So, we decided to select 7 key aspects of customer experience that will allow you to gain a competitive advantage and grow your business in 2025 - because customer experience is equally important for any business, whether it is B2B, B2C, or a separate niche - in any case, what the customer feels and how he evaluates your work will drive his further decisions regarding cooperation. Attracting a customer is expensive, and we have repeatedly said that retaining your customers is the basis for business success and stability, and only after achieving these indicators can you think about active engagement strategies. So, how do you achieve the most positive customer experience possible in 2025?
Let's find out.
What were the trends in 2024?
As we have already mentioned, this is not the first time we have made such a selection. So let's take a little retrospective and recall what trends we identified as defining at the end of 2023.
Greater focus on customer experience . This trend may not be in today's top list, but it is worth mentioning. We are convinced that there are still companies that have not accepted the concept of customer experience as an important aspect of their business, and we need to work with them. On the positive side, most businesses today are actively investing in researching and improving their customers' experience, which has a good effect on both the companies themselves and their customers - a win-win.
Personalization . We'll talk about it in more detail below, as it is indeed a fundamental part of the customer experience - especially in the AI era.
The influence of social media. It is no longer a trend but a given. For medium and large businesses, positive branding on social media, or even better, an active and loyal community, is becoming a factor of advantage over competitors when it comes to attracting and sometimes retaining customers.
Self-service . This trend deserves to be in this top, but we have rethought it through the prism of AI, as AI is now becoming the main technology for providing high-quality self-service.
Omnichannel and proactivity . We will also talk about this below, but you should understand that omnichannel is inevitable nowadays - customers want to choose where and how to communicate with you.
Artificial intelligence . The main part of our top is AI. This is a technology that has already changed the world of customer service, and we can't even imagine how far it will go in the near future, given that AI is currently in its infancy - at least as a tool for direct interaction with customers.
Working with customer loyalty
It's not just and not so much about all kinds of loyalty or customer retention programs - although it's about that too, as the latest PwC study shows that 54% of senior managers have budgeted significantly higher budgets for this in 2025 - but about loyalty and its importance in general. You have to think about how to create this loyalty - in many cases, it already exists, but not all managers fully understand the reason for it. This can happen without any bonuses or gifts - it is a factor of price, product quality, service quality, or even the geographical location of your business for individual customers. You need to see these factors and find an individual approach to each group of customers - that is, reward them with what is important to them.
In addition, think about how to create loyalty from the first interaction with you - understand what is missing. Perhaps good and caring service? Or maybe a clear loyalty program that has a clear value? Often businesses, for example, when issuing a conditional loyalty card for accumulating bonuses, do not even voice its terms and conditions - and how many customers will read and understand these terms and conditions? This is the answer to why it usually doesn't work.
Personalization
For the third year in a row, we have been writing about personalization in our annual trends, and this is not a reason to stop mentioning it - on the contrary, it is necessary, because not all companies have yet realized the importance of personalization. We emphasize the word “understood” because a simple greeting by name or even a birthday greeting is no longer an acceptable level of personalization, even in the B2C segment - it's worth going deeper, especially given the progress of tools that allow for such a deep analysis of customer behavior. According to a recent McKinsey & Co. study, 71% of customers not only want, but ultimately expect a personalized approach from businesses, and an impressive 76% are upset by its absence - and this is in such a competitive and progressive market as the United States!
Personalization is a broad concept, the essence of which is clear. The important thing is that everything should be personalized - your attitude to the customer, service, offer, loyalty program, marketing, etc. Of course, this will require investment in tools, but it is an investment that will definitely come back to you.
Voice assistants and robots are becoming more and more popular
In the entire world, full-fledged voice-activated robotic assistants - that is, not just those that can reproduce sound, but also understand human speech - are becoming increasingly popular. It's worth noting here that the growth in popularity does not mean that the market share is already large on all markets, as in some European countries only large companies, such as banks, can afford such systems, which make them rare for end customer. However, in the US market, more than 40% of shoppers are already using voice assistants, and you know what that means, right?
It means that in the near future, our market will see the same thing, and you can already adopt it. Of course, you need to understand the math and the implementation process and make a plan, but the fact that this is one of the most important trends in the context of improving the customer experience cannot be denied.
Omnichannel service
Yes, we have already discussed this issue at the end of 2022 and at the end of 2023. Its relevance has not disappeared, because the introduction of full-fledged omnichannel services is still far away. Omnichannel means two key aspects: the first is, of course, customer support and service in all necessary channels - voice and text, and in some cases, video communication, and these channels should be combined in one management system. The second aspect is less obvious but no less important: the ability to store data about the client and the communication process, as well as key performance indicators of the service in the context of not only each channel separately but also in total. This will not only allow you to analyze performance, but also improve personalization and learn more about your customers.
Artificial intelligence
Yes, this point was expected, but where without it? Progress in the field of AI is going by leaps and bounds, and there's no denying that you'll soon have to adapt AI to your business in one way or another. Artificial intelligence is not only about speech recognition and voice robots, it is also about a smart assistant that can provide your managers or operators with the right answers when working with customers, analyze customer emotions during a conversation, automatically assess quality by listening to AI conversations, etc.
According to Capgemini research, 60% of businesses plan to invest in artificial intelligence. This is already a loud wake-up call that you should at least think about implementing such systems, as it will definitely improve customer service. Artificial intelligence in the context of improving customer service can take many forms: the so-called AI operators, i.e. full-fledged voice assistants for customers that can serve them both in text and voice channels, advanced workflows, and generative search models.
AI also plays a huge role in improving the efficiency of your business from the inside: yes, we have already mentioned AI knowledge bases, but some companies go further - they have AI acting as supervisors, not only evaluating performance but also providing recommendations for improvement. The only question is that it will not be possible to immediately abandon human participation in most processes, so it is important to implement such solutions not only gradually but also in synergy with the usual human approach. Thus, the customer should always have the opportunity to communicate with a live operator, and the AI supervisor should have a familiar, live professional above him or her to help resolve issues and see the nuances that artificial intelligence is not set up or trained to handle.
More focus on objective data
It's no secret that we've been measuring the quality of customer experience for a long time now using dozens of precise metrics and key performance indicators to provide comprehensive information about whether a customer is satisfied with your company and what stages of the customer journey you need to improve to achieve better results. However, many companies still either don't pay enough attention to this process or don't approach it comprehensively. This is a problem, because in this case, you can miss the problem or simply make the wrong decision based on knowingly incorrect input data.
First, it is not so much whether you focus on the conditional CSAT or NPS that matters, but how you calculate it and form a sample. Often, a conditional questionnaire through a form will not give you the right result, at least because of low audience engagement and the inability to cover certain segments of your target audience, such as the older generation, with this channel.
Second, many countries, for example, still do not pay enough attention to the CES (Customer Effort Score) indicator, and in vain - because it is one of the main drivers of customer experience and, in fact, its second main component, after the beloved CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) indicator. Avoiding its calculation means not understanding whether it's easy or difficult for a customer to use your services or products, even though their CSAT score may remain high for a while - and only decline in the process as a result.
Finally, in some cultures, complaining is simply not accepted - a prime example is the culture of Japan, where a mock CSAT survey will not give any representation of the real situation at all - all answers will be positive, while it will not be possible to identify the problem. So, you need to take all these aspects into account and, more importantly, choose a solution that will help you automate the process of collecting all this data as much as possible - in any case, if you really care about customer experience, there is no such thing as full automation - tools such as focus groups or exit interviews will still require your involvement - and rightly so.
Conclusion
As you can see, trends in customer experience do not change, and this stability determines their importance, because it turns out that over the years, companies have seen the positive impact of the above aspects on improving customer experience and continue to move in this direction. The only qualitative difference between the situation at the end of 2023 and the end of 2024 is an even greater interest in AI solutions as a game changer that should completely change the approach to customer service and customer interaction in general. The market for such solutions is growing, their number is increasing, and so is the quality, and we can already say that over the past 2 years we have moved from a more trial, semi-theoretical approach to adapting such solutions into business processes to the full involvement of artificial intelligence in daily interactions with customers.
We would like to note that it is the introduction of AI that will allow you to more effectively adapt all other trends, such as personalization of service, omnichannel, data processing, and loyalty management. All of these aspects are about big data, which means that you will hardly be able to avoid AI, as it will be able to cope with this task. The sooner this transition takes place, the better for you, as it will give you a competitive advantage.
