[CX Industry Voices] Interview with Adrian Swinscoe

How do you build a business that truly puts customers first?

Start by focusing less on trends—and more on getting the basics right, today.

That's exactly why we curated our Top 100 CX Influencers in Europe: to spotlight leaders driving customer-centric approaches and meaningful change across industries.

Through our CX Industry Voices series, we're bringing exclusive conversations with these thought leaders, exploring their perspectives on what it means to deliver exceptional customer experiences and how businesses can build stronger, more human connections with their customers.

In this edition, we spoke with Adrian Swinscoe—advisor, author, and workshop facilitator—who has spent over 16 years researching, writing, and advocating for better customer and employee experiences. As a Forbes contributor, podcast host, and author of four books, Adrian brings a wealth of practical insights from helping businesses create the conditions for greatness—both for their customers and their teams.

We explored Adrian's journey, the pitfalls of chasing trends, and why he believes the future of customer experience is always built in the present.

Here's what he shared.

I've always been a huge fan of organisations that do great things for their customers.

However, having built businesses or developed projects and propositions that always had customer and employee value at their heart, I have always been frustrated by those that don't.

So, around 16 years ago, I set out to research, write about (www.adrianswinscoe.com) and advocate for what it takes to deliver a great customer experience.

I added a podcast to this effort in Jan 2011, was invited to become a Forbes contributor in 2013 (I continue to write for them) and have published four books along the way.

My driving passion is helping create, develop and grow businesses that take care of their customers in the best way possible and create the great teams that are required to do that and am privileged to have been able to help a number of organisations achieve their own level of greatness via consulting, writing, speaking, workshops and advisory work.

Everything and all of the time.

However, we must also realise that we cannot ourselves create a great customer experience.

We can only create or facilitate the conditions for our customer to have an experience.

By always keeping in mind and paying attention to both the customer's and the employee's perspective.

Moreover, I think it's also important to keep in mind the idea that… Just because you can do a certain thing doesn't mean that you should.

And, to be careful about any assumptions that I make.

As Alan Alda once said: “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.”

There are the usual suspects…technology, artificial intelligence, competition, customer behaviour.

But the danger of always following or focusing on trends is that we lose sight of what is important.

Followers tend to get caught up in what the future holds, fixating on the possibilities of technology and the idea that they may get disrupted out of existence. However, they fail to realise that they jeopardise their very future if they do not deliver today for their customers and themselves.

On the other hand, leaders know that while they need to pay attention to future trends and prepare for technology and customer behaviour changes, they also know that delivering a great customer experience today is the foundation stone on which their future sits.

The truth is that the future (of customer experience) is always built in the present.

Create a clear vision about the experience you want to deliver, develop a robust strategy to help you get there, and make sure that those are aligned and tied to the achievement of your overall corporate and commercial objectives.