Becky Getz From Amazon and the Impact of CX on Culture Change

Becky Getz From Amazon and the Impact of CX on Culture Change

Welcome to be customer led 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 have a super special guest for you all today. Becky Goetz is head of customer experience operations at AWS. She is building and leading the largest CX team at Amazon, which is a really impressive actually thing to be able to do. and as the first CX operations lead at the.

So Becky has a really amazing background, not only heading up design ops ex ex to be head of design ops at capital one, but also has a long career also at Ogilvy. So like a really interesting background where to talk about that as well. But before we do that, Becky, welcome to the show. It’s so wonderful to have you here.

[00:01:12] Becky Getz: Thank you, bill. I’m thrilled to be here. Looking forward to this.

[00:01:15] Bill Staikos: I know me too. I’m just, I’ve been looking forward to this all week. You have no idea. All right. I ask everyone of our guests on the show, just to talk a little bit about your background and what you think are some factors that helped you achieve the role that you’re in today.

And even just thinking about that history, that richness that we just talked about at the top of the show and the intro, how has maybe that kind of driven some perspective in the work that you’re doing?

[00:01:43] Becky Getz: Yeah, I have to say that the journey has not been planned. It was, it was a journey of, of chance and, zigs and zags.

I have a dear friend who always said, just always say yes, and I think that’s kind of a. What led me, led me to where I am. So I, yeah, I spent the bulk of my career at Ogilvy, primarily leading global businesses, global client business. and as doing that, worked with a couple of really, Kimberly Clark, Unilever, a couple of really big global businesses that were really looking at how to.

Do multi-channel, omni-channel integrated kind of things very, very early on. So I got some experience working with different divisions of Ogilvy, different agency partners and bringing those groups together to create kind of a bigger hole if you will. So I had a little bit of experience there. I ended up towards the end of my career, running operations at.

And made that switch because the CEO asked me to, and I said, I don’t, what is operations? Why, what? It, wasn’t a thing in agencies a few years ago. it’s become much more common now, but what I loved about that. Was it allowed me to take all of the things that I had learned to do for clients and all of the different, building of teams and thinking about kind of who your customer is and all of those things and apply it to Ogilvy.

So it really was able to almost take like a client point of view, if you will, and say, what do we want to stand for as an agency? How do we put the clients at the center? How do we operationalize all that? How do we make it work and really enjoy doing that? And then. Started to kind of hit my head against the holding company wall a little bit.

And, sort of was at that point where I’m going to, like, we’re all going to solve these same problems over and over the same way for the rest of my life, or I’m try something different. Try it a couple of things and ultimately capital one called and I asked if I wanted to consider. Helping run their design team.

And I have to say, I thought they meant graphic design at the time. Like I am not, I did not know much about design UX, any of that. I knew a little bit about all of it. So I said, yes, and I did it. And I made this, this big leap from agency side to client side from, mobile visa, Big advertising agency, but capital one’s a fortune 100 to a bank.

Never thought I’d work at a bank ever. So I did it and I loved it. I found that what, what I was able to learn about design and how it approaches customers and humans was really, really interesting to me, challenging to me and all of those things. And then I ended up at Amazon doing very much the same thing I was doing at capital one, but at a bigger scale.

[00:04:18] Bill Staikos: Wow. So going from the. Creating creative and award-winning creative by the way, right? At Ogilvy that you were driving to a completely new well operations, even which you’re right. A lot of agencies now have operations and it’s everybody does. How was it like creating a completely new thing at Ogilvy? I mean, because still was still pretty nascent, right.

Even that

[00:04:44] Becky Getz: I’d have to create it. Yeah. It was completely nascent. It was fun. I mean, I love creating, I love building. And I think, that’s kind of led me to where I am. I’ve also always been a creativity advocate. So being able to advocate for the importance of creativity and the importance of those pieces.

within an agency environment, was really, really important to me. And I really enjoyed doing that. I liked it. It’s problem solving. It’s, again, thinking about how to support the business. those are all the things that I really liked about it. It’s interesting. I was just asked fairly recently about the difference between, working with creatives and nurturing creatives in a, in a brand or an agency environment.

[00:05:21] Becky Getz: And a design creatives. I thought it was such an interesting thing to think about because they’re very different types of people, very different types of people, but, but that’s the, again, that’s the fun part is kind of figuring out what makes them feel inspired and what makes them provide their best work and what are the right guardrails without putting too many guardrails and how to nurture that.

So it was, it was an interesting, interesting journey creatively, too. Be able to kind of build those teams and support those teams and look for ways for those teams to be more better at what they do more better.

[00:05:52] Bill Staikos: I’m sure. Just also just learning about yourself as a leader, but also growth as yourself as a leader along the way too.

So jumping from that creative piece now on the client side, capital one now at AWS, you’re having direct impact on the client experience. What does CX mean to you? Right. Like, how do you approach it in your role today from a design ops perspective?

[00:06:12] Becky Getz: That’s the million dollar question, right? What is CX?

What do people think? It means? Because I don’t think it’s so diffused right now in terms of the. Understanding of what that is and the role that it plays for me. It’s just, it’s what a business does that people experience. So, I mean, it’s not tech, it’s not brand alone, it’s not internal, it’s not external, it’s every single one of those touch points and it covers the entire business, which is why I think there’s an interesting intersection with operations too, because as you become a leader in a business and in an organization, You have to kind of look at it holistically.

If you’re looking at customer experience, I think it can’t be a department or a piece of the puzzle. It is the, for me, it’s just all of those little myriads of opportunities that a business has to touch it’s customer.

[00:07:04] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Joe pine and it’s going to kill me for probably botching what he said, but I recently read a quote of his, he said customer experience is what the customer feels inside based on interactions that they see or, or have.

Outside of themselves. And I was like, that is so simple, right? Like it’s just, it’s the emotional piece that you feel as a customer, right. That, whatever that product or service or whatever that is, that interaction, how that makes you feel. And that is the experience with the other day. I just thought that was so simple.

It’s so real it’s mean very close to how you’re thinking about it as well.

it’s what a brand does. Not what. So that looks at it kind of from a brand perspective. It is really what, what you’re doing out there externally and internally, rather than kind of what you say you’re going to do or what you say.

[00:07:48] Bill Staikos: Yeah. And I love the power of social media, right? Like now, like customers are telling you what your brand is. Right. Like before bread was about telling, telling you what the brand is and what they stand for now, customers are saying none of the brand is what I’m telling you. It is actually because I’m feeling it every day.

Are you looking or thinking about the employee experience, similarly, in your role, are you focused solely on customers? So how do you think about employee experiences?

[00:08:11] Becky Getz: Yeah, I think it’s exactly the same. I don’t think you can parse the two, in a perfect world and, and most organizations are not perfect yet, but in a perfect world, I think that the internal employee experience should reflect all of the same things that you’re trying to reflect externally with customer experience.

So it starts with what is your, your mission and your vision for your business, and then you bring in your brand and what is the, what is the brand essence and what is it that about your consumers? All of that is applicable to internal and honestly, I heard a quote and I won’t remember it right now, but you can’t project something externally if you’re not living it internally.

And so I think that it is, and that’s not exactly right, but it’s the essence of it, because if you can’t treat your own employees with the kind of, vision and. Meaning for your company that you’re trying to project externally. You’re not going to get very far because you’re just not going to be able to find the right people.

You’re not gonna be able to keep the right people. and you’re not gonna be able to grow the right people. And I think all of those things are really important.

[00:09:12] Bill Staikos: A hundred percent agree. And this may not, this is a question it’s not necessarily geared towards the work that you’re doing today with AWS, but like, What do you find most rewarding or even most challenging from a design ops perspective?

[00:09:24] Becky Getz: I find, well, I’ll give you the first answer that comes to mind. The most challenging thing you use, the words, design ops perspective, and the most challenging thing I find in the last two roles that I’ve had is that there is an expectation that design ops is a, it’s a newly growing. Function. It’s a thing, right.

It’s being defined in there are signup. Whereas that is sort of a piece of what I love to do so often when I come into design organizations as an operations leader, the expectation is I’m going to be a design ops leader, and I’m going to really put process in place. Right? Lots of process, making sure that we’re not thinking about how we’re doing the work.

The work is getting done and it’s the best work we can do. All of those fantastic things that come out of design ops. I’m much more of an organizational operations person. So for me, that’s a piece of it. Yes, absolutely. But I’ve had to do a lot of educating. A lot of influencing throughout the design organizations, but also the companies to say, Hey, it’s not, it’s not just about the operations of our projects or programs.

It’s about how do we as a customer experience or a design team or an agency team function and continue to grow and continue to build our influence, within the organization. And that’s become particularly important, capital one and AWS. So for me, That’s the biggest challenge is that I kind of come into these roles and people are sort of like, all right, now, let’s, let’s get our tools up and running and what are we going to track our projects?

And I think all of that stuff is super important, but I come in with a broader view and I think that in order to continue to grow. And the understanding of the importance of CX. It has to be that broader view, not just even within the team, but outside within the company.

[00:11:09] Bill Staikos: I think it’s so, it’s so important.

I think. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot more as well, but. See, I could be like this really super fuzzy topic to so many people, but putting real structure and real tools and real capabilities behind it makes it real for the CEO or the C-suite as well, such a critical component. I think a lot of companies jump into the I’m going to go do VOC research, and then I’m going to go survey and I’m gonna get my C-SAT score.

And that’s customer experience. I’m like, gosh, there’s like a million things to do between now and that even before. Even just doing customer research, let alone metrics and everything else. W we talked a little bit about the employee experience side, but like CX teams more and more are playing a role in just broader culture change in organizations.

What is your perspective there? and, and what that role can or should be. Certainly they could use the same tools that they do on the customer side, whether it’s design thinking, lean, whatever you want, whatever you’re using, but what do you think that role could be a bigger, small, and where might teams start to think about that?

Even if they’re not doing it today?

[00:12:11] Becky Getz: I think it’s, it’s an important role. It’s big for sure. I think a couple of things. I think that there’s an opportunity to educate companies and influence companies. So they understand what CX can be and you started out by saying, and I’m sure you’ve seen it across all of the different interviews that you’ve done.

CX means so many different things in so many different companies. So in some places it’s a, it’s a sliver in other places it’s a little bit broader, but it could be even broader companies. My, my, my experience is that companies tend to be still very, very siloed and that that doesn’t help customer experience.

So I think there is a role that CX can play culturally within companies to get people to think more holistically. Number one, number two, to really drive putting the customer at the center and drive that way of thinking. And then, let people take their areas of expertise and go from there. But I also think that design thinking as a discipline.

Is something that could be much more broadly leveraged and create a really rich experience within companies. I gave a talk not too long ago for the forays, where I talked about how CX and advertising agencies can kind of come together. And one of the things I pointed out is that you can use design thinking and.

CX in your own agency, as you’re building your relationships with your clients. And we, we did it at capital one, too. We really, we did a lot of training to help people that weren’t necessarily intersecting with our CX team, understand how to leverage design, thinking to make the work that they’re doing better.

So I think there’s a number of different angles that it can be a cultural. catalyst within companies.

[00:13:51] Bill Staikos: So I love that perspective and I wish we would see more companies take that on I, in a past life, my design team was employing design thinking and training agile scrum teams on the, on the methodology and the mindset, frankly.

And it really started to show a huge difference in the work that they were doing, how they were coming together, create a user stories. I mean, it really just fundamentally changed the way that they were working and to the point where the company. We’re all in on this train, everybody. It was so awesome to save, goes up.

Like I know, I know it was so deep. It was, so it was really, really special. We also had a fantastic design leader, working on the team, who, who led the charge and she did a fantastic job. What do you think about that though? Particularly using tools like design thinking, what roadblocks do you see, or maybe, what are maybe some things that other things that we can be doing to break down the silos?

To create the type of culture change around the customer and even around the employee as well. Right? I mean, you have to be as employee centric as you have to be customer centric. Tell us a little bit about that or your perspective there.

[00:14:56] Becky Getz: I think that I’ve seen a couple of things work and the silos just seem to kind of be the biggest blocker right now.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the same thing as you’ve talked to folks, but no matter kind of how hard companies are trying design or customer experience. Still feels very separate from marketing in what I’ve experienced and very, not even close to being considered to being related to corporate comms or internal comms or social work, social good work.

And I think that there’s an opportunity. One of the things I started to talk about at capital one was. Let’s just build a round table. Like we don’t need to talk about who’s doing what or how we work together, or, all of the complicated things. Let’s just all sit around a table once a month or once a quarter and tell each other what we’re doing and talk about the commonalities and that’s, not a bad starting point.

Yeah. I mean in my experience with clients and in places that I’ve worked, oftentimes it’s not just silent, but there’s tension because of the way the different organizations have grown up. So just getting to know each other and getting to know what the different teams are doing and bringing, I mean, how powerful to bring all of those different sort of communicators and experience builders around a table just to have a conversation.

So that’s one thing that I think is really valuable. And I think the other thing is you, you were just talking about it a little bit, like, like let’s train people, help them understand what design thinking is. What CX is what design is, I, I’ve been lucky and I’ve had C-suite leadership that really invested in CX and design and believed in it.

And that’s fantastic. That’s, a huge, huge starting point for a win, but the folks that are then funding the roles or intersecting with the rules, don’t always really understand what it is that they’re buying. So I think like any discipline design. Tend to speak their own language. And they’re, sometimes they’re not understanding that people don’t understand them and that happens with any group.

Right. But it’s not helping when people don’t really understand the discipline yet. So I think that doing some training around design thinking where it’s not. Incumbent upon the folks that you’re training that they invest or that they partner with these teams, but it’s actually presented as a tool to help their work get better.

I found also really, really compelling. Oh

[00:17:10] Bill Staikos: yeah, absolutely. I wish that more companies would actually apply design thinking towards solving big problems that a lot of companies are facing right now, like return to work or. What is the future of work look like for our organization or not just for employees, but for our workforce.

Right. And what does that mean for the families of the people that, that work here at this company? Right? Whether they’re an IC or whether they’re a full-time employee, as an example, to

[00:17:36] Becky Getz: it’s really interesting that you said that because I, before, right before I left capital one, right after the pandemic, so the endemic had been around for about four months.

We did just that. And we did a design thinking, like in my team, we did a design thinking exercise around what does return to work look like. And it was geared it with the workspace solution team and they were blown away because nobody had ever really thought to go through all of the different journey points.

that folks were going to go through and we really uncovered some, some big things when we did that. And just then we’re able to hand it over to the workplace solutions team, which was handling all the office space and everything else and say, here, use this. So that’s another way to kind of grow, influence and learning about.

[00:18:16] Becky Getz: Really interesting exercise to do really fascinating.

[00:18:19] Bill Staikos: I’m sure. a lot of times what I see in the market and just the people I’m talking to now naturally, just because of networking in the market or the show, et cetera. A lot of what I hear sometimes Becky is folks in HR saying to your point before.

He excellency actually the same, almost same thing. Right? Two sides of same coin. A lot of people in HR just saying, it’s not my job. Right, right. CX people saying I’d love to help, but not really my role. Right. So back in that kind of siloed thinking, but to your point where you can, if you can bring different diverse people together, put a problem in front of them, use a toolkit that brings sort of a shared understanding.

Common approach, common language, common approach, a solid problem. The result can be really powerful. I just, I know we could probably talk about this all day, frankly, but like that’s where, like, this stuff, this work gets really interesting and good solve, major, huge problems for a company.

So kudos for you for doing that and bringing people together. That’s that must have been awesome to be in that room for a couple of. Okay.

[00:19:17] Becky Getz: Trying. I mean, we got, we got, we didn’t get everybody and we got one meeting before I left, but it’s, it’s, it’s early days. Right. But, but yeah, I agree. 100%.

I think those, I mean, that’s right. The core of design thinking to get all those different perspectives, get all of the different points of view. Do your research, do your, your user testing.

[00:19:36] Bill Staikos: So, so you made a change from agency work to essentially to financial services. Now, technology essentially, right.

And then like in the middle of a pandemic molest, which is, I’m sure that that was stressful enough to, how do you think you maybe have changed as a leader, whether it was due to the pandemic due to how you’re thinking about sort of the next evolution of work and what that means? For you and your organization due to the change in industries.

And certainly, I mean, AWS and capital one are very, very different companies, right. Even large and successful in their own. Right. Of course. But how maybe have you evolved as a leader as a result of, of that, all that transition?

[00:20:16] Becky Getz: Oh, bill, that’s a great question. I think I’ve really learned to listen and I’ve had to listen.

Carefully and quickly I say that mostly because of the last two roles into your point capital one, and AWS are very different companies. There’s some commonalities there for sure, but the way that Amazon and AWS works in their culture is, it’s widely, written about. And it’s very unique and very different.

And learning that, as I say, sometimes I feel like I’m getting an MBA in Amazonian, sort of like learning a holy way to think and to process things. And what is important, especially as a builder for teams that are fairly new, what is important at one company is not always important at another. So it goes back to design thinking really in the end, because I could have taken what I built at capital one and sort of translated it and brought it to AWS.

Again, the expectations of the role are very, very similar. But it didn’t translate. They needed different things, built and different connections and different emphasis. So I think listening and hearing same thing I mentioned before, like when I first got to Capitol one, I was, I wanted to nurture creativity in, in the same way and talk about it in the same way that I had it in the agency world.

And it’s very different creatives don’t think about themselves quite the same way they don’t. So I think that that for me as well, Especially again, to also not being with people, that listening part and that, that really giving a little bit of space to understand before you jump in is what has allowed me to make some of these moves.

That’s probably the biggest thing. I mean, and then the biggest thing that’s changed, do you have to there, there’s, there’s bias for action. Always. You have to, you have to want to move fast, but you also have to really understand. What the organization values and where the organization is right now.

as we go through the last couple of years. Yeah.

[00:22:11] Bill Staikos: Do you think that the pandemic has just really heightened that, that, that muscle, that needs to be worked as, as a leader now more than ever? I feel like it was, yeah. I mean, it’s just like, you’re not kind of setting the vision and telling people what to do anymore.

Like you really need leadership is so much more ground up now.

[00:22:24] Becky Getz: It’s totally bottoms up. Yeah, you’re exactly right. Used to be able to sit in a room and say, here’s what we’re going to do, everybody. Okay, cool. Let’s move on. And now, first of all, you can’t do that because you’re not all in a room, but secondly, what you’re going to do two weeks ago might be very different from what you’re going to do now.

And it’s theirs, we’re on quicksand a little bit, but

[00:22:43] Bill Staikos: every industry is, how do you think the work related to customer experience, maybe even employee experience, culture change around that? Like how do you see that evolving. Over the next five years, the customer experience broadly has changed in so many different ways.

Over the last five years, technology, AI machine learning, coming in design become much, much more data-driven even right. Like how do you see that evolution even happening over the next five years? I don’t know if that’s something you think about or I’d be curious to hear your perspective.

[00:23:15] Becky Getz: I think a lot about it, because I don’t know that we, again, I’m not sure what it is today.

So, it’s fascinating. I think it’s got to become, a little bit more holistic. It’s got to break out of silos. I like the ying and the yang of the data versus the empathy and the humanness of it. But there is a real opportunity for CX and edX to rehumanize business. And we’re in a period of time right now, where that is something that is critical and being talked about and sort of it’s in the ether.

But I think that this, this ability to bring data is you have to have that it’s never going to go away, but if we keep moving towards day-to-day to data and we lose the other perspective of what design thinking can bring in and, and branding and marketing and all of the. Touch points with people, right?

Yep. There is a real opportunity to rehumanize business and put that person back at the center of what we’re doing. And that’s what I’d love to see happen over the next five years. I would love to see that CXO role become kind of the role of the voice of the customer and employee and, and really bring those two pieces together, the data and the empathy.

[00:24:28] Bill Staikos: Just the digitalization of the world over the last 18 months, I feel sometimes that that is going to get us further away from the customer. Yeah. Sometimes because we’re so rely on it now. Right? It’s a big concern of mine. It’s something I think about all the, all the time, even in my current role where I am today, I’ve got two more questions for you.

One I’ve just started asking guests. So apologies that you’re one of the first few that get this question, but who do you look up? In your respective, maybe if your respective feel of work or maybe, or tangential body of work, like who do you look up to?

[00:25:00] Becky Getz: I’ll give you the first two things come to mind.

When I, when I joined the design team at capital one, it was a really, really fantastic team, such a strong design team that they have. And it’s because our part of the reason is because. They created their design team by acquiring adaptive path, which was one of the first designs. Yeah,

[00:25:20] Bill Staikos: I remember that.

[00:25:21] Becky Getz: So I was lucky enough to work with a lot of those adaptive path folks when I started.

And some of the leaders from that organization taught me so much about humanity and design thinking and. How to apply those processes. I was constantly amazed by their humanness and, and their smartness. So I, I really, I mean, I, and, and their ability to kind of take this, this founder, this founder perspective and, and, folks that had built their own company and then bring it into capital one and, and really allow it bribe there.

So I, I look up to that team. I think that. So those folks I’ve worked with that, that came home from adaptive path were just amazing. Individuals are amazing individuals. I think the second thing I thought of when you said that is, is I, I’m kind of, I look up to, and I’m inspired by the folks that are doing creative things every day.

Like I was trying to think if there’s a creative leader, that’s inspiring to me. And of course there are some, but the folks that actually kind of try to solve problems creatively, Their resilience and their, the way they think creatively in the way that they bring those two things together is astounding to me.

So I would say those are the that’s the second group of folks that,

[00:26:39] Bill Staikos: so I remember the announcement when capital one bought adaptive path vividly because I was working at a, at a large financial institution at the time. I will not name names, but, I remember the person next to me. He said, That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.

Why would a, why would a financial services company buy an agency, a design agency? And I was leading customer experience for that. I’m like, that is the most brilliant move I’ve ever seen. I’m like, first of all, they’re already great at it. You guys were already great at right as well, but now to bring in all this incredible talent and.

Put more fuel behind that. Cause you guys knew the power of design. Excuse me. On that business. Such a smart move. Incredibly, incredibly precise, smart move. It’s

[00:27:20] Becky Getz: that culture too. And they, I give again, I give, I give kudos to both sides because capital one. Yeah. Allowed that, that adaptive path of thinking and the culture that they had built in that company to thrive within capital one, too.

So it was a

[00:27:33] Bill Staikos: window, a hundred percent you answered. My second question is where you get your inspiration from, but it was people solving problems creatively. So now that I’ve got some user testing, maybe I won’t ask those two questions together. That’s actually, so I’m learning as I’m going here to thank you.

This has been a great conversation. I truly appreciate your time, the gift of your time. And coming on the show, I know that our listeners are going to love the show and learning from you, w where can folks find you? I know that you’re on LinkedIn and stuff. Are you out there doing like any kind of like public talking or anything like that as well?

[00:28:04] Becky Getz: The best place to look for me, I am, I am on the executive committee of the CX council. and we have a, there is a CX forum coming up, via the forays. If anybody wants to look for that, that’s coming up in December would be really interesting. Yeah. But yeah, I’m around, LinkedIn, on the, on the latest podcast from you bill.

So,

[00:28:24] Bill Staikos: oh, it’s been, it’s been an absolute pleasure. It’s been an absolute pleasure. All right, everybody. Another great guest, another great week. We’re out. Talk to you soon,

[00:28:32] Becky Getz: everyone to be customer led with bill Staker. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes.

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