Michel Stevens: 0:00

Are three things at play with customer experience, and they need to be in balance creating value for your customer, creating value for your organization, and

Rick Denton: 0:09

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

Unknown: 0:14

The best meals are served outside and require passport.

Rick Denton: 0:18

Today's guest is Michelle Stevens, a seasoned customer experience expert with a rich background that spans journalism, contact centers and global consulting. Michelle's journey into the world of CX began kind of unexpectedly in a call center, a place he never envisioned himself, but he grew to love. This experience ignited a passion for understanding customer behavior and improving service delivery with a career that has taken him across Europe, Michelle brings a unique perspective on cultural nuances in customer interactions. His approach combines structured processes with a deep understanding of the human behavior, aiming to bridge that gap between strategy and tangible business results. Y'all know how much I love tangible business results. Now, as a consultant, he helps organizations navigate the complexity of CX, ensuring that technology serves the customer, not the other way around. Michelle, welcome to CX passport.

Michel Stevens: 1:19

Thank you so much. Rick, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here,

Rick Denton: 1:22

and I'm very happy to have you here as well. Where do we find you today?

Michel Stevens: 1:28

Well, I am just in my own home office in Belgium. So yeah, that's it's a breezy afternoon here, so I'm ready.

Rick Denton: 1:38

Well, I don't know if anyone has watched the women's PGA Championship, I will take your breezy and I will raise you wind storm when it comes to North Texas, as we were buried in incredible winds, summers can be quite interesting, can't they, whether they're Belgium or whether they're North Texas. Michelle, you had told me earlier, just like we talked about in the intro there, that you didn't go to school to end up in a call center, but eventually you fell in love with that business. Talk to me about that experience, that journey, and what aspects really captivated you in that space.

Michel Stevens: 2:11

Yeah, well, that's the story, Rick. I remember that I came home and I told my mom and dad, mom, dad, you know, you paid for years of journalism studies. I'm not going to use them right now because I can't really find a job. But you know what? In the meantime, I'm going to work in a call center next town over three months, and that's it, and then I'll have a real job that those were my exact words. I was still young.

Rick Denton: 2:41

I love have a real job, air quotes for those that are listening and not watching.

Michel Stevens: 2:45

Yeah. So yeah. And then the funny thing was that I gave myself three months, I also told to the to the recruiter, actually, I said, I'm gonna work three months here, and then I'm gonna have another job. And so after three months, my my team leader came back to me, and she asked me, So what are you going to do? And I said, I love it. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's one of these magical places where actually, on the one hand, you have everything, structured processes, applied mathematics, that's what I call them very often. And on the other hand, on the other hand, you have creativity, you have empathy, you have anything but predictability, and that's very human. And where those two worlds come together, you have a call center, you have a contact center, and, yeah, I fell in love with that because that duality really speaks to me. I love it. I still do

Rick Denton: 3:41

that is, you know, I've had a lot of conversations around conduct centers, and that right, that right brain, left brain aspect of it, the the mathematics that you describe, the the empathetic, the human side of it kind of weaves together. You know, I experienced that a little bit, a little bit when I was in my high school job, working at a grocery store, and I know that you had told me about this contact center epiphany that you had while bagging your groceries. So there must be some of that contact centers and grocery stores that bring a lot of epiphanies to place. Tell me about your grocery bagging epiphany, and how did it impact your perspective?

Michel Stevens: 4:19

Yeah, well, that is then, I think, about 10 years later or something, after I started in contact centers and worked myself through to every possible ladder and role. I was, as you say, I was back in my groceries, and at some point I had paid. So there was this terminal that said, Okay, payment accepted, and I was still bagging my groceries, but the payment accepted tone was the signal for the cashier to start with the next customer. And I was like, Hold on, I'm still here. I'm still bagging everything. Hold on. Give me a give me a breather. Here it was that, that pressure on me as a customer that i. Felt. And I realized that me, as a contact center manager director at that time, I was also putting that pressure on my employees, and they were putting that on their customers as well. And I was thinking, okay, so it's not a transaction that is important in this life. It is actually something else. It's probably the relationship. But then the question came to be, yeah, how do you do that at scale? Because in right grocery store around the corner, that's easy. I mean, that's probably a man or a woman who knows everybody by name, and even knows what the children are doing on the weekends. But how do you do that when you have 10s of 1000s of customers, or even millions of customers, then it becomes really complicated, and that's what I did in the last 10 years

Rick Denton: 5:42

can that's actually when you were telling that story, that was what I was thinking about. Is it's one thing to, you know, say, hey, cashier, hang on. I need to bag my groceries at whatever pace that you need to bag your groceries and you write to compare that to the contact center. That same tension exists in the contact center of efficiency versus humanity, speed of transaction versus working with the customer to make the customer feel needed, valued and solve their challenges. How have you seen that tension play out and then be successfully handled between look, we have a business to run and we have customers to serve,

Michel Stevens: 6:22

I think that that is usually the result of a very conscious choice that a company makes. It's a company that has to understand that there are three things at play when playing around with customer experience, because that's what we're talking about. Then they need to realize that there are three forces, and they need to be in balance. It's about creating value, right? Creating value for your customer, creating value for your organization and creating value for your brand. Now, creating value for the customer is something everybody understands from the get go, right? You need to be you need to have a valuable product for for your customer. You need to have a valuable relationship that everybody understands value for the brand is sometimes something that we do forget when we have our customer experience hat on, because, yeah, by the end, we need to be paid in in euros or in dollars, and not in smileys, right? And that is 20 years ago, that was totally different, right? There it was, yeah, we are paid in euros or in dollars, and not in smileys. Screw that. What, what the customer is thinking, right? So there's,

Rick Denton: 7:31

I'm still just enjoying not paid in smileys. You have come up with the next Bitcoin. No, not Bitcoin. The next blockchain is going to be the

Michel Stevens: 7:39

smileys. Oh yeah, bring back the 90s, right? Oh my gosh,

Rick Denton: 7:44

no, no, we can't get paid in smiley So, yeah, sorry you were in our second value there.

Michel Stevens: 7:49

Yeah, so, but yeah, you need to find that balance. And every now and then those things are get knocked off out of balance, and that's because there is a short term scope. You look at the short term gains, and that's when things get really screwed up, really badly, and especially when even if you have those two things in place, like value for the customer, value for the for the brand, for the for the company, then there's still value for the brand. I was in in Saudi Arabia last year, in the summer, and I was having dinner somewhere, and all of a sudden there is this delivery robot who brings our dishes. Now, I was like, okay, that's kind of nice. That's kind of cool. The waiter doesn't have to run all the time with all the plates and everything. And, you know, it makes sense in terms of efficiency, right? And even the customer could be happy because you get your food faster or something, but there is only one thing, and that was, it was in a fine dining restaurant. So that is detrimental for your brand if you do something like that in a fine dining restaurant, right? So these three needs to be imbalanced, and you can only do that when you really understand your customer, your business and the value of your brand to both actually, hey there

Rick Denton: 9:04

Hey there, CX Passport travelers. I want to let you know about CX Passport Live. CX Passport Live helps brands amplify their event's 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 cxpassportlive.com Now back to the show. As you were answering that question, I was thinking to myself, right? But what's the difference between the value to the company and the value of the brand? That robot example is brilliant, because there are plenty of fast casual dining restaurants here in the US, some of which I know use the robot and it fits it makes sense. Look, I'm not here for my best meal experience. I'm here for calories, just you. Give me the fat and lard and the sugars, and I will consume them and enjoy and leave. And you can roll that up on a little robot, but no, when I go to the great steak houses of Dallas, if a robot showed up, I'd be pissed. So I can absolutely see that that was great for the company, really bad for the brand. You've got this kind of inquisitive, observational spirit that I'm hearing. Michelle, I mentioned that you came out of a journalism background. You said even, Hey, Mom and Dad, thanks for the degree, but I'm going into contact center. Since you have been trained in journalism, how do you take those skills into your CX work today?

Michel Stevens: 10:38

Yeah, well, I think that the biggest traits? Well, we are trained for years. We are trained to ask questions, to ask difficult questions as well, and to try and understand not just the problem that we're looking at, but the entire system. And I think that that is something I use today as well. You know, if we are looking okay, customer satisfaction is going down, okay? We can try and find a quick fix for that, but the better approach, and everybody knows this, is to take the time to step back and look at what is the entire system doing. Why is that happening? And one of the things that I usually tell people when trying to explain something like that, is like, okay, so you're measuring you're measuring customer satisfaction, you're measuring customer experience through NPS or customer effort score. Now tell me, what are the circumstances that need to be fulfilled to achieve that? The number right? Let's say that you measure customer satisfaction. What are the parameters, if you like that you need to have for that to happen, like, for instance, in a call center, in a contact center, it would be a low wait time. Wait time under 60 seconds, a very friendly agent and and your case is handled in the first time, right, something like that. And if you can make that connection, then you can try and create the parameters that the circumstances that actually allow a good NPS to flourish. But then again, that is only so the description is only one part of it. You need to do the other the other end as well, and you need to understand so that NPS or that satisfaction score, what does it lead to is that reducing my churn is that increasing my customer lifetime value is that, is that better for my basket size or my my revenue? Whatever you need to make those connections as well. And you can do that if you're stuck with your head in customer satisfaction metrics, it just doesn't happen. So you need to take that one step back. And I'm very fortunate to be in a position to be able to sit in that corner over there and sit in my sofa and think about, okay, so how does that work? You probably

Rick Denton: 12:46

had an innate sense of curiosity which drove you to journalism, or journalism helped you develop that innate sense of curiosity that went beyond the surface you though, are you? You're one when you're working with companies and you're helping them, or really, let's talk about the individual. How are you helping people develop that strength, that sense of curiosity and that, that motivation to go beyond the surface? Because you and I have been at plenty of businesses where the scorecard gets put on the wall. Everybody says yay for numbers that go up, and Boo for numbers that go down, and then they're done and nothing changes. How are you helping grow that sense of curiosity in the companies that you serve?

Michel Stevens: 13:28

I think that there is a part it needs to be in you somehow, right? I think that that is one part of the equation. Another part is that you need to have the space, the mind space as well to to allow that to happen. In many organizations today, we are rushing from A to B as fast as we can. And the problem is that when you're rushing, you will take the route that you know, because that is the shortest route, shortest route. So there is headspace is is vital in in that, and then also getting poked, right? I think that there's somebody who needs to poke you every now and then and say, Hey, what do you think? What do you think about, about this? Or you need some outside influence that that changes your thinking. And I think that, especially that last one, is very difficult today, with the algorithms being optimized for our interests that they know of. So for instance, I'm fighting my LinkedIn feed, for instance,

Unknown: 14:28

where I think a lot of us are, yeah, I

Michel Stevens: 14:31

get fed a lot of things that I know I like, but I like to surround myself with people that are a little bit different, and that I have different thinking. There are people in my LinkedIn network who I actually don't agree with on a structural basis, but still, I do read what they're saying, and I do listen to what you're what they're saying, because I think that that is the key to really try and understand what is. Going on in our system or in our customer experience, or you need to have divergent thinking in your in your environment. You need to look for it as well otherwise, because it won't happen by

Rick Denton: 15:11

accident. That's for sure. That's a, I think, a huge part of that instilling curiosity inside of a company, and that is looking at the inputs that are coming in, whether it's that, cliche business meeting that I was describing with the scorecard, or it's something grander or bigger, but or even smaller. What are the inputs that are coming in, and that even gets into conversations around talent and hiring, and what does your employee base look like, and how are you getting all those voices in? Probably beyond the scope of this episode, but you've given me a temptation to bring you back to go down that path a little bit. I want to go a different direction here and talk about your European experience. You've gone across many European countries, not just travel, but really working and embedding yourself in these cultures. How have these different cultural experiences influenced how you approach customer experience.

Michel Stevens: 16:02

You know, the Europe, European culture is a very important part of my of my life. I grew up in a country where we have two different, three different languages, two distinct, differently cultures as well. From my mother's side, we're from France, like from our father's side. We're from England. So basically, yeah, I was born in that multicultural environment. Anyhow. So Europe, 24 countries, 24 cultures, at least, and as many languages. And what has struck me is that, yes, there are many differences. I mean, the German preciseness compared to the Italian phlegma. Yeah, that is, that is a big Delta. Of course, that's not the same and, but we are all looking for the same thing, and that is, we want to have meaningful lives and and meaningful business relationships as well, and it's very often it's the human connection that makes everything better, that suits everything. Just the other day, I had a business contact over from from Denmark, and he was amazed by how we do business in Belgium, for instance, it's much more on the relationship. We always jokingly said, first we go for dinner and then we do business, whereas in some northern countries, it's the other way around, first we do business. And these are the small things that I learned to appreciate, and it also keeps myself my mind sharp, right? I'm trying to do things, things with that as well. A lot

Rick Denton: 17:51

of times we're on these long flights, we're on these long paths, and we need to take a little break. And it is wonderful when you get to have access to the first class lounge. So I am going to give you access to the first class lounge today on CX passport. We'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Michel Stevens: 18:10

Oh, that must be the northern of Sweden, close to where Santa lives. That's in Finland. But was just that, yeah, that region, Northern, northern part of Sweden, a film that is magical. I took it my honeymoon. Was there and was, was fantastic, really, yeah, you

Rick Denton: 18:28

know, that's not a place that I hear a lot, and it comes from, you know, I'm not necessarily talking to folks that are from that region. Describe the northern parts. I think a lot of us have a familiarity with the cities, but not so much, some of that natural area, other than, of course, you know, the pathway to Santa and his North Pole experience.

Michel Stevens: 18:47

Well, you know, it's vast in winter, it's very cold, but that's great for for a honeymoon, right? Because then you have to cuddle up and, yeah, well, have fun. And with romance there? Yeah, I saw the romance in that. That's for sure. No, but it's actually a magical place. And if you're lucky and you see the northern lights every single night that you're there, yeah, I mean that that is beyond anything you can ever describe. You have to see it to believe it.

Rick Denton: 19:18

And that's what I hear about the Northern Lights. Something I haven't experienced yet is that it looks pretty in a picture, but it's not the same as having seen it right in front of your eyes, going over your head. And that makes me curious for you, what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet? Hot,

Michel Stevens: 19:35

that's a that's a really, a really tough one, because there are so many places that I would love to go. I think that I would, I would really love to go to, to South South America, thinking of Brazil, for instance, that would be a very nice place, or even Paraguay, or Uruguay, something like that, something that is little bit of the beaten path as well. And. Yeah, that would be nice.

Rick Denton: 20:02

Yeah, that would be I've done Brazil. I haven't done Paraguay and Uruguay yet. I've heard wonderful things. So yes, get over there, cross the pond, way across the pond, and way down there.

Unknown: 20:14

Yeah,

Rick Denton: 20:15

definitely. One of the things that I remembered about Brazil was the food. And it makes me think, what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Michel Stevens: 20:23

I'm a very simple guy. I love pasta. Carbonara is my absolute favorite made in the very traditional Italian way. So, yeah, that is you have the choice go to my heart with that dish, for sure.

Rick Denton: 20:40

Well, everybody, you just got the secret of how to connect with Michelle. It is on pasta carbonara. What about the other way? What is something you were forced to eat growing up, but you hated

Michel Stevens: 20:49

as a kid, pineapples. I hate it

Rick Denton: 20:53

really. Yeah,

Michel Stevens: 20:55

I know I am, yeah, a unique thing like that, but I just can't eat pineapples. It is just not, not for me. Wow, yeah.

Rick Denton: 21:04

200 plus episodes. I do not think I've heard pineapple before. You win. It is. It's hard to get a unique answer then, oh my gosh. Pineapple was always one of my favorite fruits growing up, strawberries and pineapples and here you are. It's the one that you just resisted. I love the variety that people provide in that answer. And I promise I'll get you Pasta carbonara and I won't give you pineapple next

Michel Stevens: 21:26

time. Great. You know, I was force fed some some pineapple when I was child, and still have traumas of that, and it's the reason why I I'm in this eternal fight with pizza Hawaii, probably that, yeah, if you eat that though, no,

Rick Denton: 21:42

we're done now. You and I are aligned there. Give me pineapple, but don't put it on the pizza. I am fine with that. You and I are in the same space. Sadly, we're gonna have to leave the first class lounge. What is one travel item, not including your phone and not including your passport, that you will not leave home without?

Michel Stevens: 22:00

My little notebook. I always have a little notebook that I have with me with a black pen. By the way, I only write in black pen. Yeah, you know, it's and especially on those long flights, right? I try to limit screen time as much as I can, because that is really a moment where you can really disconnect. And you know, my little notebook and my pen that works like charm. I can do whatever I can do. I can write, draw diagrams or just write whatever I'm thinking and never leave home without it.

Rick Denton: 22:40

I love the notebook, and I love the specificity of the black pen. The Notebook really intrigues me. I'm one that I need my distractions on a plane. So as much as I love getting disconnected, the plane is not where I'm going to be in the notebook space. But it makes me think about something that is so true in business today, especially around technology companies are chasing the latest trends, and whether that was true in the 90s, the odds the teens. Now, of course, people think in AI and all that, but how do you advise organizations to focus on the tools that actually enhance customer experience? A la your notebook, not the shiniest new tech, but it was highly important to you, rather than a company getting actually distracted by that shiny new tech?

Michel Stevens: 23:26

That's a question that I've been working on for the last year, year and a half, in a very intense way, because a lot of organizations today are lured into the promise of artificial intelligence and large language models. And however, what I do believe is that if you want to really understand the value of a technology, it needs to be become boring first. So you need to tinker around with it. You have to play around with it. You need to understand its limitations. You need to be stressed out and frustrated by it, by its limitations, because only then you start to understand what it really does. So when the shiny wears off, I compare it to the chess computers of the of the 60s, 70s, 80s. You know when, when they came around, everybody was like, wow. That's artificial intelligence. That is super human. That is, wow. That is incredible. Today we yeah, we laugh at it because, yeah, we all know it's a big table of possibilities. It's a matrix, right? And it's just an algorithm. And that's the thing. Once technology becomes boring, then you can wrap your head around it, and you can finally understand it. And because you can understand it, you can actually play with it similar, similarly, what we did with steam, for instance. So steam engines came around at some point, and what we did with that was we powered water wheels right to grind grains or something or whatever. And. We did with that steam power was pump up the water to, yeah, nine feet, 10 feet up, and then it would fall on the water wheel, and that would power the grain mill. But if you think of it, that's That's silly, because you can power your grain mill with with the steam as well. But it took us even a few more decades to figure that one out, because we didn't have pistons and anything. So again, technology has to become boring. You have to understand it before you can move forward. And I think that today, with AI and llms and Gen AI, we are at that point where we are finally starting to understand its limitations. Getting really frustrated at that. I've been shouting to my LLM as well. I mean, other people have, probably have as well.

Rick Denton: 25:43

Well, be careful when they end up ruling us. You want to be on their nice side, so be careful.

Michel Stevens: 25:49

I was still an LLM, thank you and everything, but, but that's, that's a point where we start to understand the limitations, and that's when it gets

Rick Denton: 25:59

interesting. What did? What a fascinating phrase, what a fascinating way of thinking about it is, once technology is boring, then it's truly usable, then it's truly understandable. He gets us into that, getting value out of it. Conversation. And you've talked about that, you've talked about how customer experience is absolutely more than meets the eye. You advocate for bringing business back into customer experience, just like technology needs to be boring to extract the value. How are you helping companies align customer experience strategies with well, that magic phrase, tangible business outcomes?

Michel Stevens: 26:35

Yeah, I think that a lot of people need to first understand what is strategy right, and what is, what are the operations? I see a very big disconnect between the two today. So whereas top management is thinking about strategy and only strategy, and they don't understand the business anymore, and vice versa, people are only with their nose into operations, tactical or operational. I leave that one in the middle, but they don't see the connection anymore with the strategy. And I think that that is vital. If you want to go somewhere far, if you want to go something somewhere fast, then you need to make that this, that connection with between strategy and tactics and operations. Again, I really value the times where the CEO or senior manager was in a factory, for instance, was an engineer by trade, not saying that we should go back to that, but some love for the, for the profession, for the for what they do, would be nice. Actually, less of managers and more of traits, men and women, I guess

Rick Denton: 27:42

I think there's a lot of value in that. We're hearing a lot of that conversation even outside of customer experience, outside of that, in the sense of getting out of the esoteric and the theoretical into the tangible, the practical. Michelle, that was, I love, where we kind of ranged here, this, this exploration of customer experience, of technology and the fact of, hey, look, if it's boring, that's when you're really starting to extract the value folks. If folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to customer experience, where can they turn to learn more?

Michel Stevens: 28:16

Well, LinkedIn is the easiest way. So I'm very active on the platform. And, yeah, just write me a message, and I promise I'll always reply, because awesome. I try to be a nice person as well.

Rick Denton: 28:31

I think a lot of us try to do that as well. I'm glad to hear that of you, listeners, viewers, you know, scroll down show notes, there's the link connect with Michelle. Michelle, I truly enjoyed this conversation. I think the journalism curiosity that you bring to it allowed us to have a really juicy chat. And I appreciate that, Michelle, thank you for being on CX passport.

Michel Stevens: 28:54

Thank you for having me, Rick, it was really a pleasure.

Rick Denton: 29:02

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.