In this episode of The Experience Edge, Jochem Van Der Veer speaks with Eric Roux, Customer Experience Director at Cisco and co‑founder of the Boston Blockchain Association, about a compelling but underexplored idea: embedding customer experience (CX) into the go‑to‑market engine by forging a tight partnership with sales. They dive into how this alignment enables brands to deliver on promises, orchestrate outcomes, and avoid the “tossing over the fence” trap that many CX organizations fall into.

They also cover how CX leaders should build teams that are empowered and adaptive (not just follow the textbook), the nuanced role of metrics and trust, and how AI is starting to play a supporting, but not dominant, role in high‑touch enterprise relationships. Eric shares practical examples of how he’s applied these ideas in enterprise contexts and offers advice for scaling intimacy in consumer or low‑touch environments.

Guest Bio

Eric Roux is Customer Experience Director at Cisco, where he leads efforts to tightly integrate CX with sales, ensuring that customer promises made in the pursuit phase are honored through delivery and ongoing value creation. He is also a co‑founder of the Boston Blockchain Association, supporting innovation and connecting emerging tech leaders with funding and mentorship. With a background in consulting and professional services at top firms, Eric brings both strategic depth and hands‑on discipline to the CX space.

What you will learn

• CX and sales must “show up together” and speak with one unified voice to align around customer outcomes.
• It’s not enough for sales to hand off a customer, real partnership means knowing when CX leads and when sales leads, and stepping in accordingly.
• The human dimension (listening, relationships, trust) remains central in delivering CX, even more so than methodology and tools.
• Formalizing CX as a discipline sometimes leads teams to overemphasize frameworks and lose sight of customer reality.
• High performers in CX don’t need the textbook; they instinctively adapt, experiment, and course‑correct.
• A strong CX team is built by enabling autonomy, allowing for mistakes, and prioritizing growth and chemistry over rigid structure.
• In high-touch enterprise environments, CX serves as the orchestrator: in the room with the customer, tying threads together, facilitating alignment.
• In low-touch or high-volume contexts, CX must lean heavily on measurements, signals, and relationships with stakeholder proxies.
• AI is a powerful assistant: e.g. refining meeting preparation, automating analysis, but it doesn’t replace judgment, empathy, or orchestration.
• Metrics can be overdone: choose the ones that matter, set boundaries, and be willing to evolve them over time.

Chapters

00:00 Intro & framing: CX + Sales partnership

02:19 Why speak with one voice

04:19 Why many organizations struggle

06:04 Building the partnership: who initiates

08:00 What we lose in formalizing CX

09:17 Team composition & hiring

10:36 Orchestration across CX & Sales

13:13 Example: bringing people into the room

15:19 CX as the central orchestrator

17:42 Low‑touch / high-volume CX challenges

20:19 Distinctions between high-touch & transactional

22:31 Should CX be a department?

24:26 Role of AI in high-touch CX

27:55 Scaling productivity & journey to value

30:30 The expectation shift in delivery

32:16 Trust, consultant role & relationships

33:10 Obsession with metrics

35:20 Working backward from outcomes

36:46 Accountability and cross-domain problems

38:16 Incentivizing CX roles

40:43 Close to the customer in startups

42:59 How to keep intimacy while scaling

45:18 Traits of CX “rock stars”

47:13 Entry-level roles, AI & the future

50:00 Analytics vs. human insight

52:07 Incentives, role design & alignment

52:35 Closing / how to reach Eric

LinkedIn & Other Links

Follow Jochem Van Der Veer (TheyDo)

Follow Eric Roux

Eric's Website Boston Blockchain Association