Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

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.

Today’s interview is with Daphne Costa Lopes, Global Director of Customer Success at HubSpot. Daphne joins me today to talk about customer success, why the customer isn’t always right, how siloed systems inhibit the delivery of tailored experiences, and what brands should be doing more of to drive customer-led growth. This interview follows on from my recent interview – There needs to be a really tight relationship between business strategy and target state architecture - Interview with Cale Urwin of Bupa – and is number 511 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 Cale Urwin, Director, Data, Digital & Marketing Health Services at Bupa. I caught up with Cale recently at PegaWorld in Las Vegas to talk about what stood for him at the event and how Bupa has evolved its customer engagement story and Customer Decision Hub capabilities in Australia from outbound to digital management and surprise & delight strategies. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The ongoing decline of brand loyalty, what’s driving it and what should be done about it – Interview with Simon Morris of ServiceNow – and is number 510 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 Simon Morris, the Area Vice President of Solution Consulting at ServiceNow. Simon joins me today to talk about ServiceNow’s new Consumer Voice Report 2024, the ongoing decline of brand loyalty, what’s driving it, why “The future of customer experience is high-tech meets high-touch” and some of the biggest lessons coming out of the report. This interview follows on from my recent interview – We’ve only just scratched the surface of artificial intelligence – Interview with Peter van der Putten of Pega – and is number 509 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 van der Putten, who is Director of the AI Lab at Pega and assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in The Netherlands. I caught up with Peter at the recent PegaWorld to talk about his highlights from the event, how to think about AI using a left/right brain thinking metaphor and what’s coming next in the enterprise AI space. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Listening and taking action at scale – Interview with Ron Secrist of Citi and Christina Sansone of Dish – and is number 508 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.