In conversations with CEOs, I often find they remain overly focused on cost efficiency while customer experience (CX) sits in the background. That used to work in the traditional economy, where minimising costs led to short‑term profit. In the new — digital — economy, however, different rules apply. Organisations must now strive for the right balance between cost orientation and Human eXperience — the customer and employee experience — which ensures sustainable value creation for all stakeholders: customers, employees, owners, and the broader environment. The era when strategic customers were treated as a “cash cow” is over; today they should be treated like pure‑bred Arabian racehorses that can carry you to victory in the digital race.
What is CX
Customer Experience (CX) is the customer’s overall perception, formed through interactions with your organisation across all communication channels — from the first contact to after‑sales support. This emotional and rational perception shapes loyalty, satisfaction, and advocacy.
In the digital economy, where customers demand real‑time hyper‑personalisation, CX becomes the key differentiator. Companies with strong CX achieve, among other things, 20% higher loyalty and repeat purchases across the customer lifecycle — and therefore greater ultimate value than from short‑term revenues alone.
Three essential shifts for a healthy balance
1) The primary recipient of value is the customer, not the company.
Make the shift from short‑term, monthly sales quotas to a focus on the customer’s needs across their full lifecycle. Paradoxically, that is what ultimately drives higher revenues for the company.
2) The source of value is the end‑to‑end experience, not products or services alone.
Quality is becoming a given — necessary, but insufficient without understanding the added value that now arises primarily from business‑model and ecosystem innovation. Customers are highly informed and less loyal; they demand a high degree of personalisation and the feeling of being treated as special. They expect to invest less effort and achieve faster time‑to‑satisfaction.
3) Take an ecosystem approach.
Organisations can rarely deliver complete value to the customer on their own. They must cooperate with other organisations so that, together, they deliver more value.
How to achieve the balance
The key is to correctly understand and timely detect customers’ changing needs across their lifetime, using data and — of course — artificial intelligence. Practically, this means continuously seeking the optimal fit between the customer journey and the experience at your organisation’s critical touchpoints, aligned with internal processes, a shared, current view of the customer, employee engagement, and rapid, customer‑favouring decisions. The use of AI is essential here, because customers expect swift responses and personalised adaptation.
Cost optimisation can also contribute to customer experience if it is properly directed — for example by shortening process cycle times and simplifying them. Such optimisation not only reduces costs, it also strengthens the customer and the employee experience. But EX is a topic for another day.