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September 23, 2025 16 mins

After a short hiatus, Alex is back—and he’s bringing some big energy and even bigger ideas to the Digital Customer Success podcast. In this solo episode, he shares a deeply personal and practical reflection on how we can create magical, human moments in our digital programs—at scale.


Inspired by Will Guidara’s book Unreasonable Hospitality, Alex explores what it means to go beyond the expected, whether that’s sending a baby gift, a surprise mouse (the tech kind), or a handwritten note. The kicker? You can use AI and automation to help you spot those moments—without losing the human touch.


You’ll learn:

  • Why emotional connection matters more than ever in CX
  • How to train your systems (and your team) to spot moments of magic
  • Real-world examples you can replicate
  • Tools like Gong, Zapier, and Handwrytten in action

If you’re looking for a way to stand out in a sea of digital sameness, this episode’s for you. Subscribe and stick around—we’re just getting started.


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The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

🎬 This content was edited by Lifetime Value Media.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Turkovic (00:03):
Hey, it's Alex, I'm back.
Let's talk about digital CX,shall we Once again welcome to
the Digital Customer Experiencepodcast with me, alex Turkovich,
so glad you could join us heretoday and every week as we
explore how digital can helpenhance the customer and
employee experience.
My goal is to share what myguests and I have learned over

(00:25):
the years so that you can getthe insights that you need to
evolve your own digital programs.
If you'd like more info, needto get in touch or sign up for
the weekly companion newsletterthat has additional articles and
resources in it.
Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom.
For now, let's get started.
So hey, and welcome back to theDigital CX podcast, the show

(00:46):
where we talk about all thingsdigital in CX.
And boy, it's been a whilesince I have said those words
out loud.
I've been on a bit of a hiatusfor the past few months for
various reasons which I guesswe'll get into briefly here, but
I'm so happy to be back andtalking about cool stuff on this
show, which was hopping alongsteadily, week by week, for

(01:11):
better part of two years.
Um, then I got a new gig.
Then life got a little crazy.
A bunch of stuff happened and Iwas like you know what let's
and, to be frank with you, I wasgetting a little burned out on
the weekly posting schedule aswell.
You know, I think we all owe itto ourselves to be transparent

(01:34):
with things and realistic aboutwhat we can and can't handle,
and so I went on a bit of ahiatus, right, and I went hard.
I mean, I didn't post onLinkedIn, I wasn't in any
communities, so to those of youwho sent me messages during that
time and I wasn't responsive,I'm sorry.

(01:56):
I just I had to like hardcoredisconnect and focus on my new
gig and just get into a rhythmthere.
But it's time.
It's time for me to come backon the show because I love doing
it.
I love chatting with you all inthis virtual space that we've

(02:18):
created together, and I lovesharing my ideas.
I like giving other people aplatform from which they can
share their ideas as well, andso it is time to produce some
new episodes.
It's going to be a little bitdifferent than it was before.
Before, if you remember, I wasproducing basically a solo

(02:39):
episode every fifth episode anddoing a lot of interviews, which
was awesome Met a lot of greatpeople.
And that's not to say thatinterviews are ceasing.
We'll continue to do someinterviews.
I'm just going to do a lot moresolo episodes as well, just
because I have a lot more stuffto share that I wasn't really

(03:00):
able to fully before, and yeah.
So we're going to structure theshow a little bit differently.
We're also going to do, youknow, somewhat tighter episodes.
If you remember, I used to doanywhere from half hour to an
hour long shows here and there.
We're going to try to keep it alittle bit tighter, make it a
little bit shorter, a littlemore digestible.

(03:23):
But ultimately, I want to bringto the table a lot of the stuff
that I've been working on, a lotof the things that I've been
chatting with other people aboutwhat they've been doing,
continue talking about some ofthose best practices that exist
out there in digital CX and, ofcourse, we're going to talk
about artificial intelligence.

(03:43):
In fact, we're going to talkabout it a lot, because one of
the things I've been doing in mytime away is just playing with
AI pretty hardcore, a glorifiedGoogle, but using it in agent

(04:04):
mode especially has been prettyawesome.
You know building custom GPTs,you know building team members
as GPTs, which is such a coolconcept, and whatnot.
So I'm super excited to share alot of that information.
Excited to share a lot of thatinformation and on top of that,

(04:31):
I am also working on some prettycool projects that I will pull
you into over the coming weeks.
Let you know what's going onthere.
There's some education relatedthings, there's some partnership
things coming up that I aminsanely excited about and
really I'm trying my best totake on projects that serve the

(04:52):
greater good of the community,specifically the CS community,
the CX community and the digitalcommunity especially.
So stay tuned for that.
Probably next week I'll revealone of the projects that I'm
working on, but look, in thisfirst show back.
One of the things that has beenon my mind a lot lately is this

(05:19):
notion of creating memorablemoments for customers in a
digital program, which is, um,kind of hard to do.
So one of the things I did overthis break is I read a book by
Will Gadara, formerly of ElevenMadison Park, the famed

(05:42):
restaurant in New York Citycalled Unreasonable Hospitality.
I know from conversations a lotof you have read that book as
well, but if you haven't readthat book Unreasonable
Hospitality it is a fantasticglimpse into the restaurant and
hospitality world, but it isalso a very wonderful view into

(06:06):
the creativity that can exist inthis space of creating amazing
customer experiences.
And so, if you're not familiarwith it, the Cliff Notes version
is that Eleven Madison Parkbecame the world's best
restaurant because they lookedfor every opportunity they could
to create insane moments andmemorable moments for their

(06:33):
customers.
You know, and there's a lot ofexamples that they give in the
book about you know how theywould do kind of these.
You know outlandish kind ofthings, like a group was
visiting out of town and ElevenMadison Park was like their last
kind of New York experiencethat they were going to have
before leaving, because theywanted fine dining, blah, blah,

(06:55):
blah.
But they said the one thingthat they hadn't really had was
a New York City hot dog yet andso somebody went out and, you
know, bought a hot dog andserved it to them in a fancy,
fine dining kind of way.
But you know, it's like thoselittle gestures that show that
you really care about yourcustomers.
That kind of stuff really,really resonated with me and

(07:21):
those are things that I havebeen encouraging my team to
really embody as much aspossible.
I mean, sometimes it's reallyhard to do, especially if you're
in the thick of it, just movingfrom thing to thing, trying to
survive, all that kind of stuff.
But if there are moments thatpresent themselves where you can

(07:45):
create an exceptional customerexperience, those are moments
that you really have to listento and those are moments that
you can train your team tolisten to.
And those are moments that youknow you can train your team to
listen to and to act upon and togive them the free reign to do
it without having to ask for,you know, permission.

(08:06):
So a couple of examples is Imean, you know some easy
examples is if we hear one ofour customers is having a baby
or something like that, we'llsend flowers or a one branded
onesie or something like that.
Right, I think a lot ofbusinesses kind of do that.
I was on a customer call notlong ago where the customer was

(08:27):
complaining or it was kind of arunning joke that the customer
had a mouse like a computermouse not a real mouse, computer
mouse that wasn't reallyfunctioning correctly and it was
super annoying, but he was kindof too lazy or too busy to do
anything about it.
And so you know, you hop onAmazon, you know the customer's
address, so you ship them.
You know $30, $40.
Logitech mouse or somethinglike that showed up next day and

(08:51):
you know those moments of.
You know we didn't need to dothat.
There was no expectation thatwe would do that, we didn't
really announce that we would dothat, but it just showed up

(09:19):
isn't really serving the purposeof.
You know the customer'sexperience strictly with your
software or your solution oryour services or whatever you're
providing to your customer.
And yeah, it's just true, itdoesn't at all.
But it goes back to thatrelationship building, that
rapport building and thatshowing the customer that you
really, really, really care.
Sometimes those things go areally long way.
I said really a lot just now,but sometimes those things go a

(09:40):
long way to building thatrelationship with a customer.
So the question naturallybecomes how do you create those
kinds of experiences at scale?
And, truth be told, it's hardto do, but with the tooling that

(10:13):
we have available to us thesedays, it's not so far-fetched
that you can have your systemslisten for these kinds of
opportunities.
Now I realize that a lot of youlive in corporate environments
that are very restrictive interms of data integration and
sharing data between systems andthings like that.
So I totally get it, and thoseof you who do live in a somewhat

(10:35):
restricted environment that waymight roll your eyes at some of
the things that I'm about tosay.
But bear with me for a second,because I do think that where
there's a will there's a way.
Let's say, for example's sake,we're Gong users, we use Gong,
we record practically everysingle phone call that is made

(10:57):
into and out of our organization, and Gong has some insanely
great automation tools combinedwith its AI listening
capabilities.
And so with Gong automations orwith something like Zapier or
Makecom, it becomes entirelyfeasible for you to train a bot

(11:20):
to listen to transcripts quoteunquote listen to transcripts
for those kinds of moments, forthose kinds of pain points that
a customer has that isn'tnecessarily related to the
software.
You can also train it to listenfor personal details.

(11:41):
So the customers sometimes youknow they'll share small talk
with you or pleasantries withyou about what their team is
doing or what family thing ishappening.
Also, sometimes they share someof the tragedies in their life,
like a death in the family orsomething like that.
And those are all opportunitiesthat you can, with the tooling

(12:03):
that we have today in variousformats, listen for and act upon
.
Now I'm not saying you should gobuild a whole system that
automatically recognizes what acustomer is experiencing and
automatically takes action onthat.
I suppose you could probably dosomething like that with

(12:23):
automation, but that then, Ithink, becomes a little too
impersonal.
What I'm saying is it'sentirely feasible for you to set
aside a few hundred bucks inyour budget every month to act

(12:59):
upon those moments when theycome up to send some flowers, to
send a little gift, to sendsome swag, to send a handwritten
note, for instance.
It goes a long way If you're alongtime listener of the show,
you know that a few months agogoes a long way.
Um, if, if you're a long timelistener of the show, you know
that a few months ago, uh, wedid an interview um with David
wax of of um handwritten, whichis a company that does automated

(13:23):
handwritten notes.
Um, we're a customer of theirsand we have it integrated into
our um CSP and so if one of ourCSMs or one of our
implementation managers wants to, they can quickly type up a
note and the integration willfire it off and send out a

(13:43):
handwritten note to the customerwith this, you know, on a
design card for us and all thatkind of stuff.
What I'm saying is it's lessabout the tactical of what you
do.
It's more about presenting thetrigger and presenting the event
that has happened so that yourteam can then act upon that.

(14:03):
I just live for moments likethat and those kinds of things
have me super excited and sonaturally, being kind of
digitally minded, I'm activelylooking for ways to scale those
kinds of things and I would loveto hear from you if you have
done similar things, if you havetrained a bot to listen to your

(14:27):
call transcripts for thosekinds of moments, and, if you
have, I would love for you tolet me know and I'd love to have
a conversation with you aboutit, because I think these are
the kinds of use cases that arekind of the nonstandard use
cases that really makeartificial intelligence exciting

(14:49):
for me, because they augmentthe human experience.
I'm all for situations whereartificial intelligence augments
the human experience and makesthe human experience of being in
a vendor-customer relationshipmuch better than it is today.
So thanks for listening to meramble about that for a little
bit.
I'm so happy to be back.

(15:10):
I don't know what my publishingschedule is going to be
relatively regular, because I'mgoing to try to pre-record a
bunch of stuff.
I have some excitingpartnerships coming up as well
that's going to be great andagain launching a couple of
programs in the coming weeksthat I will share with you as
well.
But for now, thank you foreverybody who checked on me

(15:32):
while I was seemingly MIA, and Iappreciate you spending the
last 15 or so minutes with mechatting about digital, chatting
about AI, chatting aboutunreasonable hospitality.
Go read that book if youhaven't already, because it's
really great.
But until next time, hope youhave an awesome week ahead and
we'll talk soon.

(15:53):
Thank you for joining me forthis episode of the Digital CX
Podcast.
If you like what we're doing,consider leaving us a review on
your podcast platform of choice.
If you're watching on YouTube,leave a comment down below.
It really helps us to grow andprovide value to a broader
audience and get moreinformation about the show and
some of the other things thatwe're doing at
digitalcustomersuccesscom.

(16:15):
I'm Alex Tergovich.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.
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