CX Innovators

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On CX Innovators, we sit down with enterprise CX leaders and innovators to unpack what’s driving exceptional customer experience today. We explore strategy, technology, operations, and the human side of CX: and where the industry is headed next.

  1. 12h ago

    ChargePoint's Matthew Medina on realizing the contact center model was backwards

    Matthew Medina ran a multi-site contact center operation and realized the entire model was backwards. The team was answering contacts efficiently, but actual customer questions were escaping unresolved. Flipping to a knowledge management approach cut contacts in half and sent CSAT through the roof. Matthew, Director of Customer Success at ChargePoint, tells Rob how he built CX organizations from scratch, drove nine figures in expansion revenue without a sales quota, and why he dedicates team meetings to hands-on AI experimentation. Topics discussed: Why process mapping must come before your first hire Why your first hires should have entrepreneurial backgrounds Driving nine-figure expansion revenue without a sales quota Building a custom Customer360 from disparate data systems Flipping the contact center into a knowledge management center Supporting physical products with the "double ticket" model Using AI health scores to spot churn risk early Scheduling team "recess" for hands-on AI experimentation Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    ChargePoint's Matthew Medina on realizing the contact center model was backwards

  2. Aug 6

    The skill set inventory that rebuilds teams on capability over ratings | Matt Ferguson, Mitel

    Matt Ferguson built a skill set inventory that makes workforce decisions on capability rather than performance ratings. He scores every skill from 0 to 100 percent, hides the names, then rebuilds the org from the skill counts up. Matt, VP of Global Customer Service and Product Support at Mitel, shows Rob how that framework forecasts productivity, guides relocations, and exposes the inverted triangle that traps high talent with no room to grow. He also explains why deflection quietly costs your next generation of experts. Topics discussed: Skill set inventory that ranks capability over performance ratings Using percentile scoring to rebuild teams by hidden name Spotting single threads before they break your organization Avoiding the inverted triangle that traps high-talent staff Forecasting team productivity to push back on executive deadlines Why sunsetting old tech offshore drives attrition How deflection erases apprenticeship learning for junior agents Capturing knowledge now so AI answers hold up later Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    The skill set inventory that rebuilds teams on capability over ratings | Matt Ferguson, Mitel

  3. Jul 9

    Why we stopped tracking average handle time | Eir Welch, Kobie Marketing

    At Kobie Marketing, agents are told not to watch the clock. Eir Welch, Director of Customer Success,  scrapped average handle time and instead tracks whether a positive interaction makes customers spend again. She walks Rob Dague through condensing a tangled knowledge base under a Microsoft Copilot bot, turning QA reviewers into auditors of AI evaluations, and using Six Sigma fishbone diagrams to find what really breaks the agent experience. Her Stevie Award winning team treats AI adoption as a culture shift rather than a process rollout. Topics discussed: Why average handle time is the wrong metric to monitor Tracking positive interactions as a predictor of customer spend Putting a Microsoft Copilot bot over the knowledge base Turning QA reviewers into auditors of AI evaluations Teaching new hires to prompt engineer from day one Using Six Sigma fishbone diagrams to find root causes Changing the cost center mindset around contact centers Why human connection becomes more valuable as AI grow Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    Why we stopped tracking average handle time | Eir Welch, Kobie Marketing

  4. Jun 25

    A litmus test for what to automate and what stays human

    Jose Jordan keeps a simple litmus test for automation. Payments and balance checks belong in self-service, while complex, multifaceted calls go to a human who can audit the account and explain what happened. As more gets automated, the calls that remain demand sharper, more knowledgeable agents. Jose, Director of Customer Service at Curacao, tells Rob Dwyer how mirroring a frustrated caller's words almost verbatim softens their tone, why a hands-on training week builds agent confidence, and how explaining the why behind every change earns real buy-in. Topics discussed: Mirroring a caller's words to de-escalate emotion A litmus test for what to automate A hands-on training week before agents hit the floor Explaining the why to build accountability without fear Why service agents now act as account investigators Delegating instead of trying to be an atlas Giving teams room to make mistakes safely Building credit access for underserved retail customers Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    A litmus test for what to automate and what stays human

  5. Jun 11

    Why deflection is the wrong metric for AI in customer success

    Deploy AI to solve one problem the wrong way and it can create more problems for your business. Rebecca Holland, Founder at GTM RH Advisory and VP of Global Customer Success at Vimeo, has worked through five acquisitions. She explains what always breaks in customer success during a merger, and why customers do not care that you just got acquired. She makes the case for customer success as a revenue engine, why deflection makes her stomach turn, and how repurposing people the way IKEA did turns automation into new revenue. Let AI handle the slog, she says, but never outsource your brain. Topics discussed:  Why deflection is the wrong customer success metric What always breaks in customer success during acquisitions Treating customer success as a revenue engine, not cost Using AI to unify disparate customer data systems The three tests every AI tool must pass Repurposing specialized people into new revenue, like IKEA Writing playbooks for 80%, leaving 20% for nuance Resourcing AI adoption with an internal enablement specialist

    Why deflection is the wrong metric for AI in customer success

  6. May 28

    Why outages might actually be your biggest CX opportunity

    Drew Candres built support organizations where a single tweet on a Saturday night could move a market 10% and flood your queues while the rest of the world slept. Now as VP of Customer Experience at GameChanger, he's applying those same instincts to a completely different emotional context: parents trying to capture their kids' first home run. The contrast makes for one of the more grounded and honest conversations about what it actually takes to build CX operations that hold up when things go sideways. One of the sharpest observations in this episode: some of his highest CSAT scores, across every company he's worked for, came on outage days. When handled well, those days produced scores around 50% above the average. His argument is that customers already know things break. How you handle it is the only thing they're actually judging. Topics Discussed: Why containment rate is a meaningless metric and what it actually measures Manual support as the most expensive technical debt a scaling startup can carry The two-step framework for deciding what to automate and what to fix first Rate of change in inbound volume as an early warning system no platform has fully solved Why data alone doesn't move product teams, and the storytelling structure that does Embedding proactive support into the build process through phased rollouts and power user cohorts Why CX foundation work must come before executive headcount, not after Why emotional connection becomes the primary differentiator as AI compresses product advantages

    Why outages might actually be your biggest CX opportunity

  7. May 14

    Why CS Playbooks Are Failing Your Team

    Most CS leaders respond to scale pressure by automating SMB and protecting enterprise. Leana Hart, Director of Customer Success at Axon, thinks that binary is costing companies on both ends — and she's spent her career managing the full spectrum, from SMB through Fortune 500 enterprise, to prove it. In this episode, Leana gets specific: the account tiering logic she actually uses, why she thinks the playbook-first approach backfires, and the question she teaches her team to ask customers that surfaces renewal risk faster than any health score. Topics discussed: Why ARR-based segmentation misses influential smaller accounts and underweights expansion potential in the SMB tier The 4-signal churn indicator Lena uses to identify at-risk accounts within a high-volume book: support ticket volume, webinar attendance, call recency, and 90-day product adoption trend Why rigid playbooks create noise rather than behavior, and what she builds instead to get CSMs thinking critically How quarterly portfolio reviews convert individual CSM wins into trackable revenue impact ahead of QBRs and annual reviews The direct renewal-readiness question she asks customers mid-cycle, and how to read the hesitation in that answer before it becomes a lost deal Why SMB retention is structurally worse than enterprise, and the specific investment gap on both sides that drives it Where tools like Claude and Cursor are already changing what CSMs can do with customer data, and the skill gap preventing most teams from getting there Why project management is the most under-hired and under-trained skill in CS, especially as enterprise account complexity grows Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    Why CS Playbooks Are Failing Your Team

  8. Apr 9

    How OpenAI won the AI race through experience design, not the model

    Vishal Anam has spent 20 years helping global organizations close the gap between measuring customer experience and actually acting on it. As Head of CX Consulting, Research and Analytics at Datamatics, he has worked across enough enterprise programs to know exactly where they break down. Most CX programs do not fail because organizations stop caring. They fail because the infrastructure for decision-making never gets built alongside the infrastructure for listening. Vishal makes that case clearly here, and backs it up with specific examples drawn from client work, including a contrarian read on why OpenAI captured early market dominance that had nothing to do with their underlying model. Topics discussed: Why NPS without decision pairing produces no real change The cognitive load framework for reducing CX decision fatigue How macro and cultural factors silently distort NPS scores across regions The SOP gap that breaks CX programs at scale Optimization vs. transformation: how to tell which one you actually need Why OpenAI's early lead came from onboarding design, not model quality Building the CFO business case around missed revenue, not satisfaction scores How AI is shifting the analytics function away from normalization toward action Why promoter neglect is a bigger missed opportunity than most teams realize Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube

    How OpenAI won the AI race through experience design, not the model
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About

On CX Innovators, we sit down with enterprise CX leaders and innovators to unpack what’s driving exceptional customer experience today. We explore strategy, technology, operations, and the human side of CX: and where the industry is headed next.

Information

  • Creator
    Level AI
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Level AI
  • Show Website
    CX Innovators