Today’s interview is with Annette Franz, an author, speaker and founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc. She is also an old friend of the podcast and appeared back in 2019. She joins me today to talk about her new book: Employee Understanding: A Three-Pillar Framework for Designing a Great Experience and Driving Business Success, the difference between employee engagement and employee experience, the time that Annette was working at JD Power & Assocs and W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard Schlesinger (both from Harvard and two of the authors of Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work) came to their office and what leaders should do first if they want to design and deliver a great employee experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Without context, an insight is worth nothing – Interview with Jochem van der Veer of TheyDo – and is number 546 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Jochem van der Veer, the Co-Founder and CEO of TheyDo, a leading platform for journey management that helps organisations build seamless customer experiences by aligning teams around the customer journey. We discuss customer journeys, journey mapping, and data, highlighting how businesses risk exacerbating data overwhelm if they don’t rethink their approach. Additionally, we explore the finding that 41% of business leaders rarely involve other departments in data-driven decisions.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Voice still reigns in customer service – Interview with Nikola Mrkšić of PolyAI – and is number 545 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Nikola Mrkšić, Co-founder & CEO of PolyAI, a leading supplier of Conversational AI for automated customer service. We talk about some recent research of theirs that finds that the phone still reigns in customer service, making the contact center into a ‘command center,’ why voice channels aren’t relics of the past but are, in fact, essential infrastructure, that customer service interactions are becoming increasingly contentious and what their AI capabilities are doing to help with that.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The future of CX and agentic CX – Interview with Sid Banerjee of Medallia – and is number 544 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Sid Banerjee, Chief Strategy Officer at Medallia, a leading provider of customer and employee experience management solutions. I first talked to Sid 11 years ago on this podcast when he was Founder & CEO at Clarabridge. This time around, we talk about what has happened in those intervening years, what brought him out of ‘retirement’, how to balance the human touch and AI in CX, the future of both CX and agentic CX, the role of LLMs in disrupting the dashboard-centric use cases for CX, trends in omnichannel and a whole bunch of other things.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer-centric innovation and Amazon’s PRFAQ – Interview with Marcelo Calbucci – and is number 543 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Marcelo Calbucci, an entrepreneur, innovator, technologist, and author. Marcelo joins me today to talk about his new book: The PRFAQ Framework: Adapting Amazon’s Innovation Framework to Work for You, why Amazon uses it, the five principles of the PRFAQ, where and how it can be applied and what to expect when you are creating your first one.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lush’s Journey: Balancing Innovation, Empathy, and Customer Care – Interview with Naomi Rankin of Lush – and is number 542 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Naomi Rankin, the Manager of Global Customer Care at Lush, the British cosmetics retailer. I spoke to Naomi when I attended Zendesk’s recent Relate event, which took place in Las Vegas on March 25th-27th. We talk about her highlights from the event, what customer care means to Lush, their approach to AI and her journey with Lush from starting work in one of their shops to now managing the global customer care team that covers 24 markets, 15 different languages, and another 20 partner markets.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Omnichannel was a myth – Interview with Gaurav Passi of Zingly – and is number 541 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Gaurav Passi, Founder & CEO of Zingly. He joins me today to talk about some research that they have recently conducted about FORO (the Fear of Reaching Out), the Great CX Paradox, why Omnichannel was a myth and how ‘Rooms’ could be the answer.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why businesses need to invest in both brand and customer experience – Interview with Martin Gill of Forrester – and is number 540 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Martin Gill, VP, Research Director at Forrester. Martin joins me today to talk about their upcoming CX Summit EMEA that will be taking place in London (and digitally) from June 2–4, 2025. We explore the major themes of the event, including why businesses need to invest in both brand and customer experience to maximise growth, what practitioners should be keeping in mind when thinking about design for the future of experiences and the role of organisational culture and leadership in all of that.

You can find out more about the event here. Also, if you use the discount code CXEMEAPUNK, you’ll get 10% off the ticket price.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Legacy transformation, agentic AI and how to get it right – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 539 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.