PINOY consumers are becoming more receptive to artificial intelligence in customer service, but businesses risk losing customers if automated systems fail to resolve problems quickly and completely, according to a new study by Genesys.
The company’s 2026 State of Customer Experience report found that 64 percent of Filipino consumers felt more positive about AI-powered customer service than they did two years ago, compared with 56 percent in Asia-Pacific and 50 percent globally.
Yet the findings also point to the limits of that growing acceptance. Consumers continue to judge businesses by the quality of their service, regardless of whether a human employee or an AI system handles their concerns.
“91% of consumers say a company is only as good as its customer service,” the report said, noting that the global figure was nine percentage points higher than in its 2025 report.
Genesys released Philippine findings from the report on Oct. 21. The research surveyed 5,811 consumers and 1,560 customer experience and business leaders in more than 20 countries in March and April 2026.
Poor service threatens customer retention
In the Philippine results, 91 percent of respondents said poor customer service had led them to reduce spending with a business or stop doing business with it.
The global findings similarly showed the financial consequences of service failures: 42 percent of consumers had stopped buying from a brand after a poor experience, while 43 percent had spent less with that brand.
“Consumers don’t judge the experience provided by an organisation in isolation. They compare it against the best interaction they’ve ever had, anywhere,” the report said.
The findings suggest that customer experience is increasingly shaped by comparisons across businesses and channels. A company’s own service standards may not be enough if customers have experienced faster, more convenient or more effective support elsewhere.
For Philippine businesses adopting AI, the challenge is therefore not simply to automate customer interactions. Systems must be able to address customer concerns and provide a smooth transition to human employees when necessary.
The study found that 73 percent of Filipino consumers considered virtual agents or chatbots helpful. Another 78 percent prioritized a fast and complete resolution over whether a human or an AI system handled their concern.
These results indicate that customers may accept automated assistance when it solves their problems, but they do not establish a universal preference for AI over human service.
AI is changing expectations
The report found that AI is influencing expectations for speed, efficiency and personalization. Globally, 76 percent of consumers believed AI would improve the quality and speed of customer service over the next two to three years, while 75 percent expected it to improve personalization.
The study also said consumers increasingly expect service interactions to be convenient and relevant to their needs, reflecting their growing exposure to AI in personal and professional settings.
For organizations, personalization depends in part on whether customer information follows them across channels and interactions. Without that continuity, customers may have to repeat details or explain the same problem when moving from a virtual agent to a human representative.
The report’s Asia-Pacific findings show that 54 percent of organizations in the region automatically provided agents with previously collected customer information, compared with 52 percent globally. The Philippines recorded 55 percent.
On personalization, 40 percent of Philippine organizations said they delivered extremely personalized customer service, above the Asia-Pacific and global averages of 35 percent.
The figures suggest progress in some aspects of customer experience, while highlighting the need for more consistent service delivery.
AI investment and autonomous agents
Customer experience leaders in the Philippines are also planning to expand their use of AI. According to the report, 62 percent planned to use AI tools to augment employees, compared with 55 percent in Asia-Pacific and 47 percent globally.
The study found that 49 percent of Philippine leaders expected agentic or semi-autonomous AI to increasingly coordinate customer experience. Such systems can perform tasks and coordinate interactions across a service journey rather than respond only to individual requests.
Globally, 86 percent of customer experience leaders expected agentic or semi-autonomous AI to increasingly orchestrate customer experience, while 41 percent said their organizations were already using agentic AI-powered or more autonomous virtual agents.
AI tools can support customer service employees by summarizing conversations, retrieving relevant information and recommending next steps. More autonomous systems, however, also require reliable data connections and clear processes for escalating complex cases to human staff.
The challenge of connected service
The report identified continuity between service channels as an important operational challenge. It found that 96 percent of consumers in Asia-Pacific wanted information to be retained when they moved between channels. However, 46 percent of organizations did not automatically pass information from virtual agents to human employees.
When that information is lost, customers may have to repeat details or restart an interaction, undermining the convenience AI is intended to provide.
Philippine customer experience leaders expected to allocate an average of 32 percent of their customer experience budgets to AI over the next 12 months, according to the report.
The findings suggest that investment alone will not guarantee better service. Businesses also need to connect customer information, systems and workflows so that AI-assisted interactions remain consistent from one channel to another.
For Philippine organizations, the measure of AI adoption will ultimately be whether the technology improves the customer’s ability to get a problem resolved, rather than simply increasing the number of automated interactions.
