SAP's CMO Sara Richter has identified a critical vulnerability in how brands manage customer data: the accumulation of "dark data"—information collected but never activated into meaningful customer interactions. The 2026 Engagement Index reveals that 43% of Gen Z already rely on AI agents to guide purchasing decisions, meaning customers arrive at brands significantly further along the buying journey than traditional engagement models anticipate. This shift exposes a fundamental misalignment between organizational capability and customer expectation. The problem isn't data scarcity; it's the failure to operationalize what's already been collected. During peak trading periods, when marketing, service, inventory, and fulfillment must synchronize, this dormant data becomes actively corrosive to trust rather than merely a missed opportunity. For CX teams managing Zendesk, Salesforce, or similar platforms, the implication is stark: your data infrastructure is only as valuable as your ability to activate it across departments in real time.
Richter's argument cuts deeper than a technology problem—it demands organizational restructuring. The divide between customer expectations and brand delivery widens when data remains siloed within marketing while service, fulfillment, and support operate independently. This raises a critical question for support team leads and CX consultants: if your organization has invested heavily in AI-powered tools like Agentforce or similar automation platforms, but lacks the cross-functional governance to surface and act on customer signals in real time, are you actually reducing friction or simply automating outdated workflows? The solution requires moving beyond departmental ownership of customer data toward a unified model where every function—not just marketing—operates from a shared, actionable customer view. Brands like Gibson demonstrate this works when AI surfaces real-time patterns and frees teams from reporting overhead to focus on genuine customer understanding. For CX professionals, this means the next competitive advantage belongs not to those with the most data, but to those who can translate it into coordinated action across the entire organization.
New research from SAP’s 2026 Engagement Index paints a picture that will make a lot of CX teams uncomfortable. With 43% of Gen Z already using AI agents to guide purchasing decisions, customers are arriving at brands further along in the buying journey than ever before. The question is whether