Building a Customer Movement: How Companies Create Experiences That Work | Alain Thys, Revisited

Mar 17, 2026

Alain Thys, experience architect and founder of Alain Thys & Co., helps companies build customer and employee experiences into their systems. He talks about turning vision into lived experience. He explains designing incentives and environments so people naturally do the right thing. He covers choosing the right customers and employees, hiring for cultural fit, and future-proofing experience and CRM design.

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ADVICE

Grow Customer Centricity By Spotlighting Early Adopters

Build A Customer Movement Starting Small And Positive.
Alain recommends spotlighting the 3–4% already acting customer‑centric, support their risks, and let the movement spread rather than forcing organization-wide mandates.

INSIGHT

Models Can Obscure Lived Customer Reality

Business School Models Can Blind Leaders To Real Human Signals.
Alain argues models and averages lose lived nuance; great companies 'go with the flow' of customer emotion rather than prioritizing tidy models alone.

ADVICE

Three Essentials Every CRM Must Hold

CRMs Should Capture Relationship, Conversations, And Who The Person Is.
Alain lists three CRM essentials: business relationship history, prior conversations, and personal preferences to choose the right channel or tone.

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Many companies treat experience as the final layer of the business: a nicer interface, a friendlier script, a smoother customer interaction. But the real experience of a company comes from something deeper. It grows out of the systems, incentives, and environments that shape how people behave. If those foundations are wrong, no amount of design can fix it.

Experience architect, Alain Thys, has spent years helping organizations rethink those foundations so the experience customers and employees feel is actually built into the way the company works. In this episode, Dart and Alain discuss how organizations turn vision into lived experience, how leaders create environments where people naturally do the right thing, and why choosing the right customers and employees may be the most important design decision a company makes.

In this episode, Dart and Alain discuss:
- Why experience must be architected
- Turning vision into lived experience
- Why you cannot design a smile
- Creating environments where people do the right thing
- Listening to employees like customers
- Emotional and rational space in leadership
- Choosing the right customers for your business
- Hiring for fit before skills
- Why some customers drain the organization
- Designing for future customer expectations
- And other topics…

Alain Thys is the founder of Alain Thys & Co., where he helps organizations design and implement customer and employee experiences that drive business performance. He previously served as Managing Partner of Futurelab and has worked with global brands including Adidas, Audi, Mercedes, Reebok, Toyota, and ING. His work focuses on experience architecture, customer transformation, and aligning organizations around meaningful experiences. He is the author of So You Want To Be Customer-Centric?

Resources Mentioned:
Alain’s Book, So You Want To Be Customer-Centric?: 8 Steps To Profitable Customer Relations: https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Customer-Centric-Profitable-Relations/dp/1463785143

Connect with Alain:
Website: https://www.alainthys.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alainthys/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.