This article was based on the interview with RGP Chief Strategy & Experience Officer Jennifer Jones on the human experience of digital transformation by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
As marketing leaders, we are in a perpetual state of optimizing the customer experience. We invest heavily in MarTech stacks that promise seamless omnichannel journeys, we commission exhaustive research to map every customer touchpoint, and we build sophisticated data models to predict the next best action. We operate under the reasonable assumption that with the right technology and the right strategy, we can deliver a world-class experience that builds loyalty and drives growth. Yet, for many, that perfect, frictionless ideal remains stubbornly out of reach. We launch new platforms and initiatives, only to see them falter, under-deliver, or fail to gain traction.
Let’s be candid. The problem often isn’t the technology or the strategy itself. The real friction, the stubborn obstacle we often fail to properly diagnose, lies within our own organizations. We spend fortunes designing the external customer journey while neglecting the internal human experience that underpins it. The employee experience isn’t a soft-and-fuzzy HR initiative to be addressed with a better intranet or an annual engagement survey. It is the operational bedrock upon which your customer experience is built. In a recent conversation with Jennifer Jones, Chief Strategy and Experience Officer at RGP, we explored this critical, and often overlooked, connection. Her insights serve as a potent reminder that before you can transform the customer experience, you must first design a human-centered internal ecosystem.
The Two Sides of the Same Coin
The separation of employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) in the corporate mindset is an artificial and damaging construct. In reality, they are deeply intertwined systems where a failure in one inevitably cascades into the other. An unempowered, frustrated, or ill-equipped employee cannot possibly be an effective ambassador for your brand or a facilitator of a positive customer journey. They are, as Jones puts it, simply two facets of the same core identity of the brand.
“I mean, they’re two sides of the same coin in my opinion. If you think about like the most beloved brands, brands that have just like excellent customer experience, it’s usually because they… have a good employee experience as well… to be a brand that actually like competes from a customer experience standpoint, you got to compete from an employee experience standpoint.”
Jones’s point cuts through the organizational silos that so often plague enterprise companies. Marketing leaders own the brand promise, but the entire organization is responsible for its delivery. When we talk about Voice of the Customer (VOC), we must also be listening intently to the Voice of the Employee (VOE). The call center agent who lacks the right information because their internal tools are disconnected isn’t just an internal operational issue; it’s a broken brand promise delivered directly to your customer. For a marketing leader, this means extending your purview beyond the traditional marketing funnel. It requires a genuine partnership with HR, IT, and Operations to ensure that the internal systems—the tools, the processes, the data access—are designed not just for efficiency, but to empower employees to deliver the experience you’ve promised in your campaigns.
The Fallacy of the Tech-First Fix
We’ve all seen it. A complex business problem is identified, and the immediate reaction is to procure a technology solution. The allure of a shiny new platform that promises to solve everything is powerful. Yet, this rush to the “what” and the “how” without a deep understanding of the “why” and the “who” is a primary reason for the staggering failure rate of major transformation projects. The technology, no matter how advanced, is merely an enabler. If the underlying human processes are flawed or misaligned with how people actually think and work, the technology will only amplify the dysfunction.
“It’s crazy that this stat really hasn’t changed in probably 20 years, but the fact that still transformations, digital transformation, 70 to 80% fail. And if you look at the reasons why… they’re all people problems… I feel like people… underestimate the people involved and overestimate the technology and data to support the issue.”
This is a critical lesson for marketing leaders overseeing complex MarTech implementations. We are often under immense pressure to demonstrate ROI from our technology investments, but as Jones highlights, the true ROI is unlocked by solving the human problem first. She shared an example of a Fortune 100 company whose finance transformation was struggling despite a massive investment in new systems. By focusing on the “people-centered journey” for the two user groups that were struggling, they uncovered simple but profound points of friction—like the lack of an email confirmation after submitting a form—that the technology-focused plan had completely missed. This isn’t about Luddism; it’s about sequencing. A human-centered approach that involves ride-alongs, diary studies, and deep listening isn’t a “nice to have” preliminary step. It is the essential diagnostic work that ensures your technology investment will actually solve the right problems for the right people.
The Myth of “Done”
Perhaps one of the most pervasive and dangerous mindsets in any transformation initiative is the idea that it is a project with a defined end date. We build our business cases, secure our budgets, and manage toward a launch date, with the implicit assumption that once the new system is live, the work is “done.” This project-based thinking is fundamentally at odds with the reality of a dynamic business environment and the nature of digital systems. A successful transformation doesn’t have an endpoint; it marks the beginning of a new, continuous state of evolution.
“I think that the biggest leading indicator that your project won’t succeed long term is to think it’ll ever be done. I hate to say that. But… digital is never done. Like it is a living, breathing thing… to be successful, it’s like think about this like a living, breathing thing. Be open to the fact that you’re going to need to go back to the well and… you’re going to have to have continuous listening… continuous feedback, and this is going to have to have continuous… development.”
This shift from a project mindset to a product or capability mindset is crucial for long-term success. Jones uses a powerful analogy: a relationship. No one enters a meaningful relationship assuming it will never change or require ongoing effort. Our relationship with our customers, our employees, and the technology that connects them is no different. For marketing leaders, this has practical implications for budgeting, staffing, and setting expectations with the C-suite. It means planning for ongoing optimization, continuous feedback loops, and an agile development process rather than a one-time capital expenditure. It means building a muscle for change within the organization, where evolution is the norm, not a disruptive event. The goal isn’t to launch a perfect system, but to launch a viable one and commit to making it perpetually better based on real-world use and feedback.
In our drive to innovate and optimize, it’s easy to become captivated by the potential of new technologies and data strategies. These are, without question, essential tools in the modern marketing leader’s arsenal. However, as Jennifer Jones’s perspective makes clear, they are only tools. Their effectiveness is entirely dependent on the human context in which they are deployed. A technology platform implemented on top of a broken or misaligned human system will not fix the system; it will simply make it broken at a greater speed and scale. The most sophisticated CRM in the world is useless if the people using it don’t have the right training, the right incentives, or a clear understanding of how it helps them and the customer.
As we look toward a future increasingly shaped by AI and automation, this human-centered focus becomes even more critical. The core principles of understanding user needs, designing for real-world behaviors, and building a culture of continuous learning are the very things that will differentiate successful organizations from those that are simply layering new technology over old problems. The ultimate competitive advantage won’t come from having the best algorithm, but from building the most adaptive, empowered, and human-centric organization. For those of us charged with stewarding the customer relationship, our most important work begins from the inside out.
