No organisation sets out to create a poor customer experience. Yet every day, well-intentioned organisations unintentionally create friction through complex processes, internal handoffs, organisational structures, disconnected metrics and technology that amplifies the problems already embedded in the way work gets done.

Drawing on real-world experience leading customer operations, transformation, complaints, quality and operational improvement, this session explores five lessons from one of the worst customer experiences the speaker ever helped design — and what it revealed about creating better experiences at scale.

The session will explore:

• Customers don't care about our org chart — why internal ownership models and organisational boundaries so often create friction for customers.

• What makes sense internally doesn't always make sense to customers — how processes designed for operational efficiency can create unnecessary complexity and effort.

• Complaints are a free consulting service — how organisations can move beyond simply resolving complaints to using them as a source of insight and improvement.

• Technology amplifies the process it sits on top of — why AI and automation cannot fix fundamentally broken processes, and how transformation must start with understanding the problem.

• The best ideas usually come from the frontline — why the people closest to customers often have the clearest view of what needs to change.