Developing
The 16% figure and the 18-month forecast are interview remarks; the article does not give methodology for either.
In 60 seconds
- The study surveyed 2,160 people in the UK and Ireland: 560 business professionals and 1,600 consumers.
- NTT DATA's Sashen Naidu says resistance to AI is "entirely a myth"; the real concerns are trust and human empathy.
- Consumers prefer phone, email and live chat; chatbots rank lower, and urgent or complex issues call for a human.
- 52% of businesses cite legacy system integration as a top-three challenge and 40% cite data privacy and security.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- A UK and Ireland survey frames AI adoption in service as a trust and integration problem rather than customer rejection.
- Why it matters
- If customers accept AI when it is useful, the blocker is often internal systems and handoff design.
- Who is affected
- Contact-centre and service leaders.
- Martech stack area
- AI, Customer Experience
- Stack impact
- Check how smoothly your AI hands off to a human and how many systems an agent must touch to resolve a case.
- Business impact
- Low A vendor study discussed in a CX Today interview. The 16% satisfaction gap in banking and the 18-month outlook are Naidu's remarks and no methodology was given for them.
- Related technologies
- What to watch
- The full report at uk.nttdata.com.
CX Today’s October 8, 2026 interview with NTT DATA’s Sashen Naidu discusses a contact-centre study covering 2,160 people in the UK and Ireland: 560 business professionals and 1,600 consumers.
Findings
- Naidu says customer resistance to AI is “entirely a myth”; the real concerns are trust and human empathy.
- Consumers are pragmatic: they trust traditional channels more but are open to AI if it offers benefits beyond cost savings.
- Preference is for phone, email and live chat; chatbots rank lower. Urgent or complex issues call for human reassurance.
- 52% of businesses cite legacy system integration as a top-three challenge and 40% cite data privacy and security; skills gaps were also mentioned.
- Naidu says banking and financial services have overestimated customer satisfaction by about 16%.
Outlook
Naidu expects a shift to AI-native operations within roughly 18 months and warns that AI “accelerates the good” and “the bad” alike. The article does not give the method behind the 16% or the 18-month view.
Our read
This is a vendor study and an interview, so use it as a prompt. The sensible step is to test your own handoffs: how often does a customer have to repeat themselves after AI passes them to an agent?
Sources
- CX Today: How consumer attitudes to AI are reshaping contact centers (opens in a new tab)
Source of the sample, findings and quotes.