Some companies manage to offer simple, personalized experiences, while others force customers to navigate disconnected channels, repeating the same information every time. Customers immediately notice whether the organization “behind the scenes” of an app, a store, or a sales office is fragmented. If an online purchase does not communicate with the physical store, if customer support does not know the customer’s history, or if every interaction is isolated, the experience becomes frustrating.
Conversely, when all touchpoints are connected, customers perceive continuity: the brand “remembers,” anticipates needs, and simplifies choices. This is where the connected signature experience comes into play, giving its title to the book by Stefania Saviolo and Marco Di Dio Roccazzella (Connected signature experience. A strategic framework for customer and employee engagement at the intersection of people, technology, and data, Bocconi University Press, 2026). The authors propose a way of designing experience as a distinctive and coherent signature, made possible by the integration of data, technologies, people, and processes. For them, excellent experiences cannot exist without truly connected organizations.
After framing the context of customer experience in the age of connection, the authors introduce their framework — structured around the four stages of “simplify, delight, inspire, co-create” — and connect it to the internal functioning of the company through the so-called iceberg model, which links what the customer sees with the underlying organizational factors (data, technology, content, people, and purpose).
The central chapters explore each enabling element in depth —creativity to data, and all the way to artificial intelligence — while the final section translates the model into operational governance guidelines, enriched by numerous business cases.
Customer experience cannot be designed in silos: without a truly connected organization, even the best marketing strategy fails. The authors also emphasize several key tensions in contemporary management — between technology and humanity, between global standardization and local relevance, between creativity and analytical rigor — which should not be eliminated but governed.
In this framework, artificial intelligence represents a profound discontinuity: it not only increases efficiency, but also makes it possible to personalize and “humanize” the experience at scale, ultimately enabling forms of co-creation with the customer.
The book is useful for managers and professionals working across different functions (marketing to IT, human resources to innovation) because it offers a cross-cutting interpretation of the enterprise, centered on experience as a strategic glue. But it is also an accessible read for anyone seeking to understand how the rules of competition are changing in consumer sectors and services. It is a text that helps readers navigate the transformation, already underway, that shifts the center of value from the simple offering of products to the ability to build meaningful and lasting relationships.
- Publisher: Bocconi University Press
- Publication date: 2026
- Pages: 200
- ISBN/EAN: 9791280623546
- Format: Print, E-Pub
STEFANIA SAVIOLO is a Tenured Lecturer in the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University and a member of the core faculty of SDA Bocconi School of Management, where she teaches and conducts research and workshops on brand strategy, innovation, and customer experience design in the fashion, luxury, design, and retail sectors. She edited the first three volumes of the Signature Experience series: Signature Experience (Bocconi University Press, 2018); Contactless Signature Experience (Egea, 2021); and Augmented Signature Experience (Egea, 2023).
MARCO DI DIO ROCCAZZELLA is a shareholder and General Manager of JAKALA, where he holds the dual role of Global Retail & Consumer Leader and Global Data & Artificial Intelligence Leader. He leads the JAKALA division that supports private equity funds in enhancing the potential of portfolio companies through data and artificial intelligence. Over the course of his career, he has worked at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and measurable performance impact. An entrepreneur and author of numerous publications, he co-edited Augmented Signature Experience (Egea, 2023) with Stefania Saviolo and contributed to all the volumes in the Signature Experience series.
