Advertise on podcast: Customer Experience University - Winning Loyalty & Engagement One Customer at a Time

Global engagement is at a five-year low while AI spreads everywhere. In this episode, Joseph Michelli shows why the tool was never the variable. Gallup’s data puts engagement at 48% when managers actively support AI use, versus 30% when they don’t. Plus what IKEA did with 8,500 call-center workers instead of cutting them. Get Me a Person: Winning Human Connection and Loyalty in the Age of AI releases on December 8. ORDER NOW for a PRE-ORDER BONUS and a signed, personalized copy: josephmichelli.com/get-me-a-person

Most companies know their regular customers. Few know which ones would defend them. That difference matters. Joseph Michelli digs into Motista research that quantifies the gap between t satisfied and emotionally connected customers. He also offers an assignment to help you know and show appreciation for your advocates.  Joseph's book Get Me a Person: Winning Human Connection and Loyalty in the Age of AI will be released on December 8. Pre-order today to get a special offer and your signed, personalized copies: josephmichelli.com/get-me-a-person

Your customers just told researchers they would switch companies to avoid the very thing you are spending millions to build. Joseph Michelli unpacks the “get me a person” backlash — Gartner finds 64% of customers would prefer companies didn’t use AI in service, and 60% fear they won’t reach a human when it matters — and names the opportunity hiding inside it: the Human Premium, the rising value of a real person precisely because real people are becoming rare. Featuring Klarna’s very public “we went too far” reversal, and three moves to make this week. Get Me a Person: Winning Human Connection and Loyalty in the Age of AI is on sale December 8. Signed, personalized copies: josephmichelli.com/get-me-a-person

In this quarter capstone, Joseph Michelli puts the whole machine back together: engagement, loyalty, and referrals aren’t three programs — they’re three outputs of one “loyalty operating system.” Drawing on Gallup’s record-low employee-pride data and Nielsen’s finding that 88% trust recommendations from people they know, he shows how engaged people build loyal customers who replicate themselves — and why, as AI commoditizes speed, the human system on top becomes your last durable advantage.

The cheapest customer-experience strategy in your company is already on the payroll—and mostly ignored. Joseph Michelli unpacks Medallia/McKinsey research showing nearly 60% of frontline employees feel their CX ideas go unheard, even where leaders call experience a priority. Drawing on his own Mercedes-Benz buying-experience work, he explains why the people closest to customers see what dashboards and AI can’t—and three moves to surface that frontline wisdom before your competitors do.

Failure is inevitable—and as AI mediates more of the service, it’s multiplying. Joseph Michelli explains the “service recovery paradox”: why a brilliantly fixed problem can make a customer more loyal than one who never had a problem. Drawing on John Goodman’s TARP research, Qualtrics data, and Zappos’ legendary ten-hour call, he shows why the rescue moment, not the failure, is where AI-era loyalty is won—and three moves to win it.

AI use at work has nearly doubled — yet only 16% of employees say the tools they were handed help. In this episode, Joseph Michelli unpacks “the bolt-on trap”: dropping powerful AI onto jobs nobody redesigned, which removes no friction and quietly manufactures fear. Drawing on fresh Gallup data, he shares how to redesign the job — subtract the drudgery, raise the human value — so AI lifts your people instead of unsettling them.

To get the magic, customers have to let AI know almost everything — and trust in AI is falling, not rising. In this episode, Joseph Michelli makes the case that trust is the real currency of the AI era. Drawing on data from Edelman, Cisco, and Salesforce, he shows why transparency — not capability — is the differentiator and offers three disciplines for earning the “trust dividend” when your AI knows everything.

Why do we recommend some brands and never mention others? In this episode, Joseph Michelli traces the path from satisfied customer to vocal advocate — and finds belonging at its root. With Nielsen, Harvard Business Review, and Edelman data, plus the real story behind Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” strategy, he explains why you can’t discount your way to advocacy — and the three disciplines that build it.

Recognition cuts burnout by 73% — yet fewer than one in four employees feel they get enough of it. In this episode, Joseph Michelli draws on Gallup-Workhuman and APA data to map the “seen/tracked line”: the moment technology shifts from noticing your people to watching them with a Ritz-Carlton lesson in recognition at scale and three principles to keep it human as it grows.

The handheld device that once felt futuristic at The Ritz-Carlton is obsolete — but the standard it served isn’t. Joseph Michelli makes the case that AI doesn’t rewrite great service; it raises the stakes on it. Through three enduring Ritz-Carlton standards — the Credo, the Motto, and the daily Line-Up — he shows how to keep your “durable core” alive while letting AI carry the weight it was built for.

A discount that only appears when you threaten to cancel isn’t loyalty — it’s a confession. Joseph Michelli unpacks the “smoke detector test” for predictive churn AI: the same model can serve customers or surveil them, and they can tell the difference instantly. With Bain’s retention economics and a Ritz-Carlton story, he offers three guardrails to use predictive signals to serve people, not stalk them.

Every leader’s obsessing over which AI model to deploy. Joseph Michelli argues they’re ignoring the real algorithm: the middle manager who decides whether AI feels like a gift or a threat. Drawing on Gallup data — 42% of quits are preventable, and one weekly conversation quadruples engagement — plus a Starbucks store-manager story, he unpacks why enabling managers, not announcing tools, is what turns AI into engagement.

The bot was fine. The agent was great. The customer was still left furious — because of the handoff between them. In this episode, Joseph Michelli makes the case that AI-to-human escalation, not the bot itself, is the real failure point in customer service. Drawing on the Corporate Executive Board’s customer-effort research, he explains why making people repeat themselves is so costly — and offers four principles for designing a seam customers never feel.

Referral programs mostly fail because companies try to manufacture word of mouth rather than capture it. In this episode, Joseph Michelli reframes referrals as a design problem, not a promotion problem — anchored by Nielsen’s finding that 92% of people trust friends over any ad, and the referral gap: 83% of happy customers are willing to refer, but only 29% do. Featuring how Airbnb engineered talkable moments at scale.