CX Decoded is our semi-monthly podcast designed to deliver insight from leaders in the customer experience and marketing industries. Each episode is designed to help you better understand the customer experience and the value it can add to your customers' lives.
38 min
CareFirst CMO Mack McGee explains how AI is shrinking the time it takes his team to write member materials that meet readability requirements, and why he tells his team the art is still in the prompt.
38 min
Two digital agency leaders explain how AI changed their pricing, platforms and staffing. Chris Teitzel, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Cellar Door, and Anita Melendez, chief operations officer at Orange County, Calif.-based KWALL, joined CX Decoded at Pantheon's Go Live conference in Miami. They covered: Why Cellar Door moved off time-and-materials billing while KWALL kept its model Letting employees experiment with AI, and what came out of it Building websites with a CMS instead of on one The governance work created by employee-built AI tools Why agencies are hiring project managers and strategists over developers
34 min
Farah Ahmed started on the phones 25 years ago. Today he's director of sales and CX transformation at StorageVault, where nine voice AI agents resolve simple calls and route customers in hard life transitions to human advisors. He explains why a clean knowledge base got StorageVault from contract to live pilot in under three weeks, and why he designs every rollout around employees first.
38 min
CareFirst CMO Mack McGee explains how AI is shrinking the time it takes his team to write member materials that meet readability requirements, and why he tells his team the art is still in the prompt.
38 min
Two digital agency leaders explain how AI changed their pricing, platforms and staffing. Chris Teitzel, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Cellar Door, and Anita Melendez, chief operations officer at Orange County, Calif.-based KWALL, joined CX Decoded at Pantheon's Go Live conference in Miami. They covered: Why Cellar Door moved off time-and-materials billing while KWALL kept its model Letting employees experiment with AI, and what came out of it Building websites with a CMS instead of on one The governance work created by employee-built AI tools Why agencies are hiring project managers and strategists over developers
34 min
Farah Ahmed started on the phones 25 years ago. Today he's director of sales and CX transformation at StorageVault, where nine voice AI agents resolve simple calls and route customers in hard life transitions to human advisors. He explains why a clean knowledge base got StorageVault from contract to live pilot in under three weeks, and why he designs every rollout around employees first.
46 min
PayNearMe CMO Anne Hay explains why she judges events by who her team spends time with rather than how many leads they collect, how to earn a spot on a buyer's shortlist and why curiosity is a marketer's most important skill.
42 min
Jeremy Cohen, manager of fan development and insights for the Buffalo Sabres, explains how AI analysis of more than 40,000 fan comments, monthly focus groups and street-level listening during a playoff run shaped real investments in the Sabres fan experience.
37 min
Suzie Dieth, VP and Chief Experience Officer at NRG and CMSWire's 2026 CX Leader of the Year, joins CX Decoded to trace nearly 21 years of building a CX program from scratch — from contact center roots to AI-driven insight at scale.
49 min
Three competing CDP vendors — Tealium, Treasure AI and Databricks — join CX Decoded for an unusually candid panel on real-time activation, the orchestration layer and why trust may be the category's next real fight.
31 min
Jorge Camargo, Head of Digital Platforms at Bank of America, joins CX Decoded to discuss the eight-year evolution of Erica, the bank's AI assistant — covering scale, personalization, compliance and what's next as generative AI reshapes client expectations.
43 min
Clarks' Mario Protano joins CX Decoded to unpack how AI is reshaping product discovery, why brand mentions are replacing clicks as a success metric, and how the 200-year-old footwear brand is rebuilding its affiliate and attribution strategy around a messier customer journey.
37 min
Jessica Herring, VP of Member Experience at Loyalty Credit Union, joins CX Decoded to talk AI chatbot design, member trust, and why she skipped the NPS score entirely.
41 min
Justin Racine, chief digital officer at Geriatric Medical & Surgical Supply, joins CX Decoded to explain why B2B buyers are more emotional than the industry assumes — and why fixing employee experience matters just as much as fixing the customer journey.
38 min
Dexian CMO Kip Havel joins CX Decoded to talk about the expanding scope of the marketing job — from rebrand strategy to AI skepticism to why customer feedback nobody asked for is often the most valuable data a company has.
34 min
Brinks Home chief customer officer Veronica Moturi joins CX Decoded host Dom Nicastro to explain how a security and home automation company rebuilt its call center from the ground up. Moturi started as a customer service agent in 2012 and rose through retention and escalations before taking the CCO role. She breaks down why average handle time isn't a KPI, how issue resolution and first call resolution drive a 55 net promoter score, and how AI tools and a remote workforce cut agent turnover from 150% to 22%.
39 min
Sanity CEO and co-founder Magnus Hillestad joins CX Decoded to argue that content management has been solving the wrong problem for years — treating content as a marketing asset instead of core business infrastructure. He explains why real-time, machine-readable content is now a prerequisite for AI agents to build, manage and distribute at scale, what that means for AEO and answer-engine discovery, and why Sanity is betting its next phase of growth on agent orchestration rather than another round of point-and-click features.
38 min
Pete & Gerry's Organics CMO Phyllis Rothschild joins Dom Nicastro on the CMO Circle podcast to talk premium egg marketing, brand building and the evolving consumer journey. From a 30-year consulting career at McKinsey to the brand side at the largest premium egg producer in the US, Rothschild shares how her team tracks LLM citation scores, navigates Reddit authentically, deploys an in-house eggfluencer and prepares to launch a major 2026 campaign built around new proprietary research naming eggs America's number one trusted protein source.
35 min
Brian Mekka spent 15 years managing CX for 60 million Kohl's shoppers. Now he's doing it for 300 steel buyers — and the stakes are completely different. Charter Steel's director of customer experience joins CX Decoded to break down the Compass program, a multi-phase initiative five years in the making, built on VOC data, a McKinsey methodology and a simple premise: B2B customers expect the same experience they get everywhere else.
37 min
Ben Larsen has spent nine years inside a company that built its reputation on something increasingly rare in insurance: actually caring. Wellfleet Insurance — a Berkshire Hathaway company — has answered the phone for college students navigating health insurance for the first time for over three decades, and that white-glove service culture is baked into everything. Now, as Digital Experience Officer, Larsen is the one tasked with figuring out how to take that same care and push it through a screen. In this conversation, Larsen walks Dom Nicastro through the real shape of digital transformation inside a multi-line insurance business — the legacy infrastructure hiding below the surface, the student health advisory council that tells him exactly what Gen Z actually wants, the small and large bets he's placing on bot technology and agentic AI, and why none of it works without getting the data right first. Oh, and there's a Salem State College baseball reunion in here too. You've been warned.
45 min
Hayden Clark went from coaching wide receivers at Vanderbilt and working on Nick Saban's staff at Alabama to VP of Marketing at LGI Homes, where he now leads five in-house teams covering paid media, creative, analytics, local marketing, and digital experience. In this episode of CX Decoded, Clark talks about building a marketing team that prizes curiosity and soft skills over résumé depth, marketing to the emotional complexity of first-time homebuyers, and how LGI is using Sitecore CDP data to bridge the gap between the digital journey and the in-person sales experience.
39 min
Allison Kavanagh didn't come to this conversation to celebrate AI. The CMO of Inflow Health came to interrogate it. Her company exists because follow-up care gaps — the kind where an incidental imaging finding gets lost between a chart, a referring provider and a patient — can turn into a life-threatening failure. That's the standard she holds AI to: not whether it can generate more, but whether it can close a dangerous gap. In this episode, she makes the case that healthcare marketers who lead with novelty and scale are asking the wrong questions entirely.
39 min
Tyler Gardner has been in the contact center world since he was 18, taking calls for DiscoverCard off a paper dial sheet. Today, he runs customer experience for Cuyana, the premium women's clothing and handbag brand — and he's learned one thing that hasn't changed in 25 years: if the fundamentals aren't right, no technology will save you. Before Cuyana rolled out AI-assisted email and voice support, Gardner spent months mapping processes, updating knowledge-base articles and making sure every workflow was documented. His rule: if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. On this episode of CX Decoded, Gardner breaks down what it actually looks like to run a small-but-mighty CX team for a luxury brand, why phone calls aren't dying, how sentiment analysis is replacing the post-call survey as the real signal and what's next — chat AI, SMS, and a push into international commerce.
50 min
Drupal founder and Acquia executive chairman Dries Buytaert joins CX Decoded fresh off DrupalCon Chicago to break down how AI is disrupting every leg of the open source ecosystem — the platform, the agency world, and the contributor community. Plus: why the current deal between publishers and AI crawlers is broken, and what CX leaders should actually be doing about content discoverability.
16 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Dom Nicastro distills a CMSWire TV conversation with AT&T's John Miller into five essential takeaways on customer obsession. From employee enablement to AI restraint, the discussion breaks down how AT&T turns CX intent into everyday practice at enterprise scale.
28 min
CX Decoded dives into how contact centers and digital teams turn customer interactions into real business value. In this episode, host Dom Nicastro sits down with Barry Cooper, president of NiCE's CX division, to unpack the company's evolution from workforce management roots to a full-service CX platform — and what that means for agents, leaders and customers. Cooper shares how unified interaction data and AI are reshaping quality, coaching and KPIs; why the agent experience has to lead any automation push; and what's coming with CXone Mpower, specialist personas for asynchronous work and a "single pane of glass" across channels. It's a candid look at the tools, behaviors and org roles defining the next era of customer experience.
13 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro sits down with Miranda Collard, Global Chief Client Officer at TP, to explore her remarkable journey from headset-wearing agent to C-suite leader. With over 30 years in the contact center industry, Collard shares hard-earned insights on how frontline experience shapes leadership, why AI's real impact often happens behind the scenes, and how emotional intelligence can be scaled as a CX differentiator. Listeners will also hear how empowering agents and turning insights into action can transform customer journeys in 2025 and beyond. Whether you lead a global CX organization or a small team, this conversation offers practical strategies for blending technology, empathy and execution to deliver experiences that truly last.
27 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro sits down with CMSWire's VP of Research, Sarah Kimmel, to unpack top findings from two pivotal reports: the 2025 State of the CMO and the 2025 State of Digital Customer Experience. Together, they explore the evolving skill sets required of modern CMOs, the cautious return of marketing budget growth and the ongoing struggle to accurately measure ROI. They also highlight how generative AI is seeing explosive, yet still largely unguided, adoption; how DX tools are finally showing results after years of frustration; and how personalization efforts are accelerating thanks to improved tech and behavioral insight.
12 min
Too many marketers are chasing likes over results. Jim Lecinski, clinical professor of Marketing at Northwestern University and former Google executive, says it's time to reframe the CMO role—from brand builder to growth driver. In this episode, he breaks down how to stay customer-obsessed, navigate AI-driven search and get ready for Gen Alpha before they catch you off guard.
14 min
In this episode of "CX Decoded," Michelle Hawley, senior editor at CMSWire, takes a look inside the nuances of brand evolution in today's digital word, featuring Amber Holm, CMO at Winnebago Industries and Ranu Coleman, head of marketing at PatPat. In this episode, both leaders delve into the importance of customer insights in keeping brands relevant — and the challenges that come with repositioning in the consumer space. They also share strategies for maintaining brand integrity, including keeping existing customers happy while reeling in new audiences. Through in-depth interviews originally aired separately on the CMSWire TV show "The CMO Circle," Holm and Coleman offer a deeper understanding of how established brands can stay ahead through change and innovation.
16 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, host Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief of CMSWire, dives into the future of AI in customer service with insights from three leading experts in the field. This episode brings together discussions from two separate CMSWire TV "Beyond the Call" interviews, featuring Barry Cooper, president of NICE's CX Division; Tom Laird, CEO of Expivia; and Keith Farley, SVP of Individual Voluntary Benefits at Aflac.
17 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Dom Nicastro and Michelle Hawley of CMSWire discuss the evolving roles of chief marketing officers (CMOs) with insights from CMOs Gurdeep Dhillon of Contentstack and Kathie Johnson of Sitecore.
18 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief at CMSWire, and Michelle Hawley, senior editor at CMSWire, explore the intersection of employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) within the marketing landscape. The episode features insights from Gautam Pantakar, GM of Oldfield, and DeLu Jackson, executive VP and chief marketing officer at ADT. Gautam covers the importance of cultivating a strong organizational culture to enhance both employee and customer experiences. DeLu shares his approach to fostering innovation and emotional connections with customers, emphasizing the vital role that employees play in the overall customer journey.
17 min
We cover today the convergence of humanity and technology in today's marketing landscape, featuring insights from Karna Crawford, CMO at Marqeta, and Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future. In this episode, Karna shares her insights on how to bring a little bit of humanity into B2B marketing — while still getting all the benefits of modern-day technology. And Tom takes us through his strategic use of in-house media to build trust and credibility in the cybersecurity space.
19 min
In this edition of CX Decoded, we discuss how large language models are enabling more natural and efficient customer interactions, reshaping the way contact centers operate. Learn about the importance of meeting rising customer expectations, the shift from cost-cutting to prioritizing customer service excellence and the rapid acceleration of digital transformation spurred by the pandemic.
19 min
In this in-depth conversation, Shelby Mitchell of Discover shares how her personal experiences have influenced her career, driving notable improvements in accessibility at Discover. Her story highlights the powerful blend of personal commitment and corporate duty in fostering inclusive digital spaces.
37 min
This episode of CX Decoded, brought to you by CMSWire, features Karan Thaker, a specialist in customer experience and design strategy from Northwestern Mutual. Karan shares his extensive background in enhancing digital and physical customer experiences across various industries, focusing on creating seamless cross-channel experiences. The conversation dives into the nuances between UX design and experience design, emphasizing the importance of integrating service design and journey management to improve financial wellness through better customer journeys in insurance and investment products.
33 min
We explore the delicate balance between enhancing customer experiences and empowering employees at LinkedIn. Hear from Sam Stern, senior manager of customer experience, about the innovative ways LinkedIn prioritizes trust, extracts valuable insights from vast amounts of data and ensures both customers and employees feel valued and heard.
31 min
Sri Narasimhan, vice president of Enterprise Consumer Experience at CVS, discusses the importance of establishing a customer-centric culture. Narasimhan emphasizes the need for a multifaceted approach that includes igniting a culture focused on customer feedback, empowering frontline employees and strategically integrating consumer centricity across all business operations.
32 min
In the latest episode of CX Decoded, Jessica Austin Barker, the chief digital and client experience officer at TIAA, unveils the intricate tapestry of TIAA's journey in transforming digital and client experiences in the financial sector. This episode delves deep into the nuanced approach TIAA has adopted, moving beyond mere technological advancements to a more holistic integration of digital innovation with a human-centric approach.
35 min
This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. The delicate interplay of customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) forms the backbone of today's hospitality management, where understanding and valuing the contribution of each employee translates directly into enhanced customer satisfaction. Embodying this principle is Gautam Patankar, chief experience officer at Bobby Jones Links. With a rich background that blends a love for golf with a keen insight into hospitality management, Gautam stands as a testament to the power of aligning CX and EX.
28 min
This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. The convergence of customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) is more than a trend; it's a strategic imperative. Organizations are recognizing the symbiotic relationship between how they treat their customers and their employees, understanding that a holistic approach can drive significant improvements in performance and satisfaction. Bridging these two domains requires a nuanced understanding of both the internal and external dynamics of organizations.
27 min
This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Shri Nandan, VP of AI Experiences at Comcast, tells us how the implementation of AI, particularly chatbots, in contact centers has not only streamlined operational efficiencies but also enriched the quality of customer interactions. Shri shares her firsthand experiences in driving AI projects, emphasizing the importance of a customer-centric approach and cross-functional collaboration.
33 min
This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Jason Ferrell, Capital One's managing vice president of experience design, is a designer at heart. Designing experiences in the current day comes with challenges related to customer experience, employee experience and constantly connecting experiences to top-level business objectives. Ferrell believes in design experiences through a personalized approach that involves art and science, working across department silos and ultimately connecting experiences with business outcomes.
35 min
Customer experience teams at Intuit, owners of TurboTax, get inspired each day to iterate, test and create customer experiences for their thousands of customers. The key ingredients? Agility, adaptability and continuous learning. Principal CX leader Marietta Silva Allison takes us behind the curtain for all of it in this episode.
26 min
In the dynamic field of customer experience (CX), professionals need to develop and hone particular skills to navigate its challenges successfully. Cary Cusumano, an expert in CX management, has mastered this domain. Emphasizing the importance of traits like curiosity and persistence, Cusumano understands the need for continual growth and innovation in this industry. In this podcast, Cary explores these pivotal elements, setting the groundwork for achieving excellence in customer experience management.
30 min
In this episode of CX Decoded, Brianna Langley Henderson, a seasoned CX practitioner, delves deep into the implications of introducing generative AI into business organizations. She acknowledges the transformative potential of AI and its capacity to fundamentally alter the landscape of various industries. At the same time, she highlights the resistance this technology faces from certain quarters. The discussion extends to exploring the ethical conundrums posed by AI, emphasizing its potential to disrupt traditional job roles and intensify the fear of human downsizing, a concern particularly felt for creative roles. Henderson underscores the urgent need for organizations to establish their own codes of ethics in this nascent and rapidly evolving field, where concrete legal and ethical guidelines are yet to be standardized. She advocates for a proactive approach in embracing this technological advancement, emphasizing that the strategic integration of AI can secure a business's place in the future of customer experience and other creative endeavors. We caught up with Brianna recently on the topic.
28 min
In this special edition of CX Decoded, recorded live at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas this week during the CMSWire CONNECT Conference, CX Decoded hosted Karna Crawford, a distinguished marketing and digital strategy leader with a proven track record of innovation and tangible results. Throughout this episode, Karna, former head of US marketing at the Ford Motor Company, shares her invaluable insights on customer experience and its evolving landscape. She brings a wealth of experience from working with iconic brands and leveraging data-driven insights to shape customer experiences. Karna's unique perspective as a trailblazer in the industry sheds light on the best strategies and practices for CX professionals, whether seasoned veterans or those just starting their journey. One of the key takeaways from our conversation with Karna is the importance of strategic alignment between brand innovation and customer loyalty. She emphasizes the need for organizations to prioritize their innovation efforts and ensure they align with the overall brand strategy.
24 min
Michelle Morris, customer experience leader for Verizon Connect, shares insights on customer satisfaction, loyalty, the necessity of cross-department collaboration and best ways to achieve data-driven success.
24 min
In this podcast episode, Sarah Kimmel, the vice president of research at Simpler Media Group, casts a discerning eye on "The State of the CMO" survey, offering a rare glimpse into the shifting landscape of chief marketing officers (CMOs) and the competencies they must cultivate. The study's revelations place creative thinking at the top of vital skills, trailed by strategic management, leadership prowess and executive aptitude. The CMO's role has been undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis, marked by heightened collaboration with sales divisions, mounting demands for enhanced customer experiences and active participation in digital transformation initiatives. Intriguingly, CMOs say only 59% of leadership expect measurable outcomes from them, indicating not all undertakings lend themselves to direct ties to the bottom line. Kimmel sheds light on the turbulent journey of CMOs as they navigate a perpetually shifting sea of expectations and responsibilities. We caught up with her recently to discuss the survey.
32 min
Melissa Henley, an experienced CX leader at Luxion, the company behind KeyShot 3D software, explores the vital aspects of both customer and employee experiences. In this latest podcast with CMSWire's CX Decoded, Melissa, a CMSWire Contributor, identifies two core metrics that CX leaders should prioritize: churn and net revenue retention (NRR). Melissa elaborates on the significance of these metrics in evaluating customer satisfaction and cultivating a loyal customer base, emphasizing the importance of a keen focus on these numbers for a company's success. Additionally, Melissa addresses the crucial role of data in CX leadership. She asserts that proficiency in working with data is essential for success in the CX field. And just as Archimedes needed to perfect his measurement techniques to resolve the king's quandary, in the world of customer experience, mastery of the right metrics can lead to those elusive, yet sought-after "Eureka!" moments.
40 min
While positive employee experiences can enhance customer experiences, negative employee experiences can have the opposite effect. A famous SNL sketch parodies the frustrating experience of trying to cancel cable service, with a customer being repeatedly put on hold, transferred to different departments and subjected to aggressive sales tactics from customer retention specialists. The sketch highlights the all-too-common problem of customer service employees who are not engaged or motivated to provide good service, resulting in a negative customer experience. To avoid this scenario, businesses need to prioritize employee engagement and create a positive workplace culture to ensure that employees are motivated to deliver exceptional customer service. CMSWire Contributors Nichole Devolites, principal consultant of LYSI Holding Company and Justin Racine, director and lead commerce strategist at Perficient, emphasize this point and provide real-life examples to illustrate the impact of positive workplace cultures on customer experiences in this CX Decoded podcast. They also discuss the use of chatbots and artificial intelligence, the power of invoking nostalgia in branding and creating a sense of community in the customer experience.
46 min
In recent years, organizations have increasingly turned to digital experience platforms (DXPs) to improve their online presence and engagement with customers. In this episode of CX Decoded, we sat down with Sitecore's Dave O'Flanagan, Optimizely's Deane Barker and Contentstack's Nick Barron to discuss DXPs and a shift to composable platforms and related concepts such as content management systems (CMS) and content marketing platforms (CMP). The participants Dave, Deane and Nick each gave examples of common use cases for DXPs and focused on the need for omnichannel capabilities that enable consistent messaging across various channels and touchpoints. They also emphasized the importance of being open and flexible with architecture to allow customers to plug and play different products depending on their business objectives.
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