Three quarters of us may have been positively impacted by AI-powered customer service in Australia, but more than half of the nation's service agents say customer trust is the top challenge they face when using it.

The results are from a new survey by software marketplace offering, Capterra, shedding light on the increasing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in customer service. The 2024 Customer Service Technology Survey revealed 76% of customer service professionals in Australia believe AI-enabled software has positively impacted their customers, most notably through shorter wait times: 60% reported the top benefit of AI in customer support operations is faster customer service response time.

The survey shows 57% of Australian businesses now utilise AI-enhanced customer service tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants. This adoption has reportedly led to improved customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores for 55% of Australian companies. AI-powered support is favoured for multilingual conversations (58%) and analysing data to generate insights (52%). More than half also cite cost savings (58%).

However, the survey found humans are still better at many tasks over the machines. For instance, humans still outperform AI in core customer service areas such as personalised interactions (81%) and sales facilitation (72%).

Yet maintaining customer trust is identified as a key issue by 51% of respondents. Improvements are still needed too: 73% of employees admit they are concerned about the accuracy of information given to customers by AI-enabled software. To reduce errors and poor CX, 60% of companies provide their policies and terms of service regarding AI's involvement in their support interactions.

"When adopting AI in customer services, the human element remains vital, but it's also important to leverage the areas in which both AI tools (for example, faster response times) and human support agents (for example, emotional connection) work best," said Laura Burgess, Content Analyst at Capterra Australia. "It's comforting for customers to know that a complex situation can be escalated to human agents if need be-taking the customer experience to the next level."

Looking ahead, employees predict nearly half (44%) of customer service inquiries will be managed exclusively by AI within the next five years.