The experience gap between companies and customers hasn't closed in 20 years, and the author says technology isn't the problem
According to the author, the problem isn't technology but the fact that no one is held accountable for the outcome; better tools such as AI won't close the gap on their own.
What's happening
The first data point the MarTech opinion piece recalls comes from a 2005 Bain & Company study of 362 companies, in which 80% of executives believed they delivered superior customer experience while only 8% of customers agreed. The author notes that in 2026 SAP reported a similar disconnect: 78% of businesses believed they delivered a connected customer experience, while only 25% of consumers agreed. In the author's view, this is not a technology gap but an accountability gap that has persisted for 20 years, and a gap that was never a technology problem to begin with cannot be closed through automation.
Whose desk it lands on
The executive in charge of customer experience. Do they have the authority, and especially the influence and budget, to close the gap they report, or do they settle for describing it?
Our view
The CX Brief's interpretation, not a claim made by the source.
The article's central claim is that a gap measured for two decades has stayed open not for lack of measurement but for lack of ownership. As long as the customer experience team reports the gap while the authority to close it sits with other departments, each new tool does little more than draw the same picture faster. That is where the author's warning about AI comes from: automation added to a problem no one owns will only magnify what is wrong.
