Rethinking Customer Experience Management and the Tech

I have not written for some time – we have been very busy with some very exciting work, and I want to reflect on that work and what drove it

 There has been a lot written of late on the very large challenges of customer experience management. If you follow some of the loudest (and knowledgeable) voices in the CX industry such as Zack Hamilton Bill Staikos Paul Elworthy Aarron Spinley Graham Hill (Dr G) Greg Parrott Audrey CHATEL Ahmed Abdelshafy Ashutosh Karandikar, CCXP Wai Au Stephan Sigaud Adam Matossian Graham Clark Shelley Miller Eben Odendaal , you will regularly see feedback such as:

• NPS is a flawed system
• Survey response rates are declining
• There is little measurement of outcomes and even less measurement of customer experience ROI
• CX budgets are being cut
• AI is taking over customer experience – watch out!
• CX metrics (choose your favourite one) such as CES, CSAT, NPS are flat lining or even declining
• CX professionals need to be more focused on outcomes
• The digital experience is not integrated into the other channels

 I am naturally aligned to the above and see a slew of “survey centric pom-pom CX” which conveys the way I think many CX programs are run. They are completely centred around surveys (and the associated metrics) and they have a lot of hype and communication but very little of value is delivered by those programs.

 There are some very strong arguments for the following in the sphere of customer experience management:

• Focus on the people not the tech
• Make sure the initiatives that surround the CX program result in positive changes in experience
• Focus on outcomes
• Use AI appropriately (whether you like it or not, it is coming)

To some extent I agree with the above. There is a big “BUT”:

• Driving people (staff) changes within an organisation is really, really hard
• Most CX capabilities in an organisation don’t have the gravitas to influence the way the business is run
• AI does offer incredible opportunities for appropriately intervening
• There is a real need to see the relationship between what a customer is doing and how they feeling. The key focus is on the outcomes (what customers are doing) and not on how they feeling (which does provide very useful context)

 I am a Customer Experience sceptic. The reason is that the discipline of Customer Experience has a bad reputation currently, and I happen to share that view (particularly because I was previously responsible for running an insurance organisation that prided itself on great experiences). However, no one can argue that have a great brand experience makes customers feel good and good experiences mean that customers are more (not less) likely to engage with that brand.

 Given the amount written on structuring great Customer Experience programs by people like Zack Hamilton and Bill Staikos , I am not going to repeat those perspectives. I am, however, going to delve into what is wrong with the technology in the Customer Experience space. No Customer Experience Program of scale can run without technology, and I would argue that great technology can assist with improving the customer experience (hard to argue against that perspective in the context of all potential AI interventions)

 So the key exam question is : “If a Customer Experience Platform were built from the ground up, what would it look like?”. However, before you can answer that question, it is useful to examine why Customer Experience Programs are failing today by reflecing on the associated current customer experience platform flaws:

• Disruptive by Design: They interrupt the customer journey rather than support it — forcing feedback into rigid survey formats.
• Dashboard-Driven, Not Customer-Driven: Insights are locked in dashboards, focused on reporting metrics rather than enabling action.
• Disconnected from Reality: Experience metrics like CSAT and NPS are treated in isolation, detached from the actual journey or outcome.
• One-Dimensional Measurement: Reliant on a narrow set of static metrics (CSAT, NPS, CES), with little regard for context, time, or sequence.
• Manual Fixes, Every Time: When problems arise, the only remedy is to pull people in there's no systemic, intelligent orchestration.
• Limited Segmentation: Static customer groups with no flexibility to explore new behaviours or emerging patterns.
• No Journey Comparisons: Inability to compare different journey paths, leaving blind spots in customer behavior and friction points.
• Outcomes Ignored: Customer success is rarely measured, let alone tied back to experience.
• No ROI Visibility: There’s no dynamic way to tie customer interactions to business results in real time.
• Journey Blindness: No distinction between micro-journeys and broader life-stage experiences making it impossible to personalize meaningfully.

Thinking about building the ideal CX platform from the ground up, it would have the following improved characteristics:

• Value-Driven Interactions: Micro-dialogues are embedded within the journey, adding value at every interaction, not just asking for it.
• Journey-Centric Visualization: Visual maps that track progress, perceptions, and customer-defined value along the entire experience.
• AI-Powered Insight: Text analytics and behavioural AI decode the ‘why’ behind customer actions, not just the ‘what.’
• From Metrics to Meaning: Measure what matters value delivered, progress made, and the real outcomes that define customer success.
• Time & Sequence Matter: Every touchpoint is viewed in context showing how experiences evolve, improve, or decline over time.
• Real-Time Orchestration: A living platform that senses and adapts to customer sentiment and experience dynamically.
• Dynamic Segmentation: Customer groupings emerge based on live data sentiment, behaviour, and journey patterns.
• Side-by-Side Journey Comparisons: Visually compare different segments to identify what drives success and where friction lives.
• Outcome-Led Reporting: Shift the focus from passive metrics to actionable outcomes what customers achieved, not just how they felt.
• ROI Built In: Track the financial impact of customer journeys - including costs, revenue, and profitability in real time.
• Life Stage Alignment: Understand and tier experiences by micro-journeys and life stages delivering relevance across the customer lifecycle.

 We have been working very hard on a solution that meets every one of these requirements. It is not “another survey platform” but a solution that is fundamentally different driven by the perspective above that has already show to deliver higher differentiated results (proven by the platform). Our latest release takes the usability to a new level while delivering on every aspect. The platform stands out in many ways but most of all because it focuses first and foremost on outcomes and overlays customer feedback and sentiment as a secondary consideration.

 My hope is that the above content gets CX professionals to think about Customer Experience differently. It is equally that we can help many well meaning CX professionals to redeem their credibility with other parts of the business.

 I am aiming to reignite sharing views on customer experience.

 Have an incredible week

Trent