CX Network

Elan Frank from Slack joins us and shares that the tool began life as a side project of another initiative. It's grown to be a true alternative to email. Channel based messaging is built for the future of work and as we discuss, the future of work is here, now.

Karen Tilstra is the co-founder of the Florida Hospital Innovation Lab. In this conversation, Karen emphasizes the intent of the Innovation Lab, which, not surprisingly, is innovation. However, the process to innovation is often overlooked. Karen describes it as a “multifaceted journey of learning, of discovery, of openness.” In other words, innovation isn’t instantaneous, nor does it happen in a silo. When a brand thinks they know what’s best for their customers—instead of interacting with those customers—it’s often the beginning of the end. Karen details Sears’ downward spiral as an example. Next, Karen questions the value of the typical enterprise growth mentality. Is “grow or die” a myth or a reality? True, meaningful innovation involves the application of certain soft skills that aren’t immediately apparent. Karen drives their importance home in this insightful, outside-of-the-box conversation.

Fred Reichheld joins us again, this time to discuss employee engagement. The business benefit to ensuring a positive employee experience is because that translates to a positive customer experience. As Fred discussed last time, a good customer experience means an increase in profit. However, Fred is careful to clearly define what make a good employee experience. Is it lots of vacation time, the ability to shirk difficult customers, and taking on only the best shifts? Of course not, as this would lead to a bad customer experience. Fred instead focuses on “helping your employees lead great lives of meaningful service.” Technology is used as a tool to automate unfulfilling tasks that humans used to be responsible for. In turn, human talent is freed up to inform, innovate, and provide meaningful change to the customer experience. Finally, Fred makes suggestions on to achieve such a lofty goal. Ultimately, Fred says, “I think what inspires people to do their best is when they feel like they are being listened to, they have a voice, and that the team is consistently being put in a position where they can enrich the lives of customers and see that as the core purpose in their work.”

Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter System (NPS), joins us to discuss the task of building a customer-centric culture. Companies that do the best at enriching the lives of their customers are growing two-and-a-half times faster than their competition. Today, word of mouth and truth spreads like wildfire. The modern enterprise can no longer depend on clever advertising campaigns to mask their shortcomings. Building a customer-first culture isn’t always easy, though. Legacy companies have to fight through their capitalistic pasts. Metrics need to change. Shareholders must get on board with the new nature of business. The Net Promoter Score is successful because it provides data that proves the effectiveness of customer-centricity to the bottom line. It is a modern-day metric that replaces the ones that no longer serve today’s landscape. Fred offers both suggestions and examples on how to successfully pivot to a customer-centric business model during this insightful conversation.

McDonald’s senior director of innovation, Deena John, joins us to talk about digital transformation. While definitions vary, Deena describes digital transformation as “transforming through integration of technology” with the goal of generating maximum value for the customer. End-to-end disruption means looking into the future and creating a transformation road map that leads to a new operating model. Deena discusses the differences and similarities between agile and lean, and the iterative process that makes scaling sustainable. Deena frames her key points with specific examples. Next, she asks and answers the question, “In an innovation culture what’s the importance of failing fast?” Ultimately, this insightful conversation with Deena focuses on the future of the enterprise and what needs to happen now to ensure corporations can keep up with the ever-changing landscape that technology brings to business.

Todd Gillam joined Comcast a decade ago—when the word “Comcast” was met with severe negativity. During the first part of our conversation with Todd, he laments over those dark days and discusses the progress they made the first five years after he was hired. They cleaned up their image by addressing common complaints such as hold times and technician effectiveness. Stage two involved systematically identifying and fixing a broader range of customer pain points by utilizing NPS surveys. By combining the operation end of things with the product, Comcast is offering a single digital interface solution across its offerings. Todd gives a few clever examples of what this entails. Finally, Todd asks and answers three important questions: How does Comcast build something and make it useful to the customer? How do you make that work with the rest of the company? And finally, how does Comcast achieve a higher state of existence with respect to customer experiences that feel like a seamless part of the product?

Uzair Rashid, with CVS Healthcare, explains the importance of structuring innovation. Uzair brings a unique perspective to CVS, a Fortune 10 healthcare innovations company, because prior to CVS, he spent many years as a consultant. He understands how to level set and create meaningful change in legacy companies. When it comes to healthcare disruption, Uzair puts it this way: “Innovation at the speed of regulation.” Uzair’s goal is to seek out key technology enablers that create new patient experiences, drive down cost, and take the challenge of resource contention out of the game. By leveraging technology in conjunction with traditional medical resources, the healthcare system can clean up the funnel of patients who are better served with these new innovations. First, as the patient must take priority, it is imperative we understand the narrative of what they want. Then, we can power that with data and connected devices. The more proactive and preventative healthcare becomes, the healthier people become, the better healthcare becomes. Uzair summarizes the process beautifully with this simple phrase. “[With technology], you think about routing people appropriately to care.”

The entertaining Genworth Financial team joins us from OPEX Week 2020 to tell us their enterprise’s transformation story—or journey, more accurately. Kathleen starts off by explaining her view of the company 15 years ago: “It was a very siloed organization. It was very much command and control; very hierarchical. We were focused very much on our processes, like manufacturing, because we came from GE.” Sometimes, as Martijn is quick to interject, they were focusing on the wrong processes. Their new goal was to focus on the customer and increase associate empathy. The leadership team achieved this with some creative physical props that mimic certain hardships their clients experience. However, leading by fear negatively impacts the service a customer receives as well, so Genworth devised a new workforce strategy. “If you really truly believe that the customer is the most important person--because he or she pays your salary--then the front line employees are the most important people, and therefore, your team leaders are the most important leaders. Most people leave their leader. They don't leave the organization.” The team details how they achieved this monumental task.

James Dodkins, Customer Experience Expert and heavy metal enthusiast, discusses the parallels between the two. First, he touches on the cyclical nature of refining a product to please its audience. Whether it’s music or tech, improving upon the output based on feedback about the original product moves the needle forward. At the same time, innovation flourishes in a space void of customer input. The secret to balancing these two conflicting strategies is interpreting feedback to anticipate an unarticulated need. James then weighs the pros and cons of niching down and gaining a hardcore audience or going broad and creating a product that is widely accepted but lackluster, somehow tying in a relevant Nickleback reference. Ultimately, James boils it down to this: “We need to move away from this Industrial Age process standardization mindset and towards a 21st Century customer experience, personalization mindset. Embrace that variation. Understand that people are all different. They have different outcomes, different needs. Make sure that our companies are aligned towards the delivery of those things. Boom.”

Roland Haefs, with Henkel, discusses enterprise evolution and the shift from having purely transactional relationships to becoming a true business solutions provider. It takes strong leadership and an entrepreneurial spirit to pull off such a transformation, which Roland details. In order to demonstrate his point, Roland lays out Henkel’s approach to the shared services process of master data management. Next, the conversation turns to RPA and AI more specifically, including its role in shared services and how to make sure it is being deployed effectively. Further, Roland discusses Henkel’s four business priorities: fund growth, drive growth, excel at digitalization, and increase agility.

Rida Moustafa is an experienced data scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the retail industry. Rida covers a lot of ground in this concise, informative conversation. He shares his story with us, beginning in 1995 with the big data mining movement. Walking us through the way data mining has evolved, Rida hits on neural networks, deep learning, and expert systems. Today, however, AI technology has evolved enough to render some of these old processes moot. Of course, new obstacles present themselves, such as AI’s black box and its influence over regulatory decisions and prediction models. The last half of the conversation is reserved for Rida’s involvement with Walmart and the work he is doing with AI to automate processes and generally improve Walmart’s workflow and profits.

Dr. Timothy Renick with Georgia State joins us to talk about his implementation of predictive analytics within the university, including an AI enhanced chatbot. Since the deployment of these technologies, Georgia State is graduating 3,000 more students a year than it did seven years ago. Dr. Renick explains the university’s approach to finding solutions for problems over innovation for innovation’s sake. With a change in demographics, including a larger low-income population, the university felt it necessary to increase access to support and identify issues before students found themselves in dire straits. Dr. Renick discusses the process of finding a vendor to help them identify and build the perfect solution. It’s working, as shown by the examples he discusses during the rest of the conversation.

Max Just is accompanied by a special guest on this episode of Future of Work. Julie Seitz is an expert on all things workspace, which makes her the perfect partner for the topic of—you guessed it—the future of workspaces. While she notes that an enterprise can’t necessarily futureproof themselves in this regard, she encourages them to get out of their insular spaces for the sake of spotting trends in how people are working in universities, airports, etc. Flexibility and simplicity in a workspace make more practical investments than technological ones that will become outdated. Julie also reflects on the evolution of the public school classroom and how examining that process helps illustrate how different generations work differently. Max jumps in with the ah-hah moments he had while working with Julie, including the importance of providing collaborative workspaces for collaborative work. Ultimately, Max and Julie agree: workspaces matter.

Juan Araya discusses structuring for scale from the eyes of the disruptor and disruptee—both of which Juan knows well. Juan reminds us that before making any actionable change, an end goal must be set. Next, Juan discusses the role speed plays in structuring for scale. Some industries need to move faster than others, which affects their decision making. In the case of Uber, Juan understood that transformative technology supported the speed of change Uber strived for, even more than the other scaling components: people and process. On the flipside, scaling legacy organizations quickly and through technology-first means isn’t conducive to success. His new role with Stryker moves slower and with an enterprise-wide intention different than Uber’s, which he details well. Finally, Juan paints a metaphor between scaling and art.

Robert Welborn discusses five common myths surrounding autonomous vehicles in this discussion. He starts with three TV shows that have skewed perception around AVs. Next, he sets expectations around the maturity model of AVs by describing the stages as childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Today’s data presents itself in three-dimensional forms, and Robert gives time to the struggles and opportunities within this new model of data. It is the engineers behind AVs who are tasked with making things work, and Robert spends some time pulling back the curtain on their trials and tribulations. Finally, Robert recognizes that the elasticity and compatibility of all of the elements at play in autonomous vehicles have a tendency to be overestimated. 

Molecule is an open market based platform that incentivizes the development and co-creation of pharmaceutical IP. Molecule’s CEO, Devon Krantz, discusses the dire state of pharmacological R&D and its cost—literally and figuratively—to patients. Molecule, on the other hand, encourages a patient-centric approach to pharma. How? Devon puts it this way: “We are focusing more on bio-techs, on smaller research labs, on academia. [What we] want to incentivize is for researchers, scientists, and academics to take their IP, and maybe it's in an underfunded area, and put it onto the Blockchain, into an open market, which then enables other people to buy into the market and freely grow that market. We’re democratizing access to cures.” Devon elaborates on the innovative and complex ‘why & how’ during the rest of the conversation.

Sarah Aerni is a data scientist Salesforce. In this conversation, Sarah leads off by talking about what that even means. First, she gives a brief history of the expectation in customer experience and how it’s evolved with the introduction of AI. Then she describes her role in this way: “My role is to lead a team of really brilliant individuals that are focused on how to make it possible for Salesforce customers to build models, add predictions and intelligence without building out an entire data science team.” Sarah comes from a deep science background, having spent six years becoming the expert on automated labeling of C. elegans—a worm cell. How does that relate to forward-facing data science on modern platforms? Building a model is building a model, as Sarah explains. While she shirks the term “unicorn,” it is easy to understand why she’s been described that way listening to this episode.

Helenio Gilabert is the senior director for digital transformation with Schneider Electric. Right out of the gate, Helenio stresses that word “transformation” over “digital.” While technology is the enabler, meaningful implementation can’t happen without a process and cultural change. This process must include all enterprise verticals and every individual within an organization. As Helenio puts it, “You have to offer [employees] a clear view of the path that they can take as an individual to contribute to the organization. And that will require some investment from companies in training and professional development.” Lastly, Helenio defines edge solutions as a hybrid approach to cloud and AI. After all, data is only as good as what we do with it.

The key to a smooth transition into the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the ability to seamlessly upskill and reskill the workforce. Cindy Gallagher shares with us the who, what, when, where, why, and how to get it done. She specifically focuses on the why, such as delivering the right product or service to all of our consumers and stakeholders; and the how. Traditional methods of reskilling, such as training programs and schooling, aren’t enough. Engaging the workforce in ongoing training and opening up new opportunities that leverage that learning ensures companywide growth. The leadership team must facilitate this new mindset in order for it to be successful.  Gallagher closes with a soccer metaphor—she was once a goaltender—and offers additional tips on how to achieve that elusive “how.”

Deepak takes us through structured data: what it is, when we need it, and when we don’t. He talks about how to discover the history of structured data at your enterprise and what to do with it. Data comes flooding in in mass quantities and various forms. Is it worth structuring that data? Will it fit into our old ideas of “structure?” Next, Deepak talks about unpacking the value of structured data and how to get the most out of it. He suggests asking the right questions before preparing reports from structured data to eliminate time- and resource-waste. Finally, Deepak suggests identifying “master data” in order to streamline the data processing process.

Max Just talks us through digital environments in this installation of Future of Work. Max opens by discussing the importance of improving the employee experience with a focus on people “inside the tent.” HR and procurement services aren’t enough to satisfy today’s employee. Instead, employees expect a seamless digital experience more on par to the one they experience in their day-to-day dealings. If a company feels archaic to an employee, they are less likely to feel like they belong. Max offers tips on how to adapt to the future employee, such as investing in automation. Finally, Max discusses two future trends he is noticing: internal digital assistants and collaboration tools.

In this episode, Ty Grandison takes some time to step back from this flawed reality we live in and discusses some of the unintended consequences of tech in the past 30 years. First, Ty gets real about the power of AI—or lack thereof—and its tendency to be overhyped. He then lays out the three steps that need to take place before responsible change can happen. Ty speaks candidly about bias in AI, saying, “There are multiple different chasms that are actually being built in the AI machine learning spaces that we need to think really deeply about and try to address.” He then offers ethical solutions that will also appease shareholders.

Rohit Amberker opens this episode of Pace of Change with a clear disclaimer: he is no expert on this week’s topic. However, he does have some experience and insights on the Productivity Paradox. Rohit opens by outlining the definition and history of the Productivity Paradox. Then he moves on to the meat of the topic. Ultimately, the goal of technology is to create customer-centric value from something that doesn’t currently exist. As technology’s capabilities exponentially expand, the Productivity Paradox gap is shortening. Rohit looks to the past to shape the future by exemplifying Facebook and Amazon and examines the current “gap” in AI and blockchain.

The marketplace for third-party AI vendors is huge, but what is the right solution for your enterprise? Anshuman Das, the director of robotics and testing at Warner Bros., discusses the compay’s implementation of some of his favorite tools and the changes they’ve brought. From the OCR reader Textract to UiPath for RPA, Das lets us in on a little secret about intelligent automation. “RPA is the way to go, and the best part of RPA is it can very well go hand in hand with any digital transformation process. Whether you're going to cloud or you're going into IOT or you're going to any of the areas of digital transformation, it is that catalyst which can achieve your digital transformation journey much faster in a much better way.”

Brian Mikkelsen, the CEO of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, talks with us during the Intelligent Automation Nordics in Copenhagen. He discusses the launch of the Digital Growth Strategy for Denmark and how it has kept Denmark’s economy competitive. Training the workforce of tomorrow through a focus on STEM education affords Denmark the opportunity to grow its economy locally. Further, the government has established a digital hub, where small companies can have knowledge about AI, big data, and other new tech for free. Brian concludes the discussion with his thoughts on wealth disparity in Denmark—or lack thereof—and its high quality of living.

Alexander Hubel joins us again to discuss his RPA and automation journey with Ericsson. He fills us in the last two years and their evolution toward a center of excellence. Change management, communications, and automation communities are focusing their efforts on automation and business adoption. Alexander describes the difference between tribes and communities within the organization and what their roles entail. As far as machine learning is concerned, Alexander says, “I think from an Ericsson perspective, we’re quite far ahead, and I think that relates to us being a tech company.” This hasn’t come without its challenges, though, which Alexander also delves into.

Jack Cheng covered a lot of ground in this interview. He described NIO, the company he co-founded, as “an EV provider, a mobility company, but [ultimately a] user enterprise engaged with the use of directory.” From swappable batteries to vehicle “living rooms,” Cheng takes a visionary approach to everything he does. His views on globalism are just as unique. He discussed with us the dangers of indoctrination and group think. He gave us his optimistic insight on the tension between China and the U.S. He even shared some ideas on how we can bridge the generation gap at a fundamental level.

Pfizer’s Anil Bhavnani discusses the future benefits of digital transformation and intelligent automation. Within the medical and pharmaceutical industry, there are a lot of moving parts and little room for error. Technology and automation is saving lives through the accuracy and timesaving processes it deploys. Bhavnadi walks us through what has changed throughout his career, and what he believes the future holds. “At one point in time, we were just kind of doing a very rule-set based kind of process. And here we are changing the entire process. We are automating it. So obviously a lot of people get impacted. You have to work with multiple stakeholders to be able to manage that change. I think that's where the challenge is.”

Deepak Subarao joins us and shares the value of working smart and not hard: "If it doesn't add value to the business and if you don't get paid more, really there's no value by working more. So how can you get the same job done in eight hours, is it possible? Let's see now."

In this episode, Vartul Mittal discusses his RP agenda across industries and geographies. He also shares with us his favorite third-party software and other tips and tricks to convert big data into something usable. 

Charelle Wigley is the Global Head of Employee Health and Wellbeing at Bupa, a global healthcare company with 80,000 employees. Bupa’s stated purpose is to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives, starting with and including their own employees. This is inspiring to Charelle: she feels privileged to be able to make a meaningful and tangible difference in people’s experience at work. She chats with host Kevin Monroe about how wellbeing is linked with employee experience.

Steve Kato-Spyrou is the UX manager at John Lewis. He joins us at the Omnichannel Forum to discuss organizational change. Today’s consumer involves so many touchpoints it takes a corporation a collaborative way of thinking to reach them in an effective way. In order to get everyone on board from the top down, Steve creates workshops and provides us with some specific examples. “Now they've got to work together on these ideas that have come up. And that's going to be the next step: how we truly get away from the business functions, silos, buying, merchandising, trade, product, design, creative, slam them all together into a cross-functional team.”

Annie Forsmark is one of the presenters at the Employee Experience Forum in September. She started her career 20 years ago as a Health and Wellness Consultant, and now runs her own company in Sweden. She trains organizations, leaders, and employees to perform sustainably at work over time by making and acting on good decisions.  Her work is focused on training leaders to lead sustainably, to take care of themselves and their resilience, and on helping employees to find their own resilience in their work life.

Edda Blumenstein is a Ph.D. researcher at Leeds University. In this episode, she discusses her efforts to “…identify how honest retailers are supposed to survive in this dynamic environment that is constantly changing at a speed never seen before. I'm looking at how they can actually develop capabilities to do that.” Edda zeroes in on big data’s role in the transformational process. Today’s buyers expect an experience and a relationship from the brands they choose to do business with. Edda explains why businesses need to implement educated decision making in order to stay competitive prepare for an unpredictable future.

Kevin Monroe welcomes Jo Bartnicke, Global Change Manager at Unilever, to the Employee Experience Express conversations. Jo is from South Africa and spent much of her career at Unilever working across Africa. When it comes to employee experience, she is passionate about creating a simpler and better life for all Unilever employees: the woman picking tea on their plantations, the permanent workers in their offices around the globe, as well as their contractors and freelancers.

In this podcast special, Seth leads an Omnichannel Forum Panel discussion touching on topics such as CX, IoT, GDPR, subscription services, and the future of business. One thing the panelists agree on is the importance of building a customer-centric model even throughout the digitization process. Seth asks each panelist, “What do I do right now to transform into the future IoT organization that I need to be?” Each panelist answers with their own unique insight. Finally, the panelists take questions from the audience before wrapping up.

Claude Silver is the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, a global digital creative agency.  Her role, as she sees it, is to help employees thrive by spreading empathy, self-awareness, and EQ. She chats with host Kevin Monroe about common themes and challenges in employee experience around the world, and how to effect culture change in an organization. 

Chanice Henry has been in the B2B news world for over six years. Currently, she is the CX Network editor. We asked her what is keeping CX professionals up at night, and Henry touches on financial return, and building a customer-centric—not business-centric—corporate culture. Henry encourages the utilization of tools like NPS and other metrics to meet goals and gets granular with a specific case study. Her latest report is on the digital experience. In her words, “This report just kind of gives a bit of a benchmark for how CX practitioners are going about defining the digital experience of their customers, looking at it internally.”

Bruce Daisley is one of the presenters at this year’s Employee Experience forum. Bruce is VP for Twitter in Europe, Middle East and Asia, author of The Joy of Work, and host of the Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat Podcast. He chats with host Kevin Monroe about the reality of burnout at work, and how to work more sustainably.

Siemens’ Alexander Thielmann discusses the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its effect on the corporate landscape. The transformation Siemens has embarked on, aptly named Vision 2020 Plus, is a cultural one as much as it is a technology one. With a company as large as Siemens, Thielmann describes this sea change as navigating a fleet of ships. “...with this new change of these fleet of ships, the expectation of the board is also that the ships, or the companies, make more profit... Which also means now they are looking a bit more outside the box.”

Mr. Employee Experience Ben Whittier is our first guest on the Employee Experience Express Podcast. The Employee Experience Express Podcast is a mini-series provided by CX Network.

Ben is the chair for the upcoming Employee Experience forum. He and Kevin Monroe- a moderator at the event- and host of the Higher Purpose Podcast talk about the changes that have happened in the world of employee experience. 

Caroline Basyn joins us and discusses the difficulty of implementing big changes in a rapidly evolving technological world: “The request of the top management in the company is to bet on a couple of big hawks, we call them. So, what are going to be the big hawks that really will make a difference in the next few years for the company? We would like to look longer term, but the world is evolving so fast, that anything you do on the longer term, you will change five times before you get there. So, we'll stick to the next few years to start with.”

Fernando Nunes, senior process automation architect at Man Energy solutions, discusses his unique approach to IT and business. By leveraging RPA, AI, and BPA tools, Nunes works to empower the business line and decrease IT bottlenecks through process automation. He further explains the Center of Excellence concept using an apt airport metaphor. “Our philosophy was always about enabling our line of business to do large things themselves, and we of course, would have to provide an architecture, a governance, an infrastructure, and we see it more like we provide the airport. Then the line of business will make the flights; the planes to fly.”

Andrew Parris,Director Of Performance Improvement at CRH, focuses his efforts on improving corporate functions across the board, including finance, IT, procurement, and HR. How does he do it? Data-backed benchmarking, implementation planning, and change management. Additionally, intelligent automation is taking a front seat. “We're starting to bring some AI into play. Our approach has always been, it's not just about the bot, it's about the right solution for the right problem.”

Manish Jain joins us and shares information on RBCs new Silent Listener Chat Bot: "We are building a silent listener chat bot, which will listen to the conversation when an agent and a client are having those discussions. While those discussions are happening, the chat bot or the silent listener is going to understand the intent of the conversation, what the client is talking about, getting the client, IDs. In the meanwhile while the discussion is happening in goes in the background, brings in all policies and procedures, client, all information ready on the agent's screen. Agent without putting the client on hold is having a continuous discussion"

Manny Korakis joins us and shares the importance of potentially applying different strategies to different companies: "I've learned over the course of this journey that every company is in a different spot in their own journey, and I have to react to that. What's important in one organization at any given point in time, isn't necessarily a top priority in another company at their point in time."

Deborah kops joins us and shares her views on GBS: "It's a dynamic business model. It is not one rigid business model. To be very honest, to some extent we've promulgated that through the consultancy class in this industry, some of those guys are some of my best friends. But a business services platform is whatever you can do at any given time, given your leadership, given a range of external and internal factors. So GBS as a concept I don't buy."

Rob Phillips joins us and shares how venturing into the unknown is crucial to problem solving: "I think there's an overall bias that people have towards the unknown, right? They worry and they discount or they ... There's a risk factor of the unknown. So, the more that somebody can be involved in identifying what the problem is, they're coming to the table saying, "Hey, I know there's something here that needs to get fixed." Then we can work together with them to try, and propose solutions. "

Graham Russell joins us and shares the importance of understanding and implementing Data: "For those of us who have implemented ERPs for 20 years and more, data was usually the number one issue in doing that because as you move from one system to another, one of the first things you had to do was get the data clean, get the data reconciled, make sure there was integrity and so on. It's not new. I think people that don't anticipate it are perhaps not thinking of other projects."

Nadia de Villa joins us and shares how financial service providers like Manulife have to adapt in an ever changing environment: "The way customers interact with a company has changed, and therefore, we need to be there and think differently and think beyond our financial services walls. So in terms of digital transformation, what that means to us, it's truly how do we interact with our customers through any digital channel that they want to interact with us with."

Cindy Gallagher joins us and shares the importance of building personal time into your schedule: "I have surrounded myself with the right people who know how to handle situations. Not only that, but I set myself up properly as well before I went away, saying I was going to be gone, structuring the calendar appropriately, telling people when I was going to be on and off. As a CEO and as anyone who's excelled in their profession, you do have to be careful about where the line is, but you do have to draw that line for yourself."

Kamila Grembowicz joins us and shares her experience in implementing Global Business Strategy at Adidas: " I think every company has a different culture, a different structure, and then every GBS looks different. If you have a company where GBS concept is really not liked by the people, they didn't adapt to change, they maybe went too aggressive in the cuts straight away without the quality. You can have different reasons why you go back to functional model."

Mohamed Saleh joins us and shares Hartford Healthcare's values in leadership communication and change management: "We've recognized that to improve patient experience, it requires to improve employee experience as well. And that requires the organization to feel respected and trusted."

Ravi Rao joins us and shares how automation can not hurt, but help business processes as well as it's employees: "We're trying to figure out ways that the things that don't really require humans, things that are just repetitive data transfer tasks can be done by machines which are better at doing that, but the creative innovative service, interactive pieces, robots cannot do any of that. That's why humans still have a huge role to play in business and the more that they can recognize how to work with each other in exemplary ways, that's what will eventually lead the business. "

"Every big company on the planet nowadays has an imperative at the board level to really reinvent itself, partly because the market's shifting faster than it's ever done in the past. I think intellectually and philosophically, leadership teams around the world understand why they need to change because they don't want to end up like Kodak or Blockbuster or name your favorite example of a company that went under, but where you most get stuck is one what does that mean for them and how do you do it."

Mila, James, and Tula join and share their experience to help define beg data versus small data

Tula Heikenan joins us and shares how she and her team can implement data in her role at Telia: "We have a really important role in the customer interface to really help the rest of the company to understand how everything is affecting the customer. Creating those systematic ways of working, utilizing data to help, not only to help the customers but to help everybody in the company to act in the correct way. That's where we can use a lot of data but, again, it has to be a different approach to every function that we have in the company.

Maria Marino joins us and shared ideas of how private data access can be properly democratized: "A nonprofit to build a big public database of identity simply does not exist, other than the government perhaps. But, that's an equally fraught problem. So, what blockchain does is effectively create an incentive system to do exactly that with people who don't so much have a stake in manipulating your identity. "

Beju Shah joins us and highlights the importance of managing and understanding data: "Data isn't strategic, it's important and because you need it to give you importance over time. If there are executives that are not putting the emphasis on the data, they are accountable for that data and the decision making on it."

Bob Kupershoek joins us and shares how NBC Universal is always looking to the future: "Innovation is actually going to be very important for us in the future and I think that technology, finance, IT is growing closer and closer together in the end. We're expected to more with less amount of people, we gotta be more effective and to be able to achieve that, you probably need technology to help you out there. "

Sebastian Zeiss joins us and shares the optimization of process being made at Deutsche Telekom: "If one of the field service agents needs technical information of a phone line. They would call the hotline and be like, I am at customer whatever, and can you please give me the following values; and then he would start writing it down on a sheet of paper.And now, what we do is, he just enters the phone number of the customer into the smart phone, and the rest is done by the smart phone."

Deepak Subbarao joins us and shares the value of working smart and not hard: "If it doesn't add value to the business and if you don't get paid more, really there's no value by working more. So how can you get the same job done in eight hours, is it possible? Let's see now."

Anil Bhavnani joins us and shares key point on digital integration: "Digital is different in a way that you're focusing more on how you can leverage technology. And it is the same in a way that ultimately you have to focus on the process. So even when you are doing integrations, typically you are focusing on the process because you're kind of integrating onto one ERP."

The Mayor of Vilnius Lithuania joins us and shares what makes a city attractive to prospective citizens: "Speaking about again the recipe of the successful cities, especially for young talents, again just to repeat, I think it has to be historic because we have to feel the roots because new place is somehow lacking something. It has to be green because people want to be healthy. They want to go to nature and so on, and it has to be modern. It has to be forward-looking. "

Einar Michaelson joins us and shares Santander's reasoning behind implementing RPA: "I think if we had all the time in the world, we would do full integrations, classical IT. And I think that's the kind of fantastic thing about RPA is that you can actually deliver something in a very short amount of time. Doesn't have to be perfect. You can handle 70% of what you want to do and it still gives you a lot of value."

Chris Gilmore joins us and shares Infosys' approach to implementing new processes: "The movement from talk to actual implementation, there's a big, big gap. The gap exists because of some inherent challenges in the way AI is shaping up as of today. The most critical aspect comes to, as to, which is the right use case which will show them the quick win, but also be able to determine and demonstrate that AI is really something which is going to help them in the future."

Sai Ramasamy joins us and shares how implementing RPA has introduced improvements in other sectors of banking: "We share knowledge across multiple areas. So we've divided our center of excellence team into development bit, into the technology bit that we do, and various other bits, so we kind of collaborate on each of these, with the other banks that we have the collaboration with. We started it off as purely specifically for RPA, but now we have grown out of it, and we want to collaborate on various technologies that are available within the banks and build the capabilities."

Kate Levchuk joins us and elaborates on trans-humanism and its implications in business: "Trans-humanism is the ideology that says that we as human beings, as human species, have the right and even the obligation to improve ourselves. With the help of this technology while at the same time taking care of the environment and other living creatures."

James Potter joins us and shares how implementing robotics influences the customer experience: "We wanted to do something which got those first few robots built in each department. Fund some ideas on the ground across the 29 Ministry of Departments that could lead to automations. They might not and they might not be RPA specific. They might be other tools that are better suited, but just trying to engage that conversation at a practical business level."

Anders Emil Balk joins us and shares the integral relationship with IT when implementing robotics: "I can pursue that really long tail of very simple processes or tasks, because it's not processes really that we are automating. It's simple tasks. We can actually find smaller vendors that have that most simple technology, that makes it cheaper, so we can pursue smaller business cases."

Jamie campbell joins us and shares Bud's approach to communicating with the customer: "How do we kind of shorten the distance between you knowing that you wanted, to do something with your money and providing the financial product to get it done? Not based on the bank or anything but just the right product at the right time to serve that journey that you're on."

Beju Shah joins us and highlights the importance of managing and understanding data: "Data isn't strategic, it's important and because it's important you need toit to give you importance over time. If there are executives that are not putting the emphasis on the data, they are accountable for that data and the decision making on it."

Our CX London Panel discusses CX improvements: "What we were seeing is we were so transaction based. Five years ago if you tried to pay your bill, you could either pay online today the amount you owed, or you could call an agent and do the same thing. If you wanted to pay something different you'd have to call back tomorrow and try it again. Happily, that's not where we sit today."

Ali Bouhouch joins us and shares the importance of colleagues understanding how to properly implement RPA: "They understand that technology is a key component of that equation and they understand that the end of the day that we can only succeed when we keep the customer at the center of all the things we do, everything from the technologies we select to how we design and how we deliver those solutions.

Mia Jalava joins us and shares her reasoning for running a proof of concept for integrating AI systems: "There is lots of influence on the customer experience when you are selling things, when you're delivering things, and on the other hand you are uniting our own organization. Because you can't get the information from the one place. You have to be contacting in several places."

Justin Reilly joins us and shares insight some on overcoming challenges in starting a company: "When you're starting companies you have the problem of, 'I don't have enough money to do this, so I need to focus on the most valuable, most tangible problem that I can solve with the talent that I can get'. When you're at a big company you have the opposite problem, which is 'I have all the money and people in the world.' Even when people feel like they're on budgets, they still have more budget than the guy that's trying to start the company to solve the same problem. "

Pia Baker joins us and shares her approach to problem solving between the employee and the customer: "I find that a lot of times, people just need guidance. Just don't tell them that customers are unhappy. Tell them why and give them the bandwidth to try and fix it."

Niki Chambeau shares her approach to customer experience through predictive analysis. "I don't want to nudge my customers anywhere. I don't want my customers to even have to get into touch because in my ideal world, everything will be proactive and nobody will have to get into touch with us."

Darya Williams shares TMobile's appraoch to encouraging frontline employees: "I would say what drives the people, what they're really hungry for, is they feel like it's the pay, they feel like it's the benefits, but that's not always true on the front lines. There are so many reasons why those people come into work and do the jobs that they do every single day, and a lot of times the C-level executives just do not have the visibility to that. So, what drives their people to come in every day."

Chitra Unnikrishna shows us Koodo's approach to customer satisfaction: "Reducing effort is the best indicator of loyalty. There are companies that think that they have to add in products and services and other things to drive loyalty or reduce prices; but take away effort for the customer and that's the best indicator of loyalty."

Greg Marion shares his approach to adding value to customer experience: "We know what the interaction points are, but do we really fully understand how we're going to be different and when? Not through the the minimal viable product or prototyping. You can't do that until you have the strategies. So this is setting the vision and the future for the customer experience. Sometimes you have an experienced that you're incrementally making better. You realize you have to rejuvenate and restart. Sometimes it's a new experience that you're just starting."

Laura Evans shares her how her experience brought her to her current position: "We always sort of keep the customer right at the very front of mind. There was a lot of looking at data and I guess with the background and the experience that I've gotten my previous roles, that was, probably part of the reason why I was hired. I was able to bring that type of rigor and analysis to that kind of role."

"Without CX, our financial performance will never get to where we want it to be. We understand that customer needs change. If we don't keep up, we'll soon jeopardize our future success. We must understand how to make the customer experience the Bible to our business model." - Iassen Deenitchin, ING

Jason Liberman shares the importance of staying relevant and competent in the online payment space."I think it's encouraging that for companies to stay relevant right now, they need to be competitive, they need to be strategic, and they need to move quickly. For us, from a controls standpoint, it's exciting because we want to help. We want to jump in and say, "Hey, look, we want to also push out this great product. This seems awesome."

Alexis Smith on applying customer policy to the employee: "The reality is if you buy a beer and you hate it, not great, and I hope you don't buy one of our beers and hate it, but if you buy a beer and you hate it, you can return it, you can get your money back, you can exchange it for something else, but if you buy a career and you hate it, there's not really a receipt or a return policy for that. So we set out, and I challenged the team to say, "How do we go from beer sampling to career sampling?"

Circle K's Jorgen Lislerud joins us and shares: "All of us feel we are customer centric, but most of the people when I had the voting and people were submitting their question on the poll, I could see that everybody feels that majority of the people in the room felt that they are not spending enough resources, be it running people a time on customer centricity."

Peter Cszuczka joins us, giving insight on how to optimize productivity within: The talent we have, they are hungry for more and we can tackle that by having much more complex activities, automizing and outsourcing or offshoring, whatever can be done at the current level of knowledge there and focusing on more high value added activities to be done. That doesn't necessarily drive an increase in number of people working for us. It clearly drives an increase in the level of skill that is needed. That's what people want.

Uber's Martin Rowlson joins us and shares that the region comprises 20% of the volume for the organization but 70% of the complexity. Based on the pace of change within the industry and the rate of growth at his organization, Martin's goal is to identify best practice, align best practice and build on best practices. Defining processes can’t take two weeks because "that process may have gone…literally gone."

From Barclay's, Sebastian Antony joins us and shares his philosophy, "I mean we look at it from a customer lens to start with, the customers are at the heart of it, and we mean it. We mean it and we are the pioneers in bringing in innovative products."

The Director of Spark (lean transformation and Sustainability at BBC, Adrian Ruth joins us to share that four years on the organization’s transformation program called Spark program is going strong. His remit is to ensure that the “phenomenal” and “very, very successful” organization meets the challenges coming at them on every front- changing audience demands, exponentially multiplying competition, etc. Adrian notes that most folks at the BBC are like him- they joined the organization because they’re passionate about the organization and they really want to delivery the best possible output on every platform and every genre to the audience.

Suzy Nixon joins us and shares what her role is really all about, "the idea is really to help people realize that they bring a lot of their own experiences and assumptions and bias to any customer experience and their understanding of that. The idea is to help people realize that by utilizing things like human-centered design and getting new research and new insights, to think differently about how they can solve the problems, they will come up with some new ideas that are better for the customers."

On better customer experience through refining process and removing waste, David Gruber, "there's a tremendous focus on how to get cost out of the system. One of those costs are these negative processing, or the irritants that members are actually experiencing- if you have to call customer care six times to get some issue resolved- that is actually waste within the system. That waste is actually translating into higher costs for members. How do you now actually get that cost out of the system? That's through better customer experience and understanding what members are wanting."

On how CX works at John Lewis, @CatDunkley explains she's on "a very small team within John Lewis called Customer Experience and Insight. Specifically in the design side of that. As a whole team, we are the guardians of the customer experience for the whole of John Lewis. John Lewis in shops, online, over the phone, however you interact with us. In the design function we're there specifically to set the overarching ambition for what we want the customer experience to be and to help translate that for all of our individual business units. And critically to make sure it joins up across all of those individual units."

The only woman to summit Mount Everest from both sides, Cathy O'Dowd joins us with her history and some life lessons for us. She was a "stubborn and adventurous kid" who stumbled into mountaineering through a content. In retrospect, everything about that first effort was wrong from the make-up of the team to the raison d'etre. Cathy speaks of setting a rule set at the formation of every team. She discusses failures as successes- not just points for learning. And that  when you're climbing a mountain, summiting a mountain is just one of the goals.

An interactive discussion of hospitality executives includes myriad pieces of advice: "One easy thing to do is stop calling it omnichannel, because that is from your perspective as opposed to the customer's perspective." "My main tip would be, be very creative in looking within your own organization, what type of resources you can use as part of your customer services organization." "Flexibility, and agility is key. We have to look at proactivity and a little bit more pragmatism on that front in terms of solving the issue that we currently have." "Be very creative in looking within your own organization, what type of resources you can use as part of your customer services organization. So in our case, we use employees in our travel shops, in our retail shops. When it's quiet in the shop, they log in as customer service agents for the contact center." "Expect the unexpected and make sure you've got robust disruption plans."

Ken Goldman joins us a puts on a clinic for business, life, geopolitics and more. He discusses his time as CFO for Yahoo during the Marissa Mayer years. He shares his thoughts on why things were they way the were and turned out the way they did. When the team had to fix everything from product to Board composition- the first thing they looked at was culture. In the grand scheme of things, he discusses AI and the evolution of technology and it's affect on the future of work. He discusses a pillar of each enterprise being good citizenship to a community. He discusses the evolution of balance sheets for global corporations over the past 40 years. And Ken shares his evolution perception of economics- "unfortunately economics is not perfect." 

The Director of Contact Center for Global Services for Johnson & Johnson Katerina Vranovska joins us from Shared Services Eastern Europe in Budapest where she shares that her function was once internally facing and now she services external clients. Based in Prague, the organization is in the process of building a customer service shared service business right there in the Czech Republic. The global services center in Prague is already successful so the business is ready to be built there and Katerina suggests that the city and country itself is a calling card for the business as nearly 50% of J&J employees are foreign workers.

Turk Telecom’s Ahmed Gul joins us and shares his experience with the 200 year old company. Ahmed and the team are trying to expand into other markets. To do so, they’re developing products and services that they’re using at first- internally. Initial returns show 40% savings. That’s Visual IVR- the team also looking into big data, digital content and myriad other applications. He and is team work as entrepreneurs within the company- and as Ahmed sees it, his job is to convince and persuade digital initiatives into existence.