The Birds & Bees

Welcome to oomph.

We’re people that start all our work with a single aim: everything we do should result in a customer experience that is both valuable and simple.

https://www.oomphagency.com

In this first series of podcasts we investigate how to integrate 'customer first' thinking into your organisation and how it can have result in positive, sustainable results.

But first, what exactly is CX?

Presented by: Sue Carter (oomph Customer Experience and Content Specialist)
Featured Guests: Stephen Priestnall (oomph CEO) + Ross Anderson (Mr Anderson Ltd / oomph Creative Lead)

Transcript

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Sue Carter: 0:05

Hello, and welcome to our new podcast The Joy of CX. Thanks for joining us, we are going to be looking into customer experience, which is CX, over the next six to eight sessions, and hopefully looking behind the curtain a little bit in our discussions. There'll be questions we can answer perhaps some of your questions as well, if you'd like to share them with us. My name is Sue Carter, I work with oomph agency, and I specialise in customer experience and content experience.

Stephen Priestnall: 1:00

Thank you very much Sue. Hello, everyone. I'm really looking forward to joining you over the next few sessions. It My name is Stephen. I found that out. But 18 years ago now. And we've been on a journey that's brought us to a concentration, the idea of customer experience, now we can help our clients think about customer experience, not just in there worked directly connected with call centres or customer connections, but all through the organisation all the way to back office functions. And it raises an awful lot of questions about how organisations think about themselves about how they think about their relationship with the world around them. And of course, how they think about their relationship with customers. So it's a it's a fascinating topic, and I really enjoy being involved in it.

Sue Carter: 2:13

Okay, and Ross, you're fairly new to me. So you're here to challenge us a little bit, I think, perhaps when we get too technical or too many buzzwords, but just introduce yourself, for us for our listeners.

Ross Anderson: 2:27

Thanks. So my name is Ross I, owner of Mr. Anderson limited, which is my company which create content, usually moving image, visually orientated content. I work with lots of different brands over the years from Apple to Samsung, to Vodafone to lots of music brands. And I think not one point in all of that time have we thought really about customer journeys or CX so it really is interesting to me on meet you both and understand a little bit more about the fundamental of it really, which is thinking of it from the customer's perspective often.

Sue Carter: 3:05

Oh, well, you're gonna give it away and give it away. You're meant to be the newbie. All right, thank you, Ross. Stephen and Ross, welcome. So we're going to kick off a bit of a discussion. So CX, what it really is, I said at the beginning, when I came into it, I used to think about user experience. But actually, we're talking about customer experience, which I think it has been a bit of a buzzword of recent years, it seems to me. And I think people interpret it in different ways. And I suspect people listening to us today, wherever you are, you probably mean something different to you, whoever you work for, whatever you do. So come on then Stephen, enlighten us. What does it really mean? As opposed to just sounding a bit clever?

Stephen Priestnall: 3:58

Yeah, the stumbling block for for many of us involved in the world of CX, is to just get excited about CX as a thing. It can be quite technical. It can be connected in people's minds with technology. It might feel like it's difficult to access, it might feel like it's making the life of businesses more complicated. So my counsel for getting involved in discussions to begin with organisations is to stop thinking about the organisation and as customers and start thinking about yourself and think about your experiences in using services in buying stuff and doing things. And, you know, we often talk about the idea of a business's being the thing that we're working with, well, a lot of the organisations we work with are businesses, they might be membership organisations, they might be public service. A groups. But in any in any of those walks of life, that people that were trying to put the focus on other people just like all of us listeners, and all of us sat here in, in a studio. So if you can start thinking about yourself as a customer, or whatever the service is, then it's not that big a step to think about the experience you're having at a different at some stage and engagement with that service. So I was trying to think about the idea of CX is as being the as literal as the words, the experience of you as a customer. And that might be happening. Before you know, the product or service you're about to engage with. It might be happening after a long time of engagement with it. And either happening during the process of buying it. So yeah, I think I think so I'd I just try and bring it back to yourself to ourselves,

Sue Carter: 5:56

which I always like to do, as you know, I'm going to ask Ross actually here, so Ross, you're new to our organisation, and you started saying how customer experience was new to you. So that answer? Is that making it any clearer? Or do you still feel like it could be sort of a bit confusing or a word, but we don't really know what's under it?

Ross Anderson: 6:20

Yeah, I think I think it's, it's interesting, because I suppose I was being bit flippant, when I said that, you know, in my previous projects, moving image projects, or brand related products, that we wouldn't think about the customer, because obviously you do but but but I think the assumption is that you know them, and that's the, you know, them lots of people feel like they know exactly who it is that they're selling to. And that might be often, you know, so who's your audience, so will everyone you know, but but the, the idea of breaking that down and understanding who that is, I think is really interesting. And how you do that, I think that's the bit that I've been learning while I've been here is, is understanding the means as as to which you use to get to understand your customer more.

Sue Carter: 7:13

If you work in marketing, or even if you're, you know, leader of a business, however big or small that might be you might get the idea of customer experience. We all want our customers to be happy. We want our listeners to be happy. But, Stephen, what do you actually do as a customer experience agency?

Stephen Priestnall: 7:35

It's it's not a straightforward playbook, to be honest Sue, and I think I probably said, first thing we do is ask a lot of questions. It's very rare that an organisation has kind of constructed a brief for a customer experience plan, it's normally if there's some kind of initiation going on for a consideration of CX it's normally to do with what just changed? What What Why are our customers not coming back to us? So what happened to that piece of technology from that new competitor? The economic climate is very different to what it was. And normally, it's a period of reflection for an organisation that prompts them to think about CX so therefore, when we're engaged, it's not really can you do X it's Can you help us understand the the environment around around our customers? And some of it might be actually to build on what Ross said, Who are our customers? Are they different? Are they the same as they were? Do we? Do we really understand who our customers are? Now? Have we been so busy? Being fantastic at building our product or our service that we've kind of forgotten about what happens at the other end when they get used or when they get consumed? It might be a piece of work around understanding customers.

Sue Carter: 9:07

And I think to build on what you say, I've seen some of that initial work, just asking the questions can be quite transformational. Because often people don't you said at the beginning Ross, people don't often know what their customers are, who they are or what they want, or what their needs are. And I know that we've seen a number of times, sort of a light bulb go on, and people go oh, yes, I need to think about them. Why do you think they haven't been thought about before? It seems as soon as people talk about that, it just seems obvious. They go well, of course I need to think about what my customer needs. But why? Why is it a new thing that we're just talking about in the last couple of years?

Stephen Priestnall: 9:46

There's probably quite a few people that would say that it wasn't a new thing, but they might might be feeling like they've been shouting as loud as they can in a very noisy space that nobody hearing so I think think that he will definitely shout loudly though. So yeah, just shout a bit louder. Or choose the people or shout at Ross. And that is actually quite a natural process. So it's, it's also really important when you're in that questioning zone, not to feel like it's being critical. It's an exploration of why things are as they are. And it's kind of natural for, for organisations at whatever stage you are, whether it's a startup where you've got a naturally, enthusiastic, compelling, innovative founder, where she has got a great idea for a product or service and is determined to take that to market that determination as a function of the success of the organisation. And that determination and enthusiasm for getting a product and service to markets spreads into the rest of the organisation quite quickly as it grows. But it's typically typically an enthusiasm for the product or service.

Sue Carter: 11:03

And I've I've, I've been there, I've worked for an organisation where the CEO was also the chief product officer. Yep, not by name. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the ideas that were coming through were ideas that they had, at any given time, because they thought that would be great for the product. But not always thinking is this something that our audience have asked for, and that can be frustrating, and frustrating for the customer Right? As much as it is for the organisation.

Stephen Priestnall: 11:35

So bear in mind, the customer doesn't know about any of this customer doesn't really care, but they might get the wrong thing that they didn't want. And then they don't know that there was a possible right thing. All they know, is the experience of having the wrong thing.

Ross Anderson: 11:51

Isn't that the, in any organisation, there's a lot to do, and all the doing departments are taken. But one of the departments that aren't taken, is customer. Yeah, you don't ever have a sort of customer based department? Yes. Thinks about customer. I mean, you do in the more evolved organisations, but there's sort of it's often, you know, you're all looking one way, yeah, and not looking the way you know, the other.

Stephen Priestnall: 12:13

And it's, it's an, it's a naturally compelling momentum to do that. So even if we move away from that kind of startup, example, and flip to a larger corporate, it's a manufacturing organisation that says it's mainly engineering focused, and it's been building stuff for 50, 60, 100 years even, the process of improving product and service, the research and development, and the technology, investment, and the partnership, development and collaboration will almost always be product driven. And it will move out from product so all the other functions, as Ross said, the'doing people', the stuff they do is based on supporting that, that taking the product to market. And so it's it's not an unnatural end result for an organisation suddenly find itself looking very inside out at the world, and the culture to be very inside out and Sue you and I've been in meetings where we're with hugely experienced, talented, smart people. And she used that term. I think it's feels a bit inside out and they look at you as if God Yeah, how did we get there? You know, the, there's usually, you know, if the conversation has been started in the right way, there's usually almost a bit of a relief going on, which is, right, so there's a way out. So the problems are somewhere else, the problems have to do with losing sales or have to do with dissatisfied customers, or a workforce that's struggling to is unhappy and leaving, or technology that's not working. So those are the surface problems. But actually, when you're then present, have you tried flipping inside and outside in, it's suddenly opens up a whole range of solutions that just weren't there. And I think that that our challenge is to be able to pose those questions without it just being a barrage of criticism. Because it's, it's,

Sue Carter: 14:28

it's a big, it's a big truck to turn around.

Stephen Priestnall: 14:31

It can be really tricky, isn't it? Yeah.

Sue Carter: 14:39

So how do you navigate that conversation?

Stephen Priestnall: 14:46

I mean, it varies massively across organisations. And we've worked quite a lot around. This is going to start getting a bit geeky, so apologies.

Sue Carter: 14:58

I will stop you Okay, don't encourage him,

Stephen Priestnall: 15:03

we've worked a lot around the moles associated with the idea of behaviour change, and behaviour changes and methodology. As you know, there are a number of different models. And you can get into actually quite passionate arguments about which model works best. But fundamentally, it says that in order to effect the change in an individual's or an organization's behaviour, you have to, you have to change things around the outside, you can't just present the change and expect it to happen. And we've spent a lot of time on applying that to internal behaviour change in organisations. So if an organisation has been coached over time into thinking inside out, what are the things you do to coach it into thinking outside in, and it isn't just saying, shouting, stop, think about your customers, otherwise, you get fired.

Sue Carter: 15:51

So it's not just a new marketing campaign,

Stephen Priestnall: 15:53

it's invariably the marketing is the last thing to kind of happen. Because if you haven't set everything else up, you're essentially presenting a false future organisation. So the marketing plan is that last piece of the jigsaw, once you've set the principles in place to to be more customer focused.

Sue Carter: 16:12

So Ross, if you were to kind of look back at the work you've done in your business, in the past, I'm going to say five years, because you look so young. Thanks. How do you think that might have been different? Had you had this kind of slightly different way of looking at things, this customer focused way of looking at things? And I'm asking this question, because you presented that thought at the beginning. And not kind of No, absolutely. Assuming You never thought about your customers?

Ross Anderson: 16:38

No, not at all. I mean, I suppose it it's easier to think about it from a startups perspective a bit a bit more, I think, you know, in that, you know, the question that I used to ask was, Who do you think your audience is? And I sort of alluded to that before, but, you know, the immediate answer would be everyone, and that, we want everyone to listen, we want everybody to buy, I want everybody to watch because that means we will have an unlimited amount of people to, to, you know, buy our product or listen to our music or whatever. So I think that it's trying to get, because obviously, the answer is never everyone, or it rarely is I think, and the sort of, especially when you're starting off, you have to have a target audience. And so it's really trying to broach that conversation between them. We know where you want to be, which is everyone. But where do you start? You know, and that and that sort of, that's that's the, you know, an important question earlier on, I think in terms of as the, as the business develops, integrating that idea of, what would the customer think, what would, how are we talking to the customer? What language are we using, etcetera, it really, it starts to inform every decision that's made, then. And so when we come to doing something that I would do, like, make an advert, or, or whatever, then that would have been a much more thorough process, as opposed to and it would, it would save a lot of time. And a lot of that stuff that I needed to do was often instinctive, or that I would have to make assumptions or decisions on the behalf of that brand, which is not really my place in that position I should have, they should have gone through that sort of decision to make themselves and felt really comfortable about it. Because if you do make those assumptions, you end up potentially with a with a with a product they don't like either, so so you've got to really work on that together.

Stephen Priestnall: 18:34

And I think there's a, there's a mantra I've used quite a long time my career now, but it's definitely come true in the CX world, linked in to that efficiency angle that Ross alluded to, is that it's something you ask the question about, How do you? How do you ask those difficult question? So how does that how's that? How you do that, in that environment? Well, it is challenging, and you, you have to be thoughtful, you have to navigate some, you know, often kind of political skirmishes. And you probably have to deal with some negative reactions, and you have to be really persistent. But the principle I've followed is, if you for every hour you spend in that difficult, slightly conflicted, challenging question mode, you save 10 times that number of hours, when you're designing a thing. And you save 100 hours when you're making a thing. But it's really tempting to get 10 minutes into the difficult bit of the hour and go right, we're done, think we're there. And that's where you get the brief Ross that you used to get, which was actually we've done our 10 minutes. We know we're talking to everybody, or if it's not everybody is old people, young people or men or women. Oh, it's that. So just make something really nice. And then we'll we'll let you know when you've done it.

Ross Anderson: 19:56

We'll make it viral and make it viral. Easy. This podcast will be viral, absolutely.

Sue Carter: 20:10

That kind of makes me think about something you said at the beginning, Stephen, which I think brings us back to the point of what is what is customer experience? And what does it mean? You mentioned about it's not just about services, you know, it's not just about buying how you buy a train ticket, or the experience you get when you go on a social media site, for example. So how far does it expand? If you're an organisation or a marketer, you're listening to this podcast, who should be caring about this? What type of organisation should be caring?

Stephen Priestnall: 20:43

Well, there's a lens that we're that we're increasingly looking at in CX now and we call it sustainable CX. And it's not, it's not a sort of green play. It's not, it's not a carbon footprint, zero carbon play. But it's utilising the language, which is much more current now around the idea of sustainability. But it's thinking about economic sustainability for organisations thinking about how do they make themselves more robust and more sustainable? And that's got to be a sound objective for most organisations. Yes, profit might be in there, income might be in there. But also retaining customers is in there, retaining staff, being confident about products and services. So, if you think about that idea of sustainable CX, if you develop customer experiences across the piece, across all the interventions, interactions with your customers, and the likelihood is that you will have less need to go and find more new customers.

Sue Carter: 21:47

So the short answer is, it's important for everyone

Stephen Priestnall: 21:51

in that organisation, pretty much.

Sue Carter: 21:53

Yeah, absolutely. Any sort of organisation so not just to service b2b. Absolutely, b to all be anybody. And so, because I think we can get caught up in the word customer. Yeah, we can. And we've come across this in organisations that we've worked with and who it's perhaps taken us a while to have that conversation, because they'll say, but we don't have customers. Yeah, so what do we say to that? Well, sometimes

Stephen Priestnall: 22:21

you just say, Okay, would you want to call them then? And just go with the flow, the principles are the same. That's exactly right, the principles, the principles are the same. And whether they're service users for a swimming pool, at a county counsel, whether they're members of a professional association, or football club, or whether they're consumers of shampoo the relationship between the thing that's being provided, and the person who is using that thing is still about that engagement. How do they get there? How are they treated when they're there? What's the experience after the thing that they've done, the thing they're going to do. And what's the expectation of what happens afterwards. So, you know, if we look at a cruise company, a typical loyal customer will have a cruise once every five years. That's clearly not the same for if you're selling fast moving consumer goods. And by the way, I am on a mission to change the name of fast moving consumer goods, but that's for another podcast.

Sue Carter: 23:31

Okay, so I think that's given us hopefully, giving our listeners a really good picture of what customer experience means, who it's for, why it's there, perhaps we could give them a little insight into what we might be covering over the next weeks. So Ross, I'm going to start with you as relatively new to oomph and getting under the skin of customer experience. What some of the questions you would like us to answer whether it just be from Stephen or guests over the next few weeks?

Ross Anderson: 24:06

I would like to know a bit more about needs, about how that's relevant, about how you ascertain people's needs. I'd like to know I think I suppose being a bit cynical about it. I'd like to know how much of it is assumption or and how much is data driven and what the balance between that is and how much of it is based in fact, and how much you actually asked the customer you know, the whatever you call it, the customer, the audience or anything else. So I think that those those would probably been my fundamental questions.

Sue Carter: 24:40

Okay, I'll bank that. Stephen. What are some of the things that are perhaps the questions that you don't know like, what what do we not know we don't know. Whatever the phrase is, you don't know what you don't know. What are those?

Stephen Priestnall: 24:54

I don't think it's it's it's easy for an organisation to plot the their own organisational journey for becoming customer experience focused. So I think being prepared for probably some friction. So we should look at organisational friction.

Sue Carter: 25:21

So the question there for another episode is how do you get this understood in your organisation.

Stephen Priestnall: 25:27

So ground grounding your organisation embedding the idea of a CX strategy in your organisation, I think that's, that's something that is not always looked for. And interestingly, the opposite of that is if if there's like a big kind of CX strategy flagship moving this thing forward. And it's all about kind of using a model to effect cultural change, they kind of get stuck on that. And then it becomes all about let's talk talk about changing the culture without actually changing what happened. So I think there's a there's a balance to be found there. Ross talked about data. And he talked about needs of customers. There's a real, live lively debate going on in the world of CX and linked into what you're going to do with it, and how reliable is it? And linked into things like well, how many customers have I got, who behave like this and how many who behave like this is that is that the same as my customer segmentation? (We're getting a bit jargony there) is can I separate all my customers out into groups. So because that's kind of where some organisations have got their heads around. If I get really focused on my groups of customers, I can get this group one thing, in this group, another thing, the the layering around customer experiences that your customers have overlapping needs. And those needs vary according to a timeline of the customer and a timeline of their interaction with you.

Sue Carter: 27:15

Well, don't give it all away. So I think this could be for future, a future podcast, the same caution I gave to you Ross at the beginning of the podcast, let's not give it all away. Let's keep people on the edge of their seats. So what I'm drawing from today is that customer experience is pretty much what it says on the tin. Yeah, it is. That it's relevant to pretty much all organisations, but that there are and there are a number of challenges perhaps, and questions that we can still help with and help clarify and perhaps as we said, at the beginning, peek behind the curtain and perhaps make it less scary and less complicated and help people understand that it can be really useful and transformational to organisations. That's us for today for The Joy of CX, we'll see you next time.