Consumers want AI guardrails, but few business leaders have policies in place

Dive Brief:

Four in five consumers want businesses to deploy AI with robust guardrails because they don’t trust the technology, per a Genesys survey released in August. 
However, less than a third of business leaders report that their organizations have comprehensive, organization-wide AI policies and oversight, the survey found.
Making matters worse, more than one-quarter of customer experience leaders say their organization is ready to deploy agentic AI, despite having no governance policy in place, the survey found.

Dive Insight:

Businesses are rapidly adopting and marketing AI, despite consumers’ lack of trust in the technology, which can hurt a company’s bottom line.

In fact, research shows that customers’ purchase intent declines when product descriptions include AI terminology, largely because it decreases emotional trust. Consumer distrust is rooted in a perceived threat to their ethics and morals, including misinformation, disinformation and copyright infringement, as well as concerns over the accuracy of AI-generated outputs, Audrey Chee-Read, principal analyst at Forrester, told sister publication CX Dive in November.

While consumer trust in AI has grown, especially when businesses use it behind the scenes, customers still prefer to speak with a human. At the very least, they want assurance that a human is involved when issues are complex or sensitive.

About 9 in 10 customer experience leaders agree that strong governance is crucial to protecting a brand’s reputation, building long-term trust and loyalty with customers and increasing consumer comfort with autonomous systems, Genesys found.

However, more than one-third of CX leaders say their organizations have little to no formal governance policies, according to the survey. 

“The gap between what leaders know is necessary and what organizations have implemented is especially concerning given the clear demand from consumers for transparency and oversight,” Genesys said in the release. “This makes it critical for businesses to close the gap before deploying agentic AI at scale.”

Consumers are also far less likely to trust agentic AI to handle sensitive customer data. More than 4 in 5 CX leaders trust agentic AI to protect such data compared with less than 2 in 5 consumers, the survey found.

Still, more than half of consumers don’t care whether a human or AI resolves their issue. They just want it “handled quickly and completely,” Genesys found.