Human-like AI not always the answer in customer service

The next time something goes wrong with your bank account, parcel delivery or a bill, there's a good chance you’ll be directed to AI for customer service. 

Countless organisations across many industries are investing in increasingly human-like AI to answer questions, troubleshoot problems and resolve complaints. 

The Commonwealth Bank recently revealed its AI-powered customer service platform handles more than 2 million conversations every month across voice and messaging channels. 

Australia Post also reported that 55 per cent of customer enquiries were supported by self-service AI in 2025.

The logic of this trend seems straightforward – when something goes wrong, customers are used to talking to another person for help. If AI can communicate more naturally, it seems reasonable to assume it could recreate some of the benefits of human customer service.

But research published by my colleagues and I suggest the relationship is more complicated.

The push towards voice-based and conversational AI reflects an assumption that customers prefer interactions that resemble human conversations. 

The Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report found when people were told their issue would be resolved, a phone call was the preferred channel at 27 per cent, compared with 12 per cent for webchat.

But it does not necessarily follow that making AI more human-like will always improve customer experiences. One recent survey of 1,031 Australians found 78 per cent had used automated customer service systems, yet only 39 per cent reported being satisfied with them.

The benefits of slowing down

Our research involved several studies examining how people respond to different forms of AI customer service following service failures.

In one study, we examined what happens when customers interact with a text-based chatbot rather than a voicebot after experiencing a service problem. We found in some situations the less human-like option produced more favourable customer responses.

Additionally, participants who interacted with a chatbot reported greater feelings of relief than those who interacted with a voicebot. Those feelings of relief were, in turn, associated with more positive evaluations of the service experience.

This may occur because writing is slower and more deliberate than speaking. When customers are required to type, they have more opportunity to redirect their attention and allow some of the negative emotion associated with the issue to subside.

In short, when a customer is already upset, a faster and more conversational interaction may sometimes remove something valuable: a little time to cool down.

But creating emotional distance is only one part of effective AI customer service.

Where emotional intelligence matters

In separate research, we examined how customers responded when an artificial service agent acknowledged their emotions. 

We compared a robot that explicitly recognised a customer's anger by saying, "I understand you are feeling angry", with one that used the less specific phrase, "I understand you are feeling bad".

Customers responded more positively when the robot accurately identified their emotional state. More precise emotional recognition increased perceptions of the agent's emotional competence and improved customer satisfaction.

Together, these findings suggest that making AI more human-like is not necessarily the same as making it better at responding to human emotions.

Sometimes, the best customer experience may come from giving people emotional distance and time to process their frustration. In other situations, success depends on recognising exactly how a customer is feeling and responding appropriately.

Beyond sounding human

As AI takes on a larger role in customer service, the key question is not simply whether it sounds more human. Organisations need to think carefully about what customers need at different moments in their experience.

The future of customer service AI may not be about imitating humans as closely as possible. 

The most effective AI customer service models will recognise when people need empathy and when they need space – and be designed to respond accordingly.