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, titled “Customers Are Madder Than Ever”, makes one thing unmistakably clear: despite decades of investment in customer experience, American consumers are reaching their limit.

77% reported a product or service problem in the past year

, the highest level ever recorded, while the effort required to resolve those issues continues to climb.

64% of customers who experienced a problem feel rage about it

The Journal’s data exposes a growing imbalance that every leader should be alarmed by: operational efficiency improves each year, but the actual customer experience continues to decline. This is happening as AI is about to drive efficiency to new heights, raising the risk that the gap between what companies optimize and what customers actually feel becomes a serious crisis.

We Made Buying Effortless and Made the Post-Purchase Experience Exhausting.

Over the past decade, companies have invested billions to make shopping faster and easier: one-click checkout, same-day delivery, frictionless returns, and endless self-service options. The front end of commerce has never been smoother.

 shows through example after example, that ease evaporates the moment something goes wrong. Customers who can order almost anything instantly often find themselves trapped in automated loops, blocked by chatbots that can’t resolve issues, or bounced between teams that lack the context or authority to help.

The experience is seamless until it really matters. That’s when the journey breaks. We enhanced convenience but neglected care—and customers feel the imbalance viscerally.

The Efficiency–Experience Gap Didn’t Happen by Accident

This gap exists because companies are inherently better at designing for efficiency than for experience. Efficiency is easier: it’s measurable, functional, and delivers a clear return on effort and investment. Leadership can see immediate gains in reduced costs, improved throughput, and faster cycle times.

Experience design is much more challenging. It requires understanding emotion, context, memory, and human behavior—factors that don’t easily fit into spreadsheets. Few organizations have the expertise or cross-functional alignment needed to design for these moments, so experience work often becomes fragmented or deprioritized.

Companies tend to optimize what is easiest to quantify, while the aspects of the journey that shape how customers 

 are often underdeveloped. This capability gap, not a lack of intention, is why efficiency consistently improves while the experience continues to decline.

Customers Judge Companies by the Hardest Moments, Not the Easiest Ones

People don’t remember entire experiences; they remember moments, especially the ones with the strongest emotional impact. This is why airlines can operate most of the time flawlessly yet be defined by how they handle a cancellation, a lost bag, or a moment of distress. And it’s why a single act of proactive care can create loyalty that lasts for years.

Customer memories are formed at the extremes. And the extremes are where most companies remain unprepared.

AI Will Accelerate This Gap—Unless Companies Redesign the Experience Now

AI offers the greatest opportunity to redefine customer experience in decades. However, it also presents the greatest risk. The reality is: AI will make companies faster than ever. But without intentional human-centered design, it will also make them less connected, less human, and less capable of solving real problems.

If the past decade taught us anything, it’s this: efficiency improvements made without corresponding increases in experience only widen the gap.

AI could serve as the catalyst. It will cut operational friction,automate entire service layers

streamline workflows, predict issues earlier, improve routing, and speed things up. But none of these outcomes guarantee that customers feel heard, understood, supported, or respected.

If AI is primarily used for efficiency, the experience gap that the 

 highlights will widen faster than companies can adapt. 

The Path Forward: Rebalancing Efficiency with Experience

Companies don’t need more CX programs—they need a fundamental realignment. Research across Forrester, Gartner, McKinsey, and the XM Institute is consistent: customer experience improves only when the entire system is redesigned, not just isolated touchpoints. Today, most systems are optimized for speed, scale, and cost—not for humanity.

A new chapter of CX must be built around six imperatives:

Anchor experience strategy in value creation

Redesign the entire system around the customer, not the transaction.

Use AI to strengthen human judgment, not to deflect it.

Design for real-world complexity, not linear journeys.

Restore fairness and transparency through policy design.

Measure the moments that matter most.

From Branded CX to HumanAI Experiences: The Ziba Continuum

Ziba has been designing branded customer experiences since 1999, long before “CX” became a boardroom acronym. From the start, our work has focused on one core belief: 

 Not marketing. Not messaging. Not technology alone. The lived interaction between people and the organization.

For more than two decades, we have helped global brands design experience systems that align brand promise, operations, service, policy, and behavior into a single coherent reality.

Since 2023, Ziba has expanded this foundation into Human + AI Customer Experience, integrating artificial intelligence into the definition and delivery of branded CX across client organizations. Not as tools layered onto broken systems. But as intelligent capabilities are embedded into redesigned experience ecosystems.

HumanAI Experiences uses AI to:

This is not AI for efficiency alone. This is AI for experience integrity and performance.

The Wall Street Journal is right. Customers are angrier than ever. But their anger isn't random; it reflects years of systems designed to cut costs and speed up processes while neglecting emotion, memory, and trust. Now, AI threatens to entrench that imbalance permanently unless leaders act intentionally. The question isn't if AI will transform customer experience—it will. The real question is whether it will strengthen the connection or accelerate the disconnection.

Efficiency will set the pace of modern business. Experience will foster trust. And trust, not technology, will determine who succeeds in the next decade.

The future of customer experience belongs to organizations that intentionally design Human + AI systems that balance brand, empathy, and operational reality. At Ziba, this is how we build experience systems that work. This isn't about faster service; it's about better service. More human. More trusted.

Companies that act now will not only lower customer anger but also reshape loyalty for the next generation. If that’s the future you’re aiming for, 

The Wall Street Journal signals a growing gap between efficiency and experience, an imbalance that AI is about to accelerate into a major crisis.

Customers Are Madder Than Ever — This is the red alert.

Generation Alpha—today’s 0–15 year olds—already command 

globally, they’re set to become the largest generation in history. And they’re not just waiting in the wings—they’re already shaping culture, commerce, and expectations of what brands must stand for.

While many companies are still fixated on Gen Z, Gen Alpha is emerging with distinct (and often paradoxical) preferences, next-level fluency in digital and AI, and an insistence that brands 

authentically reflect their generational values

For brands that want to stay relevant, this isn’t a long-term consideration—it’s an 

. Gen Alpha is already forming opinions, building networks, and influencing household decisions. Most innovation cycles take 

; in that window, Gen Alpha will have already chosen the brands whose experiences align with their values.

, a research series designed to help you build branded experiences this generation will embrace. In this report, you’ll find actionable insights, brands who already speak Gen Alpha’s language, and a roadmap to prioritize your next innovation and design moves—organized around five essential themes:

It's a Small World

Longevity Gratification

Dual Citizenship

Nano Nuanced Navigation

Safety Zones

 to access the reports or subscribe to the full series. The shift is already underway—don’t let your brand be left behind.

The Alpha Shift: How 2.5 Billion Young Consumers Are Redefining Your Market

Designing Experiences That Balance Simplicity and a Sense of Control

For decades, customer experience was built on the belief that more is better—more features, more choices, more touchpoints. But abundance no longer empowers customers; it exhausts them. While the paradox of choice has been known for over 20 years, the scale of digital and AI-driven noise has made decision fatigue newly urgent and strategically critical. Today, calm has become currency, and the brands that win will be those that subtract complexity, give back mental space, and design clarity into every interaction.

Today's Customer Reality: Decision Fatigue

Modern consumers navigate an unprecedented landscape of choice and stimulation. Making over 35,000 decisions daily while bombarded by advertising, notifications, and messages, customers increasingly struggle to distinguish between authentic experience and promotional manipulation. The traditional belief that "more information increases engagement" has been proven counterproductive.

The convergence of marketing and customer experience has created a paradox: tools, such as push notifications and chat-based assistants meant to enhance engagement, are increasingly causing disengagement. Customers abandon interactions before becoming truly immersed, creating a crisis of attention and trust. At the same time, consumers are beginning to adapt to a life where AI is seamlessly integrated in their daily routines—where instead of searching for what they need, they expect direct answers. AI enables them to exert more control over their environment while reducing the number of decisions they must make, shaping a lifestyle defined less by constant choice and more by guided simplicity.

 report that they have used it as a search engine, bypassing traditional multi-step browsing. In fact, 

5.6% of U.S. desktop browser-based search traffic

 now flows to AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity—double the share from last year—signaling a major shift toward direct, answer-first experiences that minimize cognitive effort.

The data reveals stark customer overwhelm. 

 49% of consumers experience "digital fatigue," while 39% delay or abandon transactions due to information overload. Human-Computer Interaction studies demonstrate that excessive UI stimulation increases abandonment rates rather than conversion.

 projected to compete primarily on customer experience by the end of this year, traditional approaches of flashy touchpoints and high information volume are becoming actively counterproductive. The ability to reduce cognitive load might be the most significant competitive differentiator available.

Quiet CX emerges as a strategic response to this oversaturated landscape. Far from simple minimalism, Quiet CX is the deliberate design of decision-making moments that reduce customer choices. By creating environments where customers can naturally immerse themselves without forced actions, brands deliver frictionless experiences that build long-term value and differentiation.

In an age when quiet is scarce, it becomes a marker of prestige. The value lies not in what's added, but in what's intelligently removed.

Successful implementation of Quiet CX requires five core elements:

Passive CX Design 

Environment-Adaptive UI 

Choice Optimization

Automation & Step Elimination 

Intelligent Voice Control Design

Three industry leaders demonstrate how reducing decision-making creates measurable business value.

Virgin Hotels – AI-Driven Guest Personalization

 past stays and behavioral history, adjusting lighting, temperature, and entertainment presets. This ensures guests start their stay in an optimized environment from the moment they arrive, reducing cognitive load.

 showing 25.4% of guests want automated comfort controls, Virgin Hotels' AI system directly addresses this demand by eliminating the need for manual adjustments upon arrival.

Sprouts Farmers Market – AI-Powered Inventory & Replenishment

Sprouts Farmers Market leverages Choice Optimization

 by RELEX Solutions' AI to automate inventory forecasting, freshness management, and replenishment. Popular products are placed on shelves exactly when needed, saving customers the effort of searching or comparing. According to the company's annual report, this system has improved 

, enhancing both operational efficiency and customer experience.

Delta Airlines – Biometric Boarding Gates

 allows passengers to check bags and pass through security with a single face scan, eliminating the need to repeatedly present boarding passes or IDs. For travelers, this translates to far fewer interruptions and less decision-making at each checkpoint. The streamlined process has 

reduced bag-drop and security times by up to 75%

, giving customers back valuable minutes and reducing stress. Passenger surveys also report double-digit gains in satisfaction, with many highlighting the experience as faster, smoother, and less cognitively demanding than traditional procedures.

Quiet CX frees customers from information overload, restoring their sense of control and creating space for genuine immersion. The approach takes many forms, but the key is the intentional design of spaces, interfaces, processes, and products that customers can experience confidently and pleasurably.

Brands mastering this approach are positioned to earn lasting trust and loyalty in an increasingly noisy marketplace. The future belongs to companies understanding a fundamental truth: 

in the attention economy, the greatest luxury is freedom from decision fatigue.

The question isn't whether to embrace Quiet CX. It's how quickly you can begin removing barriers between customers and the experiences they truly value.

The future of customer experience won’t be won by adding more noise. It will be won by brands that know what to remove.

Are you ready to design your Quiet CX? Let’s talk about how to make simplicity your competitive edge.

The Quiet Edge: Why the Future of CX Is Silent

EX As Force Multiplier for Business Success

Work culture is essentially a nexus of tribal relationships—between management and employees, the organization and its external partners, employees’ own working groups, and, last but not least, the relationship between employees and customers or clients. At once forcefully upheld as critical to business success 

 treated oftentimes to the most superficial understanding, the employee/customer relationship is under increasing strain, and in need of a serious reboot.

In the simplest terms, we know satisfied human beings on both sides of the service counter have always made for business success. In B-school terms, this is the “service profit chain,” a framework that establishes a direct connection 

between profitability and employee satisfaction

An engaged workforce can be a revenue driver, service delivery stabilizer, innovation enabler, talent magnet, brand reputation builder, and organizational resilience aid. 

Positive employee experience and, by extension, the company culture it shapes and reflects, can unleash all of this dynamism if EX (employee experience) is regarded as 

 as important as CX (customer experience)—and if the synergistic relationship of the two is supported.

The numbers speak for themselves. Engaged employees and a strong organizational culture can 

. McKinsey found that companies with the best organizational health produced 

 than companies with the weakest. On the flip side, Gallup reports that in 2024, global employee engagement fell by two percentage points, costing the world economy 

Why EX Hasn’t Been Treated as Business-Critical

The C-suite certainly read the customer experience memo: an overwhelming majority of companies have made CX their top priority and the principle way they compete. Executives talk about 

 than they talk about employees in earnings calls and still perceive employees to be risks rather than resources. Why has perception of the essential CX-EX relationship remained so lopsided and short-sighted?

Much of the disconnect has to do with the inability to correlate EX metrics like employee satisfaction scores with business outcomes. For instance, how has a company’s improved retention of seasoned, highly skilled talent impacted sales? Has a manager training program been monitored both for employee well-being and for productivity gains?

HR policies and programs intended to nurture employee well-being are rarely tied systematically to CX outcomes. HR is perceived as a cost center, the latter a revenue engine, so making causal, quantifiable connections between them to prove the business impact of an organization’s employee culture isn’t the least bit straightforward.

Another factor in the slow and low prioritization of EX as business-critical is the sheer rate of change impacting businesses today. According to the 

, that rate has increased by an incredible 183% over the past four years, and 33% in the past year alone. In 2025, nothing represents greater change in and to the world of work than AI. While management is largely optimistic about AI’s promise of productivity gains, with 

 for at least one business function in 2024, staff training lags, leaving employees, particularly managers, feeling ill-equipped for its adoption. Beneath the AI skills gap, there is fear—and even resistance—among employees, who view AI as marginalizing human expertise and well-being. 

 found that only 13% of Americans believe AI will personally help them. Instead, they fear job loss, increased surveillance, and a lack of control over their own work.

We must recognize this is a hinge moment in the history of work: by the end of 2025, the World Economic Forum projects the 

 globally due to AI and automation. Goldman Sachs predicts up that to 50% of jobs could be fully 

Cultural Signs of Employee Experience Complexity

There are myriad reasons employee engagement reached an 

. Cultural signs of employee discontent have been circulating since the global pandemic, and point to a far more complex picture than the AI-and-automation shakeup. Covid brought us 

 of 2021, a forced reappraisal of work’s role in mental health. Gallup describes our current reality as 

 of 2025, a widespread feeling among employees of being stuck but uninspired in current jobs due to a slowing labor market, and perceptions of few career and pay advancement opportunities. Another phrase for stuck-but-uninspired is “quiet quitting,” a meme introduced to the world in a 2022 TikTok video that quickly amassed over 900 million views. (The Chinese version of passive rebellion against the work status quo—rising joblessness and a 

.”) Gallup’s research show that quiet quitting, while no longer a viral sensation, nevertheless persists: nearly 

six in 10 global employees are psychologically disengaged from their organization

As Employees Shift Their Values, The World of Work Lags

What are some of the deeper dynamics behind these employee disengagement trends? 

 according to several studies. Employment agency Randstad’s recent study shows that “57% of workers would not accept a job that would 

negatively affect their work-life balance

, including flexibility like working from home.” Balance is achieved through reasonable, controllable, flexible work, but for many employees, work should also support their 

Gen Z is leading a generational shift in employee expectations that a company’s values should align with their own. Company purpose has become an increasingly powerful way to attract, retain, and engage a workforce. 

 is the first generation to prioritize purpose over salary. A Millennial Employee Study found that even 

 won’t accept a job with a company without a strong CSR (corporate social responsibility) policy.

How are employers responding to these cultural signals? While 

 regular employees 285 to 1, and DEI initiatives disappear or discretely operate under other departmental auspices, too few companies have been investing sufficient resources in a holistically positive EX—resulting in what Forrester characterized as the 

 of 2024. As employee engagement and company culture energy decline, companies will not only struggle with talent attraction and retention but their customer experience (CX) will suffer as well.

There are of course exceptional exceptions—companies that have adopted innovative approaches to EX. Salesforce has implemented a "Success from Anywhere" model, allowing employees to choose their work environment. They've also expanded their wellness programs and introduced new tools for virtual collaboration. Patagonia has programs that allow employees to take time off for environmental activism. LinkedIn has introduced 

 a program focused on employee well-being that includes "RestUp!" days—extra days off for employees to recharge. Hilton, ranked as a best 100 company consecutively for the past 10 years, has several programs for 

, from Lyra Care for Teens to adoption assistance and new parent support, and a crisis concierge for families mourning the loss of a loved one.

While companies can learn from these and other innovative companies about structuring a satisfying employee experience, just as much care must be devoted to the EX-CX relationship specifically. It too is a living system of behaviors, values, programs and policies, much like the employer/employee relationship is, and if built to respond to vital cultural signals about what constitutes a satisfying employee experience, can supercharge an already engaged and motivated workforce to take great care of the company’s customers.

Ziba has devised—and managed for several companies—the following five steps for researching, measuring, supporting, and enhancing the EX-CX relationship:

Journey Alignment:

Voice of Employee (VoE) Programs:

Cross-Functional Teams:

Training and Development:

Recognition and Rewards:

As EX goes, so goes CX, affecting everything from brand reputation to resiliency to revenue. Poor customer experience is symptomatic of company cultural dysfunction on some level. A superb customer experience, or any major CX transformation effort, if it is to be sustained and scaled, should be powered by a dynamic program specifically designed for the vitally synergistic EX/CX relationship.

Ready to workshop your company's EX + CX transformation?

The EX-CX Relationship: Synergistic or Symptomatic?

Today’s Customer Experiences: A Sea of Sameness

The commoditization of Customer Experience (CX) is eroding emotional brand connection, engagement, and loyalty. As a result, both short-term performance and long-term business growth are increasingly at risk.

Commoditized CX is especially urgent for service organizations, where product differentiation is perceived as minimal, and the quality of customer experience often stands as the primary source of competitive advantage. Without meaningful CX differentiation, companies risk becoming interchangeable in the eyes of consumers, leading to lower loyalty and diminished brand equity.

Companies in eleven of the thirteen industries that research consultancy Forrester has measured for customer experience (CX) quality over the last seven years have 

A Forrester analyst ominously described the current CX landscape as one of "

 found that 58% of customers believe most brands' digital experiences have little to no impact on their purchase decisions. Nearly half of the respondents reported they could not distinguish between different brands' digital experiences, signaling a significant lack of differentiation. Because the low-hanging fruit of easy CX improvements has already been picked, executives will have to make significant investments to move the needle, something most are loathe to do.

The business case for investing in CX is clear. Companies that prioritize the customer experience report an approximately 80% higher revenue increase than those that do not. A Dimension Data 

 revealed that companies focused on improving CX benefited from:

Increased customer loyalty

Uplift in revenue 

Cost savings

Failing to differentiate on customer experience can lead to significantly slower top-line growth and margin compression, threatening market share and long-term viability.

Several interconnected factors are driving CX commoditization. There is an overemphasis on technology without human-centric design. This is often due to a shortage of expertise in designing human-centered experiences that effectively balances functional and emotional needs and aligns customer expectations with brand strategy. Many CX efforts narrowly focus on addressing functional needs such as ease-of-use and simplicity while neglecting the emotional, motivational, and contextual drivers of customer behavior.

A Branded Customer Experience Approach (BCX)

The path forward is to create authentically differentiated, meaningful customer experiences. A Branded Customer Experience (BCX) approach focuses on complete alignment of three elements: Experience Pilllars, Experience Principles, and Experience Practices.

1. Identify Your Brand’s Experience Pillars

Define 3–5 core experience pillars that articulate the emotional and functional value the brand will consistently deliver through all customer interactions. These pillars are rooted in your brand strategy, including purpose, positioning and promise, and your customers' deepest needs and wants.

There are hundreds of emotional motivators that drive consumer behavior. Below are some examples that drive significant customer value.

Pillar Name

Emotional / Functional Value

The next step is to bring the experience pillars down to earth by translating them into interaction principles. These provide clear direction for specifically how a brand should look, feel, and function across customer touchpoints.

 is a brand pillar, then the following interaction principles would be relevant:

 Capture and use customer preferences and history to personalize interactions.

 Gradually learn more about customers through each interaction rather than asking everything upfront

 Recognize where customers are in their journey and adjust messaging accordingly

American Express excels at personalized experiences. The brand offers concierge services and personalized offers based on spending patterns. USAA has built a very strong reputation through exceptional member service based on deep understanding of military families' unique needs. Le Labo's brand strategy centers on crafting a unique, personalized, and ritualistic experience around fragrance.

 Look for small opportunities to delight—unexpected kindness, thank-you notes, and little extras.


 Use language and tone that uplifts, even when solving problems.

 Leave customers feeling capable, informed, and supported, not dependent or frustrated.

Airbnb’s "Belong Anywhere" philosophy helps people feel welcomed and connected globally. Headspace makes meditation accessible and reduces anxiety around mental health. Charles Schwab takes an educational approach to investing that makes it feel approachable rather than intimidating. Sephora’s DNA is about delivering a curated, innovative and personalized prestige beauty experience, giving people the freedom to explore their beauty.

 experience practices that embody your interaction principles in memorable, authentic ways. These are a few key memorable moments that customers recognize as unique to your brand. 

DoubleTree by Hilton is famous for its welcome ritual. Upon check-in, guests are greeted with a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie—a small but memorable gesture that sets the tone for a warm, personalized stay. Trader Joe's delights customers with personal recommendations at checkout. Cashiers are encouraged to chat about and recommend products based on the customer’s selections, making the checkout process feel friendly and communal. Chewy, ranked #1 in the 

 Retail and Consumer Shipping Study for the last three years, is renowned for its handwritten Holiday Cards and Pet Sympathy Flowers. The online pet supply retailer sends customers handwritten cards for holidays and birthdays and occasionally flowers and condolences when a pet passes away.

What’s Your Branded Customer Experience (BCX)?

In an era when most customer experiences are converging toward unremarkable sameness, companies that fail to differentiate on experience risk being forgotten. Those who invest in creating authentically differentiated, meaningful experiences using a brand-driven, human-centered approach can build the emotional customer bonds that drive loyalty, advocacy, growth, and resilience. Unforgettable, signature moments are the surest indicator a company has made its Brand Pillars, Principles, and Practices a kind of Operating System, powered by a strong employee experience (EX) culture, which we will explore further in our next blog.


We’d love to discuss how to authentically differentiate your customer experience. Contact us to start the conversation.

Harmonizing Your Brand's CX Principles, Pillars, and Practices

From Commodity to Leadership: Brand as a CX Differentiator

Innovation Depends Upon Connecting Personas to People

The next era of human-centered innovation belongs to those who can connect empathy with business intelligence. AI might be the savior.

I've spent two decades watching teams chase insight-driven innovation—only to hit a wall when it's time to prove the business case. The pattern is painfully familiar: we segment people by their beliefs, lifestyles, or aspirations, give them names like "Conscious Explorers" or "Status Seekers," and build bold concepts around their unmet needs. The insights are rich. The ideas are powerful. The research is penetrating. Then someone asks the question: How big is this market? And suddenly… the room goes quiet.

This is the fatal flaw in how most companies approach understanding customers in an effort to move forward with confidence. Personas build empathy and inform and inspire creative teams, but they can't quantify opportunity. They don't always tie back to real, measurable populations-- and don't help teams model market potential.

Promising ideas often get shelved because there is no way to justify the investment. The innovations feel right, test well, but go nowhere because they can't be justified beyond the concept stage. Some innovations are launched but never reach their potential. Not because the idea was wrong, but because there aren’t enough customers, or the marketing team can't translate the personas into real-world target segments they can find and influence. Either way, the impact is the same: great ideas that fail to scale.

An AI-Powered Bridge Between Qualitative and Quantitative

Breakthrough innovation begins with human insight, but it succeeds when we can connect that insight to real-world relevance and reach. What innovation teams truly need is a way to translate small-sample, qualitatively derived personas into scalable, data-driven opportunities. A way to connect who they are with where they are, how many of them exist, and how to reach them. Until recently, the leap from qualitative insight to measurable business impact was primarily a matter of guesswork or extensive, time-consuming segmentation studies. But AI is changing that.

Today, we can leverage the rich attitudinal insights contained in personas and utilize machine learning to map them to real-world populations, utilizing data from social behavior, media habits, mobility, and purchasing patterns. AI can bridge the gap between what people care about and how many of them exist, turning insights into market strategy.

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