Brands are spending more than ever on personalization, AI, and omnichannel strategies. But the data keeps raising an uncomfortable question: Are customers actually feeling—and acting—more engaged?

To find out, SAP surveyed 10,000 general respondents and 4,800 senior decision-makers across six countries for the 2026 Global Engagement Index. The result is the most comprehensive picture of enterprise engagement available today, and it reveals a pattern we call The Engagement Divide: the measurable gap between what brands believe they deliver and what customers actually experience.

And that gap is widening.

Consumers are adopting AI faster than brands, using it to research, compare, and evaluate options in seconds. Meanwhile, many organizations still struggle to connect their data and activate it across marketing, commerce, sales, and service. This is why The Engagement Divide can’t be solved by marketing alone. It requires coordination across the entire business. The teams across marketing, commerce, sales, service, and operations that work together to bridge this divide and unlock the power of AI are the teams winning customer mindshare (and wallets) in the moments that matter.

Below are eight findings from the 2026 Global Engagement Index that reveal where the divide is growing, and the key operational challenges organizations need to overcome to close it.

The Engagement Divide

1. 78% of brands believe they deliver seamless experiences across channels

Confidence isn’t in short supply. More than three-quarters of the decision-makers surveyed rate their own cross-channel performance as seamless, reporting positive outcomes including increased customer retention, advocacy, and customer lifetime value.

That confidence tells us something important about how brands evaluate themselves internally: the metrics they track, the dashboards they build, and the feedback loops they rely on may reinforce a view that doesn’t align with external reality. As the next finding makes clear, the consumer perspective is starkly different.

2. 41% of consumers say brands don’t recognize them as a person

Despite 78% of brands believing their customer experience is seamless, nearly half of consumers feel that the brands they engage with don’t understand them as people. When you set this finding alongside the previous one, the Engagement Divide becomes tangible: a 36-point perception gap between how brands rate their performance and how customers actually experience it.

This stat puts the rest of the report in context. Every investment in AI, personalization, and orchestration should ultimately serve one goal: making the customer feel known. This is exactly what predictive AI and real-time personalization should deliver when the data behind them is connected.

3. 78% of brands see AI as essential for retaining customers in 2026

There’s no shortage of ambition when it comes to AI. In our research, 78% of brands say AI will be integral to their customer retention efforts this year.

The intent here is clear. Organizations understand that AI is shaping how brands engage customers, personalize experiences, and respond to behavior in real time. The challenge, for most, is execution, because many companies still struggle to connect the data on which AI depends.

Customer signals are scattered across marketing, commerce, service, and operational siloes, making it difficult to activate AI effectively. This is where The Engagement Divide becomes most visible. Brands recognize that AI will define the next era of customer engagement, but without connected data and coordinated teams, many are unable to translate that ambition into better customer experiences.

The External Reality of Internal Silos

4. 75% of consumers are put off by disorganized brands that pass them between multiple teams

Internal silos have external implications. Three-quarters of consumers notice when a brand can’t coordinate across its own teams, and they don’t like what they experience. Being passed from department to department, repeating information, or receiving contradictory messages harms consumers' perception of a business.

This finding is a reminder that engagement is a cross-functional discipline, not a departmental one. If the service, commerce, and marketing teams are working from different data sets and priorities, the customer experience will be affected.

5. Only 2 in 5 decision-makers believe their departments are truly coordinated

Read that alongside Finding 4, and the picture sharpens. Consumers can feel the disorganization, and the data shows brands aren't blind to it either. Fewer than half of decision-makers believe their own departments are truly coordinated, revealing just how far most organizations are from delivering connected customer journeys.

The gap between Findings 4 and 5 is telling. Customers experience the friction, and decision makers can see it too, but knowing the problem exists and fixing it are very different things. Coordinating across sales, service, marketing, and technology requires shared data, common goals, and leadership that treats engagement as a company-wide priority.

6. 54% of enterprises can’t access and use real-time data, and 60% suffer from dark data

More than half of enterprises can’t access or act on their data in real time, and six in ten are sitting on dark data: information that’s been collected but never activated. This presents a foundational challenge because you can’t personalize in real time if your data isn’t connected and available in real time. You can’t close The Engagement Divide if the insights you need are locked in systems that don’t talk to each other.

The Experience Your Customers Actually Want

7. 46% of consumers say customer service feels impersonal

Nearly half of consumers feel that customer service interactions lack the personal touch they want, and this extends across the entire customer journey. Think about the service call where you repeat your issue for the third time, the chatbot that doesn't know you're a loyal customer, or the follow-up email that feels like it was written for no one in particular. These moments add up.

When service feels impersonal, it undermines every investment a brand has made in acquisition and retention. Consumers don’t separate marketing, service, and commerce. To them, it’s all one brand experience, and one impersonal interaction can erode loyalty and undo months of carefully targeted engagement.

8. 48% of consumers care less about the brand and more about the overall experience

Nearly half of consumers say the overall experience matters more to them than the brand itself. Brand equity alone isn’t enough to retain customers when a competitor offers a smoother, more personalized, and more connected journey.

For marketers, this is a wake-up call. Awareness and affinity still matter, but they’re not enough on their own. Today, loyalty is built on the quality of every interaction, across every channel, at every stage. A seamless return process, a relevant recommendation at the right moment, a service agent who already knows your history: these are the things that earn repeat purchases, not brand recognition alone.

Closing the Engagement Divide

These eight findings tell us a consistent story. Brands are investing heavily in engagement, but customers aren’t yet experiencing the results. The Engagement Divide is real, measurable, and widespread. But it’s also an opportunity.

The organizations closing this gap share a common approach, treating engagement as an enterprise-wide discipline, not a marketing responsibility. They connect data across every customer touchpoint, they use AI to move from batch-and-blast campaigns to real-time personalization, and they align teams around a shared definition of what good engagement looks like from the customer’s perspective.

SAP Engagement Cloud is the customer engagement solution built to power this shift: connecting data, automating personalization, and orchestrating journeys across every channel, so you can deliver the experience your customers expect at every touchpoint.