Punk CX: Customer Experience Insights with Adrian Swinscoe

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a recent chat I had with Charles Melcher, Founder and CEO of Future of Storytelling and the author of a big new book called THE FUTURE OF STORYTELLING: How Immersive Experiences are Transforming Our World. Charles joins me to talk about his new book, why we often find it hard to tell stories in different contexts, and the role of storytelling in customer engagement, service and experience. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Moving past bolt-on AI to strategic reimagination – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega – and is number 583 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a recent chat I had with Jeannie Walters, who is the Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, an international keynote speaker, and an author. Jeannie and I caught up at a recent event we were both at, and I took the opportunity to have a chat with her about her new book: Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. We chat about the origin of the book, CX Foundations, the importance of mindset, four key questions that every CX leader should be asking, why they should also be thinking about what their organization and leaders need, and why it’s nearly impossible to deliver a great customer experience without creating a customer-first culture. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The unstructured data revolution in CRM – Interview with David Roberts of SugarCRM – and is number 581 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a series of interviews that I conducted at Qualtrics’ recent X4 event in Seattle and features conversations with Qualtrics executives at the event: Brad Anderson, President of Products, UX, Engineering & Security;Mark Hammond, SVP Core AI - starting at 14:59;Assaf Keren, SVP and Chief Security Officer - starting at 14:59; andAli Henriques, Executive Director of Market Research - starting at 59:19. We discuss the highlights and themes of the event, the experience gap, the future of AI, and what organisations should be considering, alongside topics such as the role of security and trust in customer experience and synthetic panels, also known as customer simulation models. There’s a lot in there, so do check it out. This interview follows on from my recent interview – The enduring and evolving ‘craft’ of customer support – Interview with Nick Francis – and is number 579 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features Raymond Gerber, the Co-Founder of the Institute for Journey Management (I4JM), Founder of JourneyCentric-CX and author of three new books. He joins me today to talk about the third book (Journey to Customer Obsession- A Leadership Blueprint for CX Maturity and Enterprise Transformation: How executives can turn fragmented CX efforts into enterprise-wide customer obsession), which is effectively the executive edition of the other two books. We talk about the 9-stage journey that organisations go through on the road to customer obsession, journey management and orchestration, why many organisations often stumble into the first stage, Awareness, by accident, the non-negotiable output of consideration, the second stage of the journey, a brief overview of the other stages, and how a leader and their team should get started with all of this. This interview follows on from my recent interview – More Than A Motto – Interview with Justin Robbins of Metric Sherpa – and is number 577 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode features a chat I had recently with Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta. We chat about a range of issues, including how many brands seem to be suffering from a split personality disorder, why CRM technology is fundamentally not the right type of technology to develop the type of conversational intelligence that is needed to drive better outcomes and why taking an automation-only approach to customer support is like ‘taking a shower with a raincoat on.’ This interview follows on from my recent interview – Transforming experience for business outcomes – Interview with Sid Banerjee, Mike Murchison and Paloma Paraja – and is number 575 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features Paul Hughes, who is Head of Direct Sales for the UKISA region at Mitel, where he helps organisations use technology to deliver human experiences built on trust, empathy, loyalty, and logic. Paul joins me today to talk about why hybrid is the new default and not a compromise, the dangers of a CCaaS monoculture, the problem with AI sameness and why most bots feel identical, linking UC/CX investment to business outcomes like revenue, resilience, and wellbeing as well as Paul’s best advice, his Punk CX brand and his very own good news story. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Loyalty is the core economic engine – Interview with Sara Richter and Fred Reichheld – and is number 573 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast is with Joel Kellhofer, CEO of SignWow, which offers business BSL solutions, including Video Relay Service & Video Remote Interpreting, to make services accessible to Deaf customers. We talk about Joel’s background and experiences as a Deaf founder, some of the everyday communication barriers Deaf people face in public services, healthcare, hospitality, and retail, why brands often don’t design experiences that work for everyone, what they should be doing differently, and how SignWow can help. We finish off with some advice for brands looking to build standout, inclusive customer experiences, Joel’s Punk CX brand, and his very own good news story. Note: Now, I should point out that today’s episode is a little different. Given that Joel is deaf, we are joined by his colleague, Emma McQuillan, Chief Interpreting Officer (CIO) at SignWow, who will be interpreting for us in real time. What I should also point out for those of you watching the video version of this podcast or listening to the audio version, you’ll experience some pauses after I ask my questions as Joel and Emma communicate via sign language before Emma answers the questions on Joel’s behalf. I hope that makes sense. This interview follows on from my recent interview – From product-led innovation to a service-led experience model – Interview with Deborah Honig of Samsung UK & Ireland – and is number 571 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast is with Nick Clark, a Partner & Director in the Service & Support Operations practice at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), as well as the author of the Service Matters! newsletter, which is a weekly newsletter about customer service, that he writes in a personal capacity. Nick joins me today to talk about why success with AI in customer service is much less about technical capability and much more about strategy, that brands need to go beyond the obvious with AI, whether (or not) we are in the midst of an AI bubble and, given that he is deeply immersed in this space, what sort of trends/things he is expecting to see/emerge in the coming 12 months. We finish off with Nick’s best advice, his Punk CX brand and his very own good news story. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Describing yourself as ‘AI-first’ is a mistake – Interview with Chris Morrissey of Zoom – and is number 569 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast is with Phil Regnault, Marketing Transformation Partner at PwC & PwC’s Adobe Alliance Leader. Phil and I talk about the recently published results of PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey, which was a US-focused survey, and a recently released fresh cut of their survey featuring exclusive insights from Adobe users. We also talk about how many organisations are still struggling to scale their AI projects, generate meaningful commercial returns, or drive improvements in customer outcomes, and what he sees the most successful companies doing to overcome these challenges. We finish off with Phil’s best advice, his Punk CX brand and his very own good news story. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Douglas Adams’ Babelfish concept just got much closer – Interview with Sharath Keshava Narayana of Sanas – and is number 567 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast is a two-parter that I recorded while attending the Twilio SIGNAL event in London on November 19th. My first guest is Peter Bell, VP of EMEA Marketing at Twilio. Peter and I talk about his highlights from the event, what he is seeing companies do well/right to help them harness the obvious potential of all of the new technology that is emerging, as well as some examples of brands that they are working with, what they are doing, what challenges they are overcoming and what outcomes they are driving. Following my chat with Peter, I spoke to Michael Binks and his colleague Paul Mawson, who are Director of Technology and Head of Product, respectively, at CarFinance247, the UK’s leading digital car finance platform. We talk about their motivations for attending the event, what they spoke about in their breakout session, their journey with Twilio and some advice/lessons learned along the way. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Are machines making marketers more human? – Interview with Elizabeth Maxson of Contentful – and is number 565 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a discussion I recently had with Ray Gerber and Mark Smith, Co-Founders of the Institute for Journey Management (I4JM). We talk about customer journeys, where most people go wrong with them, some examples of customer journeys done right, where AI fits into all of this, the backstory to the Institute for Journey Management, the problem they are trying to solve, and their plans for the coming year. Disclosure: I’ve known Mark and Ray for sometime now and have a huge amount of respect for what they have achieved in the past and what they are aiming to do with the I4JM. As they were setting up the I4JM, they invited me to become a Founding Member. I accepted. This interview follows on from my recent interview – CX is reaching a tipping point – Interview with Jonathan Rosenberg of Five9 – and is number 563 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat that I recently had with Matt Healy, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Pega, where we talk about legacy transformation, how big some of the legacy challenges facing firms are, how Pega is responding, why it’s important for organisations to have a real strategy with respect to AI agents in order to get meaningful results rather than just applying a bunch of agents and hoping for the best and some lessons from the most successful companies who are managing to scale their AI projects, generate meaningful commercial returns and drive improvements in customer-related outcomes. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Equip people with AI to enable them to lead with emotional intelligence – Interview with Miranda Collard of TP – and is number 561 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.