{"slug": "your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds", "title": "Your customers would rather use ChatGPT than your chatbot, Gartner finds", "summary": "Gartner surveys of 3,566 customers and 1,303 senior leaders found customers are three times more likely to use third-party GenAI tools like ChatGPT than company chatbots for customer service, while only 24% of customer-service AI investments yielded positive financial returns. The research highlights a misalignment between enterprise AI deployments and customer expectations for task-completion rather than just answers.", "body_md": "Businesses spent big on AI to answer their customers. The customers had other ideas. People are approximately three times more likely to use a third-party GenAI tool, such as ChatGPT, than a company’s own chatbot to sort out a service problem, according to [Gartner, Inc.](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-07-08-gartner-survey-finds-customers-are-three-times-more-likely-to-use-third-party-genai-than-company-provided-chatbots-for-customer-service)\n\nThe firm, a research and advisory company, surveyed 3,566 customers in February and March. Use of outside GenAI tools during service interactions has nearly doubled in a year. Use of company chatbots has barely moved since 2022. Consumers, meanwhile, have embraced these tools, and [half the US public](https://thenextweb.com/news/pew-research-americans-ai-chatbot-skepticism-regulation-distrust-2026) now uses AI chatbots.\n\n## Money in, little out\n\nThe spending tells the other half of the story. A separate Gartner survey of 1,303 senior leaders found customer-service teams put a median 12 per cent of their 2025 budget into AI, more than any other business function. Only 24 per cent saw a positive financial return.\n\n“The disappointing impact of customer-facing GenAI investments has less to do with technology limitations and more to do with misalignment with customer expectations,” said Eric Keller, a senior director analyst at Gartner. He argued firms should build AI-enabled service journeys across digital and voice, not standalone bots.\n\n## Customers want action, not answers\n\nThe behaviour has shifted in a second way. People no longer just want an AI to answer a question. They want it to do the task. Among GenAI users, 58 per cent said they had used it to act on their behalf. In business-to-business settings that rose to 74 per cent.\n\nBooking an appointment, submitting a document, updating an account: customers expect the bot to finish the job. Most company chatbots still stop at answers. That gap helps explain why people drift to tools that already [act on their behalf](https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-shopping-prime-day-amazon-chatbots).\n\n## Why it matters\n\nCustomer service has become an early test of whether enterprise AI pays. So far the money flows in faster than the returns, an [adoption-versus-impact gap](https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-adoption-divide-safety-critical-dan-macdonald) seen across industries. Meanwhile the AI labs circle the same work, and rivals keep [buying up support-AI](https://thenextweb.com/news/salesforce-acquires-fin-intercom-3-6-billion). Companies that treat GenAI as a bolt-on chatbot may keep losing their own customers to [someone else’s AI](https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-northslope-acquisition-enterprise-ai-deployment).\n\nOne more thing: people still want a human on the line when the bot fails.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/gartner-customers-third-party-genai-over-company-chatbots", "published_at": "2026-07-08 15:53:15+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-08 17:15:02.313327+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Gartner", "ChatGPT", "Eric Keller"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-customers-would-rather-use-chatgpt-than-your-chatbot-gartner-finds.jsonld"}}