The Customer of 2030: What Will They Expect?

What worked yesterday to enhance customer experience (CX) may not work in 2030. The rules of the game have changed. As a CX leader, your journey from cacophony to euphony has seen customers talking the language of automation, merged reality, digital trust, drones, and immersive technology. Inevitably, big data, IoT, AR/VR, cloud, AI, and ML have donned the hat of researchers and collaborators. Social media trends have their say on consumer behavior and phygital interaction to create more personalized and engaging interactions.

Good gracious! This phenomenon sounds like a watershed moment. 

If customers wore the shoes of C-suite leaders, they would emphasize customer experience management. Much to the chagrin, new brick-and-mortar stores would need a lot of oxygen. It is time to tap into the needs, emotions, and expectations of the audience. Time to strike the right chord not only to stay at the helm but also ahead of the curve. 

Future Belongs to Where Tech-Powered CX Resides

Customer experience is not hackneyed and will never be. Companies that think customers are flotsam and jetsam are doomed. Read this figure that rings an alarm bell: Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 claimed that one bad experience would compel 52% of customers to switch to a company’s competitor. The report asserts that 72% of business leaders stated that AI expansion across the customer experience would be a “main priority” over the coming year.

Meanwhile, its CX Trends 2025 report infers that 59% of CX traditionalists contemplate becoming more AI-driven in the next year.

Indeed, customer experience is not rhetoric but a strategic imperative to foster growth, loyalty, and competitive edge through value-driven and genuine interactions. 

As executive leaders strive to become quick on the uptake, these trends have already kicked off in 2025 and will continue to remain prevalent in 2030:

Hyper-personalization

The applications of state-of-the-art technologies such as generative AI, AI, ML, and real-time data analytics make hyper-personalization a force to reckon with. Customers seek remarkably individualized experiences; what better than hyper-personalization to boost customer engagement and improve user experience? In January 2025, IBM quoted a McKinsey study suggesting that 67% of customers become frustrated when their interactions fail to tailor to their needs. 

Loyalty and Digital Trust

Come 2030, data privacy regulations will continue to be the main agenda in boardrooms. According to a lawsuit filed by Christopher Hofmann, a cybercriminal under the moniker USDoD exposed the private data of 2.9 billion U.S. citizens in April 2024, putting the purchase price at US$ 3.5 million. Even their social security number and address, including the address history for the past three decades, were up for sale. No wonder companies are expected to invest in strong data privacy policies to bolster loyalty and digital trust.

Merged Reality, Drones, and Everything in Between

If your subordinates say that drones, automation, immersive technology, and AR & VR will rule the roost over the next half a decade, figures suggest it is not jabberwocky. Grand View Research expects the mixed reality market to generate a US$ 40.58 billion revenue opportunity by 2030. Predominantly, trying on clothes virtually will be the new normal, while virtual surgeries for medical students will gain ground. 

Drones—the word we will often hear in the coming decade or so—to bolster personalization (real-time tracking, personalized delivery locations, and virtual shopping assistants), last-mile delivery, and supply chain visibility. Imagine a drone as a flying assistant, guiding customers to particular products and helping assess damage to properties to ramp up the insurance claim process. Drones will remain indispensable in delivering services in mountainous regions, islands, and disaster-plagued areas. 

She-conomy on Ascendency 

An inclusive culture is what the world will look like in 2030. Concerted efforts to encourage women into STEM to propel technology-powered innovations are poised to be prevalent. In doing so, women's purchasing behaviors, needs, and values have redefined the global economy.

According to Nielsen, women controlled an estimated US$ 31.8 trillion of global spending as of 2024, and they will control 75% of discretionary spending in the next five years.

Moreover, women have a 70%-80% influence on all consumer spending. Predominantly, women are likely to prefer environmentally friendly products and those that evoke an emotional connection. The message for leaders and stakeholders in customer experience management is clear: emphasize sustainability, equality, and women’s authentic values and lifestyle. 

The Middle-Class Population—Face of Consumers in 2030

Globalization and an unprecedented spike in digital payments among middle-class population have made them the face of consumers.  The Ministry for Primary Industries of New Zealand notes that the global middle-class population could touch 5.4 billion with total spending of US$ 63 trillion by 2030. With Asia Pacific staying at the helm, China and India are expected to lead the pack of middle-class explosions by 2030. 

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other executive leaders will potentially see them as cash cows, as the middle-class consumption basket continues to soar unabated. Similarly, the surge of the millennial and Gen Z population will steer the consumption behaviors over the next half a decade. They have become the advocates for state-of-the-art technologies. Deloitte infers (2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey) that 77% of millennials and 74% of Gen Zs believe GenAI will influence the way they work. Indeed, 2030 is likely to witness a millennial-led global economy, under the aegis of Gen Z.

With these mega-trends, it becomes imperative to monitor customer experience and inject funds into advanced technologies such as customer self-service software. The following is a rundown to why C-suite leaders should not ignore customer information system, customer experience monitoring and customer self-service software. After all, these have an overarching influence on a company’s reputation, bottom line and long-term sustainability.

Elevating Satisfaction and Revenue with Customer Experience Monitoring

Can customer experience affect your company’s performance?

A Gallup Analytics claims that companies that use the principles of behavioral economics can outperform their peers by over 25% in gross margin and by 85% in sales growth.

It becomes a vital cog to analyze, track, and boost the entire customer journey across all touchpoints. Leaders should prioritize customer experience monitoring to detect and address pain points, augmenting customer retention. Gallup exhorts that fully engaged customers account for a 23% premium in share of revenue, profitability, wallet, and relationship growth compared to the average customer. 

Indeed, CX monitoring can bring a paradigm shift in enhancing customer experience and identifying product development opportunities and innovations.

A Poise in Customer Information System

Customer Information System (CIS) has emerged as an enabler of customer relationship management to help leaders make informed strategic decisions and foster personalization experience amidst rising expectations of Gen Z and millennials. What is more? The next five years will be replete with predictive analytics, which will help C-suite leaders allocate resources effectively, forecast customer behavior, and bolster marketing automation. The integration of CIS will further gain prominence to enhance digital trust by ensuring data privacy and compliance with regulations such as CCPA and GDPR. 

A customer-centric organization will propel a culture where customers are happy and satisfied, and where leaders foster the customer experience.

Getting Ahead with Customer Self-Service Software

Customers of 2030 will continue to vouch for virtual assistants, chatbots, FAQs, Kiosks, and community forums for enhanced experience and satisfaction. For instance, Gen Z and millennials will hardly compromise with quick resolutions and autonomy. Customer self-service software is a key component to the C-suite’s goal of bolstering customer loyalty and handling considerable inquiry volumes. In December 2024, IBM, while quoting Salesforce’s report, stated that 61% of consumers prefer self-service options for simple requests. Another study from Zendesk found that 67% of consumers are asking AI/bots more varied questions than before. 

The stage is set. Self-service software for customers can be the game-changer to boost customer retention and optimize services to underscore customer satisfaction. 

Customer-first Mindset—Always

It does not matter if you are a Fortune 500 company or a small startup; success and longevity will largely depend on how robustly you adapt to evolving advanced technologies and execute your vision with finesse. Visionary leaders will solicit responses through various channels, customer monitoring software, and CIS to impel customer experience management. It is not a fallacy but a prophecy to envision a world where customer experience and brand value are tightly interconnected to complement each other.

Read More Such Articles:

How can Digital Maturity Boost Your Company's Growth?

Understanding What Each Generation Wants At Work

What Can Leaders Learn from Sports?