👉 Too many customer-centricity initiatives fail. Customers do not notice the difference between ‘before' and ‘after'. And therefore there is no effect on their behaviour: word-of-mouth, sales or loyalty. Eventually, companies stop investing in these initiatives and they die a quiet death. Why is that? A major cause is that managers hold beliefs that are incorrect. And which therefore encourage actions that don't work. We call those beliefs " customer-centricity myths ". And that's what we talk about in this session: how to avoid those pitfalls and move forward effectively and efficiently.

 

💡In short: where do we put our money and energy for the best results.

 

▶️Who is our speaker? Horst Remes, managing partner at Onestone. Horst has led numerous customer behaviour research initiatives and is a valued speaker at corporate and customer experience events.

🍽️ The event will take place at Hostellerie du Grünewald, a 4* design-focused hotel & restaurant 🏨, located in the Dommeldange district. - a green area on the outskirts of Luxembourg City. Since 2025 they also have been awarded a Michelin star for their restaurant Chef's Table.

👉 Since 20 years Kantar - an insights and consulting company - publishes a yearly Customer Experience Benchmark for the French market. Since 2024 this has also been done in Belgium for the 1st time and on Nov 5th we will hear about the 2nd iteration of this report. Customers of 64 brands evaluated their experiences on three pillars: Execution, Connection, and Emotion - giving insight 💡 on the CX strength of companies and their specific industry.

🌞 We had our last CX-Brussels event before the summer yesterday and a fully packed venue at PwC Belgium, to listen to UX guru 🧙 , Vitaly Friedman. It was great to hear that a lot of people already followed Vitaly and could finally see him in real life. 
▶️ In this session, Vitaly will delved into the intricacies of the digital customer journey, offering practical insights on designing user-centric experiences that drive engagement and conversion. Drawing from his extensive work on enterprise UX, inclusive design, and smart interface patterns, he shared actionable strategies to navigate challenges such as multi-step forms, complex navigation, and diverse user needs .​
After his energizing keynote we had an engaging Q&A session, before hitting the wonderful terrace of PwC Belgium for enjoying some food and drinks. With a nice sunset 🌇 on top. 

 

The topic this time was "The Role of Empathy in Digital Customer Experience." Companies had been focusing on operational efficiency, which customers saw as a ‘hygiene’ factor rather than a differentiator. The explosion of digital and the drive to remove friction in customer experience meant that companies had engineered out meaningful and personal relationships with their customers. This operational focus missed the key component in what became the next competitive battleground - Digital Empathy.

From the UK, we had Peter Dorrington. As the inventor of Predictive Behavioural Analytics, Peter was an expert in providing customers with more human experiences across all channels, including mobile and digital.

We held our next CX-Brussels Round Table event. This time, we had one of our own members, Horst Remes (Onestone), who talked about the pitfalls of customer centricity. In this keynote address, Horst explained why too many customer-centricity initiatives fail. Numerous times, customers did not notice the difference between ‘before' and ‘after.'

As a result, there was no effect on their behaviour: no increase in word-of-mouth, improved sales, or higher loyalty. During this interactive session, we learned how to avoid those pitfalls and move forward effectively and efficiently.