Turning Customers Into Raving Fans | Mario Matulich

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #224 we  welcomed Mario Matulich President & Managing Director of Customer Management Practice based in New York City.

Mario and his team at CMP help companies with turning their customers into raving fans. They are the contact center industry's trusted partner offering research, events and online communities. They help produce some amazing events like Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas in June, 4-6 2024 .

CXChronicles Podcast will actually be there broadcasting live this year & we are beyond pumped to join some incredible customer focused business leaders including Martha Stewart, David Glickman (CEO Mint Mobile), Johnny C. Taylor (President & CEO SHRM), and Angie Bastian (Founder BoomChikaPop).

In this episode, Mario and Adrian chat through how he has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback and shares tips & best practices that have worked across his own customer focused business leader journey.

**Episode #224 Highlight Reel:**

1. Starting your CX journey as professional baseball player 
2. Focusing on building a culture that prioritizes employees first
3. Leveraging your team & tech-stack to scale your business 
4. Defining the "milestone moments" in your customer journey 
5. Investing in your customer focused business leaders to win
 
Huge thanks to Mario for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring his work and efforts in pushing the customer experience & customer success space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Mario Matulich

Click here to checkout Customer Management Practice

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You know what would be even better?

Go tell one of your friends or teammates about CXC's content,  our strategic partners (Hubspot, Intercom, Zendesk, Forethought AI, Freshworks & Ascendr) + they can learn more about our CX/CS/RevOps services & please invite them to join the CX Nation!

Are you looking to learn more about the world of Customer Experience, Customer Success & Revenue Operations?

Click here to grab a copy of my book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" available on Amazon or the CXC website.

For you non-readers, go check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel to see our customer & employee focused video content & short-reel CTAs to improve your CX/CS/RevOps performance today (politely go smash that subscribe button).

Contact us anytime to learn more about CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com and ask us about how we can help your business & team make customer happiness a habit now!

Transcript

The CXChronicles Podcast #224 with Mario Matulich Full Episode.mp4

Adrian (00:00:06) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CX Chronicles podcast. I am your host, Adrian Brady Chisana. Super excited for today's show, guys. We have an awesome guest. Mario Matalich is joining us. And guys, Mario has a pretty awesome background. And I'm not just saying that because I lean towards enjoying all the things that customer- focused business leaders are doing, but he is in a really unique spot, guys. He is building and leading an incredible company, customer management practice in New York City. 

Adrian (00:00:32) - And they are thinking about people like us every single solitary day. They're working with customer- focused business leaders. They're thinking about CX, CS, support, all the things that go into it. 

Adrian (00:00:40) - So, Mario, I'm pumped, man. 

Adrian (00:00:42) - Why don't we dive right into the show? Take a couple minutes, man. Introduce yourself to the CX Nation and start today's show off like we start all these episodes, man. I love the stepping stone question because it's important for people that are coming up behind us and climbing the ladder behind us to hear all the different walks of life, man, and all the different ways that people like you and I kind of get into some of the things that we're doing today. 

Mario (00:01:01) - Yeah, absolutely. First and foremost, thanks so much for having me, Adrian. It's a pleasure to talk shop with you and kind of have an opportunity to be here and be with all of your great listeners. Yeah, my background's an interesting one, maybe. It's one of those kind of unique stories. We all, I feel like, land. In this industry, some pursue it, some sort of land here by happenstance, and for me, it's been a really good fortune. I started out, like many people, I was an athlete. 

Mario (00:01:34) - I played baseball, and I had the great fortune of having an opportunity to play at Oklahoma State University. 

Adrian (00:01:40) - That's awesome. Wait, Mario, what position did you play? 

Adrian (00:01:43) - I was a catcher, so played at Oklahoma State University and then had a chance to spend a few years in the money. I played in the minor leagues with the Cleveland, now Cleveland Guardians organization, and I can tell you right now with certainty where I am today in my career, drawing back to where I was at 19, 20 years old, playing baseball. 

Mario (00:02:03) - Never in a million years would I have connected the dots, but looking back and reflecting on those years and then all the years in between, when I say good fortune, there's so many lessons in those years in terms of working with unique people, being innovative. I was introduced to many different cultures, getting a chance to travel the country, to play with teammates from Japan, Australia, different parts of the United States, Latin America, and so on. 

Mario (00:02:32) - I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age an opportunity to really have an introduction to what now is sort of my career and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. I didn't know it at the time, but that opportunity gave me at a very young age and my livelihood in terms of being able to work with so many great CX. 

Mario (00:04:51) - Uh, you know, when I, when I, when I finished the baseball career, um, I was kind of drawing on my experience at Chaminade thinking about what would be next, you know, what's the, what's the professional, uh, goal now. Um, and there, my parents were a little bit frustrated with me at the time because they kind of invested in me to go to this, this school. And I said, well, I want to kind of be like my father. I want to, I want to become a New York city firefighter. And, uh, and that's the, that's the, that's the path I'd like to take. 

Mario (00:05:19) - And so, um, I made a promise to my dad. I said, listen, I'm going to support you in doing it, but you got to do it differently than I did. I had to work three jobs. I had to, you know, make ends meet. I want you to study. I want you to become a chief of department, like go all the way. You know, we, we, we, we, we worked real hard to send you to Chaminade and supported you through the baseball career. We always knew that could end at any point, right? It can end at, at 18, it could end at 22 or can end at 40 after a major league career. 

Mario (00:05:47) - You know, we know that. But go ahead and give it your best effort. And so, um, so I took the fire department test, the whole thing, and I ended up, um, getting involved with our parent company at the time. And, uh, I learned, uh, I learned this space. And so I started at the ground floor. I was working with, um, the, the attendees that attend our events. I was working with the solution providers that, um, that sponsor our events and, and obviously look to sort of display and demonstrate their capabilities to our practitioner attendees. 

Mario (00:06:18) - And I really learned. The entire market from the ground up, having had the opportunity to spend so much time with those people on the front lines, leading these teams, working with these teams, buying this different, various types of technology. And I'd seen all the evolution from the outsourcing boom to the tech evolution, to, uh, everything that came off the back of the pandemic and how the landscape changed their various customer behaviors. So that kind of laid the groundwork, um, initially, and that was the jumping off point. 

Mario (00:06:45) - So I sort of fell in love with the space. The people are unbelievable. They're they're the, the, the leaders in this market, in this industry, um, they're relied on the most, they're asked to do most, they have the highest level of pressure, so many similarities to, um, a sports life or an athletic life. And, um, I didn't realize it, I didn't plan on it, but I kind of fell in love with it. 

Mario (00:07:08) - And then when the, when, you know, when the fire department of New York called and said, okay, we're ready to hire you, I'd turn them down and say, I'm going to actually stick with this because I just, I just felt, I fell in love with the career that much. That, um, it made me change course. And that was about 20, you know, 20 years ago now. 

Adrian (00:07:24) - So that's awesome, man. A couple of things. Number one, I appreciate you sharing that. Number two, I just think like for all of our listeners, Mario, it's like every single one of us comes from a different path. And one of the things that I've been really trying to highlight like for months now is like these paths all kind of make us the different types of customer focus, business leaders that we are. And the other piece is just like, I love that you shared like some of the family stuff, man. 

Adrian (00:07:49) - Because like, there's only been a handful of guests that have really kind of talked about how either the parents or their family or their early upbringing, some of the expectations from the family, how that actually helped kind of carve a path, whether they knew it at the time or not. And I appreciate you calling it out. Cause none of us, come on, think about when every one of us like rewind back 10 years ago, 20 years, you know, none of us knew what we know today. And it's part of why there is a ton of truth and a little older, a little wiser. 

Adrian (00:08:12) - Um, but I don't know, man, I appreciate you sharing that. I think that's awesome. And it sounds like you made the right decision. And I bet you're, I bet both your mom. I bet your dad are very proud of the decision you made. 

Mario (00:08:21) - Um, yeah, I was pretty lucky. I was pretty lucky to have, no, not everybody has, has kind of that, that, uh, that opportunity. It was smart enough to put me in the right direction and guided me along the way. So without them, you know, from baseball, this, trust me, they all the groundwork, they deserve a hell of a lot of credit. 

Adrian (00:08:37) - So I'll tell you what, coming firsthand from several of my, so a couple of my family members and several of my best friends were lucky enough to go even to division one sports. Their parents are a huge. Part of why they're there. Cause I don't care what sport you play, man. It's 18 years of development before D one. It's literally like, that's where, you know, we had one awesome guest a couple of months ago, uh, Rick, um, we're founder of simply noted. 

Adrian (00:09:02) - Um, and Rick was a university of Arizona football player, four years, and then he got drafted by green. So you and you and Rick are two, two of my few guests that understand sort of what's that mean. And for our listeners, people that don't care about sports, it's the same way as all of us taking a decade to hone our craft or taking a decade to figure out. What the hell we want to do, or taking a decade to build certain muscles, to be able to go do certain things. So, um, but I love it. So Mary, let me, I'd love to jump into the first pillar. 

Adrian (00:09:26) - Um, talk about the team at customer management practice. Talk about the team at CMP, um, give us some of the high levels around sort of how you guys have kind of built your team, some of the different roles that you have and some of the different things that you're doing with your customers. 

Mario (00:09:37) - Yeah. You know, and there's, there's a couple of ways I can, I can answer this question. Firstly, um, again, I've had a lot of good fortune in my life in this particular instance, when you asked me this question about the team. I had a chance to learn from so many great brands. That's kind of the amazing thing about the business we're in is that, um, you know, I have the opportunity to work with so many great CX leaders, right. 

Mario (00:10:00) - That whether they're on stage discussing and sharing some of their best practices, whether in the audience, um, and many of our events, um, that's who we're bringing together. So I get to sit there in the audience myself and learn from the best of the best. And so, you know, while, um, while I'll do that, I'll be able to take that back and figure out, okay, what, how, how should we structure? 

Mario (00:10:19) - Um, CMP, what should we do to help, you know, create a culture that's going to engage people, provide them with the flexibility that they need to be successful, empower them in such a way. So we, we kind of designed this thing called the CMP way, right. 

Mario (00:10:32) - And not just somewhat from what a lot of organizations do, but have either core values or so on. But the idea behind this was to create a successful culture that was going to really put our team members first and really ensure that they were in a position to, again, have the flexibility they need to do the job, have a level of trust associated. And we give them the tools, the teaching, the guidance, the training, but then the level of trust. 

Mario (00:10:55) - And then finally, the career development and the management infrastructure that they need to be supported in such a way to deliver and obviously achieve the outcomes that we all want to see. So when we think about that, those are the key drivers. It's the managers, it's career development, it's flexibility in today's operating environment. 

Mario (00:11:12) - When we look at our research and we look at the frontline customer contact agents and the frontline managers, these are the things that drive engagement at a level and performance at a level that we know is fundamental. And when you think about C& P, what we tried to do is create that sort of trust- driven environment. We've hired you to do a job, the old Steve Jobs mantra. Sometimes you always hire people to tell them what to do. Sometimes you hire really smart people to tell you what to do. 

Mario (00:11:40) - Yeah, and so when we look at that and we say, if we follow that properly, then you know what you find yourself with. You find yourself with a lot of people around you that add a heck of a lot of value to your business. You have a lot of value to the business because you've unlocked their ability, that freedom within the framework to go ahead and turn loose on innovation, new ideas, best practices, efficiencies. 

Mario (00:12:05) - And if you have a culture where it's an overly controlled culture or that framework is so narrow, there's not a lot of room to flex or move or share your ideas and concepts, I just think that really becomes a major inhibitor for growth for any organization. So you see a lot of similarities on the frontline of contact. You see a lot of similarities on the frontline of contact centers and CX operations, but we try to take a lot of those best practices and how we run CMP as well. 

Adrian (00:12:29) - So first of all, I got a bunch of follow- ups on it. First of all, that's awesome. I tell people on a regular basis, and I was fortunate enough even before building CXC, but sometimes people are like, dude, how have you been able to kind of get some experiences? So number one, working with a bunch of different companies, because think about it. Let's go back to our parents for a minute. My dad worked for the same company for 30 years. My mom worked for the same company for 25 years. Your parents. It sounds like they, and so like, that's fine. 

Adrian (00:12:57) - That's great. But when you have an opportunity to work for a bunch of different companies in a bunch of different industries, built a bunch of different ways with a bunch of different technology, dude, I tell people all the time and ask me like, how did you come up with some of this stuff with CXC? It's like, honestly, and then over the last four years, we worked with a hundred companies with CXC. It expedites the velocity of your ability to number one, have a multitude of paths or playbooks or possibilities. That's one thing. 

Adrian (00:13:25) - Number two, you just have an opportunity to rapidly see how a bunch of different companies are doing a bunch of different things. And it allows you to just kind of, I don't know, compartmentalize the good and the bad and the ugly. Like you want to be good. These are the things you want to be bad. 

Adrian (00:13:39) - Go ahead and do it that way. 

Adrian (00:13:39) - You want to be ugly. Go ahead and spend your money that way and make all those miscalculations and those misbets. And then, you know, just looking at CMP for a minute, guys, like for our listeners that don't know Mario's team, customer management practice, which is some huge companies, right? You guys have globally recognized brands you're working with, right? So like, MasterCard, Uber, Yahoo, United, Bose, all these velvety, huge companies, companies that literally drive the world, right? Dicks. 

Adrian (00:14:02) - Though learning from the host companies and seeing how they're doing things at that scale, at that volume. Ooh, that's a game changer. That probably makes it a lot easier to go into a new client and start parsing things out right away or start finding immediate areas right for opportunity, right for optimization. 

Mario (00:14:20) - Yeah. In today's environment as well, you know, since the pandemic, you know, we, I was just talking with a, with a peer in my network, we'd kind of spoken a while. We ended up getting some time on the calendar and catching up. And this person had been at Extended Stay America for the better part of 10 years. And we'd worked together on a few events over the years. And so we were just catching up and we're talking about the impact of the pandemic and how the operating environment, you know, it's four years ago. 

Mario (00:14:44) - It was just, you know, today's what, March 20th. So I was over the weekend, St. Patrick's Day. I was reminded that that was the, the, the fourth, fourth anniversary of 1420. And we think about how the, you know, that's four years later now. But what I always say to all of our peers in our network, those are attending our events and so on is it doesn't matter if you've been doing this for decades. Nobody has more than four years of experience because that, that pandemic coming along changed so many things about customer behavior. 

Mario (00:15:15) - It changed so many things about our future of work, the future of work now, right? This is what we're working towards before pandemic. And then we just accelerated it. 

Adrian (00:15:23) - Yeah. 

Mario (00:15:23) - And so when we think about, how to your point, how you're able to benchmark and learn from so many different brands, that was a lot more accessible. We just got together more, right? And now everything's gotten a little bit busier. Everyone's gotten, everything's got a little bit more high in demand. We're a little bit more, you know, diligent about how we spend our time and where we spend our time. So when we bring people together, those benchmarking opportunities, not as abundant as they were. 

Mario (00:15:47) - So one of the things that we try to bring to this entire community is the ability to do what you just mentioned. Like, yeah, I'm sharing how I learned. 

Mario (00:16:02) - How do the folks over at UnitedHealthcare have the opportunity to compare and contrast against best practices to say what Bank of America is doing? It's not as easily available as it once was. So to be able to get together and take a few days away from the busyness of your workflow that is in this post- pandemic environment and give people an opportunity to learn from one another in a more constructive way to team build. That's really a role we try to play in this space and specifically in this community. But yeah, it's such value in it. 

Mario (00:16:29) - It does expedite your learning at such a rapid rate to your point. You can't really, there's no real replacement for that when you have that ability to be in the room with so many great leaders at once and learn from them all. 

Adrian (00:16:38) - Yep. 

Adrian (00:16:39) - You just nailed it, man. And I just call out the point. For our listeners, if you haven't already accepted this, what Mary just said is spot on. Like work as we know it is different. So like somebody posted something the other day on LinkedIn, Mary. I wish I'm not going to say I remember who it was, but it was something along the lines of similar to what you just said about that line in the sand of when COVID started to change the whole freaking world. And every one of us had to just accept this new way. Some of us didn't. Some of us, many of us did. 

Adrian (00:17:04) - But it talked about how work experience for everybody, even some of our gray haired friends and leaders who are, you know, 40 years experience. I'm not discrediting your 40 years. 

Adrian (00:17:14) - I get it. 

Adrian (00:17:15) - I promise you every year that I age, I understand the value of age and wisdom. But every one of us started from scratch on that day with this new world. So I love that you called that out because as CX leaders, guys, this is like, this is where it's a massive opportunity for us. And then the other thing too, and we'll jump into tools in a second, but like, this is why so many customer focused business leaders are also going to have to be forced, whether they even recognize it yet today, to also be employee experience leaders at the same time. 

Adrian (00:17:40) - Because you're, to get that incredible customer experience, you've got to have an employee team that is well- equipped, well- supported, prepared for battle, for lack of a better term. And then you're playing in this new world of hybrid. Sometimes we're in New York City. Sometimes we're remote. You've got to be able to bang out an incredible presentation to Dick's executive. Leadership team remote versus a person like every one of us has been forced to kind of sharpen our skills and going back to baseball. We're doing offensive drills. 

Adrian (00:18:06) - We're doing defensive drills. You got to do all of it now to be ready to rock and roll, you know? 

Mario (00:18:11) - It's a, well, it's a perfect segue into tools and even process, Adrian. So when, when you think about what the pandemic has done and, you know, let's take contact centers, for example. And it's a perfect, there's a perfect storm here. It's a combination of how works change. It's a combination of how customer behaviors have changed. Um, and we had generational customers that lived in certain channels that were forced to move into other channels that we had no choice. Right. 

Mario (00:18:35) - Um, at that, at that point in time, that inflection point in our history, um, it hit every industry, every industry had challenged. We were just, again, same, same colleague I referenced earlier. We were talking about, um, how, how, yeah, it was, it was a horrible period. I mean, we can go on for, for days about how difficult it was on so many levels. Uh, but if you try to find some silver lining, it was. As leaders, we were challenged in such a way to have to pivot, to have to change behaviors, to accelerate some, some really positive things. 

Adrian (00:19:04) - Yep. 

Mario (00:19:05) - So again, while, while you can't really ever speak about that pandemic in a positive light, try to find some silver lining is, is how we became better leaders, stronger leaders, how we learned, uh, new ways of working that would potentially carry us decades into the future. But that also changed the game on so many levels for so many industries. And I, I believe that customer experience, customer care, customer service. Uh, was really at the eye of that storm. 

Mario (00:19:30) - Um, and when we talk about tools, you talk about process competency frameworks had to change, right? You now had, you weren't in a, in a contact center with a thousand seats, managers and supervisors over the shoulders of every, every individual. You know, our statistics tell us that we had roughly 20 to 25% of contact centers were in any form of remote or hybrid pre, uh, March, 2020. Now that number is around 80%. Hybrid or remote with only 20% on premise, right? 

Adrian (00:20:01) - Yep. 

Mario (00:20:01) - Tools, the technology you need certainly is the, is the first place most people go and it's the obvious place, but what gets overlooked and I don't mean to go back to team is, is what's required of who you hire. What is your frontline agent persona and competency mix look like today versus yesterday? What is your frontline manager need to look like today versus pre pandemic? Um, and the frameworks needed to drive performance now. 

Mario (00:20:27) - I can tell you right now, if you're using the same playbook you used back in 2019 or early 2020, you're missing a beat because that playbook changed dramatically and how you hire, how you train, who you're putting into the seat, the type of competencies you're looking for to drive top performance and engage your workforce. It's very, very different. Um, so again, not to belabor the first pillar, but that all came full circle and the inflection point and serve to this space. 

Adrian (00:20:53) - I, I am going to literally continue to iterate this back, but of all the four pillars. 

Adrian (00:21:02) - Tools is the big one. I know that every but here's. Here's what most people respond. Most people say: well then, of the most important, it's team, because team dictates the other pillars, and that's totally true. But what i've learned as i've had more and more and more of these conversations: tools is the biggest problem that most cxcs sales revenue operations leaders actually struggle with, because we have a software problem globally. There is a new piece of software every freaking day of the week that comes market. That's great. 

Adrian (00:21:27) - I'm not hating on software. I keep saying this. I love software just as much as the next guy or gal. But the world's about to be spending three quarters of a trillion dollars. Most companies, especially smbs, they see maybe sub 20 utilization rates of software. Great companies, mid- market enterprise companies, use these, these uh, use their tech stack to with maybe a 30 utilization rate. That's horrible. There's no other industry in the world that we are okay with that type of waste. 

Adrian (00:21:55) - Um, and then the other part too is, i think, a lot of executive leaders that are good at staying out of the weeds right, they're all about selling, they're all about. They're all about customers, all about finance. Keep money in the bank because that's every great ceo's job, but because they're letting their leaders do their thing- and you just mentioned this earlier: let smart people do the the hard things and then they can come back to you with things that they need your help on or direction with. 

Adrian (00:22:15) - But i think that they think when they buy the sales force or they buy the zen desk or they buy the hub spot or they buy the intercom or the fresh works, whatever the hell- they think that they've done the job and what we call the- all the folks that are actually taking the time to listen to this conversation right now- literally the battle has just. The war has just started. Okay, great, you just got a crm- perfect, the war just started. You just got a ticketing system- perfect, the war just started. 

Adrian (00:22:39) - And across the tech stack, it's different battles, different points of the year. They require different smees and different solutions, and you know, this is why tools is such a tricky one man. This is why so many leaders, i think, especially in the cxcs space- this is where they spend a lot of their time, or this is where the money, or the misspend of money, or the resources- resources- really derives from. Every one of us has worked at a company where there's 20 plus pieces of tool- the tech stack- we use two of them. 

Adrian (00:23:06) - That means theoretically, if we omitted three quarters of the 20, we could save a million bucks a year. And now tell me why you can't hire that extra person or do that additional training or go to those additional events if you have that million dollars back in your bank account each year. Right things like that? 

Mario (00:23:22) - Well, you hit the nail on the head on where there's potentially some pitfalls around is they make the tech stack purchase, uh, based on either a leading with saving money and the financial business case associated with it. I'm not saying we shouldn't look at the financial business case long term. It absolutely needs to be there, absolutely, yes. 

Mario (00:23:43) - Um, if that's the only reason you're doing it, uh, more than likely it's going to miss a mark somewhere with your people, whether it be your customers or your employees, and in the end, that's going to cost you. 

Mario (00:23:54) - Um, that's going to cost you dearly, because you'll find that when you make the decision to invest in technology and you find that, um, that it was led by a financial only business case, well, the cost that associated, that are associated with lost market share, customers departing or internally attrition or disengagement from your frontline staff. Um, those are those. Those numbers, um will far exceed any savings that you've been able to to um to derive from a tech investment. 

Mario (00:24:30) - So what i often- we often- tell many of our leaders is: okay, what is the cost of investing in a company? That's not a financial investment? So what is the, what is the, what is the outcome you're looking for and how does it align with the customer expectation? First and foremost, and more times than not, these decisions are made in a boardroom without the customer expectation fully understood. 

Mario (00:24:43) - Yep, and when we roll these things out, usually they then come along with: okay, now that we've got this piece of technology in place, we've rolled it out, we bought it, it's in, it's live. How much staff are we cutting? How many people are we cutting and where are we cutting right? Because the finance people come out and they're like: okay, well, we've invested in this. 

Mario (00:24:59) - Now we're supposed to reduce by 20 percent and inevitably, if it's aligned, if any investment technology is misaligned with customer expectation, those people that are utilizing that technology, whether internal or external facing, will give it one shot and it'll immediately return back to whatever processes they've had in place, whether it be um returning to a live support channel, if they're a customer, let's say, or an internal employee becoming so frustrated that it didn't help them become more efficient, uh, in their day- to- day work, yep that. 

Mario (00:25:31) - Then they end up leaving or start looking: yeah, and those are when those costs compile, because now you don't go back to the old channel. If you're a customer and you, you, you, you depart, you left, you went through a self- service interaction, let's say, due to some real strong investment by a brand and a self- service interaction, given some tech investment. 

Mario (00:25:47) - And that goes poorly in the first instance. Where do you go next? You immediately come back to that live support channel as an example that you were very comfortable with for all the years that you're loyal to that given brand. Yep, except you're not returning to the same old live support channel. I'm a kind of a sci- fi geek, so i always like the back to the future move. I compare it to like when marty mcfly went back to the old 1985. But he thought: but it actually was a different. 

Mario (00:26:11) - That's the live support channel you go back to because it's 20 fewer agents, there's less workforces, less resources. Now you got long wait times. You've got disgruntled, uh, frontline agents handling your call that are at the end of that rope, um, and it's just a different experience. And it's because so many brands rushed to try to claim those financial savings without ensuring that they delivered an exceptional customer experience first. Yeah, for realizing those financial gains. 

Adrian (00:26:35) - Dude, hearing you say it very it makes me immediately think to people that roll their eyes at customer journey mapping. They've never done it properly. They've never had someone come in and facilitate in a way that they've never done it properly. They've never had someone come in and facilitate in a way that they've never done it properly. They've never had someone exactly what you just said. 

Adrian (00:26:48) - You start tying not just employee consternation points, customer consternation points, all the touch points, but then financial metrics or financial kpis that you already know are really, really critical, whether it's top of funnel or top of journey, beginning of journey or end of journey or in the middle. Right dude, that's an easy way to right there, see what potential roi yields look like for being able to have certain tools. Maybe you don't need certain tools. 

Adrian (00:27:12) - Um, the other thing makes me just think about is knowing where you get the biggest for your buck on roi so that you're not skimping in, whether it's people or technology resources. Know where your high milestone moments are on a customer journey. I call for cxc. All the work that we do with our clients will what we really push our clients teams to think about milestone moments right, because, okay, we get it. Journey maps can get complex, they can be robust, they can be verbose, there's could be too much shit going on. 

Adrian (00:27:36) - I get it, but know your milestone moment in awareness and consideration and conversion and know you. You better know your milestone moments and onboarding, because think about what mary would just say, guys, you have like one shot. If you're a software company, if you're building a sas team right now or you're leading a sas team, you got one shot. If you're not knocking it out of the damn park with your onboarding, yeah, i don't know, we'll see. We'll see if you're around in a couple years. 

Adrian (00:27:58) - Um, and then when you get to customer success, it's and again, like, whether you're a software company, whether you're a service company, whether you get a product, the success part is just constantly reminding your users and your customers all of the value they provide outside of the service, outside of the product. Opposite too, guys. 

Adrian (00:28:14) - This is why, like this is why there's so many different ways you need to be going to battle with your customers these days: reminding them, um, why you're there, reminding them how you can help them, reminding them how you're providing value, whether they realize it or not. And it's just like anything in life, man, you got to hear it a hundred times before you take action. Usually, or some of us are smarter than others, but, like, most people need to hear these things again and again and again before they know where to use it. 

Adrian (00:28:35) - Um, mary, this is fantastic. I want to make sure that we hit a little bit of feedback, man, because i was excited because you work with these incredible companies and, like i said earlier, in the show man, you've seen- i bet you you're seen- some feedback data that many of us have never even seen that type of volume before. 

Adrian (00:28:51) - Right, because a lot of our listeners are going to be founders, they're, they're they're leading cx and cs and adventure groups or venture- backed companies, and and and they're they're emerging mid- market cx and cs leaders, but some of the logos that you guys are working with. 

Adrian (00:29:04) - I'd love for you to spend a couple minutes talking about sort of what you've learned and what, what your team kind of thinks about when it comes to ways of really kind of sinking your teeth into how you get really good at managing and leveraging and using your customer experience or your customer feedback, and then definitely a couple ideas or maybe a story in terms of how you've seen companies do a really great job of leveraging and acting to find a play of feedback. 

Mario (00:29:26) - Yeah, so, um, when it comes to feedback, one of the one of the biggest challenges we have is we often um see that that we make feedback so challenging at times. It's it's a high effort activity, right? So, firstly, one thing i'll say is sort of maybe something to underscore how you're thinking about feedback is: make it easy on your customers to provide you feedback. 

Mario (00:29:45) - Yeah, this has been an issue for a lot of days where we, we, we- make it so high effort, right, even some of the best brands- talking about brands that are just known for cx- there's still, when it comes to the feedback piece. It's an extra step, it's an extra effort by the customer. Remember, customers want personalization, they want ease. These are the things that drive their loyalty. It drives their lifetime value and we, we follow all these rules. 

Mario (00:30:07) - Some of the brands that we work with follow all these rules up to feedback and then make feedback really, really high effort, right, um. 

Mario (00:30:14) - So, so one one just sort of underscoring moment- will always say to any organization: make feedback easy, um, make it something your customers want to give you and provide you, and make sure that you're, you're, you're gathering it in a way that that's really low effort for them, um, because, let's be honest, it's it's it's for you and you are going to give that back to your customers in the form of improvements and adjustments to make the experience even better. 

Mario (00:30:38) - But if you want to get the best possible feedback, make it really easy for them, um, but in terms of, in terms of feedback we get, uh, we, we gather all the time it's it's, you know it's, it's around. It comes back down to: um, what, um, what is going to help a brand improve in comparison to their peers? Right, so feedback is is all relative, um, and you know we often talk about- we call it internally the amazon rule. 

Adrian (00:31:04) - Um, you've probably heard a million times over where customers today are are evaluating their, their, most you know their current experience. You against your last great experience, right, every every. 

Adrian (00:31:31) - We all find it so simple to work with Amazon that we all do and we all tell our friends about it. Now, who doesn't work with Amazon, right? But in the early days, that's how they grew their brand. It was a brilliant marketing strategy. 

Mario (00:31:43) - And what so many brands struggle with and unfortunately where the levers pull is, well, hey, if we're able to overcome these issues and make it that easy for our customers to work with us and create the right level of personalization in those interactions, our customers are going to come back. 

Mario (00:31:57) - They're going to tell their friends. They're going to tell their family. They're going to boast about us. They're going to be our best marketing effort that we can ever come up with or drum up at any marketing strategy meeting. 

Mario (00:32:07) - But we so often race to the bottom in terms of budgets, constraints, when we think about how do we improve upon our customer experience. So that's first and foremost. 

Mario (00:32:18) - So often I see organizations gain the feedback and get access to it, but then struggle to make the case internally on how to actually drive real change in the organization. 

Adrian (00:32:27) - Absolutely. It happens time and time again. And I think every... What I've learned in my near 20 years of doing this work now is you need to know how to tell the story to your specific executive leadership team. Every executive leadership team is different. Every executive leadership team has different goals. Every executive leadership team has different appetites for what they care about and what they frankly just don't care about at all. 

Adrian (00:32:48) - And then the last thing is, and I know that we get into this a lot, and I'm really glad you brought this up, Mario. But if you're not creating very clear ROI sets on some of the CX and CS. Initiatives, CTAs, objectives, investments that you want to make. If you're not making crystal, crystal clear ROI positions to your executive leadership team, they're not going to listen to you. They're not going to take it serious. You will continue to have budget taken away from you. 

Adrian (00:33:12) - And one of the reasons, guys, why you always hear me saying with CXC in general, why I personally just believe that customer experience, customer success done well is modern selling. Is because for like the last five to 10 years, man, I've done nothing but think about how CX and CS have done right. Leads directly to the bottom line. Leads directly to your ability to retain customers. Leads directly to your ability to increase lifetime value. Identify upsell opportunities, cross- sell opportunities, customer success qualified leads. 

Adrian (00:33:39) - Dude, there is so many companies I talk to every week that are doing tens of millions of years and they do not know what a CSQL is. And I'm like, I'm sorry, how much are you paying your CMO right now? $ 300, 000, $ 400, 000? 

Adrian (00:33:50) - Yeah. 

Adrian (00:33:50) - How does he or she not know what a CSQL is? And how is he or she not paying way more attention to maybe the 10 CSQLs a month that you get over the bull? Shit, thousand, you know, marketing qualified leads that come in to give to your sales team. And so like, I think, I think people are starting to get it. I do. I think not in every industry. Some businesses don't have to worry about it. We both know that. But like for our folks listening right now, they're building stuff and you're trying to like edge out and market. 

Adrian (00:34:14) - You're trying to quickly get to the top and, you know, disrupt the space. These are some of the things that like you got to build into your ground game. If you don't, it's going to be difficult for you to kind of get things across the finish line. 

Mario (00:34:28) - Completely agree. Completely agree. 

Adrian (00:34:30) - Mary, this has been fantastic, man. Before I let you get off this feedback and then we'll get ready to close up today's show. But one, maybe 60 seconds or two minutes on different ideas around employee feedback or things that you've seen with some of these big brands and some of these awesome clients you guys are working with that they're doing really well on the EX side of the game. 

Mario (00:34:48) - Yeah, it's really interesting. 

Mario (00:34:49) - I'll give a real world story. It's a healthcare company, you know, sizable healthcare company. You recognize the brand name almost immediately. 

Mario (00:34:58) - But. 

Mario (00:34:59) - They were looking at their particular attrition problem that they had and actually seen a decline from its peak number. And it was interesting where one of the when we when we nailed down and found the real data point where attrition was happening at the greatest extent, it was actually not with the zero to six month tenure people. 

Mario (00:35:17) - It was with the six to 12 month. 

Mario (00:35:18) - And then actually for 12 month onward, they were doing great. 

Mario (00:35:21) - And the leadership team that was working with us with CMP research at the moment, they were saying, you know, I'm so frustrated. 

Mario (00:35:27) - We've done so much. 

Mario (00:35:28) - We're paying at a higher level than we've ever paid. We were so below market value. Now we're exceeding market, you know, sort of fair market value. 

Mario (00:35:37) - We've created career development plans for everyone. And when we got down to it, what we found was that the majority of the career development communication happened in the onboarding phase. In the first two weeks, they joined the company when everything in the kitchen sink was being thrown at them. And so actually in the first six months, a lot of those people achieve their first tier of development. 

Mario (00:35:56) - Right. And they moved on to that next. And they got the extra pay raise and the title and the responsibility. 

Mario (00:36:01) - And that was great. But they didn't remember anything that was talked about beyond the six month mark. And it's something so simple as just your communication to this tier of person, six to 12 months where most of your attrition is happening. 

Mario (00:36:13) - It just wasn't clear. 

Mario (00:36:15) - If you're able to create some success stories and communicate them in such a way that's clear and they understand, hey, this is what you're going for in six months. And then say, like, in the fourth or fifth month, you're on the verge of this next promotion. 

Mario (00:36:28) - Let's talk about what we need to do for your 12 month. And again, that goes back to managers, flexibility, career development, being the three top drivers for engagement and retention within the workforce that are customer facing CX operations people today. And this healthcare company was a great example of when we think about it, if the manager wasn't communicating appropriately, we actually needed a couple of key managers within the full 200 person operation. And there was a couple of key managers that were failing on this. 

Mario (00:36:54) - And that's when the majority of the attrition was happening. And then we also found that when we took it a step further, that there was actually just a lack of clarity on some of the key success stories. So those people that went on and took advantage of that full career development journey and how great they were doing and where they were able to not only go within the contact center organization, but then where they were able to go into the greater organization as a jumping off point, none of that was being communicated. 

Mario (00:37:19) - So you just find it so often, managers, flexibility and career development being the top three drivers. They're engagement and retention within today's customer facing workforce. Now, when you think about those managers and you think about the skill set associated with those managers to be able to do some of the things I just referenced, that's where some of this falls off. And it's why it's such an important component to look at from a different lens in today's operating environment, maybe based on how you did it for so many decades previously. 

Mario (00:37:50) - Because if you can nail that, you talk about financial business cases. Well, when you spend $ 100, 000. To thousands of dollars in attrition, and it comes down to three quarters of that sitting with your six to 12 month tenured employees. And it's something so simple as clear communication and demonstration of key success stories around your career development plan that you worked so hard to build in the first place. These are some of the things. 

Mario (00:38:11) - So when you think about employee experience, you think about what's going to retain and engage your team members. I think it's looked at as a really big and robust and complex topic. Sometimes when you look down and you look at the data, it's really straightforward and simple. 

Adrian (00:38:24) - Yeah. 

Adrian (00:38:24) - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mario (00:38:26) - Extensive skill set to be able to do some of the things I'm talking about. It's just a matter of knowing, having the data, being able to then act on the data. 

Adrian (00:38:32) - I love it, man. And you know what it makes me think about? Like two things. Number one, everything you just walked through right there. This is why a company like Corn Fairy has got almost a nearly $ 3. 5 billion market cap, period. Number two, what you made me think about for some of our listeners that aren't at that level yet. You're not climbing towards a public position yet. Take some time to build out or draw an employee journey map. 

Adrian (00:38:54) - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Adrian (00:38:56) - Some of our friends that are building like growth focus companies and you keep losing CSMs or you said it earlier because me and you both know the same thing in our industry. Support reps are hard right now, man. 

Adrian (00:39:05) - So if you have a shitty customer experience bill and your CSMs or your support reps just get fucking hammered every day, then you might want to think about drawing out an employee journey map because there's probably a few instances where just a little bit of additional training, a little bit of additional support, maybe because most of us enjoy this, a little extra money in the right places can go a whole long way. And so like, I love some of those thoughts. 

Adrian (00:39:31) - Mary, this has been fantastic, brother. 

Adrian (00:39:32) - I'm so excited that you were able to come on the show before I let you go. Anything that you want to call out, anything that's coming up with CMP, anything that's going on that you want the CX Nation to know about? And then most importantly, where can people find out more about you, sir, and connect with you? And where can people find out more about your team at CMP? Yeah, absolutely. 

Mario (00:39:49) - So, so I'll shout out our flagship event coming up, Customer Contact Week, CCW Las Vegas, June 3rd through 6th. That's Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the world's largest customer contact event. So if you're a CX operations leader, a customer contact, customer care leader, whether your team is 10 people or you're overseeing 5, 000 person operation, we'd love to see you there. We have everyone from supervisors, managers, up to EVPs, SVPs, customer care, COOs. So we'd love to see you out in Vegas in June. 

Mario (00:40:23) - You can follow CMP Customer Management Practice. You can follow me on LinkedIn as well. I'm always kind of sharing and publishing as much as often as I can. And you'll see a lot from our team. And then, of course, anything I discuss today from a CMP research standpoint, feel free to go to cmpresearch. com and take a look at some of the research that we're offering. A number of our clients really leverage a lot of that research to make better decisions in what's really an unprecedented environment. 

Adrian (00:40:51) - So when I say you only have four years of experience, a lot of executive leaders are and they leverage the data that we can obviously glean from our larger universe to be able to make better decisions, benchmark effectively, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, Adrian, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I really do appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. And hopefully some of this was thought- provoking for your listeners. 

Adrian (00:41:11) - It was fantastic, brother. And I'm pumped to be able to join you guys out in Las Vegas in June. 

Mario (00:41:17) - Absolutely. 

Adrian (00:41:17) - It's been real quick. CX Chronicles, Mario and his team invited us guys to be able to have some awesome conversations with some awesome customer- focused business leaders. So we're super excited. Super thrilled to be there. And then you and I, my friend, are going to have to pick a night where we maybe go hit the tables and win some money out in Vegas. But, Mario, it's been a pleasure, brother. 

Adrian (00:41:34) - Yeah. 

Mario (00:41:34) - It doesn't take a lot. Trust me. The CCW community likes to have fun out there in Vegas. 

Adrian (00:41:38) - This is what I figured. We're going to enjoy ourselves there. And, guys, I'll make sure in the show notes I drop information, Mario, on CCW because we're going to be pumped to have as many of you guys join the fun as possible. But, Mario, thank you so much for joining. Huge thank you for sharing your story with us. And I look forward to talking with you real soon, my friend. 

Mario (00:41:54) - Pleasure. Thanks, Adrian.