Why 2026 & Beyond are the Moment for UX & CX Thinking

To say that the only certainty right now is uncertainty seems like one of the biggest understatements I’ve ever made. AI, tariffs, war, inflation, political strife, and more make the current economic environment very challenging for most organizations.

And when tough times hit, we tend to see organizations start pressing familiar levers to get through these challenges.

Marketing and advertising budgets often get cut, but the financial goals don’t. People are asked to do more, but with less. And most of the time that is not possible.

If your marketing agency or internal marketing team could spend less, have fewer employees, and get more conversions, then they would’ve already done these things.

The reality is there is only one lever that can be pulled to help the finance team’s dream of doubling sales while lowering spend — and that lever is leaning into radical UX and CX thinking (that’s User Experience and Customer Experience, for those who don’t immerse themselves in marketing speak).

So much effort is put into customer acquisition, but so much of this is on the spend side or the channel side of things. Then subsequently, so little effort is put on retention or preventing client churn.

Do you want to increase sales 5% without increasing your advertising budget? Then make your UX and CX help convert more of your existing audience. Across all touch points. Across all channels.

UX isn’t just for digital interfaces. It’s the entirety of your audience’s journey — even display ads, even OOH, even customer support — all the touchpoints. Yes, all of them.

And speaking of, if you lowered your churn rate by 2%, you might not need to hit a 5% increase in sales. Once a customer becomes a customer, they are often seen as a cost, not an asset. But preventing churn is not only good business, it also lowers your acquisition needs, and often at a lower cost than new customer acquisition.

Changing to a radically focused UX and CX mindset on both the acquisition side and the customer side is not just good in a challenged economic environment. It’s always good. Always. Like always. Always always.

Somehow, we just seem to forget this at times.