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As CX Satisfaction Plummets, How Should Businesses Respond?

CX Satisfaction CX Satisfaction

Businesses are struggling to connect with customers in the age of AI, and CX scores are showing it. 

According to Forrester’s annual CX Index, the average customer experience rating for U.S. brands fell in 2024 for the third consecutive year. CX performance saw a similar drop across all three dimensions of CX quality: effectiveness, ease, and emotion. 

by Neal Keene

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Rising customer expectations can partially explain this decline. As customers confront inflated costs, they’re demanding more from their brand interactions. However, businesses’ over-reliance on trendy technology — like generative AI chatbots — has exacerbated the situation. While these automated solutions promise to provide instant support and slash customer wait times, they often lead to greater frustration. 

AI alone is not a silver bullet for high-quality customer experience. Instead, businesses need a balanced, human-first approach that centers customer emotion and privacy. By arming customer service agents with responsive technology, businesses can regain trust and create more meaningful connections with customers. 

It’s no surprise CX is falling short in 2024

Currently, only 3% of businesses are categorized as “customer obsessed,” meaning they place customers’ needs, desires, and satisfaction at the forefront of all business decisions. 

For organizations that prioritize customer experience, the rewards are evident. Specifically, customer-obsessed organizations see 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth, and 51% better customer retention than non-customer obsessed organizations. 

However, making the shift toward customer-obsession can be challenging for CX leaders, who often struggle to gain support from executive leadership to improve CX functions. As a result, businesses may gravitate towards lower-cost initiatives, like chatbots. 

While chatbots offer fast support, they can also lead to more frustrating customer journeys when not implemented strategically. And since emotion remains a key factor in customer experience, frustration can make the difference between a customer continuing to engage with a brand and disconnecting altogether.

AI alone is not enough to solve customer experience woes

Companies may believe that they need to go above and beyond to evoke positive emotions from customers. But in reality, the driver of customer loyalty is much simpler: convenience. 

Essentially, customers want to avoid challenges or difficulties during their brand interactions. So much so that 96% of customers who had “high-effort” experiences reported disloyalty to the brand going forward. Common sources of effort include needing to repeat information, contact a business more than once, or being treated like a number rather than a person. 

If you’re thinking, “That sounds like a chatbot,” you’re right. Chatbots with generative AI can struggle to understand more casual human language, often redirecting customers with unwanted or inaccurate links or even impeding customers from reaching a human representative. 

Businesses understandably want to maximize efficiency. Yet, the path forward is not just chatbots, it’s enhancing the ability of human agents to provide fast, nuanced customer support. 

4 ways businesses can harness technology to rebuild trust with customers 

Responsive technology can enable businesses to maximize speed and quality across customer interactions, while still preserving essential human connection. 

The key is to utilize technology as a partner, rather than a standalone replacement. Here are four ways intentional technology use can help businesses improve customer experience: 

  1. Empower customer service agents to hone in on emotion 

Recognizing and responding to customer emotions is an important facet of high-quality customer experience. Human agents already have a competitive edge in this area, even compared to the most advanced chatbots. 

The right technology solutions can further enhance agents’ ability to connect with customers on an emotional level. An AI-powered speech analytics tool can identify key moments, sentiments, and emotions in a call and help agents respond in real time. Agents might receive advice on an empathetic response for a disappointed customer or tips for de-escalating a tense interaction. 

With these insights at their disposal, agents can communicate with greater empathy and quickly foster a positive rapport with customers. 

  1. Drive efficiency and consistency across customer interactions 

Typically, customers want to find a solution or answer as quickly as possible. Real-time prompts from conversation intelligence can help agents target customer needs more accurately on the first try. This reduces call times — and queue times — resulting in faster service for customers and better workload balance for employees. 

But greater efficiency shouldn’t mean less accuracy. Conversation intelligence also allows quality assurance teams to monitor if conversations are meeting certain compliance requirements and intervene when needed. 

Technology can help businesses prioritize speed and consistency for their customer interactions, indicating to customers that a brand values their time and experience. 

  1. Ensure robust protection of customer privacy 

Chatbots can often be intrusive, asking for unnecessary personal details up front and causing customers to disconnect from the interaction. In contrast, human customer service agents offer a critical layer of trust that chatbots lack. 

When call center agents are supported by technology, they can offer a far more personal experience and greater privacy protections. At the organizational level, conversation intelligence can monitor if agents are adhering to relevant guidelines and protocols. On a broader scale, it can also assess whether calls are complying with relevant laws, regulations, and ethical standards. 

This additional facet of quality assurance creates safe, consistent experiences for customers and protects your business against costly errors. 

  1. Identify opportunities to adapt and improve 

In every customer interaction, there is room for improvement. After a call is completed, AI technology can flag calls with negative sentiment or outcomes, helping businesses identify opportunities for additional coaching and training initiatives. Similarly, it can identify calls with positive outcomes as a starting point to establish best practices. 

Analyzing post-call analytics enables your organization to remove some of the guesswork surrounding what drives positive or negative outcomes for customers. With concrete data, you can make targeted changes to better address customer needs in future interactions.

Restoring customer trust through human connection 

Customers have made it clear that they expect more from their brand interactions. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, customer service is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s a core factor in any customer’s buying decision. 

Going forward, businesses need to drive customer experience initiatives that prioritize human connection and empathy. Integrated technology solutions can enable agents to respond with more tailored support, helping to build trust and loyalty by showing customers you’re willing to go that extra mile.


Neal Keene is CTO at Gryphon.ai a leader in contact and conversation compliance and AI-driven conversation intelligence. With more than 20 years of experience holding executive positions in corporate strategy, strategic alliances, indirect channel sales, and product marketing, Neal values delivering exceptional customer experiences. His goal is to discover how modern technologies can solve customer-centric business problems.

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