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Insights Unlocked
Leading customer-centric transformation with empathy and AI with Tabitha Dunn
00:25:08
CX expert Tabitha Dunn shares how to lead customer-centric transformation with empathy, AI, and cross-functional alignment. Listen to her insights now.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode we're talking with customer experience leader Tabitha Dunn about how organizations can stay truly customer centric while navigating the rise of AI and constant change from leading with empathy to avoiding the dreaded shiny object syndrome. Tabitha shares practical advice for building smarter, more human focused strategies. Enjoy the show.
- [00:28]
Bobby Mikzner
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concepts to execution.
- [00:47]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlock podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content marketing manager at UserTesting and joining us today as host is UserTesting's Bobby Mikzner, vice President of Solution Marketing. Welcome, Bobby.
- [01:01]
Tabitha Dunn
Hi everyone.
- [01:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Our guest today is Tabitha Dunn. Tabitha is a globally recognized customer experience leader who has built and led CX digital transformation and customer success teams as some of the world's most influential brands. She's known for helping organizations turn customer centricity into a true growth engine. She is currently a limited partner at Stage 2 Capital where she's helping early stage B2B company founders and their leadership teams deliver customer centric growth. And she's a trusted coach and consultant for those organizations serious about elevating their customer experiences. Welcome to the show, Tabitha.
- [01:41]
Tabitha Dunn
Thanks for having me.
- [01:43]
So Tabitha, really excited to have you here. You've got a really impressive background. You built and led CX teams at a global scale across a number of industries. Can you share for us a bit about that journey and how those experiences have shaped your perspective and what it takes to lead customer centric change today?
- [02:06]
Yeah, it's a, it's a good question I often get asked since I've been fortunate enough to work across a lot of different industries. What it's like, like what would be your, your plan for your year one? And I always say if you think that you have a plan before you start a job like that, then you, you're already sort of planning for failure at that point. The most important part of starting those roles is what I call a full on empathy tour. Like I really do dive deep into listening to our customers, meeting them. I want to meet our prospects, I want to meet customers we've lost. I want to meet employees across all parts of the business. I want to interview all of our leadership team to really understand where we're at, what's worked well and why, and what's not worked well and why. So we have a really good grounding and where we should Start and how we really build on what the teams have already done. I think a lot of times it's easy to think when you come in from the outside that, oh, I've got all the answers, and clearly I'm here because everything here is broken. But that is never true. There is a lot of great things that maybe just need to be replicated, scaled and built upon. And then you can identify the gaps where we really have opportunities for new technology or new ways of working or helping us improve our culture in a way that we work better together to drive change.
- [03:30]
Yeah. So you touched on new technology, new ways of working. Whenever I hear new technologies and new ways of working, what do I think of? I think of AI. Right. I mean, it's almost. You can't escape going anywhere. You can't escape talking about AI in almost every discussion, when we talk about transformation. So from your vantage point, what is the most exciting or maybe the most misunderstood thing about how AI is influencing CX today?
- [04:03]
I think the challenge comes from the fact that if you listen to multiple other chief customer officers talk about implementing very similar AI solutions, maybe they're looking at something in the space of agentic AI, and you could listen to three different chief customer officers talk about it, and one will love the solution they put in. And then one will be like, I'm not really sure we're feeling the value. And another one will think it's a disaster. And you're thinking, well, if it's the same technology, how could it possibly be so different for three different companies? And it turns out that, you know, a tool is only as good as the people who put it into place and how thoughtful they are about the people who need to utilize it to get the best out of it. And I love the incredible potential AI has to take away the tasks that are the least valuable for the human brains and creativity and innovation that we bring to the table. AI can take off so much of our plates, but people are afraid of that. They're like, well, what happens to my job? Instead of thinking jobs can evolve, they continue to evolve. Every time there's been a new technology leap, there's been an evolution in what type of jobs are there or how people do their jobs. And even something as simple as having worked with a lot of product leaders over the years, everyone complains about how different people comment in the code and document it. That's a great tool for AI to be utilized. It can make it consistent, can make it easy, and it takes the task off of your coder's plate, then they can actually do the work that they're really good at instead of trying to figure out what's the best way to comment or document my code. Right. So it's those types of insights and thinking about how you really utilize it to get the best out of people and then gives you the best out of technology.
- [05:56]
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are certainly multiple sides to it. Right. I mean, depending on the situation and people's familiarity, it can be a little scary. Right. But it can also kind of be the opposite. It can be the new bright shiny object. And you've warned against getting caught up in the shiny object syndrome of AI when you think about that. What advice do you have for CX leaders that are trying to stay grounded, stay grounded in real human needs, while also making sure that, that they're still innovating with these new technologies?
- [06:36]
There's two sides to that equation. If I take the employee side for a minute, I think that a lot of companies might take the leap and say, well, I'm going to go ahead and get rid of these roles. We can lay people off because AI is going to take the place of the people. But what they're missing is that you're losing a lot of the knowledge and skills of those people when they go away from your company. Instead of saying, there are already so many other jobs and things that we need done in our company that AI can't do, how do I really bring these people along to do those roles? Or how should their roles evolve now that AI is taking things off their plate? So if we, we miss that piece, then we're all very excited about the AI piece, but we forget that it's something you're supposed to build on rather than just rip and replace. When it comes to the customer needs, though, it's. For me, I think that the hardest part is customers will always have a long list of things they want you to fix. They want you to add things they need. I am certain user testing. You guys see that all the time. That long list, right? That long list. How do you prioritize what you're going to improve, what capabilities you give customers? It's the ability to really sit down and figure out what's going to have the most value for the most people or the highest impact to solve problems. Then you deploy technology to help. And in many cases it's that mix of how you bring your employees and customers together that AI can help. Like one of my last projects I was working on was how do we build a collaborative workspace that's run with generative AI that enables a wide, diverse global sales team to better communicate to each other. Like, how do they more easily update everybody in that team? I just talked to so and so at the account and this is what they talked about and they mentioned this and you don't have to do, oh, I'm going to go type it, I'm going to do this. Like how it does all of that work to more easily condense it and send that information to everybody else in the team. How easily it can do tasks like set up your meetings for you and like it replaces so much of those time intensive things that either get skipped or take value away. That allows the sales team to spend so much more time with the customers and the whole team is better prepared to understand what the customer needs. That's something that can be tremendously valuable to the customer. And they don't even get to see that technology. It's something that's still there to help meet their needs and help the business be efficient. So I think if we keep thinking about what do the humans need that are involved and then deploy technology, we're always going to be much more successful.
- [09:21]
Yeah. So prioritizing human needs, thinking about how technology really bolsters and supplements that. And that comes back to your earlier point about priorities. Right. So In a recent LinkedIn post, you talked about balancing usability, balancing governance along with scale. How do CX leaders need to get, or excuse me, what do CX leaders need to get right. Really at the outset of this to ensure that these AI initiatives actually get used and deliver true value.
- [09:59]
Yeah. There's a reason I talked about the governance because I think that usability is something that's easier for people to understand. They're like, oh yeah, you want to make it easier for people to use the technology. And AI gives us an ability to do a lot deeper personalization and customization as we approach prospects and customers. But it also gets to a point that we have to understand that from a governance perspective, really, you know, good CX leaders who want to really understand the breadth of capabilities you bring to CX is understanding privacy and how much customers want to be known. And that's where governance really comes into play is what do we do with the data and information we capture about you, how do we utilize that, how do we store it, how do we give you your right to be forgotten? But also like how deeply do I want to be known by this company? And allowing like this is a whole interesting thing that's going to Come over. I think the next 10 years, as AI gets even more prevalent, there are cases where you're like, oh, I want a very casual relationship with this company. I don't want them to know me that well. I don't want to be that, you know, wrapped around like, I went here and they know this and I did that. Like, you don't want that much knowledge about yourself to that company. But if you have a deep relationship with a company and you know, you want to make sure that what you've invested in is going to be successful, maybe you do want them to know more. And so how do we enable that governance piece to be not only effective from what the customer wants and needs, but it also still enables the usability. It's a real balance. Right. If, if every time you go to use a tool it forgot that you were there, that's maybe it's too far the other way. Right. You're like, really? How hard is that?
- [11:56]
Those moments where like, not this again. If I have to set this or respond to this prompt one more time.
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Yeah, exactly. Right. So it's the balance between governance and usability that is really important when we think about how we deploy these tools.
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Yeah, yeah, for sure. You've also shared how important it is to focus on the why. Right. And the impact behind customer issues, not just in the frequency of various engagements. How could CX teams use that mindset when choosing which AI powered solutions to invest in?
- [12:36]
Well, I think if we start with what problem are we trying to solve, then we go for who, then it's much easier to evaluate what's the right solution. I think it's a lot, you know, if you want to look at technology first, then you're, you're sort of starting with that whole chicken and the eggs and which came first. If the technology inspires you, like, I didn't know that was possible. That's exciting, right? So it's good to have an understanding of what the tools are out there. What, what's capability. That might be something you want to bring into your business, but if you're not clear about, I just really love that technology. But I don't know, like it's not clear what problem I'm solving for who. It's not going to be a good investment. So I often advise people to like, be really clear about how you build your priority list about what that problem is and who am I solving it for, but also spend time learning about new technology. So you get inspired by, oh wow, I didn't even know I could solve that problem that way and that can help you build better solutions in the long run. So it's sort of like don't chase the shiny object, but don't ignore it either. Right. You should understand it so you know better. Like when you can apply it to solve the right problem.
- [13:56]
Exactly. So it's not chasing the shiny object, it's making sure you're setting your priorities, obviously focused on the customer. But sometimes it's not just the customer. Right. That has influence or impact or affects in some way on a successful CX transformation. So can you touch a little bit on the role that other departments like finance, like product, like operations, what role do they play in a successful AI driven CX transformation? And how can CX leaders really better collaborate across the org to make sure that you have the right buy in and investment to truly pull off something transformational?
- [14:44]
When I coach or teach CX leaders, one of the key things that I remind them on is you need to have a very robust stakeholder map. CX touches every part of the organization at some point or another. And if you don't really understand, for example, what the heads of IT and finance and product and so forth, like what their needs are, what their goals are, what challenges are they trying to solve in the business for themselves, we don't make good partners then. And then when you ask for investment, you ask for help, support, advocacy, resources, it's really hard to get heard. And so I advise that like having really good understanding of who your stakeholders are, what they need, then when you go to say, like, I really want us to do a pilot where we apply this new technology because we think that we might be able to reduce call volume for customers, they don't want to call support. We don't, you know, we don't want to keep paying for us having this many calls. We have some very specific ones that we could probably either eliminate or embed, like auto processes that enable customer to solve the problem while it's happening, while they're in the tool itself, then you're going to go ask for support from finance and you're going to ask for it to help you in evaluating the solutions. And when you go there, you're asking them to drop what they're doing elsewhere and come help you. So if you don't already understand what their needs are and how getting involved in this project might help them and those things, or even if you're going to finance, how are you going to prove to them what's the ROI of this investment? Why should they put this time into that. And so having a clear understanding of what problem you're solving and how that might help the business, not just customers, makes finance go, oh, I'm interested. You're going to save how much money? So talking in their language when you do your stakeholder engagement is really important.
- [16:48]
So wait, you're saying that CX leaders actually need to go beyond CX and they need to have broader business and change management experience?
- [16:58]
Absolutely. In fact it's when people ask me like what are the things that I think most CX leaders should learn to do? Sure. Understanding how to do quantitative and qualitative research, privacy journey, mapping, design thinking and experience. Design like having all those skills are fantastic. You should have them should also take sales training so you understand how to negotiate, how to do. Objection, handling. You should be a certified change management practitioner. You should have, you know, certifications and project management because ultimately what CX is there to do is help the business make the right decisions or whatever right things we need to solve for customers and how do we ensure it's the right return on investment for the business.
- [17:43]
What are some of the biggest missteps that you've seen?
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Ah, so there's typically three kinds that I see. The first challenge is where the company is over invested in too many different types of change. They haven't really prioritized the changes that cross multiple parts of the business. You can only do a short list. So any size company, eventually there's just, there's some circle of people who are the same people who drive change all the time. Every new project, if they're in sales op like it's this person who gets picked. If they're in finance, you go back to the same people who generally have the most knowledge and capability to drive that change. So once you start stacking projects on top of each other, it becomes incredibly difficult to get things done. The second is where people underestimate how much it's going to cost to do something. Whether that was the investment in the technology or they didn't account for how much change management would be needed or they didn't account for how many resources would require. And so they get fatigue along the way and that project gets canceled because it's like, well, we're just can't keep affording to invest in this. We lose sort of hope in what the outcome might be. And the last piece is where change management fails. For most people who've never been trained in change management, they think that the change management is communicating and that is of course A key part of it, but really it's understanding like each of the people and the Personas of those roles, what are they going to have to do differently and what do you need to figure out about how to help them want to change that behavior? And it has to touch like every person. Like how do you make the customer want to do this new thing and go this new way? How do you make these employees change the way they work if they don't want to? It's no different than the field of dreams. Maybe you build it, they will not come, it does not matter. They will not be there for it. And you will have put all that time and money into something that unfortunately won't have any traction.
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So when. So this leads me to my next question. When do you typically get brought into these projects and when should you be brought into these projects to make sure that folks don't run into these things?
- [20:16]
So if it's a customer experience driven project, I'm usually the one building the case for it and I don't need to be the one that runs it. If it's a case like this, one or two departments or functions can run that project. CX is a good place to lead the project if it crosses a number of different functions because we play a very neutral role and it's not finance pointing to operations, how they need to change in operations, pointing the finger back at them. So CX starting it can be either to build the case or to lead it when it's a very large cross functional project. In other cases I get brought in because we've tried it and failed and, or it's floundering. And they're like, we don't know what went wrong. And it's like, all right, well let's go do a retrospective and figure out can we revive this? Should we? And how do we get it back on track?
- [21:14]
It's Tabitha to the rescue.
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Sometimes. Yes.
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So Tabitha, say you walk in and you need to do a course correction. How do you help CX leaders unwind something that they started that perhaps isn't going that well?
- [21:34]
Wow. So I think it often depends on the reason that it's not going well. If we talk about it from a leadership and an engagement perspective, you know, every time you get, for example, a new CEO or you get a new boss, priorities are going to change. And that's often where things end up going a little off kilter for the CX leader. If they, even if they've had traction and then suddenly they're like, oh, it Feels like I just ground to a halt. And I'm like, I remind them that, you know, a big part of design thinking is empathy. And it's not just empathy for customers, it's empathy for the people you work with and that you work for. And understanding that if you start from a place of empathy, that's one place you can unwind things and figure out, like, if you are having a difficult relationship with a peer or your boss or the CEO, that's like, you have to figure out why. And if you don't know why, you haven't gone deep enough into root cause analysis and your empathy has not gotten enough traction to be able to help you understand how to fix that. If it's a technology challenge, I. That's where I'm always like, I, if you're going to put me on the steering committee, I want to understand, like, every time we're making a change in investment, I don't want to see release. Like, it's great, we're making our release on time. I want to know, how did it go for the user testing? I want to know, like, how is it, this process going from 37 steps to 14? Okay, great. How many of those steps does this release take off of that process? What. How are we going to make sure that people are comfortable with that? We just cut out these process steps. Are they going to understand why they did it? Are they going to be comfortable with it? Did we figure out what happens if we stop having that data there or it gets done differently? And if I don't have those answers from the project team, I'm going to be like, okay, we got to pull this back. You can't just roll that out and expect it's going to work. So most of it, I think that it just comes down to have empathy and remember that you work with people. I mean, you're doing this for other people. And if you start from there and maybe an occasional good glass of wine so you can also vent, is a good way to help you work through those kinds of challenges.
- [23:56]
Well, you have a whole toolkit that sounds like it's worked really, really well.
- [24:03]
I'm very fortunate.
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Yeah. Incredible. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, Tabitha. Really enjoyed this conversation. How does someone learn more about you? Your coaching, your thought leadership, the work that you and the team are doing over at stage two?
- [24:19]
Well, it's very easy. I am always on LinkedIn, probably two or three times a week. So anytime, reach out, I'm always happy to answer questions and help anybody else who are trying to solve the same difficult problems that I love to solve.
- [24:36]
Bobby Mikzner
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.