August 5, 2025 • 31 mins
What's happening in CX today? In this episode, we'll explore the gap between CX ambition and execution. Camille Kremer, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Holiday Inn Club Vacations, joins Jeannie Walters for this CX Pulse Check to share how her team built a comprehensive CX program over five years—drawing on the powerful metaphor of bamboo growth: years of unseen root work before visible success emerges.
With only 17% of executives confident in their CX delivery, despite nearly half calling it a top priority, we unpack what it takes to bridge that divide. Camille walks us through how her team built trust, accountability, and alignment, warning that mismatched expectations are the “rotten tomato” that can spoil even the best CX plans.
We also explore how Verizon is using AI not to replace humans, but to enhance experiences—automating routine tasks while expanding human support.
Throughout, one theme stands out: lasting CX transformation depends on psychological safety. Innovation only happens when teams feel safe enough to try, fail, and learn.
About Camille Kremer:
Camille is the Senior Director of Customer Experience at Holiday Inn Club Vacations. She and her team lead the CX strategy, and drive enterprise-wide improvements based on customer feedback. With 20 years of experience leading large-scale operational and transformational change across multiple industries, she is passionate about turning analytics into meaningful action. Her background in sociology, informatics, quality assurance, and lean continuous improvement fuels her commitment to creating positive change for both businesses and customers.
When she visits her parents in Louisiana, Camille still loves tending to the bees in her father's apiary - a hobby they've done together for 30 years.
Follow Camille on...
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillekremer/
Articles Mentioned:
- Global execs say CX is crucial to success but most still struggle to optimize its performance (VISION by Protiviti) -- https://vision.protiviti.com/insight/global-execs-say-cx-crucial-success-most-still-struggle-optimize-its-performance
- Marketing Promised. CX Didn’t Deliver. Here’s the Cost. (CMSWire) -- https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/marketing-promised-cx-didnt-deliver-heres-the-cost/
- Verizon Announcing AI-Powered 'Customer Experience Transformation' (Newsweek) -- https://www.newsweek.com/verizon-announcing-ai-powered-customer-experience-transformation-2089472
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/)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeannie Walters (00:10):
It's the Experience Action Podcast and
it's your favorite episode ofthe month our CX Pulse Check,
where I discuss timely customerexperience episodes in the news
so that you can learn whatcustomers are expecting.
I'm thrilled to have a specialco-host with us, as always, and
that is Camille Kremer, who isfrom Holiday Inn Club Vacation,
(00:34):
the director of CX.
Senior Director of CX.
So, Camille, I would love foryou to introduce yourself to our
listeners and our viewers.
Camille Kremer (00:42):
Well, hi, Jeannie, thank you so much for
having me.
I'm absolutely delighted to behere and hello anyone who's
watching.
As you said, I'm the SeniorDirector of Customer Experience
at Holiday Inn Club Vacations.
It is a mouthful.
So if I say H-I-C-V goingforward, just know that that's
what it means.
As far as what our company is,we're like a Goldilocks-sized
company.
We're not too small, we're nottoo big.
(01:03):
We've got 30 resortsdomestically and a few over in
Mexico.
We're a timeshare company.
We also like to call thatvacation ownership, because
people have feelings abouttimeshare.
We are trying to change thosefeelings.
We've got about 7,000 employeesand about 365,000 customers.
(01:29):
As a company, we're customerobsessed, like not just as a
tagline, but it's literally ournumber one goal in our strategic
long-term plan.
It's also our number one metricand everybody has to aim for it
.
And I just want to kind ofshare this because I did say
we're in timeshare.
It's a really interestingindustry and the reason that
we're customer obsessed makes alot of sense when you think
about it.
When you purchase with us, it'sinto perpetuity, right.
(01:51):
So we don't have transactions.
We've got relationships thatlast a lifetime.
So we have to be obsessed withyou and making sure that you are
happy now, 10 years from now,40 years from now.
And then the second piece is andthen I'll stop waxing poetic
about the company is we're kindof like the Green Bay Packers.
Do you know how they're like?
Owned by the fans.
Jeannie Walters (02:13):
Yep, yep.
Camille Kremer (02:14):
So our owners literally own our units and own
time at our properties.
So they kind of own thecompany, kind of.
My CEO would kill me for sayingthat.
But we do philosophically thinkof them as like well, they're
the owners, they're the boss andwe're just working for them.
So when I say we're customerobsessed, it's built into the
model that is our company, it'sbuilt into our philosophy, it's
(02:35):
built into our strategy.
So I am stoked to be here andtalking about it with you.
Jeannie Walters (02:40):
That's so great .
Well we are thrilled thatyou're here with us and I think
(03:00):
that one of the reasons that wewanted to have this conversation
with you is because you havereally be part of leading that
journey of what does it take toget a customer experience
program that is focused oncustomers and business results
off the ground and maturing.
It's a long-haul process and sowe're gonna weave that in to a
couple of the discussions thatwe're going to have today,
because I just think your storyhas a lot of learnings for
everybody out there, and I talkto leaders every day who are
struggling, who are trying tofigure out okay, how do I do
this with a small team, how do Ido this when we are being
(03:22):
tasked with impossible KPIs?
Right, and I love that yourprogram really does focus on
this is the number one metricand this is what it means, and I
know you've had a lot to dowith that.
So how about we jump in?
You know it's a good thingthere's never news.
It's a good thing that you knownothing ever happens.
We can talk about the same old,same old.
(03:44):
Ironically, though, some of theconversations that we have are
kind of the same ones we've beenhaving for a while, even though
the data shifts a little bit,and this is, I think, an example
of that, and for those of youlistening, this is from Vision
by Protivity, and the headlineis Global Execs Say CX Is
Crucial To Success, But MostStill Struggle To Optimize Its
(04:06):
Performance, and this is reallyan executive summary of an
executive survey that they did,and the things that really stood
out to me about this were thatthere's still this huge gap
between executives who say, yes,this is so important, and then,
when they were asked about, youknow, are you good at
(04:27):
operationalizing it, essentially.
They're like, well, maybe not.
So I'm curious on your take onthis and I'm also curious did
you see any reflection of yourjourney in this?
Camille Kremer (04:41):
Actually, okay, let's just give some kudos first
to executives, having like thereflection moment and saying
this is important and we're notdelivering on it.
So I just like kudos and like,oh, that's really humility to be
able to acknowledge both ofthose things and that's
juxtaposed right, like it's veryimportant and we're not nailing
(05:02):
it.
Jeannie Walters (05:02):
And I think that's a really good point,
because one of the things thatwe talk about a lot when we work
with our leaders in all theindustries is this work takes a
tremendous amount of humility,and I think sometimes people
don't realize that until they'rein it.
And we have to make it a safeplace so that when people say
like, wow, I'm realizing thisisn't working, they're not
(05:25):
punished for that.
So I love that you use the wordhumility, because that's one
that we lean into as well, sosorry carry on.
Camille Kremer (05:32):
No, no, I'm now we're going off track here.
But you said safe and I had awhole conversation yesterday
with a couple of CX colleaguesabout.
There's a huge piece of CX thathas to be built on creating
psychological safety.
Jeannie Walters (05:44):
Yes
Camille Kremer (05:46):
It's got to be okay to be curious.
It's got to be okay to trythings.
It's also got to be okay tofail at things, as long as you
fail forward fast and learn fromit.
The only way to innovate is totry, and if you're not creating
a space where it's okay to pointout that something's wrong,
it's okay to try something, it'sokay to keep trying.
You won't make any progress andso beyond anything else I say
what makes it work (06:10):
I think having the people in place and a
culture within your companythat can support that.
That's the fertile soil.
More than anything else iscreating that environment.
Jeannie Walters (06:25):
I totally agree with you, and if you look at
the stats from this survey, theactual gap was 47% of execs say
CX is critical.
So that's not even half.
Let's be honest about that too.
But at least some of them it'sclose to half are saying, yes,
this is critical.
We understand it.
But when they were asked ifthey thought they were doing it
(06:47):
well, only 17% said they were.
And this is the gap we see overand over right.
There are these big ideas aboutcustomer experience and this
big longing to do it well, but alot of organizations just
aren't putting the tools inplace, aren't putting even the
goals or the words in place toget things done.
(07:09):
So I love that we just talkedabout humility and safety.
What are some of the otherthings that you think could help
bridge this gap?
Camille Kremer (07:19):
I think you asked early, early, like what is
it?
What does it take?
You know what has it taken foryou to do this?
Like a lot of coffee.
Jeannie Walters (07:29):
We can all relate to that one.
Camille Kremer (07:32):
But CX isn't a silver bullet, it's a commitment
, right, and so you can.
You can say the words, but ifyou're not going to make the
commitment and put the resourcesand the time and the effort and
the belief behind it, thenagain you're not going to get
anywhere, right?
So there needs to be kind of apersistence and a faith that it
could happen, and that needs tocome from the leader level that
(07:55):
we've got the, gratefully, ourCEO is bought all the way in,
and so when he started ourdepartment five years ago when I
started as well, we knew thiswas going to be a slog.
And the five year journey Ithink I told you the story of
bamboo.
I'll share it if you'd like meto.
Yeah, five years is how long ittook us, and I would bet that's
(08:17):
around a fair time frame for alot of companies to start to see
things.
So the analogy that we talkedabout last time we spoke was I
think it's an analogy, stillhaven't cleared that up.
I might be using the wrong word.
Sorry about that, but let'sjust go with it.
So, analogy, the analogy ofbamboo is you can water bamboo.
You can plant bamboo and waterit for five years and really not
(08:39):
see anything of it, and then inthe fifth year, within a couple
of weeks, it'll shoot 80 or 90feet high.
And so that analogy just speaksto again the persistence, the
commitment, the knowing thatyou're feeding the soil the
right things, and what you can'tsee is that there's all the
infrastructure that's actuallykind of happening underneath.
The root system is there, it'sbecoming fortified so that it
(09:03):
can take off on that kind ofhockey stick trajectory.
And that's exactly whathappened for us.
The first year was buildinginfrastructure and identifying
key points.
What are the key points in ourcustomer journey?
We found let's call it six bigones.
Then we found the stakeholdersfor those.
(09:26):
We found out what are theirpain points, what do they think
matters?
We went out and talked toindustry experts and said what
questions would we ask on asurvey?
And then we built and deployed.
This is a little ambitious.
I wouldn't actually say thatanybody should do this, but we
deployed eight programmaticsurveys in the year, three
separate call centers, each withlike 30 questions each.
(09:46):
Our post stay when you checkout from a resort is like 150
questions long.
We still have a 34% responserate.
It's incredible.
After our sales experience.
And then three separate digitalproperties.
So that first year was justlike build, build it and they
will come.
Jeannie Walters (10:09):
Wow.
Camille Kremer (10:09):
So you get past year one.
There's not a whole lot to showfor it, except that now we've
got a lot of VoC.
There's a lot of noise, kind ofout in the world.
So what do you do with it?
So the second year is gettinginto the relationship building.
So now you've got thosestakeholders who identified in
year one building therelationships.
Nobody really likes when youcome into their space and say
you're doing it wrong.
So you need to build thatrelationship so that the
(10:31):
communication isn't seen as anattack, it's seen as
collaboration.
Right, so do that and thenleverage the data to start
getting to your insights.
Get something.
Get something meaningful thatpeople can see.
Again, not a place where you'reseeing a lot of growth.
You're just, you know, kind ofdoing the background stuff.
(10:51):
Year three is where we startedto get into accountability,
where the executives that wewere, those major stakeholders
we were working with, we wouldmeet with them or we do.
This is all stuff you have tokeep doing.
What you did in year one, yougot to do in year two.
What you do in year two, youhave to do in year three.
Year four, you're doing whatyou did all those other years.
So by that time we decided okay,now there needs to be
(11:13):
accountability.
So the executives from thevarious functions we meet with
them monthly, we say how they'reperforming, they say what
they've done, and then followingweek all of those executives
have to go and sit in front ofthe CEO and he says what have
you done for CX lately?
Jeannie Walters (11:31):
And this is why executive buy-in is so
important and critical and whyit's often the piece that's
missing for the successful CXprograms, cause we can't just
talk to each other.
Camille Kremer (11:45):
I think there's a, there's probably some white
paper somewhere that says thatyou can do a groundswell up.
But it is tremendously easierif you can bring it.
If the executives understandthe right thing, the numbers
will follow.
Like, even if I can't prove thefinancial linkage today, I'll
be able to at some point, like,have the faith in the
(12:06):
spreadsheets, have the faith inthe graphs.
It will all come together.
Jeannie Walters (12:26):
Yeah, for sure and I think one of the things
that we see over and over againis that sometimes we start with
that process mindset where westart with well like if we just
send that surveys out everythinggoing to be okay.
And really we need to connectthat to what are the goals that
we're trying to achieve?
What is best for the customer?
What do we have the bandwidthfor?
Because if we're making a bunchof promises and surveys by
asking, would you want awaterfall in your room, you know
like, and we know that that'snever going to happen, then
that's wasting everybody's time.
So I think you describing thatjourney in that way is really
(12:49):
helpful to realize.
This is not like there, thereis no one step.
There's not even a one, two,three step.
It's like you have to keepfiguring it out as you go, and
that's why I really believe CXleaders the ones who do this
well, we have to be so strategicand often the role is not seen
as strategic, it's seen astactical, and I think we, as the
(13:14):
royal we of all of us customerexperience change agents
everywhere we need to startshowing up a little differently
and talking in this verystrategic way and helping our
leaders connect those dots.
And one of the things that cameup in this survey that we just
talked about was leaders see AIas a solution, but it's the data
(13:36):
integration that's the blocker,and that's another thing we see
everywhere.
So it's like sometimes we getout above our skis because we
think that you know if we justdo this, if we just add AI or if
we just send that survey, butwe have to think in this
holistic, integrated way.
So there's a lot to unpack withthis.
(13:57):
I would encourage everybody tocheck out the survey.
And the next thing I have hereit's kind of a similar theme.
I hate to say this, but we aretalking about CMSWire.
Let me bring that up here.
Our friends at CMSWire and ourgood friend Dom Nicastro is the
(14:18):
author of this.
Shout out to Dom.
He always does great work.
Marketing Promised.
CX Didn't Deliver.
Here's The Cost.
It's quite a headline.
And really this is about theannouncement from Forrester
about their total experiencescore and how they're looking at
things like branding and whatis the experience like for
(14:39):
prospects versus customers andhow do we strike that right
balance?
Honestly, there is a littlecontroversy already about this
and people are already kind ofthrowing stones saying I don't
know if this is what we shoulduse or not.
I think that's true foranything that you try to measure
like this, but one of thethings that I took away from
(14:59):
this and one of Dom's kind ofhighlights here was that
retention still beatsacquisition, meaning we have to
keep focusing.
Right.
Do you hear the angels singing?
We have to keep focusing oncustomer retention, even though
so much of business is builtaround acquisition, so much of
(15:20):
business is focused on salesfocused on new.
If we spent more time on reallytaking care of our customers
and retaining them, all thesegood things would happen, and
the total experience score kindof addresses that in the way
that it's using thesemeasurements.
So so your thoughts on this,what do you think?
Camille Kremer (15:40):
So for one, expectation setting is my
favorite CX topic.
Oh my gosh Like it is.
Jeannie Walters (15:47):
We are just.
We are just geeking out on allthe cool stuff right now.
Camille Kremer (15:52):
100% It's why I do this.
Come on, I love my job.
So there is no like secretsauce or magic spell to get CX
right, but there is definitelylike a rotten tomato you could
put in the soup to make it gobad, and that is mismatching
(16:12):
expectations and for me, I thinkabout it as kind of like a
quick equation.
So we said we were going togive you a thing.
You this is actually the mostimportant part of this whole
equation is you, as the customerdid something to invest in that
, like you booked at ourrestaurant, you booked your
flight, you came to our store,you bought our product, you
(16:35):
decided to come on vacation withus.
The customer's invested.
Then we do or don't deliver.
Let's say we don't deliver.
So now they have thisexpectation that they were
personally invested.
We've under-delivered.
They've now got this likecognitive dissonance right.
They're holding two differentthoughts simultaneously.
(16:55):
They had their expectationwasn't met.
People hate dissonance.
It's upsetting.
(17:24):
It's upsetting it.
It's frustrating.
Basically in the long run of itit breaks trust.
That's what it equals.
So on the equals side of thatplus those three things equals
you've not only dissatisfiedsomeone they're not going to be
loyal to you.
They don't trust you.
Right, you've broken trust, andnot only have you broken trust,
but you made them think theymake bad decisions.
So likely.
Jeannie Walters (17:29):
Oh, I love that .
Wait, say that again.
So you've made them think thatthey've made a bad decision.
Camille Kremer (17:35):
That's why I said that second one is so
important, because they didsomething to invest in the
expectation you set.
Jeannie Walters (17:40):
That's right.
Camille Kremer (17:41):
Right.
So now that's part of thatdissonance piece.
They're like but wait a minute,now can I trust myself in my
decisions.
You made me make a bad decision.
Nobody likes to feel like that.
So you've broken the trust.
You don't have loyalty.
You probably lost the mostcustomer and you've probably
earned yourself a detractor.
To be honest.
They're probably telling peopleabout not doing business with
you.
Jeannie Walters (18:01):
Absolutely.
Camille Kremer (18:01):
So mismanaged expectations.
A hundred percent to me, like Isaid, that's the secret sauce
of getting it wrong.
You can get it right, though,and this is where I like the
experience score in theForrester article, and when we
chatted previously, I told youI'm a Lean Six Sigma black belt,
and that's part of what we dois we do CX and we also do
(18:22):
continuous improvement, so ahuge piece that we push in our
company is system thinking, andexperience anywhere, anywhere in
the journey, will setexpectations everywhere.
Jeannie Walters (18:34):
That's right.
Camille Kremer (18:35):
Upper funnel.
I tell you you're getting ayacht and and then I deliver the
product and it's a canoe.
Jeannie Walters (18:45):
Or the Fyre Festival.
Remember that.
Camille Kremer (18:47):
Oh my goodness, gracious $5,000 to be in like a
wet tent eating a sandwich,
A cheese sandwich yeah,
Probably without mayonnaise or condiments, like,
come on, they paid so muchmoney.
But so I mean, I really do thinkthat you have to take the whole
system into.
It's like for us, uh, like,that's just a kind of cheeky,
(19:08):
funny example but most of ourresorts uh, let's say
domestically and in Mexico, mostof our resorts have golf
courses.
So a lot of our ownersanticipate that if they go to a
different resort there'll be agolf course.
Well, some of our resorts areurban.
We've got New York and NewOrleans, some of them are at the
(19:29):
beach, some of them are midcountry and we got another one
out in Las Vegas.
So actually, some of them havegolf courses and some of them
don't.
We when opening, the collectiveroyal we used earlier, when we
opened the New Orleans resort,which is two blocks off of the
(19:49):
French Quarter, we just kind ofassumed our customers would
understand that there was nosprawling golf course in the
middle of the city of NewOrleans that our resort was
situated on.
We were wrong.
People absolutely thought therewas going to be a golf course,
and so to fix it, we were like,oh, tiger team, this, and that's
(20:10):
what we do.
We'll pull a task force, we'llpull a tiger team and we're like
, okay, we have to get peoplefrom the call center who are
selling the packages.
What are your scripts?
Well, the agents who areactually doing the talking.
Who writes the scripts?
Who puts the content on thewebsite internal, external
website?
Who needs to update thetechnology for that?
Who is sending up thepre-arrival emails?
(20:30):
Obviously, the GM from theresort needs to be involved for
the actual messaging.
Any pre-arrival phone call.
That needs to happen.
All of that now needs to beperfectly aligned to set those
expectations, to let people knowyou won't have a golf course,
but you do have the FrenchQuarter.
Jeannie Walters (20:47):
That's right
Camille Kremer (20:47):
You know, you keep repeating that message
because the message is a greatone.
It's not that it's going to bea detractor.
It's just different from whatyou would have expected if we
didn't tell you.
Jeannie Walters (20:57):
And if you want to take a golf vacation, you
probably don't want to go to theFrench Quarter, so you would
make it, you would self-selectas a customer then, and that's
that's what's also so importantabout expectations.
And I think that when we we doa lot of journey mapping with
our clients, and one of thethings that comes up in every
single workshop I've ever donefor the last 20 years is about
(21:21):
proactive communication versuswaiting for the customer to tell
you.
And once you identify it, justlike you are talking about.
Sometimes we identify it in areaction because we didn't know
or we made an assumption.
But once you identify that, weneed to have a process in place
to actually create thatproactive communication to
customers so that we share theright expectations and
(21:43):
information.
And it's just, it's somethingthat's going to happen, and so
we need to have those processesaligned, which is why I also
love service blueprinting,because you look down to people,
process, technology, tools, howdo we deliver, and once we put
all that together, that's whenyou really get the traction on
(22:04):
this as both serving customersand delivering for our
organizations, which is whatit's all about, am I right?
Camille Kremer (22:13):
They play the light bill literally we don't
have a company if we don't havecustomers.
Jeannie Walters (22:18):
That is absolutely right, and I don't
know why we need so manyreminders, but we do.
But the this last headline here?
It's from Newsweek and theheadline is Verizon Announcing
AI Powered Customer ExperienceTransformation.
And I will be honest, when Iread this headline I did a
little eye roll, because we'veheard this before, right, and
(22:41):
we've heard these bigdeclarations before.
But when I started reading thearticle, a few things stood out
to me that maybe this is biggerthan I was giving it credit for.
And a couple things stood outto me.
One is yes, they're leaninginto AI, they're partnered with
Google, but one of the thingsthat they're doing is, instead
(23:01):
of just saying, look at all thestuff we're doing at scale or
look at the chatbots, they'realso investing in more in-person
support.
They're investing in thingslike speed to knowledge.
So the AI will take in all thetranscripts from all the calls
that they had in a day and by 11am the next day, it's the
(23:21):
summaries, the themes.
What they're hearing is infront of the executives.
This is what I think might bethe future of where we're going,
and I think that this what Iliked about this, too, is that
it was a little grounded, not inthese big, generic, large
language models, but they talkedabout small language models,
which we heard a lot about whenI was out at the Salesforce
(23:42):
conference last whenever thatwas September, I think and I
think that this is what we needto start thinking of is not just
these generic ways to use AI,not just big you know
announcements about AI, but whatwill it mean to our customers
and how can we tell them that?
So I actually saw this, as youknow, refreshing in a way,
(24:08):
because the headline I've seenbefore.
Frankly, like replace Verizonwith somebody else, and we've
seen that headline before.
And then you read the articleand it's like we got a bot.
We are so progressive and thisone I felt like there are a lot
of cool things.
I think this might be wherewe're going with the AI, so we
don't have to go in depth withthis one.
(24:28):
But I'm just curious what yousaw, especially from the seat
you're sitting at a moremid-sized company.
What do you think?
Camille Kremer (24:35):
So I took a lot of the same things away from the
article.
Like I love to see that we'regoing to leverage AI where it
makes sense.
Jeannie Walters (24:42):
Yeah.
Camille Kremer (24:42):
But we're not losing the human component.
They're building more localstores because they recognize
that that's a major part oftheir business.
Yeah, actually, expanding theservice hours they're offering,
right.
So let the AI take the you knowthe rope, easy stuff that we
don't need a human to answer thephone for, but that allows us
to actually let people, realpeople answer the phone for
(25:02):
these different shifts.
That could be, you know, moreacceptable to our customers.
I thought that was just abeautiful like hybrid blend that
it's not to your point, but wetypically hear we hear like yeah
, it's here and it's going tosave the day and everybody's
going to lose their job and it'slike yeah
not like a couple of thingsthere.
I think AI is a lot like data.
It's the rhyme of the ancientmariner like water, water
(25:24):
everywhere and not a drop todrink.
Right, I think it's a great.
I think it's a great resource,but until you desalinize the
water, you can't use it.
Until we figure out how toeffectively use the data that
you brought up earlier, or howdo we effectively use the AI,
we're just kind of drowning inthis epic resource.
Yeah, that, not necessarilyleveraging it the way that it's
(25:46):
nourishing and feeding to us.
And I think if companiesapproach it like the way Verizon
sounds like they are where it'snot We're rolling this out to
decommission humans.
They're rolling it out, yes, asI said, as a hybrid, as a
partner.
Yeah, right, we still need thehumans, even to train the AI.
It's a very, very informedfive-year-old.
(26:07):
It is not.
It doesn't have empathy, itdoesn't have compassion, it
doesn't have judgment.
It's never lived a day in itslife, you know.
So, when it deals with people,there will still need to be a
person who's training it.
I think the big thing is, as weroll AI out, is one
demystifying, be likeeverybody's going to lose their
(26:27):
job over it and instead teachpeople how to work with it as a
new colleague, but alsorecognize if you don't know how
to work with it, you will putyourself at a professional
disadvantage.
So there is an advantage tolearning about how to work with
this new colleague, but it's notthe doomsday or naysayer thing,
I think it's really somethingthat it's leveraged correctly,
(26:49):
sorry.
we're last thing.
Yeah, I know we're short ontime, probably.
I also think when we're sayingAI now everybody's talking
generative AI, Chatgpt, all ofthose.
We've been partnering with AIin most of our tools for a
decade or plus, right?
So like we use personally, weuse Medallia.
(27:11):
It reads I mean, we get 275,000surveys a year.
There's only three of us in thedepartment.
We can't read them all.
No I'm not that fast.
I also have, like the day job Ihave to do besides just reading
the surveys.
I have to drive the insightsand do the customer the
continuous improvement.
So it's reading the comments,it's creating the themes, it's
(27:34):
you, it's pointing out thesentiment or quantifying the
sentiment and then letting usknow how do we, with a scalpel
instead of a chainsaw, go in andreally refine the customer
experience?
And nobody was afraid of that.
So those types of tools I thinkare going to expand and make
our lives so much easier.
Writing summaries great.
(27:55):
Nobody likes doing an executivesummary.
Let it do that.
And then free people to be ableto do the work that only people
can do.
So I'm not afraid of it, I loveit.
Jeannie Walters (28:06):
I also think that you know you mentioned that
Verizon is building new storesand they're kind of they
mentioned how they want to bepart of the community.
That's a very big part of whatthey're doing.
And you think about the peoplein the stores, the people
answering the phones?
They need information so fastand in context, and that's
(28:32):
another area where AI couldreally support that so the
humans themselves are going tobe supported in ways that right
now they're held accountable forthings that sometimes are
impossible because they don'thave all the information.
And so the fact that now we canuse AI in these different ways,
I do think it's going toprovide a more robust customer
experience.
But we are at the start of thejourney here.
We still have a long way to go,and that's what I think is so
(28:55):
fascinating.
We're all in this together.
We're all kind of lookingaround, going, okay, what's
going to happen next and how canwe stay ahead of it and how can
we make sure?
I just had a whole conversationwith my 18 year old about that
movie 2001 with about HAL thecomputer, because I was like,
literally, this is what peopleare scared of, Like people are
scared of HAL, and we had awhole conversation about it, and
(29:18):
so I think that there's goingto be just so much evolution in
the next couple of months andyears and we're all I try to
take the approach that we'relucky to be a part of it, right,
like we are lucky to bewitnessing.
Camille Kremer (29:30):
On the ground floor.
Like this is transformative,right.
I think it's an AI revolution, Ithink it's a human
transformation,
Jeannie Walters (29:37):
yes,
Camille Kremer (29:38):
and I think being at the onset of it is a
really cool moment in historywhere, you know, as long as
we're willing to do our homeworkand you know I like doing
homework if we're willing to doour homework, then we can be
part of this and kind of ridethat wave.
Jeannie Walters (29:55):
And kudos to Verizon and others like it who
are really embracing it andstarting with their goals and
then using AI to support that.
So well done, all right, thiswas so much fun, I knew it would
be.
Camille Kremer (30:05):
Thank you, this was wonderful.
Thanks for having me.
Jeannie Walters (30:08):
Absolutely Thank you for being here, and if
people want to learn more aboutyou or reach out, what's the
best way for them to do that?
Camille Kremer (30:16):
For right now, that'd probably be through my
LinkedIn, which I will beupdating.
Jeannie Walters (30:23):
And we'll make sure that's in the show notes as
well.
But thank you so much for beinghere, Camille, and thank you
everybody here who has been apart of this program who has
sent in those questions atAskJeannie VIP, and just keep
those coming.
I love answering your questionsand hearing from you about the
challenges that you're facing asone of those amazing customer
(30:44):
experience change agents that wetalked about.
My thanks to Camille for beinghere, my thanks to you, and I
cannot wait to see you next timeon Experience Action Podcast.
Take care.
It's the Experience Action Podcast and
it's your favorite episode ofthe month our CX Pulse Check,
where I discuss timely customerexperience episodes in the news
so that you can learn whatcustomers are expecting.
I'm thrilled to have a specialco-host with us, as always, and
that is Camille Kremer, who isfrom Holiday Inn Club Vacation,
(00:34):
the director of CX.
Senior Director of CX.
So, Camille, I would love foryou to introduce yourself to our
listeners and our viewers.
Camille Kremer (00:42):
Well, hi, Jeannie, thank you so much for
having me.
I'm absolutely delighted to behere and hello anyone who's
watching.
As you said, I'm the SeniorDirector of Customer Experience
at Holiday Inn Club Vacations.
It is a mouthful.
So if I say H-I-C-V goingforward, just know that that's
what it means.
As far as what our company is,we're like a Goldilocks-sized
company.
We're not too small, we're nottoo big.
(01:03):
We've got 30 resortsdomestically and a few over in
Mexico.
We're a timeshare company.
We also like to call thatvacation ownership, because
people have feelings abouttimeshare.
We are trying to change thosefeelings.
We've got about 7,000 employeesand about 365,000 customers.
(01:29):
As a company, we're customerobsessed, like not just as a
tagline, but it's literally ournumber one goal in our strategic
long-term plan.
It's also our number one metricand everybody has to aim for it
.
And I just want to kind ofshare this because I did say
we're in timeshare.
It's a really interestingindustry and the reason that
we're customer obsessed makes alot of sense when you think
about it.
When you purchase with us, it'sinto perpetuity, right.
(01:51):
So we don't have transactions.
We've got relationships thatlast a lifetime.
So we have to be obsessed withyou and making sure that you are
happy now, 10 years from now,40 years from now.
And then the second piece is andthen I'll stop waxing poetic
about the company is we're kindof like the Green Bay Packers.
Do you know how they're like?
Owned by the fans.
Jeannie Walters (02:13):
Yep, yep.
Camille Kremer (02:14):
So our owners literally own our units and own
time at our properties.
So they kind of own thecompany, kind of.
My CEO would kill me for sayingthat.
But we do philosophically thinkof them as like well, they're
the owners, they're the boss andwe're just working for them.
So when I say we're customerobsessed, it's built into the
model that is our company, it'sbuilt into our philosophy, it's
(02:35):
built into our strategy.
So I am stoked to be here andtalking about it with you.
Jeannie Walters (02:40):
That's so great .
Well we are thrilled thatyou're here with us and I think
(03:00):
that one of the reasons that wewanted to have this conversation
with you is because you havereally be part of leading that
journey of what does it take toget a customer experience
program that is focused oncustomers and business results
off the ground and maturing.
It's a long-haul process and sowe're gonna weave that in to a
couple of the discussions thatwe're going to have today,
because I just think your storyhas a lot of learnings for
everybody out there, and I talkto leaders every day who are
struggling, who are trying tofigure out okay, how do I do
this with a small team, how do Ido this when we are being
(03:22):
tasked with impossible KPIs?
Right, and I love that yourprogram really does focus on
this is the number one metricand this is what it means, and I
know you've had a lot to dowith that.
So how about we jump in?
You know it's a good thingthere's never news.
It's a good thing that you knownothing ever happens.
We can talk about the same old,same old.
(03:44):
Ironically, though, some of theconversations that we have are
kind of the same ones we've beenhaving for a while, even though
the data shifts a little bit,and this is, I think, an example
of that, and for those of youlistening, this is from Vision
by Protivity, and the headlineis Global Execs Say CX Is
Crucial To Success, But MostStill Struggle To Optimize Its
(04:06):
Performance, and this is reallyan executive summary of an
executive survey that they did,and the things that really stood
out to me about this were thatthere's still this huge gap
between executives who say, yes,this is so important, and then,
when they were asked about, youknow, are you good at
(04:27):
operationalizing it, essentially.
They're like, well, maybe not.
So I'm curious on your take onthis and I'm also curious did
you see any reflection of yourjourney in this?
Camille Kremer (04:41):
Actually, okay, let's just give some kudos first
to executives, having like thereflection moment and saying
this is important and we're notdelivering on it.
So I just like kudos and like,oh, that's really humility to be
able to acknowledge both ofthose things and that's
juxtaposed right, like it's veryimportant and we're not nailing
(05:02):
it.
Jeannie Walters (05:02):
And I think that's a really good point,
because one of the things thatwe talk about a lot when we work
with our leaders in all theindustries is this work takes a
tremendous amount of humility,and I think sometimes people
don't realize that until they'rein it.
And we have to make it a safeplace so that when people say
like, wow, I'm realizing thisisn't working, they're not
(05:25):
punished for that.
So I love that you use the wordhumility, because that's one
that we lean into as well, sosorry carry on.
Camille Kremer (05:32):
No, no, I'm now we're going off track here.
But you said safe and I had awhole conversation yesterday
with a couple of CX colleaguesabout.
There's a huge piece of CX thathas to be built on creating
psychological safety.
Jeannie Walters (05:44):
Yes
Camille Kremer (05:46):
It's got to be okay to be curious.
It's got to be okay to trythings.
It's also got to be okay tofail at things, as long as you
fail forward fast and learn fromit.
The only way to innovate is totry, and if you're not creating
a space where it's okay to pointout that something's wrong,
it's okay to try something, it'sokay to keep trying.
You won't make any progress andso beyond anything else I say
what makes it work (06:10):
I think having the people in place and a
culture within your companythat can support that.
That's the fertile soil.
More than anything else iscreating that environment.
Jeannie Walters (06:25):
I totally agree with you, and if you look at
the stats from this survey, theactual gap was 47% of execs say
CX is critical.
So that's not even half.
Let's be honest about that too.
But at least some of them it'sclose to half are saying, yes,
this is critical.
We understand it.
But when they were asked ifthey thought they were doing it
(06:47):
well, only 17% said they were.
And this is the gap we see overand over right.
There are these big ideas aboutcustomer experience and this
big longing to do it well, but alot of organizations just
aren't putting the tools inplace, aren't putting even the
goals or the words in place toget things done.
(07:09):
So I love that we just talkedabout humility and safety.
What are some of the otherthings that you think could help
bridge this gap?
Camille Kremer (07:19):
I think you asked early, early, like what is
it?
What does it take?
You know what has it taken foryou to do this?
Like a lot of coffee.
Jeannie Walters (07:29):
We can all relate to that one.
Camille Kremer (07:32):
But CX isn't a silver bullet, it's a commitment
, right, and so you can.
You can say the words, but ifyou're not going to make the
commitment and put the resourcesand the time and the effort and
the belief behind it, thenagain you're not going to get
anywhere, right?
So there needs to be kind of apersistence and a faith that it
could happen, and that needs tocome from the leader level that
(07:55):
we've got the, gratefully, ourCEO is bought all the way in,
and so when he started ourdepartment five years ago when I
started as well, we knew thiswas going to be a slog.
And the five year journey Ithink I told you the story of
bamboo.
I'll share it if you'd like meto.
Yeah, five years is how long ittook us, and I would bet that's
(08:17):
around a fair time frame for alot of companies to start to see
things.
So the analogy that we talkedabout last time we spoke was I
think it's an analogy, stillhaven't cleared that up.
I might be using the wrong word.
Sorry about that, but let'sjust go with it.
So, analogy, the analogy ofbamboo is you can water bamboo.
You can plant bamboo and waterit for five years and really not
(08:39):
see anything of it, and then inthe fifth year, within a couple
of weeks, it'll shoot 80 or 90feet high.
And so that analogy just speaksto again the persistence, the
commitment, the knowing thatyou're feeding the soil the
right things, and what you can'tsee is that there's all the
infrastructure that's actuallykind of happening underneath.
The root system is there, it'sbecoming fortified so that it
(09:03):
can take off on that kind ofhockey stick trajectory.
And that's exactly whathappened for us.
The first year was buildinginfrastructure and identifying
key points.
What are the key points in ourcustomer journey?
We found let's call it six bigones.
Then we found the stakeholdersfor those.
(09:26):
We found out what are theirpain points, what do they think
matters?
We went out and talked toindustry experts and said what
questions would we ask on asurvey?
And then we built and deployed.
This is a little ambitious.
I wouldn't actually say thatanybody should do this, but we
deployed eight programmaticsurveys in the year, three
separate call centers, each withlike 30 questions each.
(09:46):
Our post stay when you checkout from a resort is like 150
questions long.
We still have a 34% responserate.
It's incredible.
After our sales experience.
And then three separate digitalproperties.
So that first year was justlike build, build it and they
will come.
Jeannie Walters (10:09):
Wow.
Camille Kremer (10:09):
So you get past year one.
There's not a whole lot to showfor it, except that now we've
got a lot of VoC.
There's a lot of noise, kind ofout in the world.
So what do you do with it?
So the second year is gettinginto the relationship building.
So now you've got thosestakeholders who identified in
year one building therelationships.
Nobody really likes when youcome into their space and say
you're doing it wrong.
So you need to build thatrelationship so that the
(10:31):
communication isn't seen as anattack, it's seen as
collaboration.
Right, so do that and thenleverage the data to start
getting to your insights.
Get something.
Get something meaningful thatpeople can see.
Again, not a place where you'reseeing a lot of growth.
You're just, you know, kind ofdoing the background stuff.
(10:51):
Year three is where we startedto get into accountability,
where the executives that wewere, those major stakeholders
we were working with, we wouldmeet with them or we do.
This is all stuff you have tokeep doing.
What you did in year one, yougot to do in year two.
What you do in year two, youhave to do in year three.
Year four, you're doing whatyou did all those other years.
So by that time we decided okay,now there needs to be
(11:13):
accountability.
So the executives from thevarious functions we meet with
them monthly, we say how they'reperforming, they say what
they've done, and then followingweek all of those executives
have to go and sit in front ofthe CEO and he says what have
you done for CX lately?
Jeannie Walters (11:31):
And this is why executive buy-in is so
important and critical and whyit's often the piece that's
missing for the successful CXprograms, cause we can't just
talk to each other.
Camille Kremer (11:45):
I think there's a, there's probably some white
paper somewhere that says thatyou can do a groundswell up.
But it is tremendously easierif you can bring it.
If the executives understandthe right thing, the numbers
will follow.
Like, even if I can't prove thefinancial linkage today, I'll
be able to at some point, like,have the faith in the
(12:06):
spreadsheets, have the faith inthe graphs.
It will all come together.
Jeannie Walters (12:26):
Yeah, for sure and I think one of the things
that we see over and over againis that sometimes we start with
that process mindset where westart with well like if we just
send that surveys out everythinggoing to be okay.
And really we need to connectthat to what are the goals that
we're trying to achieve?
What is best for the customer?
What do we have the bandwidthfor?
Because if we're making a bunchof promises and surveys by
asking, would you want awaterfall in your room, you know
like, and we know that that'snever going to happen, then
that's wasting everybody's time.
So I think you describing thatjourney in that way is really
(12:49):
helpful to realize.
This is not like there, thereis no one step.
There's not even a one, two,three step.
It's like you have to keepfiguring it out as you go, and
that's why I really believe CXleaders the ones who do this
well, we have to be so strategicand often the role is not seen
as strategic, it's seen astactical, and I think we, as the
(13:14):
royal we of all of us customerexperience change agents
everywhere we need to startshowing up a little differently
and talking in this verystrategic way and helping our
leaders connect those dots.
And one of the things that cameup in this survey that we just
talked about was leaders see AIas a solution, but it's the data
(13:36):
integration that's the blocker,and that's another thing we see
everywhere.
So it's like sometimes we getout above our skis because we
think that you know if we justdo this, if we just add AI or if
we just send that survey, butwe have to think in this
holistic, integrated way.
So there's a lot to unpack withthis.
(13:57):
I would encourage everybody tocheck out the survey.
And the next thing I have hereit's kind of a similar theme.
I hate to say this, but we aretalking about CMSWire.
Let me bring that up here.
Our friends at CMSWire and ourgood friend Dom Nicastro is the
(14:18):
author of this.
Shout out to Dom.
He always does great work.
Marketing Promised.
CX Didn't Deliver.
Here's The Cost.
It's quite a headline.
And really this is about theannouncement from Forrester
about their total experiencescore and how they're looking at
things like branding and whatis the experience like for
(14:39):
prospects versus customers andhow do we strike that right
balance?
Honestly, there is a littlecontroversy already about this
and people are already kind ofthrowing stones saying I don't
know if this is what we shoulduse or not.
I think that's true foranything that you try to measure
like this, but one of thethings that I took away from
(14:59):
this and one of Dom's kind ofhighlights here was that
retention still beatsacquisition, meaning we have to
keep focusing.
Right.
Do you hear the angels singing?
We have to keep focusing oncustomer retention, even though
so much of business is builtaround acquisition, so much of
(15:20):
business is focused on salesfocused on new.
If we spent more time on reallytaking care of our customers
and retaining them, all thesegood things would happen, and
the total experience score kindof addresses that in the way
that it's using thesemeasurements.
So so your thoughts on this,what do you think?
Camille Kremer (15:40):
So for one, expectation setting is my
favorite CX topic.
Oh my gosh Like it is.
Jeannie Walters (15:47):
We are just.
We are just geeking out on allthe cool stuff right now.
Camille Kremer (15:52):
100% It's why I do this.
Come on, I love my job.
So there is no like secretsauce or magic spell to get CX
right, but there is definitelylike a rotten tomato you could
put in the soup to make it gobad, and that is mismatching
(16:12):
expectations and for me, I thinkabout it as kind of like a
quick equation.
So we said we were going togive you a thing.
You this is actually the mostimportant part of this whole
equation is you, as the customerdid something to invest in that
, like you booked at ourrestaurant, you booked your
flight, you came to our store,you bought our product, you
(16:35):
decided to come on vacation withus.
The customer's invested.
Then we do or don't deliver.
Let's say we don't deliver.
So now they have thisexpectation that they were
personally invested.
We've under-delivered.
They've now got this likecognitive dissonance right.
They're holding two differentthoughts simultaneously.
(16:55):
They had their expectationwasn't met.
People hate dissonance.
It's upsetting.
(17:24):
It's upsetting it.
It's frustrating.
Basically in the long run of itit breaks trust.
That's what it equals.
So on the equals side of thatplus those three things equals
you've not only dissatisfiedsomeone they're not going to be
loyal to you.
They don't trust you.
Right, you've broken trust, andnot only have you broken trust,
but you made them think theymake bad decisions.
So likely.
Jeannie Walters (17:29):
Oh, I love that .
Wait, say that again.
So you've made them think thatthey've made a bad decision.
Camille Kremer (17:35):
That's why I said that second one is so
important, because they didsomething to invest in the
expectation you set.
Jeannie Walters (17:40):
That's right.
Camille Kremer (17:41):
Right.
So now that's part of thatdissonance piece.
They're like but wait a minute,now can I trust myself in my
decisions.
You made me make a bad decision.
Nobody likes to feel like that.
So you've broken the trust.
You don't have loyalty.
You probably lost the mostcustomer and you've probably
earned yourself a detractor.
To be honest.
They're probably telling peopleabout not doing business with
you.
Jeannie Walters (18:01):
Absolutely.
Camille Kremer (18:01):
So mismanaged expectations.
A hundred percent to me, like Isaid, that's the secret sauce
of getting it wrong.
You can get it right, though,and this is where I like the
experience score in theForrester article, and when we
chatted previously, I told youI'm a Lean Six Sigma black belt,
and that's part of what we dois we do CX and we also do
(18:22):
continuous improvement, so ahuge piece that we push in our
company is system thinking, andexperience anywhere, anywhere in
the journey, will setexpectations everywhere.
Jeannie Walters (18:34):
That's right.
Camille Kremer (18:35):
Upper funnel.
I tell you you're getting ayacht and and then I deliver the
product and it's a canoe.
Jeannie Walters (18:45):
Or the Fyre Festival.
Remember that.
Camille Kremer (18:47):
Oh my goodness, gracious $5,000 to be in like a
wet tent eating a sandwich,
A cheese sandwich yeah,
Probably without mayonnaise or condiments, like,
come on, they paid so muchmoney.
But so I mean, I really do thinkthat you have to take the whole
system into.
It's like for us, uh, like,that's just a kind of cheeky,
(19:08):
funny example but most of ourresorts uh, let's say
domestically and in Mexico, mostof our resorts have golf
courses.
So a lot of our ownersanticipate that if they go to a
different resort there'll be agolf course.
Well, some of our resorts areurban.
We've got New York and NewOrleans, some of them are at the
(19:29):
beach, some of them are midcountry and we got another one
out in Las Vegas.
So actually, some of them havegolf courses and some of them
don't.
We when opening, the collectiveroyal we used earlier, when we
opened the New Orleans resort,which is two blocks off of the
(19:49):
French Quarter, we just kind ofassumed our customers would
understand that there was nosprawling golf course in the
middle of the city of NewOrleans that our resort was
situated on.
We were wrong.
People absolutely thought therewas going to be a golf course,
and so to fix it, we were like,oh, tiger team, this, and that's
(20:10):
what we do.
We'll pull a task force, we'llpull a tiger team and we're like
, okay, we have to get peoplefrom the call center who are
selling the packages.
What are your scripts?
Well, the agents who areactually doing the talking.
Who writes the scripts?
Who puts the content on thewebsite internal, external
website?
Who needs to update thetechnology for that?
Who is sending up thepre-arrival emails?
(20:30):
Obviously, the GM from theresort needs to be involved for
the actual messaging.
Any pre-arrival phone call.
That needs to happen.
All of that now needs to beperfectly aligned to set those
expectations, to let people knowyou won't have a golf course,
but you do have the FrenchQuarter.
Jeannie Walters (20:47):
That's right
Camille Kremer (20:47):
You know, you keep repeating that message
because the message is a greatone.
It's not that it's going to bea detractor.
It's just different from whatyou would have expected if we
didn't tell you.
Jeannie Walters (20:57):
And if you want to take a golf vacation, you
probably don't want to go to theFrench Quarter, so you would
make it, you would self-selectas a customer then, and that's
that's what's also so importantabout expectations.
And I think that when we we doa lot of journey mapping with
our clients, and one of thethings that comes up in every
single workshop I've ever donefor the last 20 years is about
(21:21):
proactive communication versuswaiting for the customer to tell
you.
And once you identify it, justlike you are talking about.
Sometimes we identify it in areaction because we didn't know
or we made an assumption.
But once you identify that, weneed to have a process in place
to actually create thatproactive communication to
customers so that we share theright expectations and
(21:43):
information.
And it's just, it's somethingthat's going to happen, and so
we need to have those processesaligned, which is why I also
love service blueprinting,because you look down to people,
process, technology, tools, howdo we deliver, and once we put
all that together, that's whenyou really get the traction on
(22:04):
this as both serving customersand delivering for our
organizations, which is whatit's all about, am I right?
Camille Kremer (22:13):
They play the light bill literally we don't
have a company if we don't havecustomers.
Jeannie Walters (22:18):
That is absolutely right, and I don't
know why we need so manyreminders, but we do.
But the this last headline here?
It's from Newsweek and theheadline is Verizon Announcing
AI Powered Customer ExperienceTransformation.
And I will be honest, when Iread this headline I did a
little eye roll, because we'veheard this before, right, and
(22:41):
we've heard these bigdeclarations before.
But when I started reading thearticle, a few things stood out
to me that maybe this is biggerthan I was giving it credit for.
And a couple things stood outto me.
One is yes, they're leaninginto AI, they're partnered with
Google, but one of the thingsthat they're doing is, instead
(23:01):
of just saying, look at all thestuff we're doing at scale or
look at the chatbots, they'realso investing in more in-person
support.
They're investing in thingslike speed to knowledge.
So the AI will take in all thetranscripts from all the calls
that they had in a day and by 11am the next day, it's the
(23:21):
summaries, the themes.
What they're hearing is infront of the executives.
This is what I think might bethe future of where we're going,
and I think that this what Iliked about this, too, is that
it was a little grounded, not inthese big, generic, large
language models, but they talkedabout small language models,
which we heard a lot about whenI was out at the Salesforce
(23:42):
conference last whenever thatwas September, I think and I
think that this is what we needto start thinking of is not just
these generic ways to use AI,not just big you know
announcements about AI, but whatwill it mean to our customers
and how can we tell them that?
So I actually saw this, as youknow, refreshing in a way,
(24:08):
because the headline I've seenbefore.
Frankly, like replace Verizonwith somebody else, and we've
seen that headline before.
And then you read the articleand it's like we got a bot.
We are so progressive and thisone I felt like there are a lot
of cool things.
I think this might be wherewe're going with the AI, so we
don't have to go in depth withthis one.
(24:28):
But I'm just curious what yousaw, especially from the seat
you're sitting at a moremid-sized company.
What do you think?
Camille Kremer (24:35):
So I took a lot of the same things away from the
article.
Like I love to see that we'regoing to leverage AI where it
makes sense.
Jeannie Walters (24:42):
Yeah.
Camille Kremer (24:42):
But we're not losing the human component.
They're building more localstores because they recognize
that that's a major part oftheir business.
Yeah, actually, expanding theservice hours they're offering,
right.
So let the AI take the you knowthe rope, easy stuff that we
don't need a human to answer thephone for, but that allows us
to actually let people, realpeople answer the phone for
(25:02):
these different shifts.
That could be, you know, moreacceptable to our customers.
I thought that was just abeautiful like hybrid blend that
it's not to your point, but wetypically hear we hear like yeah
, it's here and it's going tosave the day and everybody's
going to lose their job and it'slike yeah
not like a couple of thingsthere.
I think AI is a lot like data.
It's the rhyme of the ancientmariner like water, water
(25:24):
everywhere and not a drop todrink.
Right, I think it's a great.
I think it's a great resource,but until you desalinize the
water, you can't use it.
Until we figure out how toeffectively use the data that
you brought up earlier, or howdo we effectively use the AI,
we're just kind of drowning inthis epic resource.
Yeah, that, not necessarilyleveraging it the way that it's
(25:46):
nourishing and feeding to us.
And I think if companiesapproach it like the way Verizon
sounds like they are where it'snot We're rolling this out to
decommission humans.
They're rolling it out, yes, asI said, as a hybrid, as a
partner.
Yeah, right, we still need thehumans, even to train the AI.
It's a very, very informedfive-year-old.
(26:07):
It is not.
It doesn't have empathy, itdoesn't have compassion, it
doesn't have judgment.
It's never lived a day in itslife, you know.
So, when it deals with people,there will still need to be a
person who's training it.
I think the big thing is, as weroll AI out, is one
demystifying, be likeeverybody's going to lose their
(26:27):
job over it and instead teachpeople how to work with it as a
new colleague, but alsorecognize if you don't know how
to work with it, you will putyourself at a professional
disadvantage.
So there is an advantage tolearning about how to work with
this new colleague, but it's notthe doomsday or naysayer thing,
I think it's really somethingthat it's leveraged correctly,
(26:49):
sorry.
we're last thing.
Yeah, I know we're short ontime, probably.
I also think when we're sayingAI now everybody's talking
generative AI, Chatgpt, all ofthose.
We've been partnering with AIin most of our tools for a
decade or plus, right?
So like we use personally, weuse Medallia.
(27:11):
It reads I mean, we get 275,000surveys a year.
There's only three of us in thedepartment.
We can't read them all.
No I'm not that fast.
I also have, like the day job Ihave to do besides just reading
the surveys.
I have to drive the insightsand do the customer the
continuous improvement.
So it's reading the comments,it's creating the themes, it's
(27:34):
you, it's pointing out thesentiment or quantifying the
sentiment and then letting usknow how do we, with a scalpel
instead of a chainsaw, go in andreally refine the customer
experience?
And nobody was afraid of that.
So those types of tools I thinkare going to expand and make
our lives so much easier.
Writing summaries great.
(27:55):
Nobody likes doing an executivesummary.
Let it do that.
And then free people to be ableto do the work that only people
can do.
So I'm not afraid of it, I loveit.
Jeannie Walters (28:06):
I also think that you know you mentioned that
Verizon is building new storesand they're kind of they
mentioned how they want to bepart of the community.
That's a very big part of whatthey're doing.
And you think about the peoplein the stores, the people
answering the phones?
They need information so fastand in context, and that's
(28:32):
another area where AI couldreally support that so the
humans themselves are going tobe supported in ways that right
now they're held accountable forthings that sometimes are
impossible because they don'thave all the information.
And so the fact that now we canuse AI in these different ways,
I do think it's going toprovide a more robust customer
experience.
But we are at the start of thejourney here.
We still have a long way to go,and that's what I think is so
(28:55):
fascinating.
We're all in this together.
We're all kind of lookingaround, going, okay, what's
going to happen next and how canwe stay ahead of it and how can
we make sure?
I just had a whole conversationwith my 18 year old about that
movie 2001 with about HAL thecomputer, because I was like,
literally, this is what peopleare scared of, Like people are
scared of HAL, and we had awhole conversation about it, and
(29:18):
so I think that there's goingto be just so much evolution in
the next couple of months andyears and we're all I try to
take the approach that we'relucky to be a part of it, right,
like we are lucky to bewitnessing.
Camille Kremer (29:30):
On the ground floor.
Like this is transformative,right.
I think it's an AI revolution, Ithink it's a human
transformation,
Jeannie Walters (29:37):
yes,
Camille Kremer (29:38):
and I think being at the onset of it is a
really cool moment in historywhere, you know, as long as
we're willing to do our homeworkand you know I like doing
homework if we're willing to doour homework, then we can be
part of this and kind of ridethat wave.
Jeannie Walters (29:55):
And kudos to Verizon and others like it who
are really embracing it andstarting with their goals and
then using AI to support that.
So well done, all right, thiswas so much fun, I knew it would
be.
Camille Kremer (30:05):
Thank you, this was wonderful.
Thanks for having me.
Jeannie Walters (30:08):
Absolutely Thank you for being here, and if
people want to learn more aboutyou or reach out, what's the
best way for them to do that?
Camille Kremer (30:16):
For right now, that'd probably be through my
LinkedIn, which I will beupdating.
Jeannie Walters (30:23):
And we'll make sure that's in the show notes as
well.
But thank you so much for beinghere, Camille, and thank you
everybody here who has been apart of this program who has
sent in those questions atAskJeannie VIP, and just keep
those coming.
I love answering your questionsand hearing from you about the
challenges that you're facing asone of those amazing customer
(30:44):
experience change agents that wetalked about.
My thanks to Camille for beinghere, my thanks to you, and I
cannot wait to see you next timeon Experience Action Podcast.
Take care.
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