CX Conversations – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode we talk about improving the customer experience and reducing risk through operational excellence, so we brought on Michael Popa. Companies can often go wrong in their strategy when structuring their teams and compensation. So it comes down to aligning on the responsibilities of sales all the way down to what are the metrics each one’s accountable for and how are they compensated for that. Michael gives his method for looking over and assessing business processes responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI). Make sure your different departments are communicating well so that customers don’t have to repeat themselves. The handoff is an important part of on-boarding customers.

• Michael’s background 1:00
• Helping companies get to excellence 4:27
• Where companies often go wrong in strategy 6:07
• RACI 8:16
• Guiding more of the process and strategy 11:42

“That’s where I typically start is understanding the objectives of the company. Understand where we wanna go, where we wanna take not just customer success but the entire customer life cycle and how we build a strategy in conjunction with sales and operations so that we’re investing in the right building blocks, the right milestones, in the right sequence.” 5:20

Today we talk about the power of identification to build employee and customer connection, so we brought on Aaron Painter who is the CEO at Nametag. He explains what makes good customer experience and that comes down to how employees are treated and how they treat customers. Companies need to help employees feel and understand that their opinions matter, which will help create connection with the company and even create culture as these employees interact with the customer.

• Aaron’s background 1:00
• What makes good customer experience? 4:40
• Building culture of happy employees 8:13
• Why is customer support such a hard job in today’s world? 11:44
• Benefitting both employee and customer and why he build Nametag 15:54

“It’s crazy that in today’s world so much can happen from your mobile phone except actually proving who you really are, so it led me down this path of something I’ve been on a lot, which was cyber security and privacy and this intersection with identity and just understanding who customers are because we all know in our field of marketing more broadly, the better we know our customers, the better we can tailor the overall customer experience.” 2:06

www.linkedin.com/in/aaronpainter/

Today we’re talking about how one to one marketing is transforming companies. There’s so much interesting dialogue in the market about commerce and care. Marketing and CX, and how that’s all coming together. I came across somebody that has enormous experience in this space of personalization marketing customer experience, and his name is Chuck Moxley. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Blue Triangle and an Advisory Board Member of the Customer Experience (CX) Program at University of California, Irvine.

Why personalized marketing, or 1-1 is so important 3:07
Channels that are becoming more modern 7:37
Consumers now control the value of your product 10:10
Do you have the data? 13:28

“I was having these same conversations going ‘Oh my gosh, they still think of mass media and they still think of it the same way, and they’re using a playbook that’s a decade old.’ They don’t get that the world has changed, so the first step in all of this is a big mindset change. You have to realize the way things were 10 years ago just don’t work. And there’s other factors and other consumer realities, like the fact that the power is shifted. Consumers can now go read a thousand reviews. So it doesn’t matter what you put out there on the TV commercial, they’re gonna read the reviews, and if the reviews are crap and say the product doesn’t work, you’re not gonna make the sales.” 10:51

www.AudienceofOne.website

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

sio@twitter.com
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/