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Steve:
Rolling out a CX program in a large company takes some serious leadership skills.

Bob:
It really boils down to the customer. I have a question. I want an answer. I have a problem. I want a solution. And if you can keep this simplicity of that mindset as you transform a support organization, then you say, how do we unravel all the complexities that have been built up and deliver value over years, but modernize it and deliver that equal to a greater value through new ways of doing work.

Steve:
Transforming Your customer experience at scale, 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. It's never been a better time to be a CX leader and this podcast explores topics and themes to help leaders like you deliver amazing experiences for your customers. You know, change is not easy. It's human instinct to become comfortable with, quote unquote, what you know. But sometimes a change is necessary. When professionals notice a problem or recognize a way to make the customer's experience better, their instinct is to find solutions to improve how they interact with customers. And for a global technology company you need a CX leader who can bring people together into a common purpose and inspire them to do what's best for their customers. Well, I'm really excited about the guest for our episode today. Bob McDonald is the vice president of global CRM experience for IBM, the global technology company for whom I'm sure our listeners are very familiar. And Bob is also the recipient of the US Customer Experience Leader of the Year for 2022. Bob, first of all, congratulations on this honor, but maybe more importantly, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast.

Bob:
Steve, thank you. It's a pleasure being here and looking forward to having the conversation with you.

Steve:
Bob I know everybody is familiar with IBM, but one of the things we'd like to do on The CX Leader Podcast is just hear a little bit of our guest's journey to become a CX pro. Just give us a quick overview of your career and how you got to be in your current position and more importantly, how you got to win the Customer Experience Leader of the Year Award.

Bob:
Well, so I've been at IBM for 33 years…

Steve:
33.

Bob:
… 33 years, and I started out in the industry at Lotus Development and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995, and I came over and had held multiple service and support leadership roles across the other, be the Lotus Brand or other brands and IBM. And then I had the opportunity to take on a role in a transformational space or on how we would work better with our ISP's and business partners to drive better business results for everybody. And that just gave me the opportunity to sort of get the bug around how to be a transformational leader. But I never lost hold of my focus on the client experience. That's really at the core of everything I've been doing over the span of that 33 years and 38 in the industry, if you will, but 33 at IBM. So it's it's been a welcomed profession because it just to me, when you really have a passion on the client and knowing that if you take care of the client, the business itself will follow. It really just has been an opportunity to bring and continue to evolve that strategy at IBM, because as an 111 year old company, we had to have had a focus on the client over many, many years, and it just continues today.

Steve:
I did not know that IBM was over a hundred years old. That's amazing. And, you know, it is really one of those companies that has just endured and, you know, just is such a testament to the what you can do with a great company if you are insightful enough to keep managing it. Let's talk a little bit about your program and your CX program. So kind of just give me the rundown. Where were you when you started and what did you set out to do on this journey and and how did it get from here to there?

Bob:
Yeah. So in 2015, I've been on a major set of transformations across various various parts of the organization. But in 2015, support had been… IBM client support, and that is the support we provide to the customers who actually buy and purchase our products and deployed and their environments. Support have been one of those organizations that had been not transformed across the enterprise. You had seen pockets of transformation in individual brands. I can remember we had 250,000 employees. We comprise multiple brands. We operate in over 170 countries around the world. So you had pockets of vertical transformation, but nothing horizontal across IBM support, and we saw that as something as an opportunity because the feedback we were getting from customers was they felt that complexity too often when they called into IBM. They would get a different experience. It was it was difficult to have their cases transferred from one part of the organization to another. They felt like they were starting over. And it was always done through very traditional mean. Those traditional means added a lot of value, make no mistake about it. But it wasn't modernized to the way customers today want to be served because a lot of customers want you to meet them where they are at. They want self service alternatives, they want access to content and on and on and on. And so I had the opportunity of presenting the business case to the senior leadership of the company to say this is going to transform the experience for the customer. And in the process it will it will deliver quantifiable and impactful business results in the ledger for IBM, and that's really how it took hold in 2015.

Steve:
So how did you even envision a project to begin with that was going to be this large? And then you said you presented it, but what was the process of getting everybody to buy-in on this?

Bob:
The process of getting buy-in wasn't difficult. It might sound like it should be, but it was… if you really think about it, service and support is one of those experiences that we all get to enjoy in our consumer life as well. And so how do you take the complexity of a multinational company like IBM and bring it back to the simplicity of service and support? Because at the end of the day, a support experience from a customer side of the table, which has always been our focus. You take it from the client side of the table, it really boils down to as a customer, I have a question, I want an answer, I have a problem, I want a solution. And if you can keep the simplicity of that mindset as you transform a support organization, then you say, okay, how do we how do we unravel all of the complexities that are built up and deliver value over years, but modernize it and deliver that equal to a greater value through new ways of doing work. And so we it was easy to get people, people to embrace that concept. But then the more difficult part was the how. So there's the why, the what a transformation project, but the how is where you really get into the details. And I wouldn't say that was easy, though the high was much more difficult.

Steve:
So you said that you first envisioned this around 2015?

Bob:
Correct? That's where we that's when we started to make the business case. And we got started in earnest because there were some investments that need to be made were the classic business cases that needed to be built in quantifiable terms. We got started in earnest in 2017 when we made a significant investment in the Salesforce Service Cloud platform. Because our… When we started, Steve, we had over 283 tools and technologies being used across IBM support. And those those technologies all had individual processes behind them. So how do you unravel that? And one of those technologies was a system that was our primary call management and call tracking system that was 54 years old. So it was it had it was the most hardened support and service system that I knew in any industry. But the closed architecture didn't invite and allow for a transformation to the modernization way that I described. So we made the investment in Service Cloud in 2017, and that was really the launching pad for what we what we've embarked on.

Steve:
And I think it's safe to say that this was a multi year effort, correct? You probably never, never totally done, but was mostly complete then by 2021 or 2022.

Bob:
The business case was a three year business case. And you're right, you never stop. There's no question about that. But we rolled out the Service Cloud across all of the remote technical support teams in two years. And then we rolled out to the remainder of the field… field support engineers over the next 18 to 24 months. So and I'm really happy to say those 283 systems that we started with, that's down to 102 right now. And it's going down further and further each year.

Steve:
Just knowing a little bit about that, that's phenomenal that you've been able to eliminate almost two thirds of the redundancy in the system. So that's that's impressive. So you said that the the why was fairly easy to get to, but what proceeded from there was not so easy. So talk a little bit about how you kept the momentum over that time period and when the kind of the initial yeah, let's go get this done and you kind of get into the hard tacks of the of the matter. What were some of the most difficult things you overcame in that process?

Bob:
The easy part was getting the why done, getting nestled and getting it committed to getting the best. Then you had to bring in… there was 19 business units, each with their own individual support leader. So collectively everybody had the agreement to jump on board and do it. But when you actually start to do it, everybody says, Well, can you go start somewhere else, right? So yeah, because I'm different and that's when you have to bring it back to: remember from the client side of the table, you're really not different. It's the Q&A type of thing or it's the problem solution topic. So everybody rallied around that. We… we laid down nine unique initiatives that would look at everything from tools and technologies to processes to training and skills, how we would use digital channels as well as infused AI across every dimension of the support process. In fact, when we talked to clients, we had we had a client counsel that was an advisor to us. They were inviting us and asking us to use AI wherever possible to streamline the process because they wanted to get after the content and knowledge that really is the fuel for a service experience. So when we had commitment to those nine initiatives, had leaders in place set up a set of stand up processes and in classic project management and you just had to work through each one of those initiatives defined the, the, the north star vision and then work towards in a project management fashion, achieving that north star. And we still have work to do, by the way, but we made a lot of progress over that over the first few years.

Steve:
You know, that's a really great way to take a big, complex problem and break it down. Were you able to secure the first BU? Did you lean on somebody to to be the first one?

Bob:
Yeah, I actually had the largest software team at IBM was the first one to raise their hand. The the leader in that group was truly a change agent. He would change anything and everything and he wanted to be first in to sort of take advantage of it. But he also became the lightning rod for change everywhere else across IBM. And so I've actually given him a lot of credit for that in the early stages.

Steve:
This is such a great case study for CX pros, and I think most of our listeners won't be on the scale that you're talking about. But there's, you know, there's some really great lessons in here already. But you went out and you outreach to the the business leaders and then you kind of found the the right champion, which is, you know, really textbook in terms of change management. What kind of was sort of the hardest part? What was the sort of the the one moment where you sort of wondered if you were going to make it to the other side?

Bob:
I think it was… I mean, getting everybody's agreement came together, execution had it's pockets of puts and takes. No question about that.

Steve:
Yeah.

Bob:
Keeping people horizontally focused on the client's side of the table sounds easy, but is hard because people still have the pressure of the vertical aspects of their business that they have to contend with every day. They have to deal with the here and now. And so everybody, I think it's philosophically everybody really was committed to the horizontal client experience, but they had to deliver for their specific client.

Steve:
Was there a special business ROI case that you use to communicate it, or was it still sort of the outside end view, the view of what this means to the customer? That was the driving force even for the senior execs.

Bob:
So make no mistake about it. There were there were absolutely business commitments that need to be made.

Steve:
Yeah.

Bob:
The way we position this all the way back into presenting the business case was in this order. Steve, it's really important that I stress it was in this order that I insisted that we take the approach. First and foremost, take the client experience as your primary commitment and how you're going to measure success. And we used NPS as our primary measurement of success for the client experience. Secondly, that when you improve the client experience, we will drive incremental revenue growth directly attributed to the transformation of the experience of the customer. We we were able actually to track the revenue growth that was influenced by the support transformation. Now it's not incremental revenue. Revenue to support it was broad incremental revenue across the IBM company that customers would buy more products, customers would renew their annual subscription renewals and on and on and on. And then the third component was an assumption of operational efficiency. And I stress the word assumption because every transformational project, you should assume that you are going to get productivity gains or operational efficiencies in some manner. So by driving a better client experience, by improving the revenue stream and then assuming operational efficiencies and we hit we hit all three. That's where the business case was locked in.

Steve:
Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is Bob McDonald, who's the Vice President of global CRM experience for IBM and also the recipient of the 2022 US Customer Experience Leader of the Year. And it's no wonder, because Bob is really taking us on a journey here of how you do a large scale transformation of a customer experience at a large organization like IBM. You mentioned your your reduction in the overall number of tools that you got from moving to the Salesforce service cloud. And then you also talked about using AI. Were there some real breakthroughs in terms of the tools and the technology where you were using across the whole effort?

Bob:
Well, we absolutely service cloud… we rolled out service cloud using just out of the box functionality. No, no customizations, which that into itself is unique. But by using out of the box, that's that forced us to change the process. But behind that transformation is being forced by the enablement of the platform, not the platform itself being transformative. And then we overlaid that with several Watson solutions now, and I'll give you one. I'll give you two Watson solutions. We introduced in the earliest stages… so remember, we're going back into 2017 or so chat bots. Our chat bots improved the time to resolution by 26% within a period of probably about a year, year and a half. We were seeing 20% improvement on time to resolution. But then there was one solution that the team built, which imagine you are a support engineer and you come in and you're working with very complex products when the customers are rolling out IBM's technology. And so you might have 30, 40, 50 open cases that you have to figure out where am I going to put my time and attention today based upon the priorities of those cases. We built the team built a Watson solution that did the prioritization of the cases and the workflow for the engineers when they came in the door. So they hit the ground running. They didn't have to go through, go through and sort out their workload. Watson did it for them, and we saw a 45 minute gain in many instances for the support engineers who use this case prioritization solution that gave them 45 minutes back per day, per engineer. So if they if half of those 20,000 support engineers are around the world, remote technical support engineers, so 10,000 of them, and in a high percentage of those are getting 45 minutes a day savings. You can do the math. You can see that's the contributing factor to those productivity gains and the assumption of operating system saving.

Steve:
You know, your use of metrics… and I assume this is part of how you won the award, but your command of how you're proven the business case is really instructive, I think, for our listeners. I, you know, so often I hear they can't get to the, you know, that kind of data. But if you take 45 minutes a day, times 10,000 pros, you know, I think you said the assumption of productivity improvement. Well, that I think that would confirm that would validate that assumption, right?

Bob:
That's right. And then other things that we did, you know, you have to go up to knowledge management. We had to go and fix that knowledge management component. We had to provide self service options. I mean. In the service in a client experience world. I think we all know this. You can get blinded by the data. You can get too much data. So when somebody says to me and my team, I can't get the data, I say, no, you you have too much. You have to just be able to say, what is the KPI of the guy you're going after? And then the data behind that… don't… Simplify it. Go after the KPI, fixate on the KPI and major on that and allow the metrics behind it to feed the KPI. And that's really what we're doing.

Steve:
Well, fast forward is now to the award and some of the outcomes that you achieved and kind of what's the state of the customer experience at IBM today?

Bob:
So the award was was something that was very pleasant to receive. It was especially pleasant because my team nominated me for it and I thank them for that for sure. But we're not done transforming. So when we have the success and support, my team and I were then asked to go over and do the same thing on the sales side of the house. So last year we rolled out a new CRM platform, similarly using Salesforce Technologies. So now we're creating link value between sales and support. And, and this year we're doing the same thing for our ecosystem partners. We're rolling out new ways of working for our business, our business partners, because the ecosystem is critical to our growth strategy. So all of that, though, is really tied to the strategy which we laid down in the earliest time frame, which was a 360 client experience. Right. The client needs to see the end to end connection of the various experiences they have with IBM, from sales to services to support to business partners. So how do you tie that all together? How do you use the data that's available to you to drive new ways of experience of the customer having automated experiences and drive business results back into IBM? So we're we're focused right now on the 360 aspect of it, linking it all together. And to me, the proof points of that we've seen in support and sales and we're starting to see in the ecosystem that gives us the permission to go and do this 360 way. And that's the holy grail of where we're going. And we really think that's going to be a differentiator for us in the marketplace with our customers.

Steve:
Bob, you know, you've really kind of given us the playbook here, and I just want to reinforce the order in which you do this when you're really trying to drive massive change. And I think it starts with the end in mind. And could you just kind of review that order for us just one more time? I mean, we've talked about it throughout the dialog, but I think it's just such a good formula that our listeners ought to write this order down and put it on their bulletin board or or whatever they use.

Bob:
Thanks to you. I appreciate that. Yeah. When we when you go forward with a client experience transformation, first and foremost, start with the client experience and figure out the measurements of that, how it was NPS, then commit to a better experience of the customer will and should drive incremental revenue for your company. So client experience revenue and then assume like every transformation leader you should take, you should assume you're going to get operational efficiencies, but all too often people do it in the reverse order. So I constantly am preaching to my team is client experience, it's incremental revenue growth and it's assumption of operating efficiency.

Steve:
Yeah, and I love the way you put that. You know, every customer from their perspective, they have they have a question, they want an answer or they have a problem and they want a solution.

Bob:
That's right.

Steve:
It can't be more simple than that. You get the metric. NPS is what you picked, and if you're driving that, then you're going to see some improvement in your revenue. And I assume the most simple way you can do that is you take your high NPS customers and you measure their revenue time period zero to time, period one. And then you take your low NPS customers and you do the same. And that's how you get that, that metric. And then the assumption of the productivity you gave us the example of where the the average support engineer was getting 45 minutes a day back in their time. Beautiful case study. All right, Bob McDonald, every guest on The CX Leader Podcast, I pose them with this challenge to provide our listeners with the take home value. That's the one thing that they could do to take from your podcast today, take back to their CX program and drive some improvements. So Bob McDonald, what is your one take home tip for our listeners today?

Bob:
And so Steve, it's an interesting question for sure. You know, when you and you raised it during the conversation here, a large company like IBM and a large project like this, getting people on board is not that difficult. But once you get them there and you actually get into execution mode, sometimes people's knees buckle. And they start to say I'm different, so can you start somewhere else? But I remember we're trying to think of a horizontal experience, so we need to get everybody on board. So when somebody in the team has said to me, I'm different, I always go back to the foundational point of, well, from the client side of the table, it's I have a question. I have I want an answer. I have a problem. I want a solution. So what makes you so different that those simple tenets can't be achieved in your organization now? And people will start to give me their reasoning? And there's usually some truth to that. But at the end of the day, I have to get on with this project. So while they giving me the reasoning and saying that we have to customize for their world, etc., I will simply then say, you know, I hear you, but no, I can't do that. I have to think about the horizontal. So I invite the members of my team as they're working through and advancing an enterprise wide transformation to embrace the two words of "Ask Why," listen, listen intently and say no. So because when you say no, you can actually accelerate the enterprise view from the customer side of the table a lot faster. So why and no can be an accelerant to getting your project going for your company wide and your customers and your business will benefit as a result.

Steve:
I think that's a great tip. And, you know, the node doesn't come from a place you and I were discussing this off the air, but it doesn't come from a place of like arrogance or I know better, but it's based in the principle of what the customers view of this is. And that is the real role of the CX Pro in their organization is to advocate for the customer. And that's what I love about the simplicity of how you define what the customer view is. I have a question. Can you get me an answer? I have a problem. Can you get me a solution? And NPS is the metric we use to decide whether that happened or not, and then everything can flow from there. And you're right, you know, it's it's not know just just to be obstinate. It's no because the principle of the transformation, you have to start there. So taken in the right context, I think that's a great confidence builder for a pro to stand their ground, I guess, on the integrity or the principle of what the profession is here to represent. And that's, you know, doing good business by doing right by the customer.

Bob:
I have to say. I mean, the way you described it, I learned something because I think it's it isn't taken from an arrogant position. It isn't trying to be opposite. It's exactly what you describe it. But it's it's intended to drive transformation on the behalf of the client with the results of the business to follow. So I like the way you cite it is probably better than my own. So thank you. I going take that away myself.

Steve:
No, I, you know, I like the boldness that you put that out with. And I just I'm sure our listeners will take it with good context. And I so appreciate you being a guest on the program today and sharing your case study. And and again, congratulations on this award. I can definitely see how you earned it based on this project. So congrats.

Bob:
Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity.

Steve:
Hey, Bob McDonald is the Vice President of Global CRM experience for IBM and he also is the recipient of the Customer Experience Leader of the Year Award for 2022. Bob, thanks again for being a guest on the podcast… being a great guest on the podcast. Hey, just before you go, if anybody would want to continue the dialog or reach out to you, I assume you're available on LinkedIn?

Bob:
Absolutely. Please. We know each other. That's the way it works.

Steve:
And if you want to talk about anything else you heard on the 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 or 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 listeners. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, find all of our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information. You can drop us a note, let us know how we're doing or suggest the topic 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. We'll see you again next time on The CX Leader Podcast.

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