CX Pulse Check - June 2024

Jeannie Walters: 0:09

Hello everyone, it's another episode of Experience Action Podcast. This is our special monthly episode, CX Pulse Check, where we talk about some of the things in the news we're seeing that we think you should know. So I'm Jeannie Walters. I'm so glad you're here with us today. And today we have a special guest straight from the Experience Investigators team. Paige Flenniken is here. Paige, how are you doing?

Paige Flenniken: 0:34

I'm good. I'm outside enjoying this beautiful weather. Well, not outside, but in my sunroom enjoying this beautiful weather, and I'm excited to be here.

Jeannie Walters: 0:43

Excellent! Well, thanks for being here. Paige and I have been on the road quite a bit lately. We've been working with lots of clients, and so I would love to get your perspective, because you're really somewhat on your journey understanding customer experience too. You've been here about a year, and I always love hearing your observations and things that you see. So today we have some fun things to talk about. Fun and maybe not so fun based on the stories, but today, the first thing I wanted to start with was something that is, I think, really important to not just us, but a lot of customer experience professionals, a lot of leaders in general and that is this idea of inclusive customer experiences. We want to make sure that when we're thinking about, when we're examining and evaluating and using those insights to design better journeys, that we're thinking about all of our customers, and that includes people who have different backgrounds than us, that includes people with disabilities, that includes people from different regions. We really have to broaden what we think of as a customer

Jeannie Walters: 1:52

and make sure that we're not accidentally excluding people. And so one of the things that I think is interesting to discuss here is some of the work that Apple's doing around this. This is an article from TechRadar and the headline is Apple's next accessibility features let you control your iPhone and iPad with just your eyes, and while that's a catchy headline, when you actually read the article, a lot of what they're doing is announcing how they're really thinking about ways to make the original hardware the iPad and the iPhone more accessible through vibration, through eye tracking, through all sorts of things, captions, so that it's just part of the experience. And why this stood out to me was because there are a lot of organizations that have adaptable controllers, that have things that you kind of have to modify as part of the hardware, and what I like about what Apple's doing is this isn't extra. This is how they're thinking about it. It will be available to all users. You don't have to really commit to more hardware or more purchases. So what do you think about this one, Paige?

Paige Flenniken: 3:11

I think it's great. Like, I think it's a great example of like the inclusivity and really listening to what your customers are wanting and what you've heard, how you can continue to evolve your technology with what the world needs, what your customer needs, while also making strides forward using that AI, because, as we've seen time and time again now, CX and AI are going hand in hand and if you're not including it, you're a little bit behind the curve. Like, it's. You need to be paying attention to it and finding ways to use it wisely. Obviously not all, because we still need that human touch, but to have it included in their advances, I think is really smart on their part.

Jeannie Walters: 3:55

Yeah, and that's a great point about AI, because the other side of that coin is that customers will be using AI, right? So they will start to be able to do their research, their understanding, before they actually reach out for help. They're going to know what the fine print says. They're going to know all these things. AI will help them understand that.

Jeannie Walters: 4:17

And in this case, when we're talking about being inclusive, you know, as customers have more options for how to get things done, we have to make sure that when we think about customer experiences, we are keeping up with that we are not falling behind what customers can do on their own without our brand, and so the fact that Apple is being so thoughtful about this I think it's a really good step in that direction, because there are, you know, I think it's amazing to me how, when you look at kind of the movement of disability awareness and accessibility, its history is not that great. Like, we've,

Jeannie Walters: 4:57

we really started talking about this in the 70s and nothing really happened until like the 90s, and then it's still got a long way to go, and so I think that when we see opportunities to really think through how can we make the journey accessible in an organic, natural way, so that everybody's kind of using the same products but making it work for them. I think that's really exciting to think about and I think, with the new technology out there, we are just at the cusp of some really exciting things.

Paige Flenniken: 5:26

Yeah, I really liked the at the lower part of that article about the vibrations in the music. Yes, I thought that was really cool because I, as a musician, love that. I love to feel like the beat and the vibration, and that's something that I could relate to with somebody that may have a disability that I may not have been able to relate to before.

Jeannie Walters: 5:46

Yeah, yeah, that's true, and I think there's lots of opportunity around that too. One of the things that I've noticed that we've talked about before, especially with some of our clients, is when we're in situations where we have to rely on one of our senses, we are actually accidentally excluding people, and the example I was bringing up is the airport, because I'm there all the time, but if you're at a gate and they're only announcing, they're only saying it over that bad PA system usually, and they're saying, okay, now, group 76 or whatever, you are relying on everybody hearing that information and it's just not feasible for a lot of people. And so using things like visual cues and audio cues and just anything we can do to make sure that whoever is there gets the same information that they need and I also see this in waiting rooms, right for doctors and things like that they just kind of they have this system, it's been the system forever and they don't think about updating it, and I think anybody out there listening or watching us today should really think about that. Are there places where maybe you're requiring somebody to use one channel, one sense in a way, where you could open that up? Because that's really that is the definition of inclusive. That's where we want to get to.

Jeannie Walters: 7:14

So another one I wanted to share today. You know, for those of us who love our coffee, Starbucks has been having some issues and their sales numbers went down. They had, you know, they reported out some bad news. They also are really struggling with, it seems like from the outside, looking in, staffing their stores and expanding their stores too quickly. So, people, this headline is from the Seattle Times and it says 40 minutes for Starbucks coffee: customers and workers fume over fewer staff and there are many, many layers to this.

Jeannie Walters: 7:52

But one of the things that I found interesting is that Howard Schultz, who was their founder or maybe not founder, but original CEO they brought him back twice. He really is one of the original kind of evangelists of customer experience. He focused on that, made sure all the employees focused on that, changed the way they treated employees to make sure that they were able to deliver on, that all sorts of things. He's still their majority shareholder and he came out after some of these headlines and said we have to go back to a maniacal focus on customer experience and he's really seeing how it's not feeling the same. And in this article, the person who waited 40 minutes on Mother's Day, by the way, he was trying to do something nice for his wife. He said you know, I used to go in there and it felt like a happy place

Jeannie Walters: 8:47

and now nobody's happy and including the staff. And they made some operational decisions around how to staff that the workers are saying it's making it harder so that if somebody calls out they don't have the bench that they used to to call people in. They lost a lot of people because they couldn't commit to the requirements that were now being asked around hours. So there are all sorts of things that kind of mix into this formula. But what I really took away from this was it just takes a little bit of taking your eye off the ball. It takes just losing that focus on what is customer experience to us, how can we deliver it and what does that mean for our employee experience, our operations, our goals, how we reward and recognize people. All of those things are part of this and it felt like maybe they got too operationally focused and executed there instead of looking at the customer experience and the employee experience. So what do you think about this one?

Paige Flenniken: 9:49

Absolutely. I think that you can't ever stop doing your good customer experience. I agree that you can't take your eye off that ball. You can't take your foot off the gas because it doesn't matter how big of a franchise you are. That just makes it more apparent when things aren't going well.

Paige Flenniken: 10:07

And I, as a Starbucks goer, as a Starbucks customer, I one time was late for a rehearsal because I put in a like a to-go pickup order, a mobile order that's supposed to be you just get through the drive through and on you go. But the drive through was super long so I went inside I waited 40 minutes, just like the poor man, for my coffee that I had mobile ordered to pick up quickly. I had done that 30 minutes before I got there and waited 40 minutes. So frustrating and I had to explain to my director why I was late. And it just seems so like I was getting coffee. Like it's not a good excuse. It's just like really threw a wrench in my day.

Paige Flenniken: 10:53

And when I was reading that article at first I was a little bit like, because it says in the article that they disputed that there was any understaffing. But you walk into that store and you can see it like there is no disputing that, like it's plain as day. So when it got to the later part of the article and the CEO was talking, I thought, yay, this is like you got to get in there and work with the baristas. You got to see what they're seeing, what they're dealing with, and we're trying to implement some things that make that better and we're upping our staffing. And that just makes me feel like good. You listened and you caught that falling branch quickly, like you understood the ramifications and are starting to make changes. So come on Starbucks.

Jeannie Walters: 11:40

I know we're all rooting for him right, and you know I've talked about in the past. I've talked about how one of the things I really liked about what the new CEO did, Narasimhan, I'm saying that wrong, but he came in and did spend days with baristas in the stores and one of the things he identified was you know, we've got all these complicated drinks and now they all have these different cups and so they were wasting both time and resources because baristas would start making them and be like, oh, it's the wrong cup, and have to throw out the cup and start over. And so he's like we need to unify the way that we're putting drinks together. Now that's a that's a great thing both for customers and employees. So he saw things in real life that he was able to bring back.

Jeannie Walters: 12:28

But his, his lens is very operational. That's his background, and so you know he can make efficiencies like that, but maybe not think about, okay, that's, that's an operational efficiency, that's great, but how can we make sure that doesn't impact the customer experience, that all of that? And there's another quote in this article where he basically I'm paraphrasing but he basically said they said you know he's had a an impact of saying we need operational efficiencies, we need to be faster and don't forget, we need to talk to the customers and all that. And the workers are kind of like wait a minute, which one? Yeah, because you can't always do those things together. And this is another thing we see with our clients all the time. They want to do everything and there are trade offs and you have to decide that you have to prioritize.

Paige Flenniken: 13:24

So yeah, also something we've been seeing a lot of. I think people are kind of awakening to it after 2020 and things really changed with the employee company relationship. Your employee experience and your customer experience are directly related. They happen simultaneously. It's always happening together. I've been with Jeannie in several workshops where we've really dug into this on these types of things and made some big differences at the company just because we're able to identify hey, this is happening, do you even realize? And your process that your employee is going through they're having to find. I think one example of something we heard in a workshop was there was somebody who had like 20 tabs open and a bunch of post-its around their computer to be able to know where to go to get the information quickly for the customer.

Paige Flenniken: 14:11

But that's obviously a process problem. So your employee is going through it and they're trying to still be kind and helpful to the customer when everybody ends up just feeling stressed out. So identifying that employee customer link is key in so many ways.

Jeannie Walters: 14:32

Yeah, that's a great example, Paige, because I think what I remember about that moment too is that the leaders who were in that room were shocked. They had no idea that workers had to do that, even though they knew about all those processes, right? But sometimes processes on paper look great and then when you see them in real life and when you're actually dealing with human beings in the moment, who are dealing with emotional things, you know customers are in a bind, they are trying to solve a problem and they're already heightened emotionally, and so to have to go through all of that just puts so much pressure and stress on the worker and the customer and, at the end of the day, it's not efficient. It's not operationally great for the organization either. And this is why I think this is a big misconception about customer experience in general is that it really is,

Jeannie Walters: 15:27

people think, people want it to be magic. They want it to be like well, if we tell everybody to just work with customers and be nice to customers and talk you know, talk to the Starbucks customers while at the same time being as fast as possible it will work and it's like no, you really have to think through all these steps. You have to think about what's happening in that front stage moment with the customer and what has to happen backstage to make that happen. So that's where I always say it's a lot harder than people think it is, right?

Paige Flenniken: 15:59

It is, and I think part of that being hard is it can't just be a script of happiness. It can't just be because that always falls flat. Like you have to actually think about it, how, like what that customer is going through and give them real honest care. Like I care about what you're going through, I'm here to help you, here's how I can and hopefully your processes support that employee and they are able to.

Jeannie Walters: 16:26

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I think you know that leads right into the next thing we wanted to talk about, which is a company doing this pretty successfully, and that's Aflac, who everybody knows because of the duck. It's supplemental insurance, essentially, and one of the things that this article is from CX Dive and the headline is how Aflac built a customer-centric business culture. And I thought that was interesting that the headline included business culture, because that's really what everybody's trying to do, and a lot of times we get those phone calls where they say, well, we want to be customer-centric, or we want to be customer first, or we have a mandate to deliver superior customer experiences, but they don't really know what that means or where to start. And so where we always start with our clients is to define what that means. What does that mean for this organization, for your goals, for your customers?

Jeannie Walters: 17:25

And essentially what Aflac started kind of realizing was you know they have, they might have seamless transactions with their customers, but many customers are dealing with, again, highly emotional situations. So one of the things that stood out to me about this article was really making sure that the people who were answering the questions about insurance coverage understood how to do that differently for somebody who had just received a cancer diagnosis, who were in that, you know, critical moments where they needed a different level of empathy, they needed different things and so, focusing on if we're going to be there for them as an insurance carrier, how can we be there for them emotionally and make sure that we are handling these sensitive situations in the right way? And that's the piece that that I think a lot of organizations still don't get past that transactional moment they still don't think about how do we actually make this a moment where we can build trust, we can build a relationship, instead of just delivering on what is expected.

Paige Flenniken: 18:36

I think something I've seen with you and not just our clients, but in conversations everywhere, especially the higher up in the company you go, the bigger the company, it's very, very hard, it's kind of like we leave our human at the door, like we go into like this business mode and that's all it is. It's processes, it's X, Y, Z and we forget to think about what they're feeling and that's such a block for so many people to think about the feeling that the customer is going through. Because that really is ground changing. Like if you figure it out and you are able to communicate that and understand that and really be proactive about what they could be going through and prepare for that, then it gives such a better relationship. Like you end up with higher retention, you end up with a lot of really great business results just by putting the human back into the business.

Jeannie Walters: 19:33

Well said, yeah, that that is so true, and I think what you know again, what we see a lot, is that really good intentions, right, like everybody's trying to do the right thing.

Paige Flenniken: 19:45

Absolutely yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 19:47

But if we're asking every individual to just do the right thing, that could be very different based on who we are and our life experiences. I'm not saying one's right or wrong, but we have to define this as an organization and say this is who we are, because one of the most important things in any customer journey is being consistent. And so if you have totally different and we hear this, like we've done this as customers, I've done where you call in, you get somebody who you feel like well, they don't know what they're talking about. So you hang up and you call right back, right, and you're like hoping. It's like rolling the dice. Don't be the same person.

Jeannie Walters: 20:23

Yeah, exactly, and that's because they have not figured out how to deliver a consistent customer experience, and so that chips away at trust, that chips away at all that. So I really like this idea of looking for where those emotional moments that matter, those moments of truth, and how do we make sure that it's not just about understanding that it's a moment of truth but it's about really looking at what can we do for the people who are serving them, what can we do for the process, what can we do for reassurance in that moment, all of those emotions that are so important to just continue that journey as a partnership, instead of thinking about it as okay, check the box, they got their coverage, we're moving on.

Paige Flenniken: 21:10

And I think it's very important to remember. This is something we hear all the time as well, and I've heard Jeannie say many, many times. Customer experience is happening, whether you're thinking about it or not. So you can't just ignore this. It is kind of the elephant in the room, like. You do need to look at it. You do need to look at how it's impacting things and it is everybody's business.

Paige Flenniken: 21:29

It is everybody needs to get involved. It's not just the CX department or the team lead, it is every single person needs to be thinking about this and understanding how it's affecting the customers, because it does affect your business, yeah, positively or negatively.

Jeannie Walters: 21:46

Absolutely yes. I mean, that's why, that's why we show up, because it really is. It makes a huge difference and I think it's again, good intentions only get you so far. You need to really apply business acumen and strategy and all of the things that you would any other part of your business. So that's why I like seeing these exciting, exciting things happening, like the, you know, with Apple and with Aflac and with some of these other organizations who are starting to really realize like this is part of the overall journey. This is part of what we deliver. It's not just about products, it's not just about service. It's about this bigger journey, this bigger experience. So well, this was a fun CX Pulse Check. Thanks for joining us, Paige.

Paige Flenniken: 22:36

Of course, thanks for having me. I always love to come on and talk about fun things happening in the world.

Jeannie Walters: 22:41

Exactly. Well, we will bring you on again I'm sure. It's always fun to have different co-hosts and get different perspectives. So thanks for being here, and thanks to all of you for being here at another episode of Experience Action. Don't forget, you can leave me voicemails, you can ask me whatever you'd like about customer experience, employee experience, how to do this in your organization at askjeannie. vip. And for those of you listening, don't forget, you can find all of our episodes on YouTube as well, including this one. So we can't wait to hear from you and talk to you next time. Thanks so much, everybody.