More than half (55%) of consumers are tired of hearing about AI, according to Twilio’s 2025 State of Customer Engagement Report. And while they do want the technology to improve their brand experiences, what they want is more high touch than high tech.
Cloud communications company Twilio surveyed 7,640 consumers from 18 countries, including the U.S., for its report. The number-one way consumers want AI to improve their interactions with brands: helping them find products faster, cited by 51%.
The other top items on their wish list concern customer service. Forty-nine percent want the technology to resolve service issues more efficiently, 45% to improve human agent availability and 43% to provide 24/7 customer support.
While most survey respondents aren’t averse to brands using AI as a customer service tool, 54% do want businesses to inform them when they were engaging with AI. The same percentage want the option to speak with a human. What’s more, 69% feel it’s important that AI-powered interactions do not seem robotic, up from 48% last year. So while respondents desire greater efficiency, they don’t want to sacrifice the human touch, or at least the illusion of it.
Wanted: A Personal Touch
In addition to wanting their interactions to feel “human,” consumers prefer them to be somewhat personalized, with messages contextualized in real time—relevant product recommendations based on previous purchases, for instance—and delivered via their channels of choice. Not only do 88% say they’re more likely to make a purchase when a brand delivers a personalized message in real time, but 28% have abandoned an online cart in the absence of such messaging.
Sixty percent of the consumers deem brands’ personalization efforts as good or excellent, down slightly from 62% last year. Businesses, however, have a much higher opinion of their efforts. Of the 637 business leaders surveyed by Twilio, 84% give their organization’s personalization efforts a good or excellent rating.
The disparity in opinions regarding how well brands know their audience is even greater. While 82% of the business leaders say they deeply understand their customers, only 45% of consumers agree.
Earning Trust
Businesses might argue that consumers’ unwillingness to share personal data is impeding personalization efforts. While 92% of consumers are comfortable sharing with brands their gender, 87% their age and 83% their communication preferences, those percentages drop when it comes to making location, income level, social media activity and other more personal information available.
Broadly speaking, younger consumers are more reluctant to share than older ones. For instance, while 66% of baby boomers are comfortable sharing their location with brands, only 46% of Gen Z are. Likewise, 62% of boomers have no qualms sharing their relationship status with businesses, compared with 53% of zoomers.
A scant 15% of the consumers surveyed “absolutely” trust brands with their data, and 61% don’t believe businesses have their best interests in mind when it comes to using their personal data. So at first glance it’s not surprising that for 54% of consumers, companies could earn their trust by offering strong data protection. What is surprising, however: The percentage is lower than last year’s 62%.
Consumers deem both responsive customer service and easy returns and refunds as slightly more significant ways brand can earn their trust, with 55% of respondents citing each. Half of the consumers list easy access to support channels as a means of gaining their trust, and 51% say the same of transparent communication.
The consumer emphasis on responsive, easy customer care as a means of building trust ties in with their hope that AI will improve customer service. It seems likely, then, that companies using the technology to deliver service benefits, and doing so in a transparent, personal way, will gain an edge in terms of customer engagement and loyalty.
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