The CX Leader Podcast: "It Starts With the Customer": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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

Steve:
If you're listening to this podcast, it's safe to assume that you strive to be a leader in customer experience, but what are some of the traits of good CX leaders?

Lambert:
It's the same general principle, which is it starts with the customer when you have to understand what your customers are looking to accomplish and then understanding exactly what they're trying to achieve and where they may have gaps and being able to execute that.

Steve:
Let's talk about some of the leadership traits required for customer experience professionals 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 like to say that it's never been a better time to be a CX leader and this podcast explores the topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. This is, of course, The CX Leader Podcast, and we certainly feel like our listeners are those wanting to better understand and promote the customer experience field within their companies and also throughout the greater industry and profession. But regardless of the industry or profession, there are certain traits and skills common to leaders. But what leadership traits are important specifically to customer experience pros? What qualities of leadership should you prioritize? Well, our guest on this episode is going to help us understand what he feels are traits that will best serve CX leaders. I'm very grateful that Lambert Walsh has decided to be our guest on the podcast this week. Lambert is the senior vice president of customer success at DocuSign, the agreement cloud company. Lambert, thanks for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Lambert:
Appreciate the connection, Steve.

Steve:
You know, I am familiar with you somewhat by reputation, and I know you have a distinguished career and have really seen kind of the customer success, customer experience world from some very interesting perspectives. But just for the benefit of our listeners, maybe give us a little bit of background on on your journey in your career and where you're coming from as we address this topic today.

Lambert:
I know that's it's probably a great entry point. I think, you know, people would describe me as a lifer, you know, someone that has really taken this customer success, customer experience, craft seriously and taken it to a place where I believe it's kind of core to my DNA, right? I am all about the customer. I'm all about considerations around the customer, and I just love the space. So for me, growing up in this space, starting from actually taking phone calls and being kind of a tier one rep and understanding what that what that experience is like and how you engage with customers and various different types of environments, all of these different stages kind of shaped my thinking, shaped my experiences, shaped my approach and kind of galvanized how I think about, again, the experience. So starting from the phones, moving into leadership, moving from a company called Bay Network into a company called McAfee, understanding, you know, the specific space around security and around data management, all of these areas kind of helped shape my initial early beginnings. From there, I kind of went over to Adobe, which was an incredibly different environment, a very creative space, an area where I think you were exposed to a lot of different portfolio options. And and again gave me an opportunity to really expand my thinking about scale and how I'm thinking about building four and designing for experiences. Because Adobe was such a design-oriented, creative space that you really did have to consider the personas you're working with, you had to understand the workflows you had to understand the things they were trying to accomplish in their business. And again, it just again created even more thoughtfulness around how I designed for those experiences. From there, I went to DocuSign and again, huge entrepreneurial focus, huge area of opportunity for us to shape and to build and and to create a platform for growth. And I think everybody probably knows DocuSign has had an unbelievable run of late. And again, the thought leadership that has been allowed for us to go in form is one of the more exciting things that I get to engage with on a day to day basis. So, yes, I'm a lifer. I've got an opportunity to be exposed to many different cultures, many different environments, growth, expansion, scale and all of those have really shaped my thinking. And and that's kind of the the backdrop on the DNA.

Steve:
Well, thanks for doing that. I think that really gives us a good platform for our discussion on leadership, which I want to come back to in a minute. But you know, DocuSign, I think as you mentioned, it's a brand, you know, most business people or most people that have done any sort of transactions are familiar with it. But it's more than just sign and docs on your computer, right?

Lambert:
Absolutely. And I think, you know again, when you have a brand and the recognition around the brand such as DocuSign, it's hard not to just think about the signature process. We have went so far beyond that to really be more considerate about the entire end and contracting process, and it is all about agreements. And believe it or not, everybody has to get to a place of agreement. So how we've went about building our portfolio, how we went about expanding our thinking about how to interact across an agreement, discipline and practice. Again, it's really given us an opportunity to reshape really the view on what DocuSign is and what the forward path looks like for us. So we're unbelievably excited about the growth potential, and I think we're seeing it today.

Steve:
Well, it's really exciting. And now I want to go back to your kind of your early start in this industry and the fact that you started on the phones. Mines more from the market research side, which is another path that a lot of us got got to here, but I was just thinking when you're talking about DocuSign's, vision and where you're going is, you know, contracting and you know, making the paperwork is a key transaction in the customer experience. And it's been a pain point. You know, historically, a lot of times, you know, it hasn't always been. So you really are. You're helping your clients improve their own customer experience, but really a critical time, right?

Lambert:
Every day, it's funny coming from previous companies, you know, I talk about this often is when I'd be called into a customer meeting, I pretty much had an idea of what was going to happen in that meeting. I was I was going to take a beating and I was going to answer for something that was misset in terms of expectations misrepresented or somehow our ecosystem wasn't living up to the promise that was made and the initial sales motion. At DocuSign, it's never about we don't like the product or something was misrepresented. It is always about help me think differently about this platform, help me think about how I should be organizing around the value that I can deliver to the business, how I can lean into my internal clients, how I can actually reimagine the experiences I can deliver for my customers. It is such a fulfilling role because you get to talk about the art of the possible and you're not dealing with the drama of break-fix, right? So for us, it is about the consultative peace that is so exciting for me is like, I get to go in there and help design and again to reimagine experiences for fintech or financial services, health, life science. It doesn't matter what vertical is the opportunity for us in the agreement process to really create a compelling experience, It's powerful. And everybody loves the fact that we're actually doing something even on top of that, which is helping the environment. So there's a lot of just goodness around the space we're in and also about the energy we get to provide with our customers.

Steve:
You know, this is so much fun for me to talk about this, you know, based on kind of my history and experience. But one of my jokes always used to be like that all the bad customer experience design showed up at the call center, right? I mean, that's that's where it hit the fan, right? And and these poor people and you know, I'm I'm a little more sensitive to it. I realized the front line people a lot of times didn't have the tools or the autonomy or the authority to do things. But I think some of your experiences in some of the organizations that you are at, I know that's where we started to take that feedback and design it back into better products and better processes that ultimately started to, you know, so that we didn't have to talk about throughput in the call center, we could talk about resolution rates. Or, you know, we weren't talking about how quick you could get them off the phone. We were talking about how quick could you get their problem solved. So anyway, that just kind of threw that out. But you know, it really was, you said break fix and we still do some of that. But today we're more about, you know, finding new opportunities and innovation and stuff.

Lambert:
So no, it's not so much of the work we're doing on a daily basis is really about the how. People aren't calling and saying feature A, B or C are broken. And, you know, give me give me a schedule for when we're going to be able to resolve this. You know, now it's about how how can I use this feature? How can I extend some of these, you know, wonderful innovations that you guys have? How can we extend that into an experience? How can we actually account for this in a workflow? And again, I think everybody that's involved in that is is thrilled that they get to be used in a different context. So yes, I think technology back in the day didn't allow for us to create these omni channel experiences and design flows. But today, you know, the tech is actually lining up to help us go deliver what I consider to be game changing, differentiating experiences for our businesses.

Steve:
Well, again, we say it all the time, but it's a great time to be in our profession. And you know, let's get to talking about sort of the leadership aspect of that because because so many organizations have a focus on this today, you know, a lot of our listeners, you know, they they have the resources, they they have the go ahead to go ahead and build out. So, you know, you've built some amazing customer success teams in your career, but just sort of in a general sense, what are kind of the traits that you'd be looking to prioritize if you were starting to build out a team for a new company?

Lambert:
Yeah, I mean, it's the same general principle, which is it starts with the customer, right? It really starts with the customer. You have to understand what your customers are looking to accomplish, what they're looking to achieve. You have to understand the risk dimensions that they have with the investment they've made and you as a as a vendor relationship or a partner, you have to start with who are you going to be dealing with right? Then from there, you can actually start to take a look at the workforce. You can start to take a look at the tooling. You can start to look at the infrastructure. You can start to look at how you're designing for experiences. So for me, everything starts at the customer and then understanding exactly what they're trying to achieve and where they may have gaps and being able to execute that. So I think we spend a lot of time looking at the customer lifecycle from onboarding through implementation deployment through account management or CSM Success Management type motions all the way through the learning services and education and understanding, Hey, at this stage, we should be at this projection or trajectory. And if we're not, what do we need to do to lean in to help you? Right. So for us, I look at one is what are we trying to achieve with the customer? What are they trying to achieve for their business? And then you start designing the people around it and then you start looking at, OK, what type of skills do we want to line up to really create that experience with our customers? And that's where you get into things that I am super sensitive to, which is active listening. I need people that are active listeners that really know how to to understand and to to stretch a conversation to get the most out of that conversation to where they can then really activate and guide a customer to an outcome. So I think the active listening piece is one of the huge traits I look for in employees. But again, I also want to make sure I'm designing it against the the life cycle in terms of how we're engaging with their businesses. So it could mean very different skill sets along that journey. It might be technical, it might be relationship based. It might be thought leadership. There's just a bunch of different dimensions as I look at that, that lifecycle to say, how do I fulfill against those requirements? So, yeah, a lot of traits, a lot of things to consider. But at the end of the day, it's got to start with the customer.

Steve:
Could you give us maybe sort of a generic example? I'm not asking for any kind of trade secrets, but sort of how you might match up the trait or the skill that the employee has with what you're trying to accomplish for the customer in your design of your experiences?

Lambert:
Yeah, I mean, it could be just in the onboarding process, you know, the first 30 days with the client and specifically a new client. Right? So much of their impression of you as as a thoughtful business partner and how you're going to be leaning in to get them to a successful outcome is critical. So that expectation piece is so critical and I am so involved day to day to make sure that we are clearly articulating the expectations of each specific stage of the game, right? So for the first 30, 60, 90 days, we very much map out how an agent or an onboarding consultant will take the customer through what they tell them, how they gain confidence and how they inspire people to actually think bigger about the opportunity with with the purchase that they've made. So for us, lining up those skill sets, lining up the technical capabilities. And then again, focusing on that specific part of the motion is how we think about design. So, you know, just just the 30, 60, 90 day mode. And we know if we can get a customer up live on a specific use case, we know what that means to not only our business, but we also know what it means to their business because that's where it starts to go downstream and driving experiences for their customers.

Steve:
We're all CX pros, right? So, you know, it's important we hear from you about what topics you think would be most helpful. Let us know how we're doing by going to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey. You'll even have a chance to score some free CX Leader podcast swag. That's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback.

Steve:
Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is Lambert Walsh, he's the senior vice president of customer success at DocuSign, the agreement cloud company and Lambert has a remarkable career in our profession and and he's really helped reinforcing the concept that it truly is a great time to be in our profession and, Lambert, you mentioned active listening, and that's a trait you're looking for. Is that something you can train? Or is it God given?

Lambert:
I think it is something you can train. It's not easy…

Steve:
Yeah.

Lambert:
…right? But you know, when I say I look for those skills, it starts with the interview process.

Steve:
Right.

Lambert:
If you go in and you and your your talent acquisition team is looking at a pool of candidates and you get candidate A. who starts with telling you every single thing that they think you want to know. That's probably a red flag for me. If I have someone come in here and be thoughtful and say, OK, help me understand a little bit more about the business. Help me understand a little bit more about the role. Help me understand about the scope of responsibility that I'm going to be delivering against, right? I want to see the specific interaction skills that lead me to a confidence level that when they're engaged with the customer who's typically under stress or duress, right? Are they going to take the time to extract the information from that customer? Or are they going to try to leap to a conclusion or to to a resolution path with maybe not knowing all the nuances that they're going to have to have to get to an outcome? So when I see people try to cut people short jump to conclusion. Red flag for me, right? So I think it starts in the interview process. And then from there, yes, you can work on that. You can continue to to emphasize that through coaching and training and and audits and all that kind of stuff. But I think it starts with the interview process. And when I see people that are incredibly talkative, I get a little bit concerned about their ability to be successful at a DocuSign like environment.

Steve:
So once you get them on boarded and you've got those kind of traits, how can you continue to develop that? And how can you continue to make sure that the the organization and specifically the function is building those kinds of traits in your employees?

Lambert:
Well, I mean, there's the beautiful thing about DocuSign is, you know, and there's many beautiful things about DocuSign and maybe waxing on a little bit too much about DocuSign because I'm excited about it. But the reality is that we are such an employee focused company. Sometimes I could say, maybe we go a little too far, but we are pulsing constantly our employees to understand their experience, to understand what kind of things they're going through in their own personal lives. We're trying to figure out how can we help them achieve greatness and our our internal development programs are intense. There is a constant, constant list of classes and developmental opportunities for them to continue to expand on their skill sets. We are very big on measurement of how many people are moving from one role to another role to go to one from one grade math to another grade path, how they're leaning into other roles within the company. It is all about development of our employees and again, they're there are learning tracks that are very specifically focused on skills that we're looking to develop, but also things that can help them develop their CVs or their resumes life skills. So I think for us, we don't just say, Hey, you know, here's the review. Here's the two things we want you to work on, then disappear. We are constantly pulsing to make sure that people are continuing to to work on themselves and to again get them into place with the representing our culture. They're representing our aspirations and how we want to show up on our brand. And it is an investment, but it is such a wise investment, if you ask me.

Steve:
And again, that's something, you know, 20 years ago, we didn't talk about training the whole person. We we, you know, it was all technical.

Lambert:
Yeah, yeah. Technical training, you get speeds, feeds into PowerPoint presentations that that probably were made for the sales organization that then ported over to our organization. When that didn't help you at all with anything around sustainability or service ability or addressable, none of the things that we needed to diagnose problems, it was just a different era. Now it's changed.

Steve:
Yeah, so you've seen a lot of folks and a lot of different great environments, but what's the impact on the customer for people that really have the the talent and the and have developed these, I'm going to call them soft skills. But you said active listening. I think you said empathy at one point to what is the difference for the customer then when you have that kind of culture and that kind of environment?

Lambert:
I don't… I mean, I've had this conversation a few times with peers around how the employee experience connects with the customer experience, and I'm a believer in that, right. If you have someone that's in a good place and their headspace is in the right place, they're going to they're going to be actively engaged in helping a client. And if they again, if they're employing active listening skills that have empathy, empathy for what that customer is actually going through and what they're trying to achieve, you're going to get, you know, you're going to get some synergy there and you're going to get people that are excited about an outcome. And I know we celebrate our team's outcomes a lot because it matters. But. The other thing that I think comes into play again at DocuSign is so much of the work we're doing is humanitarian based. So much of what's happened through the unfortunate condition with COVID entering our world right has been about survival. It is about, you know, PPE loans, it's about SBA. It's about, you know, health, life sciences and clinical trials. It's all of these things that we're engaged in that also energizes you because, you know you're doing something for good.

Lambert:
You were doing a lot of work with nonprofits. We're doing a lot of work with people that actually truly matter in their day to day lives what happens. So for us, I think, you know, attaching the outcomes to again, the experiences is something that I think we, we, we celebrate. And I think that also kept us alive through this COVID period, right? Is when we all had to work from home, a lot of people were going through some really difficult situations. And talking to customers when you're at home and you're in a fairly bad environment, you know, that takes a lot of mental stamina to continue to focus on a customer. So for us, shifting to work from home and then focusing on what's going on with your client, that empathy thing has to be there. You have to have an understanding of what that customer and what that employee are going through. But at the end of the day, it's about the outcome, and I think the work itself is incredibly valuable for us fulfilling and it kept our energy going.

Steve:
I was talking to a friend of mine this morning over coffee. He's a doctor and we were just talking. He's a primary care physician and he doesn't have the option to to work from home. But we were talking about, you know, all the incredible innovation that's occurred in health care since this crisis. And, you know, it's been horrible. Five million people have died, but there's been some really amazing things that have happened too, you know, and I think that is the human spirit is that, you know, people do they suck it up and they figure it out and, you know, they continue to persevere and and you're right. And then, you know, with a company like DocuSign, you're actually helping people with the tools that allow them to do that. And, you know, just look at how fast we've come with, say, telemedicine, you know, 18 months. It might have taken 10 years without COVID or something, but anyway, I got off on a tangent there. But I really like the way you talked about that. And you know, I think that at this point, we have to start looking for the positives out of COVID.

Lambert:
And and by the way, there's many and I think you're speaking to one, right, which is it's turned into a forcing function and we see so many of our customers accelerating their digital agendas and they don't know what that is. Yeah, right. So that's where this thoughtfulness, that's where that thought leadership, that's where the consultative work has come into play for us because, you know, when COVID first hit, yes, it was scrambling to get them into a use case that could help them. But from then on, it's been more about thought leadership and thought partnering. And the other thing that I think I've seen since COVID that was positive is we had so many regulatory things, so many different privacy things, so many different things that were actually delaying potential advancement in digital. All of a sudden, a lot of that stuff, because the speed and the urgency they all got dropped. And I'm telling you right now now that people experience these type of digital experiences that they can now afford themselves, they're never going back. They're never going to see this regulatory requirements stuff setting in. You're going to see everything advance. And I think that's great for the country, great for the world and great for the environment's.

Steve:
Lambert, we've reached that point in the podcast where I ask every guest to give us their take home value. This is your tip, your best idea. But the idea is something that our CX pros could take back to their shop tomorrow or the next day, or still later on today and make some improvement in what they're already trying to do. So, Lambert Walsh: take home value.

Lambert:
No, I know, and I don't think I'm going to create an epiphany for anybody here. But one of the things I think that has been incredibly compelling for for me is when I, I ask our executive team to spend cycles in the shoes of a customer like really actually sit down and go through the experiences with our products, go through the experiences with our engagement, go through the experience and our transactions and really see what we put customers through. Because every executive, you know, see spreadsheets, they see volumes, they see data, but they don't necessarily know how egregious some of these experiences can be. So for me, it is about exposing them to the actual experiences our customers go through and really getting that, getting that first hand understanding of where we can improve as a company, where we can improve as a brand. So for me, you've got to get them to walk in your shoes, you've got to get them to understand the customer condition. You have to have them feel that pain a little bit. And if you can do that, you're going to get a lot of investment from the company and its energy around solving for those things. But I have just I have spent so many years showing people spreadsheets around. All of these things that are happening and everybody just gets numb, they just get numb to spreadsheets, so you have to sit down and say, no, you have to sit here and walk, walk through this with me because you are not going to believe what we're doing to our customers. So for me, it's getting the exact team to understand what we're doing as a business and what we're doing to our customers and getting them to feel it. So that's the thing that I think I've found a lot of, you know, a lot of success with is getting them to walk in the shoes and appreciate it for what it is.

Steve:
Very nicely put. I appreciate that and thanks for being a guest on the show. Lambert really enjoyed talking to you.

Lambert:
Absolutely appreciate it.

Steve:
If anybody wants to try to continue the conversation, I know they can find you on LinkedIn. But if they're interested in more about what you're doing at DocuSign, is there a website or something where they can go and kind of learn a little bit more about what you're doing for your customers?

Lambert:
Sure. I think the LinkedIn profile is is easily accessible. Obviously, anybody can go to our website and find my name. Most customers do. So, yeah, I am very open to sharing and comparing experiences because I think learning is is everything. So, you know, if I can gain value from others and it's the opposite way, and that's fantastic.

Steve:
You know, this is episode 192 of The CX Leader Podcast, and I learn something every time, and today was definitely no exception. Really delighted that you came in and shared your experiences in your story. So thank you again. If you want to learn about anything else 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 our previous episodes podcast series. My contact information you can even drop us a note. Suggest a future subject, or maybe a topic you want to hear on the podcast. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their experience management success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening, and remember, it truly is a great time to be a CX leader. We'll see you back again next time.

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