Experts reveal key CX, personalisation and AI trends for 2026

When it comes to customer experience and personalisation in the age of AI, the landscape is shifting so rapidly that it is hard for many companies to keep up. In this article, we speak with key marketing, technology and branding experts to discover the critical considerations for the year ahead.

Geoff Main, Managing Director & Founder, Passionberry Marketing

We will see 'Human through AI' as a service becoming the standard. Top CX teams will route high-emotion moments to humans, but move everything else to well-trained agents. This isn't speed alone; it's about appropriate escalation. Meanwhile expect to see AI agents move from 'novelty' to P&L. Agent projects require a business case: target minutes saved, error rates reduced, revenue created. 

I would also expect to see 'unbundled journeys rebundle around context'. This means customers will move between chat, SMS, email and in-person seamlessly. Systems that can't carry context forward create churn. Context-carry will become a board metric.

Iris Chan, Marketing and Growth Leader

Expect to see more democratisation of agentic AI. The creation of custom AI agents will no longer be in the realm of software engineers and developers. With the success of no-code platforms, non-technical people can design, fully customise and create an AI agent. 

The proliferation of AI agents will lead to stronger yearning for authentic, humanised experiences. While people will love the convenience and speed of AI-powered transactional scenarios, they will crave for the presence of real humans and emotional connection in high-value, high-stakes exchanges. Human beings are innately gregarious so you can only defy human nature for so long. Covid has provided a strong proof point of this.

Meanwhile, the buying journey will continue to be consumerised. It is no longer enough to personalise buying experiences, the trend will be hyper-individualisation – being able to tailor experiences based on individual preferences and historical behaviours or patterns. 

Pip Stocks, Director, Pip Stocks Consulting 

CX has matured beyond convenience. What people want now is to feel understood. Emotion, not efficiency, is what keeps customers close. Brands that win will design for reassurance, excitement, trust and joy at every interaction blending empathy with tech to create experiences that feel alive and uniquely human.

The next era of CX will move from journey mapping to emotional mapping designing experiences that feel human, not just frictionless. 

At the same time, AI will become the invisible co-founder amplifying human intuition, creativity and speed while freeing founders to stay customer-obsessed.

AI is no longer the shiny toy; it's the quiet force behind smarter, faster, more customer-led decisions. It's what allows founders to move from overwhelm to focus on turning data into insight, chaos into clarity. In this next phase, AI becomes an enabler of creativity and compassion: a tool that helps us see customers more clearly, not just scale faster.

Dr Anna Harrison, Founder, RAMMP

We used to ask Google what to buy. Now we ask ChatGPT who we are. That's not hyperbole, it's the biggest shift in modern marketing.

In 2026, we're no longer marketing to audiences. We're advising individuals. And that changes everything.

AI is not a tool, it's a confidant - and we will see this shift in perception in the year ahead. Most people still treat AI like a productivity hack. But recent HBR research shows the most common uses of GenAI in 2025 were therapy, life planning, and personal growth.

We're not just using AI. We're confiding in it.

This means when ChatGPT recommends a product, it doesn't feel like a search result.
It feels like advice from someone who knows you and has your best interests at heart. And with the updates in ChatGPT (InstantBuy), this is the space to watch in 2026 *I have a Forbes article in flight on this topic should be published next month

Marketers must understand: AI isn't a channel. It's a relationship. And it's intimate.

Fabrizia Roberto, Fractional CMO & Founder of The Silva Spoon

Having spent the last decade leading marketing strategy across in-house, agency and now fractional roles - all while recently acquiring The Silva Spoon, a much-loved teahouse and tea brand - I've had a front-row seat to marketing's rapid evolution. Heading into 2026, the trends are clear: experience will lead, technology will support (not replace) human creativity, and fractional leadership will become a strategic norm.

People don't need more content. They need meaningful experiences. In both my fractional CMO work and at The Silva Spoon, I see that the brands that cut through are the ones that manage to create emotional, memorable touchpoints.

Brands that prioritise customer experience are seeing stronger engagement and trust than those focused on volume. Physical spaces, digital rituals, and service-led branding are all part of that.

AI is firmly embedded in the marketing stack now, but it's no longer a differentiator. The real edge comes from how well it's applied. A clear focus on understanding your customer and crafting your unique strategy to connect with them, not just automation, will drive results.

Audiences are also tired of lifeless, over-optimised content. The shift toward authenticity reflects what we're all feeling - a craving for human tone, depth and less noise.

How you can make the most of these trends

Whether you're leading a brand or shaping your marketing career, here's what I'd focus on:

• Prioritise experience – map how your customers feel at every touchpoint.
• Use tech with intention – make sure it enhances human connection, not replaces it.
• Reconsider your team structure – what could a strategic partner who can plug in at the right level and at the right time bring to your business?

2026 won't be about doing more, it'll be about doing things in a smarter way and with more strategic intention. Experience will win and the leaders who can design systems, guide growth and keep brands human will be the ones in demand.

Satya Upadhyaya, Marketing Technology Leader

By 2026, marketing will undergo its most profound transformation since the dawn of digital. What once consisted of fragmented tools, isolated data sets and channel-based campaigns is now converging into something radically different: a connected, intelligent and autonomous marketing ecosystem.

Personalisation in 2026 isn't a token merge variable anymore. The brand that can treat each customer interaction as a unique moment of connection wins. And the brand that treats consent, trust and value exchange as secondary loses. Hyper-personalisation powered by AI: The move from "segment of one" to "moment of one" - dynamic content, real-time context, micro-communities, linguistic/cultural/behavioural nuance. This will be powered by event-streaming and live decisioning - Data collected, processed, fed into the decision engine, triggers action immediately. The "journey" becomes fractal and adaptive.

Responsible personalisation will be the new trust currency. Brands that build transparent data practices, consent frameworks, zero-trust data design, minimise risk and earn deeper engagement. Creative & AI convergence: Generative AI will help scale creative personalisation, but marketers must guard against generic content. Authenticity, brand voice and context matter more than ever.

AI will not replace marketing; it will redefine it as a living, learning system powered by collaboration between human creativity and machine cognition. It will play a supporting role to central intelligence. It will design segments, pick channels, adjust spend, optimise creative, predict behaviour, and orchestrate experiences - all within the guardrails we set. This is not "hands-free marketing." It is human-guided, machine-scaled marketing. We don't lose control. We elevate our role from execution to orchestration, something the brain was always meant to do, reducing manual effort in the process, yet doing with precision and accuracy. Beware the AI child is learning so it will make mistakes and hence governance and oversight are important.

Stuart Matthewman, B2B Marketing leader & CMO

Most "CX issues" I hear about aren't journey problems, they're basic failures to deliver. Customers are chasing clarity, speed and follow-through. In 2026, the companies that win won't have the nicest journey maps; they'll be the ones who answer quickly, solve problems the first time, and stop hiding operational issues behind warm language. Fix the basics and CX improves.

When it comes to AI, boards won't care about pilots, demos or clever use cases anymore. They'll want to know what changed:

• Did it speed something up?
• Did it reduce waste?
• Did it create revenue?

If the answer isn't clear within 3-6 months, budgets will dry up. Not because AI failed, but because the business finally expects it to act like real technology, not a promise.