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Hi, this is Alex Romanovich and welcome to Global Edge Talk.
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Today, September 7th, 2023.
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Our guest is Nicholas Zeisler.
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Hello, Nicholas.
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Dobri Jen, Alex.
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How are you?
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Hello, hello.
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I see you're practicing your Russian.
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Very interesting.
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Nicholas is an amazing guest, and we're going to get right into it.
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Let me quickly introduce Nicholas.
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He's a fractional and in the past full-time chief customer officer.
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Was involved with major brands like Dell and HP.
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He's now a principal of Zeisler Consulting, and he's consulting on the topic of customer experience worldwide.
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He also has a book that we'll talk about of doing CX wrong and doing it right.
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That's not exactly the name of the book, but we will recover from that.
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He has been an executive in the Fortune 100 companies.
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He is also, I just learned this recently.
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Wow.
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He's also a United States for Air Force reservist with the service for almost 30 years.
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And he's also a Russian linguist.
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And he's been um he had overall active duty for nine years.
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He's a lieutenant colonel.
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And uh he's also teaching uh right now at the U.S.
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Air Force Academy.
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Very impressive.
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Um, he has been a voiceover talent.
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His voice is um has been heard in many, many instances as well.
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He lives in Denver and he loves Colorado.
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I can't blame him.
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Uh welcome to our studio.
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Alex, it's great to be here.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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Um, our audience is a global audience, and it'll be a fascinating conversation to talk about customer experience at a global level.
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Uh, because we're dealing with a lot of um, you know, global brands, um large and small, growing and not growing so much, and so forth.
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So I think it's gonna be a fascinating topic.
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I'm sure you covered that topic in your book.
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But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about your background.
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You have a very diverse background.
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What draw, what drove you, what drives you to have a background like that?
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Oh, well, actually, thanks, Alex.
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That I I think that the that my background is one of the things that differenti differentiates me from a lot of my colleagues and and you know, as as I've as I've swum in the CX waters for the last several years, uh, both internally and and as a fractional and as a consultant.
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Um you know, CX in and of itself has a lot of uh has a lot of fathers, if you will.
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It comes from a lot of different places.
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And a lot of folks come into the CX world from customer support or customer care, contact center, that sort of thing.
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And, you know, the genesis story there, whether it's apocryphal or not, is somebody from from customer care gets gets sick and tired of taking the same call all day long from the customers and marches down to product or engineering or something and bangs on the door and says, you have to fix this.
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We're we're tired of fixing it on the on the back end.
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Well, that's where I kind of come in to CX is on the fixing it, because I didn't come from customer support or customer care.
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And while I while I think customer care and customer support are an awesome and very important part of the customer experience, and for that matter, a tremendous source of insights into where our customers are having issues, that's not what customer experience is.
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I come from the world of process engineering.
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I'm a Lean Six Sigma black belt.
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I have been in operations research, which is akin to industrial engineering and optimization and process improvement for my entire military career almost, and also uh in a lot of the work that I've done in the civilian sector.
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And I've been a Lean Six Sigma consultant and trainer uh for this entire time.
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I was approached uh by and by a brilliant executive at a previous employer, said, Hey, Z, we want to leverage your process engineering skills.
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We want to use your Lean Six Sigma background and those tools and that approach and that discipline to improve our customers' experiences.
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So for me, it's always been about how can we do things better?
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How can we improve our internal processes and systems and even policies so as to better deliver on our brand promise to our customers?
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So coming from that world, it was a revelation for me to think wait, you mean you can use things like lean and six sigma to do things other than find efficiencies that you turn into redundancies, that you turn into, frankly, you know, severance checks for a lot of people.
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I mean, that's it's kind of a rough life to live when a lot of your engagements with your clients start off with, hey, well, we're looking to get rid of about six to eight headcount.
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Can you help us find ways to lay a bunch of people off?
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Um, it can be kind of soul sucking if that's the that's the the work you're in, even as cool as it might be to see processes improved and to see streamlining and uh and optimization.
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So when I was given this opportunity to say, let's use these same tools, let's use this same approach to instead better improve our customers' experiences, I thought that is really awesome.
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That's a that's a great flag to rally around.
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And what's nice is we also get to improve our processes and save resources at the same time.
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So it uh it's it's kind of uh a new paint job on process improvement and continuous process improvement, but it's for a great reason, and that is to drive that alignment between your brand and what your customers are getting.
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Let's talk a little bit about this um in more detail.
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But first, I want to ask you, as an entrepreneur of many, many years, you probably have seen a lot of very interesting situations with large brands, smaller brands, global, local, and so forth.
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And I want to talk about disruption for a second.
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We're coming out of the still coming out of the COVID disruption.
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You know, there are bouts of COVID that are coming back and so forth.
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What's this you're talking about?
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I've I've not heard of this COVID thing.
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Right, exactly.
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Um, and then of course there is a threat of recession, right?
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And then there's more in Europe, which impacts a lot of the European brands and you know, Central European brands and so forth.
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When disruptions like that happen, what happens to customer service?
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How do uh what are the best practices on how to handle situations like that, and what brands should do um in terms of being prepared for something like that?
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Yeah.
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You know, Alex, there's there's a philosophical point that that is made, and I'm sure some brilliant author said it better than I'm about to, that you can tell a person's character, you can tell a lot about a person's character by how they respond under pressure, right?
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When everything's going great, everybody's a great person, right?
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But when when things get rough, that's how you learn, for example, who your true friends are and whether or not somebody is a person of integrity and whether they'll go and and and do the right thing, it's under those pressure situations.
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Well, I think corporately and in a in the business world, a similar thing happens.
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Disruption is always going to happen.
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I mean, we are not living through the last of the disruptions, nor anywhere near the first of the disruptions.
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But those brands that truly dedicate themselves to their brand promise, to their mission and vision, their corporate principles are always going to be looking for ways to deliver what they really mean.
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You know, I use the illusion all the time of, you know, if it's etched in the marble in the lobby of your building, it should really mean something to you.
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When external forces change things about your supply chain, change things about the ability to find good help to work for your company.
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Well, if you lean back on the things that you truly believe, then I think that's always the key to delivering.
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And that's going to be the key to business success.
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It sounds silly, it sounds trite.
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I know a lot of people think of things like mission and vision statements, like, oh, these are just words that are out there.
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And it is unfortunate, Alex.
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A lot of companies do just see it that way as well.
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But the people who really believe in it, and the people who in the organizations who really desire to deliver on their brand promise are the ones who are going to have the focus to make it through disruption.
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And quite frankly, as I'd said earlier, before we started recording, they drive their own disruption.
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They are always looking for ways to change and do what they do different and better.
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And so, therefore, to better deliver on that promise.
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So when external forces change the external landscape, well, they're already in the change mode as it is anyway.
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They're already in the improvement mindset.
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So that's just those those disruptions, Alex, are nothing more than another uh facet of what they want to improve and how they need to change.
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So are you suggesting that the brands companies should do uh sort of five rills with customer experience?
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Yeah, well, well, I don't know if they want to they want to deliberately uh uh uh put something out there that's going to screw them up.
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But it's funny, I one of the things that I'll hear in in you know in in the quote unquote thought leadership, you know, uh the denizens of CX is how do you handle negative feedback?
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And they they say that as if somehow or another CX is supposed to be some sort of self-affirmation exercise.
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And it's like, oh, well, and if I hear bad news, I'm gonna have to curl up in a ball and and and you know, uh console myself somehow or another.
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No, no, no.
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That's what you should be looking for in the first place.
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So you talk about your fire drills.
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When I look at a client's VOC, their voice of the customer, their survey responses, when I look into their customer care ticketing uh uh metrics, I am looking for problems.
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I am looking for where they're falling short, where they're getting it wrong.
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Let's identify your shit shows, Alex.
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I hope this is a family uh recording, but let's identify what is okay.
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You can say the word shit.
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That's not all right.
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Let's run into that fire because that's the only way in which we are going to meet our market.
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There's the only way that we're gonna succeed, is by identifying where we're falling short.
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Now that's only the first step because the second step, which is really more important even than that very important first step, which is now what are you gonna do about it?
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Because if all you're doing is just collecting data and yay, we're so happy because our NPS is up this month or whatever, or oh no, poor, poor us, our NPS is down this month and now let's panic or something like that.
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If that's all you're doing with it, you're missing the boat and and you're becoming just passive to your metrics.
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And that, quite frankly, is where, and I say this as a statistician, as a metrics guy, as an analyst going going years and years back.
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That is a horrible thing to do, is just to look at your metrics.
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If you're not using those insights that you're getting from your VOC program to drive actual work being done to improve and change the way that you do business so as to remove those gaps, then you are actually wasting your money.
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You shouldn't even do a VOC if you're not using it to drive people in your organization whose job is dedicated to improving the things that you do.
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I'm not just saying, hey, let maybe we'll find something and and and maybe we'll we'll have an opportunity to fix something.
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No, it needs to be put in place deliberately and operationally.
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Great points, by the way.
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And I know that you're covering those points in your book.
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Let's talk about two things.
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Let's talk a little bit about your book, what's in the book?
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Uh, number one, and number two, how does a company get prepared?
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You know, what are some of the top five bullets, if you will, at four bullets, however many bullets, uh, that this um, you know, this uh recording will allow us to talk about.
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Um try to hold me back, try to limit my number of bullets.
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Exactly.
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Sure.
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Uh so how many bullets, or I'm sorry, how many um, you know, factors uh should the company pay attention to?
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Yeah.
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Um, well, about the book, it's called We're Doing CX Wrong and How to Get It Right.
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And I wrote it um from a personal perspective, I wrote it because I hate sales.
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Uh as a solopreneur, as as an on his own single guy consultant, fractional chief customer officer.
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I don't like having to spend too much time.
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Okay, here's here's the approach, here's what I do, here's how it works.
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Do you think you need this?
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Here's my card, give me a call.
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So I said, you know, I'm just gonna write it down.
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So it's a walkthrough of my framework.
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And my framework starts with customer insights, which is we were just talking about VOC and so forth, but that needs to be driven by the second part of the framework, which is process engineering, which is what are you gonna do with what you get out of that customer insights, uh, uh, those customer insights efforts, which by the way, feeds back into the customer insights efforts because if you know what you're trying to do with them, it can help guide where you go to get them, how you ask the questions you ask, how you listen, even for that matter.
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And the third third leg, if you will, of the stool of uh of the framework is building a customer-centric culture.
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A lot of folks think that that becoming customer-centric means putting up banners that say that we love the customer, handing out t-shirts and mouse pads to all your employees and say, be customer-centric, but it's but it's not about that.
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There's actually a mini-framework within that part of the framework.
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It's about uh enabling, empowering, and encouraging your entire team to be customer centric, enabling them with the tools that it takes to take care of your customers.
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And in senses like the contact center, that makes perfect sense, right?
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Get them a good knowledge management management system, get them good telephony systems and so forth.
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Sure, yeah, that's great.
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But it's also about the entire organization.
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Does your engineering department, do the people in product, do the folks in accounts receivable have what they need to best deliver that brand promise at every touch point, right?
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Um, so that's the enablement.
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The empowerment means that they don't have to escalate.
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That means obviously that every time you talk to customer uh support, that you don't have to talk to a supervisor, but it also means that there are uh skunk works within your engineering department.
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The people don't have to ask permission to try something new or to try to engineer a better solution for your customers uh in in delivering their daily work.
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And then encouragement is the third E of the customer-centric culture.
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And that is also about t-shirts and banners and mouse pads and so forth, but it's also walking the talk.
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It's investing.
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Like I alluded to uh a little while ago.
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It's it's it's one thing to say, well, we listen to our customers and then we take action on what they tell us and what they identify for us as gaps.
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It's another thing to say we have an entire branch, and maybe that branch is only two or three people, but we have process engineers whose job is nothing more than to fix the way we do things.
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And they are constantly looking for ways in which to do better and to deliver better on our brand promise.
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And so that's that's the book and that's the framework.
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Um it, it's it's it's I think it's relatively straightforward, but it's easier than the pitch that I just gave you, which I've never been able to get in under just a couple minutes.
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Excellent.
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Let's talk about alignment.
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You talk a lot about alignment within the organization.
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And the specific alignment I'm interested in is the alignment with marketing.
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And the reason for that is because uh marketers tend to, and you know, me being one of them, uh, marketers tend to promise things.
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They promise um uh the best quality, they promise uh great functions and features and and and and so forth.
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And again, maybe promise is not the right word, but uh nevertheless, that's that's what happens.
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Um within certain industries, sectors, service sectors, even airlines or sectors like that, there's a lot of promise uh in marketing, but then once you get into the um actual plane, once you you know get involved with customer service, that promise may or may not hold.
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So, how do you align?
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And again, this nothing against airlines necessarily, or nothing against the um industry segments where this is very difficult to implement.
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How do you carefully balance that alignment between reality and the promise?
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Yeah.
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Well, for what it's worth, I do have plenty against airlines.
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But um as as I've refined a lot of this and and my approach, I have learned a lot about marketing.
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I used to say, I don't know anything about marketing.
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And then I started speaking with more and more marketers and spending time at conferences speaking for marketers and with them, interviewing them, uh, you know, moderating panels of marketers.
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So I can no longer say that I don't know anything about marketing, but I'm not a marketer myself.
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But I had devised um kind of the this structure in my mind whereby the concept of customer experience, as I approach it, uh as I as I you know uh uh execute the discipline and marketing are really two sides of the same coin.
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And that coin, that what they share in common is that brand promise.
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Because marketers will spend, and I'm fascinated by it, all the way from the research that goes into it and understanding the best place and what the return might be, and and how a product or service can can come to market, the go-to-market work, all that stuff is just fascinating to me.
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All the way to you know, advertising and and fonts and colors and all this.
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It's just so much work goes into what marketers do on behalf of their companies and on behalf of their brands.
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And so I'm talking with him.
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And one thing that I hear often is the anecdote of, okay, so here I am, the CMO, and I'm sitting around the table with my peers, and I have done all of this work of marketing, and I'm just sitting there with my face in my hands.
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I'm saying, you know, my job as marketing would be a lot easier if you assholes actually delivered what I'm telling the world we're all about.
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You know, and I said, that's where you should say, Well, I have this friend, his name is Z.
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He can come in and actually help you do that.
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And I have a really good friend, and you know her, Muriel uh Lotto.
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She was on uh she was on your podcast a bit ago.
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And she said, you know what, Z, here's what it is.
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And this is another reason I love marketers because they can they can give me insights about how to pitch it like this.
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She says, I'm in brand design and I'm in brand promise.
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That's what I develop.
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Z, what you do is you deliver the brand.
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You're in brand delivery.
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And I said, that is exactly what it is.
00:19:49.859 --> 00:19:55.380
It's a it's it's the operational side of what marketing is trying to make happen.
00:19:55.539 --> 00:20:01.460
And so that's why so many of my advocates, you know, I've I uh a lot of my best work is with marketers.
00:20:01.539 --> 00:20:03.940
And I follow, I take the lead from them.
00:20:04.180 --> 00:20:06.019
Uh, what is your brand promise?
00:20:06.099 --> 00:20:07.700
Where are you trying to meet the market?
00:20:07.859 --> 00:20:15.299
You're yeah, sure, you this is what you do, sure this is your vision and your mission, but what are you trying to deliver?
00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:19.299
Are you trying to deliver the easiest to use experience?
00:20:19.460 --> 00:20:22.500
Are you trying to deliver the most luxurious experience?
00:20:22.740 --> 00:20:28.339
Are you trying to deliver the most highly technical, you know, the cutting edge?
00:20:28.579 --> 00:20:29.380
This is the newest.
00:20:29.460 --> 00:20:32.180
We always have the newest and greatest, you know, technology.
00:20:32.339 --> 00:20:34.099
Or is he just trying to be the discount brand?
00:20:34.180 --> 00:20:35.620
And not that, no, not to diminish that.
00:20:35.779 --> 00:20:37.140
That can be very valuable as well.
00:20:37.299 --> 00:20:43.539
I want to, I want to be able to go to the hardware store and pick a dozen of them out of a bucket and not care because they're just commoditized.
00:20:43.700 --> 00:20:44.579
Okay, great.
00:20:44.900 --> 00:20:52.099
How are you, therefore, as an organization, enterprise, end-to-end, how are you delivering on that brand promise?
00:20:52.339 --> 00:20:55.620
Let's look for gaps in where you're not delivering it.
00:20:55.779 --> 00:21:01.700
And let's work on your operations, your systems, your processes, and let's fix it so that you actually are.
00:21:01.940 --> 00:21:07.539
And it it follows to interesting places that might not be intuitive.
00:21:07.779 --> 00:21:16.980
I think that uh a lot of times engineering and product and and and you know, the nerds down in the lab get a bad reputation for not being very customer-centric.
00:21:17.140 --> 00:21:18.500
And I don't think that's the case at all.
00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:20.180
They may not necessarily hit it.
00:21:20.259 --> 00:21:37.700
Now they may need some guidance from marketing from time to time when it comes to creating whatever their new uh mousetrap is, but they're honestly and earnestly trying to deliver how can we make the product that we make better and more aligned to what it is that we're trying to promise our customers that they'll experience.
00:21:37.859 --> 00:21:43.220
What's interesting is that there are a lot of operational and support organizations that don't necessarily see it that way.
00:21:43.380 --> 00:21:49.620
I'll talk to a client and they'll be, for example, and just pick anyone, but I'll say that's the ease of use brand, and that's what they're trying to be.
00:21:49.700 --> 00:21:50.660
And I'll talk to their CMO.
00:21:50.740 --> 00:21:51.859
Yeah, well, that's what we want to be.
00:21:51.940 --> 00:21:54.180
We want to be, you know, ease of use.
00:21:54.420 --> 00:21:54.980
Say, great.
00:21:55.059 --> 00:21:56.740
So let me talk to your legal department.
00:21:56.900 --> 00:21:58.579
They say, why do you want to talk to the legal department?
00:21:58.660 --> 00:22:01.779
I said, well, what happens when one of your customers, say it's a service provider?
00:22:01.940 --> 00:22:08.819
What happens if one of your customers or potential clients wants something that's a little bit off from what you normally offer?
00:22:08.980 --> 00:22:11.460
How easy is that to run through your legal department?
00:22:11.620 --> 00:22:24.339
Or does the entire contract need to be rewritten and it takes two weeks, three weeks in order to get the clearance and the okay and the go ahead to deliver that slightly different version of your service to this potential client?
00:22:24.500 --> 00:22:29.140
Well, even though the delivery of that might Be awesome and easy to use once they get it.
00:22:29.299 --> 00:22:34.180
If it took three weeks to get through legal just to get to the point where you could sign the contract, guess what?
00:22:34.339 --> 00:22:38.819
You're not delivering on that ease of use brand.
00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:47.220
And so like I said, the the these opportunities to drive that better alignment come from very uh you know curious places sometimes.
00:22:47.620 --> 00:23:05.779
Um very interesting, fascinating topic, by the way, in terms of brand design, brand delivery, brand activation, and such an important um sort of a handoff point um, you know, for the brand, for the company to get involved with customer experience as well.
00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:11.460
Um let's talk a little bit about um a topic that's near and dear to me, which is global business.
00:23:12.339 --> 00:23:24.900
Um a lot of the companies that come to the United States uh United States market, and vice versa, US brands doing business overseas may experience a different experience.
00:23:25.059 --> 00:23:27.539
Um interesting statement.
00:23:27.779 --> 00:23:42.099
Experience different experience uh may um may actually um uh face a different experience because of different cultures, because of different uh consumer uh you know tolerance points and what have you.
00:23:42.579 --> 00:23:58.740
How does a brand, whether it's a scale up or startup or a more mature company, how does a brand approach uh the fact that that customer experience may not be universe, may not be uniform, and they have to adapt to a particular culture?
00:23:59.220 --> 00:24:05.539
Well, I'm not gonna tell a marketer like you the importance of what you just what you just elaborated on.
00:24:05.620 --> 00:24:19.779
I mean, that's obviously the case that that a brand needs to be dynamic and understanding that where they are makes a difference because customers are different, obviously, in those different places.
00:24:20.019 --> 00:24:47.620
Um for me, it always just goes back to having a curiosity about where you're falling short, being open to and being quite frankly eager for your customers wherever they are, in whatever situation, wherever they are, even within your own internal journey, of telling you that they're disappointed, that you're not doing it, that you're not doing it right.
00:24:47.700 --> 00:24:52.900
And for that matter, and this may have something to do with those international situations as well.
00:24:53.220 --> 00:24:58.180
There's an awkward conversation that sometimes may have to happen between CX and marketing.
00:24:58.579 --> 00:25:12.420
If you take my approach, which is that the strategic goal, the reason you quote unquote do CX in the first place, is to drive alignment between your brand promise and what your customers are getting in the real world.
00:25:12.660 --> 00:25:29.779
What you may find is that after a period of time of improving your processes and better driving that alignment and delivering what you're telling the world that you actually are all about, you may find that, wow, sales didn't really increase after all, right?
00:25:30.099 --> 00:25:36.579
Our our market share is pretty much stagnant and the revenue hasn't moved at all.
00:25:36.900 --> 00:25:37.539
Wow.
00:25:38.019 --> 00:25:44.980
But our customers are telling us that we are definitely delivering on, you know, that whatever experience that we're trying to deliver to them.
00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:47.940
Well, that's where you have to sit down and say, Well, hmm, you know what?
00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:54.099
It turns out possibly there's not so much a market for what it is that we, you know, are trying to deliver.
00:25:54.259 --> 00:26:01.700
What's nice is you don't have to beat yourself up over it because you really did deliver on what you said that you were promising.
00:26:02.259 --> 00:26:04.980
So sometimes you only had five customers.
00:26:05.059 --> 00:26:05.380
That's all.
00:26:05.620 --> 00:26:06.180
Yeah, right, yeah.
00:26:06.259 --> 00:26:06.819
And they love you.
00:26:06.900 --> 00:26:07.539
They're they love you.
00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:12.019
And if they're if they're willing to pay 20% of your revenue needs that that year, that's great.
00:26:12.099 --> 00:26:23.539
But if not, you you are running into them, therefore, that feedback loop where that goes back to marketing and says, you know, in this market, for example, if it's an international, in this market, that that brand promise just doesn't work.
00:26:23.700 --> 00:26:34.180
So maybe we need to rebrand in that market, or maybe we need to spin off and have have a subsidiary over there if it's if it's that different from our corporate principles or our corporate uh brand promise.
00:26:34.420 --> 00:26:49.059
But it's it's being willing to hear that bad news that no, no, no, you can do, you can deliver a luxury brand and knock it out of the park, and everybody agrees and recognizes you as that luxury brand.
00:26:49.299 --> 00:26:54.339
But everybody at this point is just looking for commoditation, commoditization, and and discount.
00:26:54.579 --> 00:26:59.460
So great on you, but nobody wants that in their, you know, in their sliced cheese.
00:26:59.700 --> 00:27:02.099
Yes, a very interesting um analogy.
00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:05.539
Um, I'm dying, I'm very curious, dying to ask you this question.
00:27:05.779 --> 00:27:08.900
What do you teach in the United States Air Force Academy?
00:27:09.059 --> 00:27:09.460
Number one.
00:27:09.539 --> 00:27:18.579
And number two, how do you sort of reconcile or do you use any of the content or analogies and so forth from your customer experience environment?
00:27:18.980 --> 00:27:20.180
Uh oh well, yeah.
00:27:20.259 --> 00:27:21.779
That's I I that's a great question.
00:27:21.859 --> 00:27:22.259
I like that.
00:27:22.579 --> 00:27:27.140
First of all, I teach statistics and uh and and mathematics at the Air Force Academy.
00:27:27.220 --> 00:27:28.980
Uh, and it's a tremendous honor to do that.
00:27:29.059 --> 00:27:35.539
I still I've been doing it for about 17 years, and I still can't believe how it is that that ever even came to be.
00:27:35.620 --> 00:27:37.620
And I'm humbled every time I'm there.
00:27:37.779 --> 00:27:45.940
Uh, but one of the things, in fact, that teaching taught me is that I am a very analogous thinking person.
00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:52.259
The whole trick to teaching is being able to say, all right, Alex, I'm I can see I'm not getting through.
00:27:52.339 --> 00:27:54.339
Uh what I'm saying isn't making sense to you.
00:27:54.420 --> 00:27:57.940
Let me think of a different way of saying that same thing.
00:27:58.099 --> 00:27:58.900
It's like this.
00:27:59.059 --> 00:28:00.819
Have you ever had this experience?
00:28:01.059 --> 00:28:04.579
Is this something that's similar to something that you've known before?
00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:05.299
Okay, great.
00:28:05.380 --> 00:28:09.539
Now let's jump off of that shared understanding and we'll go down this path.
00:28:09.620 --> 00:28:13.299
And hopefully I can get across to you the concept that I'm trying to share.
00:28:13.539 --> 00:28:27.859
What's interesting about that from my professional career in in CX is that consultant coaches, coaches to consultants will always tell you you've got a niche, niche, niche, niche.
00:28:27.940 --> 00:28:38.819
You've got to know exactly who you want to sell to, exactly within this, you know, within this industry and you know, this region, this size of company, this, this, you know, this revenue target, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:38.900 --> 00:28:42.900
And they want you to to to just hone in on exactly that.
00:28:43.220 --> 00:28:47.140
And just like everybody else, I'm special, Alex.
00:28:47.220 --> 00:28:49.220
And so of course I don't have to adhere to that.
00:28:49.380 --> 00:28:51.940
But here's what I uh here's what I found.
00:28:54.019 --> 00:29:03.620
If you run a healthcare organization, maybe it's a, you know, a bunch of hospitals or something like that, you want your head of surgery to be a surgeon.
00:29:03.859 --> 00:29:07.220
You want your head of pediatrics to be a pediatrician, right?
00:29:07.700 --> 00:29:14.099
But if you can at all help it, make your patient advocate somebody who isn't from your industry.
00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:22.259
Because those folks are going to be less inclined to blinders on, say, okay, this is how it's supposed to be.
00:29:22.339 --> 00:29:23.620
This is how it has to happen.
00:29:23.779 --> 00:29:32.099
You want your patient advocate and your customer experience folks to ask questions like, why do our patients have to fill this form out eight times?
00:29:32.339 --> 00:29:37.859
And recognize that it's a rhetorical question because what I'm not looking for is the literal answer to that.
00:29:38.019 --> 00:29:43.059
What I'm saying is that our customers, our patients shouldn't have to fill this out eight or 10 times.
00:29:43.220 --> 00:29:59.059
So this is one of those times where being from outside of the industry actually helps you because it gives you the opportunity to say, you know, I've seen something similar, not exactly the same, but similar in another industry.
00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:09.620
Is there any way we can apply that knowledge and that experience and those things that I've seen in our current context and where we currently are in this industry over here?
00:30:10.819 --> 00:30:11.620
Great answer.
00:30:11.700 --> 00:30:12.259
Thank you.
00:30:12.500 --> 00:30:22.259
Um, another question uh related to your experience and something that you would say to yourself of, let's say, 15 or 20 years ago, right?
00:30:22.339 --> 00:30:24.420
What have you learned in that time?
00:30:24.740 --> 00:30:36.500
And most importantly, what advice would you give to our audience, which is very diverse, global, uh, anybody from startups and scale-ups to mature, you know, large brands?
00:30:36.740 --> 00:30:37.220
Yeah.
00:30:37.460 --> 00:30:40.500
Um, I would say I would I would echo something I've heard from a lot of other folks.
00:30:40.579 --> 00:30:44.500
And it's a sort of advice, in fact, that I give to cadets uh uh all the time.
00:30:44.660 --> 00:30:52.420
And that is um try to try to uh let go of your fear from a professional perspective.
00:30:52.579 --> 00:31:05.059
Um, nobody is going to give you an opportunity because they think you can't do it, and they're just really looking forward to laughing at you when you fail, right?
00:31:05.220 --> 00:31:13.859
Nobody is nobody's business, nobody's company is running so well that they can afford that sort of investment just in their own entertainment and and and Schadenfreude.
00:31:14.420 --> 00:31:17.620
So learn from those opportunities.
00:31:17.859 --> 00:31:22.980
Say yes to the opportunities that that come forward for you.
00:31:23.140 --> 00:31:27.140
And you will be surprised how much of a through line.
00:31:27.380 --> 00:31:48.420
We were talking just just a second ago about you know applying you know learnings from from one instance in one situation analogously into another, you'll be surprised if you open up your your your curiosity, how much one experience may help you in another experience down the road that you had no way of expecting would ever come to you.
00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:58.980
And so when you say no, or when you think, I can't get this done, I don't think that I have really the skill or the talent to do that, then you're actually missing out on those opportunities.
00:32:00.579 --> 00:32:04.579
Uh, Nicholas, um, I want to say thank you so much for this conversation.
00:32:04.740 --> 00:32:07.220
I think we've learned in a very short period of time.
00:32:07.460 --> 00:32:12.579
I've learned a lot in terms of your hints, tips, bullets, and so forth.
00:32:12.740 --> 00:32:15.940
Uh, definitely um we'll read the book.
00:32:16.099 --> 00:32:18.740
Uh I apologize, I haven't had a chance to do that yet.
00:32:18.900 --> 00:32:30.980
We will provide the links to the book and the content that you have um on the bottom of the um uh the space on the bottom of the uh podcast on our uh podcast uh website.
00:32:31.220 --> 00:32:38.660
And uh I wish you well and I hope that many, many, many companies globally will listen to your advice and read your book as well.
00:32:38.900 --> 00:32:40.500
I yeah, that would be wonderful.
00:32:40.740 --> 00:32:43.220
And it's a quick, it's a quick, easy read, Alex.
00:32:43.299 --> 00:32:45.220
It's it's it's 90 some pages.
00:32:45.380 --> 00:32:50.420
It's it's not even an airplane book, it's a waiting at the gate for your airplane to board book.
00:32:50.579 --> 00:32:51.539
So interesting.
00:32:51.859 --> 00:32:53.460
Great analogy, great suggestion.
00:32:53.620 --> 00:32:54.740
Thank you so much.
00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:55.859
Cheers.
00:32:56.099 --> 00:32:56.740
Cheers.
00:00:44.099 --> 00:00:47.539
Hi, this is Alex Romanovich and welcome to Global Edge Talk.
00:00:47.700 --> 00:00:50.979
Today, September 7th, 2023.
00:00:51.459 --> 00:00:53.539
Our guest is Nicholas Zeisler.
00:00:53.859 --> 00:00:54.739
Hello, Nicholas.
00:00:55.539 --> 00:00:56.739
Dobri Jen, Alex.
00:00:56.819 --> 00:00:57.299
How are you?
00:00:57.619 --> 00:00:58.420
Hello, hello.
00:00:58.739 --> 00:01:00.179
I see you're practicing your Russian.
00:01:00.500 --> 00:01:01.299
Very interesting.
00:01:02.019 --> 00:01:05.780
Nicholas is an amazing guest, and we're going to get right into it.
00:01:06.260 --> 00:01:08.659
Let me quickly introduce Nicholas.
00:01:09.379 --> 00:01:13.700
He's a fractional and in the past full-time chief customer officer.
00:01:13.939 --> 00:01:16.659
Was involved with major brands like Dell and HP.
00:01:17.459 --> 00:01:24.500
He's now a principal of Zeisler Consulting, and he's consulting on the topic of customer experience worldwide.
00:01:24.659 --> 00:01:30.260
He also has a book that we'll talk about of doing CX wrong and doing it right.
00:01:30.819 --> 00:01:34.819
That's not exactly the name of the book, but we will recover from that.
00:01:35.379 --> 00:01:38.899
He has been an executive in the Fortune 100 companies.
00:01:39.539 --> 00:01:41.939
He is also, I just learned this recently.
00:01:42.179 --> 00:01:42.739
Wow.
00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:49.299
He's also a United States for Air Force reservist with the service for almost 30 years.
00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:51.219
And he's also a Russian linguist.
00:01:55.299 --> 00:01:58.819
And he's been um he had overall active duty for nine years.
00:01:58.899 --> 00:02:00.420
He's a lieutenant colonel.
00:02:00.659 --> 00:02:04.179
And uh he's also teaching uh right now at the U.S.
00:02:04.259 --> 00:02:05.299
Air Force Academy.
00:02:05.459 --> 00:02:06.500
Very impressive.
00:02:06.739 --> 00:02:09.300
Um, he has been a voiceover talent.
00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:13.699
His voice is um has been heard in many, many instances as well.
00:02:13.860 --> 00:02:16.740
He lives in Denver and he loves Colorado.
00:02:16.819 --> 00:02:17.860
I can't blame him.
00:02:18.099 --> 00:02:19.460
Uh welcome to our studio.
00:02:19.780 --> 00:02:20.979
Alex, it's great to be here.
00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:22.580
Thanks so much for having me.
00:02:22.979 --> 00:02:30.900
Um, our audience is a global audience, and it'll be a fascinating conversation to talk about customer experience at a global level.
00:02:31.140 --> 00:02:39.939
Uh, because we're dealing with a lot of um, you know, global brands, um large and small, growing and not growing so much, and so forth.
00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:41.939
So I think it's gonna be a fascinating topic.
00:02:42.100 --> 00:02:44.659
I'm sure you covered that topic in your book.
00:02:44.820 --> 00:02:48.020
But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about your background.
00:02:48.100 --> 00:02:49.939
You have a very diverse background.
00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:54.180
What draw, what drove you, what drives you to have a background like that?
00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:56.500
Oh, well, actually, thanks, Alex.
00:02:56.580 --> 00:03:12.659
That I I think that the that my background is one of the things that differenti differentiates me from a lot of my colleagues and and you know, as as I've as I've swum in the CX waters for the last several years, uh, both internally and and as a fractional and as a consultant.
00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:19.219
Um you know, CX in and of itself has a lot of uh has a lot of fathers, if you will.
00:03:19.379 --> 00:03:21.219
It comes from a lot of different places.
00:03:21.379 --> 00:03:28.100
And a lot of folks come into the CX world from customer support or customer care, contact center, that sort of thing.
00:03:28.260 --> 00:03:42.900
And, you know, the genesis story there, whether it's apocryphal or not, is somebody from from customer care gets gets sick and tired of taking the same call all day long from the customers and marches down to product or engineering or something and bangs on the door and says, you have to fix this.
00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:45.379
We're we're tired of fixing it on the on the back end.
00:03:45.540 --> 00:03:53.540
Well, that's where I kind of come in to CX is on the fixing it, because I didn't come from customer support or customer care.
00:03:53.860 --> 00:04:09.780
And while I while I think customer care and customer support are an awesome and very important part of the customer experience, and for that matter, a tremendous source of insights into where our customers are having issues, that's not what customer experience is.
00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:12.100
I come from the world of process engineering.
00:04:12.180 --> 00:04:13.939
I'm a Lean Six Sigma black belt.
00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:29.379
I have been in operations research, which is akin to industrial engineering and optimization and process improvement for my entire military career almost, and also uh in a lot of the work that I've done in the civilian sector.
00:04:29.459 --> 00:04:35.060
And I've been a Lean Six Sigma consultant and trainer uh for this entire time.
00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:46.340
I was approached uh by and by a brilliant executive at a previous employer, said, Hey, Z, we want to leverage your process engineering skills.
00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:54.500
We want to use your Lean Six Sigma background and those tools and that approach and that discipline to improve our customers' experiences.
00:04:54.740 --> 00:05:00.579
So for me, it's always been about how can we do things better?
00:05:00.740 --> 00:05:09.939
How can we improve our internal processes and systems and even policies so as to better deliver on our brand promise to our customers?
00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:26.019
So coming from that world, it was a revelation for me to think wait, you mean you can use things like lean and six sigma to do things other than find efficiencies that you turn into redundancies, that you turn into, frankly, you know, severance checks for a lot of people.
00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:34.900
I mean, that's it's kind of a rough life to live when a lot of your engagements with your clients start off with, hey, well, we're looking to get rid of about six to eight headcount.
00:05:34.980 --> 00:05:37.939
Can you help us find ways to lay a bunch of people off?
00:05:38.100 --> 00:05:46.819
Um, it can be kind of soul sucking if that's the that's the the work you're in, even as cool as it might be to see processes improved and to see streamlining and uh and optimization.
00:05:47.060 --> 00:05:59.460
So when I was given this opportunity to say, let's use these same tools, let's use this same approach to instead better improve our customers' experiences, I thought that is really awesome.
00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:02.019
That's a that's a great flag to rally around.
00:06:02.100 --> 00:06:06.180
And what's nice is we also get to improve our processes and save resources at the same time.
00:06:06.340 --> 00:06:21.220
So it uh it's it's kind of uh a new paint job on process improvement and continuous process improvement, but it's for a great reason, and that is to drive that alignment between your brand and what your customers are getting.
00:06:21.540 --> 00:06:24.740
Let's talk a little bit about this um in more detail.
00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:36.819
But first, I want to ask you, as an entrepreneur of many, many years, you probably have seen a lot of very interesting situations with large brands, smaller brands, global, local, and so forth.
00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:39.220
And I want to talk about disruption for a second.
00:06:39.860 --> 00:06:43.699
We're coming out of the still coming out of the COVID disruption.
00:06:43.939 --> 00:06:47.939
You know, there are bouts of COVID that are coming back and so forth.
00:06:48.340 --> 00:06:49.379
What's this you're talking about?
00:06:49.540 --> 00:06:51.300
I've I've not heard of this COVID thing.
00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:52.500
Right, exactly.
00:06:52.740 --> 00:06:56.019
Um, and then of course there is a threat of recession, right?
00:06:56.180 --> 00:07:01.780
And then there's more in Europe, which impacts a lot of the European brands and you know, Central European brands and so forth.
00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:06.420
When disruptions like that happen, what happens to customer service?
00:07:06.579 --> 00:07:17.379
How do uh what are the best practices on how to handle situations like that, and what brands should do um in terms of being prepared for something like that?
00:07:17.699 --> 00:07:17.860
Yeah.
00:07:18.100 --> 00:07:31.620
You know, Alex, there's there's a philosophical point that that is made, and I'm sure some brilliant author said it better than I'm about to, that you can tell a person's character, you can tell a lot about a person's character by how they respond under pressure, right?
00:07:31.780 --> 00:07:34.740
When everything's going great, everybody's a great person, right?
00:07:35.060 --> 00:07:49.379
But when when things get rough, that's how you learn, for example, who your true friends are and whether or not somebody is a person of integrity and whether they'll go and and and do the right thing, it's under those pressure situations.
00:07:49.540 --> 00:07:54.980
Well, I think corporately and in a in the business world, a similar thing happens.
00:07:55.540 --> 00:07:57.300
Disruption is always going to happen.
00:07:57.460 --> 00:08:02.740
I mean, we are not living through the last of the disruptions, nor anywhere near the first of the disruptions.
00:08:02.900 --> 00:08:19.540
But those brands that truly dedicate themselves to their brand promise, to their mission and vision, their corporate principles are always going to be looking for ways to deliver what they really mean.
00:08:19.780 --> 00:08:29.220
You know, I use the illusion all the time of, you know, if it's etched in the marble in the lobby of your building, it should really mean something to you.
00:08:29.540 --> 00:08:39.779
When external forces change things about your supply chain, change things about the ability to find good help to work for your company.
00:08:39.939 --> 00:08:48.179
Well, if you lean back on the things that you truly believe, then I think that's always the key to delivering.
00:08:48.340 --> 00:08:51.059
And that's going to be the key to business success.
00:08:51.220 --> 00:08:52.819
It sounds silly, it sounds trite.
00:08:52.899 --> 00:08:57.379
I know a lot of people think of things like mission and vision statements, like, oh, these are just words that are out there.
00:08:57.460 --> 00:08:59.060
And it is unfortunate, Alex.
00:08:59.220 --> 00:09:02.419
A lot of companies do just see it that way as well.
00:09:02.580 --> 00:09:14.980
But the people who really believe in it, and the people who in the organizations who really desire to deliver on their brand promise are the ones who are going to have the focus to make it through disruption.
00:09:15.139 --> 00:09:20.419
And quite frankly, as I'd said earlier, before we started recording, they drive their own disruption.
00:09:20.580 --> 00:09:25.940
They are always looking for ways to change and do what they do different and better.
00:09:26.100 --> 00:09:28.820
And so, therefore, to better deliver on that promise.
00:09:29.060 --> 00:09:38.259
So when external forces change the external landscape, well, they're already in the change mode as it is anyway.
00:09:38.340 --> 00:09:41.139
They're already in the improvement mindset.
00:09:41.379 --> 00:09:51.940
So that's just those those disruptions, Alex, are nothing more than another uh facet of what they want to improve and how they need to change.
00:09:52.180 --> 00:09:58.580
So are you suggesting that the brands companies should do uh sort of five rills with customer experience?
00:09:59.060 --> 00:10:05.620
Yeah, well, well, I don't know if they want to they want to deliberately uh uh uh put something out there that's going to screw them up.
00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:19.060
But it's funny, I one of the things that I'll hear in in you know in in the quote unquote thought leadership, you know, uh the denizens of CX is how do you handle negative feedback?
00:10:19.299 --> 00:10:25.139
And they they say that as if somehow or another CX is supposed to be some sort of self-affirmation exercise.
00:10:25.299 --> 00:10:33.139
And it's like, oh, well, and if I hear bad news, I'm gonna have to curl up in a ball and and and you know, uh console myself somehow or another.
00:10:33.299 --> 00:10:33.860
No, no, no.
00:10:34.019 --> 00:10:35.940
That's what you should be looking for in the first place.
00:10:36.100 --> 00:10:37.700
So you talk about your fire drills.
00:10:37.940 --> 00:10:52.259
When I look at a client's VOC, their voice of the customer, their survey responses, when I look into their customer care ticketing uh uh metrics, I am looking for problems.
00:10:52.419 --> 00:10:56.899
I am looking for where they're falling short, where they're getting it wrong.
00:10:57.139 --> 00:11:00.340
Let's identify your shit shows, Alex.
00:11:00.820 --> 00:11:05.860
I hope this is a family uh recording, but let's identify what is okay.
00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:06.740
You can say the word shit.
00:11:06.820 --> 00:11:07.779
That's not all right.
00:11:07.940 --> 00:11:14.580
Let's run into that fire because that's the only way in which we are going to meet our market.
00:11:14.899 --> 00:11:20.980
There's the only way that we're gonna succeed, is by identifying where we're falling short.
00:11:21.220 --> 00:11:28.500
Now that's only the first step because the second step, which is really more important even than that very important first step, which is now what are you gonna do about it?
00:11:28.740 --> 00:11:41.779
Because if all you're doing is just collecting data and yay, we're so happy because our NPS is up this month or whatever, or oh no, poor, poor us, our NPS is down this month and now let's panic or something like that.
00:11:42.019 --> 00:11:48.019
If that's all you're doing with it, you're missing the boat and and you're becoming just passive to your metrics.
00:11:48.180 --> 00:11:55.779
And that, quite frankly, is where, and I say this as a statistician, as a metrics guy, as an analyst going going years and years back.
00:11:56.019 --> 00:11:59.539
That is a horrible thing to do, is just to look at your metrics.
00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:14.820
If you're not using those insights that you're getting from your VOC program to drive actual work being done to improve and change the way that you do business so as to remove those gaps, then you are actually wasting your money.
00:12:15.379 --> 00:12:27.460
You shouldn't even do a VOC if you're not using it to drive people in your organization whose job is dedicated to improving the things that you do.
00:12:27.620 --> 00:12:32.740
I'm not just saying, hey, let maybe we'll find something and and and maybe we'll we'll have an opportunity to fix something.
00:12:32.899 --> 00:12:37.060
No, it needs to be put in place deliberately and operationally.
00:12:38.820 --> 00:12:39.860
Great points, by the way.
00:12:39.940 --> 00:12:42.419
And I know that you're covering those points in your book.
00:12:42.580 --> 00:12:43.539
Let's talk about two things.
00:12:43.700 --> 00:12:46.740
Let's talk a little bit about your book, what's in the book?
00:12:46.820 --> 00:12:50.580
Uh, number one, and number two, how does a company get prepared?
00:12:50.659 --> 00:13:00.100
You know, what are some of the top five bullets, if you will, at four bullets, however many bullets, uh, that this um, you know, this uh recording will allow us to talk about.
00:13:00.340 --> 00:13:02.980
Um try to hold me back, try to limit my number of bullets.
00:13:03.299 --> 00:13:03.700
Exactly.
00:13:03.779 --> 00:13:03.940
Sure.
00:13:04.100 --> 00:13:11.379
Uh so how many bullets, or I'm sorry, how many um, you know, factors uh should the company pay attention to?
00:13:11.620 --> 00:13:12.259
Yeah.
00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:16.340
Um, well, about the book, it's called We're Doing CX Wrong and How to Get It Right.
00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:20.580
And I wrote it um from a personal perspective, I wrote it because I hate sales.
00:13:20.740 --> 00:13:28.019
Uh as a solopreneur, as as an on his own single guy consultant, fractional chief customer officer.
00:13:28.180 --> 00:13:31.220
I don't like having to spend too much time.
00:13:31.379 --> 00:13:34.500
Okay, here's here's the approach, here's what I do, here's how it works.
00:13:34.659 --> 00:13:35.620
Do you think you need this?
00:13:35.700 --> 00:13:37.379
Here's my card, give me a call.
00:13:37.620 --> 00:13:39.700
So I said, you know, I'm just gonna write it down.
00:13:39.940 --> 00:13:43.779
So it's a walkthrough of my framework.
00:13:43.940 --> 00:14:10.500
And my framework starts with customer insights, which is we were just talking about VOC and so forth, but that needs to be driven by the second part of the framework, which is process engineering, which is what are you gonna do with what you get out of that customer insights, uh, uh, those customer insights efforts, which by the way, feeds back into the customer insights efforts because if you know what you're trying to do with them, it can help guide where you go to get them, how you ask the questions you ask, how you listen, even for that matter.
00:14:10.659 --> 00:14:17.299
And the third third leg, if you will, of the stool of uh of the framework is building a customer-centric culture.
00:14:17.460 --> 00:14:29.700
A lot of folks think that that becoming customer-centric means putting up banners that say that we love the customer, handing out t-shirts and mouse pads to all your employees and say, be customer-centric, but it's but it's not about that.
00:14:29.860 --> 00:14:32.899
There's actually a mini-framework within that part of the framework.
00:14:32.980 --> 00:14:42.659
It's about uh enabling, empowering, and encouraging your entire team to be customer centric, enabling them with the tools that it takes to take care of your customers.
00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:46.500
And in senses like the contact center, that makes perfect sense, right?
00:14:46.659 --> 00:14:51.779
Get them a good knowledge management management system, get them good telephony systems and so forth.
00:14:51.940 --> 00:14:52.899
Sure, yeah, that's great.
00:14:53.060 --> 00:14:55.620
But it's also about the entire organization.
00:14:55.779 --> 00:15:06.500
Does your engineering department, do the people in product, do the folks in accounts receivable have what they need to best deliver that brand promise at every touch point, right?
00:15:06.659 --> 00:15:07.860
Um, so that's the enablement.
00:15:07.940 --> 00:15:10.019
The empowerment means that they don't have to escalate.
00:15:10.180 --> 00:15:21.220
That means obviously that every time you talk to customer uh support, that you don't have to talk to a supervisor, but it also means that there are uh skunk works within your engineering department.
00:15:21.299 --> 00:15:31.220
The people don't have to ask permission to try something new or to try to engineer a better solution for your customers uh in in delivering their daily work.
00:15:31.299 --> 00:15:34.820
And then encouragement is the third E of the customer-centric culture.
00:15:34.899 --> 00:15:40.100
And that is also about t-shirts and banners and mouse pads and so forth, but it's also walking the talk.
00:15:40.259 --> 00:15:40.980
It's investing.
00:15:41.139 --> 00:15:43.460
Like I alluded to uh a little while ago.
00:15:43.620 --> 00:15:50.899
It's it's it's one thing to say, well, we listen to our customers and then we take action on what they tell us and what they identify for us as gaps.
00:15:51.060 --> 00:16:03.139
It's another thing to say we have an entire branch, and maybe that branch is only two or three people, but we have process engineers whose job is nothing more than to fix the way we do things.
00:16:03.220 --> 00:16:09.779
And they are constantly looking for ways in which to do better and to deliver better on our brand promise.
00:16:09.940 --> 00:16:13.620
And so that's that's the book and that's the framework.
00:16:13.779 --> 00:16:23.779
Um it, it's it's it's I think it's relatively straightforward, but it's easier than the pitch that I just gave you, which I've never been able to get in under just a couple minutes.
00:16:24.180 --> 00:16:24.740
Excellent.
00:16:24.899 --> 00:16:26.180
Let's talk about alignment.
00:16:26.259 --> 00:16:29.139
You talk a lot about alignment within the organization.
00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:33.539
And the specific alignment I'm interested in is the alignment with marketing.
00:16:34.019 --> 00:16:40.980
And the reason for that is because uh marketers tend to, and you know, me being one of them, uh, marketers tend to promise things.
00:16:41.139 --> 00:16:48.580
They promise um uh the best quality, they promise uh great functions and features and and and and so forth.
00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:53.220
And again, maybe promise is not the right word, but uh nevertheless, that's that's what happens.
00:16:53.779 --> 00:17:11.299
Um within certain industries, sectors, service sectors, even airlines or sectors like that, there's a lot of promise uh in marketing, but then once you get into the um actual plane, once you you know get involved with customer service, that promise may or may not hold.
00:17:11.700 --> 00:17:13.299
So, how do you align?
00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:21.460
And again, this nothing against airlines necessarily, or nothing against the um industry segments where this is very difficult to implement.
00:17:21.859 --> 00:17:27.700
How do you carefully balance that alignment between reality and the promise?
00:17:27.940 --> 00:17:28.180
Yeah.
00:17:28.339 --> 00:17:31.620
Well, for what it's worth, I do have plenty against airlines.
00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:40.099
But um as as I've refined a lot of this and and my approach, I have learned a lot about marketing.
00:17:40.259 --> 00:17:42.180
I used to say, I don't know anything about marketing.
00:17:42.259 --> 00:17:52.099
And then I started speaking with more and more marketers and spending time at conferences speaking for marketers and with them, interviewing them, uh, you know, moderating panels of marketers.
00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:56.500
So I can no longer say that I don't know anything about marketing, but I'm not a marketer myself.
00:17:56.660 --> 00:18:12.819
But I had devised um kind of the this structure in my mind whereby the concept of customer experience, as I approach it, uh as I as I you know uh uh execute the discipline and marketing are really two sides of the same coin.
00:18:12.980 --> 00:18:17.059
And that coin, that what they share in common is that brand promise.
00:18:17.299 --> 00:18:34.579
Because marketers will spend, and I'm fascinated by it, all the way from the research that goes into it and understanding the best place and what the return might be, and and how a product or service can can come to market, the go-to-market work, all that stuff is just fascinating to me.
00:18:34.740 --> 00:18:39.700
All the way to you know, advertising and and fonts and colors and all this.
00:18:39.859 --> 00:18:48.420
It's just so much work goes into what marketers do on behalf of their companies and on behalf of their brands.
00:18:48.579 --> 00:18:50.180
And so I'm talking with him.
00:18:50.259 --> 00:19:04.099
And one thing that I hear often is the anecdote of, okay, so here I am, the CMO, and I'm sitting around the table with my peers, and I have done all of this work of marketing, and I'm just sitting there with my face in my hands.
00:19:04.339 --> 00:19:15.539
I'm saying, you know, my job as marketing would be a lot easier if you assholes actually delivered what I'm telling the world we're all about.
00:19:15.620 --> 00:19:19.380
You know, and I said, that's where you should say, Well, I have this friend, his name is Z.
00:19:19.620 --> 00:19:21.620
He can come in and actually help you do that.
00:19:21.779 --> 00:19:24.819
And I have a really good friend, and you know her, Muriel uh Lotto.
00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:27.700
She was on uh she was on your podcast a bit ago.
00:19:27.859 --> 00:19:31.220
And she said, you know what, Z, here's what it is.
00:19:31.299 --> 00:19:36.420
And this is another reason I love marketers because they can they can give me insights about how to pitch it like this.
00:19:36.579 --> 00:19:42.099
She says, I'm in brand design and I'm in brand promise.
00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:42.900
That's what I develop.
00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:45.859
Z, what you do is you deliver the brand.
00:19:46.019 --> 00:19:47.859
You're in brand delivery.
00:19:48.019 --> 00:19:49.779
And I said, that is exactly what it is.
00:19:49.859 --> 00:19:55.380
It's a it's it's the operational side of what marketing is trying to make happen.
00:19:55.539 --> 00:20:01.460
And so that's why so many of my advocates, you know, I've I uh a lot of my best work is with marketers.
00:20:01.539 --> 00:20:03.940
And I follow, I take the lead from them.
00:20:04.180 --> 00:20:06.019
Uh, what is your brand promise?
00:20:06.099 --> 00:20:07.700
Where are you trying to meet the market?
00:20:07.859 --> 00:20:15.299
You're yeah, sure, you this is what you do, sure this is your vision and your mission, but what are you trying to deliver?
00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:19.299
Are you trying to deliver the easiest to use experience?
00:20:19.460 --> 00:20:22.500
Are you trying to deliver the most luxurious experience?
00:20:22.740 --> 00:20:28.339
Are you trying to deliver the most highly technical, you know, the cutting edge?
00:20:28.579 --> 00:20:29.380
This is the newest.
00:20:29.460 --> 00:20:32.180
We always have the newest and greatest, you know, technology.
00:20:32.339 --> 00:20:34.099
Or is he just trying to be the discount brand?
00:20:34.180 --> 00:20:35.620
And not that, no, not to diminish that.
00:20:35.779 --> 00:20:37.140
That can be very valuable as well.
00:20:37.299 --> 00:20:43.539
I want to, I want to be able to go to the hardware store and pick a dozen of them out of a bucket and not care because they're just commoditized.
00:20:43.700 --> 00:20:44.579
Okay, great.
00:20:44.900 --> 00:20:52.099
How are you, therefore, as an organization, enterprise, end-to-end, how are you delivering on that brand promise?
00:20:52.339 --> 00:20:55.620
Let's look for gaps in where you're not delivering it.
00:20:55.779 --> 00:21:01.700
And let's work on your operations, your systems, your processes, and let's fix it so that you actually are.
00:21:01.940 --> 00:21:07.539
And it it follows to interesting places that might not be intuitive.
00:21:07.779 --> 00:21:16.980
I think that uh a lot of times engineering and product and and and you know, the nerds down in the lab get a bad reputation for not being very customer-centric.
00:21:17.140 --> 00:21:18.500
And I don't think that's the case at all.
00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:20.180
They may not necessarily hit it.
00:21:20.259 --> 00:21:37.700
Now they may need some guidance from marketing from time to time when it comes to creating whatever their new uh mousetrap is, but they're honestly and earnestly trying to deliver how can we make the product that we make better and more aligned to what it is that we're trying to promise our customers that they'll experience.
00:21:37.859 --> 00:21:43.220
What's interesting is that there are a lot of operational and support organizations that don't necessarily see it that way.
00:21:43.380 --> 00:21:49.620
I'll talk to a client and they'll be, for example, and just pick anyone, but I'll say that's the ease of use brand, and that's what they're trying to be.
00:21:49.700 --> 00:21:50.660
And I'll talk to their CMO.
00:21:50.740 --> 00:21:51.859
Yeah, well, that's what we want to be.
00:21:51.940 --> 00:21:54.180
We want to be, you know, ease of use.
00:21:54.420 --> 00:21:54.980
Say, great.
00:21:55.059 --> 00:21:56.740
So let me talk to your legal department.
00:21:56.900 --> 00:21:58.579
They say, why do you want to talk to the legal department?
00:21:58.660 --> 00:22:01.779
I said, well, what happens when one of your customers, say it's a service provider?
00:22:01.940 --> 00:22:08.819
What happens if one of your customers or potential clients wants something that's a little bit off from what you normally offer?
00:22:08.980 --> 00:22:11.460
How easy is that to run through your legal department?
00:22:11.620 --> 00:22:24.339
Or does the entire contract need to be rewritten and it takes two weeks, three weeks in order to get the clearance and the okay and the go ahead to deliver that slightly different version of your service to this potential client?
00:22:24.500 --> 00:22:29.140
Well, even though the delivery of that might Be awesome and easy to use once they get it.
00:22:29.299 --> 00:22:34.180
If it took three weeks to get through legal just to get to the point where you could sign the contract, guess what?
00:22:34.339 --> 00:22:38.819
You're not delivering on that ease of use brand.
00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:47.220
And so like I said, the the these opportunities to drive that better alignment come from very uh you know curious places sometimes.
00:22:47.620 --> 00:23:05.779
Um very interesting, fascinating topic, by the way, in terms of brand design, brand delivery, brand activation, and such an important um sort of a handoff point um, you know, for the brand, for the company to get involved with customer experience as well.
00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:11.460
Um let's talk a little bit about um a topic that's near and dear to me, which is global business.
00:23:12.339 --> 00:23:24.900
Um a lot of the companies that come to the United States uh United States market, and vice versa, US brands doing business overseas may experience a different experience.
00:23:25.059 --> 00:23:27.539
Um interesting statement.
00:23:27.779 --> 00:23:42.099
Experience different experience uh may um may actually um uh face a different experience because of different cultures, because of different uh consumer uh you know tolerance points and what have you.
00:23:42.579 --> 00:23:58.740
How does a brand, whether it's a scale up or startup or a more mature company, how does a brand approach uh the fact that that customer experience may not be universe, may not be uniform, and they have to adapt to a particular culture?
00:23:59.220 --> 00:24:05.539
Well, I'm not gonna tell a marketer like you the importance of what you just what you just elaborated on.
00:24:05.620 --> 00:24:19.779
I mean, that's obviously the case that that a brand needs to be dynamic and understanding that where they are makes a difference because customers are different, obviously, in those different places.
00:24:20.019 --> 00:24:47.620
Um for me, it always just goes back to having a curiosity about where you're falling short, being open to and being quite frankly eager for your customers wherever they are, in whatever situation, wherever they are, even within your own internal journey, of telling you that they're disappointed, that you're not doing it, that you're not doing it right.
00:24:47.700 --> 00:24:52.900
And for that matter, and this may have something to do with those international situations as well.
00:24:53.220 --> 00:24:58.180
There's an awkward conversation that sometimes may have to happen between CX and marketing.
00:24:58.579 --> 00:25:12.420
If you take my approach, which is that the strategic goal, the reason you quote unquote do CX in the first place, is to drive alignment between your brand promise and what your customers are getting in the real world.
00:25:12.660 --> 00:25:29.779
What you may find is that after a period of time of improving your processes and better driving that alignment and delivering what you're telling the world that you actually are all about, you may find that, wow, sales didn't really increase after all, right?
00:25:30.099 --> 00:25:36.579
Our our market share is pretty much stagnant and the revenue hasn't moved at all.
00:25:36.900 --> 00:25:37.539
Wow.
00:25:38.019 --> 00:25:44.980
But our customers are telling us that we are definitely delivering on, you know, that whatever experience that we're trying to deliver to them.
00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:47.940
Well, that's where you have to sit down and say, Well, hmm, you know what?
00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:54.099
It turns out possibly there's not so much a market for what it is that we, you know, are trying to deliver.
00:25:54.259 --> 00:26:01.700
What's nice is you don't have to beat yourself up over it because you really did deliver on what you said that you were promising.
00:26:02.259 --> 00:26:04.980
So sometimes you only had five customers.
00:26:05.059 --> 00:26:05.380
That's all.
00:26:05.620 --> 00:26:06.180
Yeah, right, yeah.
00:26:06.259 --> 00:26:06.819
And they love you.
00:26:06.900 --> 00:26:07.539
They're they love you.
00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:12.019
And if they're if they're willing to pay 20% of your revenue needs that that year, that's great.
00:26:12.099 --> 00:26:23.539
But if not, you you are running into them, therefore, that feedback loop where that goes back to marketing and says, you know, in this market, for example, if it's an international, in this market, that that brand promise just doesn't work.
00:26:23.700 --> 00:26:34.180
So maybe we need to rebrand in that market, or maybe we need to spin off and have have a subsidiary over there if it's if it's that different from our corporate principles or our corporate uh brand promise.
00:26:34.420 --> 00:26:49.059
But it's it's being willing to hear that bad news that no, no, no, you can do, you can deliver a luxury brand and knock it out of the park, and everybody agrees and recognizes you as that luxury brand.
00:26:49.299 --> 00:26:54.339
But everybody at this point is just looking for commoditation, commoditization, and and discount.
00:26:54.579 --> 00:26:59.460
So great on you, but nobody wants that in their, you know, in their sliced cheese.
00:26:59.700 --> 00:27:02.099
Yes, a very interesting um analogy.
00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:05.539
Um, I'm dying, I'm very curious, dying to ask you this question.
00:27:05.779 --> 00:27:08.900
What do you teach in the United States Air Force Academy?
00:27:09.059 --> 00:27:09.460
Number one.
00:27:09.539 --> 00:27:18.579
And number two, how do you sort of reconcile or do you use any of the content or analogies and so forth from your customer experience environment?
00:27:18.980 --> 00:27:20.180
Uh oh well, yeah.
00:27:20.259 --> 00:27:21.779
That's I I that's a great question.
00:27:21.859 --> 00:27:22.259
I like that.
00:27:22.579 --> 00:27:27.140
First of all, I teach statistics and uh and and mathematics at the Air Force Academy.
00:27:27.220 --> 00:27:28.980
Uh, and it's a tremendous honor to do that.
00:27:29.059 --> 00:27:35.539
I still I've been doing it for about 17 years, and I still can't believe how it is that that ever even came to be.
00:27:35.620 --> 00:27:37.620
And I'm humbled every time I'm there.
00:27:37.779 --> 00:27:45.940
Uh, but one of the things, in fact, that teaching taught me is that I am a very analogous thinking person.
00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:52.259
The whole trick to teaching is being able to say, all right, Alex, I'm I can see I'm not getting through.
00:27:52.339 --> 00:27:54.339
Uh what I'm saying isn't making sense to you.
00:27:54.420 --> 00:27:57.940
Let me think of a different way of saying that same thing.
00:27:58.099 --> 00:27:58.900
It's like this.
00:27:59.059 --> 00:28:00.819
Have you ever had this experience?
00:28:01.059 --> 00:28:04.579
Is this something that's similar to something that you've known before?
00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:05.299
Okay, great.
00:28:05.380 --> 00:28:09.539
Now let's jump off of that shared understanding and we'll go down this path.
00:28:09.620 --> 00:28:13.299
And hopefully I can get across to you the concept that I'm trying to share.
00:28:13.539 --> 00:28:27.859
What's interesting about that from my professional career in in CX is that consultant coaches, coaches to consultants will always tell you you've got a niche, niche, niche, niche.
00:28:27.940 --> 00:28:38.819
You've got to know exactly who you want to sell to, exactly within this, you know, within this industry and you know, this region, this size of company, this, this, you know, this revenue target, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:38.900 --> 00:28:42.900
And they want you to to to just hone in on exactly that.
00:28:43.220 --> 00:28:47.140
And just like everybody else, I'm special, Alex.
00:28:47.220 --> 00:28:49.220
And so of course I don't have to adhere to that.
00:28:49.380 --> 00:28:51.940
But here's what I uh here's what I found.
00:28:54.019 --> 00:29:03.620
If you run a healthcare organization, maybe it's a, you know, a bunch of hospitals or something like that, you want your head of surgery to be a surgeon.
00:29:03.859 --> 00:29:07.220
You want your head of pediatrics to be a pediatrician, right?
00:29:07.700 --> 00:29:14.099
But if you can at all help it, make your patient advocate somebody who isn't from your industry.
00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:22.259
Because those folks are going to be less inclined to blinders on, say, okay, this is how it's supposed to be.
00:29:22.339 --> 00:29:23.620
This is how it has to happen.
00:29:23.779 --> 00:29:32.099
You want your patient advocate and your customer experience folks to ask questions like, why do our patients have to fill this form out eight times?
00:29:32.339 --> 00:29:37.859
And recognize that it's a rhetorical question because what I'm not looking for is the literal answer to that.
00:29:38.019 --> 00:29:43.059
What I'm saying is that our customers, our patients shouldn't have to fill this out eight or 10 times.
00:29:43.220 --> 00:29:59.059
So this is one of those times where being from outside of the industry actually helps you because it gives you the opportunity to say, you know, I've seen something similar, not exactly the same, but similar in another industry.
00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:09.620
Is there any way we can apply that knowledge and that experience and those things that I've seen in our current context and where we currently are in this industry over here?
00:30:10.819 --> 00:30:11.620
Great answer.
00:30:11.700 --> 00:30:12.259
Thank you.
00:30:12.500 --> 00:30:22.259
Um, another question uh related to your experience and something that you would say to yourself of, let's say, 15 or 20 years ago, right?
00:30:22.339 --> 00:30:24.420
What have you learned in that time?
00:30:24.740 --> 00:30:36.500
And most importantly, what advice would you give to our audience, which is very diverse, global, uh, anybody from startups and scale-ups to mature, you know, large brands?
00:30:36.740 --> 00:30:37.220
Yeah.
00:30:37.460 --> 00:30:40.500
Um, I would say I would I would echo something I've heard from a lot of other folks.
00:30:40.579 --> 00:30:44.500
And it's a sort of advice, in fact, that I give to cadets uh uh all the time.
00:30:44.660 --> 00:30:52.420
And that is um try to try to uh let go of your fear from a professional perspective.
00:30:52.579 --> 00:31:05.059
Um, nobody is going to give you an opportunity because they think you can't do it, and they're just really looking forward to laughing at you when you fail, right?
00:31:05.220 --> 00:31:13.859
Nobody is nobody's business, nobody's company is running so well that they can afford that sort of investment just in their own entertainment and and and Schadenfreude.
00:31:14.420 --> 00:31:17.620
So learn from those opportunities.
00:31:17.859 --> 00:31:22.980
Say yes to the opportunities that that come forward for you.
00:31:23.140 --> 00:31:27.140
And you will be surprised how much of a through line.
00:31:27.380 --> 00:31:48.420
We were talking just just a second ago about you know applying you know learnings from from one instance in one situation analogously into another, you'll be surprised if you open up your your your curiosity, how much one experience may help you in another experience down the road that you had no way of expecting would ever come to you.
00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:58.980
And so when you say no, or when you think, I can't get this done, I don't think that I have really the skill or the talent to do that, then you're actually missing out on those opportunities.
00:32:00.579 --> 00:32:04.579
Uh, Nicholas, um, I want to say thank you so much for this conversation.
00:32:04.740 --> 00:32:07.220
I think we've learned in a very short period of time.
00:32:07.460 --> 00:32:12.579
I've learned a lot in terms of your hints, tips, bullets, and so forth.
00:32:12.740 --> 00:32:15.940
Uh, definitely um we'll read the book.
00:32:16.099 --> 00:32:18.740
Uh I apologize, I haven't had a chance to do that yet.
00:32:18.900 --> 00:32:30.980
We will provide the links to the book and the content that you have um on the bottom of the um uh the space on the bottom of the uh podcast on our uh podcast uh website.
00:32:31.220 --> 00:32:38.660
And uh I wish you well and I hope that many, many, many companies globally will listen to your advice and read your book as well.
00:32:38.900 --> 00:32:40.500
I yeah, that would be wonderful.
00:32:40.740 --> 00:32:43.220
And it's a quick, it's a quick, easy read, Alex.
00:32:43.299 --> 00:32:45.220
It's it's it's 90 some pages.
00:32:45.380 --> 00:32:50.420
It's it's not even an airplane book, it's a waiting at the gate for your airplane to board book.
00:32:50.579 --> 00:32:51.539
So interesting.
00:32:51.859 --> 00:32:53.460
Great analogy, great suggestion.
00:32:53.620 --> 00:32:54.740
Thank you so much.
00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:55.859
Cheers.
00:32:56.099 --> 00:32:56.740
Cheers.
