agentic AI seen as biggest customer engagement shift

A survey by Infobip of technical professionals found that agentic AI is seen as the biggest change in customer engagement in the past 20 years. It also pointed to growing emphasis on AI skills and reskilling among developers.

The poll was based on 170 attendees at Infobip Shift 2026, mainly from engineering and development, IT and technical support, and product roles. Participants came from sectors including software as a service, retail and eCommerce, financial services, telecoms, and consumer technology.

The findings suggest a shift in how technical staff view both customer interaction and their own work. Respondents said autonomous, goal-driven AI agents are moving beyond scripted chat tools into more complex customer journeys, with systems handling service issues across multiple channels.

Infobip linked that shift to its AgentOS platform, which it said is already helping businesses apply AI agents in customer service. It described the market as moving from experimentation towards wider use in business and software development processes.

Respondents also said learning to work with AI would become more important than learning new programming languages. The result suggests a shift in priorities for developers as AI tools become more deeply embedded in coding, service management, and product development.

The survey also highlighted the importance of continuous learning. Developers said reskilling and ongoing education would matter more over the next 20 years than formal qualifications, suggesting employers may need to place greater emphasis on practical adaptation as tools and workflows change.

The research also touched on leadership. Developers said they are more confident in the businesses they work for when senior executives have a software engineering background, pointing to the value technical teams place on leaders with direct product and engineering experience.

Changing priorities

The survey comes as companies across the technology sector test where AI can reduce manual work in customer operations while reshaping software development itself. Businesses have increasingly introduced AI into contact centres, messaging channels, and internal development tools, but the rise of agentic systems marks a step beyond basic automation because these systems are expected to complete tasks with less human intervention.

That has implications for customer engagement strategies. As companies rely more on autonomous software agents to resolve queries or guide users through support and sales journeys, technical teams will need to design systems that work across messaging channels, authentication tools, and service platforms without adding friction.

For developers, the findings suggest professional value may rest less on mastery of individual languages and more on the ability to work alongside AI systems, assess their outputs, and build products that use them safely. The survey does not quantify how quickly those changes will happen, but it reflects a growing view among technical staff that AI literacy is becoming a core skill.

Industry backdrop

Infobip has been expanding its focus on AI as part of its broader communications business. Its platform supports customer engagement, identity, authentication, and contact centre functions, all areas where AI tools are increasingly being introduced to handle volume and reduce response times.

This year's Shift gathering also focused on practical questions around AI adoption, including cybersecurity and the infrastructure needed to support a new generation of software tools. More than 600 businesses and 3,000 local and international experts attended the event, according to Infobip.

While the survey reflects views from a specific conference audience rather than a broad cross-industry sample, it offers a snapshot of how developers and technical professionals are thinking about the next phase of AI adoption. The concentration of respondents in technical roles makes the results particularly relevant to employers assessing hiring, training, and leadership priorities.

Izabel Jelenić, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Infobip, said: “We are at a turning point. Artificial intelligence is not only changing how brands engage with their customers but also how software developers and engineers create, learn, and solve problems.”

Jelenić added: “These insights from developers at Infobip Shift demonstrate the impact of that change. They recognise that agentic AI is rapidly changing customer engagement and that they need to focus on gaining relevant AI skills more than formal programming skills or languages. It's also why we continue to invest in Infobip Shift to give the developer community direct access to the people shaping the future of the global technology industry.”