Joseph Michelli, PHD

Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., is a psychologist and organizational consultant who helps brands deliver exceptional human experiences that fuel growth. His work spans more than three decades and includes advising senior leaders at Starbucks, The Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes- Benz, Zappos, UCLA Health, and dozens of other organizations committed to service excellence.

Joseph believes All Business Is Personal. He teaches leaders how emotional intelligence, operational discipline, and everyday service behaviors shape culture and customer loyalty. His approach integrates psychology, business strategy, and frontline practicality — providing actionable frameworks organizations can use to improve performance at scale.

As a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek #1 bestselling author of fourteen books, Joseph’s insights have influenced leaders around the world. His consulting, speaking, and research continue to focus.

Joseph brings the perspective of a clinical psychologist to leadership and customer experience work — helping organizations understand human behavior, reduce friction, increase emotional connection, and build systems that support consistent excellence.

Speaking Topics

Leadership

Service Excellence / Customer Service

Healthcare Leadership

Patient Service

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Dr. Michelli is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Nielson BookScan, and New York Times #1 bestselling author.

Dr. Michelli worked for over a decade as a medical psychologist in a hospital setting. Subsequently, he worked as an organizational development specialist for a large hospital system. Dr. Michelli helped hospitals in that system create a unified corporate culture, implement patient service initiatives, enhance staff engagement, and merge cultures when that system joined with another hospital group. Dr. Michelli has studied and written about cutting edge customer experience at businesses such as the world famous Pike Place Fish Market, Starbucks Coffee, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and UCLA Health System. Blending his education and work background (both in and out of healthcare), Dr. Michelli delivers a powerful message about patient care and practical ways to create the ultimate staff and patient experience.

Joseph holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association (NSA). He is a member of the Authors Guild, an editorial board member for the Beryl Institute's Patient Experience Journal (PXJ), and is on the founders' council of CustomerExperienceOne. Other achievements include winning the Asian Brand Excellence Award and being named as one of the Top 10 thought leaders in Customer Service by Global Gurus. He received his master's and doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Having journeyed with a close family member through a six-year battle with breast cancer, Dr. Michelli is committed to social causes associated with curing cancer and abating world hunger.

The Michelli Experience - So Much MORE than a Keynote!

The Michelli Experience is built on the belief that a keynote is “not an event, but a process.” To maximize the impact of the time Dr. Joseph Michelli shares on the keynote stage, he customizes the experience by offering the following:

  • • Listens to key stakeholders

  • • Builds a draft presentation based on the input he receives

  • • Runs through his draft presentation to ensure no unwanted surprises

  • • Makes needed adjustments to his presentation draft

  • • Creates videos to promote your event or pique the interest of participants

  • • Informs you know when he arrives on the property

  • • Participates in audio/visual run-throughs

  • • Designs useable tools for participants to use post-presentation

  • • Follows-up to ensure the presentation had the desired impact

In short, Joseph will tailor his message to your audience, adapt to your needs, and ensure a successful, informative, inspiring, and memorable keynote, workshop, or training session.

WATCH Joseph’S SPEAKER REEL

Testimonials

  • “Thank you for your time and the compelling message that you delivered to our leaders at Carolinas HealthCare System today.

    Your speech not only hit upon the critical components of teammate engagement and patient satisfaction, but left the leaders feeling charged and with a sense of ownership in this journey to continue to be super stars in this space, while also developing other leaders. We were also very impressed with how well you tailored the message to our culture while bringing in examples of other industries, and sharing your own personal story. Again, job well done. You exceeded our expectations!”

    — Jamie Hubbard, Director HR/ Learning & Organization Development, Carolinas HealthCare System

  • “Joseph Michelli is an inspiring speaker who captures his audience with a blend of practicality and passion.

    Bringing insights from across industry, Joseph helps make the intricacies of excellence in experience simple and applicable. The information he shares provides his audience with ideas they can implement and also challenges them to look broader and deeper as they tackle their own organizational issues. His ideas are real and his stories palpable, bringing context to his ideas with a powerful and profound personal touch not found in many presentations today.”

    — Jason A. Wolf, President, The Beryl Institute

  • “Joseph shared his principles on the client service experience with our organization at our annual all-hands event and the audience was blown away.

    Joseph used simple concepts taken from our own consumer experiences and translated them into a message that applies to an organization like ours that supports commercial clients. Believe it or not, we had laughter, cheers—and even tears by the end of his very thoughtful and thought-provoking speech. Thank you Joseph for sharing the legacy of superior organizations with us—our associates will continue to integrate your message into daily practices by refining their own personal legacy statements.”

    — Dora Gougoufkas, Senior Vice President, Capital One

  • “Thank you and congratulations on the outstanding presentation you gave to our managers and sales staff at our recent annual sales conference in Las Vegas.

    Your message was right on track with our company’s goals and philosophy, and you presented in such a way as to reach everyone in the audience. Your ability to share examples and insight regarding culture were an inspiration to us all. As a company moving along in a five year journey, your talk inspired us to continue to become better every day. Again, thank you for a great presentation and helping to make our annual sales conference a huge success.”

    — Steve Bunger, President & CEO, Mobile Mini, Inc.

  • “Joseph takes the time to truly understand your attendees and what you’re looking to achieve at your meeting.

    This makes for a stellar, attention-grabbing presentation that truly resonates and gets to the heart of what’s really important to your audience.”

    — Lynne Skyrme, Market Manager, VSP Vision Care

  • “Joseph brings a rare combination of deep expertise, humility, and energy.

    He connects with audiences instantly and leaves them inspired to take action.”

    — SCOTT BURGER, PRESIDENT, PANDORA JEWELRY (AMERICAS)

  • “Joseph understands people, teams, and culture at a level few speakers do.

    His work has shaped how we lead and how we care for those we serve.”

    — JEANNE JUNKER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, AFFILIATE RETAIL OPERATIONS (ARO), RENEWAL BY ANDERSEN

  • "One of the key experts I turned to for insights throughout the years was Joseph Michelli, a consultant to and writer of numerous books on some of the world’s most beloved brands.

    Joseph has spoken for us at our large regional meetings and helped us achieve human-centric success. He has an extraordinary ability to translate complex challenges into simple, powerful actions. He elevates performance wherever he goes.”

    — AMIR DAN RUBIN, PRESIDENT & CEO, AMAZON ONE MEDICAL / FORMER COO, UCLA HEALTH SYSTEMS

KEYNOTE TOPICS

  • Based on Joseph’s book All Business Is Personal, this keynote reveals how the most admired organizations win by pairing human connection with operational discipline. Joseph explains that memorable experiences happen when leaders and teams create personal bonds and design processes that deliver consistently. He explores how technology and AI can augment—not replace—human service, enabling teams to anticipate needs, simplify transactions and free up time for genuine connection. Attendees leave with actionable ideas to build cultures where emotional connection and operational excellence work hand in hand to drive loyalty, referrals and long‑term growth.

  • Within days of COVID-19 disrupting the business world, Dr. Michelli began asking senior leaders at major companies about their specific challenges and how they were meeting them, getting raw yet thoughtful real-time insights into the greatest business crisis in generations. In this presentation, Dr. Michelli shares the invaluable wisdom and practical insights from 150+ top global business leaders on all aspects of leading through and beyond COVID, including crisis management, keeping employees and customers safe, maintaining a culture of engagement, rapidly innovating, and more. In this highly customized presentation, Dr. Michelli will provide winning leadership methods based on his conversations with Google, Microsoft, Starbucks, United Way, RBC, Verizon, Southwest Airlines, Goldman Sachs, and H&R Block.

  • In 2007, the founders of Airbnb had a roommate move out of their San Francisco apartment. To pay rent, they placed air mattresses in a spare room and created a website where they listed the sleeping space. Within a decade, the company was valued at 38 billion dollars. In this presentation, Dr. Michelli outlines the process of creating a 21st-century customer experience that is technology-aided and human-powered. He offers tools for disrupting or averting disruption by creating customer belonging, designing for trust, and maximizing team member and customer empowerment.

  • Many businesses were not created on a customer experience or customer service foundation. They started from a founder’s passion for a given product or industry. These types of businesses might have innovative products, operational excellence, and even great marketing. However, they often lack a consistent and emotionally engaging customer experience that lives up to their product quality. In Driven to Delight, Dr. Michelli looks at how an iconic brand with the motto “best or nothing” set sights on being one of the world’s best customer experience providers. Moving from the middle of the pack among luxury automobile manufacturers on customer satisfaction surveys toward levels that rival a brand like The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, leaders at Mercedes-Benz USA created a compelling transformational vision while aligning and mobilizing people, processes, and technology. If you are on a cultural journey to be Driven to Delight, this message will inform and resonate!

  • Customers’ wants, needs and desires are constantly changing. Joseph distinguishes between product, service and experience strategies for acquiring, retaining and driving referrals. He emphasizes that all business is personal, and shows how crafting a Way We Serve™ Statement guides employees to deliver human‑centered experiences supported by technology that anticipates needs. This keynote provides a framework for making cost‑conscious decisions that strengthen emotional connection, build operational excellence and increase loyalty and spend.

  • True service professionalism is more than scripts and standards — it’s the art of making every interaction personal. In this session, Joseph explores how professional demeanor, empathy and operational consistency come together to deliver experiences customers remember. Drawing on the All Business Is Personal philosophy, he shows how technology can support (not replace) human judgment and care, and how to equip front‑line professionals to create emotional connections while executing flawlessly on the basics.

  • A Harvard Business Review research article suggests that customer experience initiatives are failing because they are not grounded in cultures of service excellence. In "Transforming Your Culture," Dr. Michelli looks at how brands like Mercedes-Benz USA create a compelling vision of change urgency, align leaders in pursuit of tangible customer experience objectives, offer technology and process tools to delight customers, and change the internal conversation to discuss the business from the customer’s vantage point. If you are seeking a fundamental shift toward true “customer-centric” execution, this presentation will offer a roadmap and tools for transformational change!

  • Innovation flourishes when organizations combine curiosity about people with smart use of technology. This program demonstrates how to design new products, services and experiences around the human stories of your customers and employees, while leveraging tech to prototype, test and scale ideas. Joseph links innovation back to his core philosophy: by treating every innovation as an opportunity to deepen personal connection and streamline delivery, brands remain relevant and remarkable. 

  • Great leaders don’t just hit targets; they leave a legacy of people‑centered excellence. Drawing on the All Business Is Personal framework, Joseph shares how to embed values, rituals and systems that reinforce emotional connection and operational rigor long after a leader has moved on. Participants learn how to cultivate leaders at every level who will carry forward a culture of service, innovation and heart.

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Fee Range: $10,000–$15,000

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