Experience Action

Customers don’t judge brands by perfect days, they judge them by broken promises and how you respond. We dig into what an apology to customers should actually sound like, starting with language that feels human instead of corporate. We share a standout example of customer communication that opens with plain accountability: “We owe you an apology.” From there, we unpack what makes a service recover...

Customers don’t just judge what went wrong. They start asking what else you might be hiding. Trust feels fragile in customer experience right now, and “be more human” isn’t specific enough to be useful. Jeannie Walters sits down with workplace performance expert and author Henna Pryor to pinpoint what breaks believability and how leaders can close the “signal gap” between what we intend to communi...

AI is quietly rewriting the B2B buyer journey, and it starts earlier than most pipelines can see. When buyers ask an AI chatbot for vendor recommendations, they’re not searching for your brand name, your product category, or your latest feature list. They’re searching for an answer to a problem. That shift changes what “visibility” means and it turns customer experience into a discoverability engi...

Did you remember to cancel that free trial or pause the subscription you're not using? The truth is most of us get busy, and a lot of business models quietly benefit from that “I’ll do it later” gap. That gap is closing. Meta’s Muse and the broader wave of AI agents can read email, scan transactions, research alternatives, and follow through on cancellations or purchases without getting tired...

The fastest way to derail a digital experience is to treat change like a broadcast instead of a collaboration. We sit down for a CX Pulse Check with Gloria Gupta, Senior Director of Customer Experience at the American Medical Association, to talk about what’s really happening on the ground in customer experience and CX transformation right now: rapid tech shifts, rising expectations, and the very...

Your AI just answered a customer. Now ask the uncomfortable question: do they trust it, and do they trust you more or less because of it? We dig into why trust is becoming the defining customer experience metric as automation spreads across chat, contact centers, and self-service. The data is sobering: many leaders believe customers highly trust their brand, while far fewer consumers agree, and th...

CX budgets only grew about 2% this year, yet AI spending inside those same budgets jumped 38%. That math forces a hard question: if the total pool barely changes, where does the new AI money come from? We walk through why the “somewhere” is often customer service headcount, and why that shortcut can quietly create a bigger budget problem later. We unpack Gartner’s prediction that many companies cu...

$3 trillion in global sales is at risk because of poor customer experience. That number is big enough to change how we think about CX budgeting, because it turns “experience” into a measurable revenue and trust problem. I walk through where leaders should invest now, what trends actually matter, and which shiny “innovations” you can safely stop chasing. AI is no longer a trend, it’s the weather. I...

Your customer experience metrics might be accurate and still fail to move the people who control budget, headcount, and priorities. We’re tackling the uncomfortable truth: when CX leaders lead with NPS, journey maps, sentiment analysis, or dashboard reporting, executives often hear “interesting CX update” instead of “material business risk.” The fix is not more slides. It’s learning to walk into e...

Should your CX mission statement stay behind the curtain or belong in the hands of the people who actually deliver your customer experience? We tackle a sharp listener question: in a B2B organization with an exclusive customer relationship, can sharing your customer experience mission statement improve alignment, especially when that customer shows up as your retail front line? We start with what...

The show has a new name, and it’s the kind of change that brings everything into focus. We’re now Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast, because “experience” is bigger than a customer touchpoint and more demanding than a quarterly metric. It’s the thread that connects what your customers feel, what your employees carry, what your partners deliver, and what your leaders tolerate. We talk through...

AI is moving fast into customer service, but customers are pushing back. With 59% saying AI agents feel frustrating, "set it and forget it" automation is not enough. We break down the AI trust gap, why fast answers do not equal helpful outcomes, and how to hold AI agents to the same standards as human ones: empathy, clarity, and responsible decisions. You will learn why most customers wa...

Escape rooms have a weird superpower: they make people feel confused, stressed, and slightly panicked and customers still walk out saying it was the best hour of their week. That’s not an accident. It’s a blueprint for intentional friction, where the experience is challenging enough to feel rewarding and supportive enough to stay fair. We unpack what escape rooms get right about customer experienc...

AI is forcing every customer experience leader to choose: chase efficiency at any cost, or scale service without losing the human heart. Jeannie Walters sits down with Vincent Davis, Chief Customer Officer and SVP of Customer Experience at PG&E, to unpack what it takes to build empathy, accountability, and trust in a world where automation is everywhere and customer patience is thin. We dig in...

You can do great customer experience work and still lose the budget conversation if you walk into leadership meetings with the wrong proof. We’re tired of being asked to defend CX ROI with scores that don’t match the company scorecard, and we’re even more tired of watching smart CX leaders “white knuckle” their way through budget season. This conversation is about changing the starting point so RO...

"We value your feedback.” “Thanks for your patience.” “We apologize for any inconvenience.” Most of us have heard these lines so many times that we can feel our skepticism kick in before the sentence even ends. That reaction isn't cynicism for no reason. It's what customers learn when the message sounds caring but the experience doesn't match the promise. We get honest about ho...

Calling empathy a “soft skill” sounds harmless until you see what it does to your customer experience and your retention numbers. We dig into the uncomfortable pattern where leaders say they want people to feel heard and valued, then invest almost all training time in systems, process, and compliance. The result is predictable: frontline teams feel unsupported in the moments that require judgment...

Consistency sounds boring until you realize it’s the fastest path to trust and the easiest way to spot what’s broken. In this CX Pulse Check episode, Jeannie Walters is joined by Nick Westergaard, host of the On Brand podcast and author of Brand Now and Get Scrappy , to look at what actually moves the needle in customer experience (CX) and brand building when attention is scarce and expectations a...

Most leadership advice assumes you already have the mandate, the budget, the buy-in, and the seat at the table. If you lead customer experience, you know that’s often fiction. We’re expected to react to requests from marketing, ops, and whoever our dotted-line boss is this week, then we’re judged on outcomes we didn’t have the power to drive. Showing up as a customer experience business leader, no...

AI is moving fast, but customer trust is moving the other way and that should make every customer experience leader pause. We’ve all seen the rush to deploy chatbots, automate support, and squeeze more efficiency out of service operations. The problem is that customers don’t grade you on “AI adoption.” They grade you on whether they can get the job done, feel respected, and leave the interaction c...

AI agents are already shopping, comparing, booking, and contacting support for the customers we’ve spent decades trying to understand. That means customer experience is no longer judged only by what a person feels in the moment, it’s also scored by what an AI can find about your brand across policies, pricing, FAQs, reviews, and the broader web. If that idea makes you a little uneasy, good. It’s t...

If you’ve ever shouted “just let me talk to a person” at a chatbot, this one’s for you. Jeannie Walters is joined by special cohost Brandon McGovern, Senior Director of Customer Experience at HP, to pressure-test the biggest question in AI customer service right now: how do we automate without breaking trust? We start with a headline that feels like a warning label. Norse Atlantic Airways offers d...

Momentum is the thing every CX leader wants and almost nobody hands you. When you’re staring at a 12-month roadmap but drowning in daily requests, it’s easy to feel like you’re working nonstop while nothing actually changes. We built this conversation for that exact moment, and we keep it practical: seven days, one intentional move, and a clear path to visible customer experience impact. We walk t...

If your CX work keeps getting reduced to dashboards, survey scores, and “please fix this one issue,” it’s time to change how you lead. We respond to a listener who’s using Experience Is Everything with their team and wants the clearest path from customer experience ideas to real execution. The big theme is simple: structure creates credibility, and credibility creates the room you need to drive me...

Burnout doesn’t come from “not being able to handle it.” It happens when CX work becomes an endless stream of urgent requests with no clear priorities. In this episode, we unpack why customer experience leaders burn out trying to solve everything at once, and how a clear CX mission and strategy create the guardrails to prioritize, push back, and lead proactively instead of reactively. We also expl...