Curated Experience

"Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand". I hated my boss, I thought he was an a$$hole. I couldn’t afford to quit, I had an addiction to working electricity and a roof over my head. So I did next best thing, I left at exactly 5pm every day to register my protest. There are many things about those days working with him that stuck with me, he loved quotes - some of them were more confusing than profound but they all had one theme - leadership is about getting people outside of their comfort zone. It’s been over 10 years and that theme stuck with me and has influenced me greatly on my own leadership journey. I invited a few people to my podcast to discuss leadership, but I didn’t want to discuss the cuddly, nurturing part of leading but the uncomfortable parts of leadership. Our guest today is Amayea Maat (a leader in contact center space). I am not sure she knew what she was agreeing to but within 2 minutes I asked her about the worst leadership moment of her career, we discussed

If you want great customer experience, stop putting customers first. Think about your organization. Who your company exists to serve? This is about who comes first for you. Is it the end consumer, the vendors, the shareholders, the team? There are trade-offs you have to make once you have clarity on this topic. Hear the story of South West Airline and who they put first.    

master promoter Louie Lavella is on the issue to talk about social media and CX. The experiences translate from hollywood to wall street

I was held at customs for about 30 minutes for being smart ass, I thought the customs agent and I were bonding over our respective jobs. Turns out I crossed the line, he didn't find any humor in me asking him why he has to ask every traveller a set of stupid questions. File that under "doesn't follow rules". No one is required to ask more stupid questions than people with customer facing jobs. They know the questions are stupid, so do their bosses but day after day this harmful practice continues... We put this issue to bed once and for all on today's show

How can Millennials help or hurt the Customer Experience? They are called the "Control-Alt-Delete" generation because whenever something is not working for them, they reboot and start all over. We have to be very intentional to get the best out of the Millennial workforce and keep in mind that technology has changed the way we can approach work. How to combine technology, Millenials mindset and flexibility search with the needs of the CX departments of companies? We discuss trends and potential solutions with Darren Ford.

Manually pecking around looking for random calls to listen to does little for the customer experience and it’s the financial equivalent of using your 401K to buy lotto tickets. Virtually every 1800# you dial has an ominous warning - “Your call may be recorded for quality purposes.” The net is there are now billions of interactions recorded, yet the quality of interactions have largely stalled.

One of my clients used to brag about his refusal to hire any more young people - his argument was "the damn millennials were too entitled." He would constantly hold up his attrition over the last 5 years as proof. He was in online retail and his margins couldn't handle the abnormally high turnover. So I was hired to bring back a strategy to change the make up of his workforce that was at the time 80% millennials. The data notwithstanding the millennial hypothesis rang like bullshit to me but we studied it, there was a problem for sure, for starters, his employees (regardless of generational) hated working for the company, their reasons were not unique to this organization. The descriptors would fit any customer facing role in retail, hospitality or any contact center. On today's podcast I invited Darren Ford author of the Millennial Challenge to help answer some of these questions. Are millennials a completely different breed? If you have customer facing roles what should you watch out for? Subscribe on ITune

Adrian joins the show to talk about the evolution of international outsourcing in the contact center space. I would like to take some of the emotion out of it and focus on the facts. Back in the early 2000's when companies started outsourcing in India, the US customers were quite unhappy, but more and more companies invested in outsourcing mainly because of the decrease in costs and the improvement of processes/efficiency. So how it all involved since then?

Customers have lots of legitimate complaints about customer service - automated systems that seems to have been designed by sadist. They are constantly punted from one department to the next, and they have to repeat their problem over and over as they are punted from one person to the next like a football on 4th and 25. prioritizing where to focus can be challenging but for heaven’s sake we shouldn’t be focusing on a unicorn like omni-Channel

Technology is changing the landscape of the customer experience. On today's show Jamie Ham discusses what the future might look like, why you should fire customers and how humans thrive in this equation.

I asked an executive if his son would be considering a job in his own call center and you would think I was suggesting his son take a job with ISIS! He was completely disgusted with the question. I don't blame him, the job sucks. It doesn't have to be this way. The thing is, it's not just because of screaming customers, it's largely because of the environment we have created for people in these jobs. For starters, many organizations treat the roles like prostitution with patronizing policies and utter disregard. You can read my post on that here and feel free to call or text me at 4059288185 if you disagree. It is hypocritical to continue talking about the customer experience without devoting the same energy to the Customer-Faacing employee experience. Executive after executive visits their call centers, sits with an agent and walks away with awe, and patronizing remarks like "I can't do that job, those people are heroes." The job doesn't have to be heroic, it only appears that way because most people in call

You are not supposed to be able to buy a house or a car without a middleman - whose value is dubious at best. The customer experience can definitely improve but what role will the actual dealers play? Nowadays people need the middleman less each day. But what about if, instead just pushing for a sale, they delivered real expertise and provided a great Customer Experience to help you make the best choice for you. Listen to our chat and the specific cases and topics we tackle. We also discuss the automation in Customer Experience and what's the best blend of human and automated experience.

My relationship with coffee is non-committal, my drug of choice first thing in the morning is crispy bacon. I don't visit Starbucks often but it's my default meeting place to meet a colleague or friend. Not that long ago an old colleague invited me to catch up at a starbucks. We were both shocked to find out the entire place was a drive through and you couldn't even sit down for coffee - things have changed!

Nick Jiwa joins us to talk about outsourcing, and why it needs to be fixed for the sake of the customer. What are the implications for the customer experience? Does outsourcing make sense for some or most? If so why are the relationships so toxic?

Asking customers for feedback is completely useless. Why then do most organizations continue to do it? Will organization really use it...in a productive way? Maybe they think that people feel flattered when asked for feedback and input. Is asking for feedback used as a therapy session to allow people to let off some steam?    

Technology is wonderful until it is not, how does this impact customer experience, I think the next iteration of IVR will be a job killer. Mike Muson tells me to get off the ledge. We enjoy speaking to people, but when we want to get something done, we're looking for a faster and simpler option. This is where automation and self-services come out. But if presented with told IVR, we're out of there because we know that this won't get the job done. Most companies are not invested in modern solutions. They haven't really understood how technology can be applied to their business. Mike and I discuss helpful CX technologies that are available today and how they apply to different situations.  

Let's get really intentional about the customer experience. If you talk to organizations out there they will all tell you that they believe in the Customer Experience. So if everyone believes in the Customer Experience why, oh why, we're not seeing customer experience go up across the board? Why do you want to deliver a good customer experience? I think that your organization should exist to delight customers and revenue growth should come as a consequence of that delight. This might sound like semantics to you, but I think it's the critical distinction between good and great. Let me dive deeper and give you a few examples.