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Steve:
We've covered the concept of CX maturity quite a bit in past episodes. But what does that look like?

Lara:
When I started four years ago, our CX program was kind of buried four levels down in the organization somewhere and sort of understaffed and under-resourced. And now we're really making sure that it's embedded in our major processes and our culture as a company.

Steve:
Let's take a look at how one company has gone all in on their customer experience efforts. 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. And as I like to say, 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. We have some really amazing guests on the podcast, and we speak to CX concepts quite a bit. But every once in a while we like to look at how a company truly applies these principles within their organization. We've also delved into the concept of CX maturity, a way in which we gauge how well a company has adopted and applied customer experience. So what does a CX program with a relatively mature program look like? Well, my guest on the program today doesn't have to imagine what a mature program looks like because she's actually been instrumental in implementing one. Lara Caimi is the chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow, a company that delivers digital workflows, that create great experiences and unlock productivity. And she's going to share with us how ServiceNow has made customer centricity a vital part of their company's culture. Lara, thanks for being on the The CX Leader Podcast.

Lara:
Thanks for having me, Steve. It's a pleasure being here.

Steve:
Yeah, well, it's a pleasure to have you on. First of all, full disclosure, I have to thank you for being a client of Walker, and we sure have enjoyed the partnership. But I'm just tickled that you would be willing to come on and share some of ServiceNow's journey on this with with our listeners.

Lara:
Absolutely. We've enjoyed the partnership, too, and very happy to share what we've learned along the way. And and and, you know, we're still like there's still it's one of those races that maybe never finished. So we we continue to learn and in our partnership with you as well.

Steve:
Lara, I know you a little bit and know a lot about your company, but maybe just for context, give us a little background on how you became a CX pro, chief customer officer, kind of what your background is, and maybe a little bit more on the space that ServiceNow competes in and and what their unique competencies are there.

Lara:
Yeah, sure. Well, I came to ServiceNow about four years ago after a very long career, at Bain and company as a as a partner in the technology practice. I joined under when John Donahoe was the CEO as the chief strategy officer. And at the time, I had the strategy. And then I started, you know, which which was primarily about thinking about, you know, ServiceNow's, long term strategy and what we called at the time, our our path to 10 billion in revenue, which we you know, we charted out how we would get there. And since then, you know, the the bar has raised the 15 billion in revenue as it does as you continue to grow quickly. But, you know, when I took on that role, I, I had a number of kind of other odds and ends functions under me, which were either going to be sort of built or elevated or sort of fixed. And one of them was was CX, which is kind of how I first first got involved and involved with it. And then about a year ago, I became the chief customer and partner officer where I have all of ServiceNow's post sales activities, as well as our partner ecosystem. And so obviously, as part of that, given my title, I also have the real privilege to champion customer experience across the company where I was sort of building the foundations of it, I would say, under my previous role. And now I really get to help it spread its wings and spread it across across everywhere. And so it's it's been a real pleasure learning about this space and really helping to to evolve a function into something that I'm quite proud of. And I really do believe this is making a really big impact at ServiceNow.

Steve:
Yeah, I always think it's interesting because many people really didn't plan to get into the customer experience business. But you have quite the background. You know, Bain is obviously, you know, the home of Fred Reichheld and really some of the earliest critical thinking around the concepts of customer experience and then to see you move to ServiceNow from a successful career. And then I think it's really interesting for our listeners that you came in and a strategy role where now you've taken on a customer and partner experiences, even an expanded vision of that. So that's a little different than a lot of us who kind of came up in market research or, you know, the call center space. But I know a lot about ServiceNow. And you're a publicly traded company so people can do the research. But just explain a little bit about where you guys play in the space, because it's very critical to the customer experience as well.

Lara:
Yeah, absolutely. So you describe kind of the ten thousand, maybe a hundred thousand foot view. Well, we're a platform company at at its core where that drives digital workflow. And so, you know, we were founded, I don't know, over 15 years ago now by Fred Luddy, who at the time envisioned a platform to make anybody's work easier. Right. It was kind of the notion of low code, no code before that really existed. And what they found was, you know, it's actually kind of difficult to sell that idea at the time. And so they started developing applications. And and the platform is really great at driving workflow and connecting to various systems of record. And so one of the obvious places to start, given the power of the platform, was with IT service management, which, you know, people think of traditionally as their helpdesk. It's it's much, much broader and more more complicated than just ticketing. But but it's that notion of like there's a there's something that needs to be done. You can drive workflow logic across multiple systems, et cetera. Automate the work and then get a resolution. And that concept, actually, if you think about it, applies very broadly across the enterprise. You know, ServiceNow drives a great mobile and online digital experience that also automates work and makes people's lives better so they don't have to deal with the sort of mundane and frustrating parts of work. But you can focus on the higher value added parts that only humans can do. And so really it is about driving great experiences through, know, digital workflow platform.

Steve:
Yeah. And really connecting the customer with the employee experience. Right? We talk a lot about that on the show, just the kind of the concept of experience management and the need to align those things. And I, I know that ServiceNow is a great platform for the alignment of employee activities process and how that impacts the customer and ultimately the business's financial performance.

Lara:
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve:
All right. Well, let's get to the topic at hand. And that is, you know, mature CX programing. Again, I'm so thankful that you're willing to share your story, but just give me kind of high level. What's the philosophy at ServiceNow around CX and how do you think about it in terms of how that contributes to your overall role in your leadership of this function at ServiceNow?

Lara:
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's it's really come a long way and maybe will touch on the evolution because because certainly it's evolved over time as the programs matured. But, you know, for for me, the philosophy of the program is to be that that central point, that that kind of center of excellence that's really driving customer centricity across the company. And we all know that, you know, the benefits of customer customer centricity are numerous. They're great for the customer and it's great for for the company. And so we've been, you know, being able to keep that front and center, bringing real data and listening to bear, which guides all of our strategic decisions at the company and really informs it, which is reinforced by our culture. I mean, that's that's really what we're trying to accomplish here. And so, you know, it's absolutely evolved and changed and I think been elevated over time. But but that's that's what we're trying to achieve. And for me, you know, Bill McDermott, who's our CEO, talks about wanting to become the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. The only way that we're going to get there is through having a best in class customer experience. Right. And in order to do that, it's a pretty broad mandate. And so we're on a journey to to try to deliver just that.

Steve:
You know, I know a lot of companies talk about customer centricity, too, but go into this maturity concept. Can you just talk about some of the ways you've actually put that into practice to kind of meet your value around helping your customers be successful?

Lara:
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I started four years ago, our CX program was kind of buried four levels down in the organization somewhere and sort of understaffed and under-resourced. And as you mentioned, John Donahoe and I both had that background at Bain where we had, we were strong believers in NPS and the concept of customer experience. And so we pulled it out. So it was reported directly to me. I brought in a very experienced leader in Matt Lombardi, who had been working in this field for for a long time. And we really started to work on the on the basics. Right. You just making sure that we had appropriate listening posts that we were actually, you know, we had data, good data, fidelity, that we were, you know, that we were listening kind of across the key moments in the customer journey. And then over time, we added on the notion of making sure that we were taking action on that. And so we coordinated across this this help that I was in the strategy function at the time. Right. Because we were able to coordinate across all of the functions that played a role in influencing that feedback and made sure that we you know, we were really driving that kind of closed loop. And then we instituted a lot of the the process mechanisms, again, that that closed loop with the customer, making sure that every time the customer gave us the gift, their feedback, that we were following up with them on that. And now we're really, you know, making sure that it's embedded in our major processes, in our culture as a company. So we're talking about it at our at our company all-hands. We… it was a core element of our recent leaders day, you know, making sure that we have that this notion of every single person plays a role in driving a great customer experience, regardless of the function that we're in. That's what we're driving culturally and reinforcing that through how we measure success. There are for every kind of major initiative at the company that there's customer centric metrics on is what we're doing, does that really matter? And so it is really that that journey that starts kind of, you know, with with those foundations has that kind of real, I think top down support, which starts with the CEO, consistently takes action and then, you know, just is reinforced with the culture.

Steve:
Boy, you said a lot there that I'd love to go on, but we only have so much time in this podcast. But, you know, this is why I say it's a great time to be a CX leader because of the you know, just the the the elevation of this is happening so fast. And it really is the way that companies differentiate today.

Steve:
You know, we're always on the lookout for new and exciting ideas, and we'd love to get your thoughts on how we're doing. If you have a minute. Go to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey. Tell us what content you feel will help in becoming a more effective customer experience leader. Again, that's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback. And we look forward to hearing from you.

Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is Lara Caimi. She's the chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow. And we've been having a fascinating discussion about the mature approach that ServiceNow takes to customer centricity. And it's been a real education, I think, for all our listeners, too, to see how one huge enterprise is really doing some tremendous things with their CX program. Could you give us a couple examples of maybe you know, I know no trade secrets here or anything any but just a couple of things you're doing with data. You mentioned like, you know, there's CX metrics for every measure. And we talk about this all the time about sort of a balanced, you know, using customer metrics along with operational or O-data, as it's called. Can you give us just a couple of examples of where you're using data that maybe most companies aren't?

Lara:
Yeah, I mean, you know, we we have a lot of listening posts where we triangulate on what we're hearing from customers, both looking at the sentiment and the actual scores to be able to inform, you know, where our priorities are. And so, for example, this is probably true for a lot of companies. One of the pieces of feedback is we don't like your pricing. Right. Which I think probably every enterprise tech company hears some version of that. We really dug deep to understand what does that really mean? You know, because it's very simple to to simply dismiss that and say, well, I don't like paying my mortgage, but you know what? I need someplace to live. And so we really dissected that. And when you dig deep and do some journey mapping, some some deep focus groups really look at the feedback and the scores and triangulate across different listening posts. What you realize is it's much, much richer than just like I don't I don't want to pay so much money. Right. It's things like, well, you guys have changed your your meters too many times. And so it's confusing. And so when we deal with compliance, it's it's actually quite, quite painful. And so that comes out in this simple like pricing thing. But actually, when you start to peel the onion and look at the data and then we looked at it by cohorts, you'd see over time what happened to NPS. And you see that drop right before renewal. And it's like, OK, it isn't so much a pricing thing. This is about, you know, the way we meter and the way we drive compliance conversations to make sure that we understand we all agree on what we're paying for, what we're not paying for, what we need to pay for. And so it's things like that that I think that investigation around following the data and really listening to the customer to really understand what they're saying. So you're not just saying it's too easy to just dismiss it. Right. And say, well, every company deals with this, whatever. But to say, no, no, no, we can uniquely influence this if we change X, Y and Z. And by the way, changing X, Y, Z for us is not just about a pricing function. It's actually driven by our core operating model as a company and how we make decisions, how we're organized across our BU's. And so it becomes a really interesting and rich problem to be able to solve when you do truly listen. And also when you think about the full cross-functional nature of how you can resolve a problem.

Steve:
It's a great example because, you know, the the short response to the question that you originally posed would be to lower your price. But we know that that's not the right answer from a business standpoint. And what you're really advocating is we get into a deeper dialog with our customers about the total cost of ownership, about the value. And you're also trying to relate, you know, making it easier to do business with, but also reinforcing your value. So can you give a couple of examples, maybe where you have been able to manifest that, where, you know, you get some customers that actually have said, yeah, OK, now, now I get the value better or this is where I've seen the value come through in more than just the cost of what I'm paying.

Lara:
Yeah, we've made a lot of investments, to your point, that it's not it's usually not just one thing. It's usually a lot of things that influence something as complex as feedback on a broad topic, such as pricing. And so we've invested a lot in value selling. And so making sure that our sellers understand how to sell the value of something we have. We've invested in pre-sales, an organization that we call Inspire. That's a pre-sales organization that really lays out, hey, here's the full transformation that you could drive with ServiceNow. And here's the business value. We do business value assessments. We've we've been able to sort of figure out how to do that at scale so we can say, look, this is the business, this is the ROI of investing in the software and what it can do for your company and for you as an individual, as you try to continue to build your career. And then we've in my organization in in the post sales world, we've reinforced that with customer success. And we know that when folks buy customer success, that they have significantly higher NPS than those who don't. And so you have this this role that's solely there, there's no you know, you don't comp them on sales numbers or anything like that, they're solely there to align to your to your business value assessment and what you're trying to accomplish as a customer. They're speaking your language. They're there every day and they're fully there to try to get you to value to the maximum value from from whatever it is the project that you're trying to do. And then we we also do kind of both post-sale value realization efforts. Right. That will say, OK, let's let's actually document this for you and help you make the business case to show your superior or what you've done, et cetera. And by the way, we've also reinforced that through our partner ecosystem. And so that's an example of systematically what we've done. And that's multiple functions. Right. That are that are driving to to be able to do that, to to, again, change the narrative a little bit and make sure that we're reinforcing that notion of value and really proving it with customers along the way.

Steve:
Yeah. And you guys are a fast growth, technology driven organization that solves really big problems. But just in general, for any company, the way you differentiate is to have a deeper dialog about the problems that you're solving for your customers. And in doing that, you actually do create a competitive advantage because you're you know, you're not just selling them a product or a service, you are actually selling them a solution. But it isn't easy. And it is it is a journey that takes a long time. In the prep we talked a little bit about just some of how you've enhanced your listening posts and you've gotten that data. But if you could just give a couple of examples of it, maybe some kind of low hanging fruit here about where you were able to just kind of up the game for some of the listening points and getting that integrated into your actions and making changes in the business.

Lara:
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of small things that we've done. You know, it starts by making sure that we have a great platform to do the listening. So we invested in in Qualtrics to be able to deliver that. It was even taking out some bias in how we worded the survey that went out from customers instead of coming from your sales rep, who you have a personal relationship with. It comes from me an hour before I took over the role that the president of the company came from him. You know, we we made sure that we you know, there's no kind of bias in the incentives from for for sales reps that so nobody's kind of gaming the system. You know, one of the things that we really did that we really invested a lot in is is making sure that people felt heard as it's you know, it's incredibly frustrating if you give feedback and then you feel like that feedback is not is not heard. And so we invested a lot in a closed loop process, and it's made such a huge difference. We've seen double digit improvement in customer satisfaction year over year and now that we've consistently close the loop. And so that kind of just that operational rigor, both in the quality of of the data that you're getting and then really driving that close feedback loop, I think makes it makes a huge, huge difference. You know, then it's a lot about digging into that data. Looking at the patterns, trying to understand the correlation between the different the different listening posts and and really understanding what what you're learning from it. So you can operationalize that and really make a difference across the company.

Steve:
If you were given some advice to another person who maybe doesn't have the top down engagement that you have, where would you tell them to start? What would be your advice to them if they're having trouble getting attention from the C-level execs in their organization?

Lara:
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's really important to foundationally build the the business case for why CX matters. And I think it's actually pretty easy once you have some foundational data to show to correlate, you know, promoters and detractors with all of the goodness for your business or whether that's renewal rates, expansion rates, you know, whatever, whatever it is for your business. Right. Get the data that that proves it out and then do the math. Right. Say, OK, if we can move this. Oh, and also do the benchmarking. Say, here's where we here's the correlation. We know that promoters grow faster, they renew faster, blah, blah, blah. We know, by the way, that we are behind our peers here. And in that size it up, like if we were to move our NPS to the level of our peers or if we were to drive it up four points over the next two years or whatever it is, here's what it could be worth for our company and do it like you do any kind of business case. Right. And get people to understand. And then I think you also have to make it real. Show the data and say, look, you know, it's often overwhelming. And if you're if you don't do a good job telling the story from what comes out of the data, I think I think executives can get overwhelmed. And so you actually have to curate all of that. Feedback and all of that into a simple narrative that says, OK, here's the top three things that we do really well. And here's the top three things that really we don't do well that make a difference, that correlate strongly to our NPS. And so if we can move the needle on these three things, it will drive differential impact to our customers and deliver those broader outcomes that I described in the business case. Right. So I think it's I think it's a little bit about building a business case. And then I think it's a little bit about 101 exact storytelling in narrative.

Steve:
Yeah, I've said for a long time it's not impossible to do it without top level support, but it sure makes a lot easier. So, yeah, Lara, we've come to that part of the program where I ask every guest to give our listeners a tip. We call it take home value. But this is something that they could come and take back to the office tomorrow or later today or next week and actually put into practice and improve their own program. So, Lara Caimi, please share with our listeners your best tip for enhancing your CX program.

Lara:
Yeah, well, I think, you know, for every leader, almost every question like this can start with people. And I think it's it's probably true for this one as well. You know, I said earlier, I think it's absolutely critical to keep the customers at the center of everything that we do. And and honestly, the only way you can do that at scale is to make sure that it's part of the culture. Right. And that we every single function, every single individual understands how they play a role at ServiceNow in doing something great for our customer. We have a we have a phrase that we we believe that the true acid test for customer centricity is, is it is it valuable, is it frictionless? And is it delightful? Right. And if you can and if you those those three things, if you get those three things right, you can have a really great customer experience. And so that becomes the acid test for what I want every single ServiceNow employee to be empowered to say, like, ha, is this as frictionless as I could if I'm a lawyer? Is this as frictionless as I could make this be? Or if I work at in reception, you know, what can I do to create an even more delightful experience for our customer? Right. And so really empowering people culturally to be able to do that is honestly, I think the most powerful thing you can do, especially as you continue to grow fast and you continue to scale. That's the thing that I think will make the biggest difference.

Steve:
Lara Caimi is the chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow. She's been a wonderful podcast guest. Lara, thanks so much for coming on the program. Appreciate it.

Lara:
Thanks, Steve. It's great chatting with you.

Steve:
And if people want to check out anything more, do you have anything on the ServiceNow website or are you on LinkedIn just in case anybody would want to learn a little bit more about what you're doing there?

Lara:
Yeah, well, I'm on I'm on LinkedIn and we've written things about customer centricity. And then obviously the ServiceNow website has everything you want to know about a ServiceNow and probably more.

Steve:
Well, thank you, I. You know, again, the partnership has been great for our company and the vision of what you guys are trying to do and how it ties in with our whole business. Again, thank you for what you're doing for our whole profession. And thanks again for sharing your insights with our listeners.

Lara:
Thanks, Steve.

Steve:
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 our previous episodes. You'll find them organized by series. And we have our contact information so you can 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 CX leader. Thanks, and we'll see you again next time.

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