The CX Leader Podcast: "It Starts with Employees": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "It Starts with Employees": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Steve:
I think it's safe to say that if you want your customers to have great experiences, then your employees need to have great experiences as well.

Karyn:
You can't deliver on customer experience unless you have engaged, inspired employees around the customers. As we know when employees are engaged, customers will advocate brand for you, and your employees are the ones who are going to help deliver that experience.

Steve:
Building a customer focused culture through employee experience. 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 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. It's never been a better time to be a leader and this podcast explores the topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. As a CX professional, I get excited watching companies across the globe realize the value of providing exceptional customer experience. It's why I continue to say it's never been a better time to be a CX leader. But our profession is evolving to recognize the importance of going beyond the customer, knowing that if your company's culture doesn't include employee experiences, then it will be difficult to mature your CX program. Well, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast. Karyn Furstman, vice president and head of strategy and solutions at Designit, a Wipro company. And she's going to help us understand the importance of starting with employee experience to bring a customer centered culture to your organization. Karyn, thanks for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Karyn:
Thanks. It's great to be here, Steve.

Steve:
You know, you and I know each other a little bit, but for those of us in my audience that have not heard of you before, maybe you could just take a second and give us just a little bit of your background. So always interesting to hear how CX pros got to this position in their career. So we always like to do that with each guest. And then maybe if you have a little extra time, you could tell us a little bit more about Designit as well.

Karyn:
Absolutely. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, I talked about this customer experience profession and how I got here as in some ways leading me to ultimately where was my home in terms of having a career that is my passion. I grew up with parents owning two small businesses, one each, and I worked in their each of their businesses growing up. And I got that customer in my blood very, very, very early on. And what's happened since is I've worked in many professions that all are in and about the customer experience in one way or another. I started in advertising, I moved into communications, and then as I moved over to client side in financial services beginning, I actually was in brand product marketing and then CRM back in the day and all of these different types of positions that were all around the customer experience before customer experience was actually a discipline, if you will. And I was tapped on the shoulder to lead and become the chief experience officer for a banking institution back 25 plus years ago. And I felt like my career had come home. I felt like helping companies truly transform from the customer perspective and bringing all of those aspects together is something that has become my passion career. I've done it with multiple industries. I've done it in with a vendor solution. I've done it in consulting as where I am now. So it is it's been a great journey for me, but it's still underscores the importance of how you take care of your customers and your employees every single day and build it into the fabric of your organization, which is what we're going to talk about today.

Steve:
Yeah, it's it's interesting that and I always like to ask our guests because there seems to be a couple of kind of patterns where people got to here. But one thing you said that was kind of interesting to me is that you grew up in an entrepreneurial family. And I think in some ways a lot of people that go to business school, they might know a lot about finance and marketing, but they might not know a lot about customer service and just basically taking care of customers. And that's something that every entrepreneur learns pretty quickly, that the essence of business in fact, Drucker wrote this back in the 50's, he said that the real objective of business is to attract and keep customers. And so it's kind of no wonder that at this point we're all kind of in the customer experience business. But your path kind of through marketing, communications, advertising, branding is one of the ways that we've gotten there. And so interesting. Well, tell us a little bit about Designit and what you guys are doing there today.

Karyn:
Yeah, absolutely. I as I said, I'm the lead of VP of strategy and solution designit. We call ourselves an experience innovation company. And essentially we bring the best of whether it be marketing, design, technology solutions all together around improving and embedding customer and employee into everything we do to help our companies. We have research, we have design, we have all components that will help. Kind of if you think about CX as as the wrapper, if you will. One other thing that I would love to mention is that the CXPA is something also that kind of, as I began to develop additional experience in the arena, got involved very early on in the board and as the chairman of that organization. And it's really been great to see how that profession has used that community as a way to improve itself and kind of that whole for the people, by the people. So just a little bit of a plug there for the CXPA, but I just am truly a supporter of it and it's just it's been an amazing experience to see the transformation of that affiliation.

Steve:
No, I'm glad you brought that up. We're we're very closely aligned with CXPA and do a lot of that. So I'm always happy to plug the CXPA on the podcast. And in fact, if you're a new listener and you haven't heard about the CXPA, I highly suggest that you go out and check it out. It's Customer Experience Professionals Association, CXPA, and we have lots of guests that are affiliated with them and they do a tremendous service for the profession. It really kind of speaks to how our profession has matured over the last decade, that now we have a certification and a professional organization. Well, Karyn, let's let's get into our topic today, which is really about how customer focused cultures have to embrace the employee experience. It starts with the employees. So maybe just tee it up for us a little bit. With your background, what do you see as the foundation of customer focus in a company?

Karyn:
Yeah, I think it's great. And as we talked before, Steve, this is one of my passion topics around customer experience because you can't deliver on customer experience unless you have engaged, inspired employees around the customer. So it was really something that is very much near and dear to my heart. As we know, when employees are engaged, customers will advocate brand for you, and your employees are the ones who are going to help deliver that experience. So the foundation of customer focus in a company comes to a couple of things. I call it the "What" and the "Who." I'll start with the what, because it's really important. And as we talk today, I'll continue to emphasize this. But I think the what around the customer focus has got to start with a CX vision. And so many times when I talk with companies and I am asked for advice on, Hey, my CX program is not maturing, it's not sticking, a lot of people don't have that North Star or that vision in place. So I start really with the what because it translates then into the who, which is the people and the employees who deliver that experience. Right? So so many companies are trying to engage employees and do so many things and it's absolutely important, but it has to be in service to something. So there has to be a container with which all of the components will help to drive that customer experience and that every single employee, whether I am frontline facing, whether I am an operational leader, whether I'm a C-suite executive, I know what my role is in delivering and supporting that customer experience.

Steve:
I really like the What and the Who. Kind of reminds me, are you an advocate for having sort of some sort of brand around your actual program inside a company?

Karyn:
So what you'll hear from me today is the answer of it depends. I think that it depends on the culture of the organization. Ironically, I'm a big believer in capitalizing on what is working in an organization, and so thinking about how to start as an example, if the company is supported by things around nomenclature, I think it's always good to do that, but I don't think that putting a name around it for Namesake is going to make it really a critical thing to stick. It's more about the actual components underneath it, and we'll talk a little bit about that in terms of really some of the key components in delivering that employee experience in support of the customer again.

Steve:
So what are some of the markers? What would be some of the signs from your standpoint that would indicate whether they already have or they're on the verge of or maybe they can't create that kind of a culture?

Karyn:
Yeah, I think I mean, I talk about them as leading and lagging indicators. So there are on the lagging indicator side, I'll start there. Metrics around, of course, employee engagement and how often you're getting that feedback from your employees, how much your customers love you, what is employee, and then tying those to business metrics like employee retention and customer retention. But the big thing is really I say the leading indicators which really are threefold. One, going back to the organization has a strong vision, a strong CX vision that is supported in part by their business objectives, their business mission. And I think that the definition of that with the organization is so critical. So that's one that is just, again, very, very important in so many times I see overlooked in terms of what do we want to be as a CX leader in our space or across multiple spaces? The second thing is actually then taking that vision and bringing it to life so that every single employee again knows how to deliver it and to understand it and continue to improve it. And that's kind of where the continuous improvement piece comes in. So things like how am I trained on customer experience? What are those behaviors? How am I recognized around the customer experience? Again, so often and it's very important because employee engagement can be this huge, huge arc. Everything from recruiting pack practices all the way through to recognition and incentives and absolutely important elements. But then how do you tie it to the customer experience and the behaviors that support that employee experience? So you might, as an example, as you're looking at your recruiting efforts, be looking at people that are really great results driven people, but they may not have some of those inherent traits and the customer components around the behaviors that speak to the experience.

Karyn:
The third piece on the lagging and the leading indicators that I talk about is the data. So what are the outcomes that we're seeing from that? And this really stems from a very strong voice of employee program and voice of customer program. This isn't just about once a year survey and understanding. Again, that's back to a leading indicator I'm sorry, a lagging indicator, but the actual leading indicators of understanding through all of the components to hear what employees are saying. How engaged are they in meetings? How are they able to solve customer problems? Are they having to use 12 screens to try and support a customer that's on the other end? Just trying to understand why they can't make a flight change for their upcoming trip. Right? I call it the heroics about employees always having to scramble to try and do what's right for the customer. And if it's really hard day in and day out and you're not fixing things very similar to the customer problems, right, then you're not going to be able to continue to motivate those employees. And in fact, they will leave because it's too hard for them to do their job.

Steve:
Yeah, there's an awful lot of bad process and bad training that gets solved by the the heroics at the end. Right. And it's not a it's not really a feasible strategy to create a customer centric culture. If that's what you're relying on, you've got to use that.

Karyn:
Exactly. And similar to voice of customer, right? Surveying. If you're surveying your customers to understand how you can improve the experience and you don't do anything about it, it's exactly the same on the employee side.

Steve:
Yeah, it's the definition of insanity.

Karyn:
Right, exactly.

Steve:
The other analogy I love is I'm going to start my exercise and fitness program next Monday, but I'm going to weigh myself every day between now and then. You know, if all you do is measure but you don't kind of implement or bring it back to some sort of impact or meaningful change in the way you're doing business, then it doesn't really matter how much you measure.

Karyn:
Exactly. And back to your point initially in the conversation around customer, going back to many, many years ago on the customer experience, on the employee experience side, the whole component of employee experience tied to customer strength has to lead to long term value. And if you do these things, it's been very much scientifically proven that it not only increases your employee engagement, your customer engagement, but it drives long term business results.

Steve:
Yeah, it really goes back to the service profit chain, which is 94 or something like that at Harvard Business. And today's generation wouldn't even know about Sears, but it was a study around Sears, the department store. And yeah, that's really what we're engaged in just at a at a much higher level today.

Announcer:
One last reminder about the US Customer Experience Awards. Celebrate your CX achievements and enter by March 25th. There are 19 different categories in which to spotlight your initiatives and you can submit in multiple categories. Learn more about this exciting opportunity at usacxa.com. And remember March 25th is the deadline. Don't wait. Enter today.

Steve:
My guest on the podcast this week is Karyn Furstman. We're having a delightful conversation about how you build customer centric culture through your employee experience, which is a really, really kind of a key topic for where we're at as a profession today. Karyn's a vice president and the head of CX strategy at Designit, which is a Wipro company. So let's work on some of your indicators and take that another step. If I'm sort of running a CX organization that's maybe not as mature as some of what you're describing, what are some of the kind of early on steps or what are the ways that you would start to put some of these thoughts into action to improve the employee experience, to drive a customer centric culture?

Karyn:
Yeah, absolutely. I start actually with ironically, starting with what's working. I'm a believer in as I've done this and worked with companies and done this inside companies, that expression throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm a big proponent of seeing what's good and what is working. I think that the best laid plans start with understanding. So as I come into organizations and I work with organizations, I talk about and do a lot of listening. So talking with the employees, not again, just on the front line, but people in the back office. And how are what are the things that are inhibiting them from doing their jobs today? And start with what's working and build from that. Very specifically, what I believe is really important and what I hear so many times is the how do I break down the silos? I've got a department over here, I've got my product organization, I've got my sales organization and no one's talking. And that's a lot around, how do you start to build a collaboration model and a governance model that will capture those inputs and outputs to the organization? So very specifically, I believe in I call it kind of three tiered of a governance model. The first is I start with the front line forums are always really important. So those people who are day in, day out, having customers come to them and help to solve their problems and create a better experience for them. The second layer is around the operational leaders. To me, that's sometimes where the rubber meets the road, right? Because it is where the policies are made, it's where the policies are delivered.

Karyn:
So having a forum in that part of the organization cross functionally. And then third, of course, is your C-suite executives and the three of those forums working together in a very structured, ongoing meeting cadence, if you will, where it is the experience forum, regardless of what level we're at. And I think that that is something that I've seen has been really successful to start having some of those conversations that don't happen in the silos. And so it's also then in service, I always say in service back to that customer experience, vision and the roadmap that's been developed and how are we as a team and as a company helping our employees deliver that experience and what's getting in their way? I have a great example of as we were doing some of this work at an organization that I was leading the CX organization, and we essentially had an exercise to have executives call customers when they had a particular complaint or question about their particular service. And what was interesting is it wasn't just about them hearing the customer concern, it was then listening in on what the employees had to do. Again, back to the heroics to understand that concern. But the third thing that was interesting in that example was they found out that the phone numbers that they were calling for customers were not the right phone numbers and they were disconnected. And so it took that actual experience to then drive another improvement project forward that employees could get behind.

Steve:
Yeah. Well, you gave us an MBA there in CX, Karyn. Thank you. There's there's so much good stuff there that I hope our listeners can tease out. But you started with beginning with what's good. You know, this is one thing I always tell to new clients or new new people that are new to the business. You know, if you have a successful business, you're obviously doing something right with your customers. And so just kind of going in and finding that out and then, you know, you don't have to just fix problems. You can really enhance your competitive differentiation as well. So it's it's not just about fixing the problems, but it's also about building confidence and building upon the things that you already kind of naturally do well. And what customers reflect you.

Karyn:
For and the byproduct of that as well, I think, Steve, is that it it gains traction more quickly because it's not seen as okay, here's the next thing and it's a flavor of the day. Rather, it's things that have helped and build our heritage and capitalizing what is good in the organization. So I think it has a another positive effect that way as well.

Steve:
I really like the the three tiered governance model and I think there's lots of ways… The other thing you said, it was funny, like you said, that the operational leaders are where the policies are formed, but the root word of policy is also politics. You know…

Karyn:
Oh wow, yes.

Steve:
…that's where the politics get going, too. Right. And who gets in. And that's what the power of CX and I think EX is, is that it? It allows us all to agree on what's important. It's not necessarily what's good for for my department, it's what's good for the customer. It's…

Karyn:
Exactly.

Steve:
…what's good for the front line employee. Right.

Karyn:
But having that vision kind of back to that vision, if you don't have a vision or a North Star, it's hard for people to see how they're contributing to something that's going to be kind of for the common good. And back to the your analogy on on football with that kind of that operational leader or the coaches, if you will. I often see with companies when they're talking about I have a governance model, but it's the front line in the C-suite. But they miss that real important level of people that are the ones that actually are in the work every single day and hear the actual employee feedback and the frustrations as they go through their daily work.

Steve:
So, no, you're absolutely right. And I mean, again, that's why football is a great analogy because customer experience in a complex, large, growing, fast moving organization in a competitive marketplace is a very complicated team sport. You know, it goes back to your who. The only way we can really deliver value to our customers is through our our front line employees and their knowledge and their ability to take care of clients in a way that keeps them coming back. So it is a complicated team sport we play.

Karyn:
Yes, exactly. But a fun one.

Steve:
Oh, that's what I love about it. If it was easy, anybody could do it, right?

Karyn:
Exactly. Exactly.

Steve:
Karyn, we've reached that part of the podcast where I put every guest on the spot. So you're special. You are a podcast number – what are we – 209.

Karyn:
Woo hoo! I'll remember that.

Steve:
This is the time where we ask our guests to give their best tip, their take home value. And the concept is that it's something that our listeners can go and take and apply at their program and make it better. So Karyn Furtsman, what is your take home value for podcast number 209?

Karyn:
Yeah. Boy 209. I want to just start by saying I think it is an incredibly opportunistic time to be thinking about this conversation. All that has been written about the great resignation to me should be pivoted into what is the great employee experience and how can we have our own employees become our beloved employees that will recommend us and tell their friends and families about what a great company it is to work for? So I just think that that is just I think it's a huge opportunity this time. The tip that I have are actually two, but one leads into the next. The first thing I believe in is getting your organization aligned on nomenclature. I so many times see companies defining certain things even as it relates to what is customer experience and what is employee experience. So starting with that basics of defining with your teams and then having a shared understanding of that around the vision. In terms of picking a specific area, I would say start with something and again, leverage what you already have, but I always believe in celebrating success. So have some recognition that you are able to celebrate and talk about some of those customer wins or some of those opportunities where you've taken some of the angst out of the employee experience or some up. So they don't have to perform the heroics every single day and celebrate those in every way that you can. And I think that it's just really important for leaders to understand that as well, because they can actually then coach around the customer experience as well. So rather than just taking coaching for coaching sake, using some of those wins and some of those opportunities to actually drive the more positive experience into the employee that serves the customer experience. So start somewhere, whether it's recognizing or training and celebrate the little wins, but do it with a foundation of the basics that everybody understands.

Steve:
Karyn Furstman is vice president and head of CX strategy and solutions at Designit. Karyn, thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast. It was a pleasure to have you.

Karyn:
Thank you. It was wonderful to be here in chat with you, Steve. Really appreciate it.

Steve:
And if any of our listeners would want to continue the conversation, can you just tell them how you might be found? I know I found you on LinkedIn and…

Karyn:
Yeah. Karyn.furstman on LinkedIn as well as through Designit. I think you're you're able to find me as well.

Steve:
Thanks again. Best wishes for your continued success. And if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business' customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com. To subscribe to the show, find all of our previous episodes. We organize them by series and topic and you can search on there. There's even some place where you can drop me a note, suggest a future podcast, or just let us know how we're doing. 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. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a leader. So go out there and do your best. We'll see you again next time. Thank you.

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