Dawood Patel, Helm Africa

The Covid pandemic sent businesses chasing after their customers like Swifties scrambling for Tay’s concert tickets. Banks, insurers, retailers and utilities across the world spent fortunes on customer experience (CX) technologies to secure closer ties with consumers, many of whom were confined to their homes at the start of the pandemic. As global sales of CX products surged, reaching close to $640 billion last year, customer-centric marketing dominated corporate agendas.

Now, it seems, the corporate romance with customers is cooling.