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On a recent trip to Sardinia, I found myself mesmerized by thousands of wild flamingos. Watching them, three key lessons in customer experience came to life.
1. Stand Out
Flamingos don’t blend in—and neither should we. Their bold colour and poise demand attention. In today’s world, efficiency is expected. What sets a brand apart is how remarkable the experience feels. As Will Guidara says, aim for unreasonable hospitality. That’s what gets people talking.
2. Balance Is Everything
Flamingos balance effortlessly on one leg to conserve energy. In CX, balance matters too. I believe the winning formula is a mix of:
Tech and human touch
Efficiency and emotional connection
Consistency and surprise
Get this right, and you earn both trust and love.
3. You Are What You Feed It
Flamingos get their colour from their diet—and it struck me that our CX culture works the same way. If we want standout experiences, we need to feed our teams with purpose, empathy, training, and strong leadership.
The best brands don’t just deliver—they inspire. So next time you’re mapping out a CX strategy, think pink. Think balance. And most of all—be a flamingo.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few days in southern Sardinia. Arriving early ahead of a keynote at a travel industry event, I took the opportunity to soak up some Italian sunshine and explore. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend doing the same—Sardinia is a truly stunning island.
One of the more unexpected highlights? Flamingos. Around 20,000 of them call the island home. While these elegant birds are usually associated with the Caribbean, Africa, or perhaps your local zoo, in Sardinia they roam freely across the salt plains—majestic, balanced, and utterly mesmerising in their unique stance and grace.
Watching them, I was struck by how effortlessly they stand out (pun absolutely intended) from other birds. Their uniqueness is undeniable—and, naturally, my mind wandered to what we might learn from them. I know… welcome to the strange places my brain goes sometimes.
So here it is: three short lessons in Customer Experience strategy, courtesy of the flamingo.
1.They Stand Out
And so should you. Flamingos don’t blend in—quite the opposite, in fact. Their loud pink feathers set them apart. They stand tall and proud, like an Italian model strutting down a Milan runway. They’re unapologetic in their poise and grace.
As a brand, unless your customer experience stands out, why should anyone notice you?
You might think you’re special—but maybe you’re just another bland, common garden bird. Attentive customer service, frictionless journeys, and personalised communication were yesterday’s colourful plumage. Today, they’re simply the ticket to play.
In a crowded market, your brand needs to stand tall—and pink.
Access to AI tools has levelled the playing field. Every brand, big or small, can now offer efficient, seamless, frictionless CX with minimal investment. Efficiency is no longer a differentiator—it’s a commodity.
Will Guidara built the reputation of Eleven Madison Park—his three-star Michelin restaurant in Manhattan—on what he calls Unreasonable Hospitality. From serving dessert in Central Park to a Spanish family who had never seen snow (sleds included), to transforming a table into a miniature Hawaiian beach for a couple who missed their flight, he lives by the mantra: go beyond expectations at every opportunity.
You need to be noticed.
Remarkable customer experience is your most visible, memorable, and unique brand asset. If you’re not remarkable, why would anyone tell your story? Why would they even notice you in the first place?
Be a flamingo in their back yard—not a sparrow.
2. Balance is Everything
Have you ever wondered why flamingos stand on one leg? Well, so did I.
Apparently, it’s not to show off their impressive yoga skills. In fact, it’s all about conserving heat. Standing in cool water all day, flamingos tuck one leg up close to their bodies to stay warm— evolution gifting them with the balance to pull it off with elegance.
Great customer experience requires that same kind of graceful balance—across multiple dimensions.
A. Tech & Touch
Investing in AI, tech stacks, and the scale of digital connection is pointless unless you also nurture the depth of human connection. Automation must never replace authenticity. The brands that master this balance between tech and touch will win the race for relevance.
B. Efficiency & Emotion
Yes, efficiency matters—streamlined processes, reduced friction, lower costs. But it’s not enough. Emotional engagement takes creativity, empathy, and investment. It’s what makes experiences memorable. Process may get you in the game, but emotion wins hearts.
C. Consistency & Surprise
Customers need reliability. They want to know things will work, the same way, every time. But they also crave the unexpected. If your brand never surprises, it fades into the background. Reliability keeps you trustworthy— surprise makes you unforgettable.
Consider Intermountain Health, who installed a speech-to-chart AI system that transcribes clinical consultations in real time. By removing the need for notetaking, it allowed doctors to look patients in the eye—freeing them to deliver empathy. Technology doing the admin; humans doing the humanity.
Balancing automation and authenticity is one of the great CX challenges of our era.
Lose that balance, and the customer may very well topple right out of your sales funnel.
3. It Reflects What You Feed It
As you may already know, flamingos get their pink colouring from their diet. It’s the carotenoid pigments found in algae and brine shrimp that give them their standout hue. In Sardinia, those pigments are clearly in shorter supply—the flamingos there are a much paler pink, sometimes nearly white in appearance. Typical Italians—still more majestic and fashionable.
Similarly, your CX ‘colour’ comes from what you feed it.
If you want customer experience to permeate the DNA of your organisation, you must feed the culture accordingly—with top-level leadership, empathy, and inspiration. CX excellence doesn’t happen by accident. It’s cultivated.
You also need to feed it through training and feedback. Constant nourishment. Constant refinement.
Take Dame Irene Hays, for example—head of the UK’s largest and most successful travel agency. Her organisation consistently wins customer service and CX excellence awards. Why? Because every one of her employees lives and breathes customer excellence.
Dame Irene is the brand. Her passion for authentic, genuine connection shines through at every level—internally and externally. Customers feel it. Employees feel it. And that feeling becomes the foundation of loyalty.
If you want vibrant, colourful, emotionally resonant experiences, you must nourish them from the inside out. Your employee experience is the bedrock of your customer experience.
Neglect it, and frankly, you don’t even have a leg to stand on.
So, there you have it.
In today’s noisy, competitive marketplace make sure your brand is different, colourful, and unmistakably you. Nourish your CX philosophy from within and strike the right balance between tech and touch.
And above all—stand tall. Be a flamingo. Eating brine shrimp is optional.
