Gone are the days where customer experience (CX) was about nudging customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) up by a percentage point. With the digital economy, CX came to encompass the entire e-commerce journey, where brands were judged by how seamlessly they responded to emails or handled basic online queries.
Today, the AI era is upon us. Chatbots and real-time digital touchpoints have shifted from “nice to have” to baseline expectations. Nowhere is this more evident than in China, where goods are delivered within 30 minutes, and entire customer journeys live inside a single app. Perhaps also not surprisingly, brands across the globe are also breaking down silos between marketing, sales, and support to create a single view of the customer, as good customer service leads directly to repeat custom nearly 90 percent of the time. This is the new benchmark for CX and as we move deeper into 2026, these forces are converging into what we call the CX supercycle.
Brands now operate in a reality where customers expect instant responses, are flexible, and provide immediate resolution, even as AI accelerates the rise of scams—from consumers using generative tools to manipulate product images for false claims, to increasingly sophisticated bad actors attempting to breach enterprise systems.
At the same time, abundant brand choice has lowered switching costs, making loyalty harder to earn and easier to lose. Put all of the above together, and brands need to rethink fundamentally how they interact with consumers. To succeed in this supercycle, leaders must preserve personalisation in an AI-first world and move beyond isolated touchpoints to orchestrate ecosystems where the final impression is seamless.
You snooze, you lose
The first wave of AI was about throughput, using bots to deflect simple queries. Brands can now offer “concierge-level” service to millions of people simultaneously, 24/7, making high-end CX a standard expectation rather than a luxury. However, the mass adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) has shifted the goalposts. CX is transforming from a volume-driven function into a judgment-intensive system.
The challenge today isn’t just deploying AI; it’s the governance of AI decisions at-scale. When an LLM interacts with a customer, it isn’t just “answering a question but making a series of micro-decisions about brand promise, policy application, and empathy. We already see the cracks. Some brands rush to let AI chatbots take flight, but customer sentiment towards them is mixed. Others lean too heavily on automation, serving up generic, robotic responses that frustrate customers who are seeking a resolution—and who clearly need a human agent, not another scripted exchange.
Brands that choose to snooze on improving their LLMs while chasing trends risk eroding trust and losing customer stickiness.
The rise of agentic everything
What happens when AI stops waiting for instructions and starts acting on your behalf? Agentic AI is not simply a smarter chatbot. For brands, it introduces a far more complex question: Is your organisation structurally ready for an AI that can act on your behalf? A helpful way to understand this is to view agentic AI as a living system; one that only functions if every part of the body is connected and healthy.
First, the API layer is the nervous system. Does your inventory system “talk” to your loyalty platform? Can pricing, fulfilment, and customer history be accessed simultaneously? An agentic engine must be able to sense the entire organisation in real time to make correct decisions.
Second, the data foundation is the brain. Is historical data cleaned, unified, and accessible at speed? Agentic AI cannot reason or act reliably on fragmented or poorly governed data. When the data is messy, errors are not isolated—they propagate instantly and visibly.
Third, the identity layer functions as the eyes. How does a brand verify that an AI agent has the authority to act on a customer’s behalf? In an agent-to-agent economy, secure authentication and consent are no longer backend concerns; they are prerequisites for trust. Orchestrators must design the “handshake” protocols that allow bots to transact safely with other bots.
Hence, this transition does not merely upgrade the front end; it forces a structural redesign of the enterprise. Agentic AI is only as effective as the systems it connects to. When internal data is outdated, siloed, or poorly governed, the agent fails—often at scale and in full view of the customer.
To support AI agents acting on customers’ behalf, brands must synchronise data across loyalty, inventory, policy, and customer history in real time, something that few organisations are structurally built to do. Fewer still have the in-house AI architects needed to govern decision logic and accountability at scale. As agentic systems expose the limits of DIY fixes, the competitive advantage will shift to brands that outsource orchestration to specialised partners capable of building and sustaining a unified, agent-ready ecosystem.
Conclusion: The mandate for 2026
In this supercycle, CX is no longer just a service function; it is the risk management office. We must design ‘human-in-the-loop’ frameworks where AI handles the velocity, and humans provide ethical and cognitive guardrails.
For leaders in 2026, the choice is clear: orchestrate a seamless, agent-ready ecosystem now, or find yourself managed out of the market by the very technology intended to save the business.
Angie Tay has more than 20 years experience in the Contact Centre industry. She started her career as a Customer Service Officer in MobileOne Pte Ltd. Through the years, Angie worked in various roles covering Inbound & Outbound Operations, Digital Transformation, Service Quality, Training, Manpower Scheduling & Forecasting, Process Improvement, Customer Experience, and Strategic Management.
Currently the Group COO for TDCX, EVP for Singapore, Thailand, China, and Korea, holding the responsibility of leading over 4000 TDCX Singapore and TDCX Thailand best staff. She brings to the industry with 18 years of BPO experience from designing customer access strategies, inbound customer contact, outbound outreach, social media and all supporting functions of a high-performing contact center.
Angie is a certified COPC Coordinator, as well as a certified Six Sigma Green Belt from Singapore Quality Institute. She is also the Vice Chairman for Contact Center Association of Singapore for 12 years and a member in the Total Defence Awards Evaluation Board 2017 to 2026. Angie is also a member of Republic Polytechnic School of Hospitality School Advisory Committee 2018 to 2026.
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