Broadband providers are under pressure to hand customer service over to AI agents, but customers are pushing back. Research from the BBB, Metrigy and Gartner shows subscribers still want a human when it matters, and CX leaders are rethinking plans to replace their teams. I’ll share why the smarter move right now is human-first AI: using AI to make agents faster and supervisors more effective, while a real person still owns every customer conversation.
If You’re Listening to Your Customers, They’re Telling You to Ease Up on the AI Agent
Picture the call. Someone’s internet has been down for two days. They dial support, and a friendly voice picks up faster than any human ever has: “Hi there! I’m here to help.” The subscriber explains the problem.
The voice asks them to try restarting the router. The subscriber has done that, twice. The voice asks again, slightly rephrased. Three loops later, the customer is saying the word every AI agent is trained to listen for: “Human. I need a human.” And, as if there isn’t enough friction already, the AI agent says “So that I transfer you to the right agent, please tell me in a short phrase why you’re calling”.
Earlier this year, market research firm Metrigy reported that even if assured their issues would be resolved, 80% of consumers still prefer human agents.
That scene is playing out so often it’s no longer an anecdote—it’s a dataset. And the dataset is telling every service provider the same thing: not “never,” but “not yet.”
The Organization Consumers Actually Call
Countless customers seeking resolution end up at the Better Business Bureau. So the BBB’s read on this carries weight: its 2026 review of over 100,000 AI-related complaints and reviews found more than 90% expressed a negative experience (source: Better Business Bureau 2026 AI Customer Service Scam Study).
The complaints weren’t about the technology existing. They were about the inability to reach a person when the bot hit its limit.
Monica Horton, a BBB regional director, put the fix in plain terms in a July 2026 interview: businesses should keep listening to customers and make sure there’s still a way to reach a human being. That’s not a rejection of AI. It’s a simple request for an exit door.
Even the Industry Betting on AI Is Slowing Down
Here’s the detail that should carry the most weight with any provider still deciding how hard to lean in: Gartner, the research firm that has spent years forecasting AI’s takeover of customer service, found that 95% of CX leaders now plan to keep human agents in place, and half of the organizations that had planned to cut support staff because of AI are walking that plan back by 2027 (2026; Gartner research on agentic AI and customer service staffing, June 2025 and February 2026, as reported by Chatbase).
The people selling the future are telling their clients the future isn’t here yet.
Inevitable Doesn’t Mean Immediate
None of this means bet against AI long-term. It means the providers who win the next few years won’t be the ones who moved fastest— they’ll be the ones who read the room. Customers aren’t saying “keep it human forever for every inquiry.” They’re saying “this isn’t ready, and neither are you.” A service provider willing to say that out loud isn’t behind the curve. It’s the only one actually listening.
Is GOCare anti-AI? No. We are applying it in the right places that deliver the right results for broadband service providers.
Smarter Agents, Better Outcomes, Same Human Voice
That’s the thinking behind GOCare Connect. The AI doesn’t stand between the customer and the company. It works behind the team that is helping the customer.
Connect reads every conversation and automatically sorts them by why the customer reached out, with no manual tagging. A broadband CX leader can see in real time whether this week’s volume is outages, billing or slow speeds, and route each one to the right team before it turns into a repeat call or a cancellation.
When a message comes in, Connect writes a draft reply. It draws on similar past conversations, templates, knowledge bases. While the conversation is going, it suggests next steps and responses, so the agent can fix the problem instead of hunting for the answer. Plus, the account and connectivity information is surfaced via integration into the BSS and network platforms, providing more context for the agent to quickly solve the issue.
Supervisors get the same lift. Connect watches every conversation for quality assurance and customer satisfaction, so a supervisor no longer has to sample a handful of interactions. It points out the conversations that need attention, coaching opportunities and patterns building across the team. One supervisor can cover more ground without losing track of the customer.
The customer still talks to a person, and that person is more empowered and efficient.
Ready to Get AI Right for Broadband CX?
The providers who win won’t be the ones who move fastest. They’ll be the ones who applied AI where it actually helps. Let’s find those spots in your operation together.
Co-founder & CEO
After many years leading broadband network operators, Mike now leads GOCare in tackling the marketing and customer care challenges he knows firsthand.