This week, I had the chance to read the blueprint for customer obsession (literally) with the help of Marbue Brown. He’s a CX practitioner with years of experience at companies who can more or less take credit for starting the movement toward customer obsession. Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, JP Morgan Chase… you know, just some mom-and-pop shops. We discuss how the truly customer-obsessed companies out there go to extremes. They do things in their day-to-day operations that would get most people laughed out of the room. And most importantly, they innovate nonstop, because customer expectations nev ..read more

This week, we got into the weeds of digital content production with A. Lee Judge. Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Content Monsta, a B2B marketing content agency that specializes in podcasting. What really sets him apart is his focus on generating and proving ROI which comes from his own experience as a marketer. There is a multitude of services for B2B marketers to outsource their content generation efforts, but Lee realized there was still a huge gap: a lack of providers who understood the needs of marketing from an insider’s perspective. So naturally, that was the need he set out to fulfill ..read more

This week, I talked to fellow podcaster and CX professional Rick Denton. He hosts the CX Passport podcast and believes that the best meals are served outside and require a passport, and I tend to agree with that! He’s also the managing principal at EX4CX, a business growth consultancy that wants to help CX professionals stop the “survey & score” mindset to start a “listen & act” one. Also agreed. He’s also recently had a change of mindset around where CX is in the pecking order of business goals. He now sees it more as a specialized tool to accomplish a job, and that job has always bee ..read more

This week, I was joined by Mike Kuenne, owner and principal of Kuenne Advisory LLC. We discussed the complex reality of setting expectations in the hospitality industry. One guests’ memory-building experience is another’s one-star review, and the absolute norm in one region is a completely foreign experience in another. A misalignment in expectations can ruin an otherwise good or even great experience. And hospitality has the huge responsibility of understanding the differences between these guest profiles and, not only accommodating them differently but finding opportunities to set expectatio ..read more

This week, I had a good friend on the show, Marcela Lay, SVP and Head of Client Strategy at Y Media Labs. Of all her passions, the one she makes her name from is the cultural transformation of companies. She draws a lot from her experience in hospitality, translating her standard of care for individual guests to a company level. She helps Silicon Valley tech companies focus on the customer with that same intensity, creating digital products and apps to make a company’s end-to-end experience as customer-centric as possible. Get ready for the most thorough breakdown of design thinking we’ve had ..read more

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alex Genov, Head of Marketing Insights and Customer Research at Zappos. We discussed the tension between academic research and its application in organizations, and how the human aspects of research found in qualitative studies get overlooked. As Alex suggests, the key is fine-tuning the balance between the two, taking the time to understand where your limits and your customer’s needs meet. That's where you’ll find the practical, scalable solutions, instead of taking a cold average of human experience. ?About Alex Genov Alex is an experienced cust ..read more

To kick off the Voices of CX Podcast’s season 10, we hosted Graham Brown. Graham and I took a good look at the human experience, complete with detours down memory lane. He’s a storyteller by trade, helping leaders tell better stories through data and showcasing great experiences. In our discussion, we delved into the human side of business, and how companies get so focused on innovating that they lose the human aspects of business and end up commoditizing themselves anyway. Beyond that, people are afraid of getting replaced in the business world by increasingly sophisticated AI. But we think t ..read more

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Peter Shafer, VP of Sales and Marketing at The Prosper Group. He gets up in the morning to connect the dots between human behaviors and the scientific data analysis that explains the story behind them. It would be hard enough if the fast-paced and unpredictable world we live in hadn't rendered most predictive analytics almost useless, but that doesn't stop him from bringing scientific rigor to every client's market research. ?About Peter Shafer Peter helps clients successfully invest in all types of digital marketing campaigns to effectively comm ..read more

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted AJ Davis, Founder and CEO of Experiment Zone, to discuss the utility of Conversion Rate Optimization, and how it bridges the gap between economics and human behavior. Understanding what really goes into customers' decision-making is a lot more complicated than simple AB testing; it might get you by, but it won't tell you the whole story. That's where AJ comes in. ?About AJ Davis AJ Davis is a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Specialist. She’s the founder of Experiment Zone, a company that helps online businesses grow their revenue by improving ..read more

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Marilyn Mead, VP of Marketing at Winmo. We discussed how applying the authentic voice of the customer throughout the organization (with a focus on marketing) is one of the best ways to put your company on the path to being truly customer-centric. ?About Marilyn Mead As VP of Marketing for List Partners’ flagship brand Winmo, Marilyn oversees brand, product marketing, demand generation, and retention strategies. With Winmo since its 2015 market launch, Marilyn’s intuitive understanding of customer use cases crafts a marketing strategy that speaks ..read more