Since 2021, Execs In The Know’s Leading with Impact program has focused on raising awareness surrounding mental health. Our aim is to continue working to break past the stigma often associated with mental health issues and address these issues head-on. Our actions, no matter how big or small, can provide hope to those who are struggling. We’re working alongside organizations to help companies and individuals move down a stigma-free path, where those affected by mental health challenges can seek support without fear of judgment.

That context becomes especially visible in the day-to-day reality of work, where experience is shaped not only by what is measured, but also by what is felt beneath those measures.

Behind the Metrics

In the rhythm of a typical workday, especially in customer-focused environments, much of the attention is directed outward toward performance metrics, service levels, and the consistency of the experience being delivered. Dashboards update in real time, targets are tracked, measured, and optimized, and every interaction is an opportunity to reinforce trust, solve a problem, or strengthen a relationship.

Behind those measures, however, are individuals navigating competing priorities, constant interaction, and the expectation to remain responsive, steady, and engaged. The pace can be dynamic, at times unpredictable, and often shaped by variables outside anyone’s control. And within that pace, there is an ongoing balance between output and capacity, between responsiveness and recovery.

Mental health, in this context, is rarely a single moment or a clearly defined event. It is cumulative. It reflects how work is structured, how communication flows, and how individuals move through their day. It is influenced by the volume of interactions, the complexity of customer needs, and the degree of autonomy individuals have in managing both.

It also shows up in ways that are not always immediately visible. In the tone of a conversation, the patience within a customer interaction, and in the ability to remain present through complexity, to listen fully, and to respond with clarity. Over time, these small moments shape the overall experience for both employees and the customers they serve.

A Different Kind of Visibility for Leaders

For leaders, this creates a different kind of visibility. Not one rooted solely in outputs, but in patterns. How teams are pacing themselves across a week or a quarter. How often can they reset between periods of intensity? How consistently they are supported in maintaining both performance and well-being over time.

These patterns are not always captured in traditional reporting, yet they influence many of the outcomes organizations care most about: engagement, retention, service quality, and consistency. They also indicate how sustainable those outcomes are over longer periods.

Where Employee and Customer Experience Meet

Across many organizations, there is a growing awareness of these dynamics. Conversations around flexibility, workload, and support systems have become more integrated into how teams operate. In some cases, this includes more deliberate approaches to scheduling and staffing. In others, it shows up in how leaders communicate expectations, set priorities, and create space for focus.

Rather than existing in isolation, employee experience and customer experience are increasingly understood as interconnected parts of the same ecosystem. The conditions in which employees work (how supported they feel, how clearly they understand expectations, or how manageable their workload is) can influence how consistently they deliver for customers. The relationship is not always explicit, but it is observable.

How It Shows Up in the Work

When employees have the space to focus, recover, and feel supported in their roles, it often carries over into how they engage with each other and with customers. Interactions may feel more measured. Problem-solving can become more collaborative. Consistency, which is central to many customer experience strategies, becomes easier to sustain.

At the same time, the absence of that support can also surface in subtle ways. A slight delay in response, shorter interaction, or a missed opportunity to fully resolve a concern. These are not necessarily indicators of intent or capability, but reflections of the broader environment in which work is taking place.

Moments like May offer an opportunity to notice these connections more clearly. Not as a departure from day-to-day operations, but as a lens through which to view them. A way to reflect on how systems, expectations, and support structures are aligning with the realities of the people within them. It is a chance to observe what is working well and where there may be opportunities to adjust.

Small Shifts, Meaningful Impact

In practice, this reflection can take many forms. For some organizations, it may involve revisiting how workloads are distributed across teams or how demand peaks are managed. For others, it may include examining how communication flows, whether priorities are clear, whether feedback is timely, and whether individuals have the information they need to do their work effectively.

It may also include a closer look at how time is experienced throughout the day. The spacing between meetings, the ability to focus without interruption, or the presence of natural pauses allows individuals to reset before moving into the next task or interaction. These elements, while operational, contribute to the overall work experience. Over time, they shape how sustainable the experience feels and how consistently individuals can bring their full attention to their work.

For customer-facing teams, this is particularly relevant. The nature of the work often requires continuous engagement: listening, responding, solving, and adapting in real time. It is work that draws not only on technical knowledge, but also on emotional awareness and communication skills.

Sustaining that level of engagement over time is influenced by more than training or process. It is shaped by the environment in which the work takes place: the clarity of expectations, the availability of support, and the extent to which individuals can recharge between interactions.

An Ongoing Perspective

As organizations continue to evolve their approaches to both employee and customer experience, there is an increasing opportunity to consider these elements together. To view them not as separate initiatives, but as interconnected aspects of how value is created and sustained.

This perspective does not require a single model or a defined endpoint. Instead, it is an ongoing process of observation and adjustment. A willingness to look at how work is experienced in practice and how that experience aligns with the outcomes organizations are aiming to achieve. Within that process, awareness plays a central role.

So as May unfolds, the opportunity is not limited to acknowledgment. It is an opportunity to notice and observe how teams are operating, how individuals are engaging, and how the conditions of work are supporting, or at times challenging, the ability to sustain performance over time. It is also an opportunity to remain curious and to explore where small adjustments might create meaningful shifts. To consider how clarity, capacity, and support are experienced across different roles and teams.

Not as a one-time focus, but as part of an ongoing approach to building environments where both people and performance can be sustained. Because at the center of every interaction, every metric, and every outcome are individuals, bringing their attention, their energy, and their perspective to the work in front of them.

And in that sense, Mental Health Awareness Month serves less as a standalone initiative and more as a moment of clarity, a reminder of the conditions that support sustained performance, thoughtful engagement, and the kind of customer experiences that feel both effective and human over time.

Take Action

Since 1949, Mental Health Awareness Month has been a driving force in addressing the challenges faced by millions of Americans living with mental health conditions, and this year, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is calling on everyone to take action, raise their voice, and help change the conversation around mental health.

Whether you share your personal journey, raise awareness on social media using #MyMentalHealth, or simply show up for someone in need, every action helps break stigma and build a more supportive world. If you or someone you know is struggling, the NAMI HelpLine offers free, nationwide peer support — available Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET — by calling 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), texting “HelpLine” to 62640, or visiting nami.org.

The post Mental Health Awareness Month: Building Healthier, Stronger Workplaces appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The people asking it are doing their jobs; they are trying to justify spending, demonstrate ROI, and connect investment to outcome. But the question itself is built on the premise that events are solely a direct-response channel, and that their value can be measured the same way you measure a paid search campaign or a targeted email sequence. 

Measurement is not the problem. The measurement framework is. CROs and CMOs are right to demand accountability for event spend, but the metrics that reveal event value are fundamentally different from those that reveal campaign value. The argument here is not that events should escape scrutiny. It is the right measurement approach that reflects what events actually do: deepen relationships, accelerate expansion, and drive retention. When organizations hold events to the wrong standard, they systematically undervalue them, cut them first under budget pressure, and lose one of the most powerful long-term growth drivers available to them. 

At Execs In The Know, we have spent 15 years convening the customer experience (CX) community of executives, practitioners, and the partners who support them. And one of the clearest patterns we have observed is this: the partners who show up with a relationship mindset almost always win. It is worth saying plainly: events are not for leads. And understanding what they actually are for changes everything about how you approach them. 

The 97% Problem 

At any given moment, roughly 97% of your potential customers are not in an active buying cycle. They are not comparing vendors, not requesting demos, not reading RFPs. They are running their organizations, managing priorities, and building mental models of the landscape in which they operate, including who is worth paying attention to when the time comes. 

That remaining three percent? They are in the market. They will talk to sales, respond to outreach, and show up in pipeline reports. Direct-response marketing (email sequences, retargeting campaigns, SDR outreach) is optimized for that three percent. You need to reach people who are ready to buy. 

But events reach everyone. They reach the VPs who are two years away from a major platform decision or the COO who is three months from a budget cycle that will open up new discretionary spend. These are not leads. They are relationships in formation. And the only way to reach them (the only way to exist in their consideration list before they are ready to consider anyone) is to show up consistently, add value without an agenda, and build the kind of familiarity that makes you the obvious call when the moment finally arrives. 

Events, when done well, are the most efficient mechanism organizations have for doing exactly that. 

What Trust Requires 

Trust, in a business context, is a very specific thing. It is the accumulated belief that you understand someone’s problems, that you are competent to address them, and that your interests are sufficiently aligned with theirs that working together makes sense. Trust is not built through a 30-second elevator pitch or a well-designed landing page. It is built through repeated exposure to evidence; evidence that you know what you are talking about, that you are genuinely interested in their success and not just their budget, and that you will still be there tomorrow. 

Events are the trust infrastructure. They are the venue where that evidence is transmitted and accumulated at scale. Consider what actually happens at a well-run conference, briefing, or executive dinner. Your people sit across from CX leaders, and conversations take place that have no agenda. You learn something about their business that no amount of market research would have surfaced, and they learn something about your thinking that no white paper would have conveyed. You are no longer a vendor, a logo, or a line item in someone’s evaluation matrix. You are a familiar voice with a perspective they have encountered before and found worth remembering. 

Why does that matter? When the buying moment arrives, and it always does, CX leaders do not start from scratch. They call the organizations they already know. They shorten the list before the formal process begins, and they use trust as a filter. And organizations that have been showing up consistently and adding value without demanding anything in return find themselves on the short list. 

The Six Things Events Actually Do 

If events are not primarily lead-generation tools, what are they? Across the hundreds of events Execs In The Know has hosted and the thousands of conversations we have had with CX leaders and their partners, we have observed six things that events do exceptionally well (none of which are captured in a badge-scan report). 

1. Brand building at depth. There is a difference between awareness and recognition, and a further difference between recognition and resonance. Events create resonance. When a CX leader has heard your perspective in a session, had a genuine conversation with your team in a hallway, or sat at a dinner your organization hosted, they carry a richer and more durable mental model of who you are than any ad impression or email sequence could create. That depth compounds over time. After showing up to multiple events, you are no longer a vendor; you are part of the fabric of the CX community. 

2. Relationship deepening with existing accounts. The most underappreciated return on micro event investment is not new business; it is retention and expansion. Bringing a key customer into a thoughtfully curated experience, or creating the conditions for a genuine conversation between your leadership and theirs, does something that quarterly business reviews simply cannot replicate. It signals investment and conveys that you consider their success even when no immediate transaction is at stake. That signal carries significant weight when renewal conversations arrive. 

3. Account expansion. Micro events create the conditions for conversations that do not happen in formal sales motions. The customer who joined for one reason discovers that you do three other things directly relevant to problems they have been trying to solve for months. That discovery rarely happens through outbound outreach. It happens through the organic, unhurried conversation that only events make possible. 

4. Customer retention. At a time when switching costs are lower and competitive alternatives are more numerous than ever, the organizations that hold on to their best customers are usually the ones that have built genuine relationships, not just good contracts. Events are one of the most reliable mechanisms for making customers feel genuinely valued rather than merely managed. 

5. Product and market intelligence. A well-run event will surface more actionable insight in two hours than six months of survey data. The candid, peer-influenced conversation that happens in a room of CX practitioners reveals what people actually care about, what is genuinely broken, and what the next generation of challenges looks like. That intelligence has compounding organizational value that almost never gets attributed back to the event budget. 

6. Strategic positioning. Where you show up and what you contribute when you get there shape how the market categorizes you. Organizations that consistently convene meaningful conversations around the right topics become associated with those topics. They are seen as credible, forward-thinking participants in the community, not vendors seeking transactions. That positioning is extraordinarily difficult to purchase through advertising and nearly impossible to manufacture. It has to be earned over time through a consistent and generous presence. 

The Lead Measurement Trap 

If events do all of these valuable things, why does the “how many leads” question persist? Because it is genuinely difficult to measure what events actually produce, organizations default to what they can count. 

Badge scans are countable. Meetings booked are countable. A pipeline attributed within a 30-day window is countable. These three things do not fit neatly into a marketing dashboard: The brand equity accumulated over 18 months of consistent community presence, the retention driven by a customer who felt genuinely valued, or the upsell that was won years later but began as a conversation over dinner before there was ever a deal. 

This creates a systematic bias toward undervaluing events. The costs are visible and immediate; the returns are diffuse and delayed; and when budget pressure hits, the line items with the most ambiguous ROI are the first to be cut, even when they quietly do some of the most consequential work in the organization. There is also a cultural dimension. Many organizations have reinforced a specific kind of short-term accountability for so long that their event teams have internalized the lead-generation framing without questioning it. The badge scanner becomes a security blanket. The count of “qualified contacts” becomes the number that justifies the budget. And slowly, the event program begins optimizing for the metric rather than the mission: collecting contacts rather than building relationships, filling a funnel rather than building a community. 

The result is an event program that is not effective as a direct-response channel. Why? Because events are simply the wrong tool for that job and not an effective trust-building channel. 

The solution is not to abandon measurement. It is to measure what events actually produce. That means tracking relationship depth, not just contact volume, over time. It means monitoring how many initiate conversations that eventually enter the pipeline and tracing expansion and retention outcomes back to relationship touchpoints, even when the timeline is long, and the path is not linear. A CRO who insists on event accountability is not wrong, and how they measure over time for their particular business parameters is critical to realizing the true value of event participation.  

What Better Looks Like 

Reorienting an event program around trust rather than leads requires changes at multiple levels in how success is defined and how the function is understood internally. A panel that exists to showcase your executives is not the same as a conversation that helps a CX leader solve a problem she has been wrestling with for months. A sponsored session that serves as a product demo is not the same as a peer exchange that provides practitioners with new language and frameworks to bring back to their organizations. The test is straightforward: would people come to this event if your brand were not attached to it? If the answer is no, the event is built for you, not for them. 

The partners who extract the most value from events have developed frameworks that account for longer time horizons and less tidy signals. They track relationship quality alongside contact volume, monitor re-engagement, including how many people from a given event remain active in the community over the following year, and they trace closed deals, noting when the first meaningful relationship touchpoint occurred, not just when the opportunity entered the CRM. And they are honest about the limits of attribution, accepting that some of the most valuable things events produce will never be cleanly measurable and that this is acceptable. 

This is the measurement shift that matters most: moving from reach to depth, from pipeline-in-X-days to lifetime customer value influenced, from contact count to relationship continuity. When the measurement approach reflects what events actually do, the business case for sustained investment becomes far clearer, and the connection to long-term revenue growth becomes undeniable. Event strategy, properly measured, is not a cost center. It is a driver of the retention, expansion, and trusted-partner status that compound into durable growth. 

A Final Thought: The Real Value of CX Events 

The partners who win the long game in CX are the ones leaders reach for when building teams, evaluating platforms, or benchmarking their programs, and are almost never the ones who showed up most aggressively in a given quarter. They are the ones who showed up most consistently over the years. 

Consistency communicates something that no single event, no matter how well executed, can convey alone. It says: we are here because we are genuinely invested in this community, not because we need something from it right now. It says: we will be here next year, and the year after that, because our commitment to your success does not depend on your readiness to buy. 

That signal (durable, repeated, credible) is what builds the kind of trust that converts when the moment finally arrives. Not the badge scans, meeting requests sent 24 hours after the conference ends, or the 30-day attribution window. Events are not for leads. They are for something harder to measure and far more valuable: the accumulated credibility that makes you the obvious choice when the 97% finally become the 3%. 

That is worth investing in. 

Ready to show up where it matters? Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President, Partner Advocacy, at Scott@execsintheknow.com or explore our 2026 Media Kits to find your next opportunity. 

The post The Real Value of CX Events appeared first on Execs In The Know.

But something else is happening at the same time, and it deserves equal attention: the interactions that reach human agents are becoming more complex, more emotionally charged, and more consequential than ever before.

That’s an opportunity. And the brands that recognize it are pulling ahead.

The Shift Nobody Is Talking About Loudly Enough

When AI handles the easy stuff, what’s left for human agents isn’t the leftovers; it’s the moments that define the brand. Service recovery. High-stakes exceptions. Customers who are frustrated, confused, or vulnerable. These are the interactions where trust is either deepened or permanently lost.

Research backs this up. According to Qualtrics, when a customer issue is resolved positively, that customer is likely to demonstrate greater loyalty over time than someone who never encountered a problem. This is the Service Recovery Paradox, and it only works when a human agent has the empathy, judgment, and autonomy to execute it.

Scripts don’t get you there. Rigid escalation paths don’t get you there. Empowered agents do.

The 18-Point Lesson from Southwest Airlines

At CRS Amelia Island, Kevin McDorman, VP of Customer Care at Southwest Airlines, made a point that reframed the entire conversation around CX transformation: the frontline isn’t where strategy gets executed; it is the strategy.

His argument wasn’t anti-technology. It was pro-human, with intention. As automation absorbs more transactional contacts, the human role must be elevated with equal deliberateness. That means moving from rigid scripts to guardrails that give agents room to exercise judgment. It means investing in soft skills (active listening, empathy, problem-solving) with the same rigor as any technology deployment.

Because customers don’t experience transformation through a roadmap. They experience it in the moment they need help.

What AI Can Genuinely Do for Your Agents

Here’s where it gets interesting: AI isn’t just replacing agent work; it’s also making agents better at their jobs. Simulation-based onboarding tools are helping new agents handle complex scenarios before they encounter them in real time. AI co-pilots are supporting agents in real time with knowledge retrieval, sentiment analysis, and next-best-action guidance. Auto-summarization is reducing after-call work so agents can focus on the customer in front of them.

The companies winning this transition aren’t choosing between AI and humans. They’re designing operating models where each does what it does best and where the intersection between them is intentional, not accidental.

Looking Ahead to 2030

The contact center of 2030 looks meaningfully different from today’s. Agent profiles will shift, and compensation structures will evolve. Hiring, onboarding, and career pathing will be redesigned around a new contact mix that demands higher emotional intelligence and sharper judgment.

The organizations that start building toward that now, investing in frontline empowerment as infrastructure, not afterthought, will have a structural advantage that’s hard to replicate later.

The question isn’t whether to automate. It’s whether you’re elevating your people at the same pace.

Read the full article in the April issue of CX Insight magazine →

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According to Swoogo’s event data, in-person micro events grew 16% in 2024, and nearly half (45%) of event professionals say their companies are committed to hosting micro events, with enterprise companies 22% more likely to invest in them.

Bizzabo’s platform data shows 34% year-over-year growth in small in-person gatherings with fewer than 150 attendees in Q1 2025.

What Exactly is a Micro Event? 

Micro events are focused gatherings (typically between 20 and 150 attendees) organized around a specific theme, industry topic, or community. They take many forms: intimate roundtables, expert-led virtual workshops or webinars, curated dinner experiences, conferences/summits, city-specific pop-ups, and peer cohort sessions. What they share is purpose. Every person in the room (or on the call) is there for the same reason, which changes the entire dynamic of the experience. 

Unlike large-scale conferences where a sponsor’s booth competes with hundreds of others for foot traffic, micro events create environments where every touchpoint matters, and every sponsor interaction gets noticed. 

At a 1,000-person conference, you’re noise. At a 30-person roundtable or 200-person summit, you’re a conversation. 

Why Audiences Are Voting with Their Calendars 

Attendee expectations have shifted dramatically. People are more selective about where they spend their time and budgets, and they’re demanding relevance in return. Generic content delivered to a generic crowd no longer justifies a day out of the office or an afternoon away from a packed remote schedule. Micro events solve this by design. They attract CX leaders who have specifically opted into a niche conversation, meaning the room is already pre-qualified. The signal-to-noise ratio is simply higher. 

Virtual micro events have further amplified this trend, and they work best as a complement to in-person gatherings, not a replacement. A senior decision-maker who couldn’t attend a flagship conference can still join an invite-only virtual roundtable, keeping the conversation going between live events. Organizers can fill a curated 40-person session with geographically diverse, seniority-rich attendees throughout the year, deepening the community that forms at in-person summits and extending its impact well beyond a single event date. 

The Partner Opportunity 

For business partners evaluating where to place their sponsorship dollars, micro events offer something large-scale conferences rarely can: depth over breadth. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice. 

Higher-quality conversations. When an event draws vetted professionals, every sponsor interaction is with someone who belongs in your pipeline. There’s no badge-scanning lottery. The intimacy of the format makes cold outreach feel warm, and follow-up conversations feel earned rather than awkward. 

Brand recall that lasts. Attendees remember who sponsored the dinner where they had a breakthrough conversation. They remember the company that hosted the workshop that solved their most pressing problem. In a crowded B2B landscape where brand differentiation is increasingly difficult, that kind of memory is priceless. 

Content leverage. Micro events produce rich, reusable content: session recordings, curated highlights, community takeaways, and expert Q&A threads. As a sponsor, your brand appears inside content that the audience actually wants to consume and share, long after the event ends. 

Faster feedback loops. Smaller gatherings make it easier to pilot messaging, test positioning, and gather candid audience input in real time. Sponsors who show up at micro events often get market intelligence that their competitors won’t see until next quarter’s research report. 

What This Means for Your Partnership Strategy 

The most forward-thinking partners aren’t choosing between large events and micro events; they’re building a portfolio of events layered throughout the year to keep the conversation going in the spaces where decisions are made. 

If you’re evaluating your partnership strategy, the question isn’t whether micro events are worth it. The question is which ones align with the communities where your best customers already gather. Start there, show up consistently, and watch the relationships grow. 

We’re here to help you identify the right micro event opportunities. Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President, Partner Advocacy, at Scott@execsintheknow.com or explore our 2026 Media Kits to find your next best room to be in.

The post Why Micro Events Are Leading the Way appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The political headwinds around DEI have been loud, but the business signals are louder. According to our 2026 CX Leaders Trends & Insights: Corporate Edition report, 68% of consumers say it’s important for companies to take a public position on their DEI practices and allow that position to guide their operations. Yet only 36% of CX leaders say their company actually does this. That gap isn’t a branding problem. It’s a performance problem.

The Purchasing Power Behind the Principle

The consumers who care most about DEI aren’t a niche; they represent some of the fastest-growing pools of spending power in the country. Black buying power in the U.S. is projected to top $2 trillion in 2026. U.S. Latino purchasing power stands at $3.78 trillion. The LGBTQIA+ community represents an estimated $1.4 trillion domestically, and up to $4.7 trillion globally. Multicultural consumers now account for more than 65% of U.S. expenditure growth.

And they’re making purchase decisions accordingly. One-third of consumers say they’ve already cut back or stopped buying from brands that rolled back DEI commitments. Among Black and Latino consumers, that number jumps to 45%. Among LGBTQIA+ consumers, it reaches 58%.

The Contact Center

Corporate statements about inclusion don’t matter if the customer experience doesn’t reflect them. When CX leaders were asked how their company performs on accessibility and inclusion in customer support, 76% rated themselves “Very Good” or “Somewhat Good.” When consumers were asked the same question about those same brands, only 58% agreed.

That 18-point perception gap is a blind spot, and blind spots in CX show up in churn, negative reviews, and eroding loyalty over time.

The Companies Staying the Course

While some brands pulled back in 2024 and 2025, others held firm, and their results are worth noting. Costco’s board unanimously urged shareholders to reject an anti-DEI resolution in early 2025; shareholders agreed by a 98% margin. The company’s employee turnover rate is roughly 7%, well below the retail industry average of over 60%. That’s not a coincidence; it’s the return on a workforce that feels valued and a customer base that feels seen.

McKinsey research shows companies in the top quartile for leadership diversity are 39% more likely to outperform financially. Boston Consulting Group found that organizations with above-average diversity generate 19% higher innovation revenues. Harvard Business Review reports that diverse teams make better decisions 87% of the time.

The Window Is Open

This moment has created an opening. As some brands step back, others are signaling something unmistakable to the market: who they’re building for, and whether they can be trusted to hold that position when things get harder.

The brands that will emerge strongest aren’t the loudest; they’re the most consistent.

Want the full picture, including a practical roadmap for auditing your CX experience through an inclusion lens, connecting DEI to core KPIs, and building multicultural fluency into your service design?

Read the full article in the April issue of CX Insight magazine →

The post The Business Case for DEI appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is absorbing routine interactions at an unprecedented scale. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments are being publicly tested. Frontline agents are navigating more complexity than ever before. And as customer expectations continue to rise, organizations are being forced to reckon with a more fundamental question, not just how to serve customers faster, but how to serve them better, more inclusively, and with the kind of human judgment and empathy that no technology can replicate at scale.

Our April issue of CX Insight magazine brings together research, practitioner perspectives, and real-world case studies to examine the forces reshaping CX leadership and how organizations can stay ahead of them.

The DEI Performance Gap Is Widening

The business case for inclusive customer experience has never been stronger, or more urgent. Yet a critical gap persists. CX leaders rate their own accessibility and inclusion efforts 18 points higher than consumers do. That disconnect does not resolve itself. It shows up in churn, in negative sentiment, and in the quiet erosion of loyalty over time. This article examines what closing that gap actually requires operationally, structurally, and strategically.

The Frontline is Not a Support Function

Kevin McDorman, Vice President of Customer Care at Southwest Airlines, made the case plainly at CRS Amelia Island: brands will not differentiate by how much they automate. They will differentiate by how well they equip their people for the moments automation cannot handle. The shift from rigid scripts to empowering guardrails is not a cultural preference; it is a strategic imperative. This article explores what that shift looks like in practice and why organizations that get it right will find it difficult to replicate.

Brand Spotlight: How Grubhub Maintains Service Reliability at Global Scale

Behind every seamless food delivery experience is an operational infrastructure most customers never see. In this issue’s Brand Spotlight, Tanisha Parker, Associate Director at Grubhub, pulls back the curtain on how one of the world’s most recognized food delivery platforms manages global BPO partnerships, workforce strategy, and service consistency across a vast and dynamic ecosystem of couriers, merchants, and diners. Her perspective on eliminating operational friction, without compromising customer value, is one of the most practically useful conversations on this issue.

Case Study: How Uber Is Closing the Customer Feedback Gap with AI

Traditional customer satisfaction surveys capture only a fraction of the experience. Uber decided that was not good enough. In this issue’s case study, Anindya Sundar Das, Senior Director and Head of Global Digital Experience at Uber, details how Uber’s Global Digital Experience team deployed an AI engine that infers customer satisfaction across every single support interaction. It was structured around three core metrics: Resolution, Effort, and Sentiment. The result is a real-time quality signal that enables proactive improvement at a global scale and fundamentally changes how Uber understands and responds to the experience it is delivering.

KIA Spotlight: Balancing AI and Human Connection at Carrier Enterprise

In a service environment where HVAC contractors rely on fast, accurate support to keep their businesses running, the balance between technology and human connection is not an abstract leadership question; it is an operational reality. Michael Luyster, Director of Customer Experience at Carrier Enterprise and a KIA Champion, shares how Carrier Enterprise has built a hybrid service model grounded in customer choice, operational consistency, and trust. His conviction that AI should augment human capability rather than replace it offers a model worth studying across industries.

The Growing Impact of Women in CX Leadership

CX is one of the most cross-functional, human-centered disciplines in business, and women are leading it with measurable impact. The feature on women in CX leadership examines why the pipeline still narrows too early, what structural barriers remain, and why advancing women into senior leadership roles is one of the most strategically sound decisions a CX organization can make. Contributing their perspectives to this important conversation are Lisa Oswald of Travelzoo, Maureen Barnett of Fanatics, Jessica Patel of Belk, and Dima Cichi of Microsoft: four leaders who are actively shaping what modern CX leadership looks like and what it can become.

When AI Improves Metrics but Not Outcomes

Organizations across industries are deploying AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency. By conventional measures, it appears to be working. Automation rates are rising, and handling times are falling. Containment continues to improve, yet retention remains flat. Customer experience remains inconsistent, and business outcomes remain unchanged.

Cortney Jonas Burnos, Vice President of AI & Digital at Transcom, offers a sharp diagnosis: the problem is not the technology. It is the misalignment between how customer experience is measured and where it actually creates value. As AI absorbs the most repeatable interactions, what remains for human agents is more complex, more consequential, and more emotionally demanding — and most organizations have not restructured around that reality.

The Trillion-Dollar Cost That Never Appears on the P&L

According to Qualtrics XM Institute, businesses worldwide risk losing $3.8 trillion annually due to poor customer experiences. More than half of negative interactions lead customers to reduce or stop their spending entirely. Yet this cost rarely surfaces on a standard profit and loss statement. It disappears into churn metrics, missing renewals, and referrals that were never made. This article from Procedureflow provides the framework CX leaders need to translate experience quality into financial risk and bring that conversation into the boardroom where it belongs.

The question this issue keeps returning to is this: what does it actually take to lead well in this moment?

The answer, across every article and every conversation, is the same. It begins with people. The organizations that understand this and build accordingly are the ones that will emerge from this period of disruption with something the competition will find very difficult to replicate: the trust of the people they serve.

Read and download the full April 2026 issue of CX Insight magazine.

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Proposed measures include requiring English proficiency, limiting certain types of foreign call handling, and allowing customers to request a U.S.-based agent, all of which signal a meaningful shift in how brands conduct their customer care operations. 

For customer experience (CX) leaders, this is not simply a regulatory development — it is a strategic inflection point. For decades, contact center models have been optimized around global delivery, balancing cost efficiency with scalability and coverage.

These proposals introduce a new compliance dynamic that could reshape how brands approach CX, potentially creating operational complexities for verticals subject to heavy regulation, including finance, healthcare, travel/hospitality, and other high-touch industries. Ultimately, this could become an opportunity to differentiate. Furthermore, if customers are given more control over where their support comes from, organizations may need to rethink their delivery models, potentially creating new, flexible approaches that might accommodate both preference and practicality.

This raises fundamental questions about cost structures, staffing strategies, and how brands define and deliver consistency across channels and regions. 

What CX Leaders Should Be Evaluating Right Now

As these conversations begin to take shape, CX leaders should consider engaging with their C-suite counterparts now. Understanding current exposure to offshore support, modeling the financial implications of increased onshoring, and evaluating the role of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in facilitating necessary changes. In many ways, these proposals could accelerate trends already underway.

As labor constraints tighten and expectations rise, AI-powered self-service and agent-assist technologies may play an even more central role in maintaining efficiency while supporting a potentially more localized workforce. At the same time, organizations will need to carefully consider how they preserve experience quality, particularly as customer expectations around clarity, communication, and trust continue to evolve. Now is the time to analyze and understand both the go-forward plan and the eventual impact on customers. 

Transparency, Tradeoffs, and the Customer Experience

Communication with customers will also become a more strategic lever. If implemented, these proposals (particularly those related to consumer control over call routing) offer brands an opportunity to reframe parts of the service experience around choice and transparency, giving customers greater control over how they receive support. But that choice must be paired with clear expectations.

If requesting a U.S.-based agent introduces longer wait times or different service pathways, those tradeoffs will need to be communicated proactively and thoughtfully. Done proactively and well, this change could strengthen trust and reinforce a brand’s commitment to both service quality and customer assurance — an increasingly important differentiator in a landscape shaped by automation, AI, and heightened scrutiny around safety and security. Most leaders tasked with making these changes might benefit from getting ahead of the curve and engaging their counterparts and various stakeholders now. 

Preparing for 2027 Starts Now

Looking ahead to 2027, the organizations best positioned will be those that begin adapting (or planning steps to do so) now. This means evolving routing logic to account for customer preferences and regulatory requirements, reassessing workforce strategies to include more flexible domestic capacity, and strengthening quality assurance frameworks to align with emerging expectations around communication and performance.

Perhaps most importantly, it means shifting the mindset from reactive compliance to proactive design. These proposals are not just about where support happens … they are about how trust is built and maintained in every interaction. And in that sense, they may ultimately define the next chapter of customer experience. 

Look for more on this topic in the months to come, and practitioners can connect with peers in the Know It All (KIA) community to compare notes on getting ready for these imminent shifts. 

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Those things still matter. But they are no longer enough.

Today, customers are looking for something deeper from the brands they choose to do business with. They want confidence and clarity. They want to know that when something goes wrong, they will be supported by a brand that is competent, consistent, and worthy of their trust. In other words, they want assurance.

That is why Customer Assurance is such an important idea for CX leaders right now.

What Is Customer Assurance in Customer Experience?

Customer assurance is not just about making promises. It is about creating experiences that leave customers feeling informed, protected, respected, and certain they are in good hands. It is what happens when trust, empathy, operational excellence, and intelligent innovation come together in a way the customer can actually feel.

And in this moment, that matters more than ever.

Why Customer Assurance Matters More in Today’s CX Environment

Across industries, leaders are navigating enormous change. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the contact center, automation is taking on more routine tasks, and self-service has become the norm. Customers are moving faster, expecting more, and giving brands less room for error. At the same time, organizations are operating in an environment marked by cost pressure, shifting workforce expectations, economic uncertainty, and constant pressure to modernize.

That combination has created a new kind of challenge for CX teams. It is no longer enough to ask, “How do we make service faster?” The more important question is, “How do we make customers feel confident in this new experience?”

How AI Is Raising the Stakes for Customer Trust and Confidence

Because as AI becomes more visible across customer journeys, confidence becomes the differentiator. Customers may appreciate faster answers and 24/7 support, but speed alone does not build trust. If an AI agent gives incomplete information, if a handoff to a human feels disconnected, if policies are enforced without empathy, or if customers are left wondering who or what they are actually dealing with, trust begins to erode. And once trust slips, loyalty often follows.

This is where customer assurance becomes a leadership imperative. For CX leaders, assurance is about setting a higher standard for how experiences are designed and delivered. It means building operations that work responsibly, ensuring customers have clear information and support that feels grounded in both intelligence and care, and preparing teams to lead through change, not just react to it.

Why Customer Assurance Is a Competitive Advantage

For organizations, customer assurance is becoming a business advantage. In a market where products can be copied and prices can shift overnight, trust is one of the few differentiators that grows stronger over time. Brands that create confidence through every touchpoint are better positioned to retain customers, protect reputation, and grow long-term value.

For teams, assurance creates alignment. It gives frontline leaders, agents, technologists, and executives a clearer shared purpose. Not just to reduce handle time or to deploy new tools. But to deliver experiences that customers believe in. That is a much stronger rallying point, especially in a time when many teams are being asked to adapt quickly to new technologies and new expectations.

And for the industry, customer assurance may be one of the most important ideas shaping the road ahead.

CX is entering a period where the conversation is expanding beyond efficiency and into responsibility. Beyond implementation and into impact. And beyond what technology can do and into what experiences should feel like when they are done well. The brands that lead in this next chapter will not simply be the ones adopting AI the fastest. They will be the ones using it in ways that strengthen trust, empower employees, and create more confident customer relationships.

That is the opportunity in front of us.

Attend CRS Scottsdale, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2026

At CRS Scottsdale, this is the conversation we are bringing to the forefront. CX leaders will come together to explore what it really takes to build trust, confidence, and clarity in a new era of care. From AI and leadership to service strategy, customer expectations, and operational transformation, the focus is not just on what is changing, but on how leading organizations are responding with intention.

Want to learn more about what Customer Assurance looks like in practice? Visit the CRS Scottsdale website to learn more. 

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And across industries, that pressure is showing up in the same places: how to move faster without losing trust, how to create efficiency without eroding the experience, and how to separate what is genuinely transformative from what is simply new. Those were among the biggest undercurrents in this week’s Virtual Executive Roundtable, where leaders came together to talk candidly about what AI is changing within their organizations right now.

What made the conversation so valuable was not that anyone claimed to have it all figured out. It was that the discussion stayed grounded in the tension leaders are actually managing every day. What does agentic AI really mean in practice? Where is it delivering measurable value today? Where do human teams still matter most?

And perhaps most importantly, are organizations using AI to modernize the same old service model or to build something better from the ground up? The conversation made one thing clear: this moment is bigger than automation. It is a very real opportunity for CX leaders to rethink what great service looks like next.

What does “agentic” really mean?

One of the most useful parts of the conversation was the effort to separate true agentic AI from the catch-all language that’s flooding the market. Leaders repeatedly came back to one simple distinction: traditional AI reacts, while agentic AI acts. Traditional AI answers the question, and agentic AI helps complete the task. It is more conversational, more proactive, and better at taking action across systems than simply surfacing information.

That distinction matters because confusion is still slowing organizations down. Several leaders noted that many companies say they are building agentic capabilities when, in reality, they are still enhancing scripted bots. That disconnect is important. If leaders use the same word to describe radically different levels of maturity, it becomes harder to benchmark progress, align teams, and make smart investment decisions.

The industry is still early

A striking theme from the discussion was how low current adoption still is. Estimates in the room placed true agentic AI adoption somewhere below 15%, with some leaders putting it closer to 3%-5%. And yet nobody sounded relaxed about that. Quite the opposite. The tone was urgent. Leaders acknowledged that while the industry is still early, the pace of change is accelerating fast enough that waiting now could create a real competitive gap later.

That is the tension many organizations are sitting in right now. They know they do not have all the answers. They also know they do not have the luxury of standing still. If competitors have already spent the last two years learning, testing, failing, refining, and scaling, what happens to the organizations that are just beginning to ask foundational questions now?

Where leaders are seeing real value today

The conversation stayed grounded in practical use cases, and that was refreshing. Leaders discussed high-volume, repeatable work such as account updates, password resets, and status checks. They also discussed more advanced uses: proactive service interventions, automated quality auditing, and knowledge management that updates in near real time based on live interactions.

One example stood out: instead of simply telling a customer that an order is delayed, an agentic system can recognize that the customer paid for expedited shipping, predict the miss before the customer complains, and proactively issue a refund. That’s not just efficiency; that’s service with foresight.

Leaders also pushed back on a narrow definition of value. This is not only about removing cost or reducing headcount. The more mature conversation is about containment, speed, routing accuracy, reduced friction, better use of human expertise, and stronger experiences overall. In other words, if your scorecard for AI is only labor reduction, are you measuring the wrong thing?

The human-in-the-loop is a strategy

If there was one point the group returned to again and again, it was this: human oversight still matters, especially in emotionally charged moments. Leaders shared examples from industries where the issue is not a simple transaction but a life event, a safety concern, or a vulnerable moment. In those cases, the role of AI is not to replace empathy. It is to recognize when empathy is required and make the handoff smarter, faster, and more informed.

That raises an important leadership challenge. Are organizations training AI only on business rules? Or are they also teaching it context, tone, and the signals that should trigger human intervention? Because the risk is obvious: a system can be technically correct and emotionally disastrous. And in customer experience, that still counts as failure.

A few shared perspectives

• “The old AI is ‘what do you want to know?’ agentic AI is ‘what do you want to do?’”
• “Instead of AI being a helper, AI is now your accountable digital labor. It’s part of your workforce.”
• “Standard AI was reactive… agentic AI is more proactive in how we solve for the customer.”
• “Traditional AI is scripted responses. Agentic AI can go out, pull from multiple sources, and make decisions.”
• “The AI would say your order is confirmed. Agentic AI will predict it won’t arrive on time and refund the expedited shipping in real time.”
• “It’s moving from supervised learning to autonomous decision-making.”
• “Agentic AI isn’t just answering questions; it’s completing the transaction end-to-end.”

This is bigger than automation

The biggest takeaway from the discussion was not that AI is moving quickly. Leaders already know that. It is the organizations making the most meaningful progress who are asking sharper questions as they move. They are not just chasing use cases. They are thinking carefully about trust, orchestration, customer expectations, employee impact, and where human connection still matters most. That is the real work in front of CX leaders now; not simply adopting AI, but shaping how it shows up in the experience in a way that is thoughtful, responsible, and genuinely useful.

What should AI handle? What should stay human? Where can we remove friction? Where should we add reassurance? And how do we use this moment not just to do service cheaper, but to do it better?

These are exactly the kinds of candid, leader-level conversations happening inside our Virtual Executive Roundtables. If you want to hear how your peers are thinking through the opportunities and tradeoffs ahead, and contribute your own perspective to the discussion, join us at a future Virtual Executive Roundtable. It is a chance to step into a smaller, high-value conversation with fellow CX leaders navigating many of the same questions in real time.

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Performance metrics may look stable — service levels met, occupancy steady, costs controlled — yet something feels structurally off.

AI pilots launch but stall. Digital volumes increase, but accountability blurs. Customer expectations rise faster than internal capability.

For decades, the traditional contact center operating model delivered exactly what it was designed to deliver: efficiency, predictability, and cost control.

It worked — until it didn’t.

Customers began carrying expectations from every interaction they have — across industries, across platforms — into every new experience. The standard is no longer set by direct competitors. It is set by the most seamless interaction they had yesterday.

Today’s CX environment is structurally different. Customers move fluidly across channels. AI is embedded into workflows. Regulatory scrutiny has intensified. Data from every interaction is strategically valuable.

Yet many organizations are still operating on a structure built for queue management — not experience orchestration.

The issue isn’t effort.

It’s architecture.

Traditional contact center operating models were engineered for a different era.

And that architecture is beginning to fracture under modern CX demands.

The Model We Built — and Why It Worked

For years, the contact center was optimized around a clear set of assumptions:

• Voice was the dominant channel
• Demand patterns were forecastable
• Workforce management drove precision
• Performance was measured by speed and cost
• Technology cycles were relatively stable

It made sense for an environment defined by concentrated voice demand, slower technology cycles, and clearer functional boundaries.

It was structured. It was disciplined. It delivered measurable efficiency.

But it was built around queues, not journeys. That distinction now matters.

The Emerging CX Operating Model

The future operating model will require evolving tools. AI will advance, automation will expand, and digital ecosystems will grow more complex. But technology alone will not determine success.

The differentiator will be how organizations redesign accountability, governance, and workforce structure to integrate those capabilities. Structural alignment will determine whether those investments create lasting value.

If structural alignment is the differentiator, redesign cannot be abstract. It requires deliberate structural shifts.

Across industries, four are becoming clear:

1. Unified Experience Ownership
2. Embedded AI Governance
3. Workforce Redesign — Not Just Upskilling
4. Real-Time Data Integration

Together, these shifts represent more than incremental improvement. They signal a structural redesign of how CX organizations must operate to compete.

The Bottom Line

Traditional contact center structures are not flawed. They were optimized for a less complex era.

They worked — until they didn’t.

The question now is not whether the model was effective. It is whether it still fits.

The future of CX will not be won by those who install better tools.

It will be won by those who redesign how the organization works.

Guest blog post written by John Sorenson

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