Digital Trends Spotlight: AI Insights for CX Leaders
An overview of the latest trends and insights in customer experience
In the fast-paced world of evolving technology and consumer expectations, leaders must constantly adapt, pivot and innovate to stay ahead. While our Customer Experience (CX) Priorities report offers strategic, high-level guidance for setting your overarching CX vision and roadmap, our quarterly Digital Trends Spotlight is your go-to resource for key updates and details of what's happening in the marketplace. Keeping a pulse on these trends will help you continuously shape and refine your organization's priorities. Let's dive in.
Trend 1: Growing adoption of conversational AI
Despite consumer skepticism of AI, enterprise adoption of conversational AI is gaining rapid momentum and moving past the hype and honeymoon phases to generate breakthrough outcomes in customer engagement, lifetime value, satisfaction and loyalty while empowering employees to focus on more complex tasks. Companies are deploying these solutions to deliver advanced voice experiences, improved site search functionality, automated social media responses, and instant 24/7 sales and customer service support. Industries like retail, banking and telecommunications stand to benefit most, but nearly all businesses can gain from integrating conversational AI throughout their digital experiences.
We've helped many clients test, build and scale these types of solutions in WWT's AI Proving Ground. Based on this experience, we know the most successful implementations start with modern data foundations and developing robust integrations between existing systems. Leaders should also focus on data quality, privacy and security; train employees to work alongside AI agents; continuously monitor and improve AI performance; and start with pilot projects to rapidly test, refine and justify further investment before deploying at scale.
Early examples of conversational AI in action are Amazon and Perplexity's GenAI-powered conversational shopping assistants, Rufus and Perplexity Pro. These assistants help customers with product recommendations, answer shopping-related questions, provide support directly within their respective apps and enable customers to checkout seamlessly within their interfaces. Customers can ask questions like, "Is this coffee maker easy to clean and maintain?" "What are the best lawn games for kids' birthday parties?" and "I want to build my own indoor library. What do I need to buy?" and receive the information they need to make informed shopping decisions. While these solutions are still new and continue to be refined, they showcase the limitless potential of conversational AI in improving CX.
Trend 2: AI-powered loyalty programs
For years, many brands, including Sephora, Nike and Starbucks, have excelled at creating hyper-personalized loyalty programs that deeply engage customers. These programs leverage real-time customer data, including purchase history, browsing behavior and preferences, to reveal valuable insights and create highly tailored experiences that keep consumers coming back.
In 2025, the trend of AI-powered loyalty programs will differentiate the CX leaders from the laggards. AI can help organizations predict which rewards will most likely motivate a specific customer, leading to more effective loyalty strategies, enhanced customer satisfaction and revenue growth.
We expect hyper-personalized loyalty programs to continue to grow in popularity across industries, with the most successful programs including four key elements:
- Real-time data analysis: This allows organizations to reach the right customer at the right time with personalized product recommendations, dynamic pricing and seamless experiences across channels.
- Generative AI (GenAI) and machine learning (ML): Large-scale programs require GenAI and ML capabilities to make sense of large amounts of data and provide actionable insights.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) models: Predictive models for CLV help organizations identify patterns and insights that would be nearly impossible to detect manually. This allows for truly personalized shopping journeys, targeted marketing, and proactive retention strategies that enhance loyalty and long-term value with tailored experiences and rewards.
- Privacy-first AI solutions: Maintaining customer trust is crucial when developing a loyalty program and delivering personalized experiences. Make sure your program is compliant with regulations and your customer data is protected.
Our work with Schnucks, a large Midwestern grocery chain, is a great example of an AI-powered hyper-personalized loyalty program. We helped the grocer advance their personalization strategy by selecting and implementing a customer data platform (CDP) and additional MarTech tools to create a 360-degree view of its customers. From there, we developed audience cohorts to power and refine its custom-built AI/ML rewards engine. This allows the Schnucks Rewards app to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience that includes an automated rewards program, personalized savings and coupons, and other features aimed at enhancing customer engagement and loyalty.
Trend 3: Real-time insights for operational efficiency
As discussed earlier, AI can identify customer patterns and predict their future behaviors. This not only allows businesses to proactively address potential pain points and better retain customers but also gain operational efficiency by maintaining optimal inventory levels and accurately forecasting demand.
To increase operational efficiency at your organization, you'll want to focus on four key areas:
- Data collection and integration: Gather data from various touchpoints, such as online interactions, in-store visits, social media and customer service, and consolidate it into a unified platform. Regularly clean and validate the data to maintain accuracy and reliability.
- Predictive analytics: Utilize AI models to analyze historical data and customer behaviors. For example, quick-serve restaurants might focus on forecasting demand, peak times, food waste and optimal in-store staffing levels, while airlines and hotels might focus on predicting flight changes, customer service staffing and occupancy rates. Regularly test these models for accuracy and effectiveness.
- Real-time insights: Use AI to monitor customer journeys and key performance indicators (KPIs) for quick, data-driven decisions. Set up alerts for critical events needing immediate action.
- Personalization: Leverage AI to examine customer preferences and behaviors at an individual level. This allows you to tailor marketing communications, offers and interactions to cater to each customer's distinct needs without hours of manual data analysis.
An example of a company that has successfully implemented AI for operational efficiency is Delta Air Lines. By integrating data from various touchpoints, including flight bookings, check-ins and in-flight services, Delta has a comprehensive view of each customer's journey. The airline's AI system analyzes this data to provide personalized recommendations, such as seat upgrades and in-flight entertainment options, and proactively addresses potential issues, such as flight delays.
Trend 4: Facial recognition, voice analysis and biometric sensors for more empathetic interactions
Emotion AI, also known as affective computing, is revolutionizing CX across various industries, including retail, healthcare, financial services, insurance and the public sector (specifically government and law enforcement agencies). This technology uses facial recognition, voice analysis and biometric sensors to gauge customer emotions, allowing companies to tailor their interactions and offerings in real time.
Through facial expression analysis, companies can identify customers' emotional responses to products and advertisements. Voice analysis evaluates tone and pitch to assess emotional states, while wearable devices monitor heart rate and skin conductance to obtain additional emotional data.
For example, MetLife, a leading global insurance company, has integrated Emotion AI into its CX strategy to enhance interactions between contact center agents and customers. MetLife agents receive instant feedback about customers' sentiments, tones and emotions so they can respond more empathetically and effectively to their issues. The results have been impressive, with MetLife reporting a 23 percent increase in issue resolution rates and a 15-point boost in customer satisfaction scores.
Trend 5: More personalized and intelligent contact centers
Many of our contact center clients are focused on reducing repetitive work, improving resolution times and enabling personalized service. Cisco listened to this feedback and has launched a suite of new Webex AI solutions that allow businesses to scale intelligently, adapt rapidly, optimize operational costs and enhance every stage of the customer journey.
Additionally, Cisco's three new AI solutions — Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant — integrate directly into the Webex Contact Center platform, making it easy for organizations to leverage customer interaction data for predictive service offerings and improved engagement across channels.
- Webex AI Agent: Delivers natural, real-time spoken responses to standard customer inquiries, efficiently manages tasks independently, and seamlessly transitions more complex issues to human agents as necessary.
- AI Agent Studio: Quickly design and deploy AI agents without the need for deep technical expertise. Customize AI models, refine conversation flows and adapt to customer needs on the fly.
- Cisco AI Assistant: Supports live agents by delivering real-time contextual insights and suggested responses during customer interactions.
Read our blog post to learn more details about Cisco's new AI solutions.
Final thoughts
AI offers limitless possibilities. This quarter's Digital Trends Spotlight highlights just a few examples of how top organizations are using AI to enhance customer engagement, satisfaction, loyalty and efficiency.
Our team can help you further evaluate these trends and others to identify the most impactful use cases for your business, then test, build and scale them in WWT's AI Providing Ground, a state-of-the-art lab environment with the latest hardware, software and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies.
Contact us today to turn your AI ideas into realities or access our Customer Experience Priorities report to learn about key focus areas for 2025.
This report may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior express written permission of WWT Research. It consists of the opinions of WWT Research and as such should be not construed as statements of fact. WWT provides the Report "AS-IS", although the information contained in Report has been obtained from sources that are believed to be reliable. WWT disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information.