Customers know what they want and deserve from their experiences when interacting with organisations. They are also the first to know when the bar is raised in CX.
Bruce von Maltitz, CEO of 1Stream. Image supplied
The CX trends that will shape the industry in 2026 are also the ones that customers will be building expectations on.
For organisations looking to 2026, the core challenge isn't about finding new technology, but deploying available tools to genuinely fit the customer journey and meet South Africans where they are.
Five trends stand out as especially important for the year ahead, in my opinion: voice bots that are finally maturing, a move towards single platforms instead of scattered tools, stronger knowledge bases to power AI, more proactive and predictive service, and an AI-first approach to handling customer contact.
1. Voice bots: finally solving local telephony
For years, the promise of AI-driven voice bots has been undermined by bad execution – they were often rigid, frustrating, and lacked the sophistication to handle local accents and complexity. That is changing. Voice bots are becoming more mature, and this maturity is particularly key in the South African context.
In 2026 there will be an increase in the number of voice bots customers interact with in South Africa, and the sentiment around the latest ones will likely be very positive.
We can expect bots to roll out that will allow you the freedom to ask questions, yes, but also change the subject and – critically – allow you to request to be taken off a calling list.
Leveraging advanced voicebots is important because if they begin to deliver on their promise and potential it can represent an enormous shift in the way customers interact with organisations’ systems: who wants to type when you can simply talk the way you’re used to, after all?
Customers deserve (and, more importantly, know they deserve) CX that addresses things like the common "repetition problem" where they have to repeat their issue across channels.
This is a key area for innovation, moving beyond generic solutions to deliver bots that can handle local dialects, understand user intent, and ensure compliance with local regulations like PoPIA.
A well-designed voice bot acts as a crucial first line of defence, resolving routine queries and freeing human agents for more complex interactions.
2. From scattered tools to single CX platforms
In 2026, platform consolidation, omnichannel and single point solutions will emerge as key themes as more organisations move from a patchwork of fragmented systems to single, consolidated CX platforms.
The goal is to bring everything into one place so the full story is visible – why the customer made contact, what has been done, who is responsible next, and whether service commitments have been met.
Using fragmented tools that may be scattered all over the place leads to disconnected systems, which is the root cause of customer frustration and the repetition problem, for instance.
For South African businesses, this shift to a unified platform delivers both a superior customer experience and a better (and measurable) return on investment (ROI). A consolidated system allows for streamlined processes, improved efficiency, and a 360-degree view of the customer, ensuring consistent service across all channels and reducing the likelihood of human error or miscommunication.
3. A solid knowledge base as the engine of CX
AIs are only intelligent if they have knowledge. A common blind spot is not realising that chat bots and self-service portals are only as good as the knowledge behind them. Knowledge truly is power in delivering great customer service, but in many environments, that insight still sits mainly in employees’ heads or historical conversations.
The work now is to pull that insight into a proper, structured knowledge base that brings together answers to common questions and provides a single, up-to-date source of truth that agents and bots both draw from. This consistent, reliable source helps resolve queries faster, reduces support costs, and allows agents to focus on high-value interactions.
To keep a knowledge base current, businesses should actively look for commonly asked questions from their support data, gather existing FAQs and documentation, and structure the information intuitively for users. A strong knowledge base is the backbone of successful AI implementation; without it, automation efforts fall flat.
4. Proactive and predictive service
Customers are increasingly impatient with having to chase organisations for basic information. They want to know: Is my order confirmed? When will it arrive? Has my fault been logged? The organisations that stand out are those that answer these questions before customers have to ask.
This proactive and predictive service approach anticipates customer needs by leveraging data and triggers to provide relevant information instantly.
This move from reactive fire-fighting to anticipating problems is a strategic shift that builds customer loyalty and frees up internal resources.
5. AI-first contact
The final and most defining trend is the push toward an AI-first contact strategy. This is not about removing human agents, but redefining their role. AI-first means leveraging automation for all routine, low-complexity queries, ensuring that human agents are reserved for more meaningful, sophisticated, and empathetic tasks.
In the hybrid future of customer service, bots and human employees will collaborate. The key to this success is synergy. For tasks requiring contextual understanding and human judgment, the partnership is essential: for example, a study by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence has shown that in complex image classification, humans alone achieved 81% accuracy, AI achieved 73%, but the combination hit 90% accuracy.
The transition to this type of teamwork between people and their AI peers requires agents to evolve their skills, moving beyond simply handling calls to understanding end-to-end processes across the entire business.
This means that CX systems must integrate with a business's backend and financial systems to empower agents to resolve complex issues without constant transfers or hand-offs.
This integration and unified approach to customer service must be championed as a company-wide Key Performance Indicator (KPI), driven by senior leadership, to ensure consistent service levels across all departments.
Ultimately, CX is a major driver of business performance and belongs on the CEO’s list of core priorities – now more than ever.
