Forrester: One in Four Brands Will See 10% Self-Service Gains by End of 2026

Forrester Research has released its 2026 customer service predictions, and the headline finding is deliberately sobering: 2026 will not be the year AI transforms customer service - it will be the year organisations do the unglamorous groundwork that transformation actually requires.

The analyst firm predicts that one in four brands will record a 10% uplift in successful simple self-service interactions by year-end, driven by rising consumer trust in generative AI. Forrester reports that 78% of AI decision-makers now find AI outputs trustworthy.

Forrester also warns that service quality will dip at many organisations as they grapple with complexity they underestimated. The root causes are predictable: fragmented tech stacks, poor enterprise data quality, outdated knowledge bases, and change management failures.

Forrester also projects that 30% of enterprises will build parallel AI management functions - teams dedicated to onboarding, coaching, and unblocking AI agents - mirroring the structure of human service operations.