Surviving the crisis in CX: Unlock potential, articulate value, and avoid lock-ins

In the eyes of many practitioners, there is a growing crisis in CX. The crisis itself isn't new, but the arrival of new tools and technologies – as well as global economic conditions – have converged to accelerate its impact.

It's showing up in the disappearance of entry-level roles, the CX roles that are no longer structured into corporate hierarchies, widespread job losses at every level, and a collapse in customer satisfaction.

There are many factors contributing to what so many can see unfolding, but only one bottom line.

As Michael Hoffman (pictured below), author of the Customer Worthy Series sees it, if practitioners can't explain their full value in managing customer interactions across the entire experience, they will be automated out of business. At the same time, the tools doing the automations will create the illusion of better CX, without delivering it – and it won't be obvious until it shows up in diminished retention and market share.

This isn't about getting automation wrong. In fact, businesses will be doing things "right", they just won't be doing the right things.

Explaining the near-term implications, Hoffman says: "You can do things 'right' every day and performance won't improve. The call queue in terms of number of calls coming in, people getting the wrong box, having billing issues, not understanding implementation. All those things are happening right now, in huge volumes. Yet only 10 percent of customers contact you when they're ready to leave and they complain. This is what's going to be missed. The other 90 percent are on a train leaving slowly, until they leave quickly."

He adds: "This is going to be a pretty rough time. It's going to look like everything is working for about the next 18 months, then there are going to be these things that fall off the map."

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The problem with technology

Crisis takes many forms, but in this one, technology plays an outsized role.

Right now, IT is feeling empowered because organizations think they have technology problems to solve, but in reality, that isn't true.

CX's new tools – such as BigQuery, launched by Google in the days before Hoffman spoke to CX Network –  "can do everything that everybody is talking about, almost instantaneously". However, this is problematic because "that does not make customer experience better. It eliminates the people. That's a quick loss of cost," Hoffman says.

IT thinks CX capabilities are covered by the tools it procures; leaders can watch the sentiment tracking and report developments in the moment, rather than retrospectively. "But they won't do things the way they need to be done," Hoffman says. And because things are still being monitored, "nobody is going to know".

He says: "As long as you're responding somehow from an IT perspective, it appears like everything's working."

CX Network's recent research into the state of CX uncovered something similar: CX isn't being invited to the table as much when it comes to tech procurement.

The 2026 research found that 39 percent of practitioner respondents are on the decision-making team for general tech investments and 37 percent are on the team for AI investments. Compared with 2026, these figures are down from 58 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

Yet the research also showed the responsibility and financial burden of AI and accessibility compliance still fall to CX. Accessibility of contact channels was the ninth most selected investment priority in 2026, and 32 percent said they expect spending on AI regulatory compliance to increase this year.

For CX, this is not an entirely bad outcome. But it will take some work to make it a good outcome.

Looking ahead, Hoffman says: "My logical side tells me that companies will manage CX centrally at some point over the next three to seven years."

The Customer Worthy Series

The Customer Worthy Series was written to support practitioners through the challenges they face. It comprises three books: Total Customer Engineering, Before They Ask, and the second edition of Customer Worthy: Why and How Everybody in Your Organization Must Think Like a Customer.

The books have a single mission: "To give every CX professional the tools to make the case for their work in the language that organizations actually respond to. Not satisfaction scores. Not NPS. Financials. Return on investment. Cost per contact. Lifetime value progression per lifecycle stage," he explains.

To do that, Hoffman' draws on his experience as a practitioner, corporate consultant, and digital innovation specialist who has worked at BNY, Google, and Sitel Group, as well as "some of the largest and smallest companies in the world, from financial companies to direct to consumer, web, brick and mortar, non-profits, federal government, wineries, and mega tech".

The second edition of Customer Worthy – the first was published in 2010 – is the foundation. It includes Hoffman's CxC Matrix, a framework that maps 15 lifecycle stages across six interaction channels. Each of the resulting 90 cells features nine "treatment objectives". In total, 810 accountability points that define the customer relationship (more on that below).

"This book resets how you think about the customer relationship – not as a service obligation, but as the most underleveraged asset on your organization's balance sheet," Hoffman explains.

Before They Ask is the "where will CX go next" book. It plots the 2030s through the 2050s with tools, prompts, and frameworks practitioners can use now. "The practitioners who understand it are the ones who will govern the emergence of the customer sensor economy and the new four dimensions of customer reality," Hoffman says.

The third book, Total Customer Engineering, "is the one I spent the most time on" Hoffman says, and "the book I wish I had when I was navigating my own career".

Three years in the making, this book re-introduces the CxC Matrix, but this time it's "AI aware". Hoffman explains: "Department by department, cell by cell, with the exact playbooks and budget justifications that let any CX professional walk into any boardroom and speak the language of capital allocation, return on capital, increase earnings per share, EBITDA all tied to customers. Today it is essential that professionals and companies build foundations to leverage AI and design for a totally new reality."

As Hoffman explains it, the series was written for "the CX manager who is genuinely excellent at what they do, who has spent years building real expertise inside one or two parts of the customer lifecycle, and who wakes up some mornings wondering whether what they know is enough to protect what they've built". He adds: "I was that person. I know that feeling."

As the role and relevance of CX in the enterprise changes, these are the roles at risk.

"It bothers me that the tenure for those in customer experience or marketing is one and a half to two years, and dropping precipitously," Hoffman says.

The outlook is that things will get worse. For middle managers with a niche – be it web, brick and mortar, merchandising, brand, advertising, care and support, marketing, or social – the anticipated lifespan is "12 to 30 months, tops".

"I wrote the series to say, by the way, the skills that you have, you're unbelievably valuable to every company. You can acknowledge who customers are, help them, grow in their relationship, help them grow their lifetime value. Now is the time to be able to declare that. And you can still be in your niche," he adds.

It isn't just executive-level CX roles at risk as responsibility for experience management transfers to new areas of business.

Hoffman also sees entry- and intern-level roles disappearing – and he isn't alone. In the second edition of Designing Customer Experiences with Soul, authors Simon Robinson and Maria Moraes Robinson cite research that confirms how in AI-exposed occupations, there has been a notable slowdown in hiring. They say entry-level roles are quietly disappearing "before displacement becomes visible in unemployment statistics".

The Matrix: Closing the gaps that end careers

As described in the books, the CxC Matrix is designed to help the practitioner's organization "quickly find and exploit untapped customer value opportunities while working with existing tools for measurement, decision-making, and planning".

The 3.0 version expands on the original 90 cells, by adding four new layers:

1. Perception
2. Cognition
3. Actuation
4. Emotion

The Matrix comes into play because there's much more to CX than meets the eye, and when used correctly, it can expose the missed opportunities and strategic gaps that exist. Of the 90 cells mapped out, Hoffman says the typical business is managing around 20. Of that figure, the nine treatment objectives set out in each are also under-utilized.

As a framework and business tool, the Matrix can unlock the expertise CX professionals hold – which Hoffman describes as "the most valuable raw material in the CX profession" – across the full system, as well as the "financial architecture that lets them claim credit for what happens when they do".

"And now, with AI accelerating through every function in the enterprise, that gap – between the CX professional who can prove their value in financial terms and the one who can't – is no longer a career inconvenience. It's a career over," Hoffman says.

Working with the architects of CX automation

They may be a risk of CX being automated out of its current form, but practitioners still need to work with those who design the automation in order to acquire the tools to drive their current strategies.

At a time of such relentless change, Hoffman has two pieces of advice.

Firstly, when buying new tech, "nobody should sign a three-year license". In fact, they shouldn't sign an exclusive license or anything with a lock-in longer than 12 months. The reason is clear: "Nobody knows what it's going to look like in three years. Everything is just changing way too fast."

"If you signed on with one of the five major AI companies two years ago and locked in, you're in all kinds of pain," Hoffman says.

The second piece of advice is that when they do enter into new contracts, organizations should agree to a gain share model with the vendor.

The reason is anybody can present the figures to make a tool look like it's performing. "Any software can find your obvious opportunities and accelerate their harvesting. I could make your customer a special offer, but they were going to buy anyway. That's not a great deal for the company buying the software. The gain share is if I understand all of my metrics at a customer level, show me how and I'll share with you in the value," Hoffman says.

The math on a gain share is "very possible", and it means organizations no longer need to make a leap of faith by investing in something that promises returns that are too good to be true.

As CX enters the 2027 strategy season, Hoffman says that 2026 "has been and will be a free for all" and this strategy season means "reckoning season". On the schedule for 2027 are "experiments, folklore, and continuous distractions".  

Hoffman concludes: "CX is in turmoil. My thought is for CX leaders to grab control of all the customer interactions, not necessarily design, operate and execute them, but monetize, analyze, optimize them and have a seat at the table. If not 2026, position yourself for 2027."

You can find out more about the
Customer Worthy Series and buy the books via this link

Quick links

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