News
Research Report
The 2026 State of CX Outsourcing
The Gist
- Perception gap widens. Most brands see CX improving, few consumers agree.
- AI adoption rises. AI delivers returns but human support remains essential.
- CX teams impacted. Leaders must act on insights to drive real loyalty.
A stark disconnect between brand confidence and consumer reality defines the current state of customer experience.
Medallia released its 2026 State of Customer Experience Report on March 5, revealing that while 66% of CX practitioners believe experiences improved last year, only 17% of consumers agree.
Disconnect? You bet.
The report drew insights from surveys of over 1,500 consumers and 550+ global CX practitioners, plus benchmarks from over 600 anonymized Medallia customer programs. A notable finding: 30-40% of departments take no action after receiving CX data.
It's not a shocking finding. CX quality keeps getting lower and lower, according to Forrester, and customers are becoming less and less tolerant with bad experiences.
Gathering insights alone isn't a strategy, and the real magic happens when you stop just listening and start actually doing something with what you hear.
- Carrie Parker, chief marketing officer
Medallia
Breaking Down the Medallia CX Report Findings
Editor’s note: The Medallia report reveals that the biggest challenges in customer experience today are not measurement or technology alone, but alignment, operational ownership and the ability to act on insights quickly across the organization.
| Finding | What the report reveals |
|---|---|
| Experience perception gap | CX leaders are far more confident in the quality of experiences than customers themselves. While 66% of customer experience practitioners believe their company improved experience quality over the past year, only 17% of consumers say their interactions with companies improved. This disconnect suggests that internal CX metrics often fail to capture what customers actually value, particularly around affordability, access to human help and trust. |
| Experience quality drives competitive choice | Experience quality increasingly influences purchase decisions. When brands fail to differentiate on experience, price becomes the deciding factor. The report notes that 58% of consumers say they chose a brand over competitors during their most recent interaction because the experience was better, highlighting how operational CX improvements directly affect revenue outcomes. |
| Loyalty is fragile | Customer loyalty remains important but increasingly unstable. Only 22% of customers describe themselves as “very loyal” to the brand they interacted with most recently, and 40% report switching brands within the past three months after previously using a competitor for years. The findings indicate that loyalty programs alone are insufficient; brands must consistently deliver responsive, friction-free experiences to retain customers. |
| CX metrics remain largely stagnant | Traditional experience metrics such as Net Promoter Score and overall customer satisfaction have remained largely flat year over year. While headline scores appear stable, deeper interaction-level data reveals that customer needs are often unmet. Nearly one-third of consumers experienced an issue during their most recent interaction with a company, and 21% of service interactions result in unresolved issues. |
| Survey-driven insight is losing effectiveness | CX programs continue to rely heavily on survey data despite declining engagement. Customer survey email open rates dropped roughly 6%, and customer survey response rates have declined around 11% in the past year. Consumers are increasingly selective about when they provide feedback, pushing organizations to incorporate behavioral signals, operational data and conversational intelligence into their CX programs. |
| Insights often fail to drive action | The report finds that 30–40% of departments that receive CX insights do not take action on them. Executive teams are the most likely to act on insights, but follow-through declines significantly across other departments such as digital teams, product management, marketing and frontline operations. This indicates that many organizations still lack the governance structures and accountability needed to operationalize CX insights. |
| CX measurement is evolving | Many organizations are reconsidering how they measure experience quality; 78% expect to adopt at least one new metric or measurement approach in 2026. Meanwhile, roughly one-third of practitioners say their company has not established a strong link between Net Promoter Score and financial performance, prompting a shift toward operational and behavioral indicators. |
| CX program scope is limited | Two-thirds of CX teams operate with limited organizational scope. Many programs are responsible only for a specific lifecycle stage, channel or product line rather than the full customer journey. This fragmentation makes it difficult to coordinate improvements across departments and slows the translation of insights into enterprise-wide action. |
| AI expectations are rising | Both consumers and practitioners expect AI to reshape customer experience. Nearly 80% of CX professionals believe AI-driven indicators will replace traditional CX metrics such as Net Promoter Score in the coming decade. At the same time, many consumers expect a blend of AI-driven automation and human support, indicating that successful CX strategies will require balanced hybrid service models. |
Related Article: Net Promoter Score Isn't a Growth Strategy — It's a Comfort Metric
The Customer Experience Execution Gap Lives on
The perception gap highlighted in Medallia’s report mirrors what we found in the CMSWire State of Digital Customer Experience Report (2025 Edition). Many organizations have made real progress in collecting customer insights, but far fewer have built the operational systems needed to act on them quickly.
Our research shows that 41% of organizations say they understand their customers well and can act on insights effectively. However, nearly as many — 49% — report that while they have the tools to gather insights, they still struggle to turn those insights into action. The result is the same disconnect many consumers feel: organizations believe they are improving experiences, while customers often see little change.
The report also shows that technology itself is no longer the primary obstacle. In fact, 51% of respondents say their digital customer experience tools are working well. But technology alone does not close the gap between listening and responding. Operational ownership, workflow coordination and faster decision-making ultimately determine whether customer insights translate into real improvements.
How Experience Platforms Close the CX Perception Gap
What else have we found? Experience platforms now operationalize signal-based workflows that turn customer insight into coordinated action — but the real challenge is building the operational layer that connects insight to execution.
Most organizations can detect churn, intent and friction in real time. Few have the intervention pathways and decision rights to act fast.
Modern platforms ingest signals across conversational intelligence, digital behavior analytics and text/voice analysis. AI now processes call transcripts, chat logs, reviews and feedback to detect sentiment and friction patterns, enabling earlier intervention.
Yet only 7% of contact centers deliver cross-channel transitions smoothly — a defining gap between CX leaders and everyone else.
Where CX Leaders Should Focus Next
Editor’s note: Our research suggests that closing the perception gap requires shifting focus from measurement to operational execution.
- Translate insight into action. While 41% say they can act effectively on customer insights, nearly half of organizations still struggle to operationalize the data they collect.
- Move beyond tool adoption. With 51% saying their DCX technologies are working well, the competitive advantage increasingly comes from governance, workflows and cross-team coordination.
- Build responsible AI frameworks. 66% of organizations now report having formal generative AI guidelines, signaling a shift toward governed AI adoption across customer experience operations.
- Strengthen the experience foundation. 82% of organizations plan to build, buy or upgrade their CMS, highlighting the importance of content orchestration and workflow in delivering consistent digital experiences.
- Establish baseline measurement. Even with growing investment in analytics, 12% of organizations still report not measuring digital customer experience at all.
What CMSWire's DCX Report Reveals About CX Execution
Editor’s note: These findings highlight the difference between collecting customer signals and acting on them in real time.
| Report finding | What it signals about CX operations | What leaders should do next |
|---|---|---|
| 41% say they understand customers well and can act on insights | A minority of organizations have built mature insight-to-action processes | Formalize response playbooks for common friction signals and assign clear ownership |
| 49% say they have tools but struggle to act on insights | The largest gap in CX maturity is operational execution, not data collection | Create cross-functional workflows that translate signals into intervention paths |
| 51% say their DCX technologies are working well | Technology improvements raise expectations for operational follow-through | Shift focus from new tools to governance, coordination and decision rights |
| 66% report having generative AI guidelines | Organizations are beginning to formalize AI governance in CX programs | Extend AI governance into frontline workflows and customer-facing automation |
| 82% plan to build, buy or upgrade a CMS | Content management remains a core infrastructure layer for digital experience | Treat CMS platforms as operational CX systems rather than just publishing tools |
| 12% report not measuring digital customer experience | Some organizations still lack foundational measurement for CX performance | Establish baseline journey metrics before expanding analytics programs |
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Medallia Background
Medallia, founded in 2001, offers enterprise experience management software. Its Experience Cloud platform captures signals from voice, web, social media, IoT and messaging channels, applying AI and machine learning to generate predictive insights for customer and employee experience management.
Medallia just held its customer conference, touting new AI capabilities and CX practitioners in the spotlight.
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