Quick Overview

  • A Gartner survey of more than 3,500 B2B and B2C customers shows that customers arethree times more likely to use third-party generative AI toolsfor customer service than brand-owned chatbots.
  • Eric Keller, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service and Support practice, said that the number of consumers using third-party generative AI tools has doubled over the past year. However, since 2022, there has been no statistically significant increase in the number of customers using company-provided chatbots.
  • "Third-party AI usage has doubled while customer service chatbot usage has not grown—this should certainly make leaders who believe the future of customer service lies in company-owned AI chatbots pause and reflect," Keller told CX Dive.

Deep Insights

FromAirbnbtoVerizon, countless brands have launched AI chatbots. But whether consumers are willing to use them remains a question worth exploring.

"If customers are already using and engaging with your chatbot, then enhancing that chatbot with AI to help it solve more problems is a good thing," Keller said. "If customers are not yet engaging with your chatbot, simply adding AI to the chatbot may not drive more engagement. So, you really need to develop a proactive adoption strategy."

AI has become more prevalent in consumers' lives. Two-thirds of consumers are using generative AI in their personal lives, at work, or both—including third-party tools like Claude, work assistants like Copilot, and AI chatbots on brand websites.

But most of the usage is concentrated in third-party AI tools.

Keller believes this preference reflects not only customers' familiarity with third-party tools like ChatGPT and Claude, but also the quality of these tools.

"They use these tools in all aspects of their lives and increasingly trust them and the responses they give," Keller said. "So, when they encounter a customer service issue, it's natural for them to turn to the tools they use every day, rather than going to chatbots on company websites that they don't use frequently."

Brands' investments in generative AI customer service often diverge from customer behavior, leading to disappointing returns on investment. There are two aspects of brand chatbot strategies that are lacking and can be improved: taking action and presentation.

Customers use generative AI to answer questions and take actions. Gartner found that more than half of customers (58%) have used it to complete tasks, and nearly three-quarters of B2B customers have used it to complete a task.

"This is exactly where brand chatbots are currently uniquely positioned, because you can't do these operations through ChatGPT," Keller said. "But often brand chatbots simply answer questions. If you want to make a transaction, update information, add content, or change content, it sends you a link to go elsewhere on the website. That's a missed opportunity."

Brands can also improve the design and presentation of their chatbots.

"I think that presentation of a small chatbot popping up in the bottom right corner of the screen is starting to feel a bit outdated," Keller said. "What we see more advanced companies doing is making almost the entire digital experience a single intelligent entry point, not a standalone chatbot, but rather the entire digital experience being in an AI-driven conversational interface."

Keller said leading organizations are no longer offering website homepages with headers, links, and different navigation areas, but rather offering experiences that are more conversational than navigational.

Perhaps this experience takes the form of a search box asking: "What would you like to accomplish with us today?"