The Customer Experience Show

Sarah Quinn, VP of Global AI/Digital/CX Sales at TELUS International, shares fascinating insights from an impressive career working with household-name brands - from McDonald’s to J. Crew, to Airbnb, and more. In this episode, Sarah discusses how successful (and not-so-successful) brands navigated significant past changes in public behavior, plus why CX teams should embrace AI to avoid irrelevancy.  About The Guest: Sarah Quinn is the VP of Global AI/Digital/CX Sales at TELUS International and previously has provided a broad range of strategic consulting services for Fortune 500 companies and more. Sarah began her career as a Direct Marketing superstar, going on to become a proven high-impact turnaround sales strategist in the B2B and B2C enterprise space, helping increase both her employer's and client's bottom line. Key Quotes: “It's not what people like that's the most important. It's what they don't like that might be the most important…When people love you, they love you. Like political parties, if I'm a Democrat or Republican, I'm going to vote one way or the other. It's easy to find people firmly on this side or that side, but it's not easy to find people that might go on either side. That's also a part of a marketer's struggle. To understand what they don't like, to me, is as important as what they do.” “When I say the comment, ‘The customer's always right,’ we know they're not always right. But, it's how do you make them feel like you hear them and you understand, and how do you sway them to maybe understand they're not right?” “If the last two years didn't prove to marketers that you just can't depend on the environment or history or anything, then I don't know what will. Those that come to the top will come to the top, and the two words I keep saying are agility and flexibility.” Time Stamps: *[1:15] Sarah’s role at TELUS International *[3:50] Biggest changes in CX from the past decades  *[6:33] Tools for getting to know your customer better *[14:57] Outdated CX techniques  *[16:438] Times regression-modeling worked wonders *[20:57] What’s next for TELUS International  *[21:49] The future of CX trends *[26:50] Engaging across generations with the same message *[35:40]  Advice to staying agile and flexible during cultural change  Links Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn Connect with Phil on LinkedIn Follow Phil on Twitter Thanks to our friends This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they’ve created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here.

We hear so much about the importance of strategic communications, but what does that really mean? Martha Boudreau, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at AARP, helps bring strategic communication to life through relatable stories and concrete examples. Hear her explain what it means to become your customer’s wisest friend and fiercest defender - a core mission to Martha’s team at AARP. You’ll hear some of her globally-recognized insight into topics like aligning strategies, empowering employees, and much more. ----- Key Quotes: “We have to be where everybody is, offering up the same kind of content to everyone - whether it's a mailbox, a digital platform, or through our app. That is an obligation. What it means from a customer experience standpoint, is that it all has to work together. It has to be a sort of an omni-channel experience.” “For other brands, especially brands that were not created in the digital world, there can be no time to wait. You have to adopt different platforms, but first, you have to have a serious look at who your consumers are and know that moving forward, there will be no excuses for delivering anything that's not a great consumer experience. You know what? Maybe, you never get it perfect - but you create processes whereby you can fix things as you move through.” “Being able to truly listen and then act on the input makes sense for the mission, and for the business model of the organization. That's essential. You can't satisfy everyone, but you can make sure that your processes are top notch, and that you're delivering what your brand promises.”  ----- Time Stamps: *[:15] Martha’s role at AARP *[3:20] How listening to customers benefits CX *[7:50] Aligning CX strategies across multiple departments *[12:20] Why customer experience is employee experience  *[15:48] Martha’s go-to tools for productivity  *[19:05] Responding to negative customer feedback *[22:00] AARP’s Virtual Community Center *[25:40] The future of CX  *[29:17] Lightning round ----- Links: Connect with Martha on LinkedIn Follow Martha on Twitter Connect with Phil on LinkedIn Follow Phil on Twitter Thanks to our friends This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they’ve created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here.

This episode features an interview with Lee Becker, SVP and GM of Medallia’s Public Sector. In this episode, Lee talks about the federal government’s cross-agency initiative to improve CX, shares advice for managing CX across several departments, and explains why a human-centered approach sets the stage for success.  Quotes “We are elevating the human experience of government by putting people's voices at the center of decision making. That is really at the core of what we do. This element of placing the people's voices at the center of everything is something so profound because it’s the missing piece.” “I think customer experience sometimes can be seen as an audit function, and we've got to make sure it doesn't become that. Customer experience should be seen as a core enabler for everything that organization is doing. It cannot be seen as this special thing off to the side.” “We actually make sure that the changes we’re making are not just a copy-and-paste. It’s not just a, ‘Hey, we're going to keep the same process and we're going to slap technology on it, and boom, here's our modernization.’ Let's actually take a step back. Let’s make sure that we're putting the people's voice at the center of everything.” Time Stamps *[:19] Lee’s journey from Department of Defense to Medallia Public Sector *[3:08] The scope of Medallia Public Sector’s mission *[9:09] Team building and organization *[14:09] Creating a CX focused culture  *[21:27] Cross-department communication and alignment *[25:41] Tackling complex pain-points *[34:38] Bigges lessons Lee’s learned in the Public Sector Bio Lee Becker is a Navy veteran with more than 20 years of experience in regulated industries and the public sector. Lee joined Medallia in 2020, after spending 10 years at the U.S. Department of Defense in various strategic and operational roles. This included the development of award winning programs in customer, patient, and employee experience at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, and co-leading the White House cross-agency goal on customer experience for all of government. Thanks to our Friends This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they’ve created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here. Links Connect with Lee on LinkedIn Follow Lee on Twitter Connect with Phil on LinkedIn Follow Phil on Twitter

This episode features an interview with Scott Finlow, CMO for the PepsiCo Foodservice Division. In this episode, Scott talks about creating centers of excellence within a large company, operating with a digital-first mindset, and catering to experiential consumers. Quotes *”What’s important is to build a comprehensive and dynamic understanding of people, not just as consumers, nor just as shoppers, but in a more holistic way. To understand them as people, what their motivations are, what their behaviors are, not just in a moment, but over the course of a day or a week or a lifetime. And that becomes a more important way to understand people as you seek to build brands authentically and genuinely to help meet their needs, whether it's an individual brand or a portfolio of brands. That's different in different markets and in different contexts. And it's an incredibly dynamic space now more than ever.” *”You may go to Starbucks in the morning. You may be at 7 Eleven. You may be ordering from from B-Dubs for lunch. You're living in an omni-channel world today. The construct of retail to some degree in food service doesn't really present itself clearly to a consumer or to people. And that's increasingly what we need to contextualize and understand when we do our work, when we understand people, when we build our brands, when we build the experiences. We want to create. ” *”Retail is looking to create a more experiential environment. And I think the world that you live in in terms of being focused on customer experience and guest experience is incredibly relevant across both. And everyone needs to work hard to understand that guest, and or consumer, and create a better experience for them. What's important is understanding what the nature of a better experience is, right? And there are probably some common underpinnings. Things like convenience, things like depending on the context, something that's maybe unique and special, certainly relevant, is going to be incredibly important. Value is always a constant at a high level and is also dynamic, and very much unique and dynamic across the different contexts as well.” “In every role I've ever had, CX has been at the root of it. One thing that I think is really important is for everyone in the company to think that way about it no matter what your role is, whether you're in sales or finance. How are you just thinking about the consumer, the user, the customer, and how you build a better brand experience and a better business as part of that? That should be at the heart of every CPG organization. That's for sure.” “Act like an owner. No matter where you are in the business, be an owner of the brands. Be an owner as it relates to understanding your customers, helping your customers and supporting that business. Don't don't have it be someone else's job. Make it your job. Make it everyone on your team's job to think about that experience and organize at least a part of your work and your mindset to be hyper-conscious about how you can make that a better experience.” Time Stamps *[3:36] Making sense of consumer insights *[9:30] Building a unique brand experience in foodservice *[12:20] Creating the experiential environment *[14:12] Understanding the consumer across silos *[17:13] Taking ownership of your CX *[18:38] Future-proofing by shaping your brand in context  *[21:09] Adapting CX to COVID *[23:39] Driving innovation at PepsiCo through IT *[28:46] The future of PepsiCo and sustainability initiatives *[33:09] Advice for CX leaders Bio Scott Finlow is the Chief Marketing Officer for the PepsiCo Foodservice Division.  Scott and his team are responsible for translating deep consumer and customer insights into innovation and experiences that accelerate growth, build brands with purpose and transform the business for the future.  Scott has been with PepsiCo for 25 years in a variety of Marketing roles in the US and Asia. Thank you to our friends This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here Links: Connect with Scott on LinkedIn Follow Scott on Twitter Check out the PepsiCo Foodservice Digital Labs Connect with Phil on LinkedIn Follow Phil on Twitter