Clare Muscutt talks with Claire-Boscq-Scott about CX and overcoming adversity to succeed.
Episode #002 Show Notes.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Welcome to the second episode 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 today we'll be talking about a single mother's struggle to create a sustainable business in the face of multiple personal and professional challenges. How she overcame adversity to succeed and help her clients thrive with her holistic approach to CX. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest. She's one of the top 30 customer service gurus, a regular bilingual keynote speaker and author of two notable CX books. She studied at Disney university, and went on to be known as the busy Queen Bee. Most recently she bravely closed her mystery shopping business to successfully pivot, reinvent herself and embrace digital ways of working in the face of Coronavirus. Please welcome to the show. CX sister, Claire Boscq-Scott.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Hi Claire, two Cla(i)re's are better than one! Welcome to the women in CX podcast.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
How excited I am to be with you today.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
A warm welcome to all the listeners as well. So without further ado, let's crack on. So my first question for you is as somebody who grew up in customer experience and always wanted to study at the Disney University. What was that like?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Well, my dad had a restaurant, so when you grow up in a hospitality environment, you either love it or hate it. And I loved it. I loved seeing people interacting, coming back, enjoying the food and that it was really all about seeing people enjoying themselves. So I kind of continued in that environment. And then I had the opportunity to go and work for Epcot Centre in Disney World in Florida. And that was 25 years ago, this year! It was just amazing, and it was the very first time that I realised what customer experience meant. If there's a company who does employee engagement right, from every touch point. From recruitment, to arrival, to Mickey Mouse University for a whole week, you couldn't actually get into the park unless you've done that whole week. Unless we understood every step, every part of it we weren't ready. And the whole year was such an amazing learning experience it made me want to do more. It made me want to experience more, create more and inspire more people to deliver better customer experience. So that was my first real love about it.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Is it true that they paint the paint the fences every single day in the Magic Kingdom entrance?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Haha I can't remember that.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I think it might be one of those stories that you hear in customer experience, but it's not actually founded on anything. Like a CX urban myth.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Yeah, but every night at the end of the service, because I'm French we were in the French pavilion and every night there was a big fireworks display and we would all come out and dance the French cancan. That part is true!
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Oh, I believe it. Because I when I was researching you I saw this amazing video on Facebook, of you on the Jersey equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing busting some serious moves!
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Well, the American smooth is now my best friend.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Now I know you can CanCan, this is amazing. As a fellow entrepreneur, I'm always really intrigued to know how other women start their journeys to branching out on their own? How did you kind of go from that world into starting your own business?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
I kind of continued in hospitality and I was running hotels and I moved back to Jersey after traveling quite a bit, 20 years ago. I think we all come to a point where something happens in our lives when we just have to say no, enough is enough is enough. I will not take it anymore. An about 11 years ago, I was getting divorced and I was working stupid hours in a hotel. My two children were only six and 10. They we needed their mum. I had an Au Pair at home looking after them because I was doing crazy hours. I was tired. I was stressed. I was under the pressure from every side and I could see myself going down and down and down and I thought, no, this is it enough is enough. I can't, I can't do it anymore. If I carry on like that, I'm going to be ill. Who's going to look after my children and this wasn't the way I wanted it. So I packed in everything. I got the divorce. I signed the papers, quit my job as well. And I sold my house. So I could be a good mum. I could work from home have my office from home. So the children could be in bed and I could be working until two o'clock in the morning if I wanted to, but I was able to create and find my own balance. I want to be a good mum and be there for my children and also thrive too, doing something I'm passionate about and helping people is always been something that I wanted to do. It's my obsession to be able to help people. Cause in CX, we think that it's so simple. Customer service is so simple. Well, it's simple when you do it right. And when you know what you are doing because it just flows, but you need to put the work in the effort in to actually design all the steps and all those things like training to make it flow, to make it work and to make it look so easy.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I heard a word there that's absolutely synonymous with you in that part of our discussion where you mentioned the word 'thrive'. You're famously known as the Queen Bee and you wrote a book on customer experience called 'Thrive with the Hive' for anyone who is listening that doesn't know about this concept. Could you just give us a quick overview of the principles of thriving with the hive?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Well, when I started the business the core of my business actually wasn't CX was part of it. The business I started was doing mystery shopping, which is measuring the customer experience and the customer service. I realised locally in Jersey, there was no one actually doing that. And they had to fly people over to get it done and things like that so it was expensive. So I really saw a niche in the market and I just went for it. So it created that business and we started doing mystery shopping here then everywhere. And it was funny because it started off as a 'Oh yes, my mystery shoppers are like my little worker bees and they'd go into the shops and they come back to the hive and I'm the queen bee', just managing everything, you know, doing all the little thangs to make the business to thrive. And that's just a little fun part, you know, a little story that I was saying, and then it became bigger. Then I found a book on beekeeping and I loved the analogy between business and the bees. I think it was just like, this is me. This is so what I want to do. The analogy of the bees, everything that they do is about making the world a better place. We need the bees, to go and pollinate the flowers, we need all those things. As the Queen Bee it was my mission to help businesses to be better in what they're doing by giving them little helps here and there, so they could thrive and they could really deliver amazing customer experiences through their worker bees. And then the brand just grew, and all the words came into play. It's so easy because you can buzz, you can thrive, you're making honey. You can make everything really easy to explain with the Queen bee and the bees.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
And I have to say as a feminist, I absolutely love the matriarchal reference of the Queen Bee and the workers. I can really see what you're saying there, about the collaborative effort required to make a difference, but there does need to be leadership unblocking the barriers to delivering great service for the bees. So I'm sure that metaphor and the analogies extend really easily into the business world with the clients that you work with and for them to understand CX leadership in a really simple way. That's great to see. I was really interested to know how you went from mystery shopper 'beekeeping' so to speak, into developing your theories around holistic customer experience. How do you see things now? Has that changed and how is your latest thinking helping businesses to thrive?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
I think over the last 10, 11 years, I have become much more holistic myself. I've discovered techniques and I've trained in things like NLP. In fact I am training to become a master NLP practitioner. And it was just mind blowing to discover the techniques that really help people build rapport and feel better in them selves. And then I fell in love with Feng Shui. So again, it's all about the environment and how the environment affects you. How you can affect people. If you have a nice warm, welcoming home, you'll feel good. You want to go home. If you go somewhere and it's an office and it's all dark and there's no light and there's no plants and it's all grey, you're never going to perform as well. And you know, so really using Feng Shui to discover how the environment affects people and using NLP techniques really helps people to create better relationships, I'm learning a lot about resilience and emotional intelligence. We all need to know these things to thrive in life and discover our personal mastery. If you have been trained in these techniques, you will be positive, you'll be happy and you will deliver amazing customer experience. And this is the important part of it. And now at the moment we are talking about the employee experience we need to support them to feel good in themselves, because if they're not feeling good, they're never going to deliver great CX.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I think there's a movement towards health and wellbeing and wellness more broadly. And I think that being on the front foot of this kind of holistic CX thinking is going to be a great opportunity to move employee experience forward.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
At the beginning, I wasn't saying it very loud and I was saying, 'look at your environment psychology' I wasn't saying Feng Shui. I would talk about 'how you communicate and how you build rapport'. I wasn't saying NLP techniques because I've always felt people might think 'Oh, what is Claire on about' now? But I hope, and I really believe that this pandemic has given a switch button to businesses and make them realise that they must care more. They must bring more care into what they do care for their environment, care for their employees and care for their customers. Employee engagement, wellbeing, feeling good in yourself, mindfulness. Those kinds of things that are not 'woo woo' anymore, they've been researched. It's shown if you do 20 minutes of mindfulness per day, you will feel better. You will perform better. Leaders need to start taking those things more seriously because that's how people perform better.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I know from my own experience of COVID-19 that I had to go back to that foundational level and put my own health and wellbeing first in order to just survive. Never-Mind thrive in this really crazy climate. But speaking about COVID-19 I know when we last spoke, you said that you were having to make some pretty big changes to your business to adapt to what is no longer a keynote speaking business, where we travel around the world and get to do these wonderful, engaging sessions where we find our clients. What have the challenges been around becoming a digital Bee.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
I love that. I'm going to have to reuse that one, you know, the digital be yes. You know, Clare it has been a tough time and I'm sure everybody has gone through a tough time and like me, have had to reevaluate and think about where to go next. The last couple of years have been so amazing and I've so loved going and traveling and bonding with an audience and sharing that message I'm so passionate about. It's just been by the end last year, I was in Kuala Lumpur. I did a bit of the tour and I was like, wow, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. This is it, when you kind of feel the, flow you know, this was amazing. So, and then, yeah, you know, 17th of March arrived and then it was just like, bang, you know? and so, and you go down and you go down and then you go up again and then you go down and then you go up again and it's, you know, it's part of being an entrepreneur and this is why resilience and, those kinds of tools, that kind of knowledge that, you know, you're learning the techniques for it really helps, you know, and I've always been, I mean, it's been yeah, 10, 11 years, now being on my own. So I've had teams of different of shoppers. I've had team of people working with me, but it's always been me at the forefront, you know, moving the business, shaking the business, changing and always thinking forward. And then suddenly I'm thinking, okay, so I can't travel at the moment and that's not going to happen for a while. I can't send my shoppers to businesses because nothing's open. So, that's gone. What can I do? And then you start realising that technology is incredible. I mean, yesterday I was in Germany, India, South Africa, France oh, and Abu Dhabi. Five countries in less than 10 hours. It was just absolutely incredible through the power of technology. And so, and I'll also learn that actually, when you doing it right, and you're passionate and you're sending your message, it doesn't matter whether you're in front of a video or in front of the audience, it's obviously it is different. But you still sharing your message? You still have a voice. You can still, you know, make people feel how passionate you are about what you do. And it's, so it's learning again, it's learning more techniques to be in front of the camera to look, you know, in the eyes and to share your message, to be even bigger and broader, you know, as the queen bee buzzing around, you know, you need to bus even more because, you know, you want to have that message through digital, but just absolutely incredible to, to be able to, you know, connect with so many people within the same day. It's just amazing.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I'm living this idea of the digital bee, you might have to make an icon of a little robot bee or something.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Oh, don't get me. Don't get me started.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
I'm conscious of your time. I know you've got to go to another meeting straight after this, but what would advice would you give to other women out there that are perhaps facing challenges or bumps in the road, such as the ones that you've experienced?
Claire Boscq-Scott:
I think resilience and positive mindset is, is just absolutely crucial. And, and don't be afraid. And I know, I mean, I don't know how you all, but for me, all this COVID-19 made me feel almost like a failure. I wasn't, I wasn't helping anybody. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't inspiring anybody. I wasn't engaging anybody. And suddenly I'm like, Oh my gosh, what's going on? You know, where am I? And you kind of feel like you just want to retreat into yourself and, you know, just not talk to anybody and just put your head down. And actually, actually, this is the time when you need to actually call up on people, call up on your friends, call up on your family, call up on the people that surround you and having that tribe around you just brings you back. You know, to really boost you and this is a time that you think we're so lucky and feeling that great, being grateful for all the things that we have is just amazing. And so, again, it's, it's really creating habits within yourself. To feel grateful for what you have to look for opportunities. Don't think it's challenges. What is obstacle teaching me and how could I make an opportunity out of it and think outside the box. And this is like a big kind of creative time. And when you're in that mode, you're really not creative because you're like, you're not you're down, you know, down in that spiral. So give yourself some space.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
That's great advice.
Claire Boscq-Scott:
Go for that walk, go take care of your health and wellbeing. You know, like in the plane, put your mask in front of yourself before anybody else. It really is, you know, it's, it's important. So, and once you're in that space, then you can start moving forward.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
That's excellent advice. Thank you so much, Claire. I think I have only known you for a short time, but your passion for customer experience and customer service, it literally gives me goosebumps. And I'm sure the women that are listening along to have heard some of the struggles you've been through as a single mum and reacting to that by creating the life of your dreams. I'm sure everyone out there listening will really see the value in that. So thank you so much for sharing and your story. Okay, that's it for this week. Just one more thank you to say to Joakim Thorn and Effectly.com for sponsoring the podcast production today and supporting women in CX thank you.
Clare Muscutt- Host:
Thanks for listening to the women in CX podcast with me Clare Muscutt. F you enjoyed the show, I want to know more. Please check out womenincxcommunity and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Or please leave us a review on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Spotify. Join us again next week, when we'll be talking about overcoming adversity to succeed in CX.