CX Network is delighted to present this year’s guide to the top customer experience influencers we believe you should follow in 2024.
Our list includes CEOs, company founders, CXOs, thought leaders and academics from all over the world, who are making a significant impact in customer experience by bringing innovation to their field and inspiring the next generation of CX leaders.
The CX Network team compiled the list by judging a number of factors: social media presence, experience, the topics they cover and achievements in their sector as well as previous awards. Customer experience now involves more departments and job functions than ever before, and we have reflected this by ensuring the list includes a variety of regions, industries and job roles, with the aim of celebrating the huge diversity that exists in the global CX practitioner community.
We’ve compiled the list in alphabetical order, highlighting why each individual is so influential along with our pick of their top blog articles, podcasts and interviews.
Click on a name to go to them directly or scroll down to read about who is moving and shaking in the world of CX right now.
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| Ana Iorga Buyer Brain |
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| Anna Noakes Schulze The NTWK |
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| Sarah Evangeline Norman TikTok |
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| Colin Shaw Beyond Philosophy LLC |
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| Jim Tincher Heart of the Customer |
Pedro Uria-Recio True Corporation |
Ankesh Agarwal
Majid Al Futtaim
The insights specialist
Ankesh Agarwal is the director of group customer experience at Majid Al Futtaim, a Dubai-based conglomerate that operates shopping malls and hotels in the Middle East and North Africa.
Agarwal’s experience includes establishing voice of the customer programs and omnichannel strategies, and at Majid Al Futtaim he has developed a Center of Excellence for customer experience that sets best practice guidelines and training resources.
He has been recognized as a top customer experience voice on LinkedIn and among the Top 250 Global Insights professionals by insights and analytics members organization ESOMAR. Under his stewardship, Majid Al Futtaim won Forrester’s first Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award for EMEA.
- Find out what Ankesh Agarwal is talking about on LinkedIn.
Everise
The BPO entrepreneur
Sudhir Agarwal is the chief executive officer of Everise, a pioneering US$1 billion company based in Singapore dedicated to customer experience outsourcing for Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups around the world.
Prior to Everise, Agarwal was a key figure at Aegis, where he transformed it into one of India's largest business process outsourcing (BPO) companies with operations across India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Speaking to Business Insider about some common pitfalls entrepreneurs must avoid, he said, “the pressures of owning a small business can distract from what's most important — your people. When I started Everise, one thing I was very clear on was that we will never miss a paycheck for any employee.”
Agarwal is regularly invited to speak at prestigious events like the Wharton India Economic Forum and our sister brand's Customer Experience Asia Week.
- Find out what Sudhir Agarwal is talking about on LinkedIn
David Armano
Ringer Sciences
The AI strategist
An accomplished leader in AI analytics and digital transformation, David Armano currently serves as the executive vice president of AI analytics strategy at Ringer Sciences. His career includes stints at marketing firm Edelman, generative AI avatar company Soul Machines, and working with the self-driving rideshare company Cruise.
Beyond the boardroom, Armano has cultivated an online community of over 100,000 marketing and communications professionals, and he shares his insights on innovation and digital transformation through his newsletter David by Design and contributions to Forbes. He is also a sought-after speaker at events including TED and SXSW.
“Most industry experts assumed that bias in AI was one of the most significant ethical challenges, meaning the humans who build the AI allow their personal biases to seep into it, unknowingly or knowingly,” Armano tells us. “But I believe it is culture — corporate culture also extends into the jobs debate around AI as companies view the opportunities to streamline and enhance productivity through AI automation. A healthy, ethical corporate culture is likely to spawn ethical AI considerations, and a less healthy or questionable culture may have the opposite effect. Culture eats strategy for lunch — and influences AI ethics for dinner.”
Our pick of David Armano’s content:
USA Truck Brokers
The experience designer
Natalia Gómez Barrera is the chief experience officer at logistics company USA Truck Brokers, where she leads on customer and employee centricity.
Barrera has more than 18 years of experience in corporate communications, branding and customer experience, including almost 10 years at emtelco, a Colombian contact center solutions provider where she was ultimately promoted to VP of client experience.
Barrera shares her expertise in design thinking and service design through speaking events and her weekly Spanish-language newsletter Capsulas de experiencia ('Experience capsules'), where she shares her thoughts and tips on things like understanding customer personas for experience design, and unlocking the power of quantitative and qualitative data.
Our pick of Natalia Gomez Barrera’s content:
e&
The CX thought leader
Raluca Berchiu is group head of customer experience and marketing at e&, a global tech and communications company.
Originally from Romania, Berchiu trained as a lawyer and began her career in the public sector, first as an international relations expert for the Romanian Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and later as a legal advisor for the Ministry of Communication and IT.
She has since held a number of senior roles in marketing, business development and customer experience, and has won multiple awards including the CXMStars’ Top CX Award for valuable educational CX contribution.
Now based in Dubai, Berchiu is an international keynote speaker, thought leader, mentor and an advocate for women’s leadership.
- Find out what Raluca Berchiu is talking about on LinkedIn
Jeanne Bliss
Customer Bliss
Driving customer bliss
Throughout her illustrious 35-year career, Jeanne Bliss has counselled more than 20,000 business leaders on cultivating customer-centric growth. With a global reach, she has delivered no fewer than 1,500 keynote speeches and penned four best-selling books on customer experience and leadership.
In 2002, she established her consultancy, Customer Bliss, and went on to co-found the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) in 2011, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing its members' customer experience management practices.
At the start of 2024 Bliss announced two new initiatives — that she would be mentoring five chief customer officers as her way of giving back to the CX community, and the #MakeMomProud campaign, inviting people to share a picture of their mothers along with a description of an action they have taken in business to make the lives of customers or employees better.
- Find out what Jeanne Bliss is talking about on LinkedIn
Think Wow
The champion of growth
Rebecca Brown is the co-founder and lead consultant at Think Wow, a UK company that helps SMEs and start-ups grow by improving their customer experience and sales strategies.
Her interest in customer experience was piqued more than a decade ago when she oversaw the opening of several high-end retail art galleries, balancing the need for an exceptional experience with the drive for sales. She then led customer experience and operations teams in the outsourcing, property and energy sectors, before founding Think Wow in 2019.
Brown is also an anti-bullying advocate. Think Wow has a wealth of resources to help organizations tackle bullying in the workplace, including a free feedback tool to assess how bully-proof a company is, and what leaders might need ensure their employees are safe.
- Find out what Rebecca Brown is talking about on LinkedIn
Tiffani Bova
What’s Next!
The brand evangelist
The San Francisco Examiner has called Tiffani Bova “one of the most masterful keynote speakers in the world,” and she has been ranked among the Top 50 Business Thinkers by Thinkers50 among many other accolades.
Formerly growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce and a research fellow at Gartner, Bova was an early pioneer of cloud computing. She also helped lead a newly formed division of a Fortune 500 company that brought in $300 million in revenue in little over two years.
Bova is the author of two Wall Street Journal bestsellers (GrowthIQ and The Experience Mindset), is host of the What’s Next! podcast, and is also a columnist for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Bloomberg and Forbes.
Our pick of Tiffani Bova’s content:
Carruthers and Jackson
The data cheerleader
Caroline is a UK-based award-winning data expert and co-founder of global data consultancy Carruthers and Jackson. She was one of the first women to take on the role of chief data officer (CDO) and has worked across multiple industries to build data capability and advocate for its benefits.
She is also the author of Chief Data Officer’s Playbook, a book offering insights into the role of a CDO.
“Data is an amazing tool which can make so many innovations come to life, but it should underpin business goals rather than being seen as an end in itself,” she says. “Do not fall into the trap of data for data’s sake, actually work out what you need the data for first.”
Our pick of Caroline Carruthers’ content:
Rajat Chawla
Koyopo
The CX mentor
Rajat Chawla is Asia's first certified CX mentor, leading training initiatives at Koyopo, an Indian training provider recognized by CXPA. He has coached leaders at Capgemini, Accenture, Dell, Amazon, Cisco and Novartis, and sales professionals from 20 different countries over his two-decade career.
He is the author of the Customer Experience Design Book, and has created a framework to help tech sales professionals attract top job offers and thrive in their careers. In 2018 he was listed as one of CXPA’s Who's Who of Global Customer Experience Professionals.
Chawla’s weekly newsletter includes lots of actionable tips to help professionals stand out in the marketplace, including this advice: “Remember, you are not just selling what you do, you are selling who you are. Make sure your brand reflects your passion and purpose.”
Our pick of Rajat Chawla’s content:
Experian
The trade advisor
Banu Cinar is the global head of customer experience at consumer credit company Experian, where she is responsible for the organization’s global enterprise strategy including digital transformation on its customer self-service platform.
Cinar has wide-ranging experience spanning customer journey mapping, voice of the customer and business processes, having worked in senior roles at BT Group and Allianz Insurance among others.
She also sits on the advisory board of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange (IBDE), a not-for-profit membership organization championing international trade, investment flows and economic diplomacy across different sectors. To date, the IBDE has advisory boards in around 20 countries.
She has lent her expertise to judging panels, such as the UK’s Customer Experience Awards in 2023.
- Find out what Banu Cinar is talking about on LinkedIn
Amanda Cromhout
Truth
The loyalty expert
Amanda Cromhout is the founder of Truth, a South African consulting business specializing in customer centricity and customer loyalty programmes. Truth has worked with some of the countries’ biggest brands, including Virgin Active and Sun International.
Drawing from her experience heading up sales and marketing at British Airways and Woolworths, she set up Truth in 2006. She is also the academic director of Truth’s Customer Academy, an online training platform covering loyalty, customer relationship management (CRM) and data, that has served more than 500 students in 19 countries.
Cromhout was named International Loyalty Personality of the Year in 2023, is the founder of The Blind Loyalty Trust, and has written Blind Loyalty, a book where she dives into 101 different loyalty concepts. Speaking about her favorite topic, she says, “Loyalty isn’t a program; it is the connection to the brand and trust is a cornerstone of this.”
Our pick of Amanda Cromhout’s content:
Deloitte Digital Middle East
Customer-obsessed transformation
Hussein M. Dajani has more than two decades of experience in CX, working on both the agency and the client side.
His stint as the general manager for digital and CX transformation at Nissan Motor Co. for Africa, Middle East, India, Turkey and Oceania, led to remarkable CX transformations, earning him the Chairperson Nissan Way Award. Dajani has also been recognized with regional awards from Gulf Marketing Review and the Huffington Post.
In his current role as partner and chief marketing officer at Deloitte Digital Middle East he heads up advertising, marketing, content, CX and commerce offerings, while having advisory roles on the boards of CMO Council Middle East and CXPA Middle East Regional Leadership Council.
“The challenge for brands in 2024 is not just to be customer-centric, but to become customer-obsessed,” Dajani tells us. “This means putting the customer at the heart of every decision, understanding their evolving needs, and building trust through consistent, personalized, and ethical practices.”
Our pick of Hussein M. Dajani’s content:
Michael Dart
Energy Queensland
Powering Australia
In his dual role as chief customer officer and chief marketing officer at Australia’s largest electricity distribution company, Michael Dart spearheads Energy Queensland’s customer and community strategies, collaborating with stakeholders to implement energy policy on behalf of the board.
His extensive portfolio encompasses customer and community strategy, government and investor relations, brand management and digital customer needs. Additionally, he heads customer and market operations, overseeing metering services, market transactions, and customer contact centers statewide.
Dart has more than two decades of executive management experience, and has been named as a Top 100 Influencer for APAC by the Australian Contact Centre Association.
"Brands that are trusted and seen as acting in the best interests of their customers are the ones that will continue to deliver those benefits for their organization," Dart says. "I often say that trust meanders into town on a tricycle, but it leaves in a Ferrari!"
Our pick of Michael Dart’s content:
Konabos
The customer-centric strategist
Dubai-based Vaishali Dialani is senior CX strategist at Konabos, a full service digital CX agency. Prior to this she was head of customer experience at Now Money, where she led on voice of the customer, metrics and CX strategy.
An active presence in EMEA’s CX space thanks to being an in-demand guest on podcasts, blogs, lectures and speaking engagements, Dialani has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in 2023 and 2024.
We asked Dialani what she believes to be the biggest challenge brands face in 2024 to ensure they are customer-centric: "Making sure everyone in a team sees eye to eye on what 'customer-centric' really means is like herding cats,” she says. “It's akin to keeping up with a friend's ever-changing music taste, but in this case, it's the unpredictable world of customer expectations. Juggling these variables while brands craft their customer experience strategy — that's the real challenge businesses are up against!"
- Find out what Vaishali Dialani is talking about on LinkedIn
Tom DeWitt
Michigan State University
The professor of CX management
Tom DeWitt, Ph.D. is the academic program director for North America’s very first degree in customer experience management — a Master’s of Science at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. As a result of this role he plays a key part in advancing customer experience management globally, through industry roundtable discussions, conferences and by training the next generation of CX managers. His research focuses on consumer psychology, customer centricity, and employee engagement.
DeWitt earned his doctorate degree from Florida State University, where he also received an award for teaching excellence. Prior to joining academia, he held senior management positions in the hospitality industry in the US and in Asia.
He tells us, “When one reviews the reasons why CX initiatives fail, it reveals the need for a multidisciplinary skillset that most people don't consider when thinking of effective customer experience management.”
Our pick of Tom DeWitt’s content:
CX Journey
The culture expert
Annette Franz is a consultant and blogger at CX Journey, where she is focused on helping companies identify what drives retention, satisfaction and creating a customer-centric culture. In her own words, “Culture is not fluff. Putting people first in your organization is not fluff. It is real. There is a direct correlation between designing a customer-centric organization and the outcomes a business achieves.”
She has written two highly practical, widely acclaimed books including Customer Understanding in 2023, which explores customer journey mapping and how to facilitate journey mapping workshops with customers.
An authoritative voice on CX strategies, Franz has 30 years’ of experience and worked with many top companies before founding CX Journey in 2011. She is also on the CXPA’s board of directors.
Our pick of Annette Franz’s content:
Ian Golding
Customer Experience Consultancy
The CX Black Belt
Ian Golding has more than twenty years of experience in business improvement and customer-centric strategies.
A certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Golding has authored more than 300 articles and delivered keynote speeches worldwide; he also played a pivotal role in founding the CXPA and was the first person in the world authorized to teach the CCXP accreditation.
Based in the UK, Golding is the CEO and founder of Customer Experience Consultancy, a company he set up in 2012 after transitioning to work as an independent consultant. He is also an independent advisor for NPSx, the digital venture from Bain & Company's customer experience practice.
- Find out what Ian Golding is talking about on LinkedIn
Bruno Guimarães
Amigos do CX
The CX market accelerator
Bruno Guimarães is the founder of Amigos do CX, the biggest community of customer experience practitioners in Latin America. He launched this initiative to drive the CX market in the region. Each year it hosts the Wow Summit, a powerhouse event bringing together industry leaders, with the fourth edition taking place in 2024.
He juggles this with his role as CX manager for Americas at Betano; prior to this he was CX solution strategist for Latin and Central America at Qualtrics, and CX director at software company SoluCX.
Guimarães has also twice made the list of the UK’s Customer Experience Magazine's Top 10 CX Influencers.
"Latin America is a market brimming with untapped potential for CX,” he tells us. “The buzz around AI and other tech is exciting, but we cannot forget the human touch. Replacing humans with technology just to cut costs is not the way to go. The key is to strike a balance, using technology to empower people, not replace them."
- Find out what Bruno Guimarães is talking about on LinkedIn
Xperiente
The data advocate
Musa Hanhan is the founder and managing partner of San Francisco-based consultancy Xperiente. Past roles at software companies Genesys, VMware and Cloudware USA have given him a wealth of experience in customer insights and data-driven strategies — he even holds a patent for a tool that can data-link a remote worker to a communication center.
In a recent blog for CX Network he explained the importance of democratizing data so it can be put to good use by the entire organization: “Leadership must deliberately create a new mindset that focuses on the value of data to the business and its customers when everyone can use it and build a collaborative culture that supports this mindset.”
Passionate about customer-centricity, he won the CXPA’s Impact Award in 2018 for his contributions to Genesys and the broader customer experience practice. Hanhan also mentors aspiring technologists, founders, marketers, and CX leaders.
Our pick of Musa Hanhan’s content:
Smitha Hemmigae
ANSR
The corporate philanthropist
With over two decades of experience in the technology services sector, Smitha Hemmigae is a proven marketing leader dedicated to driving performance and innovation.
Having worked with well-known brands including ThoughtWorks, CSS Corp, Unisys and Infosys, she is currently the head of marketing and employer brand at ANSR, a company headquartered in Dallas and Bengaluru that provides end-to-end AI-enabled solutions to help organizations set up capability hubs.
Hemmigae is a seasoned speaker who is often invited to discuss marketing strategies and technology. Alongside her corporate role, she is the co-founder of Your Philanthropy Story, a platform that highlights inspiring humanitarian stories from all over India, and is co-trustee of Belakoo, an NGO dedicated to improving education and healthcare access for underprivileged children.
- Find out what Smitha Hemmigae is talking about on LinkedIn
Pepco
The community advocate
Willa J Hightower has more than 20 years’ of experience in the utilities sector, having started out as an analyst and moving on to various positions as finance manager, director of customer strategic planning, and now her role as VP of customer operations at Pepco, where she is responsible for call center and service operations and bill and revenue management.
An advocate for diversity, she is a member of the National Black MBA Association, a non‐profit dedicated to the development of educational and economic empowerment for African Americans. She is active with the American Association of Blacks in Energy, and has served on a number of boards including two years as president of Philadelphia’s The Legacy of Love Foundation, which funds academic scholarships and encourages community leadership in education, economic empowerment, health and the arts.
Hightower is regularly invited to speak at industry events including at our sister brand’s Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas.
- Find out what Willa J Hightower is talking about on LinkedIn
Shep Hyken
Shephard Presentations
The amazement officer
Shep Hyken’s annual Achieving Customer Amazement Study is highly anticipated in the CX community, diving into key trends in customer satisfaction and behaviors that inform the strategies of many brands worldwide.
He has written a number of books on creating successful customer service strategies, and is also a podcaster and keynote speaker. Each week he curates a list of the five best published articles on customer experience.
Commenting on the impact of economic downturns on CX, he says: “Customer expectations are not going to change in relation to the experience [customers] have received in the past, that it is really important to understand. If anything, when times are scary and times are tighter, their expectations might even rise in certain areas.”
Our pick of Shep Hyken's content:
Africa Prudential
The talent coach
In her role as chief experience officer at Africa Prudential, Ivy Ikpeme-Mbakwem is dedicated to fostering customer-centricity and value-driven experiences across the company's strategic businesses, which are operational in eight countries across the continent.
As well as leading initiatives in digital, technology consulting, and e-commerce divisions, she co-leads the company's culture change management drive, emphasizing a customer-first approach.
She was previously the customer experience manager at UBA Group, the pan-African banking organization.
At the start of 2024, Ikpeme-Mbakwem took on the additional position of director of programmes at i-Academy, specifically supporting Lagos-based software company Heirs Technology. Here she spearheads projects enabling applicants to build technical and behavioral competencies, with the goal of this leading to employment at the company.
- Find out what Ivy Ikpeme-Mbakwem is talking about on LinkedIn
Sean Ilenrey
Dutchie
The inspirational VP
Sean Ilenrey has a remarkable story — as in the space of 10 years he went from finding himself homeless at the age of 19 to supporting Fortune 500 accounts that generated revenues in excess of $250 million a year.
He currently holds the title of VP of support at Dutchie, a fast-growing tech company headquartered in Oregon that provides e-commerce, sales and payments solutions to cannabis dispensaries of all sizes.
Ilenrey has built and managed CX and operations departments in the US, Latin America and the Philippines, as well as launching one particular company’s first centralized workforce planning and analytics department in Latin America. He runs workshops for students, established leaders and entrepreneurs on brand building, and is the author of two books on employee value and utilizing LinkedIn to advance your career.
Our pick of Sean Ilenrey’s content:
Buyer Brain
The behavioral scientist
Dr Ana Iorga is an expert in consumer neuroscience, with a deep passion for understanding human behavior. Based in the UK, she has spent almost two decades working with businesses and academia, using her background in neuroscience to help companies in the finance and insurance, consumer goods, retail and automotive industries better understand their customers.
She founded Buyer Brain in 2012, a customer insights company that uses neuroscience to explore customers’ emotions and deliver insights.
Iorga is the chair of CXPA’s European Council and is on the editorial board of NMSBA’s Insights Magazine. In 2020 she was nominated as one of the most influential women in marketing by Advertising Week.
“Two of the most important differences between the offline and online journeys are related to cognitive load and empathy,” Iorga explains. “In the physical journey there is usually someone that can help the customer out… That person plays an important role in reducing the customer’s cognitive load, by removing uncertainty and providing indications. In the digital journey there is no one to help you out if you get stuck… For customers who are not digitally savvy or are unfamiliar with the journey, this situation can be cognitively taxing, leading them to abandon it.”
Our pick of Anna Iorga’s content:
Aymen Ismail
smart Europe GmbH
The customer engagement disruptor
A self-proclaimed ‘provocative disruptor’, Aymen Ismail has a wealth of experience in customer engagement solutions, particularly in the automotive sector. He spent four years at the Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Center in the Netherlands, where he led global initiatives in innovation and tech to drive sales and boost customer service. In 2020 he joined electric vehicle company smart Europe GmbH as head of customer engagement solutions.
Ismail is in the process of writing his first book, Echoes of Disruption: Reimagining Customer Engagement for the Future, which will be an exploration of customer engagement's past, present, and future, spanning ancient marketplaces all the way to AI-led transformation.
Additionally, Ismail is an in-demand keynote speaker and an advisory board member for our sister brand Customer Contact Week Europe Digital.
Our pick of Aymen Ismail’s content:
International University of Monaco
The CX metrics scientist
Prof. Dr. Phil Klaus is a prominent figure in global customer experience strategy, ranked among the top 2 percent of scientists cited worldwide four years in a row according to Stanford University’s Annual World’s Top Scientists list.
He is a leading researcher of ultra-high-net-worth individuals and he teaches customer experience and marketing strategy at the International University of Monaco. He is also the founder of Dr. Phil Klaus & Associates Consulting, through which he advises blue chip clients on CX strategy, profit enhancement, and business development.
Klaus is also a keynote speaker and bestselling author, notably for Measuring Customer Experience —How to Develop and Execute the Most Profitable Customer Experience Strategies.
Our pick of Prof. Dr. Phil Klaus’ content:
Simon Kriss
Customer Experience Innovation Institute
The CX futurologist
Simon Kriss is one of Australia’s leading voices on AI in customer experience. In 2023 he published The AI Empowered Customer Experience, a guide aimed at CX practitioners who wish to explore the possibilities and risks of AI.
He is the chief innovation officer at the Customer Experience Innovation Institute, an organization based in Melbourne that works with government departments and companies of all sizes, providing workshops and research on the latest trends in customer experience, data analytics, and technology adoption.
The host of the CXII podcast, he describes himself as a ‘customer experience futurologist’.
- Find out what Simon Kriss is talking about on LinkedIn
UJET
Reimagining the contact center
Baker Johnson is a SaaS marketing executive with over 15 years of executive-level experience in the technology industry. Currently leading marketing efforts at UJET, Baker's track record includes driving business growth and value for investors in the SaaS, consulting, and cloud contact center (CCaaS) spaces through branding and data-driven strategy transformations.
We asked Johnson about the impact AI will have on contact center operations in the coming year. “The biggest mistake with AI in the contact center is focusing on the technology for its own sake. We've been stuck in a cost-center mentality focused on replacing live agents with virtual agents, but the real power of AI lies in multimodal experiences powered by generative AI.
He adds, “Imagine effortlessly snapping a picture of your bill, asking questions with your voice, and then choosing next steps with a simple tap – it's faster, more intuitive, and unlocks the true potential of AI-driven customer service."
- Find out what Baker Johnson is talking about on LinkedIn
Neal Jones
Marriott International
Worldwide loyalty
Neal Jones has worked at Marriott International for the past 28 years, where he is currently the chief sales and marketing officer for the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions of one of the world’s biggest hotel chains. This means he is responsible for providing strategic leadership for everything to do with customers, including brand management, marketing, sales, reservations and loyalty, for consumer operations across 850 hotels in more than 70 countries.
Based between Marriott International’s Dubai and London regional offices, Jones has helped drive a number of loyalty programs across the hotel group’s various brands, as well as creating fan experiences with the NFL, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team, and more recently sponsoring Taylor Swift on tour.
- Find out what Neal Jones is talking about on LinkedIn
Expivia
The call center geek
Thomas Laird is the founder and CEO of Expivia, a US-based BPO omnichannel contact center he established in 2012. In addition to this, Laird serves on the NICE CXone executive advisory board and the NICE Cxone Omnichannel board, where he liaises with NICE customers who provide insights to guide the development of new products.
Before founding Expivia, Laird led the contact center operations for a large BPO firm specializing in financial services, leading him to manage numerous programs for the majority of the top 15 largest financial institutions in the US.
Laird has written two practical books on contact center operations, and is the host of a weekly podcast called Advice from a Call Center Geek.
Our pick of Thomas Laird’s content:
Aarthi Murali
M&T Bank
The customer fanatic
Aarthi Murali is M&T Bank's first ever chief customer experience officer, a role where she is dedicated to customer-centric transformations, blending technology and human-centered approaches to lead the bank’s voice of the customer and customer journey programs.
Murali spent more than 17 years at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where she spearheaded client advocacy in the Commercial Bank division.
More recently she was named one American Banker’s 2023 list of the Most Powerful Women to Watch. Speaking to the magazine, she said: “Brands that are successful have a high degree of empathy, and that just means that they know exactly what you want, when you want, why you want it, and they use really good data and technology to do it.
- Find out what Aarthi Murali is talking about on LinkedIn
MOFI
The corporate pastor
Over the course of his career Shawn Nason has transitioned from healthcare to working for Walt Disney and more recently launching his own boutique firm. As the interim CEO at OFFOR Health, he helped the company reinvent its healthcare models to make care more accessible to people who were under-served.
Prior to this he had the fun job title of ‘magical experience creator’ at Walt Disney, where he was tasked with creating the best possible experiences for guests through human-centered design.
He launched MOFI in 2015, a company that designs customer and employee experiences for brands; he is also an author and the host of The Combustion Chronicles podcast, which has had Ariana Huffington, Shep Hyken and Blake Morgan as guests. His inspirational posts on LinkedIn have helped Nason amass a following of more than 100,000 people.
Our pick of Shawn Nason’s content:
Anna Noakes Schulze
The NTWK
The human-digital evangelist
As the head of community experience at digital community TheNTWK, Anna Noakes Schulze spearheads efforts to foster connection and collaboration in the business community.
With over two decades of experience, she has become a leading voice in CX, known for her expertise in customer-centricity, digital business innovation and emerging technologies, working at the intersection of UX and CX with a mission to extend the human touch into the virtual world.
Schulze is a sought-after TEDx and keynote speaker on the metaverse, Web3, NFTs, loyalty and brand experience, as well as a workshop facilitator, guest lecturer and startup mentor. She is also a founding member of Women in CX and co-chair of TheNTWKSummit24.
Speaking on CX Network’s June 2023’s edition of CX Talks, she said: “The metaverse is the greatest experimental space for experience design that we've ever seen.”
Our pick of Anna Noakes Schulze’s content:
TikTok
The data storyteller
Sarah Evangeline Norman manages the sales team for enterprise at TikTok, and is a senior fellow at Wharton School where she mentors graduate students, while also frequently appearing as a political commentator on Fox News, drawing on her previous experience as senior advisor to digital for Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign.
She spent six years at Google as a data evangelist working with Fortune 50 companies on how to grow their business. An advocate for data literacy, in a 2023 Time magazine article she warned of the potential risks of AI-generated responses that are “allowing a single actor to flood the internet with endless numbers of authentic-seeming “people” all promoting or agreeing with a single, distorted claim. In such a world, the ability to independently analyze the validity of competing claims will be even more critical than it is today.”
Our pick of Sarah Evangeline Norman’s content:
Vinay Parmar
Dhruva Star
The customer happiness advocate
Vinay Parmar is the founder of Dhruva Star, a firm he set up in 2023 due to “frustration of seeing companies fail to harness the true potential of customer experience.”
Prior to this he spent eight years at National Express, the UK’s leading coach operator. He initially joined as interim head of the contact center, before ultimately being promoted to the role of chief customer experience officer, and was key to the company’s digital and customer transformation leading customer service teams and digital product development.
Parmar also has more than 20 years’ experience of providing consultancy to leading brands in the financial services, telecoms, automotive and travel sectors. He tells us that the best advice he’s received throughout his career is that “CX is mostly common sense… the trouble is that just because something is common sense, that doesn't mean it is common practice.”
- Find out what Vinay Parmar is talking about on LinkedIn
Sirte Pihlaja
CXPA Finland
The AI specialist
Sirte Pihlaja is one of Europe's first CCXP-certified CX professionals. The CEO of Finnish customer experience agency Shirute and head of team at CXPA Finland, she helps lead the annual CEM Benchmark, a study on the state of customer experience management that allows organizations to benchmark their CX strategy and practices against their competitors.
She was named among Engati's TOP33 Inspiring Women in CX to Follow in 2023. Pihlaja has also written three top-selling books on customer experience and in her latest, Customer Experience 5, she explores the concept of machine customers and how this is set to become one of the biggest customer behavior trends of recent years. “By 2030, almost one fifth of all of company revenues could come from machine customers,” she explains. “That would represent a change twice as big as when e-commerce first emerged. It is huge.”
Our pick of Sirte Pihlaja’s content:
Blair Pleasant
COMMfusion
The comms analyst
Blair Pleasant is a seasoned industry analyst with over two decades of experience, currently serving as the president and principal analyst of COMMfusion LLC, a consulting and market research analysis firm. She is also the co-founder of BCStrategies, an industry resource for unified communications (UC) established in 2007.
Pleasant is a highly sought-after speaker and thought leader, sharing her knowledge of market analytics and contact center technologies through industry conferences, webinars and podcasts. Thanks to her insights and thought leadership, she has a loyal following on LinkedIn of more than 76,000 people.
Our pick of Blair Pleasant’s content:
CXpanda
The growth specialist
As the founder of CXpanda, Olga Potaptseva works with organizations worldwide to enable customer-informed operating strategies that benefit customers, employees and the bottom line. She has also helped produce a vast library of case studies, definitions and frameworks created and curated by top CX leaders.
Potaptseva has more than 20 years’ experience of advising companies in multiple industries as well as the public sector, with one notable achievement being delivering more than £100,000 in operational expenditure gains for a UK-based insurance company while increasing customer satisfaction by 11 percent.
“Businesses have a responsibility to create a future where "good" represents a state of constant improvement,” she says, “where customer tools evolve alongside customer understanding, where personalization not only meets but anticipates customer desires, and where data analytics becomes an indispensable ally in crafting better experiences.”
Our pick of Olga Potaptseva’s content:
Jaslyin Qiyu
Citi
The content specialist
Jaslyin Qiyu managed regional marketing teams across Asia Pacific at Citibank, EY, Kantar and Credit Suisse, before taking on the role of SVP and head of client marketing at financial services firm Citi in Singapore.
With more than 20 years of B2B and B2C brand and marketing experience, she describes herself as a data and customer insights fanatic, with a passion for content strategy and storytelling. She is also a firm believer in turning customers into brand advocates. “Look at organic supporters of your own products and services through social listening and monitoring,” she says. “When they say something good or bad, engage them and invite them for user testing and feedback sessions of your planned feature launches, customer journeys and new products or services.”
In her biweekly newsletter, Mad About Marketing, she shares her thoughts on marketing, communications and leadership. Qiyu is also a CX Network advisory board member and one of our Leaders to Watch for 2024.
Our pick of Jaslyin Qiyu’s content:
Beyond Philosophy LLC
The CX philosopher
Colin Shaw has accumulated many awards throughout his 40-year career in CX, including being named one of the world's Top 150 business influencers by LinkedIn, his company being selected by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy four times, and being one of CX Network’s Top 50 customer experience influencers to follow two years running.
The author, keynote speaker and podcaster is acclaimed for both his expertise helping multinational organizations improve their revenues, and for his unique insights into all things CX, whether it’s firing customers who don’t respect your organization without hesitation or his forecasts on where customer experience is heading.
In this 2022 blog for CX Network he rightly predicted that artificial intelligence (AI), customer data and behavioral sciences were about to combine to transform the concept of CX as we know it.
Our pick of Colin Shaw's content:
Dilpreet Singh
ITC Hotels
The martech analyst
Dilpreet Singh heads up loyalty, CRM and partnerships at ITC Hotels, one of India’s largest hotel chains. Here Singh has been instrumental in developing loyalty programs to advance retention and customer lifetime value.
He previously led loyalty initiatives at The Oberoi Group, a luxury hotel chain established in 1934, where he successfully launched more than 400 targeted data-driven personalized campaigns, and also led the implementation of several martech solutions including Salesforce CRM and Einstein analytics.
In 2020 Sing was recognized as a 'top 30 under 40' loyalty professional by the UK’s Loyalty Magazine.
Singh tells us that the best professional advice he has been given is to respect the people he works with. "They are my true assets. By fostering collaboration, not only do we thrive collectively, but we also serve our customers better. No matter how strong or advanced your technology is at the end of the day you have to work and grow with people. "
Our pick of Dilpreet Singh’s content:
- The Customer Experience Trap (podcast)
Upwork
Igniting profitable growth
Patty Soltis juggles the roles of principal customer experience consultant at Kinetic Edge with that of senior customer experience manager at Upwork, the online freelancing platform. A self-described “inner nerd”, who “loves to analyze data”, she is focused on demonstrating the value of customer experience, using customer insights to monetize CX and design improved journeys.
A member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), she leverages her expertise of CX and passion for change management giving regular talks to CX professionals.
Soltis says the best advice she has ever received is to take risks. “Don’t think about what everyone else is doing or “this is how we do it”. Discover and build what is right for the team, business, company, community, and customer.”
- Find out what Patty Soltis is talking about on LinkedIn.
Saki Takeda
Netflix
The omnichannel expert
Saki Takeda leads product management, strategy and agent tools and technologies that enable customer service at Netflix. She is also tasked with overseeing technical operations including security, system reliability, escalation and incident management at the streaming giant.
Takeda has more than 18 years of experience as a customer service leader with a focus on tools and technologies, having previously led on their strategy and adoption at companies like Twitter (now X) and Splunk.
She is a member of CX Network’s advisory board, and is an expert in omnichannel strategies. “Organizations should invest in researching and understanding their customer demographics and their channel preferences to determine a strategy for digital-first in combination with their contact-driver analysis,” she explains. “This will provide them with a clearer understanding of where they should be heading.”
Our pick of Saki Takeda’s content:
Humanity@Scale
The godfather of CX
Sometimes referred to as the ‘godfather of customer experience’, Bruce Temkin spent 12 years at Forrester Research, where he led B2B, financial services, e-business, and customer experience practices. He was also the most-read analyst for 13 consecutive quarters.
He co-founded CXPA in 2010,and created the world’s first certification for CX professionals — the CCXP. In 2018 he established the Qualtrics XM Institute to provide thought leadership and training in experience management (XM) to organizations around the world.
After five years of leading the organization, he stepped down in February 2024 to work on a new project called Humanity@Scale, which will see him researching the intersections between human experience, technology and sustainable change.
Our pick of Bruce Temkin’s content:
Amas Tenumah
Slalom
The motivational speaker
Amas Tenumah is a customer service expert with a background in tech.
After working in various roles leading contact center operations at the Coca Cola company and IBM, he founded BetterXperience in 2013, a consultancy specializing in helping companies improve their employee and customer experience. He then joined AWS to lead sales, product and technology strategy for the tech giant’s autonomous retail business in North America. Since 2023 he has been at tech consultancy Slalom, while also regularly contributing to NPR, Fox Business, Forbes and Huffington Post.
Tenumah has written several books on customer loyalty and service design, as well as a self-help book on overcoming anxiety. He is a motivational keynote speaker and host of the Amas Talks podcast, where he covers self improvement, business and philosophy.
Our pick of Amas Tenumah’s content:
Heart of the Customer
The journey mapper-in-chief
Jim Tincher's influential blog, Heart of the Customer, and his company of the same name, are both revered in the CX community thanks to Tincher’s tips for successfully driving customer-focused change and increase profitability for companies of all sizes.
Tincher led initiatives at Best Buy and UnitedHealth Group before deciding to establish his own firm, where he provides journey mapping and voice of the customer consultancy.
A trainer and keynote speaker, he is also the author of two books, How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? and Do B2B Better, where he advocates for the importance of involving customers in CX design. “You need to talk to dozens of customers to understand what is happening and find the solution,” he says. “Then, involve a big part of the organization, typically 30 to 50 employees in the workshops that you organize.”
Our pick of Jim Tincher's content:
Gregorio Uglioni
Cantonal Hospital
The CX goalkeeper
Gregorio Uglioni is a lecturer, advisor to C-suite executives and a sought-after international keynote speaker. His CV includes consultancy at Accenture and a stint as head of business excellence and customer service at Swisscard. In his current role he is the head of business transformation at the Cantonal Hospital of Winterthur in Switzerland.
Uglioni is a CXPA board member, and the dynamic host of CX Goalkeeper, a weekly podcast named for its analogy to soccer strategy applied to customer experience practices. Guests have included Chip Bell, Colin Shaw, Jeannie Walters, and our very own editor-in-chief Melanie Mingas.
Uglioni told us that the best advice he has received in his career is, “be yourself and prioritize people above all; the results will follow."
Our pick of Gregorio Uglioni’s content:
True Corporation
The AI officer
As the chief data analytics and AI officer at True Corporation, Pedro Uria-Recio has led initiatives that resulted in a fivefold revenue increase in just two years at Thailand's leading telecom giant.
Uria-Recio is a true AI expert having also led large-scale digital and AI transformations at Axiata and Charoen Pokphand Group, two prominent Asian multinational conglomerates.
The former consultant at McKinsey has recently co-authored a book called Machines of Tomorrow: From AI Origins to Superintelligence & Posthumanity, diving into the future of AI and its impact on humankind.
Uria-Recio is a two-time TEDx speaker and a guest lecturer at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, where he teaches a course on AI, modelling and digital transformation.
Our pick of Pedro Uria-Recio’s content:
*This article was updated on March 19th, 2024 to include CX Network's methodology.
Quick Links
The top customer experience influencers to follow in 2023
CX Network’s 20 leaders to watch in 2024
CX Network names its 20 CX Leaders to Watch 2022