ISG Says Low Satisfaction Scores for AI Services Reflect 'Growing Pains' as Enterprises Struggle with Adoption
AI lags other emerging technologies in customer experience despite surge in service offerings, investment, ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights Report finds
Services related to AI and specifically generative AI often fell short of enterprise expectations in 2024, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm.
The ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights Report for 2024, an annual review that sheds light on what enterprise buyers think about their service and solution providers, shows that GenAI earned the lowest average CX score of any emerging technology. The findings suggest many clients believe the value they get from GenAI services does not yet justify the cost.
In addition to AI, the comprehensive annual report also covers client ratings of providers across technologies, industries, regions and by type of provider.
Amid the rapid rise of AI in 2024, average ratings for all six pillars of customer experience tracked by the survey shifted downward after mostly rising in 2023, ISG says. For 2024, Governance and Compliance remained the highest-rated area of provider performance but fell 2.4 points to 83.8. The Innovation and Thought Leadership pillar remained the lowest-rated and was down 2.0 points to 78.9.
"Many enterprises did not see clear benefits from AI investments in 2024," said Heiko Henkes, ISG managing director and principal analyst in charge of the study. "Like all technologies that have fundamentally transformed business, AI and GenAI pose challenges in the early stages of implementation."
Still, the firm's view of the future remains optimistic. "We expect CX scores to improve as clients scale these technologies across their organizations and realize strong ROI from their investments," Henkes said. "These growing pains underscore the need for expert advice on crafting AI strategies and selecting qualified service providers."
The report's findings on AI reveal that, even though GenAI is gaining traction, providers of GenAI services must bridge significant gaps to meet client expectations. GenAI services earned a CX score of 69.5, with the broader category of AI only slightly higher at 71.5, also below the average for emerging technologies.
Enterprises gave providers of AI services an average CX score of 73.8 for customization, indicating they do a good job of tailoring solutions to clients' needs. However, the findings suggest providers need to be more responsive, reliable and aligned with client expectations. Enterprises gave a below-average score of 69.3 for the cost of AI services and a score of 70.3 for delivery speed, suggesting clients are encountering delays.
Providers continue to earn high marks in other emerging technology areas, especially for services related to cloud-native technologies such as containers and serverless architectures, which earned a score of 80.3, the report says. Application development and maintenance scored highest among IT outsourcing services, while digital engineering — crucial to transforming business processes — was the highest-rated segment of business process outsourcing (BPO). AWS remained the highest-rated vendor ecosystem in a competitive field, followed by Salesforce and Microsoft.
Enterprises in the power and utilities industry were most satisfied with providers' services, giving them an average score of 81.5, up more than 5 percent from 2023, the report says. But scores from the public sector plummeted by 12.3 percent, suggesting providers struggle to meet customer expectations or evolving service standards. Providers earned higher scores in Asia Pacific and the Americas in 2024 but saw a steep decline in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), from a world-leading 82.7 in 2023 to 77.6 in 2024.
CX scores for the top 60 providers reveal that many face challenges balancing agility with scalability, ISG says. Scores fell in 2024 for providers with more than $10 billion in revenue, suggesting they should simplify their operations and become more innovative. Other segments also declined, including providers with revenue under $1 billion, which may struggle to scale up to meet customer demands. Slightly larger "breakthrough" providers gained, reflecting strong CX initiatives and effective scalability.
The report also examines a wide range of other trends in CX ratings across AI and other services, including client satisfaction with ITO and BPO specialists and firms that offer both types of services.
About ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights Research
CX scores reported in the ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights Report represent the weighted average of client satisfaction scores and importance scores across six dimensions: Execution and Delivery, Governance and Compliance, Collaboration and Transparency, Innovation and Thought Leadership, People and Cultural Fit, and Business Continuity and Flexibility.
Through ISG's continuous Voice of the Customer survey research, customers are asked to rate the importance of each of the six dimensions and then rate their service provider/vendor on each, on a scale of 1-100. CX scores are also generated across industries, regions and technology domains and for each service provider/vendor.
ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights scores are an integral part of the provider assessments offered by ISG Provider Lens™ research, the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG's global advisory team.
The 2024 ISG Star of Excellence™ CX Insights Report is available as a free download from this webpage, with more detailed findings, including by provider, available by contacting ISG.
Enterprises that wish to participate in the ISG Voice of the Customer survey research can begin the process by visiting this website. Providers also can nominate their customers to participate.
About ISG
ISG (Nasdaq: III) is a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm. A trusted partner to more than 900 clients, including 75 of the world's top 100 enterprises, ISG is a long-time leader in technology and business services that is now at the forefront of leveraging AI to help organizations achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm, founded in 2006, is known for its proprietary market data, in-depth knowledge of provider ecosystems, and the expertise of its 1,600 professionals worldwide working together to help clients maximize the value of their technology investments.
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Press Contacts:
Will Thoretz, ISG
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Julianna Sheridan, Matter Communications for ISG
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