Insights from The AX Index

Half of the AI agents were stopped before they could ask support a question.

In 441 of 884 conversations, a login, an app or a pre-chat form asked for details that a new customer's agent cannot give.

60% of what an AI reads about a company comes from other websites.

An AI agent did three customer jobs for each company, such as cancelling a subscription. For 38 of the 50 companies, other websites supplied most of what it read.

On refunds, late orders and switching, other websites supply the answer.

For an Instacart refund, 0 of the 22 pages the AI read came from Instacart. For a late order, 2 of 35 came from Amazon. For a cheaper insurance policy, State Farm supplied 3 of 45, Progressive 4 of 47 and Root 3 of 33.

Reddit and YouTube supplied 1 in 7 of the pages from other websites.

13 of the 47 homepages we could test turned agents away.

At finance companies, 68 of 91 agents were stopped before they could ask.

A login, an app or a form stopped them. In telecom, 18 of 92 were stopped. Coinbase and Venmo stopped every agent, and so did the insurers GEICO and USAA.

A company can answer agents well and have a website they struggle to read.

Telecom has the highest Service average, 54, and the lowest Readability average, 22. Netflix scores 80 on Service and 19 on Authority. Support and website scores move independently, so each needs its own fix.

39 of the 50 companies have no llms.txt file for AI agents.

An llms.txt file tells an AI agent what a site contains and where to find answers.

The top 10 gave agents a useful answer five times as often as the bottom 10.

A full or partial answer came in 97 of 182 conversations at the top 10 and 18 of 185 at the bottom 10. Meta ranks first with 66. The average is 42.