We are here at Medallia Experience at the Wynn in Las Vegas and seeing some examples of amazing customer experience and employee experience and the latest updates from Medallia.
Companies often separate Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) into different silos, but what if the real key to competitiveness and long-term success is in fusing the two together? How can organizations integrate CX and EX to create better customer interactions, drive employee engagement, and unlock real business value?
Joining me today is Sasha Fard, Country Lead for Customer Experience Management at Capital One.
Resources
Capital One: https://www.capitalone.com
Medallia: https://www.medallia.com
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom:
We are here at Medallia Experience at the Wynn in Las Vegas and seeing some examples of amazing customer experience and employee experience and the latest updates from Medallia. Companies often separate customer experience and employee experience into different silos, but what if the real key to competitiveness and long-term success is infusing the two together? How can organizations integrate CX and EX to create better customer interactions, drive employee engagement, and unlock real business value? Joining me today is Sasha Fard, Country Lead for Customer Experience Management at Capital One. Sasha, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Greg. Great to be here. Yeah, looking forward to this. And yeah, always love to be able to connect in person at these events. So I’m looking forward to talking here. Why don’t we, before we jump in, why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about your background and your role at Capital One? Sure. It sounds good.
Sasha Fard: I’m a Certified Customer Experience Professional, or CCXP. I’ve been in the CX and EX space for more than 10 years now. I actually started in market research working at a boutique consulting company where I managed end-to-end research products, syndicated studies. Then I moved over to CX consulting where I managed VOC programs for a top 10 North American bank. And then I said, you know, I really want to get involved with the brand side and really build the brand myself. So I moved over to Capital One a few years ago. In my current role, I lead a cross-functional team to measure and improve customer experience, both overall and across all key touch points and journeys. So I work with digital channels teams, contact centers, products, strategy, marketing, really across the board across Canada. I had a lot of success so far. So a few months ago, we actually won the Global CXPA Impact Award. Thank you very much. Yeah, this was for initiative that improved customer experience and employee experience across our global call centers. So really looking forward to sharing some of the insights this week with folks and also learning from other leaders as well.
Greg Kihlstrom: Nice, nice. Well, yeah, you are definitely the person to talk about this topic then. So let’s dive in here and talk about why customer experience and employee experience should be fused, not separated. So many businesses, as I mentioned at the top of the show, they tend to focus on customer experience or EX kind of in isolation. And why do you think it’s critical to fuse these?
Sasha Fard: I think that both of them, they’re very interconnected, right? So engaged employees create better customer experience that lead to better business outcomes. If employees feel that they’re feeling supported and heard, they’re just more likely to be motivated and take ownership over their work. So, being in CX or in EX, a case study that we always hear about is Ritz-Carlton, where they really empower their employees. They give them a $2,000 budget to rescue a guest experience. And so when a customer has an issue, the employee doesn’t have to go to their manager and get pre-approval. They can just solve this problem on the spot and they’re empowered to do so. So that’s like a case study that we always hear, but it doesn’t even have to be as grand as that on such a big scale. It could be as simple as just listening to employees and just taking action on their feedback. So whether that’s helping the employee to improve and optimize a CX process that they own and manage, whether it’s giving them the right tools, whether giving them the right training, just really listening to them and taking action on their feedback. And this isn’t such grand scale or so expensive. The incremental cost is not that great where the investment really pays dividends in terms of employee retention as well as customer loyalty. So they’re very connected together.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I mean, and it’s that I think it’s that agency that, you know, when employees are given that, you know, it can be motivating. And then, you know, to your point, it’s it sounds really straightforward. And I’m sure anyone listening like it makes sense to them. And yet, you know, it’s still kind of It’s often siloed still in organizations. But, you know, in addition to all the things that you mentioned, how do you look at this integration of, you know, the brand, whether it’s external brand or internal brand and culture as a competitive advantage? Sure.
Sasha Fard: So brand is essentially like what the customer, what the company promises to the customer. really intentional, really well thought out, and it’s intended to really say, hey, this is how we’re different from our competitors. So one example that I like to think about is Costco, right? You know, everyone loves Costco because they’re like, hey, I get access to all these high-quality products at really low prices, right? And that works for a lot of people. And then other people say, well, I don’t really like the warehouse-style shopping experience. I want some frills. I’m kind of talking about myself here. frills in the shopping experience. And so, which is fine, but that’s not what Costco promises to its customers, right? So if they make changes to try to appeal to folks like me, then it just wouldn’t feel really authentic to the customer as well. And I think authenticity is key, especially right now. I think it’s becoming more and more important to be authentic. especially with the Gen Z generation, authenticity is very important for them. So employees really want to work for a company where they really, you know, they believe in the brand, they trust the brand, and they also, they want to be proud of the brand that they’re working for. So, you know, like Tesla has been in the news a lot recently, and I was thinking about them, and their whole thing is about accelerating, you know, the transition to sustainable energy. If they were to like make a switch and say, now we’re going to go into the oil business and build all these gas guzzling cars, then employees are going to be a little confused. They won’t feel as connected to the company and they might leave. So, yeah, I think it’s really important to make sure that the brand and culture are aligned and doing so on a consistent basis to create that advantage.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and I mean, another thing you’re touching on is the brand. Certainly, as consumers, we experience brands all the time in advertising and everything. But it kind of starts within, right? It’s like you create the brand, the employees ideally align with it because it aligns with their values and it’s consistent and all those things. And then that kind of propagates out into the world as something that is either consistent or not, to your other point of if it’s not consistent, Not only the employees don’t know what to say to the customers, but customers don’t know what they’re buying, right? Exactly, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about some best practices then. So again, I think the concept of tying CX and EX together probably makes a lot of sense, but in practice, any large organization especially, there’s lots of existing silos and hierarchical structures or whatever. So let’s talk a little bit about what works and maybe what doesn’t work. What are some of the biggest mistakes that companies make when they’re trying to integrate CX and EX?
Sasha Fard: Sure. I think just based on my experience, one of the biggest mistakes is focusing too much on metrics. I think metrics are important, but really the focus should be on the behaviors. So let’s say that The company is looking to increase customer satisfaction. And then they, sometimes they focus too much on that metric, the customer satisfaction score. But it really should be about, hey, what are those behaviors that drive the customer satisfaction? So when we’re looking to, you know, we’re focusing on improving customer satisfaction in our contact center, We actually didn’t even have CSAT in our Asian scorecard because we didn’t want them to think about CSAT and just trying to focus on this one score. Then there’s opportunity for them to say, well, this is so important, I might try to game it or manipulate it, which does happen, and just really didn’t want to focus on that. You see this with car dealerships a lot as well. They’re just focused so much on the score. So, I think best practice is really to focus on the behavior, see what impacts customer satisfaction, whether it’s, you know, like being knowledgeable as a frontline agent, whether it’s, you know, having good active listening skills, and then just really just focusing on those behaviors. I think another mistake is obviously not acting on the insights. So very similar to CX, if you don’t respond to feedback, then employees are going to not feel engaged. They might push back a little bit. Then they might not participate in future waves as well. So I think it’s better to not even ask for feedback than ask for feedback and not do anything with it. Because then employees will say, well, It would just impact their trust. They might not feel like the ask is being authentic. And then they would also think that, hey, if they’re not listening to me and taking action on my feedback, then they’re probably doing the same with customers. So this company might not be that interested in EX or CX. So not acting on the feedback is another one. And I also like to really make sure that employees and associates are involved in the solutioning as well, and really making sure that they’re involved in what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it so that it works for them, right? So by having them engaged in the solutioning, they feel a sense of ownership. They’re more motivated to take action on it. So I really like to make sure that all the frontline folks, all the associates are engaged. And then once we launch a new initiative, just constantly get their feedback as well. Like after, let’s say we pilot something, hey, how did it go? What could we do to make it better? And that really shows the employees that, hey, we’re here to listen, and then we’re here to really help them be engaged and empowered to deliver a great customer experience. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Greg Kihlstrom: And so, you know, just to A lot of great insights there, and some of it speaks to just the value of giving the employees agency to talk about giving them involvement in the solutions. In other words, it’s important to ask for feedback. It’s definitely important to listen, as you said, as well, but also to actually involve them as co-creators in making this better. The other thing I want to briefly touch back on, you know, using that single like measurement score, I totally agree with your thoughts there on, I think it can be, it can, best case, I think it can help, it can prevent people from looking holistically about all of the things that go into making great experience. Do you think that’s especially important when you’re kind of starting out on that journey too of like focusing on a single score kind of, it doesn’t let you look at all of the potential aspects? Or is that something that just it’s kind of prevalent throughout?
Sasha Fard: I think it’s best not to focus on any single thing, like a single score or a single source. So when we look at customer experience for, you know, let’s say a particular touchpoint, You know, we look at, everyone should have some sense of ownership for a particular metric or a score. So, someone is responsible for the overall experience, right? So, they will be looking and monitoring that particular metric. Someone else is focused on, you know, an aspect of that customer experience. So, we’re not going to ask them to, hey, focus on this score or monitor the score, see what folks are saying. But really focus on those areas where you can directly control and influence. I think part of the best way to get folks more engaged with CX and EX is how can I actually influence the feedback and the scores that we’re looking at just so I feel like I can actually have ownership over it as well. ideal to look at multiple scores and metrics and then also from different sources. So for example, we look at perception from surveys, but then we also do call listening. We look at that and see what the sentiment is on those calls. We look at like social media. There’s just so many different ways to listen, especially with the explosion of technology in the last 10 years.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, definitely. So, well, that’s a great segue to the next thing. So, you know, we’re here at Medallia Experience. Capital One’s a Medallia customer. What’s the role of platform and, you know, software? Obviously, there’s a huge people component, but, you know, maybe let’s talk a little bit about what’s the role of software and platforms in enabling success?
Sasha Fard: Sure. I think technology platforms has an important role to collect feedback and then also report feedback across the organization. So there’s, you know, we use the platforms to just collect data from a wide variety of sources. So we do like email surveys, but you could also do SMS text, there’s digital intercepts. There’s just so many different ways to collect data. And it really depends on what works for your customers and employees to meet them where they are, right? So if you just focus on one channel, that might not be getting the wide coverage of feedback that you want. So using multiple channels is usually the recommended option. And then in terms of reporting, so you can report the data across the organization with user-based dashboards. I think that’s the really the best way to share feedback is having user-based roles. So let’s say a contact center leader has their own dashboard. The digital channel leaders has their own dashboard that really shows their relevant metrics and so on. So I think technology plays a critical role. And like I mentioned, technology has exploded in the last 10 years. I think 15 years ago, the best way that we collected data was through telephone data collection, which was very expensive. And now it’s just so easily accessible, so many different ways to collect, and then also report and democratize access to data. But I think the key point is, as you mentioned early on, that technology is just a component to the overall strategy and it’s really just about people and driving change and making sure the organization is taking action. I think it’s best not to get too hung up on the technology and making sure like, hey, I got the pretty dashboard and everything looks so nice and everyone’s going to look at it and say like, I love the colors on the dashboard. So I think it’s important to use it the way it’s intended, but then also focus on the bigger picture, which is driving change and improving CX and EX.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and then along those lines, continuous improvement certainly, you know, it’s one thing to get it, you know, kind of get it set up and then feel like things are going well. But like, how do you ensure that continuous improvement is in place rather than treating this as a like one-time initiative or something?
Sasha Fard: Right. I think that is such a key question because CX and EX is not an ad hoc initiative. It’s essentially a system. And it’s a system that needs to be embedded across the organization. So it is a big commitment from companies to agree to accept that. And I think the best way to make sure it’s sustainable is to be like a relationship a builder and manager and just really engage with folks and make sure that you’re reinforcing the value, reinforcing the benefits, sharing wins, celebrating results. I mentioned before we won the CXPA award, so we really made it a point to share that broadly across the organization. We had it in our monitors, we had a cake, we had parties, it was in our town hall sessions and so on. The idea was to really reinforce the benefits of the work that we’re doing because CXCX is not, it’s relatively new discipline, right? It hasn’t been around for a hundred years, like finance or accounting. So people are still kind of getting used to it, still trying to understand the benefits. So, you know, sharing wins, sharing results, reinforcing the benefits is key, especially since, you know, turnover does happen. So those champions that you had that, you know, you got kicked off the ground, they might leave or they might switch and go to another role. So you always need to continuously sell, you know, the new person coming in and so on. So I think there’s kind of a selling component to it as well. And then another key best practice is to make sure folks have certain targets as well so that they’re keeping focused in the long term. So having targets for, you know, both EX and CX and not really essentially to be like punitive targets where you must meet But really just to make sure someone is keeping an eye on this for sustaining. So, for example, our agents, our frontline agents, one of the key drivers of CX is to make sure that they’re knowledgeable. the knowledge management team who’s putting together all those knowledge articles and making sure that they’re knowledgeable, we want them to monitor the feedback, make sure that it’s still useful for them on an ongoing basis, make tweaks or not. So I think having targets in place really helps keep the focus and continue sustainability as one of the strategies.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, as we wrap up here, two last questions for you here. I know we’re just kind of starting the event here at Medallia Experience, but what’s a highlight so far, or what’s something you’re looking forward to most here?
Sasha Fard: So, what I’m looking forward to most is, since this is kind of like day one, is to… It is like hour two of the event, so maybe not a highlight yet, right? But I’m just really excited to be here. I’m looking at the lineup for today and tomorrow. I’m just really excited to, you know, learn from the leaders, learn from as well as the the Medallia folks and try to see, you know, what are some of the best practices and leveraging some of the tools and technology. Yeah, I’m just really excited to just learn from from leaders and then also, you know, share some of my insights and And I love the theme, I would say, or I’ve seen a lot of sessions about the connection between EX and CX and making sure the frontline folks are engaged. So I think it’s a great opportunity just to learn from other folks and see what other folks are doing and try to use it in my practice as well. Love it, love it.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, one last question for you. I like to ask to everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Sasha Fard: Staying agile is just really critical. And for me, it’s about continuous learning. I’d never call myself an expert because I feel like if I did, then I would just relax and I would just sit on the couch and say, hey, I’m an expert. I don’t need to learn anything new. So I’m always looking to learn new skills and learn new ways of doing things. And so one of the things that I learned a few years ago was, you know, being in this role, I really thought, you know, hey, to be successful, we need to be really great at VOC and VOE insights and generating actionable insights, you know, and being like that thought leader. That’s what’s going to be help you be successful. And then what I realized, especially coming into the brand side from consulting, I realized that’s more table stakes, really. That’s not what’s going to really get you to where you need to be. You really need to be a good change manager, change agent, and focus on getting buy-in from folks, focus on collaboration with other people, and just having everyone move into the same direction. Which is not easy, especially if you work at a large organization and there’s so many different players involved You know that that’s a challenge there. So you need to have like good skills to do that So I you know, I decided to learn more about change management a few years ago. Another key learning was problem-solving, you know, like we are problem solvers essentially and And so we need to have a really good tool in order to solve problems. And I felt I needed to add to my toolkit for that. When we have an insight, how to attack that problem, how to understand the problem. I think a lot of people don’t even understand what the problem is before they start solving the problem. So I felt like I needed a strong tool to do that. So I got my Lean Management Certificate. So there’s just a couple examples of always keep learning, keep staying on top of things, and just be better.
