By Paul Lima
If you’re responsible for customer experience at a firm, large or small, it’s stressful to put together the annual plan. Uncertainty, new regulatory frameworks, changing customer demographics, exponential acceleration of innovation, growing data volumes, fragmented infrastructure and changing customer expectations all have to be factored in your planning.
And if that weren’t enough, the Marketing Technology category now extends well beyond marketing, introducing internal gridlock and necessitating CX professionals to present robust business cases, detailed requirements, and financial models for ROI. Bonuses are increasingly tied to these plans, amplifying the stakes.
And then there are the soft skills needed to gain the consensus of IT, Operations, Finance and the C-Level. It’s harder than ever to get approvals and I had one customer recently tell me that the more data they have the more uncertainty they have in what to do next. What a paradox!
So here are my top three trends and tips that CX leaders need to prioritize in their 2025 operating plan:
- Unlock the value of data for everyone
- Prioritize AI within your span of control
- Prepare for Regulatory uncertainty across the globe by adopting new business models
Unlock the value of data for everyone
Global data volume is experiencing exponential growth; the dataverse is growing at 23% per year. By the end of 2025, it will exceed 181 zettabytes. There are more data sources being collected, from more devices (think Internet of Things), from more people buying more devices, from more types of media (think VoiceNotes from WhatsApp).
While marketers are drowning in data, I propose that you think of data as the currency for your company’s relationships. The trend to become more “client-centric” means that we need to break down data silos and create a 360 view of each person. While it’s true that this has different implications in B2B vs B2C models one constant is true for everyone: you need to know customers by name. From that baseline, you can enrich each profile with as much data as makes sense to add value to that relationship.
But breaking down data silos is like boiling the ocean. And with more stakeholders beating a path to your door now than ever before you’ll need to prioritize.
- Streamline Internal Processes: Build intake systems that enable internal stakeholders to leverage your team’s capabilities. Simplify the approach into a few “plays” (e.g., “Engage with Our Content,” “Engage with Our Event,” “Engage with Our Solutions”). Create templates and project plans to facilitate execution.
- Diversify Use Cases: Develop a portfolio of use cases and map them on an Effort-to-Impact matrix. Identify quick wins with modest impact versus high-impact projects requiring more effort. This approach helps manage expectations and balance stakeholder demands. Consider engaging a consulting firm to navigate politically sensitive areas.
- Adopt Design Thinking: Use Design Thinking to create repeatable, scalable processes for building customer journeys and engaging stakeholders. This method fosters collaboration and minimizes resistance. This will save time in the long run because everyone will feel that they had a voice throughout the creative process.
- Document Before Digitizing: Ensure builders understand data flows and customer journeys before development begins. Even in Agile processes, careful planning and documentation yield long-term dividends.
Prioritize AI within their span of control
With trends like conversational commerce, large language models (LLMs), and retrieval-augmented generation (RAGs), CX professionals have more tools than ever to create engaging customer experiences. Low-code platforms enable seamless interactions across WhatsApp, chatbots, apps, and email. Omni-channel management tools push content everywhere, and voice-activated search is shifting how we measure SEO ROI.
I recommend that CX professional go back to basics and like the stoics say, focus on what you can control.
- Segment and Analyze: Deeply understand your customers. Collect and enrich data with third-party tools to gain actionable insights.
- Concenter your data. Create a home for customer data. A centralized home, or a centralized architecture, either can work. Implementing a single source of truth for every customer relationship may require investments in process, governance and people.
- Streamline Omni-Channel Communications: Use platforms that allow you to create content once and deploy it across multiple channels. Use platforms to help accelerate your content supply chain. Like data, content is also experiencing an exponential growth. Trends in hyper-personalization will require new ways of thinking about content and producing it. Leverage AI tools to create the content once and then support your creatives with the ability to create all of the nuanced content for all of your channels. Tools like Adobe Firefly do this well. And integrate these tools with your Digital Asset Manager so that you also have a home for your content. Use databases (like Adobe Digital Asset Manager) and not shared servers (like Sharepoint) to store your content assets.
- Align Hyper-personalization with your Data Readiness Posture: Choose use cases based on their business impact and your organization’s data maturity. This alignment ensures efficient resource utilization and maximizes ROI without overinvesting in data exercises that go underutilized.
Prepare for Regulatory uncertainty across the globe by adopting new business models
The US Department of Justice stated their blunt position: “Google must divest Chrome.” And if that weren’t enough, they also want to break up Google’s Android business. They presented two pathways: divest or agree to governmental oversight.
Last week, the US Department of Justice vs Google proposed a “far-reaching overhaul of Google’s structure and business practices, including the sale of its Chrome browser, in a bid to end its monopoly on internet search.” And this week,
And Microsoft is also facing active antitrust litigation where they are being investigated for allegedly abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms.
And if the regulatory pressures aren’t enough to change the way that Google will need to manage their search business, there is a coming mass migration of users who are starting to and who will begin to adapt SearchGTP, as the future of search. The nature of paid search is changing.
No matter where the regulators in the US go with the new administration the European regulators are actively pursuing cases against Google, Apple and Meta. The Digital Marketers Act is placing more restrictions on walled-gardens by so-called gatekeepers and calls for more transparency and accessibility beyond the walled gardens.
Even if you’re a domestic business, what happens across the globe will ultimately impact your subscriptions with the platform companies you use. So pay attention to these trends and think globally and act locally.
- Own Your Data: The simplest way to prepare for regulatory uncertainty is to own your customer data and store it in platforms that you pay for.
- Innovate Business Models: Uncertainty isn’t limited to the regulatory environment. Most businesses can adopt new ways to make money using customer data. Business model innovation isn’t just the prerogative of big companies. Embrace creative approaches to monetization. For example, Starbucks effectively became an unregulated bank with $1.8 billion in unspent cash deposits. Panera’s coffee subscription and Red Bull’s paid influencer program are other examples of small-scale innovations.
- Blur Industry Lines: Consider partnerships or platforms that allow you to adopt new business models. The boundaries between manufacturers, media companies, and financial institutions are increasingly fluid, creating opportunities for even small businesses to innovate.
The Democratization of Innovation
A bonus trend: Perhaps that’s the greatest trend for 2025 is the democratization of innovation. All of the advances in data, software platforms and business models are now accessible for companies of all sizes to enable the visionaries of today to create the customer experiences of tomorrow.
Paul Lima is the founder of Lima Consulting Group and a veteran of the US Army, where he helped establish cyberwarfare capabilities. A graduate of West Point with a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton, he is multilingual and hosts the podcast “The Visionary’s Guide to the Digital Future.
