Customers Aren't Angry at AI. They're Angry at How Brands Are Using It.
Customers Aren't Angry at AI. They're Angry at How Brands Are Using It.
AI has quickly become part of nearly every stage of the customer experience.
It recommends products, personalizes marketing messages, predicts what people might buy next, and helps brands communicate with customers at a scale that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago.
For businesses, the opportunity is enormous. They can create more content, reach more people, and tailor experiences with greater speed and efficiency.
But there's a growing tension between what brands can do with AI and what customers actually want from them.
The frustration isn't necessarily that brands are using AI. It's that customers are increasingly encountering experiences that feel designed around what a company wants them to do, rather than what they actually need.
And that raises an important question: Are brands using AI to build better customer relationships, or simply to get more out of the ones they already have?
When Personalization Stops Feeling Personal
Personalization has been a priority for marketers for years. The idea is simple: the more a brand understands its customers, the more relevant its interactions can become.
AI has made it possible to act on that idea at an entirely different scale.
A brand can generate individualized product recommendations, tailor emails based on browsing behavior, and automatically adjust messaging according to what a customer is most likely to respond to.
But there's a difference between knowing what someone might click on and understanding what they actually want.
Consider a shopper who browses a pair of shoes online. That single interaction might trigger a series of recommendations, emails, and advertisements, all designed around the assumption that they're interested in buying those shoes.
The experience is technically personalized. But it may not be particularly useful.
Maybe the shopper was comparing prices. Maybe they were buying a gift. Maybe they decided they didn't like the shoes at all.
The brand has interpreted a behavior as intent, and AI has made it easier to act on that interpretation repeatedly.
When this happens across dozens of brands, personalization can start to feel less like a service and more like a constant attempt to capture attention.
More Content Doesn't Mean More Connection
AI has also dramatically lowered the effort required to produce marketing content.
Brands can generate variations of advertisements, emails, product descriptions, and social posts in a fraction of the time it once took.
That creates an obvious advantage for marketing teams. But it also introduces a new challenge.
If every brand can produce more content, does producing more content actually make any one brand more memorable?
Customers already encounter an enormous number of marketing messages. AI makes it possible to increase that volume even further, but it doesn't necessarily give people a reason to care.
A personalized email isn't automatically meaningful because it references a customer's interests. A product recommendation isn't valuable simply because an algorithm selected it. And a marketing campaign doesn't become more engaging because a brand can generate twenty versions instead of two.
The value still comes from whether the message is relevant, timely, and worth someone's attention.
There's a risk that brands become so focused on what AI allows them to produce that they spend less time considering whether customers want to receive it.
The Experiences That Are Harder to Automate
This is particularly interesting when we consider the role of physical experiences.
Shopping in a store, attending an event, or interacting with a brand in person offers something different from a digitally optimized customer journey.
People can explore without necessarily knowing what they're looking for. They can ask unexpected questions, change their minds, discover something they hadn't considered, or simply enjoy the experience.
Not every interaction needs to lead immediately to a measurable outcome.
A customer might visit a store several times before making a purchase. Someone might attend a brand event, have a memorable conversation, and develop a stronger connection to the company without buying anything that day.
Those moments can be difficult to capture through traditional digital signals, but that doesn't make them less valuable.
And as AI makes digital experiences increasingly automated, these less predictable, more personal interactions may become even more important to how brands differentiate themselves.
The opportunity isn't to choose physical experiences over digital ones. It's to recognize that technology should help brands learn from the entire customer journey, including the moments that don't happen behind a screen.
Loyalty Can't Be Generated on Demand
Perhaps the biggest limitation of AI in customer experience is that it can help brands influence behavior, but it can't manufacture genuine loyalty.
A brand can use AI to identify when someone might be ready to make another purchase. It can determine which offer is most likely to get a response or which product a customer might want next.
Those capabilities can be valuable. But they don't necessarily tell us whether someone feels connected to the brand.
A customer might redeem a discount because it's convenient, not because they have any particular preference for the company offering it. They might respond to a personalized recommendation without feeling any more understood than they did before.
Loyalty is built through the accumulation of experiences. It's influenced by whether a brand consistently delivers on its promises, understands customer needs, and makes people feel that continuing the relationship is worthwhile.
AI can support those efforts, but it can't substitute for them.
And when brands confuse driving another transaction with strengthening a customer relationship, they risk optimizing for short-term behavior at the expense of long-term value.
The Question Brands Should Be Asking
None of this means brands should pull back from AI.
The technology has enormous potential to make customer experiences more relevant, convenient, and responsive. It can help businesses recognize patterns, understand preferences, and deliver useful information at the right moment.
But its value depends on what brands choose to do with those capabilities.
The question isn't how much of the customer journey a brand can automate. It's where automation actually adds value.
Use AI to make recommendations more relevant, not simply more frequent. Use it to recognize customer preferences, not make assumptions based on every click. Let it help identify opportunities for engagement, but give customers control over when and how those interactions happen.
And don't overlook the experiences that technology can't fully replicate. A meaningful conversation in a store, an unexpected discovery at an event, or a thoughtful interaction with an employee can do more to build loyalty than another perfectly timed promotional message.
The goal should be to make customers feel understood, not processed.
At Sotto, we believe better customer experiences begin with listening. Through the Phygital Cookie and Active Listening, brands can engage customers during physical experiences and learn from the preferences and intent they choose to share, creating opportunities for more relevant interactions over time.
It's a different starting point from simply predicting what someone might do based on their digital behavior.
As AI becomes more deeply embedded in marketing and customer engagement, brands will have more opportunities than ever to reach people, influence decisions, and automate interactions.
But having more opportunities to communicate doesn't mean customers want more communication.
The brands that stand out won't necessarily be the ones using AI the most.
They'll be the ones giving customers the most compelling reasons to keep coming back.