Customer experience leaders face a plethora of challenges in 2025. Some have plagued the practice for years. 

Practitioners are met with the perennial problems of demonstrating how customer experience initiatives boost a company’s bottom line, breaking down silos to implement customer-centric changes, and understanding their customers as they provide less feedback. 

Other obstacles are fresh, as companies develop their generative AI capabilities and determine how the technology can help customers. Despite risks of hallucinations and errors, some companies are taking the technology beyond their employees and rolling it out directly to customers in the form of generative AI chatbots.

Loyalty is harder to win in 2025 as inflationary pressures and rising expectations mean consumers shop around more. And leaders’ obsessions with metrics can backfire, leading to an increase in scores, but not actually improving overall customer experience quality. 

CX Dive put together three in-depth stories looking at what practitioners should keep an eye on in the year ahead.