2025 is behind us, but some trends are persisting into 2026.
Economic pressures are still weighing down consumers, causing them to prioritize value and price above their loyalty to a brand. While the particular economic challenges may change with talk of recession in the air, the pressure on CX leaders to find new loyalty avenues lingers.
AI continues its march to transform customer experience, but among many consumers, it isn’t for the better. Customers are concerned about the erosion of human support, as more companies deploy AI solutions that don’t live up to expectations.
Other trends became more entrenched. Data and privacy remain top of mind for customers, and companies must do their part to gain consumer trust and provide loyalty programs worth their time.
CX leaders face ongoing challenges, from economic anxiety to AI reshaping customer service. Here are 6 trends of 2026:
Value-seeking customers are becoming less loyal
As rising prices and tariffs created economic uncertainty, customers have shown less loyalty to brands and have sought more value. Now, most consumers say the U.S. economy is undergoing a recession and nearly half say their financial security is getting worse, according to a Harris Poll released last week. Consumer behavior is changing in turn.
“We're in a time of transition from consumers primarily approaching their shopping through the lens of inflationary conditions into a time when consumers are going to be approaching their shopping and decision making from a recessionary mindset,” Kate Muhl, VP analyst at Gartner, said.
Inflation drives consumers to seek value more than they might otherwise, but they don’t often fret about losing their jobs.
“What you're worried about is making the dollars go further, like chasing the prices, so you buy in bulk, you join Costco, you find coupons, you work all the perks,” Muhl said.
But in recessionary times, consumers are more preoccupied with saving money and spending less to offer some security in case of job loss, according to Muhl.
“Those recessionary impulses and attitudes are much more about self protection and not spending,” Muhl said. “That also includes getting as much value as you can for your dollar. But it really does mean, ‘Let me shed services. Let me do personal care on a less frequent rotation.’”
As these economic pressures persist, businesses will need to help consumers feel safe or confident in making a purchase.
“When customers are feeling financially insecure, which I think more and more of them are, what they prioritize is not actually price, what they prioritize is certainty,” said Isabelle Zdatny, head of thought leadership at Qualtrics XM Institute. “They just don't have the extra bandwidth to absorb mistakes and costs and anything that's going to take their time, and so that trust becomes even more important because they just want a reliable partner that's not going to add to their cognitive load.”
When consumers are seeking certainty, brands can ask themselves how their products or services can represent an investment and not just a purchase.
“How would I position this as an investment so that it's not just about, ‘It's the coolest, it’s fun, it's the best,’ but rather, ‘It's going to be something that you're getting back from over time’?” Muhl said.
Consumers are worried about the erosion of human customer service
As more companies deploy AI self-service, consumers are worried about not being able to reach a human. In fact, half of consumers say it's their No. 1 concern about AI, according to Qualtrics XM Institute.
Part of the issue is AI-powered customer support is failing so far, according to Zdatny. Nearly 1 in 5 consumers say they receive zero benefit from it.
“It performs poorly across metrics that you think it would be really good at, like usefulness, convenience, time saved — it's 12 points below average,” she said. “Across industries, virtual agents perform much worse than live chat in terms of task completion, effort, effort by channel, satisfaction by channel.”
When consumers do finally get to speak to a human, the handoff is often poor.
“I think a lot of the customer effort is going to shift from company operations on to the customer, where they then get trapped in these self-service mazes, and they have to figure out the system if they actually want to talk to someone,” Zdatny said. “A lot of them probably won't make it through.”
Some businesses, however, are leaning into human care as a form of differentiation. When Nordstrom customers “really want the face-to-face, eye-to-eye, voice-to-voice connection,” the retailer is there to meet the need, Nordstrom Senior Director of Customer Care Heather Bissell told CX Dive this fall.
More than 4 in 5 consumers say they are more likely to stay loyal to companies that prioritize human customer service over automated or self-service options alone, according to an October Ricoh survey. Nearly all respondents agree that brands that actively invest in building authentic human connection will have a long-term competitive advantage.
Generative AI research is changing the customer journey
Generative AI is changing how people search and discover brands, with over one-third of consumers saying they trust AI to influence their purchases. One top use case is turning to a third-party AI tool, like ChatGPT, to assist with finding product ideas.
Historic forms of discovery, from search engines to social media, were often tedious, according to Terra Higginson, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. Consumers had to learn to use rigid search terms or dig through massive amounts of information to find what they were actually looking for.
Now, anyone can put a natural language query into a generative AI chatbot and receive concise and tailored advice. While this improves the initial discovery experience for customers, it also means CX leaders need to redesign their approach to the customer journey.
“Your journey can't start at your website,” Higginson told CX Dive. “It can't start on social media. You're going to have to redesign the journey to acknowledge that a large percentage of people are going to be doing primary research within an AI answer engine.”
As a result, teams need to rethink the buyer persona and the needs of the average customer visiting their site, according to Higgison. They need to consider how many shoppers will conduct their research through a third-party tool, and how this changes what they need when they finally arrive at a brand website.
Consumers need more than generic perks for sharing data
Consumers are increasingly concerned about the privacy of their data as companies seek to draw upon that information to help them power personalization.
While few U.S. consumers trust companies to use their data responsibly, more than two-thirds say they are willing to share their data if it results in more personalized and rewarding customer experiences, according to a June Press Ganey Forsta survey.
To earn customers’ trust, companies will have to create a compelling value proposition to share their data, according to Halle Stern, director principal analyst at Gartner. Customers are still willing to share personal information if they get something back, but the reward needs to go beyond generic discounts.
“It's all about understanding customer personas and what their values, their needs and their motivations are and tailoring benefits to those personas,” Stern told CX Dive. “If we can show that we are delivering some sort of benefit to your life, not just transactionally but helping you save time or accomplish a goal, it helps you become less risk averse.”
It’s not enough to promise customers vague deals in return for their data, according to Stern. They should be explicit about how much money they can expect to save in a year, special benefits they can access, or other ways information sharing can make their life better on a day-to-day basis.
Website design needs to consider AI and human use
The increasing use of agentic AI means that ensuring readability for bots, as well as humans, is becoming best practice for site design.
There is an entire spectrum of agentic capabilities, and the world is not yet at the point where most consumers are letting AI take action on their behalf, according to Higginson. However, AI is playing a larger role in how consumers discover brands.
Higginson said she likes to ask leaders the term they would use to describe their company, and then type that term into Google. If that company’s name appears in the AI summary, they’re doing great. If not, it’s a sign that there is still work to be done.
“Be afraid if you're not showing up because you have a limited amount of time, and then all of your competitors are going to appear there before you,” Higginson said.
CX professionals can’t tackle this challenge alone. Higginson likened the rise of third-party agentic AI to the early days of SEO, when marketing and technology teams brought on professionals dedicated to capturing customers and introducing them to the brand ecosystem under the new system.
CX leaders can no longer assume the customer journey starts on a website or app, according to Higginson. They now need to take into account AI tools as a major starting point, and design an experience that accommodates shoppers who arrive from an AI-powered answer engine.
Customers want unobtrusive loyalty program messaging
Customers want to make the most of their loyalty programs, but striking the balance between too much and too little information can be a challenge as points-based loyalty programs grow in popularity.
The wide variety of benefits is one of their biggest draws of points-based loyalty, according to Len Covello, CTO at technology loyalty program solutions provider Engage People.
More than 9 in 10 consumers say they have used or would use features that let them customize how they earn rewards and/or choose their rewards, according to an EPAM Systems survey from August.
Customers appreciate when brands help them keep track of what they’ve earned or reach out with personalized offers, but businesses need to keep their messaging unobtrusive, Covello said.
Consumers understand that brands are tracking their browsing habits as part of loyalty program membership but they don’t want brands acting too familiar, according to Covello. They want simple, infrequent communication that reflects the transactional nature of the relationship.
“A little bit too much becomes annoying or possibly eerie to a customer, because if you have a lot of data on them and not enough restraint it's kind of like you don't care,” Covello said. “But you do need to reach out, and you do need to communicate with a customer.”
Outreach should be occasional and helpful, according to Covello. Examples of good outreach include telling customers how much they’ve saved over the past three months or letting them know they’ve earned a major discount on something they previously expressed interest in.
