‘The Human Experience: Whatever Happened to Emotion and Empathy?’, with John Sills
Episode #709 Show Notes:
Clare:
We’re back with another episode of the Inspiring Women in CX podcast!
A series usually dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in customer experience and technology, this series we’re putting some of our awesome allies in the hot seat too!
No longer rehashing the same old conversations, in series 7, you can expect provocative discourse and plenty of healthy debate as we continue to challenge the status quo on CX topics!
I’ll be your host, Clare Muscutt and in today’s episode, I’ll be talking to one of our longest-standing allies, you may have heard of him…
Managing Partner at the customer-led growth company, The Foundation, he started his career 25 years ago on a market stall in Essex, and since then has worked in and with companies around the world to make things better for customers.
Before joining The Foundation, he spent twelve years at HSBC, latterly as the Head of Customer Innovation, and his first book on the topic – The Human Experience – was published by Bloomsbury in February 2023.
Without further ado, allow me to introduce today’s incredible guest, John Sills!
Clare:
Hi, John.
John:
Hey, Clare. You alright?
Clare:
I'm great. Welcome to the inspiring Women in CX podcast.
John:
Thank you. I feel very privileged to be here. Very privileged.
Clare:
Only the second of our allies to join us on the show. So, we're super excited that you're here. And, yeah, obviously we've known each other quite a while now, so I think maybe that'd be a good place to start, just to tell the audience a little bit more about how we first met and your involvement in Women in CX so far.
John:
Yeah, I think it's a very modern meeting, isn't it? So, I think you might correct me. I think we met four or five years ago when I set up my Instagram account, which was CX Stories, which was all about trying to collect together many good, but mostly bad customer experience examples. And then I started following a few people on there that I could see were active in customer experience, and that was you. You were one of those people. And then I think we ended up doing the thing where you kind of like each other's posts and chatting a bit about funny things that we saw, followed each other on LinkedIn. And then I think we started talking a bit about the book you were writing, and we just started kind of sharing ideas from that point on. And I think it went from there. So, I think it was probably.
John:
I think actually, we had a couple of years of that before we actually met in person. I remember that that was in a bar in Soho. I remember we met there.
Clare:
It was because the pandemic happened, didn't it?
John:
Pandemic happened. That was it. So, we didn't, we didn't get to meet for quite a while because of that. So, yeah, I think that's how we met. And then, yeah, I've loved following what you can do with Women in CX and been really, really pleased that, yeah, you've asked me to kind of be involved in the conference, and you guys came over to the office, didn't you? Had a group, you come over to the office when you're working on the strategy. So, yeah, it's been great to kind of be from afar and a bit closer to what you've been, what you've been doing and what you've been achieving.
Clare:
Yeah. And you came and did a webinar in the community as well, didn't you?
John:
Did a webinar. I did a webinar about the webinars. Two webinars, I was going to say, I think I've done two, haven't I? Yeah, I think I've done two, so. Yeah, I'll be very familiar with my face now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of involvement.
Clare:
Yeah. But still, to this day, the funniest man in CX, as I introduced you to the stage at the conference.
John:
Yeah, I'll have that on my grave. It's a lot of pressure, but I'll have that on my gravestone, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. I do need to make sure I live up to the billing now.
Clare:
I know, I did set you up for that, didn't I? At the conference as well, everybody remarked how actually genuinely hilarious you are and how human you make customer experience, which, you know, with that being your book.
John:
Yeah, that's the challenge. You know, someone asked me about the kind of leadership and what your leadership quality was, and I've never really thought about that or even if I'm a particularly good leader or not. But I do think kind of being authentic, when I was thinking about it, I was like, I think I'm pretty authentic. I think I'm kind of… you get what you see, and I'm a bloke that grew up in Essex, and I think that's kind of stayed with me. So, I think you're right. Yeah. When you write a book about being human, you do kind of need to be quite human, I think.
John:
And maybe that's partly why I spotted it because you end up spotting things that, you know, you may be seeing yourself you don't see in other people. But I loved the conference. I thought it was fantastic to have so many people in the room together, all with kind of shared goals, but all people that, funnily enough, in some other parts of their life might be kind of competitors if they're in consultancies or they're freelancers or they're just in other organisations that are competing. But the spirit of the day was so kind of positive and about kind of improvement and development for the people there, but also for the industry kind of as a whole. Yeah, I thought it was excellent.
Clare:
Yeah, I know. You and I have been sharing our own kind of, like, thoughts on customer experience events generally, haven't we? And reflecting on how rare it is really to go to one that is just about conversation and dialogue by subject matter experts and businesses and leaders without the agenda of trying to sell anyone anything.
John:
Exactly. You know, when I was at HSBC, I used to get invited to conferences all the time to go and speak. And you know, it made me feel really good, you know, clearly, people wanted to hear what I had to say. And then I left HSBC to become a consultant and I realised people just wanted the brand because all of a sudden I was being asked to pay £15,000 to go to conferences. And it's kind of an odd thing. Now I'm like ten years more experienced than when I left the bank. I've written the book and all these kinds of things.
John:
I'm far more interesting, I think, to listen to now than I was ten years ago. But now I'm still kind of asked to pay a lot of the time to go. And it's exactly that. So many of the events just have… they're built around the sponsors, not around the delegates. It's a little bit like, I suppose a kind of analogue version of Facebook, you know, where, you know, you as the user, what you're really there for is to get the advertisers. Like, the advertisers are the customers, they're the paying customers of Facebook. And as the user, you're the product, your data is the product.
John:
And I guess it's a similar thing with some of these conferences where, you know, if you go along to the conference and you might go through, you might pay, but if it's full of sponsors, you're the product that the sponsors are buying. Whereas what, yeah, what I love about WiCX, and we have one called Foundation Festival, we just started this year as well, you know, I think the purpose of those is much more genuine and it is genuinely about trying to make the world better, trying to make the world more customer-led, trying to help each other do better with our own development without that, you know, underlying kind of sales element to it.
Clare:
Yeah, yeah. But I don't think many people realise, because I know when I was Head of Customer Experience at Sainsbury's and I get asked to speak and invited to these kinds of events all the time that I'd never really kind of seen, that there's this like massive sponsor hall and they were booking meetings for me with like technology vendors and actually on the bill as like a business side person gave the event credibility. And it's free to go and they put you up overnight. And I thought, oh, this is lovely, but actually, like, someone was paying a lot of money for me to be there, but they didn't pay me for my speech. But hey, yeah, yeah, it's very clever.
John:
It's a really clever business model, really. And I should say, you know, I'm not being too down on the conferences. We've started to speak at a few, you know, we've paid to speak at three or four in the last year. And actually, they've been really good. Like, we've met really good people. I think there's actually a funny advantage for us that we can ignore the other sponsors, so we just get to talk to the delegates and actually, you know, you meet people that you know already, you get to catch up with old clients, old colleagues, and you get to, you know, they have been really good. But I also then don't get to go to many of the talks, and that's where I'm less sure if they're as impactful. But yeah, they're still, I think, interesting to go to.
Clare:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I owe you a favour. So, if you need anyone to speak at the Foundation Fest. Is it, is that right?
John:
Foundation Festival. But last year was our first one, so we're planning this year's one to see what we do. But, yeah, definitely keep in mind, yeah.
Clare:
If you want me back. Okay. And yeah, so I think drawing that together, we talked about kind of conferences and stuff, but fundamentally, Women in CX was an organisation designed to meet the needs of women in customer experience and technology. And we built this, I suppose, quite insular, safe space where it was about women being there to support one another and champion one another. But the gendered nature of the community meant that we'd kind of evolved this amazing culture of kind of sisterhood and sharing, and we hadn't really thought about men at all. So, whilst we're not planning to open up our safe space to men, we also recognise the importance of women can't solve some of these challenges alone. We need allyship, we need support, we need conversation around these issues, and we need to work together to solve them. It isn't something that women can do entirely in isolation.
Clare:
So, yeah, having you and Ian at the conference and bringing male speakers into the webinars was a step forward for us. And yeah, you being on the podcast right now is, I think, you know, an even bigger statement. So, I just wondered what your thoughts are on the importance of allyship.
John:
Yeah, I think that's exactly. Well, like I said, I was really kind of proud and privileged. This makes you sound like a LinkedIn post, doesn't it? Humble… but no, to come along to the conference and be on the webinars. And I think I had a couple of conversations on the day with people about this, actually. And I think it is really important because I think what you're doing is really, because clearly, I mean, it's funny, you said you don't really think about men. Well, I think part of the problem is a huge amount of men haven't really thought about women for centuries, millennia.
John:
And that's kind of partly why we're in the situation we're in with things still being unbalanced and that need to kind of get to that proper equality. So I think it's absolutely right that there is that space and that area for women to get together to share their thoughts, and challenges, to have an opportunity to promote each other, to create opportunities for each other without some of that kind of artificial suppression that happens in big organisations as well as kind of share kind of ways, support for ways around when you're trying to deal with some of those issues that still exist. But having said that, certainly my view is what we're all striving for is equality. And that means men and women being treated in the same way, in a fair way, having fair opportunities, being able to help each other out, and getting rid of a lot of the biases that have been there in the past that have caused problems. And so, for me, the kind of way to do that is, as you say, for men and women to work together in lots of ways to make that happen. And if we stay completely siloed, then that doesn't really get to the outcome either. It can probably help in different ways, but it doesn't really get to the outcome. So, there is that need, that Venn diagram to have those crossover points and have people that are being allies, hopefully, both ways as well, to help, you know, men and women get to that point of equality.
John:
And I think it also really matters because, you know, I've learned a huge amount from watching you, understanding what you're doing with WiCX, meeting lots of other people in WiCX, about some of the challenges that you've had in business that I might have otherwise been blind to, you know because I just don't see it with my perspective and my background. So that's really important as well. I think it's important, I suppose, because sometimes, I guess when you talk about an ally, it feels like, oh, I'm doing something really good for you by being allied to you. But it's really not like that. It's about a relationship, and hopefully, me being an ally to WiCX and women in work, in general, is good, but actually, the point is I'll probably learn even more, which can make me a better person to help to make the whole system work better as well. So, I think that's why it's important to kind of keep having that balance and keep having those kinds of cross-gender relationships if you want to call it that because I think that's ultimately what gets us to equality rather than complete silos in different areas. I think that's my view. But I don’t know what you think.
Clare:
I like and respect your view, and it is… you’re entitled to your view. I was just thinking about that was allyship in itself, the fact that, you know, that you haven't experienced some of the challenges that women face, but you haven't like immediately discounted them because you don't experience them. I think in amplifying the voices of women the way that we have, particularly through things like the podcast, like, we've been able to show the world from an intersectional point of view as well. Not just from a gendered perspective, but also like race, sexuality, divergence from like neurodivergence or physical ability perspective, that just because you don't experience those challenges yourself, here's like a view into what it's actually really like. And so, I think, you know, just we get a lot of questions around why women's communities need to exist. Why, what's the point of Women in CX? Like, you know, from men, but you know, you from day one, you recognise the need for it and supported that. I think also like other examples, I think like advocacy and sponsorship, you know, being able to reach back into the community with those opportunities, because you've recruited quite a few freelancers from within WiCX and given them opportunities for paid work, like recognising and spotting that there's an opportunity to tap into an underrepresented group in the marketplace.
John:
Yeah.
Clare:
And to create that. And obviously, that's great for you because you've tapped into some amazing people and yeah, I guess just that vocal sponsorship in a way, because like the listeners probably won't know, but we've never had a strategy until this year, and I didn't know how to do it because I'd never worked in business strategy. And you know, talking to you about like, well, how do we even approach this? You gave me a framework, you let me use your office. We brought the team in for two days into The Foundation. Like all of those opportunities to access like that, I guess, yeah, sponsorship and support, like we wouldn't have access to otherwise. I think it's those kinds of things, maybe, that men don't consider as allyship when it really is.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right. It's really, it's kind of. It's really. Yeah, it feels really good to hear. And I think even that it's… There are two really interesting things there. One is, I think it's interesting people that work in that kind of work.
John:
And I guess in my background in customer experience all the way through my career, you know, a big part of that is about, can you put yourself in other people's shoes? Can you understand that you don't understand? You know, it's getting away from that curse of knowledge. You know, I've never been a fan of the phrase “Treat people how you want to be treated” because I think that's the opposite. You want to treat people how they want to be treated, like, you know, and so I think that that ability to kind of recognise you won't understand someone else's perspective. And, as you say, listen to it but not discount it is, it's incredible. I mean, we see it all the time. I mean, it's incredible how many people just discount other people's experiences because they've not lived it themselves. And you think there's 10 billion people on the planet.
John:
Like, you can't, you can't, surely you can't believe that you, a 54-year-old man living in Solihull, has had the same experiences as everybody else on the planet. But, you know, the people do, don't they? And. Yeah, so I think that's. I think that probably comes, hopefully with the territory of working in the world that we do that level of understanding is there. But I also think that some of what you said is kind of just about generally a spirit of generosity, a human just being a nice human, you know? And I'm really pleased we were able to, for you to come in and use the offices... I'd also like to think that if I knew, you know, a group of men that wanted to do that, that I'd still be as generous and bring them in.
John:
But I think it's just making it really clear that the offer's there and you can come in. And I think it's that kind of, you know, being able to have worked with you over the past few years in that way, knowing what you're trying to achieve. I think that makes it, and being really impressed by that, makes it, I think, probably more likely for me to go come on, Clare, come and use our place and, you know, that kind of thing, I think.
Clare:
And for anyone who's actually watching the podcast on YouTube, John’s actually stood in the room where we did our workshop and came up with WiCX strategy ‘24 and beyond.
John:
Covered in post-its. Covered in post-its.
Clare:
You couldn't see through the walls, could you? Because literally, we'd covered the entire, every surface that was possible to have post-it notes on it had post-it notes on, which is what those spaces are for. So, I'm going to ask you a bit of a provocative question based on the conversation we've had thus far, and it is actually about customer experience. So, what are your thoughts on the eligibility of empathy and customer experience, having said what you've just said, like, what would you say on that matter? How possible is it to be genuinely empathetic when you don't have lived experience?
John:
I think it's a brilliant question. I think you can because I think you can still be human. You know, you can still recognise emotions. You know, I was very lucky when I worked at HSBC. I got to work across 20 different countries. When I was in global customer experience, I got to work across 20 different countries. And that allows you to see what's true in every market, for every customer, in customer experience and what's different. And I think that helps you start to get a feeling for what are those kinds of almost core human traits that are kind of there for everybody.
John:
So, for example, the need to feel certainty. You know, for most people in any walk of life, you want to feel certainty because a lack of certainty makes you feel a bit worried or concerned. Now, there's some people that have different tolerances of that, where that kicks in at different levels. There are some people who deliberately choose to find uncertainty because they find it thrilling. So, for example, if you love big roller coasters or you love base jumping, that's kind of what you're doing, you know? But, you know, most people react, but so I think you can, you can do that. What I think is much harder to do is for someone to tell you their experience and for you to say, I know, I know how that feels. And I generally would suggest that's not actually a good way of giving a good customer experience. I think it's much better to tell me how that feels, tell me how they feel.
John:
Because, like, even if you have, even if it was my best friend who's the same age, grew up in the same place. We even called the same name. I might think that I really know how that feels, but you can never really know what it's like for someone because there's so much going on in people's heads, people's backgrounds. You just cannot think in that moment. Someone once gave me a good example. They said you should never finish someone's sentences. You know, if. You know, if someone's, like, struggling for a word and you just helpfully go, oh, whatever, chocolate or you fill in a sentence, they go, because that presents a huge arrogance on your part that you know what they were going to say.
John:
And I really like that. It's just a principle, actually. Cause I thought, you're right. It's so much more powerful to ask questions. Tell me how that feels. You can reference about the emotions. I can see you're feeling upset about that. I'll see you angry about that.
John:
But I think that need to kind of ask get people to explain it themselves, that's so much more powerful. And then you can empathise with the feelings of the situation with certainty because of what they've told you, as opposed to trying to almost make it about yourself, and go, yeah, I've been through that. I've been through that. And that's, I think, really unhelpful. And sorry, I'm rambling slightly, but just. It's a bit like if. I don't know, if you've had someone close to you pass away and someone else says, oh, yeah, I had that last year or something, it kind of helps, but it kind of doesn't, because it's not a competition. It's not like, were you sadder than me, or did this affect you? It's like I just got to sit with my own feelings, and I just kind of need someone to listen about how I'm feeling.
John:
So, I'd probably. That's probably how I look at it, I think is the best way of dealing with it, whether you have been in the same situation or not.
Clare:
Yeah, that makes total sense. So empathy is more about listening and understanding someone's lived experience and being able to empathise with the emotion that they felt rather than the situation or how it affected them, and ultimately compassion and humanity are the road to doing that. I think it's really important as well because so much of CX these days is not based on listening. It's based on telling. It's based on frameworks and trying to push an agenda. Or, like, I hate the word, like, evangelising customer experience rather than just really listening to the humans in the business, whether that be the business stakeholders, the voice of the business is just, you know, as important as the voice of the customer, as is the voice of the employee.
Clare:
And, you know, I think whether you're inside, on the business side, or as a consultant, 90% of your engagement should just be asking questions… find a helpful point of view.
John:
Completely agree. Someone once said to me, I went on a training course years ago, which is, you can always measure how good you are as a listener, really, that the other person should always be speaking 80% of the time. That should be your aim in any meeting, in any conversation that the other person speaks 80% of the time. And if you've not done that, then you're not listening. You're not listening well enough. I think that's exactly right. Just that ability to, ability to listen, ability to sort of sit with people, and the kind of ability to understand. And the biggest challenge I think the CX industry has got is the fact that it's become an industry.
John:
And so, you know, to your point about the way CX is at the moment, it shouldn't exist. Like, it just shouldn't exist. Like, you shouldn't have to constantly remind businesses that their customers matter. Like, it's kind of, and the problem that it's become an industry means you obviously get lots of big organisations wanting to sell stuff, like measurement frameworks and measurement systems, and they sell stuff. And so those things go into the organisations, and then that becomes the way CX works. And it's really not how CX should work. So that's the kind of slightly difficult challenge, kind of like an inception-like challenge for the CX industry is its existence is the problem.
Clare:
Actually love that inception challenge within CX, within CX, within an organisation. But I agree, and I think CX technology is set to become a $38 billion industry next year. Just CX technology. And there's a finite amount of resources and cash to fund activity that benefits customers. And what a lot of companies end up investing in is something that the customer will not directly benefit from at all. Having data, insight and feedback is important, but there are so many other things you could do with a couple of million quid that would directly impact customers and be noticeably felt in their experience and have a knock-on impact on the business outcomes. Conversely, investing in systems that make employees’ jobs easier to do so they can deliver better service.
Clare:
When I was in business and when I advised businesses, I think that's one of the later things in maturity, I'd say is required. Not one of the first things, but it ends up being the first thing, as you said. And everything gets built around the survey or the feedback tool or the metrics are what we're trying to alter rather than the quality of the experience or the human aspect. So, yeah, I was going to ask you what you thought of the current state of CX, but you've told me.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose just, I think there's just two different questions there. So, I think there's the current state of customer experience, as in the experience that customers are getting and that is not in a good place. Like, you know, the number of problems are flying through the roof, satisfaction hasn't moved, and organisations have taken a lack of ownership. There's a real kind of parent-child problem between organisations and customers, both actually to blame, in a slightly odd way. A lot of the kind of way we deal with social media has kind of started coming out in organisations.
John:
A lot of the generation that came through the financial crash and were brought up taught to kind of hate companies and hate banks and hate capitalism are now coming into leadership positions. And that's causing real problems, I think, in the way organisations are working. There's a real problem with customer experience. Kind of flicking what I said on its head. The actual customer experience industry, I think, is thriving. I don't think it should exist, but I think it's thriving in that it's never been bigger, it's never been busier. It's got a whole load of money coming into it. Whether that's helping improve the customer experience, I don't think it is.
John:
And I think the stats prove that. And you could take any part of that 38 billion and turn it into better training for frontline teams and probably a few more people in the contact centre and you'd instantly increase the actual experience for customers overnight. Really? So, there are kind of two different answers to that question, depending on which angle you're looking at it from, I think.
Clare:
Yeah, no, that's super clear, and I agree with you.
Message from WiCX Founder & CEO, Clare:
Sorry to interrupt your listening, but I just wanted to take a break to tell you a little bit more about WiCX. We’re the world’s first online membership community for women in Customer Experience, our mission is clear, and that’s to unleash the power of women to lead the future of human-centred business.
Working in CX can feel lonely at times. We’re often singlehandedly trying to change the way that organisations think and behave about customers.
On our paid platform, discover a vibrant tribe of female professionals, find support from knowledgeable peers, learn best practices from experts and practitioners, and be inspired to up your game through leading-edge CX/EX thinking.
If you feel like you aren’t making enough progress with your CX objectives, are unsure what your next move looks like or are struggling to achieve your career ambitions, you’re not alone.
To learn more about membership, see how women are progressing personally and professionally with the support of the #1 community in CX, and apply to join us today, visit www.womenincx.community/membership.
I really hope I get to see you there soon!
Clare:
So, bearing in mind the current state, where do you think we're heading?
John:
As the industry or as customers?
Clare:
I think given that you'd split it out so succinctly into customer experience being something customers experience and customer experience, let's say management or industry, let's do it both ways.
John:
Yeah. Well, I think the industry is easy to answer because that's inevitably going AI. So, I was at a conference last week and every other stand around had AI written on it somewhere. I'm not sure they all knew what that meant, but it was on there somewhere. And so, I think you can already see there's some really cool stuff coming out from Zendesk, and you can see this kind of… We've had this really difficult period of chatbots that are just awful. Just like escape room gatekeepers are getting away, they've been awful. While companies have spent a whole lot of money putting them in and cutting down on the people, it's just been a bit of a disaster.
John:
I think you can see that we're probably heading towards a better future because when you start to get more generative AI coming into those chatbots, they're going to be way better. They're going to be way better. So that is definitely going to improve, and it should really help people in the contact centres. There are some great studies being done recently that show that for new people who, a new person in the contact centre using AI to support them, their kind of quality of reply is like 40% better. Interestingly, for experienced people in the contact centre, it made no difference. So, there's a point where the AI stops being any better than a really good person, but there is a big chunk of people that are new and that are going to improve. And that matters because, as you know, in contact centres, the turnover is so high. So that's…
John:
That's, I think, really positive. But that's where the industry is going to go with its money. Hopefully, it will stop putting so much into feedback surveys, but I suspect not. So, I think that's still there. Overall, I'm kind of still on the fence. I'm not overly optimistic. I don't think about where the world is going.
John:
I have to be really careful saying the world because it is really different in different markets. A friend of mine from South Africa came to visit the UK recently and was really shocked by the standards of customer experience in the UK. And she said, actually, in South Africa, it's still really high and her view was, because all the organisations are still really trying, they haven't kind of reached this point of scale where they just feel so secure that they have to stop trying. So, she felt like all the organisations in South Africa still really tried to run your business. Whereas I think if I talk from the UK perspective and I think from the US, I think it's really hard to see how you're going to get out, how we're going to get out of this low that we're in and this kind of disparity between organisations and between customers, even the disruptive start-ups, if you look at Uber Eats and Just Eat and Deliveroo, they've got awful customer experience, really bad customer experience, but they're cheap, and they claim to be cheap. So, people don't kind of mind as much. So, I'm less optimistic.
John:
I think that in the next five years, we're going to see a dramatic improvement in customer experience. People like Octopus Energy do give me hope because they're a fantastic organisation. I write about them in the book and they're making big waves in a big difficult industry, and I hope that might become a bit of a standard bearer. So, I'm really winning them on as they get bigger to keep hold of their kind of customer experience standards and the way they are as an organisation.
Clare:
You heard it here first. And for anyone who's listening, I'm sorry, just listening to the podcast rather than watching it, I’m holding up a little octopus. I am an Octopus Energy customer and definitely I'm feeling the benefit of their acquisition because I was a Bulb customer previously. It's a nice customer experience. It really is a very impressive, very impressive business. So, I just wanted to pick up on one of the things that you said there. So, in the future, the technology will go more into technology like artificial intelligence that aids contact centre agents to do a better job for customers. There was one thing was that perspective on spending less on what at the moment is like massive surveys.
Clare:
Right? So massive investment in surveys. And I just remembered at the conference you talked about the fat end of the wedge and the thin end of the wedge. I don't know if you want to share a little bit more about that with listeners.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's my favourite thing to talk about, actually. Yeah. So, if you imagine your customer’s life as this kind of wedge shape, and at one end of the thick end of the wedge, you've got all the things that really matter to them. You know, you've got their hopes, dreams, ambition, friends, family, work, you know, the things they're trying to achieve. Then you've got the things that get in the way and the challenges they have, the services they use to help. And then right at the very thin end of the wedge is you and your organisation, any organisation, a very tiny part in the customer's overall consciousness, in their overall life, the things they're trying to achieve. And the problem is we've never had more customer data than we have now coming into organisations.
John:
But 99% of all of that customer data is at the thin end of the wedge. What do you think about us? What do you think about our service? What do you think about our product? Would you recommend us? It's really, really inside out, and that's dangerous because it convinces leaders that they're close to what matters to customers, whereas, in truth, they're only really close to customers’ opinions of their business. There's a very subtle, but very significant difference as to whether organisations and leaders in organisations really understand what matters to their customers. And that matters because the most trailblazing organisations, where they start from the thick end of the wedge, they understand what matters to customers, understand their role in their lives, and work out how they can be most useful to them there, not just repeatedly ask you, are you happy with the service that we get at the moment, which makes you feel like you're understanding people, but you're really not.
Clare:
Is that a vote for research over feedback?
John:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is. It is in the loosest term, I would kind of describe it, we call it here at The Foundation, immersion, customer immersion because I think what you need is, you know, if you go into any organisation and you know this, Clare, that if you get kind of, any kind of customer data, and it's presented on PowerPoint and PDF, if there are things on there that people don't like, they'd rather question the methodology than accept the inconvenient truth, you know, they'll kind of go, whoa, it's not the right sample or what? We didn't really ask enough people. Oh, it was raining that weekend you asked people, it doesn't really count. Whereas if you get people face to face, this is a big part of what we do at The Foundation, is get senior leaders to go shopping with customers, to go to customers’ houses with their permission, to do video diaries with customers. Get real immersion in the customer’s lives. You still might not like what you hear, but you can't deny it's true. You cannot deny it's true. It's a lived experience of that person, and that's what gives you that emotional, visceral connection to what really matters to people. That gives you the conviction to then get into action. That's what you need.
John:
That's really what you need if you're going to be able to see big changes in organisations. So, the surveys are fine as long as people understand the role that they play. And it is important to understand how your transactions are working, albeit you can get most of that from the data you've got already, but that matters. But if you really want to understand customers, you've got to get out there with them. You've got to go into their world. You can't just ring them up every time they complain and claim that that's a customer's place in this program because it's not.
Clare:
And obviously, that is super clear how you do that in a consumer environment. But what about in B2B? What does customer immersion for B2B look like?
John:
It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. It's funny, I get asked that question, I think every week, because we work, about 30% of our work is with B2B. And ultimately, businesses are still run by humans. Like, there's still people, you know, in there. And of course, different sizes of businesses, it makes it a little bit different. But, you know, if your… If one of your customers is a 500-person business, well, you still want to go out and meet the CEO or the CFO.
John:
You can still go and spend a day in the factory or the warehouse or their contact centre or their head office. You can still spend time with the business. You can use their products. You can be a customer of that business. If you're talking massive, if you're starting to talk kind of Tesco size again, it's slightly trickier, but you can still go and spend time with whoever your relationship is with in there. You can still spend time in that office. You can still go and be a customer. You know, it's still about human-to-human connection.
John:
You just need to understand who are the people that we need to understand and where are they, and let's go and spend time with them, whether that's in a conference hall or whether that's in a front room.
Clare:
Yeah, I suppose that also translates to employee experience as well, doesn't it? Like being able to really get immersed into the reality of what it's like to work for your organisation when you're sitting at the top table, quite far removed from operational realities?
John:
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right.
Clare:
So, what do you think the main barriers is? So, start the question again. What do you think the main barriers or challenges that we need to focus on right now are in order to get to a better future?
John:
Yeah, I mean, so I would say this, given the book that came out, can we say, yeah, The Human Experience. I've got this far into the podcast, and I've not said the title of my own book. It came out a while ago I am, you know, I would say this, I think it is that humanity. And actually, to make that clear, I think it's about common sense and straightforwardness. If I were to all the way down, if I was to get organisations to do one thing right now, I'd be looking at language, straightforward language. I'd look at the way you talk to each other as colleagues.
John:
I look at the way you talk to your customers. It is an incredible thing that happens in organisations where we're all humans and we all speak in a normal human way. And then we go into the office or we open up our laptop and we just start typing in a funny way, we start saying kind regards and best wishes and, you know, as per my previous email and all these, you know, all these kind of phrases that we use, you know, I hope this email finds you well, that's my pet hate. Like what? How does that even? How can an email find you well? Like what does it even mean? I don't, but everyone writes it. I hope this email finds you well. Why do we do it? So anyway, I'm getting quite het up about this, but we do, but we do the same. When you look at organisations, and how they write to customers, they just write in this language that people just don't use, like real people don't use.
John:
Now, it comes from this thing called the curse of knowledge, which you'll know, a behavioural science bias, which is once you know something, it's really hard to remember what it's like to not know it. It's just really difficult. So, when you've been in an organisation for one year, five years, ten years, you know when you start to look at places like financial services, 20 years, it's just really hard to know that some people just have no idea what an overdraft is. And so, you write these letters that you think are clear and straightforward and they're really not. So that would be my number one thing, actually. If you, if you just want to start with something, get much clearer, much more human and straightforward on your communications, written, spoken to each other and with customers, and that will go quite a long way to just reducing customer frustration before you can even start to do some of the other things.
Clare:
I agree. Yeah. And sometimes the temptation is to go to like big, shiny, technology-oriented solutions that require a lot of investment, a lot of time and a lot of risk, when actually there are some super simple human things that could be done better and have a compound effect of probably a similar level of impact, or maybe not.
Clare:
So… Oh, yes, I was going to say. So, as you know, because you were at the conference, Women in CX is becoming the movement for human-centred business. What kinds of things would you expect to see from us going forward?
John:
As Women in CX, do you think?
Clare:
Well, yeah, Women in CX, the movement for human-centred business.
John:
Yeah, yeah, I think. I think it needs to be. I think I went to the point earlier, I think there's a lot about authenticity that still gets missed out. So, I think it's very easy maybe to focus on humanity and customer experience and what that looks like. But actually, when you talk about human-centred business, so much of customer experience comes from how people act with each other within the business. You know, showing each other respect, being very authentic people, speaking in an open language, being empathetic to each other. And if you do that with each other as colleagues, you will naturally probably do that far more with your customers, though, I would expect. And I would think that you may end up kind of having a lot more focus and conversations on those areas, which then lead to a much better customer experience because really, human-centred businesses just have human behaviours.
John:
Yeah. All of the people, and I in the book, I kind of quite candidly try and compare it to just having a real relationship. So, think of all the things that create a really good relationship with a partner. And actually, they're the kind of things you just want, you know, like, you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be with someone if every time you message them, they kind of, they report, they message you from like a do not reply message thing. Like, they can message you, you could message them. You wouldn't be with them if when you rang them up, you couldn’t get through for like 3 hours. And they sound like quite silly examples, but it's kind of, it kind of matters, really, because we're paying people to be their customers.
John:
So, I think we can think about that in terms of how we treat colleagues. And that's how you create that human-centred business, I think.
Clare:
Love it, love it, love it. So, final thoughts from you, John. Based on our conversation today, what would one final piece of advice or takeaway be for our audience?
John:
Well, can I do two? Because my first one would obviously be… My first one would be, to be human. Because I have to say that because that's my trademark now, I think.
John:
So, Absolutely, be human. I think the second one would be like, be yourself. I think this authenticity thing is so important, and I think that's true for everybody, men, women, everybody to, you know, the more we can be authentic to ourselves in business and in life, but in business, I think the better the business becomes and the more you understand each other.
John:
And so much in life and in business, the problem is us trying to pretend to be other people because we think we should be, because that's what is expected, and that causes all kinds of trouble. So, I think the more authentic you can be, appreciating it’s easier in some situations than others and easier for some people than others, but the more you can do that, or you can help build a business that allows that, I think the better the world becomes.
Clare:
Love it. I think I probably had a third, which is, remember that 80/20 rule of listening? Talking?
John:
Yeah, definitely that. Definitely that.
Clare:
So, thank you so much, John.
John:
Pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Clare:
No, thank you. And thank you for the previous five years of friendship, support and allyship and just being an all-around awesome human that, as I will ultimately always say whenever I speak to you, John, the funniest man in CX. So, thank you for being here.
John:
I'll take that. Thank you. Thanks, Clare.
Clare:
And thank you to everybody who listened or watched along, wherever you are. We'll see you all next time. Bye for now.
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Inspiring Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt.
If you enjoyed the episode and you don’t already, please, please, please do drop us a like and subscribe to our channel – the bigger the following, the bigger the impact we can create on our mission to amplify the voices of women working in CX and technology!
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