The Customer Experience Podcast

The word “disruption” can make us feel irritation or even angst. What we need is to recognize that disruption on an industry scale means changing how we operate to create better experiences for our customers. In this episode, I interview Michelle Lisowski, Global Director, B2B Marketing at Uber, about how she's leading a well-known B2C brand into better B2B customer experience. Join us as we discu...

He’s the Founder and Chief Executive Angel at SavingsAngel.com and host of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast. His work is syndicated nationally in print, on radio, on television, and of course online. He’s a US Navy veteran. AND he’s also sent more than 4,200 video messages over the past few years!  In this episode, I interview Josh Elledge, who is also the Founder/CEO of UpMyInfluence.com, abou...

For the entire year of 2020, his team booked about 450 meetings. So far in 2021, they’ve booked about 550 meetings in just the first three quarters by sending over 220,000 emails that people want to read.  In this episode, I interview Michael Chambers, Vice President, Sales Agency and Training Teams at Precision Value & Health, about why he puts relationships at the center of everything he does fo...

Instead of a slice of cake with a candle, they brought out a box of handmade chocolates with Happy Birthday spelled out in cocoa powder and decorated with a sparkler. All four diners spontaneously took out their phones, photographed it, and shared it online. “The single best marketing is a happy customer talking about you because it’s the most credible, the most authentic,” said our guest today, D...

There’s no reason to keep them separate anymore: success, support, marketing, and sales. Their common goal is revenue, so their common leader should be the CRO. When we’re talking about the next generation of CROs, a Chief Marketing Officer is likely the best candidate because they’re already doing the bulk of that work.   In this episode, I interview the authors of CMO to CRO: The Revenue Takeove...

Two and a half months ago, gearing up for the launch of our second book, Human-Centered Communication, we found that mass emails did not perform as well as before. Here’s what has worked: personal one-to-one video messages.  People and relationships matter more today than ever.  I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on...

In one of his interviews at his current company, our guest said this to the CEO: “If we're going to build an organization that truly earns the love of the customer by providing a consistent experience, we need to put the entire customer journey under one umbrella. We also need to train the team to be maniacally focused on the customer — to understand the market, the industry, and the players’ want...

Ignoring an antagonistic relationship at work is one of the worst things you can do — to yourself. Working with someone in a toxic situation can hinder your potential. You need to learn how to fire your villain. In this episode, I interview Heather Monahan, bestselling a uthor, renowned keynote speaker, and CEO at Boss in Heels LLC, about her story of creating confidence and overcoming villains. ...

A “paradigm shift” is a fundamental change in approach or assumptions. Modern communication is in the midst of one — a change from digital pollution to human-centered communication.  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. I co-wrote a book about this communication shift with my longtime friend and...

No one individual has all the answers to everything. With a concept as broad yet essential as human-centered communication, it was going to take many experts — 11, to be exact — to begin to equip us with the knowledge we need to recenter our communication around people.  In this episode, I have the pleasure of chatting with my longtime friend and two-time coauthor, Steve Pacinelli, CMO at BombBomb...

To get better at something, you can’t do it just twice or even five times. You have to do it repetitively — and that goes for sending videos, too. Our guest made a video a week for 41 weeks during the pandemic, partly to improve himself but mostly to help his employees and customers overcome challenges and fulfill dreams. In this episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacine...

If you’d like to be able to sit down with an expert like Shep Hyken, CAO at Shepherd Presentations, or Dan Tyre, Direct or at Hubspot, to ask them about how to implement human-centered communication techniques in your organization, well, you can.  In this episode, you will hear the suggestions that Dan, Shep, and I had for Julie, a sales professional in the continuing education space.  I’m Ethan B...

What you see on video is pretty much what you get. Video gives you a sense of who the person is. At present and in the future, salespeople need to become comfortable with video through the techniques of “created charisma”. In this episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Viveka von Rosen, Co-Founder and Chief Visibility Officer (CVO) at Vengreso, abou...

Merely getting to the sale and figuring out later how to deliver what you sold does not work in a recurring revenue business. Actually, it’s customer success that makes the money now, because they create the experiences for customers around moments that matter. Which moments matter most? In this episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Jacco van der K...

Repeat business is a goal everyone should aim for. But turning it into loyalty means creating an emotional connection between your customer and your brand. Ask yourself this: What am I doing right now with this customer to make sure that they’ll come back to me and not my competitor next time? In this episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Shep Hyke...

If you’ve been on a video call lately (and hasn’t everyone?), you’ve probably noticed how disengaged, distracted, or disconnected everyone is. This is partly because we’re all operating under the mistaken belief that virtual and in-person are one and the same, except that one just has a camera. Not so. In this episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview...

In the feeling economy, interpersonal relationships drive the success of organizations. Feelings have always been important, of course, but today they are even more important than they’ve ever been before.  In this episode, I interview Dr. Roland Rust, Distinguished University Professor at Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland and coauthor of The Feeling Economy, about the thr...

Consumers have turned into prosumers — that is, professional consumers. Before we buy, we read reviews, ask for advice, and do other forms of research about a product or service. What does this mean for sellers? In practical terms, before you send a message, you’d better know what pages they were on to construe what they are searching for. In the sixth episode of our Human-Centered Connection expe...

Here are three quick ways to better assess what people are saying with their faces and emotions (aka facial coding). Pay attention to engagement, the camouflage smile, and the two-sided impact of fear. The face is the only place in the body where the muscles attach right to the skin. Most of us aren’t aware of what we’re giving away. In the fifth episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert ser...

Taking a teaching focus means truly listening to and identifying with the customer, and it’s built on a continuous coaching environment. To learn and to teach takes agility, vulnerability, and relatability. Find out how a 3x LinkedIn Top Sales Voice cultivated those traits in himself. In the fourth episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Morgan J. In...

Moving forward, nearly every experience is going to be hybrid: both physical and virtual. We’ll need to provide a hybrid experience for our employees as well as our customers. In the third episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Mathew Sweezey, Director of Market Strategy at Salesforce, about internal marketing, the immersive experience, and employee...

When we communicate virtually, we are using flattened, muted versions of ourselves. Little surprise, then, that virtual relationships degrade over time. How do we overcome the impoverishment of the virtual world? In this episode, I interview Dr. Nick Morgan, a communications coach and theorist, four-time author, and President at Public Words, about how virtual communication differs from in-person...

Whether we are training employees, customers, or trainers, video is a powerful form of human-centered communication. When someone who teaches trainers explains the advantage of video, you sit up and take note. In the second episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Lauren Bailey, Founder and President at Factor 8 and Founder at #GirlsClub. She walks us...

Video is a perfect example of taking automation and inserting more humanity into it. It’s a relationship-building form of communication that centers around what’s human about technology. In this first episode of our Human-Centered Connection expert series, Steve Pacinelli and I interview Dan Tyre, Director at HubSpot. He explains that everyone in the company is involved in customer experience and...

The role of customer success is to build value on the promise of what the customer became a customer in the first place. Being so deeply invested in the customer’s journey, CS must become more than trusted. It must become strategic. Joining me on this episode is Wayne McCulloch, Global Head of Customer Success at Google Cloud (Saas) and author of The Seven Pillars of Customer Success, to talk abou...