#133: why CX teams need weird skills to tackle growing threats

Happy?Friday?and welcome to This Week in CX! We're bringing you our roundup of industry news summarised in an exclusive LinkedIn newsletter. For more detail on any news featured here, check out 'This week in CX' on the Customer Experience Magazine (CXM)?website.

This week, we explore the shifting CX landscape—from the rising demand for niche skills and the burden of mundane tasks to the growing threats of deepfake fraud and ineffective email strategies impacting engagement.

Stop waiting for perfection: employees hired on promise perform 1.9x better?

Organisations are missing out on significant performance gains by requiring employees to demonstrate proficiency in all skills before transitioning into critical roles. A new Gartner survey found that employees hired based on potential rather than complete proficiency are 1.9 times more likely to perform effectively. However, many companies still prioritise rigid skill requirements, slowing internal mobility and stalling workforce growth.

“Many organizations are transforming their capabilities so rapidly that they can’t acquire all the skills they need — the talent either doesn’t exist or is too expensive,” said Meaghan Kelly, director of the Gartner HR Practice. “This puts more pressure on organizations to build skills internally, but unfortunately, most organizations are not building skills fast enough to fill critical roles.”

Companies must shift their focus from building full proficiency to recognising promise—which Gartner defines as the willingness and ability to learn from a foundational skillset. Despite its potential, only 28% of employees report that their organisations emphasise hiring or developing talent based on promise.

According to Gartner, this networked approach nearly doubles skills preparedness compared to traditional one-on-one support.

• Swedish electric vehicle battery startup Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy after being unable to secure enough financial backing to continue. The future of its 5,000 employees is unknown and the company said it would work with trade unions and authorities to provide support. The Swedish bankruptcy comes after the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US last November.

• Spotify paid $10bn (€9.1bn, ￡7.7bn) in royalties last year, around 60% of its €17.1bn revenue for last year. It claims to have paid out the most royalties ever recorded. Around 1,500 artists earned more than $1m. The streaming giant reported a market valuation of around $110bn, more than the combined $70bn value of labels Universal or Warner Music, Bloomberg reports.
• Industry leaders in Europe have reacted to US president Donald Trump’s global 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium, as well as the EU’s €26bn of “countermeasures“. Customs broker Fausto Cappello said tariffs will disrupt supply chains, but could also create opportunities for evaluation and redesign. The European Steel Association said Trump’s tariffs would worsen an already “dire situation”, after the sector lost 9m tonnes of capacity and 18,000 jobs last year.

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