The Experience-Driven Growth Model - part I

In today’s climate of transformation pressure and budget constraints, one question keeps coming up: How can organizations grow, not just by optimizing operations or selling more, but by delivering better experiences? 

To explore this, I’m launching a three-part article series that breaks down the Experience-Driven Growth Model I introduced in The Elastic Future of CX (Burggraaf, 2025). This model repositions CX as a strategic operating system for growth, not a support function or branding layer.

• In Part 1, I’ll focus on the CX Levers, the operational inputs that directly shape perception, behavior, and value.
• In Part 2, I’ll cover Business Outcomes and how CX drives financial performance (CLV, NRR, efficiency, etc.).
• In Part 3, I’ll explore Transformation Outcomes, including identity lock-in and evangelism.

Let’s begin with Part 1: The CX Levers, the beating heart of experience-led growth.

The Case for an Experience-Led Logic

The Experience-Driven Growth Model is grounded in the premise that modern customers no longer evaluate organizations solely by what they sell, but by how they make them feel, succeed, and transform (Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). As service-dominant and customer-dominant logics (Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Heinonen et al., 2010) gained traction in academic literature, it became evident that value is co-created across touchpoints, not embedded in the product alone.

And yet, despite this conceptual shift, many organizations still struggle to integrate experience into their growth strategies. CX teams are often siloed from financial outcomes, and customer initiatives remain disconnected from enterprise-level objectives. The Experience-Driven Growth Model challenges this gap, embedding CX within the broader business architecture.

At its core, the Experience-Driven Growth Model operates across three reinforcing layers, each representing a progressive level of value creation:

1. CX Levers (Operational Inputs)
2. Business Outcomes (Performance Metrics)
3. Transformation Outcomes (Strategic Differentiators)

Together, these layers form a cyclical flywheel, where improvements in experience levers generate measurable performance outcomes, which in turn enable long-term strategic transformation.

Layer 1: CX Levers – The Operational Inputs

 The first and innermost layer of the model comprises seven CX levers, experience design choices that directly shape customer perception, behavior, and value realization. These levers function not in isolation but as a dynamic system, where improvements in one lever can compound or unlock the potential of others. Below, I elaborate on each.

Expectation Clarity (Parasuraman et al., 1985)

Expectation Clarity is the foundation of customer trust and confidence. It begins with mapping the end-to-end customer journey and identifying points where expectations must be explicitly set such as pricing, delivery timelines, onboarding, or support availability. Clarity must be embedded in every communication: product descriptions, onboarding flows, SLAs, and status updates. Brands like Amazon and Apple excel here not because they overpromise, but because they communicate simply, deliver predictably, and proactively manage change.

To activate this lever, organizations should use plain language, eliminate jargon, and maintain consistency across channels. Journey audits can surface where customers experience uncertainty or ambiguity. To measure effectiveness, track expectation alignment in surveys, monitor customer confusion rates, and review contact center transcripts for repeated clarification requests.

Example KPIs: Expectation Clarity Score, percentage of communications with proactive status updates, and percentage of misunderstandings resolved without escalation.

Service Reliability (Grönroos, 1984)

Service Reliability is about delivering what was promised, consistently and without exceptions. It’s not about surprise-and-delight, it’s about zero-defect delivery. This lever becomes crucial in operationally intensive environments like healthcare, financial services, logistics, and SaaS.

To operationalize reliability, organizations should establish and monitor service level agreements (SLAs), track journey-level failure points, and deploy early warning systems that flag risks before they impact the customer. Measurement should focus on incident frequency, SLA compliance, resolution time, and internal defect rate analysis. CX leaders must work hand-in-hand with operations to embed reliability into the service architecture.

Example KPIs: Uptime percentage, SLA compliance rate, and percentage of journeys delivered without error

Effort Reduction (Dixon et al., 2010)

Effort Reduction focuses on removing friction from the customer experience. Research shows that minimizing effort is more predictive of loyalty than exceeding expectations (Dixon et al., 2010). This lever applies to both digital and human interactions.

Organizations should simplify workflows, reduce the number of steps required to complete tasks, and enable self-service through portals, chatbots, or in-app help. Automation and AI play a key role, but so does journey redesign, ensuring that processes reflect customer logic, not internal structures. Key metrics include the Customer Effort Score (CES), journey completion rates, and support contact deflection. Monitoring drop-off points and unresolved inquiries will help teams identify where friction persists.

Example KPIs: Average CES below 2.0, percentage of tasks completed without assistance, and contact rate per active customer.

Value Activation (Zeithaml, 1988)

Value Activation is about helping customers realize and experience the full value of what they’ve purchased. Many customers leave products not because they’re dissatisfied, but because they never discover their true utility. This is particularly vital in subscription, SaaS, and fintech models where continued engagement directly correlates with retention and lifetime value.

To activate value, organizations should design guided onboarding, use in-product prompts to showcase underutilized features, and proactively surface milestones (e.g., “You saved 20 hours this month!”). Behavioral nudges can reinforce success and encourage deeper adoption. Measurement should focus on feature adoption rates, time-to-value (TTV), and breadth of usage across product capabilities.

Example KPIs: Feature adoption rate over 60%, time-to-first-success under 7 days, and percentage of customers engaging with high-value features.

Personalization & Empowerment (Bitner et al., 1990; McKinsey, 2021)

Customers increasingly expect experiences that are tailored to their context and allow them to feel in control. Personalization means more than including a first name. it’s about using real-time behavioral data to adapt content, recommendations, and service interactions. Empowerment allows users to make choices, adjust preferences, and control how they interact with your organization.

To activate this lever, build systems that learn from behavior, not just declared preferences. Offer settings, configurations, and responsive interfaces that reflect the individual’s journey stage or role. Effectiveness can be measured through engagement scores, personalization satisfaction surveys, and metrics related to interaction autonomy, such as the use of control features or preference settings.

Example KPIs: NPS segmented by personalization usage, percentage of users customizing their experience, and frequency of self-directed interactions.

Emotional Connection (Pine & Gilmore, 1999)

Emotional Connection is what transforms a product into a organization, and a transaction into a memory. It is built through storytelling, design, shared values, and moments of surprise or recognition. It plays an especially powerful role in industries with emotional stakes - travel, education, wellness, and luxury, but is increasingly relevant across B2B and digital services as well.

Activating emotional connection involves designing micro-moments that create resonance. This could include thoughtful messaging during onboarding, celebration of milestones, inclusive representation, or simply a organization voice that feels human. Measurement requires qualitative and quantitative inputs, including emotional sentiment analysis, net emotional value scoring, and organization favorability tracking.

Example KPIs: Emotional Resonance Index, positive sentiment in open-text feedback, and increase in organic social advocacy.

Trust Reinforcement (Morgan & Hunt, 1994)

Trust Reinforcement is a continuous effort to validate that your organization is safe, dependable, and ethical. It becomes especially critical in times of change, crisis, or digital sensitivity, such as data breaches, policy changes, or systemic service failures.

Organizations can reinforce trust through transparent communication, fast and fair resolution, consistent delivery, and visible signals of credibility (such as certifications, guarantees, and verified reviews). Acknowledging customer vulnerability and treating it with dignity is central to this lever. Measurement should include trust perception surveys, resolution satisfaction scores, and metrics on data concerns or escalations.

Example KPIs: Trust Index above 80%, percentage of customers who feel safe with data handling, and repeat service usage despite prior issues.

Conclusion and What’s Next

Together, these CX levers form the operational bedrock of experience-driven growth. They are not decorative, they are decisive. When activated intentionally and managed systemically, they create measurable uplift in satisfaction, loyalty, and financial performance.

In the next part of this series, I’ll explore how these levers feed into the second layer of the Experience-Driven Growth Model: Business Outcomes. This includes quantifying CX’s role in driving CLV, NRR, pipeline acceleration, and operational efficiency. Because when CX becomes measurable, it becomes investable.

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References 

Arussy, L. (2010). Customer Experience Strategy. Pearson Education.

Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., & Morgan, F. N. (1997). Service blueprinting: A practical technique for service innovation. California Management Review, 50(3), 66–94.

Burggraaf, P. (2025). The Elastic Future of CX: Rethinking Growth Through Experiences [Conceptual Paper].

Dixon, M., Freeman, K., & Toman, N. (2010). Stop trying to delight your customers. Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 116–122.

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