IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced new industry-specific consulting strategies developed in collaboration with Adobe, focusing on AI-driven customer experience orchestration for airlines and healthcare sectors.

The initiative addresses findings from IBM Institute for Business Value research showing companies lose an average of $29 million annually due to slow responses to customer demands. The study, conducted with Adobe, found that 75% of executives believe their organizations respond too slowly to changing customer needs.

The collaboration combines Adobe's Customer Experience Orchestration capabilities, including Adobe Real-Time CDP, with IBM's AI expertise and orchestration tools such as Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator and IBM watsonx Orchestrate.

According to the research, organizations that successfully decode customer intent report 13% lower customer acquisition costs, 4-point advantages in customer satisfaction scores, and 6% higher retention rates. Companies pairing AI responsiveness with governance frameworks see 12% higher marketing ROI and 38% increases in customer lifetime value.

The study revealed that organizations spending more time detecting and acting on customer signals experienced 30-40 percentage point drops in marketing ROI. Only 34% of collected customer data currently informs experience decisions.

IBM referenced its work with Riyadh Air as an early application of AI-guided customer support, demonstrating how agentic AI built on watsonx assists staff in real-time situations.

For airlines, the solutions aim to integrate traveler context and predictive personalization across digital, physical and operational touchpoints. In healthcare, the focus addresses administrative barriers through streamlined workflows and connected identity systems across channels.

Eric Martinez, Chief Business Marketing Officer at The Cigna Group, stated that patients deserve connected experiences where information follows them across different healthcare providers.