The CX Leader Podcast: "The Innovative CX Leader": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "The Innovative CX Leader": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Pat:
As CX professionals, we strive to better understand our customers and develop the best possible experiences for them. But how do we come up with the best ideas? How do we operationalize them, and how do we find the time and resources for such innovations?

Jonathan:
So you have this practitioner mentality which you really need because you want to deliver a consistent experience, but then you have kind of your CX innovation thinker and this person is thinking about what is the future look like to ensure that that experience that we're delivering is best in class, that is innovative, is better than the rest of the market.

Pat:
Innovation and CX on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Pat:
Hello, everyone. I'm Pat Gibbons. Guest host for The CX Leader Podcast, filling in today for Steve Walker. And I'm glad you're listening. As we like to say on this podcast, it's never been a better time to be a CX leader. And we explore topics and themes to help leaders like you deliver amazing experiences for your customers. So tell me if this sounds familiar. You know, there are a number of ways to design a better experience for your customers, but you're stuck. You find it hard to think beyond how things are currently done. And even if you had some sort of breakthrough idea changing your current processes and getting others on board, well, it seems pretty daunting. And yet you wonder, "what if?" Well, just maybe this episode's guest can provide some ideas and motivation for you. Jonathan Shroyer is the chief CX experience innovation officer for Arise Virtual Solutions, a company providing home based technology for customer support services. Jonathan, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast.

Jonathan:
Patrick Thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast, to be among the leaders that have shared some ideas, some thoughts that can help your listeners and help those CX leaders out there that are trying to think about the future and build that that future for their customers.

Pat:
Yeah, you know, I'm really excited for today's discussion because I think so much of CX is kind of past based. And here's what I mean by that. And I'll say upfront, somebody might debate this, but I think so much of the customer experience kind of movement has come out of kind of the research industry. You know, it's developed from the standpoint of, well, let's try to understand our customers, let's get their feedback, let's try to figure out what we're doing wrong and so forth. There's a lot of time and effort put into that, but maybe not as much into how we change, how we innovate, how we really come up with some creative ways to develop great experiences for our customers. Do you kind of run into that in your work as well?

Jonathan:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting, you you kind of have individuals that I'll call it academic, so they'll academically talk about customer experience. This is what you should do. This is what the research says and those types of things. But you don't often find those individuals kind of pass over into the application of their academia, if that makes sense. And then what ends up happening is large companies or CX leaders that are out there that would love to do all that research and then apply it. They don't have the resources or their companies focus elsewhere, and so they're focused on running the business. And so you don't see a lot of companies, if they're smaller than a Fortune 10 company that have large R&D budgets, that can kind of go across that entire ecosystem of imagining it, researching it, coming up with it, and then applying it. So I agree with what you said.

Pat:
But yeah, no, that's great. Well, let me back up and let's provide some context. Tell us a little about your background, how you got into CX and how you got where you are today.

Jonathan:
Well, it's kind of I mean, I don't know if it's an interesting story. It's kind of in some cases that a lot of CX leaders out there may relate to it. I started off as an agent on the phones back in 1999. I think that was my first job, and I kind of fell in love with the idea of helping people, you know, that it's like when you think about a core value that a person has that's going to go to their DNA. I've always felt my best self when I was helping somebody else. And so the service industry, that kind of the secret which became the CX industry always was something I was very interested in, passionate about something I wanted to do every day. And then as I started, I was at a younger age. Then in my twenties I built out a 20 year plan and I said, Hey, if I want to help people, eventually I can have the most impact if I run if I run a company that can help people. Right? And so I said, well, how do I do that? Like I'm 21 or whatever? And so I built out what I thought would be a 20 year plan that would eventually help we learn all the things that I need to learn in operations and services and finance and marketing, all these other different things. And so I would intentionally take different roles in different companies, always with kind of that service and that service angle. But learning something new, like I was a finance analyst at Microsoft, I was a director of customer service at Monster, I was a senior director at Symantec.

Jonathan:
And then I wanted to get up into the startup world to figure out, like, how do you build a company, right? And so then I joined Postmates and Kabam and Forte Labs, and then I got to the point where like, Hey, I think I'm ready. So I was about 41 at the time, which is ironically the end of my 20 year plan. And I was like, I should just I should go create my own services company. It's something I'm passionate about. And so me and my co-founder, Scott McCabe, we spun out of Forte Labs, which is a startup that we were with at the time. It's a blockchain gaming platform company. Kevin Chu, who's the chairman there, he gave us our our $150,000 loan and said, hey, go, go try your dream of building a CX company that can really deliver value. So we did we did that for for two or three years. And then just recently, last November via Arise Virtual Solutions, they bought us and they brought us in to run not only the gaming side of the business because we have a lot of experience in gaming, but also consulting and what the CX lab does, innovation and so forth, because they love that when we built out a system, we built it from the from the point of view, it's like, what do practitioners need day in and day out? And how can we help them do that? And that's that's where I invented the service tech maturity model, which we'll dig into when we talk about the CX cloud later. But that's kind of a little bit about my history and my passion.

Pat:
No, that's great. You know, it's a good lesson for any young CX professionals listening today, you know, to come up with the 5, 10, 20 year plan to really think about where are you going rather than just letting life, you know, go on and and you jump around. So that's that's a really neat, neat story. So let's talk a little bit about in the CX world in a do you find that people get stuck? You know, we kind of mentioned that there's times where you can get so close to the business and maybe so close to listening to customer feedback and everything. And and I'm not trying to minimize that. That's very important that you're using that feedback to really understand your customers. But sometimes really coming up with the idea is you got to step outside of your day to day to get it done. How do you go about it?

Jonathan:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. So when you look at like put yourself in the shoes of a practitioner, right? And so what ends up happening is a practitioner, even the most skilled practitioner starts to get into a rhythm, which is pretty normal, right? Because you want to run a business, you generally want the business to run smoothly. Of course you're going to have ebbs and flows and whatnot. And then you you as a practitioner, then you build up plans to manage those ebbs and flows to get the business to that, to run smoothly. Right. So you have this practitioner mentality which you really need because you want to deliver a consistent experience, right? That's that's kind of words that we use a lot in the CX world. But then you have kind of your CX innovation thinker who isn't necessarily responsible for running the day to day. And this person is thinking about what is the future look like, what is, what are, what are we going to do in five years, in ten years, in 15 years to ensure that that experience that we're delivering is best in class, that is innovative, is better than the rest of the market. And those two individuals, those two I call them mindsets.

Jonathan:
They, they don't clash, but they disrupt each other a little bit. Right. And so it's hard to get one individual to have both of those mindsets. And so I think this is what you're talking about, is that tension happens. There's oh, I need to deliver these metrics and this consistency. Oh, but now I need to think about the future. And so what we found is and why we created the lab is if you can create a space where those practitioners can break away, it's almost like a palette cleanse, break away for a day and break away for two days and not think about the consistent thing that they need to do every day. Let their teams max but start to imagine in dream about the future. And then you give them a framework or a model that helps them to then think about, okay, well, how do I take what I'm imagining and what I'm dreaming about? And then put it into app strategy and application strategy and tactics, right? So then at some point in my future, I can transform the business, right? And so that's what we do in the lab here is we give people the opportunity to think differently, to imagine, to dream, to have that palette cleanse.

Jonathan:
We have activities, we have frameworks, all the different things that you might expect in a lab. And most importantly, we've done a lot of the research. So when these practitioners come in here, they all have to go do a lot of research. We, we, we have that available and they can leverage that. And so that's what we think is powerful about the lab. And the reason why I created a lab was because I used to be a practitioner for many, many years. Right. And I could never find that space and I could never find that time because I had to do this stuff and I didn't have somebody in my company. So we're like, Hey, what about this? Or What about that? I was just naturally like a strategic thinker. But then I had this tension and I always focused on delivery and results. And so I was like, Hey, when I create my own company, I need to help people like me just have a space. It doesn't need to be like all of the time. It can be once a quarter. Right, but just have that space.

Pat:
Yeah. So you know what's kind of interesting I think in historically, you know, there's been a lot of, you know, organizations or labs or whatever focused on product design, you know, something that you can hold in your hand, something that's tangible, but probably not as much on experience design. And maybe you can just give us a little bit of how does that work? Maybe give us a few examples of maybe how a group of people have gone through the process that you facilitate.

Jonathan:
Yeah, I mean, our certain segment maturity model is really great because the way that we think about the customer experience is the first time that they touch a product, whether it's a digital product, a physical product. And so when we, when we bring individuals in for kind of our brainstorming and our CX lab sessions, we don't just bring the leaders from the title CX positions, right? We invite product leaders, we invite marketing leaders, we invite QA testing leaders, we invite all types of individuals and we say, hey, the future customer is going to leave you based off of the experience that they're having with your product at any given minute. So it's no longer like, hey, service can be a differentiator on its own. It has to be differentiation from the initiation of when you have those product design discussions. Experience design has to be a seat at the table. And so we, we set it up. So we brought in a gaming client a couple of years ago and they were struggling with that connection between the gaming product itself when the product went through game testing and then ultimately when it was experienced on the mobile phone and then what issues that the CX team had to deal with. Right? And so what we did is we pulled together a huge long wall that we have, and we pulled together the entire gaming player, the entire player journey.

Jonathan:
And we talk step by step of inside of the maturity model, like where are your players falling down? Where are your players having issues? And have you been thinking about at the experience in the product design level about those issues? Or have you just been saying, hey, we know how to create a product that's best for our clients and our customers, so we'll create it. And then customer service, customer experience, figure out how to make them happy. Right? And most of the time, companies are in the B category, not to their fault, not intentionally, but just for the way the process is set up. So this kind of maturity model really helps these different positions and roles of the company come together and say, Oh my God, like, wow, we're approaching this incorrectly. Like, if we want to be a differentiator, if we want people to be immersed in our experience, which is our product, then we need to develop and design together. And then we need to execute the delivery or extension of that experience through customer experience and through customer service. Right. And so so what ended up happening is at the end of the day, you have this new type of mantra around experience design. You have 5, 10, 20 different takeaways of like, hey, how can you transform different parts of your customer player journey, player journey in this example? Right.

Jonathan:
And then what are the key initiatives that each organization can do to help create more of customer success, player success along in that journey? And then not only that, but then how do you then work together, right? And transform. So don't go back into your silos and hope for the best. It's like, how do you then build a transformation plan that's 12 to 18 months or something of that nature? And and then who's going to be that central point of contact to help help drive that transformation? In some cases, they ask us to do that for them. In some cases they'll do that internally and we'll coach and mentor them along the way. But in either case, that's a great example. And what they find, and this is really important at everything I've said, I say, is they find that by the end of the day that there's actually data points in the product, data points in marketing that can be correlated to data points in CX and customer service that then become the measures of success for the entire customer product journey. Right. You get where I'm going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of like that's the whole purpose is palate cleanse. Let's come build this and then let's let's help you transform so you can be what you want to be in the future.

Pat:
Today we're talking with Jonathan Shroyer and we're talking about innovation in CX, how to be more creative and come up with the best ideas and put them to use in your company. So it's obviously a very creative process and you intentionally pull together kind of a cross-functional group that bring different perspectives. Do you ever find that just some people, they struggle with it or there's, you know, maybe there's an acceptable level of conflict in the room? How do you manage that?

Jonathan:
Well, I mean, I think a cool thing is that we have this exercise at the end that we call the jam box game, and we intentionally do it because we know that there's an underlying tension because people sometimes don't always share their tensions on day one because they don't want to be the person in the room that's difficult. And so the jam box game, what it does is essentially at the end of day one or day two, kind of beginning of day two, we have like all the initiatives, let's say there's 20 of these initiatives or whatever. You can't really deliver 20 initiatives in a year. I mean, it'd be really difficult. And so what we do is the game is we set up all the initiatives and we separate them into little teams, like four or five teams where then they take the initiative, they say, Hey, what's the t shirt size? So small, medium, large. So how big of the project is this? Our initiative? What's the cost? How long will it take? And then a little bit, what's a paragraph of the initiative and what the measures of success are. And so each of the groups didn't pitch their initiatives, right? And so then after the 20 initiatives are pitched, then we set up a table with all of the initiatives on the table. And we give we give them money and we lock it down to where the economy is fixed, where they can only buy one third of the initiatives. So then and then we say, hey, here's your money.

Jonathan:
You guys figure out what you want to do. And then all the groups are like, Hey, if you give me ten bucks here, I'll give ten bucks here. Let's collaborate here. Let's partner here. Right. You know, I mean, it's it's a secret sauce, but it's not like anybody can do it. Like I talk to people about and they're like, Oh, wow, that's revolutionary. It really is. Just like helping people prioritize in a way that they understand, which is like they know they have to make trade offs if they only have so much cash. So the winds up happening is you end up with like seven or ten initiatives that everybody in the room eventually says, oh, wow, we're aligned on these seven or ten initiatives. Let's go then present these to the execs, as you always do, for budgetary reasons. And the execs usually, in my experience, approve 80 to 85% of the initiatives, and then maybe they have ten or 15% or like must do's, if you will. And so it's a really powerful exercise to mitigate that tension because then everybody knows that they're not going to get exactly what they want, but they're going to have a say in what they want. And that's really powerful because when people feel empowered, they feel like they've co-created it, which they did, and so it helps them to. Then when you build out that transformation plan, it helps them to be part of it and be aligned with it.

Pat:
So I can envision that at the end of the day, people are feeling pretty good, feeling upbeat, and they've aligned. Now they've got to go back into their into the company and deal with some of the obstacles that they may encounter. Maybe you can tell us a little about how that works and what are some of the obstacles that they run into? Or does enthusiasm fade or how do they maintain that?

Jonathan:
Well, I think traction is the key, right? This is why we we find that the the most successful transformations are ones that are run by a third party. So whenever they ask us to run the transformation as opposed to them running it themselves, we find that they're much more successful just because when you have an outside objective person that's not in the day to day and they're not clouded by whatever the bias is, that organization they're in, right? They're like, Hey, well, this is what we all agreed on. Let's, let's go through the process. Let's have the weekly transformations we set up like an asana board. So we have all of the tasks. People can update everything digitally. So there's not a lot of like meetings that have to happen as you're going through your normal day. If you have a task, you complete it, you update digitally, we review it on a weekly basis. Well, then we talked about tensions or challenges that may come up as we go through. And some of these projects that look like they were easy ended up being a little bit harder because of integrations, because of API, because of new priorities that came in from the CEO or whatever it may be. Right. So you're constantly kind of reprioritizing but saying to the general timeline, right, and you're making those trade offs.

Jonathan:
So if you have an individual such as myself that's like a product manager for the transformation, they can help you do that. And then we do. Like weekly or weekly reports out to the to the team, to the core team. The steering committee has monthly reports. We might have a monthly meeting with the steering committee if there's no trade offs that need to be made with the local team, can't make those trade offs or are unwilling to or whatever. So it's that kind of normal stuff that you'd expect in the rhythm of business. But when you have a third party, dude, it's a lot easier because then everybody else just is just. I still remember that experience of co-creation. And then what we find is usually after 6 to 9 months of the transformation, you've got to bring the team back together and do a secondary exercise. It's not as robust as the first. But again, like, hey, this is what we learned in the first 6 to 9 months. You know, we have nine more months of transformation. We want to make some adjustments. Are there things that we want to do differently? How can we be better? And again, it's another palate cleanser. It's let's step out of the day to day and so forth, and we find that to be super helpful.

Pat:
Yeah, so kind of a related question, but I'm curious if you see some trends evolving. Are companies kind of more open to this type of innovation right now? And particularly, I guess I'm thinking we're kind of coming out of the pandemic. There was a lot of innovation as a result of the pandemic. Are companies kind of seeking that opportunity to say, we've just got to come up with new and better ways to provide amazing experiences for our customers?

Jonathan:
Yeah. I mean, I think when you look at it, the power of the service tech maturity model is we show companies mathematically how customer experience delivers ROI, so how they protect revenue, how they they grow revenue. And that's really powerful for your product, your power cores, for your marketing leaders, for your other executives, or they're like, oh, wow. So like, we can invest in the customer journey and we'll make more money because of that or deliver more value depending on what word you want to use. But whatever you want to use, it will be better for the bottom line. And so it's really like the math power behind the data, right? And so there's part of the part of the companies that are really interested in that, like, hey, how can we how can we deliver greater value or understand the value that's already being delivered and CX right. And then what I'm starting to notice because of the kind of the clampdown on the economy is as we go through some of these exercise, we're starting to see a trend that's kind of starting to pop up, which tends to pop up when we have recessions is we're there's a second part of the customer journey that actually happens, which is the optimized part, which is like automation and other things of that nature. So it's not just about protecting the revenue, but it's about optimizing the experience. So you're not having to spend money in the wrong places. So we're starting to see the optimization be kind of more level with the protect, where during the pandemic it was more about protect and some about optimize.

Jonathan:
But now it's leveling out, right? Because of because of the recession. And companies are starting to be a little bit tighter with their money, making sure their money is spent in the right places. Once we get on the other side of the recession, we'll probably see kind of a go back a little bit. And and we saw this the same thing happened prior to the pandemic. A lot of folks who like heavy tech and not as much optimized. And then the pandemic brought it up a little bit because companies along with the natural evolution of automation and AI that's coming along right. So it's going to be interesting. A lot of people, a lot of academics that I hear talking CX and they think automation is taking over. And I don't agree with that. I'm more of a hybrid kind of person. You need both to protect and optimize your business. And so but I think it's going to be interesting outside of companies retracting off of letters, which you've no doubt heard in some areas, companies not spending as much on people that on hiring. Right. And looking for more out of their current resources. And then you have this juxtaposed tension of people, the great resignation that's been in process. Right. That's the term. And so it's going to be interesting just to see what happens with that. But I am starting to see optimization come into play a little bit.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to see and I, I do think the CX industry is really advancing. They're recognizing that this is a real differentiator as as you have certainly explained.

Jonathan:
And it's even more prevalent when you have a digital product versus a physical product because it's easier, easier for companies to quickly get to the math, to the data, to show attribution. It's a little bit harder, not impossible, but a little bit harder with physical products.

Pat:
Jonathan we've come to that time in the show where we ask our guests for their best tip. We call it the take home value. One piece of advice that our listeners can put to to work right away. Jonathan Shroyer, what take home value would you like to leave with our listeners today?

Jonathan:
Something I learned when I was 26. And so I was was when I was working for Microsoft. And we had this workshop about emotional intelligence. And the leader there that gave the workshop is named Steve Gensler. And one thing that he taught me was the power of thinking time. And when you think about innovation, when you think about how how can I have my own natural palate cleansers where I don't have to go to Jonathan's CX lab. Right. And what Steve Gensler told me is he said, hey, you don't need hours upon hours of thinking time, but he's dedicated 30 minutes a week. He said it could be Friday at 9 a.m. It could be Saturday at 12. It could be Thursday at 9 p.m. Whatever it is, dedicate 30 minutes of thinking and say, don't, don't open your computer. Don't look at anything work related either. Go on a walk and just think. Sit there in a chair and just think or get a notepad and notepad and go to a place where it's not too loud and just think and whatever comes to your mind, just write down. Sometimes it'll be work related. Sometimes it will be not. Work related doesn't matter. But starting that practice of thinking intentionally every week will help you to have space so that you can start to think about innovative ideas that either you've thought about and dismissed you're too busy, or that you just haven't had the time to think about. And you'll be surprised at. Once you start that behavior, then your brain knows that, Oh, I'm going to have that thinking time. So when I have that, I'm going to start sharing my ideas that can be written down, that can then be applied to operations and tactics. That would be my one take away from folks.

Pat:
I think that's great advice, and if I hear you correctly, it's not good enough to just do it once and say that was okay. It builds on itself. Right. And the more you do it…

Jonathan:
15 sessions a week…

Pat:
Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great. Well, Jonathan Shroyer is the chief CX innovation officer for Arise Virtual Solutions. Jonathan, thanks for being on The CX Leader Podcast today.

Jonathan:
Thanks, Patrick. Had a great time.

Pat:
Yeah. And if people want to stay in touch with you, can they reach on LinkedIn? Is that the best way to reach out?

Jonathan:
Linkedin is a great place.

Pat:
All right. And if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or how Walker can help your business customer experience programs, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and you'll find all our previous episodes, our podcast series and contact information so you can tell us how we're doing. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening and remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. We'll see you next time.

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