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Braze, the leading customer engagement platform, today released its 2026 Global Customer Engagement Review (CER). As AI evolves from internal efficiency tool to front-line customer interface, brands confront a critical trust gap: marketers overestimate AI’s ability to understand customers while consumers remain skeptical. While 93% of marketing leaders believe AI accurately predicts needs, only 53% of consumers agree. Similarly, 60% of marketers use AI for cross-channel personalization, yet nearly half lack orchestration tools. This disconnect highlights the urgent need for real-time context and human-centric approaches to maintain meaningful connections amid rising automation.
“As AI reshapes the landscape of customer engagement, the rise of agentic commerce can feel like a moment where marketers’ direct customer relationships are slipping away. But this shift likely represents the most significant opportunity for marketers in a generation,” said Astha Malik, Chief Business Officer at Braze. “To succeed in this new frontier, we must stop viewing AI as a standalone tool and start approaching it as a complete ecosystem where predictive analytics, reinforcement learning, and agents work together to deliver experiences that resonate. In times of disruption, the competitive advantage belongs to those who use new technology to connect more deeply with consumers. By centering the human need for value, convenience, and connection while taking a composable approach to data and intelligence, marketers can build loyalty and lay a sustainable foundation for engagement—no matter what the future holds.”
The report forecasts a shift toward “bot-to-bot” interactions, where consumers rely on personal AI agents and LLMs to manage brand relationships. This transformation accelerates in agentic commerce, enabling autonomous negotiation, purchasing, and service management. Industries poised for impact include retail (AI fit experts, styling agents, order management), financial services (personalized finance and trading agents), and healthcare (frictionless replenishment agents handling natural language requests).
Consumer skepticism centers on data handling and privacy. While brands push AI personalization, significant portions of consumers remain wary of sharing information, viewing misuse as a retention deal-breaker. Top performers differentiate by using AI to anticipate needs in real time, capturing demand effectively and fostering loyalty through demonstrated understanding.
To bridge the trust gap and capitalize on agentic opportunities, brands must prioritize composable intelligence, real-time context, and human-centric value. Moving beyond basic automation to meaningful, personalized exchanges builds sustainable loyalty. The CER emphasizes that brands proving genuine understanding—through accurate prediction and respectful data use—will outperform competitors in an AI-driven landscape.
To uncover more insights, download the full 2026 Global Customer Engagement Review report here.
Report Methodology The 2026 Braze CER combines surveys of 2,200 marketing executives (VP-level or higher) from B2C companies with $10M+ revenue across 15 global markets (November 18–December 1, 2025) and 4,000 consumers in the USA and UK (November 21–December 2, 2025). It also analyzes anonymized behavioral data from 779 Braze customers (January 1–December 31, 2025), covering 6 billion user profiles and 24 sub-industries.
About Braze
Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™. Braze helps brands deliver great customer experiences that drive value both for consumers and for their businesses. Built on a foundation of composable intelligence, BrazeAI™ allows marketers to combine and activate AI agents, models, and features at every touchpoint throughout the Braze Customer Engagement Platform for smarter, faster, and more meaningful customer engagement.
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