How Elsevier’s James Munoz builds big CX from the battlefield to the boardroom

James Munoz doesn’t just talk about customer centricity—he’s lived it in war zones, bank boardrooms, and global enterprise halls. A former US Army reconnaissance officer turned CX transformation leader, James brings a rare perspective to the table: experience strategy as a force for cultural change—not just better metrics.

In this episode, James unpacks how his journey from “soldier first” to “customer first” laid the foundation for the way he approaches experience management today at Elsevier. He explains why CX needs to be more than a reporting function and how he’s helping Elsevier connect brand, employee, and customer experience into one aligned vision.

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Here’s what stood out from the conversation:

CX is not a function—it’s a mindset shift

James is clear: the goal isn’t just to fix broken experiences. It’s to change hearts and minds. At Elsevier, his work is rooted in a single question: how do we help every employee—not just the CX team—see the customer impact of their work? It’s not about creating a “CX department.” It’s about embedding customer thinking into the culture.

His military background sharpened this belief. In the Army, mission success depended on putting soldiers first—ensuring they had the resources, training, and care they needed. For James, that human-first mentality seamlessly maps onto customer experience: “You have KPIs and objectives, but at the end of the day, there’s a human being on the other side.”

Voice of the customer is only valuable if it drives decisions

James critiques the state of many VOC programs today: survey-heavy, insight-rich, action-poor. He advocates for elevating VOC beyond data collection—to a program that surfaces thematic pain points and forces the business to decide: is this a problem we solve, accept, or ignore?

At Wells Fargo, compliance demands made VOC a priority. In less-regulated environments like Elsevier, cultural influence becomes the lever. The difference? You don’t have regulators mandating action—you need to convince teams that the customer matters for their goals, too.

And that requires VOC to be operational, not ornamental.

Quarterly reviews aren’t enough—real-time data must shape action

James acknowledges that traditional VOC cadences—like quarterly business reviews—can be slow. While they create structure and visibility, they often lag behind customer needs. His vision? Marrying real-time journey dashboards with qualitative feedback analysis to give teams a living, breathing view of the customer.

One idea: use AI to “interview” your customer base in real time. Pull structured and unstructured data into a single platform, and let anyone—designers, ops, product—ask questions like “What’s frustrating Persona A in the last 6 months?” That kind of immediacy could bridge the gap between insight and action.

CX should connect brand, customer, product, and employee experience

Drawing on a framework he encountered at Qualtrics, James highlights the four core experiences every business must manage: brand, customer, product, and employee. The magic happens when these aren’t siloed—but integrated.

This means CX professionals can’t afford to operate apart from brand or product teams. “It’s ironic,” he says, “we talk about connecting departments—but often don’t even know who’s shaping the brand promise we’re supposed to deliver.”

His team at Elsevier acts as a center of excellence to unify these layers. Their strategy: define a shared North Star, tie behaviors and journeys back to it, and use it as a practical tool to align execution—not just as an aspirational poster on the wall.

The future of CX isn’t fixing broken things—it’s designing what’s next

James believes the CX profession has a language problem. Too often, it’s framed around friction and pain points. What if we flipped the script? What if CX was about opportunity—about designing experiences customers want, not just removing what they hate?

He calls this shift from “little CX” to “big CX.” It’s a reframing that positions customer experience not as a reactive support function, but as an engine of growth, differentiation, and innovation.

And that means CX leaders need to bring vision—not just VOC stats—to the table.

Why you should listen

If you’ve ever struggled to get your CX work taken seriously by the business, this conversation will hit home. James Munoz offers not only a fresh language, but a broader vision for how CX can become the connective tissue of brand, business, and culture.