Why are we still talking about customers like it’s 2009?

Brands talk about customer-centricity like it’s a clean, noble, universally understood idea.
But the truth about customers, especially in 2026, is neither pure nor simple:

• There is no one-size fits all when it comes to the way humans think. 
• The way decisions are made has revolutionised. 
• And increasingly, the decision-maker isn’t even fully human. 

Yet we still talk about “the customer” like it’s 2009.

This is an invitation to update that mental model and why we need a new way to strategic lens of our customers to replace our comforting but outdated version of customer-centricity.

Classic customer-centricity was built on three big assumptions:

1. The customer thinks in a mostly predictable way.
   Funnel logic, journey stages, rational trade-offs. It makes human behaviour look like a tidy flowchart rather than the chaos it really is. 
2. The human customer is always the one making the decision.
   The idea that the human is the decision maker is nice, but perhaps increasingly untrue as we witness the rise of the bot. 
3. The “average customer” is a useful anchor.
   As if there’s one coherent mental model you can design around and call it done. 

These assumptions have underpinned a decade of customer strategy. 

But they sit very awkwardly against the reality we’re dealing with now.

We designed for inclusion, just not for how different brains actually work.

Recent analysis of global data suggests roughly 15–20% of the world’s population is neurodivergent – including ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other cognitive profiles. (worldmetrics.org)

That’s one in five of your potential customers. That’s not a niche or an edge case. 

Accessibility and UX specialists are increasingly explicit: when you design for cognitive accessibility – clearer content hierarchies, reduced cognitive load, simpler navigation, and the ability to adjust how information is presented – you improve usability for everyone, not just people with cognitive disabilities. (Arc Inclusion)

At the same time, research on neuroinclusive workplaces connects properly supported neurodivergent employees with higher creativity, innovation and productivity, making “neuroinclusion” a business advantage, not a compliance exercise. (diversitycertification.org)

Together, these threads point to a simple conclusion:

• Real customers represent a spectrum of cognitive styles and sensory needs that our old models barely acknowledge. 
• When we design for that spectrum, value goes up, for everyone. 

Even if nothing else had changed, neurodiversity alone would be enough to demand a new definition of “customer.”

But something else has changed too: customers are no longer deciding alone.

AI agents are quietly becoming our customers

While we’ve been updating our empathy maps, a second decision system has slipped into the customer’s life: AI agents.

Large language models and retail-specific agents are already:

• handling search and discovery 
• comparing features and prices 
• filtering out irrelevant options 
• and in some cases, making purchases on the customer’s behalf 

Boston Consulting Group’s 2025 work on agentic commerce describes AI shopping agents as “reshaping digital commerce” and warns that, without intervention, retailers risk being reduced to background utilities inside agent-controlled marketplaces. (BCG Global)

A growing bank of research backs this up. A 2025 study found more than 60% of shoppers have already used conversational AI for shopping, often citing time savings and better recommendations as the main benefits. (Bloomreach)

Other analyses of Cyber Week and holiday spending show AI chat and assistant traffic exploding where in some cases, AI-mediated visits account for double-digit percentages of online orders, and shoppers using AI chat are significantly more likely to convert than those who don’t. (Reuters)

It’s hard to ignore. The real “customer” is increasingly a human–agent duo: the human sets intent; the AI carries a disproportionate amount of the cognitive load. 

Brands now have to convince two decision-makers:

• the human, with their messy, neurodiverse, emotional decision patterns 
• the machine, with its appetite for structure, clarity, and consistent signals 

Here’s the question. When you talk about customer-centricity around the board room or in your 2030 plan, is this what you had in mind?

From customer-centricity to something new…

Put these threads together and where does that leave us?

• Humans don’t think like the neat models we built. 
• Neurodiversity is mainstream, not marginal. 
• AI agents are actively participating in, and sometimes making decisions.
   

The customer is evolving beyond the classical definition we built for them 15 years ago.

That’s why we need to move from old-school customer-centricity to a new way of thinking and understanding our customers. 

A view of modern customers that includes a wide spectrum of human cognitive styles and AI systems acting as decision-makers – and that businesses must design for how decisions actually happen, not how they used to.

It asks different questions:

Not just “who is our customer?” but “how do different minds – human and machine actually process this choice?”

Not just “what journey do we want them to follow?” but “what paths do they really take when they’re overloaded, distracted, assisted by AI, or thinking differently?”

Not just “how do we personalise this by segment?” but “how do we make it easier and clearer in real time for whoever, or whatever is deciding?”

So what does this mean for 2026?

If the last decade was about learning to say “customer-centricity” with a straight face in every meeting, 2026 is about doing something harder: accepting customer reality.

Practically, that means:

1. Design for how people actually think
   Assume distraction, context-switching and cognitive overload as the norm. Work on how you reduce unnecessary choices, streamline flows, and design for different attention spans and processing styles. 
2. Treat neurodiversity as a design input, not a footnote
   Build in options for simplicity, calm modes, adjustable information density and flexible interaction patterns as standard, not as special features. 
3. Optimise for AI as a decision-maker
   Make your propositions machine-legible: clean product data, clear attributes, consistent claims, robust reviews. If an agent can’t confidently “understand” you, it won’t recommend you. 

When it comes to customers in 2026 and beyond the truth is rarely pure and never simple. 

And the businesses that will win will be the ones bold enough to embrace the messy, hybrid, beautifully complex truth of who the customer has actually become and to build their strategy, their design, and their decisions on that reality.