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Lack of skilled employees biggest barrier to leveraging AI, report says

Research underscores the necessity for enterprises to embrace AI to create intelligent, empathetic experiences

The lack of skilled employees is the greatest barrier to successfully leveraging AI, a report showed on Monday.

Sprinklr, the unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform for modern enterprises, unveiled the results of new research on the 2025 AI priorities for enterprise marketing and contact center leaders. Research findings are compiled in the new sponsored IDC Report: AI Everywhere Drives Intelligent Experiences for the Contact Center and Marketing Functions and illustrate an interesting reversal of traditional narratives.

Marketing leaders are looking for efficiencies – aligned with challenging predictions for marketing budgets in 2025. Meanwhile, contact center leaders are most focused on digitizing and modernizing the customer service tech stack, aligned with the evolution of the contact center as an integrated part of the customer and brand experience.

Both marketing (44%) and contact center (42%) leaders name lack of skilled employees is the greatest barrier to successfully leveraging AI.

“AI and generative AI are not just technological advancements—they are strategic imperatives we believe will define the future of customer experience. AI-native customer service platforms will have a significant edge over other solutions in these times,” said Sprinklr CTO, Amitabh Misra. “Our research with IDC underscores the necessity for enterprises to embrace AI to create intelligent, empathetic experiences and operational efficiencies that will help drive customer satisfaction and business growth.”

The report surveyed more than 500 enterprise customer service and 500 enterprise marketing leaders on their future goals and priorities and how they plan to address these priorities through AI-led CX transformation in 2025.

Key findings from Contact Center Respondents Include:

• 73% of contact center executives believe that autonomous 24/7 customer service and support will be the most impactful business outcome from AI-powered advanced/predictive analytics in 2025.

• 67% of contact center executives believe that contextualized customer engagement during service interactions will be the most impactful business outcome from generative AI in 2025.

• 42% of respondents say that lack of skilled employees is the biggest barrier to leveraging AI for customer service in their organizations.

Key findings from Marketing Respondents Include:

• 76% of marketing executives believe that dynamic and personalized content and image creation will deliver the most impactful business outcome from advanced/predictive analytics in 2025.

• 72% of executives emphasize the need for a unified and integrated Voice of Customer program to capture richer more expansive customer insights, thereby improving marketing effectiveness and customer journey outcomes.

• 44% of respondents say that lack of skilled employees is the biggest barrier to leveraging AI for marketing.

“AI and generative AI are revolutionizing the value exchange between customers and brands and have the potential to have a truly transformative impact on future customer experiences,” said Sudhir Rajagopal, Research Director at IDC. “However, many enterprises are only scratching the surface, focusing on efficiency rather than top-line value. To move from AI experimentation to AI adoption at scale, contact center and marketing leaders must address foundational challenges related to AI-specific employee skills, implementation costs, and risks to customer trust by shoring up data quality and establishing strong AI governance before AI can deliver meaningful value to customers.”