Breaking the Blueprint

The Beginning

• Vinay Parmar & Iqbal Javaid • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Customer experience is changing fast, and businesses that don’t keep up are at risk of losing customers overnight. In this episode of Breaking the Blueprint, hosts Vinay Parmar and Iqbal Javaid uncover the biggest challenges businesses face today in delivering seamless CX, and why most organisations are still stuck in outdated strategies.

AI is reshaping how companies interact with customers, but are businesses implementing it the right way? Vinay and Iqbal explore the reality behind AI-powered CX, the mistakes organisations are making, and how companies like Jet2 are getting it right. They also break down the real reason businesses struggle to execute their customer experience strategies—hint: it has more to do with leadership than technology.

One of the biggest surprises? Businesses are prioritising cost-cutting over long-term customer trust, leading to short-term gains but major long-term losses. The conversation dives into real-world examples, from banks reversing digital-first decisions to companies struggling to implement AI in a meaningful way.

If you’re in leadership, CX, or just want to understand where the future of business is heading, this episode is essential listening. Get ready for some uncomfortable truths, actionable insights, and a fresh perspective on what it really takes to win customers for life.

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Special thanks to our sponsors, NovelVox for supporting this episode – find out more at https://link.javelincontent.com/btb_youtube

Vinay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinayparmar/

Every Moment Matters: https://vinayparmar.co.uk/
Iqbal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iqbal-javaid/

Evolved CX: www.evolved.cx
 

#BreakingTheBlueprint
 #CustomerExperience
 #LeadershipInCX
 #FutureOfContactCentres
 #AIandCX

customer experience strategy for executives
 future of contact centres
 AI in customer service operations
 keynote speakers on customer experience
 CX transformation in large enterprises
 how to improve call centre performance
 leadership in digital customer experience
 customer retention strategies for brands
 contact centre trends 2024
 CX innovation and technology
 data-driven customer experience
 AI automation in contact centres
 employee experience and CX
 optimising BPO operations for CX
 customer loyalty through service design

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Vinay on LinkedIn

Iqbal on LinkedIn

Iqbal:

Vinay, so glad we finally made, made this together. It's been a long time coming. We've been discussing the prospect of coming together. But as a form of introduction my name is Iqbal Javaid and I've been in the CX industry from a technical standpoint now for 20 plus years. And delighted to be here today to, to discuss everything CX.

Vinay:

Yeah, great. Great to have you here. My name is Vinay Parmar I'm a speaker, strategist and advisor all around the art and science of winning customer loyalty, which of course is underpinned by great customer experience. And yeah, why are we here? So why am I driven down the M40 or up the M40 across the M25 to the studio here in London? because we've had been having lots of conversations recently. I think if you looked at our Zoom conversations, they could probably be podcasts in their own right. And then we had the idea that said, we've had some really good conversations. Why don't we just turn it into a podcast? And I guess for us, the idea was really, look, there's some really great content out there about CX, all things customer, both technology and from a pure CX perspective. But there's also a lot of misunderstanding, misconception. And if we're really honest, there's a BS out there as well. And I think both you and I, when we've spoken, have been both. Inspired by some, frustrated by some, and really this idea about breaking the blueprint was really about pulling back the curtains, getting under the skin of stuff, and just having some real honest conversations exploratory conversations isn't about the right answer or the definitive answer, but it's about debate, conversation, ideas, spark some thought so our listeners go away with kind of like, oh that was an interesting viewpoint, or I didn't think about things that way, and whether you agree. Disagree, somewhere in the middle, doesn't really matter, it's just about the conversation, right? And that's what we're here to do.

Iqbal:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker:

And now a special mention for our sponsor for this podcast, Novelvox. Novelvox are a contact center integration platform provider who bring together integrations into pretty much any CRM you're currently using for your customers and connecting that in with your contact center provider. So if you're interested in bringing together all your backend systems and your frontend systems together, Novelvox is the brand for you.

Iqbal:

And I think that's a good point, is we're not here to tell people what to do. I think what's important is we spend a lot of time with organisations speaking to people about CX coming from different angles. And it's really sharing some of that with everybody else out there. And getting everybody else's opinion on this too, right? We, we don't have, it's, it's not gospel what we're, what we're trying to preach here as such. It's, it's our extended experience of what we've been hearing in the industry. And I think one of the reasons why I think we, the two of us are coming together is we, we have. Whilst we perhaps agree on many things, I'm certainly looking at it from more of a technological aspect, right? And what I've noticed over the last few years is the two worlds are coming together. The people, the process, the technology. I think we've always talked about this, but the reality is these things haven't really worked so cohesively. But now I think with the demands of what's out there from consumers, we've got no choice but to come together. To get it right, particularly with where technology is going.

Vinay:

Yeah, I, I think you're absolutely right in that. I've been involved in this space for 30 years now as a leader, a consultant driving organisational change and transformation and all of that kind of stuff. And where you would have traditionally started from it, there's IT, there's operations, and there's another, another team over here, commercial or product or whatever it was or starting in separate lanes. Definitely that convergence of people being in that same lane has happened I guess it's been amplified more over the last few years, certainly, particularly post Covid as people have rapidly had to change their operations and design and all those kind of things. And I think the, I think the other thing is that we said this podcast is for everybody. This isn't a podcast for CXers. This is a podcast for people who are in organisations doing stuff, whether you're in a head of, A director at the C suite. This is all about doing that because, ultimately we're all in the job of being involved in customer experience. We're all there to try and influence our customer's future behavior. Cause at the end of the day, for a business, an organisation a school a charity, a not for profit, whatever the thing might be, you're trying to influence your customer's behavior and your customers being those people that interface with you, student, tenant, paying customer, whatever that might be. And whether that is a, I want you to come back, recommend us, and tell your friends, in a commercial way. Whether that's a, I want you to be a happy tenant in our homes, and therefore, drive a better reputation. I meet the regulator's obligations, and we, we, we deliver great satisfaction and give people a great life in our homes. Whether that is a school that sees itself as a business, and their parents who are paying fees see that as a great place for their kids to go. Whatever that outcome is. Through our design and our approach, that's what we're ultimately trying to do. Influence that future behavior.

Iqbal:

Yeah, 100%. And look, it's, and look, this being our first conversation, I think it's probably a good place to start is looking at what we can expect in 2025, right? I know a lot's been said, a ton of content out there, but let's dig into What our customers are asking us, what are we hearing from organisations out there? What's actually really important to them? Because you hear the analysts and technology vendors out there, they're shaping the future and telling us what we should be thinking about. But what's the reality? What can we really expect in 2025?

Vinay:

Yeah, I think Look, it would be, I think there's an obvious two letters that everybody's talking about as the key thing. A& I, and we've just recently, as we're recording this episode a few days before, all the hoo ha around DeepSeek and the disruption that's causing, and you've got excited technologists and futurists talking about what's going on. I think there's, there's, there's two elements to this. There's the internal wrestle, struggle, challenge inside an organisation From some, some C suite leading their organisation trying to put out the day to day fires, understand the day to day operations, fix what's going on. Many of them are driven by quarterly forecast and having to meet targets on a, on a quarterly basis and that, that kind of road is constantly changing. New obstacles and hazards come along the way, so you've got that internal mindset. And then you've got the, and, and I think there's a misconception that the internal bandwidth isn't always there to be able to answer those big, big questions. Strategy sometimes is a luxury inside an organisation At best, we're often mostly tactics. With a little bit of strategy, most organisations, if they're really honest and strategy is a bit of a luxury. And I think then there's the external conversation from all the people who are developing, innovating, providing services in, who are trying to fly the flag for this is the thing that's going to change the world. And those two worlds collide a little bit in terms of that determination to, yes, there's stuff that we need to do in technologies, technology or whatever the thing might be. Driving that change from the external perspective, but the internal ability to take that on and actually do stuff with it because it's like self awareness, right? Or, or personal development, if you use that analogy for a second, there's like a, there's a, I saw this great analogy and I can't remember who said this, this isn't mine, but this is like paper thin divide between. The self awareness and the dopamine hit you get from reading about something, understanding something, and oh, I need to do that, and the ability to then take action and actually do something with it. And I think, just like humans, organisations know a lot, they're aware of a lot, but their ability to translate that into actions in their organisations is often different. Not necessarily because, intentionally, they don't want to take action, but There are factors in there that just get in the way, or there are blockers, or whatever the thing might be but that. Gap between awareness, and I know this, and actually taking action is

Iqbal:

the key thing. So, do you not think that should come from leadership, in terms of, yes, there's lots of reasons why we learn stuff, and actually we want to try and implement and execute against those things. But it's actually, do we have the authorization from leadership, so that actually everybody understands the vision of the organisation And given, being given either autonomy or at least authorization to go and investigate a solution or something that will help deliver those, those types of outcomes. My, my feeling is that And I think sometimes there's, it's not clear, and when it's not clear, that's when I think this happens.

Vinay:

Yeah.

Iqbal:

You have people that have great ideas, but haven't, I think that's a really good example of how you've got the ability to actually execute against them. And yeah, there's barriers, there's always a case of actually, this could actually have an adverse effect and impact me personally. And me being able to do my job. So I think where I've seen it done really is when you've got CX leaders who have a seat at the table, let's be honest, like an executive table. So they, they have the ability to make change happen. And that's where I've seen, stuff like AI being implemented very well. What I'm seeing at the moment is there's this fear of missing out of actually our competitors are already doing things within AI where, where it's, it's because of the pace at which technology is moving. There's a lot of pressure on organisations to get it right, and the problem is, what I'm finding is, we're seeing organisations implement things a bit too quick, and it's having a bit of an adverse effect. Long term, we'll probably get it right, but in the short term, I think we're seeing in, I'll give you an example, like AI agents, agentic AI, whatever you want to call it you can, there's so many use cases for this, but where I'm seeing it quite prevalent at the moment is outbound situations where, for example, a charity looking to leverage AI agents to call donors to be able to raise money. Now, because it's an agent doing that, you're not confined by human resource. So you can, you can really, contact everybody in a very short space of time. The problem is, how do you think? The person who's donating feels being contacted by a voice bot. It's not very authentic. You're not speaking to a human being. You're trying to connect to somebody at an emotional level, yet you're expecting a voice bot to do that. And I've been seeing some charities trialling this type of thing that's one example, but you can imagine where this is going to end up.

Vinay:

look, there's a huge amount to unpack in there, there's three or four key things. Let's start with the first question, where you started off with, isn't that down to the leadership and it's the experts at the table? Yes and no. Yes, it's down to the leadership of the organisation in terms of being able to have a clarity of the picture of what it is they want to be known for. minds What is, the north star for any organisation the mission statement of it. It's what are we known for? What's our brand? How will we be remembered by our customers when they come in, contact with us, or people that come in? I think that's the first part. And where I've seen it happen best, in my own personal experience, I was part of Egg. com when it launched back in 1998. People may remember it was a disruptive brand in financial services really changed the market, shook up with a real focus on customer experience. We didn't have somebody in the scene suite, necessarily, who was, that's the voice of the customer. We might have had somebody who's responsible for customer operations and understanding what's going on in there. www. Egg. com But collectively as a group, customer was a responsibility across the piece. And I think there's a challenge there, that when it becomes one person in the room fighting their corner for this is the voice of the customer, that, that can often it's a great thing that you've got people on the board that will, will voice the customer. But I think having a board that's actually faced in and going, we're in, we, we recognize this is our responsibility. And we have an expert on board that helps us to understand that and helps us to integrate that into our thinking. I think that's, that's the part, that's the part one. And I think everything's a derivative from there cause then that drives the culture in the organisation and the appetite for change and the focus and how people hold the customer in their decision making. And customer experience is, I feel like it needs a rebrand at times because it means so many things to different people. Like you have, if you line 10 people up and you ask them all, What is sales? Probably 10 would give you almost exactly the same answer. If you do the same for marketing, probably 10 would give you the same answer. If you ask 10 people what customer experience is, you're probably going to get 9 or 10 different answers. Is it the contact center? Is it about customer service? Is it about technology and all those things? And I think that's the problem with it. Where we, where it really comes down to is It's, it's just all about how do we make our customers feel at those interaction points and having the awareness and doing that from a place of deliberate design as opposed to by chance. You and I are both in situations and many of our listeners will be in situations where they've dealt with organisations maybe three or four times and each time they spoke to a different person and they've got a different feeling because each person was different or each channel was different. gave you Trust, and one, one, one didn't work properly, so then you had to call up the contact center. So there's that inconsistency, but deliberate design helps you to drum out that inconsistency. And then, I guess to your third point, and about the application of technology, it's never about the tech, it's about the application of the tech, and it's what the tech allows you to do. The tech, if the tech is deployed in a way that assists that positive feeling that you want from your customers, then that's the right kind of chain of thought to go through. Tech deployed for tech's sake, There's a whole horde of trouble happening there. You might accidentally get it right, but more often than not, you're going to get it wrong.

Iqbal:

And it's, what I've come, and I still come across this, across this often is when, working for a vendor or somebody who's selling technology to a customer, you're usually selling to the IT buyer and, and they still, This sense of, you have your IT buyer considering all of the functional requirements. Does your technology meet this, this and this? And it becomes so tech focused that it goes back to your point around, you're implementing this for the sake of. implementing Implementing technology because you like the sound of either certain things. Maybe you've understood some of the requirements and you've married that to a particular feature or whatever, but there's still an obsession about focusing on the feature rather than the outcome that it delivers. Let's start with the outcome. What are we trying to, what kind of experience are we trying to deliver for your customer?

Vinay:

Yeah. And, and the outcome. Should be both, what's the outcome for our people, and the users of this technology, and what's the outcome for the customer, and those are some, they're linked together. Cause, we've, again, in organisations, when people have clunky software internally, or clunky systems, that translates into how experience is delivered, poorly executed websites internally, translate to poor experience externally. Poor contact center systems and customer service front ends. Again, they disrupt the conversation and the ability of the person to be able to do the job properly. Poor marketing systems and CRM and all those, again, same thing. You have to, yes, there are the functional requirements, but the bit has to start with what is the outcome for our customers? How do we want them to feel? How do we want them to act? What do we want to do next? What's the outcome from our people? How do we want, how do we want them to feel? How do we want them to act? And if you start from that perspective and work your way backwards, you're more likely to get to if that's what we're looking for, Then this is the, this is the outcome. I think again, just like any, we're talking about technology right now, right? But any dis, anything that comes into the consciousness of an organisation around that could change the way their organisation operates, grab attention. A few years ago it was all about chatbots, before that it was about voiceover, IVR, voice recognition, IVR systems. Then it's been about outsourcing and all those. And, and it's like. When you're deploying those things, if the driver is purely financial, we're doing this just to reduce costs, then you end up making some really poor decisions. Of course you want to achieve efficiencies in your organisation Who doesn't? We're not sitting here thinking, oh, we shouldn't do that. That's a really bad idea. Of course, you know, The fundamentals in organisations have as low a cost base as you can as possible to enable you to still deliver a great experience and maximize your profitability doing that. But if you're, if your driver is purely, we can take out 150 people or an organisation or half our workforce by deploying this, you're going to be driven by the wrong compass. But if you're driven by what's the outcome from our customers and our people, you'll still achieve cost savings and benefits, but from a more holistic. Intentional perspective.

Iqbal:

Yeah, it's interesting you say this because I think most organisations don't think that long term, right? It's pretty much every organisation I've ever sold to. Technology into it's cost saving. Where do we consolidate? How do we reduce cost? Will this help me hire less people? Like it's that's the priority. That's what they're thinking about It's very rare that you ever come across an organisation I certainly haven't that often where they're thinking so long terms Like this is our kind of long term vision. This is where we want to get to Yeah, of course. We want to make a cost saving but actually what's going to drive actual revenue for us like Is this technology, for example, going to help us achieve our long term vision? Okay, it may cost us a bit more, but what if the end result is more revenue? These are obvious things, but, and it's easy to say, harder to execute. But there's certain brands that I think are starting to think like this. I recently came across an example from Bank of America. So they've decided to actually open up 136 stores across the US. And that's the complete opposite of what every other bank is doing at the moment, as right? And the reason why they're doing that is to serve 1 percent of their customer base. And also, it's, it's been a, it's delivered a very positive PR spin. To say, look we, we're using technology where we can. You're using our apps to do most of the banking. But we want you to know that if you need to speak to a human being, have a face to face conversation, we're here for you. And to me, that's long term thinking because that's actually going to cost them a hell of a lot more than to, actually they could have invested that in technology. to really deliver a much better application for their customers. So I thought that that's quite a unique example, but I don't see it very often. I don't know if you do.

Vinay:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it is rare. Most organisations are in that cycle of short term thinking the next quarter, the next year, the next couple of years, you see that typical CEO cycle of new CEO comes in. distances themselves from what the previous CEO did, or doesn't talk much about it. Implements their new plan in year two. Tries to execute it across year two, year three, and by year three, year four, they're on to the next job. And then the next CEO comes in and it starts again. And, in large organisations that can often tend to be the case, right? So you've got that turbulent period of change and people wanting to make their mark. And where it works, Where it has worked in some of the great organisations. Books have been written like Built to Last and some of those great books where you've got that longevity of thought that yes, you would have an enduring purpose that carries the organisation through, but it still stimulates progress and people work with it. But there's a, there's a, there's a north star and a, an ideology to say, this is how we do

Iqbal:

stuff,

Vinay:

regardless of what's going on around site. This is how we do stuff. Yes, we adapt to technology. We adapt to the different technologies. But there's a, there's a, there's a driving force beyond profitability and delivering to the, to the market. So the driving force for this is what we want to do. So I think, I think that's part of the equation as well. And it is that long term thing. Tech, technology is not a tool for short term tactical solutions.

Iqbal:

It is though. That's what I come across all the time. It's we've got this gap here. Can you help us find a solution to this problem? And I'm always like, can we take a bit of a step back and what's the overall kind of position? And it's very difficult to get people to think like that. I get it, right? When you're running a business, The short term is what helps you survive. Yeah, I get that. I think it's just, if you take the time out to be more strategic and think more long term, I think you can achieve that. And I think one of the things that you've spoken about recently is this, this, this prospect of being consistent and achieving smaller things and how that kind of compounds to you actually achieving against your bigger goals. So it doesn't feel so overwhelming.

Vinay:

No. And just, Before I move on to the consistency point, just the bit that you said earlier, just before that, was like, just think of it, just think of it as your own personal health. Human beings are lazy. We want the quickest route to solve our problem, right? That's why the fitness industry is full of pills, potions, supplements that promise to get you short term, to get you results, right? And some of those do work and might get you short term. Benefits, a shot in the arm, you'll lose some weight initially, but then actually it's not sustainable. And in the same way, you might deploy a technology solution. You'll get an upfront benefit because there'll be an immediate cost with it. But is it sustainable in the long term? Are you just going to end up putting that weight back on later on? Or do you have a plan in place where you have fundamentally shifted your habits and the way that you're working to extend the longevity of that solution to create a more sustainable business? and then just on the point around consistency, I think, for me it's really simple. There's a three layered pyramid that I talk about all the time. The bottom of the pyramid is the basic customer needs. These are the hygiene factors, like a Maslow hierarchy of needs. In human, in human, it's food, water. Safety, that's your kind of absolute bare minimum, and then you move up the ladder, right? So in the same way, the needs, the basic needs, are the thing that foundationally is based upon. If your product doesn't do what it says on the tin, or your service doesn't, you're already off to a loser. So you've got those basic things, and with that comes, Some of those key basic hygiene factors that customers, if you're not delivering those consistently and you try to move to the next level of let's start to customize and personalize towards customer expectations, you're going to fall flat on your face. It's because you're building on a foundation of sand rather than, in stone. You've got to get those consistency of basics. And, and I think some of the best brands are those that deliver the consistent basics time and time again, at every touch point that then gives them permission. to do the other stuff. And one of the brands that I really love here in the UK is Jet2. Jet2 is my favorite short haul European airline. Like we've flown on them a number of times. And if you've, people have heard me speak, there's a story that I tell about Jet2 and my nephew and how that's created this endearment towards Jet2 from him. And he always wants to fly Jet2. But they don't do, it's not a gold plated service. It's not trying to aim for this luxury market. They do the basics. Brilliantly, the booking engine, the, all of those things work they have consistency in the boarding process. When you get off at the other end, the staff on the plane, every step of the way, when you call them, you get the same feeling about this brand at every single touch point. And it's not rocket science, they just do it consistently well. Internally, they have clear leadership, clear set of defining values, and they are, walking the walk, sorry, walking the talk and really practicing that day in, day out. Then, you get the permission for those people in their organisation those human interactions, to take on a personality within the framework that they have, to, to drive those memories, to, to have those conversations with customers, to pick on those, pick out those little moments and do something above and beyond. Because you've got the basics right. If you were trying to do that, and you just didn't do the basics, then what's the point? It's like I said the other day, what's the point of going to a Michelin star restaurant, getting a free glass of champagne at the reception, getting a beautiful welcome, sat there at your table, the food comes out, and it's cold, and it's terrible, or it doesn't come out at all? You failed at the first hurdle. But if you build it on the basics of consistency of great food time and time again, and then you build the experience, those other, Touch points on top. That's, that's the thing. And the same goes for technology. Get those basics and technology should be a, an enhancement and an enabler. to to improve the experience.

Iqbal:

Yeah, no, exactly. And, and look look, let's go a little bit deeper into, we, we talked about kind of 2025 and one of the big things that I'm certainly, the GenTech AI side stuff like Operator that OpenAI, released recently. Google are also about to release something called Jarvis. And it's changing the game for a lot of organisations because now you've got. An organisation that's been using AI to deliver more efficiencies around agent assist technology, using AI to assist the human agent to deliver a better service and then doing a bunch of automation. So there's, and that's progressing really well. And that's for me, this year, we're going to start to see that really, take off. On the consumer side, we're starting to see stuff like operator where actually you can, as a consumer, I can get my AI to do all of the things that I. That take up our time, right? We see, we're now so consumed by so many different apps when it comes to doing lots of just booking your holiday. You're having to go to your Unless it's Jet two. Of course, by the way, they're not a sponsor of this podcast. In case you're wondering the, you, you're having to go to three or four apps to book your holiday. Yeah. And that's, that takes up a lot of time. Like sometimes it takes half a day or maybe even a whole day to do that. But now the reality is using something like an operator, I can instruct them. I can even get chat GBT to write me up a an itinerary and then get my agent to go and. Find what I need and maybe even give it autonomy to go and book stuff based on a budget or whatever. I can get on with my work and then get the outcome that I'm looking for. The thing from the reason why I'm bringing this up is we'll end up, in my view, I think we're going to end up in a situation where you've got an AI representing a consumer engaging an organisation run by an AI as well. You'll end up in this situation where technology is talking to another technology and I think we're not far away from that situation. And when we do get to that point, organisations are going to have to really differentiate. And that Jet2 example is a great example because actually, you, they really, their personality shows as well, right? The way they differentiate themselves. But with, with tech going where it's going in these examples, like how are organisations going to differentiate? Like what's going to be the big thing?

Vinay:

Yeah, it's a interesting question. The thing that sits at the core of customer experience, loyalty, custody, whatever you want to call it, is trust. Do I trust this organisation And the channels that I choose, and the way that I interact with that organisation does it engender trust in me? Now sometimes I use self service, and when it works, I'm like, ah, trust this. I'll use this again. Sometimes, in a high stress situation, I might speak to a human and I learn that that is the channel that I trust because that time it was solved by that. I don't, I think as humans we want to use technology, we want to use self service. Again, I go back to our point where we're inherently lazy, we want, we want the path of least resistance. We haven't got time to sit, nobody wants to sit in a queue and wait for somebody to answer the phone to answer your problem and they could have done it themselves. So I think we, we are driven by that kind of, time poor, we want to get stuff done. I think there is a motivator to want to use. Technology, but the differentiator is going to be which are the organisations that really embed it well to engender that trust. So customers use either a human, or the technology, or those touch points, and at each of those points engenders them with that feeling of, I can trust this organisation They, they do what they say, they deliver what they say, I feel good about using them, it makes, I get, I get that positive vibe out of it, and they're good enough for me to refer. To somebody else I, I have an American Express card, right? Never speak to them. Always use their messaging service. It's brilliant. I've never had to be, even when I've reported a potential fraudulent activity on my card, with other banks, I have to pick up the phone and speak to someone. With them, I just message them, and it's just been taken care of. If I'm just being a transaction, again, message taken care of. My wife's card wasn't working one day. Through the messaging app, Okay, it's a human being, but I'm able to trust that. I'm not compelled to go, Oh, I don't like this, I'm gonna pick up the phone. Whereas others, you start on a chatbot, or a messaging app, it doesn't quite work well, or it sends you into a loop of death. Loads of people go through loops of death. And then you end up going, Oh, I need to speak to a human. Example, I was, my wife is a beautician, right? So she's got a pair of these GHD straighteners They went kaput, we tried to return them, having just had them replaced because they'd gone wrong. She went onto the website, and she was talking, it was out of hours, she was trying to talk to this chat, chatbot about, I want to return these, and the options it gave, none of them included faulty item. It was like, do you want to talk to us about your warranty, is this a new order, is this, so in the deployment they hadn't thought about all the case, user cases, or if they had, They didn't navigate to say, if it's not one of these things, use this channel instead, kind of stuff. Again, that comes back to the earlier point of the leadership. The leadership comes back to how that's led through everybody in the org embedded through everyone in the organisation How they're designing, making decisions. Are they taking the customer's perspective in their design of this technology and using, and thinking about it from the customer's perspective. Thanks, Dave. Or is it a transactional where just, just get it in, get it, get it as quickly as you can, reduce the number of calls coming in about this particular topic, and it's driven by that. So I think, sorry, long winded answer to What's a differentiation? I think it's the quality of, it's the quality of deployment. That's what's really going to make the difference.

Iqbal:

Yeah, and, and for me, that's the basics, right? You're, you're delivering your service for, very well to your customer, right? That's a given. I, in my view, I think organisations should be thinking also about how can we make our customers lives better? You've got access to this customer. They're consuming a service of yours. Is it something else you can do? And not think about how you're going to make more money from that customer, but genuinely, if you can find ways to help a customer, make a customer's life better without it necessarily costing you a lot more, I think that also builds trust, right? I think that's the, and, and there are some examples of this where we see it, but I think that's where we're going to start to see a bit of differentiation.

Vinay:

I think so. I think, When I was early in my management career, a mentor once said to me, your value in an organisation is in direct proportion to the size of problems that you can solve kind of solution. And I think that's true in any relationship. And with your customers, your customer's relationship is your value to them is in direct proportion to the size of problems you can solve for them. To your point, if I only solve this one thing and that's all I'm ever concerned about, then that's the value that I'll have. And then sometimes that value becomes a commodity. Somebody else comes into the market, does exactly what you do, faster, better, cheaper, and then it becomes a race to the bottom. But if you can build upon that initial transaction and start to offer, and help them to solve other problems in their life, and that comes from understanding your customers, your customer base, beyond just the wants, needs, and expectations of what they have directly with you, but people that interface with your organisation and you can help them solve more problems, then you're going to be of greater value to the in their eir life And what doesn't work, there must have been some kind of push around this. But, and what I don't mean is when they call or they interact with you, try and upsell them some random products. I remember the post office at times you'd go in. I want to post a letter. Would you like holiday insurance? I'm like what's the relevancy of that? So you have to build that in with. That personalization, the ability to understand your customer.

Iqbal:

Yeah, and I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's knowing your customer, and that's, and, I know this isn't just about technology, but actually the technology gives you access to so much more around knowing your customer, right? You can get AI to find out loads of stuff that's available in the public domain about your customer. Use that to your advantage.

Vinay:

I genuinely think the greater opportunity in AI is the ability to go deeper. Data to insight to contextualized action points to really give organisations intelligence to make better decisions. There are lots of companies that voice to their customers, but how well do they listen to how well are people able to interrogate that data and really present. To leaders, this is what's going on. This is the con, not just from the viewpoint of they've taken a service, they're filled in a survey, they've given us a three rating, a four rating, a five rating, but all the way through, there are lots of examples that I see of organisations. We've got disparate data points that aren't joined together, but if you join them together, it would give you intelligence. there's, there's a story that I share about a friend of mine who shopped with a major supermarket. She had, For years, she was a loyal customer. Every single week she spent a couple of hundred pounds on a kid shop, a shopping. She's got two young kids, so the home delivery service worked really well for her. She got a really good rhythm. She bought a priority pass that give her access to priority slots as well to be able to deliver. And one time it went wrong. They didn't deliver on time. She contacted them. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say To ing and fro ing, it didn't happen, the delivery didn't come, broken promises, et cetera, et cetera. So now she's got bad taste in her mouth. She had no contact from the organisation after that. So she cancelled her So data point one, she's made contact. Data point two, she then went and cancelled her priority pass that she was paying for. So that's the second data point. Data point three, her spending went from a consistent 200 a week to zero. And they can track that because they have a loyalty card and they should be able to see it, right? So those three data points exist in the company, but they are in different teams who are looking at it from different lenses. It didn't feel like they triangulated that to go, hang on a second, there's a pattern here. Somebody's called, they've cancelled this, they've stopped spending. That must mean something went wrong, we need to, we need to trigger a recovery or something like that. And I think AI gives you the ability to be able to start to pull those disparate data points together, create, not just basic correlation. But get you to causality and get you to root cause and help you to uncover some of those things that you don't see. And when you look at data on just things like core types and reasons to complain, the four or five reasons that people complain in core types normally stay pretty static and the volumes are probably about the same month in, month out. But beneath the service, there are other things that get missed because no one's paying attention to them. But they are an unusual thing that happens that doesn't get detected early on cause it's hidden in all the data. And I think AI can help surface some of that kind of Yeah, look, this is all going on track, but here's something unusual that's happening, and have you noticed this appear?

Iqbal:

Yeah, yeah, and I think a real quick win for organisations these days is sentiment analysis is available across most technologies. If you're not doing it already, let me know, because this is, for me, The first place to start from understanding the voice of the customer, because you can quickly pick up trends around how customers are feeling, what types of words they're using, and using AI to determine whether it's, good, neutral or, or bad sentiment you can start to define that and maybe even add more levels to it. So you're not just relying on surveys and other ways in which you can analyze. You can know in real time what's going on in your organisation right? You know, you can see a trend of, actually, I want to know today at this point, how many people are feeling positive You can, you can easily see that, right? I think we've got to completely shift the way we looked at our measured customer success. not look at things like CSAT, NPS, those types of things, but actually because you've got access to the data in real time, you can make decisions very, very quickly. You no longer need to look at what happened last week or the week before. Of course historical trends are important, but I think, sentiment is definitely one of those that, that can be detected very easily.

Vinay:

Yeah, sentiment gives you context, like facts and figures to only tell part of the story. The context is always the important, and I think it's not so much about what are the right KPIs. I think, people that only focus on NPS or only focus on CSAT are only focused on customer churn rate. If you're only, if you're just over. If you're over dependent on one particular measure, you start to become blind to other things that happen. It's if you, again, use a fitness example, if you're losing weight, the scales might be going in the right direction, you might be losing weight, but you might be doing that because you're actually losing muscle mass, and that's a bad thing, or there's something else going on in your biology that's looking, you maybe you've, maybe you've, unfortunately you've contracted some disease. It's causing you to, to lose weight. But if you're not checking those other things, you might be losing weight, but your blood pressure might be still up. Like I'm not a doctor. I don't know, but there are multiple indicators of health, but yet we are, most of the time we're like standing on the scales. That's the thing that tells us whether we're healthy or not. And in the same way, most of, lots of organisations have a crutch where they just land on NPS or they monitor That tells us everything's okay, but of course we know there are flaws in that, so you have to use multiple viewpoints, layer points, data points to help you to understand what's really going on, and what's shifting in your customer base.

Iqbal:

Yeah, yeah, no, interesting. Look, I've really enjoyed this conversation, but I think we're coming to the end of the conversation, and we'll obviously continue this in future episodes. But I think before we end this particular what can, what can our listeners expect from us? Why should they subscribe, follow? What, what, what, what's, what's to come?

Vinay:

Look, apart from two blokes that have got great beards and are, really good looking now, just kidding. Hopefully you've enjoyed you've enjoyed the pod, you've enjoyed this pod, you've enjoyed the conversation. More of the same, we're not here to agree with a certain viewpoint or push a certain agenda. We're here to have some just open flowing conversations like you might do with your colleagues over a minute. Over lunch or if you're at a conference and you meet people from other places, just that ability to have that. And like I said, it's just about sparking a different thought and an idea and a perspective. It's not about agreement. It's not about disagreement. It's just about discussion and conversation.

Iqbal:

Yeah, we want a healthy debate anyway, right? We want to hear people's opinions. So Do definitely comment. We want to hear from people. If you want us to talk about a particular topic, whether it's coming from a technological standpoint or from a process people perspective, hopefully we're the right people, but also we're looking to bring on guests as well in the future. We want to try and provide a bit of a a, a, a kind of, either human psychology standpoint, right? Different

Vinay:

aspects and not just. People that, again, do CX, but people from different disciplines and organisations, so people that work in, people that work in human resources or finance or technology and bring them in to have this conversation about how it affects or how it kind of Um, integrates with different parts of the organisation it's an ecosystem. So everything's connected. You can't affect one thing without affecting something else.

Iqbal:

Yeah, exactly. And I think just finish to finish off you gave an example of, every organisation needs to have the focus of actually our purpose is to serve our customers. Whether you're in the front line or in the back office, if everybody understands that, then everybody's working towards that same goal. And I think that, that to me, those organisations succeed. So Vinay, pleasure having you join me all the way from Birmingham. I won't, I won't tell you that this was five minutes away from my house, but it has been honestly a pleasure. I see the

Vinay:

ulterior motive about choosing this location.

Iqbal:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

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