FedEx's CX Chief of Staff on Using AI to Reduce Leaders' Cognitive Load

For many CX leaders, the "cognitive tax" of modern leadership originates from the constant need for recalibration. Juggling customer experience strategy, internal alignment, and operational execution would be an impossible feat without it. Now, that balancing act is beginning to drain the strategic energy leaders need to stay focused. Fortunately, some experts now believe that context switching is a trainable skill, and with the help of AI, leaders can offload some of this mental burden.

To understand the situation, we spoke with Ankur Gupta, Principal, Chief of Staff to the Chief Customer Officer at FedEx. A strategist and data storyteller, Gupta’s perspective comes from high-impact roles that include serving as an MBA Strategy Consultant at Amazon and leading corporate strategy initiatives at FedEx. Today, his central role in CX strategy offers insights into how AI can transform leadership.

"AI helps automate the mundane so leaders can focus on insight and storytelling, empowering them to unify the organization around a compelling customer narrative," Gupta says. For him, a practical starting point is to diagnose the distinct forms of context switching. Here, he breaks it down into three areas: functional, analytical, and audience-based.

First, leaders need to adjust their "frame of reference" for different departments. Product development, for instance, requires customer feedback, whereas operations rely on insights into service delivery. Next, pivot from the "what" (a number on a scorecard, like CSAT or churn rate) to the "why" behind it. Finally, recalibrate the message for the audience: a conversation with a CEO about customer lifetime value will be different than one with an expert in contact center technology.

• The right altitude: To be compelling, the narrative requires support from leaders who are fluent in both data and storytelling, Gupta says. "The numbers tell you the 30,000-foot story, but you should be comfortable getting to the 5,000 to 10,000-foot view to see what is actually driving those numbers, and, more importantly, what's driving customer satisfaction or churn."

• Briefings by bot: With the problem identified, AI can offload routine tasks. That frees leaders for strategic thought, he explains. "If a leader is going to meet an excellent customer, you have to create a brief for that customer and understand what they do. That can be done by the AI."

But efficiency is just the beginning. Here, Gupta points to the evolution of customer-facing tools. Today, generative AI is already being used to make chatbots more "human in nature," he explains.

• Customer insight generation: To unlock real value, AI must evolve from a simple tool into a strategic collaborator, Gupta says. "I use AI to synthesize vast amounts of customer feedback, identifying emerging sentiment or critical pain points that might otherwise be missed. This helps me brainstorm new CX initiatives or refine existing strategies before presenting them to stakeholders," Gupta outlines.

• The purple chip standard: But technology alone isn’t a strategy, he advises. Instead, he emphasizes a unifying mission that aligns the entire organization. "There has to be an overarching goal or a priority that everybody is working towards. At FedEx, we call that our Purple Chips. Every individual should be able to tie back their individual goals to those Purple Chips, so that the overall strategic narrative is very important."

The final step is to create a feedback loop with that technology, Gupta concludes. In this process, human-led feedback helps AI tools become increasingly valuable over time. Eventually, that information can help organizations avoid the common pitfalls that often cause enterprise AI failures. "You can interact with the AI by explaining your project and asking how to enhance the output for a particular user. For example, you can ask how to refine a customer communication strategy for a specific segment or how to tailor a service recovery message to achieve maximum customer satisfaction. You close the loop. Share feedback with the AI so next time, it’s smarter.”