Deloitte Singapore’s Dorothy Peng: Contextual intelligence is the competitive advantage of the future

She highlights that organisations are no longer evaluated on individual interactions, but on how well-acquainted they are with customers’ preferences.

Across Asia, the customer experience landscape is evolving rapidly as organisations move beyond digitalisation toward AI-enabled, context-driven engagement. Customers now expect seamless, personalised, and emotionally resonant interactions across every touchpoint, pushing businesses to rethink how they design journeys and measure impact.

Dorothy Peng, Deloitte Singapore Partner for Customer Strategy & Design, shared her valuable perspective, bringing close to 20 years of experience leading teams across innovation, digital, brand, products & services, marketing, and communications. She has partnered with C-suite leaders to drive digital transformation and innovation within their organisations and has led large-scale service redesign, design, and build programmes across the region.

As one of the judges at the Asian Experience Awards 2026, she discusses how customer expectations and behaviours in Asia are changing and how organisations can adapt through experience innovation, adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), and effective measurement of customer and employee experience initiatives. She also highlights best practices and future trends that are set to shape experience strategies across the region.

How have customer expectations across Asia evolved in recent years?

I believe we've moved beyond the era of digitalisation and entered the era of intelligentalisation. Five years ago, customers wanted organisations to be digital. Today, being digital is simply the baseline. Customers now expect organisations to understand them, anticipate their needs, and make every interaction feel seamless and connected.

The most significant shift I've observed is that customers no longer benchmark experiences against others within the same industry. Instead, their expectations are increasingly shaped by the best experience they had yesterday, regardless of the sector.

As a result, customers expect organisations to remember context, personalise interactions in real time, and eliminate friction across different touchpoints. They no longer think in terms of channels; they think in terms of journeys.

As organisations increasingly invest in AI and automation, how can they maintain the human element that customers still value?

The goal of AI should not be to replace humans, but to make every human interaction more meaningful.

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is viewing AI purely through the lens of efficiency. Customers do not wake up hoping to interact with more automation. They want their problems solved faster and their needs understood better.

The most effective organisations use AI to handle routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on moments that require empathy, judgement, reassurance, or trust. In this way, AI removes the transactional work and enables us to deliver greater relational value.

The future isn't AI versus humans. It is AI empowering humans to be more human.

Which industries in Asia do you believe are setting the benchmark for customer and employee experience innovation today?

One of the most interesting findings from our proprietary Design Experience Index (DXI) research is that great experiences are no longer confined to specific industries. The highest-performing organisations are often not competing on products or services alone; they are competing on how effectively they design experiences across the customer and employee journey.

What stands out to me is that leaders in these organisations consistently excel across a few common dimensions. They make experiences effortless, understand customer context, personalise interactions intelligently, and create emotional connections that build trust and loyalty over time.

As a result, I believe the real benchmark for innovation is not dependent on the sector, but whether organisations are able to turn experience into a strategic capability that differentiates them from their competitors.

The organisations setting the standard in Asia are those that recognise experience is not a function or a channel initiative, but a core business discipline that drives customer loyalty, employee engagement, and ultimately business performance.

What strategies can organisations adopt to better measure the long-term impact of their customer and employee experience investments?

One of the biggest challenges in measuring the long-term impact of such investments is that many organisations still utilise activity metrics rather than business outcomes.

The question should not be whether customers are satisfied today. Instead, it should be whether experience investments are creating sustainable growth tomorrow.

Leading organisations are increasingly linking experience metrics to commercial outcomes such as customer lifetime value, retention, share of wallet, advocacy, employee productivity, and revenue growth.

Ultimately, it is key for experience measurement to move beyond the question of "Did customers like it?" to "Did it change customer behaviour and create business value?”

What emerging consumer behaviours do you believe will have the greatest impact on customer experience strategies in the future?

I believe the most significant shift in consumer behaviour is that customers increasingly expect organisations to know their preferences without being asked.

Customers are becoming far less tolerant of repeating information, restarting conversations, or navigating organisational silos. Whether they are engaging through an app, contact centre, store, website, or relationship manager, they expect the organisation to remember who they are, what they have done before, and what they are trying to achieve.

This represents a fundamental change in expectations. Organisations are no longer evaluated based on individual interactions, but on how well-acquainted they are with customers’ preferences in their consumer journey.

As a result, the competitive advantage of the future will not simply be personalisation. It will be contextual intelligence — the ability to continuously understand a customer's situation and respond in a way that feels relevant, timely, and effortless.

The organisations that are able to grasp this competitive edge will create experiences that feel less like a series of transactions and more like an ongoing relationship.

As a judge for the Asian Experience Awards 2026, what qualities or achievements will stand out most when evaluating nominees?

What stands out to me is not the sophistication of the technology, but the clarity of its impact. The strongest nominees are those that demonstrate a deep understanding of customer or employee needs, articulate a clear vision for change, and deliver measurable outcomes that matter.

I am particularly interested in organisations that connect experience improvements to tangible business results – whether growth, loyalty, engagement, productivity, or advocacy. I also look for evidence that the experience is sustainable and scalable. A successful pilot is interesting, but true transformation happens when an organisation embeds experience into how it operates every day.

Most importantly, I look for organisations that create experiences people genuinely remember. At the end of the day, great experiences do not just make processes better — they change perceptions, behaviours, and relationships.