March 5, 2026 • 3 min read
In M&A, Customer Experience Now Carries Real Weight
Director of Content & Market Research
March 5, 2026
Companies have traditionally been valued on market position, income, and assets.
But that equation is changing.
As AI reshapes how customers discover, evaluate, and engage with brands, customer experience is fast becoming an additional valuation driver and a central force in merger and acquisition (M&A) conversations.
Indeed, private equity and investment firms are closely looking at whether target companies are making the right AI-enabled CX investments across agentic search, commerce, service, and beyond.
They understand something much more deeply than previously: a smart CX AI strategy isn’t just about experience, it’s about durable growth, defensibility, and long-term profitability.
Calvin Cheng, Partner at West Monroe, underscored this trend in conversation with CX Foundation.
“My team is being brought into both buy-side diligence and sell-side advisory engagements to assess AI readiness in customer experience. This has become part of the investment thesis.”
In other words, AI readiness in customer experience has moved beyond a technical discussion point. According to Cheng, it is now embedded in how investors think about growth, differentiation, and long-term competitiveness.
What Does an “AI Ready” CX Function Look Like?
When private equity firms evaluate AI readiness in customer experience, they consider AI visibility in search and discovery, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Large Language Model (LLM) relevance, and agentic commerce readiness.
Yet, according to Cheng, they’re also going deeper, looking for a strong flow of first-party data across a connected CX ecosystem.
That ecosystem doesn’t treat categories like sales, service, and marketing as separate domains with different budgets, teams, and systems.
Instead, it supports teams in collaborating to transform data into insight and actions that foster growth across the entire customer lifecycle. That covers onboarding, adoption, support, renewal, and expansion.
The future may involve a shared revenue intelligence and orchestration layer that runs across customer-facing functions, unpacking what’s driving growth and coordinating actions.
Martin Schneider, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, refers to this as Growth Operations (GrowthOps), which he pins as an emerging CX category.
“Growth Ops blends the hunter and farmer mentalities. It’s not just about closing new business. It’s about continuous lifecycle optimization and expansion.”
Ultimately, that requires an integrated stack that doesn’t break at every handoff, and that’s a daunting prospect for many organizations stuck in siloes.
However, brands that can successfully track growth across the customer lifecycle will be in a better position to strategically implement AI and drive durable growth than those that still view revenue through the lens of new deals and pipeline growth.
Expect CX to Play a Bigger Role in M&A Moving Forward
According to Cheng, the trend of customer experience influencing M&A decisions will accelerate significantly over the next 12 to 18 months.
“AI-enabled customer experience for growth will soon become a standard diligence category, much like cybersecurity diligence did over the past five years.”
“Today, cybersecurity readiness is table stakes,” he continued. “Companies must demonstrate protection of IT assets, customer data, and regulatory compliance.”
“Similarly, I expect AI readiness for customer acquisition, retention, search visibility, discovery, and commerce to become a standard diligence requirement in the near future.”
As this trend accelerates, brands will better understand the rising value of CX-led growth and perhaps embrace the emergence of a GrowthOps category, too.