The Experience Edge

Jochem van der Veer

5.0 (2)
MARKETING
UPDATED WEEKLY

Hosted by Jochem van der Veer, customer-obsessed founder of TheyDo, this weekly podcast dives into conversations with senior professionals, pioneers, and industry leaders at the forefront of CX. Guests openly share their experiences on customer journeys, voice of the customer, customer-centric transformation, journey management, and best practices for lasting impact.

1D AGO

Ep 69. - The Missing Link Between Data and Better Decisions - Insights

In this Insights episode, Jochem van der Veer challenges the assumption that more data, dashboards, and AI naturally lead to better customer experience decisions. The real issue isn’t visibility - it’s the absence of shared context that gives data meaning. Most organizations aren’t lacking insights; they’re operating in different versions of reality. Teams interpret the same signals differently and optimize locally, while AI only accelerates this misalignment. Without a shared understanding of where signals live in the customer journey and what they mean, organizations don’t scale intelligence - they scale confusion. In this video: Why more data doesn’t solve misalignment and often makes it worse How fragmented context leads to false problems and wasted investment What it means to anchor metrics in the customer journey, not departments Why AI amplifies structural issues instead of fixing them How shared context changes prioritization, decision-making, and strategy How do you know if your organization is solving real problems or just reacting to disconnected signals? Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:https://www.theydo.com #CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CXStrategy #OrganizationalDesign #DecisionMaking #CustomerJourney #BusinessTransformation #AIinCX #ExperienceManagement #ProductStrategy #OperationalExcellence #VoiceOfCustomer

13 min
MAR 25

Ep. 68 - Why Target Designs for Moments, Not Shelf Conversion - Gene Hong

Gene Hong, Design Leader at Target and founder of Aperture North, brings over 25 years of experience shaping how brands translate creativity into commercial success. Leading a $770M portfolio, Gene operates at the intersection of design, business strategy, and innovation, with a focus on creating culturally relevant, high-impact consumer experiences. In this conversation, Gene explores why the future of design lies beyond optimization and into “designing for the moment.” From triangulation and imperfect creativity to the rising importance of judgment in an AI-driven world, he challenges leaders to rethink how experience, business acumen, and creative risk come together to drive meaningful growth. Takeaways Great design leaders balance creative output with intentional input to sustain originality and perspective. “Triangulation” - combining insights from different contexts - is key to creating unexpected, differentiated outcomes. AI increases the volume of ideas, but judgment, experience, and imperfection remain uniquely human advantages. Business acumen is essential for designers to gain influence and move ideas from concept to execution. Innovation requires organizational space for risk - often a dedicated structure separate from core operations. LinkedIn Gene Hong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genehong/Jochem van der Veer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvdveer/

57 min
MAR 18

Ep. 67 - Insights 11 - How CX metrics can hide a broken customer experience

In this Insights episode, Jochem van der Veer challenges the common belief that improving customer experience requires more data, dashboards, and AI, revealing instead how a lack of shared context across teams leads to misaligned decisions. While organizations optimize performance using advanced analytics and AI-driven insights, they often operate on different versions of reality, creating fragmented customer journeys and inconsistent outcomes. As AI accelerates decision-making at scale, this misalignment becomes a critical risk, making shared context-not more data-the true foundation for effective customer experience strategy. In this video: Why fragmented context-not lack of data-is the real bottleneck in CXHow teams create “local truths” that distort decision-makingWhat AI actually does when your underlying structure is misalignedWhy defining where signals live in the journey changes everythingHow shared context turns metrics into meaningful, connected insightWhen optimization becomes dangerous because the problem isn’t real If every team is right-but the outcome is wrong-what reality is your organization actually operating in? Follow Jochem on LinkedIn: Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo: #CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #CXStrategy #OrganizationalDesign #DecisionMaking #AIinBusiness #CustomerInsights #BusinessTransformation #ProductStrategy #ExperienceManagement #DataStrategy #Leadership #DigitalTransformation

10 min
MAR 11

Ep. 66 - What Goldman Sachs Gets Right About experience debt - Ashana Singhania

Ashana Singhania, VP Product Management at Goldman Sachs and former product leader at American Express, operates at the intersection of product, trust, and regulation. Having led zero-to-one launches and large-scale platform consolidations across payments, lending, and digital banking, she brings a clear-eyed view of building customer experience inside highly regulated financial institutions. In this episode, Ashana introduces the concept of “experience debt” - the invisible friction that accumulates when speed, compliance, or legacy systems outweigh intuition and clarity. She explains why dashboards often lag trust signals, how product leaders can quantify qualitative friction, and why empathy, alignment, and narrative-building are essential to protect customer trust at scale. Guest Bio Ashana Singhania is a product and innovation leader in fintech and banking, currently serving as VP Product Management at Goldman Sachs. Prior to this, she spent nearly a decade at American Express building and scaling products across payments, lending, risk, and digital banking. She specializes in zero-to-one product launches, platform transformations, and navigating trade-offs between speed, regulatory compliance, and customer experience in complex enterprise environments. Takeaways Customer experience is “everybody’s KPI, but nobody’s operating mandate” - and that’s where friction begins.Experience debt is more dangerous than technical debt because it erodes trust silently and spreads across teams.Dashboards lag trust signals - qualitative feedback, repeat contacts, and hesitation often reveal issues before metrics do.Quantifying friction requires translating customer pain into revenue delay, cost-to-serve increases, and operational inefficiencies.In regulated environments, trust and consent must take priority over speed - especially as AI and agentic commerce evolve.Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Ashana Singhania 02:18 Is experience part of product or vice versa? 05:04 Aligning silos around a North Star 08:10 Roadmaps, customer feedback, and evolving priorities 11:49 AI, agentic commerce, and trust in finance 16:01 When dashboards are green but trust is red 18:55 What is experience debt? 21:17 When experience debt becomes an organizational problem 24:50 Preventing friction through testing and metrics 31:17 Building cross-functional bridges in large institutions 35:44 Platform consolidation and hidden complexity 39:49 Technical debt vs experience debt 43:07 Making experience debt visible and actionable 47:54 Quantifying qualitative friction 52:44 Advice for product leaders in feature factories LinkedIn Ashana Singhania Jochem van der Veer

57 min
MAR 5

Ep. 63 - How H&M aligns 79 markets around one customer journey - Anne-Kathrine Nissen -

Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a seasoned user experience leader who has driven customer-centric digital transformation across global brands like Airbus and Electrolux, and today shapes omnichannel experience at H&M across 79 markets. In this episode, she joins TheyDo co-founder Jochem van der Veer to unpack what it really takes to run experience-led transformation at global scale, where hundreds of journeys, cultures, and systems collide. Together, they explore why customer journeys work best as an organizing principle rather than a static artifact, how vocabulary and storytelling create alignment across silos, and why experience leadership is ultimately about trust, influence, and long-term change management. The conversation challenges the idea of “simple journeys” and offers a grounded view on coherence over consistency in global CX. Guest Bio Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a User Experience and Journey Leader with extensive experience driving large-scale digital and experience transformation in global organizations. She has held senior design and experience roles at companies including Airbus and Electrolux, and currently leads product design and journey work at H&M, spanning digital, retail, and customer service. Known for her systems thinking and collaborative leadership style, Anna-Kathrine focuses on building coherence across complex ecosystems through trust, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment. Key Takeaways There is no single customer journey at scale. Global organizations operate hundreds or thousands of journeys that need shared principles, not rigid maps.Customer journeys are most powerful as an organizing principle to align teams, language, and priorities across silos.Experience leadership requires speaking multiple vocabularies. Sales, tech, marketing, and design all need to hear the story in their own language.Consistency comes from shared principles and narrative, not identical experiences across markets.Insights do not die. They fade away unless actively evangelized, interpreted, and embedded into everyday decision-making. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and introductions 03:30 Why there is no such thing as a simple customer journey 05:40 Customer journeys as inspiration vs execution 09:10 Vocabulary, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment 12:30 Templates, coherence, and change management 18:00 Strategy, agility, and journey ownership 24:40 AI, agentic commerce, and the future of channels 27:20 Consistency vs coherence across global markets 38:00 From marketplace to brand: rethinking H&M’s experience 43:30 Driving transformation through journeys and insights 50:45 Making sense of a sea of experience data 57:15 Keeping insights alive inside large organizations 01:05:10 Where to connect with Anna-Kathrine LinkedIn Profiles Anne-Kathrine Nissen Jochem van der Veer 𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐁𝐄: / @TheyDoPodcast

58 min
MAR 4

Ep. 65 - Power users hate magical experiences - Adam Towne

Adam Towne, Director of Product for Skilled Analytics and Funds at LSEG, began his career on an 11-hour help desk shift before moving into account management and ultimately product leadership. Now building analytics and API products for asset managers, banks, and hedge funds, he brings a rare perspective: customer support is not a cost center, it is a growth engine. In this conversation, Adam reframes customer experience for sophisticated power users. Instead of chasing “aha” moments, he argues for monotony, reliability, and invisible excellence. From role-based access control pitfalls to the “tiny dot” reality of product in a larger ecosystem, he explores how product leaders can own CX without creating more silos. Guest Bio Adam Towne is Director of Product for Skilled Analytics and Funds at LSEG, where he leads data analytics and API products serving institutional clients including asset managers, banks, and hedge funds. He previously spent seven years in fixed income analytics at Citi, transitioning from help desk to account management and product management. Adam is a CFA charter holder and holds an engineering degree from Cornell University. His expertise spans power-user product design, financial analytics, and building reliable systems for high-stakes environments. Takeaways Customer experience is not a department, it is a product in itself and a shared responsibility across the organization.Power users do not want “aha” moments. They want reliability, monotony, and infrastructure they never have to think about.Good friction can exist in setup and onboarding for sophisticated users, but integration friction must be minimized.Feature creep for power users should be managed through primitive building blocks, not endless configuration options.Product leaders should own customer experience by aligning product decisions with support, sales, and operational metrics, not just revenue.Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Adam Towne and LSEG 02:09 Lessons from starting on the help desk 03:55 Why customer experience is a product 06:18 What real customer centricity looks like 10:23 Designing for power users vs classic CX 13:34 Good friction vs bad friction 15:10 Trade-offs of focusing on power users 19:32 Enabling the broader organization around product changes 23:48 Visualizing cross-user journeys inside a customer 33:55 The “tiny dot” reality of product in a larger ecosystem 39:27 Who should own customer experience? 44:33 Product culture vs additional management layers 50:54 The measurement gap between product and CX LinkedIn Adam Towne Jochem van der Veer

55 min
FEB 25

Ep. 64 - Why product teams keep missing the real journey - Steve Cleff

Steve Cleff, product design leader and founder of Prismatic Vision, has led product and design at Comcast, Barclays, and Siemens, helping global enterprises move beyond feature factories toward experience-led growth. In this episode, he shares how his background in UX, engineering, and fine arts shapes his belief that customer experience starts long before someone touches your product. In conversation with Johan, Steve unpacks the tension between product and CX, why shared goals matter more than ownership, and how AI can accelerate - but not replace - human judgment. From RICE frameworks to agentic workflows, he challenges leaders to protect creativity and empathy while offloading structure and repetition. Guest Bio Steve Cleff is a product design leader with over 15 years of experience building software that improves people’s lives and strengthens how companies engage customers. He has led product and design initiatives across organizations including Comcast, Barclays, and Siemens, and has partnered with brands such as JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Target, and Vanguard. Now the founder of Prismatic Vision, Steve helps organizations gain a competitive edge through experience-led strategy, multi-agent AI workflows, and cross-functional collaboration between product and customer experience teams. Takeaways Customer experience begins before someone becomes a customer - from the first problem or “sniffle” to post-purchase advocacy.Product teams often drift into “feature farms” when roadmaps aren’t anchored in real customer journeys.CX and product don’t need strict ownership boundaries - they need shared goals and mutual reinforcement.AI should accelerate structure, synthesis, and distribution, but creativity, empathy, and strategic leaps must remain human-led.The future of roles may shift from titles like “PM” or “CX manager” to value-driven specialties like adoption and engagement.Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Steve Cleff and Prismatic Vision 02:25 What product gets wrong about customer experience 05:39 How CX and product can work better together 10:42 Where CX should sit in an organization 13:41 Making product more experience-forward 16:25 Marketing, value perception, and product failure 18:06 Who owns the customer journey? 22:49 Why journeys rarely exist before you build them 24:20 What AI changes - and what stays human 33:00 What to offload to AI vs. keep human 40:01 From AI skeptic to AI advocate 47:40 Preventing AI from amplifying bad CX decisions 50:01 The future of product and CX roles LinkedIn Steve Cleff Jochem van der Veer

57 min
FEB 11

Ep. 62 - The CX trends that matter in 2026 - Insights 10

What if 2026 isn’t the year of the agentic enterprise? Most predictions paint 2026 as the moment AI suddenly takes over customer experience end to end. Autonomous agents. Self-driving journeys. Overnight transformation. In this Insights video, Jochem challenges that narrative - and argues the real shift is quieter, slower, and far more operational than the hype suggests. The risk for leaders isn’t moving too slowly - it’s aiming their CX strategy at a future that hasn’t arrived yet. In this video: Why 2026 is about agent adoption - not agentic transformation How narrow agents quietly reshape CX work at the edges of journeys Why data validation becomes the real bottleneck for AI in CX How CX teams shift from insight production to stewarding trust When asynchronous AI work changes the pace and depth of decision-making If speed is no longer the advantage, what does it mean to scale trust instead? Follow Jochem on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer Learn more about Journey Management with TheyDo:https://www.theydo.com #CustomerExperience #JourneyManagement #ServiceDesign #ExperienceDesign #CXLeadership #AIinCX #DecisionMaking #OrganizationalDesign #SystemsThinking #ProductStrategy #ExperienceStrategy

9 min

5

out of 5

2 Ratings

Hosted by Jochem van der Veer, customer-obsessed founder of TheyDo, this weekly podcast dives into conversations with senior professionals, pioneers, and industry leaders at the forefront of CX. Guests openly share their experiences on customer journeys, voice of the customer, customer-centric transformation, journey management, and best practices for lasting impact.

Creator

Jochem van der Veer
Years Active

2024 - 2026
Episodes

77
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Jochem van der Veer
Show Website

The Experience Edge