Navigate Cultural Changes with Ease with Sarah Quinn, VP of Global AI/Digital/CX Sales at TELUS International

Speaker A: It's not what people like that's the most important, it's what they don't like might be the most important because it's not as easy to understand what people don't want. Or for marketers, it's not always the popular fun thing when you're internal saying, well, maybe we shouldn't go after this crowd because of xyz. But that's the hard part, I think when people love you, they love you like political parties. If I'm a Democrat or Republican, I'm going to vote one way or the other. It's, it's easy to find all of us or this side, that side. It's not easy to find everybody in the middle that might go either side. And that's also a part of a marketer's struggle, is to understand it's what they don't like, to me is as important as what they do like.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Customer Experience Show. Today we're talking to Sarah Quinn. She is the Vice President of Global AI, Digital and CX Sales at, uh, Telus International. Sarah brings to the table a fascinating career in sales and customer experience, working with household name brands and multiple Fortune 500 companies. In this episode, Sarah talks about navigating cultural changes in public behavior and shares insights from brands who've made it through successfully, as well as lessons from the not so lucky ones, plus the case for marketers to get on board with AI and much more.

Speaker A: This podcast is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for customer experience, we created a white paper just for you. In the CX Northstar Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it with the link in the show notes.

Speaker C: We exist in an era where brands are expected to move at the speed of cultural change. Those who don't are doomed to irrelevancy. Just ask any business owner who once called the Internet a, uh, passing phase. And yet, paradigm shifts in our culture are occurring faster than ever. If it feels impossible to keep up, Sarah Quinn is here to help. An experienced CX mastermind, Sarah has helped enterprise bands navigate past changes and witnessed many brands who never made it to the other side. As you're about to hear, Sarah says the biggest key to survival is to embrace the future, not to resist it. Welcome everybody, to another episode of the Customer Experience Show. I'm, um, your host, Phil Dillard. Today, I'm here with the amazing Sarah Quinn, VP of Global AI and CX at, uh, Telus International and also known as the Queen of Loyalty programs. How are you doing today, Sarah?

Speaker A: I'm wonderful, Phil. Thanks for having me.

Speaker C: Um, great to have you here with us. I'm going to jump right into it because we had a really good warmup conversation and I think people will have a lot to learn from you and your experience. So I often ask people, you know, how they got to the role that they're in because CX is a new field and a majority of leaders didn't already start there. What can you tell us a little bit about where you started, what part of the company you started in, and how you describe your role today?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you. The loyalty queen thing was from way, way back when. So I'll start at the beginning. I fell into direct marketing out of college. I went to University of Denver and came to Chicago, uh, marketing in mind, but had no idea where that would take me. And I remember one college professor said the number one area of marketing for the future is direct marketing. And all of us in the marketing class mailbox and how boring. And it wasn't going to be anything great. And I didn't intend, but fell into it. And it couldn't have been a more interesting or wonderful ride because with direct marketing you had to know people, the person's address so thereby to send them the product or service. And there's where, uh, regression modeling, analysis and understanding really who they were versus billboards, TVs, magazines, things like that. That is an indirect way to understanding what a person wants or would want for a channel of how to be communicated. Now way back when I was doing this, there wasn't the Internet, there wasn't cell phones, there wasn't apps. And so I worked with the Fortune 500, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 and building their initial databases, let alone how to communicate even more directly once we knew where someone lived or anything about them as a person. So most of my career has been dealt in just customer experience, but it wasn't called cx, it was called all sorts of things. But it's grown to that. And now I'm with Telus International, which is one of the largest global bpo/AI digital opportunities. Um, we'd like to think of ourselves as a brand ambassador for companies to reach their customers in the way they want to be contacted, in the way that they need to be contacted to get that message across and have a wonderful experience however that channel might be. So that's all I do today is try to find folks that are, um, really looking to give their own customers the best experience.

Speaker C: So I love how you ground the basis of your experience in something that a lot of marketers today, especially a lot of young marketers, just probably hadn't thought about, right. Progression of going through different stages of major technological shifts and the contribution of the different pieces of expertise that add to that. If I'm curious, if you were to say, you know, I like to say sometimes everything old is new again, right. If we fast forward from where you started to 2022, what is different and what's the same?

Speaker A: Great question. I very regularly say when people get overwhelmed by AI or digital or cx, that the caveman actually had customer experience. He was sitting there in the cave looking at his buddy, saying, this bone's better than this bone or whatever was the topic of the day. It hasn't changed. It's like people just want to be treated with a little comfort care. That mean the message for them. So my professor at, ah, University of Denver's Chuck Patty is the name. And my college roommate and I looking at each other saying, that's so boring. And then we both grew to understand throughout the years how important, how very important, knowing who your customer was. And as I said, I wish I could take credit for coming to Chicago. I ended up with a company that was doing American Family Publishers, the old Ed McMahon, for folks that are understanding way back when, that was to win a, uh, sweepstakes. But they were sending it to the home and then they would go to the home and you'd win millions of dollars potentially. And so it got people's attention. And all of a sudden they thought their mail wasn't just, you know, slapping against the wall. Insurers, bankers, they were always the ones that started, we'll mail everybody and somebody will answer. As soon as we understood that, wait. People do want to be contacted about things they care about. So if you think about it from the beginning until you knew who that person was living in their house. I use my cul de today as a good example. There's four of us in a cul de sac, and one couple is in their 80s, one couple's in their 70s, 60s, 50s. They're not interested in the same things they're never going to be. And it's interesting when marketers understand or catch on to that, how immediately they'll see it in their profits or roi, but more importantly, they'll just have longer standing, loyal customers that feel like, wow, you care. That's it. It's that simple to me.

Speaker C: So if I'm hearing you right, what's the same people want to be Treated with comfort and care. People want to be contacted about things that they care about. Um, and they don't want to be bothered with stuff that they don't. You want to have better m and better feedback loops. Right. When you're talking about billboards and print, it's different than things, people's homes and the way for it to be much more personalized to people. The four different people in your cul de sac. Right. What's new are the tools, the speed, the engagement, the richness. The richness, the channels, the additional ability to track and engage so they're better for knowing your customer. Is that a fair synopsis?

Speaker A: That's a, uh, great synopsis and very fair. And there's a lot of hidden things behind that that people don't understand. I was lucky enough to, as I said at the beginning, fall into something that grew to end with 17 plus years at Experian. But when I started, I was employee 89 at a great startup where five programmers said, we care about our employees, we care even more about our clients. Customers. And they started out of a trunk, uh, of a car, and they ended up getting bought by experian for like $358 million or something like that, you know, 15 years later. That quickly. Because we were the best at technology at that time of matching people's names. And instead of mailing the phone book, you were mail the people that might care. And again, our goal was to hit 2 out of 100 responses for the most major corporations of the U.S. 2% response rate in the 80s or 90s was actually, you know, blowing it out of the water. That sounds crazy. At the time, because of the lack of apps or Internet, at that point, we were sending catalogs. So before that, you just called up an 800 number. Now you have a catalog that can get in the home, let the person digest it, look at it, really understand, wait, I do like this. And do I trust the system, though? Well, I'll call this person. I'll still talk to a person. That was a big deal. But at the end of it all, if that person and you found them, you realized they were your customer or they liked you enough to even inquire to ask for your catalog. That was liquid gold. That was your customer base, was your number one asset. So as we grew, we went from just trying to mail things out to a bunch of people to collecting that liquid gold for major corporations and them realizing, wait, you know, we need to cultivate these folks and realize they care about us. We can just keep Offering them stuff. You always had the out. You know, really from the beginning. I think that's important to know about direct marketing and direct mail. You always had the out. It got better and better with technology, but marketers don't want to send you anything that you don't want to get any more than you want to, you know, get things you don't care about. That's because at the time, in the 80s and 90s, it was a dollar a catalog to send out. If I did a great job, my clients looked at me and said, wow, I got two people to respond out of 100. So they were thrilled that 98 people out of 100 threw it out, threw out the catalog, had no interest, and they didn't even expect a person to buy from that time. But the point being, once you found a customer and you could even get them to buy one more time, they were pretty much your customer for life. And I always like to bring up the example. Victoria's Secret started out with 50,000 postcards from Columbus, Ohio. They thought, could this ever be that? Lingerie through the mail and this and that? Of course, they went into the billions and trillions of catalogs and let alone omnichannel marketing with, you know, the Internet. But that's how it started. And they did find, yes, you know, people were willing, but you had to trust the channel. But what we found by doing regression modeling was you also had to care about the person and how they wanted to be communicated to. Now, we didn't have so many choices, but today we do. And at Telus International, like, for example, where I'm working now, it, you know, chat, you know, uh, text, voice, email, even mail. Direct mail still is there, but rarely, not as much as we think of. It's usually the driver to the website. But, you know, that does matter because again, if you care about your customer, you care about how they want to be communicated to. So it started way back, and it started a little archaic, but we're still looking at that's the number one thing.

Speaker C: And the metrics that you're using for each of these different channels is interesting. You know, as I was thinking, even you said it's a dollar a catalog to reach someone, and you put out a hundred catalogs or $100, and you get two customers, that's a big win. I'm curious how those metrics kind of compare to the metrics of today, because you're reaching over a broader range of ways to reach people. Now, some people today, they want to be, well, customers want to be reached about the things that they care about. But you got to figure out what's the right way to reach them. Is it, do people respond through a billboard? Do people respond to a mailer and a catalog? Do people want a surprise gift or an experience? Right. So you have to me an ever increasing array of channels, each with its own frequency of communication and metrics, each with its own. The people who you're speaking to go to those channels for different things. And you're doing it across generational differences and multi dimensional, multiple dimensions of diversity of your customer base. So, you know, knowing that you've watched this grow, how do you think about categorizing it? And how would you recommend someone who's in a similar CX journey to think about how that they can digest and really think about this comprehensively versus just sticking with one channel?

Speaker A: Well, I'll go, uh, I think there's a lot to be learned in the beginning. Like you said it, there's things that are the same, but there's things that are just great lessons to be learned at the very beginning that I've carried with me my entire career. J. Crew was one of my favorite clients forever. I'm still friends with everybody that was back there in the early 90s and late 90s when Internet took over. And I've always called them my most courageous client because they were a, uh, target market of college students. College college students were the first to have laptops. Thereby they were willing to test with us and experiment with emails at the time, if you can believe that. People didn't get emails, didn't have an overloaded inbox. Didn't even have an inbox. And so at that time, we started, uh, analyzing even as early as the late 90s, like eye movement on websites. The idea that how come Everybody's ordering at 2:30 in the morning? Well, you know, it's uh, I use this example because it's logical. You know, folks came home from the bar, they're in college, they're seeing J. Crew is the greatest clothes, and all of a sudden they're ordering. And we started doing emails at, you know, 1:30 in the morning instead of, like, you would never think of that at that point. I give credit to the company I work for, which was direct marketing technology at the time. And we were bought by Experian and J. Crew because they both didn't let the boundaries stop them. They both said, this is odd, but wait a minute, it makes sense. And let's think about it. The response rates went through the roof. People started realizing, wait, you know, when I send the catalog, it was called inkjet processing. On the back of the catalog, if someone bought a pair of red shoes, we put the corresponding red belt on their message. It said, hey, thanks for your last purchase. Would you like a red belt to go with that beautiful red shoe? It wasn't about the belt or shoe. It was about that they knew that we were talking to them. And we, as in the client, as in J. Crew. But I built original databases for Oriental Trading, Office Depot, Playboy Enterprises, Anheuser Busch, Citicorp. Everyone needed data processing at the time because they realized, wait a minute, this is a wealth of knowledge. And this isn't, you know, anonymous marketing anymore. And that's what TV advertising and billboards and everything else, which is almost like outdated for sure. Some of the channels now obviously through

Speaker C: Omni channels, well, you know, I don't know some of them. There's still a lot of display. There's still a lot of billboards around. You know, I live in San Francisco and there are a lot of companies who put up signs on billboards and you go, huh, huh. That's interesting. May have never heard about them, may have not seen about them, but they're trying to reach a different demographic for a different point.

Speaker A: Oh, still there. Absolutely. Same with tv. Like, that's why all marketers are tracking how you file for find them by codes that they're using. And the reason that they always ask how did you find or ask for the code? It's because they want to know it's working. Not so much because, you know, they're, they're trying everything. It's because they care about you. Honestly, the corporations are looking at it like they want to get to you as much as you want to get to them if you're interested. And in my little cul de sac, my little four person cul de sac, they don't want to send to the other three. They don't want to email the other. They want to only communicate with people that do care. And I do think that's a misconception as well that, oh, junk mail or these dumb emails and all that stuff, if they knew better, they would do better because they're paying to do that. But they're only doing it if you're interested. It's kind of a mutual. It's sort of like dating. If you're not interested, I'm not interested.

Speaker C: That is the big challenge of the day. If they knew better, they would do better, right? Marketers want to know better because they don't want to waste the money. They don't want to waste their time. They don't want to waste your time. They want to communicate with you in the way that you want to be communicated against. Now, some people feel like they've been duped or they've been manipulated or they've been overly analyzed by my marketers. And some marketers who actually do that actually now have called that out as if they were not part of the industry. So it's a tricky thing. If you were to say, well, uh, I don't want to give you to give away any of your secret sauce. Right. But I'm curious about thinking about how you put if they knew better, they could do better into practice.

Speaker A: Well, go backwards again, because again, I love the line you used earlier about learning from the past and not reinventing the wheel. One of my favorite stories of direct marketing was or regression analysis is probably more appropriate. There was a children's book company that I found, and we talked and they said, we just don't get it. Our sales, uh, go up and down. Our forecasting is off. It's this and that. So it wasn't that they weren't doing well. It wasn't that they weren't getting, growing and getting new customers and expanding their product line. But again, I'm on the data information side, and I still feel like that's where I'm at. And so we said, let's do a model. And we wouldn't say, let's do a model if somebody's blown out the roof and they figured it all out and they're doing great, that's fine. These guys were doing great, but their seasonality was just way off whack. And it was sort of like it was up and down. And they're, you know, the executive vice president of marketing is trying to figure out, what is it I'm, um, missing again, today's world. Lot different. This wouldn't apply, but it's how this all grew and how we grew as, you know, marketing, uh, and corporations in general. I would never think that, like, weather would have anything to do with a children's book company. If I asked you to name the top five things, well, households that have children or folks that are 20 to 40. There's all kinds of things you would put up there right out of the gate that would be obvious or just part of what must have made decisions that were happening. It was weather at the end of the day, and that's why we did at the time 5000 variable plus regression modeling. That said, the easy stuff is easy. Like, we as a company never tried to say, well, you know, obviously if you have children, that would help in buying children's books. There's still a lot of people that buy children's books for gifts or for whatever. The point of it is whether all of a sudden we cut the nation in half. We looked at all the variables, and what pops out. That's why I find regression modeling so interesting. It's not what you think is going to be important. It's what you don't think is important. Or I always like to say this as well. It's not what people like that's the most important. It's what they don't like, might be the most important because it's not as easy to understand what people don't want. Or for marketers, it's not always the popular, fun thing when you're internal saying, well, maybe we shouldn't go after this crowd because of xyz. But that's the hard part, I think when people love you, they love you. Like political parties. If I'm a Democrat or Republican, I'm going to vote one way or the other. It's easy to find all of us or this side, that side. It's not easy to find everybody in the middle that might go either side. And that's also a part of a marketer's struggle, is to understand it's what they don't like, to me is as important as what they do like. Because in that case, we divided the country in half for them. Within a month, they doubled and then within four months, tripled their sales. Because all the kids in Minnesota, Phil, didn't really need to, you know, they couldn't go out and play. Kids in Miami actually could go out and play. Still had a choice all, uh, of a sudden. By doing it geographically, by weather. I never could have. Nobody could have predicted that. But regression modeling could. So again, it's very sometimes strange things that bring you to the point of where you can change your home marketing strategy to something that will transform your business.

Speaker C: So what I'm hearing you say is, um, putting into the practice. Capture the data, analyze the data, but collect creatively. Think about likes and dislikes, think about how you find the middle. So you're not listening to the end. You're finding new opportunities for your clients. In this section, I want to talk about the vision, trends and technology and things like that and how it matters for different people, like generations or different types of Segments of folks. But knowing what you know now, the way you describe, what's the vision for your company going forward?

Speaker A: I think that we continually learn from our clients, number one, and that keeps us moving forward as quickly as we are. And when I look at caring about the customer, I think that in all levels of, uh, companies, small, large, in between, the sooner they understand that the customer's always right, which may or may not be really true all the way, but it is true.

Speaker C: At the end of the day, you keep it simple. And I love that because you're like, it's a simple game. And I'm sure some people might talk about a lot of details, but the basics, the fundamentals are still remain the same. So I'm curious if you think about any generational or technology trends that you see arising that would drive, that you think are going to be important in the next year or so.

Speaker A: I think that, generally speaking, millennials, Gen X, gen Y, everybody since baby boomer slash onward have cared about the company and their philosophies and their motives and their actual actions. And I've learned that from my son. I have one child, Mark, who I learned from every day. I've learned from the day he was born, and he's helped me in my marketing career on and on. And when he started at 16, 17. Well, mom, they're not climate sensitive or they're not looking at the future, or all of these things that have gone and grown to where I won't buy certain brands at the grocery store in a plastic bottle because I can get them in a glass bottle at home. I'll use that as an example because I've learned from him. He's right. That's horrifying for the environment, but that's a paradigm shift. That's a situational shift that is so important for marketers and companies to understand that, you know, if you're not doing the right thing, it didn't matter before. If you were the cheapest, you were the easy, you know, easy access this or that. Consumers bought what was easy or good. Now they'll stop and pay more. And I've learned that from my son, and I love it. And I think that here I am in the thick of it every day. But I'll respect a company that cares about consumers and cares about the climate and whatever, because in the end of the day, that's what's going to matter. Well beyond everybody listening to this podcast.

Speaker C: Sure. I mean, you know, you make a really interesting point about, you know, if you're looking at everyone. And if you're analyzing the data, you're kind of trying to learn from these different folks all the time, right? And the thing that I think is really interesting in that is that you're, you live with your son, right? You, you live with his experience, influence your experiences. Because. So reaching a millennial, reaching Gen Z doesn't necessarily avoid reaching, uh, a Gen X person or a, uh, boomer, or even a zero. Right? Because it's an entry point for a conversation. It's it. And it can be contextual, right? It can be, you know, because the kid can influence the parent, the parent can influence the kid. You know, you can have some real conversations. There's lots of opportunity there. It doesn't have to be, oh, we only talk to millennials. We only care about millennial marketing, because blah, blah, blah, right? There are smarter ways to go about it, and they're smarter. And yours is a data driven approach looking for how you can find understanding. And then what I'm assuming is you find or build technology gives you the solutions that you need once you know who you're going after, how they want to be reached and how you're trying to, how you're trying to engage with them. Is that fair?

Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. You're a great summarizer. Fail. Because I'll throw out the other half of that. End of the stick. My poor mom and dad had seven kids in 19 years, and my brother's 19 years older than me, so he's actually the beginning of the baby boomers. And not to give my age away, but I'm the end. And then my son is obviously in a different generation. And so the three of us will get in a conversation. And I think that's, that's absolutely fascinating. But at the root of it all, what ends up counting is I just want to feel special. That's why when you began with the queen of loyalty programs, I worked with McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts and all kinds of folks in the, uh, 2000s. And I said, hey, guys, if you were smart, you would realize when the first notion of going outside of your house for a cup of coffee was it 25 cents, 35 cents, $5, now, whatever. It's crazy to comprehend that if you were alive and walking around before that, but I was in the president of, uh, McDonald's office in 2007 saying, Somebody's going to get this right. And that's, if you buy four coffees, you get the fifth one free. There's a way to draw that person. Because at the end of the day, the coffee is not the difference, it's how you make the person feel that's drinking the coffee.

Speaker C: Sure, sure. You're speaking to somebody who's, who wants to be recognized for their volume and who's seeking a similar experience. Right. And if the McDonald's customer is a volume customer, then that it's an alignment and an understanding component, which I think is super important. I think. You know, you also alluded to employee experience, which I want to get to a little bit get to later. I don't want to forget that. But he also alluded to something I think is really important. And I'm just going to call it like the impact component. And increasingly with CXOs, I'm talking about how impact matters to consumers in a way that it has not or has in a way that's changed, that's clearly shifted and it's clearly shifted and accelerated in the past 24 months. A lot of it's pandemic, but it's been rising as people talk about climate issues and all these different things. So I'm curious how you think about the impact story because you alluded to it a little bit saying the consumers are always rule, but they'll be influenced. Something will shift consumer behavior. And brands have an opportunity to lead. They also have the obligation to pay attention to the data, to see where the indicators are going and see how can we align this with our ethos or with their ethos. So can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about how you're thinking about impact, how you're tracking it? Because you mentioned a little something, people caring about the environment, people caring about how they represent. I'm m curious where your head is on that.

Speaker A: I think, uh, when I say that comment, the customer's always right. We know they're not always right, but it's. How do you make them feel like you hear them and you understand and how do you sway them to maybe understand they're not right? I just think that the marketer's end of uh, the bargain with their customer is. I hear you. So again, if it's not right, you'll help them lead them to the way of understanding why it is or isn't right. Because as we now know, versus at the beginning now it's inbox, you know, the pollution, there's. You can't even find the right marketer you want to look at or the right catalog or that now is only through a website or whatever. It's just everything changes with the times, it changes with the decades. But the same core thing goes back to. It shows that you just listen and watch and realize who, again, really wants to hear from you. I think marketers would be thrilled if you told them. And now in today's technology, you can for sure. You don't have to hit me again. It was just a gift. I don't like. You move on. And it's nothing personal. I think that marketers would pay you to do that if you could.

Speaker C: Sure. But it gives you an opportunity to understand what percentage of the sales are gifts. So if you were going to create a different marketing campaign, I mean, you said, you know, these kids come from this location and their grandparents are in that location. And I wanted to reach them on. I'm going to make it up on billboard or on a postcard.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Then I could do the postcard of the, you know, periodic gift or something that's like a periodic gift program or recommendations, uh, for this holiday or that holiday or graduations coming up or whichever things at least you can think about not just blanketing them with a certain message, but you can give them a message that's relevant, uh, at the time. And I think that's a really important thing to take advantage of. What do you think about this case when it's the, we've tried before and failed, but now things are a different case. And to me, that's the world of electric vehicles today. I mean, there are multiple attempts for EVs, uh, over decades. Right. Technology. The technology was not really the challenge. Well, per se. Right. Or the concept is not the challenge per se. But things have changed. How do you think about conveying to your client how to perceive, you know, where they are in that is this, we're trying and it's not working right now, or we tried before that and failed, but now is the time to try.

Speaker A: Well, it's funny you said electric vehicles. If you asked me that two weeks ago, I would actually have a whole different answer than I went to the gas pump today, this morning and filled up. How about that? Okay, so there's the difference. It's called adaptability. And the companies that do realized, I have to adapt, I have to move, I have to run when the moment is right. There's a good example of it, I think I've never seen more hybrid or electric car commercials in the last few months. But it had nothing to even do with the most recent events. But that hurt at the pump. I'll be honest, it was crazy. I went from one night to the next day. And the difference is it's those who are listening and are adaptable and flexible and those who feel like, you know, they have sort of the handle on their client and they're going to keep going with that and go right down with the ship. I don't. If the last two years didn't prove to marketers that you just can't depend on environment or history or anything, then I don't know what, uh, will. And those that come to the top will come to the top. And the two words I keep saying are agility and flexibility.

Speaker C: If you think about that internally, I love that. I love that whole, you've got it nailed, right? If you think about how to build the internal capacity for the agility, the flexibility, the data driven insights, can you talk a little bit about how you do it and how you might recommend for other folks to think about what they need to do to be successful?

Speaker A: I would say in today's world, I'm looking at marketers that have been in the business 20, 30 or beyond years and like myself and AI, just the term AI digital. I see it, um, now we're on zoom now. It's not get in person from since 2020. I see the fear in people's eyes. I see people going, oh my God. I know I should know more, I should do more. This is crazy. But I haven't even started. I don't want to admit I haven't started. Even the biggest companies, you'd be surprised. It that's universal. Everybody's feeling the same way I feel or others jumped and they knew better. Whatever you want to say or Covid took us different places. But I always try to start out with very simple terms and say, hey, a pot is just nothing more than taking A and B and putting it together. It's like a recipe when you're in the kitchen. You know, I can make bouillabaisse by throwing this and that in the pot, but it's called bouillabaisse. It sounds so complicated. It's really not. It's taking our customers information and realizing a big box store. Not the two big ones, Costco and Sam's, but I'll say the third one. They thought they had to get more people and ask us for 100 people. No, at the end of the day, they didn't need anything. But somebody really look at the data and understood the idea or opportunities in technology to say, why does everybody call a big box store? They don't call to say, hey, do you, um, have eggs today? No. They have 10,000 eggs every day. We all know that if we go to Costco, they have 10,000. Why do people call? They don't want to get to the cash register and find out they got to go to that awful customer service line where, oh, no, I'll have to wait in a horrible line with my entire card of too much stuff. I never went in there to buy if you're like me. So guess what? We just looked at their data. Everybody's calling for the same reason. They asked us for over, like, you know, 100 people. We're looking at them and said, you can reduce even the people you have. Because at the end of the day, everybody calls for the same thing. Just integrate it with your ivr. Number one for directions, two for store hours. Number three. Do you need to know when your membership's up? There's only 12 months. It was so simple. And we walked away from the business and said, you don't need us and you don't need. Actually, you could probably let go. A lot of people had. Because they were putting a band aid on a band aid on a band aid. And when you look at something that simple and then people say, well, how do you earn a living? Or how do you make revenue? Well, because they moved all their business to us, because we were the honest ones that came in and said, you don't even need us because it's something sometimes in front of you. And we all know that as regular people, consumers, the answer can be right in front of you sometimes. And so you just have to kind of look at and realize digital AI is just the exaggerated or one step up version of logic. And AI is all of us, what we think every day. You know, there once was a day when I wish CVS would say, hey, you know, we're open till nine. Sarah, I know you're driving from downtown Chicago and you don't know if you'll make it by 9pm, but you call us and we'll tell you that before you even have to go to a human and I say, I love you, CVS or whomever, Walgreens, whatever. That's simple. That's AI. And that's what I think people need to understand. It's logic. And machines can do a lot of logic. But it's also really important to emphasize that we're never going to get rid of people. It's not about replacing people. Even the people that might have been doing routine jobs or things that helped with CX or whatever they'll just be part of a more important step of better customer experience. Now, uh, a phone agent doesn't have to spend as much time telling you what time we close, but they could say, well, what's your problem? Or what you coming in for? And do we have it? Stuff like that. So if I left with one thought, I hope people won't be afraid of AI or digital, either term. They're just saying we can do things better and easier and make your customer happy. And to me, that's pretty important.

Speaker C: So just to recap, before we go to the lightning round, I heard build the capacity to understand the data. Build the technology that allows your people to communicate with the customers and the way that the customers want to be reached. Right. Um, use the AI to help understand people and then figure out how to put your people in the right places. When I heard you say we recommended to a client to do more, do better with less people because the people were in the wrong spot, that's a big deal for everyone, for the company, for the people who are doing the work, for the customers who need the service. So I think that's really helpful and also, um, really helpful. That's like put into story, because it's one thing to talk about those things in an abstract layer, but. But that story really helped me be, like, visceral and real for me. So I appreciate that. So I know we're running late on time, but I'd love to do the lightning round with you really quickly, and I hope you can stick around to answer a couple of these questions. So, as you know, we do the same three questions at the end in the lightning round. So question number one. As a customer, what's an example of one of your favorite experience?

Speaker A: I would say it's very specific, but there and again, it's not surprising. A, uh, Ritz Carlton by a company. I worked for many years in Atlanta and Buckhead gave me the best I ever had. And that's quite simple by, it wasn't anything fancy or it wasn't monetarily different things. They didn't give me bottles of liquid gold or something like that. They knew my name when I came in. And we had, uh, a, uh, deal with them with our other client, who happened to be one of their bigger clients. So they extended the service. Trust me, I wouldn't be staying there if it wasn't for that. But I got to feel like, wow, this is how this side of it works. And when the driver of the car would take you around for two or three miles, and he'd been there 40 years. He never forgot my name, of course. Do I know they probably prompted him? Maybe not. When I texted him from the airport, they were prompting him. When he gave me a cell number, I never felt more like loved or appreciated. The other one would be the buy four, get one free. I started in 2007. I got to the President's office of McDonald's and the President's office of Dunkin Donuts. And at the time, we were all struggling and feeling our way, but they got it. I got it. It's like, you do matter. You might only buy five cups of coffee from somebody, but they do care, and they will care.

Speaker C: I see it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I love the Horst Schulze story. I read Excellence Wins about the Ritz Carlton, and it's one of my favorites. And him just talking about simple ways to empower everyone in your organization to deliver the experience that you want and then celebrating the way people do it. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Speaker A: It wasn't the fancy shampoo, but that didn't hurt either.

Speaker C: I will throw that Number two. If there's one thing you could change about people's perception of the role of customer experience at a company, what would it be?

Speaker A: It's that people do care. That the companies I work with, they do care. They care about each of us. And I do think that's misunderstood. And I base it on my own family, and I base it on, you know, consumers I talk to. And especially if my clients or folks I'm working with, I go and I find out, you know, their own consumers. And I try to learn, because they do care. And they aren't after just everybody. They're after you. And so, yes, I had to drink a lot of beer for Anheuser Busch and other different companies, but I do what I gotta do, Phil. But I would leave with that one sentence. The companies do care, and for many reasons. But the best reason is they care about you.

Speaker C: Yeah, so many people. They're just really passionate. They want people to win. There are so many more great people out there than I think people give credit. Okay, last one of the lightning rounds for our listeners. What one lesson would you want them to take away from your experience as a CX leader?

Speaker A: Never forget the impossible. I think that the impossible is the possible. And I learned that from great leaders that have been before me. But I think that's the best rule of thumb for the marketer, for the corporation, for the consumer. If you're not getting what you want, you know, now there's avenues to express that. There's Yelp and there's, you know, Amazon board, everything else. Never thought I'd see the day. I see it now from the consumer side, but I think from our job as marketers and partners in getting folks what they need is. Don't never say the impossible is impossible. It's possible.

Speaker C: Yeah, sure, I've heard it said a number of times, it's impossible until it's done. I remember when social media emerged on the scene and corporations didn't understand what to do, didn't understand do with it or how it was going to be used. And there's some folks who might fear being out on a new platform and being, being wrong, but there's some people who are going to embrace that risk as an opportunity to experiment and explore and learn and meet folks. So if that one tool gives you the ability to create something that was impossible and make it possible, like a real time live conversation with your customer, well, and now you're, now you don't have the excuse of it being impossible anymore. Right.

Speaker A: And they're trying to follow it, they're trying to listen or they're trying to work with folks like myself which are following it and helping them understand better. But if you don't mind, I'll just share one last thing. I had a client when the Internet came out, said no, ain't gonna happen, ain't gonna last. And they were 100% phone based, they had no retail stores. This particular was party store favors and all kinds of stuff worldwide known. He said, said, not going to do it, not going to do it. And I said, uh, it's a simple analogy but I said, you know, the bus is going by and you don't have to get on, but 10 minutes later the bus is going to come by again and it'll keep coming by and coming by till you get on. It's not a choice. And technology the same way AI digital, it doesn't have to be complicated, but it will slowly help the marketer get better. But like the Internet, I didn't, you know, say that anyone was wrong to be afraid or all that stuff, buying through the mail, your transaction, all that stuff. And he waited eight months, that same person, billion dollar company, it ended up 80, 20 shift in paradigm from 80%, you know, phone orders, 20% print mailed orders to 80% Internet. With less than 12 months.

Speaker C: What do you think you might have, you would have, could have said to him to get him to be able to commit sooner.

Speaker A: I thought the Bus analogy was good because I knew he was going to get on board. But I just. The data wasn't there yet. I did try everything I knew. The one thing I kept saying was, you don't have the outlet of retail where most of my clients at that time, they had retail stores, and they had that. And we had more different data coming in that, uh, everything was going to the Internet, but with him, it was even more important. And so I did say, I think you're going to benefit the most. But what, uh, I guess I'm trying to say is that, you know, I don't fault people for taking a moment or breath. I think that, you know, AI, digital, everything is scary, but I think it's sometimes meant to be scary or complicated or vendors are coming at you saying all these things. I hope if nothing anyone took anything from today, it's that it's not that complicated. It's not that different.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's the great part. It's not that complicated. People will throw a lot of words and a lot of, uh, jargon. They'll throw a snow job at you. Right. A lot of irrelevant information that makes it sound complicated so that you need someone to demystify it, but you don't necessarily, uh, need that. What you want is a partner who makes it simple and shows where the value is. And one of the things I found through the conversations is talking about that in terms of assumptions and saying to someone like that, what assumptions would you be making that if they were wrong, if you were right, you would win, and if you're wrong, you might lose really badly? Because it's not that, you know, fear is one thing, risk is another. And if their risk assessment is off or they haven't thought through the different risks, you know, FOMO is a great way of looking at it, because somebody goes, I don't know what they're doing, but I want to be where they are. And it would go, well, maybe you want to be there where they are. Where do you think the bus is going to? And what do you think of the pluses and the minuses of being on the bus and as they go through them? And, God damn, I probably really should be on the bus to figure this out. Then you're like, great, because we can help you capture the data and we can help tell you that story. And I tell that story in one of assumptions and risk assessment.

Speaker A: Well, and a big difference to me in that is trends are different than actual paradigm shifts. And that's also something to remember is trends can Come up and down and how to communicate to people can go up and down sometimes, but the channels of how you do it won't change significantly once they're established. Uh, AI, digital Internet, those are not going to come and go. They're there. It's how you use them.

Speaker C: I know we're out of time on this one, but I hope that we can come back in, I don't know, six to nine to 12 months to talk about what sort of things you're seeing and learning with the data and with the AI, because that opens. It potentially opens a whole new level of being able to really understand and engage.

Speaker A: Well, thank you. I'll say this. I appreciate that because I would love to share that. Uh, right now, in the next 12 months, I'm focusing personally on purpose with travel, hospitality, airlines, rental cars, everything. Because of the situation our world was in. That's where I feel like my expertise could help the most to get out of a hole or to focus on something. And I've never really focused in that. I've always, I've worked with airlines before, hotel, major chain. I'm focusing 100 on that. So I would love to follow up with you on that. Because we called it the Comeback last April, and now we're doing a, uh, whole webinar panel in a few weeks called The Comeback Part 2. Because it wasn't the Comeback. And what did we learn from it? And there's a lot to be said because streaming services and all kinds of other things we've talked possibly that have thrived in the, in this pandemic and stuff like that. There's no less than 2 be learned as much as the folks that got wiped out and had no way out.

Speaker C: And it feels like the right time because people want to get out and people want to get out and see the world again, and they want to participate. But there's all this, uh, you know, just as we're getting out of COVID there is a new risk and a new challenge, and people want to live and people want. But they also want to help other people and they also want to do what's right for the environment. And your analytic and simplification will probably be helpful for a whole lot of folks. So I look forward to hearing what that's about.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: Thanks so much for your time and thank you, everyone else for joining us on this episode of the Customer Experience Show. We will see you next time. Have a great day. According to Sarah, relevancy goes hand in hand with agility and adaptability in other words, it's important to know your customers changing desires and to give them exactly what they want. After all, it can make the difference between barely surviving or thriving in the years to come.