The CX Leader Podcast | A resource for customer experience leaders

Each year on the first Tuesday in October, the Customer Experience Professionals Associate - or CXPA - encourages professionals and companies to take some time to recognize the importance of this practice and celebrate the ways they strengthen the customer experience within their own company. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Gabe Smith and Derik Iverson of CXPA to discuss how companies can celebrate their accomplishments and customers on "CX Day."

Many businesses today use a customer relationship management platform, or “CRM” to help organize how they interact with their customers and prospects. But how customer-centric are these platforms, and do they truly help put the customer at the heart of your business? Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Jake Sorofman,  president of MetaCX, to discuss how his company plans to put the “customer” back into “CRM.” 

Empowering more people throughout the organization to help with CX strategies can be effective – especially when working with frontline employees that interact with your customers the most. Host Steve Walker welcomes Sue Brady, vice president of marketing and customer engagement at Hughes Network Systems, a global satellite broadband solutions and services company, and a provider of managed network services and applications, to discuss how they implemented a program to gather employee recommendations for improving the customer experience.

The concept of dashboards is probably nothing new to customer experience pros. We use them to help communicate data like NPS and Loyalty. But is your dashboard up to snuff? Is it showing you the data you really need and is it organized in a way that your employees or colleagues can glean from it the right information? Host Steve Walker welcomes data reporting expert Katie Hatch from Walker to discuss some key best practices in making certain your dashboards communicate the data you need.

Chatbot, A.I., customer service through social media... there are a vast number of ways in which customers can interact with companies, but is one method better than the other? In July of 2019, Genesys, a global customer experience and contact center technology company based in Daly City, California, commissioned several surveys in various countries to gather data on consumer opinions pertaining to automated customer experiences. Host Steve Walker welcomes Janelle Dieken, Senior Vice President for Product Marketing at Genesys, to discuss the results of the study and what CX professionals should glean from the results.

Experience management, or “XM”, is more than just a “buzzword.” It’s a holistic approach to experience across the organization that includes customers, employees, products, and brand. The Qualtrics XM Institute recently published a report on how XM is being adopted worldwide. Host Steve Walker welcomes Moira Dorsey, principle XM Catalyst at the Qualtrics XM Institute to discuss the findings of the report.

Customer experience is quickly gaining world-wide adoption. Companies around the globe are realizing the importance of providing the best experience possible for their customers. Understanding and empathizing with customers is a critical component to CX, and that includes understanding cultural differences and expectations. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Ian Golding, an influential consultant in CX with worldwide experience in several different industries to discuss CX across the globe.

As the CX industry continues to evolve, we learn more about the importance of a holistic experience across several aspects of the company – the new “experience management”, or “XM”, model. An important piece of XM is the relationship of how the employee experience drives the customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Shane Green, a keynote speaker, consultant, television personality, and author of “Culture Hacker: Reprogramming Your Employee Experience to Improve Customer Service, Retention, and Performance” for a discussion on how the employee experience affect the customer experience.

Moving is stressful, but relocating employees is sometime necessary. Now imagine you’re a company whose expertise is relocating employees for other companies: how does experience management work in that situation? Does your program focus on the company that hired you, or on the employee that is being relocated? Or do you focus on both? Host Steve Walker welcomes Kathryn Cassidy, President and COO of Altair Global, a full-service, global mobility services company, to discuss how they manage the experience from the perspective of both B2C and B2B relationships.

Larger companies can sometime pose unique challenges to customer experience programs. CX leaders often have to navigate complicated business structures and, of course, the ever-so-frustrating “silos” that can exist in organizations. And if a company grows through acquisitions, it can be a challenge to integrate the existing customer experience programs. But it’s not impossible to innovate – regardless of the company’s size or age. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Jen Zamora, Senior Global Director of Customer Experience & Employee Experience at Dow, the multinational materials science company, to discuss how a company the size of Dow manages CX and EX of their size and through corporate change.