How can you use data to provide a first-class customer experience? With Shai Reichert, Experience Design Studio (XDS)

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Shai Reichert, Co-Founder of XDS – a US-based business also known as the Experience Design Studio. Shai has almost 20 years’ experience working in web development, user and customer experience. He has held senior roles on both the client side (for Comcast and Rosetta) as well as in digital marketing agencies. Shai spent six years in charge of all things technological at the specialist healthcare agency the W2O Group – now known as Real Chemistry.

Half-a-dozen years ago now, Shai co-founded XDS, where he focuses on the technology and operations necessary to build a positive and robust customer experience for its clients, which are mostly active in healthcare. XDS offers a heady mix of consulting, design thinking, engineering, marketing, and analytics. The company aims to enhance the customer – or patient – experience ‘beyond the pill’ for pharma and healthcare companies.

Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 19 April 2023.

Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.

Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.

Voice over by Samantha Boffin.

As a sports fan – to play, to watch, and to encourage his sometimes reluctant kids to take part – Shai spends a fair amount of his time outside of the office with his head deep in sport. That includes in the data surrounding sport – particularly his favourite, baseball – though he baulks at the real-time application of the Moneyball principles. Particularly if that means taking off a pitcher when he’s only pitched a few balls because the next three at-bat have a great record over him. That’s a bit much.

Shai’s agency, XDS, makes extensive use of data to understand how its clients are performing in their digital marketing channels, learning from data how they could improve performance, and monitoring it for evidence of impact. XDS helps clients enhance analytics, web traffic, search engine optimisation, paid ads – all different components of digital marketing spend.

The company was founded pre-pandemic, but on principles and ways of working – it turns out – that were perfectly suited for a locked-down world. XDS associates are spread across the US and, even when team members travel overseas, Shai observes that “they never miss a beat”. He goes on: “COVID accelerated a lot of things we were doing – on Slack, Teams and so on – and actually created a huge number of opportunities for us and our clients.”

Shai is lukewarm about the potential of mass-availability AI such as ChatGPT to transform marketing, but XDS finds it helpful in suggesting and elaborating copy and content strategy ideas. That said, Shai knows from experience that many businesses are not doing many of the seven critical website tactics he blogged about back in 2016, let alone embracing ChatGPT.

EXTERNAL LINKS

The XDS homepage – https://madebyxds.com

Shai’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaireichert/

The evergreen, always-relevant post Shai first shared on LinkedIn on 4 January … 2016: “Forget 2016 ‘Digital Trends’ – Here are 7 Website Tactics You Should Focus on Right Now” – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/forget-2016-digital-trends-here-6-website-tactics-you-shai-reichert/

Shai on Twitter – https://twitter.com/thesreichert

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