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Steve:
Like any recipe for a great meal, a CX program requires quality ingredients and a skilled chef to prepare them.

Stacey:
I've always had the feeling that the more feedback I get, good, bad or indifferent, the more I know, the more I can do. As people used to come to me, even in my the first job when I was the bank sharing stories and thinking, oh, here comes the survey lady, she always brings up bad news. It's like now I bring you news you can change.

Steve:
The key ingredients for making an impact with customer 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 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. On The CX Leader Podcast we explore 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. As a CX pro, you have an opportunity to help create a genuine and lasting impact on your company. But like any other aspect of an organization, there are some key elements or ingredients you'll need to make the right impact. And each company's needs will be a little bit different. So how do you know what ingredients are needed for your specific situation? Well, our guest on the podcast today is uniquely qualified to give us some advice on how to make an impact with CX. Stacey Nevel is the director of Voice of the Customer at Prudential Financial, the well-known financial services company. And she's also a member of the board of directors for the Customer Experience Professionals Association or as we like to say, CXPA makes it easier to say. Stacy, thank you so much for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Stacey:
Thank you, Steve. I'm very happy to be here.

Steve:
Well, it's our pleasure to have you and so glad that you will join us to discuss how we're going to get all the right key ingredients in. But before we do that, I always like to make sure that our our guests get a little bit of context. So just give us a little bit of your background and how you came to be a CX pro and sort of what was your journey to the world of customer experience?

Stacey:
Sure, I'll try to make it quick, but I have been in the world of voice of the customer, customer experience, customer satisfaction, whatever we called it back in the day since about 1995. So it's been a little while. I started out and coming out of college marketing and thinking that I was going to actually go into the world fashion. I went to the world of banking instead. And in that world of banking, I remember remarking on my first job I was actually working directly with customers in a branch about how badly we treated the customer at the time. And I spoke on this quite frequently, apparently, and I didn't realize I was speaking at it so much. But this is the old days of the days of nine to three. We closed you in the branch if you were there at three o'clock, three inches of Plexiglas, you know, all of that good fun stuff that we really, really knew how to treat a customer, make you compare your signature to an actual signature card that was kept in some kind of card catalog. So about six months into my job, maybe about six, seven months into my job, I got a phone call, I was getting fired or something. And they said, we here you have a lot to say. Would you like to come join this new team that is formed to look at how we're treating our customers? And they had just started a branch satisfaction survey process and so relieved that I wasn't getting fired for being so vocal. I absolutely accepted the job and moved back into the offices and have been probably managing some form of a survey program ever since. I spent the first six, seven years of my career on the client side and banking and financial services or insurance. And then I made the switch over to the consulting side of the business. So I was helping lots of different types of clients that in lots of different types of industries develop stand up, write surveys, better analyze and understand their customer experience needs and their actual voice, the customer. And then that brings me to my fun with Prudential. I've been here about three years and have the ability to work across our entire enterprise. So not just with one business, but with all of our businesses are B2B, are B2C, international, and look at how we're measuring and analyzing the voice of the customer here.

Steve:
That's a great story. You kind of encapsulate a lot of the experiences that we see. A lot of people don't, you know, actually intend to get into it. But you started as a front line customer rep. And I think the lesson in that is don't be afraid to speak up on behalf of the customer and then really took the more kind of route that I took more of the research side in the survey data side and applying the kind of the facts and data to the to the customer experience. And now comes full circle and your back a leading voice of the customer at a at a great company. So. Well, congrats on a great career.

Stacey:
Thank you.

Steve:
Well, with all that perspective, Stacey, what are just when I say what are the important elements for a CX program to make an impact, what are the things that come to your mind? And why do you say that these are the key ingredients?

Stacey:
So, again, after much time, I think much from the point of my story as well as what you just mentioned, the thing that stands out for me is being one of the most important ingredients is the employee. And I think and I'll talk about. Three things I think are important, the two of them are all centered around the employee. First is employee trust in the program and the process. The employee base has to believe the numbers are sharing, the data you're sharing, the information you're sharing. There has to be a level of transparency. And in order for there to be a level of transparency and trust, there also has to be a level of simplicity. We know that not everything is simple, but some level of simplicity and ease of understanding. Just it's got to be something that people can can grasp, hold up and understand and rally around. And the general concept of the customer voice and hearing what the customer has to say and believing in that and creating your business around that, I think is a general good way to start that. But I do think that you need that employee trust in the program to be able to move it forward. The second one, which is very, very much connected, is employee engagement. So not only do they have to trust the program in the process, but they have to see the benefit in their hard work. They have to understand and know that their efforts are appreciated, see the impact of their hard work, and know that throughout the organization, whether they're front line or back office, that their efforts towards the voice of the customer towards making it right for the customer, whoever that customer may be, is, is appreciated and that they have a say in that. So I think that those are two of the most important elements that through my career, one of the kind of survey programs that I have always loved the most is the voice of the customer through the employee doesn't take away from what I get from a customer, but I think it does so many things. It gives me the perspective of the employee, especially the front line employee that sees so much and sees those clients that don't even respond to a survey. But it also gives them a voice. And I would say it gives them a sense of of importance in the process. So it's one of my favorite survey programs to implement. And I think the third thing, which is not a surprise to anyone, I think is action. And it's not just taking action, but having and building an atmosphere that embraces action. And so, again, goes back to those employees. Are we allowing our employees to take the necessary action? Are we giving them that authority? Are we listening to what they and customers have to say and allowing people to step up and fix things and taking those the grassroots efforts as well as the top down efforts? And I think it's important that we look at the actions both tactically and strategically. So are we. We're not just doing one or the other. We're not just handling the small, low hanging fruit, but we're also looking at those bigger hairy ideas, those those challenging ideas that are that might take two to three years. Are we really going after them, setting a course for fixing the bigger challenges and problems? Because that tells not only are your customers a lot about listening to the voice of the customer. Do you listen to me? Do you take my words to heart? But it also tells the employee a lot. It tells the employee, do we do we do what we say we're going to do? Do we listen to the customer? We say we're going to listen to the customer. Would you listen to me if I said I had an idea? It it's very telling on both fronts. Companies that just send out surveys, maybe do the lip service and expect the give expect the customers and employees to give, but don't give back eventually that will come around to shoot you in the foot.

Steve:
But I love your three key points. I just want to unpack them. And I'm so happy that you mentioned the voice of the customer through the employee. We actually have done a couple of podcasts on that topic specifically. And and actually we were advocating for that heavily during COVID when people were hesitant to maybe launch surveys kind of in a time where it was so, so much was unknown. But front line employees, they know what's going on, don't they?

Stacey:
Absolutely. They do. They have they have a wealth of knowledge and they're at the front line. So it's a bit of a sandwich. Right? They've got the customer yelling, or praising, but they've got it all. But they've also got the business coming down on them at the same time. So the least we can do is show them enough appreciation to ask them what's going on, to take to heart what they know to to give them the respect that says we know you know a lot now. What can we do with it? I think that they are, in many cases, the untapped resource.

Steve:
I think you're right, too. And then how that kind of plays with your two points that are directly related to the employees, the trust and the engagement, you can do some formal like survey them, but you can also do some informal or qualitative, like, you know, when you're designing your survey, get their input, right?

Stacey:
Absolutely.

Steve:
Because I think that you mentioned something a couple of times in your discussion about how you got to involve them and make sure that they believe this is part of, you know, that they have a real vested interest in this, and I think that that just involving them along the way goes a long way to that. And then that relates to your third point, which is ultimately what we really want them to do is to take action, right?

Stacey:
Absolutely. And so we trust them to your point. Exactly. If we trust them in the beginning and involve them in the process. Let's also involve them the back end.

Steve:
Yeah. And then when you get a set of results, maybe you don't come and tell them what to do. You say, hey, here's what we heard from our customers. What are you you know. Right. What do you guys think? What should we do about this?

Stacey:
So because they have that information, that knowledge, we say the same thing with journey mapping. Right? We say, no, you can't just get a map and put it up there on the shelf. You've got to vet it. And you've seen it with your internal people, especially your front line, to say, yes, this is really how it works or not. This is not how it works.

Steve:
Yeah. And I think, you know, there's you know, some of the traditionalist would say, well, it takes too long. But I think in the long run, it's a lot faster. There really is a lot of value to having everyone go through the process of understanding what the customer is saying. Right?

Stacey:
Absolutely. It takes it takes longer and the implementation, it takes longer to stand something up. When you go through this, as we all know, it takes longer to do things the right way. That's the honest truth. But it takes a shorter time in the long string because you're not doing the work. You're not going back and redoing. It's not wrong. Yes, it. And you've got the buy in from the beginning. Years ago when I was a consultant. Yeah. When? Two years ago when I was a consultant, I worked with an insurance company and we went through this process. We had to revamp their entire survey program and we involved people at every level. And I think that the team that was involved in the process is about thirty, thirty five. And they said, are you sure we'll take a long time? Like, trust me, you're gonna have a better product on the on the back end. It's going to take a little bit longer. You're absolutely right. But when you actually create the product, what we did these discoveries with all of the necessary teams for all of the surveys, when you finish that, they're going to say, yes, I had a hand in that question. Yes, I had a hand in that that looked like that's my word right there. People are going to have that ownership in the program. So I don't think you can put a price on that. And if it takes you a couple of extra weeks to get it, take it.

Steve:
My guest on the podcast this week is Stacey Nevel. She is the director of Voice of the Customer for Prudential Financial and also a member of the board of directors of the CXPA. And we've been having a fascinating discussion about the key ingredients that you can use to bake a really good CX program at your organization. And Stacey's just given us a lot of insights. But, you know, I know talking to you that you're also a fan of branding your CX program. So tell me a little bit of your experience in that and what that kind of has an impact.

Stacey:
So I, I definitely have a love for branding a program. I talked about this a lot when I was a consultant. I've actually done several presentations on this myself. I think that at the end of the day, in this kind of goes to my initial point, how do you get an employee base and a group to take ownership of their program, to have pride in the program, that it's for their their organization and it's to give it a brand name to take to brand your program the way the company wants to bring their program, run a contest, have everybody solicit me, were put in names into the bucket, make it yours. There is nothing I believe works. And I said this when I was a consultant working for these companies. Do you not have your company running around calling your program my company's name? There is no ownership in that at all. That means that the other companies problem, it's the other companies product, it's the other company's scores. Slap whatever name on it, and it's great branding for them, but no one has ownership of that data. At the end of the day, it's that thing over there. It's not mine, it's not my survey, it's not my customers feedback, it's not mine. And I think that's what you're looking for. You're looking for your your employees from frontline to senior management to C-Suite to own the program, to own the data, to own actions. And we won't do that when we call it somebody else's program.

Steve:
So and I'm going to go back to your third key ingredient and start talking about action, because when we say action, what we what we really want is to to make change happen, positive change that that has an impact. So what are some of the things that in your experience that you've seen that are really key in activating or the things that take action that actually do create an impact with CX both both on the good in and maybe possibly on the on the not so good.

Stacey:
So what I've seen that takes impact, I think. And in first going to step back a little bit and think about what what is the impact of trying to drive? What is it you're trying to accomplish and ensure that the impact you're trying to accomplish is the right impact for your organization or your team or whatever it may be, whatever you're focused on, that it's the right impact for your customers. It's also the right impacts for your business, because those two can be in conflict sometimes. And it's important to to do that. And it's a very seems like a minor step. But one of the things I try to make sure we do also is document what we're expecting that impact to be, document what our objective was, because I can always come back to that midway through the program at the end where you're into it for a little while, come back to what you wrote down. It might it might need to be changed, updated. But at the end of the day, what I can always do that changes or suggestions to look up is not meeting the initial the initial objective or the impact I was hoping to achieve here. Do we need to make some change here? So I think that that's probably the first thing that I would do is make sure that I know what the impact, what I want it to be. And it's the right impacts for both my customers and my business. I think that there are things to avoid or things to to sidestep, hopefully in the process of doing that. And one of them, I think, is conflicting messages. So I think a positive is to establish your objective, communicate it, share it widely, widely, and make sure that it's very well known. The opposite side of that, of course, is to have those conflicting messages because it works against what we talked about earlier. It works against building the trust in the process. It erodes the trust, actually, when you have very conflicting messages.

Steve:
You talked a little bit about kind of what we do on the on the down side. What about on the incentives or are there ways that you can create an environment where you are encouraging those right kinds of behaviors to drive action?

Stacey:
I absolutely think there are. I've been saying this for years, even for the behavior you want to achieve, you and the behavior I want to achieve typically and most of the time that I've been in a position with a variety of companies, the behavior we want is feedback. We want more of it. We want as much of it as we can get. So incent for that, incent for a response rate for responses. Do not incent for… I find it hard to incent for money anything attached to money and get the right behavior. Quite frankly. It is… It biases your pool. But I've always found strength and good purpose and actually in incenting my response rates. We actually literally just had a survey where we we did infuse a monetary element. We incented the respondent pool so that our clients, by saying we'll give a certain amount to a charity based on their how many responses we got. Every response would get a certain amount of money donated. And then we incented internally to those that faced off against those clients. They're being incented on the response rate. And it's more of a bragging rights type of incentive than it is a monetary type of incentive. We want their responses. I'm not going to beat you up because someone was unhappy. I'm not necessarily even going to reward you individually because one was very happy. We're going to have the pat on the back. Kudos. But what we want to do is say this time we heard from this many more people than we did last time we heard from this much more of our of our pool than we did last time. That's the win. And that's what we're trying to share internally, which is why I think incenting for the behavior we wanted, which was responses, is the right way to go, whether that's internal or external.

Steve:
That's a great example of being more intentional about what you're trying to get at. So if if if you really want more feedback, you wouldn't incentivize the score, you would incentivize more feedback, right?

Stacey:
Absolutely. And not beat up people when we get negative feedback at the same time. So…

Steve:
No.

Stacey:
…I don't want more feedback that I'm going to then I'm going to beat you up because someone wasn't very happy. I now I've always had the the feeling that the more feedback I get, good, bad or indifferent, the more I know, the more I can do so. As people used to come to me even in the first job when I was at the bank sharing scores, they say, you know, here comes the survey lady. She always brings up bad news. It's like now I bring you news you can change.

Steve:
There you go.

Stacey:
If I didn't know it, if I, if I didn't know it and didn't share it with you, we couldn't do anything about it. The customer feels the way the customer feels. Wouldn't you rather they tell us and tell other people? So let's work on. But let's let's do it. We can work out what we can. And I'm bringing you something you can now go change and bring new information, and without it, you can't do anything, you can't make it better. And that's what I appreciate about and that's what we try to to share and push that we now know. Now, let's go make it better.

Steve:
Yeah, I know. I think, you know, companies and this has been going on for as long as I've been in the business. And, you know, people do they go to the scores too quickly. So I love the example of response rate. Another thing I've seen, particularly like in in in complex business, like B2B type of situation, as opposed to incenting the score, you really you can incent the process. You follow the process that we know that gets good outcomes. We don't worry about the outcome. Now, we're going to follow the process because the more we do the process, the better the outcomes are going to ultimately be. But again, it's a tough trap for, I think, pros because we're competitive. We want to be the best. And, you know, the score is the score and there's still some value in that. But again, I think you given great advice for how we don't go too quick to that.

Stacey:
Yeah, I think the other thing that you mentioned earlier, I think it's a little related. You mentioned that during the pandemic, some people didn't want to survey or didn't want to serve a particular groups. And again, going back to my earlier days, we've been through recessions. We've been through work in financial services or insurance for quite some time. So these were all times that people said, you know what, we know we're making a negative change. We don't want to survey now and I have always been on the side of no. You want to keep surveying. No. You want to know. Oh, we're going to we're going to raise fee for service. No, you don't want to know what happens? You don't want to know what that fee change impacted your customer satisfaction at all? Don't you want our loyalty in the long run? Don't you want to… And I don't I can't tell you that. If you just stop asking. I can't tell you that if you stop tracking. So it's something else that, you know, to your point about follow the process. You've got to keep the process going and yes, follow the process. At the end of the day, all I can do is give you the information. If you take away the ability for me to give you the information, trust me, in two years, you're going to ask me the question. In two, you're going to say what happened? And I'm gonna say, oh, you would want me ask.

Steve:
And it's not like the customers aren't going to be talking anyway. You might as well.

Stacey:
Exactly. They're just talking to somebody else. Exactly.

Steve:
Stacey, we've come to that point in the podcast where I ask every guest to give us their take home value, their best tip. The idea here is we give our CX pros who are listening in a concrete thing that they can take back to the office later today, tomorrow, Monday, and implement in their own program to make it better. So, Stacey Nevel, please give us your best tip and take home value.

Stacey:
Sure. In true "I can't choose" fashion, I have to one of these very quick.

Steve:
Extra credit.

Stacey:
Which I think most of our most of the CX pros out there probably already know. But it bears repeating, which is use your verbatim, use them wisely, but use them. Use them to punctuate your presentations, use them, use your recordings, have employees, read them aloud, bring them to every meeting. I mean, use them effectively, but use them. They are there and they have importance and poignancy and they're potent individually or together. I mean, text analytics is great, but sometimes just reading that one rant or reading that one kudo's has a value that all the numbers in the world can't replace. And the second one is actually something that's come up in our team within the last week or so. And it just kind of hit me. So it's been in my mind for a little while. And it's don't be afraid to iterate. So many of us want the silver bullet. We want the one thing we want to set it and forget it. A VOC program, a CX program, anything. It is not it's not a chicken it's not better to forget it. If we can't do that, it is a living, breathing thing. It's got to grow and it's going to grow with us. So we all know that good research ask answer questions, but it also makes you ask new ones. So don't be afraid to iterate. Set that expectation up front with your leadership, with your coworkers that, yes, this is good, but it's going to continue to get better. It's going to continue to grow. We're going to iterate. I don't need all the answers right now. I can't come up with all the answers right now because we know even as we change and grow, our customers change and grow. The the the marketplace is changing grow. So we have to allow our surveys, our feedback processes, our voice, the customer programs to do that as well.

Steve:
Stacey Nevel, thank you so much for joining us. Now, if anybody would like to continue the dialog with you offline, can they find you LinkedIn?

Stacey:
They can find me on LinkedIn. I am there and happy to connect.

Steve:
And it is Stacy with a "e y," Nevel: n e v e l. And you probably put in Stacey Nevel and Prudential Financial and you will find her on LinkedIn,

Stacey:
You will find me.

Steve:
Well, thanks again for being a guest on the podcast. It was a real pleasure to have you.

Stacey:
Thank you. This is a lot of fun.

Steve:
Stacey Nevel's been my guest. She's the director of the voice of the customer for Prudential Financial and also a board of the directors of the CXPA. If you want to talk about anything else you heard about 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 Web site, cxleaderpodcast.com, to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes. We have them organized by series and topic and contact information, and you can let us know how we're doing or send us an idea for a future podcast. Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. 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 to this episode of the podcast and we'll see you again next time.

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