Today’s interview is with the winner of the MyCustomer 2023 CX Leader of the Year competition: Roxie Strohmenger, GSO – VP, CX Strategy at UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group).

This interview is slightly different this week as I conduct it with Clare Muscutt, Founder and CEO of Women in CX but follows the same format to the one last year where we interviewed Maneesha Bhusal of JD .ID, the winner of the 2022 CX Leader of the Year.

In the interview, we discuss Roxie’s journey to where she is now, why she applied for the CX Leader of the Year competition, how she felt when she won and the biggest lessons that she has learned along the way.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The frontline is where you connect EX and CX together in a very natural way – Interview with Joe Tyrrell of Medallia – and is number 494 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with Roxie:

• Roxie has worked in the CX space for about 20 years now.
• Her background is in psychology, decision sciences and analytics.
• One of the biggest things for me is the emotional North Star. Emotion has the strongest impact on loyalty above and beyond, meeting the need, making it easy, all of that type of stuff.
• Cater to and understand the audience.
• Different personality types require different approaches.
• I tell my people that to be successful in any world you have to be a psychologist. You have to figure out who you’re talking to, what resonates with them and then cater the message to them.
• It’s probably the most underrated skill that customer experience professionals do not appreciate is that you have to treat your stakeholders like customers before you get to your customers because if you don’t get engagement, if you don’t get their buy-in, if you don’t get their support, if you’re not presenting something in a way in which they understand and that it resonates with them, you may as well give up and go home.
• Jim Tincher encouraged Roxie to enter the CXLOTY competition.
• My style has changed dramatically over the years. Because I’m blue-green plus data process, I very much think in very exacting ways, like it’s to the letter type of thing. That’s how I process.
• The journey doesn’t matter. What matters is the destination.
• When I got to learn that different styles of people approach things differently then my style morphed into a coaching style.
• I know for me, that transition to just letting go and letting them do what they think is best was also really hard because I’ve relied on these behaviours that’s made me successful. But, to be a leader, you can’t do that.
• Our current challenge is we’re going to have to be really good stewards to lean into technology without removing the humanity.
• Roxie’s best advice: Ask yourself, how do you become the trusted advisor?

About Roxie

Roxie Strohmenger is GSO – VP, CX Strategy at UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group).

Roxie is an innovative, determined, and passionate award-winning CX Change Maker who believes great things don’t happen in your comfort zone. With over 15+ years of experience, Roxie has a passion for designing and executing innovative CX transformation initiatives that are linked to operational metrics and financials to create differentiated, high-quality experiences that create, sustain, and expand customer loyalty.

Find out more about UKG, say Hi to them on X (Twitter) @UKGInc and feel free to connect with Roxie on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash