Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, CEO & Founder of Surfboard, an award-winning workforce management (WFM) software provider. Natasha joins me today to talk about the findings of their recently released 2024 customer service survey: The third wave of customer support, what might be stopping some customer service teams from not investing in AI tools and capabilities, where they are investing, how it is benefitting them and some advice for customer service leaders looking to get the most out of their AI investments. Since this podcast was recorded, Surfboard has been acquired by Dialpad. You can find out more here. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Basketball, false hustle and metrics that matter – Interview with Thomas Laird of Expivia/OttoQA – and is number 521 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Thomas Laird, founder and CEO of both the Expivia Interaction Marketing Group, a USA BPO omnichannel contact center, and OttoQA, a next-generation solution for automating contact center quality assurance scoring. Thomas is also an author and joins me today to talk about his new book: false hustle: Transforming Customer Experience from Illusion to Impact, what ‘false hustle’ is, how to spot it, the paradox of efficiency and personalization and, if you identify that you have a culture of false hustle, what you should be doing to transform your brand into one that truly values human conversation, insight and connection. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The five promises of personalization – Interview with Mark Abraham and David Edelman – and is number 520 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Boston Consulting Group Senior Partner Mark F. Abraham and Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer David C. Edelman. They join me today to talk about their new book: PERSONALIZED: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI, defining personalization, the equation P=n×v2, the five promises of personalization, the technology that brands need to embrace to deliver true personalization, the role of AI in all of this, the customer service C-suite loop and some examples of brands who are personalization leaders. This interview follows on from my recent interview – There are major tectonic shifts taking place in the outsourcing space right now – Interview with Craig Crisler of SupportNinja – and is number 519 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Craig Crisler, CEO at SupportNinja, a modern provider of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. Amidst lots of research reporting that despite all the investment in new tech, customer satisfaction is at an all-time low, I talk to Craig about where folks are going wrong with their investments, what’s going on in the BPO space, what shifts are happening, what the future of outsourcing looks like, and what are some of the main challenges ahead. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Within five years, contact center agents will become contact center specialists – Interview with Sam Wilson of 8×8 – and is number 518 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Sam Wilson, the CEO of 8x8, a provider of a unified cloud platform for contact center, business phone, video, chat, and APIs that helps companies of any size deliver differentiated customer experiences. I’ve spoken to Sam a couple of times, and every time, we have great conversations where we rummage around some of the big issues that organizations are facing when it comes to delivering against customer expectations. This one is no different and touches on everything from why brands are not keeping up with customers’ expectations to what they should be doing to build loyalty and create lifetime customers. It was great fun so definitely check it out. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Building customer loyalty and a human connection in an increasingly competitive landscape – Interview with Conny Kalcher of Zurich Insurance – and is number 517 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance, shares her vision of transforming insurance into the 'Apple of Insurance.' She discusses building emotional connections and the significance of data and empathy in customer loyalty. The conversation highlights the role of AI and ethical practices in enhancing customer experiences while avoiding aggressive sales tactics. Kalcher also differentiates between transformation as a project and evolution as a continuous journey, emphasizing the need for ongoing change to meet modern customer expectations.

Today’s interview revisits and finalises the series of podcast conversations that I had with various folks whilst at Pegaworld earlier this. This episode is a combo affair and features a conversation with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech, at Pega. It is then swiftly followed by a chat that I had with Simon Thorpe, Director - Global Product Marketing - Customer Service & Sales Automation, at Pega, who is then joined partway through the conversation by James Dodkins, a friend of the podcast and CX Evangelist, at Pega. Fun and games! Our conversations cover my guests’ highlights from the event, their perspective on the current state of play in marketing, personalization, customer service, customer experience and the impact of Gen AI on all of the above, amongst a bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Print-era thinking is holding personalization efforts back – Interview with Vivek Sharma on Movable Ink – and is number 515 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. Disclaimer: I partnered with Pega to conduct interviews and provide my perspective on PegaWorld iNspire 2024.

Today’s interview is with Vivek Sharma, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Movable Ink, which empowers marketers with scalable, omnichannel personalization through data activation and AI decisioning. Vivek joins me today to talk about their recent 2024 Audience of One research report, content creation as a key bottleneck in personalisation efforts, how automation through the increased use of artificial intelligence is permitting marketers to take a more strategy-focused approach, how that is impacting metrics like engagement rates, campaign RoI and improved commercial returns and some of the ethical concerns marketers have with new technology. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Agents view agent-assist technology as more important than a competitive salary – Interview with Gopi Polavarapu at Kore.ai – and is number 514 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Hubspot, who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It’s all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today’s interview is with Gopi Polavarapu, Chief Solutions Officer at Kore.ai, a market leader in Conversational AI platform space. Gopi joins me today to talk about two reports that they recently published ( the Agent Experience (AX) Benchmark Report 2024 and the Customer Experience (CX) Benchmark Report 2024), why a bot must emulate a company’s brand and how to keep this authentic to your brand, the importance of building a multilingual bot and the importance of protecting vulnerable customers as the presence of AI in our day-to-day increases. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Brand Connectome™ and why we are doing marketing all wrong – Interview with Leslie Zane – and is number 513 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Hubspot who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It’s all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today’s interview is with Leslie Zane, who is the Founder and CEO of Triggers, a brand consulting firm, and an authority on harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth. Leslie joins me today to talk about her new book, THE POWER OF INSTINCT: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life, why she thinks we have entered the age of instinct, being 10-15 years ahead of Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahnemann, the Brand Connectome™ and growth triggers amongst a bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The customer isn’t always right – Interview with Daphne Costa Lopes of Hubspot – and is number 512 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today’s episode is sponsored by Hubspot who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It’s all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.