Orchestrating AI-driven customer excellence

2024-25 Global Customer Experience Excellence report

86,073 interviews

881,815 Brand Evaluations

Across 2,970 Brands

23 Countries

Leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences

The hype around AI is profound. With promises to revolutionise industries, enhance decision-making and redefine customer experience, organisations have quickly been adopting and scaling AI across their businesses.

Now, the focus is shifting to actualising AI’s transformative potential. As leading organisations look beyond the hype, they are implementing effective AI use cases to meet rising customer expectations. As they do, they are using a pragmatic approach that prioritises practicality, purpose and value – all grounded in trust.

For 15 years, KPMG professionals have been asking consumers about their individual experiences with brands. This year, the KPMG Global Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) 2024-2025 report explores how leading organisations have rapidly implemented AI with swift return on investments and enhanced customer experiences. It delves into the realities of AI implementation from leading brands and looks ahead to the critical factors for AI to reach new heights in customer experience excellence.

This year’s CEE results show a stabilisation in overall customer experience with a small rise in most countries. This turnaround from last year comes from more brands humanising their AI interfaces to make them more engaging and relatable to customers.

Customer-centric AI implementation practices

Successfully implementing AI requires organisations to adopt an approach that differs significantly from traditional IT processes to meet rising customer expectations with this technology.

Customer experience is stabilising globally:

Consumers want to connect with personalities, not machines. Leading organisations are beginning to humanise their AI systems with human-like characteristics that can offer more personalised, emotionally resonant experiences with their distinct personalities and conversational style.

77% of the number one brands increased their year-on-year CEE scores by 1.3%, demonstrating that excellence, once attained, fosters continuous improvement.

Most countries reported 1% to 2% growth in overall customer experience

Humanising the customer experience

Regular interaction with advancing technologies has consumers putting a higher value on ethical and honest business practices.

Integrity

Integrity is an outcome of consistent organisational behaviour that demonstrates trustworthiness. There are trust-building events where organisations have the need to publicly react to a difficult situation, and trust building moments where individual actions by staff add up to create trust in the organisation as a whole.

For all customers, it is the degree to which the organisation delivers on its promises that is consistently top of mind.

Personalisation

Personalisation is the most valuable component of most experiences. It involves demonstrating that you understand the customer’s specific circumstances and will adapt the experience accordingly.

Use of name, individualised attention, knowledge of preferences and past interactions all add up to an experience that feels personal.

This year’s report finds Integrity (18.8%) to be the biggest driver of NPS (net promoter score). Personalisation (20.2%) is biggest driver of Loyalty, highlighting the importance of tailored customer interactions.

Shifting customer expectations

Customer expectations continue to evolve. Yet, now, with the growing adoption of AI, concerns and attitudes towards cost-of-living, ESG (environment, social and governance) and AI continue to emerge. Understanding these concerns will be crucial to organisations looking to create value through AI.

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84% of customers report being moderately, significantly, or extremely impacted by increases in the cost-of-living.
However, 54% of customers are quite or extremely willing, to pay more to a company that is ethical of gives back to society.
Customers remain concerned over AI. The top 3 concerns mentioned are:
- Not being able to interact with a human - 52%
- The security of my personal data - 46%
- AI not understanding customer emotions - 43%

Beyond the noise: Orchestrating AI-driven customer excellence

KPMG professionals have been scoring brands for overall Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) for 15 years. Based on our experience and the latest findings based on 86,073 customer interviews, 881,815 brand evaluations of 2,970 brands across 23 countries, we explore leading organisations are implementing AI to enhance customer experiences today – and how they plan to use AI to reach new heights tomorrow.

Learn more and download the report