Great conversation with CX expert Joe Wheeler about his brand-new book. The Digital-First Customer Experience. We talked about the 7 strategies he covers in the book, and went deep on several of the case studies he wrote about, including Starbucks, Lemonade, Nike & Amazon.

My favorite part about the book and our conversation was Joe's assertion that "Digital-First does not mean human second." He speaks in detail about how to humanize digital experiences, and how to weave together digital and human touchpoints, and also about how to scale human-powered touchpoints with digital capabilities.

Having read the book, I recommend it, and I think our conversation will convince you it's worth your time.

Resources & Links

Joe Wheeler on LinkedIn

Joe's speaker page

The Digital-First Customer Experience On Amazon

Howard Behar - who Joe references as his source of Starbucks wisdom

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

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Andrew's slides

Andrew's talk

Diverse Teams Perform Better And Are Smarter

Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

We talked about the one-story test for customer experience and design projects. The idea that every member of a project team should have the same story they're telling.

With the test coming when a new member joins. Can they also tell the story of the project? If they can, that's a sign that the purpose of the project is clear and simple, and that the communications about the project are clear and consistent.

The one-story test is also a great test for your team.

Do all members of your team tell one story about the team, and what you do? And is it easy for new members to your team to pick up the story? I've been on teams that couldn't pass the one-story test and it was tough for us. So administer the one-story test for your project, for your team, and see how you do.

Second idea I want to come back to was Andrew's contrasting cooperative mess and collaborative magic. Collaborative magic maybe sounds like it's easy. Everything is working well. Every piece of feedback from a colleague or project team member resonates and you incorporate it.

But it's not like that. Andrew shared a quote from a head of product design. "Whilst people were tired, at the end of it, they said it was the best project they worked on. Really productive collaborations take work. And they can be hard. So when it is feeling that way to you. Don't run from the difficulty.

Andrew's contrast between cooperative and collaborative, reminded me of the research from McKinsey, HBR and others that consistently show that more diverse teams outperform more homogenous teams.

Diverse teams are more innovative. They get better results, and they make fewer incorrect decisions.

But why? Because diverse teams focus on facts and are more likely to correct misstatements. They are more careful and deliberate in decision-making. They examine problems from more angles and thus they get better outcomes. Again and again.

And maybe you picked up on the fundamental contrast between diverse and homogenous teams. Diverse teams put in more work. But then it's not surprising that people report that being part of a diverse team feels less comfortable. Working hard isn't comfortable.

And that brings me back to cooperative mess versus collaborative magic. Don't mistake comfort for effectiveness. Don't expect collaborative magic to feel magically easy. It won't.

So here's another test to go with the one-story test: The easy work test. If your project work does feel easy, see that as a symptom that maybe something isn't working, not a sign that everything is fine because it's going easy.

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Great conversation with Andrew Hogan, focusing on specific advice for how to get important customer experience project work done in a post-pandemic world where it's hard to count on colleagues all being in one place at one time.

Learn about the One-story test for projects.

And hear why Customer experience teams need to embrace, not hide from the realities of project work in 2023:

1. You need to include more colleagues and stakeholders
2. You need to be more transparent and communicate more work in progress
3. You need to work harder at getting to know your colleagues as human beings beyond the work itself.

Get these right, and you have a mutually-reinforcing set of trends that will make your customer experience work stronger.

Resources:

Andrew Hogan on LinkedIn

Videos from Config Conference

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

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Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

Hi, everyone. Another loose threads, missing threads mini episode from the CX patterns podcast with Sam Stern. This week, I wanted to circle back on two things from last week's episode with Megan Burns. The episode was CX transformation needs employee activation. First a loose thread. I had a suspicion I was misattributing the quote to mark Twain when it was someone else's.

And it turns out it was right to doubt myself. It was actually Jonathan swift famous satirist and author of Gulliver's travels among other books, who said you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. As a reminder of the context, Megan and I were talking about the fallacy of CX teams to try to convince their colleagues

of the value of CX by using data to demonstrate its impact. Look, this is a misstep I'm guilty of myself. So not throwing stones here. Uh, but it is important to bear in mind that your colleagues who are reticent or skeptical of CX don't feel that way because they have carefully considered all the data and decided after much reflection that customer experience just isn't worth it.

No. If they've even thought about it at all, And many haven't, they have not given customer experience an in depth evaluation. Count on that.

Now a missing thread. Megan and I perhaps didn't quite emphasize how much activation is an ongoing project. Not a one-off. Look, we didn't say it was easy far from it, but I also want to be clear that once you start focusing on employee activation,

You should know that it is now a longterm part of your CX transformation efforts. It's worth it to get to a point where all employees across your company can make the right contributions to delivering great customer experience. You have to activate them. And then you have to empower enable and inspire them on a continuous basis.

Uh, activation. Is the start and then don't stop.

That's it for now, I'll be back with a full episode next week, excited to share a conversation with another former Forrester colleague. And Hey, if you're wondering if this podcast is just an excuse to have in-depth conversations with smart people, about my favorite topic, customer experience. Well, trust your instincts, Talk to you soon. And if you're enjoying the podcast would be very appreciative if you shared it with someone, you know, who you think might like it as well.

Thanks. Bye. 

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Ambiguity is the enemy of action.  

Countless customer experience transformations have been killed by ambiguity. CX teams must devote time and attention to galvanizing all employees to contribute to a CX Transformation.

But how do you do that? Activation

That’s the term my guest in this week’s Edition of the CX Patterns Podcast, Megan Burns, gives to the process of clarifying, specifying, and motivating that must happen for all employees to get on board with a CX transformation.

"You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place" - not a Mark Twain quote, no matter what I said in the episode...

Resources:

The Project Pyramid

Megan Burns on LinkedIn

Megan Burns The Company

Check out the CX Patterns Newsletter for a complete transcript of every full podcast episode (Loose Threads / Mini Threads transcripts are included in the show notes)

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

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A cautionary note that Agile does ask you to commit a lot of time to meetings, and communications.

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

 hi, everyone. Another loose threads missing threads mini episode from the CX patterns podcast. This is Sam stern. This week, I wanted to circle back on two things from the agile for CX podcast episode with Lara Nowak last week. First, a loose thread. We talked about all of the meetings, ceremonies and communications that come with agile.

And I talked about it as if that was only an unalloyed good. But of course, all of those meetings, all that communication that takes time. And attention. And it can be burdensome to maintain, especially over multiple sprints and with larger project teams. Now that's not a reason to avoid adopting agile, but as someone who personally is always trying to push back on the number of meetings on my calendar each week I did want to flag that agile can be meeting heavy.

And then a missing thread. Agile for customer experience is not just agile for customer experience design projects. That's what Lara and I have experience with directly. And so that's what we talked about in the episode. But I have other colleagues, one being May Lugemwa in particular. And thank you may for sharing your experience here. And I also know of other CX teams who are applying agile to ongoing programs.

So, for example, other agile uses for customer experience include continuous iteration, when running an ongoing customer experience program like onboarding or customer attention, agile is a great methodology in those situations to continue making steady progress against the goal of customer retention or smoother customer onboarding. Similar impacts for some teams using it on cx measurement initiatives as well.

Anyway i missed that in last week's episode and so wanted to highlight it In the loose threads, missing threads mini episode. That's it for now i'll be back with a full episode next week excited to share a conversation i had with my former Forester colleague megan burns sharing ideas and examples for how to galvanize your entire organization To take action on cx transformation 

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In this episode, I talk with my former LinkedIn colleague, Lara Nowak, about adopting Agile for customer experience work. Neither Lara nor I are Agile experts, far from it in my case. But our recent experience of having to learn Agile and apply it to customer experience work gives us "Fresh Eyes" to both the challenge and opportunity of using Agile.

We cover the important elements of Agile, concepts like Sprints, Retros, User stories, Planning Poker and the like. Fittingly, in a podcast called CX Patterns, we also talk about using the Fibonacci Sequence for estimating time and effort during sprnt planning.

More background on the meaning of Slow is Smooth. Smooth is fast.

Planning Poker Overview

Planning Poker Online Tool  

Fibonacci Sequence

The Treasure Hunt Retro

Miro – Tool for customer journey mapping, among other experience design methodologies

Lara Nowak

Check out the CX Patterns Newsletter for a complete transcript of every full podcast episode (Loose Threads / Mini Threads transcripts are included in the show notes)

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Whatever happened to Enron, WorldCom, ArthurAnderson or ValuJet? Hint: Loss of Trust

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

Hi everyone. Here's the second edition of the loose threads, missing threads mini podcast episode for the CX patterns podcast.

This week, I wanted to circle back on trust. A couple of additional things to share first, a loose thread, something I want to revisit from last week's episode, that was maybe not quite right. And I want to go back to the equation for trust, because I don't think that I mentioned clearly enough that it connects to what your brand is promising and what you are promising your customers about your experience. So for example, Think about Southwest airlines, they do not offer assigned seats on their flights. But that is not a betrayal of their customer's trust because Southwest never promised, assigned seats. It's customers have chosen the airline, knowing that they won't get to choose their seat. That's part of the equation for keeping ticket prices low. Conversely, if I fly in one of the mainline carriers, let's say Delta, for example. And I choose my seat as I book my flight. But then Delta moves me to another seat without my consent, or I get on the plane and another passenger has decided to sit in my seat. And if Delta didn't do anything about it. Either of those scenarios would be a breach of trust. The upshot of this is that you want to think about what promises you are making both implicit and explicit. And that if you don't uphold those promises, it will be a betrayal of customer trust. And now a missing thread something I didn't mention in the podcast last week. Loss of trust with your customers. Is such a bad outcome that it can lead to brand death. I think Enron Arthur Anderson, WorldCom value jet. I'm sure you can think of a few others. If you remember those brand names at all. It's in part because of their notorious betrayal of customer trust. So to put a fine point on it. The absence of trust means a company cannot 📍 exist. That's it for now. I'll be back in a week with a full CX patterns episode.

​ 

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In this episode, I talk with my friend and former colleague, Elena Garvey about the importance of Trust to customer expeirence. We cover the two general models for customers to trust companies they do business with, strategies for buildng trust, and for maintaining and restoring trust when it is threatend.

Emotion matters most to CX perceptions, and Trust is a foundational emotion in customer experience.

Links:

Elena Garvey

Tylenol Poison Pill Scandal

The Power Of Trust book

Using Good Friction To Build Trust

Full transcripts for all episodes are available at the accompanying CX Patterns Newsletter.

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

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The first mini episode of CX Patterns, what I'm calling Loose Threads & Missing Threads, correcting any mistakes, and adding any overlooked examples or points from the main episode.

Links:

Push Notification Fatigue

Carrot Weather App

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.

Full Transcript: Loose Threads and Missing Threads: Anticipation Edition

Hi, Sam stern here again. So new cx patterns episodes will drop every two weeks but I had a few things I didn't cover in the last episode And it occurred to me that this is probably going to happen every episode.

You put something out in the world and the minute you do a few more examples or ideas pop into your head but also feedback and suggestions from people who engage with the content thank you by the way makes you wish you could update the episode. At least it makes me feel that way. So instead of editing every episode incessantly, not a healthy habit, I thought I would release a mini episode in between the main episodes to share a few more tidbits.

I'm calling these Loose Threads and Missing Threads riffing on the pattern's theme. Loose Threads are where I think I got something wrong, or at least not quite right. And Missing Threads are something left out that I want to include.

So first a loose thread from the anticipation episode. There was a wonderful cartoon shared on LinkedIn this week that made its way to me thanks to Gloria Gupta. Appreciate the share. The cartoon, linked in the show notes, highlighted the absurd number of notifications we get. Estimates Range as high as 80 per day for an average smartphone user. And so the implication of that is that it is easy to take an idea like the one I shared in the first episode of the podcast: set reasonable expectations for the upcoming experience, and build anticipation for it so customers are excited. You can take that to an extreme that is no longer a good experience. That's the lesson from this cartoon and it's a great caveat of caution to add.

And now a missing thread. I mentioned in the podcast that barring a few notable exceptions surprise and delight moments are always provided through human interactions. So I wanted to share one of those notable exceptions the Carrot Weather App. The snarky, funny, insulting tone of the weather updates it provides makes my day, almost every day. You can set the notifications along a few dimensions, politics for instance from apolitical to anarchist with stops in between from conservative to liberal you can imagine all the different settings. You can also turn the profanity on or off and turn the personality up to 11, if you like which is my preferred setting the Overkill Personality. Anyway, I think the creativity, the humor, the surprising references in the notifications, combined with actual accurate weather forecasting available with one click or as a notification - see above - which makes it effective and easy while also having a strong emotional appeal that the user can personalize. I think all of that together nails the equation for digitally delivered surprise and delight moments.

That's all for now thanks for listening to the first loose threads and missing threads Mini episode of the CX patterns podcast I'll be back next week with a full episode.

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