Season 3: Episode 2, Built To Win, with Annette Franz

You're listening to Fireside Chats Without the Fires podcast, where customer experience enthusiasts are inspired by our weekly CX practitioners and thought leaders who share their insights and knowledge. And now, here are your hosts, Neil Toft and Paul Catherall. And here we are. We are back.

Season 3, Episode 2. This is going to be a special one. And if you heard me before, I try to be polite, welcoming, and hospitable to all of our guests. But this one, I'm going to hopefully break a record here to be welcoming, hospitable.

And I'm going to gush a little bit. I've already told our guest that I'm going to gush. I'm going to try to make it respectful. But man, I love this guest and the work that she has put together.

If you are seeing her right now and watching this on video, hopefully you're seeing her face. You probably recognize it. Annette Franz is in the house with us. Annette, welcome.

We're so happy to have you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I am so looking forward to this conversation.

This is going to be an awesome one. So season three, episode two, for our loyal audience, thank you for tuning in and always listening to us. You will see that we have taken just a step back this year. We are doing fewer interviews and sessions, but hopefully the ones that we are doing are of that much greater quality.

And this one is in line with that. It is a true privilege to spend time with Annette. Today's a special day, A, because we have Annette, but more importantly, Because Annette has just published a new book. We're going to talk about that in just a second.

Annette, the title of the new book, Built to Win. This is your second book, correct? That is correct. Yes, it is.

And share with us, book is available, where it's available, dates that it is available. A little bit about that, please. Awesome. Yeah, thank you.

So this one, I did not self-publish. I went with a publisher. And so that means that it is out there in, they tell me, distributed to 39,000 locations. So you can pick it up pretty much anywhere.

It's on pre-sale pre-order right now. You can find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Books A Million. It's on a lot of sites right now. And it'll be released on March 22nd.

So looking forward to that. March 22nd. Perfect. And again, I have read through most of the book, and it has made an important impact on me.

And I'm going to say that that is a muted version of the impact that it's had on me. It has challenged a lot of the things that I have thought. It caught me at a moment in my personal work. Some of you may know I own and operate a BPO or Outsource Contact Center, and it has made me stop in my tracks and challenge a lot of the ways that we are operating as a customer-facing environment on behalf of our clients, but also the way we handle our own business internally.

We'll get more into that in just a second. It is an important read. Listeners, please go out and get this book. Read it.

By the way, this is Annette's second book. Her first book is Customer Understanding, also a fantastic read. We had a chance to interview Annette about a year and a half ago, maybe. I don't remember.

It was season one, but I don't remember which episode. But we had a wonderful conversation with her. But certainly, we've talked about the book then. That is a great read as well.

Annette, for those of you that are not yet following her, of course, follow her. Consume her content. Get her book. Reach out on LinkedIn and certainly follow her.

Annette is the founder and CEO of CX Journey, Inc. And is an official member of the Forbes Coaches Council. in addition to a number of things that she's done throughout her life. We won't go into those details, but she's had an incredible background as an author, as a thought leader, and as a practitioner.

And in my book, without the experience as a practitioner, I'm not sure you can really come to the table and discuss these things that she presents. It just gives incredible credibility to the things that she's talking about and projects and opportunities that she's worked on. I'm going to stop with my gushing now. Annette, tell us about this wonderful book.

tell the audience that may not know about it yet, what is it about? What's kind of the thesis here of what you're sharing with the CX community? Yeah. And thank you for all of that.

There are so many of those things that you just said that I wanted to react to and say, oh yeah, that's a great point. But I think you said it best when you first started talking about the book, when you said that it really does challenge the way you think about being customer-centric and how you're running your organization. That's really the point of this book is to really inspire leaders to think differently about customers and the customer experience and the culture and the employee experience, right?

And so that was really, this book is less, you know, the first one was more of a, had a good chunk of how to. This one is really more about, think about these things differently, right? And it, you know, it has those 10 foundational principles of a customer-centric culture. And I think a lot of times people go, oh, wow, that's never even thought about that.

You know, I've had obviously over the last month or two since the book is we've gotten closer to the launch, a lot of conversations about the book and the why and what it entails and how it came about. And there has been a lot of, oh, I didn't think about that. Oh, you're right. That's, you know, that's a good point.

And so, so yeah, so that's my goal with the book is to really to inspire leaders to think differently about it. And I take you through those 10 principles, like those. So obviously there's 10 chapters of the book. And then I'd also talk about how to measure culture.

One of the things that folks always think is, well, culture is just this fluffy thing and we can't really measure it. So there's a chapter in there about measuring culture. There's a chapter in there about change and why change is hard and how we can, you know, because when we shift the culture, it really is a mindset shift and a behavior shift, especially a behavior shift, right? And so talk a little bit about that.

And I close out the book with a chapter that's very similar to what I did in the first book, which is that, you know, open letter to the CEO to really push you to think differently about why this is so important and why, why I wrote the book. So, yeah, so that's sort of a quick overview of the book, but you know, this is my 30th year in this profession. You know, I started when I was four, that's always my story. I started when I was four and you know it it the combination of you know working with clients and being on the practitioner side the things that I seen that work and don work the things that I know can make a change within the organization or really turn an organization around Those are the things that that drove me to write this book.

And that's where that content comes from. One observation, what I think differentiates your book from many others is and I've shared this in the podcast and I've written about it. I'm tired of hearing that you should, you must, you better, you have to. Yeah.

A lot. Much of that conversation is not backed up with concrete examples and recommendations and suggestions for how the how to. And what I love about your book is there are models, there are lists, there are frameworks with how exactly how you just described it to do those things and what to do. Because, yes, this book, as I already said, it challenged me to stop me in my tracks.

But the best thing is this gives me the next step of what to do about it. Yeah. How do I communicate the thoughts that I have in my mind with my team? What am I going to do?

It's not sufficient anymore just to criticize. I have to come up with with an analysis and a prescription for, OK, we're broken. Here's how we're going to fix it. And this is what we're going to do.

And I think that's that's the true value add here. Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right.

And I you know, I said that there isn't a how to in this book. This is more of a there there are there are how to's in this book. Definitely. Right.

You know, there are places where I say this is how you're going to move from this point. to this point. And at the end of every chapter, I pose a question, is this a series of questions? Is this what's happening within your organization?

You know, this is this is what you can do to shift that thinking and shift that behavior. And here's what the outcomes are. And I think that's an important way to look at it. It's, you know, like you said, it's not just you have to go and do this.

It's, well, I want you to think about it is is this happening with my in my organization. and if I shift, if I change, if I transform, what's the outcome going to be? Sort of the why behind doing all that. So let's talk about the why for one second.

But my why is it's a different question. I want to ask you why you wrote the book. And of course you wrote the book because there's lots of great things that you're offering here. But I'm so curious.

We've had this explosion in the customer experience field. I think I looked on LinkedIn recently and there's something like 40,000 to 50,000 jobs out there with the term customer experience in them. There are chief customer experience officers, chief customer officers. So we now have a place in many C-suites.

The technology stack is incredibly robust. It's more and more available. It's better, cheaper, faster. There's so much more talk and discussion and honing in on the importance of customer experience, yet one would think that we don't need to address the importance of built to win.

One would think we were already built. Right. But apparently not. We're not we're not really built.

I think that's what you're talking about in your book here. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there's there's a couple of things and you make a great point.

So there's a couple of things. When I was when I was younger, my grandmother always said you should be a teacher. And I was like, no, I'm not going to be a teacher. That's not my thing.

I don't want to be a teacher. But the crazy part is, is that ultimately that this is what I feel is my my thing here. I don't want to call it my mission or my purpose. That's I.

But to your point, there are so many new people in this profession. there are so many job openings here and a lot of them aren't actually CX positions they're just now everybody's sort of jumping on the CX bandwagon when it comes to that and I've and I've seen over the last 30 years so many things that don't work and so many things that do work that I guess it is sort of my thing to do now is to is to teach and I know there's tons of people out there who write books and stuff but you know this is from my perspective it's what I've seen and I think it's so important that we do help those that are up and coming into this profession really understand that customer experience is one thing, or voice of the customer is one thing, or journey mapping is one thing, but you have to actually step back and say, you know what, this isn't just about these parts and pieces of it.

There's this holistic picture that we need to take a look at, and it's the culture and it's everything that's happening across the entire organization. So I think that's really important. And then the second thing that I would say is that it was really interesting over the probably the two years before I wrote the book, I was actually I had done a ton of presentations on these foundational principles. Actually, I had only had eight and I added two for the two more for the book as I started to think more about my conversations around this topic.

And I was like the reception to those presentations was phenomenal. People were like, yeah, I never thought about it that way. I never thought about all of those things that have to all be in place to have a customer centric organization. A lot of people think customer centric.

I've got one department over here that's customer. We're sending customer centric messages or whatever. It's not about sort of those individual components. Right.

It has to be an enterprise wide and organization wide effort. And so there was sort of this thing that just clicked. And I said, yeah, this is this is the right time to write this book. And then over the course of the last year, because I started talking to Advantage Forbes Books back in April, signed the contract at the end of April.

And as soon as I started writing, I just kept seeing, you know, and hearing and reading all of these things that sort of confirmed or affirmed that this was the right time for this book, that there was definitely a need for more information about what it means to be customer centric and how to build an organization that revolves around the people, which ultimately means people win and the business wins too. Yeah. I am guilty of trying to describe my own business and even putting it at the mission statement level of being customer focused.

And what you did so clearly, I think in the first chapter was to find the definition, explain the difference between being kind of customer focused and customer centric I was using the terms basically interchangeably and what I realized is like no no no no they're not interchangeable you can be customer focused and you draw the the parallel yeah your salespeople your front people they may be dealing in an article customers but when the rest of the organization when everybody understands the importance of the customer and has the customer perspective in mind that when you can truly I think call yourselves customer-centric, right?

I think you did another great example of the customer must have a seat at the table, right? A lot of us have, you know, in our own organizations, we see people, again, you stated this, a lot going to say, well, that's not my responsibility to solve that customer problem. That's his or her responsibility. That's not my job.

But when we don't talk like that in those terms, and we all accept that it's all of our responsibilities. Exactly. That's when we're truly customer centric, correct? Yep, absolutely.

Well said. Well said. Yeah. Good.

See, I learned. I'm applying to this stuff. I'll put you on the road to promote the book for me now. I'm talking about it.

I think, and this is a little bit of my own organization, when one knows that one's IT staff and finance staff has the customer interests at heart and can bring the customer into a discussion, that's when you know I think you're on the road to being customer-centered. By the way, we're so far from that. We're not there in my own organization. That's where I want to get to.

But everyone's got to have the seat at the table. The customer has to have that seat at the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you make a great point.

I think because you sort of delineated between the front line and the back office. And I think a lot of folks don't think that the back office impacts the experience or anything, right? And they're the ones who are actually setting up the front line for success too, right? they're, you know, hey, if we design an invoice that's not clear or that's not accurate or whatever, customer's going to call your support.

So now your accounting department has screwed your contact center, right? Because, you know, so everybody's got to work together to make sure that, you know, we're doing everything in the best interest of the customer. So yeah, well said. Correct.

There's another important theme throughout the book. I believe I think you're really start to hone in on it in the third chapter, and that's the importance of employee experience. I think everyone or most everyone will agree about the importance of employees. However, how do we reconcile this great resignation thing with employee experience?

I'll go a little bit further. I really want to pick your brain on this one. There are those of us that will say, yeah, we've been hearing the importance of employees. We've got to treat them well.

We've got to give them purpose. They've got to enjoy coming to their jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Great. but they're quitting and they're not showing up and they don't care.

What do we do with that? Yeah. Well, I think, and it's really interesting because it is the third principle, right? And I think if you get the first two, right, that one is going to flow, right?

So the first two are culture and leadership. And I think that if you have a culture that I, you know, the saying is people leave companies, people leave managers, whatever, but I feel like people leave cultures. I have left cultures and yes, that is the company, but it's a, it was a crappy culture. You know, so I there were companies that I left because of the culture.

And that's a direct in direct relation to the leadership as well. And them not deliberately basically allowing the culture. You get the culture that you allow, right? Unless you deliberately design it.

And that was that was the scenario for me is that if we don't have that foundation where people are cared for, where leadership puts, you know, people before everything else and we make sure that our people are well taken care of. And that doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily financial. It's a lot of other things, right? It's, you know, it's career pathing, it's recognition, it's knowing how my work contributes.

It's what I call the soft stuff and the hard stuff, right? The hard stuff is also having the, it seems sort of a no brainer, but having the, the tools and the systems and the resources and everything that they need to do their jobs. Um, policies are not antiquated or, or make no sense anymore because the organization has evolved processes aren't broken. You know, all of those things all tie together and contribute to that employee experience.

And I think, I really do think it starts with, with leadership. The example that I use in the book is that Burger King example, right? Where, where, um, you know, the, the sign out in front of the store was basically, you know, a see you later kind of thing, you know, and, And if you read the story about what was happening behind the scenes there, it was managers weren't listening, right? The leaders weren't listening to the employees and the dreadful conditions.

Fix that, right? Listen to your employees and fix that. I love and I use some examples of this in my book to Bob Chapman with Barry Waymiller and how he talks about, you know, when people show up at work, they're in a certain mood, right? they're in our span of care for the next 8, 10, 12 hours.

Why should they leave at the end of the day feeling worse, feeling frustrated, feeling nowhere near how they felt when they showed up here this morning because we treated them the way that we treated them. So let's take the time to care about our employees. And I know for some people that sounds like squishy, but there's a lot that goes into that. Right.

And so, so I think that's a, I think that's a big part of it. And you're right. We've talked a long time about, oh, we got to take care of employees. Got to, you know, focus on the employee experience, but nothing, nothing was ever done and nobody was ever serious about it, you know, and here's a funny story.

I was meeting with a friend the other day and we were talking about, you know, there's tons of CX experts. There are tons of, you know, you could Google CX expert list or people to follow in CX and you could find a thousand lists of different people, right? Try to Google EX experts or list of EX experts and you will find basically nothing. I think I did it the other day after we had that conversation and I found, I think I found two, two lists.

And even as I went through the list, I was like, okay, maybe those aren't quite the people that I was thinking about because we want to have people who are focused on not just HR because HR is one thing, right? And they have their responsibilities, but there's this role for people and culture, talent and culture where these folks really are focused on taking care of the employees not just taking care of benefits and all that kind of stuff but actually focused on taking care of the employees So there has to be a shift in that space as well I don know when that going to happen I hoping that this great resignation whatever everybody's calling it now really drives a change there, but it's sad that it has to come to that for that change to happen.

Yeah. For the readers I'm not going to give it away, but go look at the platinum rule that Annette fights. And for those of us that like kind of graphics and flow charts and things like that, I believe it's on page 93 of my version that I'm looking at now. There is a graphic called the Harvard Business Reviews Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work.

And I recommend looking at that. And it's not complex. It's actually fairly easy, even for a simple guy like me to understand, of the impact of the soft stuff plus the hard stuff. When you do those things right on the left-hand side of this graphic, what emerges on the right side?

And I think, without giving it away, if you can get both sides of this graphic correctly, then you become built to win. Is that a fair assessment? I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah, absolutely.

And the interesting thing about Service Profit Chain is it's been around for a long time. And when I first started my career, excuse me, at J.D. Power Associates in 1992, the authors had come to our offices and were sharing some of the research that they were doing behind this.

And it was it was really fascinating. And one of the one of it's really bizarre to say this. One of the companies that was in this research, you know, they had so much data about their employees and about their customers and taking that data and really using it to drive a better experience, you know, for both and having those outcomes that they have in that service profit chain. So really, it makes sense.

It makes sense. Wonderful. I'm going to let you wrap this one up. Usually I'm the one that over talks and tries to wrap it up and put a nice red bow on it.

But I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to try not to do that this time. Parting thoughts, concluding thoughts as we wrap up today's session. What would you like readers to consider, think about, you know, heading into hopefully purchasing and consuming this amazing content?

Yeah, well, I think I think probably one of the big things is, is that or two things. Culture isn't squishy. It's real. Right.

It is real. And it is the foundation of the organization. if you are in a place right now where your culture is not as you believe it ought to be not built to win right it's going to take some time it's not going to you're not going to turn the ship overnight you know there's and especially if you're it's easier for small and mid-sized businesses to to do it in a fast I'll do a quote-unquote faster time frame larger organizations it's obviously going to be a bit harder and a little bit longer a lot longer time to do that you may have to start like with a business unit or divisions or whatever and move through it that way.

But it is possible. I think that's the that's the key here is that it is possible. And and and the benefits really do outweigh the not doing it. Right.

The outcomes are real. That's I guess that's a good way of looking at it. But one of the things that I I've been writing is I've either been signing books or just, you know, just sort of doing a quick note on the book is, you know, fix the culture, fix the outcomes. I think that's a good way of looking at it.

Yeah. This, this is the fixing of the culture, the building and fixing is, as they say in this terrible cliche, but I think it applies here is it is definitely not a sprint. It's a marathon, right? This is not a quick fix.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It takes time. Absolutely takes time, but it is possible.

And that's why at the, at the start of the book, I did this whole chapter on change and it can happen. You just have to put your mind to it, you know? And, and again, I think the key thing about this is a culture is deliberately designed and it has to be nurtured and all of that. It can't just be, it's not just a one and done kind of thing.

Even if you do go through this transformation, it has to be nurtured going forward. Yeah. This is wonderful. All right.

Audience, go get the book. Just do it. Just don't, what do they say in Monopoly? Don't, it's don't pass, pass, go, don't, no, pass, go, collect your $200 and then buy the book.

Just go do it, run. Don't think about it. You'll thank us later. Annette, will you please come back and visit us at some point for another interview session?

Once your book is out there in the marketplace, we want to have you come back because getting the chance to spend a little time with you is enriching. I learn a lot from it. And I'd love to give you some feedback in a couple of months, probably six months or so, what I've done with what I've learned from the book. I think it would make for a good conversation.

Hopefully I can share some good success stories. That's my hope and dream with this, if I actually follow the instructions correctly. I would love that. That would be a lot of fun.

I would love to hear how in six months, that's a good time to start to actually seeing some results too. So yeah, absolutely. I would love to do that. Perfect.

So we're going to wrap up today's session. We're going to let Annette go back to her day. Audience, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening.

Like I said, please go out and get this book. This is an important one. I don't recommend things that I don't do myself personally, and I mean that. I have read most of the book.

I'm learning from it, and there's things I'm going to implement. And I hope you have success with it and absolutely follow Annette on LinkedIn and other social properties. But LinkedIn is a great place to see what she's up to. To conclude, this was season three, episode two, Built to Win.

Audience, one final request. If you liked our content, please give us a rating. We'd love to hear your feedback. Hopefully, if you loved it, state that.

If you hated it, state that. Give us some ideas. We want to know how to hopefully improve and deliver good content for you. So the best place to rate and review, I believe, is on Apple Podcasts.

If that's the place where you can consume these and download these. Audience, thank you so much. And a final thank you. Annette, thank you so much for spending time with us.

I would really die with you. Wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

The episode is over, but the conversation continues. Please rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. Post a comment and subscribe to stay on the leading edge of customer experience. experience.

To get in touch or be a guest, follow us on Twitter at Chats Fires or on LinkedIn or in your podcast repository of choice. Thank you.