Artificial Intelligence Along the Customer Journey: From Promise to Reality

Let’s start with a brief look back at 2024. Back then, AI in marketing was, above all, one thing: a promise. 89 per cent of marketing professionals considered the topic relevant, yet only 4.7 per cent were actually making extensive use of AI tools. Most companies were still in the early stages: observing, experimenting, waiting to see how things would pan out. The industry was a long way from genuine strategic integration along the customer journey.

Two years later, the picture has changed fundamentally – and with it, the questions companies need to ask.

What has changed since 2024

The biggest shift is not technological, but cultural: in German marketing, AI has gone from being a topic of conversation to a working tool.

According to the long-term study ‘AI – The Future of Marketing’ (2025), 73 per cent of marketing managers now use AI – an increase of 176 per cent since 2018, and 80 per cent in the last two years alone. Those who were still wondering in 2024 whether AI was relevant to marketing are now asking a different question: How can we use it strategically, rather than just on an ad hoc basis?

This is because much of its potential remains untapped. Only 8 per cent of companies are realising more than three-quarters of the potential benefits, whilst 35 per cent are utilising less than a quarter of the available opportunities. The gap has therefore not closed; it has merely shifted. It is no longer between ‘knows about AI’ and ‘doesn’t know about AI’, but between superficial use and genuine strategic integration.

At company level, a Sage study from 2025 shows that 29 per cent of German SMEs have already fully integrated AI into their business processes – a figure that exceeds the EU-wide average. At the same time, Bitkom states that marketing and communication, at 57 per cent, is by far the dominant area of application in which AI is used. The ability of AI to drive the sales funnel is therefore widely accepted; what is lacking is consistent, cross-journey implementation.

The Customer Journey 2026: New Realities, New Requirements

Whilst in 2024 the focus was still primarily on efficiency gains through automation and content generation, the priorities have shifted. Three developments are shaping the landscape significantly:

1. From chatbots to agents: AI is taking on control roles

The transition from AI as an assistant function to AI as an autonomous actor is the most significant development of the last two years. Agentic AI – AI systems that independently plan, execute and adapt multi-stage tasks – is transforming the way marketing is orchestrated throughout the journey.

AI agents are increasingly taking on tasks such as campaign planning, content delivery, performance management and automated fine-tuning. According to the McKinsey Global Survey 2025, 23 per cent of the companies surveyed stated that they were already deploying AI agents on a large scale, whilst a further 39 per cent are experimenting with them.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, around 60 per cent of brands will be using agentic AI to enable personalised customer interactions, thereby signalling the end of channel-based marketing strategies in favour of hyper-personalised customer engagement.

In concrete terms, this means for the customer journey: an agent recognises which channel a user is coming from, which stage of the journey they are at, and what content they have consumed so far, and adapts touchpoints in real time without any human intervention.

2. Predictive analytics becomes operational, not just analytical

In 2024, predictive analytics was still primarily a reporting tool. By 2026, it will be a control system. AI-powered models provide early-stage insights into the likelihood of a purchase, churn risks or reactions to specific content and channels; on this basis, it is possible not only to implement personalised measures but also to deliver them at the optimal time and in the most appropriate context.

The result is a new level of proactivity: rather than reacting to abandoned trolleys, the system prevents them. Rather than analysing churn, it initiates retention measures before the warning signs become apparent to humans.

3. The awareness phase is undergoing a fundamental shift

A topic that was absent from any AI marketing article in 2024 is now one of the most pressing: how is AI changing the very way people become aware of companies and products?

Google SGE, AI-powered assistant systems and conversational AI are transforming the way information is searched for, products are discovered and purchasing decisions are made. Traditional search engine visibility is no longer sufficient. Anyone who does not feature in AI-generated responses on ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews is losing a growing proportion of their potential customers as early as the awareness phase, without even realising it. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is no longer a niche topic, but a strategic component of any modern customer journey planning.

AI throughout the journey: the current state of play

At adesso, we view the customer journey as a continuously repeating process – an ‘infinite loop’ – in which each phase paves the way for the next. Let’s look at what has specifically changed at the individual touchpoints:

Awareness & Consideration: Alongside paid and organic measures, visibility in AI-based search environments is taking centre stage. Today, content no longer needs to be optimised solely for search engine algorithms, but also for the semantic understanding of language models.

Preference & Purchase: Real-time hyper-personalisation has become a reality. According to Adobe’s trend report, 80 per cent of customers expect AI-powered interactions to be highly personalised and to anticipate their needs. Customer expectations have evolved faster than many companies’ ability to implement these changes.

Loyalty & Advocacy: AI-powered after-sales communication, proactive service and personalised loyalty programmes are the areas currently demonstrating the strongest ROI. Here, the feedback loop is short and measurable.

What hasn’t changed – and why that matters

Despite all the technological developments, one fundamental truth remains, which I articulated as far back as 2024: technology is no substitute for strategy. It accelerates and scales what is clearly defined strategically, whilst simultaneously amplifying what is strategically unclear.

According to the Bünte study, it is particularly critical that managers are potential obstacles to transformation: they are 21 per cent less proficient in using AI tools than their teams, and 79 per cent state that the level of AI training among marketing teams is insufficient.

This shows that the bottlenecks today lie less in technology than in governance, competence and strategic clarity.

Anyone wishing to use AI effectively throughout the customer journey needs a clear picture of their customer journeys, defined use cases for each phase and an organisation capable of managing AI-supported processes.

Outlook: The next stage of customer interaction

The next stage of development is on the horizon: AI will become part of a forward-looking, fully interconnected marketing ecosystem in which predictive analytics, automation and personalisation systems work together seamlessly.

In this context, one topic is becoming increasingly important, one that was scarcely discussed in 2024: trust as a competitive factor. In a survey conducted in autumn 2025, 78 per cent of US consumers considered clear labelling of AI-generated content to be crucial for maintaining trust. In the long term, companies that use AI transparently and in line with their brand will come out on top against those that prioritise maximum automation at the expense of user trust.

What was a promise in 2024 has become a necessity in 2026: using AI throughout the customer journey is no longer a differentiating factor; it is the baseline. The question is no longer ‘if’, but ‘how strategically’, ‘how consistently’ and ‘how human-centred’.

Do you want to unlock the potential of AI across your specific customer journeys? adesso supports you in developing concrete use cases, selecting and integrating suitable technologies, and embedding them strategically throughout your entire marketing and sales ecosystem.