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Creed II was the 2018 installment of the Rocky “legacyquel” and in this moment, Rocky is about to take Adonis Creed to the middle of nowhere to begin training for his rematch against Viktor Drago.  Because the variables have changed, Rocky knows that Adonis needs to make big changes to achieve the success he’s grown accustomed to. Kristi Faltorusso is an award-winning Customer Success Executive, a...

In 1989, Field of Dreams introduced us to one of the most famous quotes in movie history: “If you build it, he will come.”  In this scene, Terence convinces Ray to stop listening to his brother-in-law, who is only focused on one thing – the numbers.  The number of acres, the lost revenue, and the mortgage.  But Terence tells him that when he changes his focus to providing an experience to the peop...

1968’s Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones reflects society undergoing incredible changes. Demonstrations against the Vietnam War attracted thousands of students, both in Europe and America. In some cases, they turned violent. “Hey, said my name is called Disturbance” could reflect changes we see, not just in society, but in business and technology. When it comes to technologies used by cont...

It turns out that outsourcing isn’t the answer to everything like Homer suggests in this episode of the Simpsons.  But outsourcing can be an effective way for businesses to focus their people on the core functions of their business while ensuring the non-core functions are still taken care of. But outsourcing isn’t a decision to be taken lightly and finding the right partner, whether they’re onsho...

In this scene from Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David tries to invoke the Golden Rule at the airport.  The concept of the Golden Rule is to treat others the way you would want to be treated and its origins are at least 2500 years old.  The concept is present in all the world’s major religious traditions. Despite the long history and widespread usage of the Golden Rule, Milan Batinich sa...

In Searchin’, this 1957 Lieber and Stuller hit performed by the Coasters, Billy Guy, sings about his determined search that has yielded no results to this point.  While he’s searchin’ for his love, searching for specific, reliable, and up to date information to support customers can often feel just as challenging. The promise of the internet was the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.  According...

In the 1999 cult classic, Office Space, Peter Gibbons has just been requested by his awful boss, Bill Lumbergh, to work the weekend to make up for the recent layoffs their software company is going through.  This might ring a little too true for a lot of people lately, but hopefully, they don’t have to deal with a Lumbergh.  Layoffs, or Reductions in Force (a.k.a. RIF), impact not only the people...

With more than a little influence by the Beatles, U2’s The Showman (Little More Better) from 2017 is a lighthearted warning to their fans – don’t trust the performers too much.  Before the term “brand” was even coined, “influencers” existed.  In fact, celebrity endorsements go all the way back to the 1700s when the UK company, Wedgewood, makers of fine Chinaware, used royal endorsements to promote...

Do you need to rush out and adopt new tools like ChaptGPT to improve CX?  Should we be more focused on the human-to-human connection?  Are we simply not being strategic with our Customer Experience efforts delaying maturity?     On this episode of Jump the Queue, I talk with 3 CX pros about where their focus is right now.    We start in the home of Laverne and Shirley (yes, this is a test) with Mu...

In the 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds, the stereotype of the nerd eventually emerged as the hero, possibly inspiring nerd culture as we know it today.  The term nerd was initially a pejorative, but beginning in the late 90’s, the interests of “nerds” and nerds themselves became more popular, in large part because of the rise of personal computers.  Silicon Valley now wields an incredible amount o...

In 1969, Brian Wilson came out of semi-retirement to write and record Break Away, an often-overlooked Beach Boys hit song. It’s a life-affirming song about positive change in one’s life and the feelings that accompany that change. Paula Naeff is a Performance & Productivity Coach who helps busy professionals break away from burnout and arrive at balance. We discuss: · How one of Paula’s passio...

This scene is from the 2006 movie, The Pursuit of Happyness , inspired by the true story of Chris Gardner. Homeless with his young son, Chris was desperate to get a different job that would change his situation. But how does a salesman of bone density scanners transition to being a stockbroker? Transitions to any new role are challenging and that holds true in CX – whether you want to get into a C...

Despite the layoffs in the tech sector, unemployment in the US is at historic lows and we’re experiencing a labor shortage in many other sectors of the economy. Contact Centers have long experienced high turnover with baseline ranges estimated to be between 30 and 40 percent. While 2022 was seemingly the year of Employee Engagement, SQM’s research shows that agent engagement has remained stubbornl...

Nelson Mandela would spend 27 of his 95 years of life in prison. When The Ska revival band, The Specials (under the name, The Special AKA), released Nelson Mandela in 1984, he had already been in prison in apartheid South Africa for over 20 years and it would be another 6 years before he saw his release. He became the father of the modern, democratic South Africa, bringing an end to apartheid and...

Organizational Change can be difficult, especially when you’re a new leader. And while some skills like engaging with those who may be resistant to change should be encouraged, a top-down approach to change management can be lonely and frustrating effort. Michael Corleone found this out the hard way after taking the reins of the family business. And while most of us aren’t dealing with an organiza...

After over 160,000 employee layoffs in the tech sector in 2022, 2023 has already followed up with over 100,000 layoffs in the first two months of the year alone. While this pales in comparison to the number of jobs being created in the overall economy, mass layoffs have a huge impact on those affected and the psyche of people in the affected industries. This first episode of Jump the Queue, I talk...

In the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, we were introduced to HAL 9000, a supercomputer with advanced AI who decided the mission was more important than the lives of his human crew. 16 years later, in The Terminator, we were introduced to Skynet, an AI developed by Cyberdyne Systems that began seeing humanity as a threat to its existence and triggered a nuclear holocaust that would forever change...

When most people think of the 1990 film Pretty Woman, they think of Richard Gere playing Prince Charming to Julia Roberts’s Rapunzel. But the real hero of that story (at least in my eyes) is Barney Thompson played by Héctor Elizondo. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that character. Let me refresh your memory. You may remember that Vivian (Roberts) was tasked with buying a dress for dinner but couldn’t get...

In the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dog, Toto, pulls back a curtain to reveal the Wizard to be just an ordinary man, operating machinery that projects a gigantic, ghostly, and intimidating image of his face. The Wizard had built his reputation using technology that no one in the merry old land of Oz understood. Today, there’s a technology impacting Customer Experience that few understand...

In 1990, Public Enemy released “Fight the Power” from their third album, one of the most popular and influential songs in hip hop history: People, people we are the same No we're not the same 'Cause we don't know the game What we need is awareness, we can't get careless You say what is this? My beloved let’s get down to business Mental self-defensive fitness Don't rush the show You gotta go for wh...

“Everybody lies.” Recently, I started re-watching the TV series House on Netflix. Probably the most famous quote and theme from the show is, “Everybody lies.” As diagnosticians, Dr. House and his team had to use the data presented to them to find the truth about what was really happening to their patients. Surveys may be the voice of the customer, but as Dr. House says, “Everybody lies.” But we ha...

Have you ever had a customer experience that made you think, “There’s got to be a better way?” An over-priced oil change did that for Adam Alfia and it led to him opening his first company. His entrepreneurial spirit led to a variety of businesses, including a concierge service and a variety of restaurants and night clubs. Increasingly, he realized customers stopped engaging when there were servic...

Nearly every startup wants to grow. At certain milestones of growth, however, the structure of customer support must change to successfully support the business. And while change is never easy, knowing what and when you’ll need to change as you scale can help smooth out the process. Over the past 13 years, Reagan Helms has grown from the solo support agent in a start-up organization with less than...

There’s a tendency to see mental health issues through a different lens than physical health issues. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, PTSD, or neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, mental health challenges are often hidden from even close friends and family members. Because of the stigma around them and the fact that they often manifest with no outwardly visible signs, they are often not addres...

The chasm between the promises of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the reality of what AI can accomplish is closing faster than ever. Whether it’s creating uncanny images, writing poetry, providing better information in a chatbot, writing code, or creating original video from text prompts, the output of AI is increasingly disrupting long-established domains relegated to humans. This week, I’m talk...