Episode Transcript
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MC (00:00):
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience and the experience ofleaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, jeanne 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.
Jeannie Walters (00:31):
Hey there, CX
Change agent.
It's Jeannie Walters and I havea question for you.
Do you feel like you maybedon't have enough priorities?
I bet the answer is no.
Listener Question (00:44):
Hi Jeannie.
CX feels overwhelming.
We are a small team and thereare so many things that we
should be doing.
It seems like what we are doinggets derailed by competing
priorities pretty often.
Do you have any recommendations?
Jeannie Walters (00:59):
See, you're not
the only one.
We all struggle with priorities.
That's because in customerexperience, everything can feel
like a priority, especially ifwe hear from our executives.
Sometimes complaints go up andup and up and they're escalated
to the point where suddenly theCEO is calling us saying how
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could this happen?
And we have to explain that.
Well, yeah, maybe somethinghappened and there was a big
complaint about it.
It wasn't on our priority listbecause we have so many other
priorities.
So how do we keep from gettingpulled in 8 million directions
every single week and not makingreal, true progress on what
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matters most to both ourorganizations and the business?
Well, today I want to talk toyou about priorities.
It's such an important topic incustomer experience because
when we talk about priorities,what we're really talking about
is impact.
How can we make sure that inthe 24 hours in the day that we
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get, just like everybody else,we are efficiently and
effectively defining our day,putting in the effort to get the
biggest impact for ourorganization and the customers
we serve?
Let's talk about that.
First of all to the listenerwho asked this question.
Thank you for asking thisquestion.
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This is such a big challengeand I see it in all of the
organizations that we work with,small business, mid-size, large
enterprise organizations,nonprofits, education,
healthcare.
It's everywhere and that'susually because we haven't taken
the time to really step backand define what is the impact
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that we can have on theorganization.
Now, if you were a sales leader, somebody might come to you and
say you won't believe whathappened to this person.
They tried to get through thewebsite and they couldn't get to
where they could buy theproduct, so they had to call and
it was a big mess and salesshould fix this.
Now the sales leader who isbeing asked for this might take
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a step back and look into whathappened, but it doesn't derail
every other thing happening insales.
So why does this happen incustomer experience?
It's because we haven't yetdefined what is the impact we're
trying to have.
This is where you have to goback to your organizational
outcomes.
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What will do the most good forour organization?
Now, if we are working in a B2Borganization and we're having a
big problem renewing thosecontracts and we figured out in
our work as customer experienceagents, as customer experience
leaders and champions we havefigured out thanks to customer
experience investigation,sprinkling in a little of that
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CXI.
We figured out that the reasonthat many organizations are not
renewing those contracts isbecause we have a problem.
We have a problem withoverestimating the timeline, and
so we are setting expectationsduring the actual experience of
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being a customer that we can'tlive up to.
Maybe there are inventoryissues, maybe there are staffing
issues, maybe there issomething else going on.
But when we say we will deliverthis for you on Tuesday and we
can't deliver that for 30 daysafter Tuesday, then we start
eroding the trust that was builtwith customers.
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This leads to fewer renewedcontracts.
This means that every day we'relate, they could be shopping
around trying to figure out whocan get the contract next.
So if we were to invest inmaking sure that part of the
journey really got figured out,so that we understood how to
create a more seamlessexperience for the customer, so
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we could make sure that we'reliving up to those promises and
expectations and building thattrust consistently, then our
renewals would go up.
So maybe that's where oureffort has to be, because we've
defined that on behalf of theorganization.
So when we hear something thatsounds like an emergency,
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sometimes it can be very easy todrop the big, important ideas
in replacement of the urgent.
Now are there urgent issuesthat pop up, absolutely, but
what I want you to do is thinkabout what will have the biggest
impact.
How can we prioritize aroundthat?
And in order to know that, wehave to define that from the
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beginning.
That's why we use somethingcalled a customer experience
strategy success statement.
This is where you outline yourorganizational goals, your
leadership goals.
Where can you have the biggestimpact?
What are the efforts thatyou're putting into the customer
experience, to understandingyour customers and reacting and
gathering insights that turninto action that will lead to
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real results for yourorganization?
So if you do not have a definedcustomer experience strategy,
if you don't know what successlooks like, it is very difficult
to say what is a priority.
If you've ever met with afinancial planner of any kind,
one of the first things they dois they ask you what are your
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goals?
Because assessing all the moneyis not the goal.
The money is to help youachieve your goals.
The same thing is true withcustomer experience.
We have to make sure that weare investing in the right
places to get the return on thatinvestment for the organization
.
That's how we win, that's howwe get ahead, that's how we stay
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ahead of our competitors andinnovate and create a workplace
that people want to work in andcreate an experience that
customers want to be a part of.
But all of that leads toresults.
So first, if you have notfigured this out, you have to
figure that out first.
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That will help everything elsewith prioritization, because you
want to prioritize based onimpact.
And there are times you have tosay, hey, executive, who sent me
this random complaint, I hearyou.
I acknowledge that thishappened.
I need to ask you should I dropthis big, important piece for
this maybe smaller, urgent piece?
Or is there a way that we canmaybe work around or appease
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this short term in a way and putit on our list of priorities
for later, because otherwise youwill get whipped around based
on priorities every single day.
So you want to have that cleardefinition of success.
You want to make sure that youhave the language and the
agreement and that leadershiphas bought in to what you've
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defined as that definition ofsuccess, and then you want to
make sure that you have clear,measurable goals around that
success.
So if you are talking aboutpriorities but you're saying
things like, well, we're goingto be friendlier and we're going
to be nicer and we're going tohave a higher net promoter score
, none of that moves thebusiness forward.
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None of that really reflectsreal business results.
And this is the challenge weface again and again.
We have to define successdifferently.
We have to speak like businesspeople.
We have to speak the languageof our leaders, and this means
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that our priorities have toalign with what they've agreed
is most important.
Now, every organization in theworld usually there are there
are a few exceptions, so I won'tsay every, but I'll say almost
every organization in the worldwants two things they want
higher revenue and they wantfewer expenses, because that
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equation is profitability.
Now, even if you're in anonprofit, even if you are in
education or a nonprofit, youknow, cultural arts organization
we still need revenue to go upand expenses to go down.
That's what people are lookingfor.
So, anything you do, startlooking at that.
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Will this have an impact onhelping us achieve more revenue?
Will this have an impact onhelping us decrease our expenses
, because sometimes that looksdifferently.
Sometimes it looks likeoperational efficiencies.
Well, if we can improve thisinside our organization, that
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means we don't have to addheadcount, we don't have to buy
this expensive technology, wewon't have expenses long term
because we're not duplicatingefforts anymore.
Sometimes that looks like youknow what, if we could help
those customers I mentioned whoare having problems with
delivery expectations, if wecould improve that, we could
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bring in more revenue throughthose renewed contracts.
So we have to look at theseequations and really articulate
them in a way that grabseverybody else and they
understand why it's good for theorganization.
So you want to define success,you want to have real measurable
goals, you want to havelanguage to talk to your leaders
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about these priorities and then, as you're going through this
process, you really want toleverage and lean into
automation and tools.
What can we do to basicallymake sure that we are
streamlining what we can?
Every moment of time that weare reporting on work or that we
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are explaining or communicatingabout work, we actually aren't
working.
So if there is a problem tosolve and you are spending way
too much time presenting slidesto various groups about why it's
a problem to solve and you arespending way too much time
presenting slides to variousgroups about why it's a problem
to solve, then ask yourself canyou automate some of those lower
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impact tasks?
Because this is about our selfpriorities as well.
So really make sure that youunderstand not only what your
organization needs you to do,but what you personally, as a
leader in your organization whatyou need to do because that is
a priority as well.
I have seen way too manycustomer experience leaders who
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sacrifice way too much, thinkingthat they're doing the right
thing by shifting from onepriority to the next and in six
months, in a year, in two years,their leaders don't understand
what they've done Becauseeverything's been short term,
everything's been ad hoc,nothing has had that big impact
that they need.
We need to get better at this.
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We need to understandpriorities.
I also would encourage you tolean into some sort of framework
.
Now we are, of course, we loveour CXI navigational framework
because we really see it asstarting with that intentional
success model, defining whatdoes success look like here at
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this organization and what arewe doing about it.
And so, if you are trying todefine and communicate why
priorities are the prioritiesthat you have, having a
framework like that can reallyreally help you because it gets
everybody on the same page, and,of course, we want customer
experience to be woven intoeverything.
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Of course we do, and so part ofyour priorities has to be
understanding how to get otherpeople on board, how to help
people understand that they arepart of this solution.
We like to say customerexperience is everyone's
business, but we have to becareful about saying it's
everyone's job.
We have to make sure that whenwe tell somebody it's their job,
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we give them the right toolsand information and outcomes
that we're seeking so that theyknow what to do and feel
empowered to do it.
So, yes, there are tons ofpriorities in this work that we
do.
If you are not sure where tostart, if you have a list of
things in front of you right nowand you're like, oh my gosh,
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from the customer feedbacksurveys, from journey mapping,
from complaints, from what thelast shareholders meeting
mentioned, we have 120 thingsthat we're expected to do.
Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to make a verysimple matrix for yourself.
We use this all the time and onthe y-axis, the vertical axis,
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I want you to write impact, andon the horizontal or the x-axis,
I want you to write feasibility.
How feasible is it to get thisdone?
Because would we love to snapour fingers and say, let's do
hyper-personalization at scalefor every single customer?
Yay, of course we would.
But how feasible is that?
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That might be a big, huge datareorganization project.
That might be something thatyou just cannot access right now
, this minute.
So is it important and would ithave an impact?
Absolutely, is it feasible?
Maybe not right now.
So you want to look at thequadrants of that matrix and
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decide what is feasible and whatwill have the biggest impact
that can help you make realprogress, so that you can show
progress as you're working onthese larger, maybe less
feasible kind of more arduousthings that we do to have that
greater impact on the customerexperience.
At the end of the day, it allcomes back to your
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organizational priorities andyou, as a leader, you have to
define your leadershippriorities.
Those go hand in hand.
Sometimes that means saying tosomebody who sounds the alarm
you know what I hear this alarm.
I understand this alarm.
Let me go over our prioritiesand why, and maybe you can help
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me understand where this wouldfit in.
That's a great conversation toinvite somebody into.
This work is hard.
It's something that we have towork hard on every single day
and we do it because we believethat investing in the customer
experience, helping customersfeel more valued, have more
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meaningful experiences and getthrough their day a little
better that has a positiveimpact on results.
This has been proven a time andagain.
We need to live that byshowcasing why we're
prioritizing, the way we aretying that all back to how we
define success and at the end ofthe day, we're going to be able
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to look back and say we notonly delivered for our customers
, we delivered for ourorganization and if you can say
that you are doing the rightthings in the right priorities.
Thank you so much for thisquestion.
Don't forget we have lots ofresources for you at
experienceinvestigatorscom,including things like our CXI
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Compass, where you can assess alittle bit of how you're doing
on different priorities withinyour customer experience efforts
.
We love hearing from you, don'tforget.
You can leave me a voicemail ataskjeannievip.
You are also always welcome toreach out on LinkedIn or through
experienceinvestigatorscom.
I cannot wait to hear from youagain, and I so look forward to
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talking to you again then.
Thanks.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to experience
, check out free resources atexperienceinvestigatorscom,
where you can sign up for ournewsletter, our Year of CX
program and more, and pleasefollow me, Jeannie Walters, on
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LinkedIn.