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Customer experience has a credibility problem, and it isn't the ideas. Forrester has found that over half of CX teams can't prove the ROI of their own projects — and predicts one in five CX programs will simply vanish as a result. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton sit down with the person who built the opposite case.
Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping company, conducted one of the most successful CX implementations Colin has seen in over twenty-four years in this business — a 40-point Net Promoter Score lift. That translated into a 10% rise in shipping volumes. The project leader, Michel Patterson, wasn't a customer experience professional. Her background was Lean Six Sigma and statistics, and she built the entire program without ever opening a CX textbook.
What she did instead is the part worth stealing — including one leadership decision that should have sunk the whole initiative, and didn't.
Best Quote from the Episode:"I really had to go in with sound research to show that this was true. This is founded in science. This is about a sound business strategy." — Michelle Patterson
Key Takeaways:-
Why the person behind one of the best CX turnarounds Colin has seen had never worked in customer experience before.
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The move Colin made before Maersk had even agreed to the pitch — and why it ended the argument on the spot.
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The leadership call that should have killed the whole program, and instead created a groundswell nobody expected.
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Why having almost no budget turned into the project's biggest advantage.
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The unglamorous governance structure quietly doing more work than any dashboard — and why most organizations skip it.
If you've ever sat in a budget meeting unable to answer "what did this actually return," this episode is the corrective. It's not a framework pitched by consultants — it's the inside account of how one practitioner built the business case CX teams are still failing to build, nearly three years after Forrester first raised the alarm.
Resources Mentioned
Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/
Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321
Connect with Michelle Patterson on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelpatterson/
Beyond Philosophy — Maersk Line case study (NPS up 40 points in 30 months, 10% rise in shipping volumes): https://beyondphilosophy.com/about/case-studies/maersk-line/
Forrester — 54% of CX teams can't prove project ROI; one in five CX programs predicted to disappear: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/predictions-2023-customer-experience-cx
CX Network, State of CX 2026 — demonstrating ROI and finding budget remain the top two barriers for CX practitioners: https://www.cxnetwork.com/cx-experience/articles/why-cx-budgets-are-won-at-mid-year-not-year-end
Medallia, 2026 State of Customer Experience Report — 66% of practitioners believe experience improved last year; only 17% of consumers agree: https://www.medallia.com/press-release/medallia-releases-2026-state-of-customer-experience-report/
About the Hosts:
Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 760,000 downloads—and author of seven best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.
Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.
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