Scaling CX Success
The landscape of Customer Experience (CX) is constantly evolving, and today's leaders require actionable insights to bridge the gap between their current state and their desired CX destination. To meet the demands of the modern customer, businesses must adapt and provide support that aligns with customer preferences. In this informative session, we will explore practical advice that customer service leaders can implement to scale their CX efforts effectively. The discussion will cover essential topics such as people management best practices, process optimization strategies, and the pivotal role of technology in enhancing CX.
(upbeat music)
- All right, welcome everybody.
We're excited to get going here.
We're gonna be talking about scaling CX success.
And I've got a dear, dear, dear, dear, dear friend,
Mary Drummond's joining.
Mary and I do go back though.
How long is it, Mary?
It's gotta be five years, six, seven, four, four.
- I think that the main interaction
was in the height of COVID.
I think that COVID is what really like
will lock us down there.
- That's true, it's a real mess.
- Okay, that's not seven, it's more like three.
Anyways, Mary and I have gone back and forth
and I really, she was doing some amazing stuff.
I'll let her talk about that at a company called Worthix.
But where I actually came across her was,
I've been just a huge fan of her podcast,
which I wanted to talk about in a second as well.
And I was trying to get into some podcasting myself
and I came across her and I started to follow it.
You know, you try to find experts
and see what they're doing in her style,
her confidence, her command, I thought was so cool.
And so I'd reached out to her way back one
and since then we've kind of been back and forth
on all the different journeys during COVID
and the different lives and stuff.
So anyways, thank you so much for joining Mary
and how the heck are you?
- I'm great, thanks for having me, it's an honor.
Since you have been on my podcast before,
I feel like the tables have now turned.
So I'm excited to have you interviewing me
and having a conversation about customer experience.
It's the topic that both of you,
you and I are so passionate about
and I hopefully it will bring value
to the people who are watching this.
- 100%.
So before we dive in, I alluded to it a little bit
but maybe touch just on your background
and some of the fun things you've done
in the world of CX.
- So I am a marketer who's an accidental customer,
experience, a fictionata, let's call me.
Yeah.
So I kind of stumbled upon it in my quest
to create content for the MarTech company
that I was with, Worthix.
And this was like seven years ago.
And this led me into a path of discovering thought leaders,
books, publications.
And this is at a time when CX was still at that crescendo,
it still hadn't reached, let's say, full traction
in the market.
And I began researching it.
And one thing that I found really, really early on
is that the CX community is so vibrant
and most importantly, so empathetic.
It is probably the most empathetic market
I have ever had the pleasure of being in.
Everybody who's in it wants to help genuinely.
And I think that that's the calling part
of customer experience, having that built in empathy
that we have for others.
And the value that that brings
is that we do become representatives
of the customer inside of our organizations.
We champion for them, we speak for them,
we design for them, right?
So my accidental CX background
has to do with the amazing people,
including yourself, that I had the pleasure
and the honor of speaking to in my interviews,
in my publications and just the stuff that I learned,
I think that eventually I consumed so much of it
that I started regurgitating it myself.
So yeah, I'm not coming at this as an expert.
I'm coming at this perhaps as the consolidation
of the voice of the customer experience market.
How about that?
- I love that, I love that.
Yeah, and the voices of CX podcast was awesome
and it's mental to a lot of, you did so, congratulations.
Also won some great awards, I think,
being recognized as an influential person in the CX space.
So appreciate you taking the time today,
would love to kind of dive into the topic,
maybe just start big picture, I mean,
obviously the world continues to change,
there's new technologies all the time,
this word AI is something that,
we're all trying to figure out what's going on with it.
Customers are more demanding,
how would you paint the picture
of just what the heck's going on in CX?
- Well, I mean, I don't want to keep going back to COVID,
but going back to COVID,
I think what happened is that there was a massive shift
in the market after that, because,
- Yeah.
- If we consider that so much of what we do
has to do with understanding customers,
understanding decisions, understanding the market,
understanding the ecosystem,
and we had to wipe a clean slate during that time
where the world just kind of turned upside down, right?
And are things getting back to normal?
Yes, but differently, right?
Some very fundamental things
about how customers interact with brands changed.
So there are so many things
that were completely valid five years ago
that in a regular scenario would have perhaps progressed
into a different state, instead of progressing,
it was a full 180.
And we're getting behavior
that's not an evolution of past behavior,
it's completely new behavior.
So I think the most important takeaway
that we should all have from everything that happens
is that Black Swan events will happen,
they won't happen all the time,
but when they do happen,
it provokes a change in behavior
that then forces us
to understand how fragile the entire ecosystem is.
And it makes us reflect on how urgent it is
to constantly keep up with how the expectations
and the needs and the pains of customers
are continually shifting.
And that we need to stay on top of it.
And if we don't, we will very, very quickly get overrun
by somebody who will.
So I think that that's the state of the market right now.
No, no, I think sometimes it is,
it's just an awareness that you don't maybe know everything
and that the world is changing
and you better get on the horse
or you're gonna get left behind.
So it's probably not the horse, it's maybe the train.
I don't know, that just came out.
The Tesla, you get on the Tesla.
(laughing)
Like, you know, sometimes you say stuff
but then you're like, "Brain, that was not what I was supposed to be saying."
Anyways, I think that's the right framing though.
Get on or get off, it's coming, so you better get going.
So as you've seen all these changes,
you obviously are running a business yourself.
You in the past have been instrumental, I think, in coaching
and framing it up for others.
How do you see organizations being successful?
Like what are some of those core components or core keys
that you would pass along to kind of help organizations
make this adjustment, this change?
- This is, I think that you're asking me the final question
of a whole bunch of other questions.
So I'm gonna skip to the end and then hopefully
throughout this conversation, we can answer the other parts in between.
So starting at the end here, I think that the key to success
and the organizations who have been very, very successful
in the past couple of years,
are those who have been able to create a combination
of signal tracking and insights tracking.
So not only listening to the customer,
but also tracking the data.
Or if you prefer to switch it around
'cause your priorities are different,
not only studying the data, but also listening to customers.
So a combination of those two factors.
And truly, the coolest part is that is what AI
is helping us do right now, right?
Find the best way to connect feedback with data at scale, right?
So I'm sure that there are ways for AI
to help smaller operations or operations with less customers.
But when we're talking about the true success
of artificial intelligence for aiding customer experience,
we're talking about organizations that have hundreds
of thousands, millions of customers.
They're the ones that truly need help.
They need a little something extra to be able to track
every single touch point of a customer along their journey.
And they're the ones that are benefiting the most in fact,
from the advancements of artificial intelligence.
Now, the interesting part, go ahead.
>> No, I'm just gonna say, in your experience,
I mean, there's so many, this word AI is strong.
I mean, I think people have been looking
for efficiencies and automation for a long time.
And I love your framing in the sense that it's really
most advantageous when there's big quantities or there's,
it's not when you're dealing with a high net worth client.
AI probably isn't maybe as valuable in those cases.
Is there some places where you found technology, data,
AI, automation, I'm using broad categories
to be most beneficial to kind of see ex professionals
in the past?
>> Yeah, so there are a couple of them.
One of them is AI intelligence that I think is really important.
So not only is that the analytics that you can actually
process with artificial intelligence,
but it's in predictive analytics as well.
Being able to amass customer data
and predict new behavior.
So that part I think is extremely valuable
when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Personalization, I think personalization is something
that some people hate, other people love.
In most cases, people love at least some degree
of personalization.
We don't want to feel like you're hitting me
with a one size fits all.
I think that even if you speak to younger generations,
you will find that they are deeply annoyed
if they get served an ad that isn't intended
for their demographic.
You know, I have a running joke with my friend.
>> They're annoyed about everything.
Don't they?
>> Okay, okay, but in their defense,
I have a group chat with my girlfriends.
And a running joke that we have
is when we get served an ad for menopause
or something that's targeted to an older generation
and we're like, "How does the AI, why does the AI
think I need this?"
And I mean, I know, that's a TMI example.
It's a TMI example, but it's a valid one, okay?
I'm not personalization.
I want you to know that I'm not in menopause yet.
Come on.
(laughs)
>> There you go, the point is the point.
I mean, technology has got to enable goodness
if it offends people, then, you know,
your office is not doing it, right?
So you're right.
You don't have to be Gen Z or X or whatever it is for that.
That's everybody.
>> Exactly, so, you know, personalization
is another great field.
But I also think that customer service
in general, customer support has benefited greatly
from a generative AI in the past couple of years,
from chatbots to all of that.
What's it called?
Intelligent, come on, Gabe, help me, you know these things.
Intelligent, they put you in contact with the right person.
>> You're routing the crap that we're using.
>> Really quickly.
Intelligent routing, yeah.
So in other words, getting you to the right person
as quickly as possible so you're not bouncing around
when you call into a customer support line.
>> That's amazing.
But then there's really cool stuff as well.
Like conversational AIs or NLPs that are used
as a way to actually survey customers without surveying them.
So this is something that you have technology companies
out there that are doing it in a survey style
where they have a survey that's powered by AI.
And then you have other companies that are simply taking
data from either from call centers or customer service
or from chatbots and amassing or mining that data
to be able to gather the voice of customer
without having to ask.
And I believe that that is perhaps the most recent update
that has happened in customer experience.
And not only customer experience,
because that goes into marketing research,
that goes into data analytics.
That's an entire universe inside of large organizations
that is changing and is changing a lot with AI.
So the power that we have of understanding customers
without having to ask them,
without having to prompt them for responses
and how to use the data that we already have
either in our CRMs or our call logs
or other forms of unstructured data
to be able to capture the voice of customer
and then cross it with the other data points
like transactional data inside of our systems
and come up with the very best decisions
on how to provide a fantastic experience for customers.
- Yeah, I like, obviously the personalization thing
stills in my mind, I think that's super relevant.
But I think sometimes this idea that data,
if you've got it and you can use it,
some of the examples you gave it,
feels like people are screaming for it
because it is creating a world
which I think CX can be so much more powerful.
I wanna flip gears just for a second
'cause you got the technology and you got the AI side
of the house and it gets something out,
but you can't forget the people side of it.
Obviously in CX there's customer service agents,
there are people and people always play a big role
in this, how do you see that balance playing out?
Talk to me about the people side
or how you've seen technology and people work together
to drive kind of that CX amazingness.
- I really do think that to the technology piece
is that it's a 10%.
So there's a rule, I don't know who came up with the rule
but it's the 70, 20, 10 rule.
70% of change has to do with structural change
inside of an organization, it's processes,
it's systems and all of those things.
And then you've got the 20% that is the data
and getting the data right and being able to use
the correct data to do the correct thing.
So measuring data correctly.
And then 10% of it is technology.
So I would lump people into that 70%
which is the biggest effort that has to be done
in order to generate change.
So people are everything.
And when we're implementing technology,
we're not trying to get rid of people.
We're not trying to exclude people from the equation.
We're trying to empower them.
We're trying to make their actions so much more impactful
in a customer's life.
We're trying to start to arm them with the information
and the knowledge that they need
in order to best provide for that customer at that moment.
So that's where the intelligence portion
of the technology comes in.
I mean, if you have customer support
or if you have call center agents,
those guys are on the front line every single day, right?
They're dealing with customers through ups and downs,
normally getting people in a highly emotional state.
It's perhaps one of the hardest jobs in the world.
Why shouldn't we do everything in our power
to make their lives easier?
You know, a couple of years ago, I was at ICMI
and listening to people talk.
And not only that, listening to managers,
call center managers talking about the struggles
that they deal with and just keeping their people
with their head above water, keeping morale high
and just reminding them that the purpose of all of this,
adding purpose and value to it.
And I think that that's what we need to do
as organizational leaders, when we're bringing technology in,
let's try to remind our people of the purpose
and that that technology is but a tool
and it's empowering you.
There's an element of storytelling gave that I tell
every single person I know because it's so important.
When you're at a B2B SAS organization,
what you're selling is the tool.
And who are you selling that tool too?
You're selling that tool to the protagonist of your story.
So every story has a protagonist, every story has a hero.
And that hero is the one who goes out to battle
and makes things happen, right?
So when you're providing a SAS technology,
what you're doing is you're essentially
the intelligence that that, think of a superhero movie,
think of a superhero, think of any superhero,
think of Batman, that has Albert, right?
Who is constantly arming him with the information
and the knowledge and the tools.
And he's constantly in his ear telling him what needs to be done.
Another example that we used a lot in my previous organization,
everybody has a guide, right?
Iron Man has Jarvis and Jarvis is the intelligence
that shows him what to do, provides him with a weaponry,
et cetera, et cetera.
That's what our job is.
When we're bringing technology into an organization,
we're empowering them, we're arming them with what they need
to succeed and be the hero of their story, right?
So when it's CX technology, we're arming those front liners.
We're making them more powerful.
We're boosting the power that they already have
and we're making them stronger, you know?
So I think that company leaders also need
to see technology in this way.
Not as a way to eliminate people,
but as a way to make people better and stronger
and more efficient and more powerful at what they already do.
>> Yeah. I've always loved Iron Man example of the charts.
That's a great one.
In 17, 2010, I noted that down.
I'm going to have to steal that from.
I think that's a great balance.
So it is about empowering something necessarily always
about eliminating it.
Sometimes you get so far down this path and it's like we're not even --
it's like not even in any view at the moment.
Like right now, we need to name it.
And the hardest job in the world,
customers are let's just help them out, man.
>> Right. >> As we kind of wrap here,
you know, so many people are facing so many challenges.
We hit a couple different topics, but what would be maybe
that piece of advice you'd leave behind
for customer service leader or the customer experience leader
trying to navigate through these ever changing
and rough waters.
Any kind of last statement from here?
>> Yeah, it would perhaps be a summary of everything
that I said, right?
It's also really easy to get caught up in the hype
of technology, especially when that technology is being sold
as the silver bullet, right?
Either the silver bullet or the terminator that's going
to come and kill us all.
It's the, you know, there's no in between
when people talk about AI.
But I think that the important part is that if we understand
that AI is simply a way to improve and scale and --
almost multiply the efforts that we're creating as humans.
So you can't think that by bringing AI in, you're going
to fix all your problems.
If you don't do the homework and actually take the time
to understand your customers, understand their pains,
understand their needs, design a journey that's positive,
eliminate friction and effort from the experience
these -- this is data and intelligence
that AI can provide you with.
But you have to do the design, the understanding
of the customer and everything that comes in taking that data
and turning it into a plan that works for people
that's still going to come from people.
It's not coming from machines, right?
The machines are simply providing you with the data
that you need to make informed decisions, right?
So instead of seeing AI as something that's going to come
in and solve everything, see it as something that can provide you
with the information that you need to make the best possible
decision for your customers.
>> Okay. It's all about enabling.
It's not about eliminating.
I like that.
Awesome. It's so fun to catch up with you.
Appreciate it.
It's fun to kind of catch up and talk CX again.
Best of luck in all your endeavors.
So thank you for your time.
And for the audience, have a fantastic day.
Thanks, everybody.
>> Thank you.
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