Three Predictions for CX Technology Markets in 2026
2025 in Review
For the customer experience (CX) technology space, 2025鈥檚 word of the year is surely 鈥渙rchestration.鈥� As interest in implementing agentic workflows increases across the board, CX providers (especially in sales and service SaaS) are marketing capabilities for customer data governance, monitoring, and flows across heterogenous systems. The general view is that those CX vendors able to demonstrate successful 鈥渙rchestration鈥� of information across the customer journey will be best positioned to capitalize on this interest.
However, a ramification of this phenomenon is that defined boundaries between CX software categories (e.g. CRM and CCaaS) are blurring. Whereas data elements across sales, service, ERP, HRIS, and other enterprise platforms are often siloed, agentic workflows are opening the possibility of querying information in natural language across these systems; business development representatives, marketing analysts, and support agents could all be acting on the same information in real time, enabling better cross-selling, personalization, or loyalty management. The race is on for which CX providers can meet this vision, clearing the way for a novel market category.
Whatever this emerging CX space will be coined (more on that in the predictions below), providers are already jostling for leadership and trying to attach their own labels. Specialized service providers like Verint and Talkdesk, for example, are emphasizing their roles in 鈥淐XA鈥� or customer experience automation; here, multiagent orchestration of customer information is offered agnostically to one鈥檚 incumbent CCaaS (or similar CX) solutions. NiCE has posited the term 鈥淐EM鈥� for customer engagement platform, with similar emphasis on front- and back-office flows of customer information. Genesys refers to its solutions as 鈥淎I-powered orchestration,鈥� with Five9 calling itself the 鈥渘ew CX.鈥�
However, enterprise providers that already bridge CRM, HR, service, ERP, supply chain, and so on are best positioned to meet the orchestration vision. ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Microsoft have all heavily invested in their own total orchestration platforms (Control Tower, Agentforce, and Foundry AI, respectively). CX providers have no choice but to convince buyers that their agentic workflows can interoperate with these platforms successfully.
2026 Predictions
Against this above context, three predictions can be made about how the CX markets will fare in 2026:
1. No new unified CX category will appear.
It is right to predict that a standalone category will emerge that represents the convergence of CRM and CCaaS into a 鈥淐ustomer Interaction Platform鈥� 鈥� but this will not happen in 2026. At present, most CRM and CCaaS providers are not clearly falling into each other鈥檚 categories (though Microsoft is trying with Dynamics 365 Contact Center). Instead, much of the looming battleground this year will be centered on orchestration in execution: that is, how well a CX provider can demonstrate customer information flow across heterogenous systems using agentic AI workflows. Discussions about whether CX orchestration itself could form a new category are misplaced; instead, this capability will be a differentiating feature as AI models commoditize and agent-to-agent (A2A) protocols mature. For 2026, we will see 鈥渏ourney orchestration鈥� within CRM, 鈥渋nteraction orchestration鈥� within CCaaS, and 鈥渆vent orchestration鈥� as part of an iPaaS solution. Providers will win or lose based on how well they can coordinate data, decisions, and actions across ecosystems.
The elephant in the room are those providers, such as Talkdesk, that are advertising a separate solution as necessary for an agnostic orchestration layer of customer information. Info-Tech does not see strong demand for such a product; buyers are being turned off at the prospect of needing to invest in a CX middle layer on top of already-expensive CRM implementations. Instead, if an incumbent CRM or CCaaS solution can extend into orchestration, that scenario will win out.
Call to action: As the CX space hinges on the success of customer master capabilities, IT should work with CX teams to confirm current state data flow architecture and establish what the art of the possible should look like.
Info-Tech research: Develop a Master Data Management Practice and Platform
2. Speed of adoption for AI solutions (especially agentic AI workflows) will remain slow.
It is one thing to say that the 2026 battleground will center on agentic workflow orchestration; it is another whether such functionality can be implemented successfully. It is unlikely organizations will keep up adoption rates in line with innovation speed in the CX technology space (let alone other markets). Info-Tech鈥檚 2026 AI Trends report revealed only 23% of organizations have a corporate-wide AI strategy in place; consequently, CX providers must contend with navigating a largely immature buying market when selling agentic AI. Even then, having an AI strategy does not reveal how successful an organization will be when executing that strategy.
Increasingly, providers will need to offer more customized service to implement and showcase ROI for their solutions. Balancing those professional service resources and making good on their own AI investment will be a critical challenge CX markets will face. Most recently, Salesforce executives have a shift toward deterministic workflows to improve Agentforce鈥檚 reliability and improve cost-per-use. Because of inherent probabilism in LLM decision-making and output, explainability is often impossible to provide from a service standpoint if the technology hallucinates. Moreover, consider the difficulties of scaling such workflows with multiple agents, dependent on A2A reliability between different systems, all of which could be using different LLMs 鈥� the risk of failure dramatically increases, at a time where organizations are seeking better standardization and predictability in output. When combined with immature AI governance within organizations, a lot is converging that limits successful out-of-the-box deployment for CX orchestration.
Call to action: Before diving into agentic AI workflows, examine how far robotic process automation can take you; doing so will provide clarity on where AI value could sit in your organization.
Info-Tech research: Implement AI for Customer Experience
3. Marketing SaaS will continue to be overlooked in CX and that鈥檚 a missed opportunity.
Marketing SaaS providers are frequently left out of CX conversations, despite owning many of the earliest, most influential interactions with prospects and customers. The reason for this is a bias holdover from when marketing was typically scoped for mass outbound engagement and CX was focused on reactive service. Now, with capabilities for hyperpersonalization and proactive loyalty management, there are clear opportunities for marketing, sales, and service to link together for stronger sales enablement and support delivery. Customers do not distinguish between marketing emails or support calls 鈥� it is one journey with multiple interactions. Leaving marketing technology out of CX orchestration reinforces fragmentation, undermining the promise of agentic AI workflows connecting the customer journey.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence that these boundaries will be disrupted in 2026. The closest we get are CRM providers that offer sales, marketing, and service clouds 鈥� though ServiceNow鈥檚 CRM has not prioritized any marketing functionality. Service-centric providers claiming the CX crown also fall short in their 2026 product roadmaps (beyond offering outbound voice or SMS); marketing automation, campaigning, social media management, advertising lifecycles, and so on are not part of their strategic priority. Now, we would not expect some service-centric provider to offer these features, of course, but that is your bias aligning with this prediction. Marketing systems are implicitly viewed in the service markets as adjacent integrations rather than as a core part of the customer journey.
Call to action: Perform a CX strategy review with core IT, service, sales, and marketing teams to assess what workflows and systems ought to be prioritized in the customer journey.
Info-Tech research: Optimize Your CX Strategy