Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters
Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters is where customer experience leaders get real strategy for building what comes next, not just managing what already happened. It explores what it actually takes to build proactive customer experience: the mindset that shapes how your team sees every interaction, the strategy that turns that mindset into a plan, and the discipline that makes it stick day after day. Hosted by Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP, and author of the USA Today bestseller Experience Is Everything, each episode gives CX leaders real answers they can put to work immediately.
Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters
Fund This. CX Trends to Budget.
•Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP•Episode 184
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$3 trillion in global sales is at risk because of poor customer experience. That number is big enough to change how we think about CX budgeting, because it turns “experience” into a measurable revenue and trust problem. I walk through where leaders should invest now, what trends actually matter, and which shiny “innovations” you can safely stop chasing.
AI is no longer a trend, it’s the weather. It’s in the background of your tech stack and the foreground of your strategy, and it’s already shaping how customers discover products and get help. The real question is whether your AI investment strengthens human connection or quietly breaks it. I dig into why the old contact center metrics may not fit the AI era, and what to measure instead, including AI resolution and escalation quality so you can track outcomes that customers feel.
Then we get honest about a common budget mistake: funding more technology while underfunding the people, training, and services required to make that technology work. When that balance is off, you get bad AI rollouts, frustrated teams, and customers who don’t know where to get a straight answer. We also explore agent-assisted commerce, how AI assistants can become the new storefront, and why conversation analytics and interaction analytics are showing real gains in CSAT and revenue when used with clear intent.
If you want a smarter CX budget and a clearer ROI story for your leadership team, listen now, subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show. Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Three trillion dollars. That's how much is at risk. That's how much worldwide sales risk there is because of poor customer experiences. In the United States alone, that means nine hundred and seventy-three billion dollars. If you're building your budget right now, we know the risk. The risk is all of that revenue that we're leaving out there by providing poor customer experiences. So the question I want to ask you today is where should you spend? Where should you invest? And what trends are worth paying attention to for the future? And which ones could we
leave behind? Let's start with the one we all know and love, or maybe don't love, or maybe have some feelings about. AI is no longer a trend. It is essentially the weather. It is how things are done. It is in the background of technology, it is in the forefront of our strategies. And guess what? It has a big bold line item on most budgets. But here's the thing: in the work that we do, AI can enhance the human connection. It can enhance the workload. It can help human agents do their jobs better, have more time for empathy and compassion and understanding.
Now, for many decades, there have been certain metrics in contact centers, like average handle time or first call resolution. But we may want to reframe the way we measure things for the future. Now, if we know that this AI trend is not stopping anytime soon and the way it's going to just be part of what we do, maybe we need to shift to AI resolution or escalation quality. Look for what outcomes we want before we just keep doing what we've
always done. Right now, today, there is a budget mistake that is probably happening with your organization. Now, this is one of those trends that I wish weren't true, but essentially we keep investing in technology. In fact, 50% of customer experience decision makers told Forrester that they were going to spend at least 5% more on technology in the coming year. Now that sounds great, but if we don't match that with really investing in people with training and service and support, then we're missing the optimization of the very technology that we're investing in. So right now, today, I would challenge your ratio around this because only 36% of those CX decision makers intend to increase spending on people and services. That is a big disconnect. And there is risk in underfunding the very capabilities that we need to deliver on the investments of the technology. AI can give us the right information, but if we don't have the right people delivering for the people we're serving, all of that risk is on the table. We've already seen some pretty bad AI rollouts. Can we agree? So if we know that those rollouts were not handled well, why do we keep making the decision to invest in the technology for technology's sake instead of understanding that we need to support it? We need to optimize it with the people, the services, the products, the processes that are built around it. We need to make sure that the people who are delivering have what they need. And I see this as an opportunity. Instead of thinking, let's take these funds away, we can redistribute. We can take some of what may have gone to larger headcounts in some cases, may have gone to more technologies in our tech stack. Now we can do more, possibly with less, and invest in the very training and resources that our people need in order to make sure that we're getting the return on the investment of that technology. It is a balancing act.
And right now, today, I think a trend that is not going away is that we as humans are looking for signals of how to trust you. And so one of those signals actually shows up in the people that we hire, in the people that represent our brand. We need to make sure that we're empowering them to represent the brand in a way that is trustworthy, that is full of integrity and honesty and transparency. Now, if we don't take the time to do that and invest in that type of training and support, then it's going to be very easy for people to not really know where to get a straight answer, where to get the information they need, the support they need, those simple things. Because if we're only relying on AI to do that and we're only investing in the technology, then we're missing opportunities to build long-term relationships with our clients and our customers.
But the technology is here to stay. One trend that's not going anywhere is agent-assisted, agent-assisted commerce, agent-assisted conversations, agent-assisted service. This is really where agentic AI could take over in bigger and bigger ways as we move into the next year. So we need to understand what it is, how it works, and where we want to invest. If you're in retail, what's happening is AI assistants are becoming your storefront. Customers are really experiencing your brand and products within tools like ChatGPT and Claude. This is erasing the line between sales and service in big ways. So customer experience leaders need to at least understand what could happen there and how they could support the customer. Get proactive here about understanding that experience.
Early adopters of expanded conversation analytics are seeing 26.7% revenue lift and a 32.6% CSAT gain. Over 90% of IT and CX leaders already say interaction analytics deserve a place on enterprise dashboards. This is from a report from Metro D. So if you're looking to invest in a tool that will help you do more of that, make sure you put it into context of why it's important. If this approach sounds kind of familiar, it's because this is what we talk about. Figure out what outcomes you want and then go after the tools, build the plan, invest where you need to. But if you are only going for the tools, you are missing opportunities to really deliver not only for your customers, but also for your organization.
Well-designed and executed budgets can make or break leadership roles. That means that as a leader, your job is to look ahead, look to the future realistically around the trends that matter. Make sure you're investing where it makes the most sense and that you have an argument for why the outcome is so important. Mitigate the risk that we know is there and lead like a leader. Show up and understand why you're asking for the spend you are. It matters. It's important. And yes, is there risk in this? Absolutely. We can't be soothsayers and see the future all the time. We're going to make mistakes. But if you pay attention right now to the trends that are on the upswing, that will help you put your money in the right place to get the return on the investment that you want. I can't wait to talk to you next week. Have a great one.
If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. A USA Today bestseller. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.
