CleverTap Predicts Key Trends for Customer Engagement in 2025

With the initial euphoria of GenAI waning out in just a year, organizations are in the midst of conversations about its tangible business value and outcomes. As AI transitions from being a disruptor to an enabler in 2025, here are some key customer engagement and retention trends that are sure to make an impact in 2025.

1. From Push to Pull: Generative AI-driven Wave of Customer Interactions

With GenAI’s mass adoption in 2024, communication has moved from brand-led to customer-led. Industries saw a shift in their customers using queries as their primary medium to interact with the brand. 2025 will further solidify this trend from brand-driven click and swipe-based interactions (push) to user-driven, prompt-based dynamic, conversational experiences (pull) powered by GenAI. While the number of touchpoints for marketers will be reduced, the quality of exchange will become more important once businesses understand how to optimize it. The rise of GenAI will continue to bring high efficiency, enabling brands to gain real-time insights and feedback, and empowering them to make swift improvements.

2. Personalization vs Privacy: Navigating a Balanced Approach

Personalization is the norm for marketers. However, for today’s customers, hyper-personalisation only works when executed contextually and transparently. Marketers therefore will have to take a privacy-first approach while crafting meaningful experiences. Moving forward, investment in mechanisms for first-party and zero-party data collection will be vital, along with strict adherence to privacy regulations. By prioritizing transparency and safeguarding user data, businesses can foster deeper trust and loyalty among their customers.

3. Martech’s Evolution from a Fixed Tech Stack to a Living Cartography

The Martech landscape is changing rapidly to meet new demands and most businesses still operate with rigid and fragmented tech stacks consisting of traditional siloed tools. This poses a challenge for marketers as the failure of one tool can create a domino effect causing problems in the entire stack. To address this, the concept of "living cartography" holds immense promise. Unlike traditional stacks, this concept envisions a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem where tools adapt and evolve in real-time. This approach fosters seamless data exchange and reduces the risk of system-wide failures by minimizing dependencies across tools. For marketers, this shift means greater agility in meeting the growing demand of ever-changing customer preferences. 

4. The Rise of AI Agents

AI agents are the next evolution in the AI landscape, poised to grow significantly this year. Their value lies in the ability to act beyond basic response mechanisms, driving smarter interactions. Companies will focus on AI agent functionalities to analyze real-time sentiments and tailor recommendations for customers while also providing 24/7 multi-lingual support. From a business standpoint, the use case will include boosting operational efficiency and improving decision-making. Eventually, we will see AI clones of marketers for processes like customer support, and sales interactions. AI copilots will enable businesses to get a competitive edge by automating tasks and optimizing workflows.

5. Customer Retention over Acquisition 

The current economic and geopolitical situation alongside a shift in customer priorities has exacerbated the challenge of acquiring new customers, making the process more expensive as well. Companies have recognized the value of customer loyalty as opposed to the “growth at any cost” outlook and the industry is now focussing on customer retention as a strategic priority. In addition to hyper-personalization, brands will continue to innovate their loyalty programs and incentives to meet customer expectations. 

Anand Jain, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, CleverTap said, “AI's promise in marketing will truly come alive in 2025 – where it will transition from being a mere disruptor to a trusted enabler, unlocking authentic, customer-driven engagement. As brands navigate this new paradigm, success will come down to building genuine connections and striking a healthy balance between personalization and privacy, all while staying adaptable in the face of customer demands. At CleverTap, we remain committed to guiding businesses through these shifts, empowering them to advance their capabilities and drive meaningful, enduring customer relationships.”

Click here to download the report, The Customer Engagement Crystal Ball: Top Trends to Watch Out for in 2025.

About CleverTap

CleverTap is the leading all-in-one customer engagement platform that helps brands unlock limitless customer lifetime value. CleverTap is trusted by over 2000 brands like Decathlon, Domino’s, Levis, Jio, Emirates NBD, Puma, Croma (A Tata Enterprise), Swiggy, SonyLIV, Axis Bank, AirAsia, TD Bank, Ooredoo, and Tesco to help build personalized experiences for all their customers. The platform is powered by TesseractDB™ – the world’s first purpose-built database for customer engagement, offering speed and cost efficiency at scale.

Backed by top-tier investors such as Accel, Peak XV Partners, Tiger Global, CDPQ and 360 One, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, with presence across Seattle, London, São Paulo, Bogota, Mexico, Amsterdam, Sofia, Dubai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Singapore, Vietnam, and Jakarta.

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Forward-Looking Statements

Some of the statements in this press release may represent CleverTap's belief in connection with future events and may be forward-looking statements, or statements of future expectations based on currently available information. CleverTap cautions that such statements are naturally subject to risks and uncertainties that could result in the actual outcome being absolutely different from the results anticipated by the statements mentioned in the press release.

Factors such as the development of general economic conditions affecting our business, future market conditions, our ability to maintain cost advantages, uncertainty with respect to earnings, corporate actions, client concentration, reduced demand, liability or damages in our service contracts, unusual catastrophic loss events, war, political instability, changes in government policies or laws, legal restrictions impacting our business, impact of pandemic, epidemic, any natural calamity and other factors that are naturally beyond our control, changes in the capital markets and other circumstances may cause the actual events or results to be materially different, from those anticipated by such statements. CleverTap does not make any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or updated or revised status of such statements. Therefore, in no case whatsoever will CleverTap and its affiliate companies be liable to anyone for any decision made or action taken in conjunction.

For more information:

SONY SHETTY
Director, Communications, CleverTap
+91 9820900036
sony@clevertap.com

ASHMIT CHAUDHARY
Associate Consultant, Archetype
+91 8850752121
ashmit.chaudhary@archetype.co