36% of CX practitioners say awareness of how AI works is changing customer behavior

LONDON, April 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- CX Network surveyed its members in December 2025 and January 2026 with 342 eligible CX practitioners, service leaders, experience designers, analysts, authors, and consultants from around the world participating.

Consumer use of AI tools such as Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT is now just as important to the work of CX practitioners as the corporate use cases driving innovation across the business world.

Practitioners were asked to select the three customer behaviors influencing their work the most from a list of 15 choices. Awareness of how AI works/uses customer data was the most selected response (36 percent), followed by demand for convenience (30 percent), and customers using AI for their service and sales interactions (29 percent). Practitioners were also asked to select the three trends they believe will change their work to 2030, from a list of more than 25 choices. The most selected response was AI-powered technologies for operations (24 percent), followed by agentic AI and AI agents (21 percent), and AI-first customer journeys/ customers using AI for product research (17 percent).

The results confirm that the general availability of AI assistants and LLMs such as Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT are being used by customers to avoid the overwhelm of extensive product catalogs and the "endless page" so many online retailers have put front and center of their digital CX strategy in recent years. It also reflects the early impact of Google's agentic commerce suite, including the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which allows shoppers to research and complete purchases within an AI search or AI chat interface.

Consumers meet their own need for speed

These results mark a step change from previous years when the top responses consistently emerged as the expectation for instant service/delivery, demand for convenience, and customers spending less. In 2025, these responses were selected by 43 percent, 40 percent, and 39 percent of practitioners, respectively.

While this result could be interpreted as consumers being less concerned about speed and more AI literate, Melanie Mingas, editor at CX Network, says consumers now have the tools to meet their own needs for speed and convenience.

"For years, customers have expected organizations to deliver experiences that are efficient, effective, and friction free. The majority of organizations have invested significant time and money in delivering on this demand, but they can only control how things work within their own digital ecosystem. Today, your customers have the tools to compare all products across all retailers without having to navigate dozens of browser tabs or apps. Every shopper can now have their own personal shopping assistant on their desktop or in their pocket. The results prove that consumer AI use has evolved rapidly since 2022, from using generative AI to draft emails of complaint to using AI assistants and agents to complete tasks."

The full results are published in CX Horizons: The state of CX in 2026, which features commentary and analysis from 12 CX leaders from the worlds of fashion, media, consultancy, healthcare, retail and ecommerce, finance, communications, and technology. The report presents and analyzes what's happening to the trends, challenges, investment priorities, strategic aims, and customer behaviors that drive the work of CX practitioners.

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SOURCE CX Network