Rebuilding Trust in the Age of AI: From Automation to AI Customer Advocacy

Riptide CEO Doug Marinaro recently published an opinion piece in TechRadar titled “The Trust Recession: Why Customers Don’t Trust AI (And How to Fix It)”. In it, he highlights a quiet but urgent crisis: customer trust in digital and AI-powered service experiences is eroding.

Despite unprecedented investment in chatbots, self-service portals, and digital channels, satisfaction continues to fall. A 2025 Conviva report found that 91% of consumers experienced frustrating digital issues in the past year, and more than half abandoned purchases, canceled subscriptions, or switched brands as a result. Even Amazon, once the gold standard for customer experience, has seen satisfaction scores decline as automation has replaced human connection.

Doug calls this the “Trust Recession.” It’s not about the failure of AI technology itself, but about how it has been deployed. Too often, automation is used to contain customers, deflecting them with endless loops, fragmented handoffs, deadends, and cold interactions. Customers don’t feel helped. They feel managed.

Advocacy vs. Automation

The article makes a critical distinction: gatekeepers deflect, but advocates resolve. AI agents inform, while AI advocates involve. Customers intuitively know the difference. True advocacy means:

• Understanding customer goals and making them the purpose of every interaction
  
  
• Remembering context across time, channels, and touchpoints
  
  
• Navigating organizational silos faster and better than the customer, or even human employees, ever could
  
  
• Collaborating with humans with context and care, not as a last resort

This philosophy is at the heart of Ripley, Riptide’s AI Customer Advocate, innovation.

How Ripley Fixes the Trust Recession

Ripley, the industry’s first AI Customer Advocate, was designed precisely to reverse the Trust Recession. Unlike chatbots that isolate customers or agents that only complete discrete tasks or execute workflows, Ripley:

• Champions the customer’s objectives from start to finish
  
  
• Orchestrates across departments, partners, and systems in real time
  
  
• Maintains consistent brand voice and empathy in every interaction
  
  
• Knows when and how to bring in human expertise for judgement, emotion, risk, or edge cases
  
  
• Delivers measurable outcomes including 10x faster response times, 50% lower handling effort, and 4% higher customer satisfaction

Ripley is not about replacing human service, it’s about amplifying it with advocacy at scale. Customers don’t want more bots. They want someone who is competent and cares enough to see their problem through.

The Path Forward

As Doug wrote, “Trust isn’t given. It’s orchestrated.” In an era where one poor AI interaction can drive 70% of customers to switch brands, rebuilding trust is a C-suite imperative. Companies that embrace AI Customer Advocacy will not only resolve issues, they’ll strengthen relationships, loyalty, and long-term brand equity.

You can read Doug’s full TechRadar article here.

At Riptide, we believe the future of customer experience isn’t just faster or cheaper, it’s customer-centric, with AI that advocates for people, not against them.

Ripley doesn’t just answer questions. It champions outcomes.

It’s AI the way your customers would have built it: a champion for their needs, a skilled navigator of your operations, and always ready to leverage human expertise when it counts.

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