Reinventing Customer Experience

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Companies are making meaningful progress in bringing barriers-driven engagement™ to life—embedding orchestration into workflows and rethinking how CRM supports smarter decision-making, coordination and customer progress. But turning that progress into consistent value remains complex.

In this podcast, Maria Whitman speaks with ZS experts Namita Powers, Srihari Sarangan, Omer Hancer, Mahmood Majeed and Ronan Wisdom about what pharma has learned over the past year and what it really takes to make CRM work in practice.

Highlights include:

• How companies are taking different approaches to identifying and addressing customer barriers, from targeted experience transformation to enterprisewide solutions
• How advanced analytics and technology are helping infer barriers at the individual level and enable compliant, coordinated engagement
• Why integrating “systems of intelligence” with day-to-day workflows is critical to turning insight into action and impact

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Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth welcome Marcos Acosta, general manager of digital transformation at Yamaha Motor Company. Acosta shares how he led the building of a customer data platform and aligned the organization around a customer-centric mindset. Listen for insights on leadership in digital innovation and customer experience strategy.

Highlights include:

• How Yamaha is moving beyond personalization to real-time individualization, using AI and customer data to anticipate customer needs and deliver more relevant and timely experiences
• Why simplicity and an empathetic, customer-centric approach are key to delivering great customer experiences
• What the future holds as AI agents increasingly orchestrate the customer journey 

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Nordstrom is a U.S. luxury department store chain known for its high-end clothing, shoes, accessories and exceptional customer service. Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth discuss customer engagement, omnichannel, AI, personalization and digital acquisitions with Jason Morris, the retailer’s chief technology and information officer.

Topics include how Nordstrom:

• Adapts to customer experience trends and maintains its reputation for superior service in the digital age
• Implements omnichannel strategies to create a seamless customer experience across touch points
• Leverages AI to enhance in-store experiences and optimize back-end processes
• Delivers personalized experiences and protects customers’ privacy and data security

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Schneider is best known as a leading provider of truckload, intermodal and logistics services. Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth meet with Shaleen Devgun, the company’s executive vice president and chief innovation and technology officer. They discuss how Schneider delivers the goods with logistics, technology, gen AI and personalization while also highlighting the critical role of the supply chain and the importance of balancing human and AI capabilities.

Highlights include:

•  How every company, regardless of its sector, needs to operate as a technology company
• Schneider’s launch of its innovation center is a first-of-its kind endeavor in the transportation and logistics industry
• How Schneider will use gen AI to transform customer engagement
• Concerns about potential job displacement by next-generation AI and the ways organizations maintain balance with human resources roles

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Lumen Technologies is a global telecommunications company that provides communications, network services, security, cloud solutions and managed services through its extensive fiber optic and copper networks. Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth explore how Lumen uses AI to enhance customer interactions, streamline operations and empower employees with Ryan Asdourian, the company’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. They discuss the importance of maintaining a human-centered approach in AI, the role of data in driving innovation and how AI is transforming accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Ryan also emphasizes the significance of leadership principles such as failing gracefully and putting customers first in the digital age.

Before joining Lumen, Ryan spent 20 years at Microsoft, where he held various product and marketing leadership positions of increasing responsibility. Long-time Seattle Seahawks fans may recognize him as the team’s mascot Blitz, a position he took on to help raise awareness of multiple sclerosis.

Topics include:

•  How AI is enabling personalized and scalable customer experiences at Lumen
• The role of leadership in fostering innovation and embracing failure
• Predictions for the future of AI in optimizing the customer experience

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Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth get a glimpse of the future as presented by Professor Robert Wolcott, author of “Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life.” For Wolcott, the ability to deliver on customer expectations and enhance production drives the need for proximity and will shape the future. Hear how he expects technology will change business, society and the experience of being human.  

Highlights include:

• Industries already leveraging technology and data to create personalized experiences and improve efficiency
• How proximity will create new opportunities in various industries
• Why customer data will be critical and how businesses can gain an advantage using AI

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Furniture retailer Wayfair is known for creating market-leading experiences. Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth talk with Chief Technology Officer Fiona Tan about how Wayfair is integrating AI to personalize the shopping experience from online to in person. Find out what she’s learned during Wayfair’s AI and machine learning journey. 

Highlights include:

• Why the supply chain is a critical factor in successfully powering online shopping
• The importance of knowing where to keep the “human in the loop” and where to take risks
• How AI might power tech transformation in the future and the big problems it could help solve 

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On this episode of the “Reinventing Customer Experience” podcast, Arun Shastri and Gopi Vikranth discuss digital-first customer experience with Joe Wheeler, CEO of Bluemvmt. A published author on modern business strategies, Joe dives into how analytics and machine learning will drive customer loyalty in competitive markets while sharing analysis of the customer experience practices of some of the world’s best-known brands.

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Raghu has been a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 17 years. His teaching interests fall into two domains primarily; pricing and social influence. Raghu has worked on multi-part pricing techniques on customer response wherein he has developed consumer demand models capturing multi-part pricing tariffs. Raghu's work also focuses on studying how the influences of social media might work.
*Please note at the time of the podcast recording, Raghu served as a faculty director at Wharton Customer Analytics, his title has singed changed to Wharton AI & Analytics for Business (AIAB) faculty co-director.

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We are thrilled to have Jenny Wolski, SVP, Omnichannel Experience at Petco, join us in this episode. At Petco, Jenny leads enterprisewide programs targeted at evolving retail strategy and operations, strengthening omnichannel services, and enhancing employee and customer experiences and loyalty. Jenny also serves as an advisory board member for the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative and is the founding sponsor for LGBTQ+ at Petco.