Episodes

  • Bring Your Own Chair Episode 9: Leading Culture Change from the Middle

    Bring Your Own Chair Episode 9: Leading Culture Change from the Middle
    Apr 20 2024
    Michael Mattson - Leading Cultural Change as a Middle Manager. Hi there and welcome to bring your own chair. I'm Sally Mildren, your host. I'm the CEO ofClarity PX.I love this work of customer experience and today you're in for a treat. We're talking today withMichael Matson, who is a consumer affairs manager for a very large government agency thatwe all know. And he's here today to talk to us about his journey into customer experience.Starting from the ground up and moving into management, Michael has been able to reallyinfluence continuous improvement, a focus on humans and the voice of the customer. He hasbeen able to really help influence his team and integrate powerful servant leadership. Humancentricity and empathy into his work.Thanks for joining in Now we'll jump into our conversation with michaelThank you, Sally. Thanks for having me. So we always start these conversations with kind of alittle journey of how did you get to the role that you're in or find your way into customerexperience, whether it's your official title or not, each of us has found a different path. And Ithink it's interesting for our listeners to know how'd you make it here.Yeah. You know, my origin story, I think it begins with my dedication to service. Even beforegetting into government work I owned and operated two businesses. They were photographybusinesses and at the core of those. Enterprises, it's building connection authentic connectionwith humans.And so I kind of took that entrepreneurial spirit, that dedication to service, and I kind of fell intomy career in government not because that's where I ever expected to end up. But out ofnecessity you know, I made some choices to, end up closing those, those photographybusinesses and, and move and be close to family and help support them.And in doing so I wanted stability in income and ended up on the ground floor of, a serviceoriented. Government agency and, saw a need for bringing empathy human connection puttingthe customer or the general public at the core of our services and really make a differencebased on that really take action, right. Instead of lip service really, yeah. Make some, somemeasurable decisions and and get into positions where I did have more formal or informalinfluence and could change our processes, can change our way of thinking, could helpinfluence the culture to be more human centered.And that's what I really fell in love with. And I think no matter what agency, what organization Iwork with, that's really at the core of my passion is. Taking care of people helping people andreally helping organizations become more emotionally intelligent.When we had our first conversation, which I loved, it's so, it's such a familiar refrain inparticularly in huge. Traditional organizations. There is an opportunity where you might feel likeit's not my job or I can't make a difference.Because it wasn't officially part of your job to start with.But because you saw a need, and certainly that has been the case in my own career where,okay, I was over marketing and outreach for a huge fortune 50 health insurance, and we kept hearing the same drumbeat of issues by our customer and we took initiative to say, Hey,maybe we can do something about it to prevent the problems.In the first place, but I think it's an important story for you to talk about what would you say tosome of our. Community in the CX Accelerator or maybe to some of our listeners who arethinking, well, that's easy for you to say, because you have that job, but you didn't . When youfeel like maybe it's not your role or you can't make a difference.How would you respond to those folks?Yeah, you know, honestly, it is daunting and it's a very, very big challenge and I, I don't thinkthat challenges really. Any less daunting when you do have that in your job title, when it is partof your formal functions. I don't think it is. I mean, changing a culture to be more humancentric, is always difficult because it seems like a lot of organizations get so wrapped up in.Metrics numbers in the bottom line, which are all important, but kind of lose sight of the visionof, why the organization exists and that is to serve people, to add value to people's lives. Andso when I struggled with that same kind of internal challenge, internal struggle you know,really, I guess what it came down to is just having.The courage and tenacity just to just not stop. It's just try it anyways, do something. And whenit comes to a such a large organization it really just takes taking what you do have some kind ofcontrol over or some kind of influence and doing something about it. Right. It's just kind ofdiving in.And even if it's just your slice of the world, if you can make that just a little bit better than that'svalue add, and that's going to be important and culture is just a culmination of actions. Right.And so the more actions. That you can put towards the right vision and the right culture. Thenover time that has a compounding effect and ...
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    33 mins
  • Bring Your Own Chair Episode 8: Setting BOLD CX Goals for 2024!

    Bring Your Own Chair Episode 8: Setting BOLD CX Goals for 2024!
    Dec 14 2023
    "I think you just throw out that playbook and you try to innovate around what is reality." If you are ready to do BIG things with your Customer Experience in 2024 this conversation is for you! Sally Mildren, Jeannie Walters, and Kiki Chocklett form a dynamic team ready to challenge the status quo and set CX leaders up for success.
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    46 mins
  • Building The "Burning Platform" for CX

    Building The "Burning Platform" for CX
    Nov 1 2023
    CXA Podcast, Ep 7 - Lynn HunsakerHello and welcome to bring your own chair. A podcast by the cx accelerator community It's anon profit that is set up and designed to help cx professionals At any stage of their career togrow to expand and be at the top of their game.I'm sally mildren your host I'm the ceo and chief strategist of clarity px. We're a boutiqueagency that helps small and rural health care to really grow through aligned brand, Experienceand culture. We're so excited about today's message. We are talking today with our guest whohas a 30 plus year career in CX.And it started with a little old task of being chair of a 12 country Six division task force todesign the customer satisfaction methodology for that organization Whoo talk about a big firstproject, but she has deep expertise in cx in voice of the customer in customer satisfactioncorporate quality And leadership.And she provides amazing insights that will benefit anyone in CX. Lynn Hunsaker ClearAction,a customer experience consultancy that grows businesses by centering on the customer'swellbeing. In her work, she is aiming for automatic experience excellence. She's recognized asa seasoned customer experience thought leader and author.She's an educator, a transformationist, an R. O. I. Strategist and innovator. And we're reallythrilled to have you here today. Thanks for being with us today, Lynn. It's my pleasure. Thanksso much for inviting me.I like to ask this question to start with, with all our guests is what led you to CX? It's not,especially in 91. Yeah. It wasn't so common everywhere. So how'd you get here? Well, it wasactually more common than you think at that time, but, uh, I started my career after my MBA inthe strategic planning department as a strategic information manager.And part of that involved going out to our customers. Across North America and interviewingthem to find out how they viewed our performance versus our competitors versus theirexpectations as a bracket on each dimension of the experience and value. What, what was thevalue for the price paid? And based on all of that insight, uh, we adapted our corporatestrategy accordingly, which I think is kind of rare today.Wouldn't it be wonderful if more companies or every company did that? Right. So after acouple of years, they said, look, we're doing a total quality management, uh, initiative, and partof that is customer satisfaction. You're already doing that. Why don't you help us figure outexactly what it means in this context of TQM and lead a task force to figure it out.Because we were in a rural location, even though we were a fortune 250 company, they, uh,Wanted me to go and research what it means instead of just figuring it out and doing itbecause I'm a smart person, which was the way people do in Silicon Valley later on in mycareer, but I had the luxury of going to visit John Goodman, for example, in Washington, D. C.,who is very renowned for all these studies on, customer satisfaction, customer service, as wellas many other companies and providers. So that was really the start of it. And I beganspeaking at conferences in 1992, the second annual AMAS ASQ customer satisfactionconference, for example.That is awesome. I, there's so many ways we can go with this conversation. We talked a lotabout a lot of things and I thought, Oh, this could be a three hour episode, but we're trying notto do that today. One of the things in our setup conversation for this podcast. You talked a lot about how, um, listening to the voice of the customer and, you know, some of the work youjust described is, um, that sometimes we get it wrong.And there were a few things that stood out to me that I thought were so interesting. You saidthat when we're listening to the voice of the customer, particularly with, you know, anything,but now you're talking about. So cultural differences, geographic differences, all the things.Um, one of the things that you said before was that when we're going after the voice of thecustomer, we need to learn to ask more interesting questions and I loved that conversationbecause you talked about how we're asking the wrong questions when we're going afterfinding out what the customers really want or like or need and.Often it's more about us than about them. So can you talk about that a little bit and maybeshare some examples for us? That's how can we be more interesting? And what are, where arewe going wrong with that? So, right. I mean, the way that things started for me, the dynamicsin America were that we had very strong competition from Japan.Tony Walkman, for example, although consumer electronics were being taken over byJapanese brands as a preference of American consumers. Also, the American steel industry,semiconductor industry, automotive industries were facing. Really tremendous competitionfrom Japan. Essentially, we were just kind of getting too big for our britches here in America.The, the, uh, government as, as well started a national quality award...
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    47 mins
  • Living, Leading and Embodying CX in Your Organization

    Living, Leading and Embodying CX in Your Organization
    Oct 12 2023
    40 mins
  • Scaling The Employee Experience

    Scaling The Employee Experience
    Aug 30 2023

    Show Links:

    Join CX Accelerator: https://www.cxaccelerator.com/community

    Udemy Course: https://www.udemy.com/course/introduction-to-enterprise-service-management/ 

    Matt Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattberan/ Ticket Volume Podcast: https://ticketvolume.com/
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    37 mins
  • Creating a Case for Customer Experience

    Creating a Case for Customer Experience
    Jul 28 2023

    How Can you Create a Case for CX

    1. finding a sponsor and gathering a team that is cross-functional, but that is bought in is

    important.

    2. You get that buy-in by building a burning platform where you can use analytics to demonstrate

    the potential value of the work.

    a. LTV – Lifetime value

    b. One I love to quote is even a single point improvement in customer satisfaction can

    correlate to 2% revenue growth for a company.

    Is there something that gets skipped in the clients you work with?

    1. Get the sponsor and cross -collaboration

    2. Build the burning platform

    3. Don't assume everything, but you actually talk to your customers.

    (whether internal or external – you have to make sure that there is a research and an insight

    based foundation to the work) – even if you have – there is opportunity to revisit and optimize

    How do you get cross-collaboration?

    I’m a big proponent of building a small SWAT team (1-3 members) that represent the areas that will be

    impacted (not necessarily the most senior person). But the ones who will be change agents later in

    helping to roll out the solutions and program later.

    How important do you feel the Employee Experience piece is in leading change?

    I say investment in employee experience is investment in customer experience.

    What advice do you have for new CX Leaders on how to approach building collaboration across the

    organization?

    You are immersed in the topic, in the details of CX. You are working on that all the time, so how could

    anyone not get that CX is important? As a CX professional, you are one of the most immersed in the

    topic in the organization. Avoid making assumptions with that in mind.

    Use storytelling – not just insights – to demonstrate the importance of that work.

    Find a couple of executive sponsors who are critically connected and immersed in this work (might be

    tech, marketing, other) to be part of the effort.

    Final thoughts/advice:

    Start. You can get somewhere when you start somewhere. It doesn’t have to be huge – just start.

    Links for show:

    Icfnext.com

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-carter-4519b321/

    https://www.icf.com/insights/engagement/spark-consumer-participation-shared-values-beliefs
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    38 mins
  • Grow Your CX Career Without Losing Yourself

    Grow Your CX Career Without Losing Yourself
    Jul 13 2023

    Six Key Leadership Principles:

    1. Have confidence and humility

    2. Focus on results and relationships

    3. Focus on MIT (Most Important Thing) - strategically, initiative, activities, daily behaviors

    people are going to do?

    4. Communicating Consistently - communicate the MIT five times in five diff ways - not just

    once

    5. Check for Understanding - have people repeat what they are hearing back to you

    6. Scheduling the Finish - not “I need this soon” - but put a time on it (not “soon”)

     

    When you “lose yourself” in work - it comes from a “win at all cost mentality”

    It’s about “landing in the AND” - you don’t have to have all the script ready.

    People are feeling invisible at work - have to be hidden behind a script.

    What are the most important daily behaviors people need to do? (NOT 27 things, but 3 things)

    (i.e. does customer know how much we care, was there a wow factor, did we provide clear and

    accurate info, did we document the call well)

    Andrea from our community asked really important questions:

    1. How do you help someone have a poker face? Karen helped us understand that our face

    gets “screwed up” when we are trying to say something we don’t really believe. They are.

    Not a fan of the “sandwich” technique - instead, provide the feedback someone needs, but

    not all in the same sentence. Be honest and ask how they are going to do better.

    2. “The Do More with Less” mantra is big in marketing right now. It’s something that will just

    tick people off. How do we do more with less? It’s not about doing more with less. Karen

    shared great insights that it takes focusing on the things that Matter Most (MIT) - How do you

    get your team really aligned on what will matter the most?

    Which metric are you going to fail at? “None” - but the truth is - you can’t possibly push your

    team to not drop a ball on ALL. Of this. I want to be perfectly aligned if a ball is going to drop,

    what will that be.

    Instead identify “what are you going to knock out of the park” and focus on that? Simplified the

    situation for the staff - you have to know what success looks like!

    3. If you have someone with a bad attitude - the WORST thing you can say is “you have a bad

    attitude” - instead, evaluate the situation and ask, “what am I noticing or observing that I think

    is a bad attitude” and identify that. i.e. - “I noticed you were cutting off people’s input before

    they finish their sentence?” (Identify the behavior) - then ask a curiosity question, “What do

    you think is going on, or why is that continuing to happen?” Then take that data to help invite

    them to create a solution. Get specific about behaviors, not attitudes and then get curious and

    then invite them to be part of the solution.

     

    4. Dealing with Imposter Syndrome - OWN YOUR STRENGTHS - Find someone else on the

    team that can supplement your weaknesses.

    Links: how to have a performance feedback conversation

    Links: the 6 steps

     

    https://letsgrowleaders.com/

    https://letsgrowleaders.com/downloadable-resources/#open
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    40 mins
  • CX Is NOT A Solo Sport

    CX Is NOT A Solo Sport
    Jun 28 2023

    Episode Links:

    Show Links:

    http://jennydempsey.com/

    Jenny's Training Course: https://www.udemy.com/course/customer-service-best-practices-for-beginners/?referralCode=A048E9000E78912E2B39

    https://www.cxaccelerator.com/community
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    43 mins