In 2016 I was honored to serve as the first “Godfather” for the Refiners, a group of foreign startups partaking in a new acceleration program in San Francisco. As Godfather, I serve as a mentor and resource to help entrepreneurs shape and optimize their companies to be successful beyond their country of origin. In this case, many of the companies were French hoping to expand to the U.S. and around the world. The Refiners is an interesting take on startup…
CX Starts with Understanding Today’s Customer Experience, Then Designing Them To Be Amazing and Integrated
The following discussion represents Part 2 of my conversation with Loyalty360 CEO and CMO Mark Johnson. In this last part of the series, Change Starts with You Altimeter Group’s Principal Analyst Brian Solis is dedicated to creating change within brands and bringing customer experience into the spotlight. The first step, Solis told Loyalty360 in a recent discussion, is to define the CX problem and use that to guide solutions. More specifically, he challenged businesses to rethink what CX really means across the…
It’s Time to Change How Companies Perceive Customer Experience (CX)
Last year, I spent time with Mark Johnson, CEO and CMO of Loyalty360, to discuss all things Customer Experience (CX). The conversation was so rich, it resulted into a two-part series exclusively for the Loyalty360 community. Now however, I’ve been given the green light to share the conversation (parts 1 and 2) with you here. Part 1 – This is the Year of Customer Experience If you ask 100 executives what customer experience means to them, you would likely get 100 different answers. The need to…
Level Up: An Introduction to the 5 Different Levels of Self-Driving Cars
With all of the talk about self-driving cars, you’d think that they were already on our streets. Well, technically in some states such as California, Nevada and Pennsylvania, automakers and technology vendors are already publicly testing autonomous vehicles¾with human drivers and engineers onboard. You might have also heard about the Tesla’s driving around town in “Autopilot” mode where drivers are doing everything but driving. Not all autonomous cars are the same. While engineers are striving for full self-driving mode one…
Top 10 Retail Banking Trends and Predictions for 2017
Every year, my good friend Jim Marous organizes a “top trends and predictions in retail banking” for the annual Digital Banking Report. I do my best to support his efforts as its an important topic and it’s also a discussion that applies to almost every industry. The report features 99 global financial services leaders plus me ;). The crowdsourced panel includes bankers, credit union executives, industry analysts, advisors, authors and fintech followers from Asia, Africa, North America, South and Central America, Europe, the Middle East…
Wynn Las Vegas Hires Digital Butlers, Places Amazon Echo in 4,748 Guest Rooms
Many hotels offer USAToday for guests. Now guests at the Wynn Las Vegas will simply say, “Alexa, read today’s USAToday headlines.” I believe the future of any brand is directly tied to the experiences they design and deliver consistently through the customer lifecycle. It’s not just any one thing, it’s everything. That’s the definition of customer experience after all. It’s not the technology company’s invest in, nor the touch points they modernize, nor the new policies and processes they introduce…
Google’s Autonomous Driving Group Spins Out as Waymo; Becomes the Android of Self-Driving Cars
This week, Google surprised the technology and automotive industries by announcing that it would spin-out its self-driving vehicle group as a formal business unit under the Alphabet umbrella. What does Waymo mean? Waymo CEO John Krafcik explained at its press conference that the company name stands for, “Way forward in Mobility.” After years of speculation as to whether or not Google (now Waymo) would introduce its own fleet of self-driving cars, its now clear that the company will become an enabling partner…
Self-Driving Cars Drive Closer To Reality and Uber Is or Isn’t Behind the Wheel
I spent the day at Mercedes Benz Research and Development North America (MBRDNA) in Sunnyvale, California getting a full briefing on the state of the company’s EV, machine learning/AI and autonomous work. More on that soon. By the time I arrived home later that evening, thank you Guy Kawasaki for the ride, I received an email from Uber that it was set to debut a bold new autonomous pilot in San Francisco effective immediately. Wait. What? Wow. Indeed. Uber is extending its…
What CMOs Must Get Right In 2017 To Succeed as an ‘Experience Business’
Like clockwork, every December, experts voice their predictions and advice to guide us in the coming year. Sometimes I offer my thoughts. Mostly, I spend my time curating emerging and disruptive technology trends. This year however, my dear friend Giselle Abramovich with CMO.com, reached out with an exceptional question and I couldn’t resist…especially since the answer was limited to 25 words. Digital transformation and becoming a “customer experience business” is clearly the future for marketing. What is the one thing CMOs…
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The Coming Trends in Digital Transformation, Marketing, CX and EX [VIDEO]
It was the day after the U.S. election. I arrived in Copenhagen. I was tired. It near the end of a two week trip that took me to Munich, Amsterdam, Beirut, and London. But, I was also excited to attend Digital Copenhagen, a conference that explores digital trends affecting the future of business. My presentation was set to challenge conventional beliefs around several important technological and business trends. Before I took the stage, I joined the crew at TwentyThree to…
