# ElevenLabs — What shoppers choose once they’ve tried a retail AI agent

- Company: ElevenLabs (elevenlabs.io)
- Announced: 2026-10-27T12:00:00+00:00
- Category: research-paper
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: announcements
- Source: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/retail-ai-agents
- Record: https://forck.live/items/28511-what-shoppers-choose-once-they-ve-tried-a-retail-ai-agent
- Subject: Voice AI

ElevenLabs studied how shoppers choose to interact with retail AI agents across the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Europe, South Africa and Latin America, testing live voice agents rather than asking about hypothetical preferences. In the first study, shoppers used a live ElevenLabs voice agent to find a product, ask a follow-up question and add it to the cart, then chose how they would want to do it going forward. Nearly half chose speaking and hearing the reply, about 30% chose speaking and reading, and around 14% chose typing and reading. Asked about six specific tasks, shoppers put speaking and hearing on top in all six, with support ranging from more than half for gift ideas to about a third for comparing products. Comparing two products was the one task where voice did not clearly win, with shoppers split almost evenly across all three options. In an earlier survey where almost no one had used a voice assistant to shop, typing beat speaking by more than four to one among those who chose an assistant, but in the two studies where shoppers spoke with a live agent first, speaking led. When something went wrong, willingness to use an agent fell as the problem got more serious: 56% chose an agent for a late delivery, 49% for a return, 43% for an order they never placed and just 34% for a wrong charge.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://elevenlabs.io/blog/retail-ai-agents:

> Shopping has become a conversation. Leading retailers like Walmart and Amazon have rolled out AI agents that answer questions, compare products, and help shoppers get to checkout, with other major brands in the category following suit. ElevenLabs agents are already live with hundreds of retail and e-commerce brands globally.
> 
> For retailers, the case for building one is getting stronger: Bain finds shoppers trust a retailer's on-site agent about three times more than a third-party one.
> 
> That trust is an opening, not a guarantee, and building the agent is becoming the easy part. The harder questions live in the user experience: should shoppers speak to an agent or type in a chat window? Which moments call for voice, and which for text and visuals? And at what point do shoppers want a person instead?
> 
> We tested these questions with shoppers across three studies, including two where they were given an opportunity to interact with an ElevenLabs voice agent before responding. Most research asks people what they think they'd prefer. We looked at what they chose after actually trying it, and the two answers often differed.
> 
> What we did

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Record: https://forck.live/items/28511-what-shoppers-choose-once-they-ve-tried-a-retail-ai-agent
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