A resource for customer experience (CX) and experience management (XM) professionals.
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Full Episode Listing

A complete list of episodes from The CX Leader Podcast.

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Episode #159

Released: March 30, 2021

An area critical for many companies is their product and customer feedback can play a critical role in how designers and engineers develop and improve a product, so it’s important to gather the right data. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Myles Grote from Upper Hand, a provider of full-suite sports and fitness management software, to discuss how customer feedback informs product decisions.

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Life in the Fast Lane

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Episode #252

Released: January 31, 2023

A common business adage states: “fast, cheap, or good – pick any two.” But in today’s world of same-day shipping and self-service technologies, customers are demanding speedy experiences and will not accept excuses for sacrificing quality or price. On the eighth and final episode of our series, “CX Now: Eight Essential Themes Driving CX Evolution,” host Steve Walker welcomes Sean Clayton for a discussion on why customer experience professionals should keep speed at the top of their list when optimizing their CX programs.

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Let’s Talk Tech

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Episode #33

Released: August 21, 2018

In the first of a series of episodes devoted to technology, Steve welcomes Brian Kovacs, chief information officer at Walker, for a discussion on why it's critical for CX leaders to be knowledgeable about what technology is available to improve the customers’ experience.

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Let’s Play!

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Episode #243

Released: November 22, 2022

One toy that was, and continues to be a popular choice for both parents and kids is LEGO®. So named after the Danish phrase to “play well”, LEGO® bricks and playsets are still a best-selling product today. So you might be asking, “what does this have to do with customer experience?” Host Steve Walker welcomes Sirte Pihlaja, CEO and customer experience optimizer for Shirute, a customer experience research and strategy company, to discuss how she utilizes the LEGO® Serious Play® method to build better customer experiences.

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Let’s Celebrate!

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Episode #287

Released: October 3, 2023

Every first Tuesday of October, CX pros take a moment to celebrate their profession and bring awareness to the benefits of a great customer experience, and we hope you’re celebrating with us as well! Since 2011, the Customer Experience Professionals Association, or CXPA, has been dedicated to the advancement of the CX profession and continues to provide support for customer experience professionals throughout their career. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Greg Melia, CEO of the CXPA, for a discussion on why we should take time to celebrate all things CX.

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Keep It Simple

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Episode #61

Released: March 26, 2019

In the inaugural episode of a new series focusing on industries, guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes James Bampos from NetApp to discuss customer experience in the tech space.

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Just Look at the Data

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Episode #234

Released: September 20, 2022

Data is important for customer experience. Providing a great experience is certainly a good thing, but it’s not enough to assume that your program is delivering. You must gather the data necessary to either confirm you’re doing it right, or find you need to make some changes in order to improve your CX. Host Steve Walker welcomes Tim Thoman, President and CEO of Performance Services, a company that designs and constructs high performance buildings, for a discussion on how they integrate customer data into their business' decision-making process.

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Just a Simple Question

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Episode #169

Released: June 8, 2021

Growing companies often develop complicated and disjointed processes. If business is booming, no one seems to have the time to stop and take a holistic look at how things are working and that can be detrimental to customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes Pamela Herrmann, vice president for customer experience for Mortgage Cadence, to discuss how a customer complaint led to a simple question that helped bring together a cross-functional collaboration to remove friction from the experience.

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It’s the little things

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Episode #137

Released: October 13, 2020

A driving factor for any business to be successful is the ability to differentiate - setting your company apart from the competition by creating great experiences for your customers. Three ways to do that is with personalization, ease, and speed – and its the first of these three that our guest is going to talk about today. Host Steve Walker welcomes Marcus Hall, president and partner at California Closets, for a discussion about not only personalizing the product, but the experience as well.

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It’s Party Time!

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Episode #75

Released: July 5, 2019

Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Walker expert Dereck Mobley for a discussion on how customer experiences professionals can plan corporate events around customer feedback to bring better awareness of your company’s CX efforts to the organization.

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It’s not your grandmother’s A.I.

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Episode #109

Released: March 24, 2020

The ability for computers to adapt and respond to real-time data provides value to companies needing to streamline business processes. And CX pros have not ignored the potential for this technology to provide better experiences for their customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Sarah Simon, a CX Design Partner for Verizon Business, and Erin Van Remortel, a strategic account executive with Astute Solutions, for a discussion on when A.I. can help - or hinder - your CX efforts.

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It’s Moving Really Fast

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Episode #319

Released: June 4, 2024

If you go back in time 10 or 15 years you'll find it was common for a market research function within a company to send out a single survey each year to all customers asking about their satisfaction with the products and services they interacted with. The field has since greatly evolved as what we now call customer experience regularly receives customer feedback from multiple surveys and unstructured data, and we get that data from across multiple channels. But we still have a lot of evolution left if we want to keep up with the changes our companies are dealing with. Host Troy Powell welcome Isabelle Zdatny from the Qualtrics XM Institute to discuss the evolution of customer experience and experience management.

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It’s Gotta Be Seamless

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Episode #247

Released: December 20, 2022

Many have experienced the dreaded "handoff" - that experience where someone calls into support and get transferred multiple times, to the point where frustration compels them to simply hang up. Continuing the series "CX Now: Eight Essential Themes Driving CX Evolution," host Steve Walker welcomes Diane Skirvin, vice president and team lead at Walker, to discuss the importance of making customer experiences seamless.

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It’s About People

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Episode #123

Released: June 30, 2020

As the CX industry continues to evolve, we learn more about the importance of a holistic experience across several aspects of the company – the new “experience management”, or “XM”, model. An important piece of XM is the relationship of how the employee experience drives the customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Shane Green, a keynote speaker, consultant, television personality, and author of “Culture Hacker: Reprogramming Your Employee Experience to Improve Customer Service, Retention, and Performance” for a discussion on how the employee experience affect the customer experience.

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It’s a Great Time to be a CX Leader

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Episode #200

Released: January 18, 2022

In the 200th episode of The CX Leader Podcast, host Steve Walker and guests Sonya McAllister and Sean Clayton reminisce on how customer experience has evolved since the podcast began in 2018, how businesses' views and acceptance of CX have changed in those four years, and what customer experience will look like in 2022.

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It’s “Client” Experience

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Episode #101

Released: January 28, 2020

Every company has their own unique set of challenges when it comes to providing an exceptional customer experience, and financial services companies are no exception. Regulatory pressures, compliance, and risk management review are just some of the obstacles CX pros in this industry must maneuver, but according to this episode’s guest, that’s not an excuse to provide anything less than a stellar “client” experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes Dan Brousseau, senior vice president and head of client experience at City National Bank, a Los Angeles-based company and subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, to discuss customer experience in the financial services industry.

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It Starts with the Customer

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Episode #192

Released: November 16, 2021

As a CX leader it is important to better understand and promote the customer experience field within your company. Regardless of profession, there are certain traits and skills common to leaders. But what leadership traits are important specifically to customer experience professionals – what qualities of leadership should you prioritize? Host Steve Walker welcomes Lambert Walsh, senior vice president of customer success at DocuSign, the agreement cloud company, for a discussion on the traits of customer experience leaders.

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It Starts with Employees

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Episode #209

Released: March 22, 2022

The customer experience profession is evolving to recognize the importance of going beyond the customer. If a company’s culture doesn’t include employee experiences then it will be difficult to mature a CX program. Host Steve Walker welcomes Karyn Furstman, vice president and Head of CX Strategy & Solutions at Designit, for a discussion on building a customer-focused culture through employee experience.

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Is B2B CX behind B2C?

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Episode #56

Released: February 19, 2019

Steve welcomes back Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corporation and is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink.com, to discuss the perception of B2B CX trailing in progress from B2C and how B2B leaders see customer experience as an effective way to differentiate themselves within the market.

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