Customer engagement is at a breaking point, and the most recent data proves it. Even as organizations accelerate their investment in AI, automation, and analytics, experiences often feel disconnected, impersonal, and reactive.
Connect AI, data, and customer-facing applications to deliver winning experiences
The problem is not the promise of AI. It’s the gap between intelligence in the system and connection in the moment. Customers are increasingly disengaging because intelligence is not being applied where it matters most.
Technology, particularly AI, has fundamentally changed what customers expect. They assume brands can recognize them across channels, understand context in real time, and anticipate their needs. When that doesn’t happen, the miss feels less like oversight and more like indifference. Timing is off. Service lacks continuity, and personalization stops at the surface, despite all the data behind it.
While many enterprises are trapped in siloed systems and disconnected data, consumer expectations are growing. Brands that don’t deliver the expected experiences are quickly abandoned.
In addition, global socioeconomic factors are increasing rapidly and unpredictably, challenging bottom lines and making customer loyalty more critical than ever—at a time when consumers are less loyal than ever.Â
When economies falter, companies usually take one of two approaches. Some hunker down, cut costs and staff, and hope to survive. Others zero-in on differentiators like CX to drive growth and boost profitability.
The importance of CX for key metrics like churn, retention, loyalty, new sales, and competitive differentiation is well-established, so not investing in customer experience could be considered akin to saying you are willing to let those mission-critical metrics falter.
The following 15 takeouts from SAP’s 2026 Global Engagement Index Report highlight some of the most common CX pitfalls and opportunities.
1. 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them
Modern customers do not go quietly into the bad experience night. A whopping 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them, even when the product itself meets their needs. The issue isn’t the product or service; it’s the experience of purchasing and post-purchase care.
This is the essence of the “Engagement Divide”: the distance between what customers expect in the moments that matter, and what brands are actually delivering.
2. 60% do not pay attention to brands anymore and 48% care more about experience
Consumer attention in a difficult economy has shifted from logos and taglines to experiences that feel useful, contextual, and personal. So, what’s a brand to do when 60% of consumers say they simply don’t pay attention to brands and 48% care more about the experience than the product?
This is where CX outcomes become clear: engagement is no longer about shouting louder; it’s about showing up better and building experiences powered by unified data and intelligent orchestration.
3. Left unread: only 16% of customers skim email headlines, while 29% read one or two sentences
Consumer behavior in the inbox shows just how fragile engagement is:
- Most consumers only read the subject line
- Others will read one to two sentences before deciding whether to delete or engage further
Combined with the fact that 58% of consumers think most marketing emails they receive aren’t relevant, brands are staring down a massive relevancy problem. Sending more emails into the engagement abyss doesn’t solve this problem, but gaining a holistic understanding of your customers as individuals does.
4. 37% do not think brands personalize to their needs
For well over a decade we’ve been talking about the importance of personalization, but today 37% of consumers believe brands don’t personalize engagements to their needs. Surface-level personalization—names in subject lines, basic segmentation—is no longer enough.
This aligns with our assessment that 79% of companies have low or moderate CEM scores, meaning teams can access portions of shared data and deliver basic personalization, but coordination across marketing, sales, service, commerce, and product teams remains limited. Experiences often feel disconnected, forcing brands to rely on short-term tactics rather than building deeper relationships.
Consumers expect real-time, behavior-driven personalization based on context, intent, and history, not just boiler-plate persona buckets. Customers can see and feel investments in personalization and it matters.
5. 46% say customer service feels too impersonal, while 41% believe brands do not understand them as a person
Considering how much data brands collect, it’s striking that nearly half of consumers (46%) say customer service feels too impersonal.
Customers are asking a simple, and valid, question: “If you have all this information about me, why isn’t my experience better?” When data doesn’t translate into empathy and action, it starts to feel like surveillance, not service.
With 46% of consumers saying service isn’t personal, it should be no surprise that a nearly equal amount (41%) believe that brands don’t understand them as a person. However, 34% agree that AI can help brands better understand them and what matters most to them.
This presents brands with a real-time opportunity: use AI and data to close the perception gap. Instead of just predicting purchases, enterprises should also be anticipating customer needs and reducing friction.
6. 78% of brands say they deliver seamless cross-channel engagement, consumers disagree
Seventy-eight percent of brands say their engagement strategies offer seamless multichannel experiences with glowing outcomes like increased CLV, retention, and advocacy, but consumers are simultaneously reporting little emotional connection and frequent disappointment. In fact, 44% say that brand interactions feel less personal and more generic than ever before.
The takeaway: internal dashboards can create a false sense of success if not tied directly to real customer sentiment and behavioral signals across channels.
7. 54% of enterprises cannot access and use real-time data, and 66% still rely on third-party data
Fifty-four percent of enterprises can’t access and use real-time data. On top of that, 60% suffer from “dark data,” which is information that’s collected but not used throughout the customer journey.
Without real-time, connected data, brands are mostly flying blind. AI, personalization, and omnichannel orchestration don’t fail because the ideas or execution are wrong; they fail because the foundations are.
Although privacy regulations and legislation are increasing while third-party cookies decline, a majority (66%) of enterprises are still heavily reliant on third-party data. Simultaneously, 55% say their data is too unstructured to use effectively.
The lethal combination of overreliance on external data plus underutilized internal data keeps brands from building strong, first-party relationships rooted in trust and value.
8. 78% of brands say AI is essential for customer retention in 2026
AI is everywhere, and 78% of brands view AI as critical to retaining customers in 2026. However, 66% report they can’t use AI to optimize campaign performance in practice, while many also note they can’t utilize real‑time AI optimization in day‑to‑day campaigns.
A quick translation of the above stats: an AI strategy is crucial, but execution is lagging because of fragmented systems, poor data quality, and integration issues.
9. Only 30% share engagement data with a CX or CRM platform
Despite the collective agreement that a comprehensive customer profile is important, only 30% of brands share their customer engagement data within a CX or CRM platform. This means that most brands are attempting to deliver personalized experiences without having a unified engagement core.
If engagement data lives in campaign tools, service systems, commerce platforms, and ERP, but never gets connected via CX or CRM, customers will feel every fracture along their journey.
10. 30% of consumers have used AI agents that act on their behalf
AI is not just an enterprise capability; it’s also a customer behavior. Thirty percent of consumers say they’ve used AI agents to make decisions and act on their behalf when buying from brands.
This is a game-changer when it comes to engagement. Brands are now engaging not only with humans, but also with AI buyers that ruthlessly and continuously optimize for relevance and value. If your systems can’t keep pace, AI will select your competitor whose systems are operationalized for success.
11. When it comes to customer engagement maturity, 79% of brands have yet to integrate data, systems, and teams across their business; only two in five decision-makers see their departments as actually coordinated
The Customer Engagement Maturity (CEM) scoring model assesses how well brands align people, processes, and technology to deliver cohesive, intelligent experiences. Looking at the SAP Engagement Maturity Index:
- 16% of brands reside at low maturity
- 63% sit in the moderate middle
- 21% have high maturity
Despite year-over-year progress, most organizations are stuck in developing or evolving mode, able to execute campaigns but not orchestrate truly connected, enterprise-wide engagement. And leaders agree, with only two in five decision makers believing there is effective collaboration across departments.
12. Just 21% of brands are high-maturity, and they are gaining ground against their competition
High-maturity brands rise above the competition because they connect data and intelligence across marketing, service, sales, commerce, and operations. They use AI and automation to deliver personalized, omnichannel engagement in real-time, at scale.
And the maturity gap is becoming a performance gap. As top performers turn real-time intelligence into growth, the cost of competing with them rises for everyone else.
13. Personalized means personal: 58% of consumers respond positively to localized content
Personalization is more than a word or industry term. It means actually understanding and empathizing with your customer, including their regional traditions and social norms.
When engagement is done right, consumers respond:
- 63% say their favorite brand delivers seamless, connected experiences across mobile, web, and in-store
- 58% value localized content and product recommendations
- 55% appreciate highly personalized content
- 50% believe their favorite brand uses data to make interactions better
Customers aren’t against data or AI at heart. However, they are opposed to wasted data collection and bad experiences. It’s the job of brands to provide a great CX. If that job isn’t taken seriously, you can bet that other brands are willing to roll up their sleeves to fill the gap.
14. 77% of businesses plan to invest in AI-powered engagement in 2026
When it comes to the future state, 77% of businesses plan to invest in AI-powered customer engagement in 2026, and 76% are investing in omnichannel engagement technologies. At the same time, 29% say their top priority is connecting customer and stakeholder data across marketing, sales, service, commerce, and ERP systems.
The signal is clear: investment alone won’t close the Engagement Divide. The winners will be the brands that invest in connection—of data, teams, and systems—not just in tools.
15. 15% say seamless integration will be the biggest driver of success
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, 15% of businesses believe seamless integration of engagement systems will be the single biggest driver of success. While that may sound like a small number, it captures a critical strategic shift: engagement is no longer a marketing problem or a channel problem. It’s an enterprise discipline that depends on unified data, coordinated teams, and embedded AI.
Artificial intelligence provides an evolving service for businesses. Employing cloud-based systems that can store, analyze, and route data will be the differentiator for brands in the marketplace.
Loyalty is transactional, and driven by great CX and a connected enterprise
Digital engagement has raised the bar when it comes to customer expectations, with more demands and a plethora of competitive choices if a brand doesn’t deliver.
It’s not a big leap to state that better customer experiences increase customer loyalty, which in turn leads to more purchases, augmented product utilization, and increased brand affinity and sentiment. And let’s not forget that an enhanced CLV lowers customer acquisition costs.
After all, loyalty is transactional and forged by the experiences customers encounter. In my conversations with customers across the globe, it’s clear that only the brands with CX truly at the heart of their operations will retain and grow their customer bases in the enterprises of the future.
That ambition relies on a technology foundation that can consistently deliver those experiences at scale. For British-founded luxury fragrance brand Molton Brown, moving from legacy systems to SAP Commerce Cloud provided a high‑performance platform built for peak‑season resilience and continuous innovation. The impact was immediate: 100% uptime during peak trading, even as volumes surged to one order every three seconds during major events.
This kind of reliability is increasingly critical as the moments that shape experience and loyalty expand beyond owned channels. As product discovery shifts to social platforms and AI‑powered assistants, consistent content and availability help the brand remain visible and trusted wherever customers engage. SAP’s evolving agentic commerce innovations are designed for this reality, keeping products discoverable, credible, and actionable across both human and AI interactions.
Ultimately, technology and AI are not the goal—the experience is. The brands that succeed will be the ones that use AI to show up more human, not less, turning insight into relevance and automation into trust.
The future of CX is for companies that operationalize intelligence across the enterprise—connecting data, systems, and teams so AI can orchestrate experiences, not just analyze them.
Manos Raptopoulos is global president of Customer Success Europe, APAC, Middle East & Africa, and a member of the Extended Board SAP SE.
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