News Analysis
LAS VEGAS — The first step to admitting we’re not great at customer experience is demonstrating data that says so.
- Gartner says it: Most organizations (43%) have low CX maturity. They say things like measuring and analyzing CX performance are important but aren’t exactly crushing it.
- Forrester says it: Brands’ CX quality hit an all-time low, according to the Forrester Customer Experience Index released in June 2024. That represented the third year of decline in CX quality.
- We say it: In the CMSWire State of Digital Customer Experience 2025 report, 49% of organizations say they have tools to understand customer behavior but struggle to act on insights. They lack of in-house expertise (29% cite this) and have siloed, fragmented customer data (28%).
“The rules for great customer experience remain mostly the same,” said Jeannie Walters, founder of Experience Investigators. “That means understanding customers. So leaders need tools to really listen — way beyond surveys — to stay ahead of expectations and deliver. To stay ahead, it still takes vision and innovation. But that can’t be in a vacuum: understanding is the first step of proactive, positive experiences.”
Table of Contents
- AI's Center Stage: Medallia Bets Big on Next-Gen Customer Experience
- Moving Beyond Customer Surveys … Or Are We?
- Where Generative AI Enters the Customer Feedback Loop
- Traditional Text Analytics ... With a Splash of Generative AI
- CX Leaders Take on the House: Breaking Barriers With Balance, Talent and AI
AI's Center Stage: Medallia Bets Big on Next-Gen Customer Experience
So here we are again trying to figure it all out. The Great Quest for Great CX descends upon Las Vegas this week — at the Wynn Resort on Las Vegas Boulevard where customer experience management provider Medallia touts its AI vision and CX tools at its Medallia Experience conference.
The big bet in the desert this week? AI, of course. Medallia’s doubling down on artificial intelligence as some sort of customer sentiment analysis savior. The provider is banking on AI to roll a hard 8 just when CX seems down to its last buck in this game of "Customer Experience Craps."
This is not to say Medallia sees AI as a complete bailout of poor CX. Rather, AI's a pivot, “from surveys and signals to actions and automation” through a new vision and AI capabilities unveiled this week, according to Medallia CEO Mark Bishof.
“This is a pivotal point for the industry and a time when enterprise organizations must move beyond siloed, survey-centric programs,” Bishof said ahead of the conference and before his Day 1 keynote at the Wynn on Tuesday, March 25. “These new AI capabilities enable our customers to understand and act quickly on all unstructured data from digital behavior and voice and chat conversations, not just structured survey feedback. Our unique ability to bring omnichannel insights together in one platform and our industry-leading artificial intelligence position Medallia as the only CX company ready to lead this transformation into the next generation of customer experience.”
AI-Powered Capabilities Unveiled at Medallia Experience
Medallia has introduced seven AI-driven features across digital experience, contact center and omnichannel categories to enhance CX insights and automation:
| Category | Feature | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Experience | Prescriptive Digital Experience Insights | Proactively provides users with insights and recommendations to resolve digital experience issues. |
| Digital Experience | Digital Session Summarization | Quickly summarizes key behavioral events in digital sessions without requiring full replays. |
| Contact Center | Coaching Intelligence | Provides Gen AI-driven coaching recommendations personalized to each agent. |
| Contact Center | Intelligent Summaries | Automatically populates call and chat summaries for agent and manager review. |
| Omnichannel | Smart Response | Generates personalized responses to customer feedback to save employee time. |
| Omnichannel | Themes with Generative AI | Identifies emerging trends faster with detailed, user-friendly labeling. |
| Omnichannel | Root Cause Assist | Generates summarized root-cause analyses with drill-down options for deeper insight. |
Related Article: AI in Customer Experience Works Best With a Human Heart
Moving Beyond Customer Surveys … Or Are We?
It sounds like there’s a push to move away from static surveys. And we all know the major flaw of surveys: customers saying things but not really doing them. Bad customer data in = bad customer data out.
Just this morning ahead of Bishof's Tuesday, March 25 conference-opening keynote, a practitioner from a major retailer — Jennifer Monnier-Werne, senior research analyst at Bath & Body Works — said things like "love" and "store" don't provide great insights from customer surveys.
She wants more. Deeper insights. She's excited about the AI prospects unveiled from Medallia. Customer data has to be more actionable.
And here’s the fact: surveys aren't going anywhere. It's like the email of marketing, right? An overwhelming majority of brands deploy surveys, according to Forrester Research.
“It's a really interesting time to be a vendor or a buyer in this space,” said Colleen Fazio, a Forrester senior analyst who serves customer experience leaders and focuses on helping customers build Voice of the Customer (VoC) and CX measurement programs. “Surveys, despite many reports of their death, continue to be really widely used. Our data says that 96% of programs are still using surveys, and so at their core, these are still survey platforms as much as they want to do all these other things.”
Traditional Customer Surveys Cover A Lot — But Not Enough
Fazio emphasizes the importance of managing a customer survey program thoughtfully. Even large brands need to handle basics like sample management—ensuring customers aren’t sent the same survey multiple times or bombarded with surveys across channels. Each survey is a customer touchpoint, Fazio notes, so it’s critical not to overwhelm them—for example, by sending an email survey right after they completed one online.
Long-standing vendors like Medallia excel at supporting this kind of sample control and suppression logic while also focusing on user experience. According to Fazio, things like mobile-friendly design and avoiding clunky 10-point scales are essential for making surveys more enjoyable.
Where Generative AI Enters the Customer Feedback Loop
But, again, we need to do more. Close that customer feedback loop, as Bishof said on the keynote stage Tuesday morning.
These vendors also invest in the front-end experience and specialize in helping brands close the loop with customers—not just responding to negative feedback, but acknowledging and engaging with positive feedback as well. That kind of follow-through builds customer loyalty, Fazio says, but doing it at scale—across hundreds of surveys—can be a challenge. That’s where vendors and AI come in, offering workflows, alerts and automation to help brands manage that scale effectively.
“That is where generative AI is actually starting to have some impact … putting into their platform generative AI response generation,” Fazio said. Things like online reviews — and how humans in the loop can analyze that review, at scale.
Related Article: 5 Ways to Optimize Your Customer Feedback Program
Traditional Text Analytics ... With a Splash of Generative AI
Survey capabilities in the CX space are a commodity. Traditional text analytics that are rule-based in nature are, too. And it still has a role to play in the world of generative AI.
So what do brands that strive to beat the "CX kinda stinks right now" odds have to do with platforms like text analytics today? It’s all about knowing the unknowns, according to Fazio.
Fazio explains that big brands using text analytics don’t just analyze open-ended survey responses—they’re also digging into contact center transcripts. These transcripts are rich with insights, allowing companies to identify recurring themes and topics.
But just as importantly, Fazio notes, they help uncover what’s not being captured by rule-based tagging systems—those unknown unknowns that might signal emerging issues or opportunities. For instance, a topic that surfaces unexpectedly in transcripts might also show up in survey responses or social media conversations, prompting brands to investigate further. While analytics won’t make decisions for you, Fazio says it plays a key role in forming hypotheses and surfacing patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.
CX leaders get frustrated because they often don’t have the capability to paint a whole story. Case in point: a customer calls about their credit card getting lost, but in the course of that conversation, talks about how it’s really hard to use the online system.
“And that all that might not be captured because the disposition code is the reason for the call, and it's singular,” Fazio said. “And so really tapping into those transcripts just gives you so much more information.”
CX Leaders Take on the House: Breaking Barriers With Balance, Talent and AI
So this brings us back here to Medallia Experience this week in Vegas. Vegas — the land of great opportunity, glitz and glamour with a side of big-time humility for those who’ve tried to take down The House.
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Medallia and the hundreds of CX leaders that descend on the desert will be doing that all week: Only The House, this time, are those big, ugly barriers to great CX: siloed data, disjointed experiences and minute-to-minute changing customer behavior.
“Customers’ expectations are constantly changing,” said Shep Hyken, CSP, CPAE, of Shepard Presentations, LLC. “They don’t compare a company to its direct competitor but to the best experience they’ve received from any company—in any industry.”
As for the big topic of the day — AI — Hyken notes a humbling reality: his annual customer service research finds that 68% of customers still prefer the phone. For a generational breakdown, 82% of older customers (Boomers) prefer the phone first, versus 52% of Gen Z.
“Companies are challenged with a good solution that balances with traditional human-to-human support,” Hyken said. “And once you find the balance, realize it will change as the technology gets better and customers are more comfortable using it.”
The ultimate CX bet to place all the chips today? It may be keeping employees/customer service and support agents motivated, according to Hyken.
“It starts with hiring right to begin with,” Hyken said. “Bad hires equal high churn, which is frustrating and expensive. Good people must then be properly trained and empowered to take care of customers. Finally, employees must be given the right tools they need to take care of customers. If you’re investing in a good CX, it must be supported with a good CX.”
