Talking CX

There are a handful of genuinely useful practitioner observations - surveying without acting is not a CX program, voice of customer as political authority for under-titled CX leaders - but they are surrounded by significant padding, book promotion, and generic advice about culture and alignment that most B2B operators have already heard.

“organizations just buy a piece of technology and they think surveys and scores is a CX program”

“if you're a CX leader today and you lack, let's say, the positional authority or the, you know, the title, et cetera, um, one of the sources for authority is the voice of the customer”

The European-vs-US CX localization argument is a mildly fresh angle, and the observation that the Mark Twain quote itself illustrates the 'what you know that ain't so' phenomenon is a clever meta-point, but the episode largely recycles standard CX consulting wisdom about culture, alignment, and executive buy-in.

“when you're using companies like Zappos and Amazon and Apple and USAA and Google, that's not going to fly. There's no equivalent for that in Hungary or France”

“it ain't what you know that'll get you. It ain't what you don't know that'll get you. It's what you know that ain't so. And what's particularly funny about that is it isn't actually a Mark Twain quote”

Jeff Sheehan has genuine 25-year practitioner credentials and real in-market consulting experience in Ireland and Europe, and his examples come from actual engagements rather than theoretical frameworks; however, he is a mid-tier consultant/author rather than a senior operator who has run CX at meaningful scale inside a major enterprise.

“I am, uh, an American living in Dublin, Ireland and uh, have been working in customer service customer experience roles for a little over 25 years”

“I worked at a bank here in Ireland, which is a very good bank, and sadly it's going to leave the Irish market in the next, uh, in the near future”

There are a handful of concrete anchors - Musgrave named with a €9B revenue figure, specific American tech firms named in Dublin, an identifiable Irish challenger bank - but the most important examples (the telco, the challenger bank) go unnamed and lack any hard metrics on churn, revenue impact, or investment amounts, limiting their evidentiary value.

“the biggest employer in Ireland is a private company called Musgrave. They, they have um, convenience stores and grocery chains and a few other businesses. Um, very focused on customer service. Family run, I think it's like a 9 billion euro enterprise”

“Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, uh, LogMeIn, Airbnb, HubSpot. There's just so many”

The hosts ask structured but largely soft questions, never push back on any claim Jeff makes, and spend a notable portion of the episode on book giveaway logistics and mutual compliments; follow-up questions tend to re-summarize rather than probe or challenge the guest's assertions.

“Um, what do you see any differences between what happens in Ireland and what tends to happen in the US or just kind of what happens in the US in general”

“A, uh, big thank you to Jeff Sheehan and we are looking forward to seeing you next time. And in the meantime, do CXRight”