As 2026 rolls around the corner, a new wave of customer experience predictions is coming in, with experts and analysts from across the CX industry keen to forecast their 2026 expectations.
One of the first out of the gate was Forrester. Indeed, the research firm outlinined its vision for 2026 long before most people had even dusted off their Christmas decorations.
In conversation with CX Today, Maxie Schmidt, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, provided some invaluable insights on how and why Forrester landed on its latest batch of predictions, as well as some of her own personal views on the current state of the CX space.
Below are Schmidt's top six predictions for 2026:
Unpacking Forrester's 2026 Customer Experience Predictions
1. The CX Team Crisis: Disbandment and Restructuring
CX teams are facing unprecedented organizational pressure, with consistent restructuring, disbandment, and acquisitions, this 'survival' move feels like the new norm in the industry.
And with CX leaders feeling pressure from AI hype as well as balancing costs to ensure ROI, this could likely lead to dissolution and restructuring across many major organizations, as Schmidt explains:
"We're seeing big organisations who've had a CX team either rejigger it like they rename it to something else, or they dissolve them, or they take some people in the team and put them in other parts of the organisation."
She refers to this AI response as the 'Panini Effect', with AI hype and cost pressure squeezing the CX industry, organizations are forced to rethink company values in order to keep their heads above water.
"Customer experience getting squeezed because this AI hype where all organisations put all that [investment]. And at the same time, huge cost pressure like so these two forces really squish customer experience teams, they're now scrambling for resources. They're scrambling for retention."
2. The Metrics Death Spiral
CX teams are undermining their own value by becoming measurement factories instead of strategic problem-solvers.
By prioritizing dashboards and metrics over real strategic direction, CX leaders are receiving results they don't actually need, reducing the perceived value of these teams.
Despite this, CX teams still provide leaders with these metric results to deliver what is expected of them.
"Whether that is actually the right thing to do or not, but they are reporting more and more metrics. They're trying to get more data... more numbers is better."
And with only half-answer results, this prompts many leaders to continue asking for further data-based results, unaware of what they actually need.
"They're accepting the problem as given... The CX leaders hear from their leaders, 'We need more metrics. We need more data. We need more real time data to make better decisions.'
"They take this at face value and present real time data – leaders are really asking where do I need to go and why?"
This outlook on CX teams endangers their existence when automation comes into play, with AI now providing leaders with automated reports, this further reduces the overall value of these teams within an organization, risking obsolescence.
"The more these AI tools come into the [picture]... It summarises all the verbatims it creates the dashboards. What do I need you for? Right? Because you've not added value because you've just so optimised for presenting all these numbers."
3. Journey Mapping's Dramatic Decline (2/3 Drop Predicted)
Another of Forrester's predictions argues that journey mapping will see a decline in use, with its value having been diluted from overuse and poor application.
Once the go-to CX tool for every problem, business leaders have now taken little to no interest in journey mapping, arguing that in comparison to newer tools, now provides far too limited outcomes.
Furthermore, with reduced interest encourages reduced willingness to learn the tool, this can lead to teams starting with the map instead of the problem, creating end to end journeys without defining a clear question.
"This had become the go to tool for CX people that ever a business person met a CX person that CX person would invariably within 10 minutes say 'first, let's map all the journeys', at this point, people are so tired of hearing 'Let's map all the journeys' and that is also the wrong starting point."
Schmidt also argues CX leaders are choosing to reject these familiar processes that have not delivered desirable results in the past, rather than rejecting customer insights themselves.
"A client asked me, 'Maxie, I can't get internal buy in to do a journey map. How do I get people to buy in?' You know what? When I say journey map, people roll their eyes."
Schmidt further offers a dentist analogy to this recurring issue of leaders expecting to hear how the tools work rather than expecting outcomes from CX professionals, often leading to feelings of insecurity or misaligned priorities.
"Imagine you're going to a dentist and the dentist were like 'so let me first explain to you all about the different tools I have here and this is the thing and this is the other thing and this is the little mirror and isn't this all amazing?' ...You'd expect them to do their job. And the same thing for [CX].
