The Customer Service Revolution Podcast is for CEOs, CXOs, COOs, CMOs, CHROs, customer experience leaders, employee experience leaders, and business owners who want to build a service culture that drives referrals, loyalty, employee engagement, and market share.
Hosted by The DiJulius Group, the show features John DiJulius, Denise Thompson, Dave Murray, and industry leaders sharing practical insights on customer experience, employee experience, customer service strategy, leadership, service culture, and operational consistency.
Each episode gives leaders actionable ideas to transform how customers and employees experience their organization, whether they operate in B2B, B2C, healthcare, hospitality, financial services, professional services, retail, or any business where experience is a competitive advantage.
Customer service and employee experience, done right, can become your company's single biggest competitive advantage. This is not just a podcast. It is a movement to overthrow conventional business mentality and help organizations create experiences customers and employees cannot live without.
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Données mises à jour le 02/11/2026
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277: Strong Enough to Listen: Better Leadership, Better Customer Experience
Épisode 277
jeudi 29 octobre 2026 • Durée 27:56
Can someone feel heard even when the answer is no?
In Episode 277 of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast, John R. DiJulius III welcomes Lisa Duran, author of Strong Enough to Listen: Bridging the Communication Gap Between Our Choices and Our Responses.
They explore how listening skills for leaders shape employee and customer experience, why choosing person over problem builds connection, and how Lisa's CLR model helps leaders respond with care.
Learn what "yes, and" means when you disagree, why John keeps a WAIT reminder on his screen, and how writing down your thoughts can help you interrupt less. The conversation also covers curiosity, customer feedback, AI, and the listening habits that carry from work into home life.
Discover practical ways to help people feel heard while maintaining clear boundaries.
276: How to Defend Customer Experience Investment to a Skeptical Board
Épisode 276
jeudi 22 octobre 2026 • Durée 36:03
Your board asks, "What's the return on customer experience?"
Do you have an answer beyond happier customers?
In Episode 276, Denise Thompson puts John DiJulius in the boardroom to explain how leaders can defend customer experience investment with a stronger financial case.
They discuss earned sales growth, customer retention, referrals, service recovery costs, and the difference between measuring customer sentiment and customer behavior.
John also explains how a Return on eXperience—or ROX—dashboard helps leaders identify the metrics that matter for their business.
In this episode:
• Connect customer experience improvements to potential revenue. • Understand earned sales growth from repeat business and referrals. • Examine the hidden costs of poor service. • Evaluate automation beyond immediate cost savings. • Identify when a CX investment does not deserve approval. • Prepare a stronger case for your next budget meeting.
What gives a customer a reason to return—and bring someone else with them?
John DiJulius welcomes Tai Anderson, a founding member of Grammy-winning band Third Day and author of Market Like a Rockstar, for a conversation about customer loyalty, brand trust, and earning referrals.
Tai shares his ROCKSTAR framework and explains why the experience after the sale deserves as much attention as the effort to win a new customer. Together, they explore how to ask for referrals at the right time, stay connected with existing customers, and make appreciation personal for customers and employees.
In this episode:
Why fandom goes deeper than brand preference
How customer experience becomes part of your marketing
Why referrals depend on trust and timing
The eight stages of the ROCKSTAR framework
How a short video can make a thank-you more meaningful
The connection between employee loyalty and customer experience
AI can help your team clear the busywork. Which customer moments still need a human?
John DiJulius welcomes Jess Pischel, founder of Human First AI Consulting and former senior customer experience consultant and Customer Experience Executive Academy dean at The DiJulius Group.
Together, they explore AI and customer experience through practical examples: turning workshop notes into usable information, challenging an employee onboarding process, and improving handoffs between chatbots and employees.
Jess shares three questions leaders can ask before exploring an AI use case and explains why employee involvement matters. John and Jess also discuss the conversations that should retain human empathy, accountability, and judgment—from service recovery to employee recognition.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why automating a messy workflow can deepen the problem.
Where AI may relieve repetitive work that drains your team.
How to involve employees and discuss both wins and failures.
Why a chatbot handoff should preserve the customer's context.
Which moments call for human judgment and a personal conversation.
How to start small rather than chase every new tool.
Connect with Jess and explore the resources discussed:
273: How do I create a turnkey system for consistency?
Épisode 273
jeudi 1 octobre 2026 • Durée 38:29
What happens to your customer experience when your best employee calls off? In Episode 273 of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast, Denise Thompson and John DiJulius explore how to eliminate employee roulette and create a consistent customer experience across people, locations, and channels. John breaks down the Customer Experience Cycle: service defects to avoid, nonnegotiable standards to deliver, and opportunities to go above and beyond. Learn why being brilliant at the basics builds trust, how to turn your best employees' habits into teachable standards, and why everboarding and leadership accountability keep training alive. The conversation also explores service aptitude, the risks of rapid growth, and the Zero Risk approach to preparing for predictable problems. Discover how to make your brand promise repeatable while preserving the personal connection customers value.
272: Your Employee Experience Is Showing Up in Your Customer Experience
Épisode 267
jeudi 24 septembre 2026 • Durée 33:28
Your employees don't experience your organization through its mission statement. They experience it through their leaders.
In Episode 272 of the Customer Service Revolution, Denise Thompson talks with Dave Murray, Vice President of Consulting at The DiJulius Group, about the connection between employee experience, leadership and customer experience.
Dave shares lessons from his work with PSECU, including why managers must reinforce CX standards after training, how better one-on-ones can change employee relationships, why organizations should examine turnover by department and how recognition from frontline leaders influences engagement.
The bigger message: customer experience and employee experience cannot operate independently. The employee experience your company creates eventually becomes the customer experience your customers receive.
271: When Innovation Stops Serving the Customer
Épisode 271
jeudi 17 septembre 2026 • Durée 35:31
When Innovation Stops Serving the Customer
When does innovation stop being customer-centric and start becoming corporate strategy for strategy's sake? In Episode 271 of the Customer Service Revolution, Denise Thompson and John DiJulius examine Nike, Apple, Starbucks, Gap, Peloton and other major brands to explore what happens when companies chase new channels, customers and efficiencies while losing sight of the people who made them successful. They discuss why removing friction isn't always the same as improving customer experience, how Apple creates extraordinary ecosystem loyalty, why Starbucks is returning to its roots, and the question every leadership team should ask before approving its next major innovation.
270: The $100 Million Bet on Human Skills in the AI Era
Épisode 270
jeudi 10 septembre 2026 • Durée 29:58
EY is investing $100 million in employee rewards for future-focused skills such as judgment, adaptability, collaboration, leadership, innovation, and exceptional client service. What does that reveal about the future of work?
Denise Thompson and John DiJulius discuss why human skills become more valuable—not less—as AI takes over routine tasks. Technology can increase speed and efficiency, but customer loyalty is still built through empathy, trust, judgment, curiosity, listening, and service recovery. John explains why organizations should stop treating these capabilities as "soft skills," how misaligned incentives undermine company values, and how leaders can make service aptitude observable, teachable, measurable, and rewardable.
You'll also hear the ten service aptitude skills, how a Day in the Life exercise builds customer empathy, and a practical 30-day plan to audit what your company hires for, trains, measures, and rewards.
269: Encore Episode - Creating Alignment with A Customer Experience Action Statement
Épisode 269
jeudi 3 septembre 2026 • Durée 28:49
AI Can Accelerate Your Strategy—But It Cannot Choose Your Direction Before You Implement AI, Align the Experience
Companies are moving quickly to implement artificial intelligence, automation and new digital tools. But speed without alignment can create a more efficient version of the wrong customer experience.
Before an organization decides what AI should do, its leaders and employees must agree on the experience they are trying to create. A Customer Experience Action Statement, or CXAS, provides that direction. It translates an organization's broad mission, purpose and values into a clear standard employees can intentionally deliver during every customer interaction.
In a newly recorded opening to this encore episode, Denise Thompson explains why the topic is especially important now: Before companies implement AI, their employees, departments and leaders must be aligned around the experience the technology is supposed to help deliver.
Then, in the original conversation, Denise and customer service authority John DiJulius explain how to create a Customer Experience Action Statement, the three pillars that support it and the systems required to keep it alive long after the launch.
What Is a Customer Experience Action Statement?
A Customer Experience Action Statement defines what every employee should intentionally achieve whenever they interact with a customer, client, patient, guest or colleague. Unlike a mission statement, it must be actionable, observable and relevant during even the smallest interaction.
John explains why a CXAS is not another slogan for the breakroom wall. It is the behavioral North Star that helps employees make consistent decisions, creates organizational alignment and turns a desired customer experience into something leaders can teach, coach and reinforce.
The Three Pillars of a Strong CXAS
Every effective Customer Experience Action Statement is supported by three memorable pillars:
1. Expertise
Employees must be brilliant at the basics. They should have the knowledge, consistency and operational excellence required to help the customer confidently.
2. Human Interaction 3. Above and Beyond Why a CXAS Must Come Before AI Creating a Statement Is Only the Beginning Work Directly With John DiJulius and Dave Murray on September 14 Key Takeaways Quotes From the Episode Chapters Learn More
268: What Does the Future Service-Centric Organization Looks Like
Épisode 268
jeudi 27 août 2026 • Durée 50:18
The Customer Service Department Is Dead: What the Future Service-Centric Organization Looks Like
Customer service cannot remain the department responsible for cleaning up problems created by the rest of the company. If an organization is serious about becoming service-centric, every department must understand how its decisions shape the customer experience—and one accountable leader must ensure the entire system works.
In Episode 268 of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast, Denise Thompson and John R. DiJulius III examine what the future service-centric organization will look like as AI reshapes customer behavior, frontline roles, organizational design, and the economics of service.
The future will not belong to the company with the fastest chatbot or the fewest employees. It will belong to the organization that uses technology to remove friction behind the scenes while making the experience more human in front of the customer.
Customer Experience Must Be Enterprise-Wide—but Someone Still Has to Own It
"Customer experience is everyone's responsibility" sounds inspiring, but it can become an excuse for having no accountability. John argues that successful organizations need a clear experience champion—someone who loses sleep over the experience and has the authority, KPIs, and executive access to challenge decisions that could hurt customers or employees.
In a large enterprise, that may be a chief experience officer supported by a customer experience department. In a smaller organization, it may be a shared role assigned to an HR, training, operations, or other senior leader. The title matters less than the clarity of the mandate, the time committed to it, and the metrics tied to it.
The role should also extend beyond the customer. A truly service-centric organization manages the entire experience ecosystem: customer experience, employee experience, and vendor experience.
AI Should Remove Friction, Not Humanity
AI is changing customer service, but using it only to reduce headcount can create expensive unintended consequences. Gartner predicts that by 2027, half of the companies that cut customer service staff because of AI will rehire people to perform similar functions under different titles. Gartner has also reported that only 20% of customer service leaders had reduced agent staffing because of AI.
Your Customer May Send an AI Agent Instead of Visiting Your Website Access to a Human Could Become the Next Competitive Advantage Personalization Without Integrity Becomes Exploitation The Best Model Is People-Led and Technology-Powered Stop Measuring Speed at the Expense of Loyalty What Leaders Should Build Now Chapters Key Takeaways Quotes Resources Mentioned in This Episode Learn More
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Listen and explore more episodes:
Find the Customer Service Revolution podcast wherever you listen.
If your organization is working to improve customer experience but struggling to connect it to measurable business outcomes, The DiJulius Group can help.
We talk about topics like this each week; be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss an episode.
Customers want to feel seen, heard and cared about—not processed as the next transaction. This pillar defines how employees should intentionally make people feel.
When an opportunity presents itself, employees should be empowered to own the experience, solve a problem or create a memorable moment.
John shares examples from The DiJulius Group, KeyBank, Starbucks, Superior Glove, Domino's and John Roberts Spa to demonstrate how organizations turn these pillars into clear, repeatable behaviors.
AI can accelerate decisions, communications and service delivery, but it cannot decide what your brand should stand for. Without a shared Customer Experience Action Statement, departments may automate different priorities and customers may receive a faster—but increasingly inconsistent—experience.
A CXAS gives leaders a standard against which every AI use case can be evaluated: Does this technology help us deliver the experience we have promised, or does it merely make an internal process more efficient?
The episode also explores why successful customer experience strategies require more than a launch. Organizations must certify employees, measure execution, recognize examples, refresh the language through microlearning and keep the CXAS visible long after the initial excitement disappears.
As John explains, world-class customer experience is not a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The statement becomes transformational only when it remains top of mind and influences daily behavior.
On September 14 from noon to 2:00 p.m. Eastern, John DiJulius and Dave Murray will lead a live, interactive Experience Revolution Membership session focused on creating and implementing a Customer Experience Action Statement that is actionable, observable and capable of driving consistent results.
Participants will have the opportunity to work directly with John and Dave to develop or strengthen their organization's CXAS.
AI will accelerate whatever direction an organization is already heading, including the wrong one.
A Customer Experience Action Statement should guide how every employee approaches every interaction.
A CXAS must be actionable, observable, memorable and relevant to daily work.
Mission statements and purpose statements are important, but they do not tell frontline employees exactly how to behave.
A strong CXAS is supported by three pillars: expertise, human interaction and above-and-beyond service.
Operational excellence and human connection must happen consistently; above-and-beyond moments happen when the opportunity presents itself.
Three pillars are easier for employees to remember, apply and reinforce.
A CXAS should guide employees internally rather than operate as an external advertising slogan.
Launching the CXAS is the easy part; certification, accountability, measurement and reinforcement make it sustainable.
Every proposed AI application should be evaluated against the experience the organization has committed to delivering.
"The Customer Experience Action Statement is what each and every employee should intentionally be doing every time they interact with someone else." —John DiJulius
"This changes the culture. This is transformational." —John DiJulius
"The only thing my employees better know verbatim is the Customer Experience Action Statement." —John DiJulius
"I want someone that makes me feel like a human being—not next, not a transaction. I feel seen and heard." —John DiJulius
"The first two have to happen every time: Be brilliant at the basics, and make me feel like a human being." —John DiJulius
"There's magic in three." —John DiJulius
"Achieving world-class status is not a ribbon-cutting ceremony." —John DiJulius
"The Customer Experience Action Statement and pillars are a game changer. They ignite your revolution." —John DiJulius
00:00 Introduction to The Customer Service Revolution
If your organization is working to improve customer experience but struggling to connect it to measurable business outcomes, The DiJulius Group can help.
We talk about topics like this each week; be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss an episode.
As AI handles routine questions, human employees inherit the escalations, emotional customers, sensitive conversations, and high-stakes decisions. That work can be more meaningful—but also far more demanding. Organizations must protect employees from empathy fatigue, make access to a human easier, and train people in the skills technology cannot replace: empathy, curiosity, listening, rapport building, judgment, and the ability to defuse an upset customer.
The customer journey may no longer begin on a company's website, app, or contact center. Gartner found that customers were approximately three times more likely to use a third-party generative AI tool than a company-provided chatbot when trying to resolve a service issue. Among customers who already used generative AI, 58% had used it to complete a task—not merely find information—and that figure reached 74% in B2B settings.
That creates a new strategic threat: the company can become invisible while an outside AI platform recommends brands, compares choices, completes purchases, and resolves problems. Technology is easy for competitors to copy. Human connection, trust, community, and a distinctive brand experience are harder to duplicate.
Pega research found that 77% of consumers believed they always or often achieved better outcomes when dealing only with a human, while two-thirds preferred human-led support. Nearly half said they did not trust businesses that used AI to handle customer service interactions completely.
Despite that preference, many organizations continue to make people fight through layers of self-service before reaching an employee. John's answer is blunt: a customer should be able to reach a human when the customer wants to.
Companies that preserve convenient human access—and equip those employees to deliver empathy, expertise, and judgment—may be able to turn humanity itself into a powerful brand differentiator.
More customer data creates more opportunities to personalize an experience, but not every technically possible use of data is ethical. The public controversy over Delta Air Lines' AI-supported pricing illustrated how quickly personalization can be perceived as surveillance pricing.
Using customer knowledge to anticipate a need or make someone feel cared for is service. Using a customer's identity, vulnerability, income, or presumed willingness to pay to extract the highest possible price is exploitation. Customers should be allowed to choose and pay for clearly defined service levels; businesses should not quietly decide that a particular customer can be charged more.
Integrity cannot become collateral damage in the race to personalize.
Walmart and Starbucks offer a more promising blueprint. Walmart has introduced AI tools designed to support approximately 1.5 million U.S. associates, including real-time translation and technology that reduced shift-planning time from 90 minutes to 30 minutes. Starbucks' Green Apron Service model combines staffing, workflow improvements, and technology to give employees more time for craft and customer connection.
These organizations are not presenting technology as the experience. They are positioning it as the infrastructure that helps people deliver the experience.
That is where AI creates real value: transcribing workshop notes, organizing information, handling repetitive tasks, accelerating internal processes, and giving employees more time to think, connect, and solve.
Average handle time, ticket volume, and cost per contact can reward speed while quietly damaging the relationship. Fast service that makes a customer feel dismissed is not a win. Neither is a warm interaction that fails to solve the problem.
The future service-centric organization must measure both efficiency and experience. John recommends tracking earned sales growth—the percentage of business generated through repeat customers and referrals rather than purchased through advertising—along with the operational and experience measures that explain why loyalty is rising or falling.
The most important question is not simply, "Was the issue resolved?" It is, "How did the customer feel after doing business with us?"
The future service-centric organization will:
Assign one accountable experience champion with clear authority, priorities, KPIs, and executive access.
Make every department responsible for understanding its internal or external customer and its effect on the end experience.
Use AI for repetitive, administrative, and low-risk work while preserving human judgment for sensitive, ethical, financial, and health-related decisions.
Train employees continuously in AI readiness and service aptitude skills.
Give frontline employees the authority to solve problems without unnecessary permission-seeking.
Protect easy access to a skilled human whenever a customer wants or needs one.
Refuse uses of customer data that exploit vulnerability or presumed ability to pay.
Build strong customer service systems first, then layer AI on top of them.
Customer service may stop being a department, but service must become the operating system of the entire company.
00:59 — Why the customer service department is dead
01:51 — Enterprise-wide ownership still needs one accountable champion
05:06 — Does every company need a chief experience officer?
07:34 — Breaking silos through cross-functional CX leadership
08:26 — Are companies using AI to improve service or cut headcount?
11:14 — The new role of the human service professional
13:30 — Preventing escalation overload and empathy fatigue
15:17 — When customers send third-party AI to handle your company
19:36 — Will access to a human become a premium service?
23:08 — Why community and brand experience are returning
26:11 — AI costs, disappearing entry-level roles, and the talent pipeline
30:14 — Walmart, Starbucks, and the people-led, tech-powered model
34:03 — Personalization, surveillance, and the integrity line
38:59 — Which traditional customer service metrics now work against CX?
42:23 — A practical blueprint for leadership, employees, technology, and measurement
48:05 — The first question every CEO should ask
Customer experience can be enterprise-wide without becoming leaderless; one person must still own the system and its results.
AI creates the most value when it removes repetitive work and gives employees more time for judgment, empathy, and connection.
Automating simple interactions can leave human agents with a relentless stream of emotionally difficult cases, increasing the risk of empathy fatigue.
Third-party AI platforms may become the new front door to the customer journey, making a distinctive human brand experience even more important.
Easy access to a knowledgeable human can become a powerful competitive advantage.
Personalization crosses the line when customer data is used to exploit vulnerability or presumed willingness to pay.
Metrics such as average handle time can produce unintended behavior when they are not balanced with loyalty, customer outcomes, repeat business, and referrals.
A company needs clear service systems before it layers AI onto the customer experience.
"Someone has to lose sleep at night over the experience the company is providing." — John R. DiJulius III
"When answers are everywhere, questions become the scarce resource." — John R. DiJulius III
"When the world gets more artificial, we need to become more human." — John R. DiJulius III
"The more digital we become, the more human is the competitive advantage." — John R. DiJulius III
"Integrity shouldn't be something that is outdated." — John R. DiJulius III
"EX equals CX. Employee experience equals customer experience." — John R. DiJulius III
"Customer service may stop being a department, but service must become the operating system of the entire company." — Denise Thompson
If your organization is working to improve customer experience but struggling to connect it to measurable business outcomes, The DiJulius Group can help.
