Five9 Research Highlights Human Role in AI CX

New research from Five9 suggests that AI has become widely adopted in customer experience, with 92% of organizations having implemented or piloted AI use cases in customer service.

“AI has clearly crossed the threshold from promise to production in customer experience, but the next challenge is much harder than deployment,” said Amit Mathradas, CEO of Five9.

“Winning with AI in customer experience will come down to more than automating interactions at scale.

It requires making every experience more relevant, more trusted and more human – giving customers choice, equipping agents for higher-value work, preserving context across every hand-off and building AI strategies that can scale responsibly across the business.”

However, the findings indicate that consumer trust still depends heavily on access to human support and transparent use of AI.

The study, based on surveys of 3,000 consumers and 600 CX and contact centre decision-makers across the US, UK and Germany, found that while 80% of consumers are willing to use AI-powered customer service, around two-thirds still prefer speaking with a human agent.

Transparency also remains a key issue, with 71% of consumers saying it is very or extremely important to know when they are interacting with AI.

The research highlighted a disconnect between businesses and consumers around AI-to-human hand-offs, with most organizations believing they preserve context during transfers, while 83% of consumers said they still need to repeat information after being passed to an agent.

The report also found that many organizations are still modernizing their technology foundations, with 84% transitioning from on-premise infrastructure to cloud environments.

According to Five9, the findings suggest that successful AI adoption depends not only on deploying new technologies but also on how effectively organizations integrate AI into customer journeys and support experiences.

Author: Robyn Coppell

Reviewed by: Megan Jones