CXBuzz Interview With Terry Cain, Author and Co-Owner at Pinwheel Partners

I have a passion towards building a business culture that serves with excellence. My experience includes 30 Years in Fortune 500, Sales, Business Development, Process Mastery, Change Management and Customer Engagement.

After leading regional sales businesses within Avnet, I discovered a strong skill set and passion for starting new business development and strategies. Then as Vice President of Shared Business Services and Vice President of Global Operational Excellence, I drove change management and employee-led process improvement.

My “dream position” as Vice President responsible for Global Customer Engagement led me to co-write the book, The Pinwheel.

I also take part in numerous guest lecturer/speaker appearances including Kellogg at Northwestern, Eller at the University of Arizona,  Argyle Leadership Events, Richmond events, NG Customer Experience, and many others all focused on Customer culture.

Online commerce was booming in 2020, and so did consumer reviews. – How can brands better utilize this data to improve their customers’ experience? 

If you have customers reviewing your experience the ONLY thing to do is followup with them. Understand their improvement ideas, anaylyse why their experience happened the way it did.  Was it a systemic or process issue? Was it a people issue? Management issue?  You gotta know and you gotta let everyone know.

What is one element that must always be considered when working on a CXM (customer experience management) strategy? Will the culture support it?

Was it collaborative in the making or just handed down? The team must be involved to find the next best thing. If change is involved a true people oriented change management method must be a part of the change. After all, unless someone changes what they are doing the program is designed to fail.

Do you think personalization and customer-centricity are going to become increasingly more relevant in the coming year? How so?

I doubt it. Both will be in the limelight and awareness, both will be misunderstood.  Customer centricity is about culture. Unless culture adopts, embraces and understands its purpose as customer driven, centered etc. it will not change.

Personalize, personalize, personalize. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Understand the belief in culture and what it means to change it.

What’s the most insightful book you read in 2020?

“Just This” by Richard Rohr.

Terry’s predictions for the future of CX

What are your predictions for trends in customer experience in the coming year?

Same old thing.As long as leaders believe the customer metrics are about metrics then nothing changes. Unless the leaders are able to somehow put themselves in the customer shoes, then employee shoes that serve the customer there is no breakthrough strategy. There is no pat answer, there is no panacea, hard people centered work is key.