Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for Week of July 6, 2026

Every week, I read dozens of articles on customer service and customer experience from a wide range of sources. Below are my top five picks from last week, along with my takeaways. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

Group 1 CEO: ‘We Treat Customer Experience as a Competitive Differentiator’ by Andy Marks

(Wall Street Journal) In customer-facing industries, it’s no secret that customer experience matters. The harder question is how to turn it into a competitive advantage.

My Comment: We open this week’s Top Five Roundup with an interview with Daryl Kenningham, CEO of Group 1 Automotive, a Houston-based network of auto dealerships throughout the US and England. In the automotive industry, as in many industries, everyone sells similar products at similar price points. Kenningham says that Group 1’s differentiator is “reducing friction, building trust, and especially, getting the service experience right.” This is a lesson for every type of business.

A CX Culture Is Just Marketing if There’s No Buy-in, Experts Say by Bryan Wassel

(CX Dive) Organizations that confuse slogans for values or fail to punish bad behavior can see their CX efforts fall short, leaders said at a CCW Las Vegas panel.

My Comment: The title of this article made me think of the phrase, “Over promise and under deliver.” Some companies promise a good service experience, and then they fall short. Their slogans and advertising don’t reflect their culture. Instead, they reflect the creativity of the marketing department and not the reality of the customer experience. A CX culture starts at the top with leadership and is pushed throughout the organization. I’ve written many times berfore, “What’s happening on the inside of a company is felt by customers on the outside.” The culture drives the CX!

A Return to Two-Pizza Culture by All Things Distributed

(All Things Distributed) When I joined Amazon, Jeff had an idea: no team should be so large that it couldn’t be fed by two pizzas. In those early days, some teams were so small that one pizza would’ve been enough to get the job done. But it was never really about feeding hungry engineers. We could’ve just as easily said a “six sandwich team”, but sandwiches don’t evoke the same imagery as pizza. Pizza is what you order when you and your peers are crowded around the whiteboard late into the evening.

My Comment: Two reasons I enjoyed this article. First, it was by Dr. Werner Vogels, the Chief Technology Officer at Amazon, who is in charge of driving Amazon’s customer-centric technology vision. Second, Jeff Bezos’s “Two-Pizza Culture” intrigued me. Small teams move faster than large ones. Larger committees take longer to make decisions. In the CX world, the longer you take to make decisions, the more customers you lose along the way.

Customer Service Is Becoming a Boardroom Priority — and AI Is Accelerating the Shift by MarketScale Newsroom

(MarketScale) Customer service is increasingly viewed as a key driver of revenue rather than just a cost center. This shift is being influenced by advancements in AI, empathy research, and behavioral science. Executives are prioritizing customer service strategies to enhance company performance.

My Comment: For years, I’ve written, “Customer service is not a department. It’s a philosophy.” While I’ve stayed true to that statement, over the years, I’ve added that it is also a strategy, and when leadership supports this idea, magic can happen. Customers and employees are happier. Revenue and profits increase. That makes the leaders in the boardroom pay attention.

CX Isn’t in Crisis. It’s Having Its Finest Hour by Sue Duris

(CX Network) Major transformations SaaS are making it look like CX is being absorbed, but as Sue Duris writes, it’s moving to where it should have always been

My Comment: We wrap up this week’s roundup with an inspiring article. For those who believe customer service and CX are getting worse, this author feels we are in our “finest hour.” AI and technology are shaking up the CX world, and that’s led to some rocky roads, but in the end, we’ll all be better for it. Yes, the best is yet to come!

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.