As the year winds down, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on 2025’s customer experience wins (and lessons learned), and to look ahead at the strategies that will set brands up for success in 2026.
At TTEC, we know which 2026 CX trends we’re eyeing as we head into the new year, but we’re not the only ones making projections. CX experts everywhere are sharing their tips on how to take customer experience to the next level in the new year.
As brands grapple with a challenging economic environment and pressures to become more efficient, 85% of CX leaders say their companies are evolving their customer service strategies to navigate the uncertain landscape, according to Zendesk. And, unsurprisingly, AI is a huge part of the trends analysts and experts are talking about for 2026.
Memory-rich AI powers personalization
Zendesk expects a growing number of brands to invest in memory-rich AI as they aim to deliver personalization at scale. Memory-rich AI retains and applies relevant details from past interactions, across various channels, and compiles what a brand learns about its customers over time.
With this history, AI can anticipate customer needs, offer recommendations, and tailor experiences to customers’ unique preferences. The result? CX feels consistent, efficient, and extremely personal.
According to Zendesk, 85% of CX leaders feel persistent memory helps brands build deeper, longer-lasting customer relationships, and 83% say remembering context across channels reduces customer effort and frustration.
NiCE also predicts experience memory will compound AI’s value across customer journeys. “Intelligence that remembers is intelligence that earns trust,” its trend report says.
Brands should prioritize building memory that carries context across time, teams, and channels. Having a unified platform that spans interactions and teams is essential to building true experience memory, NiCE says, because disjointed tools can’t remember what matters most. When memory is embedded in a single place, AI gets smarter, associates gain clarity, and customers feel like you really know them.
AI works like an associate
Experts agree that AI will evolve past its role as an associate-helper to the point where it acts as an associate.
The rise of agentic AI (one of the trends TTEC is predicting) will gain momentum. NiCE forecasts that language action models (LAMs) will enable AI agents to move beyond chat to execution; they will be able to plan, decide, and complete tasks across systems.
As a result, NiCE expects the traditional associate desktop to be revolutionized. Multiple menus, clicks, and toggling among applications will be replaced by goal-driven AI that delivers outcomes directly.
This won’t just boost productivity; it will fundamentally change the way associates work. Agentic AI has the potential to drastically reduce associate effort and free up associates to focus on more meaningful tasks.
AI raises the bar for instant CX
AI will continue to play a growing role in customer interactions, Zendesk predicts, which will only make customers hungrier for faster resolutions. Most CX leaders (85%) say customers will drop brands that can’t resolve issues on the first contact, putting pressure on brands to cut resolution times.
Now that they’re getting used to AI being integrated into interactions, customers are increasingly embracing it – but they want know the “why” behind AI decisions, Zendesk found.
CX leaders feel transparency around customer-facing AI will be non-negotiable in 2026, which could be challenging since only 37% of CX organizations currently offer customers (or associates) the rationale behind AI-focused decisions.
The customer journey gets reimagined
With evolving technologies and customer expectations changing the customer journey so much, will customer journey mapping as we know it still exist? Forrester predicts it may not.
Two-thirds of CX teams will abandon journey mapping, according to the analyst group. Just 30% of CX decision makers say their teams have the skills to create high-quality maps and the journey mapping process has taken on a stigma as stakeholders tend to dismiss it.
Compounding the problem, CX teams usually own customer journey maps, not the business units or teams, so maps stay disconnected from the processes and tools that make business decisions.
Forrester said CX organizations can overcome journey mapping’s stigma, but it will require a fresh approach. Journey management should involve CX and business teams and focus on solving business problems in customer-focused ways.
In the new year, brands will need to focus not just on digital journeys but also in-person ones, as Forrester predicts one-third of consumers will opt for offline brand experiences over online ones in the new year.
Brands already are investing in in-person CX, according to Forrester: Starbucks plans to phaseout its drive through- and mobile-only stores in 2026 and Coach will launch more than 20 Coach Coffee Shops globally in efforts to foster more real-life connections, for instance.
A new era of CX
As we head into 2026, the CX landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace. From memory-rich AI that personalizes every interaction to agentic AI that transforms workflows, brands have an opportunity to meet rising customer expectations while empowering their teams.
For more on the trends TTEC predicts will shape the CX landscape, check out our report, “CX Trends 2026: Fast Forward.”
