Want Internal buy-in for CX change? Stop Chasing the Holdouts.
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Welcome to the DCX weekly roundup of customer experience insights!
You can have the right CX idea, a clear customer problem, and a better path forward — and still get stuck trying to convince the people least likely to move.
That’s part of the story running through this week’s issue. Whether you’re thinking about trust, AI, payment access, aging at home, or brand value, the biggest CX wins are not coming from polished decks or big promises. They come from fixing the friction customers feel every day and building momentum with the people who are ready to act.
As you read, look for the common thread: trust is built through systems, not scores. Value is shaped by experience, not price alone. And real CX change starts faster when you stop chasing the holdouts and start proving what works.
Let’s dig in.
This week’s must-read links:
Trust Is a System, Not a Score
Luxury Retail Is Selling the Feeling, Not the Price Tag
Age Tech Is Turning the Home Into the Next Care Channel
Stop Trying to Convince the Holdouts
DCX Stat of the Week: AI is funded, but not fully operational
DCX Case Study of the Week: M.U.D. Protected Access While Modernizing Payments
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Trust Is a System, Not a Score
You cannot measure your way into customer trust.
That is the useful punch in Christina Garnett’s Customer Trust Infrastructure work. Most companies track NPS, CSAT, sentiment, and loyalty data after the customer has already formed an opinion. Helpful signals, sure. But they usually tell you trust changed after the damage is done. They do not show you what built it, what weakened it, or who inside the business needs to act.
The trust problem:
You may be treating trust like a score when it really behaves like a system.
Customers learn to trust you through repeated signals: consistency, response, connection, and value.
Friction does the opposite. A bad policy, slow handoff, confusing process, or broken promise can erase trust faster than a dozen good moments rebuild it.
The CX shift:
Trust is not owned by one team.
Marketing can promise it. Product can shape it. Support can repair it. Operations can quietly break it.
That makes trust a design problem across the business, not another dashboard to admire.
The operating lesson:
Before you chase a better score, find the friction.
Look for the delays, handoffs, fine print, policy traps, and gaps between what you say and what customers actually experience.
Remove those first. Then your trust-building work has a shot.
The CX To-Do: Pick one journey and audit it through the trust equation: consistency, response, connection, value, and friction. The weakest spot is probably closer than you think.
🔗 Go Deeper: Christina Garnett, Customer Trust Infrastructure working paper
Luxury Retail Is Selling the Feeling, Not the Price Tag
You do not create value only through price. You create it through what the customer feels they are getting.
That is the useful lesson from Ralph Lauren and Tapestry. Both are leaning harder into experience, storytelling, and personalization instead of racing to discount.
The value shift:
Ralph Lauren treats value as the mix of story, product quality, and experience against the price.
Ralph’s coffee shops help turn the brand into a place customers want to spend time, not just a label they buy.
When the store feels like “welcome to our home,” the visit carries more emotional weight.
The younger customer:
Tapestry is using experience to keep Coach and Kate Spade relevant.
Craftsmanship bars let shoppers personalize bags and make the purchase feel social.
That gives customers a reason to care beyond the product itself.
The CX lesson:
Your customers do not experience value as a spreadsheet.
They judge it through emotion, identity, effort, memory, and whether the brand feels worth choosing again.
When pressure hits, discounting may protect the transaction but weaken the brand.
The CX To-Do: Look at your journey and ask where the experience makes the price feel smarter.
🔗 Go Deeper: CX Dive
Age Tech Is Turning the Home Into the Next Care Channel
If you serve older customers, caregivers, families, patients, policyholders, or subscribers, this shift is already in your lane.
More people want to age at home. Their families want them to be safe. The gap between those two needs is where age tech is growing fast.
The care gap:
Caregivers are stretched, working, remote, and often managing care between meetings, errands, and their own lives.
Smart pill boxes, digital reminders, remote monitoring, video tools, and companion robots can help people stay independent longer.
The best tools do not take over. They give families confidence while letting older adults keep some control.
The business signal:
AARP says 25% of caregivers now remotely monitor loved ones through apps, video, or wearables, nearly double the rate from five years ago.
More than 700 companies are in AARP’s AgeTech Collaborative.
This is becoming a mainstream customer need, not a side category for healthcare.
The trust problem:
Safety can start to feel like surveillance if the experience is designed only for the caregiver.
Privacy, consent, affordability, and dignity have to be built in from the start.
Nobody wants to feel managed in their own home.
The CX To-Do: Build for the person being cared for, not just the person managing the care.
🔗 Go Deeper: NY Times
Stop Trying to Convince the Holdouts
Simon Sinek makes a useful point about change: it gets harder when you aim it at the people least likely to move.
That’s where CX work gets stuck. You see a better path. A cleaner journey. A smarter fix. Then the room turns into a debate about risk, ownership, budget, and “how we’ve always done it.”
The better starting point:
Find the people who already see the problem.
Give them room to test the idea before it is fully polished.
Let them help shape the work instead of asking them to simply approve it.
The adoption trap:
Most people are not against the idea. They are waiting for proof.
A better slide deck will not change that.
Visible progress from trusted peers usually does.
The CX lesson:
Start with the early believers.
Use small pilots to create real evidence.
Let demand build from inside the business.
The CX To-Do: Before your next CX initiative turns into another alignment meeting, ask one better question: who already cares enough to help prove this works?
DCX Stat of the Week: AI is funded, but not fully operational
82% of senior leaders invested in AI for customer service in 2025, and 87% plan to invest in 2026. But only 10% of teams say they have reached mature deployment, where AI is fully integrated into operations and working at scale.
Takeaway: You may have AI in customer service, but that does not mean you have transformed the service model. The gap is now between teams using AI around the edges and teams rebuilding workflows around it. That is where the next CX advantage shows up.
Source: Intercom, 2026 Customer Service Transformation Report
🔗 MORE STATS: Daily Stats on Substack Notes
DCX Case Study of the Week: M.U.D. Protected Access While Modernizing Payments
If you close a customer channel, you still have to replace the job that channel performed.
That is the useful lesson from M.U.D., the Omaha-area public gas and water utility. The company needed to close physical payment offices, but many customers still preferred to pay with cash or in person. That could have turned a cost-saving move into a customer frustration problem.
Problem:
M.U.D. served more than 600,000 residents, including customers who relied on physical offices for cash payments.
Closing offices reduced operating costs, but it also created an access gap.
The utility needed better payment options without forcing every customer into the same digital lane.
Solution:
M.U.D. worked with Paymentus to add Walmart Bill Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Credit, digitized cash options, and AutoPay.
Walmart Bill Pay gave customers 13 local Walmart locations where they could pay with cash, debit cards, or Ucards.
Payments posted immediately, which gave customers confidence their bill was handled.
Outcome:
Walmart Bill Pay transactions grew 600% in the first five months.
PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal Credit transactions grew 35% in 2023.
Scheduled AutoPay increased 3x since 2018.
The CX lesson:
Billing CX is access design.
Payment choice lowers effort because customers can use the method that fits their life.
Adoption rises when you meet customers where they already are instead of making them learn your preferred path.
The CX To-Do: Before you close a channel, ask what customer need it quietly solved. Then replace that need, not just the channel.
Go Deeper: 🔗 Paymentus, Driving Cost Savings and Greater Adoption with Walmart Bill Pay & Digital Wallets
Have a case study to share? Reply and let me know!
See you next week.
If this edition sparked ideas, share it with a colleague or team member. Let’s grow the DCX community together!
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Thank you so much for sharing my customer trust infrastructure work.