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. So the experience is important to every industry. Those of us in the CX space say that as if it were gospel, and you know what, I truly believe it. What's fun and surprising though, is when you stumble across an example that you'd never expect, an industry that you might not even be aware of forget as a customer experience person, but as a consumer in general, there are hundreds 1000s of these industries creating real value for individuals, communities and the world that fly under the radar of these more visible industries like hospitality or retail or travel. Well, that's what our conversation today will do. Surprise us as we enter the world of genomics. As we talk with Sherry Grissom, associate director service and support and Melissa spears, senior staff customer experience culture specialist at Illumina, a leader in sequencing and array technologies. Now full transparency listeners that rolls off my tongue as if I know what I'm saying yet this world is very new to me, I have a ton to learn, first of which is the fact that Sherry and Melissa are at the forefront of using customer experience to be a differentiator in this space. Never would have expected to find CX in a conversation about genomics. as I learn more, I see how impactful this world can be to all of us, including a really sweet story I saw about a young girl asking her local police department to run a DNA test on Christmas cookies and carrots for evidence of Santa Claus and his reindeer. There is a real humanity to this industry. Indeed. When you're creating something for an industry that isn't already steeped in customer experience, you get the wisdom that comes from creating something from the ground up. I'm looking forward to having Sherry And Melissa share that wisdom today sharing Melissa, welcome to CX passport. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Rick. Glad to be here. Let's have some fun here. I guess it's going to be surreal and interesting for me, I have so much to learn. But I can't wait to do this first. And in that learning vein, before we talk about anything and customer experience, given how new the space is, to me, even though I feel like I should have known it better. Would you just give us a quick high level description of Illumina and the history?

Sherry Grissom: 2:47

Yeah, again, thanks for having us today and excited to introduce you to Illumina. As you mentioned, elimite, as a global is a leader in DNA sequencing and array technologies, and we have a pretty dubious mission to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome. Our sequencers actually enable the understanding of genomes, and that helps to translate into improved health and understanding of disease. So I, one way to think about this is every cell in your in your body has DNA, and that DNA is telling that cell what function it needs to carry out for your body to operate. So you can think of your DNA as like your human novel, it's four letters, AC, G, and t. And that is the story of you, your DNA, I have a story of me, that's my DNA. And actually, if we were to look at the two of them, there's only about a half a percent difference in 3 billion letters that would actually define you as Rec and myself as sherry.

Rick Denton: 4:04

That's really interesting to be at it does give having a little bit of flashback to some of my middle school in high school classes, especially the four letters. And that even that mention of the how tiny the percentage differences we could have a whole podcast about why on earth are we so split as humans when we're actually so close as humans, different podcasts, different topic, different time, but there's some truth there. You know, what I really liked about what you said there, Sherry, was you kept using the word story. And this is the story of who we are. And that's so important to the customer experience, world and story and imagine we'll talk a little bit more about story and how that even gets involved in the space. It shows that even in an area that I would not have expected. There is that heart there is that well, let's just talk about customer experience. And the reason that I even was intrigued to have you on the show is that I never thought your industry I've mentioned this so many times already that it would have a focus on CX but the way we came to know each other was you created a presentation at the North American Customer Experience event that caught my eye. So not only were is it an industry that has it, it was so important to y'all that it felt like hey, we want to present this and teach about this. So why would CX be important in the world of genomics?

Melissa Spears: 5:17

Yeah, again, appreciate you having us on. Sherry and I are very excited to be here. And it's a great question. And Sherry and I were talking about this earlier in the week, we at Illumina don't really see ourselves that much different than the other industries that are more popular in CX, like, like you mentioned earlier, banks, travel retail, I think it's more that the general population just doesn't really understand fully what genomics is yet. And it's hard for them to see where CX fits in. And in a way, the recent pandemic that we're still all dealing with is actually helped Illumina by creating awareness and education to, you know, the general population, oh, the impact genomics has on healthcare, and on the world. And so to answer your question, why is Cx important in genomics? While Illumina is mostly a b2b company, like Sherry mentioned, our mission is to improve human health. So we absolutely need to make sure that we're focusing on the customer needs and delivering exceptional data quality, and accuracy from our products, as well as those personalized human experiences for our customers. Because on the other side of our technology, and the genomic data that's coming off of our instruments, there are people that have diseases, there are newborns that are born, that aren't meeting their their milestones. And this information is informing the scientist for making those decisions. And its scientists in agriculture, about, you know, high yielding crops to feed the world, it's growing. And again, most recently, in the pandemic, I mean, Illumina gave the provided the first sequencer in China, and helped the companies that develop the vaccines. They were done using Illumina instrumentation. So that's, that's just a few of the examples of the many examples of why we have to pay attention. And make sure that you know, our customer experience is the top top the best that it can be.

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Rick Denton: 7:53

That in that the impact that you're describing of genomics is certainly hitting me I see it or now I see it and understand it the the ability to unlock information to help improve diseases, improve crop production, all of that. And heck, I didn't even know that about the the early sequencing of of COVID. And so, wow. So I can see that. I think, you know, you've talked about or not on the show, but we've talked about how there's this long legacy of genomics with Illumina. And that's been there sort of even probably before the words customer experience were really uttered. And in fact, there may have been a not a, not a monopoly, necessarily, but certainly not as many competitors in the space as there are today. And you've told me like we're talking about the importance of customer experience, but you've told me that now you're turning to customer experience as a way to stand out. So how are you balancing that long history? Pre customer experience world? No competitors? How do you differentiate your business now with that long legacy of Illumina?

Sherry Grissom: 9:01

Yeah, I think what, what we've done just within the legacy of Illumina I think part of that is our differentiator that we have a long history where we're celebrating our 25th year Illuma, verser Illumina bursary this year. And so, you know, where we started from years ago, years before I joined Illumina was really you know, in a very, very high touch niche area, we we had, you know, our customers had the full force of the small company that we were at the time behind them, to improve our products to listen to what they need to make their research go better to do business easier with us. And so, part of that though, we are highly innovative company, so we have to move fast embrace change. These are some of our our values. and 12 years ago, we actually introduced a new innovative product that really got us on this path. At least from a grassroots effort to focus on customer experience, you have

Rick Denton: 10:16

many different layers, you've already talked about kind of a b2b, you've talked about labs, there's the customer who is the the one with the infant who's not meeting the markers that you're expecting to see. So all of these basic definitions I've got imagine are pretty challenging. So how about just ground me a little bit in the listeners? Who are your customers? And how do you listen to them today? And then I'm going to add kind of a second questions now that you've listened to them. How do you act on what you've learned?

Melissa Spears: 10:45

Yeah, great question. So yeah, you're you're absolutely right, our customers are a very broad range from small academic labs, you know, even even our instruments are now going into some high schools. I mean, that's how far we're reach. We're, we just had our, you know, to kind of an aside here, but we're very proud of it. We just April is DNA Day, April 25. And the whole month of April, we educated over 100,000 students, by doing strawberry DNA extractions, in high schools, and our all of our employees take part in this, and it is just amazing. So yeah, high schools all the way up to, you know, like I said, academic research organizations, big universities that have genomic scores, like I live in St. Louis, Missouri. So Washington University, has a big genome center here in St. Louis, and then all the way through to all the different agriculture, ancestry, dog, you know, animal DNA tests, I mean, people love their animals just as much as they love their kids. And so they want to know what types of genetic, you know, markers that they have, that they may be able to, you know, be aware of, to prevent disease. And then all the way to, you know, like I said, we've got a big new project that just got released for whole genome sequencing and newborns, called NICU seek that Illumina was part of, and you know, that, again, is we're getting health care and insurance providers involved in all of these things as well, which is really important, because you know, who's going to pay for all of this, all of this treatment that is, you know, has come a long way. I mean, you know, when the Human Genome Project was started this these things cost, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, and now, on an Illumina sequencer we can we can sequence a whole human genome for under 1000. So the magnitude of the cost reduction is huge, but we still have to keep in mind, you know, at the end of the day, it's a patient that, you know, we have to get that covered by insurance and why it's so important. I've actually forgotten your question, because I've taken so many asides.

Rick Denton: 12:59

No, that's actually in the intro to the episode, not our episode, but I thought about we take a journey, so we'd never expect it. That's exactly what asides are. That's what a conversation is. That's what this this podcast is all about, you know what I really want it. So all of those customers, each of those are going to speak. And I use that term very air quality to you in many different ways. You're going to hear from them in many different ways, sometimes directly or indirectly behavior versus what they actually say, how do you listen to that wide range of customers a key part of customer experience, listen, and then act on it.

Melissa Spears: 13:32

Yes, now I remember. So from the corporate side, and then I'll let Sherry talk about from the commercial side. From the corporate side, we've heavily invested in the past, you know, five to 10 years in intelligent listening tools that look at multiple sources of customer feedback coming through our contact center, which we call our technical support team, coming from social media, coming from our directly from our field employees. And we take all of that information from that software tool. And we've developed an internal team dashboard where anybody at Illumina can access that data and filter that sentiment down to what they're interested in their, their on market product or whatever that they want to drill down into for pain points and move forward to make those changes. The second major thing that we implemented, gosh, it's probably been six, seven years ago. Now. Time is time is nothing at Illumina. It either goes really fast or it goes really slow. But we implemented an onboard monitoring system that we call proactive that lives on our instruments and we can remotely monitor how well that instrument is performing. We can't see the any data that the customer has, but we can see. You know, are the cameras working? Is the data meeting our specs, so we can we have a Look into the instrument performance. So we can almost see ahead, if we're getting into like a reagent problem, and we can proactively look at that, look at that across the board of all, you know, across the world, and take action, before the customers even really realize that there may be a problem. And just I mean, and that's living on every instrument that we have. And so we're looking at things like that, that are just, you know, what seemed impossible. You know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, when I, when Sherry and I started, you know, when she was talking about that, that platform that kind of changed the way we do business. And we might think back that and all of the things that we had to do that this proactive monitoring now removes all of that work that the customer had to do, and that the field teams had to do, its weeks of work. And those are the two things that stand out to me. And so we can act on those things with that, even before like I said, proactively, even before the customer knows that there's anything going wrong,

Sherry Grissom: 16:06

this ad from the commercial point of view, we really focus on true voice of customer. Within the commercial team, we have a sales service, field service and field support teams, who are with our customers listening to what they want our instrumentation and our platforms to provide them with what outcomes are they looking to gain what features they would like on our new an up and coming you know, platform, our what you know, can make it easier for them to interact with tech support, we're, we're constantly listening, and we are providing that information back in and that's actually sort of what brought us to, to the Arquette awards was was you know, sort of some of the work and dedication, Melissa making some connections for us and really bringing the fact that that this is something worth celebrating that we've done and we have a internal database now to collect all of this voice of customer data and really, you know, take that next level of stewardship of that of that information

Rick Denton: 17:33

man, what some great solutions those are I really I love the kind of the listen to act. You know, what I really was intrigued by in some of those solutions was this idea of how it can improve the customers experience and it also improve the employee experience their description of weeks of service being involved in something and instead it's something that can be discovered and resolved in so much of a shorter timeframe. Now, I imagine that some of those visits may have required technician travel. Now I don't know if the there was global travel or there was the wearing down of travel but I know that travel can really wear a person down I know it's done it to me and it can be nice to stop in the first class lounge. So that's what we're going to do here right now. We're going to stop in the first class lounge. We're gonna have a little bit of fun here. I will start with you Melissa. What is the dream travel vacation from your past?

Melissa Spears: 18:23

I think our favorite family vacation that I would love to Yeah, go on again or you know, just which is unexpected. We went to Big Bear Lake California. And, you know, it was just something we had never done before. As a family. We're usually like the type of family that goes to, you know, Cancun and just lays on the beach and has few drinks. There's

Rick Denton: 18:45

nothing wrong with a

Melissa Spears: 18:47

big bear. It was just, you know, a different place and we had a we had a blast went on lots of hikes and yeah, it was fun.

Rick Denton: 18:53

That's beautiful. I like that Sherry, how about you?

Sherry Grissom: 18:58

We are very much beachbum family, but I so from from my past, I think you know, Negril, Jamaica. I've been to a couple of different places in Jamaica but nothing matches. Girl.

Rick Denton: 19:17

Such good things. I've all the places and I live in Texas, right? The Caribbean is a very easy access. For many of us here in the US. I've never been to Jamaica. So share, you're helping inspire that that needs to get at it bumped up on the list. The problem is the list keeps growing. So it's more a matter of prioritization as to where they go. So let's actually stay with you, Sherry, in your prioritization list. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Sherry Grissom: 19:41

I think, probably to stay with on the island theme, but more of like the Greek Isles. I would love to spend some time you know, just not not necessarily to lay on the beach of course to enjoy the beach but just the scenery and the culture.

Rick Denton: 19:59

Huh, no, that's, and here's something that's surreal. I've now recorded a series of episodes that haven't been released yet. So there's no way y'all could have known this. The amount of people that have answered Greece is stunning in the recent past. So their tourism board is doing something subconsciously that none of us realize, because we all want to go to Greece. So let's check with you, Melissa. Is Greece on your list? Or is there another dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Melissa Spears: 20:26

Greece is on my 16 year old daughter's list.

Rick Denton: 20:29

Let's see.

Melissa Spears: 20:31

Yep, somebody's doing something right, somewhere. Mine would be Hawaii. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 20:40

Getting out to Hawaii. That would be a recurring theme here. I see. I hear it and the beach comes up quite a bit. Let's pivot a little bit. We're going to talk about food here. Share. I'm going to go with you first. Again, what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Sherry Grissom: 20:56

Pretty much anything that comes from my garden. So I'm a backyard gardener. And really enjoy taking something from the garden and bringing into the house and cooking it. And okay, yeah, so it's kind of a wide, okay.

Rick Denton: 21:16

Yeah, but you, you may win on the at least unique category. You know, we're used to hearing pizza or a good steak, and they're not just whatever you bring from my garden. I like that. Melissa, how about you? What's your favorite thing to eat?

Melissa Spears: 21:27

I'm not really picky. So I'll eat pretty much anything. But recently, I have been hooked on kimchi fried rice. And I just do that

Rick Denton: 21:37

too loud. Wow, that sounds really good.

Melissa Spears: 21:41

We visited my daughter in college a few months ago and I had it for the first time and now that's all I want to eat.

Rick Denton: 21:49

That does sound good. May have to give me some of that. I've never had it but it sounds really yummy. Let's so Melissa. You said you weren't picky. But I'm gonna ask you what is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid?

Melissa Spears: 22:00

Ham and beans.

Rick Denton: 22:03

Okay, that was quick. I love how quick these answers are. Got a little ashen face ham and beans. The memories started flooding back there.

Melissa Spears: 22:11

Yeah, that's that's that's an easy one.

Sherry Grissom: 22:14

Oh, I love it. Sherry, how about you? I would have to say cooked carrots. Mushy carrots. So yeah, I'm okay with my kids pushing back on. Because I understand.

Rick Denton: 22:30

And I don't know if you're like me. Sure. I love carrots. But once you cook them. No, I'm out. Not a fan. I like

Sherry Grissom: 22:36

roasted carrots. Just not boiled. Just

Rick Denton: 22:39

just not the cook carrots. I love it. All right. We'll close out here the first class lounge chair, I'll start with you, Melissa, we'll close out with you. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without?

Sherry Grissom: 22:53

Sunglasses.

Rick Denton: 22:56

Somebody's a beach person. There it is. Melissa, how about you?

Melissa Spears: 23:04

Oh, I guess I can't leave home without my bike guard.

Rick Denton: 23:13

I actually don't know who to position this question to. So I'm going to pose it to both y'all let you jump in. But you started this from scratch. This is this building of a customer experience approach was not something that was there. We talked about the long legacy. And then it's something that was created, you were part of creating it. So you couldn't look to other industry peers for your ideas, as you might do in another industry, because you were at the forefront of this. So what was it like to build a customer experience program from the ground up? Not just in your own company, but really for the industry as a whole?

Sherry Grissom: 23:51

I guess I can start. What was it? Like? I mean, it's, it was a lot of listening. A lot of just trying to do the right thing for our customers, honestly, making sure again, that that we we knew what was working for our customers and we knew what we wanted to not lose as we grew, what things were important, you know, the, the the touch points, the information that our customers needed. And so it was a lot of listening. And then it was a lot of actually cross functionally, understanding that you know, a different team who also maybe a secondary to the customer interaction that they were just as interested as to improve that downstream experience as we were, who were directly involved. And again, I'm speaking strictly from the service and support team with that customer interaction, but but we started to understand that there were other groups Maybe we're doing some really good things that we could build off of that we could try and not just come as a service and support Customer Experience team, but an Illumina service, an Illumina Customer Experience team, right? So that we were connecting with our folks, our partners in Customer Care and customer service and, you know, order intakes in that part of the the journey for the customer was seamless from from order into, you know, use of the instrumentation. So it was, it was a lot of listening, a lot of trying to break down barriers and silos, and thinking about ways that we can connect with other touch points. In the beginning,

Rick Denton: 25:46

Sherry, I heard the listen, and that be the key theme that you started with it? Well, we just started by listening to our customers, where else would you start? Right? It's almost like Rick, come on. I mean, that's where he started. I think that's brilliant. Actually, Melissa, I saw you nodding at that listen, element as well. What did you see in that kind of that aspect of the listening that really helped grow that customer experience program?

Melissa Spears: 26:11

Yeah, I mean, it's a very important part. And, you know, the one thing that I think is unique about Sheree and I's situation, is that, you know, the grassroots effort that we're talking about, and what made us the award winning, you know, culture that started this whole conversation, is that, you know, we are all trained scientist, we're not, you know, we, you know, Sherry and I, ourselves, I have moved into a customer experience role. But, you know, it was, it's a lot about hiring the right people, and looking for those skills of people that have those behaviors, and really take that listening information and act upon it. From that level down is where, you know, we we look at the hiring process from the beginning to the end into in workflow for that, as well. So I just wanted to make that, you know, yeah, clear that, you know, I, we are scientists that have built this kind of one section of the Customer Experience Program, from the corporate side, you know, we have all of the, you know, the much larger programs for listening, like we talked about before those sentiment tools as AI, you know, intelligent databases. for that.

Rick Denton: 27:34

I like that you brought in the fact that y'all are scientists, I failed to bring that in. And I'm glad that you did. And I'm glad that you did on two fronts. And the first one that comes to mind is, it shows that I never want to hear anybody tell me, well, that's customer experience is somebody else. I'm not customer oriented. I'm a finance person, I'm a technology person, I'm a scientist, no, your, your your great example of everybody can be customer focused. Absolutely. And then I love the other part that you amplified there, Melissa was, hey, it's also the hiring. Alright, we are hiring for that personality. We're hiring for happy, right. And that's not exactly what you're doing. But hiring for that understanding of customer and the willingness to listen, in addition to the precision skills that you need for the role that you're describing. But a key aspect of that is that and you hear it talked about and either emotional intelligence or EQ and the like, but what that looks like and how that can help someone advance their ability to deliver in a role like this. I am, I've got easily two to 10 other questions that I want to ask you all. And I'm struggling to figure out which one because we're out of time here. But you know what I want to I think I want to focus on something. And it's the investor aspect of it. Because we talk a lot about you're listening to customers, and getting it right for the customers. And the the real hard part of this, the human aspect of the health conditions that have been created and everything that we described, that's great. In business, though, there's a coldness to it as well. And that is okay. Right. But what did you do for the bottom line? And I found it interesting that you had told me earlier that investors are starting to realize that your customers love you. And this customer experience thing is creating actual business growth. So I want to, I want to understand how did you help the investors and your leadership team and the company in general, recognize the tangible business value of improving customer experience? Let's close with that.

Sherry Grissom: 29:39

I can, yes. Oh, go ahead and start

Melissa Spears: 29:43

sorry, Sherry. I was just gonna say I can start and then you can add on. I think a lot. I think the quick answer to that, Rick is storytelling. Just like, you know, we alluded to a little bit earlier. At the end of the day, it's all about You know, a patient or improving human health, whether it's their dog or, you know, putting food on the table, and it's telling those impactful stories. And we've gotten a lot better at doing that, you know, we can, we can focus on that now that we have people that are intentionally here to do those types of things. And, and, you know, instead of, you know, the boots on the ground, we're paying attention to the boots on the ground, but we're taking that story and we're amplifying it, you know, across the globe, we have a lot more social media presence, as well. And so it's, those are making an impact. And, you know, we're doing we're starting to do things like unexpected ribbon cutting ceremonies, we just launched a new platform. And, you know, part of my job is I've implemented this moments that matter program, where we're really elevating those experiences that that you know, are, you know, just making the customers a little bit happier, you know, celebrating with them having having fun together, and just bringing the human part back to it as well. Science can be kind of boring, you know. So you want to have fun with customers as well. And, you know, there's the share, going back to the shareholders, you know, again, we're humans, it's the stories that are creating, you know, that excitement, sharing anything.

Rick Denton: 31:23

I certainly, I've certainly won't put in the the the title of the show that science is boring. But that's true of business in general, that storytelling aspect of it. And so, sure, I interrupted you there. I just I get so excited about storytelling, though. And so it gets me going share you. What about you? What have you seen be successful in helping advance the understanding of the business value of customer experience?

Sherry Grissom: 31:47

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't change the answer, I was actually gonna call out Melissa's moments that matter. Project that she's been working on, we've definitely seen customers, super excited. And this is part of our, you know, the legacy super excited about the product. But understanding that they are part of, you know, that that experience, not just you know, that we put a product in their lab, but but this is a whole new experience for everybody involved. And, you know, I think just taking a couple steps back from from storytelling, I think the the word that sort of sticks with me is evangelizing. And being persistent, right, the storytelling does finally happen. You might tell a whole lot of stories before it sort of clicks. But then but then it does and and it's it's fun to see the test to see how it manifests.

Rick Denton: 32:50

And with that, because you gave two really important one, the storytelling amplifying the storytelling, but that consistency, and that's something I've seen at companies I've helped clients understand this as well that it can be really exciting. Think about the newsletter right back in those days, a company creates the newsletter, and we're gonna tell the customer story, and then the energy fades away over time. But our successful program requires that consistency, that persistence, that you're describing Sherry, and I'm really, really glad you brought that into this sharing, Melissa, what a fantastic exposure for me and for the listeners into an area of customer experience in an industry that I certainly didn't expect to hear it. And I know more as to why it belongs there. If folks wanted to learn more about Illumina or more about yalls approach to customer experience, what's the best source for them to learn more?

Sherry Grissom: 33:43

I think we have some really great introductory information on our website eliminate.com. And, of course, I think both Melissa and Ira are on LinkedIn. We have a fantastic technical support team who will pick up the phone and answer questions. So there's there's multiple avenues. We're all open and we all share a pretty deep passion for for Illumina. Excellent success.

Rick Denton: 34:15

That's great. Well, I'm gonna get all that in the show notes. So listeners as usual, just scroll down, click Don't hit stop, you can just click there and then you've got access to those contact points that Sherry has described Sherry Melissa, brilliant conversation they really appreciated. It also loved getting to hear some of your travel destinations. I certainly hear the beach theme coming through loud and clear. But I do want to get to where you are describing Melissa get out there in the mountains and the lakes as well. That sounds beautiful. I really appreciate you y'all both joining me on CX passport today. Thank you.

Melissa Spears: 34:46

Thanks for having us.

Rick Denton: 34:53

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.