CX Leadership Talks

You earned your reputation by getting things done. You delivered projects, improved customer journeys and brought valuable insights into the business. Now your role asks you to set direction, influence strategy and bring others with you.

So why are you working harder than ever, while struggling to create the movement you want?

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem explores a challenge many experienced CX professionals recognise: taking on leadership responsibilities while continuing to approach the work in the same familiar way.

Drawing on observations from her first two-day CX leadership bootcamp, Nienke looks beyond stronger presentations and more convincing arguments. How do you build alliances, shape a shared ambition and take your position as a leader?

Her CX Leadership ANI model: Authority, Narrative and Impact, provides a lens for recognising where your approach needs to grow. From setting the future through your CX Strategy and CX Story to creating ownership beyond the CX team, this episode invites you to reconsider where your leadership attention belongs.

Nienke also connects these challenges to Michael Watkins’ work on the transition to broader leadership and the Center for Creative Leadership’s research on working across organisational boundaries.

Are you managing today’s CX work, or are you leading the organisation towards the customer experience you want to create?

Open next week’s calendar. Choose one strategic conversation to initiate, one alliance to invest in or one responsibility someone else could own.

00:00 Understanding Your Role in CX

04:18 Building Alliances and Commitment

07:46 Leadership shifts for CX professionals

11:42 Building Strategic Relationships and Planning

14:11 Building alliances and leading change

18:13 Opportunities to discuss CX leadership

Explore the leadership research discussed:

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.

She is a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programmes including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more information, visit nienkebloem.com or email [email protected].

How far are you in using synthetic personas in your CX practice?

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem explores five practical roles for synthetic personas and how they could help you scale CX methods, embed customer-focused behaviour and strengthen your strategic leadership.

Her inspiration came from the BFSI Exchange in Berlin, where Alex Terpstra of ABN AMRO shared how synthetic customers were being used in contact-centre training. The opportunity to practise privately, repeat conversations and build skills prompted a bigger question: where else could this help CX professionals?

Nienke connects the five roles to the CXPA framework and explains why customer evidence must be the starting point. Her advice: don’t just prompt a synthetic customer. Ground one.

In this episode, you’ll explore five ways to use synthetic personas:

The Research Partner: explore existing customer knowledge, develop hypotheses and prepare better research questions. Discover why a convincing AI conversation should not be confused with evidence from actual customers.

The Promise Challenger: explore how grounded personas could support the development of customer promises, principles and strategic choices, identifying tensions and questions to validate with customers.

The Journey Explorer: investigate customer needs, friction and communications across journeys, with particular attention to uncertainty and crisis communication.

The Practice Customer: discover opportunities for onboarding, coaching and repeated practice of difficult customer conversations, drawing on the training example shared in Berlin.

The Leadership Sparring Partner: explore an application in leadership education: helping leaders practise asking questions, listening and reflecting before they engage directly with customers.

Throughout the episode, Nienke connects these opportunities to her ANI model. Scale the systematic use of CX methods. Embed the behaviours that deliver your customer promises. Build external Authority by developing experience you can substantiate and share.

The message: use AI wisely, be smart and lead strategically.

Timestamped overview:

00:00 Using synthetic personas in CX

Extra information:

Research discussed in this episode:

Already working with grounded synthetic personas? Share your experience with Nienke. She would love to hear from a practitioner for a future conversation on CX Leadership Talks.

About Nienke:

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programs including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more info: visit www.nienkebloem.com or email [email protected] to spice up your CX Leadership.

How do you scale Customer Experience across 17 European affiliates when you cannot lead CX from headquarters alone? 

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem speaks with Nicoline Valk, Department Manager Customer Experience at Daikin Europe. Nicoline shares how Daikin moved from a B2B focus towards a B2B2C approach and how she developed a centralized CX program that allows countries to take local ownership. 

At the heart of their conversation is omotenashi: the Japanese philosophy of genuinely taking care of customers, paying close attention and anticipating their needs. Translating that philosophy into a European CX approach requires a different kind of leadership. Nicoline explains how she shifted from steering operations to influencing, connecting and building bridges across countries, cultures and departments. 

Nienke experienced the strength of this network firsthand when she spoke at Daikin Europe’s CX Seminar Seminar. She was impressed by the energy, openness and genuine sense of community Nicoline and her team have created across the different affiliates. 

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

You’ll also hear how newsletters, monthly calls, affiliate meetings, customer visits and shared action plans help Daikin turn CX into an ongoing way of working. Nicoline reflects on her own leadership growth, the value of learning from other industries and the achievement she is proudest of: seeing countries embrace CX and move from customer feedback to action. 

If you are scaling CX, strengthening your internal network or wondering whether you are visible enough as a CX leader, this conversation offers plenty of practical insights and inspiration. 

A small heads-up before you press play: you may notice a few minor audio hiccups along the way. Luckily, the conversation is far too valuable to let those get in the way. 

00:00 Omotenashi, CX networks and visibility 

Extra information: 

Connect with Nicoline on LinkedIn 

Nicoline’s recommendations: 

Nicoline’s next read is The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, a book that was recommended to her for its insights into successful teamwork, psychological safety, active listening and creating an environment in which people feel free to make mistakes. 

A book she already uses in her own work is The Diamond in the Rough by Steven Van Belleghem. She particularly recommends its practical concept of “friction hunting”: identifying small frustrations in the customer experience and taking concrete steps to resolve them. 

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.       

She's a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.      

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person for CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations.       

With her over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the CXPA and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. Subscribe to her weekly CX Newsletter to stay tuned.  

Normally, CX Leadership Talks lands on a Monday. Not this week.

This special episode arrives on Tuesday, 6 October, because it is Global CX Day and Nienke Bloem and Ian Golding have something BIG to celebrate and reveal.

In this episode, Nienke is joined by long time CX colleague and friend Ian Golding. Together, they reflect on how the CX profession has developed, why leadership in Customer Experience deserves more recognition, and one question that has been on both their minds:

How do you actually prove the impact you have made as a CX leader?

Because knowing Customer Experience is one thing. Leading it is something else.

That question led to a secret project Nienke and Ian have been working on behind the scenes: CXLM, Customer Experience Leadership Master.

An accreditation designed to recognise experienced CX leaders for how they lead, influence, scale Customer Experience and deliver measurable impact. And very importantly, it has to be earned.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Timestamped overview:

00:00 Celebrating Global CX Day and why this episode is on Tuesday

Extra information:

Interested in CXLM?

Join the CXLM waitlist here: https://nienkebloem.typeform.com/CXLMWaitlist

People on the waitlist will be the first to hear about the development of the accreditation, the founding cohort and future opportunities to apply.

A small listening note:

About Nienke:

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.

She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programs including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more info: go to www.nienkebloem.com or send her an email at [email protected] to spice up your CX Leadership.

You say CX strategy matters. You say stakeholder management matters. You say you need time to think, create impact and move the organization forward.

But would your calendar agree?

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem CCXP explores one of the most underestimated tools in CX leadership: your calendar. Because especially in Customer Experience, it is very easy to become the lonely knot knitting it all together — jumping from meetings to projects, helping everybody, fixing what needs fixing and slowly losing the mental space to actually lead.

The question is not whether you are busy. Most CX leaders are.

The question is: does the way you spend your time reflect the CX leader you want to be and the strategic priorities you say matter?

Nienke introduces a simple way to look at your time through Rocks, Pebbles and Sand and challenges you to open your own calendar and see what it tells you about your leadership.

Your calendar reveals your real priorities

Why CX leaders get caught in the hamster wheel

Why you need mental space to lead

How Rocks, Pebbles and Sand can help you make choices

Protecting your calendar is leadership work

00:02 Your calendar as an unexpected CX leadership tool

Want to put this episode into practice?

Download Nienke’s Rocks, Pebbles & Sand Worksheet and use it to look at where your time is really going:

https://www.nienkebloem.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/142/2026/09/NB-CX-Rocks-Pebbles-Sand-Worksheet.pdf

Your challenge after listening:

If somebody who didn’t know you looked at your calendar, would they be able to tell what your most important strategic priorities are?

And if the answer is no… which Rock needs space first?

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programs including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more info: go to www.nienkebloem.com or send her an email at [email protected] to spice up your CX Leadership.

There are four serious working months left in 2026. Your first instinct might be to look at the roadmap, the KPIs and everything that still needs to get done.

But what if, before going straight into execution mode, you did something completely different?

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem explores the power of dreaming out loud — not only about the future of Customer Experience in your organization, but also about the CX leader you want to become.

Drawing on her own dreams, from walking a pilgrimage and speaking on the main stage of the Global Speaker Summit to her ambition of taking the CX Leadership Masterminds around the world, Nienke challenges you to look beyond the end of 2026. Go three years ahead. Imagine it is August 2029. What has changed because you were there?

Because dreaming isn't the opposite of leadership. Dreaming is leadership work. You can't lead people towards a future you haven't dared to imagine.

Dream about the impact, not the projects

Define the CX leader you want to become

Why saying your dream out loud matters

Turn dreaming into movement

Choose one move before the end of 2026

00:00 Encouraging long-term dreaming

In the episode, Nienke refers to research on vision in leadership and the work of psychologist Gabriele Oettingen on mental contrasting: dreaming about a desired future, then identifying the obstacles standing between you and that future and translating those into action.

Nienke also shares one of her own dreams out loud: taking the CX Leadership Masterminds Bootcamp on a global roadshow, bringing CX leaders together in several international locations.

Want to explore your own next step as a CX leader with Nienke? You can book a half hour call here.

Your challenge after listening:

Then ask yourself: What is one thing I can do before the end of 2026 that moves each dream closer?

And most importantly: say it out loud.

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. She’s a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programs including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more info: go to www.nienkebloem.com or send her an email at [email protected] to spice up your CX Leadership.

What if we spend too much time in CX fixing what is broken?

In this episode of CX Leadership Talks, Nienke Bloem shares three insights from Marcus Buckingham’s book Design Love In and explores what they mean for Customer Experience leaders.

This is not just a book review. It is about what the book made her rethink about positive customer moments, purpose in business and the role CX leaders can play in bringing more Love into organizations.

Why you should study the 5s

Why purpose and emotion belong in business strategy

Why love is a CX leadership topic

00:00 Importance of purpose in business

The book discussed in this episode is Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business by Marcus Buckingham.

Your challenge after listening: find one 5 in your organization. A moment customers or employees genuinely love. Study why it works — and see what you can make bigger.

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.

She's a global CX thought leader, educator and keynote speaker who helps CX leaders strengthen their leadership, create more impact and make Customer Experience work.

With over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. She is an author, host of CX Leadership Talks, a Recognized Training Partner of the CXPA and creator of CX leadership programs including the CX Masterclass and CX Leadership Masterminds.

For more info: go to www.nienkebloem.com or send her an email at [email protected] to spice up your CX Leadership. 

Welcome to a new episode of CX Leadership Talks with Nienke Bloem!

With real-world examples and actionable self-assessment questions, this episode will empower you to prove your value, connect your CX work directly to business outcomes and ensure your seat at the table - even when tough budget decisions loom. Join Nienke Bloem for a candid, energizing conversation to help you sharpen your CX leadership and make your impact truly indispensable!

Timestamped overview:

00:00 The budget cut test and CX leadership

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.

She's a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person for CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations.

With her over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. Subscribe to her weekly CX Newsletter to stay tuned.

Welcome to a new episode of CX Leadership Talks, recorded from the sun-soaked island of Texel during an intense European heatwave.  

Three key takeaways for CX leaders: 

Packed with practical insights, personal stories, and actionable strategies, this episode is perfect for anyone ready to become the captain of their own CX ship. 

Curious about the full ANI model, I created a visual overview for you here.  

00:00 Masterminds cohort for leadership growth 

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress.  

She's a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books.  

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person for CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations.  

With her over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. Subscribe to her weekly CX Newsletter to stay tuned.

Welcome to a new episode of CX Leadership Talks with Nienke Bloem.

In this episode, Nienke introduces ANI: her new CX leadership philosophy built around three elements every CX leader needs to thrive: Authority, Narrative and Impact.

After spending months interviewing CX leaders and reflecting on the future of the profession, she discovered a surprising pattern.

Most CX leaders do not struggle with customer experience.

They struggle with leadership.

The conversations were not about journey mapping, Voice of the Customer or CX strategy. They were about stakeholder buy-in, budget, urgency, visibility and impact.

In this episode, Nienke shares the story behind ANI, the surprising inspiration that led to the model, and why she believes leadership may become the most important differentiator in the future of customer experience.

This episode is personal, reflective and an invitation to think differently about your role as a CX leader.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Timestamped overview:

00:00 Reflecting on personal and career future

05:34 Exploring the future of CX leadership

10:52 Leadership and CX strategy development

12:17 Aligning leadership with impact

16:02 CX Leadership Bootcamp launch

Extra information:

Curious about the ANI model and the future of CX leadership? Click here for the visual of the model.

Take a look at the ANI model and learn more about the upcoming CX Leadership Masterminds Bootcamp, click here to plan a half hour exploration call.

About Nienke: 

Nienke Bloem is often called the Customer Experience speaker in the blue dress. 

She's a global CX thought leader, educator and a global keynote speaker who inspires audiences with best practices and proven methodologies. She leads a speaking practice, a CX game company and a training business; she breathes Customer Experiences and is author of two CX books. 

Her two-day Customer Experience Masterclass is known as the best program to prepare for your CCXP and she is the go-to person for CX leaders who want to advance their leadership and bring direct results from their Customer Experience transformation programs. Since 2020, she hosts a CX Leadership Masterminds program and helps leaders spice up their leadership and deliver an engaging CX Story including a solid CX Strategy. Besides, she is a modern-day pilgrim and found the parallel with leading customer centric transformations. 

With her over 20 years of corporate experience, she speaks the business language. Her keynotes and education programs in Customer Experience are inspiring and hands-on. She is one of the few Recognized Training Partners of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and it is her mission to Make Customer Experience Work and help you deliver business results. Subscribe to her weekly CX Newsletter to stay tuned.