CX With Teeth: Lessons from Era Ziroe on Designing for Loyalty

The Path Uncut, Episode 4

When I first met Era Ziroe, I knew we had to have this conversation. She’s one of the sharpest CX leaders I’ve come across—equal parts strategist, operator, and truth-teller. In our latest episode of The Path Uncut, we dig into what it takes to turn customer experience from just another department into a driver of business strategy.

Era has built CX strategies at many legacy financial institutions—where complexity is high and patience is low. What stood out to me most wasn’t just her experience, but the way she leads with empathy while holding a high bar for operational rigor.

CX needs to be built like a business

Era builds teams that aren’t focused on chasing trends. Instead, they build durable systems, and get results by doing the work most people avoid.

One of the early moments that stuck with me was Era’s belief that CX should be run like a business. Her first role in customer experience came through product management, and that perspective never left her. She leads CX the same way she ran P&Ls: with clear goals, aligned incentives, and a focus on execution.

In her latest role at KeyBank, she structured her team using a federated model which gave each business line ownership over their own customer journey, while the central team provided the tools, research, and design support to move the needle.

Stakeholder buy-in is earned, not assigned

When Era stepped into her role at Key, she spent nearly two years meeting with business leaders, understanding their goals, and shaping strategy around shared outcomes. She framed CX as a growth lever, backed by research, and built for their reality.

That created the foundation for real traction and opened the door to conversations about design strategy, experience gaps, and innovation grounded in insight.

Design thinking builds credibility across the org

Era brings design strategists into the room early instead of waiting for downstream handoffs. She also embeds them with product and business teams to help define the problem space, pressure-test assumptions, and facilitate decision-making across silos.

The result? Teams move faster. They solve the right problems. And stakeholders start asking for those strategists by name.

Insight has to drive action—every time

In previous roles, Era led the research function for the entire enterprise. That included quantitative research, qualitative research, syndicated benchmarks, and channel-level analysis. What made her team effective is their ability to connect the dots across sources and deliver a single, actionable narrative.

When Key Bank’s ATM rollout fell short, her team launched a listening campaign, armed the frontline with better guidance, and rebuilt trust with transparency. That’s the level of responsiveness that customers remember, and reward.

CX wins when it’s personal and predictive

In this episode, we talked a lot about personalization and the expectations of younger customers who want faster service, smarter tools, and fewer barriers. But they also want to feel seen. Era made it clear: meeting those expectations starts with the data, and with the systems that can actually act on it.

Her team has used CX scores and behavioral data to surface gaps in experience across generations. Then they layer in qualitative research to prioritize improvements that matter most.

One thing we agree on: technology is outpacing most orgs’ ability to use it

The real work is prioritizing what matters, aligning teams, and building the capacity to act on what customers are telling you every day, in every channel.

This conversation reminded me why I started this podcast. Bold ideas and courageous leadership aren’t —when done right—not only improves satisfaction scores, but also reshapes the way businesses operate.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of The Path Uncut with Era Ziroe