CXChronicles Podcast 172 with Fang Cheng, CEO & Founder at Linc

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #172 we welcomed Fang Cheng, CEO & Founder at Linc based in Santa Clara, CA.

Linc is the only CX Automation platform built for retail that is changing the conversation in commerce. Their award winning AI powers an infinitely scalable digital workforce for real conversations that solve real problems for your customers.

Brands like Levi’s, Shiseido, Carter's OshKosh, and many others partner with Linc to deliver extraordinary experiences that span the customer lifecycle to reduce support costs, increase sales conversions, and grow revenue.

In this episode of CXCP, Fang and Adrian chat through how she has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback throughout her career + shares some of the tips & tricks that have worked across her customer focused business leader journey.

**Episode #172 Highlight Reel:**

1. How sub-par customer experiences can help to ignite new business opportunities
2.  How product management can help to fuel your CX/CS optimization possibilities
3.  Why modern customers demand quick access to information + convenience
4.  Ideas for how you can include your entire team in owning your CX/CS 
5.  How you can leverage your VOC reporting to be your North Star

Huge thanks to Fang for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring her team's work and efforts in pushing the customer experience and customer success space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Fang Cheng

Click here to learn more about Linc

If you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review. This is the easiest way that we can find new listeners, guests and future customer focused business leaders to tune into our weekly podcast. 

And be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" on Amazon +  check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel with all of our video episodes & customer focused business leader content!

Reach out to CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more information about how we can help your business make customer happiness a habit!

Transcript

#172 -- Fang Cheng, CEO & Founder @ Linc

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:00:08) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CXChronicles podcast, super excited for today's guest Fang Cheng, CEO of founder of Linc is joining us on the show. Fun. Why don't you say hello to the CX nation for us? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:00:23) - Hi, everyone. Pleased to be here. Thank you so much for having us agent. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:00:27) - Absolutely. So I'm pumped. You have an awesome story. Awesome background. And then more importantly, I think this is what you're probably excited to talk about to you and your team at link are doing some pretty incredible things on the customer experience, customer success side of it. So why don't you start off today's show set the stage, give us, um, give us a couple minute background in terms of how did you get into this whole world? What were some of the stepping stones? Are there early experiences that you had along your, your own customer focus, business leader journey, and certainly give us a sense for how you actually started Lincoln and how this idea came about, where you now have this, this awesome business that that's serving all these customers across, uh, across the world right now. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:01:07) - Absolutely happy to, uh, you know, really like my journey in customer experience. It really starts as a consumer. I shop, uh, as, especially as a female founder, I shop not only for myself, but also for my entire household, my husband and my kid, you know, as a consumer, I value the experience as, um, very much of a key factor as for where I choose to shop and which brands I choose to do business with at the same time as a technologist, as an entrepreneur, um, I was naturally drawn to what could be a better experience every time I experienced the friction that I believe shouldn't be there. Uh, I think about, um, you know, what can make things better. Now that combination perhaps inspired me to really build a link, a platform that helps the world's leading brands to actually push forward. Uh, what best in class customer experience really means by specifically leveraging AI and automation, you know, since the founding, hopefully our business has grown tremendously now just as through devoting our own intellect and the word, um, to the vision of a better customer experience, but also through learning from our customers. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:02:31) - You know, our customers are brands that devoted, you know, years way before, uh, the whole wave of digital CX or CX automation starts and they deeply love their customer. They have their own wish list of what they could offer as a better CX. So we understand, uh, you know, their CX of frictions and challenges and give them the power of our platforms, the ability to bring to the world, actually the best digital CX that consumers love. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:03:04) - I love that. I think number one, it's just, um, there really is so many different ways of entering this world. Everyone's kind of got their own individual personalized story about what drew them to the space or what their own personal story was inside of their own life, in terms of what, where they knew that there was going to be a better way that they can actually, um, build a better customer experience or better yet help other companies build even better customer experiences. So I, I thank you for sharing that. What did it look like? I guess in the very beginning, what was like, um, when link was just a small, a small, like, even just an idea in your head or like a small little team and there was the initial group of folks, what did it look like in the beginning? How did you guys even start to, to be able to think about what types of product, or what types of technology, what types of solutions you knew other big businesses and other customers out there we're going to be super, super ripe for needing some additional help or needing some additional support. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:03:55) - What did that, what did that very beginning part of the link story kind of look like? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:03:59) - Yeah. So I'll give you a, a brief version of the light bulb moment, perhaps that really inspired us to building, um, in easier, an interesting, like, you know, I talked about me as a heavy consumer and, uh, uh, you know, you already started with the one day that I bought something from, uh, a premium grocery store. I won't name it. And, um, and, uh, I told them yoga back home. I cleaned my parents, uh, in-laws are just visiting. Uh, and then I realized that I could put the groceries into the refrigerator, realize, okay, the puzzle of milk is factually I expired. Um, and then right in there, it's like, Ugh, right. And, uh, you know, supposed to be a high end grocery store destination, and, you know, give me this kind of, um, headache when my mother-in-law, you know, is actually helping you sorting through the groceries. That just feel great, but, you know, it's just small things like that right there. It was like, ah, I really want to complain, um, to, um, uh, to the store about.

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:05:06) - But, you know, how do I even reach out to them? I'm already home. Right. And, uh, uh, do I really want to call them for a few dollars or complaints? It probably doesn't worth it, but as a consumer, it really doesn't feel good. Um, when, you know, um, in a, in, in scenarios like this, a little, a little, uh, issue and emerges, there's just no better way to, uh, reach out to the brands you spend the with. Right. And, uh, no good way to actually explain to them, um, what actually happened. You know, I was gradually running through my head and my mom and I say, okay, do I have to show them the receipts? And then talk to them. I actually bought this, what did I buy? Which particular product I was talking about? And right there, you know, this comes in to say, why couldn't the way interact with the brands we spent money with is as easy as we would have interacted with our friends and families. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:06:05) - Right. And then the technology side of me, you know, uh, being in the technology world for a while over decades, by that time and previously build businesses and how by the business that will be acquired about Amazon, you know, I've been long fascinated, you know, how, um, uh, consumer to consumer interactions, uh, has evolved over the years, right? We are all so in total that you, um, easy and quick messaging way of, um, staying in touch with our friends and families, but right there, it's like, why cannot that type of interaction experience, um, be the reality for a consumer's interaction with a business that we, we, we buy from. Right. And so that simple question greeted like, uh, two devoted hears of our word 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:07:04) - Solution, you know, and then while you're really pure onion, uh, how do you actually deliver, uh, a, um, almost a conscientious style, uh, assistance experience to the consumer, right? So channels and like asynchronous messaging like chat, right? And that become a way more complex, a challenge. And then, you know, that actually inspires us that this is not only a meaningful problems from a consumer needs angle, but it's actually a worthy one where innovation and on the technology front on the solution front is really required to actually solve with the right. And I would have to say that in the past few years, I'm so proud of, we were able to pull together fantastic minds in technology world and product, a world to actually build out a new generation of CX automation solution to tackle this very challenge. And now I can say that, you know, too many of the brands that we serve, they already be, they're able to, uh, chat through a college. You just style, ultimately the customer experience through the channel choice of their customer and actually getting over 85% of the customer assistance all the way to that. Two guys satisfaction that customer smile, uh, they are seeking. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:08:30) - That's awesome. I mean, let's, before we even go any further, I want to your example of like the grocery store and like that one product that was either expired or it wasn't right. You know, when people hear some of these numbers on, like, I know, I know at CXC, we're always talking about in the U S loan companies are losing upwards of a hundred billion dollars per year due to poor customer experiences. And guys, you know, w what fond just shared for us as an example, right there, that's one of those instances that tally up to that hundred billion a year, because a lot of customers, they don't do anything, or they don't ever provide the feedback, or they don't take that extra step of picking up the phone and making the phone call or getting on the app and messaging into a customer success or customer experience, or going onto social and letting, letting somebody know, Hey, you know, Hey grocer, like you just gave me a product. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:09:19) - It's not that many people don't do that. What they do instead is they just stop buying or they stop spending, or they, they start thinking about alternative places that they can go and spend their wallet share. And I think it's really, really cool that you saw that as a massive opportunity. Uh, let's give you the second part, the technology piece. I love this because you're right in today's world, you know, you kind of mentioned Amazon. Amazon has changed expectations for every single, whether you love Amazon or whether you hate it. And I know for a fact that it's definitely one of the largest line items in my wife and I as Amex every single month. So full candor right there. But like Amazon changed all of our expectations to the now economy. Right? You put something in your shopping cart. Now the thing comes to.

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:10:00) - Now you can literally filter by what's available right now versus what's going to maybe take a day or two, right. Or 24 or 48 hours. And I think that you're right on where there's like on the retail side and generally SAS side e-commerce everywhere. That knowledge expectation has really kind of shifted things for entrepreneurs, business owners, and business executives. You know, there's this new precedent out there that modern consumers are just kind of already fully entrenched in, right? They want things now. They want answers. Now they want service or support now. So I love that you guys saw that as a massive opportunity. Um, I'd love to dive into the first pillar of team. Give us a sense for the team that you've been building over at link, give us a, a high level lay of the land for what type of teams and departments you've pulled together and what types of roles and what types of different areas of responsibility have you guys carved out as you built the business and as you've built link into the future. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:10:52) - Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, you know, it's interesting, like our product is a product that helps our clients to serve their customers better. Right? So, but at the same time, our empowered business is running on absolutely customer centric philosophy, right? So in terms of our culture, client success is the success or definition of our entire company. And when we build our teams, I would say, um, as many of the SAS company, you will say, you know, Gordy days, your team looks like consists of, um, engineers, product mines. They are building out of the foundation of the solution that actually pushes the envelope on what's possible, but the moments we start tackling, going to market. And in fact, even before we launched our first version of going out to market, we were really paying attention to what our customer is looking for, right. And learning from them. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:11:57) - So client success team is one of the first, uh, um, go to market team, adamant that we invested. And over time we keep doubling down on that to today, you know, CX a team, uh, we call it a customer success team consists of now only fantastic product managers, the project managers that helps the customers who partners with link and using our solution to get up and running quickly and see the value of the platform and use it right, but also consists of, um, CX expert that can actually educate and coach and guide our customer by really spending time understanding each of our clients that unique business challenges in the CX or front, and then bring in that expertise of what is possible through technology automation and a self service, and then doing it in a way that actually now only offload work, uh, in the areas that you want to drive efficiency, you'll want to drive ability to scale from the human agents team, but to actually collaborate with human agent team, almost imagine a modern day, a CSO organization that actually consists of AI agents and the people agents, and then having the best of both types of workforce and unleash the potential and which the synergy between the two to actually achieve the ultimate goal in the best way. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:13:40) - So kind of success as a team, you know, is really one of our first go-to market team, uh, adamant that we invested in and, uh, continue to be really the cornerstone of our entire business. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:13:54) - I love that. I love that. I mean, number one, it's, we're seeing companies and executive leadership teams across the planet, definitely doubling down on CX CS, uh, revenue, operations, revenue optimization, all these different terms that different companies are kind of calling this stuff, but there's a Nasim reason why it's like now I think the pandemic showed the entire world and made a lot of business leaders and founders really, truly understand the, just the pure power of customer success and customer experience. But number two, the pandemic put a lot of us into a position where we had to get exceptional at thinking about retention. We had to get really, really good at thinking about increasing our lifetime value or increasing, uh, the actual annual revenues that we brought in, in each customer because customers became that much more valuable, right? Like let's call it what it is, guys. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:14:39) - Not every business was able to get through the pandemic unscathed. So many companies had to make changes. They had to make adjustments that, uh, uh, some of them lost big parts of the market. Some of them lost big parts of the portfolio, but now more than ever, you're seeing just the criticality of having an incredible customer success and customer experience unit really devoted and focused on number one, like the voice of the customer. And what does the customer saying? Or what's the drum beat that the customer is really kind of giving us every single week and month and quarter, but then number two. And I love that. I loved it. You, you, you called this alpha on the connectivity to product, right? So many of today's businesses have some form of technology or product or some form of solution that really does keep the train or the services or the product on the tracks. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:15:20) - And man, when you can have these teams really, really working together and working really tightly where you've got like the technology side, you've got the customer side, you've got, maybe even like some of these other teams that you bring in, you bring in sales and marketing to think about how you can actually like improve the velocity of your pipeline. For example, get more leads in the door and get more at-bats for future potential prospects. This is literally where I think just the future of customer success is going. And I think for our listeners guys, this is why probably one of the coolest times to be in this space, because for folks that can get really good at navigating the complexity of that world, of coming up with awesome solutions and awesome new paths forward around how you're going to sort of solve that for your given team or your given company. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:16:01) - Look, this guy is going to be the limit. You're going to be able to give more and more responsibility. You're you're definitely going to have folks asking you to do bigger projects and over time we're going to be building leaders bigger, bigger, and larger teams. So I love that fun. Um, I'd love to spend, spend a few minutes talking about the second CX pillar tools, because this is cool. Cause I imagine with link, you guys have all sorts of different customers across a variety of different spaces. I love for you to spend a few minutes talking about how you and the team kind of thinks about tools from an internal perspective phone. Like what type of tools have you guys invested in and what type of tools have you built link link on? And then I'd love to kind of hear how you guys work with, I imagine your customers all have different types of tools. So I imagine each account or each new customers probably get different complexities with their own tech stack, spend a couple minutes talking about tools and give us a sense for what you and your team have kind of learned over the years while building link. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:16:52) - Yeah. Um, I'm happy that you, um, you surface this particular question because, uh, I would say, uh, for any CX award, regardless of the nature of your business or your product, the technology is serving an evermore important, you know, um, to the entire CX of practice and the ultimate performance of it all. Um, I would say today's, um, you know, consumers or, um, uh, that'd be, um, uh, where today's customers, that'd be, uh, you know, consumer customers or business customers that you're serving. They are all extremely digitally savvy. So they expect a really quick access to information when they have the moments of need, um, for help, uh, they, uh, expect, uh, uh, um, around the clock availability as well as the convenience of those interaction channels, right? So those are all areas you must understand, um, what, um, the, the state of the art technology and see the right to actually achieve the best results, uh, with your customers. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:17:57) - You know, LinkedIn, particularly we found that, um, if you look at our core product, what we're offering is one eight brand partners with link. Uh, our solution is out there representing the brands to power that conscientious style, or to make it a customer assistance. Um, we have the brand though that is a core offering. So you turn on the solution, you implement your ride right away. You can deploy a digital workforce there and into work 24 7 and taking care of your customers. But then we found that for our business to be successful for our clients to truly use the platform, right, and to use the full potential, we need to build additional tools and functionalities that give visibility to our clients. So the events and the like is, is a big area of road map that we have invested you now that led to us offering some of the best in class, um, uh, real-time analytics on voice of customer, um, not just a usage, but sentiment of the customer and really knew the Prieto chart, uh, of what the customer is reaching out to the business about. Right? And you can zoom in and zoom out, um, categories of inquiry topics, and truly understand the category by category, how you're doing in, in the eyes of your customer, when you're delivering the service and the support to those clients. We found that when we put the advanced analytics capabilities to the fingertips of our customer, making them accessible is completely self service. You'll go, um, to your client portal. Um, anytime, anywhere you can access, um, the browser or accessing internet, you actually can see.

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:20:00) - Um, to the very day down to the minute. And then I think it's about what your customer is asking for at the beginning, when we be with the product we really, or Amy either give our clients visibility about, um, what our platform and the solution is doing for them and inspire them to take actions. Um, what particular sets of use cases, where they should, um, advance their automation strategies for them. So we achieve that and you become a key cornerstone part of the entire offering where clients actually can buy their own data to direct their automation roadmap. But there are some really surprising and delightful discoveries of additional value proposition. This advanced analytics capability offers, we found our customer Juul insights and take actions, a beat, and their CX practice. For example, a customer actually realized that, oh, they're proud of that description. Um, has opportunities for improvements and turns out there are so many customers after they launched a, um, a certain new lines of sneaker product. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:21:14) - And, um, they, the new lines of sneaker product is so fantastic, uh, numbers in terms of sales Denver's. But a few weeks later, the return numbers are also stabbing. And then when they look into, okay, now just return numbers is you already, it's just, oh, so maybe they had lines of product that high stem challenges, but what, particularly through the CX front, uh, capability, they were able to pick into this number of customer has high returns on this very lines of product, because people were asking about, um, um, you know, the good sides and thinking that actually running a bit narrower than other designs, that feedback, um, found those back into the product. And the digital merchandising team allows the team to say, that's just modify my PDP, my product, that description on the website. And then market just say this, this particular, uh, uh, uh, sneaker style, uh, runs a little narrower, right? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:22:21) - And that actually prevented and dramatically reduced the return rate on that lines of product. You can send posts like this trickling down to, you know, actions you can take from warehouse operation perspective, uh, actions you can take on the design side actions you can take on your digital experience can make certain information more visible that you may not have thought about. Those information are actually critical for your customer to make a buying decision. So we're, uh, we're otherwise they may, um, uh, lead to things like high rates, et cetera. And, uh, um, we found that, you know, why you actually, uh, utilizing the tools, right? And then, um, it's truly empowering for the entire organization across multiple fronds of the business minds. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:23:14) - I love that. I mean, tons of tons of awesome ideas right there falling. I think one of the first things that you made me think is look depending on what stage of a business life cycle a company's in, whether they're, you know, a brand new scrappy little startup, or whether they're a mid-market company, whether they're an enterprise company, I would argue many of those companies still struggle to be able to get a crisp, clear view on, uh, depending on how much inbound feedback they get. A lot of companies, it takes them a long time to get clarity around what types of tags or what types of compartmentalize buckets, or what types of specific focus areas. And this can take some companies years to think about how to get really good at building those reports and socializing them around the business. I think smaller companies oftentimes, or newer companies, especially with growth focus startups, right? 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:24:06) - They, they oftentimes miss the gold that even if you have a small volume, maybe you're getting a hundred pieces of feedback a month, right? And there's this like, miss there's this missing part around the good and the bad and the ugly that you get from those hundred pieces of feedback can literally dictate what you're going to, how you're going to spend your next investment, but how you're going to think about the next hires that you need to make, or more importantly, and to your point, how do you effectively prioritize your product roadmap or how do you effectively prioritize and socialize what the five leading areas are that you're going to focus on the next month? Okay. Ours, for example. And I think that this is something for our listeners to absolutely be thinking about if you can get really good at that, especially as CX and CS leaders guys, because we're going to be the guys and gals that are asked to do this for our companies. Right. But thinking about a way that you can come up with that, that way of compartmentalizing segmenting, and then sharing across the business to the appropriate owners, some of the insights that you're seeing, that's one of the biggest, one of the biggest places that you can, you can add value on the CX.

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:25:05) - Um, there was another thing that you said that I think is, is awesome, which is this idea of how do you leverage, um, some of those same insights to do operational smoothing? That's what I heard you say. So basically when you were talking about like, Hey, if we know on a thousand pieces of feedback, every time these hundred shoes are ordered, people seem to not be happy with these hundred shoes because they're too thin or they're not right, or that, and then you can start doing the operational smoothing where you understand that, and then you can go back to the top of the funnel or the beginning of the customer journey. How do you add it? I had add a updated expectations. How do you add maybe beefed up product descriptions, where he really set that bar? Very, very clear that these are thin shoes. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:25:44) - You will not like these, if you have wide feet, that's huge. And that's frankly, I think going back to some of the things that we're talking about with just this new modernized, um, expectation for the, for the modern consumer, that type of stuff, they're expecting companies and brands to actually already have thought about some of that they're expecting companies and brands in the modern world to be able to effectively ensure that that customer experience or that specific buying experience is going to be really smooth and real easy. So awesome ideas here. And certainly some really, really great insights around areas that we could think about. I'd love to jump into the third six pillar of process. Um, and we've kind of hit on this a little bit, but I'd love to hear how you and the team at link, as you've built your customer portfolio, as you've grown, the business, built the, built the team out to be larger. How have you guys thought about wrangling or managing your process or your living playbooks as things have changed. Now, everybody knows that companies have, you know, pivots and changes and twists and turns, but how have you and your team sort of managed process as you've scaled the business? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:26:42) - Yeah. Um, another fantastic question. I would say that the, the, especially for a fast growing business, um, uh, you won't be able to, uh, uh, today's, the process may not apply to tomorrow business, right? So when you, um, look into processes, you almost want to spell out what the automated principles that you want, uh, your business across departments to be aligned on. Right. And then, so that, um, um, your lieutenants, your, uh, uh, now just your management team, your goes down to every individual employees every day over there, uh, lines of work. They actually can help the business to make the right decisions and discover process gaps, and then develop a process gaps once they really understand what success looks like for the business for us. Um, you know, we really believe that all teams, uh, mass on CX, right? And, and this is like, um, CX is not really a silo, the new one team area accountability, and the ability to actually impact the improve CX is really, uh, woven into the DNA of the entire organization. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:28:07) - Um, and that means that you've a, a customer success team here, a word, the experience in a repetitive way of certain frictions of, um, uh, supporting customers or meeting their inquiries that should really follow through seamlessly to the product team and the prep team because of that customer centricity mindset, they will, uh, right away, uh, be aligned with customer success. And, but through their angle to say, how do we solve that problem, that her, um, is there a product opportunity, right? And where we could push our roadmap forward, uh, to make this easier for our customers, easier for our client success team to support our customers. Um, it's very hard to actually instruct, uh, um, uh, all detailed the process for a fast moving business. We must build a culture, um, that ingrains this kind of, uh, customer centric mindset down to every functional areas. And then you will be approximately surprised, uh, how much, um, the process inside of the things that can evolve quickly and shaping itself and adapting to that need of one people across its functions, deeply understand what CX and client success truly means. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:29:44) - Yup. I think you're right. It's, it's funny. It's like the, some of the best companies out there that are absolutely killing it with their customer experience, customer success efforts, customer, client, client satisfaction in general, you're right. Bringing, um, or having that connectivity or that conduit to your product product side, I would argue is absolutely paramount because there's things that.

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:30:04) - Our friends on the product side of the business. They can see that maybe, maybe from like, look, let's call it as if we're expert at managing customer communications, managing accounts, managing all the things that go inside of a, a customer success managers day to day. Um, we're obviously we're technically inclined, but there's certain things that we might not be able to see. So you're right. If you can start to bring your product closer to some of the, the challenges that you continue to see where like, you know, uh, 20% of the time, these are sorry, 80% of the time, these 20, 40% of these things keep presenting themselves as a problem. Boom, there's an opportunity to get product involved and think about if automation or product refinement or even product. I would argue sometimes too. It's just product awareness and product usability. Education is another piece to this because sometimes our friends in product absolutely built it properly, but maybe we need to spend a little bit of extra time thinking about how do you educate that? 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:30:55) - How do you socialize the user? How do you get the user comfortable to understanding how to use that feature, how to use that product set. So I love that part. The other thing that you're just making me think about is so many CX and CS teams out there in today's world, they use a lot of different tools. So not only do they use a lot of different, uh, tools internally that all come with their own processes. So that complicates the, just the general aggregation of building playbooks in today's world. But the other thing too is they're working with customers that have their own toolkits and have their own processes. And I've, I've, I've certainly found the same thing from one of my own journey where like the, the closer you can bring product, product, your CX and your CSF, or another way of thinking about it, the more you can create some potential resources for your CX and your CS team to leverage when and where they need it. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:31:42) - That's one of the easiest ways to keep a pulse or keep people little bit ahead of what some of the prime opportunity is for your business to be thinking about building, especially when it comes to process and playbooks and constantly tinkering with how you have to update this stuff. Cause you're right, this, these businesses change every day, every week, there's always new learnings. There's always new customer needs or customer expectations. And that process area is really where you can kind of unpack and constantly keep a pulse on sort of how your internal and your external users need to think about it. I love that. Awesome, awesome ideas. Um, following up to jump into the, the fourth CX pillar of feedback, and this is, this is always one of my favorite ones, cause I just love hearing how companies and how different customer focused business leaders sort of unpack this question, but I'd love for you to spend a minute or two talking about how you and your team actually collect and then act upon your customer feedback. And then I'd love for you to share some ideas around how you leverage some of your employee based feedback to grow the business, to grow the portfolio and to refine the product as you guys scale. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:32:40) - Yeah. Um, um, so it's, uh, I can, there's so much to say about feedback and I think, uh, this goes back to the entire foundation of CX is voice of customer. I think that really should be the mindset that's the north star, or we're looking for that as to how success is measured. When we know our customers are happy about the experience and uh, honestly, um, customers across the board, um, is benchmarking their expectations with the best experience they ever experienced. Right? So that's, uh, we had to all recognize the customer's expectation. This is a moving target, right? You, you mentioned that how Amazon has raised the bar for everyone else, that's serving consumer right in the business world as well. So regardless where you look in, you know, for any customer, as a business customer, as a work consumer customers, they will be benchmarking their expectation with the Baxi experience they ever, um, uh, uh, uh, experienced. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:33:46) - So I think it's really important for the business to attend to, uh, the voice of customer and not just as sometime, right. And once a while, take a look at, take a snapshot of review, but like constantly. So now this is a one every year about how do you actually, um, uh, build that into your everyday practice. And then again, leveraging technology to make that happen along the funny things that, you know, our, our line of work of serving our clients, because our platform is also, uh, really about empowering, uh, brands with deliver best in class CX. Then we often, uh, as we help a business wrap their heads around whether a CX opportunity is ad, then we ask, you know, do you have a parental charter? Can you share with me why your customer reaching out to you? And, uh, um, you will be surprised how often we hear from our clients have said, you know, um, I don't know 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:34:56) - The key drivers, right? Why customer reaching out to us and their feedback. Um, but I, to be honest, I don't know that for sure. It's like, it feels about like this. So this just tells you how much opportunity is left on the table. Uh, think about if you can have a continuous feedback mechanism, think about your feedback is mapped down to service inquiries. So that'd be support as ally, or they do things or new feature requests. They're very different, right? We're new feature education. They're very different. So, you know, I almost encourage the audience to take a moment to think about it for your very line of business. Do you have fingers on the pulse really about customer feedback, right? To what extent, right? Both the time frequency you can, um, gather those feedback, um, as well as the, um, the, the level of, um, risk, um, you know, the rebel resolution, you can understand that feedback out, you know, for which areas of the business practice and, um, uh, I think mapping out the state of art, uh, right. What is our feedback? Um, do we really understand our voice of customer and knowing your, your state of art, knowing that the world has moved her was much more of a real time feedback and magnesium, and then, you know, challenge the question to say, how do we get there, uh, is a good starting point. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:36:34) - I love that fun. You know, it's funny. Um, obviously we spend a ton of time on this show, talking about customer journey maps and all the different ways that companies can leverage a customer journey map. Will you just said, I'm so happy that you brought it up another one of the golden tickets for expanding or optimizing your CX in your CS. Tomorrow. We spend a lot of time with our clients at CXC here doing essentially customer feedback roadmaps, where we'll literally go back and reverse map out what are all of the different mediums and all the different touch points and all of the different connection points that you've been historically asking customers for feedback is really funny, fun, because you just know that there's so many times when number one, no one has even at mature companies, even at companies that are absolutely crushing it. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:37:15) - And they're doing phenomenal things on the sales and the growth side, but they'll look at you and they'll say, well, wait a minute. What do you mean? What, what, which mediums? And you start to start to map some of this stuff out and you look at NPS reports or customer satisfaction, or you look at some of the, some of the, some of the public sentiment that lies right on, right on the internet, right? Whether it's, whether it's Google reviews or Yelp reviews, or if you're a software company, maybe it's G2, Capterra Gartner, whatever your, your space is. But also thinking about the closing, the loop on some of those. So mapping those things is one piece, but actually making sure that your team is acting upon them and doing something with that feedback and getting back to your customers or users and letting them know what you're doing. It that's another part. So I love that you bring up what, um, what about on the employee feedback side? I'd love to just a minute on what are some of the things that you guys are doing at link to take some of the brilliant ideas that your employees have and put them right back into that customer journey for the, for the next day? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:38:08) - Yes. Um, it just as important if it's not more, um, because ultimately, um, uh, you know, uh, as the, as a fast growing business, especially, um, uh, how at the end of the day, what we do is delivered, uh, through our employees, that would be the employees on the front line building a product, and whether your employees on the front line of, um, supporting our customers and setting our solutions. Um, I think, uh, managers, uh, in the modern organization really should understand the voice of employee, um, just as much as the voice of customer and, uh, maybe one of the farm, um, uh, uh, innovative ways that we are doing this it's through slack surveys, right? So we, uh, just like many tech companies away from internal communication, almost the leaves, in fact. Right. And, um, uh, but using that, not only for collaboration, um, uh, for internal communication, but, um, there are creative ways you could do surveys, right? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:39:15) - And, uh, um, SAC survey allows you to do both, um, anonymous polls, right. Or surveys, and then to really kind of pay attention to, you know, now feedback is become as easy as a emoji response, right. It engaging for your customer. So think about those nimble approach to do it. And not just to say, I have to have a big HR team to design out a multi-page around employee survey. Let's do either once a year, but think about the things you could do, uh, after every team, all hands, right. And after I raised sprints, right. And why you have a all hands meeting where everyone is on zoom, um, you know, run a live survey on zoom, get the team involved. Right. I think that's so important this days. Um, especially, you know, um, the we're all adapting into remote or hybrid, uh, work style. You don't get to see how John is now fitting, right. Is seem to be a little older today. It was going on. Something happened in his personal life or something happened to work. You don't always get to see that now because you're not necessarily, oh, under one roof in a physical location. And I think just be creative in leveraging some of these tools and, and knowing that actually they can be used for employee survey and having a mindset to be curious about what is my voice of employees. Um, very important. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:40:47) - I love that VOC plus V O E equals your ability to grow and scale into the future. It's it really is. It's a huge opportunity. This has been absolutely awesome, uh, incredible insights and, and an awesome, thank you so much for sharing your story before we wrap up, where can people find out more about you and where can people get in touch with you? And most importantly, where can people get in touch with your team at link so that they can learn more about what you guys are doing for your customers today? 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:41:12) - Um, yes. Uh, find us@linkwithac.cx and, um, uh, we are, uh, always up for a great conversation about CX. Uh, so he has app and a couple, uh, I have a coming events myself. One of my team, uh, will be also asked, including greeters customer service and experience events at the end of may and shop target for women at the end of June. Um, so, Hey guys, if you're coming to those events, we also recently won, um, very exciting award, um, uh, of, uh, retail touch points is the past the branding experience a word that is really highlighting our partnership and work with the Pakistan, uh, another fantastic, uh, uh, consumer facing brands and our work there. So if you're interested in getting a copy of that case study and hit me up on LinkedIn, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:42:09) - That's fantastic. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for, for joining the cxchronicles podcast. And we're going to look forward to keeping in touch with you moving forward into the future. 

Fang Cheng, Linc (00:42:18) - Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.