The best customer experiences in manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities are the ones customers barely notice. A component shortage already rerouted before the line stops. A delivery exception already resolved before the recipient chases.
A bill that is already accurate. An anomaly that has already been fixed. The ambition shared by the ten professionals named in this year’s CX50 MLEU list is to extend that invisibility: to use AI not to respond to customer effort, but to remove the need for it in the first place.
The CX50 2026, produced by Marketing Week in partnership with Cognizant and Google Cloud, recognises the professionals who are making measurable progress on customer experience across the UK. In MLEU this year, the thread that connects the cohort is not a single technology or a particular use case. It is a conviction that customers in these sectors should have to do less, and that AI, deployed carefully and on the right foundations, is what makes that possible at scale.
From directing to doing
At Octopus Energy, the Magic Ink platform already handles incoming customer emails, surfacing a suggested response for a human agent to review and send. It frees support teams to concentrate on the interactions that genuinely need them, and by Octopus’s own account it is working. But Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, Octopus’s chief product and marketing officer and a member of this year’s CX50 list, is clear about where that leads. The next stage is not showing the customer how to change their direct debit or update their tariff. It is doing it for them. That distinction, between AI that directs the customer and AI that acts on their behalf, is where the real opportunity in this sector lies.
That ambition is shared by Alice Tendler, chief marketing officer at Alfred and another member of this year’s list. Alfred’s proposition is built on the observation that managing energy, mobile, broadband and insurance as four separate relationships, with four separate apps, renewal cycles and support teams, is an unnecessary burden that technology can now remove. By consolidating those services and placing AI at the centre of how they interact, the goal is a single coherent household experience that acts proactively on the customer’s behalf. Tendler is clear that this only works if it is transparent: customers need to be able to see what the AI is doing for them and why. Autonomy without visibility is not a feature; it is a risk.
“The most significant shift we’re seeing across these sectors is the move from AI that informs to AI that acts. Agentic tools have the potential to remove genuine burden from customers. To realise that potential, organisations need to get the foundational work right: trusted data, connected systems, and the right human oversight at every stage. The businesses that invest in those foundations now are the ones that will be able to move confidently and responsibly as they scale the technology."
Rohit Gupta, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Cognizant
From tracking to transparent
In logistics, the customer experience is largely defined by what does not happen: the missed window that was avoided, the exception that was resolved before anyone had to make a call. At GXO Logistics, Gavin Williams leads the deployment of GXO IQ, the first AI-powered, cloud-native operating system built specifically for logistics operations. The ambition is an operating environment in which emerging disruptions are surfaced and addressed early, so the customer rarely needs to know one existed. That is the logistics equivalent of the invisible experience.
From signals to seamless
In manufacturing, particularly in automotive and industrial sectors, the customer relationship is largely a B2B one, and the experience is defined by operational reliability. A tier-1 supplier that surfaces a potential shortage before an OEM’s line is affected is not just performing well operationally; it is delivering a better customer experience. AI that connects demand signals, supplier data and production schedules, and acts on that information before a problem becomes visible, is the manufacturing equivalent of the proactive utility or the pre-empted logistics exception.
The organisations making real progress in this space are the ones that have connected their operational data well enough for AI to act on it, not just surface it. In a B2B context, that move from reactive to predictive is not just an operational improvement. It is the customer experience.
From pilots to production
The scale at which this is already operating is evident across the rest of the list. At BT Group, Cilesta Van Doorn oversees Aimee, a virtual assistant that now handles up to 60,000 customer conversations per week. At Severn Trent, Jude Burditt is working across customer solutions and technology to translate operational data into proactive service. At South East Water, Matt Webb is doing the same across technology and insight. These are not pilot programmes. They are operational deployments, at scale, in organisations that customers depend on every day.
“In complex industrial sectors, technology should empower human expertise. We see strong results when organisations use AI to analyse operational data for proactive, predictive service. However, successful deployments still maintain clear pathways to human support, especially for high-value corporate relationships that require a nuanced understanding of the business context."
Google Cloud
The commercial case for getting this right is significant. Cognizant’s research, produced with Oxford Economics, finds that AI-friendly consumers will drive up to 55% of consumer purchasing activity by 2030.¹ In sectors where switching is low and expectations have historically been set by the quality of the service itself rather than the experience around it, that represents a meaningful shift in what customers will expect and how they will make decisions. Organisations that use their data advantage to meet those expectations proactively will be well-placed. Those that continue to operate with disconnected systems will find that gap becoming more visible, not less.
What the 2026 MLEU cohort demonstrates is that the most important question for CX leaders across these sectors is no longer how quickly they can respond when customers need them. It is how rarely customers need to reach out at all. The ten leaders named here are building towards that standard, and the progress they are making is already redefining what good looks like.
The full CX50 2026 list is produced by Marketing Week in partnership with Cognizant and Google Cloud.
1 Cognizant/Oxford Economics, New Minds New Markets, 2025. cognizant.com/us/en/aem-i/new-minds-new-markets-ai-customer-experience
