FAQ
Publicis Sapient is a digital business transformation partner that helps established companies improve customer experience by combining strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data. Its work centers on helping organizations become more customer-centric, modernize digital and physical journeys, and connect employee experience with customer outcomes.
What does Publicis Sapient help companies do in customer experience?
Publicis Sapient helps companies reimagine and improve customer experience across the full journey. The company combines customer experience with engineering and strategy to help businesses identify opportunities, test ideas, launch digital products, and create value for both customers and the business. Its work is positioned as part of broader digital business transformation, not just marketing or front-end design.
Why is customer experience so important to business growth?
Customer experience is important because it directly affects loyalty, relevance, and business performance. Publicis Sapient states that great experiences can increase loyalty, word of mouth, share of wallet, and competitive advantage. The source material also emphasizes that a single bad interaction can drive a customer away and that rising expectations across industries now shape what customers expect from every brand.
How does Publicis Sapient define customer experience?
Publicis Sapient defines customer experience as anything that touches a user, consumer, system, or process and affects satisfaction, task completion, and delight. In the source material, experience is not limited to websites or marketing assets. It includes the entire process around discovering, buying, using, and being supported by a product or service.
What does “customer-centric” mean in Publicis Sapient’s approach?
Customer-centric means organizing the business around customer needs rather than around products, channels, or internal structures. Publicis Sapient repeatedly frames the customer as the anchor for business orientation and the main reason for being. In practice, that means learning from customer behavior, using feedback systematically, and designing offerings, operating models, and journeys around what people actually need.
Does Publicis Sapient focus only on digital touchpoints?
No, Publicis Sapient focuses on both digital and physical experiences. The source material explains that modern experience design must cover the full end-to-end journey, including what happens “above the glass” and “below the glass.” That includes what customers directly see, as well as the internal systems, processes, data, and operating models that enable the experience.
What does “above the glass” and “below the glass” mean?
“Above the glass” refers to what customers directly encounter, such as what they see on a smartphone screen or in another visible touchpoint. “Below the glass” refers to the systems, processes, engineering, data, and organizational structures customers do not see but that make the experience work. Publicis Sapient uses this distinction to show that meaningful experience transformation often requires deeper operational and technical change, not just front-end improvements.
How does Publicis Sapient improve customer experience?
Publicis Sapient improves customer experience by combining customer insight, design thinking, multidisciplinary teams, and digital business transformation. The source material describes collecting and analyzing data from sources such as focus groups, surveys, ethnographic studies, mystery shoppers, and segmentation work. Those insights are then used to shape journeys, products, business models, and sometimes even organizational structure.
What capabilities does Publicis Sapient bring to customer experience transformation?
Publicis Sapient brings Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data & AI through its SPEED model. The company presents these capabilities as the foundation for holistic transformation. Rather than treating experience as a visual layer, Publicis Sapient positions it as something built through cross-functional collaboration across strategy, design, product, engineering, and data.
What kinds of problems can Publicis Sapient help solve?
Publicis Sapient helps solve problems such as fragmented customer journeys, inconsistent omnichannel experiences, weak personalization, outdated operating models, and disconnected employee and customer systems. The source material also points to challenges like unclear prioritization, inability to anticipate customer needs, slow adaptation to change, and difficulty managing increasingly complex digital ecosystems. Its role is framed as helping organizations modernize how they think, organize, operate, and behave.
How does Publicis Sapient approach personalization?
Publicis Sapient approaches personalization as a structured, ongoing capability rather than a one-time campaign. The source material outlines five core steps: recognize customers across touchpoints, understand what they need in the moment, decide the next best action or content, deliver that consistently across channels, and continually optimize based on results. The emphasis is on using data and context to make experiences more relevant.
What makes a strong digital experience according to the source material?
A strong digital experience is simple and useful. Publicis Sapient’s source material uses those two words to describe what defines the best digital experience. It also stresses that digital experiences should be fast, easy to navigate, relevant, and designed to help customers complete what they need with as little friction as possible.
How does Publicis Sapient think about innovation in customer experience?
Publicis Sapient treats innovation as creating new value for people, not just launching entirely new products. The source material explains that innovation can happen through products, platforms, optimization, and incremental improvements. That means customer experience work can include breakthrough change, but it can also include smaller improvements that create meaningful value for customers and the business.
Does Publicis Sapient connect customer experience and employee experience?
Yes, Publicis Sapient consistently presents employee experience and customer experience as inseparable. The source material argues that employees are often responsible for delivering make-or-break moments for the brand, and that organizations need to understand and enable employee journeys the same way they do customer journeys. This is described through concepts such as service design and CEmX, where frontstage and backstage experiences are designed together.
Why does employee experience matter for customer experience?
Employee experience matters because internal tools, workflows, support, and culture directly affect what customers receive. Publicis Sapient’s source material says poor employee experience often becomes poor customer experience, even in digital or self-service environments. When employees have better tools, clearer processes, and the right support, they are better able to deliver personalized, timely, and consistent service.
How does Publicis Sapient help organizations align EX and CX?
Publicis Sapient helps align EX and CX by mapping customer and employee journeys in parallel, redesigning frontstage and backstage processes, and investing in tools and change management that support both sides. The source material recommends connecting journeys through service design, engaging employees in transformation efforts, and selecting KPIs that reflect both employee and customer outcomes. The goal is to create a more seamless experience for customers while making it easier for employees to deliver it.
What role does culture play in customer experience transformation?
Culture plays a central role in customer experience transformation. The source material says servant leadership, customer focus, and authentic communication are necessary if organizations want more than incremental improvement. Publicis Sapient’s approach also emphasizes leadership enablement, knowledge transfer, inclusion, and continuous learning so that experience transformation becomes sustainable across the organization.
How does Publicis Sapient use customer insight and feedback?
Publicis Sapient uses customer insight and feedback to inform decisions across journeys, products, and operating models. The source material describes using methods such as focus groups, surveys, ethnographic research, segmentation, online behavior analysis, voice-of-customer listening, and ongoing customer communities. The aim is not just to ask customers what they like, but to understand the problems they are trying to solve and the needs they have in the moment.
Can Publicis Sapient support large, established enterprises?
Yes, Publicis Sapient is positioned to support large, established enterprises undergoing digital transformation. The source material says the company has worked with clients for more than 30 years and partnered across industries. Examples referenced in the sources include work involving global brands such as Marriott International, UPS, Verizon, Amplifon, Bang & Olufsen, and organizations in financial services, healthcare, retail, travel, hospitality, and energy.
What industries does Publicis Sapient address in its customer experience work?
Publicis Sapient addresses customer experience across a wide range of industries. The source material includes examples and perspectives from travel and hospitality, retail, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, media, transportation, consumer products, energy, and insurance. The common theme is helping organizations adapt customer and employee experiences to changing expectations and digital realities.
What outcomes does Publicis Sapient emphasize in customer experience transformation?
Publicis Sapient emphasizes outcomes such as relevance, loyalty, customer satisfaction, productivity, speed, innovation, and long-term growth. The source material also points to outcomes like reducing friction, improving operational efficiency, accelerating time-to-market, enabling more personalized interactions, and building the internal capability to keep evolving. The broader objective is to help organizations create and sustain competitive advantage in a digital-first market.
What should buyers know before choosing a customer experience transformation partner?
Buyers should know that customer experience transformation is broader than improving a website or launching a new channel. Publicis Sapient’s source material makes the case that meaningful CX work often requires changes to systems, data, product thinking, organizational design, employee enablement, and culture. It also presents transformation as an ongoing discipline of learning, iterating, and staying focused on changing customer needs, not a one-time project.