CX Champions

This episode features an interview with Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader at HFS Research. Melissa discusses simple ways to apply automation to both the customer and employee side to create an efficient and balanced customer experience.

Quotes

*”​​There's so much data, in particular in the contact center, that just gets overlooked. It's a treasure trove of information.  How can you understand your customer before they call in? Do you have kind of a golden record or repository of this customer's background, their buying habits and what their social media sentiment has been? I think one of the big things that you can use data for is to actually help an agent have context before a customer gets on the phone. And that you can really tackle by having the right kind of omni-channel and the right CRM integrations.”

*”A lot of times, companies have a software license that comes with a chat bot, so they feel compelled to roll it out. And that has resulted in a lot of chat bot fatigue. Because it’s a poorly designed chat bot. They're just put out there with their FAQ's. You could get the same responses just searching the website. It's not just ineffective, it's also a detriment to the brand, because people are then having frustrating experiences on your site.”

*”If you do it really well, you have this nice flow between an intelligent virtual assistant and an agent. If it needs to hand off for context, that's going to make or break an experience.”

Time Stamps

*[0:08] The Case of Balancing Automation with Human Interaction

*[0:44] Introducing Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader at HFS Research

*[4:59] Evidence #1: All processes are manual

*[10:15] Evidence #2: Implementing automation seems too big a task

*[14:09] Evidence #3: No visibility on data to pinpoint what to automate

*[25:50] Debrief

*[26:35] HGS Pub

Bio

Melissa O’Brien is Research Leader at HFS Research. Melissa leads HFS’ research initiatives for CX services including digital marketing and sales, contact center, and digital associates. Melissa brings over 13 years of both hands-on industry and analyst experience to her role at HFS. She previously led IDC’s Worldwide Customer Experience Management Services program, including in-depth analysis of evolving contact center business process delivery and consumer communication trends.

Thank you to our friends

This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.

Links:

Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn

Check out HFS Research

Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn

Check out HGS

This episode features an interview with Boone Putney, Chief Technology Officer at Fetch Package. Boone talks about bringing excitement and beauty into the customer experience, the importance of all teammates understanding the end user, and how technology and CX go hand in hand.

Quotes

*“I'm definitely passionate about the customer side of things. I think you can have some pretty hollow technology if you're not thinking about the implications of the customer experience. Same thing if you're exclusively thinking about the customer experience and not figuring out ways to leverage technology to deliver that experience.”

*”Our entire team has an understanding of the end user. And our product managers have an end user focus. Their core job is to make sure they're bringing to the table this end customers’ core needs, and they can know that customer better than anybody. And then they can interface with the technology and the engineers to figure out a solution together, and make sure we're building the right solution. User research and user testing is a big piece of that. Having somebody dedicated to knowing that user and being their advocate within the product delivery process is very impactful for us.”

*”I love sales. We wouldn't have any jobs if it weren't for sales. But I think the place I've seen some cultures go wrong is being very sales driven, where you have a customer or a certain set of customers ask for functionality and just smashing it through the product without really understanding how it affects the core offering and the rest of the user base. So we're lucky that we can take a look at that from all angles instead of any individual perspective.”

*”[Customers] want us to take good care of their packages, to alert them when we have a package and make sure we deliver a package when we say we're going to, the way we say we're going to. But beyond that, anything we can do to bring some excitement and beauty into the process is really important for that end user.”

*“The most important thing to me is the symbiotic nature of technology and customer experience. In this day and age, you can't really have one without the other. Or you can, but it just won't be a great experience.”

Time Stamps

*[0:08] The Case of Multiple End Users

*[0:33] Introducing Boone Putney, Chief Technology Officer at Fetch Package

*[8:57] Evidence #1: Using clunky pre-existing tech tools

*[12:37] Evidence #2: Most processes are manual and inefficient

*[22:54] Evidence #3: Gig workers' rely on their parent company's app

*[27:19] Debrief

*[28:11] HGS Pub

Bio

Boone has spent over 25 years writing software from games for the TI-83 calculator to developing solutions for Fortune 500 companies facilitating billions of dollars in annual transactions. Luckily enough, his first introduction to programming was in 2nd grade as part of an advanced curriculum in the Austin area public school system. He soon convinced his parents to purchase the first family computer with a 25MHz processor and 8MB of memory. Boone continued his software engineering education through high school and college where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Computer & Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas. After graduation, Boone spent the intervening years developing software and leading teams across large multinational corporations and start-ups alike including UPS, State Farm, Waldo, CardMyYard, and Pizza Hut.

Thank you to our friends

This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.

Links:

Connect with Boone on LinkedIn

Check out Fetch Package

Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn

Check out HGS

This episode features an interview with Keren Lynch, Publicist and Manager of Communications for the Anaheim Ducks. Keren talks about the challenges they faced during the pandemic as an in-person events based business. She shares how the Ducks worked to be an asset to their community, and to engage with their fan base in new and unique ways, including socially distanced and virtual events.

Quotes

*“We ran a few food drives during the pandemic just to make sure everybody in our community had the resources during this time. We did a back to school drive where we made sure kids had supplies for school. We also did a number of socially distance events in the parking lot. So we really tried to stay as engaged as we could with our fan base, given the restrictions and keeping everybody safe. But it was a really neat time just because you realized how much of a community asset we were.” 

*“I think the best thing that has come out of the blended world is really seeing how much we're able to do without having fans actually come to the building, and how much we've been able to engage with the community and help in other ways, besides from the hockey standpoint. We have great ownership that allow us to do that and have given us the ability and the resources to be able to do that. And so it's just a testament to our foundation and our DNA that's within the brand. [...] I think that that's something that our ownership, the Samueli's, really try and touch upon and make part of our culture. And obviously we love having people to hockey games and that's always going to be the biggest draw. But I think that our charity component and everything we do off ice has really taken center stage.”

Time Stamps

*[0:08] The Case: The Pandemic Pivot to Virtual Engagement

*[0:36] Introducing Keren Lynch, Publicist and Manager of Communication for the Anaheim Ducks

*[5:40] Evidence #1: Reliance on in-person events revenue

*[16:20] Evidence #2: Struggling to diversify events

*[19:57] Debrief

*[21:08] HGS Pub

Bio

Keren Lynch is the Publicist and Manager of Communications for the Anaheim Ducks professional hockey team based in Anaheim, California. Previously, Keren was a Marketing And Public Relations Consultant at Stanton.

Thank you to our friends

This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.

Links:

Connect with Keren on LinkedIn

Check out the Anaheim Ducks

Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn

Check out HGS

This episode features an interview with Tim Ash, Founder of TimAsh.com & PrimalBrain.com. Tim talks about getting inside your customer’s head and creating an intuitive website that feels familiar and drives sales.

Quotes

*“You need to have focus and say no to 98% of audience expansion tactics. And then you have to have a super clear origin myth that almost acts like a magnet. A brand is not that visual styling you put on at the end. It's your brand voice and your attitude and your very reason for being. It's the mission. And that's what millennials and others will get attracted to. Nobody wants some generic corporate thing. It's very forgettable. So you have to have a narrow focus and a clear appeal to those people based on a deep understanding of their needs and their larger context. You may be just a small, transactional part of their life, but if you want to attract them, you should still resonate for them.”

Time Stamps

*[0:07] The Case: The poorly designed landing page

*[0:34] Introducing Tim Ash, Founder of TimAsh.com & PrimalBrain.com

*[5:34] Evidence #1: Low conversion rates

*[11:13] Evidence #2: Site has no clear visual hierarchy

*[25:01] Evidence #3: Landing page uses unfamiliar elements

*[27:23] Debrief

*[28:23] HGS Pub

Bio

Tim Ash is the Founder of TimAsh.com and PrimalBrain.com, and author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization. A computer scientist and cognitive scientist by education, Tim has developed an expertise in user-centered design, persuasion, and understanding of online behavior, and landing page testing. In the mid-1990s, he became one of the early pioneers in the discipline of website conversion rate optimization.

Thank you to our friends

This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.

Links:

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn

Check out Tim's books

Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn

Check out HGS

This episode features an interview with Robin Laine, CEO and Co-Founder of Transect, a SaaS company providing automated environmental compliance solutions for the built world.  Robin talks about advocating for the customer, making a product 10 X better than the competition, and the life cycle of a startup.

Quotes

*“We really should be the guide along a customer's journey, not the hero of their journey. Like they are the hero, right. We're just here to make their lives better. And so much of it is listening to their pain points, listening to what brings them joy, listening to the words that they say, and then writing them down and then saying them back to them. I mean, that's literally what we do. We do a lot of case studies with our customers and we'll take the exact words that our customers say about why they like Transect, some feature that's helpful for them, and we'll regurgitate it in a marketing campaign because we know that that's what their peers are used to hearing.”

*“We make money to control our destiny as a startup. The more that we can control our revenue, the more we have choice over who our future investors are, among other things. We're making money so that we can all continue to enjoy this really awesome culture that we've built and continue to build what we want to build and do what we want to do on our own timeline.”

Time Stamps

*[0:07] The Case

*[1:20] Introducing Robin Laine, Founder and CEO at Transect

*[5:08] Evidence #1: Mis-identifying the target customer

*[12:27] Evidence #2: Solving for the wrong problem

*[19:12] Evidence #3: Product is too similar to others on the market

*[21:30] Debrief

*[22:30] The HGS Pub

Bio

Robin Laine is the CEO and Co-founder of Transect.com. She has spent over 15 years managing natural resources compliance and permitting projects across the U.S. Along with navigating federal, state, and local permits for her clients, Robin established in-house natural resource compliance processes for oil and gas companies and gave presentations across the U.S. educating various industries on how to best manage federal and state environmental regulations.

Thank you to our friends

This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.

Links:

Connect with Robin on LinkedIn

Follow Robin on Twitter

Check out Transect

Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn

Follow Lyssa on Twitter

Check out HGS

Creating a great customer experience can feel like solving a mystery.  How do you listen to your customers?  What are their pain points? What do you do with the feedback they give you? From analytics to automation, how do you deploy the proper technology to get the right insights?  

Luckily, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to CX Detectives.  A podcast dedicated to cracking the case on your toughest CX challenges.  

In each episode, your host Lyssa Myska Allen teams up with a customer experience expert to discuss the most compelling CX challenges and how to solve them. You’ll hear insights from Fortune 500 executives and top CX leaders–the pioneers and visionaries who have reinvented industries and continue to blaze a new path forward. We’ll also explore how to be a more effective CX leader, the future of digitally-led customer experience, and much more.  

This show is for CXOs, CIOs, COOs, and anyone looking to improve the way they serve customers. So hit follow, put your feet up and get ready to help us create the future of modern customer experience.  Welcome to CX Detectives. Presented by HGS Digital.