Five Customer Experience Trends to Drive Value in 2025

Welcome to M4 Communications’ Five Customer Experience Trends to Drive Value in 2025.

Before we dive into this year’s trends, I want to start with a story. I recently had a similar experience to the scenario below.

I tried many times to connect to a live agent, it was painful, and after a multitude of attempts, I finally connected with a live agent. But it certainly wasn’t easy.

While I think bots are great, they aren’t so great when they are aren’t trained to understand customer questions, which actually creates friction instead of reducing friction. We want it to be easy to interact with brands, we want quick resolutions to our service requests, and we want to feel good about the brand afterwards.

Isn’t that what customer experience is all about?

I get it. Everyone wants in on the AI action.

There is a lot of content out there about AI, what it promises to do, as well as case studies about brands who have achieved awesome results through successfully implementing AI.

But what about the rest?

NTT Data suggests that 70-85% of current AI initiatives fail to meet their expected outcomes. This is because organisations are still unclear on the purpose of AI and how it can help them; they’re putting the technology ahead of the problem to be solved or worse, ahead of the customer; they don’t have the necessary data to train AI; or they don’t have the infrastructure or resources in place to ready the data for AI or deploy the AI model.

At the end of the day, it still comes down to the why/how of AI for that organisation. Each organisation is different and should focus on the strategy/tactics right for them.

The Year of Intentional AI

2025 needs to be the year of intentional AI. Organisations need to be crystal clear on the why of AI for them and the roadmap on how to ready the organisation for AI, implement AI, and manage AI performance.

Not only does the infrastructure need to be ready but employees need to be ready. This means employees need to trust AI.

Trust is a big thing.

We’ve discussed customer trust previously and how it is declining. In fact the trust gap is growing according to PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey. According to the survey, only 30% of consumers trust companies. A number of factors drive customer trust.

Open communication. Do customers think brands are telling the truth? In Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer, less than two-thirds of consumers believe business leaders tell the truth. Data. Data security and privacy aren’t only at issue but customers question whether the use of their data is ethical. Transparency. A brand should be consistent in its transparency efforts, not only in cases of crises. Social proof. How reputable is the company?

How do companies create trust in AI for employees and customers?

Taking Action is the best way.

Companies should be transparent and educate employees and customers on AI. Involve key stakeholders so they can communicate their concerns as well as learn.

Creating a cross-functional group will build trust and enable alignment across all teams on the development and management of the AI strategy. Establish clear roles and responsibilities for AI development and deployment, and outcomes. Create governance on how to monitor and evaluate AI systems to ensure performance is as expected, to identify any potential issues, and to implement change management. Build in privacy and data protection measures and determine how and when to obtain user consent for data collection and use.

So what’s in store for 2025? How can we drive customer experience deeper into organizations to create value and impact?

Let’s take a look at the five customer experience trends to drive value in 2025.

Five Customer Experience Trends to Drive Value in 2025

These five customer experience trends to drive value in 2025 can help brands drive customer lifetime value and growth.

CX Trend 1: Thanks to AI, the contact center becomes a profit center

Some organizations treat their contact center as an island and this creates a silo in the process. This hurts employee engagement and thus CX. It prevents the contact center from being nothing more than a reactive department, responding to customers and addressing their issues only when customers bring them to the contact center’s attention.

The contact center is one of the largest touchpoints on the customer journey. It should align with sales, marketing, product, and other teams so the organisation is one cohesive unit continuously delivering on the CX strategy.

In addition, the contact center, in many ways, sets the tone for customer sentiment of the brand and the relationship they have with the brand. It’s where relationships start, customer lifetime value is built, and customer advocates are made. That’s why investing in contact center agents and leaders, insights, and technology is vital.

While the contact center should be aligned with the organisation prior to any AI implementation, AI can help build that structure and evolve the contact center from being solely a reactive cost center to a proactive and predictive profit center through the following:

-Aligning the contact center with sales and product teams to turn reactive cases into opportunities for cross-sales and upsales.

-Identifying gaps in processes and collaborating with other teams to make improvements to reduce friction points.

-Handling lower-level routine tasks providing agents more time to understand customers to be proactive and predictive to their needs.

-Predicting churn based on sentiment analysis from feedback, previous interactions with the contact center, sentiment from other listening posts, social media posts/comments and online reviews so they can intervene early to retain revenue.

-Making decisions on what should be included in self-service versus what should be directly handled by a live agent.

-Implementing personalization based on a customer’s past behavioral data — such as browsing and purchasing history, interactions — to identify needs and preferences of that individual so they can proactively engage with that customer.

An example of this is providing more content that customers want to see that would help them. Accenture, in its Life Trends Survey 2024, noted that more than two-thirds of consumers would engage more with a brand that educates them through blogs and videos.

-Enabling better predictive insights to identify opportunities and pain points before customers inquire.

CX Trend 2: CX and EX will converge

There is plenty of data that proves that a great employee experience leads to engaged employees that leads to a great customer experience.

The premise is straightforward.

If an employee has a good on-the-job experience, they will go the extra mile and give customers a wonderful experience, which, in turn, results in customers being loyal to the organisation and advocate for the organisation. This is what we call the Holy Trinity of Growth at M4.

Yet, global employee engagement is around 23%. Why? There are several factors including poor management, lack of recognition, limited career growth opportunities, absence of clear organisational goals and vision, ineffective communication/feedback, poor work/life balance, lack of tools/resources to perform the job, etc.

Would it surprise you to know that an employee’s relationship with their manager is the number one reason employees are disengaged.

EX and CX aren’t aligned in most organisations.

A typical scenario is this – the annual employee engagement survey is sent, employees respond, results are shared, but nothing happens with the feedback. This creates trust issues, low employee morale, and spirals downward from there.

In NTT Data’s 2023 Global Employee Experience Trends Report, it found that the C-suite listed improving EX as their #1 goal, and 94% said that improvements to EX impact their bottom line, yet 83% said their EX levels were low and negatively impacted delivery and business success.

Some improvements we should see include:

-EX metrics show up in organisational KPI dashboards to executive leadership and Board

-More prioritisation of feedback that comes out of employee engagement surveys and more meaningful discussions with employees to create change

-More effective bottom-up and top-down feedback provided and acted on

-More upskill opportunities for employees or opportunities for employees to move to different teams

-More managers and their teams collaborating on how/where to make improvements on ways of working within their own teams

-Creating a feeling of ownership through involving employees in organizational decisions so they know the what’s/why’s of change and how they fit in, which will help employees better embrace change and give leaders more feedback to inform on their decision-making

-Recognizing employees and celebrate wins (even the small ones) more often

-Keeping employee wellbeing on top of mind through ensuring work-life balance, preventing burnout, and providing mental health programs at work

CX Trend 3: Brands Start Leaning into Emotional Outcomes

A brand’s goal should be to help customers achieve their desired outcomes by understanding their needs and preferences and delivering solutions that meet those needs and hopefully building relationships, creating positive experiences, and driving business growth in the process.

But how are customers making these decisions?

Most decisions are based on emotion. Or how Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing at Stanford GSB, puts it, “…90 to 95% of our decisions, our behaviors are constantly being shaped non-consciously by the emotional brain system…if you think about it from that lens and for communication the first thing to do is to play in to the emotional brain rather than the rational brain.”

Are we selling ourselves short just by focusing on functional outcomes? Shouldn’t we be leading with emotional outcomes? Wouldn’t that help our time to value (TTV) metric perform better? As a refresher, TTV measures how long it takes for a customer to start experiencing the benefits (value) of a product or service.

Sentiment analysis tools are leveraging AI and machine learning to go deeper to understand emotions, and provide real-time insights so brands can provide proactive CX that customers crave.

Gartner notes that 71% of B2C and 86% of B2B customers already expect brands to know their preferences and past interactions. The AI and machine learning components of these tools will help brands to be more proactive and predictive.

VoC tools are also leveraging AI and machine learning, with focus on real-time feedback analysis, predictive analytics, and omnichannel integration.

In addition, these tools, with the combination of speed and streamlining interactions, will make it easier for customers to get what they need and brands to deliver it to them.

CX Trend 4: The CMO will evolve into the CCO.

There has been an ongoing discussion on where the CX function sits. Do it sit with the CMO, COO, Chief Product Officer (CPO), or the Chief Customer Officer (CCO)?

Having the CX function in operations or even product, for that matter, while CX needs to collaborate with both teams, sets CX up to be in a silo situation. That’s not good for the customer or the organisation.

That leaves the CMO and CCO. To define the two, the CMO primarily drives marketing strategy and those stages – buyer journey – leading up to purchase and the CCO focuses on the customer journey, the overall customer experience and driving customer loyalty and advocacy.

That still leaves an issue – who handles which without getting in each other’s way and ensuring a seamless experience for the buyer/customer?

It’s hard to break up the customer journey because the journey spans from awareness to advocacy. In addition, since customer experience is a top factor in differentiating brands, how can CX be split from the marketing function?

Going further, customers want what they want – personalised experiences, convenience, brands whose values match their own. Digital and social media during COVID created a meld of the sales and marketing funnel with the customer journey so it’s hard to split the two in an easy way.

The CMO role will become the CCO as the CCO is responsible for driving growth and value. And having all the functions under one C-level role will enable customer-centricity, collaboration, and brand strength.

CX Trend 5: Accessibility becomes a must

Recently I produced a PDF report for a group of executives. I was advised that someone in the group could not read a PDF so I adjusted my processes to produce the report in PDF and word formats.

Note to self: design with inclusivity in mind.

Designing experiences for those with disabilities in mind is very vital today. Case in point: The EU Accessibility Act (EAA) goes into effect on June 28, 2025. And very few are ready.

It has been estimated that almost 90% of global websites are not fully compliant with the latest web accessability standards.

But accessibility is not just about compliance, it is also a competitive advantage.

An accessible website is a chance to reach a $13 trillion market.

However, according, to McKinsey, consumer companies with inaccessible websites and digital strategies lose $6.9 billion annually as frustrated disabled consumers take their business to competitors.

Accenture’s analysis of the Disability Equality Index (DEI) found that organizations that innovate around disability inclusion make 1.6 times more revenue, 2.6 times more net income, 2 times more economic profit and are 25% more productive than competitors.

And, according to Forrester, accessibility improvements have an ROI of $100 for every $1 invested.

What can brands do today to become accessible?

-Audit your existing CX including website, products, and tools you use to deliver your CX to identify gaps. Collaborate with teams on efforts to close the gaps.

-Bring in experts to train your teams on accessibility best practices and to help understand accessibility regulations so the organisation is compliant.

-Engage with customers and employees with disabilities to obtain their feedback and enlist them in usability acceptance testing.

-Communicate with vendors to understand existing inclusivity or plans to build inclusivity into their platforms and tools. Consider adding specialized accessibility tools.

-Monitor and continuously improve.

What are your five customer experience trends to drive value in 2025? Let us know in the comments.

Have a question on how your company can be more customer-centric, or how to start or optimize your existing CX program? Contact us.