S4e12 The Changing The Way You Do Business Edition with Nate Brown

S4e12 The Changing The Way You Do Business Edition with Nate Brown

James chats with Nate Brow, a perpetual student of the world’s greatest experiences and the people who create them.

 

After authoring The CX Primer, Brown was dubbed the “CX Influencer of the Year” by CloudCherry in 2019, and a top global CX thought leader by ICMI, Exceeders, Netomi, Martech and many more.

 

As a passion project, Nate created CX Accelerator, a first-class virtual community for Customer Experience professionals. Nate serves as the Senior Director of Customer Experience for Arise Virtual Solutions and can be found at a variety of conferences speaking and training on the CX topics he loves.

 

They discuss playing the mandolin, why CX projects fail, the hero of the story, brand core, earning the right to grow relationships, voice of customer, gathering unstructured feedback, the magic button, AND putting CX into culture for the long term.

 

Contact Nate:

 

Web: www.cxaccelerator.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cxaccelerator/
Twitter: twitter.com/CustomerIsFirst

Click for Full Transcription

James Nathan  00:00

Hello, and welcome to The Only One Business Show with me your host James Nathan and I have got another fantastic guest for you today, this time all the way from Nashville, Tennessee, and if we’re very lucky, we might get him to to play something with strings on it. This gentleman is a perpetual student of the world’s greatest experiences, and the people who create them. After authoring The CX Primer, he was dubbed the CX Influencer of the Year by CloudCherry 2019. And a top global CX thought leader by ICMI, Exceeders, Netomi, Martech and many more. As a passion project, he created CX Accelerator, a first class virtual community for customer experience professionals. He serves as the senior director of customer experience for arise virtual solutions, and can be found at a variety of conferences speaking and training on the CX topics that he loves. Please welcome Nate Brown. Nate, how are you?

 

Nate Brown  01:50

Hello James. I am just peachy keen over here in Nashville. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I can’t wait.

 

James Nathan  01:56

Well, that’s great. So lovely for you to be on and wouldn’t giving me the time as well. And Nashville is one of those places that is on my on my bucket list. I’ve got a number of…. anything with music attached really I want to go and visit but tell me what’s so special about Nashville.

 

Nate Brown  02:11

Oh, it’s just a great culture out here. We have great hot chicken. Obviously, we had an incredible music, everything from from bluegrass to great alt rock, and certainly country music, but all kinds of different music, great shows all the time, are coming to Nashville. And we got some great outdoor activities as well. I’m a pickleball player and a disc golfer. And I’m very happy with the type of things that I get to do out here.

 

James Nathan  02:36

What is a pickleball player

 

Nate Brown  02:39

Pickleball it is taking the United States by storm becoming a bit of an international phenomenon, although not to the degree that Padel is in Europe. Padel is just exploding, but think of it as Padel except minus the walls, the exterior walls. It’s kind of like a condensed tennis. And naturally we have the US opened going on this week over here. But it’s kind of like a little bit of a slower ball. So you actually get really fast dynamic rallies like in ping pong. When people are slamming it, you have the ability to pop it back over and reset the ball. So it is so much fun. You should definitely look it up.

 

James Nathan  03:19

That sounds absolutely fantastic. And Disc Golf I think is also quite a cool thing. I play…. well. I’ve started playing real golf again. After a 15 year break. My back doesn’t love me like it used to. But this golf looks like a pretty cool thing. How did he get into playing the mandolin? Tell me about that. Because I heard you struggling a moment ago and I was I was super excited.

 

Nate Brown  03:44

The old mandolin. Yeah, that’s a it’s a very fun instrument. I was actually playing guitar at a church over here. And it was in northeast Georgia. And we had a new worship leader came in, he’s like, well, I play guitar. So you’re gonna have to do something else. Why don’t you go buy a mandolin. And I went that week to a little music store in an outlet mall in northeast Georgia. And I bought a little fender mandolin for $200. And I fell in love with this thing and I’ve just been playing ever since for the past 15 years.

 

James Nathan  04:16

Fabulous. I’ve got a little fender ukulele and that my kids learned ukulele at school. Thankfully to schools in the UK and if you want it’s like in the States but we used to all be taught… well I went to school in Australia we were taught to play the recorder which is possibly one of the nastiest instruments in the world. Although very easy to learn, and so over here they’ve started teaching them the ukulele which I thought was really cool and so not to be outdone by my 10 year old son at the time I got myself one and and have annoyed people with it ever since because my singing voice is not well, I’m not good enough is the short answer.

 

Nate Brown  04:54

I’m sure you have a great singing voice and we do penny whistle over here actually have a penny whistle. So it’s a little nicer than a recorder just in its tone, but not much.

 

James Nathan  05:06

Well, yeah, but if you can play it well like that, I’m now imagining you in some kind of musical den with with every instrument under the sun. I’m gonna name something else if you would have you got if you got a harpsichord in there.

 

Nate Brown  05:18

I’m just gonna say yes, I want you to think I have every instrument in the world around me. It’s not that cool, but I do have quite a few things in this office.

 

James Nathan  05:26

Fantastic. No sousaphone either, I guess.

 

Nate Brown  05:29

Oh, no, I wish I would love to play that.

 

James Nathan  05:32

They are incredible things, aren’t they? Everytime I see your marching band was one of those. I just think wow, that’s how do you choose that when you’re at school? Do you think you know what I’m gonna do? I can imagine coming home saying to your parents. I’m gonna play the saxophone and they hold their heads, please don’t

 

Nate Brown  05:47

That’s a great question. I love it.

 

James Nathan  05:50

Well, my brother learned we went to a Scottish School, which is very strange in Western Australia. But my brother decided that he was going to learn the bagpipe. So that was a very terrible few months till he gave that up. Really wasn’t that great. On a complete tangent, you live in the CX world, and everything I’ve read and seen that you’ve produced Nate is all excited about how to make CX so much better for everyone. What got you… What first got you involved? And what how did you get to where you are now?

 

Nate Brown  06:22

Yeah, it began…. So I was managing a technical support environment inside of a major safety science company. And in some ways, just kind of hit a wall with the fact that we were taking the same customer issues again, and again, they were having all this predictable, recurring friction in their journey. Like we’ve got to do something better, to resolve some of this upstream and guide them towards a better place a more seamless experience. I just didn’t have the words yet. So when I found customer experience, it was kind of through the effortless experience by Matt Dixon and the Corporate Executive Board and Rick DeLisi, that book blew my mind in about 2013 and set me on this path of discovery. That led me to a Annette Franz and Jeanne Bliss and Jeff Toister, folks that I would definitely call friends today. And they had been wonderful mentors for me. And I’ve consumed much of their literature, and was able to read a lot of that, kind of let it wash over me and start to dream about what a CX programme would look like inside that CX company that I was serving in. And I just went and did it, I just started this organic programme with a small CX change coalition with some cross functional leaders. And we kick some butt. I mean, we did some stuff in this organisation that had a tonne of inertia, and did not have any maturity on this topic of customer experience, we really had some neat success with it. I was able then to move into a true CX role inside that organisation, and had, and had some success with that it. Not to the degree that I would have expected. And I learned a tonne through that cycle, through some successes and some failures about how to do this work better and different, and was able to springboard off some of that and come in as the Chief Experience Officer at Officium Labs, and start to really help a whole variety of companies with their CX initiatives. And that accelerated my learning even more to see all these different teams and dynamics and, and how much employee experience was influencing it and how important that voice of customer baseline really is. And just got to experiment with all kinds of things. And the more that I do this work, James, the more that I find that it is hard, but it is possible. And when it’s done well. It’s amazing how it can transform an organisation.

 

James Nathan  08:52

Well you mentioned some really fabulous names there. And they’re people that I’ve had the pleasure to interview on this podcast as well. And I hear the same kind of thing from each though, you know, I hear that it is difficult, but it’s possible and, I think about the inertia and businesses and I wonder why it’s there and what we can do to to alleviate some of that and to get the ball rolling a bit faster for other businesses.

 

Nate Brown  09:20

Yeah, I think, I think that is the key. I mean, it takes so long to show and to demonstrate and meaningful CX success that most executives burnout. They become impatient with it and they move on, which is so sad. And I think that’s why Bob Thompson a couple of years ago, wrote his his groundbreaking work around how around 90% of CX initiatives are failing to make a meantingful difference in the organisation. It feels to me like it’s more just what you stated, James, it takes too long. So how do we accelerate it? And you know CX Accelerator is what I named my non profit community, because that is such an important element of this. And I have found, you know, a couple, a couple of magic tricks, I guess you could say a couple things that I think we’re going to talk about in this podcast, James.

 

James Nathan  10:10

Right. Okay, well, let’s, that’s a great thing to start with. So tell me about CX Accelerate, and then perhaps we can get onto a couple of those things, too.

 

Nate Brown  10:17

Yeah, so it’s just a nonprofit community. And it’s something that that we started in 2018. And it was really an a moment in time where I felt very lonely in the work. And I think that that’s something that CX professionals are especially prone to, because I mean, we’re doing all these things to serve the organisation, and to try to align people towards our customer experience strategy, and to help them to understand and to unpack the reality of the voice of the customer. And in many cases, we’re actually identifying more with the voice of the customer than our own organisation. And so we kind of have a degree of separation through that through the integrity of that programme. And then also, and then a lot of times, you know, it’s, it’s, we’re always educating, we’re always having to educate people around why CX is so important, try to convince them to be a part of the initiative and to align into a CX strategy. So we’re, we’re doing a lot of educating and pushing and asking in these things, which is good, you know, that is the nature of the work. But it can be really lonely, and it can be easy to burn out. So by having a community function around, you have people that aren’t in your organisation, that you’re not trying to convince how important CX is, but that are inspiring you and educating you on different ways to bring that work and unlocking inside of your organisation that can make all the difference.

 

James Nathan  11:44

Right. Right, fantastic. But it’ll be I get…. when you were speaking there, I get this kind of baffling in my mind. And I get it all the time when I’m talking around CX, because we all know that it’s much harder to get a new customer than it is to look after an existing customer. We all know that good customers tell other good customers about us, and that people who enjoy working with us want to do it more. But then you talk about, you know, C suite people getting bored of the process of improving the CX. And I might… why is that because it is clear that good customer experience is going to produce more profit in the long run.

 

Nate Brown  12:26

Yeah, I think, I think there’s a shortcut mentality that we’re all addicted to, to some degree. And I’ve seen some really sad stuff on LinkedIn, I don’t know if you’ve been seeing it, James, but kind of the, the next iteration of the great resignation, and this this trend around quiet quitting. And then this idea of people severing working relationships now because they don’t have time, or energy, or enthusiasm to really get to know their peers, it just doesn’t matter that much anymore. They’re working remotely anyway, just let me focus on these couple things in my job, and let me move on with my life. And that is tragedy in my mind. I mean, as the CX professional, we’re trying to create meaningful connections, we’re trying to develop relationships, but developing relationships is hard. And I think that’s why people get burned out on this work, because it’s like, well, we, you know, we already did it, we sold them this product or service, you know, we’re showing up we’re doing these things. Why don’t they…. Why don’t they fulfil their end of the bargain, you know, why don’t they just love us and just continue to advocate for us and developing true partnership. To the end, I love using Donald Miller, building a story brand verbiage. We’re not the hero of the story, the customer is the hero of the story. And so they’re trying to navigate this journey to their definition of success, and we are the guide, but to take…. to be the guide, we have to understand where they’re trying to go. And that requires a depth and intimacy in that relationship that most of us don’t have the time or energy or patience to establish to really be the guide proactively. So I don’t feel like most organisations or most executives truly have the appetite to do CX well, at the at the extent that it needs to be done to be successful. So they dabble in it. They put their feet in the pool. They’re like, well, this isn’t working. It’s time to move on.

 

James Nathan  14:20

Right? Yep, no magic bullet, unfortunately, but then no great business has been built with a magic bullet.

 

Nate Brown  14:27

Uh, yeah, most not, at least not for long. Yeah, many, many come out with the magic bullet and they explode onto the scene and grab up all this market share or establish a new market around them. But then without that true brand core and the ability to deliver on that over time, through that customer experience capability. They wash out in a period of months. We’ve seen it so many times.

 

James Nathan  14:51

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because there’s some big brands and some big names we used to you know, we were talking on this podcast recently about Nordstrom and you know, the stories that come from businesses like that. And there are dozens of businesses like that, that we could, we could talk about. And they all start with a lovely story of, you know, selling shoes or Walt Disney drawing a mouse or whatever it might be. But they are businesses that are very B2C, and they’re very much about how they expanded known markets. But a lot of the businesses that are growing now, newer businesses aren’t like that they don’t have the ability to, to build that household name identity, like these other businesses have. So how did newer businesses get themselves as established as those more you know, old, old style places?

 

Nate Brown  15:40

Me I like to think about it this way. I mean, you’re you’re establishing the organisation to do some something, something very specific, better than anybody else in the world. So what is that thing and formulating your brand core around that thing, but then having that clarity, and that discipline, to be able to say, okay, who are our customers? Who belongs to us that we can serve better than anybody else, and not trying to be all things to all people, but to have this unique experience that you’ve designed that the ability to deliver that experience well and consistently to build trust, build loyalty, then you go out and you find your customers that belong to you, you bring them in, and you earn the right to grow that relationship with them. And then they’re going to bring in more people just like them, who belong with you. It’s not going to be everybody. But you have a group of customers out there that you can serve so well.

 

James Nathan  16:38

And you said something very interesting that you said earn the right. Because we don’t, we don’t…. We have to earn it, don’t we? It’s like trust, it doesn’t just happen. It comes through concerted effort.

 

Nate Brown  16:50

Yeah, I tweeted yesterday that I feel like people think that trust comes from predictability. It doesn’t come from predictability. That’s not trust. That’s, that’s something much shallower trust comes from understanding the motivations that a person has, and trusting those motivations. I might not know why James, you do anything you do, or why you said a thing that you said specifically. But if I know your heart, and I know what you’re trying to achieve, and what really matters to you, I’m going to trust you to guide us both there. And that’s the way great brands think as well.

 

James Nathan  17:28

And is it trust? Or is it the feeling of trust?

 

Nate Brown  17:32

Doe it matter? I mean, our feelings lead to our behaviour.

 

James Nathan  17:37

Because we will work with people because we feel we can trust them. Aerosol trust probably takes a lot. Well, it does take a lot longer to to get to

 

Nate Brown  17:45

That, that’s a good point.

 

James Nathan  17:47

And you mentioned brand, the brand core, how do you how do you get to the how do you understand truly what the core of your brand is?

 

Nate Brown  17:54

Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s an amazing and it’s not new, but it’s on HBR. And they call it the company identity matrix is literally one of the first things that I use when I come into a new team to help them with their CX initiative. And it’s brilliant, the way they lay it out, they start with the internal layer, then they talk about internal external, how do we start to bring this internal layer out to the world? Then it’s external. So internal, is your mission and values, your culture? What is your attitude? How do you work? How do you behave? And your competencies? What are you really good at? Again, that’s identifying a specific way that you can serve a specific group of people better than anybody else in the world. What are you truly good at? What can you make a difference in? Then you start talking about your brand core, what do we promise, we’re going to do this for you world, we have this competency, this culture, this group of people we have brought together, we’ve created this business, we are going to make a difference for you. In this way. We’re going to be the guide for you in this way. And what are the core values that sum up what our brand stands for. And it’s organisations are having to take a bold stance about who they are and who they are looking to serve. Again, we can’t be all things to all people, not in this day and age, people are being compelled to move towards an organisation that thinks like them and is trying to make the world a better place in the way that they want it to be a better place.

 

James Nathan  19:20

Has that changed?

 

Nate Brown  19:22

Oh gosh, yeah. Gosh, yeah. In my opinion. I mean, it used to be we would just micro focus on the product or service. We didn’t care, quote, unquote, why the company existed. It’s irrelevant. I’m just trying to get a thing. It was a transactional relationship. Now we’re so concerned about how the company is using time and energy and money to change communities to change people’s lives. We want to invest in organisations who are seeing the world the way that we see the world. It used to not matter.

 

James Nathan  19:55

Yeah, nah, I mean I see what you’re saying. I’m playing devil’s advocate a little bit…. You know, if I want to, I want to buy a new car, I want to make sure that car is environmentally accessible as possible, it is the best that you know that it’s using, that they, every part of the supply chain fits with with what I want, because I’m putting my hard earned cash into that thing. But whether that company then goes and does some great stuff in the community, do I really care?

 

Nate Brown  20:27

Well, I mean, I guess it really comes down to what matters most to you. I mean, different people have different motivators of where they’re going to invest their time and energy and loyalty. And if you’re looking for an organisation, who is going to be ultra sustainable, like if that’s the thing that really matters to you is that sustainability component, then that’s what you’re looking at. If you’re looking for an organisation who’s really invested locally, like we have Nissan here in Nashville, and they do so much to invest in Nashville, like, and you feel that like, and so you know, if I, if I’m looking for a car, that’s the first name that’s gonna pop in my head, because they’ve done so much locally in this area. So I guess it really comes down to what really matters to you, James.

 

James Nathan  21:14

Yeah, and I mean, I say I was playing devil’s advocate a little bit because I do like the idea of, you know, corporate responsibility and that businesses do good things. But I’m also I think, personally, I’m my view is that I’d rather they didn’t do bad things. I’m much, you know, I’m happier with the company, he’s just pretty clean, rather than a company that is going out of its way to be other things, because that’s where I like to put my money, the last thing you want to do is, you know, I’ll give you a recent example, you know, buy a VW and find out that all their emissions statistics are nonsense, you know, and then you get paid out a little bit. And that’s nice. But that doesn’t actually undo the bad work that that corporate did. And it does tarnish the name of the long term. What are some of the things that businesses…  you mentioned a couple of things that, you know, when when we started talking there, if I want to change my business’s focus, if I’m working within a business, and I’m, you know, I’m sitting at the board table, I say, right, we really need to look at CX, we need to make sure we’re not just paying lip service to this stuff. There’s a huge number of things that we could be doing. What are those things? Where do they start?

 

Nate Brown  22:23

I mean, to me, James, it absolutely starts with voice of customer, you don’t want to make too many hypothesis is too many assumptions about what your customers actually want to need. So I mean, you’ve you’ve created this brand core, and you’re making a promise to the world about what you can accomplish. Now, you got to marry that with what people actually need to be the guide effectively. So if you try to jump in and start making changes as a CX professional, and start running on these assumptions about this, and that a couple things are going to happen, you’re probably going to miss the mark, and not make a meaningful difference there. Or if you do happen to strike gold, and improve the lives of your customers through one way or another. How are you going to measure that? How are you going to be able to come back to the business and say, Hey, through the CX improvements that we made, we were able to garner this much loyalty, impact customer share share of wallet, by this amount, customer lifetime value, you know, whatever that is, you’ve got to be able to use that VOC engine as a Jeanne Bliss-ism there to be able to come back and demonstrate real value for the changes you made.

 

James Nathan  23:33

And how do you get that information, then it’s all over.

 

Nate Brown  23:37

It’s amazing. And if we think about Voc, and how much it’s evolved over the past 5,6,7 years, I mean, of course, we used to be super dependent on surveys, you know, survey response rates are down, email based, it’s like 1 to 2%. If you have a really good Mobley optimised survey with a great UI, you can be pushing around 5 to 7%, probably response rate on a survey. But generally, that’s not enough. And somewhere for most brands, for most types of customer interactions. It’s going to be what we call unstructured feedback that exists out just out in the world. It could be on community sites could be on forums like Reddit could be in like a gaming community like discord review sites, all all these different environments in which people are expressing opinions and perceptions about your brand. You have to have the ability to go and listen where your customers are talking. Even if it’s not a structured path. So that is so different today.

 

James Nathan  24:37

And how does the magic button work? Because I was having a look at some of the stuff that you know, I was looking at Voice of Customer stuff, and I saw the magic button. I thought wow, I like that. Yeah,

 

Nate Brown  24:47

so I think iteratively when I think about voice of customer I love Brad Cleveland’s example. He talks about a restaurant in Southern California and their voice of customer programme is a three by five note card that they send around with their with their waitstaff every day. And they just simply write down things that they learned about their guests interactions. People love this new dish, that drink is great. This new seating arrangement is not quite working, the sun is right in their face from two to four, what will you they just jot all these things down at the end of the day they come together, they celebrate the changes that they’re making, that are working, where they were able to improve the guest experience. And they learn from each other on the things that could be even better. So they’re curious, they’re experimenting, they’re just, they’re just excited to together enhance the guest environment. That is exactly what we’re trying to do with a good voice of customer programme, and we lose that. So with the button progress, so kind of levelling up. Most of us can’t run run around with three by five note cards. So how do we scale up but yet maintain that same enthusiasm and that same philosophy. So the buttons were meant to kind of scale up a little bit. And it’s just a flashing USB web key that we put on people’s desks that are customer facing. And it was just a simple statement of as you learn from the customer, as they offer feedback to you, you have the honour and privilege of being the voice of the customer, and capturing that feedback, just by hitting this USB web key button. And it just went into a nice little centralised vehicle, a little form, where somebody would just fill out, Hey, what’s going on? What did the customer say? How do they feel about this? Thank you so much. And then we would use that employee in the process of closing the loop with the customer. And celebrating when we will able to make a positive change based on that feedback.

 

James Nathan  26:41

It just sounds like such a brilliant, brilliant idea. I mean, I love the card. I think that’s just, that’s just, you know, some of the best things are the simplest, aren’t they and having something like that, but being able to scale that using clever technology, web keys are things that I guess you don’t really, I when I first saw them, I thought, how do I integrate that into my business? How do I use a web key? How can I get… and for people who don’t understand what you’re talking about? A web key is basically like a USB drive. But it doesn’t have a memory, it just takes you to a URL. So you plug it into your computer into the USB port and boom, you go to the one that we’re talking about with the button as you put it in, you just press the button it takes you, is that fair? A fair way to explain it.

 

Nate Brown  27:21

That’s exactly why and people are like, well, that’s stupid. Just use, you know, a link or something. It’s like, no, no, the point of the button is it gives you a physical visual, and you actually develop some muscle memory, I got buttons that flash and click. Because we’re connecting our body to our mentality, I want somebody to hear customer feedback, and they desire the click, and they see it flashing on. Okay, I’m going to click my button, and I’m going to put in that quick piece of feedback. Because when you send somebody a link via email that’s gonna get buried in 10 minutes, they’re never going to take the time to find it again, we have to connect people’s physical reality to the behaviours we want them to emulate.

 

James Nathan  28:02

Pavlov’s CX clicking button, fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And how did you how did you stumble upon that? Was it? How did that process… How did you go from, I think we need to get out the voice of customer feedback into a centralised place where we can use it. And the button.

 

Nate Brown  28:20

While I was learning from from Jeanne Bliss, I was reading Chief Customer Officer 2.0. And at the same time, I was very convicted. As a contact centre leader, I was managing our Customer Service Centre. And we were just so transactional in our interactions. It was a situation where somebody would resolve a ticket. And then that was it. But there was there was another layer to the interaction where the customer was expressing how something impacted them. There was a feedback component to this interaction. And we had no mentality, no ability to capture that portion of it, it didn’t matter. This is all going into space. And then amplifying the fact that our sales team was having that same problem, actually our finance team as they would talk to people and understand why they weren’t paying their invoice, there was all this rich treasure trove of voice of customer data that was just being immediately disregarded, because it didn’t fit into our existing mentality or process. I was like, I have to change this. And I actually found a little USB web key button that I gotten from an HDI conference. And I was like this is it. It could literally be as simple as this.

 

James Nathan  29:32

I just, I think if, if nothing, everybody listening to this should get on their web onto a browser open up, go for web key, see what you can find because I think it makes absolute, absolute sense. And what are the some of the difficulties, some of the hurdles that people come across when they’re starting to put, you know, a new CX programme in place?

 

Nate Brown  29:53

Yeah, I don’t think that they realise how much of a marathon versus a sprint it’s going to be And there’s really no finish line at all. So it’s not a programme. It’s not an initiative. It’s really a culture change as a net Francaise. I mean, you’re really changing the way that people think about customers and each other as much as they are customers. And then and then understanding together, how can we improve their journey. So it’s going to be things like information flow, it’s going to be things like effort reduction, there’s going to be some sacred cows, some inertia and the organisation that’s going to have to change. And it’s going to take time and unified energy to do it. So having that realistic idea of what this is, this work really is, it’s not the shiny penny, it’s not something that’s going to make a quick impact. It’s not your quarterly revenue, saviour that’s going to ride in on a white horse and help you to make that additional $500,000 that you have to make in Q3. This is not that at all, this is a long term culture change. So I think that’s probably the biggest reason I see so many of these programmes/initiatives fail. And I use those words on purpose, because that’s not even what it is.

 

James Nathan  31:12

How would you define it then? What is it?

 

 

Nate Brown  31:14

Yeah, I mean, it is, it is a culture change, it is a bit of a revolution, and changing the way that you do business towards a more customer centric mentality, customer centric behaviours, and a customer centric strategy that people understand and they’re unified towards executing on together, it’s changing the way you do business over time.

 

James Nathan  31:35

And over time is the key because it is a long term process. But you know, Nate, we could talk about this stuff all day. And I think I might, if I don’t stop myself, before we finish up, and thank you so much, because there’s so many ideas there just in the conversation we’ve had so far that I know people will, will want to use or think around. But if you could give them your your one big thing, your golden nugget, the one thing that they could do in their business today to make it better for today and better for the years to come. What would that be?

 

Nate Brown  32:06

It’s going to be make make experiences that are fun, and compelling and exciting. We forget that part. I mean, that’s kind of been my defining attribute as a CX designer, is I’m thinking about what is going to make this neat, fun, put a smile on their face, even when they don’t expect it. If they’re expecting a remedial transactional experience, and then something happens that actually makes them smile, they’re going to, they’re going to remember that that’s going to stick out to them. I mean, when when we have the ability to be the guide to establish a human to human connection with another person who is navigating a journey, however difficult or easy that journey might be, and we get to be the guide for them. Let’s make that trip exciting. Let’s do it. Let’s do a road trip together with a good playlist and a bingo card or whatever it is that you do to make road trips a little more fun. Think about how you can be that enthusiastic and inspiring guide for them. Because we get too focused in on the science and too focused in on effort reduction and, and you know, just the, the NPS numbers and the in the scores and you know, these different things, when really what we have the ability to do here is to make people’s lives better and easier and to bring harmony into the organisation as an experienced designer. So tap into that superpower and I think you’re going to not only enjoy the work more, you’re going to find more success with it.

 

James Nathan  33:31

Night that is a fabulous way to end. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been lovely chatting with you.

 

Nate Brown  33:37

My pleasure, James, thank you so much. And thank you everybody. Have a great day.

 

NO COMMENTS

POST A COMMENT

Read previous post:
S4e11 The Everything Matters Edition with Lee Cockerell

James chats with Lee Cockerell, retired Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World® Resort. Growing up in...

Close