The State of Customer Experience 2025 Deep Dive #2: Why 85% of Consumers Are Ready for Automation
July 8, 2025
Our first State of Customer Experience 2025 deep dive focused on:
- The increasing CX expectations of the 18-34-year-old demographic
- Their preference for digital interactions and automated experiences
- Their understanding of how AI can benefit CX
In this deep dive, we’re taking a closer look at attitudes to automated customer experiences. We’ve drilled down into the appetite for self-service across age groups to surface insights that may help you better understand the evolving needs of your customers.
All Consumers
What the Data Tells Us
Let’s start by looking at the baseline for all consumers.
We first asked, “Do you prefer speaking to a human agent or using an automated service for customer service?”
Human agents are preferred by 56% of consumers compared to 44% who prefer automated service.
We then asked a follow up question to the 56% of respondents who say they prefer speaking to a human agent, “Would you use automation if it resolved your issue?”
Of those 56% of respondents,15% are neutral or unlikely to use automation, whereas 41% are likely to use it.
Ultimately, 85% of consumers either prefer to use an automated service or would likely use one if it could resolve their issue.
What It Means for CX Leaders
The key takeaway for businesses is two-fold:
- Almost half of consumers (44%) prefer using automated service from the get-go.
- The majority of consumers who prefer speaking to a human agent, would actually use automation too, as long as it resolves their issue.
This indicates that there is a perception among consumers who prefer speaking to a human agent that it’s the best way of resolving an issue.
With the leap forward in conversational AI, this isn’t necessarily the case.
Improvements to intent detection, more powerful large language models, and the ability to train these models on both existing industry data and data that’s unique to individual businesses, intelligent virtual assistants can contain an increasingly broad range of customer queries without the need for human intervention.
18-34 Year Olds
What the Data Tells Us
Our previous deep dive on the 18–34-year-old demographic highlighted their understanding of how AI can benefit CX, and that’s evident in the fact that 77% of this age group prefers using automated services over speaking to a human agent.
Just 4% of this demographic prefers speaking to a human agent and are neutral or unlikely to using an automated service, even if it resolves their issue.
What It Means for CX Leaders
For businesses targeting the 18–34 demographic, the key takeaway is clear: 96% of consumers in this age group either prefer or are open to using automated services.
When designed well, an intelligent virtual assistant can contain most customer interactions for this segment, delivering faster resolutions at a fraction of the cost of human support.
35-54 Year Olds
What the Data Tells Us
The 35–54-year-old demographic provides similar results to all consumers. As you’ll see after reading the results for the 55–74-year-olds, this makes sense as the younger age group leans more toward automation, whereas the older generation (initially at least) prefers speaking to a human agent.
Perhaps the most interesting data point from this age group is that 47% of 35–54-year-olds prefer speaking to a human agent but would likely use automation if it resolves their issue.
That’s almost half of the age group who, when wanting to contact a business, would initially want to speak to a human but would ultimately use an automated service if it resolves their issue.
What It Means for CX Leaders
The lesson for businesses is:
- It’s important to market your self-service capabilities. If you let your customers know which issues they can resolve by using automation, they may be less inclined to reach out to a human agent.
- Imagine if you could successfully deflect 47% of consumers in this age group away from interacting with human agents? Not only could you dramatically increase your agent capacity, but you could also improve customer satisfaction by resolving issues quickly using automation.
55-75 Year Olds
What the Data Tells Us
This graph constitutes the biggest swing between initial preference and final preference. The 55-74 demographic overwhelmingly prefers speaking to a human agent (86%) instead of using an automated service.
However, 57% of the age group says that while they prefer speaking to a human agent, they would use an automated service if it resolves their issue.
What It Means for CX Leaders
The real eye-opener for businesses is that even though this age group is the most wedded to speaking to human agents, just 15% would be neutral or unlikely to use automated services whatsoever.
This proves that it’s not just businesses with a predominantly younger consumer base that should be prioritizing conversational AI and automated customer service.
There’s scope for all businesses to increase interaction containment with Intelligent Virtual Assistants, which:
- increase agent capacity
- reduce support costs
- and improve CSAT scores.
Conclusion
This deep dive reinforces a clear trend: while initial preferences for human interaction remain strong—especially among older demographics—the vast majority of consumers are open to automation if it delivers results.
Businesses that invest in intelligent, well-communicated self-service options stand to gain in agent capacity and customer satisfaction.
To explore more insights from our proprietary research, read the full State of Customer Experience 2025 report.
And, if you missed it, be sure to check out The State of CX 2025 Deep Dive #1: How the Younger Generation Is Reshaping CX for a closer look at how younger consumers are demanding an increasingly digital and automated CX ecosystem.