Experts of Experience - #36 Using Data to Drive Growth and Customer Satisfaction

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

On this episode, Karen Wood-Maris, VP of Revenue Operations at SoftBank Robotics America, discusses the impact of robotics and automation on customer experience, the role of revenue operations in customer success, and the use of data to drive growth and customer satisfaction. Karen also explores the importance of human touch in customer interactions and the potential for robotics to elevate human roles.Key Takeaways:The impact of robotics and automation on customer experienceThe role of revenue operations in customer successThe use of data to drive growth and customer satisfaction AI's impact on data processing and customer experienceThe role of robotics in elevating human rolesThe importance of health metrics in tracking customer success–How can you bring all your disconnected, enterprise data into Salesforce to deliver a 360-degree view of your customer? The answer is Data Cloud. With more than 200 implementations completed globally, the leading Salesforce experts from Professional Services can help you realize value quickly with Data Cloud. To learn more, visit salesforce.com/products/data to learn more. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

It's not about the robot at the end of the day. It's about how robotics optimizes the operation and all of the things around that. If we are driving the best experience, then we are growing revenue. If we are investing in the right opportunities, then we're driving the right, healthy revenue. I think it is very forward thinking to actually create the RevOps role as a leadership role and do it in concert

with customer experience. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. And today I'm thrilled to be talking to Karen Wood Maris, the VP of Revenue Operations, Customer Experience, and Growth at SoftBank Robotics America. We're going to dig into Karen's insights on driving revenue growth through innovative RevOps strategies and the critical role of customer experience and how robotics and AI are transforming the way that we work. Karen, wonderful to have you on the show. Great. I'm glad to be here, Lauren. I have so many questions for you, everything from robotics to RevOps and customer success.

We have a lot of ground to cover, but where I want to start is really in the realm of robotics and automation. And I'm curious to get your perspective on how these advancing technologies are really impacting customer experience as we know it today. Oh, it's so interesting because the expectation... So one of the things that we talk about, so our business is primarily in the B2B space. And one of the things that has been noticed for a long time is that the way that we as consumers develop our experiences in our consumer world, we bring those same expectations into the business world, whether it be how we develop our

careers, how we interact with technologies, systems, even the expectations of how we do our jobs. So the way that technology and then specifically robotics comes into play. It's funny because when we initially start working with a prospect or rolling out a program on a new client, immediately they will anchor to a consumer experience that they've had with robotics. And it's usually wrong. So we have to acknowledge it and say, yes, that's not this program. And then kind of go from there. Because, you know, I think that like one of the big mantras in customer experience is you've got to set the right expectations up front. You really need to understand your audience and who you're working with, especially, again, with a technology sale and then the delivery of a technology program.

There's different audiences, different personas that you're working with throughout the lifecycle of a program. So getting that right and understanding the experiences that you want to drive along the way is really critical. And what's interesting about your business is that you are selling robots to businesses and these robots are going to interact with those businesses' customers in some or many cases, for example, in hotels or in banks. And there's so many different scenarios. I'd love to actually hear what some of those examples are just so that our listeners can really understand a little bit more of what SoftBank Robotics does. Sure. So we have a breadth of portfolio of robots that we work with in the business space,

the B2B space. One of our primary areas of focus right now are cleaning robots, and they work in environments like airports, senior living, healthcare, hospitality. We also have them working in some of the, what we would call class A office environments. Probably like the other big one is education, including like some major universities and high-end multifamily complexes. And then you mentioned hospitality. So like hotels and entertainment venues. And I can only imagine, I've never had this experience yet. And I cannot wait until it actually happens that I walk into a hotel and there's a robot cleaning or robot bringing me my room service instead of a human. Not that I don't want to interact with a human,

but there's something just really cool about having robots actually start taking on some of these tasks to free up the humans to do other more important things. So I'm very excited for that day, I have to say. So I want to talk a little bit about your role in particular in running revenue operations and how that really relates to the customer experience. So if you can give us a high level overview there of what is the role that revenue operations is playing in the customer experience? Great question. When I originally came into the role in revenue operations is playing in the customer experience? Great question. When I originally came into the role in SoftBank almost four years ago, originally the role was for customer experience and customer success and growth was part of that.

And in the last maybe two years, it's expanded to include revenue operations as I think sort of like a natural evolution. So when you think about what revenue operations is and how it grew up within the software and technology industry, the idea was that you had a leader that could look at how key investments were made in marketing and sales. Those in technology companies tend to be where the biggest portion of spend is. So the recognition was, if I have $1 to invest, where is the right place to put it? Should I put it in partners, in the ecosystem distribution channel? Should I put it in the direct team and doing programs for new business? Should I invest in current accounts, large accounts, house accounts where they continue to grow and drive revenue for us? Should I put it in marketing programs that seek to develop our brand and

positioning in the market and generate new demand? And so usually you have different functions responsible for running those different parts of the business, all rolling up into like a CFO who makes the decision where that $1 of investment goes, but not necessarily having the perspective of where's really the best place for that dollar. Should it be with the house accounts that are generating revenue? Should it be with the house accounts that are generating revenue? Should it be with the new business? So when you think about that interplay then of customer experience and revenue operations, it is understanding that in order for us, if we are driving the best experience, then we are growing revenue. If we are, as a metric,

if we are investing in the right opportunities, both with current accounts and then again, across all those different channels that I mentioned, then we're driving the right, healthy revenue. So I think it is very forward thinking of our president to actually create the RevOps role as a leadership role and do it in concert with customer experience, kind of having that fiscal responsibility of making sure that we're prioritizing the right investments. And I would go one step further because I don't think it's just investment alone that drives CX. It's also the whole infrastructure that you build up around that in terms of operations. And because you have to make the

same decisions as you're scaling and growing your business, where are you going to put that $1 of investment when you are growing fast, scaling the business, defining the market, defining even the operations for the program, where are you going to get the highest value? Where are the pinch points to be able to grow and scale? I love seeing those two things together because as you share, I mean, where are we investing money into growing? And there's so much growth potential in customer success. I mean, it's infinite if we think about it, that there's ways that we can use customer success to really garner customer insights and deliver better

on those customer needs and growing contracts. And so I'd love to learn a little bit about some of the things that you've been doing. And especially in this, when you talk about CX infrastructure, what are some of the things that you've been investing in that's really helped to use customer success and customer experience as a growth engine? Oh, this is our secret sauce. Well, that's why we had you on the show. So I would say like where we're actually spending a lot of money that I think is making a really big difference is on making the data actionable. So, you know, there's tons of data that these robotic programs throw off. You know, my background before coming to SoftBank, I came from consulting and so very

disciplined organizations where data was really essential in understanding what was happening with the business. So coming here to SoftBank, that was one of the first things that I wanted to focus on is making sure there were already systems in place, there's already data in place, but making sure that we really understand when we say things like KPIs, what is a KPI? Key performance indicator. Is that key performance indicator telling us something? Is it telling us that, yes, we're hitting our business case or we're hitting success can be built because that's our foundation for growth. So there was a lot of work that was done to establish the KPIs, understand the story around them, how that became actionable, and then all the reporting that goes around that. And then working with clients to understand how robotics fits into the operation.

And so it's not about the robot at the end of the day. It's about how robotics optimizes the operation and all of the things around that. So like when you think about, am I using the right resources? So a resource could be my own people. It could be contract workers. It could be robots. Am I using the right resources at the right time at the right price to the organization? Then I can optimize my operation for the highest value at the right cost. So the question, what are we investing in? we're making sure that we have the right data visualized in the right way to show the value that the program is driving. But more importantly, in supporting the operation of our clients who are trying to optimize their programs. And I would say even probably like the evolution of this is our clients' clients, because since we work like in a space, in a B2B space that also has

a B2B component, is that further intimacy in helping to understand what needs to be true for our clients to demonstrate success and performance. And again, looking at ways that we can integrate and visualize data to show exceptional performance. If our clients aren't successful, they're not going to want to continue using our products and services. So we need to be able to show them, here's the success that you're getting from utilizing, in this case, our robots. I think it's such an important mindset shift because not everybody's doing this. A lot of companies are still thinking about, okay, did we hit the revenue targets that we wanted to hit with our existing customers? Did we get the satisfaction numbers that we wanted to hit?

And satisfaction is really them answering a net promoter score survey in a lot of cases, which is more about us than it's about them. And when we really think about how are we helping our customers succeed in what they want to succeed, that's where we're really showing value to our customers that creates a sticky experience and they want to continue working with us and investing in us. So it's really interesting to hear that that's an area that you're investing in. And I'd love to hear just a little bit more, like, can you share an example of some of the things that you've been doing in this realm of really improving the data? Yeah. I want to go back to something that you said first, because I think this is

actually a really good point that you bring up, Lauren, about the net promoter score. So when I came into SoftBank, net promoter score was one of the things that was looked at and it was really high, but so was the churn. So it was- There you go. It was like your KPI at all. And I think that, like you said, that it could be like about us, but not really about understanding what's breaking. And that was actually, again, one of the sort of visionary things of why the president wanted to create a customer experience role, because that was the piece that was broken. So you can ask a really narrow question and get a good answer and say, we're doing a great job.

But at the end of the day, the true KPI that matters is that you have permission to grow. You have permission to grow the business and you're increasing revenue. And really that then becomes our North Star or what is it that we're going to invest in? What is the data that we need to see? Now I can answer that question. Being able to show the client that the program is performing and therefore like, yeah, we earned the right to grow the business because performing. That's only one part of the story. And so another part of why we need the right data and it has to be meaningful, it goes back to that whole concept of the optimized

operations, using the right resource to do the right activities at the right time for the right price of the organization to deliver the right value at the end of the day. That is an ongoing and living process. Mm-hmm. And that's not always really clearly understood, especially if we look at the old way that operations, manual operations, or the current way that most operations are being done. It's very manual. The data collection is very manual. Usually, you don't understand what's happening unless you visually observe. The leaders right now are doing more with using different types of things for data collection

sensors and things like that and have better reporting. But again, at the end of the day, if you're not looking at this as a living program, then you're missing the opportunity to realize the value, which is the whole operation is better. Okay, so what this means is that the data that you're collecting and the data that you are sharing is meaningful to change behavior. That's the living part of it. We also call this in consulting continuous feedback. The biggest, most complex software and technology implementations all have this point in common that if you don't do the continuous feedback loop on how we're performing, like it's not a destination like, oh, we implemented the robots or whatever technology

were there, we achieved the results. Because people are changing, you have turnover. Because the business is changing, the market is changing, you constantly have to be looking at whatever those metrics are that say that the program is operating at the level that you expect and use that as input to change behavior and to continue to optimize. And I would say like in concept, it sounds really easy like, oh, okay, we just need the right report. But you're looking at data, you're interpreting a collection of data, you're understanding what that means in terms of how to apply that to an actual operation. And then you're working with different leaders within that organization to effectively execute that change. And that becomes then the partnership

of why or how our customer success team is able to drive long-term, durable, autonomous programs that deliver bolts year after year. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is simply not an option. That's why their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, are available to help you succeed with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of the way. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. So what's an example of this? Because how do you track that the robot is driving satisfaction? How do you track that the robot is driving satisfaction?

How do you track that the robot is getting the job done? And because you said like there's sensors and things like this, I'm trying to just wrap my head around like what this actually looks like. Okay. In an environment, you have square footage, right? Because that's what robots operate. The way that they perform is they're covering a certain amount of square feet. And is that being effectively covered? And then how often is it covered? All this goes into what's called a standard operating procedure that a location would have. We have airports that require 100% coverage on a daily basis. They want everything clean from top to bottom. We have environments where they want it cleaned twice a day. We have environments where they want the address to understand the density of people in the space to drive how often the SOP is executed. So it could be every few hours there is a load of

people that come off of the airplanes within an airport. And so that's when they want the SOP executed. Or we have some hybrid back to work clients that are experimenting with less frequent and more frequent SOPs. So like that's kind of thing one is you're dialing into working with a partner who's already thinking about optimizing resources based on desired outcomes that have been needed with their clients. And what robots do is they have maps. So these are things that are part of the program. Everything is very, very specifically defined. When we say like addressable square footage is very, very specifically defined. When we say like addressable square footage, it's very specifically defined. And then the robots will be able to show what information goes into the cloud, and then we can use that on our data platform,

what was executed to what degree it was executed, and then the frequency in which it was executed. So all that then becomes then you could say like the report card. The SOP said, I was going to perform this level of activity on this regular basis, I achieve that or I underachieve that. And then we even get into more nitty gritty detail than that because it's not even good enough to say like, I was supposed to do this once a week and I did it once a week. And we say, no, how good did you do it? Because there's productivity metrics that will benefit the operation because you can use technology in an efficient way that drives more efficiency in your operation. You can also use technology in a less efficient way, meaning that there's even more opportunity for you to increase overall productivity and improve

the value that you're getting out of that asset. So that's the level of detail that we can go into. And again, that becomes the continuous feedback loop in working customer success and working with client operations, client leadership to show what's working and where there's opportunities to continue to improve. Wow, that's so fascinating. And I'm curious to know, like with the rise of AI, I mean, obviously AI has been around for a while, but in this new world of AI, how has that changed the way that you're intaking this data, processing that data, has it had an impact yet? I would say that the initial response is yes. I mean, it's baked into the evolution of the software, which is a really important component of the program itself. Our robots continue to update capabilities and functionality, and they get smarter as they work in environments. So that's kind of underneath. I think that there is a great expectation, as I mentioned at the

beginning of what is possible, what technology it's possible, how turnkey it is, and really reducing the human touch within a program. Right now, I would say that's not ready for prime time. And sometimes there's a lot of resetting of expectations that needs to occur both in the sales cycle and post that people expect like they just essentially plug this program in and it operates completely on its own. No maintenance, no nothing. You just program it to go. But we're not there yet. You know, these are uncontrolled environments with a lot of variability. There is still human touch points that are necessary, which again is why the integration of data as part of operational success is so important to show where like, no, people still need to engage in that. They still need to do all these touch points. And we've done as much as we can to streamline that and to bake it in to the operation. So long answer, short answer is yes.

I think what AI does along with a lot of things from the consumer side is just raise the expectations that technology has it all figured out. And so I think that acknowledging that and resetting expectations is critical. And then using the data to show that it's working, the program is working. I saw this, again, before I came to SoftBank, working in complex technology implementations. It's generally not the technology that's the fail point in any program. It is the people. It's the way that they think they're supposed to use the technology or whether they believe they have the option not to use the technology. And then as things change, like what the overall culture is in terms of the belief of this

technology in achieving the overall business objectives. So I always say like either we control the narrative and help our clients understand the value of the program and then the what needs to be true. Or if we don't, then the customer will and have usually what we find is completely misaligned expectations. You bring up such an important point about the expectations around what AI is capable of. I hear about this a lot. There's so much buzz about AI, about how it's eliminating the need for us to do all these manual things. And the future is so bright, but the reality is, is that we're not quite there yet. And I have a question if we, not necessarily a question for you, more of like a question for

the universe of like, will we ever fully get there? Like, will there be a world where you just never have to touch the robot and the robot just completely knows what to do? And do we want that? I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. But I think just the point about customer expectations, consumer expectations, but where I will be able to take things off our plate. We're not quite at that point where we can just fully be hands off kind of in any sense. So, well, I hope so. I mean, I really hope so, because so because I think that we can imagine it. We could imagine a world where we can create a program that's based on sensor feedback of

what needs to happen when, and we let the sensors actually dictate the SOP, you know, and the robots do all the work. And we have like a self-maintaining or a self-cleaning function, which, you know, we have that for other appliances, but we don't have that today. There are things that need to be true. And it's probably initially going to be really expensive equipment that can essentially do everything, that can operate and maintain and be integrated with technologies to move itself, you know, like in buildings, integrate with elevators to move up and down, you know, based on programs. And the cost and investment to do that will come over time. I think that's the big piece of the limitation. But I think it will happen. I think there's no man for it. I mean, you know, again, when we think about like labor, we think

about where the hot spots have been in our economy around growth. We are now effectively like a negative growth from a population standpoint the last couple of years. With negative population growth, with rising cost of labor, we have to be really thoughtful as a nation in how we leverage talent. So robotics is going to have to fill the gap. I mean, when we look at the trends, like in our own business, we see that Asia has really embraced commercial robots, I think, much faster than what we're seeing here in the States. And I think a big reason for it

is because of some of those demographic constraints. And even so, more so willing to invest ahead of there necessarily being a defined business case, a defined or a showcase of the productivity, which is like the higher bar that we absolutely have to achieve here. So we have to do all of that, even though we have definitely like those are the headwinds. So I think that robotics is just going to continue to be a focus, whether we call it integrated with AI or technology, it's going to have to be the way that we work smarter, which means that we're putting people in higher and higher value roles, which should drive better customer experiences because we're putting people in the right places. And then that should in turn, if we're doing the right things with the right resources,

we should be rewarded with higher revenue. One thing that was really interesting, we did some testing of some new robots in senior living. And there were different use cases that we were doing in terms of using robots for food delivery. So there was food delivery to the table where the customer was, or the resident was taking the food off the server. And then we were also using servers to bust the tables and take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. So the feedback that we had was that the elderly residents did not like the robot delivering food. And do you know why? Why? Because they wanted the human interaction. They wanted the server to talk to them about what they

were getting and see if they needed anything else. So and human interaction within senior living and aging is really important. But on the back end of using a robot to take the dirty dishes away, it ended up being a great validation of the use of technology. And what it did was it freed up that waitstaff person to be able to spend more time, more face time with the residents because they didn't have to do some of the back end stuff. Yeah, that's a great use case of robotics and automation. Because exactly as you said, how can we use this technology to actually lift people up and put people into more important roles? And busing tables is something that is taking them away from spending time with the elderly people in this example. And I think about, of course, people are always worried

about unemployment, but we've had a really hard time hiring for fast food roles or cleaning roles. There's working in the back of a restaurant roles. There's a lot of roles that people don't really want to do. And so how can we use technology to really help us fill those gaps and then give people better opportunities to take on, like we said, more important positions? You got it. I mean, I really think that that's got to be the vision of where we go. Because the jobs, I mean, at least this is the philosophy for SoftBank overall as an organization is that as we look at robots to include in the portfolio, there is like a certain characteristic of work that is also prone to injury so we're giving this work to the robots because they can also do it more consistently at a higher quality than a human yeah but also without the injury and that should be the evolution that we're looking for in not taking the job away, but reallocating,

rethinking how we use labor to do those higher value things that are going to deliver the higher experiences. These are the discussions that we're having with clients as they're thinking about what does it mean to integrate automation into a manual operation? What are the opportunities if we are going to free up labor hours? Yes, it's obvious those labor hours could be reduced, but in many of the operations that we're in, they're rethinking how they reallocate to drive better customer experiences. And in some cases, even create like new revenue opportunities because they have the labor now to do additional services that they weren't able to do before because there's such a constraint on labor.

And even like the industries that we're in, these are not the industries where you would find that there is like a glut of labor or people are like running to work in these fields. And it's also the aging population. So it's very welcome at all levels by the teams that are operating the robots and by the people that are managing the overall operations. Yeah, it's very positive. AI allows us to reduce work hours and we can use those reduced hours to cut costs, pay people less, but we can also use those extra hours that we recoup to increase revenue. And so rather than thinking about people are going to make less money because AI is taking their job, we can actually think about companies are going to make more money because AI is taking the difficult parts of the job or the non-scalable parts of the job

off people's plate and open them up to better opportunities to increase revenue for the company. You got it. I mean, this is it. You don't cut your way to growth. It's a very short-term and limited approach to profitability. You grow your way to growth. And in many cases, you need, especially the areas that we're in, those experiences are really important. So rethinking operations and rethinking value, usually it's right there. It just hasn't been attainable because of all these constraints and these SOPs that are just barely or usually not at all getting executed on a consistent basis. So these are great business discussions that we love to have and really open up the aperture of what is value for our customers? What is value for their customers? And being really having that customer intimacy around how we drive that. And now we're like way beyond the technology.

It's like, oh, okay. It's just the enabler to be able to get to more value. That's great. I have two last questions for you that we ask all of our guests. The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with the brand that left you impressed. Tell us about the experience and why it was amazing. I would have to say Tesla. I've been a Tesla owner for about eight years, two different cars. And the way that they operate the program, I think there are a lot of things also that have inspired us in terms of the way that we also look at customer experience and kind of as a North Star. So I always say like the best,

the best customer support is no customer support, but the solution works exactly the way it's supposed to, or with very little fanfare, the customer is able to troubleshoot and solve things like really pretty simply. And I would say like, you know, the experience that I've had with Tesla, if I have any problem with my car, I can go to my phone, I can go in the app, and I can start talking to a service technician about what my problem is. And sometimes they can fix it right there in the app. And hey, did you try this? Did you try that? Oh my gosh, I did. Problem solved. Great. And then if that doesn't work, then we kind of go

to the next phase, which is, hey, can somebody come to your house? They have a mobile solution. Can somebody come to your house and fix it there? Which is, again, I don't even have to be around. They can come in, access the car, and take care of everything. It's really clear to me what the cost is going to be, how much time it's going to take, the appointment. Everything is really clean. And then if that doesn't work, then the, you know, the final final is like to bring it into the shop and get everything done there. So when I first had the car, it was everything you had to go into the shop. And now I rarely, it's been like years since I've had to go into the shop. It's either fixed on the app or somebody

comes to the house. That is amazing. You know, like I said, that's the inspiration for how we think about service is continuing to push for less points of big fixes or big repairs, but really working with clients to solve things as fast as possible. The whole program that we run is the commitment to uptime. So we take that very seriously. If we're going to help integrate technologies to be a critical part of an operation, then uptime has to be a focus for us, which means that we're working faster and faster to ensure that the solution works exactly the way that they expected to work. That's great. And such a perfect example of immediacy. When I need help to, I mean, if you're, if you can't drive your car, that's a huge pain in your day, in your life. And it's really great to see that Tesla is addressing that because, and I hope it's something that more car companies look at and think about because that quick service, that ability to immediately solve a problem is really where things are going in customer experience. So awesome. Great example.

My last question for you is what is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? Don't use NPS as you're leading into success. It's misleading. At the end of the day, it's revenue, it's growth, it's revenue growth. And specifically on your most important accounts, you're able to do that. That should be translating. And not only that, but we even look beyond just like, are those strategic accounts growing? But what is the additional value that we're getting out of those? Are we getting introductions to other types of leaders? Are we able to create success stories,

case studies? Are we able to do maybe dual promotions, announcements, things like that, that is worth a lot. And those are great outcomes to have from successful experiences. I have one small follow-up question from that. As your, obviously revenue is the end game, right? If a customer is willing to increase their revenue with us, must mean they're enjoying or they're finding value in the services or products we're offering. But what do you use to kind of track along the way to make sure that we're going in the direction of them increasing their contract with us? I think the way that I would understand the question, Lauren, is in order for us to grow the revenue, we have to be able to deliver on the success of the program. So we have developed internally a whole set of reporting and KPIs on health metrics. So we know going in that this is a key account and the health metrics look really good. So that's

really our permission, our foundation to continue expansion and then all those other wonderful things. So it's not just about like, I have a good relationship with this CFO, you know, they bought X million dollars worth of our solution, you know, let's go grow together. We really have to understand like what the dynamics are of how successful the program is, portfolio. So I would say like that's on us to be able to understand that. And then exposing those gaps also helps highlight for that customer success team where they need to focus. And I would say more importantly, where they need help, where they need to escalate either up in our organization or up in the client's organization. What tools do you use to track those health

metrics? We do a lot of data extractions because we have our own data platform called SBR Connect, where all the robot data goes into. We have different databases that we work with. For the most part, I mean, we're using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to roll everything up into and understand and visualize what those metrics look like. I think that's under the covers. Okay, cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been so fascinating to talk about all things robotics,

AI, customer experience, and how revenue operations plays a big role. So thank you so much, Karen. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you, Laura. I really enjoyed it. You are a business leader with vision. You've seen the future as an AI enterprise thriving with Salesforce's agent force, and it is bright. Getting there? It's a little fuzzier. Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work with you side by side and turn your agent force vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support

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