Customer experience teams across Asia-Pacific (APAC) have spent 2025 working to keep pace with fast-moving customer expectations and rapid advances in technology. Organizations in the region have made significant investments in artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and automation – yet many of the toughest barriers to progress remain human and structural rather than technical.
Data from the CX Network's 2025 Global State of CX Report highlights the precise nature of those barriers. Drawing on responses from the report's survey, we can reveal the top 10 challenges facing CX practitioners in the APAC region in 2025:
These results show that many organizations are still working to embed customer-centric thinking and operational clarity at scale.
The following five challenges stand out for their potential impact on how CX maturity will develop in the coming months.
1. Building a customer-first culture
Selected by 40 percent of respondents, building a customer-first culture remains the biggest challenge for CX leaders in APAC. The high rate of responses underlines a widespread struggle to make customer-centric behavior part of everyday operations rather than it being regarded as an abstract goal.
Rekha Weerasooriya, group chief people officer for Dialog Axiata, believes that culture has to be “lived, not just communicated”.
This alignment has to start from the top, she explains. “When leaders demonstrate customer-first behavior, it sets the tone for the entire organization,” Weerasooriya says.
According to Weerasooriya, culture connects the customer and the company mission.
“If CX sits outside the business strategy, it becomes reactive instead of transformative,” she insists.
Weerasooriya’s perspective underlines what’s required to move from strategy to practice – something many APAC organizations are still developing. The survey shows that 68 percent of respondents in the region rate their organization’s approach to CX as established, in early implementation, or still at the planning stage.
The lesson, Weerasooriya notes, is that leadership consistency, not slogans or mission statements, determines whether CX becomes part of an organization’s DNA.
2. Linking CX initiatives to ROI
Selected by 33 percent of respondents, the second-biggest challenge in APAC is proving that CX efforts create measurable commercial impact.
Jim Tincher, CEO and founder of Heart of the Customer, highlights the communication gap between CX professionals and senior leadership. “While CX is talking about customer outcomes like NPS, CEOs want to hear about growth,” he says.
“My definition of a silo is when you have your own data and your own definition of success that doesn’t match the rest of the business,” Tincher adds.
That distinction reflects the reality faced by many in the region. CX teams are prioritizing measurable customer outcomes, with 33 percent listing higher NPS or CSAT among their main strategic aims for 2025. However, many still find it difficult to connect these improvements to commercial performance. Just over half (51 percent) identify demonstrating a return on investment (ROI) as the biggest obstacle to securing new CX investment.
3. Aligning business objectives with CX initiatives
Many organizations still treat CX programs as operational add-ons rather than strategic levers for growth, which is why 25 percent of our network members in the APAC region say that aligning business objectives with CX initiatives is their greatest challenge.
Weerasooriya emphasizes the importance of integration: "A mature CX management strategy emerges from a customer-centric organization where all functions are aligned towards delivering exceptional experiences."
CX teams have traditionally worked at a distance from finance, technology, and operations, limiting their influence on long-term planning. However, 82 percent of APAC respondents say collaboration across departments has increased over the past year, suggesting that organizations are now beginning to close those gaps.
Strengthening these connections is key to securing consistent investment and ensuring that CX insights shape how organizations design their offering, measure success, and plan for growth.
4. Creating actionable insights from data
According to 23 percent of respondents participating in our research, turning data into action continues to be a major issue for APAC organizations. Despite investment in analytics and AI, nearly a quarter of respondents cite “creating actionable insights from data” as a top challenge, while a further 10 percent point to siloed or disconnected customer data as a persistent obstacle.
Claire Cunningham, senior manager for customer insights at Coles Group, believes the challenge lies in “getting people excited about data”. She explains: “It becomes really important to find common ground – helping people understand what your purpose is and what your aims are with that data.”
The research results suggest that many APAC organizations remain data-rich but insight-poor, investing in analytics while still struggling to translate information into action – a situation that limits the practical benefits of their technology investments.
Cunningham argues that improving communication around data is just as important as the technology itself. “You can have the best tools, but if people don’t know why they’re using them, the insight never becomes action,” she explains.
5. Managing customer data
Only 8 percent of APAC practitioners list managing customer data as a top challenge, but the survey results show how closely it connects to other problem areas such as generating actionable insights and linking CX to ROI. Without reliable, well-structured data, efforts to personalize experiences, measure value, or apply AI effectively all become more difficult.
Debasmita Das, manager and data scientist at Mastercard in India, explains: “AI models cannot work effectively without high-quality data, highlighting the need for data management and governance.”
Her point resonates with the research finding that 86 percent of APAC organizations implemented new measures in 2024 to improve data security.
For Das, the next step is about consistency rather than awareness. “Data governance isn’t a one-off project,” she says. “It’s an ongoing process that ensures accuracy, privacy, and accessibility. Without it, even the most advanced AI system will fail to deliver the right outcomes.”
Her view illustrates how data quality and governance are becoming inseparable from CX success.
Understanding the pattern
Taken together, these five challenges highlight the dual nature of CX maturity in Asia-Pacific. The region’s organizations are leaders in adopting new technologies, but progress depends on how well they integrate those tools into company culture and strategic decision-making.
Technology can enable CX, but only strong leadership, clear alignment, and disciplined data management can sustain it.
Looking ahead
APAC's CX leaders are learning that transformation depends as much on people as on platforms. The data shows that cultural alignment and proof of value remain the hardest frontiers, and the experts suggest that leadership behavior remains the real differentiator.
As Weerasooriya puts it: "Everyone, from top executives to frontline employees, should see CX as part of their job. By living this value daily, the organization will have a more unified purpose and stronger alignment towards customer satisfaction."
Her words reflect the crux of our APAC findings: technology can accelerate CX, but only people who embody its principles will sustain it.
Quick links
- 5 things to know about CX technology in APAC
- How CX practitioners in APAC are investing in CX
- How APAC practitioners are building their CX strategy in 2025