Forrester: 2026 Will Be the Year of Unglamorous AI Groundwork, Not Transformation

Forrester's 2026 Customer Service Predictions report, released in November 2025, argues that the dazzling AI-first vision - autonomous operations, specialised human agents, seamless self-service - is not arriving this year. Instead, Forrester predicts 2026 will be defined by gritty foundational work: simplifying tech stacks, consolidating vendors, cleaning enterprise data, and reworking outdated processes.

Forrester predicts that service quality will dip in 2026 as companies wrestle with AI deployment complexity and the change management required to support it. On the upside, one in four brands is expected to see a 10% increase in successful simple self-service interactions by year's end, driven by growing trust in generative AI - 78% of AI decision-makers find AI outputs trustworthy. Separately, 30% of enterprises are forecast to create parallel AI functions mirroring human service roles, including managers to coach AI agents and specialists to unblock them when they fail.