They think they know what's needed In Episode 254 of CX Passport, Lisa Guzman talks about how startups often believe they already know what their customer experience operation needs. They usually don’t. Founders are brilliant at product. They’re bold with vision. They’re comfortable with risk. But when it comes to CX infrastructure, many of them assume the basics are already handled. An inbox becomes a ticketing system.Response volume becomes the performance metric.Support becomes something...
22 days ago • 2 min read
One in Four. And You’re Not Designing for Them. In this week's CX Passport, The one with leading neurodivergence CX, Stine Marsal talks about something most companies treat as compliance ... but should treat as strategy. "Turns out one in four has a hidden disability. One in four. 15 to 20 % neurodivergent." - Stine One in four. That’s not a niche segment. That’s not a CSR initiative. That’s not a footnote in your annual report. That’s scale. Stine discovered this while leading experience at...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Doable Is Dangerous In this week's CX Passport, Gloria Gupta and I talked about transformation inside a complex organization. It’s about choice. “It’s figuring out how to do what is worth doing, not just doable.” – Gloria I’ve seen this tradeoff play out more times than I can count. A leader knows the right long-term move. Fix the broken authentication process. Redesign the experience properly. Invest in the infrastructure that prevents friction instead of patching over it. But the quarter is...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
We Keep Promoting the Wrong People In this week's CX Passport, The One With the Answers in the Field, April Sabral and I got into something that shows up in retail… but isn’t limited to retail at all. “Just because you were really great at sales or driving results does not mean that you're going to be really good at leading 10 people.” - April That’s obvious. And yet, we do it constantly. Retail does it because results are visible. Your store hits plan… you get promoted. You exceed KPIs… you...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Designing shame into the experience? In this week's CX Passport, I talked with Joe Macleod about something we still don’t design with the same care as the rest of the journey: the end. We spend a lot of time empowering customers early. We give them tools to compare, investigate, customize, and choose. Agency is designed into the experience from the start. When the relationship winds down, that support often disappears. Joe said: “What we’ve done with the consumer is bamboozle them in this...
2 months ago • 1 min read
The instinct that keeps getting us stuck A familiar CX pattern: Something isn’t working. So we add... Add a metric. Add a dashboard. Add a meeting. Add a governance layer. Add a “center of excellence.” None of that is careless. Each addition is usually well-intended. But over time, action slows down anyway. That came up in this week's CX Passport with Frances Chapireau. We weren’t debating tools or platforms. We were talking about why insight so often stalls before it turns into action. She...
2 months ago • 2 min read
When B2B Customers Go Quiet In this week's CX Passport, my conversation with Kári Thor Runarsson focused on something that feels obvious ... and still gets missed all the time in B2B. Silence is not neutral. In consumer worlds, silence often just means indifference. In B2B, silence usually means something else entirely. It means the customer has already decided it’s not worth the effort to engage. Not worth replying. Not worth correcting you. Not worth filling out the survey you keep sending....
3 months ago • 2 min read
CX doesn’t fail in theory ... it fails in policy A quick correction before we get started...Last week, I included a link to the episode guest, Sarah Kinard. Unfortunately, that link went to the wrong Sarah Kinard. I'm sorry about that, y'all. Here is the correct link: Sarah Kinard. Back to it... We talk a lot about customer trust in CX.But when I look at broken experiences, it usually comes down to a simple pattern: we design for the exception instead of the customer. This week’s episode of...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Why delivery isn't enough Customers are absolutely buying deliverables. Let’s not overcorrect that. They want the thing to work. They want it done. They want what was promised, delivered. While recording this week's episode, “The one with the slow CX”, Sarah Kinard helped me realize something important. Deliverables are no longer the only thing customers are buying. They’re also buying confidence. Not confidence in the abstract. Confidence that the deliverables will actually show up. On time....
3 months ago • 2 min read