50 episodes

In the age of empowered consumers, brands must put customers at the center of their business. Customer experience and business strategy expert, Julia Ahlfeldt CCXP, profiles the world’s top customer-centric change makers to bring you insights on how the customer experience revolution is taking hold in businesses around the globe. Whether you are new to CX, a seasoned professional looking to expand your knowledge or someone who is just interested in learning how empowered customers are transforming the business landscape, this show will take you inside the latest topics and trends in the world of customer experience.

Decoding the Customer Julia Ahlfeldt, Certified Customer Experience Professional

    • Business

In the age of empowered consumers, brands must put customers at the center of their business. Customer experience and business strategy expert, Julia Ahlfeldt CCXP, profiles the world’s top customer-centric change makers to bring you insights on how the customer experience revolution is taking hold in businesses around the globe. Whether you are new to CX, a seasoned professional looking to expand your knowledge or someone who is just interested in learning how empowered customers are transforming the business landscape, this show will take you inside the latest topics and trends in the world of customer experience.

    Rebroadcast of Moments of Truth: CX Mini Masterclass – E46

    Rebroadcast of Moments of Truth: CX Mini Masterclass – E46

    This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer "Moments of Truth". Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares where the concept came from, and how you can use your understanding of Moments of Truth to improve customer journeys and foster loyalty. These moments can make or break a customer journey, so if you’ve heard this term used as a buzzword, but want to learn how to translate jargon into business results, then this episode is for you.























    Enjoy the best of the archive

    The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners.



    Want to keep learning about CX?



    If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.



    Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including VOC research and customer insight) or get in touch via email. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    • 8 min
    Rebroadcast of Measuring customer experience through leading and lagging indicators: CX Mini Masterclass – E32

    Rebroadcast of Measuring customer experience through leading and lagging indicators: CX Mini Masterclass – E32

    This CX Mini Masterclass explains the role of leading and lagging indicators in measuring customer experience. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares examples for how you can build a balanced view of customer experience with the right mix of CX metrics and measures. If you are wondering how to move beyond a one-metric view of CX, this episode is for you.





















    Enjoy the best of the archive

    The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners.









    Want to keep learning about CX?



    If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.



    And if you are looking to super-charge your CX skills and continue learning, be sure to check out CX University. They have a great array of CXPA accredited training resources available on a flexible monthly subscription plan. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first month’s subscription and support this podcast.



    Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX measurement, insights, leadership alignment and CX change implementation) or get in touch via email. 



     

    • 9 min
    Rebroadcast of Calculating Customer Lifetime Value: CX Mini Masterclass – E22

    Rebroadcast of Calculating Customer Lifetime Value: CX Mini Masterclass – E22

    This CX Mini Masterclass covers the concept of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), how to calculate this, and why it’s an important metric for the CX profession. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, will help you understand how to leverage CLV to demonstrate the ROI of customer experience and foster buy-in for customer-centric strategy.



















    Enjoy the best of the archive

    The podcast is currently on hiatus and will be back with new content later this year. In the meantime, I've curated a highlight reel of my favorite past shows to share with listeners.

    Want to keep learning about CX?

    If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.

    Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX strategy, leadership alignment and CX business case assessments) or get in touch via email. 

    • 7 min
    Conversation with the godmother of customer experience: interview with Jeanne Bliss – E90

    Conversation with the godmother of customer experience: interview with Jeanne Bliss – E90

    Customer experience expert and industry pioneer, Jeanne Bliss, shares insights about the origins of the CX industry as well as where it’s going. Jeanne, also known as the godmother of customer experience, provides listeners with a unique window into her career path from becoming one of the first Chief Customer Officers, to founding the CXPA and becoming a transformative force in field of CX. Jeanne and show host, Julia, discuss the enduring challenges facing all CX professionals and what's next on the horizon for customer experience in the years to come. If you’re looking for some insight, inspiration and guidance from one of the most prominent and respected voices in customer experience, then this episode is for you.





























    Meet the godmother of customer experience



    Jeanne Bliss has always been an important figure in the CX industry. She is truly a pioneer in this field and has spent 35 years transforming companies, where she’s led organizations to earn 98% customer loyalty rates. Jeanne Bliss helps companies and people become the best version of themselves. She guides them to define, build and live the behaviors and actions that will fuse customers to them, and ultimately create deep and memorable relationships. Creating these deeper bonds has been Jeanne’s singular mission for over 35 years. First, as the inaugural Chief Customer Officer at Lands’ End, Coldwell Banker, Allstate and Microsoft Corporations. Then since 2002, guiding over 20,000 leaders around the world to understand that improving lives should be their most important strategic vision. She has shepherded a whole new breed of leader into the marketplace prepared to lead this change through her pioneering years as a practitioner, experience coaching global leaders, her four game-changing books, and as co-founder of the Customer Experience Professional’s association. If the proof is in the pudding, then there is certainly no doubt why Jeanne is one of the most prominent and respected thought leaders in the world of customer experience.

     







    Jeanne Bliss, CCXP, CEO of Customerbliss

    If you'd like to learn more about Jeanne's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience and more. Her blog is second to none as a resource for aspiring CX professionals. Her books provide foundational knowledge about customer experience, and her podcast, The Human Duct Tape Show, is well worth a listen!

    From shoes to the C-suite



    Jeanne's father set the tone for her career in customer experience. As the owner of a local she store, he became not just a part of the community, but a part of people's lives. Putting shoes on children's feet and welcoming families into his store as though they were part of his family. When he retired, there was a line of customers 3 blocks long, waiting to thank him and wish him well. Customer experience was in Jeanne's bones and it encouraged her to ask questions about how brands can create those special experiences that fuse customers to them.



    What's your three blocks long? How will you be remembered? And that's really so much of what's missing for me as we get into customer experience. - Jeanne Bliss



    After acquiring degrees in marketing and apparel design,

    • 33 min
    Customer impact scorecard: CX Mini Masterclass – E89

    Customer impact scorecard: CX Mini Masterclass – E89

    This CX Mini Masterclass explains a simple yet effective CX tool for driving customer-centric change and ensuring that business decisions support an organization's overall CX goals. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the customer impact scorecard, how to build one and then how to use it to ensure that business changes work for - not against - CX. Julia also shares some news about a planned hiatus for the show. If you’re looking for a practical approach to help cross functional teams stay the course towards shared customer experience goals, then this episode is for you.



















    A simple tool for an important job



    We've all seen it happen. Someone in IT, sales or operations makes a decision about a new product or a process with the best intentions, but the resulting change has a negative impact customer experience. When these things happen, it’s rarely out of malice. After all, no one (or at least we hope no one) goes around intentionally making customer experiences worse.

    More often than not, the team that implemented the change just wasn’t thinking about the downstream impact on customer experience. This is bound to happen, because honestly, most businesses are geared to solve business problems. The customer may be the guiding light for CX departments and some executives, but historically that hasn’t been true for all teams. Additionally, the more removed a team is from the customer, the more difficult it can be to draw a connection between day to day responsibilities and customer outcomes.

    In this scenario, a little assistance and structure are in order. And a customer impact scorecard is a great tool to for CX leaders to have in their toolbox.

    A customer impact scorecard is a rating or evaluation tool that prompts the user to assess how something – be that a change to people, processes or technology – will eventually turn into customer outcomes and if these outcomes are desirable, neutral or adverse. The idea being that a scorecard becomes a quick and easy check and balance to avoid decisions which might inadvertently damage customer experience. It encourages stakeholders to pause and make an honest assessment of the impact on customer experience by moving the thinking from inside out to outside in.

    Some organizations already have risk assessment scorecards in place for any business change or major investment, so why can’t the same assessment be done for customer experience? Surely customer experience is just as important to the long-term viability of any business. (And if you’d like to know a little bit more about helping your organization balance business risk and CX, then be sure to check out episode 36.)





    Building and using your customer impact scorecard



    * Identify which attributes to evaluate - These could relate to your customer promise, CX principles or what is known to be important to the customer. It's helpful to identify 5-10 points to evaluate and phrase them as thought-starter questions. E.g. Will this change impact how easy it is for customers to do business with us? 

    * Set your rating scale - The ratings for each attribute should range from positive to negative. A 3 or 5 point scoring scale usually works nicely. Regardless of which size scale is used, a negative impact should yield a negative score, a neutral impact should yield a score of zero, and a positive impact should yield a positive score. When the overall evaluation points for the business change are tallied, a positive rating indicates a change with a net positive imp...

    • 9 min
    How to build a world class CX dashboard: CX Mini Masterclass – E88

    How to build a world class CX dashboard: CX Mini Masterclass – E88

    This CX Mini Masterclass explores best practices for building a CX dashboard, a critically important tool for any CX program. Special guest and customer experience expert, Ben Motteram takes listeners through the benefits and uses of a CX dashboard, he provides insights on how to build one with the end user in mind,  and he also speaks about how best to distribute your dashboard once it’s up and running. If you’re looking for a one stop shop for expert guidance on why and how you should build a CX dashboard, then this episode is for you.





























    Insights from a special guest



    Ben Motteram is the Founder and Principal of Melbourne-based CX consulting company, CXpert. With 25+ years of experience working with some of Australia’s most recognizable brands, he has helped many organisations to become more human in the way they deal with customers and employees. Ben assists clients in areas such as CX strategy, Voice of the Customer, and employee engagement. In December 2018, Ben was the only Australian named on a list of global thought leaders to follow on Twitter and his blog has been independently recognized for its insight on all things CX.

    Ben Motteram

    This episode was Ben's third guest appearance on the show. If you missed his previous Mini Masterclass episodes on CX Strategy and the Foundations of a Great CX Program, be sure to listen to those.

    Best practices for building a CX Dashboard

    Check out Ben's tips for creating a CX Dashboard in this article he wrote for CX Accelerator. It covers many of the same insights shared with listeners in this episode. I'd encourage you to explore the other insights and thought leadership on CX Accelerator, as well as Ben's blog. Both resources are packed with all sorts of other great gems and CX thought leadership. 

    Want to keep learning about CX?



    Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including employee engagement, leadership alignment and CX strategy) or get in touch via email. 

    • 9 min

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