Blog post
June 24, 2019

Experiences are the new differentiators

Optimise your customers’ journey across all touchpoints to achieve a holistic and customer-centric experience

Customers now have a powerful voice in sharing their experiences and with it, comes an expectation for actions to take place as a result of their feedback. In our digital world, customer data is nearly limitless – but people are much more than data. Their lives are defined by driving wants, needs and desires with an endless amount of choice and more often than not, brands believe they are delivering a better experience to these people than they actually are.

For those brands or organisations that choose to close the experience gap and embrace maximising the customer experience (CX), are finding themselves in a race to the top. By understanding what drives your customers’ decisions and the other influences that are out there, you can improve overall business growth and success over your competitors by making decisions based on customer intelligence.

Optimising the customer experience

A customer’s feedback has the power to transform your organisation through innovation and by improving their overall experience it can reduce customer churn. No matter where your organisation is in terms of CX maturity or customer feedback management, it is important to have access to customer insights in order to implement strategies to retain them. 

Here are 3 steps to maximising the customer experience:

1.       Illustrate the customer journey

The customer experience is made up of many customer journeys – the path customers take to solve a problem or need. The better experience your customers have with your brand or service, the more engaged they become, and the more opportunities become available. Having a great customer experience can also promote customer loyalty and as long you continuously optimise every element along their journey you will have satisfied customers.

Understanding the steps of your customers journey through various touchpoints, engagements and interactions with your brand will help to properly target your customers and understand their requirements and their pain points. Divide the customer journey into phases and pay close attention to each component by measuring the outcomes, collecting feedback and applying this feedback where possible. This will maximise customer success.

2.       Drive value from experience data

Looking at both quantitative and qualitative approaches across various facets of your business must be considered to give a complete picture of your customer data. Looking at one source will only give an incomplete representation.

Customer experience is more than sending surveys and collecting feedback – having this information is important but it’s also about enriching and humanising the experience and using these unique experiences to create a positive customer centric culture. Sharing insights and developing processes to improve the customer experience and create business value allows the best experience possible. It also generates the maximum return on your efforts. Obtaining this information can be done through swapping knowledge between cross functional groups by identifying where there are gaps as well as what’s working well. A team dashboard can also be created that specifically looks at different touchpoints and their success. Whatever data you do gather, turn it into actionable insights that directly improve your customers ‘experience.

3.       Learn from churn when it happens

Reducing customer churn is always sought after, however is quite difficult to achieve. Churn happens from poor experiences (both operational and strategic) and can have a drastic effect on your bottom line but it can also be helpful and insightful for your brand to learn and improve. For the customers you’re not able to prevent from churning, be sure to find out why they decided to move on. Conduct a short exit interview with the customer to understand their experiences and their pain points and take this knowledge to make improvements.

Fundamentally, it’s important to ensure a positive customer experience to encourage your customers to build brand loyalty. Customers hold the power in today’s business landscape which is why seeking feedback on their experiences is valuable to your brand or organisations’ performance and reputation.

Happy customer, happy life.

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It’s a familiar scene: friends and family are meeting up for brunch. The coffee is hot, the avocado is smashed and at least one brunch-goer is reaching for the Panadol while avoiding questions about where they ended up last night. And when the food arrives? Everyone waits; not eating until the moment has been captured and posted to Instagram.

Founded in 2010, Instagram has 800 million monthly users worldwide. In the past eight years more than 270 million pictures of food have been posted to Instagram. The influence that Instagram has had on the restaurant industry has been immense. We’re now in an age where food and beverages can go viral, not just tweets and videos. Instagram is a visual medium, and this focus on aesthetics has changed the way we eat when we’re dining out. Photogenic foods have spiked in popularity, and the food that we eat has become brighter and more decorative. At breakfast time, muesli is out and smoothie bowls are in, and the toast has to be topped with avocado.

Its commonplace for menus to now include at least one Instagrammable dish but the food itself is just one part of making a #foodstagram pop. The lighting, the crockery and the tabletop also need to be on point. Social media isn’t just changing the way we eat – it’s also influencing interior design trends. Take it from Teddy Robinson, a creative director for London café-bar chain Grind. “Last year we replaced every table in the company with white marble, just because it looks good on Instagram,” he said. This might seem extreme if you think of this phenomenon as just pictures of food, but Instagram is more than that – it’s become the way that people (particularly millennials) choose where they eat. How Instagrammable a restaurant is can flow directly to the restaurant’s bottom line.

Not every successful restaurant or café needs to be doing Instagram well – but the ones that are have something in common. Emily Arden Wells, the Co-Owner of New York architecture firm Move Matter, often works on the fit out of new restaurants in Manhattan noting that Instagrammability is now being considered from a new restaurant’s blueprint stage. Venues that are succeeding on Instagram have moved mobile and social into the very heart of their supply chain – and they’re taking their millennial customers seriously. Their customers and their devices are considered before the tables are bought, before the menus are designed and before we tell the veggie shop how many avocados we need for Saturday morning.  If successful restaurants have social and millennials at the heart of their supply chain, what does that mean for news outlets?

Devices are already changing the way that we access news. Data from the Pew Research Center in 2017 shows that 85% of adults in the United States access news on their mobile device, at least some of the time. Not surprisingly, this is a trend that is growing – this is an increase on 72% from 2016 and 54% in 2013. Social media usage is also changing the way that news is distributed, with sites like Facebook and Twitter acting as the new gateways to news channels. Analysis of online news traffic backs this up, with Australian outlet ABC News Online sharing figures that compare visits to the homepage, and visits to news articles. Traffic to the homepage is on the decline but eyeballs on articles are increasing, as people discover news content on their Facebook timeline.

Some news outlets are already using devices and social to their advantage. When you log on to the Snapchat Discover page you’ll see outlets like the Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and Buzzfeed talking direct to millennials. (At the time of writing, I almost got distracted by a Buzzfeed quiz titled “Pick a donut and we’ll tell u what your friends love + hate about u”). As you scroll down the Discover page you’ll notice more highbrow content – the power of the Snapchat Discover page is not to be underestimated. The Economist received more traffic in its first month on Snapchat Discover than it received in the preceding 12 months to economist.com.

The future isn’t just mobile – there are other, more modern utilities and methods of news delivery already available. If mobile technology can revolutionise the food industry, there’s immense potential for wearable and hearable technology to disrupt the media landscape. Hearable technology and Conversational UI is already delivering news information via Alexa and Google Home – as our virtual personal assistants get to know us better, does this mean they can deliver us even more relevant, timely information? Spotify and Netflix have already acclimatised us to the micropayment economy and people are increasingly happy to pay small amounts more frequently for quality and convenience. Rather than paywalls and digital subscriptions, would I pay for an alert on a traffic incident that meant I wouldn’t be late to birthday party?

There’s a lot of buzz around ideas like Spotify for News, News-flix and ideas that tie to the end of ownership and to micro-payments. The most buzz has been around a Dutch service called Blendle which claims half a million registered users in Europe and is now looking at the US. Most items on Blendle, which come from lots of different outlets, cost between 10 cents and 90 cents and come with a money-back guarantee: you only pay for stories you actually read – and if you then don’t like them, you can ask for your money back.

I don’t have all the answers but it’s important that we’re thinking about this. How can we prepare for continuous change in the news and content industries? The future is already here, we just need to harness it.

Ally Garrett, CX Director at Isentia
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Blog
How food could influence the way we access news

The influence that Instagram has had on the restaurant industry has been immense. We’re now in an age where food and beverages can go viral, not just tweets and videos.

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In a post-AI world where misinformation spreads faster than facts, trust in leadership has hit an all-time low. According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, we are witnessing a steep decline in how much the public trusts CEOs and institutions. So, how do leaders rebuild that capital?

In a recent webinar hosted by Isentia, we explored the critical role of authenticity as the pathway to trust. Moderated by Paik San, Head of Insights (Malaysia & Emerging Markets) at Isentia, the panel featured Kim Dy, Head of Brand & Communications for UnionDigital Bank, and Malathi Pillay, Director of Brand Equity & Communications at Malaysia Rapid Transit Corporation Sdn Bhd. Together with Isentia’s Prashant Saxena, VP, Revenue and Insights, SEA they unpacked how brands can navigate a low-trust environment by being human, consistent, and genuinely empathetic.

Here are the key takeaways from the discussion.

1. Authenticity is currency and trust is wealth

Prashant Saxena kicked off the session by grounding the abstract concept of trust in a practical framework. He noted that while trust is the ultimate "wealth" a brand possesses—protecting it during crises, authenticity is the daily "currency" one must invest to build that wealth.

Isentia’s data suggests that many leaders suffer from an "Authenticity signal poverty"—posting content that lacks social proof, information credibility, or cultural fit. To combat this, communication must rely on the "Three Ps":

  • Proof: Is the information accurate and verifiable?
  • Place: Does it resonate culturally with the specific audience?
  • People: Is there endorsed trustworthiness?

2. During a crisis, "glossy" narratives fail

One of the most powerful insights came from Malathi Pillay at MRT Corp, who manages the reputation of massive public infrastructure projects, emphasized that trust isn't built in big moments, but through the consistency of day-to-day behavior. Her advice for staying authentic is to avoid the trap of "motherhood statements", words that don't really resonate with the common audiences.

She explained that stating a vision like "transforming mobility" is often lost on the audience. To make the brand promise authenticity, one must provide context.

"We always try to support our messaging with specific examples... We talk about that university student that lives in Kajang, who is now able to get to his university in Kota Damansara in one smooth ride within 45 minutes." — Malathi Pillay.

By grounding the narrative in specific, relatable human benefits, like saving time or creating local jobs, brands can bridge the gap between corporate goals and public reality. She also mentions how misinformation does not always have to be dealt with bold statements. Quiet corrections also go a long way in maintaining consistency in our media comms.

3. The "human compass" in tech and banking

Kim Dy from UnionDigital Bank addressed the challenge of humanising a traditionally cold and intimidating industry: banking. For a digital bank where customers may never speak to a human, the brand voice must do the heavy lifting.

Kim introduced the idea of a "human compass"—a framework ensuring every notification, app interface, and social post is helpful, clear, and optimistic.

"People trust people, not logos. Authenticity means speaking the language of your customers, and staying away from jargon in an industry that is unwelcoming and very intimidating." — Kim Dy

She shared a real-world example where a deepfake of a brand ambassador surfaced promoting gambling. Instead of hiding, the bank acted with speed and transparency, proving that trust isn't built in good times alone, but is earned by how you face problems head-on and when audiences actually see the steps taken to better the brand's reputation and earn back trust.

Both panelists agreed that the role of a leader has shifted. In the past, authority meant firmness. Today, authority requires empathy.

  • From the public Sector: Malathi noted that when leaders address concerns (like project costs), they must validate the public's anxiety first before diving into technical explanations. "Empathy must always come before explanation," she advised.
  • From the private Sector: Kim argued that authority doesn't mean being the loudest voice; it means being the most responsible one. She encourages leaders to move away from corporate scripts and share personal reflections to cut through the noise.

4. Balancing AI speed with human sincerity

As the panel concluded, the conversation turned to the role of AI.

Prashant highlighted a "speed vs. sincerity" dilemma facing modern communicators. His solution was to let data provide the authority, but let leadership provide the empathy. Malathi added that while AI is a tool we all use, leaders must have the discipline not to let it replace human judgment.

In her closing remarks, Paik San summarises that the secret to building lasting trust is coherence. It is the alignment of what you say, what you do, and how you make your audience feel over time.

Whether you are managing a digital bank or the infrastructural capabilities of public transport, the rules of engagement have changed. In a noisy world, the most cutting-edge strategy a leader can employ is simply being human.


Interested in viewing the whole recording? Watch our webinar here.

Alternatively contact our team to learn more insights into authenticity, leadership and why trust is on a decline.

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Webinar: how can leaders rebuild eroding public trust through authentic communication?

The webinar explores how leaders can rebuild eroding public trust by treating authenticity as currency through transparent communication.

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Ngaire Crawford, Director of Insights, ANZ

In leadership meetings across the industry, a single question has become unavoidable: "What is our AI strategy?" Behind this question is often the unspoken hope for an "AI Easy Button": a mythical, one-click solution to our most complex measurement challenges. As someone who spends a large portion of my time designing these new frameworks, I'm infinitely more excited about the blueprints and the foundations than what colour the house is painted.

For the first time in my career, we have the tools to stop using proxies and start building what we've always wanted: true, at-scale, sophisticated measurement. The real opportunity isn't in automation, which lets the AI decide;  it's in the architecture and design of systems for the AI to follow. For decades, I’ve been frustrated by proxies. I’ve watched organisations use metrics like Impressions and Share of Voice as proxies for impact and influence. Too many people have been measuring the loudness of their voice, not whether anyone was actually listening.

Much of the history of communications measurement has been a story of 'good enough' data. And in some cases, data that wasn't even good at all (*cough* AVEs). 

Why a blueprint still needs an architect

But before we can harness the potential of AI, we have to be honest about the technology and tools we're working with. As anyone who's ever used a "smart" tool knows, they can be... well, confidently wrong.

The new challenge isn't just "Garbage In, Garbage Out." The new challenge is that the AI has become a high-speed, frighteningly convincing echo chamber. When a machine delivers a flawed insight, it does so with the resolute certainty of a supercomputer, laundering that flaw into a "fact."As architects, our job is to audit the blueprints and stress-test the materials before we build the house. When my team and I test these models, we're not just looking for what they do right. We're methodically hunting for where they go wrong.

Where we continue to see a critical need for human intervention and expertise:

  • Context Blindness: AI is a brilliant pattern-matcher, but it has limited real-world context and struggles to identify the intent of what’s being analysed. It can miss the nuance of language, the authority of a source, or whether something is fact or speculation.
  • Language Bias: This is my personal favourite and takes a few forms. AI is trained on text, but it isn't (yet) trained on human subtext. This can look like missed nuance for slang used by younger audiences or emerging shifts in the meaning of language. Models are ultimately impacted and biased by their training data, so this can also mean larger systemic biases are amplified and not appropriately interrogated.
  • Viewpoint Collapse: While AI can sometimes get locked into a perspective based on its training, it can also collapse multiple, distinct viewpoints (like a speaker's sarcastic intent vs. the literal text) into a single, flat monolith. This drastically changes the outcomes of your analysis and ultimately the understanding of your audience.

This is the methodical, behind-the-scenes work that often goes unseen, and it is the crucial due diligence needed. It’s not as flashy as writing a press release faster, but it’s the only way to build a tool you can actually trust to make a strategic decision.

New tools, same bedrock principles

This testing isn't just about finding technical bugs or funny hallucinations. We’re testing these new AI models against the foundational, hard-won principles of communications measurement that our industry has spent years formalising.

AI is an incredibly powerful new tool, but it doesn't get a free pass. It still has to follow the rules of good measurement.

  • Measure outcomes, not just outputs: This has always been our goal. An AI-driven approach that only counts outputs (like mentions or sentiment) 1,000 times faster is still just a faster measure of noise. It doesn't tell you if a single mind was changed or a single action was taken.
  • Demand transparency: A metric is useless if you can't explain how it's calculated. This is my biggest critique of the current "plug-and-play" approach to AI. If a vendor provides a proprietary 'Reputation Score' of 7.2, and they can't (or won't) tell you the formula, it's not a metric. It's marketing.
  • Link activity to business objectives: This is the most important rule of all. The only reason to measure is to inform a strategic decision that ladders up to a business goal. A tool that just produces data, but no clear insight linked to your specific objectives, has failed.

When we stop seeing AI as a magic box and start seeing it as a powerful, scalable engine, one that we must build and steer based on these principles, then it becomes truly transformative.

The payoff: the tools are finally catching up to our ambition

A new frontier of opportunity is here. Such as the capability to move from being reactive to being predictive, and it takes careful design to get this right. Our traditional analysis has been brilliant at explaining what has just happened. Now, as architects of these new systems, we are building and testing AI models that can scan the horizon for the faint signals that precede a major narrative shift.

We can empower movement from broadcasting and the old spray and pray approach; to precision, deliberate engagement of stakeholders and audiences. This is another area where the craft of measurement design is essential. AI gives us the power to see the micro-communities and specific, high-authority voices that actually shape opinion. The work is in designing the models that can identify them accurately.

Finally, we can (at last!) move from quantifying to qualifying at scale. For me, this is the most exciting and complex challenge. For 20 years, I’ve had to choose: a large-scale quantitative study (which missed nuance) or a small-scale qualitative review (which couldn't be scaled). As architects, we can now design frameworks that don't just give a "positive" score but confirm that a specific strategic message landed, with the right audiences, and in the intended context.

That is the opportunity. It's not magic. It's the methodical, patient engineering we've been waiting for. It’s the difference between a "plug-and-play" gimmick and a truly strategic asset. The real payoff isn't just faster reporting, it’s about fundamentally upgrading behaviours and expectations of measurement. This isn't an overnight shift. As any research leader will tell you, a new methodology takes time, testing and refinement to get right.

The future we've been waiting for

For my entire career, we’ve been strategic thinkers working with tools that could only show us the past. We were forced to be historians, meticulously analysing what had already happened to predict future behaviour. The key to using this new, complex technology effectively is; strong communication, articulation and critical human thinking. The power of any AI is unlocked by the quality of the question you ask it. It's a system that rewards clear, precise, and strategic language.

This is a massive homefield advantage for communicators, who have spent their entire careers honing the exact skills required to be the architects of this new era. The AI we are using today is the worst it will ever be. It will only get better, faster, and more capable from here. This is what's so thrilling, and it's just the beginning. This new generation of AI driven approaches doesn't replace our intuition, it amplifies it. As communicators (and researchers!) this is the moment to level up. We get to be the explorers and the strategists who connect communications directly to business, policy and societal outcomes. 

We're not just building better measurement and deeper insights; we're leading a more intelligent, more responsive and more impactful profession. What an incredibly exciting time to be in this industry.

Ready to be the architect of your own measurement strategy?

To learn how to build the right KPIs and tell a compelling story with your data, register for our live webinar:

  • Topic: Making Communications Count: Build your KPI confidence and storytelling"
  • Date & time: 12 November, 11am AEDT/ 2pm NZT
  • Hosted by: Ngaire Crawford, Director of Insights for ANZ, Isentia.
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Blog
Beyond the “Easy Button”: architecting a new, smarter era of comms measurement

Explore how crucial human oversight is over AI models when it comes to the future of smart measurement in communications.

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Australia’s upcoming social media ban for minors hasn’t been primarily driven organic debate. Instead, it’s unfolded through a deliberate, tightly paced sequence of government-led communications, each phase designed to build momentum, secure legitimacy, and keep control of the public narrative.

What we’re seeing in the media data isn’t a spontaneous rise in interest, but a pattern of spikes that line up neatly with major government moments. Each one serves a purpose in a broader narrative strategy, and each reveals something about where the public conversation is heading next.

The rollout of Australia’s social media ban has followed something of a three-act script. It really began on the world stage, with Prime Minister Albanese’s UN address framing the policy as a “world-first” and earning global praise that positioned Australia as a leader rather than a legislator under pressure, a narrative heavily amplified across bulletins nationwide. Momentum built when Denmark echoed the proposal, turning the story from an Australian policy into a global movement and giving journalists a reason to return to it without new domestic detail. Subsequently, the focus shifted home, with the launch of the government’s ad campaign. Coverage has moved from delivery to confirmation, from diplomacy to daily life, embedding the message of child safety through stories designed to connect emotionally with parents before the ban takes effect. 

Media coverage of the social media ban is being driven by a hierarchy of voices. At the top are the political architects, Anthony Albanese and Anika Wells, who account for 68% of all quoted commentary. Their dominance reflects a message tightly controlled from the centre, with each public appearance designed to reinforce authority and focus the debate. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant follows as the enforcer, providing regulatory credibility and keeping the story alive through ongoing updates and meetings with tech companies.Around them, Emma Mason’s personal story gives the policy its emotional weight, while expert voices like Dr Jason Nagata and Mitch Prinstein lend scientific legitimacy. Counter-voices such as Patrick McGorry are present but faint, just 1% of total commentary. Together, these strands create a coordinated ecosystem where political leadership, regulation, expertise, and emotion work in unison to sustain a single, dominant narrative.

The next layer of coverage reveals how the story’s momentum is being sustained, not just by government messaging, but by the constellation of organisations caught in its orbit. Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat remain the gravitational centre of the conversation, collectively shaping more than a thousand mentions each. They are the policy’s focal point and the media’s shorthand for what’s at stake. 

Stories about ministerial meetings, enforcement challenges, and pleas for exemptions ensure these brands stay in the headlines, but on government terms, framed as subjects of regulation rather than equal participants in debate. This has also surfaced one of the key underlying questions: Will the ban actually work? There is a significant narrative thread focused on the practical challenges of enforcement, with YouTube widely quoted in the media as saying the ban is "'extremely difficult' to enforce". 

With the media also reporting that the government will rely on "artificial intelligence (AI) and behavioural data to reliably infer age" rather than hard age verification, the public is left asking: If tech giants say it's unenforceable and teens are already finding ways around it, what will this law actually achieve? 

The eSafety Commission anchors the enforcement narrative, while the European Commission’s support sustains the “world-first” framing abroad. As the scope of the ban widens, platforms like Roblox, Discord and Reddit have been pulled into focus, signalling how the policy, and its coverage, keeps expanding. This has forced the core question into the open: What is a "social media platform" in 2025?

Although the government’s narrative still dominates, a set of counter-stories is emerging, focusing on the policy’s real-world consequences. Central to these stories are concerns about young people losing access to vital online connections, particularly among regional or marginalised communities. Advocates for the LGBTIQA+ community and youth mental health experts like Professor Pat McGorry argue that the ban could isolate teenagers who rely on online spaces for support, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Other reporting has questioned the reliability of AI-based age verification, the volume of data collected, and the risk that well-intended rules might backfire, creating unintended consequences that contradict the policy’s goal of child safety. These counter-narratives remain smaller in scale than the dominant political messaging, but they cut through because they frame the debate around everyday impacts rather than top-down authority.

A particularly visible strand of coverage centres on the unclear definition of “social media” in the legislation. While the public typically thinks of platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the law’s wording has forced a broader debate that draws in platforms such as Roblox, Discord, and Steam. The eSafety Commissioner’s proactive enforcement measures have highlighted these regulatory ambiguities, prompting media to question whether platforms with different primary purposes should be included and whether the policy might trade one harm for another. Discord drew attention following a poorly timed data breach, which the public and media linked to potential ID theft risks. These reports show how regulators and secondary players can keep the conversation alive, highlighting risks, opening new angles, and forming alliances that complicate the policy debate. A notable example is YouTube’s effort to argue it should not be classified as a social media platform, citing the platform’s role in launching careers like Australian artist Troye Sivan as part of a broader cultural and creative ecosystem.

Together, these stories illustrate that while the government controls the main narrative, emerging counter-voices are beginning to shape the media conversation in ways that emphasise practical and social realities.

Learn how Isentia helps comms teams manage media coverage and public opinion around major policy changes.

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Australia’s social media ban played out in the headlines

Australia’s upcoming social media ban for minors hasn’t been primarily driven organic debate. Instead, it’s unfolded through a deliberate, tightly paced sequence of government-led communications, each phase designed to build momentum, secure legitimacy, and keep control of the public narrative. What we’re seeing in the media data isn’t a spontaneous rise in interest, but a […]

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