Everyone talks about delivering “personalized customer experience.” Too often, though, it’s just a performance. I call it CX Theater: scripted chatbot exchanges, automated flows that feel impersonal, and gestures meant to simulate care but lacking genuine empathy. Customers can see through it. What may look like personalization on the surface can feel hollow in practice.
When the stakes are high – choosing a healthcare plan, disputing a financial transaction, or filing an insurance claim – superficial interaction does more harm than good. Fake personalization isn’t just ineffective; it actively erodes trust.
That trust deficit is the heart of the customer experience challenge in 2025. The industry conversation often veers toward whether AI will replace human workers. The more urgent reality is that AI is reshaping the nature of work and the expectations customers bring to every interaction. AI alone isn’t enough. Despite vendors’ best efforts at hype, it can’t deliver empathy, judgment, or the human touch that customers instinctively seek in sensitive moments.
But when applied thoughtfully, AI becomes a powerful accelerator, handling repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and equipping employees with the context they need to be more effective. That leaves humans free to bring the qualities AI can’t replicate: compassion, clarity, and emotional intelligence.
We can already see the balance shifting. What once felt cutting-edge, tools that could respond in real time to customer questions, have quickly become table stakes. Today, organizations are starting to explore Agentic AI, systems that don’t just react but anticipate needs and act proactively to support employees and customers.
This shift reflects a growing maturity in the market: as infrastructure, data, and operations become more reliable, businesses feel more confident experimenting with advanced AI capabilities earlier in their customer experience strategies.
Yet there’s a tension between enterprise ambition and customer comfort. Businesses are eager to automate, but surveys and research consistently show that customers remain skeptical of automation in moments that matter most. People want reassurance that comes from another person, not a script. That tension defines the human-AI collaboration challenge: knowing when automation enhances the experience and when human presence is the only way to preserve trust.
SoFi, the one-stop shop for digital financial services, offers a valuable case in point. Like many innovators, they leaned on automation to streamline simple customer interactions. But they recognized that when members needed help making financial decisions, automated flows risked creating precisely the kind of CX Theater that erodes confidence. Their answer was to embed live, human support directly into their digital journeys.
Instead of forcing members to switch channels or endure long hold times, SoFi made it possible to bring a knowledgeable representative into the interaction at the right moment. What might have been a frustrating, impersonal experience became a trust-building engagement. AI can handle the routine, while humans provided the empathy and clarity that mattered most. The outcome wasn’t just faster problem resolution; it was stronger, more enduring customer relationships. Members left feeling heard and understood, something no chatbot could replicate.
Other large banks are exploring a concept called “smart transfers” to blend AI intelligence with human empathy. Rather than trapping users in automated loops, the AI is trained to recognize points of failure. It can detect negative sentiment in a customer’s language, identify rage clicking, determine when a transaction has failed multiple times, or recognize when a query is too complex for it to solve.
At this critical juncture, the AI intelligently routes the customer to the right human – whether that be a support agent, mortgage expert, wealth advisor, or small business representative. The human can join the customer directly in the digital property (banking website, portal, mobile app) and guide them in real time. They have the full context of what the customer is trying to accomplish and why the AI escalated the case. The customer doesn’t have to start over, making them feel heard and valued, which is essential for preserving the trust that impersonal automation can so easily erode.
This balance of AI as an accelerator and humans as differentiators is the model forward-looking organizations are beginning to adopt. AI should automate repetitive tasks that slow teams down and surface insights that make employees more proactive and informed. Humans should remain present in the moments that define loyalty: the high-stakes interactions where reassurance, creativity, or nuanced judgment are required. Companies can deliver efficient, empathetic, scalable, and profoundly personal service when both sides work together.
Leaders who succeed in this next phase of customer experience will reject the false choice of “AI or human.” Instead, they will design systems, workflows, and digital journeys that complement each other. They’ll also treat their strategy as a living framework, updating it as AI capabilities mature and consumer expectations evolve. The companies that get this right will not only unlock new levels of efficiency but also deepen the human connections that drive long-term trust and loyalty.
The truth is that customers don’t want theater. They want authenticity. They want to know that when it matters most, a real person will be there to help. The best future isn’t one where AI replaces human talent but one where AI and humans work side by side to create seamless, meaningful, and trust-based experiences.
Author’s note: These insights draw on our work at Glance, developing the AI + Human Maturity Model™ for Customer Experience, a framework designed to help enterprises chart their path forward.
