The challenges of customer experience in 2025

Customer experience is way more important than you realize, every aspect of your business is directly related with the experience a customer will have. When you invest in customer experience, your company will receive many benefits that come from satisfied customers, so take advantage of it.

But, not everything is as easy as it may sound, you will not magically start receiving benefits from one day to another. Great effort is required to obtain these benefits, and with great effort comes great challenges too. These challenges are not supposed to stop you from offering great experiences, but can create frustrating situations for you and your customers.

If you are wondering what are some of the most common customer experience challenges out there, you are in the right place. In this article, we will help you identify potential challenges you may face to help you understand them and also we will share ways to overcome them.

What is customer experience

To understand the challenges, you must first understand what customer experience is. Customer experience (CX) is the overall perception a person has of a brand, which is built by every interaction they have with them during their journey. These aspects include digital channels like websites, physical experiences like stores, and customer support. So, in simple terms, CX includes every interaction that determines a customers’ level of trust and long-term value.

CX is present in every customer journey aspect, from the initial touchpoint, consideration, purchase, retention, and post-purchase loyalty. That’s why it has become a priority to deliver strong experiences that will transform a potential customer into brand advocates. The combination of their overall experience is key to reaching that endgame.

You must understand that a few bad interactions can affect every other positive experience a customer had with a company. It is critical that you never forget to be customer-centric, your entire business needs to be built with your customers in mind. Your customer needs and expectations must be the driving force for your CX strategies, so take your time to understand them.

If you are not totally aware of your customer needs, then that is a big issue you need to address. This doesn’t apply to every case, but today, most customers expect fast resolutions and human-centered experiences. Think as your customers do, so you can get to the point where you can anticipate their needs, offering them personalized solutions that add value to their experience.

When those expectations aren’t met, businesses face churn and reputational harm. In fact, CX levels in the U.S. declined by 5% from 2022 to 2024, according to KPMG, marking the lowest point since 2015. Even grocery retail, traditionally one of the strongest sectors, saw a 3% drop in scores, showing how widespread CX issues have become.

The data shows a larger truth: meeting customer expectations is no longer optional. Companies that fail to confront the challenges of customer experience risk being left behind, while those that succeed in balancing empathy and innovation can turn CX into a growth engine, something your competitors won’t be able to copy.

Top 10 customer experience challenges

Customer experience challenges are present in companies from different industries, some of them may have specific ones related to their industry and general ones too. Even though you may not face the same challenges as other businesses, there are universal roadblocks that everyone can experience. These are some of the most common CX issues you may face:

Evolving customer needs

Customers' expectations evolve over time, what they want from you now may be totally different from what they wanted before. Now it is common for customers to want personalized interactions, omnichannel experiences that reduce their effort, fast support, empathic experiences, and full transparency from businesses.

A great example of evolving customer expectations is that they now need to trust a company before deciding to buy from them. Long are the days where all customers wanted to make sure before buying was products and services to satisfy their needs. If your company is not ready to offer and adapt to their expectations, then they will simply look for other options.

How to overcome this challenge: Constantly ask for customer feedback. Think of this as research, this will help you identify what your customers need and expect from your products. After receiving their insights, take action and perform all the necessary updates to your products, by doing this you will always be their top option.

Leveraging customer feedback and improvements

This item is directly related to the previous one, as we said, asking for feedback is not enough, you also need to improve based on it. If you don’t do this, your customers will grow unsatisfied with what you offer. Some companies may feel overwhelmed with so many surveys, data, and insights coming in from their customers and may not know where to start.

Your customers will know when their feedback is ignored, and they will resent this. They are trusting you enough to tell you what is bothering them, so you must value that and improve. Think of this as an opportunity to keep the momentum going. Like any relationship, one party will grow tired of the other ignoring their issues and not working on improving.

How to overcome this challenge: Determine how often you will collect feedback, this way you will prepare with enough time to analyze the insights and have your teams ready to work on product improvements. If you feel like your current team is not enough, then hire more people on your team, or hire outsourced teams to help you with the feedback collection. Another option is to hire AI tools that will help you analyze large data pools.

Deciding which tool is the best

Now that we mentioned AI as a potential solution to one problem, this brings another challenge with it. Deciding for the right tool will take a lot of time if you want to make sure it is the one you need. Going for the cheapest or the one with the most reviews won’t make it, the tool must help you with your specific needs, so don’t go for the first one that shows up as the best.

Not every tool that worked for other companies will be of use for you, that’s why you must make sure to choose the right vendor. If you don’t invest enough time in selecting the right tool, you will bring more issues to your company.

How to overcome this challenge: Research a lot of potential options for your company, evaluate them based on their offerings, pricing strategies, customer stories, reviews, social sentiment, etc. Having interviews with the vendors will help you too, so make sure you ask them the right questions and hire them until you are fully convinced.

Technology implementation may turn out to be expensive

Selecting the right tool is not the end of your challenges, implementation can bring several other problems that will just begin when you hire a tool. Implementation may turn out to be expensive and time consuming, make sure your vendor is there at every moment. They must help you implement it with your current workflows or propose new ones that adapt to your business.

Most of the time, people make the mistake of thinking that advanced CX solutions like AI will immediately solve all their problems and bring instant ROI. The right vendor will make sure you understand an estimated time for you to adapt to the tool, train your team, and help you solve any issue that arises from implementing the tool.

How to overcome this challenge: The solution usually comes from selecting the right partner, selecting the right vendor should be taken seriously so they can become a strategic partner. This ensures constant updates and maintenance, helping you with the implementation process. Also on your side, you need to understand that this is inevitably going to take some time to adapt your team to use a new tool.

Customer churn

Companies panic when their customers start leaving, it is normal, as your sales and revenue will decrease. You may be wondering why this is happening, well, there can be several reasons for it, but it is your responsibility to get to the root cause.

Remember your customers are your more valuable asset, treat them with kindness and stop seeing them just as numbers. They are not simple statistics for you to brag about, they are human beings that deserve to feel valued by the companies they are trusting. Make the difference and offer them experiences that no one else will give them, they will be satisfied and stay loyal.

How to overcome this challenge: Understand your customers, ask them what is going on, if there’s something wrong with your products or with you, before they start leaving. Most companies make the mistake of asking their customers why they are leaving, but were never interested in knowing how they were feeling before. Don’t be arrogant believing your customers don’t have more options, get to know them, improve, and offer value so they never have to leave.

Prioritizing which opportunities to tackle

When dealing with limited resources, CX leaders must prioritize which opportunities they are going to focus on first. Not every opportunity needs to be developed from the beginning, there are ones that can be left aside for a few times, especially those involving complicated workflows or high investments.

There are high priority opportunities like the ones involving improvements on products or services, that need to be tackled first. Why is this? Because said opportunities will help your company retain customers by keeping them satisfied.

How to overcome this challenge: Work with your stakeholders to decide which opportunities are the ones that require less effort from the company, but will bring the most benefits. This way you ensure having a workflow optimized to start working on opportunities you can work without any troubles.

High ROI expectations blinding you

Executives often expect immediate financial returns from CX initiatives. However, the real value of CX lies in long-term loyalty, retention, and increased lifetime value. Measuring only short-term gains blinds organizations to these bigger wins.

If you don’t prioritize your opportunities, then you may be facing this other challenge. When your team expects immediate results and financial outcomes out of the CX initiatives. You need to know that the real value from your initiatives will come in long-term results like having loyal customers.

We don’t want to stop you from visualizing your goals and seeing where you want to be in the next few years. But, you need to know that every ambition needs patience to be successful, if not, you will just blind yourself from the results that matter by focusing on the future too much.

How to overcome this challenge: The best way to avoid this is by prioritizing and defining clear paths to achieve your goals. Ambition is good when you can wait for results and are willing to sacrifice to earn them.

Isolating CX from other business aspects

CX shouldn’t be seen as a separate entity from your business. Every single business aspect contributes to customer experience, which is why all your departments need to work together in providing your customers with the best experiences.

Isolating CX is a great mistake, 88% of executives say their businesses struggle to keep pace with rapid changes in customer and employee behavior, largely due to misalignment and lack of integration. Don’t add to the statistics and make things differently, your customers deserve it.

How to overcome this challenge: Finding ways in which all your departments collaborate with your customer success team is the best way to avoid this issue. Everyone should focus their efforts into building experiences that will overcome your customers’ needs.

Adding new channels to your support

Trying to have a consistent experience where all departments work together on the same goal, can bring another challenge. When your support team needs to add new communication channels, they can feel overwhelmed by the new tasks it involves. This is when you ensure they are not alone and won’t be dealing with all of it.

Outsourcing some of your support tasks can help your team, especially in offering consistent support. Your customers expect that, so don’t let them down and make sure they are receiving it.

How to overcome this challenge: Since having a lot of different support channels is not an option any more, you need to help your support team. As we mentioned, outsourcing is a key strategic business solution to avoid these issues.

Inconsistent customer journey and experience

An inconsistent experience is when your customers receive a different experience across your business. This can translate to receiving misleading information on the website, receiving inaccurate responses from support, or having to deal with a product that works once, but never works again.

When your departments are not working together or your support team is working alone on your channels, your customers may find inconsistencies in their journey. These are one of the most common yet critical challenges that businesses face when it comes to customer experience strategies. Make sure everyone understands your brand so well so they don’t find inconsistencies that affect their journey.

How to overcome this challenge: Training is essential to avoid these issues, when your employees are well-trained they will be prepared to respond and face challenges like your brand does.

These challenges are just a few examples of what businesses can go through when investing in customer experiences. Ignoring them can cause other critical issues that will damage your company way more than you think. So, whenever you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do, ask for help, it is better to have someone to help you than doing it on your own.

Turning challenges into opportunities

The reality is that CX issues are not just obstacles, they are opportunities to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Organizations that approach the challenges of customer experience strategically can transform them into drivers of growth and differentiation. The key lies in shifting from reactive problem-solving to proactive innovation.

Comprehensive feedback collection

Customer feedback is only powerful when it’s broad and actionable, so relying on a single channel, such as surveys, offers limited insight. Instead, your company should gather feedback across multiple sources: reviews, social media, support calls, chat logs, and in-app interactions, to form a complete view of your customers’ sentiment. When you act on this feedback, customers feel heard and valued, reinforcing loyalty and advocacy.

Break down silos with unified customer insights

Disjointed customer data is a root cause of many CX issues. Marketing may hold one set of insights, while service and operations hold another, leaving the customer journey fragmented. Breaking down silos and creating a single, unified view of the customer enables cross-functional teams to work toward the same CX goals. This not only improves decision-making but also ensures consistency across every interaction.

Promote a customer-centric culture

Technology alone cannot solve the challenges of customer experience. So, your company must also invest in people and culture. Employees at every level need training, tools, and empowerment to act in the customer’s best interest. Culture directly shapes behavior, and empowered employees create empowered customers. If businesses support this shift, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2025, 75% of organizations will abandon Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the primary CX measure. Instead, they will prioritize metrics that reflect loyalty, emotional connection, and long-term value.

Balance technology with human empathy

Automation and digital tools enhance efficiency, but they should never replace empathy. Brands that rely exclusively on automation often see customer satisfaction decline. On the other hand, research shows that businesses balancing automation with authentic human connection achieve the strongest CX outcomes and sustainable growth. The lesson is clear: technology should enhance, not replace, the human element of customer experience.

Taking advantage of AI

A staggering amount of 58% of marketers feel overwhelmed with their current job. By implementing AI-powered analytics, companies can cut through the noise, uncover patterns, and predict customer behaviors. The real-time insights make it possible to detect churn risks early, resolve issues before they escalate, and personalize experiences at scale.

Establishing the right goals on time

Another common barrier in addressing customer experience challenges is unrealistic ROI expectations. Leadership often looks for immediate results, overlooking the long-term value of loyalty and lifetime revenue. The solution is to tie CX initiatives to broader business KPIs such as retention, customer lifetime value, and revenue growth. This approach demonstrates impact and secures ongoing executive support for CX investments.

Are you ready to face the challenges and transform them into opportunities?

Everyday businesses face challenges, so don’t be afraid of having to deal with issues by trying something new. What makes the difference is the approach you decide to take when facing these issues. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by them and being afraid of not knowing what to do, see them as opportunities to prove yourself.

In our competitive world, only companies that know how to deal with pressures while maintaining a customer-centric mindset that evolves with their needs, are the ones that thrive. So, don’t stay behind and show your customers why they can trust your business.

At Mentors CX, we believe that having a customer-centric mentality is key for every business. So, if you ever find yourself stuck with an issue, then feel free to search our mentors and contact them to help you. They are happy to help and want to see your business grow, so go ahead and book a session now.