By Peter Lyon, CEO, Wigmore IT

The past year has been one of the most defining periods for SaaS since the move to cloud. Rising capital constraints, shifting customer expectations, and the rapid commercialisation of AI have exposed the fragility of many existing operating models.

At Wigmore, we work hands-on with more than 30 global SaaS and enterprise organisations. This gives us a uniquely detailed, real-time view of how companies are adjusting their customer, revenue, and operational strategies.

But there is another vantage point that deeply informs our perspective: my role in shaping the themes, agenda and speaker roster for The Customer Conference (TCC) — now one of the largest gatherings of SaaS, Revenue, CS, Support and Product leaders in Europe.

Preparing TCC 2026 has involved hundreds of conversations with CROs, CCOs, founders, investors, product leaders and AI innovators. These discussions — behind the scenes and often off-the-record — offer an unusually accurate preview of where the industry is heading.

Combining what we see inside customer organisations with what we hear from the executives shaping the future of SaaS, here are the five trends we believe will define 2026.

1. The Long Tail Becomes a Board-Level Priority

For years, long-tail customers were treated as an afterthought — valuable in aggregate, but rarely considered strategically. That is no longer the case.

Across our customer base, and echoed repeatedly in TCC speaker briefings, long-tail churn is now one of the biggest drags on net retention. Companies are realising that:

• 70–90% of their customers sit in unmanaged or lightly managed segments

• Traditional CSM coverage simply cannot scale

• CRM and CS platforms are not designed for high-volume orchestration

• Revenue leakage in the long tail often outweighs enterprise expansion

  
  

In 2026, we expect to see the long tail elevated from a “nice to fix someday” challenge to a core growth mandate. Investment will move into automated renewal workflows, AI-driven adoption, in-product engagement, and risk-detection signals that do not rely on human intervention.

The companies that solve their long-tail economics will see the strongest improvements in NRR and operating efficiency.

2. The Agentic CSM Moves from Vision to Reality

In 2025, AI made individuals more productive — but organisations struggled to translate that into operating leverage. The missing layer was orchestration.

In 2026, that begins to change.

The next evolution is what we call the Agentic CSM: an AI-enabled operating layer that assists, coordinates, and in some cases executes key customer workflows. This does not replace humans. Instead, it automates the predictable, repetitive and time-consuming components of post-sales work.

An Agentic CSM model typically includes:

• AI that reads and summarises customer communication

• Systems that monitor product usage and detect risk

• Automated preparation for renewals and QBRs

• In-product guidance for onboarding, adoption and expansion

• AI-triggered next actions powered by unified customer data

  
  

While designing the TCC tracks on AI and Revenue Operations, it became clear that this is where industry leaders are now investing most heavily. The consensus is that no single platform will dominate. Instead, organisations will compose a modern stack from 3–5 AI tools connected through clean data, clear workflows, and strong governance.

In 2026, the Agentic CSM becomes an achievable, operational reality.

3. Product Becomes the Primary Vehicle for Customer Success

As AI takes on more workflow execution, the centre of gravity for customer value delivery shifts decisively toward the product.

Product-led success — once a niche philosophy — is becoming a practical necessity.

The shift looks like this:

• Value moves from periodic conversations to continuous, in-product visibility

• Onboarding becomes guided, personalised, and largely automated

• Product usage data—not sentiment surveys—becomes the main indicator of health

• Customers expect to solve problems without waiting for human intervention

During TCC speaker development, every theme relating to CS, Revenue and Product converged on the same point: if value is not visible inside the product, it may not be visible at all.

2026 is the year where “product-led” stops being a category and becomes the default expectation.

4. AI Reshapes SaaS Pricing Models

AI introduces a new financial challenge: cost unpredictability. Token usage, inference load and compute consumption vary dramatically based on customer behaviour. Traditional flat-fee SaaS pricing cannot absorb this variability indefinitely.

The investors and CFOs we engaged for TCC were unequivocal: pricing must evolve.

What we expect to see in 2026:

• Hybrid models combining seats, usage and outcomes

• AI consumption allowances bundled into enterprise agreements

• Distinct pricing for AI-generated versus human-driven actions

• Transparent cost-to-serve tiers, especially across the long tail

  
  

This is not purely a commercial question — it is an operating model question. Companies that align their pricing with their cost-to-deliver AI capabilities will preserve margin and customer trust.

5. The CRO Model Becomes the Dominant Revenue Structure

The shift toward unified revenue ownership accelerated dramatically in 2025. In 2026, it becomes the standard.

Companies are realising that:

• Net retention is now as important as net-new revenue

• Revenue must be orchestrated across Sales, CS, Product and Support

• “Every dollar is green,” and should be managed under a single accountable owner

• Commercial fluency is now mandatory for CS leadership

• RevOps is the backbone of the modern operating model

In curating CROs and CCOs for TCC 2026, this trend was unmistakable. Senior leaders want connected data, unified teams, consistent forecasting and one operating motion — not four competing ones.

The result will be a more integrated revenue engine and a clearer path to predictable growth.

Conclusion: A New Operating Model for a New Era of SaaS

2025 showed us the limits of the classic SaaS operating model. Manual workflows, disconnected systems, inconsistent data and fragmented teams are not compatible with the next decade of software.

2026 is the reset point.

The companies that win will:

• Treat the long tail as a strategic revenue lever

• Build agentic workflows that scale humans, not replace them

• Deliver customer value primarily through the product

• Align pricing with AI-era economics

• Unify revenue under a single operating model

  
  

Our work at Wigmore — alongside the insights gained through building TCC 2026 — confirms that this transformation is already underway.