Build For Change

How can you stay alive when your customers might actually try to kill your business? In Build for Change, Alan Trefler, founder and CEO of Pegasystems, argues that a massive shift in customer behavior—driven by new generations empowered by digital technology—has upended everything businesses once knew about loyalty, service, and control. He calls this upheaval the customerpocalypse, a wave of change where customers no longer merely dislike poor service but actively revolt against companies that fail to meet their expectations.

Trefler contends that surviving this revolution requires a complete reinvention of how organizations use technology to engage with customers. Every company, he insists, must become a software company—not in the traditional sense of coding and IT departments, but by embedding its unique customer-focused DNA into software systems that can learn, adapt, and respond. Technology, culture, and customer experience must fuse together seamlessly. Without that integration, businesses risk collapse under the pressure of Gen D—the hyperconnected, instant-gratification generation that defines the new digital era.

The Generational Earthquake

At the center of Trefler’s thesis are three interlinked generations: Gen C (the connected generation), Gen C-2 (its younger, more active subdivision), and Gen D (the digital, discover-devour-demonize generation). Gen D doesn’t just want products—they want authenticity, transparency, and relationships that feel human and real. They live through social media and destroy brands that seem manipulative or impersonal. For companies accustomed to controlled marketing campaigns or loyalty programs, this new world is chaos. Apple and Lush Cosmetics thrive because their engagement feels organic, empowering customers to participate and share experiences. Borders, Nokia, and Circuit City failed because they didn’t listen and adapt.

Why Data Alone Isn’t Enough

Data, Trefler warns, has become the false idol of modern business. Companies drown in Big Data but forget the most important truth: data is just memory—it records what has already happened. He shows how overreliance on cost data led First National Bank of Chicago and Ryanair to offend their customers with fees meant to change behavior, ultimately driving them away. The obsession with data without context or customer intent creates blindness. Real insight arises when you combine data (memory) with intent (judgment and desire). Intent reveals why customers act, not just how they have acted.

The Path to 1080° Customer Clarity

Only when businesses integrate data, intent, and customer processes can they reach what Trefler calls 1080 high-definition customer view—a combination of three 360° perspectives that go beyond the flat and outdated CRM model. Customer processes are the operational muscle that allow data and intent to work together. They ensure seamless experiences across every channel, so customers never fall into frustrating gaps between departments or technologies. Examples like BB&T and OCBC Bank demonstrate how companies can make opening accounts or receiving service effortless, building real loyalty without coercion.

The Cultural and Technological Revolution

Survival demands not just technological upgrades but cultural transformation. Trefler’s famous Drucker-inspired mantra—“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”—appears throughout the book. He insists that business and IT must merge in a form of “hybrid vigor,” cross-pollinating like different species to produce more resilient, innovative systems. He illustrates this with case studies from Telstra, ING Poland, and American Express, each showing how integrating technology, people, and customer process leads to agility and financial success. The CFO must adopt new iterative models that fund experimentation rather than massive, waterfall-style projects. The Chief Customer Officer (CCO) and Chief Process Officer (CPO) roles emerge as guardians of empathy and efficiency.

You Are Your Software

The book’s ultimate revelation is captured in its final chapters: You are your software. In the digital age, software embodies your company’s identity, values, ethics, and customer relationships. It’s the “epidermal layer” your customers touch first—the sensory interface where trust and experience are built. To thrive, your software must be authentic, adaptive, and human—something no outsourced code or generic cloud app can achieve. Companies must democratize technology, teach businesspeople to work in layers, and use dynamic analytics that continually optimize experiences. As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen predicts, “software is eating the world,” and only businesses that become software-driven will survive.

The Digital Imperative

By the end of Build for Change, Trefler presents a clear challenge: if you don’t reinvent your technology culture now, Gen D will gleefully destroy your brand. To build for change, you must democratize technology, think in layers, use analytics to optimize continually, and rewire your leadership around customer empathy. Every business must operate as a living system—learning, adapting, and reinvesting in seamless experience. Companies that fail to change simply won’t survive; those that embrace authenticity and agility can flourish in this age of relentless digital evolution.

Trefler defines Generation D (Gen D) as the most empowered, connected, and volatile market in history. They have grown up immersed in digital technology, social networks, and instant access, expecting transparency and authenticity at every moment. Gen D isn’t loyal—they’re judges, critics, and creators who deify brands they love and demonize those they despise. You can’t manage them; you must let them discover you.

Discover, Devour, Demonize

The author explains Gen D’s behavior through three verbs: discover, devour, and demonize. They take pride in “finding” brands rather than being sold to. When they love a product—like Lush’s ethically sourced cosmetics or Apple’s Genius Bar—they “devour” it by sharing enthusiasm online. But when betrayed, they “demonize” brands loudly, creating viral negativity through tweets, videos, and memes. The YouTube phenomenon “United Breaks Guitars,” where musician Dave Carroll exposed United Airlines’ negligence, exemplifies Gen D’s power to destroy reputations overnight.

Authenticity Is Non-Negotiable

Gen D demands radical authenticity. They mistrust scripted advertising and respond passionately to brands that “feel human.” Lush’s stores smell natural, staff act like friends rather than salespeople, and customers feel part of a cause. In contrast, brands like Ryanair and certain banks lose trust by imposing hidden fees or treating customers as statistics. Gen D’s sense of betrayal is personal. They anthropomorphize companies—they don’t buy from a business, they “befriend” it. Once that friendship breaks, they react emotionally, not rationally.

The Five-Second Rule of Attention

Trefler recounts how Gen D teens describe skipping ads on YouTube within five seconds unless they feel “extravagant and wonderful.” That window symbolizes the shrinking attention span and the need for immediate emotional impact. Businesses have mere seconds to earn trust before customers disengage. Traditional commercials and banner ads fail not because of poor creativity but because they violate Gen D’s autonomy—they interrupt rather than invite discovery.

The End of Loyalty

For Gen D, loyalty has inverted. They don’t pledge allegiance to brands; they expect brands to show loyalty to them. They measure loyalty through respect, responsiveness, and sincerity. If they sense manipulation, they’ll migrate instantly—a phenomenon Accenture calls the “switching economy.” In Gen D’s world, frictionless movement is freedom. Your goal isn’t retention through points or perks; it’s ongoing renewal of trust through authentic engagement.

(Note: Trefler’s generational insight parallels the cultural analyses of William Strauss and Neil Howe in Millennials Rising, but adds a sharper technological lens through which digital empowerment drives rebellion rather than participation.)

Businesses, Trefler argues, have committed “death by data.” They worship numbers yet lose sight of meaning. Data alone is memory—it records the past but doesn’t reveal the future. Many failed companies prove this truth: First Chicago Bank charged customers $2 to speak to a human, Ryanair tried to charge for restroom use, and Sony ignored digital music trends—all guided by short-sighted data interpretations. To escape this trap, you must pair data with intent.

Data Is Memory, Intent Is Desire

Trefler’s metaphor is powerful: data is your business’s memory; intent is its judgment and desire. Memory recalls what happened; desire defines what should happen next. When combined, they create wisdom. He illustrates this using cases like Farmers Insurance, which transformed its customer experience by interpreting not just what customers did but why they called. Farmers trained its systems to ask the right questions to anticipate needs—cutting quote times from weeks to 15 minutes and doubling market share in commercial lines.

Next-Best-Action and Adaptive Learning

To operationalize intent, Trefler describes systems that predict the “next-best-action.” At PNC Bank, customer data and business goals converge through an AI-driven Customer Interaction Management hub that suggests real-time offers tuned to both customer needs and the bank’s strategy. Vodafone uses similar analytics to offer customers daily personalized mobile specials, achieving over 50% acceptance rates. Adaptive learning keeps these systems fresh—they improve after every interaction, learning the rhythm and chemistry of engagement rather than chasing perfection.

Testing Hypotheses: The Scientific Mindset

Borrowing from Bertrand Russell and the scientific method, Trefler insists that businesses must stop drowning in data accumulation and begin hypothesizing and testing. Observation and experimentation—not volume—create insight. Managers must ask, “What causes this behavior?” rather than “What correlates with it?” (Comparable to Peter Senge’s systems thinking, which emphasizes feedback and learning over reactive data analysis.)

When memory, judgment, and desire unite, businesses move from static observation to proactive evolution—a form of intelligence capable of real empathy. That shift transforms data from a graveyard of facts into living insight.

Data and intent need muscle to act. Trefler calls these muscles customer processes—dynamic systems that translate memory and judgment into seamless execution. Most companies, he warns, still operate with brittle, inside-out processes designed for internal efficiency rather than customer experience. To survive, you must build new customer processes that operate outside-in, mapping your workflows from the customer’s perspective, not your org chart.

Outside-In Thinking

Outside-in thinking means seeing your business as your customers see it: a unified experience, not a collection of departments. Prudential Group Insurance faced chaos with eight separate databases and multiple call centers. By redesigning processes to serve customers across products, Prudential reduced complexity and empowered staff to help with any inquiry. BB&T Bank, struggling with abandoned online account applications, unified all channels—branch, call center, and web—into one continuous process. Application abandonment dropped by half, and the cost savings equaled opening 75 new branches.

Making Seamless Experiences Normal

When your processes work across channels, customers move freely between them without friction—something Gen C and Gen D demand instinctively. American Express demonstrates this through its “Relationship Care Professionals.” By empowering staff to listen, empathize, and personalize interactions, AmEx turned service into a human relationship rather than a transaction, winning record satisfaction scores. Trefler cites this as turning average “handling time” into “customer handling time”—the period dictated by the customer’s own needs.

Continuous Adaptation

Customer processes must evolve constantly. Telerx, a Merck subsidiary, faced fast-changing healthcare regulations and client demands. By overhauling its technology with adaptive workflows and real-time analytics, it ensured compliance and scalability while personalizing care. The lesson: process muscle must remain flexible—built to change itself over time.

Ultimately, true customer processes transform operations from rigid transactions into responsive muscle memory, allowing organizations to sense, respond, and learn continuously—a hallmark of the digital age.

Culture, not structure, determines survival. Trefler echoes Peter Drucker’s warning—“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”—to show that technological transformation is impossible without cultural reinvention. The relationship between business and IT must shift from antagonism to collaboration, blending different skill sets into a creative hybrid. He calls this phenomenon hybrid vigor, inspired by cross-pollination in biology where mixing species creates stronger offspring.

Cross-Pollinating Business and IT

Case studies demonstrate hybrid vigor in practice. A U.S. benefits management company dissolved silos by embedding IT talent directly into business “innovation centers.” These mixed teams designed customer-facing processes collaboratively, cutting operating expenses and delivering a 30% productivity gain over a decade. ING Poland used similar methods to speed agent onboarding from six months to eight weeks while reusing 80% of processes across product lines—a remarkable feat of efficiency and adaptability.

Breaking Channels and Silos

Hybrid vigor requires breaking institutional silos. Companies often assume every department’s work is unique when, in reality, 95% of processes overlap. Trefler quotes healthcare leader Carole Rizzo, who found her teams performing nearly identical tasks despite regional differences. Recognizing commonalities allows teams to build shared frameworks that unite operations under one adaptable architecture—the DNA of 1080° customer clarity.

Realigning Leadership

The emergence of roles like Chief Process Officer (CPO) and Chief Customer Officer (CCO) reflects this cultural shift. Telstra in Australia appointed leadership dedicated to “process excellence,” using technology to shorten service cycles by 70% and deliver “wow moments.” American Express’s Jim Bush transformed “customer service reps” into “care professionals,” replacing transactional metrics with relational ones. Empowerment replaced control—the essence of high-definition engagement.

Hybrid vigor bridges the divide between business and technology, replacing friction with fusion. It creates organizations capable of evolving continuously instead of debating endlessly—just like the resilient ecosystems nature itself rewards.

In the culminating chapters, Trefler delivers his boldest message: your company’s identity now lives in its software. In the age of Gen D, customers don’t engage with your brand in stores or papers—they interact with your digital epidermis: your apps, your website, your algorithms, your responsiveness. This software layer represents your values, empathy, and authenticity. If your technology is clumsy, disconnected, or fake, your customers will know—and they will leave.

Democratize Technology

Trefler shows how technology has progressed from elite craftsmanship to universal access—from stone chisels to printing presses to word processors, culminating in business technology that can empower anyone. Today, businesspeople must take control of technology, eliminating the need for technical “translators.” Democratizing tech means using systems that think in business language and build solutions automatically, much like CAD/CAM in engineering. (He likens this digital evolution to Marc Andreessen’s prediction: “Software is eating the world.”)

Thinking in Layers

Traditional systems are flat, full of “if-then” branches that create zombie complexity. Layered systems allow multidimensional personalization—differentiating what’s common from what’s unique. Businesses like OCBC Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia succeed by using layers to tailor experiences across products, channels, and geographies while maintaining shared integrity. This technical layering parallels the emotional layering of relationships: consistent, nuanced, and adaptive.

Continuous Analytics and Optimization

Dynamic analytics keep software alive. They teach systems to learn as humans do, sensing changes and adjusting behaviors. PNC Bank’s adaptive models and Vodafone’s daily specials exemplify this approach, linking mathematics with empathy. Businesses must treat code as culture—capable of learning, listening, and evolving with customers in real time.

Beyond the Twilight of the Brands

As journalist James Surowiecki observes, brands used to guarantee loyalty; now they’re only as good as their latest customer interaction. Trefler builds on that insight: static branding is dead. Software has become the new brand—a living, adaptable system that learns continuously and embodies authenticity. The winners of the digital age will not be those with the flashiest campaigns but those whose software feels trustworthy, intuitive, and human.

In short, being digital isn’t about apps or clouds—it’s about making your software your soul. The future belongs to businesses whose technology breathes empathy and change.