Stories by Brad Howarth

​Financial services companies have long feared the world’s technology giants would start coming after their customers, and it appears those fears are not without foundation.

It’s long been known happy employees are more productive and less likely to leave. It is also now becoming increasingly understood employee happiness and engagement play a key role in customer satisfaction.

Few companies of the digital era are as synonymous with the concept of great customer service as Zappos. Continuing to keep customers happy is a key focus for the group’s head of customer research, Alex Genov, who is speaking at the forthcoming CX Innovation & Tech Fest in Melbourne.

Lego is a brand synonymous with play. Indeed, its name is derived from the Danish words for ‘play well’ – leg godt. So it is perhaps not surprising to hear senior global director at Lego Group, Lars Silberbauer, uses similar language when referring to his own job.

Machine learning has become one of the hottest topics in marketing circles in 2018, as organisations strive to understand what it can do and how it works. But as with most emerging technologies, there is limited experience in market against which to make decisions.

​It is often said smell is the most evocative senses, readily resurfacing memories and feelings. But with marketers generally limited in their ability to reach the olfactory organs of most consumers, other senses can still be used to great effect.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that conferences were jammed with sessions on how techniques and ideas from the world of electronic gaming were revolutionising marketing.

As the CMO at a company focused on helping clients make better technology decisions, it’s no surprise to Forrester’s Victor Milligan that much of his time is spent providing that same service to marketers.

There’s a joke in the English town of Norwich that everyone either works in a church, in a pub, or in the insurance industry. Luckily for the customers of IAG, Julie Batch’s family worked in insurance, and instilled in her a set of values she has carried through to her current role as chief customer officer.

Janine Allis never set out to become one of the most recognised faces in Australian business. It was more just a matter of necessity.

When seen on a map, Anthony Dunsford’s responsibilities appear as a few hundred hectares of open space. But in 2017, that open space attracted over 40 million visits.

It’s not hard to find social media influencers to talk about holidays, restaurants and televisions. But what about a gel designed to alleviate vaginal dryness?

With so many organisations now focused on improving the experience they provide to customers, it’s not surprising to see multiple methods have emerged for measuring the quality of that experience.

While many contact centres encourage agents to resolve calls quickly, that’s not really appropriate when your service exists in part to prevent people taking their own lives.

CX professionals may not like to admit it, but one of the benefits of a low customer satisfaction score is plenty of room for improvement and potential easy wins. But what do you do if your customer satisfaction is already high?