Michael Maas, Sprinklr’s Senior VP of Europe

By Michael Maas, Sprinklr’s Senior VP of Europe

Good customer experience (CX) is no longer a “secret sauce” in marketing — it’s an expectation. We’re used to it now and see it every day, whether it’s Netflix’s tailored show recommendations, Starbucks’ gamified loyalty app or Spotify’s curated music list, Discover Weekly.

However, the CX landscape is changing. In the golden age of advertising, a compelling ad might have been enough to draw in customers, but today, without compelling CX to match, they’ll not think twice about taking their business elsewhere. According to PWC, 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.

Undoubtedly, customer expectations are on the rise. In response, many businesses have rightly identified customer experience (CX) as essential for meeting growing customer needs, evolving from a nice-to-have to a full-scale strategic initiative. This shift in focus is driven by macro conditions, namely a tough economy leading to marketing budget cuts from 2025 onwards not to mention the runaway rise of AI, which is setting new CX standards through “hyper-personalisation.”

Against this backdrop, at a time with customer loyalty is anything but a given, businesses need to understand what good CX looks like. That includes grasping the interplay of AI and how it can personalise the experience to attract and retain a new breed of cost-conscious shopper. Let’s dive into it.

Using AI to break through ‘digital sameness’

In the AI age, CX is all about the omnichannel experience, an approach that has surged since the pandemic. It emphasises quality interactions across all platforms and stages of the customer journey. While brands have struggled with omnichannel for years, AI is now helping to unify the customer journey and differentiate brands in a “sea of digital sameness.”

Our report with IDC reveals that 25% of respondents believe we are living in an era where apps and product features often feel similar, leading to uninspired CX. To break free from this digital sameness, businesses must deliver “experience value” to foster lasting customer relationships.

This involves harnessing data and intelligence, the “lifeblood of the future digital enterprise,” to drive hyper-personalisation and create a deeper, more intelligent customer context. For example, AI will support marketing teams by enabling them to generate personalised content on the fly, such as product descriptions, email copy, and social posts. AI can also be used to predict customer behaviours, allowing marketers to suggest relevant products, through content, before customers know they want it themselves.

AI not only enhances personalised content but also supports ‘always-on’ customer service in the brand’s voice and helps create valuable audience segments for curated customer journeys. Although most companies are in the early stages of AI adoption, about 75% plan to implement generative AI (GenAI) in their marketing within the next year, with only 5% having fully deployed GenAI solutions.

Data is the key to hyper-personalised CX

Personalisation isn’t exactly a new concept, but AI will change what marketing teams are able to achieve. In fact, our report concludes that “intelligent customer context” will become the primary foundation for value creation in businesses. Already, our respondents have gleaned the benefits of improved customer satisfaction (25.1%), increased agility (20.4%), and faster innovation and time-to-market (20.2%).

A good example of hyper-personalisation in practice, is the highly anticipated annual “Wrapped’ campaign by Spotify, giving users a fun and quirky wrap-up of their year in music. After its initial launch in 2020, the brand saw an 17% increase in engagement, along with 452 million tweets showcasing listeners’ personalised stats, thereby cementing its status as one of the most successful marketing and CX stunts to date.

Yet, hyper-personalised campaigns can take many forms and employ AI in many ways. Some key areas of interest include:

• Natural language processing (NLP): NLP helps marketers understand customer conversations, analyse reviews, assess social media interactions, and identify pain points. For example, a fitness app might use NLP to detect user searches for terms like “weight loss,” “stress relief,” or “performance improvement” and make targeted in-app suggestions.
• Sentiment analysis: Real-time monitoring of public sentiment enables brands to respond to trends and gauge customer attitudes. For instance, a fashion retailer could track spikes in negative sentiment around product defects or delays, allowing them to act.
• Data set analysis: AI can segment customers into highly specific groups based on factors like demographics and behaviour, often in real-time. For example, a streaming service might segment users as “sci-fi fans who binge-watch on weekends” to deliver personalised recommendations.

Training for skills of the future

To make best use of these new technologies, marketing teams need team members who can provide robust data analysis and governance. But there’s a problem: around 44% of our survey respondents said their largest barrier to these new AI tools was a lack of skilled employees, with 42% noting training costs with current employees. A further 34% identifying a shortage of compliance tools — meaning that they did not know how to protect their data to ensure it remains under lock and key. Ultimately, we found that marketers without the sufficient tech and data skills risked falling behind.

Many employees feel unprepared and under-trained to leverage AI technologies at its full capacity and upskilling initiatives must accelerate in order to accommodate this to remain competitive and boost outcomes. Training and corporate culture plays a significant role in embracing AI and digital transformation, as these tend to thrive in cultures that encourage learning, innovation, and experimentation.

Marketing and Customer Experience as One

Marketing and CX must now be seen as inseparable. To truly connect with today’s customers, brands need teams equipped to embrace tech that enables hyper-personalized experiences. Exceptional CX isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the foundation for building relationships that last.