Why AI Efficiency Alone Isn’t Enough for Great Customer Experience

Summary: As organisations invest heavily in AI to remove friction from customer journeys, Ipsos' latest global research reveals why efficiency alone doesn't create better experiences. In the first of two articles drawing on our 2026 CX Global Insights study, we show why memorable, emotionally engaging interactions remain critical for customer loyalty and growth.

Removing friction doesn’t always mean better experiences

Amid the headlines positioning AI as the answer to many customer experience challenges, a potential disconnect has emerged between organisational investments and the experiences customers actually have.

Investment in AI-enabled chatbots, process automation and predictive analytics has been justified largely on speed and cost but our 2026 CX Global Insights study, spanning 23 markets, suggests those investments are not necessarily translating into better experiences for customers. 

Why rising CX investment isn’t increasing customer loyalty

First, and importantly, experience remains a key driver of brand preference. 70% of customers choose a brand because they expect the experience to be good, and when evaluating brands, personal experience consistently outweighs marketing or brand image. The commercial case for CX is not in question. 

Despite this, the proportion of customers choosing brands on experience quality has flatlined or declined slightly across a number of markets and in parallel, only 44% of customers say they are willing to pay a premium for superior experiences. These are not the findings we would expect when the investments meant to improve experiences are growing. 

The human element customers still value in the age of AI

Beneath those headline metrics sits a revealing figure – customers rate 48% of all interactions as "Nothing Notable". This means that nearly half of the experiences that customer have, are moments that don’t delight nor disappoint, but they also don’t leave any meaningful memory. 

This raises a ‘red flag’ for the efficiency-focused strategies many organisations have adopted with the advent of AI. Removing friction delivers clear benefits – faster resolution, fewer dropped calls and less time on hold (to name a few), but efficient experiences and good experiences are not necessarily the same thing. Taking away the bad moments does not in itself create good ones. The risk is that in stripping out friction with automated, AI-enabled solutions, organisations have also stripped out the human elements that made experiences memorable – the unexpected generosity, the person who went off-script, the moment that felt like care rather than a task. 

This matters because forgettable interactions contribute nothing to a relationship whereas good experiences, and particularly those that exceed expectations, build an emotional attachment – or a relationship that goes beyond rational, functional fulfillment.  

When AI creates consistency but reduces differentiation 

The evidence of this templated, efficiency-driven approach pulling experiences towards the average shows in our data. 

The first is in the emotional profile of the experience itself. Using Ipsos’ Forces of CX framework, we can decode relationships into six underlying needs across two groups. The hygiene forces that represent the minimum viable experience – Certainty, Control and Fair Treatment and the differentiating forces where value and meaning are created – Status, Belonging and Enjoyment. Globally, organisations continue to perform well on the hygiene forces and are weak on the differentiators. This is precisely how many current AI implementations both excel and fall short – they deliver consistency, speed and accuracy at scale, but not the softer, deeper connections that still rely on human judgement and warmth. 

This ‘hygiene focus’ also helps us understand one of the reasons customers will not pay a premium. While external factors play a role here, we know customers won’t pay a premium for basic competence, but they will pay for experiences that make them feel understood and valued. When AI converges experiences on the same efficient baseline, that premium erodes. 

How brands can turn AI efficiency into memorable customer experiences 

Taken together, these findings point to the same conclusion. Efficiency-first AI has the potential to make experiences smoother without necessarily making them better. None of this represents a ceiling, it is simply what happens when organisations pour their energy into automating the hygiene and neglecting the emotional connection, assuming that faster and better are the same thing.

The organisations that break away from the competent average won't be the ones that deployed the most AI. They'll be the ones that work out what it has quietly been subtracting – the human warmth and emotional connection that turn a transaction into a relationship. 

Because customers don't remember how efficient an experience was, they remember how it made them feel. 

This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Part 2 will be published next Wednesday, 21 September.