Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for Week of October 20, 2025

Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comments about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

CX Trends in 2026: What to Expect and How to Prepare by Melanie Mingas

(CX Network) Recent years have seen CX become essential to business operations as organizations realize that a happy customer is the key to financial success, staff retention and a stronger market share.

My Comment: We still have about two and a half months to go before year’s end, and the predictions and trends articles are going to start coming out. This is one of the first I’ve read, and there are some excellent trends to consider. Yes, AI continues to grow in capability, but the trend I really like seeing is how live/human agents will still be what drives customer support. The article’s example illustrates a company’s attempt to implement a chatbot that claimed to handle the workload of 700 human agents. The CEO said he hadn’t hired a new employee in a year, but less than a year later, he was hiring and posting that his company would become “the best at offering a human to speak to.”

Loyalty Isn’t Automated: Why Human Connection Still Defines Retail CX by Robert Padron

(Total Retail) In a world where switching costs are low and alternatives are just a click away, even established retailers can lose loyal customers overnight. Customers don’t remember how quickly a bot processed their order; they remember how a brand treated them when something went wrong. That’s why human connection has become the true driver of loyalty.

My Comment: You can’t automate customer loyalty! In other words, you can’t take the human out of the customer experience. (See article one in this week’s roundup.) As AI and digital experiences become more capable, it doesn’t mean it’s good enough to eliminate the human-to-human connection, where relationships that foster loyalty are born and grow.

Best Buy CEO: ‘Our Focus Is Manically on the Customer’ by Kristen Doerer

(CX Dive) Corrie Barry says keeping the customer at the center is key to a resilient company that can keep up with changing technology and consumer behavior.

My Comment: It’s time to learn from another recognizable brand’s leader, and in this case, it’s Corrie Barry, CEO of Best Buy. This article gives you insight into how a successful retailer is combating tariffs, rising prices, and a difficult economy by keeping, as the title of the article implies, an obsessive (manically) focus on the customer.

How To Manage Painful Customer Experiences by Chip Bell

(Forbes) All customer service has its “not so fun” parts. Stand in your customers’ shoes and consider what would soothe anxious feelings. Be a strong steward of your customers’ emotional bank accounts by depositing resourcefulness, joy, patience, and generosity. When you are forced to make a withdrawal because of unforeseen circumstances, it will leave customers with a balance to sustain their loyalty.

My Comment: Chip Bell is a friend and fellow customer service/CX expert. I always enjoy his articles, as they are usually filled with easy-to-relate-to examples. In this excellent article, he shares how some brands have managed bad customer experiences. The examples he uses should be fuel for a brainstorm on how your organization can do the same in bad or “painful” situations.

8 Tips on How Businesses Can Deliver Great Customer Experience by Ernestina Serwaa Asante

(GhanaWeb) Experts say customer service isn’t just about smiling and apologising when things go wrong; it’s about being present, responsive, and accountable. If there’s a delay, communicate, because transparency builds trust, while silence breaks it.

My Comment: Let’s wrap up this week’s Top Five article with a great list of some of the basics of customer service and experience. While there may not be anything new in the list, it’s a perfect reminder to keep your eye on the essentials of customer service. Simple, yet important, is how I describe the strategies and tactics shared in this article.

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.