Survey: Poor automated customer service leads some consumers to switch brands
Consumers have limited patience when it comes to automated customer service.
According to a new survey of 1,001 American adults from Parloa, an agentic platform and customer experience (CX) developer, more than half (55%) of respondents will interact with an automated system for less than three minutes before asking for a human. Nearly one-in-five won't last one minute, and only 5% will give automation more than 10 minutes.
One-in-10 consumers exit an automated interaction the first time they are asked to repeat anything, while 60% will comply at most twice. Seven-in-10 consumers are within two failed confirmation loops of abandoning the interaction entirely, according to the survey.
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These frustrations can have repercussions for brands. After a bad customer service experience, nearly half (48%) of respondents told friends and family, while more than a third (35%) switched brands and 27% vented publicly on social media or in reviews. Only 17% kept the experience to themselves.
More than half (53%) of respondents admitted to actively avoiding a chatbot or interactive voice response (IVR) system to force a transfer. Of those, nearly 44%% tried yelling "human" or "person" into the phone. Over a third (34%) pressed zero and random digits repeatedly.
When Parloa asked respondents to rank their top CX interaction pain points, "talking to a bot that doesn't understand me" topped the list at 25%. This is ahead of long hold times (22%), being transferred multiple times (13%) and being forced to repeat information (12%).
Despite frustrations, 85% of consumers say they're very or somewhat likely to embrace an automated system that resolves their issue nine times out of 10. Another 44% say they care only about the result, not whether AI or a human delivered it.
"The Consumer Patience Index provides the CX industry with an independent measure of where consumers actually stand, not where brands hope they stand," said Latané Conant, chief marketing officer at Parloa. "When four out of every five consumers say service directly impacts their brand loyalty, that should sound alarms for experience strategists – especially those tasked with revenue goals.”
