Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Jessica Cuthbertson, Executive, Data & Analytics at National Australia Bank (NAB), where she leads the team responsible for harnessing data, analytics, decision science and AI to improve customer experiences, drive business performance and support better decision-making across the bank. Jess joins me today to talk about how they’ve transformed their customer experience with the Customer Brain, a motoring analogy they use to explain how they are combining the power of agentic AI with decisioning, what they are able to achieve in terms of 1-to-1 hyper-personalisation at scale, with over 10 million customers how they manage conflict and do that consistently, the sort of customer and business outcomes they have been able to drive by following this approach, and what’s next for NAB when it comes to CX, agentic AI and decisioning? This interview follows on from my recent interview – AI, architecture, and human judgment in CX – Interview with Anshuman Singh of HGS Europe – and is number 609 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Anshuman Singh, CEO of HGS Europe, a user-centric technology services partner delivering Intelligent Experiences with AI, automation, and human expertise across global enterprises. Anshuman joins me today to talk about how AI’s failure mode is architectural, not a technology gap; why the statement “AI handles the routine work, humans handle the judgment calls” is true but incomplete; why AI isn’t inherently cheaper than a human; and why we are at risk of no longer teaching anyone to build and what the implications of that are. This interview follows on from my recent interview – What a people first AI playbook looks like – Interview with Mike Sullivan and Vinay Gidwaney of OneDigital – and is number 608 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Mike Sullivan and Vinay Gidwaney, co- founder and Chief Product Officer of OneDigital, a provider of insurance, employee benefits, HR and financial services for businesses and individuals to help them manage risk, control costs, and plan for long-term success. Mike and Vinay join me to talk about why AI transformation is increasingly becoming a leadership, workforce, and organisational culture challenge, how they are using AI in their business, how they are managing the transition/transformation, the ‘hiring’ process for their AI agents, who Ben, Dex, Nina, Jackie, Avery, Quinn, Amy, Odysseus, Charity and Ace are and a bit about their new book (Workforce Intelligence: The People-First Playbook for Leading Your Company Through AI Transformation) that just came out and is already a USA Today bestseller. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Measuring what matters in enterprise AI – Interview with Ashley Gross of The Alliance – and is number 607 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Ashley Gross, the Founder and CEO of The Alliance, an enterprise AI strategy and advisory firm. Ashley joins me today to talk about how most service AI business cases are measuring the wrong side of the ledger, what an honest AI service business case doesn’t include, who should own AI in the customer journey, and the new book she has just written (The AI Workweek). This interview follows on from my recent interview –The real bottleneck in customer experience AI – Interview with Brad Birnbaum of Kustomer – and is number 606 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Brad Birnbaum, Co-Founder & CEO of Kustomer, a top-rated AI Customer Service & CRM software platform provider. Brad and I talk about why the pace of AI adoption is not a technology problem, but rather the bottleneck sits elsewhere; how the idea that using AI in CX will cost less than people doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; and how most CX leaders are asking whether AI will replace their service teams, but their thinking should be elsewhere, amongst other things. By the way, I’ll be speaking at Kustomer’s ROI of CX Virtual Summit, which is taking place on Tuesday, October the 20th. Check it out! This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why marketers have an orchestration problem rather than a content problem – Interview with Eric Stine of Sitecore – and is number 605 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Eric Stine, the Chief Executive Officer of Sitecore, a global leader in AI-powered digital experience software. We talk about a range of things, including why the website still matters, but it’s not where discovery starts; why marketers don’t have a content problem, but rather they have an orchestration problem; how marketers can reach their customers in this AI-infused world; and also whether AI is going to kill SaaS or software. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Eliminating the Coordination Tax – Interview with Dan O’Connell of Front – and is number 604 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Dan O’Connell, CEO of Front, the customer operations platform built for collaboration. We talk about a range of issues, from where the CX landscape is heading to the Saaspocalypse, tokenomics, why (in experience terms) everything feels the same right now, the Coordination Tax, how Support, Customer Success, and Account Management are becoming more unified, and what needs to happen to create a more unified front (pardon the pun!) office. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The human edge in B2B customer experience – Interview with Anna Falcon of MCA Connect – and is number 603 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Anna Falcon, VP of CX Transformation at MCA Connect - a Grant Thornton Company. We talk about why B2B firms must deliver B2C‑level experiences or risk losing relevance, what’s driving this imperative, why so many AI initiatives and transformations fail to deliver value, and why we need to put humans at the centre of transformation. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why contact deflection creates quiet loyalty erosion – Interview with Pasquale DeMaio, VP of Amazon Connect Customer – and is number 602 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Pasquale DeMaio, Vice President and General Manager of Amazon Connect Customer, Amazon Web Services’ AI-powered customer experience platform, which supports more than 20 million customer interactions daily across 42 countries. We talk about how every customer now expects concierge-level treatment, regardless of how much they spend; the implications for brands; the phenomenon of ‘quiet loyalty erosion’; why loyalty is the only metric that matters now; human superpowers; and how customer experience (i.e. the contact centre space) has shifted from cost center to strategic growth driver. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Reinventing the organisation to drive better customer and employee outcomes – Interview with Ricardo Semler – and is number 601 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Ricardo Semler, a champion of radical, employee-friendly corporate democracy, a vision he successfully realised during his 40 years as CEO of Semco Partners. He went on to build Semco Style Institute (SSI) on that foundation and has shared its learnings with companies across the world in the intervening years. This chat was a bit of a fan-boy moment for me, as I read his first book, Maverick, back in the 1990s. It blew my mind then and continues to inspire me today. He joins me today to talk about a new ebook he recently published, The End of The Boss. We talk about the book, the Relevance Imperative, how today’s corporations are structurally unprepared for the forces reshaping work, particularly AI and remote autonomy, to say nothing of rebellious Gen Z and Gen Alpha talent, a new organisational architecture: the Round Pyramid, why employees should be able to hire and fire their own bosses, and the example of the Botanique Hotel & Spa, which applied the Round Pyramid in practice and what happened to customer, employee and business outcomes. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why your contact centre cost model is broken – Interview with Robert Bradshaw of WiserOwl – and is number 600 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.