Designing for Trust: Customer Experience, Bias & the Human–Automation Balance
About this episode
This episode discusses the intentional design of customer experiences and the importance of aligning people, process, and technology to build trust.
Great experiences don’t happen by accident. They’re designed. In this episode of The Parallel Entrepreneur – Innovation Series, Mark Cleveland and Johnny Anderson sit down with Suzi Earhart, CCXP, a Customer Experience and Organizational Change executive who believes better experiences begin with intentional design, empathy, and mutual understanding — and end in measurable business results. Suzi started her career in computer science before realizing something foundational: technology alone doesn’t create great outcomes. People, process, and technology must work together. And if they aren’t aligned around the customer, trust quietly erodes. This conversation goes beyond surface-level CX talk. We explore how leaders unintentionally design from the inside out, how unconscious bias limits true “outside-in” thinking, and why deciding between human, assisted, or self-service interactions is one of the most strategic trust decisions a company makes. In this episode, we discuss: - Why incentives today are tied to identity and belonging - The challenge of truly thinking “outside-in” - How culture and bias distort customer-centered design - The difference between human, assisted, and…
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