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 I started CX passport I intended as shown by the name itself. To make it a show where voices from around the globe could share their customer experience perspectives. While I've had the chance to talk with someone from every continent, except for Antarctica, and I'm still hoping for that someday listeners know anyone send them my way. There are certain regions where I still have so much more to learn. While I've had guests from Africa, the count is much smaller than other regions like Europe and North America. To be truly global, I want to continue to learn from all regions, not just those with which I'm most familiar. That's why I'm so excited to get the chance to speak with George Essama. Today coming to us from Cameroon. Giorgio is the Head of Customer Relations of Cameroon, telecommunications, or CAMTEL. And brings a great perspective on customer experience, we'll get into his CX journey, how he got to where he is today, in what's top of mind for him in the world of customer experience today. In addition to his work at CAMTEL, as a member of the leadership council of cxpa, Africa, that leadership and perspective around customer experience comes through when talking with George, I've never had the chance to go to Cameroon. So I'm going to live vicariously today through George, it'll be fun to hear more about what travel is like there later in the show. George, welcome to CX passport.

Georges Essama: 1:51

Well, thank you. It's a pleasure for me to be here with you today. Thank you for the introduction.

Rick Denton: 1:57

i It is a pleasure for me as well, I love getting the chance to talk with your new country. For me, you are a new person from a new country. And I'm excited for that. So well, let's just start with that kind of global nature of the podcast, I really enjoy hearing what's unique about a particular region when it comes to customer experience. So how would you compare CX in Cameroon and Central Africa to other regions of the world?

Georges Essama: 2:24

Yeah, that's interesting. What I can see is that talking about Cameroon and Central Africa, customer experience is an emerging discipline, right. So like, the last five years, we just had him come alone, an annual CX Summit, just for five years. So it's been five years that we are having on your CX Summit, which is interesting in the beginning. And particularly for this summit of 2022, we have created the first local association of customer experience professionals, right, that started this year. And this year to for example, we also published the first CX annual index for organizations and companies income alone. We don't see it, we don't see it in Central Africa, actually. But so Cameroon is really a leading country in Central Africa, talking about customer experience. So it's, it's the emerging discipline. And for sure, we have many sales professionals who are more more and more interested in this discipline and changing the organizations

Rick Denton: 3:41

that I didn't know that about the fact that you've just now started that index, I have to imagine that opened some eyes to businesses inside of Cameroon, that they would see Wait, I'm low on the index or some sent Oh, I'm so high on the index. Have you seen some behavior changes, or at least some interest changes and companies now that that index has been published?

Georges Essama: 4:07

Yeah, it's very, it's very interesting, very important. What the index shows is that clearly, there are some businesses that are doing better performing better than others. For example, we saw that the banking and telecommunication sector are doing better in talking about customer experience, interesting country, and one of the main challenge is about the public sector. So the public sector is really is really like a logger, there are so much so much change and so much things to do about the public sector. So more and more more and more companies are now informed and that there is an there's an index that they can measure how they're performing their customer experience, activities and business To see how well they can improve or to be better.

Rick Denton: 5:05

I, you saw me smiling and listeners, I know it's an audio only podcast. But as George was talking about the banking and telecom being high that that surprise me, but then I laughed when I heard the public sector. It shows that while customer experience is different globally, it's very similar globally as well. And I would say that public sector globally almost has some challenges there as well. Well, George, if you've had all this experience, right, you've been in customer experience for a while, even if you didn't know you were customer experience. You've had an interesting route into your CX career. And it always seems when I talk to guests, there's a different path entry into that career for every single person. How did you get into your customer experience career?

Georges Essama: 5:45

Yeah, very interesting. Well, I started like 12 years ago, and my first position was a customer care agent, right, the frontline, frontline agent. So when I started, my job was really to take care of people listening to them, and finding finding solutions for their problems and services, so that they can have better services, and so on, and so forth. So at that time, I really discovered myself being passionate about caring and serving for people, I think is important for any customer experience professionals, to really develop the empathy and know they know how to listen to others. So gradually evolve, then being an account manager, and then being appointed head of customer relations, sometimes later. And my job now as the Head of Customer Relations is really to have my, my company, my organization, to build the foundation of the customer centric culture or customer centric organization. So as you said, I'm working from cocktail combo into communication. And strangely, not strangely, but it's a public company with interesting working, I'm working in a public company, and you see how far it's challenging for us or for me, and for my team, to really change that perception that people have of doing business and having I mean, interacting as customers with public companies.

Rick Denton: 7:22

I'm curious about that. So you started, you started as an agent? Yeah. So tell me a little bit about I want to go I want to spend some time later talking about your experience in a branch and kind of the front lines. But I'm, I want to specifically ask you about you started as an agent, then. And you're aware of agents. Now what have you seen evolve, as far as customer experience customer service, specifically, with agents in Cameroon over that period of time from when you started to what it's like now?

Georges Essama: 7:56

Yeah, very interesting. I will say that. At that time, when I was I was, I was starting as a Customer Care Agent, we were not really knowing or thinking about improving the customer experience, right? We're just working at the position of customer service and customer care. And we're not really looking forward to develop the abilities and the capacities of improving the way we serve. And the way our customers, I mean, the customer experience with people. So that's the first point. And what I see now is that more and more organizations are working so that their frontline agent, not only serve in a specific position, but also those organizations develop the capacities of these frontline officers so that it can provide better customer experience from the organization. So this is somehow I see, I think it's going to be more and more better at the time at the time. So I think I think that's it.

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Rick Denton: 9:27

Yeah, I see that evolution. And heck, I see that evolution and other regions of the globe as well, even those that would say they've been at CX or customer service improvement a lot more a lot longer. Now. You'd mentioned that you've been at kamto for about 12 years now. And when you and I talked earlier, you said that there was a key point in your customer experience focus there where you were taking customer centricity beyond just the CX team into the entire company. Now that's a challenge in a lot of places. What did that look like for you there?

Georges Essama: 9:59

Yeah, That's interesting, because talking specifically about the public, public sector, as I told you is very is a very challenging environment and very challenging sector. So when I started like 12 years ago, I've now noticed that there is this very, it's more difficult to build a customer centric organizations being a public sector, rather than, for example, private sector, I don't know what about is in us, but is really more complicated here because of, for example, too much bureaucracy of for example, the different policies that are taken by the leadership, so is pretty more complicated. And in this time, or type of situations, it is so challenging that you can have a situation like you have the leadership of the public company saying, Okay, let's change things and focus on the customer. Right. But you don't see any change on the frontline. Right? That's very, that's very difficult. And this is what I've experienced. We have experience here. So we had a new CEO, like in 2018. And she said, let's now focus on customer centricity and change management. Okay. And what happened is that she said it as this as a speech, but what happened, nothing really change, talking about the way customers field about our company, the way our frontline officers were carrier about, about. So there was there were no really changed because of the complications of politic politics. So what we have said, is that being at a business unit, we are going to make that aspect customer centricity and change management effects you, right? And the need of changing the month. I mean, changing sorry to repeat myself, we're changing the change management model. Right. Now, that makes sense. Yeah. Because actually, the chain management model is like, going from the top to the dam saying, Okay, this half the this is how the new vision for the business and then directly to the frontline, but we said, Okay, let us do it from the top, from the down to the bottom to the top, right, there's a change that that's management, that change model. And this is what we did. So I work in a business unit, which is serving 40% of contribution in the global revenue of the business. So we said, we are going to do customer centricity and change management from there. And we establish the baseline and stocking how our customer felt the challenges. And then based on that we build the local CX Transformation Program. In our business unit, right. So we changed the way we were managing customers in our business unit, we implemented best was was of customer programs was of employee programs in our business unit, touching 900 employees, now a business unit, like 100,000 customers. And the change that we have made in our business unit was so impressive that the leadership, the top leadership of the company said this is there's something changing. Yeah, there's something happening. Let us see what what they're doing.

Rick Denton: 13:46

I like this, let's keep going. Yeah. So

Georges Essama: 13:50

for example, we have improved the revenue of the business unit from 50%. Implementing mean increasing the contribution of the business, you need to do revenue of the company, changing the CSR, the NPS in our local, local business unit, and they said, they're doing something that even the CEO finally understood it. And she even said, Okay, those sea level managers go and see what's happened in that business unit. And others do that in the entire company. So this is an example of a driving change from the down to the up in an environment where it's pretty difficult to see that change happening and going from the top down.

Rick Denton: 14:36

That you talked about changing the change management model, that it's not this top down, push, instead, you're choosing at this local area to do that. You said something, and I don't know if it was on purpose, but the way that you describe the results, caught my ears in a special way. And it was you said we'd increased our participation, our revenue into the business and then you mentioned CSAT, then you mentioned customer scores. Do you think that let me know, let me ask that differently? How do you think that the leadership reacted? Because there was a financial improvement versus a CSAT? Improvement? What were they focused on?

Georges Essama: 15:16

Well, I'd say I think both focusing on both, first of all, because the perception customers had from the company, the public company as well, was pretty catastrophic. Yeah. So if there is a business unit, which is changing that perception, and improving the feeling customers have of the business is positive is interesting. And at the same time, proving that if we focus on the customers, we generate more revenue for the business and for the company, then they're totally in so. So finally, they were they were sensitive to the two points. And clearly a statistic. And research shows that when the more you focus on improving the customer experience, the better you have opportunities for generating revenue. And we proved that to the business.

Rick Denton: 16:08

I could end the podcast right here like that, right? There is a brilliant quote there, George. And it is so true. And what I love is that listeners if you're part of a company, right, that is trying to start something, a lot of times there's this thought of, oh, we have to have this big program, we have to start with something. Take this example that Giorgio is describing where it says, Hey, we started local, we prove the results. Yeah, that then expanded. And I love that approach, as a way of getting your CX mission moving forward is you don't have to be big, start small. Start local and let it continue on.

Georges Essama: 16:42

Yeah, clearly, clearly, we one of the key lessons from what we've done is this one, you can implement the change model, no matter your position in your organization, you have the ability and the capacity to impact the change, which can be so much impressive, so impressive that though your team, your managers, your boss, we don't have any other chances that you understand that it's important for you to do this.

Rick Denton: 17:10

That's right. They don't have any other choice. Look how clear it is. Oh, my gosh, George, this is this is spectacular. Now, I had mentioned in the introduction, that I've never had the opportunity to go to camera, and I hope to someday, right, I kind of hope to go everywhere. We'll see how long life affords that opportunity for me. But for my selfish benefit, and for the benefit of the listeners, would you tell me just a little bit about Cameroon and what it's like to travel in Cameroon?

Georges Essama: 17:34

Yeah. Well, Cameroon is a beautiful country. Actually, it's located at the heart of Africa. Right. And people call come on Africa in miniature like small Africa. Oh, yeah. Because Because when when you come home, you may encounter some so much more aspects of the global Africa talking about the climate, okay, about the culture was talking about the animals and so on and so forth. So it's really like Africa miniature, we have like 10 Big regions, 200 cultures and tribes. So, for example, also, we have the best worlds the world's best peppercorn.

Rick Denton: 18:22

Okay. How's that for a claim the world best peppercorn, all right

Georges Essama: 18:26

Yes the world best peppercorn, they call it pepper corn of Behringer. So you can look at it is the best pepper corn and one of the greatest mountain of Africa is also located in Cameroon. They call him on Cameroon. So it really is really a beautiful place to visit. And I would love to I would love to see you somehow someday.

Rick Denton: 18:48

I like that. Listeners I do this on purpose right now. I've just got a personal invitation to a country. So there's that opportunity. George, do you find that you get a chance to just as a resident there? Are you able to get out and explore your country and really enjoy it and get out there? Or is it one of those of could you live here you kind of oh, just take for granted? What's it like living there as a traveler

Georges Essama: 19:10

Oh my God, even amazed by what I see in my own country to just to tell you that when I see pictures, people taking pictures of places in Norwegian in south region in each region. And really marketing in those spaces are fairly I always feel like I want to go to visit my own pieces of this country. So it's really beautiful. It was really beautiful. I do like it.

Rick Denton: 19:40

George, even if we're traveling locally, but also traveling globally, travel can be a bit of a grind. It does happen and it can be nice to take a little break. So I'd like for you to join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Georges Essama: 19:59

Yeah, Well, during travel location from the, from my past, I had the opportunity to go to Dubai a few years ago. And it is it was it was amazing. And why because I see that in Dubai is also a mix of culture you see so many people coming from all over the world. And having having their own culture and really sharing it and expressing it somehow and also had had to serve in my birthday. This was an amazing, nice time.

Rick Denton: 20:32

That always makes for a good trip when it's not only a great destination, but a particular important celebration as well. Well looking forward then what's a train travel location? You've not been to yet?

Georges Essama: 20:43

Yeah, I have a friend. She went to Senegal, Senegal and is another African country in West Africa much more. And so the place the place is really beautiful. And one of the things about Senegal is that they have an island that they call the island of Galway, Goree Island, okay, and in that place, slaves were going there waiting before traveling to all over the worlds. So is a place full of history, not only for Africa, but also for the worst. We'd really love to go there one day.

Rick Denton: 21:18

That would be that'd be interesting, perhaps. I'm not sure what the right adjective is disturbing, emotional, difficult to explore. But it would be fascinating to see that history as well. Now, you had mentioned the world's best peppercorn. Yeah, and the world's best peppercorn probably goes on some of the best things to eat. So I'm curious, what is your favorite thing?

Georges Essama: 21:39

What is interesting, I don't know if you will know about it, but that we have food here that we call dolet.

Rick Denton: 21:46

Okay, I do not know. But I'm learning today.

Georges Essama: 21:49

Yeah, fine. Delay. What is what delay is a vegetable that is a bit of vegetable, so it's really bitter. So we wash it to remove the bitterness and we mix it with drowners and meats, and even fish sometimes. And it's beautiful. It's really interesting. You love the sea to see it. And it's it is very interesting. Like, hey,

Rick Denton: 22:12

I'm gonna have to look that one up. Sounds good. Now, George, I'm curious. What's the thing that you had your parents forced you to eat? But you hated as a kid? Ah, oh,

Georges Essama: 22:24

my God, we have another food here that we call Downoad soup. Okay. What is it? It's just a mix of Drow nodes. And you just roll it and then we put it you cook it like a soup? I don't like I don't like it. My parents used to give it to me. But it's not passing. I don't like it.

Rick Denton: 22:50

I love asking that question. Because it's unfortunate listeners. You don't get to see people's facial expressions, but it just cracks me up. When I asked that question each time. I get these sort of pained reactions of Wait, why are you asking me this, Rick? Oh, it's really beautiful. Well, George, when you're thinking about travel, what is one travel item not including your phone that you will not leave home without?

Georges Essama: 23:12

Hmm. Very interesting. I think it's a book, I will I will go eat and that will perform is the Bible. Why? Because I feel that all the wisdom that anyone needs, you can find it in the Bible talking even about customer experience, the way you treat people. And the way people treat you is very amazing. So I'll go for the Bible.

Rick Denton: 23:42

George want to go back to something. The beginning or the at least the early stages of your career. You had talked about working in frontline branches? Yeah, we touched on it a little bit earlier. And I know longtime listeners of CX passport know that I talked about the frontline. A lot. Yeah. So specifically for you. How did working in a branch influence your perspective on customer experience?

Georges Essama: 24:05

Yeah, maybe it's well, two things. Number one, is that because I've worked in the frontline, I developed my ability to understand and be empathetic, empathic, I don't know about about people. I think that quality is important for any customer experience professionals. You need to understand people for whom you are finding solutions, you need to understand that there are issues I think that's the first point. Another point is that when you start as a frontline you understand better the business right? Because something happens as item when you just have an appointment as being a co leader or or maybe at the top of the company. For some cases you don't understand how the business goes from from The beginning of everything. And I think it's important also not only to, to understand the business you are doing, and also make sure that you keep the contract with the business itself, the way people are really behaving themselves to customers, the touch points, you need to stay in contact with with that with that one. And I think it's important when you are taking decisions that you should say, okay, what are they? What are they behaving? What are they encountering? Why are the frontline? And another point? I mean, maybe the last one is that, actually, it really helped me, I discovered myself, and that I need to improve some of the skills I had while talking about serving customers. So I was doing things because of passion. And then I discovered Oh, no, I need to be more professional about it. And this is how, for example, I joined cxpa. Right, and being being a CX Emerging Leader, and so on, and so forth. So I think it's really important for this, these three, these three points.

Rick Denton: 26:08

yeah yeah. So much of what you say is so true for you individually, obviously, but then universal as well. And it surprises me, when I see corporations or when I see leaders or when I'm talking when I go into a new client, and I'm talking to them about how to improve customer experience. And leadership has no connection to their frontline that they don't take input from the frontline that they're not living with the frontline that they're not experiencing. Because of everything. You just said the frontline knows the business better. They've built that empathetic aspect. They understand how to move between the worlds of passion and professionalism, all of that. So true. And that's why I like to talk about the frontline, because it's so important to much of at least business seems to have forgotten that. And I'm glad to hear your story there. George, we talk a lot about customer experience innovation and different places along that customer experience industry journey. And I really enjoy talking to you mentioned, you know, it's been five years that we've had events in Cameroon around customer experience and this new indicator that you mentioned as well, the scoring indicator, what do you think is driving that growth of customer experience in Cameroon or just the wider Central African community?

Georges Essama: 27:28

Yeah, well, I think two important things are driving that change. The first one is how far customer needs are evolving. Right? Okay. More and more customers are really sensitive to the way companies treat them because of competition, of course. But because also, I think, like people are more educated and really looking for some respect in the way companies treat them. And I think that's the first point. So clearly, people customers are needing more and more businesses, who are providing better customer experiences at the time. That's the first point. And the second point is that we have seen that sales professionals themselves have on this stat start to understand that they need to change it, right. They need to they need to do to do things better. They need to not just do things like robots, or no, they really need to say okay, what do we want people to remember from us? How can we improve people's lives because it's about people's lives. It's about people's lives. The way you serve me, the way you treat me, the way you receive me, you are you're adding or removing something. And I think it's important people are more and more understanding that so professionals themselves are understanding that they need to change it.

Rick Denton: 29:02

It's about people's lives. George, you've stopped me down a couple times in this episode, where I just love hearing what you said, you may need to consider kind of a side business of speaking or getting yourself out there because you've got some, some really interesting wisdom. Now, let's close with this. I'm actually a little bit over time, but that's great. Let's let's I kind of want to know about this. If you're talking about how you grown your customer experience, skills, I know that I really enjoy building my wisdom by talking to great guests. Like even today I'm sitting here with getting great epiphanies from you. Yeah. So what are you some of your favorite ways to grow your customer experience learning?

Georges Essama: 29:43

Ah, that'd be interesting. I think that I need to personally I need to really have more opportunities to share what I've learned about impact Moving people's lives, right? Because as you said, it's not just about the products and the services is people's lives. So companies and organizations and people taking decisions at these places, they need to understand that they need to improve people's lives as they will like other people's to improve their own life. I think we need to increase that speech that that voice, saying that let us treat people as as gently said, in one of our books, treat me like you like my mother to be treated, or you want me to treat your mother. So let us really treat ourselves in the way that we will love our mothers, our mothers treated us and so on and so forth. And we need to increase our speech

Rick Denton: 30:48

I like that. I like that. Let's see, let's, let's close with that. Let's just focus on improving other's lives. Georgia, people wanted to get to know more about you learn your wisdom, because I imagine people now want to get to know that or learn more about cam tell and that approach to customer experience, or even just the business in general, what's the best way for folks to learn more?

Georges Essama: 31:08

Well, I'm available on LinkedIn, at Georges Essama, so you can find me there too, . I also have my email address george-essama@yahoo dot . So you can also find me there.

Rick Denton: 31:23

Awesome. Well, I'll get all that in the show notes, listeners, you know the drill, just scroll down. And you can see that there, George, you really have opened my eyes, not just to customer experience in Cameroon in the Central African region. But you've opened my eyes to customer experience. Overall, I have learned from you today. And that's one of my favorite things about this having this this podcast and having a great conversation. So George, thank you today for what you've shared. Thank you for taking time today. I've enjoyed it thoroughly. George, have a great rest of your day.

Georges Essama: 31:52

Thank you. Thank you. Alright, have a great day.

Rick Denton: 31:57

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.