Céline Forest: Theater, Empathy, Profitability — The Compass of Customer Culture

Customer experience is often presented as a strategic priority. But when internal culture does not follow, the “customer-centric” promise becomes just another slogan.

In this episode of Transformation Heroes, Baptiste welcomes Céline Forest, a customer experience consultant who has worked in the private sector and public service and is now also co-founder of En scène MarCel and a theater actor. An unconventional career, but with one clear common thread: culture.

With Céline, we go back to basics. Culture is a set of shared values, norms, habits, and behaviors. And when it comes to customer culture, it cannot be carried by a single team. It is built over time, systemically, with concrete proof on the ground.

We also explore what changes when you move from private to public. In public service, we do not talk about customers, but about users. The relationship is not the same: no direct competition, but a requirement for trust and fairness, within a framework of equal treatment.

Finally, we tackle the question that always comes up in executive committees: how do you justify CX investment? Céline shares a simple approach: connect customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and profitability to move CX beyond the “cost center” label.