Countless guests on this podcast have described how their careers were steered into the space of customer experience. It has been a common theme that they never went to college exclusively to study CX because there were no such degree programs. Recently there has been a greater effort to remedy that problem, proving once again that it’s never been a better time to be a customer experience pro. Guest host Troy Powell welcomes Dr. Tom DeWitt, faculty at Michigan State University and director of CXM@MSU who is also spearheading the creation of a degree program in CX management.

Co-hosts Steve Walker and Pat Gibbons take listeners on a frightful journey of terrible customer experiences with plumbing, restaurants, baby supply stores, hospitals, and even vampires in blood banks! Listen, if you dare!

The advantage of experience management (or "XM") is the holistic view of experience across the company. By leveraging customer and employee data together, companies can take their experience programs to the next level. But what companies are applying this practice and how’s it working out for them? Host Steve Walker welcomes Jennefer Pursifull, VP of marketing and sales, and Sharon Bislich, director for marketing, communication, and engagement – both from Medxcel, a healthcare facilities management company - to discuss how they successfully built their program to empower their employees to create better experiences for their clients. 

CX pros often need to provide ways for employees across the company to access data from their customer experience programs. This data should be easy to access and quick to interpret on a high level – no time to be downloading tabulated data and fiddling with it in Excel. Dashboards provide a way to aggregate data into a high-level, easy-to-read view, giving CX programs a vital tool in communicating feedback from customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes Gary Szeszycki and Mike Grindstaff, both from Walker, for a discussion on how to plan and build effective dashboards.

“Do NOT ruin your customer’s day” sounds like something that belongs at the top of any list of rules for CX professionals. We’ve all had those moments where an employee with a bad attitude ruined your mood, or you’re left waiting on hold for over an hour and steamed about the experience for the rest of the day. But there are ways where you can help prevent “ruined days” for your customers. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Jeannie Walters, a CX consultant, speaker, podcaster, and CEO and Chief Customer Experience Investigator for Experience Investigators, for a discussion on why it's important to not ruin your customer's day.

Customer experience includes many aspects of how we interact with our customers. One common aspect is the hospitality we afford to them. Some companies will have more opportunities to demonstrate hospitality than others – like hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc. So how can other companies take cues from these markets by putting a “yes” mentality in their customer interactions? Host Steve Walker welcomes Christine Trippi, an award-winning hospitality leader and the author of “Yes is the Answer: How Positivity, Passion, and Pineapples will transform your leadership and your life,” for a discussion on creating a "yes" mindset in your customer experience efforts.

Is your customer loyal to your company, or to your prices? One of the best practices for any company is to create a culture that grows customer loyalty beyond aspects such as price or location. Host Steve Walker welcomes back award-winning keynote speaker, author, and CX expert Shep Hyken, for a discussion about his new book, "I’ll Be Back: How to get Customers to Come Back Again and Again.”

The importance of the employee engagement has been featured on this podcast throughout several episodes. And while there is a strong connection between engaged employees and engaged customers, the two programs are typically separate. Employee experience is run by HR, customer experience is run by CX pros, and the two typically don’t interact much. However, that seems to be changing and experience management leaders are seeing applications for the two to come together. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcome back Troy Powell for a discussion about Walker's new report, "Effectively Combining CX and EX."

In this special encore presentation, Steve Walker hosts the Live with CXPA event "Key Ingredients for Making an Impact with CX." As the ultimate advocate for customers, customer experience professionals are supposed to be catalysts for change and influential in building a customer-focused culture. However, it’s easy to get caught up in the details of managing a CX program and question if all this effort is really making a difference. In this session, join guest host Steve Walker and special guests Ian Golding, CCXP, Greg Melia, CAE, and Roxie Strohmenger, CCXP, as they discuss how to rise above surveys, dashboards, training, and other program components to really make a difference for your organization.

The concept of CX maturity is a concept covered on this podcast in the past, but what does a "real life" mature CX program look like? Host Steve Walker welcomes Lara Caimi, chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow, a company that delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity, for a look at how they made customer experience a vital part of their company’s culture.