CX Diaries - with Keith Gait Keith Gait

“Service is where your brand hits the customer”
For our latest CX podcast from the Customer Experience Foundation, Nicola talks to us about always pushing the boundaries and innovating throughout her career through some great companies, across the supply chain. We get Nicola’s take on what the cost of living crisis and impact of hybrid working and self-employed models will have on both businesses and colleagues in 2023 and beyond. 

We hear about the need for both flexibility and resilience, both for businesses but also for people. We unpack that, and Nicola takes us through how businesses and people can work together, where technology does and doesn’t support, and the impact of location sourcing.

Nicola and Simon tell us about the dangers of not just moving your problems offshore in the name of saving cost, the challenges of support and leadership talent in some offshore locations, the under estimated impact of dual running, how to understand that the contact centre is the lens into the cost of failure across the business, and how to have those conversations in the boardroom.

“For Phone Calls read Shoe Boxes”
Chris gives us his view on how so many of the problems and opportunities of the last few years come down to organisational culture and mindset, the importance of strong leadership, and his answer to the “magic formula” 

We hear about the origins of his renowned and successful leadership style, and the approach he takes at each organisation, and the philosophy taken to achieve successful results. We hear his insightful thoughts on the continuing battle between the need for human conversations versus the need for cost reduction through automation.

We hear about the importance of life balance, and how leaders influence this, and his current big interest of supporting professional sports people with mental preparation coaching.

This week Sarah Hunt spoke to Steve McSherry from Daktela UK & Ireland.

Steve shares his vast amount of experience in the industry on a range of topics such as ‘pandemic recovery’ and what the key challenges are (including ‘people’, ‘technology’ and hybrid working), and his thoughts on how organisations can engage remote workers and reward performance wherever they are based.

He also goes into detail about how deploying the right technology can help manage hybrid workers effectively, including raising ‘virtual’ hands when needing help from their managers or team leaders.

He chats to us about which kinds of technology can help improve the customer experience as well as complement the human touch.

Steve brings up the benefits of Voice Bots and the growth of natural language processing, meaning you don’t necessarily have to be talking to a person to get the service you need.

He also tells us about a couple of new phrases…'CXaaS ’, and how it lends itself to how Customer experience and service is a culture within organisations, and ‘Hyper-personalisation.

Plus he shares his thoughts on Cloud based solutions and how these can help companies meet certain regulations for their industry (such as the funeral industry), and the basic things that organisations have to get right when planning their CX strategy.

For the first of our brand new CX Diaries podcasts, we were delighted to be joined by former CX Leader of Year James Scutt, who chatted to us about his new role at Qualtrics XM after 17 years at the Post Office. We hear about what Experience Management is, what an XM Catalyst is and does, and about the work of the XM Institute.

James talks to us about how he led the award-winning CX and VoC programme at the Post Office, the importance of people, community and customer intimacy, empowerment, and how to transform from service to experience, and how this drives loyalty. 

We hear James’s view on where CX sits currently in the boardroom, aligns with marketing, deployment with frontline teams, the importance of EX, and the future of VoC and CX programmes and platforms.

James also chatted to us about how he started his career as a chef, how this still shapes his approach to work, the importance of being able to influence, and his love of travel.

“Your home is your castle”

Sarah talks to us about her move into social housing 3 years ago, having worked her way up through the ranks leading large, multi-site, multi-national contact centres, the motivation behind this, and the operational and cultural differences and challenges.

We hear how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting both their customers, and the ability of the sector to build, develop, and improve, and the challenges of investing and delivering customer service in the sector. 

Sarah gives us her take on the balance between automation and personal service, her early background in telephone market research, and like many in our industry, her grounding from working at GE and how the toolkit has stayed with her through her career, and other big career highlights, achievements and learnings.

We also hear about her alternative career as a travel agent, and her new found zest for gardening!

In this episode, as we occasionally do, we step into the world of Mental Wellbeing, and support in the workplace
Kathy was had a hugely successful corporate career in change delivery for 35 years. In the last 4 years she has run her own coaching business working with senior leaders and with women who want to transform their experience of work.
Kathy talks about something which might not be immediately obvious as being about wellbeing but which is having a huge influence on our own mental and physical health and that of the people who work for us…The subject of masculine versus feminine energy.  
We learn how this is not gender specific (we all have both), and how it can provoke a lot of emotion and pushback from both men and women. 
We hear about how after many years of operating in an aggressive environment, a heart attack made her realise that an imbalance of energy can ultimately lead to burnout, and mental and physical illness.
 Katy shares with how being able to use both energies gives you: 
   ·  A much broader spectrum of approaches, behaviours, ways of being which complement each other (feminine creativity with masculine ability to implement them)
   ·  It enables you to connect with a much wider circle of people rather than those who respond to one type of energy
   ·  It makes life less stressful: often when we are struggling with something its because we are in the wrong energy
We learn about the pros and cons of each, the facts and myths surrounding each, that there is no right and wrong, good or bad, and how each can and should have its place.
Kathy shares with us five specific business areas  where we can start introducing more masculine/feminine energy balance.
We learn about when we care and nurture ourselves and those around us then we actually produce better work. We are more creative and innovative, more efficient and productive and the research that backs this up. 
And we discuss what is stopping businesses and ourselves believing it.