CX Network

The Global Marketing Lead for CX at Oracle, Nate Skinner joins us and takes us through Marketing Mistakes to Avoid. Along the way, he also sets a path for success all while sharing use cases from his impressive career with some of the best companies in big tech.

Elan Frank from Slack joins us and shares that the tool began life as a side project of another initiative. It's grown to be a true alternative to email. Channel based messaging is built for the future of work and as we discuss, the future of work is here, now.

Karen Tilstra is the co-founder of the Florida Hospital Innovation Lab. In this conversation, Karen emphasizes the intent of the Innovation Lab, which, not surprisingly, is innovation. However, the process to innovation is often overlooked. Karen describes it as a “multifaceted journey of learning, of discovery, of openness.” In other words, innovation isn’t instantaneous, nor does it happen in a silo. When a brand thinks they know what’s best for their customers—instead of interacting with those customers—it’s often the beginning of the end. Karen details Sears’ downward spiral as an example. Next, Karen questions the value of the typical enterprise growth mentality. Is “grow or die” a myth or a reality? True, meaningful innovation involves the application of certain soft skills that aren’t immediately apparent. Karen drives their importance home in this insightful, outside-of-the-box conversation.

Fred Reichheld joins us again, this time to discuss employee engagement. The business benefit to ensuring a positive employee experience is because that translates to a positive customer experience. As Fred discussed last time, a good customer experience means an increase in profit. However, Fred is careful to clearly define what make a good employee experience. Is it lots of vacation time, the ability to shirk difficult customers, and taking on only the best shifts? Of course not, as this would lead to a bad customer experience. Fred instead focuses on “helping your employees lead great lives of meaningful service.” Technology is used as a tool to automate unfulfilling tasks that humans used to be responsible for. In turn, human talent is freed up to inform, innovate, and provide meaningful change to the customer experience. Finally, Fred makes suggestions on to achieve such a lofty goal. Ultimately, Fred says, “I think what inspires people to do their best is when they feel like they are being listened to, they have a voice, and that the team is consistently being put in a position where they can enrich the lives of customers and see that as the core purpose in their work.”

Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter System (NPS), joins us to discuss the task of building a customer-centric culture. Companies that do the best at enriching the lives of their customers are growing two-and-a-half times faster than their competition. Today, word of mouth and truth spreads like wildfire. The modern enterprise can no longer depend on clever advertising campaigns to mask their shortcomings. Building a customer-first culture isn’t always easy, though. Legacy companies have to fight through their capitalistic pasts. Metrics need to change. Shareholders must get on board with the new nature of business. The Net Promoter Score is successful because it provides data that proves the effectiveness of customer-centricity to the bottom line. It is a modern-day metric that replaces the ones that no longer serve today’s landscape. Fred offers both suggestions and examples on how to successfully pivot to a customer-centric business model during this insightful conversation.

McDonald’s senior director of innovation, Deena John, joins us to talk about digital transformation. While definitions vary, Deena describes digital transformation as “transforming through integration of technology” with the goal of generating maximum value for the customer. End-to-end disruption means looking into the future and creating a transformation road map that leads to a new operating model. Deena discusses the differences and similarities between agile and lean, and the iterative process that makes scaling sustainable. Deena frames her key points with specific examples. Next, she asks and answers the question, “In an innovation culture what’s the importance of failing fast?” Ultimately, this insightful conversation with Deena focuses on the future of the enterprise and what needs to happen now to ensure corporations can keep up with the ever-changing landscape that technology brings to business.

Todd Gillam joined Comcast a decade ago—when the word “Comcast” was met with severe negativity. During the first part of our conversation with Todd, he laments over those dark days and discusses the progress they made the first five years after he was hired. They cleaned up their image by addressing common complaints such as hold times and technician effectiveness. Stage two involved systematically identifying and fixing a broader range of customer pain points by utilizing NPS surveys. By combining the operation end of things with the product, Comcast is offering a single digital interface solution across its offerings. Todd gives a few clever examples of what this entails. Finally, Todd asks and answers three important questions: How does Comcast build something and make it useful to the customer? How do you make that work with the rest of the company? And finally, how does Comcast achieve a higher state of existence with respect to customer experiences that feel like a seamless part of the product?

Uzair Rashid, with CVS Healthcare, explains the importance of structuring innovation. Uzair brings a unique perspective to CVS, a Fortune 10 healthcare innovations company, because prior to CVS, he spent many years as a consultant. He understands how to level set and create meaningful change in legacy companies. When it comes to healthcare disruption, Uzair puts it this way: “Innovation at the speed of regulation.” Uzair’s goal is to seek out key technology enablers that create new patient experiences, drive down cost, and take the challenge of resource contention out of the game. By leveraging technology in conjunction with traditional medical resources, the healthcare system can clean up the funnel of patients who are better served with these new innovations. First, as the patient must take priority, it is imperative we understand the narrative of what they want. Then, we can power that with data and connected devices. The more proactive and preventative healthcare becomes, the healthier people become, the better healthcare becomes. Uzair summarizes the process beautifully with this simple phrase. “[With technology], you think about routing people appropriately to care.”

The entertaining Genworth Financial team joins us from OPEX Week 2020 to tell us their enterprise’s transformation story—or journey, more accurately. Kathleen starts off by explaining her view of the company 15 years ago: “It was a very siloed organization. It was very much command and control; very hierarchical. We were focused very much on our processes, like manufacturing, because we came from GE.” Sometimes, as Martijn is quick to interject, they were focusing on the wrong processes. Their new goal was to focus on the customer and increase associate empathy. The leadership team achieved this with some creative physical props that mimic certain hardships their clients experience. However, leading by fear negatively impacts the service a customer receives as well, so Genworth devised a new workforce strategy. “If you really truly believe that the customer is the most important person--because he or she pays your salary--then the front line employees are the most important people, and therefore, your team leaders are the most important leaders. Most people leave their leader. They don't leave the organization.” The team details how they achieved this monumental task.

James Dodkins, Customer Experience Expert and heavy metal enthusiast, discusses the parallels between the two. First, he touches on the cyclical nature of refining a product to please its audience. Whether it’s music or tech, improving upon the output based on feedback about the original product moves the needle forward. At the same time, innovation flourishes in a space void of customer input. The secret to balancing these two conflicting strategies is interpreting feedback to anticipate an unarticulated need. James then weighs the pros and cons of niching down and gaining a hardcore audience or going broad and creating a product that is widely accepted but lackluster, somehow tying in a relevant Nickleback reference. Ultimately, James boils it down to this: “We need to move away from this Industrial Age process standardization mindset and towards a 21st Century customer experience, personalization mindset. Embrace that variation. Understand that people are all different. They have different outcomes, different needs. Make sure that our companies are aligned towards the delivery of those things. Boom.”

Roland Haefs, with Henkel, discusses enterprise evolution and the shift from having purely transactional relationships to becoming a true business solutions provider. It takes strong leadership and an entrepreneurial spirit to pull off such a transformation, which Roland details. In order to demonstrate his point, Roland lays out Henkel’s approach to the shared services process of master data management. Next, the conversation turns to RPA and AI more specifically, including its role in shared services and how to make sure it is being deployed effectively. Further, Roland discusses Henkel’s four business priorities: fund growth, drive growth, excel at digitalization, and increase agility.

Rida Moustafa is an experienced data scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the retail industry. Rida covers a lot of ground in this concise, informative conversation. He shares his story with us, beginning in 1995 with the big data mining movement. Walking us through the way data mining has evolved, Rida hits on neural networks, deep learning, and expert systems. Today, however, AI technology has evolved enough to render some of these old processes moot. Of course, new obstacles present themselves, such as AI’s black box and its influence over regulatory decisions and prediction models. The last half of the conversation is reserved for Rida’s involvement with Walmart and the work he is doing with AI to automate processes and generally improve Walmart’s workflow and profits.

Dr. Timothy Renick with Georgia State joins us to talk about his implementation of predictive analytics within the university, including an AI enhanced chatbot. Since the deployment of these technologies, Georgia State is graduating 3,000 more students a year than it did seven years ago. Dr. Renick explains the university’s approach to finding solutions for problems over innovation for innovation’s sake. With a change in demographics, including a larger low-income population, the university felt it necessary to increase access to support and identify issues before students found themselves in dire straits. Dr. Renick discusses the process of finding a vendor to help them identify and build the perfect solution. It’s working, as shown by the examples he discusses during the rest of the conversation.

Max Just is accompanied by a special guest on this episode of Future of Work. Julie Seitz is an expert on all things workspace, which makes her the perfect partner for the topic of—you guessed it—the future of workspaces. While she notes that an enterprise can’t necessarily futureproof themselves in this regard, she encourages them to get out of their insular spaces for the sake of spotting trends in how people are working in universities, airports, etc. Flexibility and simplicity in a workspace make more practical investments than technological ones that will become outdated. Julie also reflects on the evolution of the public school classroom and how examining that process helps illustrate how different generations work differently. Max jumps in with the ah-hah moments he had while working with Julie, including the importance of providing collaborative workspaces for collaborative work. Ultimately, Max and Julie agree: workspaces matter.

Juan Araya discusses structuring for scale from the eyes of the disruptor and disruptee—both of which Juan knows well. Juan reminds us that before making any actionable change, an end goal must be set. Next, Juan discusses the role speed plays in structuring for scale. Some industries need to move faster than others, which affects their decision making. In the case of Uber, Juan understood that transformative technology supported the speed of change Uber strived for, even more than the other scaling components: people and process. On the flipside, scaling legacy organizations quickly and through technology-first means isn’t conducive to success. His new role with Stryker moves slower and with an enterprise-wide intention different than Uber’s, which he details well. Finally, Juan paints a metaphor between scaling and art.

Robert Welborn discusses five common myths surrounding autonomous vehicles in this discussion. He starts with three TV shows that have skewed perception around AVs. Next, he sets expectations around the maturity model of AVs by describing the stages as childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Today’s data presents itself in three-dimensional forms, and Robert gives time to the struggles and opportunities within this new model of data. It is the engineers behind AVs who are tasked with making things work, and Robert spends some time pulling back the curtain on their trials and tribulations. Finally, Robert recognizes that the elasticity and compatibility of all of the elements at play in autonomous vehicles have a tendency to be overestimated. 

Molecule is an open market based platform that incentivizes the development and co-creation of pharmaceutical IP. Molecule’s CEO, Devon Krantz, discusses the dire state of pharmacological R&D and its cost—literally and figuratively—to patients. Molecule, on the other hand, encourages a patient-centric approach to pharma. How? Devon puts it this way: “We are focusing more on bio-techs, on smaller research labs, on academia. [What we] want to incentivize is for researchers, scientists, and academics to take their IP, and maybe it's in an underfunded area, and put it onto the Blockchain, into an open market, which then enables other people to buy into the market and freely grow that market. We’re democratizing access to cures.” Devon elaborates on the innovative and complex ‘why & how’ during the rest of the conversation.

Sarah Aerni is a data scientist Salesforce. In this conversation, Sarah leads off by talking about what that even means. First, she gives a brief history of the expectation in customer experience and how it’s evolved with the introduction of AI. Then she describes her role in this way: “My role is to lead a team of really brilliant individuals that are focused on how to make it possible for Salesforce customers to build models, add predictions and intelligence without building out an entire data science team.” Sarah comes from a deep science background, having spent six years becoming the expert on automated labeling of C. elegans—a worm cell. How does that relate to forward-facing data science on modern platforms? Building a model is building a model, as Sarah explains. While she shirks the term “unicorn,” it is easy to understand why she’s been described that way listening to this episode.

Helenio Gilabert is the senior director for digital transformation with Schneider Electric. Right out of the gate, Helenio stresses that word “transformation” over “digital.” While technology is the enabler, meaningful implementation can’t happen without a process and cultural change. This process must include all enterprise verticals and every individual within an organization. As Helenio puts it, “You have to offer [employees] a clear view of the path that they can take as an individual to contribute to the organization. And that will require some investment from companies in training and professional development.” Lastly, Helenio defines edge solutions as a hybrid approach to cloud and AI. After all, data is only as good as what we do with it.

The key to a smooth transition into the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the ability to seamlessly upskill and reskill the workforce. Cindy Gallagher shares with us the who, what, when, where, why, and how to get it done. She specifically focuses on the why, such as delivering the right product or service to all of our consumers and stakeholders; and the how. Traditional methods of reskilling, such as training programs and schooling, aren’t enough. Engaging the workforce in ongoing training and opening up new opportunities that leverage that learning ensures companywide growth. The leadership team must facilitate this new mindset in order for it to be successful.  Gallagher closes with a soccer metaphor—she was once a goaltender—and offers additional tips on how to achieve that elusive “how.”

Deepak takes us through structured data: what it is, when we need it, and when we don’t. He talks about how to discover the history of structured data at your enterprise and what to do with it. Data comes flooding in in mass quantities and various forms. Is it worth structuring that data? Will it fit into our old ideas of “structure?” Next, Deepak talks about unpacking the value of structured data and how to get the most out of it. He suggests asking the right questions before preparing reports from structured data to eliminate time- and resource-waste. Finally, Deepak suggests identifying “master data” in order to streamline the data processing process.

Max Just talks us through digital environments in this installation of Future of Work. Max opens by discussing the importance of improving the employee experience with a focus on people “inside the tent.” HR and procurement services aren’t enough to satisfy today’s employee. Instead, employees expect a seamless digital experience more on par to the one they experience in their day-to-day dealings. If a company feels archaic to an employee, they are less likely to feel like they belong. Max offers tips on how to adapt to the future employee, such as investing in automation. Finally, Max discusses two future trends he is noticing: internal digital assistants and collaboration tools.

In this episode, Ty Grandison takes some time to step back from this flawed reality we live in and discusses some of the unintended consequences of tech in the past 30 years. First, Ty gets real about the power of AI—or lack thereof—and its tendency to be overhyped. He then lays out the three steps that need to take place before responsible change can happen. Ty speaks candidly about bias in AI, saying, “There are multiple different chasms that are actually being built in the AI machine learning spaces that we need to think really deeply about and try to address.” He then offers ethical solutions that will also appease shareholders.

Rohit Amberker opens this episode of Pace of Change with a clear disclaimer: he is no expert on this week’s topic. However, he does have some experience and insights on the Productivity Paradox. Rohit opens by outlining the definition and history of the Productivity Paradox. Then he moves on to the meat of the topic. Ultimately, the goal of technology is to create customer-centric value from something that doesn’t currently exist. As technology’s capabilities exponentially expand, the Productivity Paradox gap is shortening. Rohit looks to the past to shape the future by exemplifying Facebook and Amazon and examines the current “gap” in AI and blockchain.

The marketplace for third-party AI vendors is huge, but what is the right solution for your enterprise? Anshuman Das, the director of robotics and testing at Warner Bros., discusses the compay’s implementation of some of his favorite tools and the changes they’ve brought. From the OCR reader Textract to UiPath for RPA, Das lets us in on a little secret about intelligent automation. “RPA is the way to go, and the best part of RPA is it can very well go hand in hand with any digital transformation process. Whether you're going to cloud or you're going into IOT or you're going to any of the areas of digital transformation, it is that catalyst which can achieve your digital transformation journey much faster in a much better way.”

Brian Mikkelsen, the CEO of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, talks with us during the Intelligent Automation Nordics in Copenhagen. He discusses the launch of the Digital Growth Strategy for Denmark and how it has kept Denmark’s economy competitive. Training the workforce of tomorrow through a focus on STEM education affords Denmark the opportunity to grow its economy locally. Further, the government has established a digital hub, where small companies can have knowledge about AI, big data, and other new tech for free. Brian concludes the discussion with his thoughts on wealth disparity in Denmark—or lack thereof—and its high quality of living.

Alexander Hubel joins us again to discuss his RPA and automation journey with Ericsson. He fills us in the last two years and their evolution toward a center of excellence. Change management, communications, and automation communities are focusing their efforts on automation and business adoption. Alexander describes the difference between tribes and communities within the organization and what their roles entail. As far as machine learning is concerned, Alexander says, “I think from an Ericsson perspective, we’re quite far ahead, and I think that relates to us being a tech company.” This hasn’t come without its challenges, though, which Alexander also delves into.

Jack Cheng covered a lot of ground in this interview. He described NIO, the company he co-founded, as “an EV provider, a mobility company, but [ultimately a] user enterprise engaged with the use of directory.” From swappable batteries to vehicle “living rooms,” Cheng takes a visionary approach to everything he does. His views on globalism are just as unique. He discussed with us the dangers of indoctrination and group think. He gave us his optimistic insight on the tension between China and the U.S. He even shared some ideas on how we can bridge the generation gap at a fundamental level.

Pfizer’s Anil Bhavnani discusses the future benefits of digital transformation and intelligent automation. Within the medical and pharmaceutical industry, there are a lot of moving parts and little room for error. Technology and automation is saving lives through the accuracy and timesaving processes it deploys. Bhavnadi walks us through what has changed throughout his career, and what he believes the future holds. “At one point in time, we were just kind of doing a very rule-set based kind of process. And here we are changing the entire process. We are automating it. So obviously a lot of people get impacted. You have to work with multiple stakeholders to be able to manage that change. I think that's where the challenge is.”

Deepak Subarao joins us and shares the value of working smart and not hard: "If it doesn't add value to the business and if you don't get paid more, really there's no value by working more. So how can you get the same job done in eight hours, is it possible? Let's see now."

In this episode, Vartul Mittal discusses his RP agenda across industries and geographies. He also shares with us his favorite third-party software and other tips and tricks to convert big data into something usable. 

Charelle Wigley is the Global Head of Employee Health and Wellbeing at Bupa, a global healthcare company with 80,000 employees. Bupa’s stated purpose is to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives, starting with and including their own employees. This is inspiring to Charelle: she feels privileged to be able to make a meaningful and tangible difference in people’s experience at work. She chats with host Kevin Monroe about how wellbeing is linked with employee experience.  

Steve Kato-Spyrou is the UX manager at John Lewis. He joins us at the Omnichannel Forum to discuss organizational change. Today’s consumer involves so many touchpoints it takes a corporation a collaborative way of thinking to reach them in an effective way. In order to get everyone on board from the top down, Steve creates workshops and provides us with some specific examples. “Now they've got to work together on these ideas that have come up. And that's going to be the next step: how we truly get away from the business functions, silos, buying, merchandising, trade, product, design, creative, slam them all together into a cross-functional team.”

Annie Forsmark is one of the presenters at the Employee Experience Forum in September. She started her career 20 years ago as a Health and Wellness Consultant, and now runs her own company in Sweden. She trains organizations, leaders, and employees to perform sustainably at work over time by making and acting on good decisions.  Her work is focused on training leaders to lead sustainably, to take care of themselves and their resilience, and on helping employees to find their own resilience in their work life.  

Edda Blumenstein is a Ph.D. researcher at Leeds University. In this episode, she discusses her efforts to “…identify how honest retailers are supposed to survive in this dynamic environment that is constantly changing at a speed never seen before. I'm looking at how they can actually develop capabilities to do that.” Edda zeroes in on big data’s role in the transformational process. Today’s buyers expect an experience and a relationship from the brands they choose to do business with. Edda explains why businesses need to implement educated decision making in order to stay competitive prepare for an unpredictable future.

Kevin Monroe welcomes Jo Bartnicke, Global Change Manager at Unilever, to the Employee Experience Express conversations. Jo is from South Africa and spent much of her career at Unilever working across Africa. When it comes to employee experience, she is passionate about creating a simpler and better life for all Unilever employees: the woman picking tea on their plantations, the permanent workers in their offices around the globe, as well as their contractors and freelancers.  

In this podcast special, Seth leads an Omnichannel Forum Panel discussion touching on topics such as CX, IoT, GDPR, subscription services, and the future of business. One thing the panelists agree on is the importance of building a customer-centric model even throughout the digitization process. Seth asks each panelist, “What do I do right now to transform into the future IoT organization that I need to be?” Each panelist answers with their own unique insight. Finally, the panelists take questions from the audience before wrapping up.

Claude Silver is the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, a global digital creative agency.  Her role, as she sees it, is to help employees thrive by spreading empathy, self-awareness, and EQ. She chats with host Kevin Monroe about common themes and challenges in employee experience around the world, and how to effect culture change in an organization.   

Chanice Henry has been in the B2B news world for over six years. Currently, she is the CX Network editor. We asked her what is keeping CX professionals up at night, and Henry touches on financial return, and building a customer-centric—not business-centric—corporate culture. Henry encourages the utilization of tools like NPS and other metrics to meet goals and gets granular with a specific case study. Her latest report is on the digital experience. In her words, “This report just kind of gives a bit of a benchmark for how CX practitioners are going about defining the digital experience of their customers, looking at it internally.”

Bruce Daisley is one of the presenters at this year’s Employee Experience forum. Bruce is VP for Twitter in Europe, Middle East and Asia, author of The Joy of Work, and host of the Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat Podcast. He chats with host Kevin Monroe about the reality of burnout at work, and how to work more sustainably.

Siemens’ Alexander Thielmann discusses the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its effect on the corporate landscape. The transformation Siemens has embarked on, aptly named Vision 2020 Plus, is a cultural one as much as it is a technology one. With a company as large as Siemens, Thielmann describes this sea change as navigating a fleet of ships. “...with this new change of these fleet of ships, the expectation of the board is also that the ships, or the companies, make more profit... Which also means now they are looking a bit more outside the box.”

Mr. Employee Experience Ben Whittier is our first guest on the Employee Experience Express Podcast. The Employee Experience Express Podcast is a mini-series provided by CX Network. Ben is the chair for the upcoming Employee Experience forum. He and Kevin Monroe- a moderator at the event- and host of the Higher Purpose Podcast talk about the changes that have happened in the world of employee experience. 

Caroline Basyn joins us and discusses the difficulty of implementing big changes in a rapidly evolving technological world: “The request of the top management in the company is to bet on a couple of big hawks, we call them. So, what are going to be the big hawks that really will make a difference in the next few years for the company? We would like to look longer term, but the world is evolving so fast, that anything you do on the longer term, you will change five times before you get there. So, we'll stick to the next few years to start with.”

Fernando Nunes, senior process automation architect at Man Energy solutions, discusses his unique approach to IT and business. By leveraging RPA, AI, and BPA tools, Nunes works to empower the business line and decrease IT bottlenecks through process automation. He further explains the Center of Excellence concept using an apt airport metaphor. “Our philosophy was always about enabling our line of business to do large things themselves, and we of course, would have to provide an architecture, a governance, an infrastructure, and we see it more like we provide the airport. Then the line of business will make the flights; the planes to fly.”

Andrew Parris,Director Of Performance Improvement at CRH, focuses his efforts on improving corporate functions across the board, including finance, IT, procurement, and HR. How does he do it? Data-backed benchmarking, implementation planning, and change management. Additionally, intelligent automation is taking a front seat. “We're starting to bring some AI into play. Our approach has always been, it's not just about the bot, it's about the right solution for the right problem.”

Manish Jain joins us and shares information on RBCs new Silent Listener Chat Bot: "We are building a silent listener chat bot, which will listen to the conversation when an agent and a client are having those discussions. While those discussions are happening, the chat bot or the silent listener is going to understand the intent of the conversation, what the client is talking about, getting the client, IDs. In the meanwhile while the discussion is happening in goes in the background, brings in all policies and procedures, client, all information ready on the agent's screen. Agent without putting the client on hold is having a continuous discussion"

Manny Korakis joins us and shares the importance of potentially applying different strategies to different companies: "I've learned over the course of this journey that every company is in a different spot in their own journey, and I have to react to that. What's important in one organization at any given point in time, isn't necessarily a top priority in another company at their point in time."

Deborah kops joins us and shares her views on GBS: "It's a dynamic business model. It is not one rigid business model. To be very honest, to some extent we've promulgated that through the consultancy class in this industry, some of those guys are some of my best friends. But a business services platform is whatever you can do at any given time, given your leadership, given a range of external and internal factors. So GBS as a concept I don't buy."

Rob Phillips joins us and shares how venturing into the unknown is crucial to problem solving: "I think there's an overall bias that people have towards the unknown, right? They worry and they discount or they ... There's a risk factor of the unknown. So, the more that somebody can be involved in identifying what the problem is, they're coming to the table saying, "Hey, I know there's something here that needs to get fixed." Then we can work together with them to try, and propose solutions. "

Graham Russell joins us and shares the importance of understanding and implementing Data: "For those of us who have implemented ERPs for 20 years and more, data was usually the number one issue in doing that because as you move from one system to another, one of the first things you had to do was get the data clean, get the data reconciled, make sure there was integrity and so on. It's not new. I think people that don't anticipate it are perhaps not thinking of other projects."