Customers Use Third-Party AI Tools Three Times More Than Brand Chatbots, Gartner Finds

Quick Facts

Customers are three times more likely to use a third-party generative AI tool than a brand-owned chatbot for customer service, per a Gartner survey of 3,566 consumers.
Service and support leaders invested a median of 12% of their 2025 budgets in AI, the highest share across all business functions, yet only 24% reported positive financial returns.
Only 14% of customer service issues are fully resolved through self-service channels, even when customers describe their issue as simple.

Brand chatbots are losing the customer service battle to tools companies do not own. A Gartner survey of 3,566 B2B and B2C customers, conducted in February and March 2026, found consumers are three times more likely to turn to a third-party generative AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude than to a company-provided chatbot when they have a service issue.

Third-party AI tool usage has doubled in the past year. Company-provided chatbot usage has not statistically increased since 2022.

Two-thirds of consumers now use generative AI in their personal life, work, or both. Most of that usage flows to third-party tools, not brand-owned channels.

The ROI Problem

Companies are spending heavily and getting little back. In a separate Gartner survey of 1,303 senior leaders conducted between January and April 2026, service and support departments allocated a median of 12% of their 2025 budgets to AI. That was the highest investment share across 10 business functions tracked. Only 24% of those leaders reported positive financial returns across their AI use cases.

Pressure from boards and executives is adding to the risk. In a Gartner survey of 321 customer service and support leaders conducted in late 2025, 91% said they were under pressure to implement AI in 2026, regardless of readiness.

Self-Service Is Failing

The resolution numbers reveal how far brand-owned tools fall short. A Gartner survey of 5,728 customers found only 14% of customer service issues are fully resolved through self-service. For issues customers described as very simple, the resolution rate reached only 36%.

When self-service fails, 43% of customers say they could not find relevant content. Another 45% say the system did not understand what they were trying to do.

The cost of those failures compounds quickly. Gartner estimates that nearly one in five consumers who use AI for customer service report zero benefit from the experience. After a negative interaction, 34% of consumers reduce spending with that company, and 13% stop entirely. Poor customer experiences put an estimated $3 trillion in global revenue at risk.

Where Brands Can Still Win

Eric Keller, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Customer Service and Support Practice, pointed to a structural advantage that brand chatbots hold over third-party tools. Consumers cannot complete a transaction, update an account, or change an order through ChatGPT. Brand-owned tools can enable those actions directly.

The problem, Keller said, is that most brand chatbots do not. They answer questions and then send customers a link to complete the actual task somewhere else on the site.

‘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 said. He called on organizations to focus on AI-enabled service journeys across digital and voice channels rather than investing primarily in standalone chatbots.

Keller also warned against a common mistake. ‘If customers are not already engaging with your chatbot, simply putting AI in that chatbot is probably not going to drive more engagement,’ he said. ‘You really need to drive intentional adoption strategies.’

What Retailers Should Do Now

The data points to a clear gap between where brands are investing and what customers actually want. Consumers want tools that let them take action, not just get answers. They trust the tools they use every day, and brand chatbots rarely make that list.

Gartner’s guidance centers on an approach it calls the intelligent front door, transforming the entire digital experience into an AI-powered conversational interface rather than a traditional navigation structure. Brands that shift from question-answering to task-completion have the clearest path to separating their tools from third-party alternatives.

For operators building or upgrading customer service AI in 2026, the Gartner findings suggest the priority is not deployment speed. It is functionality depth and adoption design.