"creating impact in what you build"- W/Abdul Khaled (E.ON Next) #133

Speaker A: Not just building things. How can we make it usable to wait for four minutes? They come to the core in a better mindset, foundational layer of understanding what customers are saying. You might be conducting surveys, you might be measuring through csap, understand the purpose. You'll never be able to produce the best. So honestly, I want to explore other mountains and see how people just are so content with life without all of the technology and things that we, uh, sort of take for granted.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the CX Insider podcast. I'm your host, Alicia, and today I'm here with a very special guest, Abdul, who is the head of Digital customer experience and products@e on next. Welcome.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Can we start off maybe just a really simple one? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career journey?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, um, currently head of digital customer experience and uh, digital products at, uh, eonnext. If I work a little bit backwards, um, I, I love building. So, uh, an opportunity to come into your next. Around about four years ago, um, it was a startup, blank canvas. You give me a blank canvas, I'm all, I'm all over that. Um, so opportunity to build a team from the ground up. Uh, uh, build a new structure and approach to how we tackle customer experience and digital, uh, in the company, in the industry as well. Um, and so that was a real attraction for me. Um, and literally build from team member number one to over 80 people now and we'll be close to 100 by the close of the year. So rapid growth, new M structure, new approach. Um, and that theme of building is probably something throughout my career. So I studied engineering because I love to build, build and craft. And I still code to this day. Um, and then there was an appreciation of actually it's not just building things. How can we make it usable, how can we make it beneficial, how can we create impact from the things that we build? Um, and that combined with another sort of key interest of mine, which is psychology. So I studied psychology when I was younger and I just love how the human mind works, uh, what makes certain people do certain things. Um, and that really, uh, made me focus heavily in terms of human behavior, human psychology, user experience. So really combined the passion for building with a passion for crafting and experiences. Um, and it's helpful because it's, you know, put me in a position where I am in my career now, where I can do what I do right now, which is, uh, run an end to end team of builders, engineers, designers, analysts, products. Um, and that's helpful to have that background. So in short, that sort of, uh, the career kind of journey, uh, worked in big tech, worked in retail, um, and I think that constant of building and crafting has been something that's always stuck with me. Um, away from work, I've got two little girls, uh, Sophia and Elia. Six, uh, and three. Terrible, uh, age. Some people say it's a good age, but terrible age. Constantly fighting, uh, and then constantly making uh, up with each other. So it's just, uh, again, understanding human behavior from an early age is also something that's interesting. And observing them, um, so yeah, that's me, that's the journey and that's where I am right now.

Speaker B: Nice. At Oreo next, you've just launched Compass cx. Could you maybe walk us through what that actually is and how it's making an impact insect strategy.

Speaker A: So if I look at customer experience, um, and I think, uh, the views of this podcast would be able to relate. Customer experience now is, um, it's at the stage of maturity where people believe in it, they understand it needs to happen, they understand the importance of it. Um, but the execution is still immature. Um, and if you look at sort of different stages of maturity, if you look at um, that foundational layer of understanding what customers are saying, you might be conducting surveys, you might be measuring through CSAT or nps, that kind of foundation level which a lot of companies are at and operating at. Uh, um, what you then need to do is then drive it up a level to more insights because there is a difference between just listening and collecting customer feedback to then having actionable insights on the back of it. Uh, and like I say, a lot of companies are sort of stuck at that foundational layer, uh, where they start and finish their customer experience programs just on the back of voice of VOC programs. And that's dangerous because it doesn't give you the full picture and it doesn't give you a mechanism to then go and act upon it. Um, and if I give you an example which relates, uh, to me really well, um, there was a company out in the US and what they decided to do was internally run a survey with their employees to understand how can we get, um, how can we improve the environment that you work in?

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And one of the key things that was there, you know, quite high up the list was we want more opportunities for healthy eating within the, uh, business. Um, so they run a survey and said, okay, well you know, what options would you like us to explore to encourage more healthy eating? And overwhelmingly, number one, came out having Free bowls of fruit in the office. Over 60% said give us free bowls of fruit and that will encourage us to have more healthy eating. So they did, they launched a, uh, program of free fruit around, uh, the office. Um, and less than 1% actually took the fruit. So that obviously causes a bit of a conundrum. We asked you what you want, you told us what you want, we then gave it to you and then hardly any of you took it. Um, so when they done a bit of observation around this and told, look, let's just bring some behavior observationist in and observe the behavior, and what they found was, um, all of the bowls of fruit were placed in the canteen and they were placed next to the fries.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So then you have an interesting situation here for those that are then entering the canteen. They've got a conundrum now because it's, it's no longer, um, his fruit and have fruit, it's now the fruit versus the fries. Um, that coupled together with the social influence and pressure of going to the canteen with your work colleagues and then more going for the fries and then you kind of being lured to it, um, creates a barrier.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What they also saw was a lot of people couldn't even go to the canteen either because they bought food from home or their work schedule was so busy they were having lunch at the day. So they didn't even have access to, uh, to the fruit in the first place. Um, and so by making a few tweaks in terms of placement, positioning and ease of access, you completely change, uh, the adoption of whatever initiative that you're launching. And that can only be done through, um, a 360 view of what customers or in this case what employees want. Um, and that's why it's quite dangerous just to rely on surveys. Um, it gives you a snapshot view and sometimes a biased environment. Um, and that's why I say, you know, to mature yourself from just listening to what customers say, you've got to then observe what customers are doing and really bring that insight level in, which is the next stage of maturity. Um, and we had this great example at Yone next where we launched, ah, a digital interactive bill, which customers were telling us this is exactly what they want. And we tested it thoroughly and we launched an experience out there. And then we do sort of an S scale roll up. So we don't just launch a product out there, we sort of, um, package up a release to a beta set of customers and make sure we're reacting to real time feedback because you can do all the customer testing that you want in a lab, it doesn't replicate real life scenarios. And what we saw here is when we roll that product out to real customers and got real customer feedback in real time, um, especially the timing that we launched it, which was December, January time, we saw a lot of customers asking for more prominence on the PDF download button, which was surprising to us because obviously we launched an interactive digital bill. That's what they said they wanted. And now they're saying can you, you know there's a, there's a PDF button to download it quite far down the bottom because the idea was it's in terms of jobs to be done, one of the lower priority ones. But customers are constantly asking for that to be higher up. And why were they asking for this? Well, during that time, um, you have a few things going on. So uh, if you have a business or a small business or self employed, um, you have the January 31st self assessment deadline. So you need sort of bills that you need to you know, download and document and share. You had a tax break at that time with the uh, stamp duty the government had announced. So a lot of people were getting on um, the property market. So again you need proof of address and you know, utility bill is, is one of the key ones there. So circumstances that you will never be able to find out in a survey or control testing really unlock the usability side of things and how functional and usable and valuable customers find it. And you'll never be able to get that with just a survey link. So the maturity there in the next level is that insight. How can you observe behavior? How can you get real actionable insights from uh, what customers are telling you? And then you have the third layer which is, which is probably where a lot of people stop, um, short so feedback. You've got some companies there, um, you've got a few companies who are then sort of entering into insight maturity, but then what you do with it, and that's where the delivery side comes in. Um, and that's where a lot of majority of customer experience programs fail. Um, I mean there was A stat by McKinsey, I can't remember the exact date it was. Over 75% of customer experience initiatives fail because they can't get it off the ground and deliver. You have all this great feedback and insight. You get people excited and then you don't see anything for about 12, 18 months. Um, so the delivery mechanism to actually create impact is super important. And that's where Compass CX comes into play because it's an operating model, it's operationalizing CX strategy. Um, and we can talk about this in a little bit more detail, but the whole idea is how can you restructure your org to make sure that you've got CX and delivery mechanisms embedded together. So in my team I have the full end to end funnel. So we can go from insight to action, to impact and then to optimize, which is the more advanced level. All within the same team, the same group and the same prioritization. And I think that's the key that uh, we're trying to create here and sort of alluded to earlier on. But then the more advanced level there is, how do you then continuously optimize that experience? Because launching and delivering something to customers doesn't end there. The experience and the requirements and the needs for customers continuously evolve. And as they evolve you've got to be on the front foot, you've got to preempt it, you've got to be proactive, you've got to optimize that. And that's where a lot of continuous experimentation comes into play. That's where the idea of customer journey managers, which is what we have internally, really looking after and owning at a journey level rather than just individual product levels. Um, so that's kind of the four stages if you like of customer experience, uh, and how it operates within organizations. Your basic sort of feedback level, um, getting that into insight, getting it into delivery and then continuously optimizing it. And that's the framework that we're trying to create with compassion. Um, encompass is both a strategic approach and also an operating model. So the strategic element there is um, we're in this kind of experience economy, um, which is something that Harvard Business School first sort of coined. And it's the thought that everything now is built on emotions, um, and moments and memories rather than just products and services. So in order to differentiate and operate in this, you've got to focus everything around the experience. Um, and so Compass gives you a strategic approach on how to build those experiences really wielded in behavior science. And so COMPASS is uh, A is a seven letter acronym, um, and we'll get into second, but it's an acronym in terms of how you can build experiences. It's also a North Star direction for the team as a play on words. But it's your North Star compass essentially to navigate the experience economy and then it's also an operating model. So it's giving you the strategic playbook and then it's giving you the execution, uh, approach in terms of how you can deliver against it.

Speaker B: It's funny that you're talking about um, customer maturity, M CX maturity. We had another guest on and he was talking also about customer charity and he said that we're at the um, sort of teenage stage.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't disagree.

Speaker B: So can you talk us through some of the Compass CX principles and maybe tell us a little bit, maybe some real life scenarios of how it's made an impact?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'll run through them quite quickly and then focus probably on one or two. So um, Compass 7 principal acronyms. So the C is for cognitive ease. This is about simplifying decision making for customers, uh, reducing their mental load. Um, great examples are Uber have this uh, on their app when they showcase their uh, available options for cars. Um, previously they used to have these very internally coded names like UberX, UberXL and etc. And they've still got these but now they've got a description underneath them to make it really tangible for customers. So you've got um, either cars that will come really uh, quick if you're short on time, cars for comfort comes cars that you can kind of uh, use if you need extra leg room. So really kind of cooperating that mental model that customers are usually associating decision making with and bringing that into the app. So again simplifying the decision making for customers. Amazon one click checkout is another great example, just reducing mental load. Um, so the fact that they have uh, your details pre saved means you can kind of chuck all of the noise out the way and really influence that behavior through one click. Um, again it's not exactly one clip but the perception is one click.

Speaker B: That's how it feels. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, the O is for orchestrated journeys. So this is creating seamless end to end experiences across all touch points. Um, so again great examples are like you know, Spotify, you can uh, play something in your living room and then jump into the car and it will pick up from exactly where it left off. Um, the M is for memorable experiences. And I'll use uh, one of our own examples that you're next here where we've recently started to create um, what we call free energy days. Um, and this is giving customers a free day of electricity either on their birthday. We did one for Valentine's Day, we did one for Christmas as well. Over Christmas we've done it for three days, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day. And it's how can we make something that is usually um, not very memorable, that is Using your energy and make it into somewhat of a memorable experience. Um, so that's a really good principle. Uh, um, then we've got the P, which is for perceived value. Um, this is probably my favorite one to explain, so I'll deep dive on this a little bit. This is about making um, benefits tangible, visible and transparent. So I'm sure many people have sort of called up companies and they've seen uh, a callback system. So you can either choose to wait on the line or choose to get a callback. Um, and many, many studies have seen this from uh, the different companies that have utilized this is um, say you call someone and they say, look, there's a four minute wait time or you can get a callback. You'll get a call back in four minutes. But the perception is that it's quicker. And what they've seen is the satisfaction of the call is higher. Um, the frustration levels is lower, um, and the anxiety is lower because they haven't had to wait for four minutes. They come to the call in a better mindset. Um, and so that simple kind of way of positioning things has such a big impact on the psychological influence of customers. You've got other examples that I love, um, the underground or the Tube. You'll now see a, uh, sort of a countdown ticker which will show you how many minutes until your train is about to come and it will sort of count down. Um, and there were many kind of debates and studies around this in terms of how can we make trains faster because people wanted faster trains. Um, so you can invest tens of millions into making trains engineered in a way that they can get a fraction of a second quicker. Or what's played out is you can give people that transparency and visibility and when their train is coming. And all of the studies have measured this, have shown that actually people perceive the wait time to be quicker even though it hasn't. Uh, another great example is, um, a lot of sort of hotels do this. Um, the New York Stock, uh, exchanges this as well, where they started to introduce um, TVs next to elevators. Um, so rather than building another elevator to control the load of people coming and using the elevators, if you say it's magic, right? If you put sports or news on a tv next elevator, people will actually happily uh, wait for the next elevator. Um, so it's these sort of things in terms of perception of value which I find super useful. Uh, and one more just to end on this topic is the IKEA effect, which I love. Uh, most people might be familiar with this, it's a really well studied effect. Now um, the fact that you have to drive to Ikea, it's not just popping down to the local shopping center. You've got to make an effort to go uh, because it's usually like a limited number of bases in uh, a strange location. So you've got to drive there physically, you've got to pick out your furniture, uh, you've then got to go downstairs to then collect it and then you've got to go home and build it yourself. A lot of studies have shown the fact that you are putting a lot of effort from your side in essentially collaborating on a solution. Um, you tend to value uh, that product a lot higher. Um, and that's a physical example but you can uh, for sure apply that to a lot of digital interaction. So the sort of co creation element um, that Ikea sort of are ah, well known for is another great example of perceived value. Um, the other sort of remaining uh, principles you've got the A, which is for activated um, activation. And that's the whole idea of it's not just good enough to get people uh, onto a product or selling them a solution. They've actually got to use it to get the benefit from it. So gamification is a great uh, tool in that um, Duolingo is a great example of a company that do that fantastically well. And then you've got the two S's social influence which again um, social proof. We all know how important and valuable that is. Um, I read a stat uh the other day that said um, 70% of people are influenced uh, in the actions that they do by what others do. Um, and you see that if you ever go to like a conference and I observed this the other day and you look at the dessert parlor, um, people always wait for someone to make the first move because they don't want to be judged. Right? And it's that kind of, you know, we're social animals and really influenced by what others do. Um, and the last one is situational context. And this is about um, presenting the right information at the right time to the right customer. Um, Netflix is a great example. 80% of their content consumed is from recommendations. So they don't even, you know, customers don't have to search, they don't have to do any difficulty uh, in terms of getting the next content because it's already recommended to them and that's getting that right sort of personalized content at the right time when they're ready for it. So that's compass As a, as a principle. And that's a strategic element of compass.

Speaker B: Even the comments about, um, perceived times and perceived wait times, I think that's such a point that everyone watching can really sort of value because you'll be standing in line for, I don't know, one of the kiosks at a supermarket and you're like, I've been here for 10 minutes and it's been, you've been there for maybe 55 seconds, but it feels like a while.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, getting the car with my kids and literally gone down the road. And are we here?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That behavior starts from early age.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the psychology comes in. Okay, so how do different departments like tech and engineering, how do they work together, all for the common goal of cx?

Speaker A: And I think this is where the operational model comes into play and why it's so important. Because a lot of times what gets in the way of great success is ourselves. It's the way that we've set things up internally. It's the fight for territory, um, it's the handoffs, um, and I think it's very difficult to do. But what we have and what I have in my team is pretty much the end to end delivery model. Which means that there is a common goal that everyone's working towards, which is customer experience. So we put customer at the heart of everything that we do and everything is insight driven. So it isn't that this uh, insight or research team has just done some research. Throw it over the fence. Here you go, delivery team. You go and make something happen. And then there's that disconnect between uh, the voice of customer and the delivery teams because they're all siloed. What we have is everyone working together under that one common roof and under the one common, uh, goal. Uh, which means when we are conducting the research and the insights, our engineers, our designers, our product teams are also heavily involved in that. So it's uh, we're all in this together, moving from ideation, um, problem solving to delivery. So I think that operationally it sounds like such a simple thing to do, just get people together. Um, but it's not simple because nine times out of ten companies would fail to do that because someone would have an objection about territory and giving up their space. And it's difficult, absolutely difficult. It's not easy. And I've been very fortunate that we were able to build something from the ground up so we could design the type of org structure that we wanted. Um, and it was designed with the customer, uh, in mind, um, so it's difficult, but I think, you know, sometimes just trying to relook at how your operation is set up. Can you move at speed? Speed of insight. So how quickly can you get the insight? Speed of decision making, which again, you know, a lot of companies are just sitting on feedback and ideas and they die in the boardroom because they'll have meetings after meetings, after meetings. So how can you get, you know, speed of decision making and then speed of execution? For me, it's so crucial. And this is why we have the engineers and the delivery teams within our scope. I, um, have a team called the acceleration team. Does exactly what it says on the team, which is we see a problem and we're accelerating towards solving it. We're not worried about feeding our own egos in terms of making something pixel perfect. There's a problem, customer needs it solved yesterday. So we've got to go out there and we've got to take that sort of mindset of marginal gains and if we can improve their experience 1% today than it was yesterday, build it, launch it, um, and I think, I think that's how you can make it all work.

Speaker B: Okay. Solve the problem before you even know it's there. Yeah. Great. So, um, on this, managing different teams, obviously it's pretty, pretty large scope of people that you're having to handle. So how do you approach that, handling such a large team?

Speaker A: I think a lot of it starts in the hiring process. Gotta hire people with the right attitude. Uh, I always say to, uh, my team leads. You're only as good as the people that you have. Really invest in the people. Um, and I start from hiring, um, hire the right attitude that works for you. Um, and that's not to say that someone doesn't have the right attitude. It just might not be right for you, you, and that is, um, not only doing a service for you as a business, but you're doing the service that is required for the individual because they also need to walk into somewhere where they can grow and be at their best. And you know, it might not be the environment that you have, but it might be somewhere else. So being really transparent and clear on what environment you've created and what are the necessary principles and skills that ah, is required to succeed in that environment. And being really transparent with that in the recruitment process is really crucial. Um, and understanding those principles as well. So for us it's all about attitude. It's all about customer first. So we will always ship and build and deliver ahead of processes and

Speaker B: uh,

Speaker A: making things pixel Perfect. And getting sign offs and making sure everyone's happy. We'd always prioritize the customer at the heart of it M and so whatever it is that is important for you, you've got to make sure that that principle is really clear. Um, creative problem solving is something I always encourage the teams. We don't have a mantra called find a way or make a way which is no excuses. Um, the customer doesn't care if the printer doesn't work. The customer doesn't care if your IT department's low. Find a way to deliver value. That's what we're here to do. Um, marginal gains. As I discussed about earlier, it's not fixating on the perfect solution for 12 months. It's get something out there iterate use real customer feedback. Per the examples that I gave earlier. It's always more beneficial than anything you'll get up front in a survey. So avoid surveying to death and get into customers voting with their wallets. Um, so I think those principles and those environments creating that really helps. Um, and then I, you know, I always tell the teams, you know, find your, find your, find your superpower. What is it that makes you stand out and really lean into that and really try and bring that to the table. Because we all have our superpowers. Um, and having a diverse range of superpowers within the team really allows you to be a more successful team. So bring out the different strengths that people have um, and lead into that uh, as a team. Um, and then the final thing that I really encourage people to do is find their anchor and their purpose. What is it that they're here to do and why? What is the, you know, going back to Simon Sinek's famous words of start with why, um, if you don't understand the purpose you'll never be able to produce the best. So understand your purpose and the purpose of the team.

Speaker B: It's all very straight to the point really. Yeah. As it needs to be. It's not like you're not walking around going making up excuses. That's really good.

Speaker A: Yeah. Someone once told me clarity is kindness.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's probably the best way to kind of view things is. And sometimes clarity can be difficult. Right. Because um, that sometimes means it comes with harsh m reality checks. Um, but you've got to be clarity. You've got to be very clear. You've got to provide that clarity to people.

Speaker B: So the last person I asked this quick fire question to did not get it. But I'm going to hope, I think that you're going to get it.

Speaker A: I think you're going to shoot me.

Speaker B: Okay. Would you rather have hands for feet or feet for hands?

Speaker A: Oh, wow. I, um, think I would have hands for feet. Right. Uh, firstly, wild set of choices.

Speaker B: Eh, Just going back to the eight pages, isn't it?

Speaker A: I'd have hands because I always wish I could have more hands.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: To do more. So I'd go with. I don't know what I'd do with more feet.

Speaker B: Yeah, more feet. You wouldn't do anything. Okay. Books or movies?

Speaker A: Movies.

Speaker B: Um, Harry Potter or Star Wars?

Speaker A: Star Wars.

Speaker B: I've never seen it. But, um, summer or winter?

Speaker A: Uh, I don't know. I complain that either. Um, probably summer.

Speaker B: Okay. I was hoping you weren't gonna be one of the people that says winter. Um, okay. Would you rather travel around every place in one country or one place in every country around the world?

Speaker A: Probably the latter. See more. Explore more. See more.

Speaker B: More cultures.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, so speaking of travel, if you were to go to one place in the world, where would it be?

Speaker A: Um, I'd pick somewhere I've already been. Um, there obviously would be places I'd want to go, but just because, um, I can talk about it. I loved, um, the mountains in Marrakech.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Um, I forgot they're gone now. But I loved it because there's people, there's, like, communities in the mountains. And I found that so fascinating when you can go and see how people are still living within sort of mountains and they've got their whole civilizations there. Um, so I find that super useful. And I did say I'd want to explore other mountains and see. See how people just are so content with life without all of the technology and things that we, uh, sort of take for granted. Um, so, yeah, that's what it would be.

Speaker B: Do you do a lot of traveling?

Speaker A: I got kids now, so I try.

Speaker B: And have you done a lot of previously? Yes.

Speaker A: And then since kids, it's been, you know, where can we get in the quickest time possible? Uh, literally, you know, when I look at flights for holidays, it's wherever we can get within four hours. As soon as we get on the plane, it's not even off the Runway yet. And it's like, yeah, are we there yet? At this stage of life, it's trying to be leaning, uh, to more convenient places. But I would like to, I think, get back into traveling once they're a little bit older.

Speaker B: But, um, my final quick fire question you mentioned with the hiring process that you try to find everyone's superpower what would your superpower be if you could have one?

Speaker A: I think my superpower, which I realized very, very early on, is self belief, okay. Which sometimes is delusional, uh, because you can believe in yourself too much. But it creates so much resilience, um, and confidence, I think, because you're going to get knocked down in life multiple times and the ability to not lose belief in yourself, even if it is somewhat delusional, um, creates that resilience where you can just pick yourself up, go again, keep bashing the door. Um, so I think that's been a really, really strong superpower for me.

Speaker B: I mean, with self belief and you can get people that obviously you can be very delusional with it, but it can, you know, what, what you admit to the universe sometimes what you get back. So you could be delusional, but you could make everyone else delusional with you.

Speaker A: It.