Hype or Reality? 5 Predictions Defining the Future of AI and CX in EMEA

For Customer Experience (CX) leaders, each new year brings fresh perspectives (and retrospectives) for the state of the industry. But as leaders take stock of the current state and prepare for the next year, they must be conscious of the regional trends affecting their customers, as well as global ones. 

With that in mind, I recently spent time speaking with several CX leaders to reflect on how CX in Europe has evolved over the past year and what the coming year may hold. Those conversations, combined with what we’re seeing across Five9’s customer base, offer a clear view into where progress has been made—and where expectations need to be reset. 

Looking Back on CX in 2025 

Last year, AI dominated nearly every CX conversation.  Many believed it would become a significant part of daily life, from helping with menial personal tasks to taking on more complex operations in the contact centre. But just how far was its reach in reality? 

~ AI Adoption in Contact Centres Will Streamline Operations and Drive Significant Cost Reduction 

The first prediction from 2025 set the bar high, and our speakers made it clear that while there has been progress, contact centres have some foundational work to do before they can realize significant gains from AI adoption. For many organisations, data hygiene is a challenge, and as Alec Brown, Chief Information Officer at NCO Europe, put it, “Not every organisation has clean data to make the most out of AI repeatable functions.” 

Over the past year, CX leaders have realized that implementing change via AI shouldn’t start with the technology itself. AI is the end goal, not the starting line. “If you jump straight into AI, you’re effectively using AI to just mask a legacy or inefficient process,” Brown continued. While AI still has incredible potential, companies must get their data and processes in order before AI enterprise adoption will ever succeed. 

~ Gen AI Will Increasingly Deliver Business Outcomes in Customer Self-Service Use Cases 

Similar to our first 2025 prediction, results from AI implementation haven’t quite reached what we originally thought last year, but the paradigm shift has begun. Jonathan Rosenberg, Chief Technology Officer and Head of AI at Five9, echoed Brown’s sentiments and said, “People are sort of being cautious on the whole, taking it a step at a time, and we’re seeing some adoption of genAI for self-service, but it’s not the rocket launch maybe we all thought it would be.” 

X The Contact Centre Will Become a Primary Source of Unbiased Voice Customer Feedback 

In stark contrast to our US-based results, our CX leaders all believed this prediction missed the mark, but only just. As Steve Blood, VP of Market Intelligence and Evangelism at Five9, put it, “It’s still really email and social media listening.” However, the adoption of AI-powered solutions that capture sentiment through voice and text is quickly growing. In fact, Blood revealed that speech and text analytics, as part of customer feedback channels, have doubled in popularity in just one year, from 12% to 25%. While the contact centre isn’t yet the primary source of feedback, it could be in 2026 if last year’s trends continue. 

~ More Companies Recognise the Need to Integrate Their Unique Data into CX Applications Across the Business 

As AI adoption grows and operational efficiency becomes a top priority for CX leaders, the data that fuels the AI models and agents will be increasingly important. “AI only works if you have access to the data and the back-end systems that need to be integrated. Data and API integration remain a pretty hard problem,” said Rosenberg. 

For example, there are newer technologies and standards—including Model Context Protocol (MCP), which helps AI systems communicate with one another. So as adoption of these tools like MCP grows, the opportunity for data integration follows suit. Brown offered a phased approach as a solution, saying, “Identify what areas can be automated, target that first, and build this as a collection of processes over time. It lets [you] evolve as a business and get the most out of AI.” 

2026 Priorities & Predictions for CX in EMEA 

After resetting expectations from last year’s predictions and results, AI’s potential is abundantly clear. What will be key for CX leaders is understanding how and where to implement it. 

Prediction #1: Trust Will Become the Deciding Factor 

Unsurprisingly, European CX leaders must consider trust before all else. “The EU AI Act is setting the mandate for transparency: where there needs to be human oversight and things like risk management of AI systems. So, I think that’s going to play heavily on a lot of organizations in terms of how they think about how they deploy AI,” said Blood. 

Brown echoed the sentiment, saying, “Trust is one of those things that impacts your AI roadmap. If you don’t trust the technology, and you don’t trust what it’s going to do within your particular area or business, you’ll limit what you’re going to give it.” 

However, not only is the EU AI Act in full force, but consumer trust and how CX leaders address it have also never been more important. “Consumers are going to expect companies to be more transparent—how AI makes decisions and how their data is used, particularly for Europe,”said Blood. 

Prediction #2: AI Agents Will Move Personalisation from Theory to Reality 

One aspect that has tantalized many CX leaders is the opportunity to transform personalisation in contact centres. Rather than handcrafting every interaction (and potential interaction), AI has the potential to make personalisation a scalable endeavour. 

“With generative AI, it becomes much easier to just drop all this data into the AI, give it some guidance, and it’s gonna do a pretty good job. We’ve seen some of this already,” said Rosenberg. With AI, personalisation can become much less expensive and far easier to achieve, though the panel cautioned leaders from taking it too far. 

While 87% of consumers say they value brands recognizing them, previous examples such as Target recognizing a teen girl’s pregnancy from over a decade ago and Google’s €325 million fine from France, it’s clear there’s a line. But as Blood put it, when “the companies get it right, they’re rewarded with more data from consumers.” 

Prediction #3: CX Quality Will Be Defined by Human-AI Collaboration, Not Replacement 

As the extremely controversial “Stop Hiring Humans“ campaign in the US found, AI agents fully replacing humans is an unfounded fear. “Optimal outcomes are not all AI, and they’re not all human; it’s a blend. Success is how you combine those two things,” said Rosenberg. “You want [consumers] to talk to a person, because you want to have a human touch to close a deal. You want a personal interaction with a real person to prevent churn. You need a human person to approve certain things and make decisions,” he continued. 

AI operational efficiency in CX will succeed by instead identifying the right moments, opportunities, and use cases for AI and humans to work together. And in 2026, the potential for close collaboration is ripe for the picking. As the Five9 2025 Customer Experience Report found, half of consumers say they prioritize human connections over speed in all situations. However, “the opportunity we have with AI systems is to be able to support that process,” said Blood. 

Brown agreed, stating, “To win new business, we need to be as efficient, as cost-effective as possible. So, this kind of blended approach between AI and humans is ideal for a contact centre. For me, it’s absolutely critical, because it is what’s going to keep us competitive.” 

Prediction #4: Voice AI Will Re-Emerge as the Primary Self-Service Channel 

For decades, voice was the only self-service option. However, the technology was immature, requiring many organisations to invest significant effort and resources. As a result, most voice self-service was mediocre, at best, allowing email, chat, and social media to quickly become the preferred self-service channels. 

With AI, the potential for voice to become the primary—and cost-effective—self-service channel is back. Part of the draw of voice call support is that it’s far faster to communicate with voice than text. Additionally, “People actually want to engage with voice. So when the technology makes it so that that experience is good, you like it,” said Rosenberg. “And there are now huge investments in improvement on the naturalness of the voice, the rapidness of the response, and the quality of the conversation with AI voices.” 

Additionally, voice AI can also help support human agents. “Let’s say your agents are dealing with a difficult call, something that puts them under pressure,” said Brown. “Instead of the agent struggling to come up with a response, they could have an AI agent’s support: a guiding hand that supports them.” 

Prediction #5: Interest in Standalone AI for the Contact Centre Accelerates 

As with any new technology, part of the implementation process is understanding and deploying the technology itself. But many contact centres are still in the midst of digital transformation and haven’t yet moved from on-premises solutions to the cloud. In fact, Metrigy’s 2025 Customer Experience Report revealed that 38% of contact centres still use on-premises platforms. 

In the discussion, Rosenberg even argued, “[This prediction] is already partly true. People want to see, ‘Can I add some AI to my existing contact centre without necessarily changing the contact centre itself?’” Blood agreed, saying, “Some will say, ‘Let’s take the AI capabilities we need and let’s put those in—insert those maybe in front of our premise-based contact centre platform.’”