Top customer experience trends in 2025 and beyond

1. AI-powered personalization widens the gap between CX leaders and laggards

Consumers expect organizations to understand and anticipate their needs. Businesses offering hyperpersonalized experiences and tailored, proactive communications are widening the gap with those that don’t. Generative AI provides the opportunity to craft and deliver tailored content at scale, removing barriers to segmenting and targeting customers. And leveraging AI-powered personalization enables these leading organizations to deliver customized interactions and proactive service, building customer loyalty and bolstering brand reputation.

“When we leverage data, we can make the service invisible by reaching out to the customer proactively, knowing potential scenarios where the customer may have an issue,” said Praj Ramachandra, Managing Director at Accenture. “Reaching out to them through simple SMS or text by offering services goes a long way in terms of improving the customer experience.”

Praj Ramachandra

Managing Director, Accenture

2. Intentional channel strategies deliver exceptional CX

Real-time cross-channel visibility provides businesses with the transformative ability to deeply understand sentiment and topics surrounding their brands. Organizations are orchestrating strategies that seamlessly meet customers in the most relevant channels, while providing human and virtual agents with the context they need to deliver an exceptional experience.

“It’s critical to ensure that the channels you offer align with the needs and behavioral trends of your audiences,” said Sami Beydoun, Team Leader, Student Services Hub at Western Sydney University.

In a virtuous cycle, leading organizations are leveraging the insights they glean from listening and interactions to continually monitor and improve customer journeys. “The end goal is to use the analytics to inform us about where our knowledge gaps are and where things have fallen short in a journey,” said Beydoun.

Sami Beydoun

Team Leader, Student Services Hub  , Western Sydney University

4. Ethical AI becomes a strategic imperative

Pending regulations and concerns about brand damage are moving ethical AI from a nice-to-have to a requirement. Whether developed in-house or sourced from vendors, organizations will require AI solutions to pass high levels of scrutiny, focusing on transparency, lack of bias, reversibility and explainability. Discussions with vendors around compliance will become commonplace. Vendors will be expected to explain how they future-proof customers for both pending and unforeseen regulations. Organizations are already evaluating tools on more than technical details — they want to understand the design philosophy underpinning AI tools as part of their evaluation.

“AI is not a one-and-done solution; it continually evolves,” said Bill Dummett, Chief Privacy Officer at Genesys. “Ensuring ethical AI must also be a continuous process. It requires ongoing scrutiny to prevent unintended biases or harmful outcomes. You need to be a good steward of your data and ensure your vendors meet the same high standards.”

Bill Dummett

Chief Privacy Officer, Genesys

5. Approaches to managing the workforce are evolving for AI-powered CX

Organizations are realizing that existing approaches don’t reflect the needs of the multigenerational, distributed workforce in a modern multichannel, AI-enabled contact center. Workforce optimization and management is evolving to workforce engagement management (WEM) — not just forecasting and scheduling, but also quality, coaching, real-time AI support and knowledge management — to better enable and support the employee experience.

“Companies embracing WEM even more broadly — including categories like coaching, quality management and knowledge management — really help agents to improve their performance and also their satisfaction,” said Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst at Metrigy.

Robin Gareiss

CEO and Principal Analyst, Metrigy