The CX Leader Podcast | A resource for customer experience leaders

What would the world look like if customer experience simply... disappeared? How would anyone receive support? How would companies know what products work? How would you be able to hire someone to fix your dishwasher? In this special episode of The CX Leader Podcast, producer Chris Higgins assembles a panel of experts from Walker to perform a terrifying thought experiment worthy of an episode of T...

Closed-loop feedback is not a foreign subject on this podcast; we've covered it many times before and you can find those episodes on our website, cxleaderpodcast.com. But in this episode we look at a company that services a complicated insurance market, and how implementing a closed-loop follow-up early in the company's life has impacted their growth. Host Steve Walker welcomes Stephanie-Marie Sul...

Customers are demanding new ways to connect with companies, ranging from websites to apps, chat support to bots - the technological tools available to CX professionals is growing. In the inaugural episode in our series, "CX Now: Eight Essential Themes Driving CX Evolution," host Steve Walker welcomes Elliot Moran, associate vice president in our advisory and managed services at Walker, for a discu...

Many companies use them: personality tests or evaluations - ways to help employees discover more about how they and their colleagues work with others. Some might roll their eyes at the mention of them yet others find them very useful in trying to connect to other people in their company. Regardless of how you feel about them, the goal is ultimately a better-working team. And employees working well...

In a special CX Day Celebration episode and playing of this year's theme "CX Drives Success," host Steve Walker welcomes experts Sean Clayton, Sheila March, and Jack Walker for a fun panel discussion on how racing shares similar traits with customer experience. CX Day is held every first Tuesday in October by the Customer Experience Professionals Association as a global celebration of the customer...

This episode features a more open-ended conversation on one of the host's favorite topics: the differences between B2B and B2C, but focusing on what it is like for a CX professional to transition from B2C to B2B, or vice-versa. Steve Walker welcomes guest Stuart Gilchriest, director of CX strategy at UKG, a technology company providing solutions for HR, payroll, and workforce management technology...

Data is important for customer experience. Providing a great experience is certainly a good thing, but it's not enough to assume that your program is delivering. You must gather the data necessary to either confirm you're doing it right, or find you need to make some changes in order to improve your CX. Host Steve Walker welcomes Tim Thoman, President and CEO of Performance Services, a company tha...

It's an easy tenet to accept that a lack of conflict translates to a productive workplace. The less H.R. puts out personality "fires" the more people can concentrate on their jobs. But a study published back in 2003 by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley found that if the traditional rules of brainstorming, which encourage people to not criticize any presented ideas,...

COVID required many companies to rethink how they do business. Come companies adapted well, others did not. But some unique challenges crop up when your business is highly regulated, like the aviation industry. Regardless of the pandemic, pilots still need to be trained, certified, and recertified, and if the training of pilots is the core services of your business, then some innovative thinking n...

A common subject on the show is the importance of cross-functional collaboration when executing good customer experience. Knowing how other departments and groups work within the company is vital, but not always easy. And yet, CX pros are often left with the task of getting everyone on-board and collaborating so the entire company can help provide the best possible customer experience. Guest Miche...

Women's Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on August 26, commemorating the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. In honor of that event, and in honor of her great-grandmother Tommie Walker, who founded Walker...

People love origin stories. And for CX professionals, narratives of customer experience "newbies" growing from humble beginnings into "heroes" can be insightful. Continuing in our series of featuring winners from the Awards International 2022 US Customer Experience Awards, host Steve Walker welcomes Lee Kemp, operations, supply chain, and Customer Experience leader, and Sam Wegman, vice president...

Change is not easy. It's human instinct to become comfortable with "what you know." But sometimes a change is necessary – when CX professionals notice a problem, or recognize a way to make the customer's experience better, their instinct is to find solutions to improve how they interact with customers. And a large global technology company needs a CX leader who can bring people together into a com...

Building CX programs from scratch is never an easy task. And the endeavor usually starts with the vision of a single person that sees the benefits of CX and agrees – or is appointed – to spearhead the project. And that includes a lot: program planning, gaining support throughout the organization, putting convincing metrics in place, and a whole lot more. It's a daunting task. Guest host Pat Gibbon...

Today's technology allows for peer-driven collaboration on an unprecedented level. People from across the globe can create knowledge resources on Wikipedia, or develop software on GitHub and share it with the world. There are even ways to create art and music collaboratively online. So it only makes sense that a group of CX pros decided that the customer experience profession needed some sort of p...

Health is a deeply personal topic and these last few years have pushed healthcare institutions into making unprecedented changes in how they deliver that care. Naturally, this has had an impact on the patients' experience. XM professionals in healthcare institutions must be mindful that patients are NOT customers, and design programs accordingly to improve the patient experience. Host Steve Walker...

If you're a CX pro for small or medium size company, you already know the challenges in designing and delivering the best possible experience for your customers. But what about companies that have multiple locations? What about a company like Starbucks which has over 33 thousand locations? How do they deliver such a consistent experience across so many countries and cultures? Host Steve Walker wel...

We've had some great guest on the show recently and the importance of the employee experience has started to emerge as a notable topic. Many guests emphasize the need for companies to empower and trust their employees to make decisions that improve the customer experience. In this episode of our "Turn Back Time" take home value series, producer Chris Higgins highlights some of the take home value...

Few if any of customer experience pros went to school to be a CX professional, and yet there are thousands in this flourishing profession. So what does it take to be a CX leader? What are the right skills and what is the best career path to take? How do you break into this and how do you determine whether your company will really support customer experience strategies? Guest host Pat Gibbons welco...

There are a number of ways to design experiences for your customers, but you're stuck. You find it hard to think beyond how things are currently done. And even if you had some sort of break-through idea, changing your current processes and getting others on board seems pretty daunting. And yet you constantly wonder, "what if?" Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experi...

It's a common practice in customer experience, and a vital one: closed-loop response to customer feedback. Simply put: you need to make sure you respond to customers in a timely and appropriate way. But, like all things in life, it's not that simple and if not done well it can actually create poor experiences for your customers. This is why it's critical to get front line employees engaged in CX a...

One of the best institutions to learn leadership skills is the military. Veterans often become some of the best business leaders in their fields. So how does military life translate into becoming an effective customer experience leader? Host Steve Walker welcomes Michelle Buretta, a vice president and CX strategic advisor at Walker, for a discussion on how her service in the Army prepared her to b...

For many companies the call center (or "contact center") is the frontline of their customer experience. And the past couple of decades have seen the channels in which customers can interact with your company explode beyond the simple phone call: email, live chat, social media... But are we failing to recognize the true value and potential of the contact center? Host Steve Walker welcomes Bruce Tem...

As more companies realize the potential of a customer-centric culture, the discussion around how your employees' experiences can affect your customers' experiences is becoming more prevalent. Employee experience – or "EX" – has often been siloed in human resources, but how can you connect the customers' and employees' experiences? What data do we collect? And how do we activate a CX plus EX cultur...

In a world that generates thousands of terabytes of data every single day, it's important to be a little picky on what type of data to gather. Customer experience professionals rely on data to understand their customer's needs. But what data do you collect? How does a CX leader determine what information is meaningful and what is simply noise? Host Steve Walker welcomes Azlan Raj, chief marketing...