Being available online and having a solid digital presence is something your customers today fully expect:
- 99% of customers look for reviews when they shop online.
- 85% are hesitant to consider a product without online reviews.
- 80% of consumers are likely to choose a business that replies to all reviews.
- 75% of online customers are concerned about fakes.
With so many options online and different platforms to visit, you need more than a simple digital presence. You need a strategy in place that orchestrates journeys across channels, data platforms, and intelligent automation. Your tools need to inform your team so experiences aren’t siloed and customers feel heard.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that CXt trends for 2026 are about how we can unlock more measurable value from our technology investments. The focus is on connecting the journeys across every customer touchpoint, while elevating the often-undervalued employee experience that powers those interactions. With this in place, companies can deliver measurable outcomes through a unified CX strategy.
What Is Total Experience?
Total Experience (TX) is a strategy that brings together multiple aspects of how people interact with a business into one unified approach. Instead of focusing only on customer experience (CX), TX connects Customer Experience (CX), Employee Experience (EX), User Experience (UX), Digital Experience (DX), and Multichannel Experience (MX) so that every interaction works together seamlessly. The goal is to ensure that the technology customers use, the tools employees rely on, and the digital channels that support the journey are aligned. When these elements work together, organizations can deliver smoother interactions, faster problem resolution, and more consistent experiences across every touchpoint.
Many organizations have made significant progress in digital and UX initiatives. However, these investments often remain fragmented across teams, technologies, and channels. This requires a more integrated total CX strategy that connects customer, employee, digital, and marketing experiences into a unified approach.
With 80% of businesses becoming more focused on financials and 55% reducing budgets for new programs This might feel like the familiar “let’s do more with less” scenario. But we’ve got good news — it’s not that at all. It’s doing more in a way that supports a holistic experience for everyone involved — from your team to your prospects and customers.
You’ve been putting everything into position from an infrastructure and technology standpoint. Now you need to connect the dots on all those different launches and deployments. The model we created to connect these initiatives and turn individual improvements into measurable end-to-end outcomes is what we call the Total Experience Formula: TX = CX+EX+MX+DX+UX
Total Experience is a unified and transformative end-to-end experience model that takes into account every touchpoint across your brand, and all stakeholders involved – customers, employees, and users across all digital channels and platforms.
Why Is Committing to Total CX Critical for Multichannel Customer Support and Employee Experiences?
Your customers no longer interact with brands through a single touchpoint. They move between voice, chat, mobile apps, email, and self-service platforms within the same journey, and they expect every interaction to feel connected and consistent. A Total CX strategy aligns multichannel customer service, employee experience, and digital tools so agents have the context, data, and technology they need to respond quickly and accurately.
The winners of 2026 and beyond will shift their focus to a 10-thousand-foot, panoramic view and a commitment to total CX that understands how multiple channels are intersecting in the customer journey. They will map and optimize the employee experience, and bring cohesion to the end-to-end CX tech stack.
Most brands face the challenge of being hyper-focused on Digital Experience (DX) and User Experience (UX) because they are the most visible and clearly connected to revenue. And it’s one of the reasons 89% of CX leaders feeling they “excel” in at least one customer touchpoint (page 37). But that limited focus is hurting the organization when 42% of consumers say the #1 most frustrating aspect of resolving a customer care issue is “difficulty in reaching a live person” (page 82). There is a clear disconnect between a truly holistic (or TX) approach and a customer support strategy that hyper-focuses on only one tool or touchpoint.
What Leverage Can Total Experience Provide?
The TX Formula can help you make sense of that imbalance. Businesses have spent the past three years pulling the DX and UX levers hard. That means two levers have been undermined, Multichannel Experience (MX) and Employee Experience (EX).
How can you effectively implement MX and EX into your Total Experience strategy? Here are three key points to follow:
- Don’t overlook the human factor – your employee experience matters
89% agree that customer care agents need to be “very passionate about the brands they represent” (page 85) and 44% of consumers “prefer to speak to someone” (page 81).2. Value your team and make sure they feel supported by the customer support tools you offer. - Multichannel strategy needs to be a priority
39% have no cross-channel initiatives started, which is up from 35% a year ago (page 42)3. This means you aren’t providing a cohesive brand experience for your audience, which makes you look either nonexistent or out of touch. - The end-to-end CX Tech Stack needs to be mapped to your current omnichannel strategy
Only 31% are satisfied with their CX tech stack (page 64) and “Legacy systems, processes and tools” were the #1 challenge for CX operations (page 47). It’s important to get the right tools in place because not all software (or automation tools) are worth having. Choose things that simplify and enhance your team’s workflows.
Another way to look at the problem statement is that great DX and UX can result in a myopic focus on perfecting very specific customer journey touchpoints. A Total Experience vision will get you out of the weeds. When you break down your operations in this model, it becomes easier to see how total CX is only possible when interdependent investments are scaled, refined, or realigned to positively impact the customer
Start Seeing the “Big Picture” for Your End-To-End Brand Experience
CX leaders are more confident than ever in how they’re succeeding in individual customer touchpoints and channels. We consistently find that the “big picture” is where CX leaders are struggling:
- EX – Employee Experience is an unmapped and untapped opportunity
We see that 24% of CX leaders “don’t know” if agents trained in a WFH setting perform better than or equal to in-center trained agents. It’s a safe bet there’s much about the experience of their employees they don’t know. When our clients first come to us, we consistently find it to be an opportunity to deliver a transformational solution. We have invested significantly in mapping the end-to-end employee experience to ensure our employees are engaged, empowered to be successful, and highly motivated to deliver the best outcomes for our clients. - DX and UX – An influx of new platforms requires more holistic visibility
Digital investments are paying off, but teams still struggle to provide a consistent experience across multiple channels. The data shows us that while 89% of CX leaders feel they “excel” in at least one customer touchpoint, only 28% believe they do a good job providing a seamless, consistent, easy experience when customers transition between different channels and solutions. - MX – Multichannel needs greater visibility to help drive brand consistency
You know customers are “channel hopping” or “channel transitioning” more than ever, but very few CX leaders have clear visibility into how the increasingly multi-channel experience impacts customers. Only 38% of CX leaders are measuring across all channels (page 34). Similarly, 78% are not comparing single-channel journeys to multi-channel journeys, and that number hasn’t moved since 2021. That’s a major blind spot. 39% still don’t have any MX initiatives in place.
Differentiating on Employee Experience
At ACT, we believe that the employee experience is one of the most untapped opportunities to impact customer experience. We are 100% employee owned, which means all employees have a path to owning shares in our company. Employee ownership means our employees’ motivation is aligned to our clients’ success. We are one of less than 7,000 employee owned companies (ESOPs) in the world – none of our competitors offer this unique differentiator.
We have mapped every touchpoint of the employee experience, set high performance standards and put measurements in place to ensure that we are meeting those expectations.
By delivering an outstanding employee experience, we not only achieve extraordinary retention KPIs, we also ensure that our agents are personally motivated to build value for our customers.
Don’t Overlook the Human Factor
Automation and self-help solutions are undeniably powerful tools to help customers and gain cost efficiencies. But going into 2026 it’s more important than ever to make sure your digital investments don’t drive a wedge between your customers and meaningful human experiences that build brand loyalty.
A major point of consensus between CX leaders and consumers in this report is that they both agree a positive and differentiated customer service experience is a path to increased brand loyalty (99% of CX leaders and 73% of consumers, It can be easy to overlook this point as a “soft metric”, but this should be a thread that helps you key in on the untapped potential of a more thoroughly mapped and defined Employee Experience (EX) strategy.
There are three points in this report that show us there is still work to be done for CX leaders to meet their customers’ needs:
- Consumers say the #1 most frustrating aspect of resolving a customer care issue is “Difficulty in reaching a live person,” and #2 isn’t even close .
- In contrast, the majority of CX leaders believe the most frustrating aspect for customers is just that the “process takes too long ” with reaching a live agent in a distant third.
- CX leaders and consumers do agree that “A quick and easy process” is one of the most important factors in resolving a customer care issue. But diverge completely in that while 21% of consumers feel “polite and friendly treatment” is the most important factor, only 1% of CX leaders see it that way .
What you should take away from this is that there’s still some stark mismatches between what customers expect from a customer service experience versus what your teams believe and in turn are focused on delivering to your customers.
Mapping the employee experience brings much needed visibility to these areas of your business, gives you an opportunity to create better experiences for the customer, and ultimately sets your business apart from your competitors who are still living with these blind spots.
Capitalize on Your Digital Investments With the Total Experience Formula
If you’ve been doubling down on digital platforms and UX investments, then it’s clear that 2026 is about unlocking more measurable value from those investments by focusing on multichannel, employee experience. ACT can help you capitalize on this with an experienced strategy involving the Total Experience Formula. Our team will bring the skills and technology insights you need to truly empower your team while supporting your customers at every touchpoint.
If you want help and a deeper understanding of the Total Experience Formula, let’s talk. Schedule a call with our team now.