Amanda Stevens’ message is deceptively simple: customer experience is the growth strategy.
Not advertising. Not discounts. Not “working harder.”
Growth comes from becoming so radically customer obsessed that you stop designing from your assumptions and start building from their reality.
But most organizations don’t fail because they don’t care. They fail because customer care lives in people’s heads, not in the system. It’s inconsistent. It varies by team member. It disappears when someone is busy, away, new, or when the business scales.
That’s where process management becomes your competitive advantage.
If you can map the customer experience journey — and then turn it into activated workflows inside Way We Do — you can deliver “Omotenashi” (service without expectation) consistently, with humans and AI Agents working together so nothing gets dropped, forgotten, or skipped.
Amanda gave us the philosophy. Let’s turn it into an operating system.
The shift: stop living in your world, start living in theirs
Amanda went to an Apple Store one day to buy a specific adapter for her new MacBook (as many Apple customers know, a new device often means a new set of adapters). She walked in, and within seconds a staff member in a bright shirt bounded over — enthusiastic, energetic, ready to help.
On the surface, this is “great service.”
He asked what she needed, and as she began explaining, he cut her off mid-sentence:
“I know exactly what you need. Come with me.”
In about 2.4 seconds, he grabbed the correct adapter off the wall. Problem solved.
But Amanda walked out feeling like she’d had a negative customer experience.
Not because the product was wrong — it was right — but because she didn’t feel listened to. The staff member was living in his world: “I solved it fast.” She was living in her world: “I wasn’t heard.”
Amanda explained that if, during that same 2.4 seconds, the staff member stayed curious — “What do you need it for?” “Are you presenting?” “Where are you using it?” — Amanda would have felt understood and potentially been served better (maybe she needed a second adapter too). Curiosity turns efficiency into experience.
Process translation: your customer experience needs “curiosity checkpoints” — built-in prompts and questions — so your team (and AI Agents) don’t skip the human part in the rush to solve.
Omotenashi as a standard, not a personality trait
If you’ve travelled in Japan, you’ll often notice the service feels different — not “salesy,” not forced, not transactional. It’s attentive, respectful, and anticipatory.
Amanda introduced the Japanese concept of Omotenashi — service given wholeheartedly, without expecting anything in return. Not “servant,” but “of service.” A genuine commitment to looking after people.
Many businesses try to hire for this. Or hope it shows up through “good culture.”
But the organizations that scale it do something else:
They operationalize it.
They decide what “being of service” looks like at each point in the customer journey… then they build it into the way work gets done.
That’s the bridge between customer obsession and process.
Process translation: Omotenashi can’t be a poster on the wall. It has to be embedded in how work is done — role-by-role, step-by-step — so it survives growth, change, and busy periods.
The 5 Cs: a customer journey blueprint you can actually systemize
Amanda’s five “C” thought-starters are a ready-made structure for mapping your customer experience journey.
1) Curiosity: bake better questions into the workflow
Curiosity is the difference between “I can fix it” and “Tell me more.” It’s also how you find what customers aren’t saying — the friction, the fear, the unstated priorities.
Process translation: create “Curiosity checkpoints” in your workflows.
In Way We Do, you can embed:
- required discovery questions (so nobody skips them)
- prompts that force the team to stay in the customer’s frame
- branching steps (“If customer says X, follow path A / if Y, follow path B”)
- AI Agent assistance to suggest follow-up questions based on the customer’s context (human-in-the-loop, always)
This is also where you uncover your “KitKat questions” — the small questions you’re not asking because rejection feels awkward, even though the upside is enormous.
A simple operational rule:
Every workflow that touches a customer should include at least one designed question that creates value.
2) Commonality: build trust by finding “magnetic threads”
Amanda shares a story of NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, who led a divided space mission by starting with what her crew had in common, even when it was uncomfortable. By finding those shared “magnetic threads,” she rebuilt trust and communication — showing that commonality is often the fastest path to connection and safety.
Magnetic threads are powerful: people feel safe when they find shared ground. Safety becomes trust. Trust becomes advocacy.
Process translation: standardize how you create safety.
In your customer journey map, identify moments where trust is fragile:
- first enquiry
- first meeting
- first invoice
- onboarding
- handover to support
- handling complaints
Then embed steps like:
- “Confirm what matters most to the customer (in their words)”
- “Reflect back what you heard before offering solutions”
- “Capture personal context that’s appropriate and useful (preferences, constraints, triggers)”
- “Create a customer ‘definition of done’ before delivery begins”
Way We Do becomes your “trust infrastructure” — the workflow ensures every team member builds confidence the same way.
3) Customization: create micro-moments that customers talk about
The Adelphi Hotel’s mirror message is an eight-second, high-touch moment. At the Adelphi Hotel in Melbourne, guests don’t just see a generic welcome on the TV — they find a short, handwritten message on the bathroom mirror, written specifically for them. It’s a simple, low-cost gesture that instantly makes the stay feel personal and gives guests something memorable to talk about.
During the same stay, Amanda casually mentioned to staff that her son Ollie loved penguins and that she planned to take him to the aquarium. When they returned to their room later, they found a children’s book about penguins and a plush penguin waiting on the bed — a simple, thoughtful gesture that turned into a story she’s shared countless times and a perfect example of how small, intentional moments create lasting customer advocacy.
You don’t need to do grand gestures for everyone. You need repeatable micro-customization.
Process translation: design “moments of delight” that are realistic and scalable.
In Way We Do, you can:
- define 3–5 “micro-moments” for key customer segments
- set them as optional-but-encouraged steps
- assign them to roles (so it’s not dependent on one thoughtful person)
- trigger them automatically based on customer type, lifecycle stage, or sentiment signals
And yes — AI Agents can help here:
- draft a personalized message based on CRM notes
- suggest an add-on relevant to the customer’s goal
- prompt the team when a customer milestone is coming up
But the workflow decides when and how it happens. AI accelerates; process ensures it’s on-brand and consistent.
4) Celebration: make a big deal about your customers
Qantas celebrating Amanda’s son Ollie’s 100th flight is exactly the kind of moment that creates emotional loyalty. They noticed a simple Instagram post by Amanda about her son Ollie taking his 100th flight and surprised him by inviting him into the cockpit after landing to celebrate the milestone. It was an unnecessary but unforgettable gesture that made the customer feel seen — and turned a routine flight into a story told for years.
Celebration signals: we see you.
Process translation: turn customer milestones into a routine.
Most businesses celebrate internally (sales targets, launches). Few celebrate customers with the same energy.
Add a “customer celebration layer” to your journey map:
- first purchase / first renewal
- onboarding completion
- 90-day success milestone
- customer contribution (referral, testimonial, feedback)
- anniversary moments
Then build workflows that:
- detect the moment (via integrations)
- assign the action to the right role
- provide approved templates + options
- track completion (so celebration doesn’t rely on memory)
This is how advocacy becomes cumulative. A few consistent celebrations beat a rare grand gesture.
5) Ceremony: improve the experience by improving the meaning
Amanda explained that the same tea, served after a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, is rated as tasting better than when served normally — even though nothing about the tea itself has changed. The ritual creates meaning and presence, proving that ceremony can fundamentally elevate how an experience is perceived.
The tea ceremony story is the mic-drop: the same tea tastes better after ceremony. The ritual changes perception.
Customers don’t just buy outcomes — they experience your delivery.
Process translation: create intentional rituals in your service delivery.
Rituals could be:
- a structured welcome sequence
- a “first 10 minutes” meeting format that builds trust
- a consistent handover ritual from sales to delivery
- a clean closing ceremony: recap, proof of value, next steps, feedback loop
Way We Do helps you keep ceremony consistent:
- steps, scripts, templates, and checks
- quality gates (don’t move forward until the ritual is complete)
- audit trails (so leaders can see what’s actually happening)
Ceremony is where you stop being “another provider” and start becoming the experience customers remember.
“Pick up the seaweed”: quality is the work you think nobody notices
That final story — a senior staff member picking up tiny clumps of seaweed — is the operational definition of excellence.
Customers often don’t consciously notice the seaweed.
They do feel the difference.
Process translation: decide what “seaweed” exists in your business, then standardize it.
Examples of “seaweed”:
- follow-ups that are always on time
- proactive updates before the customer has to ask
- clean, consistent documentation
- handovers that don’t leak information
- promises that are tracked, not hoped for
- issues escalated early, not late
- onboarding that doesn’t depend on one hero employee
In Way We Do, you can build seaweed-pickup into:
- checklists and workflows
- QA steps and sign-offs
- role-based accountability
- revision schedules (so “seaweed” standards don’t degrade over time)
This is how you win the battle for relevance — not by being louder, but by being reliably better.
How to map your customer experience journey in Way We Do
Here’s a practical way to turn Amanda’s insights into a working system:
- List your key customer journeys
(e.g., Enquiry → Sale → Onboarding → Delivery → Support → Renewal) - Map touchpoints and moments that matter
Where do customers feel uncertain? Where do they decide if they trust you? - Overlay the 5 Cs on each touchpoint
- Curiosity: what must we ask?
- Commonality: how do we build safety and trust?
- Customisation: what micro-moment could delight?
- Celebration: what should we acknowledge?
- Ceremony: what ritual makes this feel premium and intentional?
- Turn the map into activated workflows
Build each stage as a workflow with:- clear roles and responsibilities
- embedded templates/scripts
- integrations for triggers and data capture
- human-in-the-loop steps where judgement matters
- AI Agent tasks where speed and drafting help (but approvals stay human)
- Measure the experience, not just the output
Use consistent checkpoints (customer sentiment, time-to-first-value, renewal risk signals), and review the workflows like you’d review any critical system.
Radical customer obsession becomes real when it becomes repeatable
Amanda’s talk wasn’t a call to “try harder.” It was a call to design.
The organizations that grow through changing times aren’t guessing what customers want. They’re continuously learning — and then encoding that learning into the way work gets done.
That’s the win:
- Your best customer experience isn’t delivered by your best person on their best day.
- It’s delivered because the system makes it easy to do the right thing, every time.
- And because your humans and AI Agents are supported by workflows that don’t miss a beat.
Your next step: identify one journey (onboarding is a great start) and choose one “seaweed” standard you’ll commit to picking up — then build it into a Way We Do workflow so it’s automatic, accountable, and consistent.
