The Impact of Customer Experience Design on Your Business with Stacy Sherman

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Stacy Sherman about Customer Experience (CX) design. Stacy’s journey with CX began in 2013 when, after a reorganization at Verizon, her Digital Marketing role expanded to increase customer satisfaction and brand advocacy. She helped introduce customer and employee feedback in website design, product development, market messaging, and related decisions to enable the brand to exceed customer expectations. 

As she gained expertise in CX best practices, Stacy fell in love with what she now calls the “Heart and Science of CX,” which is the ability to combine business expertise with a calling to provide authentic experiences for customers and employees. She is dedicated to humanizing business so that the customer relationship is viewed as a partnership and that people stay brand loyal based on real trust and connection.

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Stacy Sherman can be found online at https://doingcxright.com/ on Twitter @Stacysherman, and Instagram @Doingcxright

Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at https://fiveechelon.com/impact-customer-experience-design-business-s3e9

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com
 
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Transcript

Carla: 0:01

The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group. If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.

Eric Dickmann: 0:24

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. This week, I'm excited to welcome Stacey Sherman to the podcast. Stacy's journey to customer experience began in 2013. When after a reorganization at Verizon, her digital marketing role expanded to increase customer satisfaction and brand advocacy. She helped introduce customer and employee feedback in website design, product development, market messaging, and related decisions to enable the brand to exceed customer expectations. Stacy is dedicated to humanizing business. So the customer relationship is viewed as a partnership and that people stay brand loyal based on real trust and connection. Stacy welcome to the virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Stacy Sherman: 1:24

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Eric Dickmann: 1:26

I always like to start out and ask the guests of the podcast a little bit about their background and especially with you, how you got involved in customer experience design, because it's such a fascinating topic for me.

Stacy Sherman: 1:37

I have to be honest, I fell into it literally. I've always been, I spent my career in sales and marketing and when I was at my job at Verizon at the time I was responsible for digital experiences, eCommerce channel and such and my boss sent me a, there was this thing. He says, CX it's now important VOC and CX and said, what is that? And he said, I don't know, we have to go figure it out. and so that's the beginning. Of this momentum that, continued and it's changed a lot since 2013. there's so many more vendors and platforms and technologies to measure customer satisfaction. it's changed so much, but the fundamentals are still there and apply to every industry, where I am now. Is, Schindler elevator corporation. It's a Swiss based company, thousands and thousands of employees in every country and taking customer experience, in a B2B space, very seriously. And using that as our brand differentiator.

Eric Dickmann: 2:53

I look at the landscape today and it seems like in some ways, things have gotten dramatically better in terms of customer experience for us as consumers us as people who work with other businesses at the same time, it has also gotten dramatically worse, especially in some areas. You mentioned Verizon before we won't pick on any names, but what do you see when you look out there? Do you see things getting better and there's more of a recognition of the need around good customer experience design, or do you see things just falling apart?

Stacy Sherman: 3:26

I would say overall, all brands considered, we have a long way to go. There are definitely ones that are doing it really well doing CX right as I call it and there are companies that are definitely improving. So it's an evolution. It doesn't happen over automatically. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a very engaged motivated workforce and a company culture. But I will say, just even my own example today, I called the bank and I'm sitting on hold for a ridiculous amount of time. When I finally reached somebody. And they asked me the same information that I just input it into the digital digits, into the phone. And you think you're saving time to have to re not have to repeat this. So then somebody answers the phone and you have to say it all over again. And I'm like, I just input this. Why, how are you even asking me? And then long story short, they have to transfer me to another department. And I have to repeat the whole thing again. So it's 40 minutes. That's not a, that's a high level of effort and that's a customer dissatisfaction.

Eric Dickmann: 4:38

Okay. We're going to get into it here. So you know what you just mentioned, I'm sure everybody who's listening to this podcast can relate to. because I think most consumers know that nine times out of 10, if they put that information in it doesn't really do you any good later on in the call? Why are businesses so slow to learn this? Or do you think they simply don't want to learn it

Stacy Sherman: 5:01

Because they're too inside focused. They're letting process override the human experience. And so it requires hiring the right people internally. Or the right partners to look at every single interaction point across the customer journey with fine tune, really go deep into the customer journey. And if they don't do that, then process overtakes the experience and it just goes all wrong.

Eric Dickmann: 5:38

I think one of the most hated words that I have when I have a customer service interaction is I can't do that. And can't is actually the wrong word. It's won't. And won't is usually the result of a policy or a procedure, or just the last lack of authority that is given to an employee. you mentioned Verizon earlier, I with at and T and I had an issue the other day, where they made a billing error. They changed plans and, they overbuild people and they were aware of the problem, but I was on the phone for a half an hour while the agent worked to resolve that. And in the end, she said, I can process the credit, but I have to process it. In two separate payments because I'm not allowed to process the full refund, even though it was clearly a mistake that they were aware of. And I look at that and I say, that's a huge barrier to good customer experience.

Stacy Sherman: 6:32

Definitely. I actually worked for that company firm for 12 years and, look all these big companies. It's not a single industry. It's not just telecom. It's all companies. Big companies, especially, there's a lot of silos and there's different groups, do things different ways and you're right. It's like, how do you empower your employees to do what's right for the customer and do it right? Even when their boss isn't looking. So there's so many examples. it's just the fact of the size of the companies and where their priorities are. And it comes down to people, right? Like it's not a company that's bad or good. The people, the companies are just made of people. So that's the thing. if companies don't really focus on the fact that one person can entire brand reputation, Yeah, that's just that we have to drill that in.

Eric Dickmann: 7:36

And sometimes it's even hard to understand how they look at it from an economic perspective. In the example, I just gave the credit that I was supposed to get was$30 and I was on the phone for 30 minutes, a dollar a minute. Maybe you've had an experience where you're a credit card customer. There's been some kind of a charge or something. That's a mistake. And rather than investigate it, they'll just say, okay, we're gonna wipe that off your account. It's much cheaper for them just to quickly resolve the problem than to get multiple departments involved and have people escalate But yet it seems so many businesses are going through this laborious process of painting their customers through all these procedures. And you wonder what the end result is.

Stacy Sherman: 8:15

You're right. And the one thing that you can't forget. Is the amplification of this where now you're unhappy customer who just spent 30 minutes on the phone, got nowhere, feels frustrated. Now goes on social media and now was telling their friends too, It amplifies. And so the cost actually becomes bigger because of lost opportunities and reputation. So it's yeah, you got to get it right the first time.

Eric Dickmann: 8:47

I'd love to drill into this idea of voice of the customer a little bit more, because sometimes it feels like we are bombarded with surveys after telephone calls, after service interactions. And sometimes it feels like the quality the survey is how would you rate your experience? Good. Very good or great. They don't want to really hear anything on the opposite end of that spectrum. So how does a business employ the voice of the customer in designing their customer experience?

Stacy Sherman: 9:16

So I would say a lot of companies, majority now are getting customer feedback after they've launched. Something, a new service, a new product where companies are falling short and I can't stress this enough. This is the game changer. And that is asking the customer feedback upfront before you invest in a new technology, a new product, a new solution is getting the customer, bring them to the table and it's an agile process. And that's where it's, that's the missed opportunity, both the customer at the table and also the employee. And marrying that information to make your business decisions. Oh, and by the way, I say this a lot and I'm going to say it again. You cannot replace the customer's views with the employee. you can't save time and say, we don't have time to get the customer feedback. We're just going to use the employees. You can't do that. You have to marry both. And that's where the magic happens.

Eric Dickmann: 10:29

How do you avoid this problem then? I think it's the Henry Ford quote. If we had asked customers what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse, not a car. So how do you get that feedback before you launch a product or a service when people may not really know what they want?

Stacy Sherman: 10:46

Yes, I do this all the time. you start with even just concept validation. What do you think? Imagine if. Imagine if we had this solution, what's the appeal. Does it interest you? Here's the thing, the value props, right? What's your willingness to pay for this value. So you do concept validation, then you do prototype testing. You define a journey map and you validate the experience that you designed. Is it what the customer actually wants and expects. So it's not that you don't do this after you launched because you're constantly optimizing, but it's all the above.

Eric Dickmann: 11:29

So what you're really saying is you have to create a playing field that doesn't have preconceptions of what something should be. You have to get people to think beyond it, think outside the box, to use an old cliche.

Stacy Sherman: 11:42

That's in the box, but really like apps, the user they'll tell you, right? Whoever you're designing something for, it's not, must not be just based on what I think. Or what I want or what I believe somebody the wants, you have to ask them and they'll tell you, and them is really about who your, either current customers are ask them or the personas that you define the target audiences and go ask them. it's both.

Eric Dickmann: 12:17

It's so interesting because you can really tell when a brand has the customer in mind, From the packaging and the instructions. how something feels in your hand and how it looks. But then when you run into a company that doesn't do it, it's. Dicks out like a sore thumb, especially if they're a competitor or in those similar industries. And I come from a software background and it's amazing how many engineers may have built very good code underneath the covers if you will, but had no real concept of how an end user would interact with a piece of software.

Stacy Sherman: 12:51

I come from digital commerce for many years and every time now, personally, as a consumer and I go to buy online and I get stuck or can't do something. I just, yeah, I think about the coders, the designers. And did they test this with a real user? Nope. And boy, what a shame, because when I go to give my credit card and I can't check out, Oh, you just lost a customer. Like what a shame.

Eric Dickmann: 13:22

It's so true. I had that experience just the other day. And so many companies are working on creating experience that speed the process, look at Amazon, with one click checkout, look at things like Apple pay or Android pay, or being able to do contactless payments when you check out of a store, but yet people run into bad experiences all the time. And I think the worst is when an employee. Starts to make excuses for why it won't work before you even have an opportunity to try and see if it does work

Stacy Sherman: 13:53

Well. Exactly. And then think about what you just said about even just like we're talking about bill pay. the finance team, right? Traditionally they may say I don't have a customer experience job. Oh yeah, you do. The customer can pay or their invoices are wrong or it's frustrating. It doesn't matter that it was so easy to buy. It gets set up and start using the product. Customer service rep is nice that it doesn't matter if there's constantly billing issues and invoicing issues. What do you think it's going to, it's going to ruin the experience. So I always emphasize the point that everybody has a customer experience job. You've got to realize that you play an important part.

Eric Dickmann: 14:38

So you talk about this really in having customer experience throughout. The customer journey, right? It's not just when they're on the sales side or a prospect and looking at your product or services, but it's when they actually make the purchase. That's the fulfillment of that. It's the after sales service or support that they may need, and then obviously the opportunity to come back in and buy again. So do you think companies get that?

Stacy Sherman: 15:04

I think the brands that stand out. For sure. like I said, we have a long way to go, but I see a lot more of chief experience officers, right? Those roles becoming in companies and chief marketing officers have CX skills and certifications. So it's blending and the more that's happening. And the more that you even have. you talk about diversity inclusion, right? The hot topic. Now, why does that matter? for a hundred reasons, but from in the workplace, it's an employee experience. And when the employee feels happy and the employee feels valued, it all affects how the customer ends up feeling and seeing it. So it's interrelated.

Eric Dickmann: 15:54

I love that because I think what you're really getting at is this isn't just a process for a department. This is about something that is intrinsic to your organizational culture. You have to build a organizational culture sort of around this idea of a customer experience.

Stacy Sherman: 16:10

Yes. And it's gotta be both top down and bottoms up. It's gotta be both one without the other doesn't work. and sometimes I think people get lazy and they say, it's just a person or department's responsibility, no way. It takes a village. And it takes, the CEO and everyone down the customer expense has to be on there. Every agenda. That they, that at the top. And it needs to be part of the Salesforce, right? they have their branch meetings. It's gotta be on their agenda. They're talking about what customers are saying. They're looking at the surveys and the feedback it's, everybody's got to own it.

Eric Dickmann: 16:51

Have you seen some companies where you think that they've done an excellent job at promoting that sort of bottom up feedback, you mentioned before this idea of employees sitting side by side with customers, as they give feedback, maybe prior to launch, how about, processes that have worked well within companies once they have established products?

Stacy Sherman: 17:11

Yeah, I would say a lot of the companies I've worked for. where they intentionally are getting customer feedback upfront early on before launch, they focus on quality over speed. they get customer feedback, they close the loop, which is what Schindler is all about, where we're doing that very methodically. And then just as a consumer standpoint, I would say that, use an example. there's so many, gosh, I would say that Starbucks trader Joe's or two that stand out to me where the employees really customize. What they're offering you and what they guide you. They give advice based on what you tell them you're looking for, or you're thinking about or something I want to try and Dell, both Dell to actually open up a bag of something here tastes this, or, Oh, you like oat milk. Okay. then try this drink that has that instead of that, Yeah. So they're pushing their own products, but they're based on what you say you're interested in. And then they marry that.

Eric Dickmann: 18:29

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. One other thing I wanted to get into a little bit was talk about the role of technology in all this. I think analogy can be a huge enabler, right? And it can also be a real hindrance to positive customer experience. So what do you look at when you look at the role of technology? In customer experience design.

Stacy Sherman: 19:34

I agree. It is huge in the way that technology can enhance the customer experience, but it cannot replace, it cannot replace the human elements. So it's gotta be a mix. So for example, if communication is the number one. I'll call it opportunity for a lot of companies to improve the communication with the customer community, improve the communication internally. So when the customer, sometimes if you, for example, go to a doctor's office, they'll send you a notification, right? They'll send you a text about your appointment. Or actually even better as like a delivery package, right? It's coming, they'll send you a text. They tell you the communication, the package is on its way. It's arrived. So technology is really helpful too, to keep the customer informed. However, if we get to a place where technology replaces that I'll ever see a human being. Then that's not good. So we have to humanize business, leveraging technology to make us more efficient and informed and a lower level of effort, but don't take away the human element.

Eric Dickmann: 20:57

I remember when a lot of stores started to roll out self checkout and. They have a scale on one side. So as you would scan an item, you'd put it in a bag and the scale would weigh it just to make sure that you're scanning everything that you say you're scanning but these things were so sensitive. But almost every interaction was causing a human to have to walk over and override something because it wasn't yeah. working. So you'd get this bottleneck in self-checkout because, but he had to intervene every time somebody was trying to use it. technology can be helpful, but sometimes the way it gets implement did actually hinders the experience and takes away almost all the benefit from it.

Stacy Sherman: 21:37

I love that example. That's great. I'll tell you where I'm a company. Does it really well? No shock is Amazon. So when I call right, they have, two step authentication, but they found a way they do that sometimes. And other times, what they'll do is you call and then say, I'm going to send you a text message. Just reply. Yes. And then, and I'll do, and it saves all the upfront. So much information about account information was just literally a yes on my text and see times. So that's an a case where I have the human on the phone and technology speeds the process of identifying who I am and then we get right to it. And that's a great use case.

Eric Dickmann: 22:26

Yeah, there've been some similar ones that I've seen where people, maybe you get online to talk to somebody in a tech support about a problem that you're having. And with a click, they can take over your browser and so they can see exactly what's on your screen. And so you actually feel. That somebody is understanding your problem because they can see what you're seeing through your own eyes. So technology has a tremendous ability to empower this whole customer service process, but it can also really hinder it when it's implemented incorrectly.

Stacy Sherman: 22:58

Yes on the flip side as a customer experience professional, who has to aggregate the customer, the voice of the customer in all different channels, structured being surveys, but unstructured, social media ratings, or reviews, pulling it all together, and then understanding the customer feedback. Holistically technology is tremendous. To be able to actually do that quickly, be able to prioritize the feedback, get into the hands of the right people who can influence better experiences, predictive analysis, predicted outcomes. that's a beautiful thing when you can, when you have that right technology to do that.

Eric Dickmann: 23:44

I wanted to share with you one example, I've used it on this podcast before, but I think it's great and perfect for this discussion today, because I want to get your feedback on how a business might be able to start, really digging into their customer experience and how to improve it. So I lived down here in Orlando florida. And we've got the big theme parks here and they were always opening up new attractions. And I was listening to a story about how one of the executives who runs the theme parks would come down when a new attraction opens to see what it turned out like. But they would never do the VIP thing where they come in, they closed down the ride, they take the executive to the front, they give them a special treatment. What they would do. They would buy a ticket. They would book a hotel room with their family. They would come down, they would wait in line like everybody else, they would experience the pre show, the queue, the ride, the after ride. All of that just as a customer would because that's the true experience, not the VIP treatment where you avoid all the hassle that everybody else has to experience. So I thought that was a great example of putting yourself in the shoes of a customer. How do you recommend businesses start? If they're saying, I know I've got some problems. I want to look at my customer experience.

Stacy Sherman: 24:58

Yeah. I love that example a lot. and we do that tremendously, where I work, where, the technicians, the mechanics, they're the front line when things go wrong or something's broken, So there's a repair needed the frontline that the technicians have to go out and make a difference. And People are encouraged, no matter what role they have go out right along. Is it stepping in the technician, shoes use and understand what's it like in their role? And certainly the safety matters and all that they're doing. so yes, everybody at all different levels, are encouraged to go walk in the employee's shoes and then the customer shoes as well. I love your example and you're right. It does no good to have the VIP treatment because that's not representative of what you or I would experience. And so that. That you need more, you need all companies doing that.

Eric Dickmann: 26:02

I think, we've seen that a couple putting like Boeing has been in the news a lot this past year because of their problems with the seven 37 max that, had some accidents. And I think one of the things that showed is that the engineers never really thought about what would happen if a number of situations would occur at the same time. And then. The pilots who in this case would be, the customers had to experience all of that at once. And it was overwhelming for them. And it just shows that really, no matter what industry you are in the whole experience and the design of that experience is so crucial to the end result of whether people like your product or find your product usable or worthy.

Stacy Sherman: 26:43

Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. It's it's all part of a customer experience practice. And like I said, there's very basic human elements. But then there's a real practice. There's a real methodology. And that's a lot about what I write about and blog about. it's a practice and it's, it's constantly practicing and measuring customer happiness, employee happiness optimization, action planning, closing the loop. it's definitely a process.

Eric Dickmann: 27:20

So speaking about what you write about and blog about, share with our audience, where they can find you on the web. And I know you're a contributor to a book that's out right now. Talk a little bit about that as well.

Stacy Sherman: 27:30

Yeah. So that's, that project was, really a beautiful outcome of a bad situation being COVID. I was able to connect with people in so many countries and we came together and said, let's write a book around customer experience and best practices and actionable tips. And so that is now out on Amazon. Someone looks at my name, customer experience too. You'll see that. so it's a coauthored book and then there's a second one. I wrote coming out in October and what's really cool is that's for the Brazil market. So I don't even, I don't even know if an English shall be able to read it, but I know what I said. And, so the point is that customer experience is really booming. Everywhere. People are hungry for information, how to do it, how to measure it, how to know to do it. And yes, so those are the books and I'm doing a lot of writing of articles and started doing CX rights. So I'm mentoring people. Who want to get into the field, people who are in the field and want to elevate their game to transform their brands. And that's what I do. That's my passion projects when I'm not at my day job. And I'm, so that's doingcxright.com.

Eric Dickmann: 28:49

Perfect. I will link up to the book and to doingcxright.com in the show notes so that people have access to them. Are you active on Twitter, LinkedIn? Any other of those places?

Stacy Sherman: 28:59

All the above. so yeah, I'm tweeting all the time. I'm on LinkedIn sharing my own content and other people's content that I think is really valuable. It's all actionable. That's the point we can't just talk. We really gotta do. and the other, I would say also on my website, encourage people to sign up for my newsletter because it's just chockfull of information that they can do. Do right. Again, it's about doing CX right. I encourage people to look into education. So on my site, I talk about the, some universities now offering certifications in customer experience. So I share about my experience and taking some of the courses and why, what I recommend others do the same. So that's there as well.

Eric Dickmann: 29:49

I think this has been really useful information and, good customer experience design, breeds, customer loyalty and customer loyalty helps you sell more to your existing customers. It's a win for everybody. And so I think it's great. I will definitely link everything up in the notes so that people can check out your writing. I know you've written for a lot of major publications as well. Stacy, thanks so much for being with us on the podcast. This has been a fun interview.

Stacy Sherman: 30:13

Thank you. Yes, definitely fun. I enjoyed it. Great. Thank you again. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.