AI is inserting itself between organizations and their customers. It can answer questions, compare products, and complete purchases without a customer ever reaching a company’s own channels.
At the same time, new research by ServiceNow on customer expectations in the AI era shows a widening gap between what customers expect from AI and what organizations are delivering.
The signals below suggest that the biggest customer experience (CX) challenge isn’t how organizations serve customers, but whether they (or their human and AI agents) can reach them in the first place—and whether customers will trust companies when they do so.
What: Analyzing users’ online browsing history, Pew Research observed that people were nearly half as likely to click on links in Google search results when they encountered an AI summary. Ahrefs found that AI overviews reduced clicks to top-ranking content by 34.5%.
At the same time, traffic is up on AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, which can meet customers’ needs without ever sending them to a brand’s site.
So what: The customer journey no longer starts at a company’s website; it starts inside an AI query. Brands that aren’t optimized for AI-driven discovery risk becoming invisible during critical moments in customer (or agent) decision-making. This requires rethinking how companies measure visibility, engagement, and intent.
What: In January, Shopify and Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard enabling AI agents to discover products, negotiate checkouts, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers. This was endorsed by more than 20 partners, including Target, Walmart, Visa, and Mastercard.
So what: Agent-to-agent commerce infrastructure is now being built to scale. Brands will need to serve a new customer—AI agents—by competing for algorithmic selection and optimizing for AI the way they once did for search engines.
What: ServiceNow’s The CX Shift study, a global survey of 27,000 customers, 3,500 service reps, and 3,900 executives, found that half of customers say lack of empathy is their top frustration with customer service, but only 23% of executives recognize empathy as a service challenge.
Meanwhile, 47% of customers would switch to a competitor over slow service, and 46% of executives report high customer churn from poor experiences.
So what: Organizations using AI to cut costs rather than improve outcomes are paying for it in trust and loyalty, and C-level execs aren’t getting the message. Customers want both speed and genuine human connection, but too many organizations are sacrificing precision and empathy for efficiency.
Closing the gap requires going beyond just AI deployment and deflection to develop human-focused AI solutions. And it means training service reps on how best to outsource mundane work to AI so they’re able to be present with customers—and actually solve their problems.
Concern about misuse of personal data in AI interactions has risen eight points year over year to 53%, and 32% of consumers are now uncomfortable with all forms of personalization, according to the report.
So what: The data needed to power AI-driven workflows is the same data customers increasingly refuse to share. According to the Qualtrics report, most consumers would share more data if it were coupled with greater transparency and control over usage.
Companies that successfully demonstrate trustworthiness via transparency and control will have a decisive competitive advantage.
What: Forrester predicts that a third of consumers will opt for offline over online brand experiences in 2026, “driven by a desire for richer, more sensory interactions that digital channels can’t replicate.”
So what: As AI mediates more digital interactions, the scarcity of authentic, human-to-human experiences is driving their value upward. Customers are increasingly drawn to so-called friction maxxing consumer journeys to combat the tech-driven overload of instant gratification.
This aligns with ServiceNow's The CX Shift, which shows that 87% of customers still prefer phone calls for support—even as 75% want self-service options first. Customers don’t want to choose between technology and human connection; they want both.
Taken together, these signals reveal a restructuring of the relationship between companies and their customers. AI is becoming the intermediary through which customers discover, evaluate, and purchase.
The traditional model of attracting customers to owned channels and guiding them through controlled journeys is giving way to one in which AI agents act as initial assessors, intermediaries, and ongoing monitors. At the same time, AI advances are leading humans to prioritize physical and human connection in their interactions.
This creates a dual challenge. Companies must optimize for a world in which AI makes the first cut in product selection by prioritizing structured data, machine-readable content, and participation in emerging commerce protocols.
On the human front, research makes clear that the brands that win will be those that close the empathy gap: deploying AI to empower service reps and improve outcomes rather than just cutting costs.
ServiceNow’s CX research shows that customer service reps often must navigate three to five systems to solve one customer issue. AI-powered workflows that can operate across the enterprise help break this cycle.
With only 34% of executives having made significant progress connecting people, data, and processes on a unified platform, according to ServiceNow research, there’s a lot of room to fill the gap. Organizations that optimize for AI and humans will have the advantage.
Find out how ServiceNow can help you put AI to work for customers.
