Gartner: Customers Choose ChatGPT Three Times More Often Than Company Chatbots

Companies have been investing billions in their own AI chatbots to support customers for years, but customers bypass them: people are almost three times more likely to solve a service problem through a third-party GenAI tool like ChatGPT than through a company's branded bot. That's the conclusion drawn by research and consulting firm Gartner, Inc. based on survey results.

What Gartner's survey showed

Gartner surveyed 3,566 customers about what tool they use when they need to solve a service problem or get help from a company. The result proved uncomfortable for business: instead of using an embedded chat bot on a site or in an app, people more often open a familiar ChatGPT or other universal AI service and solve the issue through it.

• The survey was conducted by research and consulting firm Gartner, Inc.
• The sample consisted of 3,566 customers
• People are roughly 3 times more likely to choose a third-party GenAI application than a company's branded chatbot
• This concerns the resolution of service issues and customer support inquiries

Why customers choose a stranger's AI

Business has invested in its own AI-powered support systems for years — from simple FAQ bots to full-fledged agents embedded in personal accounts. The logic was simple: keep the customer within your own ecosystem and reduce the burden on live operators. But Gartner's data shows that this calculation does not work the way business expected: customers prefer the already-familiar universal tool and do not want to relearn how to work with yet another branded bot on each separate website.

For the user, the logic makes sense too: ChatGPT is already installed on the phone or open in a browser tab, responds quickly, and often formulates answers more clearly than a narrow corporate bot trained only on one company's regulations.

What business loses

If a customer solves a problem through a third-party app, the company loses control of the dialogue: it cannot see what ChatGPT advised its customer, cannot guide the conversation toward the desired scenario, and does not collect data about the inquiry itself. Meanwhile, the budget for developing and supporting its own bot has already been spent, and users still do not choose it. This raises a question for business: either radically improve the quality of its AI assistants, or accept that the real interface for customer support is increasingly becoming not the company's website but a third-party GenAI service.

What this means

Gartner's conclusion raises doubts about the return on investment from billions of dollars business has spent on its own AI support bots: while companies compete in developing branded assistants, customers have already voted with their feet for a simpler path — ask the AI they already use every day.

Frequently asked questions

How many customers did Gartner survey for this study?

Gartner surveyed 3,566 customers about what tool they use to solve service problems and reach customer support.

How many times more often do customers prefer

ChatGPT to branded bots?

According to Gartner, people are roughly three times more likely to choose a third-party GenAI tool like ChatGPT than a company chatbot when solving a service problem.