AI Adoption in Lubricants: Why Customer Expectations Are Moving Faster Than Most Sales Teams

For years, lubricant businesses have been slowly adapting to digital. Websites became the first impression. Email changed communication habits. CRM promised better visibility. Video calls became normal. Self service started to influence how buyers researched suppliers, compared options and shaped their shortlist before speaking to sales. That shift took a long time to become standard. Internet adoption has been tracked globally from 1990 to 2025, which is a useful reminder that
digital change did not happen in one neat wave. It took years for channels, systems and behaviours to become normal. (Our World in Data)

AI feels different.

It is being adopted faster than digital was, but it is being absorbed more unevenly. McKinsey reports organisational AI use rising from 55% in 2023 to 78% in early 2025, with 71% saying their organisations regularly use generative AI in at least one business function.

At the same time, McKinsey’s broader conclusion is that most companies are still working through how to capture value at scale, rather than having fully transformed how they operate. (McKinsey & Company)

That is where this gets interesting.

AI is moving faster at the surface than at the core. It is relatively easy to switch on tools, give teams access, and create pockets of experimentation. It is much harder to redesign workflows, shift habits, and embed AI into the way the business actually creates value.

Deloitte says worker access to AI rose by 50% in 2025, yet only 34% of organisations are truly reimagining the business. McKinsey adds that redesigning workflows has the biggest effect on whether organisations see EBIT impact from generative AI, but only a minority say they have
fundamentally redesigned any workflows. (Deloitte)

That is why the comparison with digital matters.

Digital changed where and how buyers interacted. It brought websites, e-commerce, email, CRM, remote meetings and self-service into the commercial mainstream. AI changes what buyers now expect those interactions to feel like. Faster. Smarter. More relevant. Lower effort. Better informed.

That expectation shift feels faster because AI is landing on top of an already-digital world rather than asking the market to build one from scratch. That is an inference, but it is a grounded one when you compare the decades-long spread of internet use with the far steeper recent rise in organisational AI adoption. (Our World in Data)

For business, that creates an awkward middle phase.

Adoption is real, but maturity is patchy. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics reported that around 25% of businesses were using some form of AI in late December 2025. Among businesses with 250 employees or more, that rose to 44%, while around 15% said they planned to adopt AI within the next three months. That is meaningful movement, but it also tells us that plenty of firms are still in a testing, deciding or early rollout phase. (Office for National Statistics)

That matters because buyers do not judge you on your internal AI
roadmap.

They judge you on the experience of dealing with you.

In sales, that is where the pressure is likely to show up first. McKinsey says marketing and sales are among the functions where organisations most often use generative AI. Salesforce says AI is the top tactic sales teams are turning to for growth in 2026, and that 94% of sales leaders with agents say those agents are critical for meeting business demands.

In other words, sales is becoming one of the earliest commercial proving grounds for whether AI creates genuine customer value or simply more
activity. (McKinsey & Company)

But customer expectation is not simply “give me AI”.

It is more nuanced than that. Salesforce’s research says only 42% of customers trust businesses to use AI ethically, down from 58% in 2023. The
same research points to a continued preference for human expertise in complex or high-stakes situations.

At the same time, Zendesk reports that 70% of consumers believe there is a clear gap between companies that use AI effectively in customer service and those that do not, while 61% say they expect more personalised service with AI. Buyers want speed, relevance and lower effort, but not at the
expense of trust, transparency or access to a capable human when it matters. (Salesforce)

That is why I would summarise it like this: Digital trained customers to expect access. AI is training them to expect competence at speed.

In practical terms, that usually becomes five rising expectations in customer-facing work. Buyers expect faster first response, more tailored communication, less repetition, better-informed people, and smoother
handoffs between self-service, AI-supported service and humans. That expectation set is consistent with the broader customer-service trends
Zendesk highlights and the trust-and-transparency concerns raised by Salesforce. (Zendesk)

For lubricant businesses, this is where the conversation becomes commercial rather than purely technical. The real issue is not whether AI exists. It does. The real issue is whether it
helps the buyer experience feel better. Does it help your team respond faster? Does it help them turn up better prepared? Does it reduce admin
and friction for the customer? Does it make your business easier to understand, easier to deal with and easier to trust? Those are the questions that matter most, because they connect AI to buying behaviour rather than hype.

This is also where Plan.Grow.Do.’s Authority / Capture / Convert framing fits naturally: build trust earlier, protect inbound opportunities, and help salespeople arrive prepared and keep momentum. (Plan Grow Do)