Hello and welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast with host Emma Dark. In the final episode of the Customer Experience podcast, Emma chats with Kate Birtles from Biffa. Whilst almost everyone won’t deem waste management as something all that ‘CX:ie’, the way we think about it has never been more important when you think about its environmental impact and how it affects the customer. Kate outlines how her new customer team ensures they are always walking in their customer's shoes, getting out on the frontline and getting to know them, whilst cascading the customer's voice right across the ..read more

Welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast with S&S Chief CX Officer and host Emma Dark. As leaders, how do we successfully approach digitisation in the retail industry? In this episode, Emma has a chat with Heidi Reynolds, Retail Director at WHSmith - one of the oldest retailers in history established over 200 years ago. This is a true heritage brand and while its core values have remained, the organisation has had to continually evolve and transform their customer experiences over two centuries. So how has WHSmith embraced the shifting sands of digitisation? How do they pair physical an ..read more

“Customer-first, not digital-first. Work in the shoes of your customers and figure out what they want for today and tomorrow.” Those are the sage words of Andrew Clayton, Group Head of Customer Experience at Close Brothers. Having previously worked as an executive across multiple sectors for the past 30 years, Andrew provides us with some great insight into how organisations can handle the gap between those who benefit from the Digital Age and those who don’t. Emma and Andrew discuss how to create a ‘design tribe’ that sits within teams and units across the business, how to identify, approach ..read more

Join Emma Dark, S&S Chief Customer Experience Officer in episode 004 of the Customer Experience Podcast, with our guest Amy Farrer on the jump from Telco to Tech-co. Amy Farrer is the Digital Capability and Planning Director at BT where her responsibilities include mobilising squads to support the Consumer Strategy, developing BT’s Digital Capability with a focus on agile ways of working, and continuing to put customers at the heart of BT’s mission statement. Amy and Emma talk about the importance of the customer sitting within every department, and how Amy is a champion of continuous im ..read more

Intro 1.04 Harvard Business Review - to compete today, companies need to be data-driven Culture is the biggest barrier to enable data-driven transformation Important to understand the value that data can bring How do you create a culture where data is more meaningful?  - 2.54 At Specsavers - creating data assets (platforms/tools/accessible) Showcasing value -demonstrations  Create a culture of sharing - creates a ripple effect across the business What are the focuses? 5.43 You need to be willing to share and train others Team spirit - our stakeholders aren’t different, we’re a ..read more

Terminator. Blade Runner. Ex Machina. iRobot. While Emma’s chat today with Mark Billingham of the Very Group isn’t quite as dramatic as some of those blockbusters, the topic of AI has been around for a long time. Mark gives us some amazing insight into his learnings, practical tips and overwhelmingly positive results of building a bot to handle a huge amount of customer queries each month - 250,000 to be exact. They dive into what capability you need sitting behind the bot, how they got customers involved using their UX Lab (which is as cool as it sounds), the opportunities it creates for yo ..read more

Join Emma Dark in her debut episode of the Customer Experience Podcast where she chats with Chief Customer Officer and Author Sharon Boyd. As new technology emerges that in a lot of ways makes life much easier for customer teams the world over through automation and process, there is a real danger that we lose the all-important human element. Sharon and Emma unpack how to keep your customer soul intact, using customer demo’s or sandboxes to put yourself in their shoes and create a seamless experience between the machine and the human. Every aspect of this debate is covered so if you love tec ..read more