Alex Mead takes on CX and shares his philosophy on customer service experience

Alex Mead – Customer Service Experience

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[00:00:00] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another week of Be Customer Led. I have a very, very special guest, and I think a lot of folks, um, uh, in the CX world are gonna know who, uh, who have gotten the show today. Alex Mead is executive director. Of customer service experience. Now we can’t tell you the name of the company, super secret stuff.

[00:00:25] If you’re in the U S at CIA FBI level, if you’re in London, maybe it’s [00:00:30] level. I don’t know how many levels that goes up, but anyway, it could be seven or Mia. Um, but Alex and I have a mutual passion in that. Don’t appreciate all of this sort of theoretical stuff out there on, on the blogosphere about customer experience.

[00:00:48] We’re going to get a little deeper into his approach, what he’s been doing, what he’s up to, uh, Alex, thanks so much for calling the show. I’m really excited to have you

[00:00:55] Alex Mead: on you’re welcome. I like pretty much everything you write as well. So this good to be. [00:01:00] I’d like to debate with you, but we have a mutual.

[00:01:03] No, no, no.

[00:01:06] Bill Staikos: We’re going to have a fun time today. So, um, one of the, you know what I ask every guest, Alex, just, you know, tell us about your journey. Uh, maybe some of the differentiating factors that helped you achieve your role where you are today. Cause you’re in the middle east or you’re a startup, it’s a bank, a lot of funding behind it.

[00:01:23] Obviously again, we can’t name the company. That’ll that’ll be coming out soon. Um, but how did you get that customer bug? Like [00:01:30] where did that.

[00:01:31] Well,

[00:01:31] Alex Mead: it all started with a, an accreditation joke. Sorry. It did not. So I started, um, I started university at south Hampton. Uh, when it was may, uh, where my kids would say, when Don Donna says walked the earth, that sort of time period, I had a degree in it and I had an offer to be a, uh, a graduate in a big it company.

[00:01:55] But I went to a thing called spring break in Fort Lauderdale. [00:02:00] Uh, Many years ago and I’m English and damn I was attractive then in my mind, in my mind, anyway,

[00:02:08] Bill Staikos: you’re still our man. We’re on video people.

[00:02:11] Alex Mead: Oh my God. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I had an amazing time, but my friends was, they were doing what young kids should be doing at that age.

[00:02:18] I met a young lady day, one that I fell in love with and held her hands and walked along the beach for two weeks instead of maximizing the opportunity. And I came back to the UK. How does it offer? [00:02:30] And I realized I’m not really into technology, I’m into what technology facilitates. And so, um, I said to my world air force father, um, okay.

[00:02:40] I don’t really want to start that career. I’ll take a year out a gap year. And, um, he was very Royal air force, very disciplines. Um, but my suffice, he supported me. So I went to Canada and I was selling sports socks, and all sorts of junk minus 20 minus 10 windshield factor, sort of autumn Hamilton, Ontario.

[00:02:58] And then I came across an [00:03:00] Asian Canadian. I wouldn’t give my whole life or we’ll be here, the whole podcast, but this Asian Canadian was selling software on floppy disks, uh, that configured. And I went business to business. All sorts of small shops, even a small hairdresser needs to print stuff and they were buying it.

[00:03:16] They were saying, no, they’re saying, can you come back in three weeks that they were saying, do you have any printer inquests your hair? Cause it’s, we don’t know, really brings that. And I wrote all this stuff down a little book, and I got back after three months of, um, being the best salesman. Cause my English accent, to be [00:03:30] honest, but also, um, I thought like, let me see what I can make of this data.

[00:03:33] And this was before the invention of the term CRM and I put it into buckets and I, I asked the question. And types of businesses seem to react one way others. And other way, is there something that groups, companies together? Yes, Alex, the tax classification code. So, ah, can I have, uh, a list of all the companies in these four tax classification codes because they seem to be our best customers?

[00:03:55] Sure. There was a list of 40,000 given to me. I faxed them. This was [00:04:00] before email when they were a long while ago, I mail sorted them out and we had a success rate of 80% for an appointment and a sales rate of 60%. So to cut a long story. Yeah. I’d like to think I was the driving force in making this Asian Canadian guys company worth 10 million Canadian dollars turnover of which 8 million was profit, but I was 21.

[00:04:20] I had a Camaro sports car money in my pocket, sky rise, apartment above mountain. And how much Ontario? I didn’t know. I needed equity or ownership or. [00:04:30] And at the end of that year, he said, Alex, I don’t need you anymore. I’m not extending your visa. You have to leave in two days or they’re going to deport you.

[00:04:36] What? So there was nothing I could do about it. And it was a big life lesson. So how did I fall into this? When I got back home? My wall air force, dad. Well, I, I hear you. Can’t now go back to your ID career and you don’t want to. Yes, dad. There’s too. I’ve put two in my house. You will be working. I’ve put you an interview as a customer service agent at our water utility.

[00:04:58] And you start at the [00:05:00] interviews tomorrow and they want you to start on Monday because clearly you’ll get the job done by God. So after being this guy, Camaro sports, car, Canada, living the Playboy lifestyle, I was welcome to walk to the, how may I help you Lord. So that’s how I fit into this. And then just, just moving on from that, I was an agent and a team leader and then a supervisor.

[00:05:19] And, um, I played a big part in making that the best water utility company for customer service. And then I realized, okay, I like this thing of fixing customer [00:05:30] issues, but then remembering what it’s like to be the agent for the answer on not being able to fix the customer issues. And those are the two things that I’d never, I’ve never stopped thinking about.

[00:05:39] That’s not my dog, that’s yours for anyone in the podcast. It’s my dog.

[00:05:41] Bill Staikos: It’s my dog.

[00:05:44] Alex Mead: We love dogs, dogs, all the world. So, um, I was in, so the utility company, I was the leadership position and I realized we sell water to customers. We can’t upsell. We can’t cross. They have to take our water during a fixed geographical area.

[00:05:57] Our job was purely to make our [00:06:00] customer service the best. And we were the top of the scale, according to the regulator. So I then had the bug and then I jumped off to a company owned by Michalea and the tire company who had acquired a UK company called ATSU amass to fit tire, stock, absorbers, and brakes.

[00:06:15] And they had 24 hour roadside records. It was B to C and B to B. And I’m not giving you my whole CV. Don’t worry. I will place these soon. But in that role, we had consumers and we had business customers and a guy in a truck could be told he has, he has [00:06:30] a delivery window of between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM in Glasgow to deliver his goods, or he’ll be refused.

[00:06:34] He’s broken down in Wolverhampton. He’s got six hours to go and he’s getting not answered by the phone call. And then when the agent. They have no details about the tire serial number, the stock. And we’ve got all these KPIs with guaranteed with a company that owns that truck drivers vehicles that will do it in.

[00:06:51] And it’s like, oh my Lord. So I then realized it’s more about fixing the contact center it’s end to end. And. And I, I did a pretty good job there and it won awards, [00:07:00] blah, blah. And then after that, I went into companies like Barclays bank, big blue chips. I work with some startups, um, company called Seatwave, which is the equivalent of StubHub.

[00:07:08] I’m sure you’ve heard of in the U S similar companies. Uh, and then probably the biggest corporate break I had was 2011 to 14. I joined a footsie 100 company with 60,000 employees and the group. He had a parcel delivery company as part of one of his subsidiaries. And, uh, they were known as the worst [00:07:30] parcel delivery expense.

[00:07:30] You can possibly imagine. Don’t expect your pastor to come on time. If it does come on, time broken, damaged, and it’s just hopeless in every way. You can’t talk to them. You can’t trust to deliver. And he created a role. Uh, I’m going to create this new role executive director or customer cognitive being someone you in.

[00:07:47] And he would recruited me and drop me in like the Sims, um, imagine dropping a SIM who’s opposite to everyone else on the board. Uh, they’d all worked in parcel delivery for 20 years. They would straight straightaway. This guy was he and the CEO said this guy [00:08:00] as well is to fix our customer experience.

[00:08:03] It’s explaining them to, to them. What customer experience moment was such a challenge. But two years later, we delivered our parcels. On time. We gave proactive tracking. We allowed customers to change the delivery, and we are written about as the best possible delivery experience in the UK and Europe at the time.

[00:08:21] But the CEO then sold that company to private equity who screwed it all up. So that was really frustrating then. W a big, another footsy [00:08:30] 100 company that owns four airline brands, then a global whiskey company. That was awesome. Macallan whiskey, famous grouse, Cutty Sark Highland park. And then the last, um, two years, uh, I did a bit of work with a, uh, Well renowned consultancy called Alvarez and Marcel.

[00:08:48] And they plugged me into lots of, I realized, wow, this consultancy gig, do you know, they get a lot of grief, but they work so hard in so many hours. And then really the last, uh, year and a half, I’ve been working with [00:09:00] this startup bank in the middle east. And it’s, uh, it’s going to be app based. It’s like the Revolut, the monsters, the end 26 of your webinar.

[00:09:06] I’m sure you have equivalence in the U S but everything I post on LinkedIn about, ah, these banks, these, these retail companies, the customer service. If I do, if I make one of those mistakes myself, I would delete my LinkedIn profile because our customer service experience is going to be awesome. And if it’s not, people can message me and I will actually reply to every customer.

[00:09:25] That’s what I always do. So that’s, that’s my potted history. Sorry. Awesome. [00:09:30] No, no,

[00:09:30] Bill Staikos: it’s all. It’s re you’re hired. So is it, is it going to be app only or just app driven?

[00:09:36] Alex Mead: Uh, no, we, we ha yeah, it’s, uh, we starting with an app, but then we, um, I’ve had to do a lot of work, so we need to contact. Clearly, um, we need, um, a website because you can’t do the complicated things like car finance mortgages on, on an app.

[00:09:51] Uh, we need social media clearly, but now we’re starting to realize the benefit of partnership approach. I don’t think we’ll ever have a branch ourselves, cause I’m never say never, [00:10:00] but for example, we’re starting to say right, we’re going to deliver you a physical card. It’s not just an outcome. Maybe you can pick it up and Starbucks or, you know, I’m sure we’re going to get to a, an omni-channel world, but I have to consider all of these things.

[00:10:11] So it’s very exciting. And, um, we won’t get it right, but we’re launching our brand and this quarter and next year. Boom. And hopefully it will be very,

[00:10:20] Bill Staikos: I’m excited for, I’m excited for you. When you think about customer service experience, there’s a lot that can maybe go into that. Like what do you see as the [00:10:30] best practice, like in terms of functions that should align in there?

[00:10:33] Cause it’s gotta be more than just the context center, certainly.

[00:10:36] Alex Mead: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, this, uh, I’ll give a sort of generic answer, but this combo is one of those companies has got, is very agile and put led. I’ve worked in companies that have that for the entire company. Was one that way, but fortunately I’ve managed to change a few things.

[00:10:52] I have a kind of hybrid model. So in this particular role with the contact center reports into me, but so does the CRM strategy. So [00:11:00] I’ve been the one that’s, um, the CTO and CIO. We had a disagreement on what CRM meant and what the vision was. So I came up with a vision and I selected a, one of the big four platforms.

[00:11:10] We’ve all heard of, um, to do the CRM, but within that also is the digital interaction, the knowledge management. The digital assistant, which is a chat bot, but a clever one there’s social media. So basically I’m responsible for everything to do with customer service express and what a lot of people don’t understand.

[00:11:28] They get that confused with customer [00:11:30] service. Customer service is like what they think of as customer care, you know, something’s happening or gone wrong. I knew I’d need to reach out to customer service experience. Okay, you you’ve, um, this, the exact steps we’re going to start with a website that reveals our brand.

[00:11:44] Customers can say they want to join our wait list. That’s part of the customer service experience. So how are we going to deliver that? They want to know more questions about the brand, how are we going to deliver that? And then they join our wait list. And for example, they then phone us and say, Hey, I joined your wait list or messages or whatever what’s happening.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] That’s custom. And then. Th they joined the wait list. So does one of their friends, one of the friends gets invited to download the app and the other doesn’t w what the hell, you know, so that’s just the very start. And then they start onboarding and clearly our financial services stages, that’s customer service experience, and then the, in our app and, uh, using, uh, the debit card and everything.

[00:12:19] It’s all customer services. Clearly we have the contact center. And one of the things I’m trying to do is not become one of these, uh, digital mobile banks, where you’re forced to [00:12:30] interactively at any stage. You can go through our app and phone us, or even request a callback. So we’re not bending the voice channel.

[00:12:36] We’re not driving people down. These awful. Oh how it there. So it’s taken a lot of persuasion, but we’re going to try it and I don’t think we will fail. Um, so literally everything to do with the customer service experience reports into me, but being a product led team, we have, we have UX people. Uh, there’s a chief product officer and as UX, but we have squads.

[00:12:56] So I have squads who are in the app that report to me, and we have our own [00:13:00] UX people within that. So I have direct ownership of the contact center or things in the customer service. But I have the influence and the stakeholder management of all the customer facing collateral. And because I chose a showman, the CTI CIO didn’t really want me to choose.

[00:13:16] They literally said off you go with Alex. It’s great. I’m building all the case, workflow, the knowledge management, everything. So, yeah, it’s uh, but that’s what, every, to me, every, you see the chief customer officer roles and these VPs of CX on boards. [00:13:30] Some few of them have that sort of remit. They’re usually marketing guys.

[00:13:33] Who’ve been given this sexy title and they don’t have. They have the contact center. They have no understanding of it. So, yeah. So that’s what I’m trying to make sure we don’t lose sight of

[00:13:41] Bill Staikos: yeah. More and more. You’re seeing contact center, agile transformation, other functions that you wouldn’t traditionally see in a, in a core CX or customer experience function rolling into that chief experience officer now, which I think is the right direction to go.

[00:13:58] And you even see a lot more strategies. [00:14:00] Being played out in that, in that team, which I think is really important, you know, w you and I have you, you know, you and I have kind of gone on LinkedIn and we agree on, you know, we were talking about, you know, we were talking before the show as well. You know, CX is not where it’s been around for a long time, but it seems like there’s a lot of failure, um, within this space.

[00:14:24] You know where from your perspective. And I think I’m going to agree with you on all the things that you, you viewed here, but [00:14:30] like what are the two or three things that are really just fundamentally wrong? Where CX as a discipline broadly is is, is going wrong?

[00:14:40] Alex Mead: Well, the first thing is I think is focused in entirely the wrong area and I see lots of people.

[00:14:45] They say the first starting point for CX is a no disrespect is voice of customer, NPS feedback, insight, analytics, all that stuff. Absolutely. That that’s one of the top three, but what, what, um, is the biggest issue right now is a customer can’t even have a [00:15:00] conversation, uh, and have a conversation means some, I think nine times out of 10 customers would just be forced to give up and live with.

[00:15:08] Okay. I’m not here to get an answer. I just have to accept that. Custom experience reality. So what time is my parcel coming? It’s supposed to be here today. You’re not going to get an answer that sucks. First of all, you, you should be able to get an answer yourself digitally or digitally or whatever channel we choose even for to self service.

[00:15:26] And to get the answer, you should be able to say, you should get to go to an [00:15:30] app or website and actually not have to get the answer because they sort of proactively told you, I mean, the classic example, if we think of Amazon, I have a success rate of less than 40%, but when they tell me when a place. The item will come to when actually comes.

[00:15:44] Uh, but then somewhere along the order status, the revised delivery date changes. But only if I happen to look at the app and see that, and it will say, I’m sorry, there’s been a carrier delay or some really uncustomary friendly language. And that, that would say it’s now going to be a week later than you expected.

[00:15:59] [00:16:00] So th that’s that’s awful. But then what is bad about customer experience and customer service? If I contact. So, what do you know what I needed this tomorrow is for wedding anniversary or a party or something or birthday gift, they would say, well, I’m sorry. So there’s nothing we can do about it. Um, we can’t even cancel or refund it until you wait another four days until X, Y, Z has happened.

[00:16:21] So Amazon companies, most of them, the planet’s most customer centric company, according to that blurb, they get that wrong. So to answer your point of the [00:16:30] pretty one, two or three, all in one thing is what we should be focusing on is just let the customer. Tell you what their issue is or give them a voice and everything behind that would follow it.

[00:16:40] Absolutely everything. So let customers find out the answer to their need or their question. If we can’t do it proactively, that’s not the end of the world. So whatever it is, Hey, it says us in stock, but I try and like I spoke before I try and order, it gives me a map. So, is it in the store? Can I find out right now and you won’t be able to get an answer to that?

[00:16:59] [00:17:00] So pretty much every question I have is torturous in the moment. I can’t think there are some examples where, um, okay, I want to do this. I don’t have, uh, I, the aid don’t have enough information or B I can’t. So reverse engineer make that the biggest thing. And, but you’re not going to reverse engineer that until, you know, those are the customer’s issues.

[00:17:20] So I can’t do this or that. So make it so, and what we’re building it in the carnival, always everything a customer does is underpinned by insight. So if a customer wants to [00:17:30] know, Hey, I’m trying to use my credit card in this restaurant, it won’t go through, they would type the words in our digital assistant or I, or even talk to an agent we will analyze straight away.

[00:17:41] What happened with that? So let’s, let’s make sure we give the customer the ability to ask the question easily so they can, as I said, um, they can, they can send a message. They can live chat, they can request a call back. They can call us. And in the future they can ask their question immediately. And without automated processes, we will give an answer straight away.

[00:17:58] But if we don’t have [00:18:00] the answer, there’ll be an alert to say, we gave a lame answer. The answer we gave to bill about that. We gave a substantive answer so we can have closed loops continuously every day. Why can’t the customer help themselves? Why do we force them to contact us? And, and the last thing we’re doing, which is probably the second part of it is probably one and two, make it easier to customers to tell you what that issue is, help themselves and talk to get the insight from that.

[00:18:23] The second thing we’re doing, and this is. Slightly a unique approach to the customer. Feedback is an insight [00:18:30] is every time a customer has interacted with us or tried to help themselves, we’re creating a case in our CRM. So they don’t have to talk to us. There’ll be a case created and they’ll get a notification to say, Hey, thanks for talking to us.

[00:18:41] Or, or looking at this self-help in the app. They can then go to the app at any stage. See the, every interaction they’ve had with us. They’re going to see the CLM case. And when they want to, not, when we invite them to, they can give feedback on how happy they were with the experience, the effort and the outcome.

[00:18:58] They can then click a button that [00:19:00] says, do you want us to follow up on that, that this feedback? So that is just, um, so two simple principles actually, but I think people get so hung up on stick a chat bot here, or a stick voice analytics. You’ve just got to start with, those are the two core fundamentals.

[00:19:13] Let customers. Find an answer to that question easily. And if they can’t find it, let them talk to easily, but everything they ask of you make sure you underpin that with insight. Cause you won’t be able to answer those questions you’ve got to make. So where are the gaps? And then when you’ve spoken to a customer, if you’ve given a great [00:19:30] answer or a terrible answer, allow them to tell you easily.

[00:19:32] And then again, pin all that insight together. You’ll continuously improve. And I don’t hear for like that. That’s what I want to be here. Yeah. There’s

[00:19:38] Bill Staikos: not a lot of. Companies that are piecing to get well, there, there are, I guess, generally globally, but when you think about everyone that’s focused on CX, no, one’s looking at signals across their customer base through different, um, through different touchpoints and bringing them together in a smart way to understand their customers better.

[00:19:59] That’s hard [00:20:00] work, right? It’s not easy to do, but, um, but, but nonetheless not, not necessarily happening. How does that maybe change? Right. You’re you’re you’re you’re now at a company that is more app driven, right. And companies are pushing a lot of technology right now. Certainly COVID saw digitalization just kind of ramp up.

[00:20:20] There’s a lot of just technical debt out there because people just need to get a solution up there quickly, whether it was good or not Danby the customer a little bit, but we had to get a solution up. Right. [00:20:30] Now you’re, you’re not an organization that is more apt driven. Obviously you’re gonna have different, uh, digital, um, platforms that are going to be able to engage through as a customer.

[00:20:38] How does that maybe change for you guys? Because you’re more tech focused where I want it. So if you think about sort of the in-app experience, is it one button click because you and I were talking about a great example, I won’t mention the name. It’s a very, very large global company that just came out with a nice watch.

[00:20:57] Um, we’ll, we’ll just, we’ll leave it there. A [00:21:00] digital watch. Uh, It seems like traditionally their in app experience has been okay, but they kind of made it really difficult for you. And had you running around Byron in another city, 30 minutes away. So tell me a little bit about what companies are missing.

[00:21:17] Maybe in that in-app or digital experience, is it that piece that you just mentioned? The ability to quickly go talk to a live person without going through 40 different kind of press one for this and five for that and [00:21:30] six for another choice, et cetera, is that.

[00:21:34] Alex Mead: I think it’s it’s, um, that’s part of it, but so yeah, I’m working for a digital app company now, but I’ve worked for a company that delivered half a million parcels a day.

[00:21:41] So it’s a physical item I’ve worked for company that delivers the most amazing whiskey and they’ll have some people spending half a million pound on a bottle. And experience could be, they’re going to collect it in an airport lounge, or they’re going to have a guide turn up in a range Rover or white gloves.

[00:21:55] So yeah, the that’s this word omni-channel that people seem to have, [00:22:00] the buzzword is disappeared. So they think the need has been solved. No, it’s absolutely. No one had been solved. So the, my view is, is. An app or website any and even a social channel or we, we chat. If you’re in China, it’s just a window to the experience.

[00:22:15] And too many companies, they have these chief digital guys are building or even marketing guys building the stuff that looks engaging the amazing, but there’s a very simple thing you need to do. You need to join that window to the actual bricks and mortar, the physicality of the, [00:22:30] the operations. So all the way back to the, uh, parcel delivery.

[00:22:33] Way we, um, improve things. We were delivering half a million parcels a day, and the contact centers, the customer service that I was officially accountable for from day one, had a 95% call abandonment rate, average speed of answer of one over one hour. The only digital channel was the emails, which is six weeks old.

[00:22:51] So when’s my parcel coming. You get an answer in six, it was hopeless. So that was the thing I was officially responsible for from day one. But I managed [00:23:00] to slowly eat across the span of control. Created a mechanism where the 700 staff who worked across our depots and hubs and out physical operation centers that handled customer care.

[00:23:12] They became part of my reporting line and we realized the phone calls, the questions, the emails, or even the, the request to change the delivery. I just, uh, that’s the, the, the, the stuff, the easy stuff to fix, make it easy for customers to ask those questions. What time is my parcel coming? And even now you’ll get the answer [00:23:30] it’s due out for delivery today.

[00:23:32] That you’re just making that up, you know, or it’s with our career, be there in the next two to three days. So what we did is we started with a very simple process of, okay, what would a customer possibly need in a, in a parcel delivery? I’ll explain that. But then we had to reverse engineer that into the retailer’s experiences.

[00:23:50] Clearly you don’t order from a delivery company, you order from an Amazon John Lewis marks and Spencer’s such in the UK. So, um, we started with, okay, how can we make it easy for [00:24:00] customers to not have to phone a sit in a queue when they either want to do one or two things? It fed into two buckets. I have a delivery coming that hasn’t yet come.

[00:24:07] I want to change it. Or I have a delivery coming. It hasn’t yet. I want to make sure I still coming it’s a big one or the time has passed what has happened to my delivery. So it’s either I want to change something or find out something that passes on the way, or you’ve already let me down. Everything’s fit into one of those two buckets, but then we have to work on.

[00:24:28] Th the premise that, well, actually there’s the people that [00:24:30] send the parcels and the people that receive them. So we realized the people that send them are of the SMEs B2B. So we worked with their experience. First of all, because we knew we had to get it right with them to deliver it to the B2C. So they had a portal where they could see the real time or we wanted to give them something better than our competitors.

[00:24:46] So, uh, came up with a vision to fix the problem with the customer contact that kept the people waiting for the. We’re getting 60 to 80,000 phone calls a day or times my parcel coming. And these were in the days where we gave no [00:25:00] estimation of that. So Lord above, if we can just get ahead of that and give them that will make, that was takeouts 50,000 at least plus exactly.

[00:25:09] Plus we’ll be better than the competition. Imagine we got to sell that to the people sending parcels. We can say to them, Hey, we can tell your customers, well, that’d be cool. And then we realized, okay, that would be cool. But to do that, oh my Lord. ’cause I went out with the drivers at 4:00 AM. I got got into their heads.

[00:25:25] I saw the way they did things. They would turn up at 5:00 AM. Someone. It would have been that [00:25:30] 4:00 AM putting all the parcels behind the back of their van, just based on postcode. So you do PE 10 to PE 12. That’s your pass. You stick them in the back of the van. You know, you’d look at them, write on a piece of paper in his head.

[00:25:41] He knew the area just to a group that he thought made sense along the way. Car crashes. There was, you know, whether sometimes he would deliver, sometimes he wouldn’t deliver the biggest fundamental thing. And I will come to the point is that because I went out with this guy, he had a PDA and he had lots of paperwork.

[00:25:57] He’d run out, I’d go with them. The first 20 [00:26:00] drops, accord it to see what was happening. And then I left him to go and I looked at his sheet and I realized he put on three of the first 20 try to deliver the customer wasn’t in, because I knew that. You’ve not been to that. Yes, not above. So I took a screenshot of it and went back to the Depot and looked into it and I realized one of them, uh, there was not sufficient address details.

[00:26:22] The guy had no chance to even find it. It was like an apartment block with no apartment number. There was no phone number. His only option would say, try to deliver you weren’t in, [00:26:30] but that would have triggered to the customer and alert that the customer is well, what the hell? Nobody came. And then I realized the other 2, 1, 1 was a guaranteed pre 9:00 AM.

[00:26:39] And by the time he would’ve got there it’d be nine 20. So he would, uh, look bad. But because the boot, when he brought it on a piece of paper, I didn’t factor that in. So. Okay. The drive is a failing and these things are happening. Not, not because they’re bad drivers because the system is broken. So to get to the point, we had to do two things.

[00:26:56] We had to be smart about the way we delivered [00:27:00] parcels. And I knew there were separate route optimization projects going on, where they were going to come up with dynamic routing, et cetera. So I want you to align that to my customer experience transformation. So we would have an idea for every parcel when the driver would roughly be there.

[00:27:13] So, okay. That sounds. But that meant, okay. We would need to join the ERP, the delivery system, you know, all the parcels, the cages that the vehicles, the vans, the drivers, the depots to the CRM, to the front end. And ultimately a to answer your question about how you, how you make an app [00:27:30] digital experience join to a physical one is a customer could go to our app and a business customer.

[00:27:36] First of all, could go to an app and click on a real-time status of every parcel we were delivering for them. And because they had access to a GPS. We couldn’t say we try to deliver, because another thing I put in place was okay. If a driver says he twice a week, he has to take a photograph photograph of the front door of the property.

[00:27:54] So they hated me in this possibly becoming, as you can imagine, all these things I was making them do, but that photograph also geo-tagged [00:28:00] the GPS. So the drivers are thought is find any dogs, number 10 snap. That would, so it took two years for us to fix the under the iceberg before we could show to actual end customers, Hey, you can now track your delivery because there was so much cultural change, but you can’t be no point having a beautiful superficial as, as we spoke about earlier digital experience, if it’s not joined to the contact experience, the digital, the CRM that the physical Alec physicality of what’s going on and.

[00:28:29] [00:28:30] That’s just the living delivering is when you go into collect something in a store, even the store collection experience is sometimes awful and they have no idea why you’re there. And you’re sat there waiting for half an hour. It really is. And I wish Amazon would, would have a go at the, their own stores.

[00:28:43] Cause I’m just, I suspect they would have a really awesome physical collect, your parcel, your order experience too. So, yeah, it’s uh, but I mean the, the overarching thing is the silos of thinking. Typically there’s not someone who says, right, here’s our customer vision for our customers and for our businesses.

[00:28:59] [00:29:00] Here’s where we need to get to. And the hardest part was getting people to sign up to where we need to get to, because we were the first company to do that. Okay. Everyone sign up to that. No, hate it. So the CEO had to work with me. Okay. I signed up to it. So you guys are going to sign it. They hated me with a passion for a long while.

[00:29:15] And then when the suit started to come up and they were winning sales and awards. Thanks Alex. They didn’t say fangs, but yeah, it’s, it’s not, as you said is not easy at all.

[00:29:25] Bill Staikos: You know, that’s the thing, when I, you know, one, one, I hate the word channels, right? [00:29:30] Like no one calls her mobile phone, a channel, right.

[00:29:32] Companies call that stuff channels. Right. And, and now be in a, and I think that this has certainly been. Uh, exacerbated due to dependent, right. With, with, with the proliferation of digital, digital, um, opportunities to engage with the business. Um, do you think it’s the silos in an organization that causes, uh, or the creates that challenge where, you know, you’re you’re in app or, or web, or, uh, is not connected maybe to the, in [00:30:00] store to more sort of brick and mortar or physical experience?

[00:30:02] Or is there something else going on?

[00:30:05] Alex Mead: Uh, I think it’s that and also something else. So, first of all, yeah, if you think of the typical organization, you’re the sophisticated ones that think that, uh, they have the right structures. There are lots of chief roles that have a chief digital officer, uh, probably a chief customer officer, uh, Maybe the chief customer officer will really be a marketing officer.

[00:30:22] In fact, let’s take it down. Forget the word chief you’ll have a digital person. You’ll have a marketing person. You’ll have a commercial person and you’ll have a [00:30:30] salesperson, some port unlucky contact center, customer service person, probably HR operations it and the usual bit. So, um, there won’t be someone in there who has the mandate or the span of control to say, I’m the customer.

[00:30:44] Service experience. I love that word. That’s what it should be. Who basically, uh, I, I own the V the vision and the strategy across digital, across, uh, across every customer. I hate the word channel as well, across every customer journey. That’s what I call it. So I’m ordering [00:31:00] a product at the example we gave.

[00:31:02] So you go to an app, you go to a website it’s in stock. You try to order it. Okay. You need to go to a store to collect it, because for some reason you can’t, there’s only one left. Okay. I should be able to reserve that store. Uh, but you can’t because there’s not a sync up between the website and the store, someone fix that.

[00:31:16] Um, okay. Why is there not a real time syncope? Well, the worst we can make is five minutes. Okay. Just message that. And then, um, allow the mechanism in, uh, whatever platforms for the customer to press the button and say, Hey, I reserve that. But everything goes to [00:31:30] every door you open, it opens another door Abbott.

[00:31:32] Are they going to have to pay in full to reserve it, uh, or deposit? Cause what if a customer physically walks into the store and they want to buy, you have to think of all of these things. Then the customer gets to the store and they pick up. Oh, actually, I didn’t know. It looked like that I’ve changed my mind that all these, all these blockers, I never thought though.

[00:31:48] Okay. And I’ve got it. I’ve taken it home. Oh, I want to return it. Well, actually, if you’d order it for distance setting and we delivered to a house, that’s. Because you physically picked up in-store, there’s no return funds over turns and everything has [00:32:00] these dumb silos. And to actually have someone who thinks as a customer.

[00:32:03] And so whether we channels, every company needs someone who just thinks like an average customer and the digital guys think about digital platform. The sales guys think about sales numbers, and the marketing guys think about above and below the line. So just have someone on a board who’s accountable for thinking like a customer and they they’ve gotta be supported by the CEO.

[00:32:23] 75% of the ideas I come up with heparin, don’t be stupid, Alex. It’s amazing. But wow. Forget it. We’re not going to [00:32:30] load that and that’s fine, but it needs to be the voice that continually pushes and of those 25% that everyone has to agree with because they’re bad situations that cost of revenue, retention, loyalty, then, um, you have to then leverage, okay, digital guy, you need to work with me.

[00:32:44] And a real example is in my CommonWell, we’ve got these amazing digital designs, but a lot of it is hard coded. Or knowledge management, they need to be dynamic. They need to pull it out of our CRM. So you should have run that by me before you spent three weeks building these amazing digital [00:33:00] designs. And, but again, because when I joined, I was didn’t have the span of control on that.

[00:33:05] So yeah, it is channels, but really is. I think it’s, um, I hate the word channel there’s we shouldn’t two things I love to remove from customer experience is the phrase channels and the phrase customer. Because if you think about what does customer it’s like, what’d you do? I do business stuff. That’s what customer experience sounds like to me.

[00:33:23] So is it the customer experience of the service interactions or the marketing interactions or the [00:33:30] fulfillment interaction? It’s the experience of something. Yeah. But everything is CX Alex. Okay. So you show me one of these CX experts. There’s an expert in fulfillment sales, marketing, customer service, contact centers.

[00:33:40] They’re not, they all have their niches. So that’s why I say I’m a customer service experience. That’s because I’d suck at doing it. But I’m pretty good at the other stuff. Very

[00:33:49] Bill Staikos: cool. Um, Hey, I know this is your weekend cause you’re in the middle east. So I’ve got one more question for you so you can get on with your, with your afternoon and your day.

[00:33:58] Um, [00:34:00] where do you go for inspiration?

[00:34:04] Alex Mead: I wish I had an answer. Obviously, Steve jobs was amazing and the more I, I, um, I don’t know, meant I saw Tim Cook’s latest and you’re charging 4 99 or was it four series speech recognition for apple music. That’s not cool that, that, uh, I want to, and your, your apple watch seven is better than the aport six, but it’s still the battery lasts one day maximum.

[00:34:28] Last two days that’s you know, [00:34:30] so do you know what I, I, I, I w I don’t have an answer that that’s, what is wrong with customer experience? I, um, I like to get inspiration. I like to give inspiration, but that is, that sums it up. So someone tell me who we can go to for customer experience inspiration. I can’t think of a single name.

[00:34:46] Bill Staikos: Wow. That’s wow. That’s terrible.

[00:34:51] Alex Mead: Uh, tell me who, who do you think? Uh, clearly people can give us, but I can’t think of one that I go, yeah. You’ve told me something that’s really inspired me. I used to be able to buy can’t now. [00:35:00] Yeah.

[00:35:00] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Well, I’m glad that you’re on the front end, leading the charge, helping people think differently.

[00:35:06] Um, and, uh, and challenging those who are not helping us as a displaying grow and succeed. Um, Alex fun conversation. Glad to have you on the show. I really appreciate you being on.

[00:35:19] Alex Mead: There’s been a pleasure.

[00:35:20] Bill Staikos: Thanks bill. All right, everybody. Another great show. The Alex made, uh, you got to, if you don’t know who he is, then you’ve been under a rock for the last 20 years.

[00:35:28] Uh, but check him out on LinkedIn, [00:35:30] really great stuff. And, uh, uh, I’m sure you’ll be nodding your head in agreement. A lot of stuff he’s putting out there. See you next week.