Missed the Experience Rules!
Virtual Book Launch Party?
Watch the playback!

Enjoy the full Transcript of the Video

00:09
Hello everybody, this is Shep Hyken. Here. Excited to host you on today's virtual book launch the experience rules starring and authored by Michael Hinshaw and Diane majors. We've got a couple of minutes to welcome our people in. And just to kind of get you into the mode of interacting with us, what I'd love for you to do is to hit the little chat button and just say hello, and let us know where you're from. We've got quite a few people, I even recognize some of these fine people that have attended today. And that's not you, Diane and Michael know, the actual attendees that are that are here. I see my buddy, Jeff shin. And so let's see, let's go over to the chat guys, and just kind of put in, hey, where are you? Where are you from?

00:55
And I'm going to shut up until you guys start typing.

01:04
And maybe I just don't see people typing.

01:08
I see one question. Hey, Chef, it's Deborah Nashville. Great. Do it in the questions. By the way. That's what I want you to do. If you have a question. It is best to go to that little box with the question mark in it. And there you go. We have great leaves Detroit, New York, Alpharetta, Georgia. This is wonderful. We have people from all over that side of the country. Oh, Gemini says Mary Poppins has arrived.

01:35
And that's, I'm sure there's all kinds of things we could say about Mary Poppins.

01:41
A bit. He's one of our she's one of our country. Wonderful. Right, right, right. No, but I just think Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins

01:52
all the way. Lionni Brunel from South Africa. Fantastic. We've got MC from Germany. Now we're getting people job in the West. Job in San Diego on the West Coast, just outside of London. This is becoming a worldwide affair. All right, so we're about two minutes in, and I'm going to give us about another 30 seconds. And then I'm going to introduce to you, our authors, who are really the reason we're here today, you don't need to hear from me, I'm going to let them introduce themselves officially. And then let him talk for a few minutes. And then we'll gonna get into the book. So and again, if you have questions, you now as you've been leaving chats, and making comments, I want you to go here, I'm going to keep an eye on these questions. And we will either answer the questions as they come in, or we will hold them till later in the meeting. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, and them, they however you like to be called or what you'd like to be called, whatever the pronoun is, we are totally cool with that. What we're doing right now is introducing you to Diane and Michael, The authors of this wonderful book experience rules. And, Diane, Michael, take it away.

03:08
Absolutely. Thank you very much. And welcome to all of you from from across the globe. Actually, a lot of our contributors represented a lot of different countries. And so we want, we know that this profession is worldwide. And we want to ensure that we're supporting everyone. It's nice to meet some of you who are new and curious about the book and what we're proposing. We welcome you, I'll introduce myself first and then Michael go, I am Diane majors, I've been in the customer experience base for longer than I care to admit, well over 25 years, kind of cut our teeth back in the day when it wasn't really a profession yet. Worked at Cisco foods and at&t business solutions. And now as CEO of experience catalyst, I help coach and advise along with a fabulous group of some other practitioners to build experience management as a discipline within the organizations. Michael, great. Hello everyone. Again, as Jeff said, wonderful to see familiar names and new, very excited to be here today. And excited beer with Dan we, we joke that the gestation period for this book was much longer than it should have been. But we're really happy with where we ended up and hope you enjoy as well. A little bit of my background. I've been in the customer experience space for probably 25 years first five years of which plus or minus i ran a business built on customer experience principles, grand trading of all things and and then leverage that expertise and those insights into starting M Corp CX consulting firm, focused on specializing in improving employee and customer experience for organizations of scale and I've been doing that since 2002. And Diane and I have been

04:56
acquainted and, and friends for many, many

05:00
yours both of us started in this space at around the same time, which is a long time ago. But the good news is that's given us a lot of stories to tell and experiences to share. So looking forward to sharing some of those with you today. Thanks again for joining, Michael and, Diane, thank you for being willing to share your insights. I just think it's really cool that you think 25 years is a long time because you make me really feel old. Because this is my 41st year in this business, doing what I do I know it bald guys, they don't look that old until one day they do.

05:36
And by the way, I just want everybody to know, I normally am working from my office, this is my home office. But my regular office building had a flood shorted out all the electrical safety equipment in the city of Clayton, which is just part of St. Louis will not let any occupants in, until there are fire safety pieces of equipment back online. So I'm working from home and hope you enjoy. You think I'd be a better guitar player with all those guitars, but I just have fun with it. Diane, I love your art and Michael love part of your art. So let's go ahead. And what I'd like to do next is just I would love for you guys to give us a little bit of an overview on what the whole book is about. And again, if anybody has any questions, we welcome you to enter into this box with the question mark is probably the best place. And I'll keep an eye on that. We won't answer questions over the next few minutes. But as soon as we got to that, get out of that. Let's see if there any questions before I start asking you questions about the book. So I don't know who's going to start first. But one of you guys take it away?

06:43
Dan, I'll leave it to you. Thanks. Well, I think every the question that I get asked quite often from our contributors and people who are supported and supported both of us through this, this journey that we've had is a little bit of the why what what is this book? And why did you write it? You've been in this space a long time, what instigated that, that publication to come to come to life that we're looking at today. And one of the things that I tell people is, it's, I don't think there's ever really been a way for people to have a guidebook or a thought process around how they really embed this in the organization. I mean, all of us doing this work, it's it's tough work. When you tell people what you do for a living, they just shake their head at you. It's tough work. And we wanted to make it easier for practitioners, but also to help executives understand how experience management needs to be baked into the organization, just part of the fabric of the way that they work. And so as Michael and I were talking, I think over a couple of old fashions. One night, when we were together at a conference and said there really isn't anything that helps the leadership as well as practitioners to really understand the questions, they should ask him what they should be doing differently, how to really make this stick. Michael, you can share a little bit more about how then that turned into that turned into the Well, it's interesting. The this is my second book, my first book, smart customers stupid companies, published about 12 years ago now, which I find very hard to believe.

08:22
That book was simply a matter of, you know, where I am my co author, Bruce cast, and I thought things were going. And that was relatively easy to write because it's just our opinion, right? This is here's what we think is gonna happen. What's kind of interesting, and, and this book experience rules is a much more I'll say, complex book, because even though it reflects the experience that Diane and I have, individually and collectively had, what it also does is reflects the experience of the broader community. So it's not a book that we're just made this stuff up. Right, we experienced it. But we also had to validate our experiences with our contributors, with our friends, with our colleagues, with others so that we were aligned with a, I'll call it a document, write the book with all these words that mean things not only to us, but reflect the reality that the practitioners in the field have been facing for the last 10 plus years is that as this discipline is continued to mature. So yeah, the the why the how it's like, what does this actually look like? And as we talked about in the book, and I think most of you on the line know, this is a relatively young professionals still just starting to develop curriculums and universities for it, you know, unlike marketing or sales or any other discipline that has been established for a long time, and there's a set structure curriculum way of approaching it. We're kind of collectively building what that curriculum is together. What are the questions we need to ask what IT professionals need to be able to do first, second, third, what are the competencies and capabilities? So we certainly haven't done

10:00
covered everything. But we've tried to at least scratch the surface of the main areas that that will help to

10:07
drive, I guess, forward progress for individuals and for companies interested in pursuing customer centricity.

10:14
This was also a little bit of a movement, as Michael and I talked about watching this profession grow and listening to all of you share your stories and calling you up and having a conversation about what what are you struggling with, and what things are going really well, we began to realize that there was going to be a next generation of how we needed to pull this profession into an organization. And I think through all the stories and the case studies and the quotes and people we talk to the same struggles came to life. And so part of this was also a recipe for what you can do differently, and how we as a as an organization, meaning the community of people, the community of practice that we have, can take that next leap, take that next set of systematic ways, we engaged with the organization to really make this come to life. And so we are going to be behind that movement, and really helping to rally everyone to understand how we're going to develop this next set of where we're headed as a profession.

11:19
All right. Anything else you want to add, Michael? Oh, all right. So the opportunity to chat? Yeah, well, that's good. That's good. We're actually a couple of minutes ahead of schedule, which I love that, which gives us time to jump right in. So I'm going to ask you a few questions. And I'm also keeping an eye on the side here where we see questions and comments coming in. First question, and you kind of alluded to it, but I want to hear specifically, okay, why write this book? And why at this time, do you think that this is the book that everybody needs to hear, by the way, I might add that somebody said, Deborah, were to Deborah beard and said, we might be adding this to our Medallia mug Book Club in 2025. Give her the reasons.

12:07
Book Club along with all of us.

12:10
So I'll go ahead and start with this relatively short answer. But the the work that we do, and the way that customer experiences moved from being, you know, a, a phrase, that means a very limited thing, set of things to a phrase, that means everything, at least when it comes to organizations don't act with customers. The reality is that

12:33
customer experience is radically interconnected and connected across every organization, whether that's designing, whether it's delivering, whether it's managing, it just covers everything. But most organizations today still are not organized in a way that recognizes and can actually facilitate that interconnectedness. So organizations are still designed to silos. One of the biggest problems that Diane and I both encounter on a regular basis is how do we really facilitate lines of communication between and help knock down some of the walls that have been built inside organizations that create that silo structure. So the recognition of the interconnected nature of customer experience is really one of the key drivers for for me and, Diane, I have a Venn diagram as a lot of crossover in terms of the reasons we've, we've approached this, but it's, it's recognizing you, it's very difficult to improve customer experience across an enterprise without having that cross enterprise view. And without recognizing the ecosystem. And frankly, the systems that you need to put in place to help make it just part of the way that organization thinks it's the rhythm of the business, the ways you think, work and operate, no matter where you sit in organization.

13:48
And all combined a little bit of where we came up with the experience operating system, and organizations that I've worked with, especially Cisco foods, it's a supply chain logistics company. So there's very specific ways that things need to get done. And making it part of the operations of the organization was really critical. So an example of that would be for the stage gates in our stage gates in our PMO, where you have a project and before it moves to the next stage, you have to prove its worth and do all those pieces, we embedded criteria that said this project shouldn't move forward unless the experience has been cared for. So it's the type of thing that we put in place to help the organization understand, everything has to move that way, everything has to have that that ability to communicate, what is this going to do for the customer and the employee, to make sure we're creating value, removing obstacles, and it's going to meet the goals that we're after? The second piece of the system is really that interconnectivity that Michael talked about, if you think about systems thinking for those of you who may or may study that, that's about the whole and all of the processes and things that have to come into place and be connected in order

15:00
For something to really work well. So I know that a lot of practitioners today are trying to move all of these different pieces and chess parts around. And by connecting those, they become stronger. And that's what systems thinking is about. So we combine how we bring experience to be both operational and create a system where things are interconnected. And they feed each other, and they feed back to the organization and the strategic goals we all have. So that's the basic basic premise, and where the name actually came from. Right. So it actually you answered the second question I had, which was, you know, let's make sure everybody understands the meeting of EX O S, which is the experience operating system. We do have a question. And it comes from David hands. Hello, David. And, and I already know the answer, but I'd love for you to hit it. You know, the book is about a system. His book is wondering whether we cover sustainability in the book.

15:57
We know that was a short answer.

16:03
Right? But no, seriously, sustainability is not part of the operating system. It's part of the culture and belief in what's important, and maybe what customers feel are important in what you want to react. And I still, I still think you probably have a very good answer to that question and how it relates to a company, I was about to jump in on that the ramp rallies and I think Shep, you hit a couple of those points, to the degree that sustainability is important to your to your audience. Right, then that's part of the way that you operate as organizations part of your strategy, part of your experience, vision, and part of the design principles that you leverage to create and deliver experiences that are relevant to personalized for your customers. And, you know, sustainability, I think, just speaking for myself,

16:54
very, very important thing, both in the companies that I do business that I choose to do business with, and also with the organizations that we work with, but not every organization is focused on that as a priority. And not every organization in terms of what drives their value, necessarily needs to have that as a primary lens. But there's absolutely alignment with there needs to be alignment with what your customers want and value. And there's many Patagonia being just one of many brands that recognize the importance, sustainability and our Rei, another front and center with those things, because that's what their customers valued.

17:32
And to that point of we know from my research that we do consumer based research here in the US, that a big percentage of customers, especially younger customers, are really into companies that stand for something beyond just making a profit. Hence, you mentioned Patagonia and Rei are huge proponents of the sustainability. But also there's any other cause, that that's out there. And a lot of customers, while they will say, well, sustainability is by number one, but look at the other good in the world, these companies are doing, basically is sending the message to companies, we want you to stand for something more than just what you sell. Well, it's interesting, if you look at the the context of a system, right if you as an organization, and are you as you know, serving customers in your organization, obviously a sustainability as an example, right, which is a great one.

18:26
The degree to which you're able to consistently deliver against that value against that principle, can be hard to do, which is an operating model, which the system and which the experience operating system built on top of operating models, tend to have tend to be a little bit less flexible, tend to have a little bit tighter borders drawn around them tend to

18:48
impact the creation of or the maintenance of silos and organizations. And operating system allows you to kind of cut across those things and do so in a way that lets you consistently systematically deliver against the kinds of values that are important, like sustainability or others. Yep. I just see. David says, yikes, I need to clarify my question.

19:11
He wasn't referring to the sustainability that we're talking about. He's talking about the sustainability, the CX program and strategy. In other words, yes.

19:22
Yes, to making sure that this process sticks. And by the way, there's another question I don't want to ignore. It's coming from Nora. And we're going to cover I want to share with you nor I think your question, I want to hit a couple other questions, because your question or it could end up taking about an hour and a half to answer because it's so big and so important. So we're gonna come back to that. Hey, Chef, we are happy to have conversations with anybody. So this is only the virtual launch. If you have questions and you want to talk to Michael and I are and or please just send us an

20:00
Email LinkedIn with us, and we're happy to get on the phone and talk to the details with you. I want to, I want to add something to what Michael said about the sustainability of your practice, if that's what you're asking about. You note in the book that we've combined, not only our profession, but our profession is based on the human, whether it's an employee, a partner, or customer. And so this ability for us to also balance that human nature, what we know about psychology and sociology, and anthropology, and what people are looking for, and how they make decisions. That all is a part of this operating system as well. So we don't want you to think this is the this is the hard knocks of how to go do this. And here's the bolts. This is all wrapped around the human. So when I think about sustainability, if you're not meeting the human needs, your business isn't going to be around for a long time. And I think that's where people struggle not being able to make the impact they think, because they're not systematically looking at where they're creating value and how they're showing that back to the organism. When

21:03
we talk about the, you know, left, right brain, we want to make sure that, you know, this is a balanced book between both of those. Yep. And I think that's part of the question that I had here about what you want people to do and do differently.

21:16
Back to the sustainability question, which had nothing to do with the answers that you gave us.

21:23
But is there something in there that helps keep everything on? On Track? What can we do? Well, what are the checks and balances to make sure that we don't lose our way?

21:36
Yeah, I mean, that that is ultimately, you know, talking about sustainability of the practice sustainability, the discipline, sustainability, the focus internally. That goes back to I think the first question you're asked, yep, which is,

21:49
what is an operating system? What how do we define experience operating system and a system is put in place to allow you to, amongst other things, have a predictable series of outputs based on a predictable series of inputs. And the experience operating system is designed in a way that you can begin to put those things in place and get that sustainable practice, sustainable discipline for the organization. Now, I say this a lot. But

22:19
putting in a discipline of customer experience becoming more customer centric is not simple, in any way, shape, or form. But it can be relatively straightforward. So that's both the good and the bad. It's not easy. However, I think it's probably simple but not easy, because it is straightforward. It's just a question of whether you want to, here's a question, I think kind of ties into this. And I actually, so everybody knows, I have a list of questions in front of me that I want answered. And as I see questions,

22:50
this is a very important question. I'm asked this all the time, in interviews, how do we take this to the C suite, if let's say we are operating, you know, maybe we're CX leaders, maybe we're in charge of a context and or maybe we're in charge of, of a broader group, we need to get the C suite to buy in to creating the system. The system, by the way, takes time. And it sometimes takes money and new technology to make it happen. How do we approach the C suite? And get them to say, yes, let's make this investment. For all the reasons time, money, people, etc. I think the challenge is gonna be Diane, and I answering that in less than 60 minutes.

23:28
So that's another one. Okay, Nora, we will get to about AI and technology that we can.

23:38
Let's, let's take the leadership team. So all of us in this profession, have done a lot of work to try to convince leadership that this needs to be done and why we should be doing my customers. And many leaders will nod their head and say, Well, of course, that just makes sense. But they don't realize that they are not connecting the fact that what you do every day, drives how people feel, and that those feelings drive people's behavior. And that's what impacts the business results. And so what we're trying to do is to show the leadership's and the questions, particularly in the eight keys that you read in the book, are built so that these are questions that you can ask your your leaders, you can ask your organization, or leaders, this was written mostly for the executive leaders and the profession to ask these themselves. So there are hard questions that you have to answer. Why aren't you doing these things are, where's all the data that you need? Is the data flowing in your organization to inform people about the experience, not just voice a customer, but data about the customer what they're doing? So I think it's that it's that ability for us to really understand that there's a perpetual motion we're trying to put in place and have that be sustainable. That is what will keep going when it's built into the way that things are working. It becomes perpetual, it becomes sustainable. And the way that we've

25:00
In the recipes, I call it the eight keys. That's part of how we're trying to get the leadership to shift their view, as well as the practitioner, and think about this differently. And I'm gonna, I'm just gonna throw in my two cents worth here, if you can show them the money, the CEO bites, their tea sweet bites, and you've got to prove ROI. And you can do that by showing what we have been what would happen if we did this, you can take a look at different case studies, which you have in the book, you mentioned keys. And by the way, I see there's a number of questions that are coming in, we're going to try to get to as many of these as possible. I want to talk about a couple important things everybody understands about the book, not just asking experts the questions. So we're going to do this. I'm going to ask you maybe one or two more questions about the book. That's it. And then I want to hit some of these questions, which really tap into your expertise.

25:51
The Alright, so back to you know, the C suite, show them the money, and they will by all right. You mentioned keys. Diane, you just mentioned keys, and there are, I believe eight keys in this book, is that correct? Yes, eight piece. I've got some of them circled titled and some yellow marks throughout the book. Why don't you just give us a hint of what some of these important keys are. So people get an idea of this is really the framework of the system that you're talking about? Yeah, I'll take I'll start with one and then we can bounce back and hit a couple of them.

26:27
Measurement metrics is, for example, one of the keys measurement metrics are those things that allow us an organization to understand how well you're doing it delivering against your aspirations. And shap right you mentioned ROI value, you go into that go into the C suite or into leadership anywhere in organization.

26:46
Customer Experience is an investment to deliver consistently against it does cost money, it takes resources it pulls away from other priorities. Importantly, every organization has too much to do right 100 things you must do 20 You absolutely have to do and three accountant or whatever that whatever your math is, right? So how do you focus on those three? And typically in organization? The answer is, is money, more value or combinations thereof, since they often mean the same thing. But thinking about the measurement metrics, specifically, that's using data about the customer and about your business, are the kinds of things that allow you to go to leadership team go to management and say, here's why this is important. And these are successes that we've had. These are some examples of things that work. And this is some of the ROI we can expect if we're to pursue this project or that one. And so as we think about measurement metrics as a key, and not only helps you understand where you've been, where you're at, it also helps you understand where you're going in ways that can point the organization consistently towards value creation and customer centricity. Yep. And Diane, why don't you take another key? Oh, and and then I'm going to come back and ask you kind of an overall general question. By the way, Michael, you make me think about the famous Peter Drucker line, which is what you, you can't manage what you don't measure or something to that effect. It's one of my favorite lines, which is why we all have to know, like, where we are right now. And where do we want to be? And so we can compare where we started where, Diane, you're? Well, systematically, I'll link that measures and metrics to alignment, this 360 view of what's happening. Oftentimes, one of the things I asked practitioners to do is, can you tell me all of the projects you have currently going on that are going to impact the experience? So and often it's No, I have no idea what those are. If, if that means we don't understand where the five critical pain points or opportunities are for our customers to engage with our organization. And we aren't aligned to those and investing in those, then we're missing the boat. So the first thing to do is to is to align all of those projects, across the journey, or however you want to do it, to understand where you're going to be impacting the experience and to stop, start merge. Whatever you need to do to optimize the investment that you're making in the experience and where you're headed. That leads to the outcomes, right, if you're investing in the right things, and you're driving for the right customer behavior, it's the outcomes and the financial outcomes, value creation for the customer and financial impact for the organization. We call that a Greg Tucker peer of mine. And friend of mine, we've learned it named it CX speak to C suite speak. We need to be talking in revenue, ROI, profitability margins, just like they are and how changing experience can change those numbers.

29:43
And that's what the C suite loves.

29:47
Jason Hamill is asking a question. Is the book universal? In other words, does it really work for just about every organization big, small, you know, probably even government, and I know the answer, but I would have

30:00
have, and you can make it as short as yes if you'd like. So I'll do a yes. And

30:06
as interestingly, as the experience discipline matures, unsurprisingly organizations that are looking for help and support and doing this work are more and more saying, Have you done exactly this for a company exactly like ours, our size, our industry, our operating model, and our customer base? And, and that's a reasonable selection criteria. But the reality is that the foundational discipline and the tools and the questions to ask and the pitfalls to avoid, apply across almost every organization, you know, the more complex the organization, clearly the more complex the answers can be. But you can apply this and I have, in fact, applied this know Dan has as well, as we've coached startups, you know, what's your go to market? How do you How are you designing a product or service? You know, kind of from a mentoring role, you can apply this to a one person company up to 100 to 250,000. Employee company? Yep. Yep. Diane, anything to add?

31:05
All right, I'm going to ask you about one of the keys, which is all about customer understanding. What do you mean by that? And how do you how do you know who you serve, you already mentioned data, and all that. So I'm sure that's gonna work its way into it. But give us a little insight there. And then we're gonna go back to answering some of these questions from our fans who are off over here. I'll kick off. I think when you think about customer understanding, oftentimes, I use these examples because their real life and well relate to them. I ask people, What is your customer strategy?

31:41
And oftentimes, I get a deer in the headlights looks like what do you mean, we have a, we don't really have a customer strategy. So I dig in a little bit. And the book will help you do this to to understanding who's your best customer. And so the ability for us to begin to ask the right questions to say, do we really know the customer well enough? Do we understand who's doing what and why they're doing it. So we'd call the customer understanding, because it's a combination of thinking through it having a strategy, but the knowledge that you need to dig into not only voice of customer, which is what we typically call it, but also looking at behavior, looking at your data, looking at social looking at what AI is learning, and what we're teaching it, all of those things come into play, when we try to understand what we're doing in the environment that's resonating or not, with our customers and potential customers, and customers that have left us. So it's, we call it that on specifically because we're going to widen the aperture of how people were thinking about voice of customer, because typically, that means surveys. And we have way, way beyond that. Now, especially with wearables, and some of the data that we see coming in, that's going to help us understand this customers better.

32:56
I'm gonna add a piece of that, I think that when it comes to customer understanding, there's the there's the data, of course, but it's also something to and said earlier, that is again, central to the to the keys, which is the human element of this is the emotional resonance is understanding who you're doing things for, and why you're doing those things, not from the company perspective, why from the company's perspective of sell more units, you know, increase customer lifetime value, etc, etc. But what is the value of providing to your, to your customer as a human? And it's difficult to do that without understanding them, as humans, not as segments, not as numbers, you know, not as regions, her GIAs it's what does this individual trying to solve? What's important to them? And how can I, as an organization, as a team, as an individual contributor, make that person's life better by solving their needs, with the services and products my company has?

33:52
And and to Diane's point, we have the ability to know more about our customers than ever before? Not not, and a lot of it is on a very individual, ever beard and just made the comment that every person and I'm going to say every company should have a personalization strategy, which allows you to feel very, we survey 81% of customers feel personalization is important. All right, I'm going to open up this can of worms that Nora, when we go down to her question his his asked a while ago because it's a big question. I see customer experience,

34:28
the most critical element for the organization to gain a competitive advantage. I will agree with that. Are you ready for this? How do you see AI generate a further focusing organizations on improving CX versus hitting the easy button and yielding a more distant frustrating experience for customers and users? I think basically what she's asking is, how does AI by the way, we've been using AI for decades, people don't realize it however, since really, it's been about a year and a half this generative AI

35:00
kick in the public starting to know about it. Thanks to chat GPT. It's taken off. I think we're still in the infancy. But there's a big question so you guys can fight over who wants to start? Oh?

35:16
Yeah.

35:18
So what's interesting is you pointed out sharp AI is kind of the forefront of everyone's mind. And we as practitioners have been using it for a very long time.

35:28
It certainly has been a key part of, you know, analyzing voice the customer data for many, many years. And it's just getting better and better at doing that. But ultimately, when you think about AI, it's like, okay, well, what about ATMs or CRM or iPhones or? Right? It is a powerful technology. Absolutely. No doubt about it. But it is a technology. And so from my perspective, the question is, how can you use AI effectively to?

35:56
And this is today, five years from now? I have no idea, right? But But today,

36:02
it's using tools like AI to make your customers lives easier their interactions with you, how can you simplify routine tasks? How can you make more relevant data,

36:14
more available and more logical ways in places to your customers as they want need it? While using that additional I'll call it computing power is shift to humans, where humans can actually

36:28
take charge of and continue to drive value by doing the things that people do? Well, empathizing, it's understanding complex tasks that AI is not at least today competent at doing consistently? Well, it's how do you leverage this tech to make the people more effective. And there's a lot of different places in AI. As any technology can be misapplied or used in ways that like, obviously, this example, a chatbot, just because you stand up an AI enabled chatbot does not necessarily mean you've effectively enabled AI as a tool for customer experience. Right? It's understanding how to bring the questions in and manage them effectively. So I simply see it as a, as a tool, a powerful, certainly, tool, but just a tool.

37:15
I am.

37:17
I agree, I think it's going to be more of an enabler. Because I believe we've just seen recent studies have come out that said, 52% of us really want to have more human connection with brands. And that's probably more of the value like Patagonia, some of those value things you talked about earlier. So how do we balance that? How do we make sure that we're engaging and understanding those customers better? Through those human elements and leverage technology to Michael's point? Yeah, so 50 52% What that that means? That's, let's just call it 50%. To cut it in half, if you don't do it, you're eliminating the interest of 50% of your customers. And that sometimes people see that as a conundrum. Like, oh, my gosh, which direction? Should I go? Well, 50% really don't care. So if you do it, it's not going to impact them. And that means do it don't do it doesn't matter to them. But on the other side, 50 actually 52% are going, this is important. And I know we're getting away from the question. But I think it's important to look at how you see numbers are real, because you can look at it. And you can make the case for both sides. Depending upon how you feel about something. I'll say the research that we've done. So quantitative as well as qualitative data. Today, given the power of the

38:40
computers we hold in our hands, and the computers at our desks,

38:45
we want to be able to, in general answer any question we can ourselves as quickly as possible. So we don't want to talk to a human until we want to talk to the human. And then we want to talk to human right away. We want that human connection, right? So I'd say there's no data to support this, that's 100% of people would rather get their answer quickly on their own and having to deal with going through the process of explaining their situation to a person, but if they can't solve it on their own, and they do want to talk to you human, we need to enable that immediately. Yeah. Interestingly, when when, what is his customer typically do before they make a phone call? They go to the website to get the phone number. And wouldn't it be nice if right there we said by the way, before you call us? Checkout, you might be able to get your answer quickly, efficiently, effectively frictionlessly, etc, etc. Before you make the call where then we have to wait on hold you have to authenticate or well there's an application of AI right there. Right, exactly. What's your question? No answer done. Thank you.

39:46
I mean, that's what conversational AI is trying to address right to be more human. So I don't I don't think it's a human or machine. I think people are saying, you know, make it resonate with my life. You know, talk to me like I'm a human. If I go in like I just

40:00
I just ordered a new keyboard because my broken, took a little bit of heat right in the book, I guess. But it when I opened the instructions, it was not helpful at all. And so it was very frustrating and seemed pretty easy just fix a couple of buttons, but didn't work. So what do I do I go wrong. So the frustration that I had was not helped by the fact that it was not written by somebody who obviously was their first language. I don't hold anybody accountable for that. That's that's the way it goes. But it was, it was very difficult to try to get it resolved. And eventually I figured out it was a defective unit. But I had to go through all these steps and my frustration, just screw. So when people think about how could they have addressed that, and addressed my emotion, even if I did it electronically, would have been very helpful. You know, just give me something to chat back and talk to you to say, I've tried this and try this not go back to the same instructions, sending the same instructions to me 10 times isn't going to help. I don't think it should be better than that. And also, if we do end up talking to a live agent, and the live agent says like, Well, how did you decide to call us and what was the process you I got on the computer, it might be incumbent upon the agent to teach the customer how to do it differently next time, knowing there's a human on the back end, if you need, it's like going to the grocery store that self serve checkout, you go to scan the item, it doesn't work, scan the item doesn't it doesn't catch it. You look around, there's almost always an employee, they're here, let me help you. And then they do and that's really a great metaphor for what customers are expecting. Want to jump back to the book? Because somebody asked Ferris asked, How is this book different from other books like chief customer experience by our friend Jean bliss?

41:47
Bam,

41:49
Oh, thanks for take that. The I think what we so I've read a ton, a ton of books that are out there, and they all have invaluable pieces of information. What Michael and I have tried to do is create something that will address, what we see is that bigger gap of leadership alignment of how you pull things together, get the silos to work together, of how you keep the human element in there, and what things you consider to do that, we just talked about this whole piece of how when you flow between an organization and you're working through that, not just the journey, but all the things it takes to deliver that if you don't have a systematic way to think about that, understand it, design it and deliver it, you're not going to be able to compete in the marketplace. And so what was missing from a lot of those books were, you know, do these tactics, but there wasn't really a place where they were all hooked together. And that we could talk about operationally how things needed to work. Now, it doesn't specifically say for you, you need to go to these things. But it helps you to begin to create and think about how all those things were all together and how they need to be connected in order for us to connect to that customer.

43:01
Add to that, that we didn't write this to beat instead of we wrote this to be an and write, there's great, great books out there. Someone else on this call Sharp has written a lot of books as well.

43:16
And there's

43:19
no, and there's I mean, every book that's been written by a practitioner, somebody who's in this space has been looking at it and understanding how organizations need to change, frankly, to deliver better against customer expectations as incredibly valuable insight. And we wanted to add to that cannon, not not trying to replace it or but something that

43:40
those instead of?

43:44
Hey, here's a good question. And I know we're starting to get close to time. But I want to hit Michelle captors question. And it really does apply to larger organizations, although I've seen very small organizations come up with a problem where people are just almost operating independently, and how can that be in such a small organization, but it's all about silos. And this is her comment and then question in a large global complex company that has grown up in the age of manufacturing silos are firmly in place and product is king. Boy, haven't they been listening to McKinsey and Deloitte and Forrester and all those that say by 2020 experience will be king beyond product. But anyway, I digress.

44:28
Experiences are created around each individual product as opposed to create an experience that products can enable besides shared objectives, to get folks to care about the system versus just their piece. And I think that's where a lot of what this whole book is about is unifying. All of these, you know, independently run structures within the organization. It brings them together. Yeah, it's kind of like the mortar between the bricks. I say that a lot. But when you know, those those silos, quote, unquote, exists for a reason.

45:00
And because there's a specialization and the knowledge and things that need to happen that not everybody's going to have access, because not everybody can do everything. But if we think about this as a way to connect those things, and we have a way that we can help product managers create the experience as the product, and then it get delivered through the actual product. That's, that's a move forward, that's a move forward. So we're designing those things ahead of time. Because we have a lot of product management product lead teams coming to us and saying, the way that we do products and how we develop them, if our experience, were just as good as that, we'd be rocking it. And that's, I think, what we're trying to say is how do you embed that into what you're doing in the product management lifecycle, to really embed that so that you see that come to life in the organization, and in each of those roles. And I'll just add to that, regarding the

45:52
question manufacturing and product lead product first companies. So this is, you know, old old examples, but still relevant today, Polaroid Kodak

46:06
blockbuster, when you think about,

46:10
right, but that it's important, because when you when you look at the product, lead company today, the reality is, any product, any service can be easily copied by a competitor, right, your your supply lines can be copied your manufacturing process, all of those things, but what can't be copied, right? It's that differentiation, the degree to which you understand your customers and give them things that nobody else can. And product absolutely is a piece of that. But it's also the services surrounding their product and the

46:43
the the awareness and the connection around that product. So we think about product lead companies, there are many products that companies that are just still doing an amazing job, they've got their supply lines, distribution channels are all nailed down. Someday, our suspicion or belief is that those are going to change. I mean, there's reason the s&p 500 is cycling at a much faster rate than it ever has in history, companies are popping out of it faster than they ever have. And the reason for that is new competitors are coming in displacing existing businesses. And we see customer experience as a differentiating factor that can help you to shortcut that process and future proof your company.

47:21
All right, as we roll out here, I want to make sure that everybody knows there is a giveaway. And part of it is and I see Jeremy Erickson asked a question whether the other seven keys in the book we've we actually I think covered three of the eight so far, but what I'd like to say Jeremy is that you have a chance to get a signed copies of the book and learn firsthand from the book, what those keys are. So the giveaways won't understand 10 sign books 390 minute coaching sessions in 160 minute, this is really cool. You guys are really giving it all away. True presentation, I can educational presentation. So what you've asked us to do is put your choice of the giveaways a book coaching or the executive presentation in the chat. And once we get finished, there will be a random selection of who will win these. And based on how many people are here, I think you got a pretty good chance of, of winning. So how about we do that while we're talking is as we start to wrap up? Because I think we're gonna be I think we need to respect everybody's time. We promised everybody we'd be finished within an hour. And if we finish three minutes before that means we under promised and over delivered.

48:39
So let's see, there's a new question that came in that might actually be a comment, we'd love to read. Oh, great. It was great. So put it in the chat, just like MC did. And I know that's initial stands for M SEER cernak. I say that from folkart.net. Would love to receive a book. All right now you're basically Oh, and then we got David once coaching. This is great. It's all coming in. So

49:02
Diane, Michael, any thoughts as people are adding in what they would like to win and hopefully take away? Yeah, we would we would love to continue the conversation. You know, both of us. Any questions you have? Just if you just want to chat? That's I mean, you could probably tell based on the question that Shep asked both of us and that you asked as well we have perspectives and opinions on just about all of this

49:32
doesn't mean that it's always the perfect right answer, but we definitely have a have a perspective. So looking forward to interacting further and anything that you you want to know or feedback on the book. We'd love to have it.

49:46
Diet. Yes, completely agree we this this was written for you, all of you who are on this call. It was written for our profession and we want to create a community around this book and a practice around

50:00
This book so that we can raise the tide, as you know, raises all boats. So we're going to be doing some additional activities, hopefully a book club where we can get together and discuss the concept, we get a ton of questions we didn't get answered. So we'd love to do that. We'll do some case study deep dives, we got a lot of contributors here, there are some really dynamic case studies that aligned to the key so you can get a real flavor for what's happening. These are people that are experts in those fields, and they've done great things in their organization. So join us for those will come out with us a sequence and series of those that will help. We also are creating workshops around this, we want to create more resources for you to be able to implement this and have that backing to talk to your leadership to talk to your teams. And your organization's about it. So much more to come. But the key element of this is we need your feedback. We'd love to take this to the next level. But we're not doing it. We didn't do it alone this time. And we certainly want to do version two, the same way. But it's going to take the village takes a village raising experience. So you guys are the start of our village. Let's make this rock. So we look forward to hearing from you. Out. It's great. And Jeff, by the way, Jeff Preston asked the question, and I know it's so difficult when you're including things about AI and technology. But his question is, when do you see a second book that needs to be written? In other words, this is the kind of book that you need right now, five years from now, there's probably needs to be an addendum to it.

51:35
Maybe not maybe five years from now.

51:38
We're starting right now, like all this all the feedback. We've gotten so many questions so far. Have you thought about this? Or work at this head? Or how do we make this you know, really come to life? It's starting now. So I can't say when this one took long enough, but now we're in a rhythm. So we'd love to get that feedback and have people collaborate with us to be able to do perhaps this book is the beginning of a great conversation. And by the way, in addition to go into Amazon, and anywhere that Amazon sells books, what URL would you send everybody to to learn more about you the books etc? Yeah, it'd be the the EX Oh, system.com.

52:20
The XO system? Th e xo.com. Correct. All right. That's where you will go, if you want to throw that into the chat if you want. And so everybody can see that.

52:35
We're just about I mean, we're just a few minutes away from the top of the hour. Any other final thoughts that you'd like to share? Oh, it looks like a lot of people have shared this is what they you know, the prices they went? David says I already bought the book. Will it be sent soon?

52:51
What's the answer? Oh, yeah, you'll have it a couple of days. It's been out for? Yeah, we this is not one day we've had it. It's actually been available. This is just the virtual launch. So you should get it in a couple of days from Amazon. And we are coming in. It's coming from us. If you want the book. I'm gonna ship them out today.

53:10
Where we're depending on where you love the way you think. Let's get it done. There it is. It is the Eco system.com You made that private vehicle. Yeah, yeah. user error. user error. Let's see what I can do to make this public. How about reply reply privately? No, I'm not going to do that. So I'm just gonna stay here, but it is the echo system.com. So we'll go with that. All right. Well, we're just about out of time. Any final last words? If I could ask both of you in less than 60 seconds? And each answer, what one last nugget of information from the book? Do you each want to share it and I'm going to go with Diane first. And then Michael.

53:55
I think our full word and our dedication or dedication is to our families who helped us but our second dedication is to all the professionals out there who are doing this every day. It is not easy work. This is a book for you to help you can overcome those obstacles or cheer you on or give you new ideas to progress. So thank you for being here. And for all of you who are going to read the book or watch this later. We're here we want to hear from you. And thank you, thank you. It's all about you. All right, Michael.

54:30
Diane touched on this the forwards. We wrote the the bulk of the words in the book, but we have I think six forwards, which is a lot of forwards.

54:41
And the reason we did that is that customer experience is such a a broad field and there's so many different perspectives to go into making customer centric organizations and experience led organizations successful that we asked our friends and colleagues, CEOs of software companies, CEO of a software company

55:00
And specifically, educators, right professors at UC Berkeley and the Haas Business School.

55:09
An entire group of really forward thinking individuals who are deeply embedded in this space have some really interesting comments not only on what we've written, but their perspectives on what's happening as well. So I would, I would actually read the foreword. And the book. Wow, all right. All right. By the way, sometimes you never know it. But there is a gem hidden than that forward that people just jump over the foreword of the introduction. They want to get right to the meat. I encourage you want any book. Take a look at those forwards. Diane, Michael, thank you so much. This has been a great hour. We have applause coming in from some of our folks that are that are here. And thank you, guys. We'll go ahead and wrap it up. And I don't know when you're in the background here so you can decide how we're going to close everything out. from the technology standpoint, as far as I'm concerned. Right now, we're all saying goodbye, drive safe and by the book, and thank you

56:06
and thank you