Best AI for customer service replies / head-to-head

Gemini 3.5 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Terrafor customer service replies

The verdict

GPT-5.6 Terra wins, 9794

Same 12 customer service replies tasks, marked blind by three rival labs. GPT-5.6 Terra took 4 tasks, Gemini 3.5 Flash took 1, 7 tied. Tested 14 Aug 2026.

Where they differed most

The task — Outage update mid-incident

Write a status update 90 minutes into an outage with no fix yet. Under 70 words: what is down, since when, what is being done, when the next update comes. No 'we take this seriously', no cause speculation.

**Status Update:** 

The main platform and API have been offline since 10:00 AM UTC (90 minutes ago). 

Our engineering teams are actively troubleshooting to restore full functionality and are currently implementing recovery protocols to bring services back online. 

We will provide the next update in 30 minutes.
**Status Update:**  
Service remains unavailable since [time]. Our engineering team is actively investigating and working to restore service. No fix is available yet. We will provide the next update by [time, 30 minutes from now].

Task by task

TaskGemini 3.5 FlashGPT-5.6 Terra
Refund the easy way1010
Say no without weasel words1010
Reply to a 1-star review1010
The confused customer910
De-escalate a threat810
The feature you won't build1010
Apologise for your mistake1010
Price rise notice1010
Outage update mid-incident96
The wrong customer810
Chargeback rebuttal facts1010
Refuse the fake review request910

Full receipts: Gemini 3.5 Flash, GPT-5.6 Terra · judges claude-sonnet-5, gpt-5.6-terra, grok-4.5

Questions people ask

Which is better for customer service replies: Gemini 3.5 Flash or GPT-5.6 Terra?

GPT-5.6 Terra — it scored 97/100 against 94/100 on our 12-task customer service replies suite, winning 4 tasks to 1 with 7 tied. Every answer was marked blind by three judges from three rival AI labs.

How was this tested?

Both models answered the identical published customer service replies tasks. Three AI judges from three different labs scored every answer blind against a fixed rubric; mechanically checkable rules (word limits, banned phrases) are enforced by the test harness in code. The raw outputs and judge verdicts are downloadable.

More customer service replies head-to-heads: GPT-5.6 Sol vs GPT-5.6 Terra · Gemini 3.5 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Sol · GPT-5.5 vs GPT-5.6 Terra · Gemini 3.5 Flash vs GPT-5.5 · GPT-5.3-Codex vs GPT-5.6 Terra · Gemini 3.5 Flash vs GPT-5.3-Codex

Full ranking: Best AI for customer service replies · model pages: Gemini 3.5 Flash, GPT-5.6 Terra