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Social niceties are easy to do half-heartedly.

But they’re not for us, they’re for the other person.

When you show up begrudgingly, it’s not half-hearted, it’s cold hearted.

A handshake, a greeting, the way we sit in a meeting or wear a mask–it’s a chance to connect and to make a difference for the person we’re with.

All in, or not at all.

When Google or Facebook or Spotify decide what you’ll see next, they’re making a choice.

That’s very different from an open platform like “podcasting” or “blogging” (in quotes with no capital letters, because no one is in charge.)

Being in charge implies that choices are being made. And people who are in charge–even if it’s just one person in charge of their own voice–are choosing.

Choosing is a form of selection, of amplification and of curation. Not official government censorship, but something more nuanced than that, the responsibility that comes from choice.

In many parts of our culture, particularly pockets of tech, it’s fashionable to talk about ‘free speech’ and ‘open platforms’ as if they’re unalloyed virtues. But the moment Apple puts a podcast on its home page, Google decides to put this blog in your promo folder, or Spotify decides to promote one song or podcast over another, the platform is no longer truly open. Often, individuals and organizations use terms like this when they’re defending something that isn’t helpful to the people who encountered it.

When money enters the picture, it’s even more complicated. There’s a difference between a truly open platform and an algorithm staffed by people who put one sort of website on their spam list and another highly ranked, simply because they make more of a profit on the second one. Or when YouTube or Spotify pay people a thousand (or two hundred million) dollars to host their content…

Ideas shared create value. Good ideas are the engine of our future. We’ve seen that when creators of ideas take responsibility for their work, it’s more likely that we all benefit.

Wide-open platforms almost always lead to chaos, negative side effects and anonymous spam. I’m in favor of choice, especially when it’s made by organizations and individuals willing to be held responsible for the choices they make.

As we head further into 2022, it’s apparent that companies are picking up steam and looking ahead to the future of their experience practices (customer experience, employee experience, and beyond).
If you’re looking for resources to share with your team on experience leadership, I encourage you to look take a look at the authors on this year’s Global Gurus list of customer experience leaders for inspiration (a sincere thank you to Global Gurus for including me in the list once again).
Over the last two years, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing many of the people on the list, so I’ve pulled out some of my favorite highlights from our conversations that look to the future of experience leadership.
1. Know Your Guardrails
“Who are we together and how do we figure out solutions to the problems?” asks my friend Chip Bell, whose latest book is Inside Your Customer’s Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions. In our conversation, he talks about the importance of grounding your company in your principles and guardrails to set your team up for success through a shared and establish culture.
Building a strong foundation for future planning is the start.
Listen to or watch the full interview »
 
2. Move with Purpose
In our discussion about his book, Stronger Through Adversity: World Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges, my friend Joseph Michelli talks about moving with purpose or “innovating at work speed.” He explains that it’s about caring what needs to be done today in order to keep a customer or employee.
In other words, there may be things that you have laid out on your map or journey that you’ve phased out to be done over the next few months or years and you will have to figure out how to get it done over the next few weeks. For instance, during the pandemic, most companies had no choice but to quickly figure out how to accommodate digital and no-touch services, even though it may not have been in their immediate business plans.
Listen to or watch the full interview »
 
3. Think Beyond “Interim Normal”
In my conversation with Brian Solis, he says, “Looking out between now and over the course of 18-24-36 months, and breaking out into different stages where of course, yes, we have to react, stabilize, ensure business continuity, but with COVID, instead of calling it a ‘new normal,’ it’s the interim normal, right? […] It’s an interim period, and it’s the time to think about business continuity. What’s next? What can I learn from all of this so that we thrive, so that we innovate, we iterate for the future, which gives us a sense of purpose.”
Beyond the challenges of this moment, brands must look ahead to think about the bigger picture of what CX could look like.
Listen to or watch the full interview »
 
4. Move from Best in Industry to World Class
“Forget about our competition. What companies outside of our industry do we love doing business with? And why? It doesn’t matter how big or small,” says Shep Hyken. In our conversation about his book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again, Shep and I discuss six easy steps to systematically building a loyal customer base.
Listen to or watch the full interview »
 
5. Build Your Legacy: What’s Your “Three Blocks Long”? 
How will you be remembered? How do you want people to recall who you are as people? What behaviors do you want to define you? How do you improve lives? That’s your “Three blocks long.” Over my 35 years in this industry, I’ve built a library of resources to help you start the process to find YOUR three blocks long and start to look beyond what your brand is known for now and towards what you’ll be remembered for long-term.
Download resources here »

Want to get more inspiration from customer experience leaders from every industry? Be sure to subscribe to my podcast. It’s been my gift to you to host over 200 episodes of my podcast, the Chief Customer Officer Human Duct Tape Show, featuring corporate and non-profit executives from across the C-Suite, as well as thought leaders, focused on doing the work of experience.
The post 5 Lessons from the 2022 CX “Global Gurus” on Future-Facing Customer Experience appeared first on Customer Bliss.

The past two years have been a whirlwind for all the industries, with customer experience (CX) being no different. Our aim with the CXMStars™ is to support the path to CX excellence and foster the community of the best practices as well as knowledge sharing. Thank you to all participants who joined us in our mission…
The post Top 50 CXMStars™ 2022 have been chosen 🏆 appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.