CCW 2025: A New Era of Customer Dialogue Has Begun

The transformation in customer service is in full swing. The 26th CCW 2025 international congress trade fair for innovative customer dialogue impressively demonstrated that the key to excellent service experiences lies in the perfect orchestration of human expertise and artificial intelligence.

From 24 to 27 February 2025 in Berlin, CCW offered an unparalleled platform for the industry's leading minds: around 8,000 participants from over 50 countries took advantage of the high-calibre congress and forward-looking trade fair with around 230 exhibitors from 24 countries to exchange ideas on the latest developments in the fields of customer experience, artificial intelligence and digital transformation.

Shaping the future of customer dialogue

The CCW Congress once again presented itself as an international think tank for the service industry and provided in-depth insights into the latest technological, strategic and social developments. Under the motto ‘Where Humans meet AI’, the focus was on five key topics in particular:

Hyper-personalisation through AI - today's customers expect tailored experiences in real time. Generative AI enables a completely new form of interaction that goes beyond traditional segmentation.
Voice and multichannel automation - Real-time translations and intelligent voice bots take global customer service to a new level.
Hybrid customer service - The combination of humans and AI enables efficient yet empathetic interaction, especially for complex enquiries.
Data protection and compliance as cornerstones of trust - Regulations such as the EU AI Act are setting new standards for the legally compliant use of AI in customer service.
The working world of tomorrow - Smart automation solutions not only open up new potential for the employee experience, but also require the targeted further development of skills in service teams.

High-calibre speakers from business and science, including Barbara Körner (Coca-Cola Germany), Axel Schulz (DB Fernverkehr), Eugen Lubaschevski (DKB), Alicia Joe (journalist & YouTuber), Marc Freyberg (BRAX Leineweber), Prof. Dr.Bertolt Meyer (Professor of Work-Organisational and Business Psychology, University Lecturer of the Year 2024 TU Chemnitz), Thorsten Hartig (Konzern Versicherungskammer), Faridah Shatanawi (HelloFresh), Sigrid Lukasek-Heider (IKEA Germany) and Stefan Kuntz (European Football Champion & Leadership Personality), provided exclusive insights and perspectives on future-proof service and business models.

A special highlight was the presentation of the European Customer Champion Awards (EUROCC 2025).Three inspiring customer service champions who have implemented innovative customer projects were honoured. Six nominees from Europe made it onto the CCW Congress stage with their commitment in a five-minute pitch. The audience voted live and the result of this live vote was included in the jury's overall assessment. The ‘European Customer Champion’ (EUROCC for short) was awarded for the fourth time by Management Circle AG together with the trade magazine cmm360 on 25 February 2025 as part of the CCW Congress.

Winner of the EUROCC 2025

Paul Herbertz, Product Manager Team Unified Communication | BarmeniaGothaer
Paul Herbertz relies on automation with the AI agent Mina and reduces calls by 90 %, saves over 100,000 - annually and increases customer satisfaction enormously.
Corinna Kaussen, Head of Operations | Digital Dialog GmbH (Rheinische Post Mediengruppe)
Corinna Kaussen is developing the classic contact centre into a digital service centre in which AI and humans work together efficiently and reduce service costs by 50%.
Felicitas Bürgi, standing in for Elia Spinas, Head Customer Operations and Innovation Direct Digital & Customer Care | Zurich Switzerland
Felicitas Bürgi and Elia Spinas are taking customer service to a new level with AI-supported process optimisation, from onboarding to retention, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and growth.

These are the winners of the European Customer Champion 2025:

^©Management Circle AG | Paul Herbertz, Corinna Kaussen, Felcitas Bürgi

Innovation meets practice - experience the future of customer service live

With around 230 international exhibitors from 24 countries, the CCW trade fair with 4 exhibition halls was once again the innovation platform for all aspects of customer service and customer experience management. Visitors could not only discover the latest technologies here, but also experience them directly in practice. In addition to tried-and-tested formats such as the next experience^{Design by HCD} as a unique pop-up working world of tomorrow, the TeleTalk demo forum with exciting provider battles and the trade fair forums, these exciting concept areas were also very popular:

The ‘World of AI’ hosted by NTT Data demonstrated the effective use of artificial intelligence to make service processes more efficient, customer-friendly and economical.

New this year, the ‘World of Business Intelligence’ hosted by tecRacer showed how smart data analysis and automation can transform customer dialogue.

The third day of the trade fair focussed in particular on the future: at ‘3 Years From Now’, previously formulated theses were examined and discussed in an interactive talk by more than two renowned industry experts in 30 minutes each from different perspectives.

The ‘SQUT-Dialogue Service Provider Challenge’ also started on the third day of the trade fair - the best outsourcing partners faced a direct comparison and showed how flexible customer service solutions can be used optimally in times of cost pressure and a shortage of skilled workers.

Startup Visions’ presented itself as young and innovative with 10 startups. On the 3rd day of the fair, the ‘Startup Visions Award’ was presented by a jury for the 6th time. The most promising start-ups presented their solutions for the digital service world.

The Startup Visions Award 2025 went to Dr Florian Hutter, Managing Director at tellma GmbH. He uses AI-supported video presence to rethink customer service and sales.

^©Management Circle AG

The future belongs to young people - in cooperation with the Alliance for Training in Dialogue Marketing, the winners of the ‘dialogXplosion Talent Competition’ were honoured, in which the trainees shared their most outstanding training moments with the entire industry.

Industry trends: The customer dialogue of the future is today

CCW 2025 has made one thing clear: customer service is becoming more intelligent, automated and individualised - but people remain indispensable. Three key trends are setting new standards:

AI as standard technology - automation is no longer a topic for the future, but is becoming a basic requirement for efficient service processes.
Emotion & empathy as a differentiator - companies that intelligently combine the value of human interaction in the customer journey with AI will secure long-term customer loyalty.
Data-driven customer experience - Smart, personalised services require seamless integration of real-time data across all channels.

Europe's largest congress trade fair for innovative customer dialogue shows ways to optimally combine the best of both worlds - people and AI - and brings together forward-looking technologies, management thinkers, pioneers of new working environments and practitioners as well as all the important trends in customer experience AND employee experience.

Outlook: CCW 2026 sets new impulses

After four days full of innovations, best practices and networking, we are already looking ahead to next year:

CCW 2026 will take place from 23 to 26 February 2026 at ECC Berlin. Companies and decision-makers should make a note of this date today.

Monday, 23 February Innovation Day (pre-congress)

Tuesday, 24 February First congress and trade fair day

Wednesday, 25 February Second congress and trade fair day

Thursday, 26 February AI Inspiration Day (post-congress) and third day of the trade fair

Further information can be found at www.ccw.eu.

Contact for the editorial team:
? presse@managementcircle.de
? +49 6196 4722-0

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