CX Conversations

In this episode we have a special guest, Evan Hopkins, who is the VP of Global Sales and Customer Operations at Outdoorsy. Outdoorsy is the most trusted RV rental experiences marketplace on the planet, powering road trips and RV adventures. They’ve seen a lot of growth recently and have had to make a lot of adjustments, which Evan explains. At first with Covid they weren’t getting any volume and skipped out on hiring new employees, until the end of May when everyone got sick of being inside and there was an “explosion” of people wanting to use their service.

What Evan does at Outdoorsy 1:21
Handling the sudden growth 4:20
Secrets to help work in harmony with your partners 6:09
How they handled Covid 7:45
From 20 to 175 team members and the hiring process 10:57
Getting people up to speed so fast 13:39
Taking technology to the next level 18:17
Working with founders successfully 20:24

“We’re right in our hiring cycle through April and May and we expect to be adding maybe 80 or so people to our staff, but we hired nobody because we had no volume coming in. No one’s booking, but then all of the sudden near the end of May, everything goes crazy and everyone’s like, ‘I’m going outside again, I don’t care.’ You know, various reasons and RVing is the way to go.” 8:27

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

Today I met with the Chief Evangelist at CX Effect, Justin Robbins, and we discussed whether the professionals in CX should focus on behavior as opposed to numbers. Quality assurance in the context of contact centers are often the score cards or mechanisms we put in place to understand how our teams are doing to keep their promises, or if we’re complying to processes put in place by the company. Are we doing the right things to drive the right outcomes?

What Justin does 1:18
Scoreless QA 4:00
Predictive vs reflective metrics 7:12
Scale metrics vs indicator metrics 12:19
Getting this into play 14:07
What is holding businesses back from investing in CX 16:48

“Think about the idea of customer experience. If I get 100% on my QA interaction with the customer I just had, that 100% is meaningless when I answer the phone or I answer the chat for that next customer. The game resets. There’s no winner or loser in customer experience, right? The whole point is to keep business going.” 7:56

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmrobbins/
cxeffect.com

In this episode we will be talking about how to delight your guests, spark your culture, and just ignite everything around you and to do that we have Michael Fiato, the SVP of Guest Experience at Eurest, and the author of The Hospitality Edge: Stories to Delight Your Guests, to Spark Your Culture, and Ignite Productivity. We discuss what to look for when hiring new people, and the common mistakes employers or interviewers make when looking for good quality candidates.

Michael’s back story 2:45
Training people to teach correct principles in your organization 4:16
The interview process 9:34
Separating tasks and purpose to create culture 12:47
Creating the “Disney Way” environment 14:59

“I don’t necessarily need a server that’s been a server before, but I do need somebody that loves people, that loves food, that is outgoing, and somebody said once to me, ‘lead with what you need.’ and I think that sometimes we just don’t do that. Really think about what you’re looking for in a candidate, and then ask for those skills and those qualifications, and you’ll probably get the right person.” 7:45

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fiato-a2b05039
https://www.amazon.com/Hospitality-Edge-Stories-Delight-Productivity/dp/B08P3JTT8X

Today it’s just Gabe sharing an interesting experience he had this past week through which he learned some useful lessons. Sometimes leaders can go over a line with how they treat other leaders, which is exactly what Gabe witnessed recently and discusses. We cannot be successful without the various moving parts that make up a business, such as the technology and operations team, or the customer service team. Being able to communicate effectively is essential to overall company harmony and growth.

Working through a customer transformation project with a company 0:51
A bit of advice for all operations professionals 1:25
Structure and process 4:06
Solving a problem together 8:31

“This is not a problem that can be solved just by an ops person. This cannot just be solved by a CX person. You really need the combination to come together and see if they can map this out in a way that doesn’t feel so disjointed.” 8:41

In this episode we meet with Wendi Sturgis who has been in the New York scene for the last 25 years. She used to be the Chief Customer Officer before becoming CEO and gives some good tips and advice on what leaders need to know in order to advance their CX team forward. Working overseas has given Wendi a broader perspective on how to be a leader in various aspects of business and tells us how she has learned to scale her business to a global standard.

Recommendation for CX leaders trying to work effectively with their senior leadership 1:05
Advice for leaders trying to maintain focus 4:09
Growing and scaling to a global standard 13:13
Investing in technology 16:11
Finding a balance of where to drive consistency 17:52

“I cannot emphasize this enough. Every opportunity you have as a leader in the internal communications, tell customer stories. Every. Single. Time. You have to every time you get a newsletter out, or speak at a company event, or at your boss’s staff meeting. Tell those stories.” 6:21

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

In this episode we talk about the 90 day roadmap to customer excellence with Shannon Martin, the Senior Director, Travel Partners Group PMO at Expedia Group. We talk about where to start in getting your roadmap going and how to get it into the mindset of your customer service team. We talk about how to gather data and the best ways you can go about understanding what your team is working with and what issues your customers are facing. Shannon shares an awesome tip on what you can do to end your call on a more positive note with your customers.

How to start thinking about the 90 day plan 1:51
Gather data 4:02
Extracting the right information 5:39
Where to go next 7:45
Ending your call on a positive 9:46
Where to go last 11:57
Last piece of advice 15:58

“In the customer service world I think customer service people are naturally designed to do this, but you always want to start with the customer’s problem. What problem are you trying to solve? And so once you understand what problem you’re trying to solve, then you can think about, ‘OK, what are the processes that impact that problem? How does the customer get to the point where they have that problem?’” 2:50

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

Today we talk to Brad Birnbaum, the CEO here at Kustomer, and we talk about the future of customer experience and the effects we have felt from the big events in 2020. We saw numerous changes last year, expected and unexpected, some of which being a boom in retail and an influx in customer inquiries. Remote work has been a large change that most companies have embraced and it seems companies across the board will keep this change and adapt moving forward. The customer’s expectations have changed as the world has changed, and then we discuss how and what companies can do to adapt and start to win moving forward.

Summarizing 2020 1:32
Remote work 4:03
The change in consumer expectations 5:45
How companies can start to win in 2021 7:11
Artificial intelligence and machine learning 9:24
Multi and omni channels 11:22
The mantra all companies should have 13:29

“I think remote work has impacted the vast majority of us. I think you and I are both doing this from our homes right now, right? So remote working has impacted, kind of almost everyone, and I think the world was trending towards remote work, but wow did we just put that in hyperdrive.” 4:04

Today I have with me Pam O’Neal, the Senior Marketing Director here at Kustomer, and we’re talking about the importance of social commerce, which isn’t new, but is really hot right now. We talk about the risks and realities of tackling it, how to make it work, and then some of the brands that are doing it really well, and then what’s coming up next. Almost everyone these days uses social media and discovering vendors, consuming, and sharing what one buys is something you have to understand in order to survive in today’s economy.

What social commerce looks like today 4:17
Why social commerce is so popular 8:24
We can’t be everywhere at once 15:05
Pillars for the customer journey 21:31

“92% of consumers said that their preferred platform for social commerce was Instagram. 77% opted for Facebook, 57 for Twitter, 47% for Pinterest. From a business perspective, you guys, 73% of businesses believe that their brand had already created an emotional bond with consumers on social media and that this would ultimately help them achieve greater success across social media.” 7:08

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

Today I meet with Vikas and Sophie Vu, Chief Marketing Officer at Unbabel, and we discuss how you can achieve high growth and customer satisfaction in our global economy. Sophie tells us how Unbabel is making communication between citizens in various countries easy and improving the way we commune globally. Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular across the board today and many people have been worried it may replace people, but language is so complex that people will always have to be around in order to correct the mistakes that AI will continue to make.

About Sophie and Unbabel 0:54
Language operations 2:08
Big picture trends 6:32
AI 8:01
AI and language 11:52
How should people adapt to coming out of the pandemic? 18:59
Your customer has evolved 23:22
Learn more about Unbabel and the research 28:06

“Think of language operations as a way to roll out, centralize, and scale multilingual capabilities across every function in an enterprise, right? We’re starting with customer service, but eventually we want to obviously enable marketing, sales, product, HR, legal, what have you, to be able to function in this global world that we live in.” 2:27

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-vu415

In this episode we’re going to talk about how great companies master modern customer experiences, and to do that we brought on the Director of Operations and Customer Experience at JOANN, Drew Chamberlain. We discuss why it’s so important to have all communication channels that the customer desires to use available to them even if your company struggles with one of those channels. We also talk about AI and whether it’s something your company should integrate into your customer experience or not. Make sure you avoid tricking customers into thinking they’re chatting with a real person.

Optimising customer experiences 3:26
Helping companies be on the right channel 4:44
The best tool to use 5:54
Multi channel vs omni channel 6:45
The 360 view 8:18
Drew’s opinion on artificial intelligence 10:05
Where to start with AI 12:18

“The trick here is the channels that you optimise in, you can try to lead people to that direction, but that doesn’t mean eliminating the channels that you’re not the best at and are gonna cost you more. Maybe you focus on email or chat, but you always have to leave that other channel out there, whether it’s phone or social in case the customer wants to contact you that way.” 5:16

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-chamberlain-2a2a6148