Experience KSA 2025: Key insights and takeaways
On October 15, New Metrics and Medallia Experience organized KSA 2025 – a day-long summit focused on the latest trends and developments in customer experience and employee experience. An overview of the event’s key takeaways.
Experience KSA (EXP KSA) brought together leaders, innovators, and practitioners shaping the future of customer and citizen experience in the Kingdom. The event explored how government and private sector organizations are transforming interactions into impact through data, empathy, and design.
The event was kicked off by Rob Thurner, who highlighted why now is the moment for experience transformation in the Kingdom – powered by Saudi Vision 2030, one of the world’s highest digital literacy rates, and a bold ambition to redefine how services are delivered.
Mike Debnar, Senior Principal at Medallia, shared ‘The Story of a Comeback Driven by Customers and Employees’. Drawing on his journey with 7-Eleven, Mike showed how listening at scale turned decline into growth, and how Medallia’s technology now fuels that same kind of listening across 3.2 billion customer interactions.
Throughout EXP KSA, John Abraham brought clarity and depth to the stage leading discussions that connected technology, culture, and human experience. As moderator, he challenged speakers to go beyond frameworks and share what truly drives transformation inside their organizations.
His facilitation bridged perspectives between private and public sectors, showing that while technologies evolve, the foundation of great experience remains constant: empathy, empowerment, and purpose.
Public Experience
Hatim Bawazir (Ministry of Culture) and Rayan Samman (HRDF) shared how Saudi government entities are reimagining citizen experience. Hatim described how empathy training transformed frontline engagement, while Rayan explained how journey mapping and citizen validation revealed insights beyond data. Their stories illustrated that while technology may enable change, it are people who ultimately deliver it.
In a candid fireside chat, Ali Al Qarni reflected on the evolution of customer experience in Saudi Arabia’s public sector. Speaking from his personal journey, he emphasized that lasting transformation comes from clarity of purpose and a willingness to rethink how value is created for citizens. His conversation underscored the growing maturity of CX in government: one focused not only on service quality, but also on trust and accessibility.
Great customer experiences
In a keynote, author and experience strategist Matt Watkinson took the stage to unpack the ten principles of great customer experiences. He reminded the audience that true CX begins with understanding human nature from identity and emotion to control and memory. Matt explained how great experiences reflect who customers are and help them achieve deeper goals, not just solve surface problems.
His insights blended science and simplicity, bringing the fundamentals of experience design back to where they belong: people.
Experience Management
Mark Boniface challenged the status quo of how organizations approach listening. In a world overflowing with data, he argued, traditional surveys are no longer enough. True understanding, he said, comes from connecting every signal across every channel.
Mark spotlighted how AI is transforming experience management, shifting organizations from reactive feedback loops to proactive, intelligent listening. By analyzing billions of unstructured interactions-calls, chats, social media, and digital behavior-AI reveals insights that conventional tools often overlook.
Customer Centric Transformation
HH Princess Jwaher Alsaud (Tawuniya), Yasser Almaliki (GOSI) , and Maher Samhouri (BSF) explored how financial institutions are embedding customer-centricity at scale.
HH Princess Jwaher emphasized that transformation begins with people and shared how Tawuniya connects journey-level performance with team accountability. Maher spoke about integrating CX and operational data to drive leadership action, while Yasser highlighted how real-time insights simplified experiences for citizens. The panel showed that culture and collaboration remain the real engines of transformation.
Experience Design
Faris Iskandrani (Red Sea Global) and Saiyfe El Cosantini (NEOM) revealed how experience design shapes the Kingdom’s giga-projects. From immersive over-water villas to integrated digital ecosystems, they showed that experience-led design is about creating emotional resonance and long-term value.
The Future of CX
Mohsen Malaki, Senior Customer Experience Advisor, introduced a bold new frontier in experience management: Predictive CX. While traditional surveys tell us what happened, predictive models reveal what’s likely to happen and how to shape better outcomes.
By fusing operational data with machine learning, organizations can now better predict satisfaction across their customer base, quantify the ROI of CX initiatives, and simulate the impact of operational changes before implementation.
Employee Experience
The discussion on employee experience (EX) highlighted how organizations across Saudi Arabia are redefining the workplace as a driver of national progress. Ahmed Thomali from STC, Waleed Sindi from SEC, and Faisal Almozaini from Arabian Drilling, explored how human experience inside organizations fuels Vision 2030’s broader ambitions.
Across all perspectives, a shared vision emerged: when people feel empowered, engaged, and connected to purpose, organizations don’t just transform -they help shape the Kingdom’s future.
Rami Haffar delivered a powerful vision for the future of Experience Management-one that transcends individual touchpoints and reimagines experience as a strategic lever for national progress.
Experience Management
Rami Haffar, partner at New Metrics, delivered a powerful vision for the future of Experience Management – one that transcends individual touchpoints and reimagines experience as a strategic lever for national progress.
In his session, ‘From Experience Management to National Transformation’, Rami emphasized that the next frontier is not just about improving interactions but orchestrating entire journeys. Organizations can unlock value at scale by harnessing the power of data, analytics, and cross-sector collaboration-impacting citizens, industries, and institutions alike.
Closing Note
Nader Abu Zahr, Vice President of Go-To-Market at New Metrics, closed the event by thanking all attendees and partners. He highlighted that through shared vision and collaboration, organizations across Saudi Arabia are not just improving experiences but they are collectively shaping a new standard for excellence in the Kingdom.
