The Art of the Ands

Table 7 · S2 · E01: The Art of the Ands
Germany · with hosts Michel Stevens & Bram De Vos

Michel and Bram packed a car in Belgium and drove eight hours into Germany to test a stereotype. Efficient. Organized. A little serious. They came back with the season's thesis instead: the best customer experiences aren't built by choosing between precision and warmth. They're built by holding on to both. Three interviews, two cities, ski jumping, river surfing, and one finger-wrestling champion.

Chapters

00:00 Why we drove eight hours to Germany
01:24 Belgium to Munich. Eight hours, Michel's taste in music, coffee.
02:16 Cologne. Meeting Dr Graham Hill (former plant geneticist)
03:00 Marks & Spencer interviewed 3,000 Germans. Hired virtually none.
06:30 The 5% rule, and why CRM isn't about customers
14:45 Rethinking the stereotype on the way south
16:30 Munich. Meeting Christian Peter, author of It Depends on the Ands
28:00 AI in CX: more noise or more signal?
35:42 The Eisbachwelle: a permanent surf wave in a city with no ocean
39:00 Helmut Blocher: sixteen years, same conference, on purpose
43:03 Frances Chapireau: surveys, closeness, and German trust
47:57 South to the Alps. The Olympia Schanze.
51:00 Thomas Post: competitive finger wrestler since age three

Guests, in order of appearance

Graham Hill: CX consultant, Cologne. PhD in plant genetics, three decades consulting some of the largest enterprises in Europe. Toyota-Lean lineage, jobs-to-be-done practitioner, sceptic of journey-mapping orthodoxy.
LinkedIn

Christian Peter: Munich-based author and former German banker. Author of It Depends on the Ands (the case for combining opposites in customer focus: data and human, automation and empathy, today and tomorrow).
LinkedIn · Book

Helmut Blocher: Organizer of the German CRM Forum, sixteen years and counting. Has deliberately refused to scale the event past a few hundred. Specialist in CRM, innovation, and transformation.
LinkedIn · Conference

Frances Chapireau: Keynote speaker at the German CRM Forum. British-born, Germany-based VoC specialist. Champion of customer-advisory boards over survey monoculture.
LinkedIn

Thomas Post: Reigning German champion in Fingerhakln (finger wrestling), Mittenwald. Third-generation competitor. Started at age three.

Hosts

Michel Stevens: Course Director, CXM Academy. CX practitioner, writer, and traveller.
LinkedIn

Bram De Vos: Co-host. The man who said yes to driving eight hours for a podcast.
LinkedIn

This episode was produced by CXM Academy, the school for people who want to actually do customer experience, not just talk about it.