The Customer Experience Podcast

When you present who you are — your core beliefs — to the customer, do you get head nods, indifference, or hostility? All 3 are great responses, actually. If they’re nodding, they probably share your beliefs. That’s a key tenet of quadrant 3: who we are. In this episode, I interview return guest Anthony Coundouris, Founder at run_frictionless and author of run_frictionless, about how Q3 (who we ar...

The key to building a great business and getting a team focused is, first, having a set of consistent core values over time. Once you’ve established core principles around serving your customer, the next step is to continue to optimize around improving that customer experience over time. In this episode, I interview John Belizaire, CEO at Soluna and Founder and Managing Editor at CEOPLAYBOOK, abou...

Those of us who feel we’re not very good on camera would rather have someone else present for us. But we’re losing the opportunity to share our passion and expertise with others who could benefit. In this episode, I interview Tricia Jane Wiles, Marketing Communications / Host of Accelerating Revenue Series at True Influence and former actor at Disney. She shares confidence-building tricks to overc...

Virtual professionals not only grant you the time you’ve been craving, but they also improve your customer experience with processes and systems that work. In this episode, I interview Daniel Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder at MyOutDesk, about how virtual professionals affect customer experience. Daniel and I discussed: - How VAs earned a shout-out in Tim Ferris’s 4-Hour Workweek - Setting expectations...

When marketing speaks to one-to-many, we’re addressing industries. When we speak to one-to-few, we’re addressing personas. But personal relevance in one-to-one messaging means that we speak to how unconsidered gaps will affect that individual specifically. In this episode, I interview Kristina Jaramillo, Founding Partner at Personal ABM, about the difference between personalized and personal ABM —...

Not all elevators are created equal. Some have the emergency button placed too high for a child or a person using a wheelchair to reach. The design is not centered on what a human needs. Same applies to visual design. In this episode, I interview Joey Kilrain, Founder/CCO Experience Design at DED, about the intersection between the importance of visual design on CX, UX, and UI. Joey and I talked a...

Two of the least aligned teams are often sales and customer success. I’ve learned so much from my podcast guests about why that’s problematic and what to do about it. 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. Join me to hear some strategies for promoting alignment between CS and sales. Here are some...

If you can combine customer-centricity and innovation as a cultural mindset pervasive throughout your company, then you’ve really got a recipe for long-term success. In this episode, I interview Dennis Geelen, Founder at Zero In and author of The Zero In Formula, about building customer-centric innovation into the company's cultural mindset. Dennis and I also talked about: - The 3 main components...

Human factors is a field of science that explores capabilities and limitations of humans as they interact with a product, technology, or service. The goal of human factors is to capitalize on the capabilities and to circumvent the limitations to create an optimal human-machine interaction. In this episode, I interview Anand Tharanathan, Chief Product Officer at MetaCX, about incorporating human fa...

If your brand is the stories people share about you, the concept of brand storytelling is how you take control of those stories by bringing humanity into the way you lead and communicate. In this episode, I interview Gabrielle Dolan, Speaker and Author at Gabrielle Dolan Consulting and Founder of Jargon Free Fridays, about the trends driving brand storytelling and how to influence stories told abo...

Everyone’s looking to you as the new dedicated CX leader to structure the customer experience. What are your two functions? What three practices will help you achieve them? In this episode, I interview Logan Lyles, VP of Customer Experience at Sweet Fish Media, about being the pioneer of the CX role at his company. Logan & I talked about: - How our mutual friend James Carbary introduced us in Colo...

The best conversation that you can have with a customer is one in which they don’t walk away without answers. That might sound obvious, but the path to arriving there requires you to know exactly how to balance bot and human — and how to transition seamlessly between them. In this episode, I interview Ali Biggs, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Intercom, about marketing for a conversational...

If you want to drive revenue growth, you need to have great CX. If you want to drive great CX, you need to have great EX. In other words, the employee experience is a precursor to the customer experience. 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’m here today to share some of the connections I made...

Not only should everyone want to have customer experience as an integral part of their org’s DNA, but they should also be accountable for the fact that they are a part of the customer’s experience. In this episode, I interview Leah Chaney, Founder and Chief Experience Officer at BetterGrowth, about her brilliant 4 A’s of Accountability bucketing system. Leah talked with me about - How customer exp...

The last cold email you received probably made you feel disengaged at best. It’s also the reason why the average cold email response rate is 1%. In this episode, I interview Jason Bay, Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting, about bringing empathy back to the sales process. We also talked about: - The 2 sales enablement fails and what should replace them - The REPLY method for cold emai...

Are we using technology to create barriers between us and our customers? Or are we doubling down on things we know that our customers respond to, like a human voice that’s friendly, accessible, and even vulnerable? In this episode, I interview Mark Schaefer, COO at B Squared Media and author of Marketing Rebellion, about returning the human voice to the center of marketing. Mark also talks with me...

The sales funnel is actually a pyramid that looks like this: top-level is sales tools, middle level is sales skills, bottom level is the humanity of the sales professional. By restoring a connection to the authenticity, emotion, and mindset of the sellers themselves, the art of sales can begin to return to the foundation of customer experience: making people’s lives better. In this episode, I inte...

The forever customer is someone who trusts you to solve their problem. They’ve taken off their consumer hat and put on their member hat. They aren’t looking for alternatives anymore. In this episode, I interview Robbie Kellman Baxter, Strategy Consultant at Peninsula Strategies, about how to achieve forever customers with customer-centricity. Robbie also talked with me about: - Why short-term reve...

Just because someone fills out a form doesn’t mean they’re ready to talk to a salesperson. Two problems stem from this fact: the problem of discerning which leads are ready and the problem of how to nurture the ones that aren’t. Welcome to the explosion of martec. In this episode, I interview Jon Miller is Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Demandbase and previously co-founder at Marketo and E...

As a CRO, how do you change the culture of your org so that customer experience is everyone’s responsibility? In this episode, I interview Darryl Praill, CRO at Vanilla Soft, about how he distributes the ownership of customer experience across the whole org by dissolving barriers between teams. Darryl talked with me about: - What a matrix organization is - How colleagues are influenced by how they...

Not only is kindness important on a human level, but it can become a core value for any company. How? In this episode, I interview Cole Baker-Bagwell is Founder and Chief Kindness Advisor at Cool Audrey, about how and why to turn kindness into a core company value. Cole talked with me about: - The cashmere effect in customer experience - The business case for kindness (it’s very strong) - Mindfuln...

You want to level up your customer experience to customer obsession, but how? Get started now. In a year’s time, you’ll wish you started today. In this episode, I interview Joseph Jaffe, host of CoronaTV and Admiral/Co-Founder at The HMS Beagle, about the origins of his show and everything he’s learned along the way. Joseph and I discuss: - The availability heuristic (things that are harder to mea...

Are you a text person? Or are you better on the phone? We all know we're better on the phone. We've got our voice tone, pace, and personality to work with. Let's raise the stakes: Are you a phone person or a face-to-face person? 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. Not long ago, I enjoyed the pr...

These trends will be important for the future of CRM: transparency, multiple companies working together, and proving value using a new wave of enterprise software and data sharing. What if we started to think of the customer being part of our customer system? In this episode, I interview Scott McCorkle, CEO at MetaCX, about how to reinvent CRM with transparency. Scott and I talked about: - The def...

When your customer base is everyone who needs images (which more or less means everyone), your customer experiences will look as different as your customers do. What do you focus on to deliver exceptional CX? Among many other things, you have to be easy to trust. In this episode, I interview Grant Farhall, Chief Product Officer at Getty Images, about delivering a supply of compelling imagery and v...