Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. When someone posts something on LinkedIn, or your fav platform, do you engage? How do you engage? What if you disagree with them? Are you looking to change their mind? Are you seeking to understand their perspective? Or perhaps do you ignore and just block? All of those thoughts flashed through my mind when I would read LinkedIn posts from today's guest, Alex Mead. Often I'd find myself nodding with eager agreement with what he said. Other times, I'd be angrily pointing a finger at the screen saying he doesn't get it at all. It was at that point that I knew I wanted Alex as a guest on CX passport. I'll tell you right now that Alex does not mince words, and I highly value that he is laser focused on driving real actions and customer experience, customer service, customer approach customer insert word here, he doesn't care about labels. He cares about action. Don't bring that fluffernutter ivory tower speak into an Alex discussion. He values protein, and that's what he delivers. I gotta admit, I don't know where today's conversation will go. And just like I say in the podcast intro often that makes for the best journeys. This will be fun. Alex, welcome to CX passport.

Alex Mead: 1:40

My pleasure, wonderful to talk to you. I love reading your posts as much as you sometimes love and hate mine.

Rick Denton: 1:46

Well, Alex, thank you that warms my heart. I'm going to ask a question that could possibly take the whole episode, but we'll see how we can break this up. But let's just hit the main point right at the start. What's wrong with customer experience today?

Alex Mead: 1:58

Yeah, I could speak all day about that. Customer Experience is a consequence of things. And I think 10-15, maybe 15 years ago, there was customer service, there were sales, there was marketing those operations, that along came this sexy buzzword, let's call everything customer experience. So to answer your question to me, customer experience is made of two very distinctly different things as the brand, the product and the marketing, which are actually pretty good. I get the personalization of offers is getting better and better. How did you know I wanted that. So but right, the second what is the customer service experience. And that's the bit that is just so badly wrong, and I'll explain what I think's wrong about it in a second. But first of all, it's the definition. So we have brand product and marketing experience. That's the offered, it's the TV ads, that's the way that they send me incentives to buy things, the way they communicate to me, the products I received the packaging the actual device, that is not an issue. But customer service experience to me means everything about my conversations, interactions and needs with the company. So it's not just hey, customer support. It's literally, hey, I'm interested in that product, I want to ask some questions about it. That's customer service experience, even before you've bought something, make the decision? And how often are you looking at something and again, to know what I know, it'd be impossible to even get an answer. So you know what, I won't even bother buying it. And then you've bought it and Damn, I need to change the delivery address. Sorry, sir, you're screwed. You can't do anything about that. And then you receive it. And I list something, I'm not sure how it works, I need to return it all. All of these things are just so badly broken. And to give three specific examples. I have four credit cards in my wallet. They're one I cannot use, and I've given up on them. So they're losing out on my my purchases my purchase power, and I can't use them. And the reason why is I travel a lot and once every two or three months, they blocked my card because they assume I'm someone's using my card friendly. Right? I played the game. But no, it's me. Please release it. I stay in Bahrain, I travel. So Bahrain is always me. But every two months, a transaction involving gets declined. suspected fraud alert, and I'm like, oh, Lord, above. And now there's no way for me, I send them a message two weeks ago, they had a message facility. It doesn't look nice. I literally filled out the form. Hey, guys, this is the fifth time please just release the card. It's me. So the only the only adoption, I can't chat to them, I can't interact them socially. I can't send a webapp message. I sit in a call center queue and I've tried five times in the last two months. It's like one hour plus and I'm like okay is now also your UK credit card company. I'm funny from Bahrain. That's one pound 80 per minute, just to allow you to give me permission to your card. You know, forget your card. It's just made sense. And then I wanted to buy I had an airline ticket, a long haul flight and I actually wanted to buy another leg more money for them more better solution for me. So instead of flying a to b, I want to go zed to A to B, because there was circumstances, I want to give all that business to the same airline. So it makes life easier. Web chat two hours and waiting disconnected. Could I send it I send them a message? Can I not just go to the the app the website and say, Hey, airline company, ABC could be anyone that flight I've got, I want to fly from this airport, can you give me some options? That's what it should be. No. And I found them and I gave up on that. And, you know, it's just customer service experience is, to me the most broken part of customer experience. I literally can't talk to companies how I want to when I want to and easily and then for those poor Asians you do get to talk to Yeah, I can't help you. I'm not allowed computer says no, or the system. No. I know. And I love it when they say I know you're right. I'm not allowed to it's like

Rick Denton: 6:00

they're like hitting pause on the call recording and saying, Hey, I know. I can't I can't. So I'm curious about that one. I love the way you've divided that up because I think one of the things I joke about when people say oh Rick, you're in customer experience, what do you do? And I or what is customer experience? I said That's like asking somebody what the word design is industrial design, graphic design, road planning design, what does that mean? And I like how you broke that down into that product marketing sales side and then the customer service experience and I think I've even seen you posted CSX maybe that's something that can be gained traction there. Why do you think because I feels like the former the the marketing the product, the digital the UX, whatever you want to call it as the more sexy side of CX people more enter in energized about it. People want to spend money their companies want to spend money there. Why do you think that CSX which is what you're describing is the key area pain point for the customer? Is so neglected, so ignored, not sexy? Why? Why are companies not paying attention to it?

Alex Mead: 6:55

Two reasons. First of all, the bad reason. The one of the frustrating reason good, bad depends on your perspective is because if you look at almost every CX influencer, there's a couple of exceptions. They are all the brand product marketing CX side of things. When people hear custom experience, they talk about journey mapping insight how you can personalize customer purchase patterns. There's so few people now who are CX people that understand digital multi channel customer contact, how I can deploy a chatbot without being the worst experience ever that they just don't get that. So first of all, the people who have the customer service experience skills are being lost because it's not seen as a specific skill and on and if you if you jump into CX now, you're forced down this path of you need to get certifications accreditation, you need to journey map, you need to focus on voice of the customer. If we're going to say voice of the customer, how many surveys, do we need to send customers, it's just off the charts. But I think the second reason is why people just don't get it. It's because as I said, it's the definition. People hear customer service. They think, oh, that's supporting customers to know what we already have their money, we don't need to worry about that they want to lean fine was actually if they if they realize and what I do in companies is I make the first month is my remit is customer service experience, which means every life's customer lifecycle stage. So a customer is interested in our company, they don't even know brands, they're interested in a product, they're interested in buying that product that is all customer service experience, then I have to break that down too. So did you know that 40% of customers went to our website, we looked at the heat mapping, they didn't buy that product they were hovering over, there was no way for them to get information. So that is lost revenue and didn't know that how many customers ordered from us then cancelled and I break it down to it costs you just as much money for CSX as it does for the brand product marketing stuff and that that's the toughest part of being a CX influencer as the post I posted earlier today that What are you influencing? If you're a CX influencer, writing books, getting accreditation, keynote speaking, no offense, I've done it occasionally. It's you're influencing the wrong people. If you can't influence a CEO, a CMO, a CTI a CIO, to actually get what CSX means and it's just gonna be shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic unit which we need to fix things.

Your CX Passport Captain: 9:24

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 9:50

Yeah, the the the thing that really catches me there as you're as you're talking about it is that idea of it. I'm almost feeling like a high school sort of feeling that it was the cool kids are on this side. And the neglected kids are on this side. And you know those tables over there. But yet, those are probably the tables that are going to turn out to be the ones that change the world. Right? And so if we would improve CSX, we would actually change the world. Now, I will say this, I'm I'm one that talks about total voc all the time. And that's an important part of me. I love how you said voc. How many surveys do we absolutely so many people think voc means survey, it's so much more than that will actually go from survey and score to listen and act. So I think you and I agree there, then in the sense of a total voice, the customer approach is correct this shallow, let's send a survey out so that we feel good about a score that's on a dashboard that we see in a monthly report. So you've had practical real world experience. Let's get out of the theoretical here for a second you and I could spend an hour trust me talking about bad airline experiences or bad credit card experiences. But with that tangible, real world, you've transformed companies from that crappy customer experience customer service to being some of the best. I'd love to hear some of those stories and how you did it.

Alex Mead: 11:00

Okay, um, probably the biggest example I've got several examples, but one would start with is parcel delivery. So a decade ago, your parcel may be there tomorrow, Mr. Mrs. Customer. That's that's the information you got if it doesn't show up, deal with it. Sorry. Yeah. When I joined a company that was delivering half a million parcels a day, a newly created board. Whoa, we've got this guy, Alex, Director of Customer Care, they call me that, oh, God, I need to change that definition. And everyone else on the board had worked in partial industries. My Yorkshire accent, I don't know why I do it. Because there were Yorkshire people there. It may not resonate with listeners. But they they'd always worked in industry, their whole careers. They knew parcels better why they employed this guy, Alex, he knows nothing about parcels of grass. The guy's an idiot. And then I inherited my direct looks line control was the contact centers. That was it. Oh, and complaints that gave me that as you can have contact.But there were,

Rick Denton: 11:57

there's gold there. There's gold there.

Alex Mead: 12:00

But it was 6000 people in this subsidiary of a 60,000. Employee company. But I reported to the Group CEO of the group. So he kind of like was mischievous that I'm employed this Alex tell the board of that parcel company. He's my little pet project. So you better not take all these things seriously, you know? So they hated me with a passion. Are you on TV?

Rick Denton: 12:22

You know, it's a good start.

Alex Mead: 12:23

Exactly. First thing, I know, we haven't talked about it at some stage is I realized, I've got to earn their respect. If I go in there and say, Hey, you're so I went out with delivery drivers at 4am. I went out to the hub sorting parcels at midnight. But I also went out with the head of Field Sales Team with 200 guys out in the Audi, a Ford and BMW X rays, user guides. And they'll go and visit the retailers say, Hey, let us deliver your parcels. We're better than courier company, etc, etc. And they're all pushing for price price price will do it two pence cheaper per parcel. And these guys, and all this time, I was picking up and listening. But what I already knew before that was customers, were saying, My God, this company's terrible. I waited in all day for the parcel to come. The tracking says they tried to deliver it. They're liars. I was here all day and 1000s of these. And then people were saying I send a complaint six weeks ago, I suppose that they're probably delivering the complaint response. And that got lost as well, you know, right. So I knew from a customer perspective, it was a car crash and the data I had, there was no CRM system. So I couldn't get any wire customers contacting us there was no survey, voc, Medallia, whatever, that metric solution where I could see what customers are happy or unhappy about. But I knew on everyday a one in five parcels resulted in a phone call. So 100,000 phone calls

Rick Denton: 13:45

Holy! 20% good gravy

Alex Mead: 13:49

that's, in theory, we had automated self service, like weeks ago. So these are almost 90,000 Something's gone wrong phone calls, and I'm talking net, not the individual customer phone calls so so as I'm going out with the driver, as I'm going in the field sales guys, I'm not listening about that. I'm thinking okay, why is this happening? And I realized two things, this field sales guys, the account managers, the poor guys, they're going to sell stuff the first half hour they're getting shouted at by the companies, they would you guys are useless. You always let us down, blah, blah, our customers complained to us, we get 1000s of them because you don't deliver. So I'm thinking okay, I hear what you're saying. You basically you want it you want us to stop your customers being upset because we don't deliver parcels when we say we're going to so that's that's the market size. Do I understand that but then when I'm going out with the drivers, I'm realizing okay, we've got all this, these wonderful parcel logistics tracking systems, but no customer interaction situation is linked to that. And lo and behold, I realized these guys would go along and possibly be stuck in the back of their vans based on the route the driver knew in his head was the best route because he delivered the area for the last 20 years. So you And along came nasty Amazon saying that parcel would deliver by nine that by 12. So that bloody bloody Amazon ruined my world, I can't deliver parcels how I want to. So suddenly, we had to do this thing called route optimization. And we realized other drivers were beginning routes that technology said was the smartest way to deliver their route. And they were going along, and it would say, now you need to deliver

this parcel at 11: 15:21

30am to this industrial estate, and they'd go, where's no point going there? Because I know they're on their coffee break between 11 and 12. They don't take deliveries, Julian trust others, no, no rubbish. And then the I'd see on a piece of note saying, Please phone the customer, when you're five minutes away, they'll come down and let you into the apartment, please, I haven't got time to phone the customer or ignore that one. So the tracking software was wrong. And whatever the consumers were telling the retailer's special instructions, the drivers were either not getting it or not caring a damn about it. And right. All this put a big picture in my head that okay, clearly something is wrong. Drivers are pretending to deliver, they press the button in the PDA says I tried to deliver but they have reasons in the head that are potentially valid. And customers are just getting fed up. I realized we weren't a broken company, it was a broken sector. So how can we do something that would choose for these customer issues, piggyback the transformation that was happening and make us stand out? And I said, Okay, of these 90,000 Plus phone calls we get per day, sitting with a call send days, and you could hear most of them are what times my parcel come in? Or why that Why didn't it come when you said it? Well, that was 90%. So what ties my parcel coming? Surely if we can give them an idea ahead of that now we have this route tracking? How awesome would that be? Make your pass will be there between nine and 11. Press this button to reschedule if there's an issue. Wow. That'd be amazing. And then, but also, the biggest thing is when we said we'd be there between nine and 11. And we didn't fulfill that promise. So I realized, okay, we need to make it easy for customers to contact us. So they go to the PDA, that app, whatever. And here's my parcel. Here's my issue. And I literally, the vision became clear, within three months, we need to be the only company that will tell you when to expect your parcel allow you to track the drivers GPS, I'm going to come up with these ideas I'm looking at like I'm the biggest village short. And if we let you down, make it easy for you to contact us. We will own your issue and we'll put it right. Those are my three....Alex. You don't understand parcels?

Rick Denton: 17:25

You're crazy, Alex

Alex Mead: 17:27

I knew if we did that is time you've got to break down. What are the things that prevent us doing that yet? I don't want to Yeah, there was nothing that could prevent us doing that if we were all in so I went to my pet buddy, the Group CEO obviously use that power. Oh, you got to win their hearts and minds Alex Oh God. So I literally had to stand up in front of 3000 Pasta delivery drivers at 70 Different depots. Explain to them the vision explain how we're going to support him with data cut long story short one, one and a half years later, we delivered 90% of what I said and we have written about by the telegraph the times and the only costs of delivery, you can trust and their service is amazing. And I'm like, Finally

Rick Denton: 18:08

let's see. that. That's so good. And I love the way that started. Here's what I love about your story in the way it started. Yes, the Pet CEO. Right, that part of it. But the fact that you started by listening to or not listening to well listen to your customers. But by living your employees Day in the Life, getting in the truck, getting in the sales cars, getting out there with the customer getting as close to the customer as possible by being there with the employees that front line, who are right there actually creating the experience with the customer. It amazes me how many companies don't value that, that even something as simple as just having call listening sessions and even better having a leader actually take calls. Those are the kind of things that would shock a company you must have I imagine this is something you've used as a tool before. Why is that so valuable? To have a get out there with the customer? What is it that you're hearing when you're right there side by side with the employees?

Alex Mead: 19:03

Well, yeah, and this is again, a great question. So people say hey, the board should go and sit by the call center agents, they're not going to do that. So you have to if you're the CX person in the company, whatever title you have, you have to be the person that takes their experiences to the boardroom to the senior man. So I literally learned the hard way I once presented a what I thought was a watertight case. Why we weren't why we were losing sales. Why we weren't retaining cars. It was a travel company actually we were selling tours around the world cruise ships everything. Let me let me explain the journey. So basically, they were looking at okay customers that talk to us about a Nile cruise. 20% of them convert that's pretty good. Right? And that was in their mind and what the actual journey was the customer would have the brochure, phone the number, they'll go through a brochure hotline agent who would say can have the 12 digit alphanumeric talk code you want us to find out About this is a tiny man Oh, and our target audience was 65 to 75. And then half of them were hanging up then. And the other half will be told, okay, here's the code, and then there'll be put into a queue to be answered by the NIO sales team who didn't answer 75% of them within 10 minutes. So they are batteries. Yeah, I managed to go and visit a customer who lives near I head office, I asked them I said, Can I just sit alongside you and and observe the process? So I screenshotted her her laptop signing in. She had the the brochure and I exactly showed the whole thing. And I played it for five minutes to the board. Yeah. Okay, stop, Alec, stop, we get it. Okay, how do we fix it, so, but you never going to get them to listen to the corner. So you have to don't just show the data don't just show the journey maps literally give a written example.

Rick Denton: 20:49

That is something so valuable when you bring the customers voice, we talk about voice of the customer, but I need the literal customers voice. So I talk a lot about call listening. But even I have and some of it is Yeah, little calculated, you choose the calls that might have the most emotional impact. But when you got a customer that's crying on the phone, because of something that the company did, it is amazing how the eyes just get wide amongst the leadership team. And they realize we're impacting real lives, not just numbers on a spreadsheet, but real humans with real lives. You and I, I guarantee we could talk a lot about this. Maybe we need another episode. That's just simply how do we bring the customers voice into leadership. But I want to ask you something. I'm talking to you in Bahrain. I'm sitting here in Texas with a bunch of passports, Logos behind me, clearly, I love the globe, you've had this incredible global experience. And I'm curious, what's it been like, with so many countries checked off your list? What's it like when you think about the real world application of customer experience? And just what's it been when you've worked in all of these global destinations?

Alex Mead: 21:48

Yeah, unfortunately, I haven't just done the big obvious places to set up a contact center in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, not all places where this was 1015 15 plus years ago, when I first did it, and we were the first to do it. Yeah. Realize, first of all, we get impatient in the US and Europe and UK, like five minute in a call center queue, my God, these guys will literally stand for an hour outside of retail store to just return an item or go and buy it. They don't get frustrated. But and also, they don't care about multi channel convergence. If they send an email and then phone you, they don't expect that to be a joined up experience that that's the case 5-10 years ago,

Rick Denton: 22:31

I was gonna say has that evolved over time? has that expecation escalated?

Alex Mead: 22:35

Now, it's almost turned about face because now they expect did they don't expect to ever have to sit in a call center queue as we still tolerate the big blue chip companies in the US and UK in Europe. They still forced customers into call center queues or in South America and Asia and Middle East. What happens after phone you it's actually seen as the as, what what planet are we in what century when I still have to make a phone call. It's literally the last channel you expect

Rick Denton: 23:09

When you're traveling at 30 plus countries when you're all over the world, sometimes it's nice to just take a little break. And so how about you join me here let's take a little change of pace. Join me here in the first class lounge we'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Alex Mead: 23:25

The toughest in sarcastic speech marks place is Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands had a three month assignment there which was wonderful.

Rick Denton: 23:33

That's AWESOME! I actually have family that have lived on the island for gosh, they may have been there for 30 years now my aunt and uncle live there. So we do get to go there. So I'm sorry that you had that hardship assignment. I hope that you survived. What's another hardship or what's a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Alex Mead: 23:50

I think Hawaii I'd love to do Hawaii. It's a long way from everyewhere I work.

Rick Denton: 23:57

I know it's funny. For me as an American. It's still a long ways for me, but at least it's sort of it's another one of my states. I could just bet over there if you will, on a six hour flight. You're right that it is quite a quite a journey from the UK or Bahrain where you are now. What is a favorite thing to eat?

Alex Mead: 24:12

Strangely, spaghetti bolognese has always been my go to meal.

Rick Denton: 24:15

Why do you start that sentence with "strangely"? that's one of my favorites.

Alex Mead: 24:19

Yeah, absolutely. But you think I've experienced so many meals? It's when I was a child. My mum would make me avocado with prawns and spaghetti bolognese and blackforest Gatto every birthday. Alex, what do you like? So it became like spaghetti bolognese and everywhere I go. That's the first meal. I try. But it has to be a good one. Not on average one.

Rick Denton: 24:38

Yeah, probably. That sounds really good. You know, it's funny Alex, when I asked that question, I do get an answer often that's very comfort foodie. Right. It's not some exotic I traveled the world type it. It often is a childhood meal or something like that. That's very comforting. So but in that vein of childhood, we've had some opposite experience. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid

Alex Mead: 24:58

tried to force me to eat soltanas, raisins, currents call them what you want. We have a thing called Christmas pudding. I don't know if you have it in the US, which is like a pie after the turkey. It has raisins tops, or Tanner's in it, and I realized when I'm young, I can't eat. So Tom has the taste there. And whilst you're you will sit at that table until you finish a man. Oh, you're watching the movie. And I've sat there like 6789 10 getting. So we got we got a dog. That was the best thing that happened. Oh, yes. And then I even stuffed in my pockets one day and pretended to eat it. So you have so Tanner's I can never eat them. Oh, but they tried for many years to come. Maybe even.

Rick Denton: 25:38

That's, I hear that a lot of the being forced to sit at the table. And I I was guilty of that in one specific instance that we joke about in my family with my first child, we did not do that with my second child. So perhaps we are breaking the chain for future generations. With all your travels. What is one travel item you will not including your phone, of course, but one travel item that you will not leave home without

Alex Mead: 26:01

interesting is my Kindle. Yeah. So I love I love to get lost in a book. If I'm on a long haul flight, yeah, watch a movie. But I'd prefer just to get lost in a Stephen King or Dean Koontz or those sorts of authors?

Rick Denton: 26:20

Yeah, for me, Alex, it depends on the length of the flight. I may need a little bit of movie, a little bit of book a little bit of movie a little bit, a little bit of wine, a little bit of sleep. But yeah, I too, I tend to find myself migrating more that book direction. I want to go back to talking about the frontline. And I'll take I'm looking at the clock. We may be kind of running out of time here. But I do want to ask you about that front line. And we joked about my keynotes. And yes, I've given a talk and have done sort of the keynote thing. But I point out how important it is to get information from the frontline. We talked about that. But it's also important to get that information back to the frontline that we don't just use them as a source of info but we provide them info. And I know you've talked about experiences even mentioned some earlier where the frontline just simply wouldn't given the information they needed to create that great experience. Why? What's it like when you see that scenario? And how have you helped get that information to the frontline, so that you can help turn that situation that customer experience? Experience around?

Alex Mead: 27:16

Okay, I'll stick with the postal delivery story because I've been there. So when I joined, I had three contact centers, about 400 people were pouring into me, there were another 800 Customer Care staff across the depots, 75 depots who reported to ops guys, depo managers, six months, six months later, excuse me, all of them reported into me. And we created a virtualized network of over 1000 Customer Care stuff, some of which were working in the operations depo world some of which worked in the contact center. The reason we did that is if you were a consumer, the likes of you and I were waiting for your parcel and you had a question, you dialed the contact center number, and the contact center would answer it, they wouldn't know where the parcel was, they would have to phone the Depo and then look on the system and try and get hold of the driver. So okay, let's make it all one set of people and you know what, this give the same data they have in the Depo to you in the contact center, and vice versa. And so that literally, but whilst was these guys were reporting to their local depo manager. They only cared about their their depots deliveries didn't care about the other 74 depo. So now this one big virtual team, one of the toughest changes I did was okay, we're now going to have a model where whether you're a business customer or a consumer, like you and I, you're going to dial a number, it's going to go to the agent this waiting longest in any depo or any contact center. Oh my god, you can't do that. Only like talking to business customers in Yorkshire. No, you could get a consumer customer from Southampton. And the hearts and minds was tough. But suddenly, it took away the the wasted call from here to here. This whoever answered it would have the data and information. So the information was huge. But the biggest part was then the empowerment what to do with that information. So getting agreement with all these depo managers that if we saw a driver had false carded, and we could see that because we knew the drive every drivers GPS route. When you when you press that button, if you'd actually gone to the customer's address, the Customer Care Agent could say, hey, driver, John, whatever your name is, I noticed you may have made a mistake with that delivery, can you please go back and fix it and they were empowered to tell drivers, you better go back and fix to that one step further. The customer didn't even have to point out or complain to us when they pressed. I tried to deliver it would flash up an alert on our CRM system and say that looks as though he wasn't anywhere near the address. Someone looked into it and no longer do we measure anyone called Answer chats, handled etc. We've measured them on fixing customer issues. So if I answered an issue from a customer, we'd say, Where's my parcel? I then was allowed to get off the phone, chase down that depo chase down that driver. And if the driver said I didn't deliver it, I'm going back to the Depo we've come up with a solution. Okay, how can we still get that parcel to that customer? An agent could phoned the customer back and say, I'm really sorry, there was an issue. You can collect the parcel from the Depo be there 7pm? Or can we send it somewhere else for you tomorrow and that information empowerment just transformed everything, it was amazing to feel the the cultural difference in the whole environment,

Rick Denton: 30:13

that idea of feeding them the information, so GPS and all the information so that the customer service person knows actually what's happening, but then also providing that I imagine it's somewhat, so we talked about the word impairment, but there's that satisfaction, okay, it's broken, I've got an upset customer, I have a way to solve for that, as opposed to, well just be empathetic and try to understand the customer pain, log the issue and then move on. I'm gonna cheat a little bit, because I know we're way out of time here. But I want to ask you a dangerous question, because it could spin us into another seven episodes. But I know that we started with the dissatisfaction of what's happening in customer experience today. So in the interest of perhaps a sickness, I'm curious, you get to fix one thing, what would you fix? How are you fixing customer experience today? Alex? What what are you going to do? What's your one thing?

Alex Mead: 31:03

Very simple. Make it easy for customer to tell you what they need help with. There's so much data, you sign into an app or website or whatever social media, the company knows who you are. They know what orders you have. They know what quotes they know the status of everything. Just let the customer say, Hey, guys, that order is supposed to be here today. It's not here yet message sent done. If you want to if they want to phone you or that's fine, but just let them send you the message and then deal with it as a company you deal with it. Why do they have to go through all the pain of telling you what their bloody issue is? Make it easy for them to tell you what their issue is. And then you can fix the issue. But you can also look at all the other similar issues. So that's why I say voc. Voc is amazing. Yeah, but you can actually the first thing is let customers tell you what they need help with.

Rick Denton: 31:47

Yeah. Oh, there it is. I love it. I love it. What's one thing make it easy for the customer to just message you, Alex brilliant. Absolutely love it. If someone wants to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you to learn more?

Alex Mead: 32:00

Just go to my LinkedIn profile, or AlexMead@sky.com.

Rick Denton: 32:05

All right, Alex, I have enjoyed this conversation today. Even in areas where I might see not see eye to eye with you. I still thrive on what you're putting out there. Keep it going. Brilliant conversation. Alex, thank you so much for being on CX Passport.

Alex Mead: 32:19

It's been a pleasure. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Rick Denton: 32:24

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.