Experts of Experience - #54 How to Turn Customer Experience Into a Revenue Driver

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

On this episode, Monica Trivedi, VP of Global Client Experience at JLL Technologies, discusses the importance of client experience in driving revenue growth and the strategies she employs to enhance customer success. She emphasizes the need for understanding client ecosystems, managing a global team, and fostering cross-functional relationships. Monica also shares insights on leveraging AI to improve efficiency and the significance of creating moments of delight for clients.Tune in to learn:Why client experience should be a 24/7 focus for leaders.How building relationships with product teams enhances collaboration.How AI can streamline customer support and engagement.The importance of meeting with your CX team.How to foster a customer-centric mindset–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.

I am a big believer in client experience really driving revenue. I think CX tends to be the hot potato catcher because we are close to the clients, we really care about the clients. We have a very big field when it comes to what we can impact, which I think is like it's a blessing and it's also a curse because what do we focus on? Sometimes when you have your different silos and functions you sort of are driving down a path but then you don't look to your right or left and say wait is this like really helping to support the other person in the highway? Hello everyone and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host Lauren Wood. Today we are joined by Monica Trivedi, the vice president of global client experience at JLL Technologies. Monica's going to tell us more about JLL

Technologies but for those of you who are not familiar, JLL Technologies is an end-to-end commercial real estate solution that helps technology firms create workplaces and facilities fit for the future. I'm really excited to talk to Monica today and dive into all things leadership, leveraging AI, and really creating data-driven strategies that inform client success and drive innovation. Monica, great to have you on the show. Thank you. It's great to be here.

So I was looking at your LinkedIn, of course, and it seems to me that you have over 150 people in your org. I'd love to understand what departments make up your organization. What does client experience really look like at JLL technologies? Yes, great question. So yes, about 150 people spanning from professional services to implementation, customer success, and global support. And that's across all our applications in property

management. And client experience really starts as soon as that deal is signed. And many times, even before it's signed, we get brought in. So it's a global team across North America, EMEA, APAC. And it's been really rewarding just having that global team and being able to work with them. Amazing. So I want to dive into some of the key features of your team. But before I do, just so that everyone understands, what exactly are your products that you

provide to your clients? Yes, so our core product for property management technology is building operations platform. So when you think about going into any sort of commercial real estate structure, think of one World Trade Center or any building. When you are bad any building, when you are badging in, when you might be in the kitchen and the coffee machine doesn't work, you could

be in the printer room and your printer is not working, you would put in a work order or you would scan your badge. So all the operations behind the building is what software does. And it's really a behind the scenes, right? And it's exciting because it really does hit every persona in a building from someone visiting 30 Rock in New York City to somebody that is servicing an elevator. It really does work across every single portfolio. And our executives are looking at the reporting, right? So our clients that are actually owning these portfolios,

they're looking at all the reporting and data. So it's really exciting because you hit so many different personas all with kind of the key piece of technology. I love that because you're really helping to make sure that there's a seamless in-person experience as people are coming into a building or being in a building. And often those things are kind of overlooked because we're just living our lives and not

thinking about the technology behind the scenes. But it sounds like you're really working with these large organizations and buildings to make it all work. Yes, exactly. I like to call it behind the scenes. But some of it is client-facing and some of it the tenants do say. Of course.

So I want to talk a little bit about customer success, which I'm sure this topic will probably touch all of your work. But as we think about how we really drive success for our clients, I know that a lot of leaders in your position are really faced with driving revenue growth. And it's a complicated thing because we're not only making sales, but we're really retaining clients, we're looking for opportunities to reduce costs, we're really having the whole span of kind of everything that happens after that contract is signed or even before it, as you mentioned. I'd love to know a little bit, I know this is a big question, but how do you approach this so that leaders

who are listening can really maybe think about some of the strategies themselves and implement them in their own work? I am a big believer in client experience really driving revenue. I think more leaders are coming on board with that, but I would say it is kind of two paths, but either path I took or take today, it is

meeting the client where they are in their technology and business journey. So I'll never forget before JLL Technologies acquired Building Engines, which is the startup I was part of, it was my first day at work. Day one, I was hired as Director of Customer customer success and our CEO said, great, we have two huge client meetings this afternoon. They're not happy. So, I want you to join. I was like, great. So I joined the meeting and boy, were they not happy.

I mean, they were angry. And I joined the calls, listened a lot because it was my first day. And I sort of went back that week and I thought about it and I was like, they need more. They need more than just the technology. They need more than just us training them on features. They need someone. And so I proposed actually a, what we call here, a customer success consultant. It's actually a person that is going to help them

strategically across their portfolio. And it wasn't something that we really did. We had outsourced a little bit of administrative work, reporting work, but never someone to really partner with our clients and look at their end to end business journey and then end up delivering the software for them across their entire portfolio. So I brought it up to our CEO and at that time our SVP of client experience and they

were like, okay, we've not really done this. I don't really know how we're going to get this to work. And I said, I'm going to put this proposal together and I want to partner with the CTO there and the property team. And so that's exactly what I did. And I said, I'm gonna put this proposal together and I wanna partner with the CTO there and the property team. And so that's exactly what I did. And that actually has created an additional revenue stream because for me, when I go into a new industry,

I'm not from property management. I came from HR tech, came from marketing tech, FinTech. I have to understand the customer, like what they're going through, what are their pain points and every industry is so different. And I learned in property management that it's very fragmented and there's not a lot of standards in place.

So I proposed that as one sort of revenue model and that's really taken off. We've done this multiple times over the last couple of years. And I sort of joked with my CEO. I said, I sort of made my money in those first three months because I already sold a person. And then the kind of second piece of it is something I've done a little bit closer this year as I see the full client experience is getting really close to my product leader and thinking about ways

to bundle subscription and service. So we see subscription models, we see software, but there's a service component that clients don't either have the bandwidth for, they don't have the resources. And so how can we help support them in a way where we can actually do a lot of that stuff for them and that they might not even realize. So those are kind of two paths I've taken in terms of the revenue model, but it really is understanding your industry,

your client personas and what are their pain points as opposed to leading with our software. And giving them a human to speak to can so often alleviate a lot of pain, allow us to find the opportunities, and create trust with the client so that they want to stay with us. And then on the flip side, I love that you also speak about really thinking about how can we make the product simpler or easier to use, alleviate some of that need for human interaction so that we can focus where it really matters.

Yeah, yeah. The human piece is so important. I mean, each of the CSEs that we have on our team, they are rock stars in the eyes of our clients. They really just make them win, and which is so important. How do you help your team or do you have any strategies or approaches for really finding opportunities for client growth? Because I think in that post-sale environment, you're not as focused on, okay, we need to make a sale or we need to find an opportunity to upsell our client or cross-sell our client. But we're always looking for those opportunities. It's just kind of like finding the diamond in the rough. Is there any way that you approach that specifically? Yes. I think a big thing that we've sort of trained on and enabled on is understanding the client's ecosystem because we are one piece of that ecosystem.

Even a building operations platform, they may have a tenant facing application. They may be managing some other things around their vendors. There's so many different pieces of a commercial real estate operation. And for our teams, it's about understanding the industry, understanding the ecosystem, and being comfortable asking questions and listening, right? Listening to not just their frustration maybe about our product or our service, but what are their other frustrations? What are they doing this week? Or have they attended any events? Or what are some of the key goals that they have for the quarter outside of our platform?

And I find that when you ask those questions, it makes them think a little bit. And then that's that in you get, right? Like, oh, did you know we could do this? Or did you know that we have a partner that we work with that actually satisfies that? And that's satisfies that? And that's something that our client experience team is continuing to learn on.

It's not a perfect method. You always have to kind of be out there and see what's up and coming, what's new. But that's the way that you really get in there. Completely asking questions and listening is essential. I literally taught a program on this last week with a client of mine because it's something, it's a habit and a muscle that needs to be built of looking outside of, okay, here's what we have to do today. And yes, we have to do those things, but we also need to take every opportunity that we have with our clients to understand a little bit more of what they are dealing with

in their role in that company. What are their goals? How are things changing? What's going on over there? So that we can like pull out a little bit and find those other opportunities and then support our clients authentically because we may actually have solutions for them that they didn't even know about. Yeah, more often than not, we do. And I always make this joke about, it's OK if it's silent. It's OK if there's an awkward pause. When you're asking that question, give them the opportunity to think. I remember when I was managing really young professionals,

those that had just recently graduated when I was at Oracle, and I would shadow calls. And one of the first couple of calls I went on, there was a CSM and he said, Monica, you're not saying anything. I was like, I know, that's okay. Because you barely spoke in the 30 minutes we were on the call.

I'm like, I know, let's listen to them. That's the point. And I think, you know, whether, no matter what level of your professional career you're in, sometimes people feel like you have to fill that air. But I'm a big believer in wait, wait and see what happens. So I am also a leadership coach in addition to a customer experience consultant. And what I was learning to be a coach, this is one of the number one things that they

teach you when you go to coach school, whatever you want to call it, is be comfortable with the silence. Give space in the silence, because what will often happen is the other person will fill it with more information. They'll fill it with more insights that maybe weren't top of mind. And so giving our clients that space, I've really applied this in my client experience work as well, because when you create that space and you let people think, what comes from it is often gold.

So being comfortable with the silence is so important and not being the person who's talking the most in the meeting. I agree. So you manage a team across many regions, as you mentioned, and I'm curious to know what are some of the unique challenges that you face in managing a team that is not only multiple different functions, but also multiple different cultures? Yes, different cultures, different time zones. I really do believe in the human first approach.

So I'm a big believer in skip levels. I do make it a point to meet with every person on my team, which is a lot, but I wanna understand at the individual level. But then in terms of the cultural level, when I travel and go meet with teams, you get a lot from that, right? How is their workday? How do they, you know, go about their workday? How do they interact with their colleagues? What's important? I've noticed in some regions

that one-on-one FaceTime is so much more important. That one-on-one training is so much more important. Whereas in other regions, you know, a Zoom is totally fine, our team's call is totally fine because they only have that one hour. And so being able to meet not only my team members where they're at, but also, you know, our clients in those regions where they're at is so important. And when I first took on this role, we would have our company all hands meetings, which would be, you know, one specific time a day. And I noticed that most of my team couldn't attend

because they were across multiple time zones. So when I created my quarterly all hands, we do two. And so people can attend no matter where they are. And we also do breakout sessions. So teams can actually meet one another across the globe and sort of talk about things that are not work related. I think all of that is so important to just build that camaraderie and that cross training ability and just being able to understand how different different parts

of the region work together. Yeah that's so interesting and I want to go back to what you had just shared about doing skip levels because I think that this is something some leaders do, some leaders don't. I've been in roles where I'm the only person in the company that's doing it and everyone's like, why are you spending your time on this? What's the benefit to you of meeting everyone on your team? To me, I am in a role that sees across, right? I see across our entire team. So I see the things that we could help improve on. We could improve processes. We can maybe make some changes.

And when I meet with the skip levels, one of the biggest things I do in those meetings is really understand what does that individual wanna do in terms of growth. And sometimes they don't. And that's important for me to know too, right? If they're like, I really like my role I really like my job. I really like what I'm doing. I don't really see myself, you know leading a team or being in a large

other part of the group but many times I do find that people are interested in other segments or other groups and In one case I had a CSM that was reporting to me and she was really nervous. She's like, I think I want to see what's happening in product, but I don't want to leave customer success. I'm not saying that. And I said, well, let's take a quarter and have you shadow product. Like, why not?

Let's have you partner with our product team and maybe you can carve out an hour or so or two hours depending a week or every other week and meet with them and she did. And it was really funny because she goes, I really thought I wanted to go there, but I don't. I was like, okay. But I do find that these really help, not only me kind of think about, okay, what do we need

in terms of resources when we're looking into the future, but then who wants to step into that role, right? Let's try to create lateral growth, upward growth, mobility, and it really essentially is talent planning. And, I mean, JLL is a huge organization, JLL who owns JLLT, 100,000 people. We have all that formal process. But even before all of that, I think skip levels are something that do come across as providing so much information. And I encourage my direct reports to do them.

And while they do take time, they're like the most exciting meetings on my calendar. I totally agree. And there's something really to be said about focusing on people's career growth. It is one of the biggest sources of inspiration in someone's role. If they feel like they're growing, if they feel like the company has their back,

they're going to have your back back. And just giving someone the opportunity to meet with product, one one like great for your career and two great for the company to have more relationships between customer success and product right yeah if that is a point of interest go have fun talk to those folks let's let's bridge those gaps between the teams because we always need to be closer to product yeah so that's great I also find that skip levels can be so helpful to understand between the teams because we always need to be closer to product. Yeah. So that's great.

I also find that skip levels can be so helpful to understand where are the barriers to someone being able to do their job effectively, especially in client-facing roles. If someone feels like they're not fully empowered or they don't have the right tooling or training, I want to know because we need to remove those so that you can really be showing up to the clients fully supported by the company to do so. I absolutely agree. And I usually do find that. I'm very transparent and authentic when I have skip levels.

I'm like, guys, I want the good, bad, and the ugly. I want it all because bad, and the ugly. I want it all. Because I can't help, you know, and sometimes, you know, sometimes we don't really get to those topics in our regular team meetings with my direct reports, right? So being able to have the skip levels, I do get the bad and the ugly. I get the good too,

but I really want to be able to make change and then kind of go back and say, okay, we talked about this, here's what we can do. And then I actually feel like, you know, I've provided some sort of value in terms of what came out of those skip levels. And so you mentioned earlier on about building a relationship with product,

and we've kind of touched on this here. I'm curious to know what strategies do you use personally, as well as if there's any strategies you use to connect your team cross-functionally? Many, many strategies. I would say over the last eight to nine months, we've continued to develop such a great relationship with our product organization, which I can't say was always the case or is always the case, depending on the organization you're in, right? I do feel very lucky that we're able to

do that. Our product leader that I partner with is incredible. And not only have we... I have regular contact with her, but my direct reports do. We have a lot of enablement sessions that we're trying to build up. We're leveraging tools to be able to help our release notes process be better, help our enablements better, really just being lockstep so that my team is very much aware, hey, this is coming out of product, this is the value prop, this is how we're going to talk to it about our client,

which wasn't always available readily, I would say. Now it is that much more. And some of the other things we're doing is really leveraging AI for that. So when you're in a small, scrappy startup kind of situation, you have your Slack channels and CSMs or customer experience, folks are pinging into the Slack channel and saying, well, what does this feature do?

And what is this doing? And our product team would always be kind of taking time to answer those questions. And so with the development of AI, you can really just take all that data, put it in, and start creating some FAQs right from it. And so partnering with product, we're able to do that and able to really create

some efficiencies around it, which I love. And a big kind of motion for us on our CX leadership team is how, what are some other things that we need, right, from our product organization, and them being open to that. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is not an option. At Salesforce, they get it. They've made their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, available to help you with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of your journey. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services.

In my last role, I was leading US customer success at a global company called Too Good to Go. Our product team was all in Copenhagen. We had launched in the US where it's this huge initiative, a ton of money is going into expanding across the US. I did not have a relationship with the product team so that we could really give them the feedback. And my team was getting resentful. They're like, we keep dealing with the same customer issues over and over and over again. Why is this happening? And eventually I just reached out to the CEO and I

said, I need to come to Copenhagen for a week and hang out with the product team. Like this is my new goal for this quarter is to just build a relationship with product so that we can start working together instead of it being this like, they're trying to minimize the number of questions we have because it takes too much time to answer them. And then my team being like, why aren't they answering our questions? And just like, I think it really takes sometimes like a focus to say, okay, our new goal right now or one of our goals is to build a better relationship with this team. How can we work better together? What are their goals? What are focused to say, okay, our new goal right now or one of our goals is to build a better relationship with this team. How can we work better together? What are their goals? What are our goals? How do we play to both of those simultaneously? And it really, it made such a massive difference to bridge

those gaps and get my team communicating with product in a way where they were actually coming to us. And then product was saying, what do you guys have? What kind of feedback have you been getting? What are the problems customers are having? But before it wasn't that way. And so I think it takes that focus to say, we're gonna improve on this relationship.

Yeah, and that is really the crux of it, the human nature of it, because you really do need to build the relationship because we're all working towards the same goal, right? They're building for the market. The market is our client. It's the same goal. And I think sometimes when you have your different silos and functions, you sort of are driving

down a path, but then you don't look to your right or left and say, wait, is this like really helping to support the other person in the highway? So I think that's where it really comes in. And I think building those relationships is so important. But I also keep my team accountable for the pieces that they own, right? So it's not all on product. It really is a two way street. I mean, we need to actually consolidate information and feedback in a way that product can understand. And that was something that I realized when I was speaking to product managers.

They're like, you just send us so many different things, and we're not really sure what to act on, what's the most important. So it really lit a fire for us to get better at voice of customer and share information in a way that they could actually understand and act on instead of it just being random customer tickets and fires and things like this all over the place, which no one can deal with.

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, you can't. I mean, we get a lot of enhancement requests from clients all the time. And we've made a concerted effort over this past year to really take the ones that are super high priority, that are going to impact our core metrics as a business and share those with product, right? And then go back to the client and say, you know, these other ones, you know, while they're

great with, we can consider them. And you know, our product team has been great because they will consider them when we are planning for the next roadmap. Because it is essentially feedback from our clients that are using our product. But I always think of our cross-functional relationships as internal clients. You wouldn't just send a client,

like here's a whole bunch of ideas for you. Like you would structure them or select which ones based on what it is that they really care about. You know, we'd like package it up for them. And I think we need to do the same with our internal teams, not only product, but sales, marketing, all of them. We are all each other's clients. And I find just thinking of it that way makes it a little bit clearer instead of, hey, deal with this. Yes, I absolutely agree. Don't throw it over that fence.

Exactly, it's not a hot potato here. No, I'm sure you and I have both caught hot potatoes in the past, and it's not fun. I think CX tends to be the hot potato catcher, because we are close to the clients, we really care about the clients, our work spans a wide, we have a very big field when it comes to what we can impact, which I think is like, it's a blessing and it's also a curse because what do we focus on? What do we prioritize?

What do we say no to? That's always a tough thing, I find. How do you feel about that? Is that a challenge that you face? Oh, absolutely. I mean, prioritization is probably one of the biggest things I've been focused on over the last quarter or two. We all want to get everything done right away. It's like, oh, the business is moving 200 miles per hour, and we're sort of trying to stay afloat on certain things. And I think for my team, whether it's our implementation team or support team or even customer success, it really is about prioritizing for them.

And so as an organization, as you said, our internal customers, we partnered with sales, marketing, product to really identify what is our priority for this year and next year. What are we going to focus on? And I want to be able to tell my teams exactly what that is. So when they're faced with a challenge or competing priority, it's easy for them to say, oh no, this is our priority, we're going to go do this. And on Friday afternoon, my implementation lead came to me and she's like, okay, I'm getting this request and I'm getting this request, I have one resource, which one and I said, let's look at that priority. And it was so easy for me to just be decisive in that moment and say, hey, this is what we're going to do. And if

anybody comes back to us, we have our list. Yeah, it's not always that easy, right? There's always nuances, but prioritization is so key, especially to be able to communicate. So when I did my first All Hands for the year, I shared, I shared my, my CEO's OKRs, I shared my OKRs, and then each leader went ahead and shared theirs. So how is everybody going to roll up? And our next one that we have in October, we're going to actually see like, where are we after two quarters? Where are we and how are we doing? And that sort of red, green, yellow sort of status because I think it's good for people to have visibility into what we're all driving towards. And I want to be able to enable them to make the decision in the moment and not have to go

through five different layers to decide, oh, okay, now we can tell you, yeah, let's go do this. It is such a time expense if people are not able to make decisions for themselves. So how can we empower our teams to know, yes, this is what I should be doing and no, this is not what I should be doing? And I think that this is the case for all departments. So I don't want to say that it's only CS or CX, but I feel like we definitely face this a lot where we really need to get good at saying no, because we want to help everyone.

Typically we hire really empathetic people who are here to help. And we also need to empower them to say, no, that's not our priority, this is, and this is how we're gonna make a decision. And I think just, as you said, that prioritization piece is just so, so critical to be able to say no, to be able to make decisions and focus on the most important thing.

Yeah, and I mean, I also want the team to understand that if they say no, I'm going to have their back because we went through the priority. And I would like the same for my peers, right? If I say no, that doesn't mean that sales says yes, or product says yes, or marketing says yes. So we're all in sync and in line. And I think that's where the communication comes in.

We're always pinging each other and making sure that as leaders, we're also sharing the same message all the way. And I think that's where the OKR alignment is so key too, right? Because if we, if the CX team has a certain set of OKRs, a certain set of priorities, and they're clashing with other teams, which I know I've experienced before with sales, for example, where they're like grow at all costs and we're like retention. We kind of need to get on the same page. Yes. I mean, sales OKR is very simple, right? Grow, grow, grow. Totally. Yeah, and we get that and we want it,

but you know, ours is to support their sales growth, right? And the best way that we can, and I think products is as well. So how do we prioritize, you know, which deals are coming in? So that's what we look at, right? Like, hey, this deal is about to come in. Let's all get into a meeting and understand like, what can

we really do? And if we can't do it, then we are pretty transparent and say, this is not something we can do. And we weren't that great at that a couple of years ago, but we've gotten really a lot better at it. I'm sure you've been burned a few too many times. Oh, yes. Yes, I still have some of those burn marks. We all do, unfortunately, but hey, it makes us stronger. Absolutely. I feel like sometimes I get so relentless.

I put on that client hat, and I'm like, relentless about it. Remember, guys, I have PTSD from this. Yeah, yeah. How do you inspire a mindset of customer centricity within your organization? I think I am that way. I have always been that way. And so for me, if there's a decision about, is this right for the customer?

Are we doing the right thing? I want everyone to ask themselves that question first. And I actually bring that up in my executive meetings with my peers, right? Are we making the right decision for the client or are we just making a decision? And so anytime we're in any kind of meeting or all hands or just a huddle about a specific topic, that's really how I ask the question. And so it sort of inevitably infiltrates, right? And people probably get sick of me asking this, right? When they bring something to me, I'm like, what's the right thing to do? And sometimes it's not, you know, we can't do everything the

client wants. So it's, that's not what right is. Right is, are we being transparent? Are we being authentic? Are we doing what is within our means? Or are we going to have to manipulate some things behind the scenes but still make it work. But if we're doing things that are so out of the realm and it's actually making us lose money, then that's not something we should be doing. And so I think customer centricity is really about right, but being able to define that right in the appropriate way. And it's easy to take shortcuts and not be customer centric,

but inevitably that is going to burn you later. And so that's really what I like to approach. And a lot of the metrics that we have in place here in our org really do revolve around that customer centricity, because you can say it, but you need to be able to actually measure it across a large organization that I run to. So we need to be able to do both. Asking the question of how does this impact our customer or what about the customer?

What is the customer asking for? It's so essential that we keep that top of mind because I think when we're all running a million miles a minute, we're thinking about like, also, how do we make this easier for ourselves? How do we like drive efficiency? It's always gonna be something that is top of mind, but if it's impacting the customer negatively, there needs to be a real good reason for it. And it probably shouldn't happen at all.

I agree, I agree. I mean, because essentially, I mean, when you think about it, right, no matter what, when you're in client experience, the client is the one that's giving us the revenue. Totally. We're not doing the right thing for them. There's something wrong.

I'd love to shift gears a little bit and talk about one of my favorite topics of the moment, which is AI. And how, if you are, how are you using it, implementing it? How has it become a part of your work? Or how are you thinking about it becoming a part of your work? There's been different flavors, I would say.

When I was director of customer success, so when I first joined, a big thing that comes up, especially when you're sort of in a startup environment, is you don't really have a lot of tools or things to help assess your entire client portfolio. And one thing I did implement was an AI tool that sort of looked at client sentiment and engagement. And it was super helpful for me to build a business case back to my business for additional headcount,

right? Because I could very easily see from this heat map which clients were sucking up the most time. It also allowed me to then go to those clients and propose a little premier engagement model, right? Like you are doing XYZ with us, if we do this we can do a little bit more. And so it gave me the data to really go and drive some revenue results, but then also drive growth in the team to be able to hire because you need that data and build that business case. It can't be like, oh, we're so busy. We're so strapped in, right? So I get a lot of that. And if anybody says that to me now, I'm always like, well, show me,

show me the data, show me, show me what's happening. So that's kind of one area. The other area is we've leveraged it in our tier one customer support. Really, I think probably a lot of companies are doing this, where, you know, streamlining comms that are going out, being able to, you know, leverage that AI for different things that are coming in, looking at the support tickets, uploading it, getting a quick buckets of where we could maybe train more on what are the themes of these tickets. And with JLL owning us, they are our clients. So they usually will come to us and say, hey, I know we're opening up a lot of tickets about

these applications. What should we do? What kind of additional training? And it's so easy to put those tickets into our AI tool, which is kind of our in-house and be able to go back to them with those themes. So that's another area. I spoke about the enablement and FAQ area through Slack. I would say customer engagement, sentiment, tier one customer support, and then personally I also used it for performances, performance reviews. So being able to kind of speak into and just talk through and then putting our key criteria for how we do performance management, that's been incredible for me. And then being able to, being able to tweak it for my own words. Amazing.

I mean, yeah, we can really use it for so, so, so many things. And I wanted to actually double click on something you had said earlier about Slack, because the integration, I was just at Dreamforce last week, Salesforce's conference. And oh my gosh, like the Slack and Salesforce integration is about to be just insanely helpful

in terms of having AI help us to consolidate what's happening on accounts, to be able to connect Slack into Salesforce and vice versa, so that we can actually have all of our client info in one place instead of us having conversations in Slack that aren't there and then going into Salesforce and not being able to find it. The searchability to be able to use AI to say,

give me an update on where this client has been in the past little while, or can you find this document? You can just ask AI and it will give it to you. It's really wild what is happening in just allowing us to speed up. Like I keep thinking about, wow, these are pain points that I haven't even noticed are pain points because I'm just so used to having to jump

through a million hoops. And now we can see a much more streamlined way of doing it, which is awesome. That's incredible. I mean, think of how many times you have to do meeting notes and recaps for our implementation team. They could be running like 20 to 25 projects a week and doing meeting recaps.

So being able to leverage something like this, I'm a big believer in helping you become more efficient. It's not going to take away the human aspect of it. You still need that. But we don't need to, you know, spend all these hours doing weekly recaps when you could just record the meeting and it's there for you and then tweak it as you need. There's just so many different ways. And then I love that we can take those sound bites when we have recorded meetings and be able to quickly share that with our product team or our sales team, right?

Because many times you'll say, oh, well, I heard this and they're like, well, what did they mean? It's like, well, here you go, quote, send it over. Exactly. Exactly. It's making things so, so, so much easier for us. And another thing, like when it comes to the meeting recaps, it's amazing that we can now have transcripts and those recaps. Sometimes I find they're a little, I don't know, not quite there yet. I think it's definitely getting better, like literally minute after minute.

But something I've been loving to do is just like stream of consciousness. This is what happened. Like sometimes I'll even just voice transcribe it. And then I'll put it into an AI and be like, make this more succinct and then it will just like put it all together for me in a way and I've trained it to do that in the way that I want it and it just makes it so much easier. We can like all work in the way that makes

the most sense for us. Yeah, I mean and sometimes you just need that initial right? That initial download and then you review it and you you're like, OK, no, I did hear this, I did hear that. And that's where that human piece comes in, because our clients don't want to get a GPT summary. They want to hear from you, too. Exactly. And that's exactly where the human element is so critical,

is how can we use AI as an assistant? Or I've heard the term of like, you know, you're managing a bunch of interns. You wouldn't just send something that this new intern, like first day on the job created, you know? Like you would always have eyes on it. And so I've actually, I was reading earlier today, someone was mentioning how the new manager is actually gonna be managing AI agents

more than they're gonna be managing people. And that's just like an interesting way to think about it. Like, of course, we will always have managers who are managing people. But people are going to start becoming AI agent managers more so than human managers. And so what skills do we need to do that? Yeah, where does that apply and where does it not? I think I have so many

questions about that that are just coming to fruition. Yeah, I believe it. I know. I'm going to have to dig in a little bit deeper on that, Slack and Salesforce that you heard about at Dreamforce. Yeah, for sure. Just go onto YouTube and watch some of the keynotes. They're really amazing. I'll also say just while we're on the topic, because I was just like nerding out about this so much last week, is Salesforce is called Agent Force. They're new like AI tool and their customer service functionality is unreal.

Like it is really changed. I thought we were maybe like a year or two away from being able to pick up the phone and call an AI agent and like actually have a conversation with them in a way that is like relatively seamless. But yeah, it's here. So it's really something I think all CX leaders, I think we should all be thinking about how our org is going to be changing as this technology advances and it's advancing a lot faster than I think anyone's expecting.

So, yeah. Very, very cool. I will definitely check it out. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Well, I have a couple last questions for you here. We'd like to ask these questions to everyone that comes on our show.

The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand or a company that left you impressed. What was that experience and why was it great? This one's not really on the professional side, it's more on the personal side. Oh, good. So, Lego, actually. My sons, I have twin boys that are 14, they love doing Legos. One of them ended up having to have surgery and could not have any activity for six weeks. So think of like a teenager or a young, you can't do anything, right? So just Legos. So he was

doing the Home Alone Lego, which is, you know, thousands of pieces and lost a piece. And so we've always done this where we've called and they've been able to, or you go online and you can get the extra piece. Great. You know, awesome customer service. I called because I was just wondering if there was any way they could get it done quicker I called because I was just wondering if there was any way they could get it done quicker because he was in the six weeks thing. And not only did they send it quicker, but then they also sent a free set over

because they did not want him to kind of wait for this piece that was coming from overseas. And they were like, well, it seems like he can't really do much. So let's just send him another set of a theme that he enjoys. And I was like, well, you know, it seems like he can't really do much. So let's just send him another set of a theme that he enjoys. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. And the way I look at that, I'm like, you just created a moment of delight for me. And you know, operationally, I think, you know, Lego's fantastic, just being able to

get extra pieces. But being able to create that moment of delight is really what I took back when I was thinking of like, okay, how do I transform this into what we're doing every day? Because our clients are dealing with support tickets, they may be dealing with product bugs, they may be trying to do so many different things. But if you can create a moment of delight, and just like have a really authentic conversation with them, that's going to go, you know, they could have five, six, seven support tickets, but that's going to go even much further. I mean, talk about surprising and delighting your customer in a way that you were like,

I'm sure that that story is going to be told beyond just on this podcast. Anyone that's just like, oh, you're going to be like, well, let me tell you. I mean, I never even knew they did that. So I was just so blown away. And maybe it was my, you know, I was naive and I didn't realize that they did this. And I'm sure people could probably abuse it. So don't, don't ruin it for the rest of us. But yeah, I was just blown away.

And he was so thrilled because, you know, if you can't do anything besides sit there or walk, that's exactly what you need. That's so amazing. And so my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear? I would say have a thick skin. Be an advocate.

Be relentless. I think those are all really important. There's many times that I'm in a room and I feel like I'm the only one wearing that client hat, which I think is so important to have that perspective. And I say thick skin because you know what, you get on a call and clients do have bad days, right? I've been in calls with clients where they have just gotten really angry and upset. And then the next day they'll send me an email that says, I apologize for my behavior.

I was going through X, Y, Z. And for me, I always try to be present, cool, calm, collected, because that's what they need. They might need a moment to vent. They may need someone to solution. But as long as you're calm and really having that thick skin, which I didn't always have when I was younger in my profession, right?

There were many times I'd be like, oh my god. She yelled at me. She yelled at me. But I think as a leader, it's really important that you instill that to the rest of your team as well. It's not personal. So being able to just have that experience of being calm in front of a client. It's not personal. That is the thing that I always tell my teams when we're dealing with upset clients that, because it's hard, it's hard for someone to be yelling at you or upset

at you and not take it personally. But we've really need to remember that most of the time this isn't always the case, but most of the time they're not actually mad at you. They're mad at the situation and it's your job to, like you said, just stay calm and help them solution, help them to a solution. Or say, maybe it's, let's get back on a call tomorrow once we figured some things out and we can actually get to a result here. Yeah. So that's great. Well, thank you so, so much, Monica, for coming on the show. It's been wonderful to have you and I'm sure we'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. 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? Eh, 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 from the best of the best. To learn more about Salesforce CTOs, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.