Today’s interview is with Shafqat Islam, Chief Marketing Officer at Optimizely, a digital experience platform software as a service provider. Shafqat joins me today to talk about their recently released Personalised to Personal report, why they think that personalization has officially reached its maximum maturity level, what’s standing in the way of marketers delivering a more personalised experience to customers and their position on marketers gathering zero-party data to further enhance/progress their personalisation efforts amongst some other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Paul Weller, the Scots word ‘gallus’ and their relation to delivering an award-winning customer experience – Interview with John Devlin of Ascensos – and is number 487 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 John Devlin, CEO and co-founder of Ascensos, a leading customer management and contact centre solution provider that offers bespoke and innovative solutions for various industries, such as consumer retail, healthcare and insurance. John joins me today to talk about the evolution of the customer service outsourcing space over the last 25+ years, what their Chief Happyologist does, the role and impact of Gen AI in the outsourcing business, how it will affect the business going forward and what Ascensos Local is all about. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Your customer doesn’t want to know about your technology – Interview with Micah Solomon – and is number 486 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 Micah Solomon, a renowned expert on customer service, hospitality, and customer experience. Micah joins me today to talk about his new book: Can Your Customer Service Do This?: Create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that Builds Loyalty Forever, why he spends a lot of time wearing a disguise and using a fake name, what Gold Touch Customer Service is, why we should keep technology in customer service/experience “Below Eye Level” and how to innovate in customer service amongst a host of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – How to safely realise the enormous potential of Al – Interview with Juliette Powell and Art Kleiner – and is number 485 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 Juliette Powell and Art Kleiner. Juliette is an author, entrepreneur, technologist, and strategist, who works at the intersection of culture, data science, and ethics and Art is a writer, editor, consultant/facilitator and entrepreneur with a background in technology, business culture, scenario thinking and organizational learning. They are both faculty members at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications and Interactive Media Arts program and have recently co-authored a new book called The AI Dilemma: 7 Principles for Responsible Technology. Juliette and Art join me on the podcast to talk about the book, the four challenges we face to regain control of our personal data, the five steps businesses can take to build AI accountability, the regulation of AI, the three things teams need to consider in developing or using systems that generate texts, images, or other content amongst a whole bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The science behind repairing trust – Interview with Professor Peter Kim – and is number 484 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 Dr. Peter Kim, Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and author of a newly published book called How Trust Works: The Science of How Relationships Are Built, Broken, and Repaired. Peter joins me today on the podcast to talk about his new book, the different elements of trust, how we think trust operates and how most of us choose to trust in real life, why we're more likely to forgive what we perceive as a blunder in competence than a lapse in integrity and what we should do when trust is broken. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The five barriers to digital transformation and a roadmap to overcome them – Interview with David Rogers – and is number 483 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 David Rogers, who is the world’s leading expert on digital transformation, a member of the faculty at Columbia Business School, and the author of five books. He joins me today to talk about his new book, "The Digital Transformation Roadmap”, the reasons behind why 70 percent or more of digital transformations fall short of their objectives or fail to achieve any sustained benefit, the biggest single factor for digital transformation success, Amazon’s press release/frequently asked questions (PR/FAQ) tool and lots of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Brands don’t need more feedback or survey data to better understand their customers – Interview with Nate Sanders of Artifact – and is number 482 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 CGS for sponsoring my podcast this month. Now, CGS is a company you might not have heard of. But, they have been delivering brand-building and customer experiences for 40 years for global brands that you will definitely have heard of. Over that time, they have developed deep expertise in both outsourcing and technology, so you should definitely pay attention to what they have to say. They’ve recently put together a free ebook and video that I’d like to point you to. It’s called The Transformative Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT and has been authored by CGS’ Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, John Samuel. It’s a really comprehensive guide and is designed to deliver insights, summarize research, and inspire creative problem-solving. Follow this link to check out the free ebook and video.

Interview with Nate Sanders, co-founder and CEO of Artifact. They discuss the limitations of surveys, the importance of AI in customer experience, and real-time visibility into customer service issues. They also talk about the punk approach to CX, examples of organizations excelling in experience leadership, and the excitement surrounding the open sourcing of the llama model.

Walter Flaat, Chief Data Officer at dentsu Canada, discusses the Attention Economy in advertising and the importance of empathy, inclusivity, and engagement. They explore attention triggers, ethical implications of personalization, consequences of attention in AI, and end with a positive news story about Canada.

Today’s interview is with Cathrine (Cathy) Jooste, President of the Business Process Outsourcing Division, and John Samuel, EVP and CTO, at CGS, a global provider of applications, enterprise learning, customer experience and outsourcing services. Cathy and John join me today to talk about how the BPO/outsourcing business has changed over the last 40 years, the current challenges that the space is facing, how things are evolving, what are the tech and talent implications of these developments and if we are moving to a fully automated customer service future. Finally, they offer a perspective on what they think the future of CX outsourcing might look like. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The delusion amongst customer service and experience VPs – Interview with Micah Peterson of ProcedureFlow – and is number 479 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 CGS for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month. Now, CGS is a company you might not have heard of. But, they have been delivering brand-building and customer experiences for 40 years for global brands that you will definitely have heard of. Over that time, they have developed deep expertise in both outsourcing and technology, so you should definitely pay attention to what they have to say. They’ve recently put together a free ebook and video that I’d like to point you to. It’s called The Transformative Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT and has been authored by CGS’ Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, John Samuel (one of our interviewees today). It’s a really comprehensive guide and is designed to deliver insights, summarize research, and inspire creative problem-solving. Follow this link to check out the free ebook and video.

Micah Peterson, VP of Product Management at ProcedureFlow, talks about delusions in customer service at the VP level, the impact of followed procedures on AHT, the challenges of text-based knowledge bases, the importance of responding rather than reacting in customer service, visualizing concepts in knowledge management, remote work and the importance of human connection, the value of scenario-based training for VPs, and the importance of innovation in customer service.