Mark Fithian is the cofounder of WideOpen, a consultancy that helps organizations achieve sustainable growth through strategic customer experience. Mark’s expertise in CX is informed by more than thirty years of work across industries, partnering with leading brands such as Providence, SAP, PayPal, Optum, IBM, BMW, the American Cancer Society, and Microsoft. Before founding WideOpen, he held leadership roles on both the client and agency sides, as well as in strategic consultancies.

Mentioned on the Show

Read Mark’s profile on the WideOpen website: https://www.thisiswideopen.com/our-team
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfithian/
Get Mark’s book, The CX Imperative: https://a.co/d/316xGzX
O’Brien and Mark discussed the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt: https://a.co/d/9GSTIfN

Timestamps
(00:00:00) Welcome to People Business with O'Brien McMahon

(00:01:45) What is the difference between customer experience and user experience?

(00:02:22) And how did you get into this work in the first place?

(00:07:24) What is the purpose of business?

(00:08:35) Why do businesses struggle with customer experience?

(00:11:24) "The Great Distancing": what it is and why it hurts customer experience

(00:13:44) What makes good incentives in customer experience?

(00:15:15) How does a business know when they are doing CX well?

(00:20:08) How does executive leadership get involved in good CX?

(00:32:49) Who should be responsible for customer experience?

(00:40:41) Mark's 5 Pillars of Customer Experience

(00:44:19) What does strategy mean to you?

(00:55:21) How to get started with customer experience and how to contact Mark Fithian.

The Customer Experience Mindset w/ Mark Fithian