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's guest Anne Bibb and I met a few years ago when I was consulting on a project with a global hospitality company that was heavily work from home for its Contact Center team. Well before COVID and before it was the norm to work from home. When I first met, and I knew this was a person who not only cared deeply about the idea of remote work, she knew how to make it work for both the employee and the company. Fast forward to today. And now the founder and CEO of remote evolution is a recognized remote work and customer experience expert. Her background allows her to bring unique thoughts the employee experience and customer experience worlds through her advisory consulting firm and works with organizations across all industries, helping them implement a remote work presence across more than 20 countries while focusing on their total experience. That global perspective helps shape and view that creating great employee and customer experience requires understanding the wide spectrum that the employee and customer present will absolutely get into that global and diverse perspective in today's show. Anne welcome to CX passport.

Anne Bibb: 1:40

Thanks, Rick, it is so good to talk to you. Again. It's been a while

Rick Denton: 1:44

it has been a while and it's fine. It's just nice to finally get you on the show. So I'm glad that we've had this opportunity. And I did mention that it's been a while when you and I met. But we were both at that brand that was ahead of its time with his approach to remote work to say that there's been an evolution and maybe say a massive evolution since then, is a major understatement. But let's start General. Since that time in the late 20, teens, 1718 kind of era, what have you seen as the evolution in remote work?

Anne Bibb: 2:15

You know, it's interesting, I had somebody tell me once that I should have named my company, remote revolution. And interesting. I said, Why would I name my organization for a moment in time, when in fact, this is something that's going to continue to evolve for forever. When you look at what remote work was 10 years ago, when you look at what it was throughout the pandemic, and even what it is now. It has continued to evolve. So, before the pandemic, people really had to fight to actually get to work remotely. Yeah, they had to I mean, it was a different conversation, wasn't it?

Rick Denton: 3:00

Yeah. Like this sort of gas? What do you mean? How would one work at home? That's not work that's home.

Anne Bibb: 3:06

When I talked to clients, it was that can't be done. That job can't be done remotely, it was so hard to really force people's hands or have these conversations about what technology does allow for this. So it's odd to see how it's transitioned and evolved because the pandemic removed the cat from the vocabulary. Yeah, because everybody, everybody went home,

Rick Denton: 3:35

it moved to sort of a instead of a Yeah, that's crazy winded, but it's a how might we like because they were forced into that, you know, the classic sort of improv or innovation phrases that you're supposed to use, but it became, alright, how might we figure out how to do this working from home thing?

Anne Bibb: 3:51

I wouldn't even go so far as to say it was a well, thank goodness, this is available this forward to now. And all of a sudden, we have evolved into the next stage of, well, there has to be a good in between. Let's, let's start thinking about hybrid. Let's start thinking about you're going to come in and you're going to work in the office two days a week or three days a week, and then you can work from home. Yeah. And what I find really interesting is that how many organizations are making these decisions without talking to their employees?

Rick Denton: 4:29

I shouldn't laugh so heartily. I'm sorry. But I just feel like you know, with as decades of work experience, that's just sort of, isn't that how companies operate. Right? We'll just choose to do and the employees will figure it out. Right.

Anne Bibb: 4:41

Just fall into place.

Rick Denton: 4:43

How's that working Anne?

Anne Bibb: 4:45

It's not Yeah. And the thing is, employees don't want to be told that this is how it's going to be employees want to be heard.

Your CX Passport Captain: 4:56

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

Rick Denton: 5:22

What are you so in that that vein? So imagine like that a 20 person company, hey, we all get together and figure that out a 200 person company a 2000 20,000. Right, as you get bigger, that gets more challenging to do that. So how do you kind of guide companies to walk through that decision making process? Beyond just Well, I kind of like to be there two days a week. So therefore, my employees like to be there two days a week? How does a company do that? Right.

Anne Bibb: 5:48

And you know what, just because you like to go to the mountains, does everybody else like to go to the mountains, who likes to go to the beaches instead? You know,

Rick Denton: 5:57

we'd go to all of them. So I could.

Anne Bibb: 6:00

I'm talking to the passport guy, of course. But I you know, then you start it, but you're, you're absolutely correct. As an organization scales, they have to revisit things. And you know, nothing runs the same at 20 people as it does with 200 people versus 2000 versus 20,000. Every time you hit a milestone you have to revisit, you have to revisit how you're running your payroll, you have to revisit how you're running your HR, you have to revisit how you're running your operations, how you're running your customer success, you have to revisit all of this specific areas of your organization. And whether you're doing work from home hybrid, or brick and mortar is no different. That is a very specific thing. And as you scale to these larger organization, organizations, it no longer becomes an organization wide decision, it starts to become a department or team wide decision, it starts to become a leader decision. Because you're starting to lead individual organizations within your organization, putting a flat mandate across 200,000 people is across 30 different countries, 60 different countries. It's an incredibly difficult thing, and I daresay, almost impossible thing to do.

Rick Denton: 7:28

Yeah. And it gets at that idea of employee experience and what that means. But that idea of you know, a key element of that employee experience is trusting the employee. So if you've got a organizational hierarchy for efficiency, right, we do tend to live in hierarchies. There's no such thing I think, as a 20,000 person company that's truly flat. But you have to trust and trust is such a key part of employee experience. And I alluded to it in the introduction, right that we were talking about customer experience, employee experience, and it's cliche, I get it their inner woven together. I get it, I think you get it, a lot of people get it. But why is it so important? Why are companies still not even getting that right? But what is it that ties those two worlds together, of customer experience and employee experience?

Anne Bibb: 8:13

It? It sounds cliche, but it really isn't. And, you know, I don't understand either, why people don't get it. Because when you start to even put yourself in these individual shoes, if you're having a bad day, and you have just had all of these things going wrong, you're just not going to do well at work. And I'd even go so far as to say, you know, when you're having such a terrible time at home, you can compartmentalize to a certain extent, and, and people need to remember that everything that's happening to us from a human human aspect, right? That impacts people's mental health as well. If we're having a bad day, and you were servicing me as a customer, and I were having a bad day and started yelling at you, if you were to, because of that absorb all of that negativity that could potentially set you over the edge. Yeah. Now, if you take that to the next customer, and because of you say your boss has put all of these policies in place, that make working very difficult. You've got to do it faster. You've got to do it accurate. You have to be absolutely perfect. The stress from everything of having to do it a very specific way at a very specific speed. While you've got all of these things happening at home and people yelling at you, you're no longer going to be nice. So one thing that an employer can do to help the situation is have a good employee experience, providing EAP services, making sure that there are realistic goals in mind, making sure that they are watching out for the signs doing all of this flows through.

Rick Denton: 10:20

Yeah, and I've heard so much of that, because you're describing the employee as a, as a human. Well, there's a dumb sentence, right? Maybe I should extract that. But yeah, as a human, well, we're getting to employee bots. But well, that's a different conversation. But the idea of they have their interaction with their customer, they have their their ecosystem that is their employer created, and there's their home one, well find the employer, what do I have the most control over? Obviously, it is that employee experience, and things that you're describing the tools that make it easier so that when they are dealing with a frustrated customer, they the employee aren't having to clickety clack 1000 times trying to figure out oh, my gosh, how can I possibly answer this question? Or even something? Oh, gosh, I wish I could remember it was years ago, I heard about at some company, again, it was on a podcast. But they had that decompress room, right. And they had two sides of it, there was the Zen garden style with the plinky plinky music and the little snare, this sand gardens. And then there was the rage room of kicking the crap out of some sort of punching bag. And that kind of allowance to get off the phone and go get rid of that customer interaction is all part of creating a great employee experience in that context and environment.

Anne Bibb: 11:24

I am hearing more and more organizations, especially for organizations that are dealing with like content, moderation and things along these lines. They're starting to do things like have a psychologist on staff, so that somebody can come in and talk and get those things out. And make sure that they're clearing their mind all of the services from an employee benefits perspective, those who hope relieved the stressors outside of the office to allow from a positive perspective, while working.

Rick Denton: 11:57

Okay, it goes back to something you said at the very beginning. And that is, whatever this remote, whatever this hybrid experience looks like, it's going to require listening to your employees and finding out what they need. And if what they need is EAP delivered remotely or if what they need is give me 90 seconds between each call so I can punch the pillow in my bedroom. Whatever that need that need is, then that's understood by listening to the employee, and then delivering listen and act, you know, and delivering on that. For the employee in that overall employee experience.

Anne Bibb: 12:30

It's communication.

Rick Denton: 12:32

Oh, gosh,

Anne Bibb: 12:33

oh, my goodness,

Rick Denton: 12:34

big words. Let's take a new tack here. Just a little departure. Right. We talked about the passport, I want to get that passport out. I mentioned the 20 countries, right? Work From Home is not just a Okay, so I'm in the US and I go to my house, not my office, there's this whole world that is now available when we talk of work from anywhere. We hear about companies that are seeking that global talent, we're talking about digital nomadism. So what does work from anywhere really look like globally? Especially if we're thinking about both from the companies aspect and the individuals aspect.

Anne Bibb: 13:12

So, you know, it's interesting, people talk about remote work, remote, first, hybrid, digital nomadism work from anywhere, all of these terms are out there right now. And it's interesting to see how different companies have defined them. And rarely are things defined the same way. For instance, remote First, I've seen so many organizations call themselves remote first, but actually not be advocates of remote work. They call themselves interesting. I don't know, how does that work? It is incredibly interesting. I think that from a marketing perspective, they're trying to get those remote if they're trying to pull in the best talent and then during the interview process, they talk them into working on site. And I tell employees all the time, be aware that from a digital nomadism perspective, it's important to pay attention again, pay attention to when you're looking for a job, and also understand a few things along the way one, insurance from a health and medical perspective. Also understand what your tax implications are, and then understand what your visa implications are because it's all fine and dandy but if you are traveling to a country as a digital nomad, and that country only allows you to be in there for 90 days, and you're in there for 91 you can find yourself in a heap of trouble. So digital nomadism is a is a great thing that was around prior to the pandemic, however, has really the whole world has opened up to it, and people have really become aware of it. Now, what I find interesting is, how many companies are really interested in it from that perspective, what companies are wary of, though, is those individuals who never set foot in the US from a tax implication perspective. Because if they aren't, if those employees don't, then all of a sudden, they are now having to either ensure that they have an entity and the primary company or in the primary country that these travelers are spending the most amount of time with and then they are looking at those tax implications there

Rick Denton: 15:43

interesting. And that's certainly well beyond my understanding and scope and beyond. Listeners, seek a tax advisor, seek legal counsel, don't listen to anything that you're listening.

Anne Bibb: 15:56

Always have your tax advisor Always

Rick Denton: 15:58

go that direction. But I do want to, you know, it does at least pop a little bit of a bubble a little bit about how look, I can work anywhere, or an employer saying I can access the globe for talents. So while work from home work from anywhere, it's certainly an appealing concept. It sounds like yes, there are some constraints, there are some boundaries that take us away from that Nirvana that I could think I'm gonna go work in Thailand this week, and then I'm gonna go work in Tanzania the next week.

Anne Bibb: 16:29

And you can as long as you're following the rules.

Rick Denton: 16:33

Well, let's talk about something a little more fun about travel. And that is how travels impacted you if you've gone all these 20 countries, and I know you've gone beyond that. But I know that travels sort of shaped me and my personality, how has it affected you? How has it shaped your perspective on customer and employee experience?

Anne Bibb: 16:50

So first of all, like you, I absolutely love to travel, there are a few things that I look at whenever I'm traveling. So one thing that you may not know about me is that I'm mildly hearing impaired. And then another thing about me is I actually have something called celiac disease. So that means that I am restricted on what I eat. So when I'm traveling, I always try and make sure that if I'm traveling on an airline, that I'm having to reserve things in advance, from a food perspective. I also note, there's a place on most airlines that you can note if your hearing impaired, so that they can, if you fall asleep on the plane, they they know to tap you or if you can't hear them. So there's a lot of little things that also when I'm going through airports or anything along those lines, just paying attention and seeing how difficult or how easy it is, for somebody with this. specialty. You know, I don't want to say disability because you know, I'm, you know, I can get along just fine. But it is interesting in the different countries to follow and to see how these things have been looked at. And even I would go so far as to say, within one country in different cities and different airports recently, I was in, you know, another country on a different continent, and was in two airports in that same country, one airport was so easy to maneuver through. And it's, you know, there wasn't a ton of white noise in the background, even though there were a lot of people. So I could still pointedly look at people and somewhat hear them utilize my appropriate apps for transcription, the signage was so good. But in the other airport, there was so much music and so much background noise. And for those that are hearing impaired, that makes it even more difficult. So it's interesting. And whenever I travel, I try to watch for things to see how it's going to be for my future customers. How easy was it to get from one place to another? How easy is it to get to from gates. So it was it. It's been very interesting to watch how the future has evolved from an ability standpoint, and I think that some countries and some cities are getting really on board with it and are making sure that they're thinking not only about the hearing, but the ability with wheelchairs. But even from a vision vision standpoint, making sure that there aren't a lot of flashing lights. So that's been it's been great to watch

Rick Denton: 19:48

when you're doing that kind of traveling, and you're traveling around this many places and going through all of these travels I imagine it can be nice to stop down in a place of peace and a place of calm And then a place that we might call that legendary first class lounge. And so I'd like to invite you here in the first class lounge live. We'll move quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Anne Bibb: 20:12

Hong Kong? Oh, yes. I visited Hong Kong once we wanted to go back and then of course the pandemic hit.

Rick Denton: 20:20

It is it is stunning. Yes, definitely go back. It certainly is. It's changing. And we know that. But definitely I love that place. What is the dream travel location? You've not been to yet? New Zealand? Oh, yeah. Okay. Tell me what what about it? Why,

Anne Bibb: 20:35

you know, what? The history, the Maori the just the beauty of what we've seen on pictures. And I would even as of today, I mean, that was 10 years ago. Today, I'd even go on to say their Prime Minister is fascinating. So there are just so many things about that island alone.

Rick Denton: 20:59

One of the things Hong Kong and I don't know much about New Zealand, but Hong Kong I know, great food. And so I always think about travel and food. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Anne Bibb: 21:09

I just like to eat let's be honest. Question somewhere, and I find it and I can't eat it. I'm gonna. But I will say this. I was in London one time. And I was so excited to find how much gluten free food was available in Hong Kong. I had I think it's like seven or eight years ago, maybe I found a gluten free bakery. And I actually had a gluten free croissant. Okay. And when I was I was so excited. I like took a picture of it. And I was texting it to everybody that I knew. Because when I mean I don't know how familiar are with gluten free food, but it usually tastes like you know, like cardboard or something. This actually when you broke it looked like a croissant with the little flaky layers and everything. I almost started crying. Because it doesn't taste like it didn't taste like I remember, but it was close enough for me. Yeah, I was just thrilled beyond belief. That's awesome.

Rick Denton: 22:17

It's amazing how food and memories can just be stirred. When you think about where you travel, just tied down to that specific item. Now, memories have their other way of interacting with us what is a thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid.

Anne Bibb: 22:34

Anything green? I to this day. Like I There are something green foods that my husband will get back to this day he has to try and sneak green food

Rick Denton: 22:43

going back to the travel part of it. What is one travel item not including your phone, you will not leave home without

Anne Bibb: 22:50

protein bars. I honestly because I never know what I'm going to be able to eat. So you know not to bring it back down to reality. I have I generally travel with gluten free protein bars, gluten free snacks

Rick Denton: 23:13

you know, and one of the things that we've talked about is how remote work, it can have this different effect on different communities. And we talked earlier about even walking through the airport. Right that that has an experience a different effect on one community versus another community. I had a podcast guest on a few episodes ago, Sean Mason and he was telling me about how certain theme parks has have set up sensory rooms for and so with his autistic children, he was so happy to be able to have a place that they could experience Dollywood and be able to have a place to decompress as well. And the same kind of thing with all sorts of communities. remote work is going to affect different communities in different ways as well. So some will say hey, remote work great, like the disability ability community had a guest on caper house. She was talking about how it was fantastic for that community. But then there's other communities that work from home really creates challenges for them. So it's a long way of me saying how do you address remote work, diversity, equity inclusion, and how does that work for a company knowing that their employees are going to be a part of a wide spectrum?

Anne Bibb: 24:28

So I'm gonna say what I say about everything and we just like clothes, I mean, let's face it, the fashion industry lies, these clothes are not one size fits all. No. remote work is the same way. It is not one size fits all. It is not for everyone, and it cannot be done everywhere. And if you have an advocate or a somebody that is telling you Oh, yes, it can, you know what they're they're pushing their own agenda, right? remote work can be a wonderful thing, it can be incredibly helpful, and it can absolutely help a Dei, because what you're doing is you're pulling yourself out of being forced into a specific radius of a building. And you're really opening up the ability to recruit and hire from an incredibly wide geographical area, which opens up the potential for diversity of thought, for the diversity of race, and gender, and religious backgrounds. So the what you have to be careful of, especially in the United States is, strangely enough, not everywhere in the US, has the infrastructure to be able to allow people to work remotely, right. It's interesting to me to know that I can go to other countries that have more solid infrastructure, and can work remotely out in the boondocks. But in the United States, we don't have that capability. So I think that's one thing to keep in mind. Secondarily, from a remote work perspective, in order for that to be successful for everybody, two things have to happen. Either those people have to already be able to afford to have the computer and the technology in order to be able to work from those systems, or the company needs to provide them. Yeah, if that company is not willing to provide that technology, then you're not setting those those individuals up for success. And I. And I think that that's really important, because we've got two schools of thought here. And as you start leaning up towards the executives, they have no problem whatsoever sending out laptops, to your directors, and your C suite and everything. Like oh, you're, you're an executive, here's your laptop, traveled the world go do what I need to do make us money. But when we're talking about our frontline employees, who are actually making the money for us, the they're not wanting to send them the computer. And I mean, I'm a fan of bring your own device, I truly am. But there is a limit to that as well. Because especially as we get further out of the city square, we're talking about individuals who don't have the ability to to afford this. So this just needs to be a factor in the organization's as they're starting to make these these decisions.

Rick Denton: 28:09

Yeah, like how you zeroed in on one aspect, there's a multitude of of lenses that we could look at that. But you're right, the socio economic aspect of it, that if you don't, if you're doing a work from home situation, well, then that person has to be able to create that environment to be successful and productive, whereas that there's an entire community that says, No, that's why I like going to the office, because the office has that productivity ability for me built in. And what are you cutting out of your employee spectrum, which then will impact we didn't talk about it, but impact your customer experience spectrum? Because then if you're serving a certain customer set, and you don't have that inside of your own company, then how can you possibly understand that customer?

Anne Bibb: 28:48

Which interestingly enough, whenever you start thinking about the people that are further away from the city square, those are the individuals who live far away from the buildings. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's just like this massive domino effect. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 29:04

And, as we always do in our conversations, we're running long. We've gone long here. So I want to close out with something that you said you actually said it to me earlier. But you know, I've heard you say before, but you said it here in the show that it's not customer experience. It's not employee experience. It's human experience. Once you just close out tell me what you mean by that.

Anne Bibb: 29:25

Well, I mean that we are all humans. You know, when we look at who we are talking about, we need to it is free to be kind. It truly is. It doesn't take anything out of your pocket, it might take a little bit out of your pride, but that that is free. All of the employees that you are working with, they're humans, all of the customers that you are dealing with are humans. Do we all agree on everything Yeah, that that individual thinks no, but you know what, they are a person. And they deserve that respect, period. We are all humans. And we have to figure out how to live together on this earth. And that is what I mean by human experience.

Rick Denton: 30:21

Let's end it right there. We're just gonna end it right there. And that's a wonderful, beautiful sentiment to end this this show on we talked about remote work. We talked about the the global aspect of that, but ending there on the understanding that ultimately, it's human experience. Now, how can people get in touch with you to learn more about wearable work your perspectives on employee experience, customer experience, what's the best way to get in touch with you and learn more?

Anne Bibb: 30:43

Absolutely. So anyone can always reach out to me and connect to me via LinkedIn. They can find me at an Anne Bibb a-n-n-e b-i-b-b. I also have our company website, remote evolution.com. And if you want to find me for a speaking engagement or for coaching annebibb.com, a-n-n-e b-i-b-b.com

Rick Denton: 31:06

Excellent all of that listeners in the show notes, you know the drill, scroll down, you don't have to look it up, you just click the link and you've got access to and there and thanks so much for spending time with me today. I really hope it was informational and inspirational. And I love having both of those on the show. Thank you for talking to me today on CX passport.

Anne Bibb: 31:23

Thanks Rick.

Rick Denton: 31:27

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.