The Modern Customer Podcast

Marketing is often thought of as everything that happens before a sale; customer service is everything that happens after. But according to Allan Dib, best-selling author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan, customer service is marketing. The two sides are related and can work together to create a smoother experience overall. Like in customer service, Dib says the first step of marketing is knowing your...

What is a customer-centric culture? According to Dr. Chris L. Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of MarketCulture, it's the environment, behaviors, and how work gets done. At customer-centric companies, the culture revolves around providing an excellent customer experience. That strong culture starts with leaders who set the tone for embracing customers and having a customer-centric mindset. Blake Morgan  ...

From Chief Experience and Chief Customer Officers to Customer Experience leaders, more companies are creating customer leadership roles. These positions can greatly impact customer-centricity, but they bring a common question: where do you start? Jim Weber, Chief Experience Officer of Comerica Inc, stepped into his current role in late 2019 with a goal to build and expand a customer experience tea...

A company as large as Choice Hotels, with more than 7,000 locations worldwide, is bound to have a huge amount of data. But how do you ensure data is used to improve and bolster the customer experience? Noha Abdalla, Chief Marketing Officer at Choice Hotels International, Inc, says data is the cornerstone of the brand's customer experience. Choice Hotels is recognized for knowing its customers incr...

Where does a customer-obsessed culture start? With the CEO. Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and CEO at KB Home, is known for his customer-centricity. That mindset has spread throughout the company to create a culture of customer obsession. Every employee knows their role and the impact of their work, which leads to incredibly high customer satisfaction rates. Blake Morgan  is a customer experien...

Like many industries, the automotive space has been upended in recent years. With supply chain issues, changing technology, and evolving customer preferences and priorities, the car-buying process is much different than it used to be. Jennifer Vianello, CMO of Cars.com, says there have been so many predictions about car-buying over the last 25 years that it is challenging to make new predictions....

Delivering quality content to customers builds trust and strengthens relationships. With the power of search engine optimization, content can be a powerful marketing tool to establish your company as a thought leader and develop credibility. According to Leslie Yazel, Editor and Head of Content for Buy Side from WSJ, people who come through search are looking for a particular product or answer and...

Most companies understand the importance of their frontline workers interacting with customers daily. But how many will build a customer experience strategy around them? At JetBlue Travel Products, the contact center is in the middle of everything the company does--literally and figuratively.  Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling book The...

Imagine having an expert makeup artist available whenever you have a question. That's the reality for customers of some of the world's leading beauty brands, thanks to an innovative digital strategy that combines technology and the human touch.  Salima Popatia is the Chief Digital Officer at Orveon Global, the company behind some of the world's most recognizable beauty brands: Laura Mercier, Bare...

Customers frequently read reviews from other customers, but how often do companies get involved? Customer reviews abound online but are often overlooked by brands.  Liz Carter, CMO of experience management company Reputation, says customer reviews have incredible power. This episode is sponsored by  Reputation . Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and author of the be...

Most customer experience data strategies include two types of insights: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data tells the stories behind the customers, and quantitative data shares trackable metrics of customers' actions and a brand's performance. But according to Jim Kalbach, author of The Jobs To Be Done Playbook, modern CX teams have an over-reliance on quantitative data, which can distr...

Between stress from the pandemic and the economy, rude customers, and changing technology, many customer-facing employees are burnt out. Mental health is crucial to everyone's well-being, especially frontline workers and contact center agents who face challenges and difficult conversations every day. Amy Smith, Chief Impact Officer at TOMS, says we need to talk about our mental health like we woul...

How does a company founded in 1911 stay relevant and a leader in the tech space today? Continual evolution and a willingness to disrupt. IBM has long been a leader in the technology industry because of its willingness to experiment and challenge the status quo. Chief Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Adashek attributes that to staying on top of advancements and being willing to a...

The biggest challenge for customer experience teams often isn't learning new technology, staying on top of trends, or connecting with customers--it's getting buy-in from executives and proving the ROI of their efforts. Bryan Sanders, Head of CX, Market Research, Digital at AAA, recommends that customer experience practitioners take a unique approach: do CX on the leaders they're trying to engage w...

Internal insights and customer feedback are essential to building an effective customer-focused leadership strategy. But it requires continually listening to customers, measuring what matters, and ensuring data is passed to the right teams to make changes and improvements.     Diana Brown, SVP of Sales Operations and Customer Experience at XPO, involves leaders with the data through feedback loops...

The abundance of data available to companies today presents incredible opportunities to personalize their experiences and serve customers like never before. Today's customer experience teams have the power to know so much more about customers, their preferences, and their history than ever.    But with technology advancements, privacy challenges, and cookie changes, it's also never been harder to...

It takes a lot to stand out in the competitive DTC food delivery market. But ButcherBox built a competitive advantage by staying true to one of its core values: being customer obsessed. Chief Product & Experience Officer Lesley Mottla says the value isn't just words on the wall—it's something leaders and employees are constantly talking about and living. Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futu...

Morgan Stanley CMO Alice Milligan is tasked with balancing legacy and innovation for a company founded nearly 90 years ago that has become one of the biggest names in finance. It's a common dilemma for companies: how do you balance holding on to the brand legacy while embracing the future? This episode is sponsored by Thinkific . Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, an...

The foundation of delivering a fantastic experience to customers is listening to them. How can you provide relevant and personalized experiences without understanding your customers and hearing their feedback?   Nationwide Insurance is known for its customer-centricity, largely because of its company-wide focus on listening to customers and using their feedback to continually improve the experienc...

What does it take to build a disruptive, customer-centric company? It starts with customer-centric leaders. Digital investment company Betterment was on my list of the 100 most customer-centric companies in 2022 because of its innovative platform that combines the convenience of digital tools with the personalization of human agents. Aside from a strong digital experience, what sets Betterment apa...

What's one of the biggest challenges of securing a sale? It's not rejection--it's indecisive customers. Customer indecision is everywhere, from B2B buyers making big purchases to customers shopping for clothes online. And it's become even more evident as global and economic conditions become more uncertain. According to best-selling sales author Matthew Dixon, 40-60% of a salesperson's qualified p...

How do you reinvigorate a 135-year-old brand to connect with new and changing customers? That's the question faced by Bibie Wu, CMO of Del Monte Foods. Customers have changed drastically in the last few years, especially in the food industry. Even with changing trends, Del Monte stays grounded in the goodness of fruits and vegetables. In fact, with more people eating at home, managing their househ...

Looking at the consumer industry, it's clear that things are changing. But what does that mean for businesses, and how can they navigate these uncharted waters? Kasey Lobaugh, Chief Innovation Officer for Deloitte's Consumer Industry, discusses 100 topics the six forces critical to navigating the next decade of change in retail. Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and...

Millions of customers, thousands of employees, and more than 1,500 stores mean that Petco has a myriad of data and metrics to pull from to track its business growth and success.  The challenge, like many other companies, is knowing which metrics to prioritize and measure. Chief Customer Officer Darren MacDonald believes that what gets measured gets managed. It's impossible to track and analyze eve...

At the heart of customer experience is building relationships with our customers. But the business side also means tracking those relationships and not lying about them. We can't expect to have a healthy and productive relationship with customers, employees, and investors if we aren't honest about what it's like for our customers. Blake Morgan  is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, a...