In 2026, Cost is ‘Number One’ Factor in CX Spend

As enterprises move into 2026, customer experience leaders remain focused on cost, while struggling to make sense of artificial intelligence and what real transformation will require.

According to Everest Group Partner David Rickard, cost remains the dominant priority in CX decision-making.

“Cost has never gone away and it’s still probably going to be the number one priority in conversations,” Rickard said.

Artificial intelligence has become the most common topic in CX discussions, though Rickard said he has been reluctant to lean into the term.

“I was really reluctant to talk about AI because it is one of the buzzwords everyone is using,” he said. “Everyone’s bringing AI, everyone’s interested in it because they are being inundated by their service providers, everyone’s saying we can do AI.”

Cisco’s AI Readiness Index, released in October, surmised that most companies still do not yet have a strategy surrounding artificial intelligence, despite the amount of talk coming from leaders. It estimated only 13% were demonstrating full preparedness and could derive value from AI use.

“Senior leaders and boards are asking (leaders), ‘Why aren’t you using AI?’” he said.

That pressure, he said, has led buyers to worry they are falling behind.

“People are just concerned that they’re missing out on something, even though they’re not, because it’s not necessarily being fully deployed everywhere anyway,” Rickard said.

Much of the activity so far has remained experimental.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of work being done on pilots and not necessarily moving to production,” he said.

AI Will Not Fix Broken Processes

Rickard said there is widespread misunderstanding about what AI can realistically accomplish.
“There’s a misunderstanding that you can just apply a layer of AI on top of your broken processes and it’s going to fix everything,” he said.

“It won’t. It just gives you a more efficient broken process.”

He said enterprises must rethink how customer journeys are designed.

“You have to reexamine your customer journeys,” Rickard said.

“The journey doesn’t start when the customer rings in. The journey could start at a different place, but we also need to include the back office processes.”

Rickard said many organizations are underestimating the scale of change required.

“I think people are underestimating the size of the reinvention that will be needed to really fully embrace AI and agentic AI to deliver the benefits that they’re hoping for,” he said.

Market Confusion and Leadership Gaps

Rickard said CX buyers are facing a fragmented and confusing vendor landscape.

“We’ve got BPOs telling us that they can help us with strategy and layering AI,” he said. “We’ve got service providers who haven’t done CX before starting to move into this space. We’ve got CRM telling them they own CX, CCaaS platforms telling them they own CX, and the hyperscalers having a much bigger play in experience as well.”

That confusion, he said, extends into executive leadership.

“Senior leaders definitely don’t understand it fully, and they’re embarrassed sometimes to ask because they think people expect them to,” Rickard said.

Valuations and Investor Nervousness

Rickard said public market reactions reflect anxiety about the future of people-heavy business models.

“When you’ve got a business built on hundreds of thousands of people, and people are saying those people are no longer needed and it’s all going to be done by AI, the market gets nervous,” he said.

However, he does not expect dramatic workforce reductions in the near term.

“I don’t think we expect that we’re going to see the massive culling of people that’s been promised, especially in the short term,” he said.

Where CX growth is occurring

Rickard said CX spending growth has been concentrated in revenue-generating areas.

“When we look at where the growth has been in CX, where service providers’ businesses are growing, it’s in sales,” he said. “And it’s also been in collections. Anything that generates or collects revenue for the business.”

By contrast, traditional service work continues to decline.

“Service has been on the decline from a spend perspective, because they’ve been looking to automate or reduce spend by going offshore,” Rickard said.

Looking toward 2026

Rickard, who described 2025 as “the year of waiting,” said 2026 could become a turning point if organizations move beyond incremental change.

“There will come a tipping point where people will have squeezed everything they can out of tinkering around the edges,” he said. “But actually, to try and do it properly, we’re going to have to bite the bullet and completely reinvent what we do.”

Nearshore Americas reported in 2022 that many companies were still trying to determine how AI would be of value in the future. By many metrics, it’s not clear much has changed since then.

“I don’t think any of us want to have another year where we just talk all the time about AI,” Rickard said. “We hear a lot about AI fatigue.”

Ultimately, he said customer experience itself remains a problem. Recently, an article penned by Forbes was published claiming AI customer experience is booming, yet failing to meet customer demands.

“Most people still feel that customer experience is pretty bad,” Rickard said. “We’ve automated our way to a really bad experience.”