CX Conversations

Today we are joined by Alyce's CEO, Greg Segall, the Head of Customer Success at Alyce, Sean MacPherson, and Vikas Bhambri, Head of Sales and CX at Kustomer. Greg tells us gifting is an investment in a relationship and builds loyalty, strengthening the bonds with those you care about. They have tens of thousands of different options for gifts to send out so people can reach everyone they need to. These gifts can help you build your team and delight customers.

Introductions 0:37
Why gifting is important 3:50
Different gift types 15:55
Situations in which to use gifting 20:44

“Software and Service is a recurring revenue business. You by nature are building all of those experiences and delighting your customers, that’s not only gonna pay out on adoption advocacy, but you’re going to get referrals, you’re gonna get all of that. So when you’re thinking about cultivating your business plan for your gifting strategy, keep all of those things in mind because at the end of the day this is going to reduce your customer acquisition cost.” 23:14

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsegall/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmacpherson/
www.alyce.com

Our guest today Richard Vernon is a customer experience extraordinaire. He is here to talk CX. The real question we need to ask ourselves these days is how do you go from old to new? What is the paradigm shift? If you want to change a practice or behavior, then you have to change your paradigm and the results you’ll get is change. Spending time on the front lines and seeing customer experience through their eyes is transformational. Sometimes the best ideas will come from those who are dealing with customers all day every day and Richard talks about how they’ve gotten great CX ideas by brainstorming with the customer service reps.

Richard’s background 1:01
Paradigm shift 2:30
Coaching 5:57
How do we truly authenticate a customer in a warm and friendly way? 13:20

“So it went around, there were some ideas shared, but nothing really stuck, and then this cute little gal raised her hand in the corner. She rarely participates and she says ‘here’s what I say. I say well who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?’ I was ready to give her my credit card, my social security number. It was the most friendly way.” 14:02

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardvernon/

In this episode we talk to the Partner Experience Manager at Twitter, Sioban Massiah. She started off working in marketing back in 2008 when the recession hit and marketing was one of the first things to disappear, so she had to go into sales. She has found while researching customer experience that no matter what you did in any company, if you weren’t empathetic or knew your customer and figured out what they wanted, you would be unable to succeed. We talk about the company's purpose and Sioban says if you put your purpose out there, people who align with it will come to you.

Her background 0:50
Power of connection 3:38
Getting your employees aligned around your purpose 8:37
Empathy and connection with customers 12:20

“I think that the script is the foundation and the training to be connecting and actually empathetic with your customer is what you build off of. You need to hire people where these practices are actually part of who they are in general, or who they want to be and who they see themselves being so that way this script is something they can work with, but they can still connect and empathise with their customers.” 7:20

[email protected]
Twitter: justcallmesio

Today we talk about tools in technology for making the life of customers easier with the head of customer experience and employee engagement for the global company called Schindler Elevator Corporation, Stacy Sherman. She tells and updates us on the current situation with customer experience tech, and then what we should be using still and how we should be adapting/changing to meet current standards. She emphasizes the importance of establishing employee and company culture to maintain a high performing work environment.

Stacy’s background 1:14
Current environment of technology 2:53
Can you use the standard methodology? Or should you change? 8:02
The importance of culture 10:23

“How do leaders be able to really aggregate the voice of the customer and be able to have a pulse of what is going on from structured data, like surveys, and unstructured, social media, rating and reviews, and so much more. That’s where it wins. That’s where the game changes when companies are using tools to be able to listen, respond, close the loop easily.” 5:36

doingcxright.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacysherman/

In this episode we have with us the founder of Support Driven, Scott Tran, and we talk about a new community that’s popping up, how it’s used, and what it is and how it has become a great resource for people to share and connect. Tune in to understand how to create a sense of community during challenging times!

Scott Tran and how he created his community 0:52
About the community 3:51
How has the community reacted 6:39
Being more effective with less people 8:51

“There’s also a social aspect to it. We have talented people with different hobbies and that’s often been a way for people to connect in these times. We’ve had quite a few people start making progress.” 10:31

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-tran-188815a3/
supportdriven.com

Joining us today we have Senior Director of Customer Experience at Epicor, Chris Warticki. He has been in the customer service industry for 25 years. He worked at Oracle Corporation for 20 years, and he’s been at Epicor for the last two years running their customer success management team. We discuss the methods Chris uses in his company and how they approach customer experience, satisfaction, success, and the present. He tells us why it’s important not to rush to delight your customers to avoid overextending your teams.

Chris’s background 0:43
Why not rush to delight your customers? 1:30
Customer experience 3:23
Customer satisfaction 4:03
Customer success 5:42
Present 6:52
A big ah-ha moment 11:20

“When it comes down to it, everybody like I said wants our customers and your customers to be successful. Getting the right minds to be able to sit together and quickly evaluate what’s the business problem we’re trying to solve and let’s get it documented for future reference. So we can lean it over time. Go from good to great. Go from better to best.” 11:51

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswarticki/
@cwarticki on Twitter

In this episode we talk to Christine Deehring, the founder and CEO of Bump Boxes, a company that sells special and useful products for pregnant women. Bump Boxes is a subscription service that provides the necessities that a pregnant woman will need each month of her pregnancy. Christine tells us what her company does to bring their values to the customer and how their culture affects how they approach customer service. She also shares some things they do like rewarding their customers based on how long they’ve been with them and improving their structure based on feedback from their customers. Tune in now!

What is Bump Boxes? 0:53
A large spike in their social media growth 1:58
How company culture empowers the customer journey 4:33
How their feedback loop has been made more fluid 12:05

“Recently we rolled out a VIP program. So any mom that subscribes with us gets, depending on how long she’s committed, she gets a specific discount to our store just joining our subscription. And that was something that came up from just customer feedback.” 11:02

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-deehring-b1468693/

Joining us today we have the Director of Customer Support at FinancialForce, Adam Maino, and we discuss how to develop a world class customer support team. We talk about the importance of creating and cultivating an environment where your employees can fail fast and learn from those challenges. Adam tells us about how the structure of a world class customer support team should be organized and the types of layers and tiers they have. We discuss knowledge center services and how this process helps Adam’s people at FinancialForce. Don’t miss it!

About Adam and his company 0:47
Lessons he has learned 2:00
What the structure should look like 4:15
What is KCS? 7:04
How many employees equal happy customers? 11:22

“With my employees I never tell them what to do. I ask them what to do, right? It’s a request. There are no demands there. I think what we should really be focusing on is coaching our employees and not managing them so much. Kick open the doors and let them do their job.” 10:58

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammaino/

In this episode, we talk to Derek Hixon, Director of Customer Support and Implementation at WordStream. He has been working for 15 years in support and also has a pretty diverse background. Derek tells us what made him change course in life and how he made some decisions that have affected him for the rest of his life. He likes to find out what his team’s goals are, both in the company and as individuals in their own lives in order to build a stronger bond and make his team members and relationships more personable. Derek says to know your team and to use the data as a tool. We’re never making a huge, big change in the team, but we’re constantly making little changes that over time will turn into the big change we need.

His background 1:38
What has made Derek successful 2:57
Things that have changed the way Derek looks at support 11:23
Case analysis 16:10
Working in a box 19:30

“Things are better if they’re done right and slowly and usually you benefit from it in the long term. You can always get short term success with things, but if you have the luxury of time, which you don’t always have obviously, you can do really great things.” 9:02

https://www.linkedin.com/in/digitalderek/

Joining us today we have Vikas Bhambri, the SVP of sales and CX at Kustomer, Rob Young, the Director of Customer Support at BambooHR, and Jamie Whited, an expert consultant in client service and client experience. We discuss some of the things and issues each of us has had to deal with during the pandemic. A lot of industries are dealing with an increase in requests and inquiries, and we all have had to adjust and make sure we are continuing to provide that human to human help that people need to continue moving forward. Rob tells how they have been able to focus and become more empathetic with their customers by getting a lot more specific with the questions they ask. We talk about what kind of things to say to the customers who are struggling in these times, and then what we can do to keep the customer service representatives motivated and going in our company visions. Tune in!

Guest introductions 1:21
Where do we go from here with all these challenges? 7:26
How Rob has dealt with increases and decreases in inquiries 11:37
How to approach empathetic or non empathetic customers 15:00
How have they been able to keep the reps going? 18:52

“We always tell the teams, ‘You can only control your reaction. So if somebody is coming at you like that in a very frustrated manner, then you turn around and you just give them the biggest virtual hug and empathy that you can potentially give them, or tell them that you understand where they’re coming from and you are so sorry for their loss, and that we’re going to do everything that we can to make this right for you.’ And that seems to calm people down in pretty much any industry.” 15:29