Nolan Nichols is a Fortune 500 keynote speaker, master storyteller, and founder of A Million Dreams. He joined our June First Fridays session to dig into one of the most important questions in CX right now: can we actually create an unforgettable experience every single time?
What followed was one of our richest conversations yet — covering employee experience, generational change, motivation, storytelling, and what it means to build a culture that survives the headwinds.
The formula for an unforgettable moment
Nolan opened with a story about Matt Emmons, a U.S. rifle athlete at the 2004 Athens Olympics who fired a perfect bull’s-eye — at the wrong target. He fell from first place to eighth in a single shot.
The lesson: success can look like a bull’s-eye but at the wrong target. In a world of geopolitical volatility, economic uncertainty, and AI-driven change, tunnel vision is the real enemy of great customer experience.
So what makes a moment unforgettable? Nolan’s framework comes down to three ingredients:
- Time — intentionality. Without it, the other two remain wishful.
- Connection — with customers, teammates, or even your own sense of purpose.
- Meaning — a reason it matters. Without meaning, moments feel hollow.
Think of Mike and Colleen coming home from Paris. Every minute of their trip had friction — wrong trains, overpriced bags, an underwhelming Mona Lisa. But they tell everyone it was a great trip. Why? Because they remember three moments: the perfect meal, the chess players in the park, and the Eiffel Tower sparkling at midnight.
“When we travel, we think about the moments and not the minutes. But when we live our lives, we do the opposite.”
The job for CX leaders is to design for moments — not to optimize every minute.
EX is the next frontier for CX
Our customers often come in with something broken. Think of it like an emergency room: nobody planned to be there, nobody wants to be there, and they’re worried about what it’s going to cost. That’s a high-friction starting point.
But Nolan reframed it: when things go wrong and are handled well, customers often leave feeling better about the company than if everything had gone perfectly.
The African proverb he cited stuck with the group: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Not all friction needs to be eliminated. Some of it — handled well — is where the relationship actually deepens.
Airlines understand this. Leaders like Scott Kirby at United and Ed Bastian at Delta have built their turnarounds on a simple bet: care for your employees, trust them, empower them, and they’ll take care of your customers. EX isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the lever.
What to do about Gen Z
The numbers tell the story: one in four American workers is over 55. More than half the world’s population is under 30. The workforce has never been this multigenerational.
Gen Z has grown up in a post-9/11 world, through a financial crisis, a pandemic, and now AI anxiety. They’ve been overexposed to information and underexposed to firsthand experience. When Nolan was at Virginia Tech managing up to 75 students at a time, he attended a university seminar that showed a striking trend: in the early 2000s, about 30% of students arrived without any work experience. By 2018, that number had crossed 60%.
The implication for managers: when you hire someone, it may genuinely be their first job. Don’t assume they know the basics.
What Gen Z wants, Nolan argues, is not to be managed — they want to be mentored. They’re craving someone to show them a way forward. A few approaches that work:
- Opt-in framing up front. During hiring, be explicit about what the role requires. Let them choose it rather than have it imposed.
- Relate feedback to their goals. “I know you want to keep moving up. There’s something I noticed that would help you get there — would you be open to hearing it?” That works better than a direct correction.
- Reverse mentoring. Let younger employees teach seasoned veterans about AI, social media, and how they view the organization from a fresh perspective. It goes both directions.
- FIKA. A Swedish concept Nolan brought back: twice a day, people step away for coffee and conversation with a colleague from a different team. Sweden consistently ranks in the top ten happiest countries in the world. There’s a connection.
Praise over prize
One of our attendees asked a question we hear often: should we pay for great CX behavior?
Nolan’s answer was nuanced. Financial incentives can work — but only when three conditions are met: the behavior is concrete, measurable, and within the employee’s control. And when you introduce them, set an end date upfront. Don’t build an expectation that goes away later.
The bigger idea: praise over prize as a long-term strategy.
Don’t just say “good job.” Be specific. “I noticed how you handled that situation with the customer this morning — that was exactly right.” That kind of specific, timely recognition is something people carry far longer than a bonus check. And as Nolan put it: once you’ve established a culture of excellence, you want the ceiling to become the floor. Great customer service shouldn’t be something you reward — it should be the minimum.
The power of storytelling
This is where Nolan and Bryan found the most common ground. Both came up through video and broadcast backgrounds. Both see storytelling not as a soft skill but as the connective tissue of great organizational culture.
Internally, storytelling starts with listening. What is each person’s story? What drives them — moving up the ladder, or a job that lets them coach their kid’s baseball team at 5pm? Both can be high performers. The manager who knows which is which will motivate them completely differently.
Externally, storytelling is about empathy — not the kind you mandate from a leadership memo, but the kind that emerges when someone sees the reality of the customer they’re serving.
Nolan’s distinction between sympathy, empathy, and compassion:
- Sympathy: seeing that someone is in a hole.
- Empathy: getting down in the hole with them.
- Compassion: getting them out.
Customer service lives at the intersection of all three. You acknowledge the problem. You get in it with the customer. And then you build a path forward.
Building your defense
Nolan closed with the Titanic — not as a tragedy but as a leadership lesson. The ship had watertight compartments designed to contain damage. The fatal flaw: no lids. One breach flooded everything.
Most of us operate the same way. A rude customer on Monday sinks the whole week. A difficult email at 9am ruins the day.
The fix is building your own lids — intentional practices that contain the damage and keep you moving forward. A lunchtime walk. A playlist. A call with a friend. A workout after work. Not every customer can be pleased. The goal isn’t to pretend otherwise — it’s to make sure today’s iceberg doesn’t sink tomorrow’s boat.
About Nolan Nichols: Nolan is a Fortune 500 keynote speaker, master storyteller, and founder of A Million Dreams. He works with leading brands on employee experience, generational leadership, and organizational culture. You can reach him at nolannnicholspeaks.com.
First Fridays is a free monthly session hosted by The Daniel Group — practical CX conversations for B2B leaders, every first Friday at noon ET. Register for the next session →
Frequently Asked Questions
- What are the three ingredients for creating unforgettable customer experience moments?
- According to keynote speaker Nolan Nichols, the three ingredients for creating unforgettable moments are time, connection, and meaning. Time means intentionality — without it, nothing happens. Connection is the relationship with the customer, teammate, or purpose. Meaning gives the moment a reason to exist. When all three come together, you create experiences customers remember long after the transaction is over.
- How does employee experience (EX) affect customer experience (CX)?
- Employee experience is the foundation of customer experience. When employees feel trusted, empowered, and part of something meaningful, that care transfers directly to customers. Airlines like United and Delta have demonstrated this at scale: leaders who invested in their frontline employees saw measurable improvement in customer satisfaction scores. In B2B industrial settings, the same principle applies — a frontline technician or service rep who feels valued is far more likely to create a memorable moment for the customer.
- How should B2B companies manage and motivate Gen Z employees?
- Gen Z employees generally prefer to be mentored rather than managed. They respond better to coaching conversations framed around their own goals than to top-down directives. Effective approaches include being upfront during hiring about what the role requires (opt-in framing), using reverse mentoring where younger employees teach veterans about new tools and perspectives, and connecting feedback to what the employee has said they want — career growth, responsibility, or work-life balance. The power of the word 'we' also matters: framing coaching as a team need rather than a personal criticism makes Gen Z far more receptive.
- Should companies pay employees for good customer experience scores?
- Financial incentives for CX behaviors can work, but only under specific conditions: the behavior must be concrete, measurable, and within the employee's control. Experts recommend using financial incentives to bridge a gap — setting a defined program with a clear end date — rather than as a permanent fixture. The longer-term strategy is 'praise over prize': specific, timely recognition that ties behavior to impact. Once a culture of excellence is established, the goal is to make great customer service the floor, not something that requires a bonus to produce.
- What is the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion in customer service?
- In customer service contexts, sympathy is recognizing that a customer has a problem. Empathy is getting into that problem with them — acknowledging the frustration as real and valid. Compassion is taking action to help them out of it. The most effective customer interactions move through all three: the representative sees the issue, validates the customer's experience, and then builds a clear path forward. Compassion — the action step — is what turns a difficult interaction into a loyalty moment.
- How can storytelling improve both employee engagement and customer experience?
- Storytelling works on two levels in B2B organizations. Internally, it means understanding each employee's personal story — what drives them, what they want from their work — so leaders can motivate and develop people as individuals. Externally, it means helping frontline employees understand the real story of the customers they serve: who they are, what pressures they face, and why the work matters. When employees see the human behind the transaction, empathy becomes natural rather than forced. Video, written case studies, and direct customer contact are all tools for making that story real.
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