The CXO Advisor List: 2026’s Most Trusted CX Consultants & Advisors
You’re under pressure to show CX moves the business while fixing journey gaps, getting buy-in, upskilling your team, and picking the right stack. The best CX consultants and advisors can give you clarity, practical playbooks, and honest feedback for your goals and career.
In this guide, I share my independent CX advisor picks to follow across strategy, VoC, service design, analytics, and digital transformation. Whether you want to bring someone on board immediately, or follow them to see if their expertise aligns with your business goals, this list will serve as a great starting point.
16 Best CX Consultants and Advisors in 2026
Annette Franz
You’ll know Annette Franz as the founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc., a CX advisor with 30+ years in the field who started her career at J.D. Power in 1992. She
…You’ll know Annette Franz as the founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc., a CX advisor with 30+ years in the field who started her career at J.D. Power in 1992. She focuses on culture, employee experience, and customer understanding, and her stance is simple: fix the culture to fix the outcomes. She’s a CCXP, a former CXPA Board chair, and the author of Customer Understanding, Built to Win, and Employee Understanding—useful if your work needs practical, repeatable ways to connect strategy to results.
“Leaders must do different! If you want consistent execution, don’t just communicate strategy. Make it translatable. Make it actionable.”
Jeanne Bliss
Jeanne Bliss is a customer experience advisor, author, and founder of CustomerBliss. She’s a five-time Chief Customer Officer with 35+ years in CX, leading work at brands like Lands’ End, Mazda, Coldwell
…Jeanne Bliss is a customer experience advisor, author, and founder of CustomerBliss. She’s a five-time Chief Customer Officer with 35+ years in CX, leading work at brands like Lands’ End, Mazda, Coldwell Banker, and Allstate, and she co-founded the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). Her stance is simple: earn the right to growth by leading with humanity—she asks leaders, “Would you do that to your mother?” If you lead CX, you’ll appreciate her direct style and focus on uniting executives around customer commitments you can actually deliver.
“You must truly CARE about customers’ lives. That’s not the same in any way as caring about the score you get or the metrics on a dashboard.”
Shep Hyken
You’ll find Shep Hyken focused on customer service and customer experience as the Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations, a National Speakers Association Hall of Fame speaker (CPAE, CSP) and a New
…You’ll find Shep Hyken focused on customer service and customer experience as the Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations, a National Speakers Association Hall of Fame speaker (CPAE, CSP) and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of 8 books. With 30+ years in the field, he’s worked with 1,200+ organizations—including Disney and FedEx—to build loyalty-focused cultures and bring customers back. If you lead CX, you’ll hear a clear message in his work: customers compare you to every experience they have, so design yours to earn the next visit. His approach is practical and research-backed, with 3,000+ published articles and ongoing studies on what drives repeat business.
“Instead of asking, “Was the experience good?” Ask, “Did the customer come back?””
Fred Reichheld
Fred Reichheld is a Bain Fellow and founder of Bain’s Loyalty practice; he created the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and has worked at Bain since 1977. If you lead CX, you’ll value
…Fred Reichheld is a Bain Fellow and founder of Bain’s Loyalty practice; he created the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and has worked at Bain since 1977. If you lead CX, you’ll value his clear focus on earning customer and employee loyalty and tying it to profitable growth. He’s a New York Times best‑selling author (The Loyalty Effect, The Ultimate Question, Winning on Purpose). His stance is simple: businesses should enrich customers’ lives and build trust to win.
“The best companies look beyond customer feedback to actual behavior, focusing on repeat purchases and referrals to understand what really earns growth”
Chip R. Bell
Chip R. Bell advises organizations on customer loyalty and service innovation, drawing on work with many Fortune 100 companies. He’s authored best-selling books—most recently Inside Your Customer’s Imagination, which won a 2021
…Chip R. Bell advises organizations on customer loyalty and service innovation, drawing on work with many Fortune 100 companies. He’s authored best-selling books—most recently Inside Your Customer’s Imagination, which won a 2021 Axiom Business Book Award—and Global Gurus has ranked him among the top 12 CX keynote speakers for 11 straight years. He pioneered customer journey mapping in the 1980s with Ron Zemke and has written 700+ columns for business outlets. If you want a CX advisor who urges “value-unique” ingenuity over value-add giveaways, his ideas can help you focus your customer experience work.
“Organizations keep wasting time and money trying to get customers' report cards rather than helping their customers instruct them on valuable ways to improve. There is a better approach.”
Blake Morgan
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and advisor with 15+ years in CX. She’s the author of three books, including The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership, and hosts The
…Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker, and advisor with 15+ years in CX. She’s the author of three books, including The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership, and hosts The Modern Customer podcast. Called “The Queen of CX” by Meta, she focuses on customer-centric leadership and the intersection of technology, communication, relationships, and people. If you lead CX, you’ll value her push to make CX a company-wide priority you can act on in your work.
“If you can’t clearly define the job your customer is trying to get done…you can’t design the experience to deliver it.”
Rob Markey
You’ll know Rob Markey as an advisory partner at Bain & Company and the creator of the Net Promoter System, focused on helping leaders earn customer loyalty. He co-authored The Ultimate Question
…You’ll know Rob Markey as an advisory partner at Bain & Company and the creator of the Net Promoter System, focused on helping leaders earn customer loyalty. He co-authored The Ultimate Question 2.0 and hosts the Customer Confidential podcast, where he digs into how executives grow customer value and hold themselves accountable for it. If you want your CX work tied to growth and investor-grade metrics, his stance on measuring and managing customer value is worth your time. If you’re reworking CX metrics or governance, you’ll appreciate his push to use NPS as a management system—not just a score—across sectors like financial services and telecom.
“Companies that built genuine loyalty—where customers feel the relationship is reciprocal—will retain more customers through price increases.”
Bruce Temkin
Bruce Temkin is a CX advisor and human experience leader with 20+ years in the field. He co‑founded the Customer Experience Professionals Association (chairman emeritus), founded Temkin Group, and later led the
…Bruce Temkin is a CX advisor and human experience leader with 20+ years in the field. He co‑founded the Customer Experience Professionals Association (chairman emeritus), founded Temkin Group, and later led the Qualtrics XM Institute. Earlier, he spent 12 years at Forrester and was the most‑read analyst for 13 straight quarters. Today he runs Humanity at Scale, focusing on human‑centric leadership and the link between customer, employee, and brand experience; he’s often called the “Godfather of Customer Experience.” If you lead CX, you’ll value his clear, evidence‑based frameworks and practical style for guiding change with your team and partners.
“AI will not fix every hospital problem, but it can help close some of the most painful gaps: making the experience easier to understand, easier to navigate, and ultimately more human.”
Clare Muscutt
Clare Muscutt is the Founder and CEO of Women in CX, a global CX keynote speaker and consultant with 15+ years leading CX in FTSE 100 brands including Whitbread, Sainsbury’s, and Compass
…Clare Muscutt is the Founder and CEO of Women in CX, a global CX keynote speaker and consultant with 15+ years leading CX in FTSE 100 brands including Whitbread, Sainsbury’s, and Compass Group. She created an agile CX design approach that delivered £4m in ROI and won CX Professional of the Year (Customer Centricity World Series, 2022). If you want a CX advisor who values co-design and clear commercial outcomes, her stance is collaboration over competition and building CX with diverse voices at the table. If you’re leading change, you’ll appreciate her practical, people-first style and focus on measurable results.
“Burnout doesn’t fix itself with discipline - it needs recovery. Rest isn’t lazy, it’s productive in ways we don’t measure. The things that bring you back to yourself are usually simple (and already available).”
Lynn Hunsaker
Lynn Hunsaker is the founder and Chief Customer Officer at ClearAction Continuum, where she offers e-consulting and learning support. She was the first CXPA-recognized training provider for an online certification course and
…Lynn Hunsaker is the founder and Chief Customer Officer at ClearAction Continuum, where she offers e-consulting and learning support. She was the first CXPA-recognized training provider for an online certification course and the first to benchmark marketing operations and global B2B CX practices; she’s also taught 25 courses at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz Extensions, San Jose State, and Mission College. If you want practical help for your work on CX ROI and culture, you’ll appreciate how she engages product lines and account teams to fix “pebbles in customers’ shoes” and guide better day-to-day decisions.
“Employees create what customers fund. Investors reinforce customers' funding.”
Colin Shaw
Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience consultancy he started in 2002, and he’s a LinkedIn Top Voice named among LinkedIn’s Top 150 Business Influencers. He
…Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience consultancy he started in 2002, and he’s a LinkedIn Top Voice named among LinkedIn’s Top 150 Business Influencers. He urges you to design for customer emotions as well as operations; his team helped Maersk lift NPS by 40 points in 30 months, driving a 10% rise in shipping volumes. He’s authored seven bestselling CX books and co-hosts The Intuitive Customer podcast, ranked in the top 5% by Buzzsprout. Earlier, he led 3,500 people in sales, marketing, and customer service at a global telecom, so his guidance stays grounded in real operations.
“Customers are getting to a place where they aren’t browsing your website anymore. They’re asking AI to choose for them.”
Ian Golding
Ian Golding is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with 20+ years in business improvement; he’s run his own CX consultancy since 2012. You’ll see
…Ian Golding is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with 20+ years in business improvement; he’s run his own CX consultancy since 2012. You’ll see him focus on making CX real in your org—operationalising it—across industries like automotive, finance, logistics, utilities, pharma, retail, manufacturing, education, and tech. He’s written 300+ CX articles, speaks around the world, sat on the first CXPA board, and was the first person the CXPA authorized to teach the CCXP; he also advises and writes for CustomerThink. If you want practical help, his book Customer What? and his training and mentoring give you tools you can use with your team.
“Little did I imagine that my desire to support others to apply what I had learned over the years, would enable me to continue to develop and learn so much more myself - as a practitioner, as a professional and as a human being.”
Nate Brown
Nate Brown leads Education and Enablement at Metric Sherpa and co-founded CX Accelerator, a nonprofit community for CX pros. He’s a practitioner who focuses on customer loyalty, voice of customer, and contact
…Nate Brown leads Education and Enablement at Metric Sherpa and co-founded CX Accelerator, a nonprofit community for CX pros. He’s a practitioner who focuses on customer loyalty, voice of customer, and contact center leadership, and he’s been speaking on CX since 2015; he also holds a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. He’s been recognized as an ICMI Top CX Thought Leader across multiple years and won CloudCherry’s 2019 CX Influencer of the Year. If you value community-driven, mission‑focused CX and want ideas you can apply to your work, Nate’s approach will fit how you lead.
“Many execs spend so much time trying to tell the world who they are. But it's the voice of their customers that determine this. Learn to listen. Learn to co-create.”
Denise Lee Yohn
You’ll know Denise Lee Yohn as a brand leadership expert, keynote speaker, and consultant who helps you raise customer experience by aligning brand and culture. With 20+ years advising brands like Sony,
…You’ll know Denise Lee Yohn as a brand leadership expert, keynote speaker, and consultant who helps you raise customer experience by aligning brand and culture. With 20+ years advising brands like Sony, Burger King, Land Rover, and Unilever, she focuses on brand-culture fusion and delivering on your brand promise across every touchpoint. She’s the author of What Great Brands Do and FUSION and a recipient of Effie Awards, and she pushes you to treat brand as a business discipline so employees’ daily actions show up in your CX.
“The numbers you track send an unmistakable signal about what your organization truly values—not what it claims to value.”
Scott McKain
If you lead CX, Scott McKain is a customer experience and distinction expert, bestselling author, and Hall of Fame speaker who helps organizations deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience. He’s delivered 2,000+ presentations
…If you lead CX, Scott McKain is a customer experience and distinction expert, bestselling author, and Hall of Fame speaker who helps organizations deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience. He’s delivered 2,000+ presentations in 36 countries and serves as Corporate Educator in Residence at High Point University. He argues that emotional engagement and relationships create more profit than one-off sales, and his work gives you practical ways to stand out with clarity and execution. He’s written four #1 Amazon business bestsellers and received the National Speakers Association’s 2024 Cavett Award.
“It’s not about slogans, taglines, or trying to be louder than the competition. It’s about distinction—the kind that is earned through clarity, purpose, and consistently delivered experience.”
Jim Tincher
Jim Tincher is the founder and CEO of Heart of the Customer and a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP)—he was the second person in the world to earn the CCXP designation. He
…Jim Tincher is the founder and CEO of Heart of the Customer and a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP)—he was the second person in the world to earn the CCXP designation. He specializes in customer journey mapping and measuring emotion, and previously led customer engagement initiatives at Best Buy and UnitedHealth Group. He’s the author of Do B2B Better and co-author of How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer?, and he teaches teams how to use journey maps, voice-of-customer, and metrics that matter to build loyalty. If you lead CX, you’ll appreciate his “see the world through customers’ eyes” approach and his focus on tying your work to clear business impact.
“We've been telling ourselves that customers want faster, more automated, more digital. And they do—75% prefer self-service first. But when you ask what actually drives growth? It's not speed. It's whether customers feel like they matter.”
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