CX Conversations

In this episode we’re going to talk about how to relate to customers in a way that’s unique and in a way that’s scalable, so we have Owen Robinson on the show today, who is currently the Vice President of CX Strategy at Water Filled Tech. The key to a successful modern customer engagement strategy is not the old school, bullhorn corporate experience for a million people, but it’s about hand crafting a million experiences for one customer. It’s earning customer loyalty at the individual scale with a handcrafted customer experience conscious of their behavior, their priorities, and delivering what they want, where they want it, when they want it.

About Owen’s background 0:52
Have customers changed? 4:07
Where to start and measuring 7:16
The data we have matters 9:44
Having the right technology 11:41

“The advent of cloud technology, which has been around for a long time and other technical spaces really came into its form in customer experience within the last decade. What that allows us to do is really consume super sophisticated applications and technology like artificial intelligence and big data analytics, and natural language processing, and all these really cool things that in the past we could kind of do, sorta, in a premise environment if you had enough money and time to put into it, but now midsized and even small businesses can consume these sophisticated capabilities for a couple hundred bucks an agent a month. So it’s a really cool time.” 4:40

www.linkedin.com/in/owen-b-robinson/

Today we’re gonna be talking about good customer experience and how that can improve your digital presence, and to do that we brought on Hannah McNaughton. She is an award winning founder and currently the CEO of Metric Marketing, a recognized thought leader in a lot of digital aspects and overall digital marketing. She has trained a lot of professionals from startups to fortune 500 in different marketing strategies and is currently a member of the Forbes Agency Panel.

About Metric Marketing 1:14
How to grow and take the next step 4:16
Algorithms 9:06
Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines 12:22

“There are over 200 factors that Google says they use to rank websites, so knowing where to start can feel really difficult, but really what everything comes down to is user experience. Everything that Google recommends from the kind of content you create to the experience that people have on your website with the navigation, with the functionality, everything revolves around user experience.” 4:44

Today we have a fun talk track and we’re gonna be talking about personalization journey mapping with a little bit of a functional twist as we dive into healthcare and pharma, and to do that we brought on Chris Brogan who is currently a grower of healthcare and Chief Strategy Officer of Predictive Health. He does a lot in the CX space, so we hope you can tune in today and gain some great insights from this interview.

Chris’s background 0:54
Personalization 3:38
Some tips in helping companies jump into this head first 5:43
Bringing the horse to water 8:29
Don’t do personalization for personalization’s sake 12:28

“If we’re able to sort of engage them with a personalized experience when they get to that site, so I hit a link, my experience is different on the website initially, and then going even further, personalizing some of the content there to meet the needs and barriers, and sort of myths maybe that your audience may have in mind.” 7:45

Today we’re going to talk about how to build a brand strategy that drives your customer experience and to do that we brought on Bettina Papirio-Faerber, who is the VP of Strategy and CX at One and All Agency. Bettina’s purpose at her agency is to support purpose driven brands in their missions, which goes from for profit to non-profit, and working with them and guiding them through connecting their mission and purpose with their customers. CX plays a huge role in that, knowing who you’re talking to, and also how that flows with your brand, so it’s a great topic to discuss today.

Structuring and framing brand strategy 2:56
Helping brands stand out in the market 8:31
Do companies find success when they incorporate these strategies? 11:16
A quote to live by 15:32

“I always say ‘Do you know that you have a gap?’ And I think that most brands, and when they develop brand strategy, don’t really recognize that there is a gap between what they think they’re doing in customer experience for their customer and how the customer perceives it.” 3:23

@bettina_says

We have a special guest with us today, Rhonda Rothstein, who is currently the President of the North East region of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals. They do a lot of good work in our space, but more importantly Rhonda has been in the customer experience space for a long time focusing a lot on outsourcing. With about 15 years of business development and operations, I’m really excited to talk to her about some of her experience in thinking about outsourcing.

What is outsourcing? 3:10
Leading edge technologies 7:05
Coaching organizations on where to start with outsourcing 7:53
What to look for 11:15
Having control 16:43

“ There’s a lot of risk that gets mitigated by outsourcing. Obviously you’re not hiring those people in house, you don’t have to pay unemployment tax and health insurance benefits, manage them, and hire them. The list goes on and on, so it’s great to be able to just take that piece off of your plate and outsource it to a company that specializes in all of those things.” 5:47

www.linkedin.com/in/rhonda-rohtstein

Today we’re discussing something that is becoming even more important today, which is how to use data to transform your customer journey. We can’t stress this topic enough and we found an amazing guest to discuss it, Biren Fondekar, who is currently the VP of Customer Experience over and Digital Strategy at NetApp. The only way, especially in today’s digital world, to truly understand the customer and what they’re experiencing is to capture as much data as you can as the customer is working their way through their customer journey.

Why is data so important? 4:57
How to become a more data driven organization 7:06
Data ownership 13:41
Using the customer experience governance board 14:51

“When I think of a customer journey, it’s everything from when a customer first hears about you as a vendor and as a product, all the way until they buy from you when they use your product and need support on it and so on. Being able to capture all those data points as the customer is progressing through that journey really helps us pinpoint friction points, pain points, and so on, and drive a much more kind of focused and specific customer experience for that given customer.” 5:39

Today we’re talking about how one to one marketing is transforming companies. There’s so much interesting dialogue in the market about commerce and care. Marketing and CX, and how that’s all coming together. I came across somebody that has enormous experience in this space of personalization marketing customer experience, and his name is Chuck Moxley. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Blue Triangle and an Advisory Board Member of the Customer Experience (CX) Program at University of California, Irvine.

Why personalized marketing, or 1-1 is so important 3:07
Channels that are becoming more modern 7:37
Consumers now control the value of your product 10:10
Do you have the data? 13:28

“I was having these same conversations going ‘Oh my gosh, they still think of mass media and they still think of it the same way, and they’re using a playbook that’s a decade old.’ They don’t get that the world has changed, so the first step in all of this is a big mindset change. You have to realize the way things were 10 years ago just don’t work. And there’s other factors and other consumer realities, like the fact that the power is shifted. Consumers can now go read a thousand reviews. So it doesn’t matter what you put out there on the TV commercial, they’re gonna read the reviews, and if the reviews are crap and say the product doesn’t work, you’re not gonna make the sales.” 10:51

www.AudienceofOne.website

Today we brought on a special guest, Matt Abrahams, who has quite the background. Currently he’s lecturing at Stanford University in the graduate school of business. In addition, he is a book author of a book called “Speaking Up Without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting.” He also hosts a podcast called “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” and finally, he is a coach and a consultant, helping many people optimize and strategize around the best ways they can communicate.

His passion for communication 2:20
His book 4:22
Setting the stage for great communication in your business: confidence 8:10
Overcoming nervousness, fake it ‘til you make it 11:18
Getting in the right mindset, or next play mindset 13:15
Dealing with tough or negative communication situations 16:04
The delivery and communicating that you care 17:27
Helping managers and leaders communicate better 19:22

“There are 3 things that I think are most important. 1 is you have to start with confidence. You have to understand the situations that make you nervous and figure out how to manage them. 2nd, you need to think about your content. How do I make my content relevant, specific, and useful for the people that I’m speaking to? So it’s really about honing that content, and 3rd, delivering in a way that really shows warmth, connection, and helps your audience to see that you’re there to collaborate and partner with them. So those are really the 3 foundational principles in all effective communication.” 8:14

nofreakingspeaking.com
www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams

Today we have the Vice President of Customer Experience at Instapage, Elizabeth Birch. We discuss how you can help your company be more recession proof through customer experience and Elizabeth says you need to ruthlessly prioritize. This involves knowing your audience and prioritizing them without freaking out and being reactionary. Companies struggle to prioritize when they dilute portions of their company, such as their team and message. Be intentional by picking one or two things and putting all efforts and focus into that thing. “In order to know your audience, you have to speak to them.”

Her background and what she’s been doing at Instapage 0:52
Making companies feel more recession proof through customer Experience 3:47
Why companies struggle with prioritizing 6:00
Know your audience 9:08
Tech and efficiency 12:03
Retention and delighting your customer 15:53

“When we’re faced with uncertainty, we all go into this reactionary mode and we don’t have to do that. Let’s keep it simple and the first point really is just prioritize. That involves knowing your audience. If you don’t know your audience, you’re probably in trouble, so keep it simple, but take a look at what your customer segments are, and then prioritize them.” 5:00

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-birch-a4806315/

Today we’re going to talk about keys for CX Transformation and we brought on a very special guest, Siri Osthed who is currently the VP of New Customer Experience at Weave. She talks about how to start thinking through the transformative approach to CX starting with your goals and understanding what you want to achieve. You want to create strategies of how you’re going to achieve your goals and maps, and then move on to the technology next.

Where to start in thinking through this transformative approach 3:33
What causes companies to miss the first step 5:05
Onboarding 1,000 customers 7:07
Getting to where you can have the meaningful conversation 9:39
Requirements 14:28
People 17:57

“You have to think about it from the outside in. How is the customer engaging with the people involved in those different departments as well? So you don’t only have the inside process of how you engage with the customer, but you gotta think about how does the customer engages with you? And there you have marketing like emails. What emails do they get from what team, at what point, with what message? Does it all align? 8:55

https://www.linkedin.com/in/siriosthed/

In this episode we brought on Isaac Major who is currently the VP of Customer Solutions at Quantanite. Outsourcing is very useful and an important step in expanding a business beyond certain bounds, but there can be many questions and misconceptions about it and how it works. Isaac says you gotta have someone to manage the relationship with your outsourcing partner/teams, and then from your partner’s side you want to have a business manager as well.

About Quantanite 2:57
Some of the trends they’re seeing in outsourcing 4:00
Staying in control 5:43
Technology they tend to use 7:51
Where does the outsourcing occur? 10:30
Customer retention 13:29
If you’re considering outsourcing 16:44

“In the present, the number one thing your customers care about the most when it comes to your support staff is time. How long do they have to wait to get this resolved?” 9:12

Today we’ve got a fun talk track and we’re gonna be talking about all things design, UX, CX, service design, and to do that we brought on a special guest, Saroni Kundu, who is currently the AVP of Service Design and CX Strategy at Equifax Workforce Solutions. Saroni explains how she is able to get the various teams working together in order to keep everything running smoothly and picking up the slack where certain reps may struggle, even if you have a new or small team that’s just starting out.

What is UX and Service Design? 2:09
Helping companies in Service Design 5:19
Breaking down silos 8:30
Lessons learned 9:39
Starting out as a newer organization 12:49

“Having a team that says ‘Hey I need to talk to these teams and bring them together as stakeholders for this service or product.’ Believe me, they are completely open to collaborate because it’ll make their lives easier.” 7:40

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saronikundu

We have a great guest today named Jason Guidetti who joins us as the Managing Director at Blueprint. We discuss the concept of delivering superior customer experience through this enterprise focus and alignment. Everything in the enterprise plays a part in CX and your company’s strategy needs to take into account every aspect of the company to create the best course of action. When you’re really serious about doing CX and you’re really serious about digital, it requires an upfront investment, which often we can see companies that are hesitant to really invest because you won’t get immediate returns when doing this. You have to invest first, bring everything together and optimize it, and then you’ll start seeing those exponential results.

Where to start and get this concept of great CX through enterprise motion 4:19
Where does CX strategy sit on your corporate strategy? 7:15
Cross functional aligned objectives 8:47
Creative in commerce 10:49

“In today's day and age with the push for digital, and also an evolving demographic consumer that’s evolving, their interests and needs and expectations are changing. They want more, they want more for free, they want to feel like the brand is relevant, like they’re a part of it. There’s just this newly invigorated sense of proximity that customers want from brands and companies that they do business with.” 7:26

We have Saari Gardner joining us today, who is currently the Vice President of Advisory and Managed Services at Walker Information, a company that helps organizations leverage XM capabilities to deliver amazing experiences and achieve differentiation in the marketplace. We talk about navigating the idea of the Age of the Individual, which was a real fun, kind of pre-session that we’ve been going back and forth on.

Her background and role and Walker 0:53
The Age of the Individual 3:24
Organizations are still sitting in the age of the customer 5:58
Navigating values and avoiding offense 11:20
Listening 13:17
Helping CX leaders adjust 17:49

“A Boycott’s really an extreme expression of being a detractor of a brand, and so again thinking about a person’s values. They color everything that they do, all of the decisions that they make and it impacts who they’re gonna spend their money with, and I think in the great resignation we’ve really seen it also dictates who they’re gonna work for.” 6:40

Today we’re going to talk about how exactly a CRM will power omnichannel customer support in the future. Companies that are really achieving success are building an omnichannel customer experience and they’re not doing it empty handed. They’re utilizing the most impactful technology solutions to steer their customer service in support with a CRM capability. I give some advice on what companies can do to make the transition to a more omnichannel support model.

True Omnichannel support 1:03
What is omnichannel support? 3:13
Making the transition 4:57
Remote work 9:16

“True omnichannel support ensures seamless transition and consistent experiences from one channel to the next. I think companies providing effective omnichannel support are collecting and harnessing information gained through each and every action. That’s different than just talking on a couple of different channels.” 1:03

Today I’m talking about 5 examples of proactive support you can follow and I wanted to talk through some of the things of modern support and how it has shifted in recent years. In order to keep customers happy and loyal, companies should think about proactive customer support in order to stay ahead of the needs of customers so that they don’t even have a chance to be dissatisfied. Reactive support deals with people who are already angry or dissatisfied, and it can often be hard to get them back to being a loyal customer/raving fan. Proactive support will nip that issue in the bud and keep them on the right track.

Proactive vs reactive support 1:36
CSAT 4:26
FAQs 5:38
Anticipating resources 7:58
Support statements 9:58

“Customer support is no longer a nice-to-have feature. It is this piece of any business and oftentimes there’s a direct correlation between the success and excellent customer support. Customer expectations are always heightened these days. The faster, more conveniently brands can resolve customer issues, the more satisfied customers are with their experience.” 1:41

Today we’re talking about how consumers want to be contacted, which sounds like something we all know, but that’s not always the case. In this post-pandemic world, consumers have undergone this shift in mindset and expectations surrounding the customer experience. I think today’s consumer finds a huge benefit in a hybrid experience that combines this idea of a spark of human communication and the convenience of digital assistance. The hybrid model is the future of customer experience and meeting customer expectations.

Today’s consumer 1:10
Conducting research in the trends of customer experience 1:50
Creating your hybrid model 6:30

“In order to keep up with this increasing consumer expectation, companies need to invest in a modern customer relationship management tool that has multi human support, it’s got AI technology, it has that personalized hybrid customer experience.” 1:29

In this episode I talk about why chatbots are so important and how your business can gain from this useful service. The chatbot, or virtual agent, will fill in for those mundane tasks that often drain the life of customer reps, making everyone’s life so much better and free up agent time so that they can focus on the bigger issues customers are facing. Chatbots can get rid of all the filler time that is used for gaining general information that agents waste so much time on, making each customer interaction that much more efficient.

Virtual agents 0:58
Chatbots can shift focus to more complex issues 2:14
Handing off chatbot conversations to real agents 3:50
How to get going on this 5:35

“We surveyed over 525 US based consumers over the age of 18 trying to understand how this need for speed, if you will, translates into customer experience preferences. And the results, yeah, they were 90%, a whopping 90% of respondents think contact in customer service should be easier. 85% of respondents think customer service should be faster.” 2:51

Today we’re talking about mapping to management and I always like talking about journey mapping, but this has a slightly different twist and to do this I’ve got on Jochem Van Der Veer, who is currently the co-founder and CEO of TheyDo. He has a lot of experience and understanding of the whole journey mapping process and the various dynamics and angles you have to look at and understand to create a useful and productive map for your business.

His background and what he does at TheyDo 0:56
The continued problem with people mapping 4:53
How to move from mapping to managing 8:34
It may get more complex as you go 12:45
Where to go once your framework is established 13:55
Keeping the map active and advice to stepping up your game with journey mapping 18:06

“Their life cycle is basically time based, right? From left to right, but when you look at it vertically, you can look at it from different dimensions and one of them is, for instance, regions. So think about how different regions like Europe vs US go, or different customer types. New customers vs existing customers, or maybe even different dimensions that are relevant to your business.” 12:03

@joch_m
www.theydo.io

Something that we all want and could all use is the knowledge and ability to turn the customer into an ambassador of your brand. I’m taking here from a post that Grace Lau, Director of Growth at Dialpad did for Kustomer. It was such a great summary of this topic, that I wanted to give you a little bit of an overview of some of the takeaways I had on it. To see more about that post, you can check it out on the Kustomer blog: www.kustomer.com/blog

The most trusted source of recommendations 1:30
What a brand ambassador is 2:25
Communication needs to go both ways and provide omnichannel customer support 5:07
Customer experiences in digital marketing can really help build trust 8:27

“I think to retain customers you don’t just want contact deals, you gotta engage with them. That means communication must go both ways. Competitions, freebies, promotions, or limited edition products, great ways to start to reward your loyal customers and keep that mailing list engaged.” 5:07

One of the biggest shifts over the last few years has been to live chat because of the digital first mindset. Live chat allows consumers to get their questions answered without having to phone in or Phone support is not going anywhere, but when you force them to switch platforms in order to get their questions answered, ultimately you give them a reason to abandon their purchase or even potentially generate a negative feeling. Only ¼ of surveyed customer service organizations are currently using chat.

What is live chat for business? 2:09
The massive disconnect between businesses and their customers 7:13
A few reasons why chat might not be right for you 9:05
Benefits and issues with chatbots 12:04

“Only 9 percent of customers that have a low effort experience display any kind of disloyal attitude or behavior compared to, get this, 96 percent of those customers with high effort, difficult experiences. And chat does a great job of delivering this effortless, quality customer service experience.” 5:00

Today we are talking about some research we did about the future of customer experience. We regularly go out and survey professionals and consumers to understand trends in the space, so we want to dive into our latest research report. We surveyed over 100 CX professionals, gathered research, and now will be sharing it with you to reveal some of the interesting findings we’ve gathered through these surveys.

Will the role of customer service become more important to fuel business growth over the next 3 years? 1:53
Which channels will grow more in popularity over the next 3 years? 3:32
What percentage of CX professionals are preparing to service through live video/VR? 5:26
Top 3 priorities for CX organizations to achieve by 2025 7:22
Where will CX organizations be investing their money in the next few years? 9:17
Will personalization become more important? 14:27

“81% of CX organizations report that reducing wait times is an extremely important priority to achieve within the next 3 years. No doubt, I mean waiting on hold with customer service is a tale as time, isn’t it? And it’s one that provides a surefire way to create a ticked off customer.” 8:07

Today we’ve got a great guest who’s got a book out there called Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance, which has been highlighted in the Wall Street Journal’s best seller list and Forbes put it as one of its top business books in 2021. His name is Howard Tiersky and is the CEO of FROM, a digital transformation agency he created that helps companies transform from where they are now to where they need to be to succeed with today’s digital-first customers. “The goal of digital transformation is to catch up to the customer.”

How to win the digital consumer 2:03
Setting the stage of the consumer 4:17
Digital transformation 6:13
Map the journey 14:02
Should you revisit the journey map over time? 21:01

“If you’ve done research like that in the past, if you haven’t refreshed it in the last 12-18 months, it’s really obsolete because customers’ digital needs have changed so much during the pandemic, they’ve accelerated so much that you have to take a fresh look because your customers’ transformation have been faster than usual.” 9:58

Even during the best of times businesses have to strive to be more efficient and there are always things to improve upon, customers to service, and proactive outreach to do. Sometimes I find when circumstances shift somewhat quickly and businesses are asked to do more with less, it really brings to light the importance of this idea of efficiency in overall customer service.

Being efficient and effective isn’t always optional 1:13
Having a customer service efficacy strategy is essential 2:20
How organizations are adapting 3:50
What CS teams need 4:56

“It’s essential to have a customer service efficacy strategy and really the correct technology in place to handle bursting activity and enable productive remote work for tools that leverage AI and intelligent automation to power self service and low level information gathering. Those ones become extremely important.” 2:20

Support agents are often on the front lines for businesses. Dealing with frustrated customers while working through repetitive tasks can be daunting. Tasks pile up, which leaves agents with a backlog and in situations like this, the danger of burnout becomes pretty real. Research at Cornell said 87% of workers reported high, or very high levels of stress in call centers. Are employers doing enough to combat burnout?

The top driver of burnout 1:28
Signs of burnout that managers should look for 3:15
Things you can do to manage and prevent burnout 4:54
Showing support and gratitude for your team members 6:17
Provide variety 7:18
Create and communicate career paths 8:36

“Strong onboarding programs are critical to the success of all agents on our teams. I think it’s important to establish what the essential tools, foundational skillsets are for agents to be able to deliver that type of customer experience.” 5:19

Today we talk to Jay Hinman, the Vice President of Marketing at Lily AI, the customer intent platform built to power the present and future of e-commerce. We talk about how much search results need to be adjusted for what people are looking for to avoid the frustration that can come from getting way more search results than you need and hardly any apply to what you’re looking for. Companies are making the digital transformation in order to keep customers interested and satisfied with their internal search systems. Focusing on the visual of what customers see rather than the description will really help retailers improve their sales.

What’s going on in the e-commerce world 3:02
Helping companies adjust 7:11
Recognize that a lot of products have more facets than you might think 12:55

“94% of consumers say they usually get irrelevant results when they’re searching on a retail website. This is from IRC Research last year. Or 76% of consumers say they will abandon a retailer after failing to find what they’re looking for.” 8:31

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayhinman/
https://www.thredup.com/looks

In this episode we discuss the issue of customer neglect with Daniel Rodriguez, the Chief Marketing Officer at Simplr. He just co-authored a book called “Experience Is Everything: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Wallets in the Era of NOW CX.” There are a lot of strategies companies use to gather customer data, but often company leaders will stick to the metrics that make them feel good about what they’re doing rather than actually showing what customers are feeling about their experience. We also discuss the different types of neglected customers, one of which is those who have a large social media presence. They can go on their profiles and blast their whole following about the terrible experience they just had with your company, causing possible revenue loss from all the lost customers that can result.

About their book 0:36
Why customer neglect is such a pressing issue 6:14
The different types of neglected customers 13:34
The late night browser 17:52
The negative networker 19:42
How to address these issues as a leader 21:50

“When you then try to understand ‘Where are we with our customers?’ You realize that there are a bunch of different things that are happening with customers, and they’re feeling many different ways that you are not actually capturing with data.” 7:39

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drodriguez4/

Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Christopher Stark, the VP of Customer Experience & Business Value at Khoros. He worked at Nike for 5 years where he learned the importance of branding and one of their mottos was “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” From there they decided they would focus on and represent the voice of the athlete and pay attention internally, which helped them understand better who they were and how they could better help their customer base. A lot of traditional programs that have been used for a while are now on the chopping block because of where things are at now and will have to be cut from what companies use.

Christopher’s background 0:41
Tying CX to business value 5:53
What’s not working right now 13:07

“Chat wasn’t even really around 20 years ago. How can a metric that came out during that time, now with an era of TikTok and Linkedin, and text messaging now to communicate with customers, the metric’s just outdated and I tell everyone, ‘You know what? It could lead to growth, but you need to actually prove that out. Find the metric. If it’s not NPS, go find the metric that does lead to growth in your company and use that.’” 9:46

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophertstark/

We had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Dominicci, the Vice President of Customer Experience Operations at TriNet. Her background in industrial and systems engineering brings a very unique perspective to the CX space. She talks about a few things you should know and understand when starting out, such as where to find the data, where to house it, and how to bring it all into one place. They started looking at how customers think about and feel about certain things as opposed to just looking at the traditional, more mechanical data.

Where to start 4:30
Leaning into the data 9:29
Looking at processes to automate 16:37
The final step 22:16

“I wanted to see different work moving at an increased velocity and really the goal was to get the customer who’s on the phone or sent us an email that needs something, get them to the right resource that has the answer faster, and really be able to increase the quality of the experience that that customer was having.” 17:43

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethdominicci/

Today we’re talking about engineering customer success by diving into using data to drive success initiatives in your business. We brought on Joshua Moskovitz who previously worked at Google as a Customer Engineering Leader, and is now an angel investor in the same area. He talks about what you deal with as a leader in customer success and the changes that a business will go through, requiring you and your departments to adapt and evolve as time goes on. Joshua tells about the two metrics you use to measure data, one being vanity metrics, which can show you how many users you have and thus understand how much you’re growing, but then there are clarity metrics, which you use as operational guideposts that show you how often people are using the product, for example.

Where Joshua came from and where he’s going 1:23
Coaching future leaders on similar problems he’s dealt with 7:11
Working with multiple technologies 12:10
Using this data 14:02
Once you have the data 19:30

“You’re gonna need to know from a vanity metric perspective how many daily active users you have, or how many new signups you have, or just how quickly you might be growing over time, but it’s really the idea of clarity metrics. The ones that you want to be tracking because they drive the right behavior, or they measure the right experience for your customers. Those are the ones that you definitely want to build out, understand, and be able to iterate on.” 14:17

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamoskovitz/

Our guest today, Jon Picoult, the founder of Watermark Consulting, helps companies impress their customers. He’s a leading expert in customer-employee experience and has been featured in dozens of media outlets including the Wallstreet Journal, the New York Times, NBC News forums, fortune 100 CEOs, and he’s been working with small entrepreneurs. He’s been helping people across the business manage this concept of customer and employee experience and is joining us today to talk about this idea of loyalty-enhancing strategies. You can save money and future hassle with customers by getting rid of issues before the customers even face them. Every time you say no to your customer, it saps their loyalty to your company.

Is customer satisfaction key? 4:51
Jon’s definition of customer service 6:21
Quantify the customer experience and understand where they’re coming from 13:17
The most universal problem/challenge in customer experience 15:21
How companies can make it easy to do business with them 19:19

“If you are doing things better in the experience upstream, for example making products that are easier to assemble, or providing sales materials that are easier for people to understand and more accurately set expectations. If you’re doing things like that, what you actually end up doing is obviating the need for downstream customer contact. You’re basically pre-empting dumb, avoidable reasons why customers reach out to you.” 9:49

Today we share audio from the Kustomer Now conference hosted by Matt Chabrier, Regional Sales Director at Kustomer, and he speaks with Aziz Razakov, Associate General Manager at MoneyLion, a FinTech startup. We discuss his role in customer loyalty and what changes the past year and a half have brought his company, such as a 24/7 support line, increased channels customers can contact through, increasing the visibility of how customers can contact them, and creating a more seamless internal complaint process. Response time is super important to customers and the quicker you respond, the higher customer service scores will be. 5 things to improve the customer experience: Response time, proper tools, self service functionality, partnership, and data analysis.

What he has seen change while at MoneyLion 3:35
What role he plays in product and customer loyalty 6:19
Changes the last year and a half have brought 7:26
Using AI and chatbots bots 9:47
Advice for rolling out this process 16:41
Responsiveness and channel type 20:35
Other tools that CX leaders ought to know about 23:50
What the future looks like 27:07

“We’ve taken the time to continuously improve the chatbot by adding more content, adding more functionality where the chatbot is not just spitting out FAQs, but is actually dipping into the database, making changes, and servicing the customer, and it’s been a huge success. I’d say through our chat channel we’re able to mitigate at least 50% of our contacts, which is huge.” 10:56

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewchabrier/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aziz-razakov-0673b793/

Today we have the privilege of speaking about CX transformation with Erika Putinsky, the Vice President of Customer Education at Mailchimp. She shares her 4 pillars to be successful in CX and what companies are looking for when they work with her. Showing up for your customer is necessary to maintain a good relationship with them because they’ll feel understood and appreciate the amount of care you show by listening to them. Focus on customer education and feedback to understand what the customer wants to both improve the company and cause the customer to stick around as they feel like part of the process.

What Erika does 1:03
Necessary pillars to be successful 3:17
The main thing people are trying to accomplish with them 5:23
The 2nd pillar 7:16
Empowering the underdog 9:29
The 3rd pillar, Process 11:11
The 4th pillar, culture 13:15
Something important to remember 17:38

“It kind of goes to what you were saying, Gabe, it’s that effort of showing up. Obviously in our current world you can’t do customer visits, or that kind of thing, but it’s about making the extra effort. So don’t hide behind emails. Mindfully listen to your customer’s unique experience … listen with two ears and one mouth.” 7:16

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikaputinsky/

Today we revisit a previous episode of Kustomer when we talked with James Dodkins, known as the Rockstar Customer Experience Expert. Before becoming a specialist in customer experience, James toured the world performing in a rock and roll band. He now takes what he learned from that and applies it to customer experience. We talk about this and how we can frame our customer experience similarly. We also talk about how to structure our team in a way that rewards direct value to customers. We often reward our employees for doing things that don’t actually lead to greater customer satisfaction.

About James 1:21
How to Give Rockstar Customer Experience 5:01
4 Step Framework 9:27
Team Structure 13:24

“Only 4% of dissatisfied customers will complain and the large majority of the rest will vote with their feet. They’ll just leave and go somewhere else. If you are only fixing problems for the 4% of people that complain, you are missing a massive opportunity.” 11:00

Revisiting one of our previous episodes, we talk with Jeanne Bliss, founder and CEO of Customer Bliss. We talked about her book that explains her philosophy on customer experience. Too often we are watering down or over complicating customer service. Jeanne explains her thoughts in a way that can help any company no matter size. Jeanne also offers a link to the first chapter and quiz to her book for our listeners.

Would you do that to your Mother? 2:14
How to start Enabling Employees 7:53
Don’t make me feed you Soap 11:58
Pillars 3 and 4 14:10

“Do you allow for human error? If you return that rent-a-car 3 minutes late, are you get dinged for half a day?...Put people above process.” 15:31

We are revisiting one of our favorite episodes today with Dan Gingiss. Dan has worked for 4 Fortune 300 companies: McDonald’s, Discover, and Cubana in marketing and customer service roles and after becoming somewhat of a specialist in this, he now is a professional speaker and consultant on the topics.

Introduction to Dan 0:48
Intersection of Customer Experience and Marketing 2:09
How to Focus on the Customers 8:49
How to Contact Dan 17:20

“ If you want to change the sentiment in social media, the way to do that is not to bombard people with more marketing talking about how great you are. The way to do that is to have your customers talk about how great you are.” 4:47

Today we’re revisiting one of our previous episodes with Matt Dixon. We talk with Matt Dixon from Tethr about some of the latest and greatest trends in customer experience at the time of this recording. Matt is known for his statements on how we shouldn’t try and delight our customers. He explains this further and how we need to redirect our focus to reducing effort for our customers and make it easier for them. So rather than focus on putting out fires, prevent the fires altogether. He also gives direct advice on how to apply this, false myths of customer experience and what kind of people to hire.

Intro to Matt 2:22
Don’t Delight your customer 4:22
How to Start Applying it 16:12
Tethr 29:18

“When something’s gone wrong and the customer reaches out and they're trying to get a problem fixed, those customers whose expectations are exceeded, are actually no more loyal than those whose expectations who were simply met.” 6:11

In this episode we have Randall King, the President of Commercial Solutions at Conduent. As the Group President of Customer Experience Management, Randall has responsibility for 25k customer experience professionals who deliver best-in-class service globally to millions of customers on behalf of their clients. In this role, Randall drives strategic transformation, stronger client relationships, and service excellence. He works in close collaboration with business and technology leaders to bring innovative solutions to their clients, while delivering an integrated and seamless experience to their customers.

Advice for someone starting out in the customer space 2:38
Priority and balance 6:54
Good and bad lessons learned 10:41
Exciting trends in the market 18:57
Working from home 21:41
A summary statement for transforming your business 26:33

“Perfection is the enemy of done and it’s hard to turn a ship that’s not moving. In my career I’ve had so much more success if you just get under way and of course things like agile methodologies really help with that with sprints, but just get out there and get going. Course correct as you go. You’ll learn, you’ll get better, and as you have progress, people get excited, and then they want to achieve more and before you know it, you’re really driving out some great results.” 3:34

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rking2002/
randall.king@conduent.com

We know the customer experience is important because without happy customers, our businesses will fail and our customers won’t be happy, but what truly creates standout brands is this idea of an exceptional experience. This means no hurdles, no drawbacks, and nothing to jump through. CX, whether you like it or not, is a team sport that touches every part of the organization. I give 3 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset.

What creates standout brands 0:42
The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience 1:38
3 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset 2:52

“The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience, it bleeds throughout the entire organization and it starts with that idea, this customer first mindset. A customer first mindset means you put the needs of your customers first. Hopefully that’s obvious.” 1:38

In today’s episode, we have Jarvis Harris, the Vice President of Global Customer Success at Visier, joining us. Visier is a cloud-based analytics application that delivers fast, clear people insight. With best-practices expertise built in, Visier asks the right questions and promptly identifies opportunities and risks within your organization so you can confidently take action. Jarvis tells us about the Driver, the Dreamer, and the Doer 3D model that helps them create the best experience and the most success.

Jarvis’s background and what he does 3:22
Driving the experience/3D model 4:30
A different experience for each of them 7:00
Process 11:28
Systems 14:01

“It’s about getting introduced before the deal is complete, getting that document filled out, and being prepared ahead of time, and you hit the ground running, but it’s essential that you know before. Don’t get assigned when you’re at 100% of their close, assign it before they’re closed because you want to get your ideas percolating early.” 10:32

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarvisharris/

We wanted to chat with two special guests, Gordana Warga, the Director of Global Support at Kustomer, and Chad Horenfeldt, customer service and customer experience leader also at Kustomer. We discuss customer service week, what it is, and why it’s important to really show appreciation for everyone that works hard in making this often difficult part of business a better experience for all involved. The little things are super important, such as recognizing someone’s birthday on the floor and taking the time to celebrate that person as an individual. If you care about your own people, they’ll care about the customer.

Thoughts on customer service week and its importance 1:21
Impacting long lasting client relationships 3:58
Encouraging customer obsession 7:22
Celebrating customer service 12:03

“We all take the time to recognize the small wins and to really recognize when we’ve helped each other and when we’ve helped clients. So we’ll do a lot via Slack and via other channels where we really just give shoutouts and reward all of the positive things we see throughout the day.” 5:43

We have a special guest today, Phil Irvine, the Vice President, Audience Intelligence at RPA. We’re going to be talking about how customer interactions and signals can fuel optimal marketing experiences and we wanted to get Phil on to see a more broad view of the customer experience, not always the service, but how marketing plays a role there. Marketing has evolved a lot over time where in the past it was less personal and a lot more over the top oftentimes, but today people are very aware of cheap marketing techniques and can always tell when you’re not being genuine.

About Phil and his experience 1:25
Relevant marketing 5:08
Personalization 7:00
Coaching people with the right tech stack 11:00
CDP platforms 15:38
Marking and customer service working in tandem 16:47

“You wanna have your North star of what the optimal personalized segmentation experience will look like, but the thing that I like to preach and what I’ve personally pursued in roles that I’ve had is exhibiting small wins along the way to show that these investments are worth it because they’re expensive at the end of the day.” 12:36

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pirvine/

Today we have special guest Danilo Pozo, the Vice President of Customer Experience for Latin America at Cisco, to discuss lifecycle management and making the best of your customer experience. Your company will go through a culture shift and you have to be able to adapt in order to keep up with your customers’ needs. The developing world provides many opportunities for companies to branch out and find better, more diverse talent that’s also more economic.

Lifecycle management 3:41
The culture shift 5:37
Bring your customer into one place 9:40
How it can be different in less developed regions 11:34
Advice and lessons learned for newer companies 13:37

“Another thing that I think is really interesting about now is talent, right? There is so much talent around the world that you don’t have to be in one place now. You can gather talent from different places in the world for one common factor and that would allow emerging markets to be more attractive to main companies, and we’re trying to see that, how you get the best talent from different places in the world for one company.” 12:47

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilo-pozo-vp-cx-cisco/

We have with us today the Senior Vice President of Marketing over at Ada, Ruth Zive, to talk about having better brand interactions. Back when ATMs were becoming popular, everyone thought they were going to replace the bank teller and kill bank jobs, but those kinds of jobs have only increased since then. There are 18% more bank teller jobs now than there were back in the year 2000, showing that automation and machines will actually help job growth. We discuss how companies can maintain personalization as they grow and scale their company, which often is a struggle for growing businesses.

What they do at Ada 1:01
Automation and the agent 2:32
Is automation sacrificing personalization? 9:15
Collecting data 14:41
Why we’re not proactively reaching out 20:33

“When automation and human resources are working in lock step, those human resources have a better job experience, they are able to deliver a better experience to the customer, it’s much more efficient for the brand. So really it’s a win-win for everybody.” 4:18

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthzive/?originalSubdomain=ca
ada.cx

Watch the CX bootcamp on demand here: https://www.ada.cx/cx-bootcamp-ecommerce?utm_campaign=ecommerce&utm_medium=partner&utm_source=kustomer

In this episode we are discussing the future of CX and artificial intelligence with Dan Watkins, President of Forethought and Rose Wang, Head of Customer Experience also at Forethought. Forethought Technologies, Inc. is a Silicon Valley software company founded by a team of Dropbox, Palantir, and Autonomy alumni in 2017. Their mission is to enable everyone to become a genius at their jobs. They are the makers of Agatha, an answer engine for the enterprise, which searches your company’s knowledge bases to generate the most accurate answers.

What is Forethought? 2:45
What is broken in customer service? 7:12
What’s keeping people away from AI 11:08
AI implementation 14:28
How can AI add a personal touch? 20:46
What steps companies can take now to ready their organization to use AI 25:33
Taking AI to the next level 28:19

“Kustomer brings such an interesting perspective I think on a foundation of core platforms, bringing systems together: omni-channel, CRM, those types of words, and adding on layers of artificial intelligence. I think Dan, I think I had a similar conversation as you had with your CEO when you first told me you jumped. I said, ‘Oh you guys are just a chatbot company?’ You’re like, ‘No, look there’s more to it than that.’ And I think this AI piece really is needed and it’s something that the market really, really wants.” 6:21

https://www.linkedin.com/in/d-watkins/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosewang20/

Today we are talking with Kenny Middlebrooks, the Director of Customer Service at Mckesson. We discuss how Kenny has been able to handle customer experience transformation with the right people and getting them to go in the right direction, and then we talk about balancing that process and empowering the agents to be able to grow and even fail in order to experience growth, or helping them know when to break a rule when they need to break a rule. Recording new things and issues your teams run into will help things improve greatly as you’re able to go back, figure out what’s wrong, and resolve those issues.

About Kenny’s time with Mckesson 1:51
Customer experience transformation with the right people and direction 5:29
Balancing process and empowering agents 9:11
Technology 14:01
Phone trees 16:21
Artificial Intelligence 17:49
Don’t make it too complicated 21:47

“If you don’t feel so comfortable doing something, we have different variables of assist, whether it be chat, assist lines, those kinds of things that will give them the benefit of having that extra expertise along with them when they wanna do certain things. But a lot of it has to do with how do they know when to break a rule when they need to break a rule?” 9:57

In this episode we have a special guest, Evan Hopkins, who is the VP of Global Sales and Customer Operations at Outdoorsy. Outdoorsy is the most trusted RV rental experiences marketplace on the planet, powering road trips and RV adventures. They’ve seen a lot of growth recently and have had to make a lot of adjustments, which Evan explains. At first with Covid they weren’t getting any volume and skipped out on hiring new employees, until the end of May when everyone got sick of being inside and there was an “explosion” of people wanting to use their service.

What Evan does at Outdoorsy 1:21
Handling the sudden growth 4:20
Secrets to help work in harmony with your partners 6:09
How they handled Covid 7:45
From 20 to 175 team members and the hiring process 10:57
Getting people up to speed so fast 13:39
Taking technology to the next level 18:17
Working with founders successfully 20:24

“We’re right in our hiring cycle through April and May and we expect to be adding maybe 80 or so people to our staff, but we hired nobody because we had no volume coming in. No one’s booking, but then all of the sudden near the end of May, everything goes crazy and everyone’s like, ‘I’m going outside again, I don’t care.’ You know, various reasons and RVing is the way to go.” 8:27

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evancbhopkins/

Today I met with the Chief Evangelist at CX Effect, Justin Robbins, and we discussed whether the professionals in CX should focus on behavior as opposed to numbers. Quality assurance in the context of contact centers are often the score cards or mechanisms we put in place to understand how our teams are doing to keep their promises, or if we’re complying to processes put in place by the company. Are we doing the right things to drive the right outcomes?

What Justin does 1:18
Scoreless QA 4:00
Predictive vs reflective metrics 7:12
Scale metrics vs indicator metrics 12:19
Getting this into play 14:07
What is holding businesses back from investing in CX 16:48

“Think about the idea of customer experience. If I get 100% on my QA interaction with the customer I just had, that 100% is meaningless when I answer the phone or I answer the chat for that next customer. The game resets. There’s no winner or loser in customer experience, right? The whole point is to keep business going.” 7:56

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmrobbins/
cxeffect.com

In this episode we will be talking about how to delight your guests, spark your culture, and just ignite everything around you and to do that we have Michael Fiato, the SVP of Guest Experience at Eurest, and the author of The Hospitality Edge: Stories to Delight Your Guests, to Spark Your Culture, and Ignite Productivity. We discuss what to look for when hiring new people, and the common mistakes employers or interviewers make when looking for good quality candidates.

Michael’s back story 2:45
Training people to teach correct principles in your organization 4:16
The interview process 9:34
Separating tasks and purpose to create culture 12:47
Creating the “Disney Way” environment 14:59

“I don’t necessarily need a server that’s been a server before, but I do need somebody that loves people, that loves food, that is outgoing, and somebody said once to me, ‘lead with what you need.’ and I think that sometimes we just don’t do that. Really think about what you’re looking for in a candidate, and then ask for those skills and those qualifications, and you’ll probably get the right person.” 7:45

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fiato-a2b05039
https://www.amazon.com/Hospitality-Edge-Stories-Delight-Productivity/dp/B08P3JTT8X

Today it’s just Gabe sharing an interesting experience he had this past week through which he learned some useful lessons. Sometimes leaders can go over a line with how they treat other leaders, which is exactly what Gabe witnessed recently and discusses. We cannot be successful without the various moving parts that make up a business, such as the technology and operations team, or the customer service team. Being able to communicate effectively is essential to overall company harmony and growth.

Working through a customer transformation project with a company 0:51
A bit of advice for all operations professionals 1:25
Structure and process 4:06
Solving a problem together 8:31

“This is not a problem that can be solved just by an ops person. This cannot just be solved by a CX person. You really need the combination to come together and see if they can map this out in a way that doesn’t feel so disjointed.” 8:41

In this episode we meet with Wendi Sturgis who has been in the New York scene for the last 25 years. She used to be the Chief Customer Officer before becoming CEO and gives some good tips and advice on what leaders need to know in order to advance their CX team forward. Working overseas has given Wendi a broader perspective on how to be a leader in various aspects of business and tells us how she has learned to scale her business to a global standard.

Recommendation for CX leaders trying to work effectively with their senior leadership 1:05
Advice for leaders trying to maintain focus 4:09
Growing and scaling to a global standard 13:13
Investing in technology 16:11
Finding a balance of where to drive consistency 17:52

“I cannot emphasize this enough. Every opportunity you have as a leader in the internal communications, tell customer stories. Every. Single. Time. You have to every time you get a newsletter out, or speak at a company event, or at your boss’s staff meeting. Tell those stories.” 6:21

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendisturgis

In this episode we talk about the 90 day roadmap to customer excellence with Shannon Martin, the Senior Director, Travel Partners Group PMO at Expedia Group. We talk about where to start in getting your roadmap going and how to get it into the mindset of your customer service team. We talk about how to gather data and the best ways you can go about understanding what your team is working with and what issues your customers are facing. Shannon shares an awesome tip on what you can do to end your call on a more positive note with your customers.

How to start thinking about the 90 day plan 1:51
Gather data 4:02
Extracting the right information 5:39
Where to go next 7:45
Ending your call on a positive 9:46
Where to go last 11:57
Last piece of advice 15:58

“In the customer service world I think customer service people are naturally designed to do this, but you always want to start with the customer’s problem. What problem are you trying to solve? And so once you understand what problem you’re trying to solve, then you can think about, ‘OK, what are the processes that impact that problem? How does the customer get to the point where they have that problem?’” 2:50

https://www.linkedin.com/in/slearmartin

Today we talk to Brad Birnbaum, the CEO here at Kustomer, and we talk about the future of customer experience and the effects we have felt from the big events in 2020. We saw numerous changes last year, expected and unexpected, some of which being a boom in retail and an influx in customer inquiries. Remote work has been a large change that most companies have embraced and it seems companies across the board will keep this change and adapt moving forward. The customer’s expectations have changed as the world has changed, and then we discuss how and what companies can do to adapt and start to win moving forward.

Summarizing 2020 1:32
Remote work 4:03
The change in consumer expectations 5:45
How companies can start to win in 2021 7:11
Artificial intelligence and machine learning 9:24
Multi and omni channels 11:22
The mantra all companies should have 13:29

“I think remote work has impacted the vast majority of us. I think you and I are both doing this from our homes right now, right? So remote working has impacted, kind of almost everyone, and I think the world was trending towards remote work, but wow did we just put that in hyperdrive.” 4:04

Today I have with me Pam O’Neal, the Senior Marketing Director here at Kustomer, and we’re talking about the importance of social commerce, which isn’t new, but is really hot right now. We talk about the risks and realities of tackling it, how to make it work, and then some of the brands that are doing it really well, and then what’s coming up next. Almost everyone these days uses social media and discovering vendors, consuming, and sharing what one buys is something you have to understand in order to survive in today’s economy.

What social commerce looks like today 4:17
Why social commerce is so popular 8:24
We can’t be everywhere at once 15:05
Pillars for the customer journey 21:31

“92% of consumers said that their preferred platform for social commerce was Instagram. 77% opted for Facebook, 57 for Twitter, 47% for Pinterest. From a business perspective, you guys, 73% of businesses believe that their brand had already created an emotional bond with consumers on social media and that this would ultimately help them achieve greater success across social media.” 7:08

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamoneal

Today I meet with Vikas and Sophie Vu, Chief Marketing Officer at Unbabel, and we discuss how you can achieve high growth and customer satisfaction in our global economy. Sophie tells us how Unbabel is making communication between citizens in various countries easy and improving the way we commune globally. Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular across the board today and many people have been worried it may replace people, but language is so complex that people will always have to be around in order to correct the mistakes that AI will continue to make.

About Sophie and Unbabel 0:54
Language operations 2:08
Big picture trends 6:32
AI 8:01
AI and language 11:52
How should people adapt to coming out of the pandemic? 18:59
Your customer has evolved 23:22
Learn more about Unbabel and the research 28:06

“Think of language operations as a way to roll out, centralize, and scale multilingual capabilities across every function in an enterprise, right? We’re starting with customer service, but eventually we want to obviously enable marketing, sales, product, HR, legal, what have you, to be able to function in this global world that we live in.” 2:27

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-vu415

In this episode we’re going to talk about how great companies master modern customer experiences, and to do that we brought on the Director of Operations and Customer Experience at JOANN, Drew Chamberlain. We discuss why it’s so important to have all communication channels that the customer desires to use available to them even if your company struggles with one of those channels. We also talk about AI and whether it’s something your company should integrate into your customer experience or not. Make sure you avoid tricking customers into thinking they’re chatting with a real person.

Optimising customer experiences 3:26
Helping companies be on the right channel 4:44
The best tool to use 5:54
Multi channel vs omni channel 6:45
The 360 view 8:18
Drew’s opinion on artificial intelligence 10:05
Where to start with AI 12:18

“The trick here is the channels that you optimise in, you can try to lead people to that direction, but that doesn’t mean eliminating the channels that you’re not the best at and are gonna cost you more. Maybe you focus on email or chat, but you always have to leave that other channel out there, whether it’s phone or social in case the customer wants to contact you that way.” 5:16

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-chamberlain-2a2a6148

Today we’re talking with Vikas and Darryl Addington, the Director of Product Marketing at Five9, and he shares with us some of his own secrets about Artificial Intelligence in the Contact Center. One thing you will have to do if you’re considering using AI for your company is moving towards the cloud, which is where all the data is. There are plenty of benefits to switching over to AI, such as customers being able to get assistance much faster than if they would have to wait for a human being to be available. The problem is it’s often too expensive for smaller businesses, so we discuss ways people can overcome the issue of cost and integrate AI into their own company.

Why people should care about AI 5:12
Are there certain things you need in place to use AI? 6:46
Where people are seeing the benefits in machine learning and AI 12:21
Agent assist capabilities 19:21
Can AI suggest solutions? 22:05
Where to start 27:39

“What [Business] can invest in though is technology using this idea of machine learning, which we can talk a little bit about, they can invest in that to solve the types of problems that they’re suffering from today, which there’s lots of them, especially if you look in the contact center. Tons of room for improvement in customer experience, as we all know, and tons of room for improvement in terms of operations and improving efficiency, and things like that.” 6:02

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darryl-addington-8055642/

Today we’re going to be talking about the power of wait time in driving the customer experience, and to do that we have Tom Reiger, the President of NSI, Inc. and President/CEO at National Business Innovations, LLC. We start off talking about wait time and Gabe asks if it’s really such an important thing to focus on and Tom explains that it’s always something his company is trying to focus on as it can prove to raise your company’s costs by quite a bit if you’re not careful.

Tom’s role 1:27
Wait time 2:18
Understanding certain types of tickets 8:37
What brands are doing to help the consumer have a better experience 13:46
Empowering employees to deliver a great experience 17:31

“You shouldn’t have to hire a million people to find this right balance. So it’s being smart about what you automate, it’s being smart about your channel prioritization, and it’s being smart about how you train and equip your reps to provide that individualized service.” 14:51

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-rieger-33161b1/

Today it’s just Vikas and Gabe talking about the issues faced the most in the CX industry and solutions for dealing with them. We discuss how companies might be trying to manage their customer feedback, and then talk about what employees might be experiencing in their own work life and recognizing when they’re frustrated or losing focus in their job and being able to track the data for that. B to B and B to C companies have their various problems and issues that we distinguish and for which we come up with some solutions.

Is customer feedback being managed more often? 3:10
2 things we would do if we had a magic wand 5:56
B to B and B to C customer service 14:00
Varying customer experience 17:19

“We can detect the sentiment of a customer’s email. What if we could detect the sentiment of an employee’s Slack or email? Maybe it will actually show that there’s a negative sentiment, like they’re getting more and more disenfranchised or hostile in their emails because they’re frustrated.” 8:46

In this episode we’re going to be talking about CX transformation and driving business value with your CX team, and to do that we brought on Laurent Pierre Jr., the General Manager of Microsoft Azure CXP. We discuss what you need to do to work with your team, your leaders, and the customer to create life time value, or to get your customers to want to stick around for the rest of their lives. We want to focus on investing in the customer journey and get customers to love our company by treating them not just as a transaction, but as an actual human being.

Working with executives 2:04
How CX teams should be driving value 3:27
Where to start to get business value 6:01
More on driving value 9:56
Coaching people through it 14:10
Helping the CX team become the best 19:03

“Probably one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from customers is like, ‘Every time I call this support center, I have to re-explain my environment. I have to re-explain my architecture.’ And so that’s why it becomes important to understand your customer, segment them, but also align industry related technologists that can speak not only the technical language, but the business language.” 10:31

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurentpierrejr/

Today we meet with Chief Operating Officer at UJET, Vasili Triant, and we talk about how companies have been adapting to the age of the mobile phone. Vasili tells us that people have been saying voice is going to die out since the late 90’s, but the reality is that all channels have been on the rise, meaning even demand for voice interactions is increasing. Vasili tells us about how they interact with their consumers and what UJET is doing to collect their data and take care of them based on their needs.

Does voice have a place in today’s market? 1:42
The big challenges that contact centers are facing now 3:37
Why some companies haven’t been able to change 7:20
How UJET is solving current problems 18:24

“The biggest thing frankly is, where are consumers today? They’re on their smartphones, they’re on web, and meet them where they’re at. So we essentially embed the connectivity between a consumer brand and their app, and we don’t make the consumer go outside of it.” 19:30

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilitriant/

Eric Chon is the Community Support Manager at Zwift, an online competitive cycling app for people who want to exercise and have fun while remaining indoors, and last year they hosted the first ever virtual Tour De France. Today we’re talking about how and why Zwift switched to a different CX platform. Eric tells us of how switching to Kustomer changed their company’s direction and the reasons behind making the switch.

About Eric and Zwift 0:26
Why Zwift switched to Kustomer 3:56
Omni channel 5:54
How moving from Zendesk to Kustomer happened 12:15
Advice for companies considering a change 14:13

“It’s a lot easier for us to kinda see, well how many calls did we get? How long were they? Which teams worked on them? And did that call turn into a chat? Did that chat turn into an email? We can see that transition. We can see how many of those there are and having the tools to be able to see like, well how often are we channel switching? Right? From one to the other, you know, that kind of information is just readily available at Kustomer.” 11:11

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericchon/

In this episode we talk with CEO and Founder at Kustomer, Brad Birnbaum. We’re gonna be talking about this idea of a ticket free future. We discuss how and why Kustomer started, Kustomer focus on a seamless customer experience, and the role of an omnichannel platform to service modern customer needs.

Brad’s background 0:44
The 3 principles on which Kustomer was founded 2:49
What does truly omni channel mean? 4:17
CRM’s role 7:33
Final advice for leaders of customer service 14:05

“You have to adapt, right? It’s kind of adapt or die, right? You have to adapt and that is how you do business in every facet of how you do business. Customer service of course is a critical part of it. You can have a great product, but poor customer service and you probably will not have repeat customers, you won’t have customer advocacy, and in the end you probably won’t win.” 14:39

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleybirnbaum/

Today we’re going to be talking about language resilience in this expansion of key superpowers, and to do that we have Edmund Ovington, the VP of Global Alliances at Unbabel and Vikas joining us. Edmund explains why resilience, agility, and flexibility are the superpowers that your company will need to survive. People want to communicate with a company in their own language and it doesn’t matter if that company is foreign because they want to be catered to. We talk about the benefits of expanding and being available to more than just our native locations.

Resilience is a superpower 1:00
Why has language become so important in the customer service arena? 6:10
How companies communicate with foreigners 9:08
Changes Edmund has seen in language 13:24
How can companies expand and scale thinking of language as an advantage 21:00

“Are you showing empathy and a desire to transact with them? We think about this at Kustomer, this concept of ‘the me’ and the consumer, right? And the consumer wants to be–they don’t want to think of you as an American brand or a British brand, right? Yes you might be, but I don’t want to do business with you in your language. Do business with me in my language, and I think that’s where we’re seeing the customer experience evolve to.” 4:19

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmundovington/

In this episode we’re going to be talking about why and how to manage a global CX team. To do that we have two special guests with us: Michael Windsor, the Senior Director of Global Customer Experience at Skybox Security, and Vikas Bhambri from Kustomer. Michael has worked in various places around the world, including Israel where they focused a lot on security, so he tells us what we can expect when working in different regions and how to go about customer experience in those various places.

Where to start 2:22
Michael’s experiences with organic vs. BPO 6:36
Other lessons learned 8:53
Variability from region to region 10:46
Challenges faced 12:07
Scaling globally 14:23
The cost/saving perspective 18:01

“Ultimately the customer experience or customer success starts from when that first sales call all the way in terms of how they’re supported. So not only do you have to make sure that the teams that you manage are aligned with that, you really need to understand that entire customer journey and keep it foundationally the same.” 11:21

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwindsor/

Today we’re talking about the importance of visual context in customer service and to do that we brought on Vikas Bhambri and Wade Radcliffe, who was Director of Business Development at Streem and is now the Vice President of Strategic Sales at Xerox. We talk about why video can really help improve the customer experience, such as cutting down on troubleshooting or quoting time. There may be some pushback from customers or even service reps that they won’t want to see each other, so Wade’s solution is having both be able to see what each other are seeing and discuss their situation, and then ease into having face to face time.

Wade’s intro 0:30
Why is it important to introduce visuals? 1:48
An example from Vikas 7:08
Visuals and car dealerships 10:33
How to start with visuals 13:43
How it works 15:08

“So I’ve seen your space, now let’s have a face to face conversation about how we go about ordering furniture for you, for example. Like a lot of things in the contact center world, you kind of want to have your channels work for you as opposed to you trying to make a certain channel work perfectly.” 6:42

On Today’s episode we have Steve Richard, the Chief Evangelist and Co-founder of Execvision, to discuss the importance of call recordings and why this ought to be incorporated into customer support. Plenty of people thought the phone, or calling in to companies for customer support would die out, but if anything, especially with the pandemic over the last year, customer phone calls have increased and this continues to be a necessary tool for companies to have in order to work with their customers.

What Steve does at Execvision 0:45
Why call recordings matter 1:58
Predicting email would die out 6:54
How people are using the data to change 12:17
Scorecard/best practices on collecting data 16:34

“So I think there’s a lot that now companies are able to do that technology has improved, but they can take thousands, millions of calls, do their analysis on it, and actually make business decisions and those business decisions aren’t limited to the enablement of the agent. It’s change in policy, change in product, change in marketing offers. That richness of data is something that’s now available to the business at large.” 11:14

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saleskickoffspeaker/

In this episode we have Vikas Bhambri and Kyle Coleman, the VP of Growth and Enablement at Clari, a company that transforms revenue operations to be more connected, efficient, and predictable. We discuss a mistake that many companies end up making without realizing it and what the interaction is that causes customers to struggle a little more in trying to learn about the product. Often looking up and learning about physical products online is pretty easy and there is a lot of information about it, but when it comes to software, specifically individual software used by various companies, the information is usually inadequate.

How Tom has become an influencer on LinkedIn 1:31
Presales interaction that makes things difficult for the customer: the demo request process 3:10
The role of the SDR 6:29
B to B vs B to C interactions 14:46
How does the buyer want to buy? 22:30

“Make it as easy as possible for people to find out as much as possible about your product so that when you have those conversations, they’re as close to the bottom of the funnel as possible. Buyers want to do research themselves. They are frustrated when they can’t find answers.” 9:28

https://www.linkedin.com/company/clari/

Today we’re going to talk about customer service research and what more than one million phone calls tells us what you’re supposed to be doing to be successful in customer service and to do that we have on with us Vikas Bhambri from Kustomer and Matt Dixon, the Head of Product and Research at Tethr. We discuss how they have gathered data of over a million customer service phone calls and the useful things we’ve learned to improve the customer experience.

How writing “The Effortless Experience” has affected Matt’s career 1:49
The latest research 6:06
Takeaways from the data 17:43

“If you’re a product person and you don’t realize, ‘Wow, my contact center gets real-time feedback on a new feature, or a new service that I’m providing.’ There’s a lack of understanding about the richness of the data that resides in the contact center environment.” 16:10

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewxdixon/

In this episode we speak with the Director of Customer Experience and Employee Engagement at Schindler Elevator Corporation, Stacy Sherman, and Vikas Bhambri, Head of CX at Kustomer. Vikas tells us about the 3 pieces to an effective program: People, process, and technology. We discuss having executives getting involved on the front lines to see and understand directly what’s going on with the customer, and then making sure your employees are feeling valued and heard.

What’s not working 1:32
3 pieces to an effect program 2:13
Bottoms up feedback 7:17
Tactics to drive the employee and customer experience 10:35
Strengthening employee relationships 15:05

“I’m seeing more and more companies put the executives or new employees in the chair of their front line as part of their onboarding. So as part of your onboarding, go sit with your support team, hear your customers, feel their pain, understand their challenges, and then rotate your executives into that on a regular basis.” 8:32

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacysherman/

In this episode we talk with the Director of Multifamily CX, UX, and Human-Centered Design at Freddie Mac, Kris Featheringham. He emphasizes on the importance of a human-centered design to provide the ultimate tailored customer experience. Kris and I discuss the process and lessons he has learned throughout his CX career, and then go into getting executive sponsorships and what you can do to work with your people to understand more their needs in relation to the needs of your customer base.

Kris’s background 0:47
Process and lessons learned 5:08
Executive sponsorships and process 8:12
Define 12:26

“A lot of times when you sit there and interview someone, they’re just going off their most recent recollection or their most recent experiences. But there are a lot of things that will come out that they would never even have thought to bring up as you watch them. And you’ll come back to them afterward and say, ‘I saw you do this and this. Talk to me about that.’ and then all of the sudden you’ve opened up a whole new can of worms and it’s powerful.” 11:59

https://www.linkedin.com/in/featheringham/

Today we’re going to be talking about customer success and how to do that on a global scale and to do that we brought on Balaji Gadicharla, who is currently the Global Head of Service Support and Success at CipherCloud. He explains some of the ideal trends and practices he has observed while traveling around the globe, such as having someone go to the customer in person, and then establishing dedicated teams. Balaji explains that the best way to become a trusted partner is by understanding them and how their ecosystem works, and then you will be allowed to join that system and move forward with them.

Balaji’s journey 0:55
Trends he has seen as he’s traveled the globe 3:40
Advice/best practices observed 5:46
Why companies don’t understand the nature of their customers 9:12

“We should be able to provide a unified experience to our customers–to all our customers across all incidents. So it should not be transactional–somebody picks up the phone, and then calls your boss, then everything starts falling in place. That’s not how it should be run.” 4:00

https://www.linkedin.com/in/balaji-g-8a3b076/?originalSubdomain=in

In this episode we speak with Sami Nuwar, the Senior Principal Consultant at Medallia, which is a customer experience management platform that helps you manage CX in your company and make things easier. We discuss why people lose focus and stop trying operational excellence, and then where to go and what to do when this happens to your business. We talk about optimizing your data collection in order to analyze it and thus improve various aspects of your customer interactions and experience.

Sami’s background 0:37
Why do people get lackadaisical on operational excellence? 2:59
Where to begin to become more operationally tight 4:13
How to avoid being misled by your data 7:41
Advice for the audience 14:17

“The other, I think, overlooked channel for data is the internal knowledge base within the business. The operational data. We all have systems and machines that capture data from our interactions with customers and our daily business, and that is typically a treasure trove of information.” 7:55

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saminuwarcx/

Today Vikas Bhambri, Head of Sales and CX at Kustomer, and Josh Neckes, currently the co-founder and president at Simon Data, are joining us to dive into market trends, specifically on the data side. We discuss how companies can better know what’s going on with their customers and Josh tells a funny story about when a company kept contacting him about his marriage that had been called off, but the company didn’t know, so contact from the company kept coming, causing some annoyance for Josh. Companies need to put something in place that analyzes the data coming in, or at least gives auto responses to customers when they have inquiries about issues they’re facing.

Simon’s company 0:50
How data plays a role in D to C 6:07
How it’s possible to bring the formula together 12:55
Where people should start if they are lost 21:01

“Maybe you’re not in an emotional space like weddings or dogs, or we work with a lot of financial services companies, but guess what. Most spaces that are not sellings socks on the internet actually are very emotional.” 14:31

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jneckes/
josh@simondata.com

Today we are going to talk about how to build and scale a CX program even during a pandemic, and to do that we have joining us the Head of Customer Experience and Strategy at ServiceNow, Matt Lombardi. He tells us there are 3 critical needs CX leaders need to embrace. The first one is getting executive buy-in early and often. The second one is track and report on the value that your team is creating for the business, which ties in to number one. Number three is continuously adapting and improving to stay relevant, which is especially true today when our customer’s needs and wants are changing so rapidly.

About Matt 1:30
Three critical needs for CX leaders 3:04
How he worked with his people on this 7:52
How number 3 affects his business 11:27

“Lots of unstructured customer feedback is ideal to understand what levers can be pulled to improve the customer experience. And then when you put those two pieces together, you can really start telling a compelling story about how to drive long term growth to your company. It’s at that point that the power of experienced management becomes clear.” 6:42

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmlombardi/

In this episode we talk with the User Experience Architect at Pitney Bowes, Nitya Pannala. We discuss this idea of design thinking, which is a mindset, or ideology of approaching every problem in a human centered way. Nitya gives 3 easy rules to put design thinking into practice. Number 1 is empathize and put yourself in your end user’s shoes. Number 2 is go broad before you go deep by considering multiple options before narrowing down. Number 3 is to experiment as much as possible by testing many different ideas so you can nail it before you scale it.

What Nitya does at Pitney Bowes 1:07
Why it’s important to talk about design thinking 3:50
What is design thinking? 4:51
Putting this into practice/3 easy rules 10:34
How people should get started 20:35

“Contrary to popular belief, this mindset isn’t really about design. It’s about helping companies and individuals think differently about strategic options and system impact. It is most powerful when you combine it with strategic context and that’s where design meets business and the most impact happens.” 6:25

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitya-pannala/

Today we’re going to be talking about human centered customer experiences and we’ll be doing this with the Director of customer experience from NuAxis Innovations, Amanda Chavez. She tells us how they focus on giving their customers a more human experience by using special creative methods and techniques to just have a conversation and get them to open up. Amanda says that literally the only thing you need to talk to humans is the stuff that you learned in 5th grade English and ask the who, what, when, why, when, and how questions, or the “newspaper questions.” She tells me you need to ask your questions, and then just shut up and listen. This is what people need and want. Common sense uncommonly practiced.

Who is Amanda? 0:58
What does human centered customer experience mean? 1:41
Diving into the details 6:17
Otter.ai 11:14
Additional points, Dark Night of the Soul 14:04

“Taking a human centered approach really focuses on not only knowing the numbers behind who your customers are and what their behaviors are, but actually intimately getting to know those people. Like actually having conversations with them to discover where the pain really lives in that experience, and using a lot of creative methods to reshape that experience for them.” 2:14

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandachavez08/

I have with me today Vikas Bhambri and the Director and Distinguished Principal Analyst at XM Institute, Luke Williams, who is the most senior CX and VOC expert in the firm and is a New York Times best seller, “Why Loyalty Matters,” and has been highlighted multiple times in the Harvard Business Review. We discuss the future of CX and how companies need to shift or prepare for situations like the one we’ve been faced with during the pandemic. Luke tells about how CX tech needs to treat and approach the customer just like an in-store associate would by asking them what their end goal is rather than just the up front issue at hand (17:31).

The XM Institute 1:24
The future of CX in 2021 3:27
Big trends as things might be shifting back to normal 6:36
Vikas’s take on the future of CX technology 8:40
Example of Circuit City 23:26

“Everyone’s kind of figured out that if your digital experience is really frictionless and good, you’re going to be able to build customer loyalty on the back of that, and that’s going to be forever moving forward. That is the retirement of the buggy whip.” 7:27

Today we discuss employee and customer engagement and the best way to do that is with Senior Director of Employee & Customer Experience at Centene Corporation, Suzzanna Rowold. She explains that the two major elements that drive success in your company are 1) Employee turnover and 2) Quality of leadership. When hiring people, you need to make sure that you have set clear expectations of what they’re going to be doing so that they aren’t blindsided by a role for which they aren’t prepared. Training your leaders to see the bigger picture is crucial in passing that on to your employees, and then making sure you invest in your employees’ growth and improvement is necessary for success.

Suzzanna’s background 0:58
Secrets of how she has been successful throughout her career 3:39
Hiring the right people 6:59
What else to look for in your hires 13:01

“One of the very top parts of ensuring that your on-boarding is really focused to your needs is setting those clear expectations. You really need to have your job descriptions and what you’re posting for those positions be exactly what it is that you’re needing them to do.” 7:00

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzzannarowoldlcpc/

In this episode we are discussing the best ways to set up your remote workforce and with us today we have the VP of customer care at Magellan Health, Gordon Schleffer. He explains what went on with the customer service world after the pandemic hit last year and what types of businesses gained more calls from customers versus what businesses lost calls. Gordon tells us that the companies that did the best were the ones who had established a strong company culture. The ability of your management and staff to keep your team engaged is the difference between success and failure in this new economic climate. We discuss AI technology that can monitor calls for you and send alerts when something goes wrong in a conversation.

Gordon’s background 0:39
What happened to the customer contact center world after Covid hit? 2:08
What separated the top performers from the bottom? 7:25
How are people managing to be successful in this new work environment? 10:43
Adapting to different technologies 15:24

“To me the critical piece on how successful and how well your contact center is run is based on the culture you create. And so, I think that the companies that have probably fared the best when they sent their staff home were the companies that had the strongest culture.” 7:40

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordon-schleffer-9463245/

Today we’re gonna be talking about operations and how that really plays into the role of helping you transform your customer experience, and with us we brought on the Vice President at Mercy Hospital, John Timmerman. The best thing to do is find out who is performing the best and study their behavior, and don’t study the behavior of the average employee, or you’ll get average results. It’s easy to take your company values and just put them on the wall, but often that doesn’t affect a lot of the people working in the department. John tells us how to deal with the employees that aren’t adapting or don’t want to change with the company.

John’s background 0:52
How to coach organizations to shift from subjective to objective 2:33
What it comes down to 8:16
How to deal with people who won’t adapt 10:54
Stay away from this 24:02

“I’d talk about our values and say, ‘If there’s anything here that you feel uncomfortable with, please we’re gonna take a break and do not come back because this is not the right organization for you. There’s an organization out there for you, we’re just not the one, and that’s OK. We want you to come to that self discovery now.’” 11:50

In today’s episode we have joining us Customer Experience Expert and Sr. Vice President at Masterbrand Cabinets, Billie Jo Timm, and we’re going to be talking about enabling long term sustainability in customer service. She'll give some good advice on how to get people to collaborate by getting them involved in the whole process of exactly what they do and how it impacts the customer. She will explain the various steps of long term sustainability, such as pushing continuous improvement and preparing for a change in culture. Tune in!

Billie Jo’s background 0:50
How she ups her collaboration game 3:57
Continuous improvement 6:17
Change in culture 10:37

“We’ve had great success where they want to be involved because they also can learn things, and learn how to run their business more effectively using similar tools and using similar structure. Many of the customers we have worked with have really benefited from that and are excited to be a part of it.” 5:45

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billie-jo-timm/

Today we’re going to be talking about transforming your CX organization. To do that we got with us today the Head of Customer Experience at Patient Pop, Hunter Schoettle. We discuss how he runs his customer service team and he shares the secrets to his hiring process. Hunter builds a strong base in relationships with his own people in order to help that spread to the customer. He tells us about how they are able to work with other departments and the type of strategy you can use to expand your circle and communications within your company.

About Hunter 0:54
The hiring process 5:24
How data helps them transform 8:22
Which metrics have been right 10:26
Best way to operate outside of your box 14:43

“The main bread and butter, main focus though is on customer retention and that’s really where my department thrives and gives the most value to the company, using those frontline interactions to both gather data, and then analyze and use that to help continually improve the product.” 1:52

In this episode, we’re going over how to build support organizations startup-style with Karen Durenberger, VP of Customer Support at Total Expert. She explains where to begin and says the first thing you need to do is define what your team needs to be, really understanding what type of service you need to give to your customers. You have to ask yourself how you want your customers to describe your customer support team because it’s amazing how much insight you will get into what their expectations are in terms of what they want from a customer support team. You also need to hire/find people who will stick with the customer until they fix their issue, and then diversify the people you bring on in order to have multiple perspectives in your company.

Karen’s background 0:50
Where to start with startup-style 4:10
Staffing and building your team 7:44
Her story of being bold 12:28

“If you were having a glass of wine with your customers over the dinner table –we wish in this era of Covid that we could do that, but let’s all pretend, and you asked your customers, “What words would you use to describe our customer support team?” What words do you want them to use?” 6:43

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-durenberger-1891013/

In this episode we discuss a 90 day roadmap to customer excellence, and to do that we brought on Shannon Martin, the Senior Director, Travel Partners Group at Expedia Group. She gives some good advice on how to break down a customer’s issue, and then come up with a plan to solve that issue, finding the root and shifting your approach to avoid that problem in the future. We talk about the question “Why” and use this to get to the root of their issue, which usually takes around 5 whys. Shannon tells how they were able to raise customer and employee satisfaction by no longer monitoring handle time.

Shannon’s background 0:51
Where to start 4:03
Where to go next 7:52
Improve results 9:54
Last step 12:07

“You always wanna start with the customer’s problem. What problem are you trying to solve? And so once you understand what problem you’re trying to solve, then you can think about ‘what are the processes that impact that problem? How does the customer get to the point where they have that problem?’ And then you start looking at breaking that problem apart and what you can then fix.” 2:57

https://www.linkedin.com/in/slearmartin/

In this episode we talk with Digital Transformation Leader, Customer Experience Zealot, and Global Vice President at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Erik Vogel. He gives us steps on how to deal with customers’ credit and how to protect yourselves from making the mistake of sending products before knowing what their credit is. It’s our job to make sure we don’t ruin the customer’s experience while putting up safeguards for ourselves. Erik gives us some tips on how to communicate effectively and make sure you’re all on the same page.

About Erik 0:46
Making their transition 3:59
Some of the most surprising changes 10:31
Their Metrics and Principles 20:08

“If there’s any takeaway everybody watching this takes is, get the common model, the common taxonomy, and drive that into the organization so you’re all talking the same language. So when you have these discussions–cross B U, cross organization, at least you’re talking about it like this and not like this. You’re bringing it together and you’re talking about it from a common viewpoint.” 18:36

Today the CEO and founder of Be ExtraOrdinary Incorporated and CX Transformation Executive Leader, Carrie S. Lemelin, is joining us. The best way to prepare for and help with problems your customers face is to listen to them. Just being human and being able to say sorry makes us seem more like people rather than robots, which will bode well with the customer.

Carrie’s background 1:02
What to be measuring 4:55
Getting digital 14:20

“Actually the biggest gift a customer can do for you is to complain. Your customers that have the loudest voices mean they’re the most angry and those are the customers that have the real good information so that you can actually make a turn-around.” 5:48

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynlemelin

In this episode we discuss how to move from reactive to proactive preventative customer support with special guest Eric Bonnette, who is currently the Director of Technical Support and Customer Success at Qualys. We talk about why being proactive is essential to having a successful branch of support, such as being able to get ahead and approach issues you may face before they become too big of a problem. Eric tells about the principles he uses to influence his teams to be proactive, and then defines what customer success is to them.

About Eric 0:51
Why proactivity is important 1:38
Principles Eric has used to change and guide his support teams 2:50
Defining customer success 6:21
Technology 10:12

“At the end of the day it is extremely important when you talk about being proactive and moving from that reactive natured state that you’re in. It allows you to gain a more holistic view on the customer engagements while quarterbacking or facilitating, if you will, those engagements.” 5:43

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-bonnette-3014787/

Today we will be talking about next level CX for business-to-business companies—the why, the what, the when, and the how with the VP of Strategy and Analytics at Walker, Troy Powell, and Steve Walker, Walker’s CEO. We will be discussing their latest research report focused on the differences between B2B and B2C customer experience. Learn how they are helping CX leaders create more sustainable B2B businesses by having a customer-centric approach.

Troy’s background 0:56
Steve’s background 4:41
Steve’s Advice/the Maturity Model 13:24
Nailing the CX transformation 19:21

“As opposed to starting with the X data, kind of talk to the business leaders about what they’re trying to drive, and then bring some insights from your customer base that can help them make those decisions better or with a more complete set of information.” 20:41

https://www.linkedin.com/in/troyapowell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfwalker/
https://www.walkerinfo.com/

In today’s episode we discuss the top customer service mistakes with Global Head of Customer Success and Support at Mitek Systems, Mike Sasaki. Mike worked for Sketchers and was able to experience how they ran their company and what issues they ran into, giving him first hand knowledge of snags you can run into with CX. Mike shares with us 5 tips to avoid the most common customer service mistakes.

Mike’s experiences 0:53
What can help customer service teams 6:13
What channels are you providing? 10:32

“I’m a customer, we’re all customers. We want to find the answers when we want to find them. Google has taught us to get to the answers pretty quickly. If you’re not providing a really great customer service self-service channel, then you’re missing out on a lot there. So I was probably late to the game with that, but I’m all on board with self-service.” 10:59

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasakimike/

Joining Gabe today we have the Chief Revenue Officer at Blue Chip CRO, Ed Porter. We go over some steps that have helped him in his role to understand the customer better and find out what branches of your business to use in order to determine what the customer wants. Technology doesn’t solve the problem, but it’s there to enable the process of fixing the problem rather than used to find the problem.

Ed’s history 1:20
Deal makers that changed the way the company sees their customers 4:12
Customer service is no longer a one size fits all 8:38
Takeaway to be successful in these different times 17:15

“I’ll tell ya the ones that are really doing it right, you don’t have to be these big enterprises. You just have to look at a lot of these tools and processes that say, ‘Does marketing know what we’re doing on the support side? Are we sharing the same message? Is that message being delivered to that customer?’ And you drive consistency through those channels, that’s how you’re delivering a good customer experience.” 6:06

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edporter/

In this episode we speak with customer experience expert and Interim CFO at Macpherson’s, Michael O’Reilly. We go over various methods on how to improve your NPS, including how they use data to optimize their score. “Find the data that tells the truth, not the data that makes you feel good.” 7:22 We also go over technology and the benefits of using the right tools to increase your results and what Michael has experienced through tech.

Michael’s background 0:33
Understanding NPS 1:43
How they have used data to optimize their NPS score 7:18
How technology plays into the NPS score 9:03

“Don’t stop when you feel good about the data. Really dig into the data and understand what’s telling you the true story, and that’s how you then drive NPS in a sustainable way. It’s also how you get credibility in the organization.” 8:09

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-o-reilly-tu/

Today I am joined by Vice President of Customer Experience at Zones, LLC, Steven Maskell. He states you need to give the customer a reason to share their data with you and he gives questions you should ask yourself, such as what do you know about your customer? Are you able to see how they’re interacting with you? Or is it anonymized? Are they sharing with you information that’s important that you can use? “The two areas where I would say to best understand is to frame it around who are they and what are they doing, and then how are they influencing each other?” 6:52

Steven’s background 0:52
Basics and must haves to help build the personalized experience 5:20
Building an infrastructure to capture the data 7:47



“It took IBM a really long time to build Watson and Watson still screws up. What I would say is this: don’t expect that it’s going to solve everything. Really what it’s gonna do is it’s gonna help you understand a little bit better. A little bit better. That’s what you’re trying to do each and every time.” 11:05

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmaskell/

In this episode we will be talking about who actually owns the customer and to do that we have with us today the Global Director of Customer Experience at Hyland, Justin Chappell. He explains that depending on the company you work for, who owns the customer could be a couple of things. It could be the account management team, or it could be a hybrid approach that uses a little bit of that account executive and customer success manager, both having ownership of the customer, but different pieces of it. “I try to look at ownership as who really has the customer’s best interest in mind and who’s working with them to help them achieve their business objectives.” 2:25

Justin’s background 0:45
Who owns the customer? 1:38
Monitoring customer risk 8:52
ROI 12:22
Retaining 15:41

“So meeting with top companies within certain verticles to allow them to share ‘Here’s what we’re seeing as a business in the outside world. How are you gonna help us achieve that?’ That’s really where you see that investment come back in being a partner in our strategic alignment with their strategies that they’re trying to achieve.” 14:44

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justchappell/
justchappell@gmail.com

In today’s episode, we have customer experience expert, Annette Pedroza, who has been in the customer service vocation for 20 years now. She gives 3 tips on how to build a customer focused foundation. Tip 1) You need leadership involvement and it needs to come from the top. Tip 2) Assessing your specific environment. There isn’t one strategy that’s gonna work with everyone. Tip 3) Setting realistic goals to be able to execute on your plans. She talks about how they were able to help their team change their way of thinking and what they did to influence that through positive people and attitudes. She was able to influence the whole company and get every department involved in interacting with the customer.

About Annette 0:41
3 tips on how to build a customer focused foundation starting with #1 3:29
Tip #2 7:16
Tip #3 7:46
What got the employees around this new way of thinking 15:30

“Now you had employees who had no direct connection prior to that and now they had a chance to talk directly to the customer and really live that customer centricity value. I just did this one team at a time and before you know it, one VP is talking to another VP and then people are knocking at my door and saying ‘Hey we want to participate. How do we become part of this?’ So really starting small and just growing your sphere of influence and leveraging you that leadership to spread your message. Size doesn’t matter, you can influence a company of any size.” 18:32

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annette-pedroza-ccxp-8465b5/

The Global Director of Customer Experience at Taconic Biosciences, David Grissom, joins us in this episode to talk about customer experience. He has 14 years of experience in customer facing roles and has seen the importance of not just hiring leaders from a certain industry. He uses something he calls the three P’s, which are 1) People, 2) Products, and 3) Process. If your people understand these three concepts and the importance of them, you will succeed as an organization.

David’s story 1:04
The 3 P’s 5:06
Building people around this journey map 10:10

“Really my passion about this is letting leaders not get hung up on only hiring candidates from a certain industry because you’re really doing your company a disservice by not bringing in people with fresh ideas and fresh technology and thoughts to really help your organization move into a different level.” 4:16

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgrissom/