Cx Leader Podcast With Steve Walker

Women's Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on August 26, commemorating the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. In honor of that event, and in honor of her great-grandmother Tommie Walker, who founded Walker in 1939, Sara Walker guests hosts to highlight words of wisdom from women who have been guests on The CX Leader Podcast.

People love origin stories. And for CX professionals, narratives of customer experience “newbies” growing from humble beginnings into “heroes” can be insightful. Continuing in our series of featuring winners from the Awards International 2022 US Customer Experience Awards, host Steve Walker welcomes Lee Kemp, operations, supply chain, and Customer Experience leader, and Sam Wegman, vice president for customer experience, at Univar Solutions, a global chemical and ingredient distributor. Lee and Sam describe how they built an award-winning program from scratch, having received three gold awards and one silver for Univar's customer experience efforts.

Change is not easy. It’s human instinct to become comfortable with “what you know.” But sometimes a change is necessary – when CX professionals notice a problem, or recognize a way to make the customer’s experience better, their instinct is to find solutions to improve how they interact with customers. And a large global technology company needs a CX leader who can bring people together into a common purpose and inspire them to do what’s best for their customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes Bob McDonald, vice president of global CRM experience for IBM, for a discussion on how Bob made the case to transform their customer experience. 

Building CX programs from scratch is never an easy task. And the endeavor usually starts with the vision of a single person that sees the benefits of CX and agrees – or is appointed – to spearhead the project. And that includes a lot: program planning, gaining support throughout the organization, putting convincing metrics in place, and a whole lot more. It’s a daunting task. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Carol Tesarek from Equipment Depot to highlight how they put all the right pieces together to create an award-winning program.

Today’s technology allows for peer-driven collaboration on an unprecedented level. People from across the globe can create knowledge resources on Wikipedia, or develop software on GitHub and share it with the world. There are even ways to create art and music collaboratively online. So it only makes sense that a group of CX pros decided that the customer experience profession needed some sort of playbook that “documents CX terms, tactics, and approaches based on the CXPA CX Framework." Host Steve Walker welcomes Heather Gillbanks, CCXP and Director and Customer Experience & Customer Center of Excellence Lead at Cornerstone Building Brands, for a discussion on how she lead the effort to create this resources for CX pros.

Health is a deeply personal topic and these last few years have pushed healthcare institutions into making unprecedented changes in how they deliver that care. Naturally, this has had an impact on the patients’ experience. XM professionals in healthcare institutions must be mindful that patients are NOT customers, and design programs accordingly to improve the patient experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes Sarah Andrews, vice president for advisory services at Walker, and Sarah Gilstrap, a senior consultant for healthcare customer experience and an XM scientist at Qualtrics, for a discussion on trends in patient experience. 

If you’re a CX pro for small or medium size company, you already know the challenges in designing and delivering the best possible experience for your customers. But what about companies that have multiple locations? What about a company like Starbucks which has over 33 thousand locations? How do they deliver such a consistent experience across so many countries and cultures? Host Steve Walker welcomes Jim Hardeman, chief marketing officer and chief product evangelist for CMX, for a discussion on how larger companies create experiences consistent across multiple locations.

We’ve had some great guest on the show recently and the importance of the employee experience has started to emerge as a notable topic. Many guests emphasize the need for companies to empower and trust their employees to make decisions that improve the customer experience. In this episode of our “Turn Back Time” take home value series, producer Chris Higgins highlights some of the take home value offered from our guest in regards to employee experience.

Few if any of customer experience pros went to school to be a CX professional, and yet there are thousands in this flourishing profession. So what does it take to be a CX leader? What are the right skills and what is the best career path to take? How do you break into this and how do you determine whether your company will really support customer experience strategies? Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Shelly Chandler, a certified CX professional and as head of customer experience for Delaware North, for a discussion on what it takes to start and advance your career in CX.

There are a number of ways to design experiences for your customers, but you're stuck. You find it hard to think beyond how things are currently done. And even if you had some sort of break-through idea, changing your current processes and getting others on board seems pretty daunting. And yet you constantly wonder, "what if?" Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer for Arise Virtual Solutions, for a discussion on driving innovation in your CX program.

It's a common practice in customer experience, and a vital one: closed-loop response to customer feedback. Simply put: you need to make sure you respond to customers in a timely and appropriate way. But, like all things in life, it’s not that simple and if not done well it can actually create poor experiences for your customers. This is why it’s critical to get front line employees engaged in CX and understand the processes set in place that provide the best possible experiences for customers. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Greg Chase, an XM catalyst with the Qualtrics XM Institute, for a discussion on closed-loop feedback response.

One of the best institutions to learn leadership skills is the military. Veterans often become some of the best business leaders in their fields. So how does military life translate into becoming an effective customer experience leader? Host Steve Walker welcomes Michelle Buretta, a vice president and CX strategic advisor at Walker, for a discussion on how her service in the Army prepared her to be a customer experience leader.

For many companies the call center (or "contact center") is the frontline of their customer experience. And the past couple of decades have seen the channels in which customers can interact with your company explode beyond the simple phone call: email, live chat, social media... But are we failing to recognize the true value and potential of the contact center? Host Steve Walker welcomes Bruce Temkin of the Qualtrics XM Institute to discuss the newest technologies that help companies utilize the full potential of their contact centers.

As more companies realize the potential of a customer-centric culture, the discussion around how your employees’ experiences can affect your customers' experiences is becoming more prevalent. Employee experience – or “EX” – has often been siloed in human resources, but how can you connect the customers’ and employees’ experiences? What data do we collect? And how do we activate a CX plus EX culture to make the best use of what we discover? Guest host Pat Gibbons welcome Kevin Campbell, an employee experience scientist at Qualtrics, to discuss how to connect CX and EX data.

In a world that generates thousands of terabytes of data every single day, it's important to be a little picky on what type of data to gather. Customer experience professionals rely on data to understand their customer’s needs. But what data do you collect? How does a CX leader determine what information is meaningful and what is simply noise? Host Steve Walker welcomes Azlan Raj, chief marketing officer of the EMEA service line at Merkle, for a discussion on how a CX pro determines what kind of data to gather. 

Steve Walker hosts another Live with CXPA event with guests Mark Slatin, senior vice president and director of CX at Sandy Springs Bank, and Ann Schrader, CX strategist at Farm Credit Service of America, for a discussion on ways for CX leaders to improve their CX program’s visibility and build a reputation as a valuable part of their company’s strategy.

In Part 1 of "CX for Start-ups" guest Jen Batley discussed why it’s so important for new companies to really be in-tune with their customers. Knowing their needs while providing a product or service that disrupts the field is critical for start-ups. But what if you’ve been around for a while and are looking to scale-up? Are you providing what you promised to your customers? How are you listening to your customers while you grow your company? Host Steve Walker welcomes back Jen Batley of Batley Advisory to discuss companies looking to scale-up their business.

New business owners have a lot to think about when trying to get their company off the ground, and hopefully one of the many things in their mental "to-do" list is customer experience. We’ve always maintained that a strong CX program and customer-centric culture is vital in today’s business environment, and that’s just as true for new companies. But how do you get started? What insights should you gather first? And what about scalability? In the two-episode series, Steve Walker welcomes Jen Batley, founder and executive consultant for Batley Advisory, for a discussion on what starts-ups should know regarding customer experience when getting their company off the ground.

With supply chain shortages throughout the globe CX pros are reminded how operational logistics can affect the customer experience. All companies have some sort of operational processes – shipping, legal work, graphics design, as a few examples - so it’s important to consider how the efficiency of your operations impacts the customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes Dr. John Olson, professor of operations and supply chain management and program director of the masters of business analytics at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a discussion on  why CX leaders should drive the move towards operational excellence.

Many companies rely on partners to deliver the best results for their customers – we here at Walker enjoy the benefits of being a member of the Qualtrics Partner Network. But any CX pro will know that it may not be particularly easy to manage the experience when it’s in another organization’s hands, and it’s natural to want to ensure that any experience your customers have with you or your partner reflects your brand promise. So how do you manage the experience beyond your own walls? Host Steve Walker welcomes Andrew Carothers, senior manager of digital experience at Cisco, for a discussion on delivering exceptional experience to and through your partner channels.