Clare Muscutt talks with CCO, Kate Thornton, about what it takes to have the edge in CX Leadership.

What does it take to have the edge when it comes to customer experience leadership?   This is a question we continually ask in CX but seldom receive a straight answer. One usually hears the same old CX dogma of ‘needing the CEO on board’, ‘customer-centric culture’, or some kind of organisational design that puts CX itself in a position of power and authority. But few of us have ever sat close enough to the top table to really know for sure what it takes to influence at that level..   That’s why I jumped at the chance to talk with a woman who’s career led her to become a Chief Customer Officer, who ‘earned her stripes’ and who’s inspiring story has much to teach us when it comes to not only learning the secrets to being a true CX leader but also what it takes to become one.   Kate Thornton is an incredible role model, who’s clarity and realisation of her own agency meant she started asking for what she wanted as she climbed the ladder to success. But the most inspiring thing is her perspective forged by her experiences of working in Scandinavia, that real success doesn’t come at the expense of others. In fact, the key to winning can be found by individuals and organisations who have higher goals to operate from a place of community, where success is shared.  Read more and subscribe to our channels: Sign up https://bit.ly/2ZDYCcB Youtube  https://bit.ly/3jdBU2w  LinkedIn https://bit.ly/3a0cDVx Instagram https://bit.ly/30Aq0bM Spotify https://spoti.fi/33AIx9F Podbean https://bit.ly/3h6Cz3T Show notes  https://bit.ly/2ZBcILF Twitter https://bit.ly/3fzxLD2 

Om Podcasten

By way of introduction, my name is Clare Muscutt and I have the pleasure of hosting and producing this new female-focused Customer Experience initiative. I had the idea that we needed a space for women when I appeared in CX Magazine’s Top 50 stars as the UK’s Top Female Influencer last year. It seemed strange to me that in a disproportionately female industry that the rest of the Top 5, were male. My newly found platform meant women started to reach out to me for help on social media and I found it surprising that they found me inspiring. I helped wherever I could, sharing my personal career story and experience of successes and ‘failures’ on the corporate road to starting my own company. I saw my mentees getting braver and felt tremendous pride at seeing them go for bigger opportunities, start their own blogs, try their hand at public speaking and some even make the jump to freelance. The theme that repeated over and over again in these conversations was the shared feeling of a lack of self-confidence to stand up and be noticed. And a lack of accessible female spaces with role models who openly share their experience of getting over similar challenges, to look up to. I found a community of awesome women through Instagram and reached out to them to get the conversation going. We started having ‘real-talk’ conversations on Zoom about our views on CX and experience of being women striving to achieve our goals. I found a collective across the globe who wanted to take part in building something ‘for the girls’ and by sharing our stories, together we found CX sisterhood. We have a dream to shine a light on more women in CX and inspire more of us to stand up and be noticed. We believe the CX world would benefit from a space dedicated to women and that a great place to start is to hear more of our stories… So, to begin with, I have handpicked a selection of the women I got to know, from around the world who have tremendous stories to tell that will be published here. Over time, I hope to get feedback on where you need more inspiration and introduce guests from other areas of interest such as health and wellbeing, business and social media skills to support the personal and professional development of women in our industry. Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like to join the sisterhood, please visit www.womenincx.community to subscribe to our list and be the first to get news and updates as we grow.