As the year winds down to a close, CX leaders are looking forward to what 2025 has in store for them.
CX Dive spoke to analysts and experts about their predictions for the year ahead. Some expect boosts in budgets, while others predicted an overreliance on metrics without actions to match.
Still more had predictions for the contact center: how generative AI will impact jobs and how customer service teams will share their insights with other parts of the enterprise.
Regulations will also play their part in shaping the practice in the year ahead as the European Accessibility Act takes effect.
Here are five predictions for 2025:
CX budgets will increase as AI investments grow
While some analysts expect CX budgets to remain flat, others predict growth in the year ahead as business leaders pump money into AI initiatives.
Nearly all business leaders — 97% — plan to invest in generative AI in the next 12 months, according to a KPMG study from March. KPMG surveyed 220 C-suite and business leaders at U.S.-based organizations with an annual revenue of $1 billion or more. These executives listed improving customer experience as a top generative AI investment priority, with 45% of leaders choosing that as their No. 1 priority.
That’s a marked improvement to the past, according to Jeff Mango, U.S. customer experience and engagement leader at KPMG. Business executives usually view CX as “squishy” and often don’t understand the value it brings the company.
“The fact that they think that AI is going to improve customer experience is really good for the industry,” Mango said. “But connecting the dots between the value of improving customer experience and what it actually means and then how that AI actually helped to drive that value [is] going to be a critical story for CX leaders to be able to tell.”
Mango says he already sees some of the biggest companies and their boards discussing what AI means for customer experience, but he thinks business leaders need to be intentional and put CX at the forefront of their efforts.
“What if the customer experience wasn't a byproduct of something we're trying to do, but the customer experience was leading AI investments?” he asked.
Mango isn’t the only one expecting CX budgets to rise. Three-quarters of CX leaders expect their budgets to grow in the next year, according to an August Forrester survey of nearly 300 CX decision-makers.
Half of accessibility efforts will have negligible impact on CX
The European Accessibility Act will take effect in June 2025, and companies across the world will work to achieve compliance. Those that adhere only to the letter of the law, rather than truly embracing accessible design, may leave growth opportunities on the table.
Only half of companies that make a commitment toward accessibility will take truly substantive action, according to Rick Parrish, VP and research director in Forrester’s CX practice. The remainder will merely take performative action — and many won’t even realize they’re falling short.
“There's billions upon billions of dollars in opportunity out there for companies that take accessible design seriously,” Parrish told CX Dive. “Some companies either still haven't been convinced or think that checking the boxes is going to do it for them. But it's not.”
Roughly 1.3 billion people experience significant disability globally, according to World Health Organization data. Companies that take the time to understand their needs have a chance to earn their loyalty.
A common problem is underrepresenting disabled customers in research efforts. Inviting people with accessibility needs into the research process is a great way to start, according to Parrish. However, the best option is for CX teams to hire people with disabilities when possible.
"It takes a little extra thought, takes a little extra effort, but you've got to do that,” Parrish said.
Contact centers will share deeper insights with the rest of the enterprise
Contact centers are gold mines of voice of the customer data. As customer service teams are called on to improve the bottom line, more advanced data analysis tools could help unlock their potential.
Customer service leaders are gaining more influence over the enterprise, and the data they have will prove CX is a growth driver, not a cost center, according to Deborah Alvord, VP analyst with Gartner’s global customer service and support research group.
For instance, if call centers are fielding an elevated number of calls about a company’s laptop displays, that could be valuable information for the product team. If customers repeatedly mention something they heard in an advertisement, the marketing team likely wants to know.
“All of that is sitting on a server somewhere and not being used,” Alvord told CX Dive. “It is a wealth of data.”
This data has always existed, and now generative AI and text analytics tools enable companies to access the buried treasure in customer service calls, according to Alvord. Teams can also directly add questions to surveys to confirm their contact center discoveries.
“Talk to the marketing team, talk to the product team,” Alvord said. “What are their key priorities? What are the things that maybe are a gap in customer knowledge? That will then help you determine if there are one or two questions in the post-transaction survey you can ask.”
CX teams will misuse NPS to their detriment
The net promoter score is one of the most widely used CX metrics. Unfortunately, it’s often overrelied on and misused.
Even as CX experts urge companies to take up new global standards or to take a more holistic view of customer experience, teams are likely to overrely on NPS in 2025 to their detriment.
“Sadly, I think many CX teams will continue to misuse NPS, positioning it in their organizations purely as a measurement tool, when in reality, the best NPS implementations use the instrument as a management tool,” Jon Picoult, founder and principal of Watermark Consulting, a customer experience advisory firm, said via email.
CX teams need to use NPS to shape, not just measure, customer experience, Picoult said. That means translating customer feedback into tangible improvement tactics. One simple strategy is to make NPS scores visible to staff so they can tailor their interactions with that customer depending on whether they're engaging with a detractor, passive or promoter.
Paul Smith, senior director of MyCX at Bain & Company, says part of the issue is teams look at NPS for the answers it can’t provide.
"The way I always think about NPS is it's kind of like a flashlight or torch,” Paul Smith said. “It allows you to eliminate the parts that aren't working or the parts that are really phenomenal for your customers. But it's not necessarily going to help you take the actions you need to do a lot of work internally. You need to join up all the data.”
NPS is just one tool in the toolkit. It’s up to CX teams to use the indicator to determine how to boost customer experience.
Generative AI will disrupt call center outsourcing companies
Generative AI is expected to make call center agents more efficient, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on employment. Global workers at contact outsourcing companies could be at risk in particular.
Forrester expects generative AI to displace 100,000 agents at the world’s largest outsourcers. However, the notion that the entire market is “doomed” is overblown, according to Christina McAllister, senior analyst at Forrester.
“There is no doubt that generative AI will have a massive impact on this market, and certainly, some outsourcers will be forced to pull back their operations as a result,” McAllister said in an email to CX Dive. “But outsourcers that see generative AI as a springboard to evolve their business and product offerings will be in a strong position going forward.”
Generative AI isn’t a replacement for human agents. CX leaders and contact center outsourcing companies can benefit from recognizing this, as the lowest cost option is not always the best option.
Instead, performance- or outcome-based AI models can benefit both parties, according to McAllister. This approach requires a more strategic partnership, but it can maximize a brand’s desired outcomes and generate cost savings for the call center.
