Reinventing Customer Delight, Service Strategy & Tech Trends | DisrupTV Ep. 44

In DisrupTV Episode 44, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar sit down with:

  • Mike Quindazzi, Managing Director at PwC
  • Patricia O’Connell, author of Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy and the Art of Customer Delight
  • Larry Dignan, Editor-in-Chief at ZDNet

This episode explores how organizations can design exceptional service, anticipate disruption in technology and media, and align strategy with evolving customer expectations. 

Together, the guests bring perspectives from consulting, customer experience, and media to illuminate what it means to stay relevant in the face of rapid change.

Key Takeaways

Service as Differentiator, Not Afterthought
Patricia O’Connell argues that many companies separate “service” from core strategy. Instead, making service a central design principle can create sustainable competitive advantage.

Experience Design Drives Loyalty
Delight and surprise matter. O’Connell suggests weaving emotional connection into service interactions—with consistency across channels.

Technology & Media Disrupt Customer Touchpoints
Larry Dignan provides insights on how shifts in media, platform power, and content distribution are redefining how customers engage and how brands must respond.

Strategy in an Age of Unpredictability
Mike Quindazzi emphasizes that strategic frameworks must be flexible—able to evolve as market dynamics shift, especially in technology-driven industries.

Alignment Between Strategy, Culture & Execution
Across guests, there is a shared theme: ideas and strategies fail without cultural alignment and execution discipline.

Final Thoughts

This episode reinforces a core truth: in a world of technological flux, service and customer experience are among the few levers organizations can control and differentiate on. But service must be embedded into the very DNA of strategy—not tacked on later.

Patricia O’Connell’s emphasis on deliberate experience design, Quindazzi’s call for flexible strategic models, and Dignan’s media-savvy perspective together form a blueprint: delight your customers, but build for change.

Leaders should focus less on predicting disruption and more on building resilient capabilities, aligning culture with service-first mindsets, and allowing strategy to evolve.

Related Episodes

 

Business Research Themes

Future of Work, Next-Generation Customer Experience, Tech Optimization

Roles

Chief Customer Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Technology Officer