Enough talking about how digital transformation will do this and that in the future. Digital transformation has already happened—and it’s been a while. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many large companies still lacked basic digital structures, such as a WhatsApp for customer service. Today, using a phone for research and purchases is something the customer doesn’t even think twice about. It’s natural. We are in the post-digital world, where digital experience is universal; Brazil, for example, has one of the most challenging competitive landscapes on the planet in terms of the number of retailers pure players digitally competing fiercely for consumers’ attention and budgets.
The big problem, however, is that many companies still treat digital and physical as separate entities, while for the customer, everything is part of the same experience. True digital transformation, therefore, lies in knowing how to use the best that digital already offers for the benefit of a more empowered customer who is ahead of the companies themselves. It’s a race for organizations to use digital tools that make them more agile, pragmatic, and capable of delivering a customer journey that truly improves their lives. Global competition and the ever-imminent disruption by startups reinforce this urgency.
Customer experience as the only genuine competitive differentiator
In a market where technology is easily replicable and cloneable, a company’s real competitive advantage no longer lies solely in its products or technologies. The only lasting competitive differentiator is the relationship with the customer.
Leading academic theorists, such as Kotler, argue that the long-term success of any company depends on having a truly customer-centric experience. Personalization and, more recently, hyper-personalization driven by convergent technologies, is essential to meet the specific needs of each customer at their specific moment in the relationship journey with the company. The challenge is that many companies still fail to minimally understand their customers, offering inconsistent experiences across different channels.
For a company to be genuinely customer-centric, it is essential to have a team of employees engaged with the brand’s purpose and aligned with the customer. This is only possible with a very strong organizational culture. A company’s culture is like a family, where shared values, a greater purpose, and strategic alignment make all the difference. In the case of a company, this generates value in service to the customer and creates a culture that is transparent to the consumer. Building all of this is the greatest difficulty for experienced leaders, as it takes a long time and is based on intangible and attitudinal assets in most cases.
In this context, leadership plays a fundamental role, not only in what it verbalizes but in its behavior, posture, and the way it relates. In a world where hard skills are increasingly delegated to machines and AI, soft skills become preferential and essential for leaders and their followers.
The essential role of Big Data and artificial intelligence
Another point of attention is the importance of data in a highly competitive environment. Customers are already aware that their data has value and is used to generate advertising and offers for them. The expectation is that companies will use this information to generate value in return, providing better and more relevant solutions.
This is where Big Data plays an essential role. It allows data from various sources to be fed into a centralized intelligence structure, where algorithms work to find increasingly better solutions. The well-known and always relevant example of Netflix illustrates this: the platform uses artificial intelligence to compare descriptions of movies and series that the user watches, programming its interface to offer choices more aligned with their interests.
Despite its potential, many companies, including large industry leaders, still do not know how to use Big Data effectively. Among the challenges, data veracity is the greatest. In a scenario of deepfakes and big fakes, the quality and authenticity of sources are critical to avoid erroneous conclusions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially generative AI, is also developing at a frighteningly accelerated pace, becoming indispensable for business. AI acts as support for human intelligence, delegating complex tasks to algorithms. However, generative AI, popularized by tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, presents the (increasingly smaller) risk of “hallucinations,” i.e., the generation of non-real information. It is undoubtedly a significant danger that requires sharp critical sense from the user to discern the truth. And in a complex world desperate for seemingly correct answers, this is a very real risk for cognition and for consumers and businesses.
The next frontiers of digital transformation
· Quantum Computing: Exponentially accelerates the power of artificial intelligence, promising a “new world” and greater power for big tech companies than for governments themselves.
· Robotics with AI: Robots with applied and functional artificial intelligence, including generative intelligence and access to our data, can assist in domestic tasks and other functions. While they offer hyper-personalization and don’t “get sick,” they present significant risks related to cybersecurity.
· Cybersecurity: A growing challenge and one of the biggest businesses on the planet (digital crime is the third largest business on the planet, according to executives from Palantir and Palo Alto), driven by the increase in attacks and fraud. Quantum computing will amplify this challenge even further, as it can break current passwords and cryptographic keys.
· Delegation of decisions to AI: A growing trend of delegating decisions to artificial intelligence, as seen in autonomous cars or robotic surgeries, with the expectation that machine error will be less than human error.
· AI Avatars: The vision of assistants like Iron Man’s Jarvis is a standard trend, with phones and other devices acting as extensions of memory and cognitive capacity.
· Return of the Metaverse: Although it was considered “too early” in its first boom, the evolution of hardware and the familiarity of new generations with virtual environments may bring the Metaverse back as a common environment for more immersive and natural interactions.
The human at the center of technology
Amid all these changes and expectations, leadership is no longer about control but about purpose. The world will become increasingly automated, and autonomous agents powered by artificial intelligence are expected to dominate the scene in the next five years, but the true differentiator will remain human. That is why reading works like “Man’s Search for Meaning”, by Viktor Frankl, is essential for those who lead in high-pressure and complex contexts. Frankl’s experience in Auschwitz shows us that even in the most extreme situations, it is possible to find meaning, and it is this sense of purpose that guides difficult decisions.
When I look back on my journey as a leader, I recognize that my biggest mistake was, for a long time, trying to mold others to my way of working. I learned—often the hard way—that the role of a leader is not to centralize but to empower. The leader who makes a difference is the one who brings out the best in each person around them, allowing diverse talents to compose something greater than any individual effort. This is the kind of leadership I want to see grow: open, generous, and deeply human.
Digital transformation is no longer a distant promise—it is among us. But no technology, no matter how advanced, replaces the need for genuine relationships and clear purpose. Data is essential. Strong culture is indispensable. But it is at the intersection of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence that things truly happen productively and fully enhance the customer experience in its entirety.
