A (2:30)

Hello. How are you?

B (2:32)

I'm great. Where are you calling in from? I want the listeners to know what time it is for you.

A (2:36)

Oh, okay. Well, this. This is sunny Milton Keynes, which if you've never heard of it, is a kind of new build city smack in the middle of the United Kingdom. And it's by the clock, 25 to 5 in the afternoon now.

B (2:48)

Awesome. Yeah. So thank you so much for taking the time today with us. I'm really excited. There is some really cool news that I am eager for you to share with our audience, which is that you have launched a new business. Could you tell us about CX Alive?

A (3:02)

Sure, I have, yeah. So 20 years in this industry has left me to think, you know, maybe it's time I give it a go on my own. So I've launched a business. That's right, yeah. We're called CX Alive, stylized with an exclamation mark. And the fundamental business is a vodcasting service for businesses. So it's a B2B service, if you like. But what we do is this. Right. So we take vodcasting as a format which appeals to anybody that has a short attention span, loves the quick fire, quick information mobile format, Watch anywhere, anytime, rewatch, repeat and share. And we take business context information, put it into that format, and then share it across companies. So the whole idea is that we make your strategy viral through the medium of podcasting. So, yeah, it's something I'm really passionate about and I've just started up.

B (3:49)

Yeah, yeah. Congratulations on launching the business. Okay, what were you seeing at some of the companies you've been working at before that made you say, this is something that's needed and something that I'm really interested in solving?

A (4:01)

Well, I think combination of things, including that CX strategy is not all that relatable to people across the front line. Most CX strategies are designed for maybe 5% of the company, and then the other 95% are out doing their day jobs. Right. They're not necessarily connected to what the strategy really wants them to be able to do and deliver. Doesn't necessarily talk in their language. And until it becomes important to every colleague, then nobody really cares about it. Sorry to say, CX professionals out there So I thought, well, how do we leverage the modern format which is really designed for Gen Z and millennial colleagues coming through the business, because in five, 10, 15 years time, they're going to be running your company. So think ahead. Right? Talk to them now in a format that works and appeals and is accessible, rather than relying on that historic death by PowerPoint, lengthy modular training courses, all the traditional ways of communicating stuff to people which barely gets consumed, understood, or even acted on because it's not in a format that people really readily consume. So that's the reason I came up with the format.

B (5:13)

Yeah, so just for everyone to have like complete clarity on what it is. So this would be like a video that is produced for internal sharing, not necessarily like externally. Here's. I'm explaining to the customer how XYZ things works. But it's like, here's what NPS score is, here's what this is, here's our goal, here's our strategy. But not just writing it out in a document or to your point, like a 50 page slide deck with a bunch of metrics that no one will remember. You're trying to create something that's actually engaging and interesting to people that might have less time or shorter attention spans or need something that's going to actually stick in their brain.

A (5:46)

Yeah. I mean, let's say you had eight to 10 minutes to sit down and watch a quick video with the CEO, head of ops, head of marketing, head of it, whoever the senior professional is that you want on the call. I'd be the host, having that dialogue with them. And we talk about the subject matter at the heart of the conversation, relaying that to all colleagues in a way that they can understand now what they need to go away and do with that information. So it's all about the method of communication, the understanding and the call to action. That's really the driver behind all this.

B (6:13)

And you know what I love about podcasts and podcasts is the intimacy factor, the authenticity factor. Right. So like to actually be able to hear your cto, your cio, your CEO, the cxo, whoever it is, like on camera, on mic, explain something now. Suddenly I feel way more connected to my leadership team than if they had just sent over an email with someone, some slides attached. Right?

A (6:35)

That's it. Yeah, absolutely.

B (6:37)

Yeah. Yeah. So I love this format, but I kind of want to start with a little bit more of these, like these problems that you had been seeing. You had a great story that you shared about your previous company where you had created kind of the first iteration of this and you had created a video that explained nps. Do you mind just walking our audience through that story?

A (6:53)

Yeah. So almost unintentionally that's what led to CX alive. But yeah, about two years ago I was thinking, look, how do we distill information to colleagues in a way that's consumable, short, punchy, a little bit different. You can insert or embed a link into newsletter, company, website, whatever. So I thought, I think I've recorded just a few slides about what is NET Promoter Score. Because back in my last company, Fujitsu, like many companies we had a global survey program. Ours was annual relationship nps. So it happened once a year. Really important when the survey results landed. But you need to do a bit of pre work to people to say look, we're measuring this thing, but actually what is it? So I felt that it was necessary to do this one video to just tell people what's Necromotor Score? How should you use it? How did you think about it? Where's it even come from? So in 2 minutes 59 seconds, hence the MPS in 3 minutes title. See what I did there?

B (7:44)

Yes.

A (7:45)

I just recorded myself on Clipchamp or something like that. Few slides with me with a little sort of head shot floating in the corner of the screen. Just sort of innocuously posted it on our company in Trinidad and it more or less blew up and it got hundreds of views, I don't want to say thousands, I'm not quite sure, but it might be in those numbers now and still was one of the most rewatched videos at the point where I exited Fujitsu just slightly earlier this year. And the reason is because it's short, informative, speaks basic language. You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get the whole thing about customer experience, analytics or how NPS is calculated. It's not important. So yeah, that's the story behind that video and why it worked so well.

B (8:25)

No, I love that. And I think speaking in the language that anyone can understand is so important because again you mentioned at the top of this, like, sure, 1% of your team who exists at this very high strategy level in CX would understand all the lingo, metrics, et cetera. But like if I'm trying to communicate with someone who's on the floor, maybe a customer service agent and like actually needs to understand what this is and why it's important, they are not going to be able to understand all that. Or maybe they could, but they just like it wouldn't stick in their brain the same way as if I had just felt like I talked to Ben and he just explained it to me.

A (8:58)

Yeah. And there's all kinds of research you can do on learning methodologies. Right. So I think there's a whole thing around. If you take an hour of learning, the human brain really only remembers the first and last 10 minutes and all of that sort of noise in between is lost. So you might remember snippets, but what are the really punchy things that you want to cut through and make sure that people know? And actually if you didn't digest it that well, then could you rewatch it? Well, yeah, I'll do that if it's a three minute video, but I'm not going to do it if it's an hours intense training course. Again, I don't have that time in my life. So that's another reason why this stuff needs to be repeatable, rewatchable, shareable, you know, all kinds of reasons. It keeps file sizes low. You know, it's a small part of everybody's day. You know, there's all kinds of reasons why it's good to do it in short, punchy format.

B (9:42)

And so talking more about that format piece, I mean, if we look back at the evolution of communication in business, right. I feel like we got so stuck in slide land, like for just years. It's like as soon as Microsoft invented PowerPoint slides, here we are just stuck. So, like, talk to me a little bit about how you've, how you've seen communication evolve even in your career and why you think it's so important right now that we make this shift.

A (10:04)

I used to joke some people would say, what, what do you do for a living? And I used to say, well, I'll do PowerPoints. What I did in some companies, the culture is everything is by PowerPoint. Send me your deck. Send me your slides. You know, and it's almost like it's not a thing if you don't have a deck about it.

B (10:20)

Mm.

A (10:20)

And in a way you understand because people, you know, have you sat down and thought about this? If you articulated it clearly, have you strategized? Have you pieced it together? Can you tell me in sequence, storyboard format? So we know my PowerPoint has always been more successful. But I think it's someone like Steve Jobs once said, you know, don't send me a PowerPoint full of bullet points. A bullet pointed list is a shopping list. You know, eggs, bacon, lettuce, not business activity, business action thing you should know About. So we've got lost in PowerPoint land over the years because that's just how it's gone. So well done, Microsoft on inventing that for us. I think that, you know, just as all I've said before, there's no way you're going to be able to capture because there's no cap on how many slides you should write someone, right? You get these decks of 50, 60. How are you supposed to consume all that information and nobody has the appetite to do it? I've seen it on an exact level. Survey results come in well intentioned customer experience team start churning out all this beautiful insight and it's amazing stuff, but in the wrong format, it's much easier and much more effective to communicate that to someone verbally and visually. And we, you know, it's this whole memory recall stuff as well. You can do research on if you present, talk, articulate, animate, you know, very much like I'm doing now, and do it with backup visuals that really emphasize a point that is way more effective and has a ton more recall value than bombard me with slides. We have this propensity to over tell the story when we have a blank sheet of paper in front of us, right. We'll write 100 words when actually we could write 10. I think AI is getting good at helping us with that. You know, people who run their content through AI and say make it small, make it punchy, make it distilled, we are getting better and that's helping us. But still there's, there's too much.

B (12:10)

But it's also the opposite of that, right. Where it's like I have this little short idea, make it long and make it beautiful and make it really. Yeah.

A (12:17)

Build my strategy for me from just three words or something.

B (12:20)

Yes, yes, right. I've seen, I'm sure everyone has seen this meme over and over again on LinkedIn where it's like, look, AI helped me write this long email and then the person who gets long email is like, look, AI helped me summarize this into a short holiday list. Right. So yeah, I think it's a great tool and it can certainly help us articulate our thoughts a bit better. But with anything, if you as you mentioned, have this like uncap ability to just keep writing more words or creating more slides without any idea of like with any thought really of how is this person going to consume it, what's their experience going to be of it? And it's like a totally different skill set, right. To actually learn storytelling and how people's brains works versus, you know, I've been doing slides all through high school, all through college. Now I'm in my career and doing slides like that feels very comfortable. But to tell me that I. I need to now think about how someone's reading this. What's the story I'm telling? Like, that's a totally different skill set that is hard to teach. So I'm kind of curious how you think about that with teams.

A (13:20)

Well, I have a few rules that I go by. Things like more white space is better. That means you probably manage to say what you're trying to say by using up less screen. What would they call it? Maybe screen real estate. Right. So you're just using the pieces of the white space that you've. The blank canvas, if you like, that you've got in front of you to tell the story. I did an internal presentation on presenting about six months ago. And I remember you can tell a story with a single image. You know, a really good one that we use in business is icebergs. Right. So you have the tip of the iceberg and then the water and then this huge ice. There's volume underneath. And that's used as an analogy to say what you can often see is just this much, but actually behind the scenes, behind the curtain, backstage, back office, there's all this stuff going on and you really need. So single images help tell stories. I'm a big fan of the power of three as well. And this is a psychological thing in people. You know, we love something, something else and an alternative or a thing, something else and then something in the middle or, you know, an opposite, an opposite and then a comparison. So there's a. There's a whole brain psychology around three part lists, three key actions, three key headlines, three things you should know, three numbers. You know, these are all really important in the way that we consume business data. But again, I think you can do that super effectively verbally because actually talking about three things is not overwhelming. Talking about 15 insights from your latest round of customer experience results, that would be overwhelming. So that's another reason why it's important to keep it short and punchy.

B (14:55)

Well, and I think too, it comes back to like, what is the core message or story I'm trying to craft or. Or, yeah, goal I'm working towards. Right. If I can put 30 different data points down, maybe only three of them are actually relevant to this thing that we're trying to march towards as a company. It does require you to go the extra step of analyzing all the Data and actually coming up with no, like, this stuff while interesting and like, we'll take note of it, it might influence some decisions down the line. These are the things that, like, my executive team needs to know. And separately, maybe there's something completely different that my teams that are on the ground, my customer service agents, the customer service reps need to know. And this is like, what I'll share with them. So it does require, like, understanding. Yeah. Who is, who's the audience? How do I craft this specifically for them? Sometimes scaling means giving your people the backup they need to crush the big stuff. That's where AgentForce comes in. AgentForce gives your team a smart digital workforce that actually gets work done. These AI agents answer customers, route requests, and hand off complex issues to humans seamlessly, all with the full context of your Salesforce CRM. They're not guessing, they're not hallucinating. They're acting on your data and the rules that you set. The results, faster service, less chaos. And your team gets to focus on work that truly moves the needle. All momentum, no burnout. Visit salesforce.com agentforce I don't know if there's any other, like, advice you have around taking, like a big story and trying to condense it down to something that you can actually deliver to your audience.

A (16:23)

Someone said to me recently and reminded me that if you could take the default position that if you try to make sure everything you say solves the problem versus just being apparently valuable, then you're probably doing much better than you would if you just thought that you were relaying valuable information. You know, there's a difference between informative information, valuable information. You know, informative is interesting. Good to know. Glad I do. I feel there's no fomo. Right. I feel included valuable information is. I might be able to take that and do something. But actually, I think, you know, the more you compress that information down into something very much distilled that solves a business problem. That's the difference between just listening to it and sitting up and taking attention. Because if your business problem you are trying to solve empathizes completely with your audience member, then there's no reason why they wouldn't pay attention to that. They will listen. They will sit up and go, you're trying to solve the problem. I have. Okay, I'm good now. I'm going to listen to what you have to tell me. So start your default day by saying, how many problems am I going to solve? What is the business issue we're trying to tackle? Not I'M just going to tell everybody how wonderful we are and look at all this amazing insight that we generate. That's all good, but is it valuable? Is it relatable?

B (17:39)

I've heard authors talk about this where you start with the ending and then you write the rest of the book. So I know this is where I'm trying to get to. This is the insight, this is the goal. And then I can go backtrack and figure out, how do we actually get there.

A (17:49)

Yeah, I've got a good one on that. Very quickly, at Santander, we did this mortgages, right? So if you say to someone, you know what, you need a mortgage. Oh, because I need a mortgage to be able to buy a house. That's not actually your goal. Your goal is. And here's where you inject the emotion into story. You want a safe space where you can raise your family, or not if you don't have a family, but a roof over your head. It's your zone, it's your place, it's where you want to be. It's where you want to live. The fact that you want a mortgage is incidental and actually is the means by which you can achieve your goal. The mortgage itself is not the goal. So again, you know, just think about what you're trying. And so therefore, you can build all kinds of emotion around a mortgage product, which, frankly, is probably one of the most boring things in the world to get excited about.

B (18:37)

Yeah, no, no, now I'm attached. Like, just you telling me this story, I'm like, oh, yeah, suddenly it's okay to go through this entire process that's very annoying and long and boring.

A (18:45)

There's a reason. There's a reason you're committing to that much financial outlay. Right. And you have to tap into the emotion of it, not just fixate on the product, which is what I think a lot of people in product and marketing land focus on. It's how can we make the mortgage attractive? Well, think about the reason why someone wants one in the first place. Why does someone want a car? Why does someone want that shirt? Why does someone want to buy something from Amazon? Right. There's reasons behind it. So the reason is the whole purpose behind why the customer's on the journey in the first place. Yeah.

B (19:13)

And I love you tying this back to emotions. We just had a great conversation with a gentleman who I was explaining that I think the definition of CX is just how do you make your customer feel like if we just keep it the most basic definition and wrap everything else around that versus, like, oh, customer experience is these, like these steps in the customer life cycle. And it's this thing, and it's this way that they behave and this is how we guide them. It's, it's as simple as how do they feel? So keeping that in mind with the people that are consuming your content, right, how does my employee feel whenever they're watching this thing? Um, I think that's really important. So it's interesting too, because what you're sharing isn't just applicable to customer experience. I know we're talking a lot about customer experience because that's what the core of the show is and that's the product that you're providing. But all these lessons in storytelling are highly relevant for sales or marketing. I mean, it's not just the CX teams that are getting bombarded with PowerPoint slides, it's all the teams across the org.

A (20:05)

Oh yeah. And you see it everywhere, right? Again, it's like, what is the main tool by which I feel I can convey my story most effectively? And I just think maybe the weakest conversation in the world is, ah, just send me some slides. Right, because where's the follow up, right? Where's the engagement? Have you captured that spark of, you know, some sort of inspiration? Whether you're, whether you, you know, like you just said, a salesperson, you're sending those slides to a prospect, or, you know, you're trying to communicate from business team to business team, these are not the methodologies by which we can do it. Something interesting I have seen started to happen and I think this is probably a lot to do with AI generation as well. People are putting video content into things like CVs and online job applications, right? So I saw a job the other day that a CEO of a company was advertising and he recorded himself on his own podcast describing what he thinks the ideal candidate for his position should be. And I thought that's, you know, it's, it's hardly rocket science, but it, it's actually a really good thing to do because now I get this sort of much better articulated version of what you expect from your ideal candidate rather than reading bullet by bullet by bullet by bullet by bullet of sort of hiring criteria, you know, ticking some off and going, oh, that's me. And ticking others, crossing other ones off and going, I better not apply to that.

B (21:30)

And you get the emotional connection too, of like, oh, do I like that CEO? Do I like how he's saying that? What's the emphasis on? Yeah, that's great.

A (21:37)

Could I work for this person. And so that's now happening rather than you just reading a list and applying to a screen or a bit of paper.

B (21:44)

Yeah.

A (21:45)

So again, you know, you said earlier, how is this content being used more? I mean, millennial, Gen Z generation are very much used to it already. There's a whole thing about how many seconds can I identify whether this is for me or not. And I think I've got it in my corporate slide deck. It's about eight seconds. That's about the average time it takes you to figure out, is this content relevant to me. That's not a lot of time that you've got to get an effective message across to someone. So you kind of have to have that sit up and watch me moment in the first eight seconds or the brain's already diverted off into something else.

B (22:21)

Is that eight seconds as related to business content like an employee consuming content, or is this as related to, like social media scrolling?

A (22:30)

Well, actually, but you see those latter. It is the latter. But those rules apply now to content within business because of the format. I mean, these are what we would say digital natives that are looking at this content. Right. So it's a little bit like customer experience. You judge the customer experience you're about to have from the one that you just had previously. Well, if I had watched business content, I'm going to judge it based on the content. I just looked at my lunch break, on my mobile phone, on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever, Right. So I'm going to judge how this information is related to me based on that. Now, if my preferred method of consumption is short, sound, bitey, snappy, punchy stuff, then actually, in order to engage my growing youthful workforce, I'd better think as a marketing exec or communication head, or even an employee lead, how am I going to communicate business concepts to this cohort of colleagues effectively and in that way? So again, that's where this whole sort of mindset shift that I've had from traditional ways of learning and consuming information into this sort of methodology has happened now.

B (23:35)

Well, and I think it's not just younger generations. I mean, even everyone's getting affected by these algorithms, like how our brains work, our attention span, everything has changed across the board. So I think it's just the future of content consumption and creation. It's all related to this regardless of age group, but especially for the younger age group that is constantly bombarded with it. Talking a little bit more about the short attention spans. Is there any other forms of content that you have seen work well, besides like video.

A (24:06)

Well, I think it's the split between podcast and Vodcast that works really well. And if anybody watching this is not sure what the difference is, a Vodcast is a podcast, but with the video element. And the reason why I've locked into that so much is because there's an uptick in terms of engagement and recall when you include the video element on top of the podcast element. But to answer your question, think about how consumable audio only is. I mean, again, you know, you commute on a train and if you can't get an Internet signal, that's what people are doing. You know, they're sitting there listening to audio content, stories, you know, prerecorded podcast shows. So there's actually probably some point in the evolution of my company where I'll think about splitting the format between podcast and broadcast. But initially I really like the video element just because of the way that you can see the natural, you said it earlier, authenticity happening between speakers. But I think podcasts are equally as effective.

B (25:05)

Do you think there's a place for internal podcasts? I've talked to a few, like chiefs of chiefs of staff recently who are like, I would be really cool to have like my CEO, my cmo, my cto, be able to be on Mike on a weekly basis to connect directly with our employees. You know, boost morale, kind of explain anything that might be a little crunchy in the organization right now. You know, it's difficult though, because I feel like you still get the PR thing coming in, being like, well, we can't say that, like, so that you kind of do lose some authenticity if people like over censor it. And it makes it really hard to produce that on a weekly basis. But yeah, I mean, I'm just curious if you think that's going to become more common where like I have my own internal content that I get access to as an employee.

A (25:41)

Yeah. And the key word is authenticity. Right. So we've all seen forward thinking CEOs do that kind of studio production version, like where they're standing up and it's clearly rehearsed, you know, scripted. They're looking at an auto, given their talking points.

B (25:58)

Yeah.

A (25:58)

And that's all been done by marketing for them. So really they're just there to say what that says.

B (26:02)

Yeah.

A (26:03)

The authenticity element though, I think is the difference between a colleague buying it and, and not buying it. And I'd much rather have some raw, maybe you know, the odd mistake here and there, fumbled line, you know, let's make it Real make it more like a little bit of a natural conversation. Inject that into your business communications. And I think people will say, do you know what? That was really good. I'm going to tune into the next one when the reminder comes into my inbox in two weeks time. So yes, in answer your question, I hope we're going to see a lot more people doing this and the more you and me do things like talking about it, the more companies will sit up and go, that's a good idea.

B (26:37)

No, I think it's going to become normal because I actually think that younger generations really resonate with authentic communication and they won't want to work at companies where they don't feel like they trust your leadership team. It doesn't matter how big the company is. Right. I've been noticing interesting trend. I don't know if you haven't seen it as well with more audio voice messages. So like even in my team I send them more voice notes of hey, can you do X, Y, Z thing? Or a loom video, like a recording of my screen of hey, can you go check this out for me versus like typing up the really long manifest email with all the tasks I need done. And like, I love getting that stuff because I feel so much more connected to my coworkers especially we're a remote team. Um, but yeah, have you seen that increase? I mean I work in very small teams so I don't know how this is growing or changing with enterprise teams.

A (27:30)

I think you could probably draw up a really nice PowerPoint slide. I'm kidding. That would say optimal channels of communication for different cohorts and populations based on favored method of communication. But that example of quick voice note by WhatsApp say for example is really good for. Imagine you're a team manager, department head and you want to reach out to your entire team and you've got a WhatsApp group set up. You can do that really, really easily in a 30 second voice note or you know, maybe with a graphic attached or something like that just to embellish the point that you're trying to make. But what an effective way. And I mean, well, 10, 15 years ago we were still using SMS. Who uses SMS now? Nobody does. Delete the app off my phone. Now I don't even have it. So yeah, it's those sorts of formats where it's digital first convenience now the audio can be transcribed so you have all of that sort of power that sits behind it as well. So yeah, I just think differently in terms of how you Want to communicate, think punchy, think quick, think effective, and think accessible, natural, authentic. You're going to sound much more authentic if you communicate in business via those sorts of channels.

B (28:43)

And I think people. You mentioned this earlier in our conversation, but people are going to be more. They're going to be starving for this as AI content continues to increase. I don't even know if that's you on screen. I don't know. Right. And, you know, so. But it could be, you know, if I get that WhatsApp message, I'm like, oh, this is definitely my boss. And this is how she speaks. And I hear her dog barking in the background and her kid, like, over here crying like that. I feel like you're definitely human. And yeah, I just think there's going to be a place for more and more content like that that can't be copied or falsified, and people are just going to love that and crave that and eat that up and keep searching for it.

A (29:21)

Well, I can remember, wasn't there a video a few years back of some guy on a business call and his kid comes into the room as he's on the business call because their daycare didn't stop the kid coming into the room. And we all at the time went. But now, I mean, there are even. I've been in meetings where my kids come and sit on my lap while we're talking in business meetings. So the cultural shift in terms of the acceptance of the way that we're doing this now, I mean, Covid's led to a lot of this. Right. We've had to think differently, and maybe this was a spark behind a lot of this. You know, we've had to think differently about how are we going to get key information across to people when we're not in the same room. Maybe that's a big reason for the explosion in PowerPoint that we've seen in the past few years. You know, you can exchange the file, but, you know, we've got teams, video, Riverside, Microsoft, you know, all this stuff that we've got that we can use, and that's the most effective format. So, yeah, I mean, the. Your whole culture behind this has changed in recent years, too.

B (30:18)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, too, being able to have a tool that you have in place to communicate change quickly. Because, you know, with AI, with new technologies constantly coming in, it's not like I can just teach my team member and then a year later teach them again, and then a year later teach them again. It's like, no. Every month we're going to need to touch base and every month we might have a new metric we're looking at and we're going to have a new tool that we're implementing. So having these systems in place where you can have that kind of like easy access to communication that people trust people, like, people maybe like laugh at and kind of look forward to and maybe talk to their coworkers. Like, hey, did you see CEO xyz like just sent over this message? I think it's going to become even more important.

A (31:00)

Yeah, me too. Me too.

B (31:01)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to get into metrics a little bit now that I do. Tee that up slightly. We talked about this myth busting that you've been doing, right?

A (31:12)

Oh, yes.

B (31:13)

Around myth busting nps. So tell me, how are you myth busting nps?

A (31:18)

Oh, right. This is one of my favorites at the moment. So I'm actually flying to South Africa in about a week's time because I'm doing a keynote at the biggest customer experience event there called CE in Africa. And the reason I'm going is because my keynote is all around CX myths. And so again. Right, so how do you do effective punchy business messaging in the 20 minute keynote that I've got? So I thought, well, I'm a big fan of busting cxmiths. And the definition of that for me is, you know, there's a lot of information out there in the CX marketplace. And the reason for that is because we've all come to this industry from different backgrounds. So we've all got different preconceived ideas. There's no real moderation or policing of the industry as such. You know, we've got freedom of speech, so you can say what you like. But the problem is a lot of mistruths, you know, well intentioned, you know, I'm not, I'm not implying this sort of some negativity going on, you know, underlying bad, toxic current going on here. There's a lot of misinformation which is leading to problems. And my favorite at the moment is on Net Promoter Score and how the whole thing I do is do you agree with this statement? Net Promoter Score is a measure of loyalty. So I'll ask people, do you think that's the case? A lot of people say, well, yeah, cautiously, because they think I'm going to sort of.

B (32:35)

Is that your question? Yeah, right.

A (32:38)

The answer, the very short version of this is it can't be a measure of loyalty because it's not actually a measure of Anything. Net Promoter score, when you look at the wording of the question, says, how likely will you be to recommend this company? Likely will you be. That's future tense. So therefore, you can't measure something that hasn't happened because you're not measuring whether customer has recommended your organization, you're asking them if they're likely to. So that's why Fred Reichelt switched his whole thing to earn growth concept a couple years ago. And we've seen a lot in the industry about that. But I just think that's the type of thing that you can use to educate within an organization and say, just be aware what you're doing. With Net Promoter. It doesn't actually track a performance of any kind because the person that told you what their score was is just saying, yeah, I'm likely to go on and recommend. Doesn't mean they will, doesn't mean they did, and it probably isn't likely that they did. They're just telling you they like your service enough that they would if someone asked them or they had the opportunity to tell someone. So actually, you can bust the whole NPS thing wide open. Not to dismiss it at all and say, stop measuring it, but to say, know what it is for? It's a predictor. So don't put it in your nice balanced scorecard of revenue. Churn customer retention, employee satisfaction. Those are all hard measures you've asked or you've got data on that stuff. NPS doesn't give you data on something that has happened because it hasn't happened yet. So just be aware of how you frame.

B (34:07)

Why measure it? If you.

A (34:08)

Why measure it?

B (34:08)

Yeah, right.

A (34:09)

And I'm not one of these people that beats up NPS all day long and says, oh yeah, I've been doing NPS 20 years in companies and I still think there's some really great stuff you can get out of it. Trying to say is handle with caution.

B (34:22)

Yeah.

A (34:23)

So for those companies that are paying bonus on it, rewarding and remunerating people, just be aware that you're bonusing and paying and compensating based on a measure of something that hasn't happened. So just have a think about that, you know, when you leave the office tonight and are you going to come back and see it the same way tomorrow? That's kind of the the thing I do.

B (34:42)

If not nps, then what metrics are you looking at?

A (34:46)

So I'd be loathe to say, go look at customer satisfaction again, because I did a whole CSAT RIP thing a few years ago. That was based on the fact that csat, whilst of a similar nature, is a little bit more reliant on how the person feels. And that's what it's measuring. It's not asking whether someone will do something, right, Saying, are you satisfied or you're not? The problem is with CSAT, it flatlines at 70 to 80% in every report you see and it never moves and it's boring. We prefer nps, don't we? Right. Because every so often you'll get this spike, oh, I thought the service was awful and get this emotion. Yeah, well, then you get some people saying, I've delighted it and you hold that up as best practice. So you get a lot more emotion. In net promoters, you can see why people are more attracted to it. I really think if you want to measure something which is meaningful and you can then go do something with it, then things like effort and ease work really well. Because you're asking, you know, customer, did you have to put a lot of effort in to get out of our service today what you were hoping to get out of it? And people say, yeah, I did actually, but they can say, I did actually. But you know what? It didn't faze me that much. I'm cool, I'm fine with it. I'm still happy. Now, that's a very different conversation than just thinking that someone's either going to promote your brand because they put nine or 10, or are going to walk away and smash your brand because they put between 0 and 6. Right. You've got a much more nuanced question going on with things like ease and effort. I still don't see them around as much. I've read a few industry benchmark reports which do things like what is your main corporate KPI or metric for 80, 90% of companies are using Net Promoter with a bit of CSAT by the side. And then these effort and ease questions seem to be almost incidental in the mix. So I do think that needs to be re looked at somehow.

B (36:27)

So you're kind of advising other folks like, hey, what if we flip this a little bit and looked at these other questions instead of NPS and csat.

A (36:35)

Yeah. I would go harder on key drivers with any survey or any questionnaire. Right. If NPS does a thing, if it performs as it does and I've got it, and I'm lucky enough to get it at high volume and I'm talking thousands, hundreds of thousands of responses, not tens or hundreds because it's still volatile at those levels. If you're lucky enough to get those sorts of volumes, then go. The first thing I would want to know is why. Why is my NPS behaving that way? Yes, it's a future predictor, but so I want to know, oh, okay, if this is what my customers are telling me they're going to go and do, why are they doing it? So I go back to my key drivers. So I'd spend much more time designing my research around the value of the key drivers to my organization. And I'd probably think about the different Personas in my company that I want to take this data to to help them improve their area of the business. So that's how I design my research around them.

B (37:26)

We all expect fast service now, but inside most companies, speed is still a struggle. It's the approval chains, the handoffs, the who owns what debate. AgentForce cuts through the mess and actually takes action. It talks to your customers, crushes tasks, and keeps things flowing, all based on prompts and rules that you set so your customers aren't waiting and your team isn't stuck in the weeds. Speed isn't just a nice to have, it's a competitive edge and Agent Force helps you deliver it. 24. 7 learn more@salesforce.com Agent Force, you mentioned surveys and I would like to talk more about surveys because I've talked to a few folks about this and I've gotten mixed opinions. Like I think there might be a death to the survey. Like if I'm going to go out there and say the clickbaity thing because I. I mean there's so many new tools now. Like with AI, I just can't imagine that we're not going to know how a customer is feeling in real time versus them having to tell me after the fact. And I don't even fill those things out anymore. So yeah, what do you think about surveys in the future?

A (38:29)

I think I'm on that train too, for all the reasons that you've said. Again, there's data out there which says that when you survey, you're getting a response from 5% of your population, your customer base, if you're lucky, 3 to 5% single digit. And what you're doing in research speak is you're taking representative sample of what the whole of the customer base is really thinking. But that isn't really very fair when you think of it ethnographically because what about the outliers who don't fit into that bucket? You're not really listening to customer stories. You're just taking a Sample and saying, so this is what we're going to do. You're making business decisions off 3% of your customer base.

B (39:08)

And I would say it's really biased. Don't you think? It's really biased? I either had a great experience and I'm happy to share about it, or I had a terrible experience and I want you to know. But those people that had the middle lane and they were just busy and they didn't want to fill out the form, you don't ever hear from them.

A (39:23)

Yeah, you're right. We could probably all think of situations where a company's changed something that we actually quite liked. And when the PR's come out about it, they'll say something like, based on customer feedback. And I'm sitting there reading it thinking, whose feedback? I didn't give you that feedback. I'd like to see how it was, move the button back to where it was, change the color of the thing. So you know that happens. So I'm already working with companies and talking to companies who are doing stuff like scraping and consuming unsolicited information. So non survey based data to aggregate that into feedback that you can then convert into a story internally. Wouldn't that equally, if not more be powerful than the structured survey data you're getting? Because a structured survey staged, right, it's an invite that's been sent to someone who knows if it's a B2B scenario, the respondent may have already been warmed up to, given a good response by the account exec. Right. Who knows? So actually if you're scraping unsolicited information, you know, online reviews, unstructured data, agent notes, voice transcriptions, you name it, it's all out there on the Internet. And you know, in the online world you can compile that, leverage AI analytics actually to convert that into meaningful insights within businesses. So short version of all of this is the traditional survey still has a place in formal and structured research and all companies think they need one and a CX platform on which to do their surveys, report and present a dashboard. So it's a little bit like PowerPoint world all over again in a digital format. Right. Everybody's got one of these things. But again, 3 to 5% of the entire population probably access that dashboard and review the information. So who's it really for?

B (41:08)

No, I mean, I totally agree and I want to go down this rabbit hole a little bit deeper with you on AI. So like as we get into more AI agents, more AI tools, more AI analysis, more like real time customer sentiment, what Are you excited about in the AI world? And what are you all, what are you like the opposite end where you're like, this is just overhyped and unnecessary.

A (41:31)

Okay, I'll start with the overhyped so I can end on a positive. Right. So I'll start with that.

B (41:35)

I like it. Thank you for flipping that.

A (41:36)

That's all right. See, I have learned some things in my storytelling. So the overhyped element is if you ask someone today, and I've seen this happen, you know, what's AI going to be doing for us in a year's time? Apparently AI is going to be running everything and transforming, transforming the world. It's going to transform agent experience will be AI agentic fully by that. While those questions were asked a year ago and those were the answers given and we're not there yet. So I think I'm starting to see and I'm glad I am because I am part of this group. Some quite a bit of resistance to the key messaging around how AI is going to transform service. Because I think there's a whole. Isn't there a choice as a consumer that you might want about whether you're served by AI or served by humans? I only think you'll care if the standard of the service that you receive is noticeably different enough between the two. But I still think that's an important moral question that nobody seems to really started tackling or addressing yet flipping that. What I am excited about with AI is how we can and this is a big problem for companies, right? You don't need more data. You are swimming in data. Every company has got data coming out of their parts of their body. I won't mention. But the point is, is that then why do you need more? Why do you need another platform to visualize it, another survey to get more? It's almost having like ongoing feedback surveys is nonsense because have you had a chance to react to the stuff you saw before? Probably not. Right. So what I'm excited about is I know there's a whole carbon footprint issue around this, but if AI can help consume that colossal amount of information and distill down for us in a way that it would be impossible for humans or other types of analytical platforms to do, then that would be really valuable. And that's why the unstructured noise around customer feedback becomes the natural future replacement for your traditional market research customer feedback survey. So I'm excited about that.

B (43:40)

Yeah. Yeah. I think the data problem is one that literally everyone that's come on the POD has talked about. Where it's like we've got a lot. So we've got lots of data just sitting around like waiting to be tapped into. I mean, I've even, you know, don't want to name any brands here, but I was talking to someone who was sharing that they've got like a, you know, a place where a customer leaves feedback and it goes off to like a notion board and then it gets promptly forgotten about and then the customer, another customer leaves the same exact feedback and then it goes off to the notion board and like it just is this endless cycle where it's like there's nothing you're not taking the time to actually take in and ingest. Like, okay, what do we change? How do we, how do we do this? So, you know, there is a lot around. You know, we've got all this data. Even if we have AI helping us interpret it, we still have to take action. So we still have to create systems in place in the company and like a culture that values action and not just keeps, doesn't just keep getting distracted with more data and insights. So do you have any advice for teams that are like trying to actually create a system where they can execute on these things? I mean, I've heard from people before, like just having more meetings about it. Maybe it's more video vodcasts, like, what is your solution for that problem where stuff just sits there?

A (44:53)

Vodka is a way of communicating, right? Effectively. But somebody asked me a similar question when I was doing a panel event. I was doing a Forrester event about a month ago and someone said, you know, how would you change today? And I think I said something like, well, I would probably stop surveying right now. Just stop surveying. Take a break. Listening is important. But the point is to what you just said, Lacy. How can you even get on top of everything that you've already consumed to start executing change within your organization? I look at job descriptions for CX Professionals these days. The companies want everything. You know, it's customer success, contact center management and oversight, Marcons, customer experience, expertise, storytelling, board level engagement. It's about 10 different jobs in one and they want to pay you about 50k dollars a year for it. You know, it doesn't make sense. So again, I'll go back to my previous question. AI is exciting because it might help the CX professional suddenly bundle all of this colossal amount of volume into some actionable stuff. But making it actionable is the hard part. So how do I get to my Frontline employee and help them understand that all those surveys that got. Are actually telling me something about how you should now do your job with the customer. And this is why it becomes a people job. You know, some people are very, very protective about their roles. You know, they've been doing it a few years. You know, they came into their job and the system was bust, and they built a whole new one, and now it's much better. And then they got this person coming along from customer experience saying, that's not what our customers are telling us. You need to change your process. People are super protective.

B (46:32)

Yeah.

A (46:33)

So you have to kind. You have to win their trust and find a way of conveying that information into a way that's relatable to them. And, you know, you want to work with them. You're not telling them what to do, and you're not trying to get them to change something arbitrarily. You're doing this for a reason. So, you know, you have to go to cause, benefit, outcome, reason why we're doing it.

B (46:53)

Yeah.

A (46:53)

And then I think you win. Then I think you win hearts and minds.

B (46:56)

And doing that again via video, via audio message, just in person, like, having that conversation, so much gets lost in translation with email. My husband works for a large Internet company, and it's insane where he's sending something that's like, friendly and nice, but the other person's interpreting it completely the opposite. Right. And then. And then it comes back, and then he's interpreting it in his own way. And I'm like, man, if you guys had just literally got on a phone call or like, you sent a video of explaining it and he saw your face and your demeanor, like, we. This wouldn't be an issue at all. So, like, as we continue to, like, have more of this remote work, you know, just let's figure out ways to effectively communicate that actually make us feel human and not just these, like, our own human robots across the. Across the ocean, you know, emailing each other, trying to figure out what's going on.

A (47:43)

Very much agree. I always laugh at the phrase the tone of my email. You know, the tone is an audio thing.

B (47:49)

Exactly. Yeah.

A (47:51)

There's no. So how can there be a tone in an email? And you misinterpret, don't you? You read written word. I always think it's funny when someone sends me a text message or a WhatsApp in capital letters that means they're shouting.

B (48:04)

I know, I know. And I grew up with, like, the age of emojis, so I'm like, if there's no emoji attached to something. How do I know how you feel? I don't know. Are you angry?

A (48:13)

Are you happy?

B (48:14)

Are you laughing? I don't know.

A (48:16)

This is the world we live in. Yeah.

B (48:18)

Yeah. Well, so from a team perspective as well, I wanted to get into it, like, incentives a little bit because we talked about how some oftentimes, like, your team's incentives that I've directly incentivized to have a great NPS score or, like, survey results. Like, I literally have been told by customer service reps, like, please leave me a good survey so that my boss knows I did well. Right. Like, it's directly telling me that. So what's the future of incentives? That actually makes sense from, like, a business perspective.

A (48:48)

So do you mean incentives for the employee or an incentive for the respondent in the example that you just gave.

B (48:55)

For the employee, like, from the actual the team that's executing on these things? Yeah.

A (49:02)

Well, interestingly, the example you just gave is. What would you call that? Maybe a culture of fear. Right? In that I need a good score so that I either just pass muster or that I am not reprimanded in my next performance review, because if I get a bad score, then that's exactly what's going to happen. And of course, some cultures, sad to say, even still fixate on the negative stuff rather than the positive stuff.

B (49:29)

Oh, for sure.

A (49:30)

To incentivize the employee to know that customer experience is there because it's a business tool, I think is the key message to convey. It's this whole thing about, why do they think we're surveying in the first place? Right. The frontline agent might think we're surveying in the first place because it's a thing the company does, and we're told to do it, and you've got to do it. And if you don't do it, you're in trouble. That whole culture needs to be thrown out of the window. So, again, right. You could do a vodcast in three minutes to frontline employees that says, here's why we survey our customers and why we want you to be part of that process. First, we really want you to get firsthand experience of what your service feels like to the customer you're providing it to. That's going to come with emotion. That's going to come with genuine feedback, authenticity, all that really good stuff. Secondly, that's vital business intelligence for our company. So once you've asked the customer to complete that survey and they have our customer experience team, whoever it is, consume that information in, analyze it, and provide information out to the company as to the things that we need to do to change. So you on the front line are our first port of call to helping our customer give our company that feedback. And we can't achieve our strategic objectives until you help us get there. Right now, the culture of everything that I just said and I made that up, is a Complete spin in 3180 format from Ask a survey. Because if you don't, you'll be reprimanded and you'll be in trouble if you. That whole culture is not why we do this. We're doing this hopefully for the reasons like I just gave you an example of. So that's where I'd take it if that were me in that company running that process.

B (51:09)

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm bought in, like, I would say up for your company right there. Like the way that you explained all that, I was like, I'm emotionally invested. Well, then this has been fantastic. Is there any, like, last piece of advice or any just takeaway you want to leave our audience with before we close out?

A (51:28)

Well, look, I'm on this vibe at the moment. I'd say, you know, think about your business messaging. How can you compact what you're trying to say into something that's memorable, relatable and actionable? Maybe they're the three keywords. Right? Memorable, relatable, actionable. You've got to remember it, you've got to know what it means to you and you've got to be able to do something about it. Otherwise that's just noise. Right. And there's plenty of noise in companies today. And if you need someone that can help you deliver that in vodcast format, then you know where I am.

B (51:56)

Awesome. And where can people find you? Is LinkedIn the best place to track you down?

A (52:00)

Yeah, LinkedIn. I've got a website now, cx-alive.com so you can come visit there. And yeah, so just get in touch and we'll see where things take us.

B (52:10)

Awesome. All right. And for everyone listening, we're going to drop those links in the show notes so you can just click on through and check out Ben and spam him with all your questions.

A (52:18)

Spam me.

B (52:19)

Awesome. Ben, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.

A (52:22)

No problem. Really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, Lacy.