Clare Muscutt talks with Ejieme Eromosele about Emotional Intelligence in Leadership.
Clare:
Welcome to the 4th episode of the sixth series of the Women in CX podcast – a series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in Customer Experience. Listen in as we share our career stories, relive the moments that shaped us and voice our opinions as loudly as we like about all manner of CX subjects.
I'll be your host, Clare Muscutt and in today's episode, I’ll be talking to a community member from New York City. She’s a career customer advocate and has advised some of the world’s best companies on exceptional customer experiences as a consultant at Accenture and PWC and as the Customer Experience Director at the New York Times.
In her current role as GM of EMEA at Quiq, she’s responsible for leading international business by guiding companies in the EMEA region to grow awareness, increase sales and lower customer support costs through conversational AI and messaging. She’s also the Founder of Success in Black, a community for Black professionals in Customer Success. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest, CX sister, Ejieme Eromosele.
Clare:
Hi, Ejieme!
Ejieme:
Hey, Clare. How are you?
Clare:
I'm awesome. And how are you? You're looking like you're in a glamorous location.
Ejieme:
Well, I just started my holiday in Barcelona. I'll be spending a few days in Barcelona and also seeing Valencia on this trip as well.
Clare:
Moi bien! Moi Bien! So, welcome to the Women in CX podcast.
Ejieme:
Thank you for having me.
Clare:
You're welcome. And welcome to everybody who's listening or watching along wherever you are. So, Ejieme, we've got to start this podcast the way I do with all of our guests and that's to ask you how you found your way to Women in CX and what's been going on for you since you've joined us.
Ejieme:
Great question. So, I recently started a new role with Quiq. Quiq is a conversational customer experience platform and we work with some really amazing brands. At the end of December, I relocated to London from New York to help us open our first international office. So, I have a new role as a GM of EMEA, which is really exciting, helping to make companies in this region aware of what we do and try to grow our business with our existing customers. So, when I landed here, you know, I was really on a learning journey and I was trying to connect with as many people as I could to try to understand how customer experience is different in this region. And obviously there are submarkets and kind of subcultures here and so I was meeting a lot of people and I met a guy by the name of Adrian Swinscoe, who I know is a great ally of the Women in CX community. And he said, Hey, you've got to know about this community. And then also, I met a woman by the name of Emily Stevenson. She also is a member of Women in CX and so, you know, we began talking and she, separately from Adrian, mentioned Women in CX and so I said, okay, I have to learn more about this organisation. Let me see how I can get involved.
Clare:
Yeah, and I'm so glad you arrived because we've had loads of fun, haven't we? We met up at the Director's Club, had round table conversations.
Ejieme:
Well, my experience so far has been amazing. I mean, all the women that I've interacted with, some of those events and meet-ups that you've mentioned have been just very collaborative, very helpful, wanting to just help me and see how we can work together. So, you know, it's been a very empowering and just, you know, highly collegial community that you're building.
Clare:
Oh, thank you. It's amazing. And, as I said, ... becoming a really important part of it because I think on reflection, as soon as you joined, you came and took part in those CX Today conversations, didn't we, around International Women's Day talking about women in the context of technology and non-technical roles and all kinds of exciting things have come as a result of that in terms of influencing industry. So, I'd just like to thank you, but also you have your own community. So, tell the listeners a little bit more about that and and how that came about.
Ejieme:
Absolutely. So, about three years ago almost now, I started a community called Success in Black and so, you know, by day I'm a Customer Success Practitioner, still believe in customer-led growth for all industries, but in particular SaaS companies and so I started this organisation three years ago around the time that, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement was starting. And I had several colleagues in customer success ask me how they can help support black talent and elevate the diversity that's needed in our industry and in tech in general. And so I looked around, there weren't any organisations or communities that, you know, were building that and so I decided to build a platform. And so now we've got a community of almost 350 members, over 2000 what I would like to call allies and advocates that want to help us do a few things.
Ejieme:
So the first is, as I mentioned before, really more broadly elevate the topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging in customer success. So, we like to view the work that we're doing not only for black talent, but for everyone that might be different. And we are all different. So, for everyone, so that we could create safer, more inclusive spaces for the companies that we work for. And then in particular, I did want to focus on black talent and customer success and black talent that might not even be aware that customer success is a career opportunity for them. You know, before I even got into customer success, I didn't know it existed. There were a few mentors that suggested it as a career path for me about looking to make the transition from the New York Times. And so, you know, I just see others that might not be aware that this is a great career for them and it's such a wonderful place to be. It's a blend of heart and head and such a great way to help your customers be successful. So, I did want to focus on black talent because I thought it was important as a black woman but our broader mission is to help elevate D and I for for all.
Clare:
Yeah, and that really resonates with me, I guess, with what we're doing with Women in CX, but also that recognition of that intersectionality.
Clare:
Obviously this is a gendered community for us, but recognising the intersections with gender and being able to collectively make customer experience a better place for everybody and our mission is to, I suppose, change the face of customer experience by elevating the voices of diverse women. And it's so powerful, isn't it? And like you say, it's head and heart... definitely making a difference. And you mentioned the New York Times there, so I'm going to ask you the next question, which is what's your career journey been like and how did you get to where you are now as the GM, EMEA at Quiq?
Ejieme:
I was just thinking about this because someone else asked me that. And the way I would summarise it is a series of calculated risks. So, you know, I went, I grew up in New Jersey, went to school super close by in New York. You know, I was ready to leave my Nigerian family home. So I, you know, when it was time to leave, said, you know, I want to go to New York, I want to do that thing. So, I went to NYU undergrad, you know, studied Economics, didn't really know what I wanted to do, stumbled upon management consulting. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do that for a few years. So, started my career at Accenture and so that's really what ignited my, what I like to call customer obsession, you know, and really was, you know, helping call centre leaders with their operations and strategy and implementing technology, right? So, that took me across the world to the Philippines and India, helping to stand up, you know, hopefully, more customer-centred ways of interacting, did that for years. Went, got an MBA, still wanted to do consulting because I just love the diversity of companies I work with, problems that we were trying to help them solve. It was all very exciting and I got to travel a lot, which I love to do.
Clare:
Always nice!
Ejieme:
Yeah. So went to PWC this time because they were standing up their customer practice also did that for a few years and it was to the point where, you know, in management consulting, it starts to become more of a sales-oriented role, right? So you're not leading the projects and doing the work, you're now pitching to clients to buy more work. I didn't really want to do that at that point, you know, I kind of had this icky feeling that sales wasn't for me. And so at that point too, I had been a career management consultant for almost 10 years. And so decided to transition out, kind of looked around, didn't really know what I wanted to do, but an amazing opportunity at the New York Times, you know, happened to materialise and I had a B-school colleague who was on the product team. So, she made me aware of this opportunity. That's a job. And it was a really interesting role. So my title was Managing Director of Customer Experience.
Clare:
Oh, love it.
Ejieme:
Yeah. It was really a brand new role that was created to help The Times and their digital transformation, you know, The Times' revenue had been historically based on advertising revenue, but with the, you know, introduction of platforms like Facebook and Google, advertisers started to funnel more of those dollars to the broader platforms that could have wider reach. And so The Times was really struggling to figure out their business model. They knew that they had individual subscribers who got the physical every day, and they really invested in building out their digital product as well. So now it became time to start to offer that digital product to individual consumers like you and me. And so they had to really start to think, okay, like, what does that mean? What is the subscriber experience? How do we measure subscriber experience? How do we think about how we empower the rest of The Times' organisation from the business side, but of course from the newsroom to start thinking about a subscriber first mentality.
Ejieme:
And so that was essentially my job is to figure it out. So, it was sort of like an internal consultant role. I had a small team, grew that team over time and really got to work across the business with marketing product, the newsroom, which was a fun experience to help map the customer journey on both the digital and the physical products. And then figure how do we measure customer experience and how do we tie that back to the metrics that match the business. So, it was a very fun ride, very great time, loved The Times and their mission and after a few years of that, it was time for me to think about something else. And so this is where some of the calculated risk taking came in. I wanted to do tech. I didn't know what to do with tech.
Ejieme:
And as I mentioned, a few mentors suggested I look into customer success given my experience in management consulting. And I did. And I said, wow, this is a lot of what I did in management consulting, helping businesses be successful, except now you're using that through the lens of technology. And so, you know, got an amazing role as a VP of Customer Success at a company that was doing chat bots at the time. So, coming full circle now with this emergence of AI and all the things. Yeah, and sort of got my first role in tech as a Customer Success Leader. And so I've been at the same company now for a little over five years.
Clare:
Awesome. What a great career story. Just a couple of things that stuck out to me there was this experience as a management consultant and then helping support a business with customer experience during digital transformation. I think that's the bit that's quite often missed, isn't it? Understanding the business model change as well as the technology change. So, a lot of the time I bump into digital transformation that's being technology led as opposed to solving problems for customers or a shift in business model that hasn't considered how the customer is going to receive that or the employees are going to need to adopt to the new technologies. So, I can see like how, what great crossover that grounding in management consulting is because you understand business models and business and business change. Yeah, we could talk about that all day, but...
Ejieme:
That's a really great call out that I hadn't fully, I think appreciated. And to be honest, I mean I give credit to the New York Times, right? So, their leadership, part of it was, it was an essential crisis, right? They had to put the customer first, or their business was literally going out of business. And we see that with a lot of traditional media, right? Is that the lean and the advantage of being advertiser focused, the math has changed, right? So, I really give kudos to the New York Times leadership that understood that they needed to better understand the individual subscriber and what their experience was like. And to your point, not a lot of businesses get that, right? You know, they lead with technology, they lead with the product, but really focusing on like, who is the end user? Who is the end buyer, what is their experience and how do we make the experience something that they're willing to pay for and willing to continue to pay for...
Clare:
In a way that's scalable over time. Yeah. And then just the other connection for me was around then into customer success because I think this is like a super interesting intersection with customer experience that again, we could talk about all day and perhaps possibly the theme of another podcast if you'd like to come back. But this evolution of, I suppose platform-based businesses, again, that are actually a lot better at putting the customer ahead of the product in some cases, especially when it's say, platform-based business where there's kind of a network effect going on. You can tell I went to a conference last week and thought about this, but the B2B aspect and the B2C aspect and how much convergence there now is from businesses offering multiple sided models where there is end user and there is business customer, and particularly in the SaaS space, right? So, the notion of customer success being like this evolution of, you know, support and service and sales and product adoption and onboarding, and actually that is an experience in its own right, right? To orchestrate and design, there's not that much thinking, I don't think, about that intersection and how that's evolving either. So, I'm too big to...
Ejieme:
No, it's interesting you say that because I've thought about it, right? And I think that...
Clare:
Well, so in the customer experience sphere, I mean, yeah. So, they've kind of diverged and one is like developing on its own and the other is developing on its own but the intersection isn't...
Ejieme:
I'll share a slide with you, former consultant so I love a two by two, right? So, a lot of people ask, well, what is the difference between customer support and customer service, customer experience, customer success? And I have a two by two, the two dimensions are on the types of things, the types of problems that the function solves, right? Or solve. And then the context, right? So is it a reactive or proactive? And on the dimension of more proactive is customer experience and customer success. Customer service is oftentimes more reactive, right? And they come out to you. The opportunity with customer experience and customer success is if you design for the right journeys...
Clare:
You don't need...
Ejieme:
Exactly. Or you minimise how much, right? How much reactive support is needed. And then other dimension is on is this a strategic problem, is it broad scale or is it more discreet and transactional? So, customer service, again, is oftentimes more discreet and transactional. I need to figure out where my order is that I placed last week, right? Versus customer success and customer experience are more kind of strategic journey-based, different milestones-based interactions. And so, that really helped me understand that they're all linked, right? And they're all reliant on each other, but if you do customer experience well, the derivatives of customer success and customer service will hopefully be a lot better. But yeah, to me they're all sort of one in the same, and can help inform the strategies and hopefully better practices of those other functions.
Clare:
Yeah. And if you can give us that two by two, we can include that in the show notes as a visual. But yeah, I think, and I think that's again, you know, this problem that we're experiencing with digital transformation though is customer service being rebranded, customer experience, but not doing the strategic stuff. And there still being this lack of understanding between customer service as something operational and reactive and customer experience as something potentially, you know, well, definitely proactive. For me, you know, we spend far too much time in surveying iterative improvements like the old-fashioned way of doing customer experience in a linear way towards, with this digital evolution that is here already. And most of the money is being spent there. How can we be proactive in maximising the return on investment of technology through being able to design and facilitate effective non-linear experiences?
Clare:
But that's not the focus of most customer experience professionals or resource being deployed in that area. So again, we could do a whole podcast on that. Listeners let us know in the comments if this is something you'd like us to come back and discuss, we'd totally be up for that. But there must have been some personal or professional challenges or barriers you encountered on this amazing career journey from consulting into the New York Times and then into customer success with some pretty huge brand names there. Would you like to share one of those with our audience?
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Ejieme:
Oh, there are so many. I mean, can I phone a friend, phone my therapist because she's got a whole list.
Ejieme:
I mean, I think maybe the biggest one that comes to mind now is dealing with perfectionism. So, I'm the firstborn daughter of immigrants. I'm an immigrant myself. I came to the states when I was very young, and the eldest, right? So, you know, it was just drilled in me and so appreciative of, you know, my parents leaving everything they know to help their children lead better lives, right? Yeah, instilled in me and they would oftentimes remind me that we brought you to this country to be successful, right?
Clare:
So, wow. Pressure.
Ejieme:
Right. And so I've always had this desire to succeed, to excel, to make my parents proud at the end of the day, right? And make my family proud. And so, I develop perfectionism, which is not a good thing, right? I think people think like, oh, you're a perfectionist. That means like, it's great, it's a great quality. Actually, no. It can be quite debilitating. And so, you know, I am often not able to put something out there because if it's not perfect, I feel a lot of anxiety that it's not perfect. I often can't complete a project because of that. And so, it's something that I have had to deliberately work on so that I can get sh*t done. Excuse my French. Right? Because if you don't, or I find if I don't deal with it, it can be paralyzing, right?
Ejieme:
So, that's something that I have struggled with and have had to deal with in my career. And that's why when we were talking about my career journey, you know, I realised though that I have had, I've taken calculated risks, right? Leaving the New York Times and a great brand, great title, right, to go and, you know, be in a 25 person start-up that no one's ever heard of was a calculated risk. But I knew that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to get into tech, I wanted to learn a different domain. You know, even deciding to move to London also. Risk. Like, you know, I'm now doing marketing demand gen sales. I've never done this stuff before and I'm having to figure it out on my own. And so I look back now and like I still have the little perfectionist Ejieme on my shoulder that, you know, is like questioning, I just decided on the strategy. Like I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm like, you know what? It'll be okay, right? And I've got the other Ejieme, the one that's less of a perfectionist on the other shoulder just saying, just do it. If it fails, it's something that you can learn from. So, this is something that I'm constantly having to calibrate in myself and be self-aware about.
Clare:
Oh my God. I think my therapist would've written the same notes, and just a really similar experience for me because I had that big comfy job in a massive organisation leading customer experience, the thing I loved in a business for like 190,000 employees and like 32 million customers like the destination I thought I always wanted and took a calculated risk to throw it all in and go out on my own. And then the experience of not only going to a 25 person start-up, but starting one in a pandemic. But the perfectionism that I had, I remember someone saying to me earlier in my career, you're a serious perfectionist, and I wore it like a badge of honour. Yes, I am. Over time it served me less and less well. But similarly to you, being plunged into that environment where you are no longer the expert in everything. You don't know the business inside out and back to front, you have to learn skills like as you're going. There just isn't room to be a perfectionist in that space. And I think it's been healing in a way for me to have to do that too.
Ejieme:
Yeah. And even when I, you know, to talk about failure, right? Like failure's a bad thing. You know, when I look at when I have failed technically, there's so much learning that comes out of it, right? And, and I'm a very self-reflecting, and this is what comes with sometimes perfectionism, right? Is that like, you know, we're overly harsh on ourselves. You know, we replay things of like, oh, I could have done this better, right? But when I do self-reflect and I look back and it's like, well, it's not as bad as I thought it was, or, oh, this is what I took away from it. So next time this, you know, broader perspective. So, it's actually been empowering to, yes, I know I'm a perfectionist. I know that this is something I will always probably have to deal with for the rest of my life, but now having the tools and the ability to, you know, properly handle it when it does come up for me.
Clare:
And a lot of it's to do with emotional intelligence, right? Which gives us a segue into what we're going to talk about next. So, yeah, I think there, well, in fact, I'm going to ask you, what do you think intelligence means and why is it so important for leadership, particularly in the field we're in? Why is it so important?
Ejieme:
Yeah. You know, I have been such a student of emotional intelligence now, especially for the past few years with, you know, my journey in therapy and self-discovery and self-awareness. I think that emotional intelligence, you know, plays a crucial role in effective leadership. It is for me all about your ability to, you know, recognise, understand, and manage your own emotions, but then in that recognition that, you know, we're all humans and the people that you deal with every day, your colleagues, your customers also have their own set of emotions that they're trying to recognise, understand, and manage. But understanding how it shows up in what we do, right? You know, we like to say that, you know, as business leaders, you know, we're logical and we're rational, we're all of those things, but we're also emotional. And I think we don't give enough credit to how our emotions show up every day in our lives and how we make decisions and how we interact with each other and how we coach and train our teams, right?
Ejieme:
And so I'm just now just like fascinated by this and, you know, just looking at how emotions show up in my personal journey in terms of even my energy levels in the morning or at the end of the day, and how I can be a little bit more self-aware so I can show up as hopefully, you know, my best self. I think the other aspect of emotional intelligence is really important to me is empathy. You know, I think leaders with high emotional intelligence can oftentimes empathise more with others, right? You can understand different perspectives, you can hopefully understand different needs of the people that you're working with. And I think that understanding and that empathetic understanding enables you to build stronger relationships, establish trust, and create a more supportive work environment. You know, I think that like, who wouldn't want that, right? That's all we desire in terms of our work environments. And oftentimes, it's missing. So, I think that emotional intelligence can help leaders create and foster these environments that, you know, are safer spaces for all of us to do this hard work that we do every day.
Clare:
Yeah, and a couple of things, just reflecting on the points that you made there. I totally get it. Like, when you start to recognise your own emotional world, and it's sometimes chaotic...
Ejieme:
I know mine is.
Clare:
Mine is. The dimension that that throws on sometimes decision making and like recognising, being triggered by something that's nothing to do with the current situation.
Ejieme:
I was highly reactive. Yes. Yes.
Clare:
Yeah. But then once you understand that about yourself, I think it does give you this ability to look at other people and perhaps their reactions in a more empathetic way to go actually. Like if the response was out of proportion, what's going on for you there that you can start to ask that question rather than just react like, whoa.
Ejieme:
Yeah, I cut that person off. I mean, I find, you know, a lot of my journey is extending grace to myself, right? So, going like perfectionism is like extend grace. Like being a human is hard, right? For me, it's hard for all of us. And so to your point, when you start to see that in other people, you know, extending grace and empathy to others as well, I think can help soften some of the more like jagged edges of what we experience every day.
Clare:
Yeah. But I think it's when you're not aware of it in yourself, you can't give yourself grace, then it's difficult to give grace to anyone else, isn't it? And as perfectionists, I know I say I'm assuming you've had a similar experience, the toughest conversations that ever go on in my life were always with myself. Like the...
Ejieme:
Exactly.
Clare:
Yeah, you know, the punishing pushing wherever I internalise that from. Well I know through therapy, but like it was so much a case of me creating that environment for myself and beating myself up about stuff. And I think like doing that work has definitely meant my view of the world externally has changed massively. And my relationships with other people in a personal and professional capacity have improved. But I was just laughing to think, you know, you're working in artificial intelligence and we're here talking about emotional intelligence and the fact that actually in some ways that's what one of the benefits of artificial intelligence is going to be, isn't it? Because it is going to be rational and non-emotional hopefully, unless it gets too intelligent and then takes on our experience.
Ejieme:
Benefit though. I just listened to an interesting, she did a South by Southwest talk, her name is Esther Perel famous, you know, relationship therapist, and she did a talk of South by Southwest and the talk was around artificial intimacy. Another Ai and yeah, I mean two seconds on it. But the takeaway was that yes, artificial intelligence is going to help us in so many ways and we should look at it as a tool to help humanity, but we should look at it as a tool to help humanity create more intimate connections. Because that's the one thing that it won't lack. And that's the one thing that makes us human. And that's what's beautiful about human is our ability to connect intimately, emotionally with others. And so it was just so profound for me, yes, working in AI, embracing this technology, but understanding its limitations and, you know, there's a lot of talk of like, you know, AI is going to replace 50% of the workforce. Yeah, maybe, and the broke transactional, you know, easy-to-process and automate interactions. But where we actually need to elevate ourselves is in these types of connections because that's where humans are powerful. And that's where AI doesn't have anything on us right now. Right. So yeah, it's just an interesting moment to be thinking about intimacy and how we relate to technology, but how we relate to each other because hopefully, these advancements in technology give us more time to be more human and to connect with one another, right?
Clare:
Yeah. Yeah. I know. Again, I could talk about this all day, but the future super agent is the human empathy machine to be able to just focus on those moments of human connection, which are critical in people's lives when solving problems or dealing with issues. It is another side of the coin to think about in that conversation. We're just going to loop back to empathy for a second though because I've had guests on this show who have varying points of view on empathy and one is Sandra Thompson and she says that, you know, empathy doesn't exist because you can't truly imagine what somebody else is feeling if you haven't felt it. So, if we've experienced the same situation, it's possible. Like we just had a conversation that was empathising with one another about our own experiences in discovering our emotional intelligence. And then with Christine Hemphill, who works in the space of disability inclusion, she was saying it's problematic there because unless you've experienced the disability yourself, how could you ever empathise with that? So, I just wondered what's your opinion on how far does empathy, or empathic thinking really extends?
Ejieme:
I mean, I think that, I think I agree with the idea that, you know, being a hundred percent empathetic with someone that looks different for you, right? So like, I experience the world as a black woman, can a white man fully empathise with that experience? Probably not because they haven't lived in my shoes, but I think that the desire to want to connect with someone and understand their point of view should be the goal, right? You know, whether you're fully empathetic or just 50% empathetic, I think curiosity of, and, and maybe even the acknowledgement of, I know that like, I haven't walked in your shoes, right? But if you see another human being in pain, if you see another human being, you know, unhappy, upset, I think at the most fundamental human level, we feel that, right?
Ejieme:
If you see someone else crying, I don't know about you, but I see someone else crying. I'm like, I feel a little thing. And I think we all kind of feel that. But can you fully then say, oh yes, I know exactly what you're going through. Probably not. And I think we should acknowledge that. I think that that's a totally fair statement, but I think the understanding one of then, yes, I haven't walked in your shoes, but the idea that like, you know, I have felt pain. We've all felt pain, right? That piece is what connects us all.
Clare:
Yeah. And I recognize that pain in you, therefore I can not feel exactly what you're feeling, but I can empathise. Exactly. That's much clearer. So, in terms of leadership then, so you talked about kind of emotional intelligence is a competency I suppose, and empathy being one of the capabilities within that. Is there anything else in that space you'd like to share with the audience about leadership capabilities?
Ejieme:
Yeah. Well I think, maybe I started on this or it's implied, but I think self-awareness, right? You know, so start by developing a better understanding of your own emotions, your own strengths, your own triggers or activations. My therapist is saying I should use activations as opposed to triggers. But yeah, like paying attention to your own thoughts, feelings, reactions to different situations. Understanding, you know, the thought process that leads you to certain patterns in your life, and reflecting on how your own behavior may impact others. You know, I think that that's probably a great place to start. We talked about empathy already, I think the ability to actively listen, you know, I think we're in a highly distracting world. There are so many things vying for our attention all the time. Esther Pearl's speech talks about this as well.
Ejieme:
So, you know, how do we actually practice active listening so that you better understand others, as you try to further your empathetic journey to other people as well. You know, being present and fully engaged in conversations. You know, I try to do this too, when I'm even doing one-on-ones with colleagues is like, you know, I've got Slack going, got my phone, and I'm like, I need to be active in this conversation, right? Like, turn it off, ignore all that other things, right? Which is hard to do because again, we have so many, especially as leaders, there's so many things tugging and bying for our attention, right? But I think being more conscious of being more active in our listening, I think is another good thing to kind of think about. Yeah and then I think maybe the last thing is just like continuous learning and being curious and open to, like, we were talking about understanding how we're different, but understanding, you know, that there's so much more to learn about each other. That would be the last thing I would suggest.
Clare:
Loads of amazing nuggets. I'm sure the audience have really loved this episode. So, just to bring it home, if there was one piece of advice or one takeaway you'd like to leave the audience with today, Ejieme, what would that be?
Ejieme:
Wow. Great question. You know, I would leave the audience with, you know, as CX practitioners and, I would like to call myself a Customer Advocate. You know, at the end of the day what we're advocating for is humans, right? You know, we call them customers, we can call them clients. A really good analogy, I was talking to a guy the other day and he was talking about the breakthrough he had, you know, they were doing churn analysis and, you know, they were, and SaaS, you know, it was all about how do we reduce churn? And they were looking at accounts and companies and they were trying to like correlate how to, you know, likelihood to churn. And he's like, you know, yeah, these are accounts, these are businesses, but people make the decision to churn. So, let's take a step back and let's try to understand the individual.
Ejieme:
And in SaaS now it's also buying by committee, right? So sometimes it's not just one person that says, look, we're going to cancel this account. It's a group of people that have had a journey that led them to saying, we don't want to buy this software anymore, right? But this breakthrough was like, let's connect it back to the individual. Do we understand why this person decided or why this group of people decided no longer to be our customers, right? And that, to me, is what I would love to leave the audience with is, yes, let's journey map, let's develop personas and all of that great foundational tooling that we have in our CX toolkit. But let's also understand that there's a person sitting at the other end of this and how best can we weave the personal narratives, the personal anecdotes into what we do as well?
Clare:
I absolutely love that. What a fabulous takeaway. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today, Ejieme.
Ejieme:
Thank you, Claire. Great to have me on and thank you so much for creating this amazing platform for the CX community.
Clare:
You're so welcome and thank you so much to everybody who's listening or watching along at home. Ejieme, if any of our listeners wanted to reach out to you, where's the best place to connect with you?
Ejieme:
The best place is LinkedIn. Follow me, connect with me on LinkedIn. Ejieme is a pretty easy name, not a lot of people like me on there. So yeah.
Clare:
Perfect! That's it everybody. We'll see you all next time. Bye!
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Inspiring Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the episode, please drop us a like, subscribe and leave a review on whichever platform you're listening or watching on. And if you want to know more about becoming a member of the world's first online community for women in Customer Experience, please check out www.womenincx.community/membership.
Join us again next time when I’ll be talking to one of our community members from Tennessee, in the US, about contact centre technology and empowering agents through conversation analytics. See you all soon!
