Enough talking about how digital transformation will do this and that in the future. Digital transformation has already happened—and has been happening for a while. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many large companies still lacked basic digital infrastructure, such as WhatsApp for customer service. Today, using cell phones for research and purchases is something customers don’t even consider not using. It’s natural. We are in a post-digital world, where the 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 digital platforms competing fiercely for consumers’ attention and budget.
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 to promote a more empowered customer who is more in charge of the companies themselves. It’s a race for organizations to use digital tools that make them more agile, pragmatic, and capable of offering 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 clonable, a company’s true competitive advantage no longer resides solely in its products or technologies. The only lasting competitive advantage is its relationship with its customers.
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 meeting the specific needs of each customer at their specific point in their relationship journey with the company. The challenge is that many companies still fail to understand their customers at a minimum, offering inconsistent experiences across different channels.
For a company to be genuinely customer-centric, it’s essential to have a team of employees engaged with the brand’s purpose and aligned with the customer. This is only possible with a strong organizational culture. A company’s culture is like a family, where shared values, a higher purpose, and strategic alignment make all the difference. In the case of a company, this generates value in customer service and creates a culture that shines through to consumers. Building all of this is the biggest challenge for experienced leaders, as it takes a long time and is often based on intangible and attitudinal assets.
In this context, leadership plays a fundamental role, not only in what it says, but also in its behavior, posture, and way of interacting. In a world where hard skills are increasingly delegated to machines and AI, soft skills become preferential and essential for leaders and their subordinates.
The essential role of Big Data and artificial intelligence
Another point of concern is the importance of data in a highly competitive environment. Customers are already aware that their data is valuable and is used to generate advertising and offers for themselves. The expectation is that companies will use this information to generate value back, providing better and more relevant solutions.
This is where Big Data plays a crucial role. It allows data from diverse sources to be fed into a centralized intelligence structure, where algorithms work to find ever-better solutions. The well-known and ever-relevant example of Netflix illustrates this: the platform uses artificial intelligence to compare descriptions of films and series that users watch, programming their screen to offer choices more aligned with their interests.
Despite its potential, many companies, including large, leading companies in their industries, still don’t know how to use Big Data effectively. Among the challenges, data accuracy is the biggest. 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 an alarming rate, becoming indispensable for business. AI acts as a support for human intelligence, delegating complex tasks to algorithms. However, generative AI, popularized by tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, presents the (increasingly diminishing) risk of “hallucinations,” that is, the generation of false information. This is undoubtedly a significant risk, requiring a keen critical sense from the user to discern the truth. And, in a complex world desperate for seemingly certain answers, this is a very real risk to cognition and to 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 than for governments themselves.
AI Robotics: Robots with applied and functional artificial intelligence, including generative intelligence and access to our data, can assist with household chores and other tasks. Although they offer hyper-personalization and don’t “get sick,” they pose significant cybersecurity risks.
· Cybersecurity: A growing challenge and one of the biggest businesses on the planet (digital crime is the third biggest business of the planet, according to executives at Palantir and Palo Alto), driven by the increase in attacks and fraud. Quantum computing will further amplify this challenge, as it can break current passwords and cryptographic keys.
· Delegation of decisions to AI: Growing trend of delegating decisions to artificial intelligence, as already seen in self-driving cars or robotic surgeries, with the expectation that machine error will be smaller than human error.
· AI Avatars: The vision of assistants like Iron Man’s Jarvis is a standard trend, with cell phones and other devices acting as extensions of memory and cognitive ability.
· Return of the Metaverse: Although it was an experience considered “too soon” in its first boom, the evolution of hardware and the familiarity of new generations with virtual environments can bring the Metaverse back as a common environment for more immersive and natural interactions.
The human at the center of technology
Faced with 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 landscape in the next five years, but the real differentiator will continue to be human. Therefore, 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 with difficulty—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 everyone around them, allowing diverse talents to create something greater than any individual effort. It’s this kind of leadership I want to see grow: open, generous, and deeply human.
Digital transformation is no longer a distant promise—it’s here. But no technology, no matter how advanced, replaces the need for genuine relationships and a clear purpose. Data is essential. A strong culture is indispensable. But it’s at the intersection of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence that things truly happen productively, truly enhancing the customer experience in its entirety.
