Adrian Swinscoe's RARE Business Podcast

Today's interview is with Jochem van der Veer, the Co-Founder and CEO of TheyDo, a leading platform for journey management that helps organisations build seamless customer experiences by aligning teams around the customer journey. We discuss customer journeys, journey mapping, and data, highlighting how businesses risk exacerbating data overwhelm if they don't rethink their approach. Additionally, we explore the finding that 41% of business leaders rarely involve other departments in data-driven decisions. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Voice still reigns in customer service – Interview with Nikola Mrkšić of PolyAI – and is number 545 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Nikola Mrkšić, Co-founder & CEO of PolyAI, a leading supplier of Conversational AI for automated customer service. We talk about some recent research of theirs that finds that the phone still reigns in customer service, making the contact center into a ‘command center,' why voice channels aren't relics of the past but are, in fact, essential infrastructure, that customer service interactions are becoming increasingly contentious and what their AI capabilities are doing to help with that. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The future of CX and agentic CX – Interview with Sid Banerjee of Medallia – and is number 544 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Sid Banerjee, Chief Strategy Officer at Medallia, a leading provider of customer and employee experience management solutions. I first talked to Sid 11 years ago on this podcast when he was Founder & CEO at Clarabridge. This time around, we talk about what has happened in those intervening years, what brought him out of ‘retirement', how to balance the human touch and AI in CX, the future of both CX and agentic CX, the role of LLMs in disrupting the dashboard-centric use cases for CX, trends in omnichannel and a whole bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer-centric innovation and Amazon's PRFAQ – Interview with Marcelo Calbucci – and is number 543 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Marcelo Calbucci, an entrepreneur, innovator, technologist, and author. Marcelo joins me today to talk about his new book: The PRFAQ Framework: Adapting Amazon's Innovation Framework to Work for You, why Amazon uses it, the five principles of the PRFAQ, where and how it can be applied and what to expect when you are creating your first one. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lush's Journey: Balancing Innovation, Empathy, and Customer Care – Interview with Naomi Rankin of Lush – and is number 542 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Naomi Rankin, the Manager of Global Customer Care at Lush, the British cosmetics retailer. I spoke to Naomi when I attended Zendesk's recent Relate event, which took place in Las Vegas on March 25th-27th. We talk about her highlights from the event, what customer care means to Lush, their approach to AI and her journey with Lush from starting work in one of their shops to now managing the global customer care team that covers 24 markets, 15 different languages, and another 20 partner markets. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Omnichannel was a myth – Interview with Gaurav Passi of Zingly – and is number 541 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Gaurav Passi, Founder & CEO of Zingly. He joins me today to talk about some research that they have recently conducted about FORO (the Fear of Reaching Out), the Great CX Paradox, why Omnichannel was a myth and how ‘Rooms' could be the answer. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why businesses need to invest in both brand and customer experience – Interview with Martin Gill of Forrester – and is number 540 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Martin Gill, VP, Research Director at Forrester. Martin joins me today to talk about their upcoming CX Summit EMEA that will be taking place in London (and digitally) from June 2–4, 2025. We explore the major themes of the event, including why businesses need to invest in both brand and customer experience to maximise growth, what practitioners should be keeping in mind when thinking about design for the future of experiences and the role of organisational culture and leadership in all of that. You can find out more about the event here. Also, if you use the discount code CXEMEAPUNK, you'll get 10% off the ticket price. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Legacy transformation, agentic AI and how to get it right – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 539 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 at Pegasystems, an industry-leading low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. Don joins me today to talk about the upcoming PegaWorld 2025 (PegaWorld is taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from June 1st to the 3rd), Agentic AI (obvs.), how some organizations are implementing agentic solutions and it is causing chaos, a better way to do it, Pega Blueprint, legacy transformation and how to get it right. This podcast is sponsored by Pega. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Starting a resolution revolution – Interview with Tom Eggemeier, Adrian McDermott and Matthias Göhler of Zendesk – and is number 538 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is a two-parter and features interviews with Tom Eggemeier, Adrian McDermott and Matthias Göhler, which took place at Zendesk's recent Relate event, which took place in Las Vegas on March 25th-27th. Tom Eggemeier is the Chief Executive Officer of Zendesk, Adrian McDermott is the Chief Technology Officer at Zendesk, and Matthias Göhler is EMEA Chief Technology Officer at Zendesk. We talk about all of the latest developments at Zendesk, some of the big product announcements, starting another revolution and how knowledge is the coal in this latest industrial revolution. This interview follows on from my recent interview – AI-driven search volumes are exploding and what brands should be doing about it – Interview with Vivek Pandya of Adobe – and is number 537 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Vivek Pandya, Director, Adobe Digital Insights at Adobe. I recently caught up with Vivek at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas to talk about some new research that Adobe just published called AI to Cart, which highlights the impact that Generative AI-powered chat interfaces are having on consumers, how that is changing their search and shopping behaviours, what brands should be doing in response and his highlights from the event. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The art and the science of listening – Interview with Zig Serafin, Brad Anderson and Isabelle Zdatny of Qualtrics – and is number 536 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is a three-parter and features interviews with Zig Serafin, Brad Anderson and Isabelle Zdatny that I conducted at Qualtrics' recent X4 2025: The Experience Management Summit, which took place in Salt Lake City on March 18th-20th. Zig Serafin is the Chief Executive Officer of Qualtrics, Brad Anderson is the President of Products, UX and Engineering at Qualtrics, and Isabelle Zdatny is the Head of Thought Leadership at Qualtrics XM Institute. We talk about all of the latest developments at Qualtrics, including some of the big product announcements, many of the big challenges currently facing brands and a new piece of research that Qualtrics recently produced in collaboration with McKinsey on The AI-Powered Customer Experience Opportunity. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Testing and experimentation is everyone's problem – Interview with Shafqat Islam of Optimizely – and is number 535 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, who recently held their X4 2025: The Experience Management Summit in Salt Lake City on March 18th-20th. I was there, and it was a great event that explored how leading organizations are leveraging Experience Management (XM) to enhance customer and employee satisfaction, reduce operating costs, and achieve remarkable breakthroughs. We heard from industry leaders and companies, including Autodesk, Ford, USAA and Hilton. Find out more and catch up on the latest news coming out of the event at the Qualtrics website.

Today's podcast is with Shafqat Islam, President at Optimizely, who joins me to talk about a new research report they have just published called Tested to Perfection, experimentation, personalization, privacy and all things in between, including the key things that marketers should be doing more of to better engage their customers. This interview follows on from my recent interview – There are five types of loyalty but only two are growing – Interview with Sara Richter of SAP Emarsys - and is number 534 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of X4 2025: The Experience Management Summit, which is taking place in Salt Lake City on March 18th-20th. It's set to be an unforgettable event designed to empower you and your organization in leveraging Experience Management (XM) to enhance customer and employee satisfaction, reduce operating costs, and achieve remarkable breakthroughs. There, you will hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies, including Autodesk, Ford, USAA and Hilton. Find out more and register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's podcast is with Sara Richter, CMO at SAP Emarsys, a leading omnichannel customer engagement platform provider. Sara joins me today to talk about customer loyalty, the findings emerging from the 2024 edition of their Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) report, the five different types of loyalty that marketers and CX professionals should be thinking about, and what brands should be doing to engender (true) loyalty with their customers. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Harnessing the contact center's potential as a real-time data gold mine – Interview with Suvi Lindfors of Netigate – and is number 533 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of X4 2025: The Experience Management Summit, which is taking place in Salt Lake City on March 18th-20th. It's set to be an unforgettable event designed to empower you and your organization in leveraging Experience Management (XM) to enhance customer and employee satisfaction, reduce operating costs, and achieve remarkable breakthroughs. There, you will hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies, including Autodesk, Ford, USAA and Hilton. Find out more and register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's podcast is with Suvi Lindfors, Strategic Business Development, Netigate. Suvi joins me today to talk about why she thinks the contact center is becoming one of the most valuable sources of insight in any organisation, how many brands are actually leveraging these insights, what needs to happen to facilitate this journey in terms of strategy, people, process and technology, what sort of impact will this have on customer centricity and how we are likely to see the contact center emerge as a data and analytics service provider within organisations. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Life Lessons I Learned From Being A Line Cook – Interview with Ari Weinzweig – and is number 532 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of X4 2025: The Experience Management Summit, which is taking place in Salt Lake City on March 18th-20th. It's set to be an unforgettable event designed to empower you and your organization in leveraging Experience Management (XM) to enhance customer and employee satisfaction, reduce operating costs, and achieve remarkable breakthroughs. There, you will hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies, including Autodesk, Ford, USAA and Hilton. Find out more and register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's podcast is with Ari Weinzweig, the CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman's Community of Businesses, a much-admired gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Ari is a friend, a veteran of the podcast and was also one of the contributors to Punk XL. Ari joins me today to talk about his latest missive - a chapbook entitled Life Lessons I Learned From Being A Line Cook; what a chapbook is, the insights behind some of the lessons and what they mean from an entrepreneur and leader who is passionate about customer service and experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The natural home of the contact center is under the CMO – Interview with Alex Levin of Regal.io – and is number 531 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Alex Levin, the Co-Founder and CEO of Regal.io, that provides high-touch contact center software (CCaaS) that enhances sales, support, and customer retention with the help of AI agents and automated personalization. Alex joins me today to talk about the rise of voice AI agents and how they are likely to transform contact centers helping to automate the majority of contact center interactions by 2035, how AI is going to bring back the ability to treat customers like human beings, why the natural home of the contact center is under the CMO and and the intriguing prospect of agents in the contact center becoming very sought after and very highly paid. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The majority of agents don't find AI useful in their daily work – Interview with Martin Teasdale and Ed Creasey – and is number 530 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Martin Teasdale, host of Get out of Wrap, a contact centre focused podcast, and Ed Creasey, Global VP of Solutions Engineering at Calabrio, a workforce performance suite provider. Martin recently collaborated with Ed and the team at Calabrio on a new piece of research called Voice of the Agent. Martin and Ed join me today on the podcast to talk about some of the main findings emerging from the research, the enhanced reputation of the contact centre industry and some key messages for team leaders and contact centre leaders and directors. This interview follows on from my recent interview – We got everyone involved in support and made our customer support metrics public – Interview with Kenji Hayward of Front – and is number 529 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Kenji Hayward, the Senior Director of Customer Support at Front, the all-in-one, AI-powered customer service platform built for collaboration. Kenji joins me today to talk about why email isn't dead and why Front takes an email-first approach, getting everyone involved in the support queue, including the CEO, and why they made their customer support metrics public. You can check them out here. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Data ontology and rethinking customer support metrics – Interview with Marcel Barrera of serviceMob Inc – and is number 528 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Marcel Barrera, Chief Strategy Officer at serviceMob Inc, a customer service enterprise technology company specializing in data ontology driven analytics. Marcel joins me today to talk about why the dominant metrics that are currently being used in customer support are broken, “The ‘Hamster Wheel' Dilemma,” why AI and human agents are bound to fail without a cohesive, actionable data model and, finally, why churn is customer service's darkest secret. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The impact of influencer marketing on customer experience – Interview with Daphne Robertson of #paid – and is number 527 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Daphne Robertson, the VP of Customer Experience and Operations at #paid, a creator marketplace where brands and creators connect, collaborate, and measure their creator marketing campaigns. Daphne joins me today to talk about influencer marketing, it's growth and influence on customer experience and engagement, how to get it right and the impact of generative AI tools on this space. This interview follows on from my recent interview – An eight-step discovery process to help master the customer experience – Interview with Edwin Margulies of Nextiva – and is number 526 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Edwin Margulies, Chief Evangelist at Nextiva, a provider of a unified customer experience management platform. Edwin joins me today to talk about his new book, Mastering the Customer Experience, why it was over twenty-five years in the making, the eight-step discovery model at its heart and how it can help companies execute and deliver better experience outcomes. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Pandemic maths and measuring all of marketing – Interview with Gregory Kennedy of Alembic Technologies – and is number 525 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast is with Gregory Kennedy, VP of Marketing at Alembic Technologies, which provides AI-powered marketing analytics for C-suite executives. We talk about how Alembic is applying mathematics and AI, developed for identifying causes, treatments, and mortality during the pandemic, to tracing the results of marketing initiatives across the board, what that means for marketers and how they ended up with a series of backers, that include NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and former 49-ers Quarterback Joe Montana. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Broken funnels, flywheels and human messaging – Key insights from HubSpot executives at GROW Europe 2024 – and is number 524 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 podcast features a series of interviews I conducted with HubSpot executives when I attended HubSpot's recent GROW Europe 2024 event at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. First up is Daphne Costa Lopes, Global Director of Customer Success at HubSpot, who I talk to about why the marketing funnel is broken, why we should be thinking about a flywheel instead and having a dedicated space in their CRM platform for customer success professionals and leaders. Following that chat, I spoke to Crevan O'Malley, VP Corporate Sales, EMEA, at HubSpot, about what stood out for him from the panel that he moderated, how human messaging will be the thing that helps scaling brands cut through the noise and what brands should be doing with all of the time that AI tools can help us save. Clue: it's all about spending more quality time building better connections. Finally, I talked to Lalitha Stables, HubSpot's new UK GM and Country Manager, about HubSpot's secret sauce and what stood out for her at the event. This interview follows on from my recent interview – It's not about the customer's journey with our platform, it's about the customer's journey – Interview with Nadine Macklin of Carto – and is number 523 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. #GROWEurope2024 #hubspotpartner

Today's interview is with Nadine Macklin, who is the Vice President of Customer Success at CARTO, a leading Location Intelligence platform, that enables organizations to use spatial data and analysis for more efficient delivery routes, better behavioural marketing, strategic store placements, and much much more. Nadine joins me today to talk about taking a different approach to customer success, the level of alignment (or lack of alignment) customer success teams often have with other teams like marketing, sales, service, product, support etc, the capability gap within data-driven decision-making and whales! This interview follows on from my recent interview – The third wave of customer support – Interview with Natasha Ratanshi-Stein of Surfboard – and is number 522 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, CEO & Founder of Surfboard, an award-winning workforce management (WFM) software provider. Natasha joins me today to talk about the findings of their recently released 2024 customer service survey: The third wave of customer support, what might be stopping some customer service teams from not investing in AI tools and capabilities, where they are investing, how it is benefitting them and some advice for customer service leaders looking to get the most out of their AI investments. Since this podcast was recorded, Surfboard has been acquired by Dialpad. You can find out more here. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Basketball, false hustle and metrics that matter – Interview with Thomas Laird of Expivia/OttoQA – and is number 521 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Thomas Laird, founder and CEO of both the Expivia Interaction Marketing Group, a USA BPO omnichannel contact center, and OttoQA, a next-generation solution for automating contact center quality assurance scoring. Thomas is also an author and joins me today to talk about his new book: false hustle: Transforming Customer Experience from Illusion to Impact, what ‘false hustle' is, how to spot it, the paradox of efficiency and personalization and, if you identify that you have a culture of false hustle, what you should be doing to transform your brand into one that truly values human conversation, insight and connection. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The five promises of personalization – Interview with Mark Abraham and David Edelman – and is number 520 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Boston Consulting Group Senior Partner Mark F. Abraham and Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer David C. Edelman. They join me today to talk about their new book: PERSONALIZED: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI, defining personalization, the equation P=n×v2, the five promises of personalization, the technology that brands need to embrace to deliver true personalization, the role of AI in all of this, the customer service C-suite loop and some examples of brands who are personalization leaders. This interview follows on from my recent interview – There are major tectonic shifts taking place in the outsourcing space right now – Interview with Craig Crisler of SupportNinja – and is number 519 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Craig Crisler, CEO at SupportNinja, a modern provider of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. Amidst lots of research reporting that despite all the investment in new tech, customer satisfaction is at an all-time low, I talk to Craig about where folks are going wrong with their investments, what's going on in the BPO space, what shifts are happening, what the future of outsourcing looks like, and what are some of the main challenges ahead. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Within five years, contact center agents will become contact center specialists – Interview with Sam Wilson of 8×8 – and is number 518 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Sam Wilson, the CEO of 8x8, a provider of a unified cloud platform for contact center, business phone, video, chat, and APIs that helps companies of any size deliver differentiated customer experiences. I've spoken to Sam a couple of times, and every time, we have great conversations where we rummage around some of the big issues that organizations are facing when it comes to delivering against customer expectations. This one is no different and touches on everything from why brands are not keeping up with customers' expectations to what they should be doing to build loyalty and create lifetime customers. It was great fun so definitely check it out. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Building customer loyalty and a human connection in an increasingly competitive landscape – Interview with Conny Kalcher of Zurich Insurance – and is number 517 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance. Conny joins me today to talk about her ambitions for Zurich to become the “Apple of Insurance”, her guiding philosophy around customer retention and revenue, how they are building customer loyalty and a human connection in an increasingly competitive landscape and some of the big trends and technologies that will drive and shape the future of customer experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – If it matters for your customer, it's important – Interview with Tara DeZao, Simon Thorpe and James Dodkins of Pega – and is number 516 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 revisits and finalises the series of podcast conversations that I had with various folks whilst at Pegaworld earlier this. This episode is a combo affair and features a conversation with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech, at Pega. It is then swiftly followed by a chat that I had with Simon Thorpe, Director - Global Product Marketing - Customer Service & Sales Automation, at Pega, who is then joined partway through the conversation by James Dodkins, a friend of the podcast and CX Evangelist, at Pega. Fun and games! Our conversations cover my guests' highlights from the event, their perspective on the current state of play in marketing, personalization, customer service, customer experience and the impact of Gen AI on all of the above, amongst a bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Print-era thinking is holding personalization efforts back – Interview with Vivek Sharma on Movable Ink – and is number 515 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. Disclaimer: I partnered with Pega to conduct interviews and provide my perspective on PegaWorld iNspire 2024.

Today's interview is with Vivek Sharma, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Movable Ink, which empowers marketers with scalable, omnichannel personalization through data activation and AI decisioning. Vivek joins me today to talk about their recent 2024 Audience of One research report, content creation as a key bottleneck in personalisation efforts, how automation through the increased use of artificial intelligence is permitting marketers to take a more strategy-focused approach, how that is impacting metrics like engagement rates, campaign RoI and improved commercial returns and some of the ethical concerns marketers have with new technology. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Agents view agent-assist technology as more important than a competitive salary – Interview with Gopi Polavarapu at Kore.ai – and is number 514 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Hubspot, who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It's all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today's interview is with Gopi Polavarapu, Chief Solutions Officer at Kore.ai, a market leader in Conversational AI platform space. Gopi joins me today to talk about two reports that they recently published ( the Agent Experience (AX) Benchmark Report 2024 and the Customer Experience (CX) Benchmark Report 2024), why a bot must emulate a company's brand and how to keep this authentic to your brand, the importance of building a multilingual bot and the importance of protecting vulnerable customers as the presence of AI in our day-to-day increases. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Brand Connectome™ and why we are doing marketing all wrong – Interview with Leslie Zane – and is number 513 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Hubspot who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It's all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today's interview is with Leslie Zane, who is the Founder and CEO of Triggers, a brand consulting firm, and an authority on harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth. Leslie joins me today to talk about her new book, THE POWER OF INSTINCT: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life, why she thinks we have entered the age of instinct, being 10-15 years ahead of Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahnemann, the Brand Connectome™ and growth triggers amongst a bunch of other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The customer isn't always right – Interview with Daphne Costa Lopes of Hubspot – and is number 512 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Hubspot who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It's all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today's interview is with Daphne Costa Lopes, Global Director of Customer Success at HubSpot. Daphne joins me today to talk about customer success, why the customer isn't always right, how siloed systems inhibit the delivery of tailored experiences, and what brands should be doing more of to drive customer-led growth. This interview follows on from my recent interview – There needs to be a really tight relationship between business strategy and target state architecture - Interview with Cale Urwin of Bupa – and is number 511 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Hubspot who have built an AI-powered customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service. It's all very cool so do check them out at HubSpot.com.

Today's interview is with Cale Urwin, Director, Data, Digital & Marketing Health Services at Bupa. I caught up with Cale recently at PegaWorld in Las Vegas to talk about what stood for him at the event and how Bupa has evolved its customer engagement story and Customer Decision Hub capabilities in Australia from outbound to digital management and surprise & delight strategies. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The ongoing decline of brand loyalty, what's driving it and what should be done about it – Interview with Simon Morris of ServiceNow – and is number 510 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. Disclaimer: I partnered with Pega to conduct interviews and provide my perspective on PegaWorld iNspire 2024.

Today's interview is with Simon Morris, the Area Vice President of Solution Consulting at ServiceNow. Simon joins me today to talk about ServiceNow's new Consumer Voice Report 2024, the ongoing decline of brand loyalty, what's driving it, why “The future of customer experience is high-tech meets high-touch” and some of the biggest lessons coming out of the report. This interview follows on from my recent interview – We've only just scratched the surface of artificial intelligence – Interview with Peter van der Putten of Pega – and is number 509 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Dr Peter van der Putten, who is Director of the AI Lab at Pega and assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in The Netherlands. I caught up with Peter at the recent PegaWorld to talk about his highlights from the event, how to think about AI using a left/right brain thinking metaphor and what's coming next in the enterprise AI space. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Listening and taking action at scale – Interview with Ron Secrist of Citi and Christina Sansone of Dish – and is number 508 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 a combo podcast in which I interview (separately) Ron Secrist, Managing Director, Head of Client Experience at Citi, and Christina Sansone, Vice President of CX Transformation at Dish. I met both of them when I attended Qualtrics' X4 Summit in Salt Lake City last month and talked to them about their Qualtrics journey, what they are doing with AI and what listening and taking action at scale means for them. This interview follows on from my recent interview – How to get 2.7mln ‘Mom & Pop' stores to adopt a new distributive trade platform – Interview with Prashaant Huria of Unilever – and is number 507 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Prashaant Huria, who is the Chief Technology Officer for Unilever's Digital Distributive Trade business. Prashaant and I connected after he spoke at Adobe's Global Summit in Las Vegas back in late March. We talked about how they got 2.7mln ‘Mom & Pop' stores to adopt a new distributive trade platform that Prashaant and his team at Unilever have developed, what it can do and what impact it has had on the retailers as well as what sort of changes Unilever has had to go through to bring this to life and make it a success. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lessons learnt from testing Copilot for service across tens of thousands of service engineers – Interview with Jeff Comstock of Microsoft – and is number 506 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Jeff Comstock, CVP of Dynamics 365 Customer Service at Microsoft. Jeff joins me today to talk about Co-Pilot for Service, the impact it is having on the agent experience and also customer/business outcomes, their experience trialling it extensively with their own customer service engineers, how their early adopter clients are leveraging Co-Pilot in Service, what they have done, the outcomes they achieved, how long it took them to achieve those outcomes and, finally, what are the big challenges that organisations need to tackle in order to fully realise the potential of leveraging Generative AI in customer service and experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Personalisation and the pink elephant in the room – Interview with Emma Springham of TSB – and is number 505 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's interview is with Emma Springham, Chief Marketing Officer at TSB, a British retail and commercial bank. I met Emma at Adobe's Global Summit in Las Vegas after she spoke on the Main Stage. Emma and I talk about the importance of your personal brand in marketing and CX leadership, the pink elephant in the room, what personalisation means for TSB, what they have done to deliver that, what impact it has had, and the importance of speaking the language of your CFO. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Making in-store grocery shopping fun and going viral on TikTok – Interview with David McIntosh of Instacart – and is number 504 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's interview is with David McIntosh, who is VP and GM of Connected Stores at Instacart. David joins me today to talk about innovation in the retail space, why and how they are reaching into the physical retail domain, what they are up to, the benefits for both the customer and business and a look into the future of retail. This interview follows on from my recent interview – If you aren't fixing the bigger picture, then you are just putting a band-aid on the problem – Interview with Zig Serafin of Qualtrics – and is number 503 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's interview is with Zig Serafin, CEO at Qualtrics, the leading Experience Management software provider. I spoke to Zig at Qualtrics' recent X4 event in Salt Lake City. We talked about Qualtrics' vision, the highlights from the event, the XM Operating system, Qualtrics AI and the hundred different AI models that they have built, how they are empowering 43 out of 50 of the world's largest brands to listen and then take action at scale and in real-time and the upcoming Qualtrics X4 EMEA event in London on June 6th. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The Generative AI landscape: The good, the bad and the boring – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 502 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: Today's episode is sponsored by Qualtrics, ahead of the annual gathering of experience leaders at Qualtrics X4 in London on June 6th. There you can hear about some of the best customer experience programmes from industry leaders and companies including Belron, Allianz and Adidas. You can register now at the Qualtrics website.

Today's interview is with Don Schuerman, the CTO and Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing at Pegasystems. Don joins me today to talk about the upcoming PegaWorld iNspire 2024 (PegaWorld is taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from June 9th to the 11th and there is a money back guarantee!), what he's most looking forward to at the event, the good and bad about the tech offerings out there in the market right now, and why it's the “boring” use of AI that really will help enterprises work smarter and harder amongst other things. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Episode 500: Some reflections on the last 13 years – and is number 501 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

In today's episode of the Punk CX podcast, there is no interview. Why? Because today, I am celebrating the 500th edition of the podcast! Woop! Woop! Now, I thought long and hard about how to commemorate the occasion and how I might be able to use an interview format to do so. I did toy with the idea of having someone interview me but then didn't get myself organised enough to arrange that. So, you get me …… doing something new…..a monologue, if you like, where I share a few thoughts about my podcasting journey….so far. So, dive in, and I hope you enjoy some of my reflections and highlights from the last 13 years and 500 episodes. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership, storytelling and why it is an art and it needs to be taught – Interview with Gareth Higgins – and is number 500 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Gareth Higgins, who writes and speaks about the power of storytelling to shape our lives and world, peace and justice, and how to take life seriously without believing your own propaganda. Gareth joins me today to talk about what makes a good story, whether good/effective storytelling be learnt, how people can start a journey towards being a better storyteller, what they should do to get started, and a simple but profound model for anyone who wants to build communities that promise mutual support, challenge, inspiration, protection and service to the common good. This interview follows on from my recent interview – You don't get promoted for teaching people how to wash their hands – Interview with James Lawther – and is number 499 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 James Lawther, Director at Squawk Point Consulting and Author of ‘Managed by Morons: The Path to a Thriving Organisation'. James joins me today to talk about his new book, why so many organisations are mediocre, what we should be thinking about when it comes to measuring performance, a story about a Unilever soap factory, the signs of a poor culture and what we should doing to not become one of ‘those' managers or leaders. This interview follows on from my recent interview – What happens when you give data back to people? – Interview with Jamie Smith of Customer Futures – and is number 498 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Jamie Smith, who is the Founder and CEO of Customer Futures Ltd, an advisory firm helping businesses seize the opportunity around disruptive and customer-empowering digital propositions, and author of the weekly Customer Futures Newsletter. Jamie joins me today to talk about CustomerTech tools, EmpowermentTech, the emerging Customer Stack, what this all means, the implications of all this for personalisation and privacy and what customer engagement in the near future could look like. This interview follows on from my recent interview – A look inside a punk-inspired contact center – Interview with David Powers – and is number 497 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 David Powers, who is an author, podcast host, Chief Experience Officer at Rooter Hero Plumbing & Air and a true punk. David joins me today to talk about the need for taking a more punk approach to customer experience and the contact center, what that means in practical terms, some of the big changes he's seen in the contact center space over the last 23 years as well as some of the biggest challenges coming down the pipe and, finally, what it means to create a tribe and/or a scene in your contact center. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The CX value model and linking experience to business outcomes – Interview with Michael Hinshaw of McorpCX – and is number 496 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who 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 Michael Hinshaw, the founder and president of customer experience consultancy McorpCX. Michael joins me today to talk about the CX value model and why we should be linking experience to business outcomes, some key indicators of a successful customer-centric transformation, why your company might need an experience operating system (the XOS), what it is and what are the benefits. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Leadership lessons from the winner of the 2023 CX Leader of the Year – Interview with Roxie Strohmenger of UKG – and is number 495 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.