Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode well 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. We are in the presence of cx wisdom, I am so excited to talk with Diane Magers today. I've had the pleasure of seeing Diane talk at many events. And each time I have come back with a specific item, or really a suite of items, I can apply immediately to my customer experience approach. companies worldwide look to Diane for leadership for their customer engagement, strategy, design, development and execution. I know that my ability to tie specific financial results to customer experience initiatives comes directly from what I've learned from Diane, she is an absolute leader in the CX space. Diane, welcome to CX Passport.

Diane Magers: 1:14

Oh my gosh, it's such a pleasure to be here. Rick, thank you for the kind words I I really appreciate it. And I'm glad that's the takeaway, because that's my mantra. I want people to learn and have a few a laundry list of things they can go back and actually do. So we're going to talk about the how more than just the what today.

Rick Denton: 1:30

Excellent. Yeah. And I am definitely example a of taking nuggets away from anytime I've heard you talk. So I know here in the CX world, we talk about how employee experience is vital to customer experience. It's a known known mantra, right. But yet too many companies still don't recognize or leverage this. Why do you think that is?

Diane Magers: 1:51

I believe that they're not really defining it the way that we think they should. So I'll give you an example of that. So when I say the term employee experience, a lot of people think, oh, that's about the survey we do for them, or that's the bagels and perks that we give to employees. And you know, it's, I call it kind of beyond the bagels. Those are all great things, and they're important. But what we're talking about really is employee experience as exactly what we do from a customer experience standpoint, we should be putting that lens for employees. In other words, you should have ongoing listening and conversations with them, we should be looking for the pain points of what what's difficult about them getting their job done. How are we understanding their emotional connection to the brand? Everything that we do, it's just turning that lens on the employee? And then employee engagement is actually the outcome of that. So for like employees to be engaged? How are we going to understand what that means? And what does it look like? So I often kind of separate it into Are you conducting employee experience opportunities to have them put discretionary effort against you know, like, be nicer to customers? And and do these things for customers? Or are you truly focused on their experience as a customer that brand themselves? So I just asked people to kind of separate those two things out and really think about it in a little bit different way.

Rick Denton: 3:20

Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of separating out experience and engagement. It's almost one leads to the other, they certainly inter relate to each other. I definitely, I can see what you're saying there. I'm curious, you know, have you seen some interesting examples of companies getting that right?

Diane Magers: 3:38

Yes, I can. I can talk about one organization, a medical device company, who, when we worked with the call center team, one of the things that they were very frustrated with were, you know, we're taking all these calls, and we're not we're feeling we're not really giving customers what they need. And so through several workshops, and through engaging them and focus groups and looking at the data and having them come in and do insight generation from the data. So we'll talk about that a little bit. We were able to identify where they could contribute to ideas, and actually become part of working teams with whether it was the digital team or it or marketing to work with them to solve the original problem that was driving the car in the first place. So that they felt like one they were in control to they had an impact and they weren't just kind of picking up the pieces from these broken experiences and their ability to contribute and be heard and be valued drove retention rates that drove referral rates. So Glassdoor, you know they were out there talking about how great it was to work that they felt, you know, valued. There were the reviews went up, their productivity went up. So all the measurements that came from just allowing them to be a part of the solution, and what that did for the organization from a financial standpoint. So it was it was amazing to hear their story. We went back a year later, and we're talking about the next phase of what we were going to do. And many of them had moved on in the company, because they discovered that they, you know, they were trusted and valued. And so they were seeking out, you know, additional pieces. But the people coming in, said, It was one of the reasons they selected the organization was that they had heard about how much they were using, even their care center agents as as ways to understand the experience and how they treated.

Rick Denton: 5:28

What's so interesting in what you're saying there is it and I realize there was a ton of work that went into what you're saying, right? I don't want to say that was simple, but what you're describing these aren't esoteric, and really deeply complex concepts, to involve the people who are the closest to your customer, your frontline individuals in the solutions, not just extract as much value out of them as possible and chew them up, but rather make them a part of the solution. Why wouldn't a company do that? What are some of them when you've talked with companies that are resistant to that? Or where you've seen that kind of resistance? Because it sounds so simple? And so right? Why wouldn't someone do that?

Diane Magers: 6:05

Ah, I don't think they have it in their mind. Like it's, it's they almost what I feel is happening now. And we can talk about this psychologically, but I feel like because organizations are kind of over rotating on technology and data and digital, that they're really forgetting the human being behind it. So you're right, this wasn't a a program that really had anything to do with digital other than us, or technology, other than just looking at the data and using it. It was completely human driven. And one of the things that I think they realized the eye opener was, you know, we need to take care of our people. And we need to understand what's happening, because they're the ones who are really driving the business results for us and taking care of our customers. And so there's this shift the shift back to humaneness. I think for many organizations, right now, those things that can be done are, are fairly simple. Like I'd say, it was simple to do it, we had to get, you know, fight for time, because these are, you know, paid employees by the hour, and all the things that go along with it. But once we kind of got that buy in, you're right, it didn't take much to do that. It's it's, it's much like us as human beings, right, the small things really make huge difference.

Rick Denton: 7:17

Boy, I love that I love I think, here, I already have what we're only a few minutes in and I have my first nugget that I'm taking away from here. And I love that phrase shift back to humaneness. I feel like I may just sit and steepen that for a little bit and let that kind of wash over me because I really liked that you did talk about to the you mentioned financial results in there. And I definitely think of you as a champion of helping companies tie customer experience to ROI. Yeah, absolutely proving that there are financial results with creating great cx. But let's extend that to the employee experience. As you alluded to earlier, tell me more about your approach to ROI and employee experience.

Diane Magers: 7:55

What I think we need to uncouple is the fact that many people attach employee or customer or partner supplier, whatever whatever person you want to talk about experience to a metric. So a metric is an outcome of something like Net Promoter or effort score or trust index, whatever it is you want to do. And what I ask organizations that I worked with is to think about the measures. Right, so how many people stay longer, like we talked about with the medical device company? What's the tenure? What's the training approach? What is turnover cost? You think about that from a different perspective of how are you going to know that this actually worked? And they say, well, human beings, they're being engaged and involved? Well, yes. But how many people were were part of that? How did you upskill those folks, those folks learned a lot just by participating. So there's tangible and intangible things. But if you look at those measures, you're able to say, Oh, my gosh, we were able to reduce our cost of acquisition for new talent, we're able to see better productivity, were less turnover, that that longer term. So when I think about experience, I think people just don't have the right lens, on how they're looking at it to truly measure that. Because the metrics tell us what they think about it, like how satisfied they are about their job, right. But it doesn't tell us the why. And so the measures and the feedback and the conversations we need to have with employees are the why. And so once we figure that out, we're able to bring that in as part of what do we need to be doing differently?

Rick Denton: 9:35

Yeah, that it's it's that second layer, is what I'm hearing there is and I can see that I can see kind of that natural inclination to go after that first layer. But helping a company understand go one level further. And that gets you to where you're going to see and not just see but understand what that return on investment might look like.

Diane Magers: 9:56

Yeah, so think about, think about this in your head. If you think About the model if you have something like a net promoter or cset. And I'm not saying they're bad, I'm just saying there's just a part of the story. Those things correlate to revenue or cost, right? If you have a higher Net Promoter Score, everybody nods their head that yes, there's, you know, higher revenue, and they can correlate, there's the calculations you can do to get there. But what's missing is when you think about the measures behind that, of how long did they stay, what was our hiring, time? frame, how much time How much do we spend in training, those are measures and those can be quantified much easier. And in addition to the the twins, I call it, of telling that metric story, talking about the measurement story. And defining that to the actual business value. Everything eventually boils down to three things, its cost revenue, well, and profitability if you want to talk about profitability, right. And then the goodwill on the bottom line, I always say to people, don't forget to take credit for the intangibles, because that's why a goodwill exists on the balance sheet. Right? That's what that all that is is your brand equity. So you have to kind of highlight that to the fact that your organization is more collaborative is a critical, important thing this in this day and age, why wouldn't you have that as a target goal? Right? And that's an intangible, but really has a huge impact?

Rick Denton: 11:22

Well, it does. And I think it has both that internal effect, right. So if you're more collaborative, you're going to be more creative, you're going to be designing products, or whatever your companies product or objective is, that will be easier, cheaper, faster, better. But then there's also that just, I'll just say it kind of silly, almost just those good vibes, right. So a lot of us know, certain brands that are highly regarded as being great at customer experience, because they provide great employee experience and those sorts of things. Give them that halo effect. I think of actually one of them. You and I are both here in the North Texas area. And it's home to Southwest Airlines. And they are they are well known for certainly historically some quirky and fun, you know, in cabin experience, and I've always had that kind of delight from a customer experience, but they're also sort of legendary in their approach to employee experience and culture. What of what have you observed they are?

Diane Magers: 12:13

they are. Well, I know that Heather from she's their director of innovation. And one of the things that we were having a really fun conversation around is you know, how she really immerses herself in living that life of the of the traveler. Understand, like she said, I spend so much time in airports. So I'll just go and sit at the airport for three or four hours and just watch people I'm like what I want to I want that job like I want to go I want to get paid to watch and and think about how to make a difference. And so what she she talks a lot about is how they can actually kind of brainstorm on what that does for an employee's or her whole approach with innovation. And with many companies, and you can even think about here's another exercise that you can go do Is she says we spent a lot of time really thinking about and and brainstorming on, what are the things that we're really going to learn as a result of doing something like this. So an example of that another company, not Southwest, but but similar to what Heather does, is we spend a lot of time really thinking about when we think about an employee coming and being a part of a journey mapping session, let's just say and, or a project. we brainstorm around, what are the benefits that that person may get out of this participation? One, because we need to go sell it to their leader, what's in it for my person if I give you their time. And so we talk about things like expanding their ability to become a technologist or at at&t, it was, you know, workplace 2020. This is back, you know, years ago and 2013, I think, really thinking about what skills that person is going to develop, that they learn more about the organization and they become more generalist. So in this day and age, we want people to understand more about each part of the business not just being their silo, right? They're building those skills. They're learning the skills of design thinking when they come to be a part of the project, highly sought after brings innovation, makes it work. So all of these things that we talked about, were purposeful, and intentional about saying what are the benefits to the organization of engaging these employees being part of these, rather than just saying we're going to get a cross functional team together? Okay, like that. What am I going to get for that? Right? Yeah, if you're a leader, So, anytime I've been a leader, I'm always thinking about, oh, you weren't one of my people to be a part of that or we're doing this activity and I naturally go to, you know, how is that going to really better things? And so if I'm able to answer that question, as a cx leader about how I need people to come on, I haven't had to tell them business case story, yeah, and tangible and intangibles for their for their people. So that's one approach to helping yourself. I would say bring engagement along but also the impact of of what you're doing.

Rick Denton: 15:01

I do like that you certainly have a theme that is woven through this entire conversation that is go that next level. So if you're on the surface, alright, cross collaborative team. But then why? So asking the why thinking that next level? What is that metric? What is the actual outcome? What is that next level, you know, going back to thinking about the Southwest example of Heather's sitting there in the airport. And, and I'm kind of like that, that I would love to just sit and people watching an airport. I know. It's, it, perhaps is something I need therapy for, but I do enjoy actually being in airports and that, but what I like about that, as you've described someone who is trying to live the life of the customer by living in the shoes of the customer, have you seen that be particularly impactful in other areas, getting into really understanding what a customer is experiencing so that a company can then derive? How to create the best cx?

Diane Magers: 15:53

Yeah, yeah, but I'm going to take it okay. So one step further, that's always what there's the theme of how they, that's how they describe me at one step further. So, so I would say, for Heather, for example, most of the time, even when she's sitting there, she is actually also engaging with the employees, and talking about the things that stand in their way from doing whatever they want to do. Going down and talking to baggage handlers, you know, talking to the flight attendants, while the flights going on and kind of watching their behavior and then following up afterwards, right, it will extend that to the employees. So so so here's an example of one of the things that just about got me fired at one organization. But that's, that's me, right, pushing the envelope. Excellent. We, the company had a lot of issues. And one of the things that the executives were just kind of in denial, you know, we were showing him all this information about what customers were going through, and they were rationalizing it away, like that's a one off, that doesn't happen very often. So we decided that we were going to have them mystery shop. And so we wrote up scripts, and we set up dummy accounts for them. And we asked them to go into the retail store to go to, to call the Care Center, to go online and try to do these things, which were very common things our case use cases, I guess, if you would say, and the executives coming back or so fired up, about what experience, they'd gone through and couldn't deny what they felt like going through it, and then what impact it was having on the organization. So when we then said, well, because of those experiences, we're seeing this defection, we're seeing these things, then they're like, Oh, now I can act employed customer. But what was ironic about that is when we the set, the second phase of that was having them go in and actually do the work. So go into the care center and not take calls. But listen to calls, go in the retail store and watch, observe, go in and really see what's happening, not just go and try to experience it, but watch employees and where they struggle. So that that empathy that they developed not only for the customer, but also for the employee. So we again, folding that that map out as I call it, is take that immersion one step further and make it about what the employee is experiencing and what they're able to do or not able to do as a result of the environment that you've created.

Rick Denton: 18:32

Little change of pace here, wanna stop down, grab a bite to eat, get a beverage here in the first class lounge. And I want to ask you what is a dream travel location from your past,

Diane Magers: 18:42

allow it to have to be that would have to be a toss up between New Zealand and Norway, New Zealand, you close your eyes and think about the pictures from a lot of movies that you've seen Lord of The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. It is such a vast difference in ecosystem as my husband says, as a biologist, from sitting on the beach to walking up to the top of a mountain where there's snow. New Zealand has everything. And I spent a day very rarely do I take a day off but when I spent a day with a backpack going across New Zealand from vineyard to vineyard doing wine tasting all day, so I would have a taste at a vineyard have a little something to eat I hiked to the next one was just you know, a couple couple miles away. Have a taste there. It got to me to just wonderful, wonderful people and just spent the day kind of just soaking all that in.

Rick Denton: 19:44

Oh my gosh. And it's so after this episode, I'm going to be asking, Hey, can you send me the link for that hike so I can learn a little bit more about that. That sounds like one that would be particularly interesting to me. So thank you those wonderful experiences but now a dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Diane Magers: 19:58

My husband and I who We've known each other since kindergarten. And we've been married for 30, almost 40 years now. We had planned a trip to Italy for our anniversary, because neither one of us have ever been there. So we're going to go to Paris and then Italy and spend time in wine country you see and a theme here.

Rick Denton: 20:17

Yeah. So next level and wine will be the title of the episode.

Diane Magers: 20:21

Yeah. And of course, we had to cancel that because of COVID. So that's still on my bucket list.

Rick Denton: 20:28

Hoping you get there soon. We're certainly hoping for that. So what is a favorite thing to eat?

Diane Magers: 20:35

Sushi and and pasta.

Rick Denton: 20:40

Let's not combine those but yes too delightful. Yeah. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat, but you hate it as a kid?

Diane Magers: 20:48

Nothing.

Rick Denton: 20:50

Okay, I like that.

Diane Magers: 20:51

There is I love brussel sprouts. I love okra like, I don't care. You can name it name of food. There's nothing I really won't eat. Ask any of my friends. They'll tell you. She eats everything and a lot of it.

Rick Denton: 21:05

That's fantastic. Kudos to you. What I'm finding funny is brussel sprouts has now come up in multiple episodes. You're the first to say that you liked them. But it is interesting to hear. What is one travel item you will not leave home without

Diane Magers: 21:21

Warm socks.

Rick Denton: 21:28

Diane, I want to go back to the airline industry. And as we went through 2020 and the various approaches to cx during the pandemic, all of them trumpeted their cleaning approach somewhat further and dramatically reduced the passengers in the plane such as by blocking middle seats or reducing capacity. How do you see these COVID reactions to cx either specifically the airlines or just traveling hospitality in general, impacting the customer's choice and thus their spend going forward?

Diane Magers: 21:57

Well, I don't know that the criteria I mean, the criteria is probably changed. But the tactical functional piece of you know, are you keeping things clean, are you aware, are all important? I don't think anybody's going to say that isn't that isn't number one, as we go back, you know, is the hotel clean? What I think they probably need to be thinking more about is what I call these subconscious indicators of what you're doing to invite people, so many people now that are traveling, they're traveling and having experiences, but part of traveling is meeting people, like I talked about, you know, meeting people and getting to experience the culture in that way. And those who are really thinking about, you know, what are truly the human needs that I can bring into this rather than, hey, it's a great buffet, it's a clean room, those things are going to become table stakes. And they're really going to have to get creative, because as the industry, I hope rebounds dramatically, and actually goes kind of overboard, which would be wonderful, is you know what's going to make the difference, if that's just the basics for what people are going to expect, yes, they'll make decisions there. But what else, so I'll give you an example of one small boutique hotel in Denver, who is making the what I would call the experiences. So they have a downtown tour of old downtown, you can go tour, the baseball, they've redone the Union Station down there. So you can have somebody who's lived in Denver, a long time take you on a tour to all the art, you know that. So they're making that a part of just offering it to people who are coming to the hotel. So they're looking for ways to engage people coming with the hotel, but also what they're looking for to learn more about the city and come back, right?

Rick Denton: 23:51

I do. I like that it actually reminds me of a trip that my family took Well, actually to Italy, but it was clearly obviously pre COVID. And one of the things that we really enjoyed was doing in Venice, we did a walking tour. And in Florence, we did a cycling tour. And it was exactly what you're describing, you've got this, really walking you through the things that go well, let's stay with the theme one level deeper than what you might get on the surface as a regular tourist just walking around and observing on your own. And those are, those things are kind of fun. And I think you're right that a lot of this will be the cleaning and everything else will be the table stakes. But it's going to be how are you kind of creating that deeper connection. And again, going that next level further, it makes me want to go back to something that we talked about earlier, and that was going back to employee experience. So we may kind of find ourselves finishing out here with employee experience. You know, we were talking about Southwest we're talking about other cultures. Well a lot of that is built inside the company but a lot of it is also you've got to continue this influx of talent that feed needs that type of culture and feeds that sort of thing? How have you seen companies really focused on bringing that inbound talent to continue to amplify that great employee experience continue to be a part of that great culture that beats employee experience or customer experience.

Diane Magers: 25:17

Um, I read somewhere the other day that about 26% of people in post COVID are going to be looking for a new job. Wow. Yeah, and I don't, I don't think that means they're looking for a job, I have to go back and find it. And I'm happy to go search for that that document. But what I, what I interpreted, the way that I read it was that 26% of people who currently have a job are going to be looking for a job. And the reason they're stating is because they have either gone through Heck, as they have tried to motivate themselves, so many changes, changes to business models, changes to org structures, changes to their roles, that that pressure has been so much. And they've learned more about how their company operates in a moment of crisis, which, as we know, shows a lot of work sometimes, but also shows a lot of times what the company is really made of, and I think people have come to realization of, you know, one, life's too short to do something you don't want to do. We've all been very introspective. But too, am I in the right place? Am I in a place where I feel like my talents are valued, right. So I'll give you an example of that. I had up I call this my floating in the pool moment, I had a leader who called me in and it's not the first time I've heard this, he called me in and said, you know, Diane, you can't stay in your lane, you're always thinking about this big picture, you get your projects done, but you're always trying to bring in these other things and expanding scope. And, you know, your work you're working in with, with different people and needed to just kind of focus on things like, Well, you know, I felt I felt horrible, it was like, I gotten the job done. But obviously, I didn't do it the way that he was he was asking, and so after, so I was a little bruised, you know, fell on me. And that's not really good feedback. So I go Think about that. Let me introspect a little bit and figure out what's going on there. And what I began to realize is, you know, he was probably right, and in some ways, but in some ways, I was like, you know, what that tells me there's, there's a company out there who really wants somebody to have this bigger picture and connect the dots. And that's what I love to do. And that's what I'm good at. So I'm in the wrong place. I tendered my resignation, the next the next week, I was just in the I was in the wrong place. It wasn't I wasn't valued. So I think people are having those floating the pool moments of being introspective about where they're the work that they're doing, how their company brings them along, how they're treated, and what they really want from an organization. And so this call to action for organizations, if you're a leader, is to define the culture that you're creating, and how you want people to feel and the type of people to your question about talent, and this full circle, question of how talent is, what is the talent you're looking for? And the type of person that you want in that role? Not just the skill sets, but what's that personality? Like? What values are you looking for? And how do you want those people to feel being part of your team?

Rick Denton: 28:32

Wow. I like that. And I'm glad you had that floating in the pool moment. Because I actually hearing the story, I kind of gasped a little bit thinking about someone saying you're you're thinking too much big picture? Well, isn't that what we want people to do and connect the dots. So how wise of you to go find that opportunity. So Diane, this has been spectacular, I've really enjoyed talking with you. The again, kind of nuggets that I think of walking out of here, take let's take that example right there. That is a direct example of how a company could tie employee experience to an ROI because that company that you left now has to go find someone new has to replace the talent that you brought in there. And so I loved our discussion around tying employee experience to ROI. I certainly liked hearing about the Southwest example of getting out there and going to that next level and absolutely right. The theme of this was going next level, understanding the metrics, but then what are the outcomes? And what does that actually tie in? And yes, another specific nugget that I take away is I'm going to go to New Zealand and I'm going to put a backpack on and I'm going to taste wine and hike and just thrive in every moment of it. So, Diane, thank you for all of those wonderful things. Thank you for the conversation today. I've really enjoyed it. And I appreciate you being a guest on cx passport today.

Diane Magers: 29:50

Well thank you so much for this. It's awesome for you to be doing this and getting these nuggets and sharing them. So thank you and everybody have a wonderful day and here's to the next here's to the next phase of us growth, personal growth and wealth.

Rick Denton: 30:07

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.