Your Next CX Win Won’t Come from Strategy—It’ll Come from Visibility.
DCX Links | February 8, 2026
Welcome to the DCX weekly roundup of customer experience insights!
This week’s stories share a common thread: the customer experience is being decided in the moments most organizations still treat as “operational details”—returns that feel like judgment, AI that’s smart but poorly timed, and store rollouts that look perfect in decks but quietly drift on the floor.
What’s striking is that the breakdown isn’t strategy. Most teams already know what they want the experience to be. The problem is seeing what’s actually happening—in the return line, during onboarding, across disconnected systems, and at the frontline when plans meet reality.
Even personalization is evolving, from what brands can infer to what customers will confess when they feel safe enough to be honest. And with loyalty now consuming more than half of marketing budgets, the signal is clear: growth is coming from retention, trust, and first-party understanding—not bigger promises.
The edge right now isn’t ambition. It’s visibility.
Because when you can see the experience clearly, you can fix it while it still matters.
Let’s dive in.
This week’s must-read links:
Returns Aren’t a Side Quest. They’re the Business.
Personalization Gets Real When Customers Start Telling You the Truth
AI Only Pays Off When the Data Actually Talks to Itself
Retail’s Reset Shows Up on the Floor, Not in the Deck
DCX Stat of the Week: Loyalty Just Quietly Ate Half the Marketing Budget
DCX Case Study of the Week: Southwest Airlines Uses Service Culture to Withstand Operational Strain
Returns Aren’t a Side Quest. They’re the Business.
The Customer Whisperer, Kate Hardcastle, puts a giant number on what a lot of retail leaders treat like “ops housekeeping.” U.S. returns for 2025 were modeled at about $849.9B, with some ecommerce and apparel categories flirting with one-in-five purchases coming back. That’s not a seasonal annoyance. That’s an entire economy running in reverse.
Her point that stings a little is this. Retail trained customers to shop this way. Free delivery, frictionless checkout, free returns, home try-ons, commitment you can undo. Customers listened. Buying became step one. Returning became step two. Now retailers are trying to claw back control with fees, stricter policies, and refund gymnastics.
Where the CX risk spikes is the return moment itself. That’s when the relationship is fragile. A delayed refund, a surprise fee, or an awkward in-store inspection can turn “reasonable policy” into “I feel judged.” She uses the infamous “sniff test” example to make it real. What’s routine to staff can feel humiliating to a customer.
Hardcastle’s take is practical. The fix isn’t shame or penalties. It’s fewer preventable failures up front, plus dignity when returns still happen. Clearer product truth, better fit data, tighter feedback loops into design, and training that keeps returns procedural without making them personal.
🔗 Go Deeper: Forbes
Personalization Gets Real When Customers Start Telling You the Truth
This piece goes past the usual “personalization works” argument and gets into why most efforts still feel thin. Former CMO of Intel’s Mailchimp, Michelle Taite’s core idea is that we’ve hit a new phase. Personalization is table stakes. The next edge comes from what people are willing to admit in the moment, not what your model infers from last quarter’s behavior.
She calls this shift “confessional commerce.” Think products that only work if users open up. Health apps, learning platforms, financial tools. Places where context, insecurity, and timing matter more than neat segments. What’s interesting is her observation that people will often tell an algorithm things they won’t say to a human. Less posturing. More honesty. That honesty fuels better outcomes, which fuels trust.
The miss she sees across teams is designing for speed instead of depth. Short onboarding. Fewer questions. Let the model figure it out. That works for convenience. It fails when the real value depends on understanding why someone showed up today.
Taite borrows heavily from clinical psychology. Ask what prompted the visit, not just the goal. Normalize reactions so shame doesn’t shut people down. Design for follow-up instead of one-and-done answers. Pay attention to how people respond, not just what they submit. And most importantly, close the loop by proving that sharing actually helps.
The warning for CX leaders is subtle but important. You can’t build trust in one interaction and break it in the next. If AI sounds thoughtful but marketing feels canned, the loop collapses.
Depth only works when the experience stays steady across every touchpoint.
🔗 Go Deeper: HBR
AI Only Pays Off When the Data Actually Talks to Itself
This report from NADA Show 2026 lands on a theme CX leaders will recognize instantly. AI isn’t the unlock. Integration is.
Dealers aren’t short on tools. They’re drowning in them. What speakers kept coming back to is that AI only creates value when sales, service, inventory, and customer communications are connected in real time. Otherwise, you get the classic disconnect. A cheery trade-in text firing while a customer is stuck waiting on a delayed oil change. Great tech. Terrible timing.
At the J.D. Power Auto Summit, leaders from Zeigler Automotive Group and The Niello Company made the case that AI works best when it sharpens judgment, not when it runs in isolation. Real-time service data feeding into sales conversations improves trade-in accuracy. Better appraisals move inventory faster. Internal AI models help teams flag compliance risks and make decisions quicker, but only because the data underneath is clean and shared.
There’s also a refreshing note of restraint here. Both dealers and automakers acknowledged that vehicle complexity has gone too far. According to J.D. Power, more than 70 percent of automaker reps believe simplifying trims and features would improve margins without hurting sales. Fewer configurations. Clearer choices. Less operational drag.
The quiet takeaway for CX pros is familiar. AI doesn’t fix fragmented experiences. It exposes them. When systems are aligned, AI amplifies good decisions. When they’re not, it just scales confusion faster.
🔗 Go Deeper: CBT News
Retail’s Reset Shows Up on the Floor, Not in the Deck
This article cuts through a lot of retail noise. 2026 isn’t shaping up as a big “new chapter” year. It feels more like a moment of reckoning. Brands are being judged less on what they planned and more on what actually shows up in stores.
Brett Beveridge’s point is simple. Customers have less patience. Teams have less room to absorb misses. When something doesn’t land, shoppers don’t hang around waiting for version two. They just move on.
What’s striking is that planning isn’t the problem. Most leaders have solid strategies. The breakdown happens in the handoff. A rollout that looks airtight on paper slowly loses clarity as it travels from HQ to the floor. Training fades. Context gets thin. Execution drifts.
You see it in small ways. Displays that exist but aren’t on. Promotions that are technically live but practically invisible. Associates doing their best without being clear on what to lead with. Nothing dramatic. But it adds up fast.
Beveridge pushes leaders to ask a better question. Not “Did we roll it out?” but “Do we actually know what’s happening right now?” Reports can reassure. Visibility keeps you honest.
The brands pulling ahead aren’t chasing perfection. They’re closing the gap between plan and reality, backing their people with clarity, and fixing issues while they still matter.
If you walked into a store tomorrow, would it look the way you expect?
🔗 Go Deeper: Retail Customer Experience
DCX Stat of the Week
Loyalty Just Quietly Ate Half the Marketing Budget
In 2026, marketers now allocate 51.5% of their total marketing budget to loyalty and CRM, based on a global survey of 3,000 marketers and 10,000 consumers in the Antavo – Global Customer Loyalty Report 2026.
Takeaway:
Loyalty isn’t a side project anymore—it’s the core of the marketing P&L for loyalty-mature brands. If your loyalty/CRM line is still treated as “nice-to-have,” you’re likely under-investing in one of the few growth levers where ROI and customer data strength are both trending up.
🔗 MORE STATS: Daily Stats on Substack Notes
DCX Case Study of the Week
Southwest Airlines Uses Service Culture to Withstand Operational Strain
CX Challenge:
Surging post-pandemic travel, labor pressure, and operational complexity strained Southwest’s historically strong service reputation. Delays and disruptions became more visible, risking declines in customer sentiment and loyalty.
Action Taken:
Southwest reinforced its service culture by:
Re-empowering frontline employees to resolve customer issues quickly
Simplifying service-recovery workflows during delays
Prioritizing transparent, proactive communication during irregular operations
Investing in employee experience as a leading CX driver
Result:
Despite industry-wide disruption, Southwest maintained stronger customer loyalty and service reputation relative to peers. Published benchmarks cited consistent performance on customer satisfaction indicators versus industry averages, supported by improved employee engagement during peak travel periods (qualitative, comparative metrics).
Lesson for CX Pros:
Employee empowerment is a resilience strategy. When operations break down, clear recovery playbooks and trusted frontline decision-making protect customer trust.
Quote:
“Southwest knows that the frontline is the bottom line. Their culture is built on the belief that happy employees create happy travelers, and it shows up in everything they do.”
— Lasandra Barksdale, Founder, Kompass Customer Solutions LLC
Further Reading: Business.com – Southwest Airlines: A Case Study in Great Customer Service
Thank you!
If this edition sparked ideas, share it with a colleague or team member. Let’s grow the DCX community together!
✉️ Join 1,490+ 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).