More Than Half of Consumers Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Contact Customer Service, Genesys Research Finds

As their expectations rise, consumers embrace AI’s potential to improve service, while organizations face growing pressure to balance operational efficiency with customer loyalty

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Genesys®, a global cloud leader in AI-Powered Experience Orchestration, today released the fifth edition of its “State of Customer Experience” report, revealing that customer experience (CX) has become an increasingly decisive factor in consumer loyalty and spending decisions. More than half of consumers say they would rather do anything else than contact customer service, and 85% say poor service has caused them to spend less or stop doing business with a brand altogether.

As customer expectations rise and patience for poor experiences declines, organizations face growing pressure to use AI to strengthen customer relationships, not solely to reduce costs. While 76% of consumers expect AI to improve the quality and speed of customer service and 75% believe it will improve personalization, the research shows they have little patience for experiences that increase effort or fail to resolve issues.

Consumers increasingly care more about outcomes than whether AI or a person provides the service. While 76% don’t care who resolves their issue as long as it’s solved quickly and completely, they still expect experiences to be both efficient and empathetic. In fact, 94% value efficiency as much as empathy, and the inability to reach a human agent remains their top frustration, reinforcing the need to orchestrate AI and human agents to deliver the right support at the right moment.

Meeting those expectations remains a challenge for many organizations. While 95% of consumers expect information to be remembered across channels, nearly half (48%) of organizations do not automatically pass information between virtual and human agents. At the same time, maintaining service quality with aging infrastructure has become the top operational challenge for CX leaders, hindering efforts to connect customer data, channels and interactions — leading to customer frustration and eroded loyalty.

“Consumers no longer compare brands to direct competitors — they compare every interaction to the best experience they’ve ever had,” said Janelle Binder, senior vice president of customer advocacy and engagement at Genesys. “As agentic AI reshapes engagement, organizations must focus on outcomes, not just automation. Success will depend on connecting AI, human expertise and customer context to deliver faster, more personalized service.”

Key findings from the report include:

• Customer expectations have never been higher. Ninety-two percent of consumers expect every organization to deliver experiences on par with the best experience they have ever had. Ninety-one percent say a company is only as good as its customer service, a nine-percentage-point increase from the previous year.
• Consumers are embracing AI — but expect it to deliver. Nearly half (46%) are comfortable with AI making decisions on their behalf if it improves speed and resolution. But patience is limited when AI falls short: 84% will give a virtual agent three attempts or fewer to resolve an issue.
• Poor experiences have real business consequences. Sixty-six percent of consumers would switch to a competitor after three or fewer bad experiences with a brand. For 21% of consumers, it only takes one bad experience before they switch, a 24% increase from the prior year.
• Organizations see agentic AI and orchestration as key to closing the experience gap. Eighty-two percent of CX leaders expect autonomous AI agents to orchestrate customer experiences within three years and 40% of organizations are already using agentic AI.

The findings suggest the future of customer experience depends not only on agentic AI adoption, but on how effectively organizations connect AI, human interactions, data and systems across the customer journey.

Methodology: Genesys worked with an independent research firm to survey 5,811 consumers and 1,560 CX and business leaders in more than 20 countries. The survey was conducted in March and April of 2026. Among the business respondents, the industries represented were airlines, automotive, banking, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, media and entertainment, professional services, retail, travel and hospitality, technology, telecommunications and utilities.

Learn more about the “State of Customer Experience” by downloading the report here.

About Genesys

Genesys^® empowers more than 8,000 organizations worldwide to create the best customer and employee experiences. With agentic AI at its core, Genesys Cloud™ is the AI-Powered Experience Orchestration platform that connects people, systems, data and AI across the enterprise. As a result, organizations can drive customer loyalty, growth and retention while increasing operational efficiency and teamwork across human and AI workforces. To learn more, visit www.Genesys.AI.

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