Service gaps persist despite AI investment, with new research from ServiceNow showing consumers in the UAE collectively spend more than 83 million hours on hold each year.

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The report, The CX Shift: Customer Expectations in the AI Era, conducted with ThoughtLab, surveyed 34,000 executives, service representatives and customers globally, including 1,335 respondents in the UAE. Findings indicate that poor customer service costs UAE consumers an average of 10.8 hours annually — equivalent to more than a full working day — due to delays, repeated queries and inefficient systems.

Across EMEA, resolution times remain slow, averaging three to four days, with manufacturing cases taking up to a week. Even in the technology sector, fewer than one in five issues (18%) are resolved within an hour. In the UAE, 41% of consumers rate service as average or worse, while 45% say they would switch providers after a single poor experience.

“Consumers across EMEA are losing entire working days to service experiences that should take minutes. The root cause isn’t a lack of AI investment — it’s that most CRM systems were built to record interactions, not resolve them. That’s the shift we’re driving: CRM as a system of action, not a system of record,” said Shakira Talbot, Group Vice President, CRM EMEA at ServiceNow.

While 62% of UAE consumers say AI has improved customer service, challenges remain. Around 55% cite a lack of empathy as a key frustration. Although 89% prefer phone support, 80% attempt self-service first, with nearly half reporting that chatbots fail to understand their queries.

“Customers want to feel heard and resolved, not just routed. But that can’t happen when AI and human agents operate in different systems with different views of the customer. The organisations getting this right are the ones connecting their entire operation — front office to back office — on a single platform. That’s when CRM stops being a digital filing cabinet and starts being a revenue engine,” Talbot added.

Operational inefficiencies continue to constrain service teams. UAE-based agents spend just 44% of their time resolving customer issues, with the remainder taken up by administrative work and navigating multiple systems. Around 73% report using three to five platforms per case, while 51% cite inconsistent customer data as a major barrier.

The research also highlights a disconnect between executives and customers. While empathy is a concern for 55% of consumers, only 24% of executives prioritise it. Similarly, 50% of customers are frustrated by being transferred between departments, compared with 36% of executives who recognise it as an issue.

Fewer than half of organisations in the UAE have unified data systems, and only 19% report having enterprise-wide AI strategies. The findings suggest that without better integration of systems, AI investments may continue to fall short of improving customer experience.