Navigating the Customer Experience Yanique Grant, Customer Experience Strategist, Entrepreneur

Herb Cogliano leads his own advisory practice leveraging the Scaling of Performance Platform, described in Verne Harnish’s award-winning book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits-Scaling Up. As a Business Coach, experience CEO Scaling Up Practitioner, and Professor of the Scaling Up Masters Business Course, he has learned first-hand what it takes to overcome many business challenges.
Herb is pursuing his passion of working with leaders of growth companies to achieve more freedom by helping them create industry leading strategies, a culture of accountability, flawless execution, along with a healthy cash flow within their organizations.
Herb was formerly CEO of Sullivan and Cogliano Designers, a 53 year privately held family owned Technology Staffing and Workforce Solutions firm who joined a select group of companies that have appeared on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company list multiple times. His firm was a Multiyear recipient of the Boston and South Florida Business Journal Best Places to Work Award. This honour recognizes Sullivan and Cogliano achievements for changing the business landscape in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains employees through a combination of employee satisfaction, working conditions and company culture.
 
Questions
•  We read quite a bit about your journey in your short bio that I just read. But we always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about your journey, in your words, how you got to where you are today.
•  Now Scaling Up, can you tell our listeners, what Scaling Up is, maybe three or four critical things that if as a business you want to scale up you need to have in place.
•  What has been your experience in scaling a business, let's say you were an organisation with let's say, 10 employees, and you've finished in the course of 12 months, you've now grown to an organisation with 100 employees.
•  In terms of customer experience, you as a customer, what are three things that you look for to ensure that you're being satisfied as a customer, that your needs are being met?
•  Now, Herb, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
•  Could you also share with our listeners if you read any books recently, actually, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, but a book that has had or books that have had a great impact on you? Do you have any of those?
•  And so, could you share with us in terms of the recruitment process from a HR perspective, what are some key, would it be a question that you need to ask them that would align you in that phase?
•  Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up herb, we always like to ask our guests do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you felt derailed or rundown, this quote kind of helps to get you back on track.
Highlights
Herb’s Journey
Herb shared that he was very fortunate to be raised in a family business where his mother and father incorporated not only raising a family on good values but incorporated what were the challenges in running and growing a business. And as he grew up, and then ultimately went into the business, their business had years of success. And then the industry became more competitive, more commoditized and their growth started to stagnate. As a result of that, they wanted to grow further. They worked hard, they were smart people, but they got stuck. 
And they came across the book called Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefel

Peter C. Yesawich is Chairman of Hospitable Healthcare Partners, LLC - a marketing consultancy serving hospitality and the healthcare industry clients - and Vice Chairman Emeritus of MMGY Global, one of the country's leading marketing communications companies renowned for its strategic thinking, breakthrough creativity, and innovation in marketing practice. 
Yesawich has contributed to the development of marketing programs for some of the industry's most popular brands, destinations and organizations including: Fairmont Hotel & Resorts, Hilton International, Disney Parks & Resorts, Universal Studios, Atlantis, The Broadmoor, Sandals Resorts, Wynn Las Vegas, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Mexico Tourism Board, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to name a few. 
He is co-author of Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism, and the new book, Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!  
Questions
•  Could you share a little bit about your journey?
•  Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?
•  Now, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
•  Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it had a great impact on you.
•     What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those?
 
Highlights
Impact on Online Sources
But on that point, one of the things that they looked at in writing the book and their survey of 1200 adults is how they use online sources to help them think about healthcare and whether it's evaluating healthcare providers, or self-diagnosis, we all joke about Dr. Google, something happens and we quickly want to do a web search, whether it's Google or WebMD, or any of a number of site specific providers, specific sites, like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and so forth, to get that kind of information. 
But that would be his answer. By the way, that is extremely helpful, but also generally very difficult for people to interpret. So, it's essential, they should absolutely do their homework, but they should also consult with a medical professional to make sure they've interpreted it correctly. So, it's a combination of those two, but that wouldn't be his answer, really, it's Google would be the certainly the go to source.
Me: It's amazing you said that, we take it for granted when you think about how we used to do research prior to Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, go to the library, it takes you so long to kind of get information. And I always tell my daughter, and even my mom, I tell her, there's nothing that you can type into Google that I'm sure someone else in the world has not asked that same exact question. No matter how stupid you think it is, somebody in the world has asked the question and there is an answer there for you, so it really is knowledge base. 
Peter shared that what's interesting about that though is, in hospitality, online people go online to look at reviews. So, you look at reviews of restaurants, or hotels or destinations or what it may be. In their companies that have really built incredible databases like TripAdvisor and Expedia and so forth. And then you think about, “Well, why doesn't that

Peter C. Yesawich is Chairman of Hospitable Healthcare Partners, LLC - a marketing consultancy serving hospitality and the healthcare industry clients - and Vice Chairman Emeritus of MMGY Global, one of the country's leading marketing communications companies renowned for its strategic thinking, breakthrough creativity, and innovation in marketing practice. 
Yesawich has contributed to the development of marketing programs for some of the industry's most popular brands, destinations and organizations including: Fairmont Hotel & Resorts, Hilton International, Disney Parks & Resorts, Universal Studios, Atlantis, The Broadmoor, Sandals Resorts, Wynn Las Vegas, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Mexico Tourism Board, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to name a few. 
He is co-author of Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism, and the new book, Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!
 
Questions
•  Could you share a little bit about your journey?
•  Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?
•  Now, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
•  Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it had a great impact on you.
•     What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those? 
 
Highlights
Peter’s Journey
Me: Could you share a little bit about your journey? I know in your bio, it gives us a summary of the clients that you've worked with, some of the impact that you've had. But we always like to hear in the own words of our guests, their words of how their journey has been and how they got to where they are today.
 
Peter shared that most of his career has been spent in the hospitality field, as you mentioned in your introduction there. Actually, when he finished school, he has a PhD in Psychology, and he never practised clinically, but he always wanted to use the education to understand the influence of marketing communication. So, that's what he did for a period of roughly 35 years. And then, for a 10-year period, he took a sabbatical and he went into the healthcare business. And he did that for a bunch of reasons. But he joined a national oncology company by the name of Cancer Treatment Centres of America. They had 5 destination hospitals, 10 clinics served about 15,000 patients annually. 
So, he had a unique perspective in hospitality, having worked with a number of the brands you mentioned, and in healthcare, and when I got to healthcare, it was very obvious to him that the health care experience for patients could be improved significantly if healthcare providers simply adopted many of the principles that have essentially led to the success of hospitality brands. So, that's the short version. 
And then a couple of years ago, he was in Las Vegas making a speech and he was in the greenroom. And he bumped into a gentleman by the name Stowe Shoemaker and he's a gentleman he’s known for probably 20-25 plus years. He's a gentleman who has a very distinguished career in academia. 
And he at the time, was the Dean of the Hospitality Management Programme at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And prior to that, he was in Houston

Michelle MacCarthy is Global Vice President of Customer Experience at Unit4. In her role, Michelle leads a talented team of professionals, is responsible for ensuring the maximum adoption of and customer satisfaction with Unit4’s offerings and is accountable for leading the transformation of Unit4’s customer experience strategy that enables the customer success evolution. 
Michelle earned her B.S in Marketing from Miami University in Ohio, and her Executive MBA in Global Management from Fordham University in New York.
 
Questions
•  We always give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, if you could take a few minutes to kind of just share with our audience a little bit about how you got to where you are today.
•  So, Unit4, could you share with our audience a little bit about what Unit4is? What do you guys do?
•  KPIs in terms of like NPS and customer satisfaction score. A lot of organisations also invest into market research, particularly like mystery shopping, and the mystery shopping sometimes will capture the NPS. What are your views on the frequency of doing these types of activities? And do you think it's critical to be doing it post transactional? Or should it be more so a conversation that you have with the client, maybe at the end of every quarter? What are some of your best practices that you'd recommend to clients?
•  If you really want to focus on dominating, navigating that CX space in such a positive way, that your brand has an exceptionally positive reputation, what are some key indicators that you believe organisations need to focus on as we go into 2024? Where do they need to be giving their attention to?
•  Now, could you also share with us what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
•  Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently that has had a great impact on you?
•  We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services. But they lack the human capital that has that constant motivation, what's the one piece of advice that you'd give them to have a successful business having that consistent challenge that they're experiencing?
•  Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, just reminding yourself about that quote will kind of help to get you back on track, help you to get more focused. Do you have one of those? 
Highlights 
Michelle’s Journey
Michelle stated that she started off her career and kind of more of the traditional marketing, b2c and b2b type roles on the client side. And started in the advertising agency space, worked for a number of different retailers and brands, and eventually had kind of rounded out her experience and wanted to move into more of the tech side of things. 
She had some opportunities to go and work on the SaaS side of the business for a company called Vibes, which is a mobile marketing technology company. And through that experience, and kind of rounding out her mobile marketing experience, she was able to kind of continue her career path then into other SaaS organisations. And so, by herself, here today, very excited to be talking with you (Yanique).
 
Tell Us About Unit4
Me: So, Unit4, could you share with our audience a little bit about w

Adam Bryant is a Senior Managing Director and Partner at the ExCo Group, where he works with hundreds of senior leaders and high-potential executives. As the creator and former author of the iconic “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, Bryant has mastered the art of distilling real-world lessons from his hundreds of interviews and turning them into practical tools, presentations and exercises to help companies deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams. 
He also works with executive leadership teams to help drive their transformation strategies based on a best practices framework he developed for his widely praised book, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders.
 
Questions 
•  We always like to ask our guests in their own words, could you share a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got to where you are today.
•  What would you say the ratio was in terms of gender, and even generation in terms of the number of CEOs that you interviewed? Would you say you got a wide cross section of different generations? And would you say it's more of a male to female higher ratio, or vice versa? Or do you think it was balanced? And did you find any differences based on those considerations that I just mentioned?
•  What would you say are three overarching themes that you'd have picked up or trends that you picked up from those interviews?
•  What are some ways that you believe the leaders can help to reinforce at least to strengthen any doubts that employees may have to ensure that they recognise that the technology, that artificial intelligence is not there to get rid of them, but rather to make their jobs easier.
•  Could you also share with our audience what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
•  Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently.
•  Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel sometimes that their products and services, of course, are the best, but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. And so, if you're sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?
•  Now, could you also share with us what's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.
 
Highlights
Adam’s Journey 
Adam shared that he was a journalist for 30 years, 18 years he was at the New York Times, spent a lot of years as a business reporter and interviewed a lot of CEOs. And he just found over time, the more he spent with CEOs, the more he wanted to set aside the usual questions people ask of CEOs about their company strategy and their products and services and things like that. And just ask them kind of how do you do what you do? And how did you learn to do what you do?
So, he rolled that impulse up into this very simple “What if” in 2009 and it was what if I sat down with CEOs, and never asked them a single question about their companies? And instead just ask them about personal leadership lessons they've learned over the course of their lives and how they think about all the universal challenges of leadership, like hiring and building teams and culture and all those things. So, that was kind of the initial idea, and sort of brought h

CJ Stratte is a highly accomplished female entrepreneur, currently serving as a CEO and President of On The Move Trucks, a successful turn-key truck rental company catering to self-storage and real estate professionals. With substantial experience in the industry, CJ has been instrumental in driving the company's growth and expansion over the years. 
As a sought-after speaker at various self-storage events, CJ has shared her extensive knowledge and expertise on topics such as business strategy, marketing and customer service, offering valuable insights to industry professionals.  
CJ is a true marketing enthusiast and firmly believes in the power of effective marketing to drive business success. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a deep commitment to excellence, innovation and providing exceptional value to clients, helping On The Move Trucks establish a strong reputation as a leader in the truck rental industry.  
Questions
•  So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, in your own words, how did you get from where you were then to where you are today?
•  Could you share with our audience, maybe two or three, I would say lessons that you've learned along the way that you found has been influential in helping the business to become more customer centric.
•  What are some ways in which the marketing aspect because I know you mentioned in your bio that you focus a lot on marketing, how have you been able to kind of marry what you're doing with marketing to kind of infuse that into the experience that the customer has.
•  Could you share with our listeners, maybe two things that are of great importance to you when do business with an organisation.
•  Now, could you also share with our listeners what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
•  Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you. It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.
•  We do have a lot of listeners that tap into this podcast who are business owners and managers, who they have great products and services, but sometimes they like to constantly motivated human capital, if one of those persons were sitting across the room from you right now and they asked you, what's the one piece of advice that you could give them to kind of turn that human capital motivation around, what would that be?
•  Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed. Do you have one of those?
 
Highlights
CJ’s Journey
CJ shared that it's been an interesting journey, she originally went to college, she wanted to own a hotel. And so, she went to school to do that and she took a marketing class and changed her whole trajectory of her career and plans that she thought she had, how you do when you are 18 going to school, you think you know it all, but she really grasp into marketing and have enjoyed the career that she’s had with it. 
She’s luckily worked for a family business and so, they had a marketing director when she began working there, but she quit, and her family never replaced her. So, she just kind of stepped in and did the work and taught herself how to do all the marketing for their company and have experimented in all. They didn't have Facebook marketing classes back when s