Over December, we will be bringing you a selection of our favorite episodes from 2024. This week, it's our conversation with entrepreneur Ron Holt...

Some industries have conditioned us to have almost unreasonably high expectations, and some industries have conditioned us to have unusually low expectations. The moving industry sits firmly in the latter category.

Ron Holt thinks that's not good enough, and he's doing something about it. Ron is one of America’s most interesting and successful entrepreneurs. He scaled his first business, ‘Two Maids & A Mop’ from a single location to nearly 100 locations, and then sold it.

He is now CEO of Pink Zebra Moving, a disruptive and customer-focused removals company that is completely reshaping the moving experience, around the customer. Their mission is to be the world’s first happy moving company.

Get in touch with Cortico-X here.

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Over December, we will be bringing you a selection of our favorite episodes from 2024. First up, the inimitable Don Peppers....

You don’t need a management consultant to tell you that customer experience is important in 2024.  It was not always the case. In fact, before the CRM revolution of the early 90’s, experience was a word seldom heard in boardrooms.

In this very special episode, host Will Kingston is joined by the man who is widely credited with launching that revolution, Don Peppers. Don’s first book, ‘The One to One Future’, co-authored with his long-time collaborator, Martha Rogers, put customer relationship management on the map.  Inc. Magazine's editor-in-chief called it "one of the two or three most important business books ever written."

He has since authored or co-authored a legacy of international business best-sellers that have collectively sold over a million copies in 18 languages. Research by SatMetrix in 2015 ranked Don and Martha as the world’s #1 "most authoritative experts on customer experience."

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We’ve all heard that old cliché, "It gets me from A to B." For a long period of time, that was good enough in the eyes of many drivers. How times have changed. The car industry is at the intersection of a range of disruptive forces: environmental sustainability, the rise of digital and AI, and the brand purpose era (to name a few).

There are few industries that are changing as rapidly, and as fundamentally, as automotive. To help Will understand the experience and brand implications of this new world behind the wheel, he is joined in this episode by Len Devanna, VP at Cortico-X, and Jeff Curry, former VP of Global Marketing, Communications and Product at Lucid Motors.

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This episode was recorded on the morning after the 2024 US election. Historians may just have a few things to say about it in years to come. One reflection will no doubt be on the impact of images and videos on the campaign. Whilst we’ve had several social media elections now, this was perhaps the first one where social media was combined with the power of AI to deliver visual content. The results were in turn unnerving, powerful, positive, and terrifying.

The impact of AI is, and will be felt no more viscerally than in the domain of visual media. After all, videos and photos impact us on the most human of levels. And organizations, like politicians, are still trying to come to terms with it.

To discuss the fusion of AI and visual experiences and what it will mean for businesses, Will is joined by the VP of Strategy at Cloudinary, Sam Pickover.

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Over the previous decades, technology has made it easier to understand and connect with other people, whether through social media, digital adoption, or with the increasing use of AI. At the same time, human interactions have become more polarized, with growing levels of political and social conflict.

We are at a critical juncture in world history. The combination of technology and interconnectivity can either be used to coerce and further polarize people, or it can be used to enhance human flourishing. How can we push the world in the latter direction? To answer that question, Will is joined by CX legend Bruce Temkin, and the President of Cortico-X, Sujay Saha.

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Community banks are in the midst of an existential moment. Their traditional strengths have been undermined by the rise of digital banking. And the reality is that they have less money to spend on digital capabilities than their bigger competitors.

KeyBank is bucking the trend, and it is doing so by taking a community ethos and applying it to the digital age. To chat about the KeyBank story, Will is joined by KeyBank's Chief of Staff and the Director of it's Corporate Center, Trina Evans, and the President of Cortico-X, Sujay Saha.

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The role of carer is an underappreciated and yet essential part of our social fabric. Looking after young children or elderly parents can be a full-time job. So what happens when a carer needs to do both at the same time. This Herculean task is what faces the sandwich generation: a group of middle-aged adults who care for both their aging parents and their own children.

How can businesses do more to help those who help others? To answer that question, Will is joined by Karol Jennings, Director of Enterprise Patient Experience at Providence, a not for profit US Healthcare system, and Emily Young, Principal at Cortico-X.

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The world wants to regulate AI, but does not quite know how. There is disagreement over what is to be policed, how and by whom. We are seeing considerable differences in approach emerge across the US, Europe, and Asia. For businesses, this is a confusing picture. How can they harness the benefits of AI, whilst staying inside blurry regulatory and ethical guardrails?

To answer that question, Will is joined by AI regulatory expert and Postdoctoral Researcher at The University of Antwerp, Josh Krook.

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About 40% of Americans will get cancer in their lifetime. We all know someone who has lost their life to this awful disease. Given its prevalence, and its devastating impact, you’d think the healthcare system would do everything it possibly could to ease the burden on patients. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In fact, navigating complex cancer treatment can be a nightmare for people who are already at a low ebb.

Brian Graziano did not think that was good enough. Brian is the Director of User Experience, Revenue Cycle, at Providence Health, a not-for-profit US healthcare system. Brian and a team at Providence-Swedish have employed user experience design to transform the experience for patients at cancer centers, and the results have been remarkable.

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Despite America spending enormous amounts on healthcare, shocking health disparities still remain across racial, culture, gender, and socio-economic lines. The not-for-profit health system Providence provides a ray of hope. Providence is using human-centered design to put patients at the heart of their health equity agenda.

To discuss the Providence story, Will is joined by Providence VP Lin MacMaster, the Co-Founder of WideOpen, Mark Fithian, and Cortico-X VP, Robyn Gilson.

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