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235: Five Strategies for Customer Experience Success in 2026 · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

0:58
Happy New Year and welcome back to the Customer Service Revolution podcast with John DiJulius.
1:03
I'm your co-host, Denise Thompson.
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If you're a C-suite leader right now, you're operating in a weird reality.
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Customers are paying more, expecting more, and tolerating less.
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And in 2026,
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The companies that win won't be the ones who try harder at service.
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They'll be the ones who build a customer experience strategy that's measurable, coachable, and consistent.
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Today's episode is called Five Customer Experience Strategies for 2026.
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I have John DiJulius fresh in the new year here, and we're going to walk him through five strategies leaders can use to create loyalty without relying on discounts or gimmicks.
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Welcome back from the holiday season, John.
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Happy New Year!
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Happy New Year to you.
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It's great to have you back.
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Are you ready to tackle this?
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Awesome.
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Let's start with the macro problem that you're seeing, which is strategy one.
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Use the customer service recession as a competitive advantage.
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You've said that we're in a customer service recession.
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Can you define that in plain English for a CEO?
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What's actually happening in the market?
2:16
Well, mean, you know, the experience gap is, you know, with the one thing that frustrates me when I hear the pundits talk about that customers expectations have never been higher.
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I don't agree with that.
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I don't feel like, you know, I feel like our expectations are lower because.
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It is at a customer satisfaction across all industries is an all time low.
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And the recession, we've had to deal with shrink flation, trick flation, tip flation, tariff flation, and inflation, which has caused the experience gap, which means customers
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are paying more and they're getting less.
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So it's not that their expectations are higher, but I think they're
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they're less tolerant, they're frustrated, which means they're gonna take it out on you and your customer facing employees.
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I've been guilty of it as a customer of just having less patience and probably more annoyed when oftentimes I'm not getting what I want.
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So you just mentioned the experience gap, customers paying more and getting less.
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Where do you see that gap show up the most?
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Is that speed, communication, follow through, something else?
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I think it could be all, all of those.
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First thing is how easy are you to do business with?
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And then it goes to how with the AI revolution, can I get to a human being?
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And then when do I do get to a human being?
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The human interaction is so much less today.
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it's fragile that it's got to be on point.
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And when it's not, when they're not trained well, when they don't show empathy and compassion and patience, I think employees need to be more patient.
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And a lot of times I don't think it's the employees' fault.
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I think it's the lack of training in that regard.
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You wrote a blog article recently for the new year and you cite that 66 % of consumers will walk when a brand breaks a promise.
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What are the most common promises companies break without realizing it?
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Well, the first is we've got to over promising, right?
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And I think if you go too often, whether it's websites or advertisements or marketing, think, you know, 99 % of companies brag on how great they are and their customer
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experience.
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The ones that don't are the ones that truly are.
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You'll never see a Nordstrom's or an Amazon, you know, brag about their customer experience.
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just, they just do it.
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so, yeah, I mean, the, the promise is kind of what, what we, we, we said is, you know, how easy we are to do business with and, and, and, you know, making it right when something
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goes wrong, that that's, we don't expect, I don't think customers expect everyone to be perfect, accurate and, and, and
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doing well most of the time, but when they do drop the ball, we got to pick it up.
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And I think that's so frustrating when it's hard to get to a human being or it's just higher resolution is just so next to impossible.
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The investment of time, the return on hassle, being zero risk is so critical.
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So for a leadership team listening now, what is the first promise they should audit this quarter?
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What should they be looking at?
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I think, you know, it always, it starts with the journey mapping, the customer journey mapping, which is each touch point, each interaction of the customer journey, which now
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can be in multiple channels, right?
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It could be online, it could be, you know, in person, it could be a phone call, all those things, you know, for the journey mapping, we call it.
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creating your signature experience and then really defining what are the pain points.
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We call it service defects for the customer.
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And if it's a service defect for a customer, it's a service defect for an employee.
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And no employee wants to be dealing with things that are challenging and getting beat up.
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And then what's your signature experience that your non-negotiables that
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that are both operational and experiential that separate you.
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We gotta be brilliant at the basics, but operational standards aren't memorable unless they're done wrong.
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So we expect the operation, we expect the appointment to be right, we expect the order to be accurate on time.
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whatever that may be.
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And so that's not a differentiator, even though we still have to be brilliant at the basics, but then what's creating your signature experience, the experiential side that
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makes you stand out, you know, and making that consistent.
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So would you say creating your customer journey or revisiting your journey is the fastest way to create separation from competitors right now without changing the product?
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Yeah, and investing in your customer experience and there's so many ways to do that.
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According to the Wall Street Journal report, 86 % of 800 C-suite members surveyed expect customer experience to become a top tier investment priority.
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That can't be just lip service, you really have to do it.
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So there's a lot of things, but I think that's the number one place to start.
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All right, so that's the strategic opportunity.
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Now let's get into the execution, because you can't deliver world-class experience with the wrong people in the wrong roles.
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So strategy two, hire for service aptitude, not just experience.
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You've said service aptitude is declining, and it's harder to find people with strong soft skills.
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What's driving the decline?
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You know, it's it's it's we're different generation, not generation, different world we're living in.
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It's the, you know, you know, the past 20 years, the explosion in, you know, the digital disruption where technology has brought us unprecedented advances in information,
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knowledge, instant access and entertainment.
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However, as convenient as these are, advances make our lives.
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They've also changed the way we communicate, behave, think.
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and dramatically decline in our people skills.
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you know, we have all generations are struggling in people skills, but you definitely have the 30 and under at no fault of their own, their relationship disadvantage.
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And that's our workforce, you know, that's, you know, well, you know, that are, you know, becoming more and more of our workforce.
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and especially our customer facing employees, our relationship disadvantage.
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You know, they spend less time with their friends via in-person.
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They have telephobia where they're uncomfortable with literally talking to someone on the phone.
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Their primary communication is electronic.
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And with the explosion of e-commerce means we go out less and less.
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And when we do, we now have
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the option of self-service checkout to avoid interacting with other human beings.
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And so, all these have created a decay in our people skills.
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And again, especially 30 and under, no fault of their own.
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Yeah, it's tough.
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There is a lot of relationship disadvantaged in the world today.
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But some of these service aptitude skills can be trained.
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Some cannot, you've always said.
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Walk us through how a leader should think about what can be coached and trained for versus what has to be screened for.
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Well, is a, while these skills seem like basic expectations in the workforce, one study showed that nearly 60 % of leaders in the US believe it's the number one challenge to find
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candidates with soft skills.
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That's why it's a responsibility of companies in leadership and the training they provide to continually develop these skills.
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there's 10,
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Service aptitude skills, AKA soft skills.
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Empathy, friendly, kind and caring is two.
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Three is curiosity.
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Four is the ability to make a connection, build a rapport.
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Five is someone who's happy, positive, optimistic.
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Six is good listening skills.
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Seven is that you genuinely like others.
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And this isn't necessarily order.
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Eight.
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is the ability to fuse and upset customer and make a brilliant comeback.
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Nine is enthusiasm and 10 is the energy you bring, the charisma that you bring.
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not all of them are, know, the training that you do, not all of them can be moved by training.
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So you have to know which ones you have to hire for.
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Now, when you're interviewing,
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and selecting.
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It's great if you find people with as many of those as you can.
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That just gives you a head start.
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Your training does have to, a new employee training, ongoing does have to address all of these, but there's four of the 10 that I don't think the training, all the training in the
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world is gonna move the needle.
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And that's really what's important with.
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your interview process is to find people who possess the four that the training probably won't have a major impact.
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Are you going to give us those four?
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I would love to.
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nicely.
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Yeah, so friendly, kind and caring, you know, that's one.
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Happy, positive, optimistic, that's two.
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Genuinely like others, that's three.
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And enthusiastic.
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I think training can move the needle a little bit, but not significantly.
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So that's why your interview process has to find people that have those.
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the other ones, know, empathy, curiosity, ability to build a rapport, being a good listener, making a brilliant comeback with an upset customer and, energy and charisma.
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again, if you could find those in people, great, but your training can have a significant, you can move the needle on that.
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If you find people that are friendly, happy, that genuinely like others.
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that are gonna be in a customer facing role.
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But even if they're not in a customer facing role, they're probably dealing with coworkers and all those things make a big impact on your workplace culture.
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So if I'm a CEO that wants to reduce complaints in 2026, are you saying hiring will matter more than another training program?
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it matters more, it's a combination.
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It's like if you go to, I always say the culture and training you bring someone into puts them through a new employee is more important than hiring.
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But you got to have a screening filter system to find those four service aptitude skills.
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they're both critical.
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You can't just hire anyone for those reasons.
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So you got to have the interview process to find your potential customer experience rock star.
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your goal is to find candidates who have exceptional service aptitude, happy, caring, friendly, kind, positive, and genuinely like others.
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So that's what a strong
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interview process will help you do.
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What are some signals during the interview process that can predict that someone will struggle in a service-driven culture?
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Well, you know, it needs to be either a conversation.
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It can't be just focused on their past experience, you know, and the skill set is important.
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But, you know, like I said, I believe 60 % of the service aptitude skills can be, if you have it, your onboarding and ongoing training can be taught.
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So, you know,
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Are they engaging?
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Do they make eye contact?
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Are they enthusiastic?
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And so, you know, there's questions like I love asking.
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You guys don't let me interview too often, but I love asking, you know, with your days off, nights, weekends, vacations, holidays, whatever, what's your most favorite thing to
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do?
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you know, provided that it's legal, I don't care what the answer is.
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what I'm looking for is do you get excited to talk about your most favorite thing to do, whether it's playing with your kids, going for a run, know, your pets, you know,
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skydiving, whatever it may be.
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If you don't get excited and show enthusiasm about your most favorite passionate thing to do, you're not going to be, you know, enthusiastic or passionate about anything,
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especially your job.
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So there's a lot of things like that.
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to help us.
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There's a lot of questions that we have in our interview question.
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I think we have 30 questions in our interview guide to gauge someone's potential service aptitude.
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And listeners, we will put the interview question guide, a link to that in our show notes.
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So if you'd like to see those questions, they're available for you.
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John, leaders always love the phrase, hire for the heart, train for the part.
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What does it actually look like in a scalable hiring process?
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Yeah, mean, you unless it's something, you know, licensed, you know, like, and even then, obviously the skill, the license, the diploma, the certification, you know, for entry, to
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get into the industry, a lawyer, a accountant, a hairdresser, you know, whatever that may mean, you you got to have that.
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But after that, you know,
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I believe we can train anyone on the skill, but do they have the heart?
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Do they have the want to, again, are they friendly, kind and caring?
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We can train them on the execution of almost anything in our businesses and I believe in most that we've worked with and consulted with.
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you know, you're hiring the person, the person that has, you know, those those service aptitude skills or the potential for them.
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I'm not as worried for the part means, you know, the job answering the phones, you know, selling all those things.
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We can teach them that we can't teach them the heart part.
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Even with the right people, most organizations lose the battle at training because the training doesn't stick, which leads to strategy three, replace big training with micro
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learning that reinforces the standards.
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You're blunt about this.
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Long trainings, manuals, hours of video are not the answer anymore.
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Why?
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Well, it's it's it's micro learning is a new piece.
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And it's and so I'm not talking about the initial onboarding of a new employee.
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That's critical.
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And that might have to be depending on the soft and technical skills that might have to be two days, two weeks.
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in a class and the traditional training.
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Where micro learning comes in is after that, you know, from, you know, 91 days to 30 years.
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Long gone are the days of having employees sit in front of a screen and watch hours of talking heads and training videos and reading training manuals.
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And this isn't just a generational thing, the way employees learn, the way people consume, learn.
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retrain information has undergone a significant evolution.
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so micro learning is the hottest trend in professional development.
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Micro learning is an educational approach that delivers short content, focused segments, typically lasting way less than five minutes.
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Think TikTok, YouTube reels, shorts, Instagram reels.
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These are concise learning units designed to address specific training and make them easy to digest and accessible at the learner's convenience.
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Can you talk about micro learning in a way that a CFO would respect?
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not as a trend, but as a performance system?
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Yeah.
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So just think like, you're again, you're trained, you're out doing your job, but there's no way you're, you know, anyone's going to remember everything they were trained on or top
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of mind awareness.
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So, you know, we're going to focus on the customer experience.
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So, you know, it might be every Wednesday at 830 AM on your phone, on your iPad, on your computer pops up a
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you know, 90 second training, micro learning video, again, think YouTube reels or shorts or whatever they're called.
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And it just pops up.
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You've already been trained on this, but it's to remind you today to execute the five E's when you meet someone, enthusiastic greet, ear to ear smile.
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Now I'm forgetting the five E's.
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Eye contact, engage and educate.
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And then you go into a little bit.
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Now you're gonna be a little bit more, next week it might be service recovery, do the least if that's your acronym, listen, empathize, apologize, solve and thank.
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Next week it might be focusing on collecting and utilizing forward when you engage with a client.
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you know, find out their, you know, two or more things of their family, occupation, recreation and dreams.
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So these are just little things that are constantly reinforcing.
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It's not the same thing every week.
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I mean, if you have, you know, good training, you could, you know, get, you know, easily 52 weeks of, you know, a less than five minute, micro learning video.
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It's kind of like a quick hit of dopamine on your customer experience.
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So if you're looking to change behavior, what should it reinforce specifically?
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It's going to be a varied amount of things, standards, language, recovery, communication.
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uh
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your nevers and always.
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This week it could be why we never say no.
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And while we can't say yes to everything, we focus on what we can do.
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And then you give some examples of what that looks like.
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So it's different things like that.
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Why we never overshare and examples of how we could be guilty of oversharing.
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Instead,
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you know, focus on making the situation right without throwing someone under the bus or, you know, oversharing that we've had a lot of turnover this week or, you know, shipping
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just isn't getting anything right and all those things.
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You know, so, so it's just, I mean, there's so many, I don't think we could, know, if you have really good customer experience training, it's taking what you're initially training
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your team members on in onboarding and, know, in their first 90 days and just sprinkling them out over the course of, you know, 52 weeks.
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and what cadence works best in the real world so that it's consistent and doesn't just become noise.
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think once a week, same time, same thing.
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then, depending on your LMS, you can track that you watched it.
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And then there's a little thing that pops up at the end that is like a little quiz.
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What are the five E's?
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And you give them 10 E's.
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What does Ford stand for?
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And you give them...
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you know, several F's, several O's, several R's, several D's.
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So it's cementing both that they watched it and they, you know, got it right.
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And so it's little things like that.
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So I think every week, same time, and again, this should be less than two or three minutes.
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you know, it's not like you're taking people.
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off the floor and when you're retraining them, you gotta take two people off the floor.
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In the past, the trainer and the trainee, you don't to do that anymore.
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Do you have an example of a five minute micro learning moment that would actually reduce friction for customers?
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Or do we even have a link that we could give to listeners for something to do that we have?
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yeah, yeah, we have, you know, a couple of the micro learning examples.
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And it's the ones I already use the, you know, focusing on the five E's, which we call delivering genuine hospitality.
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And then the other ones, you know, collecting and utilizing Ford.
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And, you know, depending on what type of business model you're in.
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You know, those are good things.
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So hopefully we can share those links in the show notes.
23:17
Great, we'll put them in there.
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Quick break here.
23:19
If you're listening and thinking, we need to operationalize this, not just talk about it,
23:24
The DiJulius Group helps leadership teams build customer experience as a competitive advantage through clear standards, coaching systems, hiring filters, and measurable
23:33
execution.
23:34
If you want a plan that your team can actually implement, schedule a call with us.
23:39
You'll get clarity on what to fix first, what to measure, and how to make it stick.
23:43
So you can schedule a call at any time.
23:45
Go to tdg.click forward slash Claudia.
23:50
Now back to the episode.
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All right, and strategy number four, stop over relying on surveys.
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Measure what customers actually do.
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You argue, John, that customer surveys are collapsing because of survey fatigue.
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What's the danger of using NPS or CSAT as your primary scoreboard in 2026?
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Well, you know, I venture to guess anyone, everyone, most people that are watching, listening to this podcast have several customer satisfaction surveys sitting in their
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inbox or texts, messages that they'll never fill out and they'll just delete or ignore.
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I know I do.
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And with
24:31
the rise of these surveys that we get them from everyone, the dentist, the salon, everyone, Uber, you name it.
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It's just, we have survey fatigue and so they're broken.
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Now the only people answering them are outliers that if you really pissed me off or blew me away.
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So you're not getting an accurate,
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customer satisfaction survey from enough.
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So the response rates are at an all time low.
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so we have to, there's new ways to do this.
25:09
You've pointed out before that NPS measures intent, not action.
25:14
So what should leaders measure that ties to reality?
25:18
Yeah, so to your question or point there, NPS had its day, but what it asked was how likely are you to recommend us to a family or friend?
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The challenge with that question is you're measuring my intent, but that doesn't mean I'll actually do it.
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There's ways to measure if I actually do that.
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and so, you know, that's where you, you, you, you go into, you know, the earned sales growth.
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and, you break it down.
25:44
there's, know, whatever you did last period, right?
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Quarter year, month, week, whatever you want to break it down to you, you can look at that.
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And if you did a hundred thousand, a million, you know, in that period, those, that sales came from two places, bought and earned.
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Right.
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But is, you know, and the number one question here is the only thing you have to do is track where customers come from.
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And in most businesses, it shouldn't be that hard, but that is an important distinction.
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You have to make it where, you know, if you're a new customer, I can't enter you without, you know, answering that question that you came from, you you Googled us, you.
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saw our billboard or you were referred or you repeat, you know, you're coming back for more.
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As long as you do that, you can run a report.
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So if you did a million dollars last period, you know, you can break down the percentage bought is is they came from advertising earned is they are repeats or referrals.
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And we have to get, you know, obsessive.
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We have to lose sleep at night over the earned sales growth.
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And when you do that, and when it's part of your ROX dashboard, your return on experience dashboard, it should be your number one.
27:06
If your business model allows, now there's some that don't.
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If you're a retailer where I just come in and buy Snickers and beer, a convenience store, you don't have a database on me.
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So that wouldn't apply there.
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But most businesses, especially all B2Bs and a lot of B2Cs, they do have a database.
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They do pull you up or have to enter you.
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If you do that, then this is perfect.
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So what does earned sales growth reveal?
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Why is it a smarter North Star?
27:40
It's repeat and referrals, right?
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And that's everything.
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And it's a lot less expensive to have someone come in.
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If you call any business up and I ask you, how did you hear of us?
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And you say, I Googled salons in the area or customer service consultants.
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That means you.
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also are calling for other of my competitors and you're looking for the best deal.
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If you're coming back for more or you know, your significant other friend at work, best friend, neighbor said you have to use them.
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You're not calling anyone else.
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So it's so much more profitable.
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And so when you start tracking that as a business location, department, an individual, service provider, accountant, lawyer, consultant, whatever it is, now we're able to pay
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people more.
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We pay our consultants more on retained, repeat, re-signs.
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We pay our hairdressers more.
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on retain and referrals.
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It's so much more profitable.
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And so you have to get everyone, now, how do you get more repeat and more referrals?
28:56
Well, number one, your experience has to be phenomenal and you have to talk about it.
29:02
But,
29:02
it really 90 % of that is about the experience.
29:07
99 % of that is about the experience.
29:10
So that's on the company doing the training.
29:13
It goes back to micro learning and the hiring, the onboarding, all that.
29:18
And then now we can see that, Dave has a 62 % earned growth rate.
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And, and, know, someone else has a, you know, 18%.
29:37
Well, that's, that's a big disparity.
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So we know who needs more training.
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we know who's not providing the experience.
29:44
Dave's just not getting lucky, luckier.
29:47
you know, so, you know, everyone should be losing sleep at night.
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That should be the number one KPI.
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everyone sees we call it ROX return on experience, KPI that everyone.
29:58
is losing sleep at night from CEO, CFO to the individual employee.
30:04
John, if a leadership team starts tracking earned sales growth this quarter, what are the first behaviors they should reinforce or stop rewarding?
30:14
Well, yeah, mean, know, earned growth, earned sales growth is less gameable.
30:19
can game NPS and CSAT.
30:21
You know, those are gameable.
30:22
You know, we've all bought a car where the salesperson says, listen, in the next 10 days, you're going to be getting something from the manufacturer.
30:31
You have to give me a five, anything less than five.
30:34
You know, I don't get whatever or I get in trouble.
30:38
You know,
30:39
So, but it just, the earned sales growth exposes the company's experience and the individual department, location, employee.
30:49
And so, you know, just start tracking it and then you want them to move north and you focus on all the things we're talking about from the hiring.
31:00
to the initial onboarding training of those service aptitude skills and the technical skill set and the ongoing.
31:08
And that's where the micro learning comes in because I didn't train you 29 years ago and haven't revisited with you or I do once a year.
31:18
I always say annual customer service trainings like deodorant.
31:22
Within a couple of weeks it'll wear off and then
31:24
the odor will come back.
31:25
What a great analogy.
31:26
Denise?
31:27
Or is it gonna be 30 this year?
31:30
Yeah.
31:32
You started in 96?
31:35
Wow, I think it's in February, Ho!
31:36
Yeah, yeah.
31:40
Hi.
31:41
All right.
31:41
So if you've been keeping up, now we've got market advantage, the right people, training that sticks, and the metric that matters.
31:49
But none of it's going to hold if your employee experience is broken.
31:53
So strategy five is treat employee experience as the root system of the customer experience.
32:00
You say it plainly, your employee experience becomes your customer experience.
32:05
Where did we?
32:07
I'm sorry.
32:08
EX equals your CX.
32:11
of that equation, your EX equals your CX.
32:14
Your employee experience equals your customer experience.
32:18
Where do leaders typically disconnect those two?
32:22
Well, you know, it goes back to all the parts of the employee experience.
32:27
Are you creating a recruiting experience that makes it un-gameable, that just doesn't hire anyone with a pulse, that makes it hard to get a job?
32:35
Quit looking to find great talent and make great talent seek you out.
32:40
The onboarding experience, which we've really talked
32:43
And then, know, the ongoing, so to me, the onboarding is, you know, day one to 90, and the ongoing is 91 days to, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years.
32:58
And, you know, just, you know, making sure, and it's developing leaders to execute that employee experience.
33:05
But what's happened on the inside will happen on the outside.
33:09
And these really aren't in necessarily order.
33:12
You could probably put this first if you're ordering these, put them in order, but it all starts with the employee experience.
33:20
You have leaders ask an engagement survey question that most miss, asking their employees, how do you feel Friday at 6 PM versus Sunday at 6 PM?
33:32
Why is that question so revealing?
33:35
Because when we've done this, the answers we get, the average answers is Friday night, people are over a nine out of a 10.
33:47
They're pumped.
33:47
If we're talking about the traditional work week where the weekends, your weekend is Saturday and Sunday, so you can adjust this for whatever their schedule is.
33:57
if their days off are during the week or whatever.
34:01
But most people are, you know, pumped at 6 p.m.
34:05
on, let's say a Friday night.
34:07
And then on a Sunday night at 6 p.m., when it starts to hit that you got to return to work tomorrow morning and a full work week ahead of you, you know, most of these, you know,
34:19
scores we get are below a three.
34:23
and people get pits in their stomach.
34:25
And that's horrible.
34:28
It's horrible that the majority of your week, the majority of employees get a pit in their stomach when they're thinking about work.
34:37
Work is, we can't avoid working.
34:39
Working takes up a majority of our life and it should be.
34:44
more rewarding.
34:45
so I think leaders, I don't expect that Sunday night will rival Friday night.
34:50
But what if your employees, you can get it to a six or a seven on a Sunday night, triple what the average employee out there feels?
35:01
I think this is a great question.
35:02
And I think it exposes the culture you're building and the individual leader.
35:08
I guarantee you it will follow a great leader and it'll expose one that needs more training in the same company.
35:17
You also cite that employees stay longer when companies invest in learning and development.
35:22
How should leaders translate that into a rhythm, not just a one-time initiative?
35:28
Well, that's what we're going back to, the micro learning and the different things.
35:32
The majority of employees training happens in their first 90 days.
35:38
And then, less than 20 % of their training they'll get it at one company occurs after that.
35:46
So if you work here 10 years, 15 years, that's not a whole lot after your first 90 days.
35:51
We love to blast people with a fire hose when we first hire them, but then we ignore them.
35:58
according to a LinkedIn workforce learning report, 94 % of employees say that they would have stayed at a company longer if they simply invested in them.
36:07
today it's so much easier to invest, again, the micro learning, but also
36:14
You know, there's a great best practice I heard and recently wrote about in a blog where, you know, people read less, right?
36:22
With the, you know, increase of video and audio and podcasts and, you know, all these things, reading has gone down significantly and right or wrong.
36:34
That's just the way people are consuming information.
36:37
But
36:38
Instead of, there's one company out there that I wrote about that instead of having a book club, they have a video club and they might send you, you know, a five minute video.
36:48
might send you a Ted talk, you know, but you know, everyone will, you know, in the group will watch that and then report on it like they do in a book club.
36:57
So there's just so many, easier ways today to get people to consume, information.
37:04
through different channels that you're sharing with them.
37:07
And another thing, LinkedIn research found that roughly a quarter of Gen Zs and millennials say learning is the number one thing that made them happy at work.
37:16
And over a quarter of them, 27 % of Gen Zs and millennials say the number one reason they'd leave their job is that they did not have the opportunity to learn and grow.
37:27
I think we underestimate that as leaders.
37:29
I always say if we're building on employees,
37:32
resume by professional development, by educating them, they won't use their resume.
37:40
It's when we stop adding value to their resume by giving them more professional development where they know they're losing value.
37:50
So true, so true.
37:51
I think we would see it with people that came to our conference even as professional development, how loyal they were to their companies, how they appreciated that.
38:00
think also about our attendees for the Customer Experience Executive Academy.
38:06
the participants that we have in that love the companies that they work for.
38:11
I can't imagine them saying, oh, I learned this.
38:14
I'm going to take it somewhere else.
38:16
They learn it.
38:17
They can't wait to use it.
38:18
They're excited about it.
38:19
They appreciate the investment.
38:22
And it also demonstrates that, you know, the leader believes in that employee and, you know, sees a future and bigger things.
38:30
Yeah, absolutely.
38:31
You emphasize recognition as a lever.
38:34
What does effective recognition look like?
38:37
Lever.
38:38
L-E-V-E-R
38:40
It could be lover too.
38:43
That you love your employees, not in the, know.
38:47
Creepy sense.
38:49
it's always a creepy sense.
38:53
We don't need another episode like 2025 with the Coldplay concert.
39:01
You emphasize recognition as a lever.
39:05
What does effective recognition look like operationally?
39:10
So it's consistent, not random.
39:12
Yeah, yeah.
39:13
63 % of employees who are recognized regularly say they wouldn't consider looking for a new job.
39:19
Now there's a lot more things, know, there's a professional development, there's workplace culture, it's all those things, but that's a big number.
39:27
You know, and our loved ones, our coworkers, our employees are not telepathic about our appreciation.
39:35
You know, we must continually express, you know, our gratitude and appreciation.
39:41
So,
39:41
You know, we talk about this at length in our trainings and in the employee experience revolution book.
39:48
But, you know, teaching your leaders, training your leaders to constantly catch people doing something right, to constantly recognize them, to celebrate them.
39:59
You know, and there's so many great ways.
40:03
One of my favorite that I've learned from from great companies is is, you know, also doing it.
40:08
to their family, letting their family know what a rock star their employee is, thanking their family, their spouse, their kids for the sacrifices they're making because everyone
40:20
makes sacrifices when, for someone's job, meaning that someone's gonna be away from home, traveling, working long hours, particular times a year or not.
40:33
consistently, but it may be more consistent depending on the job and letting them know that their sacrifices.
40:39
I always say that one of our, an employer's biggest competitor is not just the other companies recruiting them or they could possibly be interviewing with, but it's their
40:52
loved ones.
40:53
If their loved ones don't like the company they work for, if their loved ones think they're being taken advantage of, if their loved ones are stressed and annoyed at how much
41:04
time they're away, that's going to be a big factor in why they're looking for a new job.
41:11
So we want the loved ones to love the company and know that they're appreciated and celebrated.
41:17
And finally, wouldn't be 2026 without talking about AI.
41:21
Where does AI fit in this whole thing without killing the human element?
41:25
What's the leadership role for what gets automated versus what stays human?
41:31
Yeah, mean, the AI revolution is reshaping how, you know, businesses approach customer experience and leaders are rushing to automate more cut labor costs and reduce customer
41:41
facing roles.
41:42
But in doing so, they risk losing the human touch that drives customer loyalty.
41:49
You know, automation at Chatbot does not create loyalty.
41:53
So most current AI tools focus on the efficiencies such as summary search,
41:58
and automation, while overlooking the emotional connection that customers crave.
42:05
Just like we say, employees are relationship disadvantaged, customers are relationship disadvantaged.
42:12
And we talked about this earlier, that the human interaction is so much rarer today that when it happens, it has to be on point.
42:25
So AI excels at making the business easier, but the human still creates the experience that customers remember.
42:33
So, you we got to make sure that the human side of the service helping, you know, helping employees respond more quickly, naturally with an emotional intelligence, demonstrating
42:44
the empathy, demonstrating the, you know, critical thinking.
42:48
AI will never make a brilliant comeback.
42:50
the human will.
42:52
know, AI is not going to build a rapport, the human will.
42:55
Yeah, so AI, where do you think the biggest opportunity is right now for people with AI and customer experience?
43:07
I'm not rushing.
43:08
Listen, there's an AI bubble.
43:10
It's not, you know, if it's going to burst, it's just when and it's, you know, people compare it to the dot com bubble.
43:19
I think it's going to be worse.
43:20
So, you know, I think AI is critical.
43:23
think every company should be exploring it.
43:27
I think they should be crawl, walking and running.
43:29
There's so much.
43:31
Like the dot com, there's too many players and they all can't survive.
43:35
And the problem with it is there's layers and layers of apps that have to talk to one another, that have to work with your CRM system, that have to work in so many different
43:46
platforms.
43:47
You just have to be cautious of how you're doing it.
43:50
and that you're not eliminating the human, the employee, the opportunity to speak to employee, to engage with employee when I need it.
43:59
it's just, you just gotta, you know, think this is one of types, you definitely don't wanna be a pioneer.
44:06
You wanna let other people work out the kinks, you know, and there's a lot of great AI apps that you can, you you're probably already incorporating.
44:14
just be careful how fast because again, some companies you're using won't be around by the end of 2026.
44:22
Thank you, John.
44:23
Here's the part at the end here I want every CEO to hear in 2026, customer experience isn't a slogan, it's a system.
44:30
And the companies that win will be the ones who build consistency through the promises they keep, the people they hire, the way they train, what they measure and how they lead
44:41
their teams.
44:42
So here's the leadership takeaway.
44:43
Pick one place where your company is currently breaking a promise.
44:47
Maybe it's follow through communication, responsiveness or service recovery.
44:52
Fix it, standardize it, coach it, measure it, make it part of how you operate, not something you try to do when things aren't busy.
45:01
If you want help building these five strategies into your organization, we are happy to help.
45:07
We work with executive teams to design standards and systems that create loyalty, reduce complaints, and drive earned growth without relying on discounts or constant firefighting.
45:17
Schedule a call with one of our advisors today to map out what to fix for
45:21
and how to execute it throughout your organization.
45:25
Thanks for listening to the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
45:29
that number or that link is tdg.click forward slash Claudia to schedule a call.
45:35
It'll be in the show notes as well.
45:37
Thanks, John.
45:38
Thanks, Denise.
45:39
Thank you, revolutionaries.
45:41
Thanks listeners, we'll see you next week.