Products don't define a brand, experiences do. Brian Solis explains why companies must shift from product-centric strategies to cultivating outstanding experiences to remain competitive. By Judith Aquino, TeleTech.

1. Reprinted from Customer Strategist, Volume 8 Issue 4. ©2016 TeleTech Holdings, Inc. All rights protected and reserved. www.customerstrategistjournal.com 1
 PERSPECTIVES : CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
PRODUCTS DON’T DEFINE A BRAND, EXPERIENCES DO. Such is the reality
of modern business, where people are connected to a constant flow of informa-
tion and are defining brands based on what they experience and share. Simply
put, brands are increasingly defined by those who experience them.
Brian Solis, futurist and author of X: The Experience When Business Meets
Design, explains why the future of business is experiential and how to create
meaningful experiences. We sat down with Solis to learn how businesses can
begin to transform the customer experience.
Customer Strategist: In your book, you mention that technology is most human
when it is invisible. Can you elaborate on that?
Brian Solis: When designing experiences, we have to first consider intent,
desired outcomes, and also what customers value in their life. The key is to then
design experiences where technology takes a supportive role, allowing users
to seamlessly and intuitively take their next steps. Often, companies place an
emphasis on technology-first solutions and stacking them on legacy platforms
and methodologies.
12 VOLUME 8 ISSUE 4 www.customerstrategistjournal.com
Brian Solis explains why
companies must shift
from product-centric
strategies to cultivating
outstanding experiences
to remain competitive.
By Judith Aquino
Solving for X:
Why the Future
of Business is
Experiential
CSv8i4_Perspectives1_Solis_1222final.indd 12 12/22/16 5:17 PM

2. Reprinted from Customer Strategist, Volume 8 Issue 4. ©2016 TeleTech Holdings, Inc. All rights protected and reserved. www.customerstrategistjournal.com 2
 PERSPECTIVES : CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
But technology is most human when it’s invisible. Yet
companies try to stuff everything under the sun into
their devices, sites, apps, forms, etc., without consid-
eration for the users’ experience, let alone their goals
and aspirations. Users, I mean people, shouldn’t have to
think about the UI, the device, or be forced to navigate
the chaos of choice.
If you look at Google, Apple, or some of the most
elegant experiences on the planet, they’re incredibly
simple even though the technology powering each expe-
rience is incredibly sophisticated and complex. This takes
resolve, vision, and the desire to
make the complex intuitive. Don’t
make people do the hard work.
Innovation in experience design
is all the work you do to conform
to expectations and aspirations
of people as they evolve, instead
of making them conform to your
legacy perspectives, assumptions,
processes, and metrics of success.
CS: Where do brands tend to
stumble when trying to implement
human-centered design?
BS: This is going to sound trite,
but after years of research, this
is truer more often than not…companies
are not customer-centric even though many
believe they are. If anything, this is something
more aspirational than real. The truth is that companies
are shareholder-centric or stakeholder-centric. I should be
clear though. I’ve never heard an executive say, “You know,
Brian, we really don’t care about our customers.” I believe
that whether it’s value, performance, aesthetic, competi-
tiveness, etc., companies are trying to do what they feel
is right by customers. But, when it comes to human-
centered design, we have to fully appreciate the human
beings who go through life differently than our strategies,
processes, systems, and roadmaps allow or consider.
If you think about it, what’s the definition of experi-
ence? Experience is something you feel, something
you sense and interpret and, more importantly, what
you commit to memory, either good or bad. You won’t
remember those moments otherwise.
Brands don’t know their customers and how they’re
evolving. To truly embrace human-centered design,
brands must think beyond the traditional quarterly focus
and think about what matters to “humans.” The most
successful brands in experience design prioritize people
(of course) because otherwise nothing else matters in the
long term.
From there, brands have to invest in more than just
journey mapping. They need to understand intent,
context, and activities. And more so, evolved values,
behaviors, desires, motivations and emotions. This isn’t
just updating touchpoints. This
isn’t just implementing trends.
This is about understanding what
you’re absolutely missing. You are
not your customer. Your executives
don’t live the brand or live life
like the people you used to know
(or think you know). The direction
and evolution of human beings
change course as technology influ-
ences and enables new possibilities
while making previous habits or
processes obsolete.
CS: You also point out that
business experiences, customer
experiences, and user experiences are
rarely integrated. What advice would you
give to companies on how to collaborate to
integrate these disciplines?
BS: There are many disparate tracks within companies
designing and delivering experiences today. The key
to optimizing what the customer experiences in each
moment of truth throughout the lifecycle is having these
efforts not only work together, but also execute against
a vision and sense of purpose. You have to first define
what are meaningful experiences for a new generation of
customers and employees.
Then you must design them for each moment of truth
to come to life independently and then holistically.
Remember, customer experience isn’t or shouldn’t be
measured in one moment. Customer experience is defined
by how a customer experiences your business throughout
his or her journey. It’s measured as the sum of every
rategistjournal.com VOLUME 8 ISSUE 4 13
“Customer experience
isn’t or shouldn’t
be measured in
one moment.”
–BRIAN SOLIS
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3. Reprinted from Customer Strategist, Volume 8 Issue 4. ©2016 TeleTech Holdings, Inc. All rights protected and reserved. www.customerstrategistjournal.com 3
 PERSPECTIVES : CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
moment of truth. Yet most businesses are attacking
CX irrespective of the overall desired experience, if it’s
even been defined or designed, and leaving it to busi-
ness units and departments to solve independently. At
best, some work well, others don’t, and none will ever
be truly unified.
Customer experience is an investment in reshaping
business models that help companies compete for
different times. Unfortunately, many executives who
are shareholder-centric see this work not as an invest-
ment, but as a cost center and thus, a loss to potential
margins and profitability. Those companies that
invest in experience design and new business models,
processes, systems, and metrics will ultimately outper-
form businesses that focus on the bottom line.
CS: How do you see experience design evolving over the
next few years?
BS: If you think about it, the best experiences you have
are with you forever—just like bad experiences. You’ll
never forget them. They are powerful because they ulti-
mately become memories, and as human beings, we have
on-demand access to them via our limbic system, which
is the control center for our emotions. Businesses leave
something so powerful as experiences and memories to
chance today. Successful companies will go beyond brand,
creative, and innovation to invest in enterprise-wide expe-
rience architecture and design. It takes a unified approach
that unites brand experience, customer experience, user
experience, and other disparate disciplines to design and
deliver experiences that people love and can’t live without
in every touchpoint. 
14 VOLUME 8 ISSUE 4 www.customerstrategistjournal.com
BX+CX+UX = Brand
BRAND EXPERIENCE (BX):
The experience that users
should have before, during
and after engagement with
the platform. How does this fit
into my lifestyle? Where does
this add value? What value
does it add? What do I feel?
What do I tell people?
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX):
The individual + the sum
of all interactions with the
platform in each moment
of truth. How does CX bring
to life the confluence of the
brand promise and the brand
experience?
USER EXPERIENCE (UX):
A person’s entire experience
using a particular product,
system, or service. New
trends though are making UX
frictionless—even mindless or
intuitive with movements such
as “No UI = Next UI” and also
“Conversational Commerce.”
BRAND:
The essence of the experience people have and
share. More and more, the brand needs to be
emblematic of consumer aspiration, relatability,
and personality. It’s more than creative, design,
and pillars, it’s emotional and personal.
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