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SAP is a Business Reporter client

New global research reveals a widening perception gap between brand confidence and consumer reality.

Brands have never invested more in customer experience. Marketing tech stacks swell with AI tools, personalisation engines and omnichannel platforms. Boardrooms celebrate frictionless journeys and emotional connections. Dashboards glow green and, at face value, the metrics look good.

Customers, on the other hand, are telling a very different story.

The recent SAP Engagement Index – a global study of 10,000 consumers and 4,800 senior decision-makers across six countries – confirms what we’ve long suspected: there’s a significant and measurable gap between what brands believe they deliver and what customers actually experience.

Researchers are calling it the engagement divide.

The confidence gap

Consider this: 77 per cent of brands say their engagement strategies generate positive outcomes, including higher retention and customer lifetime value. Yet 75 per cent of consumers report feeling put off by disorganised brands that pass them between multiple teams just to solve a single problem.

Three-quarters of brands (78 per cent) believe they deliver connected experiences across every channel. Only 38 per cent of consumers feel brands actually know who they are when they make contact.

Meanwhile, 82 per cent of consumers admit a brand has disappointed them – a figure that suggests these aren’t isolated incidents but widespread failures to meet basic expectations.

Why brands can’t deliver what they promise

The research points to three structural problems:

On the data front, 54 per cent of enterprises can’t access and use real-time customer information. Another 60 per cent suffer from what the report calls “dark data” – information collected but never activated.

Fewer than 40 per cent of organisations share customer engagement data with either a CX platform or a CRM. Without a unified view, brands are operating blind, no matter how confident their strategies sound in the boardroom.

Team co-ordination tells a similar story. Only two in five decision-makers believe their departments are truly co-ordinated. Sales doesn’t know what marketing promised. Service doesn’t see what the customer bought. Marketing can’t access the delivery delay that’s about to torpedo their “We miss you!” email.

The result comes as a shock to no one: 46 per cent of consumers say customer service feels impersonal, and 44 per cent report that brand interactions feel more generic than before.

The AI paradox: investment without execution

AI was supposed to fix this. But the Engagement Index reveals a troubling mismatch between investment and execution.

While 78 per cent of businesses see AI as essential for retaining customers in 2026, most organisations can’t actually use it to optimise campaign performance. And consumers aren’t convinced it will help – only a third believe AI will improve how brands understand them as individuals.

The SAP Engagement Maturity Index, which measures how effectively organisations align people, processes and technology to deliver cohesive experiences, shows that most brands remain stuck in the middle.

Just 21 per cent reach high-maturity status. The rest have started investing but haven’t connected the pieces.

Engagement isn’t a marketing problem

This goes deeper than campaign execution. The research makes clear that engagement is shaped across the entire business.

“Engagement isn’t something one department can fix. Every team shapes the brand, and the real progress comes when they work from the same understanding of the customer. With that shared view, AI can take on the hard work and help deliver the personalised experiences people expect.” – Professor Mark Ritson, Founder, MiniMBA

Product availability, delivery performance, customer service and post-purchase support all influence whether customers stay engaged or quietly walk away. When those functions operate in silos, the customer feels every disconnection.

The brands that are closing the divide share common characteristics: they’ve built a single, accurate, real-time view of each customer that every department can access.

They use AI to automate repetitive tasks, not to replace human judgement. They’ve shifted from batch-and-blast campaigns to event-driven workflows that respond to what customers actually do, not what marketers assume they’ll do.

These brands also recognise that personalisation isn’t creepy when it’s grounded in consent and governance.

What customers actually want

The fact remains that the appetite for better customer experiences is strong and the bar for customer expectations is only ever going to get higher.

The Engagement Index shows that 58 per cent of customers value personalised product recommendations. Half believe their favourite brand uses their data to make interactions better.

The gap between brand confidence and consumer reality will only close when systems are connected, silos are broken down and engagement is treated as a shared business discipline rather than a marketing metric.

The research suggests most organisations aren’t there yet – but closing the engagement divide will be a strong determining factor in separating brands that customers stay loyal to from the ones they quietly abandon.

To explore the full findings and see where your organisation stands, view the Global Engagement Index Report