Once again, customer service is entering a new phase of transformation. As organizations look to 2030, they expect self-service to play a key role in the modern customer experience. Not only is it going to be positioned as the first point of contact, but a channel capable of resolving even complex needs.

The findings from this study demonstrate a shift in how customer service leaders envision the future of support. While they are certain that humans will play a role, it is increasingly clear that self-service is expected to handle a dominant share of interactions. 

In our previous conversation, we explored how customer experience is shifting from structured, repeatable journeys to real-time, AI-driven interactions. The discussion continued recently at Cannes Lions, where Joy Bhattacharya, CTO, Accenture Song, and Varun Parmar, SVP & GM of Adobe GenStudio and Adobe Firefly, met with marketing, technology, and business leaders from around the world.

While industries and priorities varied, a clear theme emerged: AI is no longer an experiment. It is moving into the core of how organizations create content, engage customers, and drive growth.

At 9:15 on a Monday morning, a new generative artificial intelligence user asks a large language model (LLM) to polish an email, reads the answer twice and checks a search engine before sending it. A few desks away, a colleague with more than one year of gen AI experience has a dedicated AI platform open next to two other models. That second user summarizes a meeting, pressure-tests a budget and organizes a project plan. The first user is testing a feature. The second has built a workflow.

As organisations race to embed AI across customer operations, execution complexity is beginning to assert itself. Most organisations can point to AI deployments. Far fewer can point to measurable changes in customer and employee outcomes. Indeed, across industries and across the B2B B2C divide, a significant share of AI investment remains locked in configurations that are too narrow to meaningfully affect the metrics that matter.

AI agents are no longer experimental – they’re where CX budgets are heading. In 2026, research from CX Network found 40 percent of practitioners expect their spending on AI agents to increase this year, while PwC has found 79 percent of companies are actively adopting AI agents, and 88 percent of executives expect agentic AI to increase AI-related budgets over the next 12 months. 

However, the integration of this powerful technology is not without challenge. Whether it’s workforce planning, costing or model design, practitioners must understand the capability gap they’re trying to solve, then build agents that will enhance, not break, the support experience.

What high-scale AI systems reveal about context, orchestration and why most AI fails between experimentation and execution. At scale, AI without memory isn’t just inefficient. It’s unworkable (we said it).

This analyst report examines how AI memory functions as core enterprise infrastructure, enabling systems to retain context, coordinate decisions and operate coherently across long-lived workflows.

Retailers that embrace AI-powered customer experience management today are putting themselves on the front foot to be best-placed to thrive tomorrow. The retail sector is at a crossroads. At a time when products and prices can often be easily matched, it is increasingly the customer experience that sets brands apart.

Research has shown that companies that prioritize customer experience see revenues typically grow 4% to 8% above competitors. Whether browsing in-store or online, modern consumers are increasingly demanding seamless, personalized retail experiences — not just transactions — at every touch point. To remain competitive, and build both customer loyalty and revenue, retailers must deliver an exceptional customer experience, and that means tailored, data-driven insights and proactive action when things go wrong. And that’s where AI is offering some serious potential for retailers.

AI is reshaping how consumers discover products. Search, product pages, and category browsing are increasingly compressed or bypassed entirely. The transaction still happens on the brand’s site, but the pages customers land on are now responsible for far more of the journey than they were designed to handle. Even as AI platforms pull back from owning checkout directly, the discovery shift driving customers to these pages is only accelerating.