CX Decoded Podcast
June 17, 2026
SEASON 5, EPISODE 7
Charter Steel director of customer experience Brian Mekka joins CX Decoded to walk through the Compass program — a multi-phase CX and EX initiative five years in the making, built on annual VOC surveys, monthly CSAT data and a McKinsey methodology that helped turn years of disparate roadmaps into a single, executive-approved path forward. Phase one launches in 2026 with three strategic enablers: a customer portal, a service transformation initiative and deep data integration between Salesforce and Charter Steel's ERP system.
Inside Our Conversation
B2B buyers expect Amazon. Charter Steel director of customer experience Brian Mekka is building the program to get there.
On this episode of CX Decoded, Mekka walks through the Compass program — a multi-phase CX and EX initiative five years in the making, born out of annual VOC surveys, monthly CSAT data and a cross-functional roadmap process that eventually found its organizing framework in the McKinsey book Rewired. The methodology helped Charter Steel map its entire customer journey, bucket it into domains and identify where technology, process and people investments needed to land.
Phase one kicks off in 2026 with three strategic enablers: a customer portal, a service transformation initiative and deep data integration between Salesforce and Charter Steel's ERP system. The data piece, Mekka says, is the enabler for the enablers — nothing else works without it.
Mekka also makes the case that CX and EX are inseparable. Faster, better-informed employees mean faster, better experiences for customers. And in a B2B world where a single account relationship can span decades and millions of dollars, that equation matters more than most manufacturers realize.
The Amazon effect, he says, is real — and it's reached the steel industry.