Tim Banting
Looking back at 2025, one pattern stands out in my CX research: the era of “just add another tool” is over. Years of rapid AI and channel adoption have left many enterprises with fragmented CX stacks. Not to mention overlapping contracts, and no single view of the customer. This year, consolidation stopped being a theoretical architecture slide and became a board-level mandate.
Consolidation is now one of the defining trends in CX. Not just reducing vendors, but rationalizing the entire experience stack into a smaller number of strategic platforms. In parallel, other forces – tougher funding scrutiny, rising regulatory expectations, and changing customer attitudes to AI – have reshaped how CX is governed and measured.
I’ve covered those trends separately in my latest interview with CX Today. Here, I want to focus on what consolidation really means for enterprise buyers.
Building a Layered CX Platform, Not a Monolith
In 2025, the most successful CX programs moved towards a layered platform model rather than chasing a mythical “all-in-one” solution. We’ve seen CCaaS platforms (for example, Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud and others), CRM suites such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Zoho, and customer data platforms like Adobe Experience Platform or Twilio Segment increasingly acting as logical layers in a broader CX architecture. The goal is to reduce fragmentation while still allowing specialised capabilities where they truly matter.
Practically, this architecture breaks into three tiers. First, a data layer that unifies customer records and events across channels. Second, an orchestration or decision layer that applies rules and AI to that data. And third, a channel layer spanning voice, chat, messaging apps, social and email. Consolidation is about collapsing redundant tools within each tier and choosing a few platforms that can interoperate cleanly. This contrasts the maintaining of a long tail of niche point solutions that all claim to be “critical”.
For buyers, the key question is no longer “who has the best feature demo?” but “which platforms can credibly become my control planes for data, orchestration and engagement?” That means interrogating reference architectures, API maturity, data models, ecosystem partnerships and the vendor’s acquisition strategy.
It also means being realistic: there is no single platform that can own every layer without trade-offs. Consolidation should reduce complexity, not simply concentrate risk and lock-in with one supplier.
What CX Leaders Should Do Next
If you’re leading CX or overseeing its architecture, your first move in 2026 should be a consolidation blueprint, not another point-tool RFP. Map your current estate into data, orchestration and channel layers. Identify where you have overlapping capabilities, ageing contracts or “shadow platforms” owned by different business units.
Then define what “good” looks like: how many strategic platforms you’re willing to support, which layers you expect them to occupy, and where you will still allow specialist tools.
Consolidation is only one of the forces reshaping CX. In parallel, AI investments are being held to tougher standards, customer expectations are evolving, and compliance is now a buying criterion, not an afterthought.
At Techtelligence, we are tracking these trends to help CX and IT leaders make better platform decisions. I’d encourage you to share this analysis with your architecture, procurement and finance stakeholders. Furthermore, do engage with our upcoming insights which will focus on what’s in store for CX in 2026.
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