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Steve:
Have you ever tried to work with another department in your company and thought, I just don't know how to communicate with them? Well, you're probably not alone.

Michelle:
For me, it comes back to empathy. Empathy is, for many of us, a concern of CX and it feels to me a bit strange that we focus it all towards customers and not to the people inside our own organization.

Steve:
Let's look at a new way to collaborate across your company 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.

Steve:
Hello everyone. I'm Steve Walker host of The CX Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. We like to say on this show it's never been a better time to be a CX leader and this podcast helps people like you explore the topics and themes that help you deliver amazing experiences to your customers. A common subject that keeps cropping up on the show is the importance of cross-functional collaboration when executing good customer experience. Knowing how other departments and groups work within the company is vital but not always easy. And yet, CX pros are often left with the task of somehow getting everyone on board and collaborating so the entire company can help provide the best possible customer experience. Well, my guest today is heading up a special project to help CX pros better connect with other areas in their company. Michelle Spaul is a customer experience consultant and is leading the Customer Experience Professional Association's Monograph Project, which quote, "seeks to provide independent insights and advice to help CEOs CX leaders and teams throughout the organization work better together by understanding the level of collaboration needed to deliver the desired customer experience." Michelle, I'm so happy that you've come on the show to talk about this important project. Thank you for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Michelle:
Thank you for having me, Steve.

Steve:
Well, I'm so excited to do this podcast today because when I heard about this Monograph Project, I said that's exactly what the profession needs. But maybe before we get into that, I always like to just get a little context for maybe our listeners who aren't familiar, but just tell us a little bit about your journey as a CX pro and how you grew up in your career and got to this point where you get to lead this very important project.

Michelle:
Well, I have a maybe slightly left field, but not uncommon background. So when you interviewed Heather a few weeks ago or even when you spoken to Greg Melia, we all come from a background where quality took a big role in developing what was then called customer satisfaction and has grown into being CX. My first CX project was the voice of the customer project in 1992 and it was amazing. It whet my appetite completely and I would have immediately loved to have done more, but nobody was doing work like that. So I carried on with my career progression through engineering, project management, process improvement, which I think has given me a strong background. Now I've come back to CX to actually understand how organizations work, how organizations take on change and resist change and need sometimes to have a little bit more thought and conscious intention around making change rather than just saying, Oh, let's be nice to our customers.

Steve:
You know, actually your background is for someone with my perspective on the business, it's pretty common. And really a lot of the the impetus for customer satisfaction was driven out of these quality improvement projects, which if you go back and you look at Malcolm Baldrige, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, all of them had this, you know, this concept around valid customer requirements, which was the kind of the impetus for our whole industry to get going. How do you become the source of truth about what the customer is actually experiencing? So and I love the engineering mindset, you know, I mean, sometimes engineers get criticized for being unemotional, but I can tell you're an empathetic person and all that. But that mindset of, you know, how do we break this down and how do we improve it in a way that actually results in some better outcomes? Is a is a great mindset for the CX pro.

Michelle:
Thank you. For me, I think delivering outcomes is is my USP. It's not enough to just change something. It has to deliver value for the business and a better experience for the customers.

Steve:
Absolutely. Well, tell me about the Monograph Project. How did this get started and and how did you end up leading it?

Michelle:
Well, before I got involved, the CXPA board were having conversations and had actually started writing a brief about capturing tips and hints and best practices around CX professionals working with other professionals. At the same time, I just kicked off my own project of review the customer platforms, and a mutual friend introduced me to Greg. And Greg and I had a long chat. He's met Deming. So if we're going to talk about total quality management, you know, he has met their God. And we talked about how that was one of the start points of customer experience and cross functional management. And that conversation triggered in him this thought about this this was nebulous idea. And he asked me if I'd lead it. And I said, actually, I'd love to, because I also see this being a really key and often missing skill within the CX profession. And so I took it on. We, reviewed the draft, we had a chat because Greg and I tend to go off at tangents. We ended up talking about something else that popped the word monograph into Greg's head. And before you knew it, we had this working title of the Monograph Series.

Steve:
And just for our listeners information, because he's been a guest on the show, Greg Melia is the executive director and the CEO of CXPA globally, correct?

Michelle:
That's right, yes, absolutely.

Steve:
And he's your Deming?

Michelle:
Oh, no, he he knew Deming. And Greg is.

Steve:
Oh, okay.

Michelle:
But yeah, the thing that the hook that we found in our conversation was Deming…

Steve:
Deming, yup.

Michelle:
…and I kind of need to not prescribe, but to formulate how things work. And obviously the Book of Knowledge was already doing that for those core CX skills and practices and tools and methodologies. But we felt we needed something that was more to do with interacting with people.

Steve:
Yeah, well, tell me about why it's so important that – this is a leading question – but why is it so important for CX prose to actually have to work with other departments?

Michelle:
Well, you know, I get asked this all the time and there's so many amazing answers. We've I've had wonderful conversations about it. But for me, it comes back to empathy. Empathy is, for many of us, the concern of CX. And it feels to me a bit strange that we focus it all towards customers and not to the people inside our own organizations. We talk about employee engagement as if that's something management do. But I think as CX professionals, we are by definition seeking change. We are by definition asking people to do things differently. And to an extent out of character, you touched on the engineering kind of stereotype of being very thorough. How can you walk into a product development team and say, I want you all to be touchy feely and do this thing based on no evidence at all, or at least no evidence that you would count as engineering evidence? So we've always got this situation where professionals are brought into an organization because they have skills and training, qualifications and the mindset that goes with what they do. And for the CX professional to try and get them to change without understanding and respecting where they're coming from, what gets them out of bed in the morning, what would constitute success for them, I think would be foolish. So very early when we were structuring the Monograph Series and the each monograph, the standard structure starts with who are these people you're talking to? What's important to them? How can you help them deliver their goals? And there's office three sections in each monograph.

Steve:
So that really is how you defined what a monograph is by function inside the company?

Michelle:
Well, the original title of the series oh gosh, it was delivered. I remember it, but it came down to function and alignment. It was both functional organizations, so it came down to function. And I think we had to go there and I still can't see how we could have done it differently. But we have obviously found some non functional subjects that we want to talk about. So my monograph is about governance and sponsorship. We are talking about organizational change and because for many people that sits with HR, those two subjects are together. And we are looking at a data monograph, not a monograph on how to use data, but actually a monograph on who around the organization has data and how can you work with those individuals. Even when they not speaking about functions and monographs, so come back to that mutual respect and that mutual achievement.

Steve:
And what departments are included?

Michelle:
I know you're going to ask that. So tranche one was operations, finance, sales and account management, which we also included customer success in. And then of course, my own monograph, which is governance and sponsorship Tranche two took us into IT. Now, that's the the IT function, the people who support the business processes and productivity. We also looked at customer services, marketing and the C-suite. Our third and final tranche will be HR and organizational change, as I've mentioned, legal, which I think legal might be the most unstructured one because it's everything from like company secretarial services in the UK all the way through to product safety with every type of regulation in between. We'll also going to look at product development and that can be physical product service or kind of SAS type products and supply chain and perhaps if we can find the right people, data.

Steve:
We're all CX pros. So, you know, it's important we hear from you about what topics you think would be most helpful. Let us know how we're doing by going to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey. You'll even have a chance to score some free CX Leader Podcast swag. That's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback.

Steve:
My guest on this week's podcast is Michelle Spaul. She's a customer experience consultant, and she's been leading the CXPA's Monograph Project, which is a fascinating activity, really a Herculean effort to pull this together. But we're literally only a month away from it being available to all the CXPA members. And so I'm so delighted that she's willing to come on the show and talk a little bit about it. It's very comprehensive, and I see this as a tremendous reference item that every CX Pro should have access to it. Who else is working on it under your leadership?

Michelle:
The most amazing people. Just absolutely amazing people. I've got to say, obviously, Greg and Gabe Smith from CXPA, but we've had a huge number of volunteers. It's high twenties, just on the authoring teams. And then we have had people who have reviewed the monographs as part of our review process and and then we have a professional editor and then these 20 amazing people, 28 amazing people who've given up their time, they go away with this template and the subject heading. You're looking after the IT department and they go and they do research and they bring together a single cohesive document. I really enjoyed working with them.

Steve:
Well, we know one of the common themes that we've had at The CX Leader Podcast is that in order to really create great customer experience, it has to be pervasive throughout the organization. It has to touch everybody. And you're a little rundown of your three tranches, I think you've covered just about everything. How do you envision that a CX pro might use this when the information is available?

Michelle:
Well, I think there's two ways. One is to read it and then have conversations with the person they want to get to know better and using the monograph as a prompt for questions. But we actually also anticipate that CX professionals will show the monograph and say, "look, this is what I think you do. Where is this document wrong? What's this one size fits all monograph missing the point? What's special about you? How can you and I work together?" So it's a conversation prompt; it's something to ask questions from and it's something to actually say I'm getting to know you so we can work together.

Steve:
Yeah. You really trying to come at it from their perspective right there lens of how they might be thinking about their business. And I would I would suggest part of the art of the CX pro here is to to make sure that this doesn't become something extra for the functional leader to do. But you're trying to integrate into how they already are thinking about the business and really bring them something that they can help them do their job better.

Michelle:
Yeah. I mean, if somebody hadn't already stolen it, we might have cause it how to make friends and influence people. But I think that title's gone.

Steve:
Yeah, that one that's that's already famous, I think, for Dale Carnegie.

Michelle:
Yeah, and this copyrighted. And we just can't go there. But in a way, it is that. But unless an influencer thinks a word that's gained some bad press, it's really about how to get to know people, get to respect them and understand them so you can do a better job.

Steve:
Yeah, I love how you lead with empathy early on and that really is and just being aware of how different functions view the business. And yet, you know, you mentioned it that, you know, part of our role is to be a change agent and to to do things that are going to have a positive impact for our customer. And that is indeed a worthy cause. But, you know, we need to do that through the other people in the organization who are experts in their area and are, you know, obviously trying to make the business work better, too. So this is an excellent effort. I can't wait to see it. When's it going to be available?

Michelle:
CX Day, October 4th.

Steve:
First Tuesday in October.

Michelle:
And everybody here is a member of the CXPA can have a PDF version of the monographs. They can, for a small fee request the print version, and anybody outside the CXPA can also buy a copy.

Steve:
And will this be for just the first tranche on CX Day or or all of it?

Michelle:
For the first two tranches. So those first eight monographs I mentioned, the second the third tranche or the second publication, kind of thinking Christmas, new early New Year…

Steve:
Okay.

Michelle:
…for them being ready. And then we will be putting in place our review process and our continuous improvement process because that's what we do.

Steve:
So this episode comes out on a Tuesday and we're probably only four or five weeks away from this being available, right?

Michelle:
Yeah. So I tell you what, Gabe is amazing. There is a lot of wheels turning within the CXPA at the moment.

Steve:
Yeah, actually, I wanted to talk to you because you mentioned Heather Heather Gillbanks earlier and we had her on the show, I don't know, a couple of months ago talking about The CX Book of Knowledge, which I guess would seem to have some overlap. But I think they're really more complementary, aren't they?

Michelle:
Absolutely, they're complementary. And if we go back to that whole data thing, we're not going to define how to collect data or use data. That's in the Book of Knowledge. But we talk about how to find the people who have customer data and operational data and finance data within an organization and create a coalition where customer data is being used constructively rather than little silos. So it's very, very different. I mean, we might say the words voice of the customer, but Heather's project defines them.

Steve:
Yeah. And, you know, just listening to you and and thinking about you've referenced the CXPA and Greg and Gabe and all the good people and the way people come together to get these projects done. But, you know, when I think about how far our profession has come, really, just since the creation of the CXPA and putting out these kinds of resources for pros is exactly what our professional organization ought to be doing. So congratulations to you for stepping up to do this and and actually bringing it out here just in a month or so.

Michelle:
Thank you. Thank you.

Steve:
Michelle, we've we've reached that part of the podcast where I ask every guest to kind of give us their take home value, which is your one tip or your one takeaway that you would like our listeners to take away from your podcast today and something that they can go back to their job or their their office and put it in place and make a difference for their organization. So, Michelle Spaul, what is your best tip and take home value for this podcast?

Michelle:
Well, I'm going to cheat, Steve, and wrap two into one, because I think professionals need to be brave and we all sometimes just have to stand up and speak about the customer. We all always have to take a leap of faith. But in being brave and in being the person who people start to look to, to be the voice of the customer, we have to be vulnerable. We have to acknowledge that we don't know it all and be open to seeking out new thoughts, new perspective, new tools, not just within the profession, but also from those colleagues in our businesses. Customer experience has such an amazing background and history, whether you've come from the background I mentioned earlier of quality management, whether you're a customer, a call center specialist and all the other other amazing backgrounds, none of us know it all. We've got to, as a profession, just get good at learning from each other and from learning from other people in our businesses.

Steve:
I love that: you can be brave and vulnerable at the same time, and I can I can kind of envision that. And I think going back to the empathy, you know, the to to be bold, to be brave, but then admit that you need some help is probably going to encourage other people. Michelle, thank you for being such a great guest on The CX Leader Podcast and congratulations on this effort. I'm sure you're really proud of it and I can't wait to see it.

Michelle:
I really am. And thank you, Steve.

Steve:
Hey, if anybody would like to continue the dialog, Michelle, can they they find you on LinkedIn or give me your website so that they could contact you?

Michelle:
Well, there's two Michelle Spaul's on LinkedIn. I'm the nice one. My website is customerexperienceconsultant.co.uk.

Steve:
Hey, Michelle Spaul is a customer experience consultant and she is leading the CXPA's Monograph Project and we can't wait to get our hands on that. Michelle, thanks again and hopefully you'll come back and and join us again when the third tranche is ready to release.

Michelle:
I'd love that. Thank you.

Steve:
Hey, and if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give The CX Leader Podcast a rating through your podcast service and give us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listener. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all of our previous episodes, podcast series, contact information. You can drop us a note, let us know how we're doing, or suggest a concept or an idea for a future podcast. 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. So keep doing all that work and we'll see you again next week on The CX Leader Podcast.

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