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Understanding that incentive is now

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who do people think about when I'm around them?

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If I'm wearing a Jersey of my favorite team,

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if I'm shopping at a particular store

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I'm now associated with the values of that.

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That becomes as much of an incentive

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as all the typical perks and financial

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Great experiences don't happen by accident

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they are designed.

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Susie Earhart is a customer experience

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and organizational change executive.

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Who spent her career helping organizations align people,

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processes and technology

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around what customers actually experience.

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In our conversation today

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Susie unpacks two things leaders

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consistently underestimate;

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1. how difficult it really is to think outside

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your own biases when designing for customers,

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and 2. how choosing between human

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assisted

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or automated experiences can either build trust

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or quietly erode it. This is a practical

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human conversation about designing with intention,

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so let's dive right in.

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I just love being in roles,

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whether it's the actual job itself

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or the type of function that I'm doing

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that enables somebody to see what

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they can do with their life.

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And the impact that they're

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making on others and then suddenly

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do something that they didn't even think was possible.

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So I love that.

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I've decided to

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do that kind of work

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primarily through customer experience consulting

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but I do a little bit of organizational change

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management consulting as well.

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Because guess what if you wanna innovate

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if you want to focus more on your customers

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you need to be willing to change.

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And change is not always the easiest things that we do,

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so understanding

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the methodology and psychology

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behind that is a big part of why

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I Learned those things

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in addition to my customer experience work.

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I love that and the psychology of it.

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What are what are three questions you ask a client

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when you're trying to figure out what's wrong

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and how you can help? Well,

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first of all I don't always assume it's wrong.

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Right,

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because when you say what's wrong

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it puts people on the defensive.

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So the first thing I usually say is why am I here?

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What is it that you want that you don't have today?

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Right, so I open that possibility of that discussion

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so that's the first. And then I always ask why?

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Thank God for Simon Sinek,

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he taught me a lot right?

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But if you don't know the 'why'

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then

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you can't get to all of the other things that trickle

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down of

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what are the implications,

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and what are you willing to do

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about it and those types of things.

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The third thing I usually ask is

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what are the hot buttons?

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What are the areas that don't cross,

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don't touch? This is who I am,

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this is who we are as a company

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or an organization or an entity.

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Because a lot of times people come forward

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very excited about doing something innovative

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or doing a different way of working.

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But then when you get close to that moment

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they all jump back and they're like no,

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no, no

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don't touch that.

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So those are the questions I typically ask to start.

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Take you back to your first statement then.

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You use the term customer experience

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what does that mean? Customer experience is basically

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defined as every impression

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that someone has about an organization,

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or a brand. It's everything from

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what's the signage that I see out there,

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all the way through to

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what was my interaction with somebody

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who worked with the company.

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And that interaction could be on the street,

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like I happen to run across them

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and they were wearing a T-shirt with the logo

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and gave me a judgment about them

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because the way they behave there.

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Or it could be related to

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I called them for help on their particular product

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they sold and what was that like.

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I think there's a book I read, eons ago

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something about sacred cows make the best burgers

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You've got. You

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were touching on that, like

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I'm not gonna judge what's right or wrong here

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I'm gonna observe. But through the eyes of a customer

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and are you bringing is a

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one of your superpowers to bring the

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the viewpoint

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the view the perspective of a customer to your client?

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It's absolutely one of my superpowers,

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And I call it outside in,

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people in our industry talk about

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it's not what I see in my own mirror

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it's what other people see

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when they're looking at you from all those different

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angles. And that outside in is not just a customer

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it's also your employees,

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it's the partners that you work with you co sell with,

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it's your suppliers the people who come and quote

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drop off the things that you need to do work

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and how you treat them. It's all of the above. Yeah,

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it's like a holistic approach to relationships.

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I think we've been

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speaking a lot about relationships and community

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through the course of these conversations.

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Give us a little bit more background

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of what it was that set you in this direction?

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I heard your why,

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but I wanna understand a little bit more about the how?

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So

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what caused me to join a focus on customer experience

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is because I was working in contact centers

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for a large part of my life.

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And the last two contact centers I ran,

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actually last three, everybody came to me and said

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here's the problem with your organization.

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And they told me we stunk.

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We were horrible. We were

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 the you know, the

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forgive me the c*@p

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that's the nice way of saying what's in my head.

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The c*@p of the organization,

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and when I looked and stepped back

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I realized that the technology

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people were designing a platform

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that our users didn't understand how to use,

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that our marketing people were pitching

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a potential of what we could do

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that we couldn't do. Our sales

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people were making commitments

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of how we could serve them

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that were unrealistic. And so

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what was happening is

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all of these impressions were being set up

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about the brand about who we were as a company,

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and then they all they'd all walk away and ask me

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why I couldn't deliver on it.

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So that's why I started working up,

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because customer experience again

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is every impression of the brand.

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So if you produce that beautiful

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image of that juicy hamburger

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on that sign,

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you better make sure that the employees in the store

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can make that juicy hamburger

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every single time you go through the drive through.

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But also with a pride a sense of accomplishment

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and their reward. How does rewards fit in?

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I believe that incentives rule the world fundamentally

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like end of story. And how does it

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how do incentives and rewards and motivations

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you know fit into the fabric of

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of how you're trying to solve

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I guess

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create opportunity for people to express themselves

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better? Yeah,

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I love that statement, because if I look back 15 years

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I would have been more aligned with the incentives

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like what is the financial incentive?

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What is the bonus?

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What is the opportunity to grow my career path etc?

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And what we've really happened,

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at least in the American space in the past five years

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is that a lot of the dynamic is around

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who do I want to be associated with, right?

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What does that brand stand? For

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like Target for example, right

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they had this huge boycott

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against them at the beginning of the year.

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Because they made a decision,

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a business decision.

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And so understanding

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that incentive is now

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who do people think about when I'm around them?

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If I'm wearing a Jersey of my favorite team

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if I'm shopping at a particular store

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I'm now associated with the values of that.

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That becomes as much of an incentive

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as all the typical perks and financial.

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More holistic approach I love it.

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More holistic approach. Holistic

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So speaking of approaches,

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the first time I heard CX as a concept or as a term,

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there was a question that was asked directly after

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and it was what are the resources you're putting

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towards your customer experience?

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And I think some of the things that you detailed out is,

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I realized we have focus in selling

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and selling and delivering.

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We have focus in building the product and

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and offering the product. But

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what is it that makes companies

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lose sight of the fact that

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there's an entire journey that the customer takes,

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that interacts with every bit of your product,

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 what creates that lack of focus,

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on the actual experience that the customer has?

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I don't think I can tell you any one thing, I mean

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the reality is we get stuck in our communities

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we know the people that we work with so well

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so close that we get stuck in our ways.

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The last company I worked for,

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I remember them saying

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our customers just don't understand how this works.

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It's like well...

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they're the ones buying,

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so let's make sure that we're. Not buying. Yeah, yeah.

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well that was the whole point

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They weren't buying after a little while.

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So there's a whole myriad of reasons.

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It's really about making sure that

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you step outside of your community,

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out of your mindset.

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Which is where I think innovation fits in

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in a great way, it causes you to step back and say

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if I was gonna do this, what would I need?

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What do I want and how do I feel?

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And even better actually

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talk to the customers who you are having

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buy your services or your products.

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And ask them why they're staying with you

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or why they're leaving?

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You'd be amazed at what you learn.

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I think that's a sin talking directly to your clients,

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I didn't know that that's an option.

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Yeah,

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it is strange right?

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I mean if

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 you could look at it with a different metaphor,

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you could say I'm

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I'm wearing blinders I'm a horse

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I'm going forward I have blinders for no distractions

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and that's your perspective.

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All right, what happens when you take the blinders off

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or what happens when you reorient,

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and you I think?

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You're bringing perspective into this decision making,

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 business making,

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value creating thing that we call business.

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I'm getting the sense that it's about expanding

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and reorienting, and

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and building your your perspective.

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It's that and, so

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you know decades ago

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we said certain companies succeed

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because they always produce the same product

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every time, every way.

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Other companies succeed

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because they're so focused on innovation

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they create new things

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that everybody's excited to run to,

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and wait outside in long lines to get. Right,

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and then there's companies who highly personalize.

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In the United States in the past

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really five to 10 years, we

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as consumers have become so conditioned,

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that I can get what I need from Amazon in an hour, right?

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So speed is there.

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I can hop on the phone call and for example

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USAA knows exactly everything about my portfolio

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and knows how I want to be talked to

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and can make this feel like I just knew.

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Like this other person on the phone

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that I've never spoken to

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they've known me for 15 years.

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Those types of expectations around speed

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around personalization,

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around the product matching my needs exactly,

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have become so ingrained

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that it's not just having perspective,

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it's that we need to meet those minimum standards

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no matter who and what company we're working with.

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Otherwise I'll leave you and go someplace else.

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Well if you're delivering that message to me,

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I'm gonna pay attention.

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So what's the,

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what's the question you'd like for us to ask you

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that we haven't asked?

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How does innovation connect to customer experience?

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All right consider that a softball.

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Thank you very much. Proceed. Yes.

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What I find fascinating about innovation is

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it usually starts with the emotion of frustration

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or anger

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about things not working the way I want them to.

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And that creates an opportunity for you to associate

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and connect with other people

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who have that shared perspective,

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that shared need, and that shared desire.

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And that innovation then

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evolves itself

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into something that more and more people adopt.

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I think that's as good a place as anywhere to...

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We dropped the mic on that one.

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Thanks for joining us Susie.

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That was the money shot