Latest / Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders / 262: Who Really Owns Customer Experience? (part two)

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262: Who Really Owns Customer Experience? (part two) · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:49
  Welcome back, revolutionaries,
• 0:51
  for another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast.
• 0:55
  I am John DiJulius chief revolution officer.
• 0:57
  And this week is part two of you know creating your your stakeholders,
• 1:03
  if you will, how to roll out an a successful launch of your customer experience.
• 1:10
  And I have vice president of The DiJulius Group
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  Mr. Dave Murray. Welcome back,
• 1:14
  Dave.
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  Hey John, thanks for having me back.
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  Great to see ya.
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  Great to see you. So, I just want to recap for those like maybe
• 1:21
  me who don't remember what we talked about a week ago.
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  so Dave, we talked about five stakeholders.
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  I actually thought of a sixth,
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  and tell me if you agree. So last week we talked about the number
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  one stakeholder is the the CEO C suite.
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  position number two is you the you know the the head champion which
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  in a larger corporation will be from that C suite but it's his
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  or her responsibility number three is the project lead could be
• 1:52
  a chief experience officer we've talked really visited those three last week
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  in depth number four
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  is your s customer experience steering committee,
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  which we're gonna talk about today.
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  Number five is the frontline, customer facing position.
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  And I wanna either re re remind or I I you know that when
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  we say customer facing or frontline
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  I think a lot of us could think of all right,
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  the cashier at McDonald's or the customer service rep you know,
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  that we're calling into. But honestly,
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  you know, that could be a lawyer,
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  accountant, consultant, doctor,
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  Sure. Mm-hmm.
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  nurse, technician. We're all we're all,
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  you know, if we're interacting with the customer,
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  we're customer facing. So it's not,
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  you know, just a low level, if you will.
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  Right. Well, John, I'm I'm working with a great organization right now,
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  North American Dental Group, and their primary frontline person
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  is the actual dentist. Of course,
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  there's others, the hygienist and there's a reception desk,
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  Yeah.
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  but but the dentist is the one that really owns the experience.
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  Just like when we're working with hospitals,
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  how important that doctor is in their bedside manner.
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  So yeah, it it it's anyone who's having that interaction.
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  Right.
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  And then my sixth stakeholder in all this is the customer,
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  right? We gotta make sure the customer's happy.
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  Hm, yeah, yeah.
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  But today I really wanna go deep in the the the fourth and fifth,
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  which is the customer experience steering committee,
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  and then you know how you successfully get the buy-in because of any
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  of those first five,
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  aren't addressed properly and thoroughly,
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  the sixth one will suffer our customer.
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  So you are the expert, you are the master,
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  you do this more than anyone, helping companies create this.
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  So let's talk about w w the importance of the CX steering committee.
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  What's that look like?
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  So the steering committee is really important because they become kind
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  of the governing body of this project,
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  right? So they're involved in the early goings,
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  helping select who should be in the workshops,
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  talking about specific team members who we want in because they bring valuable
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  information or b valuable thought process,
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  when we're gonna do it, where we're gonna do it.
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  So they get a chance to chime in on all that and help make those decisions.
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  But they become probably more important after we actually do
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  our workshops because they're the team.
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  That then take that great content and turn it into a training material,
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  right? Turn it into the the playbook or whatever it is that we're going to develop.
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  Because when we have our actual workshops,
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  it's all about great ideas, right?
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  We're not worried about inventory or other things that get in the way.
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  It's just if it's a great idea,
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  write it down. So then the steering committee has to come back and say,
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  okay, we have some great ideas here,
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  but what's reality? What what can we focus on right now?
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  There might be some great ideas that are wonderful,
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  but we can't do it until
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  second half of the year or Q1 next year because of budget or we don't have that
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  platforming it. Whatever that is.
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  Technology, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So they make all of those decisions.
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  And also, you know, there there can be a little bit of a spend involved,
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  right? We might might want to actually print up playbooks or print up posters.
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  And so they have to have some some budgetary ability as well.
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  So when we get the steering committee together,
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  normally the way it works, and every organization's different.
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  So this isn't written in stone,
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  but what we typically have, what typically works well is
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  It's made up of a group of managerial or director level employees that
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  are heavily involved with some of our more customer-facing departments.
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  Right? So whether it's a a couple of sales managers or a sales director,
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  a couple of customer service managers,
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  the customer service director,
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  contact center director. And so whatever our front-facing departments are,
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  we definitely want to have representation there.
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  But then we have to expand it out to some of the support departments as well.
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  So we want to
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  We want a finance person in there that that's supporting our frontline team members.
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  We want maybe someone from accounting or someone from logistics
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  or someone from shipping, whatever your model is.
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  So we want to have cross-departmental representation in there because that really
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  is the group that comes together to shape this project and shape
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  the deliverables as we go through the process.
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  So that's was gonna be my next question.
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  who should be on that? And is it HODs,
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  heads of departments, you know,
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  Sometimes.
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  directors? Yeah.
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  Sometimes. Yeah.
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  Who else
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  who else would be on there? if it's not H O heads of departments,
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  you know, and and and you want to remind our our listeners,
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  you know, this is for a company wide initiative.
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  So we're not, you know, it's not just the contact center or you know,
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  training and development. I mean,
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  you know, everyone needs to have a hand in it,
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  even support and and are what we like to call invisible service providers.
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  So if if I'm a project lead listening.
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  and we're about to go down this journey,
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  you know, who should I who should who should I add to this customer experience
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  customer experience steering committee?
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  What's their ask? What's what what you know what are we asking of them too?
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  So who and what
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  So you're you're absolutely right,
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  John. A lot of times it is department heads,
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  usually director level, maybe a a mix of some managers too.
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  if if you're if your organization has a training team or a training department,
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  it makes sense for at least some representation there because they're
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  the ones that usually have to take the material and get it into
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  the onboarding form or put it into some of our existing training materials.
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  So it's nice to have those as well.
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  As far as your question on what's the commitment,
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  so the steering committee.
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  Is not as not as involved as the project leaders.
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  We talked last week with the project lead.
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  We're we're communicating at least on a weekly basis,
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  if not more. In some cases, depending on what's going on,
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  we might be talking daily or every other day during some portions,
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  but it's at least that one hour weekly to make sure the project is staying on track.
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  From the steering committee standpoint,
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  we're usually getting them together once a month or so.
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  Now that can vary, right? When we when we actually conduct a workshop.
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  And then we're working on finishing up the deliverables,
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  we might have that steering committee meet weekly for three consecutive weeks just
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  to get through all that content and kind of get that to the finish line.
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  And
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  is that an hour? Is that virtual?
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  What's that look like?
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  Typically it's one hour at a time held virtually because you know sometimes they're
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  all in one room together, sometimes they're in different locations,
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  right? Whatever your whatever your setup is works.
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  So typically it's on a Zoom and we share a screen and we're just kind
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  of going through the content, editing,
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  finalizing, wordsmithing, and just getting it to that that finish line
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  so that we can get it into whatever we're getting,
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  playbooks, slides, whatever that's gonna be part of the training and the rollout.
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  Launch.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Good.
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  and then
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  The f fifth stakeholder is the front line now,
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  or customer facing or every employee.
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  And and you know, but before you do that,
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  and and that's part of the launch,
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  we you know, I I think we call them you know,
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  CX ambassadors, which is representation of each department potentially that's gonna
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  be impacted. And and let's talk about w how how you create this CX ambassadors who
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  who they should be and what's what what what's their level of of commitment.
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  Sure. So CX ambassadors can really take on a different look depending
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  on your organization, your size,
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  what your business model is. So there's a lot of different examples that
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  we can talk through. But typically what it is,
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  it's made up of some individuals that are frontline that most likely were part
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  of our workshops, right? So they sat in the workshops,
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  they they gave their their two cents,
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  they were part of the creation,
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  they they found it valuable, and they and a lot of times.
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  What happens is after our workshops,
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  we have a couple people that say,
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  I really like this. I want to be further involved.
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  And that's where we get a lot of our ambassadors.
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  People kind of raise their hand and say,
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  I'd like to keep part of this project.
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  And so a lot of times it's people that are volunteering to to keep that involvement
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  going. But one of the things that that organizations can do with that ambassador
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  is the the primary thing is they know it works.
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  They're they're excited about it.
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  So we want them to take that message back to their teams,
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  right? We can't.
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  In in most cases, this happens every once in a while,
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  but we can't have the entire company in that workshop.
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  It would be great if we could.
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  It's happened, you know, with some really smaller companies of like eight
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  or ten people where it's happened.
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  But usually we're getting a representation of some of those customer-facing groups
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  and some of those support groups together in our workshops.
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  So the first thing the ambassador does is they're they're just talking positively
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  about the experience. They're talking positively that they were in this workshop.
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  There's some really great things coming.
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  They really like the focus. It's gonna help make our our our jobs more enjoyable,
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  make our lives easier, or get fewer complaints,
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  all those, all the whatever the pain points are that we addressed in that workshop,
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  they're out there actively advocating for the project and talking about it.
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  Now, some of our clients will then take it a step further.
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  Well though they will have that group of ambassadors almost be a boots
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  on the ground oversight team, if you will.
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  So they'll actually go out to different locations w after the rollout
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  and just check in, make things make sure things are going well.
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  And there's a couple of ways to do that.
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  So I'll give two examples and they're both in the financial industry.
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  And Dave, I'm sorry, just to c confirm,
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  most of the time the CX ambassadors are not currently leadership roles.
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  Right, right, right. Okay, okay.
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  Usually not, right. Usually usually they're they're a fellow front line.
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  They might be aspiring, or they might just get it and we like And then,
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  Yes. Sure.
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  huh.
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  you know, before you go on, you know,
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  I I think we might have briefly mentioned this last week.
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  they're good employees. but they
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  what's a polite way of say it could do more damage than good if they're
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  not part of it, right? yeah, yeah.
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  Sometimes yeah, yeah.
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  So you want them because they may sabotage it,
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  which I guess defeats my definition of being a good employee.
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  They're influencers.
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  So w
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  that that does come up, right?
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  We'll we'll we'll talk to steering committees when we're when we're planning maybe
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  our first workshop session, and they'll ask,
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  should should we have people that we know aren't gonna be bought in,
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  people that don't like change?
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  And our answer is yes, because this workshop should start to convert them.
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  And if it doesn't, then maybe they're not the right fit for the organization
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  in the direction that we are trying to go.
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  So it it it can be very valuable to have those naysayers or those those people that
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  we know.
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  Like you said, John, our influencers,
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  not maybe not leader by title,
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  but leader by just by who they are.
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  and make sure that they're they're in this,
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  they're understanding it. And you're right,
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  sometimes they do become advocates and they do become part of this ambassador group,
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  which is obvious a huge win for organizations when that happens.
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  All right, so you're gonna I think share some best practices and and maybe what what
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  you know not to do, in in what examples you're working with companies.
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  Yeah, so the the two that come to mind,
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  John, and you worked with both of them as well,
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  both in the financial industry,
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  one is Advanced Financial based in Nashville,
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  and one is Key Bank that's based here in Cleveland,
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  Ohio. And I'll start with Advanced Financial.
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  What they did is once they started rolling out their their content,
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  like their action statement and a couple of their customer experience cycles,
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  and they got that material out.
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  They wanted to have an extra layer of oversight.
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  Kind of they had at the time I think they had 60 branches across Tennessee.
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  So they wanted to have some more oversight in all of those locations.
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  So they started an ambassador program,
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  they put it out there and had people apply.
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  So you had to volunteer in for this.
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  Yes, I want this extra responsibility.
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  They actually created an ambassador training program.
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  So you had to go through this training program.
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  So you already knew all the content,
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  right? Because you had gone through the rollouts and you understood what
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  we were doing with this, but they wanted to give you an extra layer
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  of training on how to be a a successful ambassador,
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  right? And so
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  They put you through some training on what to look for,
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  how to coach in the moment, soft skills of leadership,
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  those sorts of things. So that when this team went out and visited branches,
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  they were going to be successful.
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  So they had about, if I remember correctly,
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  about 65 people apply for that and they went through the training.
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  And then what they did was one day a week or one day a month,
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  instead of reporting to your traditional location,
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  you would go on the road and you would visit a couple of other locations
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  and just check in and see how things were going.
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  And you had some.
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  supplies in your car so that if they ran out of some of the things that they wanted
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  to focus on when it came to the experience like maybe the the never's
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  and always on a card or whatever it's things that gave away to customers,
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  they they would restock you. They had all those things and just make sure everything
• 14:05
  was going okay. And and that went really,
• 14:07
  really well. One thing they did learn that I want to share though,
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  there were a couple of ambassadors that they learned didn't quite get it.
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  And this happens. This happens in leadership all the time with managers.
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  They had a couple of ambassadors that really saw themselves more
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  as the gotcha police as opposed to a support person,
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  right? And so that kind of worked in the negative,
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  right? Then when those gotcha police showed up at a branch room was like,
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  boy, here they come, and we're gonna get in trouble.
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  And so that that put this this initiative more in a negative light than
• 14:37
  the positive light that we wanted in.
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  So, of course, ambassadors may need to coach every once in a while.
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  They may see something that's not going well,
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  but we don't want them.
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  just looking for the bad stuff and not acknowledging or appreciating good stuff,
• 14:51
  right? And that can happen sometimes if we're not careful.
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  So Advanced Financial to their credit realized that was happening.
• 14:57
  They stopped it immediately, retrained some people to make sure that there
• 15:01
  was a balance of finding the good stuff and coaching where we can improve.
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  and that that team was very, very successful.
• 15:08
  So that that's one example of frontline people doing it.
• 15:11
  The other example I was going to share from Key Bank
• 15:14
  was a little different where it was it was more managers and some regional folks.
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  Now Key Bank is across about thirty states,
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  I believe. So they have a huge presence.
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  They have a huge retail network.
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  Maybe close to
• 15:23
  a thousand l branches, nine hundred,
• 15:25
  I think so. I think so. It's it's north of nine hundred.
• 15:26
  yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
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  So a lot
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  of branches. So what they wanted to do,
• 15:31
  they started an ambassador program that was gonna be more regionally focused
• 15:35
  and and so they made sure that they got people from all of their their primary
• 15:39
  regions that was really gonna be trained on becoming an expert in this material.
• 15:44
  So they could actually go out and conduct trainings.
• 15:47
  They were the people that would conduct an onboarding session for
• 15:50
  new hires in Seattle, Washington or in Portland,
• 15:52
  Maine, and and they kind of
• 15:54
  owned it. they owned the project.
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  So they were a a little higher level of ambassador,
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  meaning they had a little more responsibility.
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  It wasn't just a check-in how you do,
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  and it was more like you know conducting a a three hour session.
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  So it was more a part of of their role going forward.
• 16:08
  A lot of times they were already managers or maybe even a regional director.
• 16:12
  But they still sought volunteers,
• 16:14
  people that wanted it. And I think that's important,
• 16:16
  right? It wasn't some people it might see it as a great opportunity of
• 16:20
  hey we want you to take this this this extra
• 16:22
  responsibility, some people may not,
• 16:24
  right? So having people self-select in is really powerful.
• 16:28
  If you need to find some people that didn't self-select in,
• 16:31
  that's okay too, right? If if if they understand the project
• 16:35
  and understand the value and see it as an opportunity to be an emerging leader.
• 16:38
  Because all the examples that I'm sharing with you did not include pay,
• 16:42
  right? This wasn't a promotion.
• 16:43
  This wasn't, hey, this is now part of what you do.
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  It was it was literally
• 16:48
  volunteering that I want to be a part of this project,
• 16:51
  I want to take on this additional responsibility,
• 16:53
  add it to my job description, right?
• 16:55
  But it wasn't necessarily a pay raise.
• 16:56
  And so I think that's an important distinction and and having people self select
• 17:01
  in that they want to be a part of this project is really helpful.
• 17:04
  Yeah, I love it, love it. So, when when you're the project lead,
• 17:09
  you're busy, you're inundated,
• 17:10
  you're having meetings with, you know,
• 17:13
  if i you weekly, that that's you know,
• 17:16
  it it's a tough job but but th their job now is to make sure you keep
• 17:21
  the CX steering committee and your CX ambassadors up to date,
• 17:26
  bought in, and keep their momentum.
• 17:29
  Right. And that's always the hardest part.
• 17:31
  what have you seen? you know, how how how do you keep them bought in
• 17:36
  and and and getting it? you know,
• 17:38
  because usually the project lead might be the one that's attending
• 17:41
  the customer experience executive academy and they're getting inundated
• 17:46
  and their service aptitude is through the roof.
• 17:49
  How how how what have you seen to raise the customer experience?
• 17:54
  steering committee and the customer experience ambassador service aptitude
• 17:59
  so they get it are as bought in and and and and and wanna continue this,
• 18:05
  you know, down the road.
• 18:08
  I I think the the number one best practice I see there is those teams getting
• 18:12
  together consistently. And what I mean by that is that you always say this,
• 18:16
  John, when it comes to customer experience,
• 18:17
  there is no finish line, right?
• 18:19
  We don't we don't roll something down and say,
• 18:20
  okay, great, let's go on to the next project now and just that will just kind
• 18:23
  of keep rolling. There needs to be oversight.
• 18:26
  So the best practice I see is the steering committees are meeting
• 18:29
  on a monthly basis. Maybe even we don't have much going on,
• 18:33
  right? Maybe we just rolled something out and so it's not we're
• 18:35
  not actively working on a project.
• 18:37
  But they're still meeting and looking at metrics and talking about things that,
• 18:41
  you know, maybe need a little more focus,
• 18:43
  right? Maybe things we didn't we didn't get the results we wanted,
• 18:45
  or those results are great. What else do we need to focus on?
• 18:48
  So the best practice I see is to keep those groups meeting regularly because there
• 18:52
  is no finish line. There's always something to look at.
• 18:55
  Again, whether it's monitoring metrics,
• 18:57
  whether it's making sure we're recognizing team members for a job well done,
• 19:01
  whatever that may be.
• 19:03
  There's always work to do when it comes to the customer experience.
• 19:06
  So maintaining that group and maintaining those meetings is probably
• 19:10
  the best thing that I have seen.
• 19:12
  Again, just because it's that constant reinforcement of that service aptitude,
• 19:16
  making sure we're not taking our eye off the ball,
• 19:19
  making sure that it doesn't accidentally get dropped from onboarding because
• 19:22
  we got busy one day or whatever those things are that can get in the
• 19:24
  Right.
• 19:24
  way of a project. They're really kind of an ongoing oversight team that keeps
• 19:29
  an eye on it. Then on the ambassador level,
• 19:32
  Same thing. a lot of a lot of organizations that have ambassadors will
• 19:35
  get them together monthly. Now they may be in multiple locations,
• 19:37
  so it might be on a Zoom, it might not be together in a room,
• 19:39
  and that's fine. But they're talking about,
• 19:42
  hey, what are you seeing? Is everything still going well?
• 19:44
  Are there any any best practices that you've seen that we'd be sharing with with
• 19:48
  all of our locations? Have you seen some that maybe slipping a little bit and why?
• 19:51
  And and are things different? They'll look at scores and say this region's doing
• 19:55
  really well, this region's slipping a little bit,
• 19:56
  why is that? And sharing best practices.
• 19:58
  So
• 19:59
  It's really keeping those conversations going to me.
• 20:01
  That's that's the biggest one.
• 20:03
  And making sure that they everyone understands that this is an ongoing project.
• 20:08
  This is this is who we are as an organization,
• 20:10
  and we need to keep the focus on it.
• 20:12
  So Key Bank does that. and one of the things that they have done so well,
• 20:16
  and one of the the the benefits of it is they had their MPS score go
• 20:21
  up for I believe nine or ten quarters in a row.
• 20:25
  Right, where it just kept it was small,
• 20:26
  small incremental gains, but it just kept going up,
• 20:29
  up, up. That's a testament to their focus,
• 20:31
  right? They didn't finish the project and say,
• 20:33
  Okay, great job, everybody. What are we gonna do next?
• 20:35
  They they got that team together,
• 20:37
  they kept the focus, they kept those conversations going,
• 20:40
  and they continued to improve well after we were done creating
• 20:44
  the content and rolling it out.
• 20:45
  So there there's some payoff there too,
• 20:47
  right? If if your team's getting together and focusing on this,
• 20:50
  keeping that focus going, you're gonna continue to see results.
• 20:54
  Yeah. And so some best practices I wanna share and I I'll go from best case.
• 20:59
  you know, we had
• 21:00
  we have had clients like New Day USA that have sent over forty people through
• 21:07
  the Customer Experience Executive Academy,
• 21:09
  which then become so th those are are I I think in and and and remind me if
• 21:15
  I I have it wrong, I think those are aspiring leaders or maybe people
• 21:19
  who who have just gotten into leadership,
• 21:21
  but that's part of their their leadership development.
• 21:24
  And then they become the the customer experience steering committee.
• 21:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:28
  and then after each
• 21:30
  quarter, you know, they get back that you know,
• 21:33
  from the academy, they meet with the people,
• 21:37
  the alumni, the the people on their steering committee and talk about all right,
• 21:41
  here's what we learned, here's what we think,
• 21:43
  and and they brainstorm. Key Bank has sent several ~ you know,
• 21:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:48
  I'm trying to think of you know we have a lot of alumni companies that keep
• 21:52
  on sending several. So that's one way and but but that that that's
• 21:56
  a that's that's kind of you know what one you know
• 21:59
  extreme and then other companies have had their steering committees
• 22:04
  and ambassadors join our live streams that we have quarterly live streams
• 22:09
  so they get a taste of what the project lead is getting in the academy
• 22:14
  so that helps you know inspire innovation and ideas when they get together
• 22:18
  and as well as you know reading the the the our you know our books
• 22:22
  or you know listening to our weekly
• 22:24
  podcast. So it just they're constantly consuming the methodology that they want
• 22:30
  to reinforce.
• 22:32
  One of the things that that New Day does that I think is really cool since
• 22:35
  you brought them up, John. you're right.
• 22:37
  They send typically newly promoted managers,
• 22:40
  so first-time managers, or people they've identified as maybe
• 22:43
  an emerging leader that they want to get into leadership and they want them
• 22:47
  to have this focus. And so one of the cool things they do,
• 22:50
  they send so many people through.
• 22:52
  Obviously, that that's becoming a pretty big steering committee.
• 22:54
  But one of the things they do that's really cool is that new group that's coming
• 22:54
  Yeah.
• 22:58
  through.
• 22:59
  Is taking time to take a look back at all of the content and and just make sure that
• 23:02
  Right.
• 23:04
  everything is still relevant. You know,
• 23:05
  it's every once in a while we someone might miss that.
• 23:07
  we don't use that platform. Salesforce is gone,
• 23:10
  now it's HubSpot or whatever. And some sometimes just even changing some words
• 23:14
  in the documentation or you know,
• 23:16
  businesses change, customers change,
• 23:18
  right? So maybe, maybe something that we thought was really appropriate
• 23:22
  as a standard 10 years ago might have changed a little bit in our business,
• 23:26
  and so they wanna they wanna make some tweaks.
• 23:28
  So
• 23:28
  No, that's
• 23:28
  a good point.
• 23:29
  The cool thing they do is everything they've created are living documents
• 23:33
  and they make sure that they're updated.
• 23:34
  Evolving. Evolving.
• 23:35
  Yeah.
• 23:36
  Yeah. Because, you know, i you know,
• 23:38
  even the customer experience cycle,
• 23:40
  if it was, you know, created five,
• 23:42
  ten years ago, like you said, there's things that we we don't do anymore,
• 23:47
  or or you know, or it was a great idea ten years ago and technologies replace
• 23:51
  it or whatever, and you have to brush off the dust and update it
• 23:55
  and and then there's new challenges that have risen.
• 23:58
  So that's a new service defect and that's a new standard that you have
• 24:01
  to counter it with. So yeah.
• 24:03
  Yeah.
• 24:03
  Yeah, they they do that very, very well.
• 24:05
  And that those new classes that come through,
• 24:07
  they're told that, right? That's that's part of their their mission they're given
• 24:11
  when they're when they are told they're coming to this session
• 24:13
  is learn everything you can. We want this to help you to become
• 24:16
  a great leader within our organization.
• 24:18
  We know that it will, but also you are now responsible for making sure that
• 24:21
  all of our content out there is relevant,
• 24:23
  it's where we want it to be, and so they're constantly looking at those things,
• 24:26
  which I think is a great best practice.
• 24:28
  And one of the byproducts in in of the all this,
• 24:32
  with the you know, especially with the CX Ambassador program,
• 24:37
  which again is non leadership,
• 24:39
  frontline customer facing employees.
• 24:44
  is this helps identify your future leaders.
• 24:48
  This helps to identify, you know,
• 24:50
  we talk about this in our our our book we co-authored,
• 24:53
  The Employee Experience Revolution,
• 24:55
  in the chapter developing future leaders,
• 24:58
  that 82% of leaders are accidental managers.
• 25:04
  And it it's never the employee leader's fault
• 25:09
  that they're an accidental manager,
• 25:12
  right? And then they might have they might be check all the boxes
• 25:17
  of someone you want in leadership.
• 25:18
  However, the the the key box is we didn't prepare them.
• 25:23
  But you know, Dave, you do a great job.
• 25:25
  You model the behavior. you have you know the you know the the you know
• 25:30
  we want to promote you but we didn't prepare you for what that looks like
• 25:34
  and now you know you're you're you're not doing as well as we
• 25:38
  thought you would or you had hoped.
• 25:40
  And again, it no fault of you being an accidental manager.
• 25:45
  So this helps prepare people and identify that they're really serious.
• 25:46
  Yes.
• 25:50
  I mean they're really running with this or they're kind of serious in
• 25:54
  the in the initial but it they they've been hired to you know get engaged.
• 25:59
  And and that helps you. That helps you know you know that they're they're they're
• 26:03
  a future leader.
• 26:05
  And you're 100% right on that accidental manager comment,
• 26:08
  John. And what what really happens at the end of the day
• 26:10
  is organizations when they're promoting someone don't look at the right metrics
• 26:14
  or or all the metrics, right? So maybe you're the best salesperson,
• 26:18
  you were the best producer, whatever it was.
• 26:20
  We want to we wanna reward you,
• 26:21
  but we don't look at the metrics on the soft skills of being a great leader.
• 26:26
  Are you gonna inspire your team?
• 26:27
  Are you gonna be a great coach?
• 26:28
  Are you gonna do continuing training?
• 26:30
  Right? Does that excite you? Right?
• 26:31
  So a lot of times.
• 26:32
  We're putting people in those managerial roles that would much rather just keep
• 26:35
  producing, just keep doing the job,
• 26:37
  and not oversee a team. It's not really part of what they want to do,
• 26:40
  or they accept the position because they feel like it's the next natural step,
• 26:43
  and I have to do this to build my career.
• 26:45
  But I'd much rather just smile and dial and be a salesperson or whatever their role
• 26:49
  was. And that happens all the time.
• 26:51
  And so you're right, sending them through the CX Academy as a way to train them
• 26:57
  on how to lead, especially within this culture that we're trying to create.
• 27:01
  And another best practice I've seen that that's similar,
• 27:03
  obviously CXE CXEA Academy would be great for that.
• 27:06
  But we've also worked with some clients that have gone through
• 27:09
  our world-class leadership workshop,
• 27:11
  right? And basically the deliverable of that is a playbook of how
• 27:15
  we want our leaders to lead within our service-focused culture,
• 27:19
  right? So it's not just looking at driving results,
• 27:22
  it's holistic, it's all the soft skills that we just talked about.
• 27:24
  But where I'm going with this,
• 27:26
  the best practice that I've seen is we have some clients.
• 27:29
  That then turn that into a training session.
• 27:31
  So if you are promoted into a managerial supervisory,
• 27:34
  whatever role it is, before you actually get your team,
• 27:37
  you have to go through that session,
• 27:38
  right? You can't get in front of your team until you know you've learned,
• 27:43
  hey, this is how we lead here at this organization.
• 27:46
  This is how we want you to have your one-on-one meetings or whatever those things
• 27:50
  might be, right? So that's part of it.
• 27:51
  We've also had a couple of clients that I thought this was a pretty cool best
• 27:54
  practice. A couple of clients who took it a step further.
• 27:58
  And offer that class to anyone,
• 28:00
  right? And so if you if you were thinking about going for a promotion,
• 28:03
  if you were thinking about becoming a manager or a supervisor,
• 28:06
  you had to take that class first.
• 28:08
  It was actually a prerequisite before you could actually apply for that job.
• 28:11
  So they knew you were you were serious,
• 28:11
  I love that.
• 28:13
  you were interested, you knew how to lead within the culture and you were prepared.
• 28:18
  You know, and and and what I really like about that and
• 28:22
  I kinda will compare it to my youngest son Bo right now is has
• 28:28
  a a summer internship.
• 28:30
  at a great financial company, MAI in Cleveland,
• 28:35
  one of the top financial companies in the US.
• 28:37
  And so he got lucky and and got a great internship.
• 28:40
  And and you know when he's telling me about some experiences that other people
• 28:44
  are other interns are having is they are realizing so so obviously a
• 28:49
  a great benefit of a an internship
• 28:53
  And what you're saying is, you know,
• 28:55
  w to learn what it will be to be successful in this career.
• 28:58
  But one of the hidden benefits is that Bo's telling me that some
• 28:59
  Uh-huh.
• 29:03
  of his his co-interns have realized is I don't want this.
• 29:08
  This isn't for me. And what a great thing.
• 29:08
  Yeah. Sure. Mm-hmm.
• 29:12
  Not that that you know, not i in in your case where you talk about
• 29:15
  the prerequisite of
• 29:17
  Not not that they don't want to work for the company,
• 29:19
  but they don't want the leadership isn't what they thought or,
• 29:22
  you know, it's too big of an ass.
• 29:23
  And that's, you know, what you know,
• 29:26
  just as valuable to be able to walk away and say,
• 29:29
  you know, I dodged a bullet. I would have been unsuccessful in in leadership
• 29:34
  or in this career. and you don't want to find that out,
• 29:38
  you know, two years, five years down the road.
• 29:40
  so I love that. I think that's great.
• 29:43
  Yeah, so you know, I'll give you another example too,
• 29:46
  because having that class that a potential leader has to go through,
• 29:49
  a lot of times what they're talking about are some of the requirements
• 29:52
  of being a leader. For example,
• 29:54
  do we require our leaders to have one on one meetings with their team members
• 29:57
  on a weekly or a monthly basis and we have a template for that or
• 30:02
  or whatever that may be. We want you to coach,
• 30:03
  all these things. And so a lot of times when I get that promotion and
• 30:06
  I didn't have that information,
• 30:08
  I might not realize how time consuming this is,
• 30:11
  right? That
• 30:11
  th this is this is gonna be a big chunk of my day.
• 30:13
  Yeah, I'm still gonna be required to do some of the work I have been doing,
• 30:17
  which I like, but now my focus really has to change.
• 30:20
  And I think a lot of people don't realize that.
• 30:22
  A lot of people just think that I'm gonna get promoted.
• 30:24
  I keep doing what I do and I answer questions occasionally.
• 30:27
  And that's definitely not the case.
• 30:29
  Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been super enlightening,
• 30:32
  Dave. I really appreciate your wealth of knowledge and you've helped helped remind
• 30:37
  me of so many key things as we work with our clients and helping them prepare
• 30:41
  to be successful long after we have left the building.
• 30:46
  So I really appreciate this. thank you so much,
• 30:49
  Dave. Thank you, Revolutionaries,
• 30:50
  All right, John, thanks for having me.
• 30:52
  for another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast,
• 30:55
  and we will see you next week.