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. Today we returned to the Netherlands specifically Eindhoven with an opportunity to speak with Cristina Popa Customer Experience Program Manager at Philips. What intrigued me and her background was the blend of process expertise and customer experience. It's actually at the origin of the branding of my own company e x for CX execution for customer experience. I knew Cristina and I would find common ground. Cristina grew up in Romania and has now lived in the Netherlands for so long that she joked with me that she is more Dutch than the Dutch. The blending of cultures will be fun to explore with Cristina as well. focused on customer experience, and especially finding a way for companies to go beyond the quote, bumper sticker feeling of customer experience, and into enterprise capabity for customer experience. Cristina ensures the creation of repeatable great experiences, not just an ad hoc Herculean effort for the occasional customer. We're going to find out more about how she does that, Cristina, welcome to CX passport.

Cristina Popa: 1:35

Thank you, Rick, thank you for having me. On, you're on your podcast, and very happy to share my story with you and your listeners.

Rick Denton: 1:45

It's going to be great. I'm so excited to have you on today. So I mentioned this in the intro that you and I share this blend of process and customer experience focus. Tell me about how that blend helps you enable enterprise wide capability for customer experience?

Cristina Popa: 2:02

Well, I think everything starts started with continuous improvement and lean. And there, if you don't have a process, then your work doesn't exist. If you don't have work instructions, your work doesn't exist. So that's the starting point of establishing the standard. Okay, how should the standard look before we can look at improvements before we can look at expanding capabilities or creating new capabilities. So I worked with lean and the teachings of of Deming, Six Sigma and you know, defects for for quite some time in, in my job. So that's kind of stuck with me. And I also brought this to the customer experience capability part where Okay, putting a process in place is the first step into creating this and mapping the customer experience.

Rick Denton: 3:01

How it's the first step, but I'm curious about how blending the two worlds because sometimes we hear, okay, the the OP X people the process, the Six Sigma, people sit over here, and then the customer experience, people sit over here. But as you and I've talked about, it's really, I certainly have that belief that the two worlds need to coexist so that it's a repeatable, great experience. How are you seeing that, that process work that you have, from your background really help the customer experience world in the repeatability of great experiences?

Cristina Popa: 3:37

Well, as I said, putting the process in place and determining what steps need to be done, what instruction should be followed is is the first step. But that's pretty much the overlap with continuous improvement. Because in continuous improvement, so for those who are familiar with it, you know, you're measuring times you're measuring objective things, and that's not always the case, in in customer experience. And in the world of today, I like to see myself as building the business process for the customer of the future. Okay. So, you know, if before we would measure the time that the call agent would would take to handle a customer service request. Now, I'm not sure if the customer wants to talk with us or even wants to call us he just wants to have stuff done. So that's there's a different perception and a different mindset. That yeah, we are building in the process.

Rick Denton: 4:51

I think that you talked about something there that measurability that is one thing that is quite a challenge or can be a challenge and we're going to talk about some of that a little bit later on. I want to get into some of that ideas that you've shared with me around scores and that aspect of it. But how much of it isn't necessarily measurable? And it does come into it not gut feel. I don't I don't mean that people are just guessing here. But it is how do we? How do we find a way to apply a discipline to something that well, guess what we're humans, humans are messy. Humans aren't always the most repeatable. And that's where I do think the two worlds find themselves complementing the very well, that the the art side of customer experience combining with the discipline side of customer experience combining with the analytics of process improvement. It's very good. You know, you had you had talked to me about that bumper sticker idea. And I know, and we've seen him, we have seen companies that say they're focused on customer experience, but their actions say something completely different. And I would love to name and shame several airlines, that are probably the most guilty of that, but I'm choosing not to, I'm going to be kind today. But that bumper sticker approach that you know, we care for our customers, we're there for you, you're the reason that we do what we do, customers can sniff that out a million miles away. So how do you enable a true culture of focus on the customer? And not the bumper sticker version of it?

Cristina Popa: 6:19

Well, I think the first step is to look at governance and have a discussion on who actually owns the customer experience. Okay, so that's, I think, you know, we are we are, what you see in normal corporations or big companies is that you have a marketing officer who is in charge of that of that side of customer experience, and from the ivory tower gives orders to the company on, OK, this is the direction where we should go and this needs to happen. But from my perspective, and also, this is something that I'm applying in my in my job is to enable everybody in my company to own the customer experience. Philip says health care company heavily regulated, so then just as the quality is everybody's responsibility, the customer experience follows the quality. So everybody has this mindset of okay, everything that I do, in my job, be there an office job, or a factory, or distribution or whatever impacts the customer, their patients, their families of the patients. So you know, doesn't matter if you're producing a form in an office or you're building Magnetic Resonance equipment. It has an impact on the end customer. So with that, you trigger something in people that first of all, they were themselves in situations where you have to visit the hospital and be confronted directly with something not going wrong, right? And then realize much more what is the impact of the customer in their day to day work?

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Rick Denton: 8:52

That there's so much that you layered in there that I want to just take a moment and almost absorb for a second because there's some I have never really thought about how so many companies will say quality is the responsibility of everyone. Or if you go to a factory, you'll see safety is everyone's responsibility. And you'll see that theme. I don't know that I'm seeing that customer is everyone's responsibility in that same vein and I like the way that you've tied that to that world. I do think there's a danger and if if everyone owns the customer, then no one owns the customer. But that idea that the customer is what every single role, whether they're creating that form or designing the MRI machine, to why they care for the customer. I love that. And then that last area that you spoke of, I think that is such an important thing that I want to emphasize and that is especially in healthcare. I sincerely believe that patient experience would be so much better if those that are responsible for creating the experiences that we go through his patients actually were patients. If they went and sat in a waiting room they filled out and you know the the Byzantine version of the US health insurance experience. And if more people had to actually experience that, that worked for those companies, they'd realize what a nightmare they have created for the patient. So Christina, that idea. So let me ask, how do you help encourage that at Philips? Are you getting people out I get is part of what you're doing is help drawing people out of their offices and into hospitals into doctors offices?

Cristina Popa: 10:22

Well, I think that is a part of the culture. So you know, culture, you don't get to change a culture by just putting a poster on a wall. Like you do with the quality, you know?

Rick Denton: 10:36

Well, you don't change the posters don't work even for quality. But yes.

Cristina Popa: 10:41

You know, then you have to bring it personally to the people themselves and make them understand how they their work is impacting the customer experience. Yeah. So that is that is one, building it by design in their work, and, and helping everybody by their work with the impact on customer experience. And a second one is also the support and the buy in from leadership. Okay, so here, we have metrics and KPIs that are trickled down from, from the CEO to the reception lady in the building on. Okay, how do you measure NPS in your job? And how do you make an impact? How do you move the needle for our customers to be happier with us?

Rick Denton: 11:41

See, that's absolutely that's such an important that. And you know what's funny, I talk about this on the show a lot. This is a theme that comes up a lot. Getting people out in front, I just read on LinkedIn today, today being the eighth of August, that Qantas Airlines is asking its executives and managers that are in the headquarters, to go out and be baggage handlers right now as they're dealing with this labor crunch, and the and all of that, but even outside of a labor crunch, we talked so much about how important it is to get people out of the office into the front lines. I don't know why it doesn't happen more often. Is it inertia? Is it? Well, you know, they actually have their day to day jobs that would get in the way, but it seems to be so smart. And I'm gonna say it's so easy, maybe that's an exaggeration. To do that. Now, I feel like that's related to something else that I want to ask you about, because you are very much about action, not the bumper sticker. But you talked about the ivory tower idea as well. And yes, it's important to have the executive leadership that you're describing, but a lot of times these ideas are generated in conference rooms, they're generated in the ivory tower, but how do we get these ideas of customer experience these initiatives into the front lines, you know, what are some of those stories that you've had, where you've had these challenges to overcome to get from the Ivory Tower, to the sustainable, great experience in the frontline.

Cristina Popa: 13:01

So there, I would like to quote a team member from from from the North American team, where Red is the new green in regards to KPI. So what, what that means is that if we don't have the courage to recognize where we are performing poorly, then we also cannot improve on it and, and and make it better. Be there the process or the experience, or the business in general. So what I saw in the past is that from customer feedback, in the surveys in communication, there was a very strong, and I'm just taking one example it was a very strong feeling about the packaging, that is not sufficient that products are coming broken, etc. So what the business did is put another box in another box in another box. Well, you can you can, you can imagine what happened next. Because that that big box with just one L one, one product reached the hospital and the nurse was not happy because they have limited storage space. They cannot lock the rooms and it took like three days to find the package in a hospital in between 20 departments. So just taking the feedback from the survey as such and improving on it obviously didn't work. So that's, you know, learning by experimenting. And that's how we have right now a two way approach of okay the customer feedback from from the surveys and from what is coming In communication is one. But let's also test that with customers and actually ask them, ask them what they want. How would they like to have things? So that was maybe common sense, but revolutionary for improving customer experience on a on a process level.

Rick Denton: 15:19

You have said that I think is there's probably too many silver bullets, magic bullets, but it is exactly that, you know, hey, do you want to know what the expenses ask the customer? Because I can totally see that happening in some packaging room. Great. The customers have complained about the damage, let's over protect the product. And that this is a great idea. And I can see that designed in the conference room. And never if we never asked the customer, we'd never know that that nurse on the ground says I don't have a place to put the stupid matryoshka doll packaging, right, I don't want to do all of this garbage. And forget about we're not even talking about the actual waist associated with what we're describing. So the idea of using, you know, voice of the customer to be able to understand what the customer experience is, and get out of the ivory tower. Absolutely. You said a lot of key themes there, get out of the rooms hear the voice of the customer. I love it. I want to switch gears with you a little bit here. And I know that we talked about that you've moved from the Netherlands to remain I'm sorry, to the Netherlands from Romania about 11 years ago. And I've got to imagine that had have been a fascinating cultural experience. What was that move? Like?

Cristina Popa: 16:30

How? Where do I begin?

Rick Denton: 16:34

Well, I can't answer that question. But I guess.

Cristina Popa: 16:37

So I think the first difference was in space. And if you know, from from a North American perspective, I think people are used to big spaces, large houses, and even in the cities, you know, the houses are quite quite large and comfortable. In the Netherlands, that the people first square meter is I think, the highest globally. We have something like you know, you can you can drive through the Netherlands, from the South to the North in about two hours. We have 19 million people living in the Netherlands,

Rick Denton: 17:31

my goodness

Cristina Popa: 17:32

Oh yeah. So you have different different concepts that enable the, let's say, pleasant living, of so many people want a very small, small space. So that was the first shock for me. Because again, I'm not necessarily American, but in Romania, we also have a lot of space. So, you know, there's, there's, there's this space freedom, that if you choose, so you can isolate for four weeks without having to see anybody for a three kilometer distance. Nice. So, yes, so that was the first shock. And the second one is maybe the Calvinistic way of being

Rick Denton: 18:26

Tell me more.

Cristina Popa: 18:28

In the sense that they have here a saying don't do yourself so crazy, because I'm doing myself crazy. So don't exaggerate so much, because I'm crazy enough. So it's, you know, following the norm, and behaving according to expectations in society is a heavily regulated type of society. Where if you are in, let's say, in an apartment building, then you most likely have neighbors that are going to control the safety, the security, they're gonna know exactly who went where, what type of car, what are those kinds of details without too much effort. So that's, that's in ingrained in the city life? I would, I would say, Okay, so that's the traditional part of it. And then on the other side, you have the multicultural international community. Oh, yeah. So I'm Toba is sort of the Silicon Valley of Europe. And you have here you know that you have Philips Of course, I went over was was Philips. So if you visit the city, you will see the the places the the neighborhoods of the city that were former felons, factories or Phillips villages where the employees left that were until 50 years ago blocked for the for the public access. And also the spin offs like, you know, ICML, the chip producer, and all other kinds of innovative companies that are established here. So, yeah, you have areas where you can taste the whole international cup, you can go on an international culinary journey. And just one small street

Rick Denton: 20:38

that is fantastic, Christina. Now, little change of pace here, with I'm thinking about the walking on street with all of the different food options, but I also think of just the Netherlands and the Dutch in general have always been a very kind of Global Traveler, very seeking the world. And you're living in that cultural now. Well, sometimes that travel can wear you out. So why don't you join me here in the first class lounge? Let's take a break. We'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Cristina Popa: 21:10

Oh, my best I would say most Bristol, in the UK. So the industrial new build city, the new architecture and structure with all cultures.

Rick Denton: 21:33

Oh, nice. I like that blend. That does sound nice. Now, thinking the other direction. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Cristina Popa: 21:43

I would say the Asian part of Taiwan, Vietnam, those small Asian countries that have amazing food.

Rick Denton: 21:56

Food clearly is showing up through a lot of what we're describing here. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Cristina Popa: 22:05

Well, I'm Romanian. And I'm not sure if you know, but Romania has a quite quite I stick by my Romanian cuisine. So it's a mix of Turkish, Russian, Italian, Mediterranean.

Rick Denton: 22:24

Gosh, it's all mixed in. That sounds wonderful. All right. Yeah.

Cristina Popa: 22:28

So if you visit Romania, you have to really be careful, because the locals they're gonna feed you and until you get diabetes, and you know,

Rick Denton: 22:38

well, I'm not really rooting for diabetes, but I don't mind being fed by the local so I like that now what's let's go to the other side here. Christina, what is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid.

Cristina Popa: 22:52

Vegetables in soup. So there I was very quickly, child and I would create all these kinds of conditions for my parents that okay, if I have a tomato and somebody had pick it up if I had parsley or those kinds of aromatic herbs, those were a no go for me soup. So my mother who may have had a tough with me with with soap. And also fish.

Rick Denton: 23:25

It is funny how hard we made it on our parents. And I know that it all comes around. My children are older now at the university level. But they certainly gave me some grief when we tried to introduce them to foods that they didn't like now, back to travel. What is one travel item not including your phone that you will not leave home without?

Cristina Popa: 23:48

Most likely my ereader as then I have my collection of 1000s of books.

Rick Denton: 24:02

Cristina, the book. Absolutely. I had a guest on the podcast. I'm forgetting exactly how many episodes ago now. But she was she's responsible for a lot of in flight entertainment. And I think back to a world before we had all of our TV screens and planes and yes, getting lost in a book. But I still find myself getting very lost in books. You know, thinking about we talked about this earlier in the show about metrics and the art of customer experience in that aspect of it. But you know, much of process and experience work does require that we understand metrics and analytics and one of those favorites out there is NPS Now, I just need a buddy No, I am 100% Fine with NPS. This isn't another one of those NPS is dead discussions but NPS is just a score action is what matters. So Christina, how do you really listen and act? And how have you broken that cycle of just saying or just survey and score?

Cristina Popa: 25:03

Well, NPS is important. And I think all the business world is using it be there willingly on or not. But I think NPS is just an indicator, okay? Are you doing good or not, but it's not really something that you can directly take action on. And from my perspective, we have right now working with text analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning just to make sense of the big chunk of data that we get in. So that is creating a sort of structure of combining the NPS score, but also customer sentiment and specific explicit feedback that they gave in order to trigger actions at the various levels. So that is 111. Part of it a second is also looking at overall experience how that is linked to the performance. Ideally, you would like to collect all that data linked to performance, and then have a clear conclusion, backed up by data that you can take a decision.

Rick Denton: 26:26

Yeah, and I like that, that it's not that you're saying, Hey, we're getting rid of data, right? It's just a score. And so we're not going to do anything with it. You're talking about let's weave together other data elements. But then I also heard, you know, let's take that customer sentiment, let's take those customer verbatims. And really get a sense of what is actually driving this number, because the number itself is of no value. You know, I'm looking at and I see the clock that we're getting close to the end of time, but I got one more thing that I want to ask you about. And it is this evolution of a company's maturity, to get into delivering great experiences repeatedly. Because you think of a company that's just getting started. I know Philips has been around for a long time, right. But kind of just getting started some of the way to deliver great experiences that Herculean, try that again, the Herculean effort that went off, right. But eventually, you've got to move through that journey. And it takes a while to move through that. So how have you seen Christina accompanies? And even if it's at Philips, or before? How do you keep them energized? Going through that journey of customer experience maturity?

Cristina Popa: 27:37

Well, I think here, it's a matter of, first of all, establishing a model, where you look at okay, what is the baseline and where do we want to be what is poor and what is outstanding, and have that that perception, very good understood by all the players. Second to look at Phillips. So Phillips basically brought customer experience as a as a concept from the 50s. And so you reach a level where you, you hit the glass ceiling, and you have to reinvent yourself. So a company that is 130 years old, it's, you know, they needed to reinvent themselves in order to reach this level, and what they started in the 50s, with the customer experience around the product. So light, colored light, images, and sound became the ambient experience of Philips. So try to well, even new companies today are planning to recreate that. So there's a there's a big legacy behind it. But the trick is, okay, how to disrupt ourselves and innovate ourselves in such a way that we can delight customers and actually have them buying another target without, with us before the current product is already not even at the at the end of the lifecycle. So that's, that's the kind of experience and it's just being very mindful of putting the action where it should lay, making the measurement where it should be. So if we're deciding on a model of maturity, okay, we're going to measure it and do that regularly. And see how much did we grow from one period to another? So it's just a matter of discipline and understanding very good DeMarco,

Rick Denton: 29:55

I like that. This let's set up the model but then you said something there that I think that's it poured in. And I want to make sure that I emphasize it. And it is the reinvention of it that the journey is not just the static, okay, increasingly, slowly, people get bored. And so the idea of how do we reinvent? How do we make it fun? How do we whatever it is, how do we change and be different? I think that's an important folks to think about as they're going through their customer experience journey of change, mix it up, do something different, and I'm not here, and I don't think you are here either to tell the listeners and this is what you should change it to. But rather just have that willingness to realize that what you did yesterday is not necessarily what you need to be doing tomorrow and have a little creativity and fun with it. Christina, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for talking with me today. If folks want to get to know a little bit more about you or a little more about Phillips and the approach to customer experience there, how can they get in touch with you.

Cristina Popa: 30:48

I'm a pretty vocal on invisible on LinkedIn. So they can just reach out to me on LinkedIn, and we can pick it up from there. Otherwise, also reach out to other customer experience colleagues from Philips, because we are all willing to share our story and the good stuff that we're doing.

Rick Denton: 31:11

Awesome. Well, Christina, I will get that into the shownotes so that folks can look you up there and find you there on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for sharing your journey, both just your overall approach to customer experience, your drive to action, your blending of process and the customer experience, telling the stories of how it happens there at Philips there. And I'm so glad that you did make that journey 11 years ago to to share some of those cultural differences with it's it's always fun to learn and expose ourselves in new cultures. Christina, thank you for the conversation today. I really enjoyed it.

Cristina Popa: 31:39

Thank you again for having me. And well wishing good luck with your future podcast.

Rick Denton: 31:49

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.