CXA Round up of Predictions 2025: Where Fortune Favours the Brave
Customer experience (CX) isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the gamechanger for competitive advantage. In 2025, it seems CX will look drastically different, driven by technology, changing customer expectations, and new business models.
According to Forrester “CX Fortune will favour the bold in 2025”. In summary they say 2025 will be another year of customer experience (CX) mediocrity following a yearslong trend. Some savvy CX leaders will seize the opportunity to differentiate by improving on table stakes CX capabilities and boosting impact through collaboration with other departments.
However, most teams will keep a misplaced focus on improving CX metrics to meet misguided incentives and rely on performative and ineffectual “quick fix” accessibility initiatives. Meanwhile, some CX leaders will cut redundant software spend, while contact centre outsourcers will leverage generative AI (GenAI) to reduce headcount.
Gartner’s predictions for 2025 are about organisations riding the AI whirlwind and giving caution to organisations getting pulled into innovation and risk and not getting carried away by the storm. Gartner has predicted a generative AI (GenAI) backlash in the next 18 months, claiming that at least 30% of GenAI projects will be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025.
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of customer service requests will be handled by AI. However, it’s important to note that 79% of customers still prefer human interaction when resolving complex issues. Automation will evolve but won’t fully replace the human touch in customer experience.
According to Zendesk CX Trends for 2025 include that 59% of CX Traditionalists want to become more AI driven in the next year, indicating a shared appetite to embrace AI alongside future-looking trendsetters.
Zendesk illustrates how cosmetics retailer, Lush, embraces human centric AI, achieving 82% one touch resolution rate. Also Zendesk reports how Next has accelerated its CX transforming reducing email handling times by 11%.
The Keys to staying ahead summarised by Zendesk are; • Evaluate your AI systems to optimise tailored customer interactions across all touchpoints. • Prioritise loyalty metrics, such as retention rates and customer lifetime value, and integrate AI efficiency metrics, such as response time improvements and personalised offer acceptance rates. • Regularly update these metrics to align with evolving consumer expectations, ensuring that personalised experiences translate into stronger customer loyalty and sustained success
Certainly, the analysts seem tempered in their predictions but talking to CXA’s partners and members the feeling is very much upbeat. That yes, this year since AI burst onto the CX scene in a big way has seen a lot of hype around its use but considering it’s still early days many fully expect to see exciting things continuing to happen in 2025.
One thing is for sure, the economic climate will remain challenging, and brands need to innovate and focus on improving CX to stand out. The brands who can get hyper-personalisation right and deliver incredible customer journeys will be those who succeed in 2025.
For CX and CRM vendors the challenge is clear. It will be those that can innovate consumer-facing AI powered experiences utilising valuable data insights and able to demonstrate how CX can generate significant cost savings that will be the winners in 2025.
We ask several of our esteemed CX colleagues to also predict what they see happening in 2025 please see their articles here too.
Tags: 2025, CX, predictions
