How are European brands utilising technology to increase customer experience? A look at recent tech partnerships and innovations that are fuelling CX.
As global brands increasingly leverage technology to enhance customer experiences, the Western European market has become a focal point across industries. From Redcentric’s CX analytics tool for Microsoft Teams to VOXI’s genAI-powered chatbot integration, the wave of innovation shows no signs of slowing down.
The transformation hasn’t stopped there. Brands in the ecommerce, retail, and BFSI industries also adopt AI-powered tech stacks and other emerging technologies to streamline customer journeys with a personalised approach. Over 65% of CX leaders across the UK believe that AI-powered chatbots can build stronger emotional connections with their customers.
Anglia launched Anglia Live and invested in AI-driven inventory management to streamline customer journeys with multi-currency invoicing, real-time stock visibility, and many more applications.
In offline retail, Aldi UK’s introduction of a contactless card payment option with an AiFi technology-powered experience in London grabbed everyone’s attention.
Forrester’s global retail ecommerce forecast revealed that online retail sales would reach $773 billion in Western European countries between 2023 and 2028. This trend underscores the ongoing opportunities for businesses to integrate customer experience-focused capabilities that support online marketplaces, social commerce, livestream selling, and direct-to-consumer commerce.
Talking about CX-focused technologies, Supreet Kaur, AVP at Morgan Stanley, said, “As technology becomes more accessible, there will be a greater push towards developing solutions that are tightly integrated with business strategies and accessible to everyone in the company. These advanced data products will enhance customer experience and engagement by providing personalised insights and real-time solutions.”
CX Potential for the BFSI Industry
As industry sentiments continue to stagnate amidst economic pressure, hopes for the BFSI industry across the UK still exist to re-imagine its customer engagement strategies. A 2023 research from SAP helped several banks and financial services providers pivot from a one-size-fits-all approach to delivering hyper-personalised customer experiences. For instance, the UK’s Aldermore Bank previously partnered with Mambu in 2023, helping the banks build their customer-focused BaaS models.
In February 2024, Paycom, a comprehensive, cloud-based human capital management software provider, expanded its product offerings and geographic reach into the United Kingdom. Its latest inroad includes access to Beti, an industry-first solution that empowers employees to do their own payroll.
Also Read: ISON Xperiences Forays into the UK Market
Growth Drivers for the IT and Telco Industry
Traditional contact centre technologies are merging with the customer engagement centre market. A report previously revealed that the European Customer experience management market is expected to reach US$8,442.90 million by 2028. Several technology partnerships and AI-powered solutions have been introduced in Western Europe to enhance and personalise customer experience at scale.
An Overview of Other Customer-Centric Partnerships
In April 2023, Tech Mahindra partnered with Spain-based Atento to offer global enterprises generative AI-powered solutions and services. This partnership offered a comprehensive suite of business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions and services in over 50 languages.
Another partnership was signed between Salesforce and AWS, making Salesforce products available for purchase via the AWS Marketplace in the UK. Since April 2024, it has enabled consumers to seamlessly leverage pre-approved budgets, build trusted AI apps, deliver data-powered CRM experiences, and ultimately increase business performance.
Redcentric has introduced Akixi’s real-time CX Analytics for Microsoft Teams to the UK market. This allows customers to access CX analytics solutions through Unity, its telephone platform. By leveraging the CX Analytics feature for Microsoft Teams, service provider customers, particularly those in informal contact centre environments, can access end-user call data in real time.
VOXI recently became the first UK-based Telco to deploy genAI chatbot into its system. VOXI’s AI chatbot, built with Accenture and powered by ChatGPT technology, prioritises responsible AI practices through a built-in safety framework.
What major challenges are these innovations resolving?
Important outcomes:
- Enhanced hyper-personalisation experiences in real-time by providing actionable customer insights
- Streamlined customer journeys during every touchpoint
- Improved operational efficiency of teams working within organisations by eradicating data silos
- Bridged the emotional disconnect between the brands and their customers by incorporating technologies such as AiFi, generative AI, and AR
The list of CX-focused innovations in Western Europe is extensive, and they are substantially addressing scalability, cost, and infrastructure limitations across various industries over time.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
