Catalog dumping appeared in 5 of 15 live AI agents Alhena tested. It is retrieval plus ranking, not reasoning, so the shopper's constraint has nowhere to go.
The handoff cliff appeared in 4 of 15 live AI agents Alhena tested. Escalation is a strength. Escalating without context is worse than having no AI at all.
Alhena found answer-only fallback in 10 of 15 live deployments in 2026, the most common failure in the study. The conversation stayed in channel, so containment looked healthy.
Alhena logged seven failure patterns across 15 live AI CX deployments. Answer-only fallback led at 10 of 15. Six of the seven trace to missing architectural layers.
Alhena tested 15 live AI agents on four tasks that need reasoning before retrieval. Only 6 of 15 could route a shopper to the product they recommended.
Alhena tested 15 live AI agents in supplements, the highest-stakes vertical tested. Unsafe confidence appeared in 3 of 15. Knowing when not to answer scored as a strength.