Hosted by Jochem van der Veer, customer-obsessed founder of TheyDo, this weekly podcast dives into conversations with senior professionals, pioneers, and industry leaders at the forefront of CX. Guests openly share their experiences on customer journeys, voice of the customer, customer-centric transformation, journey management, and best practices for lasting impact.
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Why former Kimberly-Clark CX leader isn't worried about AI taking over
Wednesday, September 2, 2026 • Duration 01:02:21
Most CX teams report satisfaction scores. If yours disappeared on Monday, whose week would actually break? That answer decides whether it survives AI.
Rania Brand ran global CX and service design at Kimberly-Clark, where customer experience sits inside the operating model rather than beside it. In this conversation she argues that AI changes almost nothing about the CX equation — it only raises the cost of weak foundations — and explains why the teams that come through it will be the ones already load bearing somewhere else in the business. Along the way: why NPS only tells you a fire started, which KPIs are "in the now", and what enterprises should be copying from government digital services.
ABOUT RANIA
Rania Brand is a senior product & experience leader, who was Associate Director of Global CX and Service Design, and Global Product Manager, at Kimberly-Clark. Before Kimberly-Clark she spent fifteen years at IBM, including four and a half years working in government, which she describes as the clearest example she has seen of experience operationalised as institutional capability rather than run as a programme. Her work centres on connecting customer experience to the KPIs a business already reports — revenue leakage, cycle time, inefficiency — instead of leaving CX to defend itself with satisfaction scores. She publishes on Medium and LinkedIn.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AI is another actor in the blueprint, not a new equation — the foundations question is unchanged.
NPS and CSAT tell you a fire started; they never tell you which room.
If your CX team vanished and nobody's Monday broke, it was an initiative, not a function.
CX survives by being load bearing inside supply chain, pricing and finance, not beside them.
Solve deeply in one market, then export the design principles rather than the solution.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Why AI doesn't change the CX equation
02:52 NPS tells you there's a fire, not which room 06:35 The shadow IT risk in democratised AI
11:15 Why CX teams resist AI out of fear
12:30 Load bearing CX versus CX as a department
16:48 The Monday morning litmus test
19:52 What enterprises can learn from government digital services
30:39 Why data foundations don't change how people work
35:38 Incentives versus more systems thinkers
40:16 The KPIs that are in the now
43:26 Getting analysts and CX teams in the same room
46:06 Sponsorship, agency and regional execution
50:53 Solve in one market, scale with design principles
54:25 Why change and adoption decides whether it sticks
🎙️ Host: Jochem van der Veer — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer/
THEYDO
Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo: https://www.theydo.com
Subscribe to The Experience Edge for weekly conversations on customer experience, journey management, and the future of enterprise CX. Share this episode with someone who's thinking about how their organisation connects customer insight to real decisions.
How AI Is Reshaping Customer Journeys in Financial Service
Friday, August 21, 2026 • Duration 01:01:56
Speed without craft creates undifferentiated products. The real cost of AI acceleration in financial services is the slow erosion of what makes experiences worth building.
Julia Challicom leads Customer Strategy and Design for financial services at Deloitte Digital UK, helping tier-one banks and insurers transform the way customer insight shapes business decisions. In this conversation, she and Jochem dig into the tension between top-down pressure to go faster and the ground-level reality of data fragmentation, misaligned teams, and journey ownership that no one has truly solved - and why blindly replacing craft with AI tooling is a bet that will cost organisations more than they expect.
About Julia
Julia Challicom is Customer Strategy and Design Lead for Financial Services at Deloitte Digital UK. She works with large-scale tier-one banks, insurers, and wealth management firms to transform customer experience and design customer-led services, with a particular focus on journey management, AI integration, and translating customer insights into business outcomes. She is a vocal champion of responsible and inclusive design, and is deeply concerned about the erosion of craft skills as organisations rush to automate. Her perspective is shaped by years working inside some of the UK's most complex financial institutions, giving her a practitioner's view of how transformation actually unfolds - and where it quietly stalls.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Organisations racing to go faster with AI are building the wrong things faster - alignment to customer journeys is the missing fix.
Data access, data quality, and data architecture are all broken at once; no client is immune.
Journey ownership fails when it's given to someone too junior, or a senior person with no freed-up capacity.
Replacing craft with AI tools doesn't improve output quality - it just removes the people who caught the problems.
Tokenomics is the next CFO conversation: agentic systems cost far more than the teams they were supposed to replace.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
The Weakest Link in Every Enterprise CX Data System
Wednesday, July 15, 2026 • Duration 30:44
Every CX leader can point to their data. Almost none can trace how it actually becomes a business decision.
Jochem van der Veer breaks down the four-stage customer experience data lifecycle — signals, context, intelligence, and impact — that determines whether experience data ever turns into a measurable business outcome. He unpacks why behavioral data (clickstream, session recordings, product telemetry) is consistently undervalued compared to surveys, why most enterprises over-invest in signal collection while under-investing in the hardest, least glamorous stage — building a shared context layer, or customer experience ontology, that both humans and AI can reason over. Along the way he covers taxonomy and journey mapping as change management challenges (not just data problems), the three-layer ownership model for context governance, opportunity scoring and journey health as concrete intelligence outputs, and how to build the business case for CX investment using speed-to-resolution and cost-of-inaction metrics rather than abstract insight-to-impact claims.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What customers say and what they do are correlated, but rarely the same signal.
Survey response bias means you mostly hear from the angriest and happiest 5%.
A shared taxonomy is a change management problem before it's a data problem.
Context has three owner layers: source owners, curators, and governance.
Cost of inaction on ignored recommendations is often the most persuasive metric.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction — where does experience data actually go?
02:30 Stage one: signals and the behavioral data gap
05:00 Why surveys are overweighted and underinform
08:00 Stage two: context and building a shared ontology
10:00 The KYC example — recurring patterns across journeys
11:30 Why agreeing on taxonomy is an organisational problem
How Autodesk Made Journey Management an Operating System
Wednesday, July 8, 2026 • Duration 01:10:30
Service design promised to connect the dots. So why are service designers inside the same company still not talking to each other?
Khayyam "Kai" Lasi is Journey Management Program Lead at Autodesk, where he's spent years scaling journey management from a lone title on an org chart to a company-wide operating system. In this conversation, he and Jochem get into why service design siloes itself from within, what it actually means to move from journey mapping to journey architecture, why "ownership" is the wrong mental model for CX practitioners, and how AI can reduce the internal politics that keeps teams from doing their best work.
ABOUT KAI
Khayyam "Kai" Lasi is Journey Management Program Lead at Autodesk. His career path has been far from linear - he moved from actuarial science into customer experience after discovering a stronger passion for people and solving complex problems, going on to build deep expertise in customer support, CX leadership, and journey management across Toronto startups, Scotiabank, and Autodesk. Over the past three and a half years at Autodesk, he's been foundational in scaling a journey management practice that now spans multiple teams and has influenced how the organisation hires and structures CX work. He's best known for combining analytical rigour with a systems-level view of customer experience - and for being unafraid to call out where the service design field is failing itself.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
➝ Service design siloes aren't just an org problem - they're a people problem that no tool or framework will fix.
➝ Journey management is the operating system that keeps service design from becoming the wild west.
➝ "Shepherd" beats "owner" - you can't shepherd a journey without building a flock of contributors.
➝ Insight grain size matters: product managers don't want "onboarding is bad," they want capability-level specifics.
➝ AI can create good baselines and remove language barriers between roles - but humans still have to come together.
Will half of CX teams become redundant?
Wednesday, July 1, 2026 • Duration 48:39
Half of CX teams are still just running surveys. The other half stopped reporting and started operating.
Bill Staikos spent two decades in customer experience leadership at companies like American Express, BNY Mellon, and JPMorgan, and now writes the newsletter AI Not KPI. In this conversation, he explains why CX is splitting into a "bottom 50%" still stuck in survey-and-dashboard mode and a "top 50%" rebuilding around AI, data architecture, and operating models - and argues the role's most important relationship is shifting from the CFO to the CIO.KEY
TAKEAWAYS
- Half of CX teams still only run surveys- the rest have moved to an operating model.
- When CX and the Chief Product Officer have "no daylight" between them, transformation accelerates.
- The closed-loop model needs two new loops: orchestration (AI acting in real time) and learning (feedback improving the system).
- CX leaders need data literacy and curiosity about tools like semantic layers and MCP, not just survey skills.
- Start with the biggest business pain point, not the biggest customer pain point — the experience issue usually surfaces there anyway.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
03:09 Why half of CX teams are stuck doing surveys
05:48 The CX–CPO relationship as the biggest marker of change
07:11 How insight teams are getting into product planning cycles
11:02 What the top 5% of CX leaders do differently
13:16 Should a survey-background CX leader be a red flag?
15:45 Business acumen vs. data vocabulary — CX needs both
17:32 Rethinking Bain's closed-loop model: adding orchestration and learning loops
Ontology: Fix Your AI Quality by Fixing Your Data
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 • Duration 21:08
Your AI agents aren't failing because the models are bad. They're failing because your data was built for humans, not machines.
Jochem has spent years working on the structural problem underneath failing enterprise AI initiatives. In this episode, he breaks down why CX AI pilots stall after six to eight weeks, what an experience ontology actually is and how it differs from a taxonomy or tag list, and why the architectural decision of where your ontology lives - data layer versus AI layer - determines whether your AI investment compounds or drifts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AI pilots fail because the data environment was designed for human interpretation, not machine reasoning.
Tagging the same word across systems is co-location, not integration — AI can't bridge that gap reliably.
An ontology defines not just what things are, but how they relate and what an agent can do with them.
Location primitives (journey, phase, step) give disparate data a shared address so it can finally connect.
The architectural choice of where the ontology lives — data layer vs. tool layer — determines whether it scales or drifts.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction — Why AI pilots hit a wall after six to eight weeks
01:45 The three lenses enterprises use to understand customers
03:10 Why co-location isn't integration and what breaks when humans leave the loop
04:47 The core problem: confident AI output with no traceable foundation
06:20 What an ontology actually is — and how it differs from a taxonomy
08:00 Location primitives: journey, phase, and step as shared address
09:30 Connecting VOC evidence and BI metrics to the same structural coordinate
10:30 Pattern primitives: spotting recurring opportunities across journeys
How To Turn Messy CX Data Into AI-ready Team Action
Thursday, June 4, 2026 • Duration 14:31
Your teams are drowning in customer data but can't act on it. Here's a 5-level framework that makes the customer journey your operating system.
IN THIS EPISODE
Why another dashboard won't fix your customer data problem
How to connect what customers say with what they actually do
Why the customer journey — not your org chart — should organize your data
How a "meaning layer" creates cross-team alignment without reorganizing teams
How journey-structured data becomes an ontology that AI and agents can reason over
CHAPTERS
00:00 The real problem: a data organizing problem, not a data problem
02:19 The five layers, and why the journey is the organizing principle
02:19 Level 1 — Evidence: the qualitative voice of the customer
04:46 Level 2 — Measurement: KPIs and what customers actually do
06:00 The journey as the backbone that joins the dots
07:15 Pinning every signal and KPI to a moment in the experience
08:00 Level 3 — Meaning: surfacing the "why" (the Lufthansa baggage example)
09:38 Level 4 — Cross-team connection and natural alignment
11:58 Level 5 — Business impact and competitive advantage
14:03 Putting it together: the journey as your operating system
Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer/
CONNECT WITH US:
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Why Your CX Message Isn't Landing
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 • Duration 13:19
Your CX pitch lands with practitioners but dies with CEOs. Here's the messaging framework that fixes it.
IN THIS EPISODE
Why CX leaders keep pitching the wrong message to the wrong room — and how to diagnose it
How to talk to a CEO or COO about customer experience without mentioning customer experience
What product leaders actually need to hear before they'll prioritise CX on the roadmap
When to lead with technology — and why it's only right for one specific audience
The two most common messaging mistakes CX teams make and how to avoid them
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro — Why CX storytelling breaks down
01:04 The real-world example: energy company, call volume, cost mandate
02:10 Three audience buckets: Out-of-CX, CX-adjacent, CX expert
03:29 How to pitch the out-of-CX crowd (CEOs, COOs)
05:00 How to pitch the middle layer (product, marketing, brand)
08:08 How to pitch CX practitioners — and when to lead with technology
09:49 The full messaging stack: outcomes, use case, technology
10:30 Two mistakes to avoid: stacking arguments and mixing audiences
12:12 Key takeaways — same work, three different messages
Ep. 73 - Rethinking Empathy In High Stakes Moments
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 03:54
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?
Ep 72 - Why AI Needs Journey Context to Actually Work
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 • Duration 01:11:40
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
01:47 Where the pressure to go faster actually breaks in enterprise CX
03:39 Why faster development without journey alignment produces more of the wrong things
04:34 The data problem: access, quality, architecture - and the cottage industries they create
08:11 Top-down strategy vs. ground-level AI sprawl: how to get a meaningful start
11:49 Why journey-centric working matters more than ever in financial services
18:22 The movement toward journey centricity: Lloyds, fintechs, and the ripple effect
20:41 Leading indicators of transformation: what to measure before satisfaction scores move
22:21 PI planning and the disconnect between discovery work and what actually gets prioritised
27:08 Journey ownership models: what works, what fails, and where it's still maturing
33:42 Journeys as a data model: the AI opportunity hiding in connected customer context
35:47 How the consultant's role is changing - and the slow erosion of craft that worries Julia most
43:00 KYC, agents, and the real ROI calculation of automating regulated journeys
48:02 Conversational journeys, AI search, and why the fundamental questions haven't changed
57:45 Tokens vs. time: how CFOs are starting to scrutinise the true cost of AI initiatives
01:04:30 Where to find Julia and the Deloitte–TheyDo alliance
Subscribe to The Experience Edge for weekly conversations on customer experience, journey management, and the future of enterprise CX. Share this episode with someone who's thinking about how their organisation connects customer insight to real decisions.
Subscribe to The Experience Edge for weekly conversations on customer experience, journey management, and the future of enterprise CX. Share this episode with someone who's thinking about how their organisation connects customer insight to real decisions.
Subscribe to The Experience Edge for weekly conversations on customer experience, journey management, and the future of enterprise CX. Share this episode with someone who's thinking about how their organisation connects customer insight to real decisions.
Subscribe to The Experience Edge for weekly conversations on customer experience, journey management, and the future of enterprise CX. Share this episode with someone who's thinking about how their organisation connects customer insight to real decisions.
- 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/
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