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. Today's guest Mindy Lentz is what I think of when I think of a leader and developer of contact center teams. Mindy and I first worked together on a project to build employee engagement in a remote workforce made up of teams across the globe, years before the pandemic came to impact all of our lives. Being ahead of the pandemic generated remote workforce wave offered a great place to experiment and discover what really works to build agent engagement and provide an environment where careers can thrive. What I love about Mindy is that she really understands what the life of a contact center agent will be. This isn't theoretical to her a management training book inspired, she's been in the trenches grew her career to a leadership level, and now knows how to provide that same roadmap for others. Many brings that rare but so vital ability to have both a heart for the agent but also a spirit of accountability. This isn't a world where everybody gets a trophy. But everybody will have an incredible opportunity to thrive to know how they can improve how they can delight a customer and how to lead others. I learned a ton by working with many and I know you will learn today as well. And selfishly. I love talking to people inside the hospitality industry. They have the best stories both work and travel. Can't wait for today's show. Mindy. Welcome to CX passport.

Mindy Lentz: 1:52

Oh, wow, what a warm welcome. All right, you're making me blush a little bit. It was it's also been wonderful working with you. And I learned a ton from you as well. So thank you for having me.

Rick Denton: 2:01

Well, I appreciate that. It's the spirit of hospitality light and warmth. Come on, it's got to be a warm welcoming. Now, here's kind of the flip side, though. I did actually I recently saw a Wall Street Journal article about how adult tantrums are all the rage now. And we see the viral videos and our frontlines take the brunt of this. And I know that's true in a contact center environment. What have you seen over the last year or so from an agent experience perspective?

Mindy Lentz: 2:25

Yeah, it's, it's been very interesting. So the adult temper tantrums is a new phenomenon, right? That we're seeing. But it's actually not I if you're a Disney World person, I call it the Magic Kingdom meltdown. And basically what's happening is, you go you know, when you go to if you've ever been to Disney World, you go with these expectations that everything's gonna be magical and wonderful. And then it's hot, you have to wait in lines and things are happening that you didn't expect, right. So that's what's happening today, our guests are venturing out into this post COVID world and they're expecting the travel to kind of pick up just right where it left off. And they're finding that things are just not the same as they expected. So they're having a little bit of a Magic Kingdom meltdown is their expectations are not meeting the reality. And our agents are definitely on the front line trying to resuscitate that perceived lack of service that they're getting, but they're in the middle between the hotel and the in the guest. So our guests are definitely out there, you know, not experiencing or having the perceived experience that they want it being a reality for them in our in, our agents are feeling a little banged up from having to, you know, again, recover for some of those lack of experiences that they're wanting to get.

Rick Denton: 3:33

Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And so I get it, right. It's crazy out there. And I'd like the the nuance that you're bringing to this this nuance of, it's not even so much that the experience is good or bad. It a lot of times, it's just different than what the traveler expected if they the last time they traveled was pre pandemic, and now they're traveling again, it's a different. And I know that that agent, you even said it has to sit between the company and the customer. And in this brief short moment helping an advocate for both. So how do you encourage the agent's ability to be empathetic? How do you support them in this when the actual experiences aren't ideal?

Mindy Lentz: 4:10

Yeah, so Well, first of all, I'm very fortunate in the agents that we have because kind of organically, our agents already love to travel and they're well versed in our in our brands and our products. So they kind of already understand the perspective of the traveler, which is always great, right? You don't have to fake the empathy because they know what it's like firsthand to be a traveler in those instances. So we've got that going for us first and foremost. And then the second thing is, you know, we really try to get them to adopt almost like a superhero mentality be the superhero that goes in and saves the day and be the one that you know, makes, makes the the things that were happening with our guests wrong, you know, right the wrongs and then also to you know, Hilton has a really good strong core value system. So we do a really good job of just reiterating and reminding them you know, here's what Hilton stands for the light in the warmth You know, hospitality, don't forget our core values. Don't forget why we're here. We're here ultimately for the guests and their experience. So just reminding them of why it's so important to embrace the values and then be an embodiment of those values for our guests in order to make sure there's a consistent experience, not just when they contact us, but also at our hotels as well.

Rick Denton: 5:19

You, you, there's so much in there, that was really interesting, right? I've got to get right. I've got to sit here and unpack it. I may have to go listen to the audio several times, unpack it. But one thing right at the beginning that you said that caught me, and that is your agents tend to be travelers as well. How does that come about? I mean, is that are you hiring for travelers? Or is it people are attracted to Hilton, what makes it that you have the agent community that is so heavily traveler based?

Mindy Lentz: 5:46

Well, first and foremost, we have a fantastic discount employee discount program, which devices, the travelers, right, so there's that and we do get a lot of our agents, they love the Hilton brand. That's actually what brought them to us. So not that we necessarily have to go and look specifically for travelers, so to speak, when we are doing our hiring, but it definitely, you know, understanding and knowing the brand and being embodied in the travel industry definitely helps for sure.

Rick Denton: 6:17

I know that you and I before we were hitting the record button, we were talking about a recent episode, John billings of Hilton as well, it's kind of my Hilton moment here. And he had talked about how that benefit extending even into the BPO world helps them experience it. And and exactly that not only do they live and understand the brand, they become empathetic as a traveler. And I've seen that in other brands as well, when I was consulting for Bose, it was really fascinating how Bose, whether consciously or even subconsciously, the employees that were attracted to work inside a Bose retail store where audio files, they loved sound, they loved beautiful sound. And you could just see it in their energy, when you'd walk in there, because they had a real passion around this delivery of great sound that I've got, imagine the agents themselves for Hilton, because they delight in travel, they've experienced the pain they've experienced, the delight can can can connect with the customer in a particularly unique way.

Mindy Lentz: 7:13

They absolutely can, they not only can connect with the customer, but what's great about the culture within Hilton is our agents really want to not only not only can they empathize and connect with the guests from that, but then they get the backstage experience of understanding the ins and outs of what it takes, you know, to make the reservations or to help a guest from a customer service perspective. And they actively ask us to empower them with more training with you know, cross train us into giving me the tools and capabilities to be able to service my customer. So I don't have to transfer the call to another department, which is something else that we've done, we've been empowering them also and giving them more training more capabilities. So that way, when they are getting those guests, they are able to serve them and they can do a one stop shop or first call resolution.

Rick Denton: 8:02

Oh, that's that's fantastic. Know that and, and equipping them with those tools in the process is so important. Now, I'm going to go a little differently, though. And that is, so we know this term service fatigue, and it comes up often. And frontline, right? They're getting hammered with calls or even just the volume or whatever that means. But service fatigue comes up so often. What does it mean to you? But I'm kind of curious, how do you help agents clear their mind and pivot to the next contact?

Mindy Lentz: 8:30

Oh, yeah. So burnout, right? We are hearing and that's not unique to just us. I feel like anybody who is in the hospitality sector right now is just getting a little banged up in bruise. One because we know the labor shortage, right? There's just not enough help for them out there. So what do you do, right? What are you doing your your agents are coming to you and they're just exhausted. And they just, you know, they're they're doing their best, they really want to help the guests, but they need a break. And that's actually what we've done. We took a look at our rewards and recognition program, we just launched a new platform. And interestingly enough, we launched we gave us the capability to really customize the rewards that we give our agents and we asked them, What do you want? And they said very plainly, we want more time off, we want more breaks. So part of our rewards and recognition program is we Okay, fine. You want more breaks, we're going to give you the capability not just to take hours off, we can even make it even micro breaks you want an extra 15 minute break. Sure if you've got you know, so many points in your bank, you can ask for breaks not even. Yeah, not even where they have to use their bank of coins. We call them points that they earned for hitting certain KPIs. But we gave them all an extra 15 minutes just because we were like You guys deserve an extra break. Just take a minute. Whoo saw an even even past 15 minutes. We have a wonderful capability. We have an app within Hilton called the Thrive app that gives you like 60 seconds. We're like look at a puppy video. We're looking at a kitten right? Just like some sort of pop Positive, you know, image or motion in order to give you that mental mind break that you need in order to kind of refresh, re establish and be able to hit the next guest with a completely fresh outlook and ready to serve them well,

Rick Denton: 10:13

Is that?...first of all, I love the Thrive app and the watching the puppy or kitten videos that I would like to have some external access to that. So you can talk to the Hilton app team and have that leave the features there when I'm stuck in an airport, desperately wanting to get to my next Hilton overnight, and yet frustrated with it. So maybe we can have some traveler Thrive app there too. Is that something relatively new, this this pro? Is that something that was this a pandemic influenced? Was it a post pandemic? How did that come about?

Mindy Lentz: 10:46

So I think even before the pandemic, we and we realized that we had an opportunity to enhance and to customize our reward and recognition program just as always, right? We're always evolving and changing and trying to do better. So this was something that we were working on regardless. However, as a result of the pandemic, we saw that you know what they they need more breaks. And we actually played around Funny enough, we played around with some other types of rewards. We did like, Hey, watch your leader sing karaoke, kind of like that, you know, public shaming of a leader. And they didn't want that. They were like, no, no, we don't we give us our breaks. That's what we want. That's what's important to us right now. So we listened to them. And we took their feedback. And we were able to pivot very quickly to change some of those rewards for them.

Rick Denton: 11:30

That right that there is such a valuable nugget. Because how many times have you and let's not, let's because I know you were other places for Hilton. So let's say it's pre Hilton. But you've sat in a conference room of people that aren't necessarily frontline. And you're designing something for that frontline. And you come up with this great idea. And the frontline says, that's awful. That is not what we need. And and many companies ignore it, they push out these kind of fluffernutter sort of things that folks don't want or need. And instead, the team is telling you Look, just give us a break. We just need a break. And and being responsive to that that voice of the employee is such a vital part of then see how we can see how the dots connect to then that employees ability to deliver for great customer experience. Brilliant.

Mindy Lentz: 12:18

Oh, absolutely. And just to kind of piggyback off of that we actually have agent advisory boards. So we have advisory boards where we constantly know before we were leaving out, hey, what do you think? What about communication? Right? So that way, we're always making sure that we're checking their pulse first.

Rick Denton: 12:32

Like that. I think I think we could talk more about that. But I got an itch to start talking about travel. Absolutely. We're gonna stay in that crazy space. We've heard the term revenge. In front of experience, we hear revenge shopping, we hear revenge dining, even revenge travel as people emerge from the pandemic cocoon. Now revenge may best be served cold, but my goodness, it is not what you want to see out there in the world of experiences. You said something brilliant to me when you and I were kind of getting the idea of having this podcast come together. And it was you called it the Mad Max of travel these days. So you've been out there. Tell me about some of your Mad Max crazy traveler observations. Oh my gosh. So there's been so many. And it's like in a very short period of time where I'm actually physically sitting there watching Oh, this is a this is a viral YouTube video actually happening right in front of me. I'm actually watching something that could go viral. So I'll I will say, I've literally seen a car on fire on the side of the highway. That was what made me think Mad Max. And I'm like, there's any other picture that could just show a travel right now it's a car fire on the side of the highway. Luckily, it looked like everybody was safe. And everybody was fine. We can only joke about it in that context, right? No,

Mindy Lentz: 13:49

I could. Yes, everybody was safe. But I will say one of the funnier things and lighter hearted things that I saw was waiting for a plane I look over and I'm like, why why do I see legs in the air and there was a couple doing tandem yoga poses where he had his companion on his legs and the other people sitting around we just kind of look give each other this like knowing look like and this is the world we live in today. But you know what props to them for channeling whatever energy they had in a positive way versus a negative way but yes, you know, like it was very, you know, they had a little interesting moment happening but you know, no harm, no foul, they weren't hurting anybody but that was definitely a new one for me sitting in the airport

Rick Denton: 14:39

Mindy, we definitely need a little change of pace. I promise that there will be no one performing tandem yoga. In the first class lounge comm take a break from the Mad Max of travel. Join me in the first class lounge. Let's have a little fun here. Dream travel location from your past.

Mindy Lentz: 14:58

So dream can I go left on you for a second and instead of talking about a location because I'm sure you hear about fabulous locations from your guests, and I do as well, but I would actually like to talk about a DREAM Act travel activity from the past. Okay, and, and I'm going to stick with the spirit pun totally intended of the season right now. And one of my most favorite activities that I do while I travel to any location is actually to do a ghost tour. Hmm. So I'll give you a location so to go along with my with my reason why so Asheville, North Carolina is a beautiful spot. Actually, Obama talked about retiring there because it's just this mountain esque town. very eclectic, artsy, but they offer this wonderful trolley ghost tour. And not only do you get to hear from a local firsthand about the area itself, but you get peppered in these really fun story, whether you're a believer or not. Right, you know, I'm totally Ascoli when it comes to some of these things to the molder, that is my husband when we go you know, I'm more skeptical, but whether you believe in it or not, you get to hear about local folklore from a local person, they talk about the architectural of the buildings, and you get to hear some great history. So in Asheville, specifically, there is some you know, we have the Biltmore up there, and we have all of the wonderful local, you know, history that goes along with it. So, I would say, go on a ghost tour, anytime you want to travel, you learn so many things

Rick Denton: 16:19

interesting. I like the the curveball, they're going with the activity rather than the location. I'm not, I think I get spooked a little too easily to do the ghost tour. But I do love the idea of getting the history and getting that local and getting that, you know, getting down on the ground with literally walking around and experiencing that. So maybe not your next ghost tour location. But what is a dream travel location or a dream travel activity? You've not been to yet. I'll give you both. So New Zealand is on our radar. And the reason why is when we travel I love I just love seeing you know, outdoors, mountains, lakes, I'm all about nature. But I want to go walk through back end, I just I want to see Rivendale and we're the hobbits. But being a big Lord of the Rings fans, I would just love to be able to see some of those epic movies I actually did get an opportunity to see Jurassic World Valley in Hawaii. So cool. That kind of inspired me I'm like now I need to go out there to New Zealand and see Lord of the Rings. I don't know that you'll see a hobbit but who knows? Who knows what might be out there. We know that hobbits Who here's a segue I was not expecting but we know that hobbits like to eat and they eat often. So what is a favorite thing to eat?

Mindy Lentz: 17:39

Well, favorite thing to eat? I've been you know, I've been trying to eat a lot healthier lately. So I'm going to talk about my splurge and when I cheat and I don't eat healthy, I love a nice chocolate truffle. I figure if I'm going to cheat I'm going to go all out. And if yes, catch me at a fine and chocolate factory any day with a chocolate truffle.

Rick Denton: 18:02

I love it. You are my I believe my first chocolate truffle answer right? Yeah, a lot of it is pizza or those Italian food or Thai food or something. I like the chocolate so there's almost an elegance to it. The chocolate truffle is the favorite thing to eat. What is a thing so other side your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid?

Mindy Lentz: 18:21

Well shout out to mom. She never forced me feed fed me anything because she would not end well. Her friend actually did one time force fed me to eat green beans and she ended up having green beans all over. So yes, so nothing nothing that I was force fed but yeah, I would say any sort of vegetable when I was a kid not so much now but I was definitely a picky eater when I was young

Rick Denton: 18:46

boy it's funny that is that is the kids revenge to being forced on. All right, you can put it in but I'm gonna bring it back.

Mindy Lentz: 18:52

My mom warned her French she said I don't force her to eat anything but okay if you want to give it a shot.

Rick Denton: 18:58

Oh, well what is one travel item don't say passporter phone but one travel item you will not leave home without.

Mindy Lentz: 19:06

So there's this one's a hard one. But if I had to distill it down to one thing I would say it this is not going to be fun or like superduper cool but it is my vitamins. I cannot go I need my B 12 For my energy I need my melatonin is melatonin a vitamin I don't quote me but anyway, it lives in the vitamin box with everything else to sleep. I need my you know, my union immunization burst. I need all of that. So yeah, my vitamins are coming with me.

Rick Denton: 19:40

Mindy, I mentioned earlier how you and I came to know each other by working on a remote employee engagement project before the pandemic and I know the things we've worked on then such as really focusing on the team lead, intentional coaching and development providing opportunities for employees to feel connected to the overall team. All of that it was so vital. Now I Can imagine those fundamentals did not change. But how did the pandemic change the approach to keeping remote employees engaged?

Mindy Lentz: 20:08

Yeah, so absolutely, they didn't change. If anything, they put them on steroids. Yeah. Everything that we were doing like communication, especially in an remote in a virtual environment is is critical, right? Because you don't have that in office organic environment, if you can just like look at somebody and be like, Hey, what's going on? So one of the things that we had to do was, I mean, probably did meetings, overload it to some extent, but it actually was well needed. We're backing off that now, as we're kind of, you know, not in such an intense period. But communications meetings, we also built what we called like a crisis center. So any updates that our hotels had about amenities and services, we kept that very clearly an up to date with our agents. So we were very intentional and specific about making sure that our lines of communications were open, made sure that we had supervisors and managers on tap as our agents and anybody needed them. So basically stuck with the strategy, just put it on steroids,

Rick Denton: 21:06

that it's so important that you said communications. And I think that's something that gets it often gets bandied about a communications problem, pre pandemic, during the pandemic, post pandemic, we hear communications, and companies will say, Oh, we're going to solve communications, but it sounds like you actually did. Can you give Tell me a little bit more? How did you really know? These are the things that our employees need to hear? And this is how they need to hear them? How did you go about really establishing a really effective have for lack of a better term communication strategy to to improve or increase and support that engagement?

Mindy Lentz: 21:42

Well, first of all, communication, it's it's a multifaceted initiative. Right? So you don't just go at it with one means or one media we have I am we have emails we have. So we're very intentional on what media we use for what type of communication so for example, right, we have just like, you know, conferences, like we get on the phone and talk to somebody if you feel like your agent needs some assistant or some help, you know, talk to them. When it comes to broader initiatives or broader pieces of communication. You know, we have very specific modes and means of doing that where we have, we actually have a specific director of communication, who is responsible for getting that out, and making it engaging as well, right, she does a fantastic job of making videos and things like that. So our strategy is very just based on the topic and what we're doing. But we again, want to stay very intentional and not just communicating out, but then what we were talking about earlier, listening back. So we're checking in and doing pulse checks through just a simple I am like, Hey, how are you? Like, they're not like how are you? But like, how are you mentally? Like, what's going on? What do you need? How can we be of assistance? So it's it's also remembering it's a two way street as well,

Rick Denton: 22:54

is a theme that is definitely coming loud and clear is listening to the employees. And whether that's the unsolicited listening, you're you're just hearing the community and how the the the employee community speaking, or these solicited moments of, you know how I love that not how are you doing, but how are you doing? Brilliant, brilliant effort there, right, really focused on listening and then acting in regard to the employee. Now, on the other side, we've got this, you describe it, it's still Mad, Mad, Mad Max esque out there. And we're still seeing the chaos and the voice of the customer remains just as important as ever, even in spite of the chaos. So I'm curious. You and I talked a lot about Voc when we work together, how is your approach to voc stayed the same? But then how has it changed as we continue to move through the pandemic?

Mindy Lentz: 23:44

Yeah, so we were actually going through a renovation of our voice of the customer process, and again, enhancing it, changing it, right evolving it. And one of the really great things that came out of that was some really robust tools and technologies that allowed us to take and segment the comments that our guests were saying and really bubble up, like, what are we seeing them? What are the common themes, and the crucial part of having that technology and capabilities was that we saw very clearly, that what our customers cared about in the past, not so much the same pose in a post COVID environment, things like cleanliness, safety, right? Those were all things that became paramount and most important to our guests. And it was a you know, so important being able to see that information at a glance. So and then pivoting right, like Hilton policies and procedures, were able to pivot based off of that. So we saw cleanliness was very important. So Hilton, we didn't we have the, our new cleanliness program, right. And then we have, you know, just various information that we're making available to our employees and our agents based on what our guests are saying that they want to know about. They want to know about the amenities. They want to know that the area that they're traveling in is a safe location right now, right so so that's the Some of the things that we we saw that were changing as a result of just listening and looking at our voice of the customer

Rick Denton: 25:05

responses. Yeah, my memory if and I don't know if I'm being 100% precise here, but I do feel like Hilton was very early out there with its branding, co branding with Lysol and coming out with the clean program. And it's interesting to hear you say, Well, so much of that was inspired by the customers telling you this is what matters to us now. And making that quick shift. It's that listen and act aspect of voc. And it does sound like the fundamentals of listening and acting are in place. It's just now the themes upon which you are acting or what have changed. And I imagine you're going to continue to see that evolution I know as I've traveled during the pandemic, but then certainly more that we're God willing, on the back end of it, right, that even my own interests and what I focus on have changed. And so I imagine that's true of the wider customer base as well. So, unfortunately, we are coming close to the end of time here which disappoints me, I guarantee you and I could talk for a lot longer, but I'd like to just close out with nice travel talk. Right? We talked about the Mad Max, we've talked about the chaos that's out there. So I know that travel benefits at Hilton and we talked about it are fantastic. And I'm gonna say it again anyone listening? It really might be time to explore opportunities at Hilton. It's a great place and I I'm sorry for the unsolicited job ad here it is unsolicited. It's uncompensated, but I believe it. It's a great people great opportunity, great benefits at the place. But with those travel bunnies, Mindy. Let's just close out with some of your travel stories.

Mindy Lentz: 26:35

Well, I'll share this one fun little travel nugget. I'm sure my husband's not going to be too happy that I'm sharing this story. But thank you to him again. There's a reason why Hilton is number one place to work right consistently. And that is because it is truly a wonderful company inside and out and the travel benefits, leverage them to go to our Waikoloa resort on the big island in Hawaii, which if you have not been I highly recommend it's a gorgeous resort and it's got a beautiful lagoon in the middle of it with this waterfall it's Can you can snorkel in the lagoon and the lagoon feeds out into the ocean and of course, right as an avid snorkeler, me and my husband and my daughter go out snorkeling and in the lagoon it's not the the water isn't as visit, you know, you don't have quite the same visibility as you do out in the ocean just because it's more the water is more still versus where the waves coming in. So I would say you can have about a five foot visibility as you're, you know, swimming around in the lagoon. So my husband, my daughter and I, my daughter is 11. So just to give you some context of her age, we're in the middle of the lagoon so probably a good three minutes swim to get back to shore. And all of a sudden my husband pops up and he's just like, he can't even speak the level of fear that has overcome this man. And I'm like, what do we all think? Right? Thank you Steven Spielberg. I know we're thinking when somebody panics like that in the middle of the water right knowing that this is fed into the ocean and and the mother in me that my mothering instinct me like okay, do not panic. He's seen a shark I need to get my child to shore as quickly as possible. And so I'm trying to ask him without getting him to say the S word out loud. Honey, what happened? Did you see something down there that disturbs you? Can you say quietly What did you see? And he's like aggravated with me because he can't even catch his breath. He's like, and finally he spits it out sea turtle so this big huge sea turtle caught him completely off guard because he didn't see it coming and swam literally almost hit him in the face as it's went by and I'm like, serious we're and I'm like immediately diving in the water like trying to have my Ariel moment. Turtle but just and then my daughter's just looking at us like wow, these are my parents. Yeah. That was definitely a funny but memorable experience at the Waikoloa Hawaii.

Rick Denton: 28:56

It is that is something that is so true of travel is travel creates those stories it and it's not always the the magnificent. Sometimes it's the small but even I guarantee your daughter when she is 21 when she's 3141. You know, decades later, we'll talk about Yeah, I remember the time that my we all thought my dad saw a shark and it actually was a sea turtle.

Mindy Lentz: 29:19

Right dad almost got eaten by the really scary sea turtle.

Rick Denton: 29:25

I think that's fantastic. Well, Mindy, it's been a delight talking with you. It just hearing more about hospitality hearing more about the care for the agent. How do the agent How have they evolved through this Mad Max period, and just the delight of travel. It's so much fun getting to hear from you and all of your great stories. I do hope that you get out on the road soon. Thank you for being a part of CX passport today.

Mindy Lentz: 29:50

Thank you so much for having me a pleasure as always.

Rick Denton: 29:56

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.