CX in the US: One Australian’s Mission to Raise the Bar on Service Excellence
The Epiphany You Get at 35,000 Feet
There’s something about a 17-hour flight to Los Angeles that gives you a lot of time to think. And by “think,” I mean stare at the seat-back screen for two hours, eat a slightly sad bread roll, and then — somewhere over the Pacific — have a moment of genuine clarity.
I’ve spent the better part of the last decade helping Australian organisations transform the way they serve their customers. Government agencies, hospitals, banks, utilities, retailers — if they interact with the public at scale, we’ve probably helped them do it better. And across that work, a recurring thought started nagging at me: what if the same approaches, the same methodologies, the same obsessive focus on service quality — could work just as well for the 335 million people on the other side of the Pacific?
Turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. And the US market might actually need it more urgently than anyone wants to admit.
American CX Has Unique Challenges — And the Data is Telling
Here’s a statistic that should make every US business leader sit up straight: according to Forrester’s 2025 Global Customer Experience Index, US consumer perceptions of CX quality have dropped for a fourth consecutive year — and now sit at an all-time low. Not just a bad year. Not a post-pandemic blip. Four years of consecutive decline.
Of the 469 brands Forrester tracked across 275,000 customer perceptions, 25% of US brands saw their CX scores decline in 2025, while only 7% improved. That’s not a plateau — that’s a slide.
Now before American readers get defensive (and fair enough), this isn’t about bashing US business. It’s about recognising a genuine opportunity. The CX gap between what executives think they’re delivering and what customers actually experience is widening. Forrester describes it bluntly: there’s “a persistent gap between executives’ perception of the quality of their CX and how customers perceive their experiences.”
In other words, the boss thinks the service is great. The customer thinks otherwise. That gap is costing US businesses billions — and it’s exactly the kind of problem Customer Science Group was built to solve.
So Why Can the US gain from Australia 's CX?
I get asked this a lot, usually with a raised eyebrow and polite scepticism that I’ve come to enjoy. Fair question. Australia is a country of 26 million people — roughly the population of Texas. So why would a small island nation punch above its weight in customer experience?
Competitive pressure at scale. Australia’s service sectors — banking, healthcare, utilities, government — are intensely competitive and heavily scrutinised. When you can’t compete on price alone, you compete on experience. Our clients learned this lesson early.
Regulatory maturity. Australia’s consumer protection and service quality frameworks have pushed organisations to measure and report on customer outcomes in ways many US industries are only now beginning to adopt.
A culture of pragmatism. Australians have a low tolerance for corporate waffle and a high tolerance for being told things aren’t working. That has made our service improvement industry genuinely battle-hardened.
Over more than a decade, Customer Science Group has worked with more than 300 organisations, helping deliver better outcomes for over 760 million end customers and securing more than $18 billion in approved business case funding. Our average client ROI lands within six months. That’s a track record, not a marketing claim.
The AI Factor: Where Things Get Really Interesting
Here’s where I’ll confess to being genuinely excited, because the convergence of AI and human service delivery is changing everything — and the US is both a leader in AI development and one of the biggest markets struggling to implement it well.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 40% of customer service organisations will adopt proactive CX strategies. McKinsey research shows companies investing in hyper-personalised CX see up to 25% revenue growth and 50% lower customer acquisition costs. And for every dollar invested in AI-driven CX, organisations see an average return of $3.50.
But here’s what the numbers don’t capture: the human side. AI that replaces human empathy is a cost-cutting exercise dressed up as innovation. AI that augments human capability — freeing your best people to focus on complex, emotionally charged interactions while handling routine queries automatically — that’s where the real value lives.
This is exactly what we’ve been doing in Australia. Our Conversational AI tools don’t replace your service teams — they make your service teams extraordinary. Think of it as giving every frontline agent a brilliant co-pilot who never gets tired and has infinite patience for repetitive questions. (Unlike most of us on a Monday morning.)
Follow the Sun: The Globalisation Advantage Nobody Talks About
There’s another angle to our US expansion that goes beyond the obvious. Customer Science Group operates across Australia, the UK, and now the US — and that time zone spread is genuinely useful.
“Follow the sun” service delivery means your customers can get support and your operations can run continuously without the eye-watering cost of 24/7 onshore staffing. When your Sydney team clocks off, your Dallas team is just starting. When Dallas wraps up, London picks it up. Round the clock. Round the world.
For US enterprises with global operations or customer bases across multiple time zones, this isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a genuine competitive advantage that most offshore models struggle to match in terms of quality. We’re not proposing call centre arbitrage. We’re proposing genuinely excellent service, delivered consistently, across the sun’s entire arc.
What We’re Actually Bringing to the US
Service Health Workshops. Our structured diagnostic — typically completed in weeks, not months — maps where your service delivery is strong, where it’s leaking value, and what the fix looks like in practical terms. Rigorous, evidence-based, and free of consultant jargon.
Contact Centre Transformation. This is our core. We’ve transformed contact centres for government agencies, hospitals, banks, and utilities across Australia. Many of the frameworks we apply align directly with COPC Inc. standards — so the methodology translates immediately to the US context.
AI Readiness Programs. Before you invest in AI, you need to know what you’re ready for. Our AI Readiness assessment identifies the highest-value automation opportunities in your operation, the risks to manage, and the sequencing that maximises ROI — typically within 90 days.
Customer Communications. The quality of written and digital communications — correspondence, online content, IVR scripts, chatbot conversations — is one of the most overlooked drivers of CX. We fix this. And fixing it is usually faster and cheaper than most clients expect.
The Bigger Picture: Making Life Better, at Scale
I started Customer Science because I genuinely believe that good service — really good service — makes people’s lives measurably better. Not just more convenient. Actually better.
When Service NSW redesigned their contact centres with our help, it wasn’t just about efficiency metrics. It was about the person who needed a replacement driver’s licence urgently and didn’t have to spend three hours on hold. The healthcare patient who got the right information at the right time and didn’t have to tell their story five times to five different departments. The small business owner who got a resolution in one call instead of four.
Scale that to the US — 335 million people, the world’s largest consumer economy, a services sector that touches almost every aspect of daily life — and the impact potential is extraordinary. Better service means better outcomes for everyone in the chain: the frontline worker who finishes their shift feeling proud rather than defeated, the customer who hangs up satisfied, the organisation that earns loyalty instead of buying it.
I’m heading to the US with genuine curiosity, a deep respect for the complexity of the American market, and more than a little excitement. The US has world-class talent, world-class ambition, and the scale to make CX transformation genuinely significant. What it needs right now is a fresh perspective on how to execute. That’s what we’re here to offer.
Frequently Asked Questions
We combine practitioner experience — our team has actually run contact centres, led service transformations, and managed service operations, not just consulted on them — with a track record of 300+ client engagements and 760 million end customers served. Our approach is pragmatic: we measure ROI in months, not years, and we transfer knowledge to client teams rather than creating dependency.
The fundamentals of service excellence are universal — they just need localising. We’re entering the US with genuine humility, spending time understanding the specific regulatory, cultural, and operational context before prescribing anything. The Forrester data showing US CX at a four-year low tells us the need is real — and we’ll learn the nuances on the ground.
Our sweet spot is mid-to-large organisations with significant customer service operations — typically 100+ agents or equivalent digital service scale. We work across government and public sector, healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, utilities, and large commercial enterprises.
No — and this is a hill we’ll die on. AI augments human capability. It handles volume, consistency, and speed. Humans handle complexity, empathy, and relationships. The best outcomes we’ve seen always come from getting that balance right, not from automating everything and hoping for the best.
Follow-the-sun is a delivery model where service capabilities are distributed across time zones so work is handed off seamlessly as the business day moves around the globe. For US clients, our AU and UK presence means your customers can be served — and your transformation programs progressed — around the clock without 24/7 onshore staffing costs.
Our average client achieves measurable ROI within six months. Service Health Workshops typically complete in 6–8 weeks and produce a prioritised action roadmap. AI Readiness assessments are typically 90 days. Contact centre transformations vary by scale but are always phased for early wins.
References & Further Reading
- Forrester Research (2025). 2025 Global Customer Experience Index Rankings. View at forrester.com
- Forrester Research (2025). CX Index 2025 Results. View at forrester.com
- CX Today (2026). Forrester’s Customer Experience Predictions for 2026. View at cxtoday.com
- Medallia (2026). 15 Predictions That Will Redefine Customer Experience in 2026. View at medallia.com
- CX Dive (2026). 6 Customer Experience Trends to Watch in 2026. View at customerexperiencedive.com
- Zendesk (2026). 35 Customer Experience Statistics to Know for 2026. View at zendesk.com
- Gartner (2025). Key Trends Driving Customer Experience in 2025. View at gartner.com
- Open Text (2026). Four Trends Defining CX in 2026. View at opentext.com
- Ringly.io (2026). 50 Customer Experience Statistics for 2026. View at ringly.io
- CX Quest (2025). Customer Experience Index Declines Across North America. View at cxquest.com