DCX Links | June 8, 2025
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Welcome to the DCX weekly roundup of customer experience insights!
2025 isn’t just another year—it’s the inflection point.
Customer expectations are surging, AI is reshaping the rules, and brand trust is eroding faster than loyalty can patch it.
The big message? CX is no longer a function. It’s the foundation of your brand, your strategy, and your survival.
From omnichannel friction to agentic AI, from emotional impact to adaptive experiences, the world’s leading thinkers are aligned: CX isn’t about chasing the customer anymore.
It’s about anticipating them across every screen, signal, and second.
You’re not just competing on experience. You are the experience.
Let’s dig in.
-Mark
This week’s must-read links:
CX Wake-Up Call: The 2025 Global Reality Check
AI Is Eating the World—And It’s Just Getting Started
Agentic AI: The CX Revolution B2B Can’t Afford to Miss
Stop Mapping Journeys. Start Sensing Mindsets
Omnichannel Isn’t a Tech Problem—It’s a Design Wake-Up Call
The MVP Isn’t Dead—It Just Grew Up
CX Wake-Up Call: The 2025 Global Reality Check
The Big Picture
Ipsos just dropped their "CX Global Insights 2025" sneak peek, and it’s clear: customer experience expectations are evolving faster than most brands can keep up. The report synthesizes global sentiment across industries and regions, giving CX pros a much-needed reality check.
What Drives Impact
Ipsos identifies Forces of CX, such as certainty, fair treatment, and belonging, as key drivers. These predict both satisfaction and advocacy.
CX = Brand Reputation
Customer experience now outweighs price and product in shaping reputation. Your CX is your brand.
Trust Is Slipping
Consumer trust in organizations is declining, even among loyal customers. Ipsos flags this as a crisis in progress, especially in industries like financial services and telecom.
For CX Pros: Your Marching Orders
Get serious about measuring the emotional impact of experiences.
Benchmark not just against competitors, but against customer expectations.
Recognize that omnichannel consistency is non-negotiable.
Zinger to Remember
“There is no longer a difference between brand promise and brand delivery.”
Bottom Line
Stop treating CX as a campaign. It's your competitive advantage—or your silent killer. Ipsos is holding up the mirror. Are you ready to look?
🔗 Learn more→ Source
AI Is Eating the World—And It’s Just Getting Started
Big Bang Moment
According to the 2025 Meeker Internet Trends Report, AI isn’t just growing—it’s exploding. ChatGPT hit 800 million weekly users by April 2025, up 8x in 17 months. For perspective: it took Netflix nearly 7 years to hit 1 million users. ChatGPT did it in 5 days.
Why It Matters
AI isn’t a side project anymore. It’s the infrastructure, the interface, and the workbench. Whether you’re in CX, IT, or healthcare, your tools—and your competition—are being shaped by AI, right now.
10 Trends You Can’t Ignore
User Growth: AI apps like ChatGPT are seeing unprecedented global adoption, especially outside North America.
CapEx Surge: Big Tech invested over $212B in AI infrastructure in 2024 alone.
Cost Dynamics: Training AI is expensive, but using it (inference) is getting cheaper by the day.
Human-Like Performance: 73% of AI answers were mistaken for human in early 2025 tests.
Work Copilots: AI assistants are now core to work in healthcare, finance, and enterprise.
Global First: AI launches are going global from Day 1.
Open-Source Arms Race: China and open-source rivals are catching up fast.
Physical World Gains: From self-driving taxis to factory robots, AI is off the screen.
Science & Medicine: 80% time savings in pre-clinical drug work.
AI = Infrastructure: AI factories are the new power plants.
For CX Pros
AI isn’t coming for your job—it’s coming for your workflow. Learn to ride the wave or risk being swept under it.
🔗 Get the full report → Bond
🔗 Related: GPT Summary of the Meeker AI report 2025 Meeker AI Report GPT'D
Agentic AI: The CX Revolution B2B Can’t Afford to Miss
Fast-Forward Future
Cisco's 2025 research on Agentic AI is clear: the era of passive AI is over. Agentic AI—proactive, autonomous, and memory-enabled—is reshaping customer experience in B2B tech. 56% of interactions are expected to be agentic-AI driven within 12 months. That jumps to 68% in 3 years.
Why It Matters
Agentic AI is more than chatbots. These systems think, remember, and act with minimal oversight. They solve longstanding pain points like repeated issue reporting, poor documentation handoffs, and slow onboarding.
Key Findings
93% believe Agentic AI enables personalized, proactive, predictive service.
88% say it helps achieve organizational goals.
89% agree that human empathy + AI efficiency = optimal CX.
Customer Wants, Loud and Clear
They want both: AI precision and human connection. Top use cases include smart analytics, automated troubleshooting, and proactive issue resolution. But 96% still value human relationships in complex, high-touch moments.
Ethics or Bust
68% are concerned about AI's ethical risks. And 99% say governance and transparency are non-negotiable.
Bottom Line
Agentic AI is no longer optional. It's the new baseline. But winning CX teams won’t just automate—they’ll humanize, govern, and scale with speed. B2B leaders: the window to act is now.
🔗 Learn more from Cisco
Stop Mapping Journeys. Start Sensing Mindsets
The Shift
Cprime hits it hard in "The AI-Native Imperative": Customer journeys? Kinda outdated. AI-native companies don’t build flowcharts. They tune in to what people need—right now—and adapt on the spot.
Why It Hits Home
Old-school CX says customers are fixed personas following neat paths. But real life? Messy. People change their minds. They bounce, restart, show up with new goals. AI-native orgs don’t panic—they pivot.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Forget forcing users into steps. Just deliver what they need.
Use live signals, not old segments.
Don’t just show a product—solve the whole problem (gift + wrap + card).
Make every click smarter than the last.
Real-Life Moves
Power user? Skip the funnel. Go straight to checkout.
Decision-maker ready to buy? Skip the lead-nurture dance.
Step not helping? Hide it. Channel broken? Switch mid-convo.
Why This Matters for Your Business
Users get what they want faster.
Fewer drop-offs.
Less strain on your team.
Scale without reworking everything.
Gut Check for CX Leaders
Still building journeys that hope people follow the rules? Or are you showing up with what they need, when they need it? If you're still mapping flows, you're missing movement.
🔗 Learn more→ Source
Omnichannel Isn’t a Tech Problem—It’s a Design Wake-Up Call
What’s Really Going On
Taylor Black nails it: we’re not just bouncing between devices—we’re bouncing between moments. And most brands? Still acting like people only use one screen at a time. Great omnichannel isn’t about being everywhere—it’s about keeping up.
Why You Should Care
Customers expect brands to remember who they are and what they’re doing. Instead, they keep having to start over. That’s not just bad CX—it’s draining your budget. Clunky experiences = higher costs, fewer sales, and customers peacing out.
Pain You’ve Probably Felt
Start a chat, then get sent to a phone rep who’s clueless
Favorited stuff online? Store associate has no idea
App forgets where you left off mid-show or mid-checkout
Design That Doesn’t Make People Work
Pass the baton, not the pain: Keep context between channels
Mind the messy middle: Smooth out the handoffs
Speak the same language: Make every touchpoint feel familiar
Connect the dots: Map the whole experience, not just pieces
Who’s Actually Doing It Well
Disney, Sephora, Nordstrom, REI, Warby Parker—they’re not perfect, but they’re way ahead in making omnichannel feel like one conversation, not a broken game of telephone.
What It All Comes Down To
You can have the slickest tech stack in the world—but if your experience isn’t designed around real people and real moments, it’s just more noise. Friction is your biggest competitor.
🔗 Learn more from Source
The MVP Isn’t Dead—It Just Grew Up
What’s Changed
Boardy Boardman takes a hard look at how AI is shaking up Lean Startup thinking. The verdict? Minimum Viable Products aren’t dead—but the definition of "viable" has changed. When users expect polish from day one and AI can build pro-level features in a weekend, scrappy prototypes don’t cut it anymore.
Why the Old MVP Doesn’t Cut It
Users bounce fast if your product feels unfinished
Competition is fierce—and polished
AI tools make high-fidelity builds easy and cheap
Enter the MLP (Minimum Lovable Product)
Today’s winners aren’t just launching what works—they’re shipping what connects. It’s not about bare-bones functionality. It’s about creating an emotional hook early: a tiny feature people actually love, not just use.
From MVP to MAP (Minimum Adaptive Product)
Some founders are going a step further—building products that adapt in real time based on user behavior. With AI, personalization isn’t a luxury. It’s table stakes.
Build. Measure. Learn. All at Once.
Parallel experimentation is the new normal. Founders are testing multiple formats at once—apps, bots, emails—and letting the data guide direction. Build-measure-learn doesn’t mean wait. It means ship, sense, and shift.
The New Moats
Proprietary data loops
Learning velocity
Deep customer intimacy
AI system orchestration
Bottom Line
The MVP is alive—but it’s wearing a new outfit. If you’re still launching “good enough,” you might not get a second shot. Today’s bar is higher: lovable, adaptive, and AI-powered from the start.
🔗 Learn more→ Source
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
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