A resource for customer experience (CX) and experience management (XM) professionals.
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Full Episode Listing

A complete list of episodes from The CX Leader Podcast.

The Academic Experience

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Episode #174

Released: July 13, 2021

According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 19 million people were enrolled in some level of college education for the fall semester of 2018. And just like any other business, it’s important for academic institutions to pay attention to their customer – or perhaps “student” – experience. But as you can imagine, CX in the higher education realm is a bit different. Host Steve Walker and guest Karla Fisher, chief industry advisor for education at Qualtrics, discuss the unique circumstances that CX pros work under at colleges and universities.

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Turn Back Time… Again!

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Episode #173

Released: July 6, 2021

It’s that time of year when producer Chris Higgins takes a moment to look back on some of the excellent advice from past guests on The CX Leader Podcast. Having covered a variety of topics from mystery shopping, CX in government, and even how one of the “happiest places on earth” executes their customer experience, there's a vast number of "take home value" segments to choose from, but this episode focuses on four particularly insightful tips for CX leaders.

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Making Sense of It All

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Episode #172

Released: June 29, 2021

Between website feedback, social media posts, product reviews, and every other way customers can provide insights, a staggering amount of data is generated everyday. If you’re a customer experience professional trying to make sense of everything your customers are saying about your company, you need a tool to help quantify all that information. That’s where text analytics can help. Host Steve Walker welcomes Matt Braun and Job Willman, both associates at Walker, to provide helpful guidance on using text analytics to quantify your data.

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Back to the Basics

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Episode #171

Released: June 22, 2021

CX professionals tend to get excited about some of the new concepts, practices, and technologies that are available to help companies provide the best possible experience for their customers. But it’s easy to get “swept away” by the excitement of how CX is growing and sometimes forget some of the basics of the profession. Host Steve Walker welcome Luke Williams, a distinguished principle XM catalyst at the Qualtrics XM Institute, for a discussion on the basics and how the growing field of experience management - or "XM" - fits into the mix.

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The Hyper-personalized Experience

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Episode #170

Released: June 15, 2021

Hyper-personalization is one of the newer buzz words out in the business world today – a practice that utilizes artificial intelligence to deliver highly personalized content and experiences in real-time at an individual level. It’s another way for brands to connect with their customers and a potential "tool in the box" for customer experience professionals. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Melissa Drew, an associate partner at IBM, for a discussion on how A.I. can take personalization to the next level.

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Just a Simple Question

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Episode #169

Released: June 8, 2021

Growing companies often develop complicated and disjointed processes. If business is booming, no one seems to have the time to stop and take a holistic look at how things are working and that can be detrimental to customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes Pamela Herrmann, vice president for customer experience for Mortgage Cadence, to discuss how a customer complaint led to a simple question that helped bring together a cross-functional collaboration to remove friction from the experience.

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2021 Global Consumer Trends: Part 2

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Episode #168

Released: June 1, 2021

The Qualtrics XM Institute recently released 2021 Global Consumer Trends, a report focusing on how consumer behavior will continue to change in a post-pandemic world. The report takes a look at consumer behavior and attitudes across 18 countries and covers many topics including loyalty, NPS, and post-COVID online behaviors. Host Steve Walker and Moira Dorsey of the Qualtrics XM Institute continue their discussion on the report's findings and the valuable insights it provides for CX professionals.

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2021 Global Consumer Trends: Part 1

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Episode #167

Released: May 25, 2021

The Qualtrics XM Institute recently released 2021 Global Consumer Trends, a report focusing on how consumer behavior will continue to change in a post-pandemic world. The report takes a look at consumer behavior and attitudes across 18 countries and covers many topics including loyalty, NPS, and post-COVID online behaviors. Host Steve Walker welcomes Moira Dorsey, a principal XM catalyst at the Qualtrics XM Institute for a discussion on the insights found in the report.

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Taking the Mystery out of Mystery Shopping

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Episode #166

Released: May 18, 2021

Mystery shopping: it’s that common practice where companies hire professional “shoppers” to evaluate and report on how your customers experience your business and gain valuable perspective on the customer’s journey. But, like many things today, the pandemic has shifted how customer experience pros approach their practice. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Michael Mills, global vice president of sales for HS Brands International, to discuss why CX pros should consider broadening their toolbox with this practice.

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Your Best Behavior

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Episode #165

Released: May 11, 2021

There’s a ton of science behind something as simple as a customer making a decision to purchase a product or service. Behavioral economics is a field that seeks to help us understand the biases and errors in a person’s decision-making process. Understanding this field can also provide CX pros with better insight into customer behavior, thereby finding ways to improve the customer experience. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Richard Jordan, CEO of Raggit, a customer-service review app, and one of the contributing authors of a new book, “Customer Experience 3”, to discuss how CX professionals can look to behavioral economics to help improve customer experience.

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The Magical Experience

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Episode #164

Released: May 4, 2021

Many people have experienced a visit to a theme park, but the theme park experiences provided by The Walt Disney Company are arguably some of the best. However, it’s not easy creating the “magical” world that guests have come to enjoy. Ensuring the employees – or “cast members” – provide that magical experience is crucial, which means it’s essential the employee’s experience is high priority. Guest host Pat Gibbons welcomes Francesca Tempestini, a former cast member at Disneyland Paris and one of the contributing authors of the new book “Customer Experiences 3," to discuss how companies can take some cues from "the happiest place on earth."

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Adapt and Adopt

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Episode #163

Released: April 27, 2021

It’s been over a year since a global pandemic has forced companies and organizations across the globe to rethink how they do work. While not an option for many companies, some began moving their operations to a work from home model, and it’s a trend that most CEO’s think will not go away. So how will this new work trend affect the employee and customer experience? Host Steve Walker welcomes Shanika Ofori, director of key accounts at 5CA, a company specializing in work-from-home global CX, for a discussion on how the work-from-home environment affects employee and customer experience.

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CX for the People

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Episode #162

Released: April 20, 2021

In the United States, people typically don't think of themselves as “customers” to the government. However, governing bodies from the local, state, and federal levels have been embracing customer experience as a way to connect to the community, and commercial businesses can learn from their efforts. Host Steve Walker welcomes Qualtrics experts Chelsie Bright, global head of government, and Sydney Heimbrock, chief industry advisor for government, for a discussion on understanding how CX works in government at all levels.

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Meeting Expectations

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Episode #161

Released: April 13, 2021

It’s important for those leading a company’s CX efforts to make certain the customer experience delivered by your front-line employees matches the customer’s expectations. And that means your employees need to understand your brand and the expectations it promises. Host Steve Walker welcomes Chris Wallace, co-founder and president of the InnerView Group, for a discussion on how to ensure your front-line employees deliver the experience promised by your brand.

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Round and Round We Go

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Episode #160

Released: April 6, 2021

CX professionals understand the difficulties in expanding existing programs: organizational silos, by-in from leadership, sunsetting older programs… It’s a stressful task. However, a recent study by the Qualtrics XM Institute discovered that programs successful at expanding throughout their company have a common “cycle” to how they operate. Host Steve Walker welcomes Ben Granger, the principal XM catalyst at the Qualtrics XM Institute to discuss the “XM Diffusion Cycle,” a “set of techniques that allow organizations to strategically expand [experience management].”

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Listen, then make it better

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Episode #159

Released: March 30, 2021

An area critical for many companies is their product and customer feedback can play a critical role in how designers and engineers develop and improve a product, so it’s important to gather the right data. Host Steve Walker welcomes guest Myles Grote from Upper Hand, a provider of full-suite sports and fitness management software, to discuss how customer feedback informs product decisions.

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Conversational Data

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Episode #158

Released: March 23, 2021

Companies often get stuck between the data gathering and discovering meaningful insights into how they can better their customer’s experience. Especially when you’re talking about qualitative data – conversational, open-ended data that can be difficult to quantify. But there are tools that will allow a CX pros to utilize the vast amounts of "conversational data" that companies collect. Host Steve Walker welcomes Matt Dixon, chief product and research officer, and Ted McKenna, SVP for product at Tethr for a discussion on how customer experience leaders can take advantage of the vast amounts of qualitative data typically collected by companies.

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The Laws of Experience Management

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Episode #157

Released: March 16, 2021

There are certain truths within the practice of customer experience that CX pros often observe. But when something becomes a “law”, like the laws of nature, that has a much more fundamental connotation. Host Steve Walker welcomes Isabelle Zdatny, an XM Catalyst and certified customer experience professional at the Qualtrics XM Institute, to discuss “The Six Laws of Experience Management” which helps companies understand the realities of human behavior within the context of XM.

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The ROI of Customer Experience: Part 2

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Episode #156

Released: March 9, 2021

Customer experience pros are often tasked with proving the ROI of CX within an organization. Utilizing experience data – or “X-data” – combined with operational data – or “O-data” – can be an effective tool in proving ROI of your CX efforts. In part 2 of exploring the ROI of CX, host Steve Walker welcomes Troy Powell and Brad Harmon from Walker to discuss practical ways to use X- and O-data to prove the return on your customer experience efforts.

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The ROI of Customer Experience: Part 1

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Episode #155

Released: March 2, 2021

Customer experience pros are often tasked with proving the ROI of CX within an organization. Utilizing experience data - or "X-data" - combined with operational data - or "O-data" - can be an effective tool in proving ROI of your CX efforts. Host Steve Walker welcomes guests Troy Powell and Brad Harmon from Walker to discuss the findings in Walker's new report "Deliver More Value with X- and O-data" and how CX pros can make the case for customer experience.

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