Transforming CX: Building a Harmonious Operating Model, with Olga Potaptseva
Episode #802 Show Notes:
Clare
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 inspiring lady from Georgia!
She’s a Founder and Top 15 Global CX Consultant, dedicated to helping organisations worldwide design customer-informed operating models that benefit customers, employees, and the bottom line. Her impressive track record includes delivering £100K OPEX savings, re-engineering processes for a European bank, and implementing an award-winning CX model for a global pharmaceutical company.
She is the driving force behind CXpanda, a pioneering digital library for customer-centricity! Allow me to introduce you to today’s inspiring guest, Olga Potaptseva!
Clare
Hi, Olga!
Olga
Hi Clare, so good to see you. Happy New Year!
Clare
Happy New Year, and welcome back to the Inspiring Women in CX podcast. This is actually your second episode.
Olga
Thank you, thank you, I'm thrilled to be here.
Clare
Yeah, wonderful to be back and welcome to everybody who's listening or watching wherever you are. And we're going to jump straight in with our first question, which is the one that I always ask my guests, which is, Olga, can you tell us a little bit more about your career journey and how you ended up where you are today?
Olga
Well, certainly, where I am today is creating and implementing customer-informed target operating models, which sounds all very complicated, but effectively, this is customer-centric business transformation, and that excites me a lot. What I had to acquire in terms of skills throughout my career journey is not just CX management expertise but market research, process improvement, agile project management, change management, just to name a few. So yes, I guess it is complex, but it has been a journey as well. And it's not always been intentional. I was reflecting in preparation to this podcast, and I was thinking, where did it all start?
I think it started when I was 15 and as an exchange student in the US. The original coordinators who are supposed to be our host mothers almost, and they were supposed to look after us. T, they were incentivised on placing a student into a family and making sure that student stays with the family, which all sounds great on the surface, but I wasn't very successful with my first host family, which means the coordinator had no incentive whatsoever to help me out and move out of this very unhealthy environment. The reason I'm telling this story is that targets may be damaging even if they're set with good intentions. So that was my first lesson in customer experience. Even though I did not know at the time anything about targets or customer experience, it influenced me a lot in my choices.
This whole experience made me think, how can we connect better as humans and also make it a systemic connection? We have to reward people for the right things and not damage relationships in the process. As a student, I studied economics, and through that, I got a scholarship in Germany, where I got fascinated by a company, the name of which most people can't pronounce, it's called Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung and those of you who speak German will understand that it's a society for researching consumers and they've shortened it to Growth from Knowledge.
Clare
That's more sensible for an international audience, for sure. Bit more user-friendly.
Olga
Yes, or GfK.
Clare
GfK, of course.
Olga
Yes, GfK and OP in the UK, where I spent a good proportion of my career learning market research and getting further immersed in the application of market research for business purposes. I felt very privileged to have worked with Andrew McKinsey from Thomson Reuters, who demonstrated at the time that customer experience was not even a thing, it wasn't a science. But he was very sensible in using customer research to transition operations from the US to Manila and he would not close down a team in the US until Manila got the same level of customer satisfaction.
And just to put it into perspective, large research institutions often found themselves producing reports only to be shelved. So… what Andrew did for me was like a breath of fresh air. I was like "Ah, that's how you use research." That's how we could drive more good in businesses. And from that onwards, I got into customer experience. I headed up a customer experience function at Domestic & General, which is a UK insurance company, and after a few other career steps, started my own company six years ago.
Clare
Yeah, so much of that resonated with me! And poor young Olga being in that situation at such a young age. That must have been quite traumatic.
Olga
Yeah, that wasn't nice, but it was full, but I'm grateful for the experience.
Clare
Experience, oh wow, that moment of inspiration. But yeah, it really resonated with me in terms of the skill sets that you learn along the way that enable you to be able to implement
customer experience thinking at a level that does change the organisation. For me, I was ticking off the list...yeah, agile project management. For me, I'm a specialist in experience design, but totally agree the foundation of everything being research. But I remember doing that in my Lean Six Sigma training, as well as my PRINCE2. And for me, I think I've also fused a lot of those different skill sets into my own version of what customer experience means.
And we're going to talk more about this, your own version, which I've been super inspired by. We got to work together this year on a project, didn't we, with Siemens. Yes, blending both of our approaches to be able to do a transformation program for them, where we were able to begin with research, understand the current state, design the future state, and it was really awesome to collaborate with you on that.
Olga
It was amazing.
Clare
So, I'm super excited to share more of the insights behind your methodology with our audience today. So you've already mentioned this word: customer-informed operating model. And I know that you've referred to some of your thinking as developing business harmony. So I think for the audience, just to understand a little bit more about what actually is a customer-informed operating model and how would you describe business harmony and how that works.
Olga
Yeah, so I started my thinking around business harmony from deep within, I was trying to see what motivates me, what do I want to create as a business consultant? And I love it when things are in harmony. But for me, harmony is a state of balance when things connect and they work, and nothing is out of sync, everyone is happy. So it's not just the emotional state, it's not the, you know, the ‘om’ [a-u-m], even though that's part of it, but also it's how functionally we get to an environment that allows us to thrive. And that personal attitude led me to think, well, surely businesses are living organisms, nd they can be brought into the state of harmony.
Being a customer experience-driven consultant, I thought, well, at the center of this harmonious model should be the purpose and how do we enrich customer lives? But what often falls out of sync is one of the operating model elements- that could be technology, processes, people and culture. Some companies, especially these days, think they must focus on technology, but focus on technology in itself does not bring you business benefits. It has to be aligned to what you're trying to do for your customers, for your people and for your operating model. So, starting with that purpose in mind and then thinking about how can you achieve it, with the help of technology or processes or people, is a much better- in my view, a more harmonious way of conducting business.
Clare
I'm imagining conducting like an orchestra now.
Olga
That's a very good metaphor, yes. If you think about an orchestra, if a conductor all of a sudden goes crazy and goes, right, it's going to be pretty chaotic and synchronous. Or if the violins all of a sudden decide to play their own tune or the drums decide they're a bit bored and they want to play louder, it destroys the melody. And that's a metaphor that's very applicable to the business.
Clare
Yeah, and I think what we see so often are those technology led transformations, isn't it? So, the decisions are made around which technology are we going to implement? The experience often becomes a byproduct of technology decisions. And we're seeing so many companies now having to go back and think about experience design as an afterthought and re-do so much work that if it had been done the first time around...
Clare
If it had been customer-informed in the first place, if the effort had been made to think about how do you orchestrate people, process and technology together to deliver an experience... would have saved so much time, effort and money in the process. And I think I just still keep reflecting on the fact that four years ago we were told 70 % of business transformations fail. And in 2024, that statistic hasn't altered at all. We're still seeing 70 % of business transformations fail.
So I'm absolutely with you on the concept of creating business harmony and that it has to be customer informed when you're creating these new operating models. But to help bring this to life for our audience today, would you have an example that you might be able to share of an organisation that's actually achieved business harmony and a customer-informed operating model?
Olga
I found a quote recently which resonated with me, "Strive for balance, then shall you find harmony". I don't know who said that…harmony is not a permanent state. So what... you cannot have it done. Things change, people change, environments change, your market conditions are different. So, at any given moment, you may find the state of harmony in a business, but it doesn't mean that you should stop developing. So that's just a small caveat to answer your question. I have worked, especially this year, with many businesses that are striving for harmony and balance, and I think that's a better way to frame it. It's almost like a - if you want to put it into business language - it's a strategic objective to have a balanced and harmonious business. And what I've learned from them is that they are courageous enough to rethink their processes and ways of taking decisions, and they're open enough to see the new input.
So, to put it into more practical domains, we tend to do customer journey mapping and research before we identify how to proceed with the customer-informed operating model. Many organisations find it overwhelming, and for good reasons, because we come out of journey mapping with at least a hundred initiatives that could be done. Are you supposed to add a hundred initiatives to the backlog of initiatives that no doubt everyone has in their business? It's not feasible, no you shouldn't do that. What you should do is prioritise and see what is going to bring your business to a better state of balance and harmony, including financial, operational and customer. Through that process we boil down this huge list of initiatives to five to ten projects that can be executed by the business.
It's a huge piece of work that follows customer journey mapping. So, I see journey mapping and research as a foundation. The real work is yet to follow. And once those are defined, then you need to work with change management. It's very easy for us to assume that "Well, customer-centricity is a great concept. Everyone should be behind it." And yes, they are conceptually, but their career may be on the line. They may fear that you're doing something new, am I going to be redundant? Are you not going to need me anymore? Am I actually going to be successful? I always chose technology based on my technical expertise. I'm good at this. Why are you telling me now that I should change my approach? So all of these questions are very real, and they can stop your transformation on its tracks. So working with people and change management is extremely important there.
Then being very mindful of your project management approaches and this is where Agile comes into play and really, sometimes really pushing things through and making sure that they're happening and stay on track. So what I do is very involved, and I care for my clients' success, and therefore I choose to be embedded within their organisations as this voice of customer-centricity with very practical ways of applying it.
Clare
I was just thinking about balance here because I think customer-centricity is quite often misunderstood, and the word is used incorrectly in that it can be taken to an extreme of it's all about the customers - what they want, what they need, saying yes to everything that the customers want. And then, at the really ineffectual end, it's more like a platitude that we just talk about being customer-centric, but there's actually no reality to it. Like amazing organisations that are truly customer-centric, like Amazon, they're rare, and they were built that way from the start.
And when you talked about some of the... critical capabilities to build a customer -centric company like leadership, operational, processes, people and culture. Businesses trying to make that leap from perhaps being like sales-oriented, process-oriented, operational excellence-oriented, market oriented to completely change. I think there's a reality check that actually is that necessarily what needs to happen or is it about creating better balance? So, where customer focus is completely absent, that is definitely problematic. But not to say a company that is operationally strong or thinks about its competition and the market that it's within, I think that it still has to be balanced strategically around the dominant strengths of an organisation.
Olga
100%.
Clare
That was just one thought that came to mind. I think my message to the audience is just really kind of thinking about when we're talking about customer-centricity, what do we actually mean? Because the reality of a customer-centric organisation is possibly not what is achievable for your organisation. And customer informed, I think is a much better term to use. I think, get into that operating model level of change. That means the experience really does work for customers is critical. And then secondarily, I was thinking about you and I have kind of a slightly different approach that when we worked on this big project together, we tried to blend the two worlds.
So I completely agree with, you know, starting with "as is" and how do we move forward from there. But for me, there is also what is the future state that we want to be offering? And that might be something that isn't comprehensible right now because the technology isn't in place, for example. So, for me, I think service and experience design is another critical component of this, being able to paint a picture of what do we want to be and what do we want to offer in the future, and then being able to build, I think, that roadmap that makes that connection between how do we move forward from here and how to reverse engineer to where we want to get to, because there might be some projects that might come from journey mapping, for example, that actually a new solution that may be a year away is going to solve that and 20 other things. So is that still a priority if we know we're going to revolutionise process or technology in some way that removes those challenges?
Clare:
Sorry to interrupt your listening, but I just wanted to take a moment 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-centered business. Working in CX can feel lonely at times, we're often single-handedly trying to change the way organisations think and behave about customers. On our paid platform you can discover a vibrant tribe of fellow 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 thinking. If you feel like you aren't making enough progress with your CX objectives, are unsure about what your next move looks like, or 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 number one community in CX, you can apply to join us today by visiting www.womenincx.community/ membership. I really hope I get to see you there soon.
Clare
And also, I was thinking about how do you build those capabilities, having identified what needs to change? And I think some of the points that you raised are super important, and where things come unstuck does tend to be people, doesn't it? Technology processes, redesign, that kind of thing that's easier to orchestrate.
Olga
Someone has to do them.
Clare
Yeah. And, of course, the hard bit is actually creating the change, isn't it? The hard thing is the program management of a number of changes orchestrated over a period of time that does mean you move from the current state to future state. But the change management required in that. And I was just thinking about how traditionally kind of customer experience teams are set up and centralised in some way and not necessarily having the purview that as consultants, we get to have, which is an influence on a transformation program and a resetting of an approach to transformation that is game-changing. Whereas most CX individuals and teams that I know are often quite far removed from that. So a big transformation program's already happening and they're being asked maybe at a more project level to have some input into the customer experience of that change.
So I think the question the audience I'm sure, would really love to understand is how can they go about influencing the creation of a customer-informed operating model. If we start at kind of the business level, how do organisations do it and then bring it into the listeners of this podcast, what can they do to try to help to make better customer-informed decisions during transformation? I think that would be really helpful.
Olga
Yeah, building on the three points that you raised, I think it will be a good bridge for us to talk about the practical aspects.
Clare
Okay.
Olga
So, firstly, what is customer-centricity? I think your role as a CX professional is to define what is it that we are for our customers and what is it that we are not. And that what we are not is probably even more important. Because that cuts out about 70% of the noise that the organisation is trying to do. If you think about Amazon that you brought up, try calling them. Right? You cannot. It's very, very hard. Is this a barrier for some customers? Yes, but they are not a business that likes to take calls. They give you all the other facilities. You can chat to them. You can email them but they do not like to receive calls. It's an operational choice, and someone somewhere defined that we are not a call centre for our customers. So you could start thinking what you are not conceptually and also what services you are not going to provide.
Clare
That's a really good one. Good example.
Olga
Think Ryanair, not that it's the best, most fascinating example, but they said "We are the lowest cost airline. We will get you safely from A to B at the lowest price. We never promised you anything else. So, if you come to us with the wrong expectation, it's on you. We made it very very clear.”
Clare
Their social media is hilarious. Talking about Ryanair, though, they actually turn their customers' complaints into funny social media posts, don't they? So someone will send in a photo saying, “I booked a window seat, they've only got half a window”. And they're just like, "It's Ryanair, what did you expect? We're a low-cost airline." Anyway, carry on. It makes me laugh, though.
Olga
Yeah, they push it a little bit, the point stands.
Clare
The point stands, the point stands.
Olga
So the second point you brought up, which is also very important for CX professionals to take on board, is how do you align with the organisational strategy. What is your future state thinking, not just for CX, not what you would like to imagine this company to be?
Clare
Yes.
Olga
What does the company imagine itself to be in five years and ten years? Where are they going strategically? What's the competitive landscape? How are they going to play? And then align your experience strategy to those aspirations. With all the will in the world, you cannot change the organisational strategy. It's not up for you to decide. Even if you are fortunate enough to be on the board, you are a contributor to a decision that other people will have a say on. So contribute effectively. Reduce your decisions to your circle of influence. Don't try to be more than you actually are or that you're given permission to be. Sorry, it may sound a little bit harsh, but it's actually very, very practical.
Clare
True, yeah. Yeah.
Olga
You may fall into a trap of not being effective if you don't do that. The third point I wanted to raise, remind me what was the third point actually. I was thinking I must not forget.
Clare
Was it by first...
Olga
Operating model design and how CX teams sit outside of transformation programs. And that's the biggest risk you can run as a CX team, is to fall into the silo culture. That's everything that we advocated against ever since the creation of CX as a discipline is people should work cross-functionally, there should be less silo thinking and now I see a lot of CX teams being in a silo. If you can, try to get involved cross-functionally, understand the agendas across the organisation and be that force that enables cross-functional thinking. Again, you can't force people to work cross-functionally, and it's not a one-month job, it's a lot of change management because people frankly see no reason why would they take on this extra responsibility and extra hustle in some ways.
So if you believe in it, try and demonstrate that this is the right way of doing things and it gives sufficient benefits for others to want to be on the journey with you. Again, kind of coming back to my point of your circle of influence, change the harmony in your team, change the harmony in yourself, create the balance with the teams that you work with and then you will have more opportunities to influence how other people in the organisation think.
Clare
Yeah, I was just thinking back to the project we ran this year. And that was our first block wasn't it strategy, strategic alignment, defining the proposition first and foremost.
And I was just thinking, I think that the most powerful thing CX-ers can advocate for is actually research, customer research, and being able to ask those questions. How do we know that this is what our customers want? Or how do we know that this is something that people need? What understanding do we have about our customers' needs and goals that would mean that this decision is a good one? And just asking the question, isn't it? Because if it's absent, then you're exposing a gap. It's not actually saying, we should be doing it this way or differently, but being able to just ask the question, what are we basing this decision off? What insight do we have to support that?
Olga
Yeah, and be the voice of the customer, right? And it doesn't mean that you have to buy the most expensive service software or run a lot of research programs. Sometimes, it's sufficient to go and talk to your customers. Just, you know, have 10, 20, 50 conversations yourself, or get your team to do that. Talk to your sales team, talk to your contact center.
Clare
Nope, I agree on that.
Olga
Talk to people who interact with customers every day and by understanding their perspective, their perspectives will be biased. Because know, sales teams talk to customers to achieve sales and contact centres talk to customers to resolve issues. But you are in a privileged position as a CX person to combine all these views and see each other's points of view.
Clare
…to help them see each other's points of views. Yeah!
Olga
Yes, exactly. That's the magic moment, isn't it? In journey mapping, when people start to understand not just the bit that they do but the impact that what they do has on the bit that's in the after the handoff or the handover, what actually happens further down the line and recognising how as a cross-functional team, there are so many things that could be resolved upstream, that prevent pain further down the line, both for the customer and for the operation. I love that one too.
Olga
Isn't that a privileged role, right?
Clare
It is, absolutely. Definitely, one of the most fun things to do is to bring that sense of collaboration through the lens of thinking about the customer's point of view.
Olga
Yes, that's fantastic.
Clare
Definitely one of the most rewarding things I experienced working on the business side. And these days when I work on projects with clients as well. So just to bring us home then, is there a barrier or challenge you'd like to share, that you had to overcome to become the woman you are today?
Olga
Hmm. I think you're going to be shocked by this one.
Clare
Ooh! I am. As I know you really well. How am going to be shocked?
Olga
Yeah, because, you know, we all evolve, and maybe we haven't had a chance to have this conversation yet. But my blessing and curse was focusing on self-improvement. And that's a challenge that I had to overcome. And it kind of came to me last year that focusing on improvement, self-improvement, kind of implies that you're broken. And I started focusing on strength. So, what have I achieved? What am I good at? What should I be doing more of? Yes, of course, I can do certain things better, but do they sit right with me, or should I just not be doing them?
I think sometimes self-improvement focus leads to low self-worth and relentless standards, which are not always helpful. And, you know, I come across as quite confident and I've been leading teams from the age of 23. This is my natural strength. And for years, I was trying to do all sorts of other things, and I don't think… I realised my full potential to my best. So, I did a lot of exploration of my strengths, and I have a level of determination for 2025 to focusing on what I do best, which is improvement, problem-solving, strategic thinking, driven by better ways of doing things. I anticipate challenges. I happily address problems, and that's really exciting for me.
Clare
Yeah, yeah.
Olga
You can see me animated, and I was like, yeah, give me a problem to solve. So yeah, I'm great at fostering potential in others, and I'm not very good at following rules, guidelines, sticking to rigid ways of doing things. So I'd rather delegate this to my team, which I'm very fortunate to have or avoid tasks that require this. 15, 20 years in my career, I chose to focus on being a researcher and be good at meticulous calculations, creating and checking the questionnaires, and that wasn't the right choice for me and I quickly kind of grew out of it into other roles.
Clare
Yeah, it totally resonates with me. In fact, we had our end-of-year reviews just before Christmas. And we were talking about the link between working in your zone of genius and playing to your strengths and joy. And actually, when you're in a space where you're doing something that you don't enjoy, that just isn't either your strength or you just don't like doing it. For me, I'm the same, love problems to solve, love innovation, love creating something the first time around, finding a way to do something. But maintaining that I'm not interested in, but you still need it to be maintained, right? So, and it was similar with the conversation with one of my team as well, that she's very similar to me actually. So being able to let go of some of the stuff that we have been doing to pass on to someone who's more suited to do that job. And then experiencing more joy as a result of being in that that space. I definitely am an advocate of playing to your strengths.
And a really interesting point that you raised around this continuous striving for self-improvement, all of the self-help books, all of the podcasts that are out there, I definitely fall into that trap as well. But what are you telling yourself, right? If you're always trying to improve something about you, I just thought it was interesting that you said that either you're telling yourself you're broken, or you're deficient in some way. I think for me, I'm never going to stop learning about myself. And I love that introspection in terms of listening to other points of view. And for me, I think the thing I'm continuously working on is my own mindset. But I'm no longer trying to learn other skills that I know what I'm good at. Stick to what I'm good at and keep working towards a better version of myself is definitely something I agree on as well.
Olga
Yeah. So, I suggest replacing self-improvement with self-discovery, awareness and taking pride in what you do.
Clare
Yeah, self-awareness. Yes, definitely self-discovery, self-awareness, but not self-improvement. That's that's a really, really good one. So just before we finish, obviously, you've been a part of Women in CX since day one, since before day one, because actually, I employed Olga to do our research for our own product development back in the day when we were building our first platform MVP for Women in CX. But I just wondered, is there anything you'd like to share with the audience about how being part of communities impacted your personal and professional development? Not just WiCX but community more broadly.
Olga
Yes, sure. Well, I will share about WiCX because it's my favourite community.
Clare
Okay, you heard it here first. There's that 20 pounds. I promise I didn't bribe Olga to say that.
Olga
No, no, Clare never bribes me, even though I ask for bribes all the time.
Clare
Haha!
Olga
I always used to think about myself as not the one for communities or networking. I love one-to-one connections, I love deep conversations and this is where I thrive. And Women in CX showed me that a community can do exactly that. And I met lots and lots of people, Clare herself, Bérengere, Elena, Oriana, many, many others whom I've been able to foster these deep connections with. And I think I even rethought the idea of communities and the appeal of communities to me from kind of, it's too much effort and I'm not the type of person who thrives connecting with a lot of people to think, you know, what can I give, give as much as I can and feel appreciated for that. And I think that's where Women in CX community is unique, is the appreciation that every member gets from bringing what they can.
Clare
Yeah, that's a really good point. I totally agree. You get out what you put in in a way, don't you? And even if it's just reaching out to message someone and saying, hey, you look cool, can I have a coffee? Where that can lead, it's incredible friendships. We've been able to build with wonderful people that we might not have met otherwise. But yeah, I agree. Thinking about what can you give to community rather than what you can take. And you've been a shining example of that in your generosity to the community over the last four years. So, to finish off then, our final question, is there one top takeaway from this conversation that you'd like to leave the podcast listeners with?
Olga
Not being afraid to speak your truth and don't feel you're broken in any way or deficient. Your ideas are great, you need to define them clearly, learn to pitch them to the right people and be in that state of balance and harmony yourself.
Clare
Yes, it all starts with us, doesn't it? First, if you can get yourself to harmony, then you'll definitely be able to help others and businesses to do that. So, this was a wicked episode. Thank you so much for sharing your unique perspective. It's wonderful to see the momentum that's building around these conversations about customer-informed operating models. We've talked about so many things today. And I love talking to you, Olga. It's always a pleasure. So keep doing what you're doing.
Really excited to see even more amazing content coming out from not only ECC, but CXPanda as well, which, by the way, round of applause, it's turning into a wonderful community in its own right. And yeah, thank you to everybody who listened along today and we'll see you all next time. Bye for now. Bye Olga.
Olga
Thank you, thank you very grateful to you and to all the listeners, and always a pleasure. Thank you, Clare, bye, bye.
Clare
Lots of love, bye.
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! Well, that’s all for now! See you again next time!
