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Steve:
Our profession deals with a ton of data, and it can get overwhelming. So we need a way to help us quickly interpret the information we collect

Gary:
Unless your entire company lives and breathes CX data, the only people that are going to be living and breathing CX data is you. And so now you've got to bring that message to your organization. So. So how do you do that? It's these dashboards that you provide for your organization

Steve:
Getting the most out of your dashboards on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve:
Hello, everyone, I'm Steve Walker. Host of the CX Leader podcast and thank you for listening. We have a saying on the CX Leader podcast that it's never been a better time to be a CX leader and the CX Leader podcast helps CX leaders explore the topics and themes to help people like you, leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. CX pros often need to provide ways for employees across the company to access data from their customer experience programs. This data should be easy to access and quick to interpret on a high level. No time to be downloading, tabulating data and fiddling with it in an Excel spreadsheet. Dashboards provide a way to aggregate data into a high level, easy to read view, giving CX programs a vital tool in communicating feedback from customers. Well, it's no secret that I really enjoy having my Walker colleagues on the podcast, and this week we have two of my longer term colleagues and also very good friends of mine, two people who I have a lot of respect for and who know a lot about how to action CX data for a variety of clients across a variety of industries. So Gary Szeszycki is a Vice President in our Advisory Services Group, and Mike Grindstaff is a vice president for us in our technology services group. Gary, Mike, thanks for being on The CX Leader Podcast.

Gary:
Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me.

Mike:
Yeah. Hey, thanks, Steve. Appreciate it.

Steve:
So, Mike, you're a returned guest. You've been on the podcast in the past, but somehow, Gary, we have never twisted your arm hard enough to get you on the program. So I don't know how that happened. But finally we did.

Gary:
Managed to come up with a topic that I could talk a little bit about.

Steve:
Good. Well, you know, actually dashboards, it's a lot of what we do, right? It's just a really key topic. And I know that one of our colleagues, Katie Hatch, gave kind of a how to on dashboards maybe about a year ago, and it was a highly listened to podcast. So I know this is a topic that our listeners are interested in and practitioners are passionate about. But before we get into the topic at hand, why don't you guys just take a minute and tell us a little bit about your varied backgrounds? Mike, you want to start?

Mike:
Sure. Actually, I started my career at Walker. I think maybe thirty five years ago, so I hate to date myself like that. But it's been a good ride and just came in on the data side. So I've kind of been on the data analytic viewing reporting side from the beginning, from processing the contact lists to get them into the call centers all the way today, which is working with clients to make sure they're reporting data and analyzing data and using the tools the best they can. It's been a long, good ride.

Steve:
Yeah. And you did leave us for a while and then I think we started subbing to you almost immediately after that. And then eventually you returned. And I think, Gary, you have a similar story too, don't you?

Gary:
Yeah, I'm actually on my second tour of duty with Walker. And yeah, I'm actually kind of a late bloomer when it comes to getting on to the CX bandwagon. I've had a couple of different careers and actually went back to college back in my 30s and decided to go after a business degree. And for whatever reason, I have no idea why, but as soon as that happened, it's like everything just kind of fell in place. It's like I just ate it all up, finance the marketing, the the market research, part of it. And from there I end up getting an opportunity to work at Walker and spent a number of years here. My first tour of duty, I worked over with a pharmaceutical firm for another 10 years, so I was actually moved over to the client side for a while and now I'm back on the supplier side. So doing more in the CX in the CX world and really enjoying it.

Steve:
So for those folks who maybe, you know, like when you say dashboard, you think kind of like your car, right? Like, that's a dashboard, right? So what are we talking about when we're talking about dashboards in CX?

Mike:
That's a great question, because I think when the dashboard started coming out, it was get every piece of data that you collect, every piece of data you have and get it out there on that dashboard. But as quickly as that happened, then it started becoming, you know, you need to boil that down so it's consumable to your audience. So it does still today have a dashboard that might have those three metrics like your car does and another dashboard that might have what the computer screen looks like when the auto dealer plugs in their computer to your car.

Steve:
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's a way to get the information quickly that that you need to make your decisions right and and it can be as complex as kind of today's cars where you could have a menu with, you could have several screens and then, you know, I don't personally own a Tesla, but I've seen the display. It's like an iPad in the Tesla, so it's really, really data driven. Gary, what do you think kind of the purpose is of a of a CX dashboard?

Gary:
Well, when you think about what our CX professionals have to deal with on a day to day basis and most of their organizations, they're probably in pretty large organizations where they actually have to compete for mindshare with everyone else in the organization. You know, unless your entire company lives and breathes CX data, the only people that are going to be living and breathing CX data is you. And so now you've got to bring that message to your organization. So. So how do you do that? Well, the tools that you have at your disposal to me are three fold that your communications, it's the reporting that you do, and it's these dashboards that you provide for your organization. So you've got to take advantage of the tools you have at hand to bring your message to your company.

Steve:
So I think in our prep, you guys talked about four kind of components that need to be in place for this information to be helpful to users.

Gary:
Yeah, at a high level, when you think about it for any of this information that you're sharing with your organization, if you're just starting off and you're just going to, let's say you're doing a relationship survey for the first time and it's the new shiny coin, it's going to be pretty easy to at least start generating some interest in what you're going to be obtaining from your customers, but that's only going to last for so long. And so what you really need in order to get people more involved with it on a day to day basis. It's got to be easy to access, and when I talk about that single sign on no passwords, with the exception for maybe your initial sign on, make it easy for people to get access to this information. Number two is intuitive to the user. It's got to be easy to navigate, easy to find, it's got a pop and let them know what it is or looking at immediately. If you have to take your time explaining what this widget actually means and what it does, you're already in trouble. The third component, I think, is that it has to be updated frequently. It's like it has to be relevant. It has to get their attention on a quarterly, maybe monthly, maybe half half a year basis or annual basis. Otherwise, that enthusiasm is just going to die. And it also has to be fresh at the moment that the user actually needs it. So think about the timing of your work that you're doing and getting this information up on the dashboards. Let's get it in there at the end of the month, the end of the quarter for maybe for planning cycles, budgeting cycles, you know, during marketing sales planning cycles, have it be relevant for them at the times that they most need it.

Steve:
Mike, you lead a lot of our technology services folks and and train a lot of young people. And then you were also involved in in the design of dashboards. How would you comment on sort of this four point program and how does that go into the processes of how we put them together for clients?

Mike:
Yeah, it's I love I actually love working with Gary and working with those that strategy. And then you have to really, you know, you have to overlay that with the users because there's all kinds of different users in the organization. And, you know, to get them to what kind of information can they consume, can they understand? So I'm a big fan of different dashboards for different user groups because it can be positioned differently. I talked to a lot of coworkers about things, and I say the data and the simplicity of that's important, the UI making it look nice. Gary talked about popping that gets into the user UI interfaces and those are subjective. But you got to make it clear because no one, especially today, is going to spend more than 15 seconds looking for a number that they want. So simplicity is is the first attack. And then, of course, as those when they ask questions about that data, then your data starts to get you dive deeper and deeper into your data warehouse.

Steve:
This is kind of out of left field, Mike, but what's the most complex set of dashboards that you've been personally involved in? Like, you know, how many iterations or different versions or different user groups or

Mike:
Yeah, I hate to actually say some of the most complex because you don't want to scare people, but you know, there are a lot of people out there collecting a lot of data. So and there are clients that I work with that get it. And they get they've got different parts of the organization that needs different parts of that parts of the journey. And so I've built what I'll call three level, three tier levels of dashboards where one dashboard is just looking at one survey, one touchpoint. The next dashboard might be a complex dashboard going across 15 surveys and I might have twenty two pages in that dashboard, but that's a come come here. See that data and then, oh, you see something, you're more interested in that, oh, I need to cut my data. Then you can actually go to another level. But then on top of that one is that executive dashboard that is literally five might be across 50. Some surveys you're doing on those. And trust me, there are 50 some surveys, but only one or two metrics across those surveys that they're monitoring at a high level. And so you can spend some significant time. And so I always struggle when I know we've got a client that's got a pretty complex process. But I hear everybody talking about the survey right here, about talking about the closed loop, and I'm always wanting to make sure they're talking about the dashboard up front. So the X- and O-data makes sense. They already have that, you know, it's very something we've heard all the time, but make sure you have that dashboard in mind way up front, even during survey designs.

Steve:
Yeah. And you mentioned you just mentioned X- and O-data. That's a key part of this, too, is you don't want to just put survey data in there. You want to relate it to something that's also relevant to the business, right?

Mike:
Oh, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, bringing in voices of the customer way beyond just your surveys, right? Your customers are talking to you in a lot of different places, so it's great to see those come in and validate each other that we're seeing the same thing across these different channels.

Gary:
Yeah. When you think about the different levels of expertize that you have from an organizational standpoint in getting involved with, you know, the X- and O-data, you know, as we've seen in some of the Walker white papers that we put together, not too many organizations get to that level, you know, but completely agree, Steve. It's like you've got to reach that at that point where you really are going to be grabbing some great value by combining the company's operational metrics with what you're capturing from the customer side.

Steve:
Yeah. And just give me like kind of an easy example of X- and O-data just for the benefit of our listeners.

Gary:
Yeah, the first one that comes to mind for me is going to be for the call center. You know, when you think about what the call center has to do in responding to customers, especially if they're using phone and actually live and picking it up, what about the wait times? You know that you have within a call center and you get your your transactional survey data on those calls, so you're actually sending out to your customers? Hey, how that call go? Well, if you start getting feedback while I was on hold for X amount of time or it took me so long to get to see or talk to a human being. Now all of a sudden, you see that those are issues as those issues go down to now, all of a sudden you see the CX going up so you can relate those to that point in time. And you can actually see on the operational side if they're actually the whole times, the wait times are actually reducing or not.

Steve:
That's a great example, and we could go almost through every functional area in a business and talk about that. And particularly if our listeners have an interest in that, I'd certainly encourage them to contact us because that really is the state of the art today is to be linking up your X-data with the relevant O-data to inform your decision making. Oh well, I digress. Let's go back to the dashboards. We talked a little bit about the complexity, and we talked kind of about the four key components. But what are the types of dashboards that you know? What are some of the common uses? Mike, you mentioned executive, but why don't you kind of rattle off just for our listeners, a couple of the different ideas or kinds of dashboards that we typically see?

Mike:
Typically, I see a dashboard that's bringing in maybe your relationship survey with three transactional surveys that you're running and all that data showing together and you're seeing the changes. So that enables somebody to go out, take action, come back to the dashboard, see if those are changing your metrics at all. So kind of that relationship plus transactional data is a good slice of a dashboard that I see a lot. Others are like, you know, a dashboard for like, Gary said, those call centers or support centers where you're you're having a closed loop process going on. You know, we bring it down way low for them, right? We're showing them individual counts or individual customers details so that they can actually take action on those relationships they own. So you kind of go from all the way to the one to one relationship at the bottom of the organization, all the way to the top, to the CEO that wants to see that one metric? And how is it doing compared to last quarter?

Steve:
How about you, Gary? You have a couple of examples that you might think of is typical dashboards we'd see,

Gary:
Well, Mike kind of covered most of the ones, you know, that came to mind for me. But the one thing I did want to expand on would be going down to that very granular level up to the executive level, because that's another thing you can think about in terms of putting these dashboards together in terms of the types of people that you are going to be creating these dashboards for. So no matter what type of organization you have, whether it's flat, a matrix hierarchical, you can kind of break it down into four components. I mean, you're going to have your executive leadership team at the top, you're going to have your VP, directors, managers, you know, they're going to be responsible for their specific areas. Then the next level down is going to be, Hey, you're account level, you know, and your individual contributors. And maybe you throw in your fourth one for your analysts, you know who are going to want to see, of course, everything. But that's that's your users. Those are your stakeholders. Those are the ones that are going to be looking at this information. So that's how you want to design these dashboards so that it's relevant to them.

Steve:
Yeah. So let's just say I run a region for an organization and I report up to the general manager. And so the general manager might have the comprehensive look at the organization and, you know, the four or five different regions. But as a regional manager, I probably just looking at my region, maybe with some benchmark data or some ranges or something like that, but. So that would be kind of a concept of sort of the executive down to the next level leader. But then you also have like functional managers. So, you know, like if a person is involved with, say, supply chain, they might be looking at delivery data or out of stock data or that that kind of stuff. So it really is. It's about tailoring the information to fit the business objectives.

Steve:
Do you like free stuff? Well, me too, I like it, too. Well, if you want a chance to get your hands on some CX Leader podcast swag. Go to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey on how you think we're doing. We're always looking for ways to improve, and your input will help us do just that. Again, that's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback for some CX Leader Podcast swag.

Steve:
Hey, my guests on the podcast this week are my colleagues, Gary Szeszycki and Mike Grindstaff. They are respected vice presidents with our organization. Gary's in our advisory services group and Mike's on the technology side. They're both seasoned pros, CX pros and we're having a dialog about dashboards and what those can do for CX leaders. So let me ask you this, Gary. What time are you trying to introduce this to your clients, depending on where they're at in the process? But is dashboard something that they're thinking of right off the top of the program, or is that something you've got to bring in to it?

Gary:
Well, yeah, you're right. There's a wide variety of experiences along those lines, Steve. So kind of runs the gamut of those that have actually used them before and understand it. And maybe they don't even use, for example. You know, Qualtrics, obviously is the one that we're going to be representing all the time. Maybe they have some other reporting system that they use internally instead, and they just want to feed this data into that. So we run into a wide range. But generally speaking, when we start talking about the surveys and the CX and whether it's transactional relationship or more concerned about, hey, getting that program up and running, and then it's like, OK, now let's talk about the dashboard. So Dashboard ends up being kind of the second thing, and we end up saying how important it is that, hey, let's just go through the same iterative process that we went through with creating that survey, we got to do the same thing with the dashboards.

Steve:
Mike, does that sound about right from your standpoint on the tech side?

Mike:
Yeah, it is. And I'm always in there trying to push early on, but typically they they want their talk and survey design, and I want to talk about the O-data that we're going to bring in when we send that email invitation or that text or whatever it might be. So I like seeing people thinking about the data they need for the survey flow, you know, the operational data and maybe the data they need when they can slice it to the right audiences, like you mentioned districts and regions. And then really, when it gets into that, I like to see as much conversation we're talking about what O-data can I bring into my experience data to make it more valuable? I also love the reverse of that. Where can we push X-data into O-data systems, be it a Salesforce? You know where those those owners are already in every single day? I could maybe just provide just a couple of aggregate metrics that would make their interaction with their client way more valuable, like the last few comments that that client has provided, but that Salesforce or that owner read those so that they can react to them when they're having that conversation.

Steve:
Yeah, you know, ideally, these dashboards should be a source of information that helps answer questions or provide business insight even before it's asked for. Right? Yeah, Gary made a comment earlier about, you know, the real key in dashboards is to communicate out about the CX program and connect people to it because, you know, it's not top of mind for all the managers that are trying to do everything. But Mike, you had some thoughts there about how you can do that very strategically within your organization, right?

Mike:
Yeah, I've, you know, I've come across a lot of smart people in Gary hit on it where your dashboards are exciting and new. But guess what? Something else is exciting and new if they're not in your CX or part of your organization. So, you know, strategize, how can you keep this front and center and important in your executives? Not maybe like almost. How do you market CX inside your organization and how do you draw usage so I can watch usage of a dashboard, and yes, as soon as you communicate out that you're collecting this, everybody's excited about it. Dashboard usage goes way up. But if things start to time just goes and there's not a lot of conversations about it and it starts to die down. So those those ongoing emails to your organization giving them a tidbit of information that you've collected that might some of them might find interesting and then providing links back into your dashboard, you know, is a really nice way to keep things fresh and make it easy for those people to go see those things.

Steve:
Yeah, good point. You know, you can never stop marketing the program as the CX lead in your organization to keep it kind of front and center, right?

Gary:
Yeah.

Steve:
All right, Gary and Mike, we've reached that point in The CX Leader Podcast. It's sort of the seminal moment where I ask each and every guest to give their take home value. That's your one tip that our CX pros could take back to the office later today or first thing Monday morning and improve what they're doing already. What do you say, Mike? You want to kick it off?

Mike:
Yeah, I'll start. Definitely you've got to know your audience. You know, your audiences are different, so you need to think about who will find this information valuable. And when you find out who, then you figure out where. So where will it make sense for them to see this data? Is it a dashboard? Is it inside some other software you already have? So the who and where is really important to make this stuff important? And of course, people like yourself and Gary and those of designing the right questions because then the what is important?

Steve:
Gary?

Gary:
Darn it. You took… You took what I was going to go for, but so I'm going to do a slight little spin. And in addition to that, when you're communicating, whether it's in your reporting or on your dashboards always have in mind what's in it for them. Cater that message to your audience. You don't want to have the same message across. You want to be sure that it's relevant to who you're speaking to. You know, and why, of course, is it relevant for them so that that would be my my tip?

Steve:
Well, good tips. Thank you, guys and always an honor to have you guys on the program and see how knowledgeable and and excellent of a job you guys do for our customers. So thank you very much for that and thanks for being guests on the program.

Gary:
Well, thanks a lot, Steve. Enjoyed it.

Steve:
Hey, Gary Szeszycki is a vice president in our advisory services group. Mike Grindstaff, the vice president, our technology services group. And just in case anybody would want to continue the dialog, can you just quickly tell us how they can get a hold of you?

Mike:
Yeah, I'm out there on LinkedIn or email. My company email mgrindstaff@walkerinfo.com. Grindstaff is "grindstaff."

Steve:
And Gary.

Gary:
Yep, you got the easy one out of Mike. Mine's going to be gszeszycki@walkerinfo.com. That'll be "gszeszycki." Yes, that's two Z's. And I'm also on LinkedIn, so by all means get a hold of me. I'd be happy to discuss or answer any questions.

Steve:
And if you want to learn anything more about what we do here, Walker besides dashboards, I hope you'll feel free to email me a podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all of our previous episodes, our series and our contact information. You can drop us a note to let us know how we're doing or suggest the idea for a future podcast. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thanks for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. We'll see you again next time.

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