Amid the holiday rush in Singapore, digital patience is melting faster than snow on a warm sidewalk. A single lag or hiccup is enough to send shoppers clicking away in search of the path of least resistance to the perfect gift.
This behaviour isn’t just anecdotal as Singapore consumers lead the region in digital impatience. Based on a recent survey, 41% expressed impatience with automated channels compared to the 32% regional average.
With expectations for issue resolution averaging a mere 24 minutes, brands have a razor-thin window to act before shoppers jump ship. So, how can brands rise to the challenge during the hyper-competitive, make-or-break year-end shopping season?
Are AI-powered experiences falling flat for festive shoppers?
During peak shopping periods, artificial intelligence (AI) is meant to be a congestion killer, capable of handling millions of simple queries instantly. Yet for many shoppers in Singapore, it still falls short, turning what should be a seamless online shopping experience into a frequent source of frustration.
People assume that AI will make things faster and easier because that’s what it promises. But while AI raises expectations for speed, poorly designed AI amplifies frustration. It often struggles to move beyond simple, transactional interactions, faltering when context matters.
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Unsurprisingly, the AI expectation-reality gap contributes to low satisfaction. Only 29% of Singapore consumers are satisfied with AI-supported customer service, well below the 41% APJ average.
In addition, more than half of Singapore consumers report that the use of AI in customer service has made them less patient. The impact of poorly designed AI is especially pronounced during the emotionally-charged holiday shopping season, where anxiety over delayed deliveries or navigating a complex refund process can turn even the most patient shopper into a bundle of nerves.
For Singapore consumers, the top source of AI frustration is AI’s failure to understand their question. Imagine a shopper desperately trying to resolve a delayed, high-value gift days before a family reunion, only to be met with a chatbot that misreads their urgency or misunderstands the product in question. The result isn’t just inconvenience, but rising anxiety at a time when patience is already thin.
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In Singapore, consumers tend to be less tolerant of lower-stakes retail and e-commerce issues. Only 52% remain patient when chasing delayed or missing deliveries, and only 55% when dealing with incorrect or damaged items.
Besides AI’s failure to understand their question, limited or generic responses are another sore point that frustrates 49% of Singapore consumers. When shoppers seek nuanced guidance or clarity on complex refund processes, canned, robotic scripts feel alienating and unhelpful. Rather than resolving the issue, these interactions can trap customers in confusing, repetitive loops—escalating stress instead of alleviating it.
Clarity, continuity, choice, and care for holiday shoppers
Still, these frustrations don’t mean that Singapore consumers are rejecting AI-driven customer experience outright.
Over half say they feel comfortable with businesses using agentic AI to assist them, provided they’ve given consent. The question isn’t whether brands should use AI, but how they can design it to support consumers at every step to prevent frustration and anxiety.
More than anything, consumers are yearning for reassurance and certainty during highly charged moments. When gift delivery deadlines loom, brands must prioritise clarity by explaining every delay, outlining definitive next steps, and giving visible, granular progress updates. If a brand cannot provide that level of transparency, customers will simply move to the one that can guarantee peace of mind.
This demands a radical shift in communication protocol. Instead of waiting for gift-anxious customers to initiate contact, brands must proactively provide continuous progress indicators and contextual explanations without being asked.
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Generic phrases like "Your case is being reviewed" must immediately evolve into detailed, time-stamped workflows that show exactly where a shipment or issue currently sits in the process and what the definitive next step will be to ensure the gift arrives on time.
Even with improvements in proactive updates and contextual AI-driven workflows, things can still go wrong. It’s no surprise, then, that consumers turn to humans when AI falls short. In Singapore, 52% prefer human support when an AI system can’t resolve their issue, and 46% would rather start with a human agent from the outset.
When chatbots struggle with complex requests or unexpected issues, human agents act as a safety net that can prevent AI frustration from escalating into a full-blown brand crisis. This is precisely why AI-driven customer experiences must always account for the human in the loop.
A delayed or lost gift isn’t a routine retail issue; it carries the risk of disappointing a loved one. In these moments, the human touch becomes critical, offering the personalised understanding and care that automated systems simply can’t replicate.
Having a human safety net is now a consumer expectation in AI-driven customer experiences. A striking 98% of Singapore consumers find the ability to easily transfer from an AI agent to a human to be important. By ensuring a seamless handoff from an AI chatbot to a human agent, brands signal their commitment to the customer's emotional experience – helping preserve goodwill even when logistical issues such as a delayed gift delivery arise.
Ultimately, what gift-anxious consumers want this season is peace of mind. By designing for digital patience, brands can transform holiday shopping stress into an opportunity to show care and keep holiday excitement intact.
Nicholas Kontopoulos is the vice president of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan at Twilio
