A complete list of episodes from The CX Leader Podcast.
Customer experience is about people: your customers or clients, your employees and colleagues, your business partners – people make the experience. So, it goes without saying that designing any experience should include the perspective of those involved, and human-centered design can help inform that process. Host Steve Walker welcomes Seth Fritz, the manager of the Design Futures team at the Delta Faucets Company, for a discussion on human-centered design.
Educational institutions are beholden to a different type of customer: students. Discovering how students experience the education and services they receive from one of the largest community colleges in the nation requires a substantial experience program. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Matt Ashcraft and Meredith Warner from Maricopa Community Colleges to discuss experience management within an educational institution and the differences between higher education and for-profit organizations.
Steve welcomes guest Sonya McAllister to discuss how CX leaders need to be influential - persuading other people and teams to engage and join in efforts to create a customer experience that provides a competitive advantage.
Companies often hire implementation specialists to help get their customer listening technology up and running, but don’t do the necessary preparation required to make the process happen smoothly. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcome Walker technology consultants Liz Wallshield and Charlie Rumsey to talk about some of the step companies should take to make the implementation process happen smoothly and on schedule.
Companies are always looking to save time and money by taking shortcuts, but don't be tempted to detour around your customers' feedback or you might find your journey map is not accurate to your customer experience. Steve discusses how to avoid this detour with Krista Roseberry, a vice president at Walker, and Tracy DeCarlo, director of performance management, client and member services at ELAP Services.
There are many companies today that have embraced customer experience as a key strategic practice, working hard to put the customer first. But there’s often a part of the customer’s journey that is overlooked: when it’s time to pay the bill. Even in a recent episode, our host Pat Gibbons gave an example of a company dismissing customer feedback that identified invoicing as a pain point. So why do companies often adopt this mentality? Host Pat Gibbons welcomes Philip Rürup, founder and CEO of troy, a customer experience focused collections company based in Germany, for a discussion on why CX professionals often overlook the payment process, and why it's worth their attention.
Does your brand make a promise to your customers? Then you need to make certain your CX program can deliver on that promise! Steve welcomes back Jennifer Batley, a vice president and certified customer experience professional at Walker, for a discussion on how to make certain your brand aligns with your customer experience.
Many are exhausted over the pandemic and discussing how it “changed everything,” but it would be a disservice to not recognize its effects on the CX profession. But there are some valuable take-aways in what we’ve learned about the experience management world during the pandemic. Host Steve Walker welcomes Jeanne Bliss, a c-suite coach and global thought leader for CX, the Founder and CEO of Customer Bliss, a co-founder of the CXPA, and host of the podcast The Human Duct Tape Show, to discuss CX trends as world emerges from the pandemic.
“Do NOT ruin your customer’s day” sounds like something that belongs at the top of any list of rules for CX professionals. We’ve all had those moments where an employee with a bad attitude ruined your mood, or you’re left waiting on hold for over an hour and steamed about the experience for the rest of the day. But there are ways where you can help prevent “ruined days” for your customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Jeannie Walters, a CX consultant, speaker, podcaster, and CEO and Chief Customer Experience Investigator for Experience Investigators, for a discussion on why it's important to not ruin your customer's day.
Episode #79
Released:
Creating a meaningful journey map can be a lengthy and expensive process and it's tempting to cut corners. Steve's guest Jim Tincher, founder and mapper-in-chief of Heart of the Customer and co-author of "How Hard is it to Be Your Customer", explains why hastily created journey maps can give you a false picture of your customers.
For a discussion on how to move a not-for-profit organization from making decisions based on gut instinct to utilizing customer feedback, Steve welcomes Andrea Krohnberg, senior director of customer experience at the YMCA Twin Cities in Minneapolis. They discuss how she led the effort to make customer insights and data a key decision-making driver in the organization and how it improved their CX efforts.
Just like any other business process, customer experience programs need occasional review and scrutiny to ensure it delivers the best possible experience. This is true even if your program seems to be running smoothly. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Luis Angel-Lalanne from American Express to discuss the process in which they transformed how customer sentiment was gathered to help improve their CX.
Many companies use them: personality tests or evaluations - ways to help employees discover more about how they and their colleagues work with others. Some might roll their eyes at the mention of them yet others find them very useful in trying to connect to other people in their company. Regardless of how you feel about them, the goal is ultimately a better-working team. And employees working well together means there’s better potential for excellent customer experiences. Host Steve Walker welcome Dan Silvert, partner and president of the Velocity Advisory Group, a strategic consulting company.
It's safe to say that most people are feeling the effects of today’s economy. Dealing with financial issues can create a great deal of stress. Families are penny-pinching and, in many cases, grappling with ways to help ease the burden. And many financial companies don’t make that process easy. But there are ways in which companies can make that experience better and promote what our guest refers to as “financial health.” Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Rochelle Gorey, co-founder and CEO of SpringFour, a Certified B social impact fintech company, for a discussion on ways to make it easier for people achieve financial health.
It's important to quickly identify and remedy pain points in your customer's journey - removing friction in the experience and making the necessary changes to provide easier ways for the customer to engage with your organization. On the first episode of the new year, host Steve Walker welcomes guests Mallory Elias-Cvengros is a senior customer experience analyst, and Serena Riley is the Director of Customer Experience, both at Llamasoft, a Coupa software company specializing in decision-making platforms for supply chains, and they discuss how they redesigned how their customers interact through online services to make the experience easier.
The importance of the employee engagement has been featured on this podcast throughout several episodes. And while there is a strong connection between engaged employees and engaged customers, the two programs are typically separate. Employee experience is run by HR, customer experience is run by CX pros, and the two typically don’t interact much. However, that seems to be changing and experience management leaders are seeing applications for the two to come together. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcome back Troy Powell for a discussion about Walker's new report, "Effectively Combining CX and EX."
There are lots of different ways to measure what a customer thinks about your company. But customer emotions can be pretty tricky. How a customer feels can affect other metrics – someone who’s happy with their service will likely provide a high NPS rating. Someone who is angry or frustrated will likely choose “very unsatisfied” in a CSAT survey. So it’s important to understand the emotions of a customer as context for other metrics. But what about more complicated relationships, like a B2B2C channel? On this episode, host Steve Walker welcomes Nancy Flowers, director of customer experience at Voya Financial* and featured in Jim Tincher's newest book, "Do B2B Better". Nancy discusses why CX pros needs to remember that emotions are important for B2C and B2B channels.
In the fourth episode of the CX technology series, Steve discusses the perspective from the technology provider with Kirk Baetens who is a global partner manager for Qualtrics, a world-class provider in experience management software and Walker’s technology partner.
Competitive retail electricity markets give consumers a choice of who will supply their electricity. Only 18 states in the U.S., including Washington D.C., have introduced these types of markets, giving consumers a choice in who generates their electricity. This, of course, has a significant impact on how a utility company approaches customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Suzie Dieth and Scott Burns from Reliant Energy, an NRG company and electric utility headquartered in Houston, Texas, to discuss how customer experience works in a retail utility market.
Providing the tools and resources for employee success seems like a "no-brainer," but companies often overlook the systems and processes that can create friction in the customer experience. And if the employees struggle to provide seamless experiences, then you can bet that customers are feeling their pain as well. In the fourth episode of our "CX Now: Eight Essential Themes Driving CX Evolution," host Steve Walker welcomes expert Georgetta Parisi, Ph.D., for a discussion on employee enablement.