By 2027, AI alone will no longer be a competitive advantage for customer success and customer service organizations. As brands deploy similar AI capabilities, and customers increasingly interact through personal AI assistants, experiences will become harder to differentiate. This will expose the limits of automation as a CX strategy. Companies are going to have to look for new ways to stand out by (do we dare say?) leaning into more innovative and more economically viable human connection.

2026 planted the seeds of this challenge when customer operations crossed from AI-assisted service to AI-first execution. We saw proof points of AI resolving issues and orchestrating workflows at scale. This drove gains in retention, efficiency, and service delivery. This also forced organizations to rethink their workforces . But we also saw AI successes limited to single-track use cases. These often exposed hidden organizational dysfunction.…