The Metrigy Consumer Customer Experience (CX) Index serves as a comprehensive barometer for shifting consumer sentiments, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on service delivery, and the evolving benchmarks of customer excellence across various demographics and industries.

The Q1 2026 Index establishes a baseline sentiment score of 123.8, with responses suggesting overall optimism. The underlying data tells a detailed story highlighting the preferences and sentiments of different consumer demographics. Although consumers are increasingly satisfied with the technical capabilities of AI, their preference for human interaction remains high. As companies transition toward full or partially automated service models, they must understand that consumers don’t measure success by the presence of AI. Rather, they assess the appropriate use of human and AI agents, with seamless handoffs from one to the other before they get frustrated.

The Metrigy Consumer CX Index is a longitudinal tracking framework designed to capture the evolving sentiment of customer experience (CX) for consumers. By monitoring current perceptions and future expectations across personal, economic, and societal dimensions, the index serves as a vital barometer for how CX is reshaping the world.

To create this index study, Metrigy surveyed 1,000 demographically representative U.S. respondents to give their opinion on their current experiences while contacting companies which with they do business. The overall Consumer CX Index comprises eight individual indexes, each measuring a different facet of customer experience. They are:

Using a standard diffusion index methodology, we create raw scores for each component by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses. Participants use a five-point scale ranging from “much worse than expected” to “much better than expected.” We then increase the weighting of the most positive and negative responses by 50%, giving extra emphasis to areas that have a higher concentration of a strong sentiment in either direction.

These first-quarter 2026 ratings will act as the baseline for the index going forward.

With ever-evolving customer expectations, finding the right balance between artificial intelligence (AI) and authentic human connection is a major competitive advantage. Metrigy’s inaugural quarterly Consumer CX Index highlights retail as a prominent leader in customer experience (CX) and AI implementation, carried by promising metrics. By examining the data, we uncover exactly why retail is succeeding where others are struggling, and how the industry is successfully navigating the transition into AI-assisted customer service.

The Metrigy Consumer CX Index serves as a barometer for shifting consumer sentiments and the benchmarks of customer excellence. To create this index, Metrigy surveyed 1,000 demographically representative U.S. respondents regarding their recent customer service interactions. The study utilizes a standard diffusion index methodology. This approach goes beyond simple averages by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses, giving a 50% weighted increase to extreme responses (such as “much better” or “much worse”) to accurately capture intense consumer sentiment.

The Q1 2026 index establishes a baseline consumer sentiment score of 123.8, suggesting an overall optimistic view of the market. The retail baseline index for overall customer sentiment is 175.1, and 160.5 for AI-powered customer service.

Healthcare organizations face an increasingly strict regulatory environment. Despite these heightened requirements and persistent cyberattacks, our research
data shows that healthcare organizations are often lagging in protecting their workplace collaboration and contact center environments. In our global Workplace Collaboration and Contact Center Security: 2026 research study of 305 companies (roughly 10% of which are in the healthcare sector), we found:

Healthcare companies often face a critical gap in organizational oversight: Only 60% of their chief information security officers (CISOs) have final approval authority over application purchases, compared to 73.5% of CISOs at successful companies. This lack of centralized sign-off creates a risk of missing vital security requirements during the selection of phone systems, video platforms, and team collaboration apps.

For healthcare leaders who have established security plans, the primary focus areas for 2026 are generative artificial intelligence (AI) security (70.6%), employee identity and access management, or IdAM (64.7%), and remote worker protection (52.9%). These priorities reflect a proactive shift to manage the risks associated with rapid AI adoption and the potential for inadvertent data loss in a distributed work environment.

Healthcare collaboration, customer experience (CX), IT, and business leaders must do more to ensure a proactive security environment. They must ensure a secure
environment that enables their organizations to rapidly take advantage of emerging technologies, especially AI, to improve business operations while minimizing risk and ensuring compliance.

Consumers prefer human over AI agents, welcome proactive outreach from businesses, and find the best experience from retail and healthcare companies

March 30, 2026 — Metrigy has released its inaugural quarterly Consumer CX Index, a comprehensive study that examines sentiment around customer experience. The baseline index and supporting insights lean toward positive sentiment, though consumers prefer human over AI interactions.

The Consumer CX Index is designed to move beyond surface-level satisfaction by aggregating data across eight distinct sub-indexes: AI satisfaction, AI trust, ease of use, empathy, momentum, proactivity, relationship strength, and resolution success.

Although the initial baseline indicates generally positive sentiment, the data highlights a clear distinction between where technology excels and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. Many consumers balk at full AI automation, with differences based on age, gender, education level, and income.

“The Q1 index shows a consumer base that values digital ease, but still demands the human safety net,” says Layne Haaksma, senior research analyst at Metrigy. “With most consumers considering a company’s customer service reputation before doing business with them, the brands that win will use technology to empower, rather than replace, the human connection to provide a stellar customer experience.”

Key Findings

“As AI becomes pervasive across all areas of customer experience, we felt it imperative to track changing consumer perspectives about their experiences with and without the technology,” says Robin Gareiss, CEO at Metrigy. “There are too many gaps between business strategy and consumer expectations, both of which are quickly changing. This tracking will enable CX leaders to optimize their AI-in-CX strategies for CSAT, revenue growth, and efficiency.”

Sector Leaders and the Value of Proactivity

The Q1 2026 Index identifies significant performance variances across different industries:

A major shift in consumer behavior this quarter is the rising demand for proactive engagement. The percentage of consumers who find proactive outreach “extremely valuable” rose by 17.5 percentage points compared to the previous quarter. This indicates that consumers increasingly expect brands to anticipate their needs and reach out before a problem arises, rather than waiting for the customer to initiate contact.

Redefining CX Priorities

The findings suggest a fundamental shift in what constitutes a good experience. For modern consumers, the ability to trust a brand and receive a definitive resolution to their issue is more critical than how fast a response is delivered or how personalized the marketing feels. As companies continue to invest in AI, the index suggests that the most successful organizations will be those that use technology to bolster trust and resolution while maintaining easy access to human support.

About Metrigy: Metrigy is an innovative research and advisory firm focusing on the rapidly changing areas of artificial intelligence, customer experience, and workplace collaboration—along with several related technologies, including knowledge management, security, and workforce engagement management. Metrigy conducts research with business leaders, consumers, and technology vendors. Our analysts deliver strategic guidance and informative content, backed by primary research metrics, indexes, and analysis, for technology providers and enterprise organizations.

 Press Releases

Metrigy has published its CPaaS 2025 & 4Q25 market shares and updated forecasts; Twilio maintains lead

March 27, 2026 – Metrigy has published its Customer Experience MetriCast Market Share, 2025 and 4Q2025 market shares and updated forecasts. In addition to CPaaS, the categories include contact center as a service (CCaaS), customer relationship management (CRM), and contact center platforms. Highlights include:

“Messaging continues to be the number one communication service for CPaaS, followed by voice. The CPaaS market will continue to have steady single-digit revenue growth over the next five years,with a 2.7% CAGR from 2025-2030,” says Diane Myers, Metrigy senior research director and principal analyst. 

The MetriCast market shares and updated forecasts is a core part of Metrigy’s MetriCast Service, which also includes detailed end-user adoption studies, MetriRank vendor ratings across select categories, and the annual MetriStar Awards for vendors earning top customer sentiment ratings and whose customers achieve top business success. For more information and to purchase this report, visit https://metrigy.com/product/cpaas-quarterly-market-share-forecast-report-2025-4q25/. 

 Press Releases

Metrigy has published its CCaaS and contact center platform 2025 and 4Q25 market shares and updated forecasts

March 27, 2026 – Metrigy has published its Customer Experience MetriCast Market Share, 2025 and 4Q2025 market shares and updated forecasts. In addition to CCaaS and contact center platform, the categories include communications platform as a service (CPaaS) and customer relationship management (CRM). Highlights include:

“Contact center operations continue to migrate to cloud-native CCaaS solutions, but less than half of agents worldwide are on CCaaS. Continued seat migration will drive CCaaS growth over the next five years, even as the use of artificial intelligence impacts agent requirements. The CCaaS market will grow at a 9.8% CAGR from 2025-2030,” says Diane Myers, Metrigy senior research director and principal analyst. 

The MetriCast market shares and updated forecasts is a core part of Metrigy’s MetriCast Service, which also includes detailed end-user adoption studies, MetriRank vendor ratings across select categories, and the annual MetriStar Awards for vendors earning top customer sentiment ratings and whose customers achieve top business success. For more information and to purchase this report, visit https://metrigy.com/product/ccaas-contact-center-platforms-quarterly-market-share-forecast-report-2025-4q25/.

What’s the news?

On March 24, 2026, Theta Lake announced new regional and AI offerings to expand its workplace collaboration compliance capabilities. Theta Lake now offers data sovereignty support for China, as well as country-specific regulatory capabilities for India and South Africa.

In this release, the company noted that it had added more than 300 new features the last year. These include advanced recordkeeping reconciliation and the ability to detect rogue interactions between humans and bots and other pattern-based policy violations for AI-based communications and content. Additionally, for its AI Governance and Inspection Suite, Theta Lake added the ability to detect “jailbreak” efforts to inject data into large language models (LLMs) or violate LLM guardrails.

What’s the news?

On March 16, 2026, NVIDIA introduced NemoClaw, providing security and privacy controls for the OpenClaw personal autonomous agent platform. NemoClaw allows OpenClaw users to run it within NVIDIA’s OpenShell open-source security runtime environment. This approach sandboxes OpenClaw to control what the actions it can perform and the data it can access. NemoClaw supports AI agents running locally on a user’s PC or in the cloud. It runs on any underlying computing platform, including those powered by NVIDIA graphics processing units. NVIDIA is providing NemoClaw as freely available open-source software.

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