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Customer Experience 2025: Three trends shaping the future of CX

Contributed Article by John Seeds, Chief Marketing Officer, TTEC Digital

In 2024, customer experience in (CX) has been full of innovations, evolutions, and disruptions. Customer relationship management systems have made huge strides in both capability and prominence. The use cases and understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) have also matured, demonstrating how AI can boost the strengths of existing contact center technology environments.

As we head into 2025, the industry seems well-prepared to learn from past challenges and build on recent successes, paving the way for a prosperous era in CX.

With that in mind, here are three trends I see shaping customer experience in 2025.

1.      2025 will be the year CRM gets a bigger share of the CX pie

CRM (customer relationship management) has come a long way since it first became popular in the 1980s when it was essentially a digital rolodex used for customer data. In recent years, CRM has become a sophisticated data hub from which marketing or service automation systems could extract the CRM’s data to execute campaigns and client engagements.

In 2025, CRM will advance even further.

Augmented with AI, CRM is becoming a platform capable of orchestrating the entire customer journey, harnessing CX data to guide real-time actions and deep customer insights – even linking an organization’s customer engagements with mid- and back-office fulfillment.

With the modern CRM, we can connect customer, product, and market data to create personalized interactions, bots, marketing automation, and much, much more. And we can do it all within the CRM, rather than linking to separate siloed systems that don’t talk to each other.

This expansion of CRM’s remit is important because it will have an outsized impact on customer experience.

The 2024 Forrester Customer Experience Index found that average customer experience quality in the United States now sits at an all-time low. A big reason for this low score is the disconnected experience that customers are having with brands. Departments and systems within the brand deliver different customer experiences – sales delivers one experience, while service delivers another. That’s not what customers want.

Customers expect to be known, helped, and valued throughout every interaction with a brand. They expect a customer service representative to know their purchase history and a technical support agent to understand their past service issues. But without the technology cohesion to stitch those data points, departments, and interactions together, a truly personalized end-to-end customer experience is nearly impossible.

With the new breed of CRM, however, we can improve visibility, increase automation, and create a cohesive ecosystem of data and collaboration, making it truly possible for brands to fulfill their customer experience promise.

2. Brands will finally unlock AI value – with one caveat

It’s no secret that many brands aren’t seeing the expected ROI from their AI investments. Headlines like, "88% of CEOs Have an AI Vision but Only 25% Are Seeing Returns,” highlight the fact that AI promises haven’t met business expectations.

The main roadblock I see for AI value realization? Data.

AI needs clean structured and unstructured data to work well. But getting structured data from transactional systems is tough, often because of technical debt and lack of API access for integrations. Using unstructured data is just as tricky, given the mountains of information businesses have, like PDFs, voice and digital transcripts, policies and procedures, and more.

If you try to use this data in client-facing interactions, like chatbots, you’d most likely run into problems with hallucinations, compliance violations, and conflicts. The risk is just too high.

In 2025, we expect big leaps in AI-powered knowledge engineering and content intelligence to address these data issues. New tools will be able to quickly scan thousands of documents to find missing descriptions and contradictions, and assess whether the content can be used by a bot. These tools will also provide quality and risk assessments so that businesses can have more confidence using AI for customer-facing interactions.

While 2024 was the year everyone explored AI, 2025 will be the year businesses start seeing real value from their AI investments – if they also use AI to get their data in order.

3.      Expect AI enhancements for contact center tech, but limited full migrations

In 2025, we probably won't see a big shakeup in contact center technology environments. Without a major event like new federal legislation or an end-of-life announcement, I don't expect a great deal of full environment replacements.

However, companies are showing more interest in exploring new tools, especially AI tools, and integrating them into their existing setups rather than doing a complete platform overhaul.

Businesses also aren't necessarily looking for a one-size-fits-all CX ecosystem. They want to pick the best platform for their omnichannel interactions and possibly a different one for their AI needs, which might include virtual agents, agent assistance and coaching, summarization, and more. They also want all these functions to be tightly integrated into their omnichannel engine.

While migrations from on-premises to cloud and other transitions are still happening, we're seeing more leaders pause to evaluate their goals before making major changes and exploring how point solutions can augment their existing infrastructure.

And let's not forget the hyperscalers. AWS, Microsoft, and Google will continue to expand their presence in the contact center technology space as the lines between IT and CX functions continue to overlap.

CX technology convergence – balancing opportunities with challenges

The rapid convergence of CRM, AI and analytics, and contact center technology will lead to more streamlined solutions, but also more confusion for buyers.

With more tech vendors vying for businesses' CX and AI budgets, it’s becoming harder for businesses to figure out which technologies or providers are the best fit. With so many choices and consumption models, businesses will increasingly need guidance to navigate and choose the right mix of solutions.

The truth is technology alone can’t create exceptional customer experiences. A solid CX strategy will always be essential to getting value from any tech innovation.

John Seeds is Chief Marketing Officer at TTEC Digital, a global leader in customer experience orchestration, combining technology and empathy at the point of conversation. With decades of innovation experience across the world’s leading contact center technology platforms – plus in-house expertise in CX strategy, data and analytics, AI and more, TTEC Digital delivers an unmatched skillset for organizations looking to forge deeper customer relationships and drive better business outcomes.