Why UAE Consumers Lose 83 Million Hours Despite AI in Customer Service
A growing gap between AI potential and execution is leaving customers frustrated and businesses at risk of churn.
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Consumers in the UAE are collectively losing more than 83 million hours each year navigating inefficient customer service, according to new research from ServiceNow. The findings highlight a widening gap between organizations’ investments in AI and the actual service experiences delivered to customers.
The report, The CX Shift: Customer Expectations in the AI Era, conducted in collaboration with ThoughtLab, draws on insights from 34,000 respondents globally, including 1,335 in the UAE. It estimates that individuals in the Emirates spend an average of 10.8 hours annually dealing with service-related issues—equivalent to more than a full working day lost to long wait times, repeated interactions, and slow systems.
Across EMEA, customer issues take an average of 3-4 days to resolve, with some sectors, such as manufacturing, taking close to a full working week. Even in technology, fewer than one in five service issues are resolved within an hour. In the UAE, 41% of consumers rate service experiences as average or worse, while 45% say they would switch providers after a single poor interaction.
“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 AI adoption is improving perceptions of service, gaps remain. Around 62% of UAE consumers say AI has enhanced customer service, with 49% citing improvements in speed and efficiency and 60% pointing to better 24/7 support. However, more than half (55%) identify a lack of empathy as a primary frustration. Although 80% of customers attempt self-service first, nearly half report that chatbots fail to understand their needs.
“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 also constrain service delivery. UAE-based agents spend just 44% of their time addressing customer issues, with the remainder taken up by administrative tasks and navigating fragmented systems. Nearly three-quarters of service representatives report needing to access three to five systems to resolve a single query, while 51% cite inconsistent customer data as a key challenge.
The research further identifies a disconnect between executive priorities and customer expectations. While 55% of UAE consumers cite lack of empathy as a top concern, only 24% of executives prioritise it. Similarly, half of customers report frustration with being transferred between departments, compared to 36% of executives who recognise it as a major issue.
The report concludes that fragmented systems remain a core barrier to effective service transformation. Fewer than half of UAE organisations have integrated data into a unified source, and only 19% report having enterprise-wide AI strategies. Addressing these gaps, it argues, will require organisations to align data, workflows, and teams—enabling AI to deliver on its promise of faster, more responsive, and more human-centric customer experiences.
