Executive summary
Aarron Spinley has built his career challenging the foundations of modern customer experience. As co-founder of the Field Bell Institute and author of The Customering Method, his work brings together customer science, risk, and marketing strategy to question how organizations really create value.
In this episode of In Other Words, Aarron joins host Jason Hemingway to explain why many widely accepted CX practices are not just ineffective, but fundamentally flawed. From the over-reliance on customer feedback to the misuse of automation and AI, he argues that organizations have mistaken tools and intuition for evidence-based management.
His central idea is simple but powerful. Customers are not a sentiment to be measured. They are an asset to be managed.
That shift in thinking changes everything. It reframes loyalty, challenges common metrics, and forces leaders to rethink how growth actually happens.
The mythology holding customer experience back
Customer experience started with a solid foundation: “Meet customer needs and value follows”, but over time, that clarity has been replaced by layers of assumptions.
“We start to lay a mythology on top of mythology,” Aarron explains.
Concepts like emotion, sentiment, and advocacy have become central to CX strategy, often without the same level of scientific grounding. At the same time, technology vendors have shaped how organizations think about customers, turning product narratives into accepted practice.
The result is a discipline that feels intuitive, but lacks rigour.
“It’s well intended, but it’s a conflation of things. And it’s also the undue influence of technology.”
The implication here is clear. Customer experience needs to be based on evidence, not assumption.
Why asking customers is fundamentally flawed
One of the most widely accepted practices in business is also one of the most problematic.
If you want to understand customers, ask them.
But Aarron challenges this thinking directly.
“The idea that you can ask a customer base questions to understand the customer base is deeply flawed.”
The reason is rooted in human behaviour. Most decisions are driven by subconscious processes that people cannot fully articulate. Surveys and feedback capture only a fraction of what actually drives action.
“We know how to live, we just don’t know how we know.”
This does not mean feedback has no value. But it cannot be the foundation of customer strategy.
Leaders who rely too heavily on stated opinions risk building strategies on incomplete signals, while missing the deeper behavioural patterns that drive growth.
Your customer base is an asset. Manage it like one.
The most fundamental argument Aarron proposes is simple.Customers should be treated as an asset.
“Sentiment’s important, but it’s an indicator on an asset.”
Every other asset in a business is managed using structured, evidence-based systems. Customer bases should be no different. When you apply principles from scientific management and quality systems, customer strategy becomes more predictable and easier to act on.
This also changes how leaders think about performance.
“We don’t start with measurement. That’s at the end of the process.”
Organizations should understand the asset and design the system before defining the metrics that matter.
This shift moves customer strategy from intuition to discipline.
The danger of shortcuts and the myth of the “one number”
As organizations scale, complexity increases, and with it comes the temptation to simplify. This is where shortcuts start to emerge.
Aarron points to NPS still one of the most widely used metrics in customer strategy..
“The one number you need to know… it’s complete nonsense.”
Despite being widely adopted, many of its core claims have been repeatedly challenged. Yet its appeal remains strong, particularly for senior leaders under pressure to make fast decisions.
The problem is not the intent, but the oversimplification.
“Corporate shortcuts are very, very tempting.”
Without a thorough understanding of the customer asset, these shortcuts create a gap between perception and reality, that becomes harder to close as organizations grow.
Why automation scales the wrong behaviors
Automation and personalization are often positioned as solutions to customer complexity. In practice, they frequently amplify existing problems.
Many organizations operate with a channel-first mindset, defining messages and then using technology to distribute them more efficiently.
Aarron sees the same pattern everywhere.
“These are the five messages we want to send to our customers this month.”
From there, teams optimize delivery, targeting, and timing. But the underlying logic remains unchanged.
The result is activity without true engagement.
“Personalization… is really just a sales hack. It’s never been about the person.”
True engagement, he argues, happens when customers choose to interact. Optimizing outbound messaging is a different game entirely.
This is where many automation strategies break down. They scale efficiency, but not relevance.
AI, hype, and the fundamentals that don’t change
AI is rapidly reshaping marketing and customer strategy, but Aarron urges caution.
“AI decisioning has been around since the 90s. So welcome to the party.”
While new developments, particularly in agentic AI, bring powerful capabilities, they also introduce new risks. Without a clear understanding of the customer system, AI can accelerate poor decision-making at scale.
“AI is exploding the errors of channel orientation rapidly.”
At the same time, much of the current conversation is driven by hype rather than substance.
“There’s too much hyperbole among folks that don’t understand the thing that they are claiming to be disrupted.”
What remains constant are the fundamentals. Human behavior, customer choice, and the economics of service are not changing at the same pace as technology.
The opportunity for leaders is not to chase every new capability, but to apply it within a well-understood system.
What senior leaders should focus on
When asked what executives should focus on, Aarron’s advice is direct.
“You’ve got to get people trained on your fundamentals.”
Technology alone will not solve the problem. Without a clear understanding of how customer bases behave, organizations will continue to misuse the tools available to them.
He also challenges the pace and pressure surrounding AI adoption.
“It’s like you don’t want to be the last one to figure out AI… it’s a little bit of a false arms race.”
Instead, leaders should step back and focus on what matters most. Understanding the asset, designing the system, and aligning teams around long-term value.
Because in the end, growth is not driven by better dashboards or faster automation.
It is driven by a deeper understanding of customers and how they behave over time.
Or, as Aarron puts it, “if you don’t understand the asset, the errors compound from that point.”
Hear more
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