Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Angel Maldonado, CEO & Founder of Empathy, who create human-centred, commerce search & discovery platforms that combine innovative technology, behaviour-based algorithms and data intelligence with understanding and empathy to enrich customer interactions. Angel joins me today to talk about ethical commerce, the Ethical Commerce Alliance, the changing data and privacy landscape and how we can deliver personalised search experiences in an ethical way. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lack of a clear vision leads to higgledy-piggledy services and experiences – Interview with Ari Weinzweig of Zingermans – and is number 437 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Ari Weinzweig, the CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Ari was previously on the podcast back in 2020 and is also one of the contributors to Punk XL. Ari joins me today to talk about business visions, visioning, his new pamphlet on visioning (The Story of Visioning at Zingerman’s: Four Visions, Forty Years, and a Positive Look Towards the Future), how many service and experience initiatives lack a clear vision of what it is they are trying to create and why and how this can leads to the higgledy-piggledy services and experiences that we often encounter. Note: This podcast is the first in a series of contributions (podcast chats, blogs and mixtapes etc) from the contributors to Punk XL that will appear here over the coming months. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The digitization of the supply chain and it’s impact on customer experience and sustainability – Interview with Sanjay Brahmawar of Software AG – and is number 436 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Sanjay Brahmawar, the CEO of Software AG, a software pioneer that is helping over 10,000 organisations worldwide connect people, departments, systems and devices through integration & APIs, IoT & analytics as well as business & IT transformation. Sanjay joins me today to talk about the supply chain problems that have been affecting many businesses in recent months, unstable consumer demand patterns, Internet of Things (IoT) and streaming analytics, sustainability, innovation and how brands should be responding. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Creating a metaverse experience that helps veterans suffering from PTSD – Interview with Robert Bell of 2B3D – and is number 435 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Robert Bell, Founder and CEO of 2B3D, who with their partners are developing a first-of-its-kind metaverse/NFT/gaming platform where military veterans can access live PTSD therapy. Now, I’ve been reading quite a bit about the metaverse lately and how it’s going to be the next big thing. But, on the back of some horror stories around lack of safeguards and controls and a bunch of other things, I’ve also been wondering about how it’s going to integrate with and impact our real and day to day lives in a meaningful way. So, I was excited to hear about what Robert and his team are doing. On the back of that, I invited Robert to join me today to tell me about both the technology and therapeutic sides of their mission, the size and nature of the problem they are addressing, the veteran experience and the other groups that may benefit from this sort of therapeutic resource. This interview follows on from my recent interview – 42% of workers feel that digital transformation efforts have made their job more complex – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega - and is number 434 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pega. Don joins me today to talk about a new report they have just released called Workforce Trends Report 2022, the headline findings, complexity in the enterprise, how it affects us, the impact and what we should be doing about it. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Unlocking the hidden value of language to drive personalisation – Interview with Assaf Baciu of Persado – and is number 433 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Assaf Baciu, the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Persado. Assaf joins me today to talk about Motivation AI, language, personalisation and unlocking the hidden value of language in our interactions with customers. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Design is not design without research – Interview with Alfonso de la Nuez of UserZoom – and is number 432 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Alfonso de la Nuez, the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of UserZoom, the pioneering UX Insights System. Alfonso joins me today to talk about UserZoom’s recently published research called The State of UX 2022, what they found out, the difference between CX and UX, the value of research and design and lots of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The idea that scripts ruin customer experience is a dangerous one – Interview with Jimmy Hosang of TMAC – and is number 431 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Jimmy Hosang, C-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Modular Analytics Company (TMAC), a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence and machine learning provider that helps people make better decisions faster. Jimmy joins me today to talk about how technology has made things worse, why vanity metrics like NPS don’t make sense, how speech analytics has been miss-sold and why we need to go back to creating the best experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leveraging branded virtual assistants to drive personalisation and innovation – Interview with Eric Turkington of RAIN – and is number 430 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Eric Turkington, Vice President of Growth at RAIN, a pioneer in voice & conversational AI, that is helping people, brands and businesses do amazing things with voice technology. Eric joins me today to talk about intelligent voice assistants, the state of demand, how both B2C and B2B brands are leveraging Branded Virtual Assistants (BVA’s) to drive personalisation and innovation and lots of other stuff. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Little personal touches can make all the difference – Interview with Jawad Malik of Idrese – and is number 429 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Jawad Malik, the founder of Chicago-based Idrese, a direct to consumer (D2C) brand that provides affordable and luxury custom-made shoes made in Spain to customers worldwide. Jawad joins me today to talk about how the brand came about, the future of customer experience, the inspiration behind the brand name and what great service and experience means for an emerging and fast-growing small brand. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why you shouldn’t always build for the ‘happy path’ – Interview with Sam Richardson of Twilio – and is number 428 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.