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The Path Uncut is a podcast for bold leaders, forward-thinkers, and changemakers who are shaping the future of their industries. Hosted by Gregory Ng, this show takes you behind the scenes with trailblazers who are redefining leadership, innovation, and impact. Each episode dives into the experiences, methodologies, and challenges of today’s most inspiring visionaries—uncovering the strategies and mindsets that drive meaningful change.
Transcript
Path Uncut Era Z_mixdown
00:00:05 - Era Ziroe
You can't assume that if somebody just comes to your company because they were referred by a parent or a family member that you, you're locked in. Right? You've got to continuously prove to your point, like you've got to live up to the expectation that that parent or family member might have set and also live up to the expectation that that person may have based on the current environment of the world.
00:00:32 - Greg Ng
Welcome to the Path Uncut. I'm Greg Ng and this is the show where we spotlight bold leaders and forward thinkers trailblazers who are creating meaningful change in their organizations. Each episode we dive deep into the experiences, methodologies and impact of some of today's most inspiring change makers. It's a chance to explore their stories, learn from their successes and challenges and gain valuable insights to help you drive change in your own world. Today I'm joined by Ira Zairo. Ira is the Senior Vice President and Director of Client and employee experience at KeyBank. With a rich background in building customer centric organizations, she has been instrumental in integrating customer experience into business strategies, leveraging digital transformation and AI to enhance competitive advantage. Ira's approach emphasizes empathy driven action, ensuring that client insights are transformed into human centered solutions. Her leadership has been pivotal in reshaping how businesses perceive and implement cx, making it a core component of organizational success. All right, Ira, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining. You are someone that I've wanted to have this conversation with interview for a while. I know that we met last year and from where I was sitting, like just hit it off right away because I feel like we're like minded people. So I want to thank you for taking the time and joining.
00:02:12 - Era Ziroe
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
00:02:14 - Greg Ng
Yeah. So for all the listeners out there, why don't you spend some time introducing yourself, give us a little bit of your background and you can start back as far as you want. We've had some guests who've started all the way back from childhood. But more importantly, let me frame it is, you know, what, what got you to your, your, your fulfillment point, what got you to, to the position that you're in right now.
00:02:41 - Era Ziroe
So it's always a fun story to kind of go back in time and I think if I think about myself as a person and in my professional career, I have always tried to accommodate others and try to be very user focused and I always had kind of this natural ability to improve processes and make things better. I definitely have a perfectionist side of me which helps do that. But I've always been incredibly focused on how do other people feel? How will this make someone feel? And then I had so many amazing opportunities across my career. And I think what really, really grounded me was when I moved into product management and I learned how to run a business and that shaped my take on everything going forward. So any role that I had beyond that, whether I was running product or doing portfolio management or cx, I always ran it like a business. And I think that's been part of what's been fun and also been successful. But my first role in CX was actually in product. And so I was brought into Stand Up a CX function and, and help our credit card product division at a former bank that I used to work at, help them figure out what will it take to double the size of the portfolio. And at the time we weren't doing so great and we had a lot actually in the fraud space. So it's been a really fun journey and I've been having a blast at it.
00:04:11 - Greg Ng
Yeah. So I want to, I want to go back to something you said initially about that maybe that idea of being a perfectionist. I think that one of the best kind of superpowers for those of us in the industry that obsess over the right experiences and in some cases maybe we can debate, you know, is the best experience always the right experience. But I think that perfectionism has kind of that driving force behind that. What do you think about that?
00:04:43 - Era Ziroe
I definitely think so, But I think it can also get in the way of good CX because you can't be perfect at everything. So especially like think about data and analytics from a research perspective. We can't be perfect on every single component. You got to get to that 80% mark. Right. And same thing in experiences. Try to figure out who your target audience is and assume and research and confirm. But assume that if you get your target audience experience right, that the rest will follow. Right. That the other clients will appreciate what you've done for them, even though it may not be the most important thing for them. So I do think perfection in like building processes and execution is super important. But when you're actually thinking about the broader picture can actually slow you down.
00:05:30 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And I think that it's the strive for perfection, not necessarily the achievement of perfection. Right. And I always like to say that it's. Sometimes it's, it's. It feels so satisfying to see all the things so clearly of what can be changed and you know, better than a lot, you know Recognizing what needs to change is part of it. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of factors to actually make that change. We're going to get into a little bit of that later on in this conversation. But you had mentioned at a past institution that you were at in terms of building the portfolio. Explain to me a little bit more about how did the organization arrive at a relating experience to being kind of that catalyst or motivating factor to build that portfolio.
00:06:28 - Era Ziroe
So I do think having the right executive leaders that understand the value of CX is super important. And so we had on one hand a leader who said I wouldn't necessarily recommend this product to my friends and family because every time I use it, my card gets declined. For example, exaggerating a little bit. Then on the flip side you have another executive that said, but we can fix that. Let's understand what the experience, why are we doing that? And let's understand the experience. So I do think, you know, a lot of CX teams that are successful have that top down support and investment and encouragement. Even if it's not all of the executives that always helps. But if you, you have to have that top down. I see so many teams that I talk to that are battling from bottoms up and it just doesn't work. It's not saying it can't be done, but it is an uphill battle. Kanse and just having that top of the house support in what you're doing, even though they may not know all of it, is crucial, really crucial to open the doors.
00:07:31 - Greg Ng
So I mean, I know maybe this is generalizing, but when it comes to financial services in particular, do you view that as a sea change? Is that is, you know, the kind of general consensus or maybe it's the stereotype of those at the top of financial service. Org seems to be in some cases perceived to be not as customer centric as maybe the world is moving towards now or, or the, the access of, of technology and tools. How. Why do you think that that that change has shifted? You know, 15 years ago we were not hearing financial institutions talk about customer centricity, even though everyone might say of course the customer. Right. Why do you think that's shifted over time?
00:08:19 - Era Ziroe
So I think that customer experience has shifted over time across the board, across all industries because clients are changing. Everybody's talking about it more now. It used to be, I don't want to say a dirty word, it was misunderstood. Everyone thought it was soft and didn't really understand that it was a business growth lever and accelerator and I think those that have seen it as, that have been really successful and I think that it's talked about more like, I mean back in the day when I started experience like a dozen years ago. How often do people talk about surveys? Now it's like it feels like every single interaction you have anywhere, it's a survey, a survey, a survey, a survey, a survey. Because everybody's talking and thinking about experience more and I think clients expectations have just skyrocketed, right? Like you know, you have a lot of these trailblazers, like you know, who doesn't talk about Amazon but that Uber, right? Like just change the dynamic of how we live which drives experience, expectations.
00:09:23 - Greg Ng
Yeah, I've always find it interesting and it's almost sometimes a, maybe a little bit of a test when, when we're speaking with other organizations and we say who is your biggest competitor? If they say Amazon, then we say great. We think you understand the realities of the world because you know, if you, if you talk to them outside of a boardroom context, they, they will probably say oh yeah, Amazon. But, but, but that realization that everyone's competing with all brands, not just other banks, right? Other credit cards, other investment organizations, but all brands, to me I think that's a huge kind of breakthrough, right? Breakthrough.
00:10:07 - Era Ziroe
But just even in commercial, even in commercial, which I think is interesting is because I think back in the day when I started in commercial, which was eight, eight or so years ago, I think there was this impression that commercial clients, so the B2B clients are different and have different expectations. At the end of the day you have a human using your platform, using your products that have the same day to day experiences as everybody else and they expect, expect that no matter how complex the environment is, they expect that in their space as well.
00:10:39 - Greg Ng
And that realization is critical. But there are many steps needed for that to actually take hold within an organization. Right? There's so culturally how, tell me, spend some time talking about some of the kind of the cultural environments that you have worked at and, and has it been easy, has it been challenging? You know, what are the things that you've run up against?
00:11:05 - Era Ziroe
I think culture is super important because again if you have an environment, a lot of people use the words customer obsessed, those aren't my favorite terms. But if you have an environment that is really has high energy and passion around serving the client, it just makes experience and experience teams, jobs so much easier because the company in its entirety understands it. However, regardless, you will always find no matter how well adopted customer experience as the organization is you will find individual silos of teams that don't get it, that have their own mandates or have their own ways of doing things and thinking about things that become a struggle. So for example, at KeyBank, I manage a design team, right. And that design team would come up with a design, but technology sometimes wouldn't necessarily jump to the design that was developed, even though it's incredibly user centric because they may think the technology solution has always been built this way and maybe this is how it works or maybe there's limitations in the technology space. So you still, you have to chip away at it not just at the top of the house in broad culture perspective, but you do have to chip at it in various teams and get individual groups really swimming in the same direction. And that takes a lot of work and it's not easy and there's no magic wand for it at all.
00:12:32 - Greg Ng
Yeah, yeah. So let's spend some more time on that. Because not one group or team or department can move that needle, right. It requires a orchestration amongst departments that traditionally have misalignment in goals, KPIs, budgets, all of that. Where does one start in your opinion from that? Like if you were taking on a new role in, in an organization and you have that, that grand goal and let's say you're even aligned in the goal, we don't even need to talk about whether the goal is right. There are so many feelings and people and, and scar tissue that, that, that exists. How, how does one approach that?
00:13:16 - Era Ziroe
And that's such a great question in Pandora's box too. So I'm going to try to break it down and feel free to interject with questions to add clarity. So at the end of the day I do think having executive alignment at the top of house is super important. So when I took my role at KeyBank, even though there was broad acknowledgement and support of having an enterprise function that was managing CX and EX and design, at the end of the day I still needed to do a lot of stakeholder buy in and engagement because I set the strategy, I needed their input and buy in on the strategy. So I spent the first year or two in that role really getting executive and their senior leaders buy in on what we're trying to accomplish as a, as a company, what capabilities we need as a team to really, really help the organization be more CX focused after that. And it's not like nothing is systemic like you've got it. It's, you know, some of this happens in parallel but at the same Time or, or after that you need to start to figure out where you can have impact. So for me personally, I'm very data driven and I wanted to start with having a really solid foundation with the research, analytics and insights. So I spent a lot of energy focusing on making sure that our entire organization understood what our clients are telling us, understood how we compare to the competition and understood what we need to do to win. And that took like a good year to two years to get there. And then the pivot started happening with well, how do we take action on those insights and how do we actually help the company do something about it? And it's at that time where you start to figure out how do you get those groups unified across the common front. You'll not, like you said, you're not going to do it all at once. So you need to figure out where can you add the most value. And so depending on your team size, depending on how integrated you are with the business, but you figure out where is the business trying to grow the most, what biggest problem are they trying to solve and you lean in there. And I really, really believe back to my days being in business in the product organization, you've got to get alignment and support. And so if the business is already focusing on going down a specific path to meet their business objectives and you're there to help them, but help bring in an experience angle, a design thinking perspective so that we build a solution that not only wins for the bank but for the client. That's how you start. And now you've got the support, you've socialized, you've gotten buy in and now it's so much easier if you do have a group that's not a hundred percent sold, you've got this ecosystem where all of the other supporting managers are bought in and it's easier not saying easy, easier to bring them along. But I do think once you got to that point and you have a team that maybe is a hundred percent bought in and you've got the right support model from across organization, then I think what really, really makes a difference is design thinking. And I can give you many examples where design thinking broke people that didn't believe in what we were doing. But design thinking is a way to problem solve and have a unified voice, but letting everybody have their own voice in the process.
00:16:45 - Greg Ng
Yeah, and with design thinking, I've been very fortunate to not only go through the, you know, the, the, the Stanford D School design thinking course and, and, and run some of those workshops is it puts everyone on a level playing field. Right. In terms of understanding. Before we get further into that though, because that is a, that is a whole nother. We could speak for an hour on just design thinking and the importance of that because. Because we, you know, we see it all the time. Right. I mean, it's just that idea to think creatively and to think in ways that to towards a common goal is very foreign to a lot of. A lot of people. The. I have two specific questions of those first steps though. The first is understanding. I get the understanding, what are the business objectives or department objectives and finding ways to move the needle for them. I get that. How do you ensure that you or your team gets in the room to understand that those are happening?
00:17:57 - Era Ziroe
So Greg, I'm going to ask you in your career, think about who you've brought along that maybe was an unexpected surprise in a body of work that you were doing. Think about it and I'd love to hear it in a second, but at the end of the day, if you drive value and you have the right people at the table from your team, you are going to get a seat at the table. And I have found a major unlock in doing that with our designers. So bringing design strategists into the room who really think about user centric journeys and how to create service design and bringing them into the room to help the business ensure they're solving the right problem. Help the business think about how do I. What are the right tools I should be using or design thinking methods to get that full breadth of knowledge across, you know, the internal teams or maybe competitive or what, you know, just getting a better understanding of the client perspective or expectations. And so when you do that and you bring the right people in the room, I think they keep getting called back. And then it's like people don't have enough of them. And it's like, well, I want someone like that helping me on this project and their project. And then another team hears about and then when you start sharing the impact store impact stories like that's when you know, everyone really unlocks.
00:19:17 - Greg Ng
So but let's get more, even more tactical if you don't mind, is from a. Because I, Because I can hear. So, so the more conversations that I have with this, especially with this podcast, I. I've started to create a skeptical executive Persona in my brain. It's not an actual person, but it is a Frankenstein monster. Of all the different things that over my career I've had to rebut. Right. And so, so, so I don't know, maybe I need to come up with a name name for that Persona. But you should. But right now, the skeptical executive is telling me, okay, great, I understand design strategists, but as a business unit owner, I understand the value of design strategist. But then let's get more tactical. Who pays for that Design strategist? Who pays for that time? Where does that design strategist live within an org? Under your team era? Or is it a dotted line? Because whether we like it or not, big companies need debatable whether they need but they crave because the culture supports it. Very defined hierarchy and very defined budgets. So that's that Persona. I gotta come up with a name so that I can use it in future episodes as well. But that's the skeptic in me that says, great, of course everyone would want a design strategist, but who's gonna pay for that design strategist? And where does that design strategist sit?
00:20:48 - Era Ziroe
So that's a great question, and I think there are many options. I can tell you my opinion. And what I did at Key is the design strategist sat in my team. Why? Because I stood up a federated model of CxitKey. Because I truly believe, at least for Key, it was the right thing. It's not necessarily the right thing for everyone, but I did an assessment at Key and I understood the executives and how the businesses operate. And I knew if I tried to centralize everything, I would lose and I would be gone within a year. And so I created a federated model where there are certain centralized functions that needed to exist. And then a lot of the work also lived in the business. And so I believe, as you think about this, the reason that I wanted the designers in a central group was because if you think about the personalities and the Personas of designers, they feed off of each other, and having them be all be part of one unit is huge. It is critical for their success. So could you hire design strategists in every single business? Yes. Could it work? Possibly. But will you get more out of it by them being together and being able to be one unit? Yes. I've had people argue with me and say, can you just create a community practice? Yes. There's just something different about living under the same house, living under the same leader, doing things together. You know, not that you can't do it when it's decentralized. I just definitely think designers should be centralized. Who pays for them? Well, in a service function, the business is paying for everything. Right. No matter What? And this goes back to my business days. I believe that you need the buy in and alignment of executives to fund your roles. So actually in 2024, as we were planning for 2025, our tech budget at Key went up significantly, which is great. And you need product designers that also lived in my team. You need more product designers to deliver the tech solutions. And I'm of the mindset that I don't just go figure out what I want to do and how many I need. It was a very strong alignment with the business on what they need and how we need to support that. And then I had them fund every single role. So I, I think by being very transparent and being very aligned, I think that both parties win. But at the end of the day the business, whoever runs the P and L runs the show and you know they're footing the bottom line. And so you just need to make sure that they are 100% behind you and have your back with what you're trying to do to help them be more successful.
00:23:29 - Greg Ng
And in your particular case, for this particular case, those who are running the P and L, did you run up against opposition? Did you need to convince and or was it a kind of a no brainer? It's a no brainer to me. It's a no brainer to you. But was it a no brainer to them?
00:23:49 - Era Ziroe
I think it was always a discussion. I think we need this. They say I don't think so. Or maybe we do. Why don't we try it like this? Maybe we hold off. Let's prioritize this. So it's just, I believe in a two way dialogue to come to common ground and it's, I'm never, I'm never one to, I'll fight for what's right but I'm not going to like fight just for the sake of fighting. So if you have a good discussion around what we need and the value we can bring and you know, whether or not they are willing to fund it now or if they think it's more important because from a P and L business owner perspective, right. They've got tons of priorities they're working on and it's pretty selfish. If I were just to go in there and be like I'm the most important thing that you have to focus on. Right. It's not like you've got to understand their full blown strategy, their roadmap, what are they up against from a competition, from a funding and business growth perspective. And you've got to make sure that you're woven into that and not just treat it as like I'm special and I need you to fund this over a tech investment, for example, right?
00:24:51 - Greg Ng
Absolutely. One of the things that I've really enjoyed in our conversations is your specific perspective as coming from the business versus some other leaders who also have similar ideas and similar successes and similar tactics, but maybe are coming in from a pure, very specific CX path. Sometimes through research, some, you know, qualitative as a whole, we always believe that it must be mixed method, it must be qual plus quant to inform the other. And it doesn't necessarily have to always start on one side or the other. And I think that it was always a very easy, easier thing for organizations to believe in quantitative data and then the belief structure of quantitative data and statistics makes them skeptical maybe for sample size and research size of, of qualitative studies. What are your thoughts on that in terms of how organizations can. A lot of organizations have both functions, but it seems to be an imbalance in terms of the influence that maybe traditional quantitative insights provide versus qualitative insights. What are your thoughts on those topics?
00:26:18 - Era Ziroe
So luckily I manage both. So I manage research for all of KeyBank. So all research, quant and qual. I will tell you, I do think it's easiest to sell the business on quantitative data. And so I had a use case at KeyBank where we started looking at results by age and we realized that it was almost like as if our older versus younger clients were having were banking with two different banks. They had two different experiences and we could see it with our CX performance scores that based on their expectations, talking about what we talked about, where we started, based on their expectations of their daily lives. Like, I think the older generation is more forgiving when digital isn't quite up to snuff. The younger generation is not. They want digital to be anything and everything. They want it to be. They want it to have all functionality. They hate calling in for help. They are less patient. Right. And so through data we were able to showcase this, that these generational performance from a CX perspective were so different across these two populations. That data was, there was a lot of pushback. To your point, well, cut it for me this way, cut it for me that way. Like I want to like prove to me that this isn't just, you know, it was then. Aren't other banks experiencing the same thing? So we started cutting the data that way. But once we got alignment that like, okay, we have an opportunity here, we really have an opportunity here. That's where the qual came in. Let me tell you how you fix that. Let me explain to you how we can innovate based on what the younger population actually wants. Let me tell you, out of all the things that we think we should be doing, what's the priority order, what's most important to that younger generation? And so I think starting with data because every business, every business leader is going to want data. Every business leader, you start there and then you follow on with qual. I think that's like a, a real win win situation.
00:28:17 - Greg Ng
Yeah, yeah. And then did that also apply? How was it similar and how was it different as, as it pertained to the in branch experience versus the digital experience?
00:28:29 - Era Ziroe
Eki so a key. The branch experience is amazing. We actually have best in class branch NPS scores. It's, it's incredible. They've been on a long journey with, we've been on this journey together with them and they have an amazing experience. And KeyBank in general, whether it's on the retail side or on the B2B side, we are always recognized for our people. Key has a really cool culture and the people, the people factor is special. And so the younger generation, although they don't want to go to the branch and that's the sticky factor, they will ding us for that like if we force them to go to the branch. But if they want to go to the branch, they actually score. The branch experience was scored highest. Oh, that's great. Yeah, because the, we have great people, great service.
00:29:17 - Greg Ng
Everything is about people. Yes, it is, it's interesting. I know, I know you're, you're a parent as well. And I'm in this in between sandwich generation where I have aging parents who are equipped digitally, maybe not, you know, digital experts. I have my generation who are, you know, learned at an earlier age, but as adults how to embrace digital. But, but just by the nature of my business and my career, I've been super interested in all of these things. And then I have my kids who are digital natives. And what I find so interesting is this as it pertains to in person versus digital, it seems to defy logic to me and I'm wondering if you see this too, is that when it's digital, my kids who are in their late teens, early 20s, demand knowledge, personalization, speed and efficiency. They don't care as much as as I do about privacy and personalization and things like that. But when they are in store or in branch, they are way more forgiving of humans. So they criticize me all the time. When I'm at a restaurant and maybe I don't get exactly what I offered or what I ordered, when I say I want to take it back, they're like, no, no, no, just eat it. You're fine, don't. It's not their fault. And I'm like, I know it's not their fault, but it's not what I ordered. Right. They, but at the same time, they demand such very specific maximum, maximum use of technology when it's not a physical human that they're engaging with. Have you seen similar results, you know, personally and, and, and also through, through your company?
00:31:17 - Era Ziroe
I think that could be based on your parenting style maybe, or something they learned from you.
00:31:22 - Greg Ng
Maybe I revealed too much.
00:31:23 - Era Ziroe
I think what, in general, what I see, see as the younger population is just critical over everything. Over everything. And I actually think a little, I think your kids are special because I actually see that. Because maybe this depends on how social with people the kids are. Because I think if you have a child that's just heads down in technology all the time, they actually have very little patience with people. Yeah, very little. But if you have a child that's able to interact and communicate verbally with people and do, and they do it really frequently and they're not just all, you know, heads down in their, in their mobile apps or watching stuff or on social media, I think that actually plays a huge factor into how people perceive experiences with other people.
00:32:17 - Greg Ng
Yeah, I think that's interesting. Yeah. And certainly, you know, when my kids started working, you know, their little, their part time high school jobs, they, you know, my son worked at a grocery store. You know, I mean, he interacted with people all the time. And I think that maybe that there's a factor there.
00:32:33 - Era Ziroe
I think it's, you always have empathy for people that you experience what like they're going through. So like if they're servicing. Right. People through like a grocery store and then they see another service professional dealing with another difficult client, then there's just that empathy that naturally, that's just human nature, I think. Yeah.
00:32:50 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And that's where I think the huge opportunity is for organizations to uncover. Because when you think about, when I think about early in my career and I would say, okay, maybe my daughter is on a, on a client list, the data that we knew about a 22 year old in 1985 is drastically less than what we know now.
00:33:18 - Era Ziroe
Yep.
00:33:18 - Greg Ng
But I contend that a lot of organizations are still set up incorrectly to actually manage that complexity or to understand that complexity. Even just what I said about this imaginary Persona, that person is, is easy for me to make up because that person is imaginary. But I believe that a lot of.
00:33:40 - Era Ziroe
Organizations, one, it's one person. It's one person, thousands and millions.
00:33:44 - Greg Ng
Yeah, yeah. But it's not really a Persona. It's, it's a, it's one person who is different in some ways and the same in other ways. How do organizations stay ahead of that? How do they so, so yes, an organization can have a top down belief structure and it translates to investment and it translates to influence within an organization. And every single day it gets more complex. How do organizations stay ahead of that? How do they, how do they, how should they structure themselves so that they can at least be more agile to those things?
00:34:20 - Era Ziroe
So it is such a great question. Data is an asset, right? And companies that have figured out how to use it as an asset just they do better and they win because they are able to leverage the data and they're able to actually deliver those personalized experience. Well, at least they have the capability to if they take advantage of it. It's another thing when you look at like older organizations, like banks that have been around for a while. KeyBank just celebrated 200 years. Yeah. We have legacy systems and it's not easy to stitch all that together. So it has to be a real intentional investment. You look at fintechs, that's one of the real advantages of a fintech. They're starting from scratch so they can build the data set however they want to. And so it's much easier to make it be way more personalized and agile. However, I have seen, I have a partner that I was talking to. We haven't quite done any work with them yet, but I had a partner I was talking to that has seen other organizations that have very complex data environments where the data isn't perfect and they find a use case and they pick a use case on where they know based on research, data is really important to your clients or prospects to provide personalized experiences. And then they create like a separate data hub with just that data set to then, you know, test it out and do use cases. Then you start to build another one based on another priority and another one and then over time you can build that kind of stuff. I also know at Key we use Adobe to actually drive more personalization as well. But if you don't have the data structured right, there's only so much you can do. So you know, getting the data right is really, really important.
00:36:06 - Greg Ng
Getting the pipes working for data is part of the battle, interpreting the data is another part of the battle. But then actually taking that interpretation and having it drive innovation is where I think the green field is. You know, I know we had talked about how do you start with areas in which you can influence pretty quickly. Do you foresee that that is going to be more complicated or, or simpler in the future through the way in which technology is working these days, in the way in which organizations are structured?
00:36:44 - Era Ziroe
I don't know if it's going to get easier, but I think it's just going to continue to be a focus. And I, you know, when you're dealing with complex data sets, although I could probably play a really big role in simplifying some of that. So maybe it will get easier. I just think like people can't not focus on it anymore like organizations. If organizations don't take the time to invest in their data and get it to be connected and being leveraged for good of the client as an end user, I think they're going to lose in the long run.
00:37:19 - Greg Ng
One of the things that I think is great, at least from our perspective, is that it doesn't seem like that's a debate anymore for organizations to invest in. What is a debate is how much is that investment contributing to the metrics and business outcomes that matter. Are you seeing similar or is it different where you are at?
00:37:46 - Era Ziroe
So I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about buy in prioritization. It's very similar to cx. If you have someone that's bought into cx, you figure out how to get it to work for the business and be a business growth lever. I think that for data, if you think about it, data as a product, same thing, right? Like if somebody believes that in an ideal world, which is actually happening at key CX tells you personalization is important, right? Like the data is just, it's not even that, it's obvious everywhere, but we have very clear data that says personalization is super important. And then you layer in. Well, in order to drive personalization you need good data, right? And so because you can't like doing a one to many now just doesn't stand out like doing these direct mail campaigns or, or even digital messaging where it's like, oh, you have this checking account and I'm gonna offer you this savings account. Like it just doesn't work. People want you to know them way better. To your point, like we have so much more data about people and they expect us to leverage it for their good. They expect that we see that in our data as well. So I think that getting the buy in of data as a product is important to help fuel those personalized experiences. And so, yes, at key, there's a lot of investment and focus on that right now.
00:39:10 - Greg Ng
Yeah, there's nothing that is more infuriating than having a lot of money locked up in a financial institution and then receiving a piece of mail selling you on the thing that you already have.
00:39:24 - Era Ziroe
Yes. It's like, like I'd rather like, hey, if I have a savings account and it's earning less than 1%, tap me on my shoulder and say, hey, we have a better savings account for you that you can earn. Xyz, percentage, whatever it is, why don't you move it? Like, how loyal will I be to a bank like that? Right, Exactly. You're, look, you know me, you, you're using the data about me and you're making recommendation to make my life better.
00:39:52 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And you know, I, I work, I, I'm have been a customer of an Internet service provider that also was proactively saving me money. They were saying, you know what, by your usage, you probably don't need to be that package anymore. You get the same speed and you get this, but you can, you know, we can save you five bucks a month. And it was a simple, you want to do that? And I was, and of course, my, my, all the antennas go up. I'm like, okay. But okay, what's the contract? No, no, same contract. Okay. Does it push the, you know, is there like a cancellation fee? Nope, nope, no, same, same terms. We're just think it's a better fit for you. So now all of a sudden it disarms me a bit because now the next time when they say, and you might be interested in this extra product, okay, let's hear it. Right?
00:40:50 - Era Ziroe
And so you not only disarms you, you're actually more willing to listen. Right. Because they looked out for you and they have your best interest in mind.
00:40:57 - Greg Ng
That's right. That's right. And I will say, and I'll name this company, you know, I'm, I'm a big Delta person. I'm kind of a Delta like loyalist. And they, and I do like the personalization that they provide. They, you know, obviously don't love 100% every policy for Delta. But I was on a plane yesterday and I sat down and there were two water bottles, you know, between my seatmate and mine. And one water bottle was plain and the other water bottle was a baseball promo water bottle with Wally the Green Monster on it. And I'm a Red Sox fan and a huge baseball fan. And I looked at that and I said for a split second I said, did they put this here on purpose? Because if so, that is amazing. And then I quickly realized with a quick scan that no, no, they were just. It just happened to be in the, in the 12 pack. Right. That they were distributing. But my point in, in all of that is I still credit Delta with this amazing personalization that, that, that through affiliation made me have a little spark of joy. And I. The fact that I assumed my first assumption was that it was intentional is a huge testament to an organization that has proven multiple times over multiple years and it's earned my trust that personalization is something that they can be trusted with. Right.
00:42:33 - Era Ziroe
How amazing though? Like, if. If that were actual. Re. Actually real, how amazing would that be if that's where personalization got to. Like, that would be the dream, right? It.
00:42:41 - Greg Ng
It would be a dream. Now, remember, as a. Not to get super like baseball political, but if, if I sat down and there was a, A, A y water bottle, I would have been disappointed. But I might have said, oh, well, it's just random, right? I just got it right. So. So what the reason why I bring up this example because I'm still kind of like trying to formulate my thoughts. This literally happened yesterday. Trying to formulate my thoughts around this idea of personalization is. Is that the reason why my first assumption was maybe it was actually just for me, is not because I just believe in Delta. It is because for years Delta has painted this consistent story for me that they want to understand the routes I take, the flights I take, the sky clubs I. I prefer over others. The way in which I leverage wayfinding on my watch versus what time I check in for my pat, for my boarding pass, all these other things of leveraging data for good in a very holistic, customer centric way. That takes. That's not something you can earn with one campaign. That is something that you earn over time. I imagine you have account holders at KeyBank for decades.
00:44:02 - Era Ziroe
We have very long tenured clients.
00:44:04 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And, and that is what can be such a huge asset. Speaking of other generations, how do you ensure, how do you use those things so that when parents have kids who form their bank accounts that you continue that, that trend? How do you ensure that all the, the capital, the trust that you've built up with one group, how do you ensure that that is easily conveyed to the next generation so you don't lose the next generation? Is that, is that something that is part of a broader roadmap? Is that part, is that just a core value? How, how does that work and how does your team and your role play into that?
00:44:46 - Era Ziroe
Yeah. Key. Key really values their clients, and I think that we have clients that have been with the bank for, for decades and decades. I'm talking about because they love the service. It goes back to the people and the service. If I rewind back to our conversation earlier about the generational differences in how they score us for experience based on their expectations. Yes. There's no doubt that a lot of clients will bring their kids over and family over. There's like, no doubt about that. But you can't assume that if somebody just comes to your company because they were referred by a parent or a family member that you're locked in. Right. You've got to continuously prove to your point. Like the Delta example is a great example. It's got to, you've got to live up to the expectation that that parent or family member might have set and also live up to the expectation that that person may have based on the current environment of, of the world. They may give you a little bit more grace because their parents love it so much. Right. But at the end of the day, like, if you don't deliver what they want. So, like, for example, I, I actually had a family member who came to Key and I'll say it's because I was an employee and they got a promotional offer and then for them to get the actual promotional offer to open the account was really painstaking because they had gotten married and the offer was to one name and the other, like it wasn't easy. And I think that they gave a little more grace to the process and having to go into the branch when they were trying to do everything digitally because I am an employee affiliation. Right? Yeah. But I think, like, if you take that same example and you have just your regular client go through that, they're not going to be as forgiving for. Sure.
00:46:39 - Greg Ng
Sure. Yeah. We talked one time with a, with a credit union who said that the big challenge for them is that they have very loyal members. And then their kids say, well, they're, you know, they want perks or they want a better mobile app, whereas their, the parents were comfortable with going to the ATM down the street and, and earning dividends. The kids felt like, well, wait a minute, what do you mean it's not Zelle enabled? What do you mean? I can do a deposit of this, this archaic, you know, paycheck that I received from, you know, from my grandma for, you know, you know, for my birthday. What do you mean? I have to actually go in and talk to someone instead of just scanning it and depositing it. And so I think that there is a really interesting thing about how do you create loyalty and contain and maintain loyalty while building new trust and having that affiliation, that grace period, if you will, of your family member is a great example of that. How do you do that at scale though? How and, and can you do it at scale?
00:47:55 - Era Ziroe
Well, it goes back to really understanding who's your target audience, right? Who is your, your like, Persona from a client perspective, like, who are you trying to win business over? Really understanding them deeply, what are their needs, desires, expectations and building experiences for them. And I think in today's day and age, some companies don't take advantage of transparency as much as they could or should. And I'm talking about when experiences don't go great. Be open and honest about it. Talk about what you know, you failed here and you're going to make it better and what's your roadmap like? You know, who does that a lot is Quicken. So some people think I'm arcade, but I love the Quicken. Like the, I use it for just paying bills and like reconciling my checkbook so I can do it digitally. And they're amazing at sending out communications about improving experience. And we heard you and here's what we're doing and they're phenomenal. And I think clients do that prefer that. I actually at Key, we had a situation where we launched a new atm, A software upgrade happened and this was a great example of experience gone wrong. The vendor heard clients saying that they want to pick denominations, they want a touchscreen functionality, and then they launched it, but they didn't really do it in a design thinking lens. And so whatever they launched, it did not work work well and it was very confusing. There were long delays on the screens and stuff. And we actually went out and did a campaign with clients who actually gave us feedback through surveys saying, we are so sorry. We heard you. Here's how you can, like, here's how you can work through this while we get this fixed. We are going to get it fixed. We gave them little like goodwill gifts and our NPS like it plummeted at first and it after a little bit went right back to norm because we were very open and transparent and honest about what was happening and what we were doing to fix it. And we armed our contact centers and branches with Also helping. But it was a great example from many fronts. But it was a perfect example of you think you're building a solution that's user centric, but you're actually not testing it. You're not really understanding what people want, you're not understanding the experience they want and what you're delivering and the gaps to that. And design thinking is, is a huge, huge lifesaver for stuff like that.
00:50:19 - Greg Ng
Yeah, I love that. In that example, when you mentioned kind of arming customer care and at the branch with that information, is that built into the playbook or is that something that like that communication and understanding all the different touch points in which a customer or account holder or end user will want to reach out to or who needs that communication. How does that work at Key?
00:50:45 - Era Ziroe
So there's, I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening every single day, right. And I actually think our branches have the hardest job and our contact center folks like our frontline, they have the hardest job of anybody at the bank because there's so much coming at them at any given day. And so yes, communication is critical. We actually did some research for like our branch communications team on what communication vehicles best serve the frontline and like do the best job of actually delivering the information because there's a lot. And actually was funny somebody we had like a weekly communication that we got of everything that's going on right now, all the new products, service, good, bad, and, you know, all of it. And somebody looked at and said this is too much. Like, let's get rid of this. And we were like, whoa, let's make sure we should get rid of this. We actually did research with the front line and it turned out that that particular communication that somebody thought was too much was the most valued communication that they get. And that the branch is like, carve out time and review it and talk about it together. So it's just another example of where sometimes you think common sense serves you. You think you have experience and you know the right answer, but everybody's different. And you need to take the time to really understand what your end user wants, needs and prefers before you just start making, you know, rash decisions. I've also seen this affect product rollouts where, you know, product leaders think they know what the competition is doing and what they need to do to win. And then when you ask clients, I have a great example of this. But when you ask clients, they'll tell you what they really want. So don't assume, you know, you need to ask and really deliver based on what they want and what the market's asking for right now.
00:52:25 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, clients just want a venue to be able to tell them what they really want. Right. It's, it's people always have opinions and they don't have any, you know, talking about affiliation. They don't have any real stake in the game. Relationship wise, internally in, within your corporation. Right. Because I, I would imagine there are a lot of times when there's some politicking around. Right. And you want to say, well yeah, maybe that, that's not exactly what I would do, but it's not wrong. Ish. You know, and maybe I'll do that. But when you talk to an end user and you ask them, I found that there's zero motivation for them not to be 100% truthful. Right. And bluntly truthful. Right.
00:53:11 - Era Ziroe
Yes.
00:53:11 - Greg Ng
When you talk about how. Yes. At the contact center, they, they certainly have to deal with a lot. And at the branch, how do the insights that happen there trickle back up? Is there a mechanism there? Is there a. Or do you then survey maybe at the branch? How, how does that work?
00:53:32 - Era Ziroe
Yeah. So the team that I, that I was leading at key, we did research for the entire enterprise. So we research every channel. All relationship studies like truly understanding, like broad loyalty, competitive syndicated studies, all that. So for example, what I really was proud of is that we would do research for the contact center channel. We do research for branch. We do research for, we do all, for all the channels. But then we did an amazing job connecting the dots. So to answer one question about the contact center, so the way it works is like we would do research and get the survey analysis and then we would share back with our contact center business partners and then we would tell them here are your top priorities. And we have a great use case example where they were great, great partners. They wouldn't, they took CX so to heart. So to heart. Like I think they've doubled their NPS score over the last four years. They have taken the feedback we've given them, they've acted on it and they've seen like just from doing very specific things to address top opportunities. They have like in one use case increased their MPS by 44% in a year, which is huge. So you need to have that partnership. There's no point of listening if you don't have a partner who's willing to do something about opportunities. But then on the flip side, the beauty of having research at an enterprise level is that you can connect the dots. So here's a great example. Going back to ATMs, we were getting good feedback, really good feedback, actually really high NPS scores like improved for our ATM channel over the years. And then all of a sudden in our branch survey we were getting really negative feedback about the ATMs. Now if you don't have somebody that's looking at all of it, connecting the dots and taking a step back and seeing the whole picture, you may not see that. And so what we were hearing in the branch survey was that when your ATM is down and I have to come into the branch, that is incredibly inconvenient for me. We did an entire design thinking process around it. Uncovered some amazing low hanging fruit of just like notifying the branches when an ATM is down. Like the product team knew about it, but there wasn't a mechanism for notifying the branches directly. So just a small win like that really helped helping the branches understand like what they should be saying, like we never want to blame a vendor like and we were doing that quite a bit anyway. So there's so much beauty in managing research at an enterprise level, especially if you have a team that knows how to look at it holistically and connect dots and bring it all together to understand the broad view of your client, not just in each individual channel but like across the whole company.
00:56:16 - Greg Ng
Yeah, I think that's so critical that organizations remember that, especially if you're conducting surveys, multiple surveys to the same person, that I could give a very high rating to one channel and a moderately low rating to another channel and both of them combined actually form my overall opinion of the brand. Maybe this is oversimplified. I'd love your perspective on this. It seems like a lot of organizations fall into the trap of they do not meet ever. So each channel has their own goal and their own survey and their own calculation and their own roll up of, of, of, of results. But not a lot of organizations have very intentional discipline to roll those up. And it doesn't necessarily have to be one to one, but at least even just finding where there are maybe misalignment or, or trends that are going in opposite directions. Are you seeing that as well in other organizations?
00:57:26 - Era Ziroe
Yeah, I think all too often teams are very siloed like I was saying. And I think it's the beauty of what we developed at Key where we are really looking at it all. So for example, bringing it all together, we launched a relationship study. I'm losing track of time now, maybe two, two and a half years ago. And in that relationship study, so it's a consumer relationship. So it's looking at, not how do I feel about one individual channel, but it's like, how do I feel about key overall? Like when I take a step back and I haven't been in the branch in a while and I haven't talked to a contact center and maybe I use digital recently, but whatever. But like just take a step back and I'm like, do I love key? So like, just like your delta, like you're not looking at one interaction, like overall, you love delta. Right. So when we look at that through our relationship study, then my research team would pull in all the channel specific data as well and then we will look at it from our competitive. So we would use JD Power and we look at JD Power results and say, how do we stack up? Not just how we see ourselves internally, but how do we stack up to the competition? And we would create a unified story and bring all of those leaders together and talk about how it's all culminating together. That if you're doing better but you're doing worse, like these are the drivers of client loyalty and all of this plays, you know, it's a piece of the puzzle and you can't do it one off, otherwise you won't see the whole picture and you won't, you won't win at the end of the day.
00:58:50 - Greg Ng
Yeah, I, I love that you're using, you know, other sources as well, like J.D. power. I think it's very, it's an example like with this podcast where like what I thought my voice sounds and what I then hear back in a recording are different. They're, they're maybe a little bit similar and trending in the right direction. But, but, but they're different. Right. And so I think it's really easy to look at results that you are gathering and apply a, let's face it, just a very subjective lens to what you're seeing. And it, and, but it must also include a third party objective lens because.
00:59:27 - Era Ziroe
Even if you're doing better and better and better, but your competition is advancing. How do you know that unless you're constantly comparing yourself to the competition?
00:59:36 - Greg Ng
That's right. Yeah. And it's, it's, there's, there's a, there's perspective involved in terms of hearing it. And I would argue that you shouldn't do either or you should do a combination of both. And it is always a practice. Right. It can't be a, like, great done, don't have to worry about it for another five years. Right. Because I think that the real value is seeing the trend over time and maybe even possible to see the trend over time with specific key account key meaning, you know, critical, critical key account holders. Do you do that at that level of specificity or like down to the actual person and see the trend?
01:00:24 - Era Ziroe
So. Okay, great question. So first off, I totally agree with what you said and at the end of the day, reality is data availability also plays a factor. So you only get your competitive final rankings once a year. You can't just rely like if you only relied on that, you'd be missing out what's happening every single day. Right. And so there's a balance. So every year you need to calibrate what you're seeing in your data and seeing how it's doing against the competition and how the competition is moving and how you're moving with them. So we would love to create a 360 view based on client feedback and layering out operational data as well on each individual client. And we're looking into new capabilities to do that. You need to have. Right. Technology to be able to do that. And I think it could be a big unlock if you had that.
01:01:15 - Greg Ng
Yeah, yeah. Especially if it's, and I go back and forth honestly about the idea of just because you can do personalization of one, should you do personalization of one? Let's forget about the scale challenge or the, or the ROI of deploying technology or the variations on the creative side and all that stuff because honestly all of those things technology specifically gen AI is starting to solve for. It's more about the focus time, the ability to conduct activities internally that actually informs real innovation and prioritization on the other side. So I could, I could create a very specific journey that may be incredibly effective to you and you alone, but that means nothing to the overall business. So I, I think that there's always going to be a struggle from technology forward. People who say yes, we can do this doesn't mean we should though. And, and not to broad stroke it but like pe, more customer focused people who are saying yes, we want to know this, but it doesn't mean we need to. Where, where do you, how do you find that balance? Obviously it shifts by, or organization to organization and the, the leaders that are ahead of you know, that are leading it. How, how does that play into though, the way in which you would structure your goals for next year or your team for next year, that type of deal?
01:02:59 - Era Ziroe
Great question. I, I think you're spot on that you, it's easy to do things but you do like good prioritization would flush this out. Right? You look at the frequency, the impact, the business growth impact. Like you just got to look at all the pieces and parts and you, if you have a standard framework that you use to prioritize, you flesh that stuff out. And because you're always asking the right questions. So you never want to launch something that is incredibly personalized, but it's not a moment of truth. So it's like it's personalized but like at the end of the day it's not going to have that lasting impact on somebody and how they view your company and how loyal they are or how much they trust you. You're never going to want to do something that only affects of 1% of your client base. Right. Like you're not going to want to do something like you just said, that isn't going to actually drive business value and business growth. So. And sometimes not every, not every action or investment has a direct business impact group. But you need to have data that shows that this is a driver, like if you get this right, this is a driver of loyalty which will then give you opportunity to cross sell and drive tenure and long term lifetime value for that client. So there's so many ways to think about it. You can't just look at it from only one seat. You've really got to look at all the different factors that play into it.
01:04:25 - Greg Ng
Yeah, it's an exciting time to do this type of work. Do you agree?
01:04:32 - Era Ziroe
Totally agree. It's always an exciting time to be part of cx.
01:04:35 - Greg Ng
It is. But I also feel like, I feel so grateful that we are working in this business at a time where there, in my opinion there's very few things that I dream about that can't be made into reality. Maybe there's people that are in the way and budgets that are in the way, but technology has caught up to a scenario where it's now maybe powerful enough to do whatever you want. And the real critical opportunity is how do you prioritize what you should do and how do you actually turn that into real action?
01:05:15 - Era Ziroe
Yeah, I'm totally with you. I think the opportunity and the entire like palette of options that are in front of us now from a technology standpoint is bigger, greater and better than ever before. I was at a conference in March and you know, AI is the big buzzword. I can't even tell you how many AI vendors I met and it was like actually like overwhelming because they all say that they're the best. And so there's so many Options you've got to, you know, have really strong due diligence about understanding what you're doing and what you're driving and the, the vendors that you want to partner with. But you're spot on. Like it's just endless opportunities, endless opportunities.
01:05:54 - Greg Ng
And it, at the same time, as a consumer, it then frustrates me more when I see organizations that are not even at, at level. Right. So Ira, it's great to have you here on the show. Before I let you go, I want to just ask you a quick question. And that is what brand do you interact with now? Any brand, consumer brand, where you just love, you obsess over because of the way in which they understand you as a consumer.
01:06:28 - Era Ziroe
Okay. So I always think about this and as you can imagine as a CX professional, I'm incredibly critical of brands. I actually there have been few brands that have wowed me in certain experiences and then if they just fall flat in others. So I don't have a brand that I just like. Absolutely. I can tell you some of my favorites. I don't have a brand that I absolutely love like from beginning to end because I don't think I have any particular brand that really personalizes to me that keeps drawing me in and keeps coming back for more. But I do have some favorites, so I will. I don't shop here a ton, but when I do, I'm always like, this is what CX is. So like Rei, like my son likes to go there and he went there when he was younger. Even more so. They know who they are, they have a very clear identity, they have very clear values and they stick with it. And every experience you have with that store, it never wades. Like they're always on top of their game with delivering that experience, whether it be in person, online. Like to me that is the beauty of CX and it's consistency. Consistency like really, really, really matters. And I. One of my biggest philosophies in CX is don't put burden on the end user. And I think they do a lot to try to make things right. I'm going to give you another one that just freshened my mind. Like as of this weekend, I'm a coffee snob. I love coffee. And when my husband I were remodeling our kitchen like a dozen or so years ago, he said, and he's a coffee snob too. He said, we're putting in a Mila built in coffee machine. Okay. It's now 15 years old and died on us this weekend. It's no longer pumping coffee. So we've been doing French presses. It's been very eye opening and like, you know, putting us back down to earth. But guess what Mila did, which I did not expect. So I did a lot of research online. We were trying to fix it ourselves. Didn't work. But I called Mila a couple days ago and the woman was like, you should get a technician out. And I said, well, we like to fix our appliances ourselves. Can you walk me through some troubleshooting? The woman stayed on the phone with me for probably close to an hour with trying to troubleshoot and stuff. It didn't work. And then she says, we are going to contact your local appliance service provider for you and they're going to reach out to you. And then they did. Within 24 hours.
01:09:13 - Greg Ng
Amazing.
01:09:14 - Era Ziroe
I was like, you know, just take the burden off of me. I'm already like stressed. This is coffee, right? I'm stressed. And, but my machine lasted for so long with one other issue across all the years. But they took the burden off of me and they provided me great service. And do you think if I have to go buy another coffee machine tomorrow, I'm going to get another Miele? Yes.
01:09:34 - Greg Ng
And what a strong signal you sent as a customer as well to contact them directly versus a third party. You could have gone to your local appliance person and maybe it's.
01:09:44 - Era Ziroe
I don't even know who services them because it's so specialized, right?
01:09:47 - Greg Ng
Yes, right, exactly. But, but, but you know, Google, Google or ChatGPT or could have found you something that maybe wasn't exactly right, but the fact that you sent a signal and they responded in kind is actually such a huge, huge.
01:10:03 - Era Ziroe
But to your point, I knew they were going to give me good service because I had to reach out to them once before when I something went down. And so it's kind of like even though I had the machine for 15 years, they don't stop caring, which is really important. And they stop give, they don't stop giving you great service even after 15 years and my warranty is long gone.
01:10:21 - Greg Ng
I love that, I love that. And I love that you brought up rei. I am, have, have, have talked about, I do shop at rei. I mean, that's why I have a Patagonia thing around right now. But I do shop at REI all the time. And agree. What an amazing, consistent message organization that not just values their, their teammates, but tells the world that they do. And just a quick story. I mentioned this in a past article, but I, I, it proves that point in 2019, I did a. A UNESCO pilgrimage hike in Japan called the Kumano Kodo. I hiked it with my dad, and I went to REI and I said, I need trekking poles. And they said, well, which ones? And they were like, there's six different things you need to be considered. And. And instead of them saying, what's your budget? Or what are you exactly you looking for? They said, where are you hiking? And I said, I'm doing the Kumano Coto. And the person's eyes lit up, and she goes, I'm not that person, but there's someone here who just did that hike. And so they went and grabbed that other person. That person came to me and said, okay, which trail are you doing in the Kumano code? I told them. They said, okay, what month are you doing it? Okay, when I was there, it wasn't as wet, but this and this and this and this. They're like, you need to worry about this. If you're not checking in luggage, this is going to be light and more, you know. And at that point, I don't care what the cost is. What I care is that there's an actual human with actual experience who is not trying to sell me on the biggest thing. They're trying to sell me on the right thing. And that. Create. That interaction in 2019 created a lifelong loyalty. I pay more when I go to rei, and I don't care because I.
01:12:17 - Era Ziroe
Right.
01:12:17 - Greg Ng
You know, I want that level of care.
01:12:19 - Era Ziroe
They have your back.
01:12:19 - Greg Ng
They have my back.
01:12:20 - Era Ziroe
They're so committed, and they invest in their employees and, like, you know, it's so easy over time to lower your standards and just hire whoever, but they don't. They never do. They hire the people that care as much about hiking as you do, and they hire the people that have done it so that they can help you. Like, it just. It's. It's really CX and CX combined in a package that is so beautifully delivered day in and day out. And it's just an amazing example.
01:12:49 - Greg Ng
And I say those stories all the time because I know that there is someone responsible for those types of things. And it's not a project or initiative. It is built into their DNA over time, and it can't be necessarily attributed directly attributed to revenue. But, man, if I can give them an anecdote that helps fuel that what they're doing is what is right, I will do that all day long. On that note, Ira, thank you so much, so much for joining this episode. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think a lot of our listeners will as well. And I just. I just thank you for taking the time.
01:13:27 - Era Ziroe
Thank you for having me. This is a lot of fun.
01:13:34 - Greg Ng
And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Path Uncut. A huge thank you to Ira Zyro for sharing her invaluable insights on embedding customer experience into business strategy and the transformative power of empathy driven leadership. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It helps other change makers find the show. And if there's someone you'd love to hear from or a topic you'd like us to explore, let us know. I'm Greg Ng. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, the path to meaningful change starts with bold ideas and courageous leadership. See you next time on the Path Uncut.