Speaker 1: 0:39

helping customers to achieve value can look so different, based on each customer's organization, what their desired outcomes are. So I think honestly that's probably what's kept me in this field for so long is I love problem solving and I never see the same problem exactly the same way once again, welcome to the digital customer experience Podcast with me, alex Turkovich.

Speaker 2: 1:02

So glad you could join us here today and every week as we explore how digital can help enhance the customer and employee experience. My goal is to share what my guests and I have learned over the years so that you can get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital programs. If you'd like more info, need to get in touch or sign up for the weekly companion newsletter that has additional articles and resources in it. Go to digital customer successcom. For now, let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the digital CX podcast. My name is Alex Turkovich. It's so great to have you back this week and every week and for those of you who are new, welcome to the show. Nice to have you. It's episode 66, I believe. Um, we've got Jess Osborne lined up for you, um, who's a phenomenal human being. Can't wait to get into that conversation with you. Um. First and foremost, though, I do want to um announce a digital and scaled uh success meetup that I am hosting along with Samantha David of mondaycom and Scott Wilder as well. We are going to be hosting this thing on a monthly basis. First Thursday of the month, at 11 central. There's a couple of details we're still ironing out in terms of signing up and all of that kind of stuff, but I wanted to at least announce it to give you somewhat of a calendar placeholder. The first one's going to be September. First Thursday in September I think that's the fifth, and we'll have a guest along every month to talk about different things. I think the first one we have lined up is going to be Aaron Hatton of Gainsight. He's going to be spending some time on personalization because that's kind of his bread and butter, so look forward to that. I'll have some more details and links for sign up probably by the next episode.

Speaker 2: 2:47

For today, as I mentioned, we have Jess Osborne lined up. She's a local Austinite, which is awesome. She's currently gainfully employed at GoCardless, has had an awesome career in post-sale, spent some time at Blackbaud. One of the things that she's very passionate about is people development, and so we actually talk about that. Specifically to digital. You know what it takes to get a role in digital and also you know what are the career steps from digital into something else, because really, when you think about it, digital CS draws on so many different practices and so many different professional capabilities. Let's say that the other thing that we talk a little bit about is onboarding and really how important it is to define onboarding and when somebody is quote unquote onboarded.

Speaker 2: 3:37

So I really hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jess Osborne, because I sure did. Well, hey look, jess Osborne, I'm so glad that you're on the show. It's been a while. I don't know what I'm doing with my hand, but it's cool. It's been a bit in the making because we're both local Austinites and we've met up several times and a couple times we've been like hey, you know, we should do the show together and now it's actually happened. So I'm super glad you're here.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I am so excited to be here. It's finally coming to fruition. One of my favorite things is to make plans in advance and actually execute on them. So this is back on that list Scratch the itch a little bit.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Yes, obviously there's the obligatory like who are you? Where'd you come from? I was actually, you know, looking a little bit like so you're from? From what I understand, you're from San Antonio originally.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Baytown, that's right Represent.

Speaker 2: 4:36

San Antonio, and did you move to Austin for school or had you? Were you already here?

Speaker 1: 4:48

That's exactly right. I came for the university of Texas at Austin. That's what brought me to Austin and, uh, I didn't really want to leave right afterwards cause it was so great. Um, I did take a little stint while I was in school and lived in Madrid and was obsessed with that um experience.

Speaker 1: 5:01

So I set a goal, kind of like the plan for this podcast, in advance, to try to live abroad, and I managed to live in London for four years through my company Bizarre Voice. So yeah, those are the only places I've lived is basically Europe and Texas.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Hey, Madrid, London, Austin, that's a good list. You did well, yeah, madrid is cool. We we did a, uh like a company all hands type thing a few years ago in Madrid, which is pretty pretty amazing. Yeah, pretty much. Um, tell me a little bit about, um, camp Longhorn.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Oh, yes, it is funny Cause you're talking about the summer and we were talking about campers. So yeah, I was a counselor at Camp Longhorn for four years and I actually have a podcast on that subject that my husband did the Judgy. Parents Watching Heavyweights. Oh cool, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you want to go deep on my Camp Longhorn experience? I'll reference you to that podcast.

Speaker 2: 6:03

Yes, awesome, that's cool. You did that during college, though, right.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Yeah, yeah. So I was actually a camper pre-college and then it was probably when my first like decent paying job you know classes of decent, who who categories I was, I was. I worked at a firework stand before that. So from firework stand to camp counselor and, yeah, it was actually my uh, from high school into college job.

Speaker 2: 6:31

Yeah, that's so cool. I'm glad you didn't blow yourself up.

Speaker 1: 6:35

I know Right At the firework stand that could have happened.

Speaker 2: 6:39

Yeah, cause, cause, now you're here to talk about like CS and your journey into like. What was that all about? I saw some account management in your background, which is interesting because that's definitely been a shift that we're kind of going back to now. Totally, I'm pulling on that.

Speaker 1: 6:54

I'm pulling on that now. Yeah, so I got my break out of the Austin startup scene. So I got my break out of the Austin startup scene. I had a friend who was working at this little startup called Apogee Search and I was an unpaid intern there for two months and then the lady who hired me said she was leaving and she told my boss at the time that either he could hire me, who had been there training for two months, or they could start a search, and he decided to take a risk on me.

Speaker 1: 7:19

So, I started my first day after graduating college full-time in account management with about 30 accounts and just dove right in started figuring it all out. And then I went to Bizarre Voice, which I think in terms of customer experience is a really cool company because they power the reviews on a lot of e-commerce retail and brand sites out there, from Walmart to Target and in the UK. When I got to work in the UK for Bizarre Voice, I was working with Samsung and Disney and Amex and John Lewis and.

Speaker 1: 7:55

M&S, all these huge brands and basically helping them ask for their customers feedback on their products and then channeling those insights into the departments that could do something with their feedback. And that was my job as a customer success manager was just help them get the value out of the insights of the customer feedback. So customer experience and customer feedback uh is definitely a huge part of my dna and those years at Bizarre Voice were really formative in uh in starting out.

Speaker 2: 8:23

For sure Were you there during the boom, basically the BV boom.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Yeah, I was. So I started in 2010,. We were at 38 million. When I left, we were at 200 million. Um and we had gone through becoming a publicly traded business. So, yes, I was there helping them grow through the boom.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Yeah, Fun times. Yeah, it was. It was the best times we had.

Speaker 1: 8:46

We, we loved it. We had don't stop believing. Uh, when you would pick up the phone, it would be like the ringtone was don't stop believing.

Speaker 2: 8:58

That's cool. And then it kind of what, what, what, uh, what's been the last few years looking like?

Speaker 1: 9:04

yeah, so after um bv, I, uh, I went to the largest company I'd ever worked for, because the the first um ones were more bootstrap startups. So I went to blackbaud, which was a publicly traded business, and I that's really when I got deep in digital experience. I was head of both onboarding and adoption, so I had to first define what the heck those things are and then how to drive an impact on them.

Speaker 1: 9:30

So that was a really cool experience, I would say from there. The past few years. Blackbaud got me into social impact, so I worked at a company called Find Help where we were helping people find food and housing and other low cost resources during the pandemic, and we were working with major hospital systems while we did that. And then I pivoted to GoCardless where I am now. It's a UK based business that helps with making payments easier for CFOs and their accounting teams. It's a very socially conscious business. So I really enjoyed the culture there and that experience and I'm leading an international team that spans four different time zones at the minute.

Speaker 2: 10:12

Fun yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So that's the journey.

Speaker 2: 10:17

That's the journey, yeah, the whole multiple, uh, multiple time zones I've got. I've got some folks in APAC and then some folks in EMEA. So like, right there with you.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Yep, it's, it's a lifestyle, for sure it is a life.

Speaker 2: 10:31

It's a lifestyle maybe by choice, maybe not by choice. Well, look, I mean, if you, you know, I think you're a somewhat regular listener on the show and and you know one of the questions that's coming up, which is customer success, it would be that drive outcomes.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Because, in my mind, customer success is very linked to the outcomes that the customers you work with achieve. But if you're talking experience, I would say that creates an experience that meets your customers' needs. So how do you know what your customer needs and how to solve that in the digital space, and my mind is using technology to achieve that?

Speaker 2: 11:26

Yeah, for sure. A couple of things come to mind based on what you said the fact that the variability there is so great, depending on any number of things like, obviously, who your customers are, what your product is, and all that kind of stuff. But then you know what your tech stack is, what your data is looking like, and all those kinds of things. Like there's no recipe for it necessarily, except for the core definition of hey, help your customers to achieve something or help your customers to you know, guide their experience through a flow which is fascinating to me, because I can't think of another kind of function or set of functions that really have that much variability in them.

Speaker 1: 14:29

There is a lot of variability in customer success in particular, and I think it's just the art of helping customers to achieve value can look so different, based on each customer's organization, what their desired outcomes are. So I think honestly that's probably what's kept me in this field for so long is I love problem solving and I never see the same problem exactly the same way over and over again. There's always some nuance that makes it a little bit different. It might be a similar problem, but it's never boring. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2: 15:04

It's true, it's never boring. There's never a shortage of things to do, but always a shortage of people to do it with.

Speaker 1: 15:14

That's definitely the challenge nowadays, and I proving ties to revenue. I think the more you can do that, the less you have the former problem.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah, for sure, and I mean you know it's interesting because I I don't know, I'd love your take on this. I feel like the debate in talking CS for a second here, the debate in CS over the last few years has been so much around revenue ownership, Like do we own the number, Do we not own the number? And all that kind of stuff which I kind of call BS on a little bit, because I think you own the number or you're a big part of the number, or you're a big part of the number. I guess what I'm getting at is to me it feels like we've kind of lost in that discussion. We've lost sight of the fact that, look, you're here to drive outcomes. Like driving outcome informs everything else you do, whether you own the number or whether you don't own the number, what you do to help your customers to achieve value, and to realize value out of whatever it is you're selling is like the cornerstone, and without that, it doesn't matter who owns the number.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Yeah, I think that's really true with customer success. What I will say is I've been driving a transformation in GoCardless which is bringing back a focus on account management, which, in my mind, the difference between CS and account management is.

Speaker 1: 16:43

CS is all about the outcomes for the customer and account management is all about the revenue outcomes for the business that you're working for and so I think I have a hybrid function of CS and account management and it's they have to balance driving those outcomes for the customers who are paying for those services with then also trying to drive the revenue outcomes for our business and that's part of the not enough headcount to do all of the different functions in this kind of climate. But yeah, I think that's the difference in the definition is what you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Yeah, by the way, I love the fact that this is kind of going this way and and you hear more and more people talk about account management and and those kinds of things, um, so I'm firmly on on that bandwagon. But you know, I've so me personally, I've been operating in a business that's kind of functioned like that because we had, you know, we have a separate renewals team that manages the renewal and, you know, engages customers and negotiates and handles the contracting and all that kind of stuff. So the CSMs within the org that I work for have had the luxury of not having to be involved in the day-to-day financial aspects of the renewal and the deal, which I think serves, you know, serves the CSM incredibly well because it's that's just, you know, one layer of complexity to remove so you can focus on the outcome.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Yeah, we have that same structure and the UK part of our business and I.

Speaker 1: 18:13

I now run the international, but I ran the global CSM function for a period of time and I do think that that's a good structure for scale, when you need to focus one team on driving the outcomes for customers and then you can have another team focused on driving the renewal outcomes.

Speaker 1: 18:28

I do think so because in international we're a smaller portion of the business and we have to localize the resources to the regions that we operate in. We have to wear more hats, like you do earlier stage in a business, and I would say some of the benefits of understanding the financial structure is that you have more levers to motivate the customer's behavior, because if you're just dependent on I'm here to help you, let me help you. That doesn't always motivate the people on the other side that you're trying to help actually take action, whereas if you can say this is saving you this much money by doing these things, you should do them, or if not, I'm going to increase your pricing to X. Then you have a little bit more stick to go with the carrot and that often will get things moving that are stuck. So I think there are some pros and cons of having the commercial ownership.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Yeah, I mean also anytime that you separate teams out, you run the risk of siloing stuff and siloing communications and you know you're driving outcomes. It's great. But it's not great if you're not telling anyone about them, especially the renewals team.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Totally. Yeah, that was a big focus was where were we documenting all the things that were happening on the account? All the stakeholders, all the med pick information. How does that get transferred to the renewals manager? So yeah, it's yet another handover that you've got to make sure you don't lose the context on, for sure.

Speaker 2: 19:55

For sure. So I mean maybe a natural transition there. Are you driving any of that stuff digitally?

Speaker 1: 20:02

Yes, so one of the things we put into place is the digital renewal reminder process, and that was really helpful. That basically just ensures that every customer knows their renewal is coming up and we're able to communicate some important things throughout that. Something that one of our renewal managers highlighted to me that another company is doing, which I think is really cool and I want us to get to, is to actually, six months ahead of the renewal, provide the commercial structure and the proposal so that the customer can react to that and the negotiation can begin.

Speaker 1: 20:40

So right now we're only doing digital renewal reminders but, there are other companies out there that are just digitizing the whole.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Sure Renewal. There are some that are lucky enough to have the whole thing in platform, where you know, it can be completed digitally 100%, which is awesome. Yeah, 100% no no such luck here.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Yeah, it's funny because our business has 90,000 customers and a lot of them are SMBs. That go through our self serve channel, and so a lot of the functionality that we've built is geared towards that larger part of our customer base. And so you know we're we're consistently having to kind of identify how to create the customer experience that accounts for the self-serve aspect but then isn't hindering the sales led piece of things.

Speaker 2: 21:31

Yeah for sure Sounds like a lovely mix of things going on over there. So you know, in the realm of kind of specialization because you know you've talked a little bit about the account management role, the renewals role, how that differentiates from CSM and those kinds of things I know that one of the things that you're crazy passionate about is just people and the development of people and careers and, uh, you know, helping people to get to their next stage, do some pivots and all those kinds of things, and so I was curious to get your take, I guess, first and fundamentally like what's what's your, what's your take on the job market right now, if, if you have a take on it, because it's a hot mess.

Speaker 1: 22:20

I agree Hot mess is a good take. I have lots of friends and family members who have been through the ringer interviewing and silver meddling to take a phrase from a really awesome person out there who's built a community for people who are job searching and that concept is never job search alone and you kind of need to have those sort of support groups, because when you just get rejection upon rejection, I have friends who've applied to 600 different opportunities and gotten a handful of interviews off of that and then came in second place for certain roles and it's just so demoralizing and really challenging, and so I've been spending a lot of my time trying to help them just stay motivated and be connected to people that could maybe give them their break. But yeah, it's tough times out there. From my network, it's so hard.

Speaker 2: 23:18

The other thing that I think is contributing to the difficulty is that you have these, you have you have these situations where you'll have a thousand applicants to a role as a recruiter. That's like my nightmare scenario, because no way I'm going to go through this. So now I'm reliant on my applicant tracking system to, you know, pull out some candidates who fit a certain profile, which means in turn, we are like more so kind of enslaved to these systems and how they operate and what the machine learning behind them is, and you know artificial intelligence and all that kind of stuff than ever before, and it's that stuff still being baked Like we're not we're not good yet.

Speaker 2: 24:05

So, yeah, I just I feel for folks who are on the market, and especially for folks who've been on the market for a long time, because I know there's a lot of folks out there in that vein, I think I I know I've been approached several times from people who want to get specifically into digital and don't really know what the parameters of that are, because I think there's still a lot of assumption that, oh, you know, you want to build a digital team, just take your junior CSMs and, you know, stick them in coach, and that's totally not it.

Speaker 2: 24:44

And also, I mean, you know, there's the kind of added parameter of how complex your digital team is, because you're probably going to have program managers, you're probably going to have, like data analysts and those kinds of things in the mix, not just like a pooled or scaled team. So, you know, given that you're, so you know, passionate about people, development and things like that, like what are the kinds of things that if I were to come to you and say, hey, look, I'm looking to, you know, break into digital CS. What are the things that I should be focused on? Where should I learn? Like, what should I have on my resume?

Speaker 1: 25:21

Yeah. So I would say, if you're looking to pivot in the digital CX, the first question I would ask you is why and what you're passionate about in that realm that makes you feel like that's the right fit. And if the person didn't really know, I would try to help them understand some of the things that you were just mentioning. In terms of what it takes to create a digital experience, I think of three critical capabilities. One is the content creation aspect, another is the tool administration and you've already mentioned the data side of things. I think you're also right that there tends to be either a project or program management aspect as well, to make sure all those pieces come together to actually create the outcome that's intended.

Speaker 1: 26:12

So there's a lot of different ways to break into digital. You could have a hybrid of those roles. If it's an earlier stage business that needs a jack of all trades, but if it's a more complex business that has specialized roles, then you'd have to prove yourself in one of those domains, right. So I think I would start with why are they interested in it? Do they actually have a passion for one of the things if not multiple of the things that it takes to do that? And then trying to help them figure out how they can position their previous experience or gain some experience that helps them to make that pivot. I'm a big believer of if you've got a goal, whatever you're doing today, you can start to work on the skill sets that help you get into what you want to do tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 27:01

You just need to understand what's the relation between what you're doing today and where you want to go and then how can you really sharpen the different skills that you need to be able to make it obvious that that pivot makes sense. And the easiest way to do that is if you're already in the business itself, because typically you can do a lot more of the discovery to figure out what is happening on hiring on that team, what are they looking for, what's the immediate need, and then you can think about how does your experience then match that pivot.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Yeah, I love how you started with the why. Way to go, Simon Sinek.

Speaker 1: 27:39

And it's also one of GC's values.

Speaker 2: 27:41

So it's been even more of a time or two but I love Simon as well.

Speaker 1: 27:44

Yeah, he's brilliant.

Speaker 2: 27:46

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Speaker 2: 28:25

Now back to the show. It's a great question to start somebody off with, just because, like, okay, why are you getting into it? Just because it's the hottest thing that everybody's talking about? Okay, maybe not the best reason, like, what part of your being aligns with what part of digital? Because, you're right, it's so multifaceted.

Speaker 2: 28:49

The other thing that I would add, too, is you have this proliferation of scale teams as well, which is an interesting beast right. Which is an interesting beast right Because where the CSM is sometimes considered the dumping ground of stuff, I think that only gets amplified with the scaled team, and so it behooves a leader to really kind of be pointed about what the scope of the scaled team is, what they're intended to do. And I'm using scaled and pooled kind of interchangeably right, because these folks generally operate in a pooled model and they're dealing with all kinds of stuff, which means guess what? Your most junior CSM is maybe not the right person for that kind of a role, because you're going to be dealing with a lot of different scenarios, a lot of different campaigns, a lot of inbound, a lot of outbound, like so much different scenarios and whatnot. You kind of got to be a strategic player.

Speaker 1: 29:46

Yeah, I agree with that. I would also say I'm a big fan at looking at the disciplines that exist around what you're doing, that already have mastered some of the things that you're trying to do, and I am a big fan of when you're building skilled CS. You need to know your support organization really, really well, because, especially in my world, our support organization is supporting those 90,000 customers, so they know how to scale right. And so what are the tools and ways that they're doing things, and is there a way to take advantage of some of their playbooks to be able to then achieve whatever? And, to your point, you do need to make sure that the leader of the scale team has a vision for what they're trying to achieve. It's not just a dumping ground, for we're not.

Speaker 1: 30:32

You know the land of misfit toys, but then figuring out how to do it and using, you know, when it comes to the skill piece support, when it comes to content creation, does your marketing team have a focus on the existing customer base, what already exists?

Speaker 1: 30:51

I can tell you. You know, when I was prepping for this, we talked about failures, and one of my early failures was tied to the fact that I was working at a behemoth organization that had a marketing function. That was a content Just I don't even know what you would call it like a factory, like there was just constant content being created, and I did try early doors to create an alliance with marketing. The political scene wasn't such that I was able to do it as effectively as I would have liked to. But when those parts of your org already exist, if you're trying to do something in a silo separate from that content factory, you're not set up for success because your customers are already getting barraged with a lot of information, and so when you just add to that channel, it gets drowned in the noise, and so you need to look at the adjacent functions and make sure you have the relationships with those leaders, you understand how they operate and you understand what unique value you're adding in addition to what already exists.

Speaker 2: 31:50

Yeah, I, you know we we talked briefly about the.

Speaker 2: 31:54

You know the fact that I've transitioned the show slightly from CS to CX, but it's not.

Speaker 2: 32:00

Maybe not as slight, it's one letter difference, but pretty big difference, you know, I guess the point that I'm getting to here is, when you think about digital in the realm of CS versus CX, two things come to my mind and I would love for you to poke holes into this. The first is that internal stuff that you're talking about, like those internal relationships that are so vital in terms of passing customer information along, coordinating on customer outreach, like all those kinds of things. That takes considerable effort and I think most people kind of underestimate what needs to go into building and maintaining those relationships or full-blown repairing them right. And then the other element that sits right on top of that is the customer journey or the customer life cycle and how you want to manage to that and being kind of digitally the steward of that from a digital standpoint. Like digital CS, freaking, phenomenal, awesome, we're doing great things. But when you think about CX and you broaden it out, that's where, like, getting everybody together on the digital front is so, so key.

Speaker 1: 33:15

I agree, I absolutely agree, and I would say how complex your customer journey is even just adds to how critical that is. So at the larger business that I mentioned working for, there were so many different stakeholders and different aspects that would be sending different customer emails along the journey, would be sending different customer emails along the journey and the journey mapping we did at that business. I've never seen anything more visually complex.

Speaker 1: 33:46

I think we used Mosaic, which did a really good job of pulling it all together, but it's a lot, and so I would say this is why, when you mentioned the strategic aspect of digital CS, I do agree.

Speaker 1: 34:01

And also some people say you know you need to be more data than people focused, and I'd say you definitely need to be data focused but somebody needs to be building those relationships, having those open lines of communication and figuring out how you influence stakeholders to come together to actually improve the overall experience, because in a lot of cases the parts of the customer experience that are the worst are not in the control of the CSM. The billing experience can be terrible and the CSM has very little if anything to do with how you bill your customers. It does take a lot of strategic relationship building and influencing people to then go and fix aspects that are broken in a customer experience.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Yeah, it's one of. It's one of one of the foundation pieces, right, I think data data is one of the foundation pieces too. Like, if you, if your data sucks and you can't don't even know who your champion is, then you can't build stuff. Okay Foundation piece. If you have a really cruddy relationship with your champion is, then you can't build stuff Okay foundation piece If you have a really cruddy relationship with your marketing department. That's just duplication of effort and it complicates the whole thing. It wastes people's time and ultimately doesn't achieve the goal of providing like one experience. All of a sudden, your customers are getting like eight experiences.

Speaker 1: 35:20

Exactly, exactly to have great cultures that are customer centric and also that require a certain level of shared values that allow teams to be able to operate well together. I think that's really important in order to make it to where everyone's on the same page with wanting to improve the customer experience and doing their part to do so?

Speaker 2: 35:51

Yeah, for sure we're going to take a hard right, because I know you've run some onboarding in the past. I've run some onboarding teams in the past and I think the golden question that always gets answered or asked when you're building or modifying programs is like okay, when are they onboarded? Is it after a time period? Is it when they've logged in? Is it after they've achieved XYZ? Is it six months from now, where they're actually getting value from the tool? What's your thought process on defining onboarded?

Speaker 1: 36:28

Yeah. So I firmly believe it needs to be action-based actions that the customer takes that indicate that they are up and running and able to use the platform in ways that will add value. We've actually defined onboarded as one of the phases. One of the phases, so we have activated, which is the six actions, and you can't really be onboarded unless you've reached those six actions and gotten activated Onboarded.

Speaker 1: 37:01

The most universal definition is time to value, though, so you need to be measuring how long it takes to get to activated, but then you also want to be measuring how long it takes for that customer to see value, and for us and our business at GoCardless, we consider that a concept called ramped. So our business is payments, we have transactions, and they need to achieve a percentage of the forecasted transactions that we were expecting to see them achieve to be ramped, and so it's activated, onboarded and then ramped, and those are all different. They have definitions based on a set number of actions in the tool, and then we measure how long it takes the customer to get to those milestones, and we're constantly. We have objectives, targets, compensation tied to reducing the amount of time it takes to get to those milestones.

Speaker 2: 37:54

Yeah, I love how crisp you guys are with that, because the crisper you are in those definitions, the more stuff you can add to it and the things you can run off of it like comp. If you're crisp with that stuff, it's a no brainer to run to have comp tied into that. However, if you're not crisp on those things, then all of a sudden you get yourself into a heap of trouble when you tie a paycheck to it.

Speaker 1: 38:18

Well and I'm a fan, though, of that being a catalyst towards getting crisp, because I think businesses need to think about their employee experience alongside the customer experience, and things like tying comp to metrics in the customer experience suddenly create these commercially aligned incentives to figure broken stuff out.

Speaker 2: 38:41

So, um, yeah, thank you for highlighting that. I uh that, that that employee experience stuff. I don't know if it's a US thing. I feel like international companies might be a little bit better at this than a lot of US companies. Whatever, I'm not going to go there, but the fact of the matter is is if you have somebody who's miserable talking with your customers, they're going to know, they're're going to feel it it's not you know and and they might not exactly know exactly what's happening, but it's going to impact the conversation. There there is a direct correlation to an employee's state of mind, to the outcomes that that customer can achieve. Period.

Speaker 1: 39:29

Agreed. I completely agree. I feel like we talked about this in one of our meetups.

Speaker 2: 39:36

We did yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Co-ops being the ideal business model for ultimate customer satisfaction. John Lewis and Waitrose have this model in the UK, and when your employees own part of the business, they are the shareholders. They are very incentivized to make sure the customer experience is great and there's, you know, no doubt why Waitrose and John Lewis lead in customer experience as a result of their business structure.

Speaker 2: 40:02

And let's be clear, we're not talking about stock options either. Like you know, stock options.

Speaker 1: 40:08

You know they're. They're so far removed. It's actual ownership in the business that tends to really motivate people.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Yeah, so true. One of the things I love to nerd out on is just finding digital stuff in the wild. I ran across two yesterday where I was like whoa, it's like really cool stuff that certain companies are doing. I'm finding a lot in B2C recently that is just like blowing my mind, but are there some stuff in the wild that you've seen? That you, you, uh, that you were. You were just blown away.

Speaker 1: 40:46

Yeah, I mean so I would say two that come to mind. I also pull a lot from B2C and my own consumer experience. So the two experiences that stuck out in my mind recently one I think I told you that my daughter had her birthday this week and she requested going to Olive Garden, which I had not been in a while, and they have these little digital kind of it's almost like an iPad type of experience, and my daughter was playing a memory game, which is great because I felt like it was a good way to keep a five-year-old wanting to be at her going on nine-year-old sister's birthday party. But then you could pay right there and you could split the checkout through paying in that thing. And so I'm always looking at how are people creating better payment experiences?

Speaker 1: 41:38

And it's like this is something you've already been playing with during dinner and then suddenly you have to pay with it and I thought that was, that was pretty cool. And then the other thing, more of a personal shopping experience. I had an augmented reality sunglasses shopping experience and I was like that's so cool Really. Yeah, you could see what the sunglasses look like and if they would fit your face. And I was like, yeah, I like both of these things. I like when digital starts to come back into reality. I think that that's the creative space where things really get compelling, because we all know in-person experiences are just so much more natural.

Speaker 1: 42:18

So, it's like how did the digital start to actually make the experience more lifelike?

Speaker 2: 42:24

And.

Speaker 1: 42:24

I think anything that gets you more and more in that realm is um is pretty cool in my book.

Speaker 2: 42:30

Yeah, those immersive experiences are so cool. I mean, one of the first instances I remember seeing of this stuff was actually at the Lego store way long. This is like I don't know. 10, 12, 13 years ago they had that cool. They still have it and it's kind of like whatever now, but you could hold a box up to this screen and it would like build it in front of your eyes on the screen and stuff like that. And and I remember thinking at the time man, this is like really cool, why don't other people do this? And now everybody's kind of doing that stuff.

Speaker 1: 43:05

So yeah, lego is great, I love them.

Speaker 2: 43:08

Yeah, they do good stuff, they do good stuff. I was at another, I think another company that does payment really well, especially in the hospitality space, is Toast, you know, because their terminals are like super easy to use. But the other day, you know, my wife and I went to dinner and on the receipt was a QR code and I paid with Apple Pay on the QR code. I was like, yeah, yes, let's go, I love those too.

Speaker 1: 43:36

Yeah, I've had those experiences Not as recently, but yeah, it's just nice when you don't have to pull out a credit card, especially working for a company called GoCardless.

Speaker 2: 43:44

I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1: 43:55

What's in your content diet, Jess Osborne. So I am a big fan of podcasts. So I'm happy to say the Digital Customer Experience podcast is part of that. I also just totally nerd out on leadership podcasts. So I'm a big fan of Brene Brown. Yes, and when I hear about a great thought bending nonfiction, I tend to go to Blinkist to digest the content, because I'm much more of an auditory learner and I'm. If I'm going to read, I want to read fiction. So I tend to use the Blinkist to stay up to speed on on what's going on in the nonfiction world.

Speaker 2: 44:31

That's cool. I just became a Blinkist affiliate, but I don't remember signing up for their affiliate program, so I'm a little bit perplexed by that.

Speaker 1: 44:42

Might be a customer experience issue.

Speaker 2: 44:46

Or memory lapse is probably more like it. Exactly who?

Speaker 1: 44:50

knows.

Speaker 2: 44:50

Who knows Is there. Are there any people or orgs or companies that you'd want to give a shout out to that are doing cool stuff in digital?

Speaker 1: 45:02

Yes, I have my list.

Speaker 1: 45:03

So, I would say Shikai Yube is doing some really cool things in digital. He's a great strategist who's worth following. Also, if you're looking for continuing education, I have a little short list In terms of organizations, customer Success Collective is my favorite Shout out for the Customer Success Fest I'll be speaking in San Francisco in September, nice. But then, in terms of individuals who are powering some really cool communities and learning, leighton Chaney has better growth and has really great content on customer success. And then also, if you're looking for a European flair, I would say Sue Nabath Moore. She's based in Paris, she's a British expat who is fluent in French and she's created a really cool customer success community in Paris. So those are my short list of really amazing individuals, and I would say the three last ones all have some really cool educational opportunities.

Speaker 2: 46:14

Awesome, yeah, thanks for highlighting that. I just, I just love when, like all everybody's little pockets of knowledge and and content and people kind of come together and, like you know, into into what is turning out to be a massive list of resources from all the guests, and so you just added some that hadn't made the list before, which is cool.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Awesome, I like some new links.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, look, I've super enjoyed the conversation. I super enjoyed hanging out with you more in the Austin area with any meetups that we do in the future. I know you used to do the Pulse Local stuff in Austin, right.

Speaker 1: 46:55

Yeah yeah, pulse Local was my OG customer success meetup, and then you introduced me to a brand new one, the last one that we got together. So I love to see that there's new groups forming and the community is still going strong here in Austin.

Speaker 2: 47:08

I think Austin's a little behind the eight ball when it comes to this stuff, so we got to like bolster the Austin community. If you're in Austin, let's go, come on.

Speaker 1: 47:17

Um let's go, but um where can people find you, engage with you, talk with you? Yeah, linkedin is, uh the the spot. Jess Reeser Osborne, I think. Actually, the link itself says Jessica Reeser Osborne on LinkedIn. But, yeah, please reach out, I'd love to be connected.

Speaker 2: 47:36

Cool. Well, thanks again for coming on. Your, your, your energy and what you bring to the community is phenomenal, and I always love hanging out with you, and so I'm glad we were able to hang out with the community this way.

Speaker 1: 47:48

Right back at you, Alex. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 47:50

See ya. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast. If you like what we're doing, consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment down below. It really helps us to grow and provide value to a broader audience. You can view the Digital Customer Success definition word map and get more information about the show and some of the other things that we're doing at digitalcustomersuccesscom.

Speaker 2: 48:19

This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by our good mutual friend, dylan Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the content video audio production needs of the CS and post-sale community. They're offering services at a steep discount for a limited time. So navigate to lifetimevaluemediacom, go have a chat with Dylan and make sure you mention the Digital CX podcast sent you. I'm Alex Trukovich. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week.