The Trusted Guide Podcast with Mark Slatin

How can you design experiences to drive customer loyalty?

Kevin Budelmann is an Experience Design expert, a professor at both Michigan State and Northwestern Universities, and authored Brand Identity Essentials.

He brings over a quarter-century shaping design, strategy, and brand experience. We explore the converging paths of behavioral economics, design thinking, and customer experience—all through the lens of his extensive expertise. On this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast.

🔑 **3 Key Takeaways**: 

• **Trust & Emotion in Branding**: Kevin illuminates the critical role of emotional connection and trust in shaping the brand experience - imperative in an era where customers' decisions are heavily influenced by both. 
• **Understanding Beyond Surveys**: We explore they why and how of recognizing customers' deeper needs and desires, which often go unspoken, to excel in tailoring your product offerings. 
• **Impactful Design Decisions**: Discover how design touches our everyday experiences, sometimes subtly, other times overtly, but always with the potential to create a strong impression – and why this matters to your brand.

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Dr. Judy Wolfe, who still practices as an ER doctor, talks about the transformative power of patient experience in healthcare. We dive into the critical role of trust, and how reimagining job titles and communication training can revolutionize caregiver-patient interactions. Dr. Judy highlights the urgency of embracing change management and the dire consequences of stagnation in patient care. Dr. Judy prescribes helpful tips from "shift hacks" to loyalty driver tips to "teach backs." Tons of gems in this episode from one the top medical care facilities in the world.

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Keith Ferguson brings his wealth of experience as an entrepreneur along with his career in academia (MSU and FSU) to share his wisdom on customer advocacy. Keith defines customer advocacy and then we talk about the financial impact of having customers who truly advocate for your brand. Keith shares some common mistakes about consumer behavior through a visualization of the customer lifecycle and provides 3 actionable steps leaders can take to create more advocates for their business.

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Joe Pine is on my Mount Rushmore of Customer Experience. He shares the exact moment, quite by accident, that the concept of "experience" as the next economy after the service economy was hatched. In 2020 Mr. Pine and his partner James H. Gilmore re-released in hardcover The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money featuring an all-new Preview to their best-selling 1999 book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Joe believes that goods and services are no longer enough; what customers want are experiences—memorable events that engage each individual in an inherently personal way. Join me on The Delighted Customers Podcast as Joe shares a vision for business—a world focused on human flourishing, where individuals become better people and achieve their goals. Discover how understanding your customers' wants, needs, and desires can help you create greater value and make a positive impact. Joe shares practical insights and real world stories of how you can drive business outcomes. Here are some highlights:

• The concepts of mass customization and the experience economy
• Creating robust, cohesive, personal, dramatic, and transformative experiences
• Comparing work to theater and the importance of intentional and engaging experiences
• Changing the world of business to focus on human flourishing
• The importance of not wasting customers' time and aligning value with what customers value
• The concept of "customering" and the individualization megatrend

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Pink Zebra Moving: Differentiating on CX for Explosive Growth with CEO, Ron Holt

I can't think of a better illustration of how to prove the ROI of Customer Experience.

Ron Holt sees opportunities in bad customer experiences.  

In fact, he built a successful home cleaning based on disrupting a legacy industry by differentiating the experience his customers receive. 

The model allowed him to scale a one-store cleaning business into a $40M nationally-recognized brand with 90 locations across the country.

Ron shared his entrepreneurial journey and the compelling story behind his company, Pink Zebra Moving. It's more than just a business success story - it's a masterclass in innovation, customer experience, and entrepreneurial spirit in the home services industry.

🔥Here are 3 key takeaways from our conversation:

- **Innovate With Customer Experience in Mind:**

Ron emphasizes the importance of making the moving process fun. By focusing on building personal relationships and creating memorable experiences for customers, Pink Zebra Moving stands out in the highly competitive moving industry.

- **Cultural Fit is Key When Scaling:**

As the company expands, Ron is careful to maintain its unique ethos. Selecting franchise owners who genuinely share the company's mission is crucial for preserving the brand's vision and ensuring consistent, high-quality service across all locations.

- **Fail Forward and Commit to Your Vision:**

Ron's honest reflections on the challenge of scaling a business and transitioning between industries reveal that perseverance and a clear vision are essential. Embracing mistakes as learning opportunities is a part of the entrepreneurial path toward success.

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

What's the Pioneering Edge for Today's CX Leaders according to NPS Creator, Fred Reichheld?

There's so much to unpack in this episode:

Fred shares about a personal vulnerability

What's the right way to listen to customers?

What is the huge mistake companies make relative to referrals?

How do you know if you've won or lost?

What is financial capitalism and why should it die?

What's on the pioneering edge today for CX leading companies?

Will Southwest Airlines recover?

And a ton more!

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Someone once said Marketing creates the brand promise and CX delivers it. But too often there's a gap between the two that's eroding customer loyalty and business performance. Nick Zeisler is a Lean Six Sigma expert and Professor of Practice in Michigan State University's Customer Experience Management Masters of Science program. In this episode Nick shares some valuable insights including: - the significant concept of 'Brand Alignment' was introduced, highlighting the imperative of aligning a company's customer experience delivery with its brand promise. - the importance of continuous improvement in process engineering was emphasized, advocating for a customer-centric approach to Lean Six Sigma prioritizing projects based on customer impact rather than traditional resource-focused methods - loyalty as a process beyond the initial purchase was underscored, with the suggestion that it's influenced by the consistency of the customer experience and alignment with the brand promise.

Resources

The Delighted Customers podcast website:https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Sign up for The Trusted Guide newsletter here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/newsletter

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markslatin/

Register for the next Trusted Guide Roadmap™ Master Class here: https://www.empoweredcx.com/

This episode features someone who has been at the forefront of the customer experience movement, tirelessly leading the charge in understanding how trust shapes our interactions: CX luminary Bruce Temkin. Bruce co-founded the Customer Experience Professionals Association and broke the news on this episode, that he will be transitioning as Head of the XM Institute (Qualtrics) to the next chapter of his life. This is a very special episode because Bruce and I explore the critical importance of trust as it relates to CX and ultimately, generating positive financial results. In this episode:

• Why the XM Institute declared 2024 as "The Year of Trust"
• the misconceptions CX leaders have about trust, and how can these potentially lead to ineffective customer experience strategies
• the connection between game theory and trust-building and how leaders can benefit by understanding that connection
• the difference between cognitive and affective trust
• Meyer Davis and Shorman's definition of trust is discussed and how does this definition informs our understanding of interpersonal and professional relationships
• How to repair broken trust
• A sneak peak about what Bruce has planned for the next chapter of his life

Meet Bruce Change creator, thought shaper, and movement maker who helps organizations become more human-centric. I help leaders gain clarity amid paralyzing levels of ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. I've advised many of the world's leading brands and hundreds of tech companies -- from start-ups to software behemoths. I'm often referred to as the "Godfather of Customer Experience" for defining and propelling the disciplines of Customer Experience (CX), Employee Experience (EX), and Experience Management (XM). I've helped shape multiple industry mega trends, including: Internet economy, cloud computing, digital transformation, CX, EX, and XM. The core of my work is an ability to forecast technology-driven trends, anticipate their impact on human beings, simplify the complex, and provide clear and actionable advice. I'm a builder who has led the creation of multiple global organizations. As an engineer at heart, I'm always intrigued by how things work. I study human behavior and how it is affected by different environments such as being a customer, employee, patient, fan, or senior executive. My advice always considers how different decisions will affect people, and how those moves will play out at scale and over time. So what is my profession? I have no idea. All I know is that I'm on an ongoing learning journey, continuously looking for ways to improve the world through a combination of empathy, strategy, experience design, leadership, and organizational behavior.

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Newsletter for practical tips and insights: https://www.empoweredcx.com/delightedcustomersnewsletter

Every customer experience leader should know the basics of UX and how it fits into the overall CX landscape. In this episode, I talk with UX expert Darren Hood, who has 28+ years of human-computer interaction, information architecture, and usability experience. He's a faculty member in the Masters of Science in Customer Experience Management at Michigan State University as well as several other colleges where he teaches UX. The show is packed with useful insights and practical tips like:

• The parallel importance of CX and UX in understanding and improving customer experiences.
• How UX heuristics were applied to the Fathead custom decal upload process to reduce abandonment rates?
• intervention with a heuristic analysis at Rocket Mortgage serve as a case study for the immediate impact of UX on a company's profit margin?
• the risks of implementing AI in UX design without a solid grounding in UX principles
• What he statistics from IBM, NASA, Coca Cola, Apple, and Whirlpool reveal about the return on investment and competitive advantage of being a design-led, UX-focused company Meet Darren Darren is extremely passionate about all things UX, holding 28+ years of experience in the discipline. Darren's professional footprint spans such organizations as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, DigitasLBi, MRM/McCann, Wunderman Digital, Bosch, Ryder, Rocket Mortgage, Omnicell, Cengage Learning, National Geographic Learning, Sherwin-Williams, Duracell, and USA Networks, to name a few. In academia, he serves and has served as an adjunct professor, teaching UX-related courses at several universities including UCLA, Michigan State University, Lawrence Technological University, Brandeis University, and Kent State University. Darren is one of the authors featured in the book "97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know." You can also hear Darren on The World of UX podcast, available through a host of popular sources. Darren is currently a doctoral candidate, completing a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Northcentral University.

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Newsletter for practical tips and insights: https://www.empoweredcx.com/delightedcustomersnewsletter

Employee experience and customer experience outcomes are inextricably linked. That data (going back to the Service Profit Chain) provides evidence of that correlation. But there's a lot of confusion about the difference between employee experience and employee engagement and the impact that each has on CX. Employee Engagement is too often overlooked in terms of it's importance to the customer experience and financial performance. In this episode with Employee Engagement expert, Mary Poppen, President, Employee Experience Division, HRizons, and Professor of Practice, CXM Master's program at Michigan State University, unpacks how to get to the magical state where "contagious enthusiasm and customer intimacy live." Also in this episode:

• Defining and differentiating employee experience and engagement
• Avoiding Engagement Pitfalls: Learn how to navigate common mistakes like uniform incentive structures and insufficient listening channels that undermine true connection with your workforce.
• Building Virtual Bridges: In a remote work era, one-on-one meetings are more than just touchpoints; they are lifelines that foster support and connection amidst isolation.
• The Intimacy Factor**: Explore how trust and understanding in professional relationships enhance recognition and nurture a supportive work environment.

Meet Mary Mary Poppen is President of HRIZONS Employee Experience and Professor of Practice at Michigan State University teaching in the Customer Experience Management (CXM) Master's Degree program. She is also a CS Angel investor. Prior to her current focus, Mary was Glint's Chief Customer Officer at LinkedIn and Chief Customer Officer for SAP's Global Cloud business before that. Mary holds a Master's Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and has over 20 years of customer delivery, business consulting and executive leadership experience. She is a well-recognized customer and employee experience thought leader, speaking at global events and authoring several publications in this space. She recently published a book entitled "Goodbye, Churn. Hello, Growth!" In addition to her current roles, Mary enjoys serving as a Board Advisor and executive coach, and has a passion for giving back through female mentorship programs. In her spare time, Mary enjoys traveling with her husband and two sons, playing Pickleball, and wine-tasting with friends.

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast

Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Newsletter for practical tips and insights: https://www.empoweredcx.com/delightedcustomersnewsletter