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In this series we will discuss Contact Center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories and pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the industry. Join us as we learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
Chris Warticki
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Dave Hoekstra: [00:00:00] Welcome to Working Smarter, presented by Calabrio where we discuss contact center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories in pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the industry. We're glad you're joining us to learn and grow together in order to provide world-class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
My name is Dave Hoekstra, product Evangelist for Calabrio, and my guest today is Chris Warticki. Chris is actually a pretty good friend of mine and we've gotten to know each other pretty well. But Chris is the Vice President of customer experience at Epicor, and what's really cool is customer experience and customer success are really big.
Points of emphasis and we'll get into the reasons why for a lot of organizations. And, we talk a lot about customer retention and how to really turn that into, and the good news is we've got a lot of active and attentive listeners who are [00:01:00] really into that kind of thing. So Chris, it's really great to have you here, but the first thing I really want us to talk about is maybe some of the definit.
Of what we talk about, right? We hear a lot of terms thrown out, cx, customer experience, customer success, customer service, customer journey, all those things. Maybe let's spend a few minutes laying out what all of those kind of actually mean to you and maybe how people can focus on some of the differences.
Chris Warticki: Certainly Dave, first of all, thanks for having me really enjoy our partnership that we've had together over the last year or so, but more importantly we share a lot of the same philosophies and when it comes down to, let's call it the overall customer in its in of itself. There are terms that get prefixed by the word customer that are used interchangeably, and I think it is important that we understand that there's a distillation that needs to take [00:02:00] place.
So for the audience out there, if you hear the terms, customer service and customer satisfaction, and customer success and customer experience, , you hear them often being used interchangeably. I think it's important that you stop, pause, and say, okay, what are we exactly talking about? And so I look at it in four, four different ways.
First of all, customer service. We hear this from a legacy perspective. We think of a department, right? You thought, you think about the return department in the retail store or the complaint department in any organization, when in actuality, What customer service is, it's a skill and it's a skill that you and I possess.
It's a skill that everybody possesses. It possesses, but more importantly, everybody has this skill to grow upon. So that means some people have really great customer service skills and other people [00:03:00] don't. It's all at different degrees, but this customer service aspect is how we actually engage with our customer.
These are transactions, and here's the biggest pitfall. We think of every transaction as an experience, so that customer service engagement has been morphed into what we now call customer experience. And so that's where I like to stop for a minute. Customer experience is not just the transac.
Dave Hoekstra: Okay, so to put it in real world terms, I walk into a subway and order a sandwich and receive a fair to mid customer service approach.
That is that transaction. Is not my customer experience. The customer experience is every single [00:04:00] time I've ever walked into a subway in my entire life. Is that the Exactly. Is that what you are? Okay. That's
Chris Warticki: exactly it. Dave, I think that's a perfect analogy. If I asked you, Hey what's been your experience with Subway?
or with X, y, and Z company, you are thinking about your entire cradle to present, everything from the past to the present. Now it's often it's very common for people to think about the recency effect, like your most recent subway sandwich or something like that. . But will that one transaction or engagement really.
Take you to a point of disloyalty you'll never go back again if it was a negative experience. Or do you have empathy where you're like, you know what? The majority of my engagements have been positive. I'm gonna give them, a little grace and I'll come back again.
Dave Hoekstra: It would have to be a fantastically bad experie.
Yeah. And that can truly [00:05:00] happen. And I think, we hear the studies all the time where it says, one bad experience won't bring them won't push them away, but two will. And that's where we get to the patterns of customer experience. But may is that maybe that's the point you're trying to make.
I think
Chris Warticki: another great example, Dave, is you and I have done our fair Sheriff, we can fly miles. And probably many of your audience members too. And if you say, what's been your history with X, Y, and Z airline? And you'd be like, man, I've been flying them since I was seven years old.
And some of those experiences were really great but along. . The journey of a, of let's say a flight. There's a luggage experience, there's a check-in experience, there's a, these relationship touchpoints are gonna be positive or negative and have an overall influence whether you're gonna fly that airline again, right?
So that's how we need to look at every [00:06:00] relationship touchpoint with our customers. In your own organization, what are those touchpoints? What is the level of customer service? that everyone in the organization has, and how is that being interpreted by the customer? Okay. So now the second piece that, the second piece with your subway analogy is then you're saying as a result of that engagement with that person over the counter, over the phone, online, was that positive?
Was it negative or was it neutral? And that's that measure. It's customer satisfaction.
Dave Hoekstra: Okay, so we've laid. Customer service, customer experience, and customer satisfaction. So maybe let's start actually let's not start at the very beginning because I think there are tons of resources out there on how to [00:07:00] improve the customer service of people.
More empathy. And, you and I have done this long enough to know that it's usually is the person and their life experiences and what led them to that point. Yeah. Also, whether they're being paid and managed appropriately. , I always laugh. You can walk into almost any establishment anywhere and almost immediately tell if the employees are being paid well.
Correct. Because that's a customer service process. And tho those. Those things I feel like are constantly in the minds, but let's talk about customer experience. How can an organization look at the hole instead of the, just the individual part of the experience and what are some maybe practical things they might be able to do to make sure that they're focusing in the right place?
Chris Warticki: Okay. So you've summarized it really well. The customer experience is the total. Of all in [00:08:00] interactions and engagements that a customer has with your, with you, with your company, your organization, et cetera. And so when we look at the journey that a customer has, we have to understand that every part of that journey has its own experience or engagement or process, right?
There, how did the com , how did the customer become aware of your name as a. . Right? How, what was the brand awareness journey? What was the pre-sale, maybe there was a demonstration, then there was a post-sale follow up, then there was an implementation in the case of software companies, right?
Then there's a Go Live experience then and the first thing to do is to look at that entire timeline and say, first of all, what do we. Already by the feedback, by the measurements, the surveys, the transactions. [00:09:00] What do we know that our customers have concerns about? Have they told us about or what have, what do we already know?
Kinda like the baby is ugly. What do we know needs to be fixed? Don't try to fix the entire customer journey all at one time. Don't try to boil the ocean proverbially, but pick those areas where I can share with you in our, in my own experience. We looked at just the provisioning process, the time to provision a SA environment.
We knew that there was issues, so we didn't focus on the whole journey. We took a piece of that journey and then we were able to dissect. Map it out and figure out how to improve it. And then we do it not just for a segment of customers. We don't do just for a portfolio, but we do it for everybody.
Dave Hoekstra: Okay, so now you've really thrown a wrench in the gears because the trend seems to be I wouldn't call it a trend.
This has been happening since the dawn of time with [00:10:00] any organization that has customers is how do we keep the whales happy? How do we keep the big ones? Really go into the right process. And you're, what you're saying to me here is that this particular part of focus needs to be on every single thing, not just the ones that are quote unquote important to the organization.
Chris Warticki: Yeah, a absolutely. You want to set up, first of all, customer success in, in, of itself as a theme is doesn't res, doesn't. Evolve around one person, one title, or one team that my mantra is take whatever your title is, put a comma after it, and write customer success. So if your team in your organization, whatever it is, whether you are customer facing or not, should have a customer success or process [00:11:00] improvement objective, how do we make it easier for our either.
Or external customers to how easy, how much easier is it to do business with us? How do we make it easier? How do we reduce the effort? And if you're sitting there going, ah, we don't talk to customers. . We don't, we're not customer facing. That's a, that's an attitude of a very union like attitude.
Like the line stops here, so the plumber can't fix the, the pipe to the, from the house to the street. You gotta call the city for that. No, that's not it. We have to look at this in a holistic view where every group, every line of. Is passionate about improving the overall engagement and service level to our customers.
That's the customer experience. .
Dave Hoekstra: So if we're looking let's take this from maybe a less organizational standpoint and look at it a little more transactional, right? Because a [00:12:00] lot of our listeners are very contact center focused, right? Very, spending a lot of their time on, every call.
Coming in and how to, how do you get le for lack of a better term, a frontline employee? How do you get a frontline employee to worry about customer experience and not necessarily customer
Chris Warticki: service? So I think one of the biggest things that even a frontline employee or new employee needs to understand is what's the standard that this organization has for me to work?
That's important. And that's where most companies, I think do a disservice by saying, we gotta over delight and super delight and oow our customers each and every time. Because unfortunately, you can't. And so therefore, you're gonna give super high highs and super low lows. So back to your anecdote there is to say, to a frontline employee when you're [00:13:00] focused on the customer service you shouldn't be focused.
Super delighting them. Let's focus on delivering the same standard level of service that you have been trained to do, and at least at a minimum, give that standard. Anything above and beyond that. Okay? But at least a customer can expect that standard every time, organizationally. Then we ratchet it up, take it up, next year we go from good to Great.
The year after that, we go from better to the. .
Dave Hoekstra: And so I think we know that one of the key. . The key factors in this equation, in, in especially over delighting the customer, is that a lot of times the customers view over delighting as tip the scales completely towards me and not towards the business, right?
, it's, oh l [00:14:00] my wife. Is a big fan of the order at the grocery store, drive up and have them load the groceries in your trunk and then go home, which, so that's a pretty great customer service. Transaction, right? Yeah. Now I don't even have to get outta my car.
I just show you my phone. You throw this stuff in the back. But one of the key problems with that particular one, and I'm getting oh, giving you a little insight into the Hoaxster household here is Often when she orders produce it's not the freshest one in the store. So many times she has to then follow up with the company and say, the, this celery you gave me, expired yesterday.
And usually they're very good at that particular process. And so when we look at the sum of that whole experience, it's almost zero. It's great [00:15:00] experience followed by a less, and then it averages out over and I'm going somewhere with this. My point is that my wife is often.
I won't say tempted, but it pops into her mind to maybe take advantage of this scenario because at the second she contacts the company, they're saying, oh, we'll refund it and send you another one. Great. Now I have two of what I need. And I didn't spend any money on it. And she doesn't do that by the way.
But the idea is that the over delight often has to come at the expense of the organiz. And not at the expense of customer or the process. So how can we as leaders teach our organization to delight, but still maintain some semblance of approach towards the business? Does that make sense with the question that I'm asking?
Chris Warticki: Certainly does. And [00:16:00] your spouses and I are of the same thread when it comes to produce purchasing and the expectation and almost now the entitlement behind it. And like you mentioned, the temptation. And that has actually has a ripple effect throughout all of our consumer purchases because we have an expectation that all companies should be.
Packaging my goods and, walking them out to my trunk and pack, putting them away and everything for us and not everybody does, but at the same time when we're looking at the actual business leadership, they have a responsibility and an accountability. to what is lost, I think is lost.
And that's inspection. It's not just about a series of KPIs, but it truly is about individually account individual accountability, team accountability, and [00:17:00] organizational accountability. We may set some certain goals or objectives, but if those goals and objectives aren't reviewed in a manner, the last thing everybody wants to do, by the way and roll their eyes, is when you mention the words q.
Right? . Oh my goodness. Here we go again. We're gonna just look at a bunch of charts, slides, and graphs and all this other stuff. Death by PowerPoint,
Dave Hoekstra: quarterly Business Review. For those of you who don't know what a QBR is, , Chris and I both roll our eyes like, oh no. But there are a lot of people maybe that don't know what that means, but go ahead.
Yeah, a court,
Chris Warticki: cute quarterly business review, an account review, anything like that. If we are not actually learning from those, if we're only reporting the news, of what use of what happened in the past. It's rote, it's trite. It's useless. What are we doing to make the news? It's sitting there as a grocery store manager and saying to our staff, you know what?
We've had [00:18:00] x amount of returns in the produce department because we're not looking at the expiration date. It's because we're not looking at the quality of the fruit that's going. . Or by the way, when we look at it and it looks great, we packaged it in a way that it got bruised and damage. , right? What can we do as an organization to reduce the amount of returns or refunds?
Because all of that has a cost. We may think, we don't see it, we won't see it, but eventually we're gonna see it in the cost where pennies go up, inflation occurs, naturally, where it's we're refunding all this money. We gotta start jacking up the prices to make up for the refunds.
So I think it's a lot of account. The,
Dave Hoekstra: and it's funny because my devil's advocate mind goes to, oh, they're teaching these people to find the mo, the oldest one in the pile so that they can get rid of them and [00:19:00] hoping that no one says anything. And I know that's probably a cynics. Of of things.
But I would say that if your organization has a implemented policy that teaches people to, take advantage of the customer, maybe that's a good place to start. is, I don't wanna sit here and say, oh, this is absolutely happening, but it's like, how. I have this I hesitate to call it a conspiracy theory cause I don't wanna get people riled up, but I have this there's certain doctor's offices and this is a very uniquely American healthcare problem.
But there are certain doctor offices that quote unquote, Miscode their billing. And it generates more revenue for the doctor's office. But if you call and say, Hey, this is a problem, he say, oh, we'll take care of that. No problem. Knowing that it was a problem and hoping that a lot of people won't notice, and, I, I [00:20:00] can't put it past organizations.
To have loosely implemented policies to do this because they want to get rid of this without spoilage or, that kind of thing. But it also introduces a level of distrust with your customer base, if that is truly coming through. And, I didn't intend for us to get into conspiracy theories on this one, Chris, but oh, no, Dave,
Chris Warticki: Dave I always get the coldest fries going through the drive-through
Oh yeah. For some reason. .
Dave Hoekstra: Yeah. We have now taken to always ordering our fries with no salt so that they have to make them fresh every time. And so see, and the what it customers get smart, right? Customers are, they're they will eventually find the way to overcome your.
Potentially negative policies, or let's say it's not even on purpose. Your your less than attentive policy Yeah. Or things like that do tend [00:21:00] to occur. And, we're talking about a lot about grocery stores and fast food restaurants and that kind of customer experience, but, When we get to the more enterprise level customer experience, it's, customers who call in because there is a billing issue.
Or something to that effect. Sure. The customer would rate you five stars every single time. If you just said, yo, you know what, we'll just wipe out the whole bill. Yeah. But That's not a lot of this comes back to one of my favorite words is empowerment, right? Being able to empower your organization.
I'm wondering if you've perhaps seen or can talk a little bit about how an organization might empower those people to make those kind of decisions and if there's an economic benefit to it.
Chris Warticki: Yeah, Dave, there's a, that word has lost its meaning over the last 25 years, I believe. We, we've created policies and business practices that handcuff the [00:22:00] employee from making the right decision.
And by the way, making the right decision doesn't mean giving everything away for free. Okay? That's not empowerment, okay? . It is really, truly trusting the employee to engage in a relationship with the customer in a way that is a, that is meaningful, right? That builds trust and holds both parties to, to a continued relationship.
Not a one-sided, Hey, I have a billing problem, clear my invoice for me, right? Make it that's not gonna make it. By the way, right? That's, and the empowerment comes on, how do we prevent the invoice problem from happening in the first place? The empowerment is in how do I how am I enabled to bring my thoughts and ideas to the organization to improve process, to create process, or to [00:23:00] reduce the effort that both I and the customer have to engage in to begin?
That's where the empowerment is in is prior to the result. Of saying to a customer, I'm sorry, your invoice is wrong. Let me go ahead and take care of that for you and reissue you a new one with the corrected amount. That's what, that's
Dave Hoekstra: what it should be. That's not empowerment, right?
That's what would happen if I came in front a tribunal of three judges and pled my case, they would all agree that this is what needs to happen. That's not empowerment. That is simply making a the customer. Service part of the transaction appropriate to what it should be.
Yeah. And I'm sure we've all had those moments where we're just like, I don't think you're understanding what I'm telling you here. And yeah, ho thankfully I find that those are usually few and far between, although I seem to have some friends who like never seem to have those moments with when they deal with those kind of things.
So you're [00:24:00] what you're saying is that empowerment really should not be. Customer service, empower should be, empowerment, should be about customer experience and Yeah. And overall umbrella of the life cycle. Of the journey. Yeah. The, and,
Chris Warticki: and the customer success is is saying let's use your example about the billing and invoice.
Let's say I'm in the billing department and I work with all of these customers in a transactional customer service way. Same type of work each and every day, right? , why not take a segment of that, of those bills, of those invoices, of those customers and own it and say, you know what, I would love, as a member of this team, of this org to take, I'll still handle the transactions, but I see this customer come in a lot.
How about I take care of them? Why do I, why do they have to go to, Bob, Jim, and Sally, throughout the organiz. When I can, when I know [00:25:00] I've come to know them, I've come to understand their business and why not know it and understand it better and build a longer term relationship with them to improve the overall experience.
It might not be able to be scalable. I'm not saying it needs to be done scalable for all customers, but at the same time, in parallel, how do we go ahead and improve the process for all customer?
Right,
Dave Hoekstra: you bring up the last point I wanted just to talk about, you mentioned the words customer success.
And, in, in a vacuum, if I say customer success, Basically customer experience, right? It's basically what we've talked about. But knowing that organizations have started to focus on this because annual recurring revenue is now a big deal for a lot of organizations, right? Keeping people under contract and keeping them happy has really started to focus on the idea of customer success and more [00:26:00] specifically customer success.
That, and you have a really interesting take on customer success. Now, I'm setting you up here, but what's your take on customer success departments and organizations? Yeah.
Chris Warticki: I'll give you, I'll give you the story, the little brief history for your a is I was brought into my current organization to create a customer success program.
And they're, we're a 47 year old software company at the time, and I said, do you mean in the absence of a customer success program, you don't care about customer success for the last 47? , right? It's rhetorical, right? But it, but no it's not. And, but the answer was everybody else's has got a customer success, management team or something like that.
So should we that's what does it mean to have customer success? That's at the end of the. We all handed our [00:27:00] business cards and told our customers to call us anytime there was a problem. There comes a breaking point where then they don't want, we don't want 'em to call us anymore, so we gotta just create a customer success program in order to take those calls, and that's not customer success.
That's whack-a-mole. That's not fixing the problem where it exists in your product, in your service, in your delivery, wherever it exists in that journey
Dave Hoekstra: and because in theory, that customer should be able to call anybody in your organization and get that same level of. Customer service.
Exactly. But the problem is that we tricked everybody into thinking that they need a different level of success. It's like why not just teach the everybody to do what these people are doing and we're good. Precisely
Chris Warticki: Dave. And that's why I say customer success is everybody's responsibility.
Just take your title, put a com after it, and write customer success, and it'll change the way you view your job. So it doesn't rest within one team, one title, one [00:28:00] person. It is everyone's job. It's saying, how do we get to understand our customer's business better? How do we. Their business objectives with what we do as a server or a seller of a service or a product.
And so you guys have a really great like ambassador type engagement program, right? Yes. At your organization, you don't, everybody's an ambassador. That's what I'm saying. It, , you've gotta badge It has the same business logo on it. We're all part of the same team and we should be able to create programs or projects or initiatives that help all customers be successful, not just a handful.
And so some customer or some companies might have a thousand people doing this customer success program. Some like mine only have less than a dozen. But how does it scale? It scales in that, in, [00:29:00] in a philosophy, in an actually, in a culture of continuous process improvement, about looking at how do we improve the customer service skills of all of our individuals?
How do we go ahead and measure accurately the results of those transactions? All of web, phone, email, online, everything, all those conduits do we have alignment with our customers business objectives, and then the sum total of. is the customer experience. So it wraps it all together and it builds upon each other.
Dave Hoekstra: So you're saying we should just get rid of customer success altogether, is what you're saying? Yes.
Chris Warticki: To be provocative, to be provocative, I would agree with that statement. But in, in the, in Effectionately saying. It's gotta be, within our blood, it's gotta be within our quarterly or annual objectives.
How are we as a team, as a group, as a line of business, what's our customer success goal? How do we make all [00:30:00] customers successful with this product, with this service, with this website, with this tool, with this widget, whatever it. .
Dave Hoekstra: Right. And as to be provocative, yes, you are saying that, but for organizations that do have a customer success program, it's really about making sure your customer success program is not just the place to dump problematic customers.
It is, absolutely. It is. It. , it should be the way that we genuinely find ways to promote customer success throughout the organization. Yes, you do. Sometimes you do need that customer that receives a particular level of focus from somebody who is particularly good. But how do you take that person who's particularly good?
And make sure that the rest of the organization is fulfilling that same process. That's really the key to a customer success organization.
Chris Warticki: You, you hit the nail on the head, Dave. If your customer success [00:31:00] program is focused on reactive crisis management, project management, incident management, case management, survey management, all you're doing is you have, what you are is you have a critical accounts.
you do not have a customer success team. , you have members that are going me my eye. What can I do for my account and my account only? And I don't care about the tens or thousands of others of customers that are out there having the exact same problem. I only care about fixing the transaction of the day.
Now that's where I use this other term called customer. because it's needed. But a customer advocacy are for those customers that are sideways in a ditch, they need temporary re remediation. They're not dying on the operating table yet, okay? But they need 30, 60, 90 days short term fix it and then remediate it.
And then you [00:32:00] want to cut the cord and let the customer stand on their own two feet. Again, you gotta rehab. and make sure it doesn't happen again, right? That's how I look at, that's how I term customer advocate. Doesn't every customer need an advocate? No. Cuz they all shouldn't be sideways in a ditch.
Shouldn't every customer be successful, right? Yes. But that's because our business processes are streamlined. Customers, let me give your audience a quote to write down. Customer success should not replace what's already in place. . If there's a product in your, if there's a problem in your product, go to development.
Go to the manufacturer. If there's a pro problem in your implementation, go to consulting. If there's a problem with support, go to support. Customer success is so far down the line. Post go live, post support, post implement, all that stuff. We, that's why we need to marble customer success in every part of the customer.
See,
Dave Hoekstra: I, I actually that quote better. [00:33:00] We need to marble customer success into the entire customer journey and the visual of verbalizing something, I think that works perfectly well there. There you have it, man. I think there's no better way to end the discussion here is to couple quotes to take with they're really hammering the point home. And that's exactly why I wanted to have you join us on the podcast here. First of all, I really appreciate the time you spend with us. It's been enlightening and I think a lot of great information that's out there.
Chris Warticki: Dave, my pleasure. Look forward to working with you and seeing you again. Take
Dave Hoekstra: care. Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you who are listening, as always, we super appreciate the time you give us. It always makes me feel great to know that there's even one person who wants to hear this, let alone all of you that, that spend your time with us here on working smarter.
From me and the rest of the collaborator Team, thank you for your time. We appreciate it. We look forward to the next episode. And a huge thank you to our guest, Chris Warticki from Epicor. [00:34:00] He's super, super great to have on and always wanna make sure we have room for you whenever you want to join us.
Chris Warticki: Thanks, Chris.
Thank
Dave Hoekstra: you. All right. Thanks everybody. Have a great rest of your day and from Ave here and the rest of the Calabrio team, have a fantastic rest of your week and we'll see you on the next episode of Working Smarter.