CX Superheroes podcast - Series 14 Episode 4 - Human Centric Research - Agnieszka Mroczek - MD at GEKO

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes Podcast series. My name is Christopher Brooks, and along with being the MD and lead consultant for Lexton CX, I'm also your host. Now this series has been running for some time, and our ambition is to bring to the microphone some of those more interesting characters we find in the world of customer experience. These are individuals who are making a real difference, going off the beaten track sometimes, climbing the highest mountains, and making us really think about how we conduct ourselves when it comes to customer centricity and the ambitions we have with our organizations.

This particular individual I've known for I think probably 18 months or so. We got to know her through the customer experience World Games. And since then I've had a number of really interesting conversations which I felt were wasted unless it had a broader audience. So we're going to get to meet Agniskia Morchek.

Agniskia is the owner of Gecko Research, and she is a specialist. And when I say specialist, I cannot emphasize that word enough. A specialist in UX research. We had a really interesting conversation about what that means and about how you actually conduct it effectively if you want to get some real learning and drive change across your experience from your customers.

So without further ado, let's go and meet up. So I'm really delighted to have a guest we've got on today. I spoke to last year and we had some collaborations on something called the Customer Experience World Games, we'll come back to. But actually, we're going to talk to her today specifically about UX and CX, because this is her space.

So welcome Agni Eska to the CX podcast series. Hi, Christopher. I'm happy to be here with you to explain my experience and or story. I mean, there's there's a lot we've got to get through because the topic we're going to talk about is something you're a specialist in.

So we could talk for a long time on it. And I know that people are going to find it really interesting because it's it's one of those areas that perhaps gets overlooked a little bit. It can get just outsourced to other people and people want to know the results from doing research into customers. So we'll come back and dwell on that for a while.

But before we do, what I always like to understand is the journey that you've taken in your career that's brought you to being focusing on customers and focusing on UX and your current role. So would you mind giving us an appreciation of how you come to be where you are today? Yes, sure. So I have a quite diverse background in research, and it started a long time ago, almost 20 years ago.

I worked as an interviewer in market research covering fast-moving consumer goods. We worked for automotive, telecom and the public sector as well. And my contribution in this project were quite vast. I had a possibility to moderate, to test, to realize mind tests, consent analysis, etc.

And I think that was the first step. The second step was my academic background because I had the possibility to study anthropology. And one of the parts was ethnographic studies. That was a very, very interesting field and still important to me as a person, as a researcher.

And the next steps that were crucial to my career as a researcher, um, probably just living the market research area and going towards CX and UX, which I'm quite fresh. I think I'm still during this learning path. And it was about five years ago when I started using this method. It starts from cervix design and while testing, while trying to deploy and trying to concept first open budget application for micro-credentials at Education Research Institute.

And uh it was how this starts. And CX was a very natural part of it because we know that this is emerging. It's easy to distinct these two approaches, user experience and CX. But actually, it's all about human experience and it's only about different methods and techniques we use to obtain feedback from customers and users, and many situations when we are users, customers, clients, and employees the same day, the same hour, and maybe even using the same device.

I think we cannot escape from mixing this perspective as researchers because if you work for a long time in this branch and use your skill set to face the challenges and obtain business acumen, the reality company exists, it's natural, I think. Yeah. So that's how it starts. From education, academic background, then working as a freelancer, as an employee at big orgs like banks and leasing company.

Now my role is entrepreneur. I am founder and donor of Gecko Research, and it's my blue tech consulting agency focused on small projects and enhancing CX and UX, mostly for small companies like like mine. But it's mixed in it depends. Sometimes sometimes the projects are more complicated, and still I'm open to work for big companies as well.

That's wonderful. Thank you, thank you for, I mean, I really appreciate the detail there because I think what you've you've given is an appreciation of your credibility in the space of customer experience because you've had a great career path into customer experience. You've not come through the route that many do, which is in being in service of customers, either working in retail or contact centers. You've not come through the route of marketing, which is woven with persuasion.

That's kind of what marketing does. You've come from the very pure background. And there's another academic I work with, and he says, My only master is the truth. And that's the place you've come from.

You're qualified, you're trained, both academically. I mean, to be honest, it's it's one regret I have is that I never studied anthropology at a university. I would love to have done that to really get underneath the skin. I've had to do it later in life.

But you've you've got that. That's your that's your go-to, your first place is to understand why. And that's so important with customer experience. And I think as you've gone through your career and you've worked in organizations, you've seen the impact UX can have on humans.

And and I very much like the fact that your current setup has a focus in on that when you're doing research for clients to really understand the human impact. And I'll be honest, if if everyone thought like that, then customer experience would be a much further advanced place. So it really was important that you gave us the details. So thank you for that.

It's a great career to have. I would imagine as well. I mean, there's not many people as qualified as you in this space. So it's not like you're going to get 20, 30 people who can just start tomorrow.

You get put in front of clients' customers. They've got to have a high level of trust in what you do. How important is trust when it comes to doing research for clients? Do you have to trust that your clients are doing it for the right reason?

Do you have a lot of input into the design of the questions? How does it work? Oh, I think the research integrity as an attitude is kind of holy grail in the industry and is still valuable at different levels. It was something that I appreciated at many at many levels of my career, and it wasn't only now when it's sometimes more about networking potential.

Sometimes I have some work to do, especially for NGOs or my friends, even. I think credibility in the in the industry is important, and it's still great work to be done about research, methods and techniques, and even the curiosity-based culture, research-based-based culture, before we start setting enhanced customer experience as a variety in org, it's still to be done, I think. It's never ending because methods and techniques are quite universal. It's still about being in some rigorous but fast as well, way of project research, gather feedback, obtaining insights, but the scenarios is very complicated because of the fact that there are a variety of tools, new methods.

We live in a AI proliferation reality now. So it's still new challenges to cover. So I think research integrity is one thing, but another thing is how to communicate research in the industry, how to make the results from research clear for our stakeholders, for our clients, and how to make it something that can really bring a change. Yeah, really can help enhance the customer experience, user experience, that not only another report.

Yeah, I mean, totally. And I've spent probably 30 years of my life being involved with research. Originally working as a client, I would commission research. And I would say this is where the big shift has come.

That originally the researcher would do the research and you'd have the results, and you might ask, what does that mean? And the researcher would say, That's not up to me. These are the results, it's for you to decide what to do. And that would always be, and you touched upon this, the difficult thing then.

So then you had to become, as a client, you had to become the champion of the research because you would then have to take it into the business and you'd have to convince the business to make the changes. But now you get people like yourself who actually don't only do the listening and capture authentically and with integrity, which is a great word to use, what customers are saying, but also are able to start to interpret and translate that for the business into what that could mean in terms of changes and actions that need to happen.

Because you've got that more rounded perspective of the business. A researcher who's a researcher and nothing else doesn't have that. They only sit in the insight space. But a customer experienced researcher has an appreciation of how they're going to be using this information.

So I think that is definitely the shift without a doubt. One of the things that I would challenge myself, and I'll put it to you on that, is that as a researcher, you want to be pure, you want to ask those questions and not have any judgment or or bias going on in terms of what the answers are going to be. So you don't lead the conversation in one way or another. But obviously, as an organization, you do want some confidence that what you're going to hear, you can use and you can make changes in your business.

So, how do you balance that? How do you keep the integrity of trying to keep pure and only listening, but at the same time recognize this information is going to have to be used in the business? And I just wondered how you deal with that. Great question.

When we are really experienced researcher, we had the possibility to set some anti-bias rules. Sometimes it's about creating the space for another pair of eyes, as I said. So this is one of my methods. I try to be surrounded by another researchers and gain from their knowledge.

It's a huge advantage. And another thing is for UX and CX researchers, we have a big change to bring benefits to business to be sure that the insights we had from the report from the researchers are valid to the business situation and can really enhance and help company create experience and be more attractive. We need to know our role, which is sometimes UX advocacy. It's not only being focused on business, but it's focused on research at a good quality and really with some distance to the myths or initial knowledge we know about our customers.

It's about being strong sometimes. Yeah, I think. Yeah, because it's strange to say, oh, I think it's not sure. Check it, validate it.

Let's do some tests to be sure. Because yeah, maybe it's good sometimes to have this consciousness about the specific of this role. It's not only about being nice. I mean, sometimes it's about curious and really honest to say we screw up.

This part of process is really to be burned, whatever, just to be changed. I think you make a really good point. And I think use the word strong there. We have something called the customer-centric mindset, and two of the behaviors that we've identified over the years, which are really important for CX leaders, is share everything in the spirit of progress, is a really key one.

And the other is curiosity. So the reality is, you know, I think you're right. If if you're doing a good job, you are curious, you're asking those difficult questions. And then when you get the answers, what you're not doing is editing them out, you're presenting them back, and you have to be strong and say, this is what people were saying.

And actually, this gives us opportunity to make changes and to grow. Because if you just play back what the client would really like to hear, then it really doesn't help anyone, does it? The customer's not satisfied because no change will happen, and the company eventually will suffer because they're not actually making those changes. But but I understand, I mean, I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago and they have a accreditation system, and I was understanding from them that sometimes they may need to lower their bar because otherwise the clients won't achieve it.

And you just think that's doing it for the wrong reasons. You're not earning, you're not, you're not actually achieving anything there. So, from your perspective, absolutely, you have to be strong. And when you hear something that you think this is interesting, then you you need to be curious and go a bit further.

I think I think it's a really, really important characteristics. Absolutely. I can see that. Oh, you you touched on new methodologies for research, new techniques.

And I know myself, we've worked with academics in research for many years, and they too now are talking about scraping social media noise and using that as part of their insight. And I just wondered, we did a project over the last two or three years where we've interviewed lots of customers and we chose to review the data using our eyes and working our way through every single transcript as opposed to using an AI tool. Because when we we did a little test, the AI tool was highlighting the common and the popular issues, but it wasn't getting to some of the more important and sensitive ones, would really let the client accelerate in customer centricity.

So we made a choice to not use AI in that respect, and the client accepted it would take longer, but you use that word quality as well. It needed quality. I just wanted to get your appreciation of letting AI into helping with analysis. What has been your experience or what is your view on that?

Yes, I think that there are many tools that can help us start a research plan, to start a build report, to structure, to organize material from the field study. And I think it's interesting. But as my experience now are very focused on Gemini's Google tool, it was interesting to me to get some knowledge about the possibility to create my own agent and set his abilities, the set of traits it exposes to help me in research projects. And there are some options like deep research and in the final results of using.

But of course, there are many AI agents established in big orgs to support customer service, and I think the revolution is still to be to be worked upon. I think it's not the ideal solutions. I heard a lot of complaints from customers, from clients, and I think the enthusiasm on it still needs lowering by our human in the loop approach. Another layer of this reflection on human in the loop, human in the process, bring the CX interesting and valuable approach again because it appears that established uh agents, chats, bots, it's not efficient and satisfying for customers if it doesn't serve the needs.

Totally. I think you're absolutely right. I'm interested to see where it goes, and I can see it being, as you describe, kind of a good productivity tool, a good to make us you know boost our efficiency. But behind the scenes, I'm still I saw a presentation a couple of days ago about improving the customer experience using AI to improve personalization, but it wasn't the customer experience, it was just marketing, it was just better targeted offers, is kind of what it what it was.

And and actually, as a customer, I didn't know what the offers were before. So I don't know that these are better offers for me, personally, and it's using data that may or may not be really important to my decision making. So I think you use the word that's not as efficient, both in terms of chatbots and things like this, and auto support or co-piloting for customer service agents. And I think probably we should have a healthy cynicism towards its capability in terms of the analysis.

What you said there about context is so true. I know that when I've looked at snippets that the AI tool has pulled out, it's lost the context. The bit before that said, I was having a really bad day, so it's dropped that bit, and then it just says, So I felt the customer service advisor was not very empathetic. But it doesn't know why they're not empathetic, but it was only interested in the empathy statement.

It will take time to get there, of course it will. The other thing I'm very nervous about, I'll be honest, is if you take someone like yourself, academically trained, spent many years learning your craft as a researcher. So therefore, when you come to do work on an assignment, you bring a lot of authority to what you do. Someone who's starting today can go and buy tools to basically replicate what you can do, but they have no idea about the quality of the insights.

They've got no idea about the academic structure, the understanding of how humans tick, but they can just present the answers. And they've not done that learning to get there. And that does worry me that people feel they don't have to invest in that learning, that knowledge, and that experience themselves in order to get to the outcome. They'll just use a tool to supplement it.

But you know, I'm sure 30 years ago, people were saying the same things about databases when they were arriving. You know, why do we have you have these databases that will tell you the answers? And so I'm sure it's just another version. It will be another tool in the toolbox.

Let's say that. It'll be another tool in the toolbox. And some will use it very efficiently, and some will make green, get great gains with it, and some will will not. So let's move on.

I just want to one thing I've just realized as we've been talking, and you're probably the best person to help explain this. Could you just clarify the difference between CX research and UX research? Because we've been talking across the two, but probably we've not spoken to say how these things change or how they differ. Would you mind just clarifying the difference between the two?

To me, this distinction isn't so important as usually for CX and UX professionals is. Why? Because I think that we as researchers try to focus on um gain knowledge, filling the gaps in understanding customers and users, and we know that it can be contextual and not often possible to. present in a distinct approach.

But of course, CX refers to the broader journey and the customer and encompassing every interaction from initial awareness and discovery to purchasing service and this potentially ending with churn. CX has own methods and techniques rooted in service design, design thinking methods, the different settings of methodology. I think it's connected with the fact that the scope is broader. Yes?

That's how I think. But of course even user experience focuses specifically on a user's interaction with a product or system or celebrity. It's about the usability, accessibility and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product. We still know that it's not to be isolated from the broader experience.

Even if I use app or a screen that represents some products or buy something via e-commerce store it's still immersed in broader experience in the reality of the fact that it's just a part of customer user journey which is broader. So that's how I think that we researchers are often in different units at orgs. That's why we craft some methods and techniques and trying to be much more better at specific tools, platforms, etc but it's linked with the business acumen business needs, the business overcome more than the fact that we still want to gain insights from the human perspective and apply it.

That's how we see this perspective and I think it's very natural to me to merge it in my practice. Well great I'm glad you landed on that. I'm glad you you recognize it's all about you know you say it's all about improving the human experience and one is a bigger part of something else and one is perhaps more connected to the business strategy. But at the same time how do you make the experience better for the customerslash user regardless of what the the the interaction is whether it's digital or real so it's really really interesting.

Well I mean I think there's a lot that you bring to any discussion on this area and I think you've demonstrated great capability and competence to support clients in any research projects they're working on. So before we get on to just closing and giving some appreciation of how people can get hold of you which I'm sure they'll be interested to do so are you working just in Poland or are you working beyond that at the moment? Mostly Poland is my scope of clients but I'm open to work abroad as well I just thought I thought I'd just double check.

But obviously let's let's come back to kind of how we we had our first interaction so we we ran the Customer experience world games and we ran a Poland edition as well and you came on board and joined the Customer Experience World Games and I know we've had some good conversations about it. So you people people come and play the games for many many different reasons what was your motivation for joining the World Games I think I am a lifelong learning freak it's all about it and I think it was the great opportunity to engage in such a wonderful project.

It wasn't just six challenges many of them in the world but to me it was something really transformative for us as participants in this initiative why because I could participate in a project in a big idea that focused on human talents yes that's truly it it was great to notice how people from different branches different industries different cities at different age different level of experience and expertise can work together to bring wonderful value to the NGOs and it it shows something spectacular to me that wow it's in such a tiny timeline yes because the timeline wasn't it wasn't great it was three weeks and we were we were absolutely superheroes I think and and it supported the non-governmental organizations.

It was a huge huge impact to me that our goal is so great fine noble three focus on enhanced customer experience in a close to human experience way yeah that's that it it was about we work for hospices we work for rehabilitation center we work for organizations who supported students at the market research job research it was really great to notice how it is a beneficial project yeah it it it was a truly beneficial project to us as a researcher and designers because there were designers US service designers CX specialists project managers customer support CEO specialists so the methods we applied in the project in this challenge were very wide truly it was from usability audits from service from observation from maybe even customer Mr shopper something something like that it was it was really great so another impact I observed it was the fact that we don't need to have a big budget to create customer experience yeah it's it's sometimes it's about one sometimes it's about time focus people it's not only about fantastic tools to gain feedback you don't need to have a wonderful tool to serve the customers sometimes it's just about asking about feedback being close to the human in the process and that was really good.

I think yeah we created a catalog of positive possible recommendations and what's more the changes were in real yeah it was a real impact because it wasn't about recommendation but there after the the CX World games some teams created another initiative just to prolong this initiative. A few weeks ago I had a funny observation it was my private family escape to the small pastry shop. So I found something that is very close to this six World Games experience to me it was about one interesting feature in the offer so a single scope of ice cream can be blended with two different flavors in this pastry shop.

It's not usual and it was something in this kind of thinking about small but mighty changes without overwhelming sweetness and even saves money that's something interesting when you can offer something which is very small but welcome by customers. Well I think what you've tapped into we always talk about we thank players for bringing their time and their talent and I know that people feel uncomfortable with that second word but it it really is that you know small but mighty changes because they bring with it a lifetime of experience that they don't realize these charities have never had access to all of a sudden they get access to great individuals like yourself and you say some from service design some who are running most of the customer platforms some are heads of customer experience departments coming often from very different sectors you've got that diversity and then giving them a challenge where there is no expectation of a reward for them.

So therefore they're a hundred percent of their time is focused on how do I create a better outcome for other people and and and that that is really important for us is that people give everything. When you're working in business you might be thinking well actually I've got to do it because you know Piotra needs it done like this or or or Pat has an expectation it's going to look like this. That doesn't exist in here you just give everything you've got and create the best particular version.

And I have to say I've been doing this since 2020. The entries from last year's Poland edition were amongst the best I've ever seen. The quality was incredible and those entries that were submitted will be available to any charity who's ever been involved in the games to use now because they will have similar challenges to the ones you you highlighted and they can come in there and get the ideas out. So so thank you for being a part of it.

I didn't know that there were teams who carried on afterwards and that's always filled my heart with joy to know that we've created a springboard and others bounced off it and go and do more things with the games than we could imagine. And that's always really wonderful to hear. So you've made my day to hear that. It's really lovely to hear.

And I'm glad you enjoyed this for this opportunity. It's great I like I mean I can't do it on my own and I realized I needed to find people in CX who felt the same way as I do about we're here to create better outcomes for other people. And when you realize that you speak to charities they don't have people like you in them. They can't they they don't they don't have them.

So therefore to bring that capability in just for a small time it means so much to them. And it also I've realized as well the charities feel like someone cares for them that people are going out of their way to help them and it makes them feel special because of it. They feel like the work they're doing is really worthwhile because people want to support them. And that's very anyone feels good when they know that people are interested in what they're doing.

So it has has really good value. So the Poland games will happen again in 2025 and uh we hope to see you there for that for that when it comes oh wonderful yeah that'll be happening. So we look to look forward to seeing you again in the games. Agnieska how can people get hold of you if they want to talk to you what's the best way I know you know you're very comfortable talking to people about the the specialist topic you have so if people want to talk to you or more importantly if they've got client projects they want to approach you on, what's the best way to reach you?

I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is the best way you can catch me. Wonderful we'll include the hyperlink in the description of this podcast so people can just click through straight to you. Yes yes wonderful okay wonderful great well Agnieska I've been looking forward to this call for a while I can't deny that because I find the space you're in fascinating really have fascinated and to hear about your integrity and hear about the purity of how you do it is is wonderful.

So thank you so much for coming on the CX Superheroes podcast series and and I look forward to seeing you at the games and uh speaking to you in other capacities as well. But for now thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here.

See you later.