When it comes to customer communications and the wider tech ecosystem, this is what to watch out for in 2026, says Cumulo9’s David Allen.
1. AI
The roll-out of AI will dominate everything in 2026, as businesses move from talking about it to deploying AI in everyday business applications. I’m observing that boards are now demanding AI is a line item for discussion at their regular meetings. There is now recognition at a governance level that AI will be the cornerstone for creating competitive advantage.
2. Hyper-personalisation
Businesses are starting to use advanced data analytics and AI to deliver highly tailored interactions based on individual preferences, behaviours and purchase history. But they are realising they need to invest in customer data platforms or at least in unifying their data silos if they are going to unlock the benefits of hyper-personalisation. Early adopters have found you can’t embark on any form of AI without cleaning up the application layers that exist in most large businesses.
3. Omnichannel integration
Seamless and consistent communication across multiple channels such as messaging apps, social media, email, chatbots and voice assistants. We are seeing a willingness to invest in modern customer communications platforms, where enhanced document creation functionality can be rolled out to front line staff as well as dealing with the regular batch-based comms.
At the heart of investment-based business cases is a need to deal with compliance as well as enhanced customer experience. There is also a requirement for lines of business to have more control and the modern customer communication management (CCM) platforms make document changes a less technical task. This opens the opportunity for more real-time customer engagement. Businesses want to be in control of the documents they create and so there is an active move away from using mailhouses for documentation creation tasks.
4. Real-time engagement
We’ll see greater emphasis on instant communication driving real-time responses that drive enhanced customer experience and satisfaction.
A shift to digital sending opens the door for richer communication types such as push messaging via WhatsApp or HTML5, where the documents can be ‘active’, allowing immediate in-document or via embedded URL responses.
5. Proactive comms
Anticipating customer needs and proactive outreach via predictive analytics and integration with the internet of things.
This is now a possibility following investment in data analytics – and ahead of that, the collection of supporting data, such as preferences and enhanced knowledge of the customer and their lifestyle situation.
6. Customer journey visibility
Modern customer journey mapping (CJM) tools can be accessed as a service and are now far easier to fully integrate with data sources. This allows businesses to visually see an individual customer journey through every touchpoint – including the ability to surface specific customer comms at various points on the journey. Heat maps at a consolidated level allow a business to understand where bottlenecks are occurring and take immediate action.
7. Client security as a KPI
There is growing focus on transparent data handling and privacy protection as a way to build customer trust.
Businesses are recognising that legacy platforms need to be dealt with for data security reasons. In the past, reinvestment decisions were heavily driven by marketing and process improvement gains. But no one wants to be in the news for the wrong reasons, and it would be hugely embarrassing if out of support legacy platforms were the reason for a data breach.
8. Turning off letterbox
Full rate postage is now $2.30 for a standard letter and consumers accept it’s in their best interest to help reduce costs by opting in to digital. The digital preference is also being driven by fewer delivery days and less reliable postal services. Both businesses and consumers are appreciating the convenience of digital channels. For businesses, there are compelling reasons to drive digital interaction. For example:
- Digital drives convenience, as customers can resolve issues without waiting for human support. McKinsey research found that digital self-service adoption can reduce churn by 15-20%, since customers feel more in control.
- Bain & Company’s work in banking found that customers who actively use digital channels are more loyal, less price-sensitive and generate more cross-sell opportunities.
- Digital connections can drive frequency of contact, driving more “light-touch” but meaningful interactions (notifications, insights, nudges).
In 2026, we’ll see more businesses announce they’ll stop using mail.
9. SaaS and subscriptions
Microsoft Azure now has a significant footprint in New Zealand, with its “New Zealand North” cloud region officially live. This major investment provides New Zealand businesses with enterprise-grade cloud services.
In September 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region. Both services claim to offer low-latency access, local data residency, enhanced performance and support for digital transformation. They will compete with existing platform providers like Spark and Datacom creating accelerated opportunity for businesses to move their applications from on-premises into the cloud.
At the same time, those providing software applications are moving to “subscription” or consumption-based billing where users pay at a transactional level, rather than a fixed annual fee. This is certainly so for the CCM vendors who now have subscription-based, cloud enabled offerings as well as any-premises deployment options.
10. Integrating feedback
Businesses are starting to use AI-driven insights from customer feedback to continuously improve communication strategies and offerings. In the past, insight gathering was a more difficult and highly manual task. It was often outsourced to third parties but now businesses are building in-house insight capability, only using third parties for more complex and often specific insight gathering and analysis.
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 85, Dec 2025-Feb 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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