As AI adoption has moved to the top of the business agenda, it has become a priority for C-suite and IT leaders to decide how to apply it within their organisations. 2025 was a year of broad AI experimentation – both internally, through AI training and using AI to make processes more efficient, and externally, as organisations have rushed to deploy AI-embedded solutions.
As released in RingCentral’s AI Trends Report, we see a stark difference between UK and US AI deployments in organisations. UK organisations have approached AI primarily as a productivity engine. The focus: automate tasks, streamline operations, and reduce costs. And in many cases, this strategy has paid off. Data shows that 60% of UK businesses report efficiency gains from AI adoption, while 49% have achieved measurable reductions in operating costs.
However, across the Atlantic, the picture looks different. 49% of US firms report improvements in customer experience, and 47% report better employee satisfaction. The contrast is telling. Where UK firms have used AI to do the same things faster, US firms are increasingly using it to do better things altogether.
This marks the next phase of AI maturity, where the most valuable use cases shift from internal productivity to richer customer engagement, more personalised service, and more consistent, insight-led interactions across every channel. There’s an opportunity cost here if UK organisations don’t shift their strategies, and in 2026, the UK will need to follow suit and pivot from efficiency to experience. So, what must UK organisations do to derive more value from AI in 2026?
The delivery gap holding UK businesses back
Despite growing ambition with AI, the reality is that many UK organisations are struggling to turn AI promise into production value. A third of businesses remain in exploration mode, and only 16% report successfully scaling AI initiatives. Too often, progress stalls at pilot projects and proof-of-concepts that never make it into daily operations.
To close this gap, speed to impact must overtake “proof of concept” as the measure of maturity. The firms that have learned to embed AI into daily workflows will shorten their time-to-value from months to weeks, turning ambition into measurable outcomes. AI maturity is measured by how quickly it delivers meaningful outcomes — for customers, employees, and the business.
Organisations that succeed take a different approach. Instead of asking, “What can AI do?”, they ask, “Where are my customers and employees struggling the most?” They prioritise understanding the pain points felt on a daily basis where AI can make an impactful difference. Customers and teams often have to spend a huge amount of time switching between calls, messages, meetings, and email just to get simple things done. Instead, embedded AI can summarise meetings, capture decisions and action items, and surface relevant context during conversations. The result is a dramatic reduction in time-to-value, from months to weeks.
The shift from efficiency to experience
While efficiency is always important, alone it’s no longer a differentiator. Customers now expect fast, seamless, and personalised interactions as standard. They want to be recognised, understood, and supported without having to repeat themselves. Employees, meanwhile, expect tools that reduce friction, not just workload, with solutions that help them deliver greater customer service.
AI is uniquely positioned to bridge this gap as it is able to analyze business conversations and pluck out the insights an organization needs to resolve any issues. Customer experience is no longer owned by a single team or channel; it spans contact centres, messaging apps, video calls, voice, and internal collaboration. AI that sits outside these workflows adds complexity. AI that lives within them creates impact.
This is where the UK opportunity lies. Moving beyond automation towards augmentation, so that employees feel empowered with real-time insights, recommended actions, and unified customer context, allows organisations to improve experiences at scale without sacrificing efficiency.
Embedding AI into everyday conversations
Every customer interaction is a moment of truth, yet too many are still fragmented across systems, channels, and teams. AI can unify these moments — transcribing conversations, surfacing insights in real time, summarising outcomes, and ensuring follow-up actions are never missed.
When AI is embedded into a unified communications and contact centre platform, it becomes invisible but powerful. Agents spend less time searching for information and more time listening. Managers gain insight into sentiment and performance without manual analysis. Customers feel heard, understood, and valued.
Crucially, this also improves employee satisfaction. AI that reduces cognitive load and administrative work helps employees focus on what they do best: solving problems and building relationships. This is a key reason US organisations are already seeing gains in both CX and EX, and a lesson UK firms cannot afford to ignore.
The path forward for UK organisations
As AI adoption accelerates, UK leaders face a choice. Continue optimising for efficiency alone, or embrace AI as a strategic driver of experience and differentiation. The latter requires a mindset shift: from experimentation to execution, from isolated tools to integrated platforms, and from productivity metrics to experience outcomes.
By 2026, the organisations that lead will be those that treat AI not as a bolt-on, but as a core capability embedded into everyday workflows. They will measure success by how quickly they can turn insight into action, and how consistently they can deliver great experiences at scale.
AI’s first chapter in the UK has been about doing more with less. The next chapter must be about doing better, for customers, for employees, and for the long-term resilience of the business.
