Gartner: Only 4% of customer service teams got the return they expected from AI
According to Gartner's Christopher Sladdin, organizations that succeed with AI invest nearly 1.8 times more in foundational infrastructure than in the applications themselves.
What's happening
According to Customer Experience Magazine, a Gartner survey of 275 service and support leaders found that only 4% of customer service organizations have achieved the return they expected from AI. In August, Gartner reported that service AI spending had risen 38% while overall service budgets grew 2%.
Whose desk it lands on
The head of customer service. How much of the AI budget goes to applications, and how much to the foundational infrastructure that feeds them?
Our view
The CX Brief's interpretation, not a claim made by the source.
That so few organizations are seeing a return suggests the problem may lie not in the AI applications but in the infrastructure beneath them. The fact that successful organizations are shifting spending toward infrastructure supports this reading.
Source
Source:Gartner
Reported by: Customer Experience Magazine·November 5, 2026
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