Small Moments, Big Shifts: Growing Through Experience

Amid shifting consumer behaviors and rising expectations, learn how to reset your customer experience strategy for long-term growth using refreshed research from PwC as your guide. Get insights on the power of empathy, technology, and trust in every customer interaction.

Key takeaways

• CX measurement must be holistic: Focusing on isolated touchpoints can be misleading. Leading brands measure the entire customer journey and the emotional shifts within it to understand what truly drives behavior.

• Technology can scale empathy, not replace it: AI and other technologies can help brands understand and act on customer feedback at scale, but they must be grounded in an understanding of human needs and emotions.

• Exceptional experiences drive tangible business outcomes: Customers who have an exceptional experience are significantly more likely to recommend a brand, try new products, and remain loyal.

Brands today are at a critical inflection point. Shifting customer behaviors, weakening U.S. consumer sentiment, rising tariffs, and inflation concerns are putting new pressure on organizations to rethink how they show up for customers. At the same time, expectations are rising, attention spans are shorter, and loyalty is harder to earn. For many organizations, this is a natural moment to pause: to reflect on what’s working, recalibrate where needed, and reset customer experience (CX) strategies to drive long-term growth.

To explore how leading organizations are adapting, Medallia spoke with Lauren Pleydell-Pearce, Chief Creative Officer at PwC, and Connie Leary, VP of Experience Advisory at Medallia. Their perspectives highlight a powerful truth: growth can be achieved by the small, intentional moments that build trust and loyalty. Here’s their guidance on how brands can put this into action moving forward.

Growth Starts in the Small Moments

Growth can start with getting the basics right and anticipating customer needs so interactions feel effortless and reliable. Medallia’s Connie Leary explains that trust is built in small moments like “getting an order right, an agent being super empathetic, or following up even when you didn’t have to, just showing you were paying attention.” But, she adds that emotional connection is what truly tips the scale: a moment that feels human, personal, and surprisingly thoughtful.

PwC’s refreshed Growth Through Experience research, based on feedback from 3,400 UK consumers across four industries, underscores the power of these micro-moments. As PwC’s Lauren Pleydell-Pearce notes, “Trustworthy experiences are among the strongest predictors of growth, with more impact than product or price across every sector.” When brands consistently deliver these small, thoughtful moments, they earn trust and create lasting loyalty.

Empathy as the Engine for Advocacy

But getting the small moments right requires intentional design. Exceptional brands don’t just respond: they anticipate, empower, and empathize. These brands create thoughtful systems that ”make things easy at key touchpoints, empower your team to act, and close the loop when customers give feedback. It’s about making it easy to get help and even easier to stay loyal,” explains Leary. But to truly elevate experiences—especially as customers tighten their purse strings and expectations rise—brands must create emotional experiences that resonate at every interaction.

The brands that win loyalty do so consistently, showing up the right way, every time. Empathy can make the difference between a one-time interaction and a lasting relationship. Pleydell-Pearce emphasizes that customers remain loyal not because they were delighted, but because they were understood:

“Loyalty is shaped in the moments that go wrong…or nearly do. A complaint. A refund. A missed delivery. These are the points where trust is tested. What matters most is not speed or polish, but how the brand shows up emotionally. Was it supportive? Did it feel clear? Was it handled in a way that felt human? These are the signals people remember.”
– Lauren Pleydell-Pearce

These moments of recovery, when handled empathetically, don’t just resolve issues. They deepen trust and create advocates.

Shifts in emotion—from tension to resolution—are key to why customers stay. As Leary explains, “Customers stay because it feels good to stay. That means clear communication, helpful people, intuitive design, and personalization that makes things easier or more enjoyable.” Brands that capture these emotional signals across channels and act on them proactively demonstrate genuine understanding, creating seamless, empathetic experiences that turn customers into loyal, lifelong advocates.

Technology as a Catalyst for Scaling Empathy

Technology can be a powerful tool for creating personalized, proactive experiences. AI-powered customer feedback platforms can capture signals across channels, helping brands understand what customers are experiencing, identify friction points, and anticipate needs—not just repeat what was needed in the past. As Leary explains, “AI can support this by making sense of unstructured feedback, flagging high-effort experiences, triggering proactive outreach, and tailoring interactions based on context.”

But technology alone isn’t enough. Customer feelings must be embedded in CX design and delivery—it can’t be an afterthought or a one-off thoughtful gesture. Leary and Pleydell-Pearce agree that emotional logic must underpin how technology responds to real human needs. Pleydell-Pearce notes, “When journeys are designed to feel supportive, emotionally driven, and human, they build far more trust—particularly in moments of vulnerability or strain. This kind of empathy doesn’t need to slow you down or be expensive, but it does need to be deliberately embedded.”

Empathetic experiences can be simple: the wording of an error message, how a complaint is handled, or targeted personalization grounded in context. The key ingredients are the right data and clear guidelines for action. When these are in place, brands can create meaningful impact, especially at the frontline. 

“When frontline teams have the right data, clear guidelines, and the ability to recover a situation, they can make a real impact. Brands must also commit to closing the loop with customers to show they were heard. Empathy at scale isn’t about scripted responses—it’s about using insight to deliver experiences that feel thoughtful, responsive, and human, even in a digital environment.”
– Connie Leary

Focusing solely on speed and efficiency can strip experiences of feeling. Without that emotional resonance, customers are less likely to remember interactions—and less likely to return.

CX Is More Than a Single Moment

Traditional CX measurement often focuses on isolated touchpoints, but Leary warns that this approach can be misleading. For instance, a customer might rate a support agent interaction highly, but that rating doesn’t reflect the frustration of having to call multiple times to resolve an issue. She explains, “research shows that while individual touchpoints often receive strong ratings, journey satisfaction tends to be 20 to 30 percent lower. That gap matters. Customers do not think in channels or moments—they remember how the entire experience made them feel.”

Customer journeys—and emotions—are rarely linear. People engage with brands across time and channels, and it’s essential to understand where experiences strain and where they succeed. Leading brands measure the entirety of the journey, capturing emotional evolution—the highs and lows, the frustration and relief, and all the subtle shifts in between. Pleydell-Pearce highlights that the emotional shifts along a journey are what customers remember and what ultimately drives behavior. Measuring feelings at the start, middle, and end of the journey helps brands uncover this deeper story.

“Satisfaction is static. But it’s emotional movement that creates advocacy.”
– Lauren Pleydell-Pearce

When brands view the full journey, they can better identify the moments that drive key outcomes such as churn, loyalty, and conversion. Without this holistic perspective, businesses risk prioritizing the wrong touchpoints, missing the opportunities that truly matter to customers.

The Business Impact of Trust

Exceptional experiences drive tangible outcomes. PwC’s research found that customers who described an experience as exceptional were:

• 15x more likely to recommend it
• 8x more likely to try something new
• 6x more likely to stay loyal or return

“When people trust you, they forgive more easily and come back with confidence.”
– Lauren Pleydell-Pearce

Trust and customer satisfaction often go hand in hand, driving lower churn, more repeat purchases, and higher customer lifetime value.

The benefits extend beyond measurable outcomes. Trust also creates a sense of safety, allowing customers to engage with confidence because they know what to expect. Pleydell-Pearce explains, “When people trust you, they move forward with less effort. They forgive more easily, and they come back with confidence.”

Leary adds that this trust acts as a buffer when things go wrong: “When customers trust you, they’ll cut you some slack.”

In a world where expectations are higher than ever, building a trust “safety net” is an intangible but powerful advantage that brands cannot afford to overlook.

Thoughts for Today, Tactics for Tomorrow

Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. But meaningful progress starts with intentional steps. Pleydell-Pearce and Leary offered some recommended next steps to differentiate:

1. Audit your journey: Review the feedback you have across channels to identify friction points, unnecessary steps, and gaps in trust—those invisible moments where customers hesitate or abandon a purchase. Consider the emotional arc across the journey: how did customers feel at the start, middle, and end? Which signals create lasting memory?
2. Tackle the quick wins: Address unnecessary steps, reduce confusion, and smooth points of friction across the journey. Small fixes often deliver outsized impact.
3. Design systems for emotion: Embed emotional intelligence into your CX systems. Personalize in ways that are genuinely helpful, scale training for your teams on empathetic responses, and design digital experiences that anticipate customer needs.
4. Close the loop: Acknowledge feedback, act on it, and show customers that you understand the moment they are in. Closing the loop builds trust and reinforces loyalty.

As Pleydell-Pearce and Leary emphasize, growth isn’t about doing more or spending more—it’s about feeling more: listening deeply, responding proactively, and embedding empathy into every interaction. For brands, the real opportunity lies in continuously refreshing CX strategies and focusing on the experiences that matter most—building trust, loyalty, and long-term growth, one memorable moment at a time.