Free DownloadWhat is customer experience management (CEM or CXM)?
Positive customer experiences can boost both a company’s reputation and bottom line, but negative ones can have the opposite effect. Crafting and implementing a customer experience management strategy is essential. This guide explores techniques and tools that can help organizations construct and implement an effective customer experience management plan.
Customer interaction analytics, autonomous agents and AI-driven upsells are some of the CX trends that could boost revenue, cut costs and improve customer service.
The pace of change in customer experience has never been faster, as technological innovation and customer expectations create competitive pressure on every business technology leader.
For business leaders who pivot correctly, however, the transformations ahead of them hold significant promise. In Metrigy's "Customer Experience Optimization 2025-26" global study of 656 companies, several key points emerged to help IT and CX leaders navigate this rapidly changing era.
The report highlighted seven key trends that CX leaders should watch out for in 2026. CX tech buyers should evaluate these data-backed shifts for their strategic planning in the new year.
1. Interaction analytics improve business decisions.
Interaction analytics, also known as conversation analytics or conversation intelligence, is poised to accelerate and improve business decisions, employee performance and CX. The analytics tools use AI to pull important information out of every customer interaction, including topics discussed, length of interactions, performance of AI and human agents, customer sentiment and more.
Although about half of companies are using interaction analytics now, more than 90% say it's the most valuable, or among the most valuable, data available within the company. Moreover, 84% say customer interaction analytics should be part of executive decisions via companywide dashboards.
Moving into 2026, Metrigy expects more companies to adopt the technology, and those already using it will find more depth in the data and act on it more broadly. That action will result in better customer satisfaction.
84% of companies say customer interaction analytics should be part of executive decisions via companywide dashboards.
MetrigyGlobal CX Optimization study
2. Agentic agents become hierarchical.
Despite all the discussion around agentic agents, only 48% of companies use them, and many of these applications are rudimentary. Part of the problem is only 61% of IT/CX leaders are familiar with the word agentics. So, as an industry, more education is needed.
Along those lines, Metrigy's definition of agentics is: An advanced AI framework that uses large language models to make decisions, learn, adapt and take actions autonomously with little or no human involvement. Agentics help humans in the moment and/or automate interactions or processes.
As technology leaders become more comfortable with agentics in 2026 -- and see the value of these autonomous agents -- Metrigy expects a swift move to version 2.0, which includes a hierarchy of master AI agents working together and with sub-agents to analyze issues, take action, close the loop and report on results. Early users of agentics are seeing dramatic results, including a 27% increase in revenue, 21% reduction in costs and 35% improvement in customer satisfaction, to name a few metrics.
3. AI helps generate sales in the contact center.
As customer service representatives become more productive -- thanks to agent assist and AI self-service agents -- supervisors have questioned how to optimize the saved time. For 17% of companies, idle time became high enough in 2025 that they laid off contact center employees. But that's not a sustainable approach for most organizations.
Nearly 60% of companies now attach sales quotas to their service representatives. So, once they resolve an issue -- typically 28% faster with agent assist -- they jump to an upsell or cross-sell pitch. For 64% of those companies, the pitch comes from an AI agent, which also coaches the service rep to handle objections and close the sale. This has contributed to 75% of companies designating their contact center as a value center and no longer a cost center.
In 2026, Metrigy expects AI to be involved in more sales interactions and more companies to attach sales quotas to their service agents. Then, the use of upsell pitches will be governed by AI analysis. When the contact center is too busy, AI will suspend upsell pitches to handle customer service inquiries in a timely manner. When business is a little slower, AI will enact the upsell pitches again, to drive more revenue while ensuring idle time stays low.
4. AI vs. human analysis results in new baseline KPIs.
As companies increasingly use AI agents, 58% are conducting analysis on AI performance compared to human performance. The main metrics they are using for comparison are customer satisfaction (75%), time-to-resolve issues (63%), successful upsell (54%) and first-contact resolution (51%).
In 2026, Metrigy expects companies to reset their baseline KPIs with different figures for AI and human agents in some cases. From there, they will adjust the circumstances and issues that merit human agents or AI agents based on their performance to meet company goals. Customer satisfaction and first-contact resolution should be the same whether an AI agent or human agent handles the interaction; if it's not, then adjustments are required. However, AI agents typically take less time to resolve an issue, and human agents will be more likely to succeed with an upsell, so those KPIs would be different.
5. Growing reliance on AI for supervisor functions.
CX leaders often promote the value of agent assist, but they don't sing the praises of AI for supervisors as frequently.
Metrigy's research shows significant value in using AI for quality management, coaching, scheduling and forecasting. For example, companies save 11.9 hours per week per supervisor when AI listens to calls for quality management functions; 7.4 hours per week when AI coaches agents; and 6.3 hours per week when AI handles scheduling and forecasting.
In 2026, more companies will rely on AI for supervisor functions, and they will add new tasks to supervisors' job requirements. For example, supervisors will reach out to at-risk customers -- designated by AI interaction analytics -- to reduce churn rates.
6. IVRs start to disappear as we know them.
One reason customer service ratings are not as high as CX leaders would expect is the annoying decision tree of interactive voice response (IVR) that answers most calls to businesses. Few, if any, customers want to sit through a menu of multiple options that tell them to "Press 1" for this and "Press 2" for that. AI is starting to change this.
Already, 38% of companies plan to replace their IVR with AI triage agents, according to Metrigy's study. But 63% of the Research Success Group -- those who have the highest measurable improvements in their business metrics by using AI in CX, and whose technology adoption plans are leading indicators -- say they're planning for the same. This enables customers to simply talk to a conversational AI agent to route their call based on natural language discussions.
The major reason all companies aren't doing this now is cost. IVRs are typically less expensive or a sunk cost. Business leaders need to determine whether the higher cost of AI triage agents is worth the improved customer satisfaction. Metrigy expects more companies to shift from IVRs to AI starting in 2026.
7. Technology more important than people alone to serve customers.
Last, but certainly not least, research shows a notable shift in IT/CX leaders' perspectives on the relative importance of technology.
In 2024, Metrigy asked research participants: "Though both are important, which is more important to delivering successful customer interactions: people or technology?" At that time, 72% of companies said people. One year later, that figure dropped to 59% -- still the majority, but a big year-over-year drop. Moreover, 58% of the Research Success Group said technology is more important than people in 2025, up from 48% in 2024.
The shift is an acknowledgment of three core benefits of technology in CX. First, technology makes humans better; without it, human agents would not be as good as they are. Second, technology in the form of AI agents can automate resolution, freeing humans to handle complex issues. Third, analytics delivers crucial data to inform CX leaders about whether their strategy is working.
In 2026, this trend should continue, potentially with more people saying technology is more important than people to deliver successful customer interactions. This does not mean technology replaces people -- though it will replace some of their workflows and address designated issues -- but it's crucial to empowering people further in their roles.
Robin Gareiss is CEO and principal analyst at Metrigy, which conducts research and advises enterprises and technology providers. She leads coverage into AI, customer experience and contact center operations.
