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. It's exciting to interview a fellow podcaster, especially one with as great a podcast as my guest today. Serving as the Chief Marketing Officer of Worthix and the host of the brilliant Voices of CX podcast. Mary Drumond brings a wealth of experience and energy to the customer experience field. I first met Mary when she was involved in a recent customer experience webinar, we've found a ton of overlap in our approach to customer experience, especially the need for it to be practical, usable, not just fluffernutter ivory tower dreams. I knew I wanted her to share her insights and stories on CX passport. Mary brings a global perspective having been born in Brazil now blending time between the US and with her extended Brazilian family that provides a perspective I want to explore. There's also a little something about weightlifting, weightlifting. Yeah, that's right. Customer Experience, bout occasion weightlifting, you'll get it all in today's episode with Mary Mary. Welcome to CX passport.

Mary Drumond: 1:28

Hey, Rick. It's great to be here. It's great to be on your show today.

Rick Denton: 1:33

Well, thank you for being on it. We did connect right way back in the beginning of that practical approach to customer experience that need for getting practical is vital all the time. But especially in turbulent times, like say, Now, why is customer experience so important in turbulent times?

Mary Drumond: 1:53

Well, that's a great question that can be kind of sliced and diced in many ways. But for me, the most crucial element of it all, is that in turbulent times, what we find is that it's more valuable to retain the customers that we have, and it's cheaper to retain than it is to acquire a lot of companies kind of buckled down, and just go into full, safe mode, let's say where they cut their expenses down to a minimum, and they just kind of go into survival mode to try to ride out turbulent times. And when this happens, budgets are sometimes eliminated or cut short. And it becomes that much more important to know exactly where we need to invest to have the greatest impact. And there's no better way to understand the impact and the consequences of your decisions as an executive and an organization than to hear freight straight from the customer themselves. So at my company worth X the company I work at, we have made it our mission. To understand customer decisions, we have made it our mission to value impact over frequency when it comes to measuring feedback. We have spent years in a lot of scientific research, understanding why customers value or see worth in a product or offering. And most importantly, what are the aspects of the experiences that they have with your company that are driving them to purchase because, for us, the most important moment is the decision to buy. That's the moment where money changes hands. And it can either be the decision to buy, or the decision to rebuy or not to churn in case of a subscription model. So what is it that is ultimately weighing on their decision to buy or not? What are the factors of the experience as a whole? That when it comes down to it make the customer think yes, this is worth it? Right? Or no, this is not worth it. Right? And in turbulent times, what you have is that decision is that much more precious, because the cost for acquiring customers goes gets so much higher, and the need to kind of safely protect our assets and our customers becomes so much more dire.

Rick Denton: 4:25

It's interesting to hear you say that. And the thing that I'm thinking of is everything you just said and clearly I'm biased coming out of the customer experience field. But everything you just said is so incredibly logical, it makes complete sense. And yet we're seeing so many companies actually under index on customer experience focusing on where the customer experience matters where the money changes hands or what factors might influence the money to change hands. There's elements of customer service where we talk about four hour hold times and places like that that exist out there. And the stories are legendary. Why would you think that occur? But he would just walk away from all the logic that you just described earlier.

Mary Drumond: 5:04

Because they, they don't really understand in my mind how much that's affecting the customer's decision. They don't understand what the true consequences of messing up here or there is. And that's where understanding impact over frequency becomes so important. So lots of times what's happening is that companies are looking at Customer Satisfaction Index ease or looking at recommendation potential. And what's happening is that they're looking at kind of this like broad number. With a blanket number, let's say that's masking so many things under the surface. And one of the biggest mistakes that is made is that we are looking at the experience as a whole, which is really important. But we're not understanding the subcategories or the drivers, as we like to call them that are truly driving decisions. So it's never one thing alone. It's a combination of a series of factors, right. So the science that we've done over the years, has determined that there are five main drivers that that make a customer decide whether or not something is worth it. And for purchase decisions. These drivers are price quality. Now this in no order, okay, this, this changes, from industry to industry, from product to product, company to company Market to Market, but price quality relationship, those are the tangible drivers that we can actually name, let's say, and they were pretty obvious, right? So this has to do with not only product, but the relationship that companies cultivate and nurture with customers, whether it's in the store with frontline employees in a brick and mortar, or whether it's customer service, or whether it's a user interface on on a digital platform, this is all relationship. So when it comes to the intangibles, any marketer knows how important intangible drivers are, especially the ones that we've determined are huge influencers on decision to buy or not, and they are social proof. In other words, how how your group of peers or family and your relationships actually judge you based on your decisions, let's say or how you judge them, or how you decide based on how you want other people to perceive you. And the other one is brand identification. So branding is such a main element of marketing and behavior, analytics and everything. I struggle with the notion that so many, so many companies are overlooking the importance of measuring intangible drivers when it comes to customer experience. Yes, product is important. Absolutely. Yes, relationship is important. But how about all of these internal kind of psychological elements that are just as strong if not stronger? So why is it that companies out there feel they don't need to measure those intangibles?

Rick Denton: 8:00

I imagine an element of that, and I'm going to say it but then ask it is the difficulty of measuring it. And anything that's intangible sound, soft, ethereal, esoteric, how do I how do I possibly measure it? And so it's just easier to put my eyes on something that is measurable. So how do how do you go about measuring something that is as intangible as you say,

Mary Drumond: 8:22

right? Well, I mean, I would first say that in the business world, I don't think that you get to pick like, Oh, this is difficult. So I'm not gonna do it. I'm just gonna skip over this one really quick, go on to the easy.

Rick Denton: 8:35

We've seen examples of it. No, no, it's definitely out there. But

Mary Drumond: 8:39

yes, I mean, it's out there. But it has dire consequences, right. And that's what's important to evaluate. So what we did is we actually created a methodology around doing that a lot of our platform has built in behavior analytics, there's a lot of psychology built into our platform. And that's because our CEO and founder is a psychologist, actually. So he started off in psychology and then moved into market research. So there's a very big blend of behavior, and how that affects the perceptions and the experiences of your customer. And that's why we focused so strongly on intangible drivers, because we noticed how difficult it was for other companies to do it, or the fact that they just didn't do it at all. So there's a huge gap there, or when they do do it, Rick, it's it's it's qualitative research. It's focus groups. It's in depth interviews, which are fantastic, but they're expensive, and they're nearly impossible to scale. It's so difficult that like you said, people just tend to skip that part entirely. If you look at the basis of market research, and surveying, it should always start with qualitative research. It should always start with a focus group, where you have them give you outside in feedback and then upon you use that feedback to create a questionnaire that you then turn into a quantitative research that you can then scale, but companies just skip it. For that first part, and clearly that doesn't work because most of the surveys out there are freaking nightmare.

Rick Denton: 10:05

You're oh my gosh, boy, that that right there if we if I just hit stop now that would be great because you're right so many surveys are just absolute garbage out there. You're right that is how difficult it is and how hard it is to do something right? And get those intangibles measured in a way that actually matters.

Your CX Passport Captain: 10:24

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Rick Denton: 10:51

All of that logic leads me to this next question, which is you had told me about you're not a fan of this, quote, romantic customer experience. And I know we're not talking about some rom com, The English Patient or anything like that. But what do you mean by romantic customer experience? And why are you not a fan?

Mary Drumond: 11:08

Well, I think that it has a lot to do with the first point, which is in the stuff that doesn't get done. Right. So it's it's a lot of really like well intended projects and elements that you know, just absolutely never become something that is capable of impacting a customer's decision or not, you know, so like, I hear a lot of individuals that are wonderful. And they're talking about different ways to revamp the customer journey and new ways to surprise and delight, for instance, that's fantastic and absolutely wonderful. But more importantly, how much is it going to cost to implement that initiative? And at the end of the day, how much is that initiative truly going to affect your customers decision to buy from you or not. And that's the crucial element that a lot of CX practitioners overlook entirely. And this reminds me of a bank here in the US, which shall remain unnamed

Rick Denton: 12:12

We're going brandless here. That's right.

Mary Drumond: 12:14

But a couple years ago, they made a massive a monumental investment. And instead of having, you know, bake agencies having coffee shops, where you can go and sit and have a coffee, and there was artwork, and it was beautiful. And there was a whole vibe to it, etc, blah, blah, blah. And when I saw that, I was like, Well, you know, this is interesting, but I'd be more interested in understanding how much this initiative is getting people to sign on to this company and switch over from a traditional bank agency to this one, right? Because the truth is, I don't think people want to go to the agency period

Rick Denton: 12:54

if they happen to need to go to a branch than the one that's in their neighborhood, because a lot of that does find its way to becoming commoditized. And that Exactly, yeah, I know the example that you're talking about. And it is it would have been interesting to be a part of those rooms where that decision was being made. Because wasn't some of that came back to the branding that you were describing earlier. Right? Hey, even though we know we won't get people to sign on, it'll give us a halo effect or those, what were those conversations that were there. Now, you and I share this very practical approach, I am very much a fan of if I can just say it simplistically, the ROI of CX making sure that whatever you're doing has some sort of tangible business outcome that you're driving towards, be it increase in revenue reduction and cost or some other tangible. But there's something about the emotional side of it that I don't want to lose either. So I'm a big fan of story and a big fan of how customer story inspires. And some of that stuff is not logical, some of that stuff does not necessarily find its way to spreadsheets. So how do you balance that practical, with also the emotional aspect of customer experience and inspirational aspect of that?

Mary Drumond: 13:53

By measuring it

Rick Denton: 13:56

can't get you out of the logic? Can I?

Mary Drumond: 13:59

well, well, that's the thing, like if you if your find a way to dialogue with your customers in a way that isn't boring and annoying, and is not a clunky, old traditional survey that ends up getting a whole bunch of useless feedback and very little actionable feedback. And you're able to have a conversation about what matters to them. If you find out the narrative and the storytelling matters, then by all means, just throw money at that thing. You know, I think that the important thing is once again, understanding what your customers value and focusing on that. So if your customers value, the idea of having a coffee shop location as opposed to a physical branch, whatever, then it's a good investment. It's a solid investment. It's making a difference even if they're not going but you see if what customers are truly interested in is lower bank fees or or a hotline that they can call and have that you know that first call resolution, just get on top of it call center? Yeah, then what good is it to have this big fancy shmancy Cafe bank, and then providing your customers with crap experiences when they call it and they truly need help? You know, so, so keep, as at the top of your investment priorities, the elements that truly have an impact on your customers decisions. And then once you're doing that, if you still have leftover budget, and you still want to throw money at something, then by all means build a cafe,

Rick Denton: 15:36

I love that that's going to be what we hang our head on at the build the cafe, which for all we know, it actually was a great idea and turned out incredible numbers. But the concept of what you're describing makes a ton of sense. I will say that at least what I'm saying Who knows, the algorithm may just be feeding it to me that way. I'm seeing much more talk and conversation in the way that you're describing Marian that is okay, the pendulum has swung a little bit too far to the the fluffernutter that I was describing other now it's back to Yeah, for our whole time suck, do something about it, I don't care about your really great surprise and delight story, just make it where I can call and get somebody on the phone and under four hours. Now, it's the time on the show where I always get itchy and want to start talking about travel. And so I know that you were born in Brazil, you're married to a Brazilian I had a recent podcast, gaslight eSports Oh, she's back in episode 62. She talked about how important experience is to the Brazilian culture. And I had a taste of that back way too long ago, back in 1998, when I had a project down there, and I was in Sao Paulo for a while. And I just felt that experience that vibe of Brazil. And so given your exposure to Brazil, the US the wider globe, what have you seen in regard to customer experience that's influenced the approach that you bring to customer experience today?

Mary Drumond: 16:52

Well, I think that most importantly, it's one thing that's hard to understand unless you live through it is is how behind the market truly is when it comes to the focus on the customer. So the talks about the experience economy and customer centricity that all started, I'm going to say 20 plus years ago, when when companies started focusing on hey, maybe we should listen to our customers and they started sending out surveys to begin with. In Brazil, this happened a lot more recently and not only Brazil, but a lot of developing markets because you know, for so long they were focused on you know, getting basic technology in place, etc. But then they came around to seeing the importance of, of truly valuing customers and understanding that it's it's actually like a profitable business practice to pay attention to your customers and what they need. But the market is still very, very behind. And, and in fact, from a cultural perspective, many people here in the US don't know how large Brazil is. So when it comes to square miles, Brazil is actually bigger than the continental US. Yeah, and, and there are so many different regions, and each of those regions was colonized by a different colonizer, they've got sometimes different demographics, sometimes though, the way that they speak the language change changes entirely. And one thing that definitely changes is those drivers of what they deem to be important or not. And we did a lot of research in Brazil, we've got a lot of customers in Brazil. And we find that customers in the southeast have very different drivers than the ones in the Northeast. Customers in the South that come from many of them come from a lot of the European descendants of countries like Germany and Poland, they tend to have a much more logical approach than areas of the country that were colonized, say by the Portuguese, or they have a larger indigenous population. And, and they tend to be a little bit more warm and understanding with certain events, you know, so there is a level, the level of tolerance changes a lot. And the expectations change so much. There are so many nuances. And I've had guests on the podcast that come from the African continent, from Asia from all over South America. And this is something that they describe a lot it's going to take a while for the market to truly understand the value of investing in customer service and customer experience and customer success. And none of this happens overnight.

Rick Denton: 19:34

With all that travel sometimes can be a little exhausting, so it's time to head to the first class lounge. Let's take a little break here. Join me here we'll move quickly and have a little fun what is a dream travel location from your past?

Mary Drumond: 19:46

So my baby moon during my pregnancy, I actually went to a part of Brazil called Bahia and it's it's on the beach and this South of Bahia has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. And we went to a town called Theron causal. And Troncoso is on the top of a cliff, essentially, that looks down on just endless beaches. And there's a beach nearby where a kind of a dark water river meets the ocean. And then you have a clash of that crystal clear blue ocean cool, dark waters. And it's, it's very, it's still very preserved. There are actual indigenous tribes in that area that still inhabit the land there. And it's so far there are places that you can only get to by helicopter, or by boat or in a really good jeep. And it was, it's a little piece of heaven. And I would recommend that Uncle zoo is the name of the city.

Rick Denton: 20:56

Absolutely, you're gonna get that into the show notes. But I may hide that until I get a chance to go to Trancoso before everyone else discovers I know it's water the accent Forgive me yours is much better than mine. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Mary Drumond: 21:09

So I do have this dream of taking a cruise down the fjords. So leaving Copenhagen and going all the way up to St. Petersburg. With the current scenario. I don't know how that stop in St. Petersburg is going to be maybe I'll stop in Helsinki, it'll be a little bit better. That kind of going through the Scandinavian countries and up into Finland. That has always kind of been a dream of mine.

Rick Denton: 21:32

It's it is beautiful up there. I have had the opportunity to be I haven't done Norway. But I have been to St. Petersburg was visiting a friend teaching English there but also had a chance to be there in the same the Soviet Union era if you can believe Wow, but it's a beautiful city. And I do hope that eventually as travelers, sometimes I just wish politics would go away and we could just experience the globe Saans politics but no, you're right. It may be a little while but yes, get to St. Petersburg Sunday, what is a favorite thing to eat?

Mary Drumond: 22:01

Okay, I'm a huge foodie. So that's a that's a really difficult question for me to answer because I just love food in general. Yeah. I do have a soft spot for steak tartare and fruits. So I'm just gonna go with that. Like a really a well made steak tar tar with the perfect Pumphrey. It is.

Rick Denton: 22:22

Oh, that sounds really good. It's getting a little later in the day I'm starting. These conversations are never a good idea, depending on the time of day. What's the flip side? Mary, what's the thing your parents forced you to eat? But you hated as a kid.

Mary Drumond: 22:34

Oh my god. Pea soup.

Rick Denton: 22:37

Yay. No pea soup for you. Folks, I know it's an audio podcast, but she pulled her hand up to her mouth as if she was starting to feel ill just with the mention of the word pea soup.

Mary Drumond: 22:47

Anyone who knows me since childhood knows about this childhood trauma and it's kind of a laughing joke in my family. My deep hatred of pea soup. All of my siblings have some staple that they absolutely hate. For one sister. It's bananas. The other one it's peanut butters. My brother hates cooked carrots very specifically. And I hate pea soup. And it. I haven't even tasted it. It's probably been 30 years since I've had pea soup. Because yeah, if this sounds about about 30 years, but just the thought of it is too much for me. I can't It's so gross to try to feed that to a child. Here is this bowl of green goop. And now you're forced to eat it. Yes, we use it as vomit in films. But you should totally eat this

Rick Denton: 23:34

Have at it kid Have at it. I'm starting to think that you are more passionate about that that some of the customer experience stuff we were talking about earlier really saw you get fired up there. I love it. And truly she did listen to it was or the hand went over the mouth right there as she was describing what is one travel item not including your phone that you will not leave home without,

Mary Drumond: 23:54

I know an adapter to be able to plug your devices into anything.

Rick Denton: 24:05

I'm intrigued by the weightlifting experience. You knew this was going to come up you mentioned it in our pre call. So of course I wanted to talk about it. I've even read some of your earlier podcast where you talk about how important it is to you. So I'm curious, aside from that being so key to your personal life. What does what you've learned in Olympic weightlifting influence your thoughts on customer experience?

Mary Drumond: 24:28

I don't know how much it affects my thoughts on customer experience. It affects the way I approach my entire career professional career and especially affects how I make decisions as an executive in my organization. And I think that that's the key element when you're when you're weightlifting. You're always working towards failure. So the idea the idea is always that if you can lift it, then it's time to go heavier. Yeah. All right. So if you can do it, you're ready for more. And that mentality, I think, is so important. So to never be satisfied and never just decide that you're good, and kind of get stuck in a rut, because the truth is that if we don't keep moving, the world is going to keep moving, and we're gonna get left behind anyway. So in my mind, I look at it, I think the best analogy would be to look at it as playing a video game. Right. So when you start playing, for those of you who have played video games, you'll understand this very easily for those of you who don't go play a video game, and then come back to this can even be Candy Crush, I don't care. But when you start off, it's somewhat easy. And then you start getting, you know, you kind of pick up on how it works. And it starts getting more and more challenging, until a point where you can't pass the level. Yeah. And once you reach that point, you have to keep going at it over and over again and honing your skills and getting better and trying new techniques and trying new routes and new alternatives. And I don't know what until you finally master it to a point where you level up. Yeah, but guess what happens when you level up as soon as your love when you love a lot, hey, it's too difficult again. And then you have to work on it, you have to hone those skills. Again, you have to work at it some more until you're ready to level up once again. So the idea behind a video game is that you master all of those levels, and you reach to the end and you know, you finally meet the big boss, etc. but quitting, because you can't do it is just the lamest thing ever. And anyone who's a true player knows that that's not the way it works, and then lift it in weightlifting, it's pretty much the same. Once you hit a weight that you've had your heart set on for a while, that you immediately put more weight on, immediately, no matter how long you've been trying to, let's say you're going for, you know, I don't know, 150 pounds, the second you hit 150, you put an extra five pounds on that bar, increasing 10% weight sometimes takes the lifter years, you know, but you never give up. And that's the beauty of the sport. And, and that's what I tried to apply in my own personal life in my professional life and in how I make decisions.

Rick Denton: 27:18

I'm already here you said it wasn't tied to customer experience. I'm immediately visualizing how you can tie that but you've taken it to this personal level, this corporate level. And then you're at a company that wants to create better customer experiences. What are they learning? How are they? Oh, I didn't I didn't do this right. What do I need to know about why I didn't do it? Right? Do that analysis, get that and push to that next level? And yes, I do enjoy some of my video games. The one that has captured my attention over the last couple years is Zelda Breath of the Wild, I can't wait for the next one to come out. But you're right there is that humbling experience at the beginning where you I don't even know how to smooth the sword, right. But then you work through it. And you get to that next level we are I'm going to tell you right now we are way, way past time. But I don't care, because it's just fun talk with you. But Mary, there's there's something that I always like to kind of understand and talk about, we've talked about sort of the word of this approach of helping a company understand that these are the moments that matter. And that is an overused phrase, but the truly the one that actually matters, that changes the purchasing decision really is important to the company. That's great. If a company has done they're listening, and they understand what you just said about okay, this is what's important, but then they have to act on it. And then acting is something that I see a lot of companies fail that listen and act. What are you seeing that helps company move past that insight, that analysis that listen and into it? Okay, let's actually go out and do something.

Mary Drumond: 28:40

Yeah. Well, there are a lot of different ways. But one thing that you and I discussed and I find really interesting is to have a certain diversity of thought on your customer experience team. And one individual that I find to be really helpful is to have someone on the team that kind of has a process oriented mentality. So you see this a lot in engineering students and engineer graduates, where they understand how things work, they understand the mechanics behind something, and that sometimes to achieve an end result, it's a series of steps that when executed properly, just have this beautiful result. And you know, people like me, I'm very creative. I'm kind of artistic and you know, weird in that way. I'm really motivated by the arts. But when it comes to actually understanding how to execute something monumental, I need to bring in someone to help me understand this. And luckily, it has a really competent people in my team that I can call over to help me think through those steps. You know, so being able to either have that person on your team, or find a very competent consultant that you can bring in to help you out to build those processes, you know, but I think that that element It the element of thinking like an engineer when it comes to execution is really important.

Rick Denton: 30:05

I like that I absolutely like that, that driving to action, being able to blend that both the art and the science, the cliche there, the left brain, the right brain. Yeah, all of that is how you get those great experiences for Every Customer Every Time. That's brilliant Mary. Now, we are way out of time. So just how can people if they want to know more about you more about your approaches more about worthy acts in general, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and learn more about Worthix.

Mary Drumond: 30:31

So I am the only Mary Drumond on LinkedIn. Well, the only one that shows up in the search results on the top, okay, Mary, Mary Drumond, that's with one M. So d r, u m, o, n, d, I'm really active on LinkedIn. And I'm also active on Instagram, but you're gonna see a whole bunch of weightlifting content on there. So if that's what you're interested in fine. You can also go to voicesofcx.com. And that's our hub for the podcast and the blog, and everything voices of CX. Or if you want to understand more about Worthix, you can go to worthix.com. And either request a demo or just browse and look around. And I'm always available to connect with anybody who's interested in learning more, or even sharing, or even saying, hey, Mary, you said something that I actually don't agree with, I really try to approach every single bit of feedback as as a learner as a student, and I welcome that very, very much. That's awesome.

Rick Denton: 31:29

And yes, that Voices of CX podcast is an absolutely brilliant one. I highly encourage you after downloading this one to head over there and download the whole suite, subscribe, and get engaged with the Voice of the CX podcast, because I have learned a ton from it already. And all of my listening of it so far. Mary, thank you for today. I learned a ton just talking to you today. It was it was brilliant, fun stories, really enjoyed it. Thank you for being on the show.

Mary Drumond: 31:54

Oh, thank you for having me, Rick, I really think that we aligned so much in the way that we approach things. So it's, it's always a pleasure to talk to you and to have you in my network and have like minded individuals that contribute to the community, and who are also willing to listen to opposing points of view and absorb a little bit of that as well. And I've seen you do this. So it's always great. Thank you so much.

Rick Denton: 32:23

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.