The Evolution of Customer Experience
Season 2, Episode 18 | September 16, 2026
Synopsis
In this episode of Altitude, Nicolás Rhoads and Arturo Duhart speak with David Arconada, a leading Customer Experience executive whose international career spans telecommunications, aviation, and financial services. Drawing on his leadership experience at Iberia, Aeroméxico, and BBVA, David examines what airlines can learn from banking’s digital transformation, why customer and employee experience must be managed as part of the same system, and how organizations can use artificial intelligence without losing the human connection. The conversation also explores HumanX, his book coauthored with Bill Price, and the decisions boards and young professionals should consider as Customer Experience evolves.
Opening and Introduction
Nicolás
Welcome to a new episode of Altitude, the show where we speak with leaders and experts who are transforming aviation and other closely related industries.
I’m Nicolás Rhoads, and as always, I’m joined by Arturo Duhart. Today, we are pleased to welcome David Arconada, one of the leading executives in the field of Customer Experience.
David has built an outstanding international career across telecommunications, aviation, and financial services. In the airline industry, he held leadership positions at Iberia and Aeroméxico, where he helped transform how the passenger relationship was understood, designed, and managed. He later brought that experience to banking, taking on global responsibilities for Quality and Customer Experience at BBVA, one of the world’s leading financial groups, with a particularly strong presence in Latin America.
He is also President of DEC Mexico, the Mexican Customer Experience Association, and coauthor, with Bill Price, of HumanX, a book that invites us to move beyond the traditional view of Customer Experience toward an approach that is more integrated, simple, and genuinely human. David, thank you very much for joining us on Altitude.
1. Introduction and Career — 5 minutes
Arturo: David, welcome. To begin, following that brief introduction, you have built an outstanding international career leading Customer Experience across telecommunications, aviation, and financial services. How would you introduce yourself to our audience, and what would you say has been the common thread throughout your career?
Nicolás: At what point in your career did you realize that Customer Experience was not merely an operational function, but a genuinely strategic discipline for companies?
Arturo: Who or what experiences most influenced the way you understand customers and lead people?
2. Customer Experience in Aviation — 10 minutes
Nicolás: How did you enter the airline industry, and what surprised you most when you first began working in it?
Arturo: What makes Customer Experience at an airline particularly complex compared with other industries?
Nicolás: How did your perspective change when you moved from Iberia, a longestablished European airline, to Aeroméxico, a company with a distinct Latin American identity, global leadership, and a very particular relationship with its customers?
Arturo: What differences did you find between European and Mexican customers, both in their expectations and in how they value service?
Nicolás: An airline journey involves airports, crews, systems, baggage, on-time performance, suppliers, and government authorities. How do you build a consistent experience when much of the journey is not directly controlled by a single department—or even by the airline itself?
Arturo: What matters more to a passenger’s perception: how the experience is designed when everything works properly, or the airline’s ability to respond when something goes wrong?
Nicolás: What did you learn at Iberia and Aeroméxico about turning the voice of the customer into concrete operational, product, and investment decisions?
3. From Aviation to Banking — 8 minutes
Arturo: How did your understanding of Customer Experience change when you moved from aviation to financial services?
Nicolás: Drawing on your experience leading Customer Experience at one of the world’s largest financial groups, with a particularly strong presence in Latin America, what are the main differences between managing the experience of an airline passenger and that of a banking customer?
Nicolás: What can aviation learn from banking’s digital transformation, and what could banks learn from airlines’ operational capabilities and disruption management?
Arturo: How can Customer Experience stop belonging exclusively to one department and become a responsibility shared across the entire organization?
4. HumanX and the Future of Customer Experience — 14 minutes
Nicolás: David, after so many years working in Customer Experience—including from within airlines such as Iberia and Aeroméxico—what led you and Bill Price to conclude that we need to rethink how we understand CX? What is no longer working?
Arturo: So, what does HumanX mean, and how does it change the traditional approach to managing Customer Experience?
Nicolás: And what does all of this mean for an industry such as aviation, where the passenger experience depends on hundreds of people, processes, airports, systems, and suppliers?
Arturo: In aviation, we have spent years trying to eliminate friction—reducing wait times, automating processes, and simplifying the journey. Can an experience become too efficient? Where is the line between removing friction and removing humanity?
Nicolás: You have made an important point: customers and employees are part of the same system. Does that mean we are entering a stage in which it no longer makes sense to manage Customer Experience and Employee Experience separately?
Arturo: And now artificial intelligence is arriving. If AI is going to make airlines increasingly faster, more efficient, predictive, and personalized, what will differentiate one airline from another?
Nicolás: If we reach a point where a machine can do virtually everything a person does today in a customer interaction, what should we never automate?
5. Closing — 3 minutes
Nicolás: If you were speaking to the board of an airline, a bank, or a major corporation today, what three decisions would you recommend they make to prepare for the future of experience?
Arturo: What advice would you give young professionals who want to build a career in Customer Experience?
Nicolás: After all these years working with customers, employees, and organizations across different countries, what have you learned about people that data alone could never have taught you?
Arturo: Finally, David, what would you like our listeners to remember from this conversation when they think about the human experience within an organization?
Arturo: David, thank you very much for joining us on Altitude and for sharing your experience, your insights, and, above all, your perspective on the present and future of Customer Experience.
This has been a highly valuable conversation and a reminder that, regardless of the industry, technology, or processes involved, a great experience always begins and ends with people.
To everyone listening, thank you for joining us for this episode. We invite you to follow Altitude on your favorite platforms and share this conversation with anyone interested in aviation, leadership, and the transformation of Customer Experience.
I’m Arturo Duhart, and on behalf of Nicolás Rhoads and myself, we’ll see you on the next episode of Altitude.
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