Latest / Authentic Living / Transforming Customer Experience: Insights from Tom Dewitt on Feedback, Technology, and Human Touch
Transcript
- 0:01Welcome to Authentic Living with Roxanne, a place where we have conscious conversations
- 0:08about things that really matter in our lives.
- 0:12And now here's your host, Roxanne Durhaj.
- 0:40Hi, everyone.
- 0:41It's Roxanne Durhonch.
- 0:42Thanks for tuning in again this week to authentic living with Roxanne.
- 0:46Today, have a special colleague, Tom Duet.
- 0:48Tom has done a lot in the global ecosystem of customer experience.
- 0:53So, Tom, welcome to the podcast today.
- 0:56Thank you.
- 0:56It's great being here.
- 0:57So let me tell you a little bit about him.
- 0:59He's a PhD and the founder of Exm Global Collaborative, a global ecosystem created for
- 1:04customer experience and management practitioners' professional development.
- 1:09He's the founder of CXF at MSU and the academic director of masters of science at customer
- 1:16experience at Broad College of Business in Michigan State.
- 1:20He's has over twenty years of experience.
- 1:23So, Tom, just kinda tell us kind of what what kind of brings you to the path of customer
- 1:29experience, and where where's the focus today?
- 1:32I know we're in, I'm gonna say, a bit of a tilt with where things are going in the world.
- 1:38Aren't we always?
- 1:38My my interest on the field started when I was 14 years old working as a busboy in a
- 1:45restaurant.
- 1:46That was my first paid job.
- 1:48And I came to realize that I could impact the lives of people positively.
- 1:54And I set out on a career in the hospitality industry.
- 1:57I have a culinary degree.
- 1:59I have a four year degree in hospitality management.
- 2:02And along the way, I was always intrigued by two things.
- 2:06One, how consumers chose and navigated experiences, hospitality and otherwise, and
- 2:15also how they were impacted by the employees that they engaged with, and how employees
- 2:21approached their roles.
- 2:23So I worked in senior management positions in the hospitality industry, both in The US and in
- 2:30Asia, before embarking on my PhD in services marketing, which is really a predecessor or
- 2:38laid early groundwork for the field of customer experience management.
- 2:43And for those of your listeners that don't quite know what it means, customer experience
- 2:48management is really the purposeful design and execution on the experiences that customers
- 2:56have with their organization.
- 2:58Much of it is very process driven, process design, but it also takes into consideration
- 3:04all of the physical attributes or sensory attributes that influence customers'
- 3:10perceptions, as well as the people they engage with.
- 3:15So in its totality, Lou Carbone would classify experiences in three different categories of
- 3:22clues.
- 3:23Functional clues are everything that goes into producing a product or service, like getting
- 3:30your lunch order or your coffee order right, and the human clues, which are the clues given
- 3:37off by all of the human beings in the environment, including service personnel.
- 3:42And then let's see functional.
- 3:46Well, humanic and then mechanic clues are all of the sensory cues.
- 3:53So, you know, as a consumer, when we go into experience, we're taking all that in.
- 3:58But, you know, conversely, and this is where our industry comes in, understanding who those
- 4:04consumers are and what brought them there and what their goals were, are not only in terms of
- 4:10functional outcomes, but also emotional outcomes.
- 4:13Because one thing that we realize, the majority, the vast majority of decisions that
- 4:18consumers make are based on emotions and desired emotional state.
- 4:23So that's really key as well.
- 4:25Throw into this mix that consumers today make most of their decisions based not on
- 4:34advertising, but on the reviews and feedback that they get from other people.
- 4:41And technology just fuels this.
- 4:43So if you ask a group of people, what do you trust more?
- 4:47A third party review from somebody you've never met, or an advertisement from a company,
- 4:53overwhelmingly, they point to the reviews.
- 4:55And the reviews are the results of people's experiences.
- 5:00So now businesses have a vested interest in the quality of the experiences they deliver,
- 5:06because customers are making decisions based on desired emotional states.
- 5:10They're making decisions largely on the quality of the experience.
- 5:14That's a huge thing.
- 5:16And if a company does good or does well in that endeavor, then customers say good things about
- 5:23them, which will impact the decisions of other people.
- 5:28And that's not even taking into consideration the value of customer loyalty and what that
- 5:33means in terms of consumer spending over the years and how they influence other people.
- 5:40So this is really what we've seen in the past thirty years, I guess, is a move away from a
- 5:46very product centric transactional business model that's around here.
- 5:50We're going to develop this product.
- 5:52We're gonna market the heck out of it.
- 5:54We're gonna sell a lot.
- 5:55We're gonna make a lot of money.
- 5:57And it's more about understanding when people set out on experiences, what are they trying
- 6:04accomplish?
- 6:05And what are its nuances, not just in the functionality?
- 6:08Like, you know, I always like to talk about restaurants.
- 6:12It's not just the quality of the food, but it's the environment in which it's provided, right?
- 6:17And the mood that that sets.
- 6:19It's the people in which we engage in.
- 6:21And that can change based on the context.
- 6:25Are you meeting?
- 6:25Are you on a date?
- 6:27Is it a family reunion?
- 6:28And it's really understanding that and being able to deliver on it and adapt to it makes
- 6:35what we do.
- 6:37So you did mention things of we've had these swings and things that have really driven our
- 6:44field for about ten, fifteen years.
- 6:47It was about surveys and measurements, NPS scores and customer effort scores.
- 6:53And we're hearing all about AI and the use of AI in different aspects of the experience from
- 6:59research, data collection, data analysis.
- 7:04We hear a lot about chat baits and generative AI being used by call centers.
- 7:09In fact, I wouldn't even call it a conversation, but I had an interaction with a
- 7:14computer for about ten minutes.
- 7:16Didn't fully get things resolved.
- 7:18And that's one of the issues.
- 7:20So one of the things we're facing as an industry right now is a lot of these decisions
- 7:24are being made based on cost savings or the belief that organizations are gonna save money
- 7:31by using AI.
- 7:32But unfortunately, the majority of AI initiatives and experience management aren't
- 7:37meeting their ROI projections.
- 7:39So I think we're still in a state of flux.
- 7:42But AI is here to stay.
- 7:45And if used properly, it makes people more productive, and we'll be able to do a better
- 7:50job in experience management.
- 7:52So you're talking about reviews.
- 7:53Right?
- 7:53I I was at an event recently.
- 7:55We were talking about Reddit, for instance.
- 7:57Yep.
- 7:58And the impact on things like Reddit and Quora and marketing now, how much more the impact of
- 8:04YouTube is with engagement, those types of things.
- 8:07And now you throw in that little splice that you just gave in about the AI kind of bot
- 8:13that's kind of maybe dealing with a lot of things because companies are implementing it.
- 8:19So if I let's say I go to a high end restaurant, I have an expectation, like you
- 8:24said, if I'm gonna spend a couple $100 for a nice meal to feel a certain way.
- 8:30But let's say something's off.
- 8:32Right?
- 8:32Maybe I've gone there a lot.
- 8:34The odds are the more likely I'm gonna kinda not I've gotta kinda shelve it under onetime
- 8:39experience.
- 8:41Do you find that in this economy right now, are people still more likely to stay with a brand
- 8:47that they've always liked if there's a one off, or are they more likely to kind of be reactive
- 8:52and go in, you know, write the review and those types of things?
- 8:57So a couple things going on here.
- 8:58I'm glad you touched on this area because I enjoy it.
- 9:01The reality is we wanna be in monogamous relationships with brands we can trust.
- 9:06Right?
- 9:07And the the reality is, to your point, the longer we're in a relationship, the higher is
- 9:12the trust.
- 9:13So two things happen here.
- 9:15One, we're more forgiving.
- 9:16So it's like, you know, your point, you go, that was a one off.
- 9:19The other thing that happens is because we value that relationship so much, and we want to
- 9:26see it endure, and we want to see them do well, oftentimes we'll provide feedback because we
- 9:33want it fixed.
- 9:34As opposed to the person who hasn't been there very long, they see a mistake and they go,
- 9:38Well, I'm not coming here anymore.
- 9:41I'm gonna go someplace else.
- 9:43To that point, you know, technology has lowered switching costs.
- 9:47So when you think about what it used to take to find alternatives and evaluate them, it was a
- 9:53very laborious, you know?
- 9:56You had to go to the yellow pages.
- 9:57Remember those?
- 9:58Tomorrow, you're gonna learn.
- 9:59There's no internet.
- 10:01Where are you gonna learn about the food quality?
- 10:03Switching costs were so much higher.
- 10:05When you try another restaurant, well, where are you gonna go and why?
- 10:09Well, now you can do like I do.
- 10:11I go to my phone.
- 10:12My favorite search feature is restaurants near me.
- 10:15And I go through there, I look at the high scoring, and I look it's important to invest in
- 10:21the relationship with your customers, and to consistently offer repeated satisfactory
- 10:28encounters, which means you need to know what they expect and why, and you need to be able to
- 10:35deliver on that consistently.
- 10:36And technology can help you to do that, but you gotta be able to deliver at a high level,
- 10:41right?
- 10:42And that's why I still think there's a strong desire for human interaction.
- 10:47Technology can do certain things.
- 10:50It doesn't need to be at a high end restaurant.
- 10:52I go to Panera quite often and use their app to great advantage for ordering and tracking and
- 11:00rewards points and things like that.
- 11:02But where they often fail is maybe because of staffing shortages come up and there will be a
- 11:10note on the door excusing the service today because they're shorthand.
- 11:15So as an organization, if you go all in on technology, you ignore your people and the
- 11:21internal processes that drive employee engagement, how they feel about their job and
- 11:27how they feel about the organization, you can fail in that way too.
- 11:31Right?
- 11:32Yeah.
- 11:32Don't
- 11:33And I've been like, you know, well, of course, I talk about the ROR, right, which is all about
- 11:37relationship.
- 11:37Like, you know, it's so common.
- 11:39It's one thing it's one thing too, like, with your management.
- 11:43I often talk about with employees.
- 11:45They may have a beef, or they may have a disgruntled kind of perspective or
- 11:49diametrically opposed kind of position from yourself and kind of what the vision and the
- 11:54mission is for the environment.
- 11:55But I think it's sometimes listening to a different perspective, which may have validity.
- 12:00It doesn't mean it needs to be negated altogether.
- 12:03But it's when you kind of like, I was recently talking to somebody about the generations in
- 12:07the workforce at present, right, and the newer generation and how they are coming from working
- 12:12and leading from a different spacing.
- 12:14We we call them entitled or they're coming in and they have different goals, say, compared to
- 12:19the baby boomers or stuff like that.
- 12:21And, ultimately, you're still having to manage all those individuals.
- 12:25And you wanna lead them to success, obviously, to your brand or whatever.
- 12:29How open do you think from the companies that you're dealing with that are very successful to
- 12:35that diametrically opposed position with some of the different decision making.
- 12:40Yeah.
- 12:41I would say not that they're diametrically opposed.
- 12:43Maybe the value system is different, but not in a bad way.
- 12:47You know, what I've seen the younger generation is they put a higher value on quality of life.
- 12:53Our generation, we just work way too hard.
- 12:56Know, I admire the younger generation for that.
- 12:59You know, my daughter, you know, in terms of her physical health, her mental health, and
- 13:03she's much more well rounded.
- 13:06I think that's a good thing.
- 13:07I guess the overriding principle for me is if you have a truly customer centric organization,
- 13:15or maybe you don't call it customer centric, but everyone wants to feel like they're part of
- 13:21something bigger than themselves, right?
- 13:23They want to feel that what they do every day matters.
- 13:26And I would argue maybe the younger generation feels that more than my generation did.
- 13:32Particularly if you're a customer centric organization, it's easier to make that
- 13:37connection, right?
- 13:38Whether you work in accounting or you work a frontline role, if I understand you as an
- 13:43individual and why you're there, what you're hoping to get out of your work, And I'm helping
- 13:49to develop you in that role and show you a path forward, but also help you to understand how
- 13:55you're part of a greater group of people that's here to understand and meet the needs of their
- 14:02customers in a meaningful way.
- 14:04Now, isn't that worth getting out of bed for every day and going to work?
- 14:09As opposed to not knowing, which is often the case that I've seen, where employees don't know
- 14:16much about the vision or mission or direction of their organization or its values or how they
- 14:22fit in.
- 14:23And you think about how that affects your psyche and leaves you open to leaving when
- 14:30things go wrong.
- 14:31Companies should be in the business of serving, understanding and serving the needs of their
- 14:36customers.
- 14:38And being profitable allows them to continue to do so.
- 14:42I think if I work for a company like that, and that's how we operate every day, I'd feel
- 14:48pretty good about what we do.
- 14:50And my research has shown that.
- 14:52I've run measurement scales, internal samples and organizations, multiple organizations,
- 14:59measure customer centricity and employee engagement.
- 15:04And not surprisingly, they're very highly correlated on many dimensions.
- 15:09Because I think that resonates with people, whether it's the younger generation or the
- 15:15older generation, maybe more so with the younger generation.
- 15:19I think you're right.
- 15:20But that's where we come down to leadership or management levels or supervisory.
- 15:25And, you know, the frontline people are so key fundamentally.
- 15:29Right?
- 15:29And they are touching the customer that's walking through that door if it's a physical
- 15:34environment or if it's a digital environment.
- 15:36There's still a feel that you wanna experience.
- 15:38And, you know Exactly.
- 15:39When I was an executive in health and wellness, for instance, huge company.
- 15:44And, you know, oftentimes, when I would get concerns about the quality of service, you
- 15:50know, initially, I would deal with them alone, Tom, because it was a smaller company.
- 15:54You know, my accountant were attached to me.
- 15:56The how much the company had grown.
- 16:10But what ended up happening is the quality of that touch point when there was a concern got
- 16:17removed from myself as the executive.
- 16:20So the length of time that it sometimes took to resolution got longer, and clients would, you
- 16:27know, just be horrified.
- 16:28Right?
- 16:29Like, I mean, someone's been sitting on a line.
- 16:31For instance, they're calling in for psychological service.
- 16:34Hopefully, they've been triaged, and there's nothing physical, but, generally, it wasn't
- 16:37any, you know, critical.
- 16:38But they still would time the the length of time oftentimes.
- 16:42And into the contract, some things would say it has to be within a certain times.
- 16:46And then every quarter, as they increase the suppose supposedly efficiency of quality
- 16:52assurance, the length of time got longer and longer to resolution.
- 16:56Yep.
- 16:56So you had these absent companies freaking out.
- 16:59Right?
- 17:00And we would obviously try to kind of address things.
- 17:04But what was most important in me, myself, as the executive running the accounts was the
- 17:08relationship I had.
- 17:09So I could pick up that phone and say, well, you know, when Tom called in, you know, from
- 17:14Buffalo, you know, the wait times were black.
- 17:17This is what happened.
- 17:18This is what we've done to address it.
- 17:20But because there were so many levels, by the time that I got to people already peeved.
- 17:24So I couldn't by the time the explanation would have gotten to them, they were already saying,
- 17:29when your other customers do clients do this, please do this, and then it ended up being a
- 17:34big thing.
- 17:34So with bigger companies today, what are they doing to address kind of that lag time?
- 17:41Okay.
- 17:42We have systems, like you said, AI.
- 17:44Right?
- 17:44But are there certain things that you're seeing that's working and that's not working out
- 17:49there?
- 17:49Yeah.
- 17:49Well, it all comes back to the fundamental principles for complaint handling and
- 17:54resolution.
- 17:55First of all, people want interactional justice.
- 17:59They want to feel that what they're coming to you with is understood and it's valued.
- 18:10So they want apologies.
- 18:12They want you to take ownership of it, right?
- 18:15Be understanding.
- 18:16It's hard to do that with technology in a meaningful way.
- 18:19Particularly people figure out they're talking to a computer.
- 18:22You know?
- 18:22They're like, okay.
- 18:23Whatever.
- 18:24You know?
- 18:24Am I talking to a human today or wherever?
- 18:26Right?
- 18:27Yeah.
- 18:27They want procedural justice.
- 18:29Make it easy for me to do this.
- 18:32And part of that procedural justice is informing people of wait times.
- 18:38It's saying what you're seeing a lot with technology now is we can call you back.
- 18:42Would you like to be called back at this number?
- 18:45Now, you think about that.
- 18:46Now all of sudden, I can hang up the phone and go back to what I was doing.
- 18:50I can forget about it, right?
- 18:52And then they call me back.
- 18:53So that's really key, procedural justice.
- 18:56And then distributive justice is a resolution fair.
- 19:01And I think it's understanding the extent, the amount of damage that's been caused.
- 19:07And it's not always about giving things away.
- 19:09Often it's just answering their question or providing them with a solution that meets the
- 19:15problem that they came to you with.
- 19:18And sometimes you can do that with technology, with chatbots and so forth, with a large enough
- 19:24database, they're able to identify the appropriate solution pretty quick.
- 19:30But two of the biggest reasons why AI initiatives and contact centers don't meet
- 19:37their ARYI is from a lack of sufficient data.
- 19:42So you ask a question and it queries, I don't have an answer to that question right now.
- 19:46Or you may want to, well, that just frustrates you more, right?
- 19:50Or a failure to integrate with existing systems.
- 19:54So I think oftentimes organizations rush into this a little too fast with cost savings as the
- 20:02primary driver rather than improving the quality of the outcomes.
- 20:07And that should always be their primary focus.
- 20:11Right?
- 20:11So I think that's you know, there's a potential there, but it's a matter of melding both
- 20:18technology and humanity and human beings in that conversation.
- 20:24And I think
- 20:24And we're not there yet.
- 20:25Well, not a lot of companies We're way off.
- 20:28Well, a lot of companies are trying to get to it quicker and implementing and thinking about
- 20:33this broad brush of of we're gonna just implement all the AI strategies, and it's good
- 20:37to they're feeling the human the human the human element is getting lost.
- 20:42And, you know, with the human element being lost, then they they perceive that that's gonna
- 20:47address all the concerns.
- 20:48Like you said, their bottom line is gonna be you know, a certain amount's gonna be shaved
- 20:51off, and we'll be all good.
- 20:52And then you have your massive your human capital kinda leaving and going out in droves
- 20:58because they're like, you know, when you're working for a company, you're getting
- 21:01consistence, like, for for this particular company.
- 21:04After a while, they had grown so quick in such a short period of time, so they didn't kind of
- 21:09plan proactively for the the extent of their growth.
- 21:12Unfortunately, as the leaders got deeper with myself as an executive, the complaints were the
- 21:17same.
- 21:18And then you're just hoping that you can rely on the relationship.
- 21:22But after a while, you can't go back and say, I'm so sorry.
- 21:25By the way, we've chopped a minute off, but now something else has gone awry.
- 21:29So I think it's looking at what strategies are you gonna implement because you're looking at
- 21:34the outcomes.
- 21:34And then how is your faithful customers that are gonna stay with you?
- 21:38They're still gonna be upset if now the quality kind of dips at a certain level as well.
- 21:43Absolutely.
- 21:44Now I know you are the were the a a timeline crutch for you today.
- 21:49But based on the economy today and for companies that are really, really looking to
- 21:55hold on to what business is and really continue to strive to increase business and keep the
- 22:02good customers that they have at present and attract new?
- 22:06Are there a couple of points that companies should be thinking about on the customer
- 22:10experience end to insurance?
- 22:13Well,
- 22:15you know, first of all, look at your core competencies.
- 22:17Don't look for quick fixes.
- 22:19You know, truly understand what it means to be a customer centric organization in terms of
- 22:24your day to day operating practice and how customer experience management fits into that.
- 22:30Invest in qualitative research.
- 22:33There are so many limitations to survey data, so many.
- 22:37Invest in qualitative research.
- 22:39We still need to do depth interviews, whether they're done virtually or in person.
- 22:45Take the time to understand where your customers are coming from and what they're
- 22:49trying to accomplish.
- 22:51And create purposely driven experiences that are focused on both functional and emotional
- 22:59outcomes for the consumer.
- 23:02And be conscious of the clues that I've laid out in every touchpoint and how do they
- 23:06reinforce that?
- 23:07How are they moving them closer?
- 23:09Whether it's an insurance product, you name it.
- 23:12It could be anything, right?
- 23:13There's a reason why I go to Panera.
- 23:15It's not the coffee.
- 23:16The coffee's good.
- 23:17But it's because the environment provides me with a setting where I can work and relax and
- 23:22everything, right?
- 23:23So you got to be conscious of all that.
- 23:26And then continuously improve.
- 23:29Customer needs and desires are changing constantly, as is their ability to utilize
- 23:34technology.
- 23:36And then maybe the last thing is utilize technology to improve your core competencies.
- 23:43Not to save money, but to make you more productive.
- 23:47You'll be more profitable.
- 23:48But choosing and using AI, it has to come based on what is it gonna help you to improve and how
- 23:56and not cost savings.
- 23:58Right?
- 23:58Not cost savings.
- 23:59Not the bottom line.
- 24:00The not the bottom line again.
- 24:02Yep.
- 24:03So for people that are wanting to learn more now that we have you have a conference coming
- 24:08up.
- 24:09Yep.
- 24:09You wanna tell people a little bit about it.
- 24:11I'm also a keynote speaker at the event.
- 24:14Tom, tell people a little bit about it if they want are interested in signing up and learning
- 24:18more about it.
- 24:19Sure.
- 24:19Well, they can learn more about me on LinkedIn.
- 24:22I'm Tom DeWitt, PhD.
- 24:24I think I'm the only one there.
- 24:26The Exm Global Collaborative.
- 24:28There, they can learn more or they can go to our website, www.xmgc.org.
- 24:34And there they can learn about our conference, the XM Global three sixty.
- 24:40We're offering two programs Hemisphere beginning in Hanoi at 9AM on May 21.
- 24:49And then the Western Hemisphere at 9AM Eastern Standard Time in New York City.
- 24:56Three forty five minute sessions.
- 24:58Each one you can choose from one of four to five different sessions.
- 25:04So people have choices.
- 25:06And all the sessions are recorded.
- 25:09So you'll be able to watch them.
- 25:10You have up to thirty days platform to watch your recordings.
- 25:15And if you become a member of the collaborative, you can can watch them through
- 25:20your member portal that every member has.
- 25:23Awesome.
- 25:25Well, Tom, thanks so much for your time.
- 25:27And I also have the privilege, like I said, on presenting on the elements of relationship and
- 25:33the bottom line, the ROR, which is the return versus the investment.
- 25:38So I will be putting a link in the show notes so that if you're interested in attending and
- 25:43and signing up and and joining the the collaborative, that would be a great thing.
- 25:50So, again, Tom, thanks so much.
- 25:51And for everybody
- 25:52Thank you, Roxanne.
- 25:53Thank you.
- 25:54Anybody looking to connect about the ROR masterclass, just reach out to me at Roxanne at
- 25:59Roxanne Durhodge dot com for more details.
- 26:02Again, thank you, Tom.
- 26:04And, everyone, take care.
- 26:05We'll talk to you soon.
- 26:06Bye bye.
- 26:06Take care.
- 26:07Thanks, Roxanne.
- 26:09Thanks for tuning in to Authentic Living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive,
- 26:14healthy change.
- 26:16Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach.
- 26:20To work with Roxanne, visit roxannedurhaj.com/blueprint.
- 26:26We'll see you next time on Authentic Living with Roxanne.