Experts of Experience - Why Great Leaders Communicate Like Creators

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Internal communication is broken. Most CX and leadership teams rely on outdated methods — long slide decks, endless trainings, and metrics that don’t drive action. In this episode, Ben Phillips, founder of CX Alive!, explains how to transform the way your business communicates. Drawing on two decades in customer experience and leadership, Ben breaks down why short-form, authentic content — like internal vodcasts and micro-videos — builds clarity, connection, and alignment faster than PowerPoints or all-hands meetings ever could. We cover:✅ How to make your CX strategy relatable and actionable✅ The biggest communication gap between leadership and frontline teams✅ How to communicate effectively with Gen Z employees✅ Why podcasts and vodcasts are the future of internal engagement✅ Why NPS and CSAT are outdated metrics — and what to measure instead If you’re looking to improve employee engagement, CX performance, or team alignment, this conversation will change how you think about communication, storytelling, and measurement inside your organization. #InternalCommunication #CXLeadership #CustomerExperience #EmployeeEngagement #CXStrategy #BusinessCommunication #LeadershipDevelopment #GenZAtWork #Vodcasting #StorytellingAtWork Connect with Ben at:Cx-alive.comBen Phillips LinkedIn Key Moments: 0:00 Who is Ben Phillips and what is CX Alive!4:00 How to communicate effectively with Gen Z employees9:44 How business communication is changing12:50 How to tell better stories22:00 Why you only have 8 seconds to capture attention24:00 Why podcasts and vodcasts work so well for businesses31:00 Is NPS still relevant in 2025?34:44 What are the best metrics to track in CX?37:59 Are customer surveys still relevant?41:11 AI in CX: what’s hype vs. what’s real48:24 How to build a team that understands the “why”51:28 Three words that separate good content from great –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy 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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can tell a story with a single image. How can you compact what you're trying to say into something that's memorable, relatable, and actionable? Maybe they're the three keywords. Memorable, relatable, actionable. You've got to remember it. You've got to know what it means to you. And you've got to be able to do something about it. Otherwise, that's just noise.

And there's plenty of noise in companies today. And if you need someone that can help you deliver that in podcast format, then you know, worry out. As soon as Microsoft invented PowerPoint slides, here we are just stuck. right? Because where's the follow-up? Have you captured that spark of some sort of inspiration? Younger generations really resonate with authentic communication and they won't want to work at companies where they don't feel like they trust your leadership team. So the whole idea is that we make your CX strategy viral through the medium of podcasting.

For the last 20 years, slide decks have been the go-to way we share information in business. But that's about to change. thank goodness it is. This week, I'm joined by Ben Phillips, the founder of CX Alive, to talk about what's broken and how we communicate inside companies and what we can do to fix it. A huge part of a great customer experience starts at what the employee understands. So how you disperse information inside your business to teach your employee about CX is vital and helping them be able to deliver a great experience for the customer. In today's conversation with Ben, we get into why you should treat your employees like customers when it comes to making content for them, how to actually

make data interesting, and why short form video, even for just internal updates, is actually a secret weapon that more teams should be using. Ben also puts on his myth-busting hat and busts the myth of NPS. It's something you're not going to want to miss and you absolutely must hear. And if that's not clickbady enough, we also talked about the death of the survey. So if your team uses surveys, which you probably do, and you love and cherish NPS, you should definitely tune in to hear what Ben has to say about that. Ben and I also talk about what AI-powered feedback might look like in the future and how that's going to continue to change the necessity of surveys. But before we get over to the episode, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button. And as you're listening in,

if there's any burning questions coming in mind, feel free to drop them in that comment box or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you. So without further ado, you're listening to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lacey Peace, and here is Ben Phillips, the founder of CX Live. Ben, welcome to Experts of Experience. Hello, how are you? I'm great. Where are you calling in from? I want the listeners to know what time it is for you. Oh, okay. Well, this is Sunny Milton Keynes, which if you've never heard of it, is a kind of new build city smack in the middle of the United Kingdom. And it's by the clock 25 to 5 in the afternoon now. Awesome. Yeah. So thank you so much for taking the time today with us. I'm really excited. There is some really cool news that I am eager

for you to share with our audience, which is that you have launched a new business. Could you tell us about CX Alive? Sure, I have. Yeah. So 20 years in this industry has left me to think, you know, maybe it's time I give it a go on my own. So I've launched a business. That's right. Yeah, we're called CX Alive, stylized with an explanation mark. And the fundamental business is a Vodcasting service for businesses. So it's a B2B service, if you like. But what we do is this, right? So we take Vodcasting as a format, which appeals to anybody that has a short attention span, loves the quickfire, quick information mobile format, watch anywhere, anytime, rewatch, repeat and share. And we take business context information, put it into that format and then share

it across companies. So the whole idea is that we make your CX strategy viral through the medium of podcasting. So, yeah, it's something I'm really passionate about, and I've just started up. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations on launching the business. What were you seeing at some of the companies you've been working at before that made you say, this is something that's needed and something that I'm really interested in solving? Well, I think a combination of things, including that CX strategy is not all that relatable to people across the front line. Most CX strategies are designed for maybe 5% of the company than the other 95% are outdo. their day jobs, right? They're not necessarily connected to what the strategy really wants them to be

able to do and deliver. It doesn't necessarily talk in their language. And until it becomes important to every colleague, then nobody really cares about it. Sorry to say, CX professionals out there. So I thought, well, how do we leverage the modern format, which is really designed for Gen Zia millennial colleagues coming through the business? Because in five, 10, 15 years time, they're going to be running your company. So think ahead, right? Talk to them now in a format that works and appeals and that is accessible rather than relying on that historic desk by PowerPoint, you know, lengthy, modular training courses, you know, all the traditional ways of communicating stuff to people, which barely gets consumed, understood or even acted on because it's not in a

format that people really readily consume. So that's the reason I came up with a format. Yeah. So just for everyone to have like complete clarity on what it is. So this would be like a video that is produced for internal sharing, not necessarily like externally. Here's, you know, I'm explaining to the customer how XYC things works. But it's like, here's what NPS score is. Here's what this is. Here's our goal. Here's our strategy. But not just writing it out in a document or to your point, like a 50 page slide deck with a bunch of metrics that no one will remember. You're trying to create something that's actually engaging and interesting to people that might have less time or. or should our attention spans or need something that's going to actually stick in their brain. Yeah, I mean, let's say you had eight to ten minutes to sit down and watch a quick video with the CEO, head of ops, head of marketing, head of IT, whoever the senior professional is that you want on the call, I'd be the host having that dialogue with them. And we talk about the subject matter at the heart of the conversation, relaying that to all colleagues in a way that they can understand now what they need to go away and do with

that information. So it's all about the method of communication, the understanding, and the call to action that's really the driver behind all this. You know, what I love about podcasts and podcast is the intimacy factor, the authenticity factor, right? So, like, it's actually be able to hear your CTO, your CIO, your CEO, the CXO, whoever it is, like on camera, on mic, explain something. Now suddenly I feel way more connected to my leadership team than if they had just sent

over an email with some slides attached, right? That's it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So I love this format. But I kind of want to start with a little bit more of these, like, these problems. that you had been seen. You had a great story that you shared about your previous company

where you had created kind of the first iteration of this and you had created a video that explained NPS. Do you mind just walking our audience through that story? Yeah, so almost unintentionally that's what led to CX-Aliad. But yeah, about two years ago, I was thinking, look, how do we distill information to colleagues in the way that's consumable, short, punchy, a little bit different? You can insert or embed a link into a newsletter,

a company website, whatever. So I thought, I think I've recorded. just a few slides about what is net promoter score. Because back in my last company, Fujitsu, like many companies, we had a global survey program, ours was annual relationship NPS, so it happened once a year. Really important when the survey results landed. But you need to do a bit of pre-work to people to say, look, we're measuring this thing, but actually what is it?

So I felt that it was necessary to do this one video to just tell people, what's net promoter score, how should you use it, how did you think about it, where's it even come from? So in two minutes, 59 seconds, hence the MPS in three minutes titles, see what I did there. Yes. I just recorded myself on Clipchamp or something like that. A few slides with me with a little sort of head shot floating in the corner of the screen, just sort of innocuously posted it on our company in Trinnet. And it more as blew up and it got hundreds of views.

I don't want to say thousands. I'm not quite sure, but it might be in those numbers now. And still was one of the most rewatched videos at the point where I exited. for Jitsu just slightly early this year. And the reason is because it's short, informative, speaks basic language. You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get the whole thing about customer experience analytics or how NPS is calculated. It's not important.

So, yeah, that's the story behind that video and why it worked so well. No, I love that. And I think speaking in the language that anyone can understand is so important because, again, you mentioned at the top of this, like, sure, 1% of your team who exists at this very high strategy level in CX would understand all the lingo metrics, et cetera, but like if I'm trying to communicate with someone who's on the floor, maybe a customer service agent and like actually needs to understand what this is and why it's important, they are not going to be able to understand all that. Or maybe they could, but they just like it wouldn't stick in their reign the

same way as if I had just like felt like I talked to Ben and he just explained it to me. Yeah. And there's all kinds of research you can do on learning methodologies, right? So I think there's a whole thing around if you take an hour of learning, the human brain really only remembers the first and last 10 minutes. And all of that sort of noise in between is lost. So you might remember snippets. But what are the really punchy things that you want to cut through and make sure that people know? And actually, if you didn't digest it that well, then could you rewatch it? Well, yeah, I'll do that if it's a three minute video, but I'm not going to do it if it's an hour's intense training course again.

I don't have that time in my life. So that's another reason why this stuff needs to be repeatable, rewatchable, shareable. all kinds of reasons. It keeps file sizes low. It's a small part of everybody's day. There's all kinds of reasons why it's good to do it in short, punchy format. And so talking more about that format piece, I mean, if we look back at the evolution of communication and business, right, I feel like we got so stuck in slide land.

Like, for just years. It's like as soon as Microsoft invented PowerPoint slides, here we are, just stuck. So, like, talk to me a little bit about how you've seen communication evolve, even in your career and why you think it's so important right now that we make this shift. I used to joke. Some people would say, what do you do for a living? And I used to say, well, I'll do PowerPoints. That's just that was my idea.

In some companies, the culture is everything is by PowerPoint. Send me your deck. Send me your slides. And it's almost like it's not a thing if you don't have a deck about it. And in a way you understand because people, you know, have you sat down and thought about this? If you articulated it clearly, if you strategized, if you pieced it together, can you tell me it in sequence storyboard format. So we know my PowerPoint has always been more successful.

But I think it's someone like Steve Jobs once said, you know, don't send me a PowerPoint full of bullet points. A bullet pointed list is a shopping list, you know, eggs, bacon, lettuce, not business activity, business action thing you should know about. So we've got lost in PowerPoint land over the years because that's just how it's gone. So well done, Microsoft on inventing that for us. I think that, you know, just as all I've said before, there's no way you're going to be able to capture, because there's no cap on how many slides you should write someone, right? You get these decks of 50, 60. How are you supposed to consume all that information? And nobody has the appetite to do it. I've seen it done at exact level. Survey results come in,

well-intentioned customer experience team, start churning out all this beautiful insight. And it's amazing stuff, but in the wrong format. It's much easier and much more effective to communicate that to someone verbally and visually. And it's this whole memory recall stuff as well you can do research on. If you present, talk, articulate, animate, you know, very much like I'm doing now and do it with backup visuals that really emphasize a point. That is way more effective and has a ton more recall value than bombard me with slides. We have this propensity to over tell the story when we have a blank sheet of paper in front

of us, right? We'll write a hundred words when actually we could write. 10. I think AI is getting good at helping us with that. You know, people who run their content through AI and say, make it small, make it punch, make it distilled. We are getting better and that's helping us. But still, there's too much. But it's also the opposite of that, right? Where it's like, I have this little short idea. Make it long and make it beautiful and make it really. Oh, there is. Yeah. Build my strategy for me from just three words or something. Yes. Yes. Right. I've seen, I'm sure everyone has seen this meme over and over again on

LinkedIn where it's like, look, AI help me write this long email. And then the person who gets the long email is like, look, AI help me summarize this into a short bullet list, right? So yeah, I think it's a great tool and it can certainly help us articulate our thoughts a bit better. But with anything, if you, as you mentioned, have this like uncap ability to just keep writing more words or creating more slides without any idea of like, with any thought really of how is this person going to consume it, what's their experience going to be of it. And it's like a totally different skill set, right, to actually learn storytelling and how people's brains works versus, you know, I've been doing slides all through high school, all through college. Now I'm in my

career and doing slides. Like that feels very comfortable. But to tell me that I need to now think about how someone's reading this, what's the story I'm telling? Like that's a totally different skill set that is hard to teach. So I'm kind of curious how you think about that with teams. Well, I have a few rules that I go by. Things like more white space is better. That means you probably managed to say what you're trying to say by using up less screen. What would they call it? Maybe screen real estate, right? So you're just using the pieces of the white space, the blank canvas, if you like, that you've got in front of you to tell the story. I did an internal presentation on presenting about six months ago. And I remember you can tell a story with a single image. A really good one that we use in business is icebergs. So you have the tip of the iceberg and then the water and then there's huge volume underneath. And that's used as an analogy to say what you can often see is just this much, but actually

behind the scenes, behind the curtain, backstage, back office, there's all this stuff going on. So single images help tell stories. I'm a big fan of the power of three as well. And this is a psychological thing in people. You know, we love something, something else and an alternative. or a thing, something else, and then something in the middle. Or, you know, an opposite, an opposite, and then a comparison.

So there's a whole brain psychology around three-part lists of three key actions, three key headlines, three things you should know, three numbers. You know, these are all really important in the way that we consume business data. But again, I think you can do that super effectively verbally because actually talking about three things is not overwhelming. talking about 15 insights from your latest round of customer experience results, that would be overwhelming. So that's another reason why it's important to keep it short and punchy. Well, and I think, too, it comes back to like what is the core message or a story I'm trying to craft or goal I'm working towards, right?

If I can put 30 different data points down, maybe only three of them are actually relevant to this thing that we're trying to march towards as a company. It does require you to go the extra step of analyzing all the data. and actually coming up with no, like this stuff, while interesting and like we'll take note of it, it might influence some decisions down the line, these are the things that like my executive team needs to know. And separately, maybe there's something completely different that my teams that are on the ground, my customer service agents, the customer service reps need to know. And this is like what I'll share it with them. So it does require like understanding, yeah,

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Faster service, less chaos, and your team gets to focus on work that truly moves the needle. All momentum, no burnout. Visit Salesforce.com slash agent force. I don't know if there's any other like advice you have around taking like a big story and trying to condense it down to something that you can actually deliver to your audience. Someone said to me recently and reminded me that if you could take the default position that if you try to make sure everything you say solves the problem versus just being apparently valuable, then you're probably doing much better than you would if you just thought that you were relaying valuable information. You know, there's a difference between informative information, valuable information, you know, informative is interesting, good to know, glad I do. I feel there's no FOMA, right? I feel included. Valuable information is I might be able to take that and do something. But actually, I think, you know, the more you can press that information down into something very much distilled that solves a business problem, that's the difference between just listening to it and sitting up and taking attention. Because if your business problem you are trying to solve, empathize you. is completely with your audience member, then there's no reason why they wouldn't pay attention to that, right? They will listen. They will sit up and go, you're trying to solve the problem I have. Okay, I'm good now. I'm going to listen to what you have to tell me. So start your default day by saying, how many problems am I going to solve? You know, what is the business issue we're trying to tackle? Not, I'm just going to tell everybody how wonderful we are and look at all this amazing insight that we generate. Yeah, that's all good. But, you know, is it valuable? Is it relatable? I've heard authors talk about this where you start with the ending. and then you write the rest of the book, right?

So I know this is where I'm trying to get to. This is the insight. This is the goal. And then I can go backtrack and figure out how do we actually get there. Yeah, I've got a good one on that very quickly. At Santander, we did this, mortgages, right? So if you say to someone, you know, what do you need a mortgage? Oh, because I need a mortgage to be able to buy a house.

That's not actually your goal. Your goal is, and here's where you inject the emotion into the story, you want a safe space where you can raise your family or not if you don't have famie, but a roof over your head. It's your zone. It's your place. It's where you want to be. It's where you want to live. The fact that you want a mortgage is incidental and actually is the means by which you can achieve your goal. The mortgage itself is not the goal. So again, you know, just think about what you're trying. And so therefore, you can build all kinds of emotion around a mortgage product, which frankly is probably one of the most boring things in the world

to get excited about. Yeah. No, now I'm attached. Like just you telling me this story. I'm like, Oh, yeah. Suddenly it's okay to go through this entire process that's very annoying and long and boring. There's a reason you'll commit into that much financial outlay, right? And you have to tap into the emotion of it, not just fixate on the product. Yeah. Which is what I think a lot of people in product and marketing land focus on it. How can we make the mortgage attractive? Well, think about the reason why someone wants one in the first place.

Why does someone want a car? Why does someone want that shirt? Why does someone want to buy something from Amazon? There's reasons behind it. So the reason is the whole purpose behind why the customer is on the journey in the first place. Yeah, and I love you tying this back to emotions. we just had a great conversation with a gentleman who I was explaining that I think the definition of CX is just how do you make your customer feel? Like if we just keep it that most basic definition

and wrap everything else around that versus like, oh, customer experiences these like these steps in the customer life cycle and it's this thing and it's this way that they behave and this is how we guide them. It's as simple as how do they feel. So keeping that in mind with the people that are consuming your content, right? How does my employee feel whenever they're watching this thing? I think that that's really important. So it's interesting, too, because what you're sharing isn't just applicable to customer experience. I know we're talking a lot about customer experience because that's what the core of the show is and that's a product that you're providing. But all these lessons and storytelling are highly relevant for sales or marketing.

I mean, it's not just the CX teams that are getting bombarded with PowerPoint slides. It's all the teams across the org. Oh, yeah. And you see it everywhere, right? Again, it's like, what is the main tool by which I feel I can convey my story most effectively? And I just think maybe the weakest conversation in the world is, oh, just send me some slides, right? Because where's the follow-up, right?

Where's the engagement? Where's the, have you captured that spark of, you know, some sort of inspiration? Whether you're, you know, like you just said, a salesperson, you're sending those slides to a prospect or, you know, you're trying to communicate from business team to business team. These are not the methodologies by which we can do it. Something interesting I have seen started to happen.

And I think this is probably a lot to do. with AI generation as well, people are putting video content into things like CVs and online job applications, right? So I saw a job the other day that a CEO of a company was advertising and he recorded himself on his own podcast describing what he thinks the ideal candidate for his position should be. And I thought, you know, it's hardly rocket science, but it's actually a really good thing to do because now I get the sort of much better articulated version of what you expect from your ideal candidate rather than reading bullet by bullet by bullet by bullet of sort of hiring criteria, you know, ticking some off and going, oh, that's me and ticking other, crossing other

ones off and going to go, I better not apply to that thing. And you get the emotional connection too of like, oh, do I like that CEO? Do I like how I'm saying that? What's the emphasis on? Yeah, that's great. Could I work for this person? And so that's now happening rather than you're just reading a list and applying to a screen or a bit of paper. Yeah.

So, again, you know, you said earlier, how is this content being used more? I mean, millennial Gen Z generation are very much used to it already. There's a whole thing about how many seconds can I identify whether this is for me or not. And I think, you know, I've got it in my corporate slide deck. It's about eight seconds. That's about the average time it takes you to figure out, is this content relevant to me? That's not a lot of time that you've got to get an effective message across to someone. So you kind of have to have that sit up and watch me moment in the first eight seconds

or the brain's already diverted off into something else. Is that eight seconds as related to business content, like an employee consuming content? Or is this as related to like social media scrolling? Well, actually, but you see those latter, it is the latter, but those rules apply now to content within business because of the format. I mean, these are, what we would say, digital natives that are looking at this content, right? So it's a little bit like customer experience. You judge the customer experience you're about to have from the one that you just had previously. Well, if I have watched business content, I'm going to judge it based on the content I just looked at.

My lunch break on my mobile phone on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever. So I'm going to judge how this information is related to me based on that. Now, if my preferred method of consumption is short, sound-bitey, snappy, punchy stuff, then actually, in order to engage my growing, useful workforce, I'd better think, as a marketing exec or communication head or even an employee lead, how am I going to communicate business concepts to this cohort of colleagues effectively and in that way? So again, that's where this whole sort of mindset shift that I've had, from traditional ways of learning and consuming information into this sort of methodology,

has happened now. Yeah. Well, and I think it's not just, you know, younger generations. I mean, even everyone's getting affected by these algorithms, like how our brains work, our attention span, everything has changed across the board. So I think it's just the future of content consumption and creation. It's all related to this regardless of age group, but especially for the younger age group that is constantly bombarded with it. Talking a little bit more about the short attention spans, Is there any other forms of content that you have seen work well besides, like, video? Well, I think it's a split between podcast and Vodcast that works really well. And if anybody watching this is not sure what the difference is, Vodcast is a podcast, but with the video element.

And the reason why I have locked into that so much is because there's an uptick in terms of engagement and recall when you include the video element on top of the podcast element. But to answer your question, think about how consumable audio only is. I mean, again, you know, you commute on a train, and if you can't get an internet signal, that's what people are doing. You know, they're sitting there listening to audio content, stories, you know, pre-recorded podcast shows. So there's actually probably some point in the evolution of my company where I'll think about splitting the format between podcast and podcast. But initially, I really like the video element just because of the way that you can see. the natural, you said it earlier, authenticity, are happening between speakers, but I think podcasts are equally as effective. Do you think there's a place for internal podcasts? I've talked

to a few, like, Chiefs of Staff recently who are like, I would be really cool to have, like, my CEO, my CMO, my CTO, be able to be on mic on a weekly basis to connect directly with our employees, you know, boost morale, kind of explain anything that might be a little crunchy in the organization right now. You know, it's difficult, though, because I feel like you still get the PR thing coming in being like, well, we can't say that, like, so that you kind of do lose some authenticity if people, like, over-censor it. And it makes it really hard to produce that on a weekly basis. But yeah, I mean, I'm just curious if you think that's going to become more common where, like, I have my own internal content that I get access to as an employee.

Yeah. And the key word is authenticity, right? So we've all seen forward-thinking CEOs do that kind of studio production version, like where they're standing up. And it's clear, really rehearsed, you know, scripted. They're looking at it on all Tokyo or teleparticles. Yeah. And that's all been done by marketing for them. So really, they're just there to say what that says. Yeah. The authenticity element, though, I think, is the difference between a colleague buying it and not buying it. And I'd much rather have some rule, maybe, you know, the odd mistake here and their fumbled line, you know, to make it real, make it more like a little bit of a natural conversation. Inject that into your business communications. And I think people will say, do you know what, that was really, good. I'm going to tune into the next one when the reminder comes into my inbox in two weeks

time. So yes, in asking your question, I hope we're going to see a lot more people doing this. And the more you and me do things like talking about it, the more companies will sit up and go, that's a good idea. No, yeah, I think it's going to become normal. Because I actually think that younger generations really resonate with authentic communication and they won't want to work at companies where they don't feel like they trust your leadership team. It doesn't matter how big the company is, right? I also have been noticing an interesting trend. I don't know if you've been seen it as well with more like audio voice messages.

So like even in my team, I send them more voice notes of, hey, can you do X, Y, Z thing? Or a loom video, like a recording of my screen of, hey, can you go check this out for me versus like typing up the really long manifest email with all the tasks I need done. And like I love getting that stuff because I feel so much more connected to my coworkers, especially we're a remote team. But yeah, have you seen that increase? I mean, I work in very small teams. So I don't know how this is growing or changing with like enterprise teams. I think you could probably draw up a really nice PowerPoint slide, I'm kidding, that would say optimal channels of communication for different cohorts and populations based on favored method

of communication. But that example of quick voice note by WhatsApp, say, for example, right, is really good for, imagine you're a team manager department head and you want to reach out to your entire team and you've got a WhatsApp group set up, you can do that really, really easily in a 30 second voice note or, you know, maybe with a graphic attached or something like that just to embellish the point that you're trying to make. But what an effective way, and I mean, well, 10, 15 years ago, we were still using SMS. Who uses SMS now? Nobody does it. Delete the app off my phone now. I don't even have it. So, yeah, it's those sorts of formats where it's digital first, convenience.

Now the audio can be transcribed. So, you know, you have all of that sort of power that sits behind it as well. So, yeah, I just think alternative, think differently in terms of how you want to communicate. Think punchy, think quick, think effective, and think accessible, natural, authentic. You know, you're going to sound much more authentic if you communicate in business via those sorts of channels. And I think people, you mentioned this earlier on our conversation, but people are going to be more. more, they're going to be starving for this. As AI content continues to increase, like, I don't even know if that's you on screen.

Like, I don't know, right? Yeah, it is me. Right. You know, so, but it could be, you know, if I get that WhatsApp message, I'm like, oh, this is definitely my boss and this is how she speaks. And I hear her dog barking in the background and her kid, like, over here crying. Like, I feel like you're definitely a human. And, yeah, I just think there's going to be a place for more and more content like that

that can't be copied or falsified. and people are just going to love that and crave that and eat that up and keep searching for it. Well, I can remember, wasn't there a video a few years back of some guy on a business call and his kid comes into the room as he's on the business call because their daycare didn't stop the kid coming into the room. And we all at the time went, but now, I mean, they are even, I've been in meetings where my kids come and sit on my lap while we're talking in business

meetings. So the cultural shift in terms of the acceptance of the way that we've done. doing this now. I mean, COVID's led to a lot of this, right? We've had to think differently. And maybe this was a spark behind a lot of this. You know, we've had to think differently about how we're going to get key information across to people when we're not in the same room. Maybe that's a big reason for the explosion in PowerPoint that we've seen in the past few years. You know, you can exchange the file. But, you know, we've got teams, video, Riverside, Microsoft, all this stuff that we've got that we can use. And that's the most effective format. So, yeah,

I mean, the whole culture behind this has changed in recent years, too. Yeah, yeah. And I think, too, being able to have a tool that you have in place to communicate change quickly because, you know, with AI, with new technologies constantly coming in, it's not like I can just teach my team member and then a year later teach them again and then a year later teach them again. It's like, no, every month we're going to need to touch base. And every month, we might have a new metric we're looking at and we're going to have

a new tool that we're implementing. So having these systems in place where you can have that kind of. like easy access to communication that people trust, people like, people maybe like laugh at and kind of look forward to and maybe talk to their co-workers like, hey, did you see CEO XYZ like just sent over this message? I think it's going to become even more important. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to get into metrics a little bit now that I do see that up slightly. We talked about this myth busting that you've been doing, right? around myth busting NPS. So tell me, how are you myth busting NPS? Oh, right. This is one of my

favorites at the moment. So I'm actually flying to South Africa in about a week's time because I'm doing a keynote at the biggest customer experience event there called CEN Africa. And the reason I'm going is because my keynote's all around CX myths. And so again, right? So how do you do effective, punchy business messaging in the 20 minute keynote that I've got? So I thought, well, I'm a big fan of Bustin CX myths, and the definition of that for me is, you know, there's a lot of information out there in the CX marketplace. And the reason for that is because we've all come to this industry from different backgrounds, so we've all got a different preconceived ideas.

There's no real moderation or policing of the industry as such. You know, we've got freedom of speech so you can say what you like. But the problem is a lot of mistruths, you know, well-intentioned. You know, I'm not implying there's sort of some negativity going on, you know, lying bad, toxic current going on here. There's a lot of misinformation which is leading to problems. And my favourite at the moment is on net promoter score and how the whole thing I do is do you agree with this statement, net promoter score is a measure of loyalty. So I'll ask people, you know, do you think that's the case? A lot of people say, well, yeah, you know, cautiously,

because they think I'm going to sort of. Is it a true question? Yep. That's a very short version of this is it can't be a measure of loyalty because it's not actually a measure of anything. Net promoter score, when you look at the wording of the question, says, how likely will you be to recommend this company? Likely, will you be? That's future tense. So therefore, you can't measure something that hasn't happened because you're not measuring whether the customer has recommended your organisation. You're asking them if they like you to. So that's why Fred Reichel switched this whole thing to earn Gross Concept a couple years ago. And we've seen a lot in the the industry about that.

But I just think that's the type of thing that you can use to educate within an organization and say, just be aware what you're doing with net promoter. It doesn't actually track a performance of any kind because the person that told you what their score was is just saying, yeah, I'm likely to go on and recommend. It doesn't mean they will. Doesn't mean they did. And it probably isn't likely that they did. They're just telling you they like your service enough that they would if someone asked

them or they had the opportunity to tell someone. So actually, you can bust the whole MPS thing wide open, not to dismiss it at all and say stop measuring it, but to say know what it is for. It's a predictor. So don't put it in your nice balance scorecard of revenue, churn, customer retention, employee satisfaction. Those are all hard measures. You've asked or you've got data on that stuff.

NPS doesn't give you data on something that has happened because it hasn't happened yet. So just be aware of how you frame. Why measure it? Why measure it? Yeah, right. And I'm not, you know, one of these people that beats up NPS all day long and says, you know, I've been doing NPS 20 years in companies, and I still think there's some really great stuff you can get out of it.

What I'm just trying to say is handle with caution. Yeah. So for those companies that are paying bonus on it, rewarding and remunerating people, just be aware that you're bonusing and paying and compensating based on a measure of something that hasn't happened. So just have a think about that, you know, when you leave the office tonight

and are you going to come back and see it the same way tomorrow? That's kind of the thing I do. If not NPS, then what metrics are you looking at? So I'd be loath to say go look at customer satisfaction again because I did a whole CSAT RIP thing a few years ago. That was based on the fact that CSAT, whilst of a similar nature, is a little bit more reliant on how the person feels

and that's what it's measuring. It's not asking whether someone will do something, right? Saying, are you satisfied or you're not? The problem is with CSAT, it flatlines at 70 to 80% in every report you've seen. It never moves and it's boring. We prefer NPS, don't we, right? Because every so often you'll get this spike. Oh, I thought the service was awful.

And get this emotion. Yeah. Well, then you get some people saying, I've delighted it. And you hold that up as best practice. So you get a lot more emotion in that promoters. You can see why people are more attracted to it. I really think if you want to measure something which is meaningful and you can then go do something with it, then things like effort and ease work really well because you're asking,

you know, customer, did you have to put a lot of effort in to get out of our service today, what you were hoping to get out of it? And people say, yeah, I did actually. But they can say, I did actually, but you know what? It didn't faze me that much. I'm cool. I'm fine with it. I'm still happy.

Now, that's a very different conversation than just thinking that someone's either going to promote your brand because they put nine or ten, or are going to walk away and smash your brand because they put between zero and six. You've got a much more nuanced question going on with things like ease and effort. I still don't see them around as much. I've read a few industry benchmark reports which do things like, you know, what is your main corporate KPI or metric for, you know, 80, 90 percent of companies are using net promoter with a bit of CSAT by the side.

And then these effort and ease questions seem to be almost incidental in the mix. So I do think that needs to be, you know, relooked at somehow. So you're kind of advising other folks like, hey, what if we flip this a little bit and looked at these other questions instead of NPS and CSAT. Yeah, I would go harder on key drivers with any survey or any questionnaire, right? If NPS does a thing, if it performs as it does, and I've got it, and I'm lucky enough to get it at high volume, and I'm talking thousands, hundreds of thousands of responses, not tens or hundreds, because it's still volatile at those levels.

If you're lucky enough to get those sorts of volumes, then go, the first thing I would want to know is why, why is my NPS behaving that way? Yes, it's a future predictor, so I want to know, oh, okay, if this is what my customers are telling me they're going to go and do, why are they doing it? So I go back to my key drivers. So I'd spend much more time designing my research around the value of the key drivers to my organization. And I'd probably think about the different personas in my company that I want to take this data to to help them improve the area of the business. So that's how I design my research around them. We all expect fast service now.

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Learn more at Salesforce.com slash Agent Force. You mentioned surveys, and I would like to talk more about surveys because I've talked to a few folks about this and I've gotten mixed opinions. Like, I think there might be a death to the survey, like if I'm going to go out there and say the clickbait thing. Because I mean, there's so many new tools now. Like with AI, I just can't imagine that we're not going to know how a customer is feeling in real time versus them having to tell me after the fact. And like, I don't even throw those things out anymore. So, yeah, what do you think about surveys in the future? I think I'm on that train too.

For all the reasons that you've said, again, there's data out there which says that when you survey, you're getting a response from 5% of your population, your customer base, if you're lucky, three to 5% single digit. And what you're doing in, you know, research speak, is you're taking representative sample of what the whole of the customer base is really thinking. But that isn't really very fair when you think of it ethnographically, because what about the outliers who don't fit into that bucket? You're not really listening to customer stories.

You're just taking a sample and saying, so this is what we're going to do. You're making business decisions off 3% of your customer base. And I would say it's really biased. Don't you think it's really biased? I either had like a great experience and I'm like happy to share about it or I had a terrible experience and I want you to know. But those people that had the middle lane and they were just busy and they didn't want

to fill out the form, like you don't ever hear from them. Yeah, you're right. we could probably all think of situations where our companies change something that we actually quite liked. And when the PRs come out about it, they'll say something like, based on customer feedback, and I'm sitting there reading it thinking, whose feedback? I didn't give you that feedback. I like to see how it was.

Move the bottom back to where it was. Change the color of the thing. So, you know, that happens. So I'm already working with companies and talking to companies who are doing stuff like scraping and consuming unsolicited information, so non-surveillance. based data to aggregate that into feedback that you can then convert into a story internally. Wouldn't that equally, if not more, be powerful than the structured survey data you're getting? Because a structured survey is staged, right?

It's an invite that's been sent to someone. Who knows if it's a B2B scenario, the respondent may have already been warmed up to give in a good response by the account exec, right? Who knows? So actually, if you're scraping unsolicited information, you know, online reviews, unstructured data, agent notes, voice transcriptions, you name it. It's all out there on the internet and, you know, in the online world. You can compile that, leverage AI analytics actually to convert that into meaningful insights

within businesses. So, short version of all of this is the traditional survey still has a place in formal and structured research and all companies think they need one and a CX platform on which to do their surveys report and present a dashboard. So it's a little bit like PowerPoint world all over again in a digital format, right? Everybody's got one of these things. But again, three to five percent of the entire population probably access that dashboard and review the information. So who's it really for? No, I mean, I totally agree. And I want to go down this rabbit hole a little bit deeper with you on AI. So like as we get into more AI agents, more AI tools, more AI analysis, more like real-time

customer sentiment. What are you excited about in the AI world? And what are you like the opposite end where you're like, this is just overhyped and unnecessary? Okay, I'll start with the overhight. So I can end on a positive, right? I like it. Thank you for flipping that. It's all right. See, I'll have learned some things in my storytelling. So the overhite element is if you ask someone today, and I've seen this happen, you know, what's AI going to be doing for us in a year's time? Apparently, AI is going to be running everything and transferring transforming the world. It's going to transform agent experience, will be AI agentic fully by that. Well, those questions were asked a year ago and those were the answers given and we're not

there yet. So I think I'm starting to see, and I'm glad I am because I am part of this group, quite a bit of resistance to the key messaging around how AI is going to transform service because I think there's a whole, isn't there a choice as a consumer that you might want about whether you're served by AI or served by human. I only think you'll care if the standard of the service that you receive is noticeably different enough between the two. But I still think that's an important moral question that nobody seems to really started tackling or addressing yet.

Flipping that, what I am excited about with AI is how we can, and this is a big problem for companies, right? You don't need more data. You are swimming in data. Every company has got data coming out of their parts of their body, I won't mention. But the point is, is that then why do you need more? Why do you need another platform to visualize it, another survey to get more? It's almost having like ongoing feedback surveys is nonsense because have you had a chance

to react to the stuff you saw before? Probably not, right? So what I'm excited about is, I know there's a whole carbon footprint issue around this, but if AI can help consume that colossal amount of information, and distilled down for us in a way that it would be impossible for humans or other types of analytical platforms to do, then that would be really valuable. And that's why the unstructured noise around customer feedback becomes the natural future replacement for your traditional market research customer feedback survey.

So I'm excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think the data problem is one that literally everyone that's come on the pod has talked about where it's like we've got a lot, we've got lots of data just sitting around. waiting to be tapped into. I mean, I've even, you know, don't want to name any, any brands here, but I was talking to someone who was sharing that they've got like a, you know, a place where customer leaves feedback and it goes off to like a notion board. And then it gets promptly

forgotten about. And then the customer, another customer leaves the same exact feedback. And then it goes up to the notion board. And like, it just is this endless cycle where it's like, there's not, you're not taking the time to actually take an in and ingest, like, okay, what do we change? How do we, how do we do this? So, you know, there is a lot around, you know, we've got all this data. Even if we have AI helping us interpret it, we still have to take action. So we still have to create systems in place in the company and like a culture that values action and not just keeps, doesn't just keep getting distracted with more data and insights. So do you have any advice for teams that are like trying to actually create a system where they can execute on these

things. I mean, I've heard from people before, like, just having more meetings about it. Maybe it's more video, Vodcast. Like, what is your solution for that problem where stuff just sits there? Vodcast is a way of communicating, right? Effectively. But somebody asked me a similar question when I was doing a panel event. I was doing a Forrester event about a month ago. And someone said, you know, how would you change CX today? And I think I said something like, well, I would probably stop surveying right now, just stop surveying. Take a break. Listening is important, but the point is, to what you just said, Lacey, how can you even get on top of everything that you've already consumed to start executing change within your organisation?

And look at job descriptions to see ex-professionals these days. The companies want everything. You know, it's customer success, contact centre management and oversight, Marcon's, customer experience, expertise, storytelling, board level engagement. It's about 10 different jobs in one, and they want to pay you about $50K dollars a year for it. You know, it doesn't make sense. So again, I'll go back to my previous question. AI is exciting because it might help the CX professional suddenly bundle all of this colossal amount of volume

into some actionable stuff. But making it actionable is the hard part. So how do I get to my frontline employee and help them understand that all those surveys that we just got are actually telling me something about how you should now do your job with the customer? And this is why it becomes a people job. You know, some people are very, very protective about their roles.

You know, they've been doing it a few years. You know, they came into their job and the system was bust and they built a whole new one and now it's much better. And then they got this person coming along from customer experience saying, that's not what our customers are telling us. You need to change your process. People are super protective. Yeah. So you have to win their trust and find a way of conveying that information into a way that's relatable to them. And, you know, you want to work with them.

You're not telling them what to do. And you're not trying to get them to change something arbitrarily. You're doing this for a reason. So, you know, you have to go to cause, benefit, outcome, reason why we're doing it. And then I think you win hearts and minds. And doing that, again, via video, via audio message, just in person, like having that conversation, so much gets lost in translation with email. My husband works for a large internet company.

And it's insane where he's sending something that's, like, friendly and nice, but the other person's interpreting it. completely the opposite, right? And then, and then it comes back. And then he's interpreting it in his own way. And I'm like, man, if you guys had just literally got on a phone call or like, you sent a video of explaining it and he saw your face and your demeanor, like, this wouldn't be an issue at all. So like, as we continue to like have more of this remote work, just let's figure out ways to effectively communicate that actually make us feel human and not just these like our own human robots across the, across the ocean, you know, emailing each other, trying to figure out what's going on.

Very much. I always laugh at the phrase, the tone of my email. You know, the tone is an audio thing. Exactly. Yeah. There's no. So how can there be a tone in an email? And you, you misinterpret, don't you?

You read written word. I always think it's funny when someone sends me a text message or WhatsApp in capital letters. That means they're shouting. I know. I know. And I, you know, I grew up with like the age of emojis. So I'm like, if there's no emoji attached to something, how do I know how? you feel. I don't know. Are you angry? Are you happy? Are you laughing? I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. It's funny. It's funny. Yeah. Well, so from a team perspective as well, I wanted to get into it like incentives a little bit because we talked about how some oftentimes like your team's incentives that are directly incentivized to have a great NPS score or like survey results. Like I literally have been told by customer service reps like, please leave me a good survey so that my boss knows I did well. Right. Like it's directly telling me. that. So what's the future of incentives that actually makes sense from like a business perspective? So do you mean incentives for the employee or an incentive for the respondent in the example that you just gave? For the employee. Like from the actual, yeah, the business to

the team that's executing on these things. Yeah. Well, interestingly, the example you just gave is what would you call that? Maybe a culture of fear, right? In the I need a good score so that I either just pass muster, right, or that I am not reprimanded in my next performance review, because if I got a bad score, then that's exactly what's going to happen. And, of course, you know, some cultures, sad to say, even still fixate on the negative stuff rather than the positive stuff. Oh, for sure. To incentivise the employee to know that customer experience is there because it's a business

tool, I think is the key message to convey. is this whole thing about why do they think we're surveying in the first place, right? The frontline agent might think we're surveying in the first place because it's a thing the company does and we're told to do it and you've got to do it and if you don't do it, you're in trouble. That whole culture needs to be thrown out of the window. So again, right, you could do a Vodcast in three minutes to frontline employees that says here's why we survey our customers and why we want you to be part of that process.

we really want you to get first-hand experience of what your service feels like to the customer you're providing it to. That's going to come with emotion. That's going to come with genuine feedback, authenticity, all that really good stuff. Secondly, that's vital business intelligence for our company. So once you've asked the customer to complete that survey, and they have, our customer experience team, whoever it is, consume that information in, analyze it, and provide information out to the company as to the things that we need to do to change. So you on the front line are our first port of call to helping our customer give our company that feedback. And we can't achieve our strategic objectives until you help us get there.

Right. Now, the culture of everything that I just said, and I made that up, is a complete spin in 180 format from ask a survey because if you don't, you'll be reprimanded and you'll be in trouble. That whole culture is not why we do this. We're doing this, hopefully, for the reasons like I just gave you an example of. So that's where I'd take it, if that were me in that company running that process. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm bought in. Like, I would sign up for your company right there. Like, the way that you explained all that, I was like, I'm emotionally invested. Well, Ben, this has been fantastic. Is there any, like, last piece of advice or any, just take what you want to leave our audience with before we close out?

Well, look, I'm on this vibe at the moment. I'd say, you know, think about your business messaging. How can you compact what you're trying to say into something that's memorable? Relatable and actionable. Maybe they're the three keywords, right? Memorable, relatable, actionable. You've got to remember it. You've got to know what it means to you. And you've got to be able to do something about it.

Otherwise, that's just noise, right? And there's plenty of noise in companies today. And if you need someone that can help you deliver that in Vodcast format, then you know where I am. Awesome. And where can people find you? Is LinkedIn the best place to check you down? Yeah. LinkedIn.

I've got a website now, CX-alive. com. So you can come visit there. And yeah, so just get in touch and we'll see where things take us. Awesome. All right. And for everyone listening, we're going to drop those links in the show notes. You can just click on through and check out Ben and spam them with all your questions.

Spammy. Awesome. Ben, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. No problem. Really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, Lacey.