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About us

A CX design agency built for the AI era.

f/cx.ai gives enterprise organizations senior customer experience direction and genuine AI fluency in the same room — engaged fractionally, for the work in front of them, rather than as a full-time hire or a standing agency bench.

Who you work with

The people in the room are the people doing the work.

A small senior team, not a pyramid. The person who diagnoses the problem is the person who designs the answer and sits in the steering committee when it is argued — on a standing cadence with decisions closing each week.

Enterprise experience

Fifteen enterprises, one way of working.

SAP, Bank of America, American Express, Verizon, Prudential, P&G, Bayer Crop Science, Cambridge and more. Financial services, retail, technology, telecoms, healthcare, agriculture and higher education — the environments this practice was built out of.

How we think

Diverge to see the options, converge to commit.

Design thinking gives the work its shape. We widen the option space deliberately, then close it on evidence agreed in advance — because a strategy is defined by what it declines, not by what it lists.

What we leave behind

Capability that stays after we go.

Evidence beats seniority, and the standard for it is set before the first workshop. When we release, the model, the method and the evidence trail live with your people — otherwise it was consulting, not change.

See how we design
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About us

A customer experience design and innovation agency for the AI era

f/cx.ai designs the experience an enterprise intends to deliver, and proves it before the money is committed.

We are a customer experience design and innovation agency built for a moment when enterprise CX is being rebuilt around artificial intelligence. Our work runs from the executive direction — what experience the organization is going to compete on, and who owns the customer outcome — through the journeys and service models that direction implies, to working prototypes tested with real customers before a delivery year is spent on them.

The firm is deliberately small and deliberately senior. Clients engage us fractionally: the seniority is in the room when the decisions are made, without the cost of a permanent executive hire or the overhead of a standing agency bench. Three areas and twenty-two solutions let an organization start with a single briefing and scale the commitment only as far as the work justifies.

The methods, the tools, and the reference library we bring were built inside enterprise programs — financial services, insurance, healthcare, retail and consumer goods, telecommunications, technology, and higher education — where experience decisions carry regulatory weight, and where an AI answer has to hold up under real volume, real risk review, and real cost.

Our purpose

To give enterprise leaders a customer experience they can defend with evidence — designed around what customers actually value, built with AI where it earns its place, and owned by the people who have to live with it after we go.

Our services

Three areas, twenty-two solutions

Every engagement draws on one or more of these. Most start with a diagnostic, and none of them end at a recommendation.

01

CX Strategy

Decide the experience you intend to sell, ground it in evidence, and name who owns delivering it — before anyone designs or builds.

  • CX Strategy & Operating Model Design
  • CX AI Readiness & Opportunity Assessment
  • Fractional CX Leadership
  • Customer & User Research
  • Conversation Intelligence & Voice of Customer
  • UI/UX Audit & Heuristic Evaluation
02

Design Studio

Where strategy becomes something customers use. Journeys, services, interfaces, systems and language — designed, tested, and specified to build.

  • Customer Journey Reinvention
  • Service Design & Experience Orchestration
  • Information Architecture & Wireframing
  • Product Design (UI/UX)
  • Interactive Prototyping & Design Validation
  • Usability Testing & Experience Benchmarking
  • Digital Experience Redesign & Replatforming
  • Design System & Component Library
  • Content Design & Conversational UX Writing
  • Accessibility & Inclusive Design
  • Design Operations & Embedded Design Team
03

Innovation Lab

Where new ideas are ideated, incubated, and piloted — including AI in the customer path — and only the ones the evidence supports get scaled.

  • CX Innovation Lab & Experience Prototyping
  • Generative UI & AI-Native Interface Design
  • Agentic Service Design & Deployment Plan
  • Contact Center Modernization & Agent Assist
  • CX Governance, Trust & Enablement

The practice, quantified

By the numbers

3
Areas — CX Strategy, the Design Studio, and the Innovation Lab
22
Solutions across the three, each with four named deliverables
6
Ways to engage — from a single executive briefing to a retained seat
22
Proprietary AI-driven CX and innovation decision-intelligence modules built for enterprise

How we are built

Three things that decide how the work runs

Senior only

There is no delivery pyramid underneath the people you meet. The person who diagnoses the problem designs the answer and sits in the room when it is argued.

Fractional by design

You carry the seniority through the quarter where the decisions get made, and not through the quarters where they do not. The commitment scales to the work, not to a headcount line.

Evidence before conviction

The standard a piece of work has to clear is agreed before it starts, and the model, the method, and the evidence trail stay with your people when we release.

Our IP

The tools we built, and own

f/cx.ai owns the IP its engagements run on — the entire ToolKit and AmorphiaUI AI. Clients get the outcomes; the tools stay ours.

The f/cx.ai ToolKit

Twenty-two modules the engagements run on — diagnosis, design, decisioning and measurement, including the AI-Driven Experience Audit Framework. Explore the ToolKit →

f/cx.ai Online Tools

The readiness assessment, decision instruments, Engagement Configurator and a 56-template library, all running live. Open the console →

AmorphiaUI AI

A generative AI UI agent app: you build the agent, it builds the interface — with an assurance console that shows the evidence behind every answer. Built by f/cx.ai and designed by Skip Vanderburg. Visit AmorphiaUI →

About f/cx.ai. f/cx.ai is a customer experience design and innovation agency for the AI era, working with enterprise organizations to design, prototype, and prove the journeys, service models, and AI agents their customers actually move through. Founded in 2026 and headquartered in San Francisco, the firm is organized around three areas — CX Strategy, a Design Studio, and an Innovation Lab — delivering twenty-two solutions, engaged fractionally, at the seniority the decision requires. f/cx.ai owns the IP it delivers with: the f/cx.ai ToolKit and AmorphiaUI AI. To start a conversation, write to innovate@fractionalcx.ai.


What we do

A senior design team, engaged fractionally

Enterprise customer experience is being rebuilt around AI, and most organizations are attempting that rebuild without a seat at the table that understands both halves of the problem. CX leaders are handed AI mandates they did not scope. Technology leaders are handed customer outcomes they cannot measure. The work stalls in between.

We sit in that gap. We work with executive teams to set the experience direction, design the journeys and service models AI is going to change, and turn both into decisions the business can fund and defend — then stay close enough to the delivery teams that the design survives contact with reality.

Fractional is the point. You get the seniority when the decisions are being made, without carrying the role through the quarters when they are not.


The team

Who you work with

A small senior team — the people in the room are the people doing the work.

Skip Vanderburg

Skip Vanderburg

Founder & Chief Experience Officer

Sets the direction of the agency and leads executive engagements — bringing senior CX and AI perspective into the room where the decisions actually get made.

Karene Conlin

Karene Conlin

Co-Founder & Chief Customer Care Officer

Leads the care and service design team — how human and AI agents work together on the floor, and what it takes for an AI-led service model to hold up under real volume.

Rick Bogdan

Rick Bogdan

Chief Revenue Officer & Head of Accounts

Leads sales and business development — four decades of solution sales to Fortune 500 companies, now focused on helping f/cx.ai clients grow.

Jerria Lazaga

Jerria Lazaga

Director of Research, Marketing, & Operations

Runs marketing and the operating side of the agency — how the work reaches the market and how engagements run smoothly from first conversation to final deliverable.


Enterprise experience

Where the founder has done the work.

Customer experience design and innovation engagements delivered for enterprise organizations across financial services, retail, technology, telecoms, automotive, healthcare, agriculture and higher education — the environments this practice was built out of. Click a highlighted enterprise to review the details of that engagement.

7Financial services & insurance
4Retail & consumer
3Technology, telecoms & mobility
2Life sciences & education

Named organizations reflect engagement history of the founders and their teams. All marks are the property of their respective owners and are shown for reference only; no endorsement or current relationship is implied.


How we think

Four things we believe

Design thinking gives the work its shape — diverge to widen the option space, converge to commit. Below, each conviction is drawn as the mechanism it actually describes, and every switch between them runs that same diverge-then-converge cycle.

Discover Define Develop Deliver
Discover · Define Diverge → Converge

Pick a conviction, or let it cycle. ↑↓to move

The imperative isn’t to start with the technology. It’s to design around the customer moments that move the business — and then build the AI capability that makes those moments faster, clearer, and more consistent.

Who we work with

Built for enterprise — and beyond

Customer experience is owned by one function and experienced across all of them, which is why it is argued about at this level. Below is the table it gets argued at — what each seat actually needs, where we plug in, and where the return lands. Select a seat.

CEOChief Executive OfficerCOOChief OperatingOfficerCCOChief CustomerOfficerCMOChief MarketingOfficerCIOChief InformationOfficer / CTOCFOChief FinancialOfficerCROChief Risk &Compliance OfficerCHROChief PeopleOfficer
CEO

Chief Executive Officer

One experience direction the whole company is actually funding — and evidence it is working, in the language the board already uses.

What this seat needs

  • A direction the executive team has signed, not five functional versions of it
  • Confidence that CX spend is going somewhere defensible
  • Experience movement reported next to revenue, cost, and risk

What good looks like

Investment is argued against a stated strategy rather than against whoever asked most recently, and the CX number appears in the operating review without being re-explained.

The benefit to the role

The customer experience conversation reaches the board as a business argument with numbers attached, instead of a satisfaction score nobody can act on.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentDuplicate programs consolidated; the investment gets argued once.
Return on experienceRetention and advocacy become a stated, owned outcome rather than a hope.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

COO

Chief Operating Officer

Service that holds up at volume without adding headcount every time the forecast moves.

What this seat needs

  • Demand removed upstream rather than absorbed downstream
  • Containment that means resolution, so it does not return as repeat contact
  • A floor that can absorb a bad week without a heroics culture

What good looks like

Contact volume falls because the causes were fixed, handle time falls without pushing advisors to rush customers, and quality holds while both happen.

The benefit to the role

Capacity that comes from removing avoidable work, not from staffing to the worst forecast and hoping the peak is kind.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentCost to serve moves directly, and the model is built on your own volumes.
Return on experienceFewer forced contacts is itself a better experience, if resolution holds.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CCO

Chief Customer Officer

Real ownership of a journey that crosses four functions — and evidence strong enough to arbitrate with.

What this seat needs

  • Authority that matches the accountability already assigned
  • A baseline taken before anything ships, so movement can be attributed
  • The few moments that actually decide whether a customer stays

What good looks like

Signature moments are designed end to end, each release carries one measure and a baseline, and journey-level movement is reported alongside the operational numbers.

The benefit to the role

Arbitration stops being a contest of opinions. The evidence decides, and the decision holds past the meeting.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentEffort concentrates where value leaks instead of spreading across the map.
Return on experienceThis is the seat where return on experience is the job, not a by-product.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CMO

Chief Marketing Officer

The promise marketing makes surviving contact with what service can actually deliver.

What this seat needs

  • One experience standard across the funnel and the journey behind it
  • Acquisition spend that is not quietly undone at the first service failure
  • A way to test new experience ideas before committing the brand to them

What good looks like

The promise, the interaction, and the memory are designed as one thing, and concepts are tested with real customers before the campaign that depends on them is booked.

The benefit to the role

Brand promise and delivered experience finally measured as a single number rather than as two functions each hitting their own.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentRetained customers cost materially less than replaced ones.
Return on experienceAdvocacy and trust are the return, and they compound where the promise is kept.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CIO

Chief Information Officer

AI in the customer path that is buildable, observable, and safe to run on a Tuesday afternoon at peak.

What this seat needs

  • Requirements that arrive designed rather than as a demo somebody saw
  • Knowledge and data good enough that retrieval actually works
  • Evaluation and rollback agreed before anything faces a customer

What good looks like

An orchestration blueprint the delivery team can build from, gates that hold, and a knowledge foundation above the threshold the models need.

The benefit to the role

The platform conversation starts from journeys and evidence, so the integration debt is known before the contract is signed rather than after.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentRework avoided, and vendor commitments pressure-tested before signature.
Return on experienceReliability is experience: nothing degrades a journey faster than a broken handoff.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CFO

Chief Financial Officer

A customer experience case built on assumptions finance has already agreed to.

What this seat needs

  • Value split into cost to serve, retained revenue, and avoided cost, modeled separately
  • Every assumption sourced, editable, and open to argument
  • A measurement plan that can prove the model wrong on schedule

What good looks like

The conservative case is the one submitted and approved, and the benefit is verified against a baseline rather than asserted in the following year's deck.

The benefit to the role

An investment argument that survives its second year, because the measurement was designed at the same time as the spend.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentThis is the seat the return on investment case is written for.
Return on experienceExperience return shows up here late — as churn that did not happen.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CRO

Chief Risk & Compliance Officer

Customer-facing AI that risk and legal can sign without a late-stage rewrite.

What this seat needs

  • A seat at design time rather than at review
  • Guardrails with named owners and an evidence trail that holds
  • Human review on the paths that carry real consequence

What good looks like

Approval becomes a scheduled step in the plan. Red-team findings are fixed before launch, and the audit trail answers how a decision was made months later.

The benefit to the role

Risk shapes the design instead of stopping the launch — which is both cheaper and considerably less adversarial.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentThe expensive version of this is discovering a constraint at review.
Return on experienceTrust preserved is experience preserved; an incident costs both at once.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.

CHRO

Chief People Officer

Advisors whose jobs are changing, in an organization that has told them very little about it.

What this seat needs

  • Role redesign done with the floor rather than to it
  • Reskilling that matches what the work actually becomes
  • Adoption measured on the floor, not assumed from a completion rate

What good looks like

Advisors understand what changed and what their role becomes, supervisors get signal they can coach against, and attrition is watched as a design input.

The benefit to the role

Attrition and adoption are treated as design constraints from the start, instead of as a change-management problem handed over at the end.

Where we plug in

Where the return shows up

Return on investmentAttrition and rehiring are among the least visible and most expensive line items.
Return on experiencePeople who understand the change deliver it; people who do not, leave.

Relative emphasis for this seat — where the case is easiest to make and where the value actually lands. Not a forecast.