Europe lags in AI adoption as customer service gains

Freshworks has published research showing that European customer service teams are adopting artificial intelligence more slowly than the global average. The study also found that European teams already using the technology report stronger productivity gains than their peers worldwide.

Figures show that 40.8% of European customer service organisations currently use AI, compared with 44.0% globally. Among organisations that have not yet adopted AI, 33.3% in Europe plan to invest in it over the next 12 months, versus 48.3% worldwide.

The gap points to a more cautious regional stance, even as customer service departments face pressure to handle higher volumes of enquiries without adding staff. Among European customer service teams using AI, 80.6% said it had improved their ability to manage higher ticket volumes with existing resources, ahead of the global average of 65.3%.

The research also suggests that confidence in letting AI deal directly with customers is rising among companies that have already introduced the tools. In Europe, 64.5% of customer service teams using AI said they were comfortable allowing it to resolve customer issues directly.

Adoption gap

Even so, many European organisations appear to remain in the earlier stages of deployment. Among companies already using AI, 45.2% said they had embedded it across core infrastructure and key workflows, 16.1 percentage points below the global average.

The findings also point to a broader confidence gap among service leaders. Only 38.2% of European customer service leaders said they were highly confident in their ability to support business growth, compared with 45.7% globally.

Globally, AI adoption across customer service teams reached 43.6% in 2026, up from 32% in 2025. The average AI-agent deflection rate stood at 83.1%, underlining how extensively automated systems now handle routine customer interactions before they reach human staff.

The benchmark combines anonymised customer usage data from 33,889 accounts and 1.2 billion tickets with findings from Freshworks' annual customer survey and additional cohort-based research across five industries, giving the study a broad base across sectors and customer service environments.

Operational focus

The results point to a distinction between willingness to experiment with AI and the more difficult process of integrating it into day-to-day operations. In Europe, the data suggests businesses have been slower to move from early trials to broader use across service functions.

For companies that have moved ahead, the reported benefits appear to centre on workload management rather than replacing human teams. Greater ticket-handling capacity with the same resources was one of the strongest responses in the European results.

The report also highlights how customer service has become a key testing ground for business use of AI. The function typically involves large volumes of repetitive interactions, making it easier to measure whether automation reduces pressure on staff and improves response handling.

At the same time, lower adoption and lower confidence among European leaders may reflect concerns about implementation, oversight, and the practical challenge of linking AI systems with established workflows. For many organisations, those issues appear to remain a brake on wider deployment.

Simon Hayward, Vice President of Sales International & General Manager Europe at Freshworks, said: “European CX teams are taking a measured approach to AI adoption, but those already using AI are seeing stronger productivity gains than the global average. The biggest benefits are coming from using AI to help teams work more efficiently, manage growing demand, and deliver better customer experiences. The next step is moving beyond pilots and embedding AI across service operations in a way that can scale, connecting people, processes, and AI to deliver measurable outcomes without adding operational drag. For CX leaders, the opportunity is not simply to adopt more AI, but to make it work harder for their customers, employees, and the wider business.”