CX Superheroes podcast - Series 15 Episode 4 - Meet the new role model for CX - Laura Fiacco

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes Podcast Series. My name is Christopher Brooks and I am your host and have been since the very beginning. Why did we create this podcast series? Well, we wanted to bring to you some of the characters, some of the champions and the challenges that you find in customer centricity.

We wanted to showcase their progress and the problems that they face to give you some ideas, insights, and inspiration to take back into your own organizations and help make the change and accelerate customer centricity within your own businesses. Today's guest was quite incredible. I had the privilege of spending a good hour with Laura Viacco, who is the customer experience, insights and analyst specialist at Kiwi.com, an online travel organization.

As you listen to her, understand the consideration she has for the strategic importance of customer centricity in everything she does, and also the recognition that it cannot be delivered on your own, that it's so important to engage those around you and take them on the journey as well. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I think Laura's gonna be someone we hear a lot of in the future. I hope you find the same level of enjoyment as I did. So it's great to be here on the CX Superheroes podcast with Laura.

I'm gonna say Fiaco or is it Fiat? Fiaco, Fiaco. It's right first time, I didn't need to qualify. And Laura's a bit of a whiz in terms of CX analytics at Kiwi.

So we're really excited to have a discussion, which will start there, and I'm sure we're going to a number of different areas because Laura's got quite a view on this, and I think it's an opinion that's worth listening to, and I think probably will challenge some people's assumptions. But before we get there, welcome Laura. Thank you for joining the podcast series. Thank you so much for having me, Christopher.

It's great to be on today. Okay, so what we'll do is we'll just hear what Laura's role is in Kiwi. And what I'd say, Laura, is you know, I guess you and I know what the title is, but it's the sort of thing that when you're in the pub with your friends, they're like, what is that? So if you wouldn't mind unpacking what your role is at a Kiwi, please.

Absolutely. So I think when we think of customer experience, all of us have received a survey in our lives. And a lot of us, hopefully, have at least filled one survey out. At Kiwi, we receive thousands of survey responses every day, which of course is very manual and tedious to go through.

So we have an analytics function that makes sense of all of these data points. We have thousands of data points, including numerical data. Ideally, customers leave us feedback via written text. So that's also qualitative data.

And so from an analytics standpoint, we have all of this rich data that we need to make sense of and deliver that back to the business. So I'd say, in summary, CX Analytics summarizes all of the data points that our customers give us in form of feedback and deliver that back to product. So we, of course, as a company are a very customer-centric company. We want to make sure that our customers are the center of what we're building.

So our team is essential to communicate that back and make sure that the product is in the vision of what customers are requesting, what makes them happy. And of course, their dissatisfactions are important as well. And I remember working with one of the big banks as a marketing director who's now a CEO of one of the bigger banks, and someone shared back some feedback. I just kind of went, what the hell does that mean?

And I guess that's your role is you make sense of it. You understand, you take out the imperfections, you make sure that it's in a shape that is true to the insight, but also the business can understand. So you've kind of got your feet in both camps, haven't you? You've got to keep true to the purity of what you're being told, but at the same time, give it some meaning and sense to the audience is going to be shared with.

Would that be about right? That's true. And I guess we own the survey architecture and even the tooling itself. So, what tool makes sense so that the user experience makes sense.

So they'd give us feedback, even clicking through, making sure we have a response rate from customers who actually share that feedback with us. Adding too many questions, for example, people drop off, they don't want to share feedback in a very long survey. So having the right length. So we monitor those metrics from an internal perspective.

And then, of course, all the feedback we collate, we do receive, we simplify it, summarize it, and pick just the most important ones. So that either the most important means the angriest customers, because that's of course very important, or the most customers. So the most people are talking about these themes. Maybe they're not so unhappy about it, but it's a theme that we're seeing across the business, or maybe there are very specific instances where customers are really upset, and that's an issue with our product as well, that we need to make sure we address.

Well, you you touched on something at the beginning there that normally in this sort of conversation, I have to bring in at the end because those in your role tend to forget, but you got it straight away, which is this is an experience for the customer. It's another touch point that they go through. So many people in this space forget that feedback isn't us just marking homework. It is another demonstration of we listen, we're interested in your views, we make changes, all the things that perhaps you want a healthy business to be if you're a customer of them.

And also the ease at which the intuitive way in which the survey works gives them confidence that then if they're going to call up the call center or they're going to do something else, it'll probably be easier as well. And it seems as if this is a focus point. So just talk us through how important it is for you to get the experience right for your customers when it comes to survey design and the way information is collected. Absolutely.

So, I mean, there's so many elements that go into a positive experience regarding surveying. So, of course, our team wants as much feedback, but we want rich feedback. We just don't, we don't want to know if you had a good or bad experience. Of course, we want that information, but we want to know more about what led to you having a positive or negative experience.

And of course, so Kiwi is a travel agency, an online travel agency. So the experience starts the minute you land on our webpage, whether you've become a customer or not. So we're having an experience of visiting our page and ideally you convert book with us. Now you're a customer, and now it's our responsibility to carry you through the way until the very last touch point, where of course we send our NPS survey of asking how likely you are to recommend us to your family and friends.

But it starts in the beginning where you can give us feedback if maybe the booking page isn't loading appropriately or payments fails. I mean, these are things we of course want to know. We want to fix these bugs quickly so that you have the good experience and come can become customers with us. And then so I designing surveys along the different touch points so that you have the opportunity to give that feedback if you feel like there's feedback to be given.

Ideally, you go through the whole feedback, you go through the whole customer journey. And at the last point, you have nothing but positive things to say. But we want to hear those too. So we don't we want you to fill out the survey.

We want you to for it to be easy for you. So we actually, even in our survey design, think about how we can prompt customers instead of leaving pure text feedback, which is time consuming. And if you had a good experience, you don't really, you just want to say it was good. You don't want to leave a long review.

If you're angry, you're more likely to write a scathing long message about what went wrong. But we want to know what went well because a lot of our customers have a great experience. So we've included some prompt drivers of what were the key elements that you found led to this being a positive experience that would either lead you to recommend us or book with us again. And I've always found, you know, people talk about the link between CX and EX and they miss these kind of opportunities.

So capturing the good stuff gives you kind of a nice message to go back internally to say, you know, the work that you do, it really makes a difference. Look, this is what our customers are saying about it. And that's a great opportunity. Too often, you know, the feedback that goes internally is just right, okay, you've cleared those five issues.

Here's the next five issues, and you're like, oh my God, we keep going. But to hear what so what I did made a difference, so much so that a customer actually referenced what our payment solution. Yes, they did. Oh my god.

And it just gives them that motivation to keep going. I think they're the subtle things that people miss between CX and EX. That's how you that's how you keep people engaged. You give them a demonstration of the importance of feedback, and then they work on it, you know, harder and better with you.

So that's very interesting. You kind of you say that, and I like the fact that you know you've got that closed loop piece in place because it's really important. So you're collecting the information, you're acting upon it, you made that clear. I was shocked to find out.

Gartner, Gartner's stats show that 90% of organizations collect some feedback, 10% of organizations act upon it, most just scorecard it, you know, they just scorecard it. So give us an appreciation of how you're sharing that information within the business so it can be kind of acted upon. Yeah, so I do think this is something that needs to be top down in an organization. That if the CEO or the C-suite cares a lot about driving a customer-centric product or creating a customer-centric product, then it needs to be part of your conversations and the way that the product vision and the roadmap is delivered.

So we have a dedicated team to connect those two points, to connect product with the customers, because product's main function is to, of course, build a product that drives profitability. We want something that drives revenue and the expenses are less than revenue so that we are profitable as a company. But they, of course, need to do this in a way that satisfies customers because that's what keeps them booking with us again. That's what drives down marketing costs so that we don't have to pay for new customers.

We actually have a healthy mechanism that brings new customers and they're word of mouth recommending us to their family and friends and driving that revenue again. So, all that being said, we as a as an organization keep customer experience very close to product. And we as a team have what we call the voice of customer report. And this isn't something new.

A lot of companies have the customer voice of customer report. But I think what we do differently is we design it in a way that works alongside product. So instead of having a voice of customer report that speaks about NPS and CSAT and all of our metrics, we actually flipped it to mimic the product design. So we have product roadmaps or dedicated PMs to specific products, and we have sections that are voice of customer report dedicated to their area.

So they don't need to read all 20 pages. And it's quite a long report of customer feedback. I mean, we have thousands of feedback points every day. So if we do this report once a quarter, this is 20 pages with a dedicated page per PM.

So they can go to their dedicated section and here, as you said, we definitely want to talk about what customers like about their product. This is feedback that we've heard as well of product doesn't want to be scathed in this because of course there's things the customers say we can do better, but they're doing a lot of things right. The customers love. So we start from that perspective of this is how it is versus last quarter.

Of course, there are some things that are repetitive because we don't prioritize every single thing that customer feedback give us. We need to systematically say these are the most important, as I said before, most customers or most heated customers. So these are the things to address. These are the things that were addressed and the impact of those changes.

Customers are more happy with these elements or these fixes improved quarter on quarter. And now we can also demonstrate progress. And the reason we chose quarterly is that also aligns with the product roadmap. So we're not just throwing them things in the middle of their roadmap they have to adjust.

I think this is also important from an organizational perspective is project management of meeting products where they are. Instead of us pushing all of all of our feedback down their throats and telling them you're not doing enough, do more. We meet them where they are, we tell them what they've done well, we align with their roadmaps and their timelines. And then, of course, we suggest things that they can improve going forward.

And we actually even go the extra mile to translate it into profitability, which is the metrics they use in their other features and designs. So, saying, for example, this feature could drive more revenue because we see that customers who are happy about this have a higher repeat booking. They book with us more and they're more likely to share with their friends. And this is the average booking.

So if we can extrapolate and say we'll get this many more bookings, well, this is the additional revenue we can expect if we were to make this change. I think if I'm honest with you, there'll be a number of people listening in who will just the chin will hit the ground and go, that's the answer. Because too often teams, the voice of the customer team faces in to the business and says, Right, I'm ready. Here's my insight, let me share it with you.

Off you go and do it. But you're right, you've got to get into the cycle of the different functions you're working with. And not only that, you've got to talk their language. I mean, we work, we do a lot of research with which comes through to scientists, you know, and trying to give them customer-centric information is really challenging.

We've got there, but giving it into a language that they can kind of understand and still retains what you're trying to say, and they only can understand it if it's in the context of their world. So putting it in these PMs is a great idea. And as you say, they don't want to hear, first of all, these things are broken, these things don't work. They want to hear, first of all, we're doing a great job, there's more we can go at.

And it's like, you know, great, you're motivating me more because it's very demoralizing. We had a situation a few years ago where a chap told me he's a customer insight manager, and he told me that he was told that every time they had the information, it would be a pod meeting. And he was like, Okay, so that must mean because we go down and we're next to the canteen, we sit in the pod. And then he discovered, no, it's him, he's called the prophet of doom.

Because what he would do is he'd bring down the insight, and he'd just think all they want to hear about is the stuff that's wrong so they can get on and fix it. But like, why do we want to come to this meeting? All you tell us is we're not very good at our jobs, and it's like there's lots of really good stuff in there. Well, why don't you share that?

Well, why would you want that? Your job is you know, and I think that's the human connection, and I know we've been talking about this before we we went on air, and we'll come back to it, but you can't replicate that. That kind of that's empathy, isn't it? And it's understanding this is what my colleagues need in order to do the job.

And I think the thing that's really important there that you've landed upon, which you talk about it as if it's just you know, it's just what you do, isn't it? But the currency, putting it into a currency so that they can understand the value of the change, few do that, I'll be honest, Laura. Few do that, you know, and it really does help those in the business quickly appreciate. They might do it in terms of the amount of noise, or it might do it in terms of you know how often this problem's reoccurring, but to put it into their language, which is so helpful.

So, you know, honestly, that's uh if your internal colleagues are not aware of the fact that you're you know really demonstrating customer centricity when you're dealing with your colleagues, some someone should tell them because it sounds like you're doing an amazing job. And I'm sure that's not something that you know was there when you started, it's like you have to grow trust and confidence. And I guess you've had to learn from your product colleagues, what are you looking for?

You didn't know you didn't come born with that knowledge, did you? I mean, how did you get to that point where you understood what it was that would help them be able to activate the insight? So it's funny actually, as customer experience, of course, we survey our customers, but we need to do the same internally, right? We need to, those are our customers.

The product team needs to have a format that works for them, or else we're not going to see the traction that we want. So, of course, we're not getting the outcomes if we're not delivering in the right way. So we needed that feedback mechanism internally as well. And of course, it's a much smaller group.

We're not getting, we don't have thousands of product managers every day leaving surveys like we have customers. So we can do it in a focus group, really, where we sit down with them and we ask the questions to understand the challenges. And that's where we, I mean, same thing with customer feedback. Customers share their challenges and we get to be creative about how do we create a solution that fits with the vision and solves their challenges, but fits with the vision of where we want our product to go.

Same thing with the customer experience voice of customer report. They told us the challenges of this is really difficult to compare with everything else we're working on because you're speaking in NPS and everything else is in profitability, driving revenue. So, how do I compare this? It's apples and oranges.

And then we were actually doing it monthly when I first came in. It was a monthly report, and likewise they were struggling. Like we have our quarterly roadmaps, and you're presenting your voice of customer report in the middle of my sprint, and I don't know what to do with it. And it and not to mention it's in a metric that I don't know how to compare.

So it was almost ignored. Actually, there was a time I think a colleague had shared with me before my time where one of the slides hadn't been updated and no one even noticed because it was so standard that you know, people flip through the deck, and if there's nothing really sticking out to them, it's just another deck. But there were hours of effort and work being poured into this report. So it was just translating it into something that made sense for them.

And it still takes hours to prepare this report, but now we're seeing that traction, and I'm actually getting pinged before the report is due from the head of PM of product asking, where is this report? So that we can plan our roadmap of it. And it's a hard lesson to learn. I remember working with an insurance company or life and pensions company, and the guy really needed to be involved, said, I just simply haven't got time.

I, you know, I've got all these reports to get out. And uh I went for lunch with him and I said, Can right, okay, what happens with those reports? It's not my job. They go out and then people just do stuff with them.

I have no idea what they do with them. And he always spoke, I can remember him and I spoke so fast because it's like, I'm just too busy, I'm just too busy. And I said, Right, next time you send the report out, don't attach it. Just send it and see what happens.

No one came back to him. And it was mortified, but I said, This is the challenge. You've got yourself into this cycle, you've got all the time in the world, no one's using this data, right? Right, and we did a follow-up piece to understand is it that you know you don't use it, is it not the right format?

And he did kind of identify that a lot of what they were sharing was not able to be understood or and it was out of date against what they were measuring. But you sometimes get caught in that cycle, don't you? So you need to break it. And I think that what you've done is in terms of stopping and listening to your customers.

It also, I would suggest, gives your colleagues such confidence that if this is the discipline and the care you take with your colleagues, then invariably this is what's going to happen with our customers as well. And that's important, you know, you don't get many opportunities to do that. So by demonstrating to them, you listen to them, you work in sequence with them, you'll put it in a language that they understand, it just speaks volumes in terms of two things. One, if I want to get the truth, I know where to go to because you know you give it to me exactly as I need it.

And two, I can trust the source because you're probably applying the same discipline to the customer. So again, you know, this is not a uh carry law around on a kind of a on a throne session, but I honestly don't hear this that often. So you are to be applauded. And I actually worked with a client once who three of the top ten issues were the survey, so you know it can actually go the other way.

But you did use an expression I want to come to because quite often in your role, despite that being really efficient, you can just be an order taker. But how do you, and this is for the benefit of those listening, how do you move from being an order taker who kind of just fulfills everyone's requirements and delivers it brilliantly and proficiently? How do you move from there to what we kind of call memory makers? And we find memory makers are strategic advisors, and it's a very expression you use.

So, how do you help CX analytics and the CX insight function become a strategic advisor rather than just a fulfilling the order requests that the business has of it? Yeah, I mean, I think the first I touched on earlier is it being top-down. So the CEO sees this as a customer-centric product. So we sit very close to product and we actually see it as a shared responsibility.

Product, of course, sees customer centricity as part of our vision as a company. And we see our role as supporting product and what that customer centricity looks like. So we're not just going back to product with here are the things customers aren't happy with, figure it out. We actually go the extra mile of here are the things customers aren't happy with, and here are the suggestions that we have for how to improve it.

You guys know best of how tactically difficult or not difficult this will be to implement, but here's some things that we suggest will smoothen this path so that customers don't feel this is a pain point any longer. So we work alongside them. We even do the sizing of these different things and we we have a feedback loop. So if they do make a change, they come back to us again and they ask for feedback, like how are customers responding to this?

So I think this is also important is we don't just throw it over the fence and they figure it out and then we throw more things over the fence. It's a two way. They come back to us and they say, we've made this change. What are the changes that we've seen to NPS, especially to these core customers that were previously impacted?

Do we see a shift? If it's no, we need to do more. So so let's we didn't just take action and There was an outcome, we measure it. So we want to know that it's having the effect that we hope it does, and that loop continues.

So I think that's important as well as making sure to be a strategic partner, it goes both ways. You don't just to be an order taker, they ask you for a number, you give them something back, and that's it. But if you share the responsibility of what that outcome looks like, that's when you're a strategic partner to the business. I think that's the word there.

It's starting by understanding what is the customer outcome we want to achieve, rather than starting with the methodology or the metric, which a lot of internally because they are easy concepts to get your head around, and a customer outcome is difficult. People say, No, I need a survey and I need to know are they satisfied? And you're like, Is that what they're telling you is important to them that they want to buy our products because they want to be satisfied? I'm not sure that is.

I think in travel, you know, the outcome for the customer is a bit different to that, and maybe satisfaction is a proxy, but we've got to out, but that's when you then, you know, you have to have that, you have to earn the right to that conversation. And I think you know, if you're just simply, well, we send you this output three times a month and you interpret it into your language because I'm not going to do it, you'll never get that conversation. You've gone to them, as you kind of said it.

We go to the product team, we listen, and we now have a partnership. So when you sit down and say, I'm not sure you want to hear satisfaction, I'm sure they're open to that conversation. We spoke to a number of companies about customer outcomes and customer performance indicators. And it is really refreshingly an area that organizations are getting to, but you can't just jump into it because it is a different way of thinking, isn't it?

Of understanding what is the outcome our customer wants to achieve and how do we measure if they're successfully achieving it. Are you finding you are you shifting towards that kind of way of thinking? Absolutely. I mean, I think Kiwi is in a unique space where we don't have a single customer journey.

I mean, we work with airlines, and so the experience doesn't just we don't own the experience alone. We are an online travel agency. So we connect customers to airlines, we connect customers to different services. So there's a part that we are fully owning, and there's a part we can't fully own.

So it's setting those expectations with customers too is a tricky point. And customer journeys don't all look the same either. Some people book a one-way, some people have to connect, some people are multi-city. So I think in terms of satisfaction, we're actually digging into what the customer journey looked like because we have so many different versions of what this could be.

Sometimes they need to contact us. And actually, we consider that to be somewhat of a failure because our product should be so clear that they can figure it out themselves. That's the that's also the smoother path is they can self-serve. So if they have to contact us, of course, we want that contact to be a positive one.

We want the agent to support them, but ideally they can self-serve through the app, trying to build that smooth path. So I think satisfaction can be measured. Of course, it's measured through a survey. That's the easiest way, but satisfaction can also be measured in whether they had to contact us, whether they had any of these other areas that we see are other things that we, of course, measure.

And that's brilliant. I mean, that's what I wanted to hear because you know that for me, exactly as you say, we're using customer performance indicators. So I haven't had to contact you, which means it was a very satisfying experience. And people miss that, you know, they do miss that.

It's like, well, I'm looking, that's your indicator. Yeah. Anyone who's called you up. So honestly, you don't need to ask them.

They're absolutely happy. And it's a I know it's a tough gig you have. I mean, I was in Milan last week and I was standing checking into a hotel. Australian family were next to me, and uh, quite a big number of them, there's about seven or eight of them, and they've been booked in twice, not by the hotel, but on their booking platform.

From the agency, yeah. Agency, and the hotel year said, Look, the good news is you've got the room, you have been checked in twice, but you haven't been charged, I don't think. And at that point, she was the lady's like, I really need to find out, I can't help you with that. So the hotel was very happy with giving this wonderful experience, but as soon as it was something a bit challenging, it was throwing it away.

And you know, that's gonna come back to, yeah, I'm sure it wasn't Kiwi in that situation, but it's gonna come back to a company like Kiwi. Yeah, then you just feel, wow, you guys probably get, you know, from all these different engagements that I have in the journey, maybe the car hire, maybe some events, maybe the flights, the hotel. If it goes wrong a little bit, those partners go, I'm out. Ah, right, you booked it through a third party.

That's not us. Even if they could have resolved it, I get the sense they throw it back to you. Is that the reality of your world? I think it was more in the past.

Kiwi has really made an effort lately to invest in those partnerships. So making sure that the airlines, I think in the past, Kiwi didn't have the most friendly relationship with airlines, and that's something we've been working on, which makes it a smoother experience for both, right? The airlines trust when customers come to Kiwi, they know that the quality is at least as good as if they had booked through them, if not better. That's of course why they booked through Kiwi, is we add additional services that the airline doesn't offer.

And likewise, Kiwi knows that if there's an issue on the airline side, that they can resolve it themselves. Because I think this was a challenge in the past. When the two aren't aligned, exactly. The airline throws their hands in the air and says, you booked through a third party and we didn't authorize that.

That's on you, the customer. And I think that's the downside is the customer is at the pain point of this trust, right? They chose an agency they trusted and there was a failure between the the two not having this partnership. So I think that was a great decision Kiwi made to really invest in.

We have a whole partnership team that goes out and speaks to airlines and partners to make sure that we're treating, we're building that trust with them. They believe that we treat our customers well and that we're able to deliver on that by airlines actually partnering with us and sharing that with us. And that is a, I mean, with this particular lady, I thought to myself she was going away. And her husband said, I'm sure it'll be all right.

And she goes, I'm sure it will. But I know that wasn't a good night's sleep for them. You know, she's just worrying that you know, she'll wake up tomorrow morning and they'll say, You didn't contact me early enough, you've been charged twice. But you know, it's such an important part of what you do.

And I think sometimes, and maybe this has been the case in your business, and maybe it hasn't, but that word customer gets associated with maybe the traveller. And the reality is those partnerships are customers, you know, they want to be able to get the best service from you, they want to feel super confident, they want all the systems to work because their customers are you know their customers and you're basically your transactions with them. And it sounds as if what you've done, which is brilliant, is actually recognize that, as you said earlier, our colleagues are kind of a customer, they're in you know, we're in service to them.

We have the end uh traveler, but we also have these partners. And if that partnership isn't a good experience, then it's all reflected on us. So it's really encouraging to kind of uh hear that. Now, a lot of what we've been talking about here, Laura, I think, is really interesting because it's the significance of things like uh empathy and understanding and specific nuances such as you know understanding the product uh sprint cycles, those sorts of things.

And yet used it in a role with the word analytics with rapidly being replaced with a technological solution. So how do you square this? Because I'm sure analytics can sorry, AI can help you with your analytics, but much of what you just explained to me in terms of really getting to the next level, I'm sorry, but I don't believe AI can do. I mean, you're sitting in that role, are you thinking no it can, or do you see a, you know, do you see a healthy kind of relationship here with AI where it can help you in some areas, but there are areas where actually the human is absolutely essential.

I mean, if feel free to challenge that. If you feel no, absolutely not, it can go all one way. But what's your perspective? Because you're living in that world at the moment, I'd imagine.

Definitely. I mean, a fast-growing app definitely needs to be considering AI. If they're not, then they're going to be could not be considered so so fast growing in the future. So Kiwi is very bullish on how we look at AI.

And I definitely think AI is going to facilitate the CX analytics and the entire company in efficiency, productivity. I mentioned multiple times now, we get thousands of comments per day. So, how can we possibly go through all of this? There's only so much from an analytics perspective that we can look at, but AI is brilliant at collating and summarizing vast amounts of data and feedback.

So I see that as an accelerator where we can now focus more on the business, those internal relationships. So the human element of meeting product and having those internal face-to-face meetings where we understand how they work, how we can deliver this to them, and then using AI as a tool to meet us where we are in the business. And that'll constantly change. So it's evolving with AI, using AI as a tool, as I said already, to ask questions about what are the key drivers that we're seeing, but narrowing it in.

I mean, we have so many possibilities with what we can ask now. And that was all manual before of taking the thousand and finding the areas to focus. Even that aspect took us some time. I think a full day.

Every week we look at the NPS metric and we sometimes spend the entire day on Monday reporting back to senior management on how NPS has shifted. So again, taking the thousands of comments from the week before, and where do we focus? So now we can ask AI that that's something that we're getting very close to of saying, what were the key drivers last week? It responds, and then we can double-click on that and very quickly get to an outcome that now we can spend more time with the business resolve or coming up with that resolution of what is the action from this, partnering with them on the next steps.

So yeah, I mean, it sounds a key with that, you've got it right, because obviously you see so much play being with the AI taking care of the analytics, I only need half the size of the team. As opposed to what you're saying is actually you can redeploy those human skills, which can't be replicated, to create a deeper relationship, spend more time understanding partnerships, working to explore solutions with your product team. It seems like the healthy balance. Now, where does that come from?

Because obviously, you know, I'm dealing with organizations where you know AI comes first, and then you've got to figure out how you fit in with it. So, how did how do you think culturally it evolved within Kiwi to actually be used in a very healthy way? Yeah, so I think I mean there's the theme of automation that's been around even before AI. We want to automate and be more productive.

But there are things that even with AI making life more productive and faster, there are things that it falls short. So, for example, being able to challenge assumptions. That's something that humans do very well. Being able to, I guess, summarize for executive audiences in different ways of making sure we're speaking the language of the business.

These are some things we can educate AI on, but understanding the business, I think, is a human element of working and understanding the different teams. Now, there are some companies that are building individual agents in each team. I think Kiwi's probably getting closer to that as well, where we have AI agents where we train the agent on what our role is and what our department's responsible for. They speak to another AI agent and another department that communicates what they're responsible for.

So it's breaking silos as well. But I think the human element of being able to run a proper discovery of what is it that we're solving for? What is the outcome? And being an expert in what my data is telling me and being able to say what you thought to be true is not true, is something that humans do well, that AI, AI validates, right?

It says, yes, actually, what you found is true. And we don't always want that. Sometimes we want someone to redirect and say, what you're focusing on is not the right challenge. We need to get back to the original point, which is this.

I mean, it's such a good observation. We have a client who was telling me that they were looking at their raw materials they should buy in the following year. And all the AI analysis was telling them not to buy this particular ingredient. And as a team, they sat there and they said, This feels wrong.

It just feels wrong. That these indicators are not where they should be to make that decision. And they took a bit of a gamble and bought this particular product up, and then the business is variable by weather. The weather changed, and that product was needed by so many other companies, so they had a basically monopoly on the market.

But if they'd have followed the AI, not challenged that assumption as you're saying there. Now I think this is where I find a real challenge for not us, and I'm gonna say I'm gonna say this in a really cheeky way, our generation, because I can tell you're a lot younger than me. But in 20 years' time, when you come up through the ranks, what's your frame of reference for challenging if you've only lived in an AI era? Because you you have and I have experience of working outside of it.

So unless the business allows us that space to still do the analytics in a crude way and find our own way to automate efficiently, we're just going to simply know where the button is to get the answer, and then we'll have no frame of reference in 20 years' time to say what is the right answer versus what is the wrong answer. That importance of being curious, which AI gives you the perception it is curious because it's going off and finding a lot, but it's not curious, it's not asking each and every one of those inputs, oh, tell me more about this input before I bring it forward.

It's just saying, you know, bring me, is it popular? Bring me some more of it. So, how do we retain that real important skill of curiosity and allow people who are coming into the business now and in the future to break it open and play with it rather than just kind of accept you push the green button and go with what it tells you? Yeah, I mean, another thing that that AI is not great at is creativity, right?

The AI is great at saying what has been done and looking at data points and suggesting, and it's great at inspiring, but it needs to inspire a human who's creative. So I think similarly, I would use AI as a tool for inspiration. And I mean, I am old school in the whiteboarding sessions, right? Like that's where creativity happens is put all use all the data points as input.

These are the areas to focus. And now when I'm thinking creatively about the solution of how we should move forward, put AI aside. This is what humans are the best at is putting our thinking hat on, being visionary. AI is not yet able to create something new, it's just creating things to have been.

And if we want to be a fast-growing company, you need to think differently. So you need to think of something new, you need to be a visionary. And AI is not going to build that new visionary company. So that's what we we need humans to rely on.

We need these brainstorming sessions of bringing people from different perspectives, different cultures, different backgrounds, different generations. All of us have different perspectives to challenge each other. And that's how you how you grow as a fast-growing tech company for sure. So then it's going to be down to the leadership, isn't it?

It's going to be perhaps, you know, or maybe the reality is you will be the lead, you know, the CEO of tomorrow, and then you will have a healthy understanding of how to use AI. So you'll encourage that creativity to still be a human aspect within your business. It's important that we retain, you know, as we've gone on through the generations, some skills have been lost to through industrial revolution, but some have been retained. And it's about making sure that creativity, that curiosity, that confidence to challenge, because these AI solutions are going to get more and more powerful.

And I think we'll get to a point where it becomes almost you're disruptive because you challenge it. You're not healthy. You know, we need to make sure that we don't ever get to that point that we say, no, it is exactly what we should do all the time. But you know, and I think maybe that will be the difference between two organizations is the one that retains all those human traits versus one that kind of automates everything.

I've seen I saw an ad on the London Underground saying you're never you'll never need to employ a human again. You just kind of go, really? You know, is that you know, so maybe those companies will end up exactly where they deserve to end up. And those who retain the qualities and skills of humans will thrive.

Yeah, I think I see it as the difference between being an analyst and being a leader. So an analyst is pressing all the buttons and finding all the numbers. And being a leader, whether you're the leader of a team or you're just, you know, leadership is a quality, it's not a title. So being a leader is I think the future analysts will all be leaders because they'll be leading and telling AI what to do.

So I'm training an agent on the right data points to pull, and I'm making sure that it understands the business context. So I'm explaining like these are all elements of a leader is responsibility of education and then responsibility of the output of making sure that output is challenged appropriately. So that's, I think, regardless of the title, all of us in the future will need to have that leadership element because we'll be leading our tools. Yeah.

But that that that comes back to then again about leadership, as you say, as a and I like that as a kind of skill rather than a title. A leader will ensure that those around them can develop their capability and skills. And what you've just explained there, if there was a glitch and we didn't hear AI, it was just you talking about training a colleague. Yes.

So it's the same thing, isn't it? So having that appreciation it's my responsibility to train others, because you know, one, if they can take my role, I can move up in the organization. But actually, if we all can improve, the business can improve, regardless of whether it's a AI colleague or a human colleague, you know, that continuously training people is really important. And I think that again marks you out differently because I think others are outsourcing to the AI rather than spending time nurturing the AI and developing its capability to provide a better solution to you.

So maybe this whole thing, Laura, comes back to a bit of a mindset about this, which is you know, you've got a customer-centric mindset in the first place, where you're thinking about how can I create a better outcome, whereas others are thinking much more transactionally about how can I do less or you know, how can I get more out of less sort of thing. It's a bit different mindset, isn't it? It is. No, it definitely is.

And I think customer centricity is exactly how you grow as a business to maintain a reputation. There's you can't buy a reputation, you can only deliver a reputation. And through your reputation, reputation, that actually transactions it creates transactions, it creates sales. Cool.

So byproduct, isn't it? Wonderful byproduct. Yeah. Rather than your belly, it should be a byproduct.

Exactly. And you're absolutely right. It's external in the way that your brand is perceived externally, but then internally as well, the way your teams collaborate and work together. So customer centricity isn't just a mindset for how your product is, but it's also the way the way you collaborate and work together.

And funny if we have seven customer-centric mindset traits, and one of them is collaboration. Oh, yeah. It's really important, it's a really important fact. Such is so is uh curiosity, as is empathy and active listening.

And you know, yes, you I've you I've been almost ticking off my scorecard as we've gone through the conversation to kind of demonstrate all of the things in there that you're doing. So I think you know what we need to make sure is that individuals like yourself are the role model for how you continue to adapt and grow in a healthy way with what let's be frank, whatever technology comes along next. Because whilst AI is an incredible solution or concept, so was CRM, so was the washing machine, you know.

So these things, you know, that's probably still the biggest technological advance we've ever had in life. So you know, so was the internet. So it'll there'll be other things that kind of come along. So having the ability to see how we use those for good and help improve our customers and colleagues, partnerships, whatever they are.

I think you know, we're gonna need more people like you, Laura. So, you know, kind of you know, make sure you stay in that role and invariably, hopefully, your organization and others will see this is the sort of this is what we need from a customer experience management. This is what we need. Do you feel that weight of responsibility in terms of you know making sure that you don't just not you but others in the business use AI for the wrong way or kind of put the customer to the back of the queue?

Do you feel that responsibility? I do. I mean, I think part of being customer-centric, part of being human is that I talked about training agents, but it's it's the human element of the responsibility of training my team, making sure everyone sees why I see the way I see it. I'm not just telling them to do it this way and this is how we do it, but buying them in on that vision.

And that's transforming everyone around me to see in a similar way. Everyone, at least that I've influenced with or without authority, by the way, because of course my team, I manage them. So in some ways, I have that respect because of my title, but there are other teams that don't necessarily need to take action, like the product teams, we collaborate. And getting them bought in on that vision is how you influence their action.

And it's contagious in a way. Like when you share these this framework, this ROI framework is an example, and they buy it. Now suddenly you see the way that they shift. In the way that they're talking and the actions they have as well.

So I hope that spreads. It's contagious from me and they're spreading it as well throughout the organization and of course onto other organizations too. And that's very rewarding. It probably brings me to my last point about how you measure progress because you could look at a scorecard and see that the performance has gone down because actually you've taken on far more customers than you could cope with because you've been so successful.

So you can't really rely upon that indicator. But something you've just mentioned there is exactly a measure of performance, is a function who were looking at something and couldn't get the right answers now look at it in a different way and can accelerate their success. So, you know, my final question, and I kept it to the last one because it is a difficult one, is how do you measure your progress that you're making within the business? I it is a difficult one.

The voice of customer report shift was it's funny because it was it felt like a huge risk at the moment. Like we killed something and rebuilt it. And so there was a lot of responsibility. We've used this word many times, responsibility of I'm bringing all these people onto a call to launch this whole new version of what we've built.

But it's also understanding that it says nothing about me. This was all the feedback I've received of what the next iteration needed to be. And it's not the new version and the final version either. We're iterating each time.

So it's just listening, I think active listening, like the framework I definitely need to get from you on these different elements because I don't have the checkboxes, but those are all the exact things we implement is what's not working, what listening and being curious, asking those questions, what's not working, iterating, and also being flexible enough to say this version is a step better than the last version. And the next version will iterate on this. And we're just getting closer and closer to that next best version.

And as I'm changing and improving, so are they. So we're evolving together. So it's that's how I see progress is moving forward. And as the business evolves, I think being flexible.

I think the worst thing we can do is take no action or stay the same. Those are so progress is just moving closer to fixing the feedback of yesterday. Yeah. That's lovely.

That's lovely. And I will send you the C the customer-centric mindset trait. Look, it came about, I've been I developed it probably 15 years ago by having interviews with CX leaders. And what came through was exactly the net, you know, the narrative that you've been giving me.

There was another example of it. One of the mindset traits is experimentation. Because what you've just said there, you know, you broke something that people have gone, hang on, but we know how that works, and you're going to bring something new in. That's an experiment and a half, isn't it?

You know, and then they go, Oh, actually, this works really well. Thank you very much. Which gives you permission to kind of go again. But that's how it came about, these seven traits.

So I will share it with you because I think probably you're one of those people, if I'd have met 15 years ago, would have been the basis for the customer-centric mindset. And that's reassuring for me that people are out there, you know, without knowing what it is, it's what you practice because that suggests that we're we've identified kind of the right things. But you know, it's great to hear. I mean, it sounds like you're enjoying it as well, Laura, which is really important.

I mean, I'd imagine the night before you presented the new version of the VOC platform, perhaps you didn't sleep so well, but uh, you know, because you've got anxiety, but that's healthy tension, isn't it? But it sounds like you're having a having fun doing it as well. Would that was that the right noun to use? Would you say fun is the word, or is it a bit more challenging than that?

I mean, I'd actually say I'm quite lucky that Kiwi has a great company culture where people do laugh and joke on calls. We use a lot of emojis in our Slack group. So I of course I felt the pressure, but it didn't feel like anxiety of like nervous pressure. It was more like I recognize the responsibility that I had, and it was excitement of I'm introducing something that they haven't seen before.

And I know it's better than yesterday's, and I'm looking forward to what they're going to say. And I just wanted that moment of anticipation more than anything. And so you're right, it is a lot of fun. I think evolving and changing, like working in a fast company is definitely exciting.

So I am enjoying it. Well, I'm gonna put this podcast down to it's kind of, you know, if you're looking for inspiration and you want to remember why we do what we do, this is the podcast to listen to because you're a perfect role model for progression and purpose and performance as well. So congratulations, all right. I hope to see and speak to you again in the future because I think probably you'll be one of those sort of innovators that helps us understand the other side of AI, what we're actually doing with it now, as well as many other aspects.

So and I can imagine, you know, you've probably put Kiwi on my radar now because I'd like to test that and just see how good the experience is. So thank you so much for joining us today, and I wish you all the best for the future. Thank you so much, Christopher. It was truly a pleasure talking to you today.

Thank you. Thank you.