What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and look forward to work?
1️⃣ Seeing how the people on our team are constantly growing and advancing professionally. I enjoy it when a talented junior person joins us and grows into a top professional in their field.
2️⃣ The same goes for clients — seeing the significant value we bring them, how we help them advance and learn new things. We help them keep growing in today's far-from-easy times.
Why do you think companies should take CX seriously?
1️⃣ CX is something we've all been dealing with — it just wasn't called that before. Every customer experiences something when they interact with a company. The goal is to make that experience as good as possible. In today's saturated market, excellent customer experience is the best investment — one that increases customer loyalty and revenue long-term, while neglecting it means gradually losing competitive edge. In the long run, great CX reduces a business's dependence on expensive acquisition channels, lowers marketing costs, and supports organic growth.
2️⃣ Simply put, if you have great CX and one of your marketing or acquisition channels "breaks down," your customers will always have your back. Take SolidSun, for example — one of the leading Czech solar energy companies. In 2024, they made a mistake and were expelled from the well-known industry organization CAFT. Their customers stuck by them, and every post on social media mentioning that SolidSun had been expelled from CAFT was immediately flooded with comments defending them.
Looking back, is there anything you would do differently today? And what would you do the exact same way again?
1️⃣ What would I do differently? I would have invested in Proof & Reason's own marketing far earlier and more heavily. For years we grew purely on our excellent customer experience and word-of-mouth referrals between clients. It's a shame that many others we could help are only discovering us now, when we've started pushing our own marketing harder. Client projects were always the priority, but without your own marketing you can't grow.
2️⃣ What would I definitely do the same? Supporting and developing our own people. Education. Letting them do what they love and what they're best at. That is the best investment.
You have three offers on the table: a website redesign for 2 million, a CX project with a vague brief, and a startup with an idea but no budget. Which do you choose and why?
1️⃣ A tough call. But today I'd probably think about the startup — if the compensation for our work included a reasonable equity stake. Why? It's an interesting change, even if often far more demanding than other commercial projects. Because with startups like that, we're in some ways working on something we can think of as our own. Each of the three options has a different challenge. We're really good at website redesigns that are designed to generate revenue. And a CX project with a vague brief? That happens fairly often. We can guide clients toward a good brief — through a solid analysis at the start, a workshop, or quick research. It's perfectly fine if they don't know how to brief the project at the beginning. That's what we're here for.
What did you do before Proof & Reason?
1️⃣ During university I spent several years in primary research. Alongside that, I worked in IT and network infrastructure, which led me to custom software development. We were among the first to bring foreign UX know-how to the Czech Republic — though back then nobody called it UX yet.
2️⃣ And I've been involved in marketing, customer care, and really the entire customer journey since finishing university. I tell clients that for their business to succeed, it's not enough to have a great customer experience with their app or website — you need to rigorously address the whole customer journey.
How and where do you learn outside of agency projects?
1️⃣ Mostly from the projects themselves — that's always where I learn the most. You almost always need to expand your knowledge with additional context. With every new project, what takes me the most time is studying the industry, whether it's manufacturing, e-commerce, healthcare, energy, or solar power. In every sector I always try to reach at least the level where I could sell that field myself.
2️⃣ Then there are my colleagues, who go very deep into their specializations — and their knowledge often far exceeds my own.
3️⃣ And of course, professional literature, podcasts, webinars, articles, research studies, and so on.
If you could say one thing to clients completely unfiltered, without marketing, without pitching: What would your message be?
1️⃣ Most companies think they know their customers. But the reality is that they're often just guessing. Sometimes the best thing is to admit that you don't know why something isn't working. Why people aren't buying, why they're not coming back, why nobody's talking about you. And that's not a failure — that's a starting point. At that moment, it makes sense to bring in someone who can help you make sense of it. They won't tell you what to do. But they'll show you what's happening and why. That, to me, is CX. And we bring to it every bit of experience we've accumulated over 20 years.
In it you'll find, for example:
- An interview with Mário Roženský on why customer experience should not be a business rescue operation.
- The first research in the Czech Republic showing how Czechs use traditional search engines (Google, Seznam, Bing) in the era of the massive rise of AI applications.
- A video guide on how to map the customer journey.
- A tip on a new course "How to Come Up with Ideas" — not just for marketers, but also for leaders and entrepreneurs.
- Or how an expert review of your website can move your business forward.
