Jeannie Walters: 0:09

It's the Experience Action Podcast, and it's my favorite episode of the month. It's time for CX Pulse Check. This is where I check in with a special co-host, and we talk about several things happening in the moment around customer experience, customer engagement, employee experience, all sorts of things. Now, my guest today has a specialty around social customer care. And I'm so excited to bring her into this conversation. So I am thrilled to welcome Brooke Sellas today. Hi, Brooke.

Brooke Sellas: 0:41

Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Jeannie Walters: 0:44

I am thrilled to have you here. And I know why, but I would love for you to share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

Brooke Sellas: 0:52

Sure. So I'm Brooke Sellas. I own a company called B Squared Media. We do social media services. So social media management, paid media management, but our big service, which you know, is what we call social media customer care. And that's where we help our middle market to enterprise-sized brands with social selling and retaining their customers through their social channels. So it's like it's just like it sounds like customer support, customer care, but on social.

Jeannie Walters: 1:22

And you know what? It seems like we would have more discussions about this, right? Because it's everywhere. It's everywhere.

Brooke Sellas: 1:29

Literally.

Jeannie Walters: 1:30

We as customers we rely on this. Like when I have to actually pick up the phone, I'm kind of like, wait, what? How why do I have to do this?

Brooke Sellas: 1:37

I say it all the time. I'm like, I don't pick up the phone. Maybe I'll email you, but I'll probably take to social because I know I'm gonna get an answer there faster.

Jeannie Walters: 1:44

So exactly. I know. And some some of the social platforms I'm not even really active on anymore, but I still use to DM certain brands when I need things. That's a secret.

Brooke Sellas: 1:56

Yes. Not so secret secret.

Jeannie Walters: 2:00

Well, we have some good stuff to dive into today. And I loved kind of thinking through this differently because you and I were just talking a little bit before uh recording. And one of the things that we were saying was, you know, there's all this talk right now about AI and the bots and the fear of the robots are coming and, you know, all of those things. And yet at the end of the day, it feels like we all are still craving right now that human connection and what that means. And so this first story is from one of my favorite sources, the Harvard Business Review. And the title is To Set Your Brand Apart, Create Moments of Shareable Joy. And the article really goes into how the idea of growth in this competitive market has to, we have to think about it a little bit differently. And we have to really be prepared to provide things not only for our customers, but also things that they want to share. So I'm really curious on your take on this and and really what we can all walk away with.

Brooke Sellas: 3:09

I say this all the time, um, especially on podcasts like this one. Content is the vehicle, emotion is the destination. And I think what I see happening with a lot of brands, especially on social media where I spend a lot of my time, is content has become the currency. Not because it is the currency, but that's what brands want it to be, and that's what they've made it, but that's not the currency. The currency is connection. And to get to that connection, your content has to create that joy that's not only joy within yourself, but also, as the article points out, joy that is shareable, something that is so powerful that you want to share it. Or you, in my opinion, sharing could also mean sharing your opinions and feelings on that theme of content or whatever it is. So it really resonated with me, but I don't think a lot of people think about it that way.

Jeannie Walters: 4:03

I agree. I agree. And first of all, say that phrase one more time. Content is

Brooke Sellas: 4:08

Content is the vehicle, emotion is the destination.

Jeannie Walters: 4:12

Love that so much. And one of the things I pulled out from this article was this quote, and I'm reading, so I get it right, but it says build joy loops where the act of sharing is as rewarding as the product itself. Your most successful and least expensive ad campaign could be reposting when your product or service brought one of your customers joy.

Brooke Sellas: 4:36

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 4:37

I mean, and I what I love about this too, and I think why it resonated with both of us so much, the mission of Experience Investigators , my company, has always been to create fewer ruined days for customers. And that sounds so simple, but the idea is sometimes just getting the basics is like if you're not preventing someone from going on with their day, that's great. And if you can get to that level of joy, if you can get to something where they go, oh my gosh, this felt good, that's like next level. And that's something that most organizations, frankly, cannot do unless they are super intentional. And that's why we're always talking about like defining your intentional success around customer experience. What does success look like for your customers and for your organization? Because if you don't have that intention, how can you create these joy loops that people are like, not only did I get this product, but look at what happened. Yeah. And it's just so, so cool. And I think there is that it also creates that sense of community that we were just talking about.

Brooke Sellas: 5:44

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think we're so focused in on clicks, right? And by the way, we're now living in a clickless world. So if you're still banking on clicks, you better find something else to take to the bank.

Jeannie Walters: 5:56

We have bad news for you.

Brooke Sellas: 5:58

Oh, sorry. But I think what we don't look at in the in reference to this article, but also just in in content being the vehicle for emotion, is where is your for for us, because again we're we deal in social, where is where are you making people say thank you? Or where are they giving you that digital smile? Where are they taking those screenshots, right? When you share something. Those are all little like shareable moments of joy that we need to start thinking about as metrics because now we know that we're moving the needle around emotion or joy or shareable joy, and then we can double down. We can't do anything with it if we're not measuring it. And so I think the first thing people need to do is to start to think about how to measure things like shareable joy. What does that look like?

Jeannie Walters: 6:46

Yeah, I love that. And I think it's such a challenging, creative, interesting question, and that's where this is where I get excited about like this is why AI can't take over the world because we need humans to think like this and to connect emotions with what this all means and all of those things. Now, we can certainly get some help from AI, but I'm just saying, like, there is something so special about when humans are challenged with this type of thing that I really believe we're never gonna lose that. But I could be naive, and when the robots take over, you know why maybe I didn't make it.

Brooke Sellas: 7:27

No, you'll you'll make it because you're nice, but we just, you know, we might be like, I don't know, greasing the robot wheels or something.

Jeannie Walters: 7:36

We'll we'll have very specific jobs.

Brooke Sellas: 7:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 7:40

Well, speaking of joy, one of the brands that really stood out for their social campaigns in the last, I would say probably a couple of years, is Duolingo, the language app that people love. And um in this story, this is a little bit older than I usually do on pulse checks, but this pulse check, I should say, but this led me down a rabbit hole. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. It's actually from August, and it's their CMO Today section. And the headline is Duolingo's Departing Social Media Manager Talks Virality, Anxiety, and Mental Health. And what was fascinating to learn is that this this woman, this young woman, um, she is, I think, now 26 years old. So that means that she was doing this in a time when, you know, it was she was very young. And um her her name is Zaria Parvez. I wanted to make sure I look that up. She's now head of social at DoorDash. So she left Duolingo, she went to DoorDash. The rabbit hole I went down was first of all learning about, you know, the fact that she was pretty open about this is intense. Like these jobs are super intense. And then when she went to DoorDash, and I was looking at her LinkedIn profile and some of the stuff that she has out there, she's very honest. Like the first month, she was kind of like, hey, this is what we're doing the first month. I'm trying stuff, I still don't know what I'm doing. And I think there's something to learn here because Duolingo did so many creative things. We've talked about them on CX Pulse Check, I think a few times.

Brooke Sellas: 9:25

They've been talkworthy.

Jeannie Walters: 9:26

They've been talkworthy.

Brooke Sellas: 9:27

It's quite a success.

Jeannie Walters: 9:28

Yeah. And that was, you know, in itself worth talking about. But now she's framing like both the jobs and also the transparency, the visibility around we don't always know what's going to work in social.

Brooke Sellas: 9:44

Right.

Jeannie Walters: 9:45

So what what did you did? You go down the same rabbit hole, first of all.

Brooke Sellas: 9:49

I definitely went down a rabbit hole, but I think it was slightly different. Or maybe it's the same. I think we're gonna come together on this. But my thought was, gosh, you know, we talk about customer care all the time, but we very seldom talk about creator care.

Jeannie Walters: 10:02

Oh, yeah. Right.

Brooke Sellas: 10:04

And that's what this is. We we have to care for the people who are making those connection points on the brand side, the creators, just as much as we care for the customers, because the ultimate goal is connection. And we're hopefully taking care of our customers like crazy to help get to that connection. But I think in a lot of ways, we miss the inside. We miss taking care of or that creator care to make sure that both sides are feeling comfortable and safe and vulnerable and willing to make those connections that we need to happen.

Jeannie Walters: 10:36

Well, and it brings me to kind of another side door here because one of the things I've talked about is this idea that as AI and chatbots and things start serving people, we're going to have more demand. And I was just on a leadership call last week, and one of the things that we talked about was how their contact center was not, I mean, think of these numbers. This is a huge global brand. They were deflecting 60% of what was coming into the contact center to automated methods, meaning you either got a chatbot or you got an uh voice, you got voice recognition and um a voice respondent as well, but it was all automated. So, what that meant was all those like standard questions FAQs and things like that. Yeah, they were all being handled. So then what was left was all like tier two, tier three concerns, and they were finding that they could not find the right kind of mix of skills for who they used to hire. So now they're doing things like looking at people with engineering degrees, people with accounting degrees, people with MBAs to serve in the contact center, because that's the level that we're getting to now.

Brooke Sellas: 12:02

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 12:03

And every time we talk about this, I always want to say we cannot forget what that does to somebody. When you're dealing with the gnarliest, like right, like the hardest things to solve, the most emotional, because by the time they get to tier two and tier three, people are already frustrated, yeah, feeling hopeless, maybe there's something really urgent. So if we're if you're doing that type of work all day, that is not sustainable for anybody. So I think we have to think about this both as creator care and also the the support people care. Like what are we doing?

Brooke Sellas: 12:39

Yes, yes. I was just watching um oh my gosh, what's the movie about Tinder that just came out? Swipe, swipe something.

Jeannie Walters: 12:50

Oh, I haven't watched it yet, but now I want to.

Brooke Sellas: 12:52

You've got to go watch it, it's really good. Um, but also to your point, this is what I think we uh have failed to do as a society, really, and that is to take care of the the support people. They are your front line, they know your customers inside and out, and yet they're usually the least educated, least paid people on the team. But they hold the key to literally all of the voice of customer data that we're so, you know, we all want to want it all. Right. We want it all, we're obsessed, we want it all. They have all of that, and yet we're going and spending bajillions of dollars on tools that'll maybe help us get there when you could just probably go ask your frontline,

Jeannie Walters: 13:33

Yeah

Brooke Sellas: 13:33

Your support group, and they would know.

Jeannie Walters: 13:37

It's so true, yeah. And I think the the whole idea of to your point, like creator care is really important too. I've found, I mean, I run, you know, a teeny company, but we do a lot of content, and that's always been my MO. Like I've always just that's how I started this company. I just started writing.

Brooke Sellas: 13:58

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 13:59

And now there's so much demand, and there's so much, there are so many places of both output for us and input that we have to manage.

Brooke Sellas: 14:09

Yes.

Jeannie Walters: 14:10

That there are times I'm like, I have to call a timeout and be like, I cannot, I'm not in the right frame of mind, right? Like I can't do it all the time. And so I think figuring out kind of how can we allow people, because everybody's different with this too. So how can we allow people to say, I need a timeout, I need, I need to step away, I need to get some inspiration somewhere, you know, like all of those things that are so important. Because when she talked about when this um, you know, the head of social at formerly Duolingo, in this article, she talks about like it was intense partially because there's also this internal stuff. You know, you have to you have to report your numbers, you have to talk to people and who might not understand that this is an experiment, that not everything's going to work.

Brooke Sellas: 15:03

Yes. Yeah, I think we hear that all the time from our clients working in social, is like everything is expected to be a huge win.

Jeannie Walters: 15:10

Yeah.

Brooke Sellas: 15:10

And we're like, no, no. Yeah. This is a this is this is a total playground. This is a total experiment. This is an A B test. This is a beta test, whatever it is. I think we put so much pressure on creators and teams, especially content teams, to like see these giant wins. Like, think about the way you build relationships and you connect with people in real life. It's never just like a giant win. I don't meet you and I'm like, you're my new best friend, come over, you know.

Jeannie Walters: 15:38

You know, I like to think so, but yeah.

Brooke Sellas: 15:41

Well, maybe you have that natural ability. But I think most of us, it's it comes in little like fits and starts, right? It's it's not we have to look at the whole board. I think we've we need to pull back a little bit and look at the whole board versus focusing in on like this one piece of content is gotta make it for whatever the KPI is, you know.

Jeannie Walters: 16:01

Right. Whatever the KPI is.

Brooke Sellas: 16:04

Yeah, because who knows?

Jeannie Walters: 16:05

That's definitely the quote of the episode. Um so I well, I will be watching Zaria Parvez because I think it's fascinating. I hope I'm saying her name right too, but uh I think it's going to be fascinating to see if she's able to make that same magic at DoorDash because the stakes are so high, the pressure's so high, and it's a different thing. Like people don't interact in the same way as they do with a Duolingo, but just the creativity that she showed that and and the fact that she did earn the trust of the leaders who said, Yeah, you can have the icon melt, right? Like they did that, they did all those crazy lights, like in New York and stuff. So being able to take those risks and see what works and see if that lines up with the numbers that those KPIs that everybody cares about, yeah. Whatever they are.

Brooke Sellas: 17:00

Quick point though that you're making here that I don't know if you know you're making it or not, but like risk is going to be so important because we are living in a time of AI and everything has become content is now like a commodity, right? Anybody can create it using AI. Doesn't mean it's good content, and so I think taking those risks with creativity is going to be so important in the time of AI where everything is like kind of the sea of sameness.

Jeannie Walters: 17:27

Yes, yes. That's a great point that you just made. No, you were making it. Well, it's it's an interesting segue because this last one, it's a little outside of the content space and it's more about you know, everything is data driven, right? We hear that all the time. All these data-driven decisions. So Salesforce, which is this enormous company that has a zillion and a half customers and customers upon customers, they uh made a change because they saw something that uh they didn't think people were using anymore. And it was a search bar on their site. And so they said, Oh, well, we're gonna replace that because now we have all these other options, people can find things different ways. And it didn't go exactly as they planned. So this is from CX Today, and the headline is Salesforce Responds to User Backlash over replacing help search with Agent Force. Now, Agent Force, for those of you who don't know, is their AI kind of functionality that helps with that. So what happened was they they looked at their data, and their data said something like only 1.6, I don't know the exact number right now, but they were, you know, a very low amount of people were still using the search bar. So they just took it away. Unceremoniously, they just took it away. And what happened in all their user forums, their feedback, all of it, there was a very passionate vocal group who loved the search bar. So they literally had to backpedal and rethink it a little bit because if we had just gone with numbers, it seems like such a logical thing to do. But when they did the logical thing, the vocal, passionate group showed up. And I think this goes back to the points that we've been making this whole episode, which is like it all comes back to emotion, it all comes back to humans and like understanding that they're not always going to go in lockstep with what the data says and all of those things. So, what did you think about this? Because I'm sure you see similar things on the side.

Brooke Sellas: 19:42

Yeah, it was 1.7%, which feels small. But when they but that's actually a large group of people when you think about their customer base, right? Um, to me, the message, the the entire message was internal data doesn't equal external sentiment. Yep. You really have to talk to your customers. Like I'm sure you say this all the time to your clients. Like, when's the last time you actually spoke with a customer? Did anybody on the Salesforce team think to call that small, small, small, small group of 1.7% and just say, hey, we're gonna talk to 50 people who use it and we're gonna say, usage is low. We're trying to, we're we're thinking about dismantling this service. Imagine them them doing that and perhaps getting all 50 people to say passionately as they did, like bashing the company when it actually happened, just to say passionally, do not remove it. I love it. This is how I this is how I use it, right? And then could you turn that user-generated content into education so that more of your user base started to use the function or the feature?

Jeannie Walters: 20:52

Oh, that's interesting too. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it it does have to be a cycle, right? Like we have to provide the content and then listen to that feedback and then come back with more content, look at your data and your feedback to create, you know, the next thing. But I just thought it was really interesting that first of all, I give them credit. I give Salesforce credit because they did actually come back and they said, We heard you. And in fact, there's a great quote. I'm gonna read it here. You've made clear that even with low usage, the search bar is a critical tool for many of you, and that removing it created friction in your workflow. We hear you because of your feedback we are committing to bringing back a dedicated search capability to Salesforce help. This is a top priority. And what I loved about this was they basically said not only did we hear you, because a lot of a lot of statements say that they go, Oh, yeah, we heard you, and then they don't change anything.

Brooke Sellas: 21:51

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 21:52

Um, they they also kind of couch the promise a little bit because it doesn't say we're bringing back the search bar exactly as it was.

Brooke Sellas: 21:59

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 21:59

Right? They're saying we're going to have this dedicated search capability. So you know, we have to evolve. We can't have the same technology all the time. But I like the way that they basically said, okay, even though you're small, there are many of you, and we heard you, and we are going to do something about it. And I think that is a lesson for a lot of organizations who sometimes will, again, unceremoniously just be like, Well, we're not doing this anymore. And they think, well, that's a small group. We don't have to listen to them, we don't have to do that. Even a small group can have a big voice.

Brooke Sellas: 22:37

Oh, yes. Yeah, I think there's a there there too about metrics versus voice of customer metrics, right? They were looking at some sort of internal dashboard of metrics, but I don't think they were including that voice of customer data mix into that, which is where the miss was. But to your point, they not only said I hear you, but they said we're going to do something about it. We're going to take action now. Now we have to watch and make sure they do that.

Jeannie Walters: 23:02

That's right. Eyes on you, Salesforce. But, you know, going back to what you just said too about the metrics, we always we love to say this, but it's like there is no one magic metric.

Brooke Sellas: 23:17

I wish.

Jeannie Walters: 23:17

When you are talking about customers, you have to look at yes, feedback and voice of the customer, and operational metrics like this, like usage. That's very important.

Brooke Sellas: 23:27

Sure.

Jeannie Walters: 23:28

And things like behavioral analytics and what else are they doing? And it's putting all of that together and understanding the nuance of that because a lot of times people will say one thing and behave totally differently too.

Brooke Sellas: 23:42

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 23:42

So they might say, Yeah, we don't need the search bar, but then if you look, yeah, a lot of people are still using it. So it's really important to kind of create that. I always think of it as a Venn diagram of, you know, what building blocks do you have and what's in the middle that you can really rely on for this is how people actually feel and this is how they're behaving, and this is how we need to react. So yeah, I totally agree with you on that.

Brooke Sellas: 24:05

I love that you said nuance too, because I would, if it were my project, I would want to talk to these people and find out how they're using it. Right. It reminds me of IKEA. IKEA has that whole like secondary site that's run by IKEA users who talk about how they build things from these products, but they're not in the tradition, but not in the traditional way. They build like some other thing or do some other thing with it. That could be what's happening with the search bar. Maybe they're not using it traditionally, but if everybody knew that they were using it in this cool, nuanced way, more people would adopt it. I don't know. To me, it just sounds like a fun area to dig into. Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 24:43

Well, and you know they're power users, right? You know they're they're people who are you don't get passionate about a search bar unless it is part of your daily workflow.

Brooke Sellas: 24:53

They're a there there.

Jeannie Walters: 24:54

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I agree. Like finding out what they're using it for, what they would look for in the next iteration, like bring them in, co-create with this group.

Brooke Sellas: 25:06

Yes. I love that you went to the co-creation and the collaboration piece because I think, yeah, like to my point earlier, like creating some sort of UGC or user-generated content campaign around what these people are doing, because it's got to be good, whatever it is. That's what that's my feeling, too.

Jeannie Walters: 25:19

I agree. I agree. And you mentioned Ikea, it reminds me of Lego too, who they do a lot, and they didn't used to do that, but they discovered all these adult enthusiasts and they started nurturing that community just by asking them, like, what are you doing?

Brooke Sellas: 25:36

Yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 25:37

And what would you want to see? And that's why the Lego sets you see sometimes are so complicated and complex because adults were like, We want more, we want like lifelong Lego enthusiasts.

Brooke Sellas: 25:49

Yes, yes.

Jeannie Walters: 25:50

Which 20 years ago they would have said it's you know for

Brooke Sellas: 25:53

it's for kids, yeah.

Jeannie Walters: 25:54

Yeah, exactly.

Brooke Sellas: 25:54

But imagine it, imagine that revenue stream.

Jeannie Walters: 25:57

Oh. Right?

Brooke Sellas: 25:57

Imagine that revenue stream from that specific, you know, ideal customer profile within Lego, that adult, yeah, you know, hobbyist or whatever you call it. Like, I can only imagine how much money they bring in there. All because they listened

Jeannie Walters: 26:11

completely

Brooke Sellas: 26:12

and then gave the customers what they were asking for.

Jeannie Walters: 26:15

Right. Right?

Brooke Sellas: 26:17

No one was like, it's not that hard.

Jeannie Walters: 26:21

But it is, it is hard. I acknowledge that too. So, well, this was so much fun. I knew it would be, and you do such great work, and I hope that people follow you on LinkedIn and some other places because you also, you know, speaking of content, uh, you provide a lot of great content as well. So

Brooke Sellas: 26:38

Thank you.

Jeannie Walters: 26:39

If people want to reach out or connect with you or just learn more about what you do, what are the best ways for them to do that?

Brooke Sellas: 26:44

I'm always hanging out on LinkedIn. So if you're a LinkedIn person, come find me there, connect. Tell me, tell me you found me here, and we can talk about all kinds of things. Um, I also put out a lot of content. And if you want to find out more about B Squared Media, you could head over to our website, which is bsquared.media.

Jeannie Walters: 27:03

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much, Brooke. It was so much fun.

Brooke Sellas: 27:07

Thanks for having me.

Jeannie Walters: 27:07

And we'll have to do this again.

Brooke Sellas: 27:09

Yes, please.

Jeannie Walters: 27:11

Well, thank you, and thank you for both watching and listening to Experience Action week after week. Now, when I'm not hosting a CX Pulse Check episode, I'm answering your questions. So don't forget, you can leave me a voicemail at askjeannie.vip And I will answer your question about customer experience. I can't wait to see you again next time. Thanks for being here. Bye-bye.