Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

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.

Today’s interview is like an interview I released a couple of weeks ago and features two, separate interviews that I conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. The first interview is with Kerim Akgonul, the Chief Product Officer at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Dr Peter Van Der Putten, who is assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in The Netherlands and Director of the AI Lab at Pega. I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the automated enterprise, demos featuring western omelettes, process mining, how to get the most value out of AI and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Revisiting the Big Ass Fans story and what happened next – Interview with Carey Smith of Unorthodox Ventures – and is number 477 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 Carey Smith, who is Founding Contrarian at Unorthodox Ventures. Carey is a returning guest and was first on the podcast back in October 2014, where along with his colleague Dave Waltz, they shared with me the story of how their customer service strategy was central to growing the Big Ass Fans business five-fold over a five year period. That was nine years ago! Nine years! So, I thought it would be great to invite Carey back onto the podcast to find out what happened next. This interview follows on from my recent interview – New shoes, a surprising but delightful musical collaboration, the autonomous enterprise, gen AI and getting personalisation right – Interview with James Dodkins and Tara DeZao of Pega – and is number 476 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 a bit different as it features two, separate interviews in one episode. It's a two-fer! These interviews were conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. The first interview is with James Dodkins, who is the CX Evangelist at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech at Pega. I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the autonomous enterprise, generative AI, new shoes, bad rock tracks, a surprise but great musical collaboration, first-party data, getting your ‘data’ house in order, getting personalisation right and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Taking an employee-centric approach has allowed us to achieve an attrition rate of 5% – Interview with Jose Herrera of Horatio CX – and is number 475 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 Jose Herrera, CEO and Co-Founder of Horatio CX, a next generation CX outsourcing firm and the trusted partner of some of the leading and fastest growing ecommerce companies. Jose joins me today to talk about maintaining a human connection when everyone else seems to be talking about how customer service needs to be led by robots, taking an employee-centric approach, achieving an industry-leading attrition rate of only 5% and building a truly inclusive culture. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Our transformation journey and unleashing the power of AI and automation – Interview with Shelia Anderson of Aflac – and is number 474 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 Shelia Anderson, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Aflac, a Fortune 500 company that provides insurance and financial protection to millions of policyholders and customers through its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Japan. I met Shelia as part of a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. Shelia delivered one of the keynotes on the main stage and was talking about Aflac's journey and how they have unleashed the power of Pega AI and automation. After her keynote, I sat down with Shelia for a quick chat for the podcast. By the way, you can watch Shelia’s keynote and all of the talks from Pegaworld on-demand here. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The messy middle of customer service revisited – Interview with Michael Ramsey of ServiceNow – and is number 473 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 Michael Ramsey, VP of Customer Workflow Products at ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform that help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Michael joins me today to revisit the idea of the messy middle of customer experience, what's happened since we last spoke about this around 2 1/2 years ago, what companies are doing to clean up their messy middles, the role AI and process mining plays in that, how generative AI is helping with this sort of endeavour and who’s doing it well. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The pragmatic approach to transforming customer service – Interview with Mike Upton of First Tech Credit Union – and is number 472 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 TextExpander for sponsoring this episode of my podcast. TextExpander is an auto-complete tool that allows your team to eliminate repetitive typing and stay on the same page with just a few keystrokes allowing you to delight more customers in less time. Click here to find out more and to get a 20% discount for the first 12 months of TextExpander if you use the code: SWINSCOE