SurveyMonkey Trends 2027: AI Skills and Customer Resolution Gain Focus

What happened

SurveyMonkey's latest Trends report finds that artificial intelligence and uncertainty dominate workplace concerns as organisations look towards 2027. The report, which CustomerThink covered, draws on analysis of millions of surveys.

According to the reporting, businesses are moving away from broad checks on employee sentiment and towards measuring how work actually gets done. The report's figures show a sharp rise in attention to skills training (+151%) and to customer resolution (+140%), suggesting that operational capability is now a higher priority than general mood.

The headline finding is therefore less about how people feel about AI and more about where organisations are directing their effort: building the skills their teams need and fixing the points where customer issues get resolved.

Why it matters

Sentiment surveys have long been the default tool for understanding the workforce, but they tell leaders little about whether a process works. A shift towards task-level and outcome-level measurement, such as how quickly a customer problem is closed or whether staff can use new tools confidently, gives leaders something they can act on. It also reflects a practical reality: AI tools are only valuable when the people using them know how to apply them within real workflows.

For leaders in experience, AI and digital transformation, the signal is that uncertainty is being addressed through operational design rather than reassurance. Organisations that link training and resolution metrics to the day-to-day flow of work are better placed to convert AI investment into faster, more consistent service for customers.

By the numbers

• +151% increase in the focus on skills training, as reported by CustomerThink from SurveyMonkey's Trends report.
• +140% increase in the focus on customer resolution, as reported by CustomerThink from the same report.
• Millions of surveys analysed in the report, which underpins its findings on workplace priorities heading into 2027.

The Renascence take

The most useful reading of this report is not that employees are anxious about AI, but that organisations are finally treating anxiety as a design problem. Uncertainty is rarely solved by messaging alone; it is usually reduced when people can see a clear path from a new tool to a better outcome.

Most leaders will read the skills and resolution figures as a training or productivity story. They are really a signal about experience design. If staff cannot resolve a customer issue confidently with AI in the loop, the uncertainty will surface at the customer's expense. The operators who benefit will map the moments where work stalls, redesign those moments first, and only then decide how much of the process AI should take over.