AI vs. Human: What UK Consumers Really Want

MaxContact explores where consumers want AI, where they still prefer human support, and what this means for contact centres.

A major UK utility provider announced this week that it’s cutting 1,300 jobs, leaning harder into AI and digital service.

It won’t be the last business to make this call, and it’s not the first either. Across most industries right now, there’s a version of the same bet being placed: that customers are ready to swap people for bots.

Our sales team has had some version of this conversation with almost every customer and prospect this week. The question underneath it is always the same – should we be doing this too?

“It’s the question everyone’s asking right now,” says Richard Langham, VP of Sales at MaxContact. “Listening to your customers is exactly the right instinct.

The mistake is assuming what worked for one business, in one industry, applies everywhere else. Consumer behaviour isn’t uniform, and neither are the moments that matter to people.

Before following someone else’s playbook, it’s worth checking what your own customers think – not what another sector’s did.”

That question was put to the public directly. MaxContact’s Voice of the UK Consumer 2026 report surveyed over 1,000 UK consumers on exactly this: where do you want AI, and where do you want a human? The answers are more specific, and more useful, than “customers are moving online.”

Consumers Draw a Hard Line on Where AI Belongs

We asked people which situations they’d want to keep AI out of entirely. They were clear. Over half (54%) don’t want AI anywhere near an emergency. Half say the same for complex account problems. Financial discussions (49%) and negotiating terms (46%) aren’t far behind.

Flip the question and ask where a human matters most, and you get the same answer from the other direction: emergencies top the list at 41%, then complex account queries (33%), financial discussions (29%), and explaining something personal or sensitive (26%).

These situations are more common than they might sound. A missed bill. A bereavement. A boiler packing in over winter.

Someone explaining a difficult situation to a company for the first time. Contact centres deal with moments like these every single day – and our data says people want a person on the other end when it happens.

AI Has its Place

There’s real appetite for automation where it’s genuinely useful: answering FAQs, routing calls, pulling up account updates. People are happy to let a bot handle the boring stuff.

There’s even one situation where AI wins outright: talking to a lender about financial difficulty. More people choose AI here than a human agent.

But when you dig into why, it’s not enthusiasm for the technology – it’s privacy. People find it easier to admit they’re struggling to a screen than to a person. That’s not proof consumers prefer bots. It’s proof they want to avoid judgement.

Listen to Your Own Customers, Not Someone Else’s Headline

“A telecoms customer, an insurance customer and an energy customer don’t necessarily feel the same way about AI,” Langham says. “What one industry can get away with, another can’t. What worked for one company’s customer base might land completely differently with yours.”

Here’s what to get right before making any move on the back of someone else’s numbers:

• Check your own data before borrowing someone else’s conclusion – a drop in call volume tells you what stopped happening, not why, and not whether it’s safe to read as “customers don’t want people anymore.”
• Keep the human path open exactly where our data says it counts – emergencies, complex issues, money problems, anything personal. These are the situations where AI is least welcome, and where getting it wrong does the most damage to trust.
• Tell people when they’re talking to AI – 88% of consumers say this matters, half calling it very important. If AI is handling more of your first-line contact, being upfront about it isn’t optional. It’s what keeps trust intact.
• Moving contact online doesn’t close the trust gap on its own. Keeping a human reachable for the moments people care about most does, and knowing which moments those are for your customers – not someone else’s – is the bit worth getting right.

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This post has been re-published by kind permission of MaxContact - view the original article.

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell