Kerry Bodine believes that happy customers lead to happy shareholders. Her book, Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, helps business leaders understand the financial benefits of great customer experiences—and how their organizations must change in order to deliver them.

In 2014, she founded Kerry Bodine & Co., a customer experience consultancy focused on customer journey mapping and experience design. She’s also a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and private corporate events around the world.

Kerry’s ideas, analysis, and opinions have appeared on sites like The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today, and Advertising Age. She contributes a regular column to Touchpoint, the journal published by the global Service Design Network.

Kerry spent seven years with the customer experience practice at Forrester Research. As vice president and principal analyst, she led Forrester’s research on customer experience design and innovation. She was also the creative force behind the customer experience ecosystem, a framework that helps companies diagnose and fix customer problems at their roots.

In previous roles, Kerry managed consumer research teams; guided the design of websites, mobile apps, and branded social networks; designed interfaces for robots and wearable devices; and, in 1995, developed a Web-based social shopping prototype for AT&T Bell Labs. In addition to her design background, she has completed stints as both a management consultant and an advertising executive.

Kerry holds a master’s degree in human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.

There's a lot you might not know about ACE Hardware - for example did you know the world's largest Ace Hardware store is in Indonesia and is 160K square feet? This global company—known as #TheHelpfulPlace—has focus on service you can’t ignore. The service focus in addition to specialty items and authentic 1:1 experiences is their best weapon against competitors such as Amazon. The company is much bigger than you might realize – it has 85,000 employees and over 4800 stores.

ACE Hardware as of 2016 has been ranked by J.D. Power as the highest in customer satisfaction with home improvement for ten years straight. Their CEO John Venhuizen talked to me in this Modern Customer Podcast about what makes them so successful. Whether it’s trusting the locally owned Ace businesses to cater to their local communities or a less than in your face approach to social media marketing, the company maintains a service-oriented approach throughout. Listen to this podcast with ACE Hardware's CEO to learn:

What’s the CEOs role in shaping customer experiences

How does ACE Hardware remain competitive against Amazon

What is ACE Hardware’s approach to social customer service