New York, NY – Daruma, the consulting firm established by customer experience thought leader, Brian Pia, has introduced a redefined suite of leadership services tailored to address a critical gap in growth-stage businesses: integrating customer-centric strategies into leadership decision-making. This initiative is a strategic pivot designed to support companies aiming to embed a customer-first mindset at the executive level—an approach Daruma believes is fundamental to sustainable and scalable success.
The firm’s newly focused Strategic Leadership Support centers on equipping business leaders with actionable strategies that prioritize customer experience as a core business driver. With a particular emphasis on its Fractional Chief Experience Officer (CXO) service, Daruma provides businesses access to senior-level experience leadership without the full-time executive hire. This offering enables companies to integrate customer-centric strategies at the top level of the organization, aligning operations, marketing, and service design with the evolving expectations of their customers.
As companies progress through their second stage of growth—often characterized by annual revenues between $1 million and $10 million—they encounter complex challenges around retention, differentiation, and customer loyalty. According to Daruma, overcoming these hurdles requires more than just operational efficiency or sales growth; it demands an intentional focus on the customer experience, led by strategic leadership. The Fractional CXO service addresses this need by guiding organizations to embed customer-first strategies into the fabric of their strategic planning, operational execution, and leadership culture.
Daruma’s leadership support services are grounded in real-world business applications, helping companies navigate the competitive landscape by deeply understanding and responding to customer needs. Through a combination of executive advisory, leadership development, and practical tools, Daruma helps companies reframe their growth strategies around customer retention, lifetime value, and long-term loyalty. These services are customized for each organization and are aimed at enabling leaders to make informed, customer-driven decisions across departments.
Among Daruma’s cornerstone offerings is the Customer-First Strategy Mastermind, a structured program designed for business owners who want to implement customer-centric strategies that drive revenue and loyalty. The mastermind connects like-minded leaders committed to reshaping their business around the customer experience, providing a forum for sharing insights, solving common challenges, and co-developing strategies with the support of expert facilitation.
The firm also offers the Small Group Mentor Accelerator, an exclusive leadership development opportunity where business leaders can deepen their expertise in customer retention strategies. This accelerator provides mentorship in a collaborative environment, allowing participants to access peer feedback and apply customer-focused frameworks that translate directly into business outcomes. Leaders in this program receive direct guidance on aligning their teams and processes with evolving customer needs.
Complementing these strategic advisory services is Daruma’s Customer Journey Design Thinking Workshop, a practical session focused on mapping and improving the end-to-end customer journey. In this immersive workshop, leadership teams work through the stages of their customer lifecycle, identifying friction points, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities. The goal is to reduce effort, enhance satisfaction, and create a more intuitive, impactful experience for customers across touchpoints.
What sets Daruma apart in the consulting space is its belief that leadership itself must transform in response to customer-centric imperatives. Brian Pia and his team emphasize that while operational systems and digital transformation remain important, customer-first leadership is what truly differentiates high-performing organizations. The firm’s services are thus designed to develop leaders who are not only strategic thinkers but also deeply attuned to the voice of the customer.
Daruma’s Strategic Leadership Support does not adopt a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, it builds long-term partnerships with organizations to ensure that leadership strategies are aligned with real customer data, behavioral insights, and market dynamics. The approach helps companies anticipate shifts in customer expectations and build the internal leadership capacity to respond with agility and vision.
Brian Pia, Founder of Daruma, explains: “What we consistently see in growing companies is that the gap between leadership intention and customer journey execution can stall progress. Our goal is to close that gap by empowering leaders to act as experienced stewards across every function of the business.”
With its customer-centric approach to strategic leadership, Daruma is positioning itself as a valuable partner for growth-minded companies that seek to build resilient, adaptive, and customer-led business models. By placing customer experience at the heart of executive strategy, Daruma aims to enable companies not just to grow, but to grow with clarity, purpose, and sustained impact.
For more information about Daruma’s Strategic Leadership Support and other customer-first services, visit www.daruma.ai