Ep. 045 - Ian Golding - Connecting customer & employee experience
As employee experience continues to evolve from buzzword to creating impact inside of organizations. I was curious to explore the world of customer experience. How did they go from buzzword to a discipline, business function and career choice? What learnings can we leverage for the EX evolution? How can we make better use of connecting these two sides of the same coin to bring value to people and business?
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EP. 045 Transcription
[00:00:00] Steve: So Ian, welcome to the experience designers, my friend.
[00:00:04] Ian: It is an absolute pleasure to be here, Steve. I've been looking forward to having this chat with you.
[00:00:09] Steve: Yeah. Cause we're going to be talking from, two sides of the same coin today. And exploring the topic of CX customer experience and EX employee experience. So I'm, I come with a huge amount of curiosity and an intention around really capturing. What we can learn from CX, I think, cause EX is in a very different place and also perhaps even the other way.
But first and foremost, Ian who are you? Where are you? Okay.
[00:00:36] Ian: Ian Golding, Global Customer Experience Specialist, as I like to call myself. People who know me know I'm not an advocate of the word expert, because I don't know everything. And my role. a mission really is to never stop learning. And that's what a specialist does based in Chester in the Northwest of England.
For those that aren't from the UK listening and watching to this in between Manchester and Liverpool. I have been involved in this field for over 28 years. Unlike you, Steve, I haven't gone gray, which is a mystery. No one quite knows how that hasn't happened. But I spent 17 years in the corporate world and coming up to 12 years now as an independent.
And during my independent career, I've now worked in 59 countries around the world in every industry you can imagine. So I do have a very good, interesting, potentially unusual insight into the way Customer experience and increasingly employee experience is evolving around the
[00:01:48] Steve: Yeah, it has been evolving. Don't get me wrong. So can I ask you a very quick question? I, there's a question I came into this podcast is. Why, and what are some of the drivers and reasons, and perhaps even intrinsically in terms of yourself as a human and with your values and who you are what, why have you chosen a large majority of your life on this topic and industry?
Because you have niched and focused
[00:02:15] Ian: it's a good question. It was never intentional but I would guess you probably work with many people in your career who ended up where they did without it necessarily being intentional. I actually started my career in continuous improvement. So I'm a six Sigma master black belt amongst other things.
But really, I think from a very early stage of my career. I was continuously conflicted by the organizations I was working in asking me to do things that would impact my clients or customers that I didn't think was the right thing to do. So I was working in a financial services organization and the focus was increase the fees.
We need more fees, more fee. And it just didn't sit well with me at all. I hated it because well, what I'm just going to charge them a fee for the sake of it. So I think some people often say to me, are you born. With a customer centric mindset, or can you create a customer centric mindset? I think I've always been naturally someone who exists to do the right thing for the people that I interact with.
I just want to do what I think is right. If within the spirit of transparency, it's why when people. Tell me I've done the wrong thing. I take it incredibly personally, and I find it really hard because I've always wanted to do the right thing. But again, in the spirit of transparency, corporate organizations don't want you to do the right thing.
Most of the time, I'm sure there are exceptions to that, but I had 17 very frustrating years on the inside of corporate organizations. Often thinking that I was going completely mad, often being patronized, belittled, made to feel like I was wrong and stupid. But it took me becoming independent to realize that I was never wrong or stupid.
That being said, I probably was wrong and stupid. But I think my mission, my, whether it was intentional or unintentional, I was always doing the right thing for the right reason. And, I think it took me leaving the corporate world to realize that was the right thing for me to do, however hard it might have felt at the time, and I'm now in this wonderful position of being able to do that for lots of organizations, lots of professionals around the world.
And I don't really have a job. I have a vocation, and I think. I would love more people to feel that way about work and not enough people do because it is so hard to be able to do something that isn't just from the head, but it's also from the heart.
[00:05:11] Steve: Yeah. Quick question. If I asked your family, are you constantly looking at the experience of pretty much everything as you go on your day to day life with your family?
[00:05:23] Ian: family hate me, but that probably sounds a bit strong. That my, my children, I call them children, but they're 20, 18 and 15. So they're adults, young adults now. They are always on their guard when we go to a hotel or a restaurant because they know that if something goes wrong, they're all looking at me thinking, Oh, God, he's going to say something.
He's going to do something. What will make you laugh is that my son in his phone has me registered in his phone as. Ian Goulding, Global Customer Experience Specialist, author of Customer What? That's what it comes up as. So no, that they are constantly concerned that I'm going to say something.
What I try to impress upon them is that if I am going to say something, it's because I need the organization that I'm talking to to learn from what's happened. But they hate it. And I think every family probably hates it when that happens. In fact, I hated it when my dad said stuff. So I do get it.
[00:06:31] Steve: Yeah, I think it's like a, I think it's a lens. I always like to describe experiences as a bit of a lens that you can apply to any context or situation. We tend to think in process, so we tend to think in like technology as an example, whatever, like quite a narrow lens, or we tend to always think like people process technology as a typical, but also what does that look like if you lift up the lens of an experience and therefore, what do you look, what are you seeing differently,
[00:06:57] Ian: and if this is your life, because this is what I do. It, you, it never switches off. I was, we were watching a TV program last night, for example, and it was one of these 9, 9, 9 programs, a reality thing in a hospital. And this poor person had fallen 15 feet off a ladder, I think, and he's lying on his back in agony.
And the doctor, That was dealing with him said, I'm the, my name is so and so I'm the trauma team leader of this, that and the other. All the guy on the bed who is in agony wants to know that you're a doctor and I'm here to help you, it's and so you're constantly thinking that we are having experiences all the time.
Why do organizations make these things so complicated? Just so it never switches off. So if you ever do go out with me, Steve, you will experience that for you.
[00:07:55] Steve: No yeah you'll be sharing a meal with someone who also I, yeah, I'm the same and I think I'm a bit obsessed about it to be honest, a little bit too upset, too obsessed at times. So I just want, okay, let's let's show our age, not through our respective lack of gray hair versus gray hair.
So we first, I think we figured out we first connected, I think 11 years ago when you,
[00:08:15] Ian: Yes.
[00:08:16] Steve: departed. Your last corporate job and that's so 11 years and what I'd love to do, I'd love to use that this 11 years as a bit of a timeline that we can explore together. An overlay CX. Cause I'd love to get just get your view on how has CX evolved?
Like what some of the main or you would say like you just from your perspective that you would say are some of the tipping points or quite fundamental evolution moments in the last 10, 11
[00:08:45] Ian: And it's a great question. And I do talk about the evolution of CX. And 2011
[00:08:51] Steve: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Ian: is a great place to start because in 2011. I was still very much thinking that, am I the only person doing this? Is it just me that is thinking customer experience or are there others? Whilst there were a number of conferences going on at the time, a limited number of conferences around the world about customer experience or called customer experience, many of those things were still, born out of customer service related events, so they were renaming themselves as customer experience, but it was still very Contact center type communities that were involved in the discussion, but the pivotal moment was in April 2011, when, for the very first time, customer experience was recognized as a discipline in its own right.
In 2010.
I was contacted by Bruce Temkin, who many people will have heard of, who is one of the co founders of the CXPA. He contacted me in 2010 to say, we're going to create a professional association for customer experience professionals. And for me, it was genuinely an epiphany because it was like, wow. Finally, I'm not just called this because I first had customer experience in my job title in 2005, but no one, even my organization didn't know what that meant.
[00:10:27] Steve: Okay,
[00:10:27] Ian: So April 2011 was a huge, flag of customer experience has officially arrived. Now when the professional association was created, it always had the intention of defining the standards by which the profession should operate. Now this is really important because at that point in 2011 there was no definition of customer experience.
It was really defined by different opinions and different approaches. In April 2014, driven by the CXPA, the Customer Experience Professionals Association, the world's first professional qualification in customer experience came along. The qualification that is known as CCXP, or Certified Customer Experience Professional.
It was the very first time that the competencies that define the profession that customer experience has become, Were defined by an independent, not for profit organization, which is important because other commercially driven organizations develop their own philosophies and approaches to customer experience.
But this was. driven from a professional perspective, not a commercial perspective. And that for me was again, so important because it legitimized that what we do is real, for most of my career. I was accused of being soft and fluffy, what is this thing, it isn't really a thing, we do it anyway finally, the science of CX was born and since that point, the discipline has evolved. Continue to evolve, but 2023, so it's not even the 10 year anniversary, which says nine years since that qualification came along. There are approaching. Let me think of the number. It's around 1400. I think it's around the latest number is around 1450 ish CCXPs globally. When you put this into perspective, this is now a profession, but there are still a tiny number of people.
that have that recognition of the competencies required to enable an organization to become customer centric. We are still in the very, very early stages of the evolution of this bizarrely. We are moving in the right direction, but it is very slow.
[00:13:18] Steve: Quick question to customer. So let's just, or organizations from a CX point of view. No, actually, no, not the organization, customer, the end user, the people in which we wake up every day to serve. How have they changed in that in the last 10 years as well as an audience, as a
[00:13:38] Ian: very good question. Hugely consumer behavior changes. I think the change in consumer behavior increases in pace over time. One of the things that I teach is that all experiences contain three elements. The functional, the accessible, and the emotional. The functional element represents products and services.
Now, As we know, products and services change over time, new things come into the market. But, you and I have spoken about the telco industry, whilst telco evolves, the technology doesn't really change dramatically. My iPhone today is not hugely different to my iPhone five years ago.
Whilst the battery is better and the quality of the camera is better. So the functional element is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate on. So what many organizations The focused on is the accessible element. How easy is it for you to interact with your products and services? And this is where consumer behavior has changed more than anything else, because what we want.
Is for experiences we have to become increasingly more accessible to be easier, quicker, better than ever before. And we're very influenced by organizations that do that brilliantly, like Amazon, who have made it so easy to do things. Actually, even if it's a subconscious thing, we expect everyone to be as simple to deal with as Amazon.
And so when we're interacting with organizations that aren't as easy as that. We're disappointed because that is what it should be like. But the third element actually is where I think organizations still are failing to get it right. There's a huge focus on accessibility making it as easy as possible through technology.
But the most important of the three elements is the way we make our customer feel. The emotional element and the reason it's the most important is because the way we make customers feel is what they're most likely to remember about their experience and we'll remember one of three things about all experiences very good, very bad or nothing at all and that the interesting thing is that I think as the world changes so rapidly and as we are impacted by disruption.
like COVID a conflict, like a global economic crisis, the cost of living crisis, our expectations are constantly being Affected by those disruptions and what we want for organizations to recognize that these things are happening and treat us in the right way, not to say to us, I'm sorry, but your mortgage rate is going to go up by 50%.
Just deal with it. But, to listen to us and understand us and Empathize with us. But unfortunately, not enough organizations still to this day are focusing on the emotion of the experience. The obsession is with technology, but unfortunately, whilst we might convince ourselves that's to make the experience better, it's actually at the moment, primarily a decision to save money.
And so we're in conflict right now because organizations are making decisions that are not going to enable them to grow, that are decisions that they're making to hopefully try and survive. But the irony is that by trying to survive, they're making our experiences worse.
[00:17:28] Steve: Yeah, and becoming less differentiated, which means potential
[00:17:32] Ian: And then essentially they might cease to exist.
[00:17:35] Steve: Yeah. So technology, let's just dive into this because, we're seeing and we will get into the EX side and there's a lot of there's a lot of synergies already, which I'm really curious to dive into. Because we, we can't explore this without talking about tech because for me you discussed as you shared there, it's like that accessibility, like quicker, easier, faster, and that by definition is a service design piece around how do we make it smooth and easy, remove any blockers.
And in fact, in many respects, actually make it less human and spend less time with our customer because. And maybe in certain instances, that is the right way to go. However, where's the human element? Where is that, we're keeping that balance. How in CX, because we're seeing it in the X how's the tech landscape looking dare I ask what's happening?
[00:18:23] Ian: So what I'm about to say is not a new phenomenon,
But obviously technology is critical. Technology is what will enable us to make experiences more accessible and Is potentially a huge
differentiator, but, and there is always the but, unfortunately, many organizations, as I've just said, are adopting digital technology with a different motivation. Their motivation in the main is to eliminate human interaction. And save money and cut cost. We are in a very cost constrained world.
We've lived in a world of austerity for a long time and saving money is important to many organizations, but I see. And I see this all around the world that technology has become a little bit like the silver or golden bullet, whichever way you want to phrase it, because businesses are seeing something like a I, for example, as.
This is the answer. This is what we've been looking for because now we don't need our people anymore. AI can do all of this. So how are we going to do it? What's our AI strategy? Let's just throw it at the organization, throw it at our customers. Let's get rid of a load of people and we'll save a fortune.
Now, in principle, potentially that kind of technology, generative AI can save a huge amount of money. What I have seen over the years is that if you adopt technology without understanding your customer, without understanding the journey that they're having with you, and you just throw that technology at them with the primary motivation of saving money, You will make the experience worse.
What I preach about a lot, and you can tell I'm getting preachier the more we speak, is that experiences, whether we like it or not, are all about human to human interaction. It doesn't matter how digitally enabled you become. It will always be about human to human interaction, and what we need is to see technology not as a way of replacing the human to human interaction, but as a way of better enabling the human to human interaction, this is all about understanding how the technology can better enable you to deliver the interactions that your customers are having with you, that should be the motivation.
And Thank you. The irony about everything I'm saying is that if you use technology in that way, you will save money. So this is the difference between cutting cost. and saving money. Okay. From the experiences that you've had in your career, you will have spoken to thousands of people who spend so much time dealing with stuff that they shouldn't have to deal with, things that are going wrong all the time.
That's what we need the technology for to take away the stuff that we don't need to be dealing with to eliminate unnecessary interaction that's where technology can really help us. I am yet to see organizations that are thinking that way and that are almost getting to a point where they're going to have the courage to adopt technology in alignment with the customer journey, not in isolation of it.
[00:22:04] Steve: Yeah. I was thinking there as well, from a, from an experiential. Point of view to, we talk about the tech and the human side. If, if we invite anybody listening now to think about and just reflect on any experience that you've had positive that has burnt as a memory, as a positive memory in your mind, a human will be there.
It won't be just exclusively standing on a beach, looking at a sunset or a sunrise. That would be beautiful, but is it super memorable? Maybe but
[00:22:33] Ian: The thing a customer is most likely to remember about their experience is the way your people made them feel.
[00:22:39] Steve: feel exactly. I've never come home to my wife and go, darling, I've had the most amazing experience with this app.
[00:22:46] Ian: So if I give you an example, I won't say where or what, because it's not fair for me to do that. But I'm working with an organization at the moment that runs theme parks in a certain part of the world and the theme park, they're amazing. Now, I'm not a theme park person, I don't like that kind of thing.
The product is incredible.
But the product isn't the problem, the problem is if you interact with one of the individuals that's working in that product, it's like to your point about two sides of a coin, it's like totally separate, that the people don't match the product and so you have this amazing.
Visual experience that is then ruined by completely unmemorable, bland interactions with people that don't really recognize what it is that they're there to do. We really do need to get that as something that is very firmly in the minds of people. And it's the perfect segue, to you and me connecting customer experience with employee experience.
[00:23:51] Steve: I agree. I agree. I have I'm going to come to CX maturity as well a little bit. Let's see if we can come looping on that. This is so interesting because we're, and I'll be really curious to get your perspective on this as well. When you shared the professional association and this kind of cementing of competence around the labeling of what we call this profession.
Whatever the words we choose, there is a labeling and association and a standard to this in terms of not only creating a minimum standard, but building on that for future development. I would say from a. Employee experience perspective, we're not there yet. We're seeing people make attempts with creating, mandates or, some kind of commitment to something in terms of that we could abide by, or at least align to from an EX standard perspective.
But I also see that as a profession, we're in such an early stage. I've actually been on an annual basis. I've been looking at just the word employee experience and really interesting to hear what you're saying about customer service to customer experience. So I remember those days back in the customer contact environment.
It's seen as this fluffy word and we're already seeing in, on the EX side, we're seeing people change from HR to people experience. And then you go, great. So what are you doing differently? Like, how are you evolving the role? And the role hasn't changed. There's still potentially a HR business partner or, and.
That, I think that is sometimes a necessary process to go through, but I would say that's where we are right now. And then there's that, that, that element, and then there are actually functions being built. There are actually evolutions of HR functions where we have a profession in human resources that is being required and there is a new paradigm.
They're entering into or have to enter into, remove themselves from this kind of. historical bad PR that they tend to have of reactive. Just not, most organizations don't particularly have a favorable view of HR as a function, but inside the profession, there's some amazing people doing amazing work, which focuses on people fundamentally.
So how do you leverage that in new ways to bring value to the business in new ways? And I think tech is going to play and is playing a huge part. HR tech landscape has exploded. And I think we're seeing a much more consumerized experience inside organizations for employees, but I still think we've got some way to cement what does a EX function like, or an organization that has embraced it into their operating model of some sort.
And we've got some way to go, but it's fascinating to see it. And just to mention this as well, cause I, I've, I was a privileged to be. Part of the customer contact industry, late nineties into two thousands and contribute to that industry. If we're the recruitment company to be sitting here today now in EX, I'm like, wow, I can see it again.
It's quite an interesting
[00:26:47] Ian: it shows you that parallel evolution, but there is a big reality check, I think, when it comes to employee experience, because everything you've said, I completely agree with that the reality that the biggest reality check is that the profession of customer experience, if I use the formation of the CXPA as the starting point 12th year, we are now in the 12th year.
Of that profession being formed. But how far how far have we moved in terms of the adoption? The maturity of CX is a different question. I wrote an article in 2018 that I entitled the seven year itch when it comes to customer experience, because I was starting to see. Really behavior and attitudes towards it starting to wane.
If I were to write that article right now again, I wouldn't change much of it. Are we really advancing with CX or have we actually succeeded brilliantly in putting it on the agenda? And everyone talking about it and organizations being obsessed with net promoter scores and everything else.
But how much has fundamentally changed? That's a different question. So if you put that in perspective with and compare that to the evolution of EX, EX doesn't have a professional association. No one has defined the standards yet of what it actually means. In fact, no one has really defined what employee experience actually is.
So we're still in this stage of Everyone's got an opinion on it. That doesn't necessarily mean that there is a common understanding as to exactly what it is. And so that the confusion around employee experience is huge right now. I am seeing a lot of evidence HR.
Many HR teams see it as the being all about recruitment, employee experience is how we get people into the organization that is it, it is employee experience, even the role of HR, and then how about, recognizing that the reason that employee experience is critical is that.
We can't expect to deliver an experience to our customers and leave our customers feeling a certain way if we don't leave our people leaving a certain way. So the alignment of CX and EX is critical. And so if this is something that's owned by HR. Do HR have an understanding of what happens to the employee in their end to end experience, not just bringing them into the organization, but what about the ongoing experience that employee has?
So I think, this is a reality check, but also the opportunity, it's a massive opportunity, but I think people need to get real. They can't just say, We do employee experience, but without really understanding, do we have a strategy focuses on not just what the business wants, not just what the customer wants, but also what the employee wants, because until strategically, you're thinking that way, employee experience will just be a buzzword and not a lot
[00:30:30] Steve: Yeah, agree. And I think there's a fear of that, that the buzzword, but I think we've moved beyond that now, actually the, we went through that phase, I believe anyway, my view interesting as well, the word understanding that you've mentioned a few times on customer, we talk about empathy, we talk about research, whether it's, some kind of listening strategy, whether it's qualitative research, i, my, my current opinion is that it's getting better. I think if just by looking at Qualtrics journey in the last seven, eight years with EX IPOing, selling, IPOing, selling, I don't know how many times I've done that now. They've like just their growth alone, particularly in that kind of.
Corporate structure or enterprise level we're seeing companies, more and more companies anyway, moving from a single snapshot listening of employee engagement once a year, maybe with a few pulses to actually much more embedded. End to end journey listening, which is a great start. And of course, if we then apply some kind of design lens into that, of course, you have to go deeper to really understand it, any of those challenges it highlights, but I still think there's also something else to add on this end as well is, and this is the thing I see is the next bit for us is like, how do you then take that?
What's that intersection of that data outcome, like that challenge, and then how do you solve that in a human centric way?
[00:31:48] Ian: Well, and I think that the critical point here is I don't have the answer to that
[00:31:54] Steve: No, neither do I. Yeah.
[00:31:55] Ian: but the critical point is you asked me earlier. How is consumer behavior been changing over the last 11, 12 years? How many organizations are asking themselves? How is the employee? Behavior changing, because I don't think we are in a world anymore where organizations can just assume that they're going to be able to recruit people, with a job description and a salary and a package of benefits.
We are, you've got kids, I've got kids. Younger people, what they expect their lives to be is not the same as my expectation at the same period in my life, that they don't want to work in a traditional or what it would be considered to be a traditional way anymore. The kind of work they want to do, the industries they want to be in are different, but additionally.
The way they want to work is not the same, and we're going through this period now of increasingly organizations forcing people to come back into offices and I understand that how many of those organizations are thinking about their people in the same way that they should be thinking about their customers, are they genuinely gathering insight and then designing the experience that employees have to give them what they need? Because I think younger people will be a lot pickier than you and me. And if they don't like it, they're just going to leave, and we will be in a situation where we cannot get.
The expertise, the commitment that we need to deliver the experience to our customers that this for me is a massive ticking time bomb, and I actually believe genuinely that employee experience in the next five years or so needs to be focused on even more than the input than the customer experience, because if we don't get this right, we won't be able to fulfill Thank you.
The experience to our customers and I'm not sure many leadership teams are having those very brutal, honest conversations with each other about what will our employee base look like in five years time
What is it going to look like? Because if they're not thinking now, what they're going to do in five years time, that they will suddenly have a huge problem in my opinion.
[00:34:22] Steve: I think we've got this such a, of course, COVID for all the wrong reasons has shaken up EX and actually accelerated a lot of these conversations in a huge way. And now we had this super interesting, LinkedIn doesn't go an hour by without somebody. Sharing some post on hybrid working or forced to office or whatever the content might be.
But there's this super interesting thing where we had this moment in time. I did a keynote recently and I, and it really landed with the room. I remember sharing it is this moment in time when. When everybody was forced to work from home and this is like unprecedented. Okay. Never had anything like this before.
And what happened? HR stepped up. HR was one of the winners in that process because they supported their people in a human way. They were being praised for the work they did. And on top of that, our human qualities, what are we good at when our backs against the wall, when we have to dig in, when we have to get creative, when we have to, that's the time, like we dug in and in some organizations, their performance actually went up.
And that should tell us something in that, what are we capable of if you just, unlock that ability or unlock that engagement in new ways. And now we've got this new kind of battle of the wills right now between CEOs and employees of
[00:35:44] Ian: But the other thing, Steve, what that reactionary environment demonstrated is that largely you can trust your people. Because I think fundamentally, yeah, prior to COVID, probably more than I do, very few organizations would allow a customer service advisor to work from home.
It's like absolutely no way, that there's GDPR issues, there's, but suddenly overnight. Oh, yeah, that's fine. You can work from home, so trust is such a critical thing, but how many employees feel that their organization actually trusts them, to do now, can you trust 100% of human beings?
Of course, you can't, if you don't believe that you can trust the majority of your employee base you're scuppered. It's just not going to work. And we, you mentioned CEOs. One of the, my biggest frustrations over the last 12 years is that the separation between the decision maker and the doer.
It's still so big. What we need is for leadership teams to experience what your people experience, it's interesting in the CX world constantly people say walk in your customer shoes, but why don't we walk in our employee shoes. Actually do what they do, see what they see, and then you'll suddenly realize, Oh, I couldn't do that.
If you couldn't do that, then why are you expecting them to do it? I think we've got to get real and unfortunately, with all honesty, I very rarely see it. But again this is such an opportunity. You've got nothing to lose.
[00:37:23] Steve: The big thing for me here in is like it's systemic and control ultimately
[00:37:28] Ian: yes, it
[00:37:30] Steve: where we're constantly battling with let's just dive in a little bit, cause I'm really curious to see. We talked about journeys and I think, or you mentioned journeys earlier from a customer journey perspective and understanding that journey that they go through I'm, the whole CXEX connection piece, this kind of Mecca that's been talked about for many years, particularly in customer contact.
It's been around for a long time, but it's becoming more, it's increasing, I'm seeing more discussions around it. And I always like for me, it's getting into the trenches and aligning those journeys together to find those interaction points where that human interaction is as a start point. I also think as well, talk about opportunity is if the organization is looking to drive an agenda on eX, then in my mind.
The CX, EX connection is a wonderful place to get started because you can actually talk the language of the company in terms of its KPIs or its performance metrics or whatever you're trying to impact. And normally it has to be initially some kind of saving or revenue increase or something to build out business cases, et cetera.
What's your view on that? What's your, from your CX lens and there
[00:38:38] Ian: important. Visualizing the interactions that our customers are having with us is vital. At the end of the day, it is those interactions that will determine whether or not your customer feels the way you want them to feel. And as a result, we'll come back to you again. So when we think about the employee experience, there are two things to consider here.
One is what role does the employee play in delivering those experiences? Okay. So if you think about what are your people do every day and how does that align to the journey, that is one perspective of the employee journey. Okay. It is the task based process perspective. Now, the reason that's critical is that right now, I say right now for the last 18 months, arguably, I have seen a world where employees are more stretched than ever before.
And the word stretched is one that I dislike intensely, but it demonstrates that the world has become more task focused than ever before. Now, the reason that this is a problem is that if we are. stretching our people to the point where they can only focus on the task. What that means is that they haven't got any time to think.
And if they haven't got time to think, when something goes wrong, they can't deal with it because they've got to move to the next task. So we just create an environment where people are just constantly just delivering numbers without thinking about the consequences of those numbers. And this is a huge challenge because if If organizations got their people to do a time and motion study for a week and identify things that they're doing that are of no value, I guarantee you that they would find a huge amount of opportunity to eliminate unnecessary activity.
So that's one perspective. But the other perspective is then, beneath that, what? Is the experience that the employee is having with the organization itself so you know it astounds me in 2023 how few employees have a monthly review with their boss. They don't even have a review, they don't, if again, if we don't think about the experience that the employees having with the organization in the same way that the customer is having the experience of the organization, why do your employees stay with you?
[00:41:16] Steve: Yep,
[00:41:16] Ian: So I think there are two perspectives to consider here, but as I say, being brutally honest with you, there are painfully few organizations today that can give you a visual of both of those things that I've described.
[00:41:34] Steve: and also as well, if you, if let's just talk about say this, I was thinking of it this way. So there's, you're in a, you're in a a T, a business with multiple teams. So even just if you apply a leadership lens. Or a managerial lens to look at that experience, the relationship lens of the team, as an example, between those two teams and environments.
So that might be a higher performing team. That might be a lower performing team. How are they having intrinsic different impact on
[00:42:02] Ian: I. An interesting articulation, I talk about the, what I call the accidental experience. So from a customer perspective, what that means is that to the customer, it's a lottery when they interact with an organization. If they get the right person, they might have a good experience.
Okay, but as an employee. Their experiences are accidental as well, because if you've got a good boss, who's empathetic and understanding and everything else, you may think that the organization is amazing, but if you've got the horrible boss, who actually is completely command and control, you just do what you're told.
You'll be in the same organization having a totally different experience. And again, this is why it's so important that we think of the employee experience in alignment with the customer experience, because, every employee that is feeling bad today for whatever reason it is, because their boss is treating them badly or because they're having trouble at home, that will have a negative impact on the customer experience.
[00:43:06] Steve: Yep.
[00:43:07] Ian: It's so obvious, Steve. You and I know it's so obvious, but why leadership teams don't get that is one of the reasons why they need to listen to this.
[00:43:15] Steve: And, oh, sorry, I can cut that. I totally agree. And I just want to add another one when this is where there's been a big disruption as we've just explored as well. So we're thinking about, relationships. We're looking at the spaces of which people work now, of course, that's been hugely disrupted, which has then had an impact on leadership and management relationships and how managers and leaders.
Manage and support and coach and guide their people. And that's that just think about that segment that's completely disrupted, which I think is having intrinsic value on their relationship with the organization maybe belonging connection. And yeah, that it's had a huge impact on that.
So I just want to share that as well, cause I think that's something which is Yeah, it's probably our biggest challenge of our time right now, just in terms of the overall EX experience perspective. Brilliant, Ian. Amazing. Okay. Quick. So let me just think in terms of getting started, I'd love to just just do a quick kind of segment.
And so we can dive into a little bit, maybe some tips and guides we can give to people. Just thinking about like the projects you've been involved with over the years. We're thinking at now from an EX and a CX, how to get started. Where's the, have you got any tips or advice or areas to find a way of just, yeah.
[00:44:35] Ian: so I said right at the very beginning, I was a bit pedantic with the description of me as a specialist rather than an expert. I think it is so important, however long you've been in business, however old you are, However much you think you know, we do not know everything, and I'm a huge believer that we've got to continually gather information that helps us to develop our understanding and our approach to what we're needing to do.
Whenever I share knowledge with people, which I do a lot, as I will always say to people that there are three things that you should be looking to do when you're gathering knowledge. The first is to validate, we live in such a complex world that sometimes actually listening to others will validate that you are doing the right things and going in the right direction, I sometimes feel that people don't want to listen to me because I know all of this but yeah, you might know it all, but it's not such a bad thing to hear that actually the things you know are the right things, it's quite comforting to think. Yeah, we are doing that right. That's really important.
So I think, do people get enough validation, Some do, but I think others could do a lot more of that, and there are always new things to learn, especially in CX and EX because they're evolving so quickly, and I think if you're not constantly online every week looking to see what people are talking about with the X, how it's evolving, you're going to miss Thanks.
You're going to miss a trick. So it's vitally important to keep educating yourself. And the third thing when you're sharing knowledge is to, is I always say, feel more dangerous after you've acquired the knowledge than you consider yourself to be before it, because you, what you want is to feel that you can genuinely make this happen.
That the hardest thing for me in my career. Is, as I described at the beginning, it, there are so many times you feel all alone and there will be people who are trying to and establish a focus on ex who are thinking that, oh God, no one gets this but that's normal. You know that. That's right.
But you've got that, you've got to get inspired to the point where, You're okay with that, because you are going to have to bash down a lot of walls, you're going to have to smash your head against a lot of walls before you're going to see anything happen, one of the key attributes of successful CX professionals is that they are the most persistent, bloody minded people you will ever come across, because you've got to keep going Through all the adversity that's being thrown at you, and this will be potentially even harder for those working in ex now, so you have going to have to keep going and to be able to sustain that.
Connecting with like minded people, talking to people like you, Steve, is vital because the more the EX community comes together, supports each other, learns from each other, the more likely it is that the evolution will continue to gather pace.
[00:47:59] Steve: Yeah agree. That's really nice. Very nice. Very nice. Can I just ask as well, just because you talk about the evolution because this is something I wanted to ask you as well. When we think about the construct of a CX team, what does a typical CX team, if they still exist in companies these days, but which, what would you say in terms of yeah, what would you say just in terms of the team dynamic or the setup?
[00:48:26] Ian: It, I'm asked this question a lot. And it is hugely variable. Hugely variable. I've worked with multinational organizations that have a customer experience team too. I've worked with smaller organizations that have a customer, bigger customer experience team. Some organizations try to merge customer service and customer experience together.
There's no Transcribed Right or wrong way. Unfortunately when you then think about larger multinational organizations, sometimes you'll find a global team in the middle. But then customer experience teams in each country and they're trying to connect it all together. It's a minefield, a genuine minefield.
What I will always say to people is that there is no right or wrong because every organization is different from my experience where a customer experience team can be most impactful is when they are independent of any touch points in the customer journey. What I mean by that is, is that if a customer experience team works for the marketing director, that they're marking their own homework because they, the marketing function is responsible for touch points in the customer journey.
Okay. If you report into the customer service director. The same thing. I think a customer experience team should be seen as a center of excellence that is independent of the customer journey, but they are there to define methodology, define the strategy. The approach to apply the competencies and support those who are accountable for the customer journey to do what's necessary to improve customer perception and financial performance.
The biggest weakness of the way customer experience teams have been put in place to date is that they are seen as being responsible for the customer journey and responsible for the customer experience, but they're not. The organization. Is accountable and responsible for the customer experience, not the customer experience team, and this is a constant lack of understanding.
It's down to them. No, it isn't. It is down to them to hold the mirror up and to allow the organization to identify what it is that needs to be focused on and how to focus on it and so on. But that's why if a customer experience team is not structured in the right way, there will be a misunderstanding of accountability.
Does that make sense?
[00:51:06] Steve: It makes perfect sense. And I, without going into detail I would say that there's a lot to learn on the X just from that segment
Really interesting, because there is an ownership issue right now. And there's been a lot of research and interactions of who owns a lot of the journeys.
And. So interesting. So I'm
[00:51:23] Ian: this is a, that's a really complicated question because, do HR own the employee? Or actually does the person who manages them own them, but again, it's, these are all subtleties and none of this is complicated to understand, but if we don't have that conversation and define the approach and the strategy, we're going to find it difficult to translate the words into action.
[00:51:46] Steve: We are. Ian, I knew it'd be a good one and I know we could, I know we can speak
[00:51:51] Ian: We could keep going for another hour. Absolutely.
[00:51:53] Steve: know easily. Look I let's let's cap it here. I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I think we've we've touched on some really interesting. Unique elements of this kind of CXCX conundrum that's that's definitely exists and I'm super curious to continue on our conversation as well.
Look, thank you for your time and contribution. Pleasure to have you here.
[00:52:11] Ian: Absolute pleasure. Thank you as always for asking me, Steve.
[00:52:14] Steve: Good stuff. Thanks. Cheers.
[00:52:16]Ian: Cheers.