Businesses are drowning in customer feedback.

They have surveys, online reviews, service data, behavioral signals, complaints, social posts, and AI tools ready to summarize all of it.

Yet customers can still move from an app to a store, from a dealer to a contact center, or from a product issue to an aftersales team and feel as though the brand has forgotten everything that came before.

In many instances, more feedback has not fixed the journey.

In a discussion with CX Today, Coralie Musy, VP of Customer Experience and Market Intelligence at Nissan, said:

“The issue is not getting information; it’s more about how you manage information in order to provide added value to the customers.”

Musy's words will resonate with many CX leaders, who are all too aware that data collection is no longer the hard part. Turning fragmented signals into a single view of the customer, then making sure someone acts on what that view reveals, is where the work begins.

Standardizing the Signal

Nissan faced a problem familiar to large, complex organizations.

Different parts of the business measured customer experience in different ways. Some used scores out of eight, others NPS, while other touchpoints relied on five-star ratings.

Comparing them, let alone identifying the biggest journey problems, was difficult.

Two years ago, Nissan centralized its customer voice activity within Musy’s team. The business now maps its customer journeys, brings internal and external feedback into one platform, and applies a single five-star measurement across touchpoints.

AI helps the team identify positive and negative patterns. But Musy is quick to emphasize that the technology is only useful because the underlying signals are being made comparable.

“The key is not to get more data,” she said. “The key is to consolidate data, to have the same metrics, whatever the touchpoints, and then to bring actions based on that.”

It is a simple point, but one many organizations still miss. AI cannot create a joined-up journey when the business continues to measure each part of that journey in isolation.

The Digital-to-Physical Drop-Off

The automotive buying journey makes the challenge particularly visible.

According to Musy, customers spend more than 14 hours researching before buying a car. They may begin with three vehicles in mind, consider as many as 14 after reviewing forums, recommendations, and online content, then narrow their shortlist again before visiting a dealership.

By the time they walk through the door, they have already done a lot of the work.

But a disconnect can often occur when the customer enters an actual car dealership, as she explains:

“Where it breaks, it breaks in most of the cases at the moments where you move from digital to physical,” Musy said.

Nissan refers to this as the “phygital” challenge: linking the information a customer has gathered online with the person they meet in the physical world.

The dealership should be able to build on the customer’s research, answer the remaining questions, and guide a decision. It should not force them to restart the process.

The lesson extends well beyond automotive. For example, a traveler may research and book online before arriving at a hotel; or a retail customer may compare products, reviews, and prices before visiting a store.

In each case, the customer sees one brand, not separate digital, physical, and service functions.