Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E70 - Adrian Swinscoe - Data and Customer Storytelling

Ready to shake up your customer experience approach with some no-fluff, straight-to-the-point wisdom? In this episode, Adrian Swinscoe – author of *Punk CX* and *How to Wow* – joins Roman Trebon to deliver a masterclass on how real, actionable data combined with firsthand customer stories can transform your CX from good to unforgettable. Learn why "going to the gemba" (that’s Japanese for “go see where the work happens”) can be the secret weapon in your customer success playbook, and why less complexity often results in more memorable experiences.Adrian Swinscoe dives deep into a pragmatic, almost punk rock philosophy of customer experience that’s anything but conventional. His call to action? Don’t get lost in the sea of binary data points and over-engineered solutions. Yes, data is king – but raw numbers alone often feel like a monochrome sketch. True customer success leaders bring color and context by blending quantitative insights with rich, qualitative stories. It’s these narratives that move teams to act and innovate, bridging the gap between cold metrics and vibrant human emotion.Swinscoe invokes the Toyota-inspired practice of “going to the gemba,” encouraging CX leaders to ditch conference rooms and dashboards for direct observation—whether it’s sitting with frontline agents or experiencing the product as a customer would. This boots-on-the-ground approach fosters empathy, reveals friction points invisible in reports, and catalyzes meaningful change.Echoing his punk ethos, Adrian warns against the natural tendency to keep piling on features and processes under the guise of “improvement.” Instead, simplicity should be your compass. If you add one new element to a process, critique what two things you can eliminate. Complexity is easy; elegance and clarity require discipline—and they pay dividends in customer loyalty.Roman’s illustrated comic example highlights the paradox: an overcomplicated onboarding and an overly simplified offboarding process reveal where brands lose customers—not because of lack of effort, but too much of the wrong kind of effort.For anyone seeking practical, actionable guidance on staying ahead in the crowded CX arena, this conversation is a treasure trove. Tune in, challenge your assumptions, and enrich your customer success playbook with these hard-earned lessons on observation, storytelling, and ruthless simplicity.Now you can interact with us directly by leaving a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CustomerSuccessPlaybook

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Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:05

Customer success. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we share real world tactics elevating your. Customer Success game. I'm your host, Roman Trevon. My co-host Kevin Metzger, this week is unable to join us and he's gonna miss a great guest. I'm really excited for who we have on the show this week. Uh, he's been shaking up the CX world with bold thinking and zero fluff for years. Our guest without further ado is Adrian Scoe. You may know him as the author of Punk CX and how to Wow. He's also a speaker, advisor, and provocateur helping brands challenge the status quo of customer experience. Adrian, thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome. I.

Adrian Swinscoe: 0:50

Ah, thank you, Roman. That was some intro. Blind me shaking things, provocateur blind me. Um, no thank you. Um, happy to be here. Thank you for having me on. Uh, hope I can, uh, share some ideas that might get people thinking.

Roman Trebon: 1:05

Our first show is always our number one tip, right? So something tactical that our audience can take back. So, eh. Adrian, for our audience listening, what's your, do you have a single best tip or what can they do with their teams and organizations to stand out by delivering an unforgettable customer experience in today's world?

Adrian Swinscoe: 1:25

I think the one thing I would say is that it's all about data and, but I don't mean kinda like data in terms of. The big data and all these sort things. I'm talking about different levels of data and however way of thinking about kind of thing. So I think that yes, we should use all the Clancy tools that we have available to us to inform us like,'cause I think data informs us, right? Tells us identifies patterns, all these different things. But oftentimes it can feel quite binary sort of thing. It's either this or it's not. I think we have to take it upon ourselves to actually add color and context to that kinda data. And so I think there's. Data, while data can inform us, I think we always need to go out and we need to gather kind of customer stories, some of that qualitative stuff, right? Rather than just the quantitative stuff. Also add color and context to it with the, with the stories, because stories actually move us. But I think that that, the final thing I would, I would, I would say that we should do, or should we think about, is also gonna understand that. Us as us as human beings and our own sort of psychology because data might inform us, stories might move us, but if we actually go and experience something, either go and sit next to an agent or actually go and be our own customer or actually go and watch or, or, or speak to customers out in the, out in the field, then we get that real life experience. And when you see things firsthand, experiences compel us. To do things. So I think we need to do, what we need to do is we need to take that data and we need to make it real. We need to get amongst it, we need to, in the Japanese sense, we gonna, there have this expression called going to the gemba. Oh, I love

Roman Trebon: 2:58

it. Yes. Go, go, go. Where the work is that right Adrian? Am I right going where the work is?

Adrian Swinscoe: 3:03

Well, yeah, absolutely. So gemba in, in Japanese means the real place. So you might have, remember if you watch TV on the news, you'll have TV reporters on the news that we're talking about reporting from the gemba, the place where something actually happened. Yeah. Right. And it so it, so it's the real place where things actually can happen. So in Toyota, the Toyota management system, they and managers used to talk about walking the floor and doing the gemba walk because they would go and rather than just go to instruct. Can people about what's the best way to do things? They would go and learn. They would go and listen. They would go and observe because I think that that, that brings your kind of data to life and you see the, how people interact with things, and then you see the really human problems that people can have and that can actually then go give you some incredible insights in terms of what you can do to make things different, and also to help you kinda stand out.

Roman Trebon: 3:59

Yeah, I, I love that. I was at an organization, Adrian, where we did the, these a threes that Toyota used to produce. Right. I dunno if you've ever seen, it's like a one pager.

Adrian Swinscoe: 4:07

Yeah.

Roman Trebon: 4:07

We would have all this data you talked about, you know, our executives would be, you know, they'd be, oh, it's interesting, we're wasting time, blah, blah, blah. We would go to the gemba and they would see the pain of our employees and our customers and Wow. It's amazing how that stuff really mattered when I could actually see it when they were actually there doing it. All the numbers on the page, the, the client quotes we would bring in. Yeah. They, they kind of peaked interest when we brought it to'em. Wow. Things moved amazing. How quickly funding came and, and, and things moved once, once they saw it.

Adrian Swinscoe: 4:38

Yeah. No, a hundred percent. I mean, I think that's the thing is that if you bring this stuff as to life as much as possible, then you start to really gonna get movement because others is, is. It's easy to ignore kinda data or just to observe it at arm's length. The stories actually start to bring it to life. But like you said, these client kinda quotes and stuff, but where it really starts to hit and to kinda hit is kind of hear and then kinda hear is when you actually, as you say, when you see the pain or the friction or all that sort of like, stuff kind of come to life and people go, oh, and then a head drop, and then they feel compelled to actually do something about it.

Roman Trebon: 5:12

Yeah, absolutely. So, so for audience, what, what does. Punk CX Media Dream, like how, you know, what does that mean to you? What are, how should our audience be thinking about punk cx

Adrian Swinscoe: 5:21

in, in many ways, if you think about punk, punk was like a, a stripped back version of rock and roll, right? It was open to anybody. It was democratic. Anybody could have a go at it. It emerged on the back of, um, progressive rock in the 1970s. It's a bit of like an anti kind of elaborate sort of thing. And punk is the same, same sort of thing. It's like, you know, what it means is like, don't over-engineer it. Ask yourself, can it be simpler? Because we keep adding things, right? We talk about, you know, we wanna make things simple, but yet we keep adding things but not taking things away. And so maybe there's a question you go, if you're gonna add something, ask yourself what two things you're gonna take away. Because if you're not, you're just adding complexity and you're not making things simpler. And so. Just keep an eye on that sort of thing. Keep kinda simplicity, kind of a, at, at, at the, the front of your kinda mind. Keep looking at things from a different, different perspectives because there's no, there's, there's all sorts of different ways that you can get to the solution. It doesn't, you don't necessarily have to follow the crowd.

Roman Trebon: 6:24

Yeah. Yeah. And, and it sounds like you don't need to over-engineer either, right? Yeah. Which is No, no, completely. That's

Adrian Swinscoe: 6:29

it. I mean, uh, we, we, we have the tendency to do that, to sort of, to, to, you know, to add things thinking, oh, if we add this and we add this and add this, it'd be better. You're like going, yeah. It's better in your mind, perhaps, but when you, when you're faced with somebody trying to use it, you're like going, I have no idea what's going on here. Yeah. And that's the sort of confusion you don't wanna do. You wanna try and make it things as simple and as easy as possible. But you've gotta be on it. You've gotta stay on it to be and be able to challenge the sort of dominant logic and the narrative that goes on, like by,'cause we naturally add things.'cause that's just the, the, the, the, the, the easiest thing to do. But we find it very difficult to take things away.

Roman Trebon: 7:06

I, I love it. It reminds me of my favorite comic. Like there's a little comic and there's two people looking at a whiteboard, Adrian. And on the one, there's all these process maps everywhere, and it says opening an account. And on the other side it says, close account, and it just says, call close account, just one line. And they say, how, why are more clients leaving than, than, than opening an accounts, right? Because the one is over overprocessed and the other is so simple, right? Like Right. You don't need more all the time. Just simplify it. I, I love it. So Adrian, thanks so much. It's a great way to kick off the week. Love that we're talking about CX and, and really tactical things that our audience can do this week. Go to the gemba, see the real work happening, use the data, gather the stories, but actually go do it. Awesome stuff. Uh, our audience, be sure to join us. Uh, for our next episode. Adrian's gonna come back. We're gonna tackle a, a bigger strategic question, how to reduce friction without losing personality. Okay. Until then, to our audience, please subscribe to the show. Like it, share it with your colleagues. We make these shows bite-size that you can listen, you can share, you get something out of it, and you can take it back to your organization to drive real change. So again, uh, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep on playing.