Customer‑inspired innovation goes beyond traditional Voice of the Customer programs. It requires a disciplined approach to listening, interpreting, validating, and iterating in close partnership with end users. When organizations consistently do this well, they develop an intuitive grasp of customer pain points, emerging needs, and hidden opportunities long before competitors notice them. The intent is simple: solve real pain points better than anyone else—reliably, repeatedly, and at scale. A major differentiator lies in closing the common loopholes that slow innovation:

From Noise to Insight: Five Loopholes That Derail CII—and How to Fix Them

1. Over-reliance on vocal customers
   • Challenge: A loud minority can skew priorities toward niche needs.
   • Countermeasure: Balance qualitative input with representative sampling, randomized surveys, and behavioral data. Establish segment-based customer councils and weight signals by market size, strategic fit, and revenue impact.
2. Symptoms instead of root causes
   • Challenge: Feedback often describes pain, not the underlying drivers.
   • Countermeasure: Use root-cause tools (5 Whys), contextual inquiry, and longitudinal studies. Validate hypotheses through controlled experiments that isolate causal factors.
3. Innovation blind spots
   • Challenge: Customers tend to imagine incremental improvements, not step changes.
   • Countermeasure: Pair horizon scanning and futures design with insight synthesis. Prototype radical options and test desirability alongside feasibility and viability to reveal latent demand.
4. Misinterpreting data
   • Challenge: Metrics show what happened, not why it happened.
   • Countermeasure: Triangulate behavioral data with qualitative interviews and field observation. Establish interpretation standards and guardrails (avoid confounding variables, confirm external validity).
5. Slow feedback loops
   • Challenge: Long cycles delay learning; needs may shift before launch.
   • Countermeasure: Adopt continuous discovery and delivery. Use rapid prototyping, A/B testing, feature flags, and staged rollouts to compress learning cycles and reduce risk.

From Insight to Outcomes: How CII Delivers Quantifiable Value

1. Higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
   • Tailored solutions reduce friction, boost NPS and lower churn.
   • Track retention, repeat purchase rates, and service resolution times.
2. Faster market adoption
   • Fit-to-need offerings ramp quicker with stronger early traction.
   • Monitor activation rates, time-to-value, and first 90-day engagement (adjust time window by industry).
3. Reduced development risk
   • Early validation prevents late rework and costly failures.
   • Use go/no-go gates based on validated problem-solution fit and usability scores.
4. Competitive differentiation
   • Superior usability, reliability, and experience become defensible advantages.
   • Benchmark task success rate, error rate, and customer effort score versus competitors.
5. Increased revenue and margin expansion
   • Alignment with customer value drives higher conversion, premium pricing, and upsell/cross-sell.
   • Instrument pricing acceptance, attach rates, and CLV/CAC improvements.
6. Stronger brand reputation
   • A consistent “we listen and act” posture builds trust and preference.
   • Track brand preference, share of voice, and earned advocacy.

Insight to Expansion: Five Ways CII Powers Sustainable Growth

1. Expands product lines based on real needs
   • Use usage patterns to identify high-leverage extensions, new SKUs, and feature improvements.
   • Prioritize by impact on customer outcomes, not by feature count.
2. Opens new markets and segments
   • Adjacent needs emerge from deep insight (e.g., expansion from semiconductors into data centers).
   • Validate adjacency theses with pilot customers before scaling.
3. Strengthens long-term strategic partnerships
   • Co‑creation with key accounts fuels multi‑year agreements, joint development, and preferential supplier status.
   • Formalize collaboration charters and shared KPIs to keep value creation transparent.
4. Accelerates New Product introduction (NPI) success rates
   • NPI efforts guided by customer involvement enjoy higher launch success and predictable scale.
   • Gate NPI with validated desirability, feasibility, and manufacturability; monitor post-launch learning velocity.
5. Fuels a continuous innovation culture
   • Customer‑inspired practices infuse portfolio strategy, product roadmaps, service excellence, and cross‑functional alignment.
   • Establish operating rhythms that keep teams close to customers and data: weekly insight reviews, monthly experiment cadences, quarterly roadmap recalibration.

The CII Scorecard: How to Measure Outcomes, Performance, and Learning

• Customer outcomes: time-to-value, task completion rate, customer effort score, CSAT/NPS, retention.
• Product outcomes: adoption, feature engagement, error rates, mean time to resolution.
• Business outcomes: conversion, ARPU, CLV/CAC, attach rates, renewal rates, margin.
• Learning velocity: cycle time from insight to experiment, experiment throughput, validated insights per quarter.

Conclusion

Customer-inspired innovation is a durable competitive advantage. By listening deeply, interpreting needs precisely, and iterating quickly, organizations can close common loopholes, create breakthrough value, and sustain growth. Products can be copied; customer empathy and learning velocity cannot. Companies that stay closest to their customers—through disciplined insight, rapid validation, and transparent feedback loops—will set the pace for their industries and shape the future of their markets.

Key words:

• CII: Customer Inspired Innovation
• ARPU: Average Revenue Per User
• CLV: Customer Lifetime Value
• CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost
• CLV/CAC: Customer Lifetime Value divided by Customer Acquisition Cost (a ratio indicating how much lifetime value you generate for each dollar spent acquiring a customer)
• CSAT: Customer Satisfaction (typically measured via a post-interaction survey score)
• NPS: Net Promoter Score (gauges loyalty based on likelihood to recommend)

Sandeep Singh is a global product and portfolio leader with over 10 years of experience driving innovation and growth across advanced materials, and industrial markets. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, he leads filtration and separation strategies, building on prior success at Solventum (formerly 3M Health Care) as Global Product Portfolio Leader, where he managed a multimillion-dollar global portfolio, delivered significant revenue growth, and accelerated time-to-market by 30%.

At 3M Company, Sandeep held leadership roles in the Industrial Mineral Products and Advanced Materials divisions, driving market expansion, portfolio optimization, and Six Sigma process improvements. Earlier in his career at Ferro Corporation, he led global R&D projects for electronic coatings and advanced commercialization for semiconductor and solar applications. Sandeep combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision to transform ideas into market-leading solutions worldwide. He is the author of multiple technical publications and holds three patents in advanced materials on glass coating technologies.

The post Customer Inspired Innovation (CII): From Insight to Impact and Sustainable Growth appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

“You spend so much time in front of that thing, you might as well try to make some money out of it.”

LinkedIn didn’t exist back then, and neither did any other social media as we know it today. But we still had Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs. In any case, my mom’s words stuck with me. A couple of years later, thanks to a friend whose mom probably told him the same thing, I decided to try and get a job that involved me and a computer. He had already done it and had joined the ranks of Internet Technical Support Agents who helped people connect to the very basic version of the Internet we had back then.

Google wasn’t around yet, and neither was YouTube. Portals were slowly beginning to rise, but not in Argentina. People just used their super-fast 14.4K up to 56K modems to, you know, search for something on Yahoo! or download their email packages (yes, you had to download a whole package before opening them in Outlook or Eudora), then disconnect.

Some would join private chatrooms or BBSs during the evenings and nights, and during the day, it was mostly office people just sending emails.

So, I prepared my impressive two-paragraph résumé (I had no work experience other than walking dogs in my neighborhood) that explained I was basically a self-made nerd (like there’s another kind, ha!) who loved computers and happened to be bilingual. As you did back in the twentieth century, I opened a printed newspaper my mother used to read, went to the Jobs section, and found a couple of places interviewing potential tech support people.

You had to go in person back then. You couldn’t send your résumé in advance or call in. You’d stand in line with your résumé and hope you’d at least be interviewed. You usually never knew how many openings there were, what you needed to get the job, or even if they had already found someone.

I wore the one suit I had, polished my shoes, and took what I guess we’d call my one-page CV with me. I had to ride one train and one bus to get there on time, into a city I didn’t know very well (no suburb kid knows the real city until they ride public transportation on their own). To my surprise, I didn’t just make it on time—I was among the first people in line.

The person who interviewed me was maybe 30 years old, called Liliana. Curly auburn hair, big smile, not very tall. She wore all black and was really friendly. She invited me into the conference room, interviewed me, and asked simple questions—some technical, such as: “Do you understand Windows 3.11?” “Can you set up a modem?” And then some soft-skill ones: “Do you like helping others?” “People might be angry. Can you handle emotions?”

The technical questions helped me—I answered those comfortably. The soft skills ones? Not so much. But I got the job right there and then. To some of you, this might sound impossible, but you could get a job with just one interview back then. I guess in some situations you still can, but it’s no longer the norm in big corporations.

Liliana asked me to start the very next day, and I did. She said the suit wasn’t needed, but I had no other nice clothes, so I still wore it on my first day. As I walked onto the floor and saw all the people talking at once, helping people “connect to the Internet,” I froze. The introvert in me felt that was going to be too much to handle. Everyone sounded so professional, so sure about what they were doing. Some of the guys were standing while they talked, headsets tethered to their phones. Some were smoking (back then you could still smoke in the office), some were drinking coffee, but everyone was on the phone, and all you could hear was buzzing. No one was yelling, but to me, the whole thing was overwhelming.

It must have shown on my face because I suddenly saw Liliana approach, again wearing black on black, curly auburn hair bouncing as she took big steps toward me, with her big smile. She was carrying a big binder. She shook my hand, slapped me lightly on the back, and said, “Come with me.”

She took me to a conference room next to the floor (the area where the actual call center was, where I almost had a panic attack minutes before), offered me some awful coffee, and dropped the binder in front of me. It sounded thicker than it really was. She tapped it with three fingers and told me I had to read through it because it contained the basic SOPs I would need to know by heart to do a good job.

I was still not feeling it, and as she explained what the binder contained, she realized I needed some help. So, she closed the binder and started telling me things about herself, the job, the team, the people I would meet—including my supervisors and colleagues. I can’t quite remember her exact words, but I know it had to do with those things, and it worked. She also told me about lunch breaks and that she didn’t mind that people played Age of Empires when there was no one calling us—and she knew people thought she didn’t know, but that was okay.

I went from scared to shocked, to laughing, to shocked again at laughing in front of the person I just realized was the leader of the whole thing. I wasn’t going to report to her, but to someone under her. And she was telling me she was okay with Age of Empires!

Man, I could not believe it. Then she said the sentence that inspired this whole article. She saw I had finally relaxed and was feeling more comfortable (though honestly, I can’t imagine what I really looked like, still wearing the same suit as the day before and probably pale from almost freaking out) and said something like this:

“There are two things you need to remember: One, call me Lili—no one calls me Liliana. Two, remember to have fun. That’s important. Have fun while you work, and you’ll want to work more.”

Then she left me to it, and I spent probably half that day reading back and forth through that manual before I ventured onto the floor again.

I only stayed at that job for one year, but to this day, I can say I had way more fun there than I did in the next decade. I figured Lili had the same impact on everyone else that she did on me—or most of us anyway—which created a relaxed atmosphere for the most part, even when we had some power-hungry supervisors (you don’t know evil until you work under one of those) who tried to make the job worse than it really was.

Lili didn’t take her position too seriously, and that helped us reach out to her more often. She would have dinner with us when she happened to be on my shift (I worked both evening and graveyard shifts), she would smoke with us, even cheer for one or another if we happened to be playing a quick AOE match.

She was, of course, dead serious when it came to hitting our metrics and had a firm hand to solve issues or situations that required her to jump into solution mode. I think the fact that she led with this idea of having fun helped us understand that there was a time for enjoying

ourselves and a time for respecting the fact that the best was expected from us—get the job done, and then some.

Ever since I worked under Lili, I’ve tried having fun at work and inspiring others to have fun as well. But mostly, it’s her attitude that I try to emulate when I can: I try to never take my position too seriously, stay approachable, and get out of the way when people are having fun—knowing that that is the best fuel we can all hope for, to really enjoy doing the job, whatever the job is.

Alejandro Cabral is a seasoned sales leader and digital transformation strategist with over 25 years of experience across North and South America. Currently serving as District Manager for Digital Sales at Kimberly-Clark Professional, Alejandro specializes in driving growth through innovative sales strategies and empowering teams to achieve their full potential. Beyond his corporate leadership roles at global companies like VMware, BMC Software, Oracle, and Microsoft, Alejandro is also the founder of AC Sales Consulting, where he has helped numerous organizations—from large enterprises to small businesses—navigate change, implement modern sales processes, and develop talent through tailored coaching and training programs.

A passionate advocate for change management and talent development, Alejandro is also a public speaker and mentor, sharing insights on social selling, digital transformation, and leadership. His personal motto: Success can be planned. You can find more of his insights and stories on LinkedIn here.

The post One from Lili’s book, my first manager ever. Work CAN be fun. appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Translation: We’re heading into more change, not more stability. The volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that leaders are dealing with today aren’t temporary spikes. They define our new operating environment, warts and all.

You’ve probably noticed it too. Your team gets nervous and goes quiet when you announce a new change initiative. People who used to ask questions now just nod. Deadlines slip. Volunteers for extra work disappear. When you ask for feedback, you get crickets and awkward downward stares. You can feel the tension.

Most leaders see this as resistance. They assume people disagree with the direction, don’t trust leadership, or don’t want to change. While some of that may be true, there’s an additional problem senior leaders and executives aren’t prioritizing in 2026 but should.

What you’re seeing is chronic overwhelm; it’s a form of depletion driven by too much change. Your people have been adapting to new ways of working for so long that they’ve temporarily run out of capacity for change. As Dr. Jesse MacLean of the American Medical Association (AMA) observed, “When we came out of the COVID-19 public health emergency in 2023, many believed making decisions would be easier. Unfortunately, life only seems like it has gotten more complex” (Dr. Jesse MacLean, AMA: What doctors wish patients knew about decision fatigue).

Two forces are at work, and most organizations don’t recognize the impact they’re already having on their teams: change fatigue and change saturation.

Change Fatigue: What’s Happening Inside Your People

Change fatigue develops when people have been asked to learn new tools, adopt new processes, report to new leaders, and adjust to new priorities for months or years without settling into periods of stability. Change fatigue shows up as overwhelm, withdrawal, cynicism, and a quiet refusal to go above and beyond.

Seventy-one percent of employees now feel overwhelmed by the amount of change at work, with that number rising to 86% among workers aged 16 to 24 (Capterra, 2022: Change Fatigue in the Workplace), and that was before today’s AI disruption. This problem has grown so significant that Gallagher’s 2025 State of the Sector report now lists change fatigue among the top five barriers to success. Forty-four percent of HR leaders view change fatigue as a key battleground, making it the second most significant challenge after limited team capacity.

As one respondent put it: “It’s gone beyond change fatigue. It’s change exhaustion; disconnection; denial” (Gallagher, 2025: Change Fatigue Ranks in Top Five Barriers). The business impact is real: A leading consultancy found that among employees experiencing high change fatigue, only 43% plan to stay with their company, compared to 74% of those with low fatigue. Capterra research shows workers experiencing change fatigue are 54% more likely to consider finding a new job, with 48% reporting increased stress and 37% feeling less trust toward their employers (Capterra, 2022: Change Fatigue in the Workplace).

Change Saturation: What’s Happening in Your Organization

Change saturation is an organizational condition, not an individual one. It happens when you launch more change initiatives than your people, processes, and systems can absorb. Most projects don’t get the attention they need to succeed because there’s simply not enough time to do them all well.

The pace of organizational change has accelerated dramatically with geopolitical uncertainty, economic anxiety, layoffs, digital transformation, AI disruption, and multiple overlapping change initiatives inside organizations. In 2022, the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes, up from just 2 in 2016. And that was before AI and recurring layoffs. The pace isn’t slowing: over 75% of corporations now revamp their business model every two to five years (WalkMe via Global Finance, 2023: Corporate Change Fatigue).

As Harvard Business Review put it in December 2024: “Poorly managed, unintegrated change can not only lead to reduced performance, but risks the well-being of employees as well” (HBR, Dec 2024: Are You the Cause of Your Team’s Change Fatigue?). When you stack too many changes at once, people burn out faster. When people are already depleted, even well-designed change initiatives fail to get traction.

Decision Quality Suffers Too

Every change initiative asks people to make new decisions: Which process do we follow now? What’s the priority this week? Who owns this?

The average adult makes 33,000 to 35,000 decisions per day, most of them automatic (HBR, 2023: A Simple Way to Make Better Decisions). But layer change initiatives on top of that, and your people face dozens of additional significant decisions daily, each one drawing from a finite cognitive reserve.

Workplace Intelligence found that mental overload is now a leading source of work-related stress for 72% of employees (Workplace Intelligence, 2023: Decision Fatigue). When the number of decisions exceeds capacity, people start making worse choices or avoiding decisions altogether. Psychotherapist Zainib Abdullah describes what this looks like: “It can either show up as feeling depleted, having very little energy, feeling numb… or it could show up as a lot of stress activation in the system, a lot of anxiety and impulsive behavior” (Zainib Abdullah via CBC, 2024: Decision fatigue is a peril of modern life).

What You Can Do

Practice ruthless prioritization. Before you add anything new, ask what you can stop. List every initiative currently active across the organization (in other words, everything that impacts your team). Work with your team and colleagues to identify the highest priorities (based on customer value, business benefit, and feasibility) and which ones can be paused, combined, or ended.

In a polycrisis environment, you can’t do everything. The discipline is choosing the few changes that matter most and letting the rest go. One of the most useful things a leader can say is: “We’re going to stop (or pause) doing this so we can focus on that.”

Pace change to human capacity, not strategic ambition. Not everything has to happen at once. Build in gaps between major initiatives. Give people time to fully absorb one shift before the next arrives. Your strategy might call for ten changes this year. Your people might have capacity for three. You may be able to do three well, but you’ll likely fail across most of the ten. Align the timeline with what humans can actually sustain, or risk burning out your best people.

Name what’s staying the same. When everything feels like it’s shifting, people lose their footing. Identify the things that aren’t changing: your core values, your commitment to certain practices, and the parts of the work that will remain stable. Saying “this is staying the same” gives people a much-needed anchor.

Reduce the decision load. Change saturation often brings decision overload: new tools, new processes, new expectations. Standardize where you can. Reduce the number of tools and systems, if possible. Make the path forward obvious. Every unnecessary choice you remove frees up capacity for the choices that matter.

Protect your team’s peak cognitive windows. Our brains naturally cycle through 90-minute periods of high alertness followed by dips (HBR, 2011: A 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness). Deep work, strategic thinking, and complex problem-solving are best done during peak cognitive windows, ideally earlier in the workday before routine tasks erode decision quality. Help your team reserve their best 90-minute blocks for the highest-value work only they can do.

Say the “why” more than once. Research on management communication shows that employees often need to hear a message multiple times before it sticks, especially during stressful periods (Neeley & Leonardi, HBR, 2011: Effective Managers Say the Same Thing Twice (or More). Leadership requires repetition. If you’ve said it once, you haven’t said it enough.

Watch for early signals. Silence in meetings, missed deadlines, and declining participation aren’t just performance problems. They’re often signs of fatigue. Ask directly: “What’s on your plate right now?” and “What support do you need?”

The Real Question

Organizations that treat change fatigue as a passing problem will burn through their people. Organizations that build sustainable change practices will still have capacity when their competitors are scrambling to find their next employees.

The organizations that navigate constant change won’t be the ones that push hardest. They’ll be the ones that prioritize ruthlessly, pace themselves, and make adjustments based on their people’s real-time capacity.

Your people aren’t resisting. They’re secretly hoping someone will slow down long enough to notice what’s actually happening and choose the 2-3 highest-value priorities everyone can focus on together.

So, ask yourself: If you took two initiatives off your team’s plate tomorrow, which ones would they beg you to cut?

¹ WEF, 2025: Global Risks Report 2025.

Michael O. “Coop” Cooper is the founder of High Performance Orgs and an executive coach with 26 years of experience working with over 3,000 founders, executives, and high-potential leaders. He helps ambitious, overwhelmed leaders stop winging it and start leading with better clarity, improved collaboration, and measurable results. Learn more at highperformanceorgs.com or connect on LinkedIn.

The post How to Lead Through the Next Decade: Managing Constant Change Fatigue and Change Saturation appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Mark guided participants through exercises and real-time discussions as he explored three key areas:

1. Building credibility as a trusted leader.
2. Navigating organizational dynamics to position ideas for success.
3. Expanding your network of allies to amplify your influence.

After brief introductions from a diverse group of customer contact executives, call center directors and innovation and strategy leaders, Mark Levy shared a bit about his background as an author and customer contact executive. He noted that although the assembled members were from different industries, all shared a common need to influence others, navigate organizational dynamics and advocate for their ideas. Perfecting – or at least improving – these skills can sometimes spell the difference between success and failure, no matter the extent of professional expertise.

For the first group activity, Mark asked members to add words they associated with “influence” to a word cloud on menti.com. Members added words such as inspire, respect, collaboration, energy, storytelling, open-mindedness, leadership and power.

The Credibility Equation

Next, Mark discussed a concept called “The Credibility Equation,” which encompasses:

• Competence – being good at what you do
• Character – who you are and how you show up
• Caring – empathy and caring, especially in the contact center space – genuine concern goes far if people trust your intentions

As the discussion progressed, members were asked to share a little about their strengths as well as areas where they might need to grow as leaders and influencers. Strengths shared included character, “walking the talk,” building trust and being competent overall. As a member observed, credibility is a combination of all of these things and includes consistent actions (big and small) repeated over time that help build trust with colleagues and teams.

Navigating Organizational Dynamics

It’s important to understand your organization’s dynamics and greater ecosystem. This includes thinking about:

• Power structures – who actually makes the decisions; it’s not always the fancy title
• Culture – the values that drive corporate behavior, i.e., customer first, a bias towards quick action, adaptability, etc.
• Communication channels – where and how do decisions happen? Can you have side conversations or do you always need to schedule a formal meeting?
• Stakeholder interests – What are their interests needs, priorities?

The group discussed some of the challenges they faced navigating organizational dynamics – including power structures and stakeholder interests – and how they overcame them. Remedies included getting C-Level buy-in, knowing the key players and socializing key ideas before making proposals. One member shared that they made it a point to have regular one-to-one discussions with influencers to help build rapport and trust. Another endorsed being proactive and bringing all stakeholders to the table before moving forward with new initiatives, as this was how their organization worked. As noted, this helped prevent resistance later.

Other challenges related to managing contact center teams. Some of the call center leaders noted difficulties balancing basic employee responsibilities such as phone duties with off-call work and meeting productivity goals. Another member was grappling with funding, resource issues and the management structure.

As Mark stated, “you can’t do this alone.” It’s necessary to network, find allies and build relationships to be truly effective and execute big initiatives. Mostly, people can sense when you are being genuine, or not.  As recommended, focus on giving before asking…every exchange doesn’t need to be “this for that.” Think about how you can offer help or share expertise and consider connecting colleagues to others who can help them. Finally, working in fully remote environments means you’ll need to work even harder to accomplish this. And finding time to build important connections can also be challenging for busy, overtaxed executives.
 

 

Collaboration is key

Partnering with allies in other departments can help you create a more powerful, collective voice. To this end, Mark asked members to share who in their respective organizations they would like to collaborate with, or more fully connect with.  Responses included the product development team, the AI department, marketing and, of course, the C-Suite. Whether they were looking for critical data to be shared more efficiently, sought better collaboration with the IT department, or had new ideas to pitch, members were advised to consider mapping out who might help them achieve their goals. The end game: use your influence to build coalitions and bring value to the business.

Mark Levy is an executive, coach, author, and publisher. The Psychology of CX 101 is his latest book. He is the author of The Accountability Team Handbook and 365 Days of Accountability. He publishes two newsletters—Decoding Customer Experience and DCX AI Today—read by CX leaders worldwide.

To learn more about how Mark Levy can help you navigate challenges, drive change, or build a more customer-centric organization, look for him on LinkedIn.

The post Mastering Your CX Influence appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Picture this: a customer uses your platform, redeems loyalty points, and expects a high-quality, reliable experience. But then something goes wrong. They receive cancellation notices, vague support responses, and no clear path forward. The partner responsible for delivering that part of the journey is suddenly unavailable.

From the customer’s perspective, none of that matters. They trusted your brand to deliver, and now that trust is at risk. This is not a rare example. Many companies depend on external partners to deliver parts of the customer experience. When those partners fail, the customer holds YOUR brand accountable, and your brand absorbs the reputational damage.

The breakdown of a recent high-profile partnership shows how even well-intentioned collaborations can quickly lead to customer fallout if not managed carefully.

What Happened

In 2024, Marriott International entered a licensing agreement with Sonder, a hospitality company offering apartment style stays. The goal was to offer Marriott Bonvoy members more booking options and allow them to earn and redeem loyalty points at Sonder properties.

By November 2025, the partnership abruptly ended. Marriott cited Sonder’s failure to meet certain obligations and terminated the agreement. Days later, Sonder filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and began winding down its U.S. operations.

The customer impact was immediate.

Guests who had booked stays through Marriott found their reservations canceled, some in the middle of a trip. Refunds were unclear. Some loyalty members faced problems accessing points or benefits, and support channels offered limited help. Even though Marriott was not the source of the disruption, the customers blamed the brand they trusted.

The lesson is urgent: when a partner fails, both brands may face consequences. Yet, your brand is the one the customer contacts, criticizes, and remembers for the bad experience. ~Stacy Sherman

3 CX Lessons Every Leader Must Apply

1. Identify Every Point Where Partners Interact with Your Customers

If a partner touches your customer, it becomes part of your customer experience. You need to manage it accordingly.

Doing CX Right® Tips:

• Make a complete list of every customer interaction that involves a partner. This could include third party platforms, local fulfillment teams, outsourced service centers, or loyalty redemptions
• Ask yourself: Would a customer think this moment represents our brand? If so, it must meet your standards
• Define clear service expectations for those moments and measure them as you would internal teams
• Include partner touchpoints in your customer surveys and CX metrics. Track how those interactions influence the customer’s overall impression

In the Marriott and Sonder case, customers booked and redeemed rewards through Marriott, but fulfillment was handled by Sonder. When things failed, the experience still reflected on Marriott.

2. Define Clear Roles and Customer Protocols for Disruptions

Many partnerships focus on expansion, sales, and shared benefits. But few define exactly how customer issues will be handled when things go wrong. Without clear accountability, communication breaks down and the customer experience suffers.

Doing CX Right® Tips:

• Define exactly who handles customer communication, escalation, and resolution in the event of a disruption
• Work with each partner to build a shared response plan. Make sure customer experience remains the priority
• Test scenarios before they happen. If a partner cannot deliver, do you know how and when your team will step in

In this case, many Marriott guests received abrupt cancellation notices or were left without clear support. The lack of coordination amplified customer frustration.

3. Protect Customer Promises That Depend on External Partners

When you offer guarantees, perks, or loyalty benefits, customers expect them to be honored. That holds true whether the service is delivered by you or a partner.

Doing CX Right® Tips:

• Create a list of every customer promise that depends on an outside party. This includes service guarantees, delivery commitments, and point redemptions
• Assess the risk in each case. If the partner fails, what will your customer experience
• Only offer what you are confident you can fulfill, even if your partner cannot

In the Marriott and Sonder scenario, Bonvoy members lost access to benefits they had trusted. The damage was not just operational, it was emotional! And emotion leaves a lasting imprint in people’s minds. Read that again!

Final Thought

Operational excellence inside your company is not enough. When a partner fails in front of your customer, it sets off a chain reaction of confusion, frustration, and disappointment that all land on your brand. As we saw in the Marriott and Sonder breakdown, the emotional toll of a disrupted experience grows when communication is unclear and expectations are not met.

Customers do not care who caused the failure. They only remember how they felt and which brand they trusted at the moment it happened.

Ask yourself:

• Which parts of our customer experience are owned by partners?
• Do we measure and monitor those touchpoints the same way we do internal ones?
• If a partner fails tomorrow, do we have a plan that protects the customer?

If you are not sure, this is the time to act. Doing CX Right means proactively managing partner interactions, not just thinking about them or hoping they go smoothly. Set clear standards, monitor performance, and fix weak links before they create real damage to your customer experience and business results.

Stacy Sherman has dedicated 25 years to passionately forging authentic connections between people and brands. She is dedicated to helping businesses excel in Experience Management to retain profitable customers and their valued workforce. Stacy achieves this through her proven Heart & Science Loyalty model, merging CX, Marketing, and Sales roles at reputable brands like Liveops, Verizon, Schindler Elevator, Wilton Brands, and AT&T.

To connect with Stacy or learn more, click here: Doing Customer Experience (CX) Right.
You can also follow her on Instagram or LinkedIn.

The post Your Customer eXperience Is Only as Strong as Your Weakest Partner appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

ACTION ITEMS

• Distill complex data into clear, audience-focused narratives that drive strategic decisions.
• Develop storytelling frameworks that align analytics with organizational goals to enhance executive presence and influence.
• Practice delivering high-impact stories that build trust, inspire teams, and support change initiatives at the leadership level.

KEY INSIGHTS

• Executives who use storytelling with data improve retention and understanding by up to 70% compared to executives who present numbers alone.
• Stories turn insight into influence. Research shows people are 22 times more likely to remember a story than a statistic.
• The contact center is often the front line for customer stories – learn to leverage them effectively.
• Be sure to share important stories with executives.
• Take raw data and turn it into stories that align teams.

Data alone doesn’t inspire action

• 62% of executives admit they ignore or delay decisions because the data is too complicated.
  • Example cited: a 50-page analytics report that most executives didn’t read because it was too complex and the data was poorly presented.
• With storytelling, more valuable data can be leveraged.
• Data doesn’t move people, stories do.

A framework for marrying stories and data

1. Distill complex stories or data into a narrative.
2. Create a storytelling frame and a narrative arc.
3. Use AI as an amplifier of insights. AI can add speed and scale.
4. Executive playbook: Knowing when to use the story and how to tell it.

 IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES

• Consider what the audience values.
• Tailor the data to the audience.
  • What do you want the audience to take away?
  • Why does it matter to them? What do you want them to do with the info?
  • Give them motivation to act on the information:

Getting results

• When data becomes a story, leaders are moved.
• Ground your story. Link to the company story, mission or values.
• Use contrast, universal emotions. Fear, envy etc.
• Lead with emotion – “emotion doesn’t make it weaker”- you can use it to bring a story to life.
• AI can now help you to find patterns in thousands of calls and identify sentiments.
• End with a call to action! Don’t walk away empty handed – make your ask.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Don’t be “data rich and insight poor.” Executives don’t need more data – they need the right story at the right moment. What stories should you be telling to move your organization forward?

The post Master the Art of Executive Storytelling: From Analytics to Influence appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Headliner Video – Presented by Dan Gamber,
Director of Experiences, Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC

The post Headliner Video – Raising the Bar: Delivering Preemptive Customer Service appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

At Frost & Sullivan’s 21st Annual Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, industry leaders from various sectors gathered to discuss the evolving challenges and opportunities in customer experience (CX). Although artificial intelligence (AI) was a dominant theme, the main focus was on how to use it effectively—to improve operational efficiency and strengthen customer engagement, not just as a technological trend.

A recurring insight was the disconnect between executive ambition and frontline reality. CEOs are eager to accelerate AI adoption, while contact center leaders stay cautious, concerned about its effects on agent retention and customer loyalty. Closing this gap requires teamwork across IT, CX, and HR, with shared responsibility and clear communication. Every customer saw AI as a tool, not a panacea. The value lies in deeper, more meaningful customer interactions.

CX leaders voiced frustrations in collaborating with IT, pointing to misaligned goals, a lack of customer input, and biases toward familiar technologies. Poor requirements collection and legacy systems further hinder progress. Security issues, especially in financial operations, often conflict with customer experience priorities. The absence of a common language and the rise of sources like Reddit and social media add layers of complexity. AI’s lack of discernment also raises questions about its dependability in delicate customer interactions.

Agent retention is essential for successful transformation. Burnout caused by inadequate systems leads to turnover, so it’s crucial to involve users in AI implementations and gather their feedback on processes and customer needs. Listening to the voice of the customer is also vital. Contact centers often start with backend processes where disruptions are less likely.

Businesses must carefully align strategies to deploy AI technology to enhance CX and EX successfully. This insight shares some valuable frameworks presented by event speakers for businesses to explore and consider as they develop their own strategies.

Frameworks and Models to Explore

Michael O. “Coop” Cooper, Founder & Executive Coach at High Performance Orgs, shared his insights on psychological safety, underscoring that innovation only thrives when employees feel safe to challenge norms. He said, “Despite a widespread desire for innovation, 85% of employees hesitate to speak up due to fear, futility, and lack of trust.” Cooper’s four-stage model—Inclusion, Learner, Contributor, and Challenger Safety—provides a roadmap for creating environments where ideas flourish. His weekly innovation ritual encourages structured brainstorming, accountability, and action. He emphasized that innovation becomes inevitable when it’s structured, visible, and shared.

Lee Kemp, Senior Vice President of Customer Success & Transformation at PCNA (Polyconcept North America), introduced the Precision CX Framework—Growth, Customer, Gap—and emphasized that contact centers are well-positioned to shift from cost centers to revenue generators. Strategic investments, even with limited budgets, can deliver significant returns when guided by simplicity and strong leadership. Kemp encouraged executives to focus on closing the gap between customer expectations and actual service delivery, where true transformation occurs. He stated, “CX isn’t just about satisfaction—it’s a growth engine.”

Nancy Ellen Martin, Director of Customer Service at ThredUp, emphasized shifting from a transactional to a relationship-focused mindset. Agents require tools and frameworks that support thoughtful decision-making. This involves streamlining systems, incorporating feedback into product development, and recognizing agent contributions. Establishing a dedicated Process Improvement role helps ensure sustainability and alignment across teams. She highlighted the importance of providing agents with judgment frameworks and treating them as product experts.

Dan Gamber, Director of Experiences at Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC, emphasized the importance of preemptive service—predicting customer needs before they occur. With over 2,200 stores and millions of calls each year, optimizing phone channels and integrating digital platforms are essential for boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Bridgestone’s Customer Rescue Program and AI-driven call routing show how targeted initiatives can foster operational growth and increase revenue. Its conversational AI achieved over 94% accuracy for tire sales intent and 86% for service intent.

Alisha Hightower, Senior Director of Customer Operations at Delta Dental Insurance, stressed that data alone isn’t enough—storytelling is essential for influencing executive decisions. Since much of the data goes unused, leaders must leverage more of it to turn insights into compelling stories that foster alignment and drive action. Her framework—What, So What, Now What—helps transform analytics into emotionally compelling stories that inspire change. She noted that storytelling can boost retention and understanding by up to 70%.

Todd Hixson, Director of Workforce Management at Personify Health, introduced the concept of holistic serendipity—creating environments where meaningful coincidences can occur. His approach to micro-scheduling, engagement tracking, and AI integration in workforce management challenges conventional norms and encourages efficiency. Hixson’s philosophy combines operational discipline with human-centric design, reminding leaders that intentional planning can unlock unexpected excellence. His detailed scheduling reduced call overlap and boosted compliance to 96.7%.

In his compelling Executive Insight session, Why Design Thinking is Essential for Solving Modern EX & CX Challenges, David Massey, Digital Experience Director, UPS, unveiled how UPS redefined its customer experience (CX) strategy by shifting from designing for customers to creating with them. Using a structured, sprint-based co-creation framework called J.E.D.I. (Journey, Experience & Design Innovation), UPS was able to rapidly test, iterate, and launch improvements that directly reflected real user needs, especially for underserved SMBs. The outcome? UPS saw measurable gains in conversion, revenue, development efficiency, and internal alignment.

Headliner Sean Albertson, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of CX4ROCKS, introduced the Four Rivers of Experience, which highlight key areas that must be harmonized for effective CX:

• Customer: Focus on building trust by delivering the experience you would want for yourself.
• Career: Align employee growth and purpose with CX goals to foster a motivated workforce.
• Community: Create inclusive, collaborative cultures that prioritize people.
• Core: Link personal values with the organization’s mission to drive authentic engagement.

By ensuring these rivers flow in the same direction, organizations can penetrate the silos that often hinder customer-centric strategies, driving collective success.

Tashonda Betts and Laura Stroman shared Tucson Electric Power’s (TEP’s) journey from uncertainty to strategic opportunity. Using tools like StrengthsFinder, DISC, and the Conscious Change Leader model, TEP built trust, accountability, and psychological safety. Survey results showed clear improvements in skills, trust, and resilience, demonstrating that cultural growth is essential to organizational success. Their transformation paved the way for agility, resilience, and succession planning. This journey exemplifies how utilities can evolve from reactive uncertainty to proactive strategy—by investing in people, culture, and leadership.

Final Thoughts

“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.” Henry Ford

Betts and Stroman shared this quote in their presentation, and I believe it perfectly captures what all businesses need to do to face the AI storm, which has been hitting us with rapid changes every year since 2022. Frost & Sullivan’s recent customer survey of CX leaders illustrates the impact of AI innovation on contact centers worldwide:

Source: FROST & SULLIVAN INC

Without collaboration among all key stakeholders, businesses will be in a state of confusion, unable to successfully leverage the benefits of AI infusion into CX technology.

Alpa Shah, Global Vice President at Frost & Sullivan, has vast professional and volunteer experience in developing business and organization strategies; analyzing product, regional, and vertical markets; planning and executing events; sales and marketing; writing growth opportunity insights; and, most importantly, creating and inspiring teams to be best in class. Her current area of focus is on CX; she has also worked on projects covering technologies such as UC and mobile and wireless.

The post Elevating Customer Experience Through Strategic Innovation appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Headliner Sean Albertson gave a dynamic opening presentation on leading through change at the 22^nd Annual Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan MindXchange in Tucson, Arizona recently. Sean drew from his CX leadership experiences and high-pressure transformation work to share the LEAD from Your CORE approach, a practical framework for executives who must stay grounded while guiding their teams through chaos. CORE stands for leading with Clarity, Ownership, Resilience and Empathy.

Read on for more keen insights and takeaways from his session, including tangible tactics and big-picture strategies.

Obstacles As Opportunities
“Rocks don’t block the river – they change the course.” What if obstacles are opportunities to make changes? To move forward with intent? Sean shared this analogy: When you’re riding the river rapids, classes 1 and 2 are smooth or relatively smooth. Class 3 is slightly bumpy. Classes 4 and 5 are rapids that you need a guide to get through. Class 6 is a waterfall.

Assess Your Business Environment
When Sean asked the event participants what “rapids class” they perceived their business to be in, a few of the tables self-identified as classes 3-4, some as class 5, and a few as class 6 cascading down a waterfall! It’s important to assess your own business environment so you can plan and act accordingly.

The Four Rivers of Experience and Customer Experience
Sean discussed the concept of the Four Rivers of Experience, which highlight key areas that must be harmonized in order to provide an effective customer experience:

1. Customer: Focus on building trust by delivering the experience you would want for yourself.
2. Career: Align employee growth and purpose with CX goals to foster a motivated workforce.
3. Community: Create inclusive, collaborative cultures that prioritize people.
4. Core: Link personal values with the organization’s mission to drive authentic engagement.

By ensuring these rivers flow in the same direction, organizations can penetrate the silos that often hinder customer-centric strategies, driving collective success.

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?
There have been major shifts in business in the last decades. Businesses and customer service are rapidly transforming in the digital age. Today’s experience economy is data-driven and customer centric. AI is starting to shift things even more quickly.

How To Lead During Massive Change?
What does it mean to lead today? It means to “go first,” to “provide structure or guidance” or to set the example. Leadership is shifting with the times and executives must:

• Learn – If you’re going to lead, you must be a learner at your core. What you’ve always done doesn’t necessarily work anymore. Learning fast is your edge.
• Empower – Push decisions closer to the customer. Make sure your teams are the ones with expertise. Be accountable. Enable teams to act autonomously.
• Adapt – Embed agility into culture. Talk about it in the culture of your company. It should be at the heart of what reps are asked to do. Pivot quickly.
• Deliver – Focus on value, not just activity. Teams have to understand what value means. Move fast without losing trust. Prioritize progress over perfection.

Final Insights

• Model accountability – I pivoted quickly… it didn’t work but it’s okay… I kept moving.
• Stay steady under pressure. Renewal creates space for recovery.
• Empathy is our superpower as humans. Lead with understanding. Provide room for others’ experiences.
• Embrace change together. What skills are you good at? What needs to be improved?
• Use the rocks as steppingstones! Better customer experiences can come from it!
• Disruption favors the aligned.

The post Staying Agile Amid Disruption: Lead from Your CORE to Turn Uncertainty into Advantage appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

 In recent years, customer service has undergone an unprecedented transformation driven by digitalization and, especially, by the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). Companies have gone from relying almost exclusively on human agents and traditional channels – such as the telephone or face-to-face service – to incorporating digital tools that allow processes to be automated, provide immediate responses, and personalisethe user experience. This shift has not only revolutionized the way customers interact with brands, but also the role and competencies of teams working in customer service departments.

The evolution towards a digital customer

Today’s customer has become more demanding, knowledgeable, and impatient. With access to multiple digital channels, they expect quick responses, effective solutions, and consistent experiences no matter the touchpoint. In this context, AI is presented as a key ally, as it allows companies to maintain a level of service in line with these expectations, without  adding an exponential increase in human and economic resources.

Artificial intelligence applied to customer service

The application of AI in this area manifests itself in multiple ways:

1. Chatbots and virtual assistants: they are perhaps the most visible tool. Capable of resolving frequent queries automatically, chatbots reduce the workload of human agents and allow them to focus on more complex problems. In addition, virtual assistants can be available 24/7, eliminating time limitations.
2. Predictive analytics: By using algorithms, businesses can anticipate customer needs. For example, detecting patterns of behavior that indicate a possible abandonment or predicting which product a user may be interested in based on their history.
3. Natural Language Processing (NLP): This technology allows for a better understanding of customer intent, even when speaking in different languages. This improves the quality of interactions and reduces misunderstandings.
4. Automating administrative tasks: AI also makes it easier to triage tickets, prioritize incidents, and escalate them to the right agent or department. This type of automation increases operational efficiency and reduces wait times.

Benefits for business and customers

The positive impact is evident on several levels:

• Speed and availability: customers get immediate answers, without depending on business hours.
• Cost reduction: By automating repetitive tasks, companies can allocate fewer resources to simple management and focus on delivering added value.
• Improved customer experience: the personalization offered by AI generates a closer and more relevant relationship.
• Scalability: Digital solutions allow you to manage a higher volume of interactions without necessarily expanding the workforce.

Challenges and limitations

However, implementing AI in customer service is not without its challenges. Some of the most relevant are:

• Lack of empathy: Although algorithms are constantly improving, there is still a significant gap between human interaction and that of a chatbot in terms of empathy, emotional understanding, and personalized treatment.
• Resistance to change: both from customers who prefer to talk to a person and from employees who fear losing their job.
• Data privacy and security: the intensive use of data to train AI systems implies a risk that must be managed with transparency and compliance with regulations such as the GDPR in Europe.
• Initial investment: although in the long term AI reduces costs, the implementation of these technologies requires a considerable investment.

The new role of human agents

Far from disappearing, customer service teams are evolving towards a more specialized profile. Agents are no longer limited to repetitive queries, but focus on complex cases that require empathy, creativity, and advanced resolution skills. In addition, they act as supervisors of the AI, correcting errors and providing the “human touch” that no machine can yet fully replicate.

The combination of human agents and technology is consolidating itself into the most effective model: hybrid care. In this scenario, chatbots manage the first contact and refer the most sensitive cases to a human agent, ensuring efficiency without sacrificing quality.

Looking to the future

AI looks set to continue to expand its role in customer service departments. However, the key to success will not be replacing people, but combining the best of both worlds: technological efficiency and human warmth.

Oscar Luis Marruenda Justicia brings global experience across Latin America and Europe to his current role as Contact Center Manager at Clínica Baviera in Madrid, where he manages teams and oversees internal and external contact center service and platforms. A multi-disciplinary, results-oriented professional trained in quality management, Oscar thoroughly enjoys his work and stays focused on the customer experience. He brings his significant experience working in small, medium and large enterprises and leading change to all his challenges and responsibilities.

The post The Impact of the Digital Age on Customer Service appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.