Adrian Swinscoe's RARE Business Podcast

Today’s interview is with Jeanne Bliss is the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association. Jeanne is one of the foremost experts on customer-centric leadership and the role of the Chief Customer Officer and joins me today on the podcast for something different. Rather than conducting a straight up interview, we rummage around some of the big issues and challenges in customer experience right now in a short and punchy...

Today’s interview is with Deon Nicholas, Founder of Forethought, an AI company and 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant, that has a vision to enable anyone to be a genius at their job. In practical terms, they do this indexing and surfacing content that matters the most in the context of their work. Deon joins me today to talk about the difference between NLP and NLU, winning last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield and how Agatha aims to make it easy to be a “genius” at...

Today’s interview is with Annette Franz, founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc, and an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader. Annette joins me today to talk about her new book: Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), what it’s about, what we can learn from it and her views on the current state of customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Audio is an overlooked...

Today’s interview is with Jeff Yasuda, the CEO and co-founder of Feed.fm (Music as a Service), which helps game developers, content publishers, and e-commerce retailers increase customer engagement, retention, and conversions by incorporating popular music into their environments– at the lowest possible cost. Jeff joins me today stop talk about Feed.fm, the impact of music on customer experience and what others can learn from their experience. This interview follows on from my recent...

Today’s interview is with Dan Simpson, CEO of Taziki’s Mediterranean Café, which is a fast casual chain of franchised restaurants based in Birmingham, Alabama that purveys Greek and Mediterranean cuisine such as gyros, sandwiches, soups, and salads. Dan joins me today to talk about Tazikis and eudaimonia, what it is, how they bring it to life, bringing hope and joy to others and what companies should be doing differently to improve their customer experience. This interview follows on from...

Today’s interview is with Robert Johnson, the co-founder and CEO of TeamSupport.com, a cloud-based, B2B software application built to help customer-facing support teams serve clients better through stronger collaboration, superior teamwork, and faster issue resolution. Robert joins me today to talk about the difference between B2B and B2C customer experience, the Customer Distress Index (CDI) and what B2B companies should be doing differently to improve their customer experience. This...

Today’s interview is with Paul Greenberg, best-selling author and founder & Managing Principal of The 56 Group, LLC, an advisory firm, focused on customer-facing strategic services. He is often called the “Godfather of CRM” and joins us today to talk about his new book: The Commonwealth of Self Interest: Business Success Through Customer Engagement, what engagement really is, the challenge and what we should be doing to improve how we serve our customers. This interview follows on from my...

Today’s interview is with Joshua March, Founder and Board Director of Conversocial, a digital care platform for social messaging, and also author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence. Joshua joins me today to talk about some recent research that Conversocial just released, the overall state of digital customer care, what the future of messaging and customer care looks like and what we should be doing about it....

Today’s interview is with David Avrin, a keynote speaker, an author, a consultant and also CEO of Visibility International. David joins me today to talk about his new book: Why Customers Leave (and How to Win Them Back), what it’s about, what we can learn from it and what we should be doing differently to improve customer service and experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Gender and diversity imbalances will impact your ability to connect with and serve your...

Today’s interview is with Adriana Gascoigne, founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization devoted to empowering, educating and engaging women in the tech industry across 43 chapters in 32 countries. Adriana joins me today to talk about Girls In Tech, her new book: Tech Boss Lady: How to Start-Up, Disrupt, and Thrive as a Female Founder and the impact that gender and diversity imbalances have on an organisation’s ability to best serve its customers. Here’s...

Today’s interview is with Michael Redbord, General Manager of the Service Hub at HubSpot, a technology company that builds sales and marketing software. Michael joins me today to talk about their new research into the state of customer service, what we can learn from it, what the future holds and what we should be focusing on if we are to deliver a great customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – How using a network of experts can dramatically improve...

Today’s interview is with Antony Brydon who is the CEO and co-founder of Directly, a leader in customer support automation that works with enterprise companies to launch and train virtual agents that double their automation rate. Antony joins me today to talk about asynchronous messaging, conversational interfaces, AI and expert networks. This interview follows on from my recent interview – How your procurement team is impacting both your employee and customer experience – Interview with...

Today’s interview is with Todd Olson who is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a product experience platform that helps product teams create software customers love. Todd joins me today to talk about software product experience and how it impacts both the employee and customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Becoming more empathetic can be hard. Pega’s new AI-powered Customer Empathy Advisor aims to help – Interview with Rob Walker of Pega – and is number 307 in...

Today’s interview is with Dr. Rob F. Walker, Vice President Decision Management and Analytics at Pega. I caught up with Rob at Pega’s recent customer event, Pegaworld, in Las Vegas and we grabbed a few minutes to talk about his keynote presentation, Pega’s upcoming Customer Empathy Advisor, what empathy is and the value of being more empathetic in customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The good, the bad and the ugly of customer service – Interview with...

Today’s interview is with Tom Libretto, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Pega. I caught up with Tom at Pega’s recent customer event, Pegaworld, in Las Vegas and we grabbed a few minutes to talk about Pega’s recent research report: 2019 global customer service insights: The good, the bad, and the ugly, what they found out and what lessons organisations should be learning and what they should be doing differently. This interview follows on from my recent interview – C+/B-...

Today’s interview is with Bruce Temkin, Head of the Qualtrics XM Institute. He joins me today to talk about his view on the current state of the customer experience industry, what it needs to focus on next, being acquired (twice in a few months) and what’s coming up next for him and the XM Institute. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The removal of friction represents a huge opportunity for customer experience – Interview with Roger Dooley – and is number 304 in the series...

Today’s interview is with Roger Dooley who is a a speaker and author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing, the popular blog Neuromarketing, and Brainy Marketing at Forbes. He joins me today to talk about his new book: FRICTION―The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage, what friction is, how it affects us and what to do about it when it comes to customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Behavioural...

Today’s interview is with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy in the UK and author of a new book: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense. Rory joins me today to talk about his new book, behavioural economics and what we can all do to uncover stand out ideas that don’t make sense. Note: This interview is longer than many of the usual interviews that I conduct but dive in and enjoy it as it is packed with wit and bags of insight from Rory. This interview follows on...

Today’s interview is with Andy MacMillan is CEO of UserTesting and joins me today to talk about their new research report: The Rise of the Experience Economy – The 2019 CX Industry Report, the work that they do, what the best brands do to understand their clients and what leaders and professionals in the CX space should be doing more of. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Everyone in an organisation should be a loyalty leader – Interview with Sandy Rogers of FranklinCovey...

Today’s interview is with Sandy Rogers, the co-author of new book: Leading Loyalty: Cracking the Code to Customer Devotion and the leader of FranklinCovey’s Loyalty Practice. Sandy joins me today to talk about the new book, how leading companies develop loyalty (Spoiler alert: it’s not about a loyalty programmes), what they do to get in the way of loyalty and how they can put themselves on the right path. This interview follows on from my recent interview – New tech at work and improving...