5 AI in CX trends for 2025

AI in CX trends are pushing the industry into new groundbreaking territory. Artificial intelligence (AI) in all its forms is upgrading everything from customer service chatbots to the in-store experience. Agentic AI, emotional AI and even human-like robots are emerging to not only mesmerize but actually do some heavy lifting for the humans in CX.

These different forms of AI are enabling transformations in personalization in CX, the omnichannel experience and much more. Still, the question remains and must be repeated: What role should people play in these processes and automations, so no one loses the human touch that connects brands to people?

Read on to discover the AI in CX trends, including ethics in AI, that are emerging for 2025 and beyond.

• Agentic AI to take on customer service
• Offer custom experiences through hyper-personalization
• Make the omnichannel experience seamless
• Form a bond with emotion AI
• Ethics in AI for CX
• Powering the future of CX

Agentic AI to take on customer service

As a result of advancements in generative AI and large language models (LLMs), agentic AI is going mainstream. It refers to a type of artificial intelligence that can make decisions, adapt and take action with little to no human input. More than 60 percent of the 1,100 executives surveyed by Capgemini said agentic AI would improve customer service and satisfaction. CX Network reports that agentic AI “has agency” and can be utilized for training, marketing, profit protection and machine customers, which collect data on human customers’ interests and behaviors.

Agentic AI allows for souped-up chatbots that can initiate interactions and handle sophisticated and complex customer issues autonomously. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2025), NVIDIA talked about how agentic AI will send shockwaves in many business departments, including CX. One of the newer ways it will have impact is by its ability to scan videos to improve work. This could include videos and images of shopping experiences, marketing campaigns and customer service representatives at work.

Offer custom experiences through hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization is the advanced and real-time customization of offerings, content and customer experience at an individual level, according to Shopify. Many people have experienced this already whenever they have searched for a product online and then received recommendations from the website for similar or relevant products. In fact, more than 80 percent of respondents in a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey of 5,000 global consumers say they want and expect personalized experiences. 

Artificial intelligence allows companies to take this customization to the next level. AI algorithms can analyze a customer’s browsing behavior, purchase history, social interactions and intent to deliver an experience tailored specifically to them, according to a report from NICE and Gartner. Yet, a BCG survey of more than 1,400 global C-suite executives found that 85 percent of business leaders planned to increase spending on AI in 2024, but they were ear marking it for cost saving initiatives rather than personalization. Mark Abraham and David C. Edelman in Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024) expressed their concern about these priorities.

“We believe that personalization will be the most exciting and most profitable outcome of the emerging AI boom – but only for companies that make it a strategic focus,” they wrote in Harvard Business Review.

Abraham and Edelman cited that companies putting personalization and AI at the center of their customer strategy are growing 10 percentage points faster than those who do not and six points faster than companies on average. The two created what they call the Personalization Index to measure how well companies are delivering personalized interactions. Netflix, Uber, Alibaba and Amazon are among the index leaders.

AI allows companies to tailor customer interactions and more efficiently engage with personalized follow up communications, enhanced customer support, continuous feedback loops and exclusive offers, according to PYMTS.

Make the omnichannel experience seamless

Omnichannel experience, which refers to a strategy that connects digital channels and bricks-and-mortar businesses, so customers have a seamless experience regardless of how they interact with a brand, is getting an upgrade, thanks to AI. For example, someone may browse the online aisles of a clothing retailer and put something in the cart before going to check out the item in person at the store. Then, the salespeople can gain visibility into all the ways this customer has accessed their products and services to better serve them across channels.

Musa Hanhan, founder and managing partner of Xperiente, explained to CX Network readers that AI is having profound effects on omnichannel activities. AI can better integrate data from all digital and physical touchpoints, give frontline employees access to every previous interaction with a customer so they quickly understand intent, and enable optimization and automation of the parts of customer interaction. 

Form a bond with emotion AI

Emotion AI, which is also known as affective computing, is a technology that assesses emotional cues in voice, text and facial expressions to determine intent and next steps with customers. However, it is not the same as sentiment analysis, where AI is used to analyze texts from social media, email, call transcripts, reviews and other feedback to establish overall sentiment towards a business. 

With emotion AI, the purpose is for brands to be able to create more empathetic responses to customers. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a relationship of mutual trust that enables loyalty.

When the technology correctly reads cues, it can help businesses respond more appropriately to customers, resolve issues quicker, provide enhanced data analytics to predict customer behavior, and provide automated responses that are more appealing to humans, according to News Metrics. In addition, companies will be able to develop marketing campaigns that tap into human emotional triggers.

Of course, avoiding misinterpretation is one challenge of using this technology, as are privacy concerns and ethical use in general. Still, the emotion AI market is projected to grow from $2.74 billion in 2024 to $9.01 billion with a CAGR of 21.9 percent by 2030, according to Markets and Markets.

A reason to pursue emotion AI and its benefits is that 80 percent of customers have changed brands because of one bad experience, according to Qualtrics XM. Emotion AI promises to allow for automation with a human touch.

“To all the business leaders and executives reading this, start thinking of the small steps you need to take if you’d like to embrace emotion AI integrations and how they could fit into the operations of their businesses,” writes Gary Fowler, a serial AI entrepreneur and CEO and co-founder of GSDVS.com and Yva.ia, in a column for Forbes.

Ethics in AI for CX

Loyalty has become paramount in brand development and growth. It relies on the relationship between customer and business. The bond businesses have with their customers is sacred, and machines are not always the friendliest way to approach those who have gained your trust. Organizations must have a thoughtful strategy about how, where and when to deploy AI.

To maintain the trust of their clientele, businesses also must adhere to rules and regulations. For example, the European Union's AI Act regulates that use of AI chatbots must be transparent. Companies must give customers the opportunity to refuse the bot interaction in favor of a human one. Hanhan warns the community about the need for ethics in AI deployment, and he highlights the importance of transparent data usage, customer consent and avoiding demographic biases.

Maintaining privacy, avoiding bias and considering the consequences on human workers and customers should always be at the forefront of thought

In fact, CX Network has provided a guide to ethics in AI for CX. It covers the basics of data privacy, transparency, human supervision, bias mitigation and regulations/compliance. Besides being the moral choice, compliance is a means of risk management, too. 

"With data privacy in regulations like GDPR and CCPS becoming stricter, businesses must prioritize transparency in collecting, storing and utilizing customer data," says Ekaterina Mamonova, global lead for marketing and CX at Allianz Commercial in From tech to trend: How AI will shape CX in 2025. 

Generative AI represents the biggest opportunity for organizations to get data that show causality and do it at a large scale, says Vinay Parmar, CEO and founder of Dhruva Star and CX Network Advisory Board member. Of course, with great power comes great responsability, and organizations have a duty to maintain the human quality of relationships. This extends to the employee experience, too, says Parmar. AI is helping employees do their job better, and employers to better track worker benefits and successes. However, the human connection is still paramount.

"The quality of CX starts with the internal culture...If it's set up right, the external culture takes care of itself," adds Parmar. 

Powering the future of CX

AI in CX trends explain powerful tools that will help companies connect with customers now and into the future. Agentic AI, hyper-personalization, upgraded omnichannel experience, emotion AI and automation of workflows are already surfacing in the customer journey. While artificial intelligence in all its forms can revolutionize the way people interact with brands and each other, they can also bring with them risks. Protecting privacy data, being transparent and avoiding bias should be top priorities when leveraging AI. In addition, these advanced technologies can elevate customer experience and help employees be more productive and efficient.

None of them, however, can replace the vital human touch in CX.  

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