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Steve:
The CEO points at you in the middle of a meeting and says, "you're now in charge of building our customer experience program." Well, what's the first thing you're going to do?

Lee:
Our CEO had that foresight, that wisdom in the midst of everything going wrong in the world. Pandemic, supply chain challenges, and said, "Hey, we've got to focus more on customer experience. They are at the center of all we do, but we need to actually show them that."

Steve:
Building a winning CX strategy 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. As we like to say, it's never been a better time to be a CX leader. And this podcast explores topics and themes to help leaders like you deliver amazing experiences for your customers. We love origin stories here on The CX Leader Podcast. You know those stories of CX newbies growing from humble beginnings into customer experience heroes. In our last couple of episodes, we've interviewed winners from the Awards International 2022 US Customer Experience Awards, and hearing their stories of how they built their programs has been fascinating, inspiring and instructional for all of our listeners. Today's guests, as you can imagine, are also award winners, having received not one, not two, but three golds and one silver in the following categories: Gold for Best Measurement and Customer Experience, Best at Use of Insight and Feedback, and Best B2B Program, and a silver in CX Strategy. And we're going to hear the story of how they made that happen. Lee Kemp is the senior director of Customer Experience, and Sam Wegman is the vice president for customer experience, both at Univar Solutions, a global chemical and ingredient distributor. Sam, Lee, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast and thanks for being on.

Sam:
Thank you, Steve. Looking forward to it.

Lee:
Yeah, we're excited to be here. Thanks so much.

Steve:
Well, first of all, congratulations on the award. It's been a great partnership we've had. And it's a it's so enjoyable to hear people who have succeeded at standing up and building winning programs. And I think it inspires all of our listeners. But maybe just for a little context, if you could give us a little more background on Univar are some of the firmographics and then if you could just give us a little bit of your own career journey and how you got to be the VP and the senior director respectively of customer experience.

Sam:
Well, a little bit about Univar Solution's been around since the early 1920s and has grown through a lot of acquisitions. But you know, I always tell my friends because they're always like, What is it you do? I've known you for 20 years and I still don't understand it. But thanks to Amazon, it's easy for me to say we're the Amazon of chemicals. We move product from point A to point B, but that's that's the basics of our business, right? But at the end of the day, we had a lot of value added services to customers and every industry you could imagine. So every product that you use at home, you know, companies that that you wouldn't recognize that we're selling to, that actually make the products that each and every one of us buy. So we're a global company. And yeah, we do operating revenues of about $10 billion dollars a year.

Steve:
And over 5000 employees.

Sam:
Over 5000 employees globally.

Steve:
All over the world.

Sam:
All over the world.

Steve:
Yeah. Awesome. This is a great case study. Yeah.

Sam:
Yeah. I should mention, I think I mentioned we're B2B business to business, so something fairly new for the customer experience journey, which we'll talk more about.

Steve:
Well, you know, the more complicated the the value proposition, the more work there is for the leaders. Right.

Sam:
That's that's true.

Steve:
So what about you, Sam? What's your kind of your background? And how did you get to be a VP of customer experience?

Sam:
Yeah, it's been an interesting journey. I got into the chemical industry, gosh, accidentally. My sister had worked in the industry and I came out of college and needed something to do and fell into this wonderful world and really kind of worked my way up in the organization. So, you know, they say eventually all roads lead to your perfect job. And I feel like that's that's been my experience starting out really in a lot of functions to learn the business through accounting and I.T. and customer service. Thought my way to sales and sales leadership. Again, I think my roles have all led to this having been very cross-functional throughout mostly the commercial side of the business and some of the back office things, which then Lee and I got partner and he can share his background through supply chain, which is very complementary to what I do.

Steve:
Yeah. Lee, tell us a little bit about your journey at Univar and prior to that.

Lee:
Yeah, glad to. And Sam's right. Very complementary. I think I'm going to brag for a moment. I think the perfect team really bringing all these different elements of business together onto this, this small team, certainly. But my background, primarily run operations supply chain. Army veteran of 11 years. Came over into Univar Solutions into the operations side. But ultimately, yeah, our CEO said he had that foresight, that wisdom in the midst of everything going wrong in the world, pandemic supply, chain challenges, whatever you name it, and said, "hey, we've got to focus more on customer experience. They are at the center of all we do, but we need to actually show them that." And so he asked Sam and I to stand up this global CX program.

Steve:
Well, Lee, first of all. Thank you for your service. We can never recognize our vets more and so appreciate that. And I imagine the Army is a pretty good place to learn about supply chain, huh?

Lee:
Yeah, there's. There's no better. And I got to tell you, it's a great place just to learn about how important cross functionality is. You can't win on the battlefield unless you've got everything synchronized. Right. And it's the same thing in business. You've got to have everybody operating at their best if you're going to if you're going to win that fight.

Steve:
So take me back to that day or or week or time where they all pointed at you all and said, hey, we're going to do customer experience and we'd like you to to lead it.

Sam:
It happened similar to kind of what you were saying in the beginning, Steve, and we alluded to it, our CEO, we were going through yeah, the pandemic. Pandemic was happening and we had had CX initiatives in the past largely centered around order to cash, internal processes and really internally focused, which you also have to do at the same time, but never really had put a concerted effort on putting the customer first and from an external internal view. So he tapped us both on the shoulder. We were both very, very busy in other roles and said, Hey, I'd like you to go think through this and build a CX global strategy for us. And, you know, we had some partners that we work with. We got a lot of support from one of our key partners in Dow Chemical, who had led the industry in building a program two or three years prior to us. So it was great to have kind of some best practices to learn from as well. But yeah, we were also, as we mentioned, the pandemic was going on, but also as a company we had acquired a company called Nexeo Solutions, and that's how Univar Solutions became. All these things were happening at once, and our CEO had the wisdom to say, "You know what, yeah, all this is happening. But we know it takes time to build a good program and need to get started now." So when these things hopefully start to settle down, we've got the foundation and the framework built and a really truly, as they say, nowhere to go but up. If you're going to start it in the middle of chaos, then nowhere to go but up.

Steve:
You know, I do want to emphasize the cross-functional nature of your experiences is is a perfect recipe for a fast startup. But I got to tell you, going from August of 2020 to an award winning program in 2022, for a company of your size and complexity, I mean, that might be a speed record in our industry. So August 2020, you get the mandate. What happens next where you go from there, Lee?

Lee:
One of the things that I've really appreciated about Sam's leadership in this process was, you know, a lot of times you have this sense of urgency and you got to go and you just start doing things. And we were very intentional about, Nope, take your time, we're going to go fast, but let's make sure we do this right from the beginning. And so we took the first 90 days, I think, and just researched. We went out and looked at every single website. We read the books, we listen to the podcast, we we talk to supplier partners, we talk to peers within the chemical industry, we talk to our customers. And then we leveraged, as you mentioned, a lot of past work that had already been done. And we dusted all of it off and pulled it all out and said, okay, now let's be very intentional about our approach here and let's start getting this thing together. But that speed, you know, I've got to give a lot of credit to the fact that we just had that outstanding support from our leadership from day one. And we talked to a lot of others out there that that are trying to stand up CX programs or trying to move them forward. And that's a critical hurdle for them still. And so we were really benefitting greatly from our leadership, supporting us 100%, out there communicating regularly about the importance of customer experience and making sure that we were featured in a lot of the communications, in a lot of the meetings and a lot of the newsletters. And so we really benefited greatly from that. But it was, yeah, let's make sure we've got the right path and then let's go fast.

Steve:
Sam, you mentioned earlier that you were able to leverage some of the previous work. It was a little more internally focused, but to get you started quick, were you able to to use some of that?

Sam:
Yeah, we were, Steve. You know, that prior work had a lot of outside end view points that had talked to our customers. Having been in the business for 30 some years, you know, the basics of our business haven't really changed. Customers come to us because we buy product, have it logistically available to them locally, and are able to get it to them fairly quickly. And I think so the the the ask of the customers, while things are changing digitally and through sustainability efforts, all those value added things we do. At the end of the day, it's run the basics. So we're able to take that customer feedback, the interviews that have been used and quite frankly, we're very data heavy. And so we had a lot of data that really helped direct some of the things we were able to use and start to build that foundation that we're going to talk about.

Steve:
Yeah, that's interesting. Let me stay with you here, Sam, for a minute, because, you know, typically a lot of the people that we talk to are really survey focused and they go get the operational data later. But with your combined background and kind of the way you attack this and then you're right, you know, your business model, while it is extremely complex, it's really like, hey, I made an order, where is it? Or My order came in. It wasn't right or when's my order going to arrive. I mean, it's basically pretty simple customer value type of questions. You already had the operational data then and I'm sure you had tons of operational data like on time delivery and you know, all those kinds of things. So how did you start to put those together to kind of influence the the customer experience data that you were going to collect?

Sam:
Yeah. And I'm going to I'm going to lean on Lee a little bit here, too. But let me kick it off by saying, well, we had a ton of data. One of the things we went through and said from the lens of the customer, what data do we have? That whole perception is reality. Yeah, you brought up a great one and said, okay, well, on time delivery we did have, but we were measuring that from kind of our last mile. And inevitably things happen along the supply chain. And I think we all who are listening can can understand, especially over the last couple of years, things can go wrong, things can get delayed. And what we lacked were a couple metrics down to that customer level that that told the perception story that when I do call are I need to know that you are my local supplier and you do have inventory that I can get quickly. We didn't have we had a measurement to do that within our branches and kind of higher level, but we didn't have one down at the customer level. And then the second one we wanted was that on time delivery experience of measuring ourselves in two places. One, I made a commitment to you, Steve, and I said I'd get it to you on that day. Things have happened along the supply chain. So instead of just only measuring that last mile, we thought, No, we need to know how that feels for the customer. We had inventory, yes or no. And secondly, we we made a commitment to you. And while you may understand things can go wrong, we want to hold ourselves accountable to that that first commitment as well. And so we led those initiatives.

Lee:
Yeah, I think it's it's important that when you look at your metrics and you're trying to figure out how do we how do we measure success and customer experience, you know, it's really easy to default to those things that you have already that you're comfortable with. Right. You know what your stocking strategy should look like. You know what your aged inventory is, you're working capital. But at the end of the day, if that's not focused on the customer, that's not through their lens, through their perspective, through their experience, then it's not going to be effective. And one of the things that I think really prevents organizations from moving forward that way is it's scary. Inevitably, your results are going to be more negative when you look at it through the lens of the customer, and no one wants to sign up for that, but you have to just recognize that. And again, it's about measuring it from the customer's perspective. And so there were certainly a lot of work around getting everybody on board for that and giving them the confidence that this is this is the right path. We're not assigning blame. You know, when you think about Net Promoter Score, when you think about customer experience or customer satisfaction, it's not the measurement of any particular person or organization within the business. It's a measurement of the satisfaction of that customer for the entire Univar Solutions process. And so when you give people that, that, that safety net of like, okay, it's not just about me, it's not all of us, I think that you can start to get greater buy in around that. But that was critical for us to get that lined up with our our voice of customer feedback.

Steve:
Hey, my guests on the podcast this week are Lee Kemp and Sam Wegman. They are the collective leadership of customer experience at Univar, an award winning program that we have been learning about here. And it's it's really a very instructive and very well conceived approach to how you stand up a CX program in a complicated B2B space. Hey and Sam, you at the VP level and you mentioned the top down support, which we have been talking about that since day one. There's no replacement for it. But was there hearty debate in the executive suite and the functional about the validity of the data?

Sam:
And yeah, you know, I smile, may not be able to see it on the podcast. But yes, there was definitely hearty debate and in some cases there's still hearty debate because I think we mentioned it some people in a really positive way take it personal. And I've been in sales and I've got a customer relationship with someone and I actually think my customer loves me. And when they take the time to give a voice to customer feedback and they're frustrated with Univar, they take it very personal. That's not how they feel. Like what is kind of how they feel? They actually wrote how they felt. And I think, you know, since we're such a highly transactional one, it can be very emotional because it is a relationship business first and foremost. Talking from emotion is is quite common. So our vision was, look, let's establish customer perception metrics. Let's look at our back end metrics as well that we hold ourselves accountable. And let's ask our customers and when you're able to put it in one page and say, here's the perception, does it match the reality? They're frustrated around some of these elements of our customer journey and our operational metrics over here would say, yep, it actually matches. And you can really then start taking an approach of a collaborative approach like, OK, I see it's multiple touch points. It's just not the relationship that I might be frustrated by or your on time delivery. You might not be billing me correctly or your communication back and forth in this crazy supply chain disruption world we live in right now is not good enough. The more we stick with it and now we've had almost two years on our customer journey and voice of the customer, I think the data is showing and we mentioned it, the correlations are there, we know we can follow. So as people give us feedback around certain elements of that journey, we can follow just that element all the way back to NPS and correlate the strength to NPS. Is that more or less going to drive us to a promoter or a detractor status?

Steve:
Hey, Sam, let me stick with you here. I'll leverage that concept of you never really done, but with your awards now, where do you go from here? What's kind of the next phase or what's what's the vision rolling forward?

Sam:
Yeah, I wonder. I thought our work was done. You know, we put this program together once an award. So let's move on to our next role. But not.

Steve:
You're never done.

Sam:
Yet. We're never done. And you know, the good the good news is we love what we're doing. I think the validation of the industry was really important to us because, again, B2B is a little bit lagging in terms of customer experience. I think most people in B2B would tell you that. And so we attend a lot of things and we hear a lot of things from a B2C perspective, so it was really validating to be part of that process. But where we go from here is really it's now we've got we've got some history behind us in terms of voice of customer or customer facing metrics, those perception metrics we talked about. So we're really facing forward around getting to that next level. And he's going to lead those efforts around our voice to Customer 2.0, more highly transactional at point of delivery at point of order entry, some of that feedback. But quite frankly, he also mentioned we've got really best in class in our industry, an advanced advanced analytics team with data scientist where we can really take all that data now against history and start getting predictive, getting ahead of things. So the voice of customer is wonderful, but by the time they're telling us that they're not happy, it's too late. So we've got to be able to take everything that we've done now. Throw it into an algorithm. Sounds simple, right? And spit it back out saying, hey, let's it looks like a little bit of a warning over here. And that's where our efforts are going to be focused on that. And really that deeper correlations because again, you can't do all that in the beginning until you start really building up a good data set.

Steve:
Exactly. And maybe just reflect quickly on the award and kind of what that's meant to is a validation for the efforts.

Sam:
Yeah, the validation. And I know Lee and I chatted about it in the beginning when it came and we feel like we're doing a great job. You said it earlier and we joked a little bit about sometimes you get a little bit of challenge internally around the data and like, oh, that's not really how customers feel. I'm not sure. But you know, when you got a large organization and you've got support from the top down and we feel pretty good. The awards help validate, Oh, to all of our employees. Oh, maybe there's maybe, maybe there is something to the program that they built over there that we may or may not have totally understood or bought into yet. So I think it's really helped us internally. It's been some really great recognition as part of that program.

Lee:
I think it's been exciting because it now it does it validate the work, but I think it's a great pat on the back and a recognition of all the work that so many have been supporting in the business. So when we talk about Brandon Williams and what he's doing around our our voice of customer NPS program, when you talk about Jessica Hutchinson, what she did early on around our customer journey training that we developed, helping us with the change management aspects, the entire advanced analytics team and how they've helped us deliver best in class data so fast. And then and again our executive leadership team. So it's, it's, it's that recognition of all the work that everybody's been involved in. And so we said early on, I think that it really is a team effort and we've we've just benefited from that. So it was fun to celebrate that for the entire business.

Sam:
That's true because we talked we had a tagline we created in the beginning that we are all CX hashtag and we've used that throughout. So I think that's a really point to it. All the validations for us is we have building the program and think that we're on the right track. But for the rest of the organization that we've been hammering on and you know, you mentioned earlier, Steve, how do you get this thing kickstarted? And one of the things that I thought of after we went through that section was, you know, when you have focus, right. And Lee and I were completely focused on the program. We've all done jobs where it's like, hey, you lead this area, by the way, we'd like you to kind of do this project or this was never a project. This was this was a strategy and a framework. And I think it was new for both Lee and I to sit still for a minute without chaos happening around us. And it's a little uncomfortable, to be honest. And it was kind of like, where do we start? So but it's yeah. Coming back full circle here to that question, I think it's a it's a compliment to the support we've received up and down throughout Univar.

Steve:
Sam, you mentioned something just a moment ago of of sort of your future vision for this and making it more predictive. And I'd like you to just talk a little more about that, because you're right, this is cutting edge stuff, you know, when we're measuring backwards, but we're also building these data sets and we start to learn things that we can now influence going forward, that we can prove factually are going to have a positive impact on that customer experience. Talk to me a little bit more about the vision for that.

Sam:
Yeah, thanks, Steve. You know, it's been exciting to watch because we talked earlier about our data scientists efforts and some some again, collaboration across the industry, like across our business, like wouldn't it be great if we could get ahead of it? And I think now that we've got some some data under our belt from a voice of customer, we know like minded contacts that like customers, we looked across our business and said, what types of variables impact a customer experience? And it's not just always looking at revenues up or down. We took it to the next level and said, Well, what about tenure? It's a relationship business. So has the CSR changed on the account? Has the seller changed on the account? How much experience, how many years of service do we have on these customers? And so it's literally about 70 variables going across every customer and then looking at those history historical patterns of people that are like them that have taken the survey. And so if you've got like for like in that person that took the survey was, say, a promoter, then the likelihood is we think this customer would be a promoter because one of the challenges we have in B2B is is really around getting that that survey response and why we think we've still done pretty good in our first couple of years. You're never going to get 100%. You're barely going to get 90% of your or more than 10% of your customers to take the survey. So we have to find a way. And that's that's what we're building, is to say, you know what, let's get ahead of it. The 80, 90% of the people that will never give us their opinion. We've got enough data now behind us to be able to predict that. You know what, as a seller, as a customer service rep, you can see it before we have a conversation with the customer that if they were to take the survey, they probably wouldn't be very happy with this right now.

Lee:
Yeah, I got to tell you, Sam laughed early on. I really held on tight to to some key things that advanced analytics taught me about data confidence and things of that nature. And so, you know, I'm no analyst, but what they've taught us and what they've brought to bear for our business, you know, you think about as they like to call it, it's an ensemble of algorithms, right? And the amount of data that's being leveraged to produce this this predictive NPS is remarkable. Yeah. And and again, it just it lends confidence to the process because we hear a lot of times, well, wait a minute. You know, out of my customers, only ten responded to the survey last month. Why should I jump through hoops over ten responses? Is that even accurate? And so as you start to get more data over time and as you start to layer in this this predictive element, it increases the confidence for the business that, okay, yeah, this is actually spot on and I need to get ahead of this and I need to engage that customer proactively. And I think that transparency builds confidence with your customers. Oh, you are actually listening or you are actually looking at this. And yeah, you're right, we need to improve here. And so how do we do that? So I think that those are all really, really powerful results of the work that's been done.

Steve:
Lee and Sam, we have reached that point of the program where I ask every guest to give us their best tip, their take home value. If someone's listened to this podcast, what's what's kind of the one thing that you hope that they take from this, that they could go back and apply to their own work and make some improvement. So, Lee, I'll start with you and then Sam, wrap us up.

Lee:
Sam and I talked a lot about this. You know, how do you summarize what's what's the one thing you want to give somebody? To run with. And I would say it's just have the confidence that you can do it. Don't don't shy away because you don't have enough people or because you don't you're not a CX certified professional or, you know, or that you're struggling to get your your leadership to buy in. Just do the work. Leverage a data driven approach. You've got the data, it's there. It's just in how you use it and how you communicate it and make sure that you've got a lot of focus around the culture and around the change management aspect of it. But I'd say, yeah, don't, don't be afraid. Get in there and do it. Don't wait forever for the perfect solution. Just. Just go.

Steve:
The longest journey starts with the first step, right?

Lee:
Correct.

Steve:
How about you, Sam? What's your take home value?

Sam:
Yeah, I think we summed it well, but I think for me personally, you know, having that that faith in your experience matters and that perception of the customer, I mean, talking to customers and saying, hey, here's what we're thinking about. This is what we think is important. It doesn't really matter what we think is what's important to you. What do you think? Are we on the right track? That transparency is important. But Lee touched on a little bit about culture, and even if you have top down support, you still have to take the time to educate the organization on what customer experience is and why it's important. And one of the I'd say the best things we did and it took us a year was literally look across all the roles in the organization. There's only a couple handful that are customer facing and they get it. It's the rest of the organization that we spent time with and said, You know what? How your role impacts the customer experience. And I had firsthand knowledge of it in my very first job when I was in accounting, which is way behind. And so taking those experiences that I had quite some time ago and remembering them and saying, well, no one ever really explained to me my role in accounting and how it has an influence on the customer experience. So I think one of the key things we did that I would recommend to everybody is think about that journey from the lens of everybody in the organization doesn't have to be complicated, but tying what you do and making sure they understand what they do can have a positive impact, even if it's multiple steps away from the customer.

Steve:
Sage advice from a award winning duo here. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing the story. It's awesome, it's inspiring and really appreciate it. If anybody would like to continue the conversation, I know I found both of you on LinkedIn, but is there any other contact information or any thing else you'd like to promote here in case anybody wants to reach.

Sam:
You can find us anywhere. I'm on most social media, but also both of our names. Our emails are not complicated. They're just our first first name, period, last name and at Univar Solutions. So sam.wegman and lee.kemp @ univarsolutions, just feel free to reach out.

Lee:
Yeah. And if you're a customer of ours, take the survey. And oh, by the way, our contact information is right there in the survey email.

Steve:
Awesome. Thanks to both of you for sharing the story. This is just so valuable for our listeners and I'm grateful for that.

Sam:
Yeah. Thanks for all you do for the community too, Steve. It's, it's, it's wonderful. It's people like you we talked about in the very beginning where you said, well, how did you get started? And it was listening to people like yourself to kind of help guide us in the beginning. So thanks for for all you're doing for CX.

Steve:
Pleasure's mine. Thank you. Lee Kemp is the senior director of Customer Experience and Sam Wegman is the vice president of Customer Experience, both at Univar Solutions, Award winning CX program and great podcast guests. Thanks again for being a part of The CX Leader Podcast.

Lee:
Thanks, Steve.

Sam:
Thanks, Steve.

Steve:
Hey, and if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business's customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give The CX Leader Podcast a rating through your podcast service and give us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listeners. Hey, check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, find all our previous episodes, podcast series and our contact information. You can drop us a note about a future podcast you might like to hear or give us any feedback that you want. 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 and thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. So go out there and do it and we will see you again next time.

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