Ep. 3 - Cultures That Kick CX Down the Road

Competitive CX | Conversations for Financial Services Professionals Tackling Client Experience Challenges

Struggling to drive client satisfaction in financial services? Discover why organizational culture can make or break your customer experience strategy—and learn actionable ways to get your team truly invested in CX.

In this episode of Competitive CX, host Melanie Aimer, Hamish Taylor and Adam Grainger have a transparent conversation about “cultures that kick CX down the road.” They dive deep into why culture must lead CX initiatives, the pivotal role of leadership in shaping priorities, and the risk of deprioritizing client experience during periods of cost-cutting or rapid growth. The discussion highlights real industry examples from British Airways, Monzo, Wells Fargo, and more, showing exactly how leadership behavior, hiring for cultural fit, and linking CX to tangible KPIs can transform outcomes.

Key learnings include:

• How to avoid common cultural traps that undermine CX
• Why senior leadership sets the tone for exceptional client experience
• Ways to embed CX into the core of your business through measurement, reward, and empowerment
• The impact of innovation, cost pressures, and organizational structure on client satisfaction

Packed with practical advice, real stories, and expert tips, this episode is essential listening for anyone aiming to turn CX from a buzzword into a true competitive advantage in financial services. Listen now and start creating a culture that champions the client at every level.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Leadership-driven culture change initiatives
• Prioritizing client experience in finance
• Tying CX to measurable KPIs
• Empowering frontline employees for CX
• Overcoming cost-cutting impact on CX

Timestamps:

00:00 "Financial Regulators: Friend or Foe?"

04:42 "Culture Drives Customer Experience"

07:47 Align KPIs with Customer Culture

10:18 Leadership Shapes Workplace Culture

15:25 "Prioritizing CX Amid Cost-Cutting"

17:01 "Marketing: Beyond 'Coloring In' Perception"

21:54 "Fostering CX Through Leadership"

25:08 "Share and Explore Competitive CX"

About the Competitive CX Hosts

Hamish Taylor

Hamish Taylor is a world leader in Customer-led Transformations. A multi-award winning CEO, his career has taken him from Brand Management at Procter and Gamble, Consultancy at PWC and Head of Brands at BA to become CEO of channel tunnel railway Eurostar and CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank – all before he was 40. In each case he left a record of significant growth by challenging the established way of operating and, in particular, by enabling the organisation to place its customers at the core of all activities. More recently, he has taken his “Customer-led Transformation” approach to hundreds of organisations and teams in 48 different countries. He has also been dubbed the “MasterThief” for his ability to take ideas from one industry or discipline to another.

Melanie Aimer

Melanie has over 20 years of financial services experience spanning Capital Markets, Corporate & Investment Banking, Asset Management, Private Bank & Wealth Management with Citibank, BNP Paribas and Barclays. With her vast multinational corporate Board and Exco level experience, Melanie has an award-winning record of delivering innovative client transformation across the full client and customer value-chain delivering best-in-class services in complex global organizations in a cost-effective agile manner and simplifying front to back processes spanning across people, marketing, data, and digital.

Adam Grainger

After a career leading client experience (CX) transformations for large and medium-sized asset management firms, Adam established Accomplish to translate CX for asset managers into a tangible and measurable discipline. Between 2018 and 2021, Adam chaired the global Asset Management CX Forum. This was an industry-wide innovation initiative that resulted in Accomplish’s Client Behavior Benchmark that lets asset managers pinpoint, in time and money, where their pre- and post-sales experience has out and underperformed. Adam has an MBA from the London Business School, where he studied behavioral economics and decision-making.

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