Third-Party GenAI Winning Out Over Company Chatbots

Three times more customers will use third-party generative artificial intelligence tools than company-provided chatbots when resolving customer service issues, research firm Gartner predicts.

“Customers are embracing genAI in both life and work, but so far, that has not translated into growth in the use of company-provided customer service chatbots,” says Eric Keller, a senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice. “Instead, genAI is shifting some service interactions outside of company-owned channels.”

In fact, use of third-party genAI tools during service and support interactions has nearly doubled in the past year, while use of company-provided chatbots has remained statistically unchanged since 2022, according to Gartner’s data. This lackluster adoption might help explain why many customer service organizations have yet to see financial returns from their AI investments, the firm says.

Gartner also found that service and support leaders invested an average of 12 percent of their 2025 budgets in AI; however, only 24 percent of service and support leaders demonstrated positive financial returns across their AI use cases.

“The disappointing impact of customer-facing genAI investments has less to do with technology limitations and more to do with misalignment with customer expectations,” Keller says. “Rather than investing primarily in stand-alone chatbots, organizations should focus on AI-enabled service journeys that help customers resolve issues across digital and voice channels.”

Based on its research, Gartner identifies the following three key shifts in customer behavior with genAI:

• Customers are far more likely to use third-party genAI tools than company-provided chatbots.
• Customers are using genAI to complete tasks and take action, not only to get answers. Among customers who use genAI, 58 percent said they have used it to complete tasks on their behalf. In B2B environments, this rises to 74 percent.
• Customers expect the option to reach a human agent when companies use AI in customer service.

“Many company-provided chatbots are still designed primarily to answer questions, but customers increasingly expect AI to help them take action, such as booking an appointment, submitting documents or updating their account,” Keller says. “Service and support leaders should redesign digital support around conversational, action-oriented experiences rather than treating genAI as a stand-alone chatbot.”

Gartner also offers the following recommendations:

• Prioritize genAI investments to improve the voice experience, realizing that while many customers will skip the company’s website in favor of third-party genAI tools, the phone channel will still be the first choice for support for a majority.
• Look at the entire support website as a single conversational interface for all customer requests.
• Enable customers to take action when using both company-provided and third-party genAI tools.
• Position genAI tools to customers as the first step in connected journeys rather than as gatekeepers or barriers to reaching human agents.
• Make it easier for customers to take action when starting with third-party genAI. Currently, customers starting with those tools tend to leave them for company-owned resources when it’s time to transact, a point of friction that should be eliminated.
• Prepare to serve bots, not just humans. Many future customer service interactions will be AI-to-AI, originating from customers’ AI agents and resolved by company AI agents.
• Though some leaders still view AI as only a cost optimization strategy for customer service, that is only part of the equation. Instead, organizations should use AI to re-imagine how to deliver customer service overall.