Customers Prefer ChatGPT Over Company Chatbots, Gartner Finds
Companies poured money into customer-service chatbots. Their customers went and used ChatGPT instead, and a new Gartner survey finds people are three times more likely to reach for a third-party AI tool than the bot on a company’s own site.
(July 8, 2026 – 3:53 pm)
Businesses invested heavily in AI to handle customer inquiries, but customers had other plans. According to Gartner, Inc., people are approximately three times more likely to use a third-party Generative AI (GenAI) tool like ChatGPT for service interactions than they are to use a company’s own chatbot.
Use of outside GenAI tools during service interactions has nearly doubled in a year, while company chatbot usage has remained stagnant since 2022. Consumers have embraced these tools; half of the US public now uses AI chatbots.
The Financial Reality: More In, Less Out
The numbers reveal a stark contrast:
- Customer-service teams allocated a median of 12% of their 2025 budget to AI, making it the top priority for investment.
- Only 24% of those investments resulted in positive financial returns.
Eric Keller, a senior director analyst at Gartner, attributes this discrepancy to a misalignment between customer expectations and current bot capabilities. He suggests that instead of developing standalone bots, companies should integrate AI into existing digital and voice service journeys.
Shifting Customer Expectations
The way customers interact with AI has also evolved:
- 58% of GenAI users stated they used it to act on their behalf. This percentage rose to 74% in business-to-business interactions.
Customers now expect bots not just to answer questions but to complete tasks like booking appointments, submitting documents, or updating accounts. Most company chatbots still only provide answers, leaving a gap that encourages users to turn to more capable third-party tools.
Implications and Opportunities
Customer service is serving as a crucial early test of enterprise AI’s potential payoff. The current adoption versus impact gap is evident across industries, with AI labs repeating the same work and competitors continuously acquiring supportive AI technologies. Companies that treat GenAI merely as an additional chatbot risk losing customers to rivals’ more sophisticated AI offerings.
One consistent demand remains: when bots fail, customers still want the option to connect with a human.