Amanda Whiteside on CX & EX Leadership

Be Customer Led – Amanda Whiteside on CX & EX Leadership

[00:00:00] Amanda Whiteside: Welcome to be customer lad, where we’ll explore how leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the accidents and behaviors of lawyers and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host of Bill’s staikos.

[00:00:33] Bill Staikos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another week of be customer led. I’m your host bill steakhouse. I have a very special guest with us today. Amanda Whiteside is worldwide head of customer programs. She’s responsible for delivering a multi roadmap that drives Amazon shipping’s global commercial and customer strategies.

[00:00:52] She leads a large team of technical product and program managers and responsible for five unique businesses. Onboarding and integration, customer service tracking and delivery, billing and sustainability, as well as business analytics. So like I’ve never met anyone. Who’s got such a big remit. So, I mean, I’m so excited to have you on the show.

[00:01:11] Thanks so much for joining.

[00:01:13] Amanda Whiteside: I’m thrilled. Thank you so much for having me

[00:01:14] Bill Staikos: now. It was gonna be a fun conversation. I can’t wait. I’ve been waiting, actually. I’ll wait for this. So our first question, Amanda to every guest is to tell us about your journey and some of the differentiating factors that helped you achieve the role you’re in today.

[00:01:29] And you also have a really interesting background because you come from sales originally. If memory serves me, right, and you moved into these more strategic and operational roles. So like how has that even shaped you and shaped your journey to.

[00:01:43] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, it’s a great question, bill. I’ve really enjoyed the diversification that I’ve had throughout my career.

[00:01:48] So I’m obviously I came into sales, but I should just remind your views. I came from a product design background, so I studied industrial design and I’m really enjoyed learning about design thinking and solving problems in a very creative way. Unfortunately with, everything that went on at that time, I went straight into the working world and ended up into a very commercial as space where I was responsible for business development rules, seals, rules, often in startups.

[00:02:14] So again, solving very real problems for often very growing businesses. And I really enjoyed my time. I think it’s important for everyone to do since and seals and some type of commercial role. So I think it teaches you how to engage with people and how to really figure out how to sell something. So more recently in my time at Amazon, I’ve been able to.

[00:02:37] Try different rules, try program rules, type product rules, other technical positions. And it’s been able to give me a more rounded opinion of how business works and on influence different things that I haven’t been able to influence before. It’s strictly in a commercial sense. So it’s been a really great journey.

[00:02:54] I often get people asking me, how have you gone from sales into program and product, and it’s not a linear path. It takes a little bit of kind of bumping your head. Side and on people believing in you. So I’ve been very lucky to really get to this point.

[00:03:10] Bill Staikos: So I, the nonlinear path, especially for what you do.

[00:03:12] And I want to talk about your role a little bit, if that’s okay. And how you focus on a customer experience. I have often found that some of the best customer experience leaders like to be like, take me, for example, I’ve been in customer experience for plus 20 years. That does not make me the best leader at all in this space.

[00:03:28] But I’ve often found that some of the brightest people that I’ve worked with from a CX perspective are those who have kind of. Zigs and zags through an organization or organizations and have this really wonderful breadth of expertise. So I’m excited to get into a little bit more of the conversation with you there.

[00:03:44] So just tell us a little bit, I mean, it is a pretty big remit that you’ve got, which is wonderful. Clearly your experience, catered to what you’re doing. How do you bring the customer experience into the work that you’re doing? How do you think about CX as part of your day?

[00:04:00] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah. It’s because of the diversification.

[00:04:03] We’re in a very. Lucky position, I guess, within the business that we’re very close to our customers. So things like customer services, like contacts and escalations defect, data on pickups and deliveries, it allows us to really understand what’s going wrong and what’s going right. And then we bolster that with things like C-SAT, customer interviews and I’m making sure that whatever we understand from our data, we’re also validating that with VOC to bring it to the forefront of the organization.

[00:04:31] So. That’s really been a lot of the discussion that I’ve had with my leadership, but by why it’s important to have this type of scope, because it gives us that ability to know more and then do more,

[00:04:43] Bill Staikos: could not agree with you more. I’ve worked at organizations, Amanda. Everybody owns a little piece of the Cod, right.

[00:04:49] And if we all work together well, then the sort of the call gets made. But when, excuse me, when you have an opportunity to bring multiple functions together and get a much more expansive view of the customer, it has profound differences. So tell our listeners a little bit out, what are some of the best parts about your job?

[00:05:06] Maybe if somebody, even some of the more challenging things that you’ve got to deal with, kind of given the role.

[00:05:11] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, I think it’s the problems we’re trying to solve often. They’re hugely complex and not obvious, but it means when we solve them, it’s hugely rewarding. So it also allows me to support the business through complex project management, which I really enjoy.

[00:05:27] I enjoy. Working with multiple teams, multiple geographies, multiple different opinions. And it really helps challenge me in high. I think about better stakeholder management, which I know a lot of larger organizations really struggle with. So it’s something I’m kind of personally always thinking about how can we do better?

[00:05:45] So I really enjoyed that aspect of it. It makes my role and my team’s positions already. And I would say as well, the team that I work with, I work with some seriously smart people. And so it helps when you’re not the smartest person in the room to keep, helping you growth.

[00:05:59] Bill Staikos: I know I have a imposter syndrome every day.

[00:06:01] I feel like when I’m working with my team, it’s a wonderful, but scary feeling sometimes. So let’s talk a little bit about, I mean, you’re working with product designers, you’re working with customer insight teams. I clearly you’re engaging customers directly. thinking about the symbiotic relationship between customer and employee experience, given your focus on leading a large diverse team, like how do you think about that two sides of the same coin, so to speak, like how do you lead that?

[00:06:27] That’s really a challenging thing.

[00:06:29] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, I think about it in two parts in my team are kind of set up in that way, where we spend a lot of time making sure that we get the problem statement directly from the customer. So what really is the issue that they’re up against and how do we better define that?

[00:06:43] And then articulate that. And then how do we embrace other members of the organization to really think about how we go over and above on a solution? The customers didn’t expect one that solves what they asked for and goes further. So I think then also having those different opinions really helps the journey and solves the problem differently.

[00:07:02] So it’s really part of getting it right. Having lots of those different opinions, but thinking about it in two halves of the problem.

[00:07:11] Bill Staikos: So in you, if you think about sort of your team and the focus on experience, not only from, from your customer’s perspective, but also to sellers and large corporates that you’re dealing with regularly, how does this change your approach to customer experience?

[00:07:27] You’ve got multiple stakeholders to deal with, as you just said, right? Including employees as part of those stakeholders, let alone business partners as well. I think like, thinking about that and through that. So can you give us an example about maybe how you manage that all at once? Because I think that’s probably one of the more challenging things for CX leaders.

[00:07:48] Generally, particularly as you get up into maybe like a chief experience officer or chief customer officer role, like you’re dealing with so many different constituents from HR, the CEO, CFO, customers, partners, vendors, et cetera. Tell us a little bit about your approach.

[00:08:06] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, it’s particularly challenging, I think within Amazon, because we have quite a lot of internal systems and processes that are core to how we operate.

[00:08:14] So not necessarily hard, large corporations operate. So this has forced us to think differently about our products and how they’ve scaled and evolve. Further to that. We have different customers within the cm service. So we have obviously our shippers that our sellers and our B2B business partners, and then end recipients who is more of a, B to C relationship that we facilitate there.

[00:08:36] So having customers that have different. Both inside the organization and outside, and I’m not even really touching on internal employees at the moment, it makes it really challenging. So we’ve needed a lot of rigor in our VOC and C-SAT mechanisms as well as really ruthless prioritization. It’s very difficult when you have a whole host of customers that you want to do everything for them.

[00:08:59] So, at Amazon where it’s quite helpful at a time. So when we think about things like tenants, really setting up. What matters. And how do we think about the prioritization of that? And when we have difficult trade off decisions, how do we make those decisions? often CX professionals will struggle on trade-offs between costs and customer experience and whatnot.

[00:09:17] So having those upfront and then really looking at the opportunity size, and I’m one of those big problems to solve is, is something that we spent a lot of our time.

[00:09:26] Bill Staikos: Well, I mean, trade-offs is such a big part of the work that we do, and it never feels like there’s one right answer, right. Or like the best answer sometimes just because of the issues that you’re probably dealing with and others out there are dealing with can be really complex.

[00:09:41] You just sort of have to make the best decision that you think is right for the customer and for the company together. I don’t love talking about the global pandemic as much. Cause it feels like we’re in the throws again and people don’t want to talk about it, but like, it really has. Change the way that customers think about digital commerce, generally speaking, how are you thinking about particularly given your seat and what you’re doing, Amanda?

[00:10:06] How do you see this evolving even over the next year or two and for different industries, it’s different retail would be very different than banking or hospitality, et cetera. Are you doing anything that helps you and your organization prepare for delivering the types of experiences? Consumers are now demanding or even thinking about how just consumer behavior may even be evolving or change permanently.

[00:10:30] What are you doing differently to prepare for all that or, or work through the, the, the new normal.

[00:10:34] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, it’s something that I’m really focused on right now. And, and in general, just very fascinated by it. Even on retail, from the hybrid experience of, of high a customer enters a store and then has a digital experience online.

[00:10:49] We have something similar in terms of our pickup experiences, physical between the shipper and the driver, but equally there’s platforms in which they use. And they have to engage with it that really represents the brand experience through. So I, I think a lot of what’s going to come in the upcoming years is artificial intelligence and machine learning.

[00:11:07] And that’s really what we need to get ahead of to, to try and at least start by merging those two experiences and recognizing when defects happen and get ahead of that. Customers are really expecting nowadays that they don’t have to tell us what their problem is. We should already know. And it’s so true, but a lot of businesses don’t know because they don’t have the intelligent infrastructure.

[00:11:26] They don’t have the, the technology and the tools that, that helps them, be at the forefront of that or flag that to internal teams to fix it. So that has to be something certainly foundational that we get. Right. And I think off the back of that, we’ll start to build more enhancements in our experience where it will become a little bit more of a gel of experience between the.

[00:11:46] Bill Staikos: So I look, if I think about Amazon, you have really driven a lot of the behavioral change we’ve seen in consumers. And I think in a really positive way, I don’t think there’s a day goes by actually that there’s not an Amazon box on my, or, I mean, I think that I, I mean, millions and millions and tens of millions of consumers out there, our province, similarly, that happens where, when we first met Amanda, you talked about listening to employees and feedback, and you even have internal tools to be able to understand daily, what’s on your mind and what’s happening and use that as a leader.

[00:12:22] Would you mind sharing that a little bit and how you’re managing your team using this? Cause I think. I personally think one of the most important things organizations can do is have this kind of daily listening to their employees, using that to act and improve the employee experience every day, the way you described it, that was really cutting edge and better than so many other organizations out there would love.

[00:12:46] If you can share that again.

[00:12:48] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that I think we’re all seeing evolve as work from home continues to be something that is very permanent and a lot of work in my stations likely as changes happen. And I think it’s important as we think by building those cultures remotely, that leaders really consider high possible.

[00:13:05] That is and how they can try to. Make sure that teams feel engaged, make sure there’s really strong diversity inclusion through. Right. One thing I was in does a really good job off is a platform called connections, which allows the employees on a daily basis every morning. Answer a multiple choice question.

[00:13:22] And it’s a simple question that says, how has your experience this week being rated out of one to five? Or how much support have you had from your manager in the last week? Read it one to five. So it’s something that. It’s signs. I’ve, I’ve spoken to people about it before, and they say you do this every day, but it’s something that becomes second nature.

[00:13:39] And what that does is it puts data behind employee experience. And it’s great as a leader because then I get a detailed report with these questions and it, it talks to me about my leadership ability within the team and how I’m engaging the team. And I can look at leadership and engagement and kind of separate them, but also bring them together to give an overall score and really that as a monitor, right.

[00:14:02] The information that I need to drive improvements. So within my team, I make sure that they’re part of that discussion. We have monthly connection meetings where we look at those scores and we say, okay, this is some of the trends that we’re seeing. How can we do things differently? So it, it puts me in the driving seat better as a leader, but it also puts my team in a very open space to discuss how those scores are going.

[00:14:21] And then we try to find ways in which to improve it. So it’s something that I’m very grateful for. I appreciate a lot of businesses. Maybe you wouldn’t have it because it takes a lot of time to invest in those types of tools. we’re already trying to get improvements in CX. I think the X is something that hopefully is a fast follow.

[00:14:37] It should really run in parallel, but it’s a great advancement.

[00:14:41] Bill Staikos: So look, I love the fact that as an organization you’re doing that. Amazon talks a lot about customer obsession, but that can not come without employee obsession as well. And having this daily routine where as a leader, you’re looking at, and you’ve got a big organization, right?

[00:14:57] So like how your organization is doing, how are they feeling? Do they feel supported to be successful in their job and creating a safe space? Like you are to have a conversation around those results and not from a perspective of. People get penalized, but literally how do we elevate people is such an important part of any organization success and like just an amazing best practice, frankly, that I hope listeners can take away and actually implement and steal the idea.

[00:15:24] I hope that’s okay for you if they do. So I’m really curious, Amanda, as a leader, are you changing your approach? For your role. Like if you think about like it, you must be, you’re getting this daily information and like you must be even just not changing gears every day, but really being able to reflect back and say, how can I improve?

[00:15:48] the future of work is obviously changing. Remote work is certainly here to stay people’s opinions and views about work has certainly changed. How has your approach as a leader possibly. Yeah,

[00:16:01] Amanda Whiteside: I think it’s, I’ve definitely become better at listening and understanding, but really empower my team to be part of that change.

[00:16:08] I don’t think there’s a simple answer for how things are gonna evolve. I think in the last few years it’s evolved faster. It certainly feels that way than when it has maybe in the last 10 or 20 years. I think maybe before there used to be a monitor, made the decisions and employees went along with it.

[00:16:24] Amanda Whiteside: And I, employees are very much at the forefront of the discussion and, they have an opinion and they want to really frame how their work life is going to have a balance and on what work that they do that interest them. And I think we need to be part of that conversation and be part of their development.

[00:16:40] I’m a strong advocate for my team. We do a lot of self development days where they get the day off. Tomorrow actually, where they’re able to spend time and really think about it. Okay. I want to do this course. I want to do this different thing. And I think people are looking for that diversity instead of, nine to five hammering at the same things.

[00:16:57] So we need to think about being flexible, having a hybrid approach. These are all kind of buzzwords, but it’s, it’s really the direction the world is

[00:17:04] Bill Staikos: going in for sure. Can you, so, so you said something in self development news? I have not. I mean, I’ve heard. days for like for mental health, w and my company, we do that quarterly talk about self development days.

[00:17:16] Do you mind? Is that okay? Yeah, of course.

[00:17:19] Amanda Whiteside: Well, it’s really high ever. You want to use it? I’ve left it very flexible with my team. So I feel like often my team have a lot of work to do as they think about their profession and their day job. And it’s up to me as their manager to make sure that I’m. You know that little voice inside their head that talks about, what do they want to be when they grow up?

[00:17:36] What are they missing in their core skillset? And we spend time just thinking and talking about what those things might be, and then they can use this day to get ahead. So it might be a free online course. It might be something that, they want to get a qualification in. So these days come throughout the year and they’re able to use their time as they see fit.

[00:17:54] But equally, if they need the time off, they can also have that as well. there has to be a trust between an a, an employee manager relationships that, they’re doing their job. We have the right mechanisms and goals for them to be a success and make sure that we’re tracking their performance, but equally when they need time off, they need time off.

[00:18:10] So it’s a nice opportunity that we can pass on to our teams so that they can take advantage of that.

[00:18:14] Bill Staikos: However, they wish. Another cool and best practice. I love it. So let’s talk about the future really quickly. How do you think about the work related? So we talked about sort of that, that relationship two sides of the same coin are running in parallel CX and the ex certainly there’s this, a culture around customer obsession or being customer led, as this show focuses on.

[00:18:35] How do you see that evolving over the next couple of years? I mean, five years, probably too far out, but like at least over the next couple of, do you see them coming together more and how will. Yeah,

[00:18:47] Amanda Whiteside: I think that we were getting there with CX there’s a lot more awareness about it and I I’m relatively new to the CX community.

[00:18:55] So I felt like I was doing a lot of stuff and being quite misunderstood. So I, I very much feel like I find my people and I’m within that. I think we can share a lot of best practices and a lot of tools and frameworks. I’m, I’m hopeful that. That continues to become the norm within businesses and businesses that are just a little slower to catch on, really grab a hold and go on the same journey.

[00:19:15] EEX feels a little bit more behind. And I think there are best practices or best intentions with the ECS, but a lot more to do in this space. So hopefully they, it will catch up and we’ll get to a point where the same rigor and the same salt goes into both. but at the moment, I think we need to think about them for how they are.

[00:19:34] Bill Staikos: Yeah, I’m hoping that technology helps us get there much more quickly. Actually I can see, as I could see a time in the next year or two, frankly, where those can be looked at in parallel in the same screen or whatever that looks like, where those journeys are even connected. The employing the customer journeys are even connected.

[00:19:51] I’m really excited for that time, because I think that’s a really important. Or pivotal point when we can actually do that. So, yeah,

[00:19:58] Amanda Whiteside: and ultimately we should find a place where within CX and edX their key functions or, topics in our business side, but it should become, these rules that are dedicated CX should become part of the norm.

[00:20:09] And we, we always talk about at Amazon, if you can make yourself redundant and you’ve done a good job and I’d love that to be the case in five to 10 years,

[00:20:17] Bill Staikos: So you mentioned Amanda, that you’re new to the CX space. Well, within CX or outside of CX, I have a new question that I ask all the guests.

[00:20:24] And who do you look up to in your space or just generally in business?

[00:20:31] Amanda Whiteside: Yeah, I think I actually don’t have a specific name in mind, but I am really inspired by the community that I know. I feel very much a part of, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to network and unshare those ideas. And I think there’s a lot of really relevant female leaders that are really paving the way for a lot of us.

[00:20:50] And I’m very grateful for a lot of the work that is being done to really drive a lot of that through. Women in tech discussions and awards and a lot of recognition that’s going on. So I think as I learn more about the space, I think that’ll become clear, but right now I am, I’m really in awe of what’s out there.

[00:21:07] Bill Staikos: I think one of the wonderful things about the CX community generally is that we really genuinely want to help people be successful. And in our heart of hearts and I’ve one of the things that I’ve done throughout my career is I’ve always asked for help, which is really important. And, I find leaders like yourself and like others and say, I’m struggling through this problem.

[00:21:29] Have you ever gone through it? What was, what did you do? And I’ve never had one person literally in 20 years say I’m not willing to help, which is a pretty fantastic thing from a broader community perspective to be part of. Amanda. This is a really awesome conversation. I truly appreciate you coming on the show and sharing some of your insights and ideas.

[00:21:51] And gosh, I’m really floored by some of the best practices that you’ve, that you share with us. And hopefully some of our listeners take them away immediately come tomorrow. I’d love to have you back on the show some time, but in the meantime, I look forward to kind of, following what you’re doing and the stuff that you’re putting out there as well.

[00:22:05] And thanks so much for coming on the show

[00:22:07] Amanda Whiteside: today. Yeah. Thank you so much, Phil. I really enjoyed it. We’d love to come back.

[00:22:11] Bill Staikos: Cool. All right, everybody. Another great week. We’re out. Talk to you soon.

[00:22:15] Amanda Whiteside: The car listening to be customer led with bill staikos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time.

[00:22:24] Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you want to hear more about until next time wear out.