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 an episode will combine customer experience discussions on Airbnb, Hawaii, and this sound...<dial-up modem noise> you know you're in for an intriguing discussion. Today's guest Desirree Madison-Biggs has an amazing breadth of CX experience starting back in the days for companies providing those early stage Internet services. Fast forward to the recent days and Deseret was instrumental in establishing what customer experience and a voice of a customer approach would mean for Airbnb, move all the way to the present. And we'll find Deseret happily ensconced in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Hawaii. I'm thinking today's guest with their past and present experiences may have been my unknown muse for CX passport with its weekly discussions on customer experience with a dash of travel. I feel like we may have a unique and fantastic conversational journey on our hands today, Desirree Welcome to CX passport.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 1:33

Thank you so much, Rick, it's great to be with you today.

Rick Denton: 1:35

I think it's going to be fun we talked about you just got back from walking the beach. I mean, talk about Hawaii, it's just immediately I'm already jealous. And we're only what a minute in.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 1:47

So we got here through a whole set of circumstances. And we've been here about 16 months, my young adult daughter, we live on the beach primarily because we're big nature lovers. Yeah. And Hawaii is one of the most like you said, beautiful, complicated, fraught with all kinds of juxtapositions of stakeholders. And we are just loving being here for now.

Rick Denton: 2:16

Oh, my gosh, when you're describing that, as suddenly I'm thinking, Wait, we should talk about the customer experience of Hawaii. I don't know that we will. But we'll see how that is. Really, let's talk about just your with that story background that you've got. There's all sorts of places that we could start. But often the best journeys are starting at the beginning. So how did you find your way to working in a customer experience space?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 2:37

I would say two things were instrumental. One is my passion for fixing things and making things better. So that was the first and then the second was being one who follows my heart. And really believing that when the path is made available to you, you follow it? When there's ease and flow, it's usually the right thing to do. And I guess there is a third thing in that is I'm a bit of a risk taker and an adventurer. And so as the world started turning its head towards better customer experiences as a as it evolved from like business process improvement and all those kinds of things. It really, really drew me in, and I was fortunate to be on the ground floor of a burgeoning industry.

Rick Denton: 3:29

Tell me about that. That ground floor, right. So there's this, this follow the heart aspect of it. But there were there were doors that were open for you. How did you know that? This was that moment? This was that heart? What what what, tell me that story? What was that? Like?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 3:43

It wasn't immediately obvious. I was the Director of Sales for b2b sales at one of the very first commercial Internet Service Providers back in San Jose, back in the late 90s. And I found myself constantly trying to fix things on behalf of the customer. And realize that I had no way to aggregate these experiences to help to drive systemic change. And so I put into place in the sales organization, a customer satisfaction person whose was responsible for one on one interviews with customers to find out what went well and what didn't. And at that time, there were a lot of enterprise feedback management companies, plat survey platforms that were starting to come to life. And I ended up you know, contracting with one of those to help me because to make things a little bit more systemic, yeah. So that was that was the start of everything. And the more I got into it, the more relationships I built, the more experiences I had with understanding what it really takes to drive change. You know, things opened up

Rick Denton: 4:50

that experience of realizing okay, I've got these recurring problems that I want to solve, but I have no systemic way of doing that. I've got imagine that's something that frontline employees These B ad sales sales leaders, or someone that's on a phone struggle with today that they see these recurring patterns, they see these sorts of things. How would you tell a company? Hey, here's how you should go about really understanding and getting let me say it this way, enabling that frontline to be able to communicate those recurring experiences and actually be able to listen to that voice of the customer in that way.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 5:25

Yeah, well, you're hitting on a really important part. And I think that there's, again, probably two pieces to this puzzle. One is having enlightened leadership that understands, specially now that experience is everything. And they absolutely need to have visibility into what's happening in order to change things and make the decisions that are not only right for the business, but are right for the customers experience so that they will love them more. Right. So it's all really about the brand and its promise and its connection to those experiences intentionally delivered. With regards to employees, I feel that there is a huge amount of opportunity there to make a rigorous ability for frontline employees to be able to give the feedback because they hear it over and over and over again, and capturing that as a part of any kind of voice of customer program. So that you can start to get those early warning signals right up the front and make sure that everybody knows that that is what the intention is like when we roll out that product. When we roll out that new process policy, whatever it is, that affect customers, that you know what's coming down the pipe. So you have employees to tell you right off and you also have social media. So encapsulating those key listening posts are really important, along with a systemic way to understand the relationship.

Rick Denton: 6:46

Yeah, and that idea is to many people hear voice of the customer, they think survey and you just said two things that are part of the voice of the customer that have nothing to do with the survey, getting the voice the customer, the front, the front line from social media. I know that I've had an experience when calling two different airlines here in the Dallas area. And I've told this story before. But there's one airline that I did say, Hey, I've got had this recurring problem, do you have a place that you can actually log this? And the agent? Absolutely. I've got this, let me get here's what's going to happen to and you could hear that they knew exactly what to do. And then the other airline, I actually admire the agents honesty? No, I don't have a way to capture that once you send an email into yatta yatta. Right. So it was interesting to hear that, you know, different companies with that different approach already built in through the voice of their agent right there. Yep, I want to go back to that customer experience journey that you've had, I know that you've had several points where you've established a new concept, a new role around the customer, it could be customer satisfaction, like you talked about earlier customer service, or just overall customer experience. And so for our listeners who are trying to do just that, that idea of bringing the customer to their company, what advice would you give them from your experience?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 7:51

It's such a great question. So many things that come to mind, how long do you have Rick? Yeah, usually, these programs that ended up being implemented start with surveys and voice of the customer. And I think if I were to do things differently, particularly at Symantec, where I spent 10 years driving a number of different programs, I would stay start with, I would say, start with customer understanding. And that is not about surveys, that is about the other tools of the CX trade, which are journey mapping and bringing people together cross functionally, to go out and go see, to listen, to understand with empathy, what is going on downstream from the point of departure at the company. And so that's what I would start with. But the real answer is start with wherever you can, because you can always go back, this doesn't have to be a linear process. So if you start with voice of the customer, because people want to see data, yay, you start there, but then circle back with efforts to really have deep customer understanding and empathy.

Rick Denton: 8:59

Oh, that's, I mean, it's so simple what you just said, but you probably saw my reaction on screen here. Of course, start where you can. And that's, you know, we hear the idea of start with that your small victories what that might be. So don't, let's say that you've learned something in the Customer Experience, the voice of the customer, the analysis, the insights, and you realize, oh, my gosh, is going to be this monstrous thing. Well, you know, how about just tweak the language in the communications that you send to your customer? Maybe that's kind of easy, just start there and be a little more empathetic and even how you communicate with customers. So what that might look like, I kind of like that just just start where you can. Let's I mentioned Airbnb, and that one intrigues me Of course, it's such a widely known brand. It is something that almost everybody has heard of, and many have experienced as a customer. You've experienced it as an employee. You know, what was that like from a customer experience perspective? You've got guests, you've got hosts, you've got employees. Let's just go deeper into that Airbnb experience. What was it like to drive CX there?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 9:58

It was actually really Interesting. It was the first time that I ever worked in a company where everybody felt like the customer, whether it was guests or hosts belong to them. And I was used to driving a centralized Center of Excellence, where you control me as the practitioner controls everything. Airbnb was all about the democratization of data. And so I quickly realized that I was not going to have any control or very little control, except for the instrumentation, the basic foundational components of it, but what people did with the data was not within my control. And that was weird at first, to be honest with you. But over time, I realized what an amazing decision to make. Because everybody felt like they owned some part of the customer. And so so from that vantage point, it was really unique. And the other thing that was really unique, maybe not so much unique, but actually interesting, a little bit friction and friction fraught, was, what metrics are we going to use? Ah, yes, the executives wanted to use, you know, NPS and effort. And you know, the research team wanted to use other things. They didn't believe in NPS. And so there were struggles there in how to best implement understanding and gauge our success. So that was an interesting component that I had never encountered before as well.

Your CX Passport Captain: 11:38

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.

Rick Denton: 12:05

I seen those kinds of challenges, that idea of you know what metrics now I haven't heard as much about the democratization of data that you described, where it's just okay, it's here. Y'all use it and how you want. I'm curious, I mentioned kind of that you've got the guests, you've got the hosts? I would imagine there can be competing interests. They're competing appetites for what the right experience looks like, how does that come together? Or how does that break apart? I guess maybe I shouldn't lead with that. Just how do you resolve that tension between a guest and a host when it comes to customer experience development at Airbnb?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 12:39

Oh, my gosh. So there were a lot of very smart, passionate people working on those issues. And that really comes down to that balancing act. And I saw Airbnb B, go from one focus area for hosts to guests back to hosts, and then trying to find that, that balance between interests, such that you are working on behalf of host to Dr. Guests, and making sure that the host experience since you don't own any of the properties is as best as it can be. And we had such a huge effort, always to have the host and the guest experience front and center of everything that we did. Now, from a voice of the customer being both of those, we were able to do relationship surveys to guests, and hosts and understand the drivers, including the support experience the drivers in the impact of those drivers on their total experience, their NPS, and how they felt about us. And so those findings got utilized throughout the company to and help drive some of the focus areas, especially when we start to bring the voice of support into this overall effort because they were hearing it time and time again.

Rick Denton: 14:01

Helped me so you said voice of support. Tell me what you mean by that. That's not a term that's widely out there.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 14:07

I think I just made it up.

Rick Denton: 14:09

I think you better go trademark it before this release is

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 14:12

the voice of support to me. So I ended up I started driving the customer experience in the last three years that I was there. I was in a support organization where I was responsible for driving, customer empathy, customer support, Voice of the employee, those kinds of things. And so I saw for the first time, the power of the voice of the employee and the sheer amount of data that a well run support organization can surface yes and improve that experience. And so for me, if the advice I would give to back to your original question, I would say go make friends with a support organization. Learn from them as a part of your overall attempt to understand the relationships and build those bridges because they will be your friend.

Rick Denton: 15:04

I don't know if it's because I live in the CX community, or if I'm actually sensing something that's happening out there. But for years now we've seen such an almost an extraction of resources away from the customer support. That's the context center, those sorts of things, because they're viewed as cost centers. But what you're describing is, it's really a customer insight center. And I'm starting to see more of that. I don't know if that's like, because I'm ensconced in the CX world, or if it actually is a trend that people are realizing, Wait, why don't we instead of trying to create something new to get customer insight, let's amplify the existing source of great customer insights that we have today. I'm gonna ask you a question that sort of off the wall here. And let's be honest, I can edit this out later if it's too off the wall. But I'm curious if you've been in the support organization for Airbnb, you have to had some really interesting support stories that come out of that organization, anything that you're able to share? Your filtering, okay, I know this story, no, can't tell that one. I know the story can't tell that.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 16:09

I will tell you this. That when you think about and this is make perfect sense to you. But people think of Airbnb as a company. But whatever happens in the real world happens on Airbnb, there are things that happen in places, and oftentimes those places are on Airbnb, and you can read, you know, all parties, all kinds of crazy things. And so one of the huge lifts that Airbnb had to do was to create policies to protect hosts, and guests. And to stand behind the business and, and the leadership of Airbnb, I have to do a plug. You could not wish better things on a better group of guys running a company, who they every day wake up thinking, how can we make this better? How can we support our stakeholders? And how do we have a well rounded business that is not so short term focused, but is a brand for the ages. And when you have that kind of thought, the way that you treat employees, the way that you treat each other? And the way that you treat your customers? Changes?

Rick Denton: 17:19

Yeah. You know, and we hear, Oh, gosh, it feels like there's almost this sort of public visibility of that brand that has it maybe a little negative, that kind of stuff. But what you're describing is what I've, I've felt as a customer, I've never had the opportunity to be a host. But I've certainly felt that, that it is about building experiences, it is about providing I can tell you, there's no way that I would have been able to stay and experience what I did in Florence, Italy, had it not been for this concept, had it not been for this. And so knowing that, yeah, even at the worst of humanity, knowing that there's a company that's behind, how do we solve for that? And how do we improve for that and and take that forward? I kind of like that transparency of yeah, this is maybe what does happen. But how do we help ensure that that doesn't happen going forward? Right? Speaking of those kinds of travels, Airbnb, like, a bunch of companies, right, you've got to travel for business from time to time. But imagine you're not staying at hotels all that often. So what's it like to have a business trip with Airbnb? I only think of it from a personal perspective, but to have a business trip with Airbnb, and what about if multiple employees are traveling?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 18:23

That's such a, that was probably one of the best parts of my being a part of a leadership team, was the incredible camaraderie that we established living together. Over time. You get to know your management, and your colleagues better than you ever could, and understanding who they are, what they do what they believe, through all those taxi rides, flights, and then spending the night with them, sometimes days on end, right. So all those late night dinners, and getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth, making breakfast together, making breakfast to one another. It was really incredible. And so that was the that was the human side of it. That was the employee side of it. And I think was irreplaceable, as an employee to go out and drink your own champagne. Yeah, to experience the policies, and all of the training and the things that we did that we thought were so great. And we found out well, that really doesn't work, maybe in the city, in this region, in the state, whatever things needed to be fixed. And so you know, in fact, Brian Chesky is spending the next year I think he started in February or March, living on Airbnb. And so he's going around the world, staying in all kinds of hosted experiences, to see how things work and that is the ethos of the company. Everybody goes out. And if you don't do it for travel because of your job, they pay you every quarter to go stay. So we got 500 bucks to go every quarter to go try out Airbnb.

Rick Denton: 20:17

Wow, that's awesome. I didn't know that about Airbnb. That's so much fun. Now, I gotta say, I love people. I like being around people. But I also like to take a break from people sometimes. So imagine in some of those travels, and if you're traveling, let's say in his example, traveling around the world staying in Airbnb is over and over. Maybe a break is is due. So it can be nice to just jump into the first class lounge for a bit, take a break. Have a little fun, and just enjoy that rest. So join me here in the first class lounge, and let's take that break together. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 20:49

I went to New Zealand for a couple weeks. It was amazing.

Rick Denton: 20:54

Oh my gosh, I've heard a Zealand come up a couple times. I haven't had the chance to be there. But what was it about it that you really loved

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 21:00

the beauty, the pristine seeming environment, the the integration of the native peoples, the Maori people into the overall society, and the pride that New Zealanders have and their distance from the rest of the hoo ha, in the world that was refreshing.

Rick Denton: 21:23

That last part, I've thought sometimes like, Huh, what would it take to become a resident there and just be away from the world? Hoo, ha, yeah, no, I'm, I'd have done a little digging, and yet, it's a lot. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 21:38

Its neighbor, Australia. For some reason, just haven't gotten there. I have a number of friends and I just need to go.

Rick Denton: 21:46

Well, I don't want to say you're actually halfway there. But at least you're closer than I am in Texas. You've kind of made it a little bit further to the west than I have. So yeah, you need to get down there some time. I hope to see that as well. What is a favorite thing to eat?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 22:01

I like anything that a friend or a hosted family prepares. I love the experience of eating other people's food.

Rick Denton: 22:11

Oh my gosh. You just stumped me. Like I'm sitting here with my mouth open kind of jot down what a brilliant answer. I've not had that one before. 60 Plus episodes and you have frozen me with that one. That's really nice. That's actually kind of beautiful right there. I almost hate to ask the next question, but I have to what is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 22:32

Like this? Totally vibrant memory of frozen ravioli? It happened once it went in and came immediately up. And that was the last time we had frozen

Rick Denton: 22:50

I'm laughing at the description of a vibrant memory. And then certainly the the the return process that existed with that. I've heard that before it was some of these foods as well. What is one travel item not including your phone of course that you will not leave home without.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 23:07

I say two things feel free comfortable walking shoes, number one. Number two, a swimsuit? Because you never know when you're going to be able to get in the water

Rick Denton: 23:22

I didn't expect such wisdom disarray. I liked that. Yes, comfortable shoes and a swimsuit should go into every suitcase. I agree with that. I'm kind of curious. You've traveled a I imagine many different Airbnbs many different host experiences. Is there one that particularly stood out? Is there one property? Is there one location that really stood out with you?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 23:45

There, as you asked that question, I just had this flash of all the different experience.

Rick Denton: 23:50

I wish that I could have this on video because your face showed those flashes. The

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 23:55

the one that really stood out was a place that we stayed as a management team in Sonoma, California, in this beautiful home that was hosted by his beautiful couple. And we were able to just have just an amazing time together to do all the work that we had to do for three days. But that one really stood out just because of its beauty. And it just felt like wow, people live like this.

Rick Denton: 24:23

That's great. So after we hit stop on this episode, I'm going to ask if you can send me the the name of that one. I may want to check that one out if it's if they're still hosting So, but let's move past Airbnb, right? That's not where you are. Now you've gone independent, you've launched a coaching business. How did you decide to add coaching to your existing world of customer experience?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 24:42

That really came about by my management experience over the years. I really wanted to be a better listener. And I wanted to be a deeper thinker about how people work and what they need to be be able to do the things that they want to achieve in their lives. And so the last couple of years that I was Airbnb, I went through a training program and became a certified coach. And I also was thinking about, you know, downstream retirement, you know, once I'm, through my customer experience, consulting practice, you know, what do I want to spend my time doing what really makes me feel great about putting in time, what brings me joy. And so coaching has turned out to be that part of it. And it's something I can use personally, because you have to go through a lot of work to be a coach. Yeah, self introspection and understanding. And then also helping clients do the same thing. So that's how I did it.

Rick Denton: 25:47

That's interesting. And the two worlds are not worlds that I would have thought of linking together before. But I imagined there's quite a bit of overlap between how you approach creating great customer experience and and how you might approach I'm not even sure the right verb and you know it working with someone in a in a coaching environment. How have you seen those worlds weave together?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 26:08

Well, I think, as we become, quote, unquote, experts, in what we do, the inclination is to talk too much. And to tell too much, and to be the smart one in the room. So what I have found is that if you want to engage employees, if you want to get the best out of them, you need to talk less, and listen more. And that very basic premise is also part of customer experience. How do you talk less at your customers and listen more, and then take action on what you learn. So those two things, I think, are really important. And it's really about and I always believe this, that customer experience has the power to transform people's lives one customer at a time. Yeah. And so with coaching, it's a part of that it's a skill set, basically,

Rick Denton: 27:09

gosh,so deep. You frozen me multiple times, you can't do that to the podcast host. But now I'm really frozen with some of those thoughts. Those are those are beautiful and deep. I really appreciate that. We're getting close to the end of time, and it makes me sad, but it is we're closing the time. But I do want to close out with a theme that I am hearing woven throughout here. And even hearing about Airbnb travel stories and your coaching approach. Now. It's it's all about humanity, and getting to understand the human experience. And I know that so much of customer expense. And I asked this a lot in my my podcasts because I see it so much the customer experience lately pushes towards the digital that focusing on the digital experience. And that's not bad. It's okay to a certain degree. But there's this risk of de emphasizing the human. So I'm curious, how do you keep the humanity in customer experience?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 28:01

I remember enough at the other end of whatever you're creating is a human that has to experience what you just created. Yeah. And I can I tell a quick story. You have plenty of time for a quick story. All right. So this past week, I had a motherboard problem on my Mac, which precipitated a calamitous event in my harddrive also was corrupted. I'm sorry, my external disk drive was corrupted. So and I didn't know that. So I was left with calling to huge named...

Rick Denton: 28:37

We'll keep the names out, because I don't know where the story is going.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 28:40

The one delivered amazing customer experience, whether it was in person retail, on the phone, digital, I never felt abandoned. I did not experience delays. And everyone seemed to understand to be able to empathize with what I was dealing with. Now ultimately, they couldn't help me. Yeah. But they did the best they could. And I was online, on the phone, and in a retail store. Okay, so once I got my Mac problem fixed,

Rick Denton: 29:17

oh, well, it's out there. But yes, that was the good side of the story. \

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 29:20

That was the good side of this story. There was always a human behind whatever experience I had. And if I could not get a digital fix, somebody could help me a person. And so I think they've done an extraordinary job connecting the dots on the back end. So it feels like a seamless, effortless experience, which is something that we strive for, when we're creating these customer experiences. I think they've kind of nailed it. Yeah. Now there was another company where I just needed to get a password from the applications that I that I had purchased, right. I I won't even say how awful the experience was. There was a digital experience there was a chat experience could never get anyone on the phone. Nobody understood I had to cancel my subscription and repurchase. Oh my gosh, the applications just to get up and running. I was password. I was furious. Yeah. And it took me it was two solid dates. Oh, my time trying to get it fixed. So unbelievable. There you have it.

Rick Denton: 30:23

And, you know, let me what I heard in a couple things in that story that are particularly interesting is one, you even said the first experience wasn't able to solve it, right? Eventually your motherboard failed, and it just could not be repaired. And yet you have this warmth towards that brand, because of how they treated you as a customer, how they treated you with that empathy, all the connection of all the experiences the seamless aspect of it. This other one, well, in the end, you got to solve, you're still with the product, you've got a new account, but you have this, this unsettledness this frustration that is resonating with with you and inside of you because of that company, because of the way that experience was so poor. So, so often we think that it's the issue that needs to be solved, that creates the loyalty creates the connection, but actually, it's that human connection, that empathy, that created your loyalty to that brand that is probably going to pay financial dividends for that brand as you likely stick with them for all my future.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 31:18

I did I bought another piece of equipment even though the first one failed. Yeah. So

Rick Denton: 31:23

gosh, what I glad we get to close on on that story. That's, that's a good store and a good lesson for all of us. But I do want to let the listeners know how can they get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you your practice, and how they can get in touch with you?

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 31:35

Well, thanks for asking. So there's two ways. There's my email address. It's <removed>. That's probably the easiest thing to remember. And then secondarily on LinkedIn, you can look at feedback diva, or you can look me up by name Desirree Madison-Biggs,

Rick Denton: 31:49

I love it. Yes, search for feedback data. I'll get all of that in the show notes. You don't even have to leave the episode. Just scroll down, look at the notes and you'll be able to, to find out the best way to get in touch with us. Right. That's right. Thanks so much for today. I found it enlightening. It's always fun to talk about travel. It's always great to hear those stories. It's great to hear that journey that you had through the world of customer experience and all the different definitions that are there. And thank you for closing out with that great brand story. I hope that this next motherboard and computer last infinitely longer than what you experienced this first time around. But Sears, thank you so much for today. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Desirree Madison-Biggs: 32:25

Thank you Rick was great.

Rick Denton: 32:26

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. 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.