Auto brands that survive the next five years will be those that stop pretending CX is all sunshine-and-lollipops and start treating it like the backbone of their business.
“Resilience” is no longer a nice leadership quote on a wall, but a survival trait — and it’s among the top five forces showcased in TTEC’s newly released CX Trends 2026: Fast Forward report.
2025 served up a series of disruptions in the automotive world. Cyberattacks on global OEMs crippled internal systems, supply chains, and customer-facing platforms. Tariffs escalated car sales. Volume of first-time electric vehicle owners surged but also brought complex calls.
Automotive CX has always existed in a state of motion. What is new is how often disruptions now overlap. We are no longer solving one issue at a time, but juggling a dozen, with half of them on fire. As vehicles become more connected and customer journeys more digital, the margin for error shrinks.
Resilience in 2026 will be defined not by how OEMs avoid disruption, but by how quickly and competently they respond. And that means equipping CX teams not just to deflect, but to diagnose, reassure, and recover the customer relationship in real time. The brands that invest in tooling, training, and trust, won’t just survive the next wave of disruption. They’ll build loyalty precisely because of how they handled it.
Here’s the new metric for CX maturity: Not how few calls you take, but how well your front line performs when everything else is breaking.
CX under pressure: When self-service fails, the stakes rise
Today’s customers only pick up the phone when something breaks. Self-service handles the easy stuff. What gets through to associates is messy: VIN-related recalls, broken subscriptions, app connectivity failures, software update issues, and charging errors. Every interaction is now a high-stakes moment impacting consumers’ ability to pick up their kids and get to work. Not having answers erodes trust in one of the biggest purchases a consumer can make.
2025 research from Forrester’s BX Index confirmed that customer impatience is at an all-time high, with 71% of respondents saying the most important thing a brand can do is value their time. For auto brands, this means empowering associates with the tools, training, and authority to solve problems on first contact, not escalate them.
The resilience path starts by redesigning associate workflows to emphasize ownership. That includes dynamic knowledgebases tuned for rapid model updates, integrated systems that give associates visibility into connected vehicle data, and real-time access to product specialists. When associates confidently guide a customer through a technical issue — or educate a dealer on a new EV feature — the brand earns something software alone can’t deliver: Loyalty under pressure.
Fraud threats: The new villain of customer experience
The cyberattacks on OEMs were CX events. Apps failed. Dealers and contact centers lost visibility. Production stopped. In the customer’s mind, the brand had vanished. Meanwhile, fraud is evolving as fast as the technology itself. From EV charging accounts to goodwill claims, bad actors are probing for weak links often targeting associates under pressure with limited visibility.
The heroic part? Most CX teams catch the nonsense before it becomes a headline. The exhausting part? Many are still doing it with outdated systems held together with optimism.
According to Upstream’s Global Automotive Cybersecurity Report, cyber incidents in the mobility ecosystem increased 85% year over year, with fraud, account takeovers, and app-based manipulation among the fastest-growing categories. CX is no longer just adjacent to the risk. It’s in the middle of it.
The future of resilient CX includes identity verification built directly into workflows, associate tools that surface anomalies in real time, and AI that flags behavioral patterns faster than fraudsters can adapt. It also means training frontline teams to spot the difference between a confused owner and a fraudster.
Economic whiplash and the roller coaster nobody queued up for
Every OEM I know has a month they are slammed, and the next month they are trying to figure out how to make their cost model work. The volatility in 2025 went beyond textbook cycle swings. Volume surged and then dropped within weeks. CX teams felt the whiplash first, ranging from long queues to idle associates. Dealers felt it too, caught between unpredictable foot traffic and rising expectations to deliver seamless brand experiences at the edge.
The problem is, most CX operations still rely on rigid staffing models tied to historical volume patterns that no longer predict what’s coming. Resilience here means shifting from volume-based staffing to flexibility-first CX: Dynamic forecasting, workforce management systems that account for true shrinkage, scalable partner networks, and AI-powered demand sensing.
I have worked with companies that put CX first and those that put costs first, and the results are undeniably in favor of CX if you want loyalty. Agentic AI will bridge the gap. But that is the future, not today.
Flatlining revenue, rising expectations
According to Gartner, OEM revenue from new vehicle sales is projected to flatten over the next five years, driven by longer-lasting EVs, reduced service needs, and shifting consumer behavior. Traditional revenue streams like maintenance and repairs are shrinking, just as customers demand more from the digital ownership experience.
While EVs unlock new income through connected services and software-defined features, that revenue is fragile and dependent on the quality of support tied to those features. And the complexity of supporting a software-driven vehicle is leagues beyond the old playbook. Gartner notes that 42% of connected vehicle buyers experienced a CX failure related to subscriptions or app-based functionality in 2024 alone.
This is where the principles of brand and customer experience converge. Forrester’s BX Index shows that brands scoring highest on ease, effectiveness, and emotional connection grow 1.8 times faster than their category average. For automotive, resilience isn’t just about weathering disruption. It’s about designing frontline systems that translate digital investments into trust, loyalty, and growth while reinforcing the deep emotional connection people have with their cars — one that brands have worked hard to build.
The next generation of CX leaders
The future is going to reward the leaders who build systems that adapt fast, learn, and recover quickly. Not because it sounds smart, but because automotive customers are unique. This is the second-largest purchase many will make in their lifetimes, and they expect the experience to match the price tag.
They will switch brands over a single failed support interaction, torch you on social media, and send emails to the CEO. They will expect perfection.
Resilient CX leaders do three things better than the rest:
- Create transparency across their entire CX ecosystem.
- Build teams who trust each other enough to hold the line when things get messy.
- Stress-test their own processes.
Resilience is discipline and planning, coupled with intuitive thinking and experience. This is the future. Not easier, quieter, or simpler, just smarter, stronger, and far better prepared.
For more insights on resilience and other forces reshaping CX in the year ahead, check out TTEC’s just-published CX Trends 2026: Fast Forward.
