Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a recurring theme in conversations with senior leaders.
The question isn’t, “How do we do more marketing?” or “How do we use AI?”
It’s something much more fundamental.
How do we build an organisation that truly understands its customers?
Interestingly, this question isn’t coming from one industry. It’s coming from leaders across sectors who are all wrestling with remarkably similar challenges.
Despite operating in very different markets, they’re asking many of the same questions.
How do we cut through the noise?
How do we make better commercial decisions?
How do we use AI in a way that genuinely adds value?
How do we bring different teams together around the customer instead of internal priorities?
It reminds me that while industries differ, great organisations often succeed because of the same underlying principles.
Stop looking sideways. Start looking wider.
One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is believing their competitors hold all the answers.
Of course, it’s important to understand your market. You should know what others are doing.
But if everyone is benchmarking against everyone else, eventually everyone starts looking the same.
Real innovation often comes from somewhere unexpected.
I’ve spent more than 26 years working with organisations across FMCG, technology, retail, manufacturing, travel, finance and professional services.
The products are different.
The regulations are different.
The customers are different.
Yet the commercial challenges are surprisingly familiar.
That’s why I believe some of the most valuable ideas come from borrowing principles, not copying tactics.
You don’t need to become another industry.
You simply need to understand why certain approaches work and consider how they might apply in your own.
The customer journey has changed. Have we?
For years, we taught customer journeys as neat, predictable funnels.
Awareness.
Consideration.
Decision.
Purchase.
Reality has moved on.
Today, people discover information through AI, search engines, social platforms, online communities, peers, podcasts, videos, review sites and countless other touchpoints.
They don’t move neatly from one stage to the next.
They jump.
They pause.
They return.
Increasingly, they don’t even search.
They ask.
Whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or the next generation of AI assistants, people are becoming more comfortable asking complete questions and expecting complete answers.
That has huge implications for every organisation.
It’s no longer enough to ask whether people can find you.
The better question is:
Would you be recommended as the answer?
Customer-centricity isn’t owned by one department
This is probably the biggest pattern I see.
Every team genuinely wants to create value.
Marketing wants to build awareness.
Sales wants to grow revenue.
Customer Success wants to improve retention.
Digital wants a better online experience.
Data teams want cleaner insights.
Medical, Operations, Product and HR all have their own priorities too.
None of these objectives are wrong.
The problem comes when they become disconnected.
Customers don’t experience functions.
They experience organisations.
They don’t distinguish between departments.
They remember whether the experience felt easy, helpful and joined up.
That’s why customer-centricity can never be a marketing initiative.
It’s a commercial strategy.
One that requires every function to understand the role they play in creating value.
AI isn’t replacing commercial thinking. It’s raising the bar.
Whenever AI comes up, many conversations still begin with the technology.
Which platform?
Which tool?
Which model?
I think those are the wrong starting points.
The organisations seeing the greatest value from AI aren’t asking how AI can replace people.
They’re asking how AI can help people make better decisions.
How can it surface insights faster?
How can it remove repetitive work?
How can it help teams spend more time understanding customers and less time searching for information?
Technology should amplify human judgement, not replace it.
Better decisions start with better questions
After working with hundreds of organisations, I’ve become convinced that the biggest competitive advantage isn’t having the most data.
Most businesses already have more data than they know what to do with.
The difference lies in the questions they ask.
Are we trying to sell a product?
Or solve a customer problem?
Are we measuring what matters?
Or simply measuring what’s easy?
What assumptions are we making about our customers?
When was the last time we challenged them?
Curiosity is still one of the most underrated commercial capabilities.
The organisations that will thrive
The organisations I see pulling ahead aren’t necessarily the largest.
Nor are they always the most digitally mature.
They’re the ones willing to learn.
They look outside their own industry.
They challenge long-held assumptions.
They bring teams together around shared customer outcomes.
They embrace AI where it creates genuine value.
Most importantly, they never stop asking how they can understand their customers better.
Because no matter how technology evolves, no matter how markets change, one truth remains constant.
People don’t wake up wanting your product.
They wake up with a problem they’re trying to solve.
The organisations that understand that best won’t just build better customer experiences.
They’ll build better businesses.
Cognitive Union works with large B2C and B2B businesses to build the commercial skills, digital fluency and customer-first thinking their teams need to perform — closing the capability gaps that sit between where teams are today and where the business needs them to be.
Lead. Don’t follow.
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