CX Decoded By CMSWire

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. We explore the delicate balance between enhancing customer experiences and empowering employees at LinkedIn. Hear from Sam Stern, senior manager of customer experience, about the innovative ways LinkedIn prioritizes trust, extracts valuable insights from vast amounts of data and ensures both customers and employees feel valued and heard.

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Sri Narasimhan, vice president of Enterprise Consumer Experience at CVS, discusses the importance of establishing a customer-centric culture. Narasimhan emphasizes the need for a multifaceted approach that includes igniting a culture focused on customer feedback, empowering frontline employees and strategically integrating consumer centricity across all business operations.

In the latest episode of CX Decoded, Jessica Austin Barker, the chief digital and client experience officer at TIAA, unveils the intricate tapestry of TIAA's journey in transforming digital and client experiences in the financial sector. This episode delves deep into the nuanced approach TIAA has adopted, moving beyond mere technological advancements to a more holistic integration of digital innovation with a human-centric approach.

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. The convergence of customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) is more than a trend; it's a strategic imperative. Organizations are recognizing the symbiotic relationship between how they treat their customers and their employees, understanding that a holistic approach can drive significant improvements in performance and satisfaction. Bridging these two domains requires a nuanced understanding of both the internal and external dynamics of organizations.

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Shri Nandan, VP of AI Experiences at Comcast, tells us how the implementation of AI, particularly chatbots, in contact centers has not only streamlined operational efficiencies but also enriched the quality of customer interactions. Shri shares her firsthand experiences in driving AI projects, emphasizing the importance of a customer-centric approach and cross-functional collaboration. 

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Jason Ferrell, Capital One’s managing vice president of experience design, is a designer at heart. Designing experiences in the current day comes with challenges related to customer experience, employee experience and constantly connecting experiences to top-level business objectives.  Ferrell believes in design experiences through a personalized approach that involves art and science, working across department silos and ultimately connecting experiences with business outcomes.

Customer experience teams at Intuit, owners of TurboTax, get inspired each day to iterate, test and create customer experiences for their thousands of customers. The key ingredients? Agility, adaptability and continuous learning. Principal CX leader Marietta Silva Allison takes us behind the curtain for all of it in this episode.

In this episode of CX Decoded, Brianna Langley Henderson, a seasoned CX practitioner, delves deep into the implications of introducing generative AI into business organizations. She acknowledges the transformative potential of AI and its capacity to fundamentally alter the landscape of various industries. At the same time, she highlights the resistance this technology faces from certain quarters. The discussion extends to exploring the ethical conundrums posed by AI, emphasizing its potential to disrupt traditional job roles and intensify the fear of human downsizing, a concern particularly felt for creative roles. Henderson underscores the urgent need for organizations to establish their own codes of ethics in this nascent and rapidly evolving field, where concrete legal and ethical guidelines are yet to be standardized. She advocates for a proactive approach in embracing this technological advancement, emphasizing that the strategic integration of AI can secure a business's place in the future of customer experience and other creative endeavors.   We caught up with Brianna recently on the topic.

In this special edition of CX Decoded, recorded live at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas this week during the CMSWire CONNECT Conference, CX Decoded hosted Karna Crawford, a distinguished marketing and digital strategy leader with a proven track record of innovation and tangible results. Throughout this episode, Karna, former head of US marketing at the Ford Motor Company, shares her invaluable insights on customer experience and its evolving landscape. She brings a wealth of experience from working with iconic brands and leveraging data-driven insights to shape customer experiences. Karna's unique perspective as a trailblazer in the industry sheds light on the best strategies and practices for CX professionals, whether seasoned veterans or those just starting their journey. One of the key takeaways from our conversation with Karna is the importance of strategic alignment between brand innovation and customer loyalty. She emphasizes the need for organizations to prioritize their innovation efforts and ensure they align with the overall brand strategy.

Michelle Morris, customer experience leader for Verizon Connect, shares insights on customer satisfaction, loyalty, the necessity of cross-department collaboration and best ways to achieve data-driven success.

In this podcast episode, Sarah Kimmel, the vice president of research at Simpler Media Group, casts a discerning eye on "The State of the CMO" survey, offering a rare glimpse into the shifting landscape of chief marketing officers (CMOs) and the competencies they must cultivate. The study's revelations place creative thinking at the top of vital skills, trailed by strategic management, leadership prowess and executive aptitude. The CMO's role has been undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis, marked by heightened collaboration with sales divisions, mounting demands for enhanced customer experiences and active participation in digital transformation initiatives. Intriguingly, CMOs say only 59% of leadership expect measurable outcomes from them, indicating not all undertakings lend themselves to direct ties to the bottom line. Kimmel sheds light on the turbulent journey of CMOs as they navigate a perpetually shifting sea of expectations and responsibilities. We caught up with her recently to discuss the survey. 

Melissa Henley, an experienced CX leader at Luxion, the company behind KeyShot 3D software, explores the vital aspects of both customer and employee experiences. In this latest podcast with CMSWire's CX Decoded, Melissa, a CMSWire Contributor, identifies two core metrics that CX leaders should prioritize: churn and net revenue retention (NRR). Melissa elaborates on the significance of these metrics in evaluating customer satisfaction and cultivating a loyal customer base, emphasizing the importance of a keen focus on these numbers for a company's success. Additionally, Melissa addresses the crucial role of data in CX leadership. She asserts that proficiency in working with data is essential for success in the CX field. And just as Archimedes needed to perfect his measurement techniques to resolve the king's quandary, in the world of customer experience, mastery of the right metrics can lead to those elusive, yet sought-after "Eureka!" moments.

While positive employee experiences can enhance customer experiences, negative employee experiences can have the opposite effect. A famous SNL sketch parodies the frustrating experience of trying to cancel cable service, with a customer being repeatedly put on hold, transferred to different departments and subjected to aggressive sales tactics from customer retention specialists. The sketch highlights the all-too-common problem of customer service employees who are not engaged or motivated to provide good service, resulting in a negative customer experience. To avoid this scenario, businesses need to prioritize employee engagement and create a positive workplace culture to ensure that employees are motivated to deliver exceptional customer service. CMSWire Contributors Nichole Devolites, principal consultant of LYSI Holding Company and Justin Racine, director and lead commerce strategist at Perficient, emphasize this point and provide real-life examples to illustrate the impact of positive workplace cultures on customer experiences in this CX Decoded podcast. They also discuss the use of chatbots and artificial intelligence, the power of invoking nostalgia in branding and creating a sense of community in the customer experience.

In recent years, organizations have increasingly turned to digital experience platforms (DXPs) to improve their online presence and engagement with customers. In this episode of CX Decoded, we sat down with Sitecore’s Dave O’Flanagan, Optimizely’s Deane Barker and Contentstack’s Nick Barron to discuss DXPs and a shift to composable platforms and related concepts such as content management systems (CMS) and content marketing platforms (CMP). The participants Dave, Deane and Nick each gave examples of common use cases for DXPs and focused on the need for omnichannel capabilities that enable consistent messaging across various channels and touchpoints. They also emphasized the importance of being open and flexible with architecture to allow customers to plug and play different products depending on their business objectives. 

In a story that echoes the classic American dream, media mogul Oprah Winfrey started out working at a grocery store where she was forbidden to talk to customers, a move that left her feeling unfulfilled. However, she soon found a job at a radio station where her talents for communication and engagement were allowed to flourish, leading her down the path to becoming a cultural icon with her own talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. This raises an important question about the role of employee-customer interactions in creating a successful business. In this episode of CX Decoded, Diana Brown, senior vice president of sales operations and customer experience at XPO, discusses the crucial link between employee experience and customer experience in the service industry. Drawing on both her experience at XPO and her previous experience as head of customer success for Amazon Business, Brown emphasizes that important changes often arise from employee feedback about the customer experience. She goes on to explain that XPO was able to improve its billing process after finance team members who worked in collections shared the difficulties customers were experiencing in paying their invoices. Brown underscores the importance of listening to both employees and customers in order to make meaningful changes in the service industry.

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss educational reformer, is widely regarded as the father of modern education. Despite his relative obscurity today, Pestalozzi made major contributions to the field of education in the 19th century, pioneering new methods that were a stark departure from traditional European schools of the time.  Pestalozzi emphasized real-world learning experiences and a student-centered approach to education, rejecting rote memorization in favor of group recitation and personalized instruction that highlighted each student's strengths. He believed that the role of the instructor was to facilitate and guide learning, rather than simply imparting information. One notable student who benefited from Pestalozzi's approach: Albert Einstein. At the age of 17, Einstein attended a school in Germany based on Pestalozzi's philosophy, where he was encouraged to use imaginative visualization in his studies. This approach proved to be a defining moment for Einstein, and would later play a significant role in his groundbreaking work as a physicist. The right kind of education can make all the difference. And we now know a lot more about our universe in part due to Pestalozzi's influence. Continuing this tradition of innovative education is Tom DeWitt, the director of the Customer Experience Management program at Michigan State University. DeWitt, our CX Decoded guest this week, leads a team-based real-world learning approach, fostering an environment of equality, inclusiveness and encouragement to explore. He acts as a guide to students from all walks of life, helping them to fully grasp the complexities of customer experience. 

In this CX Decoded podcast, Jim Tincher, founder, CEO and journey mapper-in-chief at Heart of the Customer and author of the book "Do B2B Better," discusses the importance of talking to customers after a transaction has taken place. He uses his experience as a product manager for health savings accounts to illustrate how a disconnect between the company's understanding of its customers and the actual customer experience can lead to high churn rates. He also addresses how to measure customer experience and the role of inventory in business.  In his book “Do B2B Better,” Jim highlights four actions that separate successful customer experience programs from those that don't work. These include showing how customer experience is improving financial outcomes for the organization and proactively creating a better outcome for the company. Jim also brings attention to the issue of silos within organizations and how they can lead to a disconnect between different departments and their understanding of customer experience.  Podcast key takeaways:  Talking to customers after a transaction has taken place is important for understanding their experience and identifying areas for improvement. A disconnect between a company's understanding of their customers and the actual customer experience can lead to high churn rates. Successful customer experience programs show how customer experience is improving financial outcomes for the organization and proactively creating a better outcome for the company. Many organizations struggle with silos, which can lead to a disconnect between different departments and their understanding of customer experience. We caught up with Jim to discuss these topics.

Leonardo Da Vinci revolutionized the way people were painted during the Renaissance, and his "Mona Lisa" is the most famous painting in the world and is a cultural icon for beauty, in part due to what is usually described as her alluring and mysterious smile. What has made the "Mona Lisa" so popular for more than 500 years? It can be boiled down to one word: innovation.  Da Vinci was an innovator his entire life. He saw possibilities everywhere. The painting is a culmination of his curiosity and studies he undertook during his lifetime. Leonardo was interested in just about everything. One thing he was interested in was human anatomy, and he made many anatomical studies of the human body, including the facial muscles used for smiling. He discovered the complex system of muscle movement needed to produce a smile, and the data he collected during dissections he performed helped him produce the world's most revered painting. This week’s CX Decoded podcast guest knows about innovation, data collection and omnichannel approaches when it comes to beauty as well. Michelle Pacynski, vice president of digital innovation at Ulta Beauty, has led Ulta through much of its digital transformation in the past 10 years, a time in which the company revolutionized how beauty products were assembled and marketed to enthusiasts.   We caught up with her to find out what brands can learn from the beauty industry about a host of topics, including the high level of engagement of beauty enthusiasts.

Thinking about getting the latest CX and marketing tools for your customer service agents or possibly investing in some artificial intelligence? Are you wondering whether the pandemic ended up hurting or helping digital customer experience? And just how is the recession impacting what CX decision-makers are focusing on? Or perhaps you're wondering whether interest is growing — or diminishing or even stalling — for certain CX tools or strategies. Or maybe you just want to know if others really don't know what headless CMS is or does. Meet Sarah Kimmel, vice president of research for Simpler Media Group, which runs CMSWire.com. She tells us what the numbers are saying by diving into the findings of the 2023 State of Digital Customer Experience Report. Sarah's got the gift for wrangling meaningful findings that indicate where we're headed. She's based in Chicago, aka the Windy City. If you really want to chew the fat with her, try getting on her good side by bringing up volcanoes or tornadoes.

A recession can be like preparing to go backpacking. You have to decide what you need, what’s unnecessary and what might potentially weigh you down.  CX leaders have to make similar decisions to successfully trek the current economic landscape. They too have to pick and choose needs, cull waste and protect the integrity of their teams — all while serving their customers flawlessly.  Tina Dobie is the chief customer officer at Calendly. In this episode, she discusses how to think about doing more with less while still driving marketing leads, keeping customers close and your customer support agents inspired. We caught up with Tina in our latest CX Decoded podcast.