Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for Week of October 27, 2025
Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comments about each article and would like to hear what you think too.
A Game Plan to Improve Contact Center Agent Empowerment by Charlie Mitchell
(CX Today) Human contact center agents aren’t going anywhere any time soon. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027, half of all businesses will abandon plans to shrink their customer service teams.
My Comment: Opening this week’s Top Five roundup is an article about empowering your customer support team. I love that part of the article, but there’s something toward the beginning that I love even more. Many have said that AI will replace human-to-human customer support. I’ve vehemently disagreed with this “prediction.” This article is in alignment, and includes a Gartner prediction that by 2025 – just two years from now – half of all businesses will abandon plans to shrink their customer service teams.
How to Build Customer Loyalty: It’s All in the Experience by Anna Baluch
(CO— by U.S. Chamber of Commerce) If you could create your own fantasy board of directors, who would be on it? CO— connects you with thought leaders from across the business spectrum and asks them to help solve your biggest business challenges. In this edition, we ask the co-founder of a marketing agency to reveal her tips on how to create customer loyalty.
My Comment: This article makes the point that customer loyalty isn’t built through discounts and perks/points earned in a customer loyalty program, though that can help drive repeat business. It’s built through the experience. Here is a co-founder of a marketing agency who shares her tips for creating the experience that gets customers to say, “I’ll be back!”
CX Leaders, Stop Selling Sentiment — Start Selling Outcomes by Samson Adepoju
(CMSWire) The C-suite wants more than advocacy. They want revenue impact, operational efficiency and measurable growth from CX investments.
My Comment: How do you get the C-Suite to budget an investment into customer service and CX? Show them the money! In this excellent article, the author points out an exciting trend in the C-Suite: a shift from chasing new customers to maximizing revenue from existing customers. This, along with the suggestion of using a CCO (Chief Customer Officer) to not only oversee CX but also identify ROI, is what makes the C-Suite happy.
What a Company With Near-Zero Turnover Taught Me About Building Culture That Lasts by Scott Deming
(Entrepreneur) The best leaders know customer service isn’t a department, it’s a culture. I saw one company prove it beyond question, and it reaffirmed everything I believe about real leadership.
My Comment: If you want to create a great customer experience, start by looking at how you treat your employees. Culture is where a good customer experience begins, and Scott Demming, a marketing and CX expert, shares three important culture lessons in this article. First, make every employee feel like their voice matters. Second, break silos and incorporate a seamless customer experience across the company. And three, recognize the importance of a diverse team that can contribute different perspectives.
Digital Journeys Are Failing Too Many Customers by Bryan Cheung
(The Wise Marketer) Self-service was meant to save time. It was supposed to make everyday transactions faster and simpler for customers while easing the load on organizations. Somewhere along the way, that promise broke down. Our new research, the Liferay 2025 Digital Self-Service Report, shows that many digital journeys have become so cumbersome that they drive people away instead of drawing them in.
My Comment: Self-service customer service is nothing new. What’s new is the ever-increasing capabilities of technology that drive self-service support. While more customers are comfortable with digital self-service, often fueled by AI, there are still trust issues that come from clunky and cumbersome experiences. This article takes a look at why a company’s effort to provide good digital support can fail. Before reading the article, my two comments (in addition to making the experience easy and intuitive) are simple. Don’t become so enamored with technology that you eliminate the ability for the customer to talk to a live person. And make it easy for the customer to get to a live person.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
A Game Plan to Improve Contact Center Agent Empowerment by Charlie Mitchell
(CX Today) Human contact center agents aren’t going anywhere any time soon. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027, half of all businesses will abandon plans to shrink their customer service teams.
My Comment: Opening this week’s Top Five roundup is an article about empowering your customer support team. I love that part of the article, but there’s something toward the beginning that I love even more. Many have said that AI will replace human-to-human customer support. I’ve vehemently disagreed with this “prediction.” This article is in alignment, and includes a Gartner prediction that by 2025 – just two years from now – half of all businesses will abandon plans to shrink their customer service teams.
How to Build Customer Loyalty: It’s All in the Experience by Anna Baluch
(CO— by U.S. Chamber of Commerce) If you could create your own fantasy board of directors, who would be on it? CO— connects you with thought leaders from across the business spectrum and asks them to help solve your biggest business challenges. In this edition, we ask the co-founder of a marketing agency to reveal her tips on how to create customer loyalty.
My Comment: This article makes the point that customer loyalty isn’t built through discounts and perks/points earned in a customer loyalty program, though that can help drive repeat business. It’s built through the experience. Here is a co-founder of a marketing agency who shares her tips for creating the experience that gets customers to say, “I’ll be back!”
CX Leaders, Stop Selling Sentiment — Start Selling Outcomes by Samson Adepoju
(CMSWire) The C-suite wants more than advocacy. They want revenue impact, operational efficiency and measurable growth from CX investments.
My Comment: How do you get the C-Suite to budget an investment into customer service and CX? Show them the money! In this excellent article, the author points out an exciting trend in the C-Suite: a shift from chasing new customers to maximizing revenue from existing customers. This, along with the suggestion of using a CCO (Chief Customer Officer) to not only oversee CX but also identify ROI, is what makes the C-Suite happy.
What a Company With Near-Zero Turnover Taught Me About Building Culture That Lasts by Scott Deming
(Entrepreneur) The best leaders know customer service isn’t a department, it’s a culture. I saw one company prove it beyond question, and it reaffirmed everything I believe about real leadership.
My Comment: If you want to create a great customer experience, start by looking at how you treat your employees. Culture is where a good customer experience begins, and Scott Demming, a marketing and CX expert, shares three important culture lessons in this article. First, make every employee feel like their voice matters. Second, break silos and incorporate a seamless customer experience across the company. And three, recognize the importance of a diverse team that can contribute different perspectives.
Digital Journeys Are Failing Too Many Customers by Bryan Cheung
(The Wise Marketer) Self-service was meant to save time. It was supposed to make everyday transactions faster and simpler for customers while easing the load on organizations. Somewhere along the way, that promise broke down. Our new research, the Liferay 2025 Digital Self-Service Report, shows that many digital journeys have become so cumbersome that they drive people away instead of drawing them in.
My Comment: Self-service customer service is nothing new. What’s new is the ever-increasing capabilities of technology that drive self-service support. While more customers are comfortable with digital self-service, often fueled by AI, there are still trust issues that come from clunky and cumbersome experiences. This article takes a look at why a company’s effort to provide good digital support can fail. Before reading the article, my two comments (in addition to making the experience easy and intuitive) are simple. Don’t become so enamored with technology that you eliminate the ability for the customer to talk to a live person. And make it easy for the customer to get to a live person.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
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