With that, Forester predicts 2025 is the year for bold CX leaders ready to kick things into high gear. But what does this really mean?
To find out, we spoke to two CM.com customers and CX experts, Kai Bentley-Grey, Senior Technology Business Partner at DFS and Ed Rice, Head of Commercial at Glamorgan County Cricket Club, to explore how businesses can use technology and automation to stand out, empowering agents and consumers whilst continuing to build long-lasting loyalty and driving business efficiency.
“Now more than ever, customers know exactly what they want and have a wide variety of options available to them, meaning it’s more important than ever to provide good experiences to encourage brand loyalty.” Kai Bentley-Grey, DFS
The “data meets personalization” sweet spot
“Customer engagement will be much harder to come by in 2025. Businesses will have to work harder for open rates and click-through rates because all sectors are improving in this area and customers are savvier,” Ed Rice, Glamorgan County Cricket Club
Customers expect more bespoke and relevant content delivered to them, which is why automation and data collection are so important now. Gartner states that 86% of B2B customers expect businesses to be well-informed about them. At the same time, customers are increasingly concerned about how personal data is used. So, what is the right balance between data and personalization?
At Glamorgan Cricket, Ed highlights the importance of personalization and automation in engagement to benefit the customer and the role of data in driving this strategy. "Segmented data enables us to tailor content to individual preferences and improve engagement metrics, a win-win for customers and businesses."
Moreover, with automation, tailored journeys can be created depending on the customer’s entry point, “when customers sign up, complete their first purchase or become a member, we use automation in welcome emails, confirmation emails and birthday emails, which are all defined by what we understand about the customer.”
"The more we know about a customer, the more relevant we can make the content we're sending them, which will ultimately be of more interest to them.” Ed Rice, Glamorgan County Cricket Club
Kai agrees that using specific data to add value to the customer is key to personalization. “Whilst customers are expecting a more tailored experience, transparency and security are key. We should be focusing on what is right for the customer, what provides benefit to the customer through that personalization.”
“Functional" and "conversational" channels have a role to play
The continued ‘will it, won’t it’ conversation around SMS usage has been going on for a few years. And while many businesses would believe SMS has had its day, Kai and Ed believe it is very much here to stay… in a functional capacity.
While there has been a shift from SMS to WhatsApp in a conversational sense, Kai believes “SMS still serves a purpose” when it comes to functional communications such as order updates or One-Time Passwords (OTPs). In a sports capacity, Ed explains how “SMS has been particularly helpful in enabling us to notify our customers quickly when our fixtures are close to selling out, or an early bird offer is coming to an end.”
Yet, both believe that when it comes to conversational interactions with customers and boosting engagement, WhatsApp is the right channel.
“From a conversational point of view, you can see businesses moving away from SMS into WhatsApp because that's where people expect conversations to happen,” explains Kai, “for example, customers want to open WhatsApp, communicate with a company, and instantly resume messaging a friend.”
Furthermore, the intertwined use of conversational channels will shift in 2025 and beyond, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha come through into the consumer market, becoming more digitally native.
Ed notes how Glamorgan Cricket launched its WhatsApp channel in 2024 to boost engagement. “By using WhatsApp, we aim to foster closer relationships with fans to create vibrant online communities and strengthen loyalty, particularly for younger and more tech-savvy audiences, ensuring they stay informed and involved.”
But it isn’t purely the channel, it is also the content shared that truly engages audiences, from Millennials to Gen Z, “we have always seen that behind-the-scenes content works great for us but we’re making a move to more personality-driven content that profiles our players and isn’t always cricket focused to drive engagement from existing and new audiences alike,” explains Ed.
The shift from AI adopter to AI native
“Consumers are becoming more and more native with AI and they're expecting higher quality and less friction than ever before,” explains Kai. Therefore, this year, AI will come together with customer experience. Kai notes the key questions to ask when defining your automation and AI strategies are “What are your goals? What do you want to achieve for your customers and your agents and how will the technology align with those goals?”
Customers will be more comfortable using AI for straightforward commodity queries, such as Where Is My Order (WISMO) requests, but human agents remain vital for addressing nuanced, emotional issues where human empathy is indispensable. “There will still be a need for human empathy and understanding, in those instances where there's not a straight systematic answer, and a customer needs somebody to talk to about their issue. I don’t think that will ever change.”
From the customer-facing perspective, businesses should experiment with integrating Generative and Agentic AI to improve engagement and offer 24/7 service, answering FAQs and WISMO requests.
On the agent-facing side, Kai believes AI can have a massive impact on the agent experience from an employee engagement perspective, simplifying business processes, such as using AI to provide suggested answers to customer issues and summarizing previous customer conversations to give the agent context. “If the agents are engaged, they will deliver excellent service. Equipping them with the right tools benefits customers and empowers agents to provide the best possible customer results," explains Kai.
“Reducing the commodity calls and tasks which could be completed by clicking a button or checking a delivery date, allows our people to support with issues that are more emotive, more complicated, and require more expertise and reasoning.” Kai Bentley-Grey, DFS
Advice from the experts: “Take learnings from your industry peers”
Data for personalization, multiple channels and Generative and Agentic AI will all become more prevalent to the customer experience in 2025. Customer expectations will shift; higher expectations for interactions on digital channels, better service from agents and a channel of choice are going to be massive.
So, what’s one piece of advice from our CX experts? “We try to keep up with industry trends and take learnings from our peers within the sport as to what is working for them and where they are seeing increased engagement from supporters,” explains Ed, “We have a really collaborative approach with other counties so we can learn from each other’s experiences.”
From Kai’s point of view, businesses need to be cognizant of the impact on all stakeholders. "In the age of such quick-paced technological advancement, it can be tempting to implement multiple changes in quick succession to start getting the benefit as soon as possible. But you can’t forget the people—your customers, agents, digital marketers and everyone else on that journey who may be nervous about the use of AI. It’s about bringing them along on the change curve. The key is to start small, get good at one thing, then use what you’ve learned to tackle the next challenge and let the outcomes speak for themselves.”
“The end goal is for customers to have a truly unified omnichannel experience where they can contact businesses through their channel of choice and get the same level of CX and efficiency, using AI and automation to support them.” Kai Bentley-Grey, DFS
Are you interested in exploring technology trends in 2025? Or would you like to implement personalization, conversational channels or AI to enhance customer engagement? Reach out to CM.com and speak to one of our experts.