Competitive Intelligence

EY: Customer Experience Services Capabilities, 2026

This EY: Customer Experience Services Capabilities, 2026 competitive intelligence profile is for customer experience leaders, CMOs, and sourcing executives evaluating EY’s consulting led, AI first approach to CX transformation.

A composite graphic combining a placement diagram on the left with a text panel on the right. Left: a three tier beach themed framework diagram grouping customer experience service providers into three horizontal horizon bands. The vertical axis represents innovation scope, moving from functional at the bottom to enterprise in the middle to ecosystem at the top. The horizontal axis represents value aspiration, moving from digital on the left to experience in the middle to growth on the right. Companies are listed alphabetically within each horizon. Horizon 3, ecosystem synergy and new value creation, lists 14 providers: Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, EXL, EY, Firstsource, Genpact, IBM, Infosys, KPMG, Publicis Sapient, Sutherland, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), and Tech Mahindra. Horizon 2, end to end experience transformation, lists 12 providers: Amdocs, ATAIN, Coforge, Concentrix, Deloitte, HCLTech, InTouch CX, LTM, Movate, Transcom, TTEC, and Wipro. Horizon 1, functional transformation, lists 6 providers: HGS, ibex, iQor, Konvecta, Mphasis, and TELUS Digital. Right: a two panel header shows the EY logo, with the tagline "Shape the future with confidence" beneath it, on a white background beside a purple panel reading "Horizon 3, ecosystem synergy and new value creation" with the tagline "Drive OneEcosystem synergy and create new sources of CX value." Below the header, a pull quote reads "Consulting led CX transformation sold as C-suite growth." Below the quote, a paragraph states that HFS Horizons: Customer Experience Services, 2026 assesses vendor capabilities, innovation, and value potential across the HFS customer experience services value chain based on a range of dimensions to understand the why, what, how, and so what of their service offerings across three distinct horizons, and that the report evaluates the capabilities of 33 service providers, including CX specialists, global system integrators, and consultancies. Source: HFS Research, 2026.

Note: All service providers within a Horizon are listed alphabetically
Source: HFS Research, 2026

Key facts about EY’s customer experience services capabilities

A six panel fact table. Key offerings, listed as a single block: growth strategy, CX strategy and operating model design, customer journey design and engineering, product and service innovation, marketing transformation, sales transformation and ecommerce, customer service transformation, customer data strategy, customer insights and voice of the customer analytics, AI powered front office solutions, and agentic CX transformation. Mergers and acquisitions from 2023 to 2026: Aqurance in 2025, a Greek Veeva services partner deepening life sciences customer technology; and Future Friendly in 2023, an Australian product and service innovation design studio. Key clients: the number of customer experience clients is not disclosed; six client relationships are listed, one named directly, E.ON, and five described without naming the companies, a leading telecommunications provider in the UK, a global cruise line and vacation company, a global home furnishings retailer, a global pharmaceutical company, and a leading global financial services firm. Partnerships: 13 named technology partners, Adobe, Microsoft, SAP, Pega, ServiceNow, NVIDIA, Qualtrics, Veeva, Kraken, Nottingham Spirk, Figma, Replit, and 8090. Global operations and resources: customer experience headcount is 7,000 plus; EY operates 50 plus EY wavespace and innovation centers, including physical AI labs globally, with center locations grouped by region, Americas with 4 named locations, the US, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil; EMEA with 9 named locations, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece, the UAE, and Israel; and APAC with 5 named locations, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and India. Flagship internal IP: 4 named assets, EY.AI for Customer, an agentic platform and toolkit for CX transformation; EY.AI solution suite, AI solutions across experience, marketing, sales, and voice; EY Voice, voice analytics with proprietary machine learning models; and EY.AI Experience Intelligence, an AI twin customer simulation for research and validation. Source: HFS Research, 2026.

Source: HFS Research, 2026

EY’s performance in the study and HFS’ views of its strengths and development opportunities for customer experience services capabilities

A composite graphic combining a Horizon placement graphic on the left with a text panel on the right. Left: a simplified version of the three tier beach themed Horizons diagram, reused from Exhibit 1 with the company name lists removed. The image keeps the same sky, ocean, and sand bands, sky at top for Horizon 3, ocean in the middle for Horizon 2, and sand at the bottom for Horizon 1. The Horizon 3 label, "Horizon 3, ecosystem synergy and new value creation," is set inside a bordered, colored box at the top of the sky band, with the EY logo and its "Shape the future with confidence" tagline placed directly beneath it in that same sky area. The Horizon 2 label, "Horizon 2, end to end experience transformation," and the Horizon 1 label, "Horizon 1, functional transformation," appear in plain gray text with no border, over the ocean and sand bands respectively, showing that Horizon 3 is EY's assessed position while the other two horizons are deemphasized. Right: a Strengths section lists five points. A growth agenda built on an AI first CX: EY Studio+ sells CX transformation as a C-suite growth agenda, with a thesis that AI will become the primary CX layer and that as customers shift to AI agents and AI mediated search, brands risk losing control of their experience; EY embeds generative and agentic AI to orchestrate human and machine touchpoints. Vertical platforms built on acquired design depth: EY organizes its CX go-to-market by industry sector and backs it with co-built platforms such as Telecom.ai with NVIDIA and EY Nexus in financial services, with design depth coming from studios acquired across 37 deals since FY15, and the practice draws on the firm's full-firm capabilities, pairing boardroom trust from its CFO heritage with strategy, tax, legal, and supply chain reach. An agentic platform built on EY knowledge and IP: EY is building EY.AI for Customer, an agentic platform and toolkit grounded in the firm's knowledge, data, and IP, alongside an EY.AI solution suite spanning experience, marketing, sales, and voice, with proprietary tools extending the stack from EY Voice analytics to Experience Intelligence, an AI twin platform launched to simulate customers for research and validation. Outcomes: for E.ON, EY unified a fragmented experience into one app and platform, lifting customer satisfaction and engagement; for a leading telecommunication provider's SMB segment, it delivered a single customer view powered by 27 AI and machine learning models, generating £38 million in in-year revenue and a 5x lift in campaign performance. Client and partner reference kudos: clients praise EY as an accessible thought partner that tailors its approach to their needs, while partners highlight its sector expertise, leadership vision, and collaboration on joint solutions with repeatable go-to-market. A Development opportunities section lists three points. What we'd like to see more of: EY can elevate its talent transformation into a stronger market narrative; its skills first architecture, EY Badges, and ProFinda deployment platform are well codified but underplayed, even as workforce readiness decides agentic CX adoption. Next steps: the firm can lean into Services-as-Software™, and with agentic AI central to its thesis of AI as the primary CX layer, productized offerings with outcome based pricing are the natural next step beyond delivery accelerators. Client and partner reference critiques: clients want a stronger, more challenging point of view and smoother collaboration across EY entities, while partners push EY to share commercial risk and simplify working across borders and service lines. Source: HFS Research, 2026.

Source: HFS Research, 2026

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