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Interview with Ales Roucek, founder of InsightSofa and initiator of the X Pulse magazine. When InsightSofa was founded fourteen years ago, it was primarily a tool for measuring and managing customer experience. Today, a new project is emerging around it – the digital magazine X Pulse, which aims to educate the Czech market in the area of Customer and Employee Experience. Why does the founder of a technology company start a media outlet? And does it even make sense to create a magazine in the age of AI?
What led you to establish X Pulse?
Honestly? Long-term frustration. In the Czech Republic, Customer Experience is often talked about in a very simplified way. As if CX were just about NPS or about the idea that “the customer is important.” But the reality is much deeper – it is about strategy, company culture, leadership, and working with data.
At InsightSofa, we got access to dozens of companies and saw that the market needs more than just software. It needs understanding. It needs inspiration. It needs examples of people who are doing it well. X Pulse was created as an answer to the question: What if, instead of another sales campaign, we started building a platform that will cultivate the entire environment in the long term?
What actually is it?
X Pulse (short for Experience Pulse) is a digital magazine focused on Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX).
But we do not want to be another “marketing blog.” X Pulse is a platform for deeper interviews with people who truly live CX and EX, specific case studies from both the Czech and international environment, commentary on trends, perspectives on leadership, culture, data, and technology, and yes – also critical reflection on what is often done wrong in the field.
We want the reader to take away not only inspiration, but also a specific idea that they can start applying in their company tomorrow.
How are you dealing with today’s AI? Does it make sense to create a magazine?
This is a very good question. Today, AI can generate an article within a few seconds. But that does not mean it can create an opinion, experience, and context. AI is a great tool. It helps us with research, structure, the articles themselves, or editing. But the idea itself, the question, the confrontation of opinions, and personal experience – that is still a human matter. Moreover, precisely in the age of AI, it is more important than ever to have curated content. X Pulse does not want to compete in quantity. It wants to compete in quality and perspective. And in well-chosen CX topics.
What can people expect from it?
Selected and relevant topics. Not random articles. Interviews with people who have actually built something in the field of CX and EX – whether they are business owners, CEOs, HR directors, or specialists who have results. We want to open questions such as: How is employee experience measured in a manufacturing company? How to connect CX with financial results? What to do when your NPS is growing but revenues are stagnating?
X Pulse will not be only inspirational. We want it to be slightly uncomfortable as well. Because it is precisely uncomfortable questions that move companies forward.
What do you want to achieve with it?
In the long term? To change the level of the debate in the Czech Republic. I would like it to become normal in a few years that CX is talked about as a strategic pillar of a company – not as a “soft topic” of marketing or HR.
In the short term, we want to build a community of people who share similar values: that both the customer and the employee are not items in Excel, but a source of the company’s long-term stability.
And yes – if, thanks to this, people better understand why it makes sense to systematically work with experience data, then it will naturally help our business as well.
Are you not concerned about the connection of this magazine with the InsightSofa product? Won’t people perceive it as advertising?
That is a legitimate concern. But we decided on transparency. X Pulse is created under InsightSofa, because we stand behind it financially and organizationally. We do not hide it. The difference is that the content will not be sales-driven. We will not write articles like “5 reasons to buy InsightSofa.” On the contrary – we want to invite even people who use other tools. We want to open discussions that are not one-sided.
If we bring value in the long term, people will very quickly recognize the difference between advertising and content with added value. Trust cannot be forced. It can only be built.
Where do you see X Pulse in two years?
I would like X Pulse to be a natural reference point for anyone in the Czech Republic who is interested in CX and EX. For it to have a strong community of readers, to regularly bring interviews with top people from the market, and perhaps in the future to have its own offline meetups or conference. If we manage to contribute to the fact that Czech companies will think more about experience as a strategic capital, then it would all make sense.
Final question – what would you say to companies that are not yet paying much attention to CX and EX?
That they may think they are saving time and money. But in reality, they are taking their future on credit. Customer and employee experience will always manifest itself in some way. The question is not if – but when. And the earlier you start managing it consciously, the greater advantage you will gain.
