Customer Experience Patterns Podcast

Start by considering if the peak is positive or negative. Most memorable peaks and ends are negative, so lowering those peaks is the first part of designing for Peak / End experiences. Then, how can we make it more positive, either completely forgetable for an experience that shouldn't be memorable, or positively memorable because it can be a memorably good experience, if you get it right.ResourcesKelly Price on LinkedIn Peak / End RuleThinking Fast And SlowDaniel KahnemanGE MRI Machine Adventure SeriesArticle about the Disney Tram Driver Time stamp trick to help customers find their cars when they leave the parkWhy is Sam buying pasta online? Sfoglini has crazy new pasta shapes like Cascatelli, invented by Dan Pashman of the Sporkful podcastThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Digital-First Customer ExperienceJoe WheelerSam SternThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.TranscriptEmployee enablement to deliver great customer experiences. If employees don't have information about the customers they're serving or about your intended experience and about how they, as your employees are supposed to deliver their piece of that intended experience. They're not going to have much chance of success. And further in enablement if their technology, their tools or their training, let them down, well, then it's also unlikely to be a great customer experience. The best customer experiences contain moments of human connection. Your humans, your employees, they need all the support. You can give them to make those moments of human connection Magic. Employee enablement is a critical often overlooked component of great customer experience. Simply put, without it, you cannot deliver great customer experiences, not for long. I've seen some companies paper over the cracks with a customer centric culture. There was a term for that approach that is pretty fitting. It's called culture driven heroics. But you rely on your employees to be heroes every day and what happens? They burn out. And then the reality is that the failure of critical systems or the inadequacy of those systems. It can undermine the efforts of even heroic employees, which still leads to bad experiences. And if systems failures, technology failures, letting down, otherwise customer centric employees, if that sounds like a problem that might've played, some airlines recently, airlines that usually score near the top of the customer experience rankings. Well, trust your instincts. Foster ownership through customer community. And co-creation, he used the example of VMware, which has a thriving customer community. That is a shining example of the recommendations he made for design strategy. Number four. What I love about this strategy and why I wish I'd brought it up is that it is rare that brands can get on the same side of the table. Metaphorically speaking as their customers. But a thriving customer community that helps with product Co-creation is certainly one way to do it. When your customers are invested in your success because it's their success, well, here in a different kind of relationship with them, not provider customer, but partners. I'm not saying that's possible for every company, or in every industry. But it may not be as unlikely as you think. Lemonade, the insurer that Joe featured in his book is an example of a company that aligned its interests with those of its customers through its business model that donation to charities of unused funds means that customers and lemonade are hoping for the same outcome. And in next week's episode, I'll talk about an experience design strategy that some companies are using to find greater alignment with their customers, especially when they can't be sure that all their customers would want the same solution in the design. There you have it folks, another podcast cliffhanger. You'll just have to come on back next week to hear the rest of the story. Talk to you soon.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Great conversation with CX expert Joe Wheeler about his brand-new book. The Digital-First Customer Experience. We talked about the 7 strategies he covers in the book, and went deep on several of the case studies he wrote about, including Starbucks, Lemonade, Nike & Amazon. My favorite part about the book and our conversation was Joe's assertion that "Digital-First does not mean human second." He speaks in detail about how to humanize digital experiences, and how to weave together digital and human touchpoints, and also about how to scale human-powered touchpoints with digital capabilities.Having read the book, I recommend it, and I think our conversation will convince you it's worth your time.Resources & LinksJoe Wheeler on LinkedInJoe's speaker pageThe Digital-First Customer Experience On AmazonHoward Behar - who Joe references as his source of Starbucks wisdomThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew's slides Andrew's talkDiverse Teams Perform Better And Are SmarterDiverse Teams Feel Less ComfortableThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.TranscriptWe talked about the one-story test for customer experience and design projects. The idea that every member of a project team should have the same story they're telling. With the test coming when a new member joins. Can they also tell the story of the project? If they can, that's a sign that the purpose of the project is clear and simple, and that the communications about the project are clear and consistent. The one-story test is also a great test for your team. Do all members of your team tell one story about the team, and what you do? And is it easy for new members to your team to pick up the story? I've been on teams that couldn't pass the one-story test and it was tough for us. So administer the one-story test for your project, for your team, and see how you do. Second idea I want to come back to was Andrew's contrasting cooperative mess and collaborative magic. Collaborative magic maybe sounds like it's easy. Everything is working well. Every piece of feedback from a colleague or project team member resonates and you incorporate it. But it's not like that. Andrew shared a quote from a head of product design. "Whilst people were tired, at the end of it, they said it was the best project they worked on. Really productive collaborations take work. And they can be hard. So when it is feeling that way to you. Don't run from the difficulty. Andrew's contrast between cooperative and collaborative, reminded me of the research from McKinsey, HBR and others that consistently show that more diverse teams outperform more homogenous teams. Diverse teams are more innovative. They get better results, and they make fewer incorrect decisions. But why? Because diverse teams focus on facts and are more likely to correct misstatements. They are more careful and deliberate in decision-making. They examine problems from more angles and thus they get better outcomes. Again and again.And maybe you picked up on the fundamental contrast between diverse and homogenous teams. Diverse teams put in more work. But then it's not surprising that people report that being part of a diverse team feels less comfortable. Working hard isn't comfortable. And that brings me back to cooperative mess versus collaborative magic. Don't mistake comfort for effectiveness. Don't expect collaborative magic to feel magically easy. It won't. So here's another test to go with the one-story test: The easy work test. If your project work does feel easy, see that as a symptom that maybe something isn't working, not a sign that everything is fine because it's going easy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Great conversation with Andrew Hogan, focusing on specific advice for how to get important customer experience project work done in a post-pandemic world where it's hard to count on colleagues all being in one place at one time.Learn about the One-story test for projects.And hear why Customer experience teams need to embrace, not hide from the realities of project work in 2023:You need to include more colleagues and stakeholdersYou need to be more transparent and communicate more work in progressYou need to work harder at getting to know your colleagues as human beings beyond the work itself.Get these right, and you have a mutually-reinforcing set of trends that will make your customer experience work stronger.Resources:Andrew Hogan on LinkedInVideos from Config ConferenceThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.Full TranscriptHi, everyone. Another loose threads, missing threads mini episode from the CX patterns podcast with Sam Stern. This week, I wanted to circle back on two things from last week's episode with Megan Burns. The episode was CX transformation needs employee activation. First a loose thread. I had a suspicion I was misattributing the quote to mark Twain when it was someone else's. And it turns out it was right to doubt myself. It was actually Jonathan swift famous satirist and author of Gulliver's travels among other books, who said you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. As a reminder of the context, Megan and I were talking about the fallacy of CX teams to try to convince their colleagues of the value of CX by using data to demonstrate its impact. Look, this is a misstep I'm guilty of myself. So not throwing stones here. Uh, but it is important to bear in mind that your colleagues who are reticent or skeptical of CX don't feel that way because they have carefully considered all the data and decided after much reflection that customer experience just isn't worth it. No. If they've even thought about it at all, And many haven't, they have not given customer experience an in depth evaluation. Count on that. Now a missing thread. Megan and I perhaps didn't quite emphasize how much activation is an ongoing project. Not a one-off. Look, we didn't say it was easy far from it, but I also want to be clear that once you start focusing on employee activation, You should know that it is now a longterm part of your CX transformation efforts. It's worth it to get to a point where all employees across your company can make the right contributions to delivering great customer experience. You have to activate them. And then you have to empower enable and inspire them on a continuous basis. Uh, activation. Is the start and then don't stop. That's it for now, I'll be back with a full episode next week, excited to share a conversation with another former Forrester colleague. And Hey, if you're wondering if this podcast is just an excuse to have in-depth conversations with smart people, about my favorite topic, customer experience. Well, trust your instincts, Talk to you soon. And if you're enjoying the podcast would be very appreciative if you shared it with someone, you know, who you think might like it as well. Thanks. Bye.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ambiguity is the enemy of action.  Countless customer experience transformations have been killed by ambiguity. CX teams must devote time and attention to galvanizing all employees to contribute to a CX Transformation. But how do you do that? ActivationThat’s the term my guest in this week’s Edition of the CX Patterns Podcast, Megan Burns, gives to the process of clarifying, specifying, and motivating that must happen for all employees to get on board with a CX transformation."You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place" - not a Mark Twain quote, no matter what I said in the episode...Resources:The Project PyramidMegan Burns on LinkedInMegan Burns The CompanyCheck out the CX Patterns Newsletter for a complete transcript of every full podcast episode (Loose Threads / Mini Threads transcripts are included in the show notes)Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A cautionary note that Agile does ask you to commit a lot of time to meetings, and communications. Thanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.Transcript hi, everyone. Another loose threads missing threads mini episode from the CX patterns podcast. This is Sam stern. This week, I wanted to circle back on two things from the agile for CX podcast episode with Lara Nowak last week. First, a loose thread. We talked about all of the meetings, ceremonies and communications that come with agile. And I talked about it as if that was only an unalloyed good. But of course, all of those meetings, all that communication that takes time. And attention. And it can be burdensome to maintain, especially over multiple sprints and with larger project teams. Now that's not a reason to avoid adopting agile, but as someone who personally is always trying to push back on the number of meetings on my calendar each week I did want to flag that agile can be meeting heavy. And then a missing thread. Agile for customer experience is not just agile for customer experience design projects. That's what Lara and I have experience with directly. And so that's what we talked about in the episode. But I have other colleagues, one being May Lugemwa in particular. And thank you may for sharing your experience here. And I also know of other CX teams who are applying agile to ongoing programs. So, for example, other agile uses for customer experience include continuous iteration, when running an ongoing customer experience program like onboarding or customer attention, agile is a great methodology in those situations to continue making steady progress against the goal of customer retention or smoother customer onboarding. Similar impacts for some teams using it on cx measurement initiatives as well. Anyway i missed that in last week's episode and so wanted to highlight it In the loose threads, missing threads mini episode. That's it for now i'll be back with a full episode next week excited to share a conversation i had with my former Forester colleague megan burns sharing ideas and examples for how to galvanize your entire organization To take action on cx transformation  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I talk with my former LinkedIn colleague, Lara Nowak, about adopting Agile for customer experience work. Neither Lara nor I are Agile experts, far from it in my case. But our recent experience of having to learn Agile and apply it to customer experience work gives us "Fresh Eyes" to both the challenge and opportunity of using Agile. We cover the important elements of Agile, concepts like Sprints, Retros, User stories, Planning Poker and the like. Fittingly, in a podcast called CX Patterns, we also talk about using the Fibonacci Sequence for estimating time and effort during sprnt planning. More background on the meaning of Slow is Smooth. Smooth is fast. Planning Poker OverviewPlanning Poker Online Tool  Fibonacci SequenceThe Treasure Hunt RetroMiro – Tool for customer journey mapping, among other experience design methodologiesLara NowakCheck out the CX Patterns Newsletter for a complete transcript of every full podcast episode (Loose Threads / Mini Threads transcripts are included in the show notes) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whatever happened to Enron, WorldCom, ArthurAnderson or ValuJet? Hint: Loss of TrustThanks to my talented colleague Emily Tolmer for the cover art. Thanks to my friends at Moon Island for the music.TranscriptHi everyone. Here's the second edition of the loose threads, missing threads mini podcast episode for the CX patterns podcast. This week, I wanted to circle back on trust. A couple of additional things to share first, a loose thread, something I want to revisit from last week's episode, that was maybe not quite right. And I want to go back to the equation for trust, because I don't think that I mentioned clearly enough that it connects to what your brand is promising and what you are promising your customers about your experience. So for example, Think about Southwest airlines, they do not offer assigned seats on their flights. But that is not a betrayal of their customer's trust because Southwest never promised, assigned seats. It's customers have chosen the airline, knowing that they won't get to choose their seat. That's part of the equation for keeping ticket prices low. Conversely, if I fly in one of the mainline carriers, let's say Delta, for example. And I choose my seat as I book my flight. But then Delta moves me to another seat without my consent, or I get on the plane and another passenger has decided to sit in my seat. And if Delta didn't do anything about it. Either of those scenarios would be a breach of trust. The upshot of this is that you want to think about what promises you are making both implicit and explicit. And that if you don't uphold those promises, it will be a betrayal of customer trust. And now a missing thread something I didn't mention in the podcast last week. Loss of trust with your customers. Is such a bad outcome that it can lead to brand death. I think Enron Arthur Anderson, WorldCom value jet. I'm sure you can think of a few others. If you remember those brand names at all. It's in part because of their notorious betrayal of customer trust. So to put a fine point on it. The absence of trust means a company cannot 📍 exist. That's it for now. I'll be back in a week with a full CX patterns episode.​  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.