The Customer Experience Podcast

Latest Episodes:

73. Marketing To Your Employees, Not Just Your Customers w/ Chris Wallace May 05, 2020

Show notes

We always talk about brand as a collection of promises that a company is making to its customers. At the end of the day, brand really comes down to the essence of a company.

However, if the people spending the money on the advertising do not have a strong bond with the people delivering that customer experience — the ones facing the customers — you have a catastrophic breakdown between promise and delivery.

Employee experience is customer experience if employees believe in the brand they are hired to represent.

In this episode, I interview Chris Wallace, Cofounder and President at InnerView Group, about marketing and branding to employees, not just customers.

A few of the takeaways:

- Build employee satisfaction to drive customer satisfaction — an upward spiral

- Avoid brand dilution by closing the gap between your brand promise and your customer experience

- Infuse your team with a sense of pride and purpose in their work and in your company

- Techniques & strategies for improving employee experience

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

72. Better Marketing Through Product, Sales, and Customer Conversations w/ Shanee Ben-Zur Apr 28, 2020

Show notes

Now more than ever, having a focus on the customer experience matters. If we're not empathetic to what our customers are going through, we won't just not make a sale, we'll make an enemy. This timely reminder underscores the importance of customer data as an avenue for relating to the deep needs of the customer.

You've heard of account-based marketing and selling… Account-based information ties into the customer experience just as closely.

In this episode, I interview Shanee Ben-Zur, Head of Marketing, Media, & Growth at Crunchbase, about using data to develop fuller pictures of your customers:

What we talked about:

- Shanee's A/B test strategy and project team

- CX touches wants, needs, and desires - not just finances

- Organizing and interpreting customer interviews

- Deeply understanding who the customer is means recognizing their stress & problem solving from a desire to help

- If you can't measure it, should you be doing it?

- Where sales meets marketing meets product

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

71. Differentiating Your Brand by Humanizing The Experience w/ Ed Breault Apr 21, 2020

Show notes

Brand experience is a promise that the buying experience will match the perceived value of the brand. Therefore, brand experience — education, enrichment, and human connection — begins well before a customer becomes a customer.

When a prospect believes that the brand and the buying experience will match and when that expectation is met… a premium brand is born.

In this episode, I interview Ed Breault, CMO at Aprimo, about developing his brand experience strategy.

What we talked about:

- Customer experience as a promise

- His mission to rehumanize the brand experience at Aprimo

- Achieving "extraordinary influence" within your target accounts

- Personal brands as the new corporate brand

- Doing your best work within your "life flow"

Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:

- Ed was profiled on DMNews 40Under40

- He explains the impact of Rehumanize Your Business

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

70. Mental Health in Sales: More Than 40% Struggle w/ Jeff Riseley Apr 14, 2020

Show notes

Think of five salespeople you know. Imagine their names and faces. Odds are, at least two of them are struggling with their mental health.

But no one's really talking about mental health in sales, even though survey research has shown that over 40% of salespeople struggle with mental health.

In this episode, I interview Jeff Riseley, the founder of the Sales Health Alliance, about his passion to create more awareness around mental health in sales — and to help salespeople and sales leaders navigate stressful sales situations in a mentally healthy way to increase performance.

What we talked about:

- The ROI of investing in mental health

- The difference between having "luck" and "feeling lucky"

- The impact of setting sales quotas your reps aren't likely to hit

- Thinking about salespeople as "corporate athletes"

- Jeff's personal story of mental health awareness and advocacy

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

- Start Talking PDF

- Sales Gratitude Journal PDF

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

69. The Essence of CX: How You Make People Feel Apr 09, 2020

Show notes

"People will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel." This quote from Maya Angelou embodies the heart of customer experience.

It's simplifying the concept to say that customer experience is how you make people feel, but I think it may not be too simple. The essence of customer experience tends to be incorrectly focused on getting customers to do something, but the underlying cause of nearly all of our actions is whether we feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

In other words, if we feel connected, we'll act.

I'm Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show, here today to continue the ongoing conversation of what customer experience is and how it builds relationships.

What I talk about:

- The definition of customer experience

- Getting people to do something is the outcome of how they feel

- Attitudes & feelings toward team members, products & services, and the problem that brought you into a relationship

- The way you operate bolsters relationship in multiple directions

Check out these resources I mentioned during the podcast:

- Rehumanize Your Business

- Ep. 56 on The Customer Experience Podcast

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

68. Creating & Delivering Better Buying Experiences with Video w/ Josh Fedie Apr 07, 2020

Show notes

The customer experience often starts at or near the buying experience. So, today, we're talking about creating and delivering better buying experiences.

Every one of us experiences some version of buyer's remorse every time we make a purchase. Strategizing about creating a buyer's experience not just to mitigate the buyer's remorse but to empower the buyer is a huge component of customer experience.

Our guest brings more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience in digital marketing and tech, most often as the Director of Business Development but also as a two-time company founder. He founded his latest company, SalesReach, because "buyers have changed, salespeople matter, and marketing shouldn't have all the fun."

In this episode, I interview Josh Fedie, Founder at SalesReach and host of The Founders Mentality, about crafting his company to make better buying experiences..

What we talked about:

- Customer experience has to do with feelings

- 2 ways to think about personalization

- Product-driven organization vs. a sales- and marketing-driven organization

- Strategies for getting started with video

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

- Josh's LinkedIn video about video

- Ep. 40, "The Biggest Transformation in Prospecting in 30 Years," w/ Dan Tyre

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

67. Customer Communication In Times of Crisis w/ Samantha Stone Mar 31, 2020

Show notes

We're neck deep in the Coronavirus pandemic, but digital communication gives us the power to stay connected while we're physically separated. Should customer communication channels change during a time of crisis?

In this episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, my guest and I discuss how digital chat (both live and bot) and video are affected by COVID-19. Listen in as I talk with my first return guest, Samantha Stone, the Founder and CMO of The Marketing Advisory Network and the author of Unleash Possible, about customer communication channels in a time of crisis.

What we talked about:

- Customer communication channels — including the chat experience

- The power of video to stay connected even when we're social distancing

- Crisis communication through the lens of the Coronavirus pandemic

- Why we're so far from gender equality in 2020

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

66. Restoring The Human Factor To Fulfill The "Big CX Dream" w/ Ben Smithwell Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Basically, CX is in a pretty bad state. Stagnating macro studies on customer experience like the CXI metric are just one indicator…

In other words, the so-called "Big CX Dream" has failed to live up to its billing.

In this episode, we talked about some of the soft spots and even illusions in the modern Customer Experience movement… Ben Smithwell joins us on The Customer Experience Podcast!

Ben is the Director and CX/Service Design Principal at Comotion and the Director and CX/Service Design Strategist at Smithwell.

What we talked about:

- The Spock vs. Kirk customer experience battle

- The evidence showing that the Big CX Dream has failed to live up to its billing

- The tendency to treat CX as an ideology rather than a discipline

- The tool-led rather than expertise-driven nature of CX

- The human factor that can help fulfill the Big CX Dream

Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:

- Ben's TEDx Talk about removing bullies

- My TEDx Talk about the Flight Back to the Face

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

65. Product Usage as a Vanity Metric w/ Chris Hicken Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

Product usage is a vanity metric.

Actually, product usage is just one of 15 factors that companies should use to build a picture of their organization's health. These belong in four "buckets" that show what to track instead to create a risk profile for each account (likelihood to renew or churn).

In this episode, I interview Chris Hicken, cofounder and CEO at 'nuffsaid, about what tracking product usage is (and isn't) good for.

What we talked about:

- 4 main buckets: Customer Maturity, The Product, The Experience, The Pricing

- Why the CS leader should own more go-to-market strategy in the future

- Considerations for product-led growth, sales-led growth, and marketing-led growth

- Why free and freemium may not be a good fit

- Considerations for going up market from SMB to Enterprise

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

64. A Circular Approach to the Customer Lifecycle w/ Wes Schaeffer Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

How do you envision the customer lifecycle? Is it linear or circular? The latter is your best bet if you want lifelong customers. And it's as easy as ABC...DE, then repeat.

If you're stumped on what this means for your sales and marketing team, this episode is for you.

Wes Schaeffer, author, speaker, and Founder at The Sales Whisperer, stopped by The Customer Experience Podcast to break down this circular approach to the customer lifecycle.

What we talked about:

- What an ideal customer lifecycle looks like – courtesy of BMW

- How the ABCDE process works

- When to use automation vs. personal touch

- Why doing things that can't scale is important

- How to keep the personal and the human in the sales process

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

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