Key Takeaways:
- Holiday shopping cemented AI as a baseline customer expectation, not a seasonal convenience, with shoppers now expecting faster, smarter, and less stressful experiences year-round.
- Consumers embraced AI for discovery and logistics but still want human empathy in emotionally charged moments, making smart escalation essential.
- Trust hinges on transparency, as shoppers respond best when AI personalization is clearly explained and feels assistive rather than intrusive.
- Brands that treat AI as a way to build trust and relevance — not just cut costs — will turn automation into a long-term growth engine.
During the holidays, millions of shoppers turned to AI tools for recommendations, support, and faster decision-making. What started as seasonal convenience is quickly becoming a baseline expectation. Talkdesk found that 75 percent of consumers planned to use AI to find deals during the 2025 holiday season, up from 66 percent the year prior, underscoring how quickly AI is becoming a default part of shopping.
Shoppers didn’t wait for brands to tell them how to use AI — they were already doing it. From asking ChatGPT for gift ideas to using AI-powered tools to price-compare across retailers, consumers embraced automation to navigate the season. Deloitte found that 33 percent of consumers used generative AI in their holiday shopping journey, more than double from 2024. Additional research by Sinch showed that nearly half of shoppers trust AI recommendations more than those from a human, and 47.9 percent believe AI will make holiday shopping easier.
The behaviors were concrete and varied: 39 percent of shoppers used AI to brainstorm gift ideas, 37 percent to find the lowest prices, 36 percent to get direct product links, and 30 percent to check if a deal was worthwhile. Perhaps most telling, 64 percent now trust AI tools as much or more than friends and family for gifting advice, rising to 76 percent among Gen Z.
But what the holidays also revealed is that consumers aren’t looking for a fully automated experience. They’re looking for something that feels more intuitive, yet still human. Even as they adopted AI tools, more than 90 percent say they still have reservations about data privacy, surveillance, and irrelevant or overly pushy messaging, per Sinch.
Instead of choosing between AI and empathy, the smartest retailers found ways to combine them during the holidays. Now, the challenge is maintaining that balance year-round.
Let AI Handle Logistics and Humans Handle Emotions
The holiday season made it clear where AI excels and where it falls short. AI is excellent at flagging inventory issues, tracking shipping statuses, and managing common requests. The top perceived benefits of AI in service are faster response times (43 percent) and 24/7 availability (45 percent), exactly the kinds of logistical tasks where automation excels.
But when emotions run high, as they do when a gift won’t arrive on time, automation alone won’t cut it. More than half of consumers worry that AI-powered service lacks human empathy and understanding, which is why escalation to people still matters when stakes are high. One study found that generative AIs like ChatGPT scored 82 percent on emotional intelligence assessments, compared to 56 percent for average human test-takers. But while AI can recognize emotional cues effectively, that’s not the same as knowing how to respond with empathy in high-stakes, emotionally charged moments.
Retailers should set up systems where AI triages and anticipates issues but escalates emotionally loaded moments to humans. Nordstrom, for example, uses AI to convey information on shipping, but when a query includes urgent language, it’s automatically routed to a service rep. This approach shouldn’t be reserved for the holiday rush; it should be standard practice year-round.
Make Personalization Transparent
The holidays proved the value of AI-powered personalization but also revealed its pitfalls. According to a Zeta Global survey, 74 percent of shoppers trust AI gift suggestions as much as those from friends, and 73 percent believe AI makes the experience less stressful. The Sinch research mentioned above found 49 percent of consumers trust AI recommendations as much, or more, than human ones.
Yet 68 percent still say gifts feel more meaningful when chosen entirely by a person, and 60 percent say algorithm-driven shopping can feel mechanical, according to Zeta Global. This tension reveals why transparency matters, not just during gift-giving season, but every time a brand makes a recommendation.
Explaining why a product is recommended, “popular with customers like you,” or “well-reviewed by outdoor enthusiasts” helps shoppers feel guided, not watched. That level of clarity isn’t just nice to have; nearly 70 percent of customers say that advances in AI make it more important than ever for companies to be trustworthy and careful with their data.
Target demonstrated this during the holidays with its Gift Finder, offering contextual prompts. Brands should apply this same principle to everyday product recommendations. Consumers often respond best when AI is presented as an assistive layer, with humans still visible in the loop.
To get there, retailers need to move beyond demographics. AI that draws on patterns from billions of prior customer interactions can shift personalization from generic to genuinely relevant, without crossing into creepy.
Extend AI’s Benefits Beyond Peak Season
The holiday data shows a real consumer appetite for AI assistance. The Talkdesk research mentioned earlier found that 70 percent of shoppers said AI reduced anxiety during the holidays. All consumers surveyed by Sinch said they were open to using chatbots when presented with clear use cases, especially for order tracking (52.9 percent), product discovery (43.5 percent), and after-hours support (37.9 percent).
These aren’t seasonal needs. Customers want help with tracking, discovery, and support in March and July just as much as they do in December. During the 2025 holidays, Liveops reported that nearly 80 percent of shoppers engaged with AI, with most using it more than the year before.
The difference is that during the holidays, brands invested in making these tools work well. The question now is whether they’ll maintain that investment. The Liveops report stated that consumers aren’t asking for more automation so much as better automation, AI that feels intelligent, transparent, and emotionally aware.
That makes escalation essential, but so is orchestration. AI should carry context forward so the transition between chatbot and human feels like a handoff, not a restart every month of the year.
Build Trust, Not Just Efficiency
The holiday season taught an important lesson: AI is only as valuable as the connection it helps create. The brands that succeeded used technology not to replace human touch, but to amplify it in the moments that matter.
That approach can’t be seasonal. Retailers who strike this balance year-round will build stronger customer relationships and set themselves apart from competitors still treating AI as a cost-cutting tool.
The question for brands isn’t “Where can we plug in AI?” It’s “Where do our customers need a human, and where would they rather skip the small talk?” Sinch’s 2026 forecast suggests AI agents will drive three to five times more customer conversations in the coming years, turning automation from a pure cost play into a growth engine for brands that prioritize trust and relevance. In fact, it’s predicted that AI agents will evolve from deflection tools to value-creating partners in customer relationships. Get that right consistently, and AI becomes part of how brands build lasting relationships.
The Bottom Line
What consumers experienced during the holidays has reset their expectations permanently. They discovered AI could make shopping easier, less stressful, and more personalized, and now they expect that same experience in every interaction.
The winners in 2026 won’t be those who automate everything or those who scale back post-holiday. There will be those who use AI to enhance empathy, relevance, and trust at scale all year long. The technology is ready. The question is whether brands are willing to reimagine customer experience not as a cost to minimize, but as an opportunity to maximize.
The author, Jonathan Bean is an award-winning go-to-market executive and the Chief Marketing Officer at Sinch, a global leader in cloud communications (CPaaS).