Growing customer expectations and advances in technology, including agentic AI, are changing how brands deliver customer value. Agentic AI will enable systems to sense, reason and act independently, reshaping every touchpoint in the customer journey.
Yet, many leaders are unsure where to begin, how to scale and how to steer innovation towards meaningful customer experiences that are very human in nature.
KPMG’s Customer Experience Excellence FY25-26 report examines consumer experience as AI becomes increasingly central to CX strategy. Now in its 16th year, the report draws on insights from 126 leading Australian brands across retail, financial services, utilities and public service sectors.
We take a look at how top brands are leaning into opportunities and overcoming challenges and ask: What does it take to deliver customer experiences that are not only intelligent, but also deeply human?
How can you prepare for the rise of agentic customer experience?
Across all sectors, agentic AI is set to reshape the customer journey. Leading brands are preparing for the new world of AI-connected ecosystems by leaning into total experience; the ability to connect customers, employees, partners, systems, and data into one intelligent, adaptive service environment.
What will set organisations apart is their ability to embrace agentic AI and innovation, while bringing together the total experience of people, data, and technology.
Is your organisation ready for the big shift?
CX leader success takeaways:
Customer AI concerns across demographics
Top customer concerns across age groups:
Six pillars of customer experience excellence
KPMG’s Six Pillars of Customer Experience Excellence defines the DNA of outstanding customer experiences. Our research shows how Australian respondents rank their importance – and how digital transformation and AI can enhance and support them.
Australian customer experience by sector
- Retail
- Financial services
- Utilities
- Public sector
The retail sector has demonstrated remarkable growth in Australia, with nine of the top 10 companies belonging to this category. Growth of +0.4% is strongly supported by improvements in the Empathy and Resolution pillars, reflecting enhanced customer engagement and improvements in resolving issues.
Grocery retail saw a notable uplift, rising to 7.43 (+1.2%), driven by value-led loyalty programs that offer faster fulfilment and reduce customer effort. Non-grocery retail grew slightly to 7.46 (+0.3%), supported by resilient demand for durables and more selective discretionary spending.
Amid ongoing economic pressures and evolving customer behaviours, AI is now central to retail’s CX transformation. Retail trends show top retail brands are innovating with AI across online and instore experiences to create seamless omnichannel journeys, while data-informed loyalty programs are also offering more personalised value.
One financial services organisation earned its place in the top 10 Australian brands, down from three in 2024. The financial services sector continues to outperform the national average on customer experience, but the gap is narrowing as expectations climb, and other sectors accelerate their programs.
The sector is seeing a shift from reactive service models to predictive, hyper-personalised engagement driven by AI and cyber resilience. There is a strong focus on AI-enabled fraud detection, with banks, insurers and super funds investing in digital transformation programs and AI to detect and prevent fraud more intelligently.
The utilities sector saw a CEE score improvement of +2.6% year-on-year. While the sector’s average score of 7.11 remains below the national benchmark, the gains signal a strong shift to customer-centric value creation.
This year’s uplift was driven by improvements across all six pillars of excellence, with Empathy (+4%) and Resolution (3.5%) showing the strongest growth. These responses reflect the sector’s growing responsiveness to cost-of-living pressures faced by Australians and efforts to support customers by managing problems before they arise.
Tech-enabled predictive maintenance, AI-powered leak detection and sentiment tracking detect and resolve issues at their source, reducing customer frustration and improving service quality. However, the sector still faces challenges in connected AI adoption.
The public sector delivered the largest year-on-year improvement in customer experience (+9.1%). This year’s uplift was driven by improvements across all six pillars of excellence, with gains in Time & Effort (+10.4%) and Expectations (+9.6%) reflecting a strong pivot towards personalisation and responsiveness.
This upward trend signals a shift from transactional service delivery to proactive, citizen-centric engagement, supported by digital platforms and data-driven personalisation.
Public sector agencies are being recognised for digital accessibility and personalised service, with apps and online platforms streamlining access to essential services and improving customer satisfaction.
Customer Experience Excellence FY25-26 report
Explore how brands are using AI to elevate customer experience.
How KPMG can help brands create customer excellence
KPMG helps organisations design and implement Total Experience (TX), a unified approach that connects customer, employee, partner, and digital experiences to drive loyalty, growth, and sustainable value.
Our approach combines The Six Pillars of Experience Excellence with advanced agentic AI and data capabilities to help clients deliver experiences that are consistent, human, and intelligent across every channel and interaction.
End to end Total Experience journey:
✔ define the TX vision and strategy
✔ map value streams
✔ simplify interactions for customers and citizens
✔ front office transformation
✔ build portals and digital products that drive seamless transactions for customers
✔ empower employees through experience design
✔ deploy trusted AI and analytics
✔ measure Total Experience value
Customer experience awards
- KPMG ranks #1 in Sales & Marketing (including customer experience)
According to Source Perspectives: Perceptions of Consulting in Australia 2025
- Forrester Wave Leader 2024
KPMG has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Consulting Services, Q4 2024 evaluation. KPMG received one of the top three highest scores in the strategy and current offering categories.
KPMG's customer experience specialists
- carmen
- neil
- louise
- benjamin
- richard
- sue
- kate
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