Punk CX with Adrian Swinscoe: Recent Episodes
Adrian Swinscoe
An ongoing series of interviews where I, Adrian Swinscoe, interview leading entrepreneurs, leaders and thought leaders about how to deliver stand out customer experience and service.
Essentially, I'm looking for practical clues that will help you build a business that both customers and employees love.
Topics covered in the interviews include customer service, experience and engagement, employee experience and engagement, technology, adaptable and responsive organizations, high-performing teams and all such related issues.
Note: This podcast series was originally known as the RARE Business podcast but rebranded in late 2019 on the back of the publication of my latest book: Punk CX.
Today’s interview is like an interview I released a couple of weeks ago and features two, separate interviews that I conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas.
The first interview is with Kerim Akgonul, the Chief Product Officer at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Dr Peter Van Der Putten, who is assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in The Netherlands and Director of the AI Lab at Pega.
I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the automated enterprise, demos featuring western omelettes, process mining, how to get the most value out of AI and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Revisiting the Big Ass Fans story and what happened next – Interview with Carey Smith of Unorthodox Ventures – and is number 477 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Carey Smith, who is Founding Contrarian at Unorthodox Ventures. Carey is a returning guest and was first on the podcast back in October 2014, where along with his colleague Dave Waltz, they shared with me the story of how their customer service strategy was central to growing the Big Ass Fans business five-fold over a five year period. That was nine years ago! Nine years! So, I thought it would be great to invite Carey back onto the podcast to find out what happened next.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – New shoes, a surprising but delightful musical collaboration, the autonomous enterprise, gen AI and getting personalisation right – Interview with James Dodkins and Tara DeZao of Pega – and is number 476 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is a bit different as it features two, separate interviews in one episode. It's a two-fer!
These interviews were conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas.
The first interview is with James Dodkins, who is the CX Evangelist at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech at Pega.
I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the autonomous enterprise, generative AI, new shoes, bad rock tracks, a surprise but great musical collaboration, first-party data, getting your ‘data’ house in order, getting personalisation right and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Taking an employee-centric approach has allowed us to achieve an attrition rate of 5% – Interview with Jose Herrera of Horatio CX – and is number 475 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jose Herrera, CEO and Co-Founder of Horatio CX, a next generation CX outsourcing firm and the trusted partner of some of the leading and fastest growing ecommerce companies. Jose joins me today to talk about maintaining a human connection when everyone else seems to be talking about how customer service needs to be led by robots, taking an employee-centric approach, achieving an industry-leading attrition rate of only 5% and building a truly inclusive culture.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Our transformation journey and unleashing the power of AI and automation – Interview with Shelia Anderson of Aflac – and is number 474 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Sheila Anderson, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Aflac, a Fortune 500 company that provides insurance and financial protection to millions of policyholders and customers through its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Japan.
I met Sheila as part of a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. Sheila delivered one of the keynotes on the main stage and was talking about Aflac's journey and how they have unleashed the power of Pega AI and automation.
After her keynote, I sat down with Sheila for a quick chat for the podcast.
By the way, you can watch Sheila’s keynote and all of the talks from Pegaworld on-demand here.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The messy middle of customer service revisited – Interview with Michael Ramsey of ServiceNow – and is number 473 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Michael Ramsey, VP of Customer Workflow Products at ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform that help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Michael joins me today to revisit the idea of the messy middle of customer experience, what's happened since we last spoke about this around 2 1/2 years ago, what companies are doing to clean up their messy middles, the role AI and process mining plays in that, how generative AI is helping with this sort of endeavour and who’s doing it well.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The pragmatic approach to transforming customer service – Interview with Mike Upton of First Tech Credit Union – and is number 472 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at TextExpander for sponsoring this episode of my podcast.
TextExpander is an auto-complete tool that allows your team to eliminate repetitive typing and stay on the same page with just a few keystrokes allowing you to delight more customers in less time.
Click here to find out more and to get a 20% discount for the first 12 months of TextExpander if you use the code: SWINSCOE
Today’s interview is with Michael Upton, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at First Tech Credit Union (or First Tech), which is the US’s premier credit union serving the world’s leading technology-oriented companies and their employees.
I met Mike as part of a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. Mike was talking at one of the break-out sessions, and his topic was The Pragmatic Approach to Transforming Customer Service.
I couldn’t resist that title and thought Mike’s insights would appeal to you too so I nabbed Mike for a quick chat for the podcast.
By the way, you can view the replays of the talks on-demand here.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Purposefully designed experiences don’t happen by accident – Interview with Deborah Battaglia of Assurant – and is number 471 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Deborah (Deb) Battaglia, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience at Assurant, Inc, a global B2B2C Fortune 300 company that provides risk management and insurance products to leading automotive, housing, and mobile technology companies. Deb joins me today to talk about the ‘why’ & vision for their transformation, how long the programme has been running, what they have achieved in terms of outcomes, how the pandemic impacted things, the outlook for the future and how they aim to leverage new technologies as well as some key learnings & top tips for others on their own journey.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Developing empathy within ourselves and the machines that we build – Interview with Minter Dial – and is number 470 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Minter Dial, an international speaker and a multiple award-winning author, specialized in leadership, branding and transformation. Back in February 2019, Minter joined me on the podcast to talk about his book: Heartificial Empathy. Now, so much has happened since then that he felt compelled to update the book and is back to talk to me about why he felt the need to update the book, what’s changed, why the development of empathy is still important, how we can develop it not only within ourselves but also the machines that we develop, what to watch out for when we do so and how the emergence of ChatGPT and the whole generative AI wave affects all of this.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why you should be adopting an Experience Mindset – Interview with Tiffani Bova of Salesforce – and is number 469 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at TextExpander for sponsoring this episode of my podcast.
TextExpander is an auto-complete tool that allows your team to eliminate repetitive typing and stay on the same page with just a few keystrokes allowing you to delight more customers in less time.
Click here to find out more and to get a 20% discount for the first 12 months of TextExpander if you use the code: SWINSCOE
Today’s interview is with Josh Feast, the CEO and Co-Founder of Cogito, who provide real-time AI coaching & guidance for contact centers. Josh joins me five years on from our initial conversation back in 2017, talks me through their journey since then, the emergence of the real-time guidance space and what service and experience leaders should be thinking about right now.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX professionals should be taking their favourite finance person out to lunch – Interview with Jim Tincher – and is number 447 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Zoho for sponsoring my podcast this month and particularly the team at Zoho Desk.
Zoho Desk is trusted by over 50,000 businesses around the world to elevate their customer service and the team over there recently asked me to write a whitepaper for them that explores How focusing on employee happiness and customer success can drive business results.
The whitepaper is called: The Killer Combination: Customer success, happiness and the right technology.
Do check it out by following this link.
Today’s interview is with Jim Tincher, Founder and Mapper in Chief of journey mapping and customer experience consulting firm, Heart of the Customer (HoC) as well as an author. Jim joins me today to talk about his new book, Do B2B Better: Drive Growth Through Game-Changing Customer Experience, what gets in the way of organisations building a differentiated customer experience and what it takes to be a B2B change maker.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Treat your customers well and your employees better – Interview with Liza Smyth of Formstack – and is number 446 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Zoho for sponsoring my podcast this month and particularly the team at Zoho Desk.
Zoho Desk is trusted by over 50,000 businesses around the world to elevate their customer service and the team over there recently asked me to write a whitepaper for them that explores How focusing on employee happiness and customer success can drive business results.
The whitepaper is called: The Killer Combination: Customer success, happiness and the right technology.
Do check it out by following this link.
Today’s interview is with Liza Smyth, who is the SVP of Customer Experience at Formstack. Liza joins me today to talk about how EX and CX efforts in organizations are often handled separately, why you need to prioritize and foster a positive employee experience, the important role that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging plays in this and what leaders should be thinking about and doing so they can merge their CX and EX efforts.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The killer combination: Customer success, happiness and the right technology – Interview with Prashanth Krishnaswami of Zoho – and is number 445 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Zoho for sponsoring my podcast this month and particularly the team at Zoho Desk.
Zoho Desk is trusted by over 50,000 businesses around the world to elevate their customer service and the team over there recently asked me to write a whitepaper for them that explores How focusing on employee happiness and customer success can drive business results.
The whitepaper is called: The Killer Combination: Customer success, happiness and the right technology.
Do check it out by following this link.
Today’s interview is with Prashanth “PVK” Krishnaswami is the head of market strategy and thought leadership for the CX product group at Zoho. Prashanth joins me today to talk about Zoho’s vision for CX, transnational localism, the link between customer success, employee happiness and business results, a new whitepaper and what service and experience leaders should be thinking about and doing.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Product Led Growth (PLG) is missing a pillar – Interview with Joe Andrews and Martin Schneider of SupportLogic – and is number 444 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Zoho for sponsoring my podcast this month and particularly the team at Zoho Desk.
Zoho Desk is trusted by over 50,000 businesses around the world to elevate their customer service and the team over there recently asked me to write a whitepaper for them that explores How focusing on employee happiness and customer success can drive business results.
The whitepaper is called: The Killer Combination: Customer success, happiness and the right technology.
Do check it out by following this link.
Today’s interview is with Joe Andrews and Martin Schneider. Joe is the Chief Marketing Officer and Martin is the Chief Evangelist and Head of Solutions Marketing at SupportLogic, whose technology helps unlock insight from unstructured data in every customer interaction and shares actionable real-time recommendations to help improve the customer's experience. Joe and Martin join me today to talk about product-led growth (PLG), what it is, the pillars that it sits on, why Joe and Martin think it is missing a pillar and what that means for customer service, support and experience leaders.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The problem of customer indecision and how to get over it – Interview with Matt Dixon – and is number 443 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Matt Dixon, the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three of the most important business books of the past decade: The Challenger Sale, The Effortless Experience and The Challenger Customer. Matt joins me today to talk about his new book (The Jolt Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision - co-authored with Ted McKenna), how they conducted their research, what they found out, how indecision is the biggest barrier to sales and decision-making in general and how a JOLT playbook could help.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience isn’t about experience at all. It is about relationships – Interview with James Dodkins of Pega – and is number 442 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with James Dodkins, CX Evangelist at Pegasystems. James joins me today to talk about some new research that Pega has just conducted, some of the results, the big trends and shifts that are driving the future of customer service and a webinar (registration link) that they are holding next week (Oct 4th) as part of Customer Service Week.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX professionals extol the importance of empathy towards external customers but often overlook its importance with internal ones – Interview with Jack Springman – and is number 441 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jack Springman, a former Associate Director of Optima Partners, customer experience provocateur and new author.
After a year-long battle with cancer, Jack Springman passed away on Sept 8th 2022.
This podcast was recorded in the early part of August 2022 and in it Jack and I talk about his new book: Customer Experience & Marketing - The Final Rant (free to download).
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer success professionals should focus on net revenue retention (NRR) to prove ROI – Interview with You Mon Tsang of ChurnZero – and is number 440 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with You Mon Tsang, the founder and CEO of ChurnZero, which helps subscription businesses fight churn with a real-time customer success platform. You Mon joins me today to talk about customer success, why it’s more important now than ever, what firms should be doing to successfully navigate a downturn and why a customer success mindset would benefit almost every organisation.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Not enough companies realize that customer support is your primary gateway to understanding your entire business – Interview with Nooshin Alibhai and Eric Klimuk of Supportbench – and is number 439 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Nooshin Alibhai and Eric Klimuk, co-founders and CEO and COO respectively at Supportbench, a full-stack customer support software provider that is made specifically to serve the B2B space. Nooshin and Eric join me today to talk about the 4 types of customer support solutions that are out there and what’s missing, what’s so different about the B2B support model, why B2B is so much harder to build for and what Supportbench are doing to address these challenges.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Delivering personalised search experiences in an ethical way – Interview with Angel Maldonado of Empathy.co – and is number 438 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Angel Maldonado, CEO & Founder of Empathy, who create human-centred, commerce search & discovery platforms that combine innovative technology, behaviour-based algorithms and data intelligence with understanding and empathy to enrich customer interactions. Angel joins me today to talk about ethical commerce, the Ethical Commerce Alliance, the changing data and privacy landscape and how we can deliver personalised search experiences in an ethical way.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lack of a clear vision leads to higgledy-piggledy services and experiences – Interview with Ari Weinzweig of Zingermans – and is number 437 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Ari Weinzweig, the CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Ari was previously on the podcast back in 2020 and is also one of the contributors to Punk XL. Ari joins me today to talk about business visions, visioning, his new pamphlet on visioning (The Story of Visioning at Zingerman’s: Four Visions, Forty Years, and a Positive Look Towards the Future), how many service and experience initiatives lack a clear vision of what it is they are trying to create and why and how this can leads to the higgledy-piggledy services and experiences that we often encounter.
Note: This podcast is the first in a series of contributions (podcast chats, blogs and mixtapes etc) from the contributors to Punk XL that will appear here over the coming months.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The digitization of the supply chain and it’s impact on customer experience and sustainability – Interview with Sanjay Brahmawar of Software AG – and is number 436 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Sanjay Brahmawar, the CEO of Software AG, a software pioneer that is helping over 10,000 organisations worldwide connect people, departments, systems and devices through integration & APIs, IoT & analytics as well as business & IT transformation. Sanjay joins me today to talk about the supply chain problems that have been affecting many businesses in recent months, unstable consumer demand patterns, Internet of Things (IoT) and streaming analytics, sustainability, innovation and how brands should be responding.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Creating a metaverse experience that helps veterans suffering from PTSD – Interview with Robert Bell of 2B3D – and is number 435 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Robert Bell, Founder and CEO of 2B3D, who with their partners are developing a first-of-its-kind metaverse/NFT/gaming platform where military veterans can access live PTSD therapy. Now, I’ve been reading quite a bit about the metaverse lately and how it’s going to be the next big thing. But, on the back of some horror stories around lack of safeguards and controls and a bunch of other things, I’ve also been wondering about how it’s going to integrate with and impact our real and day to day lives in a meaningful way. So, I was excited to hear about what Robert and his team are doing. On the back of that, I invited Robert to join me today to tell me about both the technology and therapeutic sides of their mission, the size and nature of the problem they are addressing, the veteran experience and the other groups that may benefit from this sort of therapeutic resource.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – 42% of workers feel that digital transformation efforts have made their job more complex – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega - and is number 434 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pega. Don joins me today to talk about a new report they have just released called Workforce Trends Report 2022, the headline findings, complexity in the enterprise, how it affects us, the impact and what we should be doing about it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Unlocking the hidden value of language to drive personalisation – Interview with Assaf Baciu of Persado – and is number 433 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Assaf Baciu, the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Persado. Assaf joins me today to talk about Motivation AI, language, personalisation and unlocking the hidden value of language in our interactions with customers.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Design is not design without research – Interview with Alfonso de la Nuez of UserZoom – and is number 432 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Alfonso de la Nuez, the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of UserZoom, the pioneering UX Insights System. Alfonso joins me today to talk about UserZoom’s recently published research called The State of UX 2022, what they found out, the difference between CX and UX, the value of research and design and lots of other things.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The idea that scripts ruin customer experience is a dangerous one – Interview with Jimmy Hosang of TMAC – and is number 431 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jimmy Hosang, C-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Modular Analytics Company (TMAC), a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence and machine learning provider that helps people make better decisions faster. Jimmy joins me today to talk about how technology has made things worse, why vanity metrics like NPS don’t make sense, how speech analytics has been miss-sold and why we need to go back to creating the best experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leveraging branded virtual assistants to drive personalisation and innovation – Interview with Eric Turkington of RAIN – and is number 430 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Eric Turkington, Vice President of Growth at RAIN, a pioneer in voice & conversational AI, that is helping people, brands and businesses do amazing things with voice technology. Eric joins me today to talk about intelligent voice assistants, the state of demand, how both B2C and B2B brands are leveraging Branded Virtual Assistants (BVA’s) to drive personalisation and innovation and lots of other stuff.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Little personal touches can make all the difference – Interview with Jawad Malik of Idrese – and is number 429 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jawad Malik, the founder of Chicago-based Idrese, a direct to consumer (D2C) brand that provides affordable and luxury custom-made shoes made in Spain to customers worldwide. Jawad joins me today to talk about how the brand came about, the future of customer experience, the inspiration behind the brand name and what great service and experience means for an emerging and fast-growing small brand.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why you shouldn’t always build for the ‘happy path’ – Interview with Sam Richardson of Twilio – and is number 428 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Today’s interview is with Samantha (Sam) Richardson, a principal visioneering consultant for Twilio Foundry. Sam joins me today to talk about why many people don’t think very much about customer engagement, how many brands don’t take an inclusive approach to customer engagement, why you shouldn’t always build for the the ‘happy path’, what we can learn from not-for-profit organisations about understanding customers and delivering services as well as some great examples of Twilio clients that she is working with and the sort of results that they are delivering.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – To be good at customer experience has to begin with an experiential triage – Interview with Nick Webb – and is number 427 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Pega is a low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. It’s scalable architecture helps the world’s leading organizations work smarter, unify experiences, and adapt instantly – so they’re always ready for what’s next.
Check out the latest from Pega at their annual conference, PegaWorld iNspire, which will focus on how to address constantly shifting perspectives in an ever-evolving world, including guidance, strategies, and powerful tools to achieve resiliency in the face of rapid change. Agenda and registration details can be found at pegaworld.com. The event will be held virtually on May 24 from 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT for the Americas and Europe and again on May 25 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. AEST for Asia Pacific.
Today’s interview is with Nick Webb, a world-renowned Strategist, Bestselling Author, and Futurist. Nick joins me today to talk about his new book, What Customers Hate, why he chose to focus on hate and not love, the TV show Undercover Boss, outdated customer experience best practice, the SOS Approach and why customer surveys may be your enemy amongst a bunch of other things.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Having gone through 10 years of transformation in the past two years, how do we maintain momentum – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 426 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Pega is a low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. It’s scalable architecture helps the world’s leading organizations work smarter, unify experiences, and adapt instantly – so they’re always ready for what’s next.
Check out the latest from Pega at their annual conference, PegaWorld iNspire, which will focus on how to address constantly shifting perspectives in an ever-evolving world, including guidance, strategies, and powerful tools to achieve resiliency in the face of rapid change. Agenda and registration details can be found at pegaworld.com. The event will be held virtually on May 24 from 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT for the Americas and Europe and again on May 25 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. AEST for Asia Pacific.
Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pega. Don joins me today to talk about resiliency, focus, reducing complexity, how tech can help, what lessons he has learned from the pandemic, the upcoming Pegaworld (www.pegaworld.com) and who he is most looking forward to hearing speak.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Busting some CCaaS and CX technology myths – Interview with Vasili Triant of UJET - and is number 425 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Pega is a low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. It’s scalable architecture helps the world’s leading organizations work smarter, unify experiences, and adapt instantly – so they’re always ready for what’s next.
Check out the latest from Pega at their annual conference, PegaWorld iNspire, which will focus on how to address constantly shifting perspectives in an ever-evolving world, including guidance, strategies, and powerful tools to achieve resiliency in the face of rapid change. Agenda and registration details can be found at pegaworld.com. The event will be held virtually on May 24 from 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT for the Americas and Europe and again on May 25 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. AEST for Asia Pacific.
Today’s interview is with Vasili Triant, Chief Operating Officer of UJET, the world's first and only cloud contact center platform for the smartphone era. Vasili joins me today to share his CCaaS Industry Hit List, what we should be thinking about when it comes to CX technology and what questions we should be asking.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Using customer experience as a tool to drive economic development – Interview with Mandisa Makubalo – and is number 424 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Mandisa Makubalo, the CEO of Unlimited Experiences SA, the 1st 100% black women owned CX Management Consultancy in South Africa, a global thought leader and book author. Mandisa joins me today to talk her journey and using CX as an economic development tool.”
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The impact hateful and toxic social media content has on your customers and people and what to do about it – Interview with Joel Bailey of Arwen – and is number 423 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Joel Bailey, the Product & Service Director at Arwen, a technology platform that uses AI to remove unwanted content from social media in less than a second. Joel joins me today to talk about hate and toxicity in social media, the scale and cost of the problem and the impact it has not only on customers but also your team.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The 3 pillars of agent happiness – Interview with Tue Søttrup of Dixa – and is number 422 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Tue Søttrup, Chief CX Evangelist & VP CX Excellence at Dixa, a customer service platform that generates value for brands and customers through better conversations. Tue joins me today to talk about some recent research that Dixa recently released, what we can learn from it, knowledge centred service and agent happiness.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – In three years gig experts will be able to do everything agents can do in the contact centre – Interview with Roger Beadle of Limitless – and is number 421 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Roger Beadle, the co-founder of Limitless, a gig-economy platform that addresses some of the biggest challenges faced by the contact centre industry: low pay, high attrition and access to new talent. Roger joins me today to talk about gig-based customer service, the gig economy, the GoodGig® Charter, Limitless and how brands are leveraging gig-based customer service.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We should talk about moments that shatter rather than the moments that matter – Interview with Michael G. Bartlett – and is number 420 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Michael G. Bartlett who is the Director of Experience Innovation at JMARK, an I.T. support and I.T. services company, Founder of the CCXP Exam Simulator and the author of a new book called: The Dark Side of CX: The costly patterns that turn loyal customers into brand haters. Michael joins me today to talk why we should talk about moments that shatter rather than the moments that matter, the dark patterns that reside in CX, priyomes and what CX practitioners and leaders should be doing to improve their service and experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The future of personalization and loyalty is dynamic – Interview with Christian Selchau-Hansen of Formation.ai – and is number 419 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today's interview is with Christian Selchau-Hansen, the CEO and co-founder of Formation.ai, a machine learning-powered offer optimization pioneer. Christian joins me to talk about loyalty, personalization, dynamic offer optimization and what eXperience Leaders should be doing to build better relationships with their customers and drive better business outcomes.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership and life lessons from the winner of the 2021 CX Leader of the Year – Interview with Sri Safitri of Telkom Indonesia – and is number 418 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with the winner of the MyCustomer 2021 CX Leader of the Year competition: Sri Safitri, Deputy Executive VP of Customer Experience and Digitisation at Telkom Indonesia. This interview is slightly different this week as I am conducting it with Clare Muscutt, Founder and CEO of Women in CX. The original interview can be found here but I thought it would be worth re-publishing here too. In the interview we discuss Fitri’s journey to where she is now, why she applied for the CX Leader of the Year competition, how she felt when she won and the biggest lessons that she has learned along the way.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership, employee experience and the Zoom ceiling – Interview with Dr Elora Voyles of TINYpulse – and is number 417 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Dr. Elora Voyles, an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist and People Scientist with TINYpulse, a provider of employee engagement and feedback software. Dr Elora joins me to talk about how the Zoom ceiling is the new glass ceiling, challenges with the move to a more hybrid way of working, the impact on the employee experience, who suffers the most and what leaders should be doing and paying attention to.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – An #IA40 recognized app that is focusing on making agents experts on day one – Interview with Brittany Bell of Cresta – and is number 416 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Brittany Bell, a Customer Success Manager at Cresta AI, which provides contact center agents real-time suggestions and coaching, whether in an individual call or chat session, to help them deliver the best outcomes. Brittany joined me to talk about why she made the switch from BPO to vendor side, the emerging landscape of the agent experience, the importance of live channels, ‘Experts on Day One’, contact centre churn and how Cresta’s technology works.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX, loyalty and retention – Lessons from diverse industries – Interview with Andrea Prazakova of Mastercard and David Boucher of Aster DM Healthcare – and is number 415 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Andrea Prazakova, who is Senior Vice President Customer Experience at Mastercard in the UAE and David Boucher, the Chief of Service Excellence at Aster DM Healthcare in Dubai, UAE. Andrea and David join me today as we revisit a panel discussion that we had at the CX NXT Martechvibe event in November 2021. We had a lot of fun talking about customer experience, loyalty, the connection between the two, cultural change and implications for CX leaders.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – CRM systems are not designed with users, and particularly sales users, in mind – Interview with Justin Vaillancourt of Dooly – and is number 414 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Justin Vaillancourt is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Dooly, a CRM automation software provider that is making the use of Salesforce fast and painless. Justin joins me today to talk about the findings from their recent research (Dooly Sales Happiness Index - Key Findings November 2021), what they mean, the problem with most CRM systems and why you should make sure your company culture is product driven.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Introducing Punk XL Part Two – Interview with Karen, Sandra De Z, Richard, Sandra T and Ari – and is number 413 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s podcast interview, like last week's, is different.
Last week I shared the first part of a two-part conversation about a new book project: Punk XL, that has just been released.
Again, it is available as both a podcast and a video [see below or follow this link].
A lot has happened since Punk CX was published in 2019, and Punk XL, where XL stands for eXperience Leadership, seeks to explore what it means and takes to deliver a great experience at different levels (individual, team, organisation, customer and beyond).
The book features contributions from experience "artists": Ari Weinzweig, Serena Riley, Lara Khouri, Richard Hammond, Amy Scott, Sandra Thompson, Paul Greenberg, Joyce Kim, Karen Jaw-Madson, Martin Lucas, Sandra De Zoysa, Clare Muscutt, Oisin Lunny, Tom Watts and Matt Wilson (more details about all of them are below).
However, today I want to share a recent conversation with some of the "artists" I worked with on this book, namely Sandra De Zoysa, Richard Hammond, Sandra Thompson, Ari Weinzweig and Karen Jaw-Madson. I talk to them about Punk XL, what XL means for them, why it's important, why they got involved with the project, what their favourite bits of the new book are and why all of the book's proceeds will be donated to charity.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Introducing Punk XL – Interview with Serena, Lara, Amy, Joyce, Oisin and Tom – and is number 412 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s podcast interview is different.
Here's how it is different:
It’s Part 1 of a two-part conversation about a new project. Part 2 will be released next week.
It's available as a podcast and also as a video [follow this link].
But, most excitingly, it's about Punk XL, a follow up book to Punk CX, which I am delighted to say is officially released today around the world!
Now, Punk CX was published in 2019 and explored what a punk rock version of customer experience (CX) could look and feel like.
However, a lot has happened since then.
It's no longer sufficient to talk about customer experience in isolation. To succeed, we need to think about experience holistically, especially if we are to deliver the outcomes and reach the heights we aspire to.
Punk XL, where XL stands for eXperience Leadership, seeks to explore what it means and takes to deliver a great experience at different levels (individual, team, organisation, customer and beyond).
Like its predecessor Punk CX, it will be composed of a series of short and punchy "tracks" organised loosely around a series of concentric rings or dimensions that will explore what eXperience Leadership means at that particular level.
To add richness, perspective and depth, it features contributions from a number of different experience "artists" from around the world.
Those "artists" are Ari Weinzweig, Serena Riley, Lara Khouri, Richard Hammond, Amy Scott, Sandra Thompson, Paul Greenberg, Joyce Kim, Karen Jaw-Madson, Martin Lucas, Sandra De Zoysa, Clare Muscutt, Oisin Lunny, Tom Watts and Matt Wilson (more details about all of them are below).
But today, I want to share with you a conversation I have recently had with some of the "artists" I worked with on this book, namely Serena, Lara, Amy, Joyce, Oisin and Tom. I talk to them about Punk XL, what XL means for them, why it's important, why they got involved with the project, what their favourite bits of the new book are and why all of the book's proceeds will be donated to charity.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Only 2% of marketers say they experience perfect alignment with sales – Interview with Scott Addington of SugarCRM – and is number 411 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Scott Addington, VP of EMEA Marketing for SugarCRM. Scott joins me today to talk about letting the platform do the work, the continued misalignment of sales and marketing teams, what it is costing them, what they should do about it and how technology can help.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The end of the customer experience is so important but is often looked – Interview with Joe Macleod #Endineering – and is number 410 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Joe Macleod, the Founder & Head of Endineering at AndEnd and a two-time author. Joe joins me today to talk his new book: Endineering: Designing consumption lifecycles that end as well as they begin, why the end of the customer experience is so important, often looked, what that is costing us and what we should be doing about it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – CRM is not just about technology; it’s actually about relationships – Interview with Victoria Wejchert of Kinship – and is number 409 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Victoria Wejchert, who is the founder and CEO of Kinship, a contact management app that makes it easy to store and act on contact information to build stronger professional and personal connections. Victoria joins me today to talk about Kinship, the CRM space, building a phone-based CRM application in what is already a crowded market and how with all of the tech that we are surrounded by right now we are not really focusing on building real, lasting and meaningful relationships.
This interview follows on from my recent interview - 12 principles for turning customers and employees into lifelong fans – Interview with Jon Picoult of Watermark Consulting - and is number 408 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jon Picoult is founder of Watermark Consulting, a leading customer experience advisory firm, and author of a new book: FROM IMPRESSED TO OBSESSED: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans. Jon joins me today to talk about the book, the most universal problem in customer experience today, why customer experience is like a choreographed performance, the biggest mistake companies make when embarking on a customer experience improvement effort and the ROI of customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer purchasing decisions are increasingly being driven by their values – Interview with Alan Williams — and is number 407 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Alan Williams, who is the Founder & MD, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL, and helps service sector organisations to deliver significantly better business performance and a service excellence culture through values-driven organisational alignment. He joins me today to talk about his new book: “The Values Economy, How to Deliver Values Driven Service for Sustained Performance”, what we can learn from it, how values can impact better service and experience and World Values Day.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer service: The most important job in the company – Interview with Fortuné Alexander of Pega — and is number 406 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Fortuné Alexander who is the senior director of product marketing for customer service and sales automation solutions at Pega. Fortuné joins me today to talk about National Customer Service Week, recognising and celebrating excellent customer service, the changing world of work, service with respect, simplifying service, applying technology, where to start, contact center heroes and giving them the recognition they deserve and also leadership.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The only thing that limits you on a no code platform is your imagination – Interview with Pierce Buckley of babelforce — and is number 405 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at babelforce for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Today’s interview is with Pierce Buckley who is an automation and CX expert plus the CEO and Co-founder of babelforce. Pierce joins me today to talk contact centres, customer service, customer experience, AI, the schmai-i bit, busting a few myths around the whole tech and service space, no-code platforms, what that really means, what’s the difference between RPA and no-code and how organisations should be approaching and leveraging AI and no-code in their business, particularly when it comes to improving customer service/experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The metric that is more important than NPS and CSAT – Interview with Shep Hyken — and is number 404 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at babelforce for sponsoring my podcast this month.
Today’s interview is with Shep Hyken, who is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Shep joins me today today to talk about his latest book: I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, what an Arnie is, the metric that is more important than NPS and CSAT, the difference between a repeat customer and a loyal customer, where true empathy for the customer starts and if self-service can drive customer loyalty and a whole host of other things.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We need to start talking about experience leadership – Interview with Peter Cross — and is number 403 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at babelforce for sponsoring my podcast this month.
babelforce is the #1 most flexible platform for contact center service. Pierce Buckley, CEO and Co-founder of babelforce, and his team of telecoms veterans have created a powerful cloud communications solution focused on No-Code integration and automation. Their goal is to break down every barrier to great customer experiences by putting intuitive tools in the hands of people who live and breathe CX.
Pierce and Jonathan Baer of Vonage are running a webinar on the 28th October at 11:00am CET and they will be discussing exactly how businesses are getting maximum benefit from WhatsApp, one of the fastest-growing channels for customer service. Follow this link to sign up. You don’t want to miss out as you will get to see a demo of the babelforce platform in action!
Today’s interview is with retail expert Peter Cross who until recently was the Customer Experience Director at John Lewis and Waitrose and prior to that spent ten years as Mary Portas’ business partner. Peter joins me today to talk about retail customer experience, some of the lessons he has learned over the course of the last few years, experience leadership and what he sees as some of the challenges ahead for experience leaders.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The top frustrations of customers and agents are the same – Interview with Jeff Nicholson of Pega — and is number 402 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at babelforce for sponsoring my podcast this month.
babelforce is the #1 most flexible platform for contact center service. Pierce Buckley, CEO and Co-founder of babelforce, and his team of telecoms veterans have created a powerful cloud communications solution focused on No-Code integration and automation. Their goal is to break down every barrier to great customer experiences by putting intuitive tools in the hands of people who live and breathe CX.
Pierce and Jonathan Baer of Vonage are running a webinar on the 28th October at 11:00am CET and they will be discussing exactly how businesses are getting maximum benefit from WhatsApp, one of the fastest-growing channels for customer service.
Follow this link to sign up. You don’t want to miss out as you will get to see a demo of the babelforce platform in action!
Today’s interview is with Jeff Nicholson, Global Leader, CRM Strategy for Pega, where he heads up the company’s CRM market strategy and vision worldwide. Jeff joins me today to talk about their recently released new piece of research: Resolution revolution: Customer service insights report, what we can learn from it, what we should be focusing on, agent experience, the emerging landscape of customer service and sine waves!
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What do immersive VR, empathetic interactions and stand out customer service have in common? – Interview with Monika Jo of Mursion — and is number 401 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Monika Jo, Director Of Communications at Mursion, a virtual reality platform for professionals to practice and master the complex interpersonal skills necessary to be effective in their roles. This blend of technology and human performance creates a highly realistic training environment that mimics the real-world challenges employees face every day. Monika joins me today to talk about the report that they recently published (The Human Edge in an AI World), what we can learn from it, the importance of EQ, building an empathetic musculature and what Mursion do to try help organisations and individuals get better at being more empathetic in their interactions with customers.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Pink Goldfish, standing out, portmanteaus and wabi-sabi – Interview with Stan Phelps and Dave Rendall — and is number 400 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Stan Phelps and Dave Rendall, co-authors of Pink Goldfish 2.0: Defy Normal and Exploit Imperfection. They join me today to talk about flaws, imperfections, portmanteaus and how we make our imperfections work for us and help us stand out.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Playing your way to a stand out customer experience – Interview with Sirte Pihlaja — and is number 399 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Sirte Pihlaja, who is the CEO (Customer Experience Optimiser) of Shirute, the first customer experience agency in Finland as well as a Lego Serious Play® Facilitator amongst many other things. Sirte joins me today to talk about happiness, creativity, why we need more fun in our business and CX lives, Lego and some serious playing.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We are all only one moment away from creating a hyper fan – Interview with James Dodkins of Pega — and is number 398 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with James Dodkins, who is commonly know as the CX Rockstar, is a former rockstar but is now the CX Evangelist at Pegasystems. James joins me today to talk about his journey, why he’s joined Pega, what he’s going to be getting up to, extreme fandoms, hyper-fans and what’s stood out for him regarding customer experience over the last 15 months.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A good customer experience starts with having the right tools – Interview with Liat Bycel of Airtable — and is number 397 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Liat Bycel, the VP of Sales at Airtable, the no code collaboration platform, and the person responsible for building the customer engagement organization which comprises team members from sales, customers success, support, support ops, sales ops and strategy. Liat joins me to today to talk about the ‘messy middle’ syndrome, being well-prepared when the pandemic hit, how she built their customer engagement organization, adopting a new hybrid work pattern and why we need to consider onboarding for everyone again.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Ineffective communication is a silent killer of customer service performance – Interview with Dorian Stone of Grammarly Business — and is number 396 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Dorian Stone, General Manager of Grammarly Business, who oversees all operations for Grammarly’s integrated business solution. Grammarly is a cross-platform, cloud-based, AI-enabled, writing assistant that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement and delivery mistakes in real-time. Dorian joins me today to talk about customer service and experience, writing and the impact of ineffective communication on productivity and service as well as other areas of business.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We’re going 100mph. But, we have no rules of the road and we need them – Interview with Ben Pring of Cognizant — and is number 395 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Ben Pring, who is the head of thought leadership at Cognizant, co-founded and leads Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, and is a member of Cognizant’s Executive Leadership Team.
Ben joins me today to talk abut his new book, that he co-authored with his colleague Paul Roehrig, called: Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future, why we can’t cede control of technology to technologists, can we afford to wait for governments to fix tech’s problems, the declarations that the book makes as part of its manifesto, which ones apply to customer and employee experience professionals, what happens if we don’t take action, what’s our window of opportunity and what we should be doing and thinking about right now.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Diversity, combating bias in AI and why everything is an input – Interview with Deon Nicholas of Forethought — and is number 394 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Deon Nicholas, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Forethought, an AI company that creates order, removes redundant work, and provides efficiency for businesses everywhere. They are set on changing the way enterprises access, share, and leverage their knowledge. Moreover, not only is Forethought committed to diversity, it's part of their strategy.
Deon joins me today to talk about Unbiased AI, how bias gets into AI, overfitting, how we can rid AI of unconscious biases, what customer service and experience teams should be looking out for and doing more of or doing better, what is Forethought doing differently to tackle these issues and how diversity is a central part of their strategy.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Who are the people that feel the least welcome when they engage with a business? – Interview with Gavin Neate of WelcoMe — and is number 393 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Gavin Neate, CEO and Founder of Neatebox, the umbrella company for WelcoMe and Button. WelcoMe lets service teams know when a disabled person is about to arrive and provides them with the very best general and personal information as to how to interact. Gavin joins me today talk about disability, disability and customer service/experience, inclusive CX, how WelcoMe is helping and what customer service and experience leaders should be thinking about.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The lost child of customer experience (CX) is taking action – Interview with Jason Grier of Reputation — and is number 392 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jason Grier, Chief Customer Officer of Reputation, a leading business-to-business online reputation management and customer experience management company. Jason joins me today to talk about cars, speedometers, experiencing your own experience, the (over)focus on metrics, the power of unstructured feedback and the report that Forrester that produced for them and some great advice for CX practitioners about what they should be prioritizing when it comes to improving the experience they deliver.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Employee experience, the war for talent and what to avoid in a back to the office strategy – Interview with Steve Lucas of iCIMS — and is number 391 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Steve Lucas, CEO of iCIMS, a talent cloud company. Steve joins me today to talk about changes in working patterns over the last 12 months, the findings from their new research report: 2021 Workforce Report: Respond, Recover, Readapt, employee experience and the competition for talent.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Your values are designed to attract, but also to repel – Interview with Borzou Azabdaftari of The Falcon Lab — and is number 390 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at SugarCRM for sponsoring my podcast this month.
SugarCRM, the provider of the #1 rated Customer Experience platform, is trusted by thousands of companies in over 120 countries to help them achieve high-definition CX. Recently they released their new CRM and Sales Impact Report which surveyed 1,000 sales professionals from around the globe on what’s driving (or stalling) revenue and customer engagement. The report also asks a provocative question: Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis. To find out the answer check out and download the report here.
NOTE: This episode contains some profanity. Not too much but definitely some. You are warned!
Today’s interview is with Borzou Azabdaftari, Boss at The Falcon Lab, a full service marketing agency. Borzou joins me today to talk values, profanity, having profane values, it’s impact on clients and the changing nature of customer experience and what increasingly matters.
Big shout out to Stan Phelps and David Rendall for introducing me to Borzou.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis? – Interview with David Campbell of SugarCRM — and is number 389 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at SugarCRM for sponsoring my podcast this month.
SugarCRM, the provider of the #1 rated Customer Experience platform, is trusted by thousands of companies in over 120 countries to help them achieve high-definition CX. Recently they released their new CRM and Sales Impact Report which surveyed 1,000 sales professionals from around the globe on what’s driving (or stalling) revenue and customer engagement. The report also asks a provocative question: Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis. To find out the answer check out and download the report here.
Today’s interview is with David Campbell, the vice president of product marketing at SugarCRM, the #1 rated Customer Experience platform. David joins me today to talk about CRM, what grade he would give CRM after being around for 25 years, SugarCRM’s recent CRM and Sales Impact Report, what the findings mean, what we need to do differently and whether or not we are on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Improving the customer experience of a FMCG category through a pandemic – Interview with Jan Kodadek — and is number 388 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at SugarCRM for sponsoring my podcast this month.
SugarCRM, the provider of the #1 rated Customer Experience platform, is trusted by thousands of companies in over 120 countries to help them achieve high-definition CX. Recently they released their new CRM and Sales Impact Report which surveyed 1,000 sales professionals from around the globe on what’s driving (or stalling) revenue and customer engagement. The report also asks a provocative question: Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis. To find out the answer check out and download the report here.
Today’s interview is with Jan Kodadek is the Digital Lead for the Sexual Wellbeing category at Reckitt. Jan joins me today to talk about the massive shift to digital that has taken place over the last year, the leadership lessons that have emerged for her, what this has meant for a FMCG company and how we can build our understanding of customers and build better relationships with them, particularly when dealing with a potentially sensitive area.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Crushing complexity and keeping customer outcomes front and centre – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega — and is number 387 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at SugarCRM for sponsoring my podcast this month.
SugarCRM, the provider of the #1 rated Customer Experience platform, is trusted by thousands of companies in over 120 countries to help them achieve high-definition CX. Recently they released their new CRM and Sales Impact Report which surveyed 1,000 sales professionals from around the globe on what’s driving (or stalling) revenue and customer engagement. The report also asks a provocative question: Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis. To find out the answer check out and download the report here.
Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pegasystems. Don joins me today to talk about customer experience and digital transformation, what sort of grade he would give us for our performance through the pandemic, the need for more fluidity, the response to the need for greater empathy in customer and employee interactions, the collapse of the gap between rhetoric and activity, not losing the lessons of 2020, crushing complexity, what we have leaned about leadership and technology that we can carry forward and lastly the upcoming Pegaworld (www.pegaworld.com).
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customers are like chameleons – Interview with Professor Michael R. Solomon — and is number 386 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
It’s almost time for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems. Join them online for free on May 4 from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (that’s 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. UK time) to learn how the world’s most impactful companies are driving digital transformation. They’ll have compelling keynotes, demos, and case studies in a highly interactive virtual format and a few surprises as well. Go to www.pegaworld.com to register for free and check out the full agenda. I’ve attended the last several PegaWorlds in person, and virtually, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, so go register today! That’s www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Michael Solomon, PhD who is Professor of Marketing in the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the author of one of THE books, if not THE original book, on consumer behaviour. He joins us today not to talk about that book but a new one that he has just published called The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization, the difference between horizontal and vertical thinking, whether marketers really know their customers, whether there is a myth around the idea that customers want choice and other ideas that will help you build a better understanding of your customers.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What the democratisation of artificial intelligence (AI) means for customer experience – Interview with Matthew Nolan of Pega — and is number 385 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
It’s almost time for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems. Join them online for free on May 4 from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (that’s 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. UK time) to learn how the world’s most impactful companies are driving digital transformation. They’ll have compelling keynotes, demos, and case studies in a highly interactive virtual format and a few surprises as well. Go to www.pegaworld.com to register for free and check out the full agenda. I’ve attended the last several PegaWorlds in person, and virtually, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, so go register today! That’s www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Matthew Nolan, the head of Product Marketing for the Decision Sciences division at Pegasystems, driving Pega's portfolio of marketing technology, decision management, and customer engagement solutions. Matthew joins me today to talk about the democratisation of artificial intelligence (AI), what that means, the benefits and risks associated with that and some practical advice for leaders and practitioners looking to improve the experience that they deliver to their customers.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Enabling everyone to have the ability to understand the hidden stories in their data – Interview with Dr Derek Wang of Stratifyd — and is number 384 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
It’s almost time for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems. Join them online for free on May 4 from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (that’s 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. UK time) to learn how the world’s most impactful companies are driving digital transformation. They’ll have compelling keynotes, demos, and case studies in a highly interactive virtual format and a few surprises as well. Go to www.pegaworld.com to register for free and check out the full agenda. I’ve attended the last several PegaWorlds in person, and virtually, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, so go register today! That’s www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Dr. Derek Wang, the founder and CEO of the AI-driven experience analytics platform Stratifyd. Derek joins me today to talk about empowering everyone to understand the hidden stories in their data, a vision of the future that features humans and AI working together to build better experience programs, proving or delivering a ROI for CX initiatives and some practical advice for leaders and practitioners in this space.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Getting closer to customers means connecting with them irrespective of the logistics – Interview with Bansi Mehta of Koru UX Design — and is number 383 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
It’s almost time for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems. Join them online for free on May 4 from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (that’s 2 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. UK time) to learn how the world’s most impactful companies are driving digital transformation. They’ll have compelling keynotes, demos, and case studies in a highly interactive virtual format and a few surprises as well. Go to www.pegaworld.com to register for free and check out the full agenda. I’ve attended the last several PegaWorlds in person, and virtually, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, so go register today! That’s www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Bansi Mehta is the CEO and Founder of Koru UX Design, a global leader in strategic enterprise UX for the healthcare, telecom and finance industries. Bansi joins me to today to talk about how UX is changing and what should brands and organizations be paying attention to, what the future of UI/UX/CX look like, how she was able to scale her business to become one of the leaders in the UX space for B2B businesses and the trials and tribulations of being a minority, female leader in this space.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What you are doing right now will be the hallmark of your entire career – Interview with Tom Peters — and is number 382 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Tom Peters, best-selling author of numerous business books (19 in total) and speaker. He is, perhaps, best known for his 1982 seminal book: In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr).
He is a personal hero of mine and an inspiration and I am honoured to say that this is the third time (the first and the second) that he has been on the podcast.
Tom joins me to today to talk about his new (and possibly) final book: Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism and the new set of courses he has developed: Excellence: Now More Than Ever. We talk about excellence, service, experience, leadership, kindness, extreme humanization and why it is needed now more than ever. As ever Tom was brilliant, insightful, funny and still dancing to the same beat that he has been for last 43 years. It was a huge amount of fun so do check it out.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Delivering empathetic customer experiences will require us to move from fuzzy into action – Interview with Joyce Kim, Chief Marketing Officer at Genesys — and is number 381 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Joyce Kim, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Genesys, a global leader in cloud -based customer experience and contact centre solutions that serves over 11,000 mid-sized and large businesses around the world. Joyce joins me today to talk about what it’s going to take for organizations to deliver a more empathetic experience to their customers, how empathy will move from fuzzy to actionable, how CMOs can take responsibility addressing customer experience woes as well as what lessons service and experience leaders need to be learning.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Journey analytics and orchestration is helping brands stop doing stupid stuff – Interview with Mark Smith of Kitewheel — and is number 380 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Mark Smith, President of Kitewheel, whose platform is powering real-time customer journeys for the world's most customer-centric brands. Mark joins me today to talk about leading edge customer experience, Voice of the Customer (VoC) and Voice of the Process (VoP) data, why VoC data is often partial and potentially misleading, journey analytics and customer journey orchestration as well as what lessons service and experience leaders need to be learning.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – It’s the deviants that make the difference – Interview with Gary David and Adam Gamwell — and is number 379 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
WARNING! Today’s interview is not like the regular interviews you would normally find here. This episode of the Punk CX podcast is a bit of an experiment and features Gary David, an ethnographer and a professor of Sociology at Bentley University, and Adam Gamwell, a Design Anthropologist, or as he likes to describe himself a Design-Centered Human, and myself having a bit of a rummage around some of the ideas in my Punk CX book as well as a number of other issues related to service and experience including sociology, design, anthropology, systems thinking, organisational dynamics and psychology. We had fun. It was a conversational rummage. I learned a lot. Hope you enjoy the experiment.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We need to talk about customer service’s “messy middle” – Interview with Michael Ramsey of ServiceNow – and is number 378 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
It was quite some conversation so I haven’t produced highlights this time around. I’ll leave it up to you to jump in and find your own highlights.
Normal service should resume next time 😉
Today’s interview is with Michael Ramsey, VP, Product Management, Customer Workflow Products at ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform provider that helps enterprises manage digital workflows and operations more effectively. Michael joins me today to talk about the “messy middle” in customer service, what it is, what problems it creates, how companies are addressing it and whether it should be there in the first place as well as a bunch of other insights for customer service and experience leaders.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Solving language based customer service inequalities – Interview with Vasco Pedro of Unbabel – and is number 377 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Vasco Pedro, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Unbabel, a company that removes language barriers by blending artificial intelligence with real time, human translations. Vasco joins me today to talk about their AI-powered, human-refined “Translation as a Service” business, the concept of language operations, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, how their technology works and the sort of results it produces as well as sharing a few ideas about the future of service, experience and technology.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The power of personalised videos to drive engagement at all stages of the customer journey – Interview with Matt Barnett of Bonjoro – and is number 376 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Matt Barnett, Papa Bear at Bonjoro, a mobile and web based application that lets you send personalised videos at every stage of the customer journey, to convert, activate and your support your customers. Matt joins me today to talk about video, how things have changed as a result of the pandemic, the impact of video compared to email and where best to apply video in the customer journey.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – From an award winning chef to CX Leader of the Year 2020 – Interview with James Scutt of the Post Office – and is number 375 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with the winner of the MyCustomer 2020 CX Leader of the Year competition: James Scutt, Head of Customer Experience Strategy and Deployment, Post Office. This interview is slightly different this week as I am conducting it with Chris Ward, Editor of MyCustomer. The original interview can be found here but I thought it would be worth re-publishing here too. In the interview we discuss James’ journey to where he is now, why he applied for the competition, how he felt when he won, the biggest lessons that he has learned along the way and how the pandemic has impacted the business among other things.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Where the magic happens when it comes to improving customer outcomes – Interview with Stacy Sherman – and is number 374 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Stacy Sherman, Head of Customer Experience (CX) & Employee Engagement at Schindler Elevator Corporation and Founder of DoingCXRight. Stacy joins me today to talk about what customer experience means at Schindler, what knowledge and skills she was able to bring to that job from her time at Verizon, what humanizing business & leading with a heart means and what sort of things leaders should be doing to improve their customers experience right now.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Mindset, method, motivation and harmonisation are at the centre of customer centric-thinking and leadership – Interview with Andy Murray – and is number 373 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Andy Murray, Founder and Executive Chair, Customer Centric Leadership Initiative at The Sam M. Walton College of Business at The University of Arkansas. Andy joins me today to talk about the aforementioned Customer Centric Leadership Initiative, what customer centricity means, how leadership has been impacted over the last few months, the leader’s experience and what we should be doing to make sure that we deliver a great customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership and how to achieve customer centricity – Interview with Minter Dial – and is number 372 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Minter Dial, an international speaker and a multiple award-winning author, specialized in leadership, branding and transformation. Minter joins me today to talk about his new book: You Lead: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader, what he has learned about leadership over the course of his career, what comes first…employee or customer experience and what the biggest asset in leadership is.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – When it comes to CX is your company a starter, riser or champion? – Interview with Adrian McDermott of Zendesk – and is number 371 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Adrian McDermott, President of Products, Zendesk, a provider of customer service software. Adrian joins me today to talk about a new piece of research that Zendesk has recently conducted in partnership with ESG Research. This has allowed them to build a framework around CX maturity and CX success. The findings are summarized in a report: CX Champions: How CX Leaders Who Raise Their Game Are Driving Business Success.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – On a scale from 1-10, how racist is your AI? – Interview with Jeff Gallino and Conrad Liburd of CallMiner – and is number 370 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jeff Gallino, CTO & Founder, and Conrad Liburd, AI feature engineer, at CallMiner, a provider of speech analytics solutions for improving agent performance and customer intelligence. Jeff and Conrad join me today to talk about bias in data and algorithms, discriminatory and racist calls in contact centres, what most companies do about them, what they should be doing about them and what we should be doing to improve both customer and employee experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The secrets behind tapping into your customer’s imagination – Interview with Chip Bell – and is number 369 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Chip R. Bell, a keynote speaker and consultant in customer loyalty and service innovation as well as a 24 time author of books, many of which are focused on how we can improve customer service and experience. He joins us today to talk about his new book: Inside Your Customer's Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions, what it’s about, what we can learn from it and what we should be doing to improve both customer and employee experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The relationship between trust, honesty and simplicity when it comes to customer and employee experience – Interview with Brian Rafferty of Siegel+Gale – and is number 368 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Brian Rafferty, the Global Director of Business Analytics and Insights at Siegel+Gale, a brand strategy, design and experience firm. They also define themselves as a simplicity company and help brands deliver simpler experiences to their customers. Brian joins me today to talk about simplicity and the performance of brands that have simplicity at their heart, how that relates to both customer and employee experience and what they are learning from their research about what we should be doing to improve both customer and employee experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – 140 leaders share the lessons they learned during the pandemic – Interview with Joseph Michelli – and is number 367 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D., C.S.P., is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organizational consultant. Joseph joins me today to talk about his new book: Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges, why he wrote the book, what can we learn from all of the leaders he talked to and what leaders should be doing going forward, particularly when it comes to improving the customer, employee and leader experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How can you relate to B2B customers when they more ‘hidden’ from you than before? – Interview with Jeroen Corthout of Salesflare – and is number 366 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Jeroen Corthout who is the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM that has been built specifically for smaller businesses selling B2B. It is most popular with agencies and fast growing startup companies. Jeroen joins me today to talk about the problems that sales people have with CRM systems and what he is seeing in the service and experience market and what sales people should be doing to develop better relationships with their customers.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What if customers want more than excellent service? – Interview with Steven Van Belleghem – and is number 365 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Steven Van Belleghem who is an international keynote speaker, entrepreneur and best-selling author. Steven joins me today to talk about his new book: The Offer You Can't Refuse: What If Customers Want More Than Excellent Service? , the core premise, what the future looks like, what we can learn from it and how it can help us deliver better service and experience outcomes.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience doesn’t stop – Interview with Richie Manu – and is number 364 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Richie Manu, who is Programme Director (Culture & Enterprise) at University of the Arts London, a multi-award-winning lecturer, a designer, creative consultant and author. Richie joins me today to talk about how the student and educator experience has changed over the last few months, what customer experience means to him and design-led, creative businesses and art entrepreneurs and what the future of experience looks like from his perspective.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Proactive support is the holy grail of customer support – Interview with Paul Adams of Intercom – and is number 363 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Paul Adams who is the SVP of Product at Intercom, which helps brands build their customer relationships through conversational, messenger-based experiences across the customer journey. Paul joins me today to talk about putting proactive support back on the agenda, what proactive support means for support teams, what’s stopping support teams getting started and the future of service and experience amongst a few other things.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The difference and relationship between emotion, empathy and emotional intelligence in customer experience – Interview with Sandra Thompson – and is number 362 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Sandra Thompson, a published consultant, lecturer, course leader and trainer in the field of customer experience, emotional intelligence and, more recently, remote work. Sandra joins me today to discuss emotion, empathy and emotional intelligence in customer experience, the need for and value of empathy, the difference and relationship between emotion, empathy and emotional intelligence, why empathy and emotional intelligence is needed now more than ever, the role of technology and culture in all of that and if there is any downsides to all of this.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Language is the most basic form of personalisation and it plays a huge role in a customer’s experience – Interview with Allison McDougall of Amplexor – and is number 361 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pegasystems for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Join Pega for a series of free online events focused on shaping the future of business and designing today’s tech to solve for tomorrow’s challenges. Whether your focus is one-to-one customer engagement, customer service, or intelligent automation, there’s a virtual event tailored just for you. You’ll watch live demos and hear inspiring stories from world-leading organizations in a time-zone that suits you. Register for a free Pega Discover event today.
Today’s interview is with Allison McDougall who is the SVP of Global Revenue at Amplexor, a leading digital solution provider offering global compliance, digital experience and content solutions. Allison joins me today to talk about language, culture and what it takes to deliver a great customer experience when operating across borders or across multiple languages and cultures.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Our leadership impact is really about how we show up and who we are – Interview with Anese Cavanaugh – and is number 360 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pegasystems for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Join Pega for a series of free online events focused on shaping the future of business and designing today’s tech to solve for tomorrow’s challenges. Whether your focus is one-to-one customer engagement, customer service, or intelligent automation, there’s a virtual event tailored just for you. You’ll watch live demos and hear inspiring stories from world-leading organizations in a time-zone that suits you. Register for a free Pega Discover event today.
Today’s interview is with Anese Cavanaugh, creator of the IEP Method® (Intentional Energetic Presence®), an advisor and thinking partner to leaders and organizations around the world, a keynote speaker, and author of the books Contagious Culture and Contagious You. She joins me today to talk about showing up, leadership, the IEP Method, what we can learn from it and how it can help us deliver better service and experience outcomes.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why we are building the Women In CX community – Interview with Clare Muscutt – and is number 359 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pegasystems for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Join Pega for a series of free online events focused on shaping the future of business and designing today’s tech to solve for tomorrow’s challenges. Whether your focus is one-to-one customer engagement, customer service, or intelligent automation, there’s a virtual event tailored just for you. You’ll watch live demos and hear inspiring stories from world-leading organizations in a time-zone that suits you. Register for a free Pega Discover event today.
Today’s interview is with Clare Muscutt who is recognised as one of the most prominent and valued millennial voices in CX, an international consultant, keynote speaker and soon to be the author of the book ‘How to be Awesome at CX’’. She is also the leader of the Women in the CX community and host of the podcast ‘Inspiring Women in CX.’ She joins me today to talk about her Women in CX community, how it came about, why it is need and how to get involved.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer success (CS) = Customer experience (CX) + Customer outcomes (CO) – Interview with Nick Mehta of Gainsight – and is number 358 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pegasystems for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Join Pega for a series of free online events focused on shaping the future of business and designing today's tech to solve for tomorrow's challenges. Whether your focus is one-to-one customer engagement, customer service, or intelligent automation, there’s a virtual event tailored just for you. You'll watch live demos and hear inspiring stories from world-leading organizations in a time-zone that suits you. Register for a free Pega Discover event today.
Today’s interview is with Nick Mehta CEO of Gainsight, a customer success technology provider that helps businesses retain customers and drive company growth. Nick joins me today to talk about his new book, The Customer Success Economy: Why Every Aspect of Your Business Model Needs A Paradigm Shift, what customer success is, why it is going to become increasingly important to organizations given the current climate and pressures that many firms are going to start to face, what are the benefits and what customer experience and success leaders need to be doing to survive and thrive.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Experimentation is what makes Microsoft, Google, Netflix and Booking.com so successful – Interview with Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke – and is number 357 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Stefan Thomke, who is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Stefan joins me today to talk about his new book, Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, what does experimentation mean, what does it look like, what are the benefits, why does it matter for customer service and experience leaders and practitioners.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Emerging leadership lessons from the pandemic and what we need from leaders now – Interview with Rachel Neaman – and is number 356 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Rachel Neaman, a technology leader, Non-Executive Director, leadership mentor and coach with extensive experience in the technology, health, governmental, digital and not for profit fields. Rachel joins me today to talk about some of the organisational changes taking place that she has noticed over the last few months, some of the challenges facing us, how leadership has changed and why many female political leaders, in particular, have been so successful during this period.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Difficult conversations and building more inclusive and diverse organizations – Interview with Jenn Graham of Civic Dinners – and is number 355 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator.
It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it.
So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.
Today’s interview is with Jenn Graham, Founder and CEO of Civic Dinners, who design and facilitate conversations on key topics that can help organizations build a more inclusive culture with employees, stakeholders, customers and the greater community. Jenn joins me today to talk about Civic Dinners, difficult conversations, what stops organizations having them, what are the benefits when they do tackle difficult subjects like discrimination and inequality, what they are doing to help and what we can learn from them.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lessons learned from the move to remote working – Interview with Dean Robison of ServiceNow – and is number 354 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator.
It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it.
So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.
Today’s interview is with Dean Robison who is the SVP of Global Technical Support at ServiceNow. Dean joins me today to talk about his experience of moving 1,000 employees spread out over 9 locations around the globe to remote working, his experience through the pandemic so far, what’s gone well, what’s not gone so well, what they have learned and what they are focusing on going forward.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Four key factors that are framing the challenges for organisations going forward – Interview with Jo Causon of The Institute of Customer Service – and is number 353 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator.
It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it.
So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.
Today’s interview is with Jo Causon, Chief Executive of The Institute of Customer Service. Jo joins me today to talk about the July 2020 update of the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (The state of customer satisfaction in the UK), what we can learn from it and what companies should be focusing on.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A quest to make technology emotionally intelligent – Interview with Rana el Kaliouby of Affectiva – and is number 352 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator.
It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it.
So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.
Today’s interview is with Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of Affectiva, an emotion measurement technology company that grew out of MIT's Media Lab. Affectiva has developed software to recognize human emotions based on facial cues or physiological responses. She is also author of a new book: Girl Decoded: My Quest to Make Technology Emotionally Intelligent – and Change the Way We Interact Forever. Rana joins me today to talk about the book, her career and research into putting empathy into AI, Emotive AI and her work at Affectiva.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Purpose is not a luxury and matters more than ever in a crisis – Interview with Professor Alex Edmans of London Business School – and is number 351 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Alex Edmans, a Professor of Finance at London Business School who focuses on responsible business. He has just published a new book called: Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit and joins me today to talk about the book, how it came about, what we can learn from it and why it matters.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Innovative brands are using direct mail to improve customer engagement – Interview with Dan Frohnen of Sendoso – and is number 350 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Dan Frohnen, CMO at Sendoso , a cloud-based direct mail and engagement platform that gives companies the ability to send direct mail, eGifts, wine, company swag, handwritten notes, welcome kits, and custom gifts. Dan joins me today to talk direct mail, why direct mail is not used as much as it could or should be, waste, sustainability and lessons that have emerged in the last few months.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Excellence and extreme humanization are needed more than ever – Interview with Tom Peters – and is number 349 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Tom Peters, author of numerous business books (18 in total) and speaker. He is, perhaps, best known for his 1982 seminal book: In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr). This is the second time that Tom has been on the podcast. The first time was in 2018 (Striving for excellence has never been more important) where we talked about his latest book: The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last. Today he joins me to talk about the need for Extreme Humanization given the situation we currently find ourselves in and a couple of pieces that he has recently penned: Excellence Manifesto 2020: The Twenty-Nine “Number Ones” and Excellence 2020 Observations Leading With Compassion And Care In Troubled Times.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A lot of enterprise software is still eye-wateringly terrible and it’s acting like a handbrake on experience improvement efforts – Interview with Leon Gauhman of Elsewhen – and is number 348 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Leon Gauhman, Elsewhen’s Director of Product and Strategy. Leon joins me today to talk about why enterprise software and particularly enterprise CX software is still so terrible, the power of the umbrella in the age of Unix philosophy, why we should all be focusing on delighting our customers, why beautiful and functional is the highest degree of problem solving and also what we can learn from Mr Potato-head!
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A Center-Out business architecture enables better and more empathetic customer experiences – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 347 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman who is the CTO & Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing at Pegasystems. Don joins me today to talk about Pegaworld iNspire, Center-Out™, Process Fabric™, Ethical Bias Testing and what it is going to take to succeed and thrive, particularly when it comes to delivering an outstanding customer experience, in this changing world we live in.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Up to 90% of digital data is not used. What sort of society accepts 90% waste? – Interview with Gerry McGovern – and is number 346 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
While PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems took place earlier this month (June 2nd) you can still view the sessions on-demand so do head over to www.pegaworld.com to check them out.
Today’s interview is with Gerry McGovern who is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords and the author of six books on all things digital, content, transformation and online customer experience. He has just published a new book called: World Wide Waste and joins me today to talk about the book, how it came about, what we can learn from it and why it matters.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Scaling customer support and maintaining employee and customer satisfaction even through a pandemic – Interview with Nick Misewicz of Pura Vida Bracelets – and is number 345 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
While PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems took place earlier this month (June 2nd) you can still view the sessions on-demand so do head over to www.pegaworld.com to check them out.
Today’s interview is with Nick Misewicz, Customer Success Manager at Pura Vida Bracelets. The company was founded in Costa Rica in 2010 and is headquartered in La Jolla in California. They sell hand-crafted bracelets and jewelry online and through boutique stores. Their bracelets and jewellery are made by 800+ artisans worldwide with the proceeds going back to the artisans. Nick joins me today to talk about how they scaled their customer support and increased agent productivity without compromising on employee or customer satisfaction.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The current crisis has put a very pragmatic lens onto digital transformation – Interview with Tom Libretto of Pega – and is number 344 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.
While PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems just taken place (June 2nd) you can still view the sessions on-demand so do head over to www.pegaworld.com to check them out.
Today’s interview is with Tom Libretto, the CMO of Pega, an enterprise software vendor that focuses on customer engagement, intelligent automation and customer service solutions for the world's largest brands. Tom joins today to talk about the upcoming PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems, what we are likely to see and learn, some of the big challenges that enterprises are currently facing, particularly in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and how they have been responding.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why we need to democratise leadership development and how the coronavirus pandemic is highlighting the strength and power of a more feminine way of leading – Interview with Lauren Currie of Stride – and is number 343 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Registration for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems, is free. Find out out more and register at www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Lauren Currie OBE, the CEO of Stride. They are on a mission to democratise leadership development. Lauren joins me today to talk about leadership, Stride, the problem with leadership development, what they are trying to do to solve this problem and what we should all be doing to develop their our own leadership skills and experience capabilities.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leading a digital transformation that will never end – Interview with Duncan Macdonald of UPC Switzerland – and is number 342 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.
Registration for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems, is free. Find out out more and register at www.pegaworld.com
Today’s interview is with Duncan Macdonald, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at UPC Switzerland, which is part of the Liberty Global group. Duncan joins me today to talk about leadership, what it takes to really empower people, his journey to where he is now and how he had to unlearn a lot of things in order to lead the way that he now does.
Thanks go to the folks at Pega who help set this interview up after I saw a video of Duncan talking about his work and leadership style that was featured as part of Pega’s Customer Engagement Summit (CES) online event on April 1st.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience, innovation, artificial intelligence, culture….a look inside Amazon – Interview with Claire Whitaker – and is number 341 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Claire Whitaker, a product and artificial intelligence (AI) consultant, who over the last nine years has worked in lean innovation, customer experience (CX), product management and technology including AI teams at top companies across industries, including Amazon. Claire joins me today to share some insights from her experience and, particularly, from her time at Amazon.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The nature of service and how we’ve grown up with a service economy which is now finding it very hard to actually serve customers – Interview with Joel Bailey of EY Seren – and is number 340 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Joel Bailey, who is a Director at EY Seren, the global design consultancy within EY. Joel is a friend of mine, someone I have worked with and a really interesting thinker when it comes to service. Our conversation was precipitated by the publication of an article he wrote (2020: A new decade of service) earlier this year. So, we set up a time to chat to talk about why we should leave the experience economy behind, that service is the element that connects customer experience and employee experience and the idea that we need to define service anew.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Authentic leadership is just the rebranding of transformational leadership with some of the caffeine taken out – Interview with Professor Dennis Tourish - and is number 339 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Dennis Tourish who is Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at University of Sussex Business School. Dennis joins me today to talk about the problems plaguing modern academic management and leadership research, challenges facing the modern organisation and leaders, progressive business and the problems with current leadership thinking.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience is more than f***ing metrics – Interview with Sydney Brouwer – and is number 338 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Sydney Brouwer, a customer experience speaker, author and masterclass leader. However, this one is a little different as this time Sydney turns the tables and interviews me for his podcast. We had a great conversation so I thought I would share it with you nice folks over here :)
Sydney and I talk about the state of customer experience, Punk CX, what it means to be a punk and what we should be thinking about when it comes to improving customer experience.
You can find the original discussion and Sydney’s podcast here.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How anarchy and Emma Goldman inspires one of the coolest companies in America – Interview with Ari Weinzweig of Zingermans – and is number 337 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Ari Weinzweig is CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman's Community of Businesses, a gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Inc. Magazine described Zingerman's as the "Coolest Small Company in America”. Meanwhile, they have been featured in the Harvard Business Review and on MSNBC for their business practices and Bo Burlingham in his book, Small Giants, cited Zingerman's as a model for organizations that define success more creatively than just "getting as big as we can as fast as we can”. Ari joins me today to talk about what anarchy can teach us about leadership, culture and customer service, Emma Goldman, building a progressive business and what we should be thinking about when it comes to improving customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – We are moving from a ticketing age to a conversational age – Interview with Mads Fosselius of Dixa – and is number 336 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Mads Fosselius, CEO of Dixa, a global customer service tech company that is on a mission to help brands build friendships with their customers, break down technology silos and eliminate bad customer service. Mads joins me today to talk about ticketing, why we are moving into a conversational age, what’s wrong with many ticketing systems and what we should be thinking about when it comes to improving customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Corporate transformation will soon switch from digital to purpose – Interview with Mark Curtis of Fjord – and is number 335 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Mark Curtis, Chief Client Officer at Fjord (part of Accenture Interactive). Mark joins me today to talk about Fjord’s new Trends 2020 report, some of the trends, what they mean and what we should be thinking about when it comes to improving customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Rethinking the experience of life insurance – Interview with Adam Weinberg of Haven Life – and is number 334 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Adam Weinberg, the brand director at Haven Life, a digital life insurance agency that’s backed and wholly owned by MassMutual. Adam joins me today to talk about innovating in a very traditional industry, magic tricks, what we can learn from Haven Life’s experience and what are the main things that we should be doing to improve the customer’s experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – If you don’t ignore your customers and create a service culture then you won’t have to worry about the competition – Interview with Micah Solomon – and is number 333 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Micah Solomon, a best-selling author, hands-on customer service consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, and one of the world's leading experts on customer service, company culture, and the customer experience. He is also considered to be “the customer service turnaround expert”. Micah joins me today to talk about his new book: Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away), what it’s all about, what we can learn from it and what are the main things that we should be doing to improve the customer's experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Insights from 100 of the world’s most progressive organisations on how to make work more fun – Interview with Pim de Morree of Corporate Rebels – and is number 332 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Anthony Abbatiello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and global leader of Deloitte Leadership. He joins me today to talk about Deloitte’s newly released annual 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report, some of the trends that emerged from the report and what they mean for leaders and entrepreneurs looking to build a business intent on delivering a great customer and employee experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Building a culture of good engages customers, employees and drives business results – Interview with Ryan McCarty and Scott Moorehead – and is number 209 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Rob Tarkoff, President and CEO of Lithium Technologies, a digital customer experience platform company. Their technology both powers some of the world’s largest online communities and helps some of the worlds largest brands with social customer care and publishing. Rob joins me today to talk about some recently published research, engagement, what it is, what it isn’t, what brands should be doing more and less of to help them engage more with their customers and the role of communities in all of that.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Creating a culture that stands for something and stands out – Interview with Tim Deeson – and is number 239 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Pim de Morree, co-founder at Corporate Rebels, who are on a mission to make work more fun. Pim joins me today to talk about their research, their journey to date, progressive organisations, and the arrival of their new book: Corporate Rebels: Make work more fun.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A lot of organisations talk outside in but their systems are not designed outside in – Interview with John Seddon of The Vanguard Method – and is number 331 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with John Seddon, an occupational psychologist, author and Managing Director of Vanguard, a consultancy company he formed in 1985 and the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method'. John joins me today to talk about his new book: Beyond Command and Control, the problem with current management practices and how we need to unlearn the way that we operate service based organisations if we want to improve the service and experience that we deliver.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Non-Obvious Megatrends that will affect our ability to deliver a stand out customer experience in the coming years – Interview with Rohit Bhargava – and is number 330 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
This is the eleventh in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, I spoke to Duncan Cheatle about The Prelude Group, The Supper Club, ThanksTo, being one of the founding team behind StartUp Britain and his mission around Making Britain more enterprising. Today, I want to introduce you to Rob Pinkerton, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Customer Experience Management across at Adobe. Rob has been mentioned here before when I wrote about one of his blogs back in April in The growing search for human contact in customer experience and customer service.
Recently, I had the pleasure to have a chat with Rob about all things customer, customer experience management, how CEM is not about technology, the fear that exists in many boardrooms about the changing environment, that most enterprises are built on a set of rules that have been in place for 60 years and are not set up to deal well with the changes that we are now seeing in our markets and how we are only just at the beginning of a huge change.
This is the tenth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, I spoke to Professor Patrick Barwise of London Business Schoo about his new book, Beyond the Familiar, creating long-term growth and change in a business, customer focus and Net Promoter Score (NPS) amongst other things.
Today, I want to introduce you to Duncan Cheatle, founder of The Prelude Group, The Supper Club, ThanksTo and one of the founding team behind StartUp Britain, which is a new campaign by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, launched on 28th March 2011 that is designed to celebrate, inspire and accelerate enterprise in the UK.
Duncan has a great ambition to "Make Britain the most enterprising nation in the world" and in the interview we talk about StartUp Britain as an exciting new venture, why it's a great time to start a business, what it takes to succeed and what he would advise entrepreneurs of growing businesses to do grow yourself and your business.
This is the 9th interview of this year and I think you are in for a treat. Today's interview is with Professor Patrick Barwise of London Business School about his new book, Beyond the Familiar.
Now, this is quite a long interview….a shade over an hour. I did contemplate cutting it into sections but there is such a lot of great stuff in there that I couldn't bring myself to do that.
So, forgive me for the length of the interview but trust me it is worth a listen.
Earlier this year, I published a post called The Wow! Awards – The missing key to employee engagement and great service?. Following on from that post, I was able to interview the man behind The Wow! Awards, Derek Williams.
In this interview we talked about his mission, changing the way that companies think, how you can measure how your company is feeling, customer service, customer experience and changing the world.
A few weeks ago, I was sent a review copy of Guy Kawasaki’s book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Last week following various via bits of email correspondence and travel coincidences, I was able to meet Guy in London to ask him about the book and that is the topic of the podcast. In our discussion, we talk about being enchanting, what it takes to create enchantment, the book writing process and find out what change Guy really wants to create enchantment around.
I agree wholeheartedly with Guy when he states in the book that learning how to create real and meaningful relationships with your customers is the key competitive skill that will set you and your business apart in the coming years.
Enchantment is a how-to book and also a manifesto for creating real change. It's like a 21st century version of Dale Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. In the book Guy explains how Enchantment comes about and shows us in very practical ways how to achieve it by thinking more about yourself, how we develop relationships with those around us and how we use various technology tools to tackle big problems.
This is the fifth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the 'customer' space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, I spoke to Scott Gould of Like Minds, Aaron+Gould and Scott Gould & friends about leadership, building communities and the world of social media.
Today, I want to introduce you to Syed Hasan, CEO of ResponseTek, who is leading provider of integrated customer experience solutions focusing on automating and operationalising customer feedback and voice of the customer information within businesses. ResponseTek helps their clients to listen more, learn quicker and spend less on their customer experience programs.
What I like about Syed is that he takes a very straight-forward, pragmatic and back to basics approach to building their business and helping deliver consistent and better customer experiences for their clients.
Late last month, I wrote a post called Three strategic pillars for 2011, where I explained the different themes I would be pursuing on the blog over the course of the year. One of them - Curate - was about finding and sharing content from different thought leaders, writers and entrepreneurs. I first thought that this would be only be via video interview but as it has turned out it will be via a combination of text, audio podcast and video.
First up in the series is an interview with Grant Leboff, author of Sticky Marketing, that just came out on January 3rd 2011 and is already high in the Amazon charts.
This is the twelfth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, in Adobe, Customer Experience Management (CEM) and fear in the boardroom, I spoke to Rob Pinkerton, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Customer Experience Management across at Adobe.
Today, I want to introduce you to Laurence Buchanan who is Head of CRM & Social CRM at Capgemini here in the UK.
Our discussion focused on creating a customer centric business in the modern world.
This is the thirteenth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, in Social CRM, Customer Centric and Agile Business, I spoke to Laurence Buchanan who is Head of CRM & Social CRM at Capgemini here in the UK.
Today, I wanted to Michael Hill of complaintsrgreat.com, a business that specialises in helping businesses manage customer complaints better.
This is number fifteen in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, in What is a Chief Customer Officer, I spoke to Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys, is a premier global provider of wired and wireless network infrastructure and security solutions.
Today, I am excited to introduce you to Mark Mullen, the new CEO of first direct, a bank renowned for its customer centric approach to its business and one that has won numerous awards, accolades and admirers over the last 22 years.
Following hot on the heels from, Great customer service and customer experience requires emotional intelligence – Interview with Jo Causon of The Institute of Customer Service, today I am excited to introduce you to Qaalfa Dibeehi, chief operating and consulting officer of Beyond Philosophy™, a pioneering global customer experience consultancy with offices in London and Atlanta.
This interview makes up number eighteen in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, The emotional component of customer experience: the next competitive battleground – Interview with Qaalfa Dibeehi of Beyond Philosophy, today I am privileged to share with you an interview I recently conducted with Gary Burnison, Chief Executive Officer of Korn/Ferry International, the worldwide leader in executive recruitment and a premier provider of talent management solutions.
This interview makes up number nineteen in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, The Twelve Absolutes of Leadership: Interview with Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn/Ferry International, today I am privileged to share with you an interview I recently conducted with Martha Rogers and Don Peppers of Peppers and Rogers Group, a management consulting firm, recognized as the world's leading authority and acknowledged thought leader on customer-based strategies and underlying business initiatives..
This interview makes up number twenty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Extreme Trust and why it’s important for your customers and your business – Interview with Martha Rogers and Don Peppers, today I want to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Karl Chapman CEO of Riverview Law, a new type of law firm and one that is reinventing customer experience in the legal market.
This interview makes up number twenty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Reinventing customer experience in the legal sector – Interview with Karl Chapman of Riverview Law, today I want to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Mikkel Svane, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zendesk, a fast growing and venture-capital funded cloud based customer service platform.
This interview makes up number twenty-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, The customer service revolution is here and now – Interview with Mikkel Svane CEO of Zendesk, today I want to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Will McInnes, Managing Director and co-Founder of NixonMcInnes, a Social Business Consultancy operating in London and Brighton.
This interview makes up number twenty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Social Business: walking the talk and debunking some of the myths: Interview with Will McInnes of NixonMcInnes, today I want to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Kevin Kruse, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and NY Times bestselling author. He speaks and writes about human capital, startup success and how to unleash your inner entrepreneur.
This interview makes up number twenty-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Employee engagement is not something that is done to employees – Interview with Kevin Kruse, today I'm very excited to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Frank Eliason, the father of social service or customer service on social media, about his new book.
This interview makes up number twenty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, #PositivelySocial and why customer service in social media is a failure – Interview with Frank Eliason, today I’m very excited to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Ian McGarrigle, Chairman of the World Retail Congress about the upcoming conference in London on 19th-21st September where they will be discussing the key topics at the heart of every retail boardroom - customer understanding, changing patterns of behaviour, mobile, stores, omni-channel, sustainability, brand and marketing, leadership, technology, and international expansion.
This interview makes up number twenty-sixth in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Retailers and their customers – what’s now and what’s next – Interview with Ian McGarrigle of the World Retail Congress, today I’m very excited to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Kerry Bodine, vice president and principal analyst in Forrester's customer experience research practice, about her new book: Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business.
This interview makes up number twenty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, The Age of the Customer – Interview with Kerry Bodine about her new book Outside In, today I’m very excited to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Alexis Dormandy, Founder at LoveThis, about his new venture: LoveThis, the place to find your friends recommendations on everything from restaurants to builders. Founded in 2010, and launched in 2011, LoveThis helps friends find the things their friends recommend in over 30 countries around the world.
This interview makes up number twenty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Spread the love – Interview with Alexis Dormandy of LoveThis.com, today I’m very excited to share with you an interview that I conducted with Joshua March, the CEO and co-founder of Conversocial, back in August about his company and social customer service.
This interview makes up number twenty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Social customer service can make your business more customer focused – Interview with Joshua March, Conversocial, today I am very, very excited (this was one of my blogging goals this year!) to share with you an interview that I conducted with Chris Brogan CEO & President of Human Business Works, a business design company using publishing and media to provide tools and insights smarts to help professionals and business owners work better.
He's been blogging since 1998 and his site, www.chrisbrogan.com, is one of the most popular business and marketing blogs in the world, ranked at number 3 in AdAge's Power 150: A Ranking of Marketing Blogs.
The Impact Equation is Chris' new book (co-written with Julien Smith) and is about how to get your important ideas distilled, spread across a platform that you’ve built, and cared for and understood by other people. It’s not a sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Trust Agents, but it does encompass a lot of what the authors have learned between the publication of that book and the years following.
This interview makes up number thirty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Build relationships with your customers that matter – Interview with Chris Brogan on The Impact Equation, today I am pleased to present to you an interview I did with Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction, the leading customer engagement platform that helps companies build better relationships with their customers and prospects, through the best online customer community.
Note: Hat tip to Guy Stephens (@guy1067) for the interview suggestion and for introducing me to Wendy.
This interview makes up number thirty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, True customer engagement is not based on click throughs or contests – Interview with Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction, today I am pleased to present to you an interview I recently did with Dave Carroll, a singer songwriter and the maker of the famous United Breaks Guitars video on Youtube. Whilst still a singer songwriter, he is now also an entrepreneur, speaker and an author of a new book: United Breaks Guitars - The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media.
Note: Hat tip to Guy Stephens (@guy1067) for the interview suggestion and for introducing me to Dave.
This interview makes up number thirty-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Following on from my recent interview, Customer service in the future will be a company wide mentality and not a department – Interview with Dave Carroll of United Breaks Guitars, today I am pleased to present to you a first: A follow on interview from the one I did with Karl Chapman of Riverview Law back in June.
Karl and his team at Riverview Law were kind enough to invite me along to an event that held recently at Middle Temple in London. The event was discussing the future of the legal industry and included a panel discussion that featured Mitch Kowalski who has just published a book called: Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century - which focuses on the future of the law firm. Following the panel discussion, I caught up with Mitch to talk to him about his new book, the future of the legal industry and the pressures that are forcing law firms to become more client centric.
This interview makes up number thirty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Today’s interview is with Rohit Bhargava, a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company, and the author of six best selling business books including the Wall Street Journal best seller Non-Obvious. Rohit joins me today to talk about his new book: Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future, what he’s learnt about trends over the last ten years and what we should be focusing in the coming years if we want to improve the service and experience that we deliver.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – 2019 was the year of hype and snake oil when it came to chatbots. 2020 will be a year of pragmatism and real results – Interview with Abinash Tripathy of Helpshift – and is number 329 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Following on from my recent interview, Influence marketing, Klout, social scoring and why they are important – Interview with Mark Schaefer, today I want to share with you an interview that I conducted with Rob Brown, Systems Thinking Director at Aviva, who has done some great work using system thinking and has had fantastic results in improving customer satisfaction, the delivery of customer service and employee engagement.
I met Rob when he spoke at a systems thinking event hosted by John Seddon and Vanguard Consulting.
This interview makes up number thirty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Note: Before we get stuck into the interview, here's an article: What is the Difference between Lean and Systems Thinking, that is worth reading.
Following on from my recent interview, Using systems thinking to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement – Interview with Rob Brown of Aviva, today I am very excited as I want to share with you an interview that I conducted with David Hieatt, an entrepreneur that is not short on experience in creating businesses and brands that customers love.
This interview makes up number thirty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
At the the Inbound Marketing UK conference that I wrote about in Inbound marketing is about content and context, I was able to catch up with a couple of the speakers for interviews for the blog. The first was with Mike Volpe, the Chief Marketing Officer of Hubspot, and you can check it out here: Inbound and content marketing may make up 80% of all marketing in the future.
Following on from the interview with Mike, I was also able to catch up with David Meerman Scott, the keynote speaker at the conference and author of several books on marketing, most notably The New Rules of Marketing and PR with over 250,000 copies in print in more than 25 languages.
In the interview, we talk about inbound marketing, the impact on traditional marketing, what your inbound and traditional marketing ratio mix should be and newsjacking.
This interview makes up number thirty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Recently, I spoke to David Meerman Scott in Inbound marketing is about instant communications and creating content – Interview with David Meerman Scott.
To follow that and as a result of my attendance at that conference, I met Richard Young (@richard_y), the Director of EMEA at Nimble. He arranged for me to speak to Jon Ferrara, the CEO of Nimble and a veteran and pioneer in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Social CRM space.
In the interview, we have a broad ranging discussion about customer relationship management (CRM), social CRM, social media, social business, the changing nature of business, relationships in business and personal and professional effectiveness.
This interview makes up number thirty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Today's interview is with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who has recently added The Commitment Engine to the set of books that he has authored.
John is a legend when it comes to small business marketing and in our interview we talk about his latest book, why commitment and clarity are important to any business if you are to create fanatical fans and employees and shares some tips on how he keeps up to speed as a small business owner himself.
This interview follows my recent interview (CRM, social media, social business and the future – Interview with Jon Ferrara of Nimble) and makes up number forty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
I'm excited to share with you a recent interview I conducted with Seth about his new book project: The Icarus Deception. Seth is a bestselling author and a legend when it comes to marketing and business thought leadership. In our interview we talk about his latest book, the interesting way that he got it funded, why it is important to take risks and what is changing around us.
This interview follows my recent interview (Commitment, clarity and fanatical customers and employees – Interview with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing) and makes up number forty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Recently in the podcast series, I shared an interview with you called: Using systems thinking to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement – Interview with Rob Brown of Aviva.
I met Rob at an event run by John Seddon and Vanguard Consulting. John was speaking at the event too and I and was lucky enough to get John to agree to be interviewed and share a few thoughts with us.
This interview makes up number forty-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Today's interview is with Jacob Morgan, the Principal & Co-Founder of Chess Media Group, a management consulting and strategic advisory firm focused on collaboration. He has also authored of The Collaborative Organization, a best-selling book on collaboration strategy.
Increasing collaboration within organisations using social tools like Chatter, Yammer and Jive etc is increasingly becoming an area of focus amongst businesses as they seek to leverage internal social business tools to help improve communication, efficiency, knowledge sharing, employee engagement and other issues.
This interview follows on from my recent interview with Prof. John Seddon on Systems thinking, customer service and unlearning the way we do things and makes up number forty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Neville Hobson, an entrepreneurial communications professional who has been blogging since 2002 and podcasting since 2005. This interview came about after Neville posted on his blog in the middle of December that he started blogging ten years ago. Following that post, I was thrilled when he agreed to be interviewed for my blog about the lessons that he had learnt from his years of blogging and podcasting.
This interview follows on from my recent interview with Jacob Morgan Solve customer and business problems faster through collaboration and makes up number forty-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Vala Afshar and Brad W. Martin of Enterays who have recently written a book called The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence, which charts Enterasys' transformation into a truly social business.
This interview follows on from my recent interview with Neville Hobson in Lessons from ten years of blogging and eight years of podcasting and makes up number forty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Vala's name may be familiar to some of you as I interviewed him back in September 2011 in: What is a Chief Customer Officer.
There's some great insights in interview and less theory and more ideas about what they have done, what works and what they have achieved.
Today’s interview is with Sarah Wood of Unruly Media and follows on from my recent interview: Social business is not just social media, it takes real transformation – Interview with Brad W Martin and Vala Afshar of Enterasys.
Founded in 2006 by Scott Button, Matthew Cooke and Sarah Wood, Unruly has 120+ full time employees and offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, LA, London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Sydney.
Unruly has delivered, tracked and audited 1.65 billion video views across 2,000+ successful social video campaigns for over 400 brands since 2007. Milestone campaigns include T-Mobile’s Life’s for Sharing series, Evian’s global Roller Babies hit, Old Spice’s Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign and Coca-Cola’s Happiness series.
Unruly’s mission is simple: to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet.
However, it was when they ranked No. 27 in the Sunday Times' 100 Best Small Companies to work for in 2012 that I decided I'd like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful.
This interview makes up number forty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Gary Vaynerchuk and follows on from my recent interview: Unruly engagement, creativity and collaboration is built on two things: People and Places - Interview with Sarah Wood of Unruly Media.
If you haven't heard of Gary then suffice it to say he is a successful social media and wine entrepreneur, sought after and entertaining speaker and best-selling author. You can also learn more about him in the bio below.
This interview makes up number forty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Also, this interview is part of Gary's #1aDayQandA interview series where he has committed to giving 365 short interviews to different people about different topics over the course of this year…some effort!
Today’s interview is with Keith Lewis, the UK Managing Director of Matchtech, the UK’s number 1 and multi-award winning recruitment agency in Engineering & Technology recruitment, and follows on from my recent interview: Our customer service and success is driven by happy people all striving for the same high standards: Interview with Will Beckett of Hawksmoor
It was when they ranked No. 25 in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to work for in 2012 that I decided I’d like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful.
This interview makes up number forty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Phil Barden, MD of decode marketing ltd and author of 'Decoded. The Science Behind Why We Buy' and follows on from my recent interview: Employee engagement inside one of the UK’s best companies to work for – Interview with Keith Lewis of Matchtech
This interview makes up number fifty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Lee Cockerell, who has had a hugely successful career working for Hilton Hotels, Marriott Hotels and Resorts and The Walt Disney Company. Lee now runs his own company to share what he has learned over his career and joins us today to talk about his 2nd and new book: The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service.
This interviews follows on the back of last week's interview: Customer service and customer loyalty can be improved by using decision science – Interview with Phil Barden and is number fifty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Doug Richard made famous in the UK for being one of the first Dragons on the BBC series, Dragon's Den. More recently Doug started the School for Startups in 2008 to provide accelerated instruction to entrepreneurs and it has grown into a world leader in delivering targeted programs that teach people how to start and run better businesses. One of their flagship programmes is their School for Creative Start Ups and it is on the back of this that Doug recently published a book: How to Start a Creative Business: the jargon-free guide for creative entrepreneurs which aims to teach creative people how to turn their creative hobbies and skills into sustainable businesses. He joins us today to tell us a little more about the book and why he wrote it.
This interviews follows on the back of last week’s interview: The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service and is number fifty-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Dave Kerpen, the cofounder and CEO of Likeable, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing firm which includes Likeable Media, Likeable Community College, and Likeable Local - a provider of social media solutions for small business using proprietary software.
He is also a New York Times bestselling author and today he joins us to talk about his recent book Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More and How Leaders Can Deliver, which was released in October of last year.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Doing more to help creative business start ups grow and succeed – Interview with Doug Richard and is number fifty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Hugh Anderson of Forth Metrics, a software company that is creating new, simple marketing analytics tools. Their first tool, Inkybee, aims to help small businesses and PR agencies to get more out of their blogger outreach by helping discovering blogs, manage the outreach process and measure the results.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Being Likeable, leadership, customer and employee engagement – Interview with Dave Kerpen and is number fifty-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
I've written about the work that Hugh is doing before in Word of mouth marketing and how to get bloggers talking about your business.
Today’s interview is with Molly Flatt, Word of Mouth Evangelist for global marketing agency 1000heads, to get some insight into how to get the most out of your word of mouth marketing.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Blogger outreach and building trust with your customers – Interview with Hugh Anderson and is number fifty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jessica Hagy, who is widely known for her award winning blog: Indexed (I've been a subscriber for years!). Recently, she wrote an article for Forbes magazine on How To Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps). That article was incredibly popular. So much so that she has turned it into a book: How to Be Interesting: An Instruction Manual.
Apart from being a fan of Jessica's work, I thought the interview and subject matter was apt and appropriate for some of the issues that I explore here on the blog. I hope you enjoy it.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Word of mouth marketing starts with proper listening – Interview with Molly Flatt of 1000 Heads and is number fifty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Stan Phelps an “experience architect”, author, professor and popular keynote speaker. Hat tip for the idea for this interview goes to James Lawther who recently hosted a guest post (5 Easy Ways to Increase Employee Engagement) from Stan on his blog.
Stan recently published a new book: What's Your Green Goldfish?: Beyond Dollars: 15 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement and Reinforce Culture and joins us today to share some insight into the book and the lessons that businesses can draw from it.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: How to be more interesting (and keep customers for longer) – Interview with Jessica Hagy and is number fifty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mark Bower, co-founder and CTO of CubeSocial, who are developing and have launched some cool products in the social CRM and customer engagement space, particularly for professional service firms.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Employee engagement is a commitment not a campaign – Interview with Stan Phelps and is number fifty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Dr Nicola Millard, a customer experience futurologist with BT, who does have a crystal ball but says it doesn't work! However, she spared me some time to shares with us insights around the work that she does, the research that BT is doing and helps us look just over the horizon, or round the corner, in terms of what's coming up in the ever changing world of the customer, customer service and customer experience.
This interview follows on the back of last week’s interview: Customer engagement, social CRM and cool tools for professional services firms – Interview with Mark Bower and is number fifty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Fabio Torlini, VP of Marketing, International with Rackspace, the open cloud company, who are famous for delivering Fanatical Support to their customers.
It was when they ranked No. 7 in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to work for in 2013 that I decided I’d like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful.
This interview follows on the back of my last interview: Customers, customer service, customer experience and crystal balls – Interview with Dr Nicola Millard of BT and is number sixty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Josh Kaufman, the author of the #1 international bestseller "The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business". However, today's interview is about his new book: "The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything….FAST!" Thanks go to the folks at Penguin/Portfolio, particularly Richard Lennon, who facilitated the setting up of the interview.
This interview follows on the back of my last interview: Delivering Fanatical Levels of Customer Support – Interview with Fabio Torlini of Rackspace and is number sixty-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image - one of the largest independent Digital Marketing agencies in North America - and hugely popular blogger and podcaster at Six Pixels of Separation. Back in 2009, he authored a book by the same name, Six Pixels of Separation, which went onto to become a business and marketing bestseller.
However, he joins us today to talk about his recently released book: Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.
This interview follows on the back of my last interview: Improve your business, yourself and your team with rapid skill acquisition- Interview with Josh Kaufman and is number sixty-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Chris Ives, managing director and founder of Ilkley Brewery. I was introduced to Chris by the nice folk at the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as someone with a great story and one that would appeal to readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast interview series.
This interview follows on the back of my last interview: Time to reboot your business and you? Interview with Mitch Joel about Ctrl Alt Delete and is number sixty-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Tom Walsh, CEO of Staycity. I was introduced to Tom by a contact of mine, Pawel Grabowski. Similar to my last interview (Creating products that customers love – Interview with Chris Ives of Ilkley Brewery), Tom is an 'outsider' in his industry. Tom shares his story of how they are building and developing their business, what he has learnt along the way, what the biggest challenges have been and why customer service is key to everything they do.
This interview is number sixty-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Steve Curtin, Customer Enthusiast, who has recently published Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary. This interview follows on from my recent interview: It’s all about customer service, customer service, customer service – Interview with Tom Walsh CEO of Staycity and is number sixty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Ryan Cheyne, People Director at Pets at Home, who agreed to talk to me about employee engagement and what it took to come 1st in the Sunday Times Top Big Companies to Work in 2013, after we meet at the European Customer Experience World conference earlier this year.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary – Interview with Steve Curtin - and is number sixty-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Bernadette Jiwa, two time author of #1 Amazon Bestsellers, who agreed to talk to me about her new book (already a #1 Amazon Bestseller): The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 keys to a great brand story and why your business needs one.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Employee engagement and what it takes to be the best – Interview with Ryan Cheyne of Pets at Home – and is number sixty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mark Schaefer, one of the most acclaimed and accomplished marketing consultants in America as well as being a best selling author. He agreed to talk to me about his new book that he co-authored with Stanford A. Smith (@pushingsocial): Born to Blog: Building Your Blog for Personal and Business Success One Post at a Time.
You might recognise Mark's name from the blog as I interviewed him last year about his last book: Return On Influence in Influence marketing, Klout, social scoring and why they are important. However, this time around we were able to organise a podcast interview :)
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Outstanding brands become part of their customers story – Interview with Bernadette Jiwa – and is number sixty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Luis Suarez @elsua, a leading thinker, Knowledge Manager, Community Builder and Social Software Evangelist for IBM. He agreed to talk to me about employee engagement following a Twitter exchange after I recently published Sustaining businesses successfully through Employee Engagement on the blog.
I warn you that it is a longer interview than normal but it's worth it and you should take the time to listen to it as there is some great, useful and insightful stuff in there from Luis.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Helping customers, standing out, being human and telling stories through blogging – Interview with Mark Schaefer – and is number sixty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Marsha Wright, serial-entrepreneur, author, investor and speaker. She agreed to join me to talk about her new book: The Secret Collaborative Economy: More Clients, More Exposure, More Profit, Faster!?
This interview follows on from my recent interview: The 9 ½ Principles of Innovative Customer Service – Interview with Chip Bell – and is number seventy three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Sam Boonin, Vice President of Products at Zendesk, about their recently published Q2 Benchmark report that shows that customer satisfaction is on the rise globally.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Employee engagement is about human relationships not human resources – Interview with Luis Suarez of IBM – and is number seventy in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Nikolaus KImla, CEO and partner of pipelinersales.com, about how they are trying to reinvent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and his belief that sales people are the entrepreneurs of the corporate landscape.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer Satisfaction Is On The Rise Globally – Interview with Sam Boonin, VP Products at Zendesk – and is number seventy one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Chip Bell, a renowned consultant, trainer and speaker to many of the most innovative brands in the world. He is also the author of 20 different books and joins us today to talk about his new book: The 9 ½ Principles of Innovative Service.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer Relationship Management CRM systems can be more human – Interview with Nikolaus Kimla, CEO of pipelinersales.com – and is number seventy two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Abinash Tripathy, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Helpshift, which provides an AI-powered conversational platform that companies use to resolve service issues more efficiently, boosting customer satisfaction in the process. Abinash joins me today to talk messaging, the gaming industry, chatbots, snake-oil, hype, getting pragmatic and delivering real results.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Fanocracy and building a true human connection – Interview with David Meerman Scott – and is number 328 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Dee Blick, bestselling business author, marketing consultant and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. She agreed to join me to talk about her new book: The 15 Essential Marketing Masterclasses For Your Small Business.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Business Growth Via Strategic Alliances….Done The Right Way – Interview with Marsha Wright – and is number seventy four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson, authors and leading experts in the field of customer service and social customer service. They agreed to join me to talk about their new book: Delivering Effective Social Customer Service: How to Redefine the Way You Manage Customer Experience and Your Corporate Reputation.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Marketing Requires Not Just New Tools and Skills But New Attitudes – Interview with Dee Blick – and is number seventy five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff the co-founders of Honest Tea. Today they join me to talk about their new book (Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently--And Succeeding) which recounts their stories, both personal and professional, of how they conceived, started and grew Honest Tea from zero to a turnover of just less than $100 million and then sold the company to Coca Cola.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Leading A Renaissance in English Whisky – Interview with Andrew Nelstrop – and is number seventy six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Andrew Nelstrop, the Managing Director of English Whisky, who are the 1st registered whisky distillery in England in over a century. He shares some insights into his experience over the last 7 years and their plans for the future.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Delivering Effective Social Customer Service – Interview with Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson - and is number seventy six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mark Hurst, who founded Creative Good in 1997, a New York based consulting and services company focused on the customer experience. Today, he joins me to talk about his new book: Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World - With a Single Step, that he recently co-authored with his colleague Phil Terry.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: How to create a successful, mission driven business in a profit driven world – Interview with Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff of Honest Tea – and is number seventy seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Kevin Kelly, is a leading authority on the success principles of entrepreneurship, leadership, sales and motivation. Already a best selling author, he joins me today to talk about his new book: DO! - The pursuit of xceptional execution.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Deliver great customer experience by including your customers – Interview with Mark Hurst of Creative Good – and is number seventy eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Peter A. Hunter, an author and leading authority on employee engagement. Following an exchange on the Engage For Success LinkedIn group, I arranged to have a chat with Peter about his thoughts on employee engagement and his new book: The Problem With Management - and How to Solve It.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Learning from the university of the customer and the co-worker – Interview with Kevin Kelly - and is number seventy nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Ken Olisa OBE, who is the founder and Chairman of Restoration Partners, a boutique technology merchant bank that provides advice to technology firms. Restoration Partners, by their own admittance, shamelessly copy the traditional Warburg merchant-banking model of developing long term, trusted relationships with their clients and aligning their interests and rewards. Ken agreed to talk to me about his family motto: "Do Well, Do Good", why he thinks it's important that entrepreneurs and business follow this mantra, his experience as a successful entrepreneur and his interest in both good governance and social inclusion.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Employee engagement is like rolling a snowball uphill – Interview with Peter A. Hunter – and is number eighty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jim Dicso, President and Chief Revenue Officer of SundaySky, which has pioneered technology that allows firms to deliver personalised videos to their customers in real-time. This allows firms to lower costs, increase engagement and grow revenues. Jim agreed to talk to me about the cool things that SundaySky are doing with SmartVideo, particularly in the area of proactive customer service.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Doing Well, Doing Good And Learning The Lesson Of The Orangutan – Interview with Ken Olisa of Restoration Partners – and is number eighty one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Shep Hyken, a customer service expert, professional speaker and bestselling author who works with companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. Shep has just published a new book: Amaze Every Customer, Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering The Most Amazing Customer Service On The Planet and I was really pleased when he agreed to talk to me about the book, his experience and to share some insights.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Smart proactive customer service that delivers results – Interview with Jim Dicso of SundaySky - and is number eighty two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Bian Salins, Head of Social at Now TV, BSkyB. I was introduced to Bian by Martin Hill-Wilson who suggested I should talk to Bian as she was one of the few people that really 'gets' what it is to be a 'social business'. More importantly, he said, she doesn't just talk about it….she makes it happen for big organisations. Therefore, I was very excited when Bian agreed to spend some time sharing her experience and a few insights around social business and what it takes to make the transformation into a more social business.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: The Tools To Deliver Amazing Customer Service Every Time – Interview With Shep Hyken – and is number eighty three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Yuval Brisker, the co-founder of TOA Technologies, which was picked in October 2013 as 'A Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management'. Yuval joins me today to talk about what they are doing, what makes them stand out and how they are removing the 'friction' from the last mile of customer service.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Real life lessons on how to build a social business – Interview with Bian Salins – and is number eighty four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Note: Apologies for some minor issues on my voice during the interview......what can I say.....technology and technical hitches....that we were able to overcome. Apologies if it affects the interview. I've edited it and applied some magic and don't think it is too bad. However, I'll let you be the judge of that :)
Today’s interview is with Craig Dubitsky, the founder and CEO of hello products. They first came to my attention when I heard that Craig has his Skype address on the homepage of their website as a way of encouraging their customers to get in touch. I was even more intrigued when I found out they are reinventing a category in the consumer products market and having some phenomenal success. Craig joins me today to talk about what they are doing, why they are doing it, what makes them stand, what he's learned along the way and their plans to make the world a friendlier place, starting with your mouth.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Removing the ‘friction’ from the last mile of customer service – Interview with Yuval Brisker of TOA Technologies – and is number eighty five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Dave Keeling, who is 6’ 2”, ginger, a professional actor and has been a ‘stand-up’ educationalist for over 10 years. Dave has recently published a book called: The Little Book of Laughter: Using humour as a tool to engage and motivate all learners. Whilst the book is primarily aimed at people in education, I believe there are lessons and parallels for how we build teams, develop them and create engaged employees. I also thought it'd be great to finish the series of interviews this year with a little bit of humour :)
Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to present to you my discussion with Dave, where we talk about why having fun should be in everyone's job description, how we can use humour as a tool to engage and motivate people, how it helps improve communication, learning and engagement in the workplace and why laughter is important to the workplace.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer service done different and fast reinvention of a faceless product category – Interview with Craig Dubitsky of hello – and is number eighty six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures and the Planeterra foundation. Bruce recently had a book published called Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business, which recounts the story of the founding and development of G Adventures from a garage office start-up into the largest small group adventure travel company in the world and Bruce’s quest to develop a business model that balances karma, community and culture to produce outstanding results.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Improve employee engagement and customer service through the use of humour – Interview with Dave Keeling - and is number eighty seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Michael Haringman and David Quastel of QuastelMidgen, a law firm in London. Michael is the firm’s senior partner and David is the firm’s managing partner. They join me today to talk about doing things differently in the legal industry, their model of partner led service and what it means to deliver 'first-class service'.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Looptail and changing the world through fully engaged employees and customers – Interview with Bruce Poon Tip – and is number eighty eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with David Lloyd, who is CEO of Intelliresponse, a leading provider of virtual agent technology solutions and knowledge base management software for enterprises. David joins me today to talk about some of the cool things they are doing with virtual agent technology, customer self-service and what stops enterprises from getting more from this channel.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Delivering first-class customer service – a law firm’s perspective – Interview with QuastelMidgen - and is number eighty nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Tim Pickard, who is Chief Marketing Officer for NewVoiceMedia, a leading cloud multi-channel contact centre provider. Tim joins me today to talk about cloud contact centre technology, the technology cycle and the rate of adoption by larger organisations and an issue that they are championing called 'One Agenda'.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Does your customer experience support customer success and low-effort? – Interview with David Lloyd of Intelliresponse - and is number ninety in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mark Lancaster, who is CEO of SDL, who provide technology and services to optimize the global customer experience for clients all over the world, including 42 of the top 50 global brands. Mark joins me today to talk about the challenges of delivering a global customer experience and what it takes to be successful at it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer engagement and the alignment of sales, marketing and customer service – Interview with Tim Pickard of NewVoiceMedia – and is number ninety-one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Please note that this interview was recorded in a public place so there is a bit of background noise. Not too much. But, I just thought I should let you know.
Today’s interview is with Girish Mathrubootham, who is founder and CEO of Freshdesk, an online customer support Saas software solution. Girish joins me today to talk about how to turn customer service into a marketing opportunity/asset.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Most websites fail to facilitate the customer journey – Interview with Mark Lancaster of SDL – and is number ninety-two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Nick Chater, who is Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School and co-founder of the research consultancy Decision Technology. Nick joins me today to talk about behavioural science, how our brains are hot-wired to make us all storytellers and how we can apply lessons from behavioural science to help us deliver better customer service and a better customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: It’s not about the channels in your support, it’s about the support in your channels – Interview with Girish Mathrubootham of Freshdesk – and is number ninety-three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Charlie Peters, who is Senior Executive Vice President of Emerson, a diversified global manufacturing and technology company that is working to solve the world's most complex engineering challenges. Emerson has a market capitalisation of$45 billion, approximately 135,000 employees and 235 manufacturing locations worldwide.
Charlie is a 40+ year veteran of Emerson and his main responsibility is to develop innovative global business models that build the company’s capabilities and create added value for Emerson’s customers. Commonly known as Emerson’s “innovation guru”, Charlie joins me today to talk about the changing world of B2B customer experience and what future business models might look like.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Behavioural science offers insight how customer experience can be improved – Interview with Prof. Nick Chater – and is number ninety-four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Matt Gorniak, Co-founder/COO at G2 Crowd, a new source for crowdsourced and trusted business software reviews, covering everything from CRM to accounting to content management systems to supply chain and logistics and all the way back again.
I wrote about G2 Crowd before in Choosing and comparing CRM software? – Pointers from the crowd and Matt joins me today to talk about how they are disrupt the business software buying process, the business software market and G2Crowd's plans for the future.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: The changing world of B2B customer experience and what the future looks like – Interview with Charlie Peters of Emerson – and is number ninety-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Chris Malone, founder of Fidelum Partners and recent author with Professor Susan T Fiske at Princeton of a new book: The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies. Following an introduction by Stan Phelps, who reviewed the book here, Chris was kind enough to make some time to talk to me about the book, what's changing around us and how we can make businesses or brands more human and why that is important.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Power to the customer – Interview with Matt Gorniak of G2Crowd – and is number ninety-six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Huggy Rao, Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford Graduate School of Business and co-author of a new book, with Robert Sutton, called: Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less. Huggy joins me today to talk about the book, the key scaling challenges that confront every organization and how you spread pockets of excellence across an organisation.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Transforming the internal customer service experience of your IT dept – Interview with Jason Andrew of BMC Software – and is number ninety-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Gary Ambrosino, President and COO of Timetrade. Gary joins me today to talk about the the work that they are doing helping a number of top banks in the USA transform their in-branch customer experience, how every retailer can now deliver a ‘Genius Bar’ experience and what retailers can do to reduce the affects of 'showrooming'.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Scaling up excellence is not a footprint problem but a mindset problem – Interview with Huggy Rao – and is number ninety-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Sid Banerjee, CEO of Clarabridge, a leader in the Customer Experience Management (CEM) space, particularly when it comes to helping firms mine their customer data to make better business decisions. Sid joins me today to talk about why he thinks industry, what firms can do to respond to the changes around them how they should be leveraging the right data from the right sources in order to drive actionable results.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Everyone can create a ‘Genius Bar’ customer experience – Interview with Gary Ambrosino of Timetrade – and is number one-hundred in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Rob Howard who is the Chief Technology Officer of Zimbra, a leader in the unified collaboration software space. Their solutions include email, calendaring, file sharing, activity streams, social communities and more. Rob joins me today to talk about how Texas Instruments leverages Zimbra's online community software to drive customer feedback and how to build valuable and effective customer support communities.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer experience requires a new type of responsive leader – Interview with Sid Banerjee of Clarabridge – and is number one-hundred and one in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who has recently added Duct Tape Selling to the set of books that he has authored. John joins me today to talk about his new book, how sales in changing and what sales people and businesses can do to adapt to their changing environment to help serve their customers better.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Building valuable customer support communities – Interview with Rob Howard of Zimbra – and is number one-hundred and two in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with John Marick, the co-founder and CEO of Consumer Cellular, a fast-growing and awarding winning provider of cell (mobile) phones and services in the US. John joins me today to talk about his company, why they are growing so fast, what rules they are breaking and what they are doing differently.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: The art of selling has to change because the art of buying has changed – Interview with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing – and is number one-hundred and three in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jess Stephens, Director and Co-founder of TagPoints, a mobile proximity marketing platform that uses beacon technology to help retailers gain loyal customers and generate valuable data. Jess joins me today to talk about her company, their growth, customer loyalty and what they are doing differently.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Not having contracts equalises our relationship with our customers – Interview with John Marick of Consumer Cellular – and is number one-hundred and four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corp. and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink.com, the world's largest community dedicated to customer-centric business. Bob’s also just authored a book: Hooked On Customers: The Five Habits of Legendary Customer-Centric Companies and joins me today to talk about the book, what he thinks being customer centric really means and the five habits of successful firms.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Mobile marketing, customer retention and customers expecting to be known – Interview with Jess Stephens of TagPoints – and is number one-hundred and five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Dr. Jack Lewis, Managing Director and Founder of NeuroFormed and recent author, with best selling author and motivational speaker Adrian Webster, of Sort Your Brain out. Jack joins me today to talk about the book, what neuroscience can teach us about customer service and how customers make decisions.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: The habits of leading customer centric businesses – Interview with Bob Thompson – and is number one-hundred and six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Nick Barlow, who is in charge of Creative and Media for Small Batch Coffee - a Brighton based (and local to me) ‘Boutique Coffee Roaster’ who sell coffee online (retail and wholesale) and also operate 7 coffee shops/vans around Brighton, Sussex. Nick joins me today to talk about the Small Batch Coffee, their story, social media and how they have used it to serve their customers, solve their problems and build better relationships with them.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Neuroscience, customer service and why we should always deliver and never over-promise – Interview with Dr. Jack Lewis – and is number one-hundred and seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Joan Babinski, founder and vice president of marketing at Brainshark, which helps thousands of companies around the world improve productivity with cloud-based business presentation solutions for sales, marketing and training. Joan joins me today to talk about Brainshark and how they built a community of customer advocates that helped them grow their business.
Background: Brainshark has more than 400 champions in its customer champion programme and, since starting it in 2012, has more than quadrupled the number of companies willing to serve as references and more than doubled Twitter activity around the brand. Brainshark also won a Forrester Groundswell Award for it’s programme, which has resulted in amplification of its content, acceleration of the sales cycle and deeper levels of engagement with customers (for example, more customers are enthusiastic about joining beta programs, etc.).
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Great service, great coffee and great people creates loyalty – Interview with Nick Barlow of Small Batch Coffee – and is number one-hundred and eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jan Jensen, the CMO of Trustpilot, an open, review-driven community connecting online consumers. Through their platform Trustpilot also help companies proactively collect reviews and get real insight from their customers. Launched in 2007, their service has seen rapid adoption with already more than 7.5 million reviews of over 85,000 individual companies. The company has developed strong positions in Denmark, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and is now entering the US. Jan joins me today to talk about Trustpilot, their recent Trust Series which delves into what it takes today to build trust with customers and what lessons other businesses can learn.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: How we built a community of customer advocates – Interview with Joan Babinski of Brainshark – and is number one-hundred and nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Vivek Jetley, Senior Vice President and co-Head of Analytics and Head of Corporate Strategy at EXL, a business process solutions company that integrates operations management services, decision analytics and technology platforms to help their clients deliver immediate results and long-term business impact. Vivek joins me today to talk about how companies need to create customer service teams that are cross-functional and multi-disciplinary, the convergence of customer service, sales and marketing and the challenges of implementing a big data strategy.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Using customer reviews to drive service improvement, WoM and growth – Interview with Jan Jensen of Trustpilot – and is number one-hundred and ten in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Steve Abernethy, Executive Chairman andCo-founder of SquareTrade, the leading extended warranty service provider for consumer electronics and appliances. Steve joins me today to talk about SquareTrade, why they have made their company's focus customer happiness, how they’ve made a traditionally ‘uncool’ sector cool and how customer loyalty is changing.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer insight, big data and the bigger skills gap – Interview with Vivek Jetley of EXL – and is number one-hundred and eleven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Steve Sims, Chief Design Officer & Founder of Behavior Lab at Badgeville, the number one gamification platform for enterprises. Steve joins me today to talk about Badgeville, the work they do, customer loyalty and the motivation and psychology behind loyalty programmes.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer loyalty is becoming a collective experience – Interview with Steve Abernethy of SquareTrade – and is number 112 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist at BT, where she heads up customer insight & futures with BT Technology, Service & Operations' Global Innovation team. Some of you may remember my previous interview with Nicola last year (Customers, customer service, customer experience and crystal balls – Interview with Dr Nicola Millard of BT). Well, I decided to ask Nicola back for a chat after seeing her present at the the recent 20:20 Customer Experience Summit. So, today, Nicola joins me to talk about a new concept called Customer Easy, whether her predictions from last time are coming true, her views on the use of text messaging for inbound customer service and what she see are the big issues that forms are grappling with in the customer experience and customer service space and what is coming next.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: What drives customer loyalty – Interview with Steve Sims of Badgeville – and is number 113 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with David Meerman Scott, an internationally acclaimed business strategist, author, entrepreneur, advisor to emerging companies, and public speaker. David joins me today to talk about his new book that he co-authored with his daughter Reiko: Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans, how it came about and what we can learn from it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The winner of the 2019 CX Leader of the Year – Interview with Sandra De Zoysa, Chief Customer Officer of Dialog Axiata – and is number 327 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
This is the fourteenth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, in Customer complaints are great, I spoke to Michael Hill of ComplaintsRGreat (complaintsrgreat.com), a business that specialises in helping businesses manage customer complaints better.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys, who I connected with on Twitter after he spotted my post: What else can you do with customer testimonials? and retweeted it. Following that, I reached out to Vala being intrigues by his title: Chief Customer Officer and asked him if he'd like to be interviewed for the blog.
Today’s interview is with Dr Mark Smith who is CEO and co-founder of ContactEngine, a multi-channel, interactive contact engine, whose cloud based software helps their clients improve efficiency, lower costs and drive growth through happier customers. I met Mark at the recent 20:20 Customer Experience Summit in London and he told me about what they were doing, who they were working with and the sort of results that they were helping deliver. So, I invited Mark onto the podcast to tell me a bit more about ContactEngine and some of the fascinating things they are doing to help field service management become a strength for their clients rather than a weakness.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Should ‘Net Easy’ be your new customer service metric – Interview with Nicola Millard of BT – and is number 114 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jamie Anderson, Global Vice President Product Marketing, Customer Engagement & Commerce at SAP. Jamie joins me today to talk about a concept called brand self-awareness, what we can learn from the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, and what customer engagement really means.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Improve customer experience by surveying your customers quicker – Interview with Mark Smith of ContactEngine – and is number 115 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Adrian Collins, the MD of Ziggurat Brands. Adrian joins me today to talk about innovation and a business and set of products (bac<) that they have developed that aims to transform back-care in the UK.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer engagement and lessons from the Scottish poet, Robert Burns – Interview with Jamie Anderson of SAP – and is number 116 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Alan Trefler, who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pegasystems, the publicly traded American software company which has several products that focus on customer service and predictive analytics. Alan joins me today to talk about his new book: Build For Change, which argues for a complete overhaul of how businesses think about and use technology to create customer-centric organizations.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Successful innovation doesn’t have to involve a massive breakthrough in technology – Interview with Adrian Collins of bac< and Ziggurat Brands – and is number 117 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Charlie Peters, who is Senior Executive Vice President of Emerson, a diversified global manufacturing and technology company that is working to solve the world’s most complex engineering challenges. Emerson has a market capitalisation of $45 billion, approximately 135,000 employees and 235 manufacturing locations worldwide.
Charlie is a 40+ year veteran of Emerson and his main responsibility is to develop innovative global business models that build the company’s capabilities and create added value for Emerson’s customers. Commonly known as Emerson’s “innovation guru”, this is the second time Charlie has joined me on the podcast. First time around, back in February earlier this year, he joined me to talk about: The changing world of B2B customer experience and what the future looks like. Today, Charlie joins me to talk about 'B2B versus B2C marketing’ and 'Big Data versus ‘little data’.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Business needs to be agile and customer centric if it is to avoid the coming customerpocalypse – Interview with Alan Trefler, CEO of Pegasystems – and is number 118 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Peter Kriss, Senior Research Scientist at Medallia, whose software helps corporations track and manage the experiences of their customers. Medallia’s software, delivered as an Internet service, integrates and delivers data from everywhere that a company that touches a customer, analyses it and presents it visually so that employees can see very quickly what is going on and then decide how to respond. When he’s not at Medallia, Peter is also the Director of Research for Vision Prize.
Peter joins me today to talk about the work that he is doing on valuing the impact of delivering a great customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Big and little data, building trust and B2B marketing – Interview with Charlie Peters of Emerson – and is number 119 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with David Mattin, Head of Trends & Insights at trendwatching.com, who help over 260,000 subscribers and 1,200+ clients understand the new consumer and uncover innovation opportunities through their reports and trend watching services.
David joins me today to talk about their September 2014 Trend Briefing - The Future Of Customer Service: Five trends that will redefine great service in 2015 and beyond.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Quantifying the business value of a great customer experience – Interview with Peter Kriss of Medallia – and is number 120 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Geraldine McBride, CEO of MyWave, a next generation CRM solution that puts the customer in charge of their data and their experience.
Geraldine joins me today to talk about MyWave, the emerging Personal Information Management (PIM)/Customer Managed Relationship (CMR) space and how we are moving from the era of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to the era of CMR (Customer Managed Relationships), where the customer is now in the driving seat.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Five key trends that will define the future of customer service – Interview with David Mattin of trendwatching.com – and is number 121 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Carey Smith, founder & CEO (Chief Big Ass), and Dave Waltz, Customer Advocate, of Big Ass Fans, a manufacturer of high-volume low-speed fans for industrial, agricultural, commercial and residential use.
Carey and Dave join me today to talk about how their customer service strategy has been central to growing the business from $34 million in revenue in 2009 to a projected $175 million in 2014, what they are doing that’s different, silent complaints, why they hired a full-time customer advocate and what that person (Dave and his team) does and what they are responsible for.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Moving from the era of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to the era of CMR (Customer Managed Relationships) – Interview with Geraldine McBride of MyWave – and is number 122 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Ted Coiné and Mark Babbitt, co-authors of a new book called: A World Gone Social: How companies must adapt to survive. They join me to talk about their book, the challenges that they see many firms facing, how to address these challenges and why customer service is not only an issue for whole organisations but is also a leadership issue.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Find and fix customer problems by hiring a Customer Advocacy Manager – Interview with Carey Smith and Dave Waltz of Big Ass Fans – and is number 123 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Stew Bloom, CEO of Aspect, who help enterprise contact centres deliver their customer experiences across every channel through their software platform. Stew joins me today to talk about proactive customer service and why proactive customer service drives customer loyalty.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Social leadership and why the C-Suite has to go social – Interview with Ted Coiné and Mark Babbitt – and is number 124 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Angela O’Connell, the Strategy & Marketing Director for MetaPack. Founded in 1999, MetaPack provides a SaaS delivery management system to retailers, third-party logistics companies and carriers enabling better choice and more freedom in delivery options to all consumers, both in B2B and B2C markets. Angela joins me today to talk about recent research about consumer feelings, anxieties and preferences about deliveries following online purchases, the last mile/yard of customer experience and where companies can improve.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Proactive customer service drives customer loyalty – Interview with Stew Bloom of Aspect – and is number 125 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with S. Chris Edmonds, who is the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group. Chris joins me today to talk about his new book: The Culture Engine: A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace, which gives firms and leaders a new framework for building and maintaining the culture that they need to develop in order to compete and drive their businesses forward but one that they can develop without falling behind on everything else.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Nearly 60% of customers will go elsewhere following a bad delivery experience – Interview with Angela O’Connell of MetaPack – and is number 126 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Laurence Chami, Managing Director of Eptica, a European provider of multichannel customer interaction software with a global reach. Laurence joins me today to talk about the work that Eptica are doing, the challenges that many companies face providing customer service via email, differences to approaches across geographies and why email as a customer service channel is here to stay.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Different customers have different journeys and needs – Interview with Daniel Lind of Qmatic – and is number 128 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Melvin Brand Flu, Partner and Director of Strategy and Business Design at Livework, a leading service design company. Melvin joins me today to talk about the work that Livework do and some of the research that they are doing around irritation curves.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer service by email and differences across geographies – Interview with Laurence Chami of Eptica– and is number 129 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Mikkel Svane, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zendesk, a fast growing and recently listed (NYSE) cloud based customer service platform. Mikkel joins me today to talk about: Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business - his new book that tells the story of how they grew their cloud based customer service platform from a kitchen table in Denmark to Silicon Valley, a listing on the NYSE and customers in over 150 countries.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Do you know if you are irritating your customers? – Interview with Melvin Brand Flu of Livework– and is number 130 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Matt Lautz, President and CIO of CorvisaCloud, a provider of call centre software and a cloud based enterprise communications platform. Matt joins me today to talk about B2B customer service and customer experience, why it needs to improve, what lessons B2B can learnt from B2C and a few predictions about what's coming up in the customer service/customer experience arena.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Startupland – Zendesk’s journey from a kitchen table in Denmark to the NYSE – Interview with Mikkel Svane – and is number 131 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Ron Kaufman, Founder and Chairman of UP! Your Service and author of New York Times bestselling Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet. Ron joins me today to talk about uplifting service, building a service culture, some examples of companies that are excelling at this and and why that’s important that every company builds their own service culture.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Proactive customer service will pay back ten fold – Interview with Matt Lautz of Corvisa - and is number 132 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Micah Solomon, a speaker, consultant, and bestselling author on customer service, the customer experience, and company culture. He's also a fellow Forbes contributor and joins me today to talk about his new ebook (Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business), what are the biggest lessons that firms should be learning right now with regards to the rise of new types of customers and what actions they should be taking.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Compliments received are a leading indicator of service culture improvement – Interview with Ron Kaufman of UP! Your Service – and is number 133 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and deliver great service and experience.
Today’s interview is with Nicolae Naumof, an applied behavioural science specialist, who helps businesses to increase customer satisfaction and increase profitability. Happier Customers & Higher Profitability through Behavioural Science Applied in Service Design is his motto. I came across Nicolae (Nick) following a Twitter exchange between Wim Rampen and Graham Hill regarding ‘applied behavioural economics and #gamification in the design of services. Nicolae joins me today to talk about his ebook:It Makes (No) Sense: In between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing, which is a 'mini-encyclopedia of behavioural science’, how we can apply behavioural science in service design and some of the big lessons that can be learned from behavioural science and how that can apply to service design and customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer service, customer experience and millennials – Interview with Micah Solomon – and is number 134 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and deliver great service and experience.
Today’s interview is with Eetu Raudas, Eemeli Ahonen and Kalle Ek of Gizlo, a software company from Finland that connects retailers and individual shop owners to customers through a platform used for mystery shopping, store audits and consumer surveys by making use of the customers own smartphones. Eetu, Eemeli and Kalle join me today to talk about their application, what they are up to in the voice customer space, success to date in Finland and their plans for taking the UK by storm.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Behavioural science is a gold mine for service design and customer experience – Interview with Nicolae Naumof– and is number 135 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and deliver great service and experience.
Today’s interview is with Peter Shankman, an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and worldwide connector. Peter joins me today to talk about his new book: Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans, a book about how to create fans that not only keep returning to do business with you but also help you massively grow your customer base, brand awareness and revenue.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Are you making it hard for your customers to give you feedback? – Interview with Gizlo – and is number 136 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Dana Miller, the SVP of Client Services at Crimson Hexagon, a social media data analytics firm that enables users to listen to and understand the opinions expressed on social media. Dana joins me today to talk about "voice of the customer" (VoC) programmes and how listening in social media can help.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Turning your customers into a horde of zombie loyalists – Interview with Peter Shankman – and is number 137 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with John Huehn, founder, President & CEO of In The Chat, a social media sales and customer service company, that is aiming to make text message and social customer service easy with their software. John joins me today to talk about how text messaging as a customer service channel doesn’t get the press that it deserves but that it can offer great benefits to businesses that implement it as a channel.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Social listening could replace traditional voice of the customer methods – Interview with Dana Miller of Crimson Hexagon – and is number 138 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Peter Mühlmann, Founder and CEO of
Trustpilot. You might recall that I interviewed Jan Jensen, Trustpilot’s CMO back in July 2014 about ‘Using customer reviews to drive service improvement, WoM and growth’. This time around Peter joins me on the podcast to talk about they have been able to maintain their company’s culture as well as their ability to deliver an excellent customer experience in the face of rapid sales, employee and geographical growth in the last few years.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Text messaging: a customer service channel whose time has come – Interview with John Huehn of In The Chat – and is number 139 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with David Conway who is a senior partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Nunwood, an international customer experience consultancy focused on ‘full-service’ customer experience management (CEM). David joins me on the podcast today to talk about Nunwood’s US Customer Experience Excellence Report 2015 that they have just released, some insights into what the leading players are doing to help them stand out, some examples and what the main differences are that exist between CX in the UK and the USA.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Scaling customer and employee trust – Interview with Peter Muhlmann of Trustpilot – and is number 140 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Mark Earls, a writer and consultant to business and government on marketing and communications as well as being a leading thinker on brands and behaviour. He joins me today to talk about his new book: Copy, Copy, Copy: How to Do Smarter Marketing by Using Other People's Ideas.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer experience: UK brands are 2-3 years behind the US – Interview with David Conway of Nunwood – and is number 141 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Daniel Lind, Head of Business Development at Qmatic, a company who through its software and hardware is helping organisations manage their online and offline customer experience. Daniel joins me today to talk about the work that Qmatic are doing to help improve the customer experience, especially as it relates to waiting and getting better served.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: An organisational constitution improves employee engagement and customer experience – Interview with Chris Edmonds – and is number 127 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Sandra De Zoysa who is the Group Chief Customer Officer of Dialog and the Chairperson of the Digital Customer Experience Expert Working Group for Axiata. Dialog Axiata is one of Sri Lanka's largest telecommunications service providers, and the country's largest mobile network operator with 14.275 million subscribers which amounts to 44% of the Sri Lankan mobile market. She is also the winner of the MyCustomer.com 2019 CX Leader of the Year. She joins us today to talk about Dialog, the work that she has done over the last 20+ years, what it means to live a life of service and what becoming the 2019 CX Leader of the Year means to her.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The state of workplace happiness and why it matters – Interview with Lord Mark Price of Engaging Works – and is number 326 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Following on from my interview last month, What makes first direct so successful: Interview with their new CEO Mark Mullen, today I am excited to introduce you to Henry Stewart, the CEO of Happy Ltd, the umbrella training organisation that delivers IT, Management, and Personal Development Training. They've won lots of awards, which you can check out here. Their biggest award was when The Financial Times rated Happy as one of the top 2 places to work in the entire UK economy. This was the result of their annual Best Workplaces award, organised with the Great Place to Work Institute.
This interview makes up number sixteen in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
It's been a wee while since I've published an interview here on the blog. So, following on from the interview, Creating a great place to work is the best business investment decision you could ever make – Interview with Henry Stewart, that I did in early December, today I am excited to introduce you to Jo Causon, the CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, the independent, professional membership body for customer service.
This interview makes up number seventeen in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
The rationale for the interview is that I reached out on Twitter to the Institute via Twitter and asked as I thought Jo would have a lot of interesting stuff to say. As my Mum always said: 'If you don't ask, you don't get'. Jo didn't disappoint.
In Inbound marketing is about content and context, I reported back from Inbound Marketing UK. However, whilst there I was able to catch up with Mike Volpe, the Chief Marketing Officer of Hubspot, who was speaking at the conference. In the interview, we talked about inbound marketing, where people should start, how much of their marketing should be inbound/content focused and a bunch of other things.
This interview makes up number thirty-seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping create businesses that customers love.
Today’s interview is with Will Beckett of Hawksmoor, a rapidly growing restaurant brand in London, and follows on from my recent interview: Customer service, people and how caring does scale – Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk #1aDayQandA
It was when they ranked No. 36 in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Small Companies to work for in 2012 that I decided I’d like to find out more about what makes them tick and what makes them so successful.
This interview makes up number forty-eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things and helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.
Today’s interview is with Jeremy Waite, Head of Digital Strategy, EMEA @Salesforce Marketing Cloud. He joins me today to talk about his new book: From Survival to Significance.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Copying your way to increased innovation, creativity and competitive advantage – Interview with Mark Earls – and is number 142 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Guy Letts, founder and Managing Director of CustomerSure, a cloud based software firm that helps businesses gather feedback from their customers – not as an annual marketing exercise but as part of day-to-day business. Guy joins me today to talk customer reviews, customer feedback, a better way to do it and that most firms are doing it wrong.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Brands with purpose build better relationships with their customers – Interview with Jeremy Waite – and is number 143 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Michael O’Leary, Chief Executive of Ryanair, a European low-cost airline, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Ryanair is also the largest European airline by scheduled passengers carried and also the busiest international airline by passenger numbers. Michael joins me today after he responded to a recent article I wrote (Does Michael O'Leary Really Care About Ryanair's Customers, Or Is He Just Being Pragmatic?) but also to talk about humility, Herb Kelleher, bourbon and starting to listening to and being nicer to customers.
Today’s interview is with Scott Pulsipher, President & COO of Needle, a US software firm that is pioneering advocate-assisted commerce. Scott joins me today to talk about what Needle are up to, trust, customer experience and advocate-assisted commerce.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: A degree of humility always succeeds in business – Interview with Michael O’Leary of Ryanair – and is number 145 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Sanish Mondkar, who is Chief Product Officer at Ariba (a SAP company). Ariba established the Ariba Network - a cloud-based community where you’ll find buying, selling, and managing cash to be as easy as using Amazon, eBay, and PayPal.Sanish joins me today to talk about customer experience in B2B, what lessons they have learned from B2C, Total User Experience, what they are doing about it and what lessons others can learn.
This interview follows on from my recent interview: Advocate assisted commerce improves customer experience and drives business results – Interview with Scott Pulsipher of Needle – and is number 146 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Dr. Paul Redmond who is a leading expert on generations and the graduate labour market. Dr. Redmond joins me today to talk about a report that was recently released by Capgemini and Pegasyatems that looks at how UK millennials are engaging with insurance companies, how important social media is in that context and the lessons that can be learned from learned from the research.
This interview follows on from my recent interview - Improving B2B customer experience through Total User Experience – Interview with Sanish Mondkar of Ariba – and is number 147 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Sebastian Henkes and Claire Clifford who are the Managing Director and Head of HR and People Development respectively at Sabio, a systems integrator that specialises in providing contact centre solutions. Sebastian and Claire join me today to talk about the fact that Sabio have recently been named as one of the best places to work in the UK, what makes Sabio such a great place to work and what lessons other firms in the contact centre space could learn from their experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview –Millennials and how they engage with insurance companies – Interview with Dr Paul Redmond – and is number 148 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Jo Taylor, former Director of Talent Management at Talk Talk, a provider of pay TV, telecoms, internet access mobile services to businesses and consumers in the UK. Jo joins me today to talk about what it takes to build a dynamic, responsive and evolving culture.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Building a better place to work helps develop long term customer relationships – Interview with Sebastian Henkes and Claire Clifford of Sabio – and is number 149 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Jeanne Bliss, who is the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). Jeanne joins me today to talk about her new book: Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The pre-life, early life and in-life stages of the employee experience – Interview with Jo Taylor – and is number 150 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with James McGourlay, who is the Senior Vice President of Global Technical Services at OpenText, a global leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM) & Canada's largest software company. James joins me today to talk about some of the big challenges that they are seeing and hearing about from their customers, how they are helping them and he also gives a view and update on the perennial challenge of creating a unified view of the customer.
This interview follows on from my recent interview –How Chief Customer Officers build their organisations customer growth engine – Interview with Jeanne Bliss of CustomerBliss – and is number 151 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Damian Thompson, Director of Distribution at Principality Building Society, a Welsh building society founded in 1860 and head-quartered in Cardiff. Principality is the largest building society in Wales and the sixth largest in the United Kingdom. Damian joins me today to talk about how they transformed their customer experience by moving from a performance target culture to a behavioural model and how that has delivered sustained and consistent improvement in their customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Towards a unified view of the customer – Interview with James McGourlay of OpenText – and is number 152 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Paige O'Neill who is Chief Marketing Officer of SDL, a global Customer Experience software solutions provider. Paige joins me today to talk about SDL’s latest global Customer Experience Thought Leadership research into when Customer Experience fails (and when it triumphs), exactly what happens, and why?
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How we transformed our organisation and our customer experience – Interview with Damian Thompson of Principality Building Society– and is number 153 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Lord Mark Price, who is the founder of engaging.works, an author, speaker, Chair of the Fairtrade organisation, Member of the House of Lords and former Managing Director of Waitrose and Deputy Chairman of The John Lewis Partnership. Mark joins me today to talk about engaging.works, workplace happiness and their The State Of Workplace Happiness Report - 2019.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Pathfinder customers and employees are demanding more of senior leaders – Interview with Katherine LaVelle of Accenture – and is number 325 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Today’s interview is with Ian Siegel who is co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter.com, a job platform for small and medium sized businesses which provides them with the fastest and easiest way to get a job listing in front of millions of candidates as well as some additional on-boarding features. Ian joins me today to talk about the growth of the company, being the company’s first customer service representative and how they continue to delight customers today through their approach.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience failures are more likely to be remembered than successes – Interview with Paige O’Neill of SDL – and is number 154 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Gary Miles, who is the is the General Manager for Amdocs’ Big Data and Strategic Innovations unit. Amdocs is a leader in the customer experience software solutions and services space for the world’s largest communications, entertainment and media service providers. Gary joins me today to talk about working with their customers as partners to produce innovations that drive improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Having a goal of reducing customer service calls to zero – Interview with Ian Siegel of ZipRecruiter – and is number 155 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with David Politis, who is founder and CEO of BetterCloud, which provides critical insights, automated management, and intelligent data security for cloud office platforms. David joins me today to talk about proactive customer service, putting it into practice, how they make it work for their company and how it is allowing to differentiate themselves from their competition.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Innovation, customer experience and co-design partnerships with your customers – Interview with Gary Miles of Amdocs – and is number 156 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Michael Sharkey, Co-founder & CEO, and Guy Marion, CMO, of Autopilot, a Saas company that provides easy and visual marketing software for automating the customer journey. Michael and Guy join me today to talk about what they are doing, how they are working on creating customer journeys and creating unique marketing experiences that don’t feel like marketing and the impact of this type of approach on customer engagement and customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What you do when proactive customer service is in your DNA – Interview with David Politis of BetterCloud – and is number 157 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
NOTE: The audio from Michael and Guy is a little jumpy in places but it is still ok to listen to. The vagaries of technology and telephone line connections! Apologies.
Today’s interview is with Manuel Grenacher, who is the founder & CEO of Mila, a technology company which is helping large organisations crowd source their customer service and build extended service communities around their products and services. Manuel joins me to today to talk about what they are doing, why they are helping companies create those extended customer service communities and how they are doing it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Next generation marketing automation that drives real customer engagement- Interview with Michael Sharkey and Guy Marion of Autopilot– and is number 158 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Rory Sutherland who is Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather UK and co-founder of #ogilvychange. The Ogilvy & Mather Group UK is made up of 10 companies that work across a range of marketing disciplines. #ogilvychange is their specialist behavioural science practice that uses the latest thinking in cognitive psychology, social psychology and behavioural economics to help their clients create behavioural change in the real world.
Rory is a leading thinker in the marketing and advertising space and a huge proponent of how the application of insights from cognitive psychology and behavioural economics can positively impact business and customers. As a result, Rory joins me today to talk about behavioural economics, psychology, customer experience, the big impact that small changes can have and what business can and should be learning and doing with these insights.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How to enhance, extend and crowd source your in-field customer service – Interview with Manuel Grenacher of Mila – and is number 159 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Fiona McSwein, Chief Customer Officer at Simply Business, the UK’s favourite business insurance broker. They’ve just been awarded first place in The Sunday Times’ 100 Best Small Companies to Work For list (mid-sized category) this year. They are also a Sunday Times Tech Track 100 company and were recently named in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA. Fiona joins me today to talk about what it takes to build an award winning and customer centric culture.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Behavioural science, customer experience and why we should test more things – Interview with Rory Sutherland of #ogilvychange – and is number 160 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Geraldine McBride, CEO of MyWave, a next generation CRM solution that puts the customer in charge of their data and their experience. You might remember that I spoke to Geraldine just over a year ago (Moving from the era of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to the era of CMR (Customer Managed Relationships) and this interview was an opportunity to catch up and see what’s been happening in the data, privacy and development of the the emerging Personal Information Management (PIM)/Customer Managed Relationship (CMR) space.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What it takes to build an award winning and customer centric culture – Interview with Fiona McSwein of Simply Business – and is number 161 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Ian Fitzpatrick, Chief Strategy Officer and founding partner at Almighty, a Boston-based digital agency that helps its clients reimagine what it means to be their customer, and build tools, systems and experiences that support those relationships. They recently published a new report called Hearts, then Charts: a framework for meaningful approaches to customer experience that explores the challenges that organisations face in becoming customer centric and what they need to do to achieve that. He joins me today to talk about their research and what brands and leaders can learn from it. Hat tip to Ian Golding for putting me onto the report via his blog.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Let’s stop talking about data and start talking about outcomes – Interview with Geraldine McBride of MyWave – and is number 162 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Gareth Jones, Visiting Professor at the IE Business School, Madrid, and a Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School. He is also a founding partner of Creative Management Associates (CMA), a consultancy focused on organisations where creativity is a source of competitive strength. Gareth along with co-author Rob Goffee recently published a new book called Why Should Anyone Work Here? that explores what it takes to create an authentic organisation. Gareth joins me today to talk about the book, the research behind the book and the ideas within it.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer experience begins with the empowering of people to affect outcomes – Interview with Ian Fitzpatrick of Almighty – and is number 163 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Ben Reason, founding partner of Livework, a leading service design firm. They help organisations with customer related challenges and how they affect the business and the organisation. Ben along with Lavrans Løvlie and Melvin Brand Flu, two other Livework partners, has recently published a new book called Service Design for Business: A Practical Guide to Optimizing the Customer Experience. Ben joins me today to talk about the book, what they have learnt, service design and how firms can use it to improve their customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why Should Anyone Work Here? – Interview with Gareth Jones – and is number 164 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Michael Schneider who is the founder & CEO of Los Angeles-based Service (getservice.com), which is providing “on demand customer service” - this means that they helping consumers resolve issues that they have with businesses by taking them off their hands and managing their resolution. Michael joins me today to talk about what they are up to, how they do it, what he has learnt over the last few months and where they are going next.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The only person that everyone has in common is the customer – Interview with Ben Reason of Livework – and is number 165 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Rachel Lane, Director Customer Analytics EMEA at Verint, a US-headquartered analytics company which was founded in 2002. The company sells software and hardware products for security, surveillance, and business intelligence, which are designed through actionable intelligence to address issues in three areas: customer engagement optimization; security intelligence; and fraud, risk and compliance. Rachel joins me today to talk about a new report they have recently published about customer engagement and their findings related to data, trust and privacy.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Did the hardest part of customer service just get easier? – Interview with Michael Schneider of Service – and is number 166 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Ron Davis, who is co-founder and CEO of Tenacity, a new technology/software company that is helping contact centres change agent behaviours and transform their workplaces through peer accountability. Ron joins me today to talk about employee retention, turnover and engagement in the contact centre, the size of the problem, social physics and what Tenacity are doing to help address the situation.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer data mapping, engagement and developing trust – Interview with Rachel Lane of Verint – and is number 167 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Evan Carroll who is a marketing technologist, author and speaker. Evan joins me today to talk about his new book: Blue Goldfish: Using Technology, Data, and Analytics to Drive Both Profits and Prophets that he co-authored with Stan Phelps of 9 Inch Marketing.
Back in 2013, I spoke to Stan about a previous book in the series - What’s Your Green Goldfish? - which was number 57 in this interview series: Employee engagement is a commitment not a campaign. This time around I'm talking to Evan about what leading and smart firms are doing to leverage data and analytics in their businesses and how it is helping them drive improved performance and engagement.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Transforming agent attrition in the contact centre through social physics – Interview with Ron Davis of Tenacity – and is number 168 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Note: Please be aware that there is a slight echo, repeat, delay in the recording….technology!! It’s not too much of a bother, I believe. So, please persevere with it.
Today’s interview is with Anil Kaul who is the CEO and co-founder of Absolutdata, a big data and predictive analytics firm. They describe themselves as decision engineers, where they apply decision sciences to help improve decisions at the world's largest companies. Anil joins me today to talk about what they are up to and how predictive analytics can be used to help solve the problem of silent customer churn.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How to use data and analytics to improve the 3R’s with your customers – Interview with Evan Carroll – and is number 169 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Jay Baer, best-selling author, speaker and President of Convince & Convert, a strategy consulting firm that helps companies through the smart intersection of technology and customer service. Jay joins me today to talk about his new book: Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, why complaints are a key way to help you keep your customers, the different type of complainers that exist and how to deal with them.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Predictive analytics and solving the problem of silent customer churn – Interview with Anil Kaul of Absolutdata – and is number 170 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Hilary Scarlett, a speaker and consultant on change management and neuroscience at Scarlett & Grey. Hilary joins me today to talk about her new book: Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change, why our brains don’t like change, what people who manage change should think about doing differently, the role of emotions in the change process and how that emotions are contagious.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why every business should be hugging their haters – Interview with Jay Baer of Convince & Convert – and is number 171 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Joseph A. Michelli, Chief Experience Officer at The Michelli Experience, an internationally sought-after speaker, best-selling author, and organizational consultant. Joseph joins me today to talk about his new book: Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way, what Mercedes Benz USA did to transform their customer experience, how long it took them and what lessons others can draw from their experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Insights from neuroscience and making change programmes more effective – Interview with Hilary Scarlett – and is number 172 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is something different. It’s me, Adrian Swinscoe, being interviewed by Jonty Pearce of callcentrehelper.com about my new book (How to Wow: 68 Effortless Ways to Make Every Customer Experience Amazing) that has just come out. I’m both proud and pleased with how the book has turned out and Jonty and I talk a little about how the book came about, what’s in it and what you can expect from it. Check out the highlights below and grab a copy of the book. ;)
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Moving from product to customer centricity, the Mercedes Benz USA story – Interview with Joseph Michelli – and is number 173 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Cheryl Johnson, Head of HR for Echo Global Logistics. Cheryl joins me today to talk about what they are doing at Echo with regards implementing a real-time feedback system for their employees, why they are doing it, how it compliments their existing performance management systems and the results that they are achieving in terms of productivity, satisfaction and turnover.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How to create a wow customer experience – Interview by Jonty Pearce – and is number 174 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Sarah Metcalfe, Head of Customer Service at SureFlap, an award winning smart pet products manufacturer based in the UK. Sarah joins me today to talk customer feedback and innovation, what good service looks like and what it means for SureFlap and why employee engagement is integral to that.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Employee engagement, real-time feedback and organisational indigestion – Interview with Cheryl Johnson of Echo Global Logistics – and is number 175 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Delphine Mousseau, VP Markets at the fashion online retailer, Zalando, a very successful ecommerce company based in Berlin that sells shoes, clothing and other fashion items in 15 different countries across Europe. Delphine joins me today to talk customer service, what that means for Zalando, how they are using that to help them stand out and what they have learned about different customers in different countries.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Having a great product without great support doesn’t mean anything – Interview with Sarah Metcalfe of SureFlap – and is number 176 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Monica Higgins, eSalon's Director of Customer Service. eSalon is an award wining and rapidly growing company that provides salon quality, at-home hair color at affordable prices all online. Monica joins me today to talk customer service, what being proactive means for them and how they are providing salon level service and quality online.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Delivering an excellent customer experience across 15 different countries – Interview with Delphine Mousseau of Zalando – and is number 177 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Anthony Soohoo, Co-Founder & CEO of Dot & Bo, a curated and thematic home design and furniture shopping experience that is particularly targeted at millennials. Anthony joins me today to talk about what customer service means to Dot & Bo, why millennials, what they have learned from their experience and what the future holds.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Proactive customer service drives retention, advocacy and growth – Interview with Monica Higgins of eSalon – and is number 178 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Alison Esse, Co-founder and Director of The Storytellers, a culture change consultancy, and pioneers of storytelling in business. Alison joins me today to talk about a new piece of research that they have recently completed: 'Two Years' Warning: The Customer Centricity Crisis’, which explores the mindsets that exist around customer centricity in the world's largest organisations and also differences in attitudes and beliefs between leaders and employees.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – How TV helped create an engaging and effective millenial shopping experience – Interview with Anthony Soohoo of Dot & Bo – and is number 179 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with John Timpson CBE, Chairman of Timpson’s the UK and Ireland’s leading retail service provider of shoe repairs, key cutting, watch repairs, engraved personalised gifts, dry cleaning and assisted photo ID. They are also the UK’s fastest growing specialist locksmith service.
After hearing John speak at a recent conference, I asked him if he would be willing to be interviewed for my podcast series. John talks to me today about the Timpson story, upside down management, customer service and ex-offenders.
Today’s interview is with Cathy Brown, Exec Director at Engage for Success, a UK-based social movement that is committed to promoting employee engagement as a better way to work that benefits individual employees, teams, and whole organisations. Cathy joins me today to talk all things employee engagement, why it’s important and what firms should be thinking about and what they should be doing if they want to boost their levels of employee engagement.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Great service comes from doing things upside down – Interview with John Timpson – and is number 181 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Kerim Akgonul who is Senior Vice President of Products at Pega and is responsible for the company’s suite of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. I had a chat with Kerim at their annual customer event: Pegaworld 2016to find out more about what they are up to, what makes them different and how they are fast becoming the big, new challenger in the CRM space.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Your people know the best ways to improve your organisation – Interview with Cathy Brown of Engage For Success – and is number 182 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Jan Jensen Chief Marketing Officer at Cxense, a software as a service company that is enabling many of the world’s leading media, e-commerce and consumer brands to take control of their audience data to deliver more engaging and personalized user experiences. Jan joins me today to talk about personalisation, why many initiatives in this space fail, what firms can do about it and what role data and privacy concerns play.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Using analytics, decisioning and robotics to improve the employee and customer experience – Interview with Kerim Akgonul of Pega – and is number 183 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Rob Walker, Vice President Decision Management and Analytics at Pegasystems and is responsible for the company’s suite of predictive decisioning technologies. I had a chat with Rob at Pega's annual customer event: Pegaworld 2016 to find out more about what makes Pega different and a bit more about their analytics and decisioning technology, how it can be applied and how it can improve the customer experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Most personalisation initiatives fail to improve customer experience – Interview with Jan Jensen of CXense – and is number 184 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Rob Siefker, Senior Director of Customer Service Operations at Zappos.com and one of the speakers at Zappos Insights, a team within the Zappos Family of Companies that was created simply to help share the Zappos Culture with the world and to inspire positive change in the workplace. Rob joins me to talk about the School of Wow at Zappos Insight, what Wow service means to them, employee experience and holocracy.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Making customer interactions more human by using analytics, decisioning and artificial intelligence – Interview with Rob Walker of Pega – and is number 185 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Ben Velker who is Senior Vice President of Growth at Edgenet, a Nashville-based software-as-a-service company that provides industry-leading retailers, distributors, websites and suppliers with the ability to manage and improve their product content. Ben joins me today to talk about how Edgenet has turned around it’s customer service over the last two years, what they have done, how they have done it, why they didn’t go done the ‘more tech’ route and what that has meant for their business and their clients.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Zappos: Customer experience, employee experience, culture and holocracy – Interview with Rob Siefker of Zappos and Zappos Insights – and is number 186 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Jim Barnett, who is the chief executive officer, co-founder and chairman of Glint, an employee engagement platform which uses machine learning and real-time, data-driven decisions to help improve company culture, increase engagement, and positively affect employee retention. Jim joins me today to talk about employee engagement, what is an engaged employee, the main challenges to improving engagement, what Glint are up to and the sort of impact that they are having on their client’s businesses.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – You have to sit next to a customer to be able to really understand their pain – Interview with Ben Velker of Edgenet – and is number 187 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with David Kalt, founder and CEO of Reverb.com, an online marketplace where musicians go to buy and sell guitars and other music gear. Dave joins me today to talk about how they have made customer experience the job of each and every one of Reverb.com’s employees with "The Contest."
This interview follows on from my recent interview – If you are in employee engagement then you are in management development as well – Interview with Jim Barnett of Glint – and is number 188 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Janelle Mathews, senior VP for solutions at Genesys, a customer experience platform provider, which empowers companies to create exceptional omnichannel experiences, journeys and relationships. Janelle joins me today to talk about Genesys, the work they do and how they are helping their clients improve service and both the customer and employee experience.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Contest and getting everyone involved in delivering the best customer experience – Interview with David Kalt of Reverb.com – and is number 189 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Lee Evans, the Chief Executive Officer & Founder of SurveyMe, a fast, flexible and closed-loop approach to receiving, recording and rewarding 'Point of Experience' feedback. Lee joins me today to talk about customer surveys, closing the loop and linking feedback to action.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Delivering omni channel experiences that create memorable relationships – Interview with Janelle Matthews of Genesys – and is number 190 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to their customers.
Today’s interview is with Birgit Mager who is the Professor for Service Design at KISD, the Köln International School of Design, based in Cologne, Germany and the president of the International Service Design Network (SDN). Birgit joins me today to talk about service design, design thinking, why it’s becoming more and more popular and how it can be used to produce better outcomes for organisations, customers and employees.
Today’s interview is with Colin Shaw, Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy™, a global customer experience consultancy. Colin joins me today to talk about his new book (The Intuitive Customer: 7 Imperatives For Moving Your Customer Experience to the Next Level - co-authored with Ryan Hamilton, a Professor of Marketing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and a Beyond Philosophy colleague) and what insights companies can draw from neuroscience and behavioural economics to make their organisations and customer experience better.
Today’s interview is with Stephan Aarstol, Founder & CEO of Tower Paddle Boards, a direct to consumer beach lifestyle brand, based in San Diego, that started with stand up paddle board manufacturer and has now extended into surf, snorkel, bikes, skateboards etc. However, Stephan joins me today to talk about his new book: The Five-Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness, the idea behind it, how he has implemented it in his own firm and what has been the benefits for customers and employees.
Today’s interview is with Chris Lewis, CEO of global communications agency, LEWIS. Chris joins me today to talk about his new book: Too Fast to Think: How to Reclaim Your Creativity in a Hyper-connected Work Culture, the idea behind it, what he means by creativity, what are the implications of the hyper connected work culture we live in and what people can do about it.
Today’s interview is with Matthias Murin, Group Manager Customer Service at DocMorris, a Dutch online and mail-order pharmacy that provides medicines primarily to customers in Germany. Matthias joins me today to talk about DocMorris’ approach to customer service, the challenges of delivering a great customer experience over the phone and via email and why they have opted to go down a high-touch, high cost route when the industry wide trend is to try and reduce the cost to serve and increase levels of self service.
Today’s interview is with Bill Taylor, co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company, who now spends his time writing books and speaking to leadership audiences. Bill joins me today to talk about his new book: Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things In Extraordinary Ways, why he wrote it, it's central thesis, who's it for, some of the great stories in it and what's its purpose.
Today’s interview is with Donna Peeples, Chief Customer Officer of Pypestream.com, an enterprise mobile messaging platform that features the use of intelligent automation and chatbot technology. Donna and I had a great chat about a number of things including Pypestream, what they are up to, chat bots, getting the most out of them and how customers react to them.
Today’s interview is with Morris Pentel, who is the Chairman & Founder of the Customer Experience Foundation, a leading organisation in Customer Experience Science. Morris joins me today to talk about Customer Experience Science, Behaviour As Technology and his view on the biggest and current challenges for organisations trying to design and deliver a great customer experience for their customers.
Today’s interview is with PV Kannan, the co-founder and CEO of [24]7, a customer engagement platform which assists several hundred million visitors across all channels, and engages in 1.5 billion conversations annually, most of which are automated. PV joins me today to talk about [24]7, what they are up to, utilising AI and intelligent assistants in the deliver and improvement of customer experience, the balance of tech and the human touch in customer experience and his view on achieving the ‘right’ balance.
Today’s interview is with Rob Pace, the founder and CEO of HundredX, a technology platform/app that works with major brands such as professional sports teams, Mary Kay and the University of Notre Dame, to provide listening solutions and collect real-time feedback from customers and employees. Rob joins me today to talk about a number of things including customer feedback, HundredX’s research, listening, outcomes and why they use emojis rather than numerical scales?
Today’s interview is with Liz Graham , who is Vice President of Sales and Service at Wayfair, one of the world's largest online destinations for the home. Liz joins me today to talk about a number of things including getting the human and technology balance right when it comes to delivering a great customer experience, innovative recruitment strategies, using predictive analytics and AI to drive proactive service amongst other things.
Today’s interview is with Dr. Simon Moore (BSc, PhD, CPsychol), a Chartered business and consumer psychologist who specialises in uncovering emotional and personality influences on behaviour. He is also Management Director of Innovationbubble, a new type of insights agency that, using psychological insights and methodologies, investigates the real reasons that customers behave the way that they do and what brands should be doing about it. Simon joins me today to talk about the role of emotions in customer experience and whether firms should be designing their experiences to achieve certain emotions or if they should just be more mindful of their customers emotions.
Today’s interview is with Professor Jan van den Ende, who is Professor of Management of Technology and Innovation at RSM (Rotterdam School of Management), Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Jan joins me today to talk about a research paper that he and some colleagues recently published and how ignoring customers’ opinions can lead to more successful products.
Today’s interview is with Joshua Feast, who is the co-founder and CEO of MIT-spinoff Cogito Corp., that has developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology that delivers real-time emotional intelligence feedback for customer service professionals which helps them have better conversations and build stronger rapport with customers. Joshua joins me today to talk about what they are doing, the science and thinking behind the technology, where it is getting applied and the benefits they are seeing.
Non-obvious trends and what they mean for customer experience - Interview with Rohit Bhargava, who is a trend curator, author of five best selling books (including the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Non-Obvious") and founder of the Influential Marketing Group (IMG).
Today’s interview is with Amy Downs, the Chief Happiness and Customer Success Officer of Lifesize, a provider of enterprise & business-class video, audio, & web conferencing solutions, software, equipment & support. Amy joins me today to talk about customer obsession, Lifesize's transformation and what it takes to turn an Net Promoter score (NPS) of - 4 into a score of +80 in roughly 730 days.
Building a culture of good engages customers, employees and drives business results - Interview with Ryan McCarty and Scott Moorehead, founders of Culture of Good and the authors of a new book: Build a Culture of Good.
Insights from inside some of the world's highest performing organisations - Interview with Brian MacNeice, co-author of Powerhouse: Insider accounts into the world’s top high-performance organizations.
The power of social recognition in employee engagement - Interview with Ketti Salemme of TINYpulse, an employee engagement platform that combines pulse surveys, peer recognition, and performance reviews.
Bringing together disparate data sources is key to creating stand out customer experiences - Interview with Dave O'Flanagan of Boxever
Understanding consumer behaviour by going to the gemba - Interview with Michael Solomon, PhD who is Professor of Marketing in the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the author of one of THE books, if not THE original book, on consumer behaviour.
How D.O.M.O.R.E. will help you deliver an outstanding customer experience - Interview with Blake Morgan about her new book: More Is More: How the Best Companies Go Farther and Work Harder to Create Knock-Your-Socks-Off Customer Experiences.
Focus on the right things to drive your own customer experience revolution - Interview with Susan Ganeshan of Clarabridge
The ROI of investing in employee experience - Interview with Jacob Morgan about his new book: The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces They Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate
Trust, lean data and the rising importance of purpose as a customer preference - Interview with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Chief Marketing Officer at Mozilla.
Purpose and why it is important to employees and customers - Interview with Stan Phelps about his new book: Red Goldfish: Motivating Sales and Loyalty Through Shared Passion and Purpose.
The most successful companies start by improving one customer journey at a time - Interview with Don Schuerman, CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pegasystems.
Great service and why Basecamp only focuses on a couple of channels - Interview with Chase Clemons, a customer support team lead at Basecamp, a provider of project management and team communication software. We talk about Basecamp’s CEO Jason Fried assuming personal responsibility for all customer refunds, what that means in practice, what it’s like to work at Basecamp, what customer service means for them, particularly when they have approx 50 people in 30 different cities around the world and how they deliver great service to their clients.
Aligning the organisation around three key journeys and why passenger experience equals employee experience - Interview with Mattijs ten Brink of Transavia
Opaque and transparent AI and the ethical implications for customer experience - Interview with Rob Walker, Vice President, Decision Management and Analytics at Pegasystems.
Customer experience, personalisation and how not to be creepy - Interview with Tara Kelly, President & CEO of SPLICE Software, who are helping retailers, insurance companies, and banks optimize customer communications through the marriage of patent-pending human voice software, and personalized automated messaging systems.
How to rapidly scale and still maintain the highest customer service standards - Interview with Ed Ariel, VP of Customer Service at ezCater, the only US-wide marketplace for corporate catering.
Big data and technology is undermining our ability to develop our own hunches - Interview with Bernadette Jiwa, author of a new book: Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights into the Next Big Thing.
Understanding a customers context is the key to self-service success - Interview with Bill Colleran, President and Chief Executive Officer of AnswerDash, a predictive and artificial intelligence (AI) powered Q&A Saas platform that facilitates customer service for e-commerce businesses thereby reducing support costs and revealing customer needs.
Customer service and moving from the enterprise to the flexiprise - Interview with Keith Leimbach, CEO of LiveOps, a leading virtual contact center solutions company for the financial, health care, insurance and retail industries. Keith joins me today to talk about the human and tech balance in customer experience, striking the right balance and maintaining quality standards when you are managing a network of 20,000 virtual agents.
Marrying self organising teams and customer obsession - Interview with Andrew Lawson, Chief Product Officer of Zopa.com, a UK online personal finance peer-to-peer lending company founded in 2005. Andrew joins me today to talk about customer service, customer obsession, what it means to them and the shift to self-organising teams that they have recently undertaken.
Heroes and the craft of customer support - Interview with Nick Francis, CEO and co-founder of HelpScout, a Saas software company that provides an email-based customer support platform, knowledge base tool, and an embeddable search/contact widget for customer service professionals. Nick joins me today to talk about the ‘craft’ of customer support, making support and contact centre agents heroes and their latest Customer Support Survey.
Overcoming the barriers to delivering an excellent citizen experience - Interview with Ryan Hollenbeck and David Moody from Verint Systems, a global technology firm that provides Actionable Intelligence® solutions, to both public and private sector organisations, with a focus on customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance. David and Ryan join me today to talk about citizen experience, overcoming barriers to implementing successful digital strategies, particularly in the government and public sector arena and what government and public sector organisations could be doing better.
Eliminate blindspots and build engagement by getting to know your company better - Interview with Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Company, a software tool that helps business owners get to know their employees better and overcome company growing pains.
The meaning of personalised customer experience - Interview with Jamf, Paycor and Qumulo. Today’s interview is a little different and is the first time that we have tried to conduct a roundtable style interview on the podcast. My guests today are:
Sam Johnson, VP of customer service at Jamf, a provider of software for enterprises and smaller businesses that helps them manage their Apple devices,
Mark Wilson, Senior director of customer transformation at Paycor, a provider of recruiting, human resources, and payroll solutions through an integrated, cloud-based platform, and
Chris Lisica, Director of customer success at Qumulo, a provider of simple, scalable, and efficient enterprise data storage systems.
You don’t want to design a customer experience that is akin to getting in the cockpit of an F16 - Interview with Eric Hansen, founder and Chief Technology Officer of SiteSpect, a leading software platform that offers optimization, testing, targeting, and personalization solutions that allows businesses to create superior customer experiences.
Delivering a great customer experience is not really a technology challenge any more - Interview with Mark Smith, President of Kitewheel, which is the world’s only cloud-based Customer Journey Hub designed for innovative agencies and brands looking to move in step with the modern digital consumer.
The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing - Interview with Tom Fishburne, the Founder & CEO of Marketoonist, a cartoon studio focused on content marketing. He’s also a very popular cartoon blogger and has just published a new book called: Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings.
Creating a culture that stands for something and stands out - Interview with Tim Deeson, the founder of the digital agency Deeson, a leading European multidisciplinary digital transformation agency. Tim joins me today to talk about self-organising teams, what they’ve done, what they learnt along the way, what impact it has had on them and their clients and what advice he would give to other leaders thinking about their organisational structure and how it needs to change to bring out the best in their people and deliver better outcomes for customers.
The uniqueness in everyone is the largest asset you have in customer experience - Interview with Sam Johnson, VP of customer experience at Jamf, a provider of software for enterprises and smaller businesses that helps them manage their Apple devices. Sam joins me today to talk about the idea that despite the fact that Jamf is a ‘tech’ focused company, most of the people that they hire don’t have tech backgrounds, why they taken that approach, how it came about, what the benefits have been and what others can learn from it.
The Future Of Work, Workforce Experience and Being Digital - Interview with Erica Volini, who is the US Human Capital leader for Deloitte Consulting. Erica joins me today to talk about the Future Of Work, the implications for organisations, organisational transformation, Digital DNA and how the employee experience fits into all of this.
The more you invest in technology the more you have to invest in human beings - Interview with Arnaud de Lacoste Chief Marketing Officer of Sitel and Founding Partner of Group Acticall, a world leading provider of customer experience management & business process outsourcing solutions. Arnaud joins me today to talk about data, big and small, causation and correlation, the use of AI, the impact on insight and what brands should be doing to better connect with their customers.
Corporate Rebels and their bucket list show how to create inspiring workplaces - Interview with Pim de MorreeCo-founder at Corporate Rebels, who are on a mission to make work more fun. Pim joins me today to talk about Corporate Rebels, their quest to make work more fun, their Bucket List and what they have learned so far.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The more you invest in technology the more you have to invest in human beings – Interview with Arnaud de Lacoste – and is number 243 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Public Enemy and getting practical with AI in the contact centre - Interview with Mikhail Naumov, Co-Founder & President of DigitalGenius, a venture backed artificial intelligence (AI) company based in San Francisco & London. Digital Genius is focused on eliminating the mindless work customer service teams often have to deal with on a day to day basis so that they can focus on complex issues that technology, like a bot can't handle. Mikhail has also just published a book: AI Is My Friend: A Practical Guide for Contact Centers. As result, Mikhail joins me today to talk AI, contact centres, hype, reality and the new book.
Brands can create a better customer experience by being purpose driven - Interview with Alicia Tillman, the new global Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of SAP, the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software. Alicia joins me today to talk purpose and how brands can create a better customer experience by being a purpose driven brand.
The future of customer experience and how digital transformation is as much a human problem as it is a technology problem - Interview with Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist at Altimeter, a Prophet Company. Prophet is a consultancy that helps clients find better ways to grow by creating relevant brands and customer experiences, driving accelerated growth strategies and leveraging digital as a transformative force. Brian joins me today to talk about the state of customer experience, digital maturity, digital transformation, digital Darwinism and the future of customer experience.
Getting live chat right is much more than a software sale - Interview with Jamie Edwards of Kayako, co-founder and COO of Kayako, an omni-channel customer service platform that their customers use to talk to and support their customers. Jamie joins me today to talk about some recent research that they have conducted on the uses and successes of live chat software, what are companies getting right and what are they getting wrong and what customer service leaders should be fixing or doing differently when it comes to live chat.
Fairness For All, workplace happiness and an inside look at the John Lewis Partnership - Interview with Lord Mark Price, former Managing Director of Waitrose and Deputy Chairman of The John Lewis Partnership and author of Fairness For All (the first book to explore the unique and much admired model of the John Lewis Partnership).
The Age Of Agile and why agile is more than a tool or method - Interview with Steve Denning, who describes himself as a writer, author, journalist and a renaissance man. He is very modest so I have included a more detailed bio for him below. As well as being a fellow Forbes contributor, he has just published a new book called The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done and joins me to day to talk about the new book, the imperative behind it and what leaders and entrepreneurs need to be thinking about in order to build and sustain competitiveness in their organisations.
Ethics, technology and the impact of our decisions on customers and employees - Interview with Cennydd Bowles, a designer and writer focusing on the ethics of emerging technologies. Cennydd joins me today to talk about ethics, technology, emerging technology, design and the impact of the decisions we make on customers and employees.
Customer success needs to be the responsibility of the entire organisation - Interview with Fred Shilmover, the CEO and co-founder of InsightSquared, a provider of sales intelligence solutions for high-growth technology companies. Fred joins me today to talk about InsightSquared and their journey with implementing a customer success programme and how and why they changed it.
A story of putting Dan Pink's Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose into practice - Interview with Jeremiah Smith, President and CEO of SimpleTiger, a boutique digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO for entrepreneurs and software as a service firms. Jeremiah joins me today to talk about management styles and SimpleTiger’s discovery of Dan Pink’s three elements of motivation (autonomy, mastery, and purpose) and how they have developed a management system/approach that puts these three into practice.
Today’s interview is with Anne Bahr Thompson, pioneer of the Brand Citizenship movement, founder of OneSixtyFourth and author of a new book: DO GOOD: Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit. Anne joins me today to talk about brand citizenship, her research, her new book and the power of aligning purpose, profit and doing good in business.
Today’s interview is with Katherine LaVelle, Managing Director and North America Lead for Talent & Organization at Accenture Strategy. Katherine joins me today to talk about a new piece of research (New Rules for Engagement) which is based on interviews with 200 C-suite executives and a survey of more than 11,000 employees and consumers globally and explores the hypothesis that proactively reskilling the C-Suite can lead to both personal and bottom line benefits.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – The secrets behind Airbnb’s customer experience – Interview with Joseph Michelli – and is number 324 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
The role of voice in the future of customer experience - Interview with Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, a provider of call intelligence software that allows marketers to drive, track and automate inbound calls for better leads, greater marketing insight, and more customers. Gregg joins me today to talk about a recent report they have released, the impact of voice assistants on customer experience and the role of both intelligent voice assistants and the contact centre in the future of customer experience.
A tool to help us make better decisions and improve business, customer and employee outcomes - Interview with Matt Watkinson, consultant and award winning author of The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences. Matt joins me today to talk about his new book: The Grid: The Decision-making Tool for Every Business (Including Yours), why he wrote it, what problem it solves and what we can learn from it.
An honest and open discussion about how and why we evolved our approach to customer success - Interview with Eva Klein, VP of Customer Success at HubSpot, a technology company that builds sales and marketing software. Eva joins me today for a very open and honest conversation about HubSpot and customer success, their journey, how their approach to customer success has changed, what they have learned along the way and what we can learn from it.
Engagement, why do we do what we do and why does it matter to our customers - Interview with Scott Gould, an engagement advisor, speaker and author of the recent book: The Shape of Engagement: The Art of Building Enduring Connections with Your Customers, Employees and Communities. Scott joins me to talk about his new book, what engagement is and what it isn’t, what most organisations get wrong when it comes to engagment, what we can learn from his book and how we can put it into practice so we can generate more of it with both our customers and our people.
Striving for excellence has never been more important - Interview with Tom Peters, author of numerous business books (18 in total) and speaker. He joins me to talk about his latest book: The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last, what companies should be focusing on in the face of rapidly evolving technology, why striving for excellence is more important than ever, what that means and how we can put excellence at the heart of everything we do.
You don’t need more than 3 or 4 quality data points to deliver a personalised customer experience - Interview with Jonathan Lacoste and Ben Cockerell of Jebbit, the creator of the world’s first declared data platform. Jebbit are focused on doing two things: One, giving customers back control of the data that they share around their motivations, interests and buying intentions and, two, helping brands connect with these customers through the creation of visually appealing, mobile content experiences.
Today’s interview is with Anthony Abbatiello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and the Human Capital practice’s Digital leader. He joins me today to talk about Deloitte’s newly released annual Global Human Capital Trends Report (2018), some of the trends that emerged from the report and what they mean for leaders and entrepreneurs looking to build a business intent on delivering a great customer and employee experience.
Today’s interview is with Brian Hannon, the chief commercial officer at Voxpro - powered by TELUS International, a global and award winning customer experience outsourcer. Brian joins me today to talk about their approach, their clients partners (ahem!) and what they have learned from each other as they have grown together.
Lidl, disrupting the UK market and striving for simplicity - Interview with Ronny Gottschlich, the CEO and Founder of Heunadel Retail Advisory and former Managing Director of Lidl UK. Ronny joins me today to talk about disrupting the UK supermarket sector, Lidl’s approach to being able to achieve that and the role and value of simplicity in everything they do.
The potholes of scaling customer support and service - Interview with Michael Redbord, General Manager of the Service Hub at HubSpot, a technology company that builds sales and marketing software. Michael joins me today to talk about scaling a customer support/service team, the different stages that leaders need to be aware of, what to focus on at each stage and what to avoid.
When it comes to B2B customer experience most firms still have a lot of work to do - Interview with Nick Hague, Director and Chairman of B2B International, a leading global B2B market research and consulting specialist, and author of a couple of books. Nick joins me today to talk about his new book that he has co-authored with Paul Hague, his father: B2B Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to Delivering Exceptional CX, how it came about and what we can learn from it.
Every great business has a backstory that drives and compels the work they do - Interview with Bernadette Jiwa, Founder of The Story of Telling and a recognised global authority on the role of story in business, innovation and marketing and the author of a number of best-selling books on marketing and brand storytelling. Bernadette joins me today to talk about her new book: Story Driven: You don't need to compete when you know who you are, why stories and why now, a flavour of some of the stories in the book, why stories are so important and how to find your own story.
Should you be considering using blockchain for your customer loyalty program? - Interview with Jessica Groopman and Jeremiah Owyang, industry analysts and founding partners at Kaleido Insights. They join me today to talk about blockchain, customer loyalty programmes and why and when you should consider learning more.
Digital transformation and the pursuit of customer centricity: Lessons from the frontline - Interview with Martijn Gribnau, Chief Transformation Officer, at Genworth Financial, an S&P 400 insurance company that is focused on providing long term care insurance, life insurance, annuity retirement solutions and more. I spoke to Martijn at Pegaworld, Pegasystems’ customer event in Las Vegas in early June, where we talked about digital transformation, the pursuit of simplicity, customer centricity and leadership behaviour.
Getting help is often fraught with friction. It shouldn’t be - Interview with Tom Martin of Glance Networks, an enterprise software company that provides a "visual engagement platform" for their clients that combines cobrowse, agent video, and screen share into a tool for contact centre and customer support agents to help them interact with customers. Tom joins me today to talk about the challenge of providing tech support to your parents over the phone, how their technology works, the use case and why they chose to ask Forrester to evaluate the impact of the application of their technology.
Relevance, personalization and what many firms are missing when it comes to GDPR - Interview with Dr. Rob Walker, Vice President, Decision Management and Analytics at Pegasystems, a leading provider of software for customer engagement and operational excellence. I spoke to Rob at Pegaworld, Pegasystems’ customer event in Las Vegas in early June, where we talked about customer relevance, personalisation, artificial intelligence, GDPR and what firms should be focusing on in this era of constant change. This is the second of three interviews that I conducted at Pegaworld (like last year) so look out for the final one coming out in the next couple of weeks.
The finish is just as important as the start of any experience - Interview with Pauline Wilson, who is VP of Operations at Virgin Holidays. Pauline joins me today to talk about going undercover, better understanding their customers, their customer journey mapping initiative and the improvements that have sprung from that.
Customer engagement, AI and GDPR Article 22 - Interview with Jeff Nicholson of Pega, Vice President, CRM Product Marketing at Pegasystems, a leading provider of software for customer engagement and operational excellence. I spoke to Jeff at Pegaworld, Pegasystems’ customer event in Las Vegas in early June, where we talked about GDPR, what it means, its impact and reach and what firms should be doing and keeping in mind in this new GDPR era. This is the third of three interviews that I conducted at Pegaworld.
Delivering a personalized customer experience the Zappos Way - An interview with Alex Genov, Head of Customer Research for Zappos.com. I spoke to Alex when I was in Las Vegas in June and talked to him about Zappos, personalization, what many folks are getting wrong, what Zappos has learnt with their personalization efforts and where they are headed.
Applying design thinking to culture change and employee experience - Interview with Karen Jaw-Madson, Principal of Co.-Design of Work Experience and author of a new book: Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work. Karen joins me today to talk about the book, applying design thinking to the culture change process, the DOWE framework and what leaders and organisations should be doing to create a more innovative culture at work.
Creating a learning environment that drives better sales and customer success outcomes - Interview with Pat Lynch, VP of Enablement Excellence and Innovation at MindTickle, one of the industry's most comprehensive readiness and learning solutions for closing the knowledge and skill gaps found in customer-facing teams. Pat joins me today to talk about learning versus training, the frustrations of Chief Learning Officers, what’s missing from the modern corporate learning environment, what is needed to get the most out of the Millennial and Gen-Z workforce and what MindTickle are doing about it.
25 behavioural biases and how they influence the choices our customers make - Interview with Richard Shotton, the Head of Behavioural Science at Manning Gottlieb OMD and the author of the book: The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy. Richard joins me today to talk about his book, a few of the behavioural biases in the book, why we should pay attention to them and how we can utilise them in our businesses.
Most of customer experience is cleaning and sweeping - Interview with Gerry McGovern who is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords and the author of six books on all things digital, content, transformation and online customer experience. He is about to publish a new book at the end of this month: Top Tasks – A How to Guide, which provides an A to Z look at the Top Tasks methodology that Gerry has developed and has used in around 4-500 organisations around the world over the last 20 years. Gerry joins me today to talk about the book, why being great is hard work and to take a closer look at the Top Tasks methodology.
A new model of business and leadership is needed: Lessons from one of the UK’s best companies to work for - Interview with Jason Stockwood, Group CEO of Simply Business, the UK’s leading B2B insurance broker and among the Tech Track 100 of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies. He has also just published a new book: Reboot: A Blueprint for Happy, Human Business in the Digital Age, which aims to counter much of the news that predicts the massively negative effect that Artificial Intelligence and automation will have on jobs and shows how any organisation can think freshly and benefit from technology by putting its people first.
Convenience helps you stand out and creates fierce loyalty - Interview with Shep Hyken, who is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Shep joins me today today to talk about his latest book: The Convenience Revolution: How to Deliver a Customer Service Experience That Disrupts the Competition and Creates Fierce Loyalty, why convenience, the dimensions of convenience and how to use it to make a difference to your business’ service and experience.
Design is how we treat each other - Interview with Rie Nørregaard, a Managing Creative Director of SYPartners, a consultancy based in New York and San Francisco. For 20 years, they’ve helped business leaders, teams, and individuals pursue growth and greatness. Rie has recently started a podcast: Designing for Humanity, which aims to explore designing a future that’s made for all of us—and the best in us. They also say that design, at its heart, is an act of service and is the work of solving problems for the benefit of others. That description alone got me interested and so I invited Rie onto the podcast so you can learn more about her podcast and we can learn more about she is discovering around what it means to design for humanity and how that impacts service, experience and engagement.
Today’s interview is with Joseph A. Michelli, a best-selling author, internationally sought-after speaker and organizational consultant. Joseph joins me today to talk about his new book: The Airbnb Way: 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging, why he wrote the book, what can we learn from Airbnb and some for the future challenges facing companies trying to deliver a stand out experience.
How to make your people SUPERENGAGED - Interview with Nikki Gatenby, MD of Propellernet, a multi-award winning Brighton-based digital marketing agency that operates globally and the author a new book: Superengaged: How to transform business performance by putting people and purpose first. She joins us today to talk about the new book and what they have done at Propellernet to produce some astounding commercial and engagement numbers.
Today’s interview is with Seth Godin, best selling author, teacher and sometime entrepreneur. Seth joins us today to talk about his new book: This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See and we discuss the book's main thesis, the challenge for marketers, what we need to learn, why it might be hard, why it matters and how we start to apply all of this in our businesses and our work.
Today’s interview is something different. Last week I was in Pretoria, South Africa, where I was speaking at the Customer Experience Innovation and Tech Fest conference. On the back on my keynote, Julia Ahlfeldt, one of my fellow speakers, asked if she could interview me for her podcast, Decoding the Customer, which explores business trends and innovation in the field of customer-centricity. I said that I’d be delighted to have a chat and thought I’d record it too and release it as part of my own interview series. In the interview Julia and I talk abut how firms need to tackle the human and tech balance challenge that exists currently customer experience today, how they can go about doing that, what the future holds and what that means for leadership in firms that aspire to be customer experience leaders.
Today’s interview is with Jonathan Rowe, Chief Marketing Officer at nCino, a cloud based bank operating system. Jonathan joins me today to talk to me about nCino, the experience of going through the recent Hurricane Florence, what happened, how their customers reacted and why he is so proud of their employees.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Getting the human and tech balance right in customer experience – Interview with Julia Ahlfeldt – and is number 285 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Leaders should experience what it is like to be one of their own customers more often - Interview with Shaun Belding who is the CEO of The Belding Group of Companies and the author of 6 books including a new book: The Journey to WOW: The Path to Outstanding Customer Experience and Loyalty. Shaun joins me today to talk about The Journey To Wow, why he wrote it as a story, what we can learn from the trials and tribulations the characters go through and how we can apply that to our businesses.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – Is your culture hurricane fit? – Interview with Jonathan Rowe of nCino – and is number 286 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Becoming a trusted company is an absolute requirement of a winning strategy - Interview with Christopher Roark, Managing Director at Accenture Strategy. Christopher joins me today to talk about Accenture’s Competitive Agility Index, how a decline in stakeholder trust impacts a company’s financial performance and competitiveness and what companies should do about it.
What The Great Escape can teach us about Future Fit leadership - Interview with Mike Perk, Managing Director of WWC, a South African digital transformation advisory firm, that I met at a recent conference in Pretoria. At the conference, Mike described a concept called Future Fit Leadership but he did so in a really engaging way combining World War 2 history and a famous film about the period. As a result, I asked Mike to be a guest on the podcast so he could share this story with you.
9 Trends shaping the future of marketing and CX in 2019 - Interview with Jeremy Korst, President of GBH Insights, a leading marketing strategy, consumer behavior and analytics consultancy. Jeremy joins me today to talk about 9 trends shaping the future of marketing and CX in 2019 and what we should be doing about them or thinking about in relation to them.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – What The Great Escape can teach us about Future Fit leadership – Interview with Mike Perk – and is number 289 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Going from good to great in customer experience - Interview with Rachel Haworth, Customer Experience Director, at Coventry Building Society. Particularly for non-UK readers, a building society is a financial institution that is owned by its members as a mutual organisation. Coventry Building Society is the second largest organisation of its kind in the UK with over 1.8 million members that save or have a mortgage with them. Rachel joins me today to talk about customer experience, the approach they have taken, the successes they have had, what it takes to have the highest customer satisfaction of any major bank or building society in the UK and what life is like with no targets.
Today’s interview is with Nienke Bloom, customer experience speaker, advisor and co-founder of The Customer Experience Game. Nienke joins me today to talk customer experience, the game, why play is so important in business and how and why we should put more play and fun into everything we do.
Building your positivity muscle and the impact it can have on customer experience - Interview with Matt Prowse, Customer Enablement Director at Insurance Australia Group (IAG). Matt joins me today to talk positivity, why we should add a little more of it into our own organisations, what they have done to with their ‘With Thanks’ programme amongst other initiatives, how they got senior executives talking to customers and the impact all of this has had on IAG.
What more empathy in business and artificial intelligence (AI) will look like - Interview with Minter Dial, keynote speaker and consultant on branding, new tech and digital transformation for blue chip companies, conferences and events around the world. Minter joins me today to talk about his new book: Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence, why the development of empathy is becoming so important, how we can develop it not only within ourselves but also the machines that we develop and what to watch out for when we do so.
The six core elements of ROCKSTAR customer experience - Interview with James Dodkins, founder of ROCKSTAR CX, speaker, accidental #1 best selling author and host of ‘This Week In CX.’ James joins me today to talk about the work that he does, what is going wrong with many customer experience transformation programmes and the 6 core elements of really good customer experience.
Analytics isn't something you buy, it is something that you do - Interview with Larry Skowronek, Vice President Product Management and Product Marketing at NICE, a worldwide leading provider of software solutions enabling organizations to improve customer experience, ensure compliance, fight financial crime, and safeguard people and assets. Larry joins me today to talk analytics and about some new technology that they have developed that can monitor interactions & provide a holistic view of the customer journey from start to finish, route inbound calls to the most appropriate representative through analyzing how the customer sounds and how they can track sentiment over time to enhance the customer experience and cater to evolving customer demands.
Most businesses would be shocked to see the experience they are inflicting on their customers - Interview with David Cancel, serial entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO, Drift. He’s also the author of a new book called: Conversational Marketing: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365 (and How You Can Too). David joins me today to talk about Drift, the book, why marketing and sales are broken, what conversational marketing and what companies should be doing differently.
What's stopping you from doing the best work of your life? - Interview with Aaron Dignan, founder of The Ready, an organization design and transformation firm, and author of a new book: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? Aaron joins me today to talk about the book, the core problem it is trying to address, the idea of organisational debt, what’s stopping you from doing the best work of your life and some of the biggest problems they have faced in helping firms transform the way they work.
Today’s interview is with Steve Morrell who is the Managing Director of ContactBabel, a provider of high-quality research and analysis to the UK & US contact centre industries. Steve joins me today to talk about gathering feedback, what CX metrics senior management consider the most important, the role of automation in CX and generational differences around CX amongst other things.
Our people first, customers second approach drives our growth - Interview with Tom van der Lubbe, the Co-Founder of Viisi NV, a Dutch financial services company that offers customized mortgage advice and solutions. Tom joins me today to talk about holocracy, decentralized decision-making, culture, radical transparency, only having one rule, rotating leadership and the impact of all of this on their clients experience.
Only 20 percent of support teams provide self service and other customer experience trends - Interview with Jeff Titterton CMO of Zendesk. Jeff joins me today to talk about the new Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2019, the main findings of the report, what’s driving the widening gap between what customers expect and what companies can deliver and what can companies do to close the gap.
Understanding friction and reward in customer experience - Interview with Richard Hammond and Rocky Howard, co-founders of Uncrowd, who are the the world’s leading experts on friction versus reward. Richard and Rocky join me today to talk about Richard’s new book: Friction/Reward: Be your customer's first choice, the work that they are doing at Uncrowd and why we should pay attention, particularly when it comes to creating a better customer experience.
CEOs have to come to accept that CX is their responsibility - Interview with Jeanne Bliss, the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association. Jeanne is one of the foremost experts on customer-centric leadership and the role of the Chief Customer Officer and joins me today on the podcast for something different. Rather than conducting a straight up interview, we rummage around some of the big issues and challenges in customer experience right now in a short and punchy rant-off. We also talk a little bit about Jeanne’s new book: Would You Do That to Your Mother?: The "Make Mom Proud" Standard for How to Treat Your Customers. Hope you like it.
Agatha, NLU and turning customer support agents into geniuses - Interview with Deon Nicholas , Founder of Forethought, an AI company and 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant, that has a vision to enable anyone to be a genius at their job. In practical terms, they do this indexing and surfacing content that matters the most in the context of their work. Deon joins me today to talk about the difference between NLP and NLU, winning last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield and how Agatha aims to make it easy to be a “genius” at customer support.
You can't transform something you don't understand - Interview with Annette Franz, founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc and an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader. Annette joins me today to talk about her new book: Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the "Customer" in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), what it’s about, what we can learn from it and her views on the current state of customer experience.
Audio is an overlooked dimension of the customer experience - Interview with Jeff Yasuda, the CEO and co-founder of Feed.fm (Music as a Service), which helps game developers, content publishers, and e-commerce retailers increase customer engagement, retention, and conversions by incorporating popular music into their environments-- at the lowest possible cost. Jeff joins me today stop talk about Feed.fm, the impact of music on customer experience and what others can learn from their experience.
Taziki's is closing the disability employment gap and enriching their customer and employee experience at the same time - Interview with Dan Simpson, CEO of Taziki's Mediterranean Café, which is a fast casual chain of franchised restaurants based in Birmingham, Alabama that purveys Greek and Mediterranean cuisine such as gyros, sandwiches, soups, and salads. Dan joins me today to talk about Tazikis and eudaimonia, what it is, how they bring it to life, bringing hope and joy to others and what companies should be doing differently to improve their customer experience.
If you want to improve your B2B customer experience, manage customer distress - Interview with Robert C. Johnson, the co-founder and CEO of TeamSupport.com, a cloud-based, B2B software application built to help customer-facing support teams serve clients better through stronger collaboration, superior teamwork, and faster issue resolution. Robert joins me today to talk about the difference between B2B and B2C customer experience, the Customer Distress Index (CDI) and what B2B companies should be doing differently to improve their customer experience.
The Commonwealth of Self Interest and customer engagement - Interview with Paul Greenberg, best-selling author and founder & Managing Principal of The 56 Group, LLC, an advisory firm, focused on customer-facing strategic services. He is often called the “Godfather of CRM” and joins us today to talk about his new book: The Commonwealth of Self Interest: Business Success Through Customer Engagement, what engagement really is, the challenge and what we should be doing to improve how we serve our customers.
Given the choice 75 percent of customers would prefer to use messaging channels for service - Interview with Joshua March, Founder and Board Director of Conversocial, a digital care platform for social messaging, and also author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence. Joshua joins me today to talk about some recent research that Conversocial just released, the overall state of digital customer care, what the future of messaging and customer care looks like and what we should be doing about it.
Real competitive advantage in customer experience comes from understanding customers and what drives them away - Interview with David Avrin, a keynote speaker, an author, a consultant and also CEO of Visibility International. David joins me today to talk about his new book: Why Customers Leave (and How to Win Them Back), what it’s about, what we can learn from it and what we should be doing differently to improve customer service and experience.
Gender and diversity imbalances will impact your ability to connect with and serve your customers - Interview with Adriana Gascoigne, founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization devoted to empowering, educating and engaging women in the tech industry across 43 chapters in 32 countries. Adriana joins me today to talk about Girls In Tech, her new book: Tech Boss Lady: How to Start-Up, Disrupt, and Thrive as a Female Founder and the impact that gender and diversity imbalances have on organizations ability to best serve their customers.
A lack of executive desire and recognition is holding back customer service - Interview with Michael Redbord, General Manager of the Service Hub at HubSpot, a technology company that builds sales and marketing software. Michael joins me today to talk about their new research into the state of customer service, what we can learn from it, what the future holds and what we should be focusing on if we are to deliver a great customer experience.
How using a network of experts can dramatically improve customer service automation - Interview with Antony Brydon, CEO and co-founder of Directly, a leader in customer support automation that works with enterprise companies to launch and train virtual agents that double their automation rate. Antony joins me today to talk about asynchronous messaging, conversational interfaces, AI and expert networks.
How your procurement team is impacting both your employee and customer experience - Interview with Todd Olson of Pendo who is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a product experience platform that helps product teams create software customers love. Todd joins me today to talk about software product experience and how it impacts both the employee and customer experience.
Becoming more empathetic can be hard. Pega's new AI-powered Customer Empathy Advisor aims to help - Interview with Rob Walker, Vice President Decision Management and Analytics at Pega. I caught up with Rob at Pega’s recent customer event, Pegaworld, in Las Vegas and we grabbed a few minutes to talk about his keynote presentation, Pega’s upcoming Customer Empathy Advisor, what empathy is and the value of being more empathetic in customer experience.
Today’s interview is with Tom Libretto, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Pega. I caught up with Tom at Pega’s recent customer event, Pegaworld, in Las Vegas and we grabbed a few minutes to talk about Pega’s recent research report: 2019 global customer service insights: The good, the bad, and the ugly, what they found out and what lessons organisations should be learning and what they should be doing differently.
C+/B- is the grade the customer experience industry currently deserves - Interview with Bruce Temkin, Head of the Qualtrics XM Institute. He joins me today to talk about his view on the current state of the customer experience industry, what it needs to focus on next, being acquired (twice in a few months) and what’s coming up next for him and the XM Institute.
The removal of friction represents a huge opportunity for customer experience - Interview with Roger Dooley who is a a speaker and author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing, the popular blog Neuromarketing, and Brainy Marketing at Forbes. He joins me today to talk about his new book: FRICTION―The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage, what friction is, how it affects us and what to do about it when it comes to customer experience.
Behavioural economics, alchemy, customer experience and the power of ideas that don't make sense - Interview with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy in the UK and author of a new book: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense. Rory joins me today to talk about his new book, behavioural economics and what we can all do to uncover stand out ideas that don’t make sense.
Everyone in an organisation should be a loyalty leader - Interview with Sandy Rogers of FranklinCovey, the co-author of new book: Leading Loyalty: Cracking the Code to Customer Devotion and the leader of FranklinCovey's Loyalty Practice. Sandy joins me today to talk about the new book, how leading companies develop loyalty (Spoiler alert: it’s not about a loyalty programmes), what they do to get in the way of loyalty and how they can put themselves on the right path.
How many exposure hours have you had with your customers over the last few months? - Interview with Andy MacMillan, CEO of UserTesting who joins me today to talk about their new research report: The Rise of the Experience Economy - The 2019 CX Industry Report, the work that they do, what the best brands do to understand their clients and what leaders and professionals in the CX space should be doing more of.
New tech at work and improving the employee experience - How to get it right - Interview with Carrie Duarte, Partner at PwC, Workforce of the Future Leader and Director on PwC’s U.S. Board. Carrie joins me today to talk about PwC’s new Tech at work and employee experience research report, the main findings, what they mean and what leaders should be doing about them.