Customer experience has never had more attention, more investment, or more technology behind it. Organisations are spending heavily on AI, automation, CRM platforms, journey orchestration, self-service and analytics.
Yet despite all that effort, customer satisfaction remains stubbornly static. Many CX scores still sit in the mid-to-high seventies, and recent research discussed during The Contact Centre Network’s latest event suggested that only a small proportion of brands are meaningfully improving, while many are either flatlining or declining.
That tension sat at the heart of the debate: is good customer experience dying, or have we simply mistaken faster service for better service?
To explore this, The Contact Centre Network brought together three experienced voices from across CX, contact centres and technology: Vinay Parmar, keynote speaker and customer loyalty specialist; Martin Hill-Wilson, AI readiness designer and long-standing contact centre strategist; and Rob Wilkinson, Managing Director at CX Today and host Garry Gormley, Founder of FAB Solutions.
The conversation quickly moved beyond the usual “technology good or bad” debate and into something more fundamental: how organisations think about customers, value, efficiency, employees and the role of the contact centre itself.
Technology Is Not the Strategy
One of the strongest themes came from Martin Hill-Wilson, who challenged the assumption that technology investment automatically improves CX. His argument was not that technology lacks value, but that it remains neutral until the organisation around it is ready to use it properly.
As Martin put it:
“Technology is neutral. It best enables something to happen. The secret to extracting value is being ready around data, governance, workflows, upskilling, and having the conversation about what AI does and what humans do.”
That point matters because many organisations still approach transformation as a purchasing exercise. They buy the platform, implement the system, run the project, and expect the customer experience to change. But as Martin argued, the things that really unlock value are often the things organisations are least confident investing in: learning, development, operating model redesign, governance, data quality and behavioural change.
He described this as a recurring failure of perception. Businesses find it easier to justify investment in something tangible, shiny and demonstrable than in the longer-term capability that makes the technology work. As a result, they spend heavily on tools but underinvest in the conditions that allow those tools to create value.
This is where many CX programmes stall. The organisation becomes technically better equipped, but not necessarily more customer centred.
CX Problems Start Long Before the Contact Centre
Vinay Parmar brought a different but complementary perspective. In his view, too much of what gets labelled “customer experience” is really customer service wearing a new badge. The contact centre becomes the place where broken decisions show up, but it is rarely where those problems begin.
He explained:
“What the customer experiences at the sharp end is a construct of everything that happens behind the line. The focus is often on improving the interaction, but not enough on where the problems start in the first place.”
That observation is critical. A customer’s frustration may surface in a call, chat, email or complaint, but the cause may sit in procurement, finance, marketing, commercial, product design or operations. If those teams make decisions without customer feedback loops, the contact centre simply inherits the consequences.
Vinay gave an example of a procurement team repurchasing a product based on timelines and commercial priorities, while customer feedback about that product arrived too late to influence the decision. The result was predictable: customer service spent the next year dealing with complaints that could have been prevented if the organisation had worked in a more joined-up way.
That is why CX cannot sit solely in the contact centre. If the back office creates the problem, the front office cannot solve it permanently. It can only apologise better.
The Efficiency Trap
The panel also challenged the industry’s long-standing obsession with efficiency. Contact centres have spent decades trying to reduce cost, shorten handling times, deflect demand and automate interactions. Some of that work has delivered value. But the panel questioned whether the balance has gone too far.
Vinay was direct:
“We have focused too much on doing it efficiently. We are doing things faster, but I don’t think we are doing them better.”
His point was that efficiency often gives the illusion of progress. If calls are shorter, queues are smaller, and more customers are pushed into digital channels, the organisation may look more efficient on paper. But that does not mean customers feel better served. In some cases, it simply means customers have learned to give up, switch provider, or lower their expectations.
Martin went even further, drawing a sharp distinction between efficiency and effectiveness:
“I have never once advised anyone to become more efficient. I advise them to become more effective, because effectiveness gets the outcome. Efficiency is obsessing over how fast you run around in a small circle.”
That line captures the central problem. Efficiency only matters if the outcome improves. Faster failure is still failure. A chatbot that deflects a customer without resolving their issue does not improve CX. A shorter call that leaves the customer confused is not a success. A dashboard that shows reduced contact volume may be hiding abandonment, frustration or silent churn.
Effectiveness asks a better question: did we solve the problem in a way that built trust, confidence and loyalty?
The Vendor Promise and the ROI Problem
Rob Wilkinson brought valuable insight from the technology and vendor landscape. Having worked both operationally and on the vendor side, he acknowledged that many technology conversations still default to the simplest version of ROI: cost reduction.
He said:
“There is an awful lot of discussion around ROI at vendor events, but it is nearly always efficiency-driven ROI. It is about whether we can put a pound sign or dollar sign on it.”
This matters because the people buying technology are often not the people using it. Senior decision-makers may be under pressure to reduce cost, improve productivity or justify spend quickly. Vendors therefore frame value in terms that are easy to sell: fewer agents, shorter calls, more deflection, lower cost-to-serve.
But Rob argued that this misses the bigger picture. Technology should also be judged by its impact on employees, customer trust, resolution quality and long-term value. If a tool improves employee engagement, reduces cognitive load, or helps advisors handle difficult conversations more effectively, that should count as value too.
He made the point clearly:
“You can’t fix CX without focusing on employee engagement. If you change an agent’s role this fast without the right support and training, things are going to break.”
That is a crucial message as AI accelerates. If self-service removes the easy contacts, agents are left with the most complex, emotional and high-stakes interactions. That changes the job. Yet many organisations still measure and support agents as if the work has stayed the same.
From Cost Centre to Value Centre
A recurring question throughout the discussion was whether the contact centre is still viewed too narrowly as a cost centre. Martin argued that the industry has never done enough to prove the link between great contact centre outcomes and commercial value. CFOs and executives are evidence-led, but the evidence often sits fragmented across systems and departments.
Vinay reframed the issue as a mindset problem about the customer. Too often, organisations value the customer only at the point of purchase, not when they need help. But customers create value in many ways: repeat buying, advocacy, referral, loyalty and brand reputation.
He argued:
“It is about the mental model of the customer and the value they represent. They are not just a transaction. They are an advocate, a referrer, and somebody who talks about you when you are not in the room.”
That shift is essential. If organisations continue to see service as a cost incurred after the sale, they will continue to underinvest in it. But if they see the contact centre as a loyalty engine, insight hub and value protection function, the investment conversation changes.
The challenge is that most businesses still budget, reward and measure in silos. Commercial, marketing, digital, operations and service often make decisions separately. Vinay’s point was that the question should not be “who owns the budget?” but “who needs to be in the room to decide what we are buying and why?”
Have We Over-Rotated to Digital?
The panel also explored whether organisations have pushed too far toward digital self-service at the expense of accessibility and human choice. Customers often say they want self-service , but only when it works. When it doesn’t, they want fast access to a human.
Martin’s design principle was simple:
“If I design something digital, I will always create a clear route that says: when you want a human being, take this route.”
That may challenge the business case for automation, but it protects the customer experience. If digital works, the customer completes the journey without human help. If it doesn’t, they can escalate without being trapped in what Martin called the “doom bot loop”.
Vinay added that there is no single version of “the customer”. The same person may want self-service one day and a human conversation the next, depending on mood, urgency, vulnerability, complexity or context.
As he put it:
“There is no ‘the customer’. There is a range of customers, and even the same customer may feel differently on different days.”
That is why CX design must remain human-centred. The goal is not to force customers into the cheapest channel. The goal is to help them reach the right outcome with the least unnecessary effort.
The Emotional Cost of Automation
Rob offered one of the most striking metaphors of the session when describing what happens when organisations automate the easy work but fail to redesign the agent role.
“We’ve turned contact centres into trauma wards. The easy contacts have been removed, and now live agents are left with the complex, highly emotional escalation work.”
That phrase lands because it reflects what many agents are experiencing. If every call is a difficult call, emotional exhaustion rises. If agents work from home, those difficult conversations happen in spaces also used for family, rest and personal life. The emotional residue of work no longer stays in the office.
This reinforces a vital point: AI may reduce volume, but it can increase intensity. Contact centres need to redesign schedules, breaks, coaching, support and metrics around that new reality. Otherwise, technology improves efficiency while making the human role harder.
So, Is Good CX Dying?
The answer from the panel was more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
Good customer experience is not dead. There are organisations improving, innovating and building better experiences. But the industry has spent too long confusing cheaper service with better experience. It has invested in technology without always investing in readiness. It has optimised channels while neglecting outcomes. It has talked about customer centricity while leaving back-office decisions disconnected from customer reality.
Vinay summed up the final challenge well:
“If you were producing a movie, you wouldn’t underinvest in your actors and expect them to do a great job on screen. But you also wouldn’t give them poor set design, poor lighting and poor support behind the scenes.”
That is perhaps the best metaphor for the modern contact centre. Agents are the visible performers, but the experience depends on everything behind them: systems, processes, data, culture, leadership, technology and organisational intent.
Rob closed with a powerful reflection. He did not believe customer service had necessarily become cheaper, because organisations have spent huge amounts of money. The problem is that much of that money has been spent “on the wrong side of the equation”.
That may be the real conclusion. Good CX is not dying because customers have changed too much or because technology has failed. It is under pressure because organisations keep trying to solve human, cultural and systemic problems with isolated technology investments.
The future of CX will belong to organisations that stop asking, “How do we make service cheaper?” and start asking, “How do we make customer outcomes better?”
Because if we get that right, technology becomes an enabler.
If we get it wrong, it just helps us disappoint customers faster.
