Ian Golding – CEO and Founder – Customer Experience Consultancy [Customer Experience]

 Ian Golding – CEO and Founder – Customer Experience Consultancy [Customer Experience]

He talks about:

· His book Customer What? https://amzn.to/3rSj19l

o CX Strategy o Putting employees first

o Delivering benefits early

o Golding Experience Pyramid

Nick Glimsdahl  0:04 

Welcome to the press one for Nick podcast. My name is Nick Glimsdahl. My guest this week is Ian Golding in is the CEO and founder of customer experience consultancy, and also an author of the book customer what the honest and practical guide to customer experience. And welcome to the press one for tech podcast.

Ian Golding  0:24 

Hi, Nick, It’s so lovely to be with you.

Nick Glimsdahl  0:27 

Yeah, I’m also I’m excited to get started. And specifically, before we actually get started on the book, and as you as we dig into that, I asked every one of my guests, what’s one thing that people might not know about you?

Ian Golding  0:44 

I suspect that there’s more than one thing, but um, the thing that I always live off, let’s say is that people will not know especially outside of the UK, that I once appeared in a primetime BBC TV program. It was a living history program called turn back time, the family and with this is in 2012. My wife and my three children, they took us back to 1900. And we lived a year as a Victorian family in the 1900s. We lived so not a year a week, sorry, we lived a week into war. And then a week in World War Two. Wow was primetime on BBC One. It went out just before the the London Olympics actually. And it’s the only time in my life that I have been spotted in the street. And you know, people pointing at me and but it’s also the only time in my life I’ve been abused on Twitter. And as the TV program went out in the first step, the first episode, but if you search for turn back time, the family on YouTube, you’ll you’ll find me

Nick Glimsdahl  1:58 

I now need to do that. So I think that’s definitely something that’s very unique. In a quick summary, what was that experience like for you? And those three weeks?

Ian Golding  2:12 

You know, it was phenomenal. I mean, it was more than a three week experience. It was a it, it the whole thing lasted for over a year really from, you know, the starting process. And but but it was, it was an amazing experience, because it was filmed by the same people that do that if you ever seen that series, who do you think you are? It’s like a genealogy program. They take celebrities back and find out about their family history. Yeah. And I didn’t know a lot of my family history, which is one of the reasons they selected us because I knew nothing, despite my father having tried for years to tell me. So it was amazing to really find things out that I never knew. I suspected but never knew. But what was even more fascinating. Two other quick learnings. One was the effect it had on my children at the time, they were four, seven and eight. So they were very young have no idea what was happening to them. Everything was taken away, you know, no TV, no toys, nothing. And that one of the overriding memories was in the third episode, the world war two episodes, they recreated an air raid. And when the air raid came to a finish, we were the first family to come out of the air raid shelter and they’d recreated bomb damage. When they brought us into into the house that was you know, supposedly our house. Obviously, there was no electricity, there was no gas, there was nothing. And there was damage everywhere, bomb damage everywhere. And the kids just freaked they all burst out crying. And it was the only time that the producer said we’re going to stop filming. Because the children are too upset. And both me and my wife said no, no, no, no, you got you got to film this. You know, because there are children. There’s children right now going through the same thing. This is the reality that they’ll be fine. And I will explain to them they’ll be okay. So yeah, but it’s amazing experience. But for that final point, you know, for for that three week period, I had no technology, I had no connection to anything and it was wonderful.

Nick Glimsdahl  4:29 

It’s so cool. I’m gonna come back I’ll message you. When I go back and look at it. Take a peek but so to bring back to the conversation, you wrote this book, customer walk the honest, Practical Guide to customer experience. And it is something that I’ve never seen before when it comes to customer experience. It but but for the right reasons and and I’m not just saying it like hey, it’s this is This is a crazy book, but it’s colorful. It’s it’s large. It’s not just like a normal size book. And I love it. I love the quotes. I love the color in it. I love the diagrams. But what made you write this book?

Ian Golding  5:19 

Um, I don’t often get asked that question, actually. But I, as I said, I became independent in 2012. Actually, coincidentally, just before I went to film that program, I became independent. And one of the first people I spoke to when I went independent, never having been an independent consultant before, was a member of the cxpa guy called Mike Woodson Steen, who you may know. And Mike said to me, and you need to write, you need to start writing. And I’ve never written anything before. And bearing in mind, this is 2012. So you know, eight and a half years ago, there weren’t I mean, there were blogs around but it that they weren’t a plethora of blogs, and you know, I’ll give it a go. I mean, I have very little to do. So I thought I’d just give it a go. And I wrote my first article, and actually quite enjoyed it. And so I wrote another

one,

I wrote another one or another one, I ended up writing at least one article a week for the next six years. Some weeks, I wrote more than one, you know, but it just it almost became a, it was part of what I did. And I realized that for me, it was good. It was a way for me to, I suppose express my perspective, my opinion, my views, in a way that I’d never been able to do as an employee. But now I wasn’t an employee, I could say what I wanted when it was, and I found it very cathartic, I found it a brilliant way of getting feedback. And it actually unwittingly I didn’t know at the time, enabled me to become quite well known around the world, because it was a very easy way of, you know, sharing my views. And once I started writing, people kept saying to me, you’re gonna write a book? I’ve got time to do that. No, no, I’m not gonna write a book. And then eventually, I collaborate with many people around the world. And a brilliant lady in the UK called Beth Richardson, who has worked with me on a number of engagements for clients said to me, I will help you in to pull that book together. And what we did was, we leveraged a lot of what I’d already written naturally, and supplemented it with lots of other things, to pull together, what you hold in your hands. And a lot of the design and visual side of things is entirely down to Beth’s brilliance, you know, stopping me from thinking like a boring corporate person and thinking about that the experience of what does someone want to do with this thing.

And

what I didn’t want to do was to create a boring book, with just text. What I wanted was something that genuinely could help people. You know, I wanted people to read it and think you know, what, I’m going to do stuff. That was the sort of principle of the book. And so by creating this big thing with, you know, nice pages that you could write on and scribble on and stick things in. But that’s what I wanted. And, you know, I’ve had people tell me that if I won’t name him, because he might be embarrassed, but I had a chap who said to me that he and I leave your book in the trunk of my car. I said, right. Okay. He said, because when I get to work every morning, and I get my briefcase out of my trunk, I touch your book, because it gives me hope. You know, and I thought, well, I never intended it for it to be difficult. But you know, in a way, that that’s what I wanted it to be a physical thing. I’m often asked why is it not an ereader? You know, why is it not an E book, because I didn’t really design it to be like that, you know, I want people to feel it, touch it, and to be able to refer to it. And, you know, I’m very hopeful that that’s what I achieved, and people do seem to get a lot of value from reading. Yeah,

Nick Glimsdahl  9:23 

I think that’s exactly what you achieved. I think it’s an experience, a book in and of itself, just just the, the, the easy use of going through it, how organized it is. And it’s fun to kind of flip through the next page because I don’t know what’s coming. And

Ian Golding  9:47 

it’s, it also does reflect my personality, you know, that the danger of my writing is that I, I write as I speak, so that there was a very early incidence of the lady who contacted me and said, I need to admit something to you. So what she said, um, I was reading your book in bed the other night. And I said to my husband, it’s like, he’s in bed with me. And he wasn’t very happy. And

so, but but you know, it’s

everything that underpins my approach to this subject is driven by simplicity and practicality. And you know that that’s what I wanted to come through.

Nick Glimsdahl  10:24 

Yeah, very cool. Well, tell me about this cx readiness scale inside the book.

Ian Golding  10:31 

So there are a number of things that I have leveraged over my career of doing this. So I’m a nearly 48 year old without gray hair, which no one quite understands why my wife tells me it’s down to her. And I’ve been doing this customer experience related activities for over 25 years. And for 17 of those years, I worked inside a variety of corporates. And you learn a lot, you know, you learn a lot when you are bashing your head against a brick wall, you’re being patronized, you’re being bullied. And then when you come into becoming dependent, and you start to see so many more things in so many different situations. And I realized very early on that, to me, I was just speaking what I thought was the most obvious thing in the world. You know that? Why wouldn’t you want to do the right thing for your customer? I don’t get it. You know, and there were many tiny. Ironically, it’s a little bit like Coronavirus, actually in the wake of them. And so I just don’t get why people are doing this. And I didn’t get it. And it suddenly occurred to me, I can’t remember exactly when it was before I became independent that just because this is obvious to me, doesn’t mean it’s obvious to others. And what I’ve got to stop doing is looking at these people thinking, are you stupid? You know, is this something that there’s not something wrong with me? There’s something wrong with you? How can you not see this? I’ve got to stop thinking that way. And think a lot more objectively, and a lot more empathy empathetically about. Why does someone feel that this is not an important subject to think about? And it’s from that, that I conceived this idea of the customer experience Readiness Index, a way of strategizing, where do people sit today when it comes to customer experience transformation? And as a result, what do I need to do to get them to a point where they recognize the need to change? And as you will have written a book, you know, primarily that there are four phases of readiness that I talk about the first phase, I call the acknowledge phase, and this is very unpolitical II correct. But I will often describe that is the alcoholic phase. Because this is where you will have individuals or teams of people that don’t want to admit there’s a problem. Now, we have all come across leaders in organizations that when you talk about customer experience will look at you and think,

what are you talking about, we do this already, we’ve been doing this for years, we’ve got CRM, we don’t need to do this, you know, and that, unfortunately, there have been so many examples of this over the years, some of them very high profile, you know, and I will always refer to Toys R Us as a brilliant example, of a board of directors stuck in the acknowledged phase, ignoring the online revolution, thinking with toys r us, we don’t need to change, you know, never going to fail, we’re never going to fail. And you know, but but we know that sadly, despite all of these high profile examples, it’s still happening. There are still people stuck there. But again, as customer experience professionals, we’ve got an opportunity to change that. Because the reason they’re stuck there is they don’t have the information. But we can give them the information we can give them the facts that help them to understand, you know what, there’s a bit of risk if we stay here, why don’t we diagnose? You know, what are the priorities that if we address them, actually, not only will we sustain ourselves, but we might actually grow? You know, and so, how do we get into this diagnosis phase? And what does that diagnosis need to look like? that then leads them to wanting to actually change something and improve something. But the fourth phase of readiness is the Nirvana, as I call it, and it’s what I call the improve phase. And regrettably, and I say this sincerely, whilst I’ve been working in this field for a long time as have you, very few organizations have reached the fourth phase of readiness, that improved phases I call it because that is where an organization has recognized I used and adopted a continuous never ending cycle of interconnected activity to continuously make the experience better able to meet the needs and expectations of customers. And there’s so much stuff that’s been done. But it’s still that sustainability that we’ve not quite got to. And that’s why for me, but in that very, very simple way of understanding where you are, and the challenge that you need to overcome, so you can then determine what to do about it.

Nick Glimsdahl  15:32 

Yeah, and I love that, because it’s so simple, but it’s not easy.

Ian Golding  15:39 

You know, that’s that this is the, the description to sum that up in different words that I always use. Customer Experience is a science, but it’s not an exact science. And it’s not rocket science. You know, you know, and this is the key, it’s not difficult to understand. But it’s difficult to do.

Nick Glimsdahl  16:01 

Yeah. And so is that the reason why so many companies are not in the improved section of the assessment?

Ian Golding  16:09 

The there are a number of reasons, and it does depend on geography to a degree as well. You know, ultimately, the biggest fundamental problem is that customer experience is a long term strategy. And, you know, it doesn’t matter what sector what industry, you’re in, businesses, organizations are not thinking long term. You know, forget the pandemic, this is prior to the pandemic, businesses are only looking at the hand in front of their face, you know, they want short term financial return. And the customer experience doesn’t give you that, you know, and so that when you want organizations to focus long term, that the other fundamental issue is that leadership is very rarely long term. You know, and so you might convince a CEO today, but that CEO might leave in 12 months time and then you got to start all over again. And you know, that there is a phenomenon that I always forget if this children’s song is known in the US, but there’s a children’s party song called the hokey Cokey, you know, you put one leg in one leg out. And I call this phenomenon the customer experience hokey Cokey, because you know, companies start, and then something changes, and so they stop. And then they start again, and then they start and it’s just, but they never actually stay in, you know, yeah. And so it’s so difficult to get the focus to be sustained. But then it becomes even more challenging when you throw a pandemic into the mix. If your listeners haven’t guessed on English, you know, we’ve got Brexit to add on top of all of this, you know, which hasn’t gone away yet that there’s always going to be something else that gets in the way that prevents that long term thinking. But this, this, again, is why I will always insist that our profession is even more important now than ever before. Because there is no chance this is going to happen without people like us. And we need more of us to be constantly pushing and pushing to get customer experience onto the agenda.

Nick Glimsdahl  18:24 

Yeah. Couldn’t couldn’t have said that any better myself. From your perspective? Who owns the customer experience?

Ian Golding  18:32 

So it’s a question I ask a lot. As you can imagine, as you probably know, I spend about half of my time sharing knowledge with people. And my immediate gut reaction to that question is, everyone owns the customer experience. And I think 99% of customer experience professionals I speak to would say the same thing. However, lack of understanding of that is huge. And the biggest single cause of the failure of organizations to transform is a lack of accountability. In my opinion, you know, when you look at the most customer centric organizations in the world, most of them were created that way. The overwhelming majority of legacy businesses have not successfully transformed and stayed that way. And that is because you need a certain type of leadership. You need a certain type of mindset, to be prepared to go into an organization and say enough, we’re not going to do it like this anymore. We’re going to do it like this. And you know it there are so few truly transformational leaders in the world, who had the courage, the conviction, the ethics, Do that. And that’s why it doesn’t happen. And, you know, if I just add to what I’m saying, I’ve said this for a number of years that if I’m critical of our profession, if I can say that the criticism I still have is that where we failed, is we failed to influence not those that lead organizations, but those who provide the money. You know, what we fail to do is to influence shareholders, stock markets, those that are looking for ultimately growth, sustainable growth. We haven’t addressed that community, you know, we have not managed to win the hearts and minds of the money people that you know, you want money, it will come, but you’re gonna have to wait. But it will come. And you know, it. What amazes me is, you know, you can shout Amazon as many times as you want, that it’s now a trillion dollar business, but it took a flippin long time. Yeah. But I don’t want to wait, well, then if you don’t want to wait, the likelihood is that not only will you not grown, it’s very possible that you might not even survive. So you know, what do you want?

Nick Glimsdahl  21:15 

Now, I love that. And I think that there’s so many people that don’t understand that unfortunately. And and I love that you kind of brought up the the the the soreness, or what people don’t want to talk about when it comes to customer experience. I think a lot of people talk about the I call it the pixie dust and fairy tales, like the good stories, the Hey, look, what we’re doing to the customer, look how we’re solving these pain points, look, but if we can’t figure out the way to show the people the money, and or give them enough buy in from us that we’re saying, trust us. Here’s what data shows. And I can’t show you that today, because we haven’t done it. But here’s what we’re going to do in the future. And here’s what we’re going to do in the short term, but we need to continue to show that and communicate and then be measured on it. Or else you’re you’re just you might as well have a customer experience, you know, day, once a year, and just talk about it instead of actually doing it.

Ian Golding  22:16 

Absolutely right. Absolutely. Right. And you know, that the, I suppose, again, what interests me about the current period of time we’re living through is that there will have been a proportion of organizations change their perspective as a result of this. A very small proportion, but there will have been a proportion, and that’s a good thing. There will be a whole load more, who will fail, that they might not have failed yet. But they will, you know, I’m having spent seven years in online retail. I, I’ve been predicting, and sadly, I don’t want my prediction to come true. But I think it will, that in January, we will see traditional brick bricks and mortar retailers fail. Because, you know, we’re we’re going into what retailers call the golden quarter, you know that it’s all about Christmas, but Christmas is not going to be the same this year, they’re not going to sell as much this year that there is no doubt about that. That’s right. That’s how they sustain themselves in these three months, you know, the rest of the year, they don’t make money, that they made even less money. And so you know, I think in January, we are going to see, you know, almost an Armageddon scenario for many, many businesses around the world. And you know, that, whilst again, that it’s horrific. What this pandemic has done is accelerate the demise of many of those, because many of them would have failed anyway, all this has done is speed this up.

Nick Glimsdahl  23:49 

I was just gonna ask that is that is to these companies, it magnifies their brilliance or demise of customer experience, and that that helps her deters them for success or failure. Moving forward.

Ian Golding  24:05 

Absolutely. You know, at the end of the day, it’s funny when you think about agile being the flavor of recent times, but agility is not a new word. You know, adaptability, agility, that this is what organizations have needed to do for work ever since they were created, you know, help, not just now. But it’s taken this for companies to think, Oh, you know, how do I get my people to work from home? Yeah, but your people have been asking you to work from home for the last two years. You know, and now suddenly, you’re going to have to try and figure it out. It’s not good enough. And you know, fundamentally, the worst thing about all of it is the effect on human beings because millions of employees are going to find serious hardship as a result of this. And for me, the people to blame for that are not government’s it’s not a virus but it’s it’s people who run companies bad I’m not thinking long term.

Nick Glimsdahl  25:03 

And why is that? My Why are they not thinking long term because they’re just trying to survive. And that’s what they’re measured on is something that’s not focused on the customer.

Ian Golding  25:13 

I’m gonna make a massive generalization. So it is a generalization. And there are many who are not, as I’m describing, but, you know, why is that happening? It’s two things, one greed. You know, I have said to many people that I never thought I’d become anti capitalist doing what I do for a living. But, you know, when you see it in so many scenarios, it’s a horrible thing to see, you know, when it’s the only interest is, how much money can we make, you know, and I don’t care who I trample over to get to it. That’s part of it. But the other part is a lack of education. You know, and I don’t mean, an academic education, but I mean, an education and understanding how to run a business in 2020. You know, most students coming out of universities or colleges are still taught traditional marketing principles. You know, they are taught traditional ways of running a business 50 years ago. You know, customer experience thinking is not integrated into that. But But what’s even worse is the most companies are run by people who didn’t have any education in any of this. Yes, they were educated in economics and balance sheets, and you know, that, but they were not educated and understanding the importance of managing experiences for both customers and employees. And as a result, shareholders. And, you know, the sad thing is, is that too few are willing to learn, you know, and I don’t want to offend many of your listeners, but I

Nick Glimsdahl  27:01 

think we already have, so let’s just keep going,

Ian Golding  27:03 

well, then I suspect I may do because I don’t want this to sound like a nationalistic thing, especially with you guys going into an election. But let’s not say any more about that. But, you know, I always look at the US now I’m in a very unusual position that I work in 44 countries around the world. So I see this everywhere. And people always say to me, you know, who’s best at this? Is it the US as well, actually, quite the opposite. Really, you know, I would argue that the US is the, probably the land of the greatest extremes. And what do you mean, I said, Well, I believe that the US does have the very best examples of customer centricity. But I also believe it has the very worst examples of customer centricity. And in fact, some examples that would make your toenails curl. And, you know, the problem with the us is that the US does very often start these things, you know, the momentum, the the knowledge, the inspiration starts in the US. But then people start saying the same thing over and over and over again. And it’s not so much momentum, it’s repetition, and repetition and repetition, until you get to a point where people like, I’m not hearing anything new here. You know, and actually, nothing’s changing. So I’m not going to do that. Yeah, we’ve been doing this for years. And, you know, I’ve said for the last couple of years that what I’ve seen in the US, having worked with us clients and having visited the US, in the last few years, the US has become when it comes to customer experience, very arrogant, very ignorant, and just almost apathetic towards customer experience. Because we do all of this, we have nothing more to learn. We’re doing it all already. But so little is changing. And so yes, you may be doing something, but if nothing is changing, then whatever it is that you’re doing is not having the desired effect. And I think as a result, it’s probably become even harder for customer experience professionals in US companies to, you know, to get them to wake up and say, No, we haven’t done it. You know, we haven’t made it. No, NPS isn’t enough, you know, it becomes even harder. And so I think to a degree in the US, it’s going backwards in the UK, not not to anyone to think that I’m picking on the US. I think the UK has flatlined. You know, it’s almost just nothing. It’s like we’re dead. When it comes to customer experience. We don’t get better, we don’t get worse. It’s just it’s just nothing. But then I also have this incredibly fortunate situation to see what the US and the UK would describe as less developed economies, you know, the Eastern Europe, parts of Africa. Where, right now, experiences are not as good. But what’s different is that their education is as good as ours, if not better. But even more importantly, they have the desire and the willing to change, and they want to learn, they want the knowledge, and they will do something with that knowledge. And so I believe that in the net, and again, this pandemic may accelerated, but in the next five to 10 years, I think countries like the US, like the UK, are at risk of being overtaken by economies by countries who aren’t resting on their laurels, you know, where the British Empire, you know, not anymore, we’re not, you know, there are these that there are parts of the world that want to grow, and they will grow, and they will beat us.

Nick Glimsdahl  30:51 

I heard it was on a podcast A while ago, and is said, to be elite, you need to be productively uncomfortable. And if I think of that, as an athlete, if they just said, Hey, I’m going to run five miles a day, and then I’m going to go out and win them, the New York Marathon like that, just just not gonna happen. You need to treat your your company like a fine tuned machine and understand what those weaknesses are, and then work backwards to find try to fix them.

Ian Golding  31:22 

You know, I’m very lucky, I consider myself lucky to be x, GE. But I was GE when jack Welsh was still see, which again, shows my age. And, you know, that is exactly what jack welch did. You know, he turned that organization into such a finely tuned machine. And, you know, I always remember speaking to senior leaders at GE, who said, if you ever met jack Welsh, you know, it was the worst experience but the best experience of your life, because he would ask you things about your business that you’d be thinking, How on earth does he know that? How does he know that? And if you don’t know the answer, you know, you better find out the answer pretty quickly. But that’s what he did. It’s not about humiliating people, but it’s made, you got to know your stuff. And, you know, that’s, that’s the same as Amazon. You know, I tell a lot of people that Amazon success is not a fluke, Amazon success is not just down to Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s success is down to the fact that Jeff Bezos understood leadership, and to be a leader on Amazon, they got 14 leadership principles, if 14 prints, and you’ve got to be you’ve got to demonstrate every fall every one of those 14 principles. It’s not easy to be a leader, Amazon, you know, but, again, a so much of this has just gone, you know, in businesses around the world, but it has to come back again.

Nick Glimsdahl  32:45 

That’s awesome. So I wrap up every podcast with two questions. And the first question is, what book or person has influenced you the most in the past year? And then the second one is if you can leave a note to all the customer experience professionals, and Monday morning at 8am hits their desk, what would it say?

Ian Golding  33:04 

So, leader is a nice segue from what I’ve just been saying, for me, the most inspirational or transformational leader of the moment, who, every time I see him, write something or say something that inspires me, is the current CEO of Microsoft. Now, I ask a lot of people around the world do you know who the CEO of Microsoft is? And they don’t know, which is part of the point. And that’s such an Adela, I think is a an amazing man. He’s got a huge amounts of courage and to tell Microsoft that we’ve got to stop being a company that knows everything, and become a company that learns everything demonstrates to me that he has both the intellect and empathy and understanding to ensure that Microsoft is here for many, many decades to come. So yeah, he’s he’s a very interesting, man. And in terms of the second question, there are many things that I would say, actually, but the overriding message I would leave on the desk of a cx professional within an organization is, are you doing the right thing for the right reason? Because so much of the time is we inferred in our conversation, the beginning of this podcast, we are in a position where people are making us feel as though we’re doing the wrong thing, that there are times where we will doubt ourselves. There are times where we will think, should I actually really be here doing this? And I’ve always said to the teams that I’ve worked with, you know, as long as whatever it is that you’re doing, you’re doing for the right reason. You know, you’ve got nothing to lose. You know, if you’re doing this, you know, because you want to pay rise, you know, then you shouldn’t be doing This job, if you’re doing this because you want to be popular, you shouldn’t be doing this job. But if you’re, if you’ve done the right thing for the right reason, you can hold your head up high, knowing that you are operating as an effective customer experience professional. That’s rahmatan.

Nick Glimsdahl  35:17 

Yeah, that’s some great advice. Appreciate that. And what’s the best way for my listeners to get a hold of you?

Ian Golding  35:24 

Um, well, some would say that I’m too visible. I would say I have a face for radio. But that’s a different story altogether. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m Jeff generally all over LinkedIn. My Twitter handle is ij Golding. And of course, if people want to buy my book, they’re most welcome to and you can get that on Amazon.

Nick Glimsdahl  35:49 

And just a reminder, the book is customer what with a question mark, the honest and practical guide to customer experience. So I would highly recommend you take a look at the book. Like he said, open it up, read all the way through it and then your market and and write all over it, because that’s what it’s made for. And thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker  36:09 

Love pictures. Stuff sticking out of it. Yeah,

Nick Glimsdahl  36:13 

there you go. There you go. I will do that. And I encourage everybody else to do the same. And I appreciate your time. It’s been a blast. I think we’ve ruffled a few feathers along the way. But I think sometimes in customer experience, as in any industry, it’s needed.

Ian Golding  36:27 

As long as we’ve ruffled feathers for the right reason, then that’s okay. That’s right.

Nick Glimsdahl  36:32 

Thanks, sir. Have a great day.

Ian Golding  36:33 

pleasure. Thank you so much.

—————

The Press 1 For Nick podcast is both educational and engaging, and each episode offers listeners a dynamic blend of insightful stories, best practices, and invaluable lessons.

Nick’s guests – each with a unique wealth of knowledge – include leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some of his guests include:

  • Customer service & customer experience leaders
  • A hostage negotiator
  • Award-winning authors
  • Home Depot’s Senior Director of Customer Care
  • Former VP of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
  • Lyft’s Head of Partner and Customer Engagement
  • Deputy Chief Veteran Experience Officer from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

On every episode Nick asks his guest two questions:

  1. What book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?
  2. If you could leave a note to all the Customer Service and CX professionals, what would it say?

You can find all the podcast guests’ answers under their episodes below.

If all you want is the guests’ book recommendations, you can go here.

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