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. In a classic LinkedIn story, today's guest Jay Thattai and I came to know each other through an introduction from Paul banks. Have a look. He's the Banksy of LinkedIn. The customer experience community does a wonderful job of sharing ideas and practices across the CX world. And I really valued Jays willingness to connect and meet. Jay and I both share a belief that experience is the differentiator in today's marketplace, his approach to customer experience, or to use this headline on LinkedIn. His CX evangelism comes through as he deeply cares about creation and delivery of great customer experience. When he and I planned this episode, he was hours away from a flight from India to the UK. So I knew I had a fellow traveler for the episode. You know, we'll hear some interesting travel tales as well. Jay, welcome to CX passport.

Jay Thattai: 1:22

Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, Rick.

Rick Denton: 1:25

I'm looking forward to this one. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Jason in the UK. Right now I'm sitting in Texas, we're going to have a good time here. But let's, let's start right off with what I intend to have as the title for this episode. And it is the one where CX is yoga. That's a first for me, tell me more what you mean by that.

Jay Thattai: 1:44

Okay, you pick that up. It's perfect. Yet CX yoga has got a lot of similarities. I practice a lot of yoga. And I practice a lot of customer experience. And I find a lot of similarities. If you look at it, the typically in yoga, in Sanskrit, they say there are three qualities in our in a human being, they call it a Sattva, which is the blissful stage. And then Rajas, which is a monkey still on fire running around. Oh my god, oh my god. And then and then there's something called Tamas. Tamas is about sedentary. He not like not emotionless, I mean, yeah, getting into a shell. So if you look at it at a customer, it's pretty much the same. Right? That's a blissful customer who's gonna refer you to friends and family and very happy with brand and experience, you get that customer very blissful state. And there's another customer always complains, always unhappy monkey still on fire. Yeah. And then there's another customer like, who is like, I don't care, I come, I paid I get what I want. I don't care about you. Whether you make money, you grow as a brand, I don't care about you, there's no loyalty. So there are three states sattva rajas tamas. Similarly, you have a promoter de moto passes. Yeah, so I'm not saying NPS is all about it. But I'm just saying there's a lot of relevance between the nature of a customer, how does the brand touch the emotions of a customer. And that's one angle of why there is a lot of relevance between customer experience in yoga. The second thing is, is organic, you can't do a yoga one week and look at a six pack, they got to do it over a period of time and you know, be blissful at it. And then you will see some unbelievable results not just to the physical level at a mental and emotional level. Similarly, customer experience cannot be built over a day or a week or a month and see an ROI is not paid marketing. It's it's, it's touching somebody's lives, it's making them feel the emotion, connecting them feel make them feel experience. And then you see magic unfold. So that's the second reason why yoga and custom experience have gotten common. So that's a stop,

Rick Denton: 3:42

I there's something really beautiful to that. And as an imperfect, and infrequent practitioner of yoga, I tend to use it just more of a relaxation and a physical sort of almost stretching thing. But when you're talking to someone like you who really gets it gets it that really does get at the heart of customer experience. And I especially appreciate how you're saying, Look, you can't just go and there is no hey, let's throw up a survey. And therefore we have customer experience. And boom, we've got our six pack of customer experience to use your your analogy, the there's a discipline to it, there's there's a guidance to it. And guidance is actually something that I think comes to mind as you describe this as well as having someone sort of guide you through it as well, as you're getting started. Have you used this with companies? Have you actually use this with your clients and kind of guide them through even if they didn't know that they were being guided in that way? Were you using this yoga as a model?

Jay Thattai: 4:36

Yeah, all the time because they get it and most of them go to the yoga and they get it and it's the right way to do it because in fact a small practice in the west than then in India where it actually originated, right so West West easily gets the yoga wave customer experience rather faster and an easier to understand. Yes, absolutely.

Rick Denton: 4:58

I think there's something deep there and there's Something else you've said that I find sort of deep and you've spoken about how feedback is different than reviews? And that there's a soulful nature to a review. Yeah. And there's something beautiful there. There's an interesting thought. But it's, it's kind of deep unpack that, for me, what's the soulful nature of reviews,

Jay Thattai: 5:19

sure, so feedback, ratings, reviews, recommendations, surveys, a lot of this has been used synonymous to customer experience, these are the fundamental elements of customer experience, but not really customer experience, in entirety. So but the feedback or, and reviews, the key differences, like for example, you want to go to a search engine, and you want to find about a company, and you see them listed there. And and you see a lot of reviews about that micro small business or even a larger enterprise business. And if you look at that review, and there are positive reviews, there are negative reviews that are genuine reviews that are fake reviews. So the key here is, we don't know who's written that and watch their transaction, whether there was a transaction behind that. But the whole world now believes and makes a decision whether to make a transaction with that business. reading those reviews, wow, look at that, right. So people make decisions based on what's out there without knowing the genuine 80 of it. Right, whereas a feedback, a slightly difficult different where you you, you walk into a place you you don't even put that out in the public. First, you understand, you asked for a harness feedback from a customer who's visited you has got a transaction, or like, you know, they want to give you a genuine feedback, because they take about a minute or 30 seconds to to sort of help the brand grow. That data is not put to the public day when it comes to you. Yeah, as a brand. And you analyze that you learn from it. And then you you make those changes, and then go ask them to review and go tell them like, you know what you told us and we've changed it. Now this is what we are. And then you will see the review, which is out there on a Public Social Forum, that review will be at least a paragraph, rather than saying, Oh, it's a good shot. Yeah. What do you make out of that? Right? Yeah, that's very, that's like, you know, you're doing it for the sake of doing it. So instead, if a feedback is more coming into the brand, the brand understands the feedback, and then you then you ask for a review, rather than directly showing your Google or any other social platform and Austin for your view. In fact, that's disastrous to a brand. So somebody just does it even without having a transaction or right somebody writes something bad about you can't even change it. And all the all the sort of conversations and you know, arguments happen in the public for so new customer walking in, look at that. Look at the recent customers are very smart. They're going to click and say what's what's newest, they're going to see what's newest. A lot of conversations out there, you came into my store now actually, you miss me and all that all this a lot of noise here that Midas will go to an another suggestion from the search engine.

Rick Denton: 8:01

I think what there's a lot to that, sorry, you're clearly hitting my brain and my synapses are kind of stumbling a bit here. There's, there's something special to that, that that nuance between feedback and review feedback. It's something I'm giving to you, I hope and I might even I might even be less thoughtful about it. Because I'm not putting it into the public sphere. But that review is in the public sphere. And we hope that there's some some depth to it. So whether it's feedback, whether it's review, but that soulful input that you're describing, how can a company set up the environments or the processes or even the tools to be able to capture and collect that soulful feedback?

Jay Thattai: 8:39

You know what...It's a beautiful question. We I was speaking to a hospital two days earlier, and they wanted to set up a complete customer experience. And they wanted to start collecting patients feedback, and they want to understand and and they said, you know, give us the tools and techniques. And all I told them was you don't need tools and techniques. Do you have us the ethos and culture? Right, anybody can have the tools and techniques. You can even use a, you know, a farm. And you know, just start collecting data. Do you have the ethos and culture all the way from a staff nurse to an attendant to do every city to the person or the car park and the security guard? Do they all buy into this ethos and culture of delighting a customer or in their case like say making the patient experience a very serene and a very pleasing one because they're already in pain and they coming in with a hope of some recovery and you don't want to go and give them a nasty experience? That's insult to injury. So first, the thing is to before we align the process, could we could we ensure right at the corporate level, right at the sea level all the way up to the door level? Do you have the ethos of experience? Do you want to do that as an organization? Yes, that's first tick in the box. Number two, don't worry about whether you're using an Oracle database or a JavaScript. The customer cares At least Can you keep customers the center and the customer and one says radius, that delight factor radius? Can you draw circles? Can you see what comes into it? And can you make changes and start looking inward into the customer, rather than actually saying, oh, you know, these are my legacy systems, I would not want to change them for the sake of delivering this project, the moment you start looking customer experience as a project, I think we are losing the battle because it's not a project. It's culture, you bringing in a culture

Rick Denton: 10:31

Yeah. And that takes us all the way back to the first question of the idea of CX is yoga, right? It's not the one session that you do on a Saturday morning. It is the the the ongoing process that you do take on in the culture. And I really appreciate you pointing out the culture. I especially appreciate you pointing out that, look, it's not just slapping up a set of tools. I'll have this pithy saying, you know, stop serving and score and start listening act. Well, the listen and act gets it a lot of that culture, and especially how that culture weaves from all aspects of and your your example of the hospital is great. Because does the person at the car park truly understand how they impact the patient's experience? Does the person running the cafeteria? Does the person running the gift shop? If the whatever that is, do they think I'm as impactful to the patient experience as the physician as the nursing staff as the radiologist as all of that? And if so, then you've got that customer experience? Does the does the billing in the finance department? Let me tell you, from my medical perspective, a lot of times that's some of the the most impactful element of the experience is the billing and dealing with that. So did they have that customer experience of ethos, a brilliant description of that, and, and setting that environment is how you get that soulful feedback?

Jay Thattai: 11:49

Yeah. It's exactly the same whether it's a hospital or a hotel, or or, you know, a cricket stadium, or whatever it is, it is can you keep your audience at the center, and then one says radius and build processes around that. That's the success of a custom experience.

Rick Denton: 12:05

It's so it's true. Now, obviously, each industry will have a nuance to it. But I've had that same discussion with others. And that's the reason why I talk to people like you Jay and I also have had a great conversation with the the head of fan experience for the Orlando managed magic US basketball team, right? And so it is it fan experience, patient experience, hospitality experience, it all weaves together and there are some fundamental themes that carry throughout. I want to stick with the soulful speaking of themes, right, I want to stick with a soulful theme that we've stumbled upon travel evokes all sorts of soulful feelings for me, and I know it has the same for you. That's one of my deep soul moments. But you mentioned to me earlier pretty impactful trip to Thailand. Tell me about that. What was that trip like?

Jay Thattai: 12:48

Oh, it's, I mean, I can still feel that it was a it's a trip to northern Chiang Mai is a hilltribe trek, where we at the base camp we set off to like walk all through the mountains in northern northern Thailand. In Chiang Mai, and we go to we have to go visit all the houses the the religious on the mountains, and see how people live in the mountains. There's absolutely no electricity, no mobile server, nothing cut off from the digital world and just live and live with people. And so blissful people are living so blissfully, they don't have anything I mean, but But you know, they love living with the nature and stuff. And it was a very tedious walk all the way walking through the villages and, and the mountains. And then they eventually landed about seven o'clock, we had to come to stop, we stayed in a beautiful, you know, a detached house and near a lake. And the only source of light is a moon and there's a full moon day, we were like, it was like very, very relaxing, but the legs were aching to bed. Really, really difficult. And all of a sudden, you see that, you know the we have some chimney lights and you know, small kerosene lamps and stuff very bit of a dull ones. And then they were all dimmed. And then the and then we had about 20 people walking into the dormitory that we were staying, and they all were hiding their faces and we were like taking them back for a second and what's happening. And then they were all the ladies in the in the village they said oh, you you people have come to visit us and you are our guests and they will actually do a massage on your legs and the best majority massage I've ever done in the whole of the world. And and it's so much and they tell you about you know, they sing a song as well the local song somebody sings a song and somebody does massage and there's a moonlight flowing in. It's a blissful experience. And what I loved about it is the thought that people have to basically humanizing the experience of like so I know you've traveled a lot and getting IV know that you know, your your legs should be aching, and now they come in and they do their bits and go and another thing look at the culture there as well. They don't show your faces because next day in the village, you want to go see them. You don't want to go see Oh, you are the one who came in you did the ache and you give them money. No, they don't take money out but they don't want to. They also don't want you to look at them in a wrong way. And so you don't know who did it for you. Wow, next day morning, everything gets back to normal. And the same next that night again, the second night, it again happens. So very different culture, very different experience. So didn't forget that. But I like the thoughtfulness in that experience.

Rick Denton: 15:26

Man Jay That sounds awesome. So I'm going to do a little little change of pace here. Normally, I'm trying to guess and we talked about how oh my gosh, I need this relaxation. The first class lounge it sounds like you're already relaxed. But I'm still gonna ask you to join me here in the first class lounge, we will move quickly here have a little fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Jay Thattai: 15:47

From my past? That's quite a lot, actually. But I think I would give it to the Great Barrier Reef and scuba diving there. It's a different world altogether.

Rick Denton: 15:56

Man, I hope to get there someday, someday before as we've seen some of the damage occurring with the raw Yeah, hopefully you have experienced it before that I hope to get there someday. Jay, what's a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Jay Thattai: 16:11

Oh, um, I'd be wanting to go to Kenya and Tanzania and be in the wild and see the, you know, the African wild. That's something I've been wanting to do never got a chance looking forward to it. But the COVID settles down a little bit. And then yeah, I think definitely on cards.

Rick Denton: 16:27

I look forward to having a conversation where it's not that we're considering what would COVID impact is to it. I've had the chance to go to the African continent, but I almost feel like I'm cheating. I went to Egypt so I want to go see the rest of Africa. Egypt is very much Africa but I just want to kind of see the rest of it. I want to see the wildlife I want to enjoy those areas that you're describing. What is a favorite thing to eat?

Jay Thattai: 16:52

Mama's food.

Rick Denton: 16:53

Okay, it specifically. I like that that's true a lot of us

Jay Thattai: 16:58

true I mean that's something that she makes and you give given you the exact same ingredients you tried to replicate you can get the taste I don't know that's something very very unique everything else yeah, I can copy Jamie Oliver as well I can get some days closer to him. But never the same as mom's

Rick Denton: 17:13

What is it about that? you're right I don't know. I can make the attempt there's there's something maybe there's just a special kind of love that's in there that is an ingredient

Jay Thattai: 17:22

there's no. she would say like Kung Fu Panda. There's no secret ingredient.

Rick Denton: 17:27

That's awesome. Did not expect to have a Kung Fu Panda reference and I'm excited that it's here. What is so this is the opposite side though. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid

Jay Thattai: 17:38

I'm run obese so Okay, when they gave me the runner beans for some reason I don't know why I mean so they forced me to eat it but I never eat it and the second thing was stuffing bananas in between bread and giving me I don't know for some reason I never liked it so especially when we go on some travel with family when I was little and you know some mountains and stuff and dad would used to give me a couple of breads and slides and bananas and give me and say quick bite go for it before the next top of the hour. I could never take it

Rick Denton: 18:10

Yeah no I can I can see that. Let's close out here the first class lounge with a travel thing what is one travel item including your phone of course but one travel item that you will not leave home without

Jay Thattai: 18:24

If I'm taking my checked in baggage definitely my Swiss knife

Rick Denton: 18:34

Jay there was an earlier podcast guest is Eric Lautier a way back in episode 11 And he called customer experience CX the meat of the marketing sandwich now you've mentioned a similar tie between marketing and customer experience specifically digital marketing but even just earlier in the episode you talked about how look CX isn't just you know throwing out some some digital marketing and then calling it CX but how do you see that relationship between customer experience and digital marketing

Jay Thattai: 19:03

I think CX is the new digital marketing Oh everything everything is encompassed within CX and it rather than looking at a customer as as, as an entity that needs to be sold something to if the marketing can start looking inward and looking at the size of the customer the behavior of the customer. Then Then if you look at the the marketing becomes an experience. It's not that people don't like marketing people do like marketing only when marketing becomes annoying, it becomes a negative experience and people are against marketing. Yeah, if you make marketing, unbelievable experience, incredible experience, then then people are not against marketing. In fact, people are willing to give data and when they are giving data. They expect some sort of loyalty from the brand as well as to what are you using that data for? If you go to any website today, they say essential cookies essential cookies essential cookies. It's not that people are not saying No, I will not visit to any websites people are visiting people are okay about it. And even calculating an email address or mobile number people are able to give it provided you show the credibility and the experience before the point you collect the data. Yeah. And then people are willing to do it. And as far as you, you, you, as a brand, we practice our customer advocacy, and be proactive in giving them an incredible experience. I don't think they have any problems. They are human beings. And human beings love human beings. So as far as you be nice to them, I think there's no problem. So in my opinion, customer experience is a new digital marketing.

Rick Denton: 20:34

I like that there's a there's a guy that I've seen on LinkedIn, his name's Chris Walker, and he talks a lot about marketing. And in that space, and I'm grossly simplifying it Forgive me, Chris, if you're listening to this, but he talks about this concept of dark social, so instead of paid social, or instead of, you know, your formal digital marketing, but this idea of dark social words, people telling people, it's it's another way of saying almost mouth to mouth, right? It's the text going between people. It's the WhatsApp messages. It's the watercooler and it's experience that helps drive that if you have a positive experience, you share a positive experience, if you have a negative when you have a negative if you find great content, you share great content. And so that idea of dark social fits a lot in what you're describing there that experience, if whether it is the the the new digital marketing, or it is the vehicle by which the digital marketing is amplified, the two are completely intertwined, and can't be on woven.

Jay Thattai: 21:30

So if you if you sort of notice the reports from PricewaterhouseCoopers, or KPMG, or anybody who does a lot of a lot of research on on customer experience, especially PWC. Word of mouth marketing has been the most cost effective and proven marketing technique. But what drives word of mouth marketing is the key question. It's not it's not the paid sources. It's even if there is a page source that comes to you tomorrow morning, but your brother comes and tells me or your best friend comes in tells me Hey, you know what, just go for it. He will not write because they've told you, right? And likewise, on the opposite side, if they say, oh, you know what, you know, you must try this. This is incredible. You wouldn't think twice. It's like I said, human human beings believe human beings, and they love it. So what if not, Bob is extremely powerful? And in my opinion, what drives word of mouth? Is customer experience? Yeah, it's not the three P's of marketing anymore price product promotion plays at all, in my opinion, that it's the experience that matters if the experience is incredible. All right, then people don't mind spending more money for better experiences.

Rick Denton: 22:34

Very, very true. I mean, shoot, it's even true. No one's paying for this podcast. But the only way people are fine. I'm not doing paid social. It's Jay, you're going to tell some of your friends. Hey, let's listen to this episode. Listen, that's how these kinds of content marketing vehicles grow. It's through word of mouth. Yeah, no different than a brand. And how that? And yes, I think I actually think it's a perhaps too extreme to say that, you know, price is completely dead as a factor or that product is irrelevant, right? Those are, those are fundamental pieces. But the differentiator will be experience. There will always be a price break point for somebody, but that experience will enable them to justify paying that premium. Okay, when when we think about word of mouth, and we think about working with customers, you know, a lot of that requires knowing who your customers are. Right? And so yeah, it's not it's not crafting them calculated paid social, but really knowing who they are. How are you recommending folks go about doing that? How are you going about doing that knowing your customers.

Jay Thattai: 23:36

So like I said, the first step is humanizing your experiences, you got to look at your customer as as, as a human being who's got an identity and they got a family and they got preferences, there are behaviors, we should not look at them as a as a, you know, a mobile number or an account ID or, or an email id or a loyalty Id look at them as a human being what do they like? What's their behavior? Like, thanks to the digital innovations and digital platforms outside you don't need to remember everything. So the systems are going to be remembering that but are your systems aligned to sort of understand the behavior of a customer identity of the customer and their preferences of the customer their their feedback, and then their frequency of visits their lifetime value? Their recommendations how many times they refer to friends and family their social engagement? Yes, so much data that you can collect about a particular customer. But unfortunately, there are still systems out there which basically look at loyalty and cashback and confuse the hell out of it. Right you pay you bought for 150 quid Here you go, you get about a five person. cashback is like that's not loyalty, that's just cashback. Right. So look at a customer as a human being so even if even if he or she buys even 10, if it's a 10 hour, and they want to buy only from your shop, that's loyalty. So even they are important to you. It's not only those that spend this amount of cap on you becomes loyal and everybody else is not You missed out huge customers. That's where churn happens if you're missing out on those customers, because you don't know you don't know who's talking about your brand to whom, and you need to know that it's high time we know that. So all these, the organic word of mouth marketing has to be digitized. And now that needs to be broken down into various metrics of the customer, and experience metrics. Now, we'll tell you, who's a loyal customer here. And what are you doing for the loyalty? And are you rewarding them for the loyalty? Are you encouraging them? Are you is that is that a business relationship? Or a relationship? Business?

Rick Denton: 25:36

Yeah, yeah. So is it a transaction and getting away from that that transactional into the relational? It's so so vital, I was part of a customer experience project for a retailer a few years ago. And we were doing just that moving from transactional I want Speaker I go to store give me speaker sell me I walk out? Yeah, into this experiential and then ultimately into a relational business and making that into something real. Your call out of the humanity reminds me of something that Elaine Lee, she was another guest Two episodes ago, or a couple episodes ago, I've lost track here. But Episode 40, I'm pretty sure Lane was. And she talked about how there is no such thing as an ideal customer, because each customer's individual, so quit averaging people into some sort of amorphous blob, but rather consider the averages. And I realized at scale, there are some things that you have to do to categorize, but your point, knowing that individual's story, knowing that individuals information, especially if you're talking about a contact center, or a frontline employee, how can you equip them to know that customer as a human, as opposed to just a piece of an amorphous blob helps engender that loyalty and create that loyalty?

Jay Thattai: 26:45

Absolutely.

Rick Denton: 26:47

Jay, I was gonna actually close out by asking you something that you've kind of alluded to already, but it is let me probe a little bit on that we've talked so much about customer experience over the last couple years, COVID has driven so much of this, making it digital, how do we make things digital and I love it, right? I'm not anti digital, I don't call restaurants to book, reservations at tables, I use an app to do that. And so there's, there's a lot of good in it. But there's this leaving humanity behind that seems to be the case in digital. In addition to what you said, I'd like you to close that just how do we keep that humanity in customer experience, not throwing digital out, but how do we make sure that humanity stays there.

Jay Thattai: 27:28

So when we got to put yourself as a customer first, you got to go buy from your own store. And see, and when you when you buy from your own store, do you be a you treated like a family, like for example, a guest comes into the family and the guest is introduced to all the family. And and everybody treats the guest exactly the same way they all know about the guest, all your so and so fantastic. All these lights off. Fantastic. So that's how a customer experience should be like a brand is a family, whether the customer goes and with its store, or they visit a call a contact center, or speak to somebody on the chat, or they send an email to an email team, or they speak to the delivery person, they all know you, they all know your preferences. And the data is everywhere, all you need to do is get the access, understand the customer get the access to the to the family, which is the brand and then imagine, everybody knows about this particular customer and they love the preferences. And it's amazing. They look at the experience a customer's gonna have oh my god, I'm feeling home. And Will anybody leave that family? Now? So first step, look at buy become become become a customer and look at look at your brand and see if if it's a family, and do the family know you. If there is some part of the family that does not know you, and they're treating you like Alien, then you got to fix that. Yeah. So build that connection,

Rick Denton: 28:52

then and that given gets back to what we were talking about earlier of that it's all of the roles, the parking lot attendant, to the physician, to the the greeter that is there as you walk into the hospital and whatever the experience might be. And even those roles that don't physically see the customer, the finance tour, right, and all those things and the value that is there. So Jay absolutely love that. Jay, it's been wonderful talking with you. We are out of time. And I wish that I could talk to you more, because I can think of about 17 Other things that I'd want to ask you right now. But I'm gonna have to cut us off. But thank you so much for sharing your perspective, the idea of using yoga as an image for what CX can be and what it is, is so beautiful and soulful. And we talked about that soulful element weaving through feedback and reviews and all that. I certainly will never forget your story coming talking about Thailand and that experience and I've only been to other regions of Thailand, but I need to go to that region for sure. Yeah, it's been a brilliant conversation. Jay, I've enjoyed every bit of it. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your evening.

Jay Thattai: 29:57

Thank you so much. Rick means a lot

Rick Denton: 30:02

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.