Beyond the noise: Orchestrating AI-driven customer excellence

The noise 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 actualizing AI’s transformative potential. As leading organisations look beyond the noise, 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.

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

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.

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

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

Regular interaction with advancing technologies has consumers putting a higher value on ethical and honest business practices. 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, highlights the importance of tailored customer interactions.

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.