For contact center operators, the era of deciding whether to deploy artificial intelligence is over. The new challenge is making it work without losing the customer’s trust in the process.
That is the central finding of Five9’s 2026 Business Leaders CX Report, which surveyed 3,000 consumers and 600 contact center and customer experience decision-makers across the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Nine in 10 organizations have implemented or are piloting at least one AI use case, and 9 in 10 decision-makers report positive returns on those investments. But consumers are moving at a more cautious pace, and the gap between the two groups should give any operations leader pause.
The numbers tell the story. While 99% of decision-makers believe customer service has improved over the past decade, only two-thirds of consumers agree, and 3 in 10 say it has gotten worse. Their top reason: reduced access to human agents, cited by 55% of those who see a decline. Phone remains the most preferred channel across every generation, chosen by 30% of consumers overall and 66% of the Silent Generation, while AI-driven channels, self-service, and messaging apps rank in the single digits.
Consumers are not rejecting AI outright. Four in 5 are willing to try it, and half believe it can handle most of their customer service needs. But willingness comes with conditions. When a clear path to a human agent is available, 55% of consumers trust AI to resolve their issue. Remove that option, and trust drops to 26%. Meanwhile, 71% say it is very or extremely important to be told when they are speaking with AI, a finding with obvious resonance for an industry already navigating disclosure requirements.
The report identifies the AI-to-human handoff as the moment where implementations succeed or fail. While 96% of decision-makers say their organizations preserve context effectively during transfers, 83% of consumers report having to repeat themselves at least sometimes after being handed off, and 1 in 3 describe themselves as very or extremely frustrated by the time they reach a person. For collection operations, where a repeated conversation can mean a lost right-party contact or an escalated complaint, that friction carries real cost.
