Stop designing CX for customers - start designing it with them

The 'inside-out' CX model is running out of road - businesses now need to co-create experiences with empowered customers

Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.

Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around ‘Empowerment Tech’. Digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.

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Hi folks,

Today it’s another post from the mini series exploring how CX is changing. And what’s coming next.

For thousands of years, we stood on Earth and assumed that it was our planet in the middle, and the Sun revolved around us. We were wrong.

Today, businesses are making the same mistake. They believe they are in the middle of the customer universe.

But in reality, it’s the customer themselves at the centre.

Five hundred years ago, Copernicus proved we were all wrong about the Sun’s orbit. And sparked a wave of new thinking that upended science, religion, physics, and how we see our place in the world.

And it’s about to happen again. But this time with brands.

Empowerment Tech - new customer-sided tools like digital wallets, personal data vaults, and Personal AI - is about to trigger its own Copernican shift. One that will prove to companies that they too have been wrong all along.

Because without the customer, brands are nothing. Without demand, there is no supply. And without empowerment, there is no market.

This market inversion is about to rewrite how brands earn attention, build trust, and make money. The next Copernican flip is coming. And this time, the disruption will start in the customer’s hands.

Today’s post looks at:

• Why brands are blinded by their own brilliance

• Looking inside out

• How customers have been building their own CX tools

• The new digital customer relationship

It’s all just another opportunity to explore the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.

So grab a pot of tea for one, a quiet corner, and Let’s Go.

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Brands are blinded by their own brilliance

For decades, the ‘customer experience’ has been built from the inside out. Brands have been in control, with customers as the destination, not participants.

Every experience is delivered to the customer, not built with them.

Even as platforms got smarter and contact centres moved to the cloud, the model hasn’t really changed. Fixing the processes on the inside to make the experience look smoother on the outside.

And it’s worked. But only up to a point.

Because businesses still can’t see beyond their own walls. They are blinded by their own brilliance. Believing that they are at the centre of the customer universe.

Looking inside out

I’ve been working with UJET recently on the future of the digital customer experience, and they have some great stories about how brands have been fixing their side of the CX stack.

Payments platform Zettle needed to scale fast across Latin America, but fragmented systems were slowing them down. After unifying the CX stack, Zettle can now support customers faster, and they’ve improved customer satisfaction by 10%. Great stuff.

Dog-walking platform Wag! also wanted to speed up onboarding and make it easier to support their contact centre agents. After streamlining their CX stack, new customers can join in half the time, and agents get real-time coaching to keep quality high as they grow. Also brilliant.

But.

Both of these stories are about modernising CX from within.

Like using the customer’s mobile device to add biometric customer checks to the app. Or drawing on other data sources to add customer context and recommendations in the moment.

It’s all still building from the inside-out.

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Customers have been building their own CX tools

While brands have been upgrading their CX stacks, customers have been quietly building their own, too.

Soon, new customer-side digital tools will rival - and in some cases surpass - the ones brands have spent years creating. And it’s going to change everything.

Customers will be able to show up with their own, personal digital tools for CX:

• A verified digital identity, stored in a digital wallet

• Purchase history and preferences, they can choose to share

• A Personal AI agent that can handle tasks on their behalf

And we’re already seeing the early signs of the shift.

In many US states, digital driver’s licences can be added to Apple and Google Wallets. Easily shared with companies when it’s needed. And in the EU, several countries have released the first versions of their ‘Digital ID Wallet’ to meet the eIDAS2 regulations. In fact, by 2026, Gartner believes there will be 500M digital ID wallets being ‘used regularly’ around the world.

We can also see ‘Personal AIs’ beginning to schedule appointments and interact with businesses on users’ behalf. 

This future isn’t theoretical. It’s starting to arrive in small, practical ways. 

This emerging digital customer layer - Empowerment Tech - has the potential to fundamentally change the flow of customer information and trust.

Yes, it’s about digital transformation.

But this time it’s on the customer’s side.

A new digital customer relationship

You might mistake this for just another story about CX improvement. But it’s actually about a new digital customer relationship, built on three new capabilities:

• Digital trust: Where customers can prove who they are, instantly and securely

• Real-time customer context: Where customers can choose to share relevant, real-time data about their needs, history and preferences

• Automated delegation: Where customers can send someone else - something else - to act on their behalf, their own ‘AI Agent’

Instead of asking for ID, the customer shares it. Instead of guessing intent, they declare it. And instead of queuing up, their agent - human or AI - can take the lead.

This is the shift we need to be paying attention to. From inside-out orchestration to outside-in empowerment.

The most forward-thinking brands aren’t just building better contact centres with folks like UJET. They’re preparing for a new kind of digital customer. One that arrives equipped with their own digital tools and data, not empty-handed. Hoping that the contact centre agent can pull together a spaghetti of systems and data to get something done.

Empowerment Tech isn’t about replacing what works. It’s about unlocking what’s been missing all this time.

The customer.

Because the future of CX won’t be controlled, it will be co-created. And it will belong to the brands ready to design it with customers, not for them.

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OTHER THINGS

There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.

So here are some more links to chew on:

• Post: Why Tony Blair May Be Right About Digital ID READ

• News: Meta violated California privacy laws by collecting menstrual health data - and might pay out $Bns READ

• Article: Your Next Customer Doesn’t Have Emotions READ

• Opinion: The UK's new age verification is a privacy nightmare, but it doesn't need to be READ

• Article: Zero Knowledge Proofs Alone Are Not a Digital ID Solution to Protecting User Privacy READ

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And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.

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