Experience Action

Jeannie Walters, CCXP

How do we do this customer experience thing anyway? Join award-winning customer experience (CX) expert Jeannie Walters as she answers real questions from overwhelmed leaders! Let's turn ideas into ACTION! From company culture to employee experience (EX) to customer service, Jeannie wants to help you demystify the process for enriching the customer experience. With over 20 years investigating the best and worst in CX, this international keynote speaker has heard it all... and now she's here to give you the answers you need! You won't want to miss an episode! Do you have a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail!

  1. Agentic Orchestration: The Next Step in Customer Experience

    3D AGO

    Agentic Orchestration: The Next Step in Customer Experience

    Personalization at scale gets pitched like a switch you flip, but the reality is messier and way more human. From Adobe Summit, Jeannie Walters' sits down with IBM leaders to unpack what it takes to deliver customer experience that feels consistent, connected, and genuinely helpful across digital touchpoints even when different teams, tools, and timelines are involved. First, Betsy Rohtbart, VP, Digital Experience & IBM.com, shares a simple reframing with big implications: start with the task your visitor is trying to complete, then design the experience to make that “pay off” every time. We talk about why customers often feel the gaps instead of the beautiful moments we intended, how secret shopping your own trial and onboarding flow exposes breakpoints fast, and why chasing problems like a “toddler soccer game” creates more friction. The standard is brutal but fair: customers compare you to their last best experience anywhere. Then Jay Trestain, EMEA Marketing Transformation Lead & Client Partner, breaks down agentic orchestration in plain terms: AI agents that act as domain experts and work together across an enterprise workflow. We dig into what leaders miss when they rush to deploy AI, how a clear North Star vision sharpens decisions about martech, process redesign, and KPIs, and why agentic technology is changing digital discovery by bypassing traditional web real estate. The punchline: governance is not red tape, it’s the engine for rapid, high-quality decisions that help good pilots scale into real value. Subscribe for more practical customer experience strategy, share this with a teammate leading transformation, and leave a review. Follow Betsy Rohtbart on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/betsymorserohtbart/ Follow Jay Trestain on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jay-trestain/ Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators -- experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    12 min
  2. Why Great Customer Experience Transcends Industry

    APR 21

    Why Great Customer Experience Transcends Industry

    Customer experience can feel complicated fast, especially when you’re working across completely different industries. In this episode, we answer a listener question about navigating CX in both insurance and luxury retail. Two worlds that seem totally opposite… until you realize the real challenge isn’t the industry—it’s staying clear on who you are to your customers and the experience you’re actually delivering. Because when you lose that clarity, everything starts to feel fragmented. We break down what customers really need in each space. In insurance, the best experience is often invisible until something goes wrong. That’s when reassurance becomes everything: clear coverage, confidence in what’s been submitted, and knowing progress is happening without having to chase it. In luxury retail, it’s about high-touch, thoughtful personalization that makes customers feel known and valued. Different context, same underlying goal. And that’s the big takeaway: great customer experience isn’t about the industry, it’s about how well you deliver on your promise. We’ll walk through what actually carries across both worlds: setting the right expectations, giving customers real choice, and using personalization to make them feel seen, heard, and valued. If you’ve ever felt pulled in too many directions with your CX strategy, this episode will help you refocus on what matters most. Subscribe, share with a fellow CX leader, and leave a review to help more people find the show. Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    8 min
  3. Experience Is Everything with Larissa Salazar (CX Pulse Check - April 2026)

    APR 14

    Experience Is Everything with Larissa Salazar (CX Pulse Check - April 2026)

    Customer experience isn’t failing because people don’t care, it fails because teams confuse slogans with systems. Jeannie Walters is joined by Larissa Salazar from Brand Builders Group for a special CX Pulse Check to celebrate the launch of Jeannie’s book, Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count In The Age Of Customer Expectations, and to talk about what it really takes for a message to break through in a noisy world. We get practical about the shift that changes everything: customer service is reactive, but customer experience must be proactive. If you only show up when something goes wrong, you’re already behind. We talk about designing the end-to-end customer journey with intention, choosing how you want customers to feel, and connecting experience design to the outcomes leaders care about. Along the way, we call out a common trap in CX leadership: treating Net Promoter Score like a strategy instead of a measurement you influence through real changes. Jeannie also shares the mindset strategy discipline framework from the book, including how a clear customer experience mission statement becomes a usable North Star across teams. Larissa pulls back the curtain on what she sees with experts and first-time authors, why your best knowledge is often the “small steps” you forget to write down, and how templates and frameworks help customer experience change agents take action fast. If you’re trying to operationalize customer-centricity, build a real CX strategy, and move from reactivity to discipline, this conversation is your push to start. If it helps, subscribe, share this with a change agent on your team, and leave a review so more leaders can find the show. About Larissa Salazar, Team Lead & Personal Brand Strategist | Brand Builders Group Salazar is a highly respected personal brand strategist and speaker at Brand Builders Group, an international personal branding firm and an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company. As one of the youngest and fastest-rising strategists in the organization, she has quickly built a reputation for helping authors and thought leaders clarify their expertise, define their message, and build brands that create lasting influence. With a strategic mindset and a deep appreciation for storytelling, Larissa has a unique ability to distill complex ideas into clear, compelling messaging. She doesn’t just help clients communicate their insights—she guides them in developing proprietary intellectual property and signature frameworks that make their teachings memorable, shareable, and scalable. Her approach ensures that thought leaders don’t just teach for the moment, but create content and concepts that spread, endure, and position them as industry authorities. Follow Larissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissa-ann-salazar/ Book a meeting with Larissa: https://freebrandcall.com/ls Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.c Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    26 min
  4. From Feedback to Trust: What Comes Next in Customer Experience

    APR 9

    From Feedback to Trust: What Comes Next in Customer Experience

    Are you drowning in feedback and still struggling for progress? In this bonus episode, we're bringing you more conversations from the Qualtrics X4 Summit 2026 in Seattle. These conversations tackle the same problem from different angles: how to turn customer and patient feedback into real operational change, and how to protect trust as AI becomes part of the workflow. If you collect surveys, run a CX program, or lead a healthcare team, this one is about what happens after you hit “export.” First, we talk with leaders from Trillium Health Partners about redesigning their patient experience measurement: Kerry Kuluski, Research Chair in Patient and Family-Centered Care, and Adam Gdyczynski, Senior Corporate Lead, Patient Experience Measurement and Planning. They share how moving from paper and call-center methods to modern digital surveying helped drive an 880% increase in survey responses, plus what they did next to avoid being buried by the volume. We dig into practical tactics like shorter surveys, QR codes on after visit summaries, and using iPads to improve access in areas with lower electronic response rates. We also get into why equitable care depends on knowing who is responding, and how demographic and cultural insights can inform smarter decisions while supporting patient and family centered care. Then we shift to the trust layer with Qualtrics Chief Security Officer Assaf Keren. We unpack why trust is more than security, why shortcuts create incidents, and why transparency matters when things go wrong. We also get specific about AI governance: third-party risk, building guardrails, managing data access, and keeping a human in the loop when risk is high or confidence is low. If you want to turn insights into action without losing the human side, listen now. After you finish, subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Follow Kerry Kuluski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-kuluski-a9791b227/ Follow Adam Gdyczynski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-gdyczynski-mba-che-83100635/ Follow Assaf Keren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/assafkeren/ Resources Mentioned: Qualtrics -- https://www.qualtrics.com/ Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    15 min
  5. Start with the Problem, Not the Technology

    APR 7

    Start with the Problem, Not the Technology

    AI is moving fast, but most customer experience programs still get stuck in the same place: teams chase tools, dashboards, and “shiny” promises while the real work and the real problem stay fuzzy. We wanted a grounded conversation about customer experience strategy that actually holds up inside complex organizations, especially when trust, risk, and regulation are part of daily life. Jeannie Walters is joined by Dr. Elizabeth ErkenBrack, Head of Strategy in the Office of the CEO at Qualtrics. They sat down at the Qualtrics X4 Summit 2026 in Seattle to talk about starting with the outcome you’re trying to achieve, defining who you’re designing for, and mapping the work that needs to change before you ever “plug in” AI. They get specific about where automation helps and where the human touch still matters most, particularly in vulnerable moments like healthcare, financial services, and other deeply personal journeys. They also dig into the ROI side of experience management: how to shift from CX as a cost center to CX as an investment, how to connect NPS and CSAT to action, and how to tie experience improvements to attributable revenue through churn, retention, conversion, and operational changes. A key takeaway is governance: measurement and execution often sit in different silos, and bringing them into lockstep is an executive decision. If you’re trying to make CX “count” in the C-suite, this gives you language and structure that leaders can align around. If this helped you rethink how you’re framing your next CX initiative, subscribe, share this episode with a teammate, and leave a review so more people can find it. Follow Elizabeth ErkenBrack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-erkenbrack-phd-380b5b30/ Resources Mentioned: Qualtrics -- https://www.qualtrics.com/ Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    19 min
  6. Leading with Curiosity, Commitment, and Connection

    MAR 31

    Leading with Curiosity, Commitment, and Connection

    Some of the biggest CX breakthroughs don’t come from bigger budgets, they come from sharper thinking about trust, value, and what people actually feel in the moment. We’re sharing a special Women’s History Month collection of insights from Dr. Amy Climer, Ovetta Sampson, Camille Kremer, Neen James, and Brooke Sellas, each bringing a different lens on customer experience leadership, innovation, and connection. We start with a future-facing question: when AI shows up on the screens inside our cars, is it there to help the driver or to sell to them? Amy challenges us to treat creativity as “novelty that is valuable,” and to judge value from the customer’s perspective, not the company’s. From there, Ovetta gets candid about generative AI, chatbot hallucinations, and why “set it and forget it” is a fast track to broken customer trust. If you’re building AI into customer support, you’ll hear why rigorous testing and ongoing oversight are now core CX operations. Camille breaks down expectation setting as the hidden equation behind loyalty: customers invest, brands deliver or don’t, and trust is the outcome. Neen reframes luxury as a mindset where experiences matter more than things, anchored in making people feel seen, heard, and valued. Brooke closes the loop for social media and content marketing: content is the vehicle, emotion is the destination, and connection beats chasing a single “big win.” If this sparked new ideas for your CX strategy, subscribe, share this with a CX leader on your team, and leave a review so more people can find the show. Experience Action Episodes Mentioned: CX Pulse Check – February 2025 CX Pulse Check – May 2025 CX Pulse Check – August 2025 CX Pulse Check – September 2025 CX Pulse Check – November 2025 Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    20 min
  7. From Dashboards to Decisions

    MAR 24

    From Dashboards to Decisions

    A lot of companies say they “listen to the customer” and they do. They survey, they track NPS, they build dashboards, they share reports. But then nothing changes. Today we respond to a sharp question from a listener about what separates organizations that embed customer insights into everyday decision making from those where Voice of the Customer stays stuck as a feedback exercise. We walk through the mindset shift that turns VoC into real customer experience strategy: using your mission and goals as the lens for what you act on, getting aligned on expectations, and defining a clear customer experience mission statement so improvements aren’t scattered across one-off complaints. When teams fix isolated issues without a unified view of the customer journey, customers feel the inconsistency and trust drops fast. Then we get practical about execution. Customer insights only matter when they influence decisions across product, operations, communication, and the partners you choose. That requires shared ownership, clear governance, and consistent processes for reporting what you’re doing about the feedback and closing the loop with customers. We also address the “shoot the messenger” trap and how CX leaders can connect the dots to business value so teams understand what’s in it for them. If you want to turn Voice of the Customer into decision infrastructure and measurable business outcomes, press play. Subscribe, share this with a CX leader on your team, and leave a rating and review so more people can find the show. Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    12 min
  8. Why I Wrote Experience Is Everything

    MAR 17

    Why I Wrote Experience Is Everything

    Customer experience doesn’t fall apart because people don’t care. It falls apart because the work stays fragmented, the fixes don’t connect across the customer journey, and teams end up stuck in a reactive loop of complaints, escalations, and fire drills. Jeannie Walters shares why she wrote Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations and what she kept seeing after years of working with leaders who genuinely want to do right by customers and employees. She digs into the real shift that makes customer experience improvement stick: treating CX as a leadership discipline. That means aligning a shared mindset about who we are to customers, building a clear customer experience strategy tied to outcomes, and committing to the discipline that keeps it real day after day. She also read the final page of the book to underline the heart of the message: progress beats perfection. CX gets better when we act, reflect, adjust, and act again, because small intentional decisions compound over time. She also talks about the pressure of modern work: customers move faster, organizations move faster, and AI is now part of almost everything we design. Without alignment, that speed can accidentally create broken experiences at scale. If you’re the person who notices the gaps, sees the misalignment, and feels a little alone because you care, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with a fellow change agent, and leave a review so more leaders can build better experiences one moment at a time. Resources Mentioned: Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact. Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

    11 min
5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

How do we do this customer experience thing anyway? Join award-winning customer experience (CX) expert Jeannie Walters as she answers real questions from overwhelmed leaders! Let's turn ideas into ACTION! From company culture to employee experience (EX) to customer service, Jeannie wants to help you demystify the process for enriching the customer experience. With over 20 years investigating the best and worst in CX, this international keynote speaker has heard it all... and now she's here to give you the answers you need! You won't want to miss an episode! Do you have a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail!

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