A quick glance at the defining news moments of 2024’s customer experience (CX) and martech landscape across AI, in-store automation, delivery services, customer service, acquisitions and more.
The customer experience landscape might undergo tons of changes and welcome multiple advancements, but the bottom line remains that the customer expects a seamless experience. What exactly does the perfect customer experience entail? Everything from tech-enabled store services and efficient product deliveries to immersive experiences and flawless after-sales service.
The domain really is vast—primary market brands and martech vendors alike—have spent 2024 bringing forward the best for the customer. The year is marked with innovation across different aspects of the customer-brand relationship.
“It is crucial for companies to remain grounded in solving real user problems and delivering value,” says Arvind Dutta, Principal Product Manager, Teams at Microsoft. Today’s innovation will guide tomorrow’s industry goals. Here is a look at the top news moments of 2024 in the CX and Martech landscape, presented by CXMToday.
Fundings: Innovation that Didn’t Go Unnoticed
IntelePeer specialises in providing AI-driven solutions for automating communications across various channels. The newly secured funding is supporting IntelePeer’s mission to continue reinventing the contact centre and advance their AI Agent portfolio.
2. Rapid Grocery Delivery Firm Zepto Bagged $350 Mn
The latest funding round was Zepto’s third in five months. With this, the company has raised more than $1.3 billion so far in 2024, highlighting the demand for quick commerce, where everything from groceries to mobile phones are delivered within 10 minutes.
3. Airbound Bagged $1.7 Mn to Make Drone Delivery Economically
With its proprietary blended wing body tailsitter design, called TRT, the company aims to transform logistics, reducing delivery costs by two orders of magnitude compared to traditional options.
Virtual Reality: Immersive Over Regular Experiences
4. Walmart Launched Immersive Virtual Store Walmart Realm
Joining other retailers in the virtual store trend, Walmart debuted its immersive shopping platform, dubbed Walmart Realm. The immersive shopping experience lets consumers browse virtual environments and purchase products within them.
5. Snapchat Launched Immersive AR High Street
Imagining what a high street might look like in the future, Snapchat launched an immersive high street experience, Snap Street, in East London. The Ely’s Yard building in Brick Lane was transformed into an actual indoor high street with shop-fronts showing off the augmented reality (AR) experiences available on Snapchat – curated by brands like Depop, Boots, and Cosmopolitan.
6. Marks And Spencer Rolled-Out Self-Checkouts in Changing Rooms
The new service allows customers to pay for their products upon exiting the fitting rooms, preventing them from having to queue first for the changing rooms, and then for the checkout.
7. Asda Tried Self-Service Returns
The British supermarket chain tested a new self-service returns system, which included an innovative “drop box” feature. The pilot programme allowed customers to return items ranging from groceries to electronics with ease by scanning their receipt and the product’s barcode at a self-service machine before depositing the item into a chute or cupboard.
Brands Leverage Top Technologies
8. Burger King Partnered with Uber Direct
Uber Direct, Uber’s white label delivery solution, entered an exclusive partnership with Burger King UK, to provide its customers with rapid deliveries through the fast food chain’s app. The app also rewards customers with exclusive delivery deals and the opportunity to earn loyalty points with each order.
9. Puma Tapped Google Cloud’s Imagen On Vertex AI
Puma and Google Cloud have partnered to enhance the digital shopping experience with genAI. Using Imagen 2 on Vertex AI, Puma can now create dynamic and personalised product imagery that is improving click-through rates and accelerating the time-to-market for its digital campaigns globally.
10. Michael Kors Presented First-of-its-Kind AI Shopping Assistant By Mastercard
Michael Kors became the first retailer to adopt the next-generation retail assistant Shopping Muse, made by Dynamic Yield, a Mastercard-owned martech company. Leveraging its advanced genAI capabilities, Shopping Muse recreates the in-store experience by processing consumers’ simple language prompts into tailored product recommendations.
Partnerships for the Industry’s Advancement
11. Accenture Partnered with Adobe
Accenture integrated Adobe Firefly Custom Models into marketing services offered by Accenture Song, to provide clients with the industry-specific insights required to train bespoke models on their proprietary data and brand guidelines.
12. Twilio, OpenAI Transformed Customer Service With AI Voice Agents
Twilio integrated OpenAI, bringing OpenAI’s Realtime API to Twilio’s platform. The move introduced advanced speech-to-speech (S2S) technology, which enables over 300,000 Twilio customers and more than 10 million developers to create virtual AI agents using OpenAI’s state-of-the-art multilingual GPT-4o model.
13. Honeywell Partnered with Qualcomm
Honeywell developed an AI-enabled Multi-Modal Intelligent Agent for its mobile devices powered by Qualcomm Technologies. The agent allows workers and customers in the distribution centre and retail industries to interact naturally with their handheld devices through voice, pictures, and barcodes.
Noteworthy Acquisitions
14. Accenture Acquired Unlimited
With deep expertise in behavioral science, customer strategy and CRM activation, the acquisition of Unlimited bolsters Accenture Song’s capabilities to drive marketing transformation, relevance, and growth for its clients.
15. Hootsuite Acquired Talkwalker
Hootsuite acquired AI-powered social listening firm Talkwalker. The latter develops consumer intelligence and deep listening tech that enables brands to drive business impact and revenue. The duo will give businesses a social media performance engine to turn insights into action into impact, all fueled by AI.
16. Accenture Acquired GemSeek
Accenture acquired GemSeek, a customer experience analytics provider helping global businesses understand customers through insights, analytics and AI-powered predictive models. The acquisition underscores ongoing investment by Accenture Song in data and AI capabilities to help clients grow their business and sustain relevance with customers.
Sustainability: The Path to Younger Generations’ Hearts
17. Aldi Enlisted Net-Zero Targets
Aldi established new science-based targets to reach net-zero GHG emissions across its business by 2050, validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The supermarket chain also set itself new near-term targets for absolute GHG and Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) GHG emissions up to 2030.
18. Reboxed Launched Circularity-As-A-Service Platform
Circular economy startup Reboxed launched ReboxedOS, an out-the-box solution for consumer electronics recommerce. The platform helps brands launch and scale co-branded resale, launch trade-in and recycling programmes quickly, and easily to boost revenue and sustainability.
19. SAP Unveiled AI-Driven Supply-Chain Innovations
SAP announced AI advancements in its supply chain solutions, aimed at enhancing productivity, efficiency and precision in manufacturing. AI-driven insights from real-time data helps companies use their own data to make better decisions across supply chains, streamline product development and improve manufacturing efficiency.
AI Leads Tech Ascent
Amazon unveiled Rufus, a new AI-powered shopping assistant, aimed at transforming the online shopping experience for its customers. Rufus is designed to assist users in navigating Amazon’s extensive product catalogue and making informed purchasing decisions. It is trained on Amazon’s vast product database and information sourced from the web, allowing it to provide helpful responses to a variety of customer queries.
21. NICE Launched CXone Mpower Smartspeak
CXone Mpower SmartSpeak is an AI-powered solution designed to break down language barriers and enable effortless global communication for businesses. It provides real-time language interpretation for customer service and sales interactions, empowering organisations to expand their international reach without the need for supplemental multilingual support.
22. Google Launched Online Retail AI Features
With the internet working as the primary purchase medium for buyers across the world, Google announced three retail-focused AI features this year. The ‘Tab Compare’ uses AI along with page scraping to round up pertinent information about a product open in one’s tabs. The Visual Search uses Google Lens to let mobile users ‘circle to search’ an object in an image. The Smart History integrates natural language processing to bring smart chatbot functionality into history records.
23. Salesforce Launched Fully Autonomous AI Agent
Salesforce announced Einstein Service Agent, which makes conventional chatbots obsolete with its ability to understand and take action on a broad range of service issues without preprogrammed scenarios, helping make customer service far more efficient.
What’s new in CDPS?
24. Braze Launched Comprehensive Data Platform
Braze unveiled the Braze Data Platform, a versatile, comprehensive suite of data tools and partner integrations aimed at streamlining data unification, activation, and distribution. The platform allows marketers to craft memorable and relevant customer engagements.
25. Amperity Launched Lakehouse CDP
Amperity unveiled a new composable approach for customer data management: the Lakehouse CDP. Brands can seamlessly share live data sets between a CDP and a lakehouse without maintaining ETLs or copying data.
Innovation in Customer Communication
26. Merkle Launched Global Messaging Solution
Merkle launched Intelligent Messaging, its end-to-end messaging solution, to create unified brand experiences across touchpoints and channels by blending AI assistance and human interaction. Intelligent Messaging enables creation of turnkey chat experiences, including across social and messaging platforms, delivering always-on conversational interactions throughout the entire customer journey.
Zendesk announced Relay, a new app that offers proactive messaging for companies using WhatsApp and SMS. Relay allows companies to proactively connect with customers at scale using outbound messages in WhatsApp and to manage all those conversations natively in Zendesk.
Copilots on the Top
28. Twilio Launched Unified Profiles, Agent Copilot
Twilio launched two new innovations within Twilio Flex, the cloud-based digital engagement solution: Unified Profiles and Agent Copilot. Unified Profiles provides businesses with access to a native data layer powered by Segment, enabling the collection and activation of real-time, consented data for personalised interactions. Agent Copilot leverages this data alongside AI to empower employees with automation and boost productivity.
29. Salesforce Introduced Einstein Copilot For Tableau
Salesforce introduced Einstein Copilot, a customisable, conversational, and genAI assistant for CRM. Einstein Copilot enables Salesforce users to generate responses using their own private and trusted data while maintaining strict data governance and without expensive AI model training.
30. Microsoft Announced Dynamics 365 Contact Centre
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center is a Copilot-first contact centre solution that delivers genAI to every customer engagement channel. It is built natively on the Microsoft cloud to deliver extensive scalability and reliability across voice, digital channels and routing while at the same time allowing organisations to retain their existing investments in CRM or custom apps.
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.
