Feature
The Gist
- AI utilization. AI-driven insights are crucial for brands to deliver personalized and proactive customer experiences.
- Customer control. Customers increasingly prefer to dictate their interactions with brands.
- Hyper-personalization. Brands that use granular personalization strategies can significantly stand out from their competitors.
Customer experience has become more than just a priority; it's a competitive differentiator.
With customers expecting consistent personalization across channels, proactive engagement and the flexibility to control their own narrative, brands must respond by leveraging AI-driven insights and omnichannel capabilities that offer deeper connections.
This article explores the key trends shaping CX, from voice and conversational AI to hyper-personalization, providing a roadmap for brands aiming to elevate their customer experience strategies.
Table of Contents
- Trend #1: Customers Want to Control the Narrative
- Trend #2: Digital Customer Experience Remains a Priority
- Trend #3: Great Customer Service Is Not Optional
- Trend #4: Hyper-Personalization Becomes the Goal
- Trend #5: Omnichannel Is Everything, Everything Is Omnichannel
- Trend #6: You Need to Tap Into AI-Powered Emotional Intelligence
- Trend #7: Voice and Conversational AI Will Dominate
- Trend #8: You Need Proactive & Predictive CX
- The Future of CX: Personalization, Predictive Insights and Human Connection
Trend #1: Customers Want to Control the Narrative
Quite often, customers feel like they are cornered into taking specific actions, and it makes them feel powerless and frustrated.
For example, when a customer calls customer service and is forced to use an interactive voice response (IVR) system that is tedious and takes forever to wade through when all they want is to press whatever number it takes to get to a live agent. A better alternative is to provide them with the opportunity to use an AI-driven chatbot, a knowledge base, frequently asked questions or the ability to speak directly with a service agent. No matter how they choose to contact customer service, they will be in control of their own narrative, and it will enhance, rather than detract from, their customer experience.
Mathilde Collin, co-founder and exec chair of Front, told CMSWire that one report from her company on the science behind customer relationships revealed that customers are looking for more autonomy.
"Customers prefer being offered a few solutions to a problem over having a problem solved with a single solution," she said, adding that the report also found that basic psychological needs (relatedness, mastery and autonomy) apply to customer relationships as well.
Related Article: Improve CX: Enable Customers to Control Their Own Narratives
Trend #2: Digital Customer Experience Remains a Priority
As CMSWire's own State of Digital Customer Experience Report pointed out, digital customer experience continues to evolve as a priority. Of the customer experience executives polled, 81% said that DCX is extremely or very important. In fact, only 1% cited the area as not important — down from 2% last year.
Viviana Bertinetto, chief customer officer at Language I/O, said that efficiency will be the key to CX over the next year. “Many B2B companies will have to focus on digital CX and reserve their teams for larger enterprise customers. It will be critical for them to do this without completely losing personalization."
The CMSWire report also revealed that brands with effective DCX tools are nearly twice as likely to have implemented personalization compared to those with tools that are considered ineffective, with 34% of those with tools “working well” already reaping the benefits of their personalization efforts.
The technology that allows greater levels of personalization is continuing to evolve, and now includes sentiment and intent analysis. "Tools that provide sentiment analysis will continue to be successful as they create efficiency by scanning and understanding content so it can be easily routed to the correct human. Tools providing insight into intent will be successful as well,” said Bertinetto.
This technology, she added, will be particularly helpful when it comes to gaining both efficiency and personalization — since intent can better target stakeholders and buyers.
Trend #3: Great Customer Service Is Not Optional
Consumer expectations are high when it comes to customer service, and they are only getting higher. According to one Statista survey of US consumers, 70% said they expected a response from a brand on the same day, 46% expected a response by the next day and 16% would be willing to wait three days.
Additionally, another Statista survey found that 94% of responding consumers say a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to purchase again.
After a negative customer service experience, more than half of consumers either cut back on their spending with the brand or stop purchasing from it entirely, according to a Qualtrics report.
“Businesses lose $75 billion a year to revenue churn as a direct result of poor service — and that data is from a good year,” said Collin. “In the foreseeable macro environment, every minute a company waits to improve customer retention is a minute too late.” Fortunately, many brands are realizing that an investment in customer service is also an investment in customer experience.
The personalized experience that customers expect extends to customer service as well. By recognizing past purchase history and knowing the customer’s name, address and contact info, the experience can be highly-personalized, and customers are able to avoid frustrating and time-consuming pain points such as requiring them to repeat information.
Related Article: Customer Service Experience: Definition, Tips & Examples
Trend #4: Hyper-Personalization Becomes the Goal
Karl Van den Bergh, chief marketing officer at Gigamon, told CMSWire that the strongest brands, fueled by the strongest marketing leaders, will leverage AI tools’ capabilities of hyper-personalizing marketing experiences at scale. "In our increasingly digital world, the importance of authenticity and relationship-building will shine through and help businesses stand out."
Personalization is important to consumers, and over the past few years, their expectations have dramatically risen after doing business with tech brands such as Amazon during the pandemic.
A Deloitte report revealed that nearly 3 in 4 consumers are more likely to purchase from businesses that deliver personalized experiences — and spend 37% more with those brands. Not surprisingly, the report also indicated that brands that lead in personalization improve customer loyalty 1.5 times more effectively than brands with poor personalization.
Unfortunately for many brands, they are not delivering the level of personalization that customers expect. In fact, CMSWire’s report indicated that, if anything, we seem to have almost gone backward in regards to personalization, revealing that the tendency is against granularity, with 65% of respondents describing their personalization as either “one to many” or “one to some.”
Those brands that are providing customers with a more granular approach with “one to few” is 22%, an increase of 4% over last year This is indicative that truly granular, hyper-personalization is still the exception rather than the rule where personalization is used. This isn’t because there is a lack of interest in personalization. In fact, the report showed that the proportion of those brands that are considering an evaluation of personalization has increased to 40%.
Bradley Hearn, senior product marketing manager at Nutrient, told CMSWire that as consumer behavior continues to evolve, it’s harder than ever for companies to keep up. “As a result, brands and retailers must prioritize personalization or they will begin to lose customers at the beginning of the customer journey.”
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
Sep
25
Call Spoofing Trends Financial Institutions Can't Afford to Ignore
Don't let robocalls sabotage your customer relationships. Learn how to secure your voice channel.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
CX Reality Check: What Your Customers Are Really Thinking
Register now and get the insights you need to not just meet rising expectations, but exceed them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Content Leaders Collective: What a Good CCMS Actually Looks Like
Discover how content leaders transform clunky systems into growth engines — and why your competitors are ahead.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Hype to High-Impact CX Strategies That Actually Scale
Turn buzzworthy AI and outsourcing trends into measurable CX wins with fresh 2025 data.
Watch Now
“Companies need to think creatively,” Hearn added, “and most importantly, think about the customer, to immediately capture their attention at the awareness stage of their journey.” He suggested that customers need to know how a brand or product relates to them or fits their needs without having to dig. “Otherwise, they’ll look elsewhere."
Trend #5: Omnichannel Is Everything, Everything Is Omnichannel
Customers have become used to being able to interact with brands on multiple channels, including their websites, mobile apps, emails, phones and brick-and-mortar storefronts. They expect a consistent, frictionless experience across all of a brand’s channels, and they expect their interactions to be personalized.
The omnichannel customer experience consists of all of a customer’s touchpoints, across all of a brand’s channels. Because these channels are seamlessly connected, customers can easily move from one channel to another without interruption or friction.
Omnichannel experience will continue to evolve as customers demand seamless, personalized interactions across phygital (physical and digital) touchpoints. Meeting these expectations means not only offering consistency across channels but also embedding AI ecosystems that unify customer interactions across platforms.
With brands increasingly turning to integrated AI ecosystems, they’re now able to capture more complete data about customer behaviors and preferences, resulting in more context-rich and cohesive experiences. These AI ecosystems allow brands to integrate CRM data, predictive insights and customer engagement tools across multiple platforms, creating a unified customer profile.
For instance, AI ecosystems embedded in CRM tools can deliver real-time insights to customer service agents across channels, enabling proactive engagement and personalized recommendations, whether the interaction happens in-store, online or through a mobile app.
Bill Staikos, head of client experience strategy & intelligence, asset servicing, at BNY, said he expects omnichannel investments to accelerate.
"Omnichannel, as a strategy, turned 20 years old in 2023. Companies will accelerate investment in omnichannel capabilities, with digital as the foundational pillar, to drive down their cost to serve, and personalize experiences, particularly given the economic headwinds expected next year,” he said, adding that customers are demanding more from the brands they buy from each day.
Related Article: No Excuses: Time to Build a Cohesive Omnichannel Engagement Strategy
Trend #6: You Need to Tap Into AI-Powered Emotional Intelligence
Van den Bergh suggested that by tapping AI to take over the burden of sifting through the noise and available data, organizations will ultimately be able to provide a one-on-one hyper-personalized buyer journey at scale, which is going to be a cosmic shift for the marketing profession.
"However,” he noted, “this personalization can only go so far with AI. Modern marketing programs require the human element to drive the buyers’ experience strategy, making marketing talent, knowledge and skills even more valuable in the AI era."
As digital interactions with brands have become the default for many customers, the need for genuine, human-centered engagement has only intensified. While the pandemic initially spotlighted the importance of personal connections in a largely virtual world, today’s consumer expectations have matured. It’s clear that brands must go beyond simple personalization to provide emotionally resonant experiences that feel personal even through digital channels.
According to Jason Finkelstein, CMO at Numa, brands should prioritize customer experience tools that bring humanity to the forefront. "With the adoption of technology that personalizes the customer experience — and puts the customer first, not the backend process — brands can break through the noise in the market right now and reach their audience in the way they want to be reached.”
Now, this approach isn’t merely about offering personalization at scale; it’s about making digital channels feel as human as possible. AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and similar tools continue to evolve, allowing brands to offer dynamic, responsive support that can closely mimic human empathy and understanding.
Yet, this shift doesn’t mean that the role of human agents will diminish. If anything, their presence becomes even more critical in specific scenarios. A UJET report, cited by Drew Giovannoli, former VP of Marketing at Rev and now founder of Buried Wins, highlighted that 78% of consumers still seek human interaction after a single misstep with digital assistance.
"Given the significant risk of losing customers, businesses have to ensure human involvement when developing strategies around AI for accessibility services,” he said. “While AI can be used to increase speed and quality of digital operations around customer service, it’s still critical to have humans involved in the process. Plus, he added, the human ability to provide context to the AI prevents errors that cause customers to jump ship.
Trend #7: Voice and Conversational AI Will Dominate
In CX, voice and conversational AI are fast becoming dominant interfaces, reshaping how businesses interact with their audiences. As natural language understanding (NLU) and machine learning (ML) models become more refined, they enable more fluid, context-aware exchanges that can often be indistinguishable from human interactions.
As this technology advances, it's moving beyond basic query handling to support nuanced, multi-turn conversations that can anticipate customer needs. Healthcare providers, for instance, use conversational AI to streamline patient interactions, enabling tasks like booking appointments, managing prescriptions and answering questions about treatment protocols, all while maintaining privacy and regulatory compliance.
Nikola Mrkšić, CEO and co-founder of PolyAI, told CMSWire that although younger generations of users have been able to extract value from customer service chatbots, many older generations refuse to engage with them. “The preferred channel for service interactions for most, young and old, is still voice. When a customer is frustrated, they don’t want to type out a long explanation of their problem. It’s so much easier to just say it. Voice is king for customer service, and that will be true for 2025 and beyond.”
The integration of voice and conversational AI with other channels is also a trend worth watching. By linking these AI tools with customer data platforms, businesses are gaining a more holistic view of customer journeys, allowing for seamless transitions between voice, text and even video interactions. This fusion promises a CX where the technology "remembers" past interactions, adapting responses based on prior engagements and personalizing future experiences.
Trey Courtney, global SVP and chief product officer at Mood Media, said AI voice technology will reshape retail by creating personalized shopping experiences at scale. "Soon, it’ll be very commonplace to walk through a store and hear tailored recommendations and real-time promotions in a voice that resonates specifically with you — much like having a personal shopping assistant.”
He continued, “These adaptive voice systems will forge deeper connections between brands and consumers by learning individual shopping patterns and speaking to customers in contextually relevant moments — alerting a coffee lover to a new roast as they browse nearby, suggesting recipe pairings when they pick up ingredients or reminding them of items from their digital cart that are now on sale in-store.”
Courtney predicted that when implemented ethically, with proper permissions and transparent licensing, this technology will transform casual shoppers into engaged customers, creating truly memorable experiences that set brands apart.
Related Article: What Is Conversational AI? More Than Just Chatbots
Trend #8: You Need Proactive & Predictive CX
Brands will rely increasingly on predictive analytics to transform CX from reactive to anticipatory, leveraging data to proactively address customer needs.
Craig Crisler, CEO of SupportNinja, highlighted this shift, noting that while sentiment analysis has laid the groundwork by helping brands understand customer emotions, "the true value lies in the predictive capabilities of AI." By forecasting customer needs before they arise, predictive analytics enhances operational efficiency and reduces response times. This precision enables businesses to allocate resources more effectively, providing faster, more accurate service and ultimately improving the customer experience.
As companies enhance their predictive CX capabilities, many are developing customer-centric AI strategies that emphasize improvements in user experience, operational efficiency and risk management. This shift highlights the importance of customer experience as a core part of AI-driven CX, where predictive technology not only anticipates needs but aligns with a commitment to user satisfaction and safety.
According to an InfoTech report, brands are prioritizing privacy, security and transparency when implementing AI tools, addressing customer concerns about data ethics and reinforcing trust.
Looking forward, we can expect more brands to integrate proactive, AI-driven insights into their CX strategies, as the competitive advantage of addressing issues and needs before they arise becomes more apparent. By harnessing data to predict customer behavior, brands are setting a new standard for responsiveness and personalization.
The Future of CX: Personalization, Predictive Insights and Human Connection
As CX continues to evolve, brands must recognize that meeting customers’ growing expectations for personalized, consistent and proactive engagement is essential to maintaining loyalty and trust. By investing in technology that enables autonomy, emotional intelligence and omnichannel consistency, businesses will be ready to deliver experiences that resonate on a human level, setting a new standard for how brands engage with their audiences.
