In this episode we talk about improving the customer experience and reducing risk through operational excellence, so we brought on Michael Popa. Companies can often go wrong in their strategy when structuring their teams and compensation. So it comes down to aligning on the responsibilities of sales all the way down to what are the metrics each one’s accountable for and how are they compensated for that. Michael gives his method for looking over and assessing business processes responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI). Make sure your different departments are communicating well so that customers don’t have to repeat themselves. The handoff is an important part of on-boarding customers. - Michael’s background 1:00 - Helping companies get to excellence 4:27 - Where companies often go wrong in strategy 6:07 - RACI 8:16 - Guiding more of the process and strategy 11:42 “That’s where I typically start is understanding the objectives of the company. Understand where we wanna go, where we wanna take not just customer success but the entire customer life cycle and how we build a strategy in conjunction with sales and operations so that we’re investing in the right building blocks, the right milestones, in the right sequence.” 5:20

Today we talk about the power of identification to build employee and customer connection, so we brought on Aaron Painter who is the CEO at Nametag. He explains what makes good customer experience and that comes down to how employees are treated and how they treat customers. Companies need to help employees feel and understand that their opinions matter, which will help create connection with the company and even create culture as these employees interact with the customer. - Aaron’s background 1:00 - What makes good customer experience? 4:40 - Building culture of happy employees 8:13 - Why is customer support such a hard job in today’s world? 11:44 - Benefitting both employee and customer and why he build Nametag 15:54 “It’s crazy that in today’s world so much can happen from your mobile phone except actually proving who you really are, so it led me down this path of something I’ve been on a lot, which was cyber security and privacy and this intersection with identity and just understanding who customers are because we all know in our field of marketing more broadly, the better we know our customers, the better we can tailor the overall customer experience.” 2:06 www.linkedin.com/in/aaronpainter/

In this episode we talk about building customer focused organizational processes with Ali Ghumman who is the Global VP of Customer Engagement and Innovation at SAP, a company that engineers solutions to fuel innovation, foster equality, and spread opportunity across borders and cultures. Companies have baggage of history, of technology, of positions, of growth, which can ultimately hold companies back when they’ve been around for a long time and are stuck in the old way of doing things. It can be hard to get shareholders and organization executives to want to adjust or shift how things are done to keep up with modern trends. - What it means to build customer focused organizational processes 4:45 - Why organizations don’t get the customer in mind, or don’t innovate right away 7:07 - Key factors to achieve alignment with your organization 8:40 - Advice for achieving some of these goals 13:06 “Think about in retail organization that exists in today’s world. It’s trying to understand what the impact would be of running a marketing promotion on the traffic that they’ll get in their stores as well as on their site and what that means for the amount of product that they should have so that the customers don’t go empty handed when they’re there.” 6:16 http://www.linkedin.com/in/alighumman/

Today we’re going to talk about transformation and how to really focus and align your business to this idea of experience. To do that, we brought on Cristin Thompson who is currently the Vice President of Sales Enablement and Customer Engagement at QSC. You always want to make sure you’ve captured what was said, what was written, or what was conveyed. Now, do we need the faster horse? Or do we need to build a car? That all comes back to what your strategy is for your company or organization. Whether to take the advice of your customers really depends on what type of business you’re running and where you’re wanting to go. - Crispin’s Background 1:00 - Where he goes when starting these initiatives 5:22 - Deciphering when to know that your way is better than what the customer thinks they want 7:25 - Why aren’t companies able to turn feedback into action? 11:11 - Final thoughts 16:29 “If you’re thinking more about an outcome driven type exercise, meaning ‘I wanna help people get faster from point A to point B,’ I don’t necessarily care about the means of locomotion, that frees you up to interpret that as ‘Oh they’re saying faster horse, but guess what. This brand new thing I’m thinking about is gonna help us close that gap. It’s gonna change everything, and we’re gonna have to help them get there.’” 8:24 www.linkedin.com/in/crispinthompson/

In this episode we’re going to talk about how to relate to customers in a way that’s unique and in a way that’s scalable, so we have Owen Robinson on the show today, who is currently the Vice President of CX Strategy at Water Filled Tech. The key to a successful modern customer engagement strategy is not the old school, bullhorn corporate experience for a million people, but it’s about hand crafting a million experiences for one customer. It’s earning customer loyalty at the individual scale with a handcrafted customer experience conscious of their behavior, their priorities, and delivering what they want, where they want it, when they want it. About Owen’s background 0:52 Have customers changed? 4:07 Where to start and measuring 7:16 The data we have matters 9:44 Having the right technology 11:41 “The advent of cloud technology, which has been around for a long time and other technical spaces really came into its form in customer experience within the last decade. What that allows us to do is really consume super sophisticated applications and technology like artificial intelligence and big data analytics, and natural language processing, and all these really cool things that in the past we could kind of do, sorta, in a premise environment if you had enough money and time to put into it, but now midsized and even small businesses can consume these sophisticated capabilities for a couple hundred bucks an agent a month. So it’s a really cool time.” 4:40 www.linkedin.com/in/owen-b-robinson/

Today we’re gonna be talking about good customer experience and how that can improve your digital presence, and to do that we brought on Hannah McNaughton. She is an award winning founder and currently the CEO of Metric Marketing, a recognized thought leader in a lot of digital aspects and overall digital marketing. She has trained a lot of professionals from startups to fortune 500 in different marketing strategies and is currently a member of the Forbes Agency Panel. About Metric Marketing 1:14 How to grow and take the next step 4:16 Algorithms 9:06 Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines 12:22 “There are over 200 factors that Google says they use to rank websites, so knowing where to start can feel really difficult, but really what everything comes down to is user experience. Everything that Google recommends from the kind of content you create to the experience that people have on your website with the navigation, with the functionality, everything revolves around user experience.” 4:44

Today we have a fun talk track and we’re gonna be talking about personalization journey mapping with a little bit of a functional twist as we dive into healthcare and pharma, and to do that we brought on Chris Brogan who is currently a grower of healthcare and Chief Strategy Officer of Predictive Health. He does a lot in the CX space, so we hope you can tune in today and gain some great insights from this interview. Chris’s background 0:54 Personalization 3:38 Some tips in helping companies jump into this head first 5:43 Bringing the horse to water 8:29 Don’t do personalization for personalization’s sake 12:28 “If we’re able to sort of engage them with a personalized experience when they get to that site, so I hit a link, my experience is different on the website initially, and then going even further, personalizing some of the content there to meet the needs and barriers, and sort of myths maybe that your audience may have in mind.” 7:45

Today we’re going to talk about how to build a brand strategy that drives your customer experience and to do that we brought on Bettina Papirio-Faerber, who is the VP of Strategy and CX at One and All Agency. Bettina’s purpose at her agency is to support purpose driven brands in their missions, which goes from for profit to non-profit, and working with them and guiding them through connecting their mission and purpose with their customers. CX plays a huge role in that, knowing who you’re talking to, and also how that flows with your brand, so it’s a great topic to discuss today. Structuring and framing brand strategy 2:56 Helping brands stand out in the market 8:31 Do companies find success when they incorporate these strategies? 11:16 A quote to live by 15:32 “I always say ‘Do you know that you have a gap?’ And I think that most brands, and when they develop brand strategy, don’t really recognize that there is a gap between what they think they’re doing in customer experience for their customer and how the customer perceives it.” 3:23 @bettina_says

We have a special guest with us today, Rhonda Rothstein, who is currently the President of the North East region of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals. They do a lot of good work in our space, but more importantly Rhonda has been in the customer experience space for a long time focusing a lot on outsourcing. With about 15 years of business development and operations, I’m really excited to talk to her about some of her experience in thinking about outsourcing. What is outsourcing? 3:10 Leading edge technologies 7:05 Coaching organizations on where to start with outsourcing 7:53 What to look for 11:15 Having control 16:43 “ There’s a lot of risk that gets mitigated by outsourcing. Obviously you’re not hiring those people in house, you don’t have to pay unemployment tax and health insurance benefits, manage them, and hire them. The list goes on and on, so it’s great to be able to just take that piece off of your plate and outsource it to a company that specializes in all of those things.” 5:47 www.linkedin.com/in/rhonda-rohtstein

Today we’re discussing something that is becoming even more important today, which is how to use data to transform your customer journey. We can’t stress this topic enough and we found an amazing guest to discuss it, Biren Fondekar, who is currently the VP of Customer Experience over and Digital Strategy at NetApp. The only way, especially in today’s digital world, to truly understand the customer and what they’re experiencing is to capture as much data as you can as the customer is working their way through their customer journey. Why is data so important? 4:57 How to become a more data driven organization 7:06 Data ownership 13:41 Using the customer experience governance board 14:51 “When I think of a customer journey, it’s everything from when a customer first hears about you as a vendor and as a product, all the way until they buy from you when they use your product and need support on it and so on. Being able to capture all those data points as the customer is progressing through that journey really helps us pinpoint friction points, pain points, and so on, and drive a much more kind of focused and specific customer experience for that given customer.” 5:39