The Experience Edge

Steve Cleff, product design leader and founder of Prismatic Vision, has led product and design at Comcast, Barclays, and Siemens, helping global enterprises move beyond feature factories toward experience-led growth. In this episode, he shares how his background in UX, engineering, and fine arts shapes his belief that customer experience starts long before someone touches your product.

In conversation with Johan, Steve unpacks the tension between product and CX, why shared goals matter more than ownership, and how AI can accelerate - but not replace - human judgment. From RICE frameworks to agentic workflows, he challenges leaders to protect creativity and empathy while offloading structure and repetition.

Guest Bio

Steve Cleff is a product design leader with over 15 years of experience building software that improves people’s lives and strengthens how companies engage customers. He has led product and design initiatives across organizations including Comcast, Barclays, and Siemens, and has partnered with brands such as JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Target, and Vanguard.

Now the founder of Prismatic Vision, Steve helps organizations gain a competitive edge through experience-led strategy, multi-agent AI workflows, and cross-functional collaboration between product and customer experience teams.

Takeaways

• Customer experience begins before someone becomes a customer - from the first problem or “sniffle” to post-purchase advocacy.
• Product teams often drift into “feature farms” when roadmaps aren’t anchored in real customer journeys.
• CX and product don’t need strict ownership boundaries - they need shared goals and mutual reinforcement.
• AI should accelerate structure, synthesis, and distribution, but creativity, empathy, and strategic leaps must remain human-led.
• The future of roles may shift from titles like “PM” or “CX manager” to value-driven specialties like adoption and engagement.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Steve Cleff and Prismatic Vision

02:25 What product gets wrong about customer experience

05:39 How CX and product can work better together

10:42 Where CX should sit in an organization

13:41 Making product more experience-forward

16:25 Marketing, value perception, and product failure

18:06 Who owns the customer journey?

22:49 Why journeys rarely exist before you build them

24:20 What AI changes - and what stays human

33:00 What to offload to AI vs. keep human

40:01 From AI skeptic to AI advocate

47:40 Preventing AI from amplifying bad CX decisions

50:01 The future of product and CX roles

LinkedIn

Steve Cleff

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

What if 2026 isn’t the year of the agentic enterprise?

Most predictions paint 2026 as the moment AI suddenly takes over customer experience end to end. Autonomous agents. Self-driving journeys. Overnight transformation. 

In this Insights video, Jochem challenges that narrative - and argues the real shift is quieter, slower, and far more operational than the hype suggests. The risk for leaders isn’t moving too slowly - it’s aiming their CX strategy at a future that hasn’t arrived yet.

In this video:

• Why 2026 is about agent adoption - not agentic transformation

• How narrow agents quietly reshape CX work at the edges of journeys

• Why data validation becomes the real bottleneck for AI in CX

• How CX teams shift from insight production to stewarding trust

• When asynchronous AI work changes the pace and depth of decision-making

If speed is no longer the advantage, what does it mean to scale trust instead?

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

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

#CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #ExperienceDesign #CXLeadership #AIinCX #DecisionMaking #OrganizationalDesign #SystemsThinking #ProductStrategy #ExperienceStrategy

Why executives nod at journey management - and then do nothing

Leaders rarely push back on customer centricity - it sounds sensible, even obvious - yet that agreement is often exactly where journey management quietly stalls. In this Insights video, Jochem reflects on why the issue isn’t resistance but misunderstanding: journey management is still framed as a belief or a set of maps, when in reality it represents an operating model shift that changes prioritisation, coordination, ownership, and metrics. 

The moment those implications become clear, the nodding stops, and that gap between agreement and impact is where most journey work dies. By reframing journey management as a coordination system rather than a CX deliverable, this reflection shows why a single pitch never works - and why connecting the language to what different leaders actually care about is the only way to move from concept to practice.

In this video:

• Why customer centricity is easy to agree with but hard to operationalise

• How journey management shifts decision-making, not just documentation

• Why functional leaders and P&L owners need fundamentally different translations

• How journey management reduces chaos for teams - and reveals growth constraints for the business

• What “executive empathy” really means when pitching customer journeys

If journey management keeps getting polite agreement but little traction, what are leaders actually hearing when you explain it?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn

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

Suchi Parikh is a creative director and storyteller with a rare blend of design craft and business fluency. After a decade at Apple leading global sales content, she now serves as Director of Storytelling at PayPal, where she helps bring complex product innovation to life across agent commerce, Venmo, and global payments. Her work sits at the intersection of empathy, clarity, and persuasion - translating complexity into stories that move people to act.

In this conversation with TheyDo’s Jochem van der Veer, Suchi unpacks why every presentation is an act of persuasion, how teams unintentionally dump complexity on their audience, and what it really takes to transform someone from awareness to action. Together, they explore practical frameworks for simplifying stories, designing for emotional shifts in customer journeys, and building trust through intentional storytelling.

Guest Bio

Suchi Parikh is a creative leader and Director of Storytelling at PayPal, where she shapes how product innovation is communicated across global payments and commerce experiences. Previously, she spent over 10 years at Apple as a Group Creative Director, leading global sales content and executive storytelling.

With a background in animation, design, and business, Suchi specializes in helping organizations clarify their thinking, reduce cognitive load, and communicate ideas with conviction. She is known for bridging creative storytelling with strategic business outcomes, and for mentoring teams to become more confident, intentional storytellers.

Key Takeaways

• Every presentation is an act of persuasion, even routine business updates.
• Complexity is the storyteller’s responsibility, not the audience’s burden.
• Great business stories start with one clear intention, often anchored in a single word.
• Emotional state matters as much as functional clarity in customer journeys.
• Trust is built through simplicity, sequencing, and empathy, not more information.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and background

01:32 From design to business storytelling at Apple

04:28 Why business presentations fail despite good data

07:13 Every presentation as an act of persuasion

09:56 A simple structure for clearer business stories

12:58 Removing cognitive load and the one-word anchor

19:50 Why having a point of view matters

25:10 Audience Context Transformation (ACT) framework

28:50 Emotional states in everyday customer journeys

35:30 Operationalizing storytelling in large organizations

40:24 Why energy matters more than logic

44:10 Practicing storytelling in safe environments

47:25 The role of a Director of Storytelling

48:56 Rules, frameworks, and when to break them

50:55 Learning from unexpected great storytellers

LinkedIn Profiles

Guest - Suchi Parikh

Host - Jochem

𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎𝐒:

• Why Journey Management Is Really Organizat...

• Why Collapsing CX Into Customer Service Br...

• Organizing CX around what matters. - Angel...

• Reflections 6 Why CX teams may be erasin...

𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊: https://www.theydo.com/podcasts/subsc...

/ @theexperienceedgepodcast

Thank You For Watching

What if removing friction is ruining your customer experience?

Everyone in CX wants to make things effortless. Fast. Smooth. Seamless. But in this Reflections episode, Jochem explores a provocative idea from his conversation with Sam Stern (Service Design Lead at LinkedIn): not all friction is bad - some friction creates memory, meaning, and better decisions.

We unpack the difference between good friction and bad friction, with real examples from LinkedIn, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, IKEA, nightclubs, and Todd Unger’s work at the AMA. The goal isn’t to eliminate all effort - it’s to design effort where it matters most.

In this video:

• Why some friction helps customers think clearly and choose better

• How friction creates emotional contrast and memorable moments

• When organizational drag ruins customer experience

• The 4 types of customer journeys and how friction plays a role

• How to tell if your friction serves the customer - or your org

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn: @jochemvanderveer

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

#CustomerExperience #FrictionDesign #JourneyManagement #CXStrategy #ExperienceDesign #ServiceDesign #DecisionMaking #EmotionalDesign #OrganizationalDrag #MemoryDesign #CustomerCentricity #BehavioralDesign #ExperienceArchitecture #SamStern #TheyDo

Are journey maps just artifacts or operating systems in disguise?

In this episode, Jochem reflects on his conversation with Dan Sullivan, Director of Journey Management at CHG Healthcare, to explore how journey management becomes true organizational design.

Dan's team didn’t just improve customer journeys - they restructured how decisions get made across teams. From building a “Journey Atlas” as a shared schema, to using immersive experiences to rewire executive thinking, their work signals a deeper shift: journey management isn’t about prettier maps. It’s about embedding customer thinking into the operating model.

In this video:

• Why journey management = organizational design

• How CSG created a decision-making nervous system

• The role of schema, structure, and centralized governance

• What 500 people experienced inside the “journey museum”

• Signs your journey maps are shaping strategy—not just workshops

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

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

Charissa Riddle, Senior Director of Experience Design and Customer Experience Strategy and former EA executive, brings over two decades of experience spanning Electronic Arts, PayPal, and eBay. Known for operating at the intersection of design, operations, and strategy, Charissa has led global teams serving tens of millions of customers and players, tackling challenges like toxic behavior, self-service at scale, and embedding customer insight into decision-making.

In this conversation with TheyDo’s Jochem van der Veer, Charissa reframes customer experience as a system rather than a department. They explore why CX loses power when it becomes too broad, how experience should be defined through actionable containers, and why stewardship of customer truth is the one responsibility CX leaders should never give away. Together, they unpack how governance, storytelling, and decision-making rituals determine whether CX drives real business impact or remains a reporting function.

Guest Bio

Charissa Riddle is a senior experience design and customer experience strategy leader with more than 20 years of experience across gaming, fintech, and marketplaces. Formerly at Electronic Arts, PayPal, and eBay, she has led global teams focused on experience design, service strategy, and operational transformation at scale. Charissa is known for her systems-level thinking, her ability to align cross-functional stakeholders, and her focus on turning customer insight into measurable business outcomes.

Key Takeaways

• Customer experience loses effectiveness when it is defined too broadly and without clear ownership or scope.
• CX works best as a system that connects interactions, emotions, and business outcomes across teams.
• Experiences should be defined in clear containers with entry points, exit points, and measurable impact.
• Metrics should be built from the experience outward, not imposed top-down as abstract efficiency measures.
• Stewardship of customer truth, journeys, and decision-making governance is a non-negotiable CX responsibility.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and framing CX beyond customer service

03:30 Why CX originated in service and why that still matters

06:16 CX as a mindset, function, or system

08:22 Defining experience as interactions that create emotion

11:32 Connecting emotion, loyalty, and business outcomes

18:06 Why CX definitions fail when they get too big

21:15 Accountability, containers, and governance

25:12 Making journeys tangible for leaders

29:30 Storytelling that drives decisions

31:47 Building a journey atlas at scale

35:36 Moving from metric-driven to experience-driven measurement

40:10 Centralization vs studio autonomy

44:47 Business goals vs customer-led change

46:04 Decision-making rituals and CX influence

51:48 Cross-functional focus and the toxicity example

57:59 What CX leaders should never give away

LinkedIn Profiles

Charissa Riddle

Jochem van der Veer

Martha Cotton, Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase, brings 25 years of experience bridging anthropology, design, and enterprise transformation. Known for helping large organizations understand people, navigate change, and design for adoption, Martha shares how empathy, collaboration, and partnership shape modern design leadership.

In this episode, she and Jochem explore how designers can speak the language of business, why data partnerships matter, and what it really takes to drive customer centricity inside legacy organizations. They examine the future of journey management, organizational transformation, and how AI will reshape creative work.

Guest Bio

Martha Cotton is Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase, where she leads design research and drives customer centricity across one of the world’s largest financial institutions. With a background in cultural anthropology, she has built a career spanning boutique studios, global consultancies, and enterprise design leadership.

Her work focuses on designing for adoption, shaping change inside complex organizations, and elevating design as a strategic partner to the business. Martha is also an educator and long-standing contributor to the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry community.

Takeaways

• Designing for adoption ensures experiences deliver sustained customer and business value.
• Design leaders must articulate impact in business terms, not just craft terms.
• Organizational change succeeds when it’s driven top down, bottom up, and radiating from the middle.
• Strong partnerships between design and data unlock measurable outcomes and credibility.
• Journey management becomes transformative when supported by diverse data and cross-functional collaboration.

Chapters

00:00 Setup and warm up

02:27 Intro to Martha Cotton

03:44 Martha’s career through line

05:46 Why empathy still matters in business

08:17 Skills needed to thrive in complex enterprises

12:04 Craft, business impact, and designing for adoption

14:42 How design leadership is evolving

16:37 The rise and pitfalls of design thinking

19:58 Making new ways of working stick

22:11 Breaking the glass ceiling for design

25:23 Moving from order taking to partnership

28:53 Charm offensive and influencing without disruption

30:57 Learning business context the hard way

32:40 Early days of digital transformation

33:45 Making transformation stick in enterprises

35:04 Top down, bottom up, and middle-out change

39:32 The challenge of creating opportunities inside enterprises

44:00 Design and data partnerships

47:26 The evolution of journey management

49:29 Data-enabled journeys and organizational reality

54:41 What Martha wishes she could change

55:47 Thinking about AI as a creative partner

58:29 Where to find Martha

LinkedIn

Guest: Martha Cotton

Host Jochem van der Veer

Most CX teams struggle to show ROI because they’re looking in the wrong place. CX isn’t just one metric and it was never meant to be. As Jochem van der Veer explains, leaders don’t fund sentiment… they fund outcomes.

In this episode, Jochem breaks down the three ROI lenses every mature CX organization uses to quantify impact across the business: customer outcomes, operational efficiency, and strategic influence, and how they work together to reveal the full-stack value of customer experience.

If you want CX to be taken seriously, stop defending it with dashboards and start showing how the system behaves differently because of the way you work.

What You’ll Learn

• How to measure and prove CX impact through three enterprise-wide signals:
• Customer Outcomes. How reduced churn, faster time-to-value, and increased cross-sell/upsell probabilities drive revenue growth
• Operational Efficiency. How fixing upstream friction cuts avoidable support volume, eliminates duplication of work, and reduces delay-driven waste
• Strategic Influence. How journey alignment accelerates prioritization, decision-making, and cross-functional clarity
• You’ll walk away with a practical, system-level view of CX ROI that product, finance, and executive teams actually believe.

KEYWORDS

business value of customer experience, customer experience ROI, CX strategy, customer retention, brand loyalty, experience management, CX metrics, customer insights, customer journey, customer feedback, business strategy, ROI, CX leadership, CX design, simon sinek, user experience, customer satisfaction, business growth, value proposition, customer service, customer relationships, marketing strategy

Watch next:

Bill’s full conversation on The Experience Edge podcast (link below).

• Experience starts with the CFO – Bill Staikos

Subscribe for more on journey management, CX strategy, and operationalizing customer-centricity at scale.

Like, comment, and share with your team if you’re ready to move from dashboards to boardrooms.

CONNECT WITH US:

Website: https://www.theydo.com/

LinkedIn: https://theydo-journey-management

Twitter: https://x.com/TheyDoHQ