Customer Experience Is Changing. Meet The Host Who’s Leading The Conversation.
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Today we have a little bit of a different episode for you. I'm going to be passing it off to a wonderful new host, Lacey Peace, who has been in the podcast world for quite some time. I've just been obsessed with storytelling from as young as I can remember. And it wasn't until very recently that I started to realize that this was translating into what we call customer experience. That at the

basis of every single brand experience is a story you're trying to tell for your customer. So Lacey, what types of guests can the audience expect moving forward? Hello everyone and welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. This will be my last episode as the host of Experts of Experience and I'm going to be passing it off to a wonderful new host, which I'm going to introduce to you in just a moment.

And before I do, I just wanted to say this show has been an incredible, incredible gift to me in enabling me to dive deep into the world of customer experience, far deeper than I have ever gone before. And speaking to some incredible guests to really illuminate not only what is customer experience in terms of a department or a function, but really how can leaders live and breathe in

a customer experience mindset that truly creates meaningful connection with their customers, no matter the type of business. It has been truly my greatest pleasure to host this show, and I am so excited for it to take its next phase. And so today we are going to introduce you to our new host, Lacey Pease.

who has been in the podcast world for quite some time, helping to create over 35 shows and reach over 45 million listeners as a part of the mission.org team. And for those of you who may not know what Mission is, it is a media network that produces incredible podcasts. Go and take a look at the other shows that they produce. Lacey is the perfect person to...

take the stage with this show because she has been in deep with how

how brands can truly position themselves authentically to their audience, which, as we all know, is a key element to a great customer experience. And Lacey also manages the relationships between Mission and all of their brands. So she knows the deal. Lacey, it is so great to have you. Thank you so much, Lauren. What a fantastic introduction. And I really, really appreciate you handing this over. Like, I feel...

I feel like I can't live up to the legacy you've created for this show. I'm going to give you some quick numbers before we keep going. And I told you at the beginning that I wanted to surprise you with these numbers because I think you might be a little blown away. I have the luxury of working behind the scenes on this show for the last year and a half. And so I've been able to accumulate a little bit of data here.

We've had 2.5 million plus downloads in the time that you have been here, Lauren. We've recorded more than 75 episodes. We've recorded more than 3,300 minutes of conversations with you. 3,300 minutes. I love it.

Yes. And we've created 675 plus pieces of content from this show alone. So Lauren, like massive kudos to you. I'm surprised you haven't lost your voice, to be honest, without how many episodes you've been hosting. I love it so much. And I think that just as I'm hearing that, you know, when we started the show, customer experience, like it was kind of a question mark of like, is this a show that people are going to watch?

be interested in. Like it's a passion for myself and you and the team at Salesforce. Like we all are obsessed with the topic and we know that people are obsessed with the topic, but it's just not something that at least for me, I see talked about that often. And I really wanted to make this show something that puts the concept of customer experience on a stage because

Because it's so important and it's at the root of every business, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, our customer experience is ultimately where we build trust with a customer and we build lifetime value with a customer. It all comes down to the experience. And so I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to really

talk about this at length, as you just shared, and really see all the different perspectives and pieces of insights and lessons that these incredible leaders we've had on the show have learned. Thank you again for the opportunity. And I'm so excited for what is to come next.

Well, you've really flipped this on its head, right? A lot of people think of customer experience as the end point, right? It's something that we build out this thing and then, oh, customer experience happens by default. But what you've done is put it front and center, center stage, as you said, right? Where we are...

saying that customer experience should be the first part of our conversation. And then what we build gets to be built around what that is, that experience is I want to create. So I think it's been, it's something that's been needed. And yeah, I'm just really, really grateful that I get to continue this. Lacey, I would love to give the audience an opportunity to get to know you a little better. And so my question for you is what first drew you to

the concept of customer experience and acknowledging that customer experience involves the brand, it involves conversations. What is interesting to you? For me,

It wasn't even customer experience at first. At least I didn't know to call it that. So whenever I was young, I was obsessed with stories and what stories people could craft. This could be fiction, nonfiction, or even the story that I felt when I would travel somewhere. So I got the opportunity to travel a lot growing up and walking into one restaurant or place, like what was the story that I felt was

unfolding with my interaction with that place, with the people there. So I've just been obsessed with storytelling from as young as I can remember. And it wasn't until very recently that I started to realize that this was translating into what we call customer experience.

that at the basis of every single brand experience is a story you're trying to tell for your customer. So that's, I think, what drew me in at the beginning. And then over the last decade of working with some of the largest B2B brands, just really seeing where their gaps are in this experience and helping support them through that. Something that I am excited to be able to share with others. I think that your story probably resonates with a lot of people where

none of us got into this being like, I want to work in customer experience. It's like, what is that thing? What is that? It's like, it just is. And now customer experience can be seen as like a customer service team or a lot of people might acknowledge it as that. But really it's, it just goes so much deeper.

as you just shared. It's something that is like, it's an essence almost more than it is a department. At least that's how I see it. It's more of a mindset. Yeah, it's like an emotional feeling. Like I get this emotion when I enter this building. Why is that? Why is it in this store? I feel a certain way. Is it the smells? Is it the music? Is it how they smiled at me when I entered? So there's just a lot of things growing up that I would pick up.

on. And yeah, I mean, being able to see how that comes together more professionally now is super interesting. What topics are you excited to explore as the host of Experts of Experience? So something you've touched on a lot with guests recently and something I hope to continue to get to talk with them about is AI's growing impact and especially the digital workforce that is now being created in this space and across entire businesses. AI is moving fast and I can only hope

that our audience and as a host, I can keep up with it. So I'm just really interested in getting to talk to more folks about AI, how it's transforming the organization and ultimately how it's making the customer experience better. And something that you've mentioned a lot, Lauren, is employee experience. And I feel like what I've seen in these conversations is no one can have the customer experience is improving from AI without first saying that the employee experience is also improving from AI.

So just highlighting that, those like war stories of people in the midst of it right now, because like, let's be real, no one's done. No one's like, oh, check the box, AI implementation is complete. No one has met the end goal yet, nor do I think there is really an end to this because it's just going to be new technology every single day, really. So yeah, being able to share more of those stories.

share the tools people are using and really the practical advice and practical tips that people can apply to their businesses. We are just at the tip of the iceberg, like the very tip, tip, tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI. Like you said, there's such a great use case for AI and customer experience. It's so obvious that we can have AI answering customer inquiries, answering tickets, even doing voice, which is all very true.

But if we look at it from the perspective of the employee's experience, if we're enabling employees to spend their time on higher value activities, it's actually really beneficial to their experience. And if we look at it through that lens, then we can start looking at, okay, how do we enable our employees to

spend more time on the most important things, which means reducing time on the things that are just cumbersome. How can we empower our employees to get the right answers from our knowledge base quickly, to answer emails faster? We can look at it from an efficiency standpoint, but I prefer to look at it from a employee experience standpoint. Well, and the thought that I have too with all that is a lot of people hear AI and they think like colds and like

And, you know, it's not human. It's not friendly. It's just this tool. I think the smartest organizations aren't just implementing it

as this tool, right? They are also figuring out ways to keep it human and to like make the interaction still feel like, oh, I can feel the soul of the company. Like I know it's an AI tool, but like the soul code of the company has been embedded into this thing in a way where like I'm laughing talking to you or I'm smiling talking to you. So it's definitely changing what it means to have a brand experience. It's changing what it means to have an employee experience.

But at the core of it, I want to highlight like, okay, it's not just...

It's something that's letting us be more human. And Lauren, I do commend you for how you hosted the show. You always bring it back to that human touch point, that human experience. And yeah, I'm only hoping I can carry that through a little bit. I'm sure you will. So Lacey, what types of guests can the audience expect moving forward? I'm really excited to share that we're going to be highlighting even more brands and more industries and companies of different sizes. So

So I'm excited to talk to some small businesses, medium-sized businesses. I feel like there's a huge opportunity there to highlight how they're using AI and how they're providing unique and different experiences. So really excited to go there. And then also we're going to be talking to more CIOs and CPOs and CMOs and VPs of marketing and all the different job titles you can imagine because something that I want to continue to carry through, Lauren, is that CX is everyone's job.

So bringing on all the different leaders so we can have this cross conversation in the C-suite and in the marketing departments and in the sales departments that shows that like CX gets to be at the forefront of everyone's mission, everyone's jobs, and just being able to highlight the organizations that are doing that right. It's one of the things that I think has been the most illuminating in hosting this show or just in the past 75 episodes that we've done. Most successful companies.

are the ones that see customer experience as a mindset that everyone in the organization should hold. From the sales team and the customer success team to the finance team to the HR team, everybody, if everyone adopts that mindset...

the customer experience will be better and the business will be more successful. I don't just want people to see, oh, this is a customer experience show and I should, which should only be listened to by customer experience people. We are all in customer experience. If you are in business, you are in customer experience. So this applies.

Well, Lauren, I can't let you get off this microphone without asking you this question. What were the top lessons that you've learned in those 75 plus interviews? I've learned so much. This has been truly a masterclass in business. Like I just said, it's not just customer experience and being able to really hear from top leaders, people who are at the top of their career, their peak of their career, who have seen so much sharing information with us.

And it's also come at such an interesting time because of AI. And even when we started this show a year and a half ago, AI was nowhere near where it is now in April 2025. And still, we are at the tip of the iceberg. But what I will say is that AI is radically changing customer experience. That might seem like an obvious statement, but it is wild.

wild what is happening. As a consumer, we can be excited because we will not need to be on hold any longer. Like I would say in a year or two, we're not going to be dialing and being like, please hold. You have to wait 45 minutes. That or like two hours like that. We are done. We are done with that. We can now.

have the phone answered immediately. It will be an AI. It will speak to us as a human and we will be able to get a large portion of our problems solved in that way. So like that is exciting.

From a customer experience standpoint that goes beyond that, brands have now the ability to understand us so much better. The insights that they can glean from any interaction that we're having with them can now be processed. We can take that unstructured data and process it. And brands can get a lot smarter about what is actually in our best interest. And it is something that a brand needs to choose to do.

It is something a company needs to choose to do, but the opportunity is there. And I'm just so excited about that aspect of it because as someone who's worked in customer experience my whole career, I am constantly spending a ridiculous amount of time, like before a year

ago, I would spend so much time gathering insights to then go to the product team to say, hey, customers care about this. Like we don't need to do that anymore. Now it's it is data that is processed and we can we can share it effectively.

The other thing that we've talked about this quite a bit, but my second lesson would be that customer experience is not a department. It is a mindset. And I just want to hammer that home so much. Like I don't even think we should talk about customer experience as purely customer service anymore. It is doing it a disservice. Customer experience is a mindset that goes through the entire business. And it's really the leader's job.

the CEO, the COO, really any leader, but those leaders especially have to see this fact. My third lesson that I've taken from the show, and we've mentioned it already here, is that

To have a great customer experience, we need to have a great employee experience. We know, and there's been a few episodes where we've gone specifically into this topic. The episode with Joey Coleman was one, also with Tiffany Bova, two thought leaders in the space who are deeply connected to the connection between the employee experience and the customer experience. And what we know...

is that if employees feel safe, if employees feel supported, if employees feel engaged in their work on a day-to-day basis, they will pass that on to the customer. Customer engagement is very, very, very difficult to create

Without employee engagement and to take it one step further. And how do you create a great employee experience? It really starts at the top. It starts with the leadership team believing that we need to create a great experience for our employees in order to create a great experience for our customers and have a thriving business as a result.

And so it's actually what has inspired me to dedicate myself fully to executive coaching and team facilitation, which is something I've been doing for many years, but it's now taking the forefront of my work because anytime I've gone into a company to consult with them about their customer experience, it ends up coming back to the leader. And how is that leader leading their team?

Are they leading from a place of anxiety and fear? Or are they leading from a place of calm power? If you're having challenges with your customer experience,

the first and best place to look at is yourself. I love that point you made about leadership being at the core of this, Lauren. I was speaking with an executive about this. Part of their AI implementation process was to basically acknowledge that they don't know anything. And so can you imagine this table of C-suite leaders looking around at each other and saying,

we don't know anything. How do we change that? And how do they humble themselves from this position of, I've been an expert in my field for 20 years, and now I don't know anything. So I think I'm hearing that a lot from people across the board. I'm hearing it in IT, sales, marketing, etc. Everyone is saying the same thing, that you need to put on this cap of, I don't know anything, and I'm just completely rewriting the script. I'm rewriting the playbook. In fact,

The playbook is just going to be changing every day. So like there is no playbook anymore. And it comes back to that leadership mindset that you've mentioned about how if the leader isn't willing to humbly say, oh, I don't know what's happening or isn't willing to take –

authentic ownership of the customer experience is failing. It's my fault. I think that's where we start to see these gaps happen in how these organizations are implementing their new processes. Completely. The nature of AI is we will not know. We do not know the answer. No one knows the answer. There is no right answer. The only thing we can do is to be curious.

We have to be curious. And I think a curiosity mindset as we enter into this AI world is essential because there's no right answer.

So let's ask questions. All right, Lauren, I've got something fun for you. We are going to do the lightning round, which I know you've done with every single guest up to this point. So we're putting you in the hot seat and asking you a few of the questions that you've asked guests in the past. The first question I want to ask is what piece of advice would you give any C-Lex leader? When you're thinking about improving your customer experience, it's important to also look at your leadership and look at the space that you're creating for your team and your customers.

And I mention this all the time, but the thing that I think is just so incredible about the topic of customer experience is that we're thinking about the humans doing business with humans. And so like come back to that human element of what it is that we're focused on. Of course, the metrics matter, the money matters, the KPIs matter, but...

How are the humans experiencing whatever it is you're doing? All right. This other last final question that you've asked every guest and I love hearing at the end of every episode is what's a recent experience you've had with a brand that left you impressed? I am so happy to finally be the one receiving this. But then as I was like, I know she's going to ask me this question and I started thinking about it. And the first thing that came to mind is most experiences are

that I'm impressed by are so easy that I forget about them, which is actually kind of the goal is like for a brand to just be like smooth and like not in my face and annoying. Like that is a goal, but there is always appreciation for the surprise moments, the wow moments. And I recently had one when I was staying at a hotel in West Hollywood in LA and

And it was at this hotel called Petit Hermitage, which is a, it's a one of a kind hotel. It's not a chain. It's just this one. And it is a creative expression. It is a pure piece of art. It's been around for like 15 years and still Friday nights. It's like a lineup out the door. Everyone wants to be there. It's the coolest place in town. And the thing about this hotel that just I'm

inspired by time and time again is that the property itself is not new and fancy. It's kind of like kitschy in its design, but it's expensive and it is classy. And the thing that stands out to me is the way you feel when you walk in that space. You feel like I am in another world. I am in some authentic expression of someone's crazy mind. And I am...

I am here for it. You know, they have like little, I don't know, like weird statues and they have like cookies inside of a container that says Quaaludes on it. And like, you know, like you went down Alice in Wonderland down into the rabbit hole. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But the last thing I will say about this experience that it's not only the hotel's amazing and it's like really wonderfully done, but it was my birthday. And my partner tells them when we're checking in that it was Lauren's birthday. And she's like, I'm going to send something to your room in a moment. Super nice. You know, a lot of hotels would do such a thing. And here comes a bottle of nice champagne and some dessert. Amazing. But the thing that stood out was a handwritten note.

And it was not a happy birthday, Lauren, written on a card. It was like a six sentence letter of appreciation written by hand. And I was like looking at it under the light. I'm like, is this actually handwritten? Or did they like have AI write this and like print it out? You know, they have companies that do that. They do. Someone like sat down and wrote this letter to me. And it was the sweetest thing. I told all my friends, I posted about it on LinkedIn. It is the human connection.

that stands out. And that's where AI is amazing at taking off the work that is not that important so that we can focus on the important thing, that human connection, the way that humans feel. And I felt so special and so well taken care of. I love that story. I love that story. What's cool about it too is that the folks there at the front desk felt empowered enough to give you that gift and take the time to write the note and

They know their leadership isn't going to come say, wait, why did you spend the time doing this? Like they knew that this was something that was important. So totally. I love that. I love that. They also know that like no one's probably checking to make sure that they wrote six full sentences, you know, right? Yeah. Yeah. They could have just written like, you know, throw in the towel, like happy birthday, Lauren. So glad you're here. But like, happy day. Exactly. Exactly. They took the time. And that shows exactly as you said that.

That their experience is an empowered experience and they want to create excellence for their guests because they probably feel well taken care of themselves. Wow. Okay. I know where my husband's taking me next time we have an anniversary. This place sounds amazing. Definitely check it out. It's incredible. Well, I guess this is the end of our show, so I will close it out for us.

And I just want everyone who's listening, I know that there are some of you who listen to this episode or this podcast all the time. And to those of you who have, I just want to say a massive, massive thank you for your support. Thank you for reaching out and sharing your questions and your encouragement. It's been wonderful.

Like I said, the greatest pleasure of my life to host this show. And you are all in wonderful hands with Lacey here. And the future is so incredibly bright for the topic and the conversation of customer experience.

So thank you, Lacey, for taking over. And I can't wait to keep listening. Thank you, Lauren. I am so excited. And thank you so much to the audience for creating such a space for us to have these conversations. All right. See you guys soon.