Often Imitated: CX Stories from History

With the invention of the phone came drama, controversy, and innovation. A phone call went from a trusted source of communication to spam calls that never end. Today, we’re going to learn about how it all started back in the day with Alexander Graham Bell. Call your friends and tell them you’ll be late, because you won’t want to miss this one.

In this episode of Often Imitated, Erik Nierenberg talks about the world of email, and how trust plays a key role between a purchase and an unsubscribe.

Experience: Trust is earned

Inspiration: The invention of the telephone

Modern Day Execution: Erik Nierenberg, CEO, Litmus

Three Takeaways

• Identify your end users, and figure out how they want to be interacted with.
• The more personalized you can make your outreach, the better your customer’s experiences will be.
• You earn your customer’s trust by sharing meaningful and individualized content.

Key Quotes

• "Trust is earned and we have to earn the right to email you by engaging you with something you care about."
• “Every piece of email is an extension of your brand.”
• “The more you can leverage email and at least one other channel in the customer’s journey, the more effective and innovative your marketing team will be.”

Links

Erik Nierenberg LinkedIn

Litmus

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Thanks to our friends

This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.

Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives

In 1940, four boys wandering the hilly countryside of rural France discovered a cave filled with prehistoric paintings depicting charging bison, stags, and horses. Despite being 17,000 years old, the images were not only identifiable, but powerful.

Images have been used throughout history to convey profound meaning in an instant. From Egyptian hieroglyphs to emojis,it’s like the saying goes: “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So we talked with Daniel Sines of Traitify about how he’s putting pictures to work to enhance the customer experience.

Experience: A picture is worth a thousand words

Inspiration: The Caves of Lascaux

Modern Day Execution: Daniel Sines, CEO and Co-Founder of Traitify

Three Takeaways

• Pictures can be used instead of text to convey meaning quickly.
• Giving candidates feedback on their job application ensures a positive experience as well as positive brand association.
• Give candidates an application you wouldn’t mind completing yourself.

Key Quotes

• “What we help companies to do is reduce turnover and increase performance in their workforce by aligning the right candidate with the right role. And that is really to the benefit of both parties. We're trying to create happiness in the workplace, which is a real challenge.”
• “At the core, we need to treat candidates like customers. That's been a problem that has not been solved in the entirety of the recruiting experience over years and years. We often treat these people as more of a commodity than a customer.”
• “The truth is that for every one of these brands, your people are your most important part of your business. They should be the area that you invest the most in if you want to have the best results for your company.”

Links

Traitify

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Thanks to our friends

This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.

Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives

Few things are more exhilarating than watching cars speed past you at over 200mph. It’s been said that car racing was invented as soon as the second car was built. So how can you compete in an industry full of turbocharged incumbents?

Today we’re going to learn about how outsiders have been able to breakthrough in Formula One racing. From the mavericks who invented a new kind of car in the 1950s, to how Red Bull Racing turned the entire sport on its head. Oliver Hughes, CMO, Red Bull Racing Honda, joined us and shared how Red Bull does what no one else will, and quite literally laps the competition.

Experience: Doing what nobody else will

Inspiration: Origins of Formula One Racing

Modern Day Execution: Oliver Hughes, CMO, Red Bull Racing Honda

Three Takeaways

• If you make everything surrounding your product irresistible, then customers will become fans in no time.
• You can find creative ways to push the boundaries of your marketing campaigns, regardless of budget.
• Engage with potential customers in exciting and unique ways through a variety of channels.

Key Quotes

• "Most people think we’re totally crazy. But for us, it's all about doing it because no one else would, and it makes us stand out and connect with the world. It's that simple."
• “You have to design—whether it's a product or a marketing campaign—around both the current and future fan base.”
• “If you go into something and plan everything around metrics, then you end up killing the creative process.”

Links

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/redbullracing

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Thanks to our friends

This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.

Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives

When you think of the comedy greats, who comes to mind? Dave Chappelle? Tina Fey? The producers of Often Imitated? Well, there’s someone else you should be adding to that list, someone who paved the way for women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community: Moms Mabley.

Moms started doing stand-up comedy in the late 1910s and her career lasted nearly 60 years. She had a specific style of dressing and speaking that kept people enamored with her. In her unassuming day dresses and sun hats, people were shocked when she shared her edgy jokes about love, race, and politics. She knew how to communicate and keep her audience engaged. Which is all that most of us want when it comes to good CX. So we set out to find an expert who could help us learn how to communicate well with our customers. And that’s Grad Conn, Chief Experience Officer at Sprinklr. He knows what it takes to have successful communication as a brand, and a comedian. Let’s find out how he does it.

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"Shift from thinking your product is the center of the universe to thinking about your customers as the center of the universe." - Grad Conn

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Time Stamps

(0:00) Your mom: the queen of comedy

(8:40) What is Sprinklr?

(10:16) Who’s a better communicator, your marketing exec or a stand-up comedian?

(14:25) Is being an online troll worth it?

(17:25) Prioritize your customers over your product

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Sponsor

This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.

Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives

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Links

Connect with Grad on LinkedIn

Check out Sprinklr

In the 1800s, America was generally seen as a land of abundance and endless resources until Gifford Pinchot saw the truth. That the trees, water and nutrients of the land were being used faster than they could naturally replenish. He saw that future generations faced bare, corroding soil rather than vast wilderness if those resources weren’t used sustainably.

This same concept of sustainability can be applied to CX. When crafting a customer experience today, we may only be thinking about immediate customers. But what if we could create an experience that would impact future customers for generations, to create an experience that would last, use fewer resources and be re-used?

Today we’re taking a deep dive into sustainability in CX with Holley Chant, Director of Sustainability at Lendlease, a construction, property and infrastructure company based in Australia. Holley knows how to use environmental and social sustainability as key drivers to CX. Let’s talk about how to create a sustainable experience for customers now and generations to come.

Experience: Creating a sustainable experience to serve customers now and in the future

Inspiration: Gifford Pinchot, the father of forestry

Modern Day Execution: Holley Chant, Director of Sustainability at Lendlease

Three Takeaways

[16:57] Customer experience now will have implications for future customers.

[7:44] Environmental and social sustainability can become key drivers for an amazing experience.

[11:25] Sustainability has to be quantifiable with data.

Key Quotes

• “Customers today want a sustainable solution. They want a sustainable product or experience or home or community. They want to feel great about it and not feel like that in any way that their customer experience in that moment is someday leading to a negative customer experience for people down the line due to greater environmental problems.”
• “When we just tack sustainability on at the end, instead of using a front-loaded integrative design process, it costs more. There's this triangle of sustainability - and I believe that that's also the customer experience triangle - of people, planet and profit. If you tack it on at the end and then it costs more, you've totally failed people and planet.”
• “For Lendlease as a company, our business is totally devoted to the creation of an awesome built environment. A great customer experience would be that they use a building in such a way that it literally changes their life for the better. We've all been in a building at some point where we learned better. We healed better. We were more joyous. And that is the ultimate sign of great customer experience in a built environment.”

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Thanks to our friends

This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.

Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives