Bridging the Divide
In an age where communication reigns supreme, understanding your customers through the convergence of communication is paramount. Yet, many organizations grapple with disconnections between various departments, hindering a holistic grasp of the customer experience. It's time to recognize that CX is everyone's responsibility, and identifying the roadblocks is the first step towards overcoming them.
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all right welcome everybody we're excited to get going here you got Gabe Larson
I'm the chief
marketing officer at customer and then I have a special guest somebody I've
known for Justin how
long is it it's been like seven sass years isn't it that I think which seven s
ass years is like 49
real years so it's been a long time Gave yeah I've come across Justin multiple
times but in his
current role he's the evangelist at eight by eight what a cool role what a
great opportunity when he
moved into the role I ping them and said man it's just like there's certain
roles that just fit
certain people so much and this is like perfect for Justin so he'll talk about
that more in just a
minute but today we're gonna be talking about the impact of communication on
companies overall
success and some of the great things I think Justin's been experiencing it
eight by eight and in his
previous roles all things communication so with that Justin maybe just take
just a minute tell us a
little bit about the role and some of the cool things you've been doing cool
Gabe thanks for having me
it is always a pleasure to connect with you gosh it's still funny when you're
like certain roles just
like seemed to be the thing when I saw eight by eight post about this I you
know I connected with a
couple folks there and I was like you know I'm like doing my own thing right
now but like I had this
rule that there were certain opportunities that if they came up I just like
would have to go after
it and and this was definitely one of them look for those of us like if we
haven't met before I
know each other my background I always think myself gave us a bit of a CX mutt
I started in the
contact center you know was an agent to the supervisor thing to quality
training all that kind of
stuff eventually found my way into consulting and like larger training programs
and then as you
mentioned I think around the time we met started working inside of technology
companies and it was
interesting for me just I've always been in customer experience I love the work
I love the
people that do the work and I think what what's always been most important to
me through for my
entire career but especially in this role is like just a deep desire to
understand where are people
who who are responsible for understanding and serving customers like where do
they struggle today
and what is what does it look like to to enable them to move forward in
meaningful ways because I
know at least for my own experience like there were so many times that I was
just like hitting my
head against the wall because I was trying all these different things and
nothing seemed to make
a difference yeah so if I think about like how does that show up in my work at
eight by eight
you know I think it's a couple things the biggest part of it is just being out
in the industry
trying to do what I can to understand and educate people like where is CX today
where is it going
how do we move forward in real ways and moving forward I mean changes to people
it means process
and it means technology and you know that that I think at the biggest level
like that's what it
is I can bore anybody who wants to know more about it like let's talk he is the
walking CX master so
those words rain true but let's get into some of that you know you hit on a
couple themes I think
we wanted to touch on today but communication I just it is when they talk about
CX we can talk
about customer service I mean communication reigns supreme but it does kind of
seem like it's broken
it's talking to me about what you're seeing in the market why is it broken and
then we can talk a
little bit about some maybe how you guys are thinking about solving some of
these challenges
yeah so to me this is like a compounding problem the first is just like the
nature of people
and our relationship with communicating with each other you know I won't like
there are lots of
one-to-one relationships that I have and know that like just alone
communication can break down there
so let's just talk about the natural compounding factor we've got a bunch of
people and anytime
people are involved it's going to be volatile it's going to be messy where I
think I think about
this from an internal like problem for organizations and an external and
serving our customers or
patients or constituents whoever it might be I think the external problem right
that we're facing
Gabe is the ways that we've communicated have changed and accelerated so fast
that keeping up
from a process and technology like all that standpoint we fell behind and so I
think that's
part of it just like the way we communicate change so fast as it becomes so
diversified that makes
it really complex and I think internally gosh you know we have I think
everything everything is
available for us today to have no problems with communication and so me asking
the question of
why do we do this you know I think part of it is just like it takes work to do
to do communication
well clearly right now it's taking work for me to communicate well it takes
work for us to communicate
well and and I think part of it is it's really easy to fall into like we
believe that what we
know everyone knows yeah that to me I think is is an underlying factor to like
how do we get
ourselves out of that and recognize how much others don't know and how valuable
it would be if only
they knew what we knew yeah it does seem like the that just the channel stuff
you know if it's not
you know Facebook's new threads or Twitter or something's going on with Twitter
or you know what's
up I don't know what's up seems to be like people are using it more around my
friend group all that
debate you know iPhone versus Android user I don't know what's up come if it's
not channel stuff then
it's just typical communication barriers time zones you know challenges between
the way that maybe
you are here there but it does seem like it's there's always a new way to
communicate there's always
something going on with the communication challenges that as customer service
continues to evolve and
evolve it just becomes it just I feel like sometimes it's on it's daunting you
know it's like how do I
master this idea of communicating effectively with my customers when every day
it feels like
there's something new or something that ultimately changes so I feel the pain
in my own experience
but I know customers feel it as well so how do you guys start to think about
the idea of breaking
this down then and saying hey if communication is so key how can organizations
start to think
about it differently in a way that actually drives the results we want which is
you know
happy customers more revenue top line bottom line etc yeah Gabe this question
all questions like
I think there's there's four big factors it's people process technology and
strategy
those those four things are always going to be factors in this and you can move
one and not
move another and you're not like you might see incremental ones but it won't be
sustainable
and it certainly won't be scalable yeah so let's talk about um I think strategy
often is going to
like if we're doing it right drives everything else strategy shouldn't be a by
product of what we
have it should be like what we're choosing and making decisions off of so the
first thing I think
that that like how do we move move forward is we have to recognize an own where
communication is
is preventing our success today and and I think sometimes that can be buried
and I give examples
of um I know from my own research Gabe that if it's not for a bad boss the
number one reason why
contact center employees leave their job is because they feel like they don't
have the tools the
knowledge of the resources to do what they need right there's a lack of if
communication or a
uh prohibiting of them to communicate the way that they need to so I think that
's part one like
we've got to recognize like how do you quantify that how do you quantify the
impact of bad
communication um so if I were part of an organization I'd be trying to to think
they're like can we
can we put some real numbers and facts and figures around how our failure to
communicate
effectively is is impacting our business so that's and where do you go I'm at
one click down I
mean is that typically um just in in in the numbers in the way that the the
contact center
operates is it more in like a survey based approach you know kind of as you
were saying with
sometimes reps just saying it's not working how do you go get get there yeah so
so depending on
your role so let's let's say you are responsible with the contact center um so
now part goes to
that idea of like first always always um question what you know I'm going to
give the example of a
buddy of mine who worked for company and uh they they offered drones and he he
realized one day like
he knew the number one reason why people called his company is because of a fly
away drone he assumed
everyone else in his business knew that until he was in a meeting and people
were like why aren't
customers buying more consumables so like blades and batteries and things like
that it's like
probably because the drone is missing or damaged before they would ever need
them and they're like
what do you mean oh she's like well this this is the case so so part of it I
think is how do we
create mechanisms to share what we know in the contact center outside in the
organization that
that is part of how we can discover like some of those communication challenges
um because to the
contact center that was just the number one contact driver and they just
accepted it they
didn't challenge it and then they challenged it they then discovered hey if we
have a better way of
communicating and helping our customers be successful with piloting their
drones right and that that
to me is like this this communication way of it's it's communication
communicating to the customer
but it had to happen because you had to communicate inside the organization
right that's that's
that's and that's what we're talking about this is called the communication con
undrum
well and so so Gabe then like if you think about like the real big part of this
is like how do I
ruthlessly prioritized where I'm going to go after first in my business yeah
and in that case like I
actually think the number one reason why people contact you or the number one
reason why they
go to your portal or the number one reason why they set whatever like I think
that can be a
really great place to start and understanding like do we have gaps in how we
communicate today yeah
a great yeah and that's your turn so one of those things that fills maybe a
little obvious but um
great example because it's the assumptions that often kill the communication
like wait you guys
all thought what um shoot we probably need to communicate better ourselves so
okay so you kind
of start big picture um where do you go next yeah so so then I think like okay
so what is like
preventing our visibility and and if I think about customer experience broadly
yeah often my
experience with a number of people that that I run into in CX circles or
contact center circles
like they immediately equate hey most of the customer experience happens in the
contact center
that's where most of the communication with customers happens and that couldn't
be further
from the truth because you've got customers who are communicating with
marketing and they may not
know it they're communicating with field services or they're communicating with
sales or they're
communicating with a front office employee right there's all of these places
where communication
not just happens to customers but then there's internal dependencies on the
contact center needs
to better understand when marketing is launching their next campaign and what
is it going to say
and what are going to be the terms and conditions that that convergence of
communication I think is
so important as organizations really try to understand customer experience they
have to recognize
first off it's not a contact center problem it's it's an enterprise wide
problem yeah and part of
what's fueling it is just a lack of visibility and ability to communicate on
who your customers are
what they they were doing or what they want to do and what are the things
preventing that from
happening that to me is that that I think is one of the biggest places to look
because
what's happening right now for a lot of organizations is the way the contact
center is communicating
is one way and then the way the company communicates internally is another way
and then you might have
then different departments that then they also have additional ways of
communicating and it's
fractured and it's not cohesive so that that that for me is both like a
personal like how do we
how do we converge more of how we can communicate not just through people in a
process standpoint
but you have to think about hey the ways that you're documenting or or sending
communication both
your customers and inside your organization like how do we how do we get that
more in one place
yeah it's the silos I mean I experience it in my own life but I know our
customers do too and it
I love that idea like marketing is communicating one way to the customer and
then like the customer
service entity is kind of communicating a different way in the two same
customer but the two never
never talk and it seems obvious but dang it it's hard is there certain things
you've found is
is it is it better technology is it just hanging out together more is it is it
some of the basics
you know what are they called the ABCs of communication or where do you go to
break down some of those
things silos yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna use a kind of example from from my own
past so
as you know gave and for those of you that unless I spent a few years in Hers
hey Pennsylvania
so we just place on earth and you have to say it by the way when you say Hers
hey Pennsylvania
you have to say say it's on earth and then I remember that you know I we took
my kids out there man
I loved it and that little park of it's a beautiful place street lamps shaped
like Hershey kisses
wrapped and unwrapped alternating down chocolate and cocoa avenue this is real
life people
uh look my my contact center was on the same floor of the same building as the
marketing department
and there were a number of times where you know we were on the front page of
the USA today and
didn't know about a promotion or customers were calling in because they heard
something on the
radio and we didn't know about it and and so there were a couple things that
would have
helped us then and and can help organizations now um and again people process
technology strategy
gave this is like I'm gonna be this so from let's let's get the technology
stuff out of the way
I do think it is meaningful and and there is real value of bringing the way
that we communicate
into one or as few tools as possible um like what's the the long and the short
of like why did I
decide to step into eight by eight because that's how they were thinking and
that's how they've
been building a solution right so to me that was important um from a process
standpoint you have
to create mechanisms to to not just share out what you're learning and
experiencing these might be
voice of the customer programs they might be hey I'm gonna take my peer in
marketing to grab coffee
once a month or if we've got our our media bias planning session how can I be a
part of that to
understand how I might need to forecast for my contact center differently that
that to me is
a big and we could probably have an entire session gave on like how do you
build those
relationships with those stakeholders but that to me it's intentionality it's
intentionality
around understanding how do I create those mechanisms to to not just share out
but also learn from
I think from a people standpoint it's creating a culture of curiosity that to
me is is something
I try to ingrain in in anyone I'm ever a part of a team with is like hey part
of how we
communicate better is to be naturally curious naturally curious about what the
other person has
to say naturally curious about how what we know might help others that that
just kind of creates
inside of us this desire to say how to connect and share as much as possible
and then look from a
process standpoint there are a lot of like there are a lot of organizations
that like have process
for process sake and what it does is it creates friction for customers it
creates frustration
for the employees and that's like that's not an easy problem to solve because
it can be
political and it can be messy and it can be territorial but honestly Gabe like
if we took a better
look at ourselves and like understood like how do we how do we actually make
sure that we eliminate
points of friction and and we reduce the likelihood of something is going to
fail on us
gosh it would be so much better I mean yeah it's it's some of those points you
know it's
I love the curiosity point but you know there is some of these ideas if you can
just take a step
back and understand the importance of it and you got to reach across the border
sometimes and shake
a hand and see if you can really partner with those different organizations the
example of a
marketing promotion and the service team didn't know about her you know that
just is happening
too often and it obviously causes so much friction with customers that it's
messy one one arm doesn't
know what the other arm is doing okay so customers and employees right because
that's the other part
of it that's fair that that's fair okay so you got kind of this strategy piece
identifying the
problem I love the idea of breaking down silos and finding a way to do that
with people process
technology let's see if we can hit one more one more piece you go to to kind of
help solve this
problem yeah um looks we talked people process technology strategy I think the
the other part of this is recognizing that hey look our our employees they want
us to win
yeah our customers or however we serve want us to win um and there are probably
lots of
opportunities for us to better get feedback on where we're falling short on
this today
um so so when you ask the question gabe of like where else do I go uh I go to
my employees and I
do things like start stop continues I to me it's like I don't I don't need to
do like
customer survey day to like pick up the phone and call customers or schedule
time with them and
like just genuinely approach it's like hey we we want to get better at this and
we are pro
actively coming to you to understand where are we falling short today what's
been frustrating
like to me like the simple start stop continue exercises like go get like get
feedback from your
customers from your employees from other people in other parts of the
organization like just
you know I'm a I'm a cubby seven habits person it's like seek to understand
that that I think is
the other part of a game like just don't assume like hey I know I know that we
would if we had
this tool we could communicate better I know that if I had this meeting I would
have been able to
to get this information out better like don't just operate off of assumption
that would to me
would be the last piece and it kind of goes into curiosity but but go out and
ask and even if you
don't act on everything the the fact that you went out and asked in solicitive
feedback is
going to get greater buy-in for whatever change or initiative you need to drive
drive as a result
of what you learned yeah it does seem like it's organizations get bigger it's
funny you lose that
idea of like why don't you just go talk to the customer why don't you just go
talk to the employee
you know you like feel like you got to like set up this big survey or something
and it's like
nothing better than a skip level meeting nothing better than just calling a
customer and being
like hey why did you buy why did you not buy what do you how do you what's your
experience and
you lose some of that is organizations get bigger and it's not that difficult I
think you can still
pull some of that off that's a good one yeah this to be gave it falls under the
category of
stuff it's like sometimes I'm you know having these conversations or giving
these presentations
and after the fact I was like gosh you know like I know this but why don't we
do it
and I'm convinced like there's there's two things that I'll say here you know
one is like
our our natural like tendency is is to be risk adverse and to like fall into
status quo
and so and so like I get that's part of our like natural tendency but I think
the bigger thing and
you know we talked about a couple examples it's like we know it's we know it's
going to be
difficult and we know it's going to take hard work and not that none of us like
are avoiding
hard work but but I think for a lot of especially contacts under CX leaders
like we're operating
this MOVE where we're just trying to survive and some of this stuff is like g
osh I would love
to think about some of this other stuff that would help us thrive but like
before I worry
about my communication with marketing like how do I get my people to stop not
showing up to work
and right and here's how it starts to come full circle well maybe maybe part of
why they're
not showing up to work is because you haven't gone and taken that first step
with marketing
and and we've got to be willing to take some risk and to hedge some bets on you
know sometimes
the the things that feel like they're going to help us in the short term are
hurting us long term
because we haven't gone after it yet yeah yeah well that's part of that but it
is get a little
bit back to that curiosity I mean you've got kind of step out in the the box
and get a little curious
and maybe start you know get out there a little bit um love it Justin it's so
fun to catch up with
you again it's been a while love that you're in the role I think you're going
to make a great
impact for all of us in the CX space so again congrats on you and the role here
at A by 8
as we drop here is we we finish up for those that we want to dive a little bit
deeper either with
you or with A by 8 what's kind of the the call to action you recommend here
yeah look Gabe uh
first off thanks for having me I always love my conversations uh with you uh
hey we can connect
LinkedIn uh Justin Robbins look for the bow tie and uh I'll be there and I'd
love look if you want
to talk about contact center stuff CX stuff or A by A happy to start there if
you don't learn
more about A by A for yourself it's 8x8.com uh and that's a great place to get
started
awesome awesome well again appreciate you joining Justin and for the audience I
hope you have a
fantastic day thanks cool thank you
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