Tackling CX’s top challenges ahead of 2025

The CX Network Weekly is the LinkedIn Newsletter from CX Network. Each week we share our take on a key development in experience management, with links to CX Network resources that can inform, inspire and help your organization’s response.

This week’s edition looks at the challenges facing CX practitioners.

Whether it’s nurturing that illusive customer-first culture or proving the business case for your next CX-related investment, CX rarely has it easy. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that as a CX practitioner you will have faced some form of budget, departmental or resource cuts since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over the last four years businesses have fought tooth and nail to grow their customer bases, sometimes by shifting their business model, sometimes through an acquisition, oftentimes it’s simply through marketing campaigns or promotions. But in an increasingly busy trading environment and bleak economy, where the customer’s wallet is also under pressure, these strategies do not always bring long-term gains.

As a result, many practitioners have found themselves seeking new roles, or even launching their own businesses to help drive CX standards across the board.

In next week’s edition, the Weekly will look at the trends that could shape CX in 2025, but to set the scene, this week’s edition will focus on how to overcome your current challenges and set yourself up for CX success.

So, what are the biggest challenges facing practitioners?

Each year we ask our network of CX practitioners, data specialists, marketers, consultants, analysts, researchers and authors to select their top-three challenges from a list of more than 20 choices. Here are the top-10 most selected challenges for the last three years:

There are some clear takeaways in these findings.

>>There is a strong mix of operational and technical challenges, which goes someway to explaining why “competing priorities” has topped this list for the last two years. Our money is on this repeating next year, too, simply because it’s true. CX faces many competing priorities, whether it’s improving customer satisfaction and retention, proving ROI or engaging staff.

>>While the work to build a customer-first culture has dropped down the top-10 list in recent years, this in no way means the challenge has been solved. If you’re one of the many still struggling Annette Franz, founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc, suggests asking yourself these 10 questions to help assess how customer-centric your organization is.

>>But could data be the most persistent challenge facing practitioners at present? While it is not yet the top answer in its own right, the challenge of creating actionable insights from data has remained in the top five for three years, while other data-related responses have climbed the top-10. Among them are data silos, which were a top-10 challenge in both 2022 and 2024. In fact, when we look at the responses to all survey questions, last year data emerged as the top CX trend, the second biggest investment priority and the fourth and sixth biggest challenge. With more AI and generative AI capabilities now available, the need to get data in order is only becoming more important.

We know these three lists in no way have it all covered. While nurturing employee engagement has made the top-10 in recent years, the war on talent has not… yet. We also know that each organization faces its own unique set of challenges, shaped by factors such as industry and location.

Whatever your biggest challenges are, the thing to remember is the road to greatness is never smooth. And you’re not alone!

As we head into the final quarter of the calendar year, the need to set yourself up for success in 2025 is only getting stronger. To help you prepare, this week’s links are packed with insights on how to overcome the corporate, career and economic challenges you’re likely facing right now.

Here’s something to inform you…

Here’s something to inspire you…

Here is something to help you…