AI, personalization, CX journeys, data, and content: in the world of digital experience, these areas are top of mind for most brands, regardless of industry. All demand close attention, being ever-evolving. For example, the role that AI has played within CX has changed fairly significantly over the past year.
So how has the digital experience landscape evolved over the past year, and what can brands expect to see change in 2025?
In 2024 many key focus areas noticeably shifted. There was a move from Generative AI to just AI—no matter what industry they belong to, every brand now aims to embed AI into their strategies to enhance the customer journey. AI is increasingly being recognized as a collaborative tool, rather than a job replacement. Hyper-personalization became personalization. Digital experience mapping became customer experience journeys. ‘Social commerce’ evolved to ‘community commerce’. We’ve seen a greater focus on first-party and qualitative data.
At the same time, some things haven’t changed: creating engaging content, designing immersive experiences, and being relentlessly customer-centric are (as always) the top-of-mind strategies for CX professionals.
The idea of creating a better experience for customers is near and dear to Contentsquare. We are laser focused on understanding the customer, what constitutes a great customer experience, and what strategies are top of mind for brands who aim to raise the standards of CX every day.
Earlier this year, we discovered insights on all of this and more when we put together our second Digital CX Trends report. We asked attendees at Contentsquare’s 2024 CX Circle events (2,974 marketing, UX, and product experts) the same question: “What is the biggest digital experience trend you are focusing on next year?”
And they answered, enabling us to pin-point the top 5 digital experience trends for 2025:
AI
Personalization
CX Journeys
Data
Content
This is a great example of why I love participating in our annual CX Circle events. They give me (and all of us at Contentsquare) the invaluable opportunity to chat with a wide range of our customers firsthand and find out what matters most to them.
In other words, these events are learning opportunities—and the end of a year is always a great time to reflect on key learnings.
Over the past year, I’ve spoken and collaborated with so many wonderful colleagues, customers, and partners across all industries—and I’ve been learning all the time, both at our CX Circle events and in my conversations throughout the year.
I’d like to ‘pay it forward’ by sharing what I’ve learned with you. Here are the top 4 CX lessons to bring to 2025:
34.2% of digital professionals plan to prioritize AI over the next year. When I came across this stat in our report, I thought: “that’s a lot!” But I also learned that Wolverine Worldwide’s use of AI helped them reduce exit rates by +32% and recover lost revenue—a great success story that shows why AI is worth prioritizing I look forward to learning about more brands that will use AI to rise above the rest and truly make a difference in their businesses, whether they are transitioning from generative capabilities to integrated applications or emphasizing efficiency and tangible CX improvements. No matter what they choose, optimizing the customer experience and elevating customer interactions at every stage will remain of utmost importance when utilizing AI strategies.
Seamless journeys are the new loyalty programs. The growing emphasis we’ve seen on improving customer lifecycle and seamless engagement as the new loyalty currency has proved successful. As the number of channels customers engage with continues to grow (and fully integrating offline and online data points to deliver seamless, omnichannel experiences becomes more critical) brands must understand who exactly their target audience is, and create innovative strategies to reach them effectively and quickly. If not, they’ll leave! I heard this firsthand from Jeremy Goss, Senior Digital Analyst at leading telco brand Vodafone. As Goss explained, Vodafone—like many other brands—is focused on one DX trend above all: optimizing the customer journey. Goss shared: “We're looking at where customers jump on and where they drop off and the parts in between that. We're also looking at how we can help a customer take out some of those points. That's important for our team because we're really heavily focused on the customer experience. There are lots of things involved when our customers buy a phone, like managing their account and settings, changing their direct debit, and adding a family member to their plan. The entire experience needs to be streamlined because if it's not, customers will go elsewhere.”
Social media is critical to reaching younger audiences. Speaking with Alastair Forbes, Senior Director, EMEA Head of Ecosystem & Alliances at UGC platform Bazaarvoice, I learned that they are deeply focused on influencer marketing and social commerce. He shared: “The largest generation of digital natives will start to leave school next year. We're talking about 2 billion Gen Alphas, and by the time they've left school, 43% of that 2 billion will have already made money online. This is a generation of consumers that consume all of their content digitally. For us to be able to reach that audience and use over 1 billion Tiktokers or our Instagram community to help brands get their message across, capture their attention, and create that brand affinity where they will buy—moving from 19-day purchase decisions to less than a minute—that's what we're focused on. And that's what we want to continue to work on with our partners and our brands to really support that journey.”
Brands that have reimagined how to best use data for their CX strategies have seen success, from quantitative metrics to emotional insights. The shift to first-party and qualitative data to build trust and deliver personalized experiences has made a big difference for UK cycling, motoring services, vehicle servicing and repairs brand Halfords, which integrated Contentsquare products including VoC (Voice of Customer) data with Session Replay analytics, resulting in an increased NPS (Net Promoter Score) by +2.4 percentage points.
From the conversations I have had with customers and beyond, it's clear that creating the type of experiences that customers love demands a deep understanding of customer behavior and a holistic view of journeys. Next year, the most successful brands will elevate their data strategies to the next level, combining quantitative and qualitative insights and using AI to make sense of billions of data points and surface precise, timely recommendations to improve the CX.
Now more than ever, the best companies stand out by offering a truly better experience than others. Top performers don’t just meet the evolving expectations of customers—they exceed them. They do this by understanding their customers’ behavior, understanding market trends, and implementing changes over time to offer customers exactly what they want. By pushing trends further than competitors, they stay ahead of the game.
From personalized product recommendations to timely communications and tailored content, we’re entering a new era where every interaction will feel uniquely crafted for each customer. It will be an era where brands can anticipate customer needs, create dynamic experiences in real time, and provide consistent personalization at an unprecedented scale. Generative AI, too, is allowing brands to deliver tailored, high-quality experiences to customers across every touchpoint, with remarkable efficiency.
I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to see what 2025 holds. But which strategy or success story that I’ve shared here do you find most compelling? Let me know—and feel free to connect on LinkedIn.
Happy holidays!
John
Get ahead of 2025’s CX trends
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Chief Customer Officer at Contentsquare