The Customer Experience Podcast

Employee experience and internal culture are not just a “nice-to-have,” but they bring material influence to bear on measurable business results. In this episode, I interview 2 guests about CX through EX: Kristie Ornelas, Head of CX Marketing & Communications, and Steve Cox, Vice President of Digital Lifecycle Journeys, both at Cisco (named #1 on the World's Best Workplaces list two years in a row...

Superfans! You may have some. You may have had some and lost them. You may have fans — who would be superfans — if only you engaged them the right way. Regardless, you always want more superfans. But you have to work for them. In this episode, I interview Brittany Hodak, speaker, writer, and co-founder of the Superfan Company, about what a superfan is and how to build a base of them. Brittany and...

It opened doors that I didn’t know existed. I met new people, found new opportunities, and received other unexpected benefits from organizing my thoughts. This result of writing, publishing, and selling a book makes the entire 6-step process worthwhile. 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 am...

Imagine you’re a new SDR, and your manager tells you to ‘Shut up and dial!’ The experience for the person on the other end of the line is going to be less than exceptional, don’t you think? In order to land promising meetings, we’ve got to stop measuring success by volume. In this episode, Ernest Owusu — retired NFL athlete turned Sales Development Leader at 6sense — talks to me about… - Why volum...

What should your first 30, 60, and 90 days in a new CX role focus on? Be prepared for most of your time to be spent listening. In this episode, I interview Jeff Breunsbach, Director of Customer Experience at Higher Logic and Founder at Gain Grow Retain, about designing a peer-to-peer community that goes beyond online. What we talked about: - The relationship between customer experience, community,...

Customer success’s job is to close the little loop — to solve the individual’s problem. But it’s the role of product marketing to close the big loop and adapt company strategy by listening to and acting on the voice of the customer. In this episode, I interview Lauren Culbertson, Cofounder & CEO at LoopVOC, about how companies can unify their teams around the voice of the customer. Lauren and I ch...

Every business is a relationship business. It's really important to humanize a brand, especially when the brand is financial because finance can be very complex and impersonal. When it comes to recasting a large-scale event into a webinar, it turns out that video networking is really effective. In this episode, I interview Bo Brustkern who is the co-founder and CEO at LendIt Fintech, about his lov...

If one of your goals for 2021 includes writing, publishing, and selling a book, you might be looking for a roadmap right about now. 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 am here today to share Part 1 of the 6 P's of Writing, Publishing, and Selling Your Book. A very quick overview: - The 6 P's:...

Eric and David did, and it utterly changed how they thought about value.   - The relationship between customer experience and customer success   - 2 new ways to think about the human/machine relationship   Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

Purpose is your reason for being — why you do what you do. But noble purpose means that what you do is in the service of others. When you have a noble sales purpose, your reason for serving others sits at the center of your commercial model. And that changes everything.   In this episode, I interview Lisa Earle McLeod, Founder and Keynote Speaker at McLeod & More, Inc., about how noble selling pur...

Customer experience usually manifests in a one-to-many or a one-to-few relationship style. But personal experience (PX) is CX on a one-to-one basis.    After all, people don’t care about brands. We care about the people behind the brand.   In this episode, I interview Greg Segall, CEO & Founder of Alyce, about how personal experience (PX) helps shorten sales cycles and build trust.   Greg and I ta...

People are coming to your website because they actually want to evaluate you. Who you are online is something that absolutely impacts your business — whether positively or negatively, depending on how you’ve scaled.    In this episode, I interview Nicholas Holland, General Manager and Vice President of Marketing Hub at HubSpot, about marketing considerations for improving website experiences.   Ni...

Discovering the Aha moment in your business is a big deal. It can affect the entire course of the customer experience because it creates impressions that your customers can feel, remember, and act on.   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, here today to share some things I’ve learned about Aha m...

Nobody likes to be sold to. (Not even sellers, if they’re honest.) Instead of being a sale, customers want a specific solution that originates from their current mindset.   In this episode, I interview Kristin Zhivago, Founder and President at Zhivago Partners, about mindset-driven marketing, otherwise known as selling the way that customers actually want to buy.    Kristin talked with me about:  ...

Customer retention has always been important, but nowadays it feels absolutely vital. Trust, honesty, and relationship are the 3 broad categories of customer retention — but how to boil them down into actionable tenets?   In this episode, I interview Gowri Ramkumar, Customer Relationship Manager at Document360, about her guiding philosophy for customer support.   Gowri and I talk about…   - The re...

How can I make people feel like the experience is just for them?   You’d think this question pertains to customer experience — and it does — but it originated from a Magic Moments mindset. As in, actual stage magic.   In this episode, I interview Jeff Kaylor, Fortune 500 Keynote Speaker at JeffKaylor.com and Cofounder at the Magic Estate, about how to bring wonder back into customer experience.  ...

It’s not just a box of cornflakes. It reflects something about you as a parent far beyond ingredients, taste, and health benefits.    How does your breakfast cereal make you feel about yourself?   In this episode, I interview Susan Meier, Founder and Principal at Susan Meier Studio, about creativity and brand strategy:   Susan & I discuss:   - The relationship between brand and customer experience...

You need to acknowledge that employee experience (i.e. happiness) is a bridge to customer experience.   In this episode, I interview Stacy Sherman, the Head of Customer Experience & Employee Engagement at Schindler Elevator and the Founder at DoingCXRight, about the EX/CX intersection.    Stacy and I chatted about:   - The role of video in EX and CX communication (one of my favorite topics)   - Th...

Two sets of customers don’t equal just two customer experiences. Customer experiences are myriad — especially in B2B healthcare technology, where your customers can grow 5x in a month.   In this episode, I interview James Lloyd, Co-Founder and CTO at Redox, about serving both his customers (healthcare software vendors) and his customers’ customers (health systems).   James talked with me about:  ...

You may think you’re selling products or services, but you aren’t. You’re actually selling decisions — and good feelings about decisions.   In this episode, I interview Master Hypnotist Paul Ross, CEO and Head Trainer at Subtle Words That Sell, about how to master selling using the power of language.   Paul shared about:   - How to imply a mutual relationship in your first sentence   - Being craft...

Acquisitions are often times of stress and disruption, to say the least.   Our most recent podcast guest casts new light on one of my favorite themes — that a good employee experience is a necessary precursor to a good customer experience — from the perspective of acquisitions and mergers.   In this episode, I interview Isabelle Papoulias, CMO at Mediafly, about her 3 tips for a smooth acquisition...

To celebrate the 100th episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, I decided to make you an Epic Takes Mixtape.     I watched every video clip from the first 99 episodes and selected 10 that I thought were transcendent. They reach beyond the day-to-day and speak to our humanity, our goals, and our dreams.     I’m Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, a...

The CX gap is a misalignment between CX and the C-Suite… and it’s the major reason that CX programs fail.   Why? Failure to make the data relevant.   In this episode, I interview Ian Luck, VP of Global Marketing at CustomerGauge, about bridging the CX gap and making customer-centric decisions based on accurate CX data.   In this episode, you’ll learn about...   - What lies at the heart of the CX g...

Cannabis dispensaries, being designated essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, have had to pivot how they interact with customers. From online delivery to seed-to-sale tracking, businesses in the cannabis, hemp, and CBD space care deeply about providing a customer experience that is, above all, transparent.   In this episode, I interview Nina Simosko, Chief Commercial Officer at Akerna, about tra...

User experience refers to how a human interacts with a computer (also known as human-computer interaction or HCI).   Within the last 20 years, user experience has completely recontextualized customer experience because so many of the touchpoints humans have with businesses are, well, digital.   In this episode, I interview Bob Berry, Principal User Experience Researcher at AnswerLab, about the ins...