Is empathy a staffing choice or a design decision?

We often assume that emotionally charged moments demand a human touch. This episode challenges that instinct. In a world where AI is always available, always calm, and increasingly capable, the real question isn’t human versus machine - it’s whether we’ve misunderstood what empathy actually requires in the first place.

In this video:

• Why empathy is not inherently human, but contextual

• How rigid automation creates frustration in high-need moments

• When AI provides a safer, more effective interaction than people

• What defines a “moment that matters” in customer experience

• How to design support models around need, not channel

• Why defaulting to human vs AI is the wrong framing entirely

If empathy isn’t about who delivers it, but how it’s experienced, what should you be designing for?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer

Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:https://www.theydo.com

#CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CustomerCentricity #DigitalTransformation #AIinCX #ExperienceDesign #OrganizationalDesign #CXStrategy #DesignThinking #CustomerJourneys #DecisionMaking #ProductStrategy #HumanCenteredDesign

Mark Smith and Raymond Gerber, former competitors turned co-founders of the Institute for Journey Management, join Jochem van der Veer to unpack how enterprise CX is evolving in the age of AI. Drawing on decades of experience across Kitewheel and Thunderhead, they explore how journey orchestration is being reshaped by generative AI and organizational transformation.

At the center is a key tension: AI enables scale and personalization, but without journey context and operational alignment, it risks amplifying broken experiences. The conversation reveals why journey context is no longer just a customer-facing construct, but a critical internal capability for aligning decisions, breaking silos, and enabling truly adaptive, value-driven CX.

Guest Bio

Mark Smith is a pioneer in customer analytics and journey orchestration, with over 30 years of experience in predictive modeling and customer engagement. He founded Kitewheel and led it to become a market leader in journey orchestration. His work has consistently focused on aligning data-driven decisioning with business constraints and customer value. He now co-leads the Institute for Journey Management.

Raymond Gerber is a leading voice in journey orchestration and enterprise CX, with multiple patents in the field. As former CEO of Thunderhead, he helped shape the category before its acquisition by Medallia. His expertise spans AI, decisioning systems, and operating model design. He is now focused on advancing journey-centric transformation through the Institute for Journey Management.

Key Takeaways

- Journey context is multi-dimensional, combining temporal, situational, directional, and constraint-based elements that guide both AI decisions and business actions

- Generative AI shifts value from prediction to prescription, enabling continuous, closed-loop learning driven by real-time customer intent

- Internal alignment is the real bottleneck, journey context matters more inside the organization than for customers who simply “live” the experience

- Hyper-personalization evolves from static next-best actions to dynamic, conversational interactions powered by structured and unstructured data fusion

- Journey management must evolve from project-based initiatives to an embedded operating model tied to value exchange between customer and business

Chapters

00:00 Why journey context matters for AI agents and workflows

00:03 Defining customer journey context in enterprise CX

00:08 AI in customer experience and the shift to non-deterministic journeys

00:12 Hyper-personalization and next best action evolution

00:15 Breaking down silos with shared journey context

00:19 Structured vs unstructured data in journey orchestration

00:23 Internal alignment and journey management strategy

00:28 Journey-centric operating model vs project mindset

00:33 Predictive vs prescriptive AI in customer experience

00:38 Enterprise CX transformation and journey-led value management

LinkedIn Profiles

Guests: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mapsmith/https://www.linkedin.com/in/golfergerbs/Jochem van der Veer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer/

#EnterpriseCustomerExperience #CustomerJourneyOrchestration #CXTransformationStrategy #CustomerExperienceLeadership #JourneyCentricity #CXOperatingModel #CustomerExperienceInnovation #AIJourneyOrchestration #IntelligentCustomerEngagement #AIPoweredPersonalization #ConversationalAIExperience #AIForCustomerJourneys

Over the past decade, many companies pursued omnichannel by adding touchpoints rather than designing continuity. The result is fragmented data, repeated customer effort, and teams optimizing for channels instead of journeys. In this environment, AI becomes a high-speed engine running on incomplete context. The real shift isn’t about better models, but about building shared, journey-level context — where aligned data, KPIs, and language turn AI from a surface tool into a system-wide capability that reshapes how organizations understand and act on customer reality.

In this episode:

• Why adding AI to fragmented journeys increases cost instead of reducing it

• How “more channels” became the false proxy for omnichannel maturity

• What journey-level context actually means — and why AI depends on it

• When cross-functional KPIs outperform channel optimization

• How shared experience language makes both teams and AI effective

• What it takes to turn AI from a responder into a true context engine

If AI is only as good as the context it operates in, what does your organization actually enable it to understand?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer

Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:https://www.theydo.com

#CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CXStrategy #DigitalTransformation #AIinBusiness #OrganizationalDesign #CustomerJourneys #DataStrategy #ExperienceDesign #BusinessTransformation #CustomerCentricity #OperatingModel #DecisionMaking

Katie Duncan, former CX leader at Warner Bros. Discovery, joins The Experience Edge to unpack what it actually takes to operationalize customer experience inside complex, high-growth media organizations. Drawing from scaling CX across major streaming launches, she brings a grounded view on turning strategy into execution.

The conversation centers on the gap between customer-centric ambition and operational reality. Katie argues that most companies lose customer insight during execution, and that true CX maturity comes from embedding insights into decision-making across the full lifecycle, not just measuring outcomes after the fact.

Guest Bio

Katie Duncan is a customer experience leader with over 15 years of experience driving CX transformation across media and technology organizations. At Warner Bros. Discovery, she built and scaled CX operations supporting major streaming launches including Discovery Plus and Magnolia. Her work spans operational design, customer insights, and cross-functional alignment at scale. She is known for bridging strategy and execution in complex enterprise environments. Katie has led large teams and influenced CX integration across product ecosystems during periods of rapid growth and organizational change.

Key Takeaways

• Customer centricity often exists as cultural language rather than operational reality, breaking down when insights are not embedded into decision-making processes

• CX impact comes from preventing friction early in the journey, not reacting to issues after they surface in metrics

• Treating CX as a reporting function limits influence, while positioning it as a decision partner enables real business impact

• Hidden defects in customer journeys often exist between touchpoints, requiring end-to-end analysis rather than isolated optimization

• AI accelerates insight generation but increases the need for governance, intentional design, and human-led context shaping

Chapters

00:00 The illusion of customer centricity in enterprise CX

03:30 Why customer insights fail to influence decision making

08:00 Strategy misalignment and CX execution gaps

12:30 From seat at the table to owning customer experience decisions

16:00 Customer journey orchestration and decision context

20:30 Moving beyond VOC reports to behavioral insights

25:00 Identifying hidden friction in customer journeys

29:30 Scaling CX impact through early intervention

34:00 Building business acumen in CX teams

38:30 AI in customer experience and shifting roles

43:30 Context shaping and cross-functional alignment

49:00 Governance in enterprise CX transformation

54:00 Designing customer journeys from the start

LinkedIn

Katie Duncan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-g-duncan

Jochem van der Veer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer

Hashtags

#EnterpriseCustomerExperience #CustomerJourneyOrchestration #CXTransformationStrategy #JourneyCentricOperatingModel #BreakingDownSilosInCX #CrossFunctionalAlignmentCX #CustomerExperienceLeadership #OperationalizingCustomerExperience #ExperienceDrivenGrowth #TheyDoPlatform #CustomerExperienceTransformationFramework #EnterpriseCXStrategy

In this Insights episode, Jochem van der Veer challenges the assumption that more data, dashboards, and AI naturally lead to better customer experience decisions. The real issue isn’t visibility - it’s the absence of shared context that gives data meaning.

Most organizations aren’t lacking insights; they’re operating in different versions of reality. Teams interpret the same signals differently and optimize locally, while AI only accelerates this misalignment. Without a shared understanding of where signals live in the customer journey and what they mean, organizations don’t scale intelligence - they scale confusion.

In this video:

• Why more data doesn’t solve misalignment and often makes it worse

• How fragmented context leads to false problems and wasted investment

• What it means to anchor metrics in the customer journey, not departments

• Why AI amplifies structural issues instead of fixing them

• How shared context changes prioritization, decision-making, and strategy

How do you know if your organization is solving real problems or just reacting to disconnected signals?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer

Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:https://www.theydo.com

#CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CXStrategy #OrganizationalDesign #DecisionMaking #CustomerJourney #BusinessTransformation #AIinCX #ExperienceManagement #ProductStrategy #OperationalExcellence #VoiceOfCustomer

Gene Hong, Design Leader at Target and founder of Aperture North, brings over 25 years of experience shaping how brands translate creativity into commercial success. Leading a $770M portfolio, Gene operates at the intersection of design, business strategy, and innovation, with a focus on creating culturally relevant, high-impact consumer experiences.

In this conversation, Gene explores why the future of design lies beyond optimization and into “designing for the moment.” From triangulation and imperfect creativity to the rising importance of judgment in an AI-driven world, he challenges leaders to rethink how experience, business acumen, and creative risk come together to drive meaningful growth.

Takeaways

• Great design leaders balance creative output with intentional input to sustain originality and perspective.

• “Triangulation” - combining insights from different contexts - is key to creating unexpected, differentiated outcomes.

• AI increases the volume of ideas, but judgment, experience, and imperfection remain uniquely human advantages.

• Business acumen is essential for designers to gain influence and move ideas from concept to execution.

• Innovation requires organizational space for risk - often a dedicated structure separate from core operations.

LinkedIn
Gene Hong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genehong/Jochem van der Veer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvdveer/

In this Insights episode, Jochem van der Veer challenges the common belief that improving customer experience requires more data, dashboards, and AI, revealing instead how a lack of shared context across teams leads to misaligned decisions. While organizations optimize performance using advanced analytics and AI-driven insights, they often operate on different versions of reality, creating fragmented customer journeys and inconsistent outcomes. As AI accelerates decision-making at scale, this misalignment becomes a critical risk, making shared context-not more data-the true foundation for effective customer experience strategy.

In this video:

• Why fragmented context-not lack of data-is the real bottleneck in CX
• How teams create “local truths” that distort decision-making
• What AI actually does when your underlying structure is misaligned
• Why defining where signals live in the journey changes everything
• How shared context turns metrics into meaningful, connected insight
• When optimization becomes dangerous because the problem isn’t real

If every team is right-but the outcome is wrong-what reality is your organization actually operating in?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:

Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:

#CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CXStrategy #OrganizationalDesign #DecisionMaking #AIinBusiness #CustomerInsights #BusinessTransformation #ProductStrategy #ExperienceManagement #DataStrategy #Leadership #DigitalTransformation

Ashana Singhania, VP Product Management at Goldman Sachs and former product leader at American Express, operates at the intersection of product, trust, and regulation. Having led zero-to-one launches and large-scale platform consolidations across payments, lending, and digital banking, she brings a clear-eyed view of building customer experience inside highly regulated financial institutions.

In this episode, Ashana introduces the concept of “experience debt” - the invisible friction that accumulates when speed, compliance, or legacy systems outweigh intuition and clarity. She explains why dashboards often lag trust signals, how product leaders can quantify qualitative friction, and why empathy, alignment, and narrative-building are essential to protect customer trust at scale.

Guest Bio

Ashana Singhania is a product and innovation leader in fintech and banking, currently serving as VP Product Management at Goldman Sachs. Prior to this, she spent nearly a decade at American Express building and scaling products across payments, lending, risk, and digital banking.

She specializes in zero-to-one product launches, platform transformations, and navigating trade-offs between speed, regulatory compliance, and customer experience in complex enterprise environments.

Takeaways

• Customer experience is “everybody’s KPI, but nobody’s operating mandate” - and that’s where friction begins.
• Experience debt is more dangerous than technical debt because it erodes trust silently and spreads across teams.
• Dashboards lag trust signals - qualitative feedback, repeat contacts, and hesitation often reveal issues before metrics do.
• Quantifying friction requires translating customer pain into revenue delay, cost-to-serve increases, and operational inefficiencies.
• In regulated environments, trust and consent must take priority over speed - especially as AI and agentic commerce evolve.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ashana Singhania

02:18 Is experience part of product or vice versa?

05:04 Aligning silos around a North Star

08:10 Roadmaps, customer feedback, and evolving priorities

11:49 AI, agentic commerce, and trust in finance

16:01 When dashboards are green but trust is red

18:55 What is experience debt?

21:17 When experience debt becomes an organizational problem

24:50 Preventing friction through testing and metrics

31:17 Building cross-functional bridges in large institutions

35:44 Platform consolidation and hidden complexity

39:49 Technical debt vs experience debt

43:07 Making experience debt visible and actionable

47:54 Quantifying qualitative friction

52:44 Advice for product leaders in feature factories

LinkedIn

Ashana Singhania

Jochem van der Veer

Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a seasoned user experience leader who has driven customer-centric digital transformation across global brands like Airbus and Electrolux, and today shapes omnichannel experience at H&M across 79 markets. In this episode, she joins TheyDo co-founder Jochem van der Veer to unpack what it really takes to run experience-led transformation at global scale, where hundreds of journeys, cultures, and systems collide.

Together, they explore why customer journeys work best as an organizing principle rather than a static artifact, how vocabulary and storytelling create alignment across silos, and why experience leadership is ultimately about trust, influence, and long-term change management. The conversation challenges the idea of “simple journeys” and offers a grounded view on coherence over consistency in global CX.

Guest Bio

Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a User Experience and Journey Leader with extensive experience driving large-scale digital and experience transformation in global organizations. She has held senior design and experience roles at companies including Airbus and Electrolux, and currently leads product design and journey work at H&M, spanning digital, retail, and customer service. Known for her systems thinking and collaborative leadership style, Anna-Kathrine focuses on building coherence across complex ecosystems through trust, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment.

Key Takeaways

• There is no single customer journey at scale. Global organizations operate hundreds or thousands of journeys that need shared principles, not rigid maps.
• Customer journeys are most powerful as an organizing principle to align teams, language, and priorities across silos.
• Experience leadership requires speaking multiple vocabularies. Sales, tech, marketing, and design all need to hear the story in their own language.
• Consistency comes from shared principles and narrative, not identical experiences across markets.
• Insights do not die. They fade away unless actively evangelized, interpreted, and embedded into everyday decision-making.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and introductions

03:30 Why there is no such thing as a simple customer journey

05:40 Customer journeys as inspiration vs execution

09:10 Vocabulary, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment

12:30 Templates, coherence, and change management

18:00 Strategy, agility, and journey ownership

24:40 AI, agentic commerce, and the future of channels

27:20 Consistency vs coherence across global markets

38:00 From marketplace to brand: rethinking H&M’s experience

43:30 Driving transformation through journeys and insights

50:45 Making sense of a sea of experience data

57:15 Keeping insights alive inside large organizations

01:05:10 Where to connect with Anna-Kathrine

LinkedIn Profiles

Anne-Kathrine Nissen

Jochem van der Veer

𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐁𝐄: / @TheyDoPodcast

Adam Towne, Director of Product for Scaled Analytics and Funds at LSEG, began his career on an 11-hour help desk shift before moving into account management and ultimately product leadership. Now building analytics and API products for asset managers, banks, and hedge funds, he brings a rare perspective: customer support is not a cost center, it is a growth engine.

In this conversation, Adam reframes customer experience for sophisticated power users. Instead of chasing “aha” moments, he argues for monotony, reliability, and invisible excellence. From role-based access control pitfalls to the “tiny dot” reality of product in a larger ecosystem, he explores how product leaders can own CX without creating more silos.

Guest Bio

Adam Towne is Director of Product for Skilled Analytics and Funds at LSEG, where he leads data analytics and API products serving institutional clients including asset managers, banks, and hedge funds.

He previously spent seven years in fixed income analytics at Citi, transitioning from help desk to account management and product management. Adam is a CFA charter holder and holds an engineering degree from Cornell University. His expertise spans power-user product design, financial analytics, and building reliable systems for high-stakes environments.

Takeaways

• Customer experience is not a department, it is a product in itself and a shared responsibility across the organization.
• Power users do not want “aha” moments. They want reliability, monotony, and infrastructure they never have to think about.
• Good friction can exist in setup and onboarding for sophisticated users, but integration friction must be minimized.
• Feature creep for power users should be managed through primitive building blocks, not endless configuration options.
• Product leaders should own customer experience by aligning product decisions with support, sales, and operational metrics, not just revenue.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Adam Towne and LSEG

02:09 Lessons from starting on the help desk

03:55 Why customer experience is a product

06:18 What real customer centricity looks like

10:23 Designing for power users vs classic CX

13:34 Good friction vs bad friction

15:10 Trade-offs of focusing on power users

19:32 Enabling the broader organization around product changes

23:48 Visualizing cross-user journeys inside a customer

33:55 The “tiny dot” reality of product in a larger ecosystem

39:27 Who should own customer experience?

44:33 Product culture vs additional management layers

50:54 The measurement gap between product and CX

LinkedIn

Adam Towne

Jochem van der Veer