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Is AI Customer Service Saving Businesses Money While Costing Them Sales?

Businesses are embracing AI to cut customer service costs, but experts warn that automating too many interactions could be driving customers away and allowing valuable sales opportunities to slip through the cracks.

For businesses looking to reduce costs, customer service has become an obvious target for artificial intelligence. Chatbots can answer enquiries in seconds, handle hundreds of conversations at once and operate without the expense of maintaining large support teams.

On paper, the savings can look impressive. But there is a question that doesn't always appear in the calculations: how much business is being lost along the way?

A customer unable to get a satisfactory answer might abandon a purchase. An existing client who struggles to resolve a problem could decide to take their business elsewhere. Neither outcome necessarily shows up in a report measuring the cost of handling customer enquiries.

It's a growing concern as companies invest heavily in automated customer support, sometimes making it increasingly difficult for customers to reach an actual person.

Research published by Gartner in September 2026 found that just 27% of customers would be willing to use a chatbot again following a negative experience.

The research, involving 3,566 business and consumer customers, highlights the potential consequences of getting automation wrong, particularly when companies are relying on it to manage an increasing proportion of their customer relationships.

Lara Simon, Managing Director of international customer experience outsourcer Spoken.cx, recently told Talking Business that businesses need to look beyond the immediate savings.

"It's easy to look at AI and see how much money you could save. What's harder to measure is the sale you didn't make or the customer who decided not to come back," she said.

"If somebody just wants to know where their order is, AI is probably the quickest and easiest way to help them. But if you're dealing with somebody who's about to spend a substantial amount of money, or a long-standing customer with a complicated issue, that's a very different conversation."

The issue is particularly relevant to businesses where customer relationships directly influence revenue.

Luxury retailers, professional service providers and companies selling expensive or specialist products often depend on experienced staff to guide customers through decisions, answer detailed questions and provide reassurance.

A knowledgeable employee might spend twenty minutes helping a prospective customer understand their options before securing a significant sale. An automated system may provide technically correct information without recognising that the customer needs more personal attention before committing.

For businesses that have built their reputation around service, the experience can also influence how customers perceive the brand itself.

Yet avoiding AI entirely presents a different set of problems. Businesses that continue to rely on people for every routine enquiry risk higher operating costs, slower response times and reduced capacity compared with competitors using automation effectively.

The challenge is finding the right division of work.

Spoken, which provides outsourced telephone answering, live chat, email, social media and video-based customer support through teams operating internationally, is seeing how the role of human agents is changing as businesses adopt more AI technology.

Rather than handling every routine request, people can increasingly be used for enquiries requiring specialist knowledge, personal attention or a greater understanding of the customer.

The shift is reflected in wider industry research. In April 2026, Gartner reported that 85% of customer service leaders were expanding the responsibilities of human agents as AI reduced routine contact volumes.

For employers, that could change both the skills they require and the value they place on experienced customer-facing staff.

Someone capable of handling a sensitive complaint, conducting a detailed consultation or building a relationship with a valuable client may become considerably more important than someone whose main responsibility is answering straightforward questions.

Simon believes businesses should be careful not to lose that expertise in the pursuit of lower costs.

"We use AI ourselves, and it absolutely has a place. The last thing businesses should be doing is paying people to handle repetitive tasks that technology can do just as well," she said.

"But there are conversations where you really do need someone who knows what they're talking about, can understand the customer and build that relationship. Particularly when the customer is valuable to the business, I think it's a mistake to remove that personal contact just to save money."

For businesses reviewing their customer service operations, the financial calculation may therefore need to extend beyond staffing costs and the number of enquiries successfully automated.

Customer retention, repeat purchases, conversion rates and overall customer value all have a part to play in determining whether an automated service is genuinely delivering a better commercial result.

As AI becomes more widely adopted, human customer service could increasingly become a premium part of the experience, particularly in sectors where trust and personal attention influence purchasing decisions.

The question for businesses is no longer simply how much of their customer service they can automate, but how much they can afford to.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bdaily Publishing .