CX AI Oh My - 2026 Trends & Thoughts - What you need to know

You never do know what's around the bend. Big adventure or brand new friend when you're curious. I like curious George. Swang! When everything is so glorious. And everything is so wondrous.

That's Silly Monkey and me are back for another episode, More Curious Than George. A continuation and step in a new direction from our CX, customer experience conversation from the last episode. We got a little more specific and kind of had some thought-provoking questions about times that we've had really great customer experiences and whether we did or didn't share them, whether that helped the employee or the company, et cetera, or word of mouth. So friends of ours could go there, all the things. It's probably more likely. And how we're more inclined to really share the negative ones, the not good ones. And then the ones in the middle, because why? They just meet expectations, right? We all have stories and thoughts there. And where I wanted to take the conversation now is what are the emerging trends in 2026 by thought leaders in customer experience? What are maybe some examples of companies that have been doing things well? Versus maybe ones that have not. And we'll have two companies we kind of pit side by side. And I'll caution and say it doesn't mean that either brand is amazing or bad or that simple. There's a lot of gray and there's a lot of things that the one that maybe isn't stacking up as well in some ways is doing really well in other ways. Uh, and we're going to try to appreciate those differences. We're going to turn back to AI because we can't not. Shouldn't surprise you that artificial intelligence is a big part of where CX is going, but not the full story if you're a smart decision maker in terms of your company's strategy and what you're looking to do to win over more of us wonderful consumers with whatever magic your product and services have to offer. So without further ado, we have Zendesk and they say the trends in 2026 Customer experience organizations are going to invest in memory-rich artificial intelligence to deliver true personalization at scale. So they're saying to meet customer demands, 85% of these leaders say that memory-rich AI agents will be the key to truly personalized journeys. So in other words, if I call into my cell phone provider, it knows that the last time I called it was because of a, uh, bill that was incorrect, or that I had trouble looking at a phone that they didn't have in stock at the time. So it's going to recall those things. And to me, there's some obvious, like, yeah, that feels good to know that they remember some of what I called in about or what happened in the past. But there's also questions of privacy there, and it coming across as a little bit too much, um, and whether or not that is even relevant to why I'm now calling in might not matter at all. So there's this idea of this customer journey, knowing my interactions with a company, living with this AI agent. Or here's a thought. What if that empowered customer journey properly lived with a human? Agent that we're either chatting with via web chat, SMS, old school calling in, whatever it may be. Food for thought. We're going to circle back to that one. Another trend: AI-powered self-service accelerates consumer demand for instant resolutions. We all want answers quicker. I would agree with that. So really, they're looking at the cost of interaction is high. 85% of these customer experience leaders say customers will drop Brands over unresolved issues, even on the first contact. I'd say there's some truth to that. Obviously varies across industry and how easy is it to switch, and is the competitor doing really that much better of a job, hypothetically, depending on what it is, uh, that's causing me angst or issues. Uh, you know, I, I'd say that that's an interesting one. Um, and like any trend or prediction that a mass research company does by polling thought leaders, you know, high spenders, all those kind of things. And we can get in the demographics another time. It doesn't mean that they're all going to come true. So you saw a little healthy skepticism on that one on my part. Uh, all right, so another one: multimodal support enables seamless interactions across different channels and media. So 76% say they choose a company if they could drop text, images, video into the same thread without restarting a new chat. I think we could all agree if I've got to open a whole nother interaction, I'm already like dreading that, right? Because I've got to repeat all the basics probably of here's my membership number, here's my date of birth, or verify this and then start all over with the questions or whatever the issues are. So that one I would say yes. And you think about the power of AI now where I can send in pictures and it can do analysis and provide thoughtful feedback on how I can use that information. Having that with how I interact with a company sounds quite valuable, right? If I could send screenshots to say, hey AWS, I'm doing this really cool cloud architect pathway and I'm excited about it. However, here are 3 instances where the JSON script isn't allowing me to save as it should, and I validated it. And here's another part where I can't give you the answer to the, uh, module to continue. Anyway, rabbit holes, we don't have to go down that, but it would be great if it was a lot easier to do those things. And I wonder if we also take a step back, is there a company that does things pretty well in that regard today? I think there's some examples where I appreciate when they offer a callback so I don't have to sit there and wait on hold if I feel like talking to somebody is going to be the best channel, the best means of resolving my issue. If There's notification on the amount of time. Of course, I think that's more commonplace now, but the ability to share pictures, videos, and those other things, I think that's still emerging to a degree, but that's pretty cool. Trend number 4: Customer experience leaders rely on new AI metrics and access them via prompt-driven analytics. So in other words, CX leaders are seeing the benefit. 81 of them, 81% of them saying giving every employee the ability to ask questions will transform decision-making. So real-time decisions, real-time insights, really looking at the employees being empowered to solve for that quicker. So interesting to learn and see more of what those AI real-time metrics are in terms of the availability of certain agents with certain skill sets, um, giving them more context while they're along during a live customer interaction is a little where that trend is leading in my mind and something we'll circle back to and I already mentioned earlier. And the last trend, more than ever consumers demand the why behind the AI decisions. So as usage rises, so does scrutiny. That seems to make sense. So greater transparency is being demanded and I think that's about how that data and privacy, what companies are being regulated around in terms of that information and protecting it. Cyber threats is a big one that's being discussed around there. And also, if AI is being implemented to be the front face, why is that, right? Not everybody wants to interact with an AI agent. We understand maybe if we're taking a step back and let's have a healthy reality check, a lot of companies view contact centers, meaning the traditional 800 number, or nowadays you call, you know, chat on their website, SMS message, whatever your convenience is, as a cost center, meaning most people are calling in because of some problem or some negative experience, etc., and they do their best to throw metrics and KPIs and net promoter scores and all these things around what they want to do to try to quantify that interaction and keep you loyal to the brand. But a lot of companies genuinely look at these as a cost center and not necessarily tying in the idea of investing money into the capabilities of this contact center and what it can do. Now I'm going to touch on that a little later because I have some unique experience in my personal career journey from working at a contact center to then employing some of these kinds of software, but more on that in a little bit. Okay, so here's some more fun ones from Forrester, which I would argue has surpassed Gartner in terms of the CX experience and the ratings. Um, and, and this is looking at broad CX, right? So it's not retail, it's not finance, it's kind of just the full gamut here. So the first thing that they're identifying, and actually let me back up, I gotta start with, here's kind of their overarching statement. In 2026, if you are not grounding your artificial intelligence in real human interviews, you are essentially gambling your company's future on a very sophisticated Magic 8 Ball. In other words, if you're not validating the reputation of the sources, where the data is coming from, You know, not accounting for things like intuition, storytelling, the ability to come up with a new groundbreaking idea. All AI can do is synthesize what's happened in the past to give you its safe answer for what can happen in the future. And I know maybe you're thinking, listening to this, this guy really doesn't like AI. Not true. I use Google Gemini, I've got Claude, and I'm continuing to immerse myself in it. I think the key thing that leads me to maybe have a little bit of a skeptical tone is we can't forget the human component and we can't forget to take things a step further to validate data sources, ask healthy questions, and look at the bigger picture of where is this going and how is it being invested in from the big companies in CX, like we're talking about now, to a myriad of other things. So what does this maybe marriage look like? What does it look like for the companies that are doing it well? Well, we're going to talk about an example of that or two here in a minute. But really what Forrester's getting at with their predictions is a year of reckoning, as they say. Sounds intense. Sounds like biblical New Age stuff. Um, or maybe Dune, the first part where, well, it's not so good for our heroes. So Forrester warns that 15% of CX teams will fall into this death spiral by focusing too heavily on dashboards, KPIs, net promoter score, rather than solving actual customer problems. Here's a good example of how that might look. So I call in because I've got a problem with XYZ Store's product, right? And it was advertised that it was going to, I don't know, glow in the dark. Let's say that'd be pretty cool. And it doesn't. And I'm not happy about that. Let's say the agent did a really good job of being empathetic and listening to me. And, you know, they did a wonderful job of just being human. And a lot of what most of us want when we call into a company or brand is to just feel heard. So let's say that gives a net promoter score of like, this guy loves the company. Well, that's not necessarily true. I might think the agent did the best with what was in their ability to solve my issue and then realize that that issue maybe wasn't going to be solved, but I felt really heard and listened to. So I felt really good. The sentiment, the tone of my voice, and what I was relaying to that person that I was talking to came across as all positive, positive, positive. So they view me as like a great person, right? They never maybe catch through their KPIs and their measurements that like, oh shit, like we advertise this thing glowed in the dark and maybe it was in small print and maybe it was something that a lot of people overlooked or didn't see, but you never solved my actual problem. Right. So some companies are going to fall too into the, uh, we're not actually paying attention to what's happening with that problem and looking at other metrics that aren't telling the full story. The second one is this AI overconfidence crisis. So really looking at self-service failures that maybe 30% or so of companies are going to damage their growth from frustrating AI self-service. I think this is the instance of leaders not doing enough research, not doing enough testing, not doing enough real interaction with their customer base and talking across departments to find the right solution for their unique product or service. And instead of rushing into the market to be like, I can't be one of the late players that doesn't have an AI bot and something that can handle these customer interactions, it ultimately just does a really poor job. Doesn't really interact well with the customer, doesn't solve for some of these tier 1 things that, uh, you know, AI is commonly used for today. Um, so they're predicting 2 major scandals are going to hit the headlines because of flawed AI-led customer research. So that's pretty fascinating and something we'll circle back on here in a minute. So the offline resurgence, customer experience fatigue. A lot of us still miss that face-to-face interaction, and they're predicting that, you know, that's not going to go away. We're not going to stop calling the 800 number or interacting on a website, et cetera. But those companies that give us an opportunity to talk to somebody in person and to deal with a real human are going to be ahead of the curb and still relating to what we all desire, which is that human interaction. But we're, we want it all, right? We want our, you know, we want to be able to get the AI part in there too, to make it easier. Journey mapping's decline. So basically the customer journey that I was talking about, they, Forrester says that two-thirds of these teams are going to scale this back, maybe even abandon it. And it's become the static wallpaper. I would argue because they don't have the right technology that empowers that frontline employee to make use of that data. So to me, it's an example of, hey, we've had this and it's not correlated strongly with great net promoter scores or a return on, you know, repeat customers and all these other things. I would argue it's just not being used the appropriate way. Something we can shift and talk more about. Design systems as a secret weapon. Sounds really intense. Sounds like red button war kind of stuff. So they're saying design systems will go mainstream as a core strategy, essential for compliance, global accessibility regulations, and consistency, ensuring that AI-generated interfaces and content remain on-brand and coherent across multiple touchpoints. So really meaning, how is it being designed? As federal regulations in the US haven't hit yet, multiple states have them, but that'll eventually be into play. May, maybe based on where I'm living or how I'm interacting with a company that has a wealth of different types of products or services, how much does that experience vary with the AI in that design? Uh, there's a lot we can read into on that, which is, uh, pretty interesting. So We're gonna shift focus a little bit, and I'm gonna touch on a little of my experience. So I worked for Vail Resorts in the contact center back in the day. It was a pretty cool job. I got to stay in some pretty swanky places, ski in, ski out, get a lot of powder turns in, some steezy times on the mountain. If you know, you know. So another key component of that is I worked in a call center, and I had any number of myriad interactions of people that were calling to ask about snow conditions, to look at lessons, to actually wanna book a vacation package, comparing options with copper and their panoramic views of the I-70 highway. Can't help it. It's still all in there. The fun talk tracks. So it was a really neat job for me. But later in life, I was able to get aboard with Collabrio, and that was where my sales engineering journey started. Really exciting. Essentially the technical expert on how does this software work and what do they do is they provided this contact center as a service software to measure the quality of interactions, schedule the people with the right skills to try to match demand volume for what's called workforce management. A lot of other really neat things. And it gave me a really cool feeling of like, I used to work in a call center and I know how hard that job can be across other industries. So to feel and know the difference that great technology can help that frontline person that we're interacting with when we're hoping to resolve these negative experiences that we're having, it's given me a unique lens as to, you know, how I think about technology and companies, right? So what I want to kind of, you know, shift into with this is I talked about a negative experience that I've been having with an airline, and it's Delta, Delta Airlines. And let me also just back up and give Delta a lot of credit. So there's a lot of things when you look at their strategy that I think they do pretty darn well. And that is, you know, related to the contact center as a service, some frontline technology implementation. So the minute that there's delays or issues, the system is smart enough to recognize that you might miss your connecting flight and, or something could get canceled via weather and you get notified immediately via text. The app allows you and suggests here are the best available options to rebook at no fee. So this is proactive thinking to help get ahead of problems and frustrations that could compound into a really terrible experience for me, the flyer, or other people. Hello, Nani. That's one of my dogs. You know, the concierge on the app and being able to handle base-level inquiries, maybe on my miles or, you know, what types of things are available, vacations, et cetera, before I talk to an agent. Seamless self-service on the digital IDs, pretty cool. But then there's something called UCaaS, Unified Communication as a Service, and this is the backend office engine, how employees talk to each other and how things are run. This is where Delta doesn't do the best job, and Emirates, a different airline, does a fantastic job because what they do is they look at it as a bridge between its diverse business units SkyCargo, D-NATA, Emirates, Fly Catering, etc., to have everything connected. They have a GenAI learning series for all group employees, so all back office staff know how to use and get the most out of these tools. And they are the first airline to become autism certified, which is really cool, integrating this into their technology and looking at sensory needs. So what does this really come down to?, on these different profiles. And Emirates avoids what Delta has run into issues with me because they have a unified passenger visibility and proactive resolution sort of strategy. In more simple terms, they have spent a lot of money to centralize their data. So whether it's a gate agent, a pilot stewardess on the plane, customer service rep on the phone, a different department, via text baggage claim, however businesses segment, they all have one centralized access to my customer journey to know what my experience has been and to anticipate it and to proactively communicate about it. That's really cool if you ask me. Delta doesn't have that, unfortunately. They have a lot of system fragmentation. And what you'll hear in the business speak is silos, you know, big farm silos that have all the grain and the feed. Well, you know, basically all this really important information of how I'm interacting with this company are in all these different silos and we can't get them together. It's not a good experience and it is a big reason that I am not happy with them right now. Not to say that there haven't been other things that they do well, right? So this is where I talked earlier when we were looking at some of the customer experience strategies about technology and the customer journey. I don't think it should get thrown away. But if I'm a call center agent for Vail Resorts today and I get empowered with customer journey to know that Scott Johnson has called in for a ski vacation before, but he was really unhappy because he was promised a private hot tub and didn't get one. And I recognize that. And then all of a sudden I can find a property that has a private hot tub that's in his budget without necessarily bringing it up. I can say, hey, you know, Mr. Johnson, I understand last time you were out, you were hoping for a private hot tub. I know you didn't mention you needed it or weren't looking for it this time. 'But I went ahead and found one that came with it because I understand that must have hurt your vacation the last time you came up.' Bam! Surprise and delight. Scott Johnson's coming to vacation with me every time from here on out, right? This is an example of the right contact center software and unified communication software that empowers me, a frontline agent, to know that experience no matter how Scott had previously interacted with the company, because the data isn't siloed. It is in a place where I am empowered as an agent to see the real customer journey. And as we also mentioned with Emirates, know how to use it and get the most out of that technology. There are some really innovative companies out there that are empowering big enterprises, be it Emirates or Delta, to really come at that customer experience from a different lens. And we can only hope that more can see it this way. And it's something that I think is, uh, really fascinating. So the other thing that I wanted to kind of shift to is back to AI, right? Um, so what we learn and what we see from Forrester and maybe what we'll see, and it's predictions, it's not gonna be perfect, but I, I tend to think that there's some interesting things being talked about here. The mirror effect. So AI research tools can act as a mirror for a CEO to hear what he wants to hear. There's that echo chamber I've talked about on our social media and how we're given other things that align with what they think our beliefs are versus challenging opinions. How often do you hear the really good CEOs talk about how they encountered a massive challenge or somebody disagreed with a strategy they had or said, we're doing this wrong? That's not easy for somebody to say, but it's healthy because it promotes divergent thinking and maybe opens our eyes to blind spots we didn't know were there. And then all of a sudden we go to market with an even better product and strategy. To me, that's what they're talking about here is how it's very likely they're saying, unfortunately, there'll be scandals with firms saying we have these AI-driven layoffs. And I think there's actually some already out there. And it's because, you know, AI is doing, you know, all these really cool things and it's going to sound forward thinking. But the reality is Forrester says that 50% of these layoffs will be quietly reversed by the end of the year as companies realize they don't have the mature AI applications needed to replace the humans they fired. Wow, that's shortsighted. And to me, that's the sign of a brand I'd really choose not to interact with ever again. Um, when it comes to interacting with AI, you have to look past the simple wrong facts. So like a chatbot gets a date wrong and we look at the world of synthetic data and automated strategy. So what they're saying in 2026 is a scandal isn't that AI is lying to users, like it got that date wrong. Is that it's lying to decision makers who then spend millions based on those lies. So again, remembering AI, the best it can do is take data from the past, synthesize it, and give us a safe recommendation. It's missing the storytelling component. It's missing human intuition. It's missing creativity. It's missing real human feedback on what they actually want. I'm not going to get into some of the specifics, but Volkswagen delayed a couple big Cars, Porsche, heard of it, rollout by over a year because they mismanaged AI and what they thought customers wanted. That cost them billions of dollars. That's not good. Then there's the regression to the mean, the death of innovation, they say. Yowie wowie, that sounds heavy. Not good. Innovation's good. What gives? They say AI will give you a safe answer, right? That's what I was just saying, based on past data. So it's not going to give you a disruptive, groundbreaking next step like the advent of the iPod. Mr. Jobs and its heyday, or the fitness watch, right? Uh, and they really get at is just human expertise will rival Gen AI. Leaders need to seek deeper validation and accountability. So it's really both is what they're saying in terms of where they see the top brands succeeding in the customer experience space is marrying a well-thought-out, well-researched, across-business-unit employee well-trained, UCAS, CCAS, these types of softwares that can empower the frontline employee the right way to deliver an exceptional customer experience. And it won't be the net promoter scores or those KPIs. It's going to be that wow factor in creating a situation where you've got Kylian Mbappé for the latest shoes with Nike talking about how I want this shoe to feel like I'm running on a cloud.. And as soon as I pivot with my left foot to switch, it's like I just pushed into the perfect type of grass with just a little bit of give. Right. So it's this art and this creative thinking and this emotion and this way of doing. And then that gets married with the AI component that Nike did. And what they're able to do with the AI components is say what type of, um, you know, and again, I'm not a shoe expert, but what type of materials, what type of construction on the shoe, what type of things would evoke something like this and they paired that artistry with how do we build something like this in AI tools and were able to create extreme efficiencies and going to market much sooner with game-changing Nike shoes. So that's just one example of, I think, an appropriate marriage of those two. So it's been really fun chatting on AI. I feel like it's going to come up again fairly regularly in some of the things that we'll be discussing because it's like the new big thing happening in today's world. But this has been my kind of part 2 on customer experience. I'm not sure every episode will have a part 1 or 2, but maybe I'm developing a theme here. Maybe one episode is a little more storytelling and my own personal experiences and you relating to your own and what existential questions do we have? What do we learn? You know, what can we do more of, you know, to get the kind of great customer experience we want and also to give credit to those that go above and beyond. And the part 2 is more that big picture. What are the smart companies going to do to stay ahead? What are the ones that are messing up doing wrong? What are some of these trends predicted by thought leaders in the space that are interesting for us to really think about and consider when we have a lot of choices in the type of brands that we interact with? So make your CX decisions wisely. I hope whatever the rest of your Morning, afternoon, evening, and tail. You make it a wonderful day and appreciate you taking the time to listen. Much love until next time. Chris Webb, more curious than George. See you later.