The Customer Of The Future Wants Connection And Progress
Release Date: 05/19/2020
How CAVA Integrates Hospitality, Experience, and Rewards at Scale
The Modern Customer Podcast
As restaurants scale, preserving hospitality becomes harder to sustain. This week on The Modern Customer, Andrew Rebhun, Chief Experience Officer at CAVA, shares how the Mediterranean fast-casual brand keeps hospitality at the center while scaling to 400+ locations. The conversation breaks down how experience leadership actually works at scale—from loyalty and social listening to team training and selective use of AI—without losing human connection. Where do you see the biggest gap today: loyalty design, social listening, or team alignment? 🎧 Listen to the full episode to explore...
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How Great CX Turns Customers Into Superfans
The Modern Customer Podcast
Great customer experience doesn’t lose customers to competitors—it loses them to apathy. And it creates superfans when ownership of the experience is clear. In this episode of The Modern Customer, customer experience speaker and author Brittany Hodak explains what actually turns customers into superfans—and why tools, automation, and AI alone aren’t enough. Drawing on her work with organizations like American Express, Benihana, and Keller Williams, she shows why ownership, accountability, and human judgment drive lasting loyalty. 🎧 Tune in to the full conversation to learn how great...
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What CX Leaders Can Learn From The Laws of Employee Experience
The Modern Customer Podcast
Customer experience leaders face a familiar tension: do we put employees first or customers first? As organizations scale and adopt AI, that question becomes operational. In this special takeover episode of The Modern Customer Podcast, shares insights from , based on research with more than 100 CHROs. He explains why CX and EX operate as one system—and how leadership decisions behind the scenes shape customer outcomes. This conversation gives CX leaders a practical, systems-level lens to strengthen trust, consistency, and performance as AI raises the stakes. Blake Morgan is a...
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Winning with AI Without an AI Strategy
The Modern Customer Podcast
This week on The Modern Customer Podcast, you’ll hear why winning with AI doesn’t start with an AI strategy. In this episode, —former VP of Experience Innovation at —shares a business-first approach to transformation that begins with experience, outcomes, and human capability, with AI supporting execution underneath. The conversation explores how leaders can move beyond AI experimentation and hype by anchoring technology decisions to growth, productivity, and the experiences they want to deliver to customers and employees. If you’re navigating AI investments, organizational change,...
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How AI Is Changing How Customer Bugs Get Resolved
The Modern Customer Podcast
As digital products become the primary customer interface, delays in bug diagnosis and resolution now directly affect the customer experience. In this episode of The Modern Customer Podcast, Matt Rubright, Chief Customer Officer at Jam, explains how Jam fits into the bug-reporting and support workflow by capturing technical context as issues are reported. That shared context helps support and engineering diagnose problems faster, reduce handoffs, and move toward resolution with greater clarity. The conversation looks at why resolution speed and coordination have become CX priorities—and how...
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How a Fortune 500 Bank Turns Half a Million Customer Signals to Lead CX
The Modern Customer Podcast
In this episode of The Modern Customer Podcast, Krista Phillips, Chief Customer and Transformation Officer at M&T Bank, explains how a Fortune 500 bank turns half a million customer signals into CX execution. The conversation explores how structure, governance, analytics, and AI help move customer insight from feedback into action—while balancing digital growth with trust and prioritizing relationships over transactions. Topics covered include: Anchoring CX in relationships, not transactions Balancing digital convenience with trust-based experiences Turning customer signals into...
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Leading Experience as a CXO Inside One of America’s Largest Health Systems
The Modern Customer Podcast
This week on The Modern Customer Podcast, breaks down what CX leadership really looks like at scale. As SVP and Chief Experience Officer at , Sven leads experience across one of the largest health systems in the country—bringing hospitality principles, cultural leadership, and practical technology into healthcare. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to learn what modern healthcare CX leadership really looks like—when it’s done right. Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of three books on customer experience. Her new book is called The 8...
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DHL Sets the Pace for AI-Driven Logistics Innovation
The Modern Customer Podcast
This week on The Modern Customer Podcast, , Chief Customer Officer of North America, shares how the world’s largest contract logistics provider applies AI where execution actually matters—inside warehouses, delivery networks, and daily workflows. Will breaks down his first 90 days as CCO, including owning growth targets and clarifying how customer experience is created through day-to-day operational execution. He also walks through real AI use cases already in production, from agentic delivery scheduling to warehouse automation, and explains why disciplined adoption matters at scale. 🎧...
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How CX-Aligned Leadership Shapes Patient Experience in Kidney Care
The Modern Customer Podcast
Kidney care is one of the most complex—and overlooked—patient experiences in healthcare. In this episode of The Modern Customer Podcast, we explore how CX-aligned leadership can reduce friction and improve outcomes for people facing advanced kidney disease. Strive Health’s Chief Customer Officer, Evelyn Goodfriend, shares what patient experience looks like up close, why traditional care models fall short, and how listening, alignment, and better workflow design support both patients and caregivers. We also discuss where AI meaningfully helps and where human support remains essential. A...
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How Memorial Hermann Uses AI to Redesign Patient Experience
The Modern Customer Podcast
How is one of the largest health systems in Texas using AI to transform patient experience? This episode of The Modern Customer Podcast explores how Memorial Hermann Health System is applying AI, predictive analytics, and digital tools to redesign care for millions of patients across Houston. The conversation features Alex Greengold, Chief Consumer Experience Officer at Memorial Hermann, who brings previous CX leadership experience from AOL and DISH, where he earned multiple J.D. Power awards. Watch the full conversation to see how AI, smart design, and culture are reshaping the future of...
info_outlineEvery consumer has their go-to brands—the companies they will do business with again and again because of a trusted track record, great product and strong service. Every company wants to be a go-to brand, only about one-third of them reach that status. In order to become the preferred brand of customers of the future, brands need to focus on connection and progress.
To better understand the ever-changing needs and demands of customers, Lippincott brought together specialists from a number of fields to predict what the world and customers will look like in five years. Those findings help drive brands’ current strategies to prepare to serve customers of the future. According to Dave Mayer, Senior Partner, Brand Strategy at Lippincott, one of the biggest takeaways is the need to prioritize customer experience. That comes from both connection and progress.
Connection
Go-to brands like Apple, Samsung and Charles Schwab drive real connections with their customers. They strive to continually improve the experience to make themselves loved by customers. Instead of simply delivering a functional need and being a transactional brand that a customer uses once and leaves, go-to brands create relationships and understand their customers to keep them coming back again and again. One of the best ways to measure connection is through NPS. If a customer says they will recommend a brand to family and friends, they likely feel a strong connection with the company.
Progress
But connection alone isn’t enough to create a resilient go-to brand. Brands that drive loyalty also help customers do something they couldn’t do before. Customers of the future want to interact with brands that fill a need they can’t get filled anywhere else. Progress means pushing customers forward, opening doors and introducing them to ideas and services they didn’t even know they needed.
Connection and progress work hand in hand. A brand that offers progress without connection runs the risk of deflection. As soon as another brand comes with a better option, customers will abandon ship for the competition. Similarly, connection without progress means that customers will likely eventually leave for other brands that have more forward-thinking options.
Connection and progress are vital to creating go-to brands now, but they will be even more crucial in coming years. Mayer says that go-to brands grow five times faster than transactional brands and endure themselves to customers and shareholders to become resilient through difficult times. The customer of the future is values-driven and wants to connect with brands they believe in and that do good in the world. That’s progress. But they also want highly personalized experiences, which create connection. Brands must deliver on both sides to deliver a strong customer experience.
The customer of the future is changing, but they will remain loyal to their go-to brands that continue to offer both connection and progress.