The Great Consumer Rewiring
We're Now Self-Modifying Systems
Welcome to February, everyone!
Things have been busy at UNCX. It’s growing, so thank you to everyone who supports me. Don’t forget to follow me on social media and forward this email to friends who would like the content I offer here for free.
I’m currently going through an update of my speaking packets for 2025, which is always an ordeal and a half but a good problem to have.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been chairperson and keynote speaker at three conferences (London, Berlin, EMEA).
After I get done writing this, I begin working on bringing you the best bits from the best speakers and adding them to UNCX for easy access.
Here’s my keynote from last week's conference. I was asked to discuss my thinking on consumer identity shifts and consumer-side AI agents. Below is the first part—consumer identity shift. The consumer AI agent part is for next week.
There are no slides to show. (I always try to give talks without them).
It’s great to be here with you, the leaders and innovators shaping the success of brands, experiences, and services. And we’re all here because we understand how we engage customers is changing fast.
You know the buzzwords: AI, chatbots, automation, hyper-personalization. Everyone’s talking about using AI to boost productivity, provide better service, drive personalisation, and predict what customers want before they even ask.
That’s great.
But I’m here to tell you that this—what we’re all being excited about today—isn’t the fundamental transformation.
I’m going to be contentious today.
The truth is that real disruption isn’t what’s happening inside our businesses.
It’s what’s happening outside of our business.
The transformation that will change the game isn’t about what we do.
It’s about changes that are upending our customer dynamics—about consumers’ changing behaviours….
..and then what they will do with AI, a customer-side AI.
This shift has started, and when it's over, the traditional brand-consumer dynamic—the one we’ve spent decades optimising—will be broken.
Hello & Good afternoon, everyone.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Michael Cooper, founder of UNCX. I'm a CX expert with several decades of international experience in executive CX leadership roles. I’ve been invited to share examples of my work about today’s and tomorrow’s CX playbooks with CX and brand teams and business leaders.
I’m going to focus on two topics that I hope you’ll find interesting:
First, I’ll discuss how consumer behaviours are changing in ways that already break traditional brand loyalty, the purchase funnel, and how we think about experiences.
Second, AI—but not in the context of using it in the contact centre, marketing, or content, but to focus on consumer-side AI agents that will impact the dynamics of your customer relationships.
CONSUMORPHOSIS
You won’t know this word.
And you won’t find it in the dictionary.
It's a merging of consumer and morphosis, meaning changing.
Let me start with something that happened last week. I was interviewing a brand leader who told me, "You know what's weird? Monday to Friday, I'm this serious CMO in a suit. At weekends, I'm out there as a climate activist. And every evening, I'm a gaming streamer with thousands of followers. And none of these feels fake - they're all really me."
I want to talk about this now: how your customers aren't typically who you think they are anymore.
They're not just one person anymore.
They’re individuals with multiple identities. And they use these identities interchangeably, depending on their context, moments, and situations.
Think about yourself for a moment. You might be a busy professional grabbing a quick coffee in the morning. By afternoon, you're a parent picking up kids from school. Evening comes, and you're a hobby enthusiast or social butterfly. Each version of you wants different things, values different things, behaves differently in different contexts and chooses or uses brands accordingly.
This changes everything we think about brands and your customer’s experiences with them.
Our traditional thinking of a linear life—childhood, school, college, marriage, home, a one-company career, children, retirement—has gone.
What's Driving This?
A meta-crisis
COVID changed how we work and live. Importantly, it also showed us our mortality.
And technology allows us to be different people in different spaces.
Economic pressure is making us adapt constantly.
Climate anxiety, political upheaval, wars, and social changes are making it more fluid for us to cope with our anxieties and uncertainties and change who and what we want to be.
There’s a movement gaining ground - hyper-individualism. This hyper-individualism revolution is profound. For consumers, the permission to be multiple creates what psychologists call "identity liberation." McKinsey's 2023 research shows this manifests in several ways:
Less pressure to maintain a single, consistent self
Greater comfort with identity experimentation
More authentic self-expression in different contexts
Professional identity crafting
Social identity curation
Who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I want to be seen by my friends? Where am I going? What’s my purpose?
Here’s what it means for them:
A consumer's identity now encompasses a multifaceted tapestry of individual attributes, preferences, and behaviours.
In short, consumer hyper-individualism is the thinking that buying is increasingly driven by and reinforces the sense of the individual consumer as a unique, self-sufficient entity, prioritising their personal needs, desires, and identity expression through buying choices above collective or shared consumer experiences.
Consider two consumers in their mid-30s with similar jobs and living in the same postcode. One prioritises sustainability and seeks eco-friendly products, the other convenience and indulgence. Their divergent consumer identities direct their purchasing decisions, and their different identities fuel their needs.
Contextual Identity:
Macro contexts include societal and cultural values, climate change, political conflicts, and inflation.
Micro contexts are about what happens at a moment of consumption: when and where a brand is consumed, with whom, and what—and the functional, emotional, and societal needs in that specific moment. Consumer identity becomes context-dependent, morphing based on situation, environment, and specific needs.
These factors influence consumer choices and feelings about brands, experiences, and loyalties because of who they are at different moments.
If we don’t understand the context of their moment, we miss half their story.
Each factor can influence brand choice, and countless combinations of these components exist.
These changes partly explain the flatlining of customer satisfaction in Europe and the USA—now at a ten-year low—the gap between consumers and brands—and the fact that some of our traditional CX playbooks are no longer relevant.
That loyalty program you've spent years building?
It assumes customers are one consistent person. But they are now flitting between brands, borrowing them, depending on the moment.
That customer journey map on your office wall?
It thinks people move in straight lines. But not now - they're in what Google calls the messy middle.
That target customer profile you've carefully crafted?
What ' identity mode ' is the customer in when you’re helping on a call? You’re probably missing 80% of who your customer is.
Starbucks figured this out. They realised that the same customer needs a quick, efficient experience during the morning rush, wants a relaxed workspace mid-morning, seeks a social gathering spot in the afternoon, and might be looking for an entertainment venue in the evening. They stopped trying to be one thing to one type of customer or one thing to all customers and started adapting to who their customers were becoming at each moment.
So has Nike. They noticed customers weren't just athletes or casual wearers anymore. The same person might be a serious runner in the morning, a fashion-conscious professional during the day, and a social impact advocate in their community. So, Nike created different experiences, messages, and engagements for each identity.
Here's what this means for you
Three big things:
First, stop thinking about customer segments and start thinking about customer states or modes. Stop thinking your customers are fixed personas - they're shape-shifting, constantly adapting to different moments and needs for the brands they engage with.
Second, build flexible experiences. You need to recognize and support different versions of the same customer. Think of it like a chameleon—able to adapt to whatever identity your customer is expressing at the moment.
Third and crucially - the old idea of brand loyalty is dead. Instead of assuming a relationship with one version of your customer, you need to be relevant to many versions of them. It's about winning ‘in’ the moment with them, not owning the customer.
Actions to start taking tomorrow
So let me leave you with some specific actions you can start taking tomorrow.
For Service Designers:
Think about your customer service scripts and training. Instead of one-size-fits-all approaches, teach your teams to spot identity switches. Is your customer in rushed professional mode or relaxed explorer mode? Are they being a careful parent or an adventurous individual? Each needs a different service style. Train your teams to recognize these shifts and adapt their approach.
Here's a practical tip: Start by mapping three different modes your customers commonly show up as. For each, write down what that version of your customer needs, values, and how they’d prefer to be served. That's your starting point for flexible service design.
If you’re an Experience Designer:
Stop creating single linear journeys.
Instead, design multiple entry and exit points for different customer states. Think about Lululemon - they've designed their stores so you can be a serious athlete getting performance gear, a mindful yogi attending a class, or a social connector meeting friends.
Try this: Take your main customer journey and break it into modules that can be mixed and matched. Then, different combinations for different customer modes will be created. It's like having a playlist instead of a single song - you can adapt to whatever your customer needs in the moment.
For Brand Designers:
Your brand must be like a Swiss Army knife—one tool with multiple functions. Look at Nike—one brand offering elite performance, fashion, or social justice, depending on which version of the customer they know they’re talking to.
Here's something you can do next week:
Audit your brand communications.
Are you stuck in one tone of voice?
One type of message?
Start creating a variety that speaks to different versions of your customer while keeping your core brand truth consistent.
And for all of us:
Start noticing identity shifts in ourselves. How many different versions of us show up in a single day? What makes you switch modes? What do you need from brands when in each mode?
Use yourself as a living laboratory for understanding this change.
You're not serving customers anymore - you're serving chameleons who change their colours based on context. The better you recognise and support these changes, the more valuable you become to them.
Let me wrap up this section with something important.
This isn't just a trend—it's a fundamental shift in human behaviour.
We're all becoming more fluid, adaptable, and multiple in who we are and want to be. To thrive, we need to understand we’re no longer serving fixed customers but dynamic beings who constantly reinvent themselves.
As I've said, think about how many different versions of yourself you have been just this week. Now imagine building a business that must serve all of them.
We're witnessing an unprecedented transformation in consumer behaviour. Today's consumers aren't just changing what they buy – they're fundamentally rewiring who they are. It’s not just another trend; it's a profound shift in human behaviour driven by multiple converging forces.
At its heart is a perfect storm of catalysts. Pew Research (2023) documented the rise of hyper-individualism, which shows that 71 per cent of consumers now prioritise individual self-expression over group conformity. This hyper-individualism creates fertile ground for identity fluidity, enabling and accelerating the ability to maintain multiple authentic identities.
It’s powered by three key forces:
Digital platforms creating "identity laboratories"
Cultural permission to express multiple selves
Market systems adapting to serve fluid identities
The result? Consumers now operate in multiple modes, switching between different versions of themselves based on context and need. McKinsey's 2023 research shows that between 60 and 75 per cent of consumers have adopted new behavioural patterns, with most intending to maintain these changes.
This identity fluidity manifests in three key ways:
Actively updating mental models
Maintaining multiple authentic personas
Adapting ethical frameworks to their context
For us, this creates both challenges and opportunities. Traditional models of customer segmentation are breaking down. Brand loyalty is changing. Success now requires understanding and supporting customers across different modes, situations, and moments:
Modes: distinct mindsets affecting behaviour and needs
Situations: broader contexts shaping interactions
Moments: specific points of engagement or decision
Leading companies are responding with identity-fluid service models.
Lululemon, Apple, and Nordstrom show successful adaptation through:
Flexible spaces supporting multiple modes
Staff trained in identity recognition
Technology enabling seamless transitions
Time-based service adaptation
The implications ripple beyond business. We're seeing:
Reduced identity anxiety in consumers
Increased investment in multiple personas
Evolution of community structures
Transformation of cultural norms
To succeed in this new reality with relevance and authentic service delivery, we must recognise and support identity fluidity. This isn't about offering more choice—it's about fundamentally rethinking how we serve consumers who are themselves becoming more fluid and adaptive.
Our success means moving beyond traditional customer experience models to create adaptive systems that support and enable identity fluidity.
Thank You.
Are you seeing these changes in your work? In the comments section below, let me know if you have anything to add to this thought.
Ideas don’t change the world just because they exist.
One would think the wheel as one of the greatest inventions in history.
Yet its use took thousands of years for it to become widespread.
And it took until 30 years ago for people to accept that putting wheels on a suitcase made sense.
The Wheel: A Brilliant Idea That Struggled to Roll
The wheel seems an obvious game-changer.
But the first versions weren’t practical. Early roads were dirt paths full of ruts, rocks, and mud. Wheels broke quickly, so sledges were more reliable. In Egypt, they preferred dragging stones on slick surfaces rather than using fragile wooden wheels to build their pyramids.
Wheels weren’t practical without axles. And until they developed strong enough structure to support axles, there weren’t axles (what was the point?). It took smoother roads, more substantial carts and better materials for axles to work well enough for wheels to become standard.
Wheels on Suitcases: A "Ridiculous" Idea Until It Wasn't
Fast-forward a few thousand years.
Why did it take until the 1990s for rolling suitcases to become normal? After all, the idea wasn’t new. Some people put small wheels on suitcases over a hundred years ago, but they didn’t take off then.
It was about culture. Carrying a suitcase was seen as "a man's job," reinforcing the thinking that rolling one was weak.
Then Bob Plath, a Northwest Airlines pilot, didn’t just make it practical; he made it socially acceptable. Pilots, seen as rugged and masculine, started using them, and suddenly rolling a suitcase wasn’t just easier—it became cool.
Once that image shifted, consumers followed.
When consumers followed, airlines made overhead bins bigger to accommodate them.
Suddenly, it was strange not to have wheels on a suitcase.
Timing and Perceptions
Both the wheel and wheeled suitcases weren’t about the idea itself.
They needed the right environment, technology, and cultural mindset to take off. The wheel struggled because of weak roads and fragile materials. Suitcases with wheels struggled because of outdated gender roles and cultural thinking.
The cultural shift was more important than the technology itself.
Ultimately, innovation also has to become a cultural choice.
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