Rewiring Operating Models for Customer Touchpoints

Contributing Authors:
Michael B. Snead – Business Advisor @ Metric Centric
George Assimakopoulos – Managing Principal @ Metric Centric

We’ve all been there: your flight gets canceled due to weather, and you just need to get home.

You hear the gate agent announce that you’ll need to rebook. Moments later, you get the email in your inbox: “Your travel plans have been affected,” but there’s not real-time update. The mobile app still says your flight is on time. You chat with a virtual assistant, which can’t access the latest info. And when you finally get through to a human, the phone agent has the updated details — but no record of everything you’ve already tried.

Each channel works independently. Each system is optimized for its own task. But for the traveler, it’s a fragmented, frustrating journey.

In a world where AI, content, customer data, and Voice of the Customer (VoC) insights are reshaping marketing and CX, this happens all the time — not because of the technology, but because of the way we organize ourselves.

Our org charts are getting in the way.

Most teams are still built around internal functions — content over here, data science over there, social listening with a separate team entirely. And too often, everyone is optimizing for their own KPIs.

But your customers don’t care about your org chart.

They experience your brand through touchpoints — search, chatbots, social content, support articles, email, product onboarding — and they expect it all to feel seamless.

That means your internal structure needs to mirror your external experience.

Why the Old Operating Model Falls Short

Legacy OpModels often look like this:

• Marketing drives campaigns
• Content creates assets
• Analytics monitors performance
• Support owns post-sale engagement
• VoC is off in research or CX teams

Each function does great work — but in isolation. The result?

• Redundant content
• Fragmented customer journeys
• Disconnected insights
• Slow response to real-time feedback

And worst of all: missed opportunities to train AI systems on consistent, high-quality, brand-aligned inputs.

The New Mandate: Organize Around the Customer Journey

Leading brands are shifting from function-first to journey-first. They’re building cross-functional teams aligned to moments that matter — not just job titles or channels.

For example:

• A Search & Answer Experience squad combining SEO, content, and AEO experts
• A Conversational Experience pod made up of chatbot designers, content strategists, and VoC analysts
• A Support & Retention team that includes CX, AI agent trainers, social responders, and loyalty marketers

Each team owns the end-to-end quality, cohesion, and performance of a full customer touchpoint.

How This Impacts Operating Models

From departments to dynamic squads: Shift from siloed teams to agile, cross-functional units that can rapidly adjust to audience needs and feedback.

From output KPIs to outcome KPIs: Focus on customer impact — not just content volume, open rates, or social shares.

From linear to looped workflows: Integrate VoC and social listening as a research function and always-on feedback loops, not afterthoughts.

From ad hoc AI to intentional integration: Centralize AI training, monitoring, and content governance across every team that interacts with or informs your brand’s digital presence.

Why Social Listening and VoC Must Be Central

The insights your customers are giving you — in comments, reviews, chatbot prompts, and social posts — shouldn’t live in a document. You have to socialize learnings and implement them in how your team engages… and how you train the machines.

Real-time feedback should inform:

• What content gets made
• How AI agents are trained
• Where friction is resolved
• What gets prioritized in roadmaps

That’s how the entire customer experience becomes more intelligent, more personalized, and more trusted.

Final Thought: Future OpModels Will Be Touchpoint Aligned

Technology solutions company Analog Devices (ADI) is in the process of “retooling the customer journey” to make interactions with engineers, platform architects, and client partners more seamless. They’re using feedback from internal field teams and social listening to re-map customer journeys, identify pain points, and then reorganize content and digital tools around those journeys.

ADI is developing AI to power natural language search and automate content creation tailored to customer experience touchpoints. By embedding AI and social intelligence data into how customers engage, they are now able to restructure internal teams to deliver consistent, relevant content across those touchpoints.

Like ADI, the best brands won’t just reorganize for efficiency. They’ll reorganize for relevance.

They’ll structure their teams, tools, and priorities around how customers actually engage — then use content, AI, and data to meet them there with clarity and consistency.

Because in the end, the future of brand success doesn’t belong to the most creative team or the most data-driven one.

It belongs to the most connected one.

Want to learn how to build a customer-centric operating model? Reach out to us at Metric Centric!