The connected customer
As brands compete for increasingly price conscious consumers, customer experience (CX) has become a decisive differentiator. Yet many struggle to deliver, constrained by outdated systems, fragmented data, and organizational silos that limit both agility and consistency.
The current wave of artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI that can reason and act across workflows, offers a powerful opportunity to reshape service delivery. Organizations can now provide fast, personalized support at scale while improving workforce productivity and satisfaction. But realizing that potential requires more than isolated tools; it calls for a unified platform that connects people, data, and decisions across the service lifecycle. This report explores how leading organizations are navigating that shift, and what it takes to move from AI potential to CX impact.
Key findings include:
- AI is transforming customer experience (CX). Customer service has evolved from the era of voicebased support through digital commerce and cloud to today’s AI revolution. Powered by large language models (LLMs) and a growing pool of data, AI can handle more diverse customer queries, produce highly personalized communication at scale, and help staff and senior management with decision support. Customers are also warming to AI-powered platforms as performance and reliability improves. Early adopters report improvements including more satisfied customers, more productive staff, and richer performance insights.
- Legacy infrastructure and data fragmentation are hindering organizations from maximizing the value of AI. While customer service and IT departments are early adopters of AI, the broader organizations across industries are often riddled with outdated infrastructure. This impinges the ability of autonomous AI tools to move freely across workflows and data repositories to deliver goal-based tasks. Creating a unified platform and orchestration architecture will be key to unlock AI’s potential. The transition can be a catalyst for streamlining and rationalizing the business as a whole.
- High-performing organizations use AI without losing the human touch. While consumers are warming to AI, rollout should include some discretion. Excessive personalization could make customers uncomfortable about their personal data, while engineered “empathy” from bots may be received as insincere. Organizations should not underestimate the unique value their workforce offers. Sophisticated adopters strike the right balance between human and machine capabilities. Their leaders are proactive in addressing job displacement worries through transparent communication, comprehensive training, and clear delineation between AI and human roles. The most effective organizations treat AI as a collaborative tool that enhances rather than replaces human connection and expertise.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
This content was researched, designed, and written entirely by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.
