We Tested AI vs Human Support. Here’s What Happened.

“Live agent.”

“Talk to a human.”

“Write outline for proposal on [insert topic here].”

We see messages like these every day. In fact, people assume we're AI so often that we've decided to run a little experiment to see who actually does support better. Is it AI or do humans still take the win?

The setup

We started by building a simple test environment. We pulled real questions from real users and let both sides take a shot at helping.

To make the comparison fair, we used live chat only - no slow "we'll get back to you in 2-3 business days" support. Both AI bots and human support teams were given the same questions, split across three categories:

• Onboarding

• Billing

• Technical support

Each interaction was then evaluated using the following metrics:

• First response time

• Resolution time

• Accuracy and understanding

Same questions, same grading criteria, no shortcuts. Here’s how it played out.

Round 1: First response time

If this were a test of speed alone, AI would definitely take the cake. Chatbots responded almost instantly, the first response time being within seconds.

The surprising part though? Humans weren't that far behind. Across multiple human support teams, the first response times varied between a few seconds to 4 minutes.

Considering these are real humans reading the question, thinking, and typing out the answer, that's genuinely fast. And while AI technically takes this round based on speed alone, the gap turned out to be much smaller than expected.

Round 1 winner: AI (but humans weren't too far behind)

Round 2: Resolution time

Now, here's where things got interesting. Despite being a faster responder, AI's resolution time was surprisingly inconsistent, ranging from anywhere between a few minutes to never.

When presented with more complex questions or multiple ones at the same time, our AI support chats often ended with no resolution at all. More specifically, the bots either:

• Sent us into a loop of generic answers that didn't help,

• Asked us to rephrase,

• Or gave up with a “connecting you to a live agent” message, ironically handing the problem off to a human.

All in all, only 63% of support conversations with AI ended in a complete resolution.

Human support teams, on the other hand, delivered complete resolutions in 100% of the cases. The average resolution time was a bit longer at around 7 minutes, but that extra time translated into complete answers.

Round 2 winner: Humans

Round 3: Accuracy and understanding

Seeing that you'd need to first understand the question to give the correct answer, it makes sense to bundle these results together.

AI did well on simple, one-line questions that matched up with help doc content. Things like “How do I reset my password?” or “Where can I find my invoices?”  were handled in just a few seconds, often with a link or an answer copied directly from the help docs.

However, as soon as the question required picking up on cues, things fell apart quickly. For example, we asked: “I’m not sure which plan to choose. Can you help?”

Instead of, you know, helping us choose, the bots just dumped a pricing table on us and called it a day. No follow-up questions, no attempt to figure out what we were struggling with.

Then there was this one: “I just noticed my annual subscription renewed yesterday. I forgot to cancel and I don’t want to be stuck with this for another year. Can you help me out?”

As expected, the bots hit us with a copy-paste of the refund policy without actually getting what we were saying. And that was a pattern: when the question required a real conversation rather than picking out keywords, AI wasn't quite up to the task.

Humans? They got it. Even when the question was vague or had a hint of frustration, they knew how to read between the lines. They picked up on tone, asked the right questions, and gave answers that actually made sense.

Round 3 winner: Humans, hands down

So, what's the takeaway?

AI is a great tool for covering FAQs, but it’s still far off from a full replacement. It doesn't ask follow-up questions, it doesn't understand contextual cues, and it doesn't adapt in real time the way humans can.

If you care about customers feeling like they were actually heard, you still need real people behind the chat.

On a more personal note, I've never been as frustrated as in the past few weeks talking in loops with chatbots. And to all the human support teams out there answering my questions: thank you. You absolutely nailed it.