Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with James Dodkins, CX Evangelist at Pegasystems. James joins me today to talk about some new research that Pega has just conducted, some of the results, the big trends and shifts that are driving the future of customer service and a webinar (registration link) that they are holding next week (Oct 4th) as part of Customer Service Week. This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX professionals extol the importance of empathy towards external customers but often overlook its importance with internal ones – Interview with Jack Springman – and is number 441 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Jack Springman, a former Associate Director of Optima Partners, customer experience provocateur and new author. After a year-long battle with cancer, Jack Springman passed away on Sept 8th 2022. This podcast was recorded in the early part of August 2022 and in it Jack and I talk about his new book: Customer Experience & Marketing - The Final Rant (free to download). This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer success professionals should focus on net revenue retention (NRR) to prove ROI – Interview with You Mon Tsang of ChurnZero – and is number 440 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with You Mon Tsang, the founder and CEO of ChurnZero, which helps subscription businesses fight churn with a real-time customer success platform. You Mon joins me today to talk about customer success, why it’s more important now than ever, what firms should be doing to successfully navigate a downturn and why a customer success mindset would benefit almost every organisation. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Not enough companies realize that customer support is your primary gateway to understanding your entire business – Interview with Nooshin Alibhai and Eric Klimuk of Supportbench – and is number 439 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Nooshin Alibhai and Eric Klimuk, co-founders and CEO and COO respectively at Supportbench, a full-stack customer support software provider that is made specifically to serve the B2B space. Nooshin and Eric join me today to talk about the 4 types of customer support solutions that are out there and what’s missing, what’s so different about the B2B support model, why B2B is so much harder to build for and what Supportbench are doing to address these challenges. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Delivering personalised search experiences in an ethical way – Interview with Angel Maldonado of Empathy.co – and is number 438 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Angel Maldonado, CEO & Founder of Empathy, who create human-centred, commerce search & discovery platforms that combine innovative technology, behaviour-based algorithms and data intelligence with understanding and empathy to enrich customer interactions. Angel joins me today to talk about ethical commerce, the Ethical Commerce Alliance, the changing data and privacy landscape and how we can deliver personalised search experiences in an ethical way. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lack of a clear vision leads to higgledy-piggledy services and experiences – Interview with Ari Weinzweig of Zingermans – and is number 437 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Ari Weinzweig, the CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Ari was previously on the podcast back in 2020 and is also one of the contributors to Punk XL. Ari joins me today to talk about business visions, visioning, his new pamphlet on visioning (The Story of Visioning at Zingerman’s: Four Visions, Forty Years, and a Positive Look Towards the Future), how many service and experience initiatives lack a clear vision of what it is they are trying to create and why and how this can leads to the higgledy-piggledy services and experiences that we often encounter. Note: This podcast is the first in a series of contributions (podcast chats, blogs and mixtapes etc) from the contributors to Punk XL that will appear here over the coming months. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The digitization of the supply chain and it’s impact on customer experience and sustainability – Interview with Sanjay Brahmawar of Software AG – and is number 436 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Sanjay Brahmawar, the CEO of Software AG, a software pioneer that is helping over 10,000 organisations worldwide connect people, departments, systems and devices through integration & APIs, IoT & analytics as well as business & IT transformation. Sanjay joins me today to talk about the supply chain problems that have been affecting many businesses in recent months, unstable consumer demand patterns, Internet of Things (IoT) and streaming analytics, sustainability, innovation and how brands should be responding. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Creating a metaverse experience that helps veterans suffering from PTSD – Interview with Robert Bell of 2B3D – and is number 435 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Robert Bell, Founder and CEO of 2B3D, who with their partners are developing a first-of-its-kind metaverse/NFT/gaming platform where military veterans can access live PTSD therapy. Now, I’ve been reading quite a bit about the metaverse lately and how it’s going to be the next big thing. But, on the back of some horror stories around lack of safeguards and controls and a bunch of other things, I’ve also been wondering about how it’s going to integrate with and impact our real and day to day lives in a meaningful way. So, I was excited to hear about what Robert and his team are doing. On the back of that, I invited Robert to join me today to tell me about both the technology and therapeutic sides of their mission, the size and nature of the problem they are addressing, the veteran experience and the other groups that may benefit from this sort of therapeutic resource. This interview follows on from my recent interview – 42% of workers feel that digital transformation efforts have made their job more complex – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega - and is number 434 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pega. Don joins me today to talk about a new report they have just released called Workforce Trends Report 2022, the headline findings, complexity in the enterprise, how it affects us, the impact and what we should be doing about it. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Unlocking the hidden value of language to drive personalisation – Interview with Assaf Baciu of Persado – and is number 433 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Assaf Baciu, the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Persado. Assaf joins me today to talk about Motivation AI, language, personalisation and unlocking the hidden value of language in our interactions with customers. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Design is not design without research – Interview with Alfonso de la Nuez of UserZoom – and is number 432 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.