A snapshot of the CX market: aligning customer expectations with company strategies.
Global and local CX leaders, strategy, HR and marketing specialists, as well as representatives of some of the most customer-centric companies in the region, gathered on October 14–15 at CX Conference 2025, an event organized by Customer Experience Romania, under the coordination of Gabriela Ciupitu, internationally recognized leader in Customer Experience (CX).
This year’s edition brought together over 200 professionals from 5 countries, 18 international and local speakers, and marked the launch of two landmark studies for the Romanian market: the Customer Centricity Index, developed by Ipsos, and the CX Maturity Study 2025, conducted in partnership with Staffino.
Held at Le Château and Maidan Spațiul, the conference offered two intensive days of content — from case studies and strategic panels to hands-on workshops.
The stage hosted Ian Golding, one of the most influential CX consultants globally, Bruce Temkin, founder of TemkinSight, and Olga Potaptseva, CEO of European Customer Consultancy and expert in cultural transformation.
Joining the international leaders were top professionals from Romania: Andreea Coca (Pluxee Romania), Mihai Ciută (Raiffeisen Bank), Oana Aftenii (Returo), Alina Dimbean (Delgaz Grid), Gabriela Roșca (Smart HR), Hunor Kovacs (Geomant), Ștefan Dumitru (Staffino), and Bülent Duagi (Sense & Change).
“For the third consecutive year, CX Conference is where experiences turn into strategy — and strategies into action. It’s a space where real organizational directions take shape, beyond presentations or case studies. In recent years, more and more Romanian companies have shifted from managing processes to designing experiences, understanding that the customer relationship starts internally, with employees and organizational culture,” said Gabriela Ciupitu, Founder of Customer Experience Romania.
From know-it-all to learn-it-all: the new DNA of CX-driven organizations
The CX Conference 2025 presentations offered complementary perspectives on how organizational culture, technology, and human leadership can shape the future of customer experience.
Ian Golding illustrated, through the Microsoft example, how shifting from a competitive “know-it-all” culture to a collaborative “learn-it-all” mindset increased the company’s value tenfold — confirming that cultural transformation is a true driver of performance.
Building on that idea, Bruce Temkin expanded the discussion to how leaders can balance technology and human touch in the age of AI, stressing that progress should not be measured by how smart systems become, but by how human organizations remain.
In a similar line, yet from a commercial standpoint, Olga Potaptseva introduced the concept of “good growth”, a sustainable form of growth based on balance between people, processes, and technology. She showed that only companies aligning these dimensions around a common purpose succeed in building loyalty and avoiding the “growth trap” — the illusion of expansion through sheer volume. According to the data she presented, 80% of B2B buyers changed suppliers in the past year due to a misalignment between product, service, and business purpose.
From a practical perspective, Mihai Ciută and Andreea Coca demonstrated how CX governance and cross-functional collaboration between product design, IT, marketing, and compliance can turn data and insights into concrete actions, measured through customer and employee satisfaction, operational, and business KPIs. In the same applied register, Hunor Kovacs showcased the omnichannel transformation of United Group, where integrating chat, social networks, and virtual assistants increased digital interactions from 2–3% to over 25%, achieving a 70% automation rate and interaction costs below 1 euro.
Sessions dedicated to empathetic leadership, AI-driven personalization, and customer journey orchestration emphasized that CX success is not only about satisfaction, but about consistency, trust, and relevance.
Beyond perceptions: how customer experience looks in numbers in 2025
Launched in premiere at the conference, the Customer Centricity Index 2025 and the CX Maturity Study 2025 provide a detailed overview of CX maturity in Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
Customer Centricity Index 2025: a snapshot of the relationship between customers and brands
Developed in partnership with Ipsos, this study is the first cross-industry initiative in Romania that measures customer perceptions of brands beyond companies’ internal studies — analyzing loyalty, satisfaction, and experience consistency.
The research, conducted in September 2025 on a sample of 1,500 respondents (80% urban, 20% rural; men and women aged 18–65), used CAWI online interviews and covered 14 industries and 143 national brands, from banking, utilities, telecom, e-commerce, and insurance, to medical networks, pharmacies, retail, HoReCa, and courier services.
Findings show that 79% of Romanians consider customer service too automated and impersonal, a share higher than the global average (74–75%), confirming the preference for human interaction and the expectation of balance between technology and empathy.
Top-rated performance dimensions include ease of purchase process (highest in e-commerce and delivery), respect and consideration in client interactions (best perceived in pharmacies), and experience consistency across channels (with top scores in Home & Deco).
Conversely, the weakest areas are proactivity, personalized loyalty, and continuous innovation, where customers feel the largest gap between promise and reality.
Finally, 57% of companies self-evaluate as delivering experiences “in line with their promises,” 22% “better than promised,” and 21% below expectations, showing that Romanian brands recognize operational efficiency but admit the need for greater consistency, proactivity, and personalization.
Romania climbs the CX maturity ladder: higher investment in teams and technologies
In parallel, the CX Maturity Study 2025, conducted with Staffino, confirms growing organizational commitment to CX and a visible market evolution.
Over 60% of CX teams now include more than five members, while 53% of companies have formal CX governance with a clear role in business decisions. Also, 60% of organizations share customer data internally on a regular basis, and the scores obtained across the six analyzed pillars — strategy, culture, employee journey, customer voice, customer journey, and technology — show steady progress on all fronts.
The Republic of Moldova stands out as a rapidly emerging CX market, demonstrating remarkable energy and real progress in adopting a customer-centric culture. Recent data indicate a fundamental operational shift: over 57% of Moldovan companies now consistently listen to both the voice of the customer (VoC) and the voice of the employee (VoE) through structured feedback systems. Moldova is becoming a market where the customer’s voice shapes strategic direction, proving that CX maturity depends more on mindset and openness than market size.
Organizational agility is becoming the norm, not the exception: 46% of companies now show an increased capacity to adapt internal processes and collaborations based on customer needs.
On the technology front, 49% of companies have adapted processes to customer needs, and 45% have adopted hybrid AI + human operator models. Moreover, over 80% of respondents believe AI will fundamentally change CX management, with main benefits being efficiency (46%), customer satisfaction (19%), and personalization (10%). In Employee Experience, AI is used mainly for training (55%), internal communication (45%), and performance management (32%), though resistance to change and lack of digital skills remain the biggest barriers to sustainable implementation.
CX leaders celebrated at the Customer Centricity Gala 2025
The results of both studies were recognized during the Customer Centricity Gala, which concluded the first conference day by honoring companies that demonstrated excellence in building truly customer-centric cultures.
Hosted by Alex Glod, alongside Ian Golding and Gabriela Ciupitu (CCXP), the gala awarded organizations that placed the customer at the heart of their strategy, based on the Customer Centricity Index 2025 results by Ipsos.
The brands recognized for excellence in customer experience were:
Utilities: Hidroelectrica
Insurance: Metropolitan Life
E-commerce Platforms: eMAG
Telecommunications: DIGI Romania
Banking: ING
Medical Networks: Synevo Romania
Pharmacies: Farmacia Tei
Hypermarkets: Carrefour
Home & Deco: IKEA
Retail – Apparel: Decathlon
Courier Services: Sameday Romania
Fast Food Chains: Mesopotamia Romania
Gas Stations: Rompetrol (KMG International)
About CX Conference 2025
The 2025 edition consolidated Romania’s position as a regional hub for the CX community, bringing together participants and partners from five countries and international organizations such as Customer Institute, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), Awards International, and Customer Experience Magazine (CXM).
Topics such as AI and digital empathy, Leadership through feedback, Customer Journey Orchestration, and Customer Experience in the Data Era were among the most discussed. The dynamic workshop format at Maidan Spațiul enabled participants to explore practical solutions and design actionable plans for their own organizations.
CX Conference 2025 was organized with the support of Staffino, Graia, Ipsos, Verint, Smart HR, AB Traduceri, PXcellence, Moldcell, Felicia Healthcare Group, Enjoee, and Maidan Spațiul, host of the conference’s second day. Media partners of the 2025 edition include: Wall-Street.ro, Start-up.ro, Retail.ro, Transilvania Business, Ziarul Bursa, EventsMax, PRwave, Romania-Insider.com, RomaniaJournal.ro, and SoftLead.ro.
*This is a press release.
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