Ian Storm: 0:00

Whether it's customer experience, employee experience, or an AI dashboard, you're balancing out people process and power, aligning those things to an actual business impact,

Rick Denton: 0:12

customer experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport tray tables up, and seat belts buckled. Y'all, it is time for takeoff. Our guest today is Ian storm, Director of Strategic Solutions at aspect software, the sponsor for today's episode, as a customer and employee experience strategy leader, Ian knows how to connect data, technology and experience to drive real change. Ian's career path has taken him through workforce engagement, speech, analytics and customer experience initiatives, bringing all of this together to help companies align their technology with their big picture goals, whether it's gamification, quality management or workforce optimization, Ian focuses on making customer engagement smarter and more effective. Today, we're going to talk about what companies are getting right and wrong with experience strategy, how data can be both a solution and a trap, and why understanding human behavior is just as important as implementing the right technology. Ian, welcome to CX passport.

Ian Storm: 1:19

Thank you for the introduction and having me on. I'm very excited to talk today.

Rick Denton: 1:23

I am excited too Now Ian is coming to us today from a great city, Buffalo, New York, certainly a home of one of my favorite food Ian, before we get to wings, AI is transforming dashboards. What a simple sentence for me to say, right? Like everybody knows that, of course, however, you've pointed out that companies still run into these same old problems. Where are businesses going wrong when they're trying to use AI for experience strategy, and what should they be doing instead?

Ian Storm: 1:54

Yeah, I really think if I were to start at the simplest foundation block of it, you know, having been the guy who built those dashboards or the guy who consulted on those dashboards for different segments sectors. This is common across the board, whether customer experience or operations. You just gotta simplify it to, you know, in project management, there's that cost, quality, time triangle, right, the three constraints. So I feel like, whether it's customer experience, employee experience or an AI dashboard, you know, sort of driven process, you're balancing out people process, and it's to catch you to have three piece power so like technology and aligning those things to an actual business impact, right? It's funny, you sit in these conference rooms and they'll say, you know, you know, pie chart doesn't really visualize it, right? Like, maybe it should just be some drag and drop squares. Or, you know, these are the five KPIs we've always done. Ergo, we always should. And all they do is they just keep those same data points and stare at it, right? Instead of doing that deeper level discussion where it's, how does this metric affect my people, my process, my power, right? Yeah, like, what is the root cause of that, and tie it to an actual business outcome? We've all been there where there's tight timelines and you just want to deliver things and come on, let's just get through the meeting. All right, things went up, things went down. So it's building in that time where might be uncomfortable conversations and but you just gotta allow for those deeper conversations where it's what, what is the business impact here, right? Our average total time got worse. Does it actually matter, though? Oh,

Rick Denton: 3:40

I love that you're saying the things that I have said for so long now, and that is, you know, stop survey and score, start listen and act. It matters. What you do with this information, staying in kind of that AI, that technology, whether it's AI or just enhanced technology. Are you finding that companies are getting better at doing that deep dive, or has AI presented a distraction for them that allows them to look at the next new, nifty metric, as opposed to really understanding

Ian Storm: 4:11

this is, I love the way you framed it and set it up. So what's funny to me about AI? It's the same thing when there was the big data and analytics boom, you know, when you had business intelligence and drag and drop dashboards or even omni channel IVR, it's the same, fundamentally, why do people succeed? Why do people fail? Right? If you are a very mature practice that's fairly linear, you are probably going to dominate being on the cutting edge of technology, which, in this case nowadays, is AI, right? And that tends to make the headlines, right? But for most of us in the contact center, the reality is you'd be better. You'd be better off looking at your people and your processes, right? You know, it's almost like a head coach in football, where it's like you want to make. Splash to have people believe that you're going to drive change if you actually map your customer journey, map out your employee experience, and map out your processes, right? Sometimes the little you know jolt awake to have the technology lead that, and more importantly, your vendors will probably do it for you. Like, sometimes that's very helpful. Other times, I mean, I've been on some nightmare implementations where we had to, like, you know, we thought, you know, you have your snowballs versus your avalanche. I thought we had a snowball, and it's like, oh, it was actually we need to start with a snow flake, like we are unearthing some ancient tribal knowledge here that no one ever has before. You

Rick Denton: 5:40

just said snowball versus avalanche, which I know you and I talked about that when we were first getting to know each other, but I don't know that that's as common of an understanding around there. What do you mean by that snowball versus avalanche? And I know you talked about it in the context of onboarding, so break that down for me. How should companies focus on onboarding in the context of snowball versus avalanche?

Ian Storm: 6:01

Yeah, I love this concept, and I'm probably guilty of so the real application of that analogy tends to be in uh, sort of like managing your debt and building up your financial wealth, right? Okay, it's do you pay off your smallest bounces, or do you pay off your largest bounces, right? And interest rates and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but really, you can apply that to people, whether it's your employees, your customers, your tech stack, your operations, it's the same idea, right? So like a snowball, starting out very small, that's good for your new hires. And maybe they're so new that their anxiety is super high, their confidence is super low, right? And a snowball, it's just very easy wins, right? You have those tier one support issues that probably could have been solved with Google. Or it's the cliche, you know, turn it off, turn it back on. Great snowball to build up that competency, that that confidence, all those great things, right? I'm a big sports guy, so I'm always going to bring it back to sports. But you know, if your team won one game last year, I mean, maybe don't tell them you're trying to win the Super Bowl. Be transparent and be honest. You know, we're just hoping

Rick Denton: 7:13

for three and 14, right? You know,

Ian Storm: 7:18

then avalanche is just the opposite, right? Where maybe, maybe it's even a new hire, but tends to be experienced employees. They're highly competitive, highly driven, and their esteem comes from that high achievement, right, which you know that's between them and their their loved ones, whether that's psychologically healthy or not, right? And it's the same idea for the company too, right, where sometimes to really excite and shake up a franchise. You know, it's the that first round pick which, hey, maybe this is the time it does make sense to be like, All right, we're going to bring an AI. It's going to guide you through with the step by step of the these calls you handle. To me, it's, uh, everything's a coaching mindset, just how to pull those little levers.

Rick Denton: 8:00

Hey, there CX passport, travelers. I want to let you know about CX passport live. Cx passport live helps brands amplify their events impact with the power of live in person podcasting. Brands partner with CX passport live at their on site event to help excite attendees, reward high value customers and convert potential customers. Bring a new level of energy and excitement to your event and amplify your brand's impact with CX passport. Live, learn more at CX passport, live.com, now back to the show, and especially in that onboard, I like that you brought that into the onboarding sense. We often hear people talk about quick wins as the way to get started. And I think that's the snowball. We don't hear as much about the avalanche. And what I appreciate of what you're saying there is the idea of, hey, actually, in certain company scenarios, and specifically in onboarding scenarios, when someone has that level of expertise, they're gonna be kind of annoyed with the snowball. Great. Thanks for teaching me. Turn it off and turn it on. I know a lot more. Can we go faster here? Can we get moving here? Whereas it's been a conventional wisdom to say, hey, quick wins are the way to get the culture moving and all that, the idea is actually both you said something in your answer that caught my ears, and you're talking about, I have a conversation with your spouse about the psychology and the psychological element. It shows me that background that you have, you've got that deep background in psychology. I want to get into that and how psychology ties to customer and employee experience. You had talked to me about self determination theory, and like all these deep sort of psychological terms that we don't usually get into here. How has all of that influenced your approach to designing better experiences?

Ian Storm: 9:49

If I may, dork out a little bit here, you know, you know, I majored that in that in college, that was my dream. I wanted to really help people. Right then you're like, I got bills to pay. I. Um, so I kind of did the, you know, the brags to riches and contact center, but I kind of came full circle, right? I was a huge fan of Moneyball, you know that, oh yeah, Oakland, A's and data and analytics. Like, I was like, That's me. That's who I am. I was like, technology data, technology data. Like, it just really hit me at a certain time in my life, but now, really, the last five years, I realized, oh, life comes full circle. It is psychology driven, right? Like it's such a huge impact in every way of life. So for self determination theory, ah, boy, it's almost like snowball and Avalanche again, right? My brain was avalanching with data and technology possibilities, and I had to ground myself with whether it's your customers or employees. This is humans, deeply studied subject across the board, self determination theory, three basic human needs, right? Autonomy. I feel like I'm in control of my life. So as an employee, maybe it's you get to pick your shifts and when you can kind of get that voluntary time off, or maybe it's how you handle the scripts right. And sometimes you know it's legal and compliance, I get it, and other times it's probably overthinking it, and then same thing for customer experience, right? That's your classic omni channel, right? Some folks want to chat and just, you know, yeah, through it quick. Some people want to call, right? It's giving it's having the customer feel like they can control how to resolve or improve something with your product. So autonomy is our first bucket, and then second is competency, right? So it's making your employees feel like they actually are good at what they do, right? There's coaching the checkbox, right? Where you just passively say, Rick, you did it. You set the script, and by golly, you got this FIRST CALL resolved perfectly, you know, right? But that's different than same exercise. Hey, team, listen to how Rick took this irate customer and subtly worked them to a better outcome. Where, let's flip it around the customer side of it, right? I've highlighted that Rick is doing amazing work, and I've connected it to the customer experience, where, because Rick feels competent and confident in the work he's doing, he passed that on to the customer who he was able to enable and train and overcome some sort of barrier, right, right? Maybe they didn't submit a claim correctly, the customer, you know, maybe they didn't, you know, turn, turn on the right widgets for who knows what, but it is. It is a holistic, contagious process, this competency thing.

Rick Denton: 12:45

So we've got autonomy, we've got competency. What are we missing here?

Ian Storm: 12:51

It's the hardest one, especially in a remote world, okay, relatedness, you gotta feel like you're a part of a community and something bigger than yourself. So like in a personal world, for some people, it's religion, it's who you see at the gym, but it is so much harder in a remote work environment, right? So that last example about competency, right? If I swear to synchronize that and establish my team is sort of a center of excellence, okay, where it's just transparent, honest collaboration, where this is where a leader can really tee up psychological safety, right? Like as the leader, I'll do the icebreaker and say, You know guys, I know that you guys emailed me for help on this particular issue, and it has just been, you know, my my kid had influenza A doctor and, you know, just connect on that human level, yeah, to then bring it around to those more positive achievements where it's like, but hey, I like my guy, Rick, here. He got us a win. He got us a win, right? It's those little subtle tweaks that make a huge difference.

Rick Denton: 14:02

The examples you're describing there that tie it directly into those business elements. Get it out of the esoteric, you know, book on shelf that was a nice little ivory tower read, but actually something to do, and you you actually gave an example there of psychological safety. That's one that we hear a ton about, and yet it often feels like that book on a shelf. Element of it's a nice theory, but when I'm at the workplace, I don't know exactly how to do it. You gave one example. What are other tactical ways that a company can create actual psychological safety?

Ian Storm: 14:37

Yeah, I would say kind of piggybacking off of autonomy and the customer experience. This is how you apply it to your employee experience, right? Some people, they need this one on one time, right? You gotta really open it up for it. And I'm not talking about, you know, we have a recurring one on one it happens once a month, and it's, here's like, Hey, you did this, you did that, you did that, right? Right? Attaboy, right, right? That's different than, Hey, Rick, here is an hour dedicated to that's there's no easy button or fast button for psychological safety, especially for most people. We weren't raised that way, right? You got to get that foundation down so it's time and consistency for those different options for engaging. So you just meet people where they are, right? I can go, I can go a little woo, woo. On you, if you want, where it's a little more of a mindset and a word thing if you want. I'm curious.

Rick Denton: 15:36

Let's, let's see what's, what's your woo here.

Ian Storm: 15:40

All right, so this is a very official theory, widely researched, definitely not made up by me for a blog. I called it the Socratic Ted, less Ted lasso method. Have you? Have you seen this show, Ted? Last? I have seen that? So Ted lasso, he's shooting the darts and he's talking about being judgmental and not curious, right? Because it's very arrogant, rich man. He looks at, you know, seemingly weak Ted lasso with his hunky dory all shucks attitude. Turns out this fellow has been throwing darts basically as long as he's been walking so that whole be curious, not judgmental mindset. I like to mix that with the Socratic method. The Socratic method from way back when, whether it's for your own knowledge or broadening someone else's knowledge, it's less commanding from that ivory tower and more leading where I wonder what it what the impact would be if this I wonder what's exciting about that. You know, even just that, that term wonder versus, you know, I don't feel good about this strategy, and here's why, one opens doors and conversations. The other is all right, for some reason, Ian's really hooked on the self determination theory stuff. I shouldn't point out that. I think it's a bunch of malarkey person,

Rick Denton: 16:57

yeah, that open ended kind of approach to this, yep,

Ian Storm: 17:01

that's where the nuggets come out, right? You've opened up the time in that more applicable example for your different recurring meetings. That's how you spread that psychological safety.

Rick Denton: 17:18

Ian, I appreciate that sense of the wonder, like the I wonder. And one of the things that makes me wonder is actually travel. We're gonna take a little break and stop down here in the first class lounge. Join me here. We'll have fun. Move quickly. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Ian Storm: 17:35

Oh, well, I mean, Buffalo Bills game. What could be better than that? You know, we're jumping through tables. They do karaoke. They're grilling off of, you know, car engines. Where else would you rather be than buffalo? You know, Buffalo Bills games, spoken

Rick Denton: 17:50

only like a true Buffalo Bills fan could say, I'm curious what's a dream travel location that you've not been to yet.

Ian Storm: 18:00

So I'm gonna throw you a curveball. I don't think of it in terms of location. I think of it in terms of experience.

Rick Denton: 18:06

Okay, what do we got here? I like this. You would never guess

Ian Storm: 18:09

this by the background, but there are some Broadway shows that I just love. And here in Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and I forget, and Bill Burr they're doing Glengarry Ross on Broadway this, really, and, hi, you know, obviously I haven't seen that cast. I've seen the movie. It's a great movie, yeah, and they're doing a Broadway show. So, like, when I think of, like, you know, things I haven't done, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's, that's my kind of experience. Those are my actors. That's my story. I love that stuff. Okay, that's

Rick Denton: 18:42

a little bit of a tip. I'm not as tied into that, and I love that idea. So you give me a little tip to maybe time for Clancy and me to get on a plane up there and go see this one. Ian, I like that. If we're in the city at the same time, we'll say hi to each other. I have when I've been in the city, I've enjoyed the eating that I've done there. You may have to get away from midtown a bit, but there's some good food there. We talked about wings earlier. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Ian Storm: 19:04

You know, because I I'm a big guy, I love all foods, like I definitely could say steak pizza, but, yeah, another curveball, um, I am a big little kid. Nothing makes me happier than ice cream. Doesn't matter the flavor. I love it. I am unbiased. It is just nostalgia in the best, purest form. I love it.

Rick Denton: 19:23

Ian, there's a, there's a kind of a meta nostalgia that you just offered, one all the memories of childhood that you're describing. But if you go back and look at episode one of CX passport, the title is the one with the ice cream. Santa coumarin, Ottman lingam from Malaysia, offered up a story about ice cream, and that became episode one. And so for you to mention that in the nostalgia kind of gives me a little warm space in my heart to think of episode one of CX passport with ice cream. What I imagine there's some foods that you were forced to eat that you hated growing up as a kid,

Ian Storm: 19:58

my parents were very good sports. It's so the honest answer to this one, growing up, I was a horrifically picky eater. It could have been just about any food, right? And I was that kid that was throwing the tantrums at the table. Oh no, I was a very difficult picky eater growing up. So it was, it was just about everything. But don't worry, guys, audience, at home, I thankfully recovered. Now I have the opposite problem. I enjoy all the food. That's way too much. I like

Rick Denton: 20:23

that that it was I was sitting at the table trapped for a long time, but now I enjoy the table, and I'm there for a long time because I love being at that table. Ian, it's time for us to leave the first class lounge. What is one travel item not including your passport, not including your phone, that you will not leave home without

Ian Storm: 20:41

my blender bottle, really just that simple, whether it's headaches, aches and pains, getting a little cranky, basically, having a blender bottle on the go is my key to just get that base minimum of functionality, whether it's a long trip, a short trip where it's like, alright, I may not have control the schedule because it's for work or who knows what, But I got my blender bottle. I'm feeling good.

Rick Denton: 21:09

Ian, I love it. Shake that Blender Bottle. That's fantastic. You had said when we were talking about psychological safety, and you'd even mentioned it earlier, and even just in the sports analogy, we hear the word coaching a lot in employee experience. Oftentimes it's associated with a pejorative. I'm going to coach you finger wag style. How can leaders shift that perception and turn coaching into where it's actually this tool for growth, like a good coach can be, rather than just corrective action.

Ian Storm: 21:40

All right, I'm going to present another made up term this has not been researched or studied. Rather than circle back and loop in the other points, I would actually reframe those earlier points in terms of a insert the made up term hierarchy of opportunity. Okay, fancy, right. All right. All right. So the hierarchy, right, the foundation, I'm your coach, right? What's in it for Rick, right? I have this business need. I have this coachable moment. Why am I doing that to poor Rick? Right? Why am I being nitpicky about this one thing, right? And big flag for, you know, all the leaders out there, if I can't answer that question, take a step back. You are being nitpicky, right? Like, if I can't, you know, strongly argue why this matters. Why am I talking about it? You know, Rick is my pitcher on the starting mound. Why would I walk up to him and say, you know, I'm not sure about your breath. Like, what does that have to do with pitching? No one cares, right? Like, why would I mess with your mindset when you're my guy? Right? Right? So that's foundation one, right? This hierarchy of opportunity. Two, what's in it for the team? So let's say it's like, you know, Rick, I've noticed that you're really rushing through phone calls, and you're it seems like maybe you're really worried about average handle time. I just want to let you know that from a leadership standpoint, we can actually see the customer journey throughout their their resolution process. What's actually happening is you're creating more work for your teammates who have to figure out what you said and then resolve it correctly. If we can just make this modest tweak where you spend an extra minute the downstream impacts that for our team, it's going to free up. There's, there's your second level, okay? And the final level is your organizational impact, right? Yeah. Um, actually, I want to circle back quick. The other thing that kind of, it's like a personal button. When I'm coaching someone, one on one, there should always be a talk about the future and career growth, like I've done customer support. And if someone survives that world for a long tenure, grow that person, someone has survived the grind of support, because it can be a grind, right? It's right for the faint of heart, reward that in these one on one conversations

Rick Denton: 24:11

makes sense like that. You're like, I gotta land this point. I'm coming back to it absolutely, going back to the organizational the last piece of this hierarchy that you're describing.

Ian Storm: 24:22

Yes, yes. So last piece, it really does depend on your brand and business model, right? Sure if it's supposed to be a fun experience and it helps, you know, increase the bottom line dollar to then increase these features and expand into this market like, that's where that transparency comes into play, right? Hey, so and so. I know it feels weird to be required to prompt these after call surveys or whatever, but you know, Rick, we're trying to expand into this market. We have a feeling that if you guys can get to the bottom of it, then this is growth for the company, which therefore is growth. Within terms of roles and positions, right? Just fill out that whole circle. Connect all the dots for all the impacts, right? And if there is no impact, you shouldn't be talking about it.

Rick Denton: 25:12

I love that. Throughout this episode, you've talked about what's the impact, and I think that's something that aspect software talks about as well as is looking at what are the insights that actually matter? I know companies sometimes focus on internal metrics because they kind of think internally, but it doesn't really matter to the customer. Let's close out with this. Do you have an example of a company that got this right that said, No, we're going to focus on metrics that matter for the customer. And how did they do that? Or do you got an example of perhaps, if you're willing to share the company that completely missed the mark in that

Ian Storm: 25:49

regard? All right, so this is kind of my grassroots I'm big fan of contact center and financial services, a good example where they saw metric and reacted to it. It's not what you would expect, but it does really connect all the dots of what we're talking about here, right? You realize you're getting incorrect call disposition. So what we did was, when recognizing that metric, there's the downstream impacts we you couldn't understand the types of call volume we were getting right? And this was when I was actually helping with my background of speech analytics, we were able to find the truth through transcribing the calls, categorizing them. Here's your truth. Just don't think about call dispositions, right? But then we took it a step further with the metadata, where we said, that's weird, you dispositioned it as a wrong number, but it looks like you talked to somebody. That's a pretty good conversation for a wrong number, yeah. What'd y'all talk about? Why was the wrong number? 10 minute conversation? Right? Right? There were times where it was valid, but it's, it's that qualitative analysis, yeah, that, you know, long story short, they were able to identify the gaps in their consumer process, you know, you know, we're talking about banks to then drive the improvement of oh, so in some cases, the wrong call disposition is because we the company we are actually, we have a confusing website, so customers are saying this, but we're training on that, and that's where those, like full picture conversations come into play, right where it's right, you know, you do those little snowballs of all the nice, you know, fluffy stuff, but eventually it comes together in this giant avalanche of an actual business impact right impacting your employees, your business, your customers, just chefs kiss, thing of beauty.

Rick Denton: 27:49

I love the story being told of you focusing on the right things, because it eventually adds into that significant business impact. Ian, I've enjoyed the conversation today. I'm curious if folks want to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to CX and even aspect software in general, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Ian Storm: 28:09

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. Would love to talk, and then, of course, visit our website if you are interested in the products. And yeah, I'm also happy to give a warm intro. If that's easier, too, whatever

Rick Denton: 28:19

perfect I will. I will get that all in the show notes there, Ian, and thanks again to aspect software for sponsoring the episode. Ian, it's been a fun run today. Love the thread that wove through this entire episode, around metrics that matter, psychology that drives particular business results. It all gets to that end business result, which is really in the end what businesses are all about. Ian, it was a delightful conversation. Thank you for being on CX passport.

Ian Storm: 28:51

Thanks for having me on this is a blast anytime.

Rick Denton: 28:53

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.