There are better formats but the change needs to come from the top down, I can't see it working from the grass roots. Put it this way, I'm not going to turn around and refuse a non-technical client who volunteers at a non-profit because they can only give me data in Excel rather than whatever I decide the superior format is, or tell them it's impossible when the next developer will click a few buttons and have me taken for a fool, nor will I push hard to sell them up on a data mapping service or cloud pipeline if it's well outside their needs or budget. Unlike topics like web accessibility that's easy to argue on its morals and ethics, or mobile first that's easy to argue based on market share and audience reach, refusing to work with an organisation's data because you don't like the very simple, very established format is a very tough sell. If Excel could natively export to JSON, that's what I'd ask for, or their custom-built website from the 00's had a clean REST API, then it wouldn't even be a discussion.

There are workarounds for sure; VB macros, unzip XSLX and parse the XML, write scripts to automate Excel-to-whatever using DCOM, or import into an intermediary service and re-export into the format de-jure, but that all takes time and costs money too, and often causes confusion when even spoken about. Asking for a CSV takes a couple of seconds and is easily understood by most people. Anyone experienced with importing / manipulating CSV data can deal with the variance in delimiters and escape sequences without major issues. It's a headache at times but easier than the alternative of alienating or confusing clients who are looking for a simple solution to whatever issue they have today.

On the other hand once the data is in the target system, if they're still asking for CSV exports I do probe to ask why, and try and figure out if there's a better way. Reporting is the usual reason, and plenty of the CRMs I work with have built-in reporting that can replicate and improve upon whatever spreadsheet they are using, and have APIs that can interface with cloud-based reporting services. But there's a lot of inertia against change in most small-to-medium organisations, not everyone is a data expert and you can't sell someone something they can't use or understand. Ultimately people win, and the solution ends up being a balance of hopefully incremental technological improvements that they can still integrate into their day-to-day. Not every organisation is able to undergo a full digital transformation with time, budgets, and skills at hand.

I agree with the sentiment but I'd hate to see a future where everyone's locked into proprietary ecosystems - not that that is what's advocated for in the post, but we have CSV because that's what the big platforms seem to allow, not because they don't know there are better options. There's no technical reason Excel couldn't export to WordPress or SuiteCRM. Take CSV away and it gets harder, not easier, to move between platforms.