The Weavers: The overlooked generation holding CX together - right now

Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating change faster than many businesses can keep up. Customer expectations are rising, and generational turnover is transforming the workforce. In the middle of this shift is a group of professionals that companies can’t afford to overlook — yet often do. I call them The Weavers.

These are the mid-career professionals — often Millennials — who grew up in an analog world and adapted into a digital one. They aren’t digital natives, but they’re fluent in technology and deeply rooted in human connection. They carry the company’s institutional memory forward while enabling the next generation to innovate.

Overlooked, not outdated

They didn’t inherit the digital world. They learned it — and that’s what makes them so adaptable.

Some leaders see this cohort as “too old to be truly digital” or “too young to hold institutional authority.” That assumption is wrong — and costly. Because they’ve had to master both worlds, The Weavers bring rare adaptability and perspective.

The bridge between generations

The Weavers

• Connect upward with Gen X and Baby Boomers, preserving business foundations before they retire.
• Connect downward with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, translating complexity into clarity and accelerating their growth.

This isn’t about “playing nice.” It’s about ensuring knowledge transfer, cultural cohesion and organizational resilience in a time of disruption.

Why they matter now

• AI can automate processes — but not context, empathy, or purpose.
• Research shows intergenerational collaboration can boost innovation by 12 percent to 18 percent and improve retention by up to 30 percent.
• Losing The Weavers means losing the connective tissue between people, processes and technology.

How to care for The Weavers

1. Identify your Weavers — they’re the cross-functional, mid-career professionals making things work between silos.
2. Elevate their visibility — put them in strategic conversations, not just execution roles.
3. Invest in their growth — leadership, AI literacy and CX strategy skills.
4. Leverage them as generational bridges — pair them with retiring leaders and early-career talent.
5. Reward their contribution — measure and recognize their impact on customer and employee outcomes.
6. Involve The Weavers — in AI training and validation initiatives to ensure models reflect real business logic, market realities and customer context.
7. Prioritize them — for AI literacy, prompt engineering and cross-functional AI integration projects.

The pace of change will never be faster than it is today. The Weavers are not “nice to have” — they are essential to holding your customer experience and your organization together. Identify them. Train them. Care for them. Because without them, the threads of your business will start to fray — and once they do, no AI can stitch them back.

Regional spotlight: The Americas

The importance of The Weavers extends across the Americas, where service-driven economies and shifting workforce demographics make their role in CX even more critical.

Key data points reinforce the urgency:
Millennials and Gen Z will make up 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025 (Forbes). In Latin America, millennials alone account for roughly 23 percent of the total population (Americas Quarterly, BBVA).

• Nearly 49 percent of Latin American consumers would abandon a beloved brand after just one bad experience (PwC). This puts a premium on experienced CX professionals who can maintain and elevate service quality.
• Latin America’s call center services market is projected to reach US$20.4 billion by 2030 (Superstaff). This reflects strong demand for bilingual, customer-focused talent — a hallmark of The Weavers.
• 80 percent of remote, customer-facing workers in Colombia and Mexico have strong English proficiency (Wow Remote Teams), making them ideal connectors between local and global markets.

Insights on The Weavers

The Weavers as AI enablers

As AI technology becomes embedded and used across the organization in operations, customer service, marketing, analytics and countless other use cases, there is a growing need for professionals who can give meaning and the right understanding to what AI produces. The Weavers are uniquely equipped for this role, acting as translators who bridge the gap between business needs, market demands and customer pain points.

Their deep knowledge of the business - its processes, decision-making logic and cultural context - combined with their understanding of customers’ language and expectations, makes them ideal to:

• Design and curate AI training datasets that reflect authentic customer contexts and scenarios.
• Validate AI outputs for accuracy, empathy and brand alignment.
• Serve as liaisons between technical AI teams and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring AI applications meet business, market and customer needs.
• Identify high-value use cases where AI enhances rather than replaces human-led customer interactions.

By involving The Weavers early in AI implementation, organizations can align technological capabilities with genuine customer and market priorities, ensuring solutions are efficient, relevant and human-centered.

If The Weavers are the fabric of your organization, how will you strengthen and showcase their threads to future-proof your business?

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