DCX Links | August 24, 2025
The Hidden Forces Rewriting CX: AI, Trust, and the Death of Old Metrics
Have you checked out DCX AI Today yet? It’s the only daily briefing designed for CX leaders who want to stay ahead of the curve with AI.
👉 To get it delivered to your inbox each morning, if you’re already subscribed to Decoding Customer Experience:
Go to Settings → Subscriptions → Decoding Customer Experience, then toggle on DCX AI Today.
👉 If you’re new here:
Just subscribe to Decoding Customer Experience, and you’ll be automatically added to the list.
Welcome to the DCX weekly roundup of customer experience insights!
This week’s stories reveal a truth every CX leader must face: personalization, empathy, and operational excellence are no longer “nice-to-haves”—they’re the new baseline.
Whether it’s AI tailoring a homepage for luxury shoppers, immersive tools reimagining real estate, or Google’s HEART framework shifting how we measure success, the message is clear: your customers expect more, faster, and better.
Dive into how top brands are aligning technology, trust, and UX design to meet rising expectations, and how you can, too.
This week’s must-read links:
Saks’ AI Move: A Homepage That Knows You
Zillow’s AI Bet: Less Search, More Experience
Why Your Call Center Still Makes Or Breaks Trust
Control Your Entire Phone With Your Voice
The HEART of CX: Google’s Framework For Measuring What Matters
Tech Debt Is Quietly Killing Your Customer Experience
Saks’ AI Move: A Homepage That Knows You
On August 14, Saks turned on AI-personalised homepages that reshuffle products and content for each shopper based on every click, hover, skip, and buy. The play is simple: make luxury feel curated without a stylist.
Why it matters:
AI shopping tools are grabbing attention, so retailers need first-party experiences to keep data and spend in-house.
Pilot results pop: 7% higher revenue per visitor and nearly 10% better conversion from a 5% pilot.
Visible homepage personalisation beats invisible models.
State of play:
One algorithm will power Saks, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman for 30 million U.S. customers.
Cross-brand signals and clienteling are on deck, and arm in-store stylists.
The Saks Media Network helps brands reach high-intent shoppers without sharing raw data.
The bottom line:
Start where customers land: the homepage. Then train on micro behaviors to predict next best action.
Watch for taste bubbles. Give quick ways to reset or wander outside the algorithm.
Set guardrails so models do not chase margin over trust.
🔗 Read the article → Vogue Business
Zillow’s AI Bet: Less Search, More Experience
Zillow is using AI to make home shopping feel more like a video game—and less like a spreadsheet. From 3D drone views to agent tools, it’s reimagining real estate with immersive tech and practical AI helpers.
Why it matters:
Home buying is high-stakes and emotional—Zillow wants AI to make it less stressful, not just more efficient.
Visual upgrades like 3D Gaussian splatting let users “fly” around homes, inside and out, straight from the app.
Their bigger shift: from just listings to full-service transaction support powered by AI.
What they're building:
AI chat summaries and auto-generated FAQs for agents and shoppers (already live on StreetEasy).
GenAI tools to help buyers message agents and get personalized answers—minus the spammy feel.
Partnerships with major model providers (plus in-house tech) to stay nimble as tools evolve fast.
Between the lines:
Zillow’s been doing AI for years—long before ChatGPT hype—with deep investment in computer vision and patents.
They’re balancing openness (publishing papers to attract top talent) with caution (carefully deciding what stays under wraps).
Fairness matters: they built a classifier to catch bias in AI responses and have an internal ethics review process.
🔗 More Info → Tech Brew
Why Your Call Center Still Makes Or Breaks Trust
Ricki Lang, VP at Quantum Metric, says improving contact center experiences isn’t just about faster calls — it’s the key to loyalty, retention, and customer confidence.
Why it matters:
With 55% of consumers cutting back on spending, every touchpoint now carries more weight.
Quantum Metric research found 52% of customers feel powerless when contacting brands, and nearly 1 in 5 get bounced to another agent.
Lang calls these missed moments “traps” — places where empathy and context should live but don’t.
What’s working:
Context-aware tools that show agents what a customer tried before calling help reduce friction and call times by up to 3 minutes.
AI-powered intelligent routing and escalation mean fewer handoffs and no more “please start from the beginning.”
The biggest wins? Shorter handle times, higher satisfaction scores, and happier agents.
The bottom line:
Great CX connects the digital and human experience.
Lang says when companies sync call center insights with digital behavior, it not only improves support — it prevents the call in the first place.
Smart CX teams are building systems that talk to each other so customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
🔗 Get the full interview → CMS Wire
Control Your Entire Phone With Your Voice
Forget Siri. A new assistant called Blue wants to run your whole workday hands free inside any app on your phone, not just the basic stuff.
Why it matters:
Mainstream voice assistants are stuck doing system-level tasks. Blue promises full control inside third-party apps like Slack, Google Docs, and even your banking app
For professionals juggling apps on the go, this could unlock serious productivity
It points to a future where voice is not just reactive, but actually helpful in complex workflows
What it can do:
Read and respond to Slack messages, share and permission Google Docs, upload receipts from your photos
Move between apps without restarting or repeating commands
Handle sign-ins, confirmations, and multi-step flows with natural back-and-forth
The bottom line:
If it performs like the demo, Blue is a leap beyond Alexa and Siri
Think less "set a timer," more "run my workflow"
No public release date yet
🔗 Join the Waitlist→ Hey Blue
The HEART of CX: Google’s Framework For Measuring What Matters
Google’s HEART framework helps teams track real user experience at scale—without getting lost in vanity metrics. It’s become a go-to model for CX and product leaders who want to build what customers actually love.
Why it matters:
Most metrics focus on business outcomes (revenue, page views), not real user experience
HEART reframes success around what users feel and do—making metrics more human and more actionable
It also helps teams align on goals, cut through noise, and track progress over time
What it includes:
Happiness: User sentiment, satisfaction, and ease-of-use, often captured through surveys
Engagement: Depth and frequency of use, measured as actions per user over time
Adoption: How many new users start using the product or feature
Retention: How many users keep coming back after their first try
Task Success: Effectiveness and efficiency—do users complete tasks without errors or frustration?
The bottom line:
HEART helps teams link product goals to real-world behavior
It balances attitudinal and behavioral data to guide design and development
When paired with the Goals-Signals-Metrics process, it turns UX into a repeatable, measurable practice
🔗 Go Deeper: Rodden, Hutchinson, and Fu, Google Research
Tech Debt Is Quietly Killing Your Customer Experience
According to Fast Company, tech debt isn’t an engineering headache. It’s a business threat with real consequences for speed, trust, and customer satisfaction.
Why it matters:
When feature rollouts stall, systems break under pressure, or agents get swamped after a launch, customers feel it
Tech debt slows down delivery, increases outages, and creates frustrating workarounds that bleed into the customer journey
Treating it like an IT problem means you’re missing how deeply it affects brand perception and loyalty
What CX pros should look for:
Surging support tickets after every release
Delayed roadmap items with vague timelines
Cross-team finger-pointing over broken handoffs
Customer complaints about slow, inconsistent experiences
The bottom line:
Tech debt needs to be measured, surfaced, and discussed in customer terms
Translate bugs and bottlenecks into costs, delays, and risk to customer trust
Top companies like Netflix and Spotify dedicate up to 20 percent of engineering time to managing tech debt for a reason
🔗 Go Deeper: Fast Company
Thank you!
I hope you found value in this week’s links. See you next Sunday at 8:15 am ET!
If this edition sparked ideas, share it with a colleague or team member. Let’s grow the DCX community together!
👋 Please Reach Out
I created this newsletter to help customer-obsessed pros like you deliver exceptional experiences and tackle challenges head-on. But honestly? The best part is connecting with awesome, like-minded people—just like you! 😊
Here’s how you can get involved:
Got feedback? Tell me what’s working, what’s not, or what you’d love to see next.
Stuck on something? Hit me up whether it’s a CX challenge, strategy question, or team issue—I’m here to help.
Just want to say hi? Seriously, don’t be shy. I’d love to connect, share ideas, or even swap success stories.
Your input keeps this newsletter fresh and valuable. Let’s start a conversation—email me, DM me, or comment anytime. I can’t wait to hear from you!
— Mark
www.marklevy.co
Follow me on Linkedin
✉️ Join 1,360+ CX leaders who stay ahead of the next customer curve.
Human-centered insights. Plug-and-play frameworks. Smart tools that actually work.
All designed for CX pros who want to build with purpose—and deliver with impact.
👉 Subscribe today and get the tools to elevate your strategy (and your sanity).