CX: The Human-to-Human Interface. Hacking the Matrix.

CX: The Human-to-Human Interface. Hacking the Matrix.

Most organizations are trapped in a simulation. They believe that the Customer Journey is reality, that KPIs are the truth, and that AI is the subject of the relationship.

It is time to take the red pill.

For this purpose, Maturana and Brier are our Neo and Morpheus. Through the biology of cognition and cybersemiotics, they show us that hacking the CX Matrix requires understanding three fundamental laws:

1. The Illusion of Control: You cannot «manage» a customer’s experience. As an autonomous system, the customer only reacts to your stimuli. Your job is not to direct them, but to achieve a structural coupling where your brand and their world vibrate at the same frequency.
2. The Code is Not the Message: AI processes bits, but humans process meaning. Technology is a semiotic prosthesis. If the algorithm does not facilitate a real connection between your company’s human purpose and your customer’s human need, you are merely generating noise in the system.
3. The Interface is Human-to-Human: The entire technological deployment (the Matrix) is merely a mediation. At the end of the cable, there is a human trying to be seen by another human. The best CX leaders do not manage data; they manage the coordination of significant actions.

CX as Philosophy: The Human-to-Human Interface in the Age of AI

For Customer Experience leaders, the current challenge is not technological, but conceptual. We often view the customer journey as a pipe through which information travels, although it could be said that it is actually a space where two living systems attempt to coordinate their existence.

Under the lens of Søren Brier’s Cybersemiotics and the Biology of Cognition by Maturana and Varela, CX presents itself as what it has always been: a human-to-human (H-H) interface mediated by tools we now call AI, but which operate under deep semiotic laws (those that create meaning).

1. The Customer is a Closed System

The first conceptual breakthrough for a CX mindset is accepting that we cannot design the customer’s experience, because experience is a private event closed within the nervous system of the other. According to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, living beings are closed systems that produce themselves and are operationally shielded.

• Structural Coupling: What we call CX is, in scientific and philosophical terms, a structural coupling.
• Perturbations: The organization cannot «deliver» an experience that will be decoded exactly as designed ; what we actually do is generate perturbations (stimuli, messages, interfaces).
• Implications for CX: Success is not about «managing the customer,» but about designing perturbations that are congruent with their biological and social structure. If the service protocol is rigid, there will be no coupling, but a clash. CX is not the experience itself, but the history of how the brand and the customer mutually transform through their coexistence.

2. AI as a Semiotic Prosthesis

This is where Cybersemiotics enters. Søren Brier, the creator of Cybersemiotics, tells us that information by itself means nothing. For there to be a Customer Experience, there must be semiosis (the production of meaning).

• AI Does Not Feel, It Only Processes: A chatbot or a personalization algorithm processes cybernetic signals, but it lacks a «world». AI is a semiotic machine acting as an interface.
• The Human-to-Human Interface: Behind every algorithm, there is a human team defining rules, and in front of it, a customer seeking to resolve a need or an incident.
• Meaningful Service: AI is a prosthesis that extends the organization’s ability to «be present,» but the sense of service only occurs when the human customer interprets the AI’s signal as a decision by the company to care for and value them.

3. Protocols and KPIs: From Technical Metrics to Coordination of Actions

From this perspective, we must re-evaluate our management tools:

• The Customer Journey: This is not a process map, but the footprint of what Maturana calls coordination of actions: a synchronization of behaviors. Every touchpoint is an opportunity for fine-tuning.
• KPIs (NPS, CSAT, Effort Score): These do not measure service quality; they actually measure the quality of articulation. A low NPS indicates that the cybernetic interface is producing noise in the construction of meaning ; that is, the tool is preventing the human (brand) and the human (customer) from meeting.
• The Service Protocol: It must stop being a script of «instructions» to become a framework of structural flexibility, allowing the system (the brand) to adapt to the challenge represented by each unique customer.

Conclusion: AI as a Bridge, Not a Destination

The great challenge of AI in contemporary Customer Experience lies not in its computing power, but in its transparency. Technological success consists of ensuring the cybernetic tool acts as a medium for structural coupling (Maturana/Varela) without nullifying meaning-making.

Implementing AI today is not about automating processes to distance oneself from the customer, but about designing an infrastructure that empowers the Human-to-Human interface. It ensures that technology is the bridge where the brand’s purpose and the customer’s need finally achieve a significant coordination of actions.