CRM users in 2025 could easily describe their experiences as a struggle to extract real, tangible value from sophisticated systems, often hampered by fundamental human and operational issues. Whether 2026 can successfully fix these broken aspects may be too much of a reach to make CRM a more reliable business tool in the new year.
Those challenges fall into several broad categories that will define how CRM platforms evolve — or stall — in 2026.
The primary areas of concern boil down to a few key points that will require the most attention in 2026. One of the biggest challenges will be moving beyond simple AI features — like chatbots — to truly transformative predictive and generative AI, which requires organizations to fix their data issues.
Core operational failures stemming from mishandled adoption and poor data quality plague organizations, severely undermining the ROI of their CRM investments. Low user adoption and resistance to change — despite massive investment — have led many sales and service teams to view CRM as a burden rather than a productivity tool.
Complex, non-intuitive user interfaces, excessive manual data entry — such as logging calls and emails — and inadequate, generic training often led employees to work around the CRM rather than within it. Duplicates, outdated contacts, incomplete records, and fragmented data across systems have caused persistent issues with data quality and integrity.
Integration and fragmentation failures have led to increasingly complex martech stacks, in which the CRM rarely serves as a reliable single source of truth. Critical customer data often remains trapped in marketing automation, ERP, and accounting applications, preventing the creation of a truly unified, 360-degree customer view. Connecting the CRM to an ever-growing set of third-party tools was costly, technically complex, and often introduced data synchronization issues and lag.
The biggest operational mistake Frank Palermo, COO of ServiceNow partner NewRocket saw was leaders choosing the wrong use cases. These efforts were typically overly ambitious, took too long to implement, or were too narrow, delivering limited ROI.
“CRM can no longer sit outside the operational core. It cannot function as an isolated kingdom of customer records. It has to live inside the same architecture that runs transactions, service, and fulfillment,” he told CRM Buyer.
The AI Data Readiness Gap
AI may be causing more integration problems than solutions. The current state of messy, siloed data remains a major obstacle to effective AI implementation. Organizations must prioritize data governance and data cleansing. A goal for 2026 is to make this a mandatory, continuous operational process rather than a one-time project.
According to Palermo, AI will become the frontline agent for call centers handling high-volume, low-complexity issues. The tiering functionality will be a major improvement.
Tier 1 will no longer serve as a human frontline. Instead, it will focus on training and supervising AI policies, handling exceptions, and monitoring safety. Tier 2 and Tier 3 will become the new centers of human expertise, he said.
Palermo predicted that as AI takes over routine work, the remaining human workload will increasingly consist of edge cases, multi-system issues, complex judgment, and long-tail patterns.
“Fewer humans will be involved, but the remaining live workers will be higher-skilled and more technical,” he said.
That shift in workload only works if the underlying CRM architecture can support AI at scale.
Unified Platforms Make Scale Possible
Unified platforms will become the default digital architecture for retailers and brands in 2026, noted Mariano Gomide de Faria, founder & Co-CEO of commerce suite VTEX. Developers will not see this as innovation, but survival. Fragmented stacks cannot support the scale and flexibility modern commerce demands.
For anyone on legacy CRM systems in the new year, there is a simple question to answer: Can your stack carry the weight of your ambitions?
He noted that, according to McKinsey reports, 67% of companies cannot scale AI — a pattern tied to a lack of cloud-based architecture needed to support a unified platform. AI requires commerce, marketplace, OMS, and promotions to run within a single cloud-based system that produces clean, real-time data.
“In 2026, the most competitive retailers and brands will use unified platforms to turn CRM into an operational engine that fuels real AI execution,” Gomide de Faria told CRM Buyer.
He views this as the most significant psychological shift ahead, one that will directly impact CRM. Retailers want one truth about the customer, not three competing versions.
“As unified platforms mature, CRM becomes part of the same daily workflow that runs the business. This is the only way to simplify the stack while improving the customer experience at the same time,” he added.
Once platforms can scale AI reliably, the next challenge becomes how that intelligence interacts with the people using it.
AI Integration Will Dominate CRM Development
The real challenge will be how AI blends with human workers. AI assistants that do not understand humans will feel as outdated as flip phones, suggested Nick Blasi, co-founder and COO of Personos, a platform that merges personality science with AI. He predicted that by the end of 2026, the novelty of AI that “gets things done” will fade.
“Tools that ignore human nuance, including tone, temperament, personality, and emotional bandwidth, will quickly feel obsolete. The next wave of AI will be judged by how well it adapts to each individual,” he told CRM Buyer.
According to Blasi, AI will flag half of workplace conflicts before managers know they exist. He said most workplace tension stems from predictable patterns, including communication mismatches, unmet expectations, or clashes in temperament.
“In 2026, AI will quietly spot these patterns early, long before they appear in performance reviews or exit interviews. It won’t eliminate conflict, but it will give people a chance to address issues before they calcify into cultural problems,” he observed.
He sees a significant awakening ahead for AI’s role in CRM. Business leaders will finally admit that most people do not need more AI automation. They need AI that helps them connect more effectively with other humans.
For years, AI existed primarily as a productivity engine. In 2026, managers will recognize that AI’s real value lies in helping people navigate the complexity of others.
“The biggest breakthroughs will focus on communication, influence, trust, motivation, and conflict resolution, supported by technology that understands people as unique individuals,” Blasi predicted.
CRM Will Shift to AI-Mediated, Continuous Dialogues
As users increasingly stay within AI environments such as Google AI Mode, ChatGPT integrations, and similar tools, CRM will evolve from email sequences to ongoing, personalized conversations handled through large language models (LLMs), said Ben Parkes, head of Americas advisory services, and Daniel Reid, principal insights analyst, both at Similarweb.
“Since AI platforms rely heavily on citations from publishers, user-generated content, reviews, and trusted domains — not brand sites — CRM teams will focus on shaping sentiment and mentions where AI pulls its reasoning,” Parkes told CRM Buyer.
Off-site influence will overtake on-site content in CRM strategy, Reid added. Reddit, news sites, reviews, and niche publishers already dominate citations, with Reddit cited in 54% of some categories.
“Brands will invest more in influencing external conversations than updating their own sites,” he told CRM Buyer.
What CRM Must Become in 2026
Looking ahead, CRM challenges will shift from adoption to effective use of emerging AI technologies and the solidifying of the platform’s role in modern business structures. The industry will need to strike a balance between providing flexible, adaptable platforms and offering truly industry-specific solutions that are fast to deploy and simple to maintain.
A problem-solving effort will be required to implement customer data platforms (CDPs) that unify data and establish internal rules to ensure accuracy for AI-driven recommendations, such as predictive lead scoring and next-best-action. CRM will continue to evolve into an all-encompassing customer experience management (CXM) platform, creating friction within the organization along the way.
Traditionally, CRM was sales-centric. In 2026, the system must serve sales, marketing, customer success, product, and finance departments equally. The industry must meet the growing demand for CRMs tailored to specific verticals, such as finance, health care, and e-commerce. The old-school mega-platform notion that “one-size-fits-all” will no longer apply.
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