Your First Customer Is Your Colleague

Host Adam Dorrell welcomed back the outspoken and often hilarious Ben Phillips, CCXP, leader of Customer Experience in Fortune 500 companies, for the second time! He’s an author, CX professional, and top voice in the customer experience world — truly one of the few real experts in B2B CX. The two dove into the strategy gap in B2B CX programs and how internal experience is as important as measuring customer experience. You won't want to miss this lively episode. Ben is reachable on https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-phillips-ccxp/

What happens when Customer Experience (CX) moves from buzzword to boardroom priority? In this episode, Host Adam Dorrell was joined by Nienke Bloem, a globally recognized CX leader and educator with CSP and CCXP qualifications. She’s dedicated to working with customer experience leaders and elevating their CX impact. If you’ve seen her live or watched her videos, you’ll know her contagious energy and practical approach to making CX strategies work!  Nienke and Adam discuss why CX isn't just a department but a company-wide movement, how to get board members to feel the customer truth, and the two speeds of change (and why leaders must master both) If you're passionate about B2B CX and want to drive impact at the highest level, this one's for you.

What happens when traditional B2B customer surveys fail spectacularly, yielding less than 1% response rates and delivering feedback that's months too late to act on?  Gerard Hutchings, Head of Business Development Strategy at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, found himself facing exactly this challenge in the asset management industry. But instead of accepting defeat, he created something revolutionary: a customer feedback program where the entire C-suite: CEO, CFO, COO, and department heads, personally conduct 15-minute customer calls using Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology.  The result? Nearly 100% response rates, real-time actionable insights, and clients who comment positively on the organizational culture..  In this episode, Gerard shares how he transformed the fear of feedback into executive leadership opportunity, why "now's not a good time" actually means "now is the perfect time" for customer conversations, and how applying scientific methodology to sales relationships can unlock billion-dollar client insights that traditional surveys simply can't capture.

Disruptors have made a large impact and step-changed performance in many other sectors. What if these 3 disruptors did exactly that to established customer experience (CX) approaches: Netflix, Uber, and Amazon? Hosted Adam Dorrell alongside Nigel Tordoff, Chair of the CPG Experience Council, discussed how consumer-focused technology companies like Amazon, Uber, and Netflix have disrupted traditional industries through a customer-centric approach, data-driven decision-making, and innovative revenue models. They explored how consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies could learn from these disruptors by prioritizing simplicity and customer benefit, leveraging data to enhance the customer experience, and implementing subscription-based offerings that empower customers with choice and flexibility.

In this episode of The Account Experience Podcast, host Adam Dorrell sits down with Bill Main, Director of Global Customer Success and Customer Experience at Getronics, to uncover the secrets behind building a truly customer-centric organization. Bill shares how Getronics achieves a 50% NPS response rate, why customer experience is more than just a number, and how leadership transparency builds trust. Whether you’re in B2B or just passionate about CX, this conversation is packed with actionable insights to elevate your customer experience strategy.

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.