Has Customer Experience Lost Its Teeth?

The Gist

CX has arrived—and stalled. Once disruptive, customer experience risks becoming a compliance function focused on internal optics over customer outcomes.
Real transformation is rare. Despite flashy dashboards and strategic talk, most organizations fail to deliver meaningful change or build trust with customers.
There’s still time to fix it. Reframing CX as a strategic, organization-wide discipline rooted in customer value can restore its impact and relevance.

Over the past two decades, customer experience (CX) has evolved from a novel concept to a core organizational function. Once a rallying cry for putting the customer at the center of business strategy, CX has since been integrated into corporate scorecards, executive dashboards and annual planning cycles. It has its own software stacks, job titles and budget lines.

By all appearances, CX has “arrived.” But that may be exactly the problem.

When Maturity Becomes Complacency

Despite the proliferation of CX programs, we are witnessing a troubling pattern: CX is at risk of losing its power as a strategic discipline. Like CRM before it, it’s being commoditized—reduced to a set of metrics, management tools and performance KPIs that feel more about internal reporting than external value. The original strategic promise of CX—to forge stronger, more relevant and more enduring relationships with customers—is fading.

In recent pieces I’ve written, I’ve explored different angles of this decline. Together, they paint a picture of what’s going wrong—and more importantly, what we can do to fix it.

From Strategy to Theater: The Slow Death of CX
Missed CX Opportunities in the Real World
Will CX Follow CRM’s Path?
Reclaiming CX as a Strategic Discipline
Core Questions About CX’s Strategic Decline

From Strategy to Theater: The Slow Death of CX

In Champagne and the Slow Death of CX, I reflected on the way CX has lost its strategic teeth. Many organizations still say all the right things about being customer-centric, but their CX efforts often don’t go beyond symbolic gestures or data collection exercises. There’s a lot of celebration—internal awards, impressive dashboards, new hires with “CX” in their titles—but very little transformation.

The Metrics Trap

What was once a bold, disruptive force for rethinking how companies deliver value has become corporate theater. CX risks becoming a compliance function rather than a strategic one, with teams too focused on metrics like NPS, CSAT or CES, rather than on the actual human and business outcomes those metrics are supposed to reflect.

It’s a dangerous shift—one where CX becomes more about managing perceptions than driving meaningful change.

Missed CX Opportunities in the Real World

This disconnect became especially evident at the 2025 Payments Canada Summit, where the dominant themes were disruption, innovation and trust in a rapidly changing financial services landscape. Across multiple sessions, speakers touched on the importance of delivering seamless, trustworthy customer experiences—particularly in the face of increasing competition and regulatory pressure.

Yet when it came to execution, the examples were often underwhelming. Many organizations still view CX in narrow terms: as smoother interfaces, better customer service scripts or marginally improved processes. What’s missing is the strategic leap—rethinking entire business models, aligning internal culture with external brand promises, or designing around customer jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

The New Customer Trust Equation

Customers today expect more than convenience. They want relevance, transparency, consistency and values alignment. And when companies fail to deliver on these expectations, the impact isn’t just dissatisfaction—it’s a loss of customer trust. In some sectors, like financial services, that erosion of trust can be existential.

Will CX Follow CRM’s Path?

In my most recent CMSWire article, Want Customer Loyalty? Don’t Go the Way of CRM, I argue that CX now faces the same crossroads CRM once did. CRM began with the promise of stronger customer relationships, but over time, it became an internally focused tool—valuable for tracking and reporting, but detached from the actual experience of being a customer.

The same fate could await CX. Too many organizations treat their CX teams as problem-solvers for specific pain points or as brand custodians in charge of smoothing over rough edges. These are useful functions, but they’re not strategic. Strategic CX requires reshaping how the organization operates—not just how it interfaces with customers.

Beyond Loyalty Programs

True customer loyalty—the kind that drives growth, advocacy and lifetime value—can’t be manufactured with loyalty points or call center scripts. It comes from understanding what customers really value and designing experiences (and businesses) around that insight.

Reclaiming CX as a Strategic Discipline

So how do we turn the tide?

First, we must return CX to its roots as a strategic capability—not just a function. That means connecting CX more directly to growth, differentiation and competitive strategy.

Here are three imperatives for reclaiming CX’s relevance:

Go beyond measurement. Metrics matter, but only if they drive decisions and change. CX leaders must challenge themselves (and their organizations) to act on what they learn—not just track it.
Reframe CX around customer jobs and value. Use frameworks like Jobs-to-be-Done and Willingness-to-Pay to deeply understand why customers choose you—and why they might leave. This insight should shape your products, services and go-to-market strategy.
Embed CX in the core of your business strategy. CX should influence everything from product design to pricing to innovation. It’s not just the responsibility of a dedicated CX team—it must be owned across functions and up to the C-suite.

If we fail to make this shift, CX will drift into irrelevance—another buzzword relegated to the back office. But if we rise to the occasion, we still have a chance to make CX the transformative force it was meant to be.

What Strategic CX Looks Like Compared to Tactical CX

Use this table to evaluate whether your CX efforts are performative or transformative.

Dimension	Tactical CX	Strategic CX
Primary Focus	Improving metrics (NPS, CSAT)	Driving growth and differentiation
Typical Activities	Surveys, scripts, UI tweaks	JTBD analysis, product innovation, pricing strategy
Ownership	Dedicated CX team	Cross-functional leadership including C-suite
Customer Role	Feedback provider	Co-creator of value
Measurement	Lagging indicators	Leading indicators tied to business outcomes