Today’s compilation features excerpts from two interviews: Christopher McShane, SVP of customer experience at Serta Simmons Bedding, and Jon Picoult, founder of Watermark Consulting. Both my guests speak on the importance of establishing an internal system to improve employee and customer experience. These are two great conversations which dig deeply into the processes and cultural considerations needed to truly change your organization's approach to driving experiences worth having. Enjoy!

I had the pleasure of speaking with neuroscientist, professor, speaker, author, and cofounder of Immersion Neuroscience, Dr. Paul Zak. Give this episode a listen for invaluable wisdom on deepening your customer connections, generating long-term customer value, optimizing employee performance through immersive training, and much, much more.

As we head into the new year, I ask that you revisit this podcast episode, where you’ll find many more valuable gems from my friend, Curtis Kopf. Your business—and your customers—will thank you. In my conversation with Curtis Kopf, the Chief Experience Officer at REI, we discuss thought processes and strategies that go into navigating successful CX transformations. Curtis is a seasoned leader and CX practitioner who’s worked across a few different industries during his career. He has spent time at Amazon in the early 2000s, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Premera Blue Cross. Curtis definitely knows a thing or two about how to develop a customer-first strategy.

As you’re developing what you develop your products, your services, know that—in your communication, you have a wonderful opportunity to rise above—to show who you are as people in how you communicate shared memories.

In this conversation with Matt Baer—Chief Digital and Customer Officer at the longstanding, iconic retailer Macy’s—shares key insights on the importance of getting the fundamental customer experience right before anything else.

In this conversation with Cassandra Crowe, Chief Executive Officer at Sharp HealthCare, Cassandra shares some high-level insights regarding the employee experience transformation at Sharp HealthCare and the ways in which this multilayered process impacted business operations and patient experience.

How are you taking steps to deliver what you do? Are you willing to step outside the bounds of what everybody else does? And take an ADMIRABLE action in how you do it?

Lynda Firey-Oldroyd, CCO of Topgolf speaks on previous career successes at blue chip companies and details the importance of employee and customer experience at TopGolf.

In order to move from where you are, you need to all agree on where you’ve begun. “One version of the truth" is critical. In this episode, I share an exercise you can do with your team to start the process of understanding your organization’s experience reliability.

In this conversation with Andy Clement, the CCO at Kimberly-Clark Professional, who has been with the organization for over 30 years, we discuss how digitizing the sales operations has impacted this B2B business in the post-pandemic world. Those of you in the B2B industry will enjoy this chat, especially if you’ve been in a legacy industry that had to adjust to the digital-first world.

Doing customer math rallies your team not only to ask, “Did we earn more customers than we lost?” But it pushes everybody to care about the why. Find out why in this video.

To get traction that becomes foundation to the way that people lead, you must understand the cores of power inside the organization. In this episode, I share examples of how to partner—or dance—with the power core.

In this conversation, Christopher McShane, the senior vice president of customer experience at Serta Simmons Bedding chats with me about how he helped his team understand weak points in their operations. We spoke about a 90-Day plan he implented and how to develop a plan to improve both the employee and customer experience.

What I know is that customer experience is floundering. We are focusing on the mechanics instead of the meaning of the work. At the end of the day, customer experience is about leading. It’s about leadership. It’s about finding a way to guide your people and your organization to rise to show up as a different kind of company in the marketplace. Customer experience does not belong in a silo.

What I know is that everybody needs a little pixie dust. When you do things that are unexpected for your customers, they remember you and it bonds you to them. So I want to share some of my favorite pixie dust moments back from my days at Lands’ End.

What I know is that goal mapping not journey mapping is a new way of leading, uniting your organization and earning the right to customer driven-growth. Goal mapping will drive you to reflect on new customer-driven KPIs. Thinking about: how will you operationally measure the outcome metrics that will earn their goals? Not just asking them how we did or how satisfied they are. And also recognizing in a B2B standpoint, what are you doing to help them achieve their goals?

A goal map starts with the goals your customer wants to achieve and shifts your KPIs. By measuring the things that your customer cares about, it transforms how you do work. Find the show notes and more information at customerbliss.com/whatiknow.

Principles shouldn’t just be words on a wall. They should be used to lead. In this episode, I share a powerful example from my time at Land’s End.

In a recent Linkedin Live conversation, I spoke with Natalie Petouhoff, a senior customer experience strategist and business consultant at Genesys. Her previous experience includes work with brands including Salesforce, Hulu, Marriott, General Motors, General Electric, and many more. Natalie believes we can imbue technology with our hopes and dreams for a future focused on bettering humanity. Natalie addresses some of the ways this can be operationalized in a book she co-authored, "Empathy in Action: How to Deliver Great Customer Experiences at Scale." During our conversation, we discuss the notion of blind spots in leadership, and how that affects customer and employee experience.

In my conversation with Curtis Kopf, the Chief Experience Officer at REI, we discuss thought processes and strategies that go into navigating successful CX transformations. Curtis is a seasoned leader and CX practitioner who’s worked across a few different industries during his career. He has spent time at Amazon in the early 2000s, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Premera Blue Cross. Curtis definitely knows a thing or two about how to develop a customer-first strategy.