Isabelle Zdatny: CX leaders need to escape ‘AI pilot purgatory’

Consumers don’t just want great customer support—they expect it. And 20% of global trendsetting companies are meeting or exceeding those expectations by deploying AI strategically to provide superfast, seamless, 24/7 omnichannel support, according to Freshworks’ latest CX Benchmark Report.

But the majority of organizations are falling short, according to the Qualtrics XM Institute’s latest “The State of Customer Experience Management 2025” report. Even though 88% of companies are implementing AI in one or more of their customer support business functions, most remain trapped in early stages of maturity with fragmented efforts, limited budget, and low executive buy-in.

Why the disconnect and, more importantly, how can companies lagging behind catch up with the leaders? In a recent interview, Isabelle Zdatny, head of Thought Leadership and Experience Management at Qualtrics XM Institute, shared key findings from the report and explained what they mean for CX leaders striving to meet customers’ ever-rising expectations. 

Qualtrics’ report shows that 65% of organizations are still in the early stages of CX maturity. What’s holding them from advancing further?

Isabelle Zdatny: It’s a reflection of how organizations are currently developing their customer experience efforts. They’re investing in isolated CX improvements and fragmented activities where different departments optimize the touchpoints they individually own, but they’re not yet looking across systems or entire customer journeys.

The big leap happens when you advance to systematic coordination—a unified CX platform, centralized teams with cross-functional responsibilities, journey-centric thinking, and executive support. But to make that jump, you need to conceive of customer experience not as a voice-of-customer program or survey responsibility, but as a systematic organizational discipline with the same rigor you’d put around finance or operations.

The data suggests a disconnect between executive support and resource allocation. Is that your takeaway?

That’s exactly right. Even though we found that 77% of executives say CX is a top priority, and 81% say it’s become even more important in the past year, that’s not translating to resources and attention for CX teams.

Why aren’t leaders putting the right resources behind backing CX improvement?

I think this reflects a fundamental misconception about what customer experience actually is. CX professionals are caught in a vicious cycle where executives are only giving them remit to collect insights, not to implement substantive initiatives. But the way you create value is by taking action. If CX teams don’t have authority to act on insights or equip employees across the organization with the motivation, authority, and skills to take action, there’s no mechanism for them to create value.

Only 17% of CX practitioners say they can point to monetary benefits from CX spending. Why is it so hard to determine the ROI of customer experience investments?

There are two interconnected problems here. First, there’s that limited authority to drive actions I mentioned. Second, it’s inherently difficult to attribute business outcomes to CX improvements.

Let’s say you can link higher customer satisfaction to higher retention rates. Great—but marketing, sales, and product teams are also pointing to that same stat claiming they drove it. CX professionals struggle to prove their specific efforts caused those outcomes.

Additionally, many CX teams aren’t great at tracking the business metrics that the rest of the organization actually cares about. They’re speaking in terms of NPS, CSAT, and effort scores, but that language doesn’t resonate with other departments.

Your report shows 88% of organizations are implementing AI, but mostly in preliminary pilots and not at scale. Why aren’t they further along?

While the vast majority have AI initiatives underway, they remain isolated and fragmented. Only about 12% to 14% have an organization-wide AI strategy with centralized ownership. Without that, companies get stuck in what we call “pilot purgatory”—very expensive, disconnected pilots happening in different departments. For AI to deliver on its promise, companies need fundamental changes to IT infrastructure and strategy that are outside any CX professional’s purview. CX teams are often passengers along for the ride rather than having full control over AI use cases they can implement.

What are your key recommendations for CX leaders looking to advance their programs and deliver better customer experiences?

Companies are already collecting lots of customer experience data, but, especially in early maturity stages, CX leaders probably aren’t responsible for collecting it across departments such as sales and marketing. Start with an audit of all of the CX data that is being gathered across your organization. Hunt it down where it lives and use it to identify low-hanging fruit—obvious pain points you can tackle.

To help prioritize these pain points, I recommend starting with “friends” and pushing on open doors. There are people who inherently understand that better experiences drive business outcomes. Work with them to understand and fix the problem, and then use that to develop a compelling business case, and build momentum. One mistake I see is trying to listen everywhere at once. Instead, be thoughtful about where you’re capturing data and focus on closing the loop with actions rather than lots of listening with no follow-through.