CX Pulse Check - March 2024

MC: 0:00

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready, set, action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

Hello everyone. It is another episode of Experience Action with me, Jeannie Walters, but this is the special monthly episode, all about what's happening in the real world around customer experience. This is CX Pulse Check, and we're so glad that you're here Now. I have a special guest joining me, as always, so my special co-host is Greg Kihlstrom from The Agile Brand. Greg, how are you?

Greg Kihlström: 0:58

Great, great, yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeannie Walters: 1:00

All right. So, Greg, I would love for you to share a little bit about you and your company, The Agile Brand.

Greg Kihlström: 1:08

Yeah, absolutely so. I come from a marketing and a technology background and, after selling a digital agency I ran a few years back. I work as an advisor and consultant. I help Fortune 500s make better MarTech investment decisions and then I work with them to help operationalize those decisions. In addition to that, I have a couple of podcasts, one of them called The Agile Brand, where I talk with marketing leaders and platform leaders, and I've written a few books on MarTech and other topics as well, so really, really excited to be here.

Jeannie Walters: 1:45

Well, we're thrilled you're here with us. You and I met at a conference and realized that we had a lot to chat about, so I'm very pleased to go over these kind of news items with you. So one of the things that I think is so interesting too about bringing in your perspective is, you know, a lot of the work that I do and a lot of the conversations is about kind of customer experience strategy, and one of the things that I see again and again is how really the technology, the tools, can actually sometimes be the right course. It can actually push that strategy forward, and sometimes it can be kind of a barrier. So I'm interested to get your perspective on all of these things. So one of the things I would love to talk with you about is kind of that blending of digital and in-person and how we have to really meet customers where they are.

Jeannie Walters: 2:40

And that's what stood out to me about this headline and this is about Santander Bank, and the headline is "Santander Evolves In-Person Bank Format In Hoboken [in New Jersey] With New Experience To Meet Customer Needs." And when I kind of went into this article I was expecting to hear more about kind of how they were maybe introducing more kiosks and things like that. But really this is about kind of the education of customers in-person so that they can use more of the digital experiences. So I shared this with you. What did you think?

Greg Kihlström: 3:19

Yeah, I mean my first reaction was I was reminded of a few years back, either me or my brother-in-law would drive up to my parents' house and look over my dad's shoulder as he was navigating how to use his computer and things like that. And so you know, that said, I get it from their perspective of you know, there's got to be a way to educate their customers. I mean, I look at it as okay, they do this once and then that customer doesn't have to come back in the branch anymore, and so it's a win for everyone. Because some people, I think, have a hard time asking a question.

Greg Kihlström: 3:55

I can't imagine some people asking a question over the phone about what they're looking at on their screen. There are technologies that you share screen, of course, but if that's not available, so you know, to me it's like the train the trainer kind of thing of like if we can educate our customers a little better than maybe they can even educate other customers or something. So I get it. It does beg the question why are there technologies so hard to use for, you know, for a consumer bank in the first place? So you know, the cynical part of me kind of goes there as well, but I get it.

Jeannie Walters: 4:29

Yeah, I kind of grappled with this a little bit because we want to. I really believe we need to give customers choice over how do they interact, how do they, you know, what channels do they prefer, and if they start in one channel and want to switch, we have to kind of honor that. And I'm curious about what they saw to make them think like, oh, it's probably that we just need to educate more and do it in person. Because in an ideal world I would say I would love to see more hybrid options where, if I walk into a bank, I have a choice where maybe I just want to get some answers and do it through some digital channels, or I really need to talk to somebody to help me, and so I like that idea. The idea that people might, you know, come to the bank for the purpose of digital education,

Jeannie Walters: 5:24

I'm not sure about that yet. I think we're going to have to watch this and see if this model really does serve what they need. But I think the point you just made is the one that I kind of walked away with too, like should we be investing more in kind of overall digital education in the moment with customers? Can we provide more guidance to these tools? Can we help them make better decisions when they're opting in to those digital choices, and are we respecting the customer change in behavior, or are we trying to force change in behavior? And I think those are bigger questions that I don't think we have the answers. I don't think they have the answers yet. So I'll be curious how successful this model is and kind of how it rolls out to other organizations as well.

Greg Kihlström: 6:14

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Jeannie Walters: 6:15

So yeah, customer education is always tricky, because one of the things that I've talked about is how, especially in B2B, that is one of my triggers when I hear clients say well, we just have to educate customers, that's all. It's like "we have to educate them on how to use our services and products. Like that should be a red flag that something's not going well for the customer.

Greg Kihlström: 6:39

Yeah, I completely agree. And yeah to your earlier point, when I read that headline I think I had a similar reaction of like oh okay, they're doing like the quick service restaurants or you can order but you still physically the food isn't virtual, so you still have to physically pick it up but they're making the process a little easier and probably finding a way to upsell and cross-sell a little bit easier along the way. But I could see plenty of opportunities to do something like that of like there are processes that take a long time, have a lot of questions. You could accelerate the teller experience to like just the very last stage of either like literally handing someone dollars or something like that by using a kiosk. But yeah, this it does seem a little odd that again it begs the question like why is your app, like app, so hard to use?

Jeannie Walters: 7:27

Right, right, right. So yeah, I think we'll we'll see more of this moving forward, but then we'll also see kind of where it starts and stops as well, Because I mean, if you compare it to what's happening with self checkout, a lot of those organizations are starting to remove self checkout, either completely or limiting it, because they're finding that it was not really speeding things up in the way that they expected and it was creating cause for theft and other things. So another interesting pilot that we'll follow along here. Now this next topic you actually were very involved with because you actually attended Shoptalk, which is a big, huge event. So before we dive into this, can you share a little bit about what Shoptalk is and your observations there?

Greg Kihlström: 8:15

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, just got back, actually a day or two ago, from Shoptalk in Las Vegas, one of the bigger retail shows out there big, you know, lots of, lots of great content as well as there. their, think their claim to fame is kind of the you do like the speed dating thing where you get matched up and have quick meetings and stuff like that. So, you know, did a few of those, did some book signings and interviews all that while I was there and great opportunity to just, you know, meet or reconnect with folks and definitely a lot of conversations. You know there's some e-commerce focused shows as well, but shop Shoptalk really for everybody. You know it's online and brick and mortar as well. So definitely some interesting things happening.

Jeannie Walters: 8:59

Well, and I was following along.

Jeannie Walters: 9:01

I was not, I did not attend Shoptalk, but I was kind of following along with the different insights, and this is from Coresite Research, and they produced some summaries of each day and what stood out to me about their summary for day four was this idea that, you know, we are moving into more of an interactive kind of video world and the folks that were talking about this weren't necessarily the brands that I expected to be talking about this and, specifically, I'm going to get this right, so I have the article here, but executives from Fanatics, TikTok and Walmart discussed shoppable video and emphasizing its importance for engaging customers, fostering loyalty and encouraging future purchases rather than immediate transactions.

Jeannie Walters: 9:54

And I think you know, comparing, like you know, Fanatics, which is sportswear, basically, or all the brands for, or all the teams, and then TikTok, which is very different, and then Walmart, which sells you know all the things that Walmart sells. The fact that they're all having conversations about this and the comment about it encourages future purchases rather than immediate transactions really caught my attention, because I think the thinking up until this point is, you know, if you're providing that shoppable video, [snap] it's for that moment, and so I thought that was very interesting, so I'm just curious what are you seeing there? Any feedback on that?

Greg Kihlström: 10:40

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, the ability to make it just gets easier and easier. So I think this to me, this is along the trends of just more and more brands and it sounds like even TikTok embracing this idea of customer lifetime value as opposed to transactional, and I think there's varying stats depending on where you look as far as how much impact social has on immediate purchases. But I think it also may be a smart play for a social media platform to be on board with a longer term sales cycle. Just reading between the lines there, I think there's some benefits for them to encourage that kind of thinking as well.

Greg Kihlström: 11:28

But, that said, I think that longer loyalty, lifetime value, all of that kind of stuff, it's just I think we've been talking about it for years. It's like all these, it's like personalization, it's like AI, mobile, whatever. We've been talking about it for years. But I think brands are really embracing it more. And, I think attribution is getting better and so it's starting to, I think the stars are just kind of aligning that stuff like that. It's not just again self-serving or something like that. It's actually starting to make sense and make the business sense.

Jeannie Walters: 11:57

Yeah, and I think the other thing that keeps coming up is that convergence between personalized experiences and authentic branding and how, if you can tell a story that really appeals to your customer in a personalized way, that will number one kind of break through all the noise. Right? And so we have to jump up and down and stand on our head to get attention in this world right now. And so I think one of the things that I think is interesting is thinking about how can you, as a brand, really show up authentically but also leverage your customer stories, like your customers are the best storytellers when they talk about how they use your products or what have you. So that's something that I think is interesting. And then, really one of the things that I pulled from this and it was just a little blurb, but is thinking about things like how do we integrate live streaming and how do we make sure that we are kind of keeping pace with what customer expectations are, even if that's not what you're traditionally known for. And so really working with customers, collaborating and not just influencers, I think is important too, because I think people are starting to really recognize when things get a little blurry, and that being authentic is so, so important.

Jeannie Walters: 13:28

So I just think there's a lot of potential here. I think that brands that maybe have never thought about how to really incorporate that whole idea of almost like two-way video, how that can really impact the relationship. I personally see a lot of opportunity here for B2B. I think that one of the things that would be really interesting is sharing more about like here's how we do what we do and here's your product, you know, like here's something that that could really help your product, or here's and I think that B2B is more hesitant about this stuff but I see a lot of potential there too.

Greg Kihlström: 14:11

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to emotional engagement, right, and I think you know we're, I think we're moving on from the the big super bowl ads being, you know, the main way to do brand advertising even. I think what you're touching on here is like this is maybe just, again I've been doing this long enough to see, you know, trends come and go and whatever, it's like this is maybe just how brand advertising is going to look for a few years. And it's more personal, it's more contextual, it's all you know, all of the above, and and yet it has that emotional engagement when it when it is personal, you know, when it is personalized. So it may just be an old thing made new again in a different context. That never happens, Greg! Right, I know.

Jeannie Walters: 15:00

Yeah, it is funny to see the same themes kind of pop up in different iterations and everybody you know throws up their hands and says, "oh my gosh, this is, we've never been here before, but we probably have.

Greg Kihlström: 15:14

Well, marketers, they like to come up with new names for things and labels, but it's, you know, it's those of us that have been doing this, you know? Yeah, it's a different label for the same thing.

Jeannie Walters: 15:23

Absolutely so. This next one I'm very excited about because this is part of a trend that we're seeing where government and municipalities and different folks are starting to think about their role in providing customer experience for citizens, for residents, for taxpayers, essentially and so it, on this podcast in the past, we've talked about the executive order that president Biden put into place around customer experience for agencies and the work they're doing, and now New York state has a Chief Customer Experience Officer. This was a governor appointed position and this is from StateScoop. The title is"Meet New York's Chief Customer Experience Officer." Her name is Tonya tanya Webster webster and she's really looking at kind of not just how do we serve people better, but how do we break down some of the bureaucracy and the red tape so that when you're moving from one area to the next as a citizen, it's not so cumbersome.

Jeannie Walters: 16:32

And you think about a state like New York that's been around for a long, long time. They have developed different kind of departments, different, you know, agencies, things like that, based on kind of when the needs pop up, and this is very, very typical, and in this case, that was one of the things that stood out to me about kind of her approach here. Now, one of the things that I think is, you know, really, really important to mention too is that the expectations are so high in these positions that I think it's so brave really to raise your hand and say, yes, I will do this, because think about the untangling of all the different processes, of all the different expectations and how you know that's not something that can happen overnight. But she's taking this on kind of like a mission and I really appreciate, I just appreciated her kind of approach and attitude about it. So go, Tonya. So what are your thoughts here?

Greg Kihlström: 17:37

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I love the idea and you know, I think the timing is right for this kind of thing because I mean, you know, I don't have the exact stats, but you know, trust in government is not exactly at an all time high.

Greg Kihlström: 17:50

You know there's there's a lot and there's just legacy frustration. I mean, the DMV has been a running joke for you know, decades, probably since its inception. But so you know, like there's there's definitely room to move and on the on the one hand, I completely agree with you. I think the expectations are probably completely unreasonable on poor, you know, on on her to, you know to change things, but at the same time the bar is also very low for improvement in some ways. So, you know, maybe hopefully the two kind of balance each other out. And also from a, I think, reorganizing government and you know the bureaucracy behind the scenes. I think those of us that you know, I know we both work with very large organizations, maybe not quite as big as, and the legacy of.

Jeannie Walters: 18:39

the State of New York.

Greg Kihlström: 18:45

Yeah, but you know it might feel that way some days. But you know, I think there's there's a lot that can probably be done in the short term to make it feel better to the end customer. I would hope as well that you know there's focus on the employees to, you know, give them. I mean, I think we could stand to have less disgruntled to go back to the DMV, to go back to the DMV, the disgruntled DMV workers once in a while, but I'm I just I think there's tons of room for improvment. I think the time is right because I am more than happy for my tax dollars to go towards improving my own experience that technically I'm paying for already. So it's like maybe not everybody outside of the CX space or whatever is on board with that, but I think this is a positive, but again proofs in the pudding, so we'll have to see how it works.

Jeannie Walters: 19:35

Yeah, one of the things I say sometimes when I'm explaining customer experience is you know, your customers are having an experience, whether you talk about it or not, whether you're intentional or not, and we have customer experiences because we're trying to do something. As a person, we don't love being customers, like a lot of the brands, I think, paint this picture of a very linear journey and they're like well then, they're going to feel this and they're going to move through. They're just trying to get stuff done. Right? And so you can have a customer experience when you go to a Taylor Swift concert and you can also have a customer experience when you're paying a parking ticket, and if we can make paying the parking ticket a little less effort, a little more convenient, a little more of reassuring too. Like a lot of the frustration with bureaucracy and government and these big organizations is you do something and you're kind of like did it work? And who do I call about this or whatever.

Jeannie Walters: 20:33

So what I liked about some of her early initiatives that they talked about here she is prioritizing digital and service improvements, really leveraging technology available, and that's something that I think is weirdly exciting for this sector, because they're not really always known for that, and so I think she sees the opportunity of if we could give people more digital choice, that's easier, they're going to take advantage of that.

Jeannie Walters: 21:02

That will lessen the burden on the facilities, the people, all of that. So then the in-person experience will also get better because there will be less pressure on that. And I also really interpreted kind of a she wants to shift culture, she wants to make sure that there are really ways that we value and prioritize customer experience, giving people opportunities to submit ideas. For, hey, this could be better if we could just do this. So I think there's just a lot of goodness in attempting this. I want to give a shout out to my friend, Stephanie Thum, who is a customer experience expert and she has done academic papers about red tape and how that gets in the way of customer experience, and it's fascinating to really think about how did we get here? And it's all about they saw a need and they wanted to fix the need, but it was without the perspective of what's actually happening with the customer and it was without the perspective that it's a holistic experience, and so now, getting closer to that, I think people will start feeling that and seeing that in really good ways.

Greg Kihlström: 22:20

Yeah, yeah, and to your point, it's like there's most that have dealt with companies are familiar with the term technical debt as far as you build these legacy systems and then changes, to your point, changes keep getting tacked on and so we have code that is needed. There's experience debt right, it's like we keep making these changes and keep making people jump through hurdles. And there's culture debt, because the employees doing that work now have to. So it's like all of these things can converge in a good way if we look at them, I think, through from the eyes of the customer, and sometimes it's the end customer, sometimes it's internal customer. But yeah, I think this is very promising. I wish more state, I wish, I live in Virginia, I wish Virginia would do the same thing. Maybe they are, but yeah. So no, great! I think it's exciting.

Jeannie Walters: 23:16

I think so too, and I think that there will be best practices and lessons that hopefully they can all share and make this kind of go. It will evolve faster, right, like we're in the very beginning of this, I can picture this in a few years really kind of snowballing throughout, hopefully, our whole country, but even just to a few other states like Virginia and Illinois. I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, yeah, just start there, yeah exactly.

Jeannie Walters: 23:45

We'll help, we'll help! All right. Well, this was so fun, Greg. Thank you for joining us for the CX Pulse Check episode, and I know that you have a great podcast. So another shout out listen to The Agile Brand. If people want to reach out or find out more about you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Greg Kihlström: 24:05

Yeah, so two things: Find me on LinkedIn, very active there, so connect, would love to chat, and you can go to thea gilebrand. com and find my podcast and books and things like that.

Jeannie Walters: 24:16

Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you for being here, and I can't wait to bump into you again at a future conference.

Jeannie Walters: 24:23

Absolutely, yeah, great. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely and thank you everyone for being here and thank you for listening and supporting the Experience Action podcast with me, Jeannie Walters. If you haven't already, please subscribe, and we love reviews. Now I also want to give a special invitation to all of you. We're having a special webinar coming up, all about the value of customer experience. If you're curious about that, check out our website at ExperienceInvestigators. com. Looking forward to your questions, so don't forget you can leave me a voicemail at askjeannie. vip. I answer one question a week on this podcast straight from listeners like you, so please go ahead and don't forget to ask me all the questions that you have about customer experience. Thanks so much for being here and I will see you next week.