Gartner (2026) — Customer chatbot adoption after negative experiences

Summary:

The research discusses how customers feel about service chatbots, and what happens after a bad bot experience.

The main question is simple: people may say they are open to chatbots, but do they actually use them, and will they come back after a bad interaction?

It was published by Gartner, a big research and advisory company that sells paid research, consulting, and events to business leaders.

Its goal here is to show customer-service leaders why chatbot adoption stays low and what they should do differently.

The findings come from a Gartner survey of 3,566 B2B and B2C customers, run in February and March 2026. This is survey data, so the results are based on what people said about their recent service experience and future willingness.

The biggest findings are clear.

Nearly half of customers said they would have been willing to use a chatbot if a company had offered one, but only 7% actually used a chatbot or digital assistant in their most recent service interaction.

Gartner says this shows a big gap between stated interest and real use.

Customers were also about three times more likely to use third-party GenAI tools than company chatbots in that recent interaction.

After a negative chatbot experience, only 27% said they would be willing to try a chatbot again. Gartner frames this as a trust problem: one bad bot experience can put people off quickly.

The piece also repeats another Gartner finding that 87% of customers say companies using GenAI for service must provide access to a human agent.

The practical message is that chatbots should focus on a narrower set of problems, work reliably, and hand off smoothly to a person when needed.