The Trusted Guide Podcast with Mark Slatin

Most companies don't suffer from a lack of data.

They struggle getting the right data and to know specifically what changes they need to prioritize.

The key is know what levers to pull and exactly how far to pull them

Jason's work with NPS Prism is nothing short of game changing.

In this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast we explore:

• The risks of digitizing everything
• The discrepancy between a company's internal measures of success and customer perception
• The dangers of buying share through discounting
• The importance of competitive benchmarking 
• The risks and challenges of digitization: when human touch is non-negotiable
• How NPS Prism was created and how it helps companies improve customer experiences 

Meet Jason

Jason Barro is a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy & Marketing practice, specializing in the Net Promoter System® and customer-driven transformations. He is also the lead partner and founder of NPS Prism, Bain's customer experience benchmarking service that provides actionable insights to grow loyalty and sales.

He has more than 14 years of consulting experience with Bain.

Jason has extensive experience leading customer transformations across a wide range of industries, including media, cable, retail, banking, credit cards, restaurants and healthcare. He has advised both business-to-consumer and business-to business companies.

Prior to joining Bain in 2004, Jason was an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School from 1999-2004, where he performed research and taught courses on microeconomics, corporate governance and health economics. 

Jason earned his PhD, Masters and Bachelor of Arts degrees in economics from Harvard University.

Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-barro-b25a8a/

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Leah Marone, Mental Wellness Consultant, Psychotherapist, Keynote Speaker, Author competed at the top level in Division 1 basketball. She brings all of the highs and lows of a top tier athlete to her professional role as a psychotherapist. As a board member and external consultant, Leah has been able to leverage her clinical background to develop solutions that prioritize both the bottom line and the well-being of team members and leaders. This is one of my favorite episodes because it sheds light on customer experience from a different perspective. In this episode: 👉 What's the post-Covid "emotional hangover?" 👉 Why the "urgency culture" produces burnout. 👉 What's the business risk of burned out employees? 👉 What's the "full balloon" dilemma? 👉 What are the signs leaders should listen for? 👉 How can leaders improve employee engagement and retention through wellness? MEET LEAH Leah Marone, LCSW, is a psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience based in Charlotte, NC. She has facilitated over 20,000 therapy sessions, writes for Psychology Today, and is an expert forum contributor for Newsweek. Leah was a former anxiety-ridden Division 1 basketball player which has led to her passion for working with athletes and coaches on combating pressure, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and performance anxiety. As a mental wellness consultant, Leah works with companies and nonprofits on topics such as; anxiety & stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, productivity, effective communication, and emotional intelligence. She offers a number of supportive services and fully assesses the company culture in order to meet an organization 'where they are' and address its needs. Her 5-step initiative not only reinforces the importance of mental health within an entire organization, but also identifies areas where growth and connection are needed to prevent high turnover, address burnout, and improve productivity. Currently, she partners with Equitable and facilitates a three-part wellness series for teachers and administrators that focuses primarily on boundary setting and resilience for the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System in NC. Outside of work, Leah enjoys traveling, hiking, exercising, and writing. She also loves being a coach for her daughter's club soccer team. Contact Leah on LInkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahmaronelcsw/ Or visit her on Leahmarone.com

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Augie Ray is a foremost CX thought leader, speaker, and research at one of the world's most respected research firms, Gartner. He's had a leadership role in CX practices at CX leading brands such as USAA and American Express.

This episode is loaded with gems for business leaders who know the importance of putting the customer experience at the center of your corporate strategy.

In this episode (we covered a lot so there are a lot of gems):

• Common obstacles that hijack customer centricity
• How Amex used NPS to make the business case for CX
• Keys to USAA's recognition as a CX leader
• Why employee onboarding is so critical to successful CX organizations
• The ROI of CX - What the research says
• The financial benefits and "secondary benefits" of CX
• Why do CX practices struggle?
• Latest Gartner Reserach: The 3 Primary Drivers of CX Success

MEET AUGIE

Augie Ray is a VP, Analyst covering customer experience at Gartner. He advises clients on CX strategy, Voice of the Customer programs, CX organization, personas, customer journeys, and the ROI of CX. 

Before joining Gartner, Augie was the Director of Customer Experience Action at American Express, Executive Director of Community and Collaboration at USAA, and managed an experiential marketing agency in his hometown of Milwaukee, WI. 

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We've all taken surveys. 

Clearly some are better than others.

Well designed and implemented surveys can provide business leaders with actionable insights that improve retention, reduce cost to serve, and drive customers loyalty - if acted upon.

They can help companies serve their customers better and provide them with more value. Poorly designed surveys do just the opposite.

Martha Brooke is an expert when it comes to customer research. 

Martha shares some of the secrets of best in class survey design with power and passion.

In this episode we discuss:

• What's the primary problem with surveys today?
• What are the 3 areas of differentiation for scientific research
• How to ask provocative questions to increase market share
• The art and science of surveys
• The problem with most CX programs 
• The power of 3rd party surveys

MEET MARTHA

Martha Brooke is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and holds a Blackbelt in Six Sigma. To dramatically improve the Customer Experience, Martha founded Interaction Metrics, a Customer Experience (CX) Consulting Company in 2004.

Clients such as Yaskawa America, Bosch, and Synchrony Financial choose Interaction Metrics for its pairing of scientific CX research with software such as Power BI, Alchemer, and Qualtrics. 

With her team of Analysts, Martha uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to pinpoint customer experience gaps and improvement opportunities. Methods include Text Analytics, Surveys, and Customer Service Evaluations.

To spur dialogue about the Customer Experience, Martha leads top-rated conference sessions and workshops. Some of the organizations where Martha has been asked to speak include Project Management Institute (PMI), American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), HDI, The Score Conference, Customer Solutions Expo, American Marketing Association (AMA), NICSA at the Harvard Club, Operations Summit, Association of Support Professionals, and SOCAP International.

Prior to Interaction Metrics, Martha worked for two dotcoms, Lucy.com and Food.com, where she drove improvements into the customer experience. And she held operations positions in areas that touch on aspects of CX such as quality assurance and customer service.

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What are the biggest obstacles to successful change initiatives?

Amanda Schmoldt has the expertise and experience that only comes from successfully leading change management initiatives at some of the most respected brands in the world like USAA and Neiman Marcus. 

Not only is she the President of the Association of Change Management Professionals, but she's also the Senior Director of Change and Transformation Enablement at Halo Branded Solutions. 

Customer Experience Management (CXM) and Change Management (CM) are kindred spirits and have a lot in common.

We explore the intersection of both professions as well as some other practical advice for leaders such as:

👉 Why CM initiatives fail

👉 The intersection of CX and CM

👉 How she helped change the culture at Neiman Marcus

👉 What USAA did right when it comes to cultural transformation

👉 Using behavioral metrics to measure success for change initiatives

Meet Amanda

Amanda Schmoldt, CCMP, has more than two decades of experience in organizational change management, human resources, communications, and organizational effectiveness. Amanda is President of the Association of Change Management Professionals and serves as Senior Director of Change & Transformation Enablement for HALO Branded Solutions. In her current role, she leads a team that is dedicated to building enterprise change capabilities and supporting the people side of the company's change and transformation efforts. Before joining HALO, Amanda held various leadership roles at Neiman Marcus Group, USAA, Caterpillar, Archer Daniels Midland, and the State of Illinois. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. 

You can reach her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-schmoldt/

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The 5 Leadership SUPERPOWERS with Jay Weiser, Principal and Founder, Jay Weiser Consulting

Jay Weiser is a leadership expert.

He's a graduate of the Wharton School, and has consulted at Accenture. 

He's worked with recognizable names like Autotrader, Bristol Myers Squibb and others.

Jay helps us think critically about the tensions that exist for leaders and how to leverage them to build superior organizations.

In this episode we talk about:

• Lessons for leaders from SVB's failure
• How Delta's CEO provided 3 keys to success immediately following the Covid outbreak
• How Jay's leadership insights intersect with outstanding customer experiences 
• And, of course THE FIVE LEADERSHIP SUPERPOWERS

Meet Jay

Jay Weiser is the Principal and Founder of Jay Weiser Consulting. His passion is enabling leaders and organizations to not only survive but thrive in the face of disruptiveness and uncertainty. Knowing traditional leadership capabilities are insufficient in this environment, Jay developed THE FIVE LEADERSHIP SUPERPOWERS™ capability

model to address this need.

Through speaking, training, assessment, and advisory services, he helps his clients succeed by improving their preparedness/readiness enabling them to better withstand disruptions, recover quicker, accelerate forward, and

be positioned to jump on opportunities faster.

Jay has over 3 decades of experience advising executives across multiple industries and various environments. His clients and employers span from the middle market to Fortune/Forbes 500, including recognizable names like

Autotrader (Cox Auto), Bristol Myers Squibb, Fulton County Schools, JP Morgan Chase, to Publix.

Jay has delivered presentations to executive groups and has been interviewed for multiple podcasts around the globe. Most recently, he was interviewed by Eric McNulty with the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program between Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Chan School of Public Health. His thought leadership has been featured on Forbes.com, Rework.co, The Balanced Scorecard Report (an HBS publication),

LinkedIn, and on his website, www.jayweiser.com.

He has a BS in Economics from The Wharton School (UPenn) and his MBA from the Goizueta Business School (Emory).

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/jayrweiser

Twitter – www.twitter.com/@Jay_R_Weiser

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Why do most surveys fail to get results?

Rick Denton believes too many companies rely too heavily on survey data and consequently don't get results.

He suggests CX leaders should look beyond surveys to - listen, act, and engage.

It's a simple, yet powerful model we explore on this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast along with:

👉 What not to ask customers

👉 How to use customer feedback to inspire employees

👉 Why customer experiences are tanking

👉 The importance of aligning brand promise to experience

👉 What's missing in CX today

Join us for a lively and fun episode with two CX pros who also host podcasts 

Meet Rick

Rick Denton believes the best meals are served outside and require a passport.

A sought after Customer Experience Advisor and keynote speaker, Rick enables companies to achieve Experience Transformation, guiding them to stop Survey & Score and start Listen & Act, using a Total Voice of the Customer approach.

As a Managing Principal at EX4CX, Rick helps clients unlock tangible business value from their Voice of the Customer Programs, create Customer Experience visions, culture and reality while driving revenue growth & operational improvement.

In his leadership roles prior to EX4CX such as with Bose, Capital One and several other industry champions, Rick created customer obsessed cultures, high performance execution systems, and clear outcome-oriented alignment. Rick delivered these results across multiple industries and company size profiles both domestically and internationally.

In addition to scouring the globe for the best customer experiences, Rick, his wife and two children, love to travel the globe simply to travel. You'll as easily find them in Texas as you'll find them in Thailand. (Ask him about the fantastic grilled squid on a stick!…Or the not so great fried tarantula!) When he's not with the family or clients, you'll likely find Rick hiking on a mountain somewhere in the southwestern USA desert.

Rick combines these loves by hosting the CX Passport podcast, a weekly talk with guests about customer experience and travel.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenton/

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What does football (soccer) have in common with Customer Experience? 

Greg Uglioni, CCXP, Head of Business Transformation / Digital Transformation at Kantonsspital Winterthur connects the two in a very innovative way.

Greg was voted a Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2022 Thinkers360

Greg joins us all the way from Switzerland, to share wisdom from his experience in both financial services and healthcare including:

• Creating value centers vs. cost centers
• Lessons from soccer that apply to CX
• How to win a championship by applying football (soccer) principles

Meet Greg

Gregorio Uglioni is a specialist in Business Transformation, Innovation and Customer Experience.

Thanks to his strong leadership skills, Gregorio has successfully led several transformation programs achieving great results, creating a positive customer impact while relentlessly nurturing a positive innovation culture.

His cross-industry engagement for the development of the customer experience discipline (e.g., with his podcast "CX Goalkeeper", as a Judge at several international events, as a co-author of the global best-sellers "Customer Experience 3" and "Customer Experience 4") and his in-depth know-how allowed him to be recognized and awarded several time in Customer Experience Community.

Gregorio holds two masters from the University of Zurich. He is a CCXP and the world's first certified ACXSPlus.

He started his career at Accenture and is now the Head of Business Transformation at the Cantonal Hospital of Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gregorio's battery charger is his family

2023 Recognitions:

CXM STARS #8 TOP CX INFLUENCER by CXM

ICMI'S TOP 25 THOUGHT LEADERS FOR 2023 by ICMI

World's Top 200 Business & Technology Innovators by Engati

Top 50 Global Thought Leaderss and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2023

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Digital Transformation 2023

Top 25 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience 2023

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Leadership 2023

2022 Recognitions:

CXM STARS #10 TOP CX INFLUENCER from CXM

"Influencers to follow" from the UK Customer Experience Awards 2022

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Loyalty 2022 Thinkers360

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Digital Transformation 2022

Top 10 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience 2022 Thinkers360

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Leadership 2022

2021 Recognitions:

TOP INFLUENCER 2021 by ENGATI

Customer Experience World Games 2021: Overall Star Player Recognition, 30 July 2021

Thinkers360: Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Customer Experience, October 2021

Survey2Connect: Featured in the list of the 100 CX Thought Leaders Around The World That Are Changing The CX Game

Some quotes:

"my family is my battery charger"

"When I wake up in the morning, I want to create value, to have an impact and to serve others to achieve our goals together"

"Yes, it is possible to create value for employees, customers and shareholders. At the end, they are all human beings!"

"blending agility & CX will be a key success factor in future"

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How did a neighborhood drugstore, founded in 1901 and measuring just 50 feet by 20 feet, become the pharmacy all others are measured by and one of the most respected American corporations?

Charles R. Walgreen, Sr took a job at Horton's Drugstore in Dixon, Il because an accident left him unable to take part in sports when he was 16. 

After working in several drugstores, he grew increasingly knowledgeable - and increasingly dissatisfied with what he saw as old-fashioned, complacent methods of running a drugstore.

Walgreen saw a clear way to differentiate back in the late 1800's: "...the most dramatic change Walgreen instituted was a level of service and personal attention unequaled by virtually any other pharmacy in Chicago."

Today Walgreens has over 13,000 locations across the U.S., Europe, and Latin American with over 325,000 team members. 

Recently, Walgreens has formalized their Customer Experience Management efforts and Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP, Director of Customer Experience at the storied retailer joins me for a fascinating discussion on The Delighted Customers Podcast.

She shares some practical tips and stories including:

• The same as Coke vs. Pepsi? How does Walgreens think of their brand differently from CVS and other competitors
• The evolution of CX at Walgreens
• The Power of in-store visits
• Idea Testing 
• Preparing for a health clinic from a CX perspective

Meet Danielle

Danielle Wipperfurth serves as Director of Customer Experience at Walgreens. Her background includes leadership roles across sectors and internationally in organizations as diverse as an incubator for social impact startups, a creative agency serving the White House, and a luxury outdoor kitchen company.

Danielle's expertise includes healthcare customer experience, the relationship between employee and customer experience, and the power of aligning experience with your brand promise. She is deeply committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, serving on the Diversity Advancement Committee for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA).

Danielle earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and her bachelor's degree from Davidson College. In 2020, she was recognized as an inaugural Emerging Leader in Customer Experience by the CXPA, and now invests in the next generation of CX leaders as Chair of the program.

You can reach her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellewipperfurth/.

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Greg Kihlstrom is a speaker, author, advisor, and strategy expert.

With a background in digital marketing, Greg brings experience from that background along with his experience in the customer experience world to help companies up their game.

Some of the gems Greg shares:

• Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to unlock discretionary employee effort
• Why everyone must have a line of sight to the customer
• 4 qualifiers for meaningful measurement

…and a whole lot more.

Meet Greg

 Greg Kihlström is a best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur, currently an advisor and consultant to top companies on marketing technology, customer experience, and digital transformation initiatives as Principal and Chief Strategist at GK5A. He is also the host of The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. He is a two-time CEO and Co-Founder, growing both companies organically and through acquisitions, and ultimately leading both to be acquired (one in 2017, and the other in 2021). He has worked with some of the world's top brands, including Adidas, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, HP, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota, and VMware. 

He earned his MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology and is a member of the School of Marketing Faculty at the Association of National Advertisers. He currently serves on the University of Richmond's Customer Experience Advisory Board and the Workhouse Arts Foundation Board as Chair of the Marketing Committee. Greg was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation's National Innovation Committee and served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board. Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, is an Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC), and holds a certification in Business Agility (ICP-BAF). 

Greg has had multiple best-selling books, including his Agile Brand Guides series on marketing technology platforms and practices. His eleventh and most recent book, House of the Customer (2023) discusses the 1:1 personalized customer experience of the future, and how brands can organize the people, processes, and platforms that enable it. Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience (2022), provides guidance on how to create a customer-centric culture that prioritizes customer needs while aligning internal teams around a common goal. His award-winning podcast, The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, launched in early 2019, discusses brand strategy, marketing, and customer experience with some of the world's leading experts and leaders.

Greg is a contributing writer to Fast Company, Forbes, MarTech, and CMSWire, and has been featured in publications such as Advertising Age and The Washington Post. Greg has been named a 2022 Top 10 Marketing and Customer Experience Thought Leader by Thinkers 360, was named one of ICMI's Top 25 CX Thought Leaders two years in a row, and a DC Inno 50 on Fire as a DC trendsetter in Marketing. 

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

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