The CX Files #3 - Daniel Oberes
===

[00:00:00] 

Hi, today's guest is Daniel Oberes. He's the head of operations at Snapper, which is a visual content marketplace providing photography and related services for all kinds of consumers, as well as businesses of all sizes. Let's get right into it.

Ben Foden: Daniel, how's it going?

Daniel Oberes: yeah, having fun. Thanks for having me, Ben.

Ben Foden: Yeah, it's my pleasure. I want to open with a question here about your personal experience and your personal CX journey. Is there something when you were kind of. Going on the beginning of this where you felt was really mysterious or really surprising to you.

Daniel Oberes: Little bit about my background. So I started out as a customer service agent, um, way back in the, the. com boom. Uh, and, uh, eventually I ended up in a. a technical support role, [00:01:00] um, and it was at a company that was later acquired by BA and then Oracle. Um, it was basically an enterprise business.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and I was a curious dude and I was trying to figure out what to, what to do next. And one of the bits of advice that I got from a sales leader was get closer to revenue. And I think I've, you know, there's a bit of feedback that I give to a lot of, a lot of folks, you know, like trying to figure out their, their way and, and tech.

Daniel Oberes: And, you know, especially if they come from a support background. Um, uh, I, I felt like knowing and having domain expertise was, was, was the, what I needed to do. Right. So I just figure things out and I share my knowledge and things will work out. Um, but that really didn't have. Uh, the outsize impact I was, I was going for.

Daniel Oberes: And so I had to figure out, like, what, what does the business care about? So really, uh, going into revenue focus, uh, [00:02:00] became, uh, the, the challenge for me. Um, but coming from support, I didn't know exactly how to do that. Um, so, um, I, I basically chased a lot of different things. Um, one was. Like kind of program management, right?

Daniel Oberes: So like, okay, how can I become an expert in something and then own it? And then I have a, you know, a better relationship with the revenue owner. Um, another, uh, approach that I, I took was. Um, going into sales engineering, right? So like I, I worked at a company where basically everyone was in a generalist support function.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and I saw an opportunity to say, Hey, Hey, like instead of being specialists or generalists, let's, can we think about. Pre sales and then I created a pre sales function. Um, kind of early in my career. So like, all right, cool. Now I have to be able to engage with [00:03:00] decision makers at a critical part of the relationship.

Daniel Oberes: Then I'm like, Oh, okay. There is a way to engage with customers. So I basically went on a sales journey, but like from the perspective of. and executing and building systems. So that was kind of, that was kind of my, my journey.

Ben Foden: think, um, When you're talking about sales, they're usually coming at it from the other side where they are more focused on the individual in the target business or the individual end consumer, and they're not familiar kind of at their core about the product or the service.

Daniel Oberes: Oh yeah,

Ben Foden: kind of comes secondary for them, whereas the opposite side for support, almost they get very familiar with the product and then bring that knowledge to the customer.

Ben Foden: Would you agree with that? Or how do you think about that mix?

Daniel Oberes: yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I think the best [00:04:00] salespeople, you know, have a lot of familiarity with the, with the products, um, uh, in terms of, but it's at a different level of elevation, right. And it's most of the time it is, and very much in line with what I would want for a support. Um, or customer experience leader to be able to do is like, what can we make a commitment on?

Daniel Oberes: Right? Because the salesperson is, uh, basically putting their reputation on the line, right? Um, and then other folks need to rally around and make sure that we could make good on their commitments. Um, and so that's where kind of the level of elevation kind of goes down into, like, the nuts and bolts and what's happening in the background and, you know, behind the curtain.

Daniel Oberes: Um, so. Cool. At its best, a salesperson knows what we can deliver on with a certain level of certainty. Um, and that's, that's what I need to provide for my service team, [00:05:00] right? I need to make good on that certainty. So that's where we have to, that's where all the, the work of, I think, you know, customer experience operations comes in.

Daniel Oberes: Like, okay, can I, can I maintain that level of certainty?

Ben Foden: right. You don't want to over promise, under deliver. Absolutely. one of the themes that I think is, is really key in support and thinking about the future. you know, as people who have done this, you know, I myself have done frontline customer service rep work before as well, and we know intuitively that service and support contribute to revenue growth, but it's much easier to measure the cost,

Daniel Oberes: Oh yeah.

Ben Foden: this much for headcount, this much for tools. All right, you're done measuring, right? Um, what's one opportunity that you see to connect service with revenue? Right.

Daniel Oberes: an easy one and [00:06:00] a risky one is like, uh, basically the different sides of like net revenue, uh, right. Retention, right. It's like, is the customer spending above their commitment in some way? Right. Are they expanding? Are they growing? Or are we losing customers because of our service delivery?

Daniel Oberes: Um, so, um, and you know, you could, you know, I've been, you know, also like a customer success manager or account manager and owned renewals. Right. Um, and you know, that role. Needs to, you know, kind of be the translator of like what was sold and then can we deliver and then kind of be the internal advocate and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Oberes: So like, um, which is kind of a, kind of a funky role, um, really like, you know, thinking about it. Um, but, uh, I think that's a pretty clear way. Um, are they expending more and a customer isn't going to spend more on an [00:07:00] ongoing basis unless you're able to meet your commitments. Um, and then the upside, if it gets so down below.

Daniel Oberes: You'll, you'll lose them. Um, those aren't the, those are kind of metrics that we pay attention to. Um, but I'm not, at least in terms of the services side, I'm not holding them, uh, specifically accountable to it. I need to have lots of like leading indicators, um, do that. But I have to align that with other sales leaders in the business.

Daniel Oberes: He's like, all right, cool. If this is all looking green for these portions of our customers, Then our expectation is we're going to get more revenue. Right. Um, so I think alignment with our stakeholders for things like who are pilot customers, who there are red accounts, who are top priorities and keeping that kind of machine humming.

Daniel Oberes: And everyone knows how to operate at a appropriate level for our tiers and priorities is super [00:08:00] important. I know this is all basic stuff, but, um, you know, I have about like eight teams that I'm trying to. Keep going. Right. And, and, uh, I could say as the executive for, for a function, like, yeah, when I, when I say goes, but as soon as you roll it out to hundreds of people, that translation doesn't always happen.

Daniel Oberes: So that that's, that's where a lot of the work happens.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's one of the things that you mentioned before the call, um, for the, before the podcast started. Um, basically, there's these different levels of service, these different tiers that you have. There's different sizes of organizations. Um, I believe a snapper. You also have, you know, kind of end user, individual customers.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Foden: How do you think about, know, bringing these themes together, right? You have these different levels of service, obviously, depending on the contract value, the type of customer. You've also got, um, you know, this idea of driving revenue, right? And so obviously if it's a, if it's a [00:09:00] bigger value customer, you have more, uh, more depth to that relationship.

Ben Foden: And then you have more information, most likely to. You know, to not only to track data, but also, you know, to take initiative on, um,

Daniel Oberes: Yep.

Ben Foden: about that mix? Hmm.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. It's not clean. It's like not a clean thing. Right. And some of it is like. DNA of the business and, you know, what, where you came from and where you're going. And, um, so, you know, just a little more context on the current business that I'm in, you know, snapper, the way to think about it is, um, it's like the Uber for photography.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And so when we started, it's basically a matching service for consumer, right? Like you have a wedding coming up or

Ben Foden: hmm.

Daniel Oberes: to have like, you know, you know, pumpkin patch pictures or whatever, right? Like, Oh, perfect. Right. Um, I, I don't need to do all the research. I don't have to go to the websites. I just get the people I want.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and then our turn [00:10:00] to enterprise is like, Who has the big run rate demands for images, right? So it'd be like marketplaces, right? So like, um, car dealerships or, uh, real estate, for example. Right. Um, so those are very different needs. And there's like some things in the middle where it's like, um, where we don't have a direct relationship with like a big business, but like, we'll have lots of different, like, um, um, like it'll be like a family practice of like hospitals or something or clinics.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And so like, we just have to do all that repeat business. So, um, The history of the business kind of went through all of that. Um, and in a lot of ways, the. Individual consumer and some of the SMB stuff. It was a feeder Into, uh, the rest of our business, right? Like, so like we, we backed into some of this [00:11:00] enterprise success and then we created a lot of the marketing and demand and all of a sudden, and services and like then sales team on top.

Daniel Oberes: Right. Um, so kind of like, uh, yeah, basically we backed into it. Like we didn't need a, like a big sales team to, in order to accomplish that. Um, so,

Ben Foden: from people using it themselves. And then they said, Hey, I would like to use this at my company as well. Kind of thing. Right,

Daniel Oberes: to build a product that would, you know, Facilitate a better customer experience for that, right? Like you don't want, you know, you don't want individuals, like, you don't want like someone that's going through hundreds of bookings to go through the same process and like, how do you submit a job and all this other kinds of stuff.

Daniel Oberes: So then we had to create a lot of. Specialization in terms of roles, at least initially, um, how to do that. Uh, so hopefully I'm not losing track like, uh, in terms of the story, but basically, um, a lot of the, the growth has been, [00:12:00] uh, organic. Um, and then we, then we got very intentional about it, um, in terms of like tying out the, the revenue side of it, um, also not, not clean.

Daniel Oberes: Um, so right, like the consumer business. Like it doesn't have the same, like, I both have like transactional revenue that I need to be able to maintain and then contract right with, you know, different sizes of contracts and renewals, um, and different levels of commit, but I can't let the consumer side of the house just because it's transactional fall off again, that's a feeder for the rest of the business.

Ben Foden: right,

Daniel Oberes: I have to maintain service levels and efficiency so that like your first experience with us, which should be through low friction kind of experience has to be high. And then once we get into the, um, um, work, uh, what we call work, uh, I'm sorry, the, the enterprise side of the house, um, workflows, um, [00:13:00] that needs to be a very different kind of process where you're introducing things like, You know, basically an entire life cycle, right?

Daniel Oberes: You go through a pilot success criteria, you sign off, then there's a, there's a handoff in terms of like the will of tearing. Then we communicate SLAs. Um, so, uh, for me, I have to make sure that, um, and then one of the, one of the struggles I also have is the choppiness of. enterprise sales cycle and the demand that comes from it.

Daniel Oberes: And then the linearity of consumer, um, demand. So

Ben Foden: Right. Right.

Daniel Oberes: you have to balance all of that stuff out. Um, so the challenges I end up having are how predictable is our forecasting in terms of sales? How Is our marketing spend going to be in line with what we've seen in the past? And we have to do all of those adjustments.

Daniel Oberes: So, um, it is a, [00:14:00] it's a challenge. It is definitely a challenge to get that level of forecasting consistency and, you know, kind of balancing that all that stuff out. But like, you know, um, I think those are the kind of problems I should be dealing with that at this level. And it's kind of the fun stuff.

Ben Foden: Yeah, I mean, it's meaty, isn't it? It's significant. I think, um, you know, the, you mentioned a few times this idea that, um, you know, these things kind of developed organically. Um, And that it's, it's a little bit messy on the way up and you're kind of figuring things out as you go. Um, and you started to get real serious about measurement and all those things.

Ben Foden: I think, if you talk about like more of an account management kind of role or customer success side of things, B2B, um, you know, the, the relationship is there. And I think in some sense, the tools are there also for measurement and kind of handling that. But on the, on the, uh, B2C side, um, [00:15:00] Traditionally, there hasn't been, you know, you don't really use like the CRM tools to the same degree.

Ben Foden: You don't really have the same kind of tooling that connects service and sales and, uh, and service and revenue in particular. Right. And so I think that's the part where I think people are kind of struggling a little bit or, or maybe looking for opportunities. Um, is there, is there some thinking you have around that?

Ben Foden: And maybe the metrics or the tools that you use on the

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. So if you're thinking, if we, if we were to just pull out the, you're saying pull out the enterprise side of the business and just like straight, um, uh, consumer side, right. Like if we, if we got rid of it, um, the way I think about that, if, um, is again, you're not talking about net revenue retention and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Oberes: Um, it's just, it's repeat business. Um, um, that's the way I think about it. Um, and it's a version of revenue growth and it's a version of commitment, but it's repeat business. And [00:16:00] then, so if I'm able to communicate, um, and deliver services effectively, then we have a predicted, uh, return rate and then, um, a repeat business rate.

Daniel Oberes: And so like, I got to get that number up and then I also need to get it in faster. So it's both, it's both, uh, repeat rate and, um, velocity

Ben Foden: That makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. Um,

Daniel Oberes: that ends up being more, um, at, at a model level relative to the volume that we have. And then you're like, all right, cool. Is the model working well?

Ben Foden: that makes sense. Um, one of the things that I think is really common, um, is this, this tension between, uh, data driven decisions and maintaining a human touch. And,

Daniel Oberes: Oh yeah, sure,

Ben Foden: think that some businesses will tend to lean more on one side of [00:17:00] the other. Some teams might lean more on one side of the other. Um, how do you think about this balance between, okay, I need to hit my metrics, trying to improve this number versus Maybe, um, sometimes a longer interaction, if you're talking about transactional support, for example, maybe transactional isn't the best word, uh,

Daniel Oberes: sure. Yeah.

Ben Foden: maybe a longer interaction isn't necessarily better according to metrics, but if you have a chance to really go deep and make a great, you know, uh, a great relationship with somebody that can be a net positive for the business.

Ben Foden: I think we understand this, but how do you kind of handle that tension?

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. So you're thinking like, um, with numbers, depending on how you define your metrics or what metrics you choose, um, you could really focus on efficiency, um, for the business and then not, um, kind of create the customer experience that, that we, we want. Is that, is that basically where [00:18:00] we're going?

Ben Foden: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah.

Daniel Oberes: So, um, I think. And definitely, definitely had to deal with that problem, right? Like there's not like an abstract thing. I think anyone that's working in some kind of customer experience role has to wrestle with that. Um, so

Ben Foden: Mm hmm.

Daniel Oberes: very, you have to clearly stated, uh, perspective of what good customer experience is.

Daniel Oberes: And then you have to, um, have metrics that actually encourage it. So for example, and I, I think I've spoken about this before, um, in other interviews, um, it's, it's like we had a, um, average resolution time metric

Ben Foden: hmm.

Daniel Oberes: and that's, that's a great metric. Right. Um, right. So it's like the faster you resolve it, that means that [00:19:00] you've solved someone's problem fast and everyone wants their problems.

Daniel Oberes: Solve quickly. Um, but what was underneath was a, uh, customer would have send an email right and they might have two or three questions and then that thing turned into three or four different incidents and then we solved one and then we saw another and then that ticket went to another person that would take another to another person and it all gets solved at different times.

Daniel Oberes: But we got some of them solved really quickly. And the customer is like, wait, wait, wait. why are you closing this? I'm still talking to you.

Ben Foden: Mm

Daniel Oberes: And then, Oh, like, Oh, this other, they close that ticket. I'm working on this ticket. So, um, we, we solve the problem in the, in the wrong way.

Ben Foden: hmm.

Daniel Oberes: And so the, I was willing to sacrifice, this metric that we had, which was average resolution time for, customer [00:20:00] satisfaction. The philosophy I had was customer satisfaction is the metric that we need to go for, and then it's our job to make sure that we are efficient at it.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And so, I made. Instead of it being kind of like, you know, customer satisfaction and kind of a parallel metric, we increased the weight on customer satisfaction. And then we had other metrics that would drive both, efficiency of the business and then drive resolution time, but didn't make resolution time the focus, right?

Daniel Oberes: Cause it encouraged the wrong behaviors. I cleaned up the process. And then obviously we did all that kind of stuff, right? Like don't split it up. Right. But then we had to kind of build all that out. So, our focus then became, responsiveness. And so our average resolution time went up.

Daniel Oberes: But our CSAT went to world class levels, which I'm very, very proud of, and then, but we saw, because [00:21:00] Our baselines weren't correct. Like we were kind of, our capacity was off and responsiveness kind of like floated all around. So I like, okay, responsiveness needs to be the thing that drives efficiency internally, and it helps the rest of the business too, right?

Daniel Oberes: Like if you're fast, you, you basically help everyone else. And then it turns into the productivity number. So I have adjusted the unit of measure. Um, and then just kind of focused on, um, velocity. Um, I, I, I sacrificed what I consider now to be like a vanity metric.

Ben Foden: Right, right. I think the vanity metric trap is all too easy to fall into. and I think exactly what you're saying, that's so powerful to have a clear, uh, definition of success, a definition of the outcome you want to have, um, in qualitative language. You know, you describe it. And then you say, okay, this is our priority metric. And yes, we're going to sacrifice this other one a [00:22:00] little bit. We're going to put this CSAT score up at the top and say, you know, how can we drive that initially and then kind of digging into like second and third. Okay. Yeah, we can improve efficiency here now that we've got our priorities straight. Um,

Daniel Oberes: Because I could have just focused on speed first, right? And just like, and kept banging the drum, right?

Ben Foden: And we've seen, you know, as consumers, as individuals that deal, you know, on the consumer side with businesses, you know, the. You can say some of the classic targets would probably be like banks or insurance companies. Maybe you could put health care in that bucket or maybe an airline. You know, there's some businesses that feel like they've put that efficiency metric way too high

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. Yeah,

Ben Foden: is suffering. Um, And, you know, as consumers, we feel this, you know, in our interactions with these businesses, um, you know, and some are better than others, obviously,

Daniel Oberes: Sure.

Ben Foden: but. Every time you have that delightful experience where you're very satisfied, or, you know, somebody's kind of gone above and beyond for you. You know, obviously you have a [00:23:00] positive feeling, you have more trust in that business.

Ben Foden: You're, you know, all the, all the things that will probably drive revenue for that company.

Daniel Oberes: And it also has an impact on the internal teams, right? Like they feel better, right? Like they're doing natural things that they want to do, right? So we, it's not just from a customer perspective, right? Like people that go into customer support and technical support, those people like by nature want to help people.

Daniel Oberes: So. In my mind, also having been in, in support, I want to be proud of the things that I'm doing when I'm talking to a person. I want to feel like my goal is to make sure that they're happy. And obviously I need to do it in an efficient way, but like the goal of efficiency isn't making me do unnatural things, right?

Daniel Oberes: Like I, like the goal is I'm, I'm helping somebody.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I totally agree. I think this, you know, this kind of responsibility is a filter essentially for people that want to be helpful, right? That want to help out and want to do some good. Um, [00:24:00] so I wanted to connect this a little bit with one of the things. Again, we mentioned before the podcast, but this, this idea of, um, communicating across departments, communicating to leadership. How do you, um, kind of make the case for these things? Maybe you have to shift priorities or maybe you have to say that we really need to focus on this metric. Um, when you think, when you think about kind of advocating, uh, for the service function, advocating for support, um, advocating for a better CSAT score, um, and you want to bring that to leadership, what are, what are some of the kinds of techniques or what are the things you found that are effective for that?

Daniel Oberes: Yeah, I think one of the problems, one of the challenges I had, um, cause I, when I, when I initially started in this, at this company, I was only responsible for, uh, the support function. And an inbound sales team and then the enablement and L and D teams, uh, right. So, but like, again, [00:25:00] support is like the tail end of it.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And then sales team is at the beginning of it. And then all of the work to make sure that it was effective, like the, the S that we were delivering on the service wasn't mine. Right. So I was just like, Oh, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard problem to solve. Um, so, um, yeah. You know, I would work with my partners and other parts of the organization.

Daniel Oberes: Like, Oh, we don't have enough supply. So then, you know, um, then, you know, like we can't get enough of the bookings completed or the photographers that we have didn't show up. So what am I supposed to do? Then I have to do refunds. And so I, I hold the back refunds, but I can't actually. You know, pull the levers.

Ben Foden: Mm hmm. Right.

Daniel Oberes: to another leader and they're like, okay, fine support guy, you know, like, [00:26:00] you know, I have to keep my, my machine running and I'm going to go.

Daniel Oberes: But I think eventually, you know, the, the, the level of kind of maturity that I built into the team and the trust and the pride and, and all of that was like, Was a, was a big win for the business, right? Again, like the thing that we were talking about, like if we focus on the customer's experience and the internal team feels, feels what that is, that's kind of like, uh, that's a vibe that's, that's culture building.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And then you're like, it's a winning culture. And so, um, eventually I was given the reins to basically all other parts of the business in terms of both. Managing the supply, um, and then service delivery. So like all together. Um, so I know I'm kind of skipping and like, Oh, just get promoted. But, uh, the, the real story I think is.

Daniel Oberes: Um, when you're trying to solve for support and this be, you know, became [00:27:00] very crystallized for me because, um, again, it's the tail end. And, um, I could only fix so much from the tail end. And so what, what I needed is to do is to basically make it, so make it so that I don't have support issues, right? Like that's what we should be doing as a business, right?

Daniel Oberes: I could make the team more efficient, but really, And I could make sure that they're like top notch in terms of the responses. But like, at the end of the day, you don't want tickets, right? Like you don't want, like I have a world class support team for a dysfunctional company. Like, so I got to like go as far upstream as possible.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and so that means. Um, kind of making the case for what does the customer experience need to be, but at a company, um, and I can't solve all of those things at once. Um, so, you know, I have [00:28:00] to kind of build the machine. I'm like, Hey, look, I'm accountable for all of these things. I have that humming as As far as I can have it humming, but here's the ceiling.

Daniel Oberes: This is what you guys want. And I can't, like I literally cannot move higher than that. So for example, um, the supply problem. Um, and so I have two things that I need to do. I need to make sure that I have enough people to complete the bookings and when the customer wants it, they can get it right. We have that humming.

Daniel Oberes: The other side of it is sometimes the photographers that we have, um, Um, don't show up. And so like, what do I do? And so we had, you know, uh, a algorithm that was really focused on, um, points, right? And, and, and all of that. But it was like cumulative. So like when you're at the top, you stay at the top. And what that kind of does is it doesn't [00:29:00] create an incentive for you to be reliable.

Daniel Oberes: And because I have already accumulated my points, like just keep feeding me. Right. Um, so we had to go through and I'm like, all right, so, but I'm feeling all the pain of that at the tail end and I I'm, it's impacting revenue and I have all of these refunds, what am I supposed to do? So I'm like, okay, this has a revenue impact in that I'm causing refunds because we don't have a reliable supply.

Daniel Oberes: So I have to go all the way up and like, what's our matching algorithm? Like how do we block, how do we ban? How do we, and then those numbers. Start, you know, then, then we have all of the other issues of reliability impact my ability to deliver. Like, so if someone, if a photographer is late. And they don't deliver their images then we but we have an SLA the clock starts like it doesn't matter when it's like when the bookings ends, right, they shot the shots, we have an SLA clock starts, we might that person might not upload those images for a day or two.

Daniel Oberes: I mean, like, I have to deliver this in 12 hours [00:30:00] and I have a limited amount of resources. So I'm like, okay, reliability is going to have all of these downstream impacts. So, um, and because I have a way of measuring refunds and the portion of refunds that come from this and the portion of the supply that is managing this.

Daniel Oberes: And then I have the means to say, if I get rid of somebody, Okay. I'm responsible. And then we could know what the protocol is to either bring them back or, um, recruit then, then the risk of doing this is lower. Right? So I can't just say, Hey guys, solve this problem. And then not also have a, um, a solution to the detrimental impact of some of this stuff, right?

Daniel Oberes: Cause it's nothing's ever clean. So I have to balance that out. So, um, I had an easier time because I own all of it, but the mechanics would be the same. So. refunds are bad. That's a, that's probably the, the, [00:31:00] the, the biggest signal that, um, even if our customer satisfaction is high, if a customer is asking for a refund, that is, that's the worst experience.

Daniel Oberes: Right. So like we should a disproportionate amount of attention to that. And also it has revenue, you know, just like an impact on the business. Right. So, um, how can I go upstream? Then you, then I guess that's another way that you could talk about, like pointing to the impact is like reducing refunds. It's probably another going back to an earlier part of our conversation.

Daniel Oberes: So let me just maybe summarize because that was kind of a winding conversation. Basically, I got a revenue oriented metric. Um, that say support was feeling. Um, and then I had to figure out how do I go upstream? How do I reduce the impact of it? And then how do I offset the problem of again, reducing it because I'm going to ban somebody, for example.

Daniel Oberes: Um, then again, have a solution for it because when you when you do [00:32:00] something like this and you have to make the case for it. Um, and and if you don't hold the bag for all of it, Then it'd be like, yeah, nice idea, Daniel. Um, but what about this? I'm like, okay, then we have to have a protocol for it. So I have to build lots of different like protocols to make sure that we could manage the risk.

Daniel Oberes: But normal kind of, if, if I were to use a tool and I did use this tool, um, basically gap analysis, right? Here's the thing that we want to be able to do. Here's the gap is risk. And here's the capabilities that we need to do. Do we all agree? And here's how we would measure based on like the capabilities with these capabilities.

Daniel Oberes: We will be able to measure these impacts and I could steer. So, um, you have to some people you need to pitch with gap analysis. Some people you need to pitch with the numbers. Um, and then on the floor, um, you know, you have to, like, get everyone caught up on the vision. And then whenever someone is talking about [00:33:00] it, everyone's saying the same thing.

Daniel Oberes: So like, yeah, we could pull it off. So there's a lot of, a lot of internal salesmanship

Ben Foden: Mm hmm.

Daniel Oberes: to do something like this. Sometimes getting too fancy and too polished. Um, is not going to be received well. You have to, you have to play the, the, the, you have to do a little bit of theater of, um, Hey, we thought about this together.

Daniel Oberes: And like, look at this great idea that we had together, uh, which is likely true. And, but, and I'm not trying to say, I'm the, the person that came up with all of the ideas. Typically when I asked the team, what, how do we fix it? They already know. And I'm just, I have to, I have to present it to all of our different stakeholders, um, and some people want to be involved in the decision making process and sometimes it doesn't match up with the amount of thinking that's already been in there.

Daniel Oberes: Um, so there's, yeah, it's a lot of, a lot of sales work.[00:34:00] 

Ben Foden: Yeah, thank you. I think you've covered so many great things here and I want to pick up on a few things. One is the idea of internal salesmanship. And I think that there's really a skill there. That's not, not a default skill for a lot of people working in service support and the customer experience space, unless you're coming from the sales side, you're not necessarily going to be naturally focused on that are naturally comfortable with that.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah.

Ben Foden: skill of internal salesmanship is really a big one. Um, and it's something that people can develop, right? Whatever their starting point is. Um, and of course, you know, knowing your organization, knowing the leaders that you're talking to, what are they going to kind of respond well to, um, if somebody is really numbers focused or if somebody is maybe more story driven,

Daniel Oberes: Yep.

Ben Foden: the gap analysis, another great tool that you mentioned, another great technique, um, I think all those kind of things.

Ben Foden: And one of the things that I've been thinking about, and maybe you can riff off of this, but, um, [00:35:00] the idea of amplifying the voice of the customer,

Daniel Oberes: Yeah.

Ben Foden: if you're trying to go upstream, right? Support is on the tail end. You're trying to solve something in the middle of the business, so to speak, um, and saying, look, this is not my opinion. This is what our customers are

Daniel Oberes: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Hmm.

Ben Foden: this. Here's some data. This is what's actually happening on the front lines.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah,

Ben Foden: for customers, right? And here's how I've measured it and quantified it. Um, you know, again, in pulling out quotes or, or, you know, using the keywords the customers are using, um, if you have a really clear metric, like, like refunds or something, it's like, it's clearly affecting revenue. Um, how do you kind of, uh, think about VOC and, and bringing that into the conversation?

Daniel Oberes: I feel like voice of the customer, um, is kind of like, you know, and I'm maybe this is a little aspirational. Um, but like, it should be the daily currency, right? Like, that's [00:36:00] kind of like, not like a special NPS thing or do we need to have an anecdote or whatever? Um, it should be like the way that we talk, um, in the business.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and. Even with a gap analysis, there's a, there's a home for it. Um, so when I did like, like the gap analysis, you do business requirements and then capabilities. And then eventually, um, what I do is I translate that into a roadmap. The roadmap is going to be, you know, uh, the idea is. Uh, here's, here's the overall mission that we have, like, you know, month over month, or quarter over quarter, right?

Daniel Oberes: And here's the things in the gap analysis. I'm going to spread that out over whatever period of time. And then, at the bottom of that, I turn and, uh, like, I have little, little portions of it is, like, how are we going to feel about this internally? What is the sentiment of the team and what is the sentiment of our customers or our stakeholders, right?

Daniel Oberes: So, like, what are [00:37:00] they going to be saying? And like, this is because they are saying this. And then the outcome will be, for example, if they want, you know, do it again, selling internally. Snapper is going to be the, the, the, the first choice when I'm thinking about blah, right? Like that is what I want them to feel.

Daniel Oberes: And then, then, then at that point, I'm not, you know, my selling is like, Hey, do you want them to feel this way? Oh, you do want them to feel this way. And this is how we're going to get them to feel this way. And this is the commitment that I'm going to make in order to do that. And that's how I'm going to measure it.

Daniel Oberes: So, um, even for like a framework, the abstract thing, like a gap analysis, there's a place for internal and external emotion to get in there. And then like, you get, you're like, Oh, of course, of course you want it. Then, then the story isn't the dry capability stuff. Cause I also don't want everyone in the mix.

Daniel Oberes: Like, I don't like. This is my machine. [00:38:00] I'm running it. I'm telling you what I'm going to do. I'm not asking for permission, but you want this, right? So like it's going to take three months for me to get there. The way that we're going to hold the line is this, this, and this. And like, if I'm not delivering on that feeling, because a lot of times when, when you're getting into a debate with another exec or whatever, they're not going to be like, you missed that milestone, right?

Daniel Oberes: They're going to be like, you didn't deliver on this feeling that you said the customer was going to feel. I have to make up for that gap. Right. So I have to be able to say like, Hey, right. Like, this is what you want. Right. And then, then the conversation is like, Oh, Daniel understands what I need as a salesperson or whatever.

Daniel Oberes: Right. And I'm like, Oh, then we could have that conversation. And Daniel has done all of his homework and he knows he's going to get here to here, here, and we'll measure it. And he's already taken me on this journey. And he's telling me when we're going to meet on this. And, [00:39:00] but like selling externally internally is the same.

Daniel Oberes: Like you're putting your reputation on the line and you communicate that you hear them and you see them. And even, and again, even in the most abstract kind of frame, you need to, you need to kind of put your neck out and your kind of vulnerability, but I want to feel this. Right.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. And Daniel, I can really appreciate the level of skill that you have with internal salesmanship. Just listening to the way that you talk about this. I think. you said something like, um, you want customers to feel this way, right? So you're kind of, you're confirming, you know, this is an internal conversation, right?

Ben Foden: But you're confirming what this person wants and you're saying, Hey, you want this, right? Here's how we're going to get that. Here's how you are going to get what you want. So you're, you're, you're putting yourself in their shoes and it's really a sales technique essentially. And it's a

Daniel Oberes: Yeah.

Ben Foden: one because, you know, [00:40:00] People are thinking about their own interests and their own goals and motivations. Um, and you know, I think that if you're maybe not as versed in the sales techniques, you might be thinking more from your own side of things.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah.

Ben Foden: want. This is what I want to do. This is why. But if it's always phrased, you know, any initiative you're trying to do, it's always phrased in terms of, Hey, this is, this is what you want, isn't it?

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. And, and the numbers tip, sometimes they won't, they don't translate. Right. Because if you say like, Oh, I'm going to hit blah, blah, blah, SLA, or I'm going to hit X level of support, their, their thought is like, Oh, of course, like, why not? Like what's getting in the way? Why? Like, why aren't you already doing this?

Daniel Oberes: Or, or I know how you got that number before. Right. And then, so then it becomes like, Show me your homework. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm telling you how we want them to feel like, isn't this right? And like, that's like kind of the. The thing that we could connect on, um, and it'll be our own [00:41:00] truth and then we will be able to prove it because, but if you start with some metric, then it becomes the, um, the thing to poke holes into, um,

Ben Foden: if you go to the data too quickly. That makes sense. Um, you know, we've already gone over on time. It's been a great conversation. Um, I would love to ask you one more question. Is it okay if we go a little

Daniel Oberes: yeah. Yeah.

Ben Foden: great. Um, changing gears a little bit here. Um, you think about the future of CX, when you, when you're in a leadership position, you've got a lot of experience, you've seen a lot of different tools, you've worked in a lot of different functions, different kinds of customers. I think you've got a great perspective. When you think about the future, obviously the AI wave is massive. How do you think about the mix of tooling, the mix of service channels,

Daniel Oberes: Hmm.

Ben Foden: the future of, of this kind of, um, the, the, the CX offerings that are available? Sure.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah. Um, [00:42:00] I don't think this is like a super like hot take, um, but I feel like, uh, well, the AI thing, I think there's lots of different ways that that could play out. Um, uh, I think there's a long, long way to go with making that work. Uh, I think it could add some efficiency, but like, again, like, You need some discernment and decision making and probably, um, there's, there's also a lot of risk in that, uh, uh, depending on how you roll out and how operationally savvy you are.

Daniel Oberes: Um, but I think that's totally a manageable, manageable thing and a good source of, um, efficiency. Uh, I think a bigger change is. Um, again, this, this weird mix and I'm in of like consumer and enterprise. And I think lots of, there's lots of businesses that, [00:43:00] that kind of do that kind of coverage. Um, and the experience, the kind of the transactional mode is kind of muddy, right?

Daniel Oberes: You do like, you know, pay as you go or you have contract. Um, and if you're in the platform and you do kind of a trial experience, What is our engagement model and all of that? Um, and so I, I think, you know, the whole SAS model, right? Like moving from on prem to SAS was a big transition. Um, I think the consumer ish peel, you know, product like growth motion for an enterprise style business is like still kind of wonky, um, consistent.

Daniel Oberes: So I think, um, basically customer experience. goes all the way to the beginning, right? Like, like when you're, uh, during the sales process, right? Because like, you're already exposed to the product, right? [00:44:00] Um, and so you need to support it before you sell it, um, and make sure that that experience is right. So I think customer experience as a discipline, uh, is, and, and like things like customer journey, like, Become not nice to haves, right?

Daniel Oberes: Um, and, you know, like working in a B2B, you know, kind of SaaS businesses, having someone focus on customer experience was kind of like, a fancy or thing. But I don't I don't think you could. I don't think it's a fancy thing. I think it's just kind of like when you roll something out, you need to be considering customer experience and what the engagement model and the engagement model for post sales and enterprise sass doesn't line up right.

Daniel Oberes: Like you can't throw out the SWAT team right for something you haven't sold yet. Um, when [00:45:00] the barrier to entry is so low. So like you kind of need to have Like all of the scale kind of be able to be blended. So I think customer experience is going to be fun, uh, kind of, you're gonna have to be able to scale your engagement level and your priorities and SLAs with the right levels of folks.

Daniel Oberes: Um, and so I think there's gonna be a mix of like growth, growth, marketing and SDRs and support like that kind of mix is going to get funky and all munched up. Um,

Ben Foden: What is

Daniel Oberes: and.

Ben Foden: Oh,

Daniel Oberes: sales development, right?

Ben Foden: SDR. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Got

Daniel Oberes: so I think those kinds of things will kind of all kind of, you know, because those folks are like, oh, they're a customer, but you need to transition them from a trial to a, you know, full full customer, right?

Daniel Oberes: So like, is that a customer or not? Right? Um, so I think, you know, the PLG and enterprise motion, Okay. Um, is going to create a lot of [00:46:00] different types of customer experiences and engagement models. Um, and tooling and metrics. Um, yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's kind of the fun stuff.

Ben Foden: great. Well, it's, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Um, before I wrap up here, is there anything that you'd like to shout out or, um, there anything that you, you would like to draw attention to? Is there any, uh, topics or themes that you think people should dig into? Maybe, um, some areas that people should be learning about.

Daniel Oberes: Yeah, I think if, um, if you're a customer support person, um, I think One of the things you probably heard from this is like go as far upstream as possible. Um, and I think there's like the sales portion of it, which is like kind of the first leg of my, my journey. And I think, um, go, go further upstream, um, um, involve yourself in product [00:47:00] and marketing and communicating what the ICP is, how effective are we at servicing it?

Daniel Oberes: So like, Go to market stuff, new product introduction. Um, and it's not just, Oh, we're going to turn it into documentation. No, like represent the customers, say what the impacts are. And again, like prevent, uh, issues from coming up. So, uh, yeah, use voice customer as far upstream as possible.

Ben Foden: Awesome. Thank you, Daniel. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Um, that's all for this episode of the CX files. Catch us next time and, uh, see you there. Bye.

Daniel Oberes: See ya.