Customer Experience Lessons From The CX Leader Of The Year

Gloria Gupta, MS, FCXP (CX I-III) is 2025's CX Leader of the year and she is on this edition of the CX Patterns podcast and newsletter. What lessons can we learn from an award-winning CX leader?

Relationships Matter

It may be hard for us to audit the strength of relationships Gloria and her CX team have within the American Medical Association - the AMA. We don't work there. But we don't have to take her word for it. Gloria is as connected as anyone in the CX world. Whenever I talk to someone in customer experience, it seems like they've recently talked to Gloria. She is fantastic at building, cultivating and maintaining relationships.

And relationships matter in an influence-based discipline like customer experience. We need our colleagues to do their jobs, but with a customer-centric orientation. Gloria has been with the AMA for a long time and has the trust, has the creditibility to ask that of her colleagues.

Both great relationships and great CX are built on trust. Build trust in all situations.

CX Transformations Take Time

Gloria and the team at the AMA have been grinding away at CX improvement for a long time. They're not slow, they're not doing it wrong.

Just the opposite.

They're deliberate, they're patient, they're committed to something that is worth doing, but takes time to do. You can't control how long your company will care about customer experience. It may be a flash in the pan, it may be something that executives sour on when your scores dip or plateau. You can influence that, but not control it. What you can control is your own commitment to methodically, patiently building a CX transformation track record of success.

CX transformation is a slow, steady build up that takes time to play out. You can't rush it, so if you're not up for a multi-year commitment, you're in the wrong business.

The 4 C's Framework Anchors The AMA's Transformation

Culture. The AMA has been slowly changing the culture of an organization that is almost certainly older than the organization you work for. They're closer to their 200th anniversary than their 100th. So can you imagine how ingrained the culture, the behaviors, the norms are?

And yet they're changing. They think of themselves as a "Powerful Ally For Patient Care" which has become a touchstone for them to be more customer-centric.

The other C's pair so well with Culture. Capabilities makes it possible for more of their employees to act in customer-centric ways. Collaborations mean that no one team or department has to do it all, but rather can partner for success. And celebrations means they're constantly reinforcing the right behaviors and activities.

Culture change relies on that reinforcement because people do not believe their way into new actions, they act their way into new beliefs. This explains why culture change is so difficult for so many: They try to convince others to change, rather than showing them where they are already doing the desired behaviors.

Culture, Capabilities, Collaboration & Celebration are a powerful quartet. Gloria's Courage could be the 5th C.

Listen to the podcast for more detail on what Gloria and the AMA are getting right about CX Transformation. Theirs is a powerful success story that shows CX success is possible.