Podcasts about CX

On this week's episode, we talked to Michael Keplinger about a topic we don't normally get to explore - consumer packaged goods. Which is crazy, because after our conversation, it's hard to imagine an industry that's more about understanding customers, inside and out.

Welcome to Press 1 For Nick Throwback Episode! In these episodes, we reintroduce you to some of our most popular episodes. ***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/  BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

University of Wyoming debater and Policy Debate enthusiast talks about Policy Novice Case Areas and CX Resources on this episode of Rock On! Debate.  E.C. has been involved in CX for many years and is studying Political Science with a Minor in French at UW. Check out the website post for additional resources:https://www.oneclapspeechanddebate.com/post/rock-on-debate-2021-2022-policy-novice-case-areas-w--uw-debater-e-c-powersIf you have any ideas or requests for topics to explore on the One Clap Podcast, shoot Lyle an email at lylewiley@gmail.com or check out our blog and social media here:One Clap Website: www.oneclapspeechanddebate.comFacebook: @oneclappodcastInstagram: @one_clap_podcastThe One Clap December Newsletter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1naSnRR8eHDRtROvjJuDsc5yKubM_DHxLeDQplMVwXw8/editSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/oneclapspeechanddebate)

Videos https://brandnewtube.com/watch/sonia-elijah-interviews-efrat-fenigson-from-israel_Ws1DDYkiqAOXdis.html     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWN2PV4v0lk&t=8s   Researchers find new link between a disrupted body clock and inflammatory diseases RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, November 25, 2021 New research from RCSI has demonstrated the significant role that an irregular body clock plays in driving inflammation in the body's immune cells, with implications for the most serious and prevalent diseases in humans. The circadian body clock generates 24-hour rhythms that keep humans healthy and in time with the day/night cycle. This includes regulating the rhythm of the body's own (innate) immune cells called macrophages. When these cell rhythms are disrupted (due to things like erratic eating/sleeping patterns or shift work), the cells produce molecules which drive inflammation. This can lead to chronic inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, obesity, arthritis, diabetes and cancer, and also impact our ability to fight infection. (NEXT) Social media tied to higher risk of depression Massachusetts General Hospital, November 23, 2021 The latest in a spate of studies investigating links between use of social media and depression suggests the two go hand in hand. The new study follows a yearlong look at social media use and onset of depression among nearly 5,400 adults. None reported even mild depression at the start. But in multiple surveys over 12 months, depression status had worsened in some respondents, the study found. The risk rose with use of three hugely popular social media sites: Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok. None showed any signs of depression at the first survey. But after completing at least one similar follow-up, nearly 9% showed a "significant" increase in scores for depression risk. (NEXT) Havacado or two. Study finds eating lots of the fruit has public health import Randomized controlled trial found that families with high avocado consumption self-reported reduced caloric intake and an overall healthier diet University of California at San Diego, November 29, 2021 In a novel study, researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing the potential health effects between families that consumed a low allotment of avocados (three per week) and families that consumed a high allotment (14 per week) over six months. They found that the high avocado allotment families self-reported lower caloric consumption, reducing their intake of other foods, including dairy, meats and refined grains and their associated negative nutrients, such as saturated fat and sodium. (NEXT) Crabapple supplements could help cut cholesterol, China study discovers Crabapple extract has been show to lower cholesterol in obese mice which were fed a high-fat diet, researchers in China have revealed. Beijing and Shanghai universities, November 30, 2021 The study points out that statins are the major therapy for hypercholesterolaemia and for the prevention of atherosclerosis. However, there is some evidence to suggest that they may increase the risk of diabetes, muscle pain, liver damage and cause other side effects. Crabapple has long been used for the treatment of diarrhoea, indigestion and other digestive diseases in traditional Chinese medicine, and its antioxidant benefits have frequently been studied. (NEXT) Aerobic exercise preserves brain volume and improves cognitive function Wake Forest School of Medicine, November 30, 2021 Using a new MRI technique, researchers found that adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who exercised four times a week over a six-month period experienced an increase in brain volume in specific, or local, areas of the brain, but adults who participated in aerobic exercise experienced greater gains than those who just stretched. (NEXT) Are you a morning or an evening person? It might be due to your gut bacteria University of Haifa (Israel), November 22, 2021 A new study by the University of Haifa reveals that certain gut bacteria differ between morning and evening people. It is already known that there are some genetic differences between larks and owls, but research in fruit flies in our laboratory inspired us to test the impact of gut bacteria on human chronotypes," says Prof. Eran Tauber. Fecal samples were collected from 91 individuals in order to extract and sequence the bacterial DNA. Analysis of the DNA sequences from each sample allowed identification of all gut bacterial species and quantify their abundance. The chronotype of the participants was determined based on their self-reported sleep times during the weekend (waking up without an alarm clock). (OTHER NEXT) Sonia Elijah interviews Efrat Fenigson from Israel Efrat Fenigson, a chief marketing officer and human rights activist from Tel Aviv, Israel, candidly speaks to Sonia about how 'Covid' has been marketed, as if it were a brand, by world governments and the mainstream media. She talks about the general protest movement in Israel and how it evolved from anti-corruption to anti-lockdown/green-pass demonstrations. She gives insight into the psychological state of fear that many Israelis are accustomed to living under making them compliant in obeying the draconian Covid rules and to not question the mass vaccine rollout. (NEXT) Foreclosure Looms for Homeowners Who Thought They'd Won, Thanks to Top New York Court Ruling Sam Mellings The City and New York Focus, November 30, 2021 Christine Fife was “speechless with joy” when she won her foreclosure case in January 2020, she recalled, believing her decade under threat of foreclosure in her Upper West Side condo was finally over. Now, though, Fife is once again facing the seizure of the apartment she has owned since 1990. In February 2021, New York's top court issued a decision that eliminated a path that New York homeowners had used for years to fight foreclosure. The decision in Freedom Mortgage Corporation v. Engel allowed Fife's lender to renew its foreclosure suit against her. “They said it was OK. How can they change their mind?” Fife asked during an interview with New York Focus and THE CITY. Across New York State, homeowners who believed that their cases had been settled in their favor are now once again facing foreclosure due to the Engel decision. Many are in danger of losing their homes, even as two bills aimed at protecting owners wend their way through the state Legislature. Case Reopened In New York, if a borrower misses a mortgage payment, the lender is allowed to demand the entire remaining balance immediately and then move to foreclose after 120 days, if the money owed remains unpaid.. But a lender must start the legal proceedings within six years of first demanding full payment, or the suit becomes invalid. Until recently, the clock kept ticking until the lender informed the borrower that they were no longer seeking foreclosure. In Fife's case, the lender had never done so. The bank sued Fife twice: first in 2010, a case the lender claims it later voluntarily withdrew, and again in 2017. Her lawyers, representing Fife pro bono, successfully argued that the bank's second foreclosure suit was barred by the six-year limit and got it dismissed. But the Engel decision changed the rules. The Court of Appeals found that voluntarily ending a foreclosure suit stops the clock on the six-year time limit — even if the homeowner is never notified. The court's ruling applies retroactively to any foreclosure cases ongoing or still open to appeal at the time the decision was issued. Following the ruling, many foreclosures that expired under the six-year limit have been reopened or appealed to higher courts. Holly Meyer, a Suffolk County lawyer who represented one of the defendants in the Engel case, estimated that the number of affected homeowners could be in the tens of thousands. Fife's was one of them. In April 2021, the bank moved to renew its foreclosure suit against her — and the trial judge cited the Engel ruling as a reason to rehear the case. “I was shocked at this decision, because I had put all my faith in [the foreclosure court's] initial decision, which was in my favor,” Fife said. With Fife's best defense gone, her hopes for avoiding foreclosure now appear slim, her legal counsel acknowledged. ‘Incompetently' Managed Loans It's not uncommon for lenders to allow their right to foreclose to expire, according to real estate lawyers. “There are millions of residential loans being serviced somewhat incompetently, so these things do sometimes slip between the cracks,” said Joshua Stein, a commercial real estate lawyer. Real estate industry supporters of the Court of Appeals' decision say it made little sense for a foreclosure case to fail because of what they consider a clerical error — one that basically lets borrowers shirk their debts. “The idea that you should still be at risk because you haven't repaid the money you borrowed doesn't strike me as egregious,” Stein said. Homeowner attorneys say that cases get dropped all the time in the legal system because of technical violations of procedural requirements, and that foreclosure cases should be no different. “If you have somebody on trial for murder, but you find that their constitutional rights were violated, they go free. It's the same thing here,” Meyer said. Chief Judge Conflicted? The day after the Court of Appeals ruled on the Engel case, the law firm Greenberg Traurig, which had represented two of the plaintiffs, cheered what it called a “ground shifting” victory for lenders. “Statewide application will likely protect billions in assets for mortgage holders,” its press release claimed. Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who wrote the majority opinion in Engel, was a Greenberg Traurig client at the time that she ruled in favor of their bank clients in that and other cases, the New York Law Journal reported in April. The firm defended her in a suit brought by judges forced into retirement as a cost-cutting measure. Defense attorneys said they had not been informed of the potential conflict for the judge who ruled against their clients. “The law's not on our side anymore, and that means that there are a number of people who will be facing foreclosure when they wouldn't have faced it a couple of years ago,” Julie Howe, a senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, who is representing Fife pro bono, told New York Focus. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo swears in Janet DiFiore as the new chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, Feb. 8, 2016. Governor Andrew Cuomo's Office Jacob Inwald, director of foreclosure prevention at Legal Services NYC, said many of the foreclosure cases affected by the Engel decision originally stemmed from the real estate crash of 2008 and freewheeling lending leading up to it. Fife, for instance, had borrowed $731,000 against her apartment in April 2007 to pay living expenses after a disabling injury and divorce. Monthly payments were nearly $5,000, with adjustable rate mortgage that started at 8% annual interest, potentially rising as high as 15%. “I didn't know anything about mortgages,” Fife said. “I was just so happy that I was able to live on another day. I was probably the easiest take on the block.” Within a year, the bank alleged that she had fallen behind on her mortgage payments — kicking off foreclosure proceedings that her loan's holder, Wilmington Trust Association, has resurrected more than a decade later. ‘It's Really Scary' Rockland County resident Susan Azcuy is in a situation similar to Fife's — believing that she'd survived foreclosure only to find the cloud hanging over her once again. For 23 years, Azcuy and her husband kept up with the mortgage payments on their house in Pomona, including a 2005 refinancing, for which she took on a debt of $210,000 at 5.75% interest. But in 2012, after Azcuy's husband was fired from his job, they missed a payment and their lender quickly moved to foreclose. The bank voluntarily withdrew the suit in March 2016 for technical reasons but did not notify Azcuy, refiling the case the next month. It went to trial in 2019, and Azcuy won, after a key prosecution witness failed to show up. ‘We're still struggling. I was very, very hopeful to be able to continue living here.' Before Engel, this would have been the end of the case, since more than six years had elapsed since the 2012 foreclosure suit. But thanks to Engel, the six-year clock restarted in 2016 — giving Azcuy's lender another chance to sue. Due to penalties and foreclosure fees, Azcuy now owes nearly $400,000, just shy of double the amount of the 2005 refinancing. Efforts to reach a settlement or a modification with the bank have been unsuccessful, according to Azcuy's attorney, Derek Tarson of the Legal Aid Society of Rockland County. If the bank brings another foreclosure lawsuit, which Tarson believes is likely, Azcuy will not be able to rely on the defense that more than six years have passed. “It's really scary. We're still struggling,” Azcuy said. “I was very, very hopeful to be able to continue living here.” Lawmakers Respond State lawmakers have introduced two bills seeking to reverse some of Engel's effects. One measure, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Thomas (D-Nassau) and Assemblymember Helene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn), would require lenders to inform borrowers if they withdraw their demands for payment, since that action serves to stop the clock on the six-year countdown. If lenders withdraw the lawsuit but fail to notify the borrowers, the clock would keep ticking — a return to the status quo before Engel. The bill would also forbid lenders from foreclosing if any part of the loan had previously expired — a measure that would bar reviving suits against homeowners like Fife and Azcuy. The legislature is also considering a second bill, sponsored by Sen. James Sanders (D-Queens) and Assemblymember Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn). This bill would prevent lenders from discontinuing a demand for full payment, stopping the six-year countdown clock, without the consent of the borrower. The measure also would start the countdown from the time that a mortgage holder missed a payment. Though meant to protect homeowners, the Sanders-Walker bill could actually incentivize lenders to begin foreclosure more quickly, one foreclosure defense attorney told New York Focus. “If the clock is ticking, all plaintiffs are going to want to do is get their case started,” the attorney, who asked not to be named, said. Sanders rejected the critique. “I don't think that you can further incentivize the financial institutions” to foreclose after the leeway granted them by Engel, he said. Whether either of the bills would apply retroactively to homeowners like Fife and Azcuy is an open question. “It may not be able to help those, but it is our desire,” Sanders said. “We will get guidance on whether we can do that.” Sanders said that he has spoken to Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders about his bill, and while they have not endorsed it, he said they are open to supporting it. (A Hochul spokesperson said the governor “will review all legislation that reaches her desk.” “We are making excellent progress with both, and we expect good things in the coming days,” Sanders said. (NEXT) Israeli study says COVID shot efficacy decreases dramatically after 3 months, calls for boosters British Medical Journal, November 24, 2021 A study published by The BMJ today finds a gradual increase in the risk of COVID-19 infection from 90 days after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The study was carried out by the Research Institute of Leumit Health Services in Israel. Israel was one of the first countries to roll out a large scale COVID-19 vaccination campaign in December 2020, but which has seen a resurgence of infections since June 2021. The findings confirm that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provided excellent protection in the initial weeks after vaccination, but suggest that protection wanes for some individuals with time. To do this, the researchers examined electronic health records for 80,057 adults (average age 44 years) who received a PCR test at least three weeks after their second injection, and had no evidence of previous COVID-19 infection. Of these 80,057 participants, 7,973 (9.6%) had a positive test result. These individuals were then matched to negative controls of the same age and ethnic group who were tested in the same week. The rate of positive results increased with time elapsed since a second dose. For example, across all age groups 1.3% of participants tested positive 21-89 days after a second dose, but this increased to 2.4% after 90-119 days; 4.6% after 120-149 days; 10.3% after 150-179 days; and 15.5% after 180 days or more. (NEXT) 31,014 Deaths 2,890,600 Injuries Following COVID Shots in European Database of Adverse Reactions as Young, Previously Healthy People Continue to Die Health Impact News The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 31,014 fatalities, and 2,890,600 injuries, following COVID-19 injections. A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries. The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.) Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 14,526 deaths and 1,323,370 injuries to 20/11/2021 Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273 (CX-024414) from Moderna: 8,518 deaths and 390,163 injuries to 20/11/2021 Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/AstraZeneca: 6,145 deaths and 1,075,335 injuries to 20/11/2021 Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,825 deaths and 101,732 injuries to 20/11/2021 (NEXT) Censorship = dictatorship Dr. Jessica Rose, November 29, 2021 So the censorship continues. I did a very detailed and informative interview with Frank McCaughey of Ireland on the subject of the pointlessness, potential harms and dangers with mass injecting children during this ‘pandemic' with the known non-sterilizing COVID-19 injectable products. And it has been remove Let's check out what YouTube's Community Guidelines are, shall we? YouTube's Community Guidelines: These determine what content is allowed on YouTube and help make YouTube a safe place to foster community. A safe place to foster community, eh? What kind of community are you thinkin' ‘bout there, Youtube? A community akin to an enslaved, dead-eyed mass of hypnotized automatons? If I may: no thanks on that. I'd rather live on that cat Island. So, for those of you who didn't get to see the video (I imagine that is all of you since it was up for less than 24 hours), I talked at length about the ‘don't's of injecting pre-pubescent children with experimental products for which the ingredient list is a big secret for a ‘disease' that they do not succumb to. Ah, I see now. It was because I mentioned Ivermectin. Boy. Youtube. Get with the program! Read some studies for crying out loud! And update your censorship guidelines! Make them reflect the scientific truth and not the weird false dictates of singular beings who feast on the ‘community' to increase their ‘power'. Here's what I found in their COVID-19 medical misinformation policy. Treatment misinformation: Content that encourages the use of home remedies, prayer, or rituals in place of medical treatment such as consulting a doctor or going to the hospital Content that claims that there's a guaranteed cure for COVID-19 Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 Claims that Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19 Categorical claims that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19 Claims that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment COVID-19 Other content that discourages people from consulting a medical professional or seeking medical advice Ok. I want to work backwards through the italicized points, if I may. 1. Hey Youtube. I AM a medical sciences professional. This IS my consultation. Doesn't that make your dictate of discouraging ‘consulting a medical professional' moot? I am not only not discouraging this, in addition to encouraging this, I am this. 2. Hey Youtube. GET WITH THE PROGRAM. Ivermectin has been affiliated with Nobel-ity. It's not only been awarded a prize for its safe use as an anti-parastic for decades and been doled out to literally billions of people, (including pregnant women and children) with no ill effects, it's has an excessively successful safety profile as an off-label drug in the context of COVID-19.¹ 3. It has also been clinically-tested and proven effective in the context of COVID-19 as an off-label drug - which is more than we can say about the clot shots, eh?²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹ 4. Based on points, 1, 2 and 3, I would recommend the off-label use of Ivermectin. As a Medical Scientist. Oh and by the way, aren't you violating your own ‘Community Standards' with your point on a ‘guaranteed cure for COVID-19'? You guys are so sure that your injections are the only way to deal with this situation. Doesn't that imply that this guarantees a cure? No wait. It doesn't. But what it does do is set a precedent and instigate a thought: there will never be a cure for COVID-19. It's incurable. Which is: true. But it's also no worse than the flu in the non-vulnerable, which is most people. Including children. So we don't need to seek a ‘cure'. Just like we don't need to seek a ‘cure' for the common cold or the flu. That's one of the things that our bloody immune systems are for and very good it - preventing disease. Viruses are EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME. It's not a reason to freak out. Educate yourself and others on this. It about high time people learned that we are constantly engaging and have co-evolved with viruses and bacteria for the entirety of our existences. It's what we are.¹² Our genome is 7% retrovirus. If we attempt to destroy this magnificence then we are not only stupid, but we will be destroyed in turn. Leave the immune system alone. Or rather, optimize it. Be healthy. Avoid toxins. As much as you can. Pretty simple. So there you are Youtube. You have been brought up-to-date. Now, I don't like simply bitching about stuff, even though it does feel good, so I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention that you can fight to have your content re-instated once it has been removed. However, it is not a common occurrence to have a video re-instated once it has been censored. The ones that do get re-instated typically are ones that were erroneously taken down. I think that the Youtube overlords would argue that since they are paid to enforce the dictate narrative, they cannot stand behind science and truth, and therefore, I think they would hold fast to their ‘claims' that Ivermectin is dangerous and ineffective. (NEXT) Why aren't healthcare workers speaking out about the catastrophe caused by the vaccines? Steve Kirsch, November 23, 2021 Everyone thinks that if the jabs were really dangerous, doctors and other healthcare workers would be speaking out about it. They are wrong. Here are the four main reasons they do not speak out.Two important things you need to know: 1.All the kids were recently vaccinated. 2. Kids that age NEVER get tachycardia (i.e., the medical experts I've talked to have never seen it before in their careers). Here are some reasons very few people are speaking out: 1. Delegated trust. People trust their doctors, the doctors trust other doctors and ultimately the CDC. Nobody is independently verifying the CDC is telling the truth. Doctors are really really bad in critically reading scientific studies. Mask guidelines are the PERFECT example of this. There isn't any scientific proof (well-done randomized trial) that masks work. Yet very few question the narrative (and those that do are ostracized). So everyone basically goes with the flow and the whole thing is a positive feedback loop despite zero scientific basis. See my article Masks don't work and read the accolades in the Nature article. All these experts who hailed the study never read it with a critical eye and lack the skills to do so. This is how misinformation propagates. 2.Fear of job loss. Nobody wants to lose their job. Look what happened to Deborah Conrad and others who speak out. Fired within hours after speaking out. So the lab technicians who are now seeing kids with tachycardia just keep their mouth shut. They know something is very wrong, but their job is more important. Besides, if they spoke out, it wouldn't make any difference since they are just a lab technician. Doctors have a similar problem. The medical system, despite claims of physician autonomy, actually offers very little, as it takes very little to be thrown out of the system. Medicare, the FDA, a state medical board, a malpractice insurer, the DEA, a hospital medical staff, an employer - you only have to cross one of these to have your career ruined. Combine that with the idea that most physicians wouldn't be willing to stand against a medical establishment agency such as the CDC (the ones who will have long since been ostracized) and that to do so would require a huge amount of energy and time spent on medical paper research to make a case (and most docs don't have time for that) and that most of medicine is necessarily a form of group think anyway. Then add on to it that the policy makers in large medical corporations roles are more immediately to protect the interests of the corporation than to "save the world," and you arrive at our current situation. 3.Belief that COVID is even worse than the vaccine injuries. Many people are deceived by erroneous reports that the number of vaccine cases (e.g., of myocarditis) are occurring far less often now that the vaccines have been rolled out. Dr. John Su is the big culprit here because he's never told the world that VAERS is under-reported. The pediatric cardiologists know what is going on, but they aren't going to say anything due to #1. So I see doctors tweeting the myth that “sure, there is myo after the vaccine, but the rates due to COVID are worse so the vaccine is the better of the two options.” 4.Belief that the injuries are really rare. I know a doctor who treats vaccine injured patients. He has no clue whether these are every single vaccine injured patient in the US or he's only seeing a tiny fraction of the injuries. He believes he's seeing them all so writes it off as just “coincidence” and “bad luck” since if it was the vaccine, the CDC would have spotted it. 5. Cognitive dissonance/trust in authority figures. They are so convinced the vaccines are safe (since nobody else is speaking out), that any adverse events that happen must be due to something else. Positive feedback loop. 6.Belief that they can treat you for your vaccine side effects, but that they can't treat you if you have COVID. So lesser of two evils. And of course, they think no early treatments work, so they think they are doing you a favor by telling you to get the vaccine. 7.Belief that there is no viable alternative for treating COVID and that the vaccines work. So even 100,000 dead or injured people is better than 750,000 dead people from COVID. 8. Trust in the NIH and CDC. If it was a problem, the CDC would tell people. Telling people isn't their job. Their job is to follow the direction set by the experts. 9.Fear of being ostracized. People who do research fear if they speak out they would be labelled as anti-vaxers and their research would thus be discredited. 10.Critical thinkers have been fired. Hospitals and medical facilities have already fired vaccine hesitant employees per vaccine mandates thereby self selecting for vax believers. 11. They think that the side-effects show that the vaccine is “working.” This is more of a patient thing. It's how the patients look at their adverse events… as a positive thing. (You really can't make this stuff up.) 12.They are being paid to look the other way. The federal government gave “grants” (aka BRIBES) to hospitals and physicians to promote the vaccines. If they speak out against them now, the government will demand the grants are repaid. [A physician reported this to me on Telegram. You really can't make this stuff up.] 13. They will lose their research funding if they publish their results.

Forrester VP and Research Director Martin Gill explains how customer preferences in Europe are different than in the US, how European organizations may have different objectives, but CX management best practices remain consistent, globally. To learn more, check out Martin's blog: European Organizations Are Underinvesting In Customer Experience (public)   The post 278: Is CX In Europe Different? appeared first on The CX Cast ® by Forrester.

We are revisiting one of our favorite episodes today with Dan Gingiss. Dan has worked for 4 Fortune 300 companies: McDonald's, Discover, and Cubana in marketing and customer service roles and after becoming somewhat of a specialist in this, he now is a professional speaker and consultant on the topics. Introduction to Dan 0:48Intersection of Customer Experience and Marketing 2:09How to Focus on the Customers 8:49How to Contact Dan 17:20“ If you want to change the sentiment in social media, the way to do that is not to bombard people with more marketing talking about how great you are. The way to do that is to have your customers talk about how great you are.” 4:47

Picture this: You're driving down the road and you see a familiar sign that gets your stomach grumbling, so you quickly pull into the drive-through, place an order and, within minutes, you're enjoying a tasty bite of what you were craving. That's not a hard scenario to imagine. Odds are, we've all gone through that exact sequence of events in our lives. And that's great for those businesses, and even for other stores where the foot traffic drives people in to shop. But that kind of customer isn't the only one you should be relying on. Smart operators know that there are huge portions of the population who don't often find themselves in those serendipitous moments when they can make that impulsive decision to buy something on the spot. Angelo Frigo is one of those smart operators, and as the head of customer experience at Burger King, he is trying to move beyond the drive-through and reach customers in new, exciting ways — particularly online and through Burger King's digital app. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Angelo and I go into some of the ways businesses can think about targeting and engaging with customers outside of in-person and spur-of-the-moment experiences.  Plus, we also dug into Angelo's background, which is fascinating, and includes stops at McDonald's, Feeding America, and even the White House. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:A Bigger Burden: In the government sector, customer experience is often boiled down to measuring the “burden” of something. And, thanks to an old school definition, “burden” is sometimes thought of literally as paperwork. So, reducing “burden” means reducing paperwork. As a result, the customer experience when dealing with government agencies hasn't been optimized in all the ways we're used to. Part of improving the customer experience at the government level begins with simply redefining what is included in the experience, and then removing friction at all points.Moving Beyond The Drive-Thru: Expanding reach beyond the drive-thru is one of the main areas of focus for chains like Burger King, which are attempting to market to people who traditionally only buy from quick-service restaurants when they see them close by and it becomes top of mind. To combat that, chains need to develop digital apps and ordering services with profiles, personalization, and creative marketing, design, and participation opportunities.Testing, Testing: It's important to think outside the box in all areas of the business. In the app space, you should look outside your industry for ideas and inspiration rather than copying what's most trendy or what's working with your immediate competition. Then create prototypes and test ideas whether that's with customers or with team members at all levels across your company.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---For a full transcript of this interview, click here.

Bike Radio is back with Episode 7! This is our casual bike race podcast where we just chat about all different things in the cycling realm. If you're looking for some more dialed content to help you get faster, check out the other playlists, or the BLOG! www.evoq.bike/blog Before we list out the topics, here are a few links mentioned. The store! https://grindcitydesigns.com/evoqbike/shop/home Want free coffee? Check it! http://s.trdcfe.me/BWnL3 I nsane CBD deals, HALF OFF!! https://getcbd.pro/BRENDAN The Tactics Book Link: https://amzn.to/3FWbopa Topics: •Indoors rides, let there be no confusion…Owen endurance and cadence •Love mondays •MTB exposure 30s still from Vermont •WHAT COFFE? Overlapping wheels on group ride •Cx noggin or MTB toboggan •New bike box •Thanksgiving •DISCORD plug Julbo giveaway •Lifting is fun with RPE, Core from deadlifts and squat --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/evoqbike/support

Dr. Bertley is a scientist, scholar, and evangelist for innovative thinking. As the President and CEO of COSI, he is shepherding the leading science center to its next iteration in a legacy of success.02:20 For those listeners who are not familiar with COSI, please tell us a bit about you.05:00 What is the COSI Guest Experience? How much emphasis is put on the guest experience?08:00 How has COSI been impacted over the last 20 months?12:20 Tell me more about COSI Connects?13:42 What's next for COSI? How did that come to fruition?***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/  BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Note: this episode is an encore presentation of the Live with CXPA event, "Combining CX and EX: Better Together" which premiered on November 9th, 2021. You can also watch a video presentation of this event on CXPA's YouTube channel.  Customer experience and employee experience are typically separate programs run by different departments. However, what if they were more in sync? Join guest host Steve Walker of the CX Leader Podcast along with a guest panelists Troy Powell, Jennefer Pursifull, and Ryan Willis for advice and examples that show how CX and EX can be integrated - all in service of creating more engaged employees and loyal customers.

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is one of the most widely used customer experience metrics across all industries. But according to its creator, Fred Reichheld, countless companies are doing it wrong and end up abusing the system.  The Net Promoter System involves asking a simple question to customers, typically after an interaction with a brand—how likely are you to recommend the brand or company to family and friends?  Best-selling author Reichheld says the core principle of NPS is love and the idea that you should treat others the way you would want a loved one to be treated. Reichheld created the Net Promoter System before cellphones were widely used, and the system has grown with new digital technologies. Even as the digital world grows, the core of NPS is timeless and is just as relevant today as ever.  The issue with using NPS in our modern world, Reichheld says, is that too many companies are sloppy about how they ask the question, including asking it at inopportune times, asking it too frequently or using it as a relationship question to grade employees. Many companies reach out to customers after a contact center interaction and ask the question with a strong implication that the service rep will get in trouble if they don't receive a perfect score.  Instead of a way to discipline or grade employees, NPS is about tracking how well customers are treated and how loved they feel by the company.   Successfully using NPS starts with a company culture of loving and serving customers. Leaders set the example as they inspire their employees to make customers' lives easier and better. Reichheld says the customer-first philosophy has to be at the center of every conversation and decision of leaders. When leaders set the example of running their companies as a way to show their love for customers, it comes through in how employees interact with and serve customers and leads to higher Net Promoter Scores.   With that mindset, companies can focus on asking the NPS question at the best times instead of throwing survey requests out left and right to get a mountain of abstract information. It can also lead to NPS innovation and reaching customers in convenient ways.  NPS is a powerful tool for all companies, but it has to be rooted in the right mindset: love and service. As leaders and employees aim to love their customers and treat them how they would friends and family, the NPS process is improved and scores will continue to rise. *This episode is sponsored by Quiq. Quiq is a leading conversational AI platform that drives two-way conversations to deliver a better experience for people and brands. Quiq enables enterprises to connect and engage in two-way conversations with their customers across varied messaging channels — including Facebook Messenger — in more than 170 languages. Quiq is the future of business-to-consumer messaging; it's the wingman every brand and CX'er needs. _______________ Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.  Join the new Customer Experience Community here.  

The word “disruption” can make us feel irritation or even angst. What we need is to recognize that disruption on an industry scale means changing how we operate to create better experiences for our customers. In this episode, I interview Michelle Lisowski, Global Director, B2B Marketing at Uber, about how she's leading a well-known B2C brand into better B2B customer experience. Join us as we discuss: What Michelle means when she says CX is everything How Uber for Business is redefining transportation Why disruption should be recognized as serving customers How Michelle manages multiple lines of business with trust in people When customer-centricity became a practice for Michelle     Check out these resources we mentioned: Uber for Business Michelle Lisowski on LinkedIn Patagonia American Express Target   Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for the Customer Experience Podcast in your favorite podcast player.

Hey CX Nation,In episode #147 of The CXChronicles Podcast we welcomed Mike Myer, CEO and Founder at Quiq based in Bozeman, MT. Quiq is powering the next generation of business to consumer communications through async messaging. People text all the time with family and friends -- why not text with every business that you support?Through Conversational AI and Next Gen Contact Center, Quiq's Conversational Platform drives increased revenue, improved efficiency and higher CSAT for clients in eCommerce and Customer Care.Adrian and Mike chat through The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback to share some of the tips & tricks that have worked for Quiq as they've built & grown their company and team.**Episode #147 Highlight Reel:**1. What it's like selling your company to Oracle early on in your career & finding that major first win as an entrepreneur. 2. How every business can text message with their customers like they do their family & friends 3. Why Facebook, Apple, & Google have all invested in building their text messaging platforms 4.  Leveraging asynchronous messaging throughout the customer journey & buying process  5. Why managing your customer messaging through text can be far more cost effective & lead to higher satisfaction Huge thanks to Mike for coming on the CXCP and featuring his team's work and efforts in pushing the customer communications space into the future. Click here to learn more about Mike MyerClick here to learn more about QuiqIf you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review, this is the easiest way that we can find new listeners, guests and future CX'ers & Customer Success pros to tune into our customer focused business leader show. And with the holidays coming up be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" on Amazon! We also have team rates if you're looking to scoop-up several copies for your CX or CS team. Reach out to CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more information & please remember to make happiness a habit!Support the show (https://cxchronicles.com/)

Meet our guests:Jonathan Shroyer  has been a customer service professional and leader for over 23+ years, leading large teams at established companies such as Microsoft, Monster, Symantec, and Autodesk, as well as startups like Postmates, Kabam, and Forte Labs. A thought leader in the industry, Jonathan can often be found speaking at CX conferences, participating in podcasts, and writing about his passion—the future of customer service and the CS marketplace.John Pompei  is a  results-oriented leader, with extensive experience driving operational excellence in support of customers and partners. He is experienced in navigating large organizations, developing collaborative relationships and recognized for leading multicultural cross-functional teams, aligning them to a single vision and driving change that enables customer and company benefits. Mentioned in this Episode:Officium Labs: The Future of ServiceFollow Officium Labs at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube

On this week's episode, we talked to Chelsea Kim about why the banking industry (and all industries, for that matter!) need to focus on kindness, and how “paying it forward” can be a business principle.

Welcome to Press 1 For Nick Throwback Episode! In these episodes, we reintroduce you to some of our most popular episodes. Please fill out this survey: https://forms.gle/7ig267wFeyoLU2Xg7 Free Ebook***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/  BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Josh breaks down his 2021 CX reason recap with what he has learned and what he plans to work on for 2022. Time to level up and get working. Questions? Josh@EVOQ.BIKE | @mr.nogggle | @evoqbike Thanks for listening! Leave us a review on iTunes! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/evoqbike/support

Worried about customers leaking out? Learn how a remarkable customer experience can be your best marketing and sales strategy as CX keynote speaker and author Dan Gingiss joins us on the show.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jessica Noble, MBA, CCXP, a long-time friend and supporter of Fireside Chats Without The Fires, joins Neal Topf today's episode of “Spotlight on The Business Of CX”. In this limited series of podcasts, Neal is joined by CX experts who look at how CX impacts the bottom line. Today, Jess and Neal talk candidly about a myriad of different topics related to this area. Some of the questions that they answer include Is CX at a crisis point right now?, should businesses be focusing on niceness right now? and is does the person who is leading your CX have a strong business acumen? If not, is that really the right person to lead CX? Jess shares her thoughts on how the return of CX must be seen in the bottom line, otherwise, what is the point of doing CX? What problem is CX solving and does that solve have a financial impact on the company? Jess also confronts the frequently asked question about adding new channels to the business. Her standard reply is, quite simply “Is it seamless and will they talk to each other?”. Insightful, maybe a touch controversial but, ultimately, educational, this is a podcast that you do not want to miss! 

The old saying goes that men are from Mars, women are from Venus. And while that's not literally true, when it comes to marketing, men and women do seem like two different species. What resonates with a man is wildly different than what resonates with a woman. For instance, I love a good ingredients list and couldn't care less about how much lather I get from my body wash. A lot of men apparently feel the exact opposite. These are the kinds of things that all businesses need to think of when it comes to targeting and sending the right message. And it's a topic I went deep on in the episode of Up Next in Commerce with Matt Mullenax, the Co-Founder and CEO of Huron. Matt talked me through all the ways he had to test, poll, and iterate on his advertising to get his men's body care brand off the ground. But when he found the right formula, all of a sudden it was like striking gold. We're talking crazy click-through rates, plummeting CPAs, and a direct line into the messaging that men are aligned with. Do you want to know what it is? And are you interested in what other heavy lifts Matt is working on now for long-term payoffs? Find out on this episode!Main Takeaways:The Humanization of Brand: People used to be excited by the novelty of buying online. As the DTC world evolved, consumers have gotten smarter and these days, your brand has to resonate in ways beyond just having a good product available. Some of the aspects of humanizing the brand, such as building personal connections, will require a heavy lift upfront, but the long-term value.An Atypical CX Strategy: Historically, CX has been seen as reactive, but there are ways to be proactive and ensure an exceptional customer experience no matter the situation. You should not wait for a problem to arise to help a customer out. If you know there might be a delay in shipping or some other situation arises, by reaching out before the product is delayed, you build trust with your customer.Find Your Internal Cheat Codes: Whether you have a founder with deep connections in manufacturing or you're friends with an Instagram influencer, there are certain elements you bring to that table that you should tap into to give you a leg up in one way or another.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---For a full transcript of this interview, click here.

Hey CX Nation,In episode #147 of The CXChronicles Podcast we welcomed Chelsea Bedard, Chief Revenue Officer at Cann based in Los Angelas, CA. Cann is the #1 selling THC-infused beverage in California according to BDS Analytics. Founded by Stanford and Harvard graduates, Cann is reshaping social drinking with their microdosed, non-alcoholic beverages that deliver a perfect, uplifting feeling every time. Chelsea shares her experiences of building the sales & revenue team at Cann and what she's learned  on her personal journey about finding new customers, understanding their needs and working hard at keeping them coming back again and again in the future. Adrian and Chelsea chat through The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback to share some of the tips & tricks that have worked for Cann as they've built & grown their company and team.**Episode #147 Highlight Reel:**1. How Cann is taking a totally different twist on the burgeoning cannabis industry & changing the future of drinking 2.  Building a diverse team focused on solving problems & collaborating at all costs3.  Leveraging product & merchandise placement to get your product visibility higher & increase sales4.  Why managing your company's mistakes is one of the biggest hurdles for any business as it scales 5. The power of using the start, stop, continue methodology! Huge thanks to Chelsea for coming on the CXCP and featuring her team's work and efforts in pushing the THC-infused beverage space into the future!Click here to learn more about Chelsea BedardClick here to learn more about CannIf you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review, this is the easiest way we can find new listeners, guests and future CX'ers & be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business on Amazon today!Reach out to us now at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more informationSupport the show (https://cxchronicles.com/)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmead/ (Alex Mead) is no stranger to the Customer Experience community as many "thought leaders" have faced his challenges over the past few years, and rightfully so. He is a consistent voice on how customer experience needs to improve, and even thinks the term should be removed altogether. On this episode of Be Customer Led, Alex and I get into it, talking about: Where customer experience has gone wrong over the last few years The 3-5 things Alex feels companies need to focus on to deliver great experiences How COVID has changed experiences (forever) How Alex is approaching customer service experience for the start-up he's working on in the GCC Technology's role in customer experience and its impact Really interesting show with someone who brings a new and interesting perspective to customer experience, and is in the CX trenches every. single. day.

Brian Solis is a world-renowned digital anthropologist and futurist who serves as Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. Brian is also an 8x best-selling author and international keynote speaker.Brian shared his latest research on CX and its new trajectory as a result of the pandemic at the 2021 AMA Ignite that I moderated. He also explored how marketing can take the lead to unify the organization around the customer's experience and the future of business growth.***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Every day, we text to communicate and quickly share news and questions with our family and friends.  Why can't contacting a brand be that simple?  That's the question that caused Mike Myer to create the digital CX company Quiq. As CEO, Myer has a unique view of the future of conversational AI and its power to transform customer experience. Conversational AI allows customers to chat with human agents or bots through text on a variety of channels and quickly and conveniently get the information they need.   One channel Quiq's customers have seen strong success is through Facebook Messenger. Most customers are already using the platform, which makes it convenient for them to also use it to connect with brands. Through Messenger, customers and agents or bots can send images, create a menu of choices and even provide a carousel of options for quick replies. Myer says Messenger provides rich interactions that can greatly improve a customer's experience with a brand. It's a huge improvement over calling a contact center on the phone, which has dominated the industry for decades.  Conversational AI can be tailored to meet the needs of nearly any type of customer and is helpful with reducing churn, increasing return on ad spend and greatly increasing efficiency. Instead of contact center agents talking to customers individually on the phone, companies can do twice the customer volume with only 25% more agents. Quiq customers have also seen a 40x return on ad spend through Facebook Messenger. In most cases, adopting conversational AI actually leads to a decrease in budget, but it requires the courage to reallocate funds away from traditional contact centers to new technology and bots. Myer says conversational AI is still on the left side of the bell curve of adoption. But as more companies innovate with conversational AI through Messenger and texting and see the financial and service improvements, the practice will continue to grow.  Conversational AI is growing, and this is just the beginning. Myer predicts that in three to five years, the majority of customer interactions with large brands won't be over the phone but will instead be through texting. Brands that take the leap of faith and get on the conversational AI train now are creating the next generation of customer engagement and shaping the future of CX. *This episode is sponsored by Quiq. Quiq is a leading conversational AI platform that drives two-way conversations to deliver a better experience for people and brands. Quiq enables enterprises to connect and engage in two-way conversations with their customers across varied messaging channels — including Facebook Messenger — in more than 170 languages. Quiq is the future of business-to-consumer messaging; it's the wingman every brand and CX'er needs. _______________ Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.  Join the new Customer Experience Community here.

Dan Gingiss is an international keynote speaker and customer experience coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is your best marketing strategy. His 20-year professional career spanned multiple disciplines, including customer experience, marketing, social media and customer service. He held leadership positions at McDonald's, Discover and Humana.   Dan is the author of The Experience Maker: How To Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait To Share, which was released in September 2021. And he's also the author of Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media. He also hosts the “Experience This!” show podcast and “The Experience Maker Show.”   He earned a B.A. in Psychology and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.   Questions   Could you share a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got to where you are today? Could you share with our listeners, Dan, a little bit about this book, maybe share with us maybe three to four pillars that the book is built on? And why a company would need a tool like this to enhance our customer experience? Could you maybe give us one or two examples of maybe companies that you know, that have demonstrated an immersive experience? You mentioned that word of mouth is the best type of advertising for any business. How can we get our customers to the point where they want to share their experiences with us and it's not just a mere experience? Have you found that customers expectations have changed somewhat, since the pandemic? Do you find that they're more sensitive to customer experiences, their expectations are higher? What has your experience been as a customer experience specialist in this area? In this whole digital transformation space that companies are going through, how do you think we can re humanize the customer experience, even though we're using digital to support that whole transition and make things easier for customers? Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you read recently, but it still had a great impact on you. Can you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about? It could be something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote; it kind of helps to keep you on track or get you refocus if for any reason you got derailed.   Highlights   Dan's Journey   Dan shared that he started out in a marketing role right after college, even though he had never taken a marketing class; he was a psychology and communications, undergraduate major. And he realized once he gets into marketing, that's basically what marketing is, it's psychology plus communication. So, it turned out to work out pretty well. And he held that job for about four years, he really liked it. But he ended up going to business school, where he really formalized the marketing learning. And he learned that everything he had been doing had names and frameworks and all that sort of thing.   And then he spent another 15 - 16 years in corporate America, in financial services, healthcare, and eventually McDonald's, learning all sorts of marketing channels, but also evolving into customer experience, and really falling in love with CX and its power to impact the bottom line, to obviously make customers happier. And so, the book is really a summary of everything that he's learned, put into a simple framework that allows companies to create remarkable experiences for their customers without spending a lot of money.   “The Experience Maker, How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait to Share” - The Pillars That The Book is Built On   Me: Amazing. So the book is really, really an awesome tool. So, for those of our listeners that are not familiar with Dan's book, it's The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait to Share. So, could you share with our listeners, Dan, a little bit about this book, maybe share with us maybe three to four pillars that the book is built on? And why a company would need a tool like this to enhance our customer experience?   Dan shared that he's a believer as a marketer, that the single best way to do marketing today is to get our customers to do it for us. And it's called word of mouth marketing; it's usually been considered the holy grail for marketers, and something that's been on attainable until now.   And really, what we're finding is that the companies that create great experiences don't have to work so hard at marketing, because their customers are doing it for them, they're sharing these experiences, because people like sharing positivity. We know that people share both negative experiences and positive experiences, but what they don't share is an average experience. Nobody ever has said; “Let me tell you about the perfectly ordinary restaurant I went to last night.” That's not something we care to share. But man, we will talk about it if it was amazing, and we will talk about it if it was terrible.   And so, the idea of the book is to teach companies, how do you create those amazing experiences and how do you create them in such a way that customers can't help themselves, they reach into their pocket and grab their phone and take a picture and share it and say nice things about you.   So, the framework that he introduced is called WISER. And it's so that you become wiser than the competition when it comes to customer experience. The first four letters wise stand for Witty, Immersive, Shareable, and Extraordinary, which are four different elements that help to create the kinds of experiences that are remarkable or worthy of remark, worthy of talking about.   Now you can use one of them, or you can use more than one of them. And the more that you stack them, the more powerful they are. But even just using one is going to start to change how your customers perceive the experience with you.   The R in WISER then becomes about being Responsive. And when people are talking about us, especially on social media, we've got to be part of that conversation. After all, if somebody gives us a compliment, we ignore them in real life, that's pretty rude. They don't think really highly of us and yet brands do that all the time in social media, where customers are complimenting them, but the brand is nowhere to be found.   Me: So, one of the things I really liked about the section on Witty, so you kind of explained that a little bit for us, you indicated that it wasn't so much about being humorous, because not many brands can carry off humour, depending on what their brand, reputation or image is. But more so, being very clever and creative in the messaging that you put across. And there was one that really caught my eye in the book when I was reading; the gas station one where it said customer service is priceless and I thought that was really cool. Because at a gas station, typically, rates are not necessarily the best. So, that kind of caught my eye like if I did see two gas stations, as you suggested in the book and said customer service is priceless, I probably would go to the one that said that versus the one that didn't have anything that would have caught my eye. That was really cool.   Dan shared that one of the ideas there is that competing on price is a loser's game, and all you got to do is talk to that gas station owner because he's got his competitor right across the street selling a very similar product for the exact same price. So, competing on price isn't going to work for him. Now competing on product is also difficult because they're both selling gas and inside their stores, they're both selling basically the same convenience items. So, what's left is customer experience and if this particular gas station can differentiate based on the service that you're going to get, that is a reason to choose one over the other one across the street.   Example of Companies that Have Demonstrated an Immersive Experience   Me: So, the next part of your book talks about delivering an experience that is immersive. Could you maybe give us one or two examples of maybe companies that you know, that have demonstrated an immersive experience?   Dan shared that immersive is really about the continuity of the experience and creating something that is consistent and fluid in the customer's eyes. And that's difficult as companies get bigger because they tend to have silos and everyone in each silo is responsible for one part of the experience, but nobody's responsible for connecting those experiences together.   So the poor customer ends up with this very choppy experience moving from part to part in your company. So, one of the examples that he shared in the book is about a company called Imperfect Produce. And they're a company that takes strangely shaped and sized fruit and vegetables that don't meet the cosmetic standards of a grocery store. And they box them into a subscription service that you can get a box every week at your doorstep.   And what they do is play on this idea that their fruits and vegetables sometimes look funny, they're sometimes too big or too small, or they're dented, or they're just shaped weirdly. And so, they actually lean into that and they have these characters that appear throughout the experience that are these vegetables and they have googly eyes.   And you see these characters in their marketing, on the box, really throughout the experience. The other thing that they really lean into is this idea that by buying their fruits and vegetables, which otherwise would have gone into the landfill, you're doing a good thing, you're saving waste from going to the landfill, you're saving water and CO2 because of the farmers not having to replant so often and they track this on the website.   So, every time he goes in to pick his fruits and vegetables, he's reminded of how much he has saved from the landfill and he noticed the other day he just crossed 1200 pounds of produce that he's gotten since he's been a customer. And these are the kinds of things that keep people coming back for more because of the immersive nature of them; he's much more tied into this brand than he would have been if they weren't immersive.   Me: It's almost like you feel like you're a part of their journey in whatever they're doing and because of that, it's much more difficult for you to walk away from them. And now it becomes a real relationship, because there's value being given on both ends of the spectrum.   How to Get Customers to Share Their Experiences With Us   Me: Now, you also mentioned that your experiences must be shareable. And I remember you used this word in the book, where you said customers have like a “Meh” experience, which is, I guess, just a mediocre one. I guess if we were to compare it to NPS, it would be like persons who scored seven and eight, because they're not really wowed, but they're not disappointed either, so they're kind of in the middle. So, what I really wanted to ask was, we have customers who we want to share our experiences and you mentioned that word of mouth is the best type of advertising for any business. “How can we get our customers to the point where they want to share their experiences with us and it's not just a “Meh” experience?”   Dan shared that the best example that he thinks really epitomizes this is the story that he tells in the book of taking his son for his birthday to a restaurant called Fleming Steakhouse.   And they walk into the restaurant, he had already told them ahead of time that it was his son's birthday, and the Maître d' hands him a birthday card that is signed by the staff. And he was pretty impressed with that, he had not seen that before.   And they're sitting in eating our dinner and the discussion turns to and this may just happen in families where dad is a customer experience guy. But the discussion turns to his daughter actually brought up and said, “Hey, if they brought us a birthday card, I'll bet they're going to do something pretty special at the end of the meal.”   In the US, you often get a slice of cake and a candle when it's your birthday, and it's a very nice gesture, it's just that every restaurant does it, so it doesn't necessarily stand out.   And sure enough, Fleming's did not disappoint, they came out with a box of handmade chocolates that was sitting on a plate, where Happy Birthday was spelled out in cocoa powder. And instead of a candle, they had a sparkler and the sparkler is so much cooler than a candle.   Now, there are four people at the table and without being told to and without coordinating, everybody immediately grabbed for their phones. And they took a picture of this dessert.   And the parent shared it to Facebook, and the kids shared it to Snapchat or Instagram, and just like that, Fleming's had four different shares of an experience at their restaurant, all because they decided that a slice of cake and a candle while a nice gesture, is just not going to stand out enough for people to want to share it.   Now, he'll bet that box of chocolates and the sparkler doesn't cost them much more, it might even be around the same price. But the idea is that it's so completely different and it stands out in such a way that people can't help themselves, they want to take a picture of it.   And so, he uses that as a metaphor for companies to think about, “Where do you have a candle that you could turn into a sparkler?” Because that's the difference, that's what makes it shareable.   Me: That's amazing. That was really out of the box thinking that that restaurant did for your son. And you're right; every restaurant does just give a cake and a candle so if you're doing something different then I guess that's where the extraordinary in your wise acronym comes in because that experience was definitely extra ordinary, it was definitely out of the ordinary.   Dan stated that extraordinary just means a little bit better than ordinary, it doesn't have to be a private firework show and a Beyonce' concert, that's extraordinary too.   But nobody has that kind of budget to do. And so, it's just about figuring out somewhere in your journey, where let's say you're doing something the same way that your competitors do it, that's a pretty good bet that that's an average experience, because your competitors are not delivering extraordinary experiences most of the time. So if you're doing it like everybody else is doing it, do it differently. And that's a great way to go from ordinary to extraordinary, make it stand out by being a little bit different and that is another element that causes people to want to talk about it. Since the Pandemic, Do You Find That Customers Are More Sensitive to Customer Experiences?   Me: So Dan, a big part of customer experience now, I know it has definitely changed a lot. I know a lot of customers are paying so much more attention to it now since we're all going through this global pandemic. But have you found that customers expectations have changed somewhat, since the pandemic? Do you find that they're more sensitive to customer experiences, their expectations are higher? What has your experience been as a customer experience specialist in this area?   Dan stated absolutely. He thinks we as customers really took note, especially early on in the pandemic, of which companies were there for us when we really needed them, and which companies weren't.   And the truth is, is that a lot of companies did a very nice job at especially at the beginning of the pandemic, responding, reacting, and innovating. And then other companies really did not a good job of this. And basically checked the box, and didn't particularly do anything different.   So, an example of that is when the pandemic first started, most of us got a lot of emails from companies that were telling us about their enhanced cleaning procedures. And he loved that everybody called them enhanced cleaning procedures, they weren't ever better or improved, or anything other than the word enhanced because somebody started using the word enhance, and then everybody else copied that word.   And they also sent us, at least in the US, they would send us to the CDC website, which is the Center for Disease Control, he's sure other countries have a similar organization. And what he found was that all these emails basically said the same thing, they were totally uncreative, unremarkable.   And then I got an email from his investment broker Charles Schwab and their email didn't say anything about cleaning procedures, or the CDC website. Instead, their email said, “We understand that you must be very nervous about a volatile stock market. And so, we want to make sure that you know all of these tools and benefits that you have available to you that you can use to help you through this difficult time.”   And for him, that was exactly what he needed from his investment firm. He didn't care about their cleaning procedure, that wasn't important to him. But he certainly cared about a volatile stock market. So that's the difference between companies that cared, and that were really trying to deliver what customers needed at this difficult time, versus what everybody else was doing. And so, that is something that customers remember and they've seen lots and lots of customers switch brands during the pandemic, because they realized that the company they were doing business with just wasn't going to be delivering the experience that they wanted.   Re-Humanize The Customer Experience Even Though Using Digital to Support that Whole Transition and Make Things Easier for Customers   Me: Amazing. So, that's definitely some other ways that our customers' expectations have changed. I think also Dan, since the pandemic, I get that digital transformation is super important and it definitely makes life that much easier for the customer and can create that effortless experience for them and seamless experience, especially seeing that you may not want to physically go to the business place. But I get a lot of questions from time to time from companies asking me questions like; “Do you think human beings are going to become obsolete totally in the whole realm of customer experience? And of course, my answer is always no. But in this whole digital transformation space that companies are going through, how do you think we can re humanize the customer experience, even though we're using digital to support that whole transition and make things easier for customers?   Dan shared that he totally agrees with Yanique, humans aren't going anywhere, we're not going to be replaced by robots. And the reality is that customers today crave human interaction and the pandemic actually exacerbated that, especially the time that we were all stuck in our homes for so long, we wanted human interaction. And so, there's a time and a place for both human engagement and technology engagement within the customer journey. There are times where we just want to self serve, and we just want to go online and see our balance or pay a bill or whatever and we don't want anybody to bother us, we just want to do it ourselves. And then there are other times where we really need to talk to someone because we have a problem that we don't think we can solve by ourselves or that might have too many layers to it. And so, we don't, at that point, want to talk to a computer, we want to talk to a person. And he thinks that companies that are getting it right are figuring out when do we deliver self service and when do we deliver human service. But those two things are always going to exist; one is not going to replace another.   App, Website or Tool that Dan Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Dan shared that he would say right now it's actually LinkedIn and the reason for that is just that it is the place where he network, where he share content, where he consume other people's content. And where he meets people that want to do business with him. And he thinks that is the space right now online that he can't do without.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Dan   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Dan shared that one of his favorites is They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing and Today's Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan. It's a marketing book and it teaches you how to create content around the questions that your customers ask you, or that your prospects ask you. And so, although it's a marketing book, it actually takes a lot of customer experience themes into it and he thinks it was one of the most valuable books that he has read, and has used in his own business and actually has used with clients as well. Another one that he would pick, he's going to go with one of Jay Baer's books, because he loves him as well. He really loved Utility, but he's going to go with Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers. And much like his (Dan) first book, being about social media, customer service, this is really a book that tells you to embrace complaints, and to learn from them and to treat them as gifts, because they can help you not only be responsive to customers, and maybe turn them from detractors to advocates, but also to go back to your business and find what's actually wrong and try to fix it for other people. So, Hug Your Haters is another one that definitely changed how he thinks about things.   What Dan is Really Excited About Now!   When asked about something that he's really excited about, Dan stated that you're asking a guy that just spent nine months launching a book; he's now kind of just coming off of that. But he'll say that he's super excited to be back speaking on stages in person. He had two keynotes this week in two different cities, it was so nice to be with people again, yes, everybody's being safe and wearing a mask where appropriate. But there's just something as the speaker to talking to people in real life and seeing their eyes and seeing their reactions and hearing them laugh and clap and what have you that just doesn't happen on Zoom or in digital channels. And so, that's something he's really excited about is the fact that live events are coming back and are back in some places. And he really looks forward to doing a lot more of those in 2022.   Me: That's brilliant, love that. So simple. And pre pandemic, we probably would have taken these very simple things for granted. I'm sure we never would have imagined a time when we were locked up in our homes and everything had to be digital. So now, as you said, we're getting back out there, and we're still being safe. But you really appreciate the very simple things in life that as I would say, we may have taken for granted; we wouldn't have realized how important or how valuable those kinds of experiences are.   Where Can We Find Dan Online   Website - https://dangingiss.com/ LinkedIn – Dan Gingiss Twitter - @dgingiss   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Dan Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Dan shared that this quote, believe it or not comes from a fortune cookie. He got this fortune that he was so excited about and he taped it up on to his camera right behind his laptop screen.   So, since the camera is always facing him, he can always see this. And it says, “Never mind tomorrow. Today is the day.” And he loves that because there are days where we want to procrastinate, or there are days where we just don't have the energy. And he likes reminding himself that today's the day and today is the day that he can move his business forward, he can help a customer out, he can do something nice for somebody, and you never know what tomorrow brings, or even if tomorrow brings and so that's a quote that's definitely stuck with him for a while.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links   The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait to Share by Dan Gingiss Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media by Dan Gingiss They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing and Today's Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Jerry Campbell - Director, Customer Workflows-Leading Practices at ServiceNowWhere does the Customer Experience Start?Why is it important to involve your employees in the decision-making process to deliver great CX?What specifically should the employee be involved with? Should they have an input in technology selection, onboarding, operations, marketing? Where does it stop?Let's talk about Technology next. Why do most companies feel that technology is always the solution?What happens if the technology is too complex or not integrated correctly? What does that do to morale or productivity?What makes CX professionals agents of change? How is that different than other leaders in the organization?***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ v★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This week Clint and Dawson sit down with Ali Whittier. We had such a good time during her recording, Ali has an infectious personality and gets so excited talking about cycling, racing, family, friends and life. Ali was born and raised in Iowa. She grew up a dancer (traveling to Europe for a tour at age 8) and still loves to dance to this day. She was also a team sport person through school. She married her husband, Spencer, in 2012 and the pair moved to Chattanooga in 2014. That same year she joined the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee corporate communications team and still works on that team today in public affairs, managing the company's social media presence, employee ambassador program and its WellTuned wellness content site. After meeting her future husband in 2010, she got her first road bike. Ali soon competed in a couple sprint triathlons and then focused solely on racing bikes. In 2012, Ali began her bike racing career in cyclocross on the Hub Endurance Cycling Team, also taking a leadership role on the team helping to put on races and practices each year as well as design the team's kits. She and Spencer traveled to UCI races across the country as well as races around the southeast – that included approximately 20 races between September and December. They raced CX nats in Asheville in 2016 where Spencer won his division and became National Champion. Later that year, Ali won the Tennessee State Mountain Bike Championships in a rainy, muddy race that mirrored her favorite cyclocross conditions. Ali then learned the ropes of road racing, joining the Scenic City Velo women's race team. It was then she began working with Coach Steve Carpenter who still coaches her today as an endurance gravel and mountain bike racer. Ali and her Motor Mile Racing teammate, Stephen Lebovitz, will compete as a coed duo in Breck Epic in August 2022. She trains with a group of Chattanooga female cyclists who also race and have mentored her throughout her cycling career.

Nathan and I discuss some of the principals behind BILT's success, one of them being that they measure it by their own customer's success. BILT is a customer experience platform. It operates as an app that provides a 3D assembly experience for customers who need to build a finished item like a grill or bed frame. BILT has worked with companies such as Weber, IKEA, and the Home Depot, to help empower customers and give them the confidence needed in order to complete their project.

In this episode we have Randall King, the President of Commercial Solutions at Conduent. As the Group President of Customer Experience Management, Randall has responsibility for 25k customer experience professionals who deliver best-in-class service globally to millions of customers on behalf of their clients. In this role, Randall drives strategic transformation, stronger client relationships, and service excellence. He works in close collaboration with business and technology leaders to bring innovative solutions to their clients, while delivering an integrated and seamless experience to their customers. Advice for someone starting out in the customer space 2:38Priority and balance 6:54Good and bad lessons learned 10:41Exciting trends in the market 18:57Working from home 21:41A summary statement for transforming your business 26:33“Perfection is the enemy of done and it's hard to turn a ship that's not moving. In my career I've had so much more success if you just get under way and of course things like agile methodologies really help with that with sprints, but just get out there and get going. Course correct as you go. You'll learn, you'll get better, and as you have progress, people get excited, and then they want to achieve more and before you know it, you're really driving out some great results.” 3:34https://www.linkedin.com/in/rking2002/randall.king@conduent.com

In 2022, brands will look to their customer experience (CX) teams to help them navigate their way through the pandemic by adjusting to a new normal and managing customer expectations and emotions around impending and ongoing product shortages. This doesn't mean that CX teams' responsibility will grow across the board. Instead, companies and their CX […] The post 276: 2022 CX Predictions appeared first on The CX Cast ® by Forrester.

Want to know how to connect CX and Strategy in a way that creates value for your company? https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-garcia-dorminey/ (Michelle Garcia Dorminey) is Vice President of Consumer Experience Strategy at TrueCar, Inc., a company dedicated to making shopping for a car uplifting.   Michelle's role is unique, however, I am seeing a lot more companies combine experience and strategy, and Michelle's perspective was fascinating; too many lessons to list for the classical CX Leader to take away (or the smart-minded CEO). In this episode, Michelle and I cover: Her role focused on Consumer Experience Strategy and how that differs from other CX Strategy functions How Michelle approaches strategy and her advice for newcomers to strategy development How she is using https://www.strategyzer.com/ (Strategyzer), Lean Startup and Design Thinking methods to achieve success for the business Michelle's perspective on connecting strategy with tactics and partnering with stakeholders across TrueCar Her view on the future of CX and how the CX leader's role might evolve Not only is this already one of my favorite episodes, I stated as much on the show!  Super interesting and grateful to have had Michelle join us on the podcast!

Hey CX Nation,In episode #145 of The CXChronicles Podcast we welcomed Jason Hennessey, CEO at Hennessey Digital based in Los Angelas, CA.Jason Hennessey is an internationally-recognized SEO expert, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business executive. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student and practitioner of SEO and search marketing.His expertise led him to grow and sell multiple businesses, starting with a dot-com in the wedding industry. After presenting his SEO knowledge to a group of lawyers in 2009, Jason founded and later sold Everspark Interactive, cementing his reputation as a thought leader and authority in SEO for the legal industry. As CEO of Hennessey Digital since 2015, Jason grew a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business that made the Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row in 2020, and he also runs SEO industry news site iloveseo.com. Adrian and Jason chat through The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback to share some of the tips & tricks that have worked for Hennessey Digital as they've built & grown their company and team.**Episode #145 Highlight Reel:**1. Learning from other successful entrepreneurs to build your personal playbook for success 2. Leveraging the power of SEO to help future customers find your business & brand  3. Using case studies and past customer success stories to grow your business 4.  Focusing on team building & leveraging others experience to drive business growth 5. How you can convert customer & employee feedback into tomorrow's great ideas for your scaling businessHuge thanks to Jason for coming on the CXCP and featuring his team's work and efforts in pushing the talent & location intelligence space into the future!Click here to learn more about Jason HennesseyClick here to learn more about Hennessey DigitalIf you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review, this is the easiest way we can find new listeners, guests and future CX'ers & be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business on Amazon today!Reach out to us now at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more informationSupport the show (https://cxchronicles.com/)

Charlie Godfrey is the Senior Director at Genesys.01:00 What is one thing people might not know about you?01:50 Can you have Empathy with Technology?02:43 A lot of people talk about Empathy, but how do you make it real?10:50 What is the difference between Empathy and Sympathy?13:07 Can Empathy be taught?17:23 Should you deliver Empathy to your Customers or Employees first?Where do people fail with Empathy?20:07 How does empathy align with CX?24:50 Is it possible to have empathy at scale? Do you need tech involved?28:46 What book or person in customer service or experience has influenced you the most in the past year?If you could leave a note to all customer service professionals, what would you say?***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Our guest today is Ron Schneidermann, CEO at AllTrails, the ultimate guide for outdoor adventures. AllTrails was early to the consumer subscription space, launching a $3/month premium tier way back in 2012. Ron joined as CMO and COO in 2015, and then took over as CEO in 2019, helping to grow AllTrails to over 1 million subscribers and tens of millions of active users worldwide.On the podcast, we talk with Ron about the magic of consumer subscriptions, experimenting with freemium strategies, and how private equity isn't always as bad as you've been led to believe.In this episode, you'll learn: How to refine and optimize your freemium strategy Two things you need to keep an eye on as a founder The pros & cons of outside funding vs. organic growth How Ron fast-tracked AllTrails' profitability Links & Resources Accenture Hotwire Yelp Liftopia Alex Honnold Spectrum Equity Ron Schneidermann's Links Ron Schneidermann's LinkedIn page AllTrails Celebrates 1 Million Paid Subscribers! (January press release) AllTrails' website AllTrails is hiring Follow AllTrails on Twitter Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode Transcript00:00:00 David:Our guest today is Ron Schneidermann, CEO at AllTrails, the ultimate guide for outdoor adventures, AllTrails was early to the consumer subscription space, launching a $3 per month premium tier, way back in 2012. Ron joined as CMO and COO in 2015, and then took over as CEO in 2019, helping to grow AllTrails to over 1 million subscribers and tens of millions of active users world.On the podcast, we talk with Ron about the magic of consumer subscriptions, experimenting with freemium strategies, and how private equity isn't always as bad as you've been led to believe.Hey, Ron! Welcome to the podcast. 00:00:59 Ron:Thanks for having me.00:01:00 David:Yeah. Really looking forward to the chat today. I wanted to kick it off, and most people know what AllTrails is, and it's a fantastic brand. It kind of tells you what it is right there on the tin. What's your pitch? We're in 2021, post pandemic.Give us the short version of what AllTrails is. What does it mean? 00:01:21 Ron:Yeah. So AllTrails is a free app and website that helps you find trails all over the globe, so you can spend more time enjoying the outdoors, and spending time in nature.00:01:34 David:That's awesome.00:01:35 Jacob:That's a very nice mission. That's way more beautiful than helping developers make more money. Both are important, but I can smell that. It smells, “piney” and I like it.00:01:46 David:Yeah, it smells like the Colorado forest. I haven't been hiking forever, and doing all the research to chat with you today was like, oh man, I need to go hiking more.00:01:55 Ron:I heard there's a great app for that.00:01:57 David:I heard that.So, I did want to also ask about your journey to AllTrails. You got there fairly early, and then grew in, and you're now CEO. Tell me, off the bat, what led you to AllTrails way back in 2015 when it was just six people?00:02:20 Ron:Yeah. To answer that I'm going to go a little bit further back in time. My first job right after college was at Accenture, at a global management consulting firm. It was great. A good jumping off point, and I learned a ton. I didn't know anything going into that job. You know, you get the rubber stamp and it opens doors.By the end of my third year there, I kind of had a realization. Epifany is a little too strong a word, but I just kind kinda realized I can't take a job just for money again. The amount of time and energy that I was putting into it, and the lack of work-life balance, it really made me rethink who I want to be. Who does working Ron want to be?So, I was able to parlay that Accenture job into a biz dev role over at Hotwire, an online travel company. That was really where it opened my eyes. Like, I am so much happier, and I am honestly so much better when I'm working at something that I'm just personally passionate about.That guiding principle has really held through throughout my career trajectory. From Hotwire, I want to do my own startup in the ski space. I love to ski. So, I did that for nine years. It was a ton of fun. Then I was over at Yelp, doing growth for a bit. I love finding non-chain restaurants, and supporting mom and pop businesses, and stuff. I live in Yelp, so that was great.Then, when the opportunity for AllTrails presented itself, it was just kind of a no-brainer. Of course I'm going to take this.I'll say this to you, one little addendum, one of the things I learned along the way, too. I am not a zero to one guy. That is not when I am at my best. It just causes me stress and anxiety, and just, figuring out how to keep the lights on for another day.So, again, knowing kind of that sense of self knowing. Like, alright, I'm best at B to C. I'm at my best when I'm using products I personally want to use and like talking about. I like hypergrowth, and I think that's probably my sweet spot.So, it starts to all align when AllTrials showed up.00:04:34 David:Yeah. And then how did that go from? You joined the company as COO, right? And then, what was the progression inside the company to eventually taking over as CEO?00:04:45 Ron:Yeah. So if you want to demo and COO, I dunno why I really wanted to have both, like, I didn't want to just be CMO in a vacuum, but not have any ownership or agency over kind of team composition and strategy and stuff. So I thought that it was really. Really important. And when you're a six person company, it's pretty easy to grab titles.It's not like how to take it from anyone.00:05:08 Jacob:I was going to ask, like, I mean, it's, it's not like you see this a lot where it's like a six person company and they had like five C-levels and you're like, okay. Yeah, sure. Like, like my title, for example. But like, I'm kind of curious, like, you know, you like your background, you founded a company, like you were like a real CX whatever.Right? Like it's not like it was fake. So how did, how did that, how did you go as like an executive, like choosing your next thing? That'd be a hell of a pitch to get you to like join a tiny little like, team like that.00:05:36 Ron:You know, I think I, I spent a lot of time thinking through again. I don't know, I, to be perfectly honest, I was, I was a little bit bored at the end of my tenure at Yelp. I love Yelp. It's a great company, but it was just, it was too big for me. And so I spent a lot of time thinking through what's next again?That whole question, like zero to one. Do I need, do I need to start something myself or what? So the smallness didn't bother me. I actually really liked the smallness cause it was almost like, it was almost like a cheat code. Like I got to do a startup, like basically from scratch, but I didn't have to do it from scratch.And then.00:06:09 Jacob:They had, they had a kernel of something at00:06:11 Ron:They did, they did. And you know, it was actually to, to give my predecessor credit. It was, it was actually more than that. Like they had, they had solid product market fit from a monetization perspective. And then what really got me across the line with their product channel. And I feel like that's often overlooked and that's something you kind of pick up in time.Like it's not just like, is this a product people are willing to pay money for, but just straight up, how are you going to get this out to market? And can you, can you do it in a way that is, you know, viable and scalable and, and ultimately, you know, going to be, be more efficient than, you know, it's kind of like net out, right?Like the whole LTV to CAC thing and everything that00:06:49 Jacob:Yeah. It's, it's something more efficient than paying for every single install. Right.00:06:53 Ron:Exactly. And so. You know, I, it felt like there was good bones, you know, maybe it was like a fixer upper kind of house. but it had good bones, like it had, it had the foundation in place. And I could see, you know, back in 2015, the product sucked, it sucked. and, and what was shocking after I came was how bad the data was.I didn't realize that when I was kind of doing my own diligence, but it was00:07:20 Jacob:You mean like analytics on the internally, what the company knew about itself or you mean like the, the, the trail00:07:25 Ron:The trail data, like the trail data that we were showing, you know, and that's that's subs high consequence. and so that was like a hard pivot, within a couple months, like, all right, this is, you know, all hands on deck thing.We're not doing anything else until we figure this out. but again, it just, it felt like there was a diamond in the rough, in this one. You know, I've been here six years now and I can say like, unequivocally, this is the highlight of my career. Maybe I just got lucky. I don't know. But, man, like, yeah, this has been a really, really great run so far.00:07:59 Jacob:I was just going to ask about the, that channel and monetization fit. I mean, I guess this was maybe I'm jumping ahead in our agenda here, but, but yeah, they were already charging a subscription before you got there. Right. And in terms of like monetization, maybe like describe that model a little bit and, and how that has changed.00:08:20 Ron:Yeah, I had never done this subscription business before coming here. So this was my first subscription business. And I'll tell you, you guys already know this. I'm sure your listeners already know this too. subscription businesses are magical. Oh my goodness. Compared to like e-commerce or you're trying to re when, you know, the transaction every single00:08:40 Jacob:I know I was looking at Hotwire just now, when you mentioned it. And I was just thinking about like, how many of those there were at that era, right? Like, and still are like, when you had to book a hotel on Google and they're like, oh, here's 15 different sites. You can actually like book it through it's like Wolf,00:08:53 Ron:Oh, so tough. Same with Liftopia. Liftopia the ski startup. There was the same thing. Right. you know, but, but with a much smaller niche and segment, and then, and then Yelp is, you know, they're, they're kind of the media model and then trying to, you know, kind of pivot more towards like B2B and subscriptions for businesses and value added services and stuff.And coming here doing a consumer subscription business, an annual subscription, the auto renew. It's like an annuity, like it just builds up every single year. Like obviously, like you can't take retention for granted and I'm sure we'll talk about that, but you know, just, if you're able to kinda, you know, do a, do a pretty good job on the retention side and you see this thing build up And just.Raise the tide every single year that I've been here and have it just, is that much more momentum that just gets like brought into each new fiscal year for us. It's just, it's incredible. It is incredible. the leverage that it offers. So that was cool. That was definitely a, 00:09:51 Jacob:One of those good bones.00:09:54 David:Yeah. And that's what I was going to ask you say the bones were good. Yeah, AllTrails had launched their subscription in 2012. So about three years before you joined, what was the state of that? And that's really early in the kind of consumer subscription software space. Was there a lot of push back was like, how was traction, chargebacks and things like that was the bones were there, but were there some serious doubts or questions in your mind as to how this subscription app space was going to play out? 00:10:28 Ron:Yeah, I mean, so can I share a secret with you guys? I honestly didn't know that our subscription business loss in 2012, until you guys showed me the research that you did leading up to this, I had always thought that, it launched with our ass. We launched our apps in, I think early 2015, I joined in September, 2018.And I just lumped everything together just in that, you know,00:10:53 Jacob:Yeah. It's yeah,00:10:54 Ron:Yeah. So I, I, I had always thought that it, that we had launched it when our apps launched, but I guess we were on the cutting edge, the bleeding edge, the subscription space here.00:11:05 Jacob:So, so, but that, then I'm, then I'm correct to assume that, you know, if you launched a description 2012 was on the web, if you didn't have apps until 20, 20, 15. Right. Right. Which, I mean, my, my experience, I guess I've been on old trails website, but like my vast majority of experience has been on the web.Right. Because I'm like, or sorry on the, on the phone because I'm going for a hike and I'm like, I need a map and like, boom, there's AllTrails. Right. Which I guess is that channel fit. You're talking about.00:11:27 Ron:Yeah. And that's been, that's been one of the cool things when I started. So a couple, a couple, I guess, data points, just to show like, sort of that, that snapshot in time of 2015, we probably had 20,000. subscribers at that point, maybe a million cumulative registered users since 2010, when we first launched and maybe 20,000 active paying subs.And in January of this year, we put out a press release. We don't normally do that, but it was two pretty cool milestones. We had cracked 25 million registered users and a million paying subs at the start of this. So, you know, again, like the, the, the unlock has been really cool and very, very powerful. but the other thing, like you said, like this was, you know, a web driven subscription business.At first, when I, when I first started here. probably 70% of our, of our web traffic was desktop desktop to mobile 70 30. And obviously that's inverted, since then, and then Mo the, the, the mobile apps, the native apps are by far the best form factor for what we're trying to do. Like you said, Jake would like take it with you on the go, the navigation, the GPS stuff, everything baked in there.And so that's become really the workhorses of, of subscription business and, and of our overall, UDC flat.00:12:42 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, it's so helpful. you guys have good SEO when you search a trail, it comes up on AllTrails. Right. But that's, I would imagine like this stage probably mostly like demand gen for the app,00:12:53 Ron:That's exactly it. No, that's exactly it. Right. So our se our legacy SEO, this is what, again, one of the beauties of being around for 11 years and counting, we have this amazing legacy SEO and that's, that was that product channel fit that brought me here was the sales pitch was he just showed me Google analytics.And he just like, look, look at all of this for your00:13:12 Jacob:Just like a hyper-local very valuable data, right. Index. And if you're, if you're the winner, that's a great real estate to00:13:20 Ron:I know. And, and so what we've been doing obviously as, sort of consumer behavior has changed and gone mobile first is, we're able to parlay all of that mobile first SEO traffic it's, incremental organic app installs, and that's a huge driver. Of our business. We get millions and millions of incremental app installs that we don't pay a dime for every mom's.00:13:42 Jacob:Yeah. And going back to your point, like yeah. Not having to push. Up the hill completely is a bit, you know, you think about a Compounding annuity analogy as you made, right? Like the cost of that compounding really, you know, if you net out the whole asset, right? Like that's going to be a big part of it is like, how much does it cost to push that that, that, that flywheel up a little bit. 00:14:02 Ron:It's a moat for business too, you know, you're around long enough and you're doing something good. You're going to see a ton of competitors start flooding into the space, which is great as validation of what we're doing, but the product market fit product channel fit conundrum is, is real.It's real. And you know, I see really great products, you know, beautifully designed products that just crank can't crack the code on either of those. And then they kind of, you know, whether on the line, right? Like see it all the time.00:14:31 David:No, that was actually my next question is that in those early days, and you already said when you joined and when y'all launched the apps in 2015, they were crap. So take me, how did you go from this crap up and what experimentation, what pain, what suffering did 00:14:53 Jacob:There's some, there's some old, there's some like a old guard at, at all trials that are going to listen to this and be like, crap. They were great.00:15:00 David:But what did it take and what was the approach to, to find you, you had some level of product market fit, but then to actually build a great product around those early signs. 00:15:12 Ron:There, there are a couple of philosophical things that we decided immediately. One was around funding. Do we want to go take funding, and try and do this faster? Do we want to do this kind of organically? And my predecessor had done a small seed round. I think he raised 3 million bucks in 2012.And we were still kind of drafting off of that. And then there was a little bit of subscription revenue and then a whole bunch of just, you know, classic entrepreneur head on the swivel stuff. Like let's throw a bunch of shit up on the wall. Like, let's see what we can do. So there's, you know, a media play and programmatic ads.Whatever, right. Just trying to buy time more than anything. Right? Like keep the servers running for a little bit longer. But we decided we very intentionally decided not to take funding. We wanted to control our own destiny. And part of it to be clear, part of it was the handshake agreement with the original founder, was to grow it and sell it.He wanted us to, to, to sell it. And so, so then if that was kind of the. The Mandy. And I was like, well, why would we even just, you know, deal with the, the opportunity cost and the headache of going out and trying to raise funds, as a pain in the ass. So, you know, it was like, let's just, let's put our heads00:16:22 Jacob:Especially, especially for our consumer subscription company in 2015, like00:16:27 Ron:Right? Yeah.00:16:28 Jacob:Ben kind of been party to that. It's not, it wasn't easy. Let's put it that way.00:16:32 Ron:Tried doing it in 2005, by the way I was with Liftopia was insane anyways. but so we decided to put our heads down and just say super scrappy, super scrappy, super lean. And so, it just came down to like relentless prioritization and essentially what we ended up doing was triaging sort of a different funnel metric each quarter.Right. So one quarter is. We've got to tackle bounce rate. All right. Now we've got to tackle signup rate and now we've got to tackle pro conversion rate. And now we've got to talk over attention and we just kind of spent cycles, through 2016 and through 2017, just each, each quarter, just like laser focus in on that one metric and do what we can and then move.And it worked because by the end of 2017, we actually achieved profitability. Which was cool, which was really, really great. You know, like we wanted again, when you've been around the block long enough, you talked to enough entrepreneurs, you've seen, you've seen enough. there's so many examples of people going and getting too much funding too soon, and then they develop bad habits, right?Yeah. Let's get a little hot in here. Is it.00:17:36 Jacob:I never heard of that.00:17:39 Ron:So, you know, but so you see it right? Like that you, you get the, unsustainable growth channels, again, the product channel fit question, like how are you actually going to bring this to market? And how are you going to do it when that VC money dries up? Like, is this actually00:17:50 Jacob:Five X that VC money, right.00:17:52 Ron:Right? Is this sustainable?Or you're just connecting yourself to the next round of00:17:56 Jacob:You can put yourself in a, in a dead man's corner, right. Where you're not your, market's not big enough, whatever you end up killing and otherwise like really great business,00:18:05 Ron:Totally. And I, you know, I'd seen that, I'd seen that. I really didn't want to do that here. It felt like because so much of our growth was coming through SEO. It felt like obviously there's an opportunity, which we later unlocked on the ASO side of things. It felt like even beyond both of those though, it's just like word of mouth and PR and viral loops and network effects.00:18:27 Jacob:Product market fit as a broad thing, right? Like growth kind of have you have a really good product and it serves a niche, like grit just starts to start to go.00:18:36 Ron:And especially organic growth, right? Like, and that was really the big key as like, do we need to be like one of these DTC companies and just raise millions of dollars for Instagram ads? Or can we, can we do something that's more sustainable for the long haul? And that was, that was one of the bats.The other big bet that we placed was, from a brand positioning perspective. You know, when I came in the app was definitely geared towards like the through hikers and search and rescue and, and the hardcore, like, you know, back country folks. And the challenge with, with, with that segment is that there's always these, you know, really esoteric and extreme product requirements that they want because they're they're edge cases.They're by definition, all edge cases. And in this space in particular, a lot of them. Kind of living the, you know, the van life, life, you know, trying to live as frugally as possible. and so they don't want to really pay you any money either. It's like this isn't a good growth segment. We got, we gotta rethink this one.And so, I've told this story a lot, you know, this strong man to this day still is, is my wife where like she likes going outside with me. You know, she's always down to go on a high. you know, spend time outside. We have three kids, totally trying to raise them on the trail. we have a dog who loves being on the trail and, but, but if I'm not there, you know, she's, she's not going out there.Right. So it's like, okay, okay. Maybe here's the play. Like what, what if we use technology? Kind of tear down the barriers for entry, like instill confidence, whether through like product functionality or content, but really make it so that someone like my wife and the hundreds of millions of people around the globe, like her who, who know that they feel better when they time spend in nature.They're just a little scared to do it. Like, can we help augment that? Can we help supplement that? And I think that's going to be the unlock. And that was the big bet. That was the other big bet that we placed in 2015. And you know, 00:20:30 Jacob:And just to summarize that, I understand it's like to kind of not ignore these like extreme users that are on the edge on the edges, you know, serve them, but maybe not in the way that they would want, but like let's focus on, you know, this larger segment. I mean, I think that's the thing, even some good founder advice is good for founders.Sometimes doesn't always apply. Like B to C stuff sometimes where it's like, yeah, like, listen to your most vocal users often. There's something there, but like with an ounce of like moderation, because yeah. They can lead you in really strange places. And think about the network. Think about the like user.Maybe you're not talking to her, her the next year saying next a hundred million users that you have to get. and that's potentially a much bigger surface area. And that doesn't mean you're going to abandon those court users. Like they might grumble a little bit and they might not be totally served by your use case.And like, that's maybe just life. but, but you know, you've now potentially, like if you think about the, you know, the mission of just getting people outdoors, like you've achieved that much better by going for this much larger market segment. Right.00:21:31 Ron:Yeah, and they're not mutually exclusive. It's just which one are we prioritizing? Which one are we preferencing? And how are we, you know, what kind of language are we? Are we using lingo or not? Right. Are we making this accessible for everybody or not for imagery? Right. Are we doing like, you know, Alex, Honnold like dangling one handed off of a cliff,00:21:51 Jacob:Or just, or just a picture of the N the end cap at an REI, Right. Like,00:21:56 Ron:Yeah. Yeah. Or, or just like, you know, a family like smiling and having fun out in nature together, you know, like, all right. It doesn't cater to the core, but they're not necessarily going to like walk away because they see that stuff either. 00:22:07 Jacob:Right. I mean, and that comes to. Channel fit As well, right? Like not your products fit and your products oriented for, and that like B to C you kind of, you can't divorce the two, like you can't have totally independent marketing and channel channels for the product itself, which maybe you could get away with a little bit in B2B.But, but, but they, but they don't necessarily have to be like completely like linked, you know, you can kind of serve both niches on the, on the product side to your point.00:22:34 David:And speaking of getting more folks out in the mission of AllTrails. I'd love to hear about your freemium strategy, because that's a huge part of it. Like what early on, what was your approach? And then how did that evolve over time? As far as what features you do give away for free to kind of reach the broadest audience possible, and then what things you pay wall to actually get paid? 00:22:57 Jacob:And, and, and I'd like to highlight how Ron, when we asked you to describe AllTrails, you put free in the name, which I'm sure was very intentional. Right? You said it is a free app, right? It is not a premium app. I mean, it is a premium app, but the highlight the free. So00:23:09 Ron:Yeah,00:23:10 Jacob:That framing, what, what, tell us about your free app.00:23:13 Ron:There's, this is a, this is, an ongoing. Like not debate, but, it's an open question always. And we're constantly like asking our employees and our board, like let's challenge our assumptions here just because we did something a certain way last year. Doesn't mean we need to do it this way.Like let's constantly reevaluate this, for us, there's sort of three main buckets we have. Free on authenticated users and then we have free registered users. So kind of that registration wall is like the first key funnel, metric. And then there's, pro subscribers, right? So we have two, two kind of core, success metrics.One is registration rate and one is pro conversion rate. And then what goes in front and behind the paywall and the red wall, the registration wall. Constantly influx constantly. And plus we actually just did this really fun workshop a couple of weeks ago, internally here. It was like the history of AllTrailss pro and just showing kind of which features started when I, you know, again in 2015, like what was the pro feature set?How much of those? We actually ended up pulling in front of the red wall and new features that we put back behind the paywall. So I feel like we're constantly in a state of experimentation here. we've been, we've been experimenting with that since day one. We've been experimenting with pricing also on day one.And there's still, I don't feel like we've cracked the code at all at all. When I, when I first started here, I'll chose pro was 50 bucks a year and I spent the first, like two months just trying to get as, as much like, obviously all the quant data that I could get my hands on, but as much qualitative data as I could get to.So reading every app store review, every Reddit thread, every blog post. Talking to customers, all of it. And aside from everyone telling us that our data socked and, you know, we can, we got them lost. So we got them tickets from the park ranger for telling them to bring a dog when it's not that currently, whatever it was.The other piece of feedback that we got was like 50 bucks, like it's way too much. And so we immediately started testing pricing and, and, and we tested it at 30 bucks a year and we tested that 15 bucks a year to kinda all right. If we really just take that price down is, the in incremental, purchase rate, gonna offset, you know, the, the change in that revenue per transaction.They were about to wash it, which was really interesting from a net revenue perspective, 15 bucks a year versus 30 bucks a year was, was basically flat. But we went with 30 because it gave us more maneuverability. We could do more. for the folks who were like price sensitive, do do discounting, intro offers, whatever.At 15, we really couldn't go any low, lower. So it's just like, this is it for everybody all the time. but even that we're revisiting now and thinking through like, all right, maybe are there other different tiers? We've never done monthly before. So what is, what is a world in which there's a monthly price?I don't, I don't love it. I mean, again, annual is magic. Like why mess with a good thing, but there is a cohort of users, especially outside of the U S where that's a pretty high00:26:16 Jacob:Oh, I mean, I live in the Midwest. Like I would, I only need your app from, from April to November. Right. Like I really don't need to pay all year.00:26:24 Ron:For the two weeks in00:26:25 Jacob:Yeah. I, but I mean, I think there's the counter argument there of the simplicity. It's like, yeah, sure. But. Whatever your value is. So your, your, your, this is the price.I really, I I've seen that effect before on the price experimentation, you just end up with the same area under the curve. Like, no matter how you move it, and some apps are like that, some apps are not. but I do think it's really fascinating, the wisdom of crowds, right. And just how, like, they know like the, the, the, the masses have priced and valued your products.And then just like showing that like, it's very efficient, right. No matter where it goes, then you can come down to like, It's almost a good place to be. Cause then yeah, you have that like opera, you can choose where you want it to price. You can basically, you're freed from the like fiduciary duty of like maximum extraction.And you can like, like, just focus on like, okay, what's gonna what's right. For us for some of those goals on company growth and stuff like that. If it was right for the mission. And then like also give yourself some like tactical opportunities in terms of discounting and other stuff like this, and then positioning as well.Like what is it? I think that's almost as important. It's like, how do you use. How do you see all trials? Like how do you see it as like, what's the value of perception? Like a $30 skew and a 50 and a 15, those are very different. Right. And those are, you know, I think about consumer goods on those scales.That's like each one of those things has like a different, like, feel to it.00:27:43 Ron:Totally. And, and then on top of it, though, our business is driven by UGC, right? We have this classic UGC flywheel. And so obviously we know our pro users are more engaged, but a ton of engagement comes from our free users as well. And so you can't kind of, turn the squeeze on them too hard without like really fundamentally damaging the business.00:28:05 Jacob:What kind of user generated content? Is it like pictures and updated and stuff or what? What's00:28:10 Ron:Yeah, ratings, reviews, photos, recordings, you know, and then there's this also this virtuous cycle that we have, this beautiful relationship we have with our users, where they, they help us create as well as Curie our trail Content. So that's the thing with trail content, just to go down this rabbit hole for a second, Joe Content, super fluid, like it's not like streets that are, that are relatively static.You know, a trail is you get, you get flooding, you get fires, you get maintenance, you get development, down trees, whatever. Like they're constantly in a state of flux. And it's really, really hard to stay on top of it. We can't do it alone. And so we00:28:49 Jacob:And there's no, it's not like, it's not like roads where there's like a national database, right. Of like uniform data00:28:55 Ron:Yeah, no, not at all. Right. so we, we do. We have this like really beautiful symbiotic relationship with our, with our users, you know, and, and it's kind of like, we both get value from each other and we're both very transparent about like the relationship, like you guys help us and you help the community.Right. And we'll package it. We'll, we'll keep improving and investing in the product experience and everything else. and again, like, this is where it seems to be working, but this is when, when we were talking about. Th th the choke points in the funnel and that, that red wall and the broken version Weill, this is the thing that's top of mind over all of it. 00:29:30 David:Yeah, that's great. I did want to move on and talk about in 2018, AllTrails raised, 75 million led by spectrum equity. And so I'm curious about that, about that story. So, I know, you know, the plan was to sell and then you've shared on other podcasts that, part of that was the founder taking, taking some money kind of his exit event.But I'm really curious just from like a company building perspective. I think so many founders and entrepreneurs think, oh, if I can just. More money. If I can just hire more people, everything's going to be easier. but I imagine that's not the full story. So I'd love to hear about the raise, but then also kind of how that changed the company and changed the trajectory.00:30:18 Ron:Yeah. So like I said earlier, right. That the handshake agreement was to grow and sell it. So we knew going in exactly what the deal was. and once we hit profitability in 2017, it kind of felt like, all right, it's probably next year. It's probably our year. And we got an inbound from one of the big tech companies early, you know, probably end of Q1 of 2018.And so I was like, all right, game on, right? This is it. We'll go get a bank. we'll run a formal process here. And we started going through it. We started going through it. This was actually, it was fun, right? Like I got to put together sort of like, all right, here's our top 100 strategic partnerships broken out by category, broken out by vertical.Here's like the, you know, the accretive value here is, you know, the, the investment credit. It was like a really fun thought exercise. You know, we're talking to online travel companies and real estate companies, and obviously like the retailers and just so many different types of companies out there. And we ran a process and it was, it was fun.But, and as we were going through it, well, a couple things happen. One is our business really took off. Like it was a breakout trajectory year for us. So that always helps. Anytime you, you meet with someone, you share your plan and then you come back a month later and it's like, Hey, actually, Outperforming outpacing.So your price just went up. so that was, I mean, that was great. Like a great position to be in. I've never had leveraged like that. And the other, the other thing was like, we could walk away at any point. If we, if we didn't like it, I had done a lot of fundraising before and that I've never had a position of, of leverage like that.So that was cool. But as we were going through the process and talking to these different strategic acquires, the other thing that kept jumping out was like, I don't want to just go be middle management at some big company that I already like have chosen not to work out anyways, because it doesn't align with what I want to do with my time.And so, you know, we're kind of going through, it's like, is this really, is this it is this the only path? and we're talking to our bankers about it and like, you know, there's a, a huge ecosystem of financial investors that are really excited about this consumer subscription space. let's, let's do a spike there.And so we started talking to somebody. Different financial firms out there. And that's where it got really, really interesting. you know, I think, I think we all probably have preconceptions about like private equity groups, like, you know, I know, right.00:32:36 Jacob:Just, it then the light dimmed here. When you said00:32:39 Ron:I know, cause a lot of the classic ones, they're just there in your shorts about like your bottom line expenses and micromanaging and telling you to cut costs and00:32:47 Jacob:That's, that's the, that's the, the stereotype at least.00:32:50 Ron:Totally right. but there's this whole class of growth equity shops out there and, and we, we sort of plugged into it and I would squarely put spectrum equity and that one, and the first time we talked to them, it was so clear. They're like, you guys, aren't thinking big enough. It's like, what? I love that.Okay. Let's talk growth. You know, like you guys need to be thinking global. Right. And it was just like, there was so much alignment around. This, this opportunity in front of us. And instead of like pulling the rip cord and just kind of being absorbed and integrated into something else, it's like, how about, like, we really make a, make a run at this.And so the more we talk to them, the more it's was like, yes, hell yes. And it wasn't just from like, a funding perspective, you know? Cause if it was just that like again, then you just do an auction and you just see whoever's the highest. But we really wanted, like I needed a partner. I wanted a value added partner that I wanted someone who could bring in, you know, a sense of community, not have to reinvent the wheel all the time.That's always nice when you can plug into our portfolio of similar companies and just pick their brain. All right. Like how did you guys00:33:54 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, that's an under, that's an underappreciated aspect of raising versus like going at your own. It's like the network, like it's, I think feces oversell it, but maybe founders undervalue it. Right? Like00:34:05 Ron:A hundred percent. Couldn't agree more. It does. It really does. and so yeah, we kinda went, yeah. I, I feel incredibly fortunate that we were able to partner up with spectrum equity. And so David two question, I have, it's like it for us, it was this huge unlock. It was this huge online. Like we have another partner, we're going to be more formal, with our board structure and, you know, the, the sort of like metrics, which is great, like we needed to level up, and our corporate diligence and everything.And they've been, they've been a partner and we've, we've grown the board. We've added more expertise. And again, like the, the portfolio being, being sister companies with, with like Headspace and the not worldwide and survey monkey, whatever, like these cool companies that I respect and be able to, you know, hit up the CEO and be like, okay, how did you guys deal with this?Because like you said, like there are a ton of challenges that come when you're going through that, you know, that the slope of the curve at that point, right? Like the true hyper-growth curves. All right. You know, we can't fall back on, on money as an excuse, you know, like it's purely an execution play and how do we do more faster?And that's honestly like, that's my, I think one of the coolest things I can say about my board, that the single biggest piece of feedback I get from them where they're just like yelling at me all the time and a great way. It's like, you gotta do more faster. Why aren't you doing more faster? Right. Like that is the mantra here because everyone sees this opportunity.It's ours, it's ours to go take. Right. But we got to execute and do it as fast as we can.00:35:33 Jacob:Yeah. That's that's, I mean, I'll say as somebody recently constructing a board, like that was sort of my cause as a founder and as a CEO, like you're always, you're just, you're you're at, you should be at the limits if you're doing your job. Right, right. Like you should be kind of feeling at least like thinking, you know, what your limits are and what the company's limits are.And it's nice. Even if there isn't anything more you can do. It's nice to have some people who like, ostensibly are aligned with you to be like, Are you sure there's not more right? Like, is there anything like, are you doing like, could, could you change this? Like, could you go go faster potentially? And sometimes the answer's no, but it does always kinda, you leave those board meetings going like, like maybe there is like, maybe there is some way we could do this, like better or faster, right.00:36:10 Ron:Yeah. And then you build a team, right? And that leads back to like the team growth. And this, you know, this is our third year in a row of, of doubling head count. Hopefully next year will be our fourth year in a row. And all of the leverage, I'm a big believer, like two things are the lifeblood for companies like ours.One is culture and the other is momentum. And you can't, if you lose either of them, Right. Like, you cannot take your eye off of either of those as a CEO, as a founder, whatever it is. and so like building both, you know, they, they got to go hand in hand, or you can sacrifice culture as you're doing the internal hypergrowth.00:36:43 Jacob:Have an exit strategy, right?00:36:45 Ron:Exactly.00:36:46 Jacob:Going to last very long.00:36:47 Ron:Because you'll never get it back. That's exactly right. But, but generating momentum through like value added hires and raising the bar or bringing, you know, a bringing in a plus, I love being the dumbest person in the room. That's my favorite thing at all. Choose walking in there. It was like, all right, I'm going to learn something.Someone's going to teach me something cool. and building a team.00:37:06 David:So it sounds like the biggest unlock for y'all taking the money was just the ability to hire faster, hire better folks, offer better pay. but was there anything else that you feel like taking funding helped unlock for AllTrails? Did you, were you able to spend Mo did you start spending more on, on user acquisition or ramping anything else out? 00:37:27 Jacob:Can I ask a clarifying question without like you sharing your term sheet or whatever, but like D w like these, these deals can be very different than like a venture deal, right. Where like, almost always all of it hits the books and it's dilutive, meaning that the company gets the money, but this was like kind of a buyout for the founder as an alternative to a sale.It's like, did you guys structure it? So some hit the books and not, or was it all to the founders or how did it, whatever you're comfortable00:37:50 Ron:We, we hardly took any primary capital in 2018. I didn't, I didn't want it. I don't want it. Like I liked our organic trajectory. I didn't want. And obviously I've gotten to know spectrum a lot better. They're not built from the CNA, but you take money from a VC. And the expectation is like the success metric is suspended as hard and aggressive as possible because they're incentivized to keep you hooked, you know, on the next round.And I wanted to, you know, accelerate more like on the product development side of things, but I didn't want to get stuck in a, a growth model that's dependent on unsustainable paid acquisition. Right. So. almost the entire deal with secondary capital, which was great, which was00:38:33 Jacob:And for the financial illiterate IME, like 18 months ago,00:38:37 Ron:Yeah,00:38:38 Jacob:The company gets the money. Secondary would be somebody who's already a shareholder gets the00:38:41 Ron:Exactly the people on the cap table. so it was buying out the founder, buying out the original investors, like really cleaning it out. It was a new chapter, a new book altogether. At that point and, you know, start sort of starting together. I think, you know, to the question earlier, in terms of like the other value as like, I really can't stress enough, just the strategic value add that I was able to get like, again, because as a founder or as a CEO or as an example, You're kind of stuck in your own head a lot and you can talk to other founders, but you know, there's this like culture, especially in Silicon valley, like, oh bro, coaching it.Yeah. I mean just crushing it, you know? No, one's, you know.00:39:19 Jacob:I didn't, you didn't have to put air quotes around culture there, but like, I could hear the00:39:24 Ron:Yeah.00:39:24 Jacob:I'm called.00:39:25 Ron:You know, and very few people are like really open and transparent, about the challenges and what have you. And so being able to go in. and have this board that I trust that I feel like we're all aligned. I've had boards, you know, especially VC backed boards, where you get like a different, you know, venture capitalists from every round that you do.Like you have a lot of misaligned incentives. You have a lot of sharp elbows in a room.00:39:47 Jacob:I was gonna say, there's a lot of, you know, these are all competitors in a lot of cases, right? Hopefully you pick well, and you have people that are professionals, but like you can totally end up in a situation where you have frenemies,00:39:57 Ron:Yeah, you're watching your back at your own boards. That's a horrible way to live. Whereas with this one, it was so clean. It was like, we were owned by spectrum. This is great. I work at on their behalf. This is great. We've got the two of them there's me. And then, and then, but to their credit, they're like, let's bring on two more operators.And so, you know, they didn't care about like, well, we have to have 51% plus of the seats. It was just like, no, let's just surround ourselves with really awesome. And so we got, you know, we got the former CEO of ancestry, who, you know, they know a thing or two about, subscription businesses. And then we got the COO of Robin hood and obviously like they know a thing or two about hyper-growth and everything else.And again, like, so it's almost like it's this team, you know, it's like this dream team we're just collectively, like they're helping me chart stuff. Like see things. I wouldn't have been able to see on my own, whatever the pattern00:40:45 Jacob:Yeah.I mean, I think it's, it's, it's a good story in the sense that like, I think, I think we think too terminally sometimes about companies, right? Like it's like, they're born, they are grown and then they get sold and then they die usually like nine times out of 10, right? Like it's, it's not often that an intern, like I say, all goes well and the integration goes, well, some spectrum of results.Right. But this is a result where I think you, you guys have a company that's two important. To let die, right? Like if you had sold, I don't know what, you know, your fangs or whoever was like, I'm sure I could see any number of massive tech company wanting this to be a part of their data set or part of their like social, like aspect of whatever.It's just, I could see a plugging into a lot of things, but you know, to get Google's exciting acquisition today and not saying you guys. Talking to Google or not, but as an example, like their exciting acquisition today is tomorrow is like, you know, happy trails, blog posts, right. That actually a good name for the, the shutting down AllTrails, acquisition at Google blogposts.But, but the, you know, and this is a, this is a path where, you know, people who are passionate about the mission, the employees and the users, like can kind of, you know, get that exit that people are looking for. But without like jeopardizing. Thing that's important. And like, maybe this is very hippie, right?But like, I think there is some aspect of companies that's beyond like the capital value and beyond like, even like the culture, but like actually achieving the mission and, and making that change in the world or providing that service. That's, that's, that's more important than, you know, Hypergrowth or whatever.And look, I mean, we should get into talking about now, like posts around, but it sounds like you guys are in hyper-growth anyway. Right. So it didn't, it's not like it's, it's this false dichotomy of right. Like either you're like raising for venture and you're like going at it really hard or Like you're a lifestyle business or, you know, whatever.And it's just like, Maybe, whereas maybe us like lampooning, this straw man of a false narrative has like most of the talking about this to like make that is the, the, the totality of the false dichotomy is us talking about it. But I really think this is a great example of like one of those like interesting, you know, outcomes and, and stories.So it tell us about what's happening now. 00:42:52 David:I appreciate you sharing that specifically because even in researching it, I listened to a couple of your other interviews. I still assume that that the. A pretty big primary chunk that, that went into the balance sheet of the company and then it accelerated it from there. So it's an even more interesting story to me that that raise was mostly secondary.So from the $3 million seed way back in, whatever it was 20 12, 20 13, it really has been an almost bootstrapped company and becoming what it is today on. Little capital is really incredible and it really kind of speaks to consumer subscription space and, and how you can operate and go big without spending a ton of money.If you do it right. If you don't, if you don't just plug into Instagram and blow $5 million of VC money acquiring the wrong users, if you actually talk to them and build a good product and everything else. but I did00:43:55 Ron:Well, and I was just stay on top of not only that at the first board meeting that we had with. I, I walked in and I said, Hey, you know, this is great high five super-stoked, we're also, I think we should donate 1% of our revenue to environmental causes. I know you guys just shelled out a whole lot of money, but would that be okay?And to their credit, they're like Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. And you know, one of the first things we did post-transaction was signing up for 1% for the planet, you know, like there there's totally a different path here. I didn't realize it. And I think it's cool for people.I don't know. I, I wish I heard this earlier in my career. Like there are, like you said, like there's not a dichotomy, like there's so many different ways to do this. I think we have. Fetishizing almost, or like putting on a pedestal this whole like massive VC round kind of stuff, you know, and there's a time and a place for it, for sure.But like, that's not the success metric in and of itself, like more often than not, especially for earlier companies, the death knell. And so I think that, I'm always, you know, I get, I get hit up by people, you know, for whatever I'll all the time talking about this kind of stuff. And so I was like, dude, if you can boot shop, if you can control your own destiny, like do it, you know, find right partners that are gonna unlock growth and everything else.Don't fall, don't fall victim to that. Like, just that story that you think is like the classic Silicon valley startup story, which is you go out, you raise a big round and you have an IPO. It never works. It never works that way00:45:19 Jacob:Who would do that?00:45:20 Ron:To too many man.00:45:22 Jacob:We're running out of time. I do want to know. So you're talking about like doubling and so I'm guessing like the pandemic, like we've seen across the ecosystem has been really, especially, I can imagine there's two aspects to it, right? Like one your digital service.And then secondly, like you're very good compatible with like, social distancing. So did you like think you would be having this conversation for whatever four years after the spectrum, deal like doubling every head count every year? Cause that's typically not what private equity companies growth rates look like.00:45:51 Ron:I know. No, it was, I mean, so I'll preface this by saying we were incredibly fortunate during COVID and sometimes you just get lucky. Sometimes you get like, there's a ton of great companies out there that just like how to pull sales reps out of the field, or we're an equip for like the supply chain issues or whatever it was.Right. Like, Well, like you said, we're digital first company. we, we already, we had a somewhat distributed workforce, so we already like using zoom and slack and going fully remote. Like we, we saw no, no drop in productivity. Now granted like when, when the world shut down mid-March that was a little bit scary.But we knew it would be temporary. I, you know how long no one really knew. Bye bye. Mid April, we were going to our board and saying like, look like, I know things look a little bleak right now. Like the, the machine has fully ground to a hall, but we think actually like this is going to be an insane accelerant.Once things open back up, there's nothing to do. Like you said, it lends itself perfectly to social distancing. You know, people who can't travel anymore. Like, all right, we're going to explore our local state parks now, you know, like we'll scratch that. It's that way I got three kids and you know, school is canceled and obviously, you know, summer camps forget.What are we going to do? What are we going to do with these kids? And it's like, we're going to run them ragged on the trail, you know, every weekend we're just going on the trail and we're running them ragged and00:47:10 Jacob:There's a good ad campaign in there. Just00:47:11 Ron:Totally right. And so,00:47:13 Jacob:Sleeping kids in the back of a Subaru Forester and it's like,00:47:16 Ron:Yes, exactly. So, I mean, you know, we made, we did make a big strategic decision, to get in front of it and, and start hiring like crazy, and just make, you know, make a play, make a play. And, and again, Sometimes you get lucky. you know, that works, that works all these companies around us, that we were never able to like really poach from or whatever.Something like we're able to go grab their talent. Like not just from people who are like, oh, but people were actively working there who were just like, I don't want to do this with my life anymore. I like spending time outside. I had the number of people, the number of inbound applicants that like write in their cover letter.I was looking at which apps I use the most. And I just started applying to those jobs. You know, I think that there really is. It's like really. Great. And I applaud it and I love it. And I hope it never stops people like taking more agency and control over their career and not just like reactively, you know, just doing whatever leftovers00:48:10 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, the geographic unlock of remote, I think is a big part of that. Right. Cause suddenly like you're, you can just literally go on your phone and pretty probably today, nine times out of 10, you're going to be able to work for that company depending on your like, you know, locale or like time00:48:22 Ron:Totally.00:48:23 Jacob:It wasn't that way two years ago,00:48:25 Ron:Not at all, not at all. Exactly. So, a lot changed. A lot has changed in this time. With all of that, with the big accelerant they were seeing on the usability side through 2020, there is, I think David, you had asked this like pre pre-show, you know: there's two big questions hanging over our business as we went into 2021.One is, are the registered users who we got last year during COVID are they going to convert to pro like our conversion to pro happens over time? We look at a lot of stuff through a cohorted basis, and it goes up and to the right. It will take years for some users across the line to go pro, but it's great.It just keeps going up. So, are the folks who signed up when there was nothing else to do, are they ever going to convert to pro or not? The other big question is: all the folks who converted to pro in the height of the pandemic in 2020, once the world opens up, are they going to retain? Or, are we going to have the bottom drop out from under us?These were two questions hanging over our heads. We have a seasonal business, it follows the sun pretty much. So, as we headed into May, June, July of this year, thankfully that the answer for both was a resounding “yes.” The folks who signed up last year are converting at a higher rate than normal.The folks who subscribed are retaining at higher rates than normal, too. And I think it's kind of more of a testament to how the zeitgeists has changed a little bit post pandemic. Being outside just makes people feel good. I guess it's that simple. It's not very complicated.You feel better when you spend time outside, and people are just incorporating it into their regular routines.00:50:08 Jacob:Yeah. It's interesting. For positives and negatives, I think you came up three cherries, right? It just really lined up, and then it's continued. You're talking about the hiring thing, too. Like a lot of habits changed during COVID, and I don't think anything will necessarily go back. Especially if people have found a new, happier, maximum for their lives. You guys are part of that. That's great. and that seems like, I dunno, we don't have total good analytic quantitative data on this, but it doesn't seem like the whole boosts from last year totally collapsed.It seems like it just was like an accelerate, and I think other industries would sort of back that up. 00:50:54 David:Yep. Well, we're coming up on time. Is there anything else I should've asked you? 00:50:59 Ron:No, this was fun.00:51:00 Jacob:You guys are probably hiring, right?00:51:02 Ron:We're hiring like crazy right now. Yeah, absolutely.00:51:06 Jacob:AllTrails?00:51:07 Ron:Yeah.00:51:08 Jacob:There you go.00:51:08 David:Any particular roles you want to shout out? 00:51:11 Ron:We're always starving for great engineering talent. Android, iOS, front end, back end dev ops, security, all of it. PMs, product designers, mapping designers, customer support, the full gamut. The entire company, every department is hiring right now.00:51:28 David:Well, it sounds like a really fun company to work for. We'll put links to your job page and to your personal LinkedIn, and a few other places in the show notes, but this was really fun chatting with you today, Ron. Thank you so much for taking the time. 00:51:41 Ron:My pleasure guys. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Customer expectations have changed over the past 18 months of a pandemic, leaving brands with the challenge of pivoting and adapting not only to a new way of living and working but also to a new way of interacting with and serving customers.  Scott Finlow, CMO of PepsiCo Foodservice, has noticed two major trends during the pandemic. First is that people are looking forward to re-entering the world and having meaningful connections. As they do so, they want to try new products and have new experiences. Second, people are looking for more purpose in their lives and in their brand choices. That manifests in a variety of ways, including being more aware of the impact of their decisions on the environment and their health and wellbeing.  But Finlow says understanding and recognizing those changes is only the first step. Companies need to understand where customer needs are heading so they can focus on re-inventing a better normal. It's not about going back to how things were but instead moving forward and creating a better future.  Perhaps nowhere is that more important than in the B2B world, where many companies are adjusting to new ways of doing business. Throughout the pandemic, PepsiCo has focused on forming partnerships to help support its restaurant customers as they pivot. The company is also investing heavily in digital and building out services to help its customers along their own digital journeys.  As customer expectations change, innovation is crucial. B2B companies need to find new ways to meet customer needs and break out of how things have been done in the past. With an increased focus on health and safety, PepsiCo set out to create contactless fountain drink equipment. Finlow says it required the work of multiple departments to deliver on the new hygiene standard. But it doesn't stop there—the company is also piloting a drink machine in Europe that allows customers to gesture and pour the drink of their choice. Continual innovation provides B2B customers with the tools they need to best serve their customers.   Customer experience has always required continual change and evolution, but especially in a post-COVID world. B2B companies that stay in touch with their customers to understand their new needs and expectations, find ways to support their journey and continually innovate will lead the way towards the future.      *This episode is sponsored by Quiq. Quiq is a leading conversational AI platform that drives two-way conversations to deliver a better experience for people and brands. Quiq enables enterprises to connect and engage in two-way conversations with their customers across varied messaging channels — including Facebook Messenger — in more than 170 languages. Quiq is the future of business-to-consumer messaging; it's the wingman every brand and CX'er needs. _______________ Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.  Join the new Customer Experience Community here.

As a CX leader is important to better understand and promote the customer experience field within your company. Regardless of profession, there are certain traits and skills common to leaders. But what leadership traits are important specifically to customer experience professionals – what qualities of leadership should you prioritize? Host Steve Walker welcomes Lambert Walsh, senior vice president of customer success at DocuSign, the agreement cloud company, for a discussion on the traits of customer experience leaders.

Mike Roberts is the Head of Marketing at Catalyst Software, AKA Ben's boss. In this episode, Ben and Mike discuss some of the projects they're most proud of in their careers so far, the importance of reflecting on our progress overtime, and achieving optimal work/life balance. They also touch on how they've cultivated careers they love, and the correct pronunciation of La Croix.

On this episode of The Marketer's Journey, I interview Genefa Murphy, the CMO of cloud contact center, Five9. During the episode, we discuss her path to CMO, creative marketing that challenges societal norms, and the customer experience overall.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer's Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play!Key takeaways from this episode:It's all about the customer experience. At the end of the day, the technology and products a company provides to their customers are important, but the most crucial element of forming lasting relationships is creating an exceptional journey from beginning to end. Genefa recognized this early on in her career, which led her to develop skills that would help to engage with customers on a deeper level.Thought leadership is key. Genefa noted that it's not enough for companies to set goals around creating demand—customers are looking for opinions, advice and best practices, so positioning the company alongside a provocative point of view is essential. By doing this, companies can expand the scope of how they define success, impact awareness and start a conversation around their area of expertise.Embrace subject matter experts. While marketing teams of the past may have been siloed into separate functions, Genefa mentioned that it's much more effective to create an integrated team with knowledgeable subject matter experts in each area. This way, the team can better serve all stakeholders including current customers and new prospects.Learn more about Five9 here: https://www.five9.com/Learn more about Genefa here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genefamurphy/

On this week's episode, we talked to Caroline Buck about her unlikely journey from the world of UX and brand marketing to direct-to-consumer pet food.

Fanatics Carolyne Truelove is the Head of Global Fan Experience at Fanatics, Inc. Fanatics is changing the way fans purchase their favorite team apparel, jerseys, headwear, and hard goods through innovative, tech-infused approach to making and selling fan gear in today's on-demand, mobile-first culture. Fanatics offers the largest collection of timeless and timely merchandise whether shopping online, on your phone, in flagship stores, in stadiums, or on-site at the world's biggest sporting events. 01:20 What is one thing people might not know about you?03:26 What is it that you do as the Head of Global Fan Experience at Fanatics?04:46 At Fanatics, you have Athletes and a Coach. Is it a play on sports or something else?06:45 Tell me your culture at Fanatics?08:35 Does that improve retention?12:01 How do partnerships with internal teams improve the Fan Experience? (Effortless Tools, Self Service)17:12 What makes the Fan Experience so unique at Fanatics?How do you measure the fan experience?19:47 How are you using this data to improve the fan experience?***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/  BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

“ Take your common returns, procedure, most retailers, you know, if they don't want to take it, they'll find every excuse under the sun not to take it. But that's not for the customer. That's a procedure that they've built in for themselves. So therefore, the customer experience is dilapidated at best, and it doesn't create customer loyalty.” “I mean, the first thing that you really need to do is you need to make sure that whatever you're offering is what the customer wants. Plain and simple. If you're offering something that is, you know, done before, not done, well, not well thought out selfish or in genuine, then you're not going to win. No, what you're selling is a value added to your customer, that is the first thing you need to do. The second thing is to have the procedures and the systems in place to be able to sell it in a way that doesn't cause too much friction if there's too much friction in the way that I have to create a purchase.” TIME STAMP SUMMARY00:32 What does it mean to be a certified customer experience practitioner05:09 Making procedures that help the customer 13:44 Customer loyalty and customer experience20:38 Customer recovery Where to find Aileen?Website                                               https://aileenday.com.au/ LinkedIn                                               https://www.linkedin.com/in/aileen-day-1800valued  Who is Aileen Day?Aileen Day is the founder and owner of Aileen Day Advisory, Value Driven Brand and Meraki Business Solutions. These businesses were all created to deliver in the areas of customer experience performance consulting, education, business mentoring and support. Aileen is also one of Australia's few globally recognized Certified Customer Experience Practitioners earning her designation through the world governing body of CX, the CXPA in 2021. Aileen was also inducted as a member to the Forbes Coaches Council in 2021 and after decades of having the privilege to work with businesses such as Coles, Bunnings and Officeworks leading their customer experience teams, she now uses her position to share her skills and insights on the customer, employee, and human experience with businesses around the world through the Forbes Magazine and associated media platforms, helping to create more trusted and value driven brands everywhere she goes. Aileen is also a qualified Public Relations specialist, a mother to a 10-year-old son and a lover of shoes and wine. 

How do you create remarkable experiences for customers that they end up becoming your best marketers?    Dan Gingiss, customer experience (CX) speaker and coach answers this question on Stacy Sherman's Doing CX Right podcast plus... *The importance of being an experience maker. Who, why, and what's it about. *The difference between Customer Experience vs Customer Service and strategies for success. *How supply chain, marketing, finance, and other departments impact customer experiences. *Should employee pay be linked to customer satisfaction scores? *Brands that stand out in Doing CX Right and best practices to differentiate brands. *Leadership lessons and more. Details at DoingCXRight.com/podcasts

Before 1959, little girls played with baby dolls to prepare them for motherhood and caregiving. But Ruth Handler knew girls needed a doll that could challenge their imaginations to dream bigger. And so Barbie was born. Whether she's rocking an astronaut's suit or a business power suit, the infamous Barbie is always confident and poised to take on the world. With over a billion Barbies sold, her confidence has empowered millions of children over the past 60 years to go after their dreams.Giving our customers confidence is one of our most important charges as CX leaders. Barbie's makers at Mattel knew this, and so does Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails. He and his team work to empower everyone, from “indoor people” to outdoor enthusiasts, to take on the outdoors. What can we do to harness that empowering energy for our own customer experience? Let's find out.--------"The key is using technology to find the right trail for you, then to go out and explore with confidence." - Ron Schneidermann--------Time Stamps* (0:00) The unmatched impact of Barbie* (8:13) The beauty of AllTrails* (12:06) Handling virtual trail upkeep* (14:59) A terrifying board meeting* (19:09) How to best connect with your users--------SponsorThis podcast is presented by Oracle CX. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives--------LinksConnect with Ron on LinkedInCheck out AllTrails

How much of your “race fitness” is due to improvements in capacity and how much of it comes from pain tolerance? We'll cover this and how should average athletes and pro athletes fuel differently, get into cyclocross season and much more in Episode 339 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast! -------------------------------------------- TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE - Intro 0:09 - What has Ivy learned during her CX season so far? 03:16 - Deep dive on pain tolerance and endurance training 19:17 - Rapid fire questions 53:26 - Physical vs. psychological benefits of drafting 1:14:19 - Examining how a specific pro athlete should manage their nutrition 1:19:59 - How average athletes should manage their nutrition 1:30:21 -------------------------------------------- RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE   - The Cerebral Signature for Pain Perception and Its Modulation - Survey of Chronic Pain in Europe: Prevalence, Impact on Daily Life, and Treatment - The Relationship Between Psychological Resilience and Pain Threshold and Tolerance: Optimism and Grit as Moderators - Psychological Factors Associated With Ultramarathon Runners' Supranormal Pain Tolerance: A Pilot Study - Does exercise induce hypoalgesia through conditioned pain modulation? - Assessing Endogenous Pain Inhibition: Test-Retest Reliability of Exercise-Induced Hypoalgesia in Local and Remote Body Parts After Aerobic Cycling - A meta-analytic review of the hypoalgesic effects of exercise - Examination of the dose–response relationship between pain perception and blood pressure elevations induced by isometric exercise in men and women - Dose Response of Isometric Contractions on Pain Perception in Healthy Adults - Exercise-Induced Hypoalgesia in Healthy Individuals and People With Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis - Influence of Preferred versus Prescribed Exercise on Pain in Fibromyalgia - Prescribed Versus Preferred Intensity Resistance Exercise in Fibromyalgia Pain - Similarities between exercise-induced hypoalgesia and conditioned pain modulation in humans - Hypoalgesia after bicycling at lactate threshold is reliable between sessions - Intensity and duration threshold for aerobic exercise-induced analgesia to pressure pain - Exercise-Induced Hypoalgesia After Isometric Wall Squat Exercise: A Test-Retest Reliability Study - Sex-Dependent Components of the Analgesia Produced by Athletic Competition - Changes in Pain Perception and Descending Inhibitory Controls Start at Middle Age in Healthy Adults - Effects of Mirthful Laughter on Pain Tolerance: A Randomized Controlled Investigation - Does Manual Lymphatic Drainage Have Any Effect on Pain Threshold and Tolerance of Different Body Parts? -------------------------------------------- TRY TRAINERROAD RISK FREE FOR 30 DAYS! TrainerRoad makes cyclists faster. Athletes get structured indoor workouts, science-backed training plans, and easy-to-use performance analysis tools to reach their goals. Get Started: https://bit.ly/3unoSnx   Adaptive Training: What it is, how to use it: https://bit.ly/3dIRClW Build Your Custom Plan: https://bit.ly/3oR8sme  Train Together with Group Workouts: https://bit.ly/3fkaYyd  -------------------------------------------- LEARN MORE ABOUT ADAPTIVE TRAINING Adaptive Training Video: https://youtu.be/gE2yPYZ15ew Adaptive Training: What it is, how to use it: https://bit.ly/3dIRClW  How Adaptive Training Makes You Faster: https://bit.ly/2ZNfWLq  -------------------------------------------- SUCCESSFUL ATHLETES PODCAST Listen to the Successful Athletes Podcast now!: https://www.TrainerRoad.com/SAP  -------------------------------------------- SCIENCE OF GETTING FASTER PODCAST Listen to the Science of Getting Faster Podcast now!: https://www.TrainerRoad.com/SOGF  -------------------------------------------- STAY IN TOUCH Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrainerRd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trainerroad/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrainerRoad Strava Club: https://www.strava.com/clubs/trainerroad

We know the customer experience is important because without happy customers, our businesses will fail and our customers won't be happy, but what truly creates standout brands is this idea of an exceptional experience. This means no hurdles, no drawbacks, and nothing to jump through. CX, whether you like it or not, is a team sport that touches every part of the organization. I give 3 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset. What creates standout brands 0:42The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience 1:383 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset 2:52“The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience, it bleeds throughout the entire organization and it starts with that idea, this customer first mindset. A customer first mindset means you put the needs of your customers first. Hopefully that's obvious.” 1:38

“Shortage” will be the name of the game in 2022. CX leaders will have to help their organizations contend with out-of-stock products, understaffing, and unhappy customers. Senior Analyst Judy Weader and Researcher Sam Karpinski explain how CX leaders can shine during a difficult year.

Michael leads the Customer Experience team at ASAPP. He works with customers like JetBlue, American Airlines, and Dish to help them implement AI solutions that augment and automate human work, empowering people to be their best. Prior to joining ASAPP, Michael served as SVP of Customer Care at Samsung, and held executive CX leadership roles at Electronic Arts and Apple. Key Takeaways.  Taking care of your agents. Employee satisfaction = Customer satisfaction Machine learning. How to elevate your agents into highly specialized roles by leveraging technologyAttrition levels in Call Centre Agent roles. Why they're so high, what they cost, and what can be done to reduce them. Empowering your employees with the right tools for work.  Connect with Michael  Website - https://www.asapp.com/  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-cowan-154208/  Twitter - https://twitter.com/michael_lawder?lang=en  Email - ml@asapp.com

Steve is a highly sought-after talent advisor to leaders and organizations across the globe. As a founder of his own silicon valley based firm, Cadigan Talent Ventures, Steve advises organizations including Twitter, Eventbrite, Cisco, Intel, Salesforce, and more. Prior to launching his firm, Steve worked as an HR executive for over 25 years at a wide range of companies, but his HR career was capped by serving as the first CHRO for LinkedIn from 2009 through 2012. 02:43 Why are more people changing jobs faster today than at any time in history?05:32 What does all this change mean to our careers and employers?09:30 What can companies do to keep our staff from leaving?14:42 You mention in the book that college is no longer the investment that will guarantee us a viable career path, so how should we view school?22:30 It seems like most companies still hire based on the best place to work, we pay well, have good products, but that doesn't differentiate them from anyone, so is there a better way?31:10 As an employee, should we always be looking at our next career move? Why or why not?***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The last nearly two years have been dominated by short-term thinking. With the pandemic and world changing so rapidly, most companies had to abandon long-term plans to focus on what's right ahead of them. In our personal lives, most of us are more focused on getting through the day than working towards our long-term plans.  Short-term thinking isn't bad, but according to Dorie Clark, author of The Long Game, we can't live our whole lives in emergency mode. When individuals and companies are too focused on short-term thinking, we miss the chance to proactively direct our strategy and outcomes. Long-term thinking helps us take back control and get us where we want to go.  As the pandemic slowly subsides in many places, long-term thinking is making a comeback. But the adjustment from focusing only on the here and now to the bigger picture can be jarring.  Clark suggests three steps to becoming a long-term thinker: Create white space. You have to have mental space to be able to think long term. It is almost impossible to engage in strategic thinking if you are mentally maxed out or overwhelmed. Focus on the right things. Get clear about what your priorities should be. Each person needs to focus on the right things for themselves. Keep the faith. Nearly every long-term goal faces setbacks and challenges along the way. It's easy to get frustrated and give up, but Clark says it's crucial to understand where you are in the process and persevere.  Thinking long term can get us out of the rut of monotony and searching for daily balance to instead see things from a different perspective. Clark calls it thinking in waves or the idea that we don't need to have balance every day or every week as long as we have balance eventually. There are seasons and phases to life, and long-term thinking allows us to recognize those phases and shift so that we continually improve and work towards our goals.  The pandemic has changed how we think. But even as we adjust to new ways of doing things, the ability to embrace long-term thinking and proactively take control of our lives and careers can lead to tremendous growth. _______________ Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.  Join the new Customer Experience Community here.

Learn about the best employee experiences in the country, where customer experience should live in a company, and why one airline is really mad at a third-party flight aggregator. Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode: • Great Employees Deliver Great Customer Experiences - As Newsweek's “Most Loved Workplaces 2021” list shows, happy employees lead to happy customers. • CX Is Important, But Where Should it “Live” - Dan and Joey agree that CX needs a prominent place in organizational hierarchy - but should it be lead by the Chief Marketing Officer or the Chief Experience Officer? • Forcing Customer Loyalty - Southwest Airlines' legal action against Skiplagged claims to preserve customer benefits - but does it? Are You Looking for Things We Referenced? • America's Most Loved Workplaces 2021 - by Newsweek • Southwest Wants to Force Customer Loyalty Learn more about the Experience This Show and the hosts: Joey Coleman Dan Gingiss