Cx Leader Podcast With Steve Walker

A new report has found that more people are looking for self-service options to find help with their products and services but many companies' online support and documentation is not able to handle the task. This can create problems for companies offering support and frustration for customers who simple want to find simple solutions for simple problems online. Steve Walker welcomes Gal Oron, CEO of Zoomin, a software company that helps global enterprises turn their documentation into a mission-critical asset that supports every part of the customer journey, for a discussion on why companies should offer self-service options.

The employee experience is becoming more critical in making certain your company has the best possible customer experience. But there’s one department that is critical in establishing and maintaining an effective EX program: human resources. Host Steve Walker welcomes Dr. Cecelia Herbert, a certified experience management professional and a principal XM catalyst for the Qualtrics XM Institute, for a discussion on the importance of building relationships with human resources to improve the customer and employee experience.

It can be argued that small businesses make the backbone of the U.S. economy. According to a study conducted by the Small Business Administration released in 2019, small businesses generated 44% of the U.S economic activity and created two-thirds of net new jobs. Granted those numbers would likely look different given the reality of the COVID pandemic, but it still underscores the importance of small businesses in the U.S. But how does customer experience work in small business environments and given limited resources within small businesses how can they make certain the customer’s journey is as frictionless as possible? Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Rebecca Grimes, chief revenue officer at Ruby, to discuss how small businesses can still have great customer experience.

Note: this episode is an encore presentation of the Live with CXPA event, "Combining CX and EX: Better Together" which premiered on November 9th, 2021. You can also watch a video presentation of this event on CXPA's YouTube channel.  Customer experience and employee experience are typically separate programs run by different departments. However, what if they were more in sync? Join guest host Steve Walker of the CX Leader Podcast along with a guest panelists Troy Powell, Jennefer Pursifull, and Ryan Willis for advice and examples that show how CX and EX can be integrated - all in service of creating more engaged employees and loyal customers.

It’s an unfortunate result of the pandemic that most people have experienced: supply shortages. Everything from breakfast cereal to new cars, jewelry, the newest name-brand mobile phone, and even turkeys. And it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for front-line retail workers as they receive the brunt of consumer anger over things they clearly have no control. But there are tools that can help both customer and employee smooth out these rough times. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Seb Reeve from Nuance Communications for a discussion on A.I. and how the digital experience can help smooth out a rough holiday shopping season.

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.

Relationships are an important part of our lives. Humans are social creatures and it’s important to understand that fact when leading a CX program. But companies sometimes miss the mark on ensuring employees and leaders throughout the company understand how to build and maintain relationships with customers, and each other. Host Steve Walker welcomes John Dijulius, chief revolution officer and president of the Dijulius Group, for a discussion on the importance of building relationships with customers and colleagues.

Countless guests on this podcast have described how their careers were steered into the space of customer experience. It has been a common theme that they never went to college exclusively to study CX because there were no such degree programs. Recently there has been a greater effort to remedy that problem, proving once again that it’s never been a better time to be a customer experience pro. Guest host Troy Powell welcomes Dr. Tom DeWitt, faculty at Michigan State University and director of CXM@MSU who is also spearheading the creation of a degree program in CX management.

Co-hosts Steve Walker and Pat Gibbons take listeners on a frightful journey of terrible customer experiences with plumbing, restaurants, baby supply stores, hospitals, and even vampires in blood banks! Listen, if you dare!

The advantage of experience management (or "XM") is the holistic view of experience across the company. By leveraging customer and employee data together, companies can take their experience programs to the next level. But what companies are applying this practice and how’s it working out for them? Host Steve Walker welcomes Jennefer Pursifull, VP of marketing and sales, and Sharon Bislich, director for marketing, communication, and engagement – both from Medxcel, a healthcare facilities management company - to discuss how they successfully built their program to empower their employees to create better experiences for their clients. 

CX pros often need to provide ways for employees across the company to access data from their customer experience programs. This data should be easy to access and quick to interpret on a high level – no time to be downloading tabulated data and fiddling with it in Excel. Dashboards provide a way to aggregate data into a high-level, easy-to-read view, giving CX programs a vital tool in communicating feedback from customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes Gary Szeszycki and Mike Grindstaff, both from Walker, for a discussion on how to plan and build effective dashboards.

“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.

Customer experience includes many aspects of how we interact with our customers. One common aspect is the hospitality we afford to them. Some companies will have more opportunities to demonstrate hospitality than others – like hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc. So how can other companies take cues from these markets by putting a “yes” mentality in their customer interactions? Host Steve Walker welcomes Christine Trippi, an award-winning hospitality leader and the author of “Yes is the Answer: How Positivity, Passion, and Pineapples will transform your leadership and your life,” for a discussion on creating a "yes" mindset in your customer experience efforts.

Is your customer loyal to your company, or to your prices? One of the best practices for any company is to create a culture that grows customer loyalty beyond aspects such as price or location. Host Steve Walker welcomes back award-winning keynote speaker, author, and CX expert Shep Hyken, for a discussion about his new book, "I’ll Be Back: How to get Customers to Come Back Again and Again.”

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."

In this special encore presentation, Steve Walker hosts the Live with CXPA event "Key Ingredients for Making an Impact with CX." As the ultimate advocate for customers, customer experience professionals are supposed to be catalysts for change and influential in building a customer-focused culture. However, it’s easy to get caught up in the details of managing a CX program and question if all this effort is really making a difference. In this session, join guest host Steve Walker and special guests Ian Golding, CCXP, Greg Melia, CAE, and Roxie Strohmenger, CCXP, as they discuss how to rise above surveys, dashboards, training, and other program components to really make a difference for your organization.

The concept of CX maturity is a concept covered on this podcast in the past, but what does a "real life" mature CX program look like? Host Steve Walker welcomes Lara Caimi, chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow, a company that delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity, for a look at how they made customer experience a vital part of their company’s culture. 

When we talk about “experiences” it’s often from a holistic point of view – through the lens of “experience management”, or “XM.” But how do you connect the customer with the employees, or the employees with the brand? One way is through the use of storytelling, which can be particularly effective in building empathy and understanding. Host Steve Walker welcomes Bruce Temkin, head of the XM Institute, for a discussion on how storytelling can build customer empathy and lead to better customer experience.

A key element to building any customer experience program is understanding your customers and creating empathy. And there are tools to help with that: surveys, interviews, journey mapping sessions. But what about the process beyond all the discovery that happens? What do you DO with all that “understanding?” Host Steve Walker welcomes Emily Stump of Indiana University Health for a look at how design thinking can be a valuable tool for CX professionals. 

Companies regularly hire experienced professionals from outside their organization. But they can’t tell from a resume how good of a culture fit the new leaders will be. And employees frequently find that to grow their skills, they need to go to another company – often leaving a company that is a good fit for them. So how can you solve both problems at once? Host Steve Walker welcomes Jeff Epstein, founder of Onboard.io, for a discussion on creating the right culture for employees which ultimately creates better customer experiences.