By Ben Rothman, Vice President of Customer Experience, Rightpoint
Agentic AI had its first big moment when companies rushed to roll out AI assistants to huge groups of employees. Some teams saw quick wins. Many didn’t, mostly because the data wasn’t ready. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 60% of AI projects without solid data foundations will get abandoned. That’s not surprising, and it’s not the end of the story.
The real ROI moment is happening now, especially in marketing. The teams making progress are the ones focusing on specific workflows where the data is clean enough for agents to actually do the job. In many cases, employees are already running their own “shadow agents” to get things done faster. The opportunity for leaders is to find these people, learn what they’re doing, and bring those agentic workflows into the real martech stack.
At the same time, we need to get serious about data, brand consistency, and the customer experience we’re actually trying to deliver.
Where Agentic AI actually moves CX ROI
Agents can take on and orchestrate the repetitive work that bogs marketing teams down. That shift gives marketers time back for truly high-value work, like writing stronger prompts, pushing creativity, iterating on tests, and using the right data to inform decisions.
Here’s a simple example:
A marketer should be able to ask an agent:
- “Show me everyone who clicked this button yesterday.”
- “Generate an A/B test plan for it.”
- “Run the test.”
- “Send me the performance report every morning.”
While the agent handles execution, the team can focus on the insight: how to shape a better, more personal customer experience. And soon, those insights will fuel real-time customer journeys that update instantly based on behavior.
Industry experts already know personalization can lift revenue by ~15%. Imagine a near-future scenario where someone asks ChatGPT about your product and instantly gets a personalized, on-brand micro-site built in real time. That’s where this is heading — but only if the data is ready.
Building on the tech you already have
Right now, most marketers are experimenting with agentic AI for copy, testing, and reporting. But engineering teams are usually further ahead with real agent use cases. Marketing should be looking at what engineering is doing because a lot of those projects can make their way into the martech stack.
The real unlock is unifying the data so agents can use it for personalization and prediction.
This is where an orchestration layer matters. Not a full rip-and-replace. Not wiring every system at once.
Start small:
Connect the high-value data first.
Build a few agentic workflows around it.
Expand out.
That’s how you build momentum and ROI without chaos.
Better CX starts with better EX
Great customer experience always starts with employee experience. The same tools that power customer personalization also open new ways for marketers to ideate, design, and launch experiences faster.
When teams aren’t stuck doing repetitive tasks, they can be curious again. They can experiment. They can try a new idea at 10 am and have a working prototype by lunch. That cultural shift is where AI adoption gets sticky, and where ROI gets real.
For example, a prototype application can pull data from multiple sources to see how AI engines summarize a brand — what’s accurate, what’s outdated, and what’s off-brand, giving marketers the visibility they’ve never had before into how AI understands their brand and where they might need an intervention.
Another example: Agentic tools will let marketers build entire customer-facing sites without waiting on dev cycles. That means shorter timelines, faster iteration, and teams that can finally keep up with customer behavior and new trends.
These are the use cases that remove friction, and this is exactly where agentic AI is headed.
The path to the CX ROI breakthrough
Marc Andreessen said “software is eating the world” because software told computers what to do.
Agentic AI is eating the world because it tells systems and processes what to do — across your entire stack.
If software was the backbone, agentic AI is the nervous system.
Teams don’t have to boil the ocean. The same crawl-walk-run model applies:
- Find the early adopters inside your organization.
- Pick a couple of high-value workflows and build agents around them.
- Hold internal workshops so people can actually experiment.
- Clean up and connect the data sets that matter most for real-time personalization.
Do that, and your team will start to accelerate — and eventually scale CX use cases that drive revenue, conversion, and loyalty.
This is the next big ROI chapter in customer experience. And it’s already starting.
About the Author
Ben Rothman is Vice President of Customer Experience at Rightpoint, leading strategy and delivery for digital products that transform how Fortune 500 brands engage their customers. He focuses on scalable architecture, human-centered design, and the emerging role of AI across healthcare, finance, retail, telecom, CPG, and entertainment.
