Cx Leader Podcast With Steve Walker

There can be many cogs in the machine that is customer experience, and making certain they all align is important if that “machine” is to function correctly. Host Steve Walker and guest Ted Bernard, a managing principal at Invantage Group, discuss how making certain the many pieces of CX, like customer support, align with your overall customer experience strategy.

Utilities are a vital part of everyday living in modern times: it’s our power, heat, communication, and, of course, our source of water, which is the only utility consumable by humans. This presents a different level of complexity and challenges for a company preparing and treating water for customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Georgetta Parisi, vice-president for customer operations at Aqua, an Essential utility company that provides water and wastewater services to more than 3 million people across 8 states. They discuss the importance of empathy when providing critical products and services to customers.

Companies around the world are having to adjust their operations in response to COVID-19, and customer experience leaders are finding that you cannot continue in a “business as usual” mentality. CX programs need to adapt along with the overall business. While their toolbox might be fairly well-stocked, these unprecedented times are leaving some CX pro’s and executives frustrated on next steps, wondering how to continue to collect insights and feedback while not appearing insensitive to the current global situation. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Brian Stucki, an executive vice president and general manager of Customer Experience Business at Qualtrics, a leading experience management platform, to discuss how companies need to step back from focusing on metrics and look to the "human side" during a crisis.

CX leaders today are having to make critical decisions on whether they should bother customers for feedback or find other ways to gather insights. Luckily there are tools in our CX toolbox that can help CX pros collect feedback, and unstructured voice of the customer is one of those tools. Host Steve Walker welcomes Cary Cusumano, a certified customer experience professional and principal client partner in customer experience design for Verizon to discuss ways to reconstruct the customer journey without using surveys or other potentially intrusive practices.

CX leaders are often tasked with managing change throughout the company in order to create an exceptional customer experience, and building relationships is key to helping manage that change. But when life is disrupted on a global scale, it's critical that everyone in the company trusts each other to make certain the customer's experience is not sidelined. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Stuart Gilchriest, a certified customer experience professional with Hertz, the global car rental company, for a discussion on how taking the time to building relationships within the company can help in times of crisis.

Companies are often hesitant to actively seek feedback during crisis situations and that can affect your customer listen programs. But there are ways in which employees can be a source of customer insights. Host Steve Walker welcomes back Dr. Troy Powell, vice president of strategy as Walker, to discuss how a voice of the customer through the employee program, or "VOCE," can continue to provide a means to listen to customers without actively soliciting feedback from customers.

Businesses and organizations are facing a new operational reality that affects customers and employees, and as a CX professional, you and your company need to be prepared to effectively manage crisis situations. Host Steve Walker welcomes Jennifer Dzwonar, a partner at Borshoff, a PR agency known for their work in crisis and community relations, and discuss how CX professionals can help communicate with customers during difficult times.

“Social distancing” has become the term saturating the news and social media. Experts all agree that the best way to fight the spread of the coronavirus is to keep distance from others, when possible, and practice some basic hygiene, like washing our hands. That makes things a bit difficult for CX professionals who are used to leading exercises like journey mapping and other workshops that require people to collaborate in the same space. Host Steve Walker and guest Kristina Kittle, vice president of advisory services, discuss ways CX leaders can move to virtual workshop experiences.

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.

What is the role of customer experience during a crisis? Host Steve Walker and guests Jonathan Ruchman, CCXP, and Senior Director of Customer Experience at Brookdale Senior Living, and Michelle Morris, CCXP, a Customer Experience Design Partner at Verizon and member of the board of directors for the Customer Experience Professionals Association, discuss the important role customer experience professionals and other customer-focused leaders play in times of disruption and crisis. They spotlight best practices in previous times of confusion and provide practical advice that can help CX leaders take action to help their companies and their customers deal with important issues in this time of uncertainty.

Online communities are now part of daily in life for many consumers and businesses. Most community interaction happens within larger social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But some companies are finding the value of having their own online community that focuses customer interaction and experience to their product or services, allowing for the customization of a user’s experience within their platform. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Heather McNair and Dan Reese from Higher Logic to discuss the value of online communities and marketing automation to improve the customer experience.

In the second of a two-part series on the value of customers, host Steve Walker discusses with Rob Markey, a partner at Bain and Company and recently published author in the Harvard Business Review, how companies often overlook the compounding value of customers and instead get distracted by looking too much at the present and not planning for the future.

Your customers are why you're in business but are they loyal customers? How do you measure that customer's loyalty and why do companies so often undervalue their customers? Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Rob Markey, an author, speaker, podcaster, and partner at Bain and Company. They discuss Rob's work on helping develop the Net Promoter Score and how it helped simplify the close-the-loop process in customer feedback.

Several years ago, many companies made predictions on the state of the customer experience industry. Walker was no exception, having published a widely referenced report, “Customers 2020.” Now having reached that milestone year in CX, guest host Pat Gibbons and CX thought-leader and Walker’s vice president of strategy and analytics discuss what was covered in that report, highlighting predictions that came true, those that didn’t, and covering what was missed altogether.

Customer experience professionals sometimes hit that wall of having to handle a high volume of tasks and customer interactions but there isn’t the peoplepower or resources to keep up. Strategically add a little automation to your processes and you could have a powerful CX tool that allows the customer to personalize their experience and relieve strained resources. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcome Ejieme Eromosele, Vice President of Customer Success at Snaps, to discuss the advantages of using automation and A.I. in your customer experience.

Customer experience professionals have an abundance of technological choices when it comes to gathering customer feedback, providing vast amounts of data to use in guiding their CX efforts. But sometimes the “low tech” solution is the best option. Steve welcomes guest Jen Pardi Cusick, senior customer experience strategist at Gogo Business Aviation, to discuss how employees across their company participate in a client callback program to gain better insights into their customers’ needs.

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.  

On the 100th episode of The CX Leader Podcast, host Steve Walker interviews his friend and mentor Dwaine Canova, CEO of Zynity, a company that provides online tools for organizational Leaders. Dwaine discusses his new book, "Elite Executive Teams," and how executive leadership should be the driving force in making customer experience a priority in your company.

Corporate changes such as spinning off a part of a company or rebranding can have dramatic effects on customer experience, so tooling your CX program for the disruption is critical. Pat Gibbons guests hosts with guests Rafael Chavez and Kory Weisman from Clarios, formerly known as Johnson Controls Power Solutions, to discuss how they navigated their CX programs during big changes within their company.

It's easy for companies to look at data and make assumptions about their customers’ needs, but truly placing the customer central to your business means considering them in all business decisions. Host Steve Walker welcomes back to the podcast the founder and CEO of CX Journey Annette Franz to discuss her new book "Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the 'Customer' in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business).”