Customer Smarts

Turning AI strategy into business impact is something a lot of businesses are trying to do right now. So, I wanted to create an episode focussed on how to develop an AI strategy and put it into action. My guest in this episode, Lucio Ribeiro is recognised as Australia's number one speaker on AI. He’s consulting with some of Australia’s largest organisations on AI transformation an...

AI is transforming how CMOs are running their marketing program. Many marketing departments would like to spend more time focussing on the innovative long term programs of work to progress the organisation. However, in the past, they often get pulled back into delivering short term gains and managing the always on tactical programs. With AI, CMOs finally have the chance to get ahead. To...

Every time a new technology is introduced it creates new ways to interact with customers. In recent times AI is flipping the world on it’s head but we’re also seeing progress with spatial computing and 3D experiences with devices like Apple’s vision pro. So, I wanted to get a perspective on how these new technologies are changing the way we need to approach design. To get an understanding of how w...

Building customer centric culture is smart, but it’s hard to do. It’s smart because it’s more efficient for the business and better for customers. Win + Win. The problem is, many large organisations are still structured around key product areas and work in siloed ways. So, trying to transition to a customer centric culture and operating model is an enormous task. My guest in this next episode Dr C...

Last year Australian’s were scammed out of $2.74 billion dollars, that’s an insane amount of money. The scary thing is that scammers are innovating at a speed that’s authorities are finding impossible to keep up with. And they are now using AI in scary new ways like using AI to fake the voices of family members to scam people for money.  Smart well educated people are now getting targeted and caug...

Innovating inside corporates is harder than it should be… New ideas often get bogged down in politics and red tape. So, when it comes to innovating and getting new ideas to market, there is a lot corporates can learn from start-ups. My guest in the next episode of the Customer Smarts Podcast Vijay Solanki has an amazing perspective into corporate and start-up world. He spent time as launch CMO of...

Becoming customer centric is smart, but it’s hard to do… It’s smart because it’s more efficient for the business and better for customers. Win + Win. The problem is, it’s a massive shift for large organisations, many have been structured around key product areas and work in siloed ways. So, trying to transition to a customer centric culture and operating model is an enormous task. My guest in the...

The speed at which AI is changing the customer experience space is mind blowing… Qualtrics invited me to record an episode of the Customer Smarts Podcast at their X4 Summit in Sydney last week. Every guest I interviewed was genuinely blown away and excited by the amazing new Gen AI driven capabilities, things like: conversational feedback in surveys - where Gen AI adapts questions based on how the...

Will AI make us less or more creative? AI and automation have stolen the spotlight in the last couple of years, so I wanted to explore the impact it’s having on the creative industry and what it means for the future. To help explore that question and dive into what drives great creativity I had Lee Simpson join me on the Customer Smarts Podcast. Lee has won some of the most prestigious creative aw...

Many transformations have been superficial… In the last 30 years there’s been transformation after transformation, digital, data,  customer centric and now AI. The problem I’ve seen is that many organisations have added new technology and capability, but haven’t necessarily transformed how they operate at their core, leading to somewhat superficial transformations. They then get stuck in a cycle o...

Many of us can’t live without coffee… There’s nothing better than sitting in your local cozy coffee shop with a perfectly made coffee from your barista who knows exactly how you like it made. It’s a highly personalised experience. The thing is…. when you try and brew your own at home it home it never tastes as good and the experience is just not the same. So how do you design an experience that cu...

Imagine if you knew what customers wanted next? Marketing would be a whole lot easier right?… Well, every time a customer interacts with you, they are telling you something. Often giving you clues about what they want next. However, many organisations are not taking advantage of this opportunity. Even though digital has made it a lot easier to track all these interactions. Interestingly, customer...

Over the past 30 years driving growth has become far more complex. There is now a myriad of digital channels across a mix of paid, owned and earned media assets you can leverage to engage customers. However, many organisations are still taking an old school approach, over focussing on acquisition and under focussing on retention, when there are much smarter ways to drive customer growth. To get in...

Most organisations have a desire, strategy or program to become more customer centric. However, many CX leaders are still struggling to shake old product centric ways of working inside organisations and are often finding it challenging to unlock enough investment to improve their customer experience to the standard they desire. If your executive team haven’t fully embraced your customer centric st...

In most companies between 10-30% of customers are at risk of leaving…That’s a lot of customer revenue on the table… Yet, most organisations aren’t paying enough attention to this. Some companies are leaking or even haemorrhaging customers and then spending 5 times as much to acquire new ones, it doesn’t make sense, it’s massively inefficient. It’s always been a challenge for organisations with lar...

Designing your customer intelligence in a way that’s usable for the entire organisation to drive decision making but also facilitate connection between teams is one of the most crucial elements to get right for every organisation in the next 10 years. At a time where many organisations want to become more customer centric and have a vision/strategy/program to do so, but are struggling to fully ope...

We’ve all come up with great new customer experience ideas only to discover that the data is not available or that from a tech perspective it’s very expensive or too hard to build. These issues come back to the way the current internet was built. Think about this….every organisation is being held back by the complexity of digital channels, tech integrations and data management, it’s a logistical n...

Over the last 30 years, engaging with customers has become increasingly complex. There is a vast array of customer channels and touchpoints and many organisations are struggling to deliver a consistent customer experience across all these channels. To help get some insight into this challenge, I had the pleasure of interviewing omnichannel and retail expert Danny Phillips, who is a global top 50 C...

Why are CMO’s slowly being replaced by Chief Customer Officers? I had the pleasure of interviewing Shaden Mohamed who has worked for companies like Google, held senior roles at Expedia and was most recently Chief Customer Officer at Silver Chef to provide some insights. Shaden gave some amazing perspective into what has driven the need for this role and cleared up the key differences between a CMO...

There are some really valuable insights that Organisations and CX leaders can learn from professional football coaches. Especially when it comes to overcoming organisational silos and driving collaboration. Drawing from my experience working for a professional football team, I will share insights and ideas on how a high performance culture operates. These principles can help you enhance customer e...

AI and personalisation are top of mind for every CX leader and marketer. We were lucky enough to have Salesforce Chief Technology Officer (ANZ) Dr Gayan Benedict join us to give some insights on how to tackle AI and personalisation at scale. We also discussed how to improve the CMO & CTO relationship and maximising Marketing Technology utilisation. Host Bio - Justin Stafford has spent the last...

Customer experience or CX is a term that’s getting used more and more every day. 15 years ago there was barely any companies with a specific CX team and the Chief customer officer or Experience Officer roles didn’t exist. So we’re going to give you 5 key reasons why customer experience has become so important. Host Bio - Justin Stafford has spent the last 20 years working on digital transformation...

Many organisations are struggling to get ahead when it comes to their customer data. In this episode we will go over some of the areas you might not be thinking about and talk through a data strategy example to help spark some ideas. We will cover why data is so important and the journey to creating better quality data. Host Bio - Justin Stafford has spent the last 20 years working on digital tran...

Anthony Gregorio is one of the best leaders out there, a true man of the people. He’s been CEO of some of the most successful marketing agencies in Australia including Saatchi & Saatchi and Havas. In this episode he provides some amazing insight on leadership, building a great culture, customer strategy, the impact of branding in CX and how to sell ideas from a true master. Host Bio - Justin S...

Why do some marketing and CX leaders feel frustrated that they are under utilising marketing technology. Some even feel like they’ve bought a Ferrari and can only drive it 1st gear. I’m going to give you some perspective on why. We dig into the causes of under utilisation and how to get to a better place with your MarTech stack. Host Bio - Justin Stafford has spent the last 20 years working on dig...