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

It's the Experience Action Podcast, and today we're talking about something that we need to talk about, but sometimes we don't like to admit it. Let's talk about failures.

Listener Question: 0:43

Hey, Jeannie, it's Staci. I'd love to know what's one of the biggest lessons you've learned from a CX failure. Maybe something that didn't go as planned but really changed how you think about customer experience going forward.

Jeannie Walters: 0:57

What a fascinating question, and I really want to think about this a little bit differently. But what I would love to explore today with you is the idea of customer experience failures and what we can learn and the lessons that we gain from those, how to gain that executive buy-in and why it's so important to prevent those failures or even help you kind of move through them. And then I want to look at one period of time specifically, and that's when COVID really changed customer behavior. There were a lot of missteps during that time, and there were some that we simply all learned from, so let's talk about that too.

Jeannie Walters: 1:34

So first of all, I want to share a story about a retail organization. They had all the trimmings of a great CX program on paper, and what I mean by that is they had invested in the technology and the tools. They had a feedback platform, they had journey maps, they had a voice of the customer team. And yet every month they were struggling. They were struggling with reporting back on what they were doing. They were struggling with showing the value that their team brought to the organization. They were struggling with really understanding where did their role begin and end? Because they were collecting all this feedback and going back to the teams and saying, hey, we need your help on this. Customers are telling us this isn't working for them and those teams were able to kind of shrug it off because there was no accountability to them. They had to try to do everything through influence, which is where a lot of customer experience teams are. So when we started working together, we really realized right away that, while they thought their problem was fixing a lot of the things that were broken, we realized that they had to take a step back. They had to have a strategic initiative. They had to define what success looked like.

Jeannie Walters: 3:01

Now, obviously, if we are surveying customers, if we are gathering that feedback, and then we're never doing anything about it, that is absolutely breaking trust. That is decreasing trust with the customers that we serve. If we are approaching this and thinking about it from that strategic level, then that impacts even the questions that we ask our customers. What are we committing to? How are we using their valuable time and feedback? All of this goes together, but it's really hard to do this if you don't have your strategy well defined. Now, Customer experience cannot thrive in an organization without leadership backing. We need that executive buy-in. We need our leaders to understand that this is part of who we are and how we do business. It's not something we can just tack on with a poster or a survey. We also have to realize that tools do not equal strategy. I've seen a lot of strategic initiatives that are actually tool-driven, meaning that we get a new technology, everybody's very excited about it and suddenly the whole strategy is about using that technology. Technology is a tool. We have some amazing tools capable of unbelievable things now, thanks to AI and some other factors. That's all wonderful and we should lean into that, but before we use a tool, we should know where we're going. What are we going to do with that tool? You don't walk around with a hammer and hammer into a wall just because it's there. You use the hammer because you know exactly where you want to hang that picture in your home. So think about what is the strategic initiative that you are leading, and not just about we've got to get this survey out, or I need to report on these numbers. Everything comes back to the why. So we have to drive that with accountability, real definitions, understanding our mission. So if you don't have a customer experience mission statement and a customer experience success blueprint, this is your sign. It's time to get it done.

Jeannie Walters: 5:12

Now let's talk about that period of time when so many customer expectations changed, our behaviors changed. We were working from home, living from home, doing everything, and we had to adapt to a different world. One of the things that we saw happen to several brands during that time period the one that stood out to me was Peloton. There were different levels of demand. People didn't go to gyms, they couldn't get into their health clubs, so they wanted those Peloton bikes and treadmills in their homes. And the demand went up so much that Peloton could not keep up. So they started losing trust because there were all these delays, there were all these reasons why they couldn't get that out there, and then they had a terrible safety issue with their treads and it took them a while to really show that empathy and recall, send out the information for recalls and things like that. Now I will say that since then, Peloton has regained a lot of that trust. I'm still a member. I still love Peloton. I know many members feel that way too.

Jeannie Walters: 6:15

But I think that when we are looking at what happened, none of us could have predicted that global pandemic and how fast things shut down and all of those things. However, what we can do is know enough about our measures of success that when things start happening, we start communicating. We start communicating proactively with our customers. We start preparing them for things like expected delays. We start looking to our supply chain and our suppliers and vendors and partners and working together and saying we think this might be happening, let's work together on this. So customer experience is so much more than how people categorize it sometimes with customer service or just gathering feedback. We have to think big. We have to think about the actual customer journey and if we start seeing those indicators, we have to be the ones to speak up on behalf of our customers. And I would say this is when we say our customers are going to lose trust in us if. If we can't deliver on time, if we don't communicate about this error, if we don't step up and recall our product when we need to. So we have to be the ones to look around and say we've got to do something about this for and on behalf of our customers. So what is a lesson from that we can learn? When we have misaligned information with customer expectations, that will degrade trust. So we want to make sure that we understand our customers' expectations and we are proactively communicating.

Jeannie Walters: 7:53

Another thing about communication, though I don't know if you've noticed this, but people don't really read anymore. So if you send lots of emails or lots of letters, don't expect that to solve everything. We have to get creative in how we proactively communicate with customers. We talk a lot about texting now. We talk a lot about different ways that we can show up in the moment of their journey and say I know this is your expectation, this is what's actually going on, and remind them and share with them and give them choice about communication. Communication is such a huge part of every customer journey. We have to give it the credence it deserves and the attention it deserves to really do this well for our customers.

Jeannie Walters: 8:37

Another example that happened with one of our clients we were working for a very large global organization and in the beginning everybody was very excited because they had kind of grown by osmosis when it came to customer experience. So one department started working on it and somebody else their customer experience team was very good at communicating about the value of focusing on customers and everybody kind of understood the assignment. The challenge was everything was done in this very ad hoc way. So there were hundreds of initiatives going on, but they weren't centralized, they weren't part of that bigger strategy, and so the executives weren't aligned on what this was. There was no unified roadmap. They were really trying to solve all the problems at once instead of prioritizing and solving them within the context of the customer journey.

Jeannie Walters: 9:42

Because if we don't take that step, what happens is somebody in marketing might feel like, wow, we solved this issue because we're going to send a survey in this moment and find out and get back to our customers with a personalized marketing plan. And then somebody in customer support keeps hearing about all these issues that are happening with that personalized plan, but they don't have the right information. They don't even know what that is. So we have to make sure that we are coming together on the customer journey. We're taking that holistic view and we are working together as a team on that customer journey. If we do this well the numbers that people care about, those customer feedback numbers, those will go up. But we have to remember that those numbers are measurements and not outcomes. So, as excited as everyone gets about surveys and metrics, those are measurements, not outcomes. Our job is to create the right efforts and outcomes to drive that feedback forward.

Jeannie Walters: 10:36

So if we are looking at that example, what we learned and the mistakes that we saw was that the intention was there, everybody wanted to do the right thing, everybody wanted to participate in really active customer experience initiatives, but the problem was, by all those good intentions across the organization, they were actually creating a confusing and conflicting experience for the customer. So the mistake there was that, frankly, intentions aren't enough. We have to make sure we have that plan and that we have governance over that. We have somebody in the middle of that organization a team, an advisory board, whatever that can help us with understanding what are our priorities, what are we doing to get there and who's doing what when. So when we think about what happened during that time, during COVID and during all these other times when expectations change or maybe your organization changes, there will be mistakes, right. So we just have to kind of accept that.

Jeannie Walters: 11:40

But one thing I want to highlight here is that we can't rely on what I would call legacy expectations, meaning we can't say things like well, people in this age range always want this. I still hear this sometimes. People say things like well, older people don't want to mess with technology, and that's simply not true anymore. We have to be very careful about relying on kind of those old tropes of things that used to be true, that aren't. And now, as we move forward, we have to think about okay, what if that changes? Because otherwise we will make mistakes. We will make mistakes by assuming we know what our customers. We're assuming that a certain segment or a certain demographic has needs that maybe they don't have anymore. So we have to constantly have our radar up, constantly be looking at those data and insights that we get from the feedback, from the way they're behaving, from our operational metrics.

Jeannie Walters: 12:40

We are experience investigators. This is what we do. We want to dig in, we want to figure out what is the truth today, because the truth today could be very different than the truth six months ago. That's another mistake to watch out for. And then, really, when we talk to our clients I'm going to give you a rundown of a few mistakes that we see a lot.

Jeannie Walters: 13:03

One those siloed efforts. So the journey is broken. Technology is all over the place. People don't know what's going on with the holistic journey. Instead, they're just myopically focused on their piece of it. The feedback black hole. This is where we collect a lot of feedback from customers, but we don't actually use it. We don't turn it around into insights that go to action. We don't close the loop with customers. That is another big one we see. Rigid policies. I'm sure you've all seen this as customers too where we go to a store and the return policy is so archaic and cumbersome and old and you can tell that the employees don't really like what they have to tell you either. If there are policies that are so rigid that employees are not empowered to really do anything about that, then we need to revisit that. That could be a big mistake, especially during these unpredictable crises, these unpredictable times.

Jeannie Walters: 14:00

We want to make sure we are empowering our employees in the right way, and then we are entering the age I shouldn't say entering we've been here for a while. We are talking about automation more and more and more, aren't we? And that's great, because automation is going to give us so many gifts and tools. But if we swing the pendulum too far and become over-reliant on automation without human oversight, that is a huge mistake I want you to watch out for, because that is something that will lead to frustrated customers, frustrated employees and endless loops where we don't actually know what's happening. So make sure that all of your automation has those human checks. We've talked about this in prior episodes where we need to do audits, we need to check in, we need to make sure that things are kind of staying fresh and staying true for today, not yesterday.

Jeannie Walters: 14:54

When we really boil this all down, it comes down to the why, what and how and the why that's your customer experience mission statement. The more that you are connected to a North Star about why are we doing this in the first place? What do we really do for our customers? We don't sell them widgets. We sell them widgets to do something. What is that? Are we helping them achieve a goal? Are we helping them run a better business? Are we helping them feel a certain way? That is meaningful. We need to tap into that.

Jeannie Walters: 15:25

Then we want to go into the what. This is where we figure out you know what we're an organization that has to be successful by investing in the customer experience. How will that benefit the organization and our goals? That's your strategy. That's your customer experience success blueprint. That's where you want to really map out what are we trying to do, what are our goals, how are we going to get there and what are our measures of success along the way. That will help you prioritize when all this stuff is coming at you. And then, finally, the how. How are we going to do this? Who's doing what when? How can we get the cross-functional support we need? How can we make sure that we are taking the right efforts in the right moments? How can we have that governance that we need? All of that is that business discipline piece. So that's really our CXI approach. We are customer experience investigators, and now so are you. So make sure that as you approach any of your work, you think proactively about avoiding these mistakes, about making sure you're getting that executive buy-in, that you're working cross-functionally, that you have a clear vision for your customer experience mission and a clear definition of success. Those pieces will help you so much.

Jeannie Walters: 16:51

It is the polar opposite of what we see in many organizations, which is basically just a whole bunch of things thrown at the customer experience team to fix and it's done in a vacuum. That serves you short term sometimes. It does not serve you long term. We want this to be a long term vision and strategy for you. What a great question. You all always bring it and I appreciate it.

Jeannie Walters: 17:19

And if you know somebody who would benefit from this podcast, please share it with them. Share your rating and reviews wherever you listen. That helps us a ton as well. And, of course, don't forget, you can always leave me a voicemail at askjeannievip. And if you're curious, if you're hearing all this and you're curious how you're doing, go ahead and check out cxicompasscom, where you can answer 11 questions in and out in about three minutes and you'll get your quiz results on where you might want to focus your customer experience efforts. We can't wait to hear more from you. Find us at experienceinvestigatorscom and hey, congratulations, I just deputized you. You're an experience investigator now. Way to go. I'll see you next time. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience. Check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.