Fake It Till You Make It: The CX Tech Playbook

Welcome to 2025 and the CX tech cycle!

It starts with a dream. A vision. A category-defining, game-changing, disruptive innovation that will revolutionise the industry—just as soon as we finish the prototype.

For CX tech companies, the playbook is well-worn. The formula is simple:

1. Announce a vision so grand that it makes yesterday’s tech leaders look like cavemen chiseling on stone tablets.
2. Issue a press release packed with industry buzzwords and vague promises.
3. Push out a product roadmap that looks like a wish list written by a toddler who just discovered generative AI.
4. Raise capital based on hype. (Bonus points if you call it "the most significant innovation since the invention of the call centre.")
5. Sell the dream before the reality exists.

The MVP

The trick is to get to market before you actually have a product. The MVP isn’t software, it’s a Minimum Viable Press Release. The right combination of AI, cloud, omnichannel, and automation can make anything sound real.

• "Revolutionising customer experience with our proprietary AI-driven personalisation engine!" (Reality: a chatbot connected to an FAQ page.)
• "A next-gen, AI-fuelled, predictive, sentiment-aware, frictionless CX transformation engine!" (Reality: A glorified FAQ page.)
• "The future of customer engagement is here!" (Reality: still in beta, invite-only, arriving Q4… maybe.)

The Eternal Roadmap

The roadmap is a mystical scroll where the most groundbreaking features are always just over the horizon. The golden rule? Nothing is truly late if it was never real to begin with.

• Q1: "AI-driven real-time sentiment analytics!" (Translation: A dashboard that colour-codes ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ based on emoji usage.)
• Q2: "Predictive CX automation at scale!" (Translation: We’ve renamed the same workflow automation from last year.)
• Q3: "End-to-end CX transformation!" (Translation: We hope you’ve forgotten we promised this already… twice.)
• Q4: "Next-gen AI-powered omnichannel orchestration!" (Translation: We just added ‘AI-powered’ to last year’s roadmap.)

The Pivot

If things aren’t working out, just pivot. Don’t have a real AI model? Rebrand as AI-powered orchestration. Still relying on human agents? Call it augmented intelligence. No omnichannel support? Say you’re channel-agnostic.

The Exit Strategy

At some point, reality catches up. But don’t worry—if you’ve played the game right, there’s an easy out:

1. Get acquired. Find a bigger company willing to buy your hype.
2. Rebrand. Call yourself a platform. Nobody knows what that means.
3. Blame the market. "The industry wasn’t ready for our vision!"

The Fakeaway, I mean the Takeaway

For all the talk of customer experience transformation, the real expertise is in faking it till they make it. So next time you see an announcement promising AI-powered conversational customer engagement with next-gen NLP and predictive analytics, remember: the only prediction that matters is whether it will ever ship.

Until then, keep an eye on the roadmap. It’s just around the corner… always!

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to actual CX Tech companies, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Who is Michael Clark?

Michael Clark is a real person, he is not a bot, nor is he the famous former cricketer almost as famous for his blonde highlights and trips to Noosa as he is from playing cricket!

Michael is a veteran of the CX and Contact Centre Industry and was recognised in 2023 and 2024 as one of the Top 100 Influencers in the Contact Centre Industry in APAC, and as one of Australia's Top 50 Small Business Leaders in 2022.