Sam Stern: 0:00

is an existential threat to cx to everyone, that if we don't get to that point of where we're seeing as having the clear explicit connections to the business value that better CX can create and unlock, then we are nice to have and what is the point

Rick Denton: 0:20

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. Most of the people who hear about cx passport for the first time either hear from a friend or a colleague, or they see the promotional material that I put out on LinkedIn, it is no secret that LinkedIn is a vital platform for all of us in the business community are really just about any professional community. I actually think of myself as an early adopter of LinkedIn having joined LinkedIn and October 13 2005. I've seen it go through a ton of evolutions. What I haven't spent as much time thinking about is customer experience. Sure, there are times that the platform doesn't act on the way that I want, or like a lot of us, I'm sure love to know more about how the algorithm works. I just never really thought about customer experience in the context of this social media platform. Which, as I think about it now is kind of ridiculous. There's a real likelihood that I spend the highest percentage of my work day interacting with LinkedIn. Enter today's guest, Sam Stern, Senior Manager customer experience at LinkedIn, his description on LinkedIn. Where else, of course, is simply helping to create a better experience for LinkedIn customers and members. What does that look like on a social media platform? What does the distinction between customer and member mean here with a user count that I simply cannot fathom? How does someone understand customers or members expectations, and then act upon what they learned? These are all questions that I am looking forward to asking Sam Today's episode is truly a moment for me to learn with a bonus of sharing that learning experience with you, the viewer and the listener. Now, there's a bit of a backstory here. It's been a while but Sam and I actually met each other in a way back past that a former employer. I was working with Forrester at the time to improve our understanding and delivery of customer experience in the early 20. Teens. I remember being really impressed with the Forrester focus on customer experience, and especially analysts with whom I would interact. One of those was actually Sam. Now, the passing of time our connection completely faded away, which is what made it so intriguing when a former CX passport guest Rob Dwyer, Episode 137, suggested Sam as a future guest of CX passport. Those of us as a CX community know how wonderful these small world moments can be, and how they just seem to pop up all the time in our little CX world. Once Sam and I were able to reconnect to remind ourselves of our initial interactions, it became apparent to me that I had to have Sam on CX passport. Beyond his current work at LinkedIn and his former work at Forrester, I know there is a wealth of customer experience wisdom to glean from a conversation with Sam. I also find it a treat to have a fellow podcaster on the show as Sam is the host of a brilliant Customer Experience podcast, customer experience patterns, episodes explained CX patterns that underpin some of the world's best customer experiences. Scroll down here in the show notes to find a link to customer experience patterns, follow it, subscribe to it, download the episodes, I know you will get an incredible bevy of insight from listening to Sam's podcast. I know I'm excited about today's show. And I hope that you the listener and viewer are as excited as well, Sam, welcome to CX passport.

Sam Stern: 4:00

Thank you, Rick, thanks for having me. Thank you for that lovely introduction. I appreciate it.

Rick Denton: 4:04

Well, it is easy to write an introduction for someone that I respect and I'm eager to learn from so this is going to be fun. Let's let's start at the beginning kind of the basics here, that role of yours at LinkedIn as a senior manager of customer experience. I mentioned that I hadn't really thought about it in this context before. So what does customer experience mean at LinkedIn? And how does your role influence customer experience there?

Sam Stern: 4:28

Yeah. And I know Oh, I agree with you. I you know, before I got here, I wouldn't have thought necessarily about a big customer experience team at LinkedIn. So it is it is an important distinction that you were describing earlier to think about, which is there are members and there are customers of LinkedIn. Now. Now, here's where that distinction blends or blurs which is, I would say every customer of LinkedIn is a member. We're all members and we just passed 1 billion members billion with a B on the platform. Yeah, that's a big, big milestone, we're very excited. I'll you know, we all got t shirts and took pictures. But the end the member is at the core of it for us, what we're trying to do as a platform is create economic opportunity for every one of those members, indeed, for every member of the global workforce. So as big a number is 1 billion is where we have a lot of work to do, because there's more than that in terms of global workforce that we're trying to reach and trying to support. And then part of the way we do that is that there are customers of ours who use the platform to find people to fill open jobs, to find people who are targets for their products and services. And in the best cases of that it's win win win because it is filling, giving them a member a new job, giving them a great opportunity. It's helping them with something that they are challenged with by introducing them to a company with products and services that can help matchmaking in a sense. And so our customers, when they use the platform, well, are getting access to executives, leaders, and really specific tailored roles that are hard to reach anywhere. But LinkedIn is one of the few places that they're you know, they're at least aggregated and congregating and where they're open to these kinds of messages coming from our customers.

Rick Denton: 6:27

And so that is a distinction that I certainly understand even clearer now. And I'm sure the CX passport travelers is understanding that even better as well. Talk to me then about your role in enabling the the I want to make sure I get it right, the customers and the members when it comes to improving their customer experience, hearing from what is what is your role do to drive that customer experience for for the

Sam Stern: 6:53

Yeah, absolutely. So at its core, it is it's very similar to a customer experience role at at any other company. And I can say that with confidence, having, you know, worked with so many folks like yourself, working at different companies when I was at Forrester right working with hundreds of different companies. So seeing what a customer experience seems like what a CX role is, like we are LinkedIn is known as a trusted platform. So one of the things that we're very proud of is that we are one of the few trusted social media platforms out there. I every year that on there in the rankings, it's pretty much us and Pinterest, who people trust, okay, and we rely on that trust that trust is absolutely integral to the service for both members and customers. And I would say the other emotion. And so trust is an emotion. And the other emotion that we're really trying to inspire alongside trust is confidence, confidence that you can unlock economic opportunity on the platform. So when I think about my role on the CX team and our role as a CX team, it's to ensure that we continue to create trust and confidence in the platform. And that to me, is embodied in creating an experience that's easy to use, that's intuitive, that supports people who have you know, different sort of, let's say, English is not your first language. So you have language options, let's say, you know, you have cognitive limitations, or you have sight limitations, that there are other ways to access value on the platform. We're thinking through all of those types of considerations. And everything we want to do brings it back to making this easy and accessible for people to use, but also continuing to give them a sense that this is a place that they can trust and spend time on and get value from. And give them that confidence that coming to LinkedIn for their business professional career challenges is the right place to come.

Your CX Passport Captain: 8:45

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: 9:12

trust and confidence we didn't talk about that in the pre show it and so I'm my brain is centering on those two words. My brain is also centering on the billion number I knew it was big I didn't know it was Baba billion big and so let's let's talk about that actually is combined those two worlds, for you to create and use SAM you the wider LinkedIn world to create that experience of trust to create that experience of confidence. I imagine that there is a need to listen to a customer listen to the member, and then act upon that but you're talking about a massive number of customers of members. And you're talking about the global nature of those customers and members. So how are you going about doing that? Listen, and act That drives towards that trust and confidence building.

Sam Stern: 10:02

Yeah, absolutely. So here's the good news, right, with the social media platform like LinkedIn, they're already talking, they're already telling us lots of things. So to your point, listen, you know, I would say my default was okay, you know, prior to being in LinkedIn, prior to sort of try to do a better job of understanding how this really worked is, we're going to, we're going to ask a survey, we're going to put out a survey, we're going to schedule some interviews, and we do that. But really, they're already talking a lot, they're already telling us a lot. And so our first job is to listen to what they're saying. And, and in addition, and I should point out, we have a huge, Salesforce, a huge group of customer success managers, huge group of support consultants, doing live chat doing email responses, we listened to them as well. We're doing research right now with those customer facing employee groups to really understand what they need to be successful. But also hearing from them about some of the challenges that are being are referred pain that they're hearing about from our customers that we can potentially solve with some changes to their tools. So yeah, there's a lot of listening to what's already happening. There are ongoing relationship surveys that we do with our customers. There are in feed in product or on platform member surveys that we're doing all the time to ask questions. We're doing lots of you know, and this isn't even my team, necessarily. This is the UX team, the design teams, but they're doing lots of tests of betas of new site experiences, new site features all the time rolling those out. And what we're always trying to do is that balance of can we create more value? Can we unlock more value for our members and for our customers, but do so in a way where the trust is maintained, and we create, we keep them feeling confident that they can do what they want to do on LinkedIn? Do you?

Rick Denton: 11:54

What's coming to mind? Is that conversion to action then so? Yeah, before I even talk about, you know, I started a question that I'm going to back away from the question, because I have to just steep on something that you said here for just a little bit. And that is, I love that you were talking about we are reacting not reacting to we're listening to our frontline. Yeah, the various elements of frontline that you said, we are listening to how the customer is already communicating to us. Yeah, we do surveys. Yeah, we do some of that, as well. Bill Staikos talks about living in a post surveys, world and customer experience. And I think that's true. And so you'd lead with talking about that frontline talking about that. Those are great sources. And listeners have heard me talk about that a ton how the frontline is you're just epicenter of customer experience and customer insight, gold. How do you then convert that I think there are listeners here that are thinking great, you've got all this information? I have a lot of information in my company, if I'm Yeah, listener? How do I What do I do with that? And how do I get that into actual action? Yeah,

Sam Stern: 12:51

no, great question. So we do a couple of things. I mean, no one will be surprised to hear one thing that we do, we map customer journeys, we map employee journeys, of course we do every every customer experience team does. And so we we turn the those those sources of information, the ongoing conversations, the surveys, the the end, we do, you know, we do plenty of qualitative research as well, interviews and contextual inquiry and the like. We use that as the basis for then mapping out the steps that are happening in some of these key journeys, whether it's looking at a marketer having their first time on the website, on the site, or you know, in the app, trying to launch a marketing campaign, looking at that first campaign experience, whether it's looking at the experience of posting a job, right, or applying to a job if you're a job seeker looking at all of those key journeys that we have on the site. And then we look at the different ways you can do them as you might. And the other thing that we do a lot of is we will take clips, video and audio from our research, and use that both in the journey map. So we'll sort of have it like, you know, here's a key moment of truth, or here's a key pain point. Don't trust us listen to how it sounds from the perspective of someone that we talked to about this. So you can really, you can really sort of get that sense that empathy because you're hearing them describe that pain. And as well, I often find that that really makes it much easier for them. People say well, but that does work if they know to do it this way. It's like right now watch them explain to you why it didn't work for them. And you'll realize that they were never going to figure out that way that we had devised for them to do it. And so we do a lot of that right video and journey mapping. And the video does inspire empathy and to galvanize people to want to take action. And then we don't start projects on the CX team. I think it's important to important point to note, I think I would recommend all teams take this kind of rigorous approach. We don't start projects unless we have buy in that the teams responsible for that part of the experience are ready willing able to take on our recommendations and have a plan in place have resources have, you know, a prioritization meeting scheduled where they're going to take action with what we've learned? You can see that saves us money. No, that saves us from months of wasted work, right? Like, it's just a check against. Hey, and honestly, we've walked away from projects, we're like, Well, yeah, we do not have the resources to do anything about that. We don't have to buy it. Well, let's talk again in six months. That's right. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 15:25

You have you saw my eyes kind of get bigger. I even interrupted you. And I'm sorry. That's okay. They they got that big, because you think what you just said is one of the most simple things to like, Hey, Rick, the sky is blue. And yet, how many CX teams have these wonderful initiatives that are essentially dropped off as an ambush initiative on the group that is responsible for delivering that and is thrown not as a benefit to that group, but as a burden to that group? Oh, is this CO co creation, but this code development of what is the initiative plan? If you're not ready for it? Okay, that's cool. We got other places we can play. And we're gonna play there.

Sam Stern: 16:04

That's right. And I gotta say, like, you know, I'm not inviting others here. I have been guilty of that myself, too. We're trying to get better at that, like, really not just because it's easy for people to pay lip service to that they're going to take your recommendations, but really trying to understand, well, what is your plan for acting on his insights? And then the other epiphany I had recently sort of in this vein is, you know, we were guilty of the videos really help everyone can consume that. But we were guilty of dropping off these journey maps to teams that maybe had never seen one before. Or if they had had hadn't been part of creating it. And so they didn't have the context. And that's another thing that we're trying to evolve and think more about is, well, what format would be most persuasive to them? Because it'd be most familiar to them? Like, let's, we'll do the translation into the language that they're most comfortable speaking. That

Rick Denton: 16:48

makes a lot of sense is the usability of this and yeah, CX people aren't, we are uniquely guilty. And yet, we are also kind of commonly guilty or in, we are equally guilty as other groups have. We live in our own world, we understand our own things, and we just sort of naturally so will everybody else understands that. They don't if they don't live and breathe is if they're worried more about is the supply chain delivery from Asia going to make it into the LA port on time, there might not be thinking about a journey map, even though that's a key part of the journey, that as part of a customer experience, and at least a retail world. That all gets to that kind of buzzword word out there. Right customer centricity, even your use of video stories, to bring the customer into the conversation and making sure the customer is part of initiative prioritization and the like yet, that is a term that is thrown around. So loosely, I did it right here. It is not something that is for the faint of heart to create an authentically customer centric culture. And I know this is an area you spent a lot of time at Forrester, post Forrester, it's an area dear to you. I really would like to know what you think a customer centric culture looks like. And why would a company even care to create one? Yeah, yeah.

Sam Stern: 17:59

No, I have thought about this a lot. And I'll tell you the origin story, for me caring so much about this is at Forrester, some of our clients, you know, we were describing what a customer centric culture looked like. And they said to they said to me, they said, You've shown us this, we've all read books about Ritz Carlton and other leading firms. Don't tell us what it looks like, tell us how we transform because we're not customer centric. We actually know what the path looks like to get there. And so I studied that for years at Forrester figuring out how do you actually transform your culture. And so customer centricity is about one individual, if you're going to become customer centric, it's about behavior change at the individual employee level, but then scaled up to the to the size of entire organization, which, which is a massive, massive undertaking. And I think it makes it easier to think about that individual behavior change, because we've all in our personal lives, tried to shed bad habits, adopt good habits. And we know it's hard. We know, it's really hard to quit smoking or to start exercising regularly, whatever it is you're trying to stop doing or start doing. behavior change is hard. And so what I talked about in terms of customer centricity is at a company you want to create the conditions where being customer centric, is easy for employees is the default. And so what goes into that it goes into things like, I know, in my role, so not just for CX team, but for finance, for customer facing roles, obviously, but for other behind the scenes roles. What am I doing that is role appropriate, but that contributes to great customer experience delivery. So you want to make sure that each employee feels like what they're being asked to do is relevant to the role, then you need to make sure that they feel like if they do that they are recognized and rewarded in terms of their performance evaluation for having done it. They feel like they have the data and the training and the other resources they need to do that, too. There's a whole system around being customer centric. And that doesn't place the onus solely on the individual and doesn't place the the, the onus solely on the customer facing employees, but rather makes it clear and specific for every part of the organization, and feel achievable for everyone in the organization. That,

Rick Denton: 20:21

that sounds very what's the word I'm looking for? Here? It reminds me of it almost as if you've got a methodology and approach. It sounds like there's a system to this totally. And, and I would imagine that there is, and so that's something that we're talking about kind of ways to get in touch with you later, I think that'd be important. If there's something that folks can tap into if there's a resource that they can get to or something, I'd love to link that there in the show notes. So absolutely, to understand that a little bit better. Well,

Sam Stern: 20:49

so I will do I'll do my shameless plug. Now, Rick, the on LinkedIn learning website, I do have a learning course called Building a customer centric culture. If you search that term, you search my name, you'll find it. And it gives you the steps to walk to, and it's the steps are distilled from I was alluding to before, but I studied companies that had successfully transformed their cultures who weren't customer centric and are now and this is companies like Cleveland Clinic hospital, Mercedes Benz, USA, CRO, which is a big accounting consultancy firm. There are there are not that many, but there are a handful of successful culture transformation. And I studied what they did. And there is a series of steps a sequence of steps that they walk through, there's an amount of time it takes five years or longer in every successful transformation. And conversely, the companies that weren't successfully able to transform who were walking down the same path, there's a set of off ramps from culture change that most of them encountered and ran into and exited from that that transformation path. So I talked about that in the video series. I

Rick Denton: 21:57

will definitely get a link there. Absolutely, that we can put a shameless plug for great content anywhere throughout the episode, not just the end. And over that there. That makes me think though, yeah, without taking too much away from the videos, you've got to have some really great stories, right, either from your observations here at LinkedIn, or the forest or world where you've worked with hundreds of companies that have made that evolution you you've mentioned some names, there are probably some that you're talking about going on the off ramp, any stories that would be Yeah, somewhat fun to share today. Yeah,

Sam Stern: 22:24

absolutely. So I think Cleveland Clinic is one of my favorite stories just because it's this enormous hospital complex. I mean, they are now globe spanning right, they're in the Middle East, they're out in the west coast of the US, they're, they're in multiple continents, they are based in Cleveland, as the name would imply, that's a huge hospital complex there. And people fly from all over the world to get health care in Cleveland, from the Cleveland Clinic, and they were looking at themselves, there's this great origin story about their patient experience transformation, where a woman challenged their CEO at the time, Toby Cosgrove, that you don't teach empathy to your employees, you. And so we chose a different hospital for my father's care, because you don't teach empathy. And for Cosgrave, this became this this discovery journey, because he didn't, he didn't know that they didn't teach empathy, but he didn't even really know that they should be teaching empathy. And so they were last among the Big Five research university hospitals in the US. So think Mass General, UCLA Medical Center, and Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cleveland Clinic, in terms of patient experience scores. And so their target and their patient experience transformation was to be first. And they they saw evidence in their hospital, that the units with the best patient experience scores, had lower mortality rates, had lower readmission rates, had lower lawsuit rates, all these really, really good outcomes for them for their patients. And this was part of the story that they were going to tell. And they had the data to show the doctors and nurses that it led to better health outcomes, which is what would appeal to those employee populations. And then there's so that's first is you have this clear why that appeals to the sort of self perception of your organization. Second, you go and you work with the leaders of the organization, you have to this these things are leader led, they're led from the front, they had Toby Cosgrove, their CEO in charge, leading the way but they needed to get the head of nurses that head of the surgery units, those types of people with by, you know, by stereotype surgeons and doctors healthy egos, you had to convince them that they needed to be on this journey with everybody else, that this was as important to saving lives, which is also a hard story to tell. And then they had to make very clear to them what it looked like to be patient centric in their roles. And so they they did this great observational research where they went into the different units in the hospital. Some of ones were describing before they had these differentials in terms of performance. And they saw that the units that were doing better, the doctors and nurses in those units were regularly rounding on patients. Now they were supposed to be doing this, right. But a lot of them it slipped from that because they were busy. And they were over scheduled. And they found some ways to make it much more likely much more possible for nurses and doctors to get back to that regular rounding. They worked on. So they they were reading Daniel Kahneman book, which had come out around this time, Thinking Fast and Slow. And they looked at applying the peak end rule. And lo and behold, when people leave a hospital, it's a confusing, stressful time. They're rushing them out many instances not giving them great discharge procedures, and that contributes a lot to them coming back, which the hospital doesn't want in which the patient doesn't want. And so they worked on that the discharge procedure, walking someone out carefully, making sure they had transportation, making sure they had a plan for taking their medication and doing all the follow ups that they needed to do to get to get healthy. So it was a it was a collection of things like that. And I think what's really telling about their story is they wrote a book about it. And you can find it if you search on Jim Merlino, James Merlino who is the chief experience officer and wrote the book but they they had a false start an 18 month false start at the beginning of it with Merlin, Dr. Molinos predecessor, who was this patient experience experts you'd come from outside of the culture of the hospital. And I think this is really instructive for culture change. Body kind of rejected the Oregon to stick on the healthcare theme here. She wasn't one of them. And they were kind of like we don't have to listen to you. Dr. Merlino. By contrast, Dr. Merlino was a practicing surgeon at the hospital, had no patient experience background, but was someone who was known and trusted culturally attuned person to the rest of the organization. And he focused a lot on persuasion with some of the other leaders at the hospital. And so after that 18 month, fall started about a five or six year journey from there, but they did reach that pinnacle that milestone of being then first among large research hospitals, in terms of patient experience scores leading the way setting the example and, and I joke about this, but it's true. I think someone's saying, yeah, we'll publish your book about your transformation story that these stories are still so rare that successes that invariably they do end in books, or HBr articles or Forrester Research case studies because people want to talk about them and highlight them and other people want to learn from these stories.

Rick Denton: 27:46

Sam, I definitely want to get back to that story a little bit later in the episode. But it's also important that we take a little break, you mentioned people flying from all over the world to the Cleveland Clinic. And I imagine especially if you're in the midst of a health care moment where you're taking a trip across the world to achieve a healthcare outcome. Travel can be a little bit rough, and it can be nice to take a little break. And so the first class lounge can be a very enjoyable space inside of a trip. And I hope today the first class Lounge is an enjoyable break for you inside of the CX passport episode today. Let's move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Sam Stern: 28:26

I would say that the Galapagos Islands. Yeah, I went to about 15 years ago now I think with one of my brothers and a good friend. And it's magical. And I'd love to go back some time with my daughters and take the next generation to show them that very special place.

Rick Denton: 28:43

I really want to get there. I've heard such great things about it my mom in a anyway, my mom did a ton of travel and led people to places like that. And it just sounds absolutely amazing. Let's go the other direction. What is a dream travel vacation you've not been to yet

Sam Stern: 28:59

Japan for me love the food, I'm sure it's even better there. And I've heard this from a few different people but saying it's a place where you can go and get completely lost and feel like you're completely you know, in a strange land where you don't speak the language and you're on trying to understand the culture but feel safe. And I just think there's there's something magical about that where you can go and just immerse yourself and let be free and sort of like be wandering around and exploring and not really worried and just sort of be lost in the moment. Having

Rick Denton: 29:34

done Japan for the first time at the beginning of this year. Actually we did it starting in December did to the holidays. I can attest to that and yours is a description that I haven't ever said but I will take for it absolutely get lost but still feel safe. Such a wonderful place for sport. Yes, the food is better there. Anything that shouldn't have experienced as you'd expect. Let's stay there. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Sam Stern: 29:56

Pizza for me. What I love about good answer Yeah, it's simple. It's easy, but I so actually, I love bad pizza. And I'm interesting, and I love really, really good pizza too. My, my neighbor and I make, make our own pizza. He has one of those fancy gozney pizza ovens. Okay, and I have like a, you know, I have a very involved process of making my own pizza dough that takes three days. And gosh, we make really good pizza. And we love it. And we eat it whenever we can when we get together and do this, but I'll also eat Domino's and to me, that's the magic of pizza. It's good when it's bad. And it gets better and better and better when you really work at it to try and perfect it. Boy, it's

Rick Denton: 30:38

good when it's bad. Yeah, I'm with you there. There's no way that I'm doing a three day dough preparation recipe. Don't have the patience for that. But if I'm ever in your area, maybe I'll enjoy Yes, we'll have three day preparation.

Sam Stern: 30:50

We'll be happy to host you. We're always looking for an excuse to eat happy to

Rick Denton: 30:54

be that excuse. Let's go the other way again. So growing up, what was something you were forced to eat but hated as a kid?

Sam Stern: 31:01

Yeah, well, so in case especially in case you listen to this, I need to say for the record my mom was was an is a great cook. She did most of the cooking for us. But we were a margarine family when I was a kid. Oh, yeah. And I always had I know, I always had the sense that we were not we were doing it wrong, we were on the wrong side of that divide, without even really knowing what I was missing. But when I would go over to some of my friend's houses and they'd have butter, I could taste the difference. And so I always knew that there was a better version of what I could spread on my toast out there. I just, we were we were margarine family.

Rick Denton: 31:39

I think a lot of us have a certain age some margarine on the table when we really shouldn't have seen Marge somehow it got declared as being a healthier option, which we now know really the case right? So I I can sympathize with you on that one. On that travel front, what is one item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without

Sam Stern: 32:04

pretty nerdy here I guess but packing cubes, I big big believer in staying organized while you're traveling.

Rick Denton: 32:17

Sam, I've actually heard the packing cubes once before I can't remember is yours. Your episode is going to be like 152, somewhere in that number, right. But somebody else mentioned that it does seem like a brilliant application. I just have never used them. But I can see how they are especially if you are a heavy traveler to have the convenience that that offers. I have looked at the clock. And it is clear to me that I wish that I had done a double wide episode with you or something like that, because there's so much more that I want to ask you. But I want to close out with something that's kind of related to what you told in the Cleveland clinic's story. Right? It was all about results, that it was these desires for empathy, great that maybe you made the patient happier. But you talked about better health outcomes, fewer lawsuits, actual tangible business results. Well, what we're seeing right now, in an economic downturn or a perceived one, especially inside the CX community, we are seeing so many companies turn their back on CX even specifically cutting roles, or entire massive teams that have been dedicated to customer experience. So in that vein of the Cleveland Clinic story, and really in general, how can customer experience teams be seen as this engine for tangible improvement for a company rather than this just sort of nice to have the cut when times are tough?

Sam Stern: 33:35

Yeah. 100%. And I think we are now seeing as you just said that it is an existential threat to CST everywhere, that if we don't get to that point where we're seen as having the clear explicit connections to the business value that better CX can create, and unlock, then we are nice to have and what is the point? And you know, to me, it's like, it's like any initiative in an organization, it should justify itself with returning value to the business. And so, but part of that for CX team, is I think it's important to be attuned to the rhythm of the business. And are you in a cost cutting phase? Are you in a expansion, new idea, phase? And when and CX works for cost cutting, by the way, right? So yeah, if you're in a cost cutting cycle, you know, you can focus on very tangible short term bottom line improvements, saving money on returns, or refunds, for example, right? Making self serve easier. So there's fewer calls to call center, whatever it is, there are plenty of those types of short term tangible things you can do. The other thing I would say, though, is I think there's, I think what's missing for CX teams is they get stuck in sort of a find and fix mindset. And I think if you look beyond that, to you know what I often call I call it creating memorable moment. Write things that you know whether it's you know, the peaks of the experience, the end of the experience, things that will live long in the customers memory and make them want to come back or make them want to recommend you. Many times what that strategy is predicated on doing is shrinking the parts of the experience that you actually focus on. We're saying we're going to nail these peaks are in nail the end. And you can tell that story as an efficiency story, some of your colleagues and I think would be appealing, especially in a cost cutting phase of look, we don't need to perfect every moment of this experience, there's a few that we know we need to get right. If we get those right, we can actually satisfice on lots of other parts of the experience, it's not to say we want it to be bad, we just want it to not be memorable, we want it to be easy. And something that they'll they'll never think about again, and nail a few key moments, which allows us to be efficient to focus our resources marshal our resources, so we're not over indexing on great CX, we're doing it at exactly the right moments, where the customer will remember a great CX without us having had to deliver 100% Wow, moments all the way through.

Rick Denton: 36:02

I should just hit stop. Right now. That's what I like that is a brilliant end, I think that encapsulates what's gone awry, and how we as the CX community can actually restore wealth. If I can sort of cheat and take something you said from LinkedIn, restore trust and confidence in our leaders, that customer experience actually creates tangible business value. There's a lot of really good meat in what you just said, there, Sam. I've enjoyed this today, I really enjoyed you walking me through sort of that journey and understanding how Customer Experience matters to customers and members at LinkedIn, and how you're applying to that. The idea of the building, hope I get this title, right building a customer centric culture. And if I didn't, we'll get it right in the show notes for sure. The LinkedIn learning, we'll get those links directly there, and the Cleveland Clinic story and then just now how to understand how to get customer experience teams able to deliver tangible business value has been brilliant. If folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to customer experience your role there at LinkedIn, how might folks get to know a little bit more about you and what you do with customer experience?

Sam Stern: 37:10

Well, I am on LinkedIn, as you might imagine,

Rick Denton: 37:15

actually surprising answer ever

Sam Stern: 37:17

find me on LinkedIn. And yeah, as you alluded to, in the opening, like you, I'm a fellow podcaster. So every two weeks, I'm posting a new episode of customer experience patterns, podcast and newsletter on LinkedIn. I mean, the podcast is available everywhere, obviously. But the newsletter is going live on LinkedIn. And I'm always looking for feedback, trying to practice what we preach in CX land, and I was looking for ideas and suggestions. So if you interact with me there, I will respond, I will. We'd love to always looking to engage and learn from other customer experience professionals and to take on suggestions for what are people interested in? What are the questions that are they're feeling like are unanswered? What are the challenges that they're struggling with? Because to me, that's a great starting point for the next CX patterns, podcast episode.

Rick Denton: 38:04

Oh, this is awesome. And yes, all of those links, all those contacts, that's gonna be down there in the show notes. And do make sure you head over to this podcast. It's it's a good ride, and you'll get some really, really good nuggets out of it, Sam, it's been a delightful journey with you today, Sam, thank you for being on CX passport.

Sam Stern: 38:20

Yes, thanks for having me, Rick. It was great to reconnect with you and exciting to talk to you again. Thank you.

Rick Denton: 38:31

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.