CMSWire TV
The Gist
- Field feedback reimagined. Pfizer treats its field reps as CX intelligence sensors, building scalable systems to capture insights from in-person interactions.
- AI turns data into context. Using generative AI and omnichannel listening, Pfizer is blending qualitative and quantitative signals to understand HCP needs in real time.
- CX education becomes formalized. Wayne Simmons is co-leading a global Master of Science program in CX and co-wrote a book turning customer excellence into an enterprise discipline.
In this episode of Beyond the Call, I sit down with Wayne Simmons, Global Customer Excellence Lead at Pfizer, to unpack what customer experience looks like in one of the world’s most complex industries.
Simmons shares how Pfizer is transforming CX through omnichannel listening, empowering field reps as insight generators and turning customer experience into an academic discipline. From AI-driven sensemaking to co-authoring a CX playbook, Simmons explains why customer excellence is both a strategy and a system.
Editor's note: This transcript was edited for clarity and brevity.
Table of Contents
- From Vegas to Pfizer
- Why CX Lives Under Marketing at Pfizer
- Empowering Pfizer’s Field Sales Reps
- Field Reps as the Front Line
- Scaling Field Feedback for Global Impact
- Empowering Field Reps to Give Feedback
- Meeting B2C Expectations in a B2B World
- Moving Beyond Surveys in CX
- Turning CX Data Into Action With AI
- AI’s Role in Customer Experience at Pfizer
- Mapping Journeys That Include Employees
- Getting Feedback From Healthcare Professionals
- Getting Direct Feedback From Healthcare Professionals
- Empowering Agents With the Right Information
- Teaching the Next Generation of CX Leaders
- Looking Ahead to What’s Next
From Vegas to Pfizer
Opening the Conversation
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro here, editor-in-chief of CMSWire.com, back with our latest CMSWire TV interview for the Beyond the Call series. And this time we're catching up with my pal from Vegas, who I met at Medallia's conference in March of 2025, Wayne Simmons. He's the Global Customer Excellence Lead in the Chief Marketing Office for Pfizer. Wayne, what's going on, my friend?
Wayne: It's really good to see you. Thanks again for having me. I'm really excited.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, it's like what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas because here we are proving that wrong. We're back at it. You know, we caught up for an article on CMSWire and we got so many insights at the Medallia Conference, including yourself. You're right at the top of that list. And I'm like, let's get this guy on video because he's a superstar in CX. So we got to get your insights.
Before we dive into the conversation, you know, we're going to be talking a lot about traditional CX versus customer excellence, where CX meets employee experience—which I love, because you are so invested in employee experience meeting customer experience. So we'll get into that.
But Wayne Simmons—man, the CX world knows all about you. I would be shocked if someone doesn't. But tell me about yourself and how you got into this role at Pfizer.
Wayne’s Path Into Customer Experience
Wayne: Yeah, great question. It's been quite a journey. I would describe myself as a passionate customer experience practitioner. I've been doing this for about 15 years now. And prior to getting into CX, I was in the consulting business and doing strategy consulting for large enterprises. And when I exited my last consulting firm, I started getting calls about how do we grow?
I didn't really have any special secret sauce, but I recall working with a client and doing my very first survey and getting direct customer feedback—and that customer feedback had gold in it. So that became my secret sauce for growth consulting, and that evolved into sort of full-blown CX.
I got into the pharma business four years ago without any experience in pharma, but being a very deep CX practitioner. In pharma, customer experience was nascent. It was sort of a brand new idea—post-COVID, during COVID. How do we get more channels deployed out to health professionals? Then how do we get their feedback and how do we measure sentiment? All that stuff that we've been doing for years started popping up, as we all did in pharma. And I was fortunate enough to be able to get into the industry and really fortunate enough to work for this company here in New York City. I just love the complexity of the work and challenge of the work and I'm just happy to be here.
Related Article: How Pfizer Is Building Customer Experience From the Inside Out
Why CX Lives Under Marketing at Pfizer
Organizational Structure and Strategy
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, it's cool being at that little small startup called Pfizer. My goodness, you are in there at such an incredible time for that company. I’d love to know a little bit more about how your team is structured. CX is under the Chief Marketing Officer, which to me, it's not unheard of—especially in our world. And you and I talked about this on LinkedIn recently—how those two worlds are just made for each other.
I think there might be some more tech acquisitions because of that. I talked to Medallia about it. They're open to partnerships in that world—CX meets marketing, you know? But what kind of doors has that opened versus the traditional CX structure, like Chief Customer Officer and VP of Customer Experience? You're rolled up under the CMO, right?
The Move Toward Customer Excellence
Wayne: Exactly, exactly. So yeah—not to denigrate sort of traditional CX by any means—but when you take a hard look at where the discipline is, there's a lot of talk about ROI, how it fits in, how it creates value—that’s really dominating the airwaves. So this idea of customer excellence is to fundamentally integrate it into the commercial engine and change the terminology.
Customer excellence is intentional. Most companies have sales excellence, marketing excellence—those are sort of known terms. So customer excellence seemed to fit right into that mix, as a more organic piece of the commercial engine. In pharma, we also have launch excellence, so it kind of fits into that overall narrative.
The idea behind it is to really be unapologetically commercial. That we're here to help sales and marketing amplify those functions—not just listen to customers after the fact, but really help shape our go-to-market, shape how our brands show up in the world.
And within Pfizer, there are other customer experience groups. There's a large group within our Pfizer Digital business—our technology business—that does projects for different brand teams, implements survey programs, that sort of thing. But within the CMO, it’s sort of a new concept, and it just kind of seemed to fit in with the CMO's background. Our first CMO was a B2C person, so he really had that customer feedback mindset built into his DNA. And so it made logical sense to build it there.
Empowering Pfizer’s Field Sales Reps
Why the Field Is Central to CX Strategy
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s a marriage that makes total sense. You’re both front-end experiences. Customer is front and center for both organizations. And there’s so much overlap there.
Now, at the core of our conversation back in Vegas, we talked a lot about those field service reps. And I think that’s where our conversation is going to kind of go today—how you empower them, how you get data feedback from them.
So tell our listeners—let’s lay the foundation. Who are those field service reps for Pfizer, and what are they doing day to day?
Field Reps as the Front Line
Why Face-To-Face Interactions Still Matter
Wayne: Got it, got it. So they're field sales reps, yeah. We have a large sales force globally out there in the field.
Wayne: You go visit your doctor, you're gonna see them in the halls, making visits to health professionals of all types. So those field reps are out there. They are literally the front end—the front line—for the company, out there with the customers, directly with them. So the question then becomes, given the millions of interactions that we have in that channel—that direct face-to-face channel—how do we get feedback? How do we optimize those experiences?
Because our aspiration as a customer excellence function is to create brand-aligned experiences. So when a doctor visits with a Pfizer rep, they know it, they get value from it, and it’s orchestrated—very similar to what a Geek Squad would do or a Genius Bar at an Apple store. That face-to-face interaction is truly important.
So they're out there with our customers. And so our designs for voice of the customer are built around: How do we get feedback from that interaction, that manual interaction, and how do you do it in a digital world?
One of the things we've done is direct voice of the field. So how do we get direct feedback from our field force who are at the tip of that spear? They see what's going on. They're very invested in creating a great experience. And then using them as a mechanism to get feedback. Because it's very, very difficult to engage with healthcare professionals. Time is money for them. They're under a lot of pressure to see patients—which is what we want them to do. And so if we can get feedback from that interaction from the other party of the interaction, which is the field rep, that creates a lot of value for both sides.
Related Article: What Is Voice of the Customer (VoC)
Getting Time With Healthcare Professionals
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, I was thinking as you were talking—it might be the hardest job in the world to get that attention and to make a healthcare professional like a doctor give you their time. I mean, anybody working with a doctor, that is the goal: grab their time and attention.
And now, okay, I got that. Now it's time to convince them that we’ve got something that's gonna help their day-to-day. I'm thinking of my wife—because I’m editor of a business-to-business publication and every time I say I'm busy, I can’t do something, she says, “You're not a doctor.” Literally.
So I know how precious their time is. And so what's your data telling you lately about some of their biggest challenges—these field sales reps—through those interactions? Like where, when the rubber meets the road, what are they struggling with in terms of getting that attention from these healthcare professionals?
Customer Expectations in Healthcare
Wayne: Yeah. So I think it's very similar to the B2C world in any customer set. I always say that we have to understand the customer. We have to understand that healthcare professionals—our physicians—are the smartest people in our societies, but they're also consumers. They're also moms and dads. So they have standards of expectations around how they interact. They get that from B2C companies—Amazon, Zappos, Ritz-Carlton.
What we're seeing is: there's a lot of friction in those interactions and getting medicines to patients. That’s getting access, going through the payer—the payer and provider dynamic—and a patient dynamic. So there's just a lot of complexity within healthcare. We didn’t create that; we exist within it.
So the question becomes: How can we, with every interaction we have—and again, there are millions of those interactions—add value? How can we help physicians help patients? That’s our driving force in those interactions.
We're seeing the conventional friction points you’d see in the consumer world—digital-to-physical orchestration, information gaps, different web platforms. So how do we kind of smooth all that out, and how do we make that more of a B2C type of experience that they’re used to?
Scaling Field Feedback for Global Impact
Balancing Individual Insight With Scale
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Wayne, I trust we’re dealing with obviously a large field sales rep workforce out there, so there's a lot of them. So in terms of wanting to leverage their insights—you’ve got to scale that somehow. You’ve got to collect that. Ultimately, you want to talk one-on-one with field sales reps. So how do you balance that one-on-one data collection with the reality that you're going to have to scale feedback as well?
Localized Listening at Global Scale
Wayne: Yeah, great question. So one of the things that I’ve learned in pharma—and global pharma—is that every market, every country, is different. The field rep dynamic—and you’re right, there are thousands of them out there—every country has its own dynamic going on.
So we basically have broken this massive problem of getting feedback from the field into small pieces and by market. And they are able to use technology to aggregate that data and look for patterns—and then look for systemic improvement opportunities from that.
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
Sep
25
Call Spoofing Trends Financial Institutions Can't Afford to Ignore
Don't let robocalls sabotage your customer relationships. Learn how to secure your voice channel.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
CX Reality Check: What Your Customers Are Really Thinking
Register now and get the insights you need to not just meet rising expectations, but exceed them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Content Leaders Collective: What a Good CCMS Actually Looks Like
Discover how content leaders transform clunky systems into growth engines — and why your competitors are ahead.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Hype to High-Impact CX Strategies That Actually Scale
Turn buzzworthy AI and outsourcing trends into measurable CX wins with fresh 2025 data.
Watch Now
So it isn’t one monolithic thing. It’s really a bunch of small entities and implementations that roll up to a bigger picture.
Empowering Field Reps to Give Feedback
Making Feedback Part of the Workflow
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, and is there a lot of balance with empowering the field sales reps to provide the feedback too? Because they're busy as well—just like the doctors are. They're busy trying to get the doctors to not be busy, and it just never ends. So to step back and give you data, give you feedback—what are the challenges around that?
Wayne: Yeah, that’s always a challenge. Time is precious for everyone. So giving feedback—it’s not necessarily something that’s directly in the workflow, but we’ve tried to do that. Tried to make it as organic as possible—a part of the ways of working for the field force. So feedback isn’t this outlier thing or this sort of bolt-on—it really is fundamental to how they do business.
And they’re hungry for it, because embedded within that feedback are those gems that change an interaction, change the relationship. So we’re trying to just build that behavior where there’s value in the feedback—for the field reps and for the brand teams.
Field Feedback Versus Contact Center Insights
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, and like in a situation where there’s a call center or a contact center where there’s inbound calls coming in, inbound emails, inbound text exchanges and chatbots—that kind of comes to you naturally. So you’re getting customer data right up front and you’re using tools to kind of slice and dice.
But with the field sales person, those conversations aren’t naturally recorded. So like you said, you have to kind of empower them to make sure it’s easy on them to provide you that feedback. So are you also looking over contact center? Is that kind of another aspect?
Wayne: Yeah. Yeah, so that is definitely a channel within pharma, within our company as well. So when I referred back to sort of post-COVID—that pharma would have kicked into high gear and created new channels—that was one of those channels. Creating more of a front end, a front door to the business. Both from a web platform standpoint, but also from a contact center standpoint.
There’s a lot of calls that come in from healthcare practitioners—questions around the drugs, around medicines. And our contact centers are more about that—about answering and really facilitating communication between the right experts within the company.
So yeah, it’s a big channel. It’s an important channel. We’re using text analytics in that environment just like a regular contact center would. We do have brand hubs as well, which are brand-oriented contact centers or mini contact centers. And some of those have their own technology built into them as well. We’re getting there. We’re trying to become more consumer-like—because again, our customer is also a consumer. And we’ve got to meet those expectations and that standard, that high bar. So I think as we evolve our stack and our infrastructure—and our mindset, frankly—it will become more like that.
Meeting B2C Expectations in a B2B World
Redefining the Competitive Set
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, yeah. I think we were talking with an insurance provider—a top-level insurance provider—and he says, “We’re not just competing with other insurance companies. We’re competing with those companies you mentioned earlier—the Amazons, the Ritz-Carltons—who are providing these unbelievable consumer experiences.”
And now you’re in such a heavy B2B world like Pfizer. It’s almost like you’re competing with a lot of B2C companies, right?
Wayne: Yeah. Yeah. No question about it. And it’s not hyperbolic to say that. I mean, I think everyone’s saying that—we’re competing with Amazon, competing with Zappos—but we are. We’re competing for a standard. And we have to meet that standard. We don’t get a pass because we’re a pharma company.
Moving Beyond Surveys in CX
Survey Fatigue and Better Signals
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You know, a lot of the talk at the conference we were at with Medallia in Vegas was about moving beyond traditional surveys and not using that as the total, ultimate foundation of a CX data and feedback program. How do you feel about the traditional survey methods and how we can sort of innovate in that space? Where are some opportunities to grow there?
Wayne: Yeah, so I'm a well-known opponent of surveys. I recognize the need for them, but I'm a survey-last person. And I’ve been fortunate to work in very data-intensive environments—like you mentioned, the contact centers—where the voice of the customer is coming in a very organic way at scale. So it’s much easier to collect and process at that point. In these more omnichannel environments, obviously, it’s much more difficult.
But the survey—I think it’s a useful instrument once you’ve listened to the data. Once you get into omnichannel data listening—from web platforms, behaviors and patterns, contact centers, emails, and other non-survey interactions—once you identify themes and patterns from those datasets, it’s great to use surveys to go out and validate that.
So rather than being the primary mechanism to collect data, it’s a great validating tool. And you can narrow the focus. You can do it outside traditional workflows and still get real feedback because it’s very targeted.
I think we’re all consumers—how many surveys do you have sitting in your inbox? Probably a lot. But there are other ways to do it. And I think the tech providers are meeting that challenge. We’re going to get a different interpretation of voice of the customer moving forward. And surveys will be a value-added force multiplier—rather than the primary source. That’s what customers want.
Related Article: 4 Types of Survey Bias That Can Skew Your Customer Insights
Behavior Over Press Conferences
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, so you're in the camp of “let’s take what’s actually happening” as our survey data, in a sense. Like their interactions, their call logs, their chats, their behavior in your digital channels—that’s the real stuff. Versus asking them how they feel about it later, right?
Because Bill Belichick and Tom Brady—I’m a Patriots fan—you know, they said they had the best relationship ever. But meanwhile, he's gone and winning in another suit with another team. And you look on the sidelines and you see the tense interactions. That’s what’s really happening on the sidelines—not the press conference after. The press conference is like the surveys in the CX world, right?
Wayne: Yeah, yeah. I see. You want the unsolicited voice of the customer. And we're in an omnichannel digital world. We interact with customers in a variety of ways—text, messaging, around the world. So listen to those customers in their context, in those channels. That’s when you’ll get a real picture of what’s going on.
Again, not saying surveys don’t have a place—but they’re part of a solution set now, rather than being the primary or only solution set.
Turning CX Data Into Action With AI
Sensemaking at Scale
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah. And are the tools, technologies, and strategies doing good? Because a lot of people that I go to at these trade shows—they’re telling me, “Look, we get the data. We have the data. We need to find ways to empower our CX teams and marketing teams from the data and make it actionable.”
Is there room to grow there? Do we need to get better tools—enhanced tools—to make actions for my teams with the data?
Wayne: There’s no question about it. So we’ve been on for a few minutes now and we haven’t mentioned AI one time. So, you know, AI—aside from all the hype and the hype cycle—there’s a very, very natural use case for AI in CX. And that is to do what you just said.
We are masters at collecting things at scale, particularly in the context of our environment and digital interaction environment. We collect massive amounts of data. The natural use case for AI is to make sense of that. We call it “sensemaking.” Like, what is happening in that data? And I can’t, as a human being, process that. So use technology—and technology is there generally—to do it.
But you see the path, the direction of travel for this environment, where we’ll be able to do natural language processing and just prompts—ask and interrogate data and find out what’s going on with our customer set. That’s where we’re going. We’re in that game. Now it’s a question of: the technology will mature rapidly, and we’ll stay in that game with it.
AI’s Role in Customer Experience at Pfizer
Contextual Intelligence Through Omnichannel Listening
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Since AI was invented on November 30th, 2022—and I realize there was AI before ChatGPT, but in my world, there wasn't—since that point, what's the biggest actionable gain for Pfizer outcomes in your world, with your team's CX marketing and AI? Is it the suggesting of actions? Where is it winning for you the most?
Wayne: You know, I would say that the area in my immediate space is omnichannel listening. And we have a third-party partner that we're working with. It's just the ability to interrogate omnichannel data. I can't get into a lot of the details, but basically we're ChatGPT-ing a large dataset directly for pharma, directly from HCPs, and able to get contextual intelligence—beyond just the numbers and metrics we were seeing before.
So prior to 2022, we were able to see the data and metrics—measuring a wide variety of channel metrics. But now we have contextual information as well, that comes directly from verbatims from doctors. And that’s what we’re going to really double down on: quantitative and qualitative together.
AI as Content Collaborator
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, man, I tell you, sometimes you forget being an editor before ChatGPT. You get a lot of help. You're busy, you're on deadline. And for me, the biggest use case is taking our own stuff—not asking it to create articles—but taking our own stuff and saying, “Listen, this is a long block of text that this writer just gave us. Give me suggestions for three subheads to break it up,” things like that.
So it’s enhancing content—our own content. It’s the human and AI touch. It’s like, help me process this a little bit. It’s the best intern ever for like 20 bucks a month. Yeah. And speaking of data and metrics—with those field sales reps, what are some of the metrics you’re looking at for improving their experience?
I mean, I know there’s a lot of terms like employee promoter score, like EPS and things like that. Are you looking at hard metrics with them to craft better experiences for those crucial field sales reps?
Designing Metrics That Fit the Context
Wayne: Yeah, yeah. So we’re fortunate. We have two sets of metrics we're grappling with and embedding into the business. One are things like call quality and intent to prescribe. We have a partner that gives us those hard metrics from field rep visits. And in addition to that, we're layering around that usage metrics.
I’m a big proponent of designing a metrics regime that fits your context and your business. So that’s what we’re doing.
Mapping Journeys That Include Employees
Blending Employee and HCP Experience
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Right, that makes sense, Wayne. And you know, we also talked last month when we met—or a couple months ago now at this point—we talked about journey mapping. And the traditional customer-first journey map—you’re kind of disrupting that a little bit. You're bringing the employee perspective into that journey map, which I think is super unique.
I haven’t heard much of that. Like, all right, this is a customer journey map, this is where they live, this is our experience—but now we’re infusing employees into that. So tell me a little bit about that process.
Wayne: Yeah, this is really borrowing from the consumer world again. So we’re not inventing things here—we're really applying things that work in other industries. That’s really the playbook I’m using.
In that context, we call them interaction journeys. So in our world, we have the HCP-to-patient interactions that go on in those journeys. And our medicines play a role in those journeys—testing regimes, different touchpoints. There’s a very unique journey we’ve defined quite well and understand quite well.
But the interaction between our field reps—or our medical reps and access folks—and HCPs of different types, that’s new. So we have to define that, put structure around that. And again, the end game is to do exactly what we do in the commercial world, the B2C world: identify friction points, identify points of effort, barriers to goal attainment for both parties.
So we’re mapping out that interaction between our folks, our functions, and HCPs, and doing that optimization around that. And then using it also, as I mentioned before, to create unique brand experiences. When they leave a Pfizer rep interaction or Pfizer digital interaction, they know it was Pfizer—and it was value-added for them. So we understand them. We're empathetic to their needs.
Getting Feedback From Healthcare Professionals
Closing the Loop on Direct Customer Data
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah. We haven’t touched—I don’t even know if I touched this last time we talked—but we haven’t touched getting the customer data from the healthcare professionals themselves. We’re talking a lot about the employee experience. How is that going with the direct feedback? Where is that coming from mostly? I’m so fascinated to know where you can get the doctors and the nurses to follow up and really give you something.
Getting Direct Feedback From Healthcare Professionals
Insight Generation Beyond Surveys
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: What’s been most successful with getting them to give you data and feedback?
Wayne: Yeah. As I mentioned before, we've really built what I call insight generation to do that. And surveys are part of that stack. So traditional transactional surveys—we’ve had those in the past—but we do have third-party partners that we work with.
In the pharma world, there's a lot of data floating around about prescription behaviors. Every doctor has an identifier that goes with them. So the industry knows what they’re prescribing. This data is available to everyone. So there are direct, third-party interactions going on, and they’re layering over that different mechanisms to collect feedback.
We’re also using that to tie into our unstructured data channels—eliciting from digital channels—and tying it all together into one rubric to drive voice of the customer. Survey programs are challenging in pharma because of time and regulatory elements in many countries. So we’ve built what I think is a good proxy for that, and then use surveys and our panel research—blind research—to validate things and get more feedback. There’s a lot of that going on in pharma too—blind, double-blind panels to get feedback.
Wayne’s Aha Moments
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I feel like I learn the most getting in front of practitioners like you and, for my world, trying to understand customer experience better. Where do you learn the most? What’s one area you think you've gained the most insight about what it’s like to be a Pfizer customer? Where does that aha moment usually come from?
Wayne: Yeah, I would say it's down in our contact center. That’s where it always goes down. There are a lot of valuable interactions there—real intelligence. But from our field reps, that’s really the key to the whole thing. They’re out there. I’m a former Army guy—they’re like an intelligence sensor out there. If we can just incorporate that into their workflows and into ours, that’s how I learn a lot.
I also learn a lot just by being out in the industry—working outside in. Coming in from the customer all the way in. I’m very focused on the HCP and the burnout issue they have, the time issue they have—what’s really going on with them. And how we can create spaces to deliver value that earns our way into their day. It’s very consumer-like thinking, I think.
Empowering Agents With the Right Information
Information Gaps Create Pain
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, and so the agent experience is a big deal too—for them reporting back to you what they’re hearing and empowering them. I had a recent example on another interview where an agent didn’t know something had been fixed. So when the customer asked, “Is this fixed yet?” they said no—we’re working on it. But it had been done. So there's all those dynamics of empowering agents with the right information, so they don’t have to go through the pain of not providing answers. That’s their job.
Wayne: Yeah. I think there’s a growing awareness that—even though we’re in a very digital world, an omnichannel world—that face-to-face is extraordinarily important. You can really create great brand moments with those face-to-face interactions.
I think there was a period of time where it was being devalued a little bit. But now folks are recognizing—across industries—how valuable it is. Like the Genius Bar experience. So yeah, those face-to-face interactions are critically important. We'll continue to focus on how we elevate that experience for the rep and for the HCPs—and how we listen better.
Teaching the Next Generation of CX Leaders
Bringing CX Into the Classroom
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah. You mentioned some Army experience too, and if I recall correctly, that's a family thing for you, right, Wayne? Well, thank you.
Wayne: Right. Yeah, that’s right. Second generation. You're quite welcome.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Thank you for your service. Yeah, absolutely. We need to get you back in the military—for customer experience. I mean, you could crush that. Customer experience is everywhere. So let’s wrap this. I have so many insights here—I don’t even know how I’ll capture them all. But I do want to mention that you’re so passionate about CX and marketing. You’re out there on LinkedIn.
The First CX Master’s Program
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: You’re doing a lot of things. One of those is a book you co-authored recently with Tom DeWitt—who’s our friend. He’s been at some of our past conferences. Michigan State University professor, right? And did you teach some classes too? Tell me about that, because I used to say there was no real education for customer experience. But now—there is.
Wayne: Yeah, that’s a great question. I love talking about that topic. A couple of years ago—about two and a half years ago now—Tom started the master’s degree. It’s a Master of Science in Customer Experience Management at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business. Interestingly, it’s in the School of Marketing, Department of Marketing. So that connection to marketing and CX is pretty organic.
It’s the first Master of Science degree globally in this space. Tom did a fantastic job of validating the body of knowledge and the discipline. I think we’re in cohort number six now—about 20 to 22 students per cohort. The next graduating class is on Monday in East Lansing. I’m really proud to be part of that program and elevating the discipline into a real one.
So, I’m not a professor by training. I teach customer experience strategy—that’s the component I teach in the program. But I wanted to earn the right to teach students. My experience is one thing, but I also wanted to codify a body of knowledge. That’s what led to the book Tom and I wrote—The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life.
We tried to take customer experience out of the functional or tools world and make it an organizational construct. Like—how do you become the Ritz-Carlton? There’s a system behind that. So we decoded what those players do—neutralized it—and made it accessible to everyone. That’s what’s embedded in the book. So yeah—trying to earn the right to teach students.
The New Talent Pipeline for CX
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, I wonder, Wayne—where did we hire from in the customer experience department before there was the Michigan State U discipline? I mean, to me, it always seemed like, “I was in the contact center and now I’m the VP of Customer Experience.” That was the evolution. Do you have any insight on that? Where did we get the talent?
Wayne: I think we have to build the talent—create the account of talent. I don’t think it’s organic. I think if most CX practitioners came from contact centers, we’d be in a much better position. That’s the real world. That’s where you're interacting with customers at scale.
But I think there’s a lot of folks who snap their fingers one day and become CX people. We have some of that going on. But we have to build a cadre of CX professionals. I think marketing is a great place to do it. And operations, of course—contact centers. But build on those layers. Call it a CX wrapper around those skill sets.
So it isn’t just a unique CX-only skill set anymore. It’s a marketer with CX skills around their capabilities. Or an operations person with CX skills layered in. So we have a lot more work to do to build this as an industry.
Looking Ahead to What’s Next
One Last Word for the CX Community
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: 100%. Well said. This is not the first—but the second—time you've caught up with CMSWire here. And we are better off for it. Great fodder for this year. I’ll look back at 2025 as one of our best moments—getting you in here and giving fellow CX and marketing professionals some advice from what you’ve learned in the trenches at Pfizer.
So 100%, man—we really appreciate you coming on the Beyond the Call CMSWire TV show. Can we do a third in 2025 or what’s up?
Wayne: Let’s do it. Let’s see where we are with AI in 2026. But yeah—I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. It’s really an important topic, and thank you for fighting the good fight with us.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Absolutely. Wayne Simmons from Pfizer—thanks for coming on. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
