59 Percent Mature — Says Who? Why CX Maturity Is Rising While Customer Experience Is Falling

Swiss companies assess their customer experience as more mature than ever: 59 percent. The Swiss CEX Study by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and nexa Consulting measures the level of maturity based on 14 criteria — up from 53 percent last year to 59, a new record high in its ninth edition. Almost 60 percent of respondents say their customer experience has improved over the past year.

Over the same period, Forrester surveyed over 275,000 customers across 469 brands in 13 countries. The result of the CX Index 2025: perceived customer experience in North America hit a new all-time low — declining for the fourth consecutive time. In the US, 25 percent of brands worsened, while 7 percent improved.

Two studies, two directions. And both are right.

The difference lies not in the markets, but in who was asked. The 59 percent is a self-assessment by companies. The all-time low is the verdict of customers. Among the reasons for the decline, Forrester explicitly cites a persistent gap between executive leadership’s view of their CX quality and customer perception — as well as disappointing implementations of potentially game-changing technology, including AI.

That is the real news behind the 59 percent. Not that it is wrong, but that it comes from the side that knows the least about how the experience actually feels.

The good news first

I don't want to downplay the Swiss figure. Six percentage points in a single year is significant, and the direction has been right across both parts of the country since 2023. CX has arrived in executive boardrooms — the study shows that customer satisfaction, loyalty, and brand are the three most frequently cited investment targets for 2026, with roughly half of companies investing stably and 35 percent investing more.

And AI is no longer just a pilot topic. Chatbots are deployed at around 40 percent of companies — twice as many as in 2024. Prof. Dr. Michael Grund from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts speaks of remarkable progress in AI over the past two years.

Something else in the study is remarkable, and it gets lost in the headlines: when asked about their most important investment areas, companies put employee training in first place. Only then come AI initiatives, followed by process optimization. Anyone reading this sees organizations that have understood that technology is not the bottleneck.

The uncomfortable news

59 percent also means: over 40 percent of the journey lies ahead. And right now, many are layering AI on top — onto processes that do not yet have the maturity they need.

What I see time and again in projects aligns with what Forrester cites as the reasons for declining customer experiences:

• A chatbot goes live quickly. Whether it actually helps depends on the knowledge base, clean customer data, and the handoff to the contact center — or to an advisor’s calendar. None of those reside inside the chatbot.
• AI speeds up good processes. Unfortunately, bad ones too. A process that dumps customers into a hold queue after three questions does so more efficiently with AI — not less often.
• The real work is rarely in the technology. It lies in data, clear accountabilities, and measurability. Three things no vendor delivers because they belong to the company.

Here lies the explanation for the gap between the two studies. A company introducing a chatbot measurably fulfills more of the 14 maturity criteria — “AI in use,” “digital channels,” “interaction & intelligence.” The maturity level increases. The customer who receives a phone number at the end of the dialogue notices none of this. Their experience declines. Both are measured correctly. They are simply two different things.

Where the transitions are — and why the experience is created there

A customer experience does not consist of channels. It consists of transitions between channels. The customer reads on the website, asks in the chat, calls, visits the branch, receives an email. At each of these transitions, it is decided whether they feel understood or are starting from scratch.

And at these exact transitions, the three foundations are most visible:

The right column is what customers experience and evaluate in surveys like the CX Index. The left column is what a maturity model assesses. The work lies in between.

The most expensive transition

Among all transitions, there is one that has the strongest impact on experience and revenue: the one from the digital channel to a human being. The customer has read, asked, compared — and now wants to speak with someone. For them, this is the most important moment of the entire journey. For most organizations, it is the least deliberately designed.

What typically happens there: a contact form, a callback promise, a phone number with business hours. The customer who just articulated their intent in the chatbot loses it during the handoff — and with it, the company loses the deal that the entire journey was built to achieve.

An organization with a high level of maturity has a chatbot, a CRM, a contact center, and a team of advisors at this stage. All four meet criteria. What is missing is the piece in between: turning the intent in the chat into a confirmed appointment with the right expert, context in hand, at a time chosen by the customer. This is not a fifth system. This is the connection between the four existing ones — and it is what the customer would experience as "mature."

Maturity is not shown by how many channels a company operates. It is shown by whether the customer has to start from scratch when switching between them.

The role of the CRM — and its limit

In its CRM Software Landscape Report, Forrester ranks improving customer experience among the top priorities; in the Priorities Survey 2025, 60 percent of surveyed business and technology leaders from the private sector cite CX as one of their top priorities for the coming twelve months. The logic behind this is sound: A great experience does not arise in marketing, sales, or service alone, but where data, processes, and interactions work together — and the CRM is the place where this view comes together.

However: The CRM stores what happened. It does not design what happens next. A single view of the customer is of little use if it only becomes available to the advisor during the conversation — after the customer has already waited three days for a callback. The decisive question for a CRM is therefore not how well it manages data, but whether it designs the transition to the human being so that the data arrives where the experience is created: at the confirmed appointment, prepared, at the right time.

The next percentage points

My premise: The next few percentage points aren't won with even more tools, but with the underlying foundation. And that foundation can be tested with three questions that no study can answer — only your own organization:

Anyone who can answer these three questions with yes has a maturity level that customers would confirm as well. Anyone who can't answer them probably still claims 59 percent — and has a Forrester curve that continues to fall.

What bothers me about the debate

The question "What holds back the next maturity step the most — data, organization, or budget?" is often asked, and the answer is almost always the same: not the budget. The study shows companies that want to invest and prioritize training over technology. There is no lack of resources. What's missing is the willingness to measure maturity where it gets uncomfortable: with the customer, at the handoff, in the drop-off rate.

A maturity level of 59 percent is a reason to keep going. It is not a reason to rely on the number. The only maturity measurement that counts is done by the customer — every time they switch from one channel to the next and either move forward or start from scratch.

Takeaway

Swiss companies estimate their CX maturity at 59 percent, while customers rate their experiences worse for the fourth consecutive year according to Forrester — and Forrester explicitly points to the gap between executive view and customer perception as the cause. Maturity measures what a company has; experience happens at the transitions between channels, especially the most expensive one: from digital dialogue to human interaction. That's where it becomes clear whether data, accountabilities, and measurability hold up. The next percentage points won't come from yet another tool, but from three questions: Does the person taking over know what happened before? Who owns the metric "Inquiry → Appointment"? Do you know the drop-off rate at every transition?