CX Diaries - with Keith Gait

“Culture is the worst behaviour you are willing to tolerate”

In our latest podcast for the CX Diaries, we sit down with Lucie Child who tells us about her wide-ranging role in shaping the Customer Strategy at The Very Group. Challenges include Recruitment, Employee Value Proposition, her work in leading Wellbeing for the people, and how AI may shape the team.

Lucie also talks us through payment options and support for customers and colleagues during the cost of living environment, the spectrum of vulnerability, and the legacy heritage and responsibility that comes with it. 

We hear about the importance of having a mentor, her successful homemade collection of colouring books and the Coniston Challenge for Alder Hey!

“No one wants to be stuck in a loop of death with a Bot”

Chandni talks to us about her experience of working with rapid growth businesses in E-Commerce and retail, and managing large offshore teams both in house, outsource, onshore and offshore. She also talks about innovations in technology and leading a community and member based CX operation.

We hear about the challenges of growth, automation, balancing outstanding service without also scaling the team, and how to successfully deliver personalisation. Chandni also gives us her take on what should be automated and what should be kept for the agent, and the tools and approaches for supporting community engagement.

She also talks to us about her leadership styles, the impact and influence of different cultures, and how to adapt styles to support your people and develop yourself.

“Service is where your brand hits the customer”

For our latest CX podcast from the Customer Experience Foundation, Nicola talks to us about always pushing the boundaries and innovating throughout her career through some great companies, across the supply chain. We get Nicola’s take on what the cost of living crisis and impact of hybrid working and self-employed models will have on both businesses and colleagues in 2023 and beyond. 

We hear about the need for both flexibility and resilience, both for businesses but also for people. We unpack that, and Nicola takes us through how businesses and people can work together, where technology does and doesn’t support, and the impact of location sourcing.

Nicola and Simon tell us about the dangers of not just moving your problems offshore in the name of saving cost, the challenges of support and leadership talent in some offshore locations, the under estimated impact of dual running, how to understand that the contact centre is the lens into the cost of failure across the business, and how to have those conversations in the boardroom.

“For Phone Calls read Shoe Boxes”

Chris gives us his view on how so many of the problems and opportunities of the last few years come down to organisational culture and mindset, the importance of strong leadership, and his answer to the “magic formula” 

We hear about the origins of his renowned and successful leadership style, and the approach he takes at each organisation, and the philosophy taken to achieve successful results. We hear his insightful thoughts on the continuing battle between the need for human conversations versus the need for cost reduction through automation.

We hear about the importance of life balance, and how leaders influence this, and his current big interest of supporting professional sports people with mental preparation coaching.

This week Sarah Hunt spoke to Steve McSherry from Daktela UK & Ireland.

Steve shares his vast amount of experience in the industry on a range of topics such as ‘pandemic recovery’ and what the key challenges are (including ‘people’, ‘technology’ and hybrid working), and his thoughts on how organisations can engage remote workers and reward performance wherever they are based.

He also goes into detail about how deploying the right technology can help manage hybrid workers effectively, including raising ‘virtual’ hands when needing help from their managers or team leaders.

He chats to us about which kinds of technology can help improve the customer experience as well as complement the human touch.

Steve brings up the benefits of Voice Bots and the growth of natural language processing, meaning you don’t necessarily have to be talking to a person to get the service you need.

He also tells us about a couple of new phrases…'CXaaS ’, and how it lends itself to how Customer experience and service is a culture within organisations, and ‘Hyper-personalisation.

Plus he shares his thoughts on Cloud based solutions and how these can help companies meet certain regulations for their industry (such as the funeral industry), and the basic things that organisations have to get right when planning their CX strategy.