The CX Files #35 - Ryan Klausner

Learn in this episode:

• Why the term deflection rate is actually harmful to long-term brand health.
• How to replace biased, low-response surveys with AI-driven sentiment analysis.
• The shift from reactive support to proactive AI that identifies problems before the customer does.
• Why "outsourcing your thinking" to an LLM is the biggest risk for knowledge workers today.

Ryan Klausner is a veteran CX leader with over 15 years of experience scaling mission-driven brands. From his early days saving millions for the city of Vancouver to leading global teams at Who Gives a Crap, Ryan specializes in combining human innovation with high-scale technology to drive mid-nine-figure growth.

--

Give your customers AI self-service with 95% first response accuracy. Your team gets optimal results and gains time with VoC and knowledge based improvement that is done for you. Visit https://helpfeel.com/en-us to learn more.

Transcript

The CX Files #36 - Ryan Klausner

Ryan Klausner: [00:00:00] In my view, companies, any organization that's still sending out surveys to their customers are, are missing the, the opportunity to leverage AI. So for example CSAT and you're sending out customer satisfaction surveys. Why? If you have AI working effectively, you will be able to measure every interaction you have across every channel and build a much more informed holistic CSAT measure that will actually, it will drop your CSAT score.

Ryan Klausner: Immeasurably. It's not gonna go up when you start measuring every ticket versus just the ones. 'cause I think surveys are inherently problematic because you're trying to find, you know, you, what is it pulling? It's pulling a median and that's what you're getting it from a score. But who's motivated to respond to a survey? Those very few customers who had an exceptional above and beyond experience? And might have enough time in their day to let you know about it. The majority are those that didn't have their [00:01:00] expectation met. But it's not actually having the average customer who's like, yep, it's exactly what I thought it would be. That's not, you're not measuring for that. 

Ben Foden: Hello and welcome to the CX Files podcast. Today's guest is Ryan Klausner. He started his career in cx, working with the city of Vancouver, Canada, where he led a proc led process improvements that saved citizens over $2 million. He has 15 plus years experience helping startups and mission-driven brands build and scale CX support and success teams.

Ben Foden: He takes a human first innovation led approach that drives customer loyalty and growth. While building global teams that love what they do, his most recent position was head of customer experience at Who Gives a Crap Where he helped to scale their e-commerce business to mid nine figures while managing a fully in-house global remote team.

Ben Foden: Ryan, thanks for joining.

Ryan Klausner: Hey, thanks for having me, Ben.

Ben Foden: [00:02:00] So I always like to know where people are coming from and how they got their start and what that was like. So can you tell us a story about some of your early experiences in cx?

Ryan Klausner: Yeah, I was really fortunate to start my career in customer experience in with organizations, and it's really been a consistent pattern throughout my career that our. customer, or in my case, citizen centric. and weren't just looking at cost efficiencies or savings for the organization. Yes, that was part of the mandate, of course for, for most CX functions.

Ryan Klausner: How can there be a cost savings by, doing the work we do? How can the insights and data inform other functions and, and the rest of the business, or in our case, the, the government. but it really comes down to how can we make. The work we're doing better for our customers, or in the beginning of my career for citizens at the city of Vancouver, it was about taking all of the disparate functions [00:03:00] that encompass city Hall.

Ryan Klausner: And instead of having it, well, oh, I need to speak to bylaw fines. Okay, we'll transfer you there. And, and essentially City Hall is just one large switchboard or I need to talk to someone from. Revenue services or planning. 3 1 1 was a great concept to amalgamate all those functions into a central contact center. And that instead of just having very specialized subject matter experts that often are not very citizen or customer centric, but they are subject matter experts. We were hiring based on expertise and customer experience insights and how they can support citizens and then train them in those functions.

Ryan Klausner: You can't necessarily, if someone's coming in and they don't have people skills, it's really hard to train for that. But you can train for the subject matter. That is across all of city Hall. So it wasn't uncommon, especially after a few years for, for our team to be able to take interactions where on one call there was someone who wants to sign up.

Ryan Klausner: To speak at a city [00:04:00] council meeting. Also pay a ticket with revenue services or bylaw fines for a parking infraction that they had, and also have a question answered regarding their property tax. So I was involved with that. And then also as things got more complicated, I was working very closely with our business analyst team to look at how can we reduce some of the handling time for some of our most complicated interactions.

Ryan Klausner: Standard stuff really in, in the CX space particularly around revenue services that got quite complicated. Property tax. In any governmental organization, particularly at the local level, it can be one of the most complicated areas. There's multiple levels of government. In the, in Canada, there was the provincial aspect with this, with the municipal, similar to in California, there's sort of, it's managed by the counties, but we also have the state sort of oversight on property tax. so there was a lot of work there and overall we had really strong engagement from the city council at the time that we were working with. And, and overall the experience from customers and the feedback we [00:05:00] had from the surveys were very, very positive. But it was also a challenge 'cause it was a fully unionized workforce.

Ryan Klausner: So that had its own nuances and one that was very formative for me earlier in my career. One that I probably wouldn't necessarily be super keen to step back into at this stage of my career, but, but one that I'm, I'm really glad I did when I did.

Ben Foden: Yeah. I mean, that's such a unique context for, for starting a career in cx. I think there's, there's so many people who start in a business, typically not in, in government or in public service, but, there must have been a certain a certain through line from that to, to your other experiences.

Ben Foden: Like is there something that you, you drew on in you throughout your career, like from that time or was there something that really stuck with you?

Ryan Klausner: I think it's about innovation. When I joined the city of Vancouver, there was a lot of innovation happening. They had a mandate to be the greenest city in the world at that [00:06:00] point. 

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: the run up to the 2010 Olympics. So I was starting there about nine years before the 2010 Olympics. So there's massive infrastructure investment happening in the city of Vancouver. At that time, but it was all really rooted in innovation and what they were doing there. And then when you look at the threads through the SaaS startups that I worked with in Silicon Valley or in the direct to consumer brands, they're all very innovative, both in how they operate and, and their model internally. But externally, they're, they were all doing some form of disruption in the space that they were in. And, and for me that's, that's very exciting to be part of.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, I've visited Vancouver Canada before. It's just if you, if if people listening out there have not been you, you know, you owe it to yourself to go. It's just an incredible city right there on the water, surrounded by mountains you know, plenty of, of interesting and fun things to do.

Ben Foden: But I definitely got the sense. [00:07:00] Absolutely. But I, I got the sense that the government really kind of had its head together in certain things, you know, just the way that the city was managed, you know, my experience as a visitor. But yeah, I think it, it did feel forward thinking compared to some other cities I've visited and I got a feel a little bit of, I think, of this innovation that you're talking about.

Ben Foden: You know, I, I think. You know, in general, whether it's a business or, or you know, city government people have this sense that we need to do better, we need to make things better, we need to move forward, of course. But what is it that you think, you know, kind of separates people who have a general notion of making things better versus you know, those organizations that are really engaged where there's commitment to it?

Ryan Klausner: Well first I just wanna touch on, I think one of the, the things that Canada's probably done the best job of is how it's marketed itself on the world stage. yes, Canada is [00:08:00] my, my home. I live in California now. I am a very fortunate to be a dual citizen, but at the same time, I think I have more, in many ways, even with all the. Turmoil and in fighting we have in the United States, my disappointment tends to go more towards Canada because of how much hope on that potential. I think Canada really has and continues to miss in how it positions its citizens, the talent pool there, which is often un underrepresented on the world stage in the workforce.

Ryan Klausner: And they've just sold themselves as another country that could effectively be an outsourcing. To the United States would, that is unfortunate because it also has some of the highest cost of living compared to the US that's up there with the most expensive cities in the us, particularly Vancouver or in Toronto.

Ryan Klausner: But also has. The, the, the unfortunate side is it also has some of the, the, not just highest cost of living, but lowest wages. So it is this sort of perfect storm [00:09:00] for, for inequality for a brain drain, which Canada has to some extent, or even just some just general resignation I see with my fellow Canadians accepting

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: not even realizing how much acceptance there is around it.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: Going back to your original question, I think the. Companies and organizations that are rooted in innovation and in disrupting what they're doing has to be done in a way. That is not ruthless. So it's interesting. Often in business we think ruthlessness is good. in my experience, tends to put organizations and certainly teams into a position where ethics and morals are put aside in pursuit of ruthless growth at all costs. And I do not believe that. Growth when done strategically [00:10:00] and in a scalable way is actually ruthless. It's very

Ben Foden: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: Ruthless growth. Growth I think is often give short, and that's just in general in business, but certainly in the world of CX will have short-term gains, but much harsher, longer term implications.

Ben Foden: Absolutely.

Ryan Klausner: I think so. Innovation and growth when balanced out with the human side and the technology side. And I think we're seeing that now with a lot of organizations who, or at least a handful that I'm thinking of in 2025. Really went all in on ai,

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: a fault.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: how can we best utilize this?

Ryan Klausner: How can we make this easier for our customers? How can we make this easier for our team members?

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: they basically outsourced all of their thinking to this tech stack that wasn't able to support, and they ended up having to do a 180. If anything, they're now more closer to square one than they would've been had they done intentional [00:11:00] investment in ai.

Ryan Klausner: So they withdrew it from it completely. And I think we're seeing that, you know, across the board altogether. I, I did a, just a LinkedIn post yesterday talking about how we've outsourced our thinking to ai,

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: and, and we're calling it productivity. And at the same time, and that's not, that's not you to c cx, that's really anyone who's in the knowledge space I think is

Ben Foden: Right,

Ryan Klausner: And so much of, of our professional lives is, is looked at as to how we could look productive. and productivity I think is key. But productivity in the workplace. Should not be prioritized over substance and value. Sometimes the best thinking we do is not when we're showing our work. It's the deep thinking we do when we take a walk in the woods and then how we bring that back to the office,

Ben Foden: Right,

Ryan Klausner: that's a virtual office or a physical office.

Ryan Klausner: So I think it's the same time when we look at innovation and we look at. Disruptors, it's how can we do things in a way that really understands what are we really trying to solve for [00:12:00] here? It's not

Ben Foden: right.

Ryan Klausner: cost. 'cause cost often has short-term gains and, and as I mentioned, long-term implications.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I, I, I gave this this comment. I was at an event and I was actually I was listening to Nate Brown of CX Accelerator give a, give a talk at this event. And I forget the exactly the question he asked. He sort of opened it up for discussion, I think, and I, I said something like.

Ben Foden: You know, it's, it's easy to measure dollars and it's hard to measure trust. You know, and I, I think about this in the context of this, this innovation conversation and, and sort of the short-term gain versus the long-term value. It seems to me that there's always this tension in business to, to maximize the profit, of course.

Ben Foden: But also there's this tension between just short and long term vision, right? And. You know, sometimes right now you need to save a dollar. And even if that means you have to pay $2 tomorrow, but what do [00:13:00] you think is sort of like, what is the missed opportunity there that you see, like the, the mistake that you see keeps coming back again?

Ben Foden: Like people should have the perspective to take the long view, but they don't. What, what is the kind of the hangup that you see?

Ryan Klausner: Yeah, so I think there's two things I think I'm seeing, and I'm seeing this a lot right now as I'm currently in the job market looking for my next opportunity, and I'm. Seeing, first of all, within our own industry, but just across all just organizational. Hierarchy CX is not the same as customer support.

Ryan Klausner: It's not the same as customer success.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: It's not the same as customer care. These are all different things, and we can all do these things at different times. Customer support and customer care are much more closely tied together. CX is a holistic view of the entire customer. Lifecycle and ecosystem. It

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: every aspect of your business.

Ryan Klausner: Customer support is a reactive [00:14:00] function,

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: not looking at your support team in both a proactive and reactive way, that's how we've built the reputation of support being, or CX being a cost center.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: Trust is built not from, you know, and I think so many founders in particular have a false view of trust is built when someone does an order and they get exactly what they paid for.

Ryan Klausner: No

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: built on that experience at all. Trust

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: entirely from looking at things through the lens of when something goes wrong. How easy does a company make it? For a customer to get a resolution that brings them to a place where like, well, that was easy and

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: because if you

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: business, especially if you're in a direct to consumer space, when things are made to be right or wrong and you're in a direct to consumer space and something goes wrong, which inevitably. If I'm ordering from you 3, 4, 5, 6 times, something's gonna go wrong. At some point, an order

Ben Foden: [00:15:00] Right.

Ryan Klausner: gonna go off or something doesn't show up.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: eventually at some point. How easy is it to make it right?

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: between a customer, a brand that shows that they truly care. And one that doesn't, but it's also, those are the moments and opportunities that trust are really built on. Because if,

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: lets you know of something, a, can it be automated to get that quick resolution to make it right for the customer? Let's just skip the step of having a human there. If a human does need to get involved, you know, we, we often look at what's, what was the first response time? FRT. I don't care about FRT. I mean, FRT matters to an extent the sense of should it take days to hear back from an organization? No, of course not. But like we look at often what we consider fundamental metrics. And we over like, what's the FRT? Who cares? Let's just assume we all have a baseline of FRT and go, okay, first response time is this, then what? I'm more

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: total resolution time? Not 'cause I want my team to rush through their work. [00:16:00] But how long does it take to get to an actual resolution? Great. The first response time just resulted in a ticket that had a response that just asked a bunch of questions that arguably maybe

Ben Foden: Hm.

Ryan Klausner: customer put in the original email, but because they didn't go further to look at the context, previous interactions, they asked a bunch of needless follow up questions.

Ryan Klausner: So great. response time was four hours. It's gonna take 14 days to actually solve it. But first response time looks good. Where

Ben Foden: Right?

Ryan Klausner: rather go, how can we solve this in the first 24 hours? And in, ideally, how do you improve that one? Touch resolution? Not 'cause

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: you're not trying to race through things, but again, customers are wanting resolution.

Ryan Klausner: They're not necessarily wanting a full dialogue with, with your team.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: we think we're in this business of creating these experiences, but those experiences are only valuable for customers. Once the actual issue has been solved for, then they're more interested 'cause they have the trust.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: trying to leverage the trust before it's earned.

Ryan Klausner: And

Ben Foden: [00:17:00] Mm.

Ryan Klausner: that a transaction itself has, because it's occurred, therefore there's trust and it's sort of the wrong thinking. Trust, just like in any relationship is earned and built over time.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: And just as quickly lost.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: also, I think, so critical when we look at how I've built teams and worked with teams right from my time at City of Vancouver through my time in the Bay Area through the last five years with who gives a crap, how much autonomy are you giving your team members, not just to follow a taxonomy flow to get the knowledge they need, but how much autonomy do they have making decisions that are in the best interest of the customer? And I know there'll probably be some operators listening to this going. We don't want decisions made in the best interest in the customer.

Ryan Klausner: We need decisions and outcomes that are in the best interest of the organization.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: say that's a fundamental flaw in thinking. If you're making decisions that are in the best interest of the customer, you ultimately are making decisions that are in the best interest of the organization. 'cause it's that thinking that has customers [00:18:00] continually coming back from bore again and again, and they become your largest referral. Generator as well because they have that trust in the organization. So yes, obviously you wanna make sure that you have policies in place to prevent abuse from, from customers who may have intentions where they want to take advantage of, of some very customer centric policies. But at the same time, if you have these unusual situations, and hopefully it's your humans who are dealing with those unusual situations, 'cause those are aren't the ones that AI does such a great job of if they have to follow.

Ryan Klausner: Flow that only gives one outcome or the other outcome, you might as well have AI solve for that because it's not going

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: in an outcome that's, in my opinion, in the best interest of the business because you just killed the customer lifetime value. And

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: to cut that prematurely, are you really making the best decision in the

Ben Foden: Let's see.

Ryan Klausner: I've seen so many companies, you know, something's not right with my order. Hey. All the customers really wanting is a small credit. They might not be saying it, but what's [00:19:00] between the lines? They wanna feel some value for the, the bit of, of frustration or friction that they had.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: sorry, we're not able to do that, the customer ends up leaving so they end up cutting their nose in spite of their face to say, instead of passing $10 on to the customer, you now lost how much? Hundreds, potentially thousands of dollars in customer lifetime value. Now

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: you want to prevent abuse. But I'm talking about genuine customer frustrations, not those who are the, the outliers who might be trying to take advantage.

Ben Foden: Right? Yeah. Lifetime value is, is so big as a metric and as a, as a guiding kind of principle. And I love what you said in your response saying you know, paraphrasing, but, but basically doing right by the customer is, is gonna be good for the business. Fundamentally, and I, yes, there are abuses that happen, but I think that those are, those are not the norm.

Ben Foden: And certainly a policy that is designed to prevent all abuse will be [00:20:00] shortsighted, right? Versus a policy to kind of deliver all value to customers that, that's definitely going to, you know, build a better business long term. I don't think there's any doubt about that. So well, well put I wanted to get your thoughts about.

Ben Foden: You know, of course there's this ai, this massive AI wave going on right now. I have this vision or this hope that the position, the function of support can evolve beyond. Of course, there's this, there's this necessity of responding to tickets. There's this core work of responding to customers. But when you bring in the AI tools, when you bring in.

Ben Foden: The modern you know, sort of process. There's such an opportunity to go beyond simply solving a problem, simply reacting or being you know, reactive, I think is what you said. And going, going into proactive and going into these kind of lifetime value generating interactions. And, and also. You know, sort of owning [00:21:00] the, the VOC, right?

Ben Foden: Owning voice of customer for the whole organization and sort of bringing that, that value, adding that value, bringing that in in quantifiable terms, bringing that to the business, bringing that to leadership, bringing that to other departments and saying, you know, Hey, we really understand what our customers want better than any other department, maybe even more than sales or anybody else.

Ben Foden: And this is, this is a, a goldmine. You know, going beyond the normal responsive, reactive thing and going into this new realm of potential where do you see the, the sort of the opportunities and pitfalls of this evolving CX support role?

Ryan Klausner: That's first of all, great question. I think we look at AI too much in a silo sometimes, and AI as it pertains to CX is, in my view, is so much more than just chatbots. And yes, chatbots are one exciting channel that you can help. To unleash, you know, human-based chat if you hadn't been able to.

Ryan Klausner: 'cause it can help triage and mitigate some of [00:22:00] that volume. know, the term deflection rate is a term that I loathe. I think it's one that's only generally used in sales cycles. From AI platforms look at, we can have, look at the deflection rate we can achieve. I

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: anyone who leads a CX function or any founders or CEOs talk about deflection rates. Normally, you don't wanna deflect, you want to find opportunity for value, you want to find resolutions. Anytime you deflect, it's not necessarily building trust, it's making things harder. And

Ben Foden: Right,

Ryan Klausner: of CX we should be looking at opportunities to remove friction. I think

Ben Foden: right, right.

Ryan Klausner: for us, when we talk about finding value and we look at ai, I think we're, we haven't really found the perfect balance yet, but I think we're, we're getting there as, as things evolve with ai.

Ryan Klausner: So for example, In my view, companies, any organization that's still sending out surveys to their customers are, are missing the, the opportunity to leverage AI. So for [00:23:00] example CSAT and you're sending out customer satisfaction surveys. Why? If you have AI working effectively, you will be able to measure every interaction you have across every channel and build a much more informed holistic CSAT measure that will actually, it will drop your CSAT score.

Ryan Klausner: Immeasurably. It's not gonna go up when you start measuring every ticket versus just the ones. 'cause I think surveys are inherently problematic because you're trying to find, you know, you, what is it pulling? It's pulling a median and that's what you're getting it from a score. But who's motivated to respond to a survey? Those very few customers who had an exceptional above and beyond experience? And might have enough time in their day to let you know about it. The majority are those that didn't have their expectation met. But it's not actually having the average customer who's like, yep, it's exactly what I thought it would be. That's not, you're not measuring for that.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: of your customers. How are you not getting that insight? [00:24:00] So. Ai, looking at all your interactions and then building these more holistically, similar to NPS, how can you get NPS more holistically outside of a survey through AI measuring all engagement and points of contact across the entire customer lifecycle? or even after this, asking the right question. Would you recommend us to a friend with an MPS survey? Well, first of all, I think in the world of, of B2B and sas. It's the wrong question. I don't have a friend that works in this sas space in this sector, so no. Would I

Ben Foden: Good point.

Ryan Klausner: a colleague maybe, but to a friend?

Ryan Klausner: No, I probably don't talk about it in the world of toilet paper, which I just came out of in the last five years and was, you know, building and scaling, who gives a crap during that time? And what an interesting time it was to be in the, the toilet paper space during the pandemic. As you, as you can imagine, you know, in certain markets like the UK asking customers, would you. Recommend us to a friend? Well, generally it would be fairly taboo to talk about toilet paper and, and, and [00:25:00] is just not what you talk about with decent company. So

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: we asking the wrong question and therefore not getting the right result? 

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: what is this telling us if, do you have a proper referral and retention strategy?

Ryan Klausner: Often we're great. So now you know they would. And now what? What are you doing with this data? Like,

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: oh, great. We have our, our NPS is 87. Fantastic. And now what? It gives you a pat on the back when you have a very high score,

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: rather see a lower score that has much a much more sort of concrete actionables that we could take and learn from and iterate on and do some ab testing with.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: Then just a vanity metric that makes everyone feel very good. But

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: underneath the surface there's so much more work we could be building. So I think that's how we should be leveraging ai. We should be looking at how do we do a better job of, of not sending out surveys using the, I mean, we we're often drowning in data.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: to leverage it [00:26:00] properly. So AI to me is a great, tool that can solve for that to help surface those insights that just humans cannot look at at that level of scale. And but not using it to, I mean, we've used, we've basically, as I mentioned earlier, I think for so many, and this is not just unique to cx, any knowledge function has outsourced a lot of their thinking to CX and they don't sit with deep problems and do that problem solving.

Ryan Klausner: They're literally just using that as a, an input. And they're getting the output and then they're actioning it, but they're missing the nuance and the complexity. And that's what humans do a really good job at. Not to say we shouldn't be leveraging, these LLMs for. Problem solving or for refining a problem, but for just outsourcing all of our deep thinking.

Ryan Klausner: And then at the same time, we're worried about the loss of jobs in, in the world of, of CX and across every other sector over the next few years. How much are we contributing to [00:27:00] that by outsourcing our, our deep thinking that humans generally so well at. And yes,

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: by all of this, I think in some ways we've, we've become lazy.

Ben Foden: Yeah. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and I, I like the you know, I like this idea of going beyond. The, the obvious AI use cases too. I think you know, so often it's always more and more, more, right? So often it's how can we add a new feature? How can we add this new thing? And you end up in many businesses that you end up with kind of a clu, you know, it's just a pile of, of, you know, layers of things being added without.

Ben Foden: Without a through line, without a consistent kind of vision of like, why we're doing these things. And I, I think, you know, some of the things you're mentioning, it seems like an opportunity to actually to boil down, to kind of subtract the unnecessary, to remove the friction, to simplify [00:28:00] things. And that I think is really underrated.

Ben Foden: Maybe it's not sexy, it's not like something exciting per se. But. Yeah, to be able to boil a lot of information down to be able to simplify and streamline, I think that's a big opportunity. One of the, one of the pieces you mentioned also is of course, and we can, you know, love to touch on this, get your thoughts, but there's so much anxiety about AI replacing people and AI taking jobs, and I don't know, you know, I don't, I'm not sure if anybody knows absolutely what the reality is of this.

Ben Foden: You know, there's various numbers and metrics and, and sort of reports out, but you know, it's happening to some degree. I think we can say that safely that some jobs are being automated and replaced. But I think that it's also a wave of other jobs being created and a lot, and in the middle there's a ton of jobs that are simply, they're, they're evolving, right?

Ben Foden: So it's basically the same role, but because of AI sort of the day to day is starting to look quite different. And I think. What's [00:29:00] exciting is that CX is in this position of being one of, if not the leading use case for AI today. You know, and there's been all these technological you know, innovation cycles throughout history, right?

Ben Foden: Electricity, the internet, you know, smartphones, so on, and they, they were usually centered on other disciplines or other functions. I think right now the kind of the, the two biggest use cases for AI that I see are, are, you know, coding, programming, and then customer support and cx. And so that's kind of an exciting place to be and and it, it also, it is this, this massive change and there's a lot of anxiety and people are very uncomfortable.

Ben Foden: But I, I see this, this path towards a kind of a CX renaissance, if you will. You coming out of the dark ages of like the crappy chatbot, the, the forced deflection, the, the awful, you know, experiences. And moving into this space of, of a sort of a renaissance where, you know, it's easier than ever to [00:30:00] solve a problem that you have as a customer whatever the business is.

Ben Foden: And, and CX sort of driving that through an, an enlightened use of ai. What do you think about this idea of like CX kind of. Growing and, and sort of reaching its final form or, or reaching in kind of a ultimate form of, you know leveraging AI in a way that other other departments are not.

Ryan Klausner: Well, I love talking about the future although there is so much unknowns and uncertainty about the future, I'm gonna, I, I'll take issue with one thing you said and, and that's AI eliminating jobs. I actually don't know much, and I haven't seen enough data to that AI is actually eliminated skilled jobs. I've seen it eliminate. Aspects of certain jobs

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: were manual, a bit of a burden to the, to the human that was doing the work.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: and it allowed them to prioritize other [00:31:00] aspects of their work that, that humans excel at and should be doing more of. That being said, yes, in inevitably will be taking jobs in the future. Will it be taking jobs in the world of customer support and cx? Absolutely, of course. Especially as it gets better at doing what is designed for. But right now we're still talking about deflection rates and deflection isn't what builds trust or what builds loyalty.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: When we look towards the future and we talk about cx, CX is going to be a, a much better data aggregator than

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: talked about.

Ryan Klausner: And yes, as companies go more all in on CX thinking that it's their competitive advantage about achieving scale and efficiency, what they're often missing. Through AI is who's going to be pushing the insights that are surfaced across this. Who's pushing the insights today? Often CX teams are too focused on still. Again the [00:32:00] first resolution time

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: You know, how many tickets are you solving for? How many tickets are each agent solving for versus what is the actual actions being taken based on the insights and the buckets of, of, of, of, of the frequent flyers and actually doing root cause analysis. How do we solve for this?

Ryan Klausner: How do we eliminate the need for these to even be coming in as a thing we need to solve for outside of them being. This, these outliers we're, we're still solving things in a very reactive fashion versus

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: more strategically as we should be at a CX capacity across functions

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: not just evangelize voice of customer.

Ryan Klausner: Voice of customer just shouting out into a cave if no one's listening and there's no

Ben Foden: Right,

Ryan Klausner: as as to what we can solve for.

Ben Foden: right.

Ryan Klausner: in the future, yes, can solve for things faster, but it still will be up to the humans to make sure across functions, teams that this isn't just known for, but we're able to actually quantify and solve for this.

Ryan Klausner: So [00:33:00] most of these types of interactions we're seeing as frequent flyers today are not even needing to be tickets created or interactions and. AI can do a better job of identifying problems before they happen. So a customer doesn't need to reach out, an AI agent will already reach out to the customer, letting them know we're aware of it and are already working on their problem before they're aware of it being a problem. So taking that reactive to proactive I think is something that AI will be able to solve for, but it will be companies and I think this will be a competitive advantage in the future that still have humans.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: will be for most of my life certainly in my lifetime. And yours. that are looking at how do we make it easy when our tech stack is failing us and this isn't able to solve for, how do you still reach a human?

Ryan Klausner: And I think humans will be making purchasing choices based on their access to humans in the future. Versus is this team entirely automated? I'm not sure that I have the trust that they'll be able to solve for. Are they treating me just like a number? It's great for, again. [00:34:00] Those very proactive moments where it can identify things far faster and more readily than a human team ever could, especially at scale. But when things go wrong and those unusual, unpredictable moments arise, and that's not what AI can do a great job of handling 'cause it's not what it's trained for, it's not what's in its data set. You still wanna make sure you can reach a human to actually solve the problem there. So the companies that have entirely eliminated that are going to lose favor with those who still have. human component as part of their, their workflow and, and thinking. And I think that will be the competitive advantage of the future. So the proactive and the human element, I think are, are gonna be vital.

Ben Foden: Yeah. I love that. I, I think you're absolutely right. I think the, you know, thinking of this sort of regular psychology as a discipline is sort of about bringing people from some kind of problem state to a baseline of normal, you know, air quotes normal. But then there's there's this, this idea of [00:35:00] positive psychology, which is like going from normal into.

Ben Foden: You know, a higher level a higher than average level. And that's sort of, that's sort of similar in some sense of, of what you're saying, of like reactive versus proactive. It's like, okay, now our customers are having a satisfactory experience. We've reached, you know, normal

Ryan Klausner: yeah,

Ben Foden: do we start to go into you know, exciting, right.

Ryan Klausner: yeah. And too many companies I still think are viewing satisfactory as exceptional.

Ben Foden: Right, right. Yeah. We, we aren't making their life terrible,

Ryan Klausner: right? No, but what they're seeing as as exceptional is really just baseline. It's not

Ben Foden: right?

Ryan Klausner: above and beyond. They're like, we've achieved baseline, great, but they're seeing that as exceptional and it may have become, 'cause they have a history of being far below what that is.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: I think that's where we're seeing the difference, especially across very competitive industries where there's maybe not that much differentiation between products and it is based on service. So even though you might be purchasing a product whether that's a [00:36:00] digital product or a physical product. The, the service and team is, is really one of the only unique competitive advantages that an organization may have, and they're not thinking about it in those, sort of, those both within that as a constraint and as, as a real competitive driver for them as organization.

Ben Foden: Yeah. And I That's such a good point. You make it, it, it becomes a real differentiator especially in the world where, you know, AI can kind of build more things than ever before, faster than ever possible. But if you could actually be more. If you can, if you can narrow the gap between what the business is doing and what a kind of ideal state is for customer, right?

Ben Foden: You can, you can respond and sort of react as a business. Like you can update product, you can update, you know, experiences, you can update, you know, sort of content. You can update all of this. In, in almost in real time to customer demand and customer [00:37:00] needs as opposed to like, here is our business and you know, customers are over here, you know, kind of changing all the time and we're, we're just sticking with what we do.

Ben Foden: Right. And I think organizations that move closer to, to, you know, sort of doing that dance with the customer are gonna be obviously rewarded for that. And it's gonna show, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna reap dividends. There's gonna be tons of rewards for that. And it's, it's a big opportunity and I keep coming back to this idea that like, CX is evolving beyond Oh, oh, yeah.

Ben Foden: Answering tickets and it, it, it's starting to, to have this central facility, this central position in a, in a modern organization. It's really forward thinking. Because if you're not re, if you're not, I'm using the word reacting here, but if you're not reacting to the customer, if you're not doing that dance, you know, sort of following the customer's every move, then you're inevitably.

Ben Foden: You know, not satisfying them or not exciting them as much as you could be. And so, you know, starting with maybe with VOC, right?

Ryan Klausner: I think we often focus on customer satisfaction. [00:38:00] Satisfying is baseline.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: We wanna ensure customers are satisfied. Sure, but that's just meeting expectations.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: No one's raving about companies that met expectations. They're

Ben Foden: Right. Yeah.

Ryan Klausner: haven't. The ones that met expectations, they're just leaving saying, I got what I paid for.

Ryan Klausner: This

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: what I thought it would be.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: creating. We talked about, you know, what's customer delight? What's customer happiness? Regardless of what sector you're in, you have to understand how we can go above and beyond, and it's in those trust building moments When things go wrong, how easy do we make it?

Ryan Klausner: To get it right.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: is, I think, what those real opportunities that we have to go above and beyond outside of core platform offerings.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: because yes, hopefully things don't go wrong all the time, but if a customer stays with you long enough, it's inevitable, it will. And that's the opportunity. When they're sitting with friends at dinner, that's gonna talk about is when something went wrong and suddenly how easy it was, or why are they gonna talk

Ben Foden: Yeah.

Ryan Klausner: because it's not normal.

Ryan Klausner: Most businesses don't make it easy.

Ben Foden: Right. [00:39:00] Yeah. And, and I've heard, you know, I've, you know, countless times I've heard countless stories from friends and family. About, you know, good and bad being the defining factors in why they are fans or not fans of a certain brand. Right? And, and you know, we've heard the bad experiences, like this terrible thing happened with whatever company.

Ben Foden: I'm never using them again, right? We've all heard these kinds of stories. And then the other side as well, it's like, oh, they went out of their way and they didn't have to do this. And then they really made me feel valued and I'll always buy from them. Right. And so it can really be a pivotal thing. And if you, if you stack up those, you know, I will always buy from them, you know, experiences.

Ben Foden: Then of course, you know, you've, you've, you've got a differentiator for your business. You've got long-term value. All those things are unlocked.

Ryan Klausner: Yeah, and I mean, I think, and that holds true whether you're a. Running a customer experience, success or support function at a SaaS [00:40:00] organization, SaaS brand, or you're in CPG in a direct to consumer space

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: true. How easy do you make it when something goes wrong to solve it for a customer?

Ryan Klausner: How willing are you? go to bat for that customer.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: are you really trying to earn their business? And, and also not have them be aware of how much you're working for them because, you know, it's nothing worse than having, I'm really trying to work to get this done for you. They don't care. Just get it done.

Ryan Klausner: Make it easy. Get to that

Ben Foden: Right,

Ryan Klausner: It

Ben Foden: right.

Ryan Klausner: hard you have to work, that the fact you had to hard work hard actually just tells the customer, the organization doesn't care as much as this one individual does.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: really about making sure that it's repeatable and replicable across, you know, there's nothing worse than, you know, you had one good person that you dealt with at a business, but the next person you deal with you feel is incompetent.

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: doesn't, that is still further erodes the trust that might've been built up on that first call. That it's all about how you can scale it, how it can be repeatable. And it doesn't matter who they're interacting with within your [00:41:00] organization, they're gonna get the same result. It's the

Ben Foden: Yeah,

Ryan Klausner: is key.

Ben Foden: absolutely. Consistency is key and, and just, you know, following through on what is promised from the beginning. I wanted to get your thought on one thing here before we wrap up the episode. You know, I've, you know, I'm kind of very excited about the future of, of AI in cx. I'm very excited about the future of CX as a function, sort of leveraging AI and sort of evolving into this, this more central and respected and sort of.

Ben Foden: Powerful driver of business results. But one of the, the very important pieces that I think there's growing awareness of is this knowledge management component, right? And this role of cx, this role of support as sort of owning knowledge management. Of course, starting from the customer, which is what every business should be, you know, centered on.

Ben Foden: And then sort of having that, the knowledge layer, which is informed by those customer interactions. And then using that, of course, it's, it's what the AI is pulling from, [00:42:00] right? So it's gonna be the quality of your ai, it's gonna be the quality of your knowledge management, but also like just this function of knowledge management being more central to CX and being more of a.

Ben Foden: Of a respected, valued kind of piece. How do you think about knowledge management, knowledge bases, and sort of where that's going?

Ryan Klausner: Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's, there's multiple components. So there's the, the internal data that we're feeding to our organization, you know, traditionally called Voice of Customer. I don't love. The traditional voice of customer program because it's like, here's our findings, here's our quarterly report, or here's our monthly report, and it's a little too curated.

Ben Foden: Hmm.

Ryan Klausner: and it often hides some of the, the missing pieces. I think the best. Work that's coming from CX functions that's really feeding the organization cross-functionally is coming from real time dashboards, looking at customer sentiment, looking at areas of friction, whether it's for a specific campaign, a product launch, let's look at things in real time and

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: are [00:43:00] going, and then you can pull reports but make it self-service. Train the team to get the data they're looking for. 'cause it doesn't matter what you present. How is that relevant now for the next sprint that your, your digital product team's working on? How is it relevant that's behind us? How is this moving forward? Yeah. You might be able to extract a piece here, a piece there, but giving them real time access to reports and dashboards, that's where the gold is really found.

Ben Foden: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: point internally, CX can be the gatekeeper of a lot of internal knowledge resources. I've been very fortunate in my career to be able to build out dedicated CX operations team and, and knowledge and education teams, both for training and managing the, the information, because of course, if this is feeding to your. AI platforms and pulling tools pulling information to your tools, both internally and externally. It's only as good as the quality of data that is coming to it, so to make sure that it's both accurate and especially in fast growing organizations. That's not an easy task, is what was re [00:44:00] ready and, and, and, and true last week. Might not be the case this week. So how do you make sure that the team stays across that and updated, but also what's the value in it not being so really understanding, you know, your numbers and the cost to serve customers as well as to the cost of the organization, but not just in terms of in a. Sort of ticketed reactive approach. What's the cost to serve customers over an entire customer lifecycle? What is the reason they're churning when they churn? What are the impacts or interactions they have with the team before they do, do they have any interactions before they do? And building out that narrative to really understand the customer journey and the customer journey.

Ryan Klausner: Plant mapping is all too often outsourced to marketing teams, which. fine if you're looking at it through a marketing lens, but marketing and, and, and, and growth is really just one very sort of small lens that you're shining that flashlight onto when you're missing [00:45:00] the, the rest of the landscape.

Ryan Klausner: And, and that's where CX really can come in. And should be owning that. So even if we're not being asked for it, we should be presenting it and sharing it, and also talking about why that's relevant and that's how we also get the budget that we need to do some of these initiatives. 'cause a lot of what we're talking about here, which is knowledge management as it pertains to AI, often. Flawed because we don't have the budget to do things. We might get a budget for a platform, but then we don't have a budget to actually have the professional services to ensure that it's truly successful and, and the value both internally and externally that we wanted it to have. And don't listen to the vendors.

Ryan Klausner: They're all trying to sell you a platform, but most, most may, most AI vendors are underselling the professional services required to really make it. A valuable tool that you'll continue on year over year.

Ben Foden: Absolutely. Well said. And I, I think that there's, you know. You think of like the, the cost of buying a tool as, think of it as like an [00:46:00] iceberg. There's like the visible, you know, contract price above the water, and then there's all that under the water of like, oh yeah, you have to, by the way, you need an expert for this, and by the way, it's not gonna be optimized otherwise.

Ryan Klausner: Days from purchase before you'll be able even be able to roll it out. Why? Why these these vendors are offering 12 month contracts and not saying, Hey, we know it's gonna take 60 days for this to go live.

Ben Foden: mm-hmm.

Ryan Klausner: charge you for your first 12 months on an annual agreement, but we're actually gonna give you 14 months.

Ryan Klausner: 'cause we know you're not gonna see value. Why are we paying? And then they're wanting to have. Renewal conversations halfway into the contract, but you have only had four months of usage, so you're

Ben Foden: Right.

Ryan Klausner: really go there. So I think, you know, it's a bit of a, a chicken and egg problem when it comes to finding value in these platforms.

Ryan Klausner: And the vendors obviously trying to meet their targets to get their next round of funding, but it's, they're missing the, in fact, they're often creating these customer platforms with ai, but they're missing the, the customer experience of their own clients in the process.

Ben Foden: That's a good point. I wanna wrap up the [00:47:00] episode here. You've been listening to Ryan Klausner, everybody. That's K-L-A-U-S-N-E-R. Find him on LinkedIn. Hire him before your competitors do because he's obviously a light in the space. And really knows what he's talking about here, where all this stuff is going in the future.

Ben Foden: Ryan, it's been a pleasure and this has been the CX Files podcast. We will see you next time. Bye.