background

Lior Arussy Profile

The recipient of CRM Magazine‘s “Influential Leader Award”, Lior Arussy is known as a man who gets results in the fields of customer experience and customer-centric transformation. His knowledge of how to help organizations stop focusing on the product and focus on the customer comes from his experience working with some of the most prestigious brands in the world, among them Capital One, Thomson Reuters, HSBC, E.ON, Nokia, SAP, University of Pennsylvania and Wyeth. His results speak for themselves; one European corporation followed his methodology and experienced an expansion of growth from 3% to 44% annually within two years.

Arussy has worked for Hewlett-Packard as leader of the Internet security division; under his stewardship, business grew by 50% per quarter for 3 consecutive years. He introduced a number of innovative strategies, and during his tenure no client bank ever had its eBanking security compromised; no mean feat considering he was responsible for 120 of the world’s largest banks with assets totaling $8 trillion.

Strativity Group, founded by Arussy, is a customer experience research and consulting firm that measures its success by one simple yardstick; how successfully the client has implemented their strategy. Starting in the most traditional entrepreneurial way from his garage, the company has grown to have offices around the US and around the world, including Canada, the UK, Norway, Turkey and Australia. Forrester Group has recognized the firm as being at the forefront of customer-centric transformation.

Arussy has published 5 books concerning customer experience and employee engagement, while more than 1 million readers around the world see his “Focus: Customer” syndicated column every month. In addition, he has had more than 100 articles published globally in prestigious journals, including the Harvard Business Review.

  • View Extended/Alternate Bio

    One of the world’s leading authorities on customer experience, Lior Arussy is an experienced change practitioner, success accelerator, corporate culture expert, and founder of design and transformation firm Strativity Group. Called “a triple threat of transformation” by co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company William Taylor, Arussy is a unique, critical, global voice helping people worldwide achieve ultimate success.

    Prior to founding Strativity Group, Arussy spent his career in executive positions at companies like Hewlett-Packard. With an understanding that traditional change management is not working, Arussy has worked with many of the world’s top brands including Mercedes-Benz, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Thomson Reuters, HSBC, E.ON, FedEx, SAP, University of Pennsylvania, and Johnson & Johnson, among others, to recognize that the key to truly driving change for success is in putting employees at the center of transformation efforts. His methodology enabled Mercedes Benz to take the number 1 position in customer satisfaction in just two years. Another client, a European logistics corporation, leaped from 3% annual organic growth to 44% annual organic growth in just two years.

    The recipient of the 2015 SmartCEO Circle of Excellence Award, Arussy was also presented the 2015 “Influential Leaders” award by CRM Magazine and named the #2 Top Global Guru in Customer Service by Global Gurus. Consulting Magazine also named Strativity “A Small Jewel” in 2017 and one of the fastest growing for the past three years. Strativity has the additional distinction of being named to the Inc. 5000 Honor Roll, reserved for firms who have been named to the Inc. 5000 list for 5 or more consecutive years.

    In addition to his work with Strativity, Arussy is the author of seven books including the forthcoming Next is Now: 5 Steps for Embracing Change – Building a Business that Thrives into the Future (May 2018, Simon & Schuster), and his self-published Exceptionalize it! (2015), which has sold over 30,000 copies to date. Arussy has written over 250 articles for publications around the world, including the Harvard Business Review, and multitude of magazines and media outlets have cited his work, including MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, CRM Magazine, Smart CEO Magazine, and Inc. magazine.

    Arussy completed his undergraduate degree at Case Western Reserve University and received his MBA from Weatherhead School of Management. He resides in New Jersey with his wife and five children. When he’s not sampling fine chocolates or collecting Swiss watches, he enjoys exploring new cultures—2.6 million miles on United so far.

Lior Arussy Speaking Videos

Bring Lior Arussy to Speak Live at Your Event

Image

Check Speaker Availability

Lior Arussy's Speech Descriptions

Lior Arussy presents a series of programs that explain why you need to have all departments in your company focusing on the customer. Bringing a wealth of experience and a highly impressive track record to his presentations, Arussy combines in-depth research, penetrating insight and amusing anecdote to produce invaluable lessons for anyone who recognizes the importance of satisfied customers.

Arussy presents a blueprint for customer-centric transformation, offering a disciplined methodology that has been used successfully in more than 120 projects. He will show you how to develop deeper insights into your customer’s needs and what pitfalls you must avoid. Using a combination of economics, science, psychology and expert business practice, he will have you delighting customers in a way that will delight you as you see customer loyalty and purchasing rise.

Lior Arussy′s presentations are full of refreshingly practical advice for creating ′wow′ experiences for your customers, aligning all departments towards customer centricity and being exceptionally relevant to your customers′ needs. Based on his corporate experience where he grew HP′s business by 50% per quarter for 3 consecutive years along with the last 10 years of consulting with top brand companies worldwide, Arussy brings valuable insight, fact-filled research and amusing anecdotes to every presentation. 

"When Customer Experience Success Stops!” or “Everyone Agrees, So Why Are We Not Customer Centric?”

While CX initiatives often start with a great fanfare of awareness and assessment, most organizations’ programs end up stalling and fail to completely embrace a customer centric culture. Practitioners are facing a collection of small initiatives and improvements that, at best, fix customer complaints, but do not create exceptional experience or strategic differentiation. Based on lessons learned from 200 transformation programs, this session discusses the gap that prevents organizations from bridging their initial activities to a complete organization-wide transformation.

"The New Frontier of Customer Experience: Purpose” or “What’s the Purpose of ‘Purpose’ in Your Experience?”

After years of trying to improve customer experience, many organizations succeed only in addressing customer complaints and fixing pain points. But addressing pain points is merely a starting point. Loyalty belongs to those organizations who align their values with those of their customers and create a sense of purpose through their products and services. Creating a purposeful experience requires a new way of designing and implementing the customer experience. This session will explore the definition of the purposeful experience and its principle of design.

Pride – The Missing Ingredient in Any Transformation”

Are your employees proud of the company they work for? This is the most critical question for any customer transformation. Based on 15 years of designing customer experiences for organizations, we’ve learned that a critical component to success is pride in the brand. This session will focus on what it means to create pride in a brand and, specifically, the methods to create authentic pride in your brand.

Transformation – Do Your Employees Believe You?”

Organizational transformation is dependent on a multitude of factors, beginning with its design and implementation. The most neglected factor in transformation is employees’ trust and belief in the process. Following years of failed initiatives and a serious “launch and abandon” track record, employees develop a skeptical attitude. This cynical attitude is most likely the most significant obstacle to your transformation. Based on an HBR study, 91% of change programs fail to reach their original goals. The focus of this session will be how to overcome employees’ disbelief and cynicism and accelerate transformation. Failing to achieve the transformation goals is failing to implement strategic relevance with customers. Failure is not an option.

Change and Transformation – Address the Past Before You Develop the Future”

Employees’ resistance to change is often perceived as a fear of what the unknown of the future holds, as well as an attachment to the known present and the nostalgic past. A Strativity-sponsored HBR study demonstrates that the root cause of failure of business transformation is the human factor. The real issue, however, is the past rather than a fear of the future. In the eyes of employees,
change implies that the past was somehow wrong. They cling to the past because it is part of their history, their success. In order to move forward, employees need to contextualize the past and link it to the future. This session explores the lessons learned from over 200 transformation programs and how to create an authentic transformation that will invite employees to accelerate change.

Culture by Design, Not Default” or “Who Defines Your Culture, When You Don’t?”

There are two ways to develop a culture; by design or by default. In the absence of design and direction, culture evolves and develops based on organizational decisions and performance. Every failure, change in leadership, reorganization and layoff erodes the trust of employees. Over time, all of these factors develop a very suspicious employee demographic and an organization that focuses on making “safe decisions” that is less likely to be ready for transformation. Past experiences define an organization as opposed to the thirst for a better future. This session explores ways to shift from a culture by default, to a culture by design.

The Fusion of the Digital and Human Experience”

Does your digital experience define your value to customers? If the answer is yes, you are most likely shifting value creation to your customers and reducing the human aspect of your experience. By doing so, you are eroding your perception of value and likely will be exposed to price pressure. Smart organizations are not using their digital presence to replace the human aspect of their experience, but rather, to amplify it. While customer choice and flexibility is powerful, the human role in the experience is now more critical than ever before in creating customer value. This session explores how to fuse your digital presence with human experience to ensure customers’ high perception value and loyalty.

Lior Arussy on Speaking

The memories I leave behind are more important than the performance I deliver.

SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn / take away from your presentations?


ARUSSY:
The memories I leave behind are more important than the performance I deliver. We live in a world of exceptional performance or nothing. Relevance to customers is an ever-changing target and without personal commitment we cannot deliver value.


SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How to you prepare for your speaking engagements?


ARUSSY: The prep work usually involved is seeking to understand what customers think about the client and its products. We do that through a review of customer satisfaction results, social media, etc. We also scan the competitive landscape to understand how competitors are approaching customers. For larger presentations, we typically conduct a web-based study with employees and customers to establish a baseline of expectations and performance.

SPEAKING.COM: Have you had any particularly memorable speaking engagements / unusual situations arise while on the road?

ARUSSY:One time I was speaking in India and the electricity was shut down in the middle of my presentation (twice!), while I had to continue to speak to over 500 participants.


SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?


ARUSSY: Everyone that is trying to deliver value to customers or find a personal purpose in their work would benefit from my message.


SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote topics are the most popular? Which of your keynote speeches do you enjoy the most and why?

The keynote speeches I enjoy the most are when I have the appropriate time to deliver the message and build rapport with the audience as opposed to delivering a one-way speech.

ARUSSY: My two most popular keynote topics are Exceptional Experience, Exceptional Results and Exceptionalize It! Surprise Your Customers, Colleagues and Yourself.


The keynote speeches I enjoy the most are when I have the appropriate time to deliver the message and build rapport with the audience as opposed to delivering a one-way speech. It is when we have ample time to prepare that we can apply the right concepts and do some exercises that inspire the audience to committing to doing something different.

These are the ones I find most rewarding – when I can see audience members having that “Aha!” moment. It’s less rewarding to deliver an 80-minute speech when there’s no interaction with the audience.


SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?


ARUSSY: Speaking for me is part of the broader way of driving change, which I also do in my research and consulting work. As long as audiences are responding with the desire to change and rise up to the challenge, I will continue to deliver the message.


SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients make?

The impact is tangible when we see employees rising up to the challenge and providing exceptional experiences to others.

ARUSSY: One of my proudest moments is Mercedes-Benz going from ninth to first in customer satisfaction, by impacting 25,000 employees directly all over the country and challenging them to deliver exceptional experiences every day.


Another proud moment for me was creating a program for a cancer treatment center that resulted in patients being so grateful that they actually tattooed the logo of the center on their bodies in appreciation.


The impact is tangible when we see employees rising up to the challenge and providing exceptional experiences to others. We have reached 400,000 employees so far and are looking forward to the next challenge.

SPEAKING.com Exclusive Interview with Lior Arussy
Delivering Customer Experience Excellence with Passion by Lior Arussy
In this interview, Lior Arussy discusses:
    • Details about some of the customer experience trends emerging within the next ten years.

    • How organizations can embrace a customer-centric transformation.

    • Tips for improving customer service.
    • Some of the main obstacles to performance excellence and how can an organization overcome them.

    • A few of the reasons why organizations fail to deliver excellence.

    • How excellence can be redefined while setting a new performance standard.

Read the Full Interview

"Passion and purpose will become differentiators of products and services and only vendors who are willing to rise up to that challenge will be able to command premium prices and customer loyalty."
- Lior Arussy

What People are Saying about Seeing Lior Speak

Rating Entries

I want to thank you for delivering a very thought-provoking workshop to the Global Business Services Leadership Team last week. It was way beyond what I could have hoped for; the content was fresh, the concepts were inspiring and the delivery was exceptional.The resounding theme from the leaders was that you are the best speaker they have ever seen and your presentation was the highest rated of the meeting – 9.8 out of 10.
Ginny Danforth, Manager, Customer Satisfaction, Global Business Services of Honeywell International, Inc.

Thank you for an excellent marketing strategy session. Your ideas and recommendations have helped us create a marketing message that has become the exciting new “buzz” in the information security industry. You provided my marketing team with newfound energy and excitement to implement and expand upon your creative ideas. Sometimes we just need that “one person” to guide us with “out of the box” thinking. You did that for us and I thank you.

Roberto Medrano, President and CEO of Polivec, Inc.

Quite simply, Lior delivered an outstanding keynote presentation at our recent G-Force user conference in Orlando. Focused on delighting customers, his message was a perfect fit for the conference theme and the passion with which it was delivered captivated our audience of customer service professionals. Furthermore, Lior took the time and effort to meet with many of our customers after his presentation. This made a huge difference to their event experience.
Paul Roberts, Global Customer Marketing of Genesys Telecommunications

Lior’s keynote address at our Call Center Demo & Conference in Orlando was right on target for our audience. It was a skillful blend of valuable insights, fact-filled research and amusing anecdotes that all combined to deliver a compelling call-to-action that resonated with the call center professionals in attendance. Lior made us all think and inspired us to make changes — exactly what a keynote speaker should do.
Ted Hopton, Director, Membership Services of International Customer Management Institute (ICMI)

The seminar on customer centricity you delivered was extremely well received. The content and the delivery were truly exceptional, and the feedback was very positive. Our CEO attended the session and was every bit as impressed as the others.
Joseph A. Accardi, Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Development of Siemens Financial Services, Inc

Your presentation was the most memorable part of the “Doing Business in North America” seminar presented to over 40 business leaders of the Israel Export Institute. The most valuable lesson – even more valuable than the legal, structural, and organizational – was how the customer experience was vital to their success. They now understand that their true competitive advantage is not only through product, but also through customer services.
Thomas N. Sudow, Executive Director of Ohio Chamber of Commerce

Working with Strativity has transformed the way we think about customer experience at Sage. The research techniques employed by Strativity deliver meaningful, insightful and actionable results, which we have found to be invaluable in our own journey to provide customers with a better experience. Above all else, the team at Strativity are a delight to work with – committed, forthright, personable, engaging. I would recommend them wholeheartedly.
Paul Stobart, Managing Director of Sage UK

Strativity Group has been, and continues to be, invaluable in helping us develop and deliver an exceptional experience for our customers. They have been with us since the inception of customer experience at our organization which enabled us to leverage the best practices across many industries to exceed our customer’s expectations.
Melissa M. Sturno, Vice President, Marketing of ProCure Treatment Centers, Inc.

Have You Seen this Speaker? Leave a Star Rating.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Books by Lior Arussy:

Next Is Now: 5 Steps for Embracing Change―Building a Business that Thrives into the Future

One of the world’s leading authorities on customer-centric business transformation, Lior Arussy—founder and CEO of the global consulting firm Strativity Group—offers “a revolutionary, yet pragmatic guide to not only managing change, but driving and thriving in a world of cataclysmic explosions of information and technology” (Joseph Michelli, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leading the Starbucks Way).

The old business model of adapting to change for continued success is dead. Change is the new normal. There are no more periods of stability and predictability. There is only change. This continuous upheaval can undercut morale, decrease productivity and decimate profits, or it can be a game-changing opportunity.

In Next Is Now, “Lior Arussy provides a comprehensive and instructive roadmap for leading change and preparing yourself and your organization for the future. He generously shares insider insights, examples, and lessons learned from his many years advising top business leaders.” (Denise Lee Yohn, author of What Great Brands Do). He helps corporate leaders and their employees view change as an opportunity to become invested, drive that change, and achieve more success and job satisfaction than if change were simply implemented from the top down.

Based on his experience working one-on-one with major corporate clients like Mercedes-Benz, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Thomson Reuters, HSBC and other Fortune 500 clients, Arussy shares his five-step Future Ready Impact program, guiding change-impacted employees and business owners from a victim mentality to one of participation and ownership. As Stephen Cannon, the former president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA, raves, “For anyone interested in building a thriving business, Lior Arussy’s insights provide actionable steps to integrate into your plans for achieving success.”




Customer Experience Strategy: The Complete Guide From Innovation to Execution

“Customer Experience Strategy” has penetrated the mainstream corporate agenda. It provides a complete strategic and operational framework for organizations and individuals committed to deploying customer experience. The book has been gleaned from years of designing and implementing customer experience strategies at organizations worldwide. “The most ambitious and successful attempt at a comprehensive text on the practice of customer experience management…refreshingly practical.” strategy + business magazine

Order Here




    Excellence Every Day: Make the Daily Choice-Inspire Your Employees and Amaze Your Customers

    Addressing all levels of the corporate ladder, from customer service to the CEO, this business-savvy handbook explores “The Excellence Myth,” revealing a new philosophy of excellence to help individuals and organizations reach their performance potential. Including both personal anecdotes as well as the results of a 23,000-participant study, the book details the keys to expanding leadership skills, improving employee satisfaction and job performance, and securing customer loyalty. The guide also explains how making “The Daily Choice” will empower employees to reach new heights of excellence, creating delightful customer experiences and achieving results from the bottom up.

    Order Here




    Passionate & Profitable: Why Customer Strategies Fail and 10 Steps to Do Them Right!

    Companies are not choosing to build customer relationships nor committing fully to the customer experience. Management strategies that are customer-related activities are undertaken as “initiatives”, “programs,” or “campaigns,” running for a short period of time and never being embraced as a full operational strategy. In this book, customer relationship management consulting guru Arussy demonstrates how the seller′s interest in the buyer′s welfare can be motivated by the desire to seek mutual gain.

    Order Here




Related Speakers

background

Need help filling the seats at your next meeting / event?

Call us / email us / check availability and fee for your favorite speaker.

Get in touch
Call us: (760) 656-8770
Toll free in the US: (877) 717-5327
speakers@speaking.com
topqualityessays.com