Customers still want a human in customer service: Gartner
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES — 87% of customers say companies using generative artificial intelligence (AI) in customer service must preserve access to a human agent, according to a Gartner survey of 3,566 business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers conducted in early 2026, as company-provided chatbot usage has held statistically flat since 2022 despite record AI investment in service functions.
Gartner analyst warns against AI-only service designs
Eric Keller, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner’s Customer Service and Support practice, said “service leaders should not use GenAI as a mandatory first step for every issue,” as a CX Dive analysis of the Gartner “Customer Insights 2026” study found customers roughly three times more likely to use third-party generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT than their service provider’s chatbot.
Third-party GenAI adoption nearly doubled over the past year while company-provided chatbot usage held statistically flat since 2022.
Service leaders allocated a median 12% of their 2025 budget to AI, the highest share among the 10 business functions Gartner tracks, yet only 24% say they have seen positive financial returns on those investments.
Company-provided AI service tools are absorbing record investment while delivering no measurable usage growth, a gap that human-agent demand continues to fill.
AI handles routine interactions, human escalation stays non-negotiable
Eric Williamson, chief marketing officer (CMO) at CallMiner, said “AI-powered virtual agents, chatbots and other self-service tools can handle routine, predictable interactions quickly and at scale — whether that’s checking an order status, confirming an appointment, resetting a password or answering a straightforward question,” as Gartner found 50% of customers say interactions are easier when companies deploy GenAI.
58% of GenAI users have completed a task on their behalf using the technology, with that figure rising to 74% among B2B customers.
Customers remain approximately three times more likely to use third-party tools such as ChatGPT than their service provider’s chatbot for service issues.
That preference for human escalation creates sustained demand for offshore outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) contact center capacity, where leading BPO operators staff hybrid AI-plus-human teams built around the complex interactions that automated channels cannot resolve.
AI’s service advantage holds for routine tasks, and the 87% mandate for human access defines the share of contact volume that fully automated architectures cannot absorb.
The Gartner data establishes a floor on human customer service demand that three years of AI investment has not moved, framing it as structural rather than transitional.
BPO operators in the Philippines and other offshore markets, with large-scale human agent infrastructure, are positioned to absorb the escalation-worthy interactions that AI self-service architectures cannot resolve.
The hybrid model Keller recommends, where AI handles resolution confidence and human agents take everything else, is the operating model that offshore customer service operators have built and scaled for years.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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