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Home Blog How to Deliver More Effective and Accessible Customer Service with AI
According to Zendesk, 70% of CX leaders believe generative AI makes every digital customer interaction more efficient.
February 20, 2026
That’s not surprising.
AI can now handle high volumes of customer requests, respond instantly, and automate workflows that used to take teams hours.
But efficiency alone isn’t the goal.
The best customer service teams are using AI to improve resolution, reduce customer effort, and build trust while also making sure support is accessible for everyone. That includes customers who are blind or have low vision – a community that has typically been excluded by traditional customer support experiences.
So what does it actually mean to use AI to provide a more accessible and effective customer experience?
A lot of AI deployments are judged by cost reduction and, it’s easy to see why…
A recent industry report by Statista revealed that 43% of contact centres have already adopted AI technologies, leading to a 30% reduction in operational costs.
However, it’s important to recognize that the effective and inclusive use of AI in customer service goes far beyond cost.
Cost savings alone don’t tell you whether customers are getting better support, whether issues are actually being resolved, or whether the experience works for all users.
The real question is:
“Did we make customer service better, faster, easier, and more inclusive – without damaging trust?”
If you want AI in customer service to really work well, it needs to do more than answer questions quickly.
It needs to handle complexity, support escalation, build trust, and work for all customers including those with accommodation needs.
Here are four principles CX teams can use as a practical checklist.
One of the quickest ways to lose customer trust is to trap someone inside an AI loop.
Most customers are happy to use AI when it’s working. But the moment it stops being helpful, the experience can turn fast. If a customer can’t reach a human, they don’t think “the bot failed.” They think the company doesn’t want to help.
And it’s not just a minority of customers who feel this way.
Research consistently shows that 75% of consumers still prefer to engage with human agents when dealing with complex issues.
Effective AI customer service knows its limits and makes escalation easy, fast, and respectful.
Just as importantly, escalation should carry context. A hand-off should not force the customer to repeat themselves, resend screenshots, or start the story again.
AI is now part of the customer relationship and customers notice when it’s being used.
One of the fastest ways to damage trust is to hide that the customer is speaking to AI, or to make the AI sound more confident than it should be.
In fact, three-quarters of consumers consider transparency important and two-thirds willing to switch to brands that prioritize it.
Transparency doesn’t need to be complicated.
It means being clear that the customer is interacting with AI, and being honest when the AI isn’t sure or when a human is the better next step.
Generic AI support is one of the biggest reasons AI fails in customer service.
Customer service isn’t general knowledge. It’s specific to your product versions, your policies, your troubleshooting steps, and the way your business actually operates. If the AI isn’t trained on that reality, it will provide vague answers, guess incorrectly, and escalate issues that could have been resolved.
This is where AI needs to shift from “chatbot” to “virtual agent” – resolving real customer problems accurately, safely, and consistently.
Accessibility can’t be an afterthought.
If your AI experience relies heavily on text-only chat, visual UI patterns, or complex workflows, it may exclude blind and low vision users by default. That creates both customer experience issues and compliance risk as accessibility standards continue to tighten.
But accessibility is not only about avoiding risk. It’s also a growth opportunity. When support is designed to work for blind and low vision customers, it usually works better for everyone because it reduces effort and improves clarity.
Most AI chatbots today still rely on one input type: text.
That works for basic questions like “Where’s my order?” But it breaks down fast when the issue is visual. And in customer service, many real-world issues are visual – from error messages to identifying a serial number.
In these moments, text-only AI forces customers to describe what they’re seeing, which slows things down.
If a customer is blind or has low vision, they may not be able to read a screen, identify a label, or describe what’s happening visually. That means traditional AI chatbots often become unusable at the exact moment a customer needs help.
This is why visual AI that can understand images and screenshots should be a must-have for customer service teams seeking to provide effective, inclusive service.
Whether you are a small business, a medium-sized enterprise, or a large multinational, Service AI can boost customer loyalty and reduce costs, all while providing a modern AI-driven customer service function for your blind and low-vision customers.
It combines visual AI and seamless escalation if required. And it’s integrated into the Be My Eyes app, which is already used by 1M+ blind and low-vision users globally. If you want to see what effective and inclusive AI support looks like in practice, learn more about Service AI, part of Be My Eyes’ Customer Accessibility Suite here or request a free demo.
