Rick Denton: 0:06

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we'll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. Sometimes when you make a networking connection with someone, it just clicks, it can be entertaining or shared perspective or thoughtful insights. But something just clicks. That's what happened when I met our next guest Bram De Vos Chairman of the Board of Hello customer. from the get go, Bram showed a depth of understanding both the conventional wisdom of cx but also brought me some very intriguing contrary and thinking as well. Over the time, we've known each other I've also really enjoyed talking travel and the global perspective of Bram , coming to us from Ghent, Belgium. I am excited to have this chat with Bram. Bram . Welcome to CX Passport.

Bram De Vos: 1:10

Hey, Rick, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rick Denton: 1:12

Looking forward to it. For sure. Well, let, let's start right away with travel. Since you and I have talked about that so often before, tell me about some of your travel experiences, especially how you know diversity shapes your approach and what you've experienced throughout the globe?

Bram De Vos: 1:26

Well, yeah, traveling is a wonderful thing to do. And I think there's no no time as the present to think of that, because we cannot travel very much with the whole COVID-19 pandemic. So we've been almost a year without it. And and you feel what you're missing. You missed that, that. Yeah, that discovery of diversity, those things that you that you find in other places, other people you meet other climates, you experience other other ways of putting things, it's wonderful thing, it's very inspiring thing. And, well, I've done quite some traveling in the past and the past years. And, you know, the longer I do that, the more I do that, or the older I get, maybe I should put it that way. At first, I was very much focused on what was different. And everything that was different was was brought some joy to my heart. But the older I get, the more I find that wherever I go, people tend to want the same things tend to love the same things or desire the same things from their lives. And that now brings joy to my heart that, you know, in this globe that we're on, for the period of time that we're on it, we are all in a way the same. And that's something that I find very joyful.

Rick Denton: 2:38

Yeah, I found that same thing true. I'm, I'm reminded of a trip, if you can allow me to go back in the Wayback Machine of 1990, when this little high school kid from the US, traveled to what was still then the Soviet Union. And we'd been told growing up all along how bad the Soviets were, and how the people hated us and all that. And it was amazing. When you actually talk to the humans, and didn't talk government, the government didn't do any of that aspect. But just talk to the humans, you realized, hey, we're all just humans. And it reminds me of something you and I were talking about earlier, you've mentioned a song that I wasn't very familiar with. But it was Paul Simon's myth of fingerprints. And I think you said was off the Graceland album. But correct me if I'm wrong. But tell me a little bit more about your thoughts out that song,

Bram De Vos: 3:21

talking about time traveling. I mean, goes back to 1985 or something, I think. And I remember I remember by the actual vinyl album. Yeah. Okay, that used to exist. That's real archaeology now. But great album, as a matter of fact, an album that that contains a whole lot of traveling in itself, because it's based on experiences of Paul Simon, that, you know, Musiah, you heard all over the world, really great, great album. And at the end of this side, I think of that album was a song deed, it's called the myth of fingerprints. And it's a funny song. It's a funny song, but it's always in my head. And it's something that I think about a lot. I think, if I remember correctly, I'm not really sure. But I think it's about a guy, a talk show host that says, you know, guys, I've been around the world, I've been everywhere. And the string of prints that they say that are so different. They're all the same. So there is a myth of fingerprints. And that's what the song is about. And in a way, it's it's an inspirational song for me, because there's this mixture of things that are different than things that are the same. That's what makes us human, I think, you know, the diversity and the way that we are all the same, and that you find that in that song as well. And for me, personally, I I'm in customer experience, obviously. And I think there is a myth in customer experience as well. And that myth is all about customer feedback. I know that we've been talking about this before. We both love customer feedback, right? We want to tell everybody, you know, please listen to your customers. That's a good thing. I'm not taking anything back from that. But at the same time, there is a pitfall maybe it's not me. Maybe it's a pitfall and pitfall is, if you listen to your customers, if you take the customer feedback, and you take that as the sole inspiration of what you're going to do, you're probably not going to do the right thing. So it's not just about listening to your customers, and then doing what they say, you know, you know, the story of Henry Ford, right? was what to do the faster horse and all that stuff. True. But at the same time, sometimes there's very valid information in what customers in that feedback are not saying. That can be interesting as well. So my point is, don't just take customer feedback at face value, and do whatever it says.

Rick Denton: 5:39

So that's, I mentioned it in the intro, you always bring me a contrarian thought, and you want to talk about a contrarian thought, especially someone with it associated with Hello customer talking about customer feedback, and how you might choose what to listen to and choose what not to listen to. So given how contrary, and that is, in the pure play cx world, how do you guide people? How do you discern for yourself the customer feedback that you should use? And the feedback that you shouldn't? There is just a delicious ambiguity to that statement, I'm curious how you handle that.

Bram De Vos: 6:08

That's absolutely true. There is a there is a delicious ambiguity i like i like the phrase in English is using a story of my life? How do you guide people? How do you help people, you know, what we tried to do is when we look at feedback, and and you know, I think it's, it's a way, it's not necessarily a very original thought. But if you look at customer feedback, customer feedback contains three forms of information. And the first one is very obvious, namely, it is what it says. So that's very clear. And the second bit of information is things that you were not expecting, but it's in there as well. So the first thing is you expect it, you see it, it's confirmed. The second thing is you didn't expect it comes out. It's inspiring. But then there's a third form of information. And that's the thing that people are not talking about. And that's just as important. So how do you guide people who are working with with customer feedback, what we like to do is we like to, to, to enable the customer experience people to take the strategy of their company next to the customer feedback, and just put the two together and see where are the gaps? Are there things that we are doing in our company, strategic choices that we've made, initiatives that we've that we've taken, that customers are not talking about? That's an interesting approach. And it's a very valid approach. And the other way around people who are working on strategy, we'd love to inspire them to say, Hey, take this voice of the customer stuff seriously, because it may help you to decide which choices to make or not to make. So in a way, I think it's it's all about trying to bring those those two focal points, customer experience strategy closer together. And in an ideal situation, you'd have somebody a strategy, who is CX, or you'd have somebody in cx was very strategic, you need that. That's where we want to go at the end of the at the end of the day. So yeah, that's what we want to do.

Rick Denton: 8:06

Yeah. And I like that idea of the three approaches to voc. And I want to crystallize make sure I heard you, right, so there's the thing you were expecting to hear. And then there's the things that you were not expecting to hear. But you mentioned that third one, and that's the not hearing something that you were expecting, yes. What's that do to a company?

Bram De Vos: 8:28

Oh, it does so much. When you look at the from that way, if you look at customer feedback from that viewpoint, you discover so much, you discover so much of what the company is actually doing because it assumed that it was going to be necessary. And therefore this what when we do this, we're doing the right thing, and people are gonna love this, and then you find it fine. Turns out the people not talking about that at all, that says something, it may say, either, it's fine that you did it, you're doing it well enough, don't improve anymore, because it's good enough, right? Or it may also mean you shouldn't have bought in the first place. Now this becomes becomes very interesting when you're thinking about future initiatives, which are the ones that you're going to prioritize, which are the ones that you're going to do. And the very fact that you start discussing this among each other, that it's not just strategy based on some kind of distance vision or some kind of anecdotes right off, right? If you look at voc in a in a structural way, then you will not just base yourself on the words of one or two customers or an anecdote that happens to happen there there. You look at it in a more organized way and therefore you will be able to derive from what you are you're reading what you're saying, you'll be able to derive more truth and that's what we want. And maybe the The technique is to not just look at what is written but what is between the lines. When is not There, and how does that how does that compare with the strategy that we have? It's not an easy thing to do, I grant you, but the risk of not doing it is far higher.

Rick Denton: 10:10

Yeah, I think that's an exercise. That's the part that really opened my eyes when you're bringing that is that's an exercise that a lot of companies don't go through. I know that that's not something I've been a part of all that often. And it takes me back to some of the conversations that I've had with other guests on cx passport, where they've talked about say that there might be a disconnect between marketing and customer experience, I like how you bring strategy to this, it's almost, I'm getting this vision of imagine a company saying we are x, y, and z, our values are one, two, and three, we believe and we deliver these elements to the customer. And then if that is met with complete silence from the customer, when it comes to bringing feedback, and we're not just talking about surveys here, we're talking about any voice of the customer, anything that exists out there, the customer talks about. And I've got imagine that's a mixture of both demoralizing, but then also maybe galvanizing to the point that the company has to say, hang on a second. Maybe we aren't what we thought we were. Have you walked companies through that exercise?

Bram De Vos: 11:11

It's precisely that is precisely that, Rick, it's, it's, um, you know, it's such a while we talk about human beings and what brings us all together. One of the things that brings us all together, which, you know, the creatures that we are, is we are always assuming lots of stuff. That's how we operate. Okay, true. That's true. Right? And the thing that you said, when you said, hang on a second that hang on a second moment, that's what I'm in it for that hang on a second, hey, what have we been assuming here for for so long? And I have personally experienced many situations, where the where companies are starting to, to look at their own unique selling propositions, and saying, hey, hang on a second, if this is, if this is resonating, in such a small way, with what we're hearing, is this then our USP? Or are these are USBs? Are these are unique selling propositions? And if not, what are they and that Hi, hang on a second moment is so very much needed, because our world is moving at such a fast pace, that you know, before you know it, there's going to be somebody else is going to have done that thing of Hang on a second, right. And he's come up with a new proposition. So you have to do it. It's also a lot of fun to do it, it can be demoralizing, it can be frightening. It can be frightening for people as well, people who've been in a position and you've assumed that this is the way right. And then the world changes. I mean, talk about the world changing in the last year with culture, change, right? That's how fast they can go. Well, you have to go through an exercise. And my personal view is, you can have a lot of fun doing it. I have seen companies reinvent themselves as well, by seeing certain obvious truths that had become hidden underneath layers and layers and layers of assumptions. And when that happens, when that that moment of Hang on a second happens, that's great.

Rick Denton: 13:25

Little change of pace here. Join me in the first class lounge, we'll move quickly here and hopefully have a little fun. Dream travel location from your past.

Bram De Vos: 13:33

Who I think 20 years ago Tuscany, Italy. Oh my god. What? What a country. I went there a couple of times in a short space of time I had. Yeah, I knew somebody was living there, which made it all the more easy. But Wow, great food. friendly. People didn't understand the word of English in those days. I have to say my Italian was non existent. But what a beautiful landscape wonderful people great food. Those long summer evenings riding outside.

Rick Denton: 14:04

Oh, yeah. Brilliant. So with Tuscany in the past, what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Bram De Vos: 14:13

Well, that would be it's been a dream for a while. South Africa, South Africa. Oh, yeah. I love to travel there. I've seen I've seen you know, movies and I've seen I've talked to a lot of people have been there a lot of people actually say, you know, well traveled people that say the most beautiful country I've ever seen is South Africa. And so yeah, I really want to go there. Again. That lights in that lights in the air that luminosity that that atmosphere. I want to discover that beauty of the landscapes the I want to meet the people. It's probably it's probably not all that I dream it is perhaps, but I would love to go there the music as well. And I've been told the food Sounds Sounds like it's really Really good and I love to eat.

Rick Denton: 15:01

Well, we're gonna we're gonna keep it that theme then what is your favorite thing to eat?

Bram De Vos: 15:06

Okay, well, well, yes. Lobster. So and I'm told that that there's a place in South Africa where the lobsters are reasonably cheap. So that would be that would be breakfast lunch and dinner with lobster. I just love it.

Rick Denton: 15:24

What is a thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid

Bram De Vos: 15:30

brussel sprouts,

Rick Denton: 15:31

I'm grinning from ear to ear one of these days I'll actually put this out in video brussel sprouts has come up already. Before in an episode, you have a very sympathetic friend in the aversion of brussel sprouts in spite of this renaissance of brussel sprouts right now.

Bram De Vos: 15:46

I still hate them. And blue god yeah, those are really not my best lunchtime moments, I have to say, but I had to eat them back to school. And oh, I can I can. I can still smell them. I

Rick Denton: 15:59

think there's a bit of an irony talking to somebody from Belgium who hates brussel sprouts, but I definitely sympathize. So what is one travel item you will not leave home without

Bram De Vos: 16:11

sunscreen. Alright, that that brings me back to the song by the way. Where since we were since read you know that song? I don't know that song. You have to look it up. It's it's a speech. Put on some

Rick Denton: 16:23

Oh, yes. It's a song that was based off of a speech. Yes,

Bram De Vos: 16:28

yes. If I could give you one piece of advice for the future, this would be it. Wear sunscreen.

Rick Denton: 16:39

Bram The other day I was starting to tell a travel story. And I found myself pivoting quickly to a quirky or negative moment and caught myself. My trip was great. I loved it. Why on earth? Was I bringing the negative into the story?

Bram De Vos: 16:53

Hmm. Well, because you are a human being.

Rick Denton: 16:58

Well, thank you.

Bram De Vos: 16:59

Now I Well, I noticed that even even on a podcast, you are a human being you are not artificial intelligence speaking to me, No, seriously, I've studied psychology for a little bit over a decade now, and I've noticed that this apparently is ingrained in us is when we experience something, we will focus very rapidly on the negative stuff. And well, that's just evolution. That's evolution, you know, if we want a human being when the human mind does is we take the negative because it might be threatening. So we want to take a closer look at that to eliminate the danger. That's basically what's happening. Now, of course, it's not a nice thing, when you are a company that you're delivering an experience, and your customers are focusing on on all the little negative things in there. That's not a good thing. But that is the human mind. That's something that we have to reckon with. So I think that that's the reason why that is happening the same time, there is another psychological mechanism at play, that that might either help you to not focus on that negative thing that is, but also might help companies too, too. Because, of course, you could try to eliminate all the negativity from an experience. But that's very hard to do. That's a great, great goal to have, as a company try to make it as effortless and seamless as possible. But it's not easy. The other thing you might try to do is psychological research has shown that in, in an experience that goes on for some time, let's let's say travel, right? In such an experience, there's good moments, great moments, and maybe moments that aren't that great. If the moments that aren't that great, aren't abominable, aren't terrible, right? Then we can take them into our stride provided that the last bit of the experience is positive. And I know I think maybe you've heard that story of I think it was KLM, the airline company who, who took this bit of psychological truth, and said, You know what, we're gonna focus on that moment when people come off the plane and have to collect their luggage. And if we can make that experience, great, that's a difficult thing to do, obviously. But if we can make that great, all of the other little negative things that went before are going to disappear. So that's something that you can use in your own life or that companies can use in their own in their own environment to say, Okay, how can we make the end of the experience reasonably good, or even very good. And by that way, make the rest of the negativity go away?

Rick Denton: 19:33

Yeah, I was listening to a podcast this weekend. Scott GS? I think it was, and he was talking about NPS and talking about how influential the last x period of time is last five minutes last, if it's a long relationship last day, last week, last month of the relationship, whatever that looks like how that influences it. Well, with all your travels, do you find yourself doing the same thing focusing on that negative is that a Is that a part of who you are as well.

Bram De Vos: 20:03

It's a part of everybody. So it's a part of me as well. And you know what, sometimes you need time to pass, to be able to see that the negative things that were there, maybe in the end, at the end of the day weren't that bad at all. I remember, I remember traveling to Mexico. How long ago was that five years ago, something like that with my family. And, you know, we traveled from Brussels, we had to go from Brussels, to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Mexico City. And I remember that, in Frankfurt, we had to wait a little while because it was a problem with the airplane. And well, thank God, they changed the airplane, which is nice. I do appreciate that. Yeah, we appreciate that.

Rick Denton: 20:44

We all want to get there safely, no matter what the experience is, safety is.

Bram De Vos: 20:49

Absolutely. Right. So fortunately, that didn't happen in Frankfort, they changed the airplanes. But when we arrived in Mexico, well, the bag, our luggage wasn't on it. So probably something had gone wrong with switching the airplanes and stuff like that. Anyway, next day, I'm traveling with my family to look up, which is near Mexico City. And when we arrive there without without luggage, we have to go shopping for some calls, writing some swimming trunks and T shirts and stuff like that. And that was a bad experience. Because we didn't want to do that we had everything in our baggage, and we'll Okay, so very bad experience. Looking back on it now. So many years later, it was a wonderful experience, because then we were in the hot Mexican sun, in a really quaint marketplace with these flashy colored t shirts and pants and whatever. And today, still, I have some of those t shirts today. Still, I wear some of those. And I'm reminded of that great trip. And there's this one t shirt where it's a little logo on the front, but on the back. And I only found out when I took it out of the the plastic wrapper. It said it's huge capital letters coach. So when I wear this, my kids call me coach.

Rick Denton: 22:03

Nice.

Bram De Vos: 22:04

It's one of those, you know, it's a negative experience. Sure, with time you sometimes get to get another look at things and things that were negative, maybe aren't that negative.

Rick Denton: 22:15

I really liked that. And that's true. But you never would have had the opportunity to see the local market, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to have these memories that like exactly an authentic souvenir, if you will, you didn't go to some shop of trinkets, it's actually a true memory that you're taking home, and your kids get to celebrate the coach in you. And it that actually reminds me now You pivoted that in your own perspective. But I know that's very important from just an overall customer experience perspective, pivoting the negative into the positive, bad things happen. It happens all the time. But it's really about how a company handles those bad things in order to restore the relationship with the customer. How do you help companies address that relationship restoration?

Bram De Vos: 23:00

Well, it starts with really enjoying understanding what has gone wrong. That's the first thing again, you know, go away from the assumption. Go away also from the generalization, but go to the individual experience and see if you can understand that or if you can have a system that understands that. So the first thing we like to do is help companies truly understand what has gone wrong, if something has has gone wrong, offering them then the opportunities to to loop back to the customer and to go into some kind of conversation. Even if it's a conversation that's automated. You know, people appreciate the fact people people know that something will go wrong some time. Now people aren't aren't stupid, but they hate to be ignored. So when you reach out to them, you find out something has gone wrong, have the decency to thank them for what they've told you. And if you can make it better, but very often, that's not even necessary. Just apologizing is enough. What what I think is, I had this customer the other day, who said, sometimes we would want something to go wrong, because we have seen that when something goes wrong. And we then interact with the customer. And we do that well. They appreciate us so much more that I'm tempted to make some things go wrong. I said don't go that's

Rick Denton: 24:20

not a not a good strategy. But we do see, restoring the relationship often results in a higher perception of experience.

Bram De Vos: 24:27

But understanding what is what is really going wrong and we you know, we are telcos, we use artificial intelligence to help identify that and to help you see clearly in that. That doesn't take away the fact that you know, you cannot avoid something's going wrong. Sometimes that's just given. But trust people to understand that as well have some trust in human in the human kind. They will. They will appreciate what you're trying to do, even if it's an automated message. I'm not advocating For any automation, as a matter of fact, I do believe in the true human interaction that sometimes that's just not viable. It's just not possible. But truly understanding what has gone wrong, then if you can, if you can work away if you can, if you can get the structural problems that you have as a company, if you can work on those, so that you will have less problems in the future, that's even better. That's the next step. So step by step, you go on, and you keep on improving, but it's never going to end You know, it's never going to be it's never going to be a finished story. If nothing else, the world changes and the expectations of the people you deal with change as well. So you're never gonna finish that journey.

Rick Denton: 25:43

All the more reason to spend as much time as possible, truly capturing that total Voice of the Customer being able to understand who they are, and do more than just listen, but actually act upon it. And I love that Brom. It has been wonderful talking with you again, I love that but he should we start off with travel, we're then going into very contrarian views, which of the idea of Hey, there's some customer feedback not to listen to, but I do love and appreciate the beauty of the myth of fingerprints perspective, that fundamentally we are all the same. And then Yeah, I do. I really did enjoy hearing about the T shirt. And, and how we can take those negative experiences and pivot them into positive. And certainly that is true right at the customer layer with between customer and company, and how can a company restore the relationship when things go off the rails? It's been a wonderful conversation Brahm. I have truly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for being a guest on cx passport. I am very glad you were here. And I look forward to having you on again in the future.

Bram De Vos: 26:46

Well, I look forward to that. It's been it's been as ever a great conversation with you. I do love interacting with you. And yeah, I hope that we can speak again in the future, and hopefully we can travel to actually meet in the future as well. Who knows that would be that would be a great thing.

Rick Denton: 27:06

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.