Where Central Direction Meets Local Freedom

Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a seasoned user experience leader who has driven customer-centric digital transformation across global brands like Airbus and Electrolux, and today shapes omnichannel experience at H&M across 79 markets. In this episode, she joins TheyDo co-founder Jochem van der Veer to unpack what it really takes to run experience-led transformation at global scale, where hundreds of journeys, cultures, and systems collide.

Together, they explore why customer journeys work best as an organizing principle rather than a static artifact, how vocabulary and storytelling create alignment across silos, and why experience leadership is ultimately about trust, influence, and long-term change management. The conversation challenges the idea of “simple journeys” and offers a grounded view on coherence over consistency in global CX.

Guest Bio

Anne-Kathrine Nissen is a User Experience and Journey Leader with extensive experience driving large-scale digital and experience transformation in global organizations. She has held senior design and experience roles at companies including Airbus and Electrolux, and currently leads product design and journey work at H&M, spanning digital, retail, and customer service. Known for her systems thinking and collaborative leadership style, Anna-Kathrine focuses on building coherence across complex ecosystems through trust, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment.

Key Takeaways

• There is no single customer journey at scale. Global organizations operate hundreds or thousands of journeys that need shared principles, not rigid maps.
• Customer journeys are most powerful as an organizing principle to align teams, language, and priorities across silos.
• Experience leadership requires speaking multiple vocabularies. Sales, tech, marketing, and design all need to hear the story in their own language.
• Consistency comes from shared principles and narrative, not identical experiences across markets.
• Insights do not die. They fade away unless actively evangelized, interpreted, and embedded into everyday decision-making.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and introductions

03:30 Why there is no such thing as a simple customer journey

05:40 Customer journeys as inspiration vs execution

09:10 Vocabulary, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment

12:30 Templates, coherence, and change management

18:00 Strategy, agility, and journey ownership

24:40 AI, agentic commerce, and the future of channels

27:20 Consistency vs coherence across global markets

38:00 From marketplace to brand: rethinking H&M’s experience

43:30 Driving transformation through journeys and insights

50:45 Making sense of a sea of experience data

57:15 Keeping insights alive inside large organizations

01:05:10 Where to connect with Anna-Kathrine

LinkedIn Profiles

Anne-Kathrine Nissen

Jochem van der Veer

𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐁𝐄: / @TheyDoPodcast