Holistic Customer Interaction Models

Every delightful customer interaction begins with the marketer, and it can only be as powerful as the #CRM and #metadata underpinning it. With agents supporting them at every step of the customer journey creation process, marketers and #customerengagement teams can now create superior experiences shaped by intelligent and emotionally resonant conversations. At a cognitive level, the human brain no longer perceives AI as a “chatbot.” It perceives a relationship. This emotional shift fundamentally changes how consumers relate to brands, fostering deeper loyalty and trust. When customers interact with agents in a way that feels natural, their engagement deepens. The implications go far beyond engagement. Every AI-driven interaction generates a wealth of contextual data, far richer than what brands could ever collect from a single web form or survey. In one conversation, an agent can gather insights about a customer’s preferences, behaviors, and intent, building a more complete, dynamic customer profile. This continuous intelligence loop allows brands to maximize the value of every interaction. Let’s bring this to life with an example... Imagine Melanie, one of your many potential customers. She’s been thinking about joining Posh Fitness, a popular gym chain in her city. Instead of filling out a form, she decides to engage with the agent on their website. As they chat, it quickly feels more like a friendly exchange than a transaction. Melanie shares her fitness goals, whether she wants to lose weight, gain muscle, or improve flexibility, and the agent listens closely, asking the right questions to understand her needs and intent. The agent gathers valuable insights through this conversation that a simple web form could never capture. Melanie mentions her dietary restrictions, her preference for a supportive personal trainer style, and that she loves outdoor workouts but needs a flexible schedule due to her busy life. In just a few minutes, the agent collects a wealth of data about Melanie: her goals, preferences, and availability—all essential to crafting a personalized experience. And because the conversation feels human-like and emotionally resonant, it creates an immediate connection to Posh Fitness. By collecting this richer data early in the relationship, Posh Fitness can offer tailored recommendations and build Melanie’s loyalty well before she signs up. This isn’t just about closing a sale. It’s about building trust and delivering personalized experiences that evoke emotions and feel deeply human. Brands that will thrive in the era of #Agentic #AI are those that recognize the shift from transactional interactions to relationship-driven engagement. This isn’t just about personalization; it’s about creating experiences and dialogues that feel alive—where AI and marketers co-create journeys that adapt in real time, amplifying the impact of every customer moment.

Multimodal CX refers to a customer experience strategy that integrates multiple modes of interaction—text, voice, video, touch, gesture, and even image recognition—into a seamless, unified customer journey. It’s about letting customers engage with a brand through whatever combination of channels or inputs feels most natural to them—and ensuring those modes work together intelligently. 🔍 Example (The Seamless Journey) Imagine a traveler interacting with an airline: • They speak to a voice assistant to change a flight. • They text a chatbot to confirm luggage options. • They tap through the app to choose a seat. All three interactions are connected, context-aware, and synchronized—so the system “remembers” what the customer already said or did, regardless of mode. 💡 Why It Matters Multimodal CX is the next evolution beyond omnichannel: • Omnichannel = consistent brand experience across channels. • Multimodal = fluid experience across input types (voice, text, image, etc.), powered by AI. It’s especially relevant now because AI and large multimodal models (like GPT-5) can process text, voice, and visual data together—making it possible for brands to build truly conversational, intuitive customer experiences. 🚀 In Practice This is happening today: • Retail: Scan an item, ask questions via voice, and get personalized styling advice via chat. • Travel: Show a photo of damaged luggage to an airline chatbot and get compensation automatically. • Banking: Use facial ID, voice commands, and chat messaging in the same secure flow. What new revenue streams are unlocked when your CX can see, hear, and read? #MultimodalCX #CustomerExperience #CXStrategy #AI #DigitalTransformation #ThoughtLeadership

One of the best things I did as a product leader at Depop was make every team stick their customer journey map on the wall where they sat. It took a little encouragement at first. But soon the walls were overflowing with customer quotes, pain points, prototypes and mental models. You didn't need to ask how a team thought about a problem. You could walk over and see for yourself. Stakeholders couldn't make feature suggestions without the full context staring them in the face. Everyone was more aligned. As with other product artefacts, not all CJMs are created equally, so here's a brief guide to making a GREAT one: 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗔𝗣 A CJM breaks the user journey into steps, then captures what happens at each one: • What they see • What they touch • How it makes them feel Touchpoints are every interaction: app screens, emails, support calls, physical product, sales conversations. Not just the app. Look at it from the customer's POV. Thoughts and emotions are the consequence of the touch points. Look for areas of delight to double down on, and frustration to ease. 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗢 𝗕𝗨𝗜𝗟𝗗 𝗢𝗡𝗘 1. Pick a persona. One user type, one goal. Start narrow. 2. Break the journey into steps from the customer's point of view, not yours. 3. Add touchpoints. Include everything: digital, physical, human. 4. Add thoughts and feelings. What do they like? Where do they get stuck? 5. Enrich with data. Quant, customer quotes, feature ideas. 6. Identify where to act. Fix the abandonment cliffs and you polish delight moments. You can do a rough draft on your own in 1-2 hours. But you get much richer insights and alignment by building this in a cross-functional workshop. 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗢𝗡 𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗦 • "Once and done". You run the workshop, create the artefact and then never use it. • Detached from reality. You document what you think, not what your customers' think. • Product focus. You map the screens, not the holistic flow from the customer POV. • Qualitative only. You don't include hard metrics that help you size problems. Free Miro + Figma templates + guide: https://lnkd.in/eK8u8ZkS 13x real examples (Spotify, Airbnb, eBay, Uber + more): https://lnkd.in/e-THGRYw Webinar walk through: https://lnkd.in/ebHa3FKK Product Discovery course: https://lnkd.in/etJAQnP6 --- Hustle Badger gives super practical advice to Product Managers and anyone who wants to master AI. → Courses → Templates → Playbooks → Community

🧠 Have you heard of the C.H.O.I.C.E. model? It can help you use behavioral science to create more meaningful & effective customer experiences 👇 While there are no shortage of BeSci models out there, I couldn't find one that was fit for purpose. I was working on holistic customer messaging and experience journeys for global brands like McDonald's & Starbucks... and had to explain this approach to execs without overwhelming them with too much information. So, I created C.H.O.I.C.E. It's a simple checklist of elements that the best customer experiences share. One element might be weighted more heavily than another, but a world-class customer experiences uses every one. They are: 🧠 Clear: Is your experience salient and simple for people to understand? 🧠 Holistic: Does your "big picture" experience set up individual interactions to succeed? 🧠 Open: Does your experience make it clear what's happening now, why, and what's to come? 🧠 Individual: Does your experience use relevant data to personalize? 🧠 Contextual: Does the context of your experience subtly guide customer choice? 🧠 Emotional: Do customers have positive emotions and memories associated with your experience? (This version of the model includes examples of principles mapped to each element, but of course you can map additional principles to each) // Here's how you can use C.H.O.I.C.E. ✅ Structure your thinking: Are you being asked to create a new customer experience or audit an existing one? Use C.H.O.I.C.E. to help you understand what elements to consider, which questions to ask, and how to apply specific principles to create an effective experience. ✅ Use as a CX scorecard: C.H.O.I.C.E. can be used as a scorecard for continuous improvement, to pinpoint problems when an experience is broken, or as an additional section on a customer journey map. Ask yourself, is our experience delivering on each of these elements? ✅ Defend decisions to clients: You can also use C.H.O.I.C.E. for supplemental strategic support to defend customer experience, messaging, and marketing choices. This model can help you support best-practice design principles with scientific reasoning, to create a stronger overall pitches. -- ❤️ Found this interesting? Please like or share this post so it's easier for others to find. ❤️❤️ Want to learn what makes your buyers tick? Subscribe to the free Choice Hacking Ideas Newsletter - link in the comments.

In customer experience, relying solely on Net Promoter Score (NPS) is akin to judging a baseball pitcher by their ERA alone. While ERA might give you a snapshot of effectiveness, it doesn’t capture the full array of skills and situations that define a pitcher's performance. Similarly, NPS offers a glimpse but not the complete picture of customer satisfaction. Continuous Feedback: Progressive companies are shifting from infrequent NPS surveys to ongoing, real-time feedback across all touchpoints. This continuous interaction reveals deeper insights into customer needs and experiences. Lifecycle Analysis: Understanding the entire customer journey is crucial. Like assessing a pitcher on a range of performances across different games and seasons, analyzing the full spectrum of customer interactions—from first contact through ongoing engagement—helps pinpoint areas for improvement. Advanced Analytics: Utilizing sophisticated tools to analyze CRM data and communications across various channels allows us to go beyond simple scores. These analytics help uncover nuanced insights into what truly drives customer satisfaction and loyalty. Cultural Impact: Just as a supportive team environment can enhance a pitcher's performance, a positive corporate culture profoundly influences customer experience. Engaged and motivated employees are more likely to deliver exceptional service. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Delivering outstanding customer experience is a team sport. It requires seamless coordination across all departments, ensuring every interaction contributes positively to the customer’s perception and loyalty. As leaders in CX, we must broaden our metrics beyond NPS to get a holistic view of customer satisfaction. This approach allows us to more effectively gauge and enhance our performance in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. #CustomerExperience #Leadership #Analytics #Teamwork #BusinessStrategy

Grateful to be featured in the "Shoptalk Hot Takes" interview by Blenheim Chalcot and ClickZ.com alongside George Looker to unpack omnichannel commerce. 5 key takeaways and tactics from my conversation: 1. Design for Customer Continuity, Not Just Channel Expansion 💡 71% of customers expect brands to personalize interactions across every touchpoint. Tactical: Map out customer journey across channels, then design experiences that recognize and reward continuity—cart persistence, loyalty rewards, browsing history sync, etc. 2. Build the Infrastructure: Unify Data Streams Across All Touchpoints 🧠 Data fragmentation = missed opportunity Tactical: Integrate POS, e-commerce, mobile, social, and marketplace data into a centralized data lake or unified commerce platform. 3. Establish a Single Source of Truth for Customer Profiles 🔍 Brands with unified profiles see up to 2x better campaign performance. Tactical: Implement Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to consolidate behavioral, transactional, and engagement data into unified customer profiles. 4. Partner Strategically for Scale, Not Just Stack ⚙️ A bloated tech stack doesn’t equal agility As I noted, Retailers are getting sharper about which partners can scale with them. Ecosystem efficiency matters more than ever. Tactical Step: Audit your tech stack and partnerships consistently. Prioritize partners that offer extensibility, future-proofing, and proven omnichannel success. 5. Measure What Matters: Unified KPIs Across Commerce 📈 You can’t optimize what you don’t measure holistically Tactical: Align your analytics stack to report holistically across channels—tie marketing to merchandising, CX to LTV, and inventory to revenue. 🧠 Bottom line: think holistically, move strategically, and build ecosystems that scale experience with agility, not just transactions. Complete list in comment 👇 #ecommerce #omnichannel #unifiedcommerce

Here are 5 patterns I have see working with some of the most admired organizations… Whether they are retailers, financial institutions, healthcare organizations, government agencies, service organizations, a few patterns show up consistently. 1. CX greatest impact at scale is when it is integrated into the front line The highest performing organizations don’t centralize CX and hope insights trickle down. They put feedback directly in the hands of the people doing the work; the store associates, claims examiners, contact center agents, technicians, clinicians, carriers. When frontline teams can see and act on feedback in real time, service reliability improves and issues get resolved faster. 2. Listening has to be holistic not channel specific It is not “which channel matters most” but instead connect the full journey across channels to include digital behavior, contact center signals, in-person interactions, operational data, and employee feedback. The power is in connecting signals to see where friction actually lives. 3. Action focused reporting is the way The organizations that get real value from CX treat insight as a trigger for action, not a scorecard. Closed-loop workflows, service level agreements, and accountability structures turn feedback into fixes within minutes and hours, not in months and quarters. That’s where trust is built, cost is taken out of the system, and impact is felt. 4. Governance is the difference between short term to long term enterprise impact Successful programs have clear ownership, standards, and decision rights. Centers of Excellence, councils, and cross-functional governance ensure CX becomes how the organization operates, even at national scale. This supports the holistic effort where experience data cuts through complexity, leaders see problems sooner and fix them before it becomes a greater issue. 5. CX is a growth and reliability engine when it is linked to outcomes The most mature organizations don’t debate whether CX “matters.” They can quantify its impact whether on next purchase, next transaction, repeat use, loyalty, operational efficiency, incentives, trust, and service reliability. When experience is tied to real outcomes, behavior changes across the organization. Customer experience done right is about how organizations learn, prioritize, and act at scale. When CX is part of the operating system outcomes that matter follow in improving efficient and effective service delivery. Would be great to hear your thoughts and if any other patterns you have seen. #Leadership #Management #CustomerExperience #ServiceDelivery #Innovation #AI #Technology

#AI has been the dominant buzzword in the tech world and beyond in recent years, but as Omair Ahmed Khan often points out, we must not forget that all cutting-edge technology is fueled by #data. Data is of critical importance to us, as it is the cornerstone of our future success and competitiveness—only if we are able to fully understand and exploit its potential. Data helps us understand our customers, their needs, and their experiences better, allowing Deutsche Telekom to provide much more relevant and personalized offers while foreseeing and avoiding our customers’ major concerns. This, evidently, generates significant business value in the form of revenue and cost savings. That is why I was pleased to see our colleagues, Sharareh G. and Ole Rahn, share insights on two key subsequent projects of ours. In their posts (https://lnkd.in/dmeJc3sM; https://lnkd.in/d-njuShC), they elaborate on the Customer Data Platform and Customer Interaction Platform, two critically important tools designed to enhance productivity and simplify our agents' tasks while offering an improved, more convenient experience to our customers. 🔸Customer Data Platform (CDP): CDP was the response to the challenge we were facing due to the lack of reliable interrelations between fixed-line and mobile data. By merging data to create an integrated customer view, CDP brings more personalized service to our customers, increased efficiency, and transparency, while reducing agent workload and service time. The goal is to extend the capabilities and features of CDP to our non-assisted touchpoints, such as #OneApp and #OneShop. 🔸Customer Interaction Platform (CIP): This tool, designed based on the success of CDP and now running as a pilot, aims to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer, recording all interactions a customer has had with Deutsche Telekom. The idea is to create a holistic picture of customer activity-data across all channels. By facilitating easy access to a comprehensive view, our agents can serve our customers more effectively through real-time data aggregation of purchasing power and family structure, supported by CDP. I want to thank Sharareh and Ole for the inspiring overview and acknowledge the dedicated efforts of all our colleagues who are constantly bringing new state-of-the-art solutions to life. Markus Broll; Olessia Hutzelmann 

I had a great time working with colleagues from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS on a project titled “Holistic Customer Experience: The Interplay Between Retail Experience Quality, Customer In-Shop Emotion Valence, and In-Shop Involvement Valence.” A part of this project has been published in Marketing Intelligence & Planning (Emerald Publishing). Our team, including Farrukh Lodhi, Sara Quach, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Amjad Shamim, PhD, CMgr FCMI, CPM, junaid siddique, and Maheen Iqbal Awan, PhD. About the Study: This study examines the roles of retail experience quality dimensions, customers’ in-shop emotion valence, and in-shop involvement valence in shaping the holistic retail customer experience. We conducted 25 in-depth interviews with customers who have used services at non-fuel retail stores, commonly known as tuckshops, located adjacent to fuel stations. The study identifies three key dimensions of retail experience quality: 1. Physical surroundings experience quality 2. Interaction experience quality 3. Service innovation experience quality Our research contributes in several ways: First, it identifies key retail antecedents that influence how customers interact with, interpret, and evaluate their retail experiences. Second, it explores the complexity of customers’ in-store emotions and involvement valence, highlighting the coexistence of positive and negative emotions in certain retail contexts. Third, it provides practical insights for retail firms, encouraging them to adopt a holistic approach in managing customer emotions and involvement across diverse retail service channels. Overall, this study offers a comprehensive view of how mixed emotions and involvement impact the overall retail experience. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the reviewers and editors for their valuable feedback. Link to the article: https://lnkd.in/gPgrc8V7 UniSQ School of Business #CustomerExperience #CustomerBehaviour