🌉Bridging CX and Marketing's Shared PURPOSE 🥅

Show Notes

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CX and marketing have a lot of overlap in today's business world, especially when it comes to educating and positioning internally to different groups.

Nate Brown and Sally Mildren are two phenomenal CX executives and they join me to discuss this and much more on It's Marketing's Fault.

They discuss the CX Accelerator and how it provides a community for customer experience professionals who often don't have a way to learn from peers. They discuss what keeps executives from investing in customer experience and how to talk with executives in ways they understand. They also share about the "Bring Your Own Chair" podcast and how it is helping CX professionals and those who want to learn more about the CX space.

https://www.cxaccelerator.com/

Sally Mildren
https://bossladyconsult.com/
https://clarity-px.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sally-mildren/

Nate Brown
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cxaccelerator/

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Eric Rutherford

Eric is the founder of Build That Podcast, a podcast production agency focused on the B2B marketplace

What is It's Marketing's Fault?

Welcome to “It’s Marketing’s Fault”. If you are a marketer, this phrase is familiar to you. Sometimes deserved, often times not. 

Don’t worry, you are among marketers and friends here. Let’s discuss how to do marketing the right way. 


As a side note, in episodes 1 through 37, this was Build That Podcast. The goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence.  If you go back and listen to earlier episode (those before November 2023) you will hear that name. Don't worry--it's good content too. :)

Welcome to It's Marketing's Fault, the podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way.

I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I am thrilled today because I have with me two exceptional guests.

First, Sally Mildred is the CEO of Boss Lady Consulting, as well as ClarityPX.

She has decades of experience as a leader in marketing, communications, customer experience, and she's also the host of Bring Your Own Share Community podcast.

and the exceptional Nate Brown.

My dear friend, he is a customer experience executive consultant and speaker.

Also, he is co-founder, executive director of CX Accelerator.

Sally, Nate, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us, Eric.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm thrilled.

I am thrilled.

So for everybody listening, we're going to talk about customer experience.

We're going to talk about CX.

You might be asking this question like, okay, I thought I was going with marketing and now we're talking about CX.

But I'm excited because I think we get I think customer experience has its own marketing problem.

And so I think That's what we're going to get into today.

And part of that comes with the CX accelerator.

Part of it comes with the bring your own share podcast.

But first, what is a popular belief about customer experience that you disagree with?

I'll start with Sally and then to Nate.

Well, I think customer experience being boiled down to the idea that it means happy customers is false.

That may be an outcome of it, but I think a lot of people summarize the entire profession and strategic intent of customer experience is to make customers happy.

Obviously, that's the outcome, but it's so much more than that.

It's cultural, it's operational, it is leadership.

It is process and systems and intent to serve humans right, and that results in happy customers.

Hmm.

So good.

Ah, I almost don't, I don't need to answer, do I?

But I will.

We, so see, I probably shouldn't jump right into this, but, but it's a great question, so I will, uh, there's a lot of people doing CX for CX sake and they're missing the whole point of it.

I mean, there's this beautiful overlap between CX and marketing, which we'll certainly get into, but, but CX and just about everything.

So when people try to build a little golden cathedral of CX off in some corner of the organization, it shatters the ability for that function to do anything meaningful inside of the org.

So it's about breaking down the walls of customer experience.

It's about not working so hard to make people care about CX.

It's about getting them to actually care about their customers and their ability to serve one another and their customers even better.

man, I need you to speak with some other people that I've worked with in the past.

Just, I mean, from, I mean, we'll just, let's just break down all the silos, right?

Let's go beyond even customer experience, customer service.

Let's get into product and sales and everybody else and say, oh, it is, it's about the customer.

I love that.

So let's, let me ask, I gotta throw out there, CX Accelerator, what, is it?

So that got started.

I was in a major safety science company.

I had just been awarded my first customer experience role.

And frankly, I was lonely and it was, it was hard because I felt like I was having to constantly give CX outward and I wasn't getting filled up and that wasn't going to happen inside my organization.

And that realization of there's a lot of lonely CX pros out there.

that are kind of in a similar situation.

You know, the unique nature of this work is that you're always giving, you're always evangelizing, and it's hard to fill up your own bucket.

So this is work that is especially prone to burnout and especially needs community around you.

So CX Accelerator got started as a community, as a set of unique resources to really help CX professionals to get started.

inside of a great and rewarding and fulfilling career.

And it's continued to evolve and now it's really about helping CX professionals on every stage of their career journey.

But as it got started, it was really meant to be that boom, that acceleration point at the very beginning of a good CX career.

Thank you.

So let me just add, let me kind of follow up with that.

When you, so it was initially community support, encouragement, now you're, it's that and, what does that CX career look like?

So like for some people who are listening, they're like, I don't even know what, like that's just sort of a black box, right?

So what does that look like?

How do you help with that?

There's so many paths into it.

I mean, there's a lot of people that have come from contact center and customer service functions.

And now they're helping to manage big picture CX, managing the customer journey across a larger enterprise.

So, I mean, that's a leap into it.

There's a lot of people that have come from customer marketing or customer advocacy marketing.

And it's like, wow, all of a sudden I have to do voice of customer.

Now I've got these voice of customer insights.

Now I have to help the business to do something with them.

And I have to measure the impact to the customer.

Suddenly a marketer finds themselves as a customer experience professional, almost accidentally, because of the incredible overlaps that continue to happen.

Same thing with product.

The gateway drug in product is user experience, UX.

All of a sudden you're having to think about, oh, what's the impact of this to the customer and how do we measure that?

And all of a sudden the product professional becomes a customer experience professional.

So it's not about being a quote unquote CX person It's about wherever you are, whatever role you're filling, to be an ally and to be somebody that's helping to cultivate that customer-centric culture.

Mm-hmm.

I appreciate that.

I do.

That's a good description.

Let me just kind of ask as well.

So Sally, I know you are in CX, you are in marketing.

What makes customer experience so hard to market?

And I'm gonna use that almost as a, and that can be internal, that can be external, but just as a...

as a service, so to speak, what makes it so hard?

I think internally, I'll start there, it's hard to market because there isn't broad adoption.

It's either look to be a silver bullet to say, oh my gosh, we're losing customers or people are unhappy.

So it's like, okay, we're gonna throw CX at it to fix some kind of revenue bleed or in the case of product marketing.

We aren't getting as big of adoption or as many downloads or whatever.

So I, the problem with it being brought in as a bandaid or a quick plug, the hole in the marketing funnel is that there isn't broad adoption from the top down in the organization and truly to be successful, it has to be supported by and led by the executives.

supported by a budget with realistic expectations and how do you know if it's successful?

So a lot of times you get off on this path to execute customer experience and improve it, but you haven't taken time to define what does the ideal experience look like with your organization.

And so, you know, there's a quote that says, If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.

And I feel like that is a little bit of when you're thrown into the CX world to just solve something that that's a little bit of a challenge for young professionals or new CX to organizations.

You know, obviously huge folks like Verizon and all those others haven't really dialed in, but it's because they have a ton of money to put at it.

the research, all the things.

So internally, there's got to be A, a vision for what the ideal experience looks like so you know where you're heading and B, buy-in from the top down.

And then externally, I feel like the customer doesn't necessarily know what customer experience is.

They want what they want and they want it to work.

And so...

Um, externally, I don't feel like the issue is really, that's not the biggest challenge for most CX organizations.

It's that internal alignment and buy-in.

I think also there needs to be, and this is certainly a shift in the industry is where employee experience and customer experience are now starting to really align and be considered in the same.

strategic approach because if you have disengaged unhappy employees who hate their job or are embarrassed about this particular part of the company they won't deliver an exceptional customer experience they're put in a position where they can't yesterday I had a young professional call me and say my job is asking me to lie to the customer and she's a CX manager is her title.

She's in a daily personal dilemma of who she is as a human and her own convictions as a person and the role she's being asked to do.

And so to me, I feel like that leadership buy-in is probably the biggest challenge on a lot of organizations.

They want the money that they don't wanna buy into.

what it really takes to create sustainable systems that produce happy employees and happy customers.

Wow.

Cough.

Wow.

That makes so much sense.

I'm just blown away by that.

And that's...

Do they just not realize the long-term play this is?

Because it sounds like very much when you really want to, just based on what you were sharing, what Nate was sharing, it sounds like it's really about...

It's the long game, right?

like years of work to get it.

Do they just not understand that?

Or they're just like, you know what, I'm just trying to hit my quarterly numbers.

Or what I'd love to hear your takes on that.

I think it's a little of both.

I mean, if I've certainly had CEOs at Fortune 50 companies who want the problems to go away, and their butt is on the line for the quarterly earnings.

So their entire, the COO and the CEO, their entire focus is quarterly numbers because their bonus, their...

Lively hood all of that is there and at the end of the day, you know people are going to be committed to what's best for them first So that is part of the challenge of CX professionals.

How are we internally?

Aligning our message and our marketing What what is that audience the CEO and the CEO?

What do they want to hear?

How am I?

demonstrating that in the call center we reduced complaints by 40%, which resulted in $400,000 savings or $400,000 in revenue.

And so that's part of where I feel like marketing and CX are so aligned is we get so focused on the external guy and think, well, this customer is this persona and they wanna hear it here in this channel.

And we...

Adjust our message to them, but I think that same diligence has to happen inside the organization We we know CX, but they don't CX to them is net promoter score or Happy customers or less complaints.

They don't understand the nuances of it So it's incumbent on us as professionals to market internal get your campaign Make sure you're talking to the CEO in a way he cares Yeah.

to the division managers in a way they care, talk to the salespeople in a way they care, and help demonstrate how CX is kind of this rising tide that can float all boats.

So.

No, that makes sense.

It sounds like you really internally, it's, you can't just have one message then.

And it sounds like you really have to speak to each group, position it accordingly to each group.

Nate, have you seen this firsthand?

If you had to wrestle with this or do I say wrestle with it, it's almost like it's marketing and education almost at the same time.

I what have you have you seen this firsthand?

I love that idea of earning allies into the work.

So Gene Bliss has this incredible section in Chief Customer Officer 2.0, which is like required reading for anybody that really wants to know how to do CX work.

And it's talking about how there's a power core in the business.

And like, so we have this CX initiative and we're trying to, to penetrate like organizational momentum and get people to...

see the way that we see in terms of if we serve our customers better, this is how we grow the business.

Like we know this to be true.

And yes, it does take time.

So we've got to bring that.

This is a marathon, not a sprint type of conversation to these folks.

But if you don't get the power core invested into this idea, this concept of customer experience, you're going nowhere because they have the money, they have the strategic clout in the organization.

So it is having a conversation with all these different stakeholders across the business.

I love using John Coder terms.

He talks about if you're going to lead change, if you're going to get something to stick, the first two stages of change management are developing a sense of urgency and then a change coalition.

So developing that sense of urgency is lighting the freaking fire under these folks.

We can't keep doing this.

If we keep doing this to our customers, they will not be here next year.

Here's what our competitors are doing and this is why they are earning market share.

We are still in the age of the customer.

If we continue to steal from our future selves, I love talking about that in the work of CX, because you're trying to shove money into Q1 2024, you are stealing money from your future self because you're treating your customers this way.

You're dismantling your ability to partner with them in the future and to unlock over time that strategic share of wallet.

Quit stealing from the future of the business so that you look better in Q1.

But to Sally's point, you've got to have some quick wins.

So that's the balance of the CX leader.

This earning allies, this long-term focus, this idea, statistically speaking, it takes like three years to really get a CX initiative to quote unquote stick and to be able to demonstrate real value.

It takes time.

So we don't have that much time.

That's not realistic.

So you got to be smart about finding one or two quick wins, where it's like, this is a huge friction point.

If we fix this part of the customer journey, we can have immediate impact here.

And you get people trusting you and seeing the value, then you can do your long-term work.

Yep.

And that's not too different than marketing.

You have to have a long term brand play to continue to earn and build and retain brand loyalty.

And particularly post pandemic, there are going to be some quick revenue hits.

And if you don't have those, you know, quick wins, you're not going to be around to see the long-term brand play as a marketer in an organization.

And so it's not so indifferent.

The priority is how do I identify the opportunities, prioritize those that are most aligned to the business imperatives, and focus on that, rather than vaguely trying to boil the ocean, which I think a lot of really ambitious CX folks, even marketers do.

They try to do too much at once.

When you focus on one or two, get some dopamine in the system there.

People are like, yes, I like how this feels.

Yeah, I mean, as a marketer, you know, why do one or two things when you can do 15?

Right.

I mean, that's sort of the marketing mantra, right?

That that's what, you know, we have stitched on our pillows.

So we but then that kind of rules into asking.

So you want to hit quick wins.

You've got it's long term and yet quick wins.

You got to speak to the C-suite in C-suite ease.

And.

You will go with that word.

We'll, we'll, that's going to, I'm waiting for the, uh, the transcript.

That'll have a fun one with that.

How to do that one.

Um, so then data seems like becomes really important in, in telling this story and being able to position this.

So is this, so when we think about like data technology and how it can help customer experience is that.

stuff they already have available to them?

Do you need to bring in new technology to really measure stuff?

How does that work?

Nate, you want to go first?

So there's a perfect pie in the sky answer and then there's like the dirty reality.

So yeah, I mean, there are wonderful, wonderful platforms called customer experience management platforms that are incredibly expensive, but unbelievably helpful.

So yeah, would you love to have a half million dollar, you know, anchor customer experience management platform that they can pull?

data in from all across the customer journey, in any format, structured or unstructured.

Eric, in this work, we talk about structured and unstructured feedback.

Structured is where you create a channel to the customer for feedback.

Survey, customer advisory board, your customer community that you've created.

These are structured channels.

But like usually 80% of available customer feedback is in unstructured realms.

They're in third party communities, review sites.

conversations happening with a contact center rep.

Like you didn't necessarily invite feedback, but it sure is coming.

And you have to have the intelligence to collect it and learn from it.

Cause what is CX Eric?

It's the thoughts and perceptions that people have towards the business to use that Forrester definition.

So how the heck are we gonna do this if we don't know truly how people perceive us?

How they feel about us across every stage of their journey.

So you've got to do voice of customer well, and you've got to have some good technology that can reach out and collect it, centralize it, and give you intelligence about it on every stage of the journey.

Well, and I think that, you know, for those that don't have the million dollar program, there is a lot of data available that's just sitting in silos.

I worked in CX a lot in the healthcare setting and quality would have certain data from surveys for these certain certification measures.

You know, the medical staff would have certain surveys from patients and the admin would have this information.

The call center, nobody, every call is recorded, but nobody ever access that information.

And in marketing, we were seeing the comments on social.

We were getting the feedback in person.

And so when we took time to just even get all of that data in the same place, we ran a quick little correlation between these NAP promoter scores and these quality questions and all these different survey instruments and identified things that were almost perfectly correlated.

So we're like, okay, so if we wanna move the needle on this certification and on this star rating and on this whatever, these three areas will feed all three surveys.

And so you can do the long, slow manual thing.

It's not simple, but.

You know, that was even for a Fortune 50 company.

I was the very first CX officer for them.

And they hadn't invested in tech yet.

They weren't going to yet.

I had to demonstrate.

So lots of Excel spreadsheets and some manual culling of information.

But that was how I really could demonstrate this result of this friction point solve.

resulted in $400,000 a month of savings to the organization.

Guess who was paying attention now, COO.

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I mean, I remember Brad Cleveland told me about a restaurant in California where their entire voice of customer process was three by five note cards.

And their entire staff would just go around, navigate their day.

They would learn new things about the guest experience every day.

They'd write them down on their note card.

At the end of the day, they'd come together and they would celebrate.

Well, we learned this yesterday.

We made a change.

Here's the impact that had.

I saw a guest consuming that new drink and loved it.

That was a great idea, Sally.

By the way, the new arrangement of that table in the front quadrant, people were tripping over that all day.

We've got to move it.

That is a voice of customer program.

No technology required.

But Sally, and I think you've seen this too, there's a new option in between the million dollar anchor system and the three by five note card.

There are new players in the space.

that are lightweight customer experience management platforms that can do phenomenal things that are low cost.

So I mean, that's something we get to celebrate as CX leaders.

It's not an either or anymore.

So you've got some options and to get some quick wins.

So let me kind of ask this because when you're marketing to the C-suite, you're marketing to the different groups, you need to get buy-in, you need to have that core, that coalition to really get it moving.

You've got your data.

Do you ever run into the situation where, for lack of a better way to phrase it, people just don't want to face the fact that this is the reality of their company?

Customer experience is like the perception in the marketplace is vastly different than the perception in the C-suite of the company.

And you're just wrestling with that.

I'm fascinated to hear.

Yes, I, you know, I, there have even been studies by McKinsey and Gartner and Forrester this week that demonstrate the perception of the C-suite on how well they're doing on customer experience is way skewed than how the customer feels or how the employees feel.

And so that is the baseline for this conversation.

But, you know, I had a CEO of a company.

disqualify any informal feedback from consumers because it was anecdotal.

He didn't like what he was hearing.

And so therefore, no, it doesn't count.

And so I think that there is this tendency to kind of over inflate the good things.

And I think it takes a truly transformational leader.

to be able to understand the duality of business.

We can be killing it on this and still have errors and opportunities for improvement.

And I have had leaders like that.

I've had some that are like, wait, I don't see anything wrong with us.

I'm good.

We're all fine.

They just cannot, will not face.

Like it's somehow a definition of them as a leader, but truly I feel like in 2023 forward the transformational leaders can embrace that duality and Understand we can be amazing and still missing it in certain parts, which is the truth of every organization every human on the planet, so there is a little bit of a I can't see anything wrong.

I mean, I've had those guys.

It's like, and the others that are willing to say, oh yeah, maybe I can see how this could even be better.

And maybe that's part of our challenge as CX and Marketing Pros is to not be just that drip in the bucket that gets on everyone's nerves, finding a way to present the duality in our conversation.

Sometimes we get...

so harnessed and focused on the problem that that's all we talk about.

And then we become kind of the pain in the butt to the leaders, they don't wanna talk to us because all they hear is the negative stuff, so.

Yeah.

Oh gosh, you know, it's such a great question, Eric.

And I remember there was an interview that I read from years ago.

It was talking about the mindset of executives.

And of course, they're held accountable to the number, but they wanted their legacy to be affiliated with customer experience.

They wanted to be known as the leader who improved the customer experience.

So there's a there's a there's a prick of pride here.

Yes.

because these executives want to be known as the one who improved the customer experience, but that's often different from the thing that they're being held accountable to.

So that's where that perception gap can really come in.

They desire that, but then putting their money where their mouth is there and taking that long-term view is very hard.

It's hard for CX leaders too, Eric, because I like to say we're the fish on the dish people.

or I'm working with a Minnesota client right now.

It's like the pig on the plate.

Or they say there's something with a skunk that they say, but especially in Europe, it's the fish on the dish.

There's a creative tension that we form because we're putting out the reality of the customer.

And so Sally, your story about that CEO is just like, yeah, I don't wanna hear that anymore.

Classic, and that's classic, about like a good customer-centric minded organization.

They're looking to the CX leader to help guide them in terms of how can we be even better here?

There's that desire, that curiosity to reveal the truth, the truth of that.

And so we get to do voice of customer with a great deal of integrity.

And we're just putting the fish on the dish.

This is hard and we have to wrestle through this.

I know this is inconvenient and it does not make sense right now.

Why our customers see us this way, even after we made these changes, but by earning that credibility, earning that trust with them.

and guiding them to that place where, yeah, we can serve our customers better here.

And this is how we know.

But it takes a really, really highly skilled, emotionally intelligent leader to navigate something that the CEO is so proud about.

It wants to be good, but oftentimes is dealing with that paradox themselves of, I can't invest actual time and energy here.

So, how...

So let's say, okay, company wants to get on board with really improving CX.

And they're rolling forward with it.

But let's say their products aren't the leader in their particular sphere in the marketplace.

So maybe not cutting edge products.

So it's not like they have the advantage there.

How does, how do you, can you see that CX experience making up that gap?

And is that something, excuse me, is that a way that companies can also sort of mitigate some of their problems?

Yeah, 100%.

I think that's the exceptional experience can be a differentiator.

And, you know, any savvy sales or marketing leader knows, you know, I know a lot of folks have worked for Procter and Gamble.

They aren't going in to try to get 90% of the market.

They know if they get 1%, that's worth $30 billion a year.

If you get 1% of dog food, So the savvy leaders know it's not about total conquest and 100% of the market share or even 90%.

It's about earning and keeping the customers that you have.

And the experience 100% can be a differentiator for companies.

It's happened in the cell phone world, which used to be some of the lowest rated, down with banks and other.

Yeah.

Verizon has dumped tons of money into customer experience over the last decade or two.

And I remember hearing their CMO maybe 12 years ago at a conference saying, people don't like us.

They don't like us.

And we need to fix it.

We aren't going to say, Well, be home sometime between Tuesday and Friday from 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

and we'll be by to fix it, you know?

I mean, that's the joke of the old cell phone fix is you had to have 12 hours to come get a 15 minute fix or whatever and they have worked very hard on this and I think that, you know, they all use the same network at the end of the day, but their differentiation for them now is...

their service and their people and really focusing on that.

It's across industries.

There's an interesting use case that I've been looking at more and more.

It's Duolingo, the language app.

So I mean, one could say that maybe their technology wasn't quite at the same place as the incumbent that we would all know.

And then there's some other phenomenal technology providers in that.

But what if, what have they done?

Customer experience and community.

They leaned in hard with user generated content.

and developing this experience that went way beyond the product and started forming these community meetups where people could start to interface with other customers, other people that were learning the language.

And that's become their business model more than anything.

I mean, yeah, it's rooted in a product and this great language app that's there.

But like they have created this holistic experience around it using digital and in-person.

It's remarkable what they've done and they have accelerated so far beyond the competition because of that experience mindset.

It's awesome.

Yeah.

I love that example.

So it sounds like then really as businesses focus on the customer, as they take care of the customer, they're not they're not just trying to make the customer happy.

Kind of what you said, Sally, that that's where a lot of people get stuck is we just want to make them happy and that doesn't really solve a problem.

I mean, that that's the end goal, but that doesn't necessarily get us there.

It sounds like kindness is really just part of it, right?

Just like thinking of them as people, because we're people and we interface with people and people are just part of it.

Do you think, do you think executives, and I'm picking on executives because they're easy to pick on sometimes, but you know, but business leaders in general, whether at the executive level, even middle management or whatever, do you think leaders get stuck thinking that Kindness and ROI are mutually exclusive.

Yes.

Nate, do you want to start?

Oh, that's, I don't know.

I go back and forth on this so much.

It's so, it's so hard for me.

Like I've, I've been that leader where it's like, you know, I really feel like as a business, we're just missing the boat.

It's like, what the heck are we even doing here?

We're just chasing this quarterly revenue target and really trying hard to adjust the mindset of the organization to how can we serve one another better inside the business first, and then earning the right with our community outward and just not getting an audience for that.

I remember one meeting in particular, just like, just, just getting kicked around.

You know, it was actually presenting some employee experience data and being like, we're not, we're not doing what we say we're doing.

Like our employees are, are way over here.

And we think we're over here as a business and people just being so angry, angry with me that I, that I would bring that up and distract them from the, the revenue target that we had to hit.

You know, that's what the meeting was for.

What am I, what are you talking about?

So, oh gosh, it's just, it's finding that balance as we kind of talked about before.

I mean, you've got to, you've got to earn the right with people and earn those allies by demonstrating.

When we do this for our customers, when we do this with the employee experience, this is how the business grows.

Here are the ways.

Like in a software world, it's kind of easy, right?

And that's why customer success has gained so much traction because of the remarkable and impenetrable math around renewal and retention.

If you have 5% of your customers spilling out the bottom of the funnel and not renewing, It's impossible to acquire enough business to grow and hit the targets you're looking for.

So renewal and retention are so hugely important in that SaaS space.

Because it's obvious there, but like it's the same truth.

It's the same truth in other industries.

It's just the math isn't as easy to calculate.

So you got to try a little harder to demonstrate how when, when we lock our customers in, when we earn loyalty.

with our employees and our customers, these are the building blocks that grow us here.

And this is realistically how long it takes.

I'm having to get better at that conversation.

Yeah.

And I feel like, I mean, kindness is kind of my vibe here.

I love, I believe that kindness can be operationalized.

Is it popular?

No, because our focus is completely on revenue and seeing everything in an organization as a cost center.

But the true transformation comes when we can invest in our humans in our organization employees first with kindness in a way that creates owners of the business.

This gal that called me yesterday hates her life, hates her job, hates the company, hates her boss.

She is not an owner.

She is not bought into the mission and the purpose of that organization.

Yes, they have some Sounds like some management issues.

It's one side of the story.

I will give that.

I have been an executive in a fortune 500 company and it is a whole different ball of wax when you go from director to vice president on a publicly traded company.

And so for me, I feel like when you can identify that your humans aren't a cost center, that they are an asset and that you build them with kindness, it doesn't mean you're a pushover and that there aren't standards and goals to me, but it means that it's not done in absence of addressing the human complaint that I don't want to lie to the customer.

I don't feel good about that.

Guess what?

This company's had a 30% turnover in one year.

That is an enormous revenue hit.

So when we can operationalize kindness and make it part of the culture we have built humans who are bought in their owners of the mission guess what those people are more resilient there's less absenteeism they are more accountable they own their ish good bad ugly and that will then translate into how we communicate and Align with empathy to our customer needs.

Now is every customer right?

No, no.

And that's what I meant by happiness is not the measure.

That's really self-centered.

That's about, do you still like us?

The MPS surveys are all about, pretty please, do you still like me?

What do you think about me and us and me, me?

Rather than what was it you were trying to do?

And did we make it easy?

Did you get what you wanted?

Did you accomplish what you came to us hoping to do?

That is a subtle shift, but now we're talking about the human in the mix.

And I'll tell you what, as I got moved from over six people to over a hundred, when I was also over employee engagement and customer experience, and you looked at those surveys, the thing that was so frustrating to the customer, was the number one complaint on the employee survey.

Because they were frustrated that they weren't empowered and didn't have the resources they needed to solve the customer problem.

They wanna do what's right for the customer.

And when the system isn't built around that, now we have two frustrated organizations.

And then we send a survey out to both of them saying, What's wrong?

saying, no, I don't like you at all.

So for me, the kindness is kind of that underlying principle of you as a human matter to me, to this business.

And the prickliest, awfulest phone calls I've ever had were people who didn't feel heard and didn't feel seen.

And I think a lot of those kinds of things can be resolved.

by operationalizing kindness and allowing space for humans to relate as humans, not read me some standard script that's total bull that nobody believes, not you, not me, instead to say, gosh, we really missed the boat on this.

Let's see what we can do to fix it.

That'd go a long way in a lot of companies.

sorry for my face a second ago.

We got our daughter an electric scooter for Christmas and it goes a little faster than I expected.

She just went flying through the driveway.

But I love that, Sally.

And I hopped on a flight recently in October and we're getting on the flight.

It hasn't even taken off yet.

The attendant gets up there and she goes, yeah, the wifi is broken.

We tried.

And she goes.

If you want to make them care about it, you gotta blast them on social media.

That's the only way they'll listen anymore.

Sitting here like, this poor person is like, I don't care about the wifi, but my goodness, you, I care about you.

And the fact that you feel so dismantled to make an impact inside of your own organization.

And then of course I'm sitting there like, do I want this plane to take off?

Like if this is how they treat their people, my life is in their hands.

Like clearly they don't really care.

So, I mean, there's so many layers to that, but I think there's the idea of kindness.

And this is probably not something to try to unpack here because I've not thought through it, but there's almost like an elevated relevant kindness.

Like there's the idea of being nice and being kind in the workplace.

And you have these companies that are like, oh, we're like a family here.

But then like, there's a whole nother level to that.

There's like a high performing sports team level where it's like, Hey, we're, we're kind to each other.

But we're kicking each other's butt a little bit.

We're holding each other accountable.

Like we're challenging each other.

And it's like, I've been, I've been trying to develop this like idea around servant challenger.

So like you're serving one another, but you're also challenging one another to fulfill the brand promise and to defend it well.

I don't know.

I I've not thought through it yet.

Well, I think honesty is a kindness.

We've exercised it in my own agencies.

It's like somebody missed the boat with a client, that's not okay.

So we talk about it.

But how many organizations are like, you get a surprise when you get your performance review, or you don't get the bonus you were expecting, or...

Whatever.

I mean, there's a lot of disengagement and demoralization of humans because we aren't Committed enough to say gosh Nate kind of missed the boat on that.

Let's talk about it Yeah, so I have boogered up my time management and asked a whole bunch of questions that were not on the list.

So if we have a drop dead time right now, I will wrap this up.

If you have extra time, we can go over a couple of minutes, but I totally want to respect your time because I boogered it up.

Let me send an email to my I do have a 10 o'clock, but I do have a few more minutes.

So let's wrap this thing up few minutes as well.

I'm volunteering today.

Okay, well then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask about the podcast and how this relates, and then I'll just say, hey, where people want to know more about you guys where to go.

Is that fair?

All right.

So that leads us, you've got the CX Accelerator, you're equipping and mentoring and encouraging and walking CX professionals through the minefield of CX.

Mm-hmm.

and how to navigate that and be a champion for it and market that in a business place.

So that's one thing.

But then you have the Bring Your Own Share podcast, which is another resource, another tool in the tool belt.

Tell me about the Bring Your Own Podcast, I'm sorry, Bring Your Own Share Podcast and how that is impacting the CX space.

So it's new, we started in 23, second half of 23 about, and really the podcast is designed to help inspire, empower and equip CX professionals from any stage of their career to understand best practices or case studies or maybe really innovative thinking or professional and personal development.

We have folks coming on that are sharing about strategic planning and goals and mindset and voice of the customer and lots of things that relate to this world of leadership in customer experience and customer service.

And it's been really fun so far.

We have a lot of really great stuff coming up.

You know, even just from Why would I be certified in CX?

Why is that important?

How is that beneficial?

Two, practical things about how to lead, how to communicate to the CEO and the COO.

How do you build that burning platform and make sure the work you're doing is being recognized as a value center in the organization?

So we're doing a lot of fun conversations.

A lot of the guests are...

members of our CX Accelerator community and there are thousands of individuals in the Accelerator community that have global experience all over the map and so we've got a really rich audience to pull from.

I would just add very quickly that when we were looking for a host for this podcast, we were thinking, who's out there living this mission of helping CX professionals?

And there was one person on the list and it was Sally.

I mean, she's been doing it forever and doing it so effectively as a mentor, as a practitioner, as a consultant, just awesome.

So Sally's doing a brilliant job with this thing and it's been so fun to see it evolve.

Thank you.

It sounds like an amazing podcast and not only for CX professionals, but it also sounds like just a valuable resource for people who want to get to know what CX is about.

So maybe I'm a market.

Okay, so I am a marketer and I want to learn what CX is about and why it's important or I'm a product person or I'm an executive or I'm in operations or man, I handle the warehouse, whatever.

It sounds like They can get a lot of good information from you and get that perspective that they need.

For sure.

And I think that we're seeing a lot more marketers being asked to take on CX.

And there is hardly a day that goes by in the Slack community of CX Accelerator where there isn't like, oh, hey, I've never been in CX, but now I find myself here.

And so it is a great platform for leaders from any industry that really want to help influence.

creating a human-centric culture in your organization.

I love it.

So there are marketers going from the dark side to the light side of CX.

That's good.

I like hearing that.

Oh, this has been a blast.

And we could have talked for hours and hours, but I got to wrap it up, unfortunately.

So, Sally, for people who want to know more about you, more about your business, more about the podcast, where would you like them to go?

They can find me on LinkedIn or all the social channels at Sally Mildren or at Boss Lady Consult or at ClarityPX.

So we're out there on all the channels and putting lots of great content out as well.

Indeed.

Love it.

Nate, how about you?

Where can people find you?

Yeah, just hop on over to CX Accelerator, cxaccelerator.com and then you'll, I'll be there.

You won't be able to avoid me.

So, and definitely very active on LinkedIn and X as well.

We're trying to get some things going on Instagram, but yeah, CX Accelerator.

Love it.

So all those links, if you're listening, they're going to be in the show notes.

Please go check them out.

Listen to the podcast, get a feel for, for CX.

If you're a CX professional, reach out to the CX accelerator, get involved.

It's a, it's a wonderful community.

It really is.

And everything I've heard, everything I've seen, it is worthwhile and you, you get as much as you put in.

So by all means, uh, get involved and help not only yourself, but your, your business.

Sally, Nate, this has been a joy.

Thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks everybody.

All right, cool.