Leadership Alignment, the Right Seat, and Customer Trust with Bryant Richardson

Speaker A: Next on your Customer, your Success. Bryant Richardson.

Speaker B: Well, certainly in skills that are misaligned, that, uh, misalignment can be dangerous because it can look like competence. The person may actually hit individual metrics. They might know the systems and they might even become influential in the organization. But the team can still feel drag.

Speaker A: Welcome to youo Customer, your Success, the Marist CX Hub podcast, bringing you insights from innovators who are excelling in their fields. I'm your host, Gary Mara, and each episode we dive into the strategies and mindsets that drive customer centric success. Our guests share their journeys, revealing the secrets behind their achievements, with a special focus on creating great experiences. Whether you're a business leader, solopreneur, or simply someone striving for excellence, you'll find actionable advice to elevate your strategy, get ready to learn a lot, have some fun, and transform your path to success. Hi everyone, and welcome back to youo Customer, your Success. My guest today is Bryant Richardson. Bryant helps leaders grow by turning customer experience into a competitive advantage. He is a CX strategist, consultant, a keynote speaker, and the author of the forthcoming book the next CX economy. Over more than 30 years, he has led multimillion dollar CX transformation initiatives as at CitiCards, partnered with brands like Goldman Sachs, Dell, ATT, Charter and Yum Brands to strengthen customer experience and engagement. He has again been named an ICMI Top 25 Customer Experience Thought Leader and a Top 30 Customer Experience Thought Leader by Global Gurus. Wow. Bryant, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Gary, thanks so much for that. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah. No, you're quite welcome. Glad we can finally get this going because we've had a little bit of back and forth and cancellations. I've had floods in the kitchen. So let's roll.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Sounds great.

Speaker A: Yeah. What we're going to do here today for the audience is something similar we've done before with Dave, uh, Seaton and his journey mapping framework, his Dharma method. We gave an intro to what the, uh, framework is and then we drilled down on one of the letters that the A in his Dharma. So you have this interesting, uh, uh, agility framework that's coming out in your book craft. And we're going to drill down on one of the very interesting ones. They're all interesting, but the one I thought was particularly interesting was the F. I'm going to let you get to that in a second. Um, so that's what it is. Kind of a workshop based show, but let's get everybody warmed up. Bryant Built this framework called craft. And so I want to just start by asking you. You made a striking claim when we were talking. Customer experience is rarely broken, but leadership alignment often is. So before we get into that framework, where does that misalignment usually show up first inside an organization?

Speaker B: Well, I think it shows, uh, up first off. In inconsistency, we see inconsistent decisions or priorities and inconsistent service standards and employee expectations. So the front line usually reveals the problem, but they rarely created it. Customer experience is the symptom. Uh, employees absorb that confusion from the inconsistency, but leadership really owns the alignment gap there. So the first warning signs are often internal before they actually, uh, affect the customer directly. And that can turn up in rework, increased escalations, uh, burnout, a hero culture where certain individuals have to save the day and employees asking, what do they really want us to do? So customer experience usually breaks downstream, uh, from leadership decisions that were never fully baked, never fully aligned upstream.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I'm glad to hear you say that, because I've experienced that. The kind of breakdown, it shows up internally first with just the chaos, basically, you've just explained. And it's the people on the front lines that notice it first. And it's important to have a culture where you can escalate those concerns and they can be addressed. But that doesn't quite always happen, which is what I think you will focus on. Um, so interesting stuff. So let's get right to the framework with that table being set. So walk us through your craft framework, kind of across the board, and then we'll drill down on the fox.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, CRAFT is a diagnostic leadership framework for organizational conditions that create customer trust. And just briefly, the C stands for culture agility, and that's the organizational culture. That's whether the organization's internal behaviors, who gets rewarded for what match or don't match the external promises the brand promises to the customer. Results Agility. The R is whether the business is measuring what actually drives performance and customer trust and is driving continuous improvement. A is awareness. Agility. That's where leaders deeply understand who their customers are, their employees as well. And the marketplace. F where we'll spend some time today is the fitment agility. And that's whether we have the right people aligned to the right purpose in the right roles in that particular stage of growth for the organization. And then t is tact agility. That's whether leaders and teams have the emotional agility to handle pressure. Well, think of it as emotional intelligence in motion. So fitment is where the framework gets really practical because this is where strategy meets people decisions.

Speaker A: Yeah. And this is the one I thought was super interesting. They're all interesting. But you borrowed Fitment from shipbuilding, and so why don't you tell us what exactly? For those of you out there who are not shipbuilders or into ships or boats, what's fitment on a ship? And how did that become your metaphor?

Speaker B: Well, I tell you, I heard the term, and it was used in context for shipbuilding. And I thought it just was a, uh, very fascinating term. So I started doing a little bit more research on it to understand that in shipbuilding, a fitment is something that's built onto the vessel for a specific purpose. That could be a, uh, cleat for tying down a rope, a handrail. It could be the controls at the helm. So it's a structural or functional component that helps the vessel perform to do what it's designed to do. The metaphor matters because people shouldn't be treated as just interchangeable parts. The question isn't just, can the person do the job when we're hiring. The better question is, are they suited to the purpose for this role at this stage in the organization and in the direction we're headed? So fitment is about purpose. It's about placement and usefulness in context. So hiring a great person but putting them in the wrong seat, even if they have the right experience and background, the right skills to do the job, really can create drag. And a capable person who's misaligned to purpose can quietly weaken trust with customers. So Fitment asks whether the person is really built into the organization in a way that helps the whole vessel to move forward where it's supposed to go.

Speaker A: Oh, brilliant. I love it. And I think this is one that's absolutely fascinating. So let's dig a little deeper into what actually happens to a team and eventually to customers. Right. When someone is genuinely skilled, but the purpose doesn't quite align with the organization.

Speaker B: Well, certainly. And skills that are misaligned, uh, that misalignment can be dangerous because it can look like competence. The person may actually hit individual metrics. They might know the systems, and they might even become influential in the organization, but the team can still feel drag. Uh, there can be cynicism. Collaboration can be weakened. Managers may have to overcompensate, and other strong employees may begin to disengage because of that misaligned individual. Ultimately, customers will feel that disconnect service can become more transactional. Exceptions may not be handled very well. Promises may be interpreted Very narrowly. And those things cause trust to erode quietly. The problem's not always the attitude. So we look at attitude a lot of times, but sometimes the person is simply not aligned with where the organization is headed. So skilled but misaligned person can produce output while damaging the conditions that make trust possible. So that individual might be well aligned from the standpoint of skills for the individual job that needs to be done that they're being hired for. But if the organization has a purpose that it's driving toward the way that it serves customers, and the individual's not aligned to that purpose, that's where that drag can occur.

Speaker A: Yeah, interesting, right? Because it's something we've touched on before where someone is might not just be the right fit, they're pretty skilled. And a lot of times, sometimes you say see you later, but sometimes you could actually say they're just in the wrong seat and move them. And we talked about that a few episodes ago. So how does a leader tell the difference between someone in the wrong seat and someone who's just the wrong fit entirely?

Speaker B: Well, I think it's important to understand that, uh, there shouldn't be an automatic framing, that there's failure.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So the person who helped launch the business may just not be the right person to scale it. Or an operator who thrives in chaos may struggle when discipline and process become necessary. Uh, someone who built the first version may not be the one to lead the next version of the organization. So sometimes the organization changed, sometimes the nature of the role itself changed. And sometimes their strengths are still valuable but in a different seat. And let's face it, we may move into a role, think of ourselves in early career. We might move into a role where we're a great fit at that point in time. But just like the organization, as humans we change, we learn what we desire, uh, in terms of how we are fulfilled can change over time. And so we may just not be a fit in that same seat over time. So leaders need to ask stage based questions. What does this stage in the organization and in this role really require? Uh, what strengths are now essential, what strengths are now creating risk and what capabilities need to be added. And I think that's important when we look at how we intentionally develop people and put together individual development plans over time. So fitment, uh, unlike maybe a handrail or a cleat on a ship, fitment with our people in the organization is not static. The fit that got you here may not be the fit that gets you to the next place.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's itching. And you hit on just. I was thinking of the next question, but I just shelved it because you hit on development. I was thinking about that and I said, this is, uh, something where how you develop everyone, everyone, your leaders and your team, your frontline workers, is super important. And I think it gets lost in the shuffle a lot because we have metrics and reviews at the end of the year, but they're very like, you know, regimented sometimes. And I don't think, you know, this is a very vague and general, uh, thought, but I do think a lot of times it's just about how you did last year. And there's not a lot of emphasis on what are you going to do next year or the year, you know, two, three years down the road and developing that person and having them grow, that gets lost in the shuffle I think a lot.

Speaker B: I have to agree. I think we tend to be a little too hurried in the hiring process and we pay the price for it as leaders down the road when we hire, uh, potentially for experience, having the right skills, looking in the rearview mirror without necessarily looking at where the individual's headed. I, uh, really appreciate the work of, uh, Bradford Smart, and you'll recall his book Top Grading and the approach that says, hey, look, we really need to spend more time upfront making sure we've got the right individual so that for whatever the compensation is for the role, whatever our budget is that we're hiring at the top end of that hiring, essentially, uh, an A team hiring a performers into those roles. My twist on that, of course, is that they've got to be fit for the purpose of the organization. The personal fitment and the organizational fitment need to be aligned from a purpose standpoint. So getting the wrong seat, getting the wrong fit entirely, um, the person could still believe in the mission. If they're in the wrong seat, they could demonstrate the values. They may have, the trust with the team, but their strengths are misaligned. They have real strengths, but they're not, uh, being applied in the right place. So performance improves when the role is designed or clarified. We might have people who are just the wrong fit entirely. Uh, they might resist the direction. This is where purpose alignment becomes so important. Because if they're resisting the direction of the organization, they're going to undermine trust. They're going to require constant exceptions, constant coaching and feedback or correction, and constant escalation and support from their leadership or escalation team. So the behavior conflicts with the organization's process.

Speaker A: So, uh, yeah, so the more I'm thinking of this now, uh, this is really something that takes a coordinated effort between leadership, the hiring managers, the talent acquisition teams and like we just talked about the um, uh year in review, the development piece, uh, of it. So this is not just you know, hiring manager. Think about who you're hiring better. Right. This is, this is something where you, this has to go across the entire organization which is something that you know, CX always focuses on. But I think that's what's missing a lot of the times. Right. So yeah, I, I agree.

Speaker B: I think we again tend to get into too much of a hurry. Uh you know it's, it's a struggle when our team is down a person and we need to bring somebody in to fill the gap and we tend to move too quickly. But then we also tend to do the same thing when it comes to review time. Who, who is it that looks forward to completing self assessments and completing assessments of our team? Yeah, that's a lot of work and it's taking away from what we see as our day jobs. And the real challenge there is that we're doing ourselves a disservice.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is and it is rushed and uh, most organizations do it all at once. Uh, way early in my career we had. This was interesting. I haven't heard of anybody doing this but maybe you have. You did it on your anniversary date. In other words, it was when you joined the company, you had a full year. So in other words if I joined in October, there's no point in a performance review in December or January. But to me that kept it fresh for the whole year and you didn't have to do, you know, whatever your 10 people in one sitting. But you were doing it maybe every month. And that keeps the process fresh in everybody's head. I thought.

Speaker B: I love that approach. I think the challenge for a lot of organizations is that then when you have compensation adjustments, uh, and all of the budgeting that goes with that bonus cycles and that kind of thing, those are often aligned to those review cycles. The review cycle that becomes challenging to manage. I'd love to explore that further.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, but that's exactly what I'm gonna say. Especially the more seen you get that just doesn't work for the budgeting. Um, but yeah, it just was a fascinating of doing it because everybody's kind of continually doing it. So interesting. So putting this in practice, what does this look like especially for maybe smaller or mid market firms? I know you work with a lot of big companies. I'm sure, that's a huge challenge. But, you know, for the smaller firms that might say, uh, geez, I don't have time, we're budget constrained and oh God, I wish I had time to think of this stuff. What's your response to that?

Speaker B: Well, I come back to the point that we're all in a hurry when we're hiring and we tend to rush through that. But when you look at it in the rear view, the reality is that you spend a lot more time on the back end fixing than what's broken after the fact. And time and time again, what we see is that the level of effort it would take to get the right person with the right fit in the organization, uh, we actually save ourselves a lot of time and heartache down the road.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that, that would be my challenge.

Speaker A: Yeah. So is there an example you could, um, talk about in your experience that you've worked through this process with someone, you could disguise it or not use the name, but something where you saw like a great turnaround or any sort of turnaround that, uh, uh, happened as a result of focusing on this.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So, um, one of the things we commonly do is we're brought in to take a look at the customer acquisition, uh, process. So the process of bringing on new customers, that's typically a sales or business development function. And the process had broken down. Uh, and there were certainly things that have changed in terms of how we approach prospective customers, uh, how we contact them, how we manage campaign operations and development. But one of the things that was clearly a challenge was that we had individuals in the organization that in fact were sort of subtly not being effective. They, they thought that they were safe just showing up, and in this case they were dialing the phone and, and there was not really an engagement. There wasn't an understanding, in this case the organization was involved in wealth management. And there wasn't an understanding of the real value that this particular organization actually brought to their prospective customers. And as a result of that disconnect in understanding the real purpose of the organization, that they perceived their job simply as sales and weren't necessarily excited about what they were selling. And when we looked at their individual values and what their personal purpose was, what they stood for, their personal integrity, and then we were able to align that to what the organization was really about, which was more than helping people to invest, uh, their retirement savings, it was actually much more deep than that. And when we brought that into alignment for folks, you could actually see the eyes light up as they understood that and they Were able to then take what we were teaching, what we were training in terms of changing the messaging, changing the campaign management approach. We actually in that organization, we saw a six times improvement in the net results of customer meetings, prospective customer meetings for advisors in that organization. So it was a tremendous, uh, lift in performance for them.

Speaker A: I bet. That's interesting because. Yeah, that's a topic near and dear to my heart. Financial, uh, planning. I've had a few financial planning episodes before and I feel like a lot of people are underserved in that market because people have the wrong approach, uh, and um, perspective on it. It is people who need the planning, need planning. So I think a lot of people that is high net worth people who have, uh, money to invest and there's so much more to planning. For a lot of people who have kids that they want to put through college. There's retirement savings, certainly, but there's also elder care and um, um, you know, trust for your house and things like that. Um, the estate planning, people forget. And there's the right levels of insurance and all that stuff. The risk. Make sure you have that, um, umbrella covering you and, and all that stuff. And it all kind of goes together. And I think people miss that. And if you package that as here, we help help you with your financial life, it's a much better message than perhaps what they were, you know, bringing to the table before. It sounds like that's what was kind of happening.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And when you think about an organization that is bringing those services to customers, uh, the significance of the family and having the peace of mind that they're on track, saving for not only retirement, but to your point, uh, college funds for their kids as they're growing up, making sure they're managing risk in the event that, uh, the unforeseen happens, uh, and really caring about the whole financial picture for those individual customers. And in this case, that was really a great service and purpose that the organization had and how they were serving customers. It just wasn't lined up with how that front line was operating.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because, uh, it just could. I could see how it could rub you the wrong way when you're kind of dialing for dollars, for lack of a better term. But it sounds like that's a little bit of what was going on.

Speaker B: Exactly. It was.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Dialun. Yeah. It's unfortunate, but that's something you gotta be careful of. But I am very passionate about people finding the right planners for themselves and making sure they have one. Uh, you don't have to be worth uh, $25 million in network.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. There are a lot of great advisors out there that do phenomenal work making sure that there's a well rounded support, uh, network to help folks.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, uh, interesting stuff. That was great one. I'm glad you, you brought that up. All right, so uh, so let's get back to it. So, you know, so how much of doing this right comes down to leadership? It comes under leadership certainly, but a leader's own, you know, kind of self awareness, uh, of themselves and the team and maybe their styles and team styles and where the, the organization's going. Um, do you, you know, do you see that leaders might not be as aware as they might be? And how do you, how do you address that?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Uh, fitment requires a self awareness because leaders will often personalize people decisions. They don't necessarily recognize that they're bringing bias to the table. Uh, they may think that they like this person because they see similarities in the individual to themselves. Uh, they might recognize that hey, this employee has been around for a while, they've been loyal, so they deserve the promotion. Uh, even if it's potentially not the right fit or they helped us get to where we are today, uh, or no one else knows what they know. I don't want to hurt them, so I want to make sure we're moving things along in a positive way. And leaders fool themselves then by confusing loyalty with fitment. Uh, loyalty is valuable, but loyalty can't override role clarity or purpose, alignment or customer impact. They also confuse busyness with value. Uh, that's something that we look at a great deal. Being busy having activity doesn't mean you're delivering results. Someone can be very active and still not be moving the organization in the right direction. So emotional agility matters here. Leaders need the ability to be honest without being harsh. We call it being truthful with kindness.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: They need to be able to be clear without being cold and compassionate, without avoiding accountability. You know, we talked about the review cycles and we tend to think about the year end review as we're looking at compensation decisions and whatnot. But the reality is when we get to that year end review, nothing that's covered there should be a surprise. We should be having conversations about what's going well, what's not, what needs to be improved. Um, and at the same time, we should be having conversations that demonstrate that we value the employee, we understand and know that person and we should be connecting their role to what's important for our customers and the organization. The hard Part of fitment is not seeing where there's a mismatch. It's telling yourself the truth about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, interesting stuff. So. Yeah, I like that. You know, something else I was just thinking of was sometimes it's the. You said it's more like the personality types, uh, because we've talked a lot about the colors, uh, the disc profiles, things like that, the high Ds, uh, et cetera. Because the high Ds might conflict with the yeses and that, that type of thing. So it might be the, the people who have the same personality types mesh, and it might not really be the right fit. It's just that you're, you have that bias towards that personality type.

Speaker B: That's correct. Uh, and it's important to understand how individuals mesh then for sure. Um, but I don't, I don't know that necessarily ensuring that we have alignment of everyone being the same strength. And regardless of the assessment you use, disc is a great one. If you had all high Ds, high directive individuals, you could have some real challenges, uh, and really, uh, overrun other individuals, overrun customers, uh, with that direct approach, uh, of high D. I can appreciate that. I've been a high D really, most of my career, really. And there are pros and cons to that. Yeah, I probably ought to take that, uh, assessment again, uh, because I know that, uh, as I've grown through my career, I've shifted in my own priorities.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm a green, I'm an S and a C. But no, that was my point, is that you need that alignment and you need that self awareness to know where you are, where somebody else is at. And that's why, because sometimes you get the butting heads and it's really just kind of the work style, the Ds, the salespeople pounding the table might be a D where the customer service person like me is agreeing, like, hey, let's chill, let's fill, let's figure it out, let's make the client happy. Right. And so that's where you get some conflict.

Speaker B: I've seen some organizations, regardless, uh, of the assessment approach that you use, where at a cubicle or office door, whatever it might be, they actually have a tag so that the person's name may be there, but there may be the color that represents their personality, really? Or the word key phrase that ties into their personality profile so that as you approach the individual, you can align yourself, okay, um, I'm high D. This person's high S. This is how I need to approach this individual to be more productive in how we interact. I think that's just a tremendous idea.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is a good idea. I didn't think of that one. Awesome. So we got time for one more in the traditional interview segment of the show. And so we're going to do with the kind of traditional closer we've been going with. If a founder wants the strength and fitment, or a leader wants to strengthen fitment on their team in the next 90 days, what are the first moves you would have them make?

Speaker B: I would say that in the first 30 days, I would focus on clarifying the promise. What, uh, do customers actually trust us to do? Where are we being inconsistent in that? And what must never break once we have clarity in the promise. I would go in the next 30 days, I would map roles to that promise. So what work protects the promise to our customers? Who owns that work? And where might the responsibilities be unclear? And where are people compensating for bad fit? And then in the next 30 days, I'd say have the conversations, uh, move one person into a better seat, clarify one role, stop tolerating a recurring misalignment, and make one people decision that you've been avoiding. We've all got one of those, I bet. So I'd say in 90 days, I wouldn't try to redesign the whole organization. Uh, I would clarify, though, customer promise, map people decisions that most affect the promise and address one fitment issue that everyone knows is already there.

Speaker A: Awesome. Brilliant. Great way to wrap it up. Let's hit the segments. All right, everybody, it is time for does it Hold Water? My favorite segment. This is where I ask our guest to be a resident expert witness for the day. I read them a quote, a piece of thought leadership, and they let me know if it quote, holds water or not. You ready? This is going right into CX consulting world topic, uh, near and dear to everybody in the CX world's heart. And the quote comes from, uh, Netagate, a customer experience research firm. And the defense says an NPS score without a benchmark is meaningless. Benchmarking against direct competitors provides a far more accurate picture than comparing across unrelated industries. Does the defense case hold water?

Speaker B: So I, I have to agree that an NPS score without a benchmark, it really doesn't add a lot of value. I think NPS is a great tool. I don't think it holds a lot of water by itself to begin with. Personally, uh, in our work we do see value in comparing to an industry benchmark. I would see more value, though. Comparing myself to the best in the industry. So if you're in the airline industry, compare yourself to the best in that space, whether it's domestic, international, what have you. How are you doing in that space? I don't know that I agree, though, with not going outside of your own industry. I think that in today's customer economy that there's a great focus on experience and that customers are not only comparing you to your direct competitors. They are. But they're also comparing you to the best experiences they have anywhere. So they're looking at the level of friction, the level of control that they're able to exercise. Uh, so I, I would say looking outside of your industry, at best in class, whether that's Amazon or Zappos or Apple or Uber, I think that's where there's some real magic.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, and this is why I asked you that question, because I think that is a great point. A lot of times. Well, one, there's no benchmarking, but two as well, I'll just benchmark them against my competitors. But you don't. Well, the, the realization that this experience was awful and then these guys, they've got it right, right. You, if you have a bad experience, uh, with one company and then you have a great experience with another one, it doesn't matter which that there are competitors or not. You're gonna, it's gonna, or you had a great experience with one and then you have a terrible experience with another. It's just, you're right, you're toast right there. And it's nothing to do if it's your plumber or your, uh, insurance company that I'm dealing with, or your dentist or your doctor or whoever. It's very, um, tangible, uh, to whoever the customer is, it doesn't matter 100%.

Speaker B: And I would just add, I touched on this. But focusing on just one metric I think really sells ourselves short.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We talk about that all the time. Because I'm one that, you know, metrics are great, but it's the trend, it's this. And they're not the be all, end all use a couple things, whatever matters. Um, but we get too wrapped up in the metrics, I think. And there are other factors to consider. So. Awesome. I thought that was going to be a good one for you. And it sure was. Let's move to chip shots. All right, everybody, it's time for chip shots. These are my shorter form questions. So professional, but a little bit more personal in nature. Bryant, we love the book question. What is one book that has significantly influenced you professionally, personally, you name it.

Speaker B: Gosh, just one, uh, uh, this is one that I actually reread a little more recently and it's the Speed of Trust by Stephen M r. Covey. So we've all heard of the seven habits of highly effective people. Stephen, uh, Covey, uh, was, uh, Stephen Mr. Covey's father. This book centers on trust as an operating system, not just a soft virtue. So it ties directly to making trust operational, which is one of the things we try to help our clients accomplish. The book, uh, itself, it helped to put language around something I'd seen for years, uh, that trust is not soft, that there are things we can do to impact the level of trust and that it affects speed, cost, confidence and growth. So that idea really connects directly to how I think about customer experience. That trust has to become operational.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that's been the forefront of a lot of the work I've done over the years. So I'm glad to hear you say that's a great one. And yeah, the trust is valuable not only to retaining your clients, but making that client referable. Right. Providing, uh, references or referring you business to you.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker A: So, uh, that's a great one. Awesome. All right, so I love the leader question. Uh, we asked everybody now if you could spend a day shadowing a current leader, uh, in any profession, any industry, who would it be and what would you hope to learn?

Speaker B: I'd probably choose Satya Nadella. I'd want to observe how he keeps that large, complex organization aligned around purpose while still moving quickly. Uh, the leadership challenge at scale is not just a strategy. Uh, it's keeping people, culture, the technology and customer trust moving in the same direction.

Speaker A: Yeah, no big companies. I've said this over and over. It's so hard. It really is. Uh, I think the bigger it is, it's just so hard to keep that consistency that we talked about in case that experience consisted throughout the whole organization, not to mention other things like product and operations and all that stuff. So, um, yeah, no interesting one. Good for you. Okay. Uh, was there a particular experience or failure early in your career that taught you a valuable lesson you still use today? Mhm.

Speaker B: Well, I will say that earlier in my career, I. Gosh, not even sometimes I genuinely believe that if we fix the process that the experience would improve, uh, and process matters. But I learned that having a technically correct process can still fail if leaders are not aligned with people, uh, and people are not in the right seats. That lesson has really stayed with Me and I find that customer experience is not just designed, it's led.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh great one. Sure. You didn't start in financial services because that's a lot of what you do because you're dealing with a lot of money. It's very process, process, process. And that's what I've noticed too. We've just got to fix the process. What's your process? We've got to reconcile. We're going to do the process. So what's the process? Process. It's due process. It's a process and you present your process to the clients and it's a process presenting your process. And so I get it and uh, it gets, it gets challenging. So interesting one. All right, last one. You ready?

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: What is the one question you ask a client that never fails to deliver?

Speaker B: So I would say probably the best question is what are your customers trusting you to pursue? Protect. Hmm. Mhm.

Speaker A: Interesting. Why? What do you get out of that one?

Speaker B: Well if they say quality then I ask what quality actually means in observable terms. Uh, if they say speed then I might ask them what has to be sacrificed to deliver that speed with relationship. I would ask them where the relationship is the most vulnerable.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So leaving the safety of big enterprise CX leadership really uh, brings those lessons to growth. I've been able to bring those lessons into growth minded SMBs through the real blue sky business.

Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. Great. Wow. Bryant Richardson, great guest. Thank you so much for being here today. Before we go, why don't you tell the audience where they can find you and how about the book? When's it coming out? Where they could find the book, everything?

Speaker B: Well I tell you, uh, we are in editing right now with the book and I was told, warned is probably a better word that when we got to editing I was only 20% done uh, after writing the manuscript and I am finding that to be true. So uh, we're in the midst of that. Uh, my hope is that uh, before we get through summer, uh, will be in a place to announce the book drop and very excited about that as that's all coming together and finishing up things like the COVID design and so forth. So later in the summer the best way to stay in touch and to find me is to navigate to the next CXeconomy.com that's the title of the book, the next CXeconomy.Com and folks can sign up to be on our uh, insider access list, stay up on what's going on with the book and uh, we'll have some special opportunities for folks that sign up on that list to get a, uh, deal on the book when that drops, and for a special masterclass as well. And that's a great way then to find out how to stay in touch with me, whether that's through socials, newsletter, that type of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, brilliant. I'll be signing up. Awesome. Brian, thanks again. Great job and thank you all for watching your customer, your success again. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget the audio is available on all major platforms. And if you're listening to the audio, don't forget the videos out there on YouTube. So thank you for watching once again today. That's all for today. Back real soon with more CX leaders, customer success leaders and entrepreneurs and all sorts of good stuff coming your way. Bye for now. That's a wrap. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you found something insightful that will enhance your experiences and drive your success. If you enjoy the episode, please leave a review and share your thoughts to help us improve the show. Don't forget to head on over to maracxhub.com for more ways to connect with me and learn more about experience management. Until next time, I'm Gary Amara. Working hard for your customer and your success.