ServiceNow warns of Ireland's 284 million-hour service gap

ServiceNow has published research showing that consumers in Ireland lose more than 284 million hours a year to poor customer service. The findings point to a gap between investment in artificial intelligence and the service people actually receive.

The study found that Irish consumers spend the equivalent of more than 4 million working days each year dealing with slow or ineffective service, including time on hold, repeating information and navigating cumbersome processes. That works out at 8.8 hours a year for each consumer.

Customer service levels also remain weak by the study's standards. In Ireland, 46% of consumers rated current service as average, poor or terrible, while 49% said they would switch to a competitor after a single poor or slow experience.

Resolution times are stretching across sectors. Across EMEA, customer issues take an average of three to four days to resolve, the study found, with banking averaging 2.4 days, telecommunications 3.0 days and manufacturing 6.6 days. In the technology sector, fewer than one in five issues are resolved within an hour.

System Strain

The research suggests the main problem in Ireland lies within company operations rather than customer demand. Service representatives spend less than half of their time on customer issues, with the rest taken up by administration, switching between systems and searching for information.

Ireland performed worse than other individual EMEA markets in the study on measures linked to system use and data consistency. One in three service representatives in Ireland said they rely on five systems to resolve a single issue, while 60% said inconsistent customer data was a major challenge. The EMEA averages were 20% and 43% respectively.

These figures also point to weak internal integration. Fewer than half of organisations in Ireland, 44%, have integrated data across silos into a single source of truth, while only 22% have enterprise-wide AI strategies spanning departments.

AI And Empathy

The findings present a mixed picture for AI in customer service. In Ireland, 46% of consumers said AI has improved customer service, while 35% reported gains in speed, efficiency and convenience. A further 48% said it had improved after-hours and round-the-clock support.

Yet frustration remains high. Half of consumers in Ireland cited a lack of empathy as a top complaint, and 44% said chatbots fail to understand their questions or concerns.

The survey also highlighted a mismatch between the channels customers prefer and the ones they first use. While 78% said they prefer phone support, 66% said they try self-service first.

"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.

Perception Gap

The study also found a disconnect between customer frustrations and executive priorities in Ireland. Nearly half of customers, 47%, said being transferred between departments was a major frustration, but only 21% of executives recognised it as a significant issue.

That was the lowest level of executive recognition on this issue across EMEA, and below the regional average of 29%. On empathy, the gap ran in the other direction: 50% of customers cited it as a frustration, while 29% of Irish executives prioritised it, the highest share in the region.

The research was carried out with ThoughtLab and surveyed 34,000 executives, customer service representatives and consumers globally, including 1,210 respondents in Ireland. In EMEA, the fieldwork covered 11 markets across Europe and the Middle East.

Talbot said organisations that connect systems and teams are better placed to improve service outcomes. "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."