Vik Sood is a customer experience, insights, and strategy leader who helps organizations transform customer understanding into business growth. With expertise in behavioral science and experience design, he has partnered with executive teams to solve complex challenges across industries. Passionate about the intersection of human behavior and emerging technologies, Vik is a thought leader on customer experience and the evolving experience economy. He prides himself on being a people first leader focused on building positive fun team cultures while delivering exceptional results.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with CIO Magazine, Vik shared insights from a career that began with a psychology-rooted curiosity in marketing and an Analyst role found in the Boston Globe, to leading Customer Experience at Ipsos Canada. On trends, Vik sees the next 5 years shifting from understanding what customers did and why they behave the way they do to more of a behavioral scienced focused lens to anticipate needs and remove friction in real-time. Looking ahead, his goal is to influence how executives think about growth and experience design, and mentor the next generation. His advice to aspiring professionals is that success comes from asking better questions, not just building dashboards, because organizations don’t need more data, they need better decisions. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Vik. Looking back, what first drew you to insights, analytics and marketing strategy, and how did that early curiosity shape your path?
As a junior in college, I did not have a clear sense of what I wanted to do beyond wanting to “be in business.” As such, I took on a number of internship roles and spoke with friends who had recently entered the “real world” about their experiences. That quickly led me to be curious about consulting and I developed an interest in all things marketing, based in part on my courses in psychology and social sciences and conversations I’d had with my parents’ friends. In some ways, I stumbled upon my first job, finding an advertisement in the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe (back when people actually read newspapers), seeking candidates for an Analyst role at Marketing and Planning Systems – to this day, some of the brightest people I have had the fortune of working with and it set me up well for the remainder of my 20’s.
As an insights and strategy leader, you sit between data, customers, and business decisions. What part of that role energizes you the most?
What energizes me most is being the translator between what customers are experiencing, what the data is telling us, and what the business is trying to achieve. Data on its own doesn’t achieve meaningful business impact, nor do customer stories on their own. The real value comes from connecting those pieces in a way that gives leaders the confidence to make better business decisions.
I’ve always believed that insights are only valuable if they lead to action. I love taking a complex set of data points, uncovering the human behavior behind them, and helping organizations see not just what is happening, but why it’s happening and what they should do next.
What makes this especially rewarding is that great customer experience isn’t just about making customers happier, but also about creating better businesses. When organizations truly understand their customers, they innovate more effectively, build stronger brands, create better employee experiences, all of which ultimately drives the organization’s growth.
Customer expectations are shifting faster than ever. What do you see as the biggest change in how brands will understand and serve customers in the next 5 years?
For years, brands have been focused on understanding what customers did. Over the next five years, it will shift towards understanding why customers behave the way they do, and to using that understanding to shape experiences in real time.
AI will obviously play a role, but I don’t think AI is the story. Organizations will finally be able to combine behavioral science, predictive analytics, operational data, and customer feedback into a much richer understanding of human decision-making.
We’ll move from looking at dashboards that tell us what happened yesterday to intelligent systems that help organizations anticipate needs, identify moments of friction before customers even report them, and then recommend the next best action.
At the same time, I think the brands that win will be those that truly earn the greatest level of trust. As AI becomes more embedded in customer interactions, consumers will increasingly ask, “Does this brand understand me?” but also, “Can I trust this brand to use my data responsibly?” and “Am I deriving a benefit from this company’s use of AI?” The future of CX will be defined by organizations that combine technological intelligence with human empathy. The brands that can make customers feel understood, respected, and valued will set the bar for the next 5 years.
CX is now a board-level topic. How do you see the definition of a great customer experience changing by 2030?
By 2030, I think we’ll have a much broader definition of customer experience than we do today.
For years, organizations measured CX by asking questions like, “Did we solve the problem?” or “Was the interaction easy?” Those aspects will always matter, but they won’t be enough to differentiate a brand.
Great customer experiences will increasingly be defined by how customers feel, not just what they receive. The brands that stand out will be those that create experiences that are frictionless, emotionally engaging, and genuinely memorable – none of which is easy to achieve.
That’s why I often talk about the shift toward the experience economy and “liquid expectations.” Customers are no longer comparing your experience to your competitors; they’re comparing it to the best experience they’ve had anywhere. Whether it’s a retailer, a hotel, a streaming platform, or a bank, every interaction shapes expectations for the next.
Technology, notably AI, will make it easier to remove friction, predict needs, and personalize experiences at scale. However, technology alone won’t create loyalty. The organizations that succeed will be the ones that use technology to amplify empathy rather than replace it.
By 2030, I think we’ll stop talking about customer experience as a department or a function. It will simply become the way successful organizations operate, and it will be embedded in strategy, product design, operations, employee experience, and leadership decisions. That’s why CX has become a board-level conversation, not because it’s another business initiative, but because it’s increasingly the lens through which long term growth can be created.
Outside of work, what book, podcast, or thinker has most shaped how you see people, markets, and behavior?
I’ve always been fascinated by behavioral science, that is understanding why people make the choices they do, often in ways that aren’t entirely rational. That way of thinking has fundamentally changed how I look at customers, markets, and even organizations. Data tells us what happened; behavioral science helps explain why.
I’m also drawn to the work around the Experience Economy, particularly the idea that organizations increasingly compete on the quality of the experiences they create rather than just the products or services they deliver. More recently, I’ve been following the rapid evolution of AI and its implications for customer understanding. What’s most exciting isn’t the technology itself, but how it can help us uncover deeper human insights and enable organizations to deliver more relevant, empathetic, and personalized experiences at scale.
If there’s one common thread across all of those influences, it’s that people don’t simply buy products or respond to data. They make decisions based on emotion, context, memory, and trust. The more we understand those human drivers, the better decisions we can make as business leaders.
Music, film, and art influence culture. What is one piece of media that has stayed with you and informs your work?
One piece of media that has stayed with me is Ted Lasso. On the surface it’s a comedy about soccer, but underneath it’s really a story about leadership, empathy, and human potential.
One line in particular has always resonated with me. Walt Whitman is quoted as saying, “Be curious, not judgmental.” I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice anyone working in insights can receive.
As researchers and strategists, it’s easy to jump to conclusions based on data. However, curiosity should push us to ask one more question.
That mindset influences how I approach customers, employees, and business problems. Rather than asking, “Why aren’t customers doing what we want?” I try to ask, “What are we missing about their experience?” That subtle shift often leads to much better insights and ultimately to better decisions.
Ultimately, I think great leaders, great researchers, and great brands all have one thing in common: they’re relentlessly curious about people. That’s a lesson I took from a television show, and I’ve tried to carry it into my work since.
If you could have dinner with any strategist, economist, or marketer — past or present — who would it be and what would you ask them first?
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking Fast and Slow is a great read.
His work has changed how we think of decision-making. He has challenged the assumption that people are rational actors and showed us that our choices are rather shaped by emotion, context, mental shortcuts, and even bias. I think his ideas have influenced economics, but they’ve also challenged thinking in marketing, customer experience, and leadership.
The first question I’d ask him is:
“As AI becomes increasingly capable of making decisions alongside or even for leaders, which human biases and behaviors do you think organizations are still most likely to underestimate?”
I think it’s an important question because while technology is advancing rapidly, human nature changes much more slowly. We spend a lot of time talking about how AI will transform business, but I think the bigger challenge is understanding how people will respond to AI, where they’ll place their trust, and how organizations can design experiences that appreciate and consider the way humans actually think and behave.
What is your biggest goal? Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
I’ve been fortunate to work with some incredible organizations across a range of industries, and what continues to motivate me is helping leaders make better decisions through a deeper understanding of people. That’s something I hope to keep doing at an even greater scale.
Over the next five years, I see myself continuing to grow as a business leader, not just leading larger teams or more complex organizations, but by contributing more broadly to the conversation around customer experience, behavioral science, and AI. I’d like to be someone whose ideas help influence how executives think about growth, trust, and experience design.
I also want to spend more time mentoring the next generation of insights professionals. I’ve benefited enormously from leaders who challenged and invested in me throughout my career, and I think there’s a real responsibility to do the same for others. It’s something that I enjoy.
Ultimately, success for me won’t be measured by a title, but rather by whether I’ve helped build stronger organizations and whether I’ve helped develop great leaders.
For someone starting in insights, analytics, or marketing strategy today, what is the one piece of advice you wish you had heard on day one?
Early in your career, it’s easy to believe your value comes from producing analyses, building dashboards, or presenting findings. Those skills matter, but they’re not what organizations remember.
The people who make the biggest impact are the ones who ask better questions.
Great insights professionals are naturally curious. They don’t stop at what happened—they ask why it happened, why it matters, and what should we do differently because of it? That’s the point where analytics becomes strategy.
I’d also tell someone starting out to spend as much time understanding people and businesses as they do learning analytical tools. AI will continue to automate many technical tasks, but curiosity, critical thinking, empathy, and the ability to connect insights to business decisions will become even more valuable.
At the end of the day, organizations don’t need more dashboards. They need better decisions. If you can consistently help leaders make those decisions with confidence, you’ll always be valuable regardless of how technology evolves.