Customer experience (CX) is central to every company's reputation, customer acquisition, and long-term retention.
What's on the line? Everything.
A 2025 CRM report reveals the stark reality of customer economics: acquiring new customers costs an average of $29, while repeat customers generate $39. This difference is not trivial. Existing customers spend 67 percent more, on average, than new customers. Even modest improvements can have outsized ramifications, as a 5 percent increase in customer retention can produce up to 95 percent more profit growth.
So, what does it take to get there?
As the adoption of artificial intelligence surges in CX delivery, business leaders are tasked with solving a critical challenge: how to leverage powerful, potentially cost-slashing technology while preserving the authentic human connection that is essential for customer loyalty.
To be sure, the technology is powerful and promising. It's not a silver bullet. That's why the most successful companies will master a human-delivered, digitally enabled approach to CX, ensuring that technology serves to augment, not replace, the human element.
While AI offers immense potential to streamline customer interactions, its integration requires a mindful approach to avoid creating customer service gaps like leaning too far into automation without providing a human support option.
When customers are forced into AI support for help with complex situations, they can quickly become frustrated. One customer service survey found that three-quarters of shoppers say they prefer speaking to a live customer service agent when experiencing a problem, and nearly half said they don't trust information from AI-powered chatbots.
Additionally, companies risk leaving their customers behind when they fail to apply feedback as they evolve their AI-driven solutions. AI implementation requires fluidity, meaning AI uses and integrations have to be assessed and sharpened continuously.
Finally, some companies and CX outsource partners alike become singularly focused on the operational cost-saving potential, losing sight of the big picture and the customer. While the cost to deliver support might drop significantly at first, the cost of alienating customers with a frustrating one-size-fits-all AI strategy quickly becomes far greater.
Customers want to feel seen and heard. They want to know that someone cares about their problems and can solve them. Three-fourths say they still need access to human support to fulfill those needs.
Simply turning the customer journey over to AI can lead to a negative emotional response, especially when customers are forced into a single, scripted bot channel with no option to speak with a human.
Of course, that doesn't mean that companies should (or even can) avoid AI solutions altogether.
Three Best Practices for a Human-Delivered, Digitally-Enabled CX
To effectively engineer a CX strategy that leverages technology without sacrificing the personal touch, companies should follow three key best practices.
#1. Don't select a CX partner based solely on AI-driven cost-saving promises.
A strategic partner shows up as a systems integrator, capable of efficiently orchestrating the entire customer journey. The best outsourcers take an analytic approach to diagnostics and improvements, uncovering root causes, testing scenarios, and continuously fine-tuning AI offerings to meet fast-changing customer expectations.
The question isn't whether to use AI. It's how to leverage the technology without undermining the customer experience while grabbing as much of the cost savings AI can deliver as possible. AI can handle a high volume of routine inquiries. But when it comes to customers reaching out to do business, ask a question, or search for a solution to a problem, it's important to ensure they are connected quickly with a person who has the information, insights, and power to answer their needs quickly.
#2. Leverage technology to augment human capabilities.
A commitment to continuous innovation is essential to the pursuit of an optimized customer experience, meaning one that meets customers' needs and expectations. Technology plays a key role in experience optimization, most successfully when it's leveraged to automate simple, routine resolutions or bolster the human-led interactions customers want when call drivers are more complex, nuanced, or personal.
A few cases-in-point include using AI as an asset to listen to your customers: observing sentiment trends, analyzing feedback, using data to inform personalized support, streamlining on-the-call workflows, and uncovering cues that a customer is on the way out the door. Experience optimization dictates that AI should only be used in ways that are meaningful from the customer perspective. Most often, that requires positioning it as enabler, not a catch-all, in customer support. Even for customers who turn to AI support, easy access to a human problem-solver should be available at the moment they determine they need it.
#3. Keep sight of the customer perspective.
It takes a significant investment of time, energy, and resources to acquire new customers. Companies should treat every customer interaction as if its livelihood depends on it.& That means carefully considering every opportunity to leverage AI from the customers' perspective. Will it elevate the interaction or diminish it?
To be sure, the question isn't whether companies should integrate AI into their CX tech stacks. The question is how to use it in meaningful ways that elevate your brand reputation while reducing costs. If your AI strategy isn't raising the bar on customer satisfaction, you can be sure it's pushing customers away.
Companies that take a curious, analytical approach to integrating AI earn the combined benefits of operational cost savings and improved customer loyalty. While AI offers powerful tools for efficiency, companies that use it simply to cut costs or replace human interaction risk undermining the valuable relationships they're meant to strengthen.
Moving forward, the most successful companies and CX outsource partners will find the sweet spot, using AI to enhance CX on customers' terms without abandoning access to the human connection that drives customer loyalty. They won't just look to cut costs. They will look to deliver an experience so exceptional that customers never want to leave, using AI to help facilitate that outcome.
Mario Baddour is CEO and president of InteLogix, a business process outsourcing provider that delivers customer experience (CX) solutions and accounts receivable management (ARM) operations.