A Scary CX Story

Get set for a chilling tale that will make your hair stand on end. Imagine a billing issue so terrifyingly complex it spanned three generations! Yes, you heard it right. That's the horror our host, Jeannie Walters, unravels on this Halloween special episode of Experience Action. She not only narrates the spine-chilling saga but also provides insightful solutions.

Are you unintentionally crafting a customer experience nightmare? Jeannie's got you covered. She underscores the importance of proactivity and intentionality in designing delightful customer experiences. Learn from Jeannie as she guides us through the labyrinthine process of defining excellent customer experience, creating an effective customer journey map, and much more.

Tune in, absorb the wisdom, and ensure your customers' journey is as sweet as a Halloween treat.

Resources Mentioned:
Experience Investigators Learning Center -- experienceinvestigators.com

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)

Episode Transcript

MC (00:00):
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience, and the experienceof leaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, Jeannie Walters, isan award-winning customer
experience expert, internationalkeynote speaker, and founder of
Experience Investigators, astrategic consulting firm

(00:20):
helping companies increase salesand customer retention through
elevated customer experiences.
Ready, Set, Action.
One, two, three, four.

Jeannie Walters (00:31):
Hey, hey, and happy Halloween.
It is Jeannie Walters here foranother episode of Experience
Action, where I answer yourquestion about customer
experience.
And guess what?
We have a spectacularly spookyquestion.
Hi, Jeannie, with Halloweencoming up, I want to know what

(00:52):
is the scariest CX story you'veever heard.
Thanks.
" Now, when we think about scary, spooky customer experience
stories, of course, we go tothose places that we all know.
I've heard about so manysituations that you all tell me

(01:13):
on airplanes and after I speak,and I get emails and LinkedIn
messages about these thingsbecause people can't believe how
bad it gets.
I will say that a lot of thesituations that get complex,
that cannot be solved with onecall or one message or anything

(01:34):
else, those are the things thatseem to leave us feeling the
most spooked.
So one example, I talked tosomebody at a conference.
It was actually a healthcareconference, and they came up to
me and said, "can you believeI'm the third generation still

(01:56):
getting invoices from a hospitalin my town?
And I said, I cannot believethat.
How did that even happen?
And she said well, hergrandparents went in for some
routine thing, and insurance orMedicare maybe was supposed to
cover it and for some reasonthey didn't.
So they started getting theseinvoices for something that they

(02:20):
, frankly, shouldn't have beeninvoiced for.
So she said her grandmothercalled every week and said
please remove this bill.
And they always said every weekof course we're happy to do
that.
Now they had other appointments.
They would show up, they wouldask about the bill and every
time they'd be told no, thatwill be taken off, you do not

(02:41):
have to pay that.
Well, unfortunately, hergrandparents passed away and, of
course, when her parents, theirnext of kin, were taking care
of this bill, they called thehospital again and they said,
"hey, this looks like somethingwe haven't paid, but it was
covered, so can we take care ofthis?
Oh, yes, of course.
Of course, no worries.

(03:03):
Well, you know what happenednext?
It kept going.
Wait, there's more.
Whoever was responsible, orwhatever process was responsible
, for removing that invoice thatshould have been never sent out
in the first place, should havedone it, and they didn't.
The process should have worked,and it didn't.
And my hunch is that nobodyquite knew how to fix the

(03:27):
problem.
Just fix it.
Something in the system wasautomatic and nobody could quite
figure out how do we get thisdone?
And on top of that, frankly,nobody cared enough to get it
done.
And so, after three generationsdealing with this invoice, the
person who came up and talked tome said she was still dealing

(03:50):
with it.
Now, the kicker here is thatthat hospital system had been
bought and sold a few times, haddifferent names above the doors
.
So how do things like thishappen?
I would say that many, manytimes, when we look at the
results of something like thisscary customer experience, we

(04:12):
don't take the time to reallytake a step back and look at
what part of the journey isbroken that's actually creating
this outcome.
What is happening where wecan't even figure out how to fix
something because we don't knowhow it works to begin with?
This is why I'm such a bigbeliever in not just defining

(04:35):
what great customer experiencemeans for your organization and
for your customers, but takingthat a step further, looking at
what is the actual customerjourney that's happening, so not
just relying on what ourprocesses and our systems are
telling us, but actuallyreaching out to customers,
finding out from them.
Are you getting thesecommunications the way we intend

(04:56):
?
Are you able to do things inthe easy way that we planned?
Customer journey mapping can bea really powerful tool here, as
well as customer interviews.
And finally, then we want tointentionally design better
customer experiences, and wewant to do that with tools like
service blueprinting, where youfigure out the ideal customer

(05:17):
journey and then you actuallybuild the customer journey and
then you actually break downwhat are the processes, systems,
technologies, locations even,people, employee training, all
of those things that have tohappen on the back end in order
to deliver that ideal customerjourney.
If we take the time to beintentional and proactive about

(05:40):
designing a great customerexperience, what happens is when
we have these moments where wehave to be reactive because
somebody is telling us somethingisn't going right.
We then have a game plan ofknowing where do we need to go
to fix this problem, who do weneed to involve, what teams need

(06:00):
to actually make the changes inorder to deliver on correcting
this problem.
Otherwise, we are spending allof our time in reactive mode and
we are the ones who then haveto figure out wow, where does
this come from?
What systems are included?
Which team is involved?
That's why being proactive andintentional can be such a

(06:23):
winning business strategy.
It helps you not just gaintrust with your customers so
that they spend more with you,they buy more, they refer more
all of those things they don'tleave but then we also are going
to make sure we areoperationalizing what we do so
that it's as efficient and costeffective as it can be for the

(06:47):
organization.
It is literally a win-win.
But if we don't pay attention tothese things, then guess what?
We have really scary customerexperiences that haunt people,
literally.
So let's make sure that we arenot haunting our customers with
bad customer experiences becausewe are spending all of our time

(07:10):
being reactive about thejourney instead of being
intentional and proactive anddesigning them in the best
possible way we can.
So I love this question.
I hope you're all getting lotsof treats, not so many tricks,
as you celebrate Halloween.
As you approach your job incustomer experience, look for

(07:33):
those moments that you can makethe customer journey just a
little sweeter for yourcustomers and reap the rewards
of doing that well.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
Don't forget, we have lots ofresources for you at
ExperienceInvestigators.
com and I can't wait to hearyour next question.
Don't be scared.
Leave me a voicemail atSpeakPipe.

(07:54):
com/ Experience Action.
I'll talk to you next week.