CXChronicles Podcast 180 with Tom DeWitt, P.h.D. Director of CXM at Michigan State University

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #180  we welcomed Tom DeWitt, P.h. D. Director of CXM@MSU and a fixed-term faculty member in the Department of Marketing of the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.

Tom is dedicated to advancing customer experience management globally by helping formalize and develop a framework for the field for more than a decade. Dr. DeWitt has provided customer experience management solutions to organizations and audiences around the world through consulting, workshops and presentations.

Prior to joining academia, Tom enjoyed a career in the hospitality industry, where he served in senior management roles in the USA and Asia. 

In this episode, Tom 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 #180 Highlight Reel:**

1. Building North America's first Masters Degree in Customer Experience Management (CXM)
2. How team-based ansychronous learning has changed  the future of employee experience 
3. Being strategic with the tools your team uses to build and scale your customer portfolio
4. How service blueprints can pinpoint which KPIs & metrics your business should focus on
5. Triangulating your VOC and VOE reporting to understand what you need to prioritize  

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

Click here to learn more about Tom DeWitt, P.h. D.

Click here to learn more about Michigan State's Masters in Customer Experience Management

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 business leaders to join our customer focused 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

CXCP  180 with Tom DeWitt, Ph.D. Director of CXM @ MSU.mp3

Speaker 1 (00:00:02) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CX Chronicles podcast. Super excited for today's show folks. We have a very different type of guests today, Dr. Tom Dewitt, who is the director of customer experience management and Michigan state university is joining us on the show today, Tom, why don't you say hello to the CX nation? My friends. 

Speaker 2 (00:00:20) - Hey, thanks for having me. And just let me clarify. Um, I'm not the director of CXM for Michigan state university, but actually the director of CXM at MSU, which is an entity dedicated to advancing the field of customer experience management globally. 

Speaker 1 (00:00:40) - I love it. I mean, at the time you guys are doing some incredible things here and thank you for clarifying that. Um, why don't you start off today's show Tom to take a couple minutes to set the stage for our listeners, man, you've got a super interesting background. You've got some awesome things that you and your team and your students are working on at Michigan state set the stage for us. And then take a couple minutes. How'd you get into this wild world. How did you get into this whole space? How did you get into this, this focus area that you're, that you're helping to build today at MSU? 

Speaker 2 (00:01:06) - Yeah, well, believe it or not like a lot of people that it started with my first customer contact job when I was 14 or 15 working as a bus boy, and I got promoted up to grill cook, and, um, we served on a cafeteria line. So the first point of contact with the customers was actually there. And that's when I first realized that, um, know I can make people happy every day by serving them. And I dedicated my career initially to the hospitality industry, um, where I served in leadership roles, both here and then Asia. Uh, and, and while living in Singapore, I pursued my MBA, um, which introduced, uh, research and through theoretical frameworks and in the area of consumer psychology and, um, employee attitudes and behaviors. So learned about the decision-making model and serve qual. And it really helped me to make sense of everything I'd been doing all my career. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:14) - And, and that's when I started dedicating my career to the advancement of CX first, getting a PhD in services marketing, which is probably the closest discipline to CX, um, and, and, um, eventually finding myself, um, here at Michigan state university, after living in Hawaii for 11 years, uh, so that I could finish my career in a good place. And, uh, you know, fortunately I was given the opportunity to lead an initiative around CX and from that came CXM at MSU. Um, initially it was about industry conferences, which we held twice a year, uh, pre COVID and then, um, delivery of conferences online. And during that, uh, we were creating what has become a north America's first master's degree in customer experience management, which is delivered completely online and targets working professionals. So first class this week, Thursday, I'm a little nervous. I hope nothing goes 

Speaker 1 (00:03:29) - Back to battle or getting ready to get back. 

Speaker 2 (00:03:33) - It's all good. 

Speaker 1 (00:03:34) - Well, wait a couple of things real quick. And, uh, number one, I just think it's so cool to call this out. It was the guys I was telling Tom before, before we jumped into today's show, but like he, there's something about, um, what Tom and, and what the folks at MSU are doing with this program that I told Thomas, you know, Tom, I've been working in this type of space for almost 15 years now and, you know, customer experience, customer success, customer support, and to see, um, um, uh, an institution and to see, um, you know, a university, a university like MSU, uh, take this type of, uh, of a space on take this type of, uh, uh, of just a general curriculum and build an incredible set of classes and different learnings and different things that you can really immerse yourself in. It helps to validate this man and time I was, I was joking me and you were laughing about the Tribble. 

Speaker 1 (00:04:20) - Like, I feel like even to this day, I continue to have to take that three to five minute. What, what the hell is CX eight? And what do you mean you work in CX or what do you mean? You work in CS and to see it, to see it, institutionally can miss you doing this. It helps to validate it. And then on top of it, it sounds like you guys are working with some incredible professionals from across north America who are looking to think about how they can learn more about this space, how they can learn more about, um, digging into the weeds and the customer side and the employee side, and really trying to unearth, uh, how, how they can improve the CX and the CS efforts in the business. Atomic, I just think is really, really cool in terms of what you guys are doing.

Speaker 2 (00:04:58) - You know, it's it's and I don't want to, I don't mean to pat myself on my back, but I've, I've spent my whole life, um, identifying problems and trying to address it. So, you know, actually what happened, the motivation behind the degree, it was when I was recruiting people through LinkedIn to be a part of this industry, collective income to conferences that I noticed, the disparate backgrounds that people came from. Um, and when I talked to them, you know, you got a sense. They, they all had slightly different interpretations of what CX was based on, on their background and their, their organizations approached it differently. Um, so frankly, the creation of the degree was really an attempt to address that gap. Um, provide a, a framework in which, uh, CX can operate. And to your point really validate the field. You know, I mean, look at the accounting profession, marketing, you name it, sales, whatever, there's a curriculum, right? There's a degree program which really validates the industry. There are, there are over 17 million people who self identify and LinkedIn is working in CX, but you know, they're, they're only a couple of degrees out there and they're both in Europe. So we're really happy to fill the space and, and work with, um, some really interesting people in our cohorts. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:25) - 100% of green. I think that the first point that you just said there, Tom, about how many different walks of life folks kind of come from to enter into this, this world of customer experience customer success. Um, executive leadership is wild to me. I know on this show every week time, I, I always start up and set the stage question because I think one of my selfishly, one of my favorite things has been hearing how many different places and how many different industries and how many different completely walks of life folks are coming from. And then somehow somewhere, some, some way they find their way into this type of, uh, of a space. And I think like you mentioned, you know, like, like, like the food and beverage and hospitality, that is one where it makes a ton of sense, right? You've got, and we've had a lot of guests on the show that, that, that, that have either come from working in the restaurant industry, working in the hotel industry, working in some type of hospitality set where, you know, you've got to deal with people. 

Speaker 1 (00:07:15) - You're dealing with people every single day, you're dealing with different expectations. You're dealing with some people that are a pleasure to serve and a pleasure to work with. And then you're dealing with some people that can be really, really tricky, right. It can be super, super difficult, but I love, I love that you shared with us kind of how, what your walk is and then you're right. The second part is the validation piece. Um, I just think that again, we're going to see more and more and more of the future. C-suite coming from the world of customer experience and customer success. And yeah, I'm saying that as a guy, who's thinking about this stuff every single solitary day, but the reality is a lot of modern customer experience in customer success executives. You almost have to be one of the strongest players inside of your inside of your executive leadership. 

Speaker 1 (00:07:56) - You need to understand marketing, you need to understand sales, you need to be able to talk operations. You need to be able to understand finance and then especially more and more and more now Tom, the product piece, right? The technology piece, if you're not able to kind of take some of the, the, the worldly human elements and figure out how to bake that stuff back into product, or figure out how to bake that stuff back into the technology that a given company's building, you're going to struggle. So I think it's really, really cool that you guys are actually laying this foundation and you're bringing a bunch of awesome customer focused business leader through, through, through, through the curriculum. Super, super cool. Um, Tom, I'd love to kind of start off with the first, um, pillar of team. And again, I know that I know that in this case, man, you're going to have a lot of different kind of angles that you could take at it, but I'd love for you to take a couple minutes to talk about that first pillar team. What are some of the ways that you and the, and the students and some of the participants involved in this program, how do you guys spend some time really kind of thinking about and understanding how different leaders are actually managing their teams in today's world? 

Speaker 2 (00:08:56) - I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? 

Speaker 1 (00:08:58) - Absolutely. So in terms of like some of the different students and some of the different folks that are participating in the program today, what are some of the ways that you guys take some time to really kind of start to break down the different ways that teams are being managed, the team, the different ways that teams are being led, how some of these  people are being recruited or onboarded or brought into these organizations I'd love for you just to spend a few minutes talking about some of the things that you guys are discussing, uh, within that first pillar of team. 

Speaker 2 (00:09:27) - Sure. Um, well, I mean, first of all, I I'm, I'm a firm firm believer in teams and team-based learning. So our, our curriculum, um, is designed to be applied and by teams. So every, every week students will meet in a synchronous class session and there'll be participating in activities largely as a team of four, um, and addressing case studies and whatnot. Um, and you know, the ideas that.

Speaker 2 (00:10:00) - Uh, everyone can learn from one another and you know, you can have members of teams, so different roles, but you have different strengths and weaknesses, and there's the opportunity there for them to learn from one another. Um, I think the other thing, if you look at our curriculum, one thing you'll notice is that there's, there's a considerable focus, not just on the customer, but on the organization, how it's organized organizational change. Um, and a lot of that, particularly when it comes to be in a customer centric organization is getting everyone to move in the same direction, you know, understanding where you're going, what is the vision? Um, how are you going to get there? What are the, you know, what is the mission? And then ultimately, what values do you want everyone to exemplify? Um, so, you know, we, we focus in the degree, not only on the, uh, the organization, but also on, on the employee and employee engagement, the employee experience and employee engagement and take a real multi-faceted approach to looking at engagement. And then to your point, the importance of the people around you, you know, when you think about our attitudes towards our job and our work and where motivation comes from, um, it's largely a function of the people around us and then how, you know, how we support each other and, and, you know, an understanding of a common vision, what we're doing as a team to get there and what, what my individual role is on that team. So that's definitely the approach we're taking them through that through the whole major. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:44) - I, I love it, Tom. And I think it's such a great way to, to, to, to get, you know, not, not, not just today's leaders, but future leaders, understanding why it's going to be imperative, to think about the triangulation of CX and edX. And you just, you just now the time it's like, I know that there's the age old adage of, you know, happy customers are served by happy employees. We've all kind of bought into that. We believe that everybody wants to work at a company where it's enjoyable to be at. You got awesome customers that love the product, love the service level, any of the willies or the wears that you're selling. But there's another thing that I want to call out that you just made me think about the, the, the, there's been so many stories over the last year or two about the great resignation, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:12:24) - And now great attrition. And there's all these news stories about awesome people or, or, or, or, or professionals who are really good at what they do. You know, they're, they're, they're bouncing around, they're going to other employers, they're looking for new jobs. They're looking for new opportunities. I would argue let's just call it what it is. Most of them are probably, um, leaving their past employers and walking across the street, probably due to compensation. They're looking for more money. They're looking for better quality of life, et cetera. And it's funny. I saw, um, a McKinsey report the other day, almost 40% of, of folks right now that have a job are likely to leave their jobs in the next three to three to six. And so you're still living in this world where as a business leader, today's in today's climate guys, if you're not taking time to invest and think about some of the employee experience or the employee engagement efforts that Tom just called out, you're going to have a really, really, really hard time keeping A-players and keeping some of the best and the brightest around to continue to push you into the future. 

Speaker 1 (00:13:21) - So I love that you guys really kind of focus on inside of that team element, getting folks to understand and getting folks to really kind of think about what types of ways they're going to really make sure that people feel engaged, supported, educated, and then let's call it what it is, guys. Compensation's a huge part of the game, right? That's why we all, that's why most of us show up to the jobs and the work that we're doing every day. So Tom, super, super interesting ideas here, man. 

Speaker 2 (00:13:44) - Well, I'd, I'd beg to differ. I don't think most of us roll out of bed, um, with a primary motivation being the money we're gonna make that day. It it's, you know, I think the reality is, and this is where organizations often fail is they're not really clear about who they are, um, as an organization and where they're going and the values, a expound in their recruiting and, you know, being a good fit is so important. Um, and, and that kind of speaks to the statistics. You, you mentioned, we all want to be in organizations where we feel we're making a difference in something we care about. We want to work with people who share our values. So if, if you don't know that upfront and you don't make it part of the recruiting process, and then, you know, lo and behold, when people start working for you, if, if, if you're not, um, continuing to share that and engage people on a personal level and helping them understand how their role is delivering on it and, and also their development in the role, then you're going to lose them. 

Speaker 2 (00:14:54) - You know, um, there's this theoretical framework called the attraction selection and nutrition framework. And it, it really explains everything. I just said, if you don't communicate clearly, um, who you are and what you are, you're going to attract a mixed bag of, of people. Um, if you don't include that criteria in your, in your, um, selection, you know, you're going to get the wrong people and then attrition. And this is to your point, um, when we feel uncomfortable or, or we don't like where we are, and we don't feel valued and we don't feel we're personally developing, then, um, we're gonna move on. Um, I know in our degree, we look at employee engagement is very multifaceted. Um, Ipsos has the episodes engagement model, which I really liked, um, which looks at how employees are engaged in their role and their job, how they're engaged with the organization in terms of its direction and shared values. And then ultimately a result how committed they are to the organization. So leaders have to think about all of those. They're not just hiring people to pump out widgets or to fill a functional role. They've got to be a good fit. 

Speaker 1 (00:16:12) - Yep. I could not agree more. And again, you're going to see so many different companies out there really kind of doubling down in this notion of employee engagement, employee experience, employee experience optimization. So it's going to be, it's going to be an interesting world that we're going to be moving forward into Tom, Tom. I'd love to, I'd love to dive into the second CX pillar of tools. And I was excited to chat with you about this today because we have all these different guests that come on the show and they talk about all these different softwares and all these different tools that they're building and all this different technology that helps them on their growth, or keep their growth on track or help with scalability, all these different things, right. I'm with you and with the program at Michigan state, it's got to be different when you have all these incredible professionals that are coming, um, with all sorts of different types of toolkits, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:16:54) - All different types of software. I'd love to just have you spend a minute or two talking about some of the, um, number one, just some of the ways that you, um, try to work with all of the different tools or all of the different pieces of technology or software that your students are using, but also how do you interplay that together? Because I imagine when I'm imagining some of the classes or some of the discussions that you guys are, are doing to the program, I can imagine that'd be one of the most interesting parts is hearing all of these different professionals talking about a, just the different types of tools that they use in their specific business or industry, um, be some of the pliability or like the cross utilization ideas that you would get from maybe a, maybe a manufacturing type of student thinks about a CRM in one type of way. Whereas, um, a retail person thinks about it a wildly different way, but I'd love to hear you just spend a couple of minutes talking about, um, how you guys interplay tools, technology, and software into some of, into some of the classes and some of the curriculum. 

Speaker 2 (00:17:50) - Sure. You know, uh, first and foremost, you need to understand why you needed to, right. I think that's often a problem. There, there are plenty of tools out there. Um, oftentimes, you know, organizations are sold these tools and then they're left to figure out how to use it. So I think, you know, the first thing is you need to be strategic, right? It, you know, there has to be a purpose for that tool and there needs to be a clear understanding of what it's going to do for you. And that's something that we're going to emphasize really strongly in our degree, in our, in our courses. Now it's all a part of experience, um, uh, uh, customer experience strategy. And then, you know, even if we just talk about, um, listening to the customer and all the different tools that are available there from tools at scrub social media, um, those that use artificial intelligence to evaluate video feedback. But, you know, you need to be thinking about how are we going to use the data, um, what decisions is it going to help us to make better? Um, how do we translate that into terms that decision-makers and employees understand? So I guess, you know what I would say that the tools are only as good as the strategy that they're designed to help organizations, um, to accomplish. I think simply just talking about tools all the time is not very, is not really helpful unless you know what you're going to use it for. Um, 

Speaker 1 (00:19:26) - I, I couldn't agree more. And I think this is one of the things that I know that we see all the time at CXC, Tom, which is you have these incredibly engaged, motivated, uh, super intelligent seeks and CS leaders working within their space, building their team, thinking about the toolkit. But one of the biggest things that we hear almost on a daily basis is there is almost a, too many tools, right? It's almost even a, in any type of professional environment. It's almost hard to keep track of the top five, top 10. I mean, in some cases, top 100 CX and CS.

Speaker 1 (00:20:00) - SAS solutions that are out there. And I think one of the big conversations that were always happening, you just, you just nailed the, getting to the why part of it is why do we even need these things? Or what are we going to do with them? Or how are we going to create action on them? So although we're living in a world where like, and Tom, I'm not even kidding men, and I know our listeners know this, but like in the 60 CS, it almost seems like every single solitary day or every single week, there's some new, you know, VC backed company that just raised an, a godly amount of money to build another tool that theoretically there's already a hundred of, right? Whether it's a survey tool or whether it's, uh, a journey management tool or whether it's, uh, uh, the next brightest and best CRM, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:20:38) - Like we've got so many tools that a lot of the leaders, they simply need help understanding what some of the, a, the short lists that they should even be considering. But then being, I think you just nailed this time. It's like understanding the why, so why do we need a CRM? Why do we need an issue resolution management system? Why do we need a customer communication omni-channel platform? And, and you're right until you actually understand it for our listeners. This is an awesome piece of advice for Tom. If you're not digging in and understanding and unearthing some of the why's around that stuff, how are you going about and telling your executive leadership team, which two or three solutions that they should invest in for the next 2, 3, 5 years. Right? And then the last part is just, this has become one of the biggest scariest hairiest parts of most CX and CS leaders, budgets, which is theirs. I can't, Tom. I can't tell you how many times in our client work. We look at these tools that are super expensive in the wildly underutilized. And I think that if your CEO and your COO, and certainly your CFO actually understood how low some of the utilization engagement and educational rates are for some of your primary users, the guys and the gals that should be using this tool every single day, and realistically using it to improve your CX. I think that they'd be really, really disappointed. So I think that you're spot on, 

Speaker 2 (00:21:52) - I think it's a rampant out there. I really do, you know, and then you have organizational silos where it might be using different, but similar tools and different departments. Um, so I think, you know, the other thing too, is, is when you centralize your data collection, um, and, and there's this strategy for CX, it helps to integrate people from across the organization and increase collaboration. So, um, yeah, I totally, I totally, I totally agree with you, you know, people are being sold products or software. They're basically being sold software products without really understanding the value and the strategy behind it. So, um, it's better to, better to figure that out first, you know, why, you know, why, why do you want to collect the data? Where are you going to collect it? How are you going to use it? You know, what decisions will that help you to make? Um, how do you monetize that increasingly that's, that's, um, an issue ROI on CX initiatives. So I'm in total agreement 

Speaker 1 (00:23:03) - And it's funny. I see, I, you know, when, uh, when I was kind of getting ready for today time, you know, you see inside of some of the curriculum information that you guys have, um, on the MSC program, you spend a ton of time on qualitative research on data synthesis and analysis, unexperienced analytics, which man I could go, we could have, we could have 10 shows just about experience analytics. Cause I think it takes a lot of, a lot of customer focused business leaders. I think it takes a lot of business leaders period, a while to understand how to, how to storytell with numbers, how to tell a story with some of the data that your company or that your, your user base is actually providing. And the lastly that the IEX side go right back to, and I think that this is going to keep kind of coming back inside of each one of these pillars here, Tom, but like for, for, for, for your employees to understand that Tom, to your point, like, if you want your employees to know where the, where the boat is heading in the ocean, they've got to be informed, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:23:56) - They got to know they going to know information about what direction you're going. You got to know information about what time you're going to set to arrive in the next port, that type of thing. And it's funny when you get into what you just said about aggregating this information and then being able to effectively socialize it accordingly, then that's a game changer. And I would say from a lot of the companies that we work with, and certainly a lot of the companies, I've been a part of building in my, in my career, the companies that do the best, they do incredible job of almost democratizing. We're socializing that data in a way where your customers understand what's going on with the big picture, right? And then there's the why they're there and why they're getting value. And you know what they're getting out of the relationship. And then if you flip over to the employee side, it's the same thing, right? Employees that understand the high level of, of strategically where business is going, what objectives or key results they're focused on. And then they understand some of the math around that man, that, that, that makes for a really, really good environment where folks can, um, truly be happy. But number two, you can make some incredible things happen. 

Speaker 2 (00:24:53) - Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm always shot. Um,

Speaker 2 (00:24:58) - At how little attention employee experience engagement and got sent all this. Um, you know, when I think way too many employers are just thinking of, of employees in functional ways and not really, you know, their emotions or mental state, um, what it really means to be engaged. You know, for example, one of the research has always shown the more you can be more transparent, you can be in sharing customer data with your employees, the more satisfied and loyal they are in their roles, because they want to know how they're doing on a continuous basis. But, you know, if you have, if you've talked to people and industry about it, you know, it's not being done because, you know, you have information hoarding, you have information just being, um, prepared for leadership or, you know, decision makers. So now I can't emphasize enough the importance of knowing where, where are you going as an organization and why, you know, how, how how's it related to the customer. Um, and what, what values as an organization do you expound and, and, and, and reaching that, and then helping, you know, helping everybody in the organization to understand the importance of those values, and also recognize people who are delivering because that's how culture is created. So 

Speaker 2 (00:26:25) - We don't, you and I have talked to, you know, we continually talk about how much more expensive it is to get new customers, as opposed to keeping the ones that you have. There's no reason that doesn't apply to employees as well. Um, you know, you need to be thinking about how you're going to keep the people you have, what you're doing to invest in them and develop them. Um, so 

Speaker 1 (00:26:52) - It's, it's, it's, it's spot on time. It's almost like, um, this idea of, and I guess, uh, you know, so many of our listeners, you, right? They, they spend tons of time thinking about the customer journey, thinking about the customer funnel, thinking about all the different stages or all the different clips of how you're going to bring it into the Juul all the way through the funnel, all the way through the journey. The employee side is the exact same guys like taking it, taking a minute or taking the time to, to actually, um, just lay out your most updated employee journey, taking a minute, to understand all the most important milestone moments across what makes incredible, uh, engaged employees tick versus maybe folks at fizzle out, right. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe compare that against people that are, you know, 90 days in they're hitting a PIP or they're they're they're disengaged, or they just leave, right. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:38) - They quit. They, they, they went and find another job, or they're not, they don't, they don't, they don't catch on and opine you're absolutely spot on from an economical perspective, it's the same type of logic and the same type of thinking as how we're always focused on maxing out LTV and mitigating our churn and thinking about retention at all costs seeing thing on the employee side. Last thing is this I'll be honest, man. We, we get, we get the pleasure of working with a bunch of different growth focused companies, Tom, it's the sexy, it's amazing how many high paid very expensive individuals work in these businesses for a year, two years, three years, even five years and beyond. And there's no documentation meaning to your point and the cost perspective here, no documentation, no playbook, no tribal knowledge grab of what that individual was doing for their time. 

Speaker 1 (00:28:22) - Maybe they were a salesperson, maybe they were a success person. And so then on top of it, the company's not even, there's not even the ability to grab an information exchange. So when you do have to, you know, find a new teammate or you do go out and find that new talent to add to the squad, there's something that they can begin with. There's some forum or some content or some playbook that they can kind of start with. And this obviously everyone's got to make their own opinions and they have to formulate their own own ideas, but that is tons of time and tons of money for every organization right there. So there is an opportunity cost as well around thinking about how you can make sure that, um, your people are really kind of chronicling or capturing what they're doing the entire time they're there. 

Speaker 1 (00:29:02) - Right. And then thinking about how that will be some of the seeds for how you can, you could think about future employee innovation and then employee retention. So awesome ideas here, Tom. Um, Tom, I'd love to dive into the third CX pillar process. And this is, this is a phone man, cause I know I'm sure you're number one, you guys probably spend a lot of time thinking about, or at least listening to how some of your students, um, companies are thinking about process or how they're building their playbooks, or maybe even how they're thinking about how they're capturing their measures, right. With their performance metrics or their KPIs. Uh, spend a couple of minutes talking about some of the things that you guys really kind of cracked into the weeds on around process. And some of the, some of the different, interesting discussion points that seem to come out regularly in some of the, in some of the work in the classes that you guys are doing. 

Speaker 2 (00:29:45) - Um, yeah, we're, we're, you know, particularly in our, our data analytics portion of, of the major, we're going to focus a lot on, on process and process design, um, you know,

Speaker 2 (00:30:01) - Experiences are generally driven by human beings, but it's all those behaviors are, are backed up by the movement of information. And the completion of processes, um, is dry, is dry as that sounds. But now we have one, one course experience analytics, where though you, you using different tools, including service blueprints, um, to, to, to break down and, and understand customer pain points and challenges and, and how those can be rectified with, with process design. Um, and I don't know if that completely answers your questions, but 

Speaker 1 (00:30:39) - No, absolutely. And then I guess a follow on question to Tom will be, I guess, what are some of the common, some of the common discussion threads that kind of go on? I mean, I got to imagine, so some of your students that are coming from big, huge multinationals, you know, they're big, huge businesses. You know, these companies have part of why, they're why they're so big as they've had their process ironed out in many cases for decades. Right? Well, versus maybe some of your other students who were coming from smaller businesses, or maybe even mid-market companies where they're still figuring that stuff out, they're growing quickly, they're building their team. They're certainly growing their customer portfolio. I I'd be interested in just even understanding what are some of the differences that you're hearing from some of the different, from some of the different folks that are participating. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:20) - It's got, gotta be interesting to kind of hear just the different, um, the different styles, the different levels, if you will, of how some of these folks and how some of the students are really kind of thinking about, um, how they can expand the way that they're improving their process optimization as a business growth, but more important as the team grows. Tom, I'm thinking about a lot of the CX and CS leaders listening to this show right now, man, it's things are easier when you got a 10 person team and you're sitting on a pod or you're sitting on a remote pod. It's easy for people to tap each other on the shoulder and figure answers out and kind of go on the fly. That's that's a little bit easier. Once you move into the world where you have a hundred person call center team, and you've got a hundred different agents that are thinking about this, the exact same thing, it's harder, right? It's harder to do information exchange. It's harder to, to build out playbooks, but I was just really kind of interested in hearing some of the different things that you guys are hearing around. You know, how people think about this and how they really kind of think about how they're going to manage some of their process and their workflow evolution as they get deeper into their careers. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:16) - You know, honestly, it's, it's way too early in the major yet having heard those discussions, we haven't had our first class yet, but I think, you know, that's one of the benefits of this team-based learning model, where students rotate into different teams every five weeks. Um, because, you know, as you mentioned, we have, we have people not just from industry, um, standpoint, um, but we have people with very little experience at all in CX to people, our senior vice presidents. So the opportunity there for them to learn from each other is really amazing. Um, and I'm sure, you know, we're, we'll have discussions about different levels of, of clarity and, and, and as it relates to process design, as opposed to organizations that aren't doing anything so, sorry, sorry. If that's a disappointing answer, I haven't had those conversations yet. 

Speaker 1 (00:33:15) - That's what it is. No, no, no, no, no. It's not disappointed at all. I think this is like for our listeners, Tom, this is actually, this is an awesome call to action or CTA right here, which is like, have the conversations, have the meetings, take the time, talk about, um, how from a process orientation perspective or a process optimization, optimization perspective, you can make sure that your team has the information they need. They know where to go find the answers. They know what maybe what tools or which areas within their tools, the knowledge base or the FAQ's or the living playbooks or the answers, where do they lie? And then lastly time, I think I actually love the answer. I think most of the businesses that we work with, it's part of how you get excellent at the, at the living playbook curation, and then controlling and monitoring. 

Speaker 1 (00:34:01) - It's minimally monthly conversations with the team where you're really thinking through what needs to be added, what got changed. What's different. You mentioned change management earlier time. What are the, what are the top three things this month that our business changed that will, uh, have an impact on our customer experience or have an impact on our user experience. And having those conversations is typically where number one, definitions, flags, uh, and, and it just general innovation and ideas for what the team or the organization needs to talk about. Right? So that, that socialization occurs with people understand again, where that ship's going. So, so I, I think, I think it's, it's definitely one of the hardest parts of, of really kind of thinking about how you're going to build and scale some of these CX and CS units. Um, Tom, I'd love to dive into the fourth and the final CX pillar of feedback. 

Speaker 1 (00:34:45) - And this one, this one's fun, man. Cause I'm, I don't mean you were talking about this the other day, but I'd love for you to spend a couple of minutes talking about number one, just some of the things that you guys are doing within the coursework around helping the students think about how they can get better at their customer feedback. And then I'd love, I'd love for you to spend the same, uh, spend a little bit of time also just thinking about how you guys at MSU are getting feedback to be able to update or to be able to iterate on, or be able to essentially optimize some of the actual curriculum that you guys are working out with your students. Talk about feedback for a few minutes. 

Speaker 2 (00:35:16) - Oh man. That's, that's huge. That's huge. Well, first of all, I'm already getting feedback on the course because, um, I'm teaching the first course and we had a couple of technical issues where our learning management software and a little, um, a little misunderstanding about the homework, do 

Speaker 2 (00:35:39) - All of these in for always interesting, you know, communication and, and, and how it, sometimes it fails despite sending the same message the same way to everyone. Um, that being said, I think, um, you know, we've, we've already kind of talked about, we've gotta be strategic in terms of, um, in terms of feedback, right? You need to know, you know, where, where can you get the information from whom, um, what are you going to use it for? Um, how does it help, you know, how does it help with decision-making? And I think the same, you know, um, the same applies to employee feedback. The people work the front lines, they have the best ideas, you know, they see all the problems. Um, those kinds of innovations are coming from the top. So it's providing employees with the opportunity, not only to provide that feedback on a, on a regular basis, not, you know, not simply a annual employee survey, but where they can go anytime. 

Speaker 2 (00:36:47) - Um, and whether it's through a formal channel or, you know, um, the people you work with or, or a supervisor, you know, we haven't really talked too much about leadership in that role here. Um, some, a leader of a group or a team can really set the tone. Um, and that's being curious about what are you hearing? What are you learning? Um, what suggestions do you have on how it can be improved? And then close the loop is really critical, right? Anytime we offer feedback, um, or recommendations, we want to know how that information is being used. Um, it's one thing to empower people to provide the information, but if you don't get back to them on how their feedback was valued and use are not likely to provide it in the future. So another employee piece that is gonna weigh really heavily in, um, in, in the degree program, both in terms of customer and in terms of how we learn from them, both in qualitative and quantitative ways in the same with employees. 

Speaker 2 (00:37:55) - Um, you know, it's interesting, you previously made me think a little bit about one of our courses and, and, um, interpreting qualitative data. And I want you to think about some of the tools used in CX, like empathy mapping and jobs to be done. Um, there's no reason why you shouldn't be completing those for different segments of employees too, and understand, you know, why do there, what's their underlying motivation? What are they trying to achieve? Um, what functional, you know, paycheck and emotional jobs are they trying to get done? Um, both on a personal and a social level. So it's, it's going to those lengths. And, um, you know, it's funny the service profit chain article came out 25, 30 years ago. I think it was 1995 when I first read it. And, um, organizations are still struggling to figure out how to link the X to CX or more importantly, you know, employee, um, engagement to customer engagement and, um, utilizing, you know, and valuing customer or employee feedback is, is, is, is one way to do that. And then also, as I mentioned previously, is to share that feedback with broadly with employees confidential, right. You know, I, you know, they want to know how they're doing, just think about dashboard design, the different audiences, and what's going to be valued. And, um, so they're going lecturing against 

Speaker 1 (00:39:31) - No, I love it, man. Number one, I appreciate it. Number two years, so many excellent points of your time. And I think, you know, for our listeners, if you're not already trying to eat, and again, w what I'm about to say is you can start simple here, but if you're really not aligning and almost triangulating your voice of customer reporting, right, as Tom talks about the, the external stuff, that from your customers, from your users, and then your voice of employee, right? The people that know this stuff better than arguably anybody, including your customer.

Speaker 1 (00:40:00) - Dealing with so many customers, they're getting Viet bats on a product, on a service, on a feature set. I would argue more than anybody and some of the best companies, and I'm not gonna lie time. We get, we get the pleasure of talking with a ton of incredible, you know, customer focused businesses, not a lot of companies that are thinking this way yet. So like, there's, there's a handful of companies that are doing an incredible job of distilling what their VOC reporting efforts are talking about and their voice of employee efforts are talking about. And I think the, the, the short way for the listener to kind of take away from this is when you start to see areas of alignment, I E meaning there's areas within your voice of customer reporting that are mimicking or matching, or, or correlating along with your voice employee, probably a pretty good place for you and your, your executive leadership team to start prioritizing things. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:45) - Right. Then if you're thinking about, and the other thing I love that you brought this up, but if you're going to take the time as an organization to collect customer information, collect your employee information, collect your user information, you have to be able to already have, um, a plan in action for how you're going to respond to atomic and closing the loop on it, right? Because nothing is, nothing is worse than going out. Let's say you get excellent at collecting all sorts of feedback and all sorts of qualitative and quantitative information for your business, but then there's nobody in your team or in your organization, responding to folks, especially detractors guys, right? Especially with your w with some of the folks that did not have a great experience, right? Uh, same with promoters for that matter. If you have a, an incredible promoted, it's taking the time out of their busy day to say how great they think you are and how awesome they think your product is there better be somebody closing the loop, there better be somebody following up there better be somebody taking that, that, that next minute to make sure that you're meaningfully thanking someone through the feedback. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:37) - And by the way, you can automate a lot of this stuff, guys, too. So even just taking steps here, right? It, it, there's, there's gotta be some thought put into that. So, Tom, I love, I love some of these ideas and feedback and, um, and obviously it's going to be interesting to see what type of feedback you get as the semester goes on. And as you guys get, 

Speaker 2 (00:41:54) - Yeah. Like I said, I'm again, you know, and I appreciate it. I've got a fruit, there are a couple of really eager students. We had a couple issues and in the learning management system, so real, real happy, you know, and there's the X professionals. So, um, it was as guilty as I feel to have those little problems the first time. It's nice to get a hearse look from the customer. 

Speaker 1 (00:42:17) - Yeah. Big time. And you've got an interesting crowd at no time does it? No, this has been absolute fantastic. Before we wrap up, I just want to make sure anything that you want to call it for the CX nation, where number one, where can people find out more about you, sir? And where can people get in touch with you? If they're interested in what we talked about today and the number two, where can people find out more about the program and where can people find out about the incredible work that you guys are doing today at MSU? 

Speaker 2 (00:42:45) - Um, I'm, I'm best found on LinkedIn, um, Tom Dewitt, Michigan state university, very easy to find if we're not already connected, please connect and message me. Um, and the good thing is if you Google, um, customer experience management master's degree, you're going to find our program pops up right there because it's the only one in north America. And one of just a few in the world. So I encourage you to go online and, and find our program easy to see comes up. Number one, and in search, um, avoid the paid ads. Cause that cost us. If you scroll down a little bit, uh, search, ability-wise it it's really, really great. 

Speaker 1 (00:43:30) - I love it. Well, look, Tom, it's amazing. The work that you guys are doing, it's awesome to see our space, just continuing to get pushed and stretched even further in the future. Um, huge. Thank you for coming on the show today and sharing your story with all of us. And I will absolutely be looking forward to keeping in touch with you in the future, my friend. 

Speaker 2 (00:43:45) - All right. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.