The Experience Edge

In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem Van Der Veer speaks with Eric Roux, Customer Experience Director at Cisco and co‑founder of the Boston Blockchain Association, about a compelling but underexplored idea: embedding customer experience (CX) into the go‑to‑market engine by forging a tight partnership with sales. They dive into how this alignment enables brands to deliver on promises, orchestrate outcomes, and avoid the “tossing over the fence” trap that many CX organizations fall into.

They also cover how CX leaders should build teams that are empowered and adaptive (not just follow the textbook), the nuanced role of metrics and trust, and how AI is starting to play a supporting, but not dominant, role in high‑touch enterprise relationships. Eric shares practical examples of how he’s applied these ideas in enterprise contexts and offers advice for scaling intimacy in consumer or low‑touch environments.

Guest Bio

Eric Roux is Customer Experience Director at Cisco, where he leads efforts to tightly integrate CX with sales, ensuring that customer promises made in the pursuit phase are honored through delivery and ongoing value creation. He is also a co‑founder of the Boston Blockchain Association, supporting innovation and connecting emerging tech leaders with funding and mentorship. With a background in consulting and professional services at top firms, Eric brings both strategic depth and hands‑on discipline to the CX space.

What you will learn

• CX and sales must “show up together” and speak with one unified voice to align around customer outcomes.
• It’s not enough for sales to hand off a customer, real partnership means knowing when CX leads and when sales leads, and stepping in accordingly.
• The human dimension (listening, relationships, trust) remains central in delivering CX, even more so than methodology and tools.
• Formalizing CX as a discipline sometimes leads teams to overemphasize frameworks and lose sight of customer reality.
• High performers in CX don’t need the textbook; they instinctively adapt, experiment, and course‑correct.
• A strong CX team is built by enabling autonomy, allowing for mistakes, and prioritizing growth and chemistry over rigid structure.
• In high-touch enterprise environments, CX serves as the orchestrator: in the room with the customer, tying threads together, facilitating alignment.
• In low-touch or high-volume contexts, CX must lean heavily on measurements, signals, and relationships with stakeholder proxies.
• AI is a powerful assistant: e.g. refining meeting preparation, automating analysis, but it doesn’t replace judgment, empathy, or orchestration.
• Metrics can be overdone: choose the ones that matter, set boundaries, and be willing to evolve them over time.

Chapters

00:00 Intro & framing: CX + Sales partnership

02:19 Why speak with one voice

04:19 Why many organizations struggle

06:04 Building the partnership: who initiates

08:00 What we lose in formalizing CX

09:17 Team composition & hiring

10:36 Orchestration across CX & Sales

13:13 Example: bringing people into the room

15:19 CX as the central orchestrator

17:42 Low‑touch / high-volume CX challenges

20:19 Distinctions between high-touch & transactional

22:31 Should CX be a department?

24:26 Role of AI in high-touch CX

27:55 Scaling productivity & journey to value

30:30 The expectation shift in delivery

32:16 Trust, consultant role & relationships

33:10 Obsession with metrics

35:20 Working backward from outcomes

36:46 Accountability and cross-domain problems

38:16 Incentivizing CX roles

40:43 Close to the customer in startups

42:59 How to keep intimacy while scaling

45:18 Traits of CX “rock stars”

47:13 Entry-level roles, AI & the future

50:00 Analytics vs. human insight

52:07 Incentives, role design & alignment

52:35 Closing / how to reach Eric

LinkedIn & Other Links

Follow Jochem Van Der Veer (TheyDo)

Follow Eric Roux

Eric's Website Boston Blockchain Association

Watch the Full Video HERE

One global staffing firm discovered they were solving the same customer problem six different ways across regions. No alignment, duplicated work, eroded trust - not a tooling issue, but a governance issue.

In this episode, Jochem van der Veer (CEO of TheyDo) shares what he’s learned about how to structure journey management from working with 50-60 Fortune 500 companies.

He breaks down four real-world journey governance models - from Central Command to Full Autonomy - and explains the pros, cons, and trade-offs of each. You’ll hear how organizations move from chaos to coordination, and why your journey operating model is your real CX “operating system.”

You’ll learn how to scale journey management without bottlenecks, and why your governance model is the hidden lever behind customer-centric growth.

Key Insights

• Why CX transformation often stalls due to operating model failure, not tools
• The four governance models for journey management: Orchestrated, Hub & Spoke, Federated Excellence, and Full Autonomy
• How to decide who owns journeys, who governs frameworks, and who decides standards
• How distributed ownership can speed up delivery 50–60% while still keeping alignment
• Why your journey framework should work like a shared data warehouse - one truth, many tailored views
• Subscribe to The Experience Edge for more on journey management, CX strategy, and the future of customer-centric organizations.

Like, comment, and share this episode with your team if you’re wrestling with silos or fragmented journeys.

In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem van der Veer sits down with CX thought leader Stacy Sherman to unpack what it really means to “do CX right.” Stacy draws on her 25+ years of leadership at brands like Verizon, AT&T, Schindler, and more, and shares hard-won lessons in aligning culture, accountability, and cross‑functional execution. Their conversation weaves from the pitfalls of siloed thinking and unmet promise gaps to the art of embedding delight and meaningfully leveraging AI and data in the service of experience.

Listeners will come away with a richer understanding of why “customer experience is an inside job,” how to design journeys that bridge internal organization and external expectations, and how to pilot and scale CX initiatives that truly matter to both customers and the business.

Guest Bio

Stacy Sherman is an award‑winning CX strategist, author, speaker, and educator with more than 25 years of leadership in brands such as Verizon, AT&T, Schindler, LiveOps, BPO, and Wilton Brands. She holds an MBA and is the voice behind the Doing CXRite podcast. Stacy helps organizations move beyond superficial CX initiatives toward deeply aligned, cross‑functional execution that drives retention, brand advocacy, and meaningful experiences.

Takeaways

• CX is everyone’s responsibility, no matter the function, every role influences the customer experience.
• Siloed organizations kill consistency, conflicting metrics, goals, and disconnected systems lead to broken promises.
• “Inside job” mindset, true customer experience begins internally (culture, training, alignment), not just on the front line.
• Discretionary effort matters, small acts (like helping a customer move goods in the rain) create emotional highs and lasting memory.
• Blend human + tech, don’t replace one with the other, AI and automation should empower employees, not bypass them.
• Data is only useful if actionable, voice of customer + voice of employee feedback must translate into prioritized action.
• Pilot first, scale second, start small, prove value, then expand.
• Alignment & measurement across teams, linking CX metrics to business goals ensures cross‑functional buy‑in.
• Close the loop, daily, feedback must flow to the right teams and customers need to see that something happens.
• Design journeys holistically, consider internal and external touchpoints, handovers, and “pass-over zones” between teams.
• Leadership orchestration is essential, one “conductor” or team is needed to keep cross-functional alignment moving.
• Respect content, context & timing, don’t over‑delight everywhere; choose where delight is meaningful and sustainable.

Chapters

00:00 Intro banter, setting the stage

01:59 Guest formal introduction

03:21 Why CX is often practiced poorly

05:32 Silo issues & misalignment

10:13 “CX is an inside job”

12:46 Discretionary acts that delight

16:25 Bridging online and offline friction

18:18 Designing vs validating experiences

21:03 Moments of emotional delight

24:00 Embedding CX metrics across teams

26:58 Pilot programs & scaling

28:48 Beyond journey mapping

32:11 Orchestration & central leadership

38:42 AI’s role in experience

44:15 Removing silos & consistency

47:42 Where to inject journey thinking

50:09 Scaling feedback loops

53:46 Leadership & execution

55:38 Closing and how to reach Stacy

LinkedIn / Links

Follow Jochem van der Veer

Follow Stacy Sherman

Stacy’s website: https://doingcxright.com/

Stacy’s podcast: Doing CXRite

In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem van der Veer sits down with Blake Morgan, customer experience (CX) futurist and author, to explore what’s stayed true in CX over the past decade, where business leaders often fall short, and how to build a customer-centric culture in a modern, AI-driven world. Blake highlights that while tools and channels have evolved (especially AI), fundamental human needs, being seen, heard, and having problems solved, remain the same. She emphasizes the importance of trust, long-term thinking, and tying CX efforts directly to business outcomes like revenue and customer retention. Throughout, she offers practical guidance on how organizations, especially in the “messy middle” of their structure, can embed CX mindsets, empower frontline and middle managers, link performance metrics to customer value, and begin with low-friction, high-impact actions.

Guest Bio

Blake Morgan is a leading voice in customer experience, known for her role as a CX futurist, author, and speaker. She is the author of The 8 Laws of Customer‑Focused Leadership: New Rules for Building a Business Around Today’s Customer, a framework rooted in research and interviews with top business leaders for making CX central to strategy. Blake is also the founder of the Modern Customer Podcast, an instructor on LinkedIn Learning, and frequently contributes to outlets like Forbes and Harvard Business Review. She helps organizations build trust, elevate customer‑centric culture, and align CX practices with revenue growth.

Takeaways

• Here are 10–12 key insights from the episode:
• Humanity still matters. Despite advances in technology and AI, customers still crave human interaction, being greeted, being seen, empathy. Blake Morgan
• Trust is a bank. Every customer interaction is a deposit or withdrawal from trust. Hidden fees, lack of transparency, or making it hard to reach a human cost trust heavily.
• Short‑term gains vs long‑term relationships. Boards often emphasize short‑term metrics, but Blake argues for balancing immediate profit with sustained customer loyalty and relationship building.
• Metrics beyond satisfaction. While customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, etc., are important, understanding revenue behavior (repeat purchases, referrals, churn etc.) gives stronger causal insight into CX impact.
• Start small, fix what's broken. Even in large enterprises, you can begin with friction points that frontline employees and customers call out and deliver improvements that matter.
• Middle managers are pivotal. They often get overlooked but are essential to bridging strategy and execution, coaching teams, and embedding the CX mindset across departments.
• Think of CX as everyone’s responsibility. It shouldn't live in a silo (a department) but be woven into every function, product, marketing, support, HR, operations.
• Employee experience mirrors CX. Engaged, empowered employees who understand purpose and feel supported deliver much stronger customer experience.
• AI as an enabler, not a replacement. Brands like Sephora are using AI to gather richer feedback and personalize content, but only when used thoughtfully, not to replace human connection.
• Law of the mindset is foundational. From Blake’s “8 Laws” framework, creating a customer experience mindset is the starting point, especially in an environment of rapid change. Blake Morgan

Chapters

00:00 Introduction & What’s Still True in CX

02:30 Underestimated Shifts & Trust in CX

07:40 Boardroom Perspective & Balancing Short‑ vs Long‑Term

11:50 Culture, Performance Metrics & CX Mindset

17:20 Employee Experience & Manager Role

37:40 AI’s Role: Enhancing or Undermining Emotional Intelligence

41:12 Starting Small & Building Momentum

44:16 The “Law” to Focus on Now & Closing Thoughts

LinkedIn

Follow Blake Morgan on LinkedIn

Follow Jochem van der Veer on LinkedIn

In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem Van Der Veer sits down with Santos Subramanyam, Director of Enterprise Products, CX & UX at Macy’s, to explore how customer experience has evolved over time, and what timeless truths still matter. Drawing from Santos’s extensive background in retail, hospitality, automotive, SaaS, and more, they dig into the role of measurement beyond NPS/MPS, the importance of aligning teams around customer journeys, and how AI and data are enabling more real‐time, human‐centred decisions. The conversation is rich with examples, from redesigning checkout flows in store, to localized customer experience, to prototyping with empathy, that illustrate how to build experiences that scale and deliver business outcomes.

They also examine what it takes to shift organization culture: elevating customer journey thinking from execution teams all the way up to the C‑suite; storytelling and alignment; and the real work of bringing teams, data, and leadership together. Santos shares both his successes and the friction points, especially around aligning priorities, defining what metrics truly matter, and using small wins and service design to drive momentum.

Guest Bio

Santos Subramanyam is Director of Enterprise Products, CX & UX at Macy’s. He leads large, cross‑functional teams to build scalable design systems, align business and customer outcomes, and use data and AI to optimize customer and colleague experiences. Santos has a diverse industry background, including retail, SaaS, hospitality (notably Marriott), and automotive, and has driven major transformations: boosting metrics like MPS/MPS across tens of thousands of associates, cutting transaction times in stores, modernizing legacy systems with holistic designs, and partnering with business, product, engineering, and data teams for measurable impact. He’s also an advocate for culture, localization, and embedding journey thinking across organizations.

Takeaways

• Past truths remain valuable , Experiences in physical retail and in‑person interactions still matter; digital cannot fully replace physical touchpoints.
• Modernizing systems is more than UI , It involves hardware, ergonomics, flow, colleague tools, and the mental model of how people (both customers and employees) interact.
• Metrics beyond MPS/NPS , Focusing on speed, ease, transparency, transaction times etc., rather than relying solely on MPS as a steering lever.
• Use service blueprints and Kaizen for discovering inefficiencies (even small ones) in physical + digital touchpoints; small changes can scale into large operational improvements.
• Storytelling & visualization matter , Enacting journey pain points (via role‑play) or using narrative visuals makes executive alignment easier.
• Cultural alignment is hard but essential , Organizational culture, leadership mindset, individual KPIs can misalign; aligning around customer journey thinking is an ongoing effort.
• Influence through small wins , Prove with smaller initiatives to build trust and momentum before big change.
• Engage stakeholders where they are , Whether legal, product, tech, or operations, find ways to include them in the journey, storytelling, and showing shared value.

Chapters

00:00 Intro & Name Pronunciation

 03:11 Santos’s Background & What Still Holds True in CX

 06:30 The 80‑20 Rule & Localisation in Global CX

 12:30 Moving Beyond NPS/MPS: Business Metrics & Speed of Transaction

 18:30 Journey Mapping, Service Blueprints & Physical + Digital Integration

 23:00 Prioritization, Autonomy & Small Wins

 27:40 Organizing Teams Around Outcomes vs Functions

 30:50 Storytelling Up the Org & C‑Suite Engagement

 38:20 AI Use Cases: Call Center, Conversational Agents, Merchant Tools

 50:30 Using Reports, Data, Feedback Loops to Drive Action

 57:00 Magic Wand Question: What Would You Change Most?

 59:00 What’s Next for Journey Alignment & Final Thoughts

LinkedIn Profiles

Guest: Santos Subramanyam

Host: Jochem van der Veer

In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem van der Veer sits down with Bill Staikos, a globally recognized CX leader with more than two decades of experience driving customer and employee experience transformation in financial services, consulting, and tech. Bill shares his candid perspective on the state of CX today, including why the function has struggled to mature, what it takes for leaders to earn a true seat at the executive table, and why journeys remain critical to connecting silos.

Together, Jochem and Bill dive into the challenges of aligning CX to business strategy, the role of AI in enabling both orchestration and context, and why defining value is the non-negotiable first step for any experience program. Bill also gives a preview of his upcoming podcast The Multimodal Experience, where he explores how emerging technologies will reshape how we interact with brands and organizations. This episode is a masterclass in cutting through jargon and redefining what it means to create business impact through customer experience.

Guest Bio

Bill Staikos is a senior customer experience executive with over 20 years of leadership across financial services, consulting, and technology. He has held senior roles at American Express, Freddie Mac, JP Morgan, and BNY Mellon, where he led global initiatives to transform client and employee experiences. A former SVP at Medallia, Bill helped organizations turn insights into measurable outcomes.

Recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice and one of the Top 50 Global CX Influencers, Bill is also the founder of the Be Customer-Led podcast and is now preparing to launch The Multimodal Experience. Known for his pragmatic, impact-driven approach, Bill advises leading brands—including Apple, Bank of America, Marriott, and T-Mobile—on connecting customer experience to business growth.

Takeaways

• The customer’s core needs haven’t changed: at the heart of every business, customers simply want to achieve their goals.
• CX has become overly synonymous with surveys, leaving vast amounts of uncollected insights untapped.
• Many CX teams lack execution capacity, limiting their ability to drive business outcomes.
• Defining value—for both the customer and the business—is the essential first step for CX leaders.
• CX is not just reporting; it must directly connect customer metrics to core business metrics.
• Teams must evolve beyond VOC experts to include data science, finance, and technology skill sets.
• The best way to get leadership attention is to demonstrate tangible impact (e.g., churn reduction, revenue growth).
• Journeys are essential tools to connect silos and create a shared context across teams.
• AI can enable orchestration at both the customer level and the enterprise level.
• Change leadership and change management are equally critical to successful adoption of new capabilities.
• CX leaders must frame their work in business language (growth, risk, operating leverage) to resonate at the C-suite.
• The future of CX is multimodal, blending AI, XR, wearables, and new interfaces into everyday customer and employee experiences.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Bill Staikos

02:34 What hasn’t changed in CX over two decades

05:24 CX’s survey problem and its consequences

08:13 Should CX be its own department?

10:59 Defining value in customer experience

13:47 Skill, will, and talent gaps in CX teams

19:23 Examples of CX creating business impact

25:21 Why journeys are vital for connecting silos

36:25 The role of AI in context and orchestration

43:57 Where organizations should start with AI and CX

46:11 Should CX leaders engage in the CIO’s AI agenda?

49:59 Launching The Multimodal Experience podcast

52:31 Closing reflections and future directions

LinkedIn

Bill Staikos: LinkedIn Profile

Jochem van der Veer: LinkedIn Profile

In this special edition of The Experience Edge, we bring together six of our most impactful guests in one powerful narrative, tracing the journey of CX transformation from leadership mindset to system change—and ultimately to measurable business impact.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why vulnerable leadership and cross-functional trust are foundational to CX
• How to break down organizational silos to deliver seamless experiences
• The role of content, storytelling, and digital strategy in engaging customers
• Why measurement, experimentation, and feedback loops are critical for impact
• How AI enables real-time synthesis - and where human empathy still matters
• Who should truly own the customer journey (spoiler: it’s not just one team)

Featuring standout insights from top CX leaders who’ve led transformations inside complex enterprises, from healthcare to transportation, financial services to tech.

Whether you're a CX strategist, product leader, or experience designer, this episode is your fast track to understanding what it really takes to evolve customer experience in 2025 and beyond.

Follow Jochem van der Veer on LinkedIn:

Explore Journey Management with TheyDo

In this episode, Jochem Van Der Veer is joined by Angelique Wyszynski, Global Head of Insurance Innovation and CX at HSB (Hartford Steam Boiler). With over two decades of customer experience leadership in risk-averse industries like insurance and finance, Angie shares how she’s transforming CX from the inside out, without creating new silos. They unpack how to embed CX into legacy systems, operationalize customer insights, build credibility with finance, and scale innovation in heavily regulated environments.

Angie offers a playbook for CX leaders to drive value in complex organizations, showing how her centralized team delivers high-impact research, innovation strategy, and operational alignment, while fostering a culture that’s both customer and employee obsessed.

Guest Bio

Angelique Wyszynski is the Global Head of Insurance Innovation and Customer Experience at HSB (Hartford Steam Boiler). She has spent 20+ years leading CX strategy, innovation, and transformation in some of the most regulated industries, including insurance and finance. Angie previously held senior roles at Travelers and The Hartford, where she built one of the most comprehensive voice-of-customer programs in the industry.

At HSB, she leads a multidisciplinary team focused on embedding customer insights, enabling innovation across product and service lines, and translating customer feedback into measurable business value. Known for her expertise in behavioral economics, strategic foresight, and cross-functional collaboration, Angie is redefining what it means to be customer-centric in complex B2B environments.

Takeaways

• First CX hires must co-create, not impose: Build programs with business partners, not for them.
• Start with listening: Angie interviewed 45+ leaders to define CX maturity and align strategy.
• Embed research as function, not an afterthought, to democratize insights and enable innovation.
• Quality CX output = actionable, contextualized insights tied to business outcomes.
• Partnering with finance is critical to prove CX value and secure long-term credibility.
• Prioritization is structured by strategic alignment, not the loudest voice.
• Centralized teams enable agility and scale in complex organizations.
• Teaching others to “fish” helps scale CX without bottlenecks.
• Journey maps are powerful, if made simple, shareable, and built with the business.
• Innovation thrives when insights are pushed to the edge and new ideas come from everywhere.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Angelique Wyszynski

01:11 Why HSB Was Ready for CX Transformation

04:49 Avoiding the Trap of CX Silo Creation

06:28 Running a 45-Interview CX Diagnostic

09:06 The Universal Insight that Sparked Her Team

11:37 How to Get Early Traction

15:52 High-Quality Research Means Actionable Results

18:14 Partnering with Finance to Show CX ROI

23:17 Building a 20-Person CX & Innovation Team

25:41 How the Team Prioritizes Work Across HSB

27:43 The Innovation Funnel and Idea Scoring

30:59 Defining Innovation at HSB

33:54 Can Organizations Innovate Without CX?

34:55 Why Centralized CX Still Works

36:47 Managing Strategic Focus vs. Business Requests

38:14 Will AI Make CX Fully On-Demand?

41:22 Journey Mapping: Keeping It Tangible

46:36 Taxonomy Trouble: What’s a Journey, Really?

49:24 Why Journey Thinking Is Back

52:08 Can Insurance Organize Around Journeys?

53:23 Best, Worst & First Customer Journeys

58:21 Current Focus Areas at HSB

1:00:11 Connect with Angie on LinkedIn

LinkedIn

⁠Follow Angelique Wyszynski on LinkedIn

⁠Follow Jochem van der Veer on LinkedIn

Why Talking to 10 Customers Beats 10,000 AI Insights

Are your customer insights grounded in reality - or just AI-generated guesswork?

Synthetic research is everywhere. It looks real, sounds strategic, and gives you confident answers. But according to Gia Laudi, it’s BS if it isn’t rooted in real conversations with actual customers.

In this episode, Jochem Van Der Veer (TheyDo CEO) breaks down the false confidence synthetic insights create - and why teams relying on AI to define personas, journeys, and jobs to be done are building on sand.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why synthetic research is tempting - and dangerous

• Six common traps hiding in plain sight

• Why real conversations with 10-12 customers outperform 1,000 AI-generated “insights”

• How to anchor your growth in reality using a hybrid model

• What CX teams, marketers, and product leaders miss when nuance is stripped away

• The risks of basing strategic decisions on data that “sounds right” but isn’t real

• Why research is meant to reduce uncertainty, not fake clarity

Join the conversation:

When was the last time your team talked to 10 real customers before making a big decision?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:

Explore Journey Management with TheyDo:

Stop Saying You Are Customer Centric

Is your company actually customer centric - or just saying it is?

75% of companies claim to be customer-first. But only 30% of customers agree. In some surveys, the gap is even worse: 81% of leaders say they’re customer-centric... and only 3% of customers believe them.

In this episode, Jochem Van Der Veer (TheyDo CEO) exposes the disconnect between intent and execution - and how journey coordination bridges the gap between brand promises and customer reality.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why most customer-centricity efforts fail - despite good intentions

• How internal misalignment shows up as friction in the customer journey

• The hidden cost of symbolic gestures: workshops, research, and surveys that don’t lead to action

• Real examples from telco and transportation sectors - where clarity around where to act changed outcomes

• The dangers of insight without ownership: when knowing the problem still doesn’t lead to change

• How journey coordination becomes the operational structure for proving customer focus

• What high-performing organizations do differently

• Why customer centricity isn’t a campaign - it’s a structure

Join the conversation:

Where is your company performing customer centricity… without practicing it?

Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:

Explore Journey Management with TheyDo: