CX Conversations

In this episode we discuss the issue of customer neglect with Daniel Rodriguez, the Chief Marketing Officer at Simplr. He just co-authored a book called “Experience Is Everything: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Wallets in the Era of NOW CX.” There are a lot of strategies companies use to gather customer data, but often company leaders will stick to the metrics that make them feel good about what they’re doing rather than actually showing what customers are feeling about their experience. We also discuss the different types of neglected customers, one of which is those who have a large social media presence. They can go on their profiles and blast their whole following about the terrible experience they just had with your company, causing possible revenue loss from all the lost customers that can result.

About their book 0:36
Why customer neglect is such a pressing issue 6:14
The different types of neglected customers 13:34
The late night browser 17:52
The negative networker 19:42
How to address these issues as a leader 21:50

“When you then try to understand ‘Where are we with our customers?’ You realize that there are a bunch of different things that are happening with customers, and they’re feeling many different ways that you are not actually capturing with data.” 7:39

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drodriguez4/

Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Christopher Stark, the VP of Customer Experience & Business Value at Khoros. He worked at Nike for 5 years where he learned the importance of branding and one of their mottos was “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” From there they decided they would focus on and represent the voice of the athlete and pay attention internally, which helped them understand better who they were and how they could better help their customer base. A lot of traditional programs that have been used for a while are now on the chopping block because of where things are at now and will have to be cut from what companies use.

Christopher’s background 0:41
Tying CX to business value 5:53
What’s not working right now 13:07

“Chat wasn’t even really around 20 years ago. How can a metric that came out during that time, now with an era of TikTok and Linkedin, and text messaging now to communicate with customers, the metric’s just outdated and I tell everyone, ‘You know what? It could lead to growth, but you need to actually prove that out. Find the metric. If it’s not NPS, go find the metric that does lead to growth in your company and use that.’” 9:46

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

We had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Dominicci, the Vice President of Customer Experience Operations at TriNet. Her background in industrial and systems engineering brings a very unique perspective to the CX space. She talks about a few things you should know and understand when starting out, such as where to find the data, where to house it, and how to bring it all into one place. They started looking at how customers think about and feel about certain things as opposed to just looking at the traditional, more mechanical data.

Where to start 4:30
Leaning into the data 9:29
Looking at processes to automate 16:37
The final step 22:16

“I wanted to see different work moving at an increased velocity and really the goal was to get the customer who’s on the phone or sent us an email that needs something, get them to the right resource that has the answer faster, and really be able to increase the quality of the experience that that customer was having.” 17:43

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

Today we’re talking about engineering customer success by diving into using data to drive success initiatives in your business. We brought on Joshua Moskovitz who previously worked at Google as a Customer Engineering Leader, and is now an angel investor in the same area. He talks about what you deal with as a leader in customer success and the changes that a business will go through, requiring you and your departments to adapt and evolve as time goes on. Joshua tells about the two metrics you use to measure data, one being vanity metrics, which can show you how many users you have and thus understand how much you’re growing, but then there are clarity metrics, which you use as operational guideposts that show you how often people are using the product, for example.

Where Joshua came from and where he’s going 1:23
Coaching future leaders on similar problems he’s dealt with 7:11
Working with multiple technologies 12:10
Using this data 14:02
Once you have the data 19:30

“You’re gonna need to know from a vanity metric perspective how many daily active users you have, or how many new signups you have, or just how quickly you might be growing over time, but it’s really the idea of clarity metrics. The ones that you want to be tracking because they drive the right behavior, or they measure the right experience for your customers. Those are the ones that you definitely want to build out, understand, and be able to iterate on.” 14:17

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

Our guest today, Jon Picoult, the founder of Watermark Consulting, helps companies impress their customers. He’s a leading expert in customer-employee experience and has been featured in dozens of media outlets including the Wallstreet Journal, the New York Times, NBC News forums, fortune 100 CEOs, and he’s been working with small entrepreneurs. He’s been helping people across the business manage this concept of customer and employee experience and is joining us today to talk about this idea of loyalty-enhancing strategies. You can save money and future hassle with customers by getting rid of issues before the customers even face them. Every time you say no to your customer, it saps their loyalty to your company.

Is customer satisfaction key? 4:51
Jon’s definition of customer service 6:21
Quantify the customer experience and understand where they’re coming from 13:17
The most universal problem/challenge in customer experience 15:21
How companies can make it easy to do business with them 19:19

“If you are doing things better in the experience upstream, for example making products that are easier to assemble, or providing sales materials that are easier for people to understand and more accurately set expectations. If you’re doing things like that, what you actually end up doing is obviating the need for downstream customer contact. You’re basically pre-empting dumb, avoidable reasons why customers reach out to you.” 9:49

Today we share audio from the Kustomer Now conference hosted by Matt Chabrier, Regional Sales Director at Kustomer, and he speaks with Aziz Razakov, Associate General Manager at MoneyLion, a FinTech startup. We discuss his role in customer loyalty and what changes the past year and a half have brought his company, such as a 24/7 support line, increased channels customers can contact through, increasing the visibility of how customers can contact them, and creating a more seamless internal complaint process. Response time is super important to customers and the quicker you respond, the higher customer service scores will be. 5 things to improve the customer experience: Response time, proper tools, self service functionality, partnership, and data analysis.

What he has seen change while at MoneyLion 3:35
What role he plays in product and customer loyalty 6:19
Changes the last year and a half have brought 7:26
Using AI and chatbots bots 9:47
Advice for rolling out this process 16:41
Responsiveness and channel type 20:35
Other tools that CX leaders ought to know about 23:50
What the future looks like 27:07

“We’ve taken the time to continuously improve the chatbot by adding more content, adding more functionality where the chatbot is not just spitting out FAQs, but is actually dipping into the database, making changes, and servicing the customer, and it’s been a huge success. I’d say through our chat channel we’re able to mitigate at least 50% of our contacts, which is huge.” 10:56

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewchabrier/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aziz-razakov-0673b793/

Today we have the privilege of speaking about CX transformation with Erika Putinsky, the Vice President of Customer Education at Mailchimp. She shares her 4 pillars to be successful in CX and what companies are looking for when they work with her. Showing up for your customer is necessary to maintain a good relationship with them because they’ll feel understood and appreciate the amount of care you show by listening to them. Focus on customer education and feedback to understand what the customer wants to both improve the company and cause the customer to stick around as they feel like part of the process.

What Erika does 1:03
Necessary pillars to be successful 3:17
The main thing people are trying to accomplish with them 5:23
The 2nd pillar 7:16
Empowering the underdog 9:29
The 3rd pillar, Process 11:11
The 4th pillar, culture 13:15
Something important to remember 17:38

“It kind of goes to what you were saying, Gabe, it’s that effort of showing up. Obviously in our current world you can’t do customer visits, or that kind of thing, but it’s about making the extra effort. So don’t hide behind emails. Mindfully listen to your customer’s unique experience … listen with two ears and one mouth.” 7:16

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

Today we revisit a previous episode of Kustomer when we talked with James Dodkins, known as the Rockstar Customer Experience Expert. Before becoming a specialist in customer experience, James toured the world performing in a rock and roll band. He now takes what he learned from that and applies it to customer experience. We talk about this and how we can frame our customer experience similarly. We also talk about how to structure our team in a way that rewards direct value to customers. We often reward our employees for doing things that don’t actually lead to greater customer satisfaction.

About James 1:21
How to Give Rockstar Customer Experience 5:01
4 Step Framework 9:27
Team Structure 13:24

“Only 4% of dissatisfied customers will complain and the large majority of the rest will vote with their feet. They’ll just leave and go somewhere else. If you are only fixing problems for the 4% of people that complain, you are missing a massive opportunity.” 11:00

Revisiting one of our previous episodes, we talk with Jeanne Bliss, founder and CEO of Customer Bliss. We talked about her book that explains her philosophy on customer experience. Too often we are watering down or over complicating customer service. Jeanne explains her thoughts in a way that can help any company no matter size. Jeanne also offers a link to the first chapter and quiz to her book for our listeners.

Would you do that to your Mother? 2:14
How to start Enabling Employees 7:53
Don’t make me feed you Soap 11:58
Pillars 3 and 4 14:10

“Do you allow for human error? If you return that rent-a-car 3 minutes late, are you get dinged for half a day?...Put people above process.” 15:31

We are revisiting one of our favorite episodes today with Dan Gingiss. Dan has worked for 4 Fortune 300 companies: McDonald’s, Discover, and Cubana in marketing and customer service roles and after becoming somewhat of a specialist in this, he now is a professional speaker and consultant on the topics.

Introduction to Dan 0:48
Intersection of Customer Experience and Marketing 2:09
How to Focus on the Customers 8:49
How to Contact Dan 17:20

“ If you want to change the sentiment in social media, the way to do that is not to bombard people with more marketing talking about how great you are. The way to do that is to have your customers talk about how great you are.” 4:47