The CX Files # 9 - Mark Muston

Unlock the secrets of building authentic relationships and get strategic insights in customer experience from Mark Muston, a leader at Modern Health. 🚀 Dive into how to balance data with intuition, engage multiple customer types, and drive business success with trust.

Mark Muston leads Strategic Initiatives at Modern Health, a global mental health care platform working primarily with employers. He's been at Modern Health for 5 years, and previously has led multiple functions across Provider Operations and global expansion. Prior to Modern Health, he spent 8 years at Citigroup as a commodities trader, responsible for building out and growing global trading businesses while based in New York, London, and Singapore.

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Transcript

Ben Foden: 0:06

Welcome to the CX Files. Today's guest is Mark Muston. He leads strategic initiatives at Modern Health, a global mental health care platform working primarily with employers. He's been at Modern Health for five years and previously has led multiple functions across provider operations and global expansion. Prior to Modern Health, he spent eight years at Citigroup as a commodities trader, responsible for building out and growing global trading businesses, while based in New York, London, and Singapore. Mark, thanks for coming on.

Mark Muston: 0:36

Thanks for having me, Ben. I'm excited for today.

Ben Foden: 0:38

Yeah, this, this is fun. Um, so one of the things I like to ask right from the beginning is, you know, when you started your career, what's one of the first things that you learned about customer experience, good or bad?

Mark Muston: 0:51

Yeah, definitely. Um, so I think my, I started my career, um, not the traditional health tech start and on a trading floor in New York, uh, coming out of, you know, going to school on these coasts and, you know, that was really. Where a lot of like folks I looked up to, uh, during my time had gone. And so spend some time there as a trader of a few things. Um, but my first year was trading bonds, uh, out of the New York office. And I think on the customer experience side at that time, you know, I was fortunate enough to work for Citibank and they were like far and away the leader in that space. And so it was really interesting for your first job to be someone who was two to three X. Bigger in terms of market share than the number two or number three player. And to really learn like what that level of success could look like. And I think, you know, certainly an intimidating atmosphere of any first job is to be on an old school trading floor where there was very much yelling and cursing and all of those fun things. But what really stuck out to me was the relationships and, you know, the, the sales folks who did really well in that environment or the traders who do really well in that environment had built this level of trust and the authenticity with their clients. And so. It was less about kind of always doing what made them happy. It was about building this like deep level of trust. And I think I, you know, it took me a little bit to kind of notice what was going on. And it was less of what I thought customer experience would be of this. Kind of customers always right, make them always happy, you know, always tell them that they look great and they're having a great day and this kind of like blind optimism or toxic positivity. It was much more of these like authentic relationships and as I, you know, spent that year there and got to know some of our key clients and, and, you know, would go out and to do events and all these things, it was realizing, you know, the value of building authenticity and the value of almost imperfection in a sense of, you know, being able to be a trusted partner and not always, you know, and being able to have that relationship allowed. Our team to continue to kind of really own that space, whether we made mistakes or not, you know, as, as we thought about it. So I think that was really, really impactful and really changed my perspective around what it meant to do customer experience or customer service. Um, and really what kind of what it was and what it wasn't, you know, in a world that clearly was working so well.

Ben Foden: 3:00

Yeah. I mean, and that's such a great lesson too. I think, you know, it's, it's so easy to go into an interaction. And just say, okay, I'm going to put my smile on, you know, the world is falling, you know, it's a disaster. We're losing a ton of money and I'm just going to pretend that it's all, you know, you know, uh, puppy dogs and ice cream, you know, or whatever. Um, but, but I think showing authenticity is always so important for building trust. And ultimately, you know, that feeds into everything else that we're trying to achieve. Um, so, you know, I think that, that, that toxic positivity is definitely a trap that people can fall into. Um, but once you've established, yeah, you know, okay, I made a mistake or, you know, I really, you know, this, this is really a big challenge. We have to face this. You know, that, that opens people up to, uh, to trusting each other, so that can really be helpful. Um, yeah, I wanna, I wanna ask a little bit about something, um, you've been working on recently as well. So, you know, we kind of talked about the beginning of your career. What have you been up to, uh, maybe in the last year or so?

Mark Muston: 3:58

Yeah, definitely. So in my current role, um, I lead strategic operations or strategic initiatives rather, um, where, uh, I think as you mentioned earlier, you know, global mental health benefit company working primarily with employers of, you know, all sizes and locations. Uh, and so in the last two years, one of the core projects myself and the team have have led is around bringing like a new package or a new product offering to market. And so in that it's actually a product that we support both in house and through a service partner. And so that's something we've been really focused on recently. It's been, it's been really fun to see that really challenging to see that, but also really fun to see us, you know, really have like a high growth, new product come to market, have that really resonate with clients and grow. Um, and I think kind of to, yeah, around like that's been something fun into your question of, you know, like what that's really been, what I've been focused on in that I think is. Really learning this balance of how do you get folks excited around a product? How do you roadmap it correctly? And then how do you deliver to meet those expectations? And I think it's such a challenge of, you know, anyone who's worked in like a B2B environment. And I spent a lot of my time on external client calls is, you know, sales wants to sell the world. You know, client success wants to undersell the world. And, you know, you're sitting in the middle of working with all parties trying to figure out how do we actually get a successful product to market. and so I think that's been a really fun, um, you know, opportunity and it leaned on some of my experience at city, but really trying to find that balance, you know, knowing when it was time to ship and when we could, you know, and how we fix those things along the way. And how do we build trust with clients who got that product day 1 or, you know, we're now in our 2nd year of that offering and how do we kind of show that continue to grow and show that value to continue to accumulate to those clients.

Ben Foden: 5:42

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, one of the things that a previous guest pointed out, um, very wisely. Um, I had a guy on called David Rice Lee, and and he's talking about how employee experience impacts customer experience. Right? So how is your team feeling? How is your team operating? You know, if your team's being treated well, then Of course, that's gonna that's gonna have a ripple effect and customers are going to feel that on some level. How do you think about that?

Mark Muston: 6:11

Yeah, it's such an interesting observation. Hugely, hugely agree. And so my, my current role is much more about kind of be a lean team leading cross functional projects in my past life at modern health early on. I led. Like our provider network build out in that team. And so we were, you know, it was managing through that, uh, one of the teams I managed was like therapist recruiting or coach recruiting teams. And I think that one, you know, more pertinent to that direct, to that direct kind of like customer experience of our providers for modern health as like a multi, you know, multi sided marketplace. It was really interesting of, you know, how do you intrinsically build like morale and build motivation for your team and build support for your team? And I think one of the things that always stuck out to me in a very tangible way and from that experience is. The motivation of the team members, you know, would outperform like the system or the tooling or the efficiency work you were doing, you know, and the recruiter who, like, felt supported by their manager really believe in the mission, believe what they were doing was exciting and impactful, you know, they were outperforming their quota by 30, 40, 50 percent and that, you know, and that team member who didn't feel supported. It didn't feel bought into that mission. Just wasn't motivated beyond kind of the general. This is a salary for quota. You know, they were barely hitting quota. They're falling under. Yeah. And so I think in that sense, it really, it was fun to see that in such a visual, tangible way, like thinking about a recruiting team in that moment. And it really, you know, it shaped my style of leadership and shapes the way I thought about those experiences of humans are, we're such like creatures of groups and we believe in, like, we want to support each other. We want to help each other. We want to serve as higher purpose. And so if you can create an environment, And truly believe that you're creating that and you're creating, you know, that your, what your team works on is, you know, you can help them see how it's aligned to the business and the vision and the mission. And if you can support them in that way, it's been, it was really impressive to see, you know, those folks who did buy in, you know, just massively outperform regardless of their salary or bonus or whatever it might have been to motivate them.

Ben Foden: 8:11

Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and that leads me into the next question here. I think, um, there's so many things in business where it comes down to, you know, what are the numbers? What's the data? Um, you know, what's our profit going to be on this new initiative? You know, what's our time to return our investment and so on? Um, but then as you're telling the story, I mean, it's just so obvious that human intuition, excuse me, and human motivation is so important. So, Um, how do you kind of balance kind of data with, with emotion, so to speak?

Mark Muston: 8:44

Yeah, it's a really interesting one. I think it, you know, I think I was reflecting on this of, you know, working with a variety of different personality types across the modern health leadership team and previously working at Citi, you know, there is a little bit of like what the company culture is like some company cultures that whether departmental or, or at the, you know, the exact level, there's one of them, a more uniform or non uniform culture of we're a data driven organization, or we're a, you know, go with your gut, almost like, you know, Apple style one big launch a year and just like, you know, create this emotional reaction or we're an iterative, you know, follow the data trail and go from there. And so I think part of it is kind of understanding not only like your own style of operating and for myself, kind of where do I lean in, lean out? And how do I think about that? But also understanding the environment you're operating in. And, you know, if you have a strong gut feel, do you have a manager? Do you have cross functional resources? That are going to, you know, they're going to lean into that and say, Hey, you've done great work. We trust you. We'll go with your gut. Let's do it. Or do you live in an organization where it's, you know, no data, no deal. And if you can't back it up with numbers, you know, like you're dead in the water and there's regardless of how you're feeling. So I think it's important to acknowledge the environment you're in. I think for my personal self of where do I get conviction and how do I feel like I have what I need. I kind of view them as like a weighted average or not so weighted average, but like a combination score of both, you know, like how strong the data is and how convicted I am, uh, in like that data being accurate and representative and then also what is my gut telling me? And how strongly is it telling me that? So in a simple sense of like, if they're both on a 1 to 10 point scale, you're adding those up. And if it's, you know, if you're, if it's a 10 on both of those, no brainer, you want to push for that. Yeah. But I've also found moments where if my intuition is extremely strong, and this is, Hey, this is just, I feel very much that this is what our customers want, or this is a gap they need. We don't collect data in a way that really shows that, but I believe that it's there from intuition and logic. Then I will push for that if it's like a 10 on that intuition side, or oftentimes you kind of find you have some data, but it's not the most helpful, and you balance that with some intuition, but not the strongest. I guess, so I sort of think about those as. Kind of add them both up and if they're if the sum score is above this magic threshold, like that's kind of, you know, that's your mind telling you, you should push for that. But again, I think I sort of treat it as 2 things. 1 is like, do I think we should do this? And then 2nd is how do I sell the business? I'm doing this and that selling the business definitely comes down to what are the, what's like the interaction norms of that organization? Is it data? Is it intuition? Is it both?

Ben Foden: 11:17

Definitely. Yeah, I think this is the, um. You know, the kind of the, really the old, uh, joke about business is that, you know, if you try to teach it, you know, you get a lot of like, well, it depends, um, but yeah, one of the, one of the points here that, um, I've been thinking about is, you know, we believe that CX is foundational to business success. You know, we, as in myself and the audience here, and, um, I think that that awareness is growing over time, um, within organizations. But leadership doesn't always come from that same kind of understanding. So how do you think about connecting, you know, the, the CX goals that do, we know drive business metrics, but how do you connect that with leadership? So they, you know, maybe are more willing to support an initiative or, uh, you know, get behind a project. Definitely.

Mark Muston: 12:09

Yeah. I think, um, I've done this a little bit in more of like an operations role. And then now there's more of this more project management role. I think one thing I always say to like focus on the team I've managed and I've certainly learned repeatedly throughout my careers Sales is not a department. Sales is a part of every person's job and I think it's like a really important thing to instill or if you're in these roles of trying to get a project off the ground or trying to get resourcing for a thing, you're a salesperson, you might be selling your CFO, you might be selling the head of ops, you might be selling your direct boss, but you're selling. And I think that's a really important thing of, um, just acknowledging that. And some folks have their own feelings if they want to be a salesperson or not. But I think that is, um, a really important component of it is like, how do we. You know, how do you just acknowledge that to get this to happen? You need people to feel the way you feel and get excited the way you're excited. Um, and then the other one, I think, you know, so one is like, you think about this lens and I've done this in the past of like, I build, they look very similar to like a client facing deck. Like, I literally just do a sales pitch to an executive or manager or coworker or whatever it is. Um, but then the second one is this common language idea. So, like, what do you put in that deck or that pitch or that speech you're going to give? And I think that's a really important one of, Oftentimes where I see this gap in the businesses, if one team who has this very strong belief of like. You know, um, with the saying at at modern health of, like, the best provider experience is the best member experience. So modern health and a very simple thing. One of the things we do, we connect our members to therapists and coaches globally. And so we very much believe that if you treat that provider, the best you can, you offer them a wonderful experience. You pay them on time. You make their life easy, remove the admin. They're gonna not only will they have more time to care for your members, they're gonna have more energy, more motivation, and just more passion to care for your members sort about that idea earlier, like, getting folks bought in and, you know, they'll do their best work beyond just what the compensation would imply. And so that mantra of, like, the best provider experience is the best member experience is a great rallying cry for, like, a provider support team, but. It's really important to find, like, what's the common language for the business and what's the metric that shows that. And so, in that example, it might be member NPS. And if we can say, hey, like, clients are more likely to renew with us if they have a member NPS of X or higher and member NPS is, like, heavily influenced by their experience in session with that provider. If you can connect those dots, you now have a common language. And so it might not be what you started with, which is you really want provider NPS to go out with. But you've now connected the dots between where does business want to invest, what do they want to see, and where do you really feel like there's an opportunity to have a great experience. And now you kind of have that metric of, okay, it's, you know, it takes you two or three steps, but you can really invest in this, do this thing, show that it leads to better NPS, better client retention. And now you've, you've gotten, you know, you've got everyone on board with your vision. Um, and so I think that common language idea is really important. In that example, it was fairly straightforward to map that. Some of these are much harder, but I think it's really important to think through, like, how can I get us to a metric that everyone's going to care about that is ideally, you know, not correlated, ideally, causated by kind of what you directly want to drive.

Ben Foden: 15:25

Yeah, I think that that's that's such a great insight. And I think, you know, understanding the language of the person that you're talking to understanding the. Um, the specific phrases or, or metrics, you know, the, the specific things that they really care about, and then being able to connect back to, to that and say, Hey, do you want this? You know, here's how we get you this, right? Um, yeah, that, that's, uh, that's a great point about the, the common language of the business. It's almost,

Mark Muston: 15:53

um, sorry to, sorry to cut your comment of like, yeah, you almost do like a discovery call. I don't know. Like I. No, the sales world, um, just from being a large part of that throughout the years, like, you're almost doing a discovery call with your own internal coworker manager or whatever of like, you know, what do you care about? What are you trying to solve? And then how can I connect my solution to your needs? You know, again, not to overuse the sales analogy, but it's kind of funny how it sounds similar, you know?

Ben Foden: 16:20

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think that that's historically, that's been one of the challenges for customer facing teams is, you know, there's for better or worse, well, mostly for worse, there's this image of, you know, the customer facing team as being this kind of underdog, you know, kind of run to the litter kind of image and it's hard for them to sell internally because they're You know, kind of been looked down upon as like, you know, not that important compared to sales itself or, you know, maybe product engineering or something like that. Right. Um, but I, I think that that role is changing and that kind of underdog status. Um, it can actually, you know, it can be quite powerful. It can be a way to garner more support. Actually, if you, if you kind of flip it, you know, you almost need to do like a judo move and say like, look, counter to expectation, there's a ton of value here that, that you could unlock, uh, for the business. And then that, that skill that you're talking about of, of selling internally. I think is so relevant, especially given that, you know, that kind of legacy image of customer facing work. Um, so it's absolutely relevant. And I, and I think that's great for, for people in the audience to learn these kind of skills, whether they're. You know, interested in sales or not. Um, it's, it's essential. Um, so yeah, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is this, this challenge of serving different types of customers, because modern health is a marketplace business. Uh, we've talked to leaders and other marketplace businesses. Help feel itself has customers that are marketplace businesses. And these are particularly challenging businesses for customer service and customer success and support, because there's all these different. Needs. It's really a diverse group of people. Um, how do you approach the challenge of serving all these different needs? Yeah, it's a, it's a great call out.

Mark Muston: 18:14

I think, you know, for those who are familiar with health tech or benefit space, you know, this, this will be a refresher for you, but for those who aren't, so we, you know, one of the primary go to market channels we have is through employers. And so how that process typically works, the employer works with the consultant. Um, and these be companies like Willis Towers, Watson, Mercer, you know, Alliant, Ion, and more, and their job is to consult the employer on what benefits would help them, kind of guide them through that process, be an expert, almost like a wealth manager would with your finances or, you know, consultant would for your business. And so they really, as consultants, they really do consult on benefits. And so what's interesting is you have this environment where. You know, modern health builds a product and then we educate our sales team on how to sell that product at sales team goes talks, doesn't talks to a consultant and says, hey, here's what's going on with our product. Would you do you have clients? You have employers to be interested. They say yes. Then we talked then they talk to the employers and the employer buys that product and their employees use it. So, as you can imagine this visual, it's like. Here's what we've built. It goes out into the consultant, then the employer, then the member. And so you've got like five, you know, like five core areas of, you know, who's involved in this process. And so I think what's that's like a unique one of, you know, the role of the consultant is hugely helpful, very powerful, very logical, but also just creates this added complexity in the role of the employer, you know, being responsible in the U. S. for health insurance and benefits also adds this complexity of your. Building what you think the employer thinks that their employees would want, you know, or what the consultant thinks the employer thinks employees would want. And so I think what's important in those moments is, and then internally, modern health, not to add complexity is like, we're, you know, we're a variety of things, but on the, the provider based care side, we're a network of therapists and coaches and, um, psychiatrists, medical managers, and then those work directly with, You know, members are with our, and then we have, so you have all these different connectivity points, like provider working with a member or our client success team working with a client. And so you end up, and there's a lot of times where it's a very complicated situation. And so, in those moments, it gets really important to, like, acknowledge and try and where you can separate out. Are we, who are we building for? And why? What needs are we trying to solve? And why? And understanding, you know, it's, what, what do members really want to see? Does that align with what their employers want to see? And ideally, you're looking for those overlap of where do both parties really benefit. Um, and so I think that's a really challenging environment. So I think first and foremost, it's important to acknowledge like. How many voices are in this room? And I think sometimes folks oversimplify their business and they think it's, you know, we have customers and we have our business and, you know, as an example, I gave there's four other folks in that room and they all deserve, you know, a wonderful customer experience. And so I think it's like, as you acknowledge, I think through that, and then as you work with each of those groups, you know, really, and this is like a tough one, but a great one for CX folks is. Putting yourself in their shoes and understanding the content, the context and kind of the language they want to speak in, you know, how we work with consultants very different than how we work with the prospect, you know, how we, how we communicate with, you know, our members or employers, employees, very different than how we communicate with our providers or, and so I think trying to customize the degree you can for that audience and acknowledging their uniqueness can be really helpful. And I think it's, you know, it takes more time. You have to kind of slow down and say, Hey, this communication doesn't work for all five of them. I have to tailor it to each. Okay. But what you'll find is in those moments, you know, it can be really impactful of, Hey, we feel hurt. We feel like you, you really resonate with what we're looking for. We as employers, as consultants, as employees or as therapists and that example.

Ben Foden: 21:47

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it reminds me of, um, you know, this, this kind of UX, uh, activity of, of building customer personas. I mean, it overlaps into sales and other realms as well. But I think of like, if you have a clear understanding of. Not of just a kind of average customer, but of a few very specific types of customers, then, um, you know, everybody can kind of get on the same page and, and like having those conversations, um, with these different groups, you can, you can get some kind of consistency. Um, yeah. Um, I wanted to ask you a little bit, there's a, there's a kind of a challenge here that I see, um, is slowly getting better, but basically. The, the impact of customer experience on revenue is historically hard to track. Um, and how do you think about just connecting the dots? You've got all these different groups of customers. You've got all these different activities going on. A lot of interactions from, you know, video calls to emails and everything. Um, you probably have some kinds of workflows inside of your application, um, or on your website. Um, yeah, how have you been thinking about this challenge? And if you have any examples.

Mark Muston: 23:05

Yeah, definitely. Um, so to say it back, I think it's, you know, how do we, how do you connect the value of customer experience into like business metrics or into like, you know, roadmaps as we think forward? Yeah, I think, um, it's a challenge. I think kind of back to your comment of like data and intuition. If there's a data trail, you got to follow it. I think is really important. If there's not, and there's an intuition trail, I think you can also follow that. Ideally, you have both is, you know, that works really well. If there's a logical reason that, you know, happy employee equals happy employer for our for our scenario or, um, or the earlier, like, you know, happy provider equals happy member. Um, but I think, yeah, I think it comes back to that, you know, as an engineer by training, it's like, I don't this is a very nuanced reference, but anyone who's done like math and science, like, you have, um. Like, trying to figure out your units and, like, canceling out your units and, like, high school algebra and math of, like, okay, it's centimeters up top and centimeters over here later in the formula below. So those net out. So I do a lot of that kind of logic of how do we take the data we have? And can we directly connect it to the data? Like, you know, for any. B2B SaaS company, it's like, you know, revenue retention, you know, kind of NDR, GDR, all that fun stuff, you know, net new webinar or net new ARR. And so like, can we connect up into that? And rarely, to be frank, rarely can you connect it directly of like, you know, a provider, or whatever, a member giving us a five star rating. Leads to that employer renewing 10% more than someone else. Like, it's hard to connect all that way. But I, I would encourage again, of like, how can you connect into some of these themes and then, you know, you let logic take you the rest of the way if needed. And so, for example, you know, we might say a client that has, you know, like has a certain level of engagement or a certain level of like positive reviews or certain type of, you know, certain percentage of folks who do certain step like that correlates to that client most likely. Um, staying and then we can sort of connect the dot of okay. What gives that, you know, how does that out of those client have, like, those reviews and those five star ratings, if you will. And it comes down to, well, most of that experience stems from, you know, the customer success agent or sorry, the customer support agent. And so how do we, you know, you can kind of connect into the team, but it's a really challenging one. I think. The pros and cons of today's data world is, you know, we joke at modern health. There's so much data we have, um, you know, just because we, you know, we're really thoughtful how we built that, but sometimes it's hard to find like the actual, you know, what are the, what's it actually telling you? And you can kind of get lost in that or come to the wrong conclusions in that if you're not careful. So I do think it's important to have that combination of, can you kind of map into the theme the best you can and. That idea of kind of like, start with the data points you believe in and cancel your units up into the company metrics, but also acknowledging that, you know, most of the time you don't get all the way there, but if you can at least get it into a theme of, this is highly correlated with client retention, client retention, yes, that's a big enough theme that we care about. And so you can sort of give yourself that. And then what we've done for some projects is when you get that buy in, then we actually agree on a way to track the data going forward. So say, okay, we're gonna invest in this project. We're gonna do this thing. Okay. But let's see if it let's see how much it does impact. So let's, you know, put in place whatever data tracking we need. Um, or let's record certain actions we take and then we can follow up 6 months later and say, hey, this is working. Let's invest more. Let's continue to invest. So I think it's sort of that use the tools you've got. If you can connect the data, if you can connect through logic, and then a lot of times, if you can't get the conviction you want almost treat it like a pilot and like, you know, get your validation, you know, through those first few months,

Ben Foden: 26:43

that makes sense. Absolutely. And I think the more you invest in something, um, The higher your motivation should be to track its results, right? Yeah, very true. Um, yeah.

Mark Muston: 26:53

At some point, people start calling you and the investment's big enough.

Ben Foden: 26:56

Right. Right. Um, so we, we've talked about the past. We've talked about the present. I'd like to talk about the future a little bit. Um, what are some things that you're excited about in the space that you're focused on here?

Mark Muston: 27:09

Yeah, definitely. Um, there's some nuanced views I have around like health tech in that direction, but I You know, more of that kind of CX lens and teams I manage and roles I manage there. I do think, you know, everyone has their own view on AI. I think what AI has been really, really powerful for in the pretty sure today or in the very short term is AI can really connect the dots that just take too much time to do manually. And so you can get this very personalized feel. And so, you know, for example, I was like looking at, um, we use some like AI tools internally just to help us kind of navigate things. And one example was. I was on a external call, uh, earlier this week, actually, and I just went into one of, like, our internal search LLMs. Hey, tell me everything that's been going on with this client. Has there been any, like, positive or negative reviews about this service? Has there any been concerns around this, you know, recent upgrade they did, or, you know, new product they started using? And you just get this, you know, within five minutes, it was like, this is what's been going on with this client. Obviously, it's relying on us. You know, we use, like, Jira as a system, so it's relying on us tracking them, so. You know, folks have to be diligent to the tools they have, but at modern, luckily we are. And so that was really cool. You get this very personalized experience that, you know, no one has the bandwidth to do that manually. No one's gonna, like, I love Slack. I'm not searching Slack to try and find every one of those, you know, just, it takes forever. Um, and so I think that's a really cool. Ability to really make folks feel like personalized and unique and special in a scalable way. And I think there's, you know, the long arc is like chatbot AI only, but in the immediate term, you know, whether with clients or with, you know, and users or with providers, there is this like scalable way to still have a very human interaction. But to actually, you know, to not miss anything, and I think that's really powerful and just kind of in like the shorter term.

Ben Foden: 29:02

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, I love slack and you know, the, the acronym is searchable log of all communication and knowledge, I believe, but the first word is searchable and unfortunately the search in slack is just not that great. Is it?

Mark Muston: 29:20

Yeah. No, I think it's, it's also, I think, you know, we have a lot of folks have this issue. I think, you know, there's some sad I was reading of the average company. It's like four or five hundred software vendors. You know, it's like some number that is orders of magnitude higher than you would think. And you're like, no, there's no way that's right. And then I looked at my own was like, okay, well, I used 30 in the last 24 hours. Seems fair. Um, and so, yeah, I do think it's slack itself, you know, to give, to cut them some slack, if you will, is. Yeah. They're just one repository, you know, it's like we use Google suite, use notion, and so I think that's where, you know, additionally, like, can you, these places that can really be aggregators or platforms are really powerful of, um, you know, that's just something we haven't, haven't scalably had access to before is how do you kind of search across the entire knowledge base? Um, and that we see that with, you know, for individual customers as well, we can see, you know, what they're engaging with in the product and all that stuff. And we can now aggregate that in. Yeah. Um, so the same way of, you know, what I did for a client call, you could do for an individual reached out, you know, Hey, I'm looking for a new coach and thinking about this, we can pull in all their history of like, where their sessions were, all that stuff. And you can do that in a fast enough time that you can scalably, like, personalize that service more than usual. So it's a super fun area. I'm really curious to see where it all goes.

Ben Foden: 30:36

Yeah, definitely. Um, I think the opportunities are immense. Um, probably goes without saying, I think that there's gonna be. There's a little bit of my own prediction here, but I think this year there's going to be a little bit of pullback on the optimism with AI and a little bit more of like, get back to the fundamentals, like where the real results, um, there's been so much marketing hype, um, a lot of it justified, but some of it not. And I, I think, um, you know, the, the, the use cases where it's really effective, um, I think are going to start to be more obvious this year, um, you know, chatbots are great, but. You know, it's all the things around that as well, right? Like you're kind of alluding to before is you have to have diligence to use the tools and get the data in there accurately. Um, you know, the human element is just as important as ever. And, um, you know, also on the output, right? It's like, how do you, you know, and this is, I guess, a question for you is how do you think about, you know, getting quality output, like actionable steps, things that you can, you can use to improve. You know, a lot of the things in, in AI are kind of, it's a little bit of a black box. Um, yeah. What do you, what are your thoughts about that?

Mark Muston: 31:46

Yeah, for sure. AI specifically, or like AI Yeah,

Ben Foden: 31:49

AI and just, you know, and chatbots and these kinds of tools where, you know, you put something in and some, some magic happens and then like, well, how did that, how did we get that result, you know?

Mark Muston: 31:59

Yeah, um, what is it's like I think there's like the saying is any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. I think it's like the quote that comes to mind. Um, yep. And as a engineer, my brain always kind of goes to this place of. You know, the tools are wonderful, but, you know, at their core, they're just leveraging the data you provide them. And so I think important is, you know, sort of, it's sort of like we had cars and we try to have self try to have driverless cars. And, you know, we didn't really want to acknowledge. There was this 10 year arc of adaptive cruise control that got us from cars to self driving cars. And I think in a similar way, I agree with your comment of, I think some components of it are overhyped. And, you know, I think 1, for example, is. Yeah. Um, you know, modern health, like we were thinking about the role of, you know, AI tooling to supplement, you know, the care providers give we don't personally, you know, as a company, we don't believe that we're going to, you know, in 2025, that we're going to put an AI chat bot in front of someone with a clinical need, um, you know, that's important. That's not something we want to do, but thinking about how can that AI tool like supplement. And I think to your kind of to that theme into that question is, I think the important part is. You know, are you building these models intentionally with like data capture in the right way and, you know, in a simple example is like, you know, are you categorizing it? Are you making that data data like usable discernible, you know, early on when we were recruiting for our network, we had some free text response questions and it's terrible, you know, it takes you hours to get value out of and then we're like, why was this a free text response? It could have been a checkbox, you know, and you just like those kind of insights of how do you build And then that's ultimately what feeds your model. And then your model gets, you know, more predictable, you know, more routine kind of results because it's got that like clean cleanness and consistency of data going in. So I think it's important there. Um, and I also think, you know, kind of the example of our, our clinical philosophy is it's important to kind of draw clear lines, especially early on of. If you want your chat bot to do everything, I think we've all had this experience of, like, here's an AI chat bot. We can help you with your flight. It just took you 4 more minutes to get a representative on the phone. Like, the chat bot couldn't actually do, you know, they kind of jumped to driverless car right away and it's like, you know, and I think that's, I don't know. I've had that experience recently with some airline issues and, you know, I think that's a representation of this overhyped or kind of belief that we're already there. And I think, um, I think we get there, but I think the important thing is. Yeah. Are we being really intentional back to that kind of that user experiences? Are we being intentional of how we're using this? Um, and it can be really helpful and create this amazing memorable experience if used the right way, or it can make us feel like we have a slightly worse version of the chatbots that first came out in the 2000s. You know, if we're if we kind of jump to that finish line too quickly.

Ben Foden: 34:44

Absolutely. What a great way to put it. I think. I think that's so true and I think that you have to, you have to consider where it makes sense and where it doesn't make sense, you know, say, um, you know, this would be nice to have, uh, we must have this, or we're not going to have this, right? Uh, deciding the no's are, are almost as important as the yes's, right? Yeah, that's good. Um, yeah, so, well, what a great conversation, um, I, I really appreciate your, your perspective on this, um, to close out the episode here, I just want to ask you, do you have any tips or advice? For people who are looking to advance their careers, um, maybe some lessons that you've learned as you've, um, I know you've switched roles and and focus areas. Um. You know, this could be specific to CX or just, just general career advice. Anything you want to share?

Mark Muston: 35:32

Yeah, for sure. I can give a couple. Um, I think one not specific to kind of like CX and one specific to CX. Um, I think the one nod is, you know, I, so I, my last job at city before I moved to modern health was, uh, trading iron ore and iron ore derivatives. If anyone doesn't know what iron ore and iron ore derivatives, that's okay. You're a normal person. You're not supposed to. Um, it is literally dirt. It's what makes steel the raw ingredient that, you know, becomes steel for all the things that, you know, we use appliances and cars and all that fun stuff. Buildings. Um, and so. Coming from a world where I built a ton of supply, demand models, worked with quants, worked with engineers, built out pricing tools, risk management tools, you know, worked on like building new trading businesses, kind of from zero to one in, in New York and London and Singapore. Um, I came into this world of mental health tech in San Francisco and I assumed I was hardworking, but I would probably benefit very little from anything that had got me there. And I think what I was surprised by pleasantly is. You know how much you are learning skills that apply in areas you wouldn't expect. And so, you know, for example, early on at modern health, you know, we were growing a global business, we're growing a global provider network and it's no coincidence. I think one of the things we've, you know, my biased opinion, having been involved is I think we have a one, we do an amazing job monitoring our network, recruiting best in class network, and then making sure folks can get care anywhere in the world within 24 hours. And the reason we did that fundamentally different than everyone else is I literally took the fundamentals of iron ore supply demand models. And like that were highly quantitative, you know, and then predictive forecasting, all this fun stuff. And we rebuilt those for therapists and coaches globally around, you know, thinking about demographics, location, specialization, you know, all these things. And so they are, that was a really fun moment and really encouraging moment of anyone thinking about that career pivot or thinking about, you know, switching departments or switching industries or switching, you know, kind of job types. Um, you know, just be, I encourage you to, to kind of confidence and, you know, if you're smart, hardworking and you've, you know, and you're, you're pushing yourself each day, like, You are more set up for success and you probably realize in a role that may feel, you know, at that initial J. D. may feel totally tangential to what you've been doing. Uh, I think there are just kind of like common themes that apply across businesses, industries and the rest. So I think that was particularly, um, you know, something I learned more recently that I hugely value and, um, will carry with me as I go on to, you know, future endeavors. And then the other 1, I think more specific to customer experience. You know, I think we've talked a lot about, you know, understanding how to connect your story into the business. I think it's hugely important that separates folks who are kind of more on that frontline or newer in their career from the folks who really grow into becoming leaders is understanding like how you tie into the business. And I think part of that I would say is understanding when you're in the limelight and when you're not. And I think I've, you know, I've had a variety of those experiences in my career. Sometimes the thing you're working on isn't a business priority. It doesn't mean you can, you don't have to do it doesn't mean it doesn't matter, but that's not where the incremental investment is going to go or the incremental focus is going to be. And then sometimes it is. And I think having that patience and that understanding and kind of seeing the broader business, being able to acknowledge. This, you know, right now, this is not, um, you know, this is not a priority for us to focus on this one area of my team that I personally care about, but, you know, what is already going well, and we don't need it to make, you know, it's not a priority to make it go from like an A to an A plus product versus there's other times where, you know, when those, when that is the thing where, yeah, for better, for worse, like you're in the hot seat, understand that is your opportunity to kind of take those steps. Thanks. You know, pitch those bigger projects and work for that. So I think having that, you know, ability to step back and see the whole business and understand how you fit into it can be really powerful. And I think that separates folks. I've seen do really well. Is that ability to acknowledge at that point in time? How important their specific concern or area is to the business. And how they, and by doing that, it helps them articulate in a way that, you know, either gets them the piece they need of, okay, not now, but maybe next quarter or next half, or it gets them the buy in they need of, you're right. This is important today. Let's do it today.

Ben Foden: 39:49

All right. I think that's super helpful advice. Um, Mark, thanks so much for coming on today and, uh, we'll see you next time everybody on the CX files. Thank you.

Mark Muston: 39:59

Thanks for having me, Ben.