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

India leads global optimism on AI in customer service, with the biggest increase in positive sentiment over the past two years

 94% Indian consumers expect AI will improve customer service quality and speed

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, organisations 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 personalisation, 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 organisations. While 95% of consumers expect information to be remembered across channels, nearly half (48%) of organisations 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.

Key findings from India:

• Speed is the new measure of good customer service: 39% of Indian consumers surveyed expect to wait no more than 2–5 minutes for support. Yet
• The quiet cost of poor service:
• Indian organisations are investing to close the gap:

“India is emerging as one of the world’s most AI-ready customer experience markets. It combines exceptionally high consumer confidence in AI, strong enterprise investment in cloud and AI modernisation, and a growing ability to deliver connected, personalised experiences at scale. This positions India to become a leader in the next phase of AI-powered experience orchestration. As Agentic AI becomes more deeply embedded in customer engagement, the organisations that successfully orchestrate experiences by leveraging AI, human expertise and customer context will be best positioned to strengthen customer loyalty and drive long-term growth,” said Raja Lakshmipathy, Vice President & Managing Director, India & SAARC, Genesys.

Key findings from the global report include:

• Customer expectations have never been higher. Ninety-two percent of consumers expect every organisation 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.
• Organisations 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 organisations are already using agentic AI.

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

s worked with an independent research firm to survey 5,811 consumers and 1,560 CX and business leaders in more than 20 countries. The study includes responses from 1,426 (24%) consumers and 508 (14%) CX leader respondents across Asia Pacific (APAC), providing regional insights alongside the global findings. 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 organisations 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, organisations 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.

© 2026 Genesys. All rights reserved. Genesys, the Genesys logo and Genesys Cloud are trademarks, service marks and/or registered trademarks of Genesys. All other company names and logos may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contacts

Manali Pattnaik

Senior Director APAC Communications, Genesys

Manali.Pattnaik@genesys.com

+65-83217924