This paper presents a novel complex neutrosophic soft expert set (CNSES) concept. The range of values of CNSES is extended to the unit circle in the complex plane by adding an additional term called the phase term which describes CNSES’s elements in terms of the time aspect. CNSES is a hybrid structure of soft sets and single-valued neutrosophic sets (SVNSs) defined in a complex setting where the experts’ opinions are included, thus making it highly suitable for use in decision-making problems that involve uncertain and indeterminate data where the time factor plays a key role in determining the final decision. Based on this new concept we define some concepts related to this notion as well as some basic operations namely the complement, union, intersection, AND and OR. The basic properties and relevant laws pertaining to this concept such as the De Morgan’s laws are also verified. Lastly, we propose an algorithm to solve complex neutrosophic soft expert decision-making problem by converting it from the complex state to the real state and subsequently provided the detailed decision steps. This study is supported by the comparison with other existing methods.