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Greg Melia

Greg Melia

Greg Melia, CAE, is CEO of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), the global nonprofit for the customer experience profession.

Aug 25, 2026

4:34
What's the link to you?
4:36
Yeah, well, I mean, I will share is that there's a lot of people that we have to thank when we think about CFSBA's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
4:46
One that I'll quote, you know, really is Gary David, who is a member up in Boston and a professor at Bentley University.
4:54
And what Gary pointed out is that there's always been a connection between the civil rights movement and diversity, equity and inclusion.
5:03
Because if you think about it, a lot of the civil rights movement was that question of who has access? Who can sit at the lunch counter? Who can ride the bus? Who receives schooling? And so if we're going to be committed to making sure that every customer has a positive journey and that we remove friction, we have to consider the friction that's caused because we aren't recognizing that not everyone can speak as well or hear as well or is of the same religious background or the same gender.
5:35
So we should consciously think about how we can create systems that are positive for everybody or the greatest number of companies and customers and a fair win for the company as well, because those are big markets, you know, to also think about how you can grow and serve more people in a way, you know, here during the pandemic.
5:57
You know, this video technology has been great.

14 MINS LATER

20:02
Going back to diversity, inclusion and customer experience and all these purpose driven initiatives, do you believe that companies are focused on this investing in purpose driven programs to attract better talent, better customers? What's your view on purpose driven companies?
18:19
Do you have a real example where you say there is a company where they mixed AI with customer experience in a great way?
18:29
And what I love most about CXPA is the area that I get to sit in the middle and to hear all of the different spaces and all the different elements.
18:41
And I want to just give a shout out to the presenters from CX Leaders Advance from MTN, Nigeria.
18:50
And what was kind of interesting is when we received the proposal from MTN Nigeria originally, we thought it was simply a chatbot for a telecommunications organization.
19:03
And we thought, we don't want to just tell the story of a chatbot.
19:08
What we didn't realize is that the chatbot was just one line in their presentation.
19:13
Right.
21:08
We never name the companies, but what are the lessons learned from the CX leader or from the team can share from cases that didn't work properly?

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