Juliet Mogorosi
The report suggests that South Africans are embracing agentic tools much faster than businesses think. Yet, that acceptance doesn’t come for free, so to speak. They expect a foundation of governance, transparency, and local human support to back it up.
The overarching conclusion of the 2026 CX report is that automated support is an enabler, not a standalone solution. Brands that treat AI purely as a tool to cut costs or replace humans risk widening the trust gap and alienating customers.
An insight that would give any C-suite sleepless nights is the fact that rather than complaining publicly, 52% of South African consumers will simply stop supporting the brand entirely, while 55% will quietly switch to a competitor. The report sample included 2,000 consumers and 56 business executives.
What does this mean in our environment? While many marketing technology platforms delegate their entire customer service to automated chatbot loops, local marketing teams risk encountering costly downtime when complex technical issues arise, which heightens in urgency shortly before major promotional sends. For businesses managing tight response windows, multi-client agency environments, and South Africa-specific compliance standards, the inability to reach a support specialist in real time directly threatens media spend and revenue.
Gartner’s April 2026 customer service and support research reflects a similar change inside support teams. Its survey of 321 customer service and support leaders worldwide found that 85% are expanding the responsibilities of human agents as AI reduces contact volumes and moves more routine work away from them.
Everlytic is seeing this pattern in its own support environment. We see customers use self-service when it gets them the answer they need quickly. A login or navigation question may not need a conversation with an agent. A problem affecting a campaign that is due to go out is a different proposition altogether.
Where self-service works well
Over June and July, we reviewed 164 chatbot interactions and only 12.4% needed to be escalated to a support ticket. The kinds of queries where the chatbot shines include navigating the platform, account queries or locating documentation. The customer gets what they need quickly and carries on with what they were doing.
The conversations that reach our support team are usually less straightforward. Customers contact us about deliverability and integration problems, compliance questions, platform issues, urgent campaign deadlines, or high-value sends.
The person helping them needs to understand what the customer is trying to do and what is getting in the way. Sometimes that means looking at the campaign itself. An integration issue may need a technical investigation rather than another link to documentation.
When the campaign cannot wait
Marketing teams work to fixed timeframes. If a technical issue emerges shortly before an important launch, there may already be media spend committed and very little room to manoeuvre.
Over June and July, our customer support team handled 717 tickets, with an average first-response time of 6 minutes and 52 seconds. First-response SLA achievement was 98.45%, while resolution SLA achievement reached 99.19%.
Those figures tell us how quickly our team needs to respond and whether tickets are resolved within the agreed service commitments. The customer is usually thinking about something immediate: getting the task done.
Speed helps, but an acknowledgement alone does not solve the problem. The person dealing with the ticket needs enough knowledge about the platform to understand what is happening and help the customer work through it.
That becomes especially important when the deadline is imminent. A customer does not only need to know what went wrong. They need to know what can be done to fix it now.
Local support has a practical role
Our chatbot data also showed that 92.1% of users during the period were based in South Africa. For South African customers, there is value in being able to speak to someone during the working day when a problem needs more than an automated answer. Our support team is available from 8am to 9pm SAST on weekdays. We also have weekend standby during those hours and an escalation process for urgent platform-impacting issues. This has been designed in response to what the market needs.
Agencies and large marketing teams run complex operations
Agencies and larger marketing teams deal another layer of complexity altogether because one platform may be supporting work across several clients or business units. An issue affecting a time-sensitive send can reach further than one account. Whoever picks up the ticket needs to understand the wider setup and what the team is trying to achieve.
Ask about support while everything is working
Support can be difficult to judge when choosing technology because as obvious as it sounds, during the sales process, nothing has gone wrong yet. Platform features are visible. Pricing is easy to compare.
The service experience often reveals itself later.
Buyers should know what happens when self-service stops being enough. How easy is it to reach a human who can investigate the problem? It is critical to understand what happens to an urgent issue after it has been escalated, particularly when there is a campaign deadline behind it.
This is why at Everlytic, the chatbot handles the straightforward queries. If a customer needs more help, they can reach an expert team by phone or email and speak to someone who can look into the problem and remedy it quickly.
A marketing platform is there to help teams communicate with their customers. The support behind it is critical to ensure the engine runs smoothly.
To find out more about Everlytic's comprehensive local support, contact moc.citylreve@troppus or +2711 4476147
