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2025 Will Be Another Year Of CX Mediocrity For Most Brands It’s been a rough couple years for customer experience (CX), to say the least, with 2024 seeing CX quality hit an all-time low . This begs the question: Why has such pervasive mediocrity become the norm? The “low-hanging fruit” of easy CX wins has been picked, and eking out differentiation on the basis of CX will require significant, strategic investment. Yet as many executives have (mistakenly) interpreted strong stock performance amid declining CX quality as a signal to maintain the status quo, they inadvertently clear the path for those committed to delivering good CX.
We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like 2025 will be another year of CX mediocrity for most brands. But there’s a silver lining! For bold CX leaders ready to kick things into high gear, this might just be your year. The effort to pull away from the pack will demand commitment, but the strategic advantage in a landscape where others are holding back will be significant.
Here are three of our 2025 predictions that highlight the challenges (and opportunities) awaiting CX leaders: GenAI will displace 100,000 frontline agents from the top global outsourcers. The contact center outsourcing market is an unseen behemoth, quietly powering 62% of brands’ contact center operations. This market has historically thrived on a labor arbitrage model — yet this reliance on ever-cheaper labor is exactly what makes it ripe for generative AI (genAI) disruption.
As genAI successfully automates low-complexity issues, the demand for human agents will shrink. Many outsourcers will shrink headcount in response, hitting the lowest-cost markets the hardest . In this evolving landscape, the choice for CX leaders is clear: to partner with outsourcers that view emerging technologies as a pathway to evolution, not extinction.
The strongest partners will adopt outcome-based models that align directly with client success, marking a pivotal shift toward value over volume. Half of accessibility efforts will have negligible CX impact. The spotlight on digital accessibility is intensifying as the European Accessibility Act’s June 2025 deadline approaches.
Despite 59% of design pros reporting exec-backed commitment to digital accessibility, a significant divide remains between intention and action. Forrester’s prediction underscores this gap: Only half of these companies are expected to undertake meaningful efforts to enhance accessibility. The rest will resort to superficial measures: quick-fix products and find-and-fix programs that fall short of making digital spaces genuinely accessible.
The key to bridging this divide lies in embedding accessibility principles into the design process from the outset, ensuring that efforts translate into tangible benefits beyond mere compliance. ‘Your Money Is Being Wasted’—Tesla Billionaire Elon Musk Declares ‘Financial Emergency’ As $35.7 Trillion ‘Debt Bomb’ Primes A Bitcoin Price Boom To Rival Gold Trump Vs.
Harris 2024 Polls: Harris Leads In Latest 2 Surveys—As Polls Tighten Week Before Election Day Leak Reveals A $1.4 Trillion China Earthquake Could Be About To Hit Crypto As The Bitcoin Price Soars Over $70,000 One in four CX teams will cut underused tools in favor of “good enough” enterprise suites. On average, CX teams use four technologies and often only scratch the surface of their capabilities — capabilities often mirrored in the enterprise suites that their organizations already leverage.
This overlap has caught the attention of IT departments eager to reduce software redundancies and expenses. Forward-thinking CX leaders will get one step ahead, choosing to cut the fat themselves by embracing function-first procurement strategies. They will content themselves with “good enough” enterprise solutions for commoditized but necessary functions such as post-interaction surveys and conversation analytics.
This will free up resources to invest in tech to tackle their most pressing challenges: linking CX improvements directly to business outcomes and effectively acting on customer insights. Download our complimentary Predictions guide for B2C marketing and CX leaders, which covers more of our top predictions for 2025. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub .
This post was written by VP, Principal Analyst Christina McAllister and it originally appeared here ..
