75% of consumers left frustrated by AI customer service - here's how support teams fix it in 2026
Glance's 2026 CX Trends Report lands a clear message for support leaders: speed without resolution breaks trust. The study, based on feedback from 600+ U.S. consumers, shows the gap between AI promises and what customers actually experienced in 2025.
The takeaway isn't "ditch AI." It's "fix the foundation, then let AI co-pilot." Customers want outcomes, empathy, and continuity - no matter the channel.
The signal from customers
- 75% had a fast AI response that still left them frustrated.
- 68% say "getting a complete resolution" is the most important part of support.
- Nearly 90% report reduced loyalty when human support is removed.
- Only 7% rarely or never repeat themselves when switching channels.
- 34% say AI support "made things harder," and most prefer human-first pathways.
- 44% always try self-service first and 50% sometimes use it - demand exists if it truly resolves.
Why 2025 missed the mark
Too many bots were built to deflect, not resolve. Personalization crossed into intrusion. And the basics broke: messy data, broken workflows, and context lost in handoffs.
"The future isn't AI replacing people, it's AI strengthening the foundation so humans can deliver clarity, empathy, and trust at the moments that matter," said Tom Martin, CEO of Glance.
"Leaders can't build credible AI strategies without addressing the foundation first," added Heather Nightingale, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Glance. "2026 will belong to companies that refocus on resolution, rehumanize digital experiences, and use AI as a co-pilot rather than a gatekeeper."
What to build in 2026
- Data you can trust: Clean, consistent, and shared across systems so automation has context.
- Intent-aware automation: Bots that recognize complexity and escalate early, not after five loops.
- True context continuity: Carry conversation history, account state, and prior steps across channels and agents.
- Personalization with boundaries: Helpful, transparent, and explainable - never creepy.
- Empathy as standard work: Train agents and design flows that reduce effort and anxiety.
- Value metrics over vanity: Optimize for retention, repeat engagement, first-contact resolution, and customer effort - not just handle time.
A practical playbook for support leaders
- Map top intents by volume and pain: Start with the 10 that drive most contacts and churn risk.
- Define "complete resolution" per intent: Clear success criteria, required data, and acceptable paths.
- Instrument context: Standardize IDs, events, and state so bots and agents see the same picture.
- Set smart escalation triggers: Detect confusion, negative sentiment, or high stakes - escalate with full context.
- Fix cross-channel handoffs: No repetition. The next step should begin where the last ended.
- Tighten knowledge and workflows: Shorten articles, remove dead ends, and link every step to a next step.
- Train agents on co-pilot workflows: Let AI summarize, fetch data, and suggest next best actions - the human owns the outcome.
- Review failures weekly: Analyze top 20 automation drop-offs and misroutes; ship fixes fast.
- Run controlled rollouts: A/B test scripts, intents, and escalation rules before scaling.
- Close the loop: Collect post-resolution feedback tied to the specific intent and apply it to training data.
Self-service that actually works
Customers are willing to start in self-service. They just won't tolerate loops. Build flows that either resolve fully or hand off to a human with complete context - transcript, steps taken, data collected, and customer sentiment.
Measure success by completion rate, first-contact resolution, and reduced effort, not just deflection.
Metrics that matter
- Customer Effort Score (CES): Lower effort predicts loyalty more than delight does. See research on effort and loyalty from HBR: Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.
- First-Contact Resolution (FCR): Track by intent and channel; escalate earlier if FCR falls.
- Retention and repeat engagement: Tie outcomes to accounts, not channels.
- Time-to-resolution (TTR): Shorten without sacrificing completeness or empathy.
How to prep your team
Give agents and team leads the skills to work with AI the right way - prompts, summaries, verification, and data hygiene. Build confidence with hands-on practice, not theory.
If you're leveling up your support org's AI skills, explore practical training here: AI courses by job.
The mandate for 2026
Fix the foundation before scaling automation. Use AI to reduce effort and surface context, then let humans deliver the clarity and empathy customers remember.
Fast is good. Resolution is better. Do both, and you'll earn loyalty - even when things go wrong.
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