The future of CX Is contextual: AI is the new standard

1. Memory-rich AI is no longer the future. It’s the present.

There is a stat in the report that made me laugh out loud because it is so painfully true:
74 percent of consumers find repeating themselves extremely frustrating.

You know who else finds this frustrating? Every CSM on the planet.

I think back to my early days leading teams where we’d hop across a multitude of systems just to understand what sales promised, what support said, what product “may have mentioned on a call last quarter,” and what our customers have asked for. Customers assumed we didn’t care. The truth was we just didn’t have the information. Well, either we didn’t have it, or it wasn’t accessible.

Memory-rich AI changes this completely. It remembers context. It stitches conversations together across channels and time. It anticipates needs. The report shows that 85 percent of leaders say memory-rich AI is the key to truly personalized journeys.

And it tracks with what I’ve seen. When I rolled out context-sharing across teams years ago, CSAT jumped almost overnight. Customers don’t need perfection, they don’t even expect it, but they need to feel seen.

This is one of those moments where the technology finally meets the expectation.

2. Self-service isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s your 24/7 lifeline.

Customers do not want to wait anymore. Not for a chat. Not for an email. Not for “your ticket has been assigned.”

The report makes it crystal clear: 74 percent of consumers now expect 24/7 service. And 85 percent will leave a brand after one unresolved issue. One. Single. Issue.

I once led a team where tickets would come in all days and times because our end users were global. Friday at 4pm, Sunday at 1pm, Tuesday at 2am. Tickets all the time. Everyone on the team was already exhausted, and we tried everything. Better routing. More headcount. On-call rotations. Nothing worked consistently because customers don’t schedule their problems around our availability.

That’s the power of AI, it can be there for customers at all hours of the day. All days of the week.

3. Multimodal support is the new omnichannel

Multichannel was groundbreaking years ago. Omnichannel was cute while it lasted. But as customers hopped between email, chat, and phone, context was lost.

Nowadays customers want to communicate the same way they communicate with their network. They want to send a picture, share a video, or add a voice note. And they need and expect you to be able to blend it all together seamlessly.

According to the report, 76 percent of consumers would choose a company that lets them drop images, videos, and text in the same thread without starting over.

This trend made me think of the hundreds of customers who tried to explain a bug verbally when all they really needed was to show it. I can’t count the number of times I said, “Can you email that screenshot?” or lately, “Can you make a loom?”, which in customer language translates to “Prepare to start this process over.”

Multimodal support eliminates that friction. And when friction disappears, loyalty grows.

4. Promptable analytics will be a power move in CX

This trend might be the quietest one in the report, but it is the one that will separate leaders from laggards—or at least that’s what I think.

The idea is simple: anyone in the business can ask a question in natural language and get real-time insights instantly. No dashboards. No analysts. No waiting.

The report notes that 82 percent of leaders say promptable analytics unlock insights in seconds that used to take weeks.

Imagine onboarding a new leader and instead of them waiting a quarter to “learn the business,” they can literally ask:

“Where are we losing customers in onboarding?”

“Which issues spiked after the last release?”

“Where are customers asking for help but not getting it fast enough?”

This is organizational intelligence at scale.

And if I had this ten years ago, I probably would have aged five years slower. Don’t worry, the Botox picked up the slack.

5. Transparency will make or break trust

Customers are smart. They know AI is involved. They just want to know why decisions are made.

The report says 95 percent of consumers want to know why AI makes certain decisions, especially around refunds or pricing. Yet only 37 percent of CX orgs actually provide this today.

Transparency is not a technical decision. It is an ethical one.

Years ago, I had a customer escalate a situation all the way to the CEO because a decision was made without context. The decision was valid but the customer didn’t understand the WHY. The experience wasn’t ideal but once we explained why, everything de-escalated instantly.

In short – while it may not change the answer, transparency can improve the experience.