Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Michael Ramsey, VP, Product Management, Customer Workflow Products at ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform provider that helps enterprises manage digital workflows and operations more effectively. Michael joins me today to talk about the “messy middle” in customer service, what it is, what problems it creates, how companies are addressing it and whether it should be there in the first place as well as a bunch of other insights for customer service and experience leaders. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Solving language based customer service inequalities – Interview with Vasco Pedro of Unbabel – and is number 377 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 Vasco Pedro, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Unbabel, a company that removes language barriers by blending artificial intelligence with real time, human translations. Vasco joins me today to talk about their AI-powered, human-refined “Translation as a Service” business, the concept of language operations, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, how their technology works and the sort of results it produces as well as sharing a few ideas about the future of service, experience and technology. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The power of personalised videos to drive engagement at all stages of the customer journey – Interview with Matt Barnett of Bonjoro – and is number 376 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 Matt Barnett, Papa Bear at Bonjoro, a mobile and web based application that lets you send personalised videos at every stage of the customer journey, to convert, activate and your support your customers. Matt joins me today to talk about video, how things have changed as a result of the pandemic, the impact of video compared to email and where best to apply video in the customer journey. This interview follows on from my recent interview – From an award winning chef to CX Leader of the Year 2020 – Interview with James Scutt of the Post Office – and is number 375 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 the winner of the MyCustomer 2020 CX Leader of the Year competition: James Scutt, Head of Customer Experience Strategy and Deployment, Post Office. This interview is slightly different this week as I am conducting it with Chris Ward, Editor of MyCustomer. The original interview can be found here but I thought it would be worth re-publishing here too. In the interview we discuss James’ journey to where he is now, why he applied for the competition, how he felt when he won, the biggest lessons that he has learned along the way and how the pandemic has impacted the business among other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Where the magic happens when it comes to improving customer outcomes – Interview with Stacy Sherman – and is number 374 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 Stacy Sherman, Head of Customer Experience (CX) & Employee Engagement at Schindler Elevator Corporation and Founder of DoingCXRight. Stacy joins me today to talk about what customer experience means at Schindler, what knowledge and skills she was able to bring to that job from her time at Verizon, what humanizing business & leading with a heart means and what sort of things leaders should be doing to improve their customers experience right now. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Mindset, method, motivation and harmonisation are at the centre of customer centric-thinking and leadership – Interview with Andy Murray – and is number 373 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 Andy Murray, Founder and Executive Chair, Customer Centric Leadership Initiative at The Sam M. Walton College of Business at The University of Arkansas. Andy joins me today to talk about the aforementioned Customer Centric Leadership Initiative, what customer centricity means, how leadership has been impacted over the last few months, the leader’s experience and what we should be doing to make sure that we deliver a great customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership and how to achieve customer centricity – Interview with Minter Dial – and is number 372 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 Minter Dial, an international speaker and a multiple award-winning author, specialized in leadership, branding and transformation. Minter joins me today to talk about his new book: You Lead: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader, what he has learned about leadership over the course of his career, what comes first…employee or customer experience and what the biggest asset in leadership is. This interview follows on from my recent interview – When it comes to CX is your company a starter, riser or champion? – Interview with Adrian McDermott of Zendesk – and is number 371 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 Adrian McDermott, President of Products, Zendesk, a provider of customer service software. Adrian joins me today to talk about a new piece of research that Zendesk has recently conducted in partnership with ESG Research. This has allowed them to build a framework around CX maturity and CX success. The findings are summarized in a report: CX Champions: How CX Leaders Who Raise Their Game Are Driving Business Success. This interview follows on from my recent interview – On a scale from 1-10, how racist is your AI? – Interview with Jeff Gallino and Conrad Liburd of CallMiner – and is number 370 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 Jeff Gallino, CTO & Founder, and Conrad Liburd, AI feature engineer, at CallMiner, a provider of speech analytics solutions for improving agent performance and customer intelligence. Jeff and Conrad join me today to talk about bias in data and algorithms, discriminatory and racist calls in contact centres, what most companies do about them, what they should be doing about them and what we should be doing to improve both customer and employee experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The secrets behind tapping into your customer’s imagination – Interview with Chip Bell – and is number 369 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 Chip R. Bell, a keynote speaker and consultant in customer loyalty and service innovation as well as a 24 time author of books, many of which are focused on how we can improve customer service and experience. He joins us today to talk about his new book: Inside Your Customer's Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions, what it’s about, what we can learn from it and what we should be doing to improve both customer and employee experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The relationship between trust, honesty and simplicity when it comes to customer and employee experience – Interview with Brian Rafferty of Siegel+Gale – and is number 368 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.