The Customer Experience Podcast

Nobody wants to be sold to. Nobody. But nearly all of us are open to learning something helpful.  Today’s guest, an edumarketing expert, teaches sales through education.  Hear my conversation with Ginger Bell, Founder at Edumarketing: How to extend customer experience to people who aren’t your customers Why education is better than sales What mindset shift will enable you to become an educator How...

How does an iconic brand like Amex evolve to stay connected to their customers? By driving their CX Experience with innovation.    We take a deep dive into customer surveys and look at how Amex uses the latest technology to collect and distill relevant data.    In this episode, I interview Luis Angel Lalanne , Vice President, Customer Voice at American Express , about improving customer listening...

We could call it customer experience. Or we could call it love.  How should our customer-centricity change when we want to win digital customers?  In this episode, I interview Howard Tiersky , CEO at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and author of Winning Digital Customers , about emphasizing customer experience during digital transformation.  Howard and I also talked about: What the three k...

How do you operationalize innovation? One way is to build innovation into the company culture by incentivizing ideas.   In this episode, I interview Lee Jelenic , Chief Innovation Officer at United Wholesale Mortgage , about living out the six pillars of his company by committing to continual improvement and preserving the human touch.  Lee and I talked about: - How positive client experience help...

What can we learn from a deep dive into connecting, communicating, and converting more effectively — despite the challenges of digital, virtual, and online spaces — from people who are out there doing it every single day? I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb and host of The Customer Experience Podcast. In this episode, I share four takeaways answering that question, which I learned from r...

Today’s guest says that love is a competitive advantage. Kindness, compassion, collaboration, empathy, and especially love are all good things in business both for customers and for employees.  In this episode, I speak with Sue Woodard , Senior Advisor at STRATMOR Group, about how to operationalize love for CX and EX.   Sue and I talked about: - Why CX is your customer’s perceptions of your brand...

Product-led growth is a great strategy… for about 5% of B2B companies. The other 95% should adopt customer-led growth.   In this episode, I speak with two-time Customer Experience Podcast guest Chris Hicken , Co-Founder and CEO at ‘nuffsaid , about the three elements of customer-led growth and their reliance on superior CX  Chris talked with me about: - What three things customer-led growth compan...

Listening is the secret to selling anything — but most of us don’t listen the right way, even though all of us are in sales roles (yes, all of us).  True listening is looking at the 360° view of what’s happening.  In this episode, I speak with Dr. Cindy McGovern , CEO at Orange Leaf Consulting and author of Every Job Is a Sales Job , about using listening and presence to design a customer experien...

If customer experience is important to your company, you won’t achieve it without alignment between sales & marketing. Any interaction your customers have with your business can make or break that relationship.   In this episode, I interview Sterling Snow , Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy | Inc. , about customer experience, how he’s been able to achieve alignment with his company, and tips for the...

What two things does a leader who cares about coaching do? 1. Hold a mirror up to your own behavior in constant self-evaluation 2. Coach people into the growth they want, not the growth that you want In this episode, I interview Andrea Morter, VP of Sales at Get Beyond, about being a leader whose coaching style helps others achieve. Andrea talked with me about: Why CX means keeping your promises H...

You want to send video messages because you know that personal connection matters. Here are three ideal moments for using video to help you start. I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show. Listen in today to learn about increasing confidence, connection, and clarity by mixing video messages into the...

What is your company’s way to play? Put another way, how do you differentiate yourself? It’s customer experience that is the biggest and best differentiator — and employees are the real drivers of CX. In this episode, I interview Jim Hardeman, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Product Officer at CMX, about empowering employees to deliver quality CX using technological tools that foster innovation....

Many organizations work hard to support their customers, but they don’t hold freeform, high-touch, one-on-one conversations with customers. Why? It makes everyone feel vulnerable. In this episode, I speak with Tonya Bjurstrom, Voice of the Customer and Founder at Dirby, about elevating the experience of your customers by, well, asking them about it. Tonya and I talked about: Why the voice of the c...

The process from here to there is full of failure. Today’s guest is a founder and CEO whose life changed when he recognized that failure actually means experience that he can use to help others. In this episode, I speak with Sam Jacobs, Founder & CEO at Pavilion, about realizing his entrepreneurial dreams based on openly sharing best practices, ideas, and strategies with peers. Sam and I talked ab...

Our job as sales professionals is not to persuade someone to buy our product. Our job is to learn what is most important to the buyer and help them obtain or achieve that. In this episode, I speak with Andy Paul, Author, Podcaster, Speaker at AndyPaul.com, about the four pillars of human-centered sales featured in his most recent book, Sell Without Selling Out. Andy and I talked about: How buyers...

Video messaging has not moved very fast in terms of being normalized, despite the fact that it can dramatically improve communication throughout the entire CX and EX. There are three reasons why. I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show. Listen in today to learn about why bad video prospecting has be...

What matters in digital customer service isn’t the person’s main preference for digital, live, or hybrid. What matters is understanding the process that will create the best experience for the customer at that exact moment. In this episode, I interview Rick DeLisi, Author and Lead Research Analyst at Glia, about some of the principles in his latest book, Digital Customer Service: Transforming Cust...

Define your differentiator. Ask yourself this: “What is it that we uniquely can do that others can’t? How do we amplify that in a way that will be meaningful to customers?” In this episode, I interview Elizabeth Dixon, Speaker at Elizabeth Dixon Speaks and Principle Lead, Strategy, Hospitality & Service Design at Chick-fil-A Corporate, about the five elements of exceptional customer experience — o...

In the face of ever-increasing digital noise and pollution, we need solutions … and today’s guest has been hard at work on one based on these three beliefs … 1. You should determine how people can reach you. 2. You should decide what your attention is worth - and who benefits. 3. Charging unknown senders a small cost leads to better connections. To help us take back control of our attention, our g...

The customer is (or should be) at the center of everything a business should be focused on. If your core values don’t involve being human-centric, which means both customer-centric and employee-centric, chances are that you'll probably get left behind the companies whose values do. In this episode, I interview Howard Brown, Founder and CEO at Revenue.io, about human-centricity and prioritizing con...

Features are commodities, but feelings are differentiators. Customer experience is the last meaningful differentiator left to us — and we have to navigate it, for the most part, digitally and emotionally. I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show. In this episode, I ask you three questions about how y...

The best way to start a podcast is to start. Yes, there’s more nuance to it, but honestly not that much more. In this episode, I interview Collin Mitchell, CRO at Salescast, about being a great podcast host, being a great podcast guest, and how podcasting can become a revenue driver. Collin and I talked about: Why it isn’t very hard to make the top 10% of podcasts How podcasts create communities W...

If we sent our athletes into the field without any pads or helmets, we wouldn’t be surprised that they got hurt. Yet we’re treating our stressed and struggling salespeople as if they should stoically endure the stressors to which we have exposed them. In this episode, I interview Jeff Riseley, Founder at Sales Health Alliance and author of The Guide to Better Mental Health in Sales, about the majo...

Everyone wants to know how to operate their business effectively. But depending on which of the three growth stages your company is in, the answer will be different. In this episode, I interview Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at Terminus and author of MOVE: The 4-Question Go-to-Market Framework, about GTM as a process, the 3 stages of business, and his CX takeaways from his book re...

I’ve lived in the same residence for almost 15 years. For 14 blissful years, I had no communications with my waste management service, and that was exactly how I wanted it. Here’s the story of how that changed four months ago for the worse. I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show. In this episode, I...