Customer Service Statistics (2026): 79 Sourced Figures

This page collects figures on customer service: the workforce that delivers it, how satisfied customers are, how often they complain and how AI is changing the work. Every number links to the document that first published it. Most figures come from official bodies: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the UK regulator Ofcom. Others come from the publishers of national satisfaction indexes, from Gartner surveys and from company results. One vendor survey is included and labeled. For a comparison of the software products used to automate support, see the StatWharf comparison of AI customer service software.

Key figures at a glance

Method

The data window runs from 2016 to September 2026. Figures before 2025 serve as baselines or are the latest edition of a series. StatWharf used primary sources only. These are government agencies (BLS, CFPB, Ofcom), the publishers of national satisfaction indexes (the ACSI and the Institute of Customer Service), the publisher of each survey (Gartner, Pew Research Center), and company results releases. One vendor survey, from Zendesk, is labeled as vendor-reported. Statistics aggregators and articles that re-quote other sources were excluded.

StatWharf Editorial opened each source in October 2026 and checked that the figure and its date appear there. Figures not found on a primary source were dropped. No value on this page is modeled or estimated. The sources measure different things. A satisfaction index score, a complaint count and a survey share cannot be compared with each other. Each table names its measure.

The customer service workforce

The BLS publishes employment, pay and projections for customer service representatives in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The figures below come from that page. Pay figures refer to May 2025.

The BLS projects a decline, yet it still expects many openings. Pay varies by industry. The median hourly wage was $23.41 in wholesale trade and $17.96 in retail trade.

Call center employment

The BLS Current Employment Statistics program counts employees in the telephone call center industry. The series below is not seasonally adjusted. The August value is used for each year so that months compare like with like.

Call center employment fell in every year shown after 2016. The series measures one industry, not one occupation. Many customer service staff work inside retailers, insurers and banks, not in call centers. The two BLS measures therefore do not match.

Customer satisfaction

Two national indexes measure satisfaction on a 100-point scale. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) covers the United States. The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) is run by the Institute of Customer Service.

The ACSI release states that the national score is the same as it was in 2013. The UKCSI rose 1 point on a year earlier but only 0.1 points since January 2026. Banks and building societies were the highest-rated UK sector for the first time.

US satisfaction by industry

The ACSI publishes industry studies through the year. The scores below come from the 2026 studies.

The wireless score of 77 is a record high for that industry. Airlines rose 3% and sit one point below their 2024 high. Energy utilities fell 1%. The ACSI notes rising complaint rates in that industry, linked to affordability.

Complaints

Complaint counts show where service fails badly enough for customers to escalate. The CFPB takes complaints about consumer financial products in the United States. Ofcom regulates UK telecoms and surveys customers about complaint handling.

CFPB complaints

The CFPB received about 352,400 complaints in 2019, 994,000 in 2021 and 1,657,600 in 2023. The report states that the count roughly doubled in each of the last two years. Credit and consumer reporting complaints make up most of the total. The growth therefore says more about credit reporting disputes than about service quality in general.

UK telecoms complaints

Ofcom’s Comparing Customer Service report covers residential customers in 2024. Ofcom reissued the report on 18 September 2026 after EE resubmitted broadband and landline faults data. The figures below come from the May 2025 release and do not concern faults.

Satisfaction with complaint handling rose from just above 50% in 2022 for all three services. Mobile call waiting times fell from 2 minutes 24 seconds in 2023. Broadband and landline waits rose by 13 seconds.

Customers and AI in service

Gartner surveyed 3,566 business and consumer customers in February and March 2026. The results were released in three parts between July and September 2026. Pew Research Center provides an earlier baseline on public awareness.

The gap between stated willingness (49%) and actual use (7%) is the main finding. Gartner reports that use of company-provided chatbots is statistically unchanged since 2022. Use of third-party tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot nearly doubled in the past year. In business-to-business settings, 74% of GenAI users had used it to complete a task.

Customer expectations (vendor-reported)

Zendesk, a help desk vendor, runs an annual CX Trends survey. The 2026 edition surveyed 6,182 consumers and 5,115 business respondents in 22 countries in June 2025. These figures are vendor-reported.

• 81% of consumers want agents to continue the conversation without backtracking (Zendesk, vendor-reported).
• 74% of consumers are frustrated when they have to repeat information (Zendesk, vendor-reported).
• 74% of consumers now expect 24/7 service because of AI (Zendesk, vendor-reported).
• 86% of consumers say responsiveness and accurate resolution highly influence purchase decisions (Zendesk, vendor-reported).
• 95% of consumers expect an explanation for AI-made decisions (Zendesk, vendor-reported).
• 85% of CX leaders say customers will drop brands that cannot resolve issues on first contact (Zendesk, vendor-reported).

Service leaders, budgets and AI

Gartner also surveys customer service and support leaders. A survey of 321 leaders ran in September and October 2025. A survey of 199 leaders ran in April and May 2026. The budget and return figures come from a separate survey of 1,303 senior leaders in many functions, run from January to April 2026.

The 12% median budget share was the highest of the 10 business functions Gartner assessed. Only about a quarter of service leaders showed a positive return. Gartner links that gap to low customer use of company chatbots. Leaders also report that large layoffs remain the exception. Most plan to redeploy agents or reduce headcount through attrition.

Company results

Public companies report revenue from customer service software and outsourced service. The figures below come from each company’s results release. Fiscal years differ.

Notes on the table:

• Salesforce renamed its service offerings to reference Agentforce in the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The Agentforce Service line covers its customer service cloud. Agentforce ARR covers AI agent products across all clouds, not only service.
• Freshworks sells customer service and IT service software. The revenue figure covers the whole company.
• Concentrix and TP sell outsourced customer experience services. Their revenue includes services beyond customer support.

What the figures show

Three points stand out. First, the human workforce is shrinking slowly. The BLS projects a 5% decline in customer service representative jobs to 2035. Call center employment fell from 484,500 in August 2019 to 303,300 in August 2026.

Second, satisfaction is flat while complaints rise. The national ACSI stood at 76.7 in Q1 2026, the same level as in 2013. CFPB complaint volume roughly doubled in each of 2024 and 2025.

Third, AI spending runs ahead of customer adoption. Service leaders raised AI spending by 38% on budgets that grew 2%. Yet only 7% of customers used a company chatbot in their last service interaction, and 87% want a route to a human. Buyers who evaluate AI tools for support need to check two points. The first is the handoff to human agents. The second is how each product bills for AI resolutions. Products, pricing models and documented fit are compared on the StatWharf page for AI customer service software.

Where to go next

Other StatWharf data pages are listed in the research directory. The next update follows three releases: the ACSI national score for Q3 2026, the January 2027 UKCSI and the BLS call center figures for later 2026 months. Send corrections to any figure to the editorial address below.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.