Customer experience professionals face countless balancing acts: do you focus on digital or in-person experiences? Employee experience or customer experience? Build out the contact center or move to self-service options?

But perhaps the biggest question is this: Do you focus on long-term strategic vision or short-term customer service?

Wendy Smith, author of BOTH/AND THINKING: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, says the answer is in changing from an either/or approach to a both/and way of thinking. Instead of feeling you have to choose just one solution, you can embrace the creative tension of both ideas.

Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future.