CX Education

Episode summary 

There's nothing like healthy competition. And monitoring the way your competitors do business and approach their customers can make you a stronger player. 

But if you want to stay on top of the game, sometimes you need to look beyond your competition. In this episode of CX Education, our host Sunny Dhami welcomes Bill Eveleth, the COO/CFO of GoLive. They talk about the importance of staying ahead of the competition, why text messaging is still an effective communication channel and the benefits of creating a high-quality customer experience. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Bill Eveleth 

💡 What he does: He's the COO/CFO of GoLive. 

💡 Company: GoLive 

💡 Noteworthy: Bill has also founded a consulting company, The Fractional CFO. Before that, he held CFO roles in multi-billion-dollar companies. He's also authored four books, ranging from business and operations to stories and life lessons. 

💡 Where to find Bill: LinkedIn 

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Key insights  

⚡ Look beyond the competition. Having competition is a natural part of every business - it can help you stay on top of the game while keeping customers happy. But sometimes, you need to go beyond the competition to win in business. Bill explains, "If you're going to really win in business, you've got to be out front. You've got to be on the leading edge of where you want to take your business, and that's what I do as COO of GoLive; we really spend a lot of time thinking about where are the blue oceans, where are the fields that people haven't gone to yet, and that's where we really want to compete. If you jump into the competitive mass and you try to do anything there, you can just get gobbled up in marketing expenses. So, we focus on the future and where we want to take the business." 

⚡ Text messages are still an effective communication tool. Despite what some people think, text messaging is still one of the best ways to reach customers and prospects. Bill explains, "One of the things we really like about text messaging is that 90% of the messages received are read within five minutes. Text messaging, we see as a very efficient and effective form of communication, whether it's in marketing or whether it's in employee communication or patient communication." 

⚡ Put your customer's needs first. To build a long-standing relationship with customers, you need to put them first – a high-quality customer experience can make all the difference in business. Bill says, "If somebody comes to me and says, 'Okay, I have a situation, and I want to know if you have a solution,' then yeah, absolutely. You can say, 'Well, I hear what you're saying, and we have a product that I think will solve this problem for you.' So, it's a little different when you're selling a product or a service than when you're selling consulting services. It's okay to have the answer being your product, but you want to understand what their needs are first. Put your prospect's needs or your customer's needs before you make recommendations to them." 

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Episode summary 

Retail stores play a crucial role in our daily lives, helping consumers access a variety of products, and they can track customers' likes, needs, and values to offer relevant and timely experiences. 

But how consumers make purchasing decisions has changed dramatically. People stand in stores and use smartphones to compare prices and product reviews; they make purchasing decisions through social media, and when they're ready to buy, they have a growing list of online retailers at their disposal. 

In this episode of CX Education, our host Sunny Dhami welcomes Andrew Busby, the founder of Retail Reflections. Andrew describes his retail journey and gets into the changes the retail industry faces. Andrew and Sunny discuss customer loyalty to retailers and brands, the future of brick-and-mortar versus online stores, and personalization in retail. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Andrew Busby 

💡 What he does: Andrew is the founder of Retail Reflections 

💡 Company: Retail Reflections 

💡 Noteworthy: Andrew is a retail writer, former Forbes contributor, number one best-selling Amazon author with his book "Harry Was Right All Along," Global Retail Senior Director at Software AG, and the founder of Retail Reflections. In a retail career spanning over 20 years, Andrew held senior positions at Kingfisher and Superdrug. In addition to writing his own retail blog, Andrew is a member of the IORMA Advisory Board, a member of REAN, an advisory board member of Retail Week, a founder of the Retail Advisory Board, and an editor-at-large of Retail Technology magazine. 

💡 Where to find Andrew: Linkedin l Website 

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Key insights 

⚡ Customer loyalty is almost nonexistent. In today's global economic situation, finances are tight, inflation is affecting nearly every country, and there is a cost-of-living crisis. As Andrew says, it affects customer loyalty, and only a few brands can manage that customer loyalty. "Retailers and brands like to think that their customers are loyal. With certain exceptions, I think they're loyal in the moments of the transaction, but I don't think they're loyal. I've been saying for quite some time that the customer experience, whether online or in-store — but particularly in the store — is the number one thing." 

⚡ People in retail are much more attuned to what's going on. Modernization, the internet, and all things digital have changed people's habits and expectations - the retail industry needs to move with the times. Customers today are looking for an elevated customer experience, both during the purchase journey and afterward, and based on that, they choose which retailer to shop at. According to Andrew, the average consumer doesn't think and look at things the same way as those working in the retail industry. "Even though somebody perhaps can't articulate — in the way that we might be able to — why they either had a positive, good experience or a negative, bad experience, they'll certainly know it. They'll feel it. They'll feel something about it. They'll say, 'I didn't like that.' So I think this is extremely important for all retailers." 

⚡ The future of high street versus online. As a result of the pandemic, we’ve turned more and more to online avenues, and many high street stores have closed. On the other hand, there are many stores where you can see and try their products, but they still encourage you to buy online. Andrew notes the convergence happening now; and that people want to see the digital experience extend to the store. "If I'm buying a big-ticket&

Episode summary

The development of technology has brought so many advantages. In fact, thousands of companies use technology every day to reduce sales costs and focus on self-service. 

But it's not just about the value of technology to the business; it should always be about what creates value for the customer. 

In this episode of CX Education, our host Heather Share welcomes Mike Wittenstein, Founder and Managing Partner at Storyminers. Mike and Heather discuss the importance of customer experience and what customer experience designers do. They talk about using technology to create value, the problem of too many messages, and the benefits of building a story while creating a different customer experience. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Mike Wittenstein 

💡 What he does: Mike is the founder and managing partner of Storyminers. 

💡 Company: Storyminers 

💡 Noteworthy: Mike is a strategic advisor who helps leaders develop a powerful leadership story so their strategies can increase and sustain their competitive advantage. A lifetime of diverse global experiences has taught Mike how to ask tough questions in a kind manner, translate clients' words into stories, and express business strategies as customer and employee experiences. With his teams at Storyminers, he has helped over 1,000 clients in 24 countries create over $2 billion in value. 

💡 Where to find Mike: Linkedin l Website 

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Key insights 

⚡ A CX designer really cares about customers. Customer experience is your customers' holistic perception of their experience with your business or brand. It encompasses every aspect of a company's offering — the quality of customer care, advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability. Customers want you to commit to them, to engage with them, and according to Mike, that's what a customer experience designer does. "They think about the interactions, and they set everyone up for success. They don't just look at the little path of getting the transaction done, or buying the doll, or buying the clothes and trying them on. They think about everything — how people feel; what stories are they going to tell — it goes way deeper than just the surface." 

⚡ You should do things WITH customers instead TO customers. Today, when everyone spends most of their time on their phones, people are completely cut off from personal experience, which is precious. Mike points out that keeping in touch with customers is important and explains how it makes a difference between companies. "We've become a group of people, and whether we're customers or employees or strategists and designers, we tend to think about doing things 'to people.' Like, 'Let's make the customer do this,' instead of doing things for them. When you do things for them, there's a whole different attitude and posture, feeling, grace, and harmony that happens when you do things with people. You have the opportunity to connect, to build relationships, to share, and to co-create." 

⚡ Use technology for customer value creation. While technology has enabled companies to improve their business and reduce costs, it can also be used to improve customer experience. As Mike notes, if it's digital, anytime you use it, it can create a record, an indelible footprint, and you can make value for customers. "If we're collecting information when they're online, and then in the store, and then on their phone and through conversation, what if we put all of that together and we were able to meet more of our customers' needs? What value could we create for them? That's that five- or ten-second profit pause

Episode summary 

SMS was the first mobile channel, and with so many new communication channels — like WhatsApp and Viber — popping up, some brands are deciding to leave SMS behind. 

But SMS is still a powerful way to communicate with customers. In this episode of the CX Education podcast, our host Sunny Dhami welcomes Nick Lane, the chief insight analyst and founder of Mobilesquared. They chat about the power of SMS, rich messaging, and why brands should implement messaging into their omnichannel marketing strategy. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Nick Lane 

💡 What he does: He's the chief insight analyst and founder of Mobilesquared. 

💡 Company: Mobilesquared 

💡 Noteworthy: Nick is a mobile engagement specialist who analyzes, consults, strategizes, presents, moderates, and judges. His expertise in mobile engagement focuses on business messaging, customer interaction, and conversion. He has worked for over two decades in the mobile sector, providing the platform to meticulously shape market strategy and insights and accurate industry forecasts, whether that is for Mobilesquared's own data portal, for MessageMapIQ, for their 60+ clients, or for industry presentations at events around the world. 

💡 Where to find Nick: LinkedIn 

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Key insights 

⚡ There's still nothing quite like SMS. Despite what some people think, SMS is still very much relevant today. Nick explains, "Our view has always been that it hasn't started yet, and we still have that. We still think this is a platform, but we're only at the tip of the iceberg. So what is happening now is largely because of the pandemic and the way brands have started to think about how they engage with their consumers. And also, maybe the digital journey and transformation that they've undergone in that time have really brought them to realize that actually messaging — SMS, for example — is not sexy, but in terms of effectiveness, there's nothing close to it. In terms of getting that message to the consumer, there's no better channel." 

⚡ SMS is the most trusted communication channel. One of the best things about SMS is that consumers trust it the most. Nick says, "I think it's still trying to understand what the engagement is and how to engage with people when you only have a few characters. Because right now, the big thing within SMS is one-time passwords. That's really effective, and there's so much security around any purchase or online activity that I'd say that it's increasing the level of trust that people have in the channel." 

⚡ Messaging will be the most dominating communication channel. According to Nick, the future will be dominated by messaging. He explains, "We don't have to reach everyone all the time because that's not how advertising works anyway, which is why people advertise on Sky, BBC, CNN, Star, or wherever, depending on where you are in the world. You've got different audiences that you're trying to reach. So again, it's kind of understanding that. But we think WhatsApp will drive things, and that will then pull and drag along the others for a while, and then, they will start to flourish as well. So, in 10 years, the world we think will be very different, and it will be dominated by messaging." 

Episode summary 

Marketing is critical right now, and if you want to engage your customers and sell your product, you need an effective content marketing strategy for your business. 

However, there are no universal truths in marketing, so you need to know your customers and focus on your unique value proposition. 

In this episode of the CX Education podcast, our host Michael Ahearn welcomes Anthony McLoughlin, the VP of Ecommerce & Growth Marketing at Rothy's. They chat about the importance of tailoring messaging to customers, the difference between segmentation and personalization, and why video content works so well. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Anthony McLoughlin 

💡 What he does: He's the VP of Ecommerce & Growth Marketing at Rothy's. 

💡 Company: Rothy's 

💡 Noteworthy: He's an accomplished senior e-commerce and marketing executive with twenty years of experience growing e-commerce and store revenue through digital channels across owned, earned, and paid media. 

💡 Where to find Anthony: LinkedIn 

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Key insights  

⚡ Tailor messaging to your customers. You can't communicate with all your customers in the same way. That's why tailoring your marketing strategy to specific customer groups is vital. Anthony explains, "In the world that we operate in, there's just so much messaging and so much media that it's just so important to get it really specific and to be really focused on the value proposition of that particular customer in that particular moment — knowing that next week you're going to probably be speaking to the same customer in a different moment, and it all has to be relevant and make sense." 

⚡ Know your customer. Understanding your customers is the key to success in marketing. Anthony says, "Know your customer. Understand that it's not going to work verbatim every single time. And just give it more thought up front. It’s about understanding your customer and understanding the channels that relate to the customer at the end of the day. And not every single channel is going to work the same way." 

⚡ You can't be everything to everyone. One of the most common mistakes brands make is trying to be everything to everyone. And that's not possible. Anthony says, "What happens is — and it's happening more acutely because of the macroeconomic situation — that you're trying to be all to all at the same time in the same way, and you can't. You can't just flash these promotions. You can't flash these messages to every single consumer in the same way because, over time, they'll drown them out. And so, I think the mistake is trying to be too promotional to a wider audience too quickly and to show all your promotional hands to send the same type of messaging to everyone." 

Episode summary 

Digital transformation is here for the long haul, and businesses that want to stay afloat must go through it. But in conservative industries like finance, change comes with many challenges, especially if the executive team is not open to innovation and is worried about the effect it might have.  

So it’s critical to keep the conversation about entering and conquering the digital space alive. The more information financial institutions have, the more confident they’ll feel about taking that step. After all, people spend more time online and want to access various products and services there.  

In this episode of CX Education, Christopher Young, the Director of Industry Strategy & Marketing for Financial Services at Adobe, joins our host Heather Share to discuss customer experience in the digital space, primarily in finance. 

 Chris discusses the challenges financial institutions face when establishing the tools, processes, and channels for client-company communication. He also talks about the importance of being where your customers are and communicating with younger generations, as that’s the path to growing your customer base in the future.
 
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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Christopher Young 

💡 What he does: Christopher is the director of industry strategy & marketing for financial services at Adobe. 

💡 Company: Adobe 

💡 Noteworthy: As he describes it, Christopher's role includes conversations with the company's financial services customers, the branch banks, insurers and management firms. Christopher is an experienced marketing professional with an extensive background in cross-channel marketing, customer acquisition, customer segmentation, brand management, and creative development. 

💡 Where to find Christopher: LinkedIn 

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Key insights 

⚡Create an environment where customers feel comfortable communicating their finance-related plans, doubts, and concerns. The increased use of technology and the internet has influenced customers' preferences and reshaped their needs. Financial institutions that want to stay relevant in the market and continue to grow must stay atop innovations and make the most of the digital channels available. That way, they become part of the entire customer journey: prior to, during, and after a purchase. After all, when clients feel their needs are heard, they are more likely to stay with a particular organization. ''The key thing for financial services is loyalty. And loyalty has been put at risk with a lot of everything — the pandemic, digital entrance, all of these things. So that puts a lot of pressure on our financial services customers. There was a huge change in journeys.'' 

⚡The quality of customer experience depends on how fast you can adapt to change. Asked how he would rank financial institutions in terms of their digital experience - Christopher shares results from an Adobe Digital Trends Report. They had around 500 respondents from the financial services industry. One of the questions was, "How would you rate your digital experience in keeping up with customer expectations?" Around 70% of those surveyed claimed they are keeping pace or staying ahead, while 30% are lagging. However, they also got some additional insights. ''The same survey indicated that the marketing executives, 90 plus percent, said that the key to future success is the agility of the marketing department. And to be clear, it's not about applying an agile methodology, but it's for their teams to be able to move fast to rapidly respond to a customer's changing needs. So if there is a situation, consumers are going to react very differen

Episode summary 

Right now, a remarkable customer experience is everything. If you want to stand out from the competition, you have to make customers feel valued. 

But in today's over-crowded market, you need to go beyond B2B and B2C — you have to become B2Me or, in other words, business to me. 

In this episode of the CX Education podcast, host Heather Garand welcomes Daniel Lafrenière, an Omnichannel Customer Experience Strategist. They chat about human-to-human relationships with customers, how to use chatbots to create good experiences, and why Apple is the perfect example of an enjoyable customer experience. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Daniel Lafrenière 

💡 What he does: Daniel is an Omnichannel Customer Experience Strategist. 

💡 Company: Daniel Lafrenière 

💡 Noteworthy: Daniel a speaker, author, and consultant in the field of CX and UX. 

💡 Where to find Daniel: LinkedIn 

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Key insights  

⚡ Customer experience is about human-to-human relationships. Customer experience should be about interpersonal relationships, not transactional relationships. Daniel explains, "We talk a lot about customer experience or B2C and B2B — business-to-consumer and business-to-business. But in reality, it's more H2H or human-to-human. Even if I work for a company, it's a human talking to another human who is the customer. So it's more H2H or a human-to-human relationship. And if you create a relationship, it's going to be perfect. That's the grail; that's what we're looking for as a business — to create a relationship as opposed to a transaction. If you're a mere transaction, you're a commodity." 

⚡ Personalize the customer experience. Businesses to provide a seamless customer experience, and it should be personalized. Customers want to feel valued. Otherwise, they’ll choose another brand. Daniel says, "We call this at the time B2Me or business-to-me. We don't want B2B or B2C; we want B-to-me. Please know me, you know me — I've been doing business with you for years. The same thing as with a couple — ‘You know how I take my coffee in the morning? You've been living with me for years now. How come you don't remember?’ It would be very strange." 

⚡ Walk a mile in the customers' shoes. It all boils down to this: treat customers the way you’d like to be treated. Daniel says, "Put yourself into your customers’ shoes too. As simple as that. Treat your customer the way you'd like to be treated. As simple as that. There's a beautiful book on customer experience — it has been written by Jeanne Bliss — 'Would you do that to your mother?' I really liked this title. I wish I'd thought of it. So think about that. Would you do that to your mother? Would you like to be treated that way if you come into a store or call a call center or service department? So just do the right thing. It's as simple as that."

Episode summary

The pandemic changed everything in our lives — from how we communicate and work to how we shop. COVID-19 brought millions of people into a new working environment; the home office has become a universal reality. Digital is a core part of most businesses.

While some companies successfully adapt to digital transformation, others get left behind and struggle with adopting new tools and processes. Customer needs are constantly growing, and to keep up with them, developing a change management strategy and a digital transformation strategy is crucial - these are some of the challenges of going digital.

In this episode of CX Education, Heather Garand welcomes Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach. Heather and Brian get into how the digital experience impacts relationships, explain the importance of personalization and optimization of the commerce experience, and discuss changes in data privacy protection.

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Guest-at-a-glance

💡 Name: Brian Walker

💡 What he does: Brian is the Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach.

💡 Company: Bloomreach

💡 Noteworthy: Brian is a long-time member of the e-commerce and digital marketing community that started when e-commerce began. He was a part of the team that launched eddiebauer.com many years ago and has been in many different roles across the industry. Today, Brian leads the go-to-market strategy at Bloomreach.

💡 Where to find Brian: LinkedIn | Website

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Key insights

⚡The three pillars of the commerce experience. According to Brian, Bloomreach provides different standards for customers to use diverse combinations of their solutions and the solutions in the market. "The first pillar is discovery, which is where we power search merchandising, product recommendations, and personalization on sites. It's an AI-driven solution. […] The second pillar is content, and it speaks for itself. It's the experiences that we, as consumers or B2B buyers, are interacting with. We power the sites and applications of customers with content solutions, and, again, we are doing targeting and personalization through that product as well. And then, the last is engagement, which is, of course, where we also partner with Sinch. And engagement is an AI-driven engagement solution focused on marketing automation, channel optimization, and marketing optimization. Again, focused on personalizing the channels, the content, and the marketing that a customer receives through email, text, in-app notifications, social, and advertising."

⚡ Digital is a critical part of the business. With COVID, everything changed, and digital became more present. Brian notes that digital grew as an important piece but not necessarily the prime driver. "The trends that we now see really playing out in a more important way were already happening pre-pandemic. The pandemic dramatically accelerated the importance of digital as a way to engage with, inspire, and convert customers. And obviously, there was a point during the pandemic when it was essentially the only channel, and businesses that really hadn't focused on digital, of course, had to accelerate the way they were leveraging those channels dramatically and then, also link together their channels more effectively."

⚡ Customer acquisition has become a lot more expensive and less effective. The pandemic and changes in data privacy protection led to massive changes in marketing strategies. Brian explains how these changes impact acquiring new customers and building relationships, and he notes that bringing in new customers today is more expensive and less effective. "There's been a pretty profound shift over the last few years. The combination of those factors is propelling a&

Episode summary 

The business world is changing — customers' wants and needs have changed, and so have employees' perspectives about their rights and obligations. But not many companies know how to deal with these shifts and how to meet the needs of both customers and employees. 

The key is to first create a culture that resonates with your team and projects your vision. Then, your employees become your brand ambassadors and help you provide an excellent customer experience.  

In this episode of CX Education, host Amber Peters talks with Eric Carrasquilla, the SVP of Digital Engagement Solutions at CSG. They discuss customer experience, its drivers, the challenges companies face when they start focusing on these areas, and the ways to do it successfully.  

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Guest-at-a-glance

💡 Name: Eric Carrasquilla 

💡 What he does: Eric is the SVP of Digital Engagement Solutions at CSG. 

💡 Company: CSG 

💡 Noteworthy: A strategic visionary and operator, Eric is passionate about building, launching, and monetizing great software products that deliver exceptional customer experiences.  

💡 Where to find Eric: LinkedIn  

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Key insights

⚡ Companies don't lack data; they struggle with leveraging it to provide an exceptional customer experience. However, the key to this challenge is establishing a unified system, a tool, and a solution that will gather all your company's data in one place. Customer experience should be seen as a journey with lots of information, from when prospects became customers to when they started using your product, and everything in between. ''So for companies, the issue isn't, 'Hey, there isn't enough data there for me to make sense of.' The problem is that there's too much of it, and it's fragmented. So to be able to bring that stuff in, make sense of it, and do something in real time, that's another reason [CX] is tough.'' 

⚡ Focus on what you could do rather than what you should do. Another thing companies find challenging is figuring out where to start with CX. They may have technology, processes, and people, but they don't know how to use data coming from these resources to start measuring and evaluating CX. As Eric explains, focus on the end goal or the north star of your business. ''Within customer experience, [...] look at happy delivery. When you start to break that down and work backward from a happy delivery versus just orders through the app or revenue, the app has to be usable and discoverable. Then people are going to use it more, or you're going to have a higher average selling price, more frequency, and more openness to using other applications on the platform.'' 

 ⚡ Positive results can come out of undesired situations. Regardless of the company's efforts to provide a flawless customer experience, there’s always some friction. However, it all depends on the management and the entire team's approach to it. Friction doesn't have to be a bad thing. If managed properly, it can result in an even better relationship between a company and an unhappy customer. ''You're never going to be able to avoid the friction a hundred percent. The key is understanding where those hotspots happen and to be able to do the right thing quickly.''