TRANSCRIPT: Is Customer Experience Dead or Just Changing in Hospitality?
The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast
Guest: Rick Denton, Host of CX Passport
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MICHELLE: Welcome everyone to today's episode. I have a wonderful guest — I believe a friend across the airwaves. We were just chatting about how it's been over 12 months since we last spoke, but you know, the last time I was on Rick's podcast it only seems like yesterday.
Let me introduce you to my wonderful guest today — podcast host, author, and corporate world escapee. That sounds exciting, doesn't it! Rick Denton believes the best meals are served outside and require a passport.
Rick is the creator and host of CX Passport, a global customer experience podcast with just a dash of travel talk. Across more than 250 episodes, he has sat down with leaders from around the world, building a reputation for conversations that are thoughtful, relaxed, real, and just fun. The show reaches listeners in more than 100 countries and features guests from every continent — except Antarctica, though I do believe he is working on that.
Rick has also expanded with CX Passport Live, where he brings live podcasting onto conference floors to help brands turn event moments into lasting content and business impact.
Rick is also the co-host of The Loud Quiet, a podcast he launched with his wife Clancy when they became empty nesters. What started as a way to stay connected during a big life transition has grown into a community and a book released in 2026 — The Loud Quiet: Love, Laughter and Life in the Empty Nest. The show reflects a different side of Rick — less boardroom, more living room. Honest conversations, plenty of humour, and two people figuring out what comes next together.
Before podcasting, Rick spent three decades driving business results and leading customer-focused initiatives inside large organisations. Today he brings that experience to every conversation, blending business insight with curiosity, storytelling, and a natural ability to put people at ease. Outside the studio you will usually find Rick hiking, travelling with Clancy, or planning the next trip that proves his belief true — that the best meals are served outside and require a passport.
Welcome, Rick. Thank you so much for joining me today.
RICK: What a lovely introduction, Michelle. Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be on your show today.
MICHELLE: Tell our audience — where are you situated at the moment?
RICK: Right now I'm in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. If someone happens to know it, it's Frisco — but most folks globally would know Dallas.
MICHELLE: I've been there a few times. I love the Macy's store. I actually used my bags from Macy's yesterday — I was training at one of my clubs. It has a beautiful filigree pattern.
But you know, it was that Macy's in Dallas where something happened. I'd missed my connecting flight and I was travelling up the escalator when I heard something over the PA system. It went along the lines of: "We'd just like to do a shout-out to John in menswear for providing excellent customer service." And I sort of stopped and I thought, wow. Maybe it's something you hear quite often, but I had never heard a company actually calling out on their PA system, acknowledging someone who had just done a really great job because a customer had gone up and said something. Does that happen often?
RICK: No, most certainly not. I'm hearing your story and thinking, boy, I don't think I've ever heard that before. And the example you're telling there — how much did that cost that company? $0. How much effort was that? Really not all that much. It's stunning how some of the most simple customer and employee experiences are really easy and cheap, and yet companies tend to overlook those — sometimes in favour of the new, the shiny, the technology, whatever is trendy — as opposed to just the good old basic human element of experience.
MICHELLE: And that stuck with me. That was 2019, and here we are in 2026 and I still remember it. It was a shock. Maybe it was just a manager on that day.
RICK: Maybe so — and that's what is good about it. It tells you something about the culture. Either that manager felt renegade enough to just break the rules, or that manager had been given the freedom to say, "Find a way to do something like that." Because I'll say I haven't heard that in other stores. Whether it was a coincidence or not, that flexibility, that empowerment — those big fancy words we hear — really just comes down to: did that human feel free enough to celebrate another human in a public way?
MICHELLE: And what a wonderful way for that staff member to feel. The customer was nice, they said something to the manager, and that person actually heard it. I felt so good because I had just come from buying luggage — I'm always a big shopper — and I felt joy. I was thinking, I hope I get to meet John. And then the interaction I had with the people in the luggage department was just as good. I thought, this whole shop must have wonderful staff. Something so simple, didn't cost anything, but it made a massive impact.
RICK: Clearly it did. Absolutely.
MICHELLE: So let's just chat about this — you've been in the CX world, working with large organisations for decades. Some people now say customer experience is dying, particularly with all this AI. They're both right and wrong. I want to understand what's dying and what's not going anywhere, Rick. What's your view?
RICK: Well, the words "customer experience" — we will always have customers and we will always have experiences, so that's not going away. I think what's dying is the branding of customer experience. Those of us in the CX world, I believe, have done a very poor job of tying customer experience ideas, concepts, and projects to actual tangible dollars. Companies have therefore gotten fatigued of the CX brand. So the branding of it is going away. But the actual fact that a company has customers, and that those customers want to have experiences — that will not go away.
AI is a great example of something companies have embraced, and there are definitely ways it's been used to improve the customer's experience. There is a particular brand I use in my business that helps me generate newsletters. Their bot is one of the best I have ever engaged with. When I have a question, I engage with the AI and it works. And the moment I need a human and it doesn't work, the transition to that person is very easy and simple. So there are definitely ways technology is helping. The customer's need and the experience they want — that isn't going away. It's just the move to: what are the tools and techniques that can help us?
MICHELLE: And that example shows you that it's not just the bot — it's the bot and the person. Making that connection. Particularly in hospitality, AI is great for all the back-end things people need. But what it's allowing is for staff to be out on the floor more, to connect more, to actually spend time looking someone in the eye and creating those experiences — using their initiative instead of worrying about filling in reports.
RICK: Exactly. I was once consulting for an audio electronics company — I'm probably not free to name the brand — and one of the challenges with their retail stores was getting managers and team members onto the floor as much as possible. But there was so much back-of-house reporting to do. Technology is a great example of what you just described: the more back-of-house work that can be removed, the more people can be front of house, and that's valuable.
Where companies get it wrong is thinking: "Great, now I can slash all those people because they don't need to do as much back-of-house work." That is a wonderful saccharin sugar high you'll get. But over time you'll find that your customers will have no interest in doing business with your brand because they can't get what they need done out front.
MICHELLE: And you're right. So many businesses are thinking, "We're going to save so much money, we'll get rid of Jack and Fred and Mary and Julie" — and then they realise, wait, our business isn't growing. Our sales are declining. Why is that? Because they've lost those people.
You talk about dashboards. We all know about net promoter scores and how great they look. I've got my own research company and we've been going through the process over 12 months now writing our proprietary program 2.0 — we wrote the original 25 years ago and it was phenomenal. But what is it that leaders are actually doing wrong when they look at all that data? I've got clients who just look at the stats. Years ago I'd go in there — I'm a qualitative researcher at heart — and I'd look at these numbers and they'd go, "I just want the stats, Michelle. I just want the numbers." And I'd say, the numbers aren't telling you anything. It's just a score. You need the information that goes with it. But what does acting on data actually look like?
RICK: Well, what you just said there is actually the answer: when they do something with it. I'm not anti-stats, I'm not anti-dashboard. It's remarkably naive to say we need to listen to every individual customer — that's the reason you have aggregation, data, and statistics. But if you're just applauding in the five-minute customer section of your monthly review meeting when scores go up, or shedding a brief little tear when scores go down, and then doing nothing — that's worthless. It makes for a bit of a sugar high: "Oh yay, we talked about the customer." Barf.
It's when you do something meaningful and impactful. And going back to how CX got into trouble in the past — we may have focused on things that felt good or felt friendly to the customer. But the actual test is: do something that is meaningful enough to the customer that, if they knew what you were doing, they would say, "I'll pay for that." That's the customer effectively saying, "Yes, I'm going to continue to transact with you because you've made some sort of change." It's not just the action — it's understanding which action has impact. That's when a company has really got it right.
MICHELLE: And that impact isn't just on the direct customer — it spreads to the staff and to others nearby. I think even in the moment, you know, in hospitality I've been waiting for a coffee and something's gone wrong with the machine. You can have the barista who keeps their head down and bangs pots. But then there's the barista who looks up and goes, "Look, I'm terribly sorry, the beans have just run out. I'm just going to sort this — and in the meantime, have a look at the cake display." And I'm thinking — it's not only the person in front of them they're impacting. I know I'm behind going, "OK, now I'm not going to start huffing and puffing" — though I've realised I huff and puff quite loudly, Rick. My daughter will go, "Mum." It impacts the other people around because that barista is communicating what's happening. That to me is part of the customer experience.
RICK: I love that example. Let's talk about the surrounding customers — you get this a lot in the airline industry when something goes wrong. Whether it's a weather delay or some kind of operational issue, communication is so key. But in your barista example, I've seen this go very poorly in the airline industry too. It takes a real understanding of what the customer is feeling in that moment to know how far to lean into the jokey side, and how far to lean into, "We understand this sucks, we're working as hard as we can."
When I'm on a two-and-a-half-hour delay, I really don't want the flight attendant singing a cutesy little song. It makes it worse. Your barista who says, "Take a look at the cakes" — that works because she's read the room. Her audience is basically a queue she can lightly entertain. But if you've just poured hot coffee on someone's blouse and burned them, being jokey is absolutely not the right solution. It's that ability to read the customer and communicate in a way that matches what they need.
MICHELLE: And I think that's where — you can train somebody to make the coffee or master whatever the skill set is. But it's that intuitive understanding. We can show people, we can build their confidence. When someone first starts in hospitality they may be a quieter person, and we build that confidence and empowerment so they can make the call — replace the coffee without seeking three permissions from the supervisor, the team leader, and the duty manager.
RICK: Exactly. As opposed to pulling out $5 and saying, "I'm sorry, hopefully this covers your dry cleaning — if not, come back and let us know." The empowerment and freedom — not just the programmatic and policy freedom, but the cultural freedom — to act in the moment. And you and I have both interacted with companies where you can tell the human on the other side really wants to help but their hands are tied, either by policy or by culture.
MICHELLE: And it's a shame because they're the one getting impacted. They're dealing with a real person who has emotion, who's now gone from, "I just came for a coffee" to something far more charged — and that frontline person is stuck going, "I'd really love to help but I can't." That's where we hear about resilience and burnout, isn't it? We need to ensure we support our teams.
So when we look at leaders — do you feel that sometimes they don't actually have a real idea of what the guest experience is? It looks great on paper: these are the steps from when we greet the guest on the phone to when they come through the front door. But sometimes I find they have never actually done it themselves. They've never gone through their own system. Simple things — you can never find a power point near the nightstand. I've got a CPAP machine and you can never find a plug. They're hidden away behind the bed head or going straight to the wall. Do leaders actually sit in that room and think: am I experiencing this from the customer's side?
RICK: I both expect leadership to get out into the field and I also sympathise with the reality that they do have roles and responsibilities. But you can't go to either extreme. Your hotel example is one where so many times you walk into a hotel room and you're thinking: how could anyone in leadership think this is okay? Like the amount of stuff on the desk, the phone — I'll grant maybe it has to stay there for safety. But then the marketing promotion team has put this flyer in, this stand, this thing, and you're like, I just want to be able to set my earplugs down.
The power cord situation is another one. Many people have moved to hard-sided luggage, which opens all the way flat. How many hotel rooms still have that old fabric luggage rack with the little lever on the back? You can't open your suitcase on that. So you're looking around — which desk do I put it on? Do I put my stuff on the floor? If any leadership team member travelled with regular hard-sided luggage, they'd realise straight away: that luggage rack doesn't work anymore.
I have yet to be in a hotel room that has solved for this. So, listeners — there is a really good business idea out there. If anyone would design a luggage rack for modern suitcases, you can take over the world.
MICHELLE: You can! And here's another tip while we're at it — replace the batteries in the remote control every month, whether they need it or not. It doesn't matter whether it's a ten-star hotel or a country motel. I cannot tell you how many times I'm all set up in bed and the remote doesn't work. Then beside the bed there's a whopping big iPad you're supposed to use to choose your dining and your television — but you still end up reaching for the remote and it doesn't work. So now you've got to ring reception. But you don't know what number to ring. There is a phone, but nobody picks up and the number for reception is so small on this ancient device you can't read it — so you're going, "Nine? Zero? What would it be?" And then you hit some combination of numbers and the police and fire department show up.
RICK: And it all comes down to what you're saying — leaders need to be out in the field. Yes, it's not possible all the time. But it can't be not possible all the time. You've got to get out there at least some of the time, so we can get some batteries in those remote controls and some places to put the luggage.
MICHELLE: You know what I did in that last hotel? I used my mobile and rang the hotel. And they said, "Oh, Mrs Pascoe, why didn't you use the phone?" And I said, "I didn't know what number to ring." You know, we see shows like Undercover Boss — that's a bit of fun, but you don't have to go undercover. You just have to go in with a suitcase. Sit on the bed. Look around the nightstand, look in the bathroom. Just use your eyes.
And I think what's really important is listening to those frontline team members who have told you repeatedly: they need batteries in the remote, the luggage rack is not good. They don't always get an option to be heard.
RICK: That's actually one of the hacks for a leader who can't be out in the field all the time — setting up a real, structured program, not an ad hoc process, where frontline staff can provide input that is received, understood, appropriately prioritised, and acted upon. Not everything will be acted on — but it needs to go somewhere.
I was floored on our flight back from Spain recently. We flew business class over and economy coming home — four seats in the middle. Where do you put your luggage? You normally put it in the space in front of you, but four seats, only three spaces. I guarantee flight attendants hear about that all the time. If there were a structured program for flight attendants to feed that directly to airline leadership — absorbed, understood, prioritised, and acted upon — that would overcome the reality that a leader simply cannot be on every flight, in every hotel room, at every location, all the time.
MICHELLE: Listening. I did a course at the Disney Institute in California some years ago, and one of the examples that stayed with me was a director who would randomly select seven people from one particular ride every couple of months — the people in the shop, on tickets, operating the ride. She'd sit down and said the first thing she had to do was sit on her hands and close her mouth and not interrupt by saying, "We've tried that, done that." The things they learned — wait times, a cup that didn't work, a straw. Those little things. It doesn't matter how big a company you are — you've got to listen to your frontline team. Because they can make a big difference to your business growth.
Rick, you work with individuals as well as organisations. For someone who's built their career in hospitality — maybe in middle management or operations — who is watching AI change everything around them and wondering whether their role will exist in five years, what do you tell them?
RICK: I have a lot of thoughts on this and they're hard to distil into something coherent. One thought is: you've heard the phrase that AI is not going to take your job — someone who understands how to use AI is going to take your job. So if your company is bringing in these technology tools — no different from any other technology that's ever been brought into a company — understand how you can use them to better your ability to perform the role you've been asked to do. And explore how those tools might help you do other things for the company.
To those worried that their jobs may be going away — yes, honestly, that's true of almost any technology change that has come along. However, at least so far, every one of those technology changes, while significantly and in some cases disastrously disruptive, has resulted in more jobs overall. So my advice: understand your company's business goals. There's someone who once said the first thing anybody should read when they come into a company is the annual report — to understand what the business goals are. If you understand those goals, then understand how your role and the application of these new technologies can advance those goals. That will serve you well through this technology transformation.
MICHELLE: That's a good point. Read the annual report, understand what it actually says, and bring it to life — how can you work with it, not against it? This has been going on for thousands of years. We were all pushing the cart, somebody made a wheel, and suddenly the cart pushers thought they didn't have a job. But things move on. It's about how it can work with you and for you.
And honestly — does anybody actually want to read an annual report? No. It's torture. But you know what you can do? Download it, run it through AI, and ask: "Here's my role — how can I best apply this information to advance in the company?" There is some truth to using the tools to help you understand how to use the tools.
RICK: Exactly. And there's a great example of that — I love the story you told earlier about the woman who was leaving her position to start her own business. She did a brain dump into ChatGPT, went through all her emails, and put together everything she'd done. ChatGPT told her, "You're phenomenal — this is a job for three people." And she ended up handing her boss a 13-page job description. That's awesome. It was just taking a moment to go: what do I actually do?
I'll be honest — the sycophantic part of ChatGPT is part of why I moved on from it as my LLM of choice. I have instructions in there that say, "You're my colleague, not my lackey — please stop that." But the point of distilling a role into something that can be explained is valuable. Companies are going to use LLMs to help craft performance reports. And that same weapon is available to the employee — to present themselves in the best light when it comes to performance evaluations.
MICHELLE: You've mentioned off air, and I've been reading about, the concept of the polycrisis. Most hospitality leaders probably haven't heard it named, but they are living inside it every day — cost of living pressure, staffing shortages, post-COVID behavioural shifts, economic uncertainty globally. What is the one thing most hospitality leaders are getting wrong in how they respond to those intersecting crises? And what should they be doing instead?
RICK: It's hard to distil into one thing. But what I'm seeing more of — and what more people are talking about — is a very short-term view. How can I reduce costs by X so I can make this quarter's numbers? And I don't want to create some Pollyanna picture here — businesses are in business to make profit, and if cost cutting needs to be part of it, then it does. But the issue is cost cutting for the sake of just reducing costs, as opposed to asking: how does this set us up for growth in the future? That's where I think hospitality is getting it wrong.
Something else I'm seeing in the hospitality space — certainly in the US — is a wealth disparity taking shape, and a race to focus on the segment of the population whose wealth is increasing. You're seeing it in sports and in hospitality. And while that makes economic sense, the problem is that a lot of brands are doing the same thing simultaneously. Which means there may actually be saturation at the top end, while the moderate and budget segments get overlooked. I'm pondering here, not predicting — but focusing on those segments, and understanding what different generations and traveller styles are looking for, could be a less tapped area going forward.
MICHELLE: And there's got to be something in the middle for the majority of people globally who are seeking time away from work, adventure, whatever it might be.
RICK: Absolutely. You're seeing newer brands where the room takes a real back seat — almost sparse — but the common areas are heavily invested in. Great music, exciting bars, good restaurants. The idea is to get people out of their rooms and into shared spaces. But that doesn't always appeal to the 53-year-old on his sixth day of a business trip. To your point about generations — it's not always just generation. It's traveller style and traveller segment. Being aware and responsive to those different needs has served several brands very well.
MICHELLE: And it's interesting — when they're minimising the room to get people socialising, we hear about Gen Z spending so much time on their phones, but they want that feeling of belonging. Getting out and having conversations — it's not just Gen Z, it's all of us. You go to a nice hotel and you're sitting in your room watching reruns of The Brady Bunch and you think, right, I'm going downstairs. And if they've created somewhere that makes you feel comfortable — regardless of gender, age, whether you're alone, with a partner, or with friends — if it collectively makes you feel, "I made the right choice coming here, I feel like I belong," then whether it's that hotel or a chain, that's the one you'll seek out in the future. From just one experience.
RICK: It is. And I think about this — I'm not one individual segment of traveller. When I'm driving with my daughter back from Arizona to Texas overnight, I want something easy off the highway, functional, fast check-in, room — I don't need a whole lot. But when we were in Barcelona, I kind of wanted a nice experience. A good concierge, a nice bar — not that we went — but it had a three-star Michelin restaurant. Those are the things you want in certain moments. That Barcelona hotel would be terrible for an overnight on a road trip. Which brings it back to what we were saying at the very beginning: understanding your customer's needs, and placing the right experience in the right location and moment — whether it's a hotel style, a service recovery moment, or a new idea around experience — it all comes down to how well a company is listening to their customer and to the employees who are closest to the customer.
MICHELLE: Definitely. Rick, thank you so much for our conversation today. As always, it's been lovely to catch up and hear your experiences both as a traveller and as an expert in CX. Is there anything I haven't asked that you'd like to share with my listeners?
RICK: We talked about the changing customer — you mentioned the podcast my wife Clancy and I created, The Loud Quiet. We also have a book out now. And when you talk about the transformation a person goes through as they enter the empty nest, I think a lot of what we've discussed about customer experience applies to that too. You may think you know your customer, and then something happens and they go through a massive transformation. That's what's happening with empty nest living as well. As Clancy and I have gone through our own transformation, we've realised there are so many people just struggling to survive that phase when really we want them to thrive in it.
The idea of listening to "your customer" — in this case, the empty nester — and helping guide them through that transition: it's true CX in the business world, but it's also true in everyday human life. Clancy and I are really trying to live that with The Loud Quiet.
MICHELLE: It sounds wonderful. I'll put the links for The Loud Quiet and CX Passport in the show notes. Rick, thank you so much for your insights and knowledge. Take care.
RICK: Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute delight. Thanks. Bye.
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