Courtney LeBlanc: 0:00

in the support teams wheelhouse is that if you are creating these five star experiences on a five star scale, those people are gonna go out to their friends and family and they're gonna say I had this issue and it was really frustrating. And then I talked to support and they resolved it so fast and it was done. It was great. They were kind, they think you should consider doing them too. And that word of mouth was so important.

Rick Denton: 0:23

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require a passport. Welcome back CX passport travelers. Today we're in for something completely unique and hasn't been done before on six passport. This is going to be completely improv. When I say to you that today's guest and I have not met until about five minutes ago. That is a correct statement. Today's guest is a CX open to work job seeker, Courtney LeBlanc coming to us from Calgary, Canada. And I am excited to have her on as she was introduced to us by a former CX open to work job seeker Emily Stubbs, that is about the extent of the knowledge that I have, which is going to make today the kind of journey that we say you should actually take out in your real travels. Just get in the car and start driving. So today, we're going to get in the car and start driving Courtney, welcome to CX passport.

Courtney LeBlanc: 1:27

Thanks, Rick, really excited to be here. I think that analogy is actually really interesting, because some of the best trips I've ever taken are the ones with the least amount of plans and just get up and go. But as a type A person, those can actually be pretty stressful sometimes, but I think they make the best memories too.

Rick Denton: 1:47

I, I'm with you there that I've had some planning challenges myself where it's like, no, I need to know everything. And yet the ones where this is what works really well for the planner, when something doesn't go according to plan and you're forced to move into improv mode. And that is where I've had some spectacular experiences. There's a backpacking trip that I took in 1995, no cellphones and that sort of thing. And we fell asleep and missed our train. And so with no reservations, we're sitting in Barcelona, what the heck do we do had a fantastic experience. So you're right, sometimes as unexpected can be there. According since you and I haven't had a chance to meet before really in any depth. I mean, that I can't do a very adequate job of introducing you and telling you a little bit about your story. So Courtney, would you briefly introduce you know who you are? And a little bit about your story?

Courtney LeBlanc: 2:37

Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I have been working in customer facing roles pretty much my entire career. I've worked in telecommunication sales, I've had extensive experience in retail sales. I did move into account management, from a wholesale sales side of things on in the action sports industry at fox racing, which was incredibly cool. learning all about motocross and mountain biking, working with so many different stores all across Canada. Meeting all these really cool people through that experience and making sure that they were well cared for and really loved the brand and the experience that they were getting with us. I managed about 300 accountants in Eastern Canada, including Quebec, since I'm bilingual. And then after that, I moved into tech and went to willful which is a legal tech company where people can make their wills and estate planning documents without having to go see a lawyer very, very cool, niche product that they're trying to do. And really with the mission to make estate planning more accessible to everyone. I was there for about three and a half years, I was the first hire dedicated to anything customer related. So built, pretty much built their whole support slash success slash experience function from the ground up. Outside of having a bare bones and us that was in place when I joined the business like had to build out all the automations all the operational stuff, all the processes, policies, documentation, content creation and management for customer facing resources, customer service philosophy, hiring, training, onboarding, you name it, I did it and built all of that from the ground up for about three and a half years.

Rick Denton: 4:19

This is this this is good. I'm glad those may present some angles for us to kind of explore a bit what a what a writer and you heard me kind of Ooh, the Fox Sports part of that. That does sound cool. And there's the coolness of it but then I love especially as folks that follow me on LinkedIn know, the the estate planning and the willpower of it, the more that we can simplify that and help people focus on perhaps the emotions of bereavement rather than the business of bereavement more power to that company for sure. I want to just start since this is you know the the hashtag open to work series in general. What is it that draws you to customer experience? You had to get there somehow. So why is customer experience important you

Courtney LeBlanc: 5:00

Yeah, I think that's something that happens to a lot of folks that doesn't get talked about as people just kind of find themselves in the customer experience industry. And I think that once you get there, you fall in love with it, and you want to stay, which is really cool. I think it's twofold. I think the people, both the people that you're working with, as well as the people that you're helping really make it a magical place to be being able to say, hey, you know, I have built this team, and they're on the front lines, and like, they, you know, in the willful case, made death, so much less scary to talk about and like, get this done, and made it a really cool, approachable, like easy experience. And now, I'm not stressed out about what this means and what this looks like. And being able to have that tangible impact. And also, just the multidisciplinary nature of customer experience, I think is really cool and very attractive in that it kind of gives you a little hand in everything, right, you're going through your customer experience, data and analytics, like potentially, from your support platform, maybe your reviews, maybe your CSAT depending on what your tech stack looks like. And you're creating these really amazing insights and this voice of customer data that can then turn into really tangible things in a product. When I started willful, one of the first things I advocated for was the upgrade function, there were folks who would purchase one package, they didn't necessarily fully grasp what was included in that package. And leaders say they want another one. And when I joined the company, that was a fully manual process, they had to reach out to support support had to look at everything, they had to send a manual stripe invoice, they had to check and see the customer pay, they had to go in and submit a request to our developers update their package. And it was just so manual intensive. And so you know, putting together a proposal that said, hey, look, look at all these hours that are being dedicated to this thing that customers are looking for. And being able to make that change in the product through that advocacy with Voice of Customer Data is something that's also very cool to me.

Your CX Passport Captain: 7:10

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

Rick Denton: 7:36

You have you may have seen my facial reactions. If you're just listening, folks, you didn't get to see it. But those of you that are consistent listeners and viewers of CX passport know why I'm grinning from ear to ear according to you hit on so many wonderful things there. And in fact, they're the questions that I like to ask job seekers, you've taken us into a couple the ones there, I'll ask you for more detail in a here in a little bit. But that process, that execution that is what is so important to customer experience is the repeatability of it and the the scalability of it that it's great that you've got perhaps a manual approach to a customer experience. But so what if you can't repeat it? And that's where the the second part that I love what you said the tangible business results that come out of customer experience? I think a lot of the industry is perhaps suffering a bit, because it didn't focus on that nearly as much as it should have. And folks like you and others are helping to bring that back into of No, no, this isn't just fluffernutter. There's actual dollars, there are actual cost cutting and revenue growth that can exist here. So let me ask you that because you started to mention it. But talk to me more about it, that experience or another one, how have you created an experience that your customers wanted in the past?

Courtney LeBlanc: 8:49

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of different things. And I kind of mentioned this in my intro, I kind of inherited this very bare bones business function. When I worked at wilful here's the Zendesk inbox, you know, shortly before I joined the team, it was book a call through Calendly, with one of the founders for customer support if you needed it.

Rick Denton: 9:11

Really, right. Hey, it's personal.

Courtney LeBlanc: 9:14

It was right. And it's really great. But as you grow a business that's not feasible for the founder, CEO to be on the phone all day, every day, and she's incredible and so lovely and so good at it, but that's not necessarily the best return on investment task for someone of that caliber to be working on when they you know, might need to be fundraising or building partner relationships and things like that. So I took over a lot of that and then had to work, both with customers and both with other folks throughout the business really say okay, what are customers looking for? What do they need, and we did a really, really big analysis, even looking at demographic data folks who are likely to reach out to our team for support. And then we you know, we found out that more than the majority of the folks who are reaching out for support were aged 60 Plus And so that brought in new questions of okay, what are the folks in this age category asking? And what do these folks prefer in terms of contact channels? And how do we create content that is most appealing to these folks in this demographic? And how do we create support that makes sense for them. And there was a few things that we had identified when we're going through this. And the biggest one, which I don't think it'll be a surprise to anyone who's done any amount of CX work is that folks in that age demographic generally prefer football. We also found that because we were such a small team, and we were doing a request to call function, we kind of unearthed and confirmed our suspicion that because there's no phone number posted anywhere on our website, these folks found it frustrating and generally ended up emailing us first. And then looking for a call via email. And so this became like, we're unearthing this like driver of tickets. And like, a really big friction point for these users. And so looking at and assessing like, how do we improve this friction point for these users, which will then reduce our tickets reduce the work that CX has to do increase customer satisfaction overall, and looking at, you know, when you're a team of maybe three people, only one person is bilingual, that being myself running the team? How do we navigate and support this function and look at bringing in open phone lines? Or, you know, how do we better publicize the availability of our request to call to make sure that these folks are finding it? Right? We know that phone is also a very high conversion driver in that business. Especially with such a complex business. These folks have a lot of questions, and they're a little, you know, and rightfully, serious.

Rick Denton: 11:43

We're talking about serious topics here. So

Courtney LeBlanc: 11:45

yes, it's important scary. With those online businesses, sometimes no matter how many trust signals are on a website, like the fact that will fall was on CBC Dragon's Den, which is the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank for any American listeners who aren't familiar. You know, we're on several news outlets on a regular basis. Like sometimes folks just want to hear that there's a person on the other end of it, I'm getting that email in writing just doesn't do it for people. And I get that right. And so we're working really hard, like to optimize that phone channel and create that great experience where we're making it not a burden on our CX team to support these folks. But also making sure that it's very clear and very available, and that people can get a call when they need it. Sometimes, when we first started, there was people who we used to book phone calls and 15 minute blocks, in Calendly. And that was something that I had inherited, and the second call went over. I was like, well, oh, man, like I'm late for the next

Rick Denton: 12:44

customer. Right? You're automatically just, yeah, and you're automatically

Courtney LeBlanc: 12:47

behind. Or if you had a call that was two minutes, you're like, Okay, now I have a 13 minute window. What do I do in these 13 minutes before I have to call this next person, right? And so really changing over to that request a call method created a better expectation, setting the situation for both the users and for us as

Rick Denton: 13:04

a team. Yeah. And that you brought that into? Because the question I asked was, how do you create an experience that was better for your customers or what they wanted in the past? I liked that you woven it, there's a way to do this, and a way to do this, that is better for the employee as well. And those two worlds, it's not novel, that sentence is not anything that somebody is listening, going. You're right employee experience matters to customer experience. But it's these tangible examples that show no, it really, really is tied together and it's meaningful, and that weaving them together can solve both at the same time. You start you mentioned conversion rate, in general, kind of your philosophy, you already talked about it. But talk about that important part of the tangible business results. How is it that the delivery of customer experience affects business results?

Courtney LeBlanc: 13:49

Yeah, so I think that there's a lot of different things to unpack here.

Rick Denton: 13:54

That could be the whole show, right? It could be and

Courtney LeBlanc: 13:57

I think that like at a very high level, conversion rate will always be incredibly important to a leadership team in a business. And if you can create a case for this is, what we're doing and how we can contribute to conversion rate and help your team not be viewed as a cost center to the company. incredibly valuable. And so some of the analyses that I've done with our product team, because they had to pull some specific, like, amplitude, like event analytics and stuff from our platform was just understanding. You know, if we're seeing customers clicking on any of the support related things in the app, are those users more likely to convert? Right? Do we see a higher checkout rate from folks who are either clicking on the live chat widget when they're in their account or clicking on that request to call function when they're in their account, is request a call or chat more likely to see folks convert? So these were just some of the things that we did an policies on and found that typically, folks who clicked on the live chat window were 30 plus percent more likely to convert in a 90 day window. And I want to say it was 20%, for request to call, folks. So that was a really huge way for us to say, hey, CES, is doing this really good impact piece here. I think the other thing, which I think it's maybe, like kind of the underdog in some ways, I guess that's not quite the word I'm looking for. But it conveys the same meaning. It's just the value of your CSAT, your customer satisfaction scores and surveys, the better those are, especially, and I'm talking specific to CSAT, not Net Promoter Score. I think that's a very different can of worms. And I think there's a lot of value there. But in terms of what is immediately kind of in a support team's wheelhouse is that if you are creating these five star experiences on a five star scale, those people are gonna go out to their friends and family, and they're gonna say, Hey, I had this issue. And it was really frustrating. And then I talked to support and like, they resolved it so fast. And it was it was done. It was great. They were kind, you know, maybe depending on what the person is, and their values, like they were empathetic, they did this great thing. They made the process really easy. They think you should consider doing them too. And that word of mouth was so important, especially in that wills and estate planning thing, because those are the things that you're going to want your loved ones to get done and like take care of and do. This isn't, you know, Spotify with their low key cult following. There's not a lot of people left to refer to Spotify at this point, if we're being honest, because odds are the other people are using Apple Music and they don't want to change. Whereas in wills and estate planning, there's research that shows that half of adult Canadians don't have a will. And so the ability to create that incredible word of mouth, and we saw that in our referral program, our referral program accounted for I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was, I want to say maybe around a third of our business was through referrals and word of mouth. And so why wouldn't we want to create this incredible experience for our customers so that they can become advocates for us? And I think that that's a really unsung hero of customer experience in some ways in terms of those tangible impacts.

Rick Denton: 17:29

I love that. I first of all, you heard me laughing about the Spotify comparison, because you're right, we'll certainly have a different category of, of customer impact, and Spotify. I love my Spotify. But you're right, there's not a lot of referring that's going on there. And I think you came up with a turn there in the end the unsung hero as well. What I really appreciated, what you were doing there is that driving the tangible business results because I started to think, oh, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna hit me with CSAT. And I actually I don't care about scores, the score is not the reason for doing something. But you pointed out the score is the indicator, the delivery of an experience that gets the score helps create the result there. And so I love that drive to tangible business results. Speaking of drives, and as we talked about at the beginning, sometimes these journeys need a little break. Now there aren't a lot of first class lounges on the roads, there's some nice rest stops, but we're going to pretend that we're flying and hitting a nice luxury airport with a first class lounge here. So we're going to stop off, take a little break, move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. Courtney, what is a dream travel location from your past?

Courtney LeBlanc: 18:30

I think Paris is probably my favorite place I've been so far.

Rick Denton: 18:35

Just so the fact that you're bilingual has to help you

Courtney LeBlanc: 18:40

be able to get around France. I know I can always communicate with someone. definitely helpful. Going to Brazil not being able to speak Portuguese, overwhelming. But being able to comfortably navigate everything in France really made it a great experience. And just my family dates back to France, who knows how many centuries ago and it was really just cool to kind of see where I came from in a sense.

Rick Denton: 19:06

Oh, that's neat. I like that aspect of it as well. Right? There's plenty of reasons to go to France, many hundreds of 1000s and millions are heading to the summer for the Olympics. The idea of tying it back to your family would be really delightful. What is going the other I guess the other direction chronologically what is the dream travel location you've not been to yet

Courtney LeBlanc: 19:27

so funny enough that you included this in the intro Emily and I are currently talking about dreaming of going to Thailand and or Vietnam. We actually have an entire state of travel inspiration and so we're really really hoping we can get there early next year.

Rick Denton: 19:45

I have only been to Vietnam on a business trip but loved it it was just we did a little bit of tourism kind of thing and in Vietnam, Thailand though we've spent we the family not the royal but the spam family spent some time there love it. So yes, prioritize Get their the best food cheap. It's a wonderful place. And so yes, get to Thailand as quickly as possible. It's awesome. I love that that's on your list. I mentioned food. I hope I didn't bias it with that, with that suggestion of Thailand. But what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Courtney LeBlanc: 20:15

You did not bias it. I mean, my partner will probably hate but I'm saying this. I'm not a huge fat person. That's his favorite food. By far he would eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner. I would say I am more of a passive person. I appreciate how diverse that dish can be. And I feel like it's such a good comforting food.

Rick Denton: 20:35

Oh, boy, you are now I do like fun. But yeah, put me in front of a big big plate of some good, fresh, homemade or recently made pasta. Oh, yeah, that's some good stuff there. Now that we talked about the yummies, what is something that you were forced to eat growing up, but you hated as a kid?

Courtney LeBlanc: 20:55

I feel like this is a really, unfortunately, cliche answer. But brussel sprouts was really the big one. I wasn't a super picky eater growing up, but that one and then like, kind of conversely, I grew up on the East Coast for a few years and really loved fiddleheads as a kid. Google it, if you're not familiar, it's kind of like a little firm

Rick Denton: 21:14

loved what?

Courtney LeBlanc: 21:18

It's like, it's almost like

Rick Denton: 21:19

this one who this is new. I don't know if that's a Canadian phrase, or it's a

Courtney LeBlanc: 21:23

very east coast thing. So it's almost it's like a baby. Okay, and I think technically, so it's like a strand that has little swirly at the top. And it's a green that you eat. And typically you would skim it and then maybe like, put some butter and salt on it kind of like a broccoli. And I love that when I was a kid and I went back home to New Brunswick in my early 20s. And my grandma served me fiddleheads because she knew how much I loved them growing up, and I took a bite and I was like, oh my god, I can't do this.

Rick Denton: 21:53

Oh, it's the reverse. Oh, interesting. Because suddenly you learn to hate it as an adult.

Courtney LeBlanc: 21:58

I figured I'd give you something a little more.

Rick Denton: 22:00

Well, you and I stereotypical brussel sprouts. Well, I knew that Emily had suggested you because she knew that improv no intro whatever we'd get along, I already know that I'm a huge fan of you, Courtney, because of the customer experience part. But now that you suggested my least favorite food and childhood and in current adulthood of brussel sprouts, I feel a very special bond to you. And I'm glad that you've been on CX password. We're gonna have to exit the lounge here though, sadly, what is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without

Courtney LeBlanc: 22:32

not including my phone or passport, I would say my battery pack. There's been so many times. And I haven't started using a battery pack until recently. But even in the last year or so the amount of times where battery packs have saved me when I'm at music festivals or concerts abroad or, you know, on those 24 hour in the airport travel journeys, where I'm running all over the place trying to get through connections and stuff that has been invaluable to have on my trips.

Rick Denton: 23:10

Courtney, that's one of mine as well is that that I've got a specific pocket in the backpack that it goes in. There have been plenty of times, especially when planes didn't have the power outlets for the longest time that on a delay or whatever, it was certainly nice to be able to have that power sitting there readily available. Oh, it's funny. The question that I'm gonna ask you now kind of could relate to this right. power planes have been adding that from a customer experience perspective, but really more in general? What are companies missing in customer experience today? And how can they improve it?

Courtney LeBlanc: 23:42

I think I don't think there's like a unanimous answer for this. I think that different companies do different things really well when it comes to customer experience. But I think that's something that we seem to be missing from a lot of companies. And this is kind of a two part answer is like empathy, and the empowerment for frontline reps to go above and beyond. I think that it can be really easy to create and get stuck in policies and procedures that are very black and white. And some of the things that I've learned through customer research and just analyzing all of our, you know, customer satisfaction and net promoter score data and all kinds of other pieces of qualitative commentary from customers is that when those black and white situations don't result in a win for the customer. It's such a bad experience for them. And I get it. I mean, we all want to get our way all the time. And that can't always be the case. Sure. But if we can, at a minimum, show up with empathy, try and come up with some middle road, give some leeway to our folks on the front line to really show up and put themselves in the customers shoes and try and do whatever they can really I mean, barring giving someone $1,000 or You know, right, whatever a system won't let them do, why wouldn't we want to do that and create these amazing advocates for our brand, because we've created that impeccable experience for them. There's nothing that's more frustrating than like, reaching out to a company and then being like, you know, what, sorry, Sucks to suck. It is what it is, yeah, do anything for you can't do anything. I think if we just all took a second to approach with a bit more empathy and flexibility in how we provide that experience, overall, the way that customers feel about our brand, and the way that they're willing to advocate for us, and then continue to create those tangible results that we talked about earlier through that advocacy, and that conversion, is a massive ROI that some companies are missing out on.

Rick Denton: 25:50

I like that, yeah. Cuz you talked about that empathy. But then the Empowerment has so many elements of training, how do you equip people to do it to give them the freedom to do that? All of those aspects? I want to ask you, though, how can you help companies do that? If this is what companies need to do? How can Courtney help them? Build those strings?

Courtney LeBlanc: 26:10

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is that I did it at willful, and I can do it again, we, I spent a long time drafting and then refining with the leadership team at willful, effectively, like, it was a few pages worth of what we called Make It Right policy documentation. And that covered so many different scenarios, where a customer may reach out, and they're upset, or they're frustrated, or they have a situation that kind of goes beyond what our standard policies are. And we can just, you know, use it as an opportunity to make it right or make it better, or do good by the customer and work a bit in that gray, just to make that good experience. And so I think the fact that I've already, you know, taken this business where I am an expert and sat down and looked at okay, what are these situations where we're seeing friction points and frustration for these folks? How could we have done better? And how do we document this, that there's clarity for everyone, right? Like, what do we want to be known for as a brand? How do we embody this? What does empathy look like in all these different situations, and also setting clear expectations for reps, because that's another thing is we want a consistent experience paired with this embodiment of empathy. And working in the gray is like, yes, we want to encourage flexibility. But we also don't want one person to reach out about a and get a certain result, and then have someone else reach out about problem A and get a different result. Because that's not a good experience either. So really, just the fact that I've gone through and worked out all of those kinks in those workflows and created that extensive policy process and documentation around what does this gray area look like? And how do we show up with empathy and flexibility for those folks already? I think that it's something that I can bring to any team that I join next.

Rick Denton: 28:06

I like that. And you know, that's, let's go to my usual last question here with the job seeker. What's next for you? Right? So I heard the experience is why you can help companies do that, thank God because we need more of what you're describing, in that empathy and empowerment. And, and I like that there was a structure there. But now, taking that what's next for you and customer experience? Where do you want to go next?

Courtney LeBlanc: 28:30

Gosh, that's, it's something I've always had a really interesting time with as someone who has a strong interest and a little bit of everything. And I think that's why I love customer experience so much is because it's got your hand and each little pot of the business. And I think that's really great. Ideally, I would love to be running a Customer Experience team again, hopefully, you know, maybe at the associate director level senior manager level in and around there, where we have an amazing team of folks who are supporting, you know, the customer service function. And that customer success function, as I have experienced in both with that account management work that I did at Fox and really just being able to show up and build and grow both a team and a business function through empathetic strategy and leadership.

Rick Denton: 29:18

I love it. I love it. I absolutely love it. Courtney, if folks want to make you their next best member of their team, or even just to get in touch with you to learn more about your approach to customer experience, or just have a good conversation, because folks, I hear you can see it. I didn't know Courtney, and I think we had a great conversation. So clearly, she's someone you need to get to know. How can folks do that? What's the best way for them to get to know you and get in touch with you?

Courtney LeBlanc: 29:42

Yeah, thanks. It's been really great. can chat with you today. LinkedIn is definitely the best. I assume we'll drop that in the description of the podcast episode. But yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the best way to get in touch with me for anything professional related.

Rick Denton: 29:59

Awesome. It's funny you you you actually took my next phrase, which is listeners viewers, they've all heard this. Scroll down the link to easily LinkedIn is right there. You don't even have to pause the episode. Click link and you can dual screen it listen to the episode and look at her profile as well Courtney, I did this was really enjoyable. First of all just the fact that simply I've got another brussel sprouts hater, God bless. Let's keep that fight going. And simply your approach to customer experience that it is not just the fluffernutter of empathy, empathy is important. And how that then creates the tangible business results. value that in so many ways coordinates been great. Thank you for being on CX password.

Courtney LeBlanc: 30:40

Thanks for having me, Rick. This has been great.

Rick Denton: 30:46

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.