Four Predictions for Customer Experience in 2025

As customer experience leaders plan for 2025, anticipating future developments is crucial to shaping Customer Experience (CX) strategy and execution. Despite efforts, many organizations still face challenges in delivering outstanding CX. A recent Cisco study revealed that only 25% of customers were very satisfied with their last service engagement, while 94% abandoned interactions due to poor experiences. In 2025, the CX landscape will begin to shift, driven by four key trends.

AI agents will revolutionize self-service

Advancements in AI will continue to accelerate in 2025, enabling more intelligent automated customer engagement solutions. AI agents will provide personalized, conversational self-service options across voice and digital channels, offering faster, more effective resolutions. These agents will engage customers in human-like conversations rather than robotic ones, helping contact centers remove customer frustration and allowing human agents to focus on complex or high-value interactions.

Brands will increasingly adopt AI agents that align with their values, offering authentic, meaningful interactions. AI will become a staple of everyday customer service, with voice capabilities and the ability to act on customer requests, driving efficiency and satisfaction. Prebuilt templates and low-code/no-code tools will simplify the development of AI agents, empowering business generalists to leverage AI to enhance customer interactions. Cisco’s global study showed 79% of CX leaders have an AI virtual agent, compared to just 7% of laggards.

Hyper-personalization will become table stakes for CX

AI advancements will also fuel hyper-personalization, enabling organizations to extract insights from customer data to anticipate needs, appeal to preferences, and create upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Leading brands will orchestrate hyper-personalized journeys across channels and interactions, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Proactive communications will become a key component of personalized experiences. By sending timely reminders about appointments or payments and allowing customers to respond in the same channel, brands can reduce customer effort and prevent issues before they arise. By 2025, these proactive experiences will set new customer expectations for engagement. Cisco’s study shows that 61% of CX leaders deliver proactive communications using AI, while only 6% of laggards do.

RCS adoption will skyrocket

Rich Communication Services, which enhances customer interactions with rich media and interactive components, will see explosive growth by 2025. Now supported on both iPhone and Android, RCS offers businesses a messaging channel native to billions of devices worldwide. This expansion makes RCS an ideal solution for creating engaging, two-way experiences such as promotions, appointment reminders, and customer support.

RCS also offers features like end-to-end encryption and branded sender profiles, helping build customer trust. As the industry standard for business messaging, RCS adoption is expected to increase dramatically, unifying Android and iOS devices under a common platform for both person-to-person and application-to-person interactions.

CX data will have to become unified

To optimize CX with AI agents and hyper-personalized experiences across multiple channels, organizations must unify customer data. Many organizations struggle with disparate data sources, but in 2025, significant progress will be made in creating a comprehensive view of customer journeys. By unifying data from various systems and channels, businesses will improve their customer service capabilities.

With easy access to up-to-date information, both AI and human agents will resolve inquiries more effectively. A unified data view will also help brands identify customer needs and anticipate issues, strengthening customer trust and loyalty. This holistic approach will also uncover trends and friction points, enabling brands to optimize customer interactions.

In 2025, the ROI of AI investments in CX will be a key focus for executives, prioritizing AI use cases that directly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.
As you plan for 2025, understanding and leveraging these key trends will be essential to driving CX success.

Sudarshan Dharmapuri is the Vice President of Product Management for Webex Customer Experience Solutions at Cisco. He is a product and engineering leader with a passion for creating and launching products that solve real business pain points, delight users and deliver exceptional outcomes for end customers. More than two decades of product leadership, strategy and execution in Silicon Valley and India for enterprise software products with a proven track record of bringing successful new products to market. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

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