Customer experience isn’t failing because people don’t care, it fails because teams confuse slogans with systems. Jeannie Walters is joined by Larissa Salazar from Brand Builders Group for a special CX Pulse Check to celebrate the launch of Jeannie’s book, Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count In The Age Of Customer Expectations, and to talk about what it really takes for a message to break through in a noisy world.

We get practical about the shift that changes everything: customer service is reactive, but customer experience must be proactive. If you only show up when something goes wrong, you’re already behind. We talk about designing the end-to-end customer journey with intention, choosing how you want customers to feel, and connecting experience design to the outcomes leaders care about. Along the way, we call out a common trap in CX leadership: treating Net Promoter Score like a strategy instead of a measurement you influence through real changes.

Jeannie also shares the mindset strategy discipline framework from the book, including how a clear customer experience mission statement becomes a usable North Star across teams. Larissa pulls back the curtain on what she sees with experts and first-time authors, why your best knowledge is often the “small steps” you forget to write down, and how templates and frameworks help customer experience change agents take action fast. If you’re trying to operationalize customer-centricity, build a real CX strategy, and move from reactivity to discipline, this conversation is your push to start.

If it helps, subscribe, share this with a change agent on your team, and leave a review so more leaders can find the show.

About Larissa Salazar,
Team Lead & Personal Brand Strategist | Brand Builders Group

Salazar is a highly respected personal brand strategist and speaker at Brand Builders Group, an international personal branding firm and an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company. As one of the youngest and fastest-rising strategists in the organization, she has quickly built a reputation for helping authors and thought leaders clarify their expertise, define their message, and build brands that create lasting influence.

With a strategic mindset and a deep appreciation for storytelling, Larissa has a unique ability to distill complex ideas into clear, compelling messaging. She doesn’t just help clients communicate their insights—she guides them in developing proprietary intellectual property and signature frameworks that make their teachings memorable, shareable, and scalable. Her approach ensures that thought leaders don’t just teach for the moment, but create content and concepts that spread, endure, and position them as industry authorities.

Follow Larissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissa-ann-salazar/
Book a meeting with Larissa: https://freebrandcall.com/ls

Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com
Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.c

Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact.

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

Are you drowning in feedback and still struggling for progress? In this bonus episode, we're bringing you more conversations from the Qualtrics X4 Summit 2026 in Seattle. These conversations tackle the same problem from different angles: how to turn customer and patient feedback into real operational change, and how to protect trust as AI becomes part of the workflow. If you collect surveys, run a CX program, or lead a healthcare team, this one is about what happens after you hit “export.”

First, we talk with leaders from Trillium Health Partners about redesigning their patient experience measurement: Kerry Kuluski, Research Chair in Patient and Family-Centered Care, and Adam Gdyczynski, Senior Corporate Lead, Patient Experience Measurement and Planning. They share how moving from paper and call-center methods to modern digital surveying helped drive an 880% increase in survey responses, plus what they did next to avoid being buried by the volume. We dig into practical tactics like shorter surveys, QR codes on after visit summaries, and using iPads to improve access in areas with lower electronic response rates. We also get into why equitable care depends on knowing who is responding, and how demographic and cultural insights can inform smarter decisions while supporting patient and family centered care.

Then we shift to the trust layer with Qualtrics Chief Security Officer Assaf Keren. We unpack why trust is more than security, why shortcuts create incidents, and why transparency matters when things go wrong. We also get specific about AI governance: third-party risk, building guardrails, managing data access, and keeping a human in the loop when risk is high or confidence is low.

If you want to turn insights into action without losing the human side, listen now. After you finish, subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Follow Kerry Kuluski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-kuluski-a9791b227/

Follow Adam Gdyczynski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-gdyczynski-mba-che-83100635/

Follow Assaf Keren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/assafkeren/

Resources Mentioned:
Qualtrics -- https://www.qualtrics.com/
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com
Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com

Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact.

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)

AI is moving fast, but most customer experience programs still get stuck in the same place: teams chase tools, dashboards, and “shiny” promises while the real work and the real problem stay fuzzy. We wanted a grounded conversation about customer experience strategy that actually holds up inside complex organizations, especially when trust, risk, and regulation are part of daily life.

Jeannie Walters is joined by Dr. Elizabeth ErkenBrack, Head of Strategy in the Office of the CEO at Qualtrics. They sat down at the Qualtrics X4 Summit 2026 in Seattle to talk about starting with the outcome you’re trying to achieve, defining who you’re designing for, and mapping the work that needs to change before you ever “plug in” AI. They get specific about where automation helps and where the human touch still matters most, particularly in vulnerable moments like healthcare, financial services, and other deeply personal journeys.

They also dig into the ROI side of experience management: how to shift from CX as a cost center to CX as an investment, how to connect NPS and CSAT to action, and how to tie experience improvements to attributable revenue through churn, retention, conversion, and operational changes. A key takeaway is governance: measurement and execution often sit in different silos, and bringing them into lockstep is an executive decision. If you’re trying to make CX “count” in the C-suite, this gives you language and structure that leaders can align around.

If this helped you rethink how you’re framing your next CX initiative, subscribe, share this episode with a teammate, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Follow Elizabeth ErkenBrack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-erkenbrack-phd-380b5b30/

Resources Mentioned:
Qualtrics -- https://www.qualtrics.com/
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com
Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Experience Investigators -- https://experienceinvestigators.com

Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Leave your review at ratethispodcast.com/xact.

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)