Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Table Service podcast where we'll dish on all things support, success and beyond with the people and companies building the future of customer experience.
Table Service is presented by tavilo Consulting and I'm your host, Jordan Hooker. Craig Stoss is a CX veteran with over 25 years serving in customer facing roles. Currently the VP of Solutions at Codif, Craig previously worked with Partner Hero and Shopify.
From teaching seniors how to use the Internet to consulting on process improvements with Fortune 500 companies, Craig is a passionate advocate for high context personalized CX across all industries. Craig, welcome to the table.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me, Jordan. Great to be here.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. So glad to have you. I know we have previously hosted a webinar together and really enjoyed the conversation there with support driven earlier in the year. So glad to have you on and talk a little bit more. So please, before we get into our conversation, we'd love to just take a few minutes to have you share a little bit more about yourself for our listeners who may not be familiar with you. Let's, let's hear the story.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: My name's Craig and I have you did a great job of kind of saying where my career has been. I have been a fierce advocate for customer experience for a long, long time. And what I mean by that is one thing that I realized. I used to travel full time for work. I was on the road straight for seven years and different countries, different customers, companies, you know, all sorts of different contexts. And one thing that I really realized in, in this is that no matter what place I went, people were customers, people were consumers, right? And, and yet the experiences that you would get in a European country versus an American state versus a Asian country versus different Asian countries were just super different.
The experience you get with an airline company is different than, you know, your local baker. And it was one of these things that just kind of triggered in my mind of why is that if we are all consumers and we all know how we would want to be treated, why is it that we are consistently treated differently and often, as we all know, in the CX space poorly, Right? And so that just became my passion. It became this thing like almost like a psychological or philosophical maybe too, but, but experiment in my mind of like, well, what can we do to improve it? And, and you know, as I've seen tools evolve over the past five, maybe even 10 years, you know, the first generation AI chatbots that were not really great, but I mean it was helpful to support and now the technology we have today, I think we're finally in a position where customer experience can be made relatively easy and accessible. And the tool sets are there now. And I think the other thing that's interesting is the demand is there.
Generational, you know, divides aside between Gen Z and Gen X and Millennials or whatever, people want personalized experiences. And, and so this has become, you know, kind of the newest passion I have, you know, with my last couple roles with partner Hero and now, now into codifs. So, yeah, that's, that's me and I do a lot of writing on the subject and, and do a lot of podcasting on this subject with, with people like yourself.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks for sharing that. And let's, let's hop into the conversation. Actually, something you just mentioned kind of triggered a question for me. And thinking about customer experience and support and all of these pieces related to this, you talked a lot about the contextualization of, you know, in, in Europe it was one way. In one Asian country, it was another way. Another, it was a different way. How do you think contextualization plays into this space and how do we do that in a really quality way? Because obviously there's, you know, there's cultural elements, there's other aspects of that. And so I'm curious your thoughts on how we can build a quality, consistent experience while not losing that touch of what's really special about this particular place you may happen to be.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: I think it's in understanding who you're selling to and who's buying from you, and then not only that, but what they want.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: I think too often companies start with, well, what are we going to offer? And how do we tell people we're offering it? As opposed to starting with what do our customers want?
[00:04:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: The question should be reversed.
So, you know, if you are in Japan, Japan's a great example because it's a very formal cultural country. And so, you know, their customs are very formal, certainly compared to American customers.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: And so when you know that that's the context of the people you're selling to, you need to adapt your service offerings. And that could be in a support sense, that could be your channels, that could be the people and the brand tone that you're using, like the way you train your people to speak in your brand voice.
And it could be just as simple as how you present yourself. How does your website present itself? How does. What is the framework, phrasing of how you're guiding people through, through troubleshooting and things like that. I think it's also different by sector.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: I would, I would argue that in, you know, the IOT space, you know, the connected devices, I, I think that those devices should be supported fundamentally differently than if I'm, you know, buying a, you know, a non connected physical device from, from another company or physical product like, like a children's toy.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: And, and so when I think about contextualization, I think of maybe, you know, two or three different categories.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: It's demographically.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: You know, I work, I'm working with a hearing aid company right now at Codif and their demographic obviously is, is an elderly demographic.
[00:05:43] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: And so phone is incredibly important as a channel to them.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: That tends to be how that demographic wants to receive support.
And they, they, they recognize that.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: They also are very conscious of automation. They want to use aut, but they want to use it in a way that is incredibly personalized. They don't want generic marketing emails, they don't want to use macros. They want to customize the email based on, or the chat or whatever it is to the situation. Because again, with that demographic, you want to be very specific and very clear. So if they're, you don't want to say, click on this link to go to a website. You want to provide those instructions right there to be able to be very conscious of who your audience is. That would be completely different if you're selling widgets to teenagers.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: And how they want to be supported. So I think that's the first one. I think the second one is the demand, you know, the demand of what your customers expect from you. So there are certainly areas where, you know, I always make the comment that you wouldn't email the fire department if your house was on fire. You would probably call your emergency line.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: And that's true with some products and tools. If you have a business critical software package or a business critical tool for whatever reason, you know, you need fairly immediate support and your customers are expecting of that to you. Like your, your response time of an hour is unacceptable if it's costing the company money or your house is burning down.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: And so, so you need to be very conscious of how your product is being used.
You know, I joke about my, I have a 7 year old son who, who just now expects to be able to watch his TV show at any time because he's used to Netflix.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: And it's like that's his expectation.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Now.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: It's not necessarily a rational expectation because obviously, you know, when we're driving in the car, you know, we don't have WI fi. So it's like he has to watch whatever we download for him necessarily.
And so, you know, you're catering to that type of demand now. And maybe if I can add a third one, I think it's also around where your customer is at. So it's not just what they're demanding and it's not just what the personnel, the demographic itself, but it's where are they?
So again, I'll use Iot as a great example. If you have a physical device that's connected and it's like, you know, hanging from your ceiling, like a light bulb, or it's a thermostat that's attached to the wall.
These are devices. It's a smart lawnmower or something that's in the middle of your massive yard that you have.
You know, how do you support that in a meaningful way? Do you make them pick up the lawnmower and drag it into the house and sit next to a laptop and have a chat conversation?
That's probably not ideal, right? Or if it's a, if it's a thermostat, you know, you can't just grab that off the wall and sit and like, oh, I gotta copy down a serial number because I have to tell the customer, you know, the, the client, my serial number.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Like, it's, it's something that you need to be able to support it where they are. And I think that's true. That's a great example. But, you know, there's many, many examples that are, that are not to do with physical devices. So those are three things I talk about. When I think about contextualization, thinking about.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: That, that first point around kind of personalization, we're thinking about how do we build an experience for individual customers that meets their individual needs. I'd be curious your thoughts on two aspects of that. One, how do you prepare your team to do that? Especially if you're talking about a high volume, busy support desk, how do you do that without having to have, you know, 500 support reps and then two in. In the process of doing that? How, how do you scale that? I mean, I guess it's similar. This is basically the same question, like, how do you scale that within the context and prepare your team to manage that?
[00:09:33] Speaker B: I would say it comes down to integration and pattern recognition.
I think that's the whole element there.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And what I mean by that is you need to integrate the systems that contain this data.
So they have to be something that is integrated into the place where you're you're helping your agents sit, maybe a help desk likely. And, and then you need to have the pattern recognition element of this is this customer calling about something that is that this is their fifth phone call, this is their first phone call. Is this a pattern that, you know, might lead to a churn or a return product or a refund or something? And you know, certainly AI is good at this. I think AI is really good at both these things, both in, you know, understanding data and then recognizing that there's patterns within that data.
But I don't think it has to be AI. I think that the first bit is just preparing your agents with the data that's relevant. So you know, let's take an E commerce case because that's, that's something I'm very familiar with.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: You want to know things like the, you know, how long, if it's a subscription service, how long have they been a subscriber if it's a, you know, if it's a E commerce website, have they bought from you before? Have they returned things before? You know, what sizes have they bought before? Like imagine a world where you go to buy a pair of shoes and the system pops up and says hey, normally you buy a size 10 and this time you've picked nine. Is that what you really want to do? You know, that's a, that's a great CX because A, you're confirming with the customer, you're not, you're not forcing them to buy 10, you're just asking.
[00:10:59] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: And B, you're preventing a potential return or refund, which is a costly endeavor.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: And it's also time consuming on the customer. You're reducing friction.
So those, the types of things that you prepare your agents for if you want that human element and they have maybe a list of these types of things that they're important to the conversation. But I think the scale question, I truly believe, and, and I'm not a doomsdayer that AI is taking our jobs. I, I think human in the loop with AI and a, AI augmentation is absolutely the way to go.
But I think AI is really good at this if you're, if you're going to be able to scale this effectively. There are a certain type of, of questions and automations that AI is just really good at handling and so why not let it handle it? And the advantage of that, in my opinion, and this is something I've written some articles on, is that I believe strongly that in the near term, in the next two, three, four years, Success and support are going to merge together more closely into one team because as the repeatable questions get taken off of support, when customers do contact support, they're contacting for a more complex type question, which means it's more of a consultative process, more of a, they're having, they'll have a higher expectation of what the response will be like. And that's traditionally in the past, you know, 15 years anyways, what customer success has done. And so I do see a world where support success are going to combine and you're now going to have these really highly trained, you know, industry experts, product experts, whatever it is, who can be much more consultative with your clients and support solve the most difficult problems. And I think that that's also an element of scale because now you're, you're kind of reducing these teams, not reducing them necessarily, but like combining it into this like more customer friendly function and using AI to solve the stuff that doesn't require that level of consultation.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: If you were talking to a support leader or a, you know, success leader or just someone who maybe runs CX in its entirety for an organization and they are thinking about, let's say three to five years from now, that's where we're headed, what would be your advice to them? One, in terms of hiring, like how do you go look for the right people to do that and then two, how do you onboard and train those types of people or the people you've already got, knowing that you want to hang on to them but you want to make sure they're prepared for what's coming?
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a great question. If I could tell you where the world is in three to five years, I'd write a book about it in retire. Because I'll tell you, I, I, I can't picture the world in three to five years, to be honest.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: The, I mean, I think the first thing I will say is AI. AI agents are going to become part of your workforce.
No, there's no doubt in my mind that that is a true statement, is that that would be, you know, an untrue statement. So, so let's start with that. So how does AI sit beside your humans and, and provide a perfect experience with handoffs that are seamless, with personalization that is seamless. Where's that split between their functions and then a, how do the humans enable the AI to continually learn and grow?
And so that's where I would start. Like let's, let's assume that that's the case because I'M positive is going to be the case, then the next step would be, okay, well, what are the types of questions that, that you know, my clients might want to ask that traditionally they haven't maybe asked or they haven't found focused on, you know, because it, you know, just, it's a time thing.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: They're, they're not going to call support for, for something unless they need to.
And you know, I had a really, a while ago, I had a client that delivered organic food products to people and they had this really cool vision where what if their support agents could answer questions like, I'm making this very specific Italian recipe. Which tomato has the right flavor profile to make the sauce?
[00:15:02] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: And to do that to your exact point of how do you train your agents? You need to have people who either have this stuff documented or have actually tried these tomatoes.
[00:15:13] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: And one area that I see that does this really well is travel agencies. I go to book maybe a resort vacation in the Caribbean. And every website says, here are four travel agents that have been to this resort. Why don't you click on their name and ask them questions about this resort? I think that's a brilliant level of cx.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Because you know, Jimmy has been to this resort. I'm going to go and talk to Jimmy about it, see what, what his experience was. And they're kind of incentivized not to lie to you because if you go and have a bad time, well, I'm not going to use Jimmy services anymore.
[00:15:45] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: And you know, how do you apply that to your business and how do you train your people? Is it, is it have to be hands on experience? Do you have to eat the tomato or do you, you know, do you have kind of just this like list of stuff that is just all of these things that you, you know, you either need to learn or you need to study and add to constantly as your products and services evolve.
So those would be kind of the two probably highest level pieces of advice that I would, I would give to a support leader today.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Thinking about talking with teams about what this looks like in terms of AI becoming more of our workflow. I mean, you, you made the statement that you're not a, you're not an AI doomsday guy. I'm not either. I think I probably was a few years ago. And now having seen the value it can bring to drive efficiency for my team and see my team see that of, oh no, this thing's not coming in to take my job, it's coming in to help Me do my job better. It's a tool.
What do you think, what do you think those conversations need to look like with team teams to help them understand what's happening and then adopt the technology that will help them do that without the fear of what might be coming down the line.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I mean, super important, right? I advocate for 100% transparency. You know, we've all heard, you know, forget about AI, right? We've all heard the horror stories of, you know, a company decided to maybe start partially outsourcing their, their services and, you know, the fear of, oh my gosh, this outsourcing, you know, company is going to take my job.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Right?
[00:17:21] Speaker B: It's the same thing. Why are you doing outsourcing while you're doing outsourcing? Because I need certain language coverage or any time zone coverage, right. If a team knows that, they understand that, oh yeah, I don't want to work at 2am my time. So someone that's, that's overseas can, can work and it's, you know, noon their time and that's, that's good for them and it's good for me, right? And I think AI is exactly the same conversation, right? It's, why are you implementing AI?
And to the, to the point that I just made, if you're implementing AI because you want to stop the repeatable stuff, the stuff that annoys support agents, like, how many times can you answer this one question and do you like clicking on this macro that is not, you know, customer friendly and that is completely robotic versus a beautiful AI agent that is personalized and contextual and generative, not macro based on. And that's important for them to know, like, it's important for them to know that, hey, your job's not going away, it's evolving. You know, you, you are never spend more time helping train the AI. You're going to spend more time talking about tomato taste. You're going to, you're going to spend more time doing things that you might be interested in. When I was in support, when I was in frontline support, you know, and I was interview and then when I started leading to start interviewing people and you talk about why do you want to be in support.
Most people and I, I will be included in this, they do it because they like helping people.
And, and so as long as the job is about helping people and as long as the job is maybe elevated where you're helping them even deeper, you know, you're becoming like an industry expert and so you're not just answering, you know, where do I Click to do this. But you're answering, how do I solve this complex business problem?
I don't know. That would excite me. Like, that wouldn't make me fearful. That would, that would make me excited. And, and so that's how I would have. The conversation is just this radical, I hate to say radical transparency. I think that's been an overused trope, but you just be very transparent on, you know, and if you are getting AI to replace people's jobs, such as, you know, a couple of big companies that have been making headlines, you know, be transparent there too. Like, hey, you know, we're planning on cutting 90% of our workforce because AI could do the, you know, do everything.
Completely untrue.
[00:19:32] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: And so then, then you can make a decision, do I want to wait to the day the ax comes down, or do I want to go and start looking for something that's more, you know, more appropriate for me, more fitting for me? So I think transparency is just the way to do it.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I think that is one of the things we've been talking about internally at the company I work for now is that clarity is kindness. Being able to be very clear with people about what is going on, why it's going on. I understand there are elements sometimes we maybe can't be just yet as we're working on plans, and we certainly don't want to create confusion, which then of course creates the chaos. But definitely that clarity and that clear direction I think is very important.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: I'd be curious what you think. You know, we think about where we are now. Even where we were a few years ago, we're still battling the idea that support is just a cost center. I think we're seeing it disappear in a lot of places. We've. We've started to see a lot of companies understand the value. And so part of the issue with that is support getting a place at the table, even cx. Getting a place at the table as a whole has been a challenge. What would your advice be to a leader in a CX role who is trying to get a place at the table to influence a company's direction in the coming years? What would be the place to start?
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Support's biggest value right now, especially with the. In the AI kind of world that we're in, is data.
You have customers talking to you, emailing you, chatting with you every single day.
Those customers have emotions and sentiment. Those customers have questions about a variety of topics. Those customers are expressing frustrations, expressing gratitude. Those customers are giving you a treasure trove of information.
You need to show the value of that to not, not just, not just the company, but like every part of the company. You know, complaints about marketing material, complaints about the products and services you provide, you know, where, you know, correlate. This again, goes back to integration correlations between like, if this customer, you know, bought certain types of products, you know, were they more likely to write into support? Like, this data is literally at your fingertips and you don't have to do much today to just do, do some smart things with it. Export your ticket data, scrub it of your, you know, PII, put it into a, you know, an AI ChatGPT or something and say, give me the list of trends, give me, give me a set of information. You know, what are you finding inside this data that they, that's useful for product X or for topic Z or whatever it is. Like, put it in and spit it out and deliver that to your leaders and say, look at this value, right? Look at the insights that we can get out of just this data. And that is just with like, you know, grassroots free nothing actually doing this properly.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: And that to me is how you prove that there's value in investing in the proper tools to do this correctly.
You know, I don't like, you know, I've been very on the record with, I'm not a fan of csat. I think that surveys don't work correctly. I think that NPS data and CSAT data for that matter, are not utilized in the right way. And I think that they're, they're very biased sets of data because, because of the nature of how it's collected.
Unfiltered support feedback connected to your CRM and other systems is by far the biggest unused resource in any company I've ever spoken to.
And so you can very easily use it to prove this is valuable. You should invest in it and we should care about it.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a really good call. And I think that's been one of the challenges even I've seen as a support leader.
I've grown up in the, as a support leader in the transition from support as a call center to support may actually bring value. And I think for me, a lot of the foundational elements that I learned seven, eight, nine years ago leading my first team were I just need you to spit out CSAT data, NPS data. I need you to tell me ticket volume for the week and how fast you're responding to tickets and getting those closed. And so I find it even a challenge now to step back and be able to have that large perspective. And I think that learning how to use the technology to help me do that has been a key thing of starting to know what does it look like to actually produce value, not just information. Well, Craig, as we wrap up this conversation, would love to, love to just take a minute for any closing thoughts you may have, any topics we didn't hit or something that you think would be really valuable for our listeners to hear.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, in general, again, let's assume that AI is here to stay because I can't see a now world now that the cats are the bag. But that's, that's not the case. So assuming that how do you, how do you use it in a way that provides that context, that personalization and, and increases your customer experience instead of hurts it like the, the legacy chatbots, maybe from from seven, eight, nine years ago. That to me is the fundamental question. So if you can start to answer those things, if you start to look for a tool or a partner vendor to be able to provide that level of service and that solution to your team and then show that value of the data it collects, show the value of the experience your customers are getting, show the financial value of maybe some cost savings that come from that, that to me is just, just going to be vital to the support industry and showing that we are not a cost center. We are, we are a valuable contributor to the industry overall satisfaction of our customers. And that to me is a, I mean it's a truth that maybe is hard to prove today, but I think in two to three years, if you haven't even attempted to prove it, you're going to be behind your competitors. So that's, that's been my closing thought.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for our listeners who may want to connect with you, hear more from you, what would be the best way for them to, to connect?
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean LinkedIn is where I post most my content. I do have a archive of all the articles and podcast I've ever done on Stas CA and so and I'm members of Support Driven Elevate cx. And of course if you're interested in talking about AI more, you know, I'm, I'm available at Codif IO so you know, lots of places people could come in and connect.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Wonderful. Awesome. Well, we'll include links to your LinkedIn and other resources that you just mentioned in the show notes as well to make it easy for folks to get to you. But Craig, thanks so much for joining us here at the Table. It's been a great conversation.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Wonderful, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Table Service podcast. You can find out more about today's guest in the show notes below.
The Table Service Podcast is presented by Tableau Consulting, hosted by Jordan Hooker, music by Epidemic Sound.
