This week, I had the chance to read the blueprint for customer obsession (literally) with the help of Marbue Brown. He’s a CX practitioner with years of experience at companies who can more or less take credit for starting the movement toward customer obsession. Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, JP Morgan Chase… you know, just some mom-and-pop shops.

We discuss how the truly customer-obsessed companies out there go to extremes. They do things in their day-to-day operations that would get most people laughed out of the room. And most importantly, they innovate nonstop, because customer expectations never stop changing, either.

So get ready to hear an insider’s perspective from companies that brought customer-centricity mainstream and learn everything you can. Enjoy!

🟠About Marbue Brown

Marbue Brown is an accomplished customer experience (CX) executive with a track record of thought leadership and signature business results at some of the most iconic companies on the planet, including JP Morgan Chase, Amazon.com, Microsoft Corporation, and Cisco Systems. As a CX leader, he guided the Chase Consumer Bank to record performance in the JD Power Retail Banking Study, NPS and branch satisfaction. He transformed the Andon Cord mechanism at Amazon.com from a primarily manually triggered system to a primarily automated system triggered by machine learning and statistical models. The Andon Cord is one of Amazon.com’s most significant mechanisms it uses to personify its Customer Obsession culture. Marbue devised and codified the NSAT Improvement Approach at Microsoft, which was widely used by business units to dramatically improve CX as well as international subsidiaries who won nationwide awards in the process. He co-authored seminal articles about customer experience measurements that are widely cited in industry. He is a sought after speaker and published author on customer experience, business strategy and economic policy.

🟠Connect with Marbue Brown

Follow Marbue Brown on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/marbue-brown-43a8a52/

Get Blueprint for Customer Obsession on Amazon: https://a.co/d/jd695U0

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/worthix/

Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer ([email protected]).

This week, we got into the weeds of digital content production with A. Lee Judge. Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Content Monsta, a B2B marketing content agency that specializes in podcasting.

What really sets him apart is his focus on generating and proving ROI which comes from his own experience as a marketer. There is a multitude of services for B2B marketers to outsource their content generation efforts, but Lee realized there was still a huge gap: a lack of providers who understood the needs of marketing from an insider’s perspective. So naturally, that was the need he set out to fulfill with Content Monsta.

We get into the nitty-gritty of a content-based growth strategy, and opening the door for authentic marketing creativity from your employees – and in some special cases, customers too. Enjoy!

🟠About A. Lee Judge

A. Lee Judge is the Co-Founder and CMO of Content Monsta, a content marketing production agency. Lee has over 25 years of marketing, media, and sales operation experience directing initiatives at multiple global technology organizations.

🟠Connect with A. Lee Judge

Follow A. Lee Judge on LinkedIn

Visit Content Monsta at contentmonsta.com

Listen to The Business of Marketing Podcast at contentmonsta.com/podcasts

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn

Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn

Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer ([email protected]).

This week, I talked to fellow podcaster and CX professional Rick Denton. He hosts the CX Passport podcast and believes that the best meals are served outside and require a passport, and I tend to agree with that! He’s also the managing principal at EX4CX, a business growth consultancy that wants to help CX professionals stop the “survey & score” mindset to start a “listen & act” one. Also agreed.

He’s also recently had a change of mindset around where CX is in the pecking order of business goals. He now sees it more as a specialized tool to accomplish a job, and that job has always been creating customer value and business growth. Agree strongly.

And that’s not to say CX is getting phased out – far from it. In fact, Rick sees countries around the world, particularly in the Middle East, embracing CX with a vengeance by piggybacking on the tried-and-true basics that are already working in the US and EU.

Enjoy the show, and get ready to expand your horizons a little bit beyond just CX.

🟠About Rick Denton

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 – Execution for Customer Experience, 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.

🟠Connect with Rick Denton

Follow Rick Denton on LinkedIn

Visit Rick’s consultancy at www.ex4cx.com

For tips and workbooks on achieving total VoC, visit www.totalvoc.com

Listen to Rick on the CX Passport podcast – www.cxpassport.com

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn

Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn

Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer ([email protected]).

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kristen Berman. She’s a behavioral scientist, CEO, and co-founder of Irrational Labs, helping teams apply behavioral design research to their products and services.

We covered multiple ways to think about behavior design, like studying the physical environment in which decisions are made, resolving conflicts with established metrics, and mapping customers’ path to your desired behavior using what Kristen calls “getting uncomfortably specific”.

Long-time listeners know that any day I get to geek out about behavioral design with an expert is a good day, so naturally, this episode was as fun as it was educational. Enjoy!

🟠About Kristen Berman

Kristen is the co-founder of Irrational Labs, a behavioral economics product design company, with author and professor Dan Ariely. Irrational Labs has worked with hundreds of companies to increase the health, wealth, and happiness of users. Kristen also co-founded Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being for low to middle Americans. Under Kristen’s leadership, Common Cents launched over 50 experiments with companies, positively impacting tens of thousands of people. She was on the founding team of the behavioral economics group at Google, a group that touched over 26 teams across Google, and she hosted one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics.

🟠Connect with Kristen Berman

Follow Kristen Berman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenberman/

Learn more about the science of Behavioral Economics and Design IrrationalLabs.com

While you’re there, sign up for their Newsletter or enroll in a Behavioral Economics Bootcamp

🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voi...

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got feedback about the Voices of CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at [email protected].

This week, I was joined by Mike Kuenne, owner and principal of Kuenne Advisory LLC. We discussed the complex reality of setting expectations in the hospitality industry. One guests’ memory-building experience is another’s one-star review, and the absolute norm in one region is a completely foreign experience in another.

A misalignment in expectations can ruin an otherwise good or even great experience. And hospitality has the huge responsibility of understanding the differences between these guest profiles and, not only accommodating them differently but finding opportunities to set expectations ahead of time so they’re not caught by surprise.

Without further ado, enjoy the episode!

🟠About Mike Kuenne

Mike is the owner and Principal of Kuenne Advisory LLC and has 25 years of experience in industry and consulting across B2B and B2C channels. He brings a unique perspective by leveraging his diverse background across multiple organizational disciplines helping organizations create truly comprehensive strategies. Organizational leaders and Executive teams benefit from his broad experience in Technology, Corporate & Site Operations, Procurement / Sourcing Strategy, Administration, and Brand and Customer Experience. He enjoys sharing his passion for Customer Experience and has been featured on numerous podcasts and in various industry publications. He’s worked with many fortune 500 clients in consulting roles with PwC and North Highland, and held multiple industry leadership roles, most recently as Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Extended Stay America.

Mike earned his Bachelor’s degree in International Business & Political Science from Lehigh University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. He is an avid traveler and a passionate supporter and coach of youth sports. He resides in Charlotte, NC with his wife Wesley and their 3 children.

🟠Connect with Mike Kuenne

Follow Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkuenne/

🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at

📧 Subscribe to the Worthix Newsletter 📧

👉 https://bit.ly/newsletter-voices-of-cx

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voices-of-cx-podcast/

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at [email protected]

This week, I had a good friend on the show, Marcela Lay, SVP and Head of Client Strategy at Y Media Labs. Of all her passions, the one she makes her name from is the cultural transformation of companies. She draws a lot from her experience in hospitality, translating her standard of care for individual guests to a company level. She helps Silicon Valley tech companies focus on the customer with that same intensity, creating digital products and apps to make a company’s end-to-end experience as customer-centric as possible.

Get ready for the most thorough breakdown of design thinking we’ve had on the show from the company that exports Silicon Valley to the world. Hope you enjoy!

🟠About Marcela Lay

Marcela is a strategic customer experience executive with 18+ years of experience working with Fortune 500 clients like State Farm, Albertsons, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Delta Air Lines and The Coca-Cola Company. Marcela’s broad and deep expertise in various industries allows her to bring a holistic and strategic approach to digital products and digital experience solutions — from conceptualizing to deploying those solutions.

Marcela has also spent her career pushing change and redefining the status quo. As a minority woman, a woman in tech and a woman in senior leadership, Marcela has broken gender, ethnic and managerial glass ceilings, not only for herself, but as a true ally and power agent for everyone she has the privilege to lead.

Marcela has been recognized among Campaign’s prestigious “40 over 40” winners, as a dual Stevie Award® winner for “Maverick of the Year” & “Women-run workplaces”, as a winner of the “Women Worth Watching®” Award, and as a “WIT Women of the Year” Honoree.

Marcela enjoys painting in acrylics, biking with her family, exploring new restaurants, traveling and exploring new cultures and reading a good business book in her free time.

🟠Connect with Marcela Lay

Follow Marcela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelalayccxp/

🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at https://voicesofcx.com/how-the-agency-exporting-silicon-valley-does-design-thinking-marcela-lay-s10e3/

📧 Subscribe to the Worthix Newsletter 📧

👉 https://bit.ly/newsletter-voices-of-cx

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voices-of-cx-podcast/

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at [email protected]

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alex Genov, Head of Marketing Insights and Customer Research at Zappos. We discussed the tension between academic research and its application in organizations, and how the human aspects of research found in qualitative studies get overlooked.

As Alex suggests, the key is fine-tuning the balance between the two, taking the time to understand where your limits and your customer’s needs meet. That's where you’ll find the practical, scalable solutions, instead of taking a cold average of human experience.

🟠About Alex Genov

Alex is an experienced customer research professional who applies his Experimental Social Psychology background and his passion for research, design, and innovation to solving important customer and business problems. His professional goal is to help teams create remarkable products and services which make people’s lives easier and more enjoyable.

Currently Alex is leading Customer Research for the Zappos Family of Companies. In previous positions, he was responsible for research and usability of the products and services for companies like TurboTax (Intuit), State Farm Insurance, and the Active Network. Alex has a PhD in Experimental Social Psychology and over 25 years of relevant experience – 5 years of academic research and over 20 years of customer research in the software industry.

Alex’s areas of expertise include: defining and measuring emotions, the psychology of individual differences, usability, market research and consumer segmentation, customer experience research and strategy.

🟠Connect with Alex Genov

Follow Alex on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alexgenov/

Get Alex's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Customer-See-Person-uncertain/dp/B0B14MBQRZ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1652977263&refinements=p_27%3AAlex+Genov&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Alex+Genov

🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at

https://voicesofcx.com/making-qualitative-cx-data-practical-and-scalable-alex-genov/

📧 Subscribe to the Worthix Newsletter 📧

👉 https://bit.ly/newsletter-voices-of-cx

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voices-of-cx-podcast/

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at [email protected]

To kick off the Voices of CX Podcast’s season 10, we hosted Graham Brown.

Graham and I took a good look at the human experience, complete with detours down memory lane. He’s a storyteller by trade, helping leaders tell better stories through data and showcasing great experiences.

In our discussion, we delved into the human side of business, and how companies get so focused on innovating that they lose the human aspects of business and end up commoditizing themselves anyway. Beyond that, people are afraid of getting replaced in the business world by increasingly sophisticated AI. But we think the reality is a lot more like augmenting humans, rather than replacing them.

This was a fun discussion, and a great kickoff to season 10. Enjoy!

🟠About Graham Brown

Graham is the founder of Pikkal & Co – Award Winning Podcast Agency – an AI Powered, Data Driven B2B Podcast Agency in Singapore. He is a published author on the subject of The Digital Transformation of Communication, works including “The Human Communication Playbook”, “The Mobile Youth: Voices of the Connected Generation” – documenting the rise of mobile culture in the early 2000s in Japan, China, Africa and India and “Brand Love – How to Build a Brand Worth Talking About”.

🟠Connect with Graham Brown

Follow Graham on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamdbrown/

Visit GrahamDBrown.com

🟠Would you like to read the full interview? Get the summary on our blog at https://voicesofcx.com/how-storytelling-creates-customer-value-through-shared-experiences-graham-brown/

📧 Subscribe to the Worthix Newsletter 📧

👉 https://bit.ly/newsletter-voices-of-cx

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/voices-of-cx-podcast/

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marydrumond/

And Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email us at [email protected]

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted Peter Shafer, VP of Sales and Marketing at The Prosper Group. He gets up in the morning to connect the dots between human behaviors and the scientific data analysis that explains the story behind them. It would be hard enough if the fast-paced and unpredictable world we live in hadn't rendered most predictive analytics almost useless, but that doesn't stop him from bringing scientific rigor to every client's market research.

🟠About Peter Shafer

Peter helps clients successfully invest in all types of digital marketing campaigns to effectively communicate their messages and build long-term audience engagement with our clients' brands.

In today's competitive digital environment, Peter knows that context, content, and collaboration are keys to success. He loves to help clients build digital strategies that work and exceed their expectations.

🟠Connect with Peter Shafer

Follow Peter on LinkedIn

Reach out at [email protected]

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn

Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn

Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer ([email protected]).

This week on the Voices of CX Podcast we hosted AJ Davis, Founder and CEO of Experiment Zone, to discuss the utility of Conversion Rate Optimization, and how it bridges the gap between economics and human behavior. Understanding what really goes into customers' decision-making is a lot more complicated than simple AB testing; it might get you by, but it won't tell you the whole story. That's where AJ comes in.

🟠About AJ Davis

AJ Davis is a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Specialist. She’s the founder of Experiment Zone, a company that helps online businesses grow their revenue by improving the user experience of their website using scientific methods. Before starting Experiment Zone in 2017, AJ led optimization strategy for Fortune 500 companies during her tenure at Clearhead. She was also the lead UX researcher on the Google Optimize product.

🟠Connect with AJ Davis

Follow AJ on LinkedIn

Check out ExperimentZone.com

🟠Connect with the Voices of CX

Follow Worthix on LinkedIn

Follow Worthix on Instagram: @voicesofcx

Follow Mary Drumond on LinkedIn

Follow Mary Drumond on Twitter: @drumondmary

🟠About Voices of CX Podcast

The Voices of CX Podcast is a podcast that covers all things business strategies, customer decision insight, empathetic leadership practices, and tips for sustainable profitability. With a little bit of geeking out on behavioral science, A.I. and other innovation sprinkled in here and there. The guests span multiple industries, but all of them have years of experience to bring to the table.

📩Got something to say about CX or want to be featured on the show? Let us know! Email the Producer ([email protected]).