Closing the Loop Is Like a Ghost: Don’t Do It and It’ll Haunt You

In this episode, Host Adam Dorrell spoke with Ragna Ghoreishi, a seasoned Vienna-based customer experience (CX) leader and owner of RagnaDigital, a boutique CX consultancy. Ragna spoke candidly about her experience at a global IT organization working on a large B2B CX project when suddenly the project sponsor and champion left. This is a situation Adam has seen in many companies. He asked Ragna to open up about how it affected her and how she salvaged the project.  Her tips:  Don't focus on just one strong leading figure; build early on a network of strong advocates with closeness to the board. Carry it on the shoulders of multiple strong leaders Make it everybody's topic as part of the growth/revenue targets Ownership needs to be with the functions who can make an impact; make them accountable — you cannot improve CX from a CX team only. It is a business effort! This episode is a great conversation that can help you plan a large project.

"Our ambition is to be the undisputed LATAM CX leader, delivering experiences 'Only Coke can do.'" In a special edition of the Account Experience Podcast, Adam Dorrell is in Bogota, Colombia, where he was one of the presenters at The Coca-Cola Experience Summit Latin America 2024. For its second year, the conference had 80+ attendees and 31 bottler operations represented, continuously serving as an inspiring and highly operational meeting.  The Coca-Cola team invited speakers across the continent to help evolve the vision of experience in the region, which can be summed up as Coca-Cola's ambition to be the undisputed LATAM CX Leader, delivering B2B experiences only they can do. To understand some of the successes and challenges, Adam interviewed some of the key people there, including:   Luis Carlos Mira Olarte   Customer Experience (CX) Director LATAM, The Coca-Cola Company Mariana Lozano OrtizGil  Loyalty and Customer Experience Manager, Arca Continental Christian Nunes Christian Nuñez  Customer Experience Manager, Coca-Cola FEMSA, Mexico Mauricio Hernandez Senior Consultant, The Click! Paulo Mendes LATAM Value to Market & Consumer Head, The Coca-Cola Company,  Cary Self Vice President of CX Education and Development, CustomerGauge  

In this episode, Adam talks with a friend of the podcast and CustomerGauge Vice President of Customer Experience, Cary Self. He’s got years of optimizing experience and energizing entire workforces around navigating customer feedback and managing the follow-up process. Discussion topics include the right timing to follow up (48 hours is just the title of an Eddie Murphy film, not the time it should take you), how to follow up with detractors, passives, and promoters, thank-you notes, and overcoming the “fear of feedback." And they even take a deep dive into whether it should be called “Closing the loop” or “Following up” — what’s your opinion? Listen to this episode and see if you agree! Cary Self can be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-t-self-41393640/ His popular webinar series “Champions of Change” can be seen here in the archives: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Adam’s guest is the outspoken and often hilarious Ben Phillips CCXP, leader of Customer Experience at Fujitsu. He’s an author, a CX professional, and a top voice in the customer experience world — one of the few real experts in B2B CX. Ben is open about how the program is run at Fujitsu, talking through some of his challenges and how the program is evolving. He’s also generous in talking about real benchmarks in the business.  Adam and Ben discuss the pros and cons of competitive benchmarks: when to use them and how not to get tripped up. Ben also makes a good point about CX and how it is nothing like Harry Potter. Ben is reachable at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-phillips-ccxp/ and the link to the B2B benchmarks he refers to is here: https://customergauge.com/ebook/b2b-nps-and-cx-benchmarks-report and https://customergauge.com/ebook/cpg-experience-benchmarks-report

Jackie Kesterson, Director of Client Experience at Orion Advisor Solutions, opens a treasure chest of B2B experience knowledge. Orion's client base consists of 1000s of investment advisors and wealth managers. As you can imagine, that’s a very demanding customer base! Jackie ensures the voice of the customer is acted on and maintains a client-centric culture to drive business growth.  This discussion covers how rewarding staff on NPS is difficult and asking customers for feedback several times a year is best managed.  Today's episode is a great journey into a real B2B technology company that prides itself on customer experience.

Zahra Eid is the Customer Experience Manager at Beyon, a regional Digital Communications/Telco business based in Bahrain. She explains how she energized their customer experience (CX) program, growing it from research roots to a company-wide, silo-busting program based on action and connecting CX measurement to revenue growth. Host Adam Dorrell leads her to talk about the transformation from the Batelco brand to Beyon and how her CX program has become more digital, just like the company's services. Zahra also discusses how the company’s commitment to excellence has helped elevate the brand. She is a pioneer in identifying market trends, optimizing customer touchpoints, and creating a customer-centric culture within the organization. This is a fascinating insight into the diversity of CX programs worldwide and how customer experience is evolving in the Gulf region.

This week Adam Dorrell sits down with CustomerGauge client Lucas Mistelske, Vice President of Client Experience at Involta. Involta is an enterprise-class IT infrastructure partner that provides advanced colocation, hybrid cloud solutions, superior data center experiences, and connectivity with first-class fiber. Lucas has led the deployment of Involta’s Managed Infrastructure Services offering and spearheaded their Net Promoter Score program. In this episode, Adam dives into the value NPS brings to Involta, the mechanics within the program, and what Lucas has learned throughout the process. You won't want to miss this conversation if you're a mid-market to enterprise company looking to scale your customer experience.

Anna-Maija Tanninen is a female entrepreneur who started CX Agency in Helsinki, Finland. CX Agency helps B2B companies successfully develop and lead customer-centric changes through services like customer experience strategy to business design. Previously she was a partner at Futurelab and a management consultant with Accenture and elevator company Kone. To use a terrible pun, Anna-Maija can LIFT all your programs.  In this episode, she talks about culture: “To understand if we truly are customer-centric, we cannot observe culture from the corporate level only. We should have ways to experience the culture from the frontline, as well.” You won't want to miss Anna-Maija's insights on “Silent Information” and her top three tips for B2B CX.

To heat things up with the first episode of the New Year, Host Adam Dorrell welcomes Nick Wood, the Global Marketing Director at Teledyne Gas and Flame Detection; a division of Teledyne Technologies Inc. Teledyne is coming up on its 75th birthday, marking almost 100 years of providing reliable customer experiences to its long-standing customers. Adam and Nick dive into why the business made the turn towards a structured strategy (hint: it's all about the data), the importance of closing the loop on feedback, and Nick's lightbulb moments he's had throughout his career that have led to long-term CX success.

The pint is making its way west, and Americans are now beginning to understand why it's been a staple across the pond. During this quick episode, Nigel Tordoff, Chairman of the CPG Experience Council, joins Adam Dorrell to walk through the article "Americans are discovering the joy of a true pint of beer" in The Economist. Why is this a trend in the market? How might a trend like this affect the convenience store? What might be driving this new experience? Join Adam and Nigel as they break down this market shift through a customer experience lens.