Experts of Experience - The Model That Creates Lifelong Customers (and Revenue)

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

How do brands create customers who stay for years or even decades? In this episode, we break down the model behind lifelong loyalty, emotional connection, and trust-based customer experience - the kind that drives repeat revenue, referrals, and real brand love. Our guest is John Boccuzzi, Jr., CX leader, speaker, author of The Art of Seducing Your Customers, and President of ISG Research. With 30+ years studying how companies build trust and deliver memorable customer experiences, John shares the frameworks and stories that prove: CX is not a cost center — it’s a growth engine. You’ll learn:The #1 factor that determines whether customers returnWhy customer experience is more emotional than operationalThe “Ruth Story” - how one pair of glasses changed John’s entire view on CXHow to scale empathy, trust, and personalization across big organizationsWhat brands get wrong when implementing AI in customer experienceThe future of CX and what will matter most in the next 12 months If you lead customer experience, marketing, service, brand, or product, this conversation will reshape how you think about delivering value.Watch Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgNCaTYkXCE&t=1864s Key Moments:0:00 Meet John Boccuzzi, Jr.3:20 What Customer Experience Really Is5:20 The “Ruth Story”: Creating Emotional Loyalty10:10 Why Having a Point of View Builds Trust15:15 Training Teams to Deliver Great CX18:55 Scaling Emotional Customer Experiences23:30 How AI Fits Into Customer Experience29:55 The Power of First Impressions33:25 How Brands Stay Relevant Today37:15 Make the Customer Journey Simple42:55 The Future of Personalization49:15 Common Misconceptions About CX50:27 A Trend to Bet On (That Isn’t AI) –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is customer experience? It's not just satisfying the customer. It's seducing them. It's getting them to truly believe in you passionately about what you're doing. When I ever go to a restaurant, I always say, what do you recommend? And if they say, well, I haven't tried anything on the menu, that's an epic fail on the restaurant. They should be sampling everything and have a point of view. AI is a cost reduction opportunity in a lot of people's eyes.

I look it as a cost expansion opportunity, right? A client expansion opportunity. How do you create revenue because of the AI, not reduce the cost? If the first impression does not meet expectation, it's a 0% chance of them winning the deal. Wow. Not like 20%, not 10%. No one's ever done it. So how is your brand creating that first impression with the customer base?

The thing about friction is it never goes away 100%. There's always friction. It's kind of like radiation. There's a half-life's radiation. It never goes away, right? So I think we always have to consider being a friction hunter. What trend are you betting on that's not AI? Today's guest is John Bakuzi Jr., the president of ISG Research and the author of The Art of

Seducing Your Customer. Is there an art seducing your customer? Well, John thinks there is, and today he shares his playbook and guide for how to do that very thing. John has the most popular TED Talk on YouTube for CX, where he talks about his experience as a customer purchasing glasses several years ago. This story set the tone for his career, and since then, he's been writing books, speaking, and advising companies on how to deliver an emotional customer experience, something that sticks with customers in a way that they will never forget

it and they want to come back. In today's conversation, John and I debate positive friction versus negative friction, where there might be room to add a little extra friction, but ultimately why simplicity is the most seductive choice. John also shares why he thinks, younger generations are going to be craving more analog, human-driven experiences, and how brands can prepare for that change. We talk about AI and what he's seen in research about how enterprises are successfully using AI. And he also shares a statistic that blew my mind about why the first impression with the brand is the most important. We also get into employee empowerment. And when you think about it, your $20 an hour customer service rep is the one that's representing your company

as the face of the brand most frequently. So how can you empower them to make the decisions that are going to actually lead to customer enjoyment and an emotional response that keeps them coming back? This is experts of experience, and I'm your host, Lacey Peace. I absolutely love this conversation with John today. But before we dive in,

please hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, and leave a comment below with your favorite takeaway from this episode. Here's John Pekuzzi Jr., the president of ISG research and the author of The Art of Seducing your customer. John, welcome to the show. Lacey, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I am so excited to talk with you today. I have been spending the last hour sort of doing a deep dive. I watched your TED Talk again. I looked through your book and I was like, oh, I cannot wait to have John on the podcast

and ask all the questions that I've been burning to ask now that I've been reading some of your content. Thanks, Lacey. And look at your title of this podcast is perfect because I'm all about experience. So thanks for inviting me. Yeah, yeah, of course. So I've asked guests in the past out the gate to define what CX is. And I would love to hear from you, what is customer experience? This is a journey that's been over 30 years now for me and really figuring out that it's a critical component to success in business and your life in general.

And I would say customer experience is about trust. It's about relationships. It's about empathy. So as I think about customer experience, those are the three type of big words. that I think about when I think about customer experience. So when that customer or that client is engaging with you, do they trust you? Do they understand that you empathize with the challenges they may be having?

Those are big important things for me. And that's how I think about defining customer experience. What I love about that definition is it's very emotional-based. It's like how, like if I were to summarize that, I would say that CX is all about how does my customer feel, right? Yeah, how does my customer feel? feel, and it doesn't mean they're always going to feel like you're always going to wow them, but did they get what they need it? That's kind of what we want to deliver, right?

Is I wanted an ice cream, I got an ice cream. That's fantastic. You have to over deliver, but you need it to deliver. Yep. It's cool to me that you're coming at it from this perspective of sort of that emotional experience of empathy, trust, right? Because you could have answered, you know, customer experience is these touch points that you have with your customer in sales and in marketing, right? Like, we could have gotten really into the business we, of what is customer experience? But I think we lose touch so much with what is our customer actually going through. If we think about it from this very logistical perspective instead of the emotional human side of,

no, how do they feel? Do they trust me? Did they get what they wanted? Did I satisfy them? And so it kind of brings me to your book, The Art of Seducing Your Customers, which is just a great title. Like, kudos to you for naming it that. That's fantastic. tell me a little bit about the origin story of this book and yeah you're kind of like foray into this

customer experience field yeah sure um so look i got i have to give my wife cynthia full credit for the book title and the ted talk title oh really i thought it was far too provocative for the ted talk and she said no john you've got to do it and so the ted talk became the number one ted talk on customer experience and I think partially due to the title so full credit to my wife Cynthia for that and and really the journey started I said almost 30 years ago in New York City I was I was you know just look at I was a sales professional inside of tech at a startup and I went to get a new pair of glasses and you know didn't you know back then 30 years ago there wasn't Google there you know there was simpler things that we utilized to find brands and find stores and retail etc.

and do our research. And I walked downstairs, took a left-hand turn, and there was 10-10 optics store for glasses. And I just needed glasses that I couldn't see, Lacey. That's as simple as it gets. But that one experience with Ruth and the owner of that store and the way she built confidence for me changed my life and changed the perspective of how I thought about customer experience

because that's why I utilize those words of trust and empathy. So certainly I went in there because I couldn't see, but I left. And not only could I see, but I experienced life in a whole new way. And the why that it was is she convinced me to get a very, you know, wild pair of glasses, really outside of the realm of what I was used to. It had multiple colors. And I was more of a Michael J. Fox kind of guy, you know, wire frames. And when I left the store with those frames on, feeling pretty not constant,

And I felt a self, you know, I was really, really doubting myself. A woman walked up to me and said, I love that your frames. And I, you know, I didn't know who she was. And I figured, oh, my God, Ruth was pretty smart. She has somebody outside ready to compliment you when you leave her store. But it was five compliments later on the train ride home. And then my wife loving the pair of frames that I knew that she had really made a difference in my life. And I shopped with her.

I've shopped with her for the last 27 years. I travel all in New York, even though I don't work there anymore. and that really Lacey inspired the whole TED talk and the book is it's not just satisfying the customer, it's seducing them. It's getting them to truly believe in you passionately about what you're doing because I could buy frames anywhere, right? I could buy them online now. I could buy them at the local optic center, but I go all the way to New York to get those frames. I can't believe that you fly to New York to do that. That's amazing. Have you told, what's her name, the owner of the shop.

Bruce, have he told Ruth about this? Like that, hey, Bruce and I, I mean, we've done selfies together. I did a book signing at her store. You know, I'm a huge Ruth fan. In fact, I named a chapter after Ruth about the idea of hiring a team of Ruth, right? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we have a tremendous. Shout out to Ruth.

Oh, man. But I also love about your story, and you share this in the TED Talk, is that she gave you three options, right? She gave you option A is sort of the generic version. version of what you've already been doing. B is like a little bit more out there and C is what you ended up choosing, right? And she was strongly encouraging you to go see. And I think just like the time that she took to curate, here are the three options for you. And then the time that she gave you to explain which of these three are. And then she gave you the vision of like, you will walk around in the world as you are today if you choose option A. And if you choose option C, you'll get to walk

in a different world. And, like, how cool is it that she spent the time with you to do that and curate that experience for you? And then you got to live it out after you left the shop. So cool. Yeah. And, Lisa, again, option one was exactly the option I was going to pick. No questions about it.

But she really, again, it becomes that empathy and that trust factor that said, hold the phone. I've just met this woman. But you know what? I trust her. And she's taken that time, like you said, to kind of curate that experience. experience, and it was a life changer for me. What I think, too, is interesting about that is she sort of chose a little bit of, like, I guess, conflict, right?

She was like, I'm not going to give you the easy out. Like, she could have just been, oh, choose whatever, go with it, give me my money and you're out of the store, right? But she was like, no, I'm going to push you and kind of disagree with you and say that, like, this one you don't want. You want this one. And I think that, like, friction actually builds a lot of trust whenever you have any kind of engagement with like a customer service person or a salesperson. If you tell me like,

hey, no, you don't want this and like this thing you actually do want, I automatically trust you more than if you just like smile and nod and go along with what I'm saying. So I'm curious if there's any like, I don't know, thoughts or guidelines there that you have for customer service folks that are working with customers on, you know, how can they creatively but and authentically have that kind of friction built in. I like that you're thinking about it this way. I don't know if I necessarily call it friction, but almost a strength of point of view.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Is really having a point of view because, look, I don't consider myself an expert in eyewear or frames, but I went into an optic store just thinking I needed a pair of frames, but I met an expert. Yep. And within 20 minutes, she convinced me of that.

So what I would say to, you know, firms about their companies about their, their customer experience teams and their call center teams is don't just hire because they're $18 an hour, do the interview process and dig a little deeper so they have a POV about what they're doing. There's a point of view. I think Jack Blue is a great example when they first, you know, started that airline. Their interview process, they asked a question, tell me about a time that you help somebody. And most of the people they hired were former firemen or firewomen, people that worked on ambulances. And the reason why is because if you could save a life or you could take somebody out of a burning building, you obviously can get them a customer, a hot cup of coffee on

time and create a cool experience. So I would say Lacey is we tend to get stuck on the cost center of experience rather than being a revenue generator. And I would look and say, don't look at it as a revenue generator. I want to get more into that. But first, I kind of like this idea around hiring. You know, you talked about JetBlue strategy for finding good team members. And I believe you shared something that was along lines. Like if you're hiring, you're hiring someone at $20 an hour to be the voice of your brand. Right. Like that's powerful. And whenever I read that, I was like, oh, yeah. No kidding. I'm, you know, one of the lower paid employees is actually representing my brand every single day. And so like, how can I ensure that they're empowered to represent me well and that they want to? So can you talk to me a little bit about that? Like, how do I actually empower? our frontline employees to be able to do like what Ruth did for you. Yeah, look, I've got a good example in the book. And there's others that I've watched because I pay attention to this so closely. But, you know, it's that ability one is point of view.

So, you know, I always go, when I ever go to a restaurant, I always say, you know, what do you recommend? And if they say, well, I haven't tried anything on the menu, that's an epic fail on the restaurant. Yeah. Because they should be sampling everything and have a point of view, not just, oh, get the lobster because it's the most expensive thing on the menu, right? Or what the chef's pushing.

So I would say is as you think about your customer experience teams, make sure they're experiencing it. When I worked at edible arrangements and I ran the call center over 500 people during the, you know, Valentine's and Mother's Day, we made sure that those employees enjoyed and tasted chocolate-covered strawberries and pineapple on a stick. Yeah. And apples dipped in caramel and chocolate. So they could say on the phone is my absolute favorite is.

Okay. And that's that difference. So again, you know, $20 an hour, but you're asking that person to represent the overall brand. And so giving them a point of making sure they have a point of view and then giving them the permission to go outside of the box, right? Of course we have scripts and everything else. I remember at New York, New York Hotel in Las Vegas. I came in after a terrible flight. It is what it is. You know, it happens when you travel. I was tired. It was one in the morning. I had a 7 a.m. meeting. So I'm only going to be in the hotel for a couple hours. And I walk up to the desk and the woman says, welcome to New York. And I said, hold the phone. I just left New York. Now I'm back in New York. I don't even know where I am. And I kind of had a little sense of humor left. So I just wanted to, you know, I figured I had a little fun.

And she said, well, sir, hold on one second. And she came back in like 30 seconds. She said, sir, since you were in New York and now you're back in New York and you have no idea where you are, we've upgraded you to our largest suite. Oh, my gosh. And you look, she didn't, you know, like she'd have to go five levels up to get permission. The hotel room was already empty. It's six hours.

I was going to be there for six hours. It was one night's day. So she made this experience incredible by just quickly on her feet thinking about, okay, this customer's got a little bit of a sense of humor. I'm going to surprise and delight them, you know, and run with this. And I give her a lot of credit. And I give that brand a lot of credit for giving not only that employee an ability to have a point of view, but also the authority,

to kind of make some decisions, right? That room probably was $3,000, $4,000, $5,000. But for them, it was no cost because it was empty. It was going to be the cleaning charge, right? Yep. And I don't think it's just authority, right? It's also knowledge. Like, I know how to make it so I can book this room for this customer.

I've had some recent issues where I've called up customer service reps, and it feels like they don't even know how their systems work. Like, oh, I don't know where this went. There's been a lot of blaming A, recently that I've noticed where I call a customer service agent and they're like, oh, we have an AI algorithm that vets these things and I don't really know how it works and I can't really tell you if or when, you know, we'll be able to solve it. And it's like, what? You know, and it's not that person's fault that they don't know how it works, but it feels to me like there is a huge

part of this that's education. So it's like, yes, giving people the autonomy to act, but if they don't even know how to act or what to act on or like how the systems work, then they can't do what, you know, you got to experience there in New York. Yeah, I think this is critical. I think training is a big component. My son just went to go work for a health care technology firm, Epic. And the founder, it's a privately held firm. So she doesn't have to worry about, you know, the stock and shareholders and shareholder value, et cetera. Super successful. I think she's 80 or 85, somewhere in that range. She's had the business for 45 years. And now it's a multi-billion dollar business. But she still teaches courses on her own for new employees around how

the firm acts, what they believe in. Wow. You know, so it is pretty powerful. And so not only is my son having a great experience, but he's going to go into the workforce and go to customers all over the world, all over the country, and be able to create a better client experience, customer experience, because he understands what the mission of that business is, and he's been trained on all the system. He has to take a test every week on different systems. So that investment, it sounds like, oh my God, again, a cost. No, it's an investment in the future and profitability. She's the number one tech for healthcare. It's because she does that training, in my opinion. Yeah, oh, for sure. And it gives you the opportunity.

to really get your employees bought in, right? Because the best experience that I'm going to get from an employee is if they actually believe what they're selling or doing or offering. And so like that ability for your son to be able to have like front row seat with her, who's the, you know, founder and be able to hear like, this is our story. This is why we do what we do. I think there's been a gap that I've seen recently in training where like people just don't get that going back to emotions, that emotional investment as employees anymore because they, they just go in, they do their job when they go back home, but you can't really deliver on a great customer experience if you aren't also emotionally invested as an employee. Yeah, that's right. And I think they, I don't want to get it wrong, but so I might, and I apologize, but there's three edicts that they focus on while customers have fun and make money. I love that. And I think it's so simple, but you know, I think you need all three. Listen, we're not charities. You have to make money to be able to wow customers. But first is about the customer, and then it's about having fun, because if that call center person and that

team is having fun doing what they do and they feel like they're contributing, it's a much different experience than some of you just, again, they came in, they were breathing, so you gave them the job and the phone to answer calls for your brand. I thought that was a really simple but easy way to understand business and what you should be trying to do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love that. I love that. Well, I want to get back a little bit back to this emotional, how emotions can drive repeat engagement is something that, you know, we've been talking about. Your prime example of flying to New York just still continue to buy from Ruth for your glasses, right? Did she pick out the ones that you have right now? Yeah, she picked these out. I mean, you know, I really don't have any

choice or option. I come in. She gives me the good news and I depart. I actually get to drive because I'm only in Connecticut, so I get to drive there. But it's still a couple hours. Yeah, no, no. But I think it's, what's great is you're repeating, it's that repeat engagement. Like, you're going to keep going back to her because of the emotional experience that you had the first time you, you interacted with her. So my question for you is, how can brands create those types of emotionally resonant experiences, you know, especially at scale? Because I think about like one, one stop shop, like, you know, you get to work with the owner of the glasses place. But how can a bigger brand do this at scale? At scale.

Yeah, look, at scale is tough. Even the JetBlue struggles with that, right? As they grew as an airline, it's harder to find people that worked in EMS or a fire or firemen to come and work. Scaling is challenge. Starbucks is struggling with it, right? You know, the barista 15 years ago was a different experience than potentially you're looking at today. But the good news is brands like a Starbucks is a good example is they continue to retrench themselves and go back to the basics and then come back. out. And they've done that a couple times, right? They got, they got, you know, mixed up in this

idea of a lot of different menu items and hot foods. The next thing, you know, you went in, you didn't smell coffee, kind of smelled an egg sandwich, etc. And they retrenched, figured out a new mechanism to be able to deliver the experience and, you know, including the aroma of the store, and then came back out of it. So I would say is, look, when you're doing things at scale, you're going to constantly have to come back to the basics and the core. And then come back out and figure out how to grow from that. What tends to happen is you have this unique experience up front. And then you lose it as you go on because as you scale, you can't keep that mechanism.

You know, the cost of the training is too much. You know, the ability to have a location to bring people together and teach a course is not efficient. You got to get rid of all that. No, it worked for you. So continue. Figure out a way to do it. You know, again, I don't want to spend too much time on Epic, but, you know, looking, 16,000 employees, largest share, I think they have 80% of U.S. consumers utilize their technology. It's not because it's the best technology. Maybe it is, but it's probably because of the darn experience that they give the hospitals and their patients.

So I think it's critical, and she's been able to do that at scale. So I think you have to look at it and figure out how are you going to keep that core. And there may be costs associated with it, but the value is there. where, you know, AI is a cost reduction opportunity in a lot of people's eyes. I look it as a cost expansion opportunity, right? A client expansion opportunity. How do you create revenue because of the AI, not reduce the cost? So I would say is make sure you understand what was the core.

Another good example of someone that does it really well is chewy.com. You know, they have continued to blow me away on how they train their teams and create that autonomy for those employees. A quick little story here, if I can, is I obviously wrote the book and didn't tell them about it, but the book is out. And I wrote a blog, a LinkedIn post about my cat, getting this great treat from chewy.com. Two weeks later, my book shows up at my house from chewy.com.

And I'm like, well, I already have this book. I wrote it. I don't need to copy. I don't need a copy. I'm good. But I open up the cover. and inside the book is a portrait of my cat painted. Oh, wow.

Now, they go through multiple levels to get that done. A customer care person inside of their experience team figured out that was the right thing to do to wow me and created it, got it done, shipped it out, found the book, by the way. So how did you even find that? You had to go on LinkedIn. You had to go on Amazon thinking I'm a published author. So that's, Lacey, that's the opportunity is, are you serious?

seriously caring about your client, your customer, whatever you call them, because some people call them clients, some people call them customers, but are you really thinking about what they're looking for or is it just a transaction? Yeah, yeah. I do want to go back to something that you mentioned in that about how people are often thinking about cost reduction versus cost expansion, right? And I think that's so true. I mean, this is a mental issue that we all get into, like a mental game in our own heads even personally with finance, where we're like, oh, I'm feeling stressed about money. So I'm going to try to save and sock away $100. Like, oh, my gosh, I got to save my $100, right? Versus how can I make $100 more

instead of like trying to lower how I live or whatever it is. So I think at a business scale, the same thing starts to occur where we're like, okay, we've got to reduce costs. This thing is starting to cost too much money versus, oh, can we use these tools to actually grow cost? And so I think it's actually important reframe, especially as we get into the AI conversation around like, oh, there's so many things that we can automate these like we could quote unquote lower job count or we could do this. And I think the people that I've talked to that I've been the most inspired by are the ones that are not talking about how do we reduce headcount, but how do we take the headcount we have and augment them so they can have more fulfilling careers and do the work that they want to do and not have to do this boring stuff that, of course, we can use technology to help audit. made. So I would kind of like to go into AI, since it is such a hot topic, what's your initial take and thoughts on, you know, adding AI into the mix as it relates to customer experience? Yeah, look, I am thrilled. I'm having so much fun even personally with, you know,

AI, agentic AI, all these, the ability to kind of almost really utilize it as a co-worker. So my personal experience has been incredible. And at ISG, where I am now is the president of research, we're tracking well over 1,000 use cases of it being leveraged everywhere from customer experience through in different industries. And again, it's augmenting the work and allowing people to do a higher level skill where a human is required rather than doing some of the back-end work. And so I think there's a huge, huge opportunity for AI to create some efficiencies, optimization, and better experiences. Now, again, always when things are coming about. You've got to be careful about how fast you launch. And I've seen some cost reduction options.

You know, GoDaddy, one of my favorite customer care experiences until about two years ago when they offshoreed their customer care. And they saved, you know, 10, 15, 20 percent by, you know, offshoring it. But for me as a customer, the experience was horrendous. And I can already see now as I call them. And I almost dropped them really because it was just, again, it's just so frustrating. I can see. they're making a pivot back. And that's going to be important. A good example of where I saw somebody offshoring in a different way was Atos, a large service provider out of France. I was on the phone with an executive literally just yesterday. Great conversation catching up. And he mentions, you know, we open up this center of a thousand people in the Canary Islands. Now, the Canary

Islands are Spanish and they're just off the coast of Africa. I'm like, you've got to tell me more. Why would you have done that? That just seems like an odd thing. Why not Asia, Philippines, you know, India, all these other places where you see this outsourcing. He says the reason why is because a huge number of Europeans from all over Europe end up retiring at a very early age, 45, 50, in the Canary Islands. And then they want to do something and add value.

And guess what? They speak four to six languages. Wow. Okay. Wow. And so they're adept to being able to handle. all these different calls and they love the idea of coming in and being part of something and then going back and enjoying the beaches of the Canary Islands. So I just thought that was a

unique approach to saying, instead of just offshoring, what's the best place to offshore? So I like this idea. You can do these things. You can utilize AI, but in a thoughtful way. What are you trying to accomplish? If it's just saving 20%, you're probably going at it the wrong way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like save a penny and then lose your customer trust forever. I mean, you almost lost, the GoDaddy almost lost you, right? Because of this, right? And I've been seeing that with some of the AI stumbles is like, oh, we're going to completely automate this thing or you're going to call and now I have to go through so many hoops to actually get a human on the phone. And then whenever I get them on the phone, they actually don't even know what I need, even though I just explained it to this thing. Like there are so many. And then I've had the opposite experience where I've communicated with the AI chatbot and it's been great. And then I do need to level it up to a human. And they have. have all the context that they need. And the human is like, oh, you don't even need to repeat anything. I got it all. Don't worry. And here's how we're going to fix it. And it's like a 60 second, two minute phone conversation with them and it's resolved. And I feel great. So it's like I've seen both sides

of it where it's used poorly and used really, really well. And I think, yeah, companies just need to be kind of cautious and thoughtful, as you say, about how they roll it out. Like, how is this going to actually impact customer experience and customer trust in the long haul? Because if I, I roll this out and it does fumble, like, it's going to take a lot to get it back. Like, we're talking about cost centers. I think rolling out AI and it fumbling will actually be more of a cost increase than a cost reduction. Well, yeah, you nailed it, Lacey.

And I'll give you a good example. Clarenaut is a pay, buy now, pay later system in Sweden. And in 2022, 23, somewhere that range, early AI, early AI, they said they were going to reduce their staff by 700 leveraging AI. I remember this. I actually remember this. Yeah, go ahead. It's a total train wreck.

Total train wreck. And in 2025, they said we're, you know, we're reverting back and don't get a happy mix. You know, have some AI, et cetera. You know, good examples are Sephora, you know, leveraging AI to figure out skin tone and and what to wear. Like, that's really cool. So I think we're in the early days, okay? I think some brands will figure it out faster.

Again, we're at ISG. I mean, our whole job is. is trying to help firms figure out what's a practical approach to leveraging technology. And clearly everywhere we're talking now, it's about AI. But it's got to be done in a set format to make sure you accomplish it correctly. Is there anything else you guys are seeing in all the research that you have been doing, whether it's around AI or just trends in general that you think are important for business leaders to be thinking about going forward?

I'll give you something that I think would shock your audience. And it's pretty impactful. So we do a lot of research on our own deal flow. We do about $20 billion a year for large firms, everything from the Marriots and Carnivals of the world to the American Expresses, Bank of America. And one of the things that we found is a data point that is, was pretty shocking to me is first impressions and how important they are. So when a service provider is presenting to our client, whoever that might be the end

client, enterprise client, if the first impression does not, does not, meet expectation. It's a zero percent chance of them winning the deal. Wow. Not like 20 percent, not 10 percent. No one's ever done it. I look at this, Lacey, and I don't think it just relates to large deals. These deals are 25 million to a billion dollars, but in tech. But Lacey, this is the same for brands. Somebody that's even a loyal brand person, there's other data out there, and I might have the number a little off, but, and I think it was PWC, but 30% of the time, if a loyal customer has a bad experience, they'll leave that brand. So not only first impressions, but long-term impressions.

Our options today, Lacey, I can buy paint anywhere. I can buy frames anywhere. So if you don't get any a good experience, I'll just go somewhere else. It's not a problem. I won't even tell you about it, okay? So I think there's this opportunity and the research that we see for ourselves and our deal flow is first impressions 100% matter and have a huge impact. So how is your brand creating that first impression with the customer base and the prospect base? That would be a huge thing to

look at. That is really interesting that even like from an enterprise level that matters so much because I would think from a consumer level of I can literally go buy shoes or glasses anywhere. Like of course it makes sense. Like by would I waste my time with you? But from an enterprise level, you only have so many options, especially when it comes to certain types of software that you can purchase from. So it's interesting to me that even at that level, the impression matters so much that it's like a complete no in my head. And it's just how human brains work, right? Like from a psychology standpoint, like the first thing I hear is likely the thing I'm going to believe for the rest of my life, even if it's wrong. And even if you tell me it's wrong,

a thousand times over, it's just the way our brains are wired, which is, you know, the reason why misinformation is so bad is because if I read that first and then I'm predispositioned to think that thing. But like from a brand's perspective, understanding, wait, what do people actually think about when they see us? And that comes back to everything we've been talking about and like the marketing and sales influence. Like if my first experience of you is some sort of marketing campaign, it's not even like that I've spoken to you, but I see something. And that's a bad first impression that I'm not even going to engage with you at a further step. So I think that's really interesting.

Yeah, and customers will walk out. I mean, I was at the beach this weekend with my family up in West Delhi, Rhode Island, and we walked in for the first time to a cafe. I was super excited because I always like to find, I'm a foodie, so I like to find new places. New cafes, yeah. But we went in, the floor was kind of a little slick. People were talking behind the counter, not talking to the customers. I walked out.

We didn't buy a thing. Yep. Yeah. You know, so first impression. John, I had a conversation yesterday. actually with another John. So another John that we were interviewing. And he was talking about how in this future where I'm doing most of my research on, you know, LLM. Sorry, like, I'm going to chat GPT to be like, where can I find glasses or what's the best brand to get jeans from? Or if I'm an

enterprise, you know, what's the best, you know, B2B SaaS tool, you name it that I'm looking for, right? Yeah. So a lot of the research is being done now on these tools. And I may never actually end up on your brand's website. Like, I may never, ever click through and actually see your brand. I might just make that buying decision. After I've compared ABC option on chat, GPT, I'm like, oh, I know I want to do that. I'm ready to go buy it, sales call.

That's it, right? So as we get to this place where, like, more and more of this research is being done off the brand's website in a place that you don't really control as a business, how, like, important do you think actual brand experience? is going to matter. You know what I mean? Like if I, when I do land on your website, how important is it that I'm actually very interested in what is appearing? Or if I do walk into your store, how important is that in-person experience now that I have no other touch points with you besides that experience? It's going to be crucial. And this goes to the ideas of, you know, what are brands

going to need to do to stay relevant and update? And, you know, because remember, the speed at which brands go out is astonishing right before it might take two decades before you know the buggy whip person who sold whips got it went out of business because of cars but today you know blockbuster was out in you know less than two years uh because of netflix and other other challenges and then netflix was almost out because of hulu and then they you know they saved themselves pretty quickly so the speed at which things are happening um i think is crucially to keep up with what you want to do is you want to create that, again, that trust factor and how you make them feel a great mentor to me, Ira Neumark. He was the CEO, former CEO of Bergdorf Goodman. And he started

out as a doorman way back in the day and ended up becoming the CEO of Bergdorf Goodman. Wow. And took the brand. He was such a great mentor. I feel very lucky that I was fortunate enough to know him for many, many years. But, you know, he said, he says, John, it's how you you make your customers feel? Because they can buy jeans. They can buy the dress anywhere. But how do I make them feel in the store? How do I make them feel after? Right? Just think about Ruth and actually made me feel in the store and then afterwards with my glasses. So now of a sudden, I can go think about buying that pair of jeans, but in my head, I'm like, I'm going to go to Bergdorf because I know the experience is going to be great. I'll give a good

example. I'm wearing this headset that I absolutely love. But I did all the research utilizing AI. And then once I found out which one was the best headset, where did I go? I went to Best Buy because I trust Best Buy and I want to buy it from Best Buy. So I think Lacey, it's creating that awareness and that brand trust and that empathy for me as a consumer that I know that's where I'm going to go shop. I'm going to shop at Best Buy. So I think you've got to do that. Or I could have bought it anywhere, right? I'm sure I could have gone to Amazon, you know, or directly to the brand's website and bought it there. But they've created something with me that is now sicky. So how do you create that with your customers? Okay. Airline, same thing. I have lots of

options to fly with ISG, but I always lean towards Delta because I know experience-wise, it's spectacular. Yep. Yep. There's something that you also shared in your book about simplicity. And so getting into that as part of our decision-making process, right? Like, the reason why you might go to a Best Buy is you know exactly what you're going to expect. Like, I can walk in. I know I'm going to find it easily. Someone will help me.

I can buy it. We're done, right? Like, it's not going to be a complicated process. So could you tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on how important simplicity is in the customer experience? We don't need to always, a word that seems to be overused in customer experience is delight. You know, that's a word. It's like, you know, what does it really mean?

of course we're going to delay our customers. All customers are really actually after is the cause and effect. I need a headset, get all the friction out possible to make it as easy as possible to get to the final result. So I don't think we have to overcomplicate things. I think it's a very cause and effect type of mechanism, right? It's a consumer has a need. You have an item that will help satisfy that need. what is the simplest way to get that need met with your brand or your solution?

And sometimes we over-engineer that whole process, that whole experience in itself. And it's a distraction for the consumer, frankly. You know, I have a point of, I wouldn't say disagreement, but I would like to hear thoughts on this. We interviewed someone who was sharing about how good friction can be in the sense that it makes the customer feel like I've accomplished something and it gives them a little like extra little mental juice of like I'm the hero of this story, right, of I got to choose. So like giving people a little bit of options. Like by definition, that is a little bit of friction because it's not just like I can click and buy. But now that I have optionality, to some extent, not overwhelmingly

so, I feel like I'm putting myself into this decision a little bit more. And so it is like, and maybe we just have different definitions of friction, but I think there is some good friction. that actually makes people a little bit more invested in what they're doing and maybe more likely to share. I mean, going back to your example of buying your first pair of glasses with Ruth, there was some friction in that in the sense that she kind of like pushed back on you. She gave you some options. And it could have been as simple as you go and grab what you want and leave. So I just wonder if there is a place for some complexity in order to make someone have that emotional response. I love that you're challenging this. And there's a chapter in my book

about being a friction hunter. The thing about friction is it never goes away 100%. There's always friction. It's kind of like radiation. There's a half-life's radiation. It never goes away, right? And this is the same thing is the key is what components of friction, and I'll give you a good example, is Amazon.

The thing about how frictionless the process is. Now, to your point is, even when I say, oh, I want to buy something, it gives me this is the best choice, most popular, this is the one with the most stars. And then these are all the others, et cetera. So I still, to your point, have a choice to make. I guess I would define that to your point as friction. But the process of getting to the end result and the seat at which I can get that item is they took a lot of friction out of the process.

Because remember, before, okay, if somebody here remembers Sears Robux, right, the Amazon of the past, right? You could buy a house from Sears Roboc, right? Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you could. I mean, so, but think about what the process was. You got the Christmas catalog, it was 700 pages long. As a kid, I used to open it up and goes through and circle all the toys, lots of friction

because I couldn't get the toy. I had to circle them and everything else. Then I had to go to a location that was miles away, not a driver, so I had to get my parents and convince them to take me there. And then I had to see if it was in stock, et cetera, lots of friction. Why Sears struggled was they didn't pay attention to that. friction. There was choices. Great. That's the friction I would want maybe. But Amazon came along and said, hey, hold the phone. If you've got the internet or a phone, I'm going to allow

you to pick what you want. I've got the same millions of items that Sears has. But if you want tomorrow, I can actually get it to you tomorrow. And that is a friction hunter. So it's simplicity. Blockbuster, having to go to the store, remembering to rewind, you know, all these inconveniences, all this friction. And Netflix says, no, we're going to mail you. the CDs. Remember, that's how it started Netflix. They would mail you the CDs in the mail, and you would return them and get a new one right away. And then obviously the friction was still too much, so they reduced it because of Hulu and made it streaming. So I think we always have to consider being a friction hunter. I'm not sure choice would be something we'd want to

take out necessarily. I think you're right. You want the hero of the story to be the customer, but you want it to be a great experience. You want them to feel satisfied. You want it to make it feel easy that they made that choice. Does that make sense or can we agree on friction? Love that. Love that. Yeah, absolutely. Now my greatest friction with Netflix is what to watch. That is called choice overload. It's like, there's too much. What do I do? Yeah, it's a little overwhelming. It's a little overwhelming. That's kind of like they give me the choices up front or you watch this, so you might like these. That's helping me a little bit. Yeah. I know. I know. Even then, though, I'm like, I could just keep scrolling. Like I can't, I've lost count of the amount of hours

I've spent just like looking for something to watch and then I decide, eh, and I just turn off the TV because I'm too overwhelmed with the options. That's crazy. Oh, see, they've got work to do. Yeah, apparently. I just need them to spoon to me like five options and that's it. Well, John, I want to go into personalization a little bit because I know this is something that you have some thoughts on.

As we get into this future with way more technology support, I think there's opportunities for brands to really create more personalized experiences. but I also like start to question that because I'm like, if you get too personalized, do we like lose the brand feel? You know, like am I having a totally different experience than, you know, even my husband when I experience this brand and does that lose something about what the brand is? So I'm just curious on your thoughts on personalization, especially as it relates to like the next 12 months of what people are going to be sort of investing in and looking at.

Personalization is a slippery slope that you have to be careful because it can, can get creepy if you get too personalized, like, hey, I saw you were looking at these five websites, so you might like this. You've got to kind of be careful about that because we want to have our own security and personal field. Jack Mitchell, the owner of Mitchell, another mentor of mine, he owns clothing stores, very high-end, very high-end clothing stores. And he wrote a book, hug your customer. And one of the things he did from a personalization perspective, and this is going back 30, 40 years is he made sure his sales teams knew those. his customers and then wrote net notes before there was sales force or a real true CRM system.

He built a CRM system with an IBM mainframe. I know it sounds crazy, but it was, you know, 35, 40 years ago. And when I walked into the store at Jack's store, somebody would approach me, say, John, welcome back. How are you? How's Sabrina, your daughter? And it was this engagement because they had those notes there. I really love that personalization.

I felt like they took time to get to know me. They knew what size my clothing was. They knew the colors I liked. They knew that I couldn't really, I didn't really want to spend, you know, $1,000 on a blazer. So they knew there was a $500 set of blazers that I would enjoy. I think you've got it as a brand. And again, this comes back to scale, right?

How do you scale something like this? You've got to find ways to leveraging technology to help create that personalization. And then that human interaction, if it's required, if it's in a store like Sephora. Let me use AI to find a tone. But maybe then I need an associate to create that unique experience. It makes me want to come back. So where is it going to go in the next 12 months? AI is going to have a huge impact, the acceleration of AI in the marketplace,

where it was even just 12 months prior to this. So if you think about the speed at which it's going, 12 months from now, you're going to see some really sophisticated, some really useful tools inside of AI creating airline reservations. Imagine, you know, when I go to look for a Marriott Hotel, I know where my meetings are. Imagine if AI was able to start to help me say, pick this hotel because it's the least traffic to get to your destination that you're going there for. These are the things I'm going to see coming from a personalization perspective coming, moving forward is just that extra little step that I'm doing as a human. And again, remember, it's related to reducing that friction component, that personalization gets me to my,

answer faster, right? Gets me to where I wanted to get to quicker. Hopefully it helps. Yeah, well, and I think about personal, like personal AI assistance, because like what you're describing there with the, you know, I have my meetings in this location, find me a hotel. That is something that like a chat GPT could feasibly do really well right now. So I'm just curious, like how brands are going to be able to tie in what they have to offer to these tools. So that way, because I am going to be using probably a personal AI system of some former fashion. I feel like in the next year or two years, I'll have something that's for me, whether it's GPT or some other AI tool out there, that like just orders my groceries

and they show up to my door and I don't have to think about it. You know what I mean? Like there's going to be a lot of these like personal assistance, AI assistants out there. But those are like separate companies than the actual like HEB that I'm ordering it from. So I'm curious how these companies are going to play together with these tools? Like how are we going to be able to do some data sharing. Again, I was talking to a gentleman yesterday about this and he was saying that like how, you know, if I go onto a, let's say,

American Eagles website or whatever, like name your clothing brands website and they know that I have choice fatigue. Like I was just sharing with you with Netflix, right? If I have too many choices, I'm not going to get anything. I'm just going to leave. If they knew that about me because of my, like, way that I interact

with and engage with an LLM, then they might present a different website to me specifically. But it's like, how do we get to that point where there is that kind of data sharing? That's just like a big question mark in my head. So look, no different than 5G and the technology around 5G, when 5G first came out, you know, my big statement was, hey, listen, all 5G is going to do is allow bad ideas to move quicker. If you don't get it right at the core, just bad things will happen faster. And now with technology and energetic AI and where things are going, without a core foundation

of that data, bad decisions will now move faster. So, you know, we're going to make really bad decision based on inadequate data from the core. So I agree, Lacey, I think, and it's funny how things never really changed. This has been the problem for 30 years is when I was in consumer package goods and technology for category management, the big issue was the spare data sets and normalizing them. Well, here we are 40 years later, 35 years later.

What are we trying to do, normalize the spirit data sets? Yeah. So it's the same age-old problem. The challenge now, the opportunity now is that the ability to normalize data has gotten a little easier. Cloud is going to help us out, obviously. But there's still work to be done. And without that core, I don't know if we'll 100% satisfied that piece in 12 months,

but we're going to certainly get better. But that is going to be the lynchpin here is the normalization of those disparate datasets that allows that full decision-making process up at the top. Without that, you're still just getting almost the right answer. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Well, John, I know that we're coming up here to the end of our conversation. And I would like to talk about some advice or trends that you're seeing for leaders. So one thing that I wanted to ask, you is what's a misconception that you think people have about CX that you would like to,

you know, throw out there and say, no, like, I think this opposite thing. Customer experience isn't a cost center. That's what I'll say first. So don't treat it as a cost center. We've talked about that already. Stay away from words like the light. Stay away from, instead of focusing on NPS scores and CSAT scores, okay, you know, numbers, focus on customer effort scores.

What is the effort it takes for a customer to engage with your brand? That is far more interesting and compelling to me. Not only as a consumer, but somebody in technology is, if I could really understand utilizing AI or other technology, how to create less effort for that customer to engage with my brand. To your point, Lacey, engaging with that American Eagles site and helping me make decisions. So I would focus less on MPS, CSAT scores,

and more on that customer effort score. Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. And then what trend are you betting on that's not AI, not AI for the next year? That's really interesting. Okay. So I would say, look, there's always a backlash on trends.

You know, if the parents are super techie, then the next generation wants to do something opposite. I think we're getting back to this next spending generation group where the wealth will be is going to look for authentic, authentic engagement. And I think it's going to be in person. My son's got rid of Instagram, okay? My daughter, even though she's in PR, she doesn't spend a lot of time there, okay?

No Facebook whatsoever, no social. She's not trying to live a FOMO experience. She's trying to live authentic experiences by going to Trivia Night. You know, and it's not just her, but it's this group of friends. So if I was a brand, I'm thinking about this, is think about Trader Joe's, right? Least technical experience you can come up with, you know, using markers to create their signs. But look at the audience in that room that are shopping there. Okay.

So I think you're going to see a trend towards coming back to authentic experiences, and that means in-person experiences. This group grew up with COVID. They were on flat screens for two years plus. So they're ready to get together in person. Yeah, yeah. And I think this extends beyond just the younger generation, too. I think everyone is a little bit hungry for these more like authentic human engagements,

especially as we start to see, you know, LinkedIn post after LinkedIn post written by AI, which I don't mind AI supporting with copywriting and editing. But if your ideas are just generated that way, you know, I think a lot of people are getting burnt out on the generative AI scene. And I definitely agree with you that in the next. couple months, year, two years, like, people are going to be just hungry and starving for like, I know that this idea that you have is truly your idea. And I think people are going to start listening to more conversations like this, you know, long form podcasts. We've already seen that grow in the last several years. And like my brother is 24 and he spends more time

listening to like a Rogan interview than he would ever like binge watching TV or engaging with something online. So I think people are just going to continue to like look for more content that is, you can't, can't fake that. Like, we can't fake this conversation we're having right now. Yeah, yeah. I think the authentic personalization, the real conversations, the real posts. The last post, one of the last posts I did was me crossing the street in Bangalore two weeks ago. And in India, and the lessons I learned about business, having some fun with it.

Yeah. 21,000 people engaged with the post. Wow. You know, and it's the reason why, because it was authentic. Yeah. It wasn't, you know, hey, look at me at my birthday. perfect. It was an authentic conversation about, you know, the complexity of street crossing. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I love that. Well, is there any final advice you would like to leave our

audience with? That's a big one. I would say, look, again, going back to Ira, one of the big things he always talked about was never start with no. So as you think about customer experience, how do you train your teams to not start with no and really have that empathy? Yeah. I think that's not just for customer experience, but that's employee experience as general life experience, you know, somebody says, hey, I want to take a trip around the world. Don't start with no. Ask questions. Be curious. So I would say don't start with no. Be curious. Ted Lasso, you know, not judgmental. I would say those would probably be my lessons. They're not authentic because those are from irony mark and from Ted Lasso, but those would be the lessons

I would leave you with. Now, life is so much more fun if you think about it from like, how can I make this happen? How can I do that? And like, make it way more playful than And no, no, we can't do that. No, we don't offer that. I mean, definitely a totally different frame of mind to live in. I love that. Thank you, John. Well, if people want to follow you, they're like, hey, I was so interested in what

John had to share. Where should they find you and or ISG research? Like, oh, and definitely your book. Like, let them know where they can find your book. Yeah. So you can find the book on Amazon, obviously. So that's on Amazon, easy to find there. You can track us, track me personally on LinkedIn.

I'd love to connect with people. I love hearing other people's ideas and stories. I'm passionate about customer experience. Those are probably the two best areas. And of course, certainly if you're a large enterprise and you really want to dig into this a little more deeply and on the tech side and understand where you're going next, then certainly reach out to ISG, me at ISG.

And I'm certainly happy to get you to the right people at our firm. Awesome. Amazing. Well, everyone listening, we're dropping that link to his book in the show notes. And John's LinkedIn will also be linked up there. So please DM him and, you know, let him know how you like this episode. Thanks so much, John, for joining. Thanks, Lacey. Bye-bye.