The Trusted Guide Podcast with Mark Slatin

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#37: The Art and Science of Customer Surveys - With Martha Brooke, Founder and Program Director, Interaction Metrics Jun 15, 2023

Show notes

We've all taken surveys.

Clearly some are better than others.

Well designed and implemented surveys can provide business leaders with actionable insights that improve retention, reduce cost to serve, and drive customers loyalty - if acted upon.

They can help companies serve their customers better and provide them with more value. Poorly designed surveys do just the opposite.

Martha Brooke is an expert when it comes to customer research.

Martha shares some of the secrets of best in class survey design with power and passion.

In this episode we discuss:

What's the primary problem with surveys today?
What are the 3 areas of differentiation for scientific research
How to ask provocative questions to increase market share
The art and science of surveys
The problem with most CX programs
The power of 3rd party surveys

MEET MARTHA

Martha Brooke is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and holds a Blackbelt in Six Sigma. To dramatically improve the Customer Experience, Martha founded Interaction Metrics, a Customer Experience (CX) Consulting Company in 2004.

Clients such as Yaskawa America, Bosch, and Synchrony Financial choose Interaction Metrics for its pairing of scientific CX research with software such as Power BI, Alchemer, and Qualtrics.

With her team of Analysts, Martha uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to pinpoint customer experience gaps and improvement opportunities. Methods include Text Analytics, Surveys, and Customer Service Evaluations.

To spur dialogue about the Customer Experience, Martha leads top-rated conference sessions and workshops. Some of the organizations where Martha has been asked to speak include Project Management Institute (PMI), American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), HDI, The Score Conference, Customer Solutions Expo, American Marketing Association (AMA), NICSA at the Harvard Club, Operations Summit, Association of Support Professionals, and SOCAP International.

Prior to Interaction Metrics, Martha worked for two dotcoms, Lucy.com and Food.com, where she drove improvements into the customer experience. And she held operations positions in areas that touch on aspects of CX such as quality assurance and customer service.

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#36: The Biggest Obstacles to Successful Change Initiatives - with Amanda Schmoldt, CCMP, President, ACMP Jun 08, 2023

Show notes

What are the biggest obstacles to successful change initiatives?

Amanda Schmoldt has the expertise and experience that only comes from successfully leading change management initiatives at some of the most respected brands in the world like USAA and Neiman Marcus.

Not only is she the President of the Association of Change Management Professionals, but she's also the Senior Director of Change and Transformation Enablement at Halo Branded Solutions.

Customer Experience Management (CXM) and Change Management (CM) are kindred spirits and have a lot in common.

We explore the intersection of both professions as well as some other practical advice for leaders such as:

👉 Why CM initiatives fail

👉 The intersection of CX and CM

👉 How she helped change the culture at Neiman Marcus

👉 What USAA did right when it comes to cultural transformation

👉 Using behavioral metrics to measure success for change initiatives

Meet Amanda

Amanda Schmoldt, CCMP, has more than two decades of experience in organizational change management, human resources, communications, and organizational effectiveness. Amanda is President of the Association of Change Management Professionals and serves as Senior Director of Change & Transformation Enablement for HALO Branded Solutions. In her current role, she leads a team that is dedicated to building enterprise change capabilities and supporting the people side of the company's change and transformation efforts. Before joining HALO, Amanda held various leadership roles at Neiman Marcus Group, USAA, Caterpillar, Archer Daniels Midland, and the State of Illinois. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

You can reach her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-schmoldt/

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#35: The 5 Leadership SUPERPOWERS with Jay Weiser Jun 01, 2023

Show notes

The 5 Leadership SUPERPOWERS with Jay Weiser, Principal and Founder, Jay Weiser Consulting

Jay Weiser is a leadership expert.

He's a graduate of the Wharton School, and has consulted at Accenture.

He's worked with recognizable names like Autotrader, Bristol Myers Squibb and others.

Jay helps us think critically about the tensions that exist for leaders and how to leverage them to build superior organizations.

In this episode we talk about:

Lessons for leaders from SVB's failure
How Delta's CEO provided 3 keys to success immediately following the Covid outbreak
How Jay's leadership insights intersect with outstanding customer experiences
And, of course THE FIVE LEADERSHIP SUPERPOWERS

Meet Jay

Jay Weiser is the Principal and Founder of Jay Weiser Consulting. His passion is enabling leaders and organizations to not only survive but thrive in the face of disruptiveness and uncertainty. Knowing traditional leadership capabilities are insufficient in this environment, Jay developed THE FIVE LEADERSHIP SUPERPOWERS™ capability

model to address this need.

Through speaking, training, assessment, and advisory services, he helps his clients succeed by improving their preparedness/readiness enabling them to better withstand disruptions, recover quicker, accelerate forward, and

be positioned to jump on opportunities faster.

Jay has over 3 decades of experience advising executives across multiple industries and various environments. His clients and employers span from the middle market to Fortune/Forbes 500, including recognizable names like

Autotrader (Cox Auto), Bristol Myers Squibb, Fulton County Schools, JP Morgan Chase, to Publix.

Jay has delivered presentations to executive groups and has been interviewed for multiple podcasts around the globe. Most recently, he was interviewed by Eric McNulty with the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program between Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Chan School of Public Health. His thought leadership has been featured on Forbes.com, Rework.co, The Balanced Scorecard Report (an HBS publication),

LinkedIn, and on his website, www.jayweiser.com.

He has a BS in Economics from The Wharton School (UPenn) and his MBA from the Goizueta Business School (Emory).

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/jayrweiser

Twitter – www.twitter.com/@Jay_R_Weiser

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#34: Why do most surveys fail to get results? with Rick Denton, Managing Principle, EX4CX May 25, 2023

Show notes

Why do most surveys fail to get results?

Rick Denton believes too many companies rely too heavily on survey data and consequently don't get results.

He suggests CX leaders should look beyond surveys to - listen, act, and engage.

It's a simple, yet powerful model we explore on this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast along with:

👉 What not to ask customers

👉 How to use customer feedback to inspire employees

👉 Why customer experiences are tanking

👉 The importance of aligning brand promise to experience

👉 What's missing in CX today

Join us for a lively and fun episode with two CX pros who also host podcasts

Meet Rick

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, 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.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenton/

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#33: Applying Lessons from Football (Soccer) to Customer Experience with Greg Uglioni, CCXP May 18, 2023

Show notes

What does football (soccer) have in common with Customer Experience?

Greg Uglioni, CCXP, Head of Business Transformation / Digital Transformation at Kantonsspital Winterthur connects the two in a very innovative way.

Greg was voted a Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2022 Thinkers360

Greg joins us all the way from Switzerland, to share wisdom from his experience in both financial services and healthcare including:

Creating value centers vs. cost centers
Lessons from soccer that apply to CX
How to win a championship by applying football (soccer) principles

Meet Greg

Gregorio Uglioni is a specialist in Business Transformation, Innovation and Customer Experience.

Thanks to his strong leadership skills, Gregorio has successfully led several transformation programs achieving great results, creating a positive customer impact while relentlessly nurturing a positive innovation culture.

His cross-industry engagement for the development of the customer experience discipline (e.g., with his podcast "CX Goalkeeper", as a Judge at several international events, as a co-author of the global best-sellers "Customer Experience 3" and "Customer Experience 4") and his in-depth know-how allowed him to be recognized and awarded several time in Customer Experience Community.

Gregorio holds two masters from the University of Zurich. He is a CCXP and the world's first certified ACXSPlus.

He started his career at Accenture and is now the Head of Business Transformation at the Cantonal Hospital of Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gregorio's battery charger is his family

2023 Recognitions:

CXM STARS #8 TOP CX INFLUENCER by CXM

ICMI'S TOP 25 THOUGHT LEADERS FOR 2023 by ICMI

World's Top 200 Business & Technology Innovators by Engati

Top 50 Global Thought Leaderss and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2023

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Digital Transformation 2023

Top 25 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience 2023

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Leadership 2023

2022 Recognitions:

CXM STARS #10 TOP CX INFLUENCER from CXM

"Influencers to follow" from the UK Customer Experience Awards 2022

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2022 Thinkers360

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Digital Transformation 2022

Top 10 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience 2022 Thinkers360

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Leadership 2022

2021 Recognitions:

TOP INFLUENCER 2021 by ENGATI

Customer Experience World Games 2021: Overall Star Player Recognition, 30 July 2021

Thinkers360: Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Customer Experience, October 2021

Survey2Connect: Featured in the list of the 100 CX Thought Leaders Around The World That Are Changing The CX Game

Some quotes:

"my family is my battery charger"

"When I wake up in the morning, I want to create value, to have an impact and to serve others to achieve our goals together"

"Yes, it is possible to create value for employees, customers and shareholders. At the end, they are all human beings!"

"blending agility & CX will be a key success factor in future"

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#32: "The Evolution of CX at Walgreens with Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP, Director of Customer Experience " May 11, 2023

Show notes

How did a neighborhood drugstore, founded in 1901 and measuring just 50 feet by 20 feet, become the pharmacy all others are measured by and one of the most respected American corporations?

Charles R. Walgreen, Sr took a job at Horton's Drugstore in Dixon, Il because an accident left him unable to take part in sports when he was 16.

After working in several drugstores, he grew increasingly knowledgeable - and increasingly dissatisfied with what he saw as old-fashioned, complacent methods of running a drugstore.

Walgreen saw a clear way to differentiate back in the late 1800's: "...the most dramatic change Walgreen instituted was a level of service and personal attention unequaled by virtually any other pharmacy in Chicago."

Today Walgreens has over 13,000 locations across the U.S., Europe, and Latin American with over 325,000 team members.

Recently, Walgreens has formalized their Customer Experience Management efforts and Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP, Director of Customer Experience at the storied retailer joins me for a fascinating discussion on The Delighted Customers Podcast.

She shares some practical tips and stories including:

The same as Coke vs. Pepsi? How does Walgreens think of their brand differently from CVS and other competitors
The evolution of CX at Walgreens
The Power of in-store visits
Idea Testing
Preparing for a health clinic from a CX perspective

Meet Danielle

Danielle Wipperfurth serves as Director of Customer Experience at Walgreens. Her background includes leadership roles across sectors and internationally in organizations as diverse as an incubator for social impact startups, a creative agency serving the White House, and a luxury outdoor kitchen company.

Danielle's expertise includes healthcare customer experience, the relationship between employee and customer experience, and the power of aligning experience with your brand promise. She is deeply committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, serving on the Diversity Advancement Committee for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA).

Danielle earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and her bachelor's degree from Davidson College. In 2020, she was recognized as an inaugural Emerging Leader in Customer Experience by the CXPA, and now invests in the next generation of CX leaders as Chair of the program.

You can reach her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellewipperfurth/.

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#31: Understanding Intrinsic and External Motivators to Unlock Discretionary Employee Effort - with Greg Kihlstrom, Principal, Chief Strategist, GK5A May 04, 2023

Show notes

Greg Kihlstrom is a speaker, author, advisor, and strategy expert.

With a background in digital marketing, Greg brings experience from that background along with his experience in the customer experience world to help companies up their game.

Some of the gems Greg shares:

Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to unlock discretionary employee effort
Why everyone must have a line of sight to the customer
4 qualifiers for meaningful measurement

…and a whole lot more.

Meet Greg

Greg Kihlström is a best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur, currently an advisor and consultant to top companies on marketing technology, customer experience, and digital transformation initiatives as Principal and Chief Strategist at GK5A. He is also the host of The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. He is a two-time CEO and Co-Founder, growing both companies organically and through acquisitions, and ultimately leading both to be acquired (one in 2017, and the other in 2021). He has worked with some of the world's top brands, including Adidas, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, HP, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota, and VMware.

He earned his MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology and is a member of the School of Marketing Faculty at the Association of National Advertisers. He currently serves on the University of Richmond's Customer Experience Advisory Board and the Workhouse Arts Foundation Board as Chair of the Marketing Committee. Greg was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation's National Innovation Committee and served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board. Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, is an Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC), and holds a certification in Business Agility (ICP-BAF).

Greg has had multiple best-selling books, including his Agile Brand Guides series on marketing technology platforms and practices. His eleventh and most recent book, House of the Customer (2023) discusses the 1:1 personalized customer experience of the future, and how brands can organize the people, processes, and platforms that enable it. Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience (2022), provides guidance on how to create a customer-centric culture that prioritizes customer needs while aligning internal teams around a common goal. His award-winning podcast, The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, launched in early 2019, discusses brand strategy, marketing, and customer experience with some of the world's leading experts and leaders.

Greg is a contributing writer to Fast Company, Forbes, MarTech, and CMSWire, and has been featured in publications such as Advertising Age and The Washington Post. Greg has been named a 2022 Top 10 Marketing and Customer Experience Thought Leader by Thinkers 360, was named one of ICMI's Top 25 CX Thought Leaders two years in a row, and a DC Inno 50 on Fire as a DC trendsetter in Marketing.

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#30: The "Customer Chair": The Power of Storytelling, Richard Dorfman, MBA, Vice President, Customer Experience, Eastern Bank Apr 27, 2023

Show notes

The Customer Chair: The Power of Storytelling, Richard Dorfman, MBA, Vice President, Customer Experience, Eastern Bank

Influencing decisions in the C-Suite requires an appeal to both the logical and emotional sides of the brain. Sure you have to have data to support big decisions, but emotions are always linked to influence. Stories are a powerful way to engage leaders to get your ideas accepted.

Rich Dorfman, the CX leader at one of the largest Boston-based banks, shares his real world experience as a CX practitioner and how he used the power of storytelling to influence key decision-makers. In my opinion, there's nothing like hearing from someone who has learned real life lessons to lead a customer centric culture.

Some of the highlights of the episode include:

The Customer Chair - How Rich borrowed an idea from Clint Eastwood to influence senior leaders
The "Axle-breaking Moment" - the power of knowing your audience
Building relationships with key stakeholders
Partnering with key stakeholders to create allies

Meet Rich

For more than nine years, Rich has led Eastern Bank's customer experience efforts managing all aspects of this strategic initiative from program design to Voice of Customer (VOC) measurement and management to analysis and reporting to being the "customer-first" catalyst of the company. The result of Rich's relentless pursuit of this critical outside in perspective has focused and aligned the bank around customer-centric behaviors and attitudes. Key accomplishment include:

> Created a Customer Experience (CX) governance council empowered to identify and repair CX pain points, which then communicates these customer and institutional "wins" to all impacted stakeholders

> Designed customer feedback programs in every line of business with robust closed loop management processes

> Integrated VOC insights into business plans to drive CX enhancements

> Developed a comprehensive and actionable CX financial linkage analysis that strongly correlates customers' sentiments to their banking business and profitability

> Embarked on a CX maturity benchmark assessment to uncover a defined strategic roadmap for future CX improvement initiatives

Prior to Eastern, Rich's banking career included strategic marketing positions at Chemical Bank/Chase in New York, Shawmut Bank/Fleet Bank in Boston and as principle of his own strategic consulting firm focused on delivering differentiated value to high-revenue small business segments.

Connect with Rich:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richdorfman/

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#29: You Got the CX Leader Job, Now What? with Allison Landers, Chief Experience Officer (CXO), UBS Apr 20, 2023

Show notes

You Got the CX Leader Job, Now What? with Allison Landers, Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for Banking and Lending, UBS

Allison Landers knows a thing or two about customer experience. She started her career in the .com space working for AOL and then shifted into financial services working at some of the most respected brands like Key Bank, Wells Fargo, and now UBS, where she serves as the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for Banking and Lending.

Our conversation was particularly timely given the turbulence in the financial sector and the critical need to earn customer's trust. Allison has taken the helm and successfully led CX practices that were at various stages of maturity.

Some of the highlights of the episode include:

Being honest about your brand "perception"
The first order of business when beginning a CX practice
How to build trust with key stakeholders
The two key things to focus on most

Meet Allison

Allison Landers joined UBS Bank USA as Managing Director and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) in 2022. In this new role, Allison is responsible for the design, delivery and ongoing management of end-to-end, omni-channel client and employee experiences. Her focus areas include journeys, client and field messaging, research, Voice of the Customer/Employee and client experience and engagement measurement.

Allison brings over 25 years of experience in Customer Experience (CX), Digital Product Management and Marketing. She started her career in the .com space, working for America Online (AOL), American Greetings and Sabre Networks. Since 2005, Allison has been applying best practices from those industries to move Financial Services forward, leading Digital and omni-channel CX efforts at KeyBank, TD Bank, Prudential and Wells Fargo.

Allison earned her undergraduate degree in Journalism/Advertising from Indiana University and her MBA in Marketing from Marymount University. Allison is active in both the industry and her community. She lives in Little Silver, New Jersey with her husband Steve, their three sons and her dog Daisy.

She can be best reached on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonpainelanders/

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#28: Pt. 2 - Lou Carbone, the Father of Experience Management Apr 13, 2023

Show notes

In this fascinating two part mini-series, Lou Carbone distills decades of thought leading ideas that cut through years of misled efforts to delight customers.

In Part 2 we cover:

The reason for being of a company should be creating value for customers
Using Deep metaphors for feelings that connect you to companies
Based on unconscious frameworks - how do you meet unconscious needs
Will AI be used for wisdom?

Be sure to listen to Part 2 for more great gems from Lou

Meet Lou

Lou Carbone is foun der andCEO of Experience Engineering®, Inc., an experience management consulting firm, the first of its kind, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Since the late 1980's, Carbone, actually referred to as the "father of Customer Experience Management", has been at the forefront of exploring and developing and creating cutting edge tools and experience management perspectives. He is globally recognized as a significant thought leader in the field as well as an experience management futurist continuously innovative, hands-on academic/practitioner.

He has written and co-authored numerous academic articles and wrote the book "Clued In: How to keep customers coming back, again and again, Published by FT Prentice Hall which won Fast Company's Reader's Choice Award. Including a paper that was cited as the best paper by Sage Publications on Memorability of Experiences. Citations from those works in academic publications number in the thousands.

More than two decades has collaborated very often with Dr. Leonard Berry, of the Mays School at Texas A&M. Len co-authored the book Management Lessons from the Mayo Clinic with Dr. Kent Seltman, former Chair of Marketing at the Clinic and has been recognized for contributing more to academic literature than any other academic ever.

Lou originated the concept of Total Experience Management™ and a robust methodology called Experience Engineering®. He is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at Health Quality Partners and has served on the board of Fairview Physician's Associate Network, as well as the Chairman of the Brown College Board of Trustees. Board Brown College Board Chair. He has spoken across the Globe hundreds of times delivering Keynote addresses.

Prior to founding Experience Engineering Lou was the Global Vice President of Marketing at National Car Rental during the innovative creation of the Paperless Rental Agreement, Emerald Club®, The Emerald Aisle where choose your vehicle. Which the entire industry has now mimicked by the industry decades later.

Lou was a senior executive with major advertising agencies in NYC, Detroit and Minneapolis and served as a Journalist in his early career.

Prior to starting Experience Engineering, Carbone was an advertising executive with major agencies in New York, Detroit and Minneapolis. While with Campbell-Ewald Advertising, Grey Advertising, and Manoff Geers Gross, he worked with wide array of companies including American Tourister Luggage, National Car Rental, Walt Disney World, Eastern Airlines and Howard Johnson.

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