The Difference.
CX & AI.
When everyone has access to the same AI, where does your difference go? A hands-on program for teams and professionals who build valuable customer relationships in an age of parity.
What you
actually leave with.
Not a certificate for sitting through slides. A tested answer, for you personally and for the organization sending you, to where your edge still is once everyone has the same AI.
For you, as an individual
- A clear, personal answer to where your own judgment still beats the machine, tested against a real scenario, not a hunch.
- An explicit process for deciding when to trust AI and when to override it, something you can actually explain out loud to someone else.
- A completed strategy you helped build and defend in front of a panel, real evidence for your next review or interview, not a participation certificate.
- A certificate of completion, and a small network of peers who played the same scenario and hit the same hard calls.
For your organization
- A CX and AI strategy the team actually built and pressure-tested together, priced and pitched, not bought off a slide deck.
- A shared, explicit language for where AI belongs and where a human has to step in, so the whole team describes it the same way when asked separately.
- A 30-day and day-100 check-in built into the longer formats, so the strategy gets tested back at work instead of shelved after the workshop.
- Lower risk of the quiet, AI-driven mistakes that cost customer trust, because the team has already practiced catching them.
Technology is
parity now.
Most mid-level professionals already have the same AI everyone else has. The real question isn't how to implement it. Courses for that are everywhere, and they make no one distinctive.
The real question is how you build a valuable relationship with the person on the other side, when the contact itself is increasingly automated. Technology has become parity. What's left to differentiate on is judgment, trust and orchestration. Human skills aren't a nice-to-have next to AI skills, they are the differentiator.
Doshi & Hauser, published in Science Advances, showed that generative AI raises individual creativity but lowers collective diversity: work made with AI looks more like everyone else's. That's a measured effect, not a hunch. When everyone feeds the same models with similar prompts, offerings converge, and taste becomes the only thing that still sets you apart.
By the end of the program, every participant leaves with their own explicit strategy for using AI, building valuable customer relationships, and claiming a place in the market that's actually theirs.
Four days.
One arc.
Mirror
See where your edge really was, and what's left of it once AI is available to everyone.
Customer
Find the human on the other side again, and name the one moment that actually makes the difference.
Design
Orchestrate human and machine. Prototype the moment you named, test it, iterate.
Strategy
Leave with your own emergent CX & AI strategy, priced, pitched, and pressure-tested by a panel.
Three weeks back at work. Participants test one real moment from their own job before returning for day 3, so day 4's strategy is built on evidence, not intention.
This program teaches customer journey design, so its own design has to be the proof. Every phase name is borrowed from language people already use in their own change work, so it travels back into their organization instead of staying in the room.
Five layers,
every block.
Sharp input from an expert
Short, provocative, never a lecture.
Why this works, and when it doesn't
Dialogue and pushback, not a one-way download.
Applied in a safe setting
The scenario game, with guidance, before anything real is at stake.
Applied to your own case
Every participant brings a real challenge from their own job.
What worked, what didn't, what's next
No block ends on insight alone: insight without practice doesn't change behavior.
"Open-water swimming. Go fast and your head goes down, but then you can't see where you're going. So every so often you look up, find the marker, and adjust course. Never look up, and you swim hard in the wrong direction. Look up constantly, and you get nowhere."
Strategy is the rhythm between the two, and the program itself follows it: two days setting course, three weeks head-down, day 3 looking up, day 4 adjusting course. Participants don't just hear the model, they swim it.
The Cost & Gain Game
Twenty cards (twelve real costs of AI, eight real gains, each with a sourced statistic) turn every AI decision in the room into a trade-off with a price, not a free option.
Accepting a cost costs score, unless the team can mitigate it. Claiming a gain earns score, but only if they can argue why it applies here. There's no way to take only the upside, same as in the real organization.
By day 4, the running score becomes part of the strategy itself: which costs did you knowingly accept, and which will make you change course?
One arc.
Pick your length.
All three options below tell the same story and build the same kind of strategy, just compressed or extended to fit the time available. Choose one format, not all three: cut the valley and it turns into a nice day with no change, cut the celebration and people leave flat.
◉ Pick one of the three options below
Option 1
1 day
The mirror, the customer moment, and a first pass at strategy. No trial period yet, so the strategy stays a hypothesis rather than tested ground.
Option 2
2 days
A full strategy, including the pause points that make it a strategy rather than a plan, plus a 30-day challenge as a first real cycle back at work.
Option 3 Flagship
4 days
Everything, including the three-week trial and the day-30 and day-100 check-ins. The only format where a participant lives one complete strategy cycle (set course, head down, look up, adjust) rather than just learning about one.
Every format ends with a personal certificate of completion, useful for a performance review or a LinkedIn profile. Organizations also receive a short summary of what the team built and committed to.
Built for the room,
not the org chart.
Sector-neutral, mid-level. For managers and professionals responsible for customer contact, service, marketing, operations or transformation. Every participant brings a real, current case.
For organizations
Delivered in-house for a single team or business unit, built around your own customer journeys and cases.
Also works as a shared language across a leadership team before a larger transformation effort.
For individuals
Open-enrollment cohorts of 16–24, teams of 4–5, mixed across sectors on purpose. The outside view is part of what makes the mirror work.
Bring one real challenge from your own job. Leave with a tested moment and a strategy you can defend internally.
Designed and
led by me.
I've spent more than two decades designing learning experiences for organizations navigating complexity, from founding DesignThinkers Academy, active in more than twenty five countries, to Future Skills Academy today.
My clients include Under Armour, ING, Bosch, Philips and SAP. I co-authored This Is Service Design Thinking, one of the field's standard references, and I lecture at TU Delft, IE Business School and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
Before you
reach out.
Will my employer pay for this?
Many organizations have a training or professional development budget for exactly this kind of program. If yours doesn't have a formal policy, it's often still worth asking. Most companies approve it case by case once they see what the four days actually produce.
Do I need to be technical, or already fluent in AI tools?
No. The program assumes you already use AI day to day, the same way most professionals do now. It isn't a tools training. The four days are about judgment, trust and customer relationships, not prompting technique.
What do I actually walk away with?
Every participant leaves with their own tested strategy and a certificate of completion. In the 4-day format, that strategy is built around a real moment from your own job that's been prototyped, tested and pressure-tested, not just discussed.
What's the real difference between the formats?
Length changes how far the arc goes, not what it's about. The 1-day format is the mirror and a first pass at strategy. The 2-day format builds a full strategy. Only the 4-day flagship includes the three-week trial back at work, so the strategy gets tested before it's finished.
Can this run in a language other than English?
Yes. The program has been delivered in both English and Dutch. For other languages, reach out to talk about what's possible.
Do you deliver outside the Netherlands?
Yes, this program travels well. My earlier work at DesignThinkers Academy was delivered across more than twenty five countries, and this program is available in-house or at conferences anywhere.