A customer opens the chat on a business's website, gets an automated answer that misses the question, tries again, and ends up typing "agent" three times. Meanwhile the owner looks at the dashboard, sees the bot "resolved" the conversation, and concludes it works. A survey Twilio published on 9 November 2026 puts numbers on that gap: 86% of companies believe their customers are satisfied with AI-powered customer service. Among consumers, only 51% said those interactions were satisfactory.
The survey is part of Twilio's 2026 Customer Insights Series. It ran from 9 April to 1 May 2026 and covered 7,652 consumers who had bought something online in the previous six months, plus 660 director-level or more senior leaders at companies with at least 500 employees. It spanned 18 markets, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, Brazil and Australia. Israel was not part of it.
Where companies and customers disagree
| Topic | Companies | Consumers |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfaction with AI service | 86% think customers are satisfied | 51% are satisfied |
| The bot should say it is a bot | 32% prioritise AI transparency | 76% want it to identify itself at the start |
| A more "human" bot | 73% think customers want it | 54% want it |
Disclosure shows the widest split. Three in four consumers want to know from the first message that they are talking to software, while about a third of companies design their agents that way. At the same time, 98% of organisations said they are training their AI to communicate like a person. A bot that sounds human and never says it isn't is exactly what the consumers in this survey asked to avoid.
The way out to a person
63% of consumers want a quick, easy way to reach a live person at any point. 78% have already tried to bypass an AI agent to speak to a human. In the same survey, 64% said chatbots have improved over the past year, 34% are more likely than a year ago to pick a chatbot over a person, and 55% feel valued as long as the AI is smart enough to help.
Customers will use a bot that helps and get stuck with one that won't let them leave. 91% of companies reported a drop in customer satisfaction caused by AI errors, such as a bot losing track of what was said a few messages earlier. 99% said major challenges stop them from fully understanding their customers.
Running a bot on WhatsApp or a website
The survey looked at large companies, but the bots small businesses install today on a website, in WhatsApp Business or on a Facebook page work the same way and meet the same customers. That includes businesses in Israel, even though Israeli consumers were not surveyed. The findings translate into a few settings decisions.
The bot's opening message can say in one sentence that it is an automated assistant. That answers what 76% of consumers asked for and costs nothing. Give customers a word or a button that hands the chat to a person, and hours when someone actually replies. 91% of consumers said personalised AI interactions feel more real, so a bot that knows the customer's name and order details can help more than one that starts every chat from zero.
If the bot is allowed to answer questions about prices, refunds or delivery dates, read the conversations themselves now and then. The dashboard number, how many chats were closed, does not tell you whether the customer got an answer.