All Good Things…

Well, it’s been a fun ride and we’ve learned a lot along the way. But as they say, all good things must come to an end.

You know, when we started to expand the envelope a little bit and connect CX with the other relevant things that are going on in the business. You know, we talked about X- and O-data linking CX with EX. I think that the experience management function is is not really a department, it literally is strategy.

Looking back at our favorite moments and why it’s still a good time to be a CX leader on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

The CX Leader Podcast is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Hello everyone! I’m Chris Higgins, producer and this episode’s host of The CX leader Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. It’s a great time to be a CX leader and we here at Walker have had a fun time producing this podcast. But after over 330 episodes, speaking with fantastic people from across the globe, covering topics to help you get the most from customer experience, it’s time to put away the microphones. That’s right. This is the last episode of The CX Leader Podcast, at least for now. And the reason isn’t complicated, as many companies do, we here at Walker have shifted our marketing strategy and need to devote resources to other activities, but all the great content we’ve produced since 2018 will still be available on our website, and you will always be able to rely on Walker as an authoritative source for all things XM. And since this episode is special, we’ve gathered our past hosts to share their favorite moments and takeaways from our previous 331 episodes. Devout listeners will certainly recognize the dulcet tones of Pat Gibbons, Sara Walker, Troy Powell and Steve Walker, all who are sitting with me as we record this episode. Welcome back to all of you.

All right. Good to be here. This will be fun.

Thank you. Let’s see if we can all talk. Yeah.

Meeting of the talking heads here.

It’s been a while for me.

All right, well, I’m going to start with Steve and Pat. We’ll go way back when – we’ll dial the Wayback Machine to 2017, when we first started talking about doing this podcast. What prompted you both to start The CX Leader Podcast?

Uh, Pat and I were talking off, off the air, and we both think it was Bill Caskey who was an early guest on the pod.

That’s right. Yep.

And Bill has been a mentor of mine. He’s really my sales guru from my career 30 some plus years ago. I met Bill and we were early on in our process with Qualtrics, and we were at that time, just like we are now. We were changing our approach, and a lot of it was just, you know, getting the educational content out there about what what experience management was, what customer experience was. And Bill suggested we do a podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, it was evident, you know, podcasts had certainly already caught on. But more than that, I think, um, you know, storytelling, sharing conversations had really, you know, all of a sudden it really made sense. And there wasn’t really something for CX leaders to have that kind of forum. And so when he suggested it, it’s like, yeah, it’s time for that in customer experience. And we’re the right people to to head it up.

Yeah. And of course, at that time the realm of podcasting was exploding…

Right.

…and and getting very popular. And what went wrong in the decision to do it weekly? Why did we decide to do it weekly?

I wish, you know, and you guys have heard me say that when I’ve described the podcast to people I’ve said, and for some ungodly reason, the word weekly came out of our mouth and we started doing it. But somehow we had a routine. We would recruit, we would record. And, Chris, you had a process for producing it. And, you know, we the only time we skipped a week is during the holidays.

Mhm. Yeah. Absolutely.

You know, and I’ll just say I remember being around at that time like we were making a lot of changes in the business at that point. You know we were really shifting a lot of things. And I think there was this kind of challenge element to it of like, this is going to be easy, but like we need to do new things that we haven’t done before and we need to do them at a level that we might not think that we can. And to me, not being involved in the decision to start this, but being kind of a guest on some of those early ones, to me it was a signal that, you know, hey, we’re we’re marching forward in this direction of doing new stuff. And this was kind of a little bit of a flag, even though, you know, it wasn’t directly related to some of the stuff we were going after, but it was directly related to this, you know, like new direction. And it kind of served as a little bit of this, you know, just like flag of we’re going in this direction, like get on board. Um, so I liked it, but it was hard.

Yeah. Just kind of thinking out loud. I mean, we always knew we had great content and we always struggled to get it communicated effectively. And so once we kind of got into the rhythm of it and worked out the processes, the content really was never an issue. Um, and you guys are, you know, led by Pat. You guys are are prolific content producers. And we just as we start to think more creatively and then, you know, as we started to build an audience, people wanted to be on the podcast. It was kind of amazing to me how soon the request to be on the podcast started pouring in. I mean, at the at the high point, I was getting like a half a dozen, probably a week…

Oh yeah.

…of people pitching to go on our podcast. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So I want to talk about like, favorite moments, either as a guest or a host, because I think everybody has been either a guest or a host at some point at time. And I think I’ll pick on Troy first. Troy, you were… I looked this up before we started recording: you were a guest for 15 episodes. I think you were one of you were kind of as as Steve was joking before we started recording. You’re the kind of the Buddy Hackett of of the podcast. And so – I’ll let Steve explain that later if he wants to.

A lot of people going, who’s Buddy Hackett?

Both the frequency and the maybe oddness.

But but as Steve was saying earlier, real quick, he was he was the guest that appeared the most on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And yes so…

And The CX Leader Podcast is my outlet because I always wanted to be Johnny Carson.

Yeah, exactly. So we got Johnny Carson and Buddy Hackett in the room right now. Yeah, right. So anyway, so you you were on 15 episodes, but also you hosted six episodes as well. And what was your favorite moment out of all those episodes you experienced? And it might not be an episode that you were even part of.

Yeah. No, that’s a tough question. I was kind of looking back over, you know, all the episodes because there’s a lot of them. And the ones I was involved with, and there were a number of ones that I really enjoyed, a number of guests. So as a host, like, I think I enjoyed certain things more. I think as a guest it’s easier to do it, but then you’re also just constantly thinking like, what am I saying? What do I need to say next? Does this sound good? So from a hosting standpoint, I think that episode hosted with Topher Mitchell at Qualtrics on value. I think it was out of the box. It was kind of recently. This past year was a fun episode one because Topher and I kind of like, share, you know, sort of a little more of an analytic mindset. And I’ve enjoyed talking to him, you know, outside of the podcast, etc. but then also because that content is just so relevant and has been for, you know, decades to this process of CX and how to make things valuable, but providing a slightly different, maybe perspective that I felt was more practical, approachable to how we actually can do it instead of just sitting around and talking about it a lot, which is what’s kind of happened at this point. So I enjoyed that one. I also enjoyed there’s an episode a couple, uh, maybe a year or two ago with Tom DeWitt, who started the CX master’s program at Michigan State. So he’s a professor and I, you know, my graduate background. So it was kind of fun to talk to somebody in that realm a little bit, too.

Yeah, yeah, that was a good episode. Sara, what about you?

Um, I was trying to think about if I had to pinpoint a favorite moment or a favorite episode, which is hard to do, I think I what I enjoy the most about the podcast is just the that the forum feels very authentic for having conversations about why our industry is so important in the world, and you really would feed off of that with every guest. Certainly that I had the opportunity to speak with, um, when hosting. And so I just think that that podcasting was a really great medium for allowing a lot of that to come to light. And hopefully a lot of our listeners, um, took that away from various episodes. Of the episodes that I was involved with my favorite one was probably the one that I got to host, um, in recognition of, um, Women’s Equality Day, which was a nod back to, um, Dorothy “Tommie” Walker, who’s the founder of our organization and also my great grandmother, and just talking about kind of her, uh, impetus for starting the organization and a lot of what she gave to the industry and just felt very full circle. And so I think that one holds a special place for me in thinking back and reflecting on some of my favorite moments.

Yeah, that was a great episode. I think that was the first episode you ever did with the podcast.

I think it might have been.

And you were host, so. Yeah.

Yeah. And there’s a lot of really nice nods to not just, you know, why Tommie started the business, but also the important role that women played in getting the organization up and running and, you know, women’s feedback in particular, and how that was especially important for consumer packaged goods. And a lot of the first clients that that Walker had. So that was a fun one, definitely stands out for me.

Yeah. Yeah. And just to circle back, you did 18 episodes.

Oh!

Yeah. In total.

That’s more than I thought.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Much many more hosting. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Pat, I’ll pick on you now.

Okay, well, we have to mention the Halloween episode.

Oh, yes.

I mean, come on.

Yes.

If if if anybody has not listened to those, they’re certainly the most entertaining. And they, you know, they had good content. Yes. We focused on scary moments. CX in there, you know, and clients or not, not just clients, but people would share their experiences as customers that were horrible. And it was fun to kind of dissect those and get lessons from them. But then, of course, the special effects that you geek out on, Chris, were the toppers.

Those those were my favorite episodes. Yes.

The other ones that come to mind, you know, we had a lot of industry leaders, you know, Bruce Temkin, Ian Goulding, Jay Baer, um, um, lots of episodes with the CXPA and the XM Institute. One of the things that I really liked, and I think back to when recording as host was sometimes you would record the podcast, you would be complete, and then you’d just have some fun dialog afterwards and some story would come out and we’re like, wait a minute. Turn the mics back on. We need you need to tell that story that that is a great example of all the things you just talked about. And then we’d edit it and get it back in. So those that was one of my favorite things was when those kind of magical moments happened.

Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The Halloween episodes are probably my favorite as well. Yeah, it got to the point. People were, um, recommending to me like topics for that little beginning part, the little skit we’d always have. And even my best friend who’s who’s a pastor. Nothing to do with customer experience in a business sense. But I remember he called me one day and he said, I got an idea for you. This one is Frankenstein is trying to buy life insurance. I was like, that’s it. That’s perfect.

You went with it.

That was perfect. That was perfect. So, uh. Yeah, I don’t think we ever really did that episode, but it never, never came to light. But that might…

How many… How many horror story episodes were there then? I mean.

Six.

Six?

Six. So six. Yes. Yeah.

Which is crazy to think. So not quite the Simpsons, you know, Treehouse of Horrors…

No no. No.

…28 or whatever. But.

But that was the aspiration, you know? That was always the horror story six. Yeah.

I had one yesterday. I mean, it’s kind of easy pickings to get horror stories, isn’t it? But it’s so creative the way we did that

Steve?

Yeah, I was… I mean, that was kind of where I was going. I had a couple other thoughts. I always enjoyed doing it with other people. Um, and I really thought that the content was the best when we had our pros on. I also liked when we put together a series or a construct, like the top Qualities of Leaders or some of the emerging trends we sort of would integrate other things we were doing. Um, I remember one specifically that we did with Sheila march, Sean Clayton and Jack, and we compared CX to auto racing.

Oh, yes. Yes.

And Sean, Jack and I are all big motorsports nuts. And the idea was Sheila’s and I kind of feel bad afterwards because we, I was kind of picking on her because she doesn’t know anything about racing, but it was her idea, and it was so much fun because we just kept, you know, we just kept making these analogies. Um, so and I’m, I’m kind of one for, uh, getting distracted or getting off the topic so that, that that was a good one. Um, I remember a really bad one that we never produced, chris.

Oh, yes. There was only one episode.

We grinded for, like an hour, and we just could not.

Oh, it was, it was. I think you got in three questions in an hour, and someone brought their keynote speech with them. And it was that was it.

And we’re like, no, we’re just going to talk here.

Yeah. We’ll just quietly put this one on the shelf. And yeah.

You know what? I really wish, um, I wish I could remember the first time I said it’s a great time to be a CX leader.

Oh, yeah.

Because it stuck. Yeah.

And I think it came out from, you know, just bantering with somebody.

Yeah.

And we were kind of getting all giddy about, you know, how how fun it was that, you know, this business was really becoming mainstream in business. And, and, you know, the appetite for it inside organizations just to better understand. And those of us that have been practicing it for decades, you know. Um, but it really was it was one that just sort of stuck. And we ended up putting it into kind of the, the regular. And it kind of became a catchphrase, really.

Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty early on. I think it.

Was early on.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it just somebody said, you know, we were just going back and forth like, yeah, isn’t it great? I said, yeah, it’s a great time to be a CX leader.

Yeah. That sounds like a great tagline.

Yeah,

That sounds like that’s.

Yeah, exactly.

Steve, I’ll stick with you. What’s a particular topic that stands out to you that you feel was probably one of the more significant things that we covered?

Yeah, I think and I think we’re going to go here later in the in this broadcast too. But I think that, you know, when we started to expand the envelope a little bit, um, and, and connect CX with the other relevant things that are going on in the business. Um, you know, we talked about X- and O-data. We talk about linking CX with EX. I think that the experience management function is is not really a department in a company. It’s got to be cultural. It’s got to be… It literally is strategy. It’s strategy today. So any time we were kind of putting those more visionary, you know, how could CX be more impactful in the organization? I always liked it. And again, back a nod to you guys and your ability to organize content. You know, I think that’s always been sort of part of how we’ve, you know, we’ve had this laboratory with all these great companies and we’ve been early, um, you know, we we were in this business early on, and we’ve seen it evolve over decades. And it’s just so gratifying to see where it where it is today, where it has such a tremendous impact on, on our clients and our companies and our customers.

Yeah. Yeah. Sara, what about you?

Yeah. Um, I was thinking about, you know, some of the the content that I think is probably most valuable for our leaders, for our listeners. And my mind is going to on a similar path to Steve’s, which is knowing that the bulk of our audience are CX leaders themselves. I think a common challenge that our listeners tend to be up against is how to get the customer more centralized within their organization, how to, um, you know, move what it is that they’re doing in relation to CX outside of their functional areas and have it be adopted more broadly or considered more important at the company level. And I think that’s where we had a lot of the most valuable content was in listening to other practitioners in terms of how they’ve had success and really integrating that within their, their organizations and, and making sure that CX and experience management were, were thought of as real business assets. And I think that goes back to, you know, Troy, when you mentioned some of your favorite episodes with with Topher and the value framework and how you just make CK and experience management, really the, the business, um, solution, I think in a lot of ways to things like profitability or reduced cost and, you know, elements that that really matter at the highest levels. And when you can show how the customer can, um, impact that, you know, all the better. So I liked any episodes where guests talked about how they, they overcame those types of challenges or had success in, in getting it better, better adopted within their organization.

Yeah. Yeah. Troy?

Yeah. You know it. You know the things there’s a couple aspects of CX specifically, but then just business in general that I think can sometimes get in the way of us making progress. And one of those is you kind of lack of maybe agreed upon frameworks or, you know, scaffolding of how to sort of think about and approach CX as a business discipline that is, you know, to Sara’s point, a business discipline, that whole focus should be on success and growth of the business. Right. And we can far too often get, you know, engaged in the little kind of aspects of, of running CX. And so, you know, I liked anything that allowed us to provide some kind of a framework that we think could help CX become more strategic and more valuable, especially in the future. And so we had an X and O series, you know, many years ago and an X and O report. And, you know, and I think I guess the other aspect often of CX and business is we think of it’s not something that’s been done in the last 6 or 12 months, it has no relevance. Like things from years ago, it’s like, oh, that’s old news, you know. Well, again, coming from more of that graduate school background with like, you know, we were often doing lit reviews and stuff in the 50s and 40s that, you know, people have kind of forgotten about but still are like foundational to how we think about the world and how we can understand the world.

Right. Yeah. When was service profit chain.

Right.

80s or 70s. 80s became more popular. But you go back to Peter Drucker’s. I mean, all of that stuff is still…

“Attract and Keep Customers”

…relevant.

I think that was like 56 or something like that. He wrote, the objective of business is to attract and keep customers.

Well. Yeah. And so many of you know, we’re just kind of building on those things without always recognizing them, sometimes even. And so, um, you know, so the X and O piece was a few years ago, it was still pretty relevant, the CX Now series is one that I particularly kind of proud of as something we’ve done, and that’s two years old now that we kind of put some episodes on that and built out a book, but…

How about Customers 2020?

Yeah. Well, yeah, let’s go way back. Right. Like, yeah,

We did it in 2013.

Yeah.

And it was pretty darn good. Actually, it was pretty predictive.

Speed. Yeah. Yeah.

Personalization. Personalization. Wow.

Yeah. I was looking back. We have like AI being mentioned in like 2019 is a thing that CX needs to get on board with, you know. But so anyway this idea of like some of those pieces that I think still are relevant and the aspects of CX Now are these eight things that we really need to be focusing on CX still so incredibly relevant and still things that we’re not doing well at, you know. And so that was something, you know, those those topics I think are ones that I always enjoyed. And then a recent episode with Izy at XMI that, you know, I hosted where she’s talking about this modern XM, like, what’s the future of XM? So that one’s more recent. So business people can feel good about looking at recent things. But you know… But those pieces where it’s like, what does it take for us and for CX leaders that we work with and other leaders to really propel CX into the future? Because, you know, and we’ll get to this later. I’m a little worried, honestly, about CX losing its place of relevance because we’re just not advancing and modernizing enough. So anyway, that’s my soapbox.

No, it’s a bold statement.

Yeah, definitely.

Pat?

Well, I, I would reiterate and I had kind of thought of this as well, is the series we did on eight themes of driving, uh, innovation or CX Evolution. Um, that was kind of profound, and that was one for those listening to to go back to that, because it is a couple of years ago, but it’s all completely relevant. And that’s one that we did blogs about. We came out with a published booklet on it and everything. It was one that really I think we put a lot of thought into. So I thought that was very intentional. The other thing that is a theme completely different from some of the business aspects, but certainly relevant, was I always liked when we talked to people about their backgrounds. How did you end up in CX?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what was interesting about that was, you know, a couple of things. One is they came from all different areas, you know, some some came from a traditional research background, some came from being in customer service, some from marketing and some from just who knows where. But they ended up in CX. But the thing that they had in common was some sort of passion for the customer. And as much as we can talk about all the ingredients and the pace of change and all that. One thing that doesn’t change is if you’re a CX leader to be any good at it, you’ve got to have some passion for this and really feel like what you’re doing is making a difference, because it is, and it should at least.

I like that. The passion for it. Yeah. All right. So looking forward to 2025. And I’m going to put a caveat on this. What is the one thing – other than AI. Because AI is very significant not just in customer experience and in the professional world, but what is the one thing that will be key for CX leaders to understand and implement? I think I’m going to come to Sara first on this one.

Ooh. Um, okay. Not AI, but potentially related to AI, I would say in the sense that as we can learn more about our customers experience through what we might call as unstructured or unsolicited data available, things like time spent on the website, you know, various elements that might be tracked through any type of software that exists that the organization has. I just think it will really behoove us in this industry to not lose sight of feedback that does come through in a more traditional sense, via surveys or any other type of direct interaction, because I think it’s going to become more important than ever to have that personalized element and attention to the customer. There’s a lot of things that will benefit the industry that you can learn at scale with big data, but I don’t think we can, um, under index on what is told to us in a 1 to 1 setting, because it’s really the foundational aspect of why our industry even exists, which is to make sure we’re listening and caring for our customers. So I just think that as the industry becomes smarter, as we get more and more data inputs and that becomes the focus and rightfully so, get a lot of the attention, like just not to lose sight of maybe what might be more obvious, but if you’re looking past it, you won’t see it. So…

Yeah.

…definitely. I think that’s top of mind for me.

Troy?

Um, so I asked AI what I should know. No, not really. Um, although it is, you know, gen AI tools are incredible for, you know, getting this, giving different perspectives and all of that. So but I didn’t actually use it for what I’m going to say next, but. But it is to me like kind of piggybacking a little bit on my earlier comment that there is an inflection point going on relative to, you know, the the prevalence of customer data. You know, often unsolicited, unstructured, etc., you know, that that has often fallen outside of the purview of CX. There’s also just with, you know, the tools that are now available to the organization as a whole. There’s a growing interest across organizations for utilizing customer data to make better decisions. Right? And there always has been, but there’s always been some roadblocks that I think CX then has sort of filled. Right. It’d be like, okay, well, we can’t get this feedback from customers. So. Okay. CX comes along to do surveys and to solicit that. Well now there’s you know, you can use a lot of this data that’s being stored just more recently, we can store a lot of it and now analyze it with new tool sets. And so CX runs the risk of becoming less relevant unless we really jump ahead of this and stop just relying on what we’ve traditionally done and on tracking programs and on surveys. And, you know, and we’ve been beating this drum for years. And so, you know, I will take, you know, fault for some like that. We haven’t driven our clients far enough ahead in this either.

But I think as leaders, you know, all of us need to take this seriously because it’s at a point now that an organization could easily be like, oh, well, everyone’s now analyzing data, understanding it, and taking action on what do we need the CX team for? Um, and so we need to lead the charge because it’s not easy. Like it’s unstructured data. Like we still see incredibly low value getting pulled out of this because it’s massive amounts of data, lots of noise. And so it’s not easy like people think it is, but it’s not. And so as a CX team, we can lead the organization to actually get value more quickly out of this data, out of additional ways of thinking about customers. But we have to be proactive about it and not just be like, well, this is what they’ve always asked us to do. So that’s what we keep doing. So, you know, I think that 2025 has to be a year of transformation, of how we think about our role and how we provide value to the organization. And it’s something we’re going to have to push. It’s not an organization. There’s too many things for them to like, go, hey, do this. Like we have to proactively go, this thing, this is what we can do to provide value to you and organizations will leadership will like that. Like they’re looking for these answers just the same way. And everybody’s underwater on trying to figure out how to, you know, use all these new tools and data. So that would be my 2025 challenge to myself and all of you.

That’s right. Steve, what about you? What is the one thing that CX leaders need to really understand in 2025?

Yeah, I think we’re all kind of in the same zip code or area code here. I would say data integration and a single view of the customer. Um, just back to your comment about AI, I think that’s just a new tool in the toolbox. Um, you know, the iPhone and the internet were human enhancements already, and now we’ve just got kind of the next level of that. And so that does provide more opportunities to amass more data, make better sense of it. Store more data. And then ultimately integrate that. But I’m with Troy. I think that, you know, we we should as a profession be the people that, um, you know, keep keep pushing the, the, the envelope on how you put your customer data and how you relate it to the business objectives. Um, and, you know, to the earlier comments, it’s sort of the same. It’s the same issues. It’s just sort of doing it at a new level of complexity and scale. Um, you know, we really are we’re trying to help our, our companies, our organizations attract and keep better customers the way we do that keeps evolving.

Yeah. Pat, what about you?

Um, you know, at the risk of repeating the others, you know. No, I, I agree with, um, the whole focus on data strategy. You know, we’ve been talking about the use of unsolicited data, unstructured data, combining data, you know, using behavioral operational experience data all together for too long. And, you know, it’s it’s a challenge to put it all together. But more and more, there are tools and technology to be able to do that. I think, um, the one thing I would add to it is and it kind of hits on some of the things Troy was saying, not only does CX have to put themselves in that position, I think some of the CX leaders may not have those skills. They may not be… Let me put it this way: they may not be as comfortable with the technical skills that are necessary behind it. So I think the just the the skills of a CX leader are shifting. And either you kind of have to get on board or you have to have somebody on your team or something to make sure that you can address, you know, the future needs that CX needs to take on.

Yeah. All right. Well, one of the highlights of each episode of The CX Leader Podcast was the take home values – that one tip or trick that CX leaders can take from that episode and put it into practice right away. It could be a quick win. It could be a North Star for them to to base their work from. So all of you are now going to give your take home value for the podcast. And I think I’ll start with Sara.

Okay. I think my… My take home value is going to stay a little high level or 30,000 foot, if you will. And I think it’s just be curious. You know, our whole industry exists because, you know, we want to understand the experiences that our customers are having with our organization. And you can’t do that at a macro or a micro level. If you weren’t curious about what’s happening and have a real, genuine and an authentic desire to make sure it’s the best experience that you can provide. So I’ll leave it at that.

Good. Troy?

I do love that. This idea of curiosity and, you know, I think the fancy word for it is growth, right? But you don’t grow if you’re not curious. And so I love that that piece. I fully agree. Um, I would say, you know, from a practical standpoint, it is as quickly as humanly possible, sit down. Sit down with your team. Identify a use case for how you can build out either a value statement that you can prove, like, hey, we heard this, we did this. Here’s what happened to, you know, these value drivers as a result of that, you know, and here’s what we project or no, you might be happening as a result of that. Everybody’s got something like that in their organization or the capacity to build it at some point. And it’s just thinking down through the detail as opposed to getting stuck at, you know, the NPS, you know, revenue level. It’s like getting down to like what actually changed because of stuff we heard from customers and make a case out of that and shout it to the rooftops in your organization to start, start proving the value. And then that get a habit of continuing to do it. Or the other aspect of going out and finding a way, an area where there is un- or underutilized data from customers, probably unstructured in this case, and and find a way to provide value from that, you know, and then try and make it as focused as possible to make it addressable, but to kind of be able to then prove and say, here is how we took this data that was not being used and made value out of it, and you now have a bit of a use case for how can we scale that? So I think as quickly and this is a great time to do it, is everybody’s thinking about, you know, strategy etc. and sitting down and planning like as quickly as possible, identify something you can do to prove value of your efforts.

All right. That’s a great one, Pat?

All right. Um, yeah, those are both great ones. Um, but first I’m going to go off script just for a second. And, Chris, I know you have editing power over this. I hope you don’t edit this. But we have shared hosting duties for all of these. But we’ve had one producer over the whole time. And, Chris, you’ve done a great job. You’ve had fun with this. Um, we’ve provided a lot of great content. So somewhere in here there has to be a thank you for for your work.

Well. Thank you.

Yeah.

Um, so my take home value, I’ll take it from two different perspectives. One, we mentioned earlier this whole idea of data integration and the skills required for that. I think that’s a challenge for CX professionals. Um, it probably doesn’t fit the take home value descriptor that you can do it today, but you can start it today. You can say, you know, I got a commit to this. I got to find out more. The other is the topic I know I mentioned earlier is so many of our guests had a passion for this. And so I do think one question you could ask yourself today is, am I finding joy in what I’m doing here? Because if you don’t have that, you won’t have the passion. And I think that that is a requirement for a CX leader.

Yeah, that’s a great one. Steve. Our our host emeritus. I’ll leave the last take home value to you.

Well, I want to echo Pat’s comments about you, Chris. I was going to do that too. Um, it’s been a real pleasure to work with you and get to know you through this. And you’re a pro, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without your expertise, so thank you.

Thank you. It’s been fun.

And, uh, just a reminder, our our our music is Chris Higgins original music that we use in the show, too, so we get a double whammy there. Hey, um, you know, I’m an optimist. Um, so I think that it’s still a great time to be a leader. And I don’t think that I’ve ever really had to search that hard to find what we do as being mission and purpose driven. Um, I do believe that, you know, responsible, conscientious, free market capitalism is the best way to advance mankind. Um, and I think that, you know, the role that we play as CX professionals, we, we help the good guys win in the marketplace by making sure that they’re, you know, generating real value, that customers can’t get at a better price or a better value. And that’s what it really comes down to. So, uh, all the same stuff, you know, keep keep practicing your trade and keep trying to relate it back to how your company succeeds in the marketplace. Um, because there’s there’s really not anything wrong with a successful business. It, it, you know, it provides good jobs, it provides good products, and most of them pay taxes and, and contribute back to their communities in lots of good ways. So, um, you know, in, in in our world today, I think we, we provide a very, very useful purpose. And I just hope that our best days are still ahead. And I think they are.

Yeah, that’s a great one. Steve Walker, Troy Powell, Sara Walker and Pat Gibbons are all hosts of The CX Leader Podcast. Thank you all for your leadership and insights into providing this resource for customer experience leaders.

Thank you.

Glad to do it.

It’s been a good ride.

Yeah,

Yeah, a lot of fun.

It was it was really a fun run.

This might be our last episode, but you can still keep in touch by following us on LinkedIn and through our website at walkerinfo.com. And as I mentioned earlier in the episode, you’ll still be able to access all the great content from The CX Leader Podcast at cxleaderpodcast.com, so feel free to browse and link to content from there. The CX Leader Podcast has been a production of Walker, where an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. Thank you for listening and remember it’s a great time to be a CX leader.