Women have little tolerance for AI-driven customer service hiccups

Ever been frustrated with an AI-powered customer service experience? Women are twice as likely as men to simply give up if a chatbot asks for repeat information. Parloa’s 2026 Consumer Patience Index notes that only 63% of women trust AI to handle complex requests, 13 percentage points less than men and “the largest gender split” in the study. Women also prefer a human somewhere in the loop. Notably, Parloa also found that, when automation works, consumers older than 60 are the most likely of any age group to keep using it. “The demographics tell an interesting story,” Parloa Chief Marketing Officer Latané Conant says, “but the real signal is that consumers aren’t opposed to automation itself, including AI.”