Organizations often respond to customer pain with task forces, projects, and transformation initiatives…only to discover they solved symptoms rather than identifying root causes.
In this session from our Customer Experience 2026 Executive MindXchange event, participants learned how leading organizations build co-creation operating models that continuously connect customer voice, employee voice, and business context to improve decision-making, accelerate adoption, and deliver measurable business outcomes.
ACTION ITEMS
- Identify a high-priority customer pain point and map customer voice, employee voice, and business context before defining solutions.
- Establish a recurring co-creation mechanism that brings customers, employees, and business stakeholders into decision-making.
- Rapidly test and validate proposed solutions with all stakeholder groups before scaling implementation
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We often react quickly but don’t fully fix issues.
- Consider co-creation to help design experiences with customers, employees and stakeholders.
- Use AI to support co-creation, not replace human collaboration.
STRATEGY
- Shift from episodic feedback to continuous co-creation.
- Leverage long term pilots aimed at decreasing onboarding times.
- Create durable teams that consist of front-line employees and solution architects.
- Leverage incremental improvements for calculated and sustained gains.
Understand the problem
- Go – to the place where work is done.
- See – with humility and fresh eyes.
- Learn – from the front line what is happening.
Co-create with customer reality, business reality, employee reality
Voices within a shared reality might include physician advisory board, medical biller user guide, Voice of the employee, medical billing consultants, product management, product design, business leaders.
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
Days 1-30: Find the shared reality
- Identify an employee pain point that is already receiving attention.
- Gather customer feedback, employee perspectives, and business context.
- Look for gaps, contradictions, and assumptions between the three.
- Document what each group sees as the actual problem.
Days 31-60: Go, see, learn
- Use co-creation workshops and journey mapping to guide your attention.
- Visit the frontlines, with a sense of curiosity and newness.
- Identify root causes instead of symptoms.
- Measure baseline metrics for future calibration.
- Identify possible solutions
Days 61-90: Prioritize solutions
- Rapidly prototype or pilot a solution.
- Get feedback from customers, employees, and business stakeholders.
- Measure adoption, effort reduction, and customer impact.
- Establish a recurring mechanism to keep realities connected.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Treat customers as active participants in solving problems.
Marina is a product and design leader with two decades of experience helping organizations turn customer and employee insights into measurable business results. She has led customer-centered transformation efforts across healthcare, financial services, logistics, and building technology for organizations ranging from Fortune 20 enterprises to VC-backed startups. Her expertise in co-creation helps companies accelerate innovation, reduce risk, and improve adoption by designing with customers and employees, not just for them.
