CX Leaders: How to Thrive Through Volatility

Customer experience leaders can use the upheavals of 2025 to guide their companies back to the heights of customer focus they achieved during the COVID-19 global pandemic. During 2020, CX leaders helped their companies improve experiences during unprecedented changes in customer needs and the operating environment—and their brands earned historically high Customer Experience Index (CX Index) scores as a result. Post-pandemic, however, companies lost their customer focus, CX leaders were nudged to the sidelines, customer stress levels increased, and CX Index scores fell to historic lows.

The situation in 2025 isn’t identical to 2020: The belief that “we’re all in this together” has been replaced by a divided public and the disruption of core tenets about how the economy and society should work.

However, CX leaders can still use a version of their 2020 playbook, which leveraged the urgency of the moment and executives’ understanding that customer needs—and companies’ ability to fulfill them—were changing rapidly. Here’s how to regain your company’s 2020 momentum in 2025:

Understand the value that customers want from your company. There are four dimensions of value: economic, functional, experiential, and symbolic. During volatile times, the amount of each value that customers expect from your company will change. For example, customers who crave stability may shift to a service that evokes confidence, even if its functional value is low due to weak digital interfaces. Use customer research best practices to identify the value your customers want, then find your value sweet spot—the blend of value dimensions that delivers on your customers’ needs, matches what your organization excels at, and gives you a competitive advantage.

Balance customer and business needs to serve customers sustainably. Mature customer-focused companies have the discipline to deliver only the experiences that they can sustain, instead of trying to do everything their customers want. This requires a companywide metrics framework that maintains a long-term balance between the value for the customer and the business. The framework also helps business leaders decide when to lean toward value to the customer or to the business in the short term.

Prioritize relentlessly amid resource constraints. Perennial CX prioritization problems worsen during volatile times, when budgets tighten just as well-meaning execs with little CX expertise flood CX leaders with new ideas. In this environment, a disciplined approach to prioritizing CX projects is crucial. Assess potential CX projects in five categories: customer impact, business impact, feasibility, risk, and ROI. Collaborate with stakeholders so the ranking of each project reflects their input and they understand why their ideas do or don’t make the cut.

Ensure customers have consistent, on-brand experiences. Confirm that your CX vision aligns with your business strategy. An authentic and actionable CX vision is essential for consistent, on-brand experiences. Use design and journey mapping techniques to weave that vision throughout your customer journeys. Build a real design system that stakeholders can use to ensure consistency while speeding time to market.

Use guerilla CX tactics for quick, inexpensive wins. Swift, creative, low-cost CX tactics can quickly implement meaningful improvements that support customers during stressful times—like many organizations did during the pandemic. This could include providing empathy training for frontline staff, waiving late fees, or letting customers opt for lower-cost services. Avoid complex approval processes that sprung up during boom times; test and iterate quickly; and find opportunities for subtractive innovation, which aims to improve CX by removing hurdles instead of adding features.

Be a visible change leader and steadying force. Leaders must project confidence and clarity to maintain stability on their teams, despite conditions that most employees have never experienced. Trust in leadership is often low during times of change and financial hardship, although paradoxically, our global survey found that confidence in executives’ ability to manage disruption rose to unprecedented highs during the pandemic. Effective change leaders become their best selves in the face of adversity, by clarifying their vision, resolving uncertainty, identifying barriers, releasing resources, listening and responding, and celebrating successes.

CX leaders can thrive through volatility, but doing so requires intention. At CX Summit North America, we’ll showcase research-based insights and tools to equip you to turn disruption into opportunity. Learn more and register.

Rick Parrish is vice president, research director, at Forrester Research. Parrish leads Forrester's customer experience (CX) research practice. He and his team help organizations across industries develop successful, innovative, and efficient CX programs.