CXChronicles Podcast 174 with Gregorio Uglioni, The CX GoalKeeper

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #174 we welcomed Gregorio Uglioni, CCXP an inspiring CX/CS executive who has come to be known as The CX GoalKeeper, based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Greg has spent years helping a plethora of amazing companies with transforming and digitizing their CX/CS roadmaps. In short, Greg is a former Accenture consultant, who today is responsible for Business Transformation at the Cantonal Hospital of Winterthur based in Switzerland. 

He's also a huge part of the global CX/CS community. He's authored several books, is the host of The CX GoalKeeper Podcast,  judges a variety of Customer Experience awards programs across the globe, is an international speaker and regular at webinars and conferences + lectures on customer experience & success at the University of Lucerne.

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

**Episode #174 Highlight Reel:**

1. How building your CX/CS  team is like managing a world-class soccer club 
2. Building offensive, mid-field and defensive goals & targets to scale your business
3. Creating your "eye-level" strategy for building a tool-kit or blueprint for your team
4. Leveraging process to become the glue that retains customers & fuels your growth
5. Investing in customer & employee feedback optimization to drive future innovation

Huge thanks to Greg for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring his work and efforts in pushing the customer experience and customer success space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Gregorio Uglioni, CCXP

Click here to learn more about The CX GoalKeeper Podcast

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

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

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

Transcript

#174 -- Gregorio Uglioni, CCXP The CX GoalKeeper

Speaker 1 (00:00:08) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the cxchronicles podcast. Super excited guys today, we have another, um, another incredible individual who spends much of his time meeting with all sorts of incredible customer focused business leaders, CX leaders, CS leaders from across the world. Today, we have the CX goalkeeper with us. Greg, why don't you say hello to the CX nation? 

Speaker 2 (00:00:30) - Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be on your podcast, ladies and gentlemen, really delighted tonight to be here and discuss with Adrian about customer experience. That's what I really love to do 

Speaker 1 (00:00:42) - A hundred percent. So guys recently, we had the pleasure of chatting with Greg on his podcast to see a keep podcast. And, and honestly, guys, it's so interesting, so helpful to hear from other individuals who have tons of these conversations with other CX and CS leaders are the people that are focused on the customer centricity and just general customer focused business leader world. So Greg, I'm excited to kind of have you share your story with us today, and I'm excited to kind of have you talk with the CX nation about some of the things that you've been, um, able to do over your career through your own journey. What if we start off today's show, why don't you take a couple of minutes before we get into the fourth six pillars to set the stage, Greg, why don't you give people, um, the high level story for it? How'd you get into this whole space? How did you become the CX goalkeeper? 

Speaker 2 (00:01:27) - Sure. Happy to do that. But first of all, I want really to say thank you because I, I really love to be part of the CX community because exactly what we are doing. You are a podcaster. I am a podcaster, but we are helping each other because we want to spread the word of mouth. We want to help others to grow. It's not, we are competitors and therefore we don't. We do not exchange information as in all other industries or in order of disciplines, we are here to help each other and we are here to help your audience and therefore, extremely happy that you invited me. My name is Greg, the CX goalkeeper. Why CX goalkeeper, perhaps for the people watching to the video and not only listening to the podcast, I have, um, soccer pitch in the background because these are my two passions, customer experience and soccer. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:15) - And yes, I have really the great pleasure to work in this space where it's also my passion and this, this customer experience. Um, as you listen from, from my accent, um, grew up, I grew up in the Southern part of Switzerland. My mother tongue is Italian, but I think we can understand each other well. And then I came to Zurich, Switzerland to study, and I started my career at Accenture, big consulting firms. I think also in America where well-known after four years there, I moved to into, um, credit card issue. And also at this credit card issue, the customer were always at the center because, you know, call center customer, calling us for different requests, doing project for them. And therefore I was always focused on the customer and the, in the last few years, I had the pleasure to really work, to transform a customer service from a cost center, into a customer centric value generating engine. 

Speaker 2 (00:03:14) - And we did that and it was really successful. But as you know, quite a lot of change on the SI on the C-suite and therefore I decided to move to my older experience. I am now working since six months in a hospital and there I'm leading the business transformation. And when I'm saying the word transformation, I always add customer centric transformation. In, in hospitality, we are speaking about patient and employees, uh, on the, on the other side, the CX goalkeeper, this is my patient. This is what I'm doing. But at the end, let's think about the role of CF, a CX professional. And as a goal keeper, you are in the back port, you are helping the team. You watch, you see the field and you are trying to help creating amazing experiences. And this is what, what I am doing. I am here to spread the word of mouth to help. 

Speaker 2 (00:04:03) - And let's add one example. If you allow me thinking about fans in soccer, fans in soccer are emotionally involved. They are buying tickets, they are buying merchandise and they are really there to spread the word of mouth. Let's think about, uh, if your preferred team lost a match, you find ways to support them. You find ways and excuses. Yes, but they play words, but they are lost in the next time. They will. Ladies and gentlemen think about businesses where customer, after a bad experiences, experience, spread the positive word of mouth. There is no industry or not so many industry, I think for have three to four companies thinking about them, where we have really fans of these companies. And I think from soccer, we can learn quite a lot. And I hope that I can share that with your audience tonight.

Speaker 1 (00:05:01) - I so Greg, number one, I absolutely love it. Number two, for, for some of our listeners, the first, the first time I met Greg, I think him and I, we, we begin immediately friends for two years. We both shared these similar passions of customer experience, customer success, customer centricity thinking, and just generally helping businesses with think about how they can improve their entire customer and employee engagement game. Right? One of the, one of the most fun parts of any business, but number two, it's the football piece. It's the soccer piece, right? I, I, I, I, I have to share with folks. I was joking with Greg. Um, last week that, you know, soccer is, is one of the most incredible, um, sports metaphors or sports comparatives to business. Right? And I, and I know for a lot of the folks that listen to this show weekly, Greg, they're constantly hearing me talking about moving the ball around, understanding the different areas of the pitch, understanding whether we're playing offense, defense, midfield. 

Speaker 1 (00:05:53) - So I absolutely love that we have the CX bull keeper and then selfishly, Greg, I don't even know if I told you this the other day I grew up playing goalkeeper. So that was literally my position in soccer the whole time I was a kid growing up. So I'm pumped to have you here today, man. And I'm pumped to, um, to kind of be listening in to learning to your story, but also love the way that you think about the four CX pillars, Greg. So I'd love to jump into the first of the CX pillars team. So you've set the stage. You've been able to work at all these incredible businesses today. Now you get to work with a number of different customer focused business leaders. Why don't you take a couple of minutes, Greg, tell us, tell us a little bit about, a little bit about some of the different things that you've been able to learn along your own journey that you've seen either past companies or some of your, some of your current customers or your current team is talk about teams, spend a few minutes talking about a few of the lessons that you've learned along your own journey around team building and team management, team leadership, 

Speaker 2 (00:06:41) - More than happy. First of all, we are sharing something additional because I was also a goalkeeper. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:47) - Yeah, I like it. It's a great position, my friend. 

Speaker 2 (00:06:50) - Exactly. And, uh, and thank you for asking, um, as first speaking about teams, because teams are you a group of human beings? And I think human beings is the key of everything. Um, I always share the same story. I start with a business issue that should be known also to your audience. And then, uh, we can discuss what it's happening in South Korea and our they're entering that. And I start with a really simple example. I wants to contact the company. We are trying to contact the customer service. If I phone them, then I contact the customer service and I get, I get treated in one way. If I have rights to them, an email back office is trying to answering my question and they are treating me differently because they are sitting in another department. And if I'm writing to them, uh, through social media, often social media sits with, uh, with the marketing department because it's something fancy and they get treated in another way. And by the way, I'm complaining because something is not, it's not working and they are trying to sell me something because they're tired. It's to sell stuff. Can you empathize with what I'm saying? 

Speaker 1 (00:08:00) - A hundred percent, every one of us has had an experience like that guy. 

Speaker 2 (00:08:04) - Exactly. And basically what I want to share is what we can learn from soccer based on this issue. And let's think about the soccer team S exactly what I mentioned, three different departments, the defendant with their targets, for example, let's say defenders are customer service. They need to decrease costs. Therefore they need to answer the call as quick as possible. And to get you out of the line, as quick as possible, the midfield are marketing products. They need to sell you something. And then the strikers are an order department, the it department, but it's enough to make the example and everybody's focused on their targets. Now the defense let's let's give to the defenders, their target. They need to stop as many boats as possible. And they are, if they get this target, they will focus only on debt. If we give them to the midfield players, the target to run as many kilometers or as many miles as possible, they will run around the 90 minutes of the game. 

Speaker 2 (00:09:04) - They will achieve their goal, but they want achieve their common goals. And therefore we need to give to these teams the same targets, serving the customer in the best possible way, creating a successful customer outcome. And if we give to all of them the same targets, they will achieve something. And therefore, for me, it's extremely important. What we learned, the first thing that we learned from soccer give today to all the different employees in the company, different targets, but one common target. They need to know what it's the end goal. And then go in soccer is to win the game, score more goals than the others and the same thing it's for companies, explain to them what they need to achieve. If you will give me some additional a bit more time. Let's let's continue speaking about you Mondays. Now they are playing. They are trying to do to win the game. They are on the field.

Speaker 2 (00:10:00) - And they start playing and they see that. For example, they cannot go to the left because the defenders from the other team are where good, but compared to a contact center in the script, in the policies that they are saying, you need to go to the left. And there are always trying to go to the left 

Speaker 2 (00:10:20) - Team. Players, teammates can use improvisation and they can go to the middle or to the left. Think about now a team player that's take out from the pocket, the rule, and goes to the coach and ask, do you coach, may I please go through the left to the right or to the middle instead of going to the left. In the meantime, the other team already scored one or two goals. And therefore for me, extremely important is yes, we have our people, we have regulation. We need to comply some rules speaking about compliance, generally tools, but we need to empower teams to achieve the score, to score goals, to win the games to, and therefore we need to empower them to improvise, to find ways to serve the customer in the best possible way. And I think these are two extremely important, uh, learnings from soccer that we can apply in companies related to the topic teams. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:20) - I love it. So Greg, a couple of different things to unpack your man. Number one. Awesome, awesome example. I think the first thing that you make me think about, and it's crazy, it's crazy that in this day and age, with all of the, the abundance of information and content and fault leaders and all of this incredible information, that's out there on the internet for us to be able to find you would think that he would almost go without being said that two things, number one, clarity, direction, goal setting missions, right? All of these different, these different terms for how do you get a bunch of awesome, smart people with different expertise areas, right? Different areas of focus, different, different backgrounds. How do you get them rowing the boat in the same direction, right? And when you, right, when you bring it back to soccer, it's pretty simple. 

Speaker 1 (00:12:06) - Whether you're offensive, midfield, defense goalie, the bottom line is you're trying to win the football match, trying to win the game period. That's what you're trying to do in business. That's not always the case. Um, number one, we've got different leaders in sales and marketing and customer success and different product leaders. And then, and then you've got all a, um, you know, you've got everybody sort of reporting up to your CEO or your founders, your, your chief executives, but not every company. And certainly not every executive leadership team is good at making it really, really clear what that goal is. That's equivalent to winning the game, right, as a, as a team, as a club, um, as a fan base. And I think it's super important to call out that for any team building exercise or for any customer focused business leader, trying to get a little bit ahead or trying to gain a competitive advantage. 

Speaker 1 (00:12:52) - If you haven't taken time to really make sure that everybody in the stadium or everyone on your team or everyone on your bench understands why everyone's showing up every single solitary day, what are the mission? What are the values? What are the goals? Why are we here? What's the, you know, what's the purpose, what's the purpose of showing up here? That's one of the easiest places to start guys, right? It's one of the easiest places that you can start. Here's the other thing for people like me and you, Greg, before we can start cracking into the woodwork and understanding all the details and all the granularities of how to build incredible customer experience or how to provide world-class customer success. If we, if we start asking questions, if we don't understand what the goal is or what the missions are, what the value drivers are. 

Speaker 1 (00:13:30) - Well, then we already enrolled with some of our first calls to action, right? We're going to start working with the executive leadership team on those parts, right there. There's one other part though, that you called out grid that I absolutely love in today's world, more than ever before, with the rise of remote work and with the rise of hybrid working environments, every single solitary, one of his guys is in this new world of, of, of minimally hybrid, right? Some of us have gone back to the office and some of us are getting back to where we used to be before the pandemic. The reality is the world's changed forever. You're crazy if you don't think so, it is what it is. Right? And, and I think now more than ever having the ability to create that clarity and to create that goal or that mission, or that, that, that core value driver, it's going to be imperative guests it's paramount, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:14:11) - People, every single person on the team to Greg's point needs to understand why they're showing up to the pitch that day and what the, what are some of the activities that are going to equal the win. Right. So I absolutely love that. Greg had a number of really, really good ideas right there. Um, Greg, what about the second CX pillar of tools? So we talked about leadership. We talked about some of the teams, we talked about goal setting and directions. I'd love to hear you talk for a few minutes about the second pillar of tools. How has in your personal journey, Greg, how have tools. And then I really want to hear, I want to hear the comparative of how we bring this back to, to soccer, but I'd love to hear you spend a couple of minutes talking about tools. What are some of the things that you've seen along your own journey that some of the best teams are some of the best businesses that you've been able to work with? How have they thought about tools and how they leverage tools to make an incredible customer experience, or to make sure that they're driving a really, really excellent customer success for their, for their customers and for their business. 

Speaker 2 (00:15:07) - Um, as you appreciate appreciated my first answer, then I will structure the answer the second answer in the same way, let's start with w with the, with the business issues. And please tell me if you can relate to that. Um, I am, I worked quite a lot in customer service. Therefore, let's focus again on customer service. And, um, one big project goes, live, new product launch, and then go live. Then the first customer starts cooling and the agent on the other side has no idea what's happened. What's the product. And then the leader of the customer service as marketing and marketing said, Ooh, we forgot to inform your employees. We forgot to update your knowledge management or for example, um, the employee starts in the morning to the tools and they forgot to update one of them without a relevant information, or it show up in the Monarch say, oh, we need to lifecycle this tool and say, sorry, we are using it. We are seven screen open at the moment, seven to seven different tools. We are trying to manage them. And now you're telling me that you need to quickly upgrade over lunch for one hour, this tool that we are using everyday every minute, but something that you can relate to. 

Speaker 1 (00:16:28) - Oh yeah, it's happened to me. It has happened to me multiple times, crack. 

Speaker 2 (00:16:31) - Exactly. And now let's think in soccer, and I think if you want to win one match, you can work like that. You can try with some tactics to win one match, but if you want to win the championship. And I think in, uh, in December, we will, uh, we will have also the soccer world championship USA is participating. Therefore are also interested. There, there is a clear strategy. The teams are training, preparing, understanding everything throughout the complete preparation time in order to score and to win during this tournament. And so there, I think in customer experience, it's often we have the high level strategy, 

Speaker 2 (00:17:20) - Customer experience strategies, and you have a roadmap. What it's missing in between. I name it customer service architecture. It's an overview, a blueprint of all the tools that you are using in customer service that companies use in customer journey. So that if somebody shows up and says, we will introduce a new product, you say, okay, on my overview, it means you need to update the CRM. You need to update the knowledge management and you need to update these tool there, you'll see all your functional components. And every time that you change something within the department or somebody outside of empowerment, influence what you are doing with the new product, with the lives, I can you have the clear overview of your strengths and of your weaknesses. If, uh, let's say a CS C C-suite comes to you and say, let's introduce a new tool. This is an outstanding tool. 

Speaker 2 (00:18:16) - Yesterday. When the guy I had the dinner with this, uh, with this company and they told me, this is the best tool you can say, yes, we could introduce that. But if you look on this, uh, customer service architecture overview, we already have a knowledge management tool or a workforce management tool. Why introducing anyone let's improve this. And I think this is the key to really have a clear architectural overview of all the tools that you are using, that companies are using and leverage them. If you have this clarity, you know, where the weaknesses. So when a unit lifecycle at tool, where are, where are your data sitting? Let's do we know we are not going to discuss about big data and all this stuff, but companies need to first know where the data are sitting before they can do artificial intelligence and all this stuff. And therefore, I think the key is to have the structure to prepare, to strategize. If you want really to win the championship, if you want to win one match, you can continue working. Like a lot of companies are working, but if you really want to stand out from the crowd, then you need something like that. 

Speaker 1 (00:19:24) - I love it. I think, you know, Greg, I, I want, I think for our listeners, man, I, I wonder sometimes if people realize what maybe the next year, maybe two years, hopefully not three, but maybe three years in five years beyond things are about to get a little bit more different, right? Things are a lot about to get a lot more difficult for SAS companies. That they're number one, but number two, every executive leadership team on the planet, if they haven't already is going to be taking a serious look and not just their teams guys, but they're going to be taking a look at their tools and their software and some of the, some of the solutions that have been helping to drive.

Speaker 1 (00:20:00) - Maybe the front of house and the back of house magic to right back, by the way, Greg, it's going to be both. It's going to be front of house and back house. But the reality is, you know, there's going to be, um, a major cleansing, I think over the next year or two, we are, everyone's seeing what's going on with global markets. Everyone's seeing what's going on with all these different economic signals that show that, Hey, this might be the first time in a very long time. We're not live. It's not going to be easy to be a business person. It's not gonna be easy to be a business founder or an entrepreneur and executive, right? We're for the, for the first time we're going to have, you know, some challenging markets in front of us and people are crazy if they don't think that, um, executive teams everywhere are going to be taking a look at every single piece of technology, they're going to be understanding its utilization rate. 

Speaker 1 (00:20:41) - They're going to be understanding it's, uh, it's, it's projected value both internally and externally. They're going to be doing a tremendous amount of the art. Exactly. The maneuver of the ROI projections bag. Does this, or does this not make us money or does it, or does it not save us a tremendous amount of money? And if the answer isn't a definitive yes. To each one of those camps, guys, there's going to be changes coming. Right. So I love Greg. What, you're what you're saying here. I think it's, it's an awesome idea for, for some of our listeners to be thinking about, well, here's another part and I want to make sure that I call this out. We do talk about this all the time on the, on the show, but I think it's so important. Greg's point about context mitigation. It's one of the easiest ways that you can really truly number one, take charge of your budget as a CX and CS leader, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:21:24) - Because your executive teams are going to be coming. Do you guys ask him where and how and when and why you can start slimming some things down it's inevitable it's going to happen. But then the other piece too is just from a general customer experience and an employee experience perspective. Um, when typically when you talk to businesses who have one or two tools, most people are completely trained, familiar, comfortable, confident with the one or the two tools. Not only that the customers feel that confidence, they feel that smoothness, they feel that operational intuitiveness, you're already starting to kind of, um, support both sides. Your guys, the CX side and the yak side. The other thing too is just, again, I think, um, you mentioned like some of the process side, and we're going to get into process a little bit deeper your guide, but like men, most folks, uh, when you, when you use your example of like having 7, 8, 9, 10 different tabs open, just to do your day to day, that's part of the consternation. 

Speaker 1 (00:22:17) - And that's part of the friction that we're constantly reading about and hearing about and learning about when you think about things like the great resignation or the big talent migrations, happier, and other people moving from one job to another that's part of it. Guys, that's literally part of what makes people either really love showing up every single day and, and working with your toolkit or it's over time. It becomes one of the things that makes a lot of professionals say, you know what, I'm good on this. I might want to go try to find an employer who maybe wants me to become a master of a few different tools that I can really show up and feel great about. So I'd love some of these ideas. I think, major takeaway for our listener, spend time thinking about your own toolkit assessment, and then certainly spend time working with your team to think about some of the likes, some of the dislikes, some of the areas that are right for optimization inside of your toolkit, because I can almost promise you guys, it's going to be asked by your executive leadership team at any time now, anyway, if they haven't done so already, um, 

Speaker 2 (00:23:09) - Let me add one thing, because I think what you're saying is extremely important and the, the, the example that, uh, quick, quickly to share that you can create the most fancy tool for your customer. Your customer will have the best possible app. They can contact you through you on the thousand different channels, because that will be the future, perhaps. And, and on the other side, the employees is struggling with 5, 6, 7, 8, 15 different tools. And therefore it's extremely important. If you create an amazing experience for your customer, do not forget that on your side, you have the employees that need to serve this customer. And if they don't have the right tools, they are amazing tools. They will be slow. They will make mistakes. They want create amazing experience, and you will then have an issue with the customer, 

Speaker 1 (00:23:58) - A hundred percent men it's that Greg is that constant balance and triangulation of CX and edX, and what's best for your customers, making sure that the, it almost simultaneously is able to kind of be best for your employees to say it's. And I know it's hard guys, but like that's part of the balance. And that's part of that magic or that alchemy that, that our CX and a CS leaders are being asked to think about for our businesses and to think about for our teams and to think about our customer basis every single solitary day. So I'd love that you called that out. Greg, I'd love to dive into the third six pillar process, um, processes of following man. I, I, a lot of guests talk about how processes almost like the glue of the four pillars, or they talk about it as being like the conduit between the three, the three, the three pillars. I'd love to hear our, you think about process and spend a couple minutes talking about, um, how process, um, number one, how you've kind of seen it work really, really well in some businesses. And I'd love to, I'd love for you to share some stories around, um, maybe even how process finds its way back into, into, into an elite championship soccer team, right? I'd love, I'd love to keep running with this idea of how we can give people ideas for sort.

Speaker 1 (00:25:02) - The dynamic of the similarity between these worlds, 

Speaker 2 (00:25:05) - Uh, you know, yes, I have a good example of the way with soccer, but in this case, because you have a lot of different X episodes and you had already a lot of totally there's what I want to share. It's, it's, it's a super simple, um, tool that you can use and you can leverage. And again, facing nowadays also the issue that we often seek professional apps or in the digitalization use peak, we discuss you discuss with older people in the company and they always say yes, but you are calming and you want to automate my processes. I always say, no, I don't want to add automate your, your processes. I want to let's say, simplify your life, make your life easier, or elf creating this amazing customer experience and the tool that I'm sharing with you. It's not mine. It's um, it's, um, it's, it's really great. 

Speaker 2 (00:25:58) - It's the value irritant metrics. It's not me creating that, but it's coming from one of the first, the first VP of, uh, of customer service at Amazon. And, and it's, it's really outstanding. Let's think about a simple matrix where you analyze a process from two different point of view. The first one is ease this process, this interaction irritating for the customer, or creates value for the customer. And the second question that you need to ask is, is this process, this interaction irritating or creates value for the company. And I go quickly through these, these four different options options. Number one, if it's great value for the customer and create value for the company, then you should leverage that. Let's make an example that the customer is calling you and say, I want to cancel my subscriptions because I don't read the newspaper. I read the newspaper only online. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:00) - Then you can leverage, you can create value for the customer. You can empathize with the customer and therefore their technology can support, but important is that two human being speak together and you can create value for the customer. Yep. Let's go to the second example to, to make that understandable. The second example is, um, if the process is irritating for the customer, but create value for the company. Often we are speaking about this compliance processes in the financial services. We need to ensure that Adrian, you are still living where you're living, and this is a mandatory regulation. Each three months, each six months. I don't know the deregulation in the USA. This is something that irritates you, but it's required by the company. It creates value for the company, because if they are not doing that, they need to close the relationship with you. And therefore that it's extremely important to simplify as much as possible, this interaction with you to make it as seamless, as easy as comfortable for you, that you can. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:03) - For example, only with one click, confirm that done and create. Yep. Let's go to the third example when it's irritating for the customer and it's irritating for the company, let's eat, eliminate it. And this is the example of all the complaints that companies are getting. What I always see is you complain. I try to find a solution for you. And I give you a 50 bucks voucher that you are after the next customer will complain for exactly the same process. And then you need to fix the basics because you don't want to have the complaints again. And again, it means this issue, this interaction you need to completely eliminate. You don't need to automate, you need to eliminate this interaction because it doesn't bring value. The last one. And then I stopped again. It's if it brings value for the customer, but it's irritating for the, for the company. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:55) - Then there, you can automate example. I forgot my personal identification. Number of my credit card. I need to call to call the company. It's a lot of costs for the company. It's a great value for me, but it's not generating value for the company for this interaction, for sure. Then the customer will use the card and therefore you will get value later. But for this specific interaction, it's only irritating because it's one click that the employee needs to perform in the system to unblock the card. And that is extremely important to automate. And therefore, for me, the key is really, let's try to understand from a holistic point of view, the processes, the interaction, if you want to automate, if you wants to leverage, if you want to simplify, or if he wants to eliminate some process, some processes and some interactions. And I think this is really, really key. The name of the guy creating this value matrix is build price, where we are known. If rotos announced, then the book. And I really enjoyed, uh, to find out this, this tool, because you can use it in every industry.

Speaker 1 (00:30:00) - Uh, Greg, it's an awesome, awesome call. And I love the different examples. And guys we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes so people can find it, but what a, what a good point, Greg, it's this idea of, and it's simple. Let's keep it really, really simple understanding what the consternation points are, whether it's consternation across your customer base, whether it's consternation across your employee base, but then more importantly, thinking about what you understand some of these consternation variables and you understand what really kind of drives people crazy, or even the friction points. Gregory had a lot of, a lot of different customer focus, business leaders. They might call these their friction points and really beginning to understand internally how you can think about immediate solutioning, right? Whether it's a full-blown fix, whether it's thinking about created automatic, automated paths forward, or whether it's thinking about elimination, I love that elimination. 

Speaker 1 (00:30:49) - Like what things can we just get rid of? What things to talk about, keeping it simple, get good at getting rid of the garbage call. It, I, I, I know that we talk about this all the time, Craig, with some of our customers at CXC, but like call it out when they're, when you're finding different parts of the customer journey, different parts of an employee journey, different parts of your product journey that are garbage, call them out, flag them and eliminate them, get rid of them because it's so common, Greg, for incredibly smart, hardworking individuals to keep trying to fix garbage and repair garbage and do 30 minute meetings about garbage with a bunch of other smart people. Here's the best way of doing that. Eliminate the garbage, get rid of it, throw it in the waste in the waste basket. Um, give it red cards, Greg. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:32) - Right? Give it, give it the red card and get rid of it all all day long. But I think awesome idea. I think the other thing too, is just like as a customer focused business leader in your business or in, in, in, in your team leading our team, I'll tell you Greg, and, and feel free to add onto this, but like part of being a leader and part of making some of these tough calls or part of being, uh, having your hands kind of tucked into the playbook or tucked into the budget or tucked into some of the difficult decisions that's going to be, what continues to allow you to really kind of propel up up the corporate ladder or up a given businesses ladder. But the other thing too, is talk about making these difficult decisions. This is where you're driving value for your business. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:09) - This is where you're, you're providing value to your team. And this is frankly where you're either creating an environment and a, and a business where people want to be, and they're excited to work on it because they know that, um, you're going to be eliminating and you're going to be removing, or you're going to be smoothing. Some of these things. I'll tell you everybody on this, everybody that's listening to this podcast right now knows when you're in the other type of environment and an environment where you're constantly flagging. You're constantly finding these different areas that are ripe for disruption or ripe for automation or riper elimination. And nobody does a damn thing. Those are businesses that are fun to be a part of. Those are teams that after a while, it's just not fun anymore. And then that's typically one of the main areas where people start to look elsewhere. People start to look at other companies, they look for other leaders. They look for maybe even internally, right Greg, with some of these big companies that you and I were talking about the other day. This is where you start to see movement internally. You have people that are kind of going to a different leaders team, just because they've sort of exhausted what they've seen in their current camps. So I love those ideas. Those are fantastic ideas. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:08) - You, you, you mentioned that and only the last thing, what you are, you said is perfect. I don't need to add anything, but exactly what you're saying. Now, people are working remote, working from home. Therefore the connection to your employer is not the same as you are everyday going. I am not saying that you need to go every day, but the companies need to understand that the cost to change for an employer is decreased dramatically because at the end it's a new laptop and you can start working from home and that's done. And therefore I think what you are saying, it totally makes sense. And nowadays it's even more important 

Speaker 1 (00:33:46) - Hundred percent agreement. Greg. I'd love to, I'd love to dive into the fourth and the final CX pillar of feedback. And I'm excited to hear, hear your, uh, some of your ideas in this, but spend a few minutes just talking about w with your own journey map, with your own, with your own journey, in terms of thinking about this space for a very long time, and worked with a bunch of different teams and customers and different companies, what have been some of the best things that you've really kind of seen, um, around customer feedback, and then I'd love for you to kind of spend a minute talking about some of the best things that you've seen companies do to make sure that they not only collect, but they act upon employee feedback as well. Spend a few minutes talking about feedback. 

Speaker 2 (00:34:23) - Uh, it's great. Uh, perhaps you can remember that. I mentioned somebody from the C-suites taking the decision to implement one technology. When we were speaking about tools, the same guys goes into a steering committee who are the most important people are sitting. He is the hippo, the highest paid person opinion. That means he said, I want you to implement it. You need to implement this tool without thinking about what customer needs are, what employee needs are or what it's happened in the pump. But the, I need to, to really, to implement this one, because I have a good connection with this guy. If I help him, he will help me in future. And I think this is often the mistake that we as companies are doing. We listened to the highest paid person's opinion instead to listen to the feedback of our customer, of our employees. 

Speaker 2 (00:35:19) - And perhaps also from the processes, let's meet again, use soccer as an example, the teammate is there and we are playing together on the field and you give me feed feedback. Please pay attention. Somebody is coming from the left. Somebody is coming from the right on watch behind you. Then on the other side, also, the customer defense in the stadium are giving feedback. Hey, go and do that. Yes, yes, yes. Or booboo, you get feedback from your customer and you understand where are we playing? Well, are we not playing well? Are we playing a smart way and not in a smart way? And on the other side, you get feedback from the game because you see your competitors. They are also trying to win the game and you see clubs, they are strong and on the left side, and therefore you bond the riots or they are not so good with, uh, playing with, uh, with the head and therefore the, you try, you tried it. 

Speaker 2 (00:36:12) - And I think this is the key you need really, to focus on the voice of the employees, on the voice of the processes in business languages or in software languages, voice of the game and on the voice of the customer to find the best way to achieve the successful customer outcome. And also there, it's extremely important. Let's start from the journeys. What are the biggest pain points for our, from our customer, then watch on the processes that we already discussed and then watch on the technology. And you start from the top going down, leveraging all these different feedback. You can really create something outstanding because then you have all the relevant feedback from the different parts that, that, that you need. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:01) - I love it. Great. I think it's spot on man. Super well said. And it's right. It's like this, uh, the, the, the only thing I have in a followup on this is like this notion of paying attention to your voice of customer, your voice of employee, your voice of product, your voice of process, that's it right there, men it's. And then it's. And again, for our listeners, if you don't have any of those things built, that's your starting point. Just even understanding on a simple start, how you can begin unpacking those different areas. 

Speaker 2 (00:37:28) - Let, let, let me please add something. Because there, I think there are a lot of companies that they have really, I use the word intelligent voice of the customer solutions, but they are filtering the feedback. It's good feedback. I share only the good feedback. I share only the benefit with a team player, soccer player, east on the field. You get direct, unfiltered feedback, real time. If we could be able to do something like that, to provide direct feedback unfiltered to the, to the employees, they understand what's happening outside because now they are getting only some part, you get only the feedback from this customer. And not from that customer, not from the social media, because it's not still integrated, not from the products, because this is something that you don't, you shouldn't come to do something for the marketing unfiltered direct feedback. That's what the employees need. 

Speaker 1 (00:38:25) - I love it, Greg, before, uh, before we wrap up today's episode, my friend, uh, I have to ask you, and I told you I was going to ask this, what club are you rooting for? What, what is so all of these soccer analogies and all of these wonderful, different football stories. Who's your club. Who's your club. Are you ready for? 

Speaker 2 (00:38:42) - I am 100% sure that you already checked that because you are. So the two colors, the red and the black is a simulation. And this year extremely active because we won the championship. It's it's it's again, my wife cannot understand because I'm so happy why I bought the new t-shirt, the latest t-shirt and son, but that's the reality. It's, it's, it's the Mo they are moving my emotion emotionally for me, and I will stay with them forever. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:12) - This 

Speaker 2 (00:39:13) - Is what companies are dreaming of. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:18) - I, I love it. So I appreciate you sharing that. I think, as I told you the other day, Greg might, my dad might not be so happy to hear that because he's at one of the biggest inter Milan fans that I know personally, but I love it, man. Greg, look, before we wrap up number one. Awesome, awesome. Um, awesome stories, awesome ideas. So many different calls to action for our listeners today. I really do appreciate you coming on and joining the cxchronicles podcast, but where can folks find out more about you? So where can people reach out to you and where can people learn more about the CX goalkeeper podcast and all the awesome work that you're doing? 

Speaker 2 (00:39:51) - Thank you very much, LinkedIn. I am there every day. I think we can share in the show notes, mine, my LinkedIn link. If you are interested in what I'm doing, www.cx goalkeeper.com. And if you had as lash and podcasts, then you will find my podcast. I am on all the different platforms. They're well known platforms, apple, iTunes, Google, Spotify, and all these one. You will find me writing CX goalkeeper. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:19) - I love it. Well, Greg, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. My friend, thank you so much for joining us. And I'm going to look forward to keeping our conversation moving forward offline my friend, 

Speaker 2 (00:40:28) - 100% sure. Thank you very much to you and to your audience. It was really outstanding and it's such a great discussion.