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Experts of Experience
#60 Storytelling 101: CMO of LG Electronics Shares the Key
00:45:29
Is the commoditization of technology ruining the customer experience? Can Artificial Intelligence be characterized as “Affectionate Intelligence” if it’s designed to respect a consumer’s boundaries? Louis Giagrande, CMO of LG Electronics USA, dives into these hot topics as he discusses the challenges of maintaining brand value in a market flooded with cheap alternatives. Plus, he explains what companies can do to stand out and how LG is breaking down silos and fostering collaboration to enhance customer experience.
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- [00:00]
A
In the past, we had good reviews on our refrigerators, our laundry, our TVs, but now it's like, wait, what does this company stand for? So reinventing the brand, committing to telling the brand story has been a big part of our development of where we're going in the last two years.
- [00:16]
B
What got us here won't get us there. Telling the story of what this brand means so that people feel connected. We want to feel like we are a part of something in that. And it's not just a product that we put on our counter, but it's actually something that's to help us live a better life. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today I am joined by Luis Giagrande, the Chief Marketing Officer at LG Electronics USA Today. We are going to explore how he's leading a transformative shift in the customer experience at lg, leveraging innovation, new market expansion, and a redefined brand vision to strengthen LG's connection with both customers and businesses. Before we dive in, I just want to share a quick little PSA for everyone who is listening. If at any point in this episode you say, I totally agree or that was really interesting, I'm really enjoying this episode, please let us know by giving us a quick rating. Wherever you listen to your podcast, that helps us to know that we're doing this right and we really appreciate your support. Now, let's dive into it. Louis, how are you doing today?
- [01:36]
A
I'm doing great, thank you. And yourself?
- [01:38]
B
I'm very, very well. So I'm really excited to talk all about lg. And in our prep conversation you told me that you have over 1400 products on your website. Is that correct?
- [01:51]
A
Product pages? Yes, product pages. You know, variations and accessories and everything. But the point is the product portfolio is broad for sure, which is huge.
- [02:01]
B
And you also shared that the way that you would design these products is really built on the premise of human centered innovation. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about what human centered innovation really means at LG and how that's a differentiator for you.
- [02:16]
A
Yeah, no, it's one of the things we take the most pride in is that and it's really one of the core brand values that we have is that there's a lot you can do in our space in terms of making innovative products. And sometimes we do have products that have innovations that is more for the fun of it. But most of their products innovations are really tied to consumer pain points and things that consumers are asking for we have a very robust voice to consumer social listening platform. We're always looking at what consumers are saying is a challenge with not only our products, with competitors products. I like to start with dishwasher because it's such a category that most people don't talk about. But just from listening to consumers feedback on dishwasher washer usage, the things kept popping up. It was very loud. So if you ever had a dishwasher that was in the vicinity where you're watching tv, the TV was always had to be increased in volume. There would be promises of a wash and dry cycle, but things were never really quite dry. It would take so long so that if you're like, you want to do a quick wash, if you're in the middle of a party and whatnot. So last year we came out with a dishwasher one hour wash and dry that was super quiet and addressed these issues. And right away you saw, you know, great success with that product. And it's, it's not a surprise because we're addressing, you know, what the, what the consumer needs. So you know, we could have done something fancier, you know, with the, you know, I don't know, with the outside of the product or whatever. But just hitting on the innovations that really are consumer driven is very key to us and something that our factories are very good at.
- [04:00]
B
And you were telling me earlier that you've recently made updates to your voice of customer program. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired that change and what it looks like now?
- [04:09]
A
We're really proud of our team that's working on this. I don't want to say his name because I don't want anyone to poach him. But I'm keeping on the DL for those who understand what I'm saying. But the leader, that team in general has done a fantastic job of really aggregating feedback. There's so much data out there right now. In fact, I think we've moved into a point where there was a time when you were always struggling to get the right data and now you're almost struggling with what to do with, with.
- [04:40]
B
All the data that's available.
- [04:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. And that's really been a guiding principle from our CFO in North America. Is like, he doesn't want to see data anymore. He wants to see data, insights, actions, you know, and it's totally right. And it's like, so this platform we have is aggregating 12 to 13 different data sources from product reviews on our site to product reviews on retailer sites, to Social listening, every call to our call center, every chat that's gone on, I mean, any interaction that we can capture that's either on our platforms or public is being pulled in. And you know, I mean, there used to be a time when you'd like, I wonder what consumers would think of this or how they feel about this product. And you do a focus group and you're four hours talking to 12 to 15 people. And now, you know, in four hours we could really pull up the sentiment of like 40,000 people in the last two weeks with various data sources and inputs. So it's really been such a fantastic, fantastic tool for us. It feeds, it tells us exactly what we have to do. There's no more like guessing. It's like, oh, this is what a majority of consumers are saying, that's what we'll do. Whether it's a content creation or a change in our process, it's just been so helpful.
- [06:04]
B
What are some of the data sources that you're using that you weren't using previously that you found to be really valuable?
- [06:10]
A
Of course we'd use the call center data in our support group to understand pain points, but I think it was used previously more of like, how do we expedite fixes or how do we. And now we're using it to get in front of things to be more proactive. So I think that's been such a great tool. When we were doing our pre call, I had mentioned that we saw a bump in laptop returns in a certain period of time from our direct to consumer platform and we just, we were able to look it up, you know, just from this VOC platform to find out there was a mixture of like our 17 inch laptop, which is a really, it's a great laptop, but it actually doesn't fit into some people's laptop bags and they weren't ready to swap out their favorite laptop bag or they were seeing sales go on the next week after they bought it. And instead of, you know, when they would call the call center, they were calling to return it and buy and rebuy it. And we're able to cut off that step by just giving them the credit for, you know, the sound. So I really think bringing that in has been super helpful. And we've also found a nice way to balance our survey data with our other data, which gives us a nice combination of perspectives.
- [07:29]
B
Yeah, you're highlighting something that is just music to my CX ears, which is the collaboration between customer experience and customer support and marketing. And when you really marry Those two teams, and we look at the insights and the wealth of knowledge that is coming through customer service. We can not only improve the experience for the customer, improve the marketing messaging for the customer, but also create products and think about how these products will impact the customer in a more meaningful way.
- [08:03]
A
Yeah, if you're not marrying up marketing and support at this point, you're falling behind because like you said, it's just so integrated. There was a time, I've been with LG almost 15 years and you know, with the marketing team, there was a time when on social platforms they'd be like, oh, that's a break fix issue. Here you go. Social ego support team. And like, oh, that's a non break fix conversation. And it was literally like all we were doing is triaging and separating and. And that was it, you know, and now we're, you know, we have people within our marketing team that's having daily conversations in the support center and regularly pulling it in. That's especially going to be helpful as, you know, we're growing our D2C E commerce platform. This isn't just about breakfast. It's about delivery and the experience, you know, the experience of interaction, transaction, you know, fully. Yeah.
- [08:57]
B
What challenges have you experienced in this? Because at the same time as we create these deeper connections, we also create often more complexity. And I think a lot of the reason why we've stayed in our own lanes is because it's easier to stay in your own lane instead of merge the highways, if you know what I mean.
- [09:14]
A
Yeah, oh, absolutely. I mean, you hit on a big challenge I think most companies are dealing with is prioritizing customer experience really means breaking down the walls between groups within companies. And the biggest one being the support center, which is like, for us, it's like a different headquarters in Alabama. We're headquartered here in Northeast. So it's like you have to break down these walls. So that's a challenge. Now you're starting to creep into each other's R&Rs and the RACI charts look different. And collaboration has to be a lot more than just the handoff via some sort of triage tool. It's like, all right, what are you doing? And even to the point of training the chat agents, training the call centers on how to have a brand voice that's consistent throughout. I mean, there's a lot that goes on and that's been a challenge. I think, you know, we. The good part is we have alignment all the way up to our CEO in, you know, in Korea. So it's the most aligned I've ever seen lg. And that's what makes. That's one of the most exciting parts of things. But the challenge is making it, you know, putting it to action.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Breaking down as well.
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B
I think that because of the difficulty that we're talking about that executive alignment all the way at the top to say we are going to take on the challenge of cross functional collaboration and integration into our systems and our ways of working. It's worth the juice, is worth the squeeze basically. And we acknowledge that it's not going to be a cakewalk. It's probably going to be somewhat challenging. We'll need to invest in that collaboration. And so I.
- [11:01]
A
Trial and error. Yeah, trial and error. Because this is new. This is new to so many, you know, people have been in LG 30, 40 years, you know, very bright, you know, sales, product focused, you know, people. And you're now being asked to reinvent an org chart that's been relatively similar for the past 20 plus years.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah. But what got us here won't get us there. And that is a great segue into what I would love to now talk about which is what's the next phase of lg. It feels like you're really at a turning point right now. So tell us a little bit about that.
- [11:36]
A
A lot of positives for us right now. I just brought up the fact that alignment from our most senior leader on down is there and that's fantastic. This year we became the number one home appliance brand in the US in both units and dollars. So we've always been one of the top brands and this year we broke through. We're still like the number one in OLED, over 50% market share. But we've hit a point where we really have to rethink our company because there's only so far you could take a hardware business. And if you've heard or if anybody's seen like last year's CES or our CEO spoke or even any press announcement, the step for us that we have to take has become what our CEO is calling a smart life solutions company. Going from the simplest way to explain this is going from a singular transaction that happens once every five to 10 years to a customer experience that's happening on a day to day basis. We have the hardware we spoke earlier about having such a wide portfolio of products. We're going to have the hardware in homes, in every room in the home, from the kitchen to the basement to the living room, the bedroom. So we have the products in the homes and now how do we get them all to get to what was that initial vision of connected homes? Smart homes. So that's really where we're going as a company. And what we talked about earlier about shifting the orgs around to really focus on customer experience. That's small changes compared to what we have to do to really become a solutions company. We're fantastic when it comes to hardware, but taking that next step is a big step.
- [13:23]
B
And what does that require? What are you looking at in terms of different ways of working and also different ways of designing products?
- [13:31]
A
We'll hear a little bit more CES about our take on AI. We refer to it more as affectionate intelligence versus artificial intelligence.
- [13:40]
B
I love this so much.
- [13:41]
A
Yeah. And the reason we're making that this distinction is we want to find the right balance of proactively supporting and helping customers in their home and not crossing the boundaries we all worry about with AI. So when you talk about what does it mean when we're designing products or thinking about the future of products, it's like when it comes to the washing machine giving early detections if we notice filters are clogged or a connection with the water isn't right, or just even letting people know when the laundry is done so they could swap it out. Simple little things like that that will help people in a day to day, all the way up to when autonomous vehicles start becoming more regular. The car becomes another room in your house, in your home in a sense. So what you're watching, what you're doing in your home can seamlessly be brought into the car experience. Whether it's watching something or you're on a zoom like this and you're just saying switch to the automotive platform. So it's a lot of like servicing the customers, making life like seamless, proactively providing solutions to customers. And we call it for the kitchen, we call zero labor. So how do we make the kitchen experience less of a chore and more enjoyable? So this is what we're talking about when, you know, when it comes to our vision.
- [15:12]
B
You know, I'm just thinking about the Jetsons right now and how I never thought that that would be a reality in my lifetime, but here we are.
- [15:21]
A
Yeah, you're 100% right. That's in essence a fun way of looking at it. For sure. It's like connecting the products, having. But that's why it was important for us when we were establishing this vision. One of the big steps we had to do was evolve the brand and make the brand Communicate what the brand stood for. Allowing a brand into your life in this sort of way where we're integrated and like you're saying, we're rosy telling you that your kids need to be picked up, you know, at 4:00 and we'll have food ready when you get home. That's customers really aren't going to just. In the past we had good reviews on our refrigerators, our laundry, TVs. All right, I'll buy it. It's good reviews, it's a good price, it's worth it. But now it's like, wait, what does this company stand for? So reinventing the brand, or better yet, committing to telling the brand story has been a big part of our development of where we're going in the last two years.
- [16:22]
B
Tell us a little bit more about that. What was the real like the philosophy and the influence of this new brand story that you're telling?
- [16:31]
A
As I mentioned, as we started to think about moving beyond being a hardware company and being solutions based and recognizing that the brand is going to play a huge role. It already plays a big role, but even bigger role as we evolve. We were noticing that, you know, in, in the US over the past 10 years we've, we've doubled our revenue, we've had significant growth in our, in sales and we've seen good improvements in our product brand metrics. When we looked at like corporate brand metrics, it was somewhat stagnant over, over those 10 years and it wasn't a surprise because we really were allowing people to experience the brand through our products. You know, so if you're refrigerator owner, you're seeing LG through the eyes of the refrigerator and what it brings to you, or if you're a gamer and you're looking at Ultra Gear Gaming monitor, you're experiencing LG that way. Thankfully, as I mentioned, we make fantastic products that are always well reviewed. So sentiment was pretty positive about LG. But there still was a gap in what LG stood for, in the brand affinity you want. So two years ago, really beginning of 2023, end of 2022, we set out the US and was working. I mean it was really driven by headquarters team because the US market is so big, they welcomed us into the process. And what I loved about what they did is even though the press release said LG launches a new brand identity, what they really did, which was very smart, was harness what was there, what do we stand for? And so the new brand identity was really us saying we're going to commit to telling the to exposing customers to what the brand is about. And you've seen a lot of improvements. We're lg. Our slogan is life's good. And what that is is like a promise to really champion positivity and optimism, not just in your life, but your work life, your personal life. So that's really been the foundation of what we've done. We've made a lot of progress in that. It's a very long answer. But the main thing where you're seeing the results is interbrand this year noticed a difference from last year. This year where they value your brand value. And they saw a 40% increase in our brand value, really based on the fact that we were exposing consumers to our brand and opening up what we stood for. And LG is now in the Interbrand top 100 brands in the world as of this year. So it's nice to see the fruits of labor paying off. But even more encouraging that, you know, we're seeing it in the brand. We're seeing it in our own brand metrics. A lot of improvements in the perceptions of the brand.
- [19:24]
B
An AI agent your customers actually enjoy talking to. Salesforce has you covered. Meet agent force service agent, the AI agent that can resolve cases in conversational language anytime, on any channel. To learn more, visit salesforce.com agentforce well, congratulations. I'm sure that feels really good to say. Oh, okay. There's the recognition for what we've been doing, but I just want to highlight the importance of storytelling here. And it is the first thing is always having a great product that works well, that people enjoy, that solves the customer's problems. But there's also, in what you're describing, this really important piece of telling the story of what this brand means so that people feel connected to it. And I can only imagine that as we become more and more connected to our technology and that our homes become connect, our technology becomes connected to each other within our homes and all of that, that we want to feel like we are a part of something in that. And it's not just a product that we put on our counter, but it's actually something that's here to help us live a better life.
- [20:41]
A
Yeah. We are now entering the 12th year of being the number one selling OLED TV. There was a point where all manufacturers having trouble mass producing OLED screens, they knew how to produce it, but the failure rate with the way they were doing it was just too high to make it a viable product. And at one point, LG took a different path to manufacturing than what you were seeing the competitors take. And that was a very bold, optimistic kind of approach to this. You're putting your job so you're not going to get fired for following everyone else's path. And we're all failing. We all can figure it out. And it produced an incredible run in our industry. To be the sole manufacturer of a certain technology for 10 years is just unheard of. We're a fast follower copycat industry where, oh, that's a great idea and we'll bring that in next year. I mean, every year is a new line of products. Right. So for us to own OLED TV manufacturing for such a long time, mass producing it, incredible story and something we didn't really tell. And now you're starting to see us bring those stories to life a bit more.
- [21:59]
B
And you mentioned this a little bit about Interbrand, but I'm curious to know how do you measure the effectiveness of these campaigns in really driving the outcomes that you are trying to create?
- [22:10]
A
Yeah, one of the biggest challenges, especially when it comes to brand metrics and tying it back so hard. Yeah. I mean what Interbrand did for us is we can always debate methodology and whatnot, but they have a very solid formula for how they're measuring brands. So at the very least we looked at that formula for how they were measuring it and said, oh, there's a lot of great insights here on how to improve our brand, even down to they look at how much the company, the employees themselves are aware or aligned to the brand vision and the brand voice and whatnot and things like that. Maybe we didn't prioritize. All of a sudden you saw us doing multiple internalization events where we're talking about the brand, sharing stories like we just talked about, even to each other. And it's a nice. Besides the fact that you feel better about where you're working because you're hearing these great kind of stories about overcoming obstacles and challenges, it also really starts to make you become advocates and believers in the brand. But to your question, I mean we have multiple, we have local brand trackers, global brand trackers, we have the interbrand stuff. And by all metrics we saw, there's a lot of survey based data of course, but we saw lifts and willing to pay more for and brand preference and affinity. We also have, I think a campaign going on right now from a whole appliance group. That's the perfect time for us to really. We became the most reliable home appliance brand based on consumer reports surveys and rankings a couple of years ago. And We've started really leaning into that. It's part customer experience, part a tough time for the economy right now. So it was a great message that's resonating really well with consumers. We typically have one of the higher price points, but the products are a little bit more premium and, and they don't, you know, they don't break as much according to Consumer Reports. So you know, you're seeing like all this sort of coming into place, all these things that were running in parallel paths kind of converging from you're growing what the brand means, improving our, you know, relationship with consumers because we're a D2C. The reliability, which is like customer service, customer reliability. So yeah, it's all sort of conversion. So it makes it a very exciting time for us at MLG for sure.
- [24:46]
B
You mentioned something that I am curious to go a little bit deeper on, but it's really sharing customer stories internally because I think that talking about those experiences, those pieces of feedback or those, the things that went well or the things that didn't go well internally is so great. What practices do you have on your team to really share those stories, if any practices?
- [25:11]
A
Right now it's a little ad hoc, to be completely honest. It's like town halls, it's meetings. It's, you know, it's funny because we've had a conversation about this like ideally it's integrated into everything, right? It does not. We don't need to have like specific meetings to talk about this. It should be part of every meeting. But at the same time you want to sort of expedite it a bit. So we do have sort of breakout sessions. But you know, our CEO has us do like for him a monthly sort of recap on our Voice of Consumer tool where we'll pick like five key topics and just do deep dives into. It could be as simple as like delivery issues or vacuum features that, you know, it could go all over the place. But it's getting us into this habit of, you know, pulling the data, drawing out insights and then the actions that come off of this is, you know, in the room is everyone from supply chain to product marketing, product development, you know, to regular marketing to call center support. So it just shows you how impactful listening to consumer can be. When you look at all the different departments in this room and during these meetings.
- [26:22]
B
Yeah, it's that cross functional understanding that I think goes so far. And it's something that in my experience is it feels like a nice to have. And we're like, oh, it Takes time to have these conversations and na, na, na. But the result of it means we're thinking about the customer more. And I find it can really drive innovation. And speaking of innovation, I wanted to talk a little bit about LG Nova. Can you explain to us what LG Nova is?
- [26:51]
A
It works with startups and entrepreneurs, investors, sort of to help empower them and bring, you know, their ideas to light, you know, through partnerships. And it really had a broad mandate, but at the end of the day, it's really, you know, it's trying to sort of help push forward what's next in whether it's hardware, solutions, experience. You know, it's all about future focus.
- [27:20]
B
Cool. So it's kind of the innovation incubator, where you're bringing different minds to the table outside people from outside of LG to come in and help think through what the future can really look like.
- [27:32]
A
Yeah. And LG is helping these groups or these teams or entrepreneurs in different ways. But it's this idea that innovation can come from anywhere. And so it's not like it has to go through the process that we've gone through in developing our products in the past. So that's the root of it. It's a pretty cool group. I do the brand introduction to. We have new hires. We have a new hire summit once every two months. And I always love talking to the LG Nova hires because they come in from California to our headquarters about what they're doing. It sounds like a lot of fun. And really, it's so perfectly aligned to what the LG brand is standing for. It's championing that of, you know, that optimism and positivity of new ideas and new ways of doing things. Yeah.
- [28:29]
B
Sometimes we need to think outside of the box in order to really find the next path forward. I was listening. I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, and he was talking about how their innovation lab. And I know Apple has an innovation. A lot of companies, companies have innovation labs, but how they need to be in a different building, separate from everyone else. We have to, like, create that space of literally outside of the box of the normal building to be able to think about all these different ways of approaching perhaps the same problem, but from a different way, a different perspective.
- [29:09]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I know LG has done some incredibly innovative things. I was telling you earlier that I used to live in Korea. I went on a student exchange there. And I remember this was about 15 years ago, and that was when they first started launching or talking about the flexible screen, which I've seen incredible improvements on over the years of this concept of having a screen that you can fold and bend and stretch. It is wild.
- [29:40]
A
It's wild. I know that we, we had a TV that was rollable so, you know, it'd be just in a baseboard, it kind of, you know, rolled up. We have a monitor that, you know, for people want like a gaming and one more immersive, like the sides can kind of come in even more. So like now you might have seen a. We have a transparent screen TV now a transparent oled. So like it looks just like a piece of glass and then you turn it on and it's like full hd, you know, OLED tv picture quality. And it just. Yeah, it's awesome. Last year at CES it won like, you know, numerous awards and there was, reporters couldn't stop reporting on it and that was just a 55 inch model. This year we'll be, you know, launching a bigger screen size and you know, the applications will probably be a little bit more. In the B2B world, we have a storefront that like, like you always want, like even like a restaurant, you want to show beautiful pictures of your food, but also show the beautiful interior. Like you can kind of, you know, switch it on and off, do both. But even in the, in the home it was the transparent OLED screen does is it could look like a regular, you know, shelving unit and all of a sudden it becomes a beautiful tv.
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B
So that's awesome.
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A
So there's a lot of cool stuff.
- [31:00]
B
I mean, I am definitely of the generation where I don't like having the black box in my house. So I don't have a tv and I'm like, I want it. When I go to somewhere else, I love having a tv, but I just don't like seeing it. So I love the innovations around how we can make that more just a part of my life instead of this reminder of like watching tv.
- [31:22]
A
Yeah, you know, we have, we have another product that is fits into the mold you're talking about. I do think TV, different form factors, factors of TVs is going to be the future of television and where brands like LG can differentiate from the cheaper brands that are really commoditizing TVs. But we have a product called the Standby Me. It's basically a battery powered TV on a stand with rollable. So what we've done, my wife wasn't keen on having a big TV in a bedroom. So we have this Standby Go. It's just in the corner. And when we want to watch tv, we just roll it out and it's. It's like it's battery powered. It's so easy to work with.
- [32:03]
B
Yeah.
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A
And then you just throw it back in the corner and it could be for. You could use it sometimes if you need, like a second screen when you're working on your laptop. I mean, so there's a lot of different ways displays will be evolving, for sure.
- [32:16]
B
Well, I am going to check that one out because that sounds like exactly what I want.
- [32:21]
A
I should definitely send you some footage.
- [32:24]
B
Amazing. So, speaking of B2B, there's been a renewed focus on your B2B segment. How are you approaching that, especially when it comes to customer experience and marketing?
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A
Yeah, well, you know, again, we touched on it earlier. You know, how does it. How does the brand or has the current organizational structure adapt to that? I mean, for us, it's, you know, I've mentioned that we've had fantastic growth over the last 10 years. B2B offers an untapped area for us in many ways. We're definitely a player in the B2B space, but it wasn't a focus for us. It's becoming much more of a focus. You're going to see our overall portfolio, even though it'll still be B2C majority B2C. You'll see B2B taking up a larger part of our revenue split. And B2B for us is a lot of different things. It's the builder market for home appliance. We're getting very involved and working with home builders. It's commercial displays, you know, storefronts. It's, you know, hospitals. I mean, there's so many verticals that we're, you know, working with and expanding. I'm thinking now we're like the official TV of the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees. So we were talking to them how to bring, you know, B2B displays into their arenas. So right now it's a separate entity from what I'm working on. But of course, the brand stays the same. All the best practices that we're learning from customer experience, you know, a little bit different of how we're working with them. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, the right message to the. To people at the right time. Right. You know, delivering a. Sometimes an unexpected. A very comforting experience throughout the whole, whether it's a purchase or transaction or ordering. So this, there's a lot of, like, best practices practices that overlap, but you know, we're sort of developing that skill set right now on the side.
- [34:22]
B
Yeah, it's a, it's in many ways another world. And at the same time it's like you said, it's providing the right message, it's thinking about what that customer needs and wants and how do we deliver to it. So that's exciting. It also sounds like there's, I mean, just with the innovation that is happening in this space, how can we be integrating products more into our lives, as you said, like in our homes? That is really exciting. You've been making big improvements and waves when it comes to your brand and your customer experience. And I love to just look at the other side of things sometimes. What are the challenges that you're currently facing?
- [35:03]
A
The big challenge that the industry. Well, there's two challenges that companies like LG are facing industry wise. The first goes back to Covid. So during COVID time, a lot of non breakage demand was pulled forward. Right. So you had people who understandably were like didn't lose their jobs and they were home and they weren't spending money on gas or vacations or anything. And like this would be a great time to build the man cave or to redo the kitchen or whatever. So so much demand was pulled up and then after, you know, Covid sort of got better or loosened up, people started shifting their discretional income into what they were missing those years. So vacations and other things. Right now you're seeing in home appliance the largest percentage of purchases ever that are purchasing because something broke. So demand is down. And now you're seeing what we call distressed shopper, someone who's something's breaking or about to break. As accounting of over 70% of home appliance purchases, where typically it's 60%, maybe even a bit lower. So the demand is down across the board. People are just buying less products, less TVs, less appliances, which made our becoming the number one brand from home appliance even more impressive. Because it wasn't just that we sort of got more, we really were stealing share and grabbing share from others. But now the second big challenge for a brand like us is the commoditization of television. So we're, you know, five years removed from like, you know, people that when they were buying a TV it was highly considered purchase. They research it, they, you know, figure it out what they wanted. And now you're seeing people that go to Walmart for eggs and milk and they see a 55 inch TV for like 200 and they're like, why not? You know, so now if you're a video file, if you really care about having, you know, a really good picture quality and the best available, we still, you know, we still win in that market most of the time. But when you start, that's a sliver of, you know, of people at this point. A lot of people are. We even saw the purchase dynamic shift, where you used to say, I'm going to buy a new tv. It goes in the living room. The living room TV moves to the bedroom, or bedroom TV moves to the basement, you know, and it was like this pecking order. And now the TVs have. Have become much more affordable. You're seeing people be like, well, why not? I'll just get that cheap 55 inch for the third bedroom. So the dynamic has shifted a bit. So that's a bit of a challenge where we have to address by really bringing more to our TVs. And the first thing that we have that's a very, I think a big differentiator for us versus the cheaper televisions is that LG smart TVs come with something called LG channels, which is 300 free channels. You just hook up the TV to the Internet and you basically get something that I feel is better than basic cable was, you know, when we were young.
- [38:18]
B
Which is expensive now, by the way.
- [38:21]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:22]
B
I'm like, how much does it cost to have cable tv? It's insane.
- [38:25]
A
Yeah, I know. And now you're getting. Now if you just have an LG smart TV and it's going into a second third bedroom, and you're like, I don't need a new cable box, or there's only so many YouTube TV connections I could have. This is a. LG is a great TV to have because you're going to have, like I said, 300 free channels for the life of the television. It's not. So things like that, that's what we have to figure out. And it also makes us. We talk about moving away from hardware. We have a partnership with NCAA right now, and part of the partnership, we have a channel on our Smart TVs that's unique to LG TVs. It's called the NCAA Champions Channel. And we talk about championing the people who make life good. There's so many schools, D2, D3, there's so many sports programs. So right now, majority of what we see on television is like D1 famous, like more popular sports. This channel is like playoffs and championships of D2, D3 of like rowing of, you know, tennis. So it gives these athletes who work just as hard as, like, you know, D1 athletes are just as hard as football players where 99% of them, there's no big payday at the end of it. It gives them a platform where now they have their championships being broadcast nationally through our smart TV platform. And it's, you know, so now we're bringing content play into our hardware. Play. And even one more step further, we started creating unique content on ourselves for that channel. So we have a series called the Rivalries, which is like finding these niche little rivalries in D2, D3 schools that have been going on for 100 years and doing, like a docu series on them to put on our channels. And it's forcing us to rethink what. What we can do to make our products more than just a good picture quality.
- [40:28]
B
You know, I mean, sometimes that competition or the shifts in the market force us to take it a step further and really think about how do we provide more value for the products that we are. That we are selling. So I love that story because it's. I never would have thought, oh, LG is doing this. But look at that.
- [40:49]
A
Like you said, necessity, right? We have to. We have to find ways to differentiate. And it's creating some good stuff completely.
- [40:57]
B
So I have two last questions for you as we wrap up on our time here. And the first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was that?
- [41:09]
A
Yeah, I remember. It didn't happen to me personally. I remember reading about a recent experience a consumer had with Chewy, who's known for doing, you know, some great stuff. And it was like returning dog food because the dog passed away. And then Chewy responded with, like, you know, condolences and like, a gift. Those are home runs.
- [41:31]
B
I wanted to say Chewy is probably the most common response that I get to that question. Chewy and Apple, you know, But I think it just is such a testament to the way that Chewy not only recovers if there's a mistake, but I think most of the time it's the. It's either the customer's mistake or misfortune that Chewy just steps up to the plate around.
- [41:54]
A
They made that, like, part of their DNA from day one, which is, you know, what? I think, you know, the advantage while the companies are trying to recalibrate and restructure, changing KPIs from call times to customer satisfaction, you know, things like that. Chewy's done A good job.
- [42:12]
B
Zappos is another one that I. If you haven't read Delivering Happiness, I highly recommend it to anyone because that, again, Zappos really pioneered, I think, in the space of making their customer service their marketing. Because people will tell that story of how the customer service agent that was helping them pick the right pair of shoes or find the right dog food went above and beyond their wildest expectations to support them. That is the type of referral and storytelling that really goes so far.
- [42:46]
A
The value of a story like that is greater than a $200 million TV budget. You know, like advertising budget. I mean, it's just like you get people thinking, oh, that brand goes above and beyond. You know, they provide sort of a certain peace of mind. That's so important.
- [43:05]
B
Yeah.
- [43:05]
A
So incredibly important.
- [43:06]
B
And my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear?
- [43:13]
A
You know, it goes back to, I think what we were talking about earlier is as you embark on this, it's really important that you bring your most collaborative team leaders to the table. And unfortunately, you know, you have people sometimes that are very good at their job who are not collaborative. You got to have to put them in a corner and still leverage what they do. But that has to be a priority when you're embarking on this journey. Is. Is collaboration, even if somebody's maybe not the most strategic or if they can bring people together and get people working together, that's the most important talents when it comes to this. Because as we said, you're breaking down walls that have been up for quite some time. Collaboration is going to make a break if it works for you.
- [44:04]
B
You are speaking my language. I think that collaboration is one of the most important things. And our ability to develop relationships with our colleagues is essential to be able to get things across the line, to be able to bring the customer voice into the company in order to innovate through creating safe spaces for people to come up with new ideas. And I do think if I take what you just shared one step further, will. I agree that. That we want to make sure that everyone in the room is collaborative, that we really empower the people who are amazing at bringing others together. We can also teach collaboration. I believe that. That people can change even if they don't want to. Yeah, it is possible.
- [44:51]
A
Yeah. And it's. It definitely helps that the. If your senior leadership is on board and is. Is requiring it. I definitely think, you know, it's. But, you know, it's. I agree with you. You have to check egos of the door sometimes with this stuff. And I just, you know, we were, I was talking to a friend the other day about like org charts and we were saying there's no, there's no perfect org chart. Like the only orgs work best when people have good relationships and want to be collaborative. It's processes help and, you know, things help. But if you have people, people that want to make it work, usually you find a way to make it work and vice versa.
- [45:29]
B
I could not agree with you more. Well, Lewis, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been such a great conversation and pleasure talking to you. Really appreciate it.