Isabel Báez Gil
Customer Experience Manager · Service Designer · Speaker

Great customer experiences are designed front stage and back stage.

I'm Isabel Báez Gil. I design end-to-end customer journeys and the operations that deliver them, from a three-star hotel that competed with five-star properties to a global platform with 16M+ members.

Isabel Báez Gil
Guest journey
BookArriveStayReturn
50%+ returning guests, against five-star competition
Voice of the Customer
Listen Fix Return
AI-enabled CX AI suggests, people decide
50%+ of each season's bookings from returning guests Hotel Paris
16M+ members, nine merging platforms, one member experience Talenthouse
60x growth in usage of the Mailchimp email templates I led Farm.Co
170+ customer interviews behind an agentic AI product Alavanz
Punta del Este skyline and marina seen through palm trees, Uruguay
Hotel Paris
The competition
50%+returning guests
~40%new guests by referral
Where it started

A three-star hotel that competed with five-star properties.

For twelve seasons I ran Hotel Paris in Punta del Este, one of Latin America's most exclusive destinations. We couldn't outspend the five-star hotels around us, so we out-designed them: service choreography, housekeeping timing, even the scent of the rooms, and a 24/7 feedback loop that solved issues before they became complaints.

Nobody called it customer experience then.

Read the case
What I do

The experience customers see, and the operations that deliver it.

Front stage · what customers see

Customer journeys and service design

End-to-end journeys and service blueprints across physical and digital touchpoints, built around the moments that matter.

Voice of the Customer

Feedback loops and proactive service recovery that fix issues at the root, before they become complaints.

Line of visibility
Back stage · what makes it work

The operations behind the experience

Service standards, SOPs and frontline training that make the experience consistent, shift after shift.

AI-enabled CX

Generative AI in customer research, service operations and product, with people kept in charge.

How I work

From listening to lasting change.

01 · Listen

Hear every voice before deciding.

Decisions made on half the customer’s voice are biased by design. I walk the journey myself, front stage and back stage, and make sure every channel is heard, including the frontline teams who hear it first, before anything is decided.

Where I’ve done itA 24/7 guest feedback loop at Hotel Paris. 170+ customer interviews at Alavanz.

02 · Map

Find the moments that matter.

I map the end-to-end journey to see where customers drop off or get frustrated, and which moments decide whether they come back.

Where I’ve done itJourney maps and storyboards that aligned teams across nine merging platforms at Talenthouse.

03 · Blueprint

Design the back stage too.

I blueprint the operations behind each moment, as they are and as they should be, so the fix reaches the people and processes that deliver it.

Where I’ve done itOn every project: as-is and to-be service blueprints across front-line, operations, logistics and commercial teams.

04 · Fix

Close the loop.

Every issue gets an owner, a fix and its root cause. I redesign the moment with the people who deliver it, and set the service standards that keep it fixed.

Where I’ve done itAt Hotel Paris, issues were solved before they became complaints, so formal complaints were rare.

05 · Measure

Measure what the business feels.

A few metrics that matter, such as satisfaction, effort, repeat and referral, linked to business outcomes. AI reads the feedback at scale; people decide what to do about it.

Where I’ve done it50%+ of each season’s bookings from returning guests, and ~40% of new guests by referral, at Hotel Paris.

Case studies

Selected work

All case studies
Hotel ManagerHotel Paris · Punta del Este, Uruguay

A stay people came back for

The whole guest stay designed as one service, front-of-house and back-of-house, against five-star competitors.

50%+ returning guests Read
Lead Service & Member Experience DesignerTalenthouse · London (remote)

One member experience for nine merging platforms

A target-state member experience across a post-merger integration, and a member-centred redesign of a fintech product.

16M+ members Read
Founder & CX Research LeadAlavanz · Madrid

From 170+ interviews to an agentic AI product

Discovery research that changed the problem worth solving, and a multi-agent product validated with users.

Evidence-based pivot Read
Self-initiated work

How I'd approach these challenges

Concept projects built on public data. Not commissioned by or affiliated with any organisation.

Concept Hospitality

Listen first, then make it personal: a five-star beach resort

A Voice of the Customer programme, and where I’d take it next depending on what guests say.

Read the concept
Concept Real estate

Service recovery for a new-home handover

A blueprint from keys to year one, a recovery playbook for the five most common failures, and service standards.

Read the concept
Concept Banking

Bank onboarding with AI agents and a human hand-off

Where the agent hands over to a person, the safeguards for responsible AI, and how success is measured.

Read the concept
What people say
I wholeheartedly recommend Isabel as an extraordinary leader in customer experience. … Her systematic approach to analyzing feedback and implementing strategic initiatives yielded remarkable improvements in the overall customer experience.
Andre Zepeda · Talenthouse · managed Isabel directly
Working with Iz is a huge pleasure, she brings passion and customer-focus to work each and every day.
Liz von Loewen · Chief of Staff, Talenthouse
Isabel was able to create complex operational strategies … she was able to walk the c-suite through in-depth customer user journeys, whilst incorporating a creative approach.
Rachelle Palmer · Marketing & communications, Talenthouse
Isabel has the rare combination of design skills AND project management skills.
Christian Wettre · EVP & GM North America, W-Systems
Brands I've designed for
MailchimpYeti CoolersW-SystemsTalenthouse
As co-founder and COO of Farm.Co (Mailchimp, Yeti Coolers, W-Systems) and as Lead Service & Member Experience Designer (Talenthouse)
Work featured in
The Wall Street JournalThe New York Times

Building a customer experience team? Let's talk.

I work front stage and back stage, in English and Spanish, across cultures and time zones: hospitality and destinations, real estate, government services, banking and customer-facing platforms.

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