Retailers adopt AI for customer experience
New data reveals artificial intelligence is becoming a major customer experience tool.
"The 2025 CX Landscape," a survey of more than 1,000 in-house customer experience leaders across the U.S., U.K. and Canada conducted in November of 2024 by Nextiva and Dimensional Research, finds that AI is now a nearly universal component of customer experience architectures.
More than nine-in-10 (92%) respondents have adopted AI. Of those, 24% characterize themselves as "early stage," 31% as "in process" and 28% as "established." Only 9% called themselves "mature" in their AI adoption.
Looking at reasons why organizations invest in customer experience AI technology, the survey found that 54% of respondents cited revenue generation as a primary reason to invest in AI, with process improvements/efficiency gains (46%), customer demand (40%) and competitive pressure (39%) following.
Demonstrating innovation (35%) and curiosity (26%) were also cited. Respondents also reported a dozen different current and future use cases. Using generative AI to write to customers (64%), agent assist tools (60%), self-service (57%) and quality assurance (53%) were the most common use cases for AI in customer experience.
Almost all (98%) respondents said a smooth handoff between AI interactions and human agents is essential. However, nine-in-10 respondents using AI for customer experience reported struggling to reduce friction in this transition.
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Employee resistance topped the list of barriers (36%), followed by customer resistance (29%) and then technology issues such as lack of integration (29%) and legacy technology (27%).
To help lessen this friction, 51% of respondents said their company would benefit if human agents could oversee AI interactions and assist as needed. Eight-in-10 (81%) said consolidating customer data into a single system would generally improve customer experience.
Customer experience reputation improves
In other findings, the survey showed that senior executives are starting to see customer experience as a more important area of the enterprise. Almost all (96%) respondents said their company leadership sees customer experience as a key driver of business outcomes and 79% said their corporate leadership now views customer experience as a crucial revenue driver.
In addition, two-in-three respondents reported increased ease in securing customer experience funding compared to five years ago. The survey also revealed that close to half (47%) of respondents cited the increased ability to track the impact of their customer experience investments (using metrics such as retention rate) as a notable reason for its perception change.
Additional factors respondents said have helped improve the reputation of customer experience were the ability to implement new technologies (43%), general changes in attitude across the industry (42%) and better ROI metrics (35%).
"Customer experience is recognized as a strategic investment on the c-suite agenda," said Tomas Gorny, CEO and co-founder of Nextiva. "The emphasis should be on simplifying operations, consolidating technologies and creating seamless, personalized experiences for customers. Companies that embrace these trends will be rewarded with the loyalty of customers whose expectations continue to rise."