CX Network’s 20 leaders to watch in 2024

The 20 CX Leaders to Watch in 2024 profiles 20 leading CX professionals from around the world who have brought an innovative and visionary approach to their role over the last 12 months.

We opened nominations to our network of more than 100,000 practitioners in September 2023, and over the weeks that followed dozens of senior-level CX Network members shared their success stories for consideration in the final line-up.

The team here at CX Network has assessed all applications and conducted additional research to compile the final list, which features leaders from retail, healthcare, telecoms, beauty, transport and insurance. These were not easy decisions. Reflecting the high CX standards and cutting-edge capabillities that are being introduced by organizations around the world, the quality of nominations this year was outstanding and even those who did not make the final list deserve congratulations. 

Of course, there are many leaders around the world who do not feature on this list, which is why CX Leaders to Watch will return next year.

For now, on behalf of the entire team here at CX Network, thank you to everybody who took the time to submit a nomination and a heartfelt congratulations to all who made this year’s final list.

Here is the full list of CX leaders to watch - in alphabetical order by company name - and you can read about each leader's CX success below.

CX Network's 20 leaders to watch in 2024

Anthony Griffin

Job title: Vice president of patient experience (PX)
Company: Arkansas Children's Hospital
Years in current role: 1 year, 3 months
CX challenge: Limited interaction and engagement between team members, patients and their families.

The solution: As the newly appointed vice president of PX, Griffin was keen to connect with his new colleagues at Arkansas Children's Hospital but saw they had limited interaction and engagement both with each other, and with patients and their families. Yet he knew that the ability to work effectively as a team and provide the best care for patients was greatly influenced by the strength of connection within teams and the sense of inclusion people felt.

Griffin started small, saying hello to everybody he passed as he arrived at the hospital each day. He even got his young daughter involved and by October 2022, “project engage” was officially headed by Griffin and the director of PX and operations.

They trained more than 1,000 employees and by January 2023, had seen a substantial increase in NPS, improvements across retention and culture, and a three percent improvement in employee engagement thanks to new communication, training and recognition programs.

Chandni Bhatt

Job title: Senior manager, member happiness
Company: Beauty Pie
Years in current role: 1 year, 8 months
CX challenge: Ensuring a competitive member experience through digital self-service, and reduced wait times and effort.

The solution: Reducing customer wait times and effort are key priorities for many businesses, but for membership e-commerce business Beauty Pie, it was even more important that members could easily self-serve. The business wanted to ensure members could upgrade, downgrade, cancel or pause their memberships without waiting up to three working days for a response. After reviewing contact volumes, cost to serve and CSAT sentiment, it was clear that this task was consuming the time of skilled agents when it could easily be automated.

After reviewing automation partners and savings, Bhatt and the seven-strong team engaged with senior stakeholders, such as the CTO and VP of growth, to propose an automation project that would ensure a timely response. The project started in August 2022 and after a four-week pilot the proof of concept was reviewed. The savings to date have reached six figures and Beauty Pie is continuously improving on the capabilities.

Early results have been transformational – the average handle time for membership-related contact was seven minutes and through automation has been reduced to 15 seconds. On top of this, the response rate was set at five minutes for the automation to trigger once the customer made contact, whilst typically it could take up to four working days for a human to respond to the customer. With new systems in place, agents now have time to work on value-add conversations such as upselling, consulting and engaging with the community on social media, as well as helping to manage brand integrity on channels such as Trustpilot.

You can find out more about Chandni’s automation project here.

Vanessa Milan

Job title: Head of VoC
Company: Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Years in current role: Less than one, six years in VoC
CX challenge: Integrating new customer service tools with existing VoC platform.

The solution: The Cambridge University Press & Assessment omnichannel team decided to pilot an integrated transactional NPS survey to better support the organization’s ongoing VoC program. However, tech integrations are an established challenge in CX. When CX Network asked its members to name their greatest tech investment challenge, 43 percent said it was integrating new technology with old.

Under Milan’s leadership, however, Cambridge University Press & Assessment was able to avoid this pitfall. The integration was made available to a limited number of customer service teams and the data captured was so strong, that what started as a pilot integration has now become an integral feature of the group’s omnichannel deployment, being used by more than 20 teams, including credit management and royalties.

Involving more than 30 people, the project started in August 2022 and although it will not conclude until December 2023, data from the customer service NPS survey shows an improvement in overall CX. For instance, feedback directly inputted into workshops looking at ways to improve e-commerce and the major English Language Teaching (ELT) platform.  The customer service NPS increased by five points and one platforms’ NPS jumped 19 points. NPS scores and drivers are regularly presented and discussed at senior operations forums to shape ongoing improvements. NPS scores, loyalty drivers and pain points are also shared with the executive leadership.

You can find out more about the VoC program Vanessa led for Cambridge here.

Lucy Eylerts

Job title: Associate VP of human experience
Company: CareMax, Inc.
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge: Culture and performance management during rapid expansion, retaining and improving on 96.7 NPS score.

The solution: In June 2021, US healthcare provider CareMax embarked on a rapid national expansion after listing on the Nasdaq Exchange. The organization scaled from 13 wholly owned clinics in South Florida to more than 60 facilities across four states. Eylerts was HR director at the time and had already been working to promote meaningful connections between every employee and patient, as well as between employees and CareMax as a company. One of the main concerns during the expansion was how to involve and engage employees while continuing to respond quickly and effectively to the growing patient population.

CareMax appointed Eylerts as its first associate VP of human experience and since August 2021, she has led notable projects that helped CareMax maintain its 96.7 NPS. One was the Voice of the Customer (VoC) initiative – key to defining and refining PX. She drew on qualitative and quantitative customer research, data capture, focus groups and one-on-one meetings and questionnaires from patients, their families, CareMax team members and other stakeholders. This helped Eylerts identify problem points and, using an integrated human experience framework and methodology, she scaled the program across the organization to even reach new hires, who now immediately benefit from her work. Eylerts also co-led CareMax’s first patient journey mapping sessions to gain additional insights into the areas that required more resources.

As a result, CareMax still holds its 96.7 NPS and also saw a dramatic increase in patient retention. Among patients, 96 percent say their providers always respect what they have to say and 89 percent see their provider within 15 minutes of arrival.

RELATED CONTENT: The top customer experience influencers to follow in 2023

Jaslyin Qiyu

Job title: SVP, head of client marketing, channels and digital capabilities
Company: Citibank Singapore
Years in current role: 3 
CX challenge: Need to differentiate the Citibank brand in a crowded market place, drive engagement and generate leads.

The solution: Content has long been part of the customer experience and journey and is increasingly utilized by brands to engage their customer base, build community and nurture the emotional connections that drive loyalty. In early 2023, Citibank launched a new content platform, Life and Money by Citibank in partnership with Yahoo.

Headed by Qiyu and a marketing team she built from the ground up over the last three years, Life and Money is all about defining Citibank’s position in the marketplace as a reputable and credible financial services partner. In refreshing Citi’s consumer content strategy, content in the hub is focused on addressing the financial aspirations and challenges of existing, prospective and new customers. It also serves as a lead generator. Preference and behavioural data is collected from prospects, meaning the content hub has been able to generate incremental leads that shift the traditional focus from top and bottom funnel marketing tactics that are known to generate quick wins, to a longer-term play.

The content hub is also helping the Citi brand to differentiate itself from competitors by demonstrating its intrinsic value to customers as their trusted financial partners.

You can find out more about Jaslyin’s work in CX Talks: The power of content marketing for CX.

Lydia Clayton

Job title: AVP, contact center operations, center of excellence
Company: Cox Automotive
Years in current role: 4
CX challenge: To create a single contact center experience for a portfolio of more than 20 brands by restructuring digital infrastructure and putting data at the heart of operations.

The solution: Cox Automotive is a rapidly growing global company with more than 20 brands at present including Autotrader, Clutch Technologies and Manheim. But each brand was operating in a silo, meaning CX could not be fully standardized.

Clayton set out to create a single contact center experience across the entire portfolio that would also improve the agent experience. But it wasn’t just about CX and EX – from the management perspective, with each brand using different systems, performance was difficult to measure and compare, and data was not being actioned to its full potential. Cox required a systems transformation that would shift the group to a single telephone and tech stack and a single analytics tool.

Drawing on her software engineering skills, she started to connect the group’s digital infrastructure. Both part of the problem and the solution, customer, workforce and business data was key to this project, for reporting and tracking internal KPIs, as well as delivering a cohesive customer and agent experience and Clayton ensured the new capabilities allowed Cox to combine and rationalize the data it held in a way that had not been possible before. That, however, that was the easy part: Clayton also had to secure stakeholder buy-in from each brand and unite all relevant teams around the same goals to ensure the tech upgrade was a success.

The project is ongoing and for customers, the new capabilities are also driving higher standards across self-service, while supporting the introduction of new channels and other areas.

You can find out more about Lydia’s work by watching her interview from All Access: Customer Insights and Data Analytics.

Michael Dart

Job title: Chief customer officer
Company: Energy Queensland
Years in current role: 5
CX challenge: Maintaining NTS and CSAT scores amid a cost-of-living crisis and billing service interruptions.

The solution: Inflation and a global cost of living crisis have pushed many customers to rethink their spending habits, but when it comes to utility bills it isn’t so easy. In Australia, where global energy shocks saw electricity prices increase by up to 25 percent last year, this caused stress for many customers. In Queensland this was compounded with a tragic safety issue that caused a three-month interruption to billing services at the start of 2023.

For Dart, this disruption to customers and company required prompt action to prevent a material impact on CSAT and Net Trust Scores (NTS) for the Energy Queensland brands, Energex, Yurika, Ergon Retail and Ergon Network. In mid-2022 he recognized the need for a campaign that would reassure customers of all its brands that Energy Queensland was supportive during this time and could offer programs to help.

The Energy Queensland customer team rallied behind a campaign to support customers while keeping the community safe. The provider worked with the Queensland government to deliver the largest cost of living rebate package direct to customers with no need for them to apply, and more digital meters were made available to customers to give them different tariff options to choose from. With a heavy focus on ESG, Energy Queensland worked with the government on initiatives around renewable energy and storage programs as well as new job opportunities. Looking to the future, journey mapping exercises were performed with key sectors to establish pain points for doing business with the energy provider, for example with the housing development industry to explore the pressures on housing supply in Australia.

Despite the expectation that scores would plummet, both CSAST and NTS remained stable and above target. Employee engagement scores in April 2023 recorded a 10 percent increase, putting the customer division into the ANZ Top Quartile for the sector.

You can find out more about Michael’s work in this interview with CX Network. 

Surangkhana Chaiprasart

Job title: Senior vice president - CX group
Company: Home Product Center PCL
Years in current role: 5
CX challenge: Pushing new corporate values around customer success while driving stronger customer engagement.

The solution: As an award-winning home improvement retailer, Thailand’s Home Product Center offers 40,000 items across its nationwide network of 95 stores. Focused on the customer, Home Product Center has expanded its business several times since it launched in 1995, adding DIY and build solutions for residential customers, as well as a wholesale brand for business customers. But since January 2023, Chaiprasart has been leading a new push to implement a corporate culture based on customer success, while driving better engagement with both retail and trade customers.

Once the challenge of low engagement had been identified, Chaiprasart engaged stakeholders across the company by setting goals and performance tracking and introducing an implementation plan. As a result, NPS improved 85 percent.

RELATED CONTENT: The top 50 customer experience influencers to follow in 2024

Efren Caringal Jr

Job title: Chief transformation officer
Company: The Insular Life Assurance Company Ltd.
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge: Create a compelling agent experience and drive business growth.

The solution: Financial advisors play a critical role at Insular Life (InLife), driving the firm’s CX mission and business growth. Caringal is well aware of the links between a compelling agent experience and overall business success and, since May 2022, has been working to refine EX at InLife. To do this, he worked to understand the perspectives and experiences of agents and their leaders through surveys, interviews and focus groups. When he was appointed chief transformation officer, Caringal launched a Voice of the Partner (VoP) program to identify agent needs and improve their overall experience through digital enablement.

One pillar of this program involved the development of an enhanced sales mobile platform called Compass SuperApp, intended to support the agents throughout their journey from onboarding to selling, as well as managing their performance and servicing their insured clients. Caringal’s CX team ran the VoP program and any elements of the overall drive involved strong collaboration between his teams, including with IT, data and analytics, business transformation and other InLife business units.

Agent activity and productivity improved; Compass adoption is at 96 percent of active agents; and, based on data from the Insurance Commission of the Philippines, InLife’s overall new business premium ranking improved from ninth in 2022, to fifth as of June 2023.

Ingrid van Ruiswijk

Job title: Former manager, customer service DTC
Company: New Balance
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge: Managing the ever-growing volume of orders and customer contact requests while providing the best CX possible.

The solution: Often the greatest challenge for a growing business is scaling the quality of the experience in tandem with the size of the operation. Global sports brand New Balance recorded sales growth of 115 percent in 2022 and van Ruiswijk is tasked with ensuring the quality of CX and service remained as high as ever. Failed deliveries were a big pain point for New Balance and data showed that once an order was returned to sender, the customer was unlikely to buy from the brand again.

To tackle this, van Ruiswijk shared data with stakeholders across the company that clearly proved how the failed orders impacted revenue and created additional logistics costs. Her proposed solution was to implement an address validation tool on the website that could validate customer information before the order was placed, and directly and positively impact customer lifetime value.

Involving e-commerce, development, customer service and logistics, the project started in February 2022 and was implemented in April 2023. Through revenue recovery and lower logistics costs, ROI has already reached US$10 million. The failed delivery percentage decreased by more than 65 percent almost immediately after implementation, customer contacts decreased more than 50 percent and further savings are expected in future.

You can find out more about Ingrid’s work by watching her interview from All Access: Contact Centers 2023.

Colleen Russell

Job title: Director, system engagement
Company: Northwestern Medicine
Years in current role: 5 years
CX challenge: Staff retention post-Covid and higher competition to retain patients.

The solution: Northwestern Medicine recognized the importance of addressing staff and patient retention challenges during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Deploying a smart, modern and easy to use Voice of Customer (VoC) system allowed Northwestern to capture feedback from both patients and staff to improve their experiences. With a six-person team to support her, Russell, who oversees the full CX program for both patients and employees, headed the deployment and development of a company-wide system that could instantly capture and analyze feedback. The system also alerts management to specific feedback that requires immediate review and action.

Most recently in the multi-year project, Russel completed the transition of all surveys to the platform and this year, the program rolled out new regulatory patient surveys and officially extended the EX program with milestone surveys added for new hires.

Raja Chandran

Job title: Senior client program manager
Company: NTT
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge: High customer complaint volumes relating to prolonged response times and inconsistent communication across service channels.

The solution: Since August 2022, NTT has experienced higher than average customer complaints related to prolonged response times and inconsistent communication across the various service channels it offers. This significantly impacted overall customer satisfaction and loyalty and in June 2023 a 15-person team started to address the challenges.

As the project lead, Chandran conducted thorough customer journey analysis, which identified a critical bottleneck requiring address. He initiated cross-functional workshops to collaborate with stakeholders in designing and implementing targeted improvements. The initiative resulted in a 15-point increase in NPS, a 20 percent improvement in ROI due to reduced churn and increased referrals, and a noteworthy 10 percent boost in employee engagement, as evidenced by internal surveys and financial reports.

RELATED CONTENT: CX Network names its 20 CX Leaders to Watch 2022 

Diane Leung

Job title: Senior product manager
Company: Pinnacle Pet Group
Years in current role: 1, promoted after four years in the business
CX challenge: Address higher than normal policy cancellations through new journey features.

The solution: As inflation put additional pressure on customer wallets, Pinnacle Pet Group noted a rise in pet insurance policy cancellations. But many customers were not contacting the insurance provider to cancel their policies – instead they were cancelling Direct Debits through their bank. This meant that Pinnacle Pet Group was unable to identify why customers were leaving and therefore attempt to retain them. Leung presented an idea: instead of adding friction to the cancellation journey, why not offer a new, more visible cancellation journey direct on the customer portal that could capture feedback and allow the firm to understand the reasons for cancellation.

The first phase of the project ran from August 2022 to April 2023 and is now in its second iteration. The project demanded collaboration between marketing, operations and customer service teams but was worth the resource and investment: in providing a seamless digital journey, Pinnacle Pet Group increased operational efficiency and NPS as measured on Everypaw, a subsidiary of Pinnacle Pet Group. The project has been so successful the functionality has also been added to seven of Pinnacle Pet Group’s brands.

Sathish Krishnan

Job title: Vice president, CRM
Company: redBus India
Years in current role: 3.5
CX challenge: Achieving the shortest service resolution time possible, with aspirations to provide instant resolution to queries.

The solution: As an online marketplace for transport tickets, redBus aggregates bus services across India, giving customers a wide choice of operators to book through. But when a customer needed help for a post-sale service issue, they were forced to wait an average of 76 hours for a resolution. By analyzing customer data, Krishnan and his team knew that faster resolution times had a direct impact on customer ratings and repeat transactions.

As the custodians of the customer experience at redBus, the CRM team collaborated with business development, product and engineering teams to devise a solution and roll out standard operating procedures (SOP) that would empower advisors provide instant resolutions to customers. The pilot started in Q2, 2022 and results have scaled over the course of 2023. At the time of writing, the average speed of resolution is less than four hours, with up to 60 percent of queries resolved within 30 minutes. Customer satisfaction scores are up 1,000 basis points and operational efficiency at redBus also improved.

The faster resolution times are down to the CRM team and the SOPs introduced, which allowed redBus advisors to act on the customer query instantly, rather than liaising with individual bus operators for the resolution. The firm has 3,500 operators on its platform and more than 1,000 operators are currently involved in this project.

Babul Balakrishnan

Job title: Former global head of customer care, now head of customer experience (CX) operations
Company: Thunes
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge: Setting the gold standard for customer care in fintech.

The solution: The fintech space is one of constant and rapid change as well as tight competition, but Thunes had an ambition to set the gold standard for customer care in the industry. Taking on the role of customer advocate, Balakrishnan (BK) led a multi-part strategy intended to do just that. Initial work saw parts of customer care automated to reduce overall ticket numbers; next a process was established to conduct root cause analysis on all identifiable errors.

A team of proactive issue resolvers was established to constantly test systems and customer journeys, raising tickets when errors were found. Meanwhile, the NOC team monitored all alerts and notifications to initiate a fix or solution, and control the communication loop with external stakeholders while driving to a resolution.

With an exemplary level of operational efficiency now established in customer care, the lessons from this phase of the project were then applied to other teams. Since BK launched the strategy in June 2022, NPS scores have increased, operational overheads decreased and the number of manual interventions required has also reduced. BK says employee engagement across his team is among the best in the whole organization. Since October 1, he has taken on the role of head of CX operations and his team is now stepping into other functions to drive process optimization and efficiencies. Reflecting this wider remit, BK’s team is now called customer experience operations.

Sam Tolentino

Job title: Head of training, quality and VoC, client engagement and solutions group
Company: UnionBank of the Philippines
Years in current role: 2
CX challenge:  Addressing below-threshold NPS and other CX metrics across multiple channels.

The solution: A true omnichannel customer experience drives satisfaction and loyalty but when the connections between channels and agents break, customer satisfaction is the first thing to suffer. At UnionBank of the Philippines, customers had a variety of service channels to choose from and although NPS and CX metrics were continuously being improved, a framework was required to manage and improve metrics in a structured and systemic way. This included but was not limited to the creation of a VOC team, defining VOC survey structure and the management of the VOC program and customer journey mapping.

Tolentino established a framework to manage and improve metrics and the project ran from January to July 2023 with Tolentino supported not only by his team, but the whole group and organization. In all, UnionBank saw improvements in NPS and with its new framework in place, was able to introduce new data-driven solutions to deliver further gains. It deployed several process improvements and redesigns, which led to a reduction in financial losses and improvement of other operational and CX metrics.

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Krishna Gautam

Job title: VP, customer experience
Company: Urbanic
Years in current role: 4
CX challenge: Reversing a collapse in NPS linked to COD refund delays and poor UX during the payment journey.

The solution: Facing what Gautam describes as “relentless challenges”, socially responsible fashion brand Urbanic needed to tackle COD refund delays and payment failures, which had had a severe impact on NPS. In response, the brand embarked on a transformation journey and initiated a comprehensive project involving meticulous problem identification, innovative solution crafting, seamless implementation and, ultimately, a positive impact on the bottom line.

The four-month project started in February 2023 and was executed by a team of 10, four of whom reported direct to Gautam. The project saw the introduction of a new payment interface and double verification, and penny testing features were added to the refund process. Following the customer-centric innovations, NPS for the refund journey soared above 60, elevating customer satisfaction and delivering a tangible impact on the bottom line. The reduction in error-related expenses also improved customer loyalty, which translated into increased revenue.

GovindaRaj Avasarala

Job title: Head, customer experience excellence (CXX)
Company: Vodafone Idea Limited
Years in current role: 1
CX challenge: Driving B2B and B2C customer engagement in a highly competitive, three-player market, and encouraging customer centricity among employees.

The solution: From its Voice of Employee (VoE), Voice of Customer (VoC) and relationship studies, Vi (Vodafone Idea) knew that customer engagement was a key priority. In response, the telco’s head of CX excellence adopted a flexible engagement model, partnering with HR, sales and service as key stakeholders.

Adopting a boundaryless approach to collaboration allowed various departments to align their highest impact internal and external programs. Avasarala and his team had a portfolio of CX programs to engage across the entire company with programs tailored to functional cohorts and customer segments. The programs ranged from B2B engagements with top group customers to retail customer engagement programs across India.

The initiative started in December 2022, with execution beginning in February and several milestones recorded to the end of FY2023. Vi has seen an uptick in customer engagement scores, positive social sentiment for the brand and new business opportunities across the B2B and B2C customer segments. 

Jason Skinner

Job title: Former head of omnichannel strategy and VoC
Company: Wayfair
Years in role: 1
CX challenge: No governance on VoC program and lack of omnichannel capabilities and strategy.

The solution: In 2022, online furniture retailer Wayfair had nascent omnichannel capabilities and a disjointed VoC program. Appointed to change the retailer’s fortunes, Skinner led the redesign of all CSAT surveys – the first time Wayfair had overhauled its survey designs – leading to a holistic VoC strategy across all channels. To measure the new approach, he then created a rapid-testing program that enabled quick pilots of new survey designs and questions within a new technology platform before moving the best performing designs into full production.

To tackle the omnichannel issues in service, Skinner created a strategy outlining all the technology capabilities required to enable seamless omnichannel customer experiences and built the tech roadmap Wayfair needed to achieve the goal.

The six-month project involved 30 people and by January 2023, frontline managers were seeing improvements in CSAT due to improved consistency in survey deployment and increased response rate. Within key journeys, survey completion rates increased dramatically and the bold move to redesign email templates saw click through rates increase, too. 

Jaakko Lempinen

Job title: Head of customer experience
Company: Yle
Years in current role: 4
CX challenge: Tight competition, changing customer behavior and a need to compete in new ways.

The solution: In the saturated entertainment and streaming market, competition is tight. Not only do customers have plenty of different services to select from, but each is loaded with so much content that it’s impossible to search it all. Yet customers have higher expectations than ever and their behavior is constantly changing.

Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, has spent years executing customer centricity strategies and nurturing a supportive internal culture where people are open and interested in developing modern UI solutions and modern content products that can meet new customer needs. A strategic shift towards personalized CX was initiated at Yle in 2020. Lempinen notes that while the development of AI as a central component in Yle’s CX strategy dates back to 2016, it has taken significant leaps forward in strengthening customer relationships in recent years. As an example, in 2023 Yle's streaming service Areena was nominated the third most valuable brand in Finland.

You can find out more about Jaako’s work by watching his interview from All Access: Customer Insights & Data Analytics.