Ilenia Vidili

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Ilenia Vidili

I am a passionate customer centricity advisor, author and keynote speaker. I have been advising the Find out more https://www.ileniavidili.com/the-book/

My new book, Journey to Centricity, is a timely roadmap for leaders to transform
outdated business practices into truly customer-centric companies of the future.

14/10/2026

Honoured to have taken part and for these kind words.

Thank you ★

“Ilenia's keynote was the talking point of the whole event. Playful, full of energy, and at the same time grounded in real knowledge.

Her examples were easy to take in and impossible to forget.

She also joined our panel on the future of hospitality and innovation, and was just as sharp there.”

13/10/2026

In Japan, nearly 50% of service and retail workers say they’ve been harassed by customers. Some have even sought psychiatric help.

Harassment includes:

✘ Intimidation

✘ Verbal abuse

✘ Unreasonable demands

This month, a new law comes into effect requiring Japanese businesses to protect employees from customer harassment.

And SoftBank already has a solution on the market:

✔︎ SoftVoice, an AI tool that softens the tone of angry callers in real time before it reaches call center agents.

The words stay the same. Only the voice changes.

I love this idea for protecting employees well-being.

BUT BUT BUT

This technology changes how employees hear the anger, but it doesn't change why customers are frustrated in the first place.

● It's like turning down the volume on a fire alarm. Easier to listen to, but the fire is still burning!!

The agent still hears every word of the complaint.

So the real question is: what happens next?

→ Why is the customer upset?

→ How can they turn frustration into loyalty?

→ Are they just shortening handle time or actually fixing the issue?

→ Are they solving problems proactively or only when customers escalate?

→ Are they truly listening to customer concerns, or just deflecting complaints?

→ Do their frontline reps have the tools and authority to actually resolve the issue?

→ Are they making it easy for customers to get help, or forcing them through hoops?

Technology shouldnt be a band-aid for masking the symptoms.

Angry customers aren't the problem. Ignoring why they're angry is.

So:

1. Protect your people

2. Fix whats broken

06/10/2026

I've seen a lot of beautiful customer journey maps over the years, and I've started to think of them as drawings of what companies hope will happen.

The problem is that customers never see the map. What they experience are decisions, thousands of small ones.

- Customers and companies are making decisions all the time, and each side is responding to the other.

→ Yet journey maps only show what the customer did. The company's decisions stay out of the picture, so the cause and the effect never meet on the same page.

Heres what that looks like in real life:

► A customer calls to double-check something that was in the email.
► We log it as a repeat contact and move on.
► But a decision on our side came first: a confusing price, a status update that didn't say what happens next, a cancellation process that's hard to find, etc.
► The customer decides its safer to check every time from now on.
► We see more calls, and we decide we need more people to answer them.

● The customer hesitation was a reaction to that decision.

A better way to map?

1. Start with the moments where your customers hesitate, and write down the decision they were facing: whether to trust the price, whether to call or wait, whether to read the whole email.

2. Trace each one back to the decision your company made earlier that put them there: how the price was shown, what the email said, what the next step looked like. Youll be surprised how often the two connect.

A great customer experience it’s a series of decisions, on both sides, that make the next step feel obvious and safe.

What’s your take on this?

05/10/2026

Thank you so much to the VISIT team for having me at Visit Summit 2026!

It was great to meet everyone in person. Thank you for the kindness, the warm welcome and the thoughtful gifts.

In my keynote, we explored:

► the push effect: the more the digital world accelerates, the rarer and more valuable the human touch becomes.

► how to bring the human magic back into every customer interaction in a machine-powered world.

► how to build a customer-centric cult(ure) through my 3H framework

A huge thank you to the wonderful Renée Andersson, Carl-Johan Holmén, Magnus Emilson, Chris Micklethwaite and the whole Visit team.

Until next time! ☀️

01/10/2026

A lot of times customers have no choice but to deal only with machines.. and that sucks!

- The chatbot answers first.

- The dashboard decides who matters.

- The script tells the agent what to say.

- The automated email says "we value your feedback" to someone who just had a terrible experience with you.

What bothers me is that many organisations are now removing as many people as possible from the experience, and calling it efficiency.

The tools aren't the real problem. The problem starts when we stop people from connecting with customers.

Here’s what happens:

✘ If the tool can answer, the human is no longer needed to ask.
✘ If the script covers it, the human is no longer needed to listen.
✘ If the numbers look good, nobody is needed to check on the customer.

● Efficiency becomes the goal while connection becomes optional.

Customer centricity is not just about efficient processes. At its core, it's deeply human.

So before you take another person out of the customer journey, ask:

1. Who will notice when the machine gets it wrong?

2. Can your customers reach a real human without having to fight for it?

3. Does your customer feel heard, cared for and valued or just processed?

►Machines should give your people more time to be human. Not less reason to be.

29/09/2026

Last week I snapped at an event organiser, and I haven't stopped thinking about it. Let me explain…

We jumped on a call about speaking at their flagship CX event.

1. For the first 20 minutes, she basically pitched. She told me how great the event is, who attends, who the big sponsors are, and the hefty price they charge - Fine.

2. Then she started teaching me about customer experience - I've worked in this field for 15 years, but okay.

3. Then she asked if I knew about Gen Z consumer behaviour - I actually wrote a book with Gen Z and Millennials consumers at the heart of it, but okay.

4. Finally, she got to the ask: She wanted me as a keynote speaker, then on a panel, and running a one-hour workshop - I said that sounded great.

5. Lastly, she released the second ask: As a matter of transparency, we don't pay speakers, and you'd have to cover your own flights from Italy to “big continent” - Really??!

6. To make things worse, she mentioned the full names of other CX professionals who had agreed to the same "deal" - Uh!

That's when I lost my patience and asked..

→ Me: So, do you work for free?

→ Her: uhm, no, oh, but, [rambling]

→ Me: you should have shared this by email instead of taking 30 minutes of my time. You also should know that I have over 15 years of experience in this field. And lastly, people who speak and train companies for a living deserve respect, especially when you ask for thousands of dollars worth of work and travel.

The call ended on a bad note, and I felt a mix of anger and regret for having been so snappy.

It’s not really who I am...

There are times when I give back to the community and waive my fees for causes I care about, and those are all listed clearly on my website.

But that's my choice to make, not something to be assumed, let alone asked for outright.

The lesson: know your worth, and don't let anyone talk you out of it, no matter how nicely they ask.

22/09/2026

Wherever I step, the objective is always the same:

• To leave people different than they walked in.

My current schedule over the next months:

• Gothenburg → Hospitality
• Virtual → Printing
• London → Saas
• London → Professional Services
• Madrid → Pharmaceutical
• Aranjuez → Bioeconomy
• Sofia → Telecoms
• Milan → FMCG

Not matter what company or industry, the same broken pattern shows up every time:

companies obsessed with customer experience on slide decks, and nowhere near it in the actual customer’s reality.

That’s where I come in.. to help close that gap

Hit me up if you’re around :)

21/09/2026

After 3 years, I had the pleasure of meeting Rikard Karlsson in person in Gothenburg.

We spent a great dinner overlooking the city, talking about life, career, and the future.

The kind of conversation that reminds you why real, in-person connection still matters so much in this hyper-digital world we work in.

Thank you, Rikard, for taking the time to meet me, for your constant support and for sharing your book with me. Can’t wait to dive in.

Moments like these are what make all the travel worth it.

17/09/2026

New week, new stage, and this time I’m in Gothenburg, Sweden 🇸🇪

My keynote, The Human Edge in a Machine Powered World, is about how every new tech eventually becomes a basic requirement. And why human connection never will.

Now waiting for 500 beautiful people in the travel and hospitality sector.

Wish me luck ;)

08/09/2026

Had such a blast at the TotalEnergies UK Annual Summit in London.

Fantastic and lively audience, the kind that keeps you on your toes, leans in, and makes every minute on stage feel worth it.

The keynote was focused on how to close the gap between what companies deliver and what customers actually experience, through alignment, an outside-in mindset, and daily habits.

Huge thank you to Pauline Liberté Hugon and Anton Roberts for having me, and for the outstanding coordination of Johann Matti at Matti Speaker Agency.

Thank you 💚

Address

Zagreb

Website

http://www.ileniavidili.com/, http://linktr.ee/ileniavidili

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