Sirte Pihlaja: 0:00

Because I want to talk about this range of research because there, there are so many people who keep saying that I'm not creative, I wasn't born creative, and so on. And that's, in fact, that's not the truth. Everybody has that five year old within them, we just need to unlock that creativity

Rick Denton: 0:22

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. Big day six passport travelers. We are heading to a new destination as today's guest comes to us from Finland actually spent a whopping 24 hours in Helsinki back in 1990. On an overnight while we were on the way to a high school trip to what was then the Soviet Union. So I can tell you the both the passage of the years and just that tiny little time that I was there makes me eager to return vicariously to fill in through today's guest. Welcome Sirte Pihlaja. When you think of guests for CX passport, I'm not sure you'd expect a career that started in journalism. Yet, that's exactly where she started her career journey with roles on the media side at the Finnish Broadcasting Company and on the press information side, as the press officer for the Finnish Ministry of Education, she's seen both sides. Both sides, a perspective that might be pretty valuable. The customer experience might explore that a bit later, transitioning to the consultancy world see your job explored digital media and digital self service along with public sector design. Our entrepreneurial spirit led her to launch her own company in 2010. Specializing in customer experience, loyalty, and customer dialogue. Y'all cxpa is a well known organization to those of us in the CX world, and specifically to CX passport travelers. Well, it's quite well known to co chair as she was one of the founding members of cxpa Back in the early 2010 2011. Era, including starting the finish branch in 2013. And just to add to the intrigue, co2 brings the creative side out as a trained serious Lego play facilitator. kind of wish we were doing this episode in person while we build and talk at the same time. Maybe that'll be in the future. Sirte , welcome to CX passport.

Sirte Pihlaja: 2:45

Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

Rick Denton: 2:47

Yeah, I am sincerely excited. This is gonna be a good ride here. Let's start with a journalism background that has me a little bit curious, how do you migrate from there the world of journalism, to customer experience? And then how has journalism influenced your CX approach today? Oh, back

Sirte Pihlaja: 3:05

in the day, when I was working for the Finnish broadcasting company, I was. I had a very forward future future thinking boss at the time. And she asked me to create the first intranet in Finland, and probably one of the first ones in the world, I guess, as well. We created that. And then also the internet pages for the Finnish broadcasting company. I was part of that project as well. And then I just got headhunted to Accenture where we started creating the internet what was then called the Internet Center of Excellence. Were talking back into 2004. So so that was really my, my kind of way into into the internet of the other or the worldwide web as a profession, but I had been already keen on it since the 1990s. So I was part of the using using emails and E IRC, Internet Relay chats and things like that. We were also doing like chats on a VAX BMS machine. So way back then, like on the web, or point one, I would say, yeah, yeah. So and I think that journalism, coming back to your question about journalism, it's very, it has many similar traits to doing customer experience, because you have to always think about your audiences. What is of interest to them when you're creating your feature stories? And what you need to inform them about at different phases on the Yeah, I think that thinking back now, I was already doing some kind of customer journey when I was doing journalism. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 4:56

yeah, that's something that I hear a lot and I even think about in my own experience, where I will think back to a period of my career that was labeled something else. For me it was Process Excellence process improvement, and then realize later Oh, wait, that actually was very customer experience oriented, I just didn't know to call it that we were had a slightly different lens on it. And your your point of the fact that journalism is about understanding the audience, along with, you know, capturing authentic truth and authentic stories, and reality to then be able to communicate that to your audience, AKA your customer. Imagine, you know, journalism has a whole bunch of creativity in it as well. And we talked about that Lego play, right. And the idea of using Legos, I want to go back to that here in a little bit. But I want to stay general first. And it's just the spirit of creativity that I want to talk to you about. As kids, our creativity is off the charts. And in fact, we always laugh about what kids come up with, right? It's encouraged, it's celebrated, we want more of it. And then creativity is something that many of us claim we say, Yeah, I'm not a creative person. I think the business world is the really the world that does its best to squash creativity out of people. I'm curious, though, especially with your exposure to Lego and just creativity in general. Why is it important to keep alive as adults, especially in the business and the experience worlds?

Sirte Pihlaja: 6:23

Oh, firstly, what I think is that we're already exposed during our days at school, like at school, because everybody's pushed into the same kind of, I don't know, funnel that everybody needs to be exactly the same at the end of the day, skip school time. And in fact, there is it's a very, there's a very famous study by George land from 1965. And so and onwards, where he had been asked to create this, some kind of test that would discern the the creative talents who were applying for NASA. And he, in fact, came up with this, and it regularly still evaluate people who are going into NASA with this, as far as I know. And if they sense the 2%, the creative geniuses within people who are applying to these jobs, he wanted to take it a step back from from there with his research partners. And what they did was that they took a bunch of kids aged from four to six years old, a 1600 of them all together, and they put them through the same test. And when they started doing this test, they had like 98%, or like, almost 100% of the kids should score on the creative genius level. That then they would take the same kids when they would be 10 years old, and only about a third of them, some 30% would then score the creative level, the same level and then another five years later, they had maybe 12% of them, who was were even, like, measurably creative. So there's about a million adults who have gone through this test nowadays and it keeps giving the same results. So he started pondering about these things that why is it so that clearly you could see this that there was a train this and they came up with this theories about how it is our school theorists that take take the five year old creative genius from within awesome, somehow squash.

Rick Denton: 8:41

And here I am blaming business and it's it's our schools that took care of it well, before any of us got into the the university or the the business worlds. Interesting. So

Sirte Pihlaja: 8:52

so we, we unlearn creativity really during during our time. And that's because I want to talk about this range of research because that there are so many people who keep saying that I'm not creative, I wasn't born creative, and so on. And that's, in fact, that's not the truth. Everybody has that five year old within them. We just need to unlock that creativity.

Your CX Passport Captain: 9:14

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.

Sirte Pihlaja: 9:45

Well, Lego serious play is a methodology that Lego created for for themselves, or actually, they invited two university professors Johan Ross, and Mark Victor's to create it for them. And it's based on 30 different academic theories. Well, flow is the one that is probably most known out of these 30 dx theories. And that's the one that really is what legacy replay is all about is getting people into that flow state of mind where they can, you know, come up with new ideas, be innovative, create new things. The way how it works is that there's this While originally, there were four applications, one for creating new strategies, because that was what LEGO The LEGO Group was after because they needed to change their strategy. And they needed to do that very innovatively and very fast, because they were on the brink of a bankruptcy. I'm not saying that Lego serious space thing that saved them, but it certainly had its hand in hand in there. Right? And, and, yeah, so so they open sourced it by the millennium. And then people who are trained facilitators with the Lego serious play methodology have been, you know, creating their own applications on top of that. And we've also done that, through the she read the CX play. And the idea there is that we're utilizing this whole Lego serious play methodology and materials to do the same stuff that we would otherwise be doing for customer experience, design. So anything and everything from CX strategy work, creating personas for, you know, employee, and employees and customers and customer journeys, doing the actual customer service design thinking about voice of customer, where would the best touchpoints be? What should we be measuring and all of those steps but with a layer of facilitation, that that is more creative than, you know, having those posts usually work with him in workshops.

Rick Denton: 12:30

I like that you're pointing back to the post. It's because I'm, that's probably dangerous to assume. But I would imagine that, if not all, certainly most of the listeners and viewers right now immediately visualize the workshop with the posts on the wall and immediately could think of that. And if you are just listening to the episode, I will tell you listeners Sirota actually has a Lego t shirt on she's got a Lego Man on her shirt right now. So just know that she, this is a true believer here. And I can see that and that concept of flow that you're describing. We hear it in athletics, we hear it in other aspects. The idea of flow in business is an interesting one to bring in. Now. I would imagine. Now let me not even say that. Let's just talk about the fact that a lot of times creativity is viewed as being a part of certain roles. The designer, the artist, the musician, well, you're in business, you're in conversations with business. So what do you say to the accountant that shows up with their arms folded, grumpy that they had to be assigned to this workshop? And to them, they're saying, I don't need creativity, my numbers aren't creative. What do you say to that accountant of the value that they're gonna get out of the Lego series play experience?

Sirte Pihlaja: 13:43

Well, firstly, I tell them that your your, please, please, you're allowed to stay here. But please don't drain the font from everybody else, you know, by not participating. If you're not interested, then please, you know, getting onto the border to the border and so on. But no, but to be totally honest, for for, I don't know accountants for for anybody who don't, who doesn't think that they are in a creative role as such. Creativity is about problem solving. So basically, what what's your the skills that you're gaining from becoming more creative is is all about being able to come up with new ideas to create new even financial services I guess, are such so there is a lot that they can gain from this even from their personal growth in that sense. To think about that, I've even had some people from from a what do you call them this? Funeral funeral parlors towing workshops from a big UK chain and they said they told me after the workshop that they was like us Is it like a conference thing where it was a show like a demo session of Lego serious play? And they said, told me afterwards that they had been very skeptical in the beginning, but then they had slowly got into the get into the play, and state of flow, I guess. And then they came, and this is something that we need to take up as soon as possible. And you would think that, you know, from their background, that wasn't, wouldn't be like the first thing that they would be saying after. But yeah, that's what truly happened.

Rick Denton: 15:39

Oh, my gosh, search of all the things I expected you to say. I did not expect you to say that the mortuary business the death industry, the the funeral services, were the ones that said, Oh, we've got really new creative ways to serve our customers, right with the right now and is there but the right way to serve our industry and that I really would never have expected you to tell me that Lego series play impacted that industry. So because you have broken you, I certainly believe you. And now because you've broken my brain a second time on the episode here, I think it's time for us to take a little break here. And it is nice to do a little change of pace. Why don't you step down and join me here in the first class lounge, we'll do a little bit quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Sirte Pihlaja: 16:32

Um, well, I can't say probably know that it's a dream location from my past is Barbados we just spent one and a half years with the family are almost one and a half years on Barbados, and traveling a little bit also the other Caribbean islands. So it was really, really something that we enjoyed a lot. And

Rick Denton: 16:52

did I hear you, right? One and a half years on Barbados?

Sirte Pihlaja: 16:56

Yeah, one year and four months, I think altogether? Oh, my gosh.

Rick Denton: 17:00

So you know, most of us will certainly those of us in the US that have a little closer access to the Caribbean, you know, it might be a three day trip. Or if it's really long, a seven day trip, you were there for 1415 months, what was that like kind of pivoting from going to being a tourist to really effectively a resident and experiencing that slow travel in Barbados?

Sirte Pihlaja: 17:22

Well, that is really what it was all about. Because I've been traveling a lot in the past, seen, like most of the Asian countries and whatnot. And we are not, we don't want to be just traveling anymore, if you know what I mean. It has always been about understanding local culture, meeting with local people trying to understand their traditions and culture and so on. So this was really taking us on the whole family into a very immersed, immersive experience. To understand the Caribbean way of life, I guess,

Rick Denton: 17:56

oh, my gosh, well, unfortunately, I can't but I wish I could, maybe you and I just create a separate podcast episode just about living in Barbados, but we'll do a separate one. Whether it's short or long travel, what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet,

Sirte Pihlaja: 18:12

Japan. It's something that I have always dreamed of. And I've actually been studying Japanese culture of several years at the university. So I'm very keen on traveling there. I was supposed to go there last fall with my friends. But they went already in the summertime and I couldn't turn them back then. So now I'm waiting for the next opportunity to go there.

Rick Denton: 18:36

Well, listeners and viewers know this, that I've talked about this a bit that we as a family had an opportunity to go to Japan through the fact that my son studied abroad there. And so we went for a week and a half, I will say, Love, definitely go prioritize it go solo if you need to, I will say your choice to study the language is going to prove incredibly fruitful. There's a lot of places in the world that you can sort of get by, that's when that having some rudimentary skills really helps. So I admire you for doing that study before heading over one of the things I loved about Japan, and I don't mean to lead the witness, Your Honor here, but is the food so what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Sirte Pihlaja: 19:11

I love trying out different kinds of exotic fruit I would say. So we always try to find something, something in that area. But really any kind of food. That is for me food is is a full full experience, let's say in this in the sense that I I appreciate the whole journey of going to a restaurant and getting that service a great service, the different, you know, different plates that you get. And by the time I'm at the research, I certainly have had my best experience for a long time or then the other way around, probably, but that usually doesn't happen. Luckily, but it doesn't have to be like, let's say fine dining as such, right? Like, for instance in Barbados, the best experience was when We were on a sandy beach. And there was a Sun Sun setting in the background. And we had there was like, I don't know, swing by next to us and so on. And you had the oldest flavors and smells. And the waitress, waitress was very nice and all of that. So it's really about the whole experience for me. Oh my gosh. And like, this is something I bought from my brother, because he was in the hospitality business, and still still has that background. So he was always talking about how, like hospitality is theater, and you're not, in fact, buying, like food, just food, you're buying a ticket for a performance.

Rick Denton: 20:41

I like that. I like that. And I really appreciate how you're describing doesn't have to be fine dining, some of our best experiences. I have a similar memory of a beach in Thailand and a little shack that we found just here at the luxury resort and then you go down the beach to the shack and the shack was perhaps at times better than the luxury resort dining experience. This will be interesting, given your perspective towards foods here too. But what is the thing that you were forced to eat growing up but you hated as a kid?

Sirte Pihlaja: 21:09

I was afraid to do my best not. There is a Finnish so called delicacy that we only eat for the Easter festivities. Okay. And let me say, I won't describe it in any more detail, but it's made of hops, and it looks brown. And he put cream on top of it. Okay, so you have this, it has a specific taste. Yeah, really, really. You need to, let's say, appreciate. But But. But nowadays, I'm a grown up and I actually like it myself. So I guess it's a thing that your taste buds change, as well. We I

Rick Denton: 21:52

hear that a lot. The evolution? Yeah, a lot of a lot of guests have talked spoken of vegetables that they just reached out when they were a kid and yet came to love as adults. And there's still some on my list that I still am not a fan of. But you're right, how it evolves. Closing out the first class lounge, we'll go back to travel here, what is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport, that you won't leave home without Oh,

Sirte Pihlaja: 22:15

I would love to say my camera. But that is that is probably part of my phone. So I'm not sure if that's allowed. So I'll say just some kind of video equipment because I love to get the memories. I also like record the memories that I get, so that I can make the small experiences out of them and try to explain that to all my friends and, and well, they probably get bored of all the photos that has been taken from Barbados, but I love to get back to those, those special moments that we had there.

Rick Denton: 22:54

There is such a topic and a conversation around what I'm about to bring up with you here. And it's generative AI, digital tech, machine customers even there's so much energy, there's so much opportunity. And there is so much hype. I know you've spent a lot of time focusing in this area, how can companies separate that hype? From the actual implementation of a practical application of AI into their customer experience?

Sirte Pihlaja: 23:26

That's a very good question. I think one thing that is not hype, I mean, we've been all been immersed in this chat JpT thing for for the last year or so. But the thing that people are not so much aware of or haven't really picked up yet is Agent AI agents and, and machine customers specifically. So that's a thing that is going to change the world as we know it all the business service processes are going to need to be rethought and redesigned for machine customer. So what are machine customers they are these small I don't know digital representatives of ourselves that we can launch and tell tell them or preferences and have them shop and buy things on our behalf whether we are in b2c or b2b and that is something that companies on the other hand need to be responding to because they maybe they have they've had chatbots so far, right? Maybe they have their thing now with you know, use utilizing large language models behind them and so that they're a little bit more responsive and don't make you wanna cry when you're chatting with your customer. But this is going to change totally because machine customers will will not be interested in the same things as us as like live customers so they don't want to talk about the weather. They will want to talk about how they their day has been so on, they just want the facts and they're very data driven. And they just buy, when they see that this is now going according to the specs. So creating, like machine customer, it's like journeys is going to be something that Cx plus a CX professionals will definitely need to look into, in and not in the future. But right now, because this is something that is happening already. Yeah. And

Rick Denton: 25:28

so help me understand this a little bit. Because I, I think the closest I could have been exposed to being a machine customer using one is activating Google Voice to call like, physically call a restaurant on my behalf to book reservations. And I imagine that's a pretty limited use case, what are some examples of machine customers right now say, from a customer perspective that I might might actually use?

Sirte Pihlaja: 25:53

Well, in the consumer business, I would say that personal assistants are what you you can do yourself with, like no coding experience whatsoever, you have to understand a little bit the API, how to get like integrate it into into your system. But that is something that you can also, you know, chat with, chat JpT about and they can then help you create those things, right. But in any hustle. So no coding experience is required to create this personal assistance, mainly, they are currently used to, in addition to other, like automation routines, their superiors, there's make doc Coleman and all of these that can then, you know, do the rest, like next steps. But like a friend of mine, he she created this personal assistant who does all her calendaring creates these tables and spreadsheets for her. And she's basically digitalized and automated her whole life, that whatever podcast is worth listening to all or watching webinars, so you can get all that transcribed and then, like highlight things, and they go through a different service for that. And like, there's so many things that she has been doing, trying to automate with her assistant that it's just crazy. And all you have access to an API through this.

Rick Denton: 27:23

You know, what's interesting to me as well, all of that was interesting. But the thought that I had, as you were saying, that is a thought that I've expressed earlier, and others have said that, that we're at the worst it's ever going to be as far as quality, right? So what you described was kind of my eyes got a little big and exciting, that sort of stuff. And this is just the beginning the infancy of what you're describing. And so if if there's a listener or viewer that was like, yeah, that didn't sound like much well, just wait, just wait, because that's the thing is, we are very much at the beginning. Yeah, like, like

Sirte Pihlaja: 27:54

another example that I thought that came to my mind is, is that very practical one is that you might want to have your assistant, create a plan, plan for like dinner, for the whole week for your family with all the special dietary requirements taken into account, then go online and see the recipes for it and see what products you need to buy, go to our preferred online grocery store, make the actual orders for those look from our calendars that when are we going to be home so that they can be delivered home delivered to us? And you know, almost cookie cook the food for us as well.

Rick Denton: 28:32

That's my that's it. You broke my brain a third time. My jaw is starting to drop a little bit. My eyes are getting Oh, wow. Okay, I don't know that my brain can handle any more of that. So that is absolutely fascinating. I do want to I'm conscious of time, but there's something that I really want to ask you about. That's not in the vein of anything that we've talked about so far. And it is I get the opportunity to talk to someone in Finland, and I'm getting the opportunity to talk to someone who actually started the Finnish branch for CX PA. And with that leadership, I'd love your perspective on just the state of customer experience in Finland somebody? Is it struggling? Is it evolving? Is it thriving? What is customer experience? Like in Finland?

Sirte Pihlaja: 29:16

Oh, that's one of my favorite questions. Good. We agree. Yeah, because we are doing this same benchmark Customer Experience Management benchmark that we have been doing for a study that we have been conducting for 10 years now, and in Finland and three for three years internationally. So the idea there is that we're going like on five different areas of customer experience management and say that it's a self assessment that how well are you doing in this and then you get the score on that. And based on that there was a long time where we had like, I don't know 99% of the respondents say that they have customer experience in their CX strategy and 90% or something 90 6% are doing lots of CX related activities and, and like very high scores there. And even during the pandemic, it didn't go down like drastically, I would say, but now this year, we had some some fallbacks. They're not sure if it's because it's a, it's a generic score or index that is also based on the international scores. But on the Finnish side, we had had that as well. So there has been some fluctuation there, it's usually it's going up upwards, and everything's developing. But it didn't go down as expected. So drastically during the pandemic. And now, we see that there are some budgeting issues, but and probably that is why it has gone down during this. Or we didn't do it last year, we done it like two years back. So compared to 2021. This was a 2023 edition that I'm talking about. So now, what is happening is that they are getting their budgets back and teams slowly started to work on and investing in CX activities again. So there's some light that is coming. I see. And I think that then it's just going to go forward from there, especially thinking about the kind of technological advancements that we have, like in Finland were quite advanced as such, now that AI is such a big part of CX and E X. I think that that is going to kind of give us a big leap forward.

Rick Denton: 31:38

Well, I liked and I like ending on that. Because I think I know, we felt that in the US. Heck, I talk about the CX reckoning of 2023. And I believe that there's going to be a renaissance specifically around process of CX, but in 2024, for you to be seeing some of that rebound as well, I think is is very, very good. Since this was, well, I froze three times at least and mentally probably froze even more. So I learned a ton out of this. If folks wanted to know a little bit more about you your approach to customer experience, your consultancy, where they turn to learn more welcome,

Sirte Pihlaja: 32:14

they can connect with me on LinkedIn, and they only see it on LinkedIn. So it's easy, easy enough. You don't need even to pronounce my name correctly to find me.

Rick Denton: 32:23

You know, I'm struggling with I admire you I'm just having trouble. But yes, it's LinkedIn. And

Sirte Pihlaja: 32:29

then on Shirota dot, FYI, my company dot FYI, slash e n, which is the English version or CX Pedro de fi for labor serious play related things. And if you're interested in machine customers, there's actually a book that I just wrote. And that was just published called customer experience five, which is a global bestseller. So that's one, there's a there's a site for for that one as well. There's links from my site. Awesome.

Rick Denton: 32:55

I will get all of those into the show notes listeners, as always, you just scroll down there, click those links. You don't have to stop the episode one bit and you can, you can connect, you can learn more about SEO, chat her her LinkedIn, profile her website and then access that book as well. I had a absolute delight talking with you today. This was one that I learned a lot. I was excited to get to talk to someone from a new country for me, and I know that the listeners value that as well. I really appreciate you being on the show. Sirte. Thank you for being on CX passport.

Sirte Pihlaja: 33:30

The pleasure is mine. Thank you so much for inviting me and next time definitely was placed with some Lego bricks. Promise.

Rick Denton: 33:42

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.