CMOs and CX Leaders, Start Here: Actionable Research, AI Reality Checks, and What to Scale in 2026

Marketing and CX Leadership: What Matters Now

Modern marketing and customer experience hinge on one thing: making decisions that move the numbers. Less theory, more execution. The themes below cut through noise and show where to focus next.

Break AI Paralysis

If AI feels stuck in committee, simplify the plan.

• Pick three high-value use cases: content production, call summarization, and lead scoring.
• Ship a 30-day pilot per use case with clear success metrics (time saved, quality uplift, revenue impact).
• Set guardrails: data access rules, review workflows, and human override points.
• Document what worked, templatize it, and roll out to adjacent teams.

Your Contact Center Is the Truth

Operations in the contact center tell you what customers actually feel. Treat it like a live focus group.

• Map top five call drivers weekly. Fix one upstream issue per sprint.
• Use AI QA to spot friction, compliance risks, and coaching moments at scale.
• Pipe insights into product, CX, and content calendars within 48 hours.
• Reward agents who capture root causes, not just handle time.

B2B Content Reset for 2026

The volume game is over. Relevance and distribution win.

• Stop: vanity ebooks, generic thought pieces, channel sprawl.
• Start: opinionated frameworks, field data, and content built for one primary channel each.
• Standard: topic clusters with clear conversion paths and repurposing rules.
• Combine human POV with AI speed - editors set the bar, AI accelerates the draft.

What to Keep, What to Cut, What to Scale

• Keep: first-party data programs, lifecycle measurement, and customer panels.
• Cut: manual reporting, one-off campaigns with no reusability, and vanity KPIs.
• Scale: modular content, partner co-marketing, and targeted personalization with consented data.

Market Signals You Can Use

• Enterprise CX investment is rising. Large rounds in AI-first CX platforms point to automation across voice, chat, and self-serve.
• Creation speed matters. On-page editing and drag-and-drop localization are becoming table stakes for marketing teams.
• Proof over polish. Brand stories that show the build - like major brands shipping on modern web stacks - earn trust and conversions.
• AI in CX is getting packaged. Google's Contact Center AI signals a push to unify knowledge, agent assist, and analytics.

Quarterly Action Plan

• Week 1-2: Audit your journey. Pull top call drivers, top content by assisted revenue, and time-to-value by segment.
• Week 3-4: Launch two AI pilots (content and contact center). Define metrics and owners before kickoff.
• Week 5-6: Rebuild one campaign into a modular system: hero piece, two deep dives, four short formats, one webinar.
• Week 7-8: Ship a localization test into one growth market with on-page editing and native QA.
• Week 9-10: Publish an internal "what we keep, cut, and scale" memo and lock the next-quarter roadmap.

Team Enablement

Upskill quickly so your playbooks don't stall.

• AI Certification for Marketing Specialists - build repeatable workflows for content, ads, and analytics.
• Latest AI Courses - stay current without chasing trends.

The Bottom Line

Make the contact center your insight engine. Reset content for relevance and distribution. Package AI into small wins, then scale what proves value. That's how teams grow in 2026 - steady, test-driven, and customer-first.