The CX Blind Spot: Why Technology Leaders Must Fix EX First

Leaders across industries are pouring millions into digital customer experience (CX) solutions — from omnichannel platforms and AI chatbots to advanced analytics tools — all in pursuit of exceeding expectations, fostering loyalty and accelerating growth. 

Yet despite these investments, many CX initiatives fail to deliver lasting impact. In 2025, research shows that CX rankings declined for 25% of U.S. brands, remained unchanged for 68% and improved for only 7%.

Another global executive survey found that while 47% of leaders say CX is extremely important to business success, just 17% believe their organizations are extremely effective at delivering it — underscoring a widespread execution gap.

Why is it that even as organizations embrace CX as a top priority and dedicate substantial budgets to it, the payoff remains elusive?

The answer is often hiding in plain sight: employee experience (EX). 

When employees wrestle with fragmented systems, slow devices or broken workflows, customers feel it in very tangible ways — a patient waiting longer for results, a banking client frustrated by redundant verification steps, a gamer annoyed by lagging response times or a family stuck in a slow drive-thru line. 

When EX is overlooked or skimmed over, even the most sophisticated CX strategies struggle to gain traction. To close this blind spot, technology leaders must treat EX and CX as a single, connected system — where empowering employees is the first step to delighting customers.

Where experience breaks down

The disconnect between EX and CX isn't usually about a lack of effort, but small misalignments that quietly undermine progress.

Silos are often the first sign. EX and CX teams may spot the same problems, but without a shared vision or authority, issues persist. For example, a CX leader might see staff and customers frustrated by a slow point-of-sale system, but without control over IT budgets, the problem lingers.

Fragmented technology and employee workflows add to the challenge. When employees must navigate a patchwork of legacy systems and manual processes, what should be a simple five-step process can balloon into 20 tedious steps due to workarounds. These hidden variations slow innovation, create inconsistency and introduce errors that ripple out to customers.

Measurement and incentives can also get in the way. CX and EX leaders are often evaluated on separate, narrowly defined targets — such as customer satisfaction for CX leaders and operational efficiency or uptime for EX leaders — not the end-to-end quality of a digital experience. So, a contact center might hit its technical goals, yet still provide a poor experience for employees and customers, as agents clicking through multiple screens to get the information they need while customers wait on the line.

Finally, the EX-CX connection falters when leaders don't understand the nuances of their various workforce personas and miss subtle but significant sources of friction that accumulate over time, widening their blind spot. 

The good news is that with the right mindset and a few strategic shifts, organizations can begin connecting EX and CX in ways that drive not just better experiences, but better business outcomes. 

Closing the gap

Connecting EX and CX goes beyond improved customer service; it's about driving innovation, agility and business growth. 

When employees are equipped with the right tools, clear workflows and a shared sense of purpose, they don't just serve customers more effectively — they help the business move forward faster. Ideas surface more quickly. Decisions are made with greater confidence. Teams collaborate across silos. And the organization becomes more resilient and competitive.

According to Great Place to Work®, organizations that empower employees to innovate and contribute ideas see 5.5 times greater revenue growth than their peers.

So how do you begin to close the gap?

Here are four practical approaches drawn from our work with clients:

1. Create "combined arms" teams

Pair product managers from the business and technology sides to work in lockstep. This method ensures shared goals, joint incentives, and a unified view of employee and customer needs. It's also especially effective for breaking down silos and accelerating cross-functional execution. 

For example, one global retailer struggled to improve its tipping feature for credit card and mobile app transactions — not because it was technically complex, but because it required coordination across five different departments. Once a combined arms team was formed and incentives were aligned, the solution was implemented within six months.

2. Embrace a product mindset

Think of internal tools and systems the same way you do a customer-facing experience. That means applying the same level of care to employee platforms as customer ones, whether it's by conducting user research, prioritizing intuitive and human-centered design, and assigning end-to-end ownership. 

One way we help organizations do this is through dynamic persona modeling, which uncovers how different employee types actually work, what tools they use and where friction lives. By designing around real behaviors and needs, teams can build experiences that feel natural, reduce complexity and drive faster adoption.

3. Link EX metrics to CX outcomes and business goals

Move beyond isolated dashboards and start mapping EX metrics — like application responsiveness, device performance and time-to-resolution — to customer satisfaction, loyalty and even revenue growth. When EX and CX data are visualized together, it becomes easier to identify friction points, prove ROI and prioritize investments that drive performance.

If you haven't already defined a comprehensive digital employee experience strategy, implementing digital experience monitoring (DEM) is a critical first step. DEM provides real-time visibility into how digital tools impact employee productivity and satisfaction by combining analytics, sentiment data and automated remediation. Without this baseline, it's nearly impossible to connect EX improvements to CX outcomes or broader business goals. For example, when DEM detects app latency or login failures slowing call center agents, IT can address those issues before customers ever feel the impact. DEM tools help quantify the EX and give leaders the insight they need to justify and prioritize experience-driven investments.

4. Rally around AI initiatives

AI can feel like an added layer of complexity, but it's actually a powerful opportunity to bring EX and CX teams together. Start by piloting workforce AI initiatives internally, empowering employees with intelligent assistants, workflow automation or predictive insights. This controlled environment allows teams to learn, iterate and build maturity before rolling out AI-powered customer experiences, like personalization or loyalty programs.

WWT's Atom Ai, the generative AI digital assistant built into wwt.com, is a prime example. Initially developed to enhance employee productivity and spark innovation, Atom Ai was first tested internally, giving employees the chance to explore its capabilities, report issues and shape improvements. This internal rollout and enterprise-wide adoption helped build confidence in the tool's performance and value before extending access to customers and partners.

When EX and CX teams collaborate on AI initiatives, they build shared understanding, reduce risk and accelerate impact.

What's possible when you connect EX and CX 

When EX and CX are in sync, the results are measurable, scalable and visible across industries and workforce personas. 

Here are just a few ways we've seen the EX-CX connection come to life:

Retail

We partnered with Jack in the Box to modernize its point-of-sale (POS) system, a cornerstone of both the associate and guest experience. The new POS platform unified data and workflows across thousands of locations, improving transaction speed, simplifying menu management and enabling richer insights for operations leaders. Frontline employees now spend less time navigating outdated tools and more time engaging customers, delivering higher satisfaction on both sides of the counter.

Healthcare

In healthcare, every second counts. We helped a specialty healthcare provider deploy Glean, an enterprise search and AI knowledge platform, to break down data silos and surface critical information instantly. Clinicians and staff now find what they need faster, reducing administrative burden and allowing more time for patients. The result is a smoother EX that directly translates into better patient care, faster response times and improved outcomes for patients.

Construction

At Clayco, we developed and executed a holistic strategy to improve collaboration between managers, engineers, architects, on-site workers and customers. By unifying the firm's collaboration suite from nine videoconferencing platforms to one and modernizing its infrastructure, Clayco empowered its employees to innovate faster, maintain client project schedules and delivery timelines, and keep clients engaged in every step of a project.

Government 

A city government agency's contact center was struggling with disjointed legacy systems and limited communication channels. Residents were frequently rerouted across departments and agents lacked visibility into prior interactions, creating frustration on both sides. We partnered with the agency to implement an omnichannel strategy and leverage AI-powered virtual assistants to improve both the agent workflow and the resident experience. The result was faster resolution times, fewer call transfers and a more connected CX across all departments. 

Technology

At WWT, our RFP Assistant, an advanced AI-powered tool developed internally to automate and streamline the human-led process of responding to requests for proposals, has transformed both EX and CX. By leveraging large language models (LLMs), RFP Assistant efficiently summarizes and presents information, extracts key requirements and deadlines, and generates initial draft responses from a repository of previous content. This allows our team to reduce proposal creation from days to hours, in some cases, and focus more on strategy, storytelling and customer relationships. For customers, this means more tailored, timely submissions with well-prepared responses, which has led to higher satisfaction.

While these are just a few examples of connecting EX and CX, the pattern is consistent: when employees have seamless tools, clear workflows, the agency to innovate and intelligent support, customers feel the difference in speed, quality and experience.

Turn insight into action

Bringing EX and CX together requires rethinking how work happens and how value is delivered. For many organizations, this won't happen overnight. The data, tools and processes that shape digital experiences often span multiple departments, systems and partners.

The first step is simple: start mapping where EX meets CX. This gives you a clear view of where you can build and strengthen those connection opportunities. Only then can you begin to realize tangible ROI: smoother operations, more engaged employees, and customer experiences that truly drive loyalty and growth.

By taking these steps, leaders can turn insight into action and create a culture where employees and customers thrive.