Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff Speaking Topics

• Navigating Your AI Blind Spots

  Is It AI-Palooza or a Strategic Differentiator for Business Success?

  “We’re being replaced by the machines. Humans don’t matter. It’s taking our jobs and there is nothing we can do about it.”

  The truth is our jobs won’t be replaced by AI. They will be replaced by those who don’t know how to harness the power of it. AI has been in development for over 25 years, some say much longer. While it’s only gained major strides in the last several years, it is here to stay. Instead of becoming a victim, we must demystify it, irradicate the fear, and co-create our future.

  In the age of AI-palooza hype, many are wondering whether Generative AI is tech in another hype cycle or if it’s a game-changing opportunity. If we create the future together, we train and develop the AI to be in service to us. But that means we need to understand it, participate in it, train it, and guide its development.

  You don’t have to be a programmer or an engineer to be part of this future. Yes, they write the code, but we are the users. It’s the users who take the tech, and in that use, we train it. That’s our power. We can’t live on the sidelines and allow it to take over. It’s up to each and every one of us. And we must begin NOW.

  While the possibilities are endless, the probability of utilizing AI’s full potential is much smaller, leading to a unique and unprecedented strategic differentiator for those who learn how to take the potential of AI and turn it into their reality. Dr. Natalie takes us through the top 10 AI blind spots (magic bullet syndrome, strategy misalignment, operational implosion, slowing down-to-go-fast, fear-based mindsets, 360 deprivation, lack of win-win perspective, physiological resistance, emotional unintelligence, and psychological safety.) Then she delivers a comprehensive AI strategy and implementation framework.

  Learning Objectives:

  1. Deepening and applying a solution to the top 10 AI blind spots
  2. How AI can improve the employee experience and future of work
  3. Proven AI methods to improve the customer experience
  4. Crafting your AI strategy and an implementation framework
  5. Real-world case studies that work

• AI + Empathy: Better Together

  The Unlikely Pairing for Customer Experience Loyalty

  When we feel seen by a company, we spend more. We can’t get enough. We’re insatiable. That’s what businesses want: loyal customers for a lifetime. Pairing AI + empathy creates an unparallel experience that keeps us all coming back for more, and more and more. It’s like the improbable pairing of chocolate and peanut butter. Once you have it, you can’t live without it. You can’t get enough. That’s what your customers want; something they can’t get anywhere else.

  Today’s businesses face extreme and jarring challenges. Quiet quitting. Detached employees. Heightened customer friction, frustration, and attrition. The truth is the customer experience cannot be any better than the employee experience. But no one seems to know how to level the playing field. At the same time, AI is the elephant in the room. Leaders can’t get around it and they can’t avoid it.

  What is a leader to do?

  Dr. Natalie discovered the answer through endless hours working side-by-side with companies, and their CEOs, and conducting her own independent research. What she learned surprised even her. Empathy and AI are the improbable pairings we are all searching for.

  The greatest example of empathy-based business success is W. Edwards Deming’s work which transformed the Japanese auto market by galvanizing the customer and the employee experience. An improbable pairing indeed. Now add AI. The possibilities are endless for employees, customers, and businesses. Instead of running from the synergy between AI + empathy, two seemingly disparaging ideas, the key is to bring them together as one holistic whole which drives increased revenue and reduces cost at scale for the future.

  Learning Objectives:

  1. Why applying empathy-as-a-business strategy reduces costs and increases revenue
  2. How adding AI to empathy-as-a-business strategy exponentially accelerates business results
  3. How applying empathy turns a company into an employer of choice, retaining the top talent who is productive, motivated, and innovative
  4. How inspired employees then become the motivated creators of products and services garnered to deliver repeat buyers and those who buy more over time
  5. Top three types of AI to apply to the customer and employee experience, the results of real companies, and the improvements to their bottom line

How to Become a Leader in Customer Experience

Applying the Economics of Empathy®

It’s the big day. You’ve placed an order and anticipating its arrival. You leave for the airport soon and there’s no time to shop. You get a notice. It’s delayed. You paid extra for the delivery. They promised. You can’t believe this is happening. You panic. You search for the customer service number. It’s nowhere to be found. You resort to the chatbot. It shows some options. None match what you specifically need. You try to chat with it. It gives you nonsense.

You search on public forums. You find a number. After listening to “Press 1 for… Press 2 for, Press 64 for…” you are outraged. You try to get around the list. You ask for an agent. It keeps giving you a list of button-pressing options. You outsmart it and finally get to an agent. They keep apologizing, but they don't solve the issue. So much friction and effort to get what THEY promised. You wonder, “What on earth is this company thinking? All those years of paying your bill on time, of being loyal to this company??? It feels like they don’t care about me! I’m canceling my service now!”

You search on the internet for another company. Yes! Not only do they have the product, but they can also deliver it to my destination. The visceral elation? “This company is different. They see me, understand me, and care about me. I will give them my business forever.” Which company would you rather shop with? Creating experiences that evoke that kind of gratitude is the greatest loyalty-creating endeavor. But how many businesses create remarkable experiences?

Freaky Friday is a movie about a teenage daughter and her mother which switch places. They are given the opportunity to intimately experience another person’s perspective. Without being in each other's shoes, they couldn’t fully understand the impact they were having on each other– despite caring about each other. By living in each other’s lives, i.e., applying empathy, they come to a new understanding, change their behaviors, and dramatically improve the relationship.

Often leaders in customer experience are bound by cost-cutting measures. They are tired of doing this because many know it negatively impacts the experience and in turn the business metrics and operations goals, they are tasked with meeting and exceeding. Is this you? Would you like to know how to build the business case so you can convince the executives who control the budgets to realize that it saves more money and increases revenue when you are allowed to create experiences that garner trust and loyalty?

The Economics of Empathy® Framework is grounded in real-world case studies of the companies that Dr. Natalie has guided to transform the 70+ year-old cost-cutting operational blind spot contact center industries practices. She guides us to put ourselves in the customer and employee’s perspective. With this process, she shows us how we can demonstrate to our peers and leaders how many of the thing’s businesses do no longer work. With simple adjustments like using the “House is on Fire®” technique she helps us to see what we couldn’t see before, removing the blind spots. We learn how the new choices and decisions in turn not only change our own perspective, but that of the whole company. You’ll see how she helped a food service delivery company, and others save $100M dollars and increase millions in revenue.

Learning Objectives:

1. How to remove the obstacles in your organization to transform the customer and agent experience
2. Why is empathy the most important business capability?
3. How can businesses apply empathy to customer and employee experience
4. Hear case studies results from large and small company’s successes
5. The ROI and the economics of empathy

Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Developing Leaders That Drive Employee Engagement

Gallup research shows 77% of the world’s population is quiet quitting, and 50% are actively looking for their next position. How did we get here? In part, the pandemic created a cause for pause… In that time of self-reflection, we all asked ourselves very deep questions about what we want for ourselves at work and in our personal lives.

As a result, the workforce & customers have changed quite a bit… But do we, as leaders, really understand this or know what to do about it? In this talk and her workshops, Dr. Natalie provides unique insights into a scientific and systematic method to transform our emotional intelligence with easy steps anyone can learn and apply.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand our selves: what drives us and makes us tick and what drains our energy
2. Understand others: what drives them, makes them tick, and what drains their energy
3. Understand how to interact with others via 3 simple steps using the drivers and drains
4. Understand how drivers and drains apply to teams

Managing Change

Taming the Resistance

Companies are constantly in a state of flux in this competitive marketplace, especially now with AI. A company’s biggest asset and the biggest liability is change. The key to leading any new initiative is the ability to help others see the vision, paint the art of the possible, and engage them to come along on the journey with you. However, inherent in human nature is the strong tendency to resist change. By understanding key components of the resistance, you can become empowered to become the leader you know you can be and know how to transform change from a liability to a bottom-line asset.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understanding the beauty of change: the visceral reaction to change and why it creates resistance
2. Learn about Reptile TalkTM and its effect on motivation and focus
3. Master tools to understand our reactions and employee’s reaction to change
4. Apply the emotional intelligence tools to teams
5. Deliver business results