Q & A with Customer Experience Futurist Blake Morgan

I had the great opportunity to interview Blake Morgan, customer experience futurist about her new book, More is More: How the Best Companies Go Farther and Work Harder to Create Knock-Your-Socks Off Customer Experiences.  I have been a big fan of her customer experience articles that regularly appear in Forbes. Her book is a must-read resource for those intent on delivering an exceptional experience for their customers. You can find out more about Blake at the end of the interview. 

Where did you start your career?
I started my career producing conferences, and then moved to building a social network and online magazine for contact centers. At this social network I had a podcast show, a blog, and I was an early thought leader on contact centers. I remember my boss telling me that now I was a “brand,” which at the time seemed really strange to me. Now I get it. That was almost ten years ago. I enjoyed studying contact centers, and worked at Intel as a social customer service leader. However after having two years of customer service practitioner experience under my belt I realized I preferred customer experience which included more branding, consumer behavior and more. I decided to focus 100 percent on customer experience thought leadership – speaking at events, writing a book “More Is More,” and even teaching an executive education at Rutgers Business School this August. I will also be keynoting the Genesys conference for 500 people in Australia this summer.

What inspired you to write the book More Is More?
I always wanted to write a book – while books don’t make any money these days, it does level up your career. If you want to be a thought leader, having a book is very helpful.

What is your book about?
I wrote a book about hard work called “More Is More” as I mentioned. Meaning? Not much differentiates us as individuals. Plenty of people have the goods – they’re smart, even talented. But not everyone wakes out of bed ready to run. It’s those that jump out of bed ready to run that end up successful. Others, who don’t have that internal maniac – who seem asleep all day, will let the less smart, less talented competitor win. It’s the same with companies. Companies today need to work harder. They don’t need to be the smartest or most talented. But they need to consistently jump out of bed ready to serve. Why? Products and services are largely the same. Airline, gym, grocery store…pretty much all the same. Companies that will go to any length to make their customer’s life easier and better will ultimately attract more customers. And it’s not even so much as how many hours you work…it’s the consistent focus. The “jumping out of bed” every single morning, ready to serve someone.

How can it help readers?
Often no one person within a company owns customer experience – and that’s how it should be. The CEO can lead it, but everyone within the company should be focused on customer experience. That said, my book is for anyone who wants a simple explanation of customer experience and the many ways it can improve their job, their company and their market share.

What’s the future of customer experience? 
In the future we will use technologies to fix many of the common customer frustrations we see today. Technology can fix the mundane customer issues so companies can focus on high touch customer experiences. When people tell me they’re afraid of the looming AI revolution, I wonder if they enjoy the many ways customer experiences are inefficient today. For example I want to ask them, do you enjoy waiting in line at the DMV? Passport control? Do you enjoy doing paperwork for insurance, healthcare etc? There is much opportunity to improve the efficiency of our world and that’s not a bad or scary thing. We need thoughtful, conscientious people leading technology strategies – and that way we can ensure we won’t have a robot take-over, but leverage technology to make people’s lives easier and better.

Blake Morgan is a Customer Experience Futurist. Her first book is “More is More: How The Best Companies Work Harder And Go Farther To Create Knock Your Socks Off Customer Experiences.” Blake is adjunct faculty at the Rutgers executive education MBA program. Blake contributes to Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and the American Marketing Association. She is the host of The Modern Customer Podcast and a weekly customer experience video series on YouTube. She’s been ranked as ICMI’s Top 50 Thought Leaders To Follow on Twitter In 2016, Clarabridge’s #1 Social Customer Service expert to follow and Customer Gauge’s top 20 customer experience experts in follow in 2017. She has worked with Intel, Verizon Wireless, and many more. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, daughter and their two Yorkie rescues.

Follow her on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to her newsletter from her website at blakemichellemorgan.com.