CX is at an all-time low. How has that happened after years of investment and good intentions of being customer-centric?
According to one study, there are three reasons:
- an inability to provide truly seamless CX and employee experiences;
- chatbots failing to deliver expected digital experiences; and
- consumer concerns about their personal finances, society, and the economy.
Does that mean brands should stop focusing on CX? Hardly; there is significant evidence that demonstrates how, when executed properly, CX contributes to better financial performance. Improving CX can reduce cost to serve by 20-50%, while using it as a differentiator is associated with a 10–15% increase in sales conversion, according to McKinsey. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of customers said a positive brand experience was more influential than great advertising.
So, good CX drives value. The challenge for many brands is that CX is all-encompassing, spanning every touchpoint across every channel, both online and offline. It’s influenced by systems and processes hidden deep within the organisation, managed by teams that are far removed from the customer-facing frontline. And it’s shaped by culture right across the business.
That might mean challenging old assumptions or completely changing how you have previously structured data. For example, for Avanti West Coast, the key to achieving a great customer experience was aligning back-end ticketing services with customer needs and presenting information mapped to customer mental models rather than arcane business processes.
Or there’s BMW. It offers drivers of the same car a fully customisable experience, allowing them to adjust seating, displays, and even ambient sounds. This is a move away from the vehicle as the centre of the brand and requires the ability and technical architecture to consider individual drivers and recognise their specific needs.
These are deep-seated, structural changes. The thought of making them can be daunting. It doesn’t need to be. It comes down to knowing where to invest and where to avoid.
Start focusing here now
Most CX guides focus on the new and seemingly innovative, but this shiny-object syndrome often contributes to a poor experience. That’s because while new technology can be game-changing, if it’s bolted onto weak foundations and poor principles, it will only exacerbate those issues. If brands are to deliver great CX, they need to focus on three areas.
- Know what your customers want, even if they don’t
User research is central to CX, but insights are often taken at face value: users say what they want, and brands build it. What’s needed is an understanding of what customers actually need, which may not align with what they say they’re looking for. It’s a balancing act between respecting the customer’s wishes and getting to the root cause of their problem.
For example, Domino’s focused on understanding that what matters to its customers is getting their pizza quickly and having it arrive fresh and hot. It built services with those insights at its core: optimising routes, removing bottlenecks, and providing customers with live location updates to reassure them that their pizza was on the way. The result was a 69.3% increase in online orders, more than double the market trend, and a twelve-fold increase in digital revenue.
- Build the foundations your ambitions deserve
Brands often forget that the point at which they interact with a customer is only the end result of their CX efforts. Delivering that seamless, end-to-end experience requires significant coordination, supported by the right data and technology ecosystem. A fantastic onboarding process can be totally undermined by poor-quality, siloed data.
What’s required is alignment between internal teams, all focused on delivering exemplary CX. Review each interaction, understand what it requires and who owns each element of the process, and design the technical architecture to support it.
It was a focus for LIV Golf as it rolled out its LIV X loyalty programme for the 2024 season. It wanted to reward fan interactions across both online and offline channels — on its web channels, in its app, and even on the golf course. To do that, it aligned its customer data and rolled out single sign-on across all app accounts to ensure it captured all touchpoints.
- Looks DO matter
Humans respond instinctively to how something looks, and that extends to brands. A dull design and uninspiring tone can turn off a prospect before they’ve properly engaged, removing any competitive advantage. How the experience looks is crucial, but it must reflect the core values of the brand and what it offers its customers.
This approach was central to Virgin Active's app, which supports multiple territories and languages. Colour-coded identities for each of its Big Five activities (yoga, Pilates, boxing, cycling, and grid training) were paired with brand details to help customers navigate both its online and physical presences. Members engaged with the app more frequently and for longer periods, and 86% reported achieving a wellness goal in the last 90 days. Importantly, this increased engagement helped protect revenue, with engaged members being 60% less likely to terminate their membership.
Keep away from these behaviours
Just as important as knowing where to focus is knowing what to avoid, and in many ways, the three key areas to steer away from are similar to where brands should be deploying their resources: rather than being specific technologies, they’re behaviours or traits that should be kept out of the CX at all costs.
- Adding features no one asked for
Brands increasingly add features no one asked for. Customers engage with products to solve specific problems, yet companies lose sight of this, layering on functionality that creates friction rather than value. Annual recaps work when they celebrate meaningful user behaviour — Spotify Wrapped showcases listening habits, Strava's Year in Review highlights fitness achievements. But does a banking customer need a year-in-review of their app usage, especially if they must click through it to access their account? What value does a workspace tool's annual recap deliver beyond taking up screen real estate? Features should serve the user's core need, not the company's engagement metrics.
- Forgetting what helped you grow in the first place
Introducing new products and services can drive growth and diversify revenue, improving financial sustainability. Yet brands have to be careful not to do so at the expense of what built them in the first place.
Spotify might get it right with the Spotify Wrap, but not everything it tries works. Its efforts to be a destination for podcasts and audiobooks can make the app harder to navigate for users who still rely on it for music, while its sponsored recommendations might boost the bottom line in the short term but risk undermining trust in the service as a discovery mechanism. Users may start to question whether what they see is tailored to them or if Spotify is being paid to promote it to them. Uber, too, has shifted from a clear home screen with a map and a prompt to one that offers multiple services, from car hire to food and grocery delivery.
- Putting business before customers
Without customers, there can be no business. That doesn’t mean sacrificing everything for the customer; as noted above, brands shouldn’t blindly follow what customers say they want, and there needs to be a trade-off between customer needs and what a company can deliver without going bankrupt.
But customers are smart and will spot when a business prioritises its own interests. Amazon built its fortune on a hyper-focus on the customer and still claims to do so. Yet actions speak louder than words: adverts in its Prime streaming service, the prominence of sponsored and promoted products with limited relevance to the user’s search, and the challenges of cancelling any subscriptions. They all detract from the CX and ultimately risk losing customer trust.
Build great CX from the ground up
It's natural to look to new technologies or innovative approaches to solve long-standing problems. After all, what we had before didn't work, so maybe something more powerful will? Yet when it comes to CX, many brands haven't got the foundations right. They're 90% of the way there; they just need to keep going. That's often where concentration breaks, and they pivot to adding features, chasing novelty, and losing sight of what got them there in the first place: the customer.
The brands that truly stand out aren't necessarily the ones using the latest tools first. The real CX winners have fantastic fundamentals. Brands that ignore their foundations don't gradually decline; they get left behind. Customers leave for competitors who got the basics right. And all that shiny AI and innovation? Wasted on a crumbling foundation. This isn't a trend; it's how business works. True in 2026, true forever.
