Businesses suffer when they separate CX from operational efficiency

By Tomas Gorny, CEO and co-founder, Nextiva

Organizations are using too many separate AI tools that work in relative isolation. They’re paying a price for it. New research shows how it hurts the bottom line.

This problem is understandable. New AI-powered software enters the market every day. The global AI market hit $390 billion last year, and is expected to reach nearly $3.5 trillion by 2033, according to Grand View Research.

Each new tool is backed by all kinds of promises. So it’s tempting for businesses to want to snatch up different solutions to handle a wide array of tasks.

McKinsey reports that 70% of businesses were using AI for more than one function in 2025. Just over half (51%) were already using it for three functions or more. These figures are growing rapidly, so soon the vast majority of businesses will likely implement multiple tools.

At Nextiva, our survey The Leader’s Guide to CX Trends found that businesses are using an average of 6.3 tools for CX alone. Many, if not all, of these increasingly use AI as well.

That figure was consistent among large enterprises and small businesses.

“Multiple tools often means siloed data, which can make it difficult to gain a holistic customer view,” the survey explained. “It also makes it very difficult to get the real-time insights necessary to identify the most impactful points in the customer journey.”

But this problem extends beyond just the tools businesses use for customer interactions. When CX operations and internal functions operate in separate systems, businesses also lose out. A new study quantifies the problem. Published by Scientific Reports, it examines the power of “a scalable hybrid framework for boosting customer experience and operational efficiency” together.

Most previous studies focused on “improving the personalization or the efficiency of the operation in isolation,” the group of researchers wrote. They found that when functions addressing both these needs are combined into one system, businesses see a “significant reduction in operational costs and enhancement in profitability.” Sales and customer retention go up. Errors go down. Perhaps most striking, a hybrid system is much more accurate at predicting what customers want.

This may seem surprising, since operational efficiency is generally thought of as its own distinct challenge. But the research bolsters a crucial point: The best communication platforms bring everyone across the organization into the same system.

The ‘back office’ role in CX

Every unit in a company contributes to the customer journey. In our survey of CX leaders, we asked which functions they think of when it comes to delivering a great customer experience. Nearly three quarters (73%) named departments traditionally considered “back office,” such as product development, IT, and business operations like legal, finance, and human resources.

At any moment, an employee in any of these units might have information about a customer that will contribute to improving their experience. But if that data remains siloed off, it’s useless. When people operate within the same framework, they update records in real time, and those updates are visible to all.

This is why Nextiva focuses on unified customer experience management. It’s not just about “omni-channel marketing,” which generally refers to interacting with customers across as many platforms as possible. UCXM is about unifying the entire operation.

AI has the power to piece through every scrap of data and integrate it instantly. It can use all that information to pull up the most important insights, giving an agent -- whether human or AI -- the most vital details about the customer at a glance. It can also guide the agent to deliver the best possible experience.

Everything from a cloud contact center to an auto-dialer to collaboration tools should access the same data. The researchers behind this new study say this kind of thing isn’t just a nice idea; it’s a necessity. “This work is motivated by the increasing demand for a unified and scalable solution for e-commerce that unobtrusively integrates advanced AI techniques to solve both personalization and operational optimization problems,” they write.

So as your business looks to maximize the revolutionary potential of AI, avoid a patchwork approach. Adopt a single platform that allows for all the functionality. Empower your employees with a one-team approach that allows them to work together, as one team, like never before.