Marketing and growth leaders’ agenda

The new mandate for data-driven marketing and growth leaders: frictionless, personalized experiences to anticipate and deliver what customers need.

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Laurence Buchanan 19 Jun 2026

Companies have a new mandate around the customer journey and rapid acceleration of digital transformation. You need the right growth strategy and the right customer experience now, next and beyond. Here are three priorities:

Reimagine and redesign your growth strategy by establishing a future-back vision around customer-centric growth, enabling your business to optimize customer lifetime value focus and invest in the most valuable customers and customer touchpoints including considerations on organic growth, M&A, geographic expansion and segmentation.
Empowered to shop wherever and however they want, customer preferences around the world are increasingly evolving e.g. toward products and services that are local, authentic, transparent, traceable, and ethical. This is forcing brands to continuously re-imagine and optimize their offering strategy and portfolio, and even develop and implement new business models and concepts, both in the current core functions or in peripheral functions to meet the evolving needs of consumers now, next and beyond.
Building a strong understanding of customer needs, behavior, emotions and satisfaction and being able to quickly translate these insights through effective use of data and technology into business actions on all levels of operations and realize smart customer journeys that increase acquisition, retention, and growth is an important value driver in this time of disruption. This includes:

Implementing customer experience (CX) measurement models and understanding customer engagement with novel methods that complement traditional ones such as net promoter scores (NPS) and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT).
Using “design thinking”, automated orchestration of customer journeys, and personalization to deliver the best and most relevant experiences that are closely connected to customer needs.
Designing and implementing customer-centric operating models and CX technology stacks using scaled, agile frameworks and methods.
Shifting the business model and customer experience to digital and direct to consumer (eCommerce)

To realize a customer data-driven strategy that drives value and operational efficiency, growth leaders need to look beyond just braving the headwinds of technological debt to:

Growth and customer leaders need a significantly larger budget to pay for an effective data-driven strategy and customer experience, and they need to make stronger business cases and forecast return on investment (ROI) in a way that is satisfactory for the chief financial officer (CFO). 61% of marketing leaders in a recent EY survey said that they wanted to increase their spending in data and analytics.

This includes:

Quantifying the right way to measure ROI
Focusing on customer lifetime value
Driving financial performance through smart and effective pricing
Balancing short- and long-term investments and better leveraging existing investments
The new market realities and evolving growth strategies are forcing marketing, sales and customer care leaders to re-evaluate how they think about their respective functions and how they need to work to drive top- and bottom-line results. Commercial excellence addresses such key issues as:

Landing on the most efficient, effective and agile operating model, including inhouse/outsource strategies
Structuring and incentivizing organizations correctly to drive effectiveness, productivity and cross functional collaboration, and developing the right skills and talent
Identifying the right ecosystem of technologies to support the front lines, such as market intelligence, performance management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), CPQ, CRM
Optimizing sales channels across field, inside, and digital sales
Using customer care to drive revenue through better upsell/cross-sell

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In the latest edition of Human Signals, we reveal how understanding biases for human interaction can shape the future of customer service. Discover insights on co-creating AI models that address consumer empathy demands, like transparency and control, when stakes are high.

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Women is working in laptop

Laurence Buchanan

EY Studio+ Global Leader

Helping clients navigate the transformation age through human-centered design and digital transformation.

London, United Kingdom

Duncan Avis

EY Studio+ Americas Leader; EY Studio+ Global Marketing Transformation Solution Leader

Trusted advisor, helping executives through complex transformations. Focused on value and outcomes balanced with the need to build the right culture for sustainable success.

Tysons, VA, United States

Helen Bentley

EY Studio+ Global Digital Strategy, Innovation and Experience Leader

Driver of digital transformation and innovation. Creative and strategic thinker. Neurodiversity champion. Adventure sports and improvisational comedy enthusiast.

London, United Kingdom

Lisa Lindström

EY Nordics Business Reinvention Leader

Co-founder of Doberman, now part of EY Studio+. Known for unorthodox methods for design, digitalization, customer experience, and innovation. A true change-maker.

Stockholm, Sweden

Fabio Dotti

EY EMEIA Business Transformation Leader

Basketball and sports lover. Modern art collector. Traveler.

EY Studio+ helps organizations build differentiated experiences that adapt with customers and drive sustainable long-term value. Read more on studio.ey.com.
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