Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Nick Mehta CEO of Gainsight, a customer success technology provider that helps businesses retain customers and drive company growth. Nick joins me today to talk about his new book, The Customer Success Economy: Why Every Aspect of Your Business Model Needs A Paradigm Shift, what customer success is, why it is going to become increasingly important to organizations given the current climate and pressures that many firms are going to start to face, what are the benefits and what customer experience and success leaders need to be doing to survive and thrive. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Experimentation is what makes Microsoft, Google, Netflix and Booking.com so successful – Interview with Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke – and is number 357 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 Stefan Thomke, who is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Stefan joins me today to talk about his new book, Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, what does experimentation mean, what does it look like, what are the benefits, why does it matter for customer service and experience leaders and practitioners. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Emerging leadership lessons from the pandemic and what we need from leaders now – Interview with Rachel Neaman – and is number 356 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 Rachel Neaman, a technology leader, Non-Executive Director, leadership mentor and coach with extensive experience in the technology, health, governmental, digital and not for profit fields. Rachel joins me today to talk about some of the organisational changes taking place that she has noticed over the last few months, some of the challenges facing us, how leadership has changed and why many female political leaders, in particular, have been so successful during this period. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Difficult conversations and building more inclusive and diverse organizations – Interview with Jenn Graham of Civic Dinners – and is number 355 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 Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month. Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator. It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it. So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.

Today’s interview is with Jenn Graham, Founder and CEO of Civic Dinners, who design and facilitate conversations on key topics that can help organizations build a more inclusive culture with employees, stakeholders, customers and the greater community. Jenn joins me today to talk about Civic Dinners, difficult conversations, what stops organizations having them, what are the benefits when they do tackle difficult subjects like discrimination and inequality, what they are doing to help and what we can learn from them. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lessons learned from the move to remote working – Interview with Dean Robison of ServiceNow – and is number 354 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 Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month. Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator. It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it. So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.

Today’s interview is with Dean Robison who is the SVP of Global Technical Support at ServiceNow. Dean joins me today to talk about his experience of moving 1,000 employees spread out over 9 locations around the globe to remote working, his experience through the pandemic so far, what’s gone well, what’s not gone so well, what they have learned and what they are focusing on going forward. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Four key factors that are framing the challenges for organisations going forward – Interview with Jo Causon of The Institute of Customer Service – and is number 353 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 Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month. Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator. It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it. So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.

Today’s interview is with Jo Causon, Chief Executive of The Institute of Customer Service. Jo joins me today to talk about the July 2020 update of the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (The state of customer satisfaction in the UK), what we can learn from it and what companies should be focusing on. This interview follows on from my recent interview – A quest to make technology emotionally intelligent – Interview with Rana el Kaliouby of Affectiva – and is number 352 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 Amplexor for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month. Amplexor is preparing to launch a really exciting virtual series called: Ignite Revenue Through Content which will feature leading speakers and thinkers in short, punchy and thought-provoking bi-monthly episodes exploring and highlighting insights and best practices of how to leverage Content as a strategic differentiator. It’ll run from August through mid-December and kicking it off on August 20th will be yours truly talking about “Unleash(ing) your Inner Punk: a Rebellious Take on Customer Engagement”. I think the session that we have organised will be awesome, it’s a real honour and I’m really looking forward to it. So, go to Amplexor.com to find out more and register.

Today’s interview is with Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of Affectiva, an emotion measurement technology company that grew out of MIT's Media Lab. Affectiva has developed software to recognize human emotions based on facial cues or physiological responses. She is also author of a new book: Girl Decoded: My Quest to Make Technology Emotionally Intelligent – and Change the Way We Interact Forever. Rana joins me today to talk about the book, her career and research into putting empathy into AI, Emotive AI and her work at Affectiva. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Purpose is not a luxury and matters more than ever in a crisis – Interview with Professor Alex Edmans of London Business School – and is number 351 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 Alex Edmans, a Professor of Finance at London Business School who focuses on responsible business. He has just published a new book called: Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit and joins me today to talk about the book, how it came about, what we can learn from it and why it matters. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Innovative brands are using direct mail to improve customer engagement – Interview with Dan Frohnen of Sendoso – and is number 350 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 Dan Frohnen, CMO at Sendoso , a cloud-based direct mail and engagement platform that gives companies the ability to send direct mail, eGifts, wine, company swag, handwritten notes, welcome kits, and custom gifts. Dan joins me today to talk direct mail, why direct mail is not used as much as it could or should be, waste, sustainability and lessons that have emerged in the last few months. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Excellence and extreme humanization are needed more than ever – Interview with Tom Peters – and is number 349 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 Tom Peters, author of numerous business books (18 in total) and speaker. He is, perhaps, best known for his 1982 seminal book: In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr). This is the second time that Tom has been on the podcast. The first time was in 2018 (Striving for excellence has never been more important) where we talked about his latest book: The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last. Today he joins me to talk about the need for Extreme Humanization given the situation we currently find ourselves in and a couple of pieces that he has recently penned: Excellence Manifesto 2020: The Twenty-Nine “Number Ones” and Excellence 2020 Observations Leading With Compassion And Care In Troubled Times. This interview follows on from my recent interview – A lot of enterprise software is still eye-wateringly terrible and it’s acting like a handbrake on experience improvement efforts – Interview with Leon Gauhman of Elsewhen – and is number 348 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.