2024 is going to be the year, that process returns to customer experience. 2024 is when we are going to see a process renaissance in customer experience or if I may, a procenaissance 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. Hey CX passport traveler. Gonna try something a little new today. And we'll see where this goes. The most important part of this is I want this to be something that works for you. I have gotten so much from you, the listener, the viewer, the feedback, the input, the questions, the ideas that you have shared, that have helped shaped CX passport over the last two and a half years. And so with this little experiment today, I want to get your feedback and your thoughts on what I'm going to be trying today. And the idea is about once a month, I just want to have a little chat with you. What's on my mind? What is top of mind for customer experience right now what is what are some of the things that I'm seeing what are some of the things that I've heard from you would love to bring your thoughts into the show, and just have a little chat so that this can not only be a podcast that hopefully entertains you in a way that is fun, that has a little bit of a ride. It's also a podcast that I hope is one that you get insight from wisdom from an actually take something and apply it to your actual business practices in real life, today, and in the future. And so today, I'm just going to be talking with you. And this may not go the full 30 minutes, it may not go 10 It might not we'll just see where this goes. And that's what I want to do is have this conversation with you so that you can in turn, let me know, does this work for you? Because one of the beautiful things about this medium is you can tell me exactly what's working and what's not. And we can pivot away. But I want to come and talk to you today about something that's really on my heart. And it is the reality that 2023 was the year of reckoning for the customer experience discipline. The headlines inside the customer experience world were riddled with individuals who were now looking for new jobs. How many times did we see that post on LinkedIn that someone who was in a leadership position or in a any position in customer experience suddenly had that green circle around their avatar and pointed out, Hey, I'm on my next phase, I'm looking for that next opportunity in customer experience. So individuals were impacted, entire teams were impacted. I've actually got over here in another tab. Just I just Googled 2023 CX team layoffs, and it's stunning what you see in a list there. And what really resonated for me is when you hear some of the big names, like some of your BOC leaders Experience Management leaders, when you're talking about a Qualtrics, or a Medallia shedding customer experience roles. What does that mean? And what it means is that 2023 Absolutely was the year of reckoning for customer experience teams. Now, I have a theory or a series of theories, or maybe just a set of ideas as to why that happened. And some of it was learning through the conversations that we had here on this podcast and also with direct client experience as well. You know, there's obviously the economic, and I'm gonna use the word reality. But I think there's also the economic perception, and whether that economic perception or reality of a recession is there, there is this concept that I've seen on LinkedIn. I've seen it on the BBC called vibe session, and it is the idea that there's just a vibe out there that it's an economic negative. It's an economic downturn, it's an economic who we have the sense that things are going to happen and maybe they haven't happened already. Or or what we're also seeing a lot of is that individuals and companies are personally doing well or the company is doing well but they perceive that others are not doing well. And in the end it really doesn't matter if a company thinks the recession is going to happen then they may be making decisions around that. And yeah, economic realities caused a lot of companies to do some company soul searching were let's call it balance sheet. Keep searching. And so they go and look for areas that they perceive that they're not seeing a return on investment. This is business, you know exactly where I'm going with this. And it is, hey, if a customer experience team hasn't demonstrated to the company, that there is a, I'm paying X dollars in salary, I'm paying X dollars an opportunity cost. I'm paying X dollars and initiatives and software and tools and whatever that looks like. And I'm not receiving what I perceive as an return on that investment. Then I question why do I need to do that? The year of reckoning, right? So there's no future for a team after a company has had that soul searching, saying, You know what, I don't see that I'm getting anything out of this. Let's just, let's just move on. And I cannot tell you, for those of you that are avid listeners, you know that you've heard this. But I can't tell you how many conversations that I've had with people around look, we have got to do better, as a customer experience discipline around demonstrating our ROI. Now. Many of you just hit stop. But actually, you wouldn't hear me say that sentence because you already had stopped. But those of you that are still with me, are saying yourself, well, okay, right. But why do we have to justify our existence? Why do we as customer experience, people have to demonstrate a return on investment doesn't accompany know that the customers are really where all the revenue comes from? And that's the heart and soul of the company? No, that's not what other people think, I think we have been blinded by our own selves as to Well, of course, a company wouldn't know that the customer is the most important. Of course, a company would know that the customer needs to be the center of the decisions, or in many cases, we may have been in conversations, where we have heard a leader say, Absolutely, the customer is the epicenter, and we're going to do everything right by the customer. That's how we're going to inform our decisions. Go back to what I said about an economic reality or a vibe session? Well, when I'm looking at the balance sheet, I'm going to be looking at where am I seeing what I believe is real return on investment. And I have had healthy disagreements about that with others. You know, I've had give full credit to Nicholas Eisler on this one, I absolutely love his perspective on Wait a second, HR doesn't have to justify their existence, they don't necessarily have to prove an ROI, the finance department ironically, doesn't usually have to prove their ROI for the existence. And that is true. I don't think that we as a customer experience entity as a discipline, have made it to that level of maturity that accompany knows right off the bat that yet we have to have this. And so whether we disagree with that, whether we think that look, it should be about delivering on brand promise, it shouldn't be around ROI, it should be all that that doesn't matter. And in 2023, we found out that it really doesn't matter, as that was the year of reckoning for customer experience. So what does this mean, for those of us in the customer experience discipline? Doesn't mean that we should just give up? Does it mean that all right, you're right, we didn't demonstrate value, and it's time to go back to doing other things. I'm not going to say that that has exactly what we should do. But I do think that we need to have a really deep and and and meaningful introspective moment as individuals in this space and as a collective community of what value do we actually provide and how can we deliver on tangible business value and I am fully of the mindset that 2024 is going to be the year that process returns to customer experience 2024 is when we are going to see a process renaissance in customer experience or if I may a Procenaissance where we actually recognize that that inside out of operations, a process of executional discipline can actually live with the outside in of customer we have believed for so long that the outside in is the absolute monster look behind me those of you that are on the video. I believe that outside and book it is absolutely a Bible. I think though that we have moved our pendulum too far away from execution. And we need to get back into process. I think we have found ourselves so obsessed with being customer obsessed, not a bad thing. But like anything in life over indexing on it can absolutely be a bad thing that we have said our journey maps are what will deliver our value our God help us our customer metrics scorecards will be where the value You is even. And I'm a big believer of this, even the customer stories that we share that give the heart and soul to the customer where we deliver value. Everything I just said, has value. It does not deliver tangible business value for a company, absent of the process and the execution that needs to take place. Let me tell you a little story, my origin story around customer experience, and why that origin story is so influential into why I think the 2024 has to be the year of process for customer experience for customer experiences survival. I started my career actually back in Ohio and admit it back in 1995. Yeah, that gray is authentic gray on the on the head and the beard. And I started as a coder. Now I was a poli sci major. I didn't know squat about coding. But one of the things that it taught me was a a without the words process. Coding is absolutely a series of disciplined thoughts of ifs and then and does this equal? And what is the path and what is the flow for it to be a successful program. And I'm not here to say that I became a programmer, I survived it and then moved quickly into the world of process of process of project management, even ultimately, moving into where I guess got my Six Sigma Black Belt. Now I joke with many that it has become gray from lack of use, it's still a part of that core of who I was when I got that process orientation. And at that time, working for what was then a very large bank in the US. And we did many projects that I look back on now and realize wait, that actually was for the benefit of the customer, even though our mindset from the beginning was how do we make things faster, cheaper, more efficient, allowing more things to flow through the business give you an example here, we realized that there was a particular requirement that for a certain kind of check, there had to be two signatures. And the execution of getting two signatures was one of the most difficult things that existed in this particular division in this particular process. So customers were not getting their funds in a timely fashion, major commercial projects were not moving forward because certain funding wasn't making it to those companies and those clients. And then there was a realization of wait from a process perspective, we could actually get more efficient if we just had one signature, what's the risk associated with it all the process discipline associated with it, bam, one signature moves things through at X percentage faster. Well, guess what, that also benefited the customer. But I can assure you that that time, none of us were thinking that way. We were simply thinking how do we make it more efficient for the business fast forward to when I was working another company got exposed to the label customer experience, through great companies like forester and others that helped to open my eyes to the discipline of customer experience. I will say that I thought that I'm going to use this word, I felt like I had evolved, I felt like I had evolved into a higher level, that by moving into customer experience, I had evolved to something better that the the process work was a stepping stone. But actually now I'm focused on the customer and doing all the things that we do the outside and look the the focus on the customer the the the understanding what the customer wants, needs, desires, listening to them, Voice of the Customer, all of that very customer oriented. So if I thought I'd evolved, I can assure you that many of us that were in the customer experience world thought alright, yeah, we're, we've moved past those days, things like six sigma and lean had fallen out of favor. And I think in some cases, rightfully so as just like we may have over indexed on all of our practices, processes and ideas and concepts and customer experience. I think back then we also over indexed on the formal theories and applications around some of the process work we were doing. And that's why coming today, I realized that that process background of the Inside Out combined with the outside in, well, that's what we should be focused on. Now, in 2024. Do you want your business to be able to receive tangible business value? Well, let's do that. Let's actually use what we know about our customer, and then translate that into something that is a business decision that drives actual revenue growth, actual cost reduction. Now, one thing that I think a lot of folks might think that 2024 is about is AI. And yes, AI is very true. I'm not talking about AI today, I think here's AI is a great example of how this could be misused as Well, that if you think that the tool AI is going to do everything for you, Nana realize AI means so much more than just a hack. It's not even we've been doing AI for decades, the concepts that we're talking about MLMs and generative AI and all of what that means. If we just do that without a process behind it, without a reason for doing it without a tangible business value intended behind it, only guess what we've made the same mistake. So you may have thought that you're going to hear about AI today, but as an aside, no, other than to say that AI I think is an important tool to be used. But I don't think it's going to be the magic bullet for 2024. I do sincerely believe that it is process. And let me tell you a story as to why I think it's process, one of my client experiences, and it's the one that is the greatest numeric magnet. And of course, I'm not going to tell you the client name. That's not what we do here. There's NDAs. But I can speak of them in the general case. And they have received 50 million. Let me only add on that, again, I know there's companies bigger than that there's a lot of companies a lot smaller $50 million in increased revenue over five years, as a result of using process interwoven with listening to the customer and acting on what you hear, weaving the outside end of customer with the Inside Out of process, and operational excellence and discipline and execution. And how do we do it isn't particularly complex here. Customers were canceling. And they were canceling at a rate that was higher than what was thought to be normal. And it was a matter of going in and listening to the customers understanding why they were departing, or in many cases, because once they've departed, how many customers are going to tell you why a lot of times, I'll just give you the middle finger in there out. Instead, paying attention to the pain points, both what we observed and what the customers told us about two different worlds. Customers may not tell you about all their pain points. So you've got to observe their behavior and see where the stickiness is where the friction is. And by understanding where the customer confusion was, by understanding where the frustration points were, we were able to address that in the upstream onboarding, and even all the way back into the sales process. Through a series of defined processes, through a series of defined solutions, all with an executional target of reducing cancel rates. I'm even talking about defining an escalation process that didn't exist prior, when a customer were calling with a complaint, there was no process associated with an escalation, it was very haphazard, very ad hoc that made a customer feel abandoned, not cared for. And ultimately, frequently, the issue was not resolved. Same story, even inside of the onboarding, there was a not a casualness, I don't want to say that there was a care for the customer. But there was not the same discipline and rigor around onboarding the customer and what that looked like. And so creating a onboarding process and documenting it, how boring is that documenting a process yet documenting that process and being able to then have that be shared across the company so that not only did the roles that were focused on onboarding, know what was involved, so did sales, so did downstream customer service. So did any of the roles that needed to understand what this might look like? So if I can talk to you about finding$50 million based off of using process and execution, to identify what a customer's pain points are, and why they canceled and then reduce that cancel rate to such a degree that it resulted in $50 million of revenue. That's the kind of tangible value delivery that we as customer experience, leaders, individuals, members, practitioners, we are responsible for delivering. So let's get practical. I'm curious, obviously, I'm curious about your thoughts. This is a this has been a bit of a monologue, right? I wish we were all sitting in a room together, lifting a beverage of choice having a conversation about that, and maybe we can have as an aside for those of you that are going to be at CCW Austin, in late January, I'm there so if you're listening to this real time because this will come out right at or around that conference. Hit me up, we'd love to meet in person, let's have this conversation or any other customer experience conversation. But um, here's why was 2023 a year of reckoning? What do you think it is? And what are your ideas? What are your visions for 2024? And then I'll land to with the hate. Did this work for you? This is the first one doesn't have to be the The last one, I don't intend it to be. But if you're saying, Hey, Rick, this didn't give me value, give me those guests. We don't want to hear you ramble. Or if it's a wreck, here's some ideas and get a little better here, do a little better there, right? You're my customer. And I want you to tell me what your pain points are with this or what delighted you what you really enjoyed. As always, hit me up on LinkedIn, you can always find me there, you can go to CX passport.com, and be able to subscribe to the newsletter so that you're not missing any of the episodes with great guests. And then I've got some other new concepts that I want to introduce to the podcast this year as well. And if you're looking for the delivery of that tangible business value through your customer experience, head over to ex4cx.com/services To get a sense of what execution for customer experience. That's the meaning behind exp CX. I'd love to have a conversation about that to learn where you are looking to improve your processes. In the process Renaissance or the Procenaissance of 2024 Hey CX passport traveler, thank you so much for being on today's journey. Thanks for hanging with me here and trying this experiment out. I can even tell that there's things that I want to improve going forward and future episodes. And as I have this monthly chat with you just one on one. I'm already thinking about ways that this can even be made better, and I look forward to getting your feedback and implementing that as well. I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. 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.