Ben Larsen has spent nine years inside a company that built its reputation on something increasingly rare in insurance: actually caring. Wellfleet Insurance — a Berkshire Hathaway company — has answered the phone for college students navigating health insurance for the first time for over three decades, and that white-glove service culture is baked into everything. Now, as Digital Experience Officer, Larsen is the one tasked with figuring out how to take that same care and push it through a screen.

In this conversation, Larsen walks Dom Nicastro through the real shape of digital transformation inside a multi-line insurance business — the legacy infrastructure hiding below the surface, the student health advisory council that tells him exactly what Gen Z actually wants, the small and large bets he's placing on bot technology and agentic AI, and why none of it works without getting the data right first. Oh, and there's a Salem State College baseball reunion in here too. You've been warned.

Hayden Clark went from coaching wide receivers at Vanderbilt and working on Nick Saban's staff at Alabama to VP of Marketing at LGI Homes, where he now leads five in-house teams covering paid media, creative, analytics, local marketing, and digital experience.

In this episode of CX Decoded, Clark talks about building a marketing team that prizes curiosity and soft skills over résumé depth, marketing to the emotional complexity of first-time homebuyers, and how LGI is using Sitecore CDP data to bridge the gap between the digital journey and the in-person sales experience.

Allison Kavanagh didn't come to this conversation to celebrate AI. The CMO of Inflow Health came to interrogate it. Her company exists because follow-up care gaps — the kind where an incidental imaging finding gets lost between a chart, a referring provider and a patient — can turn into a life-threatening failure. That's the standard she holds AI to: not whether it can generate more, but whether it can close a dangerous gap. In this episode, she makes the case that healthcare marketers who lead with novelty and scale are asking the wrong questions entirely.

Tyler Gardner has been in the contact center world since he was 18, taking calls for DiscoverCard off a paper dial sheet. Today, he runs customer experience for Cuyana, the premium women's clothing and handbag brand — and he's learned one thing that hasn't changed in 25 years: if the fundamentals aren't right, no technology will save you. Before Cuyana rolled out AI-assisted email and voice support, Gardner spent months mapping processes, updating knowledge-base articles and making sure every workflow was documented.

His rule: if it's not written down, it doesn't exist.

On this episode of CX Decoded, Gardner breaks down what it actually looks like to run a small-but-mighty CX team for a luxury brand, why phone calls aren't dying, how sentiment analysis is replacing the post-call survey as the real signal and what's next — chat AI, SMS, and a push into international commerce.

Drupal founder and Acquia executive chairman Dries Buytaert joins CX Decoded fresh off DrupalCon Chicago to break down how AI is disrupting every leg of the open source ecosystem — the platform, the agency world, and the contributor community. Plus: why the current deal between publishers and AI crawlers is broken, and what CX leaders should actually be doing about content discoverability.

In this episode of CX Decoded, Dom Nicastro distills a CMSWire TV conversation with AT&T's John Miller into five essential takeaways on customer obsession. From employee enablement to AI restraint, the discussion breaks down how AT&T turns CX intent into everyday practice at enterprise scale.

CX Decoded dives into how contact centers and digital teams turn customer interactions into real business value. In this episode, host Dom Nicastro sits down with Barry Cooper, president of NiCE's CX division, to unpack the company's evolution from workforce management roots to a full-service CX platform — and what that means for agents, leaders and customers.

Cooper shares how unified interaction data and AI are reshaping quality, coaching and KPIs; why the agent experience has to lead any automation push; and what's coming with CXone Mpower, specialist personas for asynchronous work and a "single pane of glass" across channels. It's a candid look at the tools, behaviors and org roles defining the next era of customer experience.

In this episode of CX Decoded, Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro sits down with Miranda Collard, Global Chief Client Officer at TP, to explore her remarkable journey from headset-wearing agent to C-suite leader. With over 30 years in the contact center industry, Collard shares hard-earned insights on how frontline experience shapes leadership, why AI's real impact often happens behind the scenes, and how emotional intelligence can be scaled as a CX differentiator. Listeners will also hear how empowering agents and turning insights into action can transform customer journeys in 2025 and beyond. Whether you lead a global CX organization or a small team, this conversation offers practical strategies for blending technology, empathy and execution to deliver experiences that truly last.

In this episode of CX Decoded, Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro sits down with CMSWire's VP of Research, Sarah Kimmel, to unpack top findings from two pivotal reports: the 2025 State of the CMO and the 2025 State of Digital Customer Experience.

Together, they explore the evolving skill sets required of modern CMOs, the cautious return of marketing budget growth and the ongoing struggle to accurately measure ROI.

They also highlight how generative AI is seeing explosive, yet still largely unguided, adoption; how DX tools are finally showing results after years of frustration; and how personalization efforts are accelerating thanks to improved tech and behavioral insight.

Too many marketers are chasing likes over results. Jim Lecinski, clinical professor of Marketing at Northwestern University and former Google executive, says it's time to reframe the CMO role—from brand builder to growth driver.

In this episode, he breaks down how to stay customer-obsessed, navigate AI-driven search and get ready for Gen Alpha before they catch you off guard.