Customer experience trends: what customers expect in 2026

The main customer experience trends for 2026 are that customers expect you to remember them, answer fast at any hour, and be honest about when they are dealing with automation. Zendesk's CX Trends 2026 research, based on surveys of 6,182 consumers and 5,115 business respondents in 22 countries in June 2025, found 81% of consumers want agents to continue a conversation without making them backtrack, and 67% expect support tailored to their past interactions.

This report compiles Zendesk's CX Trends 2026, Salesforce's State of the AI Connected Customer (7th edition, 15,015 consumers in 18 countries), Twilio's 2025 State of Customer Engagement Report (7,640 consumers and 637 business leaders in 18 countries) and Gartner's 2024 survey of 5,728 customers on AI in customer service. The research covers large brands as well as small firms, so we translate each finding for service businesses where the same expectations show up at the front desk, on the phone and in the text thread.

Yes, and repeating themselves is the most common frustration. Zendesk found 74% of consumers are frustrated when they have to repeat information, and 85% of CX leaders said carrying context across interactions is critical to a personalized experience. Salesforce found 69% of consumers expect consistent interactions across departments, and nearly 60% prefer using fewer touchpoints to get information or finish a task.

In a service business, repetition usually comes from disconnected tools. A patient fills out an intake form online, then gives the same details on the phone and again at check-in. A homeowner explains the problem to the person who answers, then again to the technician. A legal client tells their story to intake, then to the attorney. Each handoff without shared notes is a place where the customer feels like a stranger.

Quickly, and outside business hours. Zendesk found 74% of consumers now expect 24/7 service because of AI, and 86% said responsiveness and accurate resolution strongly influence their purchase decisions. 85% of CX leaders said customers will drop brands that cannot resolve issues on first contact.

Accuracy matters as much as speed. A fast reply that does not answer the question, or a booking link that sends people to the wrong service, adds a second contact and more frustration. Salesforce found 43% of consumers say a poor customer service experience will stop them from buying again, and more than a third said inconvenience such as a difficult return process would make them stop buying from a brand.

They want relevance, and they notice when it is missing. Twilio found 71% of consumers will walk away from a purchase if the experience does not feel relevant, and 88% are more likely to buy when engagement is personalized in real time. Yet only 45% of consumers said they feel understood by the brands they interact with, while 83% of business leaders claimed to deeply understand their customers. That 38-point gap is the difference between what companies think they deliver and what customers feel.

Customers also want control. Twilio found 84% want control over their personalization settings, and 61% do not believe brands use their data in their best interest. Salesforce found 65% of consumers feel companies are reckless with customer data. For a clinic, law firm or financial practice, personalization should look like remembering preferences and history the client knowingly shared. Using anything beyond that tends to feel intrusive.

Split, and the split depends on transparency and the option to reach a person. Gartner's 2024 survey found 64% of customers would prefer companies not use AI for customer service, and 53% would consider switching to a competitor if they learned a company planned to. Salesforce's data shows the other side: over a third of consumers would work with an AI agent to avoid repeating themselves, and 30% (37% of Gen Z and millennials) would do so for faster service.

The conditions are consistent across studies. Nearly 75% of consumers in Salesforce's survey want to know if they are communicating with an AI agent, 45% are more likely to use one if there is a clear escalation path to a person, and 44% if its logic is explained. Twilio found 54% want to know when they are talking to AI, and 55% said they are tired of hearing about AI. Zendesk found 95% of consumers expect an explanation for decisions made by AI.

For a service business, the practical reading is that automation works best on tasks customers want done quickly (confirming an appointment, sending a form, answering hours and pricing questions, collecting details for a callback) and should hand off to a person clearly and early for anything personal, urgent or complicated.

By most measures, yes. Salesforce found 72% of consumers trust companies less than they did a year earlier, and 60% believe advances in AI make trust even more important. Twilio found only 15% of consumers absolutely trust brands with their data, though 90% trust at least some brands.

Small service businesses have an advantage here. Clients often know the people they deal with by name, and a local practice or agency is judged on how it treated them last time more than on a brand campaign. That advantage holds only if the basics (answering, following up, remembering) stay reliable as the business grows.

These studies were run mostly with large brands' customers, but the expectations carry over to a dental office, a property manager or an event venue. Customers want to be recognized, answered quickly and told plainly who or what they are talking to. Monvell's Communications and Automation work focuses on those points: shared client history across calls, texts and forms, fast first responses at any hour and a clear handoff to your team when a person is needed.

• Keep one client record that everyone can see, so the person answering the phone knows about the web form, the last visit and the open quote.
• Set a response-time standard by channel (calls, texts, web forms, email) and measure it.
• Cover after-hours inquiries with at least an instant acknowledgment and a clear next step, since 74% of consumers expect service around the clock.
• Tell people when they are dealing with an automated assistant and give them an easy way to reach a person.
• Use what clients have shared to personalize (preferred times, past services, family members on the account), and ask before using anything more.
• Fix the repeat-information points first: intake forms that feed the record, notes that travel with handoffs and confirmations that already include the details.

Zendesk's figures come from its November 2025 CX Trends 2026 release (two surveys fielded June 2025). Salesforce's figures come from its release on the 7th edition of State of the AI Connected Customer (YouGov survey of 15,015 consumers, July 16 to August 16, 2024), which is the most recent edition we could verify. Twilio's figures come from its June 2025 release on the 2025 State of Customer Engagement Report (fielded January to February 2025). Gartner's figures come from its July 2024 release on a December 2023 survey of 5,728 customers.

All four companies sell customer service or engagement technology, and their surveys cover customers of large brands across many countries. We use them to show the direction of expectations, not precise rates for any one industry. The 38-point gap between businesses' and consumers' views is our subtraction of Twilio's two published figures.