Winning over CX skeptics with Sami Nuwar, Medallia
The following was transcribed from a recent interview on The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast.
Today we’re going to talk about CX skeptics and how to win them over to adopting customer-centric thinking in a meaningful way. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Sami Nuwar, Customer Experience Advisory at Medallia.
(Greg Kihlström): What do you think is the reason behind skepticism that a focus on CX or a move towards greater customer-centricity will bring meaningful changes to an organization?
(Sami Nuwar): I think there are a few reasons but the primary reason that I think is that there's a lack of understanding of what experience management and what CX really is, and why we're doing this. So there's some misperception that if we have a survey and we have data available on dashboards then the business will magically improve and I think that's a common misperception that I hear. Of course collection methods and reporting methods are core components of a program. You’ve got to start you got to measure the progress of the work that you're doing and then make it available but at the same time, you've got to you combine those disciplines with a host of other disciplines that help to drive the necessary change so that those numbers actually you know move in the right direction.
As with any element of change, there's 3 components: people, process, and technology. Even though the latter seems to be the most complex, it's often the “people” component that causes the biggest challenge and roadblocks to success. What are some of these approaches that, while well-intentioned could sometimes cause more harm than good?
I would say that the most common oversight that I've experienced in in my time as a practitioner and I've also seen in other programs that I help consult with is a lack of active leadership participation. And I used those those 3 words very deliberately. Active meaning you're either on the field of play getting your hands dirty or you're not. And leadership meaning leaders at all levels of management regardless of title need to engage. So starting with the top all the way on down to the individual contributors and the people in between need to be engaged and actively engaged. Then that last word: Participation. It means that we've taken time to fully define and articulate each organization's role starting with a top leader in the organization. Everybody has a purpose and I see organizations where those 3 words were not always true.
For those leaders that are more actively participating, how can they then work to gain buy-in and adoption towards customer-centric culture with their employees?
The people in the organization take their behavioral cues from their executive leaders from their leadership and when we hear our CEO talk about customer experience in a meaningful way it resonates through all layers of management. When we see or hear them exhibiting certain behaviors we tend to emulate them. The organization and organizational behavior is a reflection of the leadership. I'll give you a perfect example of that. The CEO of a company I can’t mention by name— they make components for computers—a new CEO just coming on board to that company hosted a leadership meeting covering the usual business topics. You know, essentially our inaugural business review. We're going to cover the usual topics of performance around profitability and so on and so forth. So he called all of his direct reports to the meeting, and so everybody came on board excited to meet this new CEO and the very first question he asked of them in each of their business unit reviews was what they were hearing about from the customers. What are they telling you and what are we doing to manage their experience? And of course people were kind of dancing around the question because they truthfully didn't have an answer to it, but that moment gave people the trigger for the next time we have a business review or the next time I talk to the CEO I damn sure better have a clear answer to this question. That question that he asked of all of his direct reports in that day sent the signal.
They were measuring the experience but nobody was paying attention and it probably wasn't done very effectively. Their program shifted from a pet project to part of the company's DNA overnight.
Leadership needs to take that leading role but leadership also needs employees to feel like they're driving change too. So it's ah it's ah it's a delicate balancing act. So let's switch gears here for a little bit to another topic: how do you define CX governance?
We all have our own individual definitions based on our our own experiences. You know we think of governance as a systematic process where a group of people can hold each other accountable to drive some sort of change hopefully for the better. By driving that change we can track the progress of the company and of the work that we're doing to ensure that we're moving in the right direction. It's a management system composed of people and processes and what we're managing is the progress of the work that we're doing. To drive some sort of change.
Why is it so important to have CX governance in place and to follow on to that, what are some of the costs of not having it?
I can answer both questions with one word, and that's alignment. First of all, we align on our purpose like why do we exist and what is the direction we intend to go, so let's align on that to make sure we're all on the same page. Then we also align just as I alluded to before. We align onto work that we are doing or intend to do across all business functions. We're so busy executing, but at the same time we need to give ourselves permission to take a step back every once in a while to periodically and retrospectively assess our progress on a cross-functiontional on a cross-functional basis and understand what other areas are doing. It's hard to do that when you don't come together periodically and align on the work and make sure that that work aligns to the purpose so that we're all going in this in the same direction
It's just like a car. We're driving in our cars every day and our north star is guided by the steering wheel and every once in a while we're going to hit a pothole and you're going to see the car start to drift left or right even though you point it in a certain direction. And that's why that's why we take our cars in to get some maintenance done every three months right? You have a schedule to take your car in to get your tires rotated and align the and get a realignment and that makes sure that the wheels of the car are pointed in a direction of the steering wheel. The business is no different than that.
Listen to the Episode
About the Guest
Sami Nuwar is Director, Customer Experience Advisory at Medallia. Customer Experience Management expert and certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with demonstrated leadership in customer experience transformation, strategic design, employee experience, workforce collaboration, and effective business metrics. A strategic thinker that enjoys getting hands dirty, unafraid to fail, with extensive experience leading complex projects from ideation, planning, execution, and governance.
About the Host, Greg Kihlström
Greg Kihlstrom is a best selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur and host ofThe Agile Brand podcast. He has worked with some of the world’s leading organizations oncustomer experience, employee experience, and digital transformation initiatives, both before and after selling his award-winning digital experience agency, Carousel30, in 2017. Currently, he is Principal and Chief Strategist atGK5A. He has worked with some of the world’s top brands, including AOL, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, GEICO, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota and VMware. He currently serves on the University of Richmond’s Customer Experience Advisory Board, was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation’s National Innovation Committee, and served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board. Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, and holds a certification in Business Agility from ICP-BAF.