Customer Experience in 2026: What Changes When AI Becomes Accessible to Everyone
By Fraser Dunk, Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP)
AI has arguably been at the forefront of the customer experience space for years, powering everything from behavioural segmentation to churn prediction through machine learning and analytics.
What is different now is accessibility.
The new wave of generative AI and low-code and no-code tooling is putting powerful CX capabilities into the hands of non-technical teams and businesses. Marketers, product managers, and support specialists are no longer reliant on analytics platforms or reporting teams. No data science degree required. No enterprise budget necessary.
One of the biggest issues I have seen leading global CX teams is that CX is often stuck in a silo. Is it a product function? A marketing function? An operational function? By definition, CX needs to cover the full experience customers have with a business and therefore cannot sit in isolation.
I have always seen CX as a commercial function. Customer experience is directly correlated to company performance. Treating CX as anything other than that limits its impact or sees it continue to be viewed as a nice-to-have rather than a driver of growth.
This shift in accessibility means CX capabilities are becoming cheaper to deploy, easier to integrate, and more democratic across organisations. Importantly, it is changing who can shape the customer journey, which will unlock fundamental changes in how CX operates in 2026 and beyond.
Here are four I see coming.
1. Over-Personalisation Will Break Trust, Not Build It
Hyper-personalisation has been an AI buzzword for years, but most personalised experiences still feel robotic.
Done badly, it comes across as creepy (“How did they know that?”) or disappointingly generic (“Hi [FirstName], here’s something irrelevant to you”). As AI-driven personalisation tools become more widespread, a clear divide will emerge between brands that use AI thoughtfully—with context and consent—and those that overstep, eroding trust in the name of engagement.
By 2026, trust and expectation-setting will be core to any AI personalisation strategy. Users will want to understand why they are seeing something and have the ability to opt out or redirect the experience.
2. Journey Orchestration Will Overtake Static Mapping
Traditional CX methods such as journey mapping workshops or reviewing analytics dashboards are still too often point-in-time or reactive. Teams map journeys periodically or analyse data after churn has already increased.
That is no longer enough.
AI-enabled journey orchestration shifts CX from looking backwards to acting in real time. These systems can detect when users are going off-track, predict what might help, and trigger automated or human interventions instantly.
This will redefine CX from something that describes the past to something that actively shapes the present.
3. The UX and CX Divide Will Finally Collapse
For years, UX and CX have been treated as two separate disciplines. UX focused on what happens inside the product, while CX covered everything outside it.
AI is blurring those lines by giving teams access to the same underlying data, including user behaviour, feedback loops, and friction points. Product, design, and support teams can now act on shared insights rather than operating in parallel.
In a world driven by product-led growth, the divide between user experience and customer experience no longer makes sense. Customers experience a single journey, not internal team structures. By 2026, this artificial separation should finally disappear.
4. Human Support Will Become a Premium Layer
AI is automating more of the support experience, from chatbots and knowledge base creation to sentiment analysis and triage.
As automation becomes the baseline, human interaction becomes rarer and more valuable. In complex or emotional scenarios, customers will still want to speak to a real person, and there will continue to be a segment that is turned off by being forced to interact with a bot.
As AI handles routine queries, support teams can shift focus away from operational metrics and towards outcomes that matter commercially, such as reducing churn, driving adoption, and increasing engagement.
In that shift, customer support becomes customer enablement, and human interaction becomes a deliberate part of the experience.
What This Means for CX Leaders
AI accessibility is changing how customer experience is owned, delivered, and valued within organisations.
The teams that succeed in 2026 will not be those that automate everything or personalise indiscriminately. They will be the ones that use AI to act in real time, align teams around shared journeys, and apply human judgement where it creates the most value.
As AI becomes available to everyone, customer experience becomes less about the technology itself and more about the choices organisations make in how they use it.
About the author
Fraser is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and a recognised leader in Digital Customer Experience. With a career spanning over 15 years, he has built and scaled CX functions within some of the world’s most competitive digital environments — from publicly listed corporations like Betsson Group to hyper-growth disruptors such as DAZN Group.
This article ‘Customer Experience in 2026: What Changes When AI Becomes Accessible to Everyone’ is an exclusive piece by Fraser for CXQuest.com.
About Jurnii
Jurnii is a digital experience agency, powered by a proprietary suite of AI insight and analysis tools. The company helps brands unlock customer understanding, optimise journeys, and deliver modern experiences that drive business growth.
