Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Juanita Coley, who is best known as the “Contact Center Whisperer” and is also the CEO and Founder of Solid Rock Consulting, a workforce management consulting firm. Juanita joins me today to talk about the inside track on what customer service agents like or don’t like about their jobs, the implications of those findings, what contact center leaders should be focusing on/doing to help improve their employees’ (agents) experience and why we should be talking about and leaning into the voice of the agent (VoA) amongst a bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The challenge with conversational analysis in the Nordics – Interview with Tue Martin Berg of Capturi – and is number 491 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 Tue Martin Berg, the CEO and part of the founding team at Capturi, Scandinavia's leading software provider for conversation analysis. Tue joins me today to talk about what they are up to, why some Scandinavian organisations who after implementing call/interaction analytics solutions from one of the big US providers, then ripped it out, whether the problem they faced applies to all brands that operate in languages other than English, the impact that has on their ability to offer automated conversational features as part of their services and what many Scandinavian organisations are now doing and achieving with the help of Capturi. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Are you doing change to people or with people? – Interview with Phil Lewis and Claire Croft of Corporate Punk – and is number 490 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 Phil Lewis and Claire Croft of Corporate Punk, an award-winning management consultancy that helps clients innovate and transform their business culture. Phil and Claire join me today to talk about how many change/transformation initiatives suffer because they try to do change to and not with their people, how doing change with and not to people is grounded in both data and dialogue and a framework to help an organisation/department/team determine how change-ready they are. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customers don’t want minimally viable anything. They just want quality – Interview with Debbie Levitt – and is number 489 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 Debbie Levitt, who is the CXO of Delta CX and the author of Customers Know You Suck. Debbie joins me today to talk about how we are in danger of over-indexing on failure and celebrating failure rather than trying to emulate what makes successful companies successful, how that is manifesting itself, why we talk about Apple and Amazon a lot but often don’t really emulate them, the relationship between failure, speed and quality and what customers actually care about. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Personalization is pervasive but it’s not personal – Interview with Shafqat Islam – and is number 488 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 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.