CX Conversations

Today we’re revisiting one of our previous episodes with Matt Dixon. We talk with Matt Dixon from Tethr about some of the latest and greatest trends in customer experience at the time of this recording. Matt is known for his statements on how we shouldn’t try and delight our customers. He explains this further and how we need to redirect our focus to reducing effort for our customers and make it easier for them. So rather than focus on putting out fires, prevent the fires altogether. He also gives direct advice on how to apply this, false myths of customer experience and what kind of people to hire.

Intro to Matt 2:22
Don’t Delight your customer 4:22
How to Start Applying it 16:12
Tethr 29:18

“When something’s gone wrong and the customer reaches out and they're trying to get a problem fixed, those customers whose expectations are exceeded, are actually no more loyal than those whose expectations who were simply met.” 6:11

In this episode we have Randall King, the President of Commercial Solutions at Conduent. As the Group President of Customer Experience Management, Randall has responsibility for 25k customer experience professionals who deliver best-in-class service globally to millions of customers on behalf of their clients. In this role, Randall drives strategic transformation, stronger client relationships, and service excellence. He works in close collaboration with business and technology leaders to bring innovative solutions to their clients, while delivering an integrated and seamless experience to their customers.

Advice for someone starting out in the customer space 2:38
Priority and balance 6:54
Good and bad lessons learned 10:41
Exciting trends in the market 18:57
Working from home 21:41
A summary statement for transforming your business 26:33

“Perfection is the enemy of done and it’s hard to turn a ship that’s not moving. In my career I’ve had so much more success if you just get under way and of course things like agile methodologies really help with that with sprints, but just get out there and get going. Course correct as you go. You’ll learn, you’ll get better, and as you have progress, people get excited, and then they want to achieve more and before you know it, you’re really driving out some great results.” 3:34

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rking2002/
[email protected]

We know the customer experience is important because without happy customers, our businesses will fail and our customers won’t be happy, but what truly creates standout brands is this idea of an exceptional experience. This means no hurdles, no drawbacks, and nothing to jump through. CX, whether you like it or not, is a team sport that touches every part of the organization. I give 3 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset.

What creates standout brands 0:42
The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience 1:38
3 steps to follow in order to prioritize a customer first mindset 2:52

“The responsibility of creating exceptional customer experience, it bleeds throughout the entire organization and it starts with that idea, this customer first mindset. A customer first mindset means you put the needs of your customers first. Hopefully that’s obvious.” 1:38

In today’s episode, we have Jarvis Harris, the Vice President of Global Customer Success at Visier, joining us. Visier is a cloud-based analytics application that delivers fast, clear people insight. With best-practices expertise built in, Visier asks the right questions and promptly identifies opportunities and risks within your organization so you can confidently take action. Jarvis tells us about the Driver, the Dreamer, and the Doer 3D model that helps them create the best experience and the most success.

Jarvis’s background and what he does 3:22
Driving the experience/3D model 4:30
A different experience for each of them 7:00
Process 11:28
Systems 14:01

“It’s about getting introduced before the deal is complete, getting that document filled out, and being prepared ahead of time, and you hit the ground running, but it’s essential that you know before. Don’t get assigned when you’re at 100% of their close, assign it before they’re closed because you want to get your ideas percolating early.” 10:32

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

We wanted to chat with two special guests, Gordana Warga, the Director of Global Support at Kustomer, and Chad Horenfeldt, customer service and customer experience leader also at Kustomer. We discuss customer service week, what it is, and why it’s important to really show appreciation for everyone that works hard in making this often difficult part of business a better experience for all involved. The little things are super important, such as recognizing someone’s birthday on the floor and taking the time to celebrate that person as an individual. If you care about your own people, they’ll care about the customer.

Thoughts on customer service week and its importance 1:21
Impacting long lasting client relationships 3:58
Encouraging customer obsession 7:22
Celebrating customer service 12:03

“We all take the time to recognize the small wins and to really recognize when we’ve helped each other and when we’ve helped clients. So we’ll do a lot via Slack and via other channels where we really just give shoutouts and reward all of the positive things we see throughout the day.” 5:43

We have a special guest today, Phil Irvine, the Vice President, Audience Intelligence at RPA. We’re going to be talking about how customer interactions and signals can fuel optimal marketing experiences and we wanted to get Phil on to see a more broad view of the customer experience, not always the service, but how marketing plays a role there. Marketing has evolved a lot over time where in the past it was less personal and a lot more over the top oftentimes, but today people are very aware of cheap marketing techniques and can always tell when you’re not being genuine.

About Phil and his experience 1:25
Relevant marketing 5:08
Personalization 7:00
Coaching people with the right tech stack 11:00
CDP platforms 15:38
Marking and customer service working in tandem 16:47

“You wanna have your North star of what the optimal personalized segmentation experience will look like, but the thing that I like to preach and what I’ve personally pursued in roles that I’ve had is exhibiting small wins along the way to show that these investments are worth it because they’re expensive at the end of the day.” 12:36

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

Today we have special guest Danilo Pozo, the Vice President of Customer Experience for Latin America at Cisco, to discuss lifecycle management and making the best of your customer experience. Your company will go through a culture shift and you have to be able to adapt in order to keep up with your customers’ needs. The developing world provides many opportunities for companies to branch out and find better, more diverse talent that’s also more economic.

Lifecycle management 3:41
The culture shift 5:37
Bring your customer into one place 9:40
How it can be different in less developed regions 11:34
Advice and lessons learned for newer companies 13:37

“Another thing that I think is really interesting about now is talent, right? There is so much talent around the world that you don’t have to be in one place now. You can gather talent from different places in the world for one common factor and that would allow emerging markets to be more attractive to main companies, and we’re trying to see that, how you get the best talent from different places in the world for one company.” 12:47

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilo-pozo-vp-cx-cisco/

We have with us today the Senior Vice President of Marketing over at Ada, Ruth Zive, to talk about having better brand interactions. Back when ATMs were becoming popular, everyone thought they were going to replace the bank teller and kill bank jobs, but those kinds of jobs have only increased since then. There are 18% more bank teller jobs now than there were back in the year 2000, showing that automation and machines will actually help job growth. We discuss how companies can maintain personalization as they grow and scale their company, which often is a struggle for growing businesses.

What they do at Ada 1:01
Automation and the agent 2:32
Is automation sacrificing personalization? 9:15
Collecting data 14:41
Why we’re not proactively reaching out 20:33

“When automation and human resources are working in lock step, those human resources have a better job experience, they are able to deliver a better experience to the customer, it’s much more efficient for the brand. So really it’s a win-win for everybody.” 4:18

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthzive/?originalSubdomain=ca
ada.cx

Watch the CX bootcamp on demand here: https://www.ada.cx/cx-bootcamp-ecommerce?utm_campaign=ecommerce&utm_medium=partner&utm_source=kustomer

In this episode we are discussing the future of CX and artificial intelligence with Dan Watkins, President of Forethought and Rose Wang, Head of Customer Experience also at Forethought. Forethought Technologies, Inc. is a Silicon Valley software company founded by a team of Dropbox, Palantir, and Autonomy alumni in 2017. Their mission is to enable everyone to become a genius at their jobs. They are the makers of Agatha, an answer engine for the enterprise, which searches your company’s knowledge bases to generate the most accurate answers.

What is Forethought? 2:45
What is broken in customer service? 7:12
What’s keeping people away from AI 11:08
AI implementation 14:28
How can AI add a personal touch? 20:46
What steps companies can take now to ready their organization to use AI 25:33
Taking AI to the next level 28:19

“Kustomer brings such an interesting perspective I think on a foundation of core platforms, bringing systems together: omni-channel, CRM, those types of words, and adding on layers of artificial intelligence. I think Dan, I think I had a similar conversation as you had with your CEO when you first told me you jumped. I said, ‘Oh you guys are just a chatbot company?’ You’re like, ‘No, look there’s more to it than that.’ And I think this AI piece really is needed and it’s something that the market really, really wants.” 6:21

https://www.linkedin.com/in/d-watkins/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosewang20/

Today we are talking with Kenny Middlebrooks, the Director of Customer Service at Mckesson. We discuss how Kenny has been able to handle customer experience transformation with the right people and getting them to go in the right direction, and then we talk about balancing that process and empowering the agents to be able to grow and even fail in order to experience growth, or helping them know when to break a rule when they need to break a rule. Recording new things and issues your teams run into will help things improve greatly as you’re able to go back, figure out what’s wrong, and resolve those issues.

About Kenny’s time with Mckesson 1:51
Customer experience transformation with the right people and direction 5:29
Balancing process and empowering agents 9:11
Technology 14:01
Phone trees 16:21
Artificial Intelligence 17:49
Don’t make it too complicated 21:47

“If you don’t feel so comfortable doing something, we have different variables of assist, whether it be chat, assist lines, those kinds of things that will give them the benefit of having that extra expertise along with them when they wanna do certain things. But a lot of it has to do with how do they know when to break a rule when they need to break a rule?” 9:57