Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe – Details, episodes & analysis

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.