Our story begins in Shanghai, China, in 2005. While shopping in a high-end mall, Christophe Caïs saw a gap between what the luxury brands were aiming to deliver and what was actually happening in the stores. He saw an opportunity to help luxury brands deliver a better customer experience through a deeper understanding of their customers. Albatross was born, specializing in CX measurement. In 2006, Albatross won its first client – Benetton Sisley.

After our first satisfied client, referrals and word of mouth grew. Albatross started winning contracts across China and APAC. We rapidly opened offices in Beijing and Guangzhou, followed by Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Singapore.

Our CX measurement solutions provided many practical, actionable insights to our clients, but we noticed they sometimes had trouble implementing them. In 2010, we launched Face2Face, a specialist CX training business to help luxury brands deliver richer programs to enhance the CX competence of their retail managers and staff.

By the 2010s, we were expanding into Europe to be closer to our clients’ key decision makers and their brands internationally. We opened new group offices in Paris, followed by London, Moscow and New York. A large on-going project in the UAE brought us to Dubai, where we discovered a vibrant, business-friendly city, ideally located between the North American, European and APAC markets. We decided to make Dubai our headquarters, where support functions and the executive team are based.

The closer we got to our clients, the more we realized that many do not fully understand their customers beyond the transactional interactions they have with their brands. We created Wisely Insights, a boutique consumer research agency, to help clients fully understand luxury and premium brand customers, highlighting potential gaps and providing practical guidance on how best to address them.

As our client relationships developed, we realized we needed to unify our solutions into a stronger, more united proposition – the Customer Experience Group. We wanted to be seen as a strategic partner that could guide clients on their journey and help them find new solutions to the problems they were facing.

As the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the retail sector, we took the opportunity to strategically review our clients’ evolving needs, as well as our business and the way we operated. CXG was born. One name. One brand. One vision to become the preferred customer experience transformation partner for premium and luxury brands. Our journey continues.