March 27, 2025 • 24 mins
Navigating the Power Core: A Strategic Approach to Customer Experience
Join us as we dive deep into the world of customer experience with Shelly Chandler, a seasoned CX strategist with 25 years of experience across B2B and B2C industries. In this eye-opening episode, Shelly shares her journey from banking to diverse sectors, offering unique perspectives on leading CX transformation from within the product realm.
Discover why aligning with your organization's "Power Core" is crucial for CX success, and learn how to navigate C-suite expectations by connecting CX initiatives to business objectives. Shelly also addresses common pitfalls in the CX profession and provides invaluable advice for practitioners looking to make a lasting impact.
Shelly answers these questions:
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What is considered "product" in different industries, and why is it important?
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How has the role of customer experience within organizations changed in recent years, particularly in relation to the "Power Core"?
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What advice does Shelly give to CX professionals when starting in a new role or trying to drive change?
Whether you're a CX novice or a seasoned professional, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you elevate your CX game and drive meaningful change in your organization. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry's most versatile experts!
Meet Shelly
Shelly Chandler is a senior customer experience strategist and leader delivering proven results that increase revenue, reduce costs and solidify customer loyalty. In the specialized profession of Customer Experience that that spans all organizational functions, her career as a customer catalyst has helped companies to drive action within organizations that are ready for customer growth.
Shelly especially enjoys transforming blue-sky visions into tangible, executable programs, creating strategic change with others to enhance customer experience. Shelly has worked in many different industries, adding strategic value and broad understanding of the CX profession over the past 25 years. Key verticals include B2B and B2C, Hospitality, Retail, Automotive, Transportation, Manufacturing, SaaS, and Financial Services, with brands such as PNC Bank, Wells Fargo, Moen, Penske, Walmart, Forsta, and American Tire.
Specialized Skills:
CX Strategy, Insights Development and Metrics, Customer Journey Mapping/Orchestration, and
Experience Design are Shelly’s areas of expertise, along with public speaking, coaching and
volunteering.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelly-chandler-cxleader/
shelly@evolvecxconsulting.com
704-995-7939
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so
glad you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about
customer experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't
just good for business. It's a powerful way to make a meaningful
difference in people's lives. Each week we feature thought
provoking conversations with industry thought leaders from
(00:23):
a variety of backgrounds, offering unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Well, I am so excited to have my next guest on
the Delighted Customers podcast. Shelly Chandler is
(00:46):
a CX strategist. She has worked
across some of the biggest brands out there and she has
helped organizations over the past 25 years
in B2B and B2C. Hospitality, retail, automotive,
transportation, work for some great brands like pnc,
Moen, Penske, Walmart, Forsta, and where she currently
(01:08):
is now, which is Wells Fargo. Shelley, welcome so much
to the show. Thank you, Mark. You know, I've been a listener over the years.
I'm really impressed with what you've done with the podcast because you
typically bring in people that I can always learn from. So I hope I
can contribute to that today. Well, it's so cool to have you on the show,
partly because you have such a broad a
(01:30):
range of experience in different industries. And
mine when it comes to cx, mine was limited to banking. And all I get
to do in terms of expanding my knowledge base is get to have great guests
like you on the show. Well, you know, Mark, that's why I left
banking for a while, because I've been in banking for a
total of 20 years. But I got to a point where I just felt like
(01:52):
I needed to really expand my customer experience
learning and to be able to go deeper and to do all pieces of it.
I had to leave banking because as you know, in very large
banks, we all tend to have kind of our spots, our
slots, our boxes. And I decided
toward the end of the merger with Wachovia and Wells Fargo to
(02:14):
just move into something that would allow me to get into things like customer
journey mapping and customer experience strategy and more into voice
of the customer and, you know, actually doing some of the work for clients who
were invested in it. It's really a lot of fun. Yeah. And that broad
range of skills is an experience to go along with
that will make you, no doubt, make you a better leader wherever you go.
(02:37):
But right now you are at Wells and Wells is sort of
a bucket list for me to have on the show. So I'm doubly honored
to have you? And, but you know, you bring so much background
and one of the things that you perspective that you get
that most people don't have by having all the broad range of
experience that you have is what it's like to lead change from
(02:59):
different places in an organization and in particular what we call
product and how that may make be a little bit different than other areas.
So I think it could be really informative for the audience
to hear about from a different perspective what it's like to
lead change from different areas and in particular from
product. So could you help us by first like what is, when
(03:21):
we say product, what are we talking about? And then talk
about just how is that perspective different than other perspectives?
Sure. You know, product really depends of course upon the industry that
you're in. So in banking, product is, it's
both services and physical, physical things, you know, your deposit
checking account. But it could also be a service that you
(03:44):
provide. Like some of the services that we, we handle in merchant
services. Product can be software, if that's the main thing
you produce, it could be an actual widget or it could just
be purely a service that you provide. As when
I worked with a distribution company, so we didn't actually
manufacture the tires, but we got them from one place to the other
(04:06):
and added a whole lot of value added services on top. So but it's
usually the part of the business that let's say
is not sales, is not operations, it's not customer service. And
it's the one that can tend to be sometimes most important or at least in
the eyes of a lot of product people. I've had a product
management title before. I've been a product manager. So you know, I can make fun
(04:28):
of myself there with that. But
what it is though is the place that you can't hide.
So if you have a poor product, you're not going to be
able to hide from that. You can have a great sales organization. And I've
worked at some places where the sales organization was top notch, but the product really
wasn't. You can make up for things with your customer service group,
(04:51):
but in the end the product has got to be solid. And that's why I
think it gets so much attention. So
I'm gonna riff off what you just said a little bit and
ask your opinion. I know we both know Gene Bliss and in her, in her
book the Chief Customer Officer, she talked about this thing called the power
core of an organization. And it was,
(05:14):
it's an interesting thing. You get in the weeds and you're not really thinking about
those kind of things. But I had Sam
Stern from LinkedIn on the show a couple, couple of shows back and
he talked about they moved, they let go a number of people, but
they moved him over to the Power Corps, which he, which is product
for them. And I want to get your opinion of, you know, how
(05:36):
important was Gene's original philosophy around
being. She said if you're not in the Power Corps, you at least need to
dance with them. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, that hasn't
changed a bit. I think the Power Corps is also
consolidating. So. And you know, I don't remember in the book if she, if
she said that marketing was part of that Power Core. I, I
(05:57):
would suspect maybe not in some ways because customer experience has,
in the last, especially the last five years has, has gone
into one of two places. It seems like either marketing
or product in a lot of corporations now in some places it still stands
alone and that's great. But invariably, you know, you
see people get moved into one of these areas. I actually
(06:20):
reported into operations at one point and I know that's part of the Power
Core. So that, I think that that's really important too is to, if you can
see if you can aligned to one of those areas, it won't be an easy
go in some ways and maybe we can talk about that. But you
are definitely better suited being inside that core
than as a support service. I would agree. So
(06:42):
why, when we talk about leading transformation, what's the,
what's the view or perspective you think from the C Suite
when it comes to why should they care about this?
Yeah, it depends on your C suite. Obviously, you know, some of
them, all they know about customer experiences is what their NPS
score is and others believe that it's really happening in the
(07:05):
contact center and that's the only place. Or maybe it's the relationship
management arm, the customer success team, that's really customer experience.
So it all really depends on how deeply they've gotten into it. The size
of company matters too. The organization where I reported to the coo,
so I was one down from the coo, from the CEO. And that
really helped because I had access to him and to his team
(07:28):
to be able to help them grow in their CX maturity. You know, the
C suite is, is really concerned mainly about numbers,
about the finances of the company, and you want to be concerned about that
too as a CX leader. I think in the last four or five years, and
I keep using that because I believe that since COVID things have changed so
rapidly and so dramatically for customer experience
(07:50):
professionals that we can no longer kind of hide in
our own profession. We have to be really part
of that. We have to be integrated into the other professions and we have to
understand financials. We have to know what the product is and how it's built built
and how it's sold. So if you can do that, then you're gonna
be more relevant to the C suite than if you're just talking about
(08:12):
your survey results, for example. I'm sure you've talked about that on a lot of
other shows. Yeah, and. And just to, to rewind a little bit on the
Power Core. So I think, I think what Gene's
concept of it was, and I, I hope I'm getting this right,
is you have to figure out in your organization what is
the Power Core. So it could be marketing, it could be, you know, a
(08:35):
particular product if you're in banks, could be commercial loans, or it could be
treasury management and merchant services. It could be anything.
And the idea is to get in alignment
with that group and make friends with that group and be
tapping into that for. Partly for what you're, you're talking about is if you really
want to make transformation, the part of the organization that holds the
(08:56):
power is a good place to get aligned, right? Yeah. You used to look at
who the CEOs were for banks, for example, and it
felt to me like a lot of times they came up through commercial lending.
So that was almost like a path, if not
there. Finance. And more and more companies are promoting
their CFOs into those types of roles. You don't often see some
(09:19):
of the support services making it to that level. So that should tell
you something about kind of where you want to be and who you should make
your best friend at work. I always say, people would ask me, when you're starting
up a CFO CX discipline within a company, who would you hire first? I
said the first person I'd hire would be an analyst because we have to get
our hands around the data. And then the second person, if that were able to
(09:40):
be a hire, and you know, you don't always have the luxury of big
teams, but it would be a person who can do the
financials for me. So how do we create a
CX portfolio? And let's do the business case for that. And you know,
if not that, you need to have someone that can kind of be assigned to
you in finance to be sure that you are aligned with the way numbers
(10:01):
are Done at your company. Yeah. Good. Great point. Just
so critical to have a good handle on the financial
levers of the organization and, you know, how to prove
the roi. We're always trying to make the ROI case. And if you've got someone
on your team or someone who you're friends with, that's going to really help you
go a long way to transformation. You know, I'm going to share a little
(10:24):
beef here because we're on that. On that trend. Yeah.
Lately, I have been hearing a lot of consultants in
our space say the reason customer experience is failing
is because these practitioners don't know how to
connect what they're doing with business objectives. And there's truth in
that. It is true that we worked ourselves into this, this small
(10:45):
little survey box in a lot of ways. But for
those who have tried to do that, it's just as much about,
like you said, the CEO's understanding of customer experience, the value that
it has, how strategic, how they're willing to place
strategic value on what our customers think, feel, need, expect,
observ of all those things. So what bothers me, I think in the industry right
(11:08):
now is it's in fashion to say, well, CX practitioners are
failing because they don't do this and that. Well, often
you will take a role in customer experience and be told that
that's what you're there to do, is to elevate CX maturity and to grow these
things. And then you get there and you find that that's really not what they
were prepared for. So I'm not speaking to my current
(11:30):
situation, but I have been in that situation before, prior to that.
So it's. It's tough when people who aren't inside the
business don't understand how the business works. Yeah. What
advice would you give to those people? I would. You know, like we talked about,
finding the right friends in the organization. I mean, that starts on day one. That
starts in your interviews because you're likely going to interview with those people.
(11:51):
But, you know, one thing I've learned the hard way over time
is to start slow. And it's still hard for me. I still want
to, maybe because of my nature. I still want to push
ahead fast. You know, I want to go fast. I want to get things done.
And I know that that's important in any CX role is to
show results. But it's often one of the professions where you
(12:13):
really have to tiptoe more than just barge ahead.
Sometimes, especially if you've been in it for a while, you can be
perceived as someone who's kind of too consultanty. Maybe
you're, you're trying to teach because you know you have to. But people don't
always want to be taught. They want to think they,
they know how to handle their customers and what to do to make a
(12:35):
better experience. And you know, as a professional that there are lots
of things that maybe need to be done. So it's really just, you
know, having that balance and not charging in too hard
and not trusting that what they told you you were going to be able to
do can happen all at once. Yeah, that's such a good point.
I like to pull out gems when they guest share of them so people
(12:58):
don't roll, roll over them too quickly. But one of those is like you
need to slow down sometimes in order to go faster. And part of that
is, you know, you talked earlier about stakeholders and building
relationships. I think you know that the, the masterclass that
I offer to people is all about this balance
of getting the financials right. Yes. But none of that's going to
(13:21):
matter unless you act more like a guy than a hero
and build trust. And with some people that can happen very
quickly and other people, it takes longer. And
so this idea of thinking, use the word strategically earlier is
strategically about who are the people across the organization?
What do I know about them? What do I know about their goals, their
(13:43):
problems, their philosophical challenges? Right. And
if you, if you can't answer those questions, maybe you're going too fast.
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(14:06):
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(14:28):
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(14:50):
business.
Yes, and you know you often can't answer those questions until
you get out into the business. So one thing, whether you've been there for a
while or not, CX professionals need to be
immersed in their businesses. You know, I worked for a company for a
time that did food and beverage and sports
(15:12):
facilities and parks and casinos. I mean, it was a
really fun business. And I made sure that the first six months I was
out there in those locations. Now, I have to say that was a fun thing
to do. But you have to get out there to really see
what the problems are on the street. It's just too hard to tell when
you're behind your desk looking at all the data. And it can be easy to
(15:35):
get boxed into that position of being a CX person who's just looking
at data without feeling it. So, you know, one of my goals right
now is to get out with our sales team, even though a lot of appointments
are done virtually, but it's to get on some of those, get out there to
try to understand how the product is sold, what types of
concessions do they have to make when they do those things is just really understand
(15:56):
from each perspective what that experience is like. Well, you have
just shared. I'm just going to recount some of the gems that you've already shared
and then ask if, if there's any more strategies that you can help
folks when it comes to leading transformation from product or really from anywhere
else. That is. So one is, one we talked about is slow down. Sometimes
slow down to get to really know the people that you need to
(16:19):
influence to make change. Because after all, we're not the ones
actually making the change in the organization. We're shining a light on
it and maybe providing some advice. But ultimately they're
going to have to be the ones making those changes. And secondly, you said be
immersed, get out there. It's one thing to be familiar
with the data, it's another thing to know what it's like in real life. And
(16:41):
then the third thing I have was align with key leaders in the
organization. In some cases that might be finance to help
you get a better handle on, you know, how they're measuring
financial impact. But align with key leaders in the organization. Are
there, are there any others in terms of strategies that you can think of
that might help? Leaders always have a growth mindset. You know, Carol
(17:03):
Dwark's work on growth mindset because as a CX leader, you're going to help, you're
going to have been trained in a certain discipline. You might, you might be able
to calculate NPS and do pivot charts and pull in data
and give everybody the answers they want. But you know, you're going to have your
blind spots. So just like any leader, you're going to want to know what the
blind spots are and how you can get out of your fixed mindsets. I think
(17:24):
one fixed mindset that we bring into the customer experience
profession is that maybe we aren't as good as
product because product managers are told all day
long, this is your product. You own this. You own it
from soup to nuts. We sometimes think that they don't value what
we can bring them. And yes, it's about building relationships
(17:46):
with them, but it's also, you know, standing strong in the profession that
you're in and contributing what you can contribute and showing them
that you, you know how to apply that as well because you know the business,
maybe they know everything about the product. But don't, you know, don't be cowed by
that. I think that's a common problem between product and
CX people, is that sometimes you willing put yourself in a
(18:08):
smaller box than you need to be. Yeah, I think that's another area of
balance. Right. Is we have to learn enough about
the other areas, you know, other, other people outside of CX
in the organization, learn enough about how the business works, how it operates, and then
bring the customer's perspective into view so that
we can talk their language, that they feel like
(18:31):
there's enough credibility that they can trust what we're saying. Does that
make sense? Yeah, it really does. Because otherwise they think you don't get it.
They think you don't get the business. They say you don't understand the realities. You're
reading me a couple little verbatims or you're telling me what the ideal
experience ought to look like and you just aren't, you aren't living
where I'm living. You know, you're not, you're not seeing the, the problems
(18:54):
that we have to overcome. So you can then sometimes appear as someone
who's not flexible, even though what you have to do
is, is really push the rock up the hill most days. So you just,
you have to be seen as someone who understands that there's, there are other
perspectives and there are other key business goals that maybe what's best for
the customer doesn't address. Yeah, I
(19:17):
so resonate with that, having come when I first ended up at
the bank I was with for over 10 years. But when I first got there,
I had no banking experience. And the average, seemed like the average
tenure was at least 30 years of the people there. So I was
definitely, you know, in terms of credibility, I was on the short end. And one
of the things, a few years in, probably should have done it way sooner, sooner
(19:37):
was I made friends with A senior underwriter who underwrote business
loans. And he was one of really four key
senior senior leaders who did underwriting. And I sat with
him when he would meet with other underwriters and
listen to the conversations that they would have. And then I would ask a bunch
of questions. Well, what is, why is this happening? What's happening? What's your thought process,
(19:58):
you know, on approving this loan? What, you know, and tell me when they get
stuck, why are they getting stuck? And, and then they would go to this thing
called senior loan committee, which is this
periodic thing that happened, whatever it was, I'd say once a month or whenever it
happened, every few weeks. And they would all be these, all these people, including one
of the executives and underwriting, all the underwriters would be there, the commercial lenders who
(20:19):
had a loan up for review and approval was sitting in the room, maybe some
operational people and they would, this would be sort of like their day in court
and they, they really wanted, you know, it's a push pull. Banking's a little different
than other businesses where you're not just trying to sell stuff. You become part owner
in their business if you make them a loan. So there's part of your own
organization that's pushing back on saying yes to things naturally.
(20:40):
I mean, it's a natural operational risk. That's. Yeah.
And that, that's not unusual outside of banking. Absolutely right. Well, you still have
to invest resources. You still have to decide at the end of the day what
the best use of money is. One company where I
came in to build out the CX program, I eventually got to the point,
I may have said this already, but I eventually got to the point where I,
(21:02):
I was. Well, I'm not going to say I was given, but you know,
I earned a CX portfolio of projects. So year one was about
building, year two was about, okay, now we agreed
that these are the things to do, but I had to run it through the
strategy team, I had to run it through every team and kind of fight for
those dollars because they could have easily gone to things that probably had
(21:23):
more immediate positive impact on the bottom line. Some of them did
have bottom line impact, but then some of them didn't. Something that executives want to
keep a really close eye on as to, you know, is promising
here actually going to increase our bottom line eventually. And sometimes
it's eventually and sometimes it's right away. So such a, such a great
set of recommendations, great conversation. It is
(21:45):
getting time to land the plane and I would like to ask you
one more question, which is what delights you
as a customer? For me, I just want to be able to respect
the product or service provider. And what, what makes me
respect them is when a company has the
same sense of urgency that I do, which is tough because
(22:07):
I can be demanding. I'm in this field and, you know, when I go out
to dinner with my son, he's like, mom, don't embarrass us because you're just
better. But I, you know, I want to see that somebody cares about
their business as much as I care about the experience that they're giving me.
And if something goes wrong, I don't need a hero kind of experience.
I don't need them to give me something. Once I was staying at a hotel
(22:29):
in San Francisco and I went to open the window and it fell on my
hand and kind of crushed it. Oh, almost. I think I broke a
bone. But when I went to tell the hotel about it, all they wanted to
do is give me points and, okay, give me a million
points. But all I want you to do is care. Yeah, just
want them to care. And if something happens, make it right. You don't have to
(22:51):
go overboard. And then we're on. We're fine. Because I know that you
cared enough to make it right. And you'll do it again if I have another
problem. That's what delights me as a customer.
Shelley, we could do a whole. A whole episode on
service recovery, right? That'd be fun. Oh,
my gosh. Well, thank you so much for being on the
(23:13):
show. Before we leave, if somebody wanted to get ahold of you
just to check in or pick your brain on something, what would be the best
way? LinkedIn would be the best way. I usually am on
there once a week or so. Excellent. Shelley. Thank you so much for being a
guest on the show. Thank you, Mark. I really enjoyed it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers
(23:35):
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Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so
glad you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about
customer experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't
just good for business. It's a powerful way to make a meaningful
difference in people's lives. Each week we feature thought
provoking conversations with industry thought leaders from
(00:23):
a variety of backgrounds, offering unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Well, I am so excited to have my next guest on
the Delighted Customers podcast. Shelly Chandler is
(00:46):
a CX strategist. She has worked
across some of the biggest brands out there and she has
helped organizations over the past 25 years
in B2B and B2C. Hospitality, retail, automotive,
transportation, work for some great brands like pnc,
Moen, Penske, Walmart, Forsta, and where she currently
(01:08):
is now, which is Wells Fargo. Shelley, welcome so much
to the show. Thank you, Mark. You know, I've been a listener over the years.
I'm really impressed with what you've done with the podcast because you
typically bring in people that I can always learn from. So I hope I
can contribute to that today. Well, it's so cool to have you on the show,
partly because you have such a broad a
(01:30):
range of experience in different industries. And
mine when it comes to cx, mine was limited to banking. And all I get
to do in terms of expanding my knowledge base is get to have great guests
like you on the show. Well, you know, Mark, that's why I left
banking for a while, because I've been in banking for a
total of 20 years. But I got to a point where I just felt like
(01:52):
I needed to really expand my customer experience
learning and to be able to go deeper and to do all pieces of it.
I had to leave banking because as you know, in very large
banks, we all tend to have kind of our spots, our
slots, our boxes. And I decided
toward the end of the merger with Wachovia and Wells Fargo to
(02:14):
just move into something that would allow me to get into things like customer
journey mapping and customer experience strategy and more into voice
of the customer and, you know, actually doing some of the work for clients who
were invested in it. It's really a lot of fun. Yeah. And that broad
range of skills is an experience to go along with
that will make you, no doubt, make you a better leader wherever you go.
(02:37):
But right now you are at Wells and Wells is sort of
a bucket list for me to have on the show. So I'm doubly honored
to have you? And, but you know, you bring so much background
and one of the things that you perspective that you get
that most people don't have by having all the broad range of
experience that you have is what it's like to lead change from
(02:59):
different places in an organization and in particular what we call
product and how that may make be a little bit different than other areas.
So I think it could be really informative for the audience
to hear about from a different perspective what it's like to
lead change from different areas and in particular from
product. So could you help us by first like what is, when
(03:21):
we say product, what are we talking about? And then talk
about just how is that perspective different than other perspectives?
Sure. You know, product really depends of course upon the industry that
you're in. So in banking, product is, it's
both services and physical, physical things, you know, your deposit
checking account. But it could also be a service that you
(03:44):
provide. Like some of the services that we, we handle in merchant
services. Product can be software, if that's the main thing
you produce, it could be an actual widget or it could just
be purely a service that you provide. As when
I worked with a distribution company, so we didn't actually
manufacture the tires, but we got them from one place to the other
(04:06):
and added a whole lot of value added services on top. So but it's
usually the part of the business that let's say
is not sales, is not operations, it's not customer service. And
it's the one that can tend to be sometimes most important or at least in
the eyes of a lot of product people. I've had a product
management title before. I've been a product manager. So you know, I can make fun
(04:28):
of myself there with that. But
what it is though is the place that you can't hide.
So if you have a poor product, you're not going to be
able to hide from that. You can have a great sales organization. And I've
worked at some places where the sales organization was top notch, but the product really
wasn't. You can make up for things with your customer service group,
(04:51):
but in the end the product has got to be solid. And that's why I
think it gets so much attention. So
I'm gonna riff off what you just said a little bit and
ask your opinion. I know we both know Gene Bliss and in her, in her
book the Chief Customer Officer, she talked about this thing called the power
core of an organization. And it was,
(05:14):
it's an interesting thing. You get in the weeds and you're not really thinking about
those kind of things. But I had Sam
Stern from LinkedIn on the show a couple, couple of shows back and
he talked about they moved, they let go a number of people, but
they moved him over to the Power Corps, which he, which is product
for them. And I want to get your opinion of, you know, how
(05:36):
important was Gene's original philosophy around
being. She said if you're not in the Power Corps, you at least need to
dance with them. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, that hasn't
changed a bit. I think the Power Corps is also
consolidating. So. And you know, I don't remember in the book if she, if
she said that marketing was part of that Power Core. I, I
(05:57):
would suspect maybe not in some ways because customer experience has,
in the last, especially the last five years has, has gone
into one of two places. It seems like either marketing
or product in a lot of corporations now in some places it still stands
alone and that's great. But invariably, you know, you
see people get moved into one of these areas. I actually
(06:20):
reported into operations at one point and I know that's part of the Power
Core. So that, I think that that's really important too is to, if you can
see if you can aligned to one of those areas, it won't be an easy
go in some ways and maybe we can talk about that. But you
are definitely better suited being inside that core
than as a support service. I would agree. So
(06:42):
why, when we talk about leading transformation, what's the,
what's the view or perspective you think from the C Suite
when it comes to why should they care about this?
Yeah, it depends on your C suite. Obviously, you know, some of
them, all they know about customer experiences is what their NPS
score is and others believe that it's really happening in the
(07:05):
contact center and that's the only place. Or maybe it's the relationship
management arm, the customer success team, that's really customer experience.
So it all really depends on how deeply they've gotten into it. The size
of company matters too. The organization where I reported to the coo,
so I was one down from the coo, from the CEO. And that
really helped because I had access to him and to his team
(07:28):
to be able to help them grow in their CX maturity. You know, the
C suite is, is really concerned mainly about numbers,
about the finances of the company, and you want to be concerned about that
too as a CX leader. I think in the last four or five years, and
I keep using that because I believe that since COVID things have changed so
rapidly and so dramatically for customer experience
(07:50):
professionals that we can no longer kind of hide in
our own profession. We have to be really part
of that. We have to be integrated into the other professions and we have to
understand financials. We have to know what the product is and how it's built built
and how it's sold. So if you can do that, then you're gonna
be more relevant to the C suite than if you're just talking about
(08:12):
your survey results, for example. I'm sure you've talked about that on a lot of
other shows. Yeah, and. And just to, to rewind a little bit on the
Power Core. So I think, I think what Gene's
concept of it was, and I, I hope I'm getting this right,
is you have to figure out in your organization what is
the Power Core. So it could be marketing, it could be, you know, a
(08:35):
particular product if you're in banks, could be commercial loans, or it could be
treasury management and merchant services. It could be anything.
And the idea is to get in alignment
with that group and make friends with that group and be
tapping into that for. Partly for what you're, you're talking about is if you really
want to make transformation, the part of the organization that holds the
(08:56):
power is a good place to get aligned, right? Yeah. You used to look at
who the CEOs were for banks, for example, and it
felt to me like a lot of times they came up through commercial lending.
So that was almost like a path, if not
there. Finance. And more and more companies are promoting
their CFOs into those types of roles. You don't often see some
(09:19):
of the support services making it to that level. So that should tell
you something about kind of where you want to be and who you should make
your best friend at work. I always say, people would ask me, when you're starting
up a CFO CX discipline within a company, who would you hire first? I
said the first person I'd hire would be an analyst because we have to get
our hands around the data. And then the second person, if that were able to
(09:40):
be a hire, and you know, you don't always have the luxury of big
teams, but it would be a person who can do the
financials for me. So how do we create a
CX portfolio? And let's do the business case for that. And you know,
if not that, you need to have someone that can kind of be assigned to
you in finance to be sure that you are aligned with the way numbers
(10:01):
are Done at your company. Yeah. Good. Great point. Just
so critical to have a good handle on the financial
levers of the organization and, you know, how to prove
the roi. We're always trying to make the ROI case. And if you've got someone
on your team or someone who you're friends with, that's going to really help you
go a long way to transformation. You know, I'm going to share a little
(10:24):
beef here because we're on that. On that trend. Yeah.
Lately, I have been hearing a lot of consultants in
our space say the reason customer experience is failing
is because these practitioners don't know how to
connect what they're doing with business objectives. And there's truth in
that. It is true that we worked ourselves into this, this small
(10:45):
little survey box in a lot of ways. But for
those who have tried to do that, it's just as much about,
like you said, the CEO's understanding of customer experience, the value that
it has, how strategic, how they're willing to place
strategic value on what our customers think, feel, need, expect,
observ of all those things. So what bothers me, I think in the industry right
(11:08):
now is it's in fashion to say, well, CX practitioners are
failing because they don't do this and that. Well, often
you will take a role in customer experience and be told that
that's what you're there to do, is to elevate CX maturity and to grow these
things. And then you get there and you find that that's really not what they
were prepared for. So I'm not speaking to my current
(11:30):
situation, but I have been in that situation before, prior to that.
So it's. It's tough when people who aren't inside the
business don't understand how the business works. Yeah. What
advice would you give to those people? I would. You know, like we talked about,
finding the right friends in the organization. I mean, that starts on day one. That
starts in your interviews because you're likely going to interview with those people.
(11:51):
But, you know, one thing I've learned the hard way over time
is to start slow. And it's still hard for me. I still want
to, maybe because of my nature. I still want to push
ahead fast. You know, I want to go fast. I want to get things done.
And I know that that's important in any CX role is to
show results. But it's often one of the professions where you
(12:13):
really have to tiptoe more than just barge ahead.
Sometimes, especially if you've been in it for a while, you can be
perceived as someone who's kind of too consultanty. Maybe
you're, you're trying to teach because you know you have to. But people don't
always want to be taught. They want to think they,
they know how to handle their customers and what to do to make a
(12:35):
better experience. And you know, as a professional that there are lots
of things that maybe need to be done. So it's really just, you
know, having that balance and not charging in too hard
and not trusting that what they told you you were going to be able to
do can happen all at once. Yeah, that's such a good point.
I like to pull out gems when they guest share of them so people
(12:58):
don't roll, roll over them too quickly. But one of those is like you
need to slow down sometimes in order to go faster. And part of that
is, you know, you talked earlier about stakeholders and building
relationships. I think you know that the, the masterclass that
I offer to people is all about this balance
of getting the financials right. Yes. But none of that's going to
(13:21):
matter unless you act more like a guy than a hero
and build trust. And with some people that can happen very
quickly and other people, it takes longer. And
so this idea of thinking, use the word strategically earlier is
strategically about who are the people across the organization?
What do I know about them? What do I know about their goals, their
(13:43):
problems, their philosophical challenges? Right. And
if you, if you can't answer those questions, maybe you're going too fast.
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(14:06):
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(14:28):
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(14:50):
business.
Yes, and you know you often can't answer those questions until
you get out into the business. So one thing, whether you've been there for a
while or not, CX professionals need to be
immersed in their businesses. You know, I worked for a company for a
time that did food and beverage and sports
(15:12):
facilities and parks and casinos. I mean, it was a
really fun business. And I made sure that the first six months I was
out there in those locations. Now, I have to say that was a fun thing
to do. But you have to get out there to really see
what the problems are on the street. It's just too hard to tell when
you're behind your desk looking at all the data. And it can be easy to
(15:35):
get boxed into that position of being a CX person who's just looking
at data without feeling it. So, you know, one of my goals right
now is to get out with our sales team, even though a lot of appointments
are done virtually, but it's to get on some of those, get out there to
try to understand how the product is sold, what types of
concessions do they have to make when they do those things is just really understand
(15:56):
from each perspective what that experience is like. Well, you have
just shared. I'm just going to recount some of the gems that you've already shared
and then ask if, if there's any more strategies that you can help
folks when it comes to leading transformation from product or really from anywhere
else. That is. So one is, one we talked about is slow down. Sometimes
slow down to get to really know the people that you need to
(16:19):
influence to make change. Because after all, we're not the ones
actually making the change in the organization. We're shining a light on
it and maybe providing some advice. But ultimately they're
going to have to be the ones making those changes. And secondly, you said be
immersed, get out there. It's one thing to be familiar
with the data, it's another thing to know what it's like in real life. And
(16:41):
then the third thing I have was align with key leaders in the
organization. In some cases that might be finance to help
you get a better handle on, you know, how they're measuring
financial impact. But align with key leaders in the organization. Are
there, are there any others in terms of strategies that you can think of
that might help? Leaders always have a growth mindset. You know, Carol
(17:03):
Dwark's work on growth mindset because as a CX leader, you're going to help, you're
going to have been trained in a certain discipline. You might, you might be able
to calculate NPS and do pivot charts and pull in data
and give everybody the answers they want. But you know, you're going to have your
blind spots. So just like any leader, you're going to want to know what the
blind spots are and how you can get out of your fixed mindsets. I think
(17:24):
one fixed mindset that we bring into the customer experience
profession is that maybe we aren't as good as
product because product managers are told all day
long, this is your product. You own this. You own it
from soup to nuts. We sometimes think that they don't value what
we can bring them. And yes, it's about building relationships
(17:46):
with them, but it's also, you know, standing strong in the profession that
you're in and contributing what you can contribute and showing them
that you, you know how to apply that as well because you know the business,
maybe they know everything about the product. But don't, you know, don't be cowed by
that. I think that's a common problem between product and
CX people, is that sometimes you willing put yourself in a
(18:08):
smaller box than you need to be. Yeah, I think that's another area of
balance. Right. Is we have to learn enough about
the other areas, you know, other, other people outside of CX
in the organization, learn enough about how the business works, how it operates, and then
bring the customer's perspective into view so that
we can talk their language, that they feel like
(18:31):
there's enough credibility that they can trust what we're saying. Does that
make sense? Yeah, it really does. Because otherwise they think you don't get it.
They think you don't get the business. They say you don't understand the realities. You're
reading me a couple little verbatims or you're telling me what the ideal
experience ought to look like and you just aren't, you aren't living
where I'm living. You know, you're not, you're not seeing the, the problems
(18:54):
that we have to overcome. So you can then sometimes appear as someone
who's not flexible, even though what you have to do
is, is really push the rock up the hill most days. So you just,
you have to be seen as someone who understands that there's, there are other
perspectives and there are other key business goals that maybe what's best for
the customer doesn't address. Yeah, I
(19:17):
so resonate with that, having come when I first ended up at
the bank I was with for over 10 years. But when I first got there,
I had no banking experience. And the average, seemed like the average
tenure was at least 30 years of the people there. So I was
definitely, you know, in terms of credibility, I was on the short end. And one
of the things, a few years in, probably should have done it way sooner, sooner
(19:37):
was I made friends with A senior underwriter who underwrote business
loans. And he was one of really four key
senior senior leaders who did underwriting. And I sat with
him when he would meet with other underwriters and
listen to the conversations that they would have. And then I would ask a bunch
of questions. Well, what is, why is this happening? What's happening? What's your thought process,
(19:58):
you know, on approving this loan? What, you know, and tell me when they get
stuck, why are they getting stuck? And, and then they would go to this thing
called senior loan committee, which is this
periodic thing that happened, whatever it was, I'd say once a month or whenever it
happened, every few weeks. And they would all be these, all these people, including one
of the executives and underwriting, all the underwriters would be there, the commercial lenders who
(20:19):
had a loan up for review and approval was sitting in the room, maybe some
operational people and they would, this would be sort of like their day in court
and they, they really wanted, you know, it's a push pull. Banking's a little different
than other businesses where you're not just trying to sell stuff. You become part owner
in their business if you make them a loan. So there's part of your own
organization that's pushing back on saying yes to things naturally.
(20:40):
I mean, it's a natural operational risk. That's. Yeah.
And that, that's not unusual outside of banking. Absolutely right. Well, you still have
to invest resources. You still have to decide at the end of the day what
the best use of money is. One company where I
came in to build out the CX program, I eventually got to the point,
I may have said this already, but I eventually got to the point where I,
(21:02):
I was. Well, I'm not going to say I was given, but you know,
I earned a CX portfolio of projects. So year one was about
building, year two was about, okay, now we agreed
that these are the things to do, but I had to run it through the
strategy team, I had to run it through every team and kind of fight for
those dollars because they could have easily gone to things that probably had
(21:23):
more immediate positive impact on the bottom line. Some of them did
have bottom line impact, but then some of them didn't. Something that executives want to
keep a really close eye on as to, you know, is promising
here actually going to increase our bottom line eventually. And sometimes
it's eventually and sometimes it's right away. So such a, such a great
set of recommendations, great conversation. It is
(21:45):
getting time to land the plane and I would like to ask you
one more question, which is what delights you
as a customer? For me, I just want to be able to respect
the product or service provider. And what, what makes me
respect them is when a company has the
same sense of urgency that I do, which is tough because
(22:07):
I can be demanding. I'm in this field and, you know, when I go out
to dinner with my son, he's like, mom, don't embarrass us because you're just
better. But I, you know, I want to see that somebody cares about
their business as much as I care about the experience that they're giving me.
And if something goes wrong, I don't need a hero kind of experience.
I don't need them to give me something. Once I was staying at a hotel
(22:29):
in San Francisco and I went to open the window and it fell on my
hand and kind of crushed it. Oh, almost. I think I broke a
bone. But when I went to tell the hotel about it, all they wanted to
do is give me points and, okay, give me a million
points. But all I want you to do is care. Yeah, just
want them to care. And if something happens, make it right. You don't have to
(22:51):
go overboard. And then we're on. We're fine. Because I know that you
cared enough to make it right. And you'll do it again if I have another
problem. That's what delights me as a customer.
Shelley, we could do a whole. A whole episode on
service recovery, right? That'd be fun. Oh,
my gosh. Well, thank you so much for being on the
(23:13):
show. Before we leave, if somebody wanted to get ahold of you
just to check in or pick your brain on something, what would be the best
way? LinkedIn would be the best way. I usually am on
there once a week or so. Excellent. Shelley. Thank you so much for being a
guest on the show. Thank you, Mark. I really enjoyed it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers
(23:35):
podcast. It would mean so much if you would take a moment to subscribe.
You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you
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