Empowering People, Elevating CX: The Power of Culture, Leadership and Employee Wellbeing, with Clare White
Episode #805 Show Notes:
Clare M
We’re back with another episode of the Inspiring Women in CX podcast! A series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in customer experience and technology. For Series 8, we’re raising the bar—pushing boundaries, sparking bold ideas, and challenging the CX status quo. Expect fresh perspectives, fearless discussions, and a celebration of women driving change in our industry. I’ll be your host, Clare Muscutt, and in today’s episode, I’ll be talking to a seriously super lady from here in the UK. With 25 years of experience in customer loyalty, shopper activation, and MarTech, she has spearheaded business units driving CRM, sales growth, and customer success metrics. A master of customer strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and culture transformation, she’s dedicated to making business more human. She recently authored ‘You’ve Got the Power: Six Principles for Business Success’ and now works as a consultant, helping companies craft customer-first solutions that drive lasting impact. Allow me to introduce you to today’s inspiring guest, Clare White!
Clare M
Hi Clare!
Clare W
Hi Clare, thanks for having me.
Clare M
Welcome to the Inspiring Women in CX podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you with us today. And I'm sure our listeners are going to absolutely love the conversation we're going to have focusing on customer and employee experience today and the link between those two. So let's jump right in there, Clare. I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about your career history and how you ended up where you are today.
Clare W
Well, I've had a very wiggly career. And I think, like a lot of people, you go to university, I was very lucky, went to university, but I had no clue what I was going to do. Not one idea and after university, I went and worked in horse racing, a passion project for three years.
Clare M
Oh, this sounds so like me!
Clare W
Exactly! And we're both Clare with no 'I'!
Clare M
We're both Clare with no I, yeah, the shared Clare history.
Clare W
Yeah, I then found myself working in a field marketing business and I literally just fell into it really. So I've always been passionate about customers and also retail and shopping. I'm a great consumer. So, working for this company was a shopper activation and field marketing organisation. I was leading teams of people, up to 150 people, I think was my biggest team. Really learning and understanding about how people operate, how they're motivated and what drives them. Everyone is so ultimately unique. And I was leading big kind of blue chip companies like P&G, Microsoft, Disney, Miller Brands, leading the strategy for those accounts and leading their experience with our organisation. This is where I became introduced to customer experience. And we're talking about 20 years ago. So, back then, customer experience was vastly different from what we know today. And people didn't really know what it was. People weren't really talking about it.
Clare M
Yeah, it wasn't really a thing, was it?
Clare W
It wasn't a thing.
Clare M
I remember those days, ageing ourselves, here, Clare, but...
Clare W
Yeah, I mean, it was fascinating to see how customer experience has developed. I then moved to another organisation which had a marketing channel that we operated for Sainsbury's and Morrison's, two of the biggest retailers in the UK.
Clare M
I remember when I was at Sainsbury's we were a client of yours.
Clare W
Exactly. And it was a new technology for the UK at the time; it was cutting-edge in terms of engaging customers. And I was leading the relationships across probably 12-year periods, and working with these organisations and working on their experience with our organisation, but also the experience that their customers had with our channel. So everything we did, we had to think about the end customer and the experience that they were going to have. This just really reignited my passion for customers and thinking about how as organisations, we have a responsibility to make the experience as positive consistently as possible.
And particularly nowadays, I think CX has become…we talk about it as a differentiator. The organisation I worked for was really about driving customer loyalty. And I think we could have a huge debate about whether that exists or not today. But definitely, I think customer experience has become the critical element that an organisation can do and focus on that will put their organisation above the competition when it comes to deciding where they want to shop. So, that was kind of my career journey for CX.
Clare M
Definitely.
Clare W
Part of that journey, and I know you know about this, was leading culture transformation in the last organisation. We were going through a period where the business wasn't performing well, our clients weren't happy, and ultimately our employees weren't happy. And I was one of them. And we went through a huge transformation over probably a period of four or five years. And culture isn't something you ever stop focusing on. It's something that I've become so passionate about. It's something that I now do to support my clients in my own business. So I set up my own business, connectedCX, in October last year, but I think really focusing on it from January.
Clare M
That feels like ages ago, but it wasn’t that long!
Clare W
Yeah, not that long and I think I created my business at the same time as I joined Women in CX. It was a leap of faith for me, the first time that I've had my own business.
Clare M
Yes! And you're flying now.
Clare W
But being passionate about people, not just customers but employees, is what underpins my business. It's about helping organisations be more human and helping them to focus more on the experience their people have, customers and employers, with their organisation. So quite a long-winded way of saying I'm here today because I've had a really diverse journey, and it's just made me more passionate about people.
Clare M
Yeah, I love that. What an epic story to share. And you've seen so much, right? Like you said, operationally, from an account relationship point of view, from being the leader of a huge team right through to executing cultural change. That is, I'm sure, really well prepared you for what you're doing now. And hence why you are so busy with clients now in your new business.
So just zooming in now onto this topic for today, which is the link between employee and customer experience. And I got to attend the masterclass that you ran in the community. Definitely one of my favourites so far. So I know you've got so much to share with the audience today. But it's well known, isn't it, that there's a lot to suggest that happy employees are more likely to deliver better customer experiences. I think that's well accepted and well understood now, isn't it? But are there any specific strategies or practices that companies can implement to ensure good EX translates into a positive customer experience?
Clare W
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say that it's more than happy employees. Happy employees are really important. You want to have happy employees, but it's having empowered employees who feel able to do their best work and bring their best selves to doing their jobs every day. And when we think about customer experience, you think about all the frameworks. We talk about starting with data. We talk about… understanding your customers and understand the experience they're having with your organisation. And I would say it's no different for employees.
So, when we're thinking about strategies to employ that are going to drive an improved customer experience, start with understanding how your employees feel about working in your organisation. I think I've experienced being in an organisation where you get a global survey that comes out once a year. It will ask you lots and lots of questions about everything to do with the organisation. You answer it, and you're not always sure what happens once you've answered that survey. Because, as an employee, you don't necessarily feel that anything changes. And I think when we talk about CX, we talk about using lots of different channels to understand how your customers are feeling and the sentiment, as well as surveys and feedback. And I suggest that it's probably quite important that businesses seek to understand consistently how their employees feel through different forums. And if you've seen my webinar, you'll know that one of the approaches that we did in the last organisation was having an employee forum, an employee committee, if you like, who were there to listen to and have a voice, for leadership to listen to. And it made a huge difference. So, I think start with a Voice of Employees, understand how they're feeling and think about how you can improve their experience. Ultimately, having employees who show up every day feeling like they are trusted and empowered to do their job and that they can do that without fear of retribution is really important. And that's how you're going to drive really good CX. That is definitely one way I suggest.
I've actually written an ebook recently which outlines 10 factors that businesses can employ to really improve their employee experience. I'm not going to go through all of them now. You'll be relieved to hear.
Clare M
We can definitely leave the link in the show notes, though, if you want to read it all, listeners.
Clare W
Absolutely, I think definitely let's do that. When we're talking about employees being empowered and trusted, psychological safety is a bit of a phrase that's been banded around for many, many years. Psychological safety doesn't mean being a "nice organisation" in inverted commas. It means that employees are able to challenge safely, they're able to have conversations and embrace productive and positive conflict because conflict isn't a bad thing. In organisations, you want conflict to get the best ideas to get the best resolutions for your customers. Remember, we're talking about CX here. So having an environment of psychological safety is so important and it needs to be led by the top. So leaders need to be embracing feedback, embracing a collaborative culture and embracing inclusivity in their organisation. Because when everyone feels able to collaborate and be valued for their contribution, you're going to get the best results for your customers.
An example I would suggest is when you've got an issue resolution. So if you've got a serious customer complaint or something that's happening and your customers are complaining, quite frequently, you need to fix that issue. And if you don't have a culture of collaboration, your cross-functional teams aren't going to work effectively and be able to resolve the situation as quickly as possible with the least impact on your customers. And that's just one example. And I think having a collaborative culture that embraces psychological safety is really, really important.
So those are just two. I could go on and on because there are many. We talk about leadership. I think it's really important that leadership lead by example and drive the customer agenda. Because when that happens, your employees are all going to follow. So those are three.
Clare M
Three very good ones. I was thinking about some of the things that you discussed there because I'm always intrigued to know what the best way to tackle EX and CX is. I know there are some schools of thought that think EX is an HR thing. And we actually think about that quite separately from CX. And we think about the employee journey, let's say, and that use very similar tools and techniques as you said to customer experience instead of measuring and monitoring. I thought what was really interesting was what you said. You know, this once-a-year survey comes out, and nothing changes as a result, which I'm pretty sure is exactly how customers feel when they give you feedback, and nothing actually changes.
For me, I found a really great way of kind of combining customer experience discovery with including employee listening within the discovery for your project or your program. So, not just employees, but also stakeholders, and to employ those listening techniques to all three groups in order to define the problem statements or the opportunities or the challenges that are ahead. Because I think quite often, what I find is a lot of the pain points that customers are experiencing are driven by policy, procedure, process, systems, technology issues that employees are encountering. A really good technique that I think really supports cross-functional collaboration is how, for example, with things like journey mapping, you involve the frontline employees that are delivering that service or customer-facing in doing those kinds of activities. I think the other challenge is when you're trying to change anything, you've heard me say this a million times: transformation can be a problem rather than a solution when it comes to customer experiences. The bigger the changes you propose, the greater the resistance you're going to face, right? By involving employees in defining what the problem to solve is, what the solutions potentially are, and how we can resolve a customer pain point.
By better-supporting employees, you change the culture by doing those activities. I think I'm always a bit worried about culture initiatives, you've got your vision, you've got your values, and then it's some kind of communication cascade. But the risk to that is it just becomes expensive words on a wall; maybe a big four consultant has helped you to define, but it doesn't become part of who we are and how we operate. Whereas, if you're talking about being a collaborative cross-functional organisation that's there to support customers first, actually those kinds of activities demonstrate through action that that is who we are. And being able to maintain those practices on an ongoing basis, you know, embedding those things into HR processes. So I don't know…recruitment, reward and recognition, performance management even.
Clare W
Yes.
Clare M
And the other important point was the connection between leadership, employee experience and customer experience. Because quite often, the employees are picked off then as this group of people that needs change. That's why I said you're kind of listening to stakeholders and understanding the leadership voices is that that change has to be seen to be delivered in behaviours, different behaviours, from the leaders, by the managers, if the employees are being asked to change or do things differently or put customers first or whatever the word of the day is. But they don't see that echoed in…not just their working practices, like reward and recognition and performance management, but they need to see their bosses at the end lead by example, And being the ones to celebrate when it's…I say that it is working the way it should or that customers are being genuinely supported or those magical moments where somebody has made that additional effort to ensure that a customer leaves happy or a problem is resolved. So yeah, I think I echo all of those points as well.
Clare W
Yeah. And just to pick up on a few of those points, actually, and expand on them. Absolutely involving frontline teams when you're doing anything like journey mapping or anything that's going to involve the customer. But I would also say back office because we're also thinking about systems. What systems are problems that they're having? That insight in the room is really important as well.
Clare M
100% sorry, I didn't mean just customer-facing employers. But yeah, you are right. And thank you for picking that up because I think a lot of the problems that customers and employees experience aren't necessarily front-stage issues, are they? Quite often, they're backstage. So yeah, thank you for calling out specifically. I totally agree.
Clare W
That's right. And I think when we talk about leading by example, it's actually one of the points of the 10 critical factors that I've identified is making sure that your values underpin behaviour. So you talked about behaviour, and actually it's all very well having these values up on the wall that look great. But if it's not driving the behaviour in the right way, then it's not achieving anything. It does start with leadership, but like you mentioned, underpinning those with HR policies and having them as part of appraisal processes. So that you're really understanding how people are living those values and how well it is living throughout the whole organisation. But it starts with the top. Everything starts with leadership. And if it doesn't work at that level, it's not going to work, full stop.
Clare M
Yes, performance management, I totally agree. So we've talked about kind of the positive things that should be happening. Conversely, what are some of the pitfalls or challenges that arise when employee experience is neglected, and how can this impact CX specifically?
Clare W
I think if you've seen my webinar, I talk about this at length.
Clare M
See this webinar that we're talking about listeners; you've not heard that you have to join the Women In CX community to get out your hands on this one.
Clare W
Absolutely. Ultimately, if employees don't feel they're able to show up and do their best work every day, then they're not going to do their best work every day. And there is actually a growing issue called presenteeism. You might have heard of it. It's when people are showing up at work, but they're either unwell, or they're burnt out, or they are just not able to do their best work. And that's happening more and more. There was a recent survey which was conducted, it's a government survey. It's shown that presenteeism, which is people showing up but not being able to do their best job because of their personal situation or wellbeing, has cost UK businesses 25 billion pounds since 2018. It's huge.
Clare M
Is that in sick days or poor performance or...
Clare W
That's people who are showing up but should probably have taken a sick day because they're not able to do their job, and they have felt that they've had to turn up for whatever reason. So it could be bad culture. It could be leadership not understanding long-term issues or illnesses. But the cost because they're not doing their best work because they're not able to is just enormous. And when you're looking at that cost in revenue, that's largely because what they have been doing has had a negative impact on customer experience. It might have increased customer churn because there's been more negative customer experiences that have been instigated because people have been turning up not their best selves. I think when we're looking at pitfalls, it's making sure that you prioritise well-being in your organisation and that you really are clear that if people are not feeling able to do their best job or they're not feeling well, that they take that time. It's really important.
Clare M
I'm thinking about how related that is to culture again there, isn't it? And how related that is to leadership. Because I know as a leader myself, I don't always role model self-care. I'll be exhausted and burnt out, and I'll keep showing up. And I definitely resonate with that. I'm present, but am I really doing my best work? No, when I'm exhausted, I definitely start to procrastinate. I'll have a massive list of things to do, but the more tired I am, the less I can actually march through that list of things that I need to get done. I'm just unproductive. And if I just took a day off, rested, and then came back again refreshed, I would probably be a million percent better. And practising what you preach to me has become a value for me to uphold because I can spot when my team are not feeling great and I can say, 'You just need to have a day off. You're due a holiday, you haven't taken one for ages'. But for people to take care of their own needs, they need to see their leaders also prioritising that as well, don't you think?
Clare W
And when you're a business owner, it's harder. It's absolutely harder to do that. So yeah, I think when you have people turning up that aren't able to do their job every day, it's going to have a negative impact on customer experience and it's going to have a negative impact on your revenue. So, having well-being practices in your organisation is essential. Because if you don't, and I have seen this firsthand, lived experience, your critical metrics are going to decline. People will leave your business. Employees who are valuable to your organisation will leave because they're not happy. The business isn't doing well, and employees are not feeling great about working in your business. When you have that, when that starts to happen, everything else declines because you then have costs to recruit and costs to train. That's taking people who should be doing their day job off to train new starters. That's going to have an overall impact on their wellbeing because they're going to be put under more pressure to still deliver on their day job whilst training up new employees. And the list just goes on and on. It literally is a vicious circle. And what eventually will happen is your critical customer metrics will decline. You'll start getting poor reviews. There'll be more firefighting.
So, actually not prioritising your employee experience will have a significant impact on your overall business and your profits, which obviously, everyone needs profits. It's what large organisations focus on significantly, particularly if you've got shareholders. And it's a false economy. I think organisations start needing to prioritise their employee experience because when you do, harsh reality is it can result in declining business. You might think that that is kind of a scare tactic, but I have literally seen this happen in organisations. That's why I'm so passionate.
Clare M
Yeah, you're definitely not alone. Bringing this back to your personal story, was there any particular barrier or challenge you overcame to become the woman that you are today? It could be personal or professional, whatever you wish.
Clare W
I would say this, one is you can't achieve perfection.
Clare M
Yes, no such thing.
Clare W
It's no such thing, but it's something I still battle with. But I probably realised maybe five or six years ago that constantly striving for perfection was having a negative impact not only on me but also on the people around me, particularly as a leader in an organisation. It doesn't exist. I'd love it to, but it really doesn't. So I think reminding myself - I still need to remind myself every day, but I say that was a huge barrier for me to overcome. I would also say that you shouldn't compare yourself to other people. You're compared to classmates when you were at school, well, I was certainly. And it was something that was really detrimental because it then became a learned belief. So then, throughout my career, I've always compared myself to other people. But all that does is make you miserable and make you feel like you're not good enough. So I would say that was the other huge barrier that I've overcome, which is to realise that I'm unique. I bring a huge amount of value to people in my life, professionally and personally, and that is enough. So I think those are probably two of the biggest barriers that I've overcome.
Clare M
Yeah, they're brilliant ones, they resonate with me for sure. I'm sure they will resonate with a lot of the audience today as well. And just before we come to the close of this podcast today, how has being part of a community impacted your personal and professional journey?
Clare W
Hugely. I would say being part of Women in CX has been one of the brightest sparks of my career. And I've spoken to you a lot about this, networking in the corporate world, I turn up, and it be quite competitive. People weren't bringing their unique selves, their authentic selves. People were always quite guarded, and everyone seemed to have an agenda. So, coming to Women in CX, I think my first real experience was with the conference last year and being in a room of women who were all there to support each other and share advice because a lot were business owners and had been on a journey themselves. And obviously, I was just starting out, so it was invaluable to me. Making connections, I even found a mentor with Women in CX, which has been just an incredible experience. Whilst my business has become really busy over the past three months, I feel terrible because I've neglected Women in CX more than I wanted to. I will be back. But yeah, I can't say thank you enough. It's been an amazing experience.
Clare M
You've done a masterclass, you've now been on the podcast, you've written for Women in CX as well, had an article published. So it had a lot of focus on raising your profile. And now we see you everywhere on LinkedIn. And don't worry if you're not as active on the platform. That's, you know, the dream situation, isn't it? You arrived wanting to start a new business, and now you've had some support, you've had some mentorship, you've taken part in some initiatives and now you're so busy you haven't got time for us anymore. That's a good result. I'm happy for that.
Clare W
Yeah, I mean, I will be back. I just need to navigate where it fits in with my busyness.
Clare M
Yeah, I was just thinking, listening to you, there's an opportunity that we've got in a Women in CX Consulting House for a project we're working on for some EX, CX and culture work, but it sounds like you're too busy! So, don't be too busy for big projects.
Clare W
Never too busy to help.
Clare M
So, just to round off then, is there one particular top takeaway or piece of advice you've got for our podcast listeners to take away from our conversation today?
Clare W
So, I think when it comes to EX, it absolutely has an impact on your customer experience and the experience they have with your organisation. I truly believe it starts with data and deeply understanding how your employees feel about your organisation. And I think failing to really do that and do that well can have a negative impact on your business. So I would listen and properly listen to what your employers are saying consistently, take it on board and really importantly, make sure you do something with the feedback and tell them about it.
Clare M
Yeah, I think it's like that three steps, isn't it? So, everybody does a quantitative survey. How do you take the outputs of that into qualitative scenarios, either focus groups or committees or listening groups? How do you respond just like with customer experience in actually doing something about the things that you're being told are problematic? How do you involve employees in the process of defining the solutions? So, working cross-functionally collaboratively. And then how you communicate back what changed as a result in a tangible, measurable way. I think that's five of the key points we talked about, didn't we, throughout this conversation. Yeah, so that would be my top five for me. So, thank you so much, Clare. It's been awesome to have you on the Inspiring Women in CX podcast. It's been an inspiring journey, given that you only joined in October and just started your new business and really knuckled down in January, not even a year on, and you're absolutely flying. Yes, but it is a privilege to watch your growth and very excited to see what happens for you next!
Clare W
Thank you so much, Clare and thanks to Women in CX for everything.
Clare M
And thank you for everybody who listened or watched wherever you are to. We'll see you next time. Bye for now. Bye, Clare!
Clare W
Bye!
Clare M
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! Well, that’s all for now! See you again next time.
