Navigating the Customer Experience

Join host Yanique Grant as she takes you on a journey with global entrepreneurs and subject matter experts that can help you to navigate your customer experience. Learn what customers really want and how businesses can understand the psychology of each customer or business that they engage with. We will be looking at technology, leadership, customer service charters and strategies, training and development, complaint management, service recovery and so much more!

Navigating the Customer Experience is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 137 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Navigating the Customer Experience, a business show with 137 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Navigating the Customer Experience

  280: The Skills AI Can't Replace: Why Human Service Still Wins with Jeff Toister

  Sep 8, 202626 min

  Send us Fan Mail AI won't replace your people. It will replace the ones acting like robots. Returning guest Jeff Toister , best-selling author of Human Service: The Skills AI Can't Replace, joins Yanique Grant to unpack where humans still win in a world racing to automate. Drawing on new research spanning more than 370,000 phone calls and 400-plus face-to-face interactions, Jeff makes the data-backed case for connection, understanding, and advocacy, the three human skills AI simply can't provide. In this episode : - Why connection is efficient: warm rapport makes calls 16% shorter - Understanding and advocacy, the skills that beat automation on complex issues - The greeting research: 12% better first-contact resolution and warmer customers - Why AI replaces the transactional employee, not the true expert - How to simplify your service strategy heading into 2027 Featured resources : Book: Human Service: The Skills AI Can't Replace by Jeff Toister Book: The Service Culture Handbook by Jeff Toister Zoom (video conferencing Jeff uses daily, while noting no single tool is truly indispensable) LinkedIn Learning (home to Jeff's training courses, taken by 5 million-plus learners) Customer Service Tip of the Week (Jeff's free weekly email with content to share with your team) Connect with the guest : Human Service book (download the first chapter free): humanservicebook.com Customer Service Tip of the Week (free weekly research and tips): toistersolutions.com/tips Reply directly to any weekly email and it goes straight to Jeff Follow the show: X @NavigatingCX and join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community . Hosted by Yanique Grant.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Navigating the Customer Experience

  278 : Clarity Beats Confidence: How Great Leaders Actually Change with Terez Rijkenberg

  Aug 11, 202627 min

  Send us Fan Mail What if the fastest way to lead change was to stop trying to feel confident? Executive coach Terez Rijkenberg says clarity beats confidence every time, and she has the frameworks to prove it. Terez Rijkenberg, executive coach to C-suite leaders and director at Tuitive AI, joins Yanique Grant to share the two frameworks behind her work: the RAFT formula (results, actions, feelings, thoughts) and Radical Adaptability. She unpacks how change really happens, how she coaches leaders through it with a real client story, and how her Claude-based AI system hands executives back 10-plus hours a week. She also shares the grounding quote she uses when stress spikes. In this episode: - Terez's journey from the corporate ladder through postpartum depression and identity shift to executive coaching - The RAFT formula: why your thoughts drive your feelings, actions, and ultimately your results - Radical Adaptability: safety, clarity, belief, experiment, and integrate, the five steps of real change - A client story showing why coaching a team is faster than telling them what to do - Before and after: building AI workflows that remove manual work and free leaders to think - The grounding self-talk Terez uses under pressure: this is not an emergency Featured resources: Book: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield Book: The Freakonomics series by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (her gateway into behavioral economics and psychology) Claude (Anthropic) - where Terez builds her processes, systems, and personalized client dashboards AI Amplified Exec - her Claude plugin that turns spreadsheets, transcripts, and documents into branded outputs like board packs in minutes Tuitive AI - where Terez is director and built AI Amplified Exec, helping senior executives use AI safely for real gains in personal productivity. Connect with the guest: Website: terezrijkenberg.com Weekly email / blog: terezrijkenberg.com/blog LinkedIn: Terez Rijkenberg (most active here) Follow the show: X @NavigatingCX and join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community. Hosted by Yanique Grant.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Navigating the Customer Experience

  277 - Deflection Done Right: Building AI Support That Customers Actually Love with David Karandish

  Jul 28, 202615 min

  Send us Fan Mail Can AI answer your customers without pushing them away? David Karandish has automated support for 20,000 companies, and he says deflection should make the experience better, not worse. David Karandish , founder and CEO of Capacity, joins Yanique Grant to unpack how to bring AI into customer support the right way. After selling Answers Corp for $960 million, David built Capacity into an omni-channel support automation platform serving roughly 20,000 customers. In this episode he shares the design principles that keep automation human, why your first AI project should be a small, provable win, and how AI agents are now running entire companies from finance to marketing. In this episode: - The design principles that make AI deflection improve the customer experience instead of frustrating people, from great escalation paths to leading with empathy - Why human behavior is largely universal across regions, and where support questions actually differ - What the $960M Answers.com journey taught David about people who are truly stuck and have nowhere to turn - The single most practical first step for any support leader: go get your small win, then iterate - How builder agents let a complete novice spin up workflows, integrations, and CSAT surveys just by asking Featured resources: Book: Principles by Ray Dalio — a first-principles breakdown of how Dalio built one of the most successful investment firms of all time. Foundational AI models — Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic's Claude, used across the business. Jira — for tracking development tickets; David uses LLMs to analyze time-in-stage when off-the-shelf plugins fall short. Capacity — an AI-powered support automation platform that deflects emails, calls, and tickets across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, web, and email. ~20,000 customers, 250+ app integrations. Connect with the guest: Website: capacity.com Email: david@capacity.com Follow the show: X @NavigatingCX and join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community. Hosted by Yanique Grant.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Navigating the Customer Experience

  275 : From Pissed to Empowered: How Consumer Feedback Drives Business Transformation

  Jun 30, 202626 min

  Send us Fan Mail What if the most valuable thing a customer could do for your business was complain? In this episode of Navigating the Customer Experience, Yanique Grant sits down with Michael Podolsky , co-founder and CEO of PissedConsumer.com and Wisebrand.com, to explore the power of negative feedback and why organizations that take it seriously are the ones that build lasting customer loyalty. Michael built PissedConsumer.com after a deeply frustrating personal experience as a customer left him with no recourse and no resolution. Starting with just $200 and no venture backing, he has grown the platform over the past 20 years into a consumer advocacy powerhouse serving over 30 million users. His message to businesses is consistent: complaints are not your enemy. They are your most honest source of business intelligence. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE 87% of consumers contact a company directly before leaving a negative review online. That statistic sits at the heart of everything Michael teaches. By the time a review is posted, the customer has already tried to reach you. The review is not the problem. The missed connection is. In this conversation, Yanique and Michael explore how organizations of all sizes can shift the way they receive and respond to consumer feedback, including how to categorize complaints by severity, how to establish timelines for resolution, and why the department most often blamed for service failures is rarely the one responsible for causing them. KEY TOPICS COVERED From a Bad Vacation to 30 Million Users Michael shares the origin story behind PissedConsumer.com, which was born from a travel experience that left him with no recourse as a consumer. That frustration became the foundation for one of the largest negative review platforms in the world. Collective Complaints: A New Way to Get Businesses to Respond PissedConsumer.com recently introduced a collective complaint feature that groups consumer feedback around a single issue and gathers signatures to amplify the message. Companies that routinely ignore individual complaints have begun responding to collective ones. Complaints as Small Gifts 72% of consumers who leave negative reviews are trying to protect future customers from the same experience. They want things to improve. Michael's position is that every complaint is a gift, and businesses that receive it that way build stronger relationships than those that deflect or dismiss. Customer Service Is Not a Deflection Mechanism Michael addresses one of the most common and costly mistakes in large organizations: treating customer service as a buffer designed to keep consumers away from the business rather than a function empowered to fix the actual problem. When customer service has real authority and clear escalation paths, the feedback loop works. Empowering Your Team with AI Michael shares how his organizations have deployed agentic AI systems using multiple models across departments including recruitment, operations, marketing, and deep research. His belief is that business leaders must integrate AI and human institutional knowledge now, not later. The Last Generation to Manage Only Human Teams Perhaps the most thought-provoking moment in the conversation comes when Michael reflects on where AI is taking the workforce. His message to his own employees: in nine months, the company will either need 70% fewer people or will be ten times more productive. Every single person chose productivity. BOOK RECOMMENDATION Getting Past No by William Ury. Michael has carried this book on negotiation and conflict resolution for over 40 years. For anyone who deals with difficult customers, challenging conversations, or resistant stakeholders, this is the read he points to first. CONNECT WITH MICHAEL PODOLSKY LinkedIn: Search Michael Podolsky, PissedConsumer Website: pissedconsumer.com Website: wisebrand.com FOLLOW NAVIGATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE X (Twitter): @NavigatingCX Facebook: Navigating the Customer Experience Community LinkedIn: Yanique Grant Website: yaniquegrant.com

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Navigating the Customer Experience

  274 : Lead With Clarity: Burnout, Cultural Intelligence, and the Strategy Every Leader Needs with Dr. Kerrian M. Peart, PHD.

  Jun 9, 202629 min

  Send us Fan Mail NAVIGATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Episode 274 | Lead With Clarity: Burnout, Cultural Intelligence, and the Strategy Every Leader Needs What happens to your customers when the leader serving them is running on empty? In this episode, Yanique Grant sits down with Dr. Kerriann M. Peart , organizational psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Island Rooted Co., for a conversation that connects leadership well-being directly to customer experience outcomes. Dr. Peart brings over 20 years of experience in organizational psychology, public health, and executive coaching, and her work challenges the idea that high performance should come at the expense of people. Drawing on her own journey as a Caribbean woman who navigated three cycles of burnout while building her consulting practice in corporate America, she offers leaders a grounded, practical framework for leading with clarity, cultural intelligence, and personal strategy. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE How burned-out leaders show up to customers in three distinct patterns, and which one is the rarest and most powerful Why happy employees are defined by competence AND capacity, and how both translate directly to the customer experience How the anchored bias of "this is how we have always done it" is damaging customer interactions in Caribbean businesses The difference between a growth mindset and an agile mindset, and why leaders in culturally diverse environments need the latter Why humble leaders go further and last longer than those who demand to be followed The one personal strategy shift that will change how customer experience professionals show up, even on their hardest days BOOKS MENTIONED The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle CONNECT WITH DR. PEART LinkedIn: Search Kerriann Peart Website: peartconsulting.org FOLLOW NAVIGATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE X: @NavigatingCX Facebook: Navigating the Customer Experience Community LinkedIn: Yanique Grant Website: yaniquegrant.com/podcasts

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on Navigating the Customer Experience. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.