u/answerconnect_us

Feels like more businesses are going all-in on AI right now.

But comparing our April 2026 survey (~6k people US/UK/CA) vs 6 months ago:

• 85% said they’d rather speak to a real person (up from 83%)
• 59% find AI more frustrating than humans (up from 54%)
• ~1 in 3 would hang up if they hit AI on a call

Small shifts, but all in the same direction.

Feels like sentiment might be getting worse, not better.

Are you seeing this with customers?

Genuine question for service business owners (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, etc.):

What’s your current setup when calls come in but you’re busy?

We’ve been looking into how different teams handle this, and it seems like most fall into one of these:

Let it go to voicemail and call back later
Try to juggle calls while working
Have someone internally managing phones
Use an answering service or outsourced support

One example I came across recently was a small plumbing business that realised they were losing time and jobs just from missed calls and manual admin (creating customer profiles, chasing messages, etc.). After changing their setup, they reckoned they had about an hour a day back and could take on more work.

Curious what’s actually working in reality though.
Do your customers still leave voicemails? Or do they just move on if no one picks up?