The best experience customers have anywhere becomes their expectation everywhere. That means your business needs to keep meeting the bar—and every interaction counts. Great customer experience (CX) not only secures customer loyalty, but also drives long-term growth to enable innovation, builds enduring relationships and enhances product offerings.

The AI revolution is only intensifying these trends. Chatbots, new ways of finding products and services, hyper-personalized and scalable content—AI has changed the CX game. If you’re not rethinking how you connect with customers, you’re already behind.

We did a pulse check to see how leaders are responding to the rise of AI and leveraging it in their CX plans. Our global CX survey of 1,000 executives across diverse sectors has revealed that the surge of generative AI in particular has dramatically changed the future of customer relationships. New AI-powered tools and technology promises to enhance CX by improving customer service , simplifying logistics and empowering personalized interactions.

Our in-depth report unpacks these and other developments, illustrating how AI is already reshaping the CX toolkit across industries and where organizations are still catching up.

Key findings

Business leaders have intensified their focus on customer needs in their CX AI plans

58 percent of C-suite leaders placed customer experience and satisfaction among their top three growth priorities, showing that CX isn’t just a nice to have—it's core to business strategy.

Figure 01

Top three priorities for growth

Corporate leaders today are more attuned than ever to customer desires and delivery methods. Over one-third of C-suite leaders acknowledged that rapidly evolving customer expectations significantly challenge their growth.

Figure 02

Percent of respondents who saw a customer challenge as having a significant impact on their growth transformation in the last 12 months

Leaders must leverage AI innovation to keep pace with rapidly evolving customer expectations.

Strategic priorities in the C-suite vs. V-suite

The C-suite shows stronger concern for how customer expectations impact the bottom line compared to VPs and below, with a pronounced focus on customer service and experience leading the push for generative AI investment over the next three years. Areas prioritized differently by C-suite and V-suite include:

Figure 03

Functional areas for generative AI

Enthusiasm and challenges in AI integration

Strategic initiatives around AI are promising, but CX leaders face challenges in bridging the gap between big-picture strategies and actionable tactics. For example, to get the most out of AI investments, you’ll need to deeply integrate it into everyday tools and capabilities.

Tapping into the data advantage

Leaders recognize that deep, enriched and real-time customer data is pivotal in delivering personalized experiences. More than half of survey respondents (53 percent) identified data management and predictive analytics as critical for system modernization, underscoring data’s role as the fuel of the emerging AI revolution.

• Generative AI capabilities democratize data access and refine customer segmentation, further enriching personalization capabilities
• Efficient data usage enables precise targeting and customization, granting the potential for unparalleled personalization at scale

Personalization’s new frontier

AI can enable ultimate personalization—but only with the right tools. Two-thirds of executives (67 percent) anticipate AI assistants will become increasingly vital for productivity in the coming three years, driving efficiency in content creation and automating routine tasks

A shift in search paradigms

Generative AI is reshaping how customers conduct searches, unlocking intuitive, natural language capabilities. This transformation impacts traditional concepts like SEO, potentially revolutionizing customer engagement methods.

Seizing the AI in CX opportunity—the time is now

Generative AI presents an urgent opportunity. The challenge lies in piloting projects at scale and leveraging data to prioritize impactful customer experiences. Organizations can prepare by:

1. Breaking down data silos and establishing robust data governance
2. Embracing AI as a transformative force, augmenting current interaction models and starting to build what those experiences could look like in the future.

Thriving in the generative AI era means turning customer-focused strategies and ideas into products and services that actually work. At Publicis Sapient, we help companies use data and AI to find new customers, keep the ones they have and create lasting value.  Curious how that could look for you? Let’s talk.

About the research

This report is based on research conducted with 1,000 business decision-makers in June and July 2024. Respondents hailed from sectors such as Consumer Products, Health, Financial Services and Retail, and they all work within companies generating $1 to $10 billion annually.