Customer experience trends 2026: Eight analysts share their predictions

As 2026 approaches, customer experience (CX) leaders are navigating a landscape that continues to transform due to the impact of AI, automation, and shifting customer expectations. Although it seems technology is evolving faster than the speed of light, the past year has proven that technology alone doesn’t define great CX. The measure of success is in finding the right balance between innovation and empathy, data and intuition, and innovation and trust to empower agents and simplify customer journeys. 

To help CX leaders and professionals prepare for what’s next, we asked eight top CX analysts to share their predictions for the year ahead. From the rise of agentic commerce to the evolution of workforce experience management, these customer experience trends reveal how organizations can apply AI, analytics, and human insight to deliver the experiences customers crave in 2026 and beyond.

Let’s dive into each prediction.

“The real question for 2026 is how effectively AI enhances—not replaces—human interactions.”

Alpa Shah, Frost & Sullivan

While AI has dominated headlines for years, the real question for 2026 is how effectively it enhances—not replaces—human interactions. Contact center leaders aim to utilize AI to enhance efficiency and strengthen engagement; however, a gap persists between executive ambition and frontline reality. CEOs are eager to accelerate adoption, while operational leaders remain cautious, concerned about its impact on agent retention and customer loyalty. Closing this gap will require closer teamwork across IT, CX, and HR, with shared responsibility and open communication. The goal: deeper, more meaningful customer interactions powered by both technology and human empathy.

Our 2025 survey confirms a turning point: AI in contact centers is no longer experimental but a proven business driver. Agent seats and voice channel investments are declining as virtual agents deliver higher satisfaction across industries. Still, human agents aren’t disappearing; they’re being reskilled into roles demanding empathy, adaptability, and digital fluency. Retaining these professionals will be critical to digital transformation and creating a truly customer-centric organization. Burnout from inadequate systems remains a top cause of turnover, making it vital to involve agents in AI design and gather their feedback. Organizations that fail to do so risk weakening both employee engagement and customer experience.

"In the AI era, success is measured by the value, quality, and collaboration between humans and machines—not by speed."

Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research

Traditional metrics like Average Handle Time (AHT) and First Contact Resolution (FCR) are losing relevance. They were built for an era focused on processing high volumes of simple calls quickly and cheaply. Now, with AI and agentic agents managing routine, low-complexity interactions, often with near-zero AHT, the human agent’s role is shifting to complex, emotionally charged, and high-value issues. In this new environment, penalizing longer calls or pushing for instant resolution can actually undermine customer satisfaction and problem-solving quality.

New metrics for the AI era

The focus must shift from speed to value, quality, and collaboration. Emerging success measures include:

• AI resolution rate: Tracks how effectively AI resolves issues without escalation, ensuring it’s truly helpful, not just deflecting calls.
• Effective escalation: Measures how smoothly AI transfers complex or sensitive issues to the right human agent.
• Human agent value: Evaluates how well agents handle high-value, complex problems through outcomes like churn reduction, upsells, or improved Customer Effort Scores.
• AI suggestion adoption: Assesses how often agents use AI-driven recommendations, reflecting the strength of the AI–agent partnership.

“AI assistants are becoming the new storefronts of the digital economy.”

Sheila McGee-Smith, McGee-Smith Analytics

At its October 2025 developer day, OpenAI reiterated that it never intended to build a chatbot; rather, it aimed to build a super assistant, and that goal has now taken center stage. OpenAI described a future where users might start their day in ChatGPT, now the de facto entry point into the commercial web. The plan is not to lock consumers into ChatGPT but to allow other companies to build AI Agents that operate inside it. Behind closed doors, contact center and conversational AI companies are already developing prototypes designed to connect consumers searching for products with contact centers to complete purchases, with post-purchase support as the next logical step.

Ahead of Black Friday, a flurry of announcements emerged from retailers integrating e-commerce into AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Walmart and Sam’s Club partnered with OpenAI to enable shoppers to browse and buy within ChatGPT, while Target launched a custom app that allows for multi-item transactions, fresh food shopping, and shipping options. Abercrombie & Fitch teamed up with PayPal to let customers browse its catalog and complete transactions within conversations on platforms like Perplexity. These retail integrations will require contact center support—and CX platforms are gearing up to meet the challenge.

“For CX leaders in mid-enterprise organizations, the first rule of agentic AI in 2026 will be not to talk about agentic AI.”

Dave Michels, Talking Pointz

We need to shift the conversation from the technology to the outcomes. Agentic AI, which can perceive, reason, and act toward a goal, has the potential to transform customer experience by driving faster resolutions, reducing friction, and empowering teams to focus on empathy and judgment. But the term "agentic" is slowing things down. The key is to shift the conversation to a strategic capability that enhances human performance rather than a replacement for it. Leaders should assess how these systems can deliver context-aware insights, automate routine tasks, and ensure consistent, outcome-driven service across every customer interaction.

To make the most of agentic AI, CX leaders should communicate its value in clear, outcome-oriented terms. Use language that connects directly to business impact—such as “Context-Aware AI” for systems that understand customer intent, “Digital Worker” for automation that supports agents, or “Self-Optimizing Systems” for tools that continuously improve. Framing agentic AI this way helps teams and stakeholders see it as a practical enabler of better service, smarter operations, and stronger customer trust. For mid-enterprise CX organizations, success will come from translating agentic AI’s advanced capabilities into measurable results that elevate both customer and employee experience.

“We’ve only begun to uncover the value conversation analytics can deliver.”

Robin Gareiss, Metrigy 

AI’s ability to analyze every conversation—whether voice or text, human or AI—gives leaders powerful insights for making better decisions. Over 90% of IT and CX leaders say interaction analytics is among the most valuable data in their companies, and 84% believe it should inform enterprise-wide dashboards for decision-making*. With access to real-time and historical views of customer sentiment, organizations can improve customer service, refine sales and marketing strategies, and guide smarter product and business decisions.

AI reveals what topics customers care about most, which campaigns resonate, and where products or performance fall short. These insights help leaders make every decision more customer-focused, driving higher revenue and satisfaction. Early adopters are already seeing an average 26.7% lift in revenue and a 32.6% gain in CSAT*. Extending these insights across the enterprise will only accelerate success, and forward-thinking companies are already moving in that direction.

* Metrigy’s AI for Business Success 2025-26, a global study of 1,104 companies.

”Customer loyalty in 2026 will hinge on fast, first-contact resolution through unified, AI-powered platforms.”

David Smith, Inflow Analysis

Organizations will prioritize seamless, single-contact customer resolution through unified platforms that merge communication and workflow under a Universal Context Layer. The focus will shift from minimizing call times to ensuring Outcome Certainty at Speed, delivering full resolution on the first interaction.

This shift will drive the convergence of UCaaS and CCaaS, enabling the rise of the Resolution Specialist, a fully empowered human agent who combines empathy and expertise with AI-driven clarity. For example, when a customer disputes a bank fee, the agent instantly accesses all relevant data, such as recent transactions, compliance rules, and account details, allowing immediate resolution while the agentic AI handles administrative tasks in real-time.

Achieving this seamless experience requires all systems to share a common data language. Fragmented environments hinder AI orchestration, making the Universal Context Layer essential as the new enterprise operating system. By standardizing data exchange through protocols like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol, it unifies information across legacy systems and CRMs into a single, actionable view. This foundation enables agents to focus on empathy and judgment while AI manages complexity. In 2026, organizations that commit to this unified context and human empowerment will set the benchmark for CX excellence.

“Enterprises are shifting from siloed modernization to building unified foundations that enable true experience orchestration across functions.”

Mila D’Antonio, Omdia

Omdia’s IT Enterprise Insights 2026 survey shows this clearly: 31% of organizations cite next-generation infrastructure as a top priority, another 31% point to modern data architecture, and 26% highlight connected systems — a collective signal that companies are aligning around shared, enterprise-wide capabilities rather than isolated upgrades.

At the same time, the rising strategic importance of AI underscores that meaningful impact depends on unified data, consistent processes, and cross-functional workflows; AI cannot scale in isolation. Together, these priorities reveal a decisive shift in 2026: Experience orchestration is no longer an aspiration but a core business mandate, required to connect systems, people, and processes into cohesive, end-to-end employee and customer journeys.

“Agentic AI is tearing down the long-standing divide between sales and service.”

Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, CaCube

Three years into the GenAI-driven revolution, 2025 signals a clear inflection. Agentic AI has opened new ways to put AI to work. Customer acceptance has moved fast. Curiosity has shifted to expectation, with consumers now demanding experiences from brands that match their interactions with AI assistants.

Despite headlines about stalled pilots, this year has delivered meaningful wins. Customer support automation and e-commerce assistance are two customer-facing use cases proving that AI can succeed beyond employee augmentation.

CX leaders, historically cautious, can now see paths to deliver repeatable, predictable responses and are ready to modernize self-service. Next year should see the broad application of Voice AI and agentic AI to replace IVRs and digital self-service.

The early traction of agentic self-service points to a broader shift. It tears down the long-standing divide between sales and service, delivering on the CX vision of unified experiences across the entire customer journey and setting a new bar for businesses.

Together, these eight predictions paint a clear picture: 2026 is expected to be the year CX leaders turn AI from a tool into a collaborative partner that helps employees do their best work, unifies data to deliver invaluable insights, and drives business outcomes that make a meaningful difference. The future of customer experience lies in connected intelligence, effortless journeys, and empowered workforces.

As Chris Morrissey, General Manager of CX at Zoom, shares:

“The most successful brands in 2026 will be those that use AI to make every interaction effortless for customers and employees alike. At Zoom, we’re helping organizations achieve that vision through a connection-first contact center platform built for intelligent, human-centered experiences.”

Zoom CX continues to be a trusted provider for organizations seeking to unify communication, collaboration, and customer engagement, helping them deliver the kind of effortless, empathetic, and connected experiences that define the future of CX.