r/customerexperience

Customers will frequently leave a low CSAT rating and/or negative reviews simply about us using AI for our customer service support, not rating the quality of the interaction. Our AI crafts responses that are accurate, faster, empathetic, and usually better than what my team can write quickly. We do include a statement that, after handoff, it may take a few hours up to a full day to receive a response to set the expectation. We also disclose transparently that AI created the response. AI recently has been perceived negatively by the general public.
Is the answer to not disclose that it's AI so transparently? Curious how other organizations address this or avoid it? Does anyone else experience this?

I have been a CX practitioner for nearly two decades working on the car rental and financial services industries. I was recently laid off and it seems as though CX roles are few and far between - my network tells me that specific CX functions have been cut and it is more difficult to find CX roles publicly posted. I have tried searching via skills required (journey mapping, VoC, etc.) and still haven’t found many roles. I wanted to see what everyone thought of the current job market - is it just simply a lack of demand tied to the overall market or are companies permanently eliminating CX roles?

Some companies are now offering human only, AI free service as a premium option. Fast access to a real person is something customers may actually pay for.

What used to be the baseline is now the upgrade. agree?

Hey!

Recently started a new role in CS in FinTech and a part of my role is doing any renegotiations of rates/contracts etc! Right now - we use HubSpot for deal tracking and whenever I renegotiate a deal, I make a new deal in a renegotiations pipeline whereas sales use their own separate pipeline and it all just feels so confusing?

Does anyone have any good hubspot pipelines they can share that work well? like if it that the sales pipeline should have additional stages? should they be separate? It is so confusing and impossible to track (considering my bonus depends on it!!!)

I'm open to trialling different softwares but HubSpot is where all the sales process lives (even though I would consider CS more Ops than Sales!)

TIA!!

Stressed CSM

One team is expected to build relationships.
The other is expected to solve problems fast.

But in many businesses, both are thrown into the same queue, same KPIs, same scripts, and same pressure.

Then leadership wonders why customers feel unheard while agents feel burned out.

Curious how other teams are separating service vs support in 2026, or are most companies still blending both and hoping AI fixes the gap?

We’ve been debating this internally after noticing how many support tickets are basically:

“Did it go through?”
“Where is it?”
“Why does this look different?”
“Why haven’t I received confirmation yet?”

What’s interesting is most people seem completely fine right up until something feels delayed or unclear — then visibility suddenly becomes incredibly important.

Curious how others see this. Do customers genuinely value detailed transaction/status visibility from the start, or do they only really care once something goes wrong or takes longer than expected?

Been noticing the brands getting real lift from conversational AI aren't the ones with the fanciest models, they're the ones who already had clean customer data, clear segments, and a sharp read on intent before the agent went live.

Curious if others are seeing the same, or if the tech itself is doing more of the heavy lifting than I'm giving it credit for.

Many founders focus on adding features to reduce churn. But usually, the problem isn't the products, it's behavioral friction...

If your onboarding feels like work, or your UI triggers cognitive overload, users will bounce before they ever see your value.

I was in a meeting with a Legal and Security team for an insurance company the other day, and the second I mentioned WhatsApp, the vibe in the room completely shifted. It was wild everyone in that room uses it to talk to their family, their doctors, or even to send photos of their IDs for personal stuff, but the moment you suggest it for work, they treat it like a radioactive zone.

I started digging into why this fear is still so loud, and I realized there’s this massive misunderstanding between the app we all have on our phones and the actual API (the enterprise version).

It’s honestly kind of baffling that many companies still insist on using email for everything, even though email is usually way more vulnerable. With the WhatsApp API, end-to-end encryption is the real deal nobody, not even Meta, can read those messages. And when it comes to data privacy (GDPR and all that), if it’s set up correctly through a legit provider, the data is actually more locked down than in some of the janky, old CRMs I’ve seen teams using.

At one point, I just had to ask them: "What are you actually afraid of? Is it that the platform isn't secure, or is it that you feel like you’re losing control of the conversation?"

That’s where the truth came out. It’s not a technical problem; it’s a culture problem. They’re scared of not having a "paper trail," when the reality is that the API gives you a much better audit log and more security than a standard phone call that isn't even recorded.

I feel like we’re constantly sacrificing customer convenience because of "security" prejudices from five years ago. Has anyone else had to fight this battle with their IT or Legal departments? Is it actually about security for them, or is it just a massive resistance to changing how they’ve always done things?

You walked up on riverside drive Caseys, told the cashier: *cutting the line*

"I've been trying to pump 3 fucking times get it fucking right you bitch, here's my fucking card you prick"

I told you "it's not hard to be kind"

You walked back up to my face and said, "what the fuck did you say to me?"

I replied, "that's not how you treat or talk to people."

You replied, "time is money.."??

My last statement while you were fuming off was, "it's not hard to be kind in this world we are all human", and your reply was, "maybe in your world buddy".

I just want to say to the clerk, you didn't deserve the disrespect or atrocious attitude/words he was saying to you, working and having to take that is a horrible feeling, I work at the psych ward on the weekends, and I probably be seeing that truck driver on Saturday 🙏.

Bless you and hope you had a better rest of your shift.

Medallia is shutting down on us, got a few months to find a replacement. Mid-sized retail (~80 stores + ecom). Spent the last week in demos, rough ranking of where we landed:

1. Unwrap — what we're leaning toward. AI clusters and categorizes open-ended feedback automatically, no manual tag rules or taxonomy setup. Medallia's text analytics was always the piece we meant to use and never actually did because of the upkeep — this just bypasses that problem.
2. Survicate — light, fast to stand up. Solid for the survey/NPS side. Pairs well with Unwrap if you split the stack.
3. Forsta — kept getting pitched as the natural Medallia successor. Same enterprise DNA, same multi-quarter implementation.
4. Qualtrics / InMoment — both positioned as 1:1 Medallia replacements. Both felt like the same trap.
5. Delighted — if all you really need is NPS and CSAT, this'll get you most of the way.

What else am I missing?

We are pressured contantly for in person customer events.

I get the relationship side of it is great but the planning workload feels huge compared to webinars.

Is it really worth the hustle?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how customer support has changed (or how it’s supposed to have changed), and it feels like we’re still trapped in a 90s mindset even though we have 2026 tools.

The other day I was talking to a Support Director who was obsessed with reducing response times. He told me his team couldn't keep up with the call volume and that customers were complaining about the wait. The funny thing is, when we looked at what was happening on their WhatsApp channel, it was the exact same thing: they were treating messages like emails. Customers would write in and get a response three hours later.

I feel like a lot of companies talk a big game about "radical change" or "AI," but at the end of the day, they’re just putting a band-aid on a system that’s already broken. People don't want to be stuck waiting on a chat or a call; they want to drop their question on WhatsApp, go about their lives, and get an actual solution not a "we'll be with you shortly" message.

What caught my attention in this case is that as soon as they started automating the "dumb" questions (the usual "where's my order" stuff) and let the agents have real conversations without the pressure of closing the ticket in two minutes, satisfaction shot up. Not just for the customer, but for the team itself, who finally felt like they were helping people instead of just "processing" them.

At the end of the day, I think the mistake is thinking technology is just for cutting costs. Tech should be about making it so the customer doesn't have to work so hard to get noticed. Is it just me, or is the traditional contact center model dead if it doesn't shift toward something more conversational and less about "ticket management"?

I'm in the middle of an evaluation to roll out prospect/customer facing agents across our Sales, CS, and Support teams. Each team had rolled out their own tools (Alice, Agentforce, Fin) and they've been managing the agents themselves with not so great results. We're now doing a build vs buy analysis to deliver a more unified CX, but the part my team has been underwhelmed by is the voice...finding something consistent yet still dynamic.

My perspective is that the communication styles of our Sales, Customer Success, and Support agents should all have a different feel. Their objectives are different and they're working with prospects and customers at different stages of their journey.

I'd also like the agents to adapt their communication style in response to the prospect/customer to drive better engagement and see fewer abandoned interactions.

Am I being realistic or is this kind of personalization a nice-to-have in practice?

Hey everyone,

I've been researching customer journey mapping and I keep noticing two completely different worlds.

one version is the polished version. Something like a pretty Miro template.

and the real version. A team builds a map, presents it once in a workshop, and never opens the file again.

I'd love to hear from people who've actually done this work. The good, the bad, and the painful.

A few things I'm curious about:

On building it:

• What was the hardest part of your first journey map? Getting data, getting buy-in, picking a persona, or something else entirely?
• How did you scope it without it eating three months of your life?

On keeping it alive:

• Do you actually revisit your map, or did it quietly become wallpaper?
• Who "owns" the map at your company?

On tools:

• what worked and what didn't?
• How do you combine qualitative feedback (interviews, tickets) with quantitative data (NPS, analytics) in one view?

On AI:

• Has anyone used AI to draft a map or cluster feedback? Was it actually useful, or more cleanup than it was worth?

One last thing:

• What's the single piece of advice you wish someone had given you before you started?

I'm just tired of reading the same recycled "5 stages, 7 steps" blog posts and want to hear what actually happens in the trenches.

Happy to summarize what I learn and share it back with the thread.

Thanks!

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Not "bad product." Not "too expensive."

Feeling ignored. Waiting too long. Getting a response that clearly didn't read the original complaint. Never hearing back after raising an issue.

Three out of four top complaints have nothing to do with the product itself. They're about what happened after something went wrong.

That's the part most companies underinvest in.

The pre-purchase experience gets obsessed over, ads, landing pages, onboarding flows.

But the moment a customer has a problem, the process falls apart. A generic auto-reply. A ticket that closes without resolution. A review that sits unanswered for months.

Here's what the data actually shows: customers who leave negative reviews aren't always gone.

A significant share of them are still reachable, they left the review because they wanted someone to notice.

When a brand responds personally and fixes the issue, a measurable percentage updates their review or comes back.

Review management isn't a reputation task. It's a retention lever most companies haven't pulled yet.

What does your current process look like when a negative review comes in?