The CX Files #4 - Andrew Rios

Challenge the bigger businesses in your space with customer-first strategies the expert use. Watch now to see what Andrew Rios has learned with decades of experience in CX leadership☕️☕️

Andrew Rios is currently the Head of Customer Experience at Cityside Fiber, a fiber optic internet service provider in Irvine, CA. He has lead internal and BPO support for companies of all sizes from startups to Fortune 100 over the last 20 plus years. He is a long-time member of both Intent CX and Support Driven communities as well as a leading speaker in the CX space.

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Transcript

The CX Files #4 - Andrew Rios
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[00:00:00] 

Ben Foden: Welcome to the CX Files podcast. Today's guest is Andrew Rios. He is the head of customer experience at Cityside Fiber, and he's led internal and BPO support for companies of all sizes from startups to Fortune 100 over the last 20 years.

Ben Foden: Andrew, thanks you for joining.

Andrew Rios: Hey Ben, thanks for having me. Appreciate you having me coming to you live from my home office, aka my garage. This side looks better than the back. Trust me on that. are you today?

Ben Foden: Good, good. I'm doing really well. Um, I want to jump right in and ask you a question. So you have a post, um, recently talking about how important stories are, uh, for explaining opportunities to improve and the real experience of customers. Can you tell a story about a really memorable customer experience you've had or maybe one you helped with recently?

Andrew Rios: Yeah, you know, um, one of the most memorable, you know, customer [00:01:00] experiences, I wanted to go back to my Fitbit days because it was a customer experience for internal customers, our stakeholders,

Ben Foden: hmm. Mm hmm.

Andrew Rios: it resulted in a customer experience, a better customer experience for our beta testers out there. So basically it was one of the first beta tests we were going to run for a product that had been on a recall. So we

Ben Foden: Okay.

Andrew Rios: specific dates to get the product tested and validated in order to release the updated version that didn't have the problem with previous version. so what happened was we rallied the troops, the entire team. There was about 12 of us and we boxed up. We worked with our internal team because there were going to be a lot of delays in meeting that day. Shipping and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what my team did is we looked at it and said, what can we do to speed it up and not hit that delay date? So we packaged up over 2000 devices in a matter of hours. I think I still have pictures of it somewhere. Then we got them all shipped out in that same day.

Andrew Rios: So you have to imagine. [00:02:00] 12 people in a hallway in the San Francisco building, packing up all these great big devices, putting notes in there, talking, laughing about it, just remembering the clock, trying to hit a deadline. And as we started getting a basket full of them, getting them down to the FedEx store in the middle of downtown San Francisco.

Andrew Rios: So for the next morning, That's what's happening with 2, 000 Fitbit trackers. So we can hit that, that date to get them out there and what that resulted in for the customer experience. Those beta testers were waiting for this. First, we're getting a free device for me. That kid, they were getting opportunity to test one of the latest devices. And then third, we were getting opportunity to get some feedback back and be able to release the product so that more people can get that device. Right. Um, booting that out, getting the feedback from the beta testers that they love getting it on time, that they love the notes that were inside the box that they could tell. That we, uh, as they were getting their support from us, contacting us with that, that they could tell how invested we were, how much they, we wanted to get them to be successful with the product, you know, so on and so forth. And then, you know, that resulted in [00:03:00] being one, you know, a great Fitbit tracker launch, right?

Andrew Rios: It was the, the surge launch, one of our first active trackers that, you know, upgraded with our app as well. Um, and there was a sense of pride there. You know, I call that a moment. It was a moment for the team because we had a milestone. We had some things that were in our way. We did everything we could to over accomplish them, achieve them. And then we felt and heard. What that impact had, not only for the business, but for the customers. And then a flip side of that too, is it, it showed the business, how invested our team was into the success and how much we would collaborate with them. And it kind of, what I like to say, you know, to all support leaders, it puts chips in the bank, right?

Andrew Rios: Because we could have said, Oh, well, we don't ship. Well, we don't pack well, we don't have those boxes. I mean, there's such a story behind it. Well, we need 2000 boxes. We need this much bubble wrap. And the team just rallied. Yeah. To go get that and get it done. Um, and that's a great mantra. I always like to say, sometimes you just got to get it done.

Ben Foden: Absolutely, and what a great story. I [00:04:00] really love how you describe that, you know, chips in the bank. And I think, you know, one of the themes that I keep thinking about, it keeps coming up in these conversations on the CX files is this idea of things you can measure. Obviously that are very important. You have to measure and improve, but there's a lot of other things that you can't directly measure.

Ben Foden: Things that are a human touch, right? Putting a little note in the box, right? Something like that, especially for a beta tester, they want to feel like they're early. They're, you know, they're special, right? They're getting a handwritten note, that kind of thing. How do you think about that balance between like those metrics you have to hit, you have to measure, you have to be aggressive about improving, right?

Ben Foden: And then there's other things that's, it's about the human touch.

Andrew Rios: So how I balance it is, and this is going to sound too easy, I guess, but how I really, and I believe this, I've lived this, is I balance it by Thinking about the human touch and the experience first, really thinking about what [00:05:00] experience we're trying to offer. We're trying to achieve what experience we're not currently achieving.

Andrew Rios: Right.

Ben Foden: Hmm.

Andrew Rios: from both sides, because I found that once you then identify that you have your, your, your standard operating procedure, your values, your principles that go along with delivering that the metrics are going to follow. And then what I mean by that is all the metrics. the metrics that you could possibly measure aren't the ones that are as important for that specific experience that you might be trying to achieve or improve, enhance, deliver. So, you got to measure what matters, right? And that always going to be dependent upon the experience and what you're trying to improve and achieve. And that can change and it should change. It absolutely should change as you grow a company, as you mature a company, as your product matures, your service matures, as you add other services,

Ben Foden: Definitely, definitely. That makes sense. I think, um, you know, it, it seems like, and I want to know, is this the case [00:06:00] for you? Have you experienced this before? But I feel like sometimes, you know, there's a, there's a lot of metrics around efficiency. And about, you know, saving time and, you know, maybe writing handwritten cards isn't the most time efficient thing you could be doing, right?

Ben Foden: But you know, as in your words, you put chips in the bank, it builds goodwill with the customer, right? You're setting up a relationship with a, with a personal touch right there. Do you, have you ever felt the need to kind of. you know, say, Hey, look, you know, this is not the most efficient thing that we're going to be doing, but this is going to be a longterm, there's a, there's a real value here and I need you to trust me on this.

Ben Foden: Have you ever had to kind of sell those ideas or, or have you had a lot of support for that kind of thing? Hmm. Yeah.

Andrew Rios: whole home audio, So it was a, basically a speaker system, connect your [00:07:00] phone, right? Play your audio and then your entire home wirelessly connected to the Linksys router. previously with products that we released, right. It was about, you know, getting them set up on their wireless. then they're gone right handle time five seven minutes. Let's move on to the next call. Just get them going with this product throughout the testing and kind of the beta testing we were able to understand that. Oh, it's a little complex It's kind of a two phase product to set up, you know They're probably long story short after assessing it beta testing it in our lab, right? Ui testing going they're probably going to call us back a couple times Because there's three things you need to set up in order to really have it set up in your home Like it is in the commercial like it is on the product marketing material like we're selling it So, you know speaking with my you know, my director at the time and we we ran the advanced product support testing team We were able to tell the business a couple of things. Hey first we anticipate [00:08:00] You know, and we started, we started putting this metric in our MPI slide decks years before, but it was, we anticipate this many contacts for this product based on these factors. Um, we're within five ten percent every time which is pretty good if you think about it So with this one, we said the same thing.

Andrew Rios: Hey, we anticipate everybody's going to call us The first reason is because we're telling them to also anticipate Um that they're going to call us a couple of different times and here are the different times at which they're going to do that So what we propose is that we do this all in one call And we have a dedicated team trained to do this instead of training 3, 000 agents Why don't we just train 25 30 route the call to them because we're not anticipating a lot of them As many as we previously get with the router based on the cost the price point and a bunch of other factors So longer handle time is going to happen which does cost a little bit more money.

Andrew Rios: We want dedicated agents And here's kind of what we're anticipating with the forecast. So you're basically telling the [00:09:00] business a little bit higher cost up front, we're not going to see that return call. We're going to have a better experience, right. And you kind of just tell that story based on. The experience that you've already had and that's been one and they understood

Ben Foden: Yeah,

Andrew Rios: float them back into the general queue where we built that with our partner. So you kind of have all that that ready for them. Yeah, that's, that's one right there.

Ben Foden: that makes sense, you know, and it really is clear how you've laid it out. I think, you know, ultimately it goes back to the first thing and you had a post about this, right? It's telling a story, right? And it's a story that connects those two pieces, right? I'm trying to, you know, kind of drive a wedge a little bit here between the human touch and the data side.

Ben Foden: But, but really if you can tell a story that connects those things. Then you can make the case, you can get support for what you, you know, what you know is the right thing to do from your experience. Um, absolutely. [00:10:00] Yeah. So, um, I want to, I want to talk a little bit about what you're doing right now at Cityside Fiber.

Ben Foden: Um, was there like a big surprise when you started there or any interesting stories you can tell us about what's been going on? Absolutely.

Andrew Rios: um, we're bringing fiber. So I think that's one of the first biggest surprises. So interesting enough, you know, I started my career 25 years ago as a field technician. Installing telecom lines, ISD, T1s, router switches, all that stuff, right? And I remember those early fiber days. And so it was a very early, early technology back then, early being not mainstream as it is now. So a big surprise to me, which is, um, how complex it is to get a fiber network built. Right. I think another surprise is, um, a lot of the, the help and assistance you get, you know, from government and city to get it [00:11:00] built. um, some of the great things we're doing there that I was surprised on is how creative you can be to bring fiber to the neighborhoods, um, at a great price. And I was just shocked that, yeah, the cable companies are charging a lot for a lower end service, right? So, you know, this is, this is what people want, especially with. All the home network users out there, And I think when I go back to the creativity part, let's remember where we're coming in the ground, we're coming from utility poles. And I think that was one of the things, and I don't know, back in, back in the early two thousands, when I started my career there in broadband, um, North point communications in the Bay area. if telco or, you know, a fiber company, DSL company was considered a utility, you know, but we're utility now. So you've got to keep that in mind as we're developing, as I'm developing a customer experience is there's so many things out there now where in previous roles, you know, I took care of the customer.

Andrew Rios: Right. Because of people who bought our products, you know, [00:12:00] here there's residents now, there are people who were, were in their neighborhood doing work, so I need to be prepared for that experience. So that's something that's been a surprise to me, but a challenge that I've embraced and I love because I'm like, okay, they're, they're future customers too. They see our trucks, they see our brand out there. How do we make sure that when they see it, they think great thing. Right. Oh, I saw that city side truck. I saw that city side employee, that blue jacket, you know, um, that's been great. Also, I'll say this too, and I told this to my boss out there, shout out JR. Um, I'll be in my neighborhood here in Irvine, coaching my kids and whatnot. And I'll have my city side hat on, my shirt or whatnot. When are you guys coming to my neighborhood? I'm in Lake Forest. I'm in Michigan and I would just sit there and go, Oh, what's your address? So I kind of, I learned to switch into this. Well, give me your address, man. Let me see. Okay. I'll send you an email. I have someone from my team contact you. So I found myself being, like I say, resident experience out there, which love talking to folks out there anyway. Um, so [00:13:00] that that's been great and then building building a great team You know, I got a great team over there You know recently added a couple new ones and coming into the the end of the year and we're doing some great things That's how we call ourselves the concierge you know, we're a customer experience team, right?

Andrew Rios: We do customer service. We do customer support, technical support, you know, order management, all those things that happen, but we do it in a concierge way, right? We do it in the concierge way. We're going to help you, um, with whatever you need. Shout out to the

Ben Foden: Interesting.

Andrew Rios: Uh, one, one

Ben Foden: Yeah, I mean, shout out to them. And I, I think,

Andrew Rios: big

Ben Foden: it's so common when you think of like utilities, I think. You know, you think of the Comcasts of the world, you know, these, these mass, you know, Verizon, right, you know, whatever, you name it, um, PG& E out there in California, you know, there's these massive utilities.

Ben Foden: And, you know, unfortunately, many of them have not a great reputation for a good customer experience, right? And the bigger the company, whatever industry it is, right? Let's just make it really broad. But [00:14:00] whatever industry it is, you know, the larger the company, typically the worst reputation is for customer experience.

Ben Foden: And then on the flip side, you have smaller teams. You know, I think Cityside is growing fast, but it's a relatively smaller organization. Is that correct? So, but when you're, when you're growing fast and you're smaller than the big guys, obviously, they could go and get a cable subscription, right, for their internet.

Ben Foden: Um, and then when you're trying to stand out and really make a difference, right, you're mentioning concierge service. What are some other things that you kind of do to, to, you know, to kind of compete on the, on the service side against the big dogs?

Andrew Rios: there's, there's a lot. And I think that's not, I think is, um, I know that's why I joined the city side team and the leadership here is that was the differentiator. Right at the end of the day, internet, internet services, you know, cable service, internet services, you know, the differentiators, the experience you offer from the field technicians onto our team.

Andrew Rios: So that's why I joined and that's what we talk about every day, today [00:15:00] and a year from now, one of them. And this is the, I'll say one of the biggest ones that I hear customers call me and tell me they appreciate it. I hear in our center, people talking about it is we support the customer's home network, right?

Andrew Rios: We're connected home experts. Okay. We're going to support you with your third party camera system. If it needs to get on the wireless network and you need a little support, well, we're going to, we're going to walk you through that, If you know where normally another vendor provider out there draws their D mark or their scope of support at a, well, I got a signal to the box. I ran a

Ben Foden: Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.

Andrew Rios: not working. And that's one of the biggest ones right there. And we'll do that for someone's old Amazon, you know, someone's a TV old Roku that they're trying to connect on call us.

Andrew Rios: We'll [00:16:00] help you out. Um, the other thing we do is we like to do fun things in the neighborhood. We're in your neighborhood. We're in the community. We're at the local high school football game, right? We're at the swap meet and the weekends we're at the farmer's market. You know, we're doing so much in the community. Um, to give back with a lot more coming, um, that I'm really excited about, you know, every month we, we run a couple of raffles for our customers, you know, when they fill out the survey, our little installation survey at the end, which, you know, we're in the high nineties in our CSAT right now, again, shout out to the whole customer experience team for that, really proud of that, um, is, hey, uh, we support local businesses. we ask them at the bottom, would you like to be a entered in our monthly raffle to, you know, get a gift certificate, uh, to a local business, local coffee shop, local sandwich shop, local restaurant to take your family and we will do some stuff like that. We do the sporting events here, um, our local OCSE Irvine soccer team.

Andrew Rios: So we're in your community, right? We're supporting you in your home. [00:17:00] Right. And, um, you can expect a great customer experience when you talk to anyone. And that's even the residents, right. And I tell this to the, and you said something that too, Ben, that I talked to my team about, if not daily, weekly is, you know, we're at X amount of customers now, three months from now, it's doubled, then doubled, then doubled, then pretty soon we're at that size of those people that were competing with, or they're leaving to come with us, do we not lose this this brand?

Andrew Rios: So I keep reminding them of that. So that's how. strategically think and build, today with the city side team and what's going to happen a year from now, two years from now, so.

Ben Foden: Yeah, definitely. Um, and I think that there's, there's something that you're touching on there, which is kind of leading to my next question, which is this idea that, you know, going the extra mile. Especially when you're building a relationship, when you're first setting out the beginning of that customer's experience, right?

Ben Foden: If it's support with their iPhone, it's not necessarily your job or not [00:18:00] your, you know, your DMARC, not your area that you're technically responsible for. But you know that that's, you know, that's part of building a good experience for them. And if you go that extra mile now, You know, what's that gonna do for retention?

Ben Foden: Right? Maybe that person becomes, you know, a 5 10 25 year subscriber, you know, and that's super valuable, right? That that person has a good image of the business and they're gonna stick around for a long time, right? Um, and so basically that, you know, what support it traditionally is looked at as a cost, right?

Ben Foden: And you try to whittle it down and you try to be as efficient as possible and save money on support right as a business. Um, but we know that. It creates revenue. Also, right? If you create a great experience, that person subscribes for a long time, the business is going to make more money as a result of great support.

Ben Foden: Great experience. So we know that that's a big impact, but typically it's hard to measure. It's hard to structure that in a way that you can say, Hey, look, we [00:19:00] did this and it impacted that. Um, how do you think about this? And and have you faced this challenge of saying like support is more than just a cost.

Ben Foden: It also makes revenue.

Andrew Rios: Yeah, oh yeah, that's the age old, oh yeah, the age old conversation, and um, a balancing act, right? I think that, so as support leaders, do have to understand that on the Excel sheet, right, for the, for the CFO, we're OCOGs, right? We are in that line item. And sometimes people do start their conversation or look at it as percent of revenue percent to profit cost per contact So I always tell support leaders and myself all the time that number in mind always right Is it going up?

Andrew Rios: Is it going down? And how do you get there? It's kind of simple math. Don't overcomplicate it Right doesn't have to be calculus, right? Um, and then but knowing that So just, just keeping that, you know, top of mind and then [00:20:00] capturing those experiences in your data. And then what they mean, right? What they actually mean.

Andrew Rios: I think one, one of them, I, I used to make a joke with people when they would say, Hey,

Ben Foden: Silence. Silence. Silence.

Andrew Rios: And unfortunately that someone was one of our field technicians. So one of our technicians out there doing some work, unfortunately needs their password set up. Uh, reset for whatever reason, they'd have to call in. Um, to the same queue where my team was also providing we had to support network [00:21:00] engineering team was providing technical support, which could sometimes be a 25 30 minute call with this product because it was pretty complex.

Andrew Rios: There was a lot of factors and getting it going and you need to make sure that it was up and running 100 percent for a lot of guidelines and just lots of reasons. So now I was getting one of four calls were just password kind of reset calls. Um, so I would just kind of tell that when someone would say, like, why, why are we getting these calls?

Andrew Rios: I'm like, well, if we just did this, I would lose 25 percent of my calls. Like, so it became a, the irony with that story was, um, I told that and I showed that as a challenge, right? You know, and an opportunity, both right. And we finally got it resolved, but only when there kind of was a reduction in force. finally it was like, you know, Andrew, what can we do? What can you do? I'm like, well, how about this? If we can, if we, and they're like, Oh yes, let's go ahead and prioritize that. And in my mind, it's like, wow, one day when I'm the boss up there, I'm going to be like, you know, that just seemed like a [00:22:00] one in four calls kind of not needed.

Andrew Rios: Internet already solved this, but we needed someone, I don't know. So that's kind of one where, you know, the metrics help you. Um, but the experience is kind of what you want to share and tell. When. And help people understand and then sometimes you just got to keep telling that story And then one day it'll be heard and acted on and as support leaders.

Andrew Rios: We got to remember that

Ben Foden: Yeah, I think there's something there definitely about being ready. You know, having your, your ammunition being ready and then the opportunity presents itself in this case, unfortunately it was a reduction in force, but, but you still, you were ready for the opportunity by doing your homework, right? Having this, this kind of case in mind, and then.

Ben Foden: You know, you have a chance to use that. Right. Um, and so I think, you know, you've worked in a lot of different organizations, big and small, different kinds of industries. Um, and I'm sure you've experienced it, but there's, there's [00:23:00] some things that are just, for whatever reason, they're just hard to sell internally.

Ben Foden: It might be that company's culture. It might be that, you know, internal politics and your team or whatever's going on, different priorities, things happen, but I think knowing when you've got a solid, uh, a solid case. And maybe just now is not the right time. Just hold on to it. Right? Um, so I'm, I'm really excited to hear about your experience at city side fiber.

Ben Foden: And I want to think about the future for a minute and think about, you know, where you see things going. So you've got a lot of experience. You've been doing this for over 20 years. You've seen. Things change obviously in that time. Um, and, and you've seen trends and things come and go and whatever's the, you know, the latest rage and you know, right now it's AI, right?

Ben Foden: Everybody's talking about AI, this and AI, that, and you know, if people kind of talk about it, it's like angels and devils, right? It's, it's just, it's, it's everything is amazing and AI is perfect or it's all terrible and it's going to take all of our jobs, right? But [00:24:00] obviously it's not exactly that black and white.

Ben Foden: Um, but how do you think about AI? How do you think about the future of, uh, of customer experience?

Andrew Rios: Yeah, it's it's going to be an enabler. I think, notice how I say those, it's going to be an enabler. I think there's a lot of companies today getting instant wins right away with it, you know, um, and that's awesome. You know, um, I think that it's a great opportunity for support leaders and I, and I, I, I'm, I'm doing this myself from, from the building of data standpoint, right?

Andrew Rios: We're starting to just building our story, building our data sets and whatnot. Um, but it's a great opportunity for those support leaders out there who have data sets already, right? And can tell a story and say, Hey, if I automate this. I could use AI for this or the flip side when their leadership comes to them and says, Ben, I want to see AI introduced in Q2. Okay. This is what that means and be able to have that. It's remember that it's not that you have that story. You've been waiting, you've been holding, you've been sharing. It's like perfect. I have a great opportunity to do that because [00:25:00] I think it's going to give opportunities for businesses to see if

Ben Foden: Silence.

Andrew Rios: call it data hygiene, right? Um, and then

Ben Foden: Silence. Um,

Andrew Rios: that to you, right? You know? So I think that's the opportunity we have is to take all that and say, yes, 30 percent of the time, they're going to contact us for this. And we know, we know where your mattress is. Right. We know, you know, how many days left you have in your subscription. You know, we know that you're seven days past due and here, and I've seen some great places do great things, experienced it myself, AAA is one of the stories I tell, which is, you know, side of the road, tires popped, them, they instantly detected, Oh, you're Andrew [00:26:00] Rios.

Andrew Rios: Here's your number. Here's your account. We're going to text you a link. Click that link. They see a map pops up five minutes later, a tow truck is on its way. I think 31 minutes later, I'm on back on the freeway on the road. And I'm like, yes, I never talked to a human except for the amazing tow truck driver that showed up. Right. And I think that I've seen a lot of that. So it's opportunity for support leaders to use the data. They have the experiences they know to, to leverage it and build it in. And then it's a career builder. I do see that too, because now you're freeing up those resources to do some of that other operational work in the background. Right. What's that next opportunity? What are those other corner cases? Um, I see it as an opportunity here's where I see kind of the shift coming to Is maybe there's going to be even a more opportunity to create support engineering function That is that vessel to support or to provide information back to the business On how the product and services are doing because ai is going to start to give you that front line View of it numbers contact that but the story part is still [00:27:00] Needed by a human to put those pieces together.

Andrew Rios: And that's where I see a big, a big push for support engineering, support operations, right. To take even more because that's what AI is going to free up. Um, so that's how I see it.

Ben Foden: I'm I'm getting chills over here. This is you're speaking my language support operations and support engineering. I feel like there's a whole industry that's about to be born right there. You know, I think there's um, there's this idea that. businesses care about the customer. It's obvious, right? And if you're in the sales team, you listen to the customer.

Ben Foden: If you're in the marketing department, you listen to the customer. You need to get testimonials, right? You need to understand what people are saying about you out on the internet, right? Obviously, if you're in support, you're talking to customers every day. Um, and so the voice of the customer, right? We all know V.

Ben Foden: O. C. Is like is everywhere. It's like the lifeblood of the business. But, you know, who's really the champion of that? Who [00:28:00] really holds the keys to that, right? It's the support folks. It's the people, you know, that are going to be in these support operations and support engineering roles, right? And so I think that, like you said, there's that opportunity, um, you know, let, let the AI handle the password resets, you know, the, the tickets, the tickets for that or whatever, right?

Ben Foden: But, but when there's a, when there's a chance to really, you know, You know, bring that story and use that to inform the business to like to move things forward. Um, how do you think about like VOC and, and how that kind of feeds the whole company?

Andrew Rios: How do I think about, I think about as an asset, a necessary arrow in the support leaders quill. Right. And I think that I was fortunate enough early

Ben Foden: I'm going to be doing some form of translation. I'm going to do some focusing on the site. And I'm going to be doing some. I'm going to be doing some, um, I'm going to be doing [00:29:00] some, um, I'm going to be doing some top 10 things that I've heard from the

Andrew Rios: right and then be the voice of the customer and embrace that and then get that Mindset spread out to the entire team so that everyone knows they're empowered to share the voice of the customer, right?

Andrew Rios: I think that's that's what's important because no matter what you want to keep that flowing. and then uh, The customer, right? And this is where I would say we have two customers. We serve with the voice of the customer needs to be the voice of the customer has to be for what the business wants to hear to marketing.

Andrew Rios: Once you might want to hear something different than sales and product development, then software, then Q. A. Then hardware and supply chain. Just remembering those customers at

Ben Foden: site.

Andrew Rios: and what's important to them. So when you're putting that voice of the customer report together, Mhm. Right. That summary together, taking a step back and saying, okay, now what does this mean to my top five stakeholders?

Andrew Rios: I just use the word five [00:30:00] for now. It could be three, it could be seven. Um, but that's, that's how I see it. And then always, always be telling that through stories with data. and and then yeah, I mean I can go on and on with the voice of the customer You know, I say too we don't have to over complicate it right with okay I'm going to start a voice of the program voice of the customer program.

Andrew Rios: Let me go hire This consultant or let me go buy this tool and let me just start doing it No, you have the voice of the customer in your support team. So just start there, right? I always tell people you want to know how your product is doing how your business is doing talk to the support team right here what they have to say right go talk and then they'll help you You see some blind spots, you know, sunshine, some light or whatnot.

Andrew Rios: So,

Ben Foden: Absolutely. And I think, I think, you know, there's, there's something there about, Keeping it simple and also, you know, making yourself heard, you know, I, I think it's great when people come and ask, but I think there's also, you know, there's a, there's a need to kind of push that [00:31:00] forward a little bit sometimes instead of waiting for it to get pulled to, um, but yeah, I love, I love how you're thinking about this.

Ben Foden: I think, um, you know, VOC is such a, um, it's such an obvious thing. And yet I think because support has. Is always kind of dealing with like their seasonal fluctuations, you know, you might have a product release and there's a whole bunch of stuff coming in because of that there's there's always a kind of a split between, you know, delivering service and kind of reporting on results, right?

Ben Foden: And you've got to deliver the service. And then when you have a little free time, you do the other thing, right? And that's usually how, you know, priority one, priority two kind of thing is happening. Of course, you want to do both. Um, but I, I think about what you said about AI before, you know, maybe that front line, maybe some of those, the low hanging fruit, the password resets of the world, you know, those things are, are, are automated.

Ben Foden: And then, You know, [00:32:00] the more impactful stuff, some of the, you know, you can go deeper on the reporting side. You can go deeper on the edge cases, all that kind of thing. Um, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm just kind of summarizing a little bit of what you said, but, um, one of the things you touched on, which I really love is you said earlier, um, the idea of data hygiene and, you know, how well is your data structured in your organization?

Ben Foden: Um, and of course, you know, it doesn't matter how great your tool is. It doesn't matter, you know, whatever amazing AI you've got. You still need good data, right? And you, and you need, uh, data, data with a human touch, right? You need those human stories. You need the content, right? Not only numbers. Um, how do you think about knowledge management and, and how do you see that changing, uh, you know, with AI getting, you know, more and more important?

Andrew Rios: Oh, man, let's see knowledge, man. How do I how do I uh knowledge management is [00:33:00] is It serves two, two customers, obviously, our external customers and their internal team. So I think of knowledge management as, as one, one, um, one set of information told in two different, two different ways, one customer facing and one internal to walk a customer through something. And I think that sometimes it could be, uh, overcomplicated. By, uh, a structure that isn't optimal, right. Or no structure at all. And what I mean by that is no structure on how we create the, the, the KB article, the knowledge based article, right. How it's updated, how it's maintained, and if it's being used. So I think about knowledge management as another process within the team, And then how, and how we measure it. So the most important thing is let's go back and measure people using their articles, right. And there's customer facing or internal, because you're going to eventually get that question of. Does this help reduce any kind of contacts or [00:34:00] is it helpful or useful? Because behind those articles is someone creating, right? So, and I think knowledge management is a super important process back to that, you know, that support operations specialist, you know, and I think kind of going back into that again, that's a role that's going to be. embraced and filled by Ai helping those frontline agents who have been in there before and understand and can grow into those operations roles And help with knowledge management. I think a knowledge management process when it's created and run by the support team People who've been in there know Right know what they want to see what what needs to be seen and then know how to maintain it measure it update it I think that's it's fundamental. It's fundamental for the customer experience because the customer knows If you don't know something, They don't know what you've been trained on. They don't know how good you've been trained on. They don't know, but they instantly know if you don't know something.

Ben Foden: Right.

Andrew Rios: something because of a lack of knowledge information, and maybe [00:35:00] it's tribal somewhere else, then that's impacting the customer experience.

Andrew Rios: So knowledge management is fundamental within the team.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, I want to ask you one more question here before we wrap up the the episode. Um, you know, there's a lot of people out there that that are, you know, at some different stages of their career. They're trying to learn. They're trying to get ahead. Um, you know, I've talked to people who are who are leaders in leadership positions like yourself.

Ben Foden: I've talked to people who are, you know, in different stages of their journey. And there's a lot more guests scheduled coming up, but I want to, I want to have something, um, that can help people, um, ultimately to, to move forward in their career. So do you have any tips or any advice for people who are really trying to practice their craft to hone their skills?

Andrew Rios: Uh, yes, yes. You know, one thing I would say that is, it's a principle that I've [00:36:00] taken That was instilled in me and I've taken with me throughout my career and, and up until here at city side. And it's, you know, uh, I'm going to say it and then give short stories. Like, what are the facts? What do they mean? What are we going to do about it? Right. I think that that framework, that principle, it's one of my big three principles that I like to bring to a team what are the facts? What do they mean? What are we going to do about it? So many times it's support leaders. We get caught in conversations. A lot of the time is emotionally driven passionately driven driven by finance driven by another motive driven by lots of different things, right? We got to be there and and with our team And our team with our customers us with our leadership us with our customers us with our team. It's kind of this big circle Uh being able to have those conversations. Okay to your point about prioritizing earlier how we do all that. What are the facts? What do they mean?

Andrew Rios: What are we going to do about it? So, um, You Understand the [00:37:00] situation that you're in, the challenge you're in, and what it means, right? What's that impact? And then

Ben Foden: Right.

Andrew Rios: going to do about it? So often, sometimes, because we're caught in the chaos, the whirlwind of support, we're jumping to what we're going to do about something, right?

Andrew Rios: Because it's like, oh, we got that problem. Oh, but just go do this. Just go do this. Now we got all of our fingers caught and we're like, okay, I hope nothing else happens because I have no more fingers left. Instead, we got to say, what are the facts? What do they mean? And then what we're going to do about it.

Andrew Rios: And so many times as a leader earlier in my career, I would, go and make a decision and be like, Oh, this decision, if I just would have spent another few minutes asking this question. And I learned that just to say, okay, let's just slow down. Let me understand what all the facts are. Right. And then, especially when we're in support and troubleshooting, because, uh, I button that with, uh, one time, real time, every time. is once you get to that first part, it's about saying, okay, Ben, we've taken care of today's issue. Now I've already thought about what [00:38:00] could happen in the future. I've thought about what you might experience later. I'm already thinking that, let me give you this pro tip to help you down the road. Right? So, Hey Ben, now when you get set up, don't forget to go here, right? Because that's, you know, what are the facts? What do they mean? What are we going to do about it? Okay. I took care of them. And then. time real time every time sometimes they call that next issue resolution I like to just refer to it as take care of the current issue then think about what they might encounter next and help them with that. You do those two things You'll build a pretty good experience. You'll have some great conversations Um, and you'll create I think the great team culture where people understand what's going on and have good conversations around problem solving issue identification And then what I really like to do is You Don't be afraid to give people little bit of autonomy to go and work that project on their own.

Andrew Rios: Once they identified everything.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And I think, you know, the, um. The what does it [00:39:00] mean step it gets skipped over like you said and I think that's so big for people because You might you might pick up. Um, you know might join a team. It's it's in motion. It's got its own metrics It's got its own thinking.

Ben Foden: Um, there's all these numbers in any organization that are being tracked and measured but like if you have if you have uh, You know a number out there, whatever it is, and then you know You don't know what it actually means. Like what, what is CSAT actually mean for us? Like, why, why do we care about that?

Ben Foden: Right. Just as one example, you might have all these numbers, but if you don't know what they mean, then the action is not going to be connected in the right way.

Andrew Rios: Exactly.

Ben Foden: a great tip.

Ben Foden: All right. Um, that's all for our podcast today, Andrew. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and uh, yeah. Tune in next time for the CX files. Thank you.

Andrew Rios: Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. You're good.

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