Customer Engagement

Experience Debt: The Silent Killer of CX Progress

August 27, 2025

Poor CX costs businesses trillions in lost sales every year because of countless small compromises that quietly pile up. Devidas Desai, SVP of Product Management at ASAPP, explains how this ‘experience debt’ silently erodes loyalty and what leaders can do to finally break the cycle.

Every compromise in CX leaves a trace. A clunky checkout flow, a confusing chatbot, or a delayed follow-up may seem small in isolation. But over time, these small cracks form something far more damaging: experience debt.

Unlike technical debt, which can be measured, experience debt quietly accumulates in the space between what customers expect and what they actually receive. And the cost isn’t abstract. Qualtrics research estimates that businesses risk nearly $4 trillion in lost sales worldwide due to poor experiences.

“Experience debt is the gap between the experience customers expect and the one they actually get. It’s what builds up when teams make compromises that erode clarity, ease, or delight over time,” says Devidas Desai, SVP of Product Management, ASAPP.

This is why leaders describe it as the silent killer of CX progress: unseen on dashboards, underestimated in boardrooms, but deeply felt by customers.

The Hidden Cost of ‘Good Enough’

“Most companies obsess over technical debt because it’s visible to engineers, but experience debt is just as dangerous,” says Devidas.

What makes it especially dangerous is its subtlety. Customers rarely log tickets about minor annoyances. They simply disengage. And when they do, the cost of ignoring those signals compounds quickly:

A confusing handoff between digital and human support can double contact centre costs.
A cluttered mobile interface discourages app adoption.
A mismatched tone between email and in-app messaging erodes trust.

According to a recent report by Emplifi, 70% of consumers are expected to abandon a brand after just two poor experiences, while nearly a quarter cut ties after only one.

“Left unchecked, it quietly drives churn, damages brand trust, and makes every new product release less effective,” says Devidas Desai. That’s the true cost of “good enough,” a slow leak of loyalty until it’s too late.

The Warning Signs: Where Experience Debt Shows Up First

“The signs are usually right in front of you: rising customer effort scores, repeat contacts to support for the same issue, inconsistent workflows across channels,” says Devidas Desai.

Even in mature CX programs, the warnings aren’t obvious. Declining adoption of new features may not mean the features are flawed; often, it’s the fragmented experience around them that confuses customers.

And sometimes, the disconnect is almost invisible: leadership teams see positive KPIs and assume the journey is smooth, while customers silently struggle. That perception gap is often the first red flag.

But experience debt leaves other clues, like:

Escalating support costs: Customers bouncing between digital and human channels signal broken handoffs.
Abandoned carts and unfinished forms: Often dismissed as marketing issues, they’re really signs of friction in the journey.
Channel drop-offs: A spike in app downloads followed by low retention can reveal confusing onboarding flows.
Inconsistent brand tone: Jarring shifts between an email’s friendly tone and an app’s robotic prompts erode trust.
Silent churn: Customers don’t always complain; sometimes the only signal is that they quietly stop engaging.

When combined, these signals are less like isolated glitches and more like an early-warning system.

Why Organisations Stick to Bolt-Ons Over Transformation

If the warning signs are so evident, why do companies keep layering incremental fixes instead of rethinking journeys holistically? The answer, experts say, lies in mindset, structure, and measurement.

Devidas says, “It’s all three.” He further describes;

Mindset: Incremental solutions are faster to prioritise in quarterly roadmaps.
Structure: Most organisations are siloed, with KPIs tied to their portion of the journey, so no one owns the end-to-end experience.
Measurement: Success is often tracked through local optimisations—“Did my feature uptake go up?” instead of customer outcomes.

Bolt-ons offer the illusion of efficiency: quick wins, instant metrics, and visible delivery. But beneath the surface, they deepen fragmentation, forcing customers to navigate a patchwork of disconnected experiences.

Without structural alignment and executive sponsorship, the cycle of “fixing without transforming” repeats, compounding experience debt with every sprint.

Breaking the Cycle and Building CX Resilience

Escaping experience debt takes more than quick fixes. It requires a fundamental shift in how organisations view customer experience.

“Product should be the connective tissue,” says Devidas, pointing to the product team’s role in spotting and addressing experience debt. “They’re in the unique position to see how design, engineering, and operations shape the customer journey over time.”

CX and service design teams bring qualitative insights; product brings prioritisation and delivery muscle, he adds. True progress happens when all agree that success isn’t “launching,” but launching something customers truly value.

Technology can amplify efforts, but it’s no substitute for a solid foundation. AI and automation can streamline interactions, yet if the underlying journey is fractured, they merely paper over flaws.

“A bot that helps you navigate a bad process faster is still enabling a bad process,” warns Devidas. The real opportunity is to reimagine, not just accelerate.

For executives, the strategic levers are clear: