Navigating the uncertainty in CX for 2025

As CX practitioners, we know there are challenges at every turn and as we prepare for 2025, there are a whole host of new challenges on the horizon. From extracting insights from data to overcoming competing priorities, sometimes these challenges seem too big to overcome. But what if, instead of planning a route through uncertainty, CX leaders instead start to prepare?

That’s the theme of the book Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times by Dr Rebeca Homkes, faculty member at the London Business School and Duke CE, as well as Boston Consulting Group’s University.

The book is based on real-world case studies from Gorilla Glue, WD-40, Gordon Food Service, Spotify, Dell and Ducati, and with a focus on retail CX, it explains why leaders need to stop planning and start preparing to develop a pragmatic strategy in times of uncertainty.

CX Network caught up with Rebecca (pictured below) to find out why there is more uncertainty than ever before, what it means for the global CX community and how to use kickers and killers to find a way through it all. 

CX Network: Your book covers how retail leaders must avoid the temptation to over plan and instead begin to prepare for difficult scenarios, so they can embrace ambiguity and navigate any market condition. What are some of the scenarios that retail leaders need to begin preparing for?

Dr Homkes: If we take a step back, the shift from planning to preparing is a big one that we need leaders to make.

We are raised in organizations to be planners. We make operational plans, we make launch plans, we make go-to-market plans and we're not throwing planning away.

Planning is great when the past is a strong indicator of the future and I can build a model of what's going to happen next. But when the past is not an indicator of the future and I can't model what's going to happen next, we need to shift to preparation mode.

In preparation mode, the biggest difference is that you make decisions based on beliefs, not waiting for facts. This sounds scary, especially to data scientists! But it mostly applies to emerging trends, such as a shift to extreme customization and personalization or surprising election results, where anything from supply chain to tariffs to immigration could go one way or another.

We can't plan for one outcome or another, but we can start preparing.

On these big shifts where we can't model from the past, we need to go into preparation mode, because the risk is that you end up setting yourself targets and metrics you then have to meet.

This means you're inherently off track before you even start. Or you have to ignore something until you can learn more – and that's not the best response to some of these big developments.

CX Network: What are some of the top consumer behavior trends that practitioners should be mindful of when preparing for uncertainty?

Dr Homkes: If we take the example of AI, we care how AI is going to impact the retail experience and one factor is customization or personalization at scale. Another is changing retail or consumer targeting and another is delivering an end-to-end customer journey.

We need to then think, how are these factors going to impact us and our strategy and decisions?

There is a sentence I like to ask leaders to complete: You say we are seeing X, and we believe Y for 2027, which means Z for us.

The trap is that what we tend to do, especially in fast moving industries like CX, is we see a trend and then we jump to the implication: I'm seeing this happen, therefore, we must do that. But that middle ground of articulating the belief is important for making decisions and testing learning along the way.

Therefore, in separating the trend that we are seeing from the belief, the stance that we're taking is the implication for us. That means that as I'm executing my strategy and executing my implication, I'm testing my belief to see whether or not the belief is valid.

That matters because I'm going to get feedback on whether or not my belief is valid way before I get feedback on whether my priority is hitting its target metrics. That's the real power of shifting between planning and preparing.

Any of these trends that we're seeing, we often see teams mire themselves in endless discussions. What does the ESG agenda mean for us? What does AI mean for us? What do geopolitical tensions mean to us?

Instead, let's talk about not just what we're seeing, but our beliefs. Going back to that sentence, it really forces you to put that middle ground in.

When teams align on their beliefs, they will make better choices about what to do.

CX Network: For a practitioner to secure the buy-in of their peers and superiors, they would need to be masters of soft influence. What are your tips for how they can nurture this to secure buy in?

Dr Homkes: Number one is involving a bigger team in the beliefs and then articulating and sharing your beliefs with the resulting priorities.

That means instead of saying “these are our top five priorities for the year”, say “these are our top five or 10 beliefs over the next strategy cycle, therefore, these are our top priorities”.

That says we're executing these priorities because of these beliefs, but it’s also an exercise in signposting. You're saying if these beliefs get challenged, we might change something we're doing. That is when two really powerful things happen. The first is we give ourselves permission to change course.

If I tell a team what its priorities are, we’re just focused on those priorities. If a big shift in the situation occurs, for example, the election goes a different way than you're assuming, you’re going to need to change one of your priorities. However, if you didn't explicitly communicate that priority was linked to a specific belief, you become resistant to change.

We don't like to change strategies once they're communicated; that goes against the principle of a growth strategy, which is always changing and adapting.

The second powerful thing is that you have now recruited hundreds of testers. If I share my belief with a team, I can have a discussion or debate around it and I may think differently after, but I have more testers of the hypothesis. Those testers are then in the market looking for feedback on that belief, and all those signals can come back in to inform our execution and learning.

CX Network: Why is now the time to write and release this book?

Dr Homkes: You could argue – and I do – that we have always faced uncertainty. Find me a CEO who said they ran their company in certain times!

But among the entrepreneurs and CEO that I talk to, there is something slightly elevated about the past couple of years. There has always been market uncertainty, tech uncertainty and there has always been an element of macro uncertainty. But we could take geopolitical stability as a given. It didn't have to be factored that into strategy –that has now changed.

In the same way, we have always had technological evolutions, but AI is something different. It challenges every aspect of how we create value, not just customization, not just backend efficiency.

I looked into this more and when I combined climate uncertainty with geopolitical uncertainty and AI and the rate of connectivity that we have – the idea that something that affects one industry very quickly affects multiple industries – there really is a heightened level of uncertainty right now.

Why does that matter? Because of majority of strategy tools we have are based on linear models and checklists, and more so, these tools and frameworks usually assume uncertainty is bad, and must be adjusted for.

The majority of planning tools assume uncertainty is a risk. In fact, we equate uncertainty with the risk, and we build risk registers that and we categorize all possible changes as risks to manage down.

The book is intended to be a true end-to-end playbook to help companies lead a breakthrough growth strategy in any market circumstance. It could be a market downturn, a frothy market or anything in between. My strong assertion is market cycles will always swing, but your business model and growth strategy doesn't have to. You can grow a company through any market circumstance if you're willing to put some of these growth principles in place.

CX Network: Let’s talk next about consumer tech. This can change drastically from one year to the next as the likes of Google, Meta and ByteDance throw a new innovation into the mix. Before you know it, consumer appetites and interaction habits with brands changes drastically. How can retailers in particular navigate this uncertainty?

Dr Homkes: We end up in a trap of asking what could happen, which instantly frames the future as negative.

If uncertainty means a series of future events which may or may not occur, instead of asking what could happen with consumer tech, ask the question: What could make us and what could break us? These are the kickers and killers.

Here's the thing. Across every industry, if I ask a leadership team to brainstorm 10 killers – the things that could break their business model – in 10 minutes, I've got a really good, clear list. If I ask a team to give me 10 kickers, it will take them much longer – if they can even get them. But the nice thing that happens is usually a third of what they identify are quick wins, that is, we should just do them now, regardless of the environmental uncertainty.

The next thing comes back to what you are trying to achieve. What is your ideal customer profile (ICP) and what's your value proposition for them?

In a way we are moving away from the view of having a clear ideal customers, and there can be this novice view that any customer that buys is a good customer.  But the insights that lead to growth are about the absolute clarity of the ICP – and the opposite of an ICP is not who you fire as a customer.

But this is about the absolute clarity of the ICP. The opposite of an ICP is not a fire customer.

A customer who isn’t your ICP can still shop with you, but I'm not customizing my value proposition for you or waking up every morning thinking about that persona.

Retailers need to go back to the basics of their ICP to navigate all these trends. Because then we lean in and learn more about this ICP, what they want and how they're going to be using new technology, and that allows us to customize experiences for them.

CX Network: The book also covers the key signs that a business needs a hard reset to survive and thrive, particularly in retail. What are some of those signs?

Dr Homkes: Hard resets are soberingly hard and there are so many examples.

Boeing is going through a hard reset as we speak. CVS is going to be going through a hard reset. Nike looks like they're going to need to be go through a hard reset. Starbucks, let's see whether or not they actually step up to the challenge and go through a hard reset.

The point is, we are seeing several right now and all those key questions, the assumptions that we built to build our growth strategy have been challenged. Those questions are: What's the situation? How is it going to change? Where are we going to play? How are we going to win? What could stop us? And what should we do?

A hard reset happens when beliefs have been challenged, where to play choices have been challenged, and you've lost sight of your right to win.

That means you need to reset everything, including your beliefs about the future. You need to reset what your right to win is going to be in that world. You need to reset where you're going to play moving forward, and then define a new finish line, the new strategy, how you're going to get there.

That process is unfortunately not a short one. Normal strategy takes a couple of weeks to a couple of months, a hard reset can take up to a year.

That's how much work you have to do to define those initial steps.

In the book I reference Dell as one example of a company that had to go through that to the extent that they had to take them private and only return to the public market after that hard reset was completed. Some extreme measures had to be taken there.

Burberry is another great example. It went through a hard reset in 2007-2008 with Angela Earhart and Christopher Bailey and was very successful. It became the first luxury retailer to target the millennial, the first luxury retailer to embrace omnichannel and digital, and had a successful strategy for over 10 years, which is as much as you can really expect.

But we've just seen that now they're going to be removed from the FTSE100. They're going to have to go through a hard reset again.

Nothing lasts forever. You can have a very successful hard reset, as Burberry did and have it last almost 15 years, but still have to do it all over again because things continue to change.

Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times is available now

Quick links

• Solving the problems facing consumer insights
• Preserving the human touch in AI-powered CX
• Measuring the magic flywheel of customer love with Fred Reichheld

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