Elevating CX Strategy
In the dynamic realm of Customer Experience, it's time to shift our mindset from competing with AI to leveraging its potential for something truly remarkable – a thriving brand community. Leading brands are already embracing this approach, and for Customer Experience professionals, this is a call to action. We possess the unique mindset, skills, and influence to redefine the landscape. Join us in this interview as we lay the foundation for this transformative journey.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome everybody, we're excited to get going.
Got a great guest today, we got Nate Brown.
- The Leibels.
- The Leibels.
- He is the co-founder of CX Accelerator,
a real brilliant mind when it comes to all things CX.
It was funny when I first, Nate,
I think when I first joined customer,
you gotta be like one of the first person.
You know, you're like Google.
I remember that conversation.
- It's like Googling, what do I do in CX?
(laughing)
I was like, Nate Brown, Nate Brown,
I was like, I should probably talk to these guys though.
I've known him now for coming up on like five years.
And he is just everywhere.
You'll see him on LinkedIn, you see him at events.
He was just recently speaking,
doing a keynote at a university in the Midwest.
So it's like the guy is,
you might be in the Million Mile Club.
- There's four of me.
I cloned myself.
I'm the good looking one.
You got the best one, Gabe.
- I was gonna say, there does seem to be,
I'm always on LinkedIn, I'm like,
where is he doing this?
You know, he just told me he was at a university
in the Midwest, I'm like, I don't know.
Okay, that didn't look like where you normally are.
- Anyways, Nate, thanks so much for joining Matt
on how the heck are you?
- Doing super good.
Love that additional conversation Gabe that I have.
And that's what I'm about.
I love welcoming people into this customer experience space
and in this community that we have, it's so special.
It's just awesome this work that we get to do.
The way we get to cultivate meaningful connections
inside the organizations that we serve
and the added bonus of just the larger royal community
that we have of people doing that work
across the entire world,
it's just awesome what we get to do, Gabe.
Welcome.
- Yeah, well you get to do the rest of us fake it a little bit.
- Yeah.
- Tell us just, I mean, I gave a little bit of an hit,
but tell us just a little more about your background
before we kind of jump in, if that's okay.
- Woo, let's go back.
So coming out to Coa Falls College,
move more.
- Oh, I meant even further back,
like nine, you born nine pounds, five ounces.
- Yeah, yeah.
Wasn't that big of a baby?
I'm a big baby now though.
I came out of school and started trying to sell postage meters
on the streets of Jacksonville, Florida.
- Okay.
- Turns out I wasn't not good at that.
I got kicked out of a lot of strip malls in Jacksonville.
But then ultimately did realize I love the customer service
element of my account manager role.
And so as I navigated, there was a short stint
of selling vacuum parts out of a storage unit,
but we'll skip over that part.
And we'll go to my first entry level customer service role
at a safety science company.
And I just loved it.
I just came alive in that customer service role,
just getting to help so many people in an accelerated format.
The day just went poof, like a hundred tickets a day.
And it was just helping so many people
with challenges around adult learning.
It was safety science and making sure
that they were staying safe in their jobs.
And I just loved it, Gabe.
- I love it.
Yeah, man.
- So there started the journey.
And then they ended up bringing this
a hundred years later to where we are, right?
- So then kind of took ownership of that team
and grew into more of that leadership mentality
of how can I equip others that are doing customer service
work to embrace it, to love it, to come alive
the way that I was able to.
And then really grew into more of that CX capacity
became a CX director inside of that organization.
So it went from really, really kind of that,
and it was on me to be thinking this way,
but kind of that reactive mode of taking a lot of tickets
and doing that on behalf of our department
to then morphing to, whoa, how can we embrace
the customer journey and reduce friction upstream
and think about it through their lens and their eyes
and really do something special here
with the overall experience that we're creating
and get myself out of this customer service box
that I was thinking about.
And that's still what I'm thinking about Gabe.
In the last four years, I've been doing quite a bit
of fun consulting and other projects
and just helping, mentoring CX professionals in this space.
And I've loved it.
- Yeah, tell us real quick just about CX accelerator.
What's the mission and what are some of the fun things
you guys are doing over there?
- The mission of it is to equip CX professionals
on every stage of their career journey.
But our absolute sweet spot is people
like you Gabe five years ago coming into this field,
coming into this work and looking for that launching pad
to be able to just feel good about what they're doing
and to have a community around them of people
that are wrestling with the same stuff
and that can support them and embrace them
and be able to ask some of those more vulnerable questions
where you might want to not put that
on the amplification of LinkedIn,
like how exactly am I doing my job?
(laughing)
- I'm gonna do it.
- Good to have a private community for that.
And right now we're really focused on
bringing some of that campfire field back
because I mean we're over 4,000 people now,
which is awesome.
And you get that amplification of perspectives
and worldwide input of what's going on
in the customer experience.
So I love that, but you're kind of missing
that more intimate community feel of where we started.
So we're gonna do both, right?
We're gonna have those giant mega threads
of just all the things you get to learn and see
and refresh yourself on in terms
of the big perspective, but be able to dive deeper
with a smaller group of people
who are looking to achieve that next milestone
in their CX career similar to what you're doing.
And embrace those folks, resource them,
encourage them, and just again,
accelerate them to that next milestone
and do that in the context of community.
So we're super excited about what's going on.
- Well, congrats, man.
It's definitely on the note.
- Thank you.
- For a lot of people and you've obviously
done a lot of good in the world.
That's not a bad thing to say,
put on the old CV.
Awesome, I appreciate the overview.
Want to dive into the topic at hand here.
You know, you and I have gone back and forth
and certainly AI is, yeah,
it's a little bit overused.
I mean, and I think everyone agrees.
There's obviously something there
and we're all rushing towards it,
but there are other ways to define, optimize,
you know, and really bring your CX strategy
to the next level.
One of the things you and I have been talking about
is this concept of community.
Maybe start big picture, you know,
"Why community?
"Why are you passionate about it
"and why do you think it can make a difference?"
- Yeah, and I'll pause for a quick second
'cause I do want to bridge the gap here.
I mean, we don't want to skip over the AI elephant.
It is so good and helpful and relevant.
And I mean, I love how Bill Stechos talks about this.
I mean, so the way AI is impacting CX
is really in three acts.
So it started as contributor, agent assist.
It's helping us to facilitate a better interaction
with customers.
But now it's a composer.
It's actually in those interactions
and in composing them itself.
And we're witnessing the music that's taking place there
and it's exciting, it's wonderful.
But then the third act,
the one we're moving towards, is that of character.
It's like a character in our lives.
It's a friend of ours.
Think about Jarvis to Iron Man.
- Right, I'll have to make that example.
- And what Jarvis, it's just there.
It's proactively taking care of all these things.
But we also, as CX professionals,
we get to be pepper pots,
which is the true guide to Iron Man.
I mean, it's the heart, it's the conscience, right?
It's why he wanted to sacrifice himself to save humanity.
So when you combine Jarvis and Pepper
around our customer, the hero of this story, Iron Man,
we get to do some really killer stuff, Gabe.
So I'm excited for that.
But the community element is there.
And I heard CK recently talk about how she's a brilliant
AI analyst in the space.
She's like, hey, everybody's asking me,
how do you compete against AI?
Don't, don't.
Let's do the things that we should do.
Let AI do the things that it's great at.
Let's do the things that we're great at as people.
And what we're great at, it should be great at,
is cultivating meaningful community.
But we've been struggling here, Gabe,
because right now, and you might've saw
the US Surgeon General come out
with the epidemic of loneliness report a few months ago.
- Oh, I didn't, oh, I didn't see that.
- It's scary.
It's hard to digest.
It'll tear you up a little bit.
It's just the state of where we are as a society right now.
But who, in the workforce,
is gifted to offer a solution here?
CX professionals.
- Yeah.
- We've got that servant heart, we've got that empathy,
we've got that desire to connect
and cultivate meaningful community,
which is literally one of the bullet points
in that report as the solution
is cultivating meaningful community.
And people are turning to the workforce, Gabe,
more than ever before,
to gain their sense of identity
and to find their community and their lives, big life.
Where it used to be that some of those forces
are diminishing in our lives.
I'm not saying it's right,
but community associations, family ties,
religious associates, a lot of these things
have diminished in their impact in our overall identity.
And people are turning to their work family,
(laughs)
looking for that community.
So we get to be there to help cultivate that
and make it something really special.
- Wow, wow, yeah.
I mean, I love the segue from AI.
That's a great kind of three part talk track.
(laughs)
I like that, I like that.
So as you think about in the loneliness,
sorry, one more click on that.
It's just was, basically we were saying
this report, the surgeon, Jim,
people are just as you'd expect,
I mean, with potentially some of the stuff coming out of
COVID and whatnot and just all kind of lonely.
I mean, I'm almost on a Googler right now,
but that's the general overview, or does it go deeper?
I mean, I gotta read that, that sounds fascinating.
- Well, I mean, it talks about how deadly
that loneliness is to us.
I mean, how much the mind is connected to the body.
And when we have that psychological void
that forms without that meaningful connection in our lives,
it impacts us physically, greatly,
which is why the US surgeon general is jumping in
and saying loneliness is killing you.
- Epidemic, aren't you?
- It is, truly.
I mean, that connection between our mind and our,
it happens, it overflows in all these ways
and that stress, that cortisol is manifest
in all these physical ways.
So if you wanna think about folks
that are not able to engage in the workplace
the way that you want them to,
us as CX professionals, we're asking for a lot.
(laughs)
Go make the magic with these customers.
You know, go do all these things,
represent the brand as an ambassador, innovate for us.
We're asking people to do so much.
And if they're in a place where they're isolated,
if the circle of psychological safety
has been broken for them,
all they can think about is themselves,
in that self-preservation mode,
until we restore them to that place of health,
they can't physically, mentally,
focus outward towards the customer.
So we've gotta do this as CX pros.
- Yeah, I love it.
Well, this is probably then the question,
then the follow-ups, how do you get started?
You know, I mean, if we laid the foundation,
I think for a compelling reason to consider this
is something that maybe we needed.
And I think a lot of us feel this,
but maybe you put some words
to the thought, how do companies,
how do people start to get down,
how do they dirty on this, how do we get started?
- I think that answer is emerging.
And I've been endorsing myself inside
of a lot of research here,
and just learning, learning a lot.
And my current response to this very complicated question,
to summarize it as best as I can,
I've been thinking and talking about a community
in three layers, as it is relevant to the workplace.
And that starts with servant leaders.
So you've got a group of senior leaders
who are, they understand the true brand core
of the organization.
There's a reason the business got started.
There's a mission, a promise that was made,
outward to the community, to the customers that were serving
about why this organization exists.
Is that group of senior leaders committed
to the defense of that promise,
to extending that and maximizing the value of that promise,
beyond shareholder value, which is obviously important.
And that is a core reason why the business exists,
but that's not why the business exists.
And do you have leaders that care enough about each other
and care enough about the organization and its promise
to where they're gonna serve each other in that?
And they're not looking to just extend their own legacy
or put themselves up on a pedestal,
or focus too, too, too much on the revenue generation portion.
- Yeah, I just don't know if,
I can't think of that many companies who do it.
And I think it's because of that last reason.
It's, you know, so, maybe it's the why and the what.
It's like, you know, what we need to,
we certainly need to be profitable.
We need to generate revenue.
That is what we, like, you know, it's capitalism
or, you know, businesses can't serve off right now
on just being quote unquote, nice, right?
But ultimately, that I think becomes
such a front and center.
It's like, this is our goal or our mission is to hit
this dollar and cents and it's like,
that's really our mission.
You know, that's what we're here to do is just that.
And so maybe it's the what and the why,
but man, as I hear you talk about that,
I know offense to everybody, just about every company.
I just don't think they've got that why nailed down.
And they certainly, if they, they may put it
on a piece of paper, but then actually in town halls
or in things like that, all they're doing
is talking about revenue.
- So me, Gabe, and again, I'm a 39 year old dude
who's a student of this.
I don't have the answers here, but what I see
and what I feel is that the difference is patience.
So these organizations can and should make money.
And what we know, Gabe, is that good CX does make money.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- But the quarterly shareholder mentality
is the antonym of long-term customer value,
is the antonym of great CX.
And so when we try to just cram in and accelerate
that revenue generation into these little pockets,
these little windows of time, these quarterly windows
of time, we're robbing from the future
of our own organization.
We're robbing from our future customers and their success,
trying to squeeze it in right here.
If we can just allow ourselves to have that longer term view,
that that's what great organizations do.
They can and should make money.
It's just a matter of, are you gonna make this little bit
of money now, this quarter, or are you gonna make
this money in two years?
- Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, sometimes they're long.
And look, there's gotta be a balance, I think,
as you're saying, but I do think a lot of us
are leaning towards maybe being too quarterly focused
or too dollar focused.
- It's hard, I get it.
Those are the pressures.
- The soft stuff versus the hard, you know,
like sometimes it's hard to go after the quote,
unquote softer side of the business,
but I love your point.
You invest in that.
You're gonna see the returns in the longer.
Okay, so number one is this servant leadership,
it's this idea of getting to the why,
making sure you do it at the leadership level.
Okay, got it.
Where do you go for layer two then?
- So then we are in layer two.
So the leaders are connected.
There is a concept of the ideal customer experience
we're trying to create.
The brand promise is clear.
Now it trickles it down to our employee organization,
the community of our organization,
and it's trying to awaken what I've been calling
guides and guardians.
So these are people, and it's a metaphor coming
from building a story brand by Donald Miller,
but the customers, the hero of this story.
- Oh man, Donald Miller, oh man,
I haven't heard that name for a while.
- Right.
- Is it that guy's the wrong story?
- Nashville boy, you got to represent Nash Vegas out here.
- I love it, I love it.
- It's a brilliant, just simple way to think about the fact
that we, the customers that hear of the story,
so we get to be the guide.
So what does the guide do?
Well, the guide is trying to bring the customer
to their definition of success, their destination.
So that requires us to know what that destination is,
what that requires a great voice of customer engine
to be able to do that.
It requires us to be a capable guide,
to have the skill, the knowledge, the desire
to walk alongside the customer on that journey,
and like Jarvis, to be proactive in terms of the overcoming
of the obstacles that one would navigate along this journey.
- So it's making your employees that ambassador, that guide,
but then it's a guardian too, like they care so much
about the integrity of the brand promise
that they are willing to defend it.
They're going beyond the bare minimum, they're going beyond.
So think about this, there's so much training
and chatter out there about how can we have crucial
conversations with our coworkers?
How can we navigate conflict in the workplace?
The vast majority of people just aren't doing it.
It's not worth it to them.
They don't care enough to have hard conversations
with coworkers, to hold anybody accountable to anything,
especially at a peer level.
But that's what great organizations do.
So if you care enough about the brand promise to guard it,
to defend it, you're going to be willing to engage
politely, respectfully, like radical candor,
we're going to care personally, like I care about you,
you're, we're in the trench together,
we're fighting this wonderful battle together,
but like I care so much about winning this
and ensuring that we protect the integrity
of our brand promise, this is something
that we need to work on together here.
This is something that needs to be better.
- Yeah, it does seem like, so this next level's all kind of
that really engaging and mobilizing this workforce
in a way that potentially they haven't done it before.
And one of those ways--
- I've been guarding it.
- I don't know if it's an employee engagement,
but this idea of actually being a guide and a guardian.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That is a different framing.
I mean, sometimes I think we, you know,
I use the word employee engagement,
employee satisfaction or something like that,
but especially I think nowadays with customers,
you know, those words might resonate more than ever.
They want this, I don't want to say a consult
with a relationship, but it's like,
I want someone to tell me how to become a superhero,
you know, like I want that.
I'm trying to think of--
- Or the pepper pots.
- Or the rings pepper pots type of thing, you know.
- Yes.
- Like where's the wizard who guides Frodo on the journey
to get the ring, you know, or--
- There is the wizard.
- Somebody to kind of help me on my journey,
because in a lot of cases, this is,
we're talking about things that are important to people, right?
I mean, these are the clothes I wear,
it's the identity I am, you know,
this is a very important kind of purchase for my family.
So, and it's crucial and it's like,
man, I just, if I could just have somebody
kind of help me understand.
So, I think customers actually want it,
but we've not been able to get employees to embrace it.
Where do you feel like some of the challenges
with this one have been like,
why are we not there?
Why are we not getting to this guides and guardians moment?
- Yeah, I mean, it's generally people
that they have not reached that level of tribe
to use tribal leadership language
inside the organization to where that has happened.
I mean, the vast majority of organizations
are stuck between tribe two and tribe three,
which what that is, is my life sucks.
That's a tribe one.
And then tribe two is, well, I'm okay, but all of you suck.
And then tribe three is like,
I guess we're doing a few things okay,
but most of the rest of you are not so good.
But like, I'm all right.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
how are we gonna do much in terms of external ambassadorship,
in terms of really stepping up
to wanna guide the customer
and intimately understand their needs,
to get them to their definition of success
when our lens is that much on ourself,
when the circle of psychological safety
is broken to the point where all we can do
is really focus on ourselves.
So we have to restore that.
We have to change that lens
to be more focused externally on our customers
as the hero of the story.
But it requires a lot of friction reduction.
People have to have the desire and the ability.
- Oh, yeah, the ability to.
- But when, and this, I mean,
so customer is an example of a friction fighting tool.
- That's right.
- But the average enterprise organization
has 464 custom applications inside of it.
So think about the digital ecosystem mess
that we have created.
Information is everywhere.
And the ability for a customer service worker
to just do their jobs requires
like 14 different tools in like a 30 minute window.
- It's just fun.
- So it's like, it's stupid.
It's ridiculous what we've done to ourselves in that area.
So you've got good people that have the desire,
but do not have the tools and capability
to actually fulfill their desire to serve well.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow, man.
- Amen to that.
And I love just the point of it's one thing
to have the desire and to know I need to be a guide,
but the ability to actually execute all that.
I'm glad you threw that in there
'cause sometimes I got it, but I just can't actually do it.
All right, we got one and two guide guardian.
We got kind of servant leader.
Okay, number three, where do you go for number three here?
- And this is where so few brands get to do,
but it's the most exciting one.
This is where we get to blow the doors off this building
and go outside in the world
and cultivate meaningful community with our customers.
We get to start co-creating alongside them
and we're attracting the right customers to us.
The care about this brand promise as much as we do.
They wanna see the world as a better place
in the same way that we do.
I'll use UL as an example.
That they had a clear brand core
of making the world a safer place
in these specific and good ways.
You can't be selfish with a brand promise like that.
You've activated your employees.
Now let's go out and let our customers join us
in the future of what it looks like
to make the world a safer place.
And you've got an actual community mechanism,
a virtual space in which that collaboration,
that organic collision is happening.
Now it's good and it's scary and it can be awful.
If the brand tries to jump straight to level three community,
the organization can't sustain it.
There's not that authentic overflow.
You don't have the business earning the right to over spill
over into their customers and invite them
into a community that already exists inside the business.
So you've got to have those layers one and two.
Then you get to start bringing those customers in
and you're learning so much from them.
The most dynamic and rich voice of customer channel
ever created is there.
Suddenly you have customers supporting other customers
in a really good edifying way.
So from a customer service perspective,
I mean it's tremendous.
It's like the greatest channel ever created.
(laughs)
So I mean there's just so much implication
to brands that can get to this level three layer
of community and co-creation alongside customers.
But that to me, Gabe, is the future
of customer experience work for great organizations
that can do it.
- Yeah, I mean it's a word that is sometimes thrown around.
I love the way you've kind of put it in the three layers.
Let's do one more click though on the last one there.
'Cause again, if you walked around to some six liter
and you're like you should have a community people
and be like, I know I just don't know how.
Where have you found that people on that last pillar
and you could go tactical or principle based,
but how do you kind of start to dive into that one?
Where is it?
Do you need to buy a tool?
Do you need to have, I mean I get you probably,
to your point you gotta make sure you have the leadership
and the employees in place.
But do you start running a newsletter?
Do you like, what are the principles of,
is it information, you gotta like,
Gabe you gotta give them great information often
through whatever means newsletter.
Like how do you, how would you guide someone
on that third pillar to get cracking?
- Yeah, I'm still learning a lot here, Gabe.
You know, I feel like I'm just in this past year
in seeing the true power and the future
of what community's going to mean for us.
And it was that report, you know, months ago
that woke me up and created even more of a sense
of urgency inside of me.
But with the experiment of CX accelerator
and that being as successful and helping brands
to set up a couple brand communities,
at this point what I would recommend
is to be thinking through, okay,
what is the true brand core here?
What is the promise that we wanna defend
and that purpose element where a community makes sense?
So in other words, we want to be collaborating
with people inside the organization,
inviting customers in long term
to where this type of interaction makes sense.
Not every organization is a use case for community.
But if you wanna see some great use cases
and get some of these practical steps,
belonging to the brand by Mark Schafer
is a wonderful resource that can help you to think through,
am I a good candidate for this as a brand?
And what would it look like
in terms of the digital extension of the community?
I mean, you're gonna be asking yourself the question,
where are our customers now?
And how can we, in the most frictionless way,
a lot of times there is the mobile app component
and there's some great pre-built community,
mobile app capabilities where you can build it,
right there, there is your Slack and your Discord
in incredible virtual spaces
where just remarkable functionality is already built in.
But there's some, sometimes,
depending on the needs of your community
and some of the specific things that you wanna amplify
with it, you might wanna custom build your own app
or your own interface in which those interactions
are going to take place.
So there's questions that need to be answered
as you navigate that journey
and then you gotta have good moderation here.
And so Community Roundtable is an incredible organization
that equips these community moderators
to be able to establish that originating culture
to when you start inviting folks in, they pick it up.
They see what you're trying to do.
They're excited.
They come to life about their ability to co-create with you
around a specific meaningful purpose
and they just kinda take on the vibe of it.
And it's almost seamless when it's a great community
but that requires very intelligent community moderation
behind the scenes to make that happen.
So you've gotta have some unique individuals
with that gift set and with that up-skilling
to be able to facilitate that type of environment.
Then you just cultivate it and grow it and let it evolve,
almost lose control of it a little bit
as you truly do allow your customers
to guide the future direction of that community with you.
- I love it man.
Oh my goodness.
We always do, man.
I could talk to this guy for like four hours.
I told him it was gonna be 15 minutes.
I think I'm on like 40 here.
Just a wealth of knowledge.
Man, I'd love to keep going.
I might have to have you back for something else here.
Either way, love the kind of message on AI.
I love the idea of bringing community out
in these three layers, servant leadership guide, guardian
then ultimately this customer concept
that really brings that to life.
So if people wanted to dive a little deeper in with you,
Nate or learn a little bit more about some of the cool things
you guys are doing at CX Accelerator,
what would be the best place to start?
- Yeah, hop on over to CX Accelerator.com
and see a great CX community that has come to life there,
modeled out in that context.
And then you can certainly ping me right in there
otherwise LinkedIn, Nate Brown, Twitter, CX Accelerator,
or I guess X, my apologies Gabe.
Would love to be a resource for you on this community journey.
This work has never been more important
as we as CX leaders get to use our unique gifts
to fight against the epidemic of loneliness
and earn the right to grow our brands in the right ways.
- I love it.
It's a great kind of closing statement there.
Mr. Brown, so again, appreciate you taking the time
and hope everybody enjoys the session.
Take care.
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