MarTech’s customer experience experts to follow

Here are the CX experts to follow to stay on top of all the best practices and latest developments.

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Customer experience is the most important and toughest part of marketing. The scale alone can be staggering. CX involves every interaction current and potential customers have with a brand — from customer service to packaging to digital presence to physical store maintenance to positioning around external events and much, much more. 

Dig deeper: How Allied Beverage is transforming customer experience

How can anyone stay on top of all that? You need expert help. So, here’s our list (in alphabetical order) of the people you absolutely must follow to keep up with the latest in CX.


Jay Baer

Jay Baer

Jay is a customer experience and marketing keynote speaker and emcee who has written six best-selling books on customer acquisition and retention and founded five multi-million dollar companies from scratch. He is also founder of ConvinceAndConvert.com, one of the world’s most popular online resources for marketers and business owners.


Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne is a leadership and customer experience advisor, who has delivered over 2,000 speeches and workshops for nearly every business vertical. She hosts the podcast Customer Bliss and is the author of several books including the best-selling “Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine.”


James Dodkins

James Dodkins

James is Pegasystems’ GTM Excellence, Customer Service & Sales Automation Director. He can honestly be called a rockstar, having played guitar with a world-touring, album-releasing heavy metal band. Check out his video “What Can Stevie Ray Vaugh Teach Us About Customer Experience” to see what those two worlds have in common. He also helped create the ACXS customer experience certification program.


Annette Franz 

Annette Franz

Annette is founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc. and has been named one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider. She’s author of the books “Built to Win” and “Customer Understanding.” She has 30 years of experience in CX on both the client and vendor side, serves on the advisory board for customer experience at the University of California, Irvine, and is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. 


Don Peppers 

Don Peppers

Don’s first book, 1993’s “The One to One Future,” written with long-time business partner Martha Rogers, Ph.D., is widely credited with having launched the CRM revolution. BusinessWeek called it the “bible of the new marketing” and Tom Peters named it his “book of the year.” Among the many other books Don has written by himself or with Rogers are the definitive “Managing Customer Experience and Relationships” and “Customer Experience: What, Why and How.” He is also one of the LinkedIn Top Voices, which is the site’s official influencer program.


Colin Shaw 

Colin Shaw

Colin is a pioneer of customer experience. In 2002 he founded Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first customer experience consultancies. He is author of several best-selling books, including “Building Great Customer Experiences’ and “Revolutionize Your Customer Experience.” Colin is also one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices and co-host of the business podcast The Intuitive Customer, rated in the top 5% of all podcasts by BuzzSprout. 


Brian Solis 

Brian Solis

Currently Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, Brian is a renowned digital anthropologist who researches technology’s impact on business, markets and society. He’s the author of many bestselling books, including, “LifeSCALE: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life,” “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” “What’s the Future of Business” and “The End of Business as Usual.” He’s a Top Voice on LinkedIn, where his newsletter has more than 62,000 subscribers.


Bruce Temkin 

Bruce Temkin

Bruce leads the Qualtrics XM Institute, which provides thought leadership and training to help organizations with experience management. He is also co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. This non-profit organization runs the Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) program, an industry-wide, standardized curriculum which confirms CX practitioners’ expertise in the field.  


Steve Towers 

Steve Towers

Steve is CEO and founder of The BP Group, a consultancy that helps upskill customer experience professionals. He has been keynote speaker for conferences and corporate events around the world. He is author of the books “Dare” and “The Process Tactics Playbook” (with James Dodkins).


Steven Van Belleghem 

Steven Van Belleghem

Steve is co-founder and board member of nexxworks, a disruption consultancy. An in-demand keynote speaker, he is also author of many business books, including “The Offer You Can’t Refuse” and “When Digital Becomes Human” and the tech thriller “Hoogverraad” (sadly, only available in Dutch).


Individuals included on MarTech Experts to Follow lists post currently, frequently and substantively, on the specific topic of the list. The volume of social media followers is also taken into account to validate that list member posts are of interest to a wide audience.

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About the author

Constantine von Hoffman
Staff
Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.

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