newsletter

Consumers want personalization. Brands get it wrong.

Covering what consumers want from personalization, consumers using AI to handle their customer service needs, tipping, and more.

Hope Dorman

Jan 29, 2026

4 min read

CX Insights

Retail consumers want personalization, but brands get it wrong.

Amperity found that 83% of Americans said personalized shopping is important and 74% are more likely to purchase when they get truly personalized offers or recommendations.

However, 57% of Americans say their shopping experiences are generic, and 79% say it’s not rare for retailers to get personalization wrong.

This is a huge opportunity for customer experience teams to improve and also impact the bottom line - because CX teams collect a mountain of first-party data from customers. Use it to help your organization refine personalized offers and build loyalty, boosting sales and customer retention. Good data is also critical for automated and AI-based customer service to work well, too.

Make 2026 the year you focus on getting the most out of your customer data so you can deliver refined personalization that customers want.

Consumers are using AI to handle CX for them

We’ve got two stories on the same theme this week - consumers using AI Agents to handle their own CX needs.

In financial services, experts anticipate that consumers using AI to handle CX needs for them will increase the conversation volume coming into brands. Consumers may no longer just let things slide that weren’t worth their time to address, and/or they can use AI to uncover things potentially owed to them, like refunds or fees that shouldn’t apply.

Experts note that some of this AI-generated messaging coming from consumers may sound correct, but there’s always the chance it’s hallucinating. Organizations will need to sift through this to ensure they’re upholding policies and in compliance with regulations. See last week’s story about how easy it was to exploit banking AI chatbots for more details.

Second, a podcast episode digs into AI calling on behalf of customers and human frontline agents getting caught off-guard and not knowing how to handle it, with an example of an AI agent handling debt negotiation on behalf of a customer.

What to consider about Google’s eavesdropping settlement

Google settled a federal class-action lawsuit alleging voice assistant recorded without consent to the tune of $68 million.

Why does this matter to CX leaders? One, voice is an increasingly important channel as voice assistants become more integrated into our lives, and it’s a reminder that tech reliability may not always be what it seems. Whether the alleged voice recording without consent was intentional or the result of an oversight, the damage is done.

Two, it all comes back to consumer trust - consumers have to trust channels to use them. As AI becomes more common and part of your CX operations, it’s even more critical to ensure all parts of your tech stack are secure.

Tipping: a customer experience problem

Harvard Business Review explores the concept of tipping given recent changing dynamics as tipping went from a reward for good service to, “a way to monetize empathy for underpaid workers.” The authors say that thoughtfully-designed tipping can reinforce customer centricity - and lay out this plan to decide when tipping is appropriate:

Distinctiveness: Customers should only be expected to tip on recognizable, discretionary service

Visibility: Customers may be able to observe the discretionary service

Proportionality: Customers should be able to reward CX workers based on how they perceive the quality of service

The article calls out how some CX teams are working tipping into private channels, like hospitality brand Marriott working it into the Bonvoy app. This reduces awkwardness and pressure in real time for customers and guests.

There’s no universal answer here but it’s important to think about - especially for those within the same company that have CX roles where some are tipped and others are not, and still others in a gray area.