October 10, 2025
This Week in CX: From Broken CX to Human-Centered Experiences
Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news.
This week, we explored CX and culture, covering Ian Fishwick’s leadership lessons, broken CX in organisations, trust in search, human-focused insurance with LV’s Chloe Stuttard, and AI project challenges spotlighted by HubSpot.
We are also discussing updates from the Financial Times, Snapchat and more.
Key news
- The European Commission plans to give the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) supervision of cryptocurrency firms, stock exchanges and clearing houses, the Financial Times reports. Until now, national authorities have overseen some financial market sectors. The changes aim to ensure the European capital market’s global competitiveness, according to Esma chair Verena Ross. However, the plans have faced backlash from countries like Malta and Luxembourg, due to concerns about the increased oversight undermining crypto and financial hubs.
- Don’t have a personal assistant to organise your travel? ChatGPT can now make travel recommendations all the way from hotel stays to taxi rides to road trip playlists. OpenAI has struck partnerships with a number of companies including Spotify, Uber and Booking, whose apps will be integrated into its chatbot, the company announced on its annual DevDay this week. The new functionality will allow users to access third-party apps directly through ChatGPT, which will also suggest appropriate apps in chats. As Wired notes, the move could be an important step towards developing “a kind of chat-driven operating system”.
- Snapchat is facing user backlash after announcing plans to charge people who have more than 5GB of shared videos and pictures stored in its Memories feature, the BBC reports. The change, announced last month as part of a global rollout, means users will need to pay for additional cloud storage or download their archives. This has led to a wave of negative reviews on Apple’s and Google’s app stores, with one petition calling the fee a “memory tax”. Snap has offered 12 months of temporary storage for such users, saying only a small number will be affected.
CXM news stories
Here’s the full news stories that CXM have reported on in the past week. Learn all about the latest news around broken CX, the importance of a good company culture, the lack of consumer trust in their first search, and more.
Customers Want Self-Service That Actually Serves Them
Self-service tools were meant to make life easier — offering speed, simplicity, and independence. But for many customers, the promise has fallen short. Instead of feeling empowered, they often feel like they’re doing the company’s work. Liferay, a global leader in Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), uncovered this growing frustration in its 2025 Digital Self-Service Report. The research shows that 73% of customers have walked away from a purchase because the process was simply too frustrating, revealing a costly gap between companies’ digital investments and the experiences they actually deliver.
The survey captured insights from 1,000 U.S. adults about their online journeys – how they navigate digital tasks, what makes them abandon them, and what would rebuild trust in self-service experiences.
“People remember how a journey ends,” said Bryan Cheung, CMO at Liferay. “At the last step, what matters is ease and a clear outcome. When customers get a receipt or confirmation and know what happens next, the experience ends in confidence instead of doubt. Retention is the compound effect of endings like that, repeated across days and channels. Make the digital journey unmistakably clear and dependable, and you stop pushing people away and start earning their trust.”
The findings are a wake-up call for every organisation relying on digital channels. Nearly seven in ten respondents (68%) said they’ve abandoned an online task altogether, and almost three-quarters (73%) skipped a purchase due to an irritating process. A striking 82% said they often feel like they’re doing work that used to be handled by company staff. Frustration has become the norm: 64% described feeling frustrated, and 39% said they were outright exhausted after interacting with self-service systems. Even among those who consider themselves tech-savvy (67%), confusion and overwhelm remain common.
Which Industries Suffer the Most?
The burden is especially heavy in industries with complex, compliance-driven processes. Customers in healthcare (48%), government services (37%), insurance (32%), and banking (32%) reported the highest levels of frustration and digital fatigue. Despite the challenges, consumers are clear about what they want: simplicity, transparency, and support. More than half said that clear instructions (57%) and straightforward design (54%) would make self-service easier. Others highlighted the importance of timely help (42%) and reliability (34%) to build confidence and trust.
Customers don’t mind doing their part, but they expect technology to do the heavy lifting. A smooth, reliable, and guided digital journey makes all the difference between abandonment and completion. When well designed, self-service delivers the control customers crave and the efficiency companies need.
