The Customer Experience Podcast

Brand experience is a promise that the buying experience will match the perceived value of the brand. Therefore, brand experience — education, enrichment, and human connection — begins well before a customer becomes a customer.    When a prospect believes that the brand and the buying experience will match and when that expectation is met… a premium brand is born.   In this episode, I interview Ed...

Think of five salespeople you know. Imagine their names and faces. Odds are, at least two of them are struggling with their mental health.   But no one’s really talking about mental health in sales, even though survey research has shown that over 40% of salespeople struggle with mental health.   In this episode, I interview Jeff Riseley, the founder of the Sales Health Alliance, about his passion...

“People will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” This quote from Maya Angelou embodies the heart of customer experience.    It’s simplifying the concept to say that customer experience is how you make people feel, but I think it may not be too simple. The essence of customer experience tends to be incorrectly focused on getting customers to do something, but th...

The customer experience often starts at or near the buying experience. So, today, we’re talking about creating and delivering better buying experiences.    Every one of us experiences some version of buyer’s remorse every time we make a purchase. Strategizing about creating a buyer’s experience not just to mitigate the buyer’s remorse but to empower the buyer is a huge component of customer experi...

We’re neck deep in the Coronavirus pandemic, but digital communication gives us the power to stay connected while we’re physically separated. Should customer communication channels change during a time of crisis?    In this episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, my guest and I discuss how digital chat (both live and bot) and video are affected by COVID-19. Listen in as I talk with my first re...

Basically, CX is in a pretty bad state. Stagnating macro studies on customer experience like the CXI metric are just one indicator…   In other words, the so-called “Big CX Dream” has failed to live up to its billing.    In this episode, we talked about some of the soft spots and even illusions in the modern Customer Experience movement… Ben Smithwell joins us on The Customer Experience Podcast!   ...

Product usage is a vanity metric.   Actually, product usage is just one of 15 factors that companies should use to build a picture of their organization’s health. These belong in four “buckets” that show what to track instead to create a risk profile for each account (likelihood to renew or churn).   In this episode, I interview Chris Hicken, cofounder and CEO at ‘nuffsaid, about what tracking pro...

How do you envision the customer lifecycle? Is it linear or circular? The latter is your best bet if you want lifelong customers. And it’s as easy as ABC...DE, then repeat.   If you’re stumped on what this means for your sales and marketing team, this episode is for you.   Wes Schaeffer, author, speaker, and Founder at The Sales Whisperer, stopped by The Customer Experience Podcast to break down t...

If you’re looking to grow your business, then having a raving fan base can help you get you there. Passion is contagious, and they are passionate about what you have to offer. So, as your fandom flourishes, so will your company. To accomplish this, you have to give people an experience they’ll always remember – one built on human connection. And that’s hard to do. But you can’t have truly invested...

Because you're listening to this podcast, I can make one pretty good guess about you… You’re a learner. You intentionally seek out information, meaning that you actively learn as a regular part of your life. I'll go out on another limb and say that in your week to week — at work, at home, or somewhere else — you’re probably also in a teaching role. In other words, you’re both a learner and a teach...

If you want your business to grow and succeed, it needs to be built on a solid foundation of relationships. Obviously. However, creating connection with the right people can be quite difficult — even damaging — if you go about it the wrong way. What if I told you that creating connection is as simple as collaborating with anyone you want to know to create valuable content?  This very episode of th...

As the customer experience evolves, so do our motives. Consumers are no longer motivated by a great piece of content (if they ever were). They’re motivated as long as you can offer them the best solution at the most essential time. In fact, the director of market strategy at Salesforce — Mathew Sweezey — wrote an entire book on what exactly goes into context marketing. That book, entitled Context...

When you constantly learn from the best, you become the best. Today we’re learning from some of the best salespeople, who know that the secret to improving customer experience is no secret at all. My most recent podcast guest spent a few years as a Marketing Director before becoming a Territory Manager for UPS, selling supply chain solutions. For the past decade, he’s been blowing out his quotas i...

Three experience-based goals are the foundation of an amazing agency that builds the concept of experience right into its name: The Participation Agency. Translating digital experiences into lived experiences. Creating remarkable, resonant experiences without abandoning data and analytics. Building affinity between customers and brands through experience. The extreme laser-focus on experience obvi...

Experience differentiators were the subject of a recent LinkedIn post that grabbed my attention for the way it spoke to the heart of this podcast… aligning to invest in creating and delivering better experiences for our customers. I asked its author to be a guest on my podcast to hear more about his experience in operations, account management, biz dev, and sales roles. I was so excited to intervi...

The most economically valuable thing you can do is to meet customer expectations. Meet the expectations. Not exceed customer expectations. Not surprise and delight your customers at every turn. Actually, the best way (economically and experientially) to serve your business and especially your customers is to meet their expectations. I’m Ethan Butte, here today on The Customer Experience Podcast to...

Amaze every customer every time … that sounds like a promising foundation for a remarkable customer experience, doesn’t it? That’s the theme of the conversation you’re about to enjoy. My guest today is Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations and a customer service expert and speaker. He’s the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of six books, among which i...

Today, we’re talking about how people work. It’s no understatement to say that knowing how people think and what makes them tick is a must for everything from making sales to just holding conversations that uplift both sides. I was incredibly excited to talk to Vanessa Van Edwards, Lead Investigator at Science of People and bestselling author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People.  I...

A great employee experience begets a great customer experience. If you want to retain your best team members, you need to value them and invest in them. Today, we’re talking about investments in your sales team - training, coaching, and development. These are things that both make them better and demonstrate how you’re building them up. Did you know that 30% of sales reps get no coaching whatsoeve...

If you've been thinking at all about implementing video into your sales or CS process — and let’s face it, you pretty much can’t be a video denier anymore — you're going to love this episode.  There's been a ton of talk about video lately. Not that highly produced video with background music and a suite of hairstylists, but simple, personal video. Think about these casual and conversational videos...

Let’s drill into sales enablement. Not just the important question of how we can best prepare our salespeople, but I’m talking here about how we set them up to serve our customers successfully? Sales isn’t about quotas; it’s about pursuing our clients’ success. Which is why it’s completely apt that my guest on this episode of The Customer Experience Podcast was a customer who was absolutely deligh...

Human domination by superintelligences is pretty much the thing to be talking about, ever since the Golden Age of Sci-Fi. Has the passage of nearly 70 years since then made us more or less susceptible to Alexa, Cortana, Siri, and others like them? That’s what William Ammerman, author of The Invisible Brand: Marketing in the Age of Automation, Big Data, and Machine Learning and the EVP of Digital M...

The benefits of being a lifelong learner are priceless. But, have you ever considered learning more about a different profession in order to improve the work you do? That’s exactly what Scott Barker has done on multiple occasions. Scott is the Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker and the host of The Sales Engagement Podcast; although, don’t pigeonhole him as solely a sales pro yet. In this episode...

My wife and I recently had to go out and buy a new car.  And if there aren't customer experience lessons in that process, I don't know where else they are.  So, on this episode of The Customer Experience podcast, I shared the 5 things I learned about the customer experience...by being a customer.

“One question can change everything.” Indeed, it can. On the latest episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, I have the pleasure of speaking with Brian Robinson, author of best-selling The Selling Formula and VP of Strategic Partnerships at Works24.  Brian fills us in on: His definition of great customer experience How to adjust your mindset before entering a sales conversation Why your questio...