Why Your CFO Ignores Your NPS Score with Sue Duris | CX Heroes #53

Learn in this episode:

• Why your team gets looked at as a cost center, and how to grow beyond that framing
• How presenting the same metrics in a new way drives action from the CFO, COO, or CRO
• Why you should never send an NPS survey right after a support ticket
• How to build internal trust from the bottom up before you pitch the executive suite
• Why the buyer moving upstream to the CFO is good news for CX leaders
  
  Sue Duris, MBA, CCXP, is founder and principal consultant at M4 Communications, a CX business transformation and marketing strategy consultancy. Across a 30-plus year career she has built CX programs from the ground up in telecom at WorldCom and professional services at Resources Global Professionals, and served as head of stakeholder experience at the Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-backed responsible investment body, where she built a signatory experience program in the ESG space. She has been quoted in Forbes, The Times, and The Sun, and writes for CX Network.
  
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Transcript

CX Heroes 54 - Sue Duris

Sue Duris: [00:00:00] a lot of people have been upset with NPS, and that's because they've pushed the envelope on NPS and m- and trying to get NPS to do what it shouldn't be doing.

Sue Duris: For instance, a good example is making NPS a transactional metric. It infuriates me still when I call in or call in or email in a service problem, and I think it's resolved, and what is the survey that I get back? An NPS survey.

Ben: Hmm

Sue Duris: shouldn't be done at that time. An effort, a customer effort survey is, is a transactional means because they wanna know, we wanna know how, how easy was it to do business?

Sue Duris: Did, do you resolve [00:01:00] my request or, or my issue? And things of that nature. But NPS is not a transactional metric. It's a relational metric, and it's all about the relationship over time. And you should d- you should take the score annually. Um, biannually would be preferred. Some, some organizations do it quarterly, but...

Sue Duris: And this is where the problem is. You're exec, let's say the CFO, and you want a, let's say you want Qualtrics And you want the funding to get Qualtrics in, in the organization. And you say, "Our customer experience is doing great. Look at our, our NPS went up 30 points." What is the [00:02:00] CFO supposed to do with that information?

Sue Duris: Nothing. 

Ben: Hello and welcome to CX Heroes. Today's guest is Sue Durais. has an MBA, CCXP, and is founder and principal consultant at M4 Communications, a CX business transformation and marketing strategy consultancy. Across a 30-plus year career, she's built CX programs from the ground up in telecom for WorldCom, professional services for Resources Global Professionals, and is head of stakeholder experience for the Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-backed responsible investment body where she's built a signatory experience program in the ESG space.

Ben: She's been quoted in f- in Forbes magazine, The Times, and The Sun newspapers. Sue, thanks for joining.

Sue Duris: Well, thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to it

Ben: Me too. So you've spent years in [00:03:00] telecom and professional services before CX became your full-time focus. You eventually landed at, uh, this, this ESG, uh, op- me, th- th- this ESG world in, related to the UN. What, what pulled you out of marketing and into CX?

Sue Duris: Well, I've always been interested in the post-purchase side. You know, you have the acquisition and the renewal side. And I started my c- career in finance, then moved to product marketing and management, and then, corporate marketing. And, that's always been something that, that side of the house, the growth, how do we build products and build relationships with, with our customers so that we're driving, customer lifetime value, greater lifetime value, [00:04:00] and they're, they're sticking with us.

Sue Duris: So I've always been interested in that side of the house. So I pivoted a little bit from my marketing consulting into content. I think that content is very important and, and extremely important in, in the CX space, more so than others might think because I always feel that content is kind of that engine that takes you on the journey.

Sue Duris: The journey, the customer journey is the train track, and that content, if it's resonating wi- with, with a prospect, that's how you get them in the door. And then content and relationship development helps build trust so they trust you enough to wanna sign on the dotted [00:05:00] line and hopefully stay with you.

Sue Duris: And ultimately, I think the ultimate goal for all, all customers is to make them an advocate, to help you sell, and beli- believing so much in, in your organization that they wanna stick with you on the journey

Ben: Right. Right. And something about, something about making customers into advocates is, is exciting to you

Sue Duris: Yeah, it, yes, exactly. And then from content, I pivoted into customer experience. It was kind of like coming, coming back home in a way because, I'm dating myself now, but back when solution selling was a term, that was, I think, near- the nearest to customer experience at the time because you're, you're working with a customer to help them find a solution to a problem [00:06:00] that they have.

Sue Duris: It wasn't customer experience at the time. Customer experience, I mean, if you wanna date, date it back, has, has its roots way back when. Um, but when I, I started getting involved in solution selling and helping those, those sales teams and things of that nature, that, that really drove it for me, that I w- I was always very much c- in being cust- I'm very much, customer, customer obsessed.

Sue Duris: Excuse me for flubbing that part. Um, and I've always been interested in what their job to be done is and how we can help them meet those objectives and meet those outcomes so that they are successful.

Ben: Right

Sue Duris: that, that's what's always been the driver for me

Ben: [00:07:00] Yeah. I, I think there's something that feels very good about that, isn't there? I mean, you know, selling is sort of like, you know, getting to success for the organization, right? Getting to success for the company. but, but sort of solution selling or customer experience or customer success is about, know, getting to success for the customer, right? it feels good, to, you know, to help people, right? In the way that they wanna be helped

Sue Duris: Oh, absolutely. I, I love the advisory piece. If I can share some, some knowledge with the customer that the light bulb goes on. Yes, you, you get, you, you get what I need, and oh, this all makes sense. Sim- similarly with not only being an advisor to the customer, [00:08:00] but my internal customer i- is the C-suite, is

Sue Duris: are those functional leaders. So because a- as a customer experience professional, practitioner, I view my role as being the customer voice inside the organization. But I have to also sell my team, the organization on this is what the customer i- is saying, and this is how it helps you if we can fix the customer's problem.

Sue Duris: And, and that's

Ben: to the organization

Sue Duris: and that's typically protecting revenue, increasing revenue, reducing cost to serve, mitigating risk, operational excellence. So [00:09:00] when ... And I think that's the issue that we're in right now in the customer experience space. I've always been, in how I conducted my teams that I've been on and, and, and all the, all the programs that I've built, is the customer experience pieces to help the, the customer, that- that's good.

Sue Duris: That- that- that's the starting point. But what does the future hold? And that's increased growth,

Ben: Right.

Sue Duris: um, better profitability,

Ben: Mm-hmm

Sue Duris: um, redu- reduced cost, all, all the, all those things. The operationalizing of CX kind of, I, you know, I, I don't w- I don't wanna say this, but it, it kind of has taken a backseat to [00:10:00] Um, what I wanna say here is taking a back seat to analyzing and reporting.

Sue Duris: And many customer experience teams tend to stop there. But now with AI and its speed, its scale, it's exposing all the issues that, that organizations have, and it's not enough. It is just not enough for a customer experience team to analyze and report. It, it, now it's analyze, report, act, because the C-suite are, are looking for- What, what are the financial impacts?

Sue Duris: What is customer experience doing to drive impact? And that's why I, I talk a lot about customer experience teams [00:11:00] has, have some wonderful activities, but until you can translate those into the language that a chief operating officer, chief revenue officer, a chief financial officer can understand, and in essence, you're helping them to change those decisions so that you're looking at things that will help the customer.

Ben: Right. Alignment,

Sue Duris: Exactly

Ben: comes to mind. I, I think, um, there's, there's so many organizations out there that start with the best of intentions, but somewhere along the line, those priorities become misaligned, with the intention. And, I think we understand, you know, broadly that, you know, better customer experience equals better business, does it actually connect, right? It's a great question. I, I wanna get into that a little bit more, um, in [00:12:00] this episode. you know, the starting point here, um, we're sort of going, going back i- into history, i- is there a specific decision earlier in your career that it maybe didn't go the way you hoped or didn't have the result you hoped for? And how did you... What did you learn from that, or how did you overcome that?

Sue Duris: Well, I think It's interesting that you bring, bring up alignment, and it is very important, , that alignment piece because I'm thinking of a particular role I was in. I was a chief marketing officer a, a number of years back and, um, for a startup. And, bring- I was doing the marketing piece. Everybody understood what marketing was and, and its role and how it basically drives the business or helps drives- drive the [00:13:00] business, but we also brought in customer experience.

Sue Duris: And I think taking time to educate teams on what is customer experience, and at- back at that time, customer experience was fairly new. Um, what is customer experience? What, what value does it hold? Why should I care about it? So, you know, what is it? Why is it important? And what's in it for me? Ba- basically those three questions.

Sue Duris: And I think at that particular time, if I would've spent more time aligning the teams to our goal that of customer experience and why it was important and, and why making sure that the customer's needs were being [00:14:00] met and not building things from the inside out, but taking their input to make our product better actually got to our goals quicker than creating, create- creating a product and then chasing customers with that product.

Sue Duris: It, it, it was much, it's much quicker doing an outside in focus to get to your goals, which is growth and, and increased revenue and things of that nature

Ben: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, uh, start from the goal and work backwards, right? Um, i- is sort of the, the saying, and it's, you know, it's, it's a popular saying for good reason 'cause if you plan from the goal, then you're more likely to reach it, of course. Um, a, there's a word for this in Japanese, which I learned, which is actually [00:15:00] gyakusan, but it basically just means reverse accounting.

Ben: It's the same idea of, you know, working backwards from the goal to make the plan. Um,

Sue Duris: Or Stephen Covey too, begin with the end in mind

Ben: Right. Right, right. Yeah. Um, but I, I think that the, the... Again, it's, it- even if you have that mentality going into it, it, it's sort of, it's all the, the, the struggles and challenges along the way of achieving that, you know, that intention that you had in the beginning. I wanted to, I wanted to, to hear from you, if you could walk me through a time that you helped build out a, a CX program that was successful, and what, what were some of the elements of that program that stood out as most impactful? And when those, And how did that fit into this idea of, like, starting from the goal, um, whether that's, your goal or, or, you know, the goal that's maybe passed down to you? But, how do you think about that, and, and how does it, how did, how did you sort of put those right pieces [00:16:00] in place, you know, to make the impact and, and reach that goal?

Sue Duris: Well, my, my first focus, and I know when a- anyone comes into a new job or a new consulting engagement, you know, you wanna hit the round- ground running and have that first win as quickly as possible. But I view back- backing up to speed up are very, very important. And so whenever I go into these things, I like to get a lay of the land and, where's the data?

Sue Duris: Um, what's the CX stack look like? Are there things that they've already done so you're not reinventing the wheel? So that was the first thing. I, I looked, I look at, at, at gaps. I just want to, to research what, what's [00:17:00] there at present. The second thing that I like to do is, and I, and I've done, is have meetings, introductory meetings with key stakeholders for a number of reasons.

Sue Duris: First, to find out how they fit in the, in the organizational big picture, finding out what their issues are, and introducing myself and explaining what I, what I do. That, that gives me a, a beginning list. If there's not a list of what are the issues, um, sometimes starting internal is the best place.

Ben: Right.

Sue Duris: and, what I found in, matter of fact, my last, my last build at the PRI, that a lot of teams that I spoke with, they didn't have a person to go to for, [00:18:00] "Hey, I have this issue.

Sue Duris: Who can help us with the issue?" That was one of the big insights that I found, and it served me later because as a customer experience practitioner- Or a leader, regardless, we're bu- we're trying to build influence and build trust. And many times that's not only taking, translating what we're doing to, to the C-suite, to the, to the executive leadership and putting a number on it, it's also working with the functional groups.

Sue Duris: And what I was able to do is start small. I fixed a couple of issues for a couple of teams. They remembered that. They came back to me for, for more issues. Other teams saw that, so [00:19:00] that there's a snowball effect here. You're buil- and this is how you build influence and trust from the bottom up. So that, that was kind of the second thing that I did.

Sue Duris: The third thing that I did is I wanted to look at the touch points that, that were happening currently on, on, on the journey. And I discovered that there were, like, over 50 touch points on this particular, particular engagement. And what's important to, to look at is should those touch points actually be listening posts?

Sue Duris: Or ... And it, and, and you, you really have to align that with is there an owner? Is there an owner for that particular touch point? If there's not an owner, then you need to determine is it, is it important enough to, to still be a [00:20:00] touch point or, um, and if so, who's gonna own it? Or maybe it's not a, maybe it's not a touch point.

Sue Duris: And also identifying touch points that weren't included. So look, looking at that piece because then that help, that helps me determine, okay, what, what's the journey? What ... Put it- putting a journey together and then looking at the journey and, and seeing where, where those gaps could be Then one of the, the other things that I've done is totally overhauling the voice of the customer program.

Sue Duris: In the PRI one, that's, that's exactly what we did. Um, there, I put in data on where, where is our customer growth, where... What [00:21:00] is happening if it... What, what, what's changing the number from, from quarter to quarter? And, and finding out specifics. What, what are the root causes of those changes? Looking at the different markets, and at the time we had, we had 20 markets.

Sue Duris: So looking, looking to see what's the sentiment? What, what's the engagement level? Is it, is it a retention? Is it, is it a, is it a growth market? All those little pieces sounds like a lot, but putting it together helped me to be able to come up with some solid recommendations that not only the executive leadership, but the board, the board praised.

Sue Duris: And I also, because I believe in Inclusivity and letting employees know what's [00:22:00] going on. I published those voice of the customer reports, and I actually had teams come to me, "Oh, that, that is really interesting. I didn't know that that was happening. I, I have this particular issue. Maybe if I, if I took some of the recommendations that you have in your report here, that might help us."

Sue Duris: So it was opening the doors, doors to a lot of possibility

Ben: Yeah, I mean, there's so many good, good points in there. One of the things you were saying earlier, that really stood out to me was, okay, you've mapped the customer journey, okay, you've got these 50 touchpoints, but then asking the question, which one of these should be... Which of these should be listening posts? Which of these are we actually listening to customers or not? Where should we be listening? And then who's actually responsible for the result of that, right? What, once we pick something up, who's act- who does it actually... How does it map back into the organization actually taking action? [00:23:00] Um, and that, that is sort of what you're getting to here at the end of your response as well is once you publish this VOC, there's people who said, "Oh, I didn't know that.

Ben: Now I can, now I can improve what I'm doing to help the customer more." I, I think that, that, that sort of checking where you should be listening, and then once you're listening, checking what action should be taken based on that, right? That's, like, a really concrete thing that I think, um, it... You just, you, you summed it up very succinctly, and I

Sue Duris: But that was just the reporting piece. That, I wanna be true to, to my message, um, that was just the reporting piece. We also built, through Salesforce, a, a closed loop system. It w- it was, it was our looping mechanism. So employees or customers could have access to, to this, to this frame, th- this framework.

Sue Duris: They could, put, put in a request, "This is what's happening. I, [00:24:00] I have this particular issue." And we'd look at it, we'd triage it, whether it was an inner loop or an outer loop type, type of scenario, and pri- prioritize, prioritize things. And, you know, the in- the inner loop piece was, you know, pretty easy that, that one person could probably resolve that.

Sue Duris: But it wasn't just inputting the issue, it was also managing it. What, was it picked up? What, who was the team involved? Were they doing anything wi- with it? What was the status? Was it moving along? So it was our, our eyes on it to make sure that it was being managed, and if we, where we needed to get involved.

Sue Duris: Because as, as you know, too many times when you say, "Okay, here, here's an [00:25:00] issue, another team owns this," we go to the team who, who owns it and, and say, "This is a fix that needs to occur." Chances are good it's not gonna happen, it's just gonna sit there. That's where getting functional, creating a functional team, getting people in the same room to understand what are the priorities, "Okay, these are our top five things.

Sue Duris: How are we gonna take action?"

Ben: Right. I,

Sue Duris: that's what drove continuous improvement

Ben: Yeah. If you have a pile of, of, improvement opportunities, that's not very useful. But if you have top five priorities, that's quite useful, right?

Sue Duris: Absolutely. And it, and it wasn't, 

Sue Duris: it it, wasn't ... You gotta look at, a lot of teams are looking, "Okay, what's a, what's a CX stack? Well, I need to have Qualtrics in there. I need to have Medallia in there. I need Salesforce in there. I need the, these [00:26:00] pieces to, to fill in the gaps." Look, it, it all starts with jobs to be done.

Sue Duris: I hate to be glib about it, but what is the cl- customer job to be done? And go from there. Circling back to b- to beginning with the end in mind, and what is, what are they, what are the outcomes that they are trying to achieve?

Ben: Right. Yeah, it harps... It, it, it bears repeating, right? It, it's good to harp on these things. It's good to, to remind, um, ourselves these things. I think that the fundamentals should be 80% of the work, right? It's about getting those fundamental pieces and that fundamental thought in you know, and remembering sort of why are we doing this, right?

Ben: Who are we doing this for? What are they trying to get done? and needs to be repeated so that it stays front, front and center. [00:27:00] I, I think you've explained a, a sort of a frame or a thought process for that and the example was clear as well. Um, moving on, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you about NPS there's been arguments made about NPS. Gartner Research projected that more than 75% of organizations would abandon NPS by 2025. We're in 2026 now, and NPS is still, uh, quite relevant. You made a tr- a trend prediction for 2026 actually, that, that customer trust is at an inflection point, right? And we've seen various, um, research... I'm sorry I don't have any sources for this right now, but there's various research that's been done about customer trust, and it's, it, it is at a, a low point. perception of customer experience is low, um, historically low, and, you know, trust in businesses is, I believe, historically low as well, and I mean, my personal experience at least anecdotally, this checks out. I am very distrustful, and very [00:28:00] skeptical. Do you think that NPS is still a good proxy for customer trust or, or not, and why?

Sue Duris: NPS in a vacuum on its own, I don't think serves much purpose. I don't think any metric does. You know, you, you hear people talk about foundational metrics 

Sue Duris: and that, and that's great. What, what is your foundational metric? But it's all ... It's always built on other things like NPS, like CSAT, like your effort score, um, di- different things.

Sue Duris: So taking a look at the entire picture gives you a sense of where you are, but it's not just looking at the data, it's looking at what's behaviors, what are, are the outcomes? Does the data align with [00:29:00] the outcomes taken? For instance, are renew- are strong CSAT, NPS effort score driving renewals? And is it driving, maybe if you have an advocacy program, more, more customers maybe, or, or even a reference program.

Sue Duris: Are, are more, are more customers be- wanting to do case studies? Are they wanting to refer? Are they wanting to advocate? That, that's where, where you look at that and it's, it's a number of different pieces. It's the behaviors, it's the data, it's, it's, it's the surveys, it's, it's your employees. What, what are your employees saying so that you have a q- a qualitative, quantitative Picture of 

Sue Duris: where, where, things are.[00:30:00]

Sue Duris: NPS is part of that, but I think with NPS, I would say that I'm one of the believers in NPS to a point, and that is my, my whole feeling, position has been that a lot of people have been upset with NPS, and that's because they've pushed the envelope on NPS and m- and trying to get NPS to do what it shouldn't be doing.

Sue Duris: For instance, a good example is making NPS a transactional metric. It infuriates me still when I call in or call in or email in a service problem, and I think it's resolved, and what is the survey that I get back? [00:31:00] An NPS survey.

Ben: Hmm

Sue Duris: shouldn't be done at that time. An effort, a customer effort survey is, is a transactional means because they wanna know, we wanna know how, how easy was it to do business?

Sue Duris: Did, do you resolve my request or, or my issue? And things of that nature. But NPS is not a transactional metric. It's a relational metric, and it's all about the relationship over time. And you should d- you should take the score annually. Um, biannually would be preferred. Some, some organizations do it quarterly, but...

Sue Duris: And this is where the problem is. If you go to- You're exec, [00:32:00] let's say the CFO, and you want a, let's say you want Qualtrics And you want the funding to get Qualtrics in, in the organization. And you say, "Our customer experience is doing great. Look at our, our NPS went up 30 points." What is the CFO supposed to do with that information?

Sue Duris: Nothing.

Ben: 嗯，

Sue Duris: And that, that's where the stalls happen, because we're not aligning to what the executive needs. But if the NPS score, that those 30 points resulted in, "We have an NPS score of 30 points, and that, and that translates into X dollars [00:33:00] because we were able to fix our content issue happening in an onboarding.

Sue Duris: People were getting confused, they dropped out of onboarding, they weren't active with the product. And so when renewal, renewals came, we saw a drop in renewal. But because we fixed the content, they completed their onboarding, and they renewed. We, we got this, this much renewal money, and it's reflective in our NPS score."

Sue Duris: That gives them information that they can use to make, make a decision. "Oh, they brought in an extra," whatever, "5 million, $5 million for renewal because of what they did." That builds, that builds the credibility points with the execs

Ben: [00:34:00] Yeah. Um, I, I think that that's a great, a great way to describe it, and I, I think of the difference between talk versus action, Uh, I think of, you know, NPS is sort of, you know, you think of questions like, you know, would you recommend this product to a friend or a colleague? Something like that. And, and that's, that's a, a talking point, and maybe somebody will say, "Yeah, I would totally do that." But then what is the action that actually happened, right? Did they, refer somebody? Whether y- if you, you know, hopefully have a mechanism to track a referral. Did they volunteer or agree to be part of a case study, right? Have they taken some NPS re- uh, have they taken some action in, in the, in the space of actual promotion, right? versus, you know, just responding positively to a survey. But I think that that's a a really good way to sort of dig in a little deeper. And obviously, if there's a specific action that has taken place that you can quantify, like [00:35:00] this many referrals happened or, um, this many... you know, this is our rate of, of getting case studies per, per customer or whatever, um, then that's, that's much closer to the revenue number and the dollar signs and, and you know, you can, you can connect those dots and then, you know, and then you have the influence inside the organization, right?

Sue Duris: It's all about measurable impact, how we can align what we're doing to what the deci- decision makers need,

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Sue Duris: change those decisions. That, that's a big piece right now, that's happening. Um, look, just look at Qualtrics. Qualtrics is moving into more decision intelligence, where it's not enough to purchase a seat, and ha- be able to use the software.

Sue Duris: Okay, the customers now [00:36:00] wanna know, what is this software helping me do? What is the impact that it's delivered? And that's where really laser, laser focusing in how those decisions are, are being made, what are the inputs to those decisions

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I think, um, you know, there, there's a theme here that I'm picking up on, which is, you know, connecting back to action, um, connecting back to decision. Um, you know, what, what is the, the outcome or the impact of listening to customers, of recording NPS? What i- what is the outcome or impact of that?

Ben: And it's, it comes down to a- you know, decisions that are made in the organization and the actions that are taken, whether by, by the organization or by the customer. I think there's a rising awareness of this, and there's a rising demand for this across the CX space. and, you know, some vendors are moving ahead.

Ben: [00:37:00] I think, uh, you know, Qualtrics is definitely moving in the right direction. the... At the same time, there's this conversation about, the cost center framing, um, the cost focus, the historical, model, where, you know, it is reactive. We, we have a problem coming in, and we solve it. And it's moving towards this proactive model, and that's where we can talk about the actions and the decisions.

Ben: But, what do you think are some of the key challenges in actually effecting that change in an organization and actually getting the reactive stance to a proactive stance?

Sue Duris: I think a lot of it is in organizational design, and how things were set up. I don't wanna belabor the history of how, how we got to where we are, but, I, I view it as [00:38:00] We were building products, just take, take product development. We were building products that we thought internally would work for customers, but that's not the right way to do it.

Sue Duris: It's looking at what are the customer needs and filling that need with a product. It's an easier, it, it's, it's the faster path to profitability and growth. So I think that Organizations saw, saw the writing on the wall. They saw some, some organizations be successful f- with customer experience. "I need a customer experience team myself," says the CEO.

Sue Duris: It gets, it gets ... It goes in as an add-on. The problem is with that add-on ... And, and it wa- it, it wa- it was great. It was to fill, fill a need. There wa- there was no one really looking at root causes [00:39:00] and, really dealing with, with customers, that, the customer feedback, analyzing, analyzing data, and coming up with insight, and determining those root causes, and putting fixes in place.

Sue Duris: There, there wasn't ... There was a need for that. The problem was that they didn't align it with the other pieces of the organization. So you had customer experience team doing their own activities, doing their own metrics, and then trying to engage others on this,

Ben: Right

Sue Duris: and, and they were really relegated to a, an analyze and reporting function, i.e.

Sue Duris: cost center.

Ben: Right

Sue Duris: it, it looks like a cost. That's why adding [00:40:00] the outcomes piece, the impact, the action piece trans- transitions the team from a cost center to a revenue generator

Ben: Right

Sue Duris: But a lot of that, it is with what, what the teams are, are doing, and it, it's kind of like we stopped, and I'm as guilty as anyone.

Sue Duris: I don't think there is a customer experience person in the business who has not done just that, done the analysis, done the, done the reporting, tried to do take the actions. And, and it's not that we've stopped with, with the reporting. A lot of time to be able to take those actions, customer experience finds the root cause of, of something, it's in a [00:41:00] different team, the op- the ops team.

Sue Duris: We don't have those decision rights to make those decisions. It has to go to somebody else, and without having executive leadership to really push that and champion that along, it stalls. So it's, it's not that customer experience stopped at reporting, it's a lot of times our hands were tied

Ben: Right. Right. And, and we've been talking and alluding to how to, how to untie one's hands, um, so far in this episode, which is of course, you, you, you come back, you connect the impact back to dollars, and you use that to convince your executive. But I, I think, yeah, there's, there's this, um, there's some, there's some data out there about the, the cost of adding new customers versus the cost of retaining existing customers, [00:42:00] and the, the cost performance is much higher, like dramatically higher on the retention side. Um, and I think that that is ultimately a very compelling argument. What do you think about that?

Sue Duris: Oh, I, I absolutely re- agree. I don't remember the last Bain, it, ins- insight data point, which very interestingly enough, the, the creator of NPS, but I believe it costs seven times more to acquire a customer than retain a customer. I was also gonna add that we're also seeing ... I'm a, I'm a big Fan, big believer of transitioning our contact centers from being reactive to proactive.

Sue Duris: And [00:43:00] I think the alignment works especially when the contact center, which in and of itself is a huge touch point, can, can be included into the journey. A lot of times contact centers are, okay, here's the business, and the contact center's out here. So you can't blame them to, to do nothing but react and fix, fix an issue, because that's what that was set up to be.

Sue Duris: But when you include the contact center as a touch point in the overall ways of working, how do we get end to end? There ... It goes from being reactive to proactive, and I'm- I've been a long ... My position is on contact centers that many times the [00:44:00] contact center rep is the first connection a customer has to the brand.

Sue Duris: And, and they ... Customer relationships can be made or broken inside the contact center. So that, that goes to, to leadership making sure that, that the agents are equipped, training the, training and developing the agents, and that's all end to end. That's all alignment with, with the entire organization. And to your point, since you, you so eloquently brought it up earlier, that it all does come down to alignment

Ben: Hmm. Well, I think, alignment is a sort of an ideal state. and, you know, perfect alignment is impossible, but worth striving for. And I, I think that, [00:45:00] that, you know, the- my focus or my interest is what are the challenges that people are really facing towards that goal and how do you unlock those challenges?

Ben: And so I think, you know, I, I, I brought up before this, the difference in incremental cost of retaining a dollar versus gaining a new dollar from a new customer. You, cited, I, I believe Bain & Company had, you know, seven to one on the cost performance there. but people get, you know, just human nature, we get really excited about a new sale, a new customer, and then, maybe we don't appreciate the, the efficiency and the impact that can be made on retaining the existing ones. For people out there, I mean, I think you should, we should be, we should be saying this seven to one ratio in every meeting with an executive. Um, that should be sort of siren call or the, you know, the, um, alarm that's blaring, um, to impact the change, to get over the hurdles, right?

Ben: And, and get to that, get closer to that alignment. are there any other things that you [00:46:00] think people can do, any concrete actions or, or metrics to point to, to, you know, to bring them closer to this proactive contact center, to bring them closer to this, um, relationship building function?

Sue Duris: thing is creating a cross-functional team, a, a CX center of excellence. And that's ... And the CX leader is uniquely positioned to lead the charge, not do the work, but lead the charge because customer experience intersects with so many different functional groups. And, and it all starts ... And it, it's interesting we're, we're having these AI discussions about, about the same, the same thing.[00:47:00]

Sue Duris: What gets ... What happens is when we don't have shared goals amongst the organization, we go off in our, our different silos, and we start doing what we think we need to do based on our agenda. Is that agenda aligned with the overall corporate goals or not? When you don't have shared goals, that's when accountability and ownership starts to not happen, and, and that leads to having, having metrics all over the map.

Sue Duris: So even if customer experience created a m- a metrics dashboard and [00:48:00] met with operations, would they buy into it or not? It ... If those metrics weren't shared, um, and, and, and it was a shared dashboard where somebody could buy into and owner- and take ownership for, it's just not, it's just not going to happen.

Sue Duris: That, that's why I think the key to all, all of this, the organizational design and, and everything, is how does customer experience look at- What the organizational goals are, tie its goals to areas where it can support those goals. One being if a goal is to increase revenues by 25%, [00:49:00] then that should be in customer experience goals to, to help with that.

Sue Duris: I mean,

Ben: Right.

Sue Duris: people can argue and say, "Well, that's not customer's, customer experience's role to, to drive revenue." It's, it's a shared goal.

Ben: Mm-hmm.

Sue Duris: So if there are broken processes where, that are impacting customers, that customer experience is, is overseeing, managing, fixing whatever, then it, then it, it does equate to improvements when we can fix the processes.

Sue Duris: Again,

Ben: Right

Sue Duris: um, again, it comes down to do you have the decisions, the decision rights to make the, [00:50:00] make those decisions? When you can align and start with a shared, a shared goal leading to those shared, shared objectives, shared metrics, shared outcomes, then, then that's how, how it aligns. Just take- taking it into AI right now, it, it's very interesting because Organizations are looking at, at the sexy stuff.

Sue Duris: AI can redu- reduce my cost, it can, do, do all these ama- amazing things. That's great, but do you have a purpose for AI? Um, are your use cases aligned? Are, are, are they shared? Are, are all the important people in the room that need to be in the room to make those decisions? [00:51:00] Otherwise, you could create an AI silo, 

Sue Duris: and and who, who is that helping?

Ben: Yeah, there's, AI is a tool, it's not a result, um, is, is the line, um, I hear and I like to repeat. Um, the, the number of opportunities that are arising because of AI i- is dramatic, um, and it, it's about, you know, it's about alignment, it's about picking your battles and saying, "We're gonna use it to do this, to drive this outcome." Um, I think that there's a lot of... lot in that, and, uh, we're getting towards a longer episode here, but it's just so interesting, and so I wanna keep going a little bit further and ask one more question on, on this AI point, and specifically referencing, you had an article that was recently published i- at cxnetwork.com, um, uh, published just a few weeks ago, and, and you're comparing this [00:52:00] sort of, this moment in CX to, to, to a crisis, or at least people, a lot of people feel about it, feel that it's a crisis or feel that it's in, critical moment here. Um, but you argue that it's actually having its finest hour. Can you expand on that a little bit and, and sort of what's the, what's the positive message here d- despite all the AI gloom and doom that we're hearing?

Sue Duris: Oh, the CX is dead conversation. My view is that And, and I don't know if AI is, is the pushing, put- not pushing us off the cliff, but pushing us in, into some type of, of action. We know that AI is speed at scale. We also know that AI is not resolving ... If you have a broken process, [00:53:00] AI is not just going to suddenly fix it.

Sue Duris: AI is gonna expose that, and probably, if not fixed, hurt, hurt trust even more, and hurt, hurt the brand's reputation that it, that, that it, that it's taken year, years, years to fix. What I see happening is that the buyer is moving upstream, so the buyer now is the CFO, the COO, the CRO, where it, it used to be the, the chief customer officer or VP of CX or who- whoever, whoever that CX leader was.

Sue Duris: It's not diminishing the CX leader, it's actually moving CX close- closer to that operational core where [00:54:00] we will have more opportunities to be in the room to make impacts. But it, it is an effort. It can't just be what we're doing, our, our CX activities. It's what, what is the impact that what we're doing, what, what is it happi- having, having on revenue, on operations, on the finan- finance of the organization?

Sue Duris: But I really believe that our greatest days are ahead of us, and that, that was the, the gist of I think we're, we are in our finest hour, and it can be the finest hour, but that requires CX to evolve

Ben: Right. Right. I mean, there, there's an, there's an, um, a value that we have inside of my organization, which is is a chance. Um, [00:55:00] and I think there is a lot of chaos, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of hype. Um, there's a lot of people who are, honestly I think being a little bit reckless about how they're using AI. but there's, there is a lot of opportunity of course, and the, AI doing what it's doing, at the same time there's this, this increasing awareness and this incre- increasing, move towards the operational core. I love that, that wording that you used. I think that that is the trend, and I think it, it is, uh, a well-aligned trend. It is a trend that improves the customer experience, improves the business. you know, if I can be a little bit aspirational for a moment, I think that kind of makes this a better world to live in overall. You know, commerce and exchange is not going anywhere, whatever, you know, political or economic system you wanna consider, there's always gonna be exchange, and that means [00:56:00] there's always gonna be CX basically. And, and if that exchange, you know, post-exchange, after purchase, post-purchase, you have a, a good experience, well, you know, a lot of our, our life is spent having those experiences, whether it's business to business or business to consumer or whatever. and, and yeah, I mean, this is ... It, it really is an opportunity for, you know, for CX to see its finest hour.

Ben: So I'm, I'm very excited about that, and I, I love the way that you're, you're describing this and thinking about it. we'll link to the article, um, you had on cxnetwork.com for that, and,

Sue Duris: Oh, lovely

Ben: more people can read that and, and, and feel the optimism and feel the opportunity here.

Sue Duris: There's a, there's another byproduct. I was just gonna say something really quick. There is another byproduct here. When the buyer moves upstream, the knowledge doesn't go with it, and that's an opportunity for CX leadership to educate [00:57:00] executive leadership.

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Sue Duris: it's not just... Yes, um, there are the financial impacts.

Sue Duris: There are, there are the measurable impacts, but we do, we do this because it, it's a chain reaction. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, and this, these are the outcomes, and, and we meet our corporate goals

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, connecting the dots, showing the chain of impacts, you know, I'm just imagining in my mind, like, to one, Bob. You know? I'm imagining a scenario where seven to one, just sort of, and here's how we get there, right? Here's the steps in the middle. Um, I, I think if that gets repeated a bit more, it, it should have the, the right impact on, on, on what we're trying to achieve.

Ben: So, Sue, I wanted to ask you one final question here as we close out the episode. Um, are there any books or podcasts or personalities you've been [00:58:00] enjoying recently? You know, what would you recommend, uh, that I check out?

Sue Duris: Well, it might be a little different to what you're thinking, but because I live in the UK, but I'm a US expat who lives in the UK, I've been really enjoying The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. Because you can't do customer experience the way you do in America in, let's say you have a client in Japan, since you mentioned Japan, um, one of my favorite countries, by the way, or, um, or South America, or, or, um, the Middle East.

Sue Duris: So it's, it's... And that- that's, as an American, we have this problem as Americans that we think that we can go wherever and, "Oh, let's go Americanize it." No, you have to learn, learn the culture. [00:59:00] And I'll just bring that back really quickly. I have a framework that I use called the Holy Trinity of Growth, and it's about how do we align culture, employee experience, and customer experience to drive growth?

Sue Duris: And that's what I use in assessing my clients when I, when I enter into engagements

Ben: Culture, employee experience, and customer experience. Aligning those towards growth ultimately all the goals we're trying to achieve. I love it. It's been a pleasure to speak with you, Sue. This has been CX Heroes podcast with Sue Duris, and we will see you next time