Today’s interview is with Nate Sanders, the co-founder and CEO of Artifact, the customer experience forecasting company. Nate joins me today to talk about the recent guest post that he wrote for my site called “Obituary: The Survey (1920s – 2023)” [It caused a bit of stir on LinkedIn], where we are at re surveys, VoC, data and insight, why companies don’t necessarily need more insight or customer feedback data and what they should be doing instead.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – When we talk about attention, we’re actually talking about engagement – Interview with Walter Flaat of dentsu Canada – and is number 481 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at CGS for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.

Now, CGS is a company you might not have heard of.

But, they have been delivering brand-building and customer experiences for 40 years for global brands that you will definitely have heard of.

Over that time, they have developed deep expertise in both outsourcing and technology, so you should definitely pay attention to what they have to say.

They’ve recently put together a free ebook and video that I’d like to point you to. It’s called The Transformative Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT and has been authored by CGS’ Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, John Samuel. It’s a really comprehensive guide and is designed to deliver insights, summarize research, and inspire creative problem-solving.

Follow this link to check out the free ebook and video.

Today’s interview is with Walter Flaat, dentsu Canada’s Chief Data Officer. We talk about a new whitepaper that they’ve just published on the Attention Economy, what drives attention (engagement), what brands should be doing in order to be able to deliver a more thoughtful, empathetic and inclusive experience and what are the implications for experience and digital professionals and leaders.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX in the age of AI: A leading outsourcer’s perspective – Interview with Cathy Jooste and John Samuel of CGS – and is number 480 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at CGS for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.

Now, CGS is a company you might not have heard of.

But, they have been delivering brand-building and customer experiences for 40 years for global brands that you will definitely have heard of.

Over that time, they have developed deep expertise in both outsourcing and technology, so you should definitely pay attention to what they have to say.

They’ve recently put together a free ebook and video that I’d like to point you to. It’s called The Transformative Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT and has been authored by CGS’ Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, John Samuel (one of our interviewees today). It’s a really comprehensive guide and is designed to deliver insights, summarize research, and inspire creative problem-solving.

Follow this link to check out the free ebook and video.

Today’s interview is with Cathrine (Cathy) Jooste, President of the Business Process Outsourcing Division, and John Samuel, EVP and CTO, at CGS, a global provider of applications, enterprise learning, customer experience and outsourcing services. Cathy and John join me today to talk about how the BPO/outsourcing business has changed over the last 40 years, the current challenges that the space is facing, how things are evolving, what are the tech and talent implications of these developments and if we are moving to a fully automated customer service future. Finally, they offer a perspective on what they think the future of CX outsourcing might look like.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The delusion amongst customer service and experience VPs – Interview with Micah Peterson of ProcedureFlow – and is number 479 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at CGS for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.

Now, CGS is a company you might not have heard of.

But, they have been delivering brand-building and customer experiences for 40 years for global brands that you will definitely have heard of.

Over that time, they have developed deep expertise in both outsourcing and technology, so you should definitely pay attention to what they have to say.

They’ve recently put together a free ebook and video that I’d like to point you to. It’s called The Transformative Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT and has been authored by CGS’ Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, John Samuel (one of our interviewees today). It’s a really comprehensive guide and is designed to deliver insights, summarize research, and inspire creative problem-solving.

Follow this link to check out the free ebook and video.

Today’s interview is with Micah Peterson, a member of the founding team and the VP of Product Management at ProcedureFlow, the next-generation knowledge management software that is designed to help companies visualize and navigate processes. We talk about two delusions that exist in the service space, particularly at the VP level, why followed procedures reduce AHT, how customer service can often be the dumpster fire of the company, and how text-based knowledge bases tend only to have a 3-year lifecycle unless they are properly cleaned and managed before they become completely dysfunctional.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The autonomous enterprise is like a North Star vision of where business is going – Interview with Kerim Akgonul and Peter van der Putten of Pega – and is number 478 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is like an interview I released a couple of weeks ago and features two, separate interviews that I conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas.

The first interview is with Kerim Akgonul, the Chief Product Officer at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Dr Peter Van Der Putten, who is assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in The Netherlands and Director of the AI Lab at Pega.

I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the automated enterprise, demos featuring western omelettes, process mining, how to get the most value out of AI and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Revisiting the Big Ass Fans story and what happened next – Interview with Carey Smith of Unorthodox Ventures – and is number 477 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Carey Smith, who is Founding Contrarian at Unorthodox Ventures. Carey is a returning guest and was first on the podcast back in October 2014, where along with his colleague Dave Waltz, they shared with me the story of how their customer service strategy was central to growing the Big Ass Fans business five-fold over a five year period. That was nine years ago! Nine years! So, I thought it would be great to invite Carey back onto the podcast to find out what happened next.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – New shoes, a surprising but delightful musical collaboration, the autonomous enterprise, gen AI and getting personalisation right – Interview with James Dodkins and Tara DeZao of Pega – and is number 476 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is a bit different as it features two, separate interviews in one episode. It's a two-fer!

These interviews were conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas.

The first interview is with James Dodkins, who is the CX Evangelist at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech at Pega.

I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the autonomous enterprise, generative AI, new shoes, bad rock tracks, a surprise but great musical collaboration, first-party data, getting your ‘data’ house in order, getting personalisation right and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Taking an employee-centric approach has allowed us to achieve an attrition rate of 5% – Interview with Jose Herrera of Horatio CX – and is number 475 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Jose Herrera, CEO and Co-Founder of Horatio CX, a next generation CX outsourcing firm and the trusted partner of some of the leading and fastest growing ecommerce companies. Jose joins me today to talk about maintaining a human connection when everyone else seems to be talking about how customer service needs to be led by robots, taking an employee-centric approach, achieving an industry-leading attrition rate of only 5% and building a truly inclusive culture.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Our transformation journey and unleashing the power of AI and automation – Interview with Shelia Anderson of Aflac – and is number 474 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Shelia Anderson, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Aflac, a Fortune 500 company that provides insurance and financial protection to millions of policyholders and customers through its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Japan.

I met Shelia as part of a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas. Shelia delivered one of the keynotes on the main stage and was talking about Aflac's journey and how they have unleashed the power of Pega AI and automation.

After her keynote, I sat down with Shelia for a quick chat for the podcast.

By the way, you can watch Shelia’s keynote and all of the talks from Pegaworld on-demand here.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The messy middle of customer service revisited – Interview with Michael Ramsey of ServiceNow – and is number 473 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Michael Ramsey, VP of Customer Workflow Products at ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform that help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Michael joins me today to revisit the idea of the messy middle of customer experience, what's happened since we last spoke about this around 2 1/2 years ago, what companies are doing to clean up their messy middles, the role AI and process mining plays in that, how generative AI is helping with this sort of endeavour and who’s doing it well.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The pragmatic approach to transforming customer service – Interview with Mike Upton of First Tech Credit Union – and is number 472 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at TextExpander for sponsoring this episode of my podcast.

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Click here to find out more and to get a 20% discount for the first 12 months of TextExpander if you use the code: SWINSCOE