Three unconventional ways I want to unlock customer transformation in 2024

If I listen to the experts on LinkedIn, customer success in 2024 is about digital transformation, data and, of course, AI.

Of course they are right

Technology is a great way to democratise and personalise. Become faster, better and cheaper. It can take eliminate tasks and augment the humans in our business.

But unless your AI integrated data lake is vastly superior to that of the competition, they’re not a sustainable differentiator.

• Every piece of software you can buy is also available to the competition;
• Every digital gizmo you build can be copied by a dedicated me-too;
• Every AI will eventually be overtaken by a stronger one.

Uniqueness will need to come from how your people deal with this technology.
The actions they take. The innovations they come up with. The ways they can blend data and human touch. As they say, it’s no AI that will take your job. It’s someone using AI in the right way.

So while I’ll stay up to date on whatever latest tech Silicon Valley throws our way, I’ll put my real attention elsewhere …
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I’m going all in on customer transformation.

Because customer experience management has plateaued in its current form.
Sure, by doing more of the same, we will always get a little better. But we won’t make the jumps required to prepare our businesses and customer relationships for the future. We keep chasing the experience puck, rather than skate where it will be.

So in 2024, and probably beyond, I’ll double-down on what I think are the three main priorities for customer leaders. To:

• Create customer cultures rooted in passion and belief, instead of compliance
• Create experiences that are memorable, or even transformative. At scale.
• Expand experience know-how beyond management theory

In which the three overlap, but it helps to keep them separate.

FOCUS #1: Creating customer cultures rooted in passion and belief, instead of compliance

For most of the last decade, corporate conversations about customer experience have focused on scores, chatbots and journey maps. Occasionally, someone laments that mindset, leadership commitment, and ROI lag. To then focus on that ‘EPIC journey which will personalise multichannel communication’.

While this all makes sense within the customer experience universe, for the rest of the business, it makes customer-centricity fuzzy, uninspiring and complicated. Sometimes even stressful.

As a result, acting on customer feedback becomes a chore. Scores get ‘gamed’. Personal initiative dwindles under the weight of checklists. And somehow, IT can never keep up with the endless list of change requests.

The traditional organisational response is usually more metrics, more training, more processes and more pressure. But if there is one thing that I’ve learned when working on experience programmes, is that MORE isn’t always the answer. In fact, trying to control an ever more complex and volatile world only burns you out.
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So rather than ‘push harder’, my first focus will be on the creation of workplaces where people WANT to do what is right for the customer and the business. Not because they are told, but because they believe it’s the right thing to do.

​Once an organisation hits that stage, things just start to ‘flow’. ​
​Last year, I remember blitzing a global digital team’s priority list in an afternoon. Not because there was some amazing methodology, but mainly because they considered the customer goal they aimed for, intuitive and exciting.

While excellence will always require hard work, once the customer strategy connects to the people, decisions get easier. Ideas come quicker. Leaders get more engaged.

If you want to get philosophical about it, The Taoists call it Wu Wei, the art of effortless action. I just call it creating a customer culture.

Ask yourself: Are you pushing the customer cause uphill with methods, technology, and measurements? Or are you going with the cultural flows? Consider how you can put real customer transformation (even) higher on your agenda.
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FOCUS #2: Create experiences that are memorable, or even transformative. At scale.

Most experience innovation is incremental. 
We tweak websites. Update journey maps. Refine contact centre scripts. This is good, as it improves our performance. It makes us faster. Effortless. Cheaper.

But it also locks us into the orthodoxies of the past. 
We keep building on yesterday’s experience assumptions, even when they stopped making sense. And because customer conversations keep shifting, we’re always chasing the puck. While slowly drifting into commoditisation.

Just think about it. 
Exceptions aside, every bank, insurance, supermarket, car brand, accountant or construction company resembles the next. Zooming out, the functional orientation of our schools, health care, travel, prisons or death care only meet a fraction of the needs of those ‘being processed’. Did anyone mention the carbon economy?

If we continue to improve on outdated assumptions, eventually we lose touch with our customers, and our businesses will be replaced by those who do listen. All the incremental improvement in the world won’t change that. At least not fast enough.

My second focus will go on balancing incremental improvement with transformative experience innovation. Make experiences more memorable and meaningful. Even help humans achieve their true aspirations.

​I learned the need for this balance between incrementalism and transformation at Toyota. Renowned for their ‘kaizen’ approach to continuous improvement, they also embrace radical change and innovation through ‘kaikaku’ and ‘kakushin’, balancing evolution and revolution.

Years ago, this led to the creation of the GT86 sports car, designed to ‘accelerate the heartbeat’ of its driver. These days, they’re building a city of the future, to discover what tomorrow’s mobility customers ‘really want’.

Balancing incrementalism with breakthrough thinking is of relevance to every industry.
I realise it may be challenging, as organisations like to maintain the status quo. But the payoff is big too, as taking the experiential high road:

• Allows us to anticipate tomorrow’s customer needs and risks of disruption. This reduces organisational stress and wasted investments.
• Create deeper customer relationships. As experience research superstar Prof. Mat Duerden found, the hard Net Promoter 9’s or 10s only really appear when experiences are memorable, meaningful or even transformational. Merely being faster or effortless doesn’t cut it for long.
• Can create breakthroughs which competitors struggle to match. Gutenberg, Kodak, Apple or the more recent ChatGPT didn’t win by being the first mover. They did it by transforming the experience customers were used to.

Ask yourself: What is your company’s balance between incremental improvement (kaizen) and transformational experience innovation? Are you improving based on yesterday’s assumptions and habits, or also building for tomorrow’s needs and expectations? Is there an opportunity to ‘change the game’?
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Focus #3:. Expanding customer thinking with multidisciplinary insights.

The thought first came to me on an October evening in 2016. I was in New York for the Future of Storytelling conference and went out for a walk. I was thinking about what I had learned earlier that day from the likes of Felix Barrett , Marije Vogelzang and Beau Lotto. Names which meant nothing to me at the time, yet which each turned to be giants in their field of expertise.

And then it hit me. 
Even though I had worked on some of the largest scale customer experience projects in the world, I realised I was only scratching the surface of ‘real’ human experience. My business school and corporate training had locked my mind into a world of management theories, maturity models, and processes. I was damn good at them. Even invented a few.

But I was only seeing part of the picture.
Out there was a world of neuroscience, theatre, psychology, anthropology, art, literature that didn’t just entertain, but was a vast source of experience and transformation knowledge to soak up.

Suddenly I felt like an amateur, and I loved it.
So I studied. Sought the fringe. Experienced. Confronted my corporate biases. And yes, occasionally went a bit too far.

I learned how to change value and perception through story. How to use biofeedback as a measurement for customer immersion. How to create awe. Trust. Shift paradigms. And above all, how to reimagine customer and employee experience from scratch.

Compared to my expert friends, I still feel like a beginner. 
But after 7 years of learning, and the associated imposter syndrome, I feel I know enough to encourage others to broaden their experience and transformation horizon.

So, my third and final focus will go to enriching the field of ‘corporate’ experience and transformation management with the knowledge of other disciplines. From the artists, scientists, storytellers and builders that help us dream and grow.I know that in a business context, this sounds fluffy. 

So, my third and final focus will go to enriching the field of ‘corporate’ experience and transformation management with the knowledge of other disciplines. From the artists, scientists, storytellers and builders that help us dream and grow.

I know that in a business context, this sounds fluffy. 
But while the communities I mention use their own non-business language, the content of their message is rock solid. And it should be heard by the board of every large organisation.

Ask yourself: Beyond the frameworks of business school and ‘rationalist’ training, how open are you to integrate artistic creativity, scientific insights, and storytelling into your commercial experience strategies? Are you ready to explore this balance to transform what is possible in your organisation? Your industry?

So that’s me for 2024, and probably beyond.
In a way, 2024 is just a continuation of the path I took on that fateful evening in New York seven years ago, albeit with more focus.

So as I change my LinkedIn description from Experience Architect to Transformation Architect, it’s about more than picking a fancy new title. It’s about making a statement that while customer experience tools and technologies still matter, we should never forget the goal: to make customer transformation happen. Profitably, and at scale.

Ask yourself: In how far is your business going through the customer experience motions? Focusing on tools and technology while avoiding actual work on culture? Tinkering with touchpoints without challenging the status go? Keeping on blinkers?

When I started asking these questions of myself, I didn’t always like the answers. But acknowledging reality is the first step of transformation.

So if you’re up for it, I invite you to join me.
Our world is changing fast, and needs to change even more. We need to reinvent the way we deal with customers. Work. Life. The planet. Getting better at what we did yesterday won’t be enough. So let’s:

• Craft organisations which naturally focus on customer and societal needs,
• Imagine experiences that help customers meet their aspirations. That transform our world.
• Broaden our perspective by learning unfamiliar disciplines, cultures and perspectives

And let’s do it profitably, and at scale.


PS. Seriously, if you feel the idea of customer transformation could resonate with your intentions for 2024 and beyond, drop me a line. Even if we don’t do business, we can learn from each other. And that’s already a win!