In this episode, Mike is joined by Mazen Ghalayini, Managing Director of West Monroe's new Product & Experience Lab, to discuss three key trends we see for organizations to shift from surviving to thriving in 2021. The trends focus on converging customer experience with digital elements to position organizations for growth, including:

1) accelerate innovation through agile, adaptive business models,

2) connect digital and analog experiences across the customer journey,

and 3) leverage your customer data to drive your CX strategy.

They share two other predictions for what we will see in the world of CX in 2021.

In this episode, Mike and Paul speak with Gainsight CEO, Nick Mehta, to discuss the merging worlds of customer experience and customer success and how COVID is impacting these functions. Listen to hear:

· Mehta’s origin story

· His point of view on customer success (CS) and how it exists within organizations as a capability and function

· Why organizations need to focus on customer outcomes and measurement best practices

· Common challenges organizations face when considering a CS technology solution

· How CS technology is different from traditional CRM and CXM solutions

In this episode, Mike is joined by guest co-host Mike Rowland, Director and Customer Experience Strategy National Lead for West Monroe to have a conversation about how organizations get back to growing their business again while navigating continuous interruptions created by the COVID pandemic. For this discussion, Mike and Mike are joined by Tiffani Bova, Global Growth Evangelist at Salesforce and author of the book “Growth IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business”. Together they talk about:

- The need to be “employee-first AND customer-centric”,

- How the lines are blurring between B2B and B2C and how B2B organizations should look to B2C for signals and lessons learned,

- The “heavy-dose” of listening required to understand how to meet customers' new needs,

- How innovation and the ability to be nimble is the key to success coming out of the pandemic

PLEASE NOTE: This episode was recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the US this year, but the key takeaways are more critical then ever for organizations to survive and accelerate out of the current market conditions.

In this episode, Paul and Mike are joined by guest Elli Rader, a director in West Monroe's Product Studio, to discuss what's needed for organizations to rethink what they're doing and become digital companies. Some of these shifts include:

- Focus on an outcomes-based vs. deliverables-based approach

- Build comfort with more agile execution practices

- Learn from actual customers usage of products and services and improve through continual iteration

- Bring cross-functional groups to solve specific customer issues

- Just start - there are no perfect conditions to begin improving and transforming

During this episode, Paul and Mike are once again joined by colleague Cindy Garrett, director in our Customer Experience practice, to discuss best practices for customer service organizations to enable their work-from-home professionals and provide the best employee experience, given the current COVID-driven environment. These best practices include:

1) Using cloud-based technology to easily stand-up remote employees, including telephony and knowledge base platforms

2) Increasing the frequency of the use of their Voice of the Employee programs to best understand employees new needs

3) Building a remote-based set of rituals to drive a sense of community, including the use of video chat for team stand-ups and 1-on-1 meetings

4) Supporting employees emotional needs and shielding the service professionals from being “the bad guys” by setting expectations with customers

In this episode, Paul and Mike are joined by Cindy Garrett, a director in our Customer Experience practice who helps organizations optimize their customer service operations. She discusses what companies should and should not be doing in response to COVID-19 to meet new customer needs by adapting their service operations while also containing costs, including:

- Focusing on customers and employees as people

- Increasing transparency and personalization of communication

- Creatively and rapidly innovating on their service delivery model

- Empowering employees to make decisions to meet their customers’ needs

In this episode, Paul and Mike are joined by Dhaval Moogimane - a Director in West Monroe Partners' Mergers & Acquisitions practice and Customer Success (CS) subject matter expert - to continue our discussions focusing on the merging of Customer Experience and Customer Success. They discuss five key trends driving the evolution and merging of Customer Success and Customer Experience, including:

- Shifting the focus on outcomes from primarily Churn Reduction to Relationship Expansion (Net Retention Growth)

- Tighter integration and alignment of distinct roles between Customer Success and Customer Experience functions

- Delivering CS at Scale across all customers (and not just the most important)

- Evolving customer-focused technology to drive CS

- The importance of data and organizations' ability to deliver the right data and the right time in the right context to lead to action

In this episode, Paul and Mike are joined by Neil Jane - a Director in West Monroe Partners' Mergers & Acquisitions practice and Customer Success (CS) subject matter expert - to begin a mini-series focusing on the merging of Customer Experience and Customer Success. They discuss the reasons behind the rise of Customer Success, the key KPIs and metrics used to demonstrate the value CS can deliver to the organization, and the similarities and differences of the key building blocks of these two disciplines, including:

- the need to understand your customers,

- an agreed-upon strategy,

- an ability to govern and operationalize within the organization,

- the required structure to execute,

- and the mindset and cultural shifts needed to ensure long-term success

In this episode, Paul and Mike bring out their CX crystal ball to talk about three key accelerating trends for CX in 2020: 1) How the intersection of Customer Success and Customer Experience is gaining steam, 2) How the need for organization-wide data will drive an increased focus on customer data management, and 3) How traditional CRM capabilities will evolve to provide more personalized experiences for customers.

Additionally, they talk about their "wishes" for CX in 2020, including:

1) Building financial literacy to articulate the value of CX,

2) Mainstream adoption of journey-based operating models in organizations

3) Businesses fully adopting more human-centered and purpose-driven outcomes as the 2019 "Business Roundtable" articulate (creating value for customer, community and employee, not just shareholders)

4) CX leaders driving the upfront elements of digital transformation

In this episode, Paul and Mike revisit their 2019 CX trend predictions from the beginning of the year and see if and how the industry has moved forward in 2019. Additionally, they share a couple of key takeaways, including how emotion and longer-term (and broader) value were beginning to show public prominence from business leaders.