This week’s guest is Samantha Burns. Sam is the Founder and Director of Brilliance and is an international client success co-creator with more than 20 years’ executive experience in customer success-related accountabilities. She has an MBA cum laude in customer loyalty from Surrey University, UK. Plus, a BA Degree in psychology and communications. Sam is dedicated to helping companies all over the world succeed by focusing on their customers’ success. Brilliance believes in business “doing well by doing good.” For more about Brilliance, visit https://brilliancecx.com​.

Originally recorded as a video live stream on Thursday, April 15, 2021.

How do you create value for team members and customers? In Stronger Through Adversity, Amir Dan Rubin, Chair and CEO of One Medical, discussed how he adjusted value drivers in response to the pandemic. For more about the role of value creation in the future of customer experience success, please pick-up or gift a copy of my book Stronger Through Adversity or download one of my many complimentary eBooks at josephmichelli.com.

Gary Bagley is the Executive Director of New York Cares, New York City’s largest provider of volunteer-led social services programs, and the biggest affiliate of Points of Light, the global organization dedicated to volunteer service. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Points of Light and the New York State Commission on National and Community Service. Gary led New York Cares in garnering The New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Award for Overall Management Excellence and the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation.

Originally published on Thursday, April 8, 2021, as a video Livestream.

According to retired four-star general Colin Powell, “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” I would argue extraordinary customer experience brands are also great simplifiers.

This is the fifth and final post in a series titled "How to Deliver Memorable Experiences in a Pandemic and Post-Pandemic World."

In the midst of all that confusion, team members and customers rushed toward leaders and brands that simplified their experiences and made their lives as easy as possible. In Stronger through Adversity, Ben Salzmann, President & CEO of Acuity Insurance offered insights on how to simplify the employee and customer experience by effectively leveraging technology and empowering team members through training.

Have you looked at your customer experience and sought to remove complexity, corporate-speak, and unnecessary steps?

Racecar driver Mario Andretti once said that “if everything seems under control you are not going fast enough.” His words are appropriate for automobile racing and apply to customer experience delivery as well. Is your average response time from customer service below 5 minutes?

Joseph will be discussing recent research from Accenture and Bain & Co. regarding shifts in consumer behavior emerging from the pandemic. For example, he will explore how people want to feel less anxious and more connected. Let's explore what you can do to address the changing wants, needs, and desires of those you serve!

Originally recorded as a live stream on March 25, 2021.

"Our memory is enhanced by the emotion attending the event. The more intense the feelings, the more accessible the memory." Those words from Professor Robert Dykstra have profound relevance given the intensity of emotions experienced from early 2020 to the present day. The pandemic has produced sustained and heightened emotions of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, sadness, isolation, and loss. As such, the actions of leaders, team members, and brands are more vividly recallable than pre-pandemic events. Against that backdrop, it has become increasingly important to look for elements of a team member or customer journey that produce pain or pleasure. During the pandemic and into the future, are you demonstrating competence, consistency, responsiveness, and reliability that fuels positive emotional experiences?

Brian Solis observed, "Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it." Calling back to Brian Solis' quote, do you believe your business is experiencing digital Darwinism - reflecting an expedited evolution of consumer behavior, COVID-19, and technology advances?

This week my guest is Eric Farone. Eric is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director at Bovine Metropolis. Eric has been teaching improv to groups in Colorado since 1993 and online since March 2020. For over 25 years he has been a director, teaching improvisation to some of Denver’s top improv groups, such as ‘NERTS’, ‘Mouse Couch’, ‘Dungeon Cave’, ‘MooCrew’ and ‘The SansScript Players’. He has directed, hosted and played in “On The Spot” since 2000 and in "On The Spot Online". After 30 years, Eric still loves teaching groups to play. He really enjoys Improv Adventures because he gets to see family and friends laugh together during in these trying times "People laugh so much when they improvise, and I do too." For more about Eric and Bovine Metropolis, visit https://www.bovinemetropolis.com​.

Originally aired as a video Livestream on Thursday, March 11, 2021.

Many of my clients ask what they need to do to engage team members and customers well-past the pandemic. While I have my hunches, I prefer to look at data on what people say they want from their employers and companies with whom they do business. In addition to self-reported preferences, I watched consumer behavior dating back to research conducted as the virus first took hold in China.

This is the first post in a series titled How to Deliver Memorable Internal and External Customer Experiences in a Pandemic and Post-Pandemic World.