The intent is there. They invest in customer experience (CX), map out journeys and launch initiatives. Yet the execution often mirrors internal structures rather than the way customers actually experience the brand.
This results in fragmented journeys, diluted accountability, cautious innovation and short-term wins that never scale.
According to Forrester’s Global CX Index 2025, customer experience quality is declining across industries and regions. Customers are more demanding, less patient and have higher expectations for consistency, empathy and ease.
The organisations closing that gap aren’t necessarily spending more, they’re organising differently. They’re rethinking how their teams connect, collaborate and deliver.
According to Salesforce, 54% of customers report inconsistent experiences across departments. That inconsistency is rarely caused by poor intent, but by structure.
Many organisations still design experiences that reflect internal divisions rather than customer realities. But customers don’t experience your business in silos. They expect fluidity:
Every disconnected moment chips away at trust and satisfaction.
Toyota recognised this. By restructuring around journey-led, cross-functional teams – and introducing clear, shared CX metrics – the company achieved a 20% rise in customer satisfaction and a 15% uplift in financial performance.
What can you do about it?
Map customer journeys across departments, not within them. Identify where organisational boundaries create friction in the customer journey.
Align teams around a shared CX vision that transcends departmental KPIs. Success should be measured by customer outcomes, not internal outputs.
Connected journeys build confidence. When teams see how their work fits into the customer’s wider experience, they design with greater empathy and deliver with greater consistency.
When customer experience is “owned” by one department, others disengage. CX becomes someone else’s job, until something goes wrong.
But high-performing CX organisations make it everyone’s job. They move from isolated ownership to shared accountability, creating structures where strategy is shaped and delivered by everyone who touches the customer.
According to InMoment, companies with cross-functional CX programmes are 27% more likely to achieve high ROI on their CX efforts.
Nissan is a case in point. The car brand launched a global CX team with representatives from strategy, technology, analytics, operations and regional markets. This cross-functional operating model – designed around the customer journey rather than internal hierarchy – reduced abandonment rates and increased conversion.
What can you do about it?
Create cross-functional CX working groups that co-develop and co-deliver initiatives.
It’s also important to develop shared KPIs and incentives so everyone is rewarded for collective success.
Accountability drives alignment. When CX performance influences everyone’s success, collaboration stops being optional, it becomes instinctive.
Siloed teams tend to play it safe, while integrated teams build braver ideas faster.
According to McKinsey, agile CX teams deliver 30-50% faster results and achieve higher customer satisfaction. That’s because they collaborate in real time, shorten feedback loops, and share ownership of outcomes.
B2B SaaS company EverAfter.ai recently aligned its customer success, product and sales teams through a unified CX strategy supported by AI and collaboration tools. The shift allowed them to test, learn and launch more effectively, leading to smoother implementations and higher customer success scores.
What can you do about it?
When teams trust each other and share a common ambition, they move faster, act smarter, and stay closer to the customer.
So, introduce processes that allow rapid, collaborative pilots across functions and empower teams to test and iterate without waiting for perfection. It’s also important to celebrate experimentation, not just execution.
Treating CX like a series of projects can create short-term wins but long-term fragmentation.
Customers evolve. Journeys change. And when CX design stops at implementation, the experience slowly erodes.
Leading organisations like Adobe, LEGO and USAA have embedded design-led, cross-functional CX teams permanently. They treat customer experience as a continuous system – one that is always learning, always adapting, and always connected to business performance.
Companies with strong cross-functional collaboration are five times more likely to outperform on CX, according to Forbes. These organisations don’t “finish” CX projects; they build capabilities that allow constant iteration.
What can you do about it?
Continuous design creates continuity of care. It ensures your experience evolves as quickly as your customers do.
So it’s important to shift to journey-based ownership that spans the full lifecycle. Invest in long-term CX capabilities that continuously design, test and improve. And treat design as an operating system, not a campaign.
Rethinking CX delivery
When teams are structured around departments, customers fall through the cracks.
Your customers don’t experience your brand as departments, so why design and deliver your experience that way?
The best customer experiences aren’t built by specialists working in isolation. They’re built by connected thinkers including strategists, designers, technologists and operators, who work in rhythm around the same CX vision.
When those disciplines sit around the same table, experience stops being a deliverable and starts becoming a shared mindset.
According to Forbes Tech Council, cross-team collaboration isn’t just about efficiency, it’s the foundation of standout customer experiences. Integrated teams translate insight into action faster, align commercial and customer goals and create solutions that stick.
This shift towards integrated, multidisciplinary teams isn’t a trend. It’s the foundations of competitive advantage.
At Engine, we bring together business insight, CX design, digital enablers and operational practicality into one unified rhythm.
We help organisations design systems that connect people, platforms and purpose, ensuring customer experience isn’t just imagined, but delivered.
If you’re ready to make cross-functional collaboration your competitive advantage – let's talk.