What if you could anticipate your customers’ needs before they even voice them? Last month, thousands of Customer Experience leaders explored this very question at Qualtrics X4 2025 in Salt Lake City, and the insights that emerged are set to shape the future of experiences.
At commonFont, we were honored to take part in these conversations, sharing our expertise with fellow innovators. For those who missed out on commonFont-led sessions, we’ve summarized four key takeaways that CX professionals can apply in their work:
1) Overcome silos to harness customer data and create business value
2) Move beyond “listen, analyze, act” to transform CX
3) Create a unified customer strategy for multiplied growth
4) Empower inclusive leadership to create a more connected future
Let’s dive in!
Data-Driven CX: From Silos to Success
Aaron Demro | Managing Director | commonFont
In this hands-on session, commonFont’s Aaron Demro outlined a framework for assessing data maturity, emphasizing that harnessing omnichannel customer data, from collection to proactive action, is the key to unlocking truly impactful and personalized customer relationships: a cornerstone of the data strategy commonFont advises for our clients.
At the heart of this workshop-style session was a practical maturity model designed to help organizations assess their current data capabilities and chart a course towards achieving true data-driven CX. This model isn’t just about the volume of customer data collected, but the value derived at each stage. It places a strong emphasis on identifying business challenges first and then using customer data to address them.
Listen: This foundational stage focuses on the breadth and depth of data collection across all customer touchpoints. Organizations at this level are actively capturing feedback through surveys, interactions, and basic transactional data. However, this data often resides in disparate systems, creating silos and limiting a holistic view.
Unify: The next critical step involves breaking down silos and integrating data from various sources into comprehensive customer profiles. This unified view provides a more complete understanding of individual customer journeys, preferences, and behaviors. Achieving this requires robust data management strategies and technologies.
Analyze: This is where the true power of data begins to emerge. Moving beyond basic reporting, organizations at this stage leverage advanced analytical techniques, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), to identify key trends, uncover hidden patterns, and predict future customer behaviors. This includes identifying drivers of satisfaction, predicting churn risk, and segmenting customers for more targeted engagement.
Recall: The value of insights is limited if they aren’t readily available when and where they’re needed most: during customer interactions. This stage focuses on embedding insights into operational systems and empowering frontline teams with actionable intelligence. Imagine a service agent instantly accessing a customer’s predicted needs or a marketing team personalizing offers based on real-time behavioral data.
Act: The pinnacle of data-driven CX is the ability to anticipate customer needs and proactively shape their experiences. This involves using predictive insights to trigger personalized interventions and resolve potential issues before they escalate. Organizations at this stage are not just reacting to the past; they are actively influencing the future of the customer journey.
By understanding their current maturity level and systematically progressing through this model, businesses can unlock the full potential of data-driven CX, leading to more impactful and personalized customer engagements that drive loyalty, trust, and ultimately, significant business value and growth.
At commonFont, our team’s expertise lies in guiding organizations through each stage of this maturity model, helping them transform raw data into actionable insights and deliver truly exceptional customer experiences. If you are interested in additional information about our free in-depth CX maturity assessment, reach out via the form below!
From Traditional to Transformative CX
Matt Fulton | Chief Customer Officer | commonFont
With Mary Beth LoVerdi, SVP Experience Insights, Northern Trust
Matt Fulton’s session, alongside Northern Trust’s Mary Beth LoVerdi, challenged the long-held “listen, analyze, act” principle of Customer Experience, not by dismissing its foundational importance, but by highlighting opportunities to adapt in today’s technology and data landscape. While the traditional approach has undoubtedly fostered customer-centricity, the modern era demands a more proactive and deeply personalized approach. The key to this transformation lies in moving beyond reacting to past feedback and towards curating and shaping experiences in real-time.
This evolution necessitates two critical advancements: 1. unifying disparate data sources and 2. the ability to recall past interactions seamlessly. Imagine a customer service interaction where the agent not only has access to the customer’s recent feedback but also a comprehensive history of their past engagements across all channels: their purchase history, previous support tickets, and even their expressed preferences. This holistic view, achieved through the unification of feedback data, CRM data, social media interactions, and more, provides a richer context for every interaction.
The ability to recall past interactions isn’t just about accessing historical data; it’s about intelligently leveraging that memory to personalize the present moment. This means anticipating needs based on previous behavior, offering relevant solutions proactively, and ensuring a consistent and connected experience across every touchpoint.
This transformation doesn’t require a complete overhaul of existing systems. Instead, the speakers emphasized the importance of building upon existing capabilities. Organizations that have already established robust feedback mechanisms can leverage these foundations to integrate new technologies and strategies. This might involve implementing AI-powered analytics to identify predictive insights from unified data or deploying platforms that enable real-time personalization based on recalled past interactions.
Ultimately, the shift from traditional to transformative CX is about moving from a reactive stance to a proactive relationship with the customer. By unifying data to gain a comprehensive understanding and recalling past interactions to personalize the present, organizations can move beyond simply meeting expectations to anticipating needs and creating truly exceptional experiences that foster loyalty.
This proactive, data-rich approach is not a future aspiration but a present-day necessity for organizations aiming to not just survive, but thrive in the experience economy, a practice that drives commonFont’s strategic guidance for our clients.
Enabling CX Insights to Action: Uniting CX and Research Insights for Multiplied Growth
Deb Campbell | VP Consumer & Marketplace Insights | Verizon
Laila Forster | Sr. Director | Insights Enablement & Innovation | Verizon
With Abby Schlatter, CEO of commonFont as moderator
The pursuit of exceptional CX often hinges on internal alignment. Verizon’s Deb Campbell and Laila Forster, moderated by commonFont’s Abby Schlatter, highlighted the critical need for an internal CX hub to break down silos and ensure insights drive action.
Verizon created a Center of Enablement across its Research and VoC teams to be more actionable and agile in identifying and addressing consumer pain points across various business units and stakeholder groups. In addition, they adopted a “trunk and branches” model for the COE, underscoring the importance of carefully chosen symbolism and language to promote collaboration and alignment.
Key early successes included accelerating their transition to Qualtrics, facilitating collaboration, and improving teamwork. The COE shifted the focus from just methodology to the underlying customer research objectives. Now, instead of asking the research team to set up a survey, stakeholders are more likely to present their needs, allowing the research experts to determine the appropriate methodology to address them.
Strong leadership and clear communication are critical to creating a unified customer strategy. At commonFont, we’ve seen firsthand how this integrated approach amplifies the impact of CX initiatives, turning valuable insights into measurable growth.
Women in Leadership Fireside Chat & Networking Lunch
Abby Schlatter | CEO | commonFont
Teri Felix | SVP Research & Insights | Fidelity
Hannah Mulryan | Global Head of Client Experience | JLL
More than just a conversation, the Women in Leadership fireside chat, hosted by commonFont’s CEO, Abby Schlatter, alongside Fidelity Investments’ Teri Felix and JLL’s Hannah Mulryan, was a call to action. Abby highlighted commonFont’s commitment to advancing women in leadership, setting the stage for a vibrant discussion on driving this vision forward. Teri and Hannah shared the “whys” that fuel their passion and emphasized the power of listening with empathy in driving customer-centric cultures.
Together, Hannah, Teri, and Abby stressed the importance of mentorship as a reciprocal learning experience and the profound impact of supportive, authentic leaders who “walk the walk.” The session highlighted that a more inclusive and equitable future requires genuine advocacy and connection, and attendees had a chance to network and develop relationships they will carry forward.
Looking Ahead
The future of Experience Management, as illuminated at X4, is about building genuine connections through proactive, personalized, and data-driven strategies, all guided by inclusive leadership. We see this not just as a direction, but as a movement. We’re committed to partnering with you to create generative communities that elevate the human experience, driving meaningful business outcomes and lasting success.
If you’re ready to explore how this approach can make a real difference for your business, we’d love to chat.
