Jameson McFarland: 0:00

The design process is practice in honesty. Good design is about observing and making an honest assessment about the needs of the user, as well as the realities of the system, uncover the hidden gems, but also the unfortunate truths

Rick Denton: 0:18

Customer experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff.

CX Passport Band: 0:23

The best meals are served outside and require passport. ,

Rick Denton: 0:28

I have been away from the mic for a few weeks, so I am especially excited to return to recording another CX open to work episode. It's your chance. You the excellent CX passport audience's chance to amplify today's guest and his career path. Today, I am pleased to introduce Jameson McFarland, a seasoned CX and experienced design professional with that knack for transforming customer feedback into those actionable strategies. One of my favorite things James's journey spans roles at LinkedIn, DocuSign and several other companies all focused on the customer. Most recently, Jamison was at LinkedIn, where he led efforts to refine support models and integrate agile methodologies. His appearance on today's episode was strongly recommended by former CX passport alum Sam stern back in episode 153 who noted Jay's passion for creating authentically customer centric solutions. Jameson comes to us from San Francisco today, but you'll note, if you go look at his LinkedIn profile, that banner shows one of those rare glorious bluebird days in Seattle when the mountain makes a glorious appearance. In fact, we're recording this episode just days after he returned from two weeks in the Pacific Northwest, two beautiful cities, so there might be a little location jealousy on display today we'll see Jameson. Welcome to CX passport.

Jameson McFarland: 1:55

Thank you so much, Rick. Really glad to be here, and a huge thank you to you for having me as well as my former colleague, Sam Stern. He's a CX powerhouse, and I'm so grateful for his intro.

Rick Denton: 2:10

Well, one thing we can definitely agree on is that Sam is a CX powerhouse. And yes, listeners, viewers, if you didn't hear it, go back and listen to episode 153, he's an absolute delight to hear from there. And then also in just the CX community and LinkedIn community in general. Jameson, with this being an open to work episode i and we're talking about customer experience. What is it that draws you to customer experience? Why is this particular field amongst all the fields that are out there important to you?

Jameson McFarland: 2:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. I think my thoughts are sort of twofold here, one the leading thought, or the reason that really initially drew me to CX in the first place is it's really easy to get behind like, as a concept, customer experience, good customer experience, yeah, making interactions better for customers and and the business. That's something that really easily clicks for my moral compass, and I think that's probably the case for many people that find themselves in this field. But then on top of that, it's actually a really hard problem to solve, and I think that's actually something that I seek out, and at the very least, it's a hard problem to get right every single day, every single quarter, every single year, over and over and over again. And the way I see it CX is it's a function, and it's a practice that is really built on the currency of deeper understanding. And you can pretty much always go deeper when it comes to understanding that the big, nebulous, faceless customer, let's say, right. So there's no end to the fun. And I think there's always problems to be solved, and you can always go deeper. And that's something that keeps me coming back.

Rick Denton: 3:56

You said something there that it made me grin a little bit. One is those of us inside the CX world, yeah, well, it's one of those. It's relatively easy to embrace. I think it goes even beyond just being in the CX world of as customers, we want our experience to be better. So it's kind of nice to be behind the curtain of the ones helping experience be better. I really appreciated how you said that it's it's hard, and I think that's something that isn't as well understood outside of the CX discipline. Whereas people understand experience and they want it to be good, they may not understand hard. What did you mean by that? What is it about CX that's particularly hard, which makes it a challenge, which makes it fun to unlock for you? Yeah,

Jameson McFarland: 4:38

yeah. Well, I think really at the core of it, I think there's, there is the outcome that is good customer experience, but then there's also something very different, which is a good CX function, a good CX team, an effective, impactful group of people within an organization that are owning. CX, and I think there's rightfully so, a lot of obsession around the outcome part of things, but actually, I think conceptually, it's maybe harder to pin down the perfect recipe for a good CX function itself and how you actually drive that outcome. And I you know, this is something we could talk about all day. But I think you see a lot of misnomers across, you know, various businesses and across the field in terms of, you know what CX is, what CX isn't right? And it's not always easy. In fact, I would say it's almost always not easy to parse together, what is the perfect, you know, dynamics within your organization to make that, that outcome a reality? Yeah, a lot of people get stuck in the quagmire of, like, being attached to the concept, concept of customer obsession, but not necessarily knowing what to do next. And I think that's something that you can toy with endlessly. And I think so rarely is does it come together perfectly? Business?

Your CX Passport Captain: 6:04

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Rick Denton: 6:30

That's a good distinction of because all of us are driving well, we should be driving towards an outcome, not just a nifty journey map, but rather an outcome. It's that how that outcome is crafted. What does the team look like? How is that put together? That one? There's a myriad of solutions that are out there, or solutions. Let's back away from that word, options that are out there, because the solution is the word presumes that something was actually solved. But there's plenty of options that are out there. Let's go to that first part of it, how in your past? How have you created an experience that your customers wanted in your past?

Jameson McFarland: 7:08

Yeah, I one initial project comes to mind, and this is from one of my previous roles. We were involved with a pretty significant change or evolution to one of our more technical products. Really the customer need at the center of this project was an ask for more self serve capabilities for this product. And given the technical nature of this product, there was a lot of hand holding, historically, that needed to take place to even get customers up and running with the product itself. And there was within that, you know, sort of bucket of, you know, hand holding activities, there was a number of different teams that had various pieces of that process, or own various pieces of that process. And so we were tasked with understanding, if we were going to transition this product to a fully self serve model, one, what does that look like? What is the future state of this product if it's fully in the hands of the customers? Because really, what they're asking for is, can we, can we turn this product on ourselves without coming, you know, to, you know, a customer facing rep to make that happen. And then two, how do you how do we stair step from the current experience, which is mostly not self serve, to the future, which is fully self serve. And one of the things that immediately became clear is that because of various customer, you know, technical capabilities and the way that our product roadmap was evolving itself. It wasn't going to be an overnight change. There was no world where we said, Okay, we all, you know, 1000s and 1000s of customers that are not self serve today, by the way, tomorrow, you're going to be doing

Rick Denton: 8:56

this for yourself. Magic Wand. Come on, right?

Jameson McFarland: 8:59

So what I did is I went really deep on understanding the current process. Started with some, some, you know, setting a baseline by doing some journey mapping of what was working right now, what were the sort of the fine, the finer details of all the different interaction points within this onboarding process, which was, again, pretty, pretty complex. And then we we started talking about, you know, where do we go from here? And we brought in all of those different customer teams, customer facing teams that were part of the implementation process. We designed the future of of what that implementation would look like. And really took a very procedural approach, more than anything, obviously, we set some design principles that guided us along the way. But with something as complex as this particular system, it was really helpful to go piece by piece and think about okay, if customer could do this themselves instead of. If interacting with a customer facing team, what does that now look like? Is it better, or is actually just a miss all of a sudden, right? And the reality of that planning period was that we were planning not only for the self the fully self serve customer, right, also customers in 369, months, who hadn't actually reached full self service, yes, and and so we, we were essentially stratifying the customer experience, which can be, you know, sort of a tricky, dangerous thing to do if certain groups within that plan get left behind. One of the things I was really proud of is that we, we put together sort of a strategic roadmap for how each of those customer segments with varying technical capabilities were accounted for, and how each of their onboarding experiences were actually going to get more efficient and be more self service wherever possible. And so that was sort of one of the guiding pillars of our work, and ultimately was a was a more pain free experience.

Rick Denton: 11:09

Well, obviously pain free is certainly desire the customer, what an important outcome that is. Want to come back to outcomes here for a second, I now see a key reason why Sam suggested that you and I connect, and emphatically wanted you here on the show. I talk about process and execution all the time, and what is it that you just brought in? And also, we understood what the process were. We understood how these things moved forward, and that that that element of customer experience is so important, that discipline of it, the sustainability, the the keeping it going beyond, and you alluded to that at the very beginning of the challenge of keeping it going, rather than just something that's a flash in the pan that's related to what I want to ask you next, and that is, outcome, a pain free experience. That's good, that's nice, but stocks aren't traded on pain free experience. Bonuses aren't paid out on pain free experiences. CFOs aren't rewarded on that. And so businesses are in the business of, well, making profit. How does what you're describing, how does that delivery of customer experience, either specifically in your past or in general? How does that delivery affect the tangible business results?

Jameson McFarland: 12:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, in this particular case, I think the very immediate outcome was very simply, product utilization, right? You have a pretty, pretty robust technical product that maybe looks a little bit different depending on the customer, but if there's roadblocks along the way, just getting things up and running, that immediately leaves a bad taste in the customer's mouth, and then, you know, time goes by, maybe that bad taste is still there and the product is up and running technically, but is perhaps not actually a part of their their workflow, And isn't a part of the way that they do business anymore. And the goal is to make that onboarding experience in this particular instance, the goal is to make that onboarding experience so pain free and so effective in getting the customer from point A to point B. Point being, point B being whatever reason that they were exploring this product in the first place, that it is instantly a part of the way that they do business and the way that they interact with the rest of your product suite.

Rick Denton: 13:31

Was this a product that, and I don't know and recognize, let's not dive into brand names or anything like that. But is this subscription? Could the customer walk away from this easily. Was this something that if, if they had said, it's not really a part of my workflow, they could say, you know, I don't really care about paying that next invoice. We're done subscription over. Yeah, very

Jameson McFarland: 13:52

much so and, and even to the point that this was, this product was potentially even going to be removed as a SKU at all and was just freely available to customers that were already paying for licenses of the core product. And this is sort of an addition to the core product experience, but if you think this is something that it's going to be like, provide some operational efficiencies for the customer and make them more able to use the core product more effectively. You want that to be as you know, readily available as possible. And so if it's sort of rife with roadblocks along the way, but is also actually sort of a key piece in the puzzle and the way that you think about your overall product strategy, then you're gonna have some issues, right? So,

Rick Denton: 14:42

yeah, Jamison is one of the things that that brings to mind when you're talking about solving it there in the onboarding process, I had a client, listeners, viewers. I know you've heard this story before, I'll be real brief, but we were able to create a $50 million increase in revenue by reducing cancel rates. Well, the discovery was, it was actually in the onboard. Process that was messed up that increased Those cancel rates. By fixing that, we reduced the cancel rates, therefore revenue went up. Did you see a similar tie to actual dollars? Did you see that where it resulted in this is going to show up on the balance sheet as an improvement to the company's financials by improving that experience,

Jameson McFarland: 15:21

yeah, yeah, in this case, absolutely right. I mean, this product, again, was sort of an addition to the core product experience. And so if you think about it, the metrics for usage and the things that the customer is measuring for this particular product is one in the same with the sort of the key, you know, product experience that they were measuring. So when it comes time for value review or any sort of, you know, assessment checkpoint and the the efficacy of the product that the customer has purchased, then a more efficient onboarding process for this sort of accelerator of the key workflows is, is going to be, you know, is going to pop out on page, and that's one of the things we looked at, is like this product was helping customers use the rest of our products more effectively. So why not make the onboarding and sort of upkeep and moment of turning this on as effective and seamless as possible? So

Rick Denton: 16:26

it's a little change of pace here. I know there probably weren't a whole lot of first class lounges between the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco, but who knows. It's a short flight. It's still nice to stop off in a lounge. Heck, I've done it when I've been going from Phoenix to Dallas. The Lounge is a nice little treat. So join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Jameson McFarland: 16:50

Well, I would say that one of the trips, and I've you know, been very grateful to have had many amazing trips, but one that immediately comes to mind was sort of the, actually the first big trip I did post pandemic. I was at a I was at a transitionary moment in my career, going from one job to the next, and my little brother was actually just about to start his second year of college. And so we both had, both had a little bit of downtime, and we, we ended up in Ecuador for nice it was a pretty, pretty long trip. Just sort of bounced around. Didn't have a huge itinerary other than the bookends, but one of the things we stumbled upon along the way was the accessibility to the Galapagos Islands. And I would say as bucket list locations go, the Galapagos is more amazing than than anywhere I've ever been. We saw so much part of life. It's so that, I mean, the physics, like the scenery there itself, is incredible. And there's opportunities to actually go out and explore some of the more remote parts of the islands on like boat tours, spending like five nights on a boat, and just did a whole bunch of snorkeling, a whole bunch of hiking on little islands. Also so much of the natural beauty of that

Rick Denton: 18:08

place that sounds really delightful. It shows how, and I'm very guilty of not doing this, but how slow travel really can unlock some experiences that you wouldn't have otherwise. So my jealousy meter. I thought it was gonna be location jealousy, just about San Francisco and Pacific Northwest. Now you added a third so thanks a lot. We'll see how this the rest of this conversation goes now that you've made me that hyper jealous, but let's see what's a dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Jameson McFarland: 18:38

Sort of on that same theme of like natural beauty and the majesty of it all. I've, I've never done any of the more the more picturesque locations in Europe, and in particular, like the Swiss Alps, I feel like me a little bit. I'm a I'm a snowboarder. Don't hate me skiers. But I, you know, and I know there's a lot of places actually, probably in this was to upset her ski only, so maybe I need to do some lessons this year. But I you know those, those was cliffs that just rise up from nothing to 1000s of feet right in front of your face. I mean, those are that that really pops off the page when you're scrolling through different travel locations. Yeah, that's been on the bucket list for a while.

Rick Denton: 19:21

That's awesome. And yes, I love the the one versus two plank battle. That's there. I my last snow experience. I my daughter wanted to try snowboarding. So we did that. Was my one and done. I did it. I was okay, but I'm definitely going back to skiing. It's what you grow up with, right? So if snowboarding is you think, just find the place that are the snowboarders there in the Swiss Alps. I'm sure you will enjoy it thoroughly. It is beautiful. It's a favorite thing of yours to eat.

Jameson McFarland: 19:49

I have a particular affinity for raw fish. I think it's my Pacific Northwest route. We are lucky to have really good. Seafood up there. I think San Francisco, I'm probably just inviting sort of a fight now, but Cisco has Seattle, like your battles in many culinary categories. I would not say that seafood is one of them. I think there's just the freshness of it all and something else. And so sushi in particular, and then a good poke bowl is a favorite of mine. Back in my time at the University of Washington, there was like this little hole in the wall neighborhood spot called hiroshis in the new district. Haven't been there in years, so can't, can't vouch for the quality nowadays, but I'll tell you what that was like my go to that's awesome. You know, when I just needed a good, good portion, sizes and quality of fish. That's

Rick Denton: 20:44

awesome. Well, I'm gonna take you the other direction. What is something growing up that you hated but were forced to eat as a kid?

Jameson McFarland: 20:51

Um, it's pretty basic, and I think this, I think maybe it comes as a function of having some pretty significant growth spurts throughout my childhood, like just having, like, a, you know, a physical, maybe, instinct for, like, calorie dense foods. I just couldn't get through the like, starter salad at the beginning of a meal. I just like, I know, salads nowadays a staple of my current diet, but as a kid, there was just something about, like, a bowl full of leaves that I just couldn't get behind, you know, and there's, you know, there's many ways to dress this out, and I'm sure I had some that I liked, but I think, actually, I think I said that at some point, my mom pulls that out every every opportunity she can. She says, That's so awesome. You have time for leaves.

Rick Denton: 21:41

I love that. It's and it's not just vegetables or it's the starter salad. Like, that's the brilliant part of that answer.

Jameson McFarland: 21:48

When you're like, a, you know, a 1011, middle school going through the most rapid period of growth in your entire life, there's like, spaghetti on the other Yeah.

Rick Denton: 21:57

Why you? Why are you stalling me, Mom? I'm

Jameson McFarland: 22:00

it, yeah,

Rick Denton: 22:03

nowadays we are gonna have to exit the lounge here. I do want to know, though, what is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without,

Jameson McFarland: 22:14

um, a cheap pair of sunglasses. And I say cheap very specifically, like, you know, I like to protect my eyes. You know, I don't love to be squinting when I'm trying to take in the beautiful scenery in front of me. But I say cheap pair of sunglasses because I'm also really good at losing sunglasses. I've dropped sunglasses off the side of a boat, I've left them in an airport. I've left them in the woods on a backpacking trip. You know, there's just no place for expensive sunglasses in my life anymore. Unfortunately, it's just not a habit I can I can sustain so cheap sunglasses, that's my answer.

Rick Denton: 22:57

I had the rights to it. The interstitial you just heard would have been a ZZ Top song, however, one, that dates me and folks may not have any idea what I'm talking about. And two, I can't afford those rights, so don't worry about that. It's the usual interstitial. I love the cheap sunglasses. Jameson, I have always and only worn cheap sunglasses, so you and I are very, very aligned. In fact, the pair that I wear right now most often are as cheap as you can get. They were a free handout at some tequila tastings. I'm like, great. Here's my perfect sunglasses. They are free. Let's go back to customer experience here. What are companies missing in customer experience? What's wrong in customer experience today, and how can they improve it?

Jameson McFarland: 23:40

Yeah, you know, I alluded this, alluded to this earlier, but I think I have a couple of thoughts here. One is, again, the misconception, or just sort of the misunderstanding, between the dotted line that connects CX, the outcome, quality CX, the outcome and quality CX as a function, as a team, as a part of the business. I think the unfortunate there's actually an unfortunate downstream impact here for job seekers like myself, which is, if you know, the CX practice is not particularly well understood, or there's it's not thought out within the business like the CX label can get slapped on any number of pieces of the whole Yes, right? And as somebody who's actively on the hunt for, you know, the next big CX gig, I think that can be sort of a confusing story to unpack, right? And I really think this is important, because good CX is really hard to create in a vacuum. I could, it is not, it is not something that you could, you know, spin up at. Separate from the rest of the business. I think it really has to be a fundamental part of like the engine that that moves your company forwards and acts, I think, in a lot of ways, like a like a nervous system or something, right? It's, you know, it's far reaching. It provides signals to various parts of the organism, let's say, and ultimately does not function well if it's partitioned or separate from the way that you think about delivering other pieces of the business. And so, yeah, as a job seeker, it's interesting to see that play out and have teams that I don't know that I would call CX be called CX, but of course, there's no, you know, there's no singular right way to do some of this, and so it can't always fault folks.

Rick Denton: 25:44

It really is a challenge for the job seeker. Well, one you've identified, it's a challenge inside the business. The job seeker, too has such a challenge. And I've heard this tale told often, is even if you're just searching for the word or the roles, there is no unified definition. And companies, to your point, if it's not well understood inside the company, they might slap a label CX on something that is so clearly not, or it's a it's CX adjacent, but not quite what you do, or those sorts of things. So it makes it sort of a challenge. How can you help companies do better at that now or in the future? How are you going to improve that weakness?

Jameson McFarland: 26:22

Yeah, I so I'll start with a brief aside. One of the things I love about the design process is that, at its best, it's sort of a practice in honesty, right? Good design is about observing and making an honest assessment about, you know, the needs of the user as well as sort of the realities of the system you're working within. I think one of the best things that I can offer companies is to be the honest designer in the room, right, somebody who's willing to go deeper uncover, sort of the hidden gems, but also perhaps the unfortunate truths in any particular system that's really at the I pride myself in being able to operate at the nitty gritty, at the micro level, the understanding, okay, why did this one, why did this one switch not flip for a customer, but also being able to zoom out and think, all Right, how does this broader system that is our customer experience? How does flipping that one switch trickle down into any number of different rooms or moments or interactions for our customers? And so I can promise to be an honest and dedicated designer in that sense, but also just a strategic mind that somebody who's just as is happily found uncovering hidden gems as unfortunate truths,

Rick Denton: 27:50

well, like that. Okay, that may be the title the episode. I say that a lot during the episode, because I'm sitting here the whole time. What friends title am I going to apply to this? I kind of like that one there. We'll see where things go more specifically in your hunt, what's next for you with customer experience? What is it that you're targeting to find in that next great opportunity?

Jameson McFarland: 28:13

I think really what I'm looking for at this phase is a company that's doing something exciting, right? I mean, I think CX is more fun when you're in an innovative environment, right? And many things are right, but doing something that's, you know, pushing an industry forward that's always attractive, being around people that want to go deeper. I've spoken to that a little bit, but deeper understanding and really having a penchant for pushing beyond the superficial customer understanding that I think we often get stuck in, and also Looking for an environment where there's a sense of camaraderie and genuine collaboration, right? Like TX is a is an inherently sort of human task, or a human environment to exist in, and they're human problems that are being solved. And so, not to get too philosophical, but I think I'm looking for, you know, good humans to surround myself with, and good CX as a downstream impact of that interaction.

Rick Denton: 29:28

Let's leave it right there. Listeners, viewers, let's help Jameson find good humans to surround himself with and hearing what you're saying. Jamison, about that idea of the details, because how are you going to get the deeper understanding without those getting into the details, but then that wider view, so that you aren't misunderstanding some detail out of context, and it's the context that helps you generate those business results as well, and that honesty aspect of the delightful elements and the uncomfortable truths are, it's not easy. To find someone that's going to do that and do that successfully, and do that boldly, and so that would be an attractive, attractive path for a company to bring something, someone like that in, if one someone wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to CX, just who you are, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Jameson McFarland: 30:17

Yeah, I think probably my LinkedIn is the best, best place to start. That's Jamison McFarland on LinkedIn. Always open to coffee chats, always open to learning more about what other folks are doing and what's happening in their world. So reach out. We'd love to connect, and we'd love to share a little bit more about nice do for your work.

Rick Denton: 30:38

Well, I'm certainly glad that a LinkedIn alum chose LinkedIn as the best way to get in touch. So that was a wise choice, right? And yes, I will get that as always, into the show notes below. Jameson enjoyed one just getting to talk to you, getting to hear the a little bit more about who you are, and to get a little bit more sense of your approach to customer experience, where you think they're the challenges and how you're going to be able to help that next company overcome those challenges? Jamison, thank you for being on CX passport.

Jameson McFarland: 31:09

Thank you so much. Rick, glad to be here.

Rick Denton: 31:16

Thanks for joining us this week on CX passport. If you liked today's episode, I have three 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 enjoy CX passport too. Then head over to cxpassport.com 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. You.