CX trends come and go, and most organisations simply watch them unfold. But the leaders who act, who turn change into progress, are the ones who define the future.
Large, established organisations often move slowly, constrained by legacy systems and risk aversion, while start-ups move fast, experiment boldly, and capture the advantage. Here’s what innovators will be considering.
1 priority
Upstream CX: Improving and integrating business processes remains the best driver of customer service
More than ever, delivering great service depends on integrating business processes across the entire value chain, and this remains the real differentiator in customer experience that works. When organisations ensure product usage links accurately to invoicing, payments are matched to bills, and inventory is synchronised with online ordering, customers benefit from real-time visibility and fewer errors; critical in models like retail click-and-collect. In sectors such as healthcare, connecting patient records across providers reduces friction across the journey from booking to treatment. In manufacturing, the flow of sensor data into predictive maintenance schedules reduces downtime and improves satisfaction. And robust cybersecurity ensures operations stay live, while accurate proactive messages are reassuring and useful to customers.
Ultimately, reducing friction for customers depends on different systems working together; and yet, resolving customer issues typically requires access to multiple disjointed and siloed systems. This remains the No. 1 challenge for organisations striving to deliver great CX, even as simple processes are automated.
Customer satisfaction isn’t guaranteed by technology alone, whether AI or not. In telecoms, Ofcom’s service quality reporting shows that overall satisfaction in sectors like mobile and broadband remains high (88% and 84% respectively satisfied), but complaints handling still vary significantly across providers, highlighting that breakdown between systems and business units is influencing outcomes. (Ofcom, 2025)
Data consistently shows that where systems remain siloed, customer journeys break down; leading to frustration, complaints, and churn. Organisations that tie operations together end-to-end, digitising processes and aligning them around customer needs, are far better positioned to reduce friction, personalise service, and ultimately deliver experiences that drive loyalty and competitive advantage.
• Untangling CX complexity, digitalising processes, and putting the customer at the centre of every decision will define the organisations that succeed next.
7 trends
1. Outcome-Based CX: Following in the Footsteps of Consumer Duty
In UK financial services, there has been an increased focus on outcome-based measures of service delivery under the FCA’s Consumer Duty, which requires firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers, act in good faith, avoid foreseeable harm, and enable customers to pursue their financial objectives. Outcomes rules for products and services require firms to ensure offerings meet customer needs, represent fair value, provide understandable information, and deliver accessible, effective help across the customer journey. These principles blend broader regulatory expectations with specific performance measures aimed at embedding customer-centricity at every stage of product and service lifecycle. Importantly, the Duty also emphasises the treatment of customers in vulnerable circumstances, requiring firms to design services that do not disadvantage specific groups and ensure accessible support where needed. (FCA, 2025)
These outcome-based concepts are now spreading beyond financial services into other regulated sectors such as energy, water, telecoms, and media, where regulators increasingly expect providers to demonstrate that customer outcomes, not just compliance, are being delivered. For CX leaders, this shift is prompting a rethink of how customer journeys are designed: not just focusing on transactional satisfaction but on the real, measurable impact of interactions on customer wellbeing and objectives.
• Focusing on the outcome of an interaction places greater onus on businesses to deliver what is genuinely best for customers, rather than simply what is merely satisfactory.
2. More Focus on Vulnerable Customers: Designing Appropriate Journeys
Delivering exceptional customer service for the millions of potentially vulnerable customers remains a strategic priority for leaders and UK regulators. YouGov research indicates that around 60% of UK adults exhibit at least one characteristic that could make them potentially vulnerable, underscoring the pervasive nature of this group. Vulnerability spans financial resilience, mental health, and other life circumstances that can amplify harm if services are poorly designed. (YouGov, 2025)
Regulatory scrutiny on this front is intensifying. Ofcom recently fined Virgin Media £23.8 million for failures in its transition from analogue to digital landlines that left vulnerable customers, who relied on telecare alarms, without essential service, emphasizing the real consequences when systems and processes overlook customer needs. (The Guardian, 2025)
The FCA’s guidance on delivering good outcomes for vulnerable customers stresses that firms must consider vulnerability at every stage from design to distribution and support, and monitor outcomes to ensure these customers receive outcomes as good as those of others. (FCA, 2025)
• Developing processes that are genuinely customer-centric, particularly for vulnerable individuals who feel anxious about contacting organisations or accessing digital channels, will be central to reducing friction and meeting regulatory expectations.
3. Empowered Consumers: Gen AI Use By the Public Will Challenge Organisations
Consumers have long felt disadvantaged when dealing with large organisations that make it difficult to complain, fail to answer questions fully, or deliver complicated service channels. These frustrations often stem from organisational policies or processes rather than front-line staff that experience customer annoyance.
The rising availability of Gen AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Co-pilot, and Google Gemini means customers are increasingly empowered with knowledge that has been difficult to access. These tools can help consumers understand complex information, prepare in-depth arguments, or navigate regulatory frameworks, potentially shifting power dynamics in customer interactions. (CX Network 2025)
• As consumers increasingly use agentic AI to engage with organisational systems, businesses will need to check and elevate their own response quality and transparency to ensure fair and accurate customer outcomes.
4. Cyber CX: Fraud Challenges Customer Journey Optimisation
The proliferation of Gen AI and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) tools is enabling cybercriminals to launch more frequent and sophisticated attacks against both businesses and consumers. This context places greater demands on CX leaders to protect customer relationships, as fraud can severely disrupt service experiences and erode trust.
Although automation plays a key role in defence, training front-line staff to recognise and respond to fraud attempts, and rewarding their attention to security signals, will remain crucial. Meanwhile, the necessity for additional verification steps and heightened regulatory compliance can make customer journeys feel more cumbersome.
At the same time, organisations need to educate customers as to how to behave securely to reduce fraud and the costs of dealing with it. You can read more about this on our blog, in our predictions for cybersecurity trends for 2026. (Davies Hickman, 2025)
• Managing the impact of cybersecurity requirements on the customer journey will be key to maintaining both protection and satisfaction in an increasingly digital service environment.
5. AI Everywhere: Strategic Deployment Across CX
Boards and senior leaders will increasingly prioritise accelerating the deployment of AI across a range of customer experience processes, especially during economic headwinds where efficiency and cost management are under scrutiny. AI offers significant potential to reduce operational costs, improve process efficiency, and enrich insight, but it is not a universal solution and must be embedded strategically to manage both implementation costs and service quality risks.
The challenge will be to have AI address the issues set out in our first trend, Upstream CX. This means working across systems and operational units to deliver great customer experiences. Key AI deployment areas include:
1. AI Insights – Generative AI can analyse large volumes of customer feedback and interactions, speeding up insight quality and helping organisations better understand pain points and behaviour trends.
2. AI Interactions – Advanced chatbots and conversational agents will increasingly handle customer enquiries via voice and text. However, ensuring consistency, contextual understanding, and emotional intelligence remains a challenge, especially as outcome-based measurement frameworks rise in prominence.
3. AI Support for Staff – AI will assist customer service agents by drafting responses, offering in-the-moment knowledge retrieval, and suggesting next-best actions. Such tools can boost staff productivity and responsiveness.
4. AI-enabled Processes – Autonomous agents working across systems to deliver customer outcomes will slowly mature, offering deeper integration and automation for routine tasks.
5. AI-Driven Hyper-Personalisation – Real-time behavioural and contextual intelligence will allow journeys, pricing, recommendations and support to adapt instantly to individual customer needs.
AI deployment must be governed with transparency and oversight; regulatory environments such as the EU AI Act (and related UK approaches) will shape implementation expectations, emphasising explainability and accountability. UK regulators are already engaging with how AI can be used responsibly.
• Organisations that treat AI only as a tactical cost cutter, not a strategic enhancer of customer outcomes, risk disappointing both customers and regulators.
6. Employee AI Anxiety: Engagement and Support Matter
As AI becomes more embedded in CX processes, employee engagement and wellbeing will become critical leadership priorities. Research from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows mixed perceptions of AI’s impact on employment: while some workers see AI making tasks easier (28%), significant proportions, particularly in customer service and administrative roles, worry AI could put jobs at risk (32%), or reduce income over time (23%). (ONS, 2025)
This dual sentiment highlights a real organisational risk: unaddressed anxiety about AI can dampen engagement, reduce morale, and undercut the service quality that depends on motivated, confident employees. Ethical leaders will need to integrate AI adoption with strong support structures, clear communication about the role of AI, training that builds confidence (not fear), and pathways to reskilling or upskilling as work evolves.
• Attending to employee engagement, evolving skill requirements, mental health, and career futures will elevate CX and sustain both productivity and loyalty.
7. Higher People Costs: Competitive Pressures and Labour Market Realities
Even as AI changes workflows, labour costs in large-scale customer service operations remain a significant headwind. Recent UK labour market data from the ONS shows continued volatility in employment and modest wage growth, reflecting broader economic pressures. (ONS, 2025)
Simultaneously, structural changes in employment policy (such as National Living Wage increases and other fiscal adjustments) are placing upward pressure on operational budgets while pricing power remains constrained in competitive markets. (CCMA, 2025)
This environment creates a dual challenge: AI must be deployed in ways that complement human labour, not simply replace it, while organisations must invest in higher-value activities and skill areas that justify rising people costs. This includes training customer service teams to work alongside AI, interpret outputs responsibly, and handle complex or sensitive customer situations where human judgement is still essential.
• Mitigating rising human costs by developing new skill pathways and elevating roles will be a critical objective for CX-focused organisations.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the greatest challenge for CX leaders will be resisting the pull of the past, where contact centres were seen only as costs to be minimised and technology was deployed before it was ready. The future belongs to organisations that take a different path: using AI with purpose, empowering their people, and elevating customer experience as a strategic asset rather than a budget line.