Consider this: A customer orders a product or new service, only to receive… silence. No confirmation, no shipping or implementation updates, no idea when it’s coming or what happens next.
What starts as excitement turns into uncertainty and anxiety. Did the order go through? Did my card get charged for nothing? And by the time the product arrives—if it arrives—the relationship is already damaged.
On the flip side? When a brand proactively communicates delays, shares what to expect, or anticipates what the customer might need next, the experience feels seamless (and even human!).
This is just one small example of the many ways B2B and B2C organizations can stay ahead of their customer’s emotions to amplify their excitement or quickly quell any hesitation.
Whether your customer is buying a pair of sneakers or rolling out enterprise software, their journey is full of emotions: excitement, relief, doubt, frustration, joy. Designing great CX means understanding those emotions and anticipating them.
When brands lead with empathy and action, they create trust before things go wrong. Ready to get started? Pull out your customer journey map, and let’s explore some options!
Empathy Helps You Predict What Customers Need Next
Empathy isn’t just a soft skill; it’s a strategic advantage.
When you take time to understand the emotions and goals tied to each step of your customer’s journey, you uncover opportunities to act before they ask for help.
Every brand has opportunities to build trust through foresight. But those opportunities look different depending on your audience and industry.
B2B CX: Help Customers Feel Supported and Informed
B2B relationships are often long-term and built on mutual goals. Your customers may be navigating organizational change, proving ROI, or managing risk. Proactive CX helps reduce uncertainty and build confidence.
Examples:
- Service outage notifications: Don’t wait for a client to discover downtime. Reach out first, acknowledge the impact, and offer a timeline for resolution.
- Feature roadmap updates: Keep clients in the loop about upcoming improvements. Let them see that you’re innovating with their future needs in mind.
- Onboarding and maturity-based resources: Share tailored guidance, checklists, or how-tos based on where the customer is in their lifecycle. A small tip at the right time can prevent frustration and increase value.
- Billing transparency: The cost of your service should not be a surprise for customers when they receive their first bill. Ensure your sales process and onboarding clearly explains how costs work, payment terms, and how customers can ask in-depth questions if needed.
B2C CX: Build Loyalty Through Little Moments
B2C customers expect fast, frictionless experiences. Small surprises or disruptions can cause big drop-offs in trust. A proactive approach can turn those moments into loyalty wins.
Examples:
- Shipping and delay updates: Proactively communicate when packages are running late. Customers are more patient when they’re informed.
- Post-purchase education: Send emails or include messaging in your packaging that explains how to use the product, offers tips, or shows unexpected uses. Help customers get the most from what they bought.
- Retention touchpoints: Reminders to reorder, check in on satisfaction, or seasonal nudges tied to past purchases show customers you haven’t forgotten them.
- Coupon and discount reminders: Many customers are eager to join loyalty or rewards programs to accrue points and discounts. But it’s easy to forget about their perks before they expire. Consider sending reminders about any personalized offers customers have received so they make use of them before they expire (and cause sadness or frustration at the next purchase).
Let Customers Help Themselves — And Love You For It
Proactive CX also means giving customers the tools they need to overcome any challenge. Self-service is about empowerment and helping streamline your team resources so anyone can access their preferred support avenue.
- Ensure support contact details are easy to find—no digging required.
- Create a searchable FAQ or help center that reflects actual customer questions.
- Use AI-powered chatbots or guided workflows to offer 24/7 assistance in context.
When customers can solve their own issues quickly, it leads to higher satisfaction and lower service costs.
Want to Be Proactive? Start Listening More Closely
Unsure where to focus first? Start with listening.
Every support ticket, feedback form, customer call, and survey response is a signal. When you connect the dots, you start to see patterns—friction points you can prevent, needs you can anticipate, and moments where a small gesture makes a big difference.
Customers will start to say, “It’s like they read my mind.” And that’s not just a compliment—it’s a competitive advantage.
Try This: Flip the Script
Take a fresh look at your customer journey map. Ask:
“Where are we waiting for the customer to reach out to us?”
Now ask:
“What would it look like if we reached out first?”
That shift toward anticipation over reaction is where standout CX begins.
Accelerate Your CX Success
Would you like help building proactive touchpoints into your journey map? We’ve helped hundreds of CX leaders do just that. Let’s talk.
]]>Did you remember to cancel that free trial or pause the subscription you’re not using? The truth is most of us get busy, and a lot of business models quietly benefit from that “I’ll do it later” gap. That gap is closing. Meta’s Muse and the broader wave of AI agents can read email, scan transactions, research alternatives, and follow through on cancellations or purchases without getting tired, distracted, or overwhelmed.
We dig into what Muse’s rapid adoption means for customer experience, subscription retention, and churn. If an AI assistant does the browsing, the comparison shopping, and the form filling, your customers may never visit your website and the human “signals” you rely on to predict renewals can vanish. We also talk about the platform and partnership angle: which brands open the door to agent-based shopping and service, which block it, and why that decision impacts discovery, conversion, and trust.
From there, we get practical. I share concrete ways to become agent-ready in your CX strategy: make leaving easy and staying easier, add real options like pause before cancel, keep a human findable for fast escalations, and brief your frontline teams for customers who arrive with AI-generated summaries. Most importantly, we explore how to earn the final click, the moment a customer approves what an agent did, by reinforcing reassurance, protections, and transparent policies.
If you want to stay ahead of AI shopping assistants, customer service automation, and the new rules of retention, listen now. Subscribe, share this with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find it.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership
and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
The fastest way to derail a digital experience is to treat change like a broadcast instead of a collaboration. We sit down for a CX Pulse Check with Gloria Gupta, Senior Director of Customer Experience at the American Medical Association, to talk about what’s really happening on the ground in customer experience and CX transformation right now: rapid tech shifts, rising expectations, and the very human work of getting buy-in across an organization.
We start with a key idea local government leaders are surfacing more and more: tech isn’t the hard part. The hard part is involving stakeholders early, building shared ownership, and staying close to the people you serve. Then we explore AI in contact centers, and Gloria shares how to manage AI like a real team member. We close with the Domino’s app redesign and why testing needs a clear strategy behind it.
If this sparked ideas for your own digital experience or service operations, subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show.
About Gloria Gupta
Sr Director, AMA Service, Sales, and Customer Experience Transformation at American Medical Association
Gloria Gupta leads enterprise-wide customer experience and service at the American Medical Association (AMA). She unified AMA (www.ama-assn.org) sales and service within a Benchmark Portal Center of Excellence, placing AMA service in the top 10% of high performing contact centers world-wide for two decades.
For nearly ten years, Gloria and the CXOne team have led AMA’s extensive CX transformation. She received several leadership and impact awards from the Customer Experience Professionals Association and was named “USCXA CX Leader of the Year” and “Reuters Events Most Influential Woman Leading Change in Healthcare.” Working across AMA business and mission units AMA CXOne earned numerous global awards for CX innovation, culture, and transformation, including “USCXA’s Best CX Team of the Year.”
Follow Gloria on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloria-gupta-rdh-ms-fcxp-4760939/
Articles Mentioned:
- Tech ‘isn’t the hard part’ in digital experience, local leaders say (Route Fifty)
- How Hotel CEOs Are Really Using AI, From Voice Agents to a Digital Hyatt CEO (Skift)
- How Domino’s app redesign went wrong and what CX leaders can learn (CX Dive)
Resources Mentioned:
- Order your copy of Experience Is Everything — http://experienceiseverythingbook.com
- Learn more about CXI Membership and apply — http://CXIMembership.com
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave Jeannie a voicemail at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
Finalists were announced in the 23rd annual Stevie® Awards for Women in Business, the world’s top honors for women entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run.
Recognition Highlights Jeannie Walters’ Practical Guide for Customer Experience Leaders
October 7, 2026 – The Stevie® Awards named Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations by Jeannie Walters a Finalist in the Book of the Year category of the 23rd annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.
The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor the achievements of women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run– worldwide. The Stevie Award has been hailed as the world’s premier business award.
Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the awards will be presented to finalists at a ceremony in New York City on November 16, where Gold, Silver, Bronze and Grand winner placements will be announced.
The Stevies expect more than 400 women and their guests from around the world to attend the presentations, which the organization will broadcast live.
Organizations and individuals in 56 nations and territories submitted more than 1,500 entries this year for consideration in more than 300 categories, including Executive of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Company of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women, and Women Run Workplace of the Year.
Experience Is Everything gives leaders a practical roadmap for turning customer experience (CX) from good intentions into everyday action. Walters draws on her work with organizations of all sizes to show leaders how to align their teams, build customer trust, and create lasting momentum.
“Every leader I meet wants to deliver better experiences. The hard part is turning that intention into action,” said Walters. “I wrote Experience Is Everything to help business leaders do exactly that. I’m honored to stand alongside so many remarkable women this year. Congratulations to every finalist. Your work shows what’s possible when women lead with purpose.”
Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award finalists will be determined based on the average scores of more than 200 business professionals worldwide, serving across seven judging committees.
Maggie Miller, president of the Stevie Awards, said, “As the Stevie Awards for Women in Business marks its 23rd year, we continue to be impressed by the remarkable accomplishments represented among the nominations. It is especially rewarding to see the significance a Stevie Award holds for women and the recognition it brings to their achievements, careers, and organizations. We congratulate all of this year’s finalists and look forward to revealing the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements on November 16.”
Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of winners in all categories are available at http://Women.StevieAwards.com.
Entries for the 2027 Stevie Awards for Women in Business will open in May.
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About Experience Investigators
Experience Investigators, founded in 2009 by award-winning customer experience leader and international keynote speaker Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP, helps organizations shift from reactive customer service to a proactive customer experience strategy. Recognized by LinkedIn as one of the most influential voices in the industry, Walters and her team provide strategic consulting, training, and thought leadership for Fortune 500 companies and SMBs across multiple industries. The firm’s proven CXI Navigator framework empowers leaders at all levels to drive measurable customer experience outcomes. More than 500,000 professionals have taken Walters’ LinkedIn Learning courses, and her insights on customer experience strategy have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Chicago Tribune. Walters is the author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations.” Visit: experienceinvestigators.com
About the Stevie® Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in nine programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, and the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations and territories. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.
Your AI just answered a customer. Now ask the uncomfortable question: do they trust it, and do they trust you more or less because of it? We dig into why trust is becoming the defining customer experience metric as automation spreads across chat, contact centers, and self-service. The data is sobering: many leaders believe customers highly trust their brand, while far fewer consumers agree, and that gap is poised to grow as AI gets embedded into everyday service.
We unpack what’s driving the trust slide, including why customers feel more loyal when real people stay visible in the journey and why authenticity matters more than ever. We talk through a practical approach to AI disclosure: when you can treat AI as an internal assist for human agents, and when transparency is non-negotiable because it could feel like impersonation. We also broaden the lens beyond chatbots to AI avatars and video, where the line between real and synthetic can get blurry fast.
Then we get tactical with three questions you can apply to your CX and 2027 planning. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review so more CX leaders can build trust before it turns into a crisis.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
CX budgets only grew about 2% this year, yet AI spending inside those same budgets jumped 38%. That math forces a hard question: if the total pool barely changes, where does the new AI money come from? We walk through why the “somewhere” is often customer service headcount, and why that shortcut can quietly create a bigger budget problem later.
We unpack Gartner’s prediction that many companies cutting support roles due to AI will need to rehire by 2027 and beyond, often at a higher cost than keeping and reskilling people in the first place. We also talk about the trust gap showing up in channel value: leaders still rate live chat and phone as most valuable today, even while expecting generative AI chatbots to take the top spot soon. When spending moves faster than trust, customers feel it through inaccuracies, frustrating loops, and a lack of empathy during complex moments.
If you care about customer experience, customer service automation, and making smart generative AI decisions without breaking trust, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show.
Article Mentioned:
Gartner Predicts Half of Companies That Cut Customer Service Staff Due to AI Will Rehire by 2027 (Gartner)
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
$3 trillion in global sales is at risk because of poor customer experience. That number is big enough to change how we think about CX budgeting, because it turns “experience” into a measurable revenue and trust problem. I walk through where leaders should invest now, what trends actually matter, and which shiny “innovations” you can safely stop chasing.
AI is no longer a trend, it’s the weather. It’s in the background of your tech stack and the foreground of your strategy, and it’s already shaping how customers discover products and get help. The real question is whether your AI investment strengthens human connection or quietly breaks it. I dig into why the old contact center metrics may not fit the AI era, and what to measure instead, including AI resolution and escalation quality so you can track outcomes that customers feel.
Then we get honest about a common budget mistake: funding more technology while underfunding the people, training, and services required to make that technology work. When that balance is off, you get bad AI rollouts, frustrated teams, and customers who don’t know where to get a straight answer. We also explore agent-assisted commerce, how AI assistants can become the new storefront, and why conversation analytics and interaction analytics are showing real gains in CSAT and revenue when used with clear intent.
If you want a smarter CX budget and a clearer ROI story for your leadership team, listen now, subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!