AI Sounds Great. But What Do Your Customers Think?

If you’re a business owner, you are probably as tired as I am of the messaging around AI coming from the business “experts.”

“If you’re not adopting AI in your business, you’re already behind.”

“AI is the answer to simplifying the running of your business.”

“Stop doing the things that AI could do for you.”

One of the things these experts tout is handing customer support over to AI. From AI-powered chatbots to AI help desks like Tidio and Freshdesk, small businesses are promised hours of time saved by putting AI in charge of customer support.

But Has Anyone Asked the Customer?

But has anyone asked your customers if they actually want you to automate their customer support experiences?

I ask because while an AI chatbot may save you time, it can cause your customer to spend more time trying to solve the problem they came to you with.

Efficiency for Whom?

And that makes me wonder: Efficiency for whom?

We keep measuring AI efficiency from the business owner’s side of the interaction. If AI saves me five minutes but makes my customer spend ten frustrating minutes trying to get an answer, have I actually made anything more efficient?

Maybe for me.

Certainly not for my customer.

And customers are making their feelings about this pretty clear.

According to 2026 research from SurveyMonkey, 79% of Americans strongly prefer interacting with a human rather than an AI agent for customer service. Even more telling, 81% believe companies are primarily using AI to save money rather than to improve customer service.

This isn’t an entirely new concern, either. Gartner found that 64% of customers would prefer companies not use AI for customer service at all, and 53% said they would consider switching to a competitor if they learned a company planned to use AI for customer service.

That should matter to us as small business owners.

The Problem Isn’t Always AI. It’s AI Gatekeeping.

The frustration isn’t necessarily that AI exists. It’s what happens when AI becomes a gatekeeper standing between your customer and the human being who can actually help them.

Someone might be perfectly happy to ask a chatbot where their order is or what time your business closes.

But imagine that same person has been charged twice, received the wrong product, can’t access something they paid for or has a problem that doesn’t fit neatly into one of the chatbot’s predetermined pathways.

Now they’re explaining themselves to a bot.

The bot misunderstands.

They try again.

The bot spits out another answer that doesn’t solve the problem.

They type “human.”

“Representative.”

“AGENT.”

And suddenly the technology that was supposed to create a more efficient customer experience has become the obstacle preventing them from getting help.

I’m not saying there aren’t places in your business where utilizing AI for customer support might make sense.

After-hours assistance, simple information and routine transactions are all places where customers might actually appreciate the convenience of AI.

When AI Starts Hurting the Customer Experience

AI starts damaging the customer’s experience with you and your business when the situation requires human reasoning, flexibility or empathy.

Complex problems. Emotional situations. Billing disputes. Complaints. Unusual circumstances. Situations where there is no obvious path to a solution.

Those can become even more frustrating when your customer first has to fight their way past an AI gatekeeper.

Being Human Could Be Your Small Business Advantage

And before you start feeling discouraged about all of this, I think there’s something worth considering.

Being a small business may actually give you an advantage here.

We cannot usually compete with giant companies on scale.

They have larger teams, enormous technology budgets, sophisticated systems, bigger advertising budgets and far more resources than most of us will ever have.

But we can offer something that is becoming increasingly difficult to find:

Access to an actual human being who cares whether the customer’s problem gets solved.

Think about how strange the messaging to small businesses has become.

For years, we’ve been told that people buy from people.

Build relationships.

Know your customers.

Create a personal experience.

Let people see the human behind your business.

And now we’re being encouraged to automate many of the very interactions where those relationships are built.

That doesn’t mean we should reject AI.

It means we should be much more thoughtful about where we put it.

Don’t Just Ask, “Can AI Do This?”

If you’re wondering whether adopting customer-facing AI might be beneficial for your small business, don’t just ask whether it will save you time or money.

Instead of asking:

Can AI do this?

Ask:

Will it save my customer time?

Will it make their experience better?

Will they still have an easy way to reach a human when they need one?

And ultimately:

Will my customer be happier that AI is doing this?

Human-First Means Thinking About Both Humans

Previously, I’ve talked about protecting your human brand voice when using AI. I’ve discussed ethics, creativity and human judgment.

But being human-first can’t only be about protecting the person using AI.

We also have to think about the person on the receiving end of it.

When we ask ourselves, “How does this feel for me?” we should also be asking:

“How is this going to feel for my customers?”

Because those are the humans our businesses ultimately depend on.