Amy Shioji on Combining Strategy and Customer Experience

Amy Shioji on Combining Strategy and Customer Experience

[00:00:00] Amy Shioji: 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.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to be customer led. I’m your host bill stakers. I am joined by Amy cog, who is SVP for corporate strategy and the chief experience officer at strategic education Inc. Now. So as you get education, Inc has a really cool mission. It is dedicated to enabling economic mobility through education.

[00:00:53] That statement kind of just hits me every time I read it, frankly. Amy, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.

[00:00:59] Amy Shioji: Thanks. No, I’m super excited to be here and I love your series. hopefully can share some wisdom and talk a little bit about, as you mentioned, what we’re doing at our company.

[00:01:09] Bill Staikos: Cool. I’m so excited for that.

[00:01:11] And just for, for folks who are not familiar with Amy, I’ve been a super fan for a long time. The stuff that you put out there on social media and other channels, Amy is like, Always so thoughtful, deep introspective and just, I walk away like, damn, why didn’t I think of that? So like thank you for putting all this great stuff out there and I’m excited just to kind of get into it.

[00:01:33] But before we do Amy, can you talk a little bit about your journey and what were some of the differentiating factors that helped you achieve sort of the role you’re in today?

[00:01:42] Amy Shioji: Great question. Yeah, so like many, I started out in integrated marketing. Primarily in service to improving customer engagement, which I feel like many organizations sort of conflate with customer experience, but I think it became pretty apparent that there was more that we needed to do in terms of understanding and designing experiences for customers versus just purely to customers.

[00:02:05] And so that sort of began my curiosity and my foray into the more comprehensive practice of CX that you and I largely live in today. To your question about the journey. When I think about my experiences, I’ve worked at organizations like ARP USA today and now strategic education and its family of brands like Strayer and Capella university.

[00:02:29] CX like many has been more of a build from the ground up sort of endeavor in terms of helping organizations define both what CX should mean for the business, as well as how it’s sort of meaningfully take hold in the company culture and its overall operating model. And I think where I found myself now, which is, as you said, sort of chief experience and strategy officer for strategic education.

[00:02:54] One of the things that I’ve always been really focused on. Not just the advent of CX, but in making sure that customer or undergrowth and value are really embedded in driving the overall corporate agenda and culture in a really meaningful way. And so I’m really excited to talk about sort of the marriage of CX and corporate strategy and what that means for our organization, not just in terms of CX, scalability and mindset, but in terms of the importance of overall.

[00:03:26] Strategic clarity and strategic direction for broader employee engagement, because we know that that ultimately is what creates that sense of purpose for employees. And it allows them to deliver against both your customer promise and your organizational goals.

[00:03:41] Bill Staikos: So I love, and so I’m seeing more and more CX and strategies starting to come together much.

[00:03:47] Like you guys have done it. You guys are clearly pioneers in this and yourself included and thinking that way and bring, and really combined. I want to get into it, but really for our international listeners and even maybe some domestic listeners who in the U S who are not familiar with the company, can you tell us a little bit about who strategic education is and what you’re doing?

[00:04:07] Amy Shioji: Yes. So strategic education, we are in the higher ed post-secondary market. We have a number of educational institutions and assets catered to working adult learners. So here in the U S some of the notable brands, as I mentioned are Strayer and Capella university. They offer. Bachelor’s master’s and doctoral programs and degrees.

[00:04:28] we also have more recently an international institution, so Torrens university in Australia, and we also have a portfolio of non-degree offerings. So things like coding, boot camps, or general online education course programs.

[00:04:43] Bill Staikos: Very, very cool. So let’s get into now that combination of strategy and experience and, and help our listeners and walk them through your.

[00:04:54] What are some of the differences? you mentioned some of the more traditional kind of CX functions that you see out there that you’ve been involved in. And I certainly have been involved in the past, like the Rasha, we’ve talked about this in the past, but the rationale to bring it together with which you kind of say before, but then like, what is that difference for, for you all and how are you bringing up together?

[00:05:12] Amy Shioji: Yeah. And I think an important distinction here is that what this role combines. Corporate strategy NCX as opposed to CX strategy or customer strategy, which is often embedded just as a core competency in terms of an overall CX practice. And I think that’s both a differentiation in terms of past roles that I’ve had, but it also, I think, opens up a lot of opportunity for improved CX adoption and enablement, because it starts to sort of natively embed customer experience into the overall strategic framework of the.

[00:05:48] And I think, while well-intentioned in terms of my own experience of what I see, I think many organizations treat CX as a discreet thing. So, here are additional metrics, additional tools that we want to use to represent the customer, but we haven’t necessarily declared what the business should do with this, how they’re ultimately accountable for it.

[00:06:10] And we haven’t really talked about how. The CX focus areas aligned to the overall organizational goals and values. And so in my mind, in what I’ve experienced a lot is it’s largely a way at least initially, to measure current state experiences and satisfaction. And while RCX teams certainly works a lot in that area, the addition of strategy has allowed us to really sort of operate on.

[00:06:35] Three levels. And so we’ll talk a little bit about how we’re structured, but also how this sort of works. So the first I like to think about is sort of organizational, and this is where sort of our traditional strategy team. So we do have a strategy part of the team as well as a CX team. But given that we’re sort of all under one department, I think there is a lot of crossover and lots of information sharing that we do.

[00:06:58] So we wear our strategy hat to answer the question. Is the organization set up to deliver customer earned value and growth at all levels. And how is that really supported through things like goals and priorities and resource allocation, right. And that’s a lot of the work of, of sort of more of the corporate strategy side.

[00:07:16] The second is really functional. So do we have customer experience, goals and standards that are clearly clearly articulated as part of that broader strategy? And does that, how does that enable us to achieve. Meaningful experience improvements in satisfaction at scale. And this is where the CX team obviously plays a huge role in this.

[00:07:36] And then I think the third level is sort of the individual level. And this is where we see a really good marriage between both the corporate strategy team and the experience team, which is, does the organization provide the right strategic clarity to fuel that sense of purpose for employees to give them that line of sight of what they’re doing?

[00:07:54] And allow them to really be in alignment to your customer promise. So there’s a lot of work that the team has done on the CX side in terms of building that customer promise, those sets of behaviors that we model model in terms of being more customer focused, but also making sure, as you mentioned, in terms of our overall organizational vision and mission statement, we’re defining who the customer is to us, whether that’s, B to C students or industry or, or investor party, Too, you know how that needs to all come together.

[00:08:23] And I think that’s the combination. That’s been really powerful for our team to work across both at the organizational level, as well as sort of at the functional and the individual level as well.

[00:08:33] Bill Staikos: So that’s really interesting. can I just follow up on that on the individual level specifically, there’s so much conversation around there around CX and the X and the combination, both sides of same coin.

[00:08:44] However we want to screen. Are you then working in partnership with your HR function as part of that, or are you really, as your team really driving a lot of the, maybe workforce experiential items and then kind of engaging HR in a different way. I’m curious to understand if you can, if you can share that.

[00:09:01] Yeah,

[00:09:01] Amy Shioji: no, it’s a great partnership, certainly with HR. So HR really is the one that is. Probably technically responsible for things like our overall employee health and organizational health and employee engagement scores. But as I’ve mentioned, a lot of what we look at and one of the metrics that we use in terms of gauging overall organizational health is this index that looks at things.

[00:09:25] And one of the big quadrants for us in terms of what drives greater engagement and sense of purpose is this, this idea of strategic clarity and strategic direction. And so that’s where there’s a huge opportunity and partnership between the corporate strategy and experience, function, and HR in terms of sort of unpacking that and looking at how we need to be more thoughtful in the articulation right.

[00:09:50] Of, of what we stand for and who we are, but how that then needs to translate to. The way that we set our priorities, the way that we communicate and set goals around those priorities, the way that we make sure that there isn’t misalignment to the work that’s happening between different departments and infused.

[00:10:08] As part of this work, what our, what our emphasis and what our commitment to customers ultimately is. And so it’s been a really good partnership with HR to think about this. And we think about this from a talent perspective and just an overall engagement perspective. So it’s very much a partnership between our two teams, but it’s one that is, of real focus and priority for us in the organization.

[00:10:29] Bill Staikos: So cool. Amy, when you think about. Other leaders. I mean, one of the nice things, like feedback I get from listeners on this show is like, Hey, that was really good. I can take that away. Start to like tease out a couple of ideas. But when you think about other leaders or maybe even CEOs who are listening to their show, like how should they start thinking about an organizational design to meet the demands of today’s businesses, much like.

[00:10:58] Your company has by bringing these two functions together in a really meaningful way, because some organizations don’t even have a strategy function per se, that could sit in the CFO org or some teams don’t even have formal CX teams. Right. But like for listeners, like what do you think are some of those first steps that they can start or questions that they can be asking maybe inside their company to start to meet or start to put in a similar structure perhaps today?

[00:11:25] Amy Shioji: Yeah, first, I’m glad you asked the question that way, in terms of also thinking about the CEO or sort of executive listeners, I think we’re often guilty of sort of preaching to the choir in terms of CX evangelism to other CX professionals. When we know who we really need to be influencing is the C-suite.

[00:11:43] I think the culture champion for a lot of this work should ideally come from the CEO and that’s why in our organization, both CX, as you mentioned, and corporate strategy, Report up through the CEO in this role. And I think that’s both an important signal and a Testament to the practice and the transformation that we’re undertaking.

[00:12:02] But when I think about that question, I think about it a little bit this way. If you were to ask a CEO how they would define good CX for the business, and I’ve asked this question obviously to my own CEO and, they’ll likely tell you something to the effect of. It’s a great experience that ultimately leads to greater customer loyalty, improve retention, and improve word of mouth.

[00:12:28] Great. So if you follow that up to sort of say, and how does that happen? You’ll you’ll tend to get answers like, well, we need to, improve our products and our services. We need to think about the overall value in pricing. We need to think about culture, fabulous. So the next question, and how do you best enable.

[00:12:45] Okay, well, that’s where it starts to kind of fall apart. And I think if you ask the question that way, the answer is not going to be sort of this default. Well, you stick it under marketing, I guess, right? Because what they’re describing in terms of the product experience, the service experience, the culture and all those pieces.

[00:13:03] Is really a holistic way that they’re talking about customer value. And so I think that’s going to look different in every organization. Maybe it’s aligned to some things like corporate strategy. It might be if you have some sort of a transformation office, depending on the size of the business and the change agenda for the company.

[00:13:21] I also think having chief customer officers, chief experience officers is a fabulous way to attack this as well. But I think in general, those are the questions and if not the CEO. Whoever the executive champion and sponsor of this work is within the organization. Those are the types of questions you should be asking them, of the CEO of the leader and, or of, potential as a CCO or a CXO candidate yourself, to make sure that CX is well positioned in the organization.

[00:13:51] And it’s aligned to what the definition of success. Ultimately looks like for those executives and for that leader. And I think that’s, what’s really important regardless of where it formally sits is have people describe what it, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what success is, and that will help you sort of figure out what’s the best way to align your resources and who needs to be part of that conversation.

[00:14:15] Bill Staikos: Those three questions. So simple, so incredibly powerful. And clearly why you’ve got the structure that you do today. The enabling piece is really important. One. I don’t think that companies give as much thought to it as they could or as they should. And I think that’s where a lot of the breakdown could potentially happen outside of the CEO and maybe their executive team, all having sort of a different view of what the experience should be as well.

[00:14:40] But that alignment using the same language as equally as. Are you using kind of it. So you’ve got two different, you’ve got a strategy team and a CX team. Are they using combine? Are you guys using combined tools like tools together, whether that’s design thinking, personas, journeys, et cetera, or is the strategy team using their set of tools to create and think about strategy and the CX team using their cause that cross-functional partnership and being on the same platforms and tools, and really be understanding.

[00:15:10] It would be interesting to understand that maybe a little bit more.

[00:15:13] Amy Shioji: Yeah. So there are some, not maybe as many as we probably should. I think it’s given me some good ideas already, but we do. So some of the sort of design thinking methodologies frameworks are certainly a lot of the ways that both in terms of more traditional corporate strategic planning and in, in our design practice and our CX practice, we certainly use.

[00:15:33] I think on the CX side specifically, a lot of what we used as a team are the same tools that I’ve traditionally used. But what I think has been really stellar is the packaging and delivery of those tools to be really impactful. So we focused a lot on creation of sort of a journey Atlas as a way to sort of package tools and artifacts and methods, just to be able to deliver for the business.

[00:16:00] So part of what we’ve done. Is really intimately understand and document all of the key student journeys. And for us, that’s everything from, starting to think about education, to applying for the university, figuring out how you’re going to finance your education, enrolling, taking classes, graduating, everything in between.

[00:16:21] And what we’ve been able to do is create these journey maps. Digitize them put them online available for our, for the, the company and embedded in those they’re really interactive. So we do have some, text analytics, voice of customer platform insights. So what you can do is within any of those journeys, we’ve kind of broken it down in terms of key jobs or tasks that we know are the most important that we have to get, right.

[00:16:46] In terms of the experience for our students. And so what you can do is click into those. Look at what the current state journey map is. You can click in and actually hear audio calls and transcripts that we’re pulling from things like chat or our phone calls between our coaches, for example, our enrollment counselors and the student.

[00:17:06] So you can look at all of that. We have as part of our design practice, some future state prototypes, and what’s really been a focus that was, I think, a new. Capability that we really brought to the organization was service blueprints, right? Being able to have teams be able to understand and see the interconnectedness of a lot of the different touch points and processes that are enabled so that if you do pull this down and you say, okay, I’m in marketing.

[00:17:31] I want to make changes to X. Let me better understand the landscape. where the customer’s coming from, here’s an example of a future state prototype. And also as we start to make these changes, this does have downstream implications to our chatbots that are connected through the same knowledge systems or the training and the scripting that we need to arm our, our coaches or our advisors on in terms of making this ultimate change.

[00:17:54] So those are pieces that I think have been really powerful. On the CX side of things that has really enabled the organization to be able to utilize these tools rather than sort of a piecemeal approach to here’s insights. And now here’s another set of things. And so having that and sort of an overall design rubric for the organization, I think has.

[00:18:14] Particularly for our current culture, a really powerful way that we’ve been able to influence pulling this stuff together.

[00:18:20] Bill Staikos: You may not be able to answer this. So if you can’t just say no, but the journey outlets, I think Forrester created it maybe four or five years ago, give or take around there. We use the same tool at Freddie Mac we’d similarly, we digitized it using TA and other sort of insights platform to really make those journeys and those tasks.

[00:18:41] Come alive. I think we had like 36 journeys under six overarching kind of experiences that I think is a really important piece that many companies still are missing. But has that driven you to be maybe not so product focused or are you thinking about going to more journey alignment as a result of that, of that work that you’re doing?

[00:19:05] Or how are you thinking about that? Cause that’s a big piece for me that I’m hearing now more and more companies. Okay. We were silos. And then we went to product organization and the folks that are really getting it and really implementing journeys and analytics and orchestration, as an example, are now starting to align around the journeys and not necessarily the product anymore, which has really fast.

[00:19:28] Amy Shioji: Exactly. And it’s a really timely conversation and one that we’re going through right now. So yes, I think the focus on this. And we’ve also learned this, just, I think in going through this and all of us have felt this as part of CX practitioners, when you come in, as far as this is the CX agenda, the CX team agenda, right?

[00:19:47] Like it’s, it’s not going to go over pretty well. So what we found to be agnostic was to really talk about the student journey, the customer journey, and so architecting our, our overall experience, design architecture and all these different artifacts in that way has been a really. Universal way to, to have people understand that no one person, frankly, not even the CX team or any particular function owns that journey.

[00:20:12] There are so many components to that. And so that’s been a really good way to sort of open the door to having these types of conversations and bringing everybody in and understanding the complexity of an interconnectedness of all of these different groups and touchpoints. So one of the things that we have done more recently on the CX team related to, or even our voice of customer team, We used to have folks that were sort of specifically earmarked for each university or each institution, or even certain types of programs and things like that.

[00:20:41] And we have moved our own resources to a journey level view, and actually agnostic of university, because what we’ve found is that, well, the students themselves, the actual degree programs are different. When you go back to that base layer, we talked about, which was creating those overall journeys and key jobs and tasks.

[00:20:59] To the student view. It’s exactly the same. I mean, they want the same things. They want to feel the same things. They want the same sense of accomplishment. They need the same types of questions answered how that manifests might look slightly different depending on, on the university or the level of the degree program and things.

[00:21:14] But it’s largely the same. So we’ve been able to restructure in some ways to really align our resources as a CX team around those journeys. And we’re starting to also see this being influenced in terms of. Our partner teams thinking a little bit more holistically as they think about QA and training, as they think about starting to build in different support structures and support student support teams, they are also now starting to more formally align around journey, which again is just when you think about impact, but also more importantly culture it’s such a wind have people start to think about an orient themselves around the customer journey versus.

[00:21:55] The the, the function or the vertical or the product, which is such an internal view of, of the way that we need to organize

[00:22:02] Bill Staikos: ourselves. Yeah. I think a lot of folks are missing a trick a little bit there in terms of this, something that we were pushing and did that Freddie Mac. And even in my role today, just I have a lot of conversations around this.

[00:22:12] Like when you think about even your product teams, you have. Product portfolio owners, just like multiple products or multiple journeys. Like those individuals can be journey owners, right? And certainly if there are multiple journeys inside a set of products, they can own those multiple journeys. But once you start thinking that way, it opens up a completely new set of possibilities and excitement.

[00:22:35] And I’ve seen firsthand how, from an employee engagement perspective, people just get very much more attuned to the impact that they’re having back to your point around. I’ve connected my role to strategy and the customer, and just more fulfillment there, which was such a critical piece. Are you like, I’m curious as to kind of think for, to hear from you, not many organizations I’m seeing more and more of it, but not many organizations have brought strategy and CX together.

[00:23:02] You see a lot more around the chief customer officer or chief experience officer, as you mentioned before, how do you see this? I’m a big fan of how you guys have done it, and clearly you, you all are successful, in part because of that, that structure, but where do you kind of see this going?

[00:23:18] Like, how do you see this coming together over the next couple of years?

[00:23:22] Amy Shioji: It’s a great question. And I think so first aid, certainly if there’s organizations that do want to think about a chief customer officer, a chief experience officer. That’s great. I think that’s, that’s a fabulous signal. That’s an important role within the organization, but I still think you then need to have some way to align the C-suite because now you’ve got the CMO, the COO, the C2 CTO, now the CCO or CXO, and that’s yet another agenda, sort of the customer agenda that needs to be reconciled as part of that.

[00:23:55] And so. I do think in our case, and what I certainly have seen is that the integration between customer experience and strategy helps to align the work and the mechanisms to enable greater adoption and impact, not just in terms of what the CX agenda is, but, but across the organization, because, and I think also I don’t particularly like using the phrase customer agenda because to me, the customer agenda is the business agenda, which is another reason why tying it to corporate strategy, more deliberately.

[00:24:26] Is really powerful. And I think a lot of what I’ve described in terms of mechanisms, that have worked or how we’ve thought about those three levels of, of strategy and CX. A lot of that does sound like traditional corporate strategy. Your listeners might say, well, that strategy and I’m not in strategy and you’re white, but I think at CX practitioners, we all know that one of the biggest hurdles to CX enablement is really goal or priority or resource misalignment.

[00:24:53] So helping to ensure that you have. Shared goals, the right resources allocated and alignment of CX and overall corporate priorities upfront is only going to make the work of the CX team and of the organization overall that much more impactful. So I can’t say, as I said before, that necessarily one role or construct is going to be best for every organization.

[00:25:17] But I would say that what has been really nice and what. Now really started to understand and appreciate in terms of our own current structure. Is that not only does, having the representation as the CXO, have some, some great impact in terms of how we talk about and focus on CX, but I’ve also been able to marry that with saying now here’s the CX agenda and broadly for the organization, the customer agenda.

[00:25:43] How do I help clear the deck to make sure that there aren’t things across other groups. That are still going to get in the way of how we deliver on that. And that combination is what’s been really, really powerful.

[00:25:54] Bill Staikos: Very cool.

[00:25:55] Amy Shioji: Very cool. What have you seen work in other organizations?

[00:25:59] Bill Staikos: So I think that there are, just kind of, given my seat these days, I get to see a lot of different models, which I’m really grateful for.

[00:26:08] I think the lion share and maybe like top 10, 15% of companies who are far along in maturity are really sort of leaning into the. Broader CX agenda and an organization and aligning differently the organizational pieces. So, as I mentioned before, I think the folks that are on that cusp or they’re already are starting to take a much more journey based view of the company and the work that they’re doing and the work that employees every day or know just are delivered.

[00:26:39] And that is a very, very different model than even just say three years ago. Right? I mean, I think when Forrester first came out with their journey Atlas approach, I don’t think that they maybe even thought about how this could be the evolution of just organizational structure at some point. And that’s what it feels like it’s starting to kind of turn into, which is really wonderful to see.

[00:26:59] And the results that we see from an experiential perspective for these companies are just leaps and bounds. Further ahead than, than others. There’s this big, middle 60% that are really looking at, or maybe have put in like a head of CX or a CXO, or maybe even a CCO, but it’s still really feels like we’re there.

[00:27:20] They’re focused on CX metrics and not business metrics and tying the two things. Now you can have a CX strategy and ladder that up, maybe to your corporate strategy. You don’t need to necessarily bring the two teams together. Although the value is clear to do that. But still so many are focused on those customer metrics.

[00:27:37] And to your point, that CXO is just trying to influence everybody else. And if you don’t have good influencing skills and partnership and collaborate well across, or your team’s not capable of do that, able to do that, it just breaks down. So I think there are, there’s a big kind of group in that middle that is struggling right now with, with solving for that and making those connections.

[00:28:00] And then, for the, let’s say the bottom. 20% that aren’t even there as much, survey driven, 8% of our customers are responding and, we’re dry making some change based, based on the feedback or not, but still really just toe in the water. And you think like at this sort of stage in the game where there’s so much out there, just information to be able to access that.

[00:28:23] Yeah. I think it comes down to resources, frankly, and what they’re able to execute and deliver against versus people thinking that, not, not wanting to do. But the discipline really feels like it’s at this inflection point around, where do we go to next? And for those, with the resources that can think deeply and hire people that can change an organization in the right way, it I’m really personally just my own opinion.

[00:28:47] I’m just trying to really see a separation in those companies. But even in that CXO role, I think the companies that do get it and are doing it well are saying, Hey. Thinking about McDonald’s or Walmart, like we’re going to embed marketing agile transformation brand contact center, like those, everything kind of, post-sale now rolling up into that CXO or CCO role.

[00:29:10] And once you’re able to bring that together and have everyone working collaboratively, man, that could just be magic. And I’ve really seen that firsthand, which is just so wonderful to see from a customer perspective, as well as the employee perspective. Over time that has profound impact on culture and having a customer led culture where people are putting in that incremental effort outside of the, around their role to really create value, not only for themselves in their teams, but also ultimately for the customer too.

[00:29:41] Amy Shioji: Absolutely. Well said.

[00:29:44] Bill Staikos: I have got two more questions for you. I know you’re super busy and I’m so grateful for your time. Who do you look to for inspiration? One is where do you go for inspiration, but to like, who do you look up to in our space? I’m curious.

[00:29:56] Amy Shioji: Yeah. So I guess where do I go for inspiration?

[00:29:59] I don’t know. These days, I feel like it’s a really good brownie or cup of coffee. It doesn’t take much for me these days. I must say, I will say I’m a runner. I like to do some ultra running and things. So I tend to try to do that. And I’d say. Other inspiration would sort of be as cheesy as it sounds, my kids.

[00:30:19] So we’ve talked about this. I have two youngsters under the age of five and they ask so many questions and while it’s really maddening in the moment, like my daughter will ask me things like, well, why is a banana not pink? And you’re like, I don’t know how to answer that. There’s no good answer that will satisfy you.

[00:30:37] But at the same time, it’s this sort of constant reminder of. That outside in thinking that sort of curiosity, that innate curiosity, that sort of helps me remember, don’t stop asking the why or the, why not. It can be really inspirational for our type of work. So I would say those are sort of the sources of energy for me is running and food and children in yeah.

[00:31:02] In terms of. Thought leadership and inspiration. I mean, I think I’m really fortunate. So I sit on the board of the customer experience professionals association, and there are so many just amazing practitioners, CX evangelists, people that I have come across working for that, through that organization that have been really phenomenal.

[00:31:25] And what I love is that part of our focus has been. Not just domestically, like how are we all between consultancies and practitioners focusing on customer experience, but a big focus has been on international growth. And one of the things that has been really interesting to see is how is CX taking hold in other organizations?

[00:31:44] And I think part of what’s been really helpful for me is grounding myself and say, The CX discipline, the CX practice, I think we’re starting to really formalize and standardize a lot of, of what those disciplines and mechanisms and tools need to be. But it is very interesting to see how that shows up culturally, within different types of industries, but also in different countries.

[00:32:07] And it’s very humbling to say like, oh, we think we know everything about CX, but it’s just a very different orientation than some other countries. And I’ve really enjoyed just learning about how the CX practices. Considered and. Implemented in other parts of the world. So I’d be remiss not to list a bunch of people that I’ve worked with through my experience with the CSBA, but I would say in general, that organization and particularly the, the board and the folks that I’ve been really fortunate to work with, I think are just constantly challenging us to think about.

[00:32:38] The CX practice and the discipline on a global scale, which is something that is very much still evolving, as you say.

[00:32:46] Bill Staikos: Yeah. I mean, I feel like in a, in some markets, certainly in, Asia-Pac still very far behind, a little bit, you’ve got Europe further ahead, Africa as a continent, Brazil is one of the fastest growing CX markets out there, which is fascinating to kind of see the growth there.

[00:33:03] Amy Shioji: Like Australia, New Zealand, for example, super advanced in CX, just as they are typical business management in general. So having that kind of representation is just really interesting in terms of where they’re taking it, how they are structured, how they think about CX, what that even means. Yeah. Is really interesting.

[00:33:20] Bill Staikos: So I’ve got just before I let you go, the one thing that I’ve started doing, so I’ve got folks know on this show, like I’ve got three littles as well. I’ve got 310 and I’ve started now asking my nine year old and my seven. What do you think this product is going to look like in the future when your dad’s age or your, the answers that I get are just off the charts, hysterical, but like, sometimes they’re just like, wow, that is spot on too.

[00:33:43] So I’m turning the questions around on them now. So it’s a, it’s a fun age where I get really interesting responses. We do that before bedtime and, it’s a fun way to kind of end the day, get their creative juices going. And th the next day I’ll typically. A question of, can I actually go make that, do you think I can go build that?

[00:34:02] I’m like, yeah, a hundred percent you can, right? Not right now, not in our house, but like, you can go work on that. So it’s such a pleasure to have you on Amy. Thanks so much for joining us. And I can’t wait to see your successes and how your organization evolves in the work that you’re doing.

[00:34:18] Continue to drive growth for the company. So, thanks again. Thanks for the gift of.

[00:34:22] Amy Shioji: Great. Thank you so much.

[00:34:23] Bill Staikos: All right, everybody. What a great show we’re out. That’s it. I’ll see you all next week. Talk to you sooner for

[00:34:29] Amy Shioji: listening to be customer led with bill staikos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time.

[00:34:37] 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.