Tidio Research: 37 Audits Find Companies Could Do More With AI Using What They Already Have
Of 37 audits, 57% were classified as Ready, 27% as Best in Class, 16% as Not Ready, and 0% as Early Stage
86% of audits scored 40 or below on actions and system integration; 78% scored 30 or below on proactiveness; 57% identified a failure in the handoff to a human
Average AI maturity scores across ten dimensions, measured on a 0–100 scale
New report finds help centers and platforms in place, while AI stays disconnected from orders, checkout and the handoff to a human.
The ceiling here is integration, not intelligence.”
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, October 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Across 37 customer service audits at 36 companies, the foundations available to support AI consistently outscored what AI actually did for customers, by 26 points on average. The finding anchors The AI Readiness Gap, a Tidio Agents report published today by Tidio, which examines how businesses could make better use of the content, data and systems they already have.— Marius Laza, Chief Revenue Officer at Tidio
The audits were conducted from the customer’s side of the screen, without access to internal systems, dashboards, ticket exports or deflection rates. Each audit followed the same ten steps across live chat, email, social inboxes, checkout, the help center and public reviews, plus questions designed to challenge an AI assistant. It produced two separate scores: AI Readiness, covering the content, data, systems and goals AI needs, and AI Maturity, covering what AI does for customers today. Readiness was assessed whether or not a company used AI. Scores were measured on a 0–100 scale.
The groundwork was often already in place. Content was the strongest area measured: 68% of audits scored 61 or higher, and nearly a third scored 80 or higher. Overall, 57% of audits landed in the report’s Ready quadrant, indicating solid foundations with AI doing less than they could support. Another 27% were classified as Best in Class and 16% as Not Ready under the report’s framework. No audit fell into the Early Stage quadrant, which describes AI deployment ahead of the foundations needed to support it. The weakest readiness area was use case clarity, which scored 50 or below in more than half the audits.
The findings point to gaps in integration and configuration. In 86% of audits, actions and system integration scored 40 or below: assistants could explain a returns policy but could not start a return. In 78% of audits, proactiveness scored 30 or below, and in more than three quarters, analysts observed no proactive engagement at checkout. The handoff to a human was identified as a failure in 57% of audits.
Where an assistant existed to test, it averaged 70 on stress tests involving false claims, competitor questions and off-topic prompts. Across the whole study, only one assistant made something up: it claimed to have emailed a customer something it never sent. Human teams also performed well, with 65% of audits recording the quality of human support as a strength. Reported complaints concerned availability and response times, including weekend closures and one reply that took 48 hours.
Customer-facing tests also revealed broken touchpoints and inconsistent support promises. In 49% of audits, a published promise, such as stated hours or response times, did not match what analysts observed. Approximately a quarter identified an outright broken touchpoint, including a support email that bounced and a storefront displaying an “Access Denied” error. In 19%, a scripted menu was presented to customers as an AI assistant. In 11 of the 18 audits where multilingual support applied, AI failed to answer in the customer’s language.
The readiness gap appeared across the sectors represented in the study. SaaS and software companies led on both scores, with mean readiness of 75 and maturity of 55. Retail and ecommerce averaged 61 and 33, while B2B and industrial companies averaged 42 and 14. One company that acted on its findings was audited again a month later. Its AI Maturity score rose from 55 to 68 with the same assistant, while readiness moved from 66 to 69.
Tidio also ran the same audit on its own customer service. It scored 89 on readiness and 78 on maturity, but only 35 on actions and integration because its assistant had not been connected to its account data. “The ceiling here is integration, not intelligence,” said Marius Laza, Chief Revenue Officer at Tidio.
The findings describe the audited companies and the customer-facing experiences tested. The full report, including 12 tests companies can run on their own customer service without access to internal systems, is available at tidioagents.ai/gate/ai-readiness-gap
For media inquiries, visit https://tid.io/newsroom
About Tidio
Tidio is an AI-powered customer service platform that unifies live chat, chatbots, and AI agents. Its Lyro AI Agent resolves customer inquiries automatically and escalates complex cases to human operators. The platform is designed for fast-growing e-commerce businesses that treat customer service as a revenue function. Learn more at https://www.tidio.com/
About Tidio Agents
Tidio Agents is Tidio’s service for custom AI solutions built by experts, from AI audit to full implementation. It connects AI agents to the systems a team already uses, validates them on a real use case, and bills per result. Learn more at https://www.tidioagents.ai/
Roberta Raczyńska
Tidio
pr@pr-tidio.net
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