The customer experience is ready for a “reset” and here's the real reason why
While companies are investing more and more in the customer experience, the results are failing to impress. According to the authors of HumanX*, the problem no longer lies with the tools, but with the model itself.
Why the old CX model no longer works
The customer experience has become too operational, too fragmented, and too detached from human reality. Companies are investing in customer journeys, channels, metrics, and automation, but the experience that customers and employees actually have often remains fragmented, impersonal, and emotionally detached.
What's missing isn't follow-up, but consistency.
A model that has become misaligned
The prevailing CX model no longer meets people's actual needs.
Confusion Over Priorities
We confuse measurement with understanding, process with transformation, and multiple channels with true simplicity.
Concrete consequences
Customers still face friction, employees navigate exhausting systems, and executives continue to obsess over customer-centricity without rewarding consistency.
The Transition from CX to HumanX
In light of this observation, the book proposes a decisive step: realigning the model toward Excellence in the Human Experience, or HumanX. More than just an updated framework, it is a different philosophy of value creation that places people—not processes—at the center of organizational design.
The customer experience has become inextricably linked to the employee experience, leadership, culture, and social impact. It is no longer an end in itself but a reflection of the way the entire organization thinks, makes decisions, and behaves.
Experience is no longer an end in itself. It has become an expression of the way the entire organization thinks, makes decisions, and behaves.
Structural Simplicity
To take action rather than complicate matters.
Human Universality
Emotions are widely shared, even in different contexts.
Significant Measures
The indicators reflect the actual impact, not just operational output.
A Concrete Goal
alues are reflected in decisions, not just in statements.
Continuous Evolution
A capability that must adapt to a digital world shaped by AI.
What Leaders Should Take Away From This
HumanX proposes eight areas to focus on in order to bring about lasting change in the organizational experience:
The Goal, Vision
and Strategy
Leadership
and Culture
The design of
human experiments
Processes
without friction
Human Connection
and Authenticity
Agility and
adaptability
Co-creation and
collaboration
Impact and
measurement
Together, these criteria outline a concrete model for moving beyond mere efficiency and creating genuine relationships based on trust and meaning. The message is simple: it’s not the tools that make a company more human, but the alignment of everything that matters—strategy, culture, and operations—around people.
Key Takeaways...
This book does not argue for abandoning the customer experience; it argues for saving it from its own limitations. Its most important contribution is to remind leaders that the customer experience should not be treated as a secondary consideration. It is an approach that reflects the way an organization thinks, makes decisions, acts, and serves others.
The companies that will succeed in CX won't simply be those with more automation, more channels, or more dashboards.
These will be the ones that rebuild themselves around a clearer human-centered approach—where strategy, culture, and experience finally work in harmony.
* Bill Price and David Arconada, two internationally renowned experts in CX, share their insights.
Bill Price
Bill Price, Amazon's Senior Vice President of Global Customer Service, co-founded LimeBridge Global Alliance and began his career at McKinsey & Company.
Author of The Frictionless Organization (2022), Your Customer Rules! (2015) and The Best Service Is No Service (2008).
David Arconada
A recognized expert in customer experience in Spain and Latin America, he has designed and implemented CX strategies in the telecommunications, airline, and banking industries.
Currently Global Director of Customer Experience at BBVA, he leads the group’s CX strategy with a focus on customer insights and AI.
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Yolande Le Mercier
Country Manager - Activeo Suisse