Companies are pouring money into customer service chatbots. Consumers, it turns out, would rather ask their own AI.
A new Gartner survey of business and consumer customers, conducted in February and March and released last week, found that customers are roughly three times more likely to turn to third-party generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude than to a company’s own chatbot when trying to resolve a customer service issue.
The gap is widening fast. Use of third-party AI tools during service interactions has nearly doubled in the past year, while use of company-provided chatbots has remained statistically flat since 2022, according to Gartner.
Why it matters: For an industry investing heavily in AI-powered consumer communications, the findings suggest the engagement battle may not happen on your website or in your portal at all. Consumers experiencing a debt collection issue may be more likely to ask their personal AI assistant how to respond, what their rights are, or how to dispute a debt than to engage with whatever tool a collection agency has deployed.
“Customers are embracing GenAI in both life and work, but so far, that has not translated into growth in the use of company-provided customer service chatbots,” said Eric Keller, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Customer Service & Support Practice. “Instead, GenAI is shifting some service interactions outside of company-owned channels.”
The ROI problem: A companion Gartner survey of 1,303 senior leaders found that service and support executives invested a median of 12% of their 2025 budgets in AI, the highest share of any of the 10 business functions Gartner assessed. Only 24% reported positive financial returns across their AI use cases. Keller attributed the disappointing results to a misalignment with customer expectations rather than technology limitations.
What consumers actually want: Action, not answers. Among customers who use generative AI, 58% said they have used it to complete a task on their behalf, such as booking an appointment, submitting documents, or updating an account. In business-to-business settings, that figure climbs to 74%. Consumers also expect the option to reach a human when a company deploys AI, meaning automation alone will not satisfy them.
Keller’s advice to service leaders: stop treating AI as a standalone chatbot in the corner of the screen and start building conversational, action-oriented experiences across digital and voice channels. For collection operations betting on self-service AI to drive resolution rates, the data suggests a hard truth. If consumers were not engaging with your chatbot before, adding AI to it probably will not change that.
