How can you make a lasting impression in 2025 through an unforgettable customer experience?

Over the years, customer experience (or CX ) has become a major concern for companies. And with good reason! When you consider that 61% of consumers don't buy again after a bad experience, it's hardly surprising that it's now at the heart of their strategies.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it: to leave your mark on the world with a consumer experience that is so fluid and enchanting that no-one will ever forget you!

In this article, co-written with Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel, Chairman and Founder of 1min30, we explain everything you need to know about the subject and the good reasons to invest time and money in it.

We'll also give you some practical advice and examples of companies that have proved their worth in this area.

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What exactly is customer experience?

Defining customer experience

The customer experience is defined as all the experiences and feelings that customers have throughout their relationship with your company.

This experience can be divided into two dimensions:

• the cognitive dimension, referring to the rational perception of your offering (price, product quality, etc.) ;
• the emotional dimension, which appeals to the emotions.

The emotional dimension, which is more difficult to grasp, is now at the heart of the concerns of companies, whether they operate in the digital world or not.

What's more, the customer experience can be divided into several phases, and understanding them means grasping the 360° dimension it takes on.

There are

• the anticipation experience, which involves "whetting the appetite" of the customer, even before the act of buying;
• the purchasing experience, which takes place at a physical point of sale or on an e-commerce site;
• the delivery experience. Delivery times, quality of packaging... given the explosion in online sales, this phase is becoming a major concern for companies;
• the user experience. This is the crucial phase when customers experience their new product or service;
• the after-sales experience. Finally, after purchase or use, the consumer is sometimes led to contact the after-sales service in the event of a problem.

What will the customer experience be like in 2025?

With consumers constantly online, you need to offer a seamless, interactive customer experience to build lasting loyalty. On social networks and websites, AI, machine learning, predictive analysis and virtual assistants have created a revolution in customer relations. In the blink of an eye, they make it possible to interpret the buyer's needs while at the same time offering ultra-personalised recommendations.

💖 However, emotion remains a key concern, driving brands to offer an ever more human and authentic experience. Without a real emotional connection, the perception of the experience is cold and impersonal, with no added value.

So what's the key? Finding the right balance between technological efficiency and a personalised relationship. A responsive customer service and empathetic advisers will boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In 2025, more than ever before, the user experience must meet intelligent, connected and emotional expectations. It's no longer enough to simply offer a good product! To create a successful and memorable customer experience, we are taking up the challenge of subtly combining artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence.

The difference between customer experience and customer relations

It's important to understand that customer experience is different from customer relations:

• CX is about how the customer feels;
• customer relations, on the other hand, correspond to all the exchanges between the customer and your company.

Customer relations are therefore often short-term, whereas the aim of customer experience is to leave a lasting impression on the consumer's mind thanks to the emotions experienced 🤩.

How important is an optimised customer experience? The 4 key benefits

#1 Increase customer satisfaction

The best way to satisfy a customer? Offer them a positive experience, whether before the act of buying, during and even afterwards.

In fact, optimising the customer journey increases satisfaction by 20%, according to a McKinsey study.

#2 Building customer loyalty

A good customer experience generates satisfaction. And the more satisfied customers are at every level, the more loyal they are.

Acquiring a new customer costs seven times more than maintaining a relationship with an existing one.

One of the main benefits of improving CX then lies in customer loyalty, which is much more profitable in the long term.

#3 Increase brand awareness

The profitability of an optimised customer journey also results from word-of-mouth.

A satisfied consumer is more likely to recommend a company or brand to friends and family or on social networks.

Given that 84% of people no longer trust traditional advertising, you might as well do everything you can to take advantage of the free exposure offered by your satisfied customers!

#4 Increase your sales

Over 86% of buyers are prepared to pay more for a product or service if the customer experience is good.

The positive impact on your turnover is therefore particularly tangible.

💡 According to a Twilio report, after a bad customer experience :

• 38% of customers switch to a competitor or cancel their order;
• 66% tell a friend about their experience;
• 41% stop doing business with the company altogether.

The major challenges of customer experience in 2025

By now you understand the importance of looking after your customers' experience ✨.

However, adopting the right strategies means understanding the ecosystem in which business operates, and therefore the major marketing, commercial and technological issues of the day.

Here are a few examples 👉.

Hyper-personalisation thanks to AI

Consumer expectations are evolving towards even greater personalisation, and the use of artificial intelligence makes it possible to meet such a challenge.

This is why more and more companies are integrating AI to offer product recommendations, personalised reminders or even interactions tailored to each customer, using predictive analysis and machine learning in particular.

Managing organisational silos

Information silos within companies remain a major obstacle to improving the customer experience.

In 2024, more than 54% of organisations report that their CX operations are managed in silos.

Unfortunately, this type of structure limits companies' ability to respond quickly to customer feedback and to coordinate efforts between teams.

Improving internal communication and sharing information seamlessly between departments will therefore be a major challenge in 2025.

Sentiment-driven CX, or the emotional approach

Brands are beginning to take an increasing interest in analysing the feelings in their interactions in order to understand customer emotions (frustration, satisfaction, etc.) and adapt their responses accordingly.

Thanks to this approach, they are creating stronger emotional connections, demonstrating greater empathy and active listening.

A word from the expert

Consumer needs in terms of customer experience are evolving rapidly, and we can anticipate several key trends. Firstly, personalisation will continue to play a central role. Consumers expect bespoke experiences, tailored to their individual preferences.

At the same time, speed and simplicity will be increasingly important criteria. Consumers are looking for fluid, frictionless interactions and instant responses to their needs.

Finally, the emotional dimension will become even more important. Brands that succeed in establishing emotional connections with their customers will create memorable experiences and build loyalty.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

Examples of inspiring customer experiences

There's nothing like real-life examples to give you an idea of what a successful CX is all about!

And let's start with the champion of online customer experience, Amazon, which has been thinking about how to use technology to improve the shopping experience in physical outlets.

By starting with consumers' needs and identifying the bottlenecks, the company realised that going through the checkout and facing queues was ruining the in-store customer experience.

The American giant therefore developed a device capable of recognising who is buying what and debiting the right amount directly from the credit card. No more queuing!

👀 Find out more in this video :

Another example: to improve the in-store experience, Sephora has developed an application, MySephora, containing all its customer information. All the advisers have to do is consult it to facilitate their work in real time.

74% of customers would appreciate the experience, which they consider to be different from that offered by other chains.

💡 Discover other inspiring examples in our article Customer experience: what if we pumped a little from the big brands?

How do you offer a good customer experience? Our 6 tips

Tip 1: Determine your customer experience strategy

To know where you're going, you need to think in terms of the following four questions:

• What is the scale of the task ahead? Depending on your company's level of maturity on the subject, determine whether your customer experience requires a simple improvement or a more profound transformation.
  
  
• What business objectives do you need to meet in order to optimise your customer experience? What precisely are the expected results?
  
  
• What principles and values underpin your customer experience? Your areas for improvement must take account of your values, your corporate culture and your brand image. Remember the emotional dimension that your customer experience must include.
  
  
• How are you positioned in relation to your competitors? That's why it's important to base your strategy on marketing research and in-depth benchmarking.

This reflection on your strategy will guide your future actions, as well as those of your staff.

Tip 2: Know your customers inside out

This step goes hand in hand with the previous one, because to adopt the right strategy, you still need to understand who your customers are and what their aspirations are.

The best technique is to set up personas.

These are fictional characters representing the population segment (s ) you are targeting. To create a more accurate picture of your customers, give them socio-economic and psychological characteristics, and identify the issues and needs that your offering is likely to meet.

A word from the expert

An essential tip for improving the customer experience is to put the customer at the centre of all decisions and interactions. In-depth understanding of customer needs, preferences and journeys is key.

Then use the data collected to personalise each interaction, anticipate expectations and create memorable moments.

What's more, facilitate customer journeys by eliminating friction. Simplified processes and transparent communication contribute to a positive customer experience.

Finally, actively listen to your customers' feedback and use this information to continually iterate your approach and constantly raise the level of customer experience.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

Tip 3: Involve all the company's departments in the adventure

To guarantee optimum customer satisfaction, make sure you involve all the stakeholders (marketing, customer service, R&D, etc.). Good teamwork is one of the keys to success: don't forget that the customer must be satisfied at every level, at every point of contact in the purchasing process.

For this reason, the messages of the various employees must remain aligned to better reflect the corporate culture and brand image mentioned above.

Tip 4: Think "omnichannel customer experience".

As you will have realised, you always need to consider the customer experience as a whole... even in your communications.

Implementing continuous, omnichannel communication helps to build a solid relationship of trust, and plays an effective part in transmitting your corporate culture.

💡 To achieve this, we recommend using appropriate customer relations tools. Here are 3 examples:

• Helpdesk software such as Freshdesk can make all the difference. It centralises requests from the ticketing platform, phone calls, chats, emails and social networks. It can also automatically assign a task to an agent with a priority level and the customer's history, so you have all the context and can anticipate responses.
  
  
• RingCentral Customer Experience centralises all the channels deployed for your retail activity (live-chat, messaging, in-app messaging and Google my business). What's more, the tool enables every member of staff to respond to customers in real time, so there's no need for frustration.
  
  
• With a unified platform like Zendesk, you have all the tools you need to offer your customers a quality experience across all channels. By centralising and analysing customer data, every member of staff can intervene effectively. You can automate the sending of personalised messages tailored to the different stages of the customer journey.

Tip 5: Personalise customer relations as much as possible

According to a Monetate study, 79% of brands that have exceeded their annual sales forecasts have implemented a relevant personalisation strategy.

Source : Smart Tribune

Customer personalisation is therefore one of the major thrusts of your strategy.

To achieve this, you need to know each customer... or at least give them the illusion that you do. This recognition must be palpable across all distribution channels and contact points.

💡 With this in mind, we recommend that you equip yourself with a suitable tool, developed with the aim of effectively managing the processing and analysis of prospect and customer data.

• Bloomreach, for example, effectively optimises your customer experience. Thanks to its comprehensive features, such as advanced personalisation, intelligent recommendation and advanced marketing segmentation, you can create unique interactions that will captivate your customers at every stage of their journey.
  
  
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud CRM is also a perfect fit: it offers the possibility of creating personalised customer journeys while promoting automation and the involvement of the various stakeholders (customer service, sales and marketing).

Tip 6: Automate certain interactions (intelligently)

More than ever, the trend in 2025 should be towards intelligent automation, with the development of self-service or selfcare technologies (dynamic FAQs, chatbots).

But automation means having an integrated customer relations platform to centralise customer data and contextualise past and future interactions, whatever channel is used.

💡 An open, programmable platform, Twilio Flex provides users with a ready-to-use application solution to develop a unique customer experience. With its Studio function and easy-to-use visual interface, it enables interactions to be automated, whether via an interactive voice server or a chatbot.

How do you measure customer experience?

Choosing the right key indicators

We recommend that you regularly measure your actions. This drives your marketing strategy to a large extent, and enables you to highlight any adjustments that need to be made.

This work involves monitoring certain key indicators, or KPIs. But how do you choose them?

Here are a few examples of tried and tested indicators:

• Abandonment rate. Specific to e-commerce, this is a very telling indicator. If customers don't continue with their purchase, it's because they were dissatisfied at some point during their visit (payment too complicated, hidden charges, delivery times too long, etc.).
  
  
• Retention rate. This reveals a customer's loyalty which, as we have seen, depends largely on the quality of their experience.
  
  
• The product return rate. This shows how satisfied your customers are with your products.
  
  
• Complaint rate. To be more precise in your analysis, you can categorise the different types of complaint according to their seriousness and recurrence.
  
  
• Customer Journey Tracking (CJT). More advanced than the Customer Effort Score (CES), it analyses the customer journey and when frustration or abandonment occurs.

But how do you accurately track all these indicators? Forget manual reporting, software automates it all for you!

💡 monday.com CRM, for example, is an intuitive, ultra-easy-to-use solution that guarantees you complete tracking of your prospects and customers thanks to clear, automated dashboards and reporting. Make informed decisions based on figures that are updated in real time: sales figures and team performance, management and customer experience KPIs, mailing and campaign performance analysis, etc.

Gather customer opinions

We also recommend collecting customer reviews directly so that you can better understand consumer expectations and adapt your services accordingly.

To do this, make satisfaction questionnaires available to them online or in-store, or ask for their feedback by email, after a purchase in particular.

💡 Don't forget the NPS, or Net Promoter Score! This is a score, from 0 to 10, determined from a question like "Were you satisfied with your experience with us? ". Depending on the score, respondents are divided into three categories:

• Promoters (score of 9 to 10) ;
• Passive (score of 7 to 8);
• detractors (score from 0 to 6).

The NPS is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The aim is to obtain at least a positive number, and even more if you're aiming for excellence (according to Avis de confiance, Tesla has an NPS of... 97%!).

Self-diagnosis tool: assess the maturity of your customer experience

An adapted customer experience is not just a concept! ☝️ It's crucial to your business if you want to survive into 2025. A bad experience? That's a lost customer, a damaged brand image and a lost competitive advantage. Conversely, a positive customer experience means :

• greater customer loyalty
• a direct impact on your sales
• and skyrocketing customer satisfaction.

So where do you really stand? Our self-diagnosis tool enables you to analyse your level of maturity and identify the actions you need to take to optimise your customer relations. Thanks to this mapping of the customer journey, the tool gives you a better view of your contact points, the fluidity of interactions, the integration of digital tools, the impact of your services and the extent to which the voice of the customer is taken into account.

Our aim? To help you deliver an effective, emotionally-driven customer experience.

Analyse your customer experience by evaluating each of these elements with a maturity score in stars:

Pillar	Self-assessment question	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐	⭐
Customer knowledge	Do you use a CRM to centralise customer data and optimise relationship management?	Yes, everything is integrated and automated	Yes, but only partially used	No, everything is manual
	Do you have a complete database to track the history of interactions with your customers?	Yes, and it's accessible to all departments	Yes, but data is sometimes missing	No, no centralised database
	Do you have a strategy for regularly collecting customer feedback to feed into your CRM?	Yes, customer feedback is constantly analysed	Some customer feedback, but not systematic	No, no system in place
Customer journey	Do you have a customer journey map to identify contact points and avoid friction?	Yes, defined, optimised and fluid	Partial, but continuous improvement	No, no visibility on customer journey
	Do you analyse communication channels to improve efficiency (email, telephone, social networks)?	Yes, all channels are analysed and optimised	Partial analysis of some channels	No, no analysis
	Are your website and digital tools optimised for a smooth customer journey?	Yes, the customer journey is simplified and smooth	Some optimisation required	Confusing and unintuitive customer journey
Personalising the experience	Do you tailor the experience to customers' needs, expectations and emotions?	Yes, ultra-personalised and targeted approach	Somewhat, but not always	No, generic approach
	Do you use tools to monitor and adapt the experience based on real-time consumer feedback?	Yes, feedback is integrated into a continuous improvement process	Feedback is taken into account, but on an ad hoc basis	No, feedback is rarely used
	Do you create personalised offers or products based on the specific expectations of each customer?	Yes, each customer receives a tailor-made offer	Some personalisation, but limited	No, all offers are standardised
Innovation and digitalisation	Do you use digital tools (AI, predictive analysis, automation) to improve the customer experience?	Yes, advanced technologies integrated throughout the customer journey	Some tools, but little use made of them in the process	No, no innovation implemented
	Does your customer service use digital technologies to provide fast, effective responses?	Yes, instant assistance thanks to automation	Assistance sometimes fast, but longer delays in general	Slow responses without modern technology
	Have you adopted chatbot or virtual assistant tools to manage customer requests?	Yes, we have a functional and effective chatbot	A chatbot exists, but it is still limited	No, no automated solution
Internal customer culture	Is your team trained to put customer experience at the heart of your marketing strategy?	Yes, customer experience is a priority for everyone	Partial training, some departments are less involved	No, no training on customer experience
	Do you regularly monitor customer feedback to adapt your marketing strategy?	Yes, feedback is integrated into our marketing decisions	Some feedback is taken into account, but not systematically	No, feedback is not analysed
	Is customer experience part of your overall strategic objective?	Yes, it is at the heart of everything we do	Sometimes, but it remains secondary for certain decisions	No, customer experience is not a priority

Interpretation of scores:

The maximum score is 75 ⭐andthe minimum score is 15 ⭐.

• 66 to 75 ⭐: optimum maturity

  Well done, your company is a leader in customer experience! You offer a fluid, responsive experience across all communication channels by placing emotion at the centre of consumer interactions. Good points for boosting customer confidence and satisfaction with your products and values.

• 51 to 65 ⭐: solid maturity

  You're well advanced in your customer experience strategy, but there are still a few relationship marketing optimisations to be made. Your team is responsive, but some channels require longer lead times. Analysing customer data and criteria helps you to better understand the expectations of consumers in your sector, but you need to bring an even more personal dimension to your offers. Seize this opportunity to improve your customer service.

• 36 to 50 ⭐: medium maturity

  You are aware of the importance of the customer experience concept and are starting to structure it, but several crucial elements need to be improved. Think about adopting digital technologies that provide you with assistance in managing customer relations and communication channels. Put customer service responsiveness, personalised experience and the exploitation of digital data at the heart of your objectives and concerns. At this stage, not seeking to evolve would mean losing market share.

• Less than 36 ⭐: low maturity

  The organisation of your customer experience is not yet adapted to the expectations and needs of increasingly demanding customers. You are in the early stages of development with mainly manual processes. It is essential to improve your customer experience strategy as quickly as possible to ensure that interactions run more smoothly and that customers are more satisfied.

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In conclusion, the 8 mistakes to avoid when it comes to customer experience

Customer experience has become a major concern for companies. If you neglect it, you run the risk of missing out on a significant increase in your sales.

However, with organisations becoming more complex and the number of channels and contact points multiplying, it's not easy to know how to start improving or transforming the CX!

In other words, you need to remain particularly vigilant and avoid making the following 8 mistakes:

1. Not listening to customers and ignoring feedback;
2. Offering a uniform, impersonal experience that disconnects consumers from your brand;
3. failing to respond quickly to requests or follow up your customers adequately;
4. Offer an inconsistent omnichannel experience, with no harmony between the different touch points;
5. Maintain organisational silos, to the detriment of good communication between teams;
6. Excessive automation, without any human intervention, giving the impression of a cold, dehumanised customer relationship management system;
7. not anticipating needs and trends, and not regularly analysing consumer behaviour;
8. under-invest in customer support.

In fact, to rise to the challenge successfully, bear in mind that everyone in your business needs to work together to achieve a 360° understanding of the customer experience. Always stay connected to your customers, your values and your objectives. And don't forget to constantly measure the impact of your actions, so that you can identify areas for improvement.

Finally, mobilise all your company's resources and use tools that are perfectly suited to your ambitions.

It's a big job, but your customers have everything to gain... and so do you!