Customer experience has been a strategic priority for many organisations for more than a decade. Yet as we move into 2026, the nature of that priority is changing. The challenge is no longer about digitising touchpoints or launching new customer-facing tools. It is about whether organisations can operate customer experience as an intelligent, connected and trustworthy capability across the entire business.
This shift is happening at a time when technology complexity is increasing rather than decreasing. According to Gartner, technology leaders face a pivotal year in 2026 as disruption, innovation and risk accelerate simultaneously, requiring a clear response at the executive level. Customer experience sits directly at the intersection of these forces. It touches data, AI, security, integration and business process orchestration.
The organisations that succeed in 2026 will be those that move beyond fragmented CX initiatives and build an integrated foundation where intelligence can be applied consistently across marketing, commerce, sales and service.
1-AI evolves from task support to experience orchestration
Artificial intelligence has already entered most customer-facing organisations, but often in limited and tactical ways. Chatbots answer basic questions. Recommendation engines suggest products. Forecasting models assist planning. In 2026, this fragmented approach is increasingly seen as insufficient.
Gartner identifies orchestration as a defining theme of the next phase of AI adoption, driven by the rise of multi-agent systems that collaborate to execute complex workflows. Enterprise interest in multi-agent systems has surged by 1,445 percent between Q1 2024 and Q2 2025, signalling a sharp shift from experimentation to operational deployment.
This matters for customer experience because modern journeys are inherently cross-functional. A single customer interaction often spans marketing engagement, commerce activity, sales follow-up and service resolution. Orchestrated AI enables organisations to manage these journeys holistically rather than optimising isolated steps.
By 2027, 70 percent of multi-agent systems are expected to use narrowly specialised agents to improve accuracy, while 60 percent will support multivendor interoperability by 2028. This points towards an environment where intelligence is distributed but coordinated, embedded directly into operational systems rather than layered on top. In practical terms, this favours CX platforms where AI is natively integrated into core processes and can draw on shared customer data without heavy custom integration.
2-Unified customer data becomes a prerequisite for intelligent CX
The effectiveness of AI-driven customer experience depends fundamentally on data. Without reliable, contextual and timely data, intelligence remains superficial. In 2026, organisations are increasingly recognising that fragmented customer data is one of the main barriers to delivering meaningful personalisation and automation.
While the 2026 trends report focuses heavily on AI and infrastructure, it repeatedly highlights the need for centralised, governed data as a foundation for value creation. Domain-specific language models are a clear example. Gartner predicts that 30 percent of enterprise generative AI models will be domain-specific by 2028, and that 30 percent of generative AI workloads will run on premises or on devices to meet governance and accuracy requirements.
For customer experience, this signals a move away from generic personalisation towards context-rich, domain-aware intelligence that reflects real customer behaviour and business rules. Achieving this requires customer data that is not only unified but trusted, governed and accessible across functions.
In practice, organisations are increasingly consolidating customer identity, consent, behavioural data and transactional history into connected platforms that can support marketing, sales, commerce and service simultaneously. This reduces duplication, improves data quality and enables AI to operate with real business context.
3-Composable architectures mature as governance becomes critical
Composable architecture continues to be a major theme in 2026, driven by the need for agility and rapid innovation. However, experience has shown that composability without governance leads to fragmented landscapes that are expensive to operate and difficult to scale.
Gartner notes a strong shift towards hybrid and orchestrated environments. By 2028, 40 percent of enterprises are expected to adopt hybrid computing architectures, up from just 8 percent today. This reflects a broader move towards environments where workloads, data and intelligence flow across cloud, on premises and edge systems.
For customer experience, this means that CX platforms must integrate seamlessly with core systems rather than operate as standalone layers. Composability still matters, but it must be applied within a coherent architectural framework that supports data consistency, security and performance.
This is where integration platforms and business technology foundations become increasingly important. Rather than acting as middleware, they enable orchestration of customer journeys, events and data flows across the entire enterprise.
4-Commerce shifts from transactions to continuous engagement
Commerce is undergoing a significant transformation as customer expectations evolve. Transactions are no longer isolated events. Customers expect continuity across discovery, purchase, fulfilment, service and renewal.
This shift is reinforced by advances in AI and automation. Intelligent search, guided selling and contextual recommendations are becoming standard expectations rather than differentiators. At the same time, commerce platforms are increasingly connected to service and sales systems to ensure consistent experiences across the lifecycle.
The rise of physical AI further expands the scope of commerce-related experiences. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 80 percent of warehouses will use robotics or automation. While this trend is operational in nature, it has direct implications for customer experience, influencing delivery speed, accuracy and transparency.
To support these expectations, commerce capabilities must be deeply integrated with inventory, logistics, service and customer data systems. This favours CX ecosystems where commerce is not a standalone channel but part of a broader engagement platform.
5-Sales and service converge around lifecycle value
Another defining trend of 2026 is the convergence of sales and service functions. Customers increasingly expect organisations to recognise context and intent regardless of where the interaction takes place. Historically, sales and service systems evolved separately, optimised for different goals. In 2026, this separation is becoming a liability. AI-driven insights lose value when customer history is fragmented, and teams miss opportunities to create value across the lifecycle.
The move towards orchestrated AI and unified data supports this convergence. When sales teams can access service history and behavioural signals, they can engage more effectively. When service teams understand commercial context, they can resolve issues more efficiently and identify opportunities to strengthen relationships. This trend is reinforced by the broader shift towards outcome-driven AI. Domain-specific models and role-based intelligence enable more precise insights for both sales and service teams, grounded in the same customer data foundation.
6-Automation expands, but trust and governance take centre stage
Automation is no longer primarily about efficiency. In 2026, it is increasingly about reliability, accountability and trust. As AI-driven automation becomes more pervasive, organisations must ensure that decisions are explainable, secure and compliant.
Gartner highlights a strong shift towards preemptive cybersecurity as AI-driven threats increase. By 2030, 50 percent of security software spending is expected to go to preemptive solutions, while documented vulnerabilities are projected to exceed 1 million annually.
For customer experience, this has direct implications. Automated decisions influence pricing, eligibility, recommendations and service outcomes. Customers and regulators expect transparency and fairness, not just speed.
Confidential computing is another key trend addressing this challenge. Gartner predicts that by 2029, 75 percent of processing in untrusted infrastructure will be secured by confidential computing. This enables sensitive customer data to be processed securely, even in cloud environments.
Together, these trends underline that trust is becoming a core CX differentiator. Organisations must design customer experience platforms with governance, security and compliance built in rather than added as afterthoughts.
7-Integration becomes a strategic business capability
Integration has traditionally been treated as an IT concern. In 2026, it is increasingly recognised as a strategic enabler of customer experience and business agility. The rise of orchestrated AI, hybrid architectures and real-time customer journeys places significant demands on integration capabilities. Systems must exchange data and events reliably, securely and at scale.
Gartner emphasises orchestration across diverse technologies as a key requirement for unlocking new value in an AI-powered world. This reinforces the need for integration platforms that can support event-driven architectures, API management and process orchestration across complex landscapes.
For CX leaders, this means that integration decisions directly affect customer experience outcomes. Poor integration leads to delayed responses, inconsistent data and broken journeys. Strong integration enables real-time insight, coordinated action and scalable innovation.
What these trends mean for CX leaders in 2026
Taken together, these trends signal a clear shift in how customer experience must be approached. Success in 2026 is not about adopting individual technologies, but about building an integrated, intelligent and trustworthy CX foundation. Leaders must move beyond channel-centric thinking and focus on lifecycle value. They must align data, AI, automation and integration around shared outcomes rather than departmental objectives. They must also balance innovation with sustainability. Hybrid architectures, orchestrated AI and governed composability enable organisations to adapt without constantly reengineering their landscapes.
Turning trends into measurable outcomes
Understanding the trends shaping customer experience in 2026 is only the first step. Real value is created when those trends are translated into execution that fits existing processes, data and governance. Many organisations struggle because new tools are introduced in isolation, while integration and adoption are underestimated. Langia helps organisations avoid this by designing platform-based CX architectures where SAP CX, SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP Business AI work together as one. This ensures intelligence is embedded into real customer-facing processes, enabling organisations to move from trend awareness to measurable, scalable and trusted CX outcomes.
If you are planning your next step in customer experience modernisation for 2026, get in touch with Langia to discuss how these trends can be turned into practical results for your organisation.