Today’s interview is with Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance. Conny joins me today to talk about her ambitions for Zurich to become the “Apple of Insurance”, her guiding philosophy around customer retention and revenue, how they are building customer loyalty and a human connection in an increasingly competitive landscape and some of the big trends and technologies that will drive and shape the future of customer experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – If it matters for your customer, it’s important – Interview with Tara DeZao, Simon Thorpe and James Dodkins of Pega – and is number 516 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 revisits and finalises the series of podcast conversations that I had with various folks whilst at Pegaworld earlier this. This episode is a combo affair and features a conversation with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech, at Pega. It is then swiftly followed by a chat that I had with Simon Thorpe, Director - Global Product Marketing - Customer Service & Sales Automation, at Pega, who is then joined partway through the conversation by James Dodkins, a friend of the podcast and CX Evangelist, at Pega. Fun and games!

Our conversations cover my guests’ highlights from the event, their perspective on the current state of play in marketing, personalization, customer service, customer experience and the impact of Gen AI on all of the above, amongst a bunch of other things.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Print-era thinking is holding personalization efforts back – Interview with Vivek Sharma on Movable Ink – and is number 515 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Disclaimer: I partnered with Pega to conduct interviews and provide my perspective on PegaWorld iNspire 2024.

Today’s interview is with Prashaant Huria, who is the Chief Technology Officer for Unilever’s Digital Distributive Trade business. Prashaant and I connected after he spoke at Adobe’s Global Summit in Las Vegas back in late March. We talked about how they got 2.7mln ‘Mom & Pop’ stores to adopt a new distributive trade platform that Prashaant and his team at Unilever have developed, what it can do and what impact it has had on the retailers as well as what sort of changes Unilever has had to go through to bring this to life and make it a success.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lessons learnt from testing Copilot for service across tens of thousands of service engineers – Interview with Jeff Comstock of Microsoft – and is number 506 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Jeff Comstock, CVP of Dynamics 365 Customer Service at Microsoft. Jeff joins me today to talk about Co-Pilot for Service, the impact it is having on the agent experience and also customer/business outcomes, their experience trialling it extensively with their own customer service engineers, how their early adopter clients are leveraging Co-Pilot in Service, what they have done, the outcomes they achieved, how long it took them to achieve those outcomes and, finally, what are the big challenges that organisations need to tackle in order to fully realise the potential of leveraging Generative AI in customer service and experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Personalisation and the pink elephant in the room – Interview with Emma Springham of TSB – and is number 505 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

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 Emma Springham, Chief Marketing Officer at TSB, a British retail and commercial bank. I met Emma at Adobe’s Global Summit in Las Vegas after she spoke on the Main Stage. Emma and I talk about the importance of your personal brand in marketing and CX leadership, the pink elephant in the room, what personalisation means for TSB, what they have done to deliver that, what impact it has had, and the importance of speaking the language of your CFO.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Making in-store grocery shopping fun and going viral on TikTok – Interview with David McIntosh of Instacart – and is number 504 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

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 David McIntosh, who is VP and GM of Connected Stores at Instacart. David joins me today to talk about innovation in the retail space, why and how they are reaching into the physical retail domain, what they are up to, the benefits for both the customer and business and a look into the future of retail.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – If you aren’t fixing the bigger picture, then you are just putting a band-aid on the problem – Interview with Zig Serafin of Qualtrics – and is number 503 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

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 Zig Serafin, CEO at Qualtrics, the leading Experience Management software provider. I spoke to Zig at Qualtrics’ recent X4 event in Salt Lake City. We talked about Qualtrics’ vision, the highlights from the event, the XM Operating system, Qualtrics AI and the hundred different AI models that they have built, how they are empowering 43 out of 50 of the world’s largest brands to listen and then take action at scale and in real-time and the upcoming Qualtrics X4 EMEA event in London on June 6th.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Generative AI landscape: The good, the bad and the boring – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 502 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

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.