Bella Obudho on Setting Up a CX Team for Success

Be Customer Led – Bella Obudho

[00:00:00] Bella Obudho: Welcome to be customer led where we’ll explore, help leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors, employees, and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host bill stagos.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to be customer led. I’m your host bill Staco. I have another amazing guest for you all this week. Bella, a book is head of operations and customer experience for a company in Nairobi, Kenya called brighter Monday. Now that’s a recruiting and staffing organiz. But Bella has a really amazing, way and approach that she’s looking at customer experience.

And I think one that you all are gonna learn from. So without further ado, Bella, welcome to be customer led. I’m so excited to have you on

[00:01:04] Bella Obudho: the show. Thank you so much, bill. Equally excited. I’m so stoked to be here. You

[00:01:10] Bill Staikos: have no idea. I’m more stoked than you are. I could tell you that so, Bella, you have a really.

Interesting journey. We ask every guest on the show. The first question is talk to us about your journey, share it, and what you think were the differentiating factors in your career and, go back as far as you like. And I know we, you shared it with me a little bit when we first connected, but yeah.

Share it with our listeners.

[00:01:39] Bella Obudho: Awesome. Thank you so much, bill, for the opportunity. I immediately after university. I actually started to help out my, my colleagues, with their projects. Cause I’d done a degree in statistics. And for me just then it was all about referrals. I just wanted to do it so well so that someone would tell somebody else about it and that person would come running to me for a solution.

And then after that, after a couple of years, I went now into employment. And I took on an entry level sales role. And since then I’ve been growing in sales, particularly, but here’s the thing I was already giving my customers such a great experience. And I was so focused on retaining my customers, making sure that they’re within my network, even as I was moving and changing jobs across different verticals and across different industries.

I wanted to keep in touch with those customers and to ensure that they’re moving along with me and if they had needs, in terms of the previous companies that I worked for, the current company that I was working in, that I was able to offer those solutions. And so it was always about giving value to my customers no matter where I was.

So in essence, I was practicing customer experience, right. Without knowing that I was, I was keen on revenue targets and commissions, like any other sales. But what was key for me is that I needed to retain those customers and I needed to get referrals. And that’s what enabled me to succeed in a sales career.

So then I transitioned into customer experience when I started working for a company that was selling an integrated customer experience management tool, and that was not so many years ago. And just then I started to examine what customer experience is as a field. And as a specialty and I decided, this is my, it, this is where everything is coming together for me.

And since then, I’ve just been a customer experience professional.

[00:03:44] Bill Staikos: That’s awesome. That is awesome. Yeah. I love that you come from the sales side of it and you realize, once you worked in sort of in the discipline that you realize, Hey, this is really what my passion is. And you were great at sales cuz you were delivering a great experience at the end of the day.

And that’s, that’s so much part of the, In Kenya. Tell us a little bit about the state of customer experience Kenya and how do you think it’s maybe evolved over the last couple of

[00:04:08] Bella Obudho: years? I’d like to say the state of customer experience in Kenya though. I haven’t done a survey. I haven’t checked a pulse of any sort.

I belong to a customer experience community of about 200 professionals and we have a WhatsApp group. Right. And we are constantly. Sharing insights on what we expect as customers, whenever we are receiving services across different, verticals and industries. But we are also in that same community speaking to each other about expectations, right?

And we are constantly challenging each other to make sure that we are offering those great experiences in the companies that we work in. So if I was to look at it in terms of evolution, What was the contact center and customer care and customer service and how it was known. Mm-hmm a couple of years ago, that’s now morphing into customer experience.

And so you’ll find that most customer experience professionals in Kenya are coming from that kind of background. Some of whom are coming from a marketing background as well. I know globally really. There’s a large majority of customer experience professionals that have been backed from a marketing background, but in Kenya, it’s more from the customer service point of view, customer care and contact center professionals.

Who’ve been practicing for probably 15 to 20 years. Who are now just morph to become customer experience professionals and ensuring that their centers of excellence within their organizations speak more about the entirety of our customers, relationship to the brand and not just the call center. Right?

Yeah. So I would say that’s the morph, it’s the same people, but the practice is what has, has actually changed their.

[00:06:08] Bill Staikos: That’s really interesting. Cool. I love that you have a WhatsApp group of 200 people. What a cool little community that you are part of and is it really active? Are people really active on, WhatsApp talking about, and helping each other?

[00:06:22] Bella Obudho: Please don’t get me going on it because there are times if you, if you, if you’re not, if you’re not looking at, if you’re not looking at the messages and you’ve decided, to just block out your, then focus on your work by evening, you have more than 200 messages to catch up on. Right? Oh my gosh.

That’s so, yeah. So I’ve answered your question, right? Very. We are at any one time, the conversation is around a brand experience. One of us has had a brand experience somewhere and we are sharing it. And we are probably reaching out to the person that works in that organization or that industry. And we are speaking to them objectively about what was the expectation and what really needed to happen.

As well, we are ensuring that we are keeping abreast with each other’s milestones. So it’s also a platform where we celebrate each other, right. For all the different initiatives that we are taking in our businesses and the awards we are winning and the recognition that we are getting in our industries.

We’re also sharing that with the group and celebrating that as well.

[00:07:28] Bill Staikos: Very cool. I love that. That is happening. I wish that was happening more. Maybe it is. I’m just not aware. I’m part of a couple of different slack groups around customer experience, but, I love that you guys are using for that. And I can imagine, I can imagine how many messages you’re getting, but it’s great that you’re all helping each other.

When you think about sort of customer experience, Bella, talk to us a little bit about what you see as some of the core tenants for customer experience. Are there core tenants that you found over your career, whether it was even in sales or when you were working for the provider or now, even in your role?

with the staffing agency, what are some more important than others?

[00:08:09] Bella Obudho: Well, bill it’s, it’s a tricky one, but here’s the thing. What I consider to be the strongest foundation you could ever build around customer experience is the voice of the customer program. I think it all starts with, are you able to Coate customer feedback, whether it’s solicited through service or unsolicited, because you’re doing some call listening.

And you’re mining some data from different touchpoints. I think that that sets the foundation for everything else that you could build around customer experience because at the end of the day, every business is in there to meet the customer’s needs and the customer’s needs and preferences are constantly changing.

Right. And customers have options. Their loyalty is based on their expectations and what’s happening within and around them. Right? So every business that wants to be successful needs to have a path on what the customer is feeling and thinking across multiple touchpoints within the organization and without, right.

And then after that is when you begin to build initiatives around. What can we do to ensure our customers remain close to us? What can we do to ensure that we are acquiring new customers constantly not only retaining, but we are also growing our market share right within the industry. Mm-hmm and that’s just my opinion.

Start with that and then build from there. So if you have real time customer insights, right. And you’ve automated your process around voice of the customer. And here, I just wanna put a caveat, right? It’s just not the external customer, the internal customer as well. So you’re gathering the voice of the employee as well.

And you’re integrating all of these things and you’re building initiatives based off of those. Then you begin to look at organizational adoption and accountability based on the voice of the. Then you begin to look at metrics. How are you measuring the return on investment of customer experience? How are you measuring like certain other metrics that we know of?

Like the net promoter score and the customer satisfaction score and the customer effort score. You want to look at designing those experiences because you’ve received a certain amount of feedback that points you in a certain direction. You want to look deeper into the journeys that the customers are going through, and then you want to now design solutions around those, right?

So you just to come back to it, I think the voice of the customer, the voice of the employee is what sets the foundation for all the other practices within customer experience.

[00:10:57] Bill Staikos: That’s I, I couldn’t agree more, Bella, frankly. When you think about that though? How, I mean, especially when you’ve got technology shaping a lot of the work that practitioners and leaders like you are doing every day, certainly COVID has maybe to the best word to describe it as accelerated different experiences, digital being one of them and engagement.

I know that’s very different. In Kenya versus in the us, obviously you all are accessing brands in different ways than, than we are. The us is horribly behind the rest of the world in a lot of different ways, in many different ways. Really. How has that changed for you? Oh, it really is. Trust me, trust me. It is.

How has that changed for you, particularly in the face of COVID maybe in terms of whether it’s accessing that voice of the customer or the voice of the employee? Ability to act on that. Has that changed your think or your

[00:11:54] Bella Obudho: approach at all? Absolutely. It has. I think just when COVID hit and we had to go remote, like fully remote at the time and just then is when I was implementing our automated voice of the customer program and we had just onboarded a platform right.

For, for that use. I immediately started listening to team members within the organization and asking them, what can I do to make your work a little bit easier? What do you think would meet your needs? And, and bill, I got so much feedback, right? I immediately dived into doing empathy maps for, for different people in the organization.

And before I knew it. We were relating this to our customers experience because some of them were also working from home or remotely and their lives had somewhat turned around during that time. Did we accelerate? Yes, we did. In terms of, especially reaching back to our disgruntled and, and, detractors.

And these customers were so glad that our turnaround time was really fast. Right. And you could hear on the call an unhappy customer immediately converting into a promoter. just then, because they were super impressed that not only did the person reach out to them within 45 minutes. But that that person was able to empathize with them at another level, other than what they were really unhappy about.

Right. Mm-hmm and to be able to connect with them on an emotional level, based off of the empathy maps, we’d done, bill. And so in terms of reaching our customers where they’re at and putting them in comfort. Yes, we are able to do that in terms of looking at insights in real time and having a tool that analyzes that feedback in real time, both quantitatively and qualitatively and better at having this tool be integrated to existing work tools.

So our existing tools like CRM, like our ticketing system, our telephone system are all integrated into this platform. So the power of technology is that it enables us to reach beyond and go the extra mile in terms of serving our customers and in a way that saves on our time. So we are very efficient and we are very productive.

We are happy with the work that we. We are happy with the difference that we are making in our customers lives. And, and yes, I think technology had a big part to play during the COVID era in just ensuring that we are able to give seamless experiences to our customers.

[00:14:41] Bill Staikos: When you think Bella, about the technology that you use for your work as a team, in being able to obtain that voice of the customer feedback in real time, getting employee feedback, even.

How do you think that that has changed the work of, of leaders and practitioners like you? I personally, I’m a bit. Look, I work for a technology company in this space, so it’s, it’s, don’t take it this as I’m trying to pitch anything, but I really do think that without a robust technology, a CX tech stack in place.

I don’t think that actually customer experience teams and organizations that want to focus on customer experience can be successful in the mid or long term. How has technology and don’t share who you’re working with obviously, but how has technology maybe changed the work for you and, are there any tools out there that you are actually keen to try and, and, and start to test out too?

[00:15:42] Bella Obudho: totally. So I’ve already mentioned the aspect about having a tool that collects and collates feedback in real time and ensures that it does the quantitative and the qualitative. So then you are able to identify exactly what the customer said and the sentiment analysis that’s done on the qualitative feedback.

Is what ensures you understand and prioritize the customer experience drivers. Right? So like right now, bill, if you asked me what’s driving customers, emotions and decisions for the last one week at brighter Monday, I’m able to tell you about three things, right? Based off of the sentiment analysis that’s happening in real.

And I totally agree with you, companies that are looking to be customer obsessed, definitely need technology to further that agenda, right. And more so they need technology. That’s integrable to their existing systems. They don’t necessarily need to overhaul everything that exists within the organization.

Mm-hmm because I know that’s usually one of the challenges that customer experience professionals face internally in their companies. And that now brings out the aspect about collaboration as a key pillar in customer experience, ensuring that you’re working cross functionally in the business and that you have buy in from the different leaders within the business, and you’re working together to create awesome experiences for the customer.

So technology is definitely at the center of creating those awesome experiences. How effective is my team based off of the technology that we are using. I’d like to say bill, one of the mandates that I put on myself in my first 100 days when I took on the job was to ensure that I could free up my team from focusing on customer service, customer support related tasks.

Mm-hmm because most of those tasks tasks are actually reactive. It’s all about the customer called in and complain. The customer sent in an email and complaint, and surely a lot of time can go into that. In fact, a whole working day can go into that. Right? And I just wanted my team to be able to not only attend to customers, who’ve reached out to us, but to also a portion, a part of their time into proactive initiatives that anticipate customer needs and then cross functionally doing that within the business.

And then measuring the impact. I really wanted my team to focus more on the proactive activities. And just to answer your question around, what do I anticipate for the future, bill I’m looking for tools that can do predictive analysis, right? Of customer actions, anything around customer spent behavior, anything around anticipating the future of our customer’s needs and preferences based off of market behavior.

I’m looking for that and proactive initiatives that my team can take up in anticipation of, of the future needs of the customer. Yeah.

[00:18:59] Bill Staikos: Be careful. You might get some sales calls after we publish this show. So I hope, I hope you don’t get bombarded with LinkedIn request for, software vendors. for me, the, the technology is going towards a place where it’s it’s about data and automation, where the experience is gonna be.

Automatically delivered that next best journey or that next best experience is gonna surface in real time, based on what you’re doing with that brand. I’m really excited for that. I mean that the technology exists today. It’s not as ubiquitous as it can be one it’s expensive to, it’s really focused on sort of the enterprise.

I’m really excited for five, 10 years from now when that kind of technology is going to be available. That’s, everywhere. Small mid-market as well as large enterprises can use this tech to, to deliver the experiences that we’re all gonna be demanding. Right. And I think our preferences are gonna be, even shape that and drive that more.

And it’s gonna create a big gap, I think, in the near term, for those that have the technology and the experiences that they can give and deliver, versus those that can’t access that technology, which is gonna be really sad thing for a CX. But nonetheless, I think others will, will catch. So Bella I a question for you, bill, go, go for it, go for it.

I don’t know if I’m gonna have the right answer, but I’ll have an opinion.

[00:20:21] Bella Obudho: I think when it comes to, adoption of technology, there’s, there’s usually a somewhat fear around. Automation. Like if there’s any such thing as over automation, mm-hmm, such that people begin to be insecure about their jobs and their roles in different organizations, would you like on that in terms of yeah.

customer experience and also other roles within the business

[00:20:49] Bill Staikos: we’ve seen at least over the last five years with respect to technology, automating. A lot of like the work I’ve seen it, mostly in the contact center. And in the last five years, there’s been a lot of conversation around bots or other technology taking over the role of a contact center agent.

But I’ve never seen the, the teams being like, people being, let go as an example. From the sort of the business cases that I’ve seen like, oh, 20% of your contact center isn’t needed anymore because your calls will be reduced so much. I’m not seeing people being laid off for technology reasons.

I think eventually that’s going to happen, but I think it’s gonna happen in a way where you are going to need humans talking to humans. I think the bots, and I think that’s a really important conversation. It’s starting to happen more and more. Now bots should take care of questions that bots can take care.

Very very mundane, rudimentary kind of inquiries, maybe like a password reset, actually password reset. You don’t even know about anymore. You should be able to do that on your website as a customer or an app, but maybe you wanna know, something about, your balances at a bank, or, when a product may be shipped as an example, those are things, questions that can be answered by a bat, a bot, excuse me, in, in a.

For the context center and for other individuals sales, even who are customer facing, there’s always gonna be a role. And I think that there are always going to be questions where as a human being, I need to talk to another human being and yeah, so for, for those, and I think we need to define what those are obviously, and it’s going to be different for every industry, every company, but defining.

The other thing that I think is interesting, Bella is when you, when you think about the metaverse and where that’s going, and let’s just say we’re there in seven, eight, maybe nine or 10 years. I think that humans there are gonna also be very important. I think that people are gonna want to talk to humans in the metaverse of their avatars.

Yes. Right in the metaverse mm-hmm but, but also be able to distinguish, am I talking to a bot? Am I talking to a human. I think the human interaction is gonna be really interesting and something, I think a lot about a lot in a fully, digitally immersive environment. And what does that mean for the human team in connection too?

And I think we’ll be able to express our individuality better. So agents, being able to see an agent’s avatar, they can bring their whole selves through that, even though it’s digitally immersive platform.

[00:23:29] Bella Obudho: Yes. They can channel their creativity.

[00:23:33] Bill Staikos: Oh yeah, of course. Yes. And I think that’s really gonna be a really wonderful thing.

And I think it’s gonna humanize the contact center again, which is, I think really important. And I think it’s, I think it’s gonna be a wonderful thing. Yeah. Awesome. So, Bella, I, I’ve got another question for you. So as a leader and I, I almost set female leader, but as a leader, it doesn’t matter whether you’re female or male, you’re a leader in this space.

There are individuals that are listening that want to get to. A level where you are leading a function, a team. What advice do you have for them? maybe you think about yourself maybe five, 10 years ago. What advice would you give young Bella? Or what advice would you give for other practitioners who are looking to eventually lead teams at some point in their career?

[00:24:24] Bella Obudho: Yeah, I’d say three things, bill. I’d say, be curious, right? The moment that you keep asking questions and whenever you support opportunities and you want to involve people and you want to keep understanding exactly what’s going on in the environment, that then helps you to learn as much as possible, but also to take.

And to take action collaboratively because you wanna solve solutions with people. You want to do it together. That’s what I’d say. Really be curious. And then number two, I would say, please take a seat on the table because at some point, as you’re doing all the collaborative work and solving together, you will be offered a seat.

Please take it. I mean, you deserve to be there. They see and feel your value and they’ve pulled up a seat for you. Do not shy away. Take that seat. And then number three, please speak up. so you have been asking questions and learning. You’ve been offered a seat at the table. Do not let an opportunity to share your ideas or to speak up about something because you’ve been learning for a while.

So it’s an opportunity for you to. And you just never know, because that could position you for that leadership role and whether or not you have a title that describes you as a leader. You’re definitely going to be that person that’s sought after. Cause of the value that you give, which comes into leadership.

Right? So those are the three things I’d save you.

[00:26:15] Bill Staikos: I love that. I, I love that you started off with being curious. That’s something. I don’t see, or I see less and less of I’m really encouraged by folks who are now like coming out of university and starting curiosity is something that’s really baked into their brains.

Much more. I’m I’m an older, I’m older. It, it was don’t ask questions, shut up and do your work. that’s the environment that I grew up in given. And that is a really different thing now where people are challenging the status quo, they want to understand why is it this way? Why can’t it be a different way?

Yeah. Can you give me the opportunity to go solution? Cause I me see a different way. Yes, yes. And I’m really encouraged by that. And I think that’s gonna be a really wonderful thing for the discipline that we’re in, that we work in every. So, hopefully I get to, continue to work in this space as long as they’ll have me.

And, I get to see that really, really start to start to blossom.

[00:27:15] Bella Obudho: Can I just add this, that C just about the initial stages, right? You need to remain curious. Yeah. Once you arrive at what looks like a solution, you need to keep ITER rating and asking questions. And that’s now what brings onto process improvement, continuous process improvement, and ensuring that you’re doing it collaboratively.

That just wins. It wins every day. It’s what gets me excited in the morning, really when I just get up and I say, oh my God, is that what we did for our customers that were self self customers on the website? How about we tried for offline customer? So you’re always constantly looking for that thing that you could do differently and you’re very proactive about it, right?

Yeah. I love

[00:28:07] Bill Staikos: that. And yeah, I know you can never lose curiosity. I think that that’s well, you can lose it over time, I think, but you just have to constantly remind yourself to practice it. The last point you made around speak up, once you get your seat at the table, all of a sudden, maybe imposter syndrome kind of sets in.

Sometimes it’s important to. Just have confidence in yourself, provide your opinion. Yes. Let other leaders know that you have a view and share that view. It’s so critical. Yes. It’s so critical. Yes, Bella, I’ve got two more questions for you. I know it’s a Saturday and, and you’ve got a family to get to and, and I do as well.

what, are there any leaders that you look up to, whether it’s in our discipline, maybe in customer and employee experience or even, just large industry at large, are there any like leaders out there that you look up to and. You’re aspiring to, to be more like them.

[00:28:58] Bella Obudho: Yes. Most definitely. Bill I’ve become a recent fan of podcasts.

Right? It’s part of my morning routine, I, to at least one episode every day, and there’s a wealth of knowledge out there and there’s a wealth of experiences that we need to tap into. So. I would say, I, I don’t wanna mention like, just specific names because it’s OK. You can mention specific names, go for it.

I feel like I get, I get inspiration from different people every day. so. So those that I’m following Kindley are you bill number one? Oh, what kinda you I’m following you everywhere. Please check me out. I’m following you across different channels. And I told even before we started recording, I’ve been watching and listening to your podcast.

And then, someone else would be G because, yes, I’m listening to her podcast as well. And I’m telling everyone who needs to listen and need to grow in CX, or they need to listen to her podcast on customer experience. For sure. Yeah. And then there’s, there’s other leaders out there. Right? I tell you somebody that inspires me quite a bit is Oprah win free.

She has the capacity. To bring out the deeper layers of people’s experiences in a way that helps you or me to reflect on exactly what’s going on in my life and to be able to take certain conscious steps to drive my life in the direction that I wanted to go. Right. So there’s, there’s wealth in the conversations that she has.

Totally. And then there’s definitely Simon CEK. I mean, I can’t get enough. Can’t get enough of that content. And so anything around breaking this status quo, just challenging what’s happening and asking those questions and always remaining curious, right? Yeah. So those are the ones that are coming top of mind at the moment, but I have inspirational times in my day, like I’ve just described part of my morning routine is listening to podcast.

And I just want to tap into the wealth of knowledge that people have out there. And if that can make me a better person in terms of what I do work family, and I’m good for it, and I’m here for it. I love

[00:31:35] Bill Staikos: that. Yeah. Do you, so outside of podcast, where else do you go for inspiration? Where do you look for inspiration?

I look at my children for inspiration and my wife and my family and friends and the people that I work. I’m a huge people person and I’m an extrovert. So I get energy from, from being around other people. where do you get your inspiration

[00:31:52] Bella Obudho: from? From dancing and I dance with my children every day. Bill. I know there’s people that say every day, every day, Bella.

And I say yes every day, even if it’s like for five minutes, just before my evening classes, we we’ll just do a dance to the extent that my two year old. Right now cannot be on our, what we call our dance floor alone. If something’s pumping, he’s going go around the house and get everyone to come and dance so that no matter how bad the day was or how uninspired I thought I was or how tired I was, those five, 10 minutes dance with my children.

Totally sets me up and inspires me.

[00:32:44] Bill Staikos: You’ve inspired me. I’m gonna go dance with my kids actually after breakfast this morning, what an amazing conversation. I’m really honored to get to know you and have you on the show and has been a great conversation. And just thanks so much for the gift of your time and sharing your knowledge with our listeners.

I really do appreciate it.

[00:33:04] Bella Obudho: Thank you so much, bill. Last tip, make sure you dance behind them. So then you get to enjoy their moves really well.

[00:33:14] Bill Staikos: I know what they’ll do is probably, my oldest will probably take her iPad out and start to record dad. Making a full of himself is probably what

have a wonderful day. Thank you

[00:33:27] Bella Obudho: again. Thank you so much for having me bill. It was totally awesome. Having this conversation with.

[00:33:33] Bill Staikos: It’s my pleasure. It’s my pleasure. All right, everybody. Another great show this week. We’re out. Talk to you soon,

[00:33:38] Bella Obudho: everyone. Thanks for listening to be customer led with bill Staco.

We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you wanna hear more about until next time. We’re.