Artificial intelligence (AI) isn't just shaping how organizations interact with customers – it's also changing how customers interact with organizations. As sophisticated tech changes both sides of the relationship, knowing how, where, and when to connect with customers is becoming much more complex.
Some of the established laws of customer understanding still apply. People are generally looking for simple, quick, and easy experiences that get them from A to B without friction or undue effort. However, many studies have found the attention economy that accelerated over recent decades has contributed to widespread overwhelm in the face of seemingly endless marketing communications and product choice.
With AI assistants now acting as intermediaries, it's becoming even harder to cut through the noise and reach customers. Once acquired, loyalty is also becoming more difficult to win.
Drawing on research and insights from CX Horizons: The state of CX in 2026, this article presents the top customer behavior trends of 2026 and explores what organizations need to do to connect with customers when AI is changing the game for both sides.
What do customers want?
To truly connect with customers, practitioners must first understand what they want.
CX Network's annual research into the state of CX asks practitioners to select three customer behaviors influencing their work the most from a list of 14 choices. In 2026, the top results emerged as awareness of how AI works/uses customer data (selected by 36 percent), followed by demand for convenience (30 percent), and customers using AI for their service and sales interactions (29 percent, see graphic below).
These results do not follow the established pattern: in previous years the top responses consistently emerged as the expectation for instant service/delivery, demand for convenience, and customers spending less. In 2025, these responses garnered 43 percent, 40 percent, and 39 percent of votes, respectively.
The 2026 result suggests customers are now turning to their AI assistants to deliver the speed and convenience they crave and avoid the overwhelming levels of choice that have become standard in digital CX.
Elsewhere in the top 10 customer behaviors, awareness of ethical working conditions climbed from ninth to seventh place (selected by 19 percent of respondents in 2026), while lower customer spending has become less of a concern, dropping from third to fifth place year-on-year.
3 Ways to build connections with customers
To build meaningful connections with customers who are tech literate, AI savvy, and reluctant to overshare their data presents some challenges. CX Network asked a cohort of leading practitioners how to turn challenge into opportunity.
1. Understand that everybody is now a competitor
Expectation transfer shapes and heightens expectations. Enjoying convenience and simplicity when interacting with one brand, sets the scene to expect convenience and simplicity when interacting with all brands. This means practitioners must understand how they stack up against their competitors.
Greg Thomas, senior director of thought leadership for Genesys, says brands must be mindful that expectation transfer has been magnified and "competitive parity" is now global.
"Consumers increasingly judge every brand against the single best experience they've had anywhere. If a retailer delivers one-click resolutions or a fintech app anticipates needs in real time, that becomes the new standard for healthcare, travel, utilities, everywhere," he explains. "The bar is no longer competitive parity within your sector; it's competitive parity with the best experience on the planet."
2. AI can drive convenience, but trust is equally important
Instant and proactive service is certainly important to customers, but it's only the start. According to Thomas it must also be delivered alongside personalization and other AI-powered experiences features. "Speed and personalization are both table stakes," he says.
Claire Cunningham, founder and managing director of The Customer Connexion says customer expectations "are being shaped by two seemingly competing forces: the desire for instant convenience and the growing demand for trust and transparency while still being able to reach a critical thinking human if required".
"I myself as a customer expect this too," she says.
It means that to meet current requirements and connect with customers, a balance must be struck between AI and automation and maintaining human connection.
Cunningham says: "The organizations that are already succeeding in this are those that have managed the balance between fast automation and personalized humanity."
It means "the greatest opportunity" for the application of AI "lies not in completely automating a customer service department, but in using AI to remove friction while humans are able to focus on critical problem solving and soft but important value".
With that balance in place, Cunningham says transparency around AI use is critical – and a major trust differentiator.
She adds: "As customers become more aware of how AI works and how their data is used, organizations that openly communicate what AI is doing and why, will accelerate and grow." For those operating in the EU, from August 2026 the need to be transparent around how AI is used in experience, support, and decision-making will become non-negotiable under the EU AI Act.
3. Take governance and accountability seriously
As the top customer behaviors demonstrate, a large share of customers understand how AI – and organizations – are using their data. In response, customer privacy, data use, and data security surfaced across the research:
- Consumer privacy entered the top 10 CX trends for the first time in 2026.
- Awareness of how AI works and uses customer data is the leading customer behavior influencing the work of practitioners.
- Consumer demand for data security emerged as the fifth most selected challenge in 2026.
"As AI becomes more embedded in customer-facing use cases, responsible deployment becomes equally critical," says Thomas. "Consumers have expectations about knowing when they're interacting with AI and how AI uses their data. Guardrails, explainability, and transparent data practices will directly influence trust and loyalty. Hallucinations or misinformation can undo years of brand equity."
In 2025, we asked practitioners if they had an organization-wide approach to AI governance for the first time. As many as 48 percent said no, while 37 percent said they do have models in place, and 15 percent were unsure. In 2026, the results show a marked improvement: 43 percent now do have an organization-wide approach in place, and a much-reduced 20 percent do not.
Thomas adds: "The practitioners who win in 2026 will be those who combine intelligent orchestration with visible accountability – delivering seamless experiences while making AI governance a core part of the brand promise."
Conclusion: Is loyalty still possible?
It's clear that connection is more difficult, but certainly not impossible. The question now, is how connections can be maintained and if they can be nurtured into loyalty.
While a growing number of customers embrace the AI era, are increasingly AI literate, and expect the best experiences possible to be delivered at all times, at the most basic level, humans also respond positively when their experiences are anchored in trust and familiarity.
These foundations build loyalty, which means that in CX, there is no room for technology and trust to be mutually exclusive; connecting with customers meaningfully demands focus on governance and accountability.
"The 2026 behaviors make one thing clear: loyalty will be built at the intersection of transparency, relevance and humanity," says Montserrat Padierna, customer knowledge and experience lead for Walmart Canada. "Customers are more aware of how AI uses their data, more selective in their spending, and more informed before they engage. That raises the bar. Efficiency alone is no longer enough. Technology must elevate humanity, not override it."
As this shift takes hold, Padierna says deep customer understanding is required. To achieve this, organizations should enhance their understanding of customers "not just through static segments, but by interpreting behavioral signals, economic realities, and emotional cues in real time", Padierna says. "Intelligence should help organizations adapt to customers, not force customers to adapt to rigid systems," she adds.
For organizations to thrive in this environment, Padierna says empathy must become a design principle. "Many frustrations experienced by customers – repetition, inconsistency, lack of understanding – are the result of internal fragmentation. When market and customer intelligence teams connect VoC, operational and behavioral data effectively, experiences become more intuitive and responsive," Padierna explains.
"Humility is equally critical," she adds. "Organizations need to walk alongside customer needs, not assume control. Giving customers agency and the ability to adjust preferences, escalate or opt out, all reinforces trust."