While it’s always great to hear our leaders provide insights and analysis of their achievements and wins, it’s also important to acknowledge the difficulties that professionals are facing within the CX space.
That’s why, as part of our inaugural CX All-Stars series, we decided to ask the 50 CX Leaders to name the biggest challenge they anticipate facing this year.
Below is a snapshot of some of their responses. You can view their complete answers to these questions and more in CX All-Stars or by clicking a leader’s name to view their full profile.
Despite our leaders outlining a wide breadth of challenges, a few common trends still emerged.
Change Management
As any person in their mid-30s trying to grasp the latest TikTok trends will understand, keeping up with change is difficult – and it’s no different for the CX sector.
Indeed, staying abreast of the ever-changing customer service and experience environment was mentioned by almost 20% of our All-Stars.
Among those who highlighted the issue was Oru Mohiuddin – Senior Research Manager at IDC – who succinctly summed up the two main factors of dealing with change: “Keeping up with the rapid pace of changes and making a clear prediction about how things will shape up.”
It is not enough to stay up-to-date with the current trends and tech, CX leaders also need to be able to accurately foresee what will and won’t work in the long run – a point Alex Monaghan, Solution Architect at The Open University, expounds on:
“It is now essential to move fast, but in a large organization you need to do this without breaking things. Making long term choices is increasingly difficult with such rapid change.
“Imagine deciding in 2022 that AI was not relevant to your business, or deciding early in 2023 to go all-in on Generative AI (GenAI) chatbots for customer service. Decisions still need to be made, but staying flexible is perhaps more important than getting it right the first time, because what’s right in 2024 may turn out to be wrong in 2025.”
For David Singer, Global Vice President of Go-To-Market Strategy at Verint, one of the biggest contributors to the intense speed of change is the widespread deployment of AI:
“The biggest challenge right now is keeping up with the pace of change. Our entire industry is changing faster than ever before, and it’s driven by the rapid evolution of AI and new use cases and applications that surface almost daily.”
The relationship between AI and pace of change was also mentioned by Jay Patel, VP & GM at Cisco: “Keeping up to date with technology developments is an ongoing struggle, and it seems increasingly difficult.
“The pace of change has accelerated and is exponential, this requires a regular review of what we are doing and why. It would be just as easy to get carried away and waste effort as it is to be paralyzed by analysis.
“Successfully navigating through all this requires great flexibility, quick responses, and collective experience throughout an organization.”
Here’s what other All-Stars had to say:
Samantha Conyers, Chief Experience Officer at First Retail Group: “The most exciting aspect of my role as the CXO is also its greatest challenge – navigating change, embracing agility, and keeping up with the pace of retail!”
Brett Weigl, General Manager of Digital and AI at Genesys: “Clearly my big challenge this year – shared by the broader team – is simply keeping pace with the rapid rate of change in the CX industry brought about by AI. The change we’re undergoing is fundamental, and one of the biggest I’ve witnessed in my career.
Georges Essama Georges Essama, Senior Manager of CX, Marketing & Communications at Cameroon Telecommunications: “The upcoming years will be a challenging time where the adoption of new technologies in improving Customer Experience will impact people and entire industries as well. The challenge is to support organizations in considering and adopting smoothly those changes.”
Jono Luk, Vice President of Product Management at Webex by Cisco: “The fast-changing landscape of expectations. It’s both a challenge but also what’s fun.“Modern-age technology evolution has always been driven by consumer demand–they want something new, or want something in a new and improved way.
“This means that as a Contact Center/CX vendor my team and I need to stay ahead of the curve, and help businesses realize how they can best get their customers what they want using our platform and product.”
Maximizing AI and Other Tech Solutions
As is the case throughout the CX industry at present, AI continued to play a significant role for our leaders, with several of them outlining the most effective implementation of AI and other new technologies as one of the biggest challenges they will face this year.
In particular, many of our leaders were quick to point out the importance of not falling into the trap of seeing AI as a silver bullet solution, as Dan Miller – Lead Analyst and Founder at Opus Research – explains: “[The challenge is] getting the world to understand what Generative AI is and why it is *not* some radical new thing that will revolutionize CX.”
Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, also discussed how balancing the pros and cons of AI was already causing her headaches: To be clear, I do not think AI is gunning for my job as an analyst.
“However, AI without questions complicates my job. It is both an astounding innovation with new twists and turns (yeah, GenAI I’m looking right at you) every day and a distraction full of bloated promises and daydreams masquerading as reality.”
The challenge for Joel Viotti, Owner of Value Streams, boils down to the best deployment of the tech: “While it’s certainly impressive what you can do with AI, it’s definitely going to come down to how well companies can implement this technology for either internal use to make individuals more productive by providing AI-Tools or make the life of customers easier through AI.
“Customers and employees want the best experience possible; no matter if it’s AI or not.”
Ellie Sutton, Director of Customer Strategy at Veriteer, makes a similar point; highlighting the need to “navigate the noise” surrounding AI tech: “In 2024, the biggest challenge I face in my role is supporting organizations in navigating the noise of evolving technology while ensuring that we priorities getting the basics right.
“Customers increasingly demand seamless experiences, and neglecting foundational elements in favor of flashy tech risks alienating them. Therefore, my focus is on ensuring that we excel in fundamental aspects of customer service before integrating new technologies.
“By striking this balance and prioritizing customer-centricity, we can retain loyalty and drive sustainable growth.”
Here’s what other All-Stars had to say:
Andrew Addison, Founder & CEO of Purple Square CX: “Keeping on top of the continued growth (or tsunami) of AI capabilities and integrations in MarTech.”
Amy Roberge, Head of Global CX Solutions Engineering at Zoom: “There are so many ways to apply AI that it can be distracting at best, and paralyzing at worst. The opportunity in CX is to help customers determine which business outcomes they are looking to impact with AI, and then identify specific, focused applications and use cases to implement.
Buddy Waddington, Principal Technologist of Insights & AI at Sprinklr: “The biggest challenge I face isn’t about deciding if we should use new AI, it’s about what we should do with it first. “There is an abundance of opportunity with AI and the way to success is determining what type of capabilities or focus areas you should prioritize first.”
Andy Dignan, Chief Operating Officer at Five9: “AI has changed the CX landscape so dramatically and within a very short period. As a company, we need to ensure Five9 is focusing on the real and practical benefits AI can bring.”
A Personal Touch
Another common theme that had some crossover with AI and tech deployment was providing adequate levels of personalization in an environment where customer expectations have never been higher.
This was discussed by Joey Tan, Head of CX at GXS Bank, who sees a direct correlation between AI and personalization: “In 2024, we are looking to use AI strategically to improve personalization and efficiency in ways that truly benefit our customers and the bank.
“The challenge lies in energizing my team to aim for significant advancements efficiently and quickly. Our focus is to drive impactful progress with minimal resources.”
As well as outlining change management in the above section, David Singer, President, Go-To-Market Strategy, Verint, mentioned the need to provide more personalized experiences: “Ever increasing demands from consumers for personalized experiences are also changing how brands engage which is pushing the industry to look beyond the contact center and across the enterprise.
“We also have to focus on employee experience as well as customer experience. All of these factors are driving change at Verint.”
The heightening of customer expectations was also highlighted by Iqbal Javaid, Head of CX Solution Engineering at Zoom: “My biggest challenge is ensuring our solution remains not just relevant, but indispensable to our customers. With the landscape of customer expectations evolving rapidly, staying ahead means constantly innovating to meet their needs while maintaining seamless integration with their existing systems.
“It’s about striking that delicate balance between anticipating future demands and delivering value that drives business growth and customer retention.”
The issue was also highlighted by Neha Dutta, VP of CX Transformation at EXL: “How to drive Hyper Personalization through technology and ensure customers get north star CX experience.”
Best of the Rest
While the above three trends were mentioned by a significant portion of our All-Stars, it is far from an exhaustive list. Here is a selection of some of the additional challenges discussed:
Ben Phillips, Head of CX Performance Centre at Fujitsu: “Unifying understanding of CX business-wide and helping colleagues avoid some of the common pitfalls and CX myths.”
Melissa Henley, Chief Customer Officer at KeyShot: “For any leader, communication is always a significant challenge.“As you progress in your role, so much of your time is spent sharing news of upcoming changes, assuaging employee concerns, and ensuring alignment between teams and departments. Add in a global organization, and communication becomes even more vital.”
Barry Cooper, President of CX Division at NICE: “The biggest challenge is finding ways to stay nimble and move fast while we continue to scale. As the company grows larger, it’s vital that we maintain our fast-paced innovation.”
Susanna Baque, Senior Director Global Customer Experience at SCIEX: “The biggest challenge I’m facing nowadays is the limited resources compared to the immense potential work my team could do in the multiple areas of Customer Experience, using existing and also new approaches and technologies. “It’s still challenging to build strong enough business cases to get those additional resources focused in long term business gains, difficult to prove an ROI immediately.”
Timothy Biddiscombe, Managing Director at Purple Square CX: “Organizations putting their faith into system integrators instead of a small number of specialist organizations who work well together.”
Sandra De Zoysa, Group Chief Customer Officer at Dialog Axiata PLC: “Navigating the ongoing economic crisis, which has significantly impacted the cost structure across all sectors is significantly challenging.“This situation has posed substantial barriers to the rollout of several strategic business plans, particularly those aimed at expanding our technological infrastructure and enhancing customer service capabilities.
“Rising costs and economic instability require us to be more innovative and judicious in resource allocation to ensure that our investments deliver maximum impact without compromising our commitment to customer satisfaction.”
