CX Trends in 2025: ROI, Scale, and a Lot More AI

Customer experience teams have an exciting year ahead. With access to bigger budgets and ambitious plans for AI innovation, they’re poised to transform the customer experience and impact revenue like never before.

We sponsored an in-depth survey of more than 1,000 CX leaders conducted by Dimensional Research. Participants from the US, Canada, and the UK shared insights into the state of CX at their organizations, common challenges, future plans, and customer experience trends for the year ahead.

In this post, we’ll share some highlights from the report. Get the full version of The Leader’s Guide to CX Trends in 2025 today.

Execs Today Realize That CX Is Worth the Investment

CX leaders feel like their work is finally in the spotlight, a welcome change from previous years where getting approval for CX investments was more difficult. A nearly unanimous 96% of respondents said their leadership team sees CX as a key driver of business outcomes.

💡 67% of CX leaders say it’s easier to get approval for CX investments today.

In general, now is a good time for CX teams to ask for more budget. An astounding 94% of respondents saw CX investments deliver ROI in the last five years. Their executive stakeholders and business leaders are more likely to understand and agree with this impact.

Enterprise technology and analytics strengthen CX’s reputation

As CX teams adopt better tools for tracking their contribution to company-wide KPIs, leadership and departmental stakeholders are buying into the idea that CX is a valuable group effort. 

💡 47% of respondents said the ability to track the revenue impact of CX investments contributed to its favorable view at their company.

Modern analytics solutions make consolidating data on customer activity and preferences from many sources and channels easier, properly attributing successes to CX efforts, and providing flexible, self-serve reporting to stakeholders. 

Today’s more positive CX outlook can also be attributed to adopting enterprise CX solutions that streamline and automate everyday workflows, improving the employee experience for reps as they interact with customers.

CX Efforts Are Expanding Across Many Teams and Tools

CX investments are trending upward in almost every area, with the biggest spikes expected in areas like AI, data integration and management, and analytics and reporting.  

When asked about 2025 investments in specific customer engagement channels, social media and live chat took the lead with email, in-store experiences, chatbots, and others trailing very closely behind. 

Customer-facing and back-office teams share CX responsibility 

Survey respondents called out sales, product, digital, marketing, and a handful of other teams as part of delivering a great customer experience. Nearly three-quarters of them included traditional “back office” teams, acknowledging that what happens behind the scenes profoundly affects customer satisfaction and retention.  

Companies need to consolidate CX tools 

CX teams use between six and seven tools on average just for customer interactions, including ticketing, collaboration, and knowledge base solutions. 13% use more than 10 tools.

💡 81% of respondents say their company could improve the customer experience if they consolidated customer data from all interaction points into one system of record.

Coupled with the fact that CX stakeholders are strewn across a handful of different teams, this results in a fragmented, often frustrating experience for both customers and backend users. To reduce total cost of ownership and better scale CX processes, customer experience leaders hope to consolidate tools on enterprise-grade platforms.

AI Touches Every Corner of CX, With Promising Results

Almost every CX team is experimenting with AI or planning to do so soon, with the hopes of better meeting customer expectations and impacting key growth and retention metrics. Today’s top AI use cases include generative AI writing tools and self-service bots, while agent assist technology appears to be the next big focus of investments.

💡 92% of companies have adopted AI to some degree, at least with simple, standalone solutions or pilots.

Where are CX teams adopting AI?

• Gen AI for writing to customers
• Agent assist tools 
• Self-service chat and voice bots
• QA and compliance
• Language detection and translation
• Personalization
• Call routing optimization
• Real-time sentiment analysis
• Process automation
• Predictive analytics
• Proactive issue resolution

Companies report significant value from AI adoption at every stage 

CX leaders overwhelmingly reported medium to high value from their AI investments, both at early and mature stages of adoption.

💡 80% of early-stage adopters already report medium to high value from AI investments.

At the early stage, 80% stated that they already realized medium to high value from investments. At the mature stage, 99% reported the same—with numbers like this, CX teams shouldn’t be afraid to adopt AI at scale.

Streamlined data management is critical for AI in CX

When asked about the challenges they’d faced in implementing AI, CX leaders ranked data management at the top. AI requires real-time, unified data to make predictions and interact live with customers, which many respondents have yet to achieve.

Not surprisingly, 86% of companies with multiple CX tools report having siloed data. Consolidating on a unified CX platform addresses several issues at once—less vendor sprawl, holistic data, and integrated architecture that can support modern AI tools.

This is especially prevalent at large contact centers, where thousands of customer interactions happen a day with live agents on the phone or via chat. AI technology and automation in the contact center setting can improve customer support almost immediately, but only if the company’s underlying data infrastructure supports it. 

With customer data consolidated in one place, true omnichannel CX is possible. CX teams adopting a unified platform can see better customer engagement at every touchpoint, increased customer loyalty, and better customer retention from their investments in artificial intelligence.

Balancing AI and Human Interactions Is the Key to Success

The AI/human balance applies to customers and CX employees alike. 

Employees worry about being replaced or negatively impacted by AI, often lacking the training and data access they need to serve customers alongside new, AI-powered tools.

Customers expect a seamless experience as they get support, learn about products, and interact with a company online. But despite widespread AI adoption, most companies struggle with effective handoffs between AI and human agents.

💡 98% of CX leaders recognize the need for seamless AI-to-human transitions, but only 10% have implemented these handoffs without a struggle.

To mitigate pushback against AI initiatives and overcome AI adoption obstacles, companies are turning to autopilot and agent assist tools that balance automated interactions against well-informed human conversations.

For example, CX teams might use autopilot technology to automate some route tasks, like drafting a follow-up email after a call that the rep can review and edit before sending. Agent assist can help during a call by surfacing live customer data and suggesting next steps while leaving the rep in control. Even when interactions are fully automated, the best CX tools use sophisticated underlying logic to optimize outcomes and remove customers from AI workflows as soon as friction is detected. 

These tools allow CX teams to oversee and take over AI-led interactions, complete manual work faster, and keep the human element alive and well along every touchpoint in the customer journey.

Get the Complete Guide to CX Trends

This year, expect many positive changes and substantial AI experimentation in CX. 

If you haven’t already begun consolidating your toolset and investing in a modern, unified CX platform, Nextiva can help you take the next step. Request a demo from our team of CX experts or dig deeper into the survey data and CX strategies in The Leader’s Guide to CX Trends in 2025.