Experts of Experience - Stop Guessing! Win Customers Through Data AND Emotion

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Most brands are doing CX wrong—and it’s costing them.The secret to getting it right? It’s not just about data, and it’s not just about empathy—it’s about both.In this episode, Lauren Wood sits down with Stacy Sherman, CX expert, author, and host of Doing CX Right, to break down her ‘Heart and Science’ framework. With 25 years of experience leading CX for major brands, Stacy shares the real impact of emotional intelligence, AI, and cross-functional collaboration in creating customer experiences that actually work.They tackle the tough questions: How do you balance data and human connection? Where do most brands fail in their CX approach? And what’s the real cost of getting it wrong?If you want practical insights, real-world stories, and actionable strategies to drive customer retention and satisfaction, this conversation is a must-listen. Stay tuned until the end for an unforgettable example of human-centered CX in action.Are you delivering the experience your customers deserve? How far are you from your goals? Discover the gap with our Customer Experience Assessment and improve your strategy today.🔗 Get your free assessment now! https://forms.gle/VqXGtybjLhWQAsiL8Check out Doing CX Right: https://doingcxright.com/ Key Moments:00:00 Who is Stacy Sherman, CX Speaker & Expert?02:23 Why Customer Experience is Vital to a Business’s Success04:41 Designing Proactive & Delightful Customer Journeys10:19 The Key to Breaking Down Silos16:51 What is the Cost of Doing CX Wrong?25:33 The Importance of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)26:17 Addressing Fear & Psychological Safety in the Workplace27:41 Human Connection & The Role of AI in CX40:40 The Role of Accountability in Customer Service48:27 Key Advice Every CX Leader Needs to Hear  –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their strategies with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org

everybody listening, stop measuring satisfaction. Satisfaction is mediocre. What patterns do you see the companies that are doing CXRite do? They intentionally design the experiences based on real customer needs, not based on what the internal teams think. There's generosity.

There's a desire to give more. And it's because you love the brand and the brand loves you back in action, not just words. So what's the cost of doing CXROM? Acquisition, sales is sexy. Retention, staying in the relationship, it takes work. It's not an overnight thing. It's that consistency and that intentionality.

That's where transformation happens. Own it. Don't pass it on to someone else. It's someone else's job. That department. Own it. It starts with you. You have a customer experience role, regardless of job title. Hello everyone. And welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today I am joined by Stacey Sherman.

She is an author, advisor, professional speaker, as well as founder and host of the award-winning podcast Doing CX Right. And as you can tell from that title, that is what we are going to dive into today is how to do CX right. Stacey brings 25 years of experience leading teams at major brands like Verizon and AT&T. And something that I love about Stacey's work is how she really combines empathy with data driven strategies using her heart and science framework. So we're going to dive into all of that today and really understand the best practices of driving customer outcomes for CX leaders as well as any business leader, because we know that CX does not

stop in the CX function. It really impacts the company as a whole. So Stacey, I'm so excited to have you on the show. How are you doing? Great. And I love your recap. You said it better than me. I don't know about that, but we'll see how you do. Thank you.

So Stacey, your name has been mentioned to me by multiple CX leaders who we've had on this show. And I wanted to just kick things off by asking you, why do you do what you do? It is truly a passion. It's a lifestyle. When I was working in corporate for the past 25 years, I was continuing to breathe and think and do CX right,

because I care both from a consumer perspective, frustrated by bad experiences that don't have to happen, but then also from within certain companies and departments that were frustrating that didn't have to happen. So some people play golf at night and weekends. For me, I found myself blogging and podcasting and educating people. Whoever would listen to me, I was standing on the mountain, any mountain, just to help people understand that doing CXRite is in their control and make people care because it really impacts lives. I could not agree more. I always say that the reason I do what I do, and we do very similar work,

and helping people to learn about what great CX really entails, is we're making the world a more enjoyable place. If people have good experiences, they are able to live their lives in happier ways. If we're having bad experiences that are frustrating, that anger us, that make us feel like we just can't get what we need to get done done. Life is just less enjoyable.

So I appreciate you doing what you do. And I see you. Thank you. And it's more than fluff. Like I want people to understand that, yes, enjoyable, enjoy are important outcomes, but it's so much more. Like there is a business outcome beyond just a feel good outcome, which I would hope people would want to. But business is in business for a reason.

So those listening, this is not fluff. Thank you for saying that. So let's get into that business piece of things and really understand how businesses can create great experiences and what's in it for them to create those great experiences. And so the first question I really want to ask you is, what patterns have you noticed? This is kind of a broad question and we'll dig into it. But when it comes to doing CXRite, what patterns do you see the companies that are doing CXRite do? They are intentionally designing experiences across an entire journey, how a customer learns and buys, gets, uses, pays,

get help as we know customer service, which is not the same thing as customer experience, but an important part. And so they intentionally design the experiences based on real customer needs, not based on what the internal teams think it could be or maybe. And they validate it with real customers and then they fix the gaps where the needs are

not addressed. They measure along those micro moments. And when they do it right, the people that have bought from them come back again and again. And the internal teams who are championing the brand, they stay and they keep championing the brand because they love it so much. There's a lot to that.

And we're gonna get into all of it today. The thing that I want to start with is really thinking about the customer's needs, putting yourself into your customer's shoes and understanding what is it that they need throughout this journey, through every step of the way. Because like you said, it's not just, like CX is not just, OK, how do we handle customer service?

It's the entire thing. How do we first approach our customer? How do we engage with them in the beginning? How do we bring them on board? How do we ensure that throughout their experience, we are thinking about what it is that they are here for and what they need from this experience for it to be something that they want to come back to. Yeah, I was gonna say my book coming out next month is literally the transformational journey management

and the impact of that. It's not just the customer journey and it's not just journey map. It's really the holistic ecosystem of the journey from all the different stakeholders and partners and employees and the customers. It's an ecosystem. And I think that's important for people to realize. Well, tell us a little bit more about that.

Tell us about the ecosystem and how you approach that and how you speak about it in your book. Yeah, it's taking what I think has become a cliche word of journey map. We do journey mapping. That's kind of just a little bit of checking the box and not really understanding what it is and how you go deep and how does it actually design the experience that meets the customer needs. And it's an opportunity to not only just walk in your customer's shoes every micro moment and know that you're doing it right from each doorway of the learn awareness as we call it, the marketing department might handle that down the journey line. And it's breaking the silos.

It's showing the domino effect so that every team understands where they begin and end, but the effect. Because what happens is a lot of times people focus on their role, their goals, and then they're just like done and you can't be that way because it becomes so disjointed. A great example, and by the way, I say ecosystem because it's your vendors, your partners, your interns, it's everybody that's involved in this experience. So here's an example. Recently, I was on United Airlines and we were sitting on the runway and it was about an hour waiting and not really knowing why. So there was a flight attendant that walked down the aisle

and I said, do you know what's happening? When are we taking off or what's going on? And she said, I really don't know. I'm kind of learning the way you are when the pilot gets on and tells us. I said, okay. So then I go onto the app, United app, and I see an explanation that there's baggage that is

like kind of in backlog trying to get onto the plane. So I'm like, oh, it's a baggage problem. Then I happen to go onto the website, not the app, and there's another reason. So you have inconsistent reasons for me, the customer sitting there frustrated and I'm the lucky one, cause my neighbor next to me had to catch another flight from when we land. So that inconsistency is not okay. And that's because the experience is disjointed,

the communication is disjointed, the communication is disjointed, the teams are working in silos, and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing. And that's not okay. That doesn't work. It is something that I come is so much in my work, and whether it's a small startup or a very established company, we want to stay in the silos of each team because it creates clarity. It seems simpler if we say, okay, sales, you are focused on new business, and customer

success, you are focused on renewals and customer service, you're focused on tickets, and everyone stays in their lane, and then everything is simple and clear, and we can do it. The problem is that that's not what the customer experiences. They experience the company. They don't know or care that you're in that role or you're in that role or you do that or you do that. What matters to me is my experience. What matters to me is that consistent experience.

And so how can companies, I know this is a big topic and we're not gonna solve the world right now, but how can companies start to break down those silos in the face of the customer while still keeping the clarity internally about who owns what role or what piece of that customer's experience. Yeah. So when I was working in all different companies, I remember going to different departments and asking them, what is doing CXRite mean to you? And a very common answer was, well, I don't touch the customer. I'm back office, so it's not my job. And I would say, well, actually, let's sit down. Let

me explain to you how much you impact their experience because the sales team and customer service and the frontline teams can't do their job without you in the puzzle. And so that's my, that's what I mean by bringing people to the table. Uh, I'll often facilitate that and literally help each person understand the roles of the individual departments across that journey. And it's cross education, but also awareness and appreciation for, let's just take communication as a topic. Who is designing, who's deciding what we tell the customer? If it's a promotion, an offer, let's say for some upcoming holiday. Great, this team comes up with it, marketing, communications, then it goes to the website

where people can buy, let's say it's an e-commerce. Well, that team has to know what's going to be on the website and implement it on the website. And it has to go all the way down the line because what happens often is the front end doesn't reach customer service where someone will call and say, hey, I got an email about this great promotion.

Can you apply it? I have some questions. And the service team says, I don't know what you're talking about. I've experienced that as a CX leader, as a customer service leader myself, so many times. And there is nothing more frustrating to learn about something that your company is doing for the first time from your customer instead of your peers. You came up with the idea in the first place? There's nothing more frustrating. No, that is doing CX wrong.

And here's the thing though, while people listening might realize, okay, that's intuitive. But also the reality is when I've been in certain companies and I said, let's do this, let's bring the different stakeholders to the table who are in charge of those departments and go through the journey and see the gaps. A lot of times, I would get pushback and say, you know what, we don't have budget for that right now. And I would say, how do you not have budget?

How do you, first of all, it doesn't take, this isn't sophisticated technology. This is bringing humans to a room and Really solid communication, but but time okay takes time to bring people out of their rules and Their day to day and it's a cost It's a cost to actually not do this exercise and in this practice because you're losing customers and then you're losing your team who are frustrated and not empowered. So I do a lot of workshops, as I know you do as well, around customer experience and helping

cross-functional teams to align on what the customer's needs are throughout the journey. Call it journey mapping, call it, I mean, there's many different ways or reasons that teams can come together. But the point is, and I find honestly, no matter the workshop that I do, when we bring teams cross-functionally into one room to talk about the customer, it is one of the most, I mean, it's literally my favorite thing to do

because it's one of those magical experiences for everyone involved to be able to say, oh, you see that too? Or I didn't know that you feel that way. I didn't know that you're getting frustrated by the fact that we're rolling out these promotions and you're not able to support the customer. And now I understand the impact that has on the customer. So I'm innately going to do something to help mitigate that because I can.

And just gaining the awareness of our actions and gaining the awareness of what it is that the customer really cares about so that teams can start to find their own solutions is, I think, one of the most powerful things that companies can do. It's really empowering your team to see the opportunities for improvement because they're getting outside of their little boxes of focus, which focus, I'm all for focus. I'm all for here's your role, here's what you need to do. But we have to step out of it sometimes so that we can really see the bigger picture and work together. Yeah, and it's a sense of what I would call

in terms of doing CXRite, there's generosity. There's the desire to give more. Yeah. And it's because you are, you love the brand and the brand loves you back in action, not just words. So let's talk a little bit about the cost of doing CX wrong. You mentioned it a little bit, but I'd love to dive into it more because I think often

executives see CX as, you know, some executives, not all, but it can be kind of a nice to have. It's not, you know, the direct path to revenue. It's not the acquisition of customers. So what's the cost of doing CX wrong? I love that you said that because, let's face it it acquisition sales is sexy. Retention, you know staying in the relationship it takes work and it's not an overnight thing and it's that consistency and that intentionality and that's where transformation happens. And so what I help leaders understand is, let me give you a good example to demonstrate

what I'm trying to say. A company I was working for, we would do re-outreach to clients, to customers who had long-term contracts. We would reach out to them a year before the contract would end and gauge how's the relationship going. This was not, oh, you just bought something, the transaction, no, this was relationship.

And what we did was we gauged how well are we delivering on the promise, how much more than satisfaction, because satisfaction is mediocre. And so we were striving not for mediocre. So the value is that we would gauge where are we falling short? And they would tell us. And therefore we had a year to really fix their pain point that we would know about or not know about. Now, when I say we, collectively, I would take that feedback. I'd give it to the right sales team across the globe. It was a global company and follow up and ask,

what did you do with this information? And then actually go back to the customer and tell them, we heard you. And what that created was not only, again, feel good for the customer, but we retained billions of dollars because of that relationship and caring and not just giving lip service,

but really acting upon the feedback. So people miss that opportunity to say, how are we doing? And not just when the contract's gonna end, that's too late. It's a common misconception, I think. I mean, I think it's also human nature. We don't want, it's hard to think really far ahead. It's so often we're in a reactive mode as well

when it comes to customer experience. We're like, oh no, someone's leaving. We gotta, we have to keep them. If someone said they're leaving, probably too late. Yes, I mean, look, I'm going on 30 years of marriage this year. And that did not happen because just one-offs, you know, through the years. This is intentionality. It is everything that we're talking about in CX. It applies to business. If you want people to love you and your brand, it is not a one night stand. Yeah, completely.

And we need to think ahead to what is this relationship need in the long run. What do we need this relationship? What is the foundation that we wanna lay for this relationship? And that means really looking ahead to make sure that we have the right things in place. And so I think when it comes to retention, then important time to think about retaining your customer

is actually when your customer is happy and they're willing to talk to you and tell you the things that aren't working. And that gives you an opportunity to get ahead of it because the cost of waiting is just far too high. Yeah, people have too many choices now and the competitors know it and a lot of times people leave and they don't even tell you. So you do have a chance to get ahead of it and one of the other things I would say that is a common miss is if you just take NPS, I have many other metrics that I promote, champion.

But let's just take the basics of NPS, Net Promoter Score. So many companies focus on the green, the nines and tens, the people that love you. And they also focus on the detractors, the people that are not happy. But what a missed opportunity. They miss the passives who haven't made a decision yet, who you can bring to the promoter's side, but so many ignore them. What a mistake that is.

What are some ways that companies could not ignore those passives? Have you seen any actions or what types of actions have you seen to really work in bringing those passives over to the promoter side? Approach them without selling. So what I mean by that is this happened to be during COVID, but it doesn't have to apply just to a pandemic. We would call our customers and literally stop all surveys that we were doing and literally ask them, are you okay? How are you?

And that they remembered that after the pandemic was over. You're the company that actually cared. You weren't just trying to push a sale, a product, but you were really genuinely authentically caring. And people noticed that you can't fake that. I had an experience the other day where this happened. I live in Southern California in Los Angeles and by a stroke of luck was not directly impacted

by the fires. It was very, very, very close call. And I had a phone call from my 401k provider, who I haven't logged into that website in a long time. I'm not a very active investor, obviously. And they called me to say, is everything okay? And do you need any support with figuring out your retirement plan considering all of this? And I was like, so taken aback. But also it was just honestly in that moment of being like, do I have a home? Do I not have a home? Is it there? Is it not there? It actually was really a welcomed call to just be like, Hey, we just want to check in on you. Are you okay?

Do you need anything? We want to remind you that we're here and we can support you with your long-term financial planning. I was like, okay, that's like so nice. And it was such an opportunity, but also a, I just think of them with a higher regard now. It's just as simple as that.

Well, to what you said, and that's so similar to my story, doing CX right is basic. I mean, we could go really, really deep into tactical, prescriptive things. People overcomplicate it, like, get the basics right. Deliver on your promise. Let's go back to kindergarten. Right?

Like, it's just, it's that simple. So what we're talking about is not this huge tech investment. I wanted to talk to you about emotional intelligence here, because I think that it ties into what we're speaking about. And what is the role that EQ plays in creating meaningful customer interactions? What would you say? It's tremendous. It's part of the equation. And I'll give you an example. My best leader's bosses had high EQ. I really have honed in on that skill myself.

And people see it, you can't fake it. It's like a singer has a great voice. You're born with it. But I do think you can nurture that skill. So when we talk about EQ, one of the things I tell leaders today is that AI is our reality. It's a tool. It's valuable if you use it in the responsible way.

Here's the reality though. For people, customers, and your workforce, there's fear. There's real fear. And so the smart high EQ leader is acknowledging that, not ignoring it. So they're helping their team understand, this is why we're deploying this particular technology. This is how it's going to help save you time and give you more

time to really spend with the customer instead of some of that administrative things. This is how we're going to use it so that you can better train without risk. In talking to a live customer, you can practice with the simulation and get the confidence and readiness and acknowledge that people have fear and help them get comfortable so that they can be and show up their best. And so that's where I say that a lot of people ignore the reality and just try to shove the

new technology because they have to, they have to claim what they are. And high EQ really is looking at the reality and helping each individual not in a cookie cutter approach. It's connecting human to human, which isn't that easy, especially when you're doing it at scale. And I think a lot of customer service teams or client-facing teams in general can struggle with this because we're talking so much about efficiency and this is where AI comes into play which I want to dive into in a moment.

But when we have a customer on the phone or over email or over text message, how can we, if we have a human speaking to a human, how can we be more human in that interaction? I think is the thing I always come back to because we've all had those experiences where we are upset about something and we're speaking to the customer service team or our account manager on that account and we just feel like we're not getting through to them. I had this experience the other day with a brand again related to the fires where I am, I'm not going to get into it because honestly it's going to get me angry. I'm losing a lot of money because of this business's decisions on how they are going to treat my neighborhood.

And I was speaking to someone on the phone and they were just not emotionally intelligent at all. It was, we're shutting down our portion of your app in this neighborhood. It's like a home sharing platform. And they're like, you're closed for business because we see that the fire is still happening. I was like, the fire's out, it's been out for a week. And they would not, they were not empathizing with me.

It was just this like wall of no, to someone who's very clearly in an emotional state because of fear. But there was no connection to that fear whatsoever. It was like, I need to get you off the phone right now. That was the feeling. And I mean, it's changed my opinion of that company forever. And I'm not going to do a take down piece in this moment, but it's greatly impacted my experience of this company for a long time. I think it's just one of these areas that we need to invest in for anyone in

business, but especially client facing teams to build that emotional intelligence and learn how to have human to human conversations, even when it's a very difficult conversation to have. I especially then. Yeah. So in my recent keynote speech I did at an event, I talked about the word you said that I feel very strongly about is connection.

And I believe that both the brands need to purposely create the connection with the humans that are interacting with the brand, internal and external. I also deeply feel and wrote about in Psychology Today magazine that we have to own our experiences too. So when I call customer service, that agent is an human, and oftentimes just the messenger, right?

They didn't make the decision. And so having listened to thousands and thousands of calls within brands and listened to the tone of a customer, it's heartbreaking, right, for the agent. And so obviously there's training in how you handle those irate customers and that's a different topic, a different day. But we do need to own the experience, how we show up for others. And it's a two-way street.

How do we do that? I love that you're bringing this up because it, if you are someone who has ever been on the phone with an irate customer, you know the emotional toll that that takes on you having to have that conversation. It is not easy at all. And it does require self-regulation in order to show up and make that connection.

So how do you guide teams to learn that skill? Yeah, very easily. Within the company, all the different departments, you share the customer calls that the agents go through. You share those calls. You invite them to those calls. You have them be an agent for a day. From the inside, from the CEO to the intern. Right? They need to actually shadow each other

for the appreciation and understanding of what it's like. At the same time, it's the conversations like this and that I'm doing on all my social platforms to help people understand this same concept that even if you're not in a customer service role, this is what it's like. And so if you're a customer or if you're a leader, heads up, this is what great looks like and it goes full circle. I'm curious, now I wanna shift gears a little bit because now we have AI coming into play,

which there are massive benefits and there's also substantial risk. So I'd love to hear your opinion of AI coming to the scene of customer experience, and we can talk about it in any facet of customer experience, not just customer service. How are you seeing organizations implementing AI right and then on the flip side, wrong? Absolutely many examples. As I alluded to before, I think AI is fabulous to save people time. I believe AI, even if you think about training, I've seen a platform that allows the agent and salespeople to practice and the AI really feels like a customer, a human being, and you

can set up like an irate customer, you can set up a funny customer, and so the person who's in charge of serving that individual can practice. And the beautiful part is that there's multiple platforms, but the one that I love most actually allows the salesperson, the agent, whoever's front-facing to be able to practice and not have their boss hear it until they're ready for their manager to hear the dialogue. Because you get graded and you know what? You need a psychologically safe place to practice.

And so some platforms are created for the boss to hear every practice session. And I think that's not a good idea. So that's an example where AI can really boost someone's confidence to train at scale and be able to make mistakes comfortably. And then you bring in the others who are going to grade you and say, you're ready for that first call, you're ready for the promotion, you're ready for whatever it is. So that's a great example.

Can you share that company with us? I am going to stay agnostic, but anyone wants to call me, I'm happy to share. I've been evaluating a bunch of different AI technologies. I'm going to be agnostic. All good. But that is such a great, great use case to allow us to practice those human skills. It's not to replace our human interactions.

It's to enable us to be better at it. Yes. And likewise, having done a lot of customer feedback sessions and aggregating feedback. So there's the structured data from the surveys, but there's the unstructured from social media and rating review sites and customer service calls. And so aggregating all that, there's no way a human could read all that and prioritize it. So AI is a wonderful tool to help understand the conversations to make decisions from and risk mitigation. Because if you hear someone say, lawsuit, you want to know that right away.

So that is another great use case of AI application. Now, if you're not doing CX right with AI intentionally, responsibly deployed, then the reverse happens, you actually can push customers away. And what that looks like is, let's say I want to find something online. I go to the company website. I deploy the AI chat.

I'm asking a question. And if it's not high risk, it's okay to keep talking to a bot. But if there's something that's like a lot of money, if it's something that I'm frustrated with and it was, there's certain criteria. So I get passed on to a human after I interact with the bot. But now I just went through this whole conversation with the bot and now the human comes on and makes me repeat everything all over again. Right? Like there's a problem with that. Yes. Thank you for saying that because it is happening a lot. I'm seeing this happen a lot and it's a solvable problem. It is such a solvable problem.

It is and it's not just the bot, it's even the traditional IVRs where you call the 800 number and then you give your credit card and then the rep comes on and says, can I have your credit card? So it's all automation that is serving the internal needs and disregarding the time and the energy of the caller, the customer, the prospect. And so if you're not making it easy, they'll leave, they'll hang up, they'll disconnect. Yes. I think that when we look at, I want to dive into this example a little bit, because I think it exemplifies a core, what I would call, law of great CX, which is ease and making

it easy for the customer. And it's not just, oh, we made it easy for you, but it's respecting their time. It is respecting their energy and their attention. And it comes down to respect. If you're making something really difficult for me, like if I have to type in my 30-digit account number and then say it to you on the phone five minutes later, you are not respecting my time. And I think that it's just one of these things that as we

look at our customer journey and we look at what is it that the customer is, what are the opportunities to improve the experience and what are the challenges that they're facing, we really need to look at where are these points of friction where we're making it harder for the customer. And I think when we bring AI into the picture, we have to look very, very closely at every interaction because AI can make it really easy for the team to deliver,

but there can also be an impact on the customer where it's actually making it harder for the customer to get their answers. And so it has to be really thinking through, where are we making this easier for the customer to get their answers. And so it has to be really thinking through where are we making this easier for the customer, not just enabling us to get through more tickets in a day. Yes. And the most common challenge across all the different industries I've worked for and worked with comes down to one image.

And that image is this. Pointing fingers everywhere, but instead of here at yourself, everybody is passing the buck. And that's why silos break relationships. They create customer churn, they create employee turnover, and that is the biggest opportunity to change. Mm-hmm.

Accountability. Oh. I wanted to talk about that a little bit with you. How can leaders create teams that are more accountable to serving the customer's needs, not just giving the short answer, but actually solving the problem? So that little sigh you heard from me when you said accountability. That was an unexpected noise from my mouth. Because most companies, most teams and individuals are really good at being responsible. They're responsible for their job, their tasks, they're getting it done the way that is on that piece of paper and job description.

Accountability takes it a step further. Accountability is saying, I not only took care of your problem on this call or interaction, but I went up and beyond to make sure that you're delighted. And it was exceptional. Accountability is going way beyond. Responsibility is doing what you have to do. And that comes back to leadership. That comes back to a unified vision and mission and values and shared goals. Because I remember being in an organization where I had a set of goals that were customer-centric

and other people did not. They had other metrics. And so no one would listen to me when I brought them some very important customer data and they would say, yes, I'll add it to my list. And I said, no, no, no, right now. And they said, sorry, that's not my top three goals. And I'm like, what? Like, no, no. You can see I'm very passionate about this. And I'm laughing because I've been through that too many times to count and I see my clients go through it every single day.

And so it actually brings me to my last question, it's a perfect segue, into measurement and how we can create cross-functional metrics that create that accountability to deliver an exceptional, not just satisfactory, but an exceptional customer experience. Yeah. I'm very big on satisfaction. No. I love what you said. Satisfaction is mediocre.

I could not agree more. No. Yeah. Everybody listening, stop measuring satisfaction. It's so much bigger than that. To your question, the way you measure and drive

that customer centric mission at all roles in all departments is making everybody have the same goal around this from the C-suite to your admin, your interns, your contractors, your every department. And that way everybody's working together. At the same time, you also need to train that there's not

gaming of the system. I remember we had deployed certain metrics to the sales team and they would be paid their bonuses in comp, had many metrics, but this was one of them. And I remember they would call me and say, you know, please give me, give me that one extra little point because it affects my pay. And no, that's not what this is about. This is, I'm not your report card, the customer is. So people really have to not only create the metrics but really live by what it means and use it not for punishment, but for how do we make it better so that people aren't detractors,

people aren't sitting in the passives waiting to make a decision, but they're promoters, they're advocates, they're champions, and they actually take the action to go recommend. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's so important that we have cross-functional alignment on a key metric, at least one key metric that exemplifies the customer experience. And I think retention often is that. But retention is different for each team. And as you're sharing, I also have an example where the sales team initially, they had no retention metric. It was just acquisition. And then my team, leading customer success and customer service, retention was our problem.

But we all know that what is sold, if it does not match up with what is given, someone's not going to be happy, and they're probably not going to be retained. So we looked at the sales reps that had the highest retention, and we studied what they did. Cause they weren't measured on retention initially. They were just creating really great,

highly retained customers through their sales process. And we studied that and then decided that it made sense to apply a retention metric to the sales quota. They would not hit their quota if that customer did not stay past a certain number of days. Just early retention. How did they do with the first portion of that journey? And they hated it.

So many of them hated it. It was like the devil for moving this forward. Wait, so bring them in, don't care about onboarding? Well, no, but they had to care about onboarding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they didn't before or many of them didn't. And what ended up happening was our retention totally changed in the months after that. We had such an improvement in our retention metric. So then we said, okay, product team, what is your retention metric? in our retention metric. So then we said, okay, product team,

what is your retention metric? We started looking at all the teams that had an impact on retention and gave them a version of retention, something that would come up to our final retention number. And I just can't recommend it enough. And what you're saying is that we have to have a common measure of what success is and ensure that all teams are working

together to drive that forward. Yeah, I think it's the number that's shared, both ends. And when you're bringing people together to design the customer experience from the employee perspective who knows the customer experience from the employee perspective who knows the customer while also validating it with real customers. When they understand how their role affects, how the sales team affects the next one in line and vice versa, there can be empathy for each other.

Yeah. Right? And friendship and bond. And therefore, what do you do when that happens? You, you're generous and caring and look at it as we, not my bonus, our bonus. Yes, totally. Stacey, I have two last rapid fire questions for you. The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience

that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was that experience? Ooh. Well, I would say it's a brand, but also other humans in the story that give me a renewed love for humankind because there's so much bad news out there. And what I mean by is I left my tablet, my remarkable tablet, somewhere in Colorado at my last trip there. I'm guessing it was on the airplane or in the airport.

I don't know. And I ended up getting a FedEx box, opened the box, actually made a TikTok on this, unveiling the box, taking the tablet out. There was no note. taking the tablet out, there was no note. Nobody put a note to say, I found your tablet, you know, hope this reached you. Like nothing, no nothing. I know that the airline was the one

that the person turned it into. So there is an airline in this story. And there were many human people who touched my tablet to get it into the box, into FedEx to me and didn't need the recognition, didn't look for the pat on the back, which I would have done. And so I made a TikTok to say,

thank you, whoever's out there, that there's really good people in the world. And this was an experience that the airline did, the human did, FedEx did. It was this multi-touch that did really good. So that stands out to me in this very moment. How did they know to send it to you? How did they know it was yours? My tablet, when you opened it, has my contact information. I didn't even remember doing that, but that was the only one.

Maybe it was also remarkable, like prompted you to do that, who knows? Exactly, it is a remarkable experience. So it makes sense to be a remarkable product. I hope Remarkable experience. So it makes sense to be a remarkable product Remarkable hearing this And then my last question for you is what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear Oh Own it Hmm own it. Don't don't pass it on to someone else. It's someone else's job. That department.

Own it. It starts with you. You have a customer experience role, regardless of job title. Every leader is a customer experience leader. And you don't need leader in your title to be one. Mm-hmm. Well, Stacey, thank you so much for coming on the show. I have learned so much. I love this conversation, and I'm sure our listeners will as well. So I hope you have a wonderful day. Oh, and last but not least, how can folks find you? Yes, I welcome it. So one is my website doingcxwrite.com and my newsletter, I'm giving tons of free wisdom and advice. I also have a free audit tool that I can give to you for the show notes. Amazing. That people can take this and it'll give you a score

of how much you're doing right and where are some of the gaps and happy to discuss it. So between my website, I'm on all the social channels, predominantly on LinkedIn, giving tips and tactics every day, Stacey Sherman. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Stacey. And I hope you have a wonderful day.

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