Voices of CX

This week, I had the chance to read the blueprint for customer obsession (literally) with the help of Marbue Brown. He’s a CX practitioner with years of experience at companies who can more or less take credit for starting the movement toward customer obsession. Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, JP Morgan Chase… you know, just some mom-and-pop shops. We discuss how the truly customer-obsessed companies out there go to extremes. They do things in their day-to-day operations that would get most people laughed out of the room. And most importantly, they innovate nonstop, because customer expectations never stop changing, either. So get ready to hear an insider’s perspective from companies that brought customer-centricity mainstream and learn everything you can. Enjoy! 🟠About Marbue Brown Marbue Brown is an accomplished customer experience (CX) executive with a track record of thought leadership and signature business results at some of the most iconic companies on the planet, including JP Morgan Chase, Amazon.com, Microsoft Corporation, and Cisco Systems. As a CX leader, he guided the Chase Consumer Bank to record performance in the JD Power Retail Banking Study, NPS and branch satisfaction. He transformed the Andon Cord mechanism at Amazon.com from a primarily manually triggered system to a primarily automated system triggered by machine learning and statistical models. The Andon Cord is one of Amazon.com’s most significant mechanisms it uses to personify its Customer Obsession culture. Marbue devised and codified the NSAT Improvement Approach at Microsoft, which was widely used by business units to dramatically improve CX as well as international subsidiaries who won nationwide awards in the process. He co-authored seminal articles about customer experience measurements that are widely cited in industry. He is a sought after speaker and published author on customer experience, business strategy and economic policy. 🟠Connect with Marbue Brown Follow Marbue Brown on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/marbue-brown-43a8a52/ Get Blueprint for Customer Obsession on Amazon: https://a.co/d/jd695U0 🟠Connect with the Voices of CX Follow Worthix on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/worthix/ Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/ Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary 🟠About Voices of CX Podcast The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table. 📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer (steve.berry@voicesofcx.com).

This week, we got into the weeds of digital content production with A. Lee Judge. Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Content Monsta, a B2B marketing content agency that specializes in podcasting. What really sets him apart is his focus on generating and proving ROI which comes from his own experience as a marketer. There is a multitude of services for B2B marketers to outsource their content generation efforts, but Lee realized there was still a huge gap: a lack of providers who understood the needs of marketing from an insider’s perspective. So naturally, that was the need he set out to fulfill with Content Monsta. We get into the nitty-gritty of a content-based growth strategy, and opening the door for authentic marketing creativity from your employees – and in some special cases, customers too. Enjoy! 🟠About A. Lee Judge A. Lee Judge is the Co-Founder and CMO of Content Monsta, a content marketing production agency. Lee has over 25 years of marketing, media, and sales operation experience directing initiatives at multiple global technology organizations. 🟠Connect with A. Lee Judge Follow A. Lee Judge on LinkedIn Visit Content Monsta at contentmonsta.com Listen to The Business of Marketing Podcast at contentmonsta.com/podcasts 🟠Connect with the Voices of CX Follow Worthix on LinkedIn Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary 🟠About Voices of CX Podcast The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table. 📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer (steve.berry@voicesofcx.com).

This week, I talked to fellow podcaster and CX professional Rick Denton. He hosts the CX Passport podcast and believes that the best meals are served outside and require a passport, and I tend to agree with that! He’s also the managing principal at EX4CX, a business growth consultancy that wants to help CX professionals stop the “survey & score” mindset to start a “listen & act” one. Also agreed. He’s also recently had a change of mindset around where CX is in the pecking order of business goals. He now sees it more as a specialized tool to accomplish a job, and that job has always been creating customer value and business growth. Agree strongly. And that’s not to say CX is getting phased out – far from it. In fact, Rick sees countries around the world, particularly in the Middle East, embracing CX with a vengeance by piggybacking on the tried-and-true basics that are already working in the US and EU. Enjoy the show, and get ready to expand your horizons a little bit beyond just CX. 🟠About Rick Denton Rick Denton believes the best meals are served outside and require a passport. A sought after Customer Experience Advisor and keynote speaker, Rick enables companies to achieve Experience Transformation, guiding them to stop Survey & Score and start Listen & Act, using a Total Voice of the Customer approach. As a Managing Principal at EX4CX – Execution for Customer Experience, Rick helps clients unlock tangible business value from their Voice of the Customer Programs, create Customer Experience visions, culture and reality while driving revenue growth & operational improvement. In his leadership roles prior to EX4CX such as with Bose, Capital One and several other industry champions, Rick created customer obsessed cultures, high performance execution systems, and clear outcome-oriented alignment. Rick delivered these results across multiple industries and company size profiles both domestically and internationally. In addition to scouring the globe for the best customer experiences, Rick, his wife and two children, love to travel the globe simply to travel. You’ll as easily find them in Texas as you’ll find them in Thailand. (Ask him about the fantastic grilled squid on a stick!…Or the not so great fried tarantula!) When he’s not with the family or clients, you’ll likely find Rick hiking on a mountain somewhere in the southwestern USA desert. Rick combines these loves by hosting the CX Passport podcast, a weekly talk with guests about customer experience and travel. 🟠Connect with Rick Denton Follow Rick Denton on LinkedIn Visit Rick’s consultancy at www.ex4cx.com For tips and workbooks on achieving total VoC, visit www.totalvoc.com Listen to Rick on the CX Passport podcast – www.cxpassport.com 🟠Connect with the Voices of CX Follow Worthix on LinkedIn Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary 🟠About Voices of CX Podcast The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table. 📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer (steve.berry@voicesofcx.com).

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kristen Berman. She’s a behavioral scientist, CEO, and co-founder of Irrational Labs, helping teams apply behavioral design research to their products and services. We covered multiple ways to think about behavior design, like studying the physical environment in which decisions are made, resolving conflicts with established metrics, and mapping customers’ path to your desired behavior using what Kristen calls “getting uncomfortably specific”. Long-time listeners know that any day I get to geek out about behavioral design with an expert is a good day, so naturally, this episode was as fun as it was educational. Enjoy! 🟠About Kristen Berman Kristen is the co-founder of Irrational Labs, a behavioral economics product design company, with author and professor Dan Ariely. Irrational Labs has worked with hundreds of companies to increase the health, wealth, and happiness of users. Kristen also co-founded Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being for low to middle Americans. Under Kristen’s leadership, Common Cents launched over 50 experiments with companies, positively impacting tens of thousands of people. She was on the founding team of the behavioral economics group at Google, a group that touched over 26 teams across Google, and she hosted one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics. 🟠Connect with Kristen Berman Follow Kristen Berman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenberman/ Learn more about the science of Behavioral Economics and Design IrrationalLabs.com While you’re there, sign up for their Newsletter or enroll in a Behavioral Economics Bootcamp 🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at 🟠Connect with the Voices of CX Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voi... Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/ And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary 🟠About Voices of CX Podcast The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table. 📩Got feedback about the Voices of CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at contact@voicesofcx.com.

This week, I was joined by Mike Kuenne, owner and principal of Kuenne Advisory LLC. We discussed the complex reality of setting expectations in the hospitality industry. One guests’ memory-building experience is another’s one-star review, and the absolute norm in one region is a completely foreign experience in another. A misalignment in expectations can ruin an otherwise good or even great experience. And hospitality has the huge responsibility of understanding the differences between these...

This week, I had a good friend on the show, Marcela Lay, SVP and Head of Client Strategy at Y Media Labs. Of all her passions, the one she makes her name from is the cultural transformation of companies. She draws a lot from her experience in hospitality, translating her standard of care for individual guests to a company level. She helps Silicon Valley tech companies focus on the customer with that same intensity, creating digital products and apps to make a company’s end-to-end experience...

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alex Genov, Head of Marketing Insights and Customer Research at Zappos. We discussed the tension between academic research and its application in organizations, and how the human aspects of research found in qualitative studies get overlooked. As Alex suggests, the key is fine-tuning the balance between the two, taking the time to understand where your limits and your customer’s needs meet. That's where you’ll find the practical, scalable...

To kick off the Voices of CX Podcast’s season 10, we hosted Graham Brown. Graham and I took a good look at the human experience, complete with detours down memory lane. He’s a storyteller by trade, helping leaders tell better stories through data and showcasing great experiences. In our discussion, we delved into the human side of business, and how companies get so focused on innovating that they lose the human aspects of business and end up commoditizing themselves anyway. Beyond that,...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Peter Shafer, VP of Sales and Marketing at The Prosper Group. He gets up in the morning to connect the dots between human behaviors and the scientific data analysis that explains the story behind them. It would be hard enough if the fast-paced and unpredictable world we live in hadn't rendered most predictive analytics almost useless, but that doesn't stop him from bringing scientific rigor to every client's market research. 🟠About Peter...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted AJ Davis, Founder and CEO of Experiment Zone, to discuss the utility of Conversion Rate Optimization, and how it bridges the gap between economics and human behavior. Understanding what really goes into customers' decision-making is a lot more complicated than simple AB testing; it might get you by, but it won't tell you the whole story. That's where AJ comes in. 🟠About AJ Davis AJ Davis is a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Specialist....

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Marilyn Mead, VP of Marketing at Winmo. We discussed how applying the authentic voice of the customer throughout the organization (with a focus on marketing) is one of the best ways to put your company on the path to being truly customer-centric. 🟠About Marilyn Mead As VP of Marketing for List Partners’ flagship brand Winmo, Marilyn oversees brand, product marketing, demand generation, and retention strategies. With Winmo since its 2015 market...

On this week's CXIC, we unpacked the idea that CX is the backbone of the small business world with Hank Ebeling. 🟠About Hank Ebeling Hank Ebeling is a sought-after speaker and small-business entrepreneur and the founder and owner of H4 Training gyms. He’s built his career on a passion for customer service and customer experience, and today helps other small business owners transform their customer service. Hank hosts his popular Success Trails Podcast which focuses on small business owners...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Hank Ebeling, founder and owner of H4 Training gyms, and in a refreshing change of pace, the first small-business entrepreneur we've hosted on this podcast! But as you might expect, CX is no less important to small businesses just because it's easier to manage. In fact, it's even more important when you're face to face with the people you serve. Read the full transcript on VoicesofCX.com: 🟠About Hank Ebeling Hank Ebeling is a sought-after...

On this week's CXIC, we took a note from the book of Warren Buffett: 'People will forget what you said, people will forget, but people will never forget how you made them feel'. That's why treating people like people is so important, especially in business. 🟠About Crystal Garrett Professional writer, storyteller, and creator Crystal Garrett is a Sr. Copywriter at Salesforce, with over 15 years of experience creating content for television and film and demand-generating copy for digital...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted a special guest: Crystal Garrett, Sr. Copywriter at Salesforce and - if you've been listening to the pod long enough to remember - our original host! Crystal and Mary reminisce about the origins of the VoCX Podcast and about how even B2B storytelling is made for people. 🟠About Crystal Garrett Professional writer, storyteller, and creator Crystal Garrett is a Sr. Copywriter at Salesforce, with over 15 years of experience creating content for...

Welcome to CX In Context! Sometimes, we can’t get into as much detail as we’d like during the podcast. On CX In Context, our host Mary takes the timeliest and most thought-provoking concepts from each episode’s discussion and puts them into a practical business context; in other words, why they should matter to you. This week on the Voices of CX Podcast, we talked to Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer at Arise Virtual Solutions. His passion is for customer service...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast, we talked to Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer at Arise Virtual Solutions. His passion is for customer service and helping people understand how to create amazing customer experiences in a decentralized way. 🟠About Jonathan Shroyer CEO & Co-Founder Jonathan has been a customer service professional and leader for 22+ years, leading large teams at established companies such as Microsoft, Monster, and Autodesk, as well as...

Welcome to CX In Context! Sometimes, we can’t get into as much detail as we’d like during the podcast. On CX In Context, our host Mary takes the timeliest and most thought-provoking concepts from each episode’s discussion and puts them into a practical business context; in other words, why they should matter to you. This episode, we dive into the wide, multi-cultural and multi-faceted world of hospitality, where there’s no easy way to segment customers, let alone cater to every single one...

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast, we talked to Alec Dalton, Co-founder & Partner of the Hospitality Leadership Academy about service concepts he's perfected over his decade in hotel operations and global quality management with brands like Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, and Disney. We discuss why approaching exceptional service with an industrial mindset that leaves room for personal agency and empathy is the best of both worlds. 🟠About Alec Dalton Alec’s expertise and passion were formed...

Welcome to CX In Context. Sometimes on the Voices of CX Podcast, we just run short of time and can't get into as much detail during an episode as we'd like. Thus, CX In Context was born, where our host Mary takes the timeliest and most thought-provoking concepts from each episode's discussion and does just that. We hope you learn something new today! This episode, we take some key points from Amelia Dunlop (CXO Deloitte Digital) and her views on the human experience at work. She challenges...