Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s interview is with Jess Stephens, Director and Co-founder of TagPoints, a mobile proximity marketing platform that uses beacon technology to help retailers gain loyal customers and generate valuable data. Jess joins me today to talk about her company, their growth, customer loyalty and what they are doing differently. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Not having contracts equalises our relationship with our customers – Interview with John Marick of Consumer Cellular – and is number one-hundred and four in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corp. and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink.com, the world's largest community dedicated to customer-centric business. Bob’s also just authored a book: Hooked On Customers: The Five Habits of Legendary Customer-Centric Companies and joins me today to talk about the book, what he thinks being customer centric really means and the five habits of successful firms. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Mobile marketing, customer retention and customers expecting to be known – Interview with Jess Stephens of TagPoints – and is number one-hundred and five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Dr. Jack Lewis, Managing Director and Founder of NeuroFormed and recent author, with best selling author and motivational speaker Adrian Webster, of Sort Your Brain out. Jack joins me today to talk about the book, what neuroscience can teach us about customer service and how customers make decisions. This interview follows on from my recent interview: The habits of leading customer centric businesses – Interview with Bob Thompson – and is number one-hundred and six in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Nick Barlow, who is in charge of Creative and Media for Small Batch Coffee - a Brighton based (and local to me) ‘Boutique Coffee Roaster’ who sell coffee online (retail and wholesale) and also operate 7 coffee shops/vans around Brighton, Sussex. Nick joins me today to talk about the Small Batch Coffee, their story, social media and how they have used it to serve their customers, solve their problems and build better relationships with them. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Neuroscience, customer service and why we should always deliver and never over-promise – Interview with Dr. Jack Lewis – and is number one-hundred and seven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Joan Babinski, founder and vice president of marketing at Brainshark, which helps thousands of companies around the world improve productivity with cloud-based business presentation solutions for sales, marketing and training. Joan joins me today to talk about Brainshark and how they built a community of customer advocates that helped them grow their business. Background: Brainshark has more than 400 champions in its customer champion programme and, since starting it in 2012, has more than quadrupled the number of companies willing to serve as references and more than doubled Twitter activity around the brand. Brainshark also won a Forrester Groundswell Award for it’s programme, which has resulted in amplification of its content, acceleration of the sales cycle and deeper levels of engagement with customers (for example, more customers are enthusiastic about joining beta programs, etc.). This interview follows on from my recent interview: Great service, great coffee and great people creates loyalty – Interview with Nick Barlow of Small Batch Coffee – and is number one-hundred and eight in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Jan Jensen, the CMO of Trustpilot, an open, review-driven community connecting online consumers. Through their platform Trustpilot also help companies proactively collect reviews and get real insight from their customers. Launched in 2007, their service has seen rapid adoption with already more than 7.5 million reviews of over 85,000 individual companies. The company has developed strong positions in Denmark, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and is now entering the US. Jan joins me today to talk about Trustpilot, their recent Trust Series which delves into what it takes today to build trust with customers and what lessons other businesses can learn. This interview follows on from my recent interview: How we built a community of customer advocates – Interview with Joan Babinski of Brainshark – and is number one-hundred and nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Vivek Jetley, Senior Vice President and co-Head of Analytics and Head of Corporate Strategy at EXL, a business process solutions company that integrates operations management services, decision analytics and technology platforms to help their clients deliver immediate results and long-term business impact. Vivek joins me today to talk about how companies need to create customer service teams that are cross-functional and multi-disciplinary, the convergence of customer service, sales and marketing and the challenges of implementing a big data strategy. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Using customer reviews to drive service improvement, WoM and growth – Interview with Jan Jensen of Trustpilot – and is number one-hundred and ten in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Steve Abernethy, Executive Chairman andCo-founder of SquareTrade, the leading extended warranty service provider for consumer electronics and appliances. Steve joins me today to talk about SquareTrade, why they have made their company's focus customer happiness, how they’ve made a traditionally ‘uncool’ sector cool and how customer loyalty is changing. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer insight, big data and the bigger skills gap – Interview with Vivek Jetley of EXL – and is number one-hundred and eleven in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Today’s interview is with Steve Sims, Chief Design Officer & Founder of Behavior Lab at Badgeville, the number one gamification platform for enterprises. Steve joins me today to talk about Badgeville, the work they do, customer loyalty and the motivation and psychology behind loyalty programmes. This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer loyalty is becoming a collective experience – Interview with Steve Abernethy of SquareTrade – and is number 112 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

 Today’s interview is with Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist at BT, where she heads up customer insight & futures with BT Technology, Service & Operations' Global Innovation team. Some of you may remember my previous interview with Nicola last year (Customers, customer service, customer experience and crystal balls – Interview with Dr Nicola Millard of BT). Well, I decided to ask Nicola back for a chat after seeing her present at the the recent 20:20 Customer Experience Summit. So, today, Nicola joins me to talk about a new concept called Customer Easy, whether her predictions from last time are coming true, her views on the use of text messaging for inbound customer service and what she see are the big issues that forms are grappling with in the customer experience and customer service space and what is coming next. This interview follows on from my recent interview: What drives customer loyalty – Interview with Steve Sims of Badgeville – and is number 113 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.