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The one where he just fixes it please - David Balko CX #OpenToWork E170

June 11, 2024 Rick Denton Season 3 Episode 170
The one where he just fixes it please - David Balko CX #OpenToWork E170
CX Passport
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CX Passport
The one where he just fixes it please - David Balko CX #OpenToWork E170
Jun 11, 2024 Season 3 Episode 170
Rick Denton

🎤🎞️The month’s CX #OpenToWork seeker in “The one where he just fixes it please” with David Balko in CX Passport Episode 170🎧 What’s in the episode?...


CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:20 Why Customer Experience?

4:00 You can only sell a bad product once

6:10 David’s past creating desired experiences for VW

10:00 Buying a car is like Wimbledon?

15:17 Why companies are backing away from experience

17:46 1st Class Lounge

22:38 What’s missing in customer experience today?

26:04 How David can help fix experience

32:12 Contact info and closing


If you like CX Passport, I have 3 quick requests:

✅Subscribe to the CX Passport YouTube channel youtube.com/@cxpassport

✅Join other “CX travelers” with the weekly CX Passport newsletter www.cxpassport.com

✅Accelerate business growth📈 by improving customer experience www.ex4cx.com/services

I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport


Episode resources:

David’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-balko-7ab1806/

Show Notes Transcript

🎤🎞️The month’s CX #OpenToWork seeker in “The one where he just fixes it please” with David Balko in CX Passport Episode 170🎧 What’s in the episode?...


CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:20 Why Customer Experience?

4:00 You can only sell a bad product once

6:10 David’s past creating desired experiences for VW

10:00 Buying a car is like Wimbledon?

15:17 Why companies are backing away from experience

17:46 1st Class Lounge

22:38 What’s missing in customer experience today?

26:04 How David can help fix experience

32:12 Contact info and closing


If you like CX Passport, I have 3 quick requests:

✅Subscribe to the CX Passport YouTube channel youtube.com/@cxpassport

✅Join other “CX travelers” with the weekly CX Passport newsletter www.cxpassport.com

✅Accelerate business growth📈 by improving customer experience www.ex4cx.com/services

I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport


Episode resources:

David’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-balko-7ab1806/

David Balko:

What I actually think a lot of clients want, they don't want us to go back to bare earth and understand everything about your brand like just Can you fix it please?

Rick Denton:

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require a passport. Welcome to the departure lounge CX passport listeners. Thank you again for your continued support of our CX open to work series. It really is great to see how this community has rallied around each other to help everyone advance to that next great stage in their customer experience career. Today, we welcome David Balko, an executive from the greater London area with experience across the digital creative and technology sectors. David has spent over two decades enhancing Business Growth leading teams and solving complex problems that companies like tribal worldwide London with a background in driving strategic solutions and engaging with C level executives. David understands market pressures and the innovation required to solve those market pressures. His expertise extends to public speaking particularly on topics like mobile marketing, and connected device strategies. David brings to us an origin story that starts at age 14 With campaign magazine inspiration and later observations that Buying a car is akin to Wimbledon. Hmm, I'm intrigued by what David has to tell us today. David, welcome to CX passport.

David Balko:

Well, thanks for it. I really appreciate that. Yeah, it's really good to it's really good to be here. And thank you for the invite. I'm really, really looking forward to the next next half an hour. Yeah,

Rick Denton:

it's gonna be a lot of fun. And we were lamenting listeners, David and I before how not lamenting we were celebrating how it's starting to warm up. So we're recording this in early May. Things are getting a little nicer out there. Yeah, although we did have a little compare and contrast between what warming up means to me in Dallas, Texas, and what warming up means to David in the greater London area.

David Balko:

Yeah, it's a little bit different here. But it's wonderful. Everything's green. Everyone's feeling bright as a lot of optimism. And you know, we've come out of that really wet winter that we've had here in the UK. So it's great.

Rick Denton:

That is great. It is it is nice. The smiles and the greens for sure. Well, David, we're talking about customer experience. And I'm curious, what is it? What drew you and what draws you to customer experience? Why is it important to you?

David Balko:

Well, I think so I started my career in in above the line advertising. And I started at Ogilvy and Mather. And David Ogilvy famously kind of said, you can only convince someone to buy a bad product once. And I think when you overlay customer experience onto that, you can fail in many areas, not just with the product. And so for me, that whole experience, what you what you what you have, during the buying process, what you have during the the learning process, the excitement process, and the delivery and the product, and everything else that goes beyond that, to me is encapsulates the whole of the brand. And that experience. And so, over the years, what started for me is, you know, let's make some ads, let's do some advertising. And so it's rapidly extended into the wider piece, which is, you know, the whole, and that, for me is where the excitement happens, because it's often a way to excite and delight and, and deliver people to the product much more engaged, excited, happier, whatever it might be. That can ultimately and this is the other part that really excites me deliver sales. You know, we're not here just for some kind of improve a client's bottom line a customer's bottom line.

Rick Denton:

You if you're watching this, people would have seen it if not just let me promise you audio listeners that I grinned from ear to ear. And those of you that have been consistent listener to six password know how important that sales part of it the revenue, the results. Part of it is so important. I liked that quote that you mentioned, you can only sell a bad product once and I may have Yeah, yeah, totally misquoted it there. Yeah, you started to bring that into experience, how to tell me a bit a little bit more about your thoughts around that. And when it comes to experience, is it you only get one shot to give a bad experience? Or what are your thoughts around that?

David Balko:

I think so. I mean, I think consumers consumers are more forgiving, in the sense that I think, I think when when particularly in written retail or in fashion, there's a we're prepared to jump through a few more hoops. Because usually we want the thing. So we're prepared to kind of go well, that's a bit of a rubbish kind of, you know, checkout experience or I can't find it on in the browser experiences and work probably on my phone or whatever it means because we're kind of already there. But I think I think though, that those things are, are being ironed out and clearly have been over the last kind of five or 10 years as things have improved. But so I think that consumers do want better experiences, and we are more forgiving. But for me, that's not an excuse. So so so all brands have to think about that and think about those, those kind of moments. Where do you know what if if five in 100 people kind of go, can't be bothered, I don't want it that badly. That's that could be the difference between profit and loss.

Your CX Passport Captain:

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton:

Yeah, yeah. Now, again, you're tying it to business results, which is so valuable. I also think that there's been companies this is sort of a yes, a in their companies a thing? Yeah, I've got a great product. It's an awesome product. It's a fantastic product, everybody would want my product forever and ever. Amen. Well, no, consumer tastes are fickle, and they change. And if you are solely relying on product products important. But if you're solely relying on that, that's and still deliver a bad experience, your customers are going to leave. Let's talk about how have you created an experience that your customers wanted in the past?

David Balko:

Yeah, so I spent the last eight years working at tribal one of our one of our largest clients was Volkswagen. And the jet the customer experience and the journey that people go on when they buy an automobile is is long, truncated, we've we kind of called it, you know, it was full of loops and leaps. There are these moments, usually when you kind of take delivery of your brand new car, that you start to think about, you know, the next one, and that might be three, four or five years down the line. But you know, we're all constantly looking around, see what our friends say, you know, so. So those loops and leaps, leaps take place over time. Well, I spent a lot of time looking at that journey with the team at tribal and looking at ways that we can enhance that experience, both digitally, physically in the showroom, and post delivery in the car, and all of those connected points in between, because we knew that there were certain pressure points, where customers, as I was just saying earlier, either post purchase, kind of had 20 questions that you only really find out when you've taken delivery of your new car and driven it for a bit and you then want to go back to the dealership or go back to the brand and say, how does that work? Can I just my mirror when I turned my key off all those kinds of things. And they were often being let down. And so what we were doing was looking at those points and saying, Well, how do we improve that Through clever use of CRM, clever use of applications, the use of a phone call, whatever it might be, because actually, when all of those are joined together, what we found at the beginning of the journey was when we joined up all the technology really well, customers basically traded up a trim. So we knew that when all that technology was in and again, going back to the bottom line, I genuinely I only care about improvements for our customers. Now that can be you know, it's usually financial, because that's kind of what they're trying to do. But at the same time, it can be a brand experience, it can be appreciated all of those things. But when we join them up, and when customers use all of the tools, they went up a trim that's valuable to an automotive manufacturer.

Rick Denton:

Yeah, well, as someone who has gone up a trim level or two, from time to time, I know how valuable it is because I felt I felt the value coming out of me into the automotive.

David Balko:

But actually what we did, we used a lot of data to understand how the cars were being produced on the factory. And then we've started to say, well, how can we start making conversations, having conversations with clients about upsell during the process in a way, either post order, before delivery and so on where you can make those changes and all of those start to turn marketing from a cost center into a profit center when done correctly. So that for me is again that the heart of why I do what I do because yeah, you have to look at that entirety. I

Rick Denton:

want to I intend to come back and I want to spend a little more time talking about customer experience and business results. But I want to go back to something that I mentioned in the introduction you talked about buying a Car is akin to Wimbledon. Help me understand what you mean. Yeah.

David Balko:

So So winning Wimbledon, the tennis tournament, winning Wimbledon, and any of the Grand Slams is really easy. You just have to win seven games in a row. Right now. It's simple, right? Yeah. When you look at it like that, it's very simple process along the way, you might have to beat Rafa Nadal, you know, Serena, Serena Williams, anyone? But but he's really straightforward. And often, you know, you start with a drawer of 128 players. Well, it's a bit like buying a car, we think of all of those brands at the beginning of the journey. And we think about, hey, you know, let's buy Chrysler or Let's buy a Volkswagen or let's buy whatever. And gradually, you sift out that those brands fall out in the early rounds, rounds. 1234. And my view is that you can only win Wimbledon, if you're in the final. And being in the final is exactly like buy a car, most customers, on average test drive 2.4 cars, so to write, and so they go and test drive those cars, that's your final. So we have to my job was always to deliver customers, rationally convinced and emotionally excited to the dealership. Because at that point, you have to hand over to the services, the humans that that experience. And we spent a lot of time working with the brands on that experience. But that was the moment that's the final. That's the part where we want people to kind of go, I want that one. And that's when you work as a brand. That's when you win.

Rick Denton:

I like that there's a lot to enjoy there. One just was very simple to win Wimbledon. That put on that year that on your T shirt quote. Absolutely. But it doesn't make sense when you talk about it. Yeah, and the point of get to the final. And I especially appreciate there's there's a whole conversation we could have around how customer experience is so much more than what some people pigeonhole it in in their minds. And that idea of you're handing it over and how does that all work together, the work that you were doing up here was a part of the experience, the work that the dealership is doing, as part of the experience, the post sale, all of that is the customer's experience, when it comes to buying a car in this example,

David Balko:

so we wanted to we wanted dealers to to understand. So when a customer has when customers sit watching television, and they see an ad and they might in the UK, we're quite digitally literate in that sense. So second screening is really we're really good at it compared to other European countries, we do it a lot. So people have their laptops, their phones, their tablets, and they go on to car websites, and they do tech, they build cars, they go on to onto those onto the configurators. And do that, well, that's data, we can start to use that. When you book a test drive, why don't we send all that data to the to the to the dealership, so that we know that that person wanted to buy a golf, they really liked them read, they kept looking at the stereo, the stereo, upgrade all of these things. So we send those not just the desired configuration, but the search configured. So that helps just it's it's those little pieces of information and that currency that we can that dealership can use a brands can use to help give their customers a better experience. And give them what they want. You know, and a basic one was was you know, if you want to drive a Golf GTI and test drive one well make try and make sure there's a Golf GTI to test drive, rather than a base level. Right? Right. You know, really simple stuff like that. Now, it's hot as easy for me to say it's really hard for brands to deliver. But but we know that when those things work, people get great experiences, and they then they're more likely to buy. Yeah.

Rick Denton:

And that's that that is I chuckle you're right, because having an inventory we're not talking about, you know, a bag of chips here, right, it is having the right trim on a lot. I certainly get complexity. But at least knowing that that's an objective allows a company to start the process and execution towards going that direction.

David Balko:

But you know what, in retail, it's exactly the same in fashion. How many times have we walked into a store, thinking that we want to buy a pair of jeans and or a pair of shoes and they don't have it in our size? Yeah, this is where stock checks really great. You know, only today I knew that I had to go and buy something for my daughter. I knew they had it in stock. I was in and out very quickly. Now the brand, the shop that I went into might have wanted me to dwell a bit more might have wanted me to buy some other things. I went great. I had a wonderful experience here I'm in I'm out in 30 seconds. You have what I want. I feel good about that and I'm more likely to go back in the future. So it can work on a 599 kind of pair of trousers as much as it can on a 2530 Plenty 100,000 Balko

Rick Denton:

very true. I'm wearing a pair of pants right now that was part of that boop boop is the buy in line purchase in store today? And because of it being so easy, yeah, I'm gonna get like four or five more pairs, because I like you're gonna go there again.

David Balko:

And then you can order online and then. Yeah, and all that data is important. Well,

Rick Denton:

that's okay. I want to do a little twist, because we've been talking about how the delivery customer experience affects business results, pretty clear and simple. Well, why is that not so clear to some companies? Why are we seeing companies sort of back away from the label customer experience and the work of customer experience? If folks like you and me know, and have direct line between customer experience and financial results?

David Balko:

I think I think it's good question. I think lots of agencies and certainly at the agency world that I come from a lot of conversations where agencies purport to to understand the commercial aspects. I think if I'm being slightly negative, I think a lot of them think they do but have no idea. And actually, for me, Curiosity is all about curiosity. Yeah, you know, again, go back to the to the kind of my early Ogilvy and TBWA training, just trying to understand how your clients make money trying to understand what what their pressures are, I remember years ago, similarly working on this and and we were doing an ad for a Nissan Micra, which is a tiny little car in the UK, so even sold in the USA. And, you know, we were arguing over something or other and the client just said to me, Look, David decide one day and he said, Look, David, we designed these cars a year ago, they're on a boat, they're about six weeks away from the UK, there's 865 of them, they come in two colors, they come with all of the trim that we all know about. I just need to sell them. Please give me an ad that does that. And we will take care of the rest. Now, customer experience, we'll do all of those things. But I, I really understood that at that moment where you just have to understand the client's pressures, you know, we would sort of thinking, Oh, well, you know, it might change right now it's too late. The cars are on the way, just sell them. And so there was, to me, it's that curiosity of understanding how they, how they make them, why they make whatever they do, and how can we frankly, not get in the way that's just kind of help things get better.

Rick Denton:

David, I've really liked that. I liked that, especially, especially understanding the commercial reality of what is the product? Hey, it's locked in man, just give me an ad that will know you talked about those, those cars being on a boat, and on their way over. And I used to actually work in international supply chain and that sort of stuff. So I can visualize some of those big old boats going through the Suez Canal, actually. Thankfully, when you and I are traveling the globe, we are not having to do that. And yet it's still quite a big distance. It can be nice to stop down in the lounge, take a little break. And that's what I want to do with you here right now. Let's stop down on the first class lounge take a little break have a little bit. What is a dream travel vacation from your past. So

David Balko:

there, I'm gonna you're gonna let me have two. The first is Venice. I love Venice. Venice to me, I would happily go and live there tomorrow, you know, and I don't really care that it's sinking. That's my you know, I buy house, I live there. I love the quietness. I love the fact that it hasn't changed. I love the fact that when you arrive, it's the same view that Marco Polo saw in the 14th century. And it's just great. And the second is Los Angeles, which is a kind of complete different part of the world. But I love LA and I, my grandfather lived there. And I spent much of my childhood there. And I think is one of the most vibrant and exciting and amazing cities and California in general. You know, you can get out of LA and get to the mountains and get to the desert and get to the coast. And it's you know, I love it. That's

Rick Denton:

what I love about having this podcast be a global podcast with global guests. Because if it were just us, folks, I don't think there'd be a lot of folks that would name la as the dream travel occasion with their past but it's so it's eye opening to have the perspective of someone that isn't sitting here in the States and say no, that's a great place now, I'm 1,000% with you on Venice, the brilliance of Venice is yes, you can be in the most just crowded, overly touristy street but if you just wander one block over where no one else is so good. It is delightful. Quiet. You're right. It's so nice. I saw

David Balko:

you know I saw a here's a customer. Here's a CX problem, right? Okay, so I saw a refrigerator being delivered in Venice now. This is comparable. Yeah, it's on a boat with a crane. You know, it goes in through a window. And there are many opportunities for failure. And when you see how cities solve those kinds of CX problems that we we sort of forget about. Right? And it's a wonderful moment, I kind of sat and watch this fridge go into this, that

Rick Denton:

in the context of customer experience like that, yeah, that's great. Well, let's go forward. What's a dream travel location? You've not been to get?

David Balko:

Costa Rica. I really want to go to Costa Rica. I've a bunch of friends have been it's, you know, it's a country that has embraced tourism in a very ecological ecologically minded way. Yes. You know, it's, it's very progressive in the region. What's not to like, you know, I'd love to go love

Rick Denton:

Costa Rica plus one for Costa Rica. brilliant place to be wonderful, wonderful country. Beautiful. And yeah, good food, which is a key part of that. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

David Balko:

So anyone that knows me, and anyone that listens will will know that I love Indian food. I love a curry. And so the best car I ever ate was in India. But it because of the Indian population in the UK. Once a month is a wonderful treat.

Rick Denton:

That's awesome. Oh, I like that. It's well, going the other way. What is something growing up? You were forced to eat but you hate it as a kid?

David Balko:

Rice Pudding. My mother. I hate the idea of rice is great. Right? White rice is wonderful. It's something as a savory dish. Rice as a dessert. It fills me with with dread. I even feel slightly nauseous talking about Yeah. What?

Rick Denton:

Man? I love this question. Because i Yours may be the first dessert that's ever been mentioned. Okay.

David Balko:

And

Rick Denton:

forced to eat as a kid. I liked that. Well, let's we're gonna have to get back on the road here, David. So what is one travel item not including your phone or your password that you will not leave home without is

David Balko:

easy. It's a pen and a piece of paper? Again, it's an obvious answer. But you know, there's those moments where we all take notes on our phone, we all take notes it on, we've got technology that can do these things. But there's nothing better occasionally than a piece of paper sketching something out, and it just works.

Rick Denton:

David, I really liked that answer. And it's not as obvious like you said, Oh, it's obvious, you know, not really not anyone just kind of abandon that. But I've got my you can't see it on screen. I've got my yellow pad right here. And that's where my most creative thoughts are bonus, convenient. I can't carry a legal pad when I'm on a run. But when I'm trying to be creative, I need that tangibility of brain to finger to paper for sure. Absolutely. Let's go back to CX a bit. What are companies? Like? What have you seen is just missing in customer experience today? And how can they improve on

David Balko:

that? So airlines, I think, I mean, that it's a really tricky, but I get, again, going back to the commercial pressures, you know, airlines are under enormous commercial pressure, you know, the cost of fuel, you know, is is the biggest factor, I guess, cost of equipment, all of those things. But the the dreadful customer experience that exists. I mean, I think particularly in Europe with some of our low cost airlines, some get it right, you know, some, some are better. But I think there's so much opportunity to make a journey, so much more pleasurable. Without adding costs. It's just little things that I think can can make can make the difference. Technology is making a big, big difference. But I get the fact that the airline, the airport, the car parking, the tech, the transport to the airport, they're all different. Right? And, but, but when it goes well, and when brands get it right, of course is good. But there's so much room for error and most airlines don't get it right, let alone you know, the experience on board. The experience, you know, the the technology you know, I worked for many years with a brand called Panasonic Avionics, looking at how customers can have better experiences with tech on on on aircraft. It's great is a great opportunities. There are great opportunities there. You know, notwithstanding seats and all of that stuff, but I just think it's got worse in I was lucky enough to fly on Concorde many years ago, which was tiny. Yeah, really cramped, lovely champagne, lovely food. But got it to New York in three and a half hours? We've we've gone backwards, right? We really have. So I think I think, you know, there's a, there's, there's a lot to be said for an improved experience in that in that tech in that sector. Well,

Rick Denton:

I'm gonna, I'm gonna push you a little bit on that. But first, I want to say I'm missing out on the Concorde, as I've always wanted to have that experience. And I have, I have this hope, that before my traveling days have come to an end that I will experience some sort of supersonic version of flight because that the thought of three hours between those cities was just delightful. You

David Balko:

know, and it's fascinating. Every six months, we see an article in the press that says, oh, you know, there's an aircraft coming, we'll get to Sydney in three minutes, or, you know, whatever it is, and, and I've been reading these articles for, I don't know, 2530 years. Rubbish. I'm just like, you go, then, please, I want it. Where do I find, you know, aircraft manufacturers, this my play, please, please, crap.

Rick Denton:

You're talking to a guy that lives in a country whose we barely have any sort of rail system to speak of, and hardly any, what we call high speed wouldn't even really qualify. So having spent some time in Japan a while ago, the there's a lot of improvement that can go around in the travel space. So this is where I'm going to push you a little bit, David. So if that's what's missing, and whether we want to talk about the airline, specifically, how can you help companies improve customer experience and the ways they're falling short now?

David Balko:

Yeah. So for me my again. So one of one of my bugbears with the CX industry is, and it's slightly controversial, and some of you might CX mates will have heard me say this, and they'll get annoyed. But I think one of the one of the things that we do badly in CX is we often go back to square one. So we're really good again, right? So we now need to unpick everything about that experience. And we need to understand everything about it, and so on. And I kind of go Whoa, hang on a minute, you've got three people in the room, each with 25 years worth of experience. Why don't we use some of that as well? Right? Because because often it isn't about going back to kind of bearer and building it from scratch, it's often about just applying smart amounts of common sense. So to your question, you know, I think you know, the the industries that really can can do well, light rail is an interesting one. Now, it's very complicated. In North America, I get that. But in Europe rarely is really opening up again, and what I've read an article recently about the Italian railways, opening up something like 750, or 100 kilometers worth of old railways to attract people out of Venice to attract people out of Rome, so that they can go and visit our gorgeous country in Italy. And so my view is, that is a wonderful way, big CX, that in my view, that's a wonderful way of thinking, we've got some old trains here, we've got some old track, we've got lots of people that want to see our country, hang on, you know, light bulb moment, let's take let's do something really good with that? Well, I think that's a great a great way of starting to it's a country, a national CX project. So I think that's a good thing. And I think, again, a big a big opportunity in the UK, in Europe will be joining all of those rail networks up, which is coming. And I think that'd be great. And for me, I just want to apply a year, many years ago, a really famous old planner strategic planner said to me, I asked him a question, How did you solve these? How do you solve these briefs? How do you do that? How do you think so beautifully? And he said, Look, David, it's simple. I've got two filing cabinets. One is full of the work that I've done, and one is full of the work of how we got there and the problems that we solved. And I just go and rummage around in both of those. And usually, there is an answer that solves that, that that the problem that is in front of me. And I think that's what I bring to solving those solving problems. I've got 2728 years of working on every kind of conceivable sector. And most of the problems that I've seen often can be related I can relate to something else and therefore we can kind of get to the answer quickly, which is what I actually think a lot of clients want they don't want us to go back to bare earth and understand everything about your brand like just Can you fix it please move on.

Rick Denton:

I like that get more we'll keep it PG here we are G will get stuff done. Yeah, that approach to it. I actually I had a job title of that actually back at a former employee where I was I had I created the team it was just called the getting done to get it done. Yep, get it. And that approach this I agree there's a lot of over I actually agree with you. There's too much Oh, overhead and customer experience actually is distancing us and actually kind of repelling our target customer and just the people we work with. And I'd say the companies or clients, it's repelling them, they look at as sort of fluff rather than No, no, here's actually the quick ways we can get to your tangible business value totally moving toward. Well, David, we're kind of coming near the end of our time together here. Unfortunately, I could tell there's I mentioned, there's a few other threads that I like to pull out. But we're out of time here. I'm curious, though, what's what's next for you with customer experience? Where do you want to be next?

David Balko:

Well, I think you've touched you just touched on it actually read. For me. The, the, the, the application of AI, is, is having a tremendous effect on on agencies, I read somewhere, someone was saying, no one's really thought about what AI is going to do to the billable hour. And I think that's really, really key to successful agencies, and running a successful team, and so on. And, and, of course, the great use of AI. And great use of technology, when married to a problem will often solve 80% of the lit heavy lifting in 20% of the time. So instead of hey, look will disappear off for 234 weeks, and we're gonna go and think about something, we might be able to do that in 234 days, well, we've still got to pay people quite a lot more money for their salaries. How do we do that? Well, I think the smart use of application of AI means you can do more. So that's the first thing instead of working on one client, you might be able to work on two, three or four, that's good. But using AI to improve customer experiences with better comps that are targeted correctly, that map's back to what the product is that's in the warehouse, so that we don't disappoint people. And then meriton measuring all of that and tying it all together in a way that allows clients and their and their and their their paymasters and their senior senior folks to interrogate it quickly, I think is really important. I

Rick Denton:

like that, I think that'll be a very interesting, I'm going to enjoy watching you move forward in those next steps in your next CX move. David, if folks want to get to know you get to know a little bit more about your views on customer experience or heck, just life in general, what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

David Balko:

So at LinkedIn, always LinkedIn is great. If you're in the UK, hit me up. I'm always I'm in London, three days a week. And, you know, I again in the in, in true, good CX I like to meet face to face. It's always good. You know, I think it's always a nice way to kind of get to know each other better. But yeah, LinkedIn is always the way forward.

Rick Denton:

We'll do and I will as everyone knows, scroll down in the show notes right, there will be the link to David's profile. David. I enjoyed this today. I did not expect us to find out that a dessert was the treat that was the one that tortured you as a child. I did. However, in all seriousness, I thought our discussion around customer experience and the push to tangible business value across all the dimensions are vital. And now I'd know that hey, I can win Wimbledon. I just need to win seven games. That's all an easy. It's easy, David. It was wonderful. Talking to you today. David, thank you for being on CX passport.

David Balko:

Thank you, Rick. I really enjoyed it.

Rick Denton:

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.