We asked our CX teams, contact center professionals, and industry experts: “What are the top initiatives that need to be prioritized in the coming year, and how should companies prepare for them?”
“Employee engagement is the main ingredient in making customer experience a competitive advantage. As we look toward 2025, customer experience leaders must recognize that truly engaged employees become the living embodiment of your brand’s values, creating trust, inspiring customer loyalty, and driving consistent service excellence. To achieve this, organizations must build a culture that not only values but actively invests in their employees’ growth and well-being. This culture fosters mutual respect and encourages employees to create memorable, shareable customer experiences. When employees feel appreciated and part of something bigger, they reflect that energy in their work, reinforcing a cycle of trust and satisfaction. It’s not an operational initiative. It’s the base for brand growth and advocacy.”
– Frank Pettinato, CEO, Avantive Solutions
“Customer experience leaders must prioritize omnichannel strategies and intelligent automation to meet customer expectations. This means ensuring seamless, user-friendly touchpoints across every channel—websites, chatbots, IVRs, and live agents—that work together to create a smooth customer journey. At the same time, agentic AI tools are changing how agents perform by providing near real-time coaching and insights, enhancing both efficiency and outcomes. Contact centers should also invest in FAQ systems and voice-prompt routing to handle simpler inquiries while reserving agents for more complex issues. Looking at hiring, the shift toward remote work for customer care and sales agents is a necessity for attracting top talent. Meeting employees where they want to be while ensuring secure, high-quality customer care, will define the future of successful contact centers. Gen Z’s demand for work-life balance is reshaping employment models, and the companies willing to adapt will be best positioned to thrive.”
– Amy Brennan, COO & CAIO, Avantive Solutions
“AI is driving a sea of change within our industry. On top of that, global economics are tumultuous and customer expectations, amplified by social media, are increasing exponentially (something I call the Moore’s Law of Customer Service). There is no room for static experience architectures. If you can’t modify workflows and adjust the capacity of both human and machine at speed and at scale, your system may soon be considered a dinosaur. For machines, AI is the obvious solution. But the human perspective? You don’t put all your eggs in one basket with your stock portfolio and you shouldn’t do that with your CX team. Today, it is imperative to tap into scalable, diversified, market-driven talent solutions. Companies like ArenaCX now provide globally distributed resource pools organized by marketplace forces that drive continuous improvements. A marketplace solution like this will be more resilient, flexible, scalable, and efficient than a centrally-planned solution.”
– Alan Pendleton, Founder & CEO, Arena CX
“As we look toward 2025, a key initiative for customer experience leaders will be fostering trust through verified communication. Two-thirds of consumers want more accurate caller ID to help identify trusted calls (Numeracle, 2024). With AI playing a larger role in communications, consumers will demand trustworthy interactions. Establishing verified identity and robust security measures will be critical in ensuring customers know when they can trust the systems they engage with. By integrating identity verification and security into every interaction, companies can deliver a customer-first experience that drives loyalty and satisfaction in 2025 and beyond.”
– Rebekah Johnson, Founder & CEO, Numeracle
“I think 2025 is going to be all about the relationship. Here are two areas where the relationship is going to be pivotal for companies.
The first is around the business-to-business relationships in our industry. Where client meets vendor, prospect meets potential partner, or even contact center meets service provider. Regardless of what intercept point you play in the customer service journey, your options for service providers are nearly endless. Yet the nuances of what each can deliver are often almost negligible. Therefore the businesses will begin to identify true partnerships that are moving in the same direction and can build lasting strategies for a mutual success. Cultural, enterprise goals, and vision alignment are invaluable.
The second is the frontline relationships within the call center. At a time when information is so abundant and data analytics is at the top of its game, teams need a high skillset to transfer knowledge with confidence and effective direction. Balancing data analytics with a positive customer and employee relationship will be a critical focus for companies so they do not get lost in the numbers. Business Relationship Management (BRM) will be a growing topic for executive teams.”
– Mike Ferrari, Chief Customer Officer, Avantive Solutions
“As customer expectations continue to rise, CX leaders must prioritize streamlining and automating key stages of the customer journey. Focusing on understanding and simplifying each step, using automation where possible, providing effective training at every stage, and providing custom techniques for handling diverse needs of customers will be crucial. Additionally, greater emphasis must be placed on addressing the areas that cause the most customer frustration. Not only will customer interactions improve, but collateral benefits like employee satisfaction, increased associate tenure, and higher interaction accuracy will follow.”
– Sapna Rana, Manager of HR & Operations, Avantive Solutions
“Data security and privacy are rapidly becoming a barrier to entry for supply chain organizations that fail to demonstrate these competencies. Without robust data protection, companies risk falling behind as customers and regulators demand higher standards of transparency and accountability.
While I may be biased, the hard evidence speaks for itself. Verizon’s annual data breach investigations report, which analyzes a significant number of breaches, underscores the growing risks businesses face. To prepare, organizations need to invest in stronger security measures, ensure compliance with privacy regulations, and build customer trust through transparent, secure data practices.”
– Sean Hicks, Sr. Account Executive, CompliancePoint
“CX leaders and contact centers must prioritize flexibility, scalability, and personalization to meet evolving customer expectations. Fractional workers will play a transformative role in these initiatives by enabling companies to scale their operations dynamically, match specialized skills with customer needs, and provide 24/7 support across diverse geographies and languages. By embracing these models, businesses will remain agile, deliver superior experiences, avoid costly operational and capital expenditures while maintaining a distinct competitive edge in the rapidly evolving CX landscape.”
– Daniel Akre, Founder & CEO, GigCX Talent
“I think this is the year that more companies will realize that customer experience is not just a function of one department—it’s the job of the entire organization. With customer satisfaction levels plummeting, companies have a huge opportunity to set themselves apart by delivering exceptional, consistent service that becomes part of their brand. To prepare, organizations need to align every department around CX, ensuring it’s a shared responsibility. Investing in tools and partnerships that proactively address customer concerns and leveraging data to anticipate needs can help companies stay ahead of challenges. Equally important is empowering teams with the training and resources to deliver memorable experiences at every touchpoint. When done well, CX can drive growth, revenue, and passionate brand advocates.”
– Lindsey Warren, Chief Marketing Officer, Avantive Solutions
“In 2025, focusing on employee well-being will be key, as mental health and work-life balance become even more important for job satisfaction and keeping great employees. Contact centers can offer flexible schedules, mental health resources, and create space for employees to actually leave work at work. By offering support through employee assistance programs, promoting open communication, and building a culture of care, companies can help create a healthier, happier, and more engaged team.”
– Julieta Lopez, HR Director, Avantive Solutions
“All channel Contact Compliance can no longer be a series of disparate, siloed processes. There are way too many new and strengthening rules governing omni-channel outreach with a marked rise in enforcement action. Organizations performing outreach, especially at scale, must centralize their governance and controls. Also, as AI and ML technologies continue to evolve, there’s no reason contact centers can’t perform quality assurance across 100% of their phone calls, instead of relying on the outdated practice of sampling just 1-3%. Shipping calls to offshore third-party vendors and trying to ‘find the needle in the haystack’ is no longer necessary when tools exist to analyze every interaction, allowing the needle to find you instead.”
– Stefan Dunigan, Vice President of Operations, Gryphon.ai
“Hyper-personalisation goes beyond simply gathering data—it’s about genuinely listening to customers and engaging with them in a professional manner in their preferred method of communication. By leveraging data thoughtfully, businesses can create tailored interactions that make customers feel recognised, understood and valued. Consistency across every touchpoint—whether through phone calls, social media or live chat—is essential. Every interaction should feel seamless, as if the customer is speaking to the same attentive, helpful representative in each brand interaction.”
– Roshan Sookdeo, Director of Global Solutions, CallForce Outsourcing Specialists
