The Customer Experience World Games 2026 with Mike McClelland

Welcome to the Business Transformation Pitch. I am Greg the CX Goalkeeper bringing you conversations where transformation, leadership and customer experience meet to create real impact. Did you know 80% of regular listeners haven't subscribed yet? If you enjoy the show, support us by hitting the subscribe button. I promise we will keep raising the bar with the guests ideas and strategies that really matter to you. Because in business, just like in football, this conversation could be the game changer. I am Greg's AI based assistant. In this episode, Greg had the pleasure of chatting with Mike McClelland about the customer experience War Games 2026. They discussed about how these games provide a platform for CX professionals to use their skills for charitable causes. Sharing stories about impactful initiatives from past years. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Business Transformation Pitch with the CIS goalkeeper. Today very special episode because we are here to discuss about the Customer experience War Games 2026 that are now running yesterday 1st of June, it was the kickoff and today is the 2nd of June. We will publish soon this episode. I'm here together with Mike. Hi Mike, how are you? Hi Greg, Doing great, thank you very much. Before we start and we speak about the Customer experience wargames, could you please share a few words about you? All right, so I'm a Senior Director of Business Innovation Value within the CX space. I've been in this industry for almost two and a half decades. Don't want to age myself too much and I really specialize in helping customers understand how to take technology such as AI and gain the most value of that in transforming customer experiences as well as employee experiences. That's so cool. And it means it's the right person at the right place playing for their Customer Experience War Games. What is your role in the Customer Experience War Game and what motivated you to join? So I joined three years ago as a player. I happened to hear about it on LinkedIn and thought it was pretty intriguing. You know, CX World Games just had a great, great spin to it, investigated it that it was basically for charities around the world. And I was looking for ways to give back and really enjoyed my first year, had a great time. Came back the second year as a captain and very humbled that we had a great team, great success last year and then returning this year as a, as a player again. But also really proud that, you know, internally I recruited a bunch of my team at work to join and one of my employees actually is a captain this year. So that's, that's pretty exciting to see. Is perhaps an initiative from the last Years last year or two years ago that you still remember. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's always the charities that stand out. Greg? Yeah, know the Ugandan charity last year, the Gandhi foundation, you know helping, helping women in Uganda, young women with shelter and housing and also career path. I thought it was just fantastic. And the ways we could help them, you know, along with, you know, helping cancer children affected with children and their families affected by cancer in Colombia. That always stands out. You know business beats cancer in Edinburgh last year also was great. So I think the cancer, the attorneys themselves, they really stick with you over the years and you take tremendous pride about that. In fact one thing, the grade always stands out to me, my daughter who just turned 21 when I first started playing the games, she always struggled introducing dad and what dad does for his work. And she would spend more time explaining my dad helps charities improve customer experience is how she would explain what I do. Which I took a bit of pride in that, that she used me that way through the CX World Games which was great. That's really great. What do you like the most out of the games? The opportunity to network and learn from other industries and other players in those industries with their background. I've met great CX professionals through this that are professors at university. They're high end consultants in industries I've never touched and they're even engaged as students just entering the industry. So they have the ability to network globally and see things through other professional's eyes has been very helpful. And how do events like Customer Experience War Games contribute to the global CX community? I think it's a unification of all of our efforts, again centered in a very short time frame on charities and people in need. I think their contribution alone to the CX community was one we should be proud of. You know how I often describe it to friends and family and co workers. If I was a carpenter by trade grade, I would find it easy to get back. I could join an organization to go help build a home or build shelter for people in need. As a CX professional it's sometimes tough to find a way to give back and use these skills over the last two decades that we built. Where can I go apply those? And the World Games gives me a fantastic vehicle for that. And I can take a lot of pride in these methodologies, these tools I've built along the way to help customers. Businesses around the world are just as applicable to those charities in some ways, even more so when they have limited resources. And as you said, you are playing with a Lot of different members coming throughout the world. What are the biggest learning, playing or being part of such a team that in advance you, you didn't know just the, the ability for individuals to be as agile as they are is super impressive. My third year in, we're already just a couple days into the game, this year's games and we are already firing up our, our collaboration boards. Ideas are flying back and forth and it surprises me every time, Greg, that first challenge, how quickly season players will dive in and show what good looks like, how unseasoned players observe and follow along and start to contribute. And by that third week, man, we're operating as a machine. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses. We're feeding off each other. And then it gets really exciting. If you come back the following year and you have players on your team you played with last year because now you can move even faster. And this year, for example, I've got some players on my team that were on my team last year and the year before and it's almost as if that year or two years has not passed by immediately. I recognize the name. I really understand what their superpower is in cx and I know, my gosh, as part of this challenge, Bala on my team would be fantastic at this or Lauren and my team would be great at this. And just that the ability to collaborate so quickly and learn each other's styles, man, it's just some life lessons you take with you. You are touching two very important topics. One is, and I played the first time 60 rebel and I'm still in contact with the team that I was in that time. And as you said, I can very well remember the superpowers of my colleagues working together with us. But basically in the CX world, we are often doing it a bit more complex than it really is. You mentioned after three weeks you are fully operational. You are firing up all the ideas and putting them on paper and really solving challenges. Which tools are you using in your team without sharing the secret of your team, but which tools are you using in order to collaborate? For me, it's really about the simplicity of the tools that can really make a difference even if you don't have all this big investment that customer experience experts are expecting. You know, I was really, really fortunate with, with my very first captain my first year, Chris, you know, he really guided the team quite well in WhatsApp and got us really communicating globally as a unit via that vehicle. A simple to do secured platform and it just worked out really well. Secondarily we really leaned in heavily to collaboration boards. Whether it be depending upon your board of choice, Miro or lucidchart or Rural, there's a ton out there. But those Collaboration boards and WhatsApp are vital tools for the global games and here's why. Most of your teams are going to be made up of players in very, very wide time zones. This year alone we've got players on the team from United States to Dominican Republic, all the way to Africa. So finding a cult, a meeting time that works for all those time zones can sometimes be tough ones. App as well as the collaboration boards that let you cut through those time zones. We can hand off work in the middle of the night from the United States to Europe or anywhere in APAC or Middle east or Africa and vice versa, they can handle it back to us. That's from a communication standpoint on WhatsApp. And then the mural board helps you keep everybody organized on what your researchers are focusing upon, what your builders are focusing upon, and finally what your designers are focusing on and having all in one place communicated through WhatsApp. Those are the two main tools I think that have been vital for us. Lastly with that Greg, we really started to see last year the proliferation of use of AI and folks coming to the table with ChatGPT this year, access to Claude and ChatGPT and other tools that really helps you very very quickly research Personas within a charity, research other types of charities like them and success they've had. We'll look at the charities annual filings and reports to their federal governments and understand the financial structures of them. So AI has been a game changer as well on top of those communication tools. Thank you very much for sharing that and I think that's really the simplicity and the willingness to collaborate. People can find ways to collaborate using very simple tools. Now we are coming to the last three questions. Is there one or very few words? Answer. If you could describe your customer experience war games experience in one word, what would it be? Inspiring. If you could describe this customer experience war game community in one word, what would it be? Grateful. Are you planning to participate in future again in the six war games? I plan to do this in my retirement. The only thing that I can say is Mike, thank you very much for your contribution by contributing for one second, one minute, one hour, one week, everybody that contributes help these charities get one step forward solving their CX issues and continue delivering great experiences for their people. Therefore, thank you very much Mike. Please stay with me for the others. I hope that you enjoy these short interviews, please support and collaborate with the Six Wargame 2026. It's free of charge. It's a lot of fun and it's really inspiring, as Mike said. Thank you very much and bye bye. Thanks Craig. That's all for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please spread the word. It really helps. And remember, 80% of regular listeners haven't subscribed yet. If you enjoy the show, the easiest way to support us is by hitting that subscribe button. I promise we will keep raising the bar with the guest ideas and strategies that matter most to you. Until next time, never forget, we are not in B2B or B2C. We are in Edge to Edge, Human to human environment. Thank you.