For Phil Wilkinson (pictured below), CX is how a business should choose to drive growth. In fact, he says transformation is only meaningful "when it changes business performance and leaves the organization with a stronger capability than it had before".
It's a philosophy that underpinned Wilkinson's career. During his 13 years with British supermarket ASDA, he held a variety of commercial and customer facing roles, including that of senior director of online grocery trading, through which he helped build the supermarket's online grocery service into a highly profitable, award-winning platform.
IIn 2020, Wilkinson joined Kellogg Company. Following the separation of the North American cereal business in 2023, the remaining global snacking business became Kellanova, which was subsequently acquired by Mars in 2025. There he has helped build an omnichannel capability across Europe that strengthens the connections between CX and growth.
Anybody who has worked in a large organization knows that coordinating results across siloed departments in this way is no mean feat. But Wilkinson says the tide is turning on siloed CX.
Looking to the future, he says two of the most persistent and damaging silos are slowly being eroded: the boundaries between experience, marketing and commerce are disappearing, and customers are moving away from thinking in channels.
As he joins the CX Network Advisory Board, Wilkinson tells CX Network:
- Why he chose a career in CX, his greatest achievements and the best professional advice he has ever received.
- How consumer AI will change omnichannel in the coming years.
- And what he believes to be the most interesting thing happening in CX right now.
CX Network: What first drew you to a career in CX?
Working in online grocery really brought those two things together for me. You could see very quickly that seemingly small points of friction in a customer journey could have a very real impact on conversion, loyalty and growth. From there, my career increasingly moved towards digital, data, personalization and omnichannel experiences.
What has kept me interested is that CX sits at the intersection of consumer behavior, creativity, technology and commercial performance.
Done well, it shouldn't be a separate discipline. It should simply be how a business chooses to grow.
CX Network: What do you consider your greatest achievement to date at Kellanova?
Phil Wilkinson: My proudest achievement isn't a single campaign or technology deployment. It's helping build an omnichannel capability across Europe that connects consumer experience much more directly to growth.
That has meant bringing together media, content, data, technology, consumer experience and digital commerce around common outcomes, rather than allowing them to operate as separate disciplines.
The technology is important, but the bigger achievement has been creating the capability, teams and operating model around it. We've built connected experience platforms at scale, strengthened our data and personalization capabilities, introduced new approaches to experimentation and measurement, and connected those much more closely to commercial outcomes.
For me, transformation is only meaningful when it changes business performance and leaves the organization with a stronger capability than it had before.
That combination of growth and capability building is probably what I'm most proud of.
CX Network: With consumer AI assistants now in the mix, how do you believe omnichannel will change in the coming years?
Phil Wilkinson: I think the biggest change will be that consumers increasingly stop thinking about channels altogether.
Omnichannel has traditionally been about creating a consistent experience as a consumer moves between a store, website, app, retailer, search engine or social platform.
Consumer AI assistants potentially change that model because, increasingly, the consumer may not navigate those touchpoints themselves. Their AI will do some of that work for them.
So the challenge shifts from simply being present across channels to ensuring that your brand, products, data and services are understandable and accessible to both humans and machines.
That has major implications for discovery and commerce. If I ask an AI assistant, "What's a good high-protein breakfast?" or "Find me a snack my children will like and add it to my grocery order", the point of influence has moved upstream. The AI may decide which handful of brands I ever consider.
For brands, that makes trusted data, distinctive brand assets, product information, availability and connected commerce infrastructure incredibly important.
But I don't think this eliminates human experience. If anything, it raises its value. AI will increasingly handle friction; humans and brands will need to create the moments that build emotion, trust and preference.
CX Network: What is the best professional advice you have ever received?
Phil Wilkinson: One piece of advice I've carried through my career is: start with the problem, not the technology.
It's particularly relevant today because there is always another platform, capability or AI use case competing for attention.
The temptation can be to adopt the technology and then work backwards to find a use for it. I've learned to do the opposite.
Be very clear about the consumer or business problem you're trying to solve, understand the behavior you want to change, and then decide what technology, data or capability will help you achieve it.
It sounds simple, but it's probably become more important as technology has become more powerful.
CX Network: What do you think is the most interesting thing happening in CX right now?
Phil Wilkinson: For me, the most interesting development is that the traditional boundaries between customer experience, marketing and commerce are disappearing.
Historically, organizations could treat brand building, media, CRM, customer experience and ecommerce as relatively separate disciplines.
Consumers obviously never saw it that way, and technology is finally forcing businesses to catch up.
A piece of content can now create demand, generate a personalized experience and lead directly into a transaction, while the data created by that transaction can improve the next experience. The opportunity is to make that entire system work together.
AI accelerates this enormously, but I don't think AI itself is the interesting part. The interesting part is what happens when insight, creativity, experience and commerce become one connected growth system.
That changes CX from something organizations measure at individual touchpoints into something much closer to an enterprise growth capability.