December 30, 2025
CX Analyst Highlights and Expectations for 2026
The analyst class had a busy 2025 rushing to fit the fast-moving AI puzzle pieces into the customer and employee experience jigsaw.
Forrester’s Total Experience Score proved an interesting way to align brand and CX for improved results, while Gartner was busy looking at the impact of AI on CX headcount.
That’s as these companies continue to trim their own numbers with the relevance of business analysis in the AI era further questioned.
Among the individual analysts, CXM talked to Justin Robbins at Contact Centre Expo about user’s values, and Chris Marron about the changing market contact landscape.
Analysing the 2026 CX Landscape
Most analysts are already firmly focused on 2026, as AI becomes a firm fixture in CX applications, but also the wider operating landscape.
There’s no bigger CX market than the US government, and Forrester’s Judy Weader dug into the US President’s Management Agenda for 2026 and its lack of a CX mission.
Aside from the political inanity of forced font changes (Times New Roman is back) she looks into how federal CX leaders must focus in 2026 on their mission, even as the unhinged leadership find more ways to battle “woke” and destabilise normal customer relations.
Weader’s key advice includes:
- Build the business case for CX improvements around improving efficiency.
- Adopt the federal government’s excellent design system.
- Whenever possible, prioritize cross-agency customer journeys.
Forrester also has a useful CX budget planner guide for 2026 operations and strategy. While the brand’s 2026 CX predictions include avoiding the obsession around metrics, a few AI-powered scandals, and how design systems could become a CX secret weapon.
The Gartner Analyst View
Over at Gartner, their predictions focus on domain specific AI and the use of confidential computing to protect customers’ sensitive data.
Looking into the new year, Brad Fager takes a closer look at how customer leaders can prioritise human strengths with AI intelligence in 2026, highlighting that:
“To maximize the benefits of AI, leaders should pursue both customer-facing and agent-facing use cases that support first contact resolution, enable seamless journeys, and drive value delivery. We recommend investing in robust knowledge management strategies and upskilling agents to work alongside AI.”
He also looks at the key question in contact centre, on the impact AI has on staffing and agent roles and similar key topics.
With all the major CX, EX and CC solutions packing their own AI features, the rise of intelligent agents is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Where the analysts, of any colour, can help is linking the dots between often still-fractured business systems and focusing on the key values and metrics beyond the latest trendy themes.
