Episode 2: When in Doubt, Be Human — How Technology Amplifies Customer Centricity

In this episode of CX Matters, host Bram De Vos sits down with Michel Stevens, one of the most respected voices in customer experience, to explore why culture and behavior matter far more than processes or technology. With over two decades of experience guiding organizations toward stronger customer relationships, Michel shares how real differentiation happens when companies align values, leadership, and frontline behavior.

Together they dive into why technology alone won’t make you customer centric, how culture shapes what people believe is acceptable, and why leaders must intervene in the moment to reinforce the right behaviors. Michel explains the power of storytelling, going to gemba, and uniting operational, perception, and outcome metrics so everyone speaks the same language.

They also discuss the future of CX in an AI-driven world, why “average” is becoming a commodity, and how technology can bring companies back to timeless values like sincerity, clarity, and trust. At the heart of it all is Michel’s guiding principle: when in doubt, be human.

A thoughtful conversation on the foundations of customer centricity and the cultural work required to make it real.

Learn how Hello Customer turns feedback into business improvements: https://www.hellocustomer.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to CX Matters, the podcast where we dive into all matters CX to find out what really makes the difference, what moves the needle, and what makes customers tick. CX Matters is a podcast powered by Hello Customer, the platform that helps organizations turn feedback into real business improvements. My name is Blan de Vos, and I'm your host. And today, my guest is Michelle Stevens. Michelle is one of the most experienced voices in customer experience today. Over the past 20 years, he's helped companies rethink how they build customer relationships, not just through processes and technology, but through culture and behavior. Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Bram. I'm very happy to be here. Couldn't be happier than I am. Really, really pleased that you're with us here. Now, Michelle, you've been you've been talking about customer experience for for quite a while, and I think long before it became the buzzword that it is today. And what I really appreciate in the conversations that you and I have had is that you are really grounded about that topic. You don't romanticize uh in any you know shape or form the whole field. You don't romanticize it. You treat it as a as a tool, as a management tool, as a management field, really, um, and you want it to deliver results. And I think that's that's the right way to approach it. Um So maybe let's start there. Um I know that you talk a lot about a customer-centric culture as being foundational to success. Why is it that important? Why is that more important than talking about processes or or technology or anything of of that nature?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, I think that um in these days uh when we talk about customer centricity or customer experience, um it is really about uh how are we going to differentiate ourselves from uh from others? Um just the other day I was in a conversation with uh with an organization that was deep into B2B, and they said, you know, uh the any other of our competitors, they make the same products as we do, and uh we struggle to make the difference. How do we do that? We cannot do it on the product itself. Of course, there is some innovation in there, and uh you have some more advanced products for sure. Um but apart from that, how do you do that? So you have two other angles that you can have, right? So you can become the cheapest one, uh, which is a sport that many organizations play these days, uh, or you can be the one that is closest to its customers. And as a principle, that works well, uh, but how do you do that? And especially how do you do that in complex environments like a B2B, or how do you do that at scale? For um an organization like the butcher just around the corner, it is quite easy to do because you basically the 50 people that you have as a customer, or 500, I don't know. Um it is easy to remember to who you sold that steak or um that one dish, all right. Um so that's easy. But how do you do that when when you have thousands or or even millions of customers? And that is a thing that I've been uh working on for the last what uh 20 years? And uh yeah, uh that is really the question that I I ask myself. So how do you do that? How do you go beyond the transaction and more towards towards the relationship?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I always think that if you take the example of the butcher as a very very good example, you say he or she could remember the 500 customers that that they normally have, but I would think that solving that problem would be a technological problem. And yet in your writings you always emphasize that it's it's a cultural problem rather more than a technological or a process problem. Why emphasize that so much? Couldn't technologies solve any problem you have in that field?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

I think that technology on its own has little value. It is a lever, it is something that will accelerate whatever is going on, but at the most foundational level, you need to you need to actually take one step back and look at what do customers want from us, right? Um so what do they want? And I don't know about you, but um sometimes I buy things because they're convenient, because they're nearby. But when you come into um in situations where you have to think about why where am I going to buy, I I rather have some uh an organization where I go like, hey, this is uh they treat me well. I'm gonna give you an example. I'm gonna make it real plain simple. This morning I went to a workshop. I had to, yeah, my car had needed maintenance. And um I walked in and I was a little bit early, and I saw that uh there was this uh this reception desk and there was a lady sitting behind it, and she was doing all kinds of important stuff. It was that important that she couldn't pay attention to three people that in the meanwhile had walked in, right? And it was only after five minutes that somebody, really in the back of that office, got up and said, Hey, can I help you? And I was like, it is not that difficult these days to just look up, but you need to want it. Why do people buy a product? It's of course there are there is a functional aspect to it, but there is absolutely also an emotional and a social component to that.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

You've got the want it. That that kind of strikes me because the lady that you described there who is very busy doing all sorts of things but didn't look up, she didn't acknowledge the fact that you were there and maybe some other customers were there. Is that something that is where is that culture? Is that the culture within that person? Or is that the culture of the organization? And how do you tackle it? How do you change it? How do you if you would be the manager of that of that place, how would you fix that?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah. I think that nobody gets up in the morning and uh thinks uh to him or herself, uh I'm gonna do a bad job for the customer. I think I I genuinely I genuinely hope that nobody thinks that way, right? Like I'm gonna mess up with a customer today. I think everybody wants to do right. But there is a system in place where um or a culture, right? Let's go back with what is culture actually. Culture are the things that we do that we take for granted, right? So everything that you see that happens and you see that it yeah, that it that it just happens and nobody reacts to it, then things will happen over time as well. There was this um situation uh many years ago where a um there was a a letter going out to residents of an of a retirement uh home. And um it this was in a very stressful period. It was in a COVID period, so you could yeah, you could imagine that the letter to the to the people, to the elder living in that retirement home, um it was very severe, it was very strict, it was like um there there were things in there like uh you all witnessed the war, so this is much worse, that kind of tone. And uh that's not mentioned the words, that's uh yeah, exactly. Um and everybody was saying, oh, it is an outrage that that person writes something in that letter. And I said, Well, I said, well, take it from her position. She wrote that because of obviously there was a lot of stress involved. It was a high-pressure environment, it was uh days, uh hours maybe even before the lockdown. So there was a lot of uncertainty and there was a lot of pressure on that person who wrote that. That's one thing. But also that she thought that it was okay to write stuff like that. So that meant that her moral compass was compromised in some kind of way. Uh and that is most likely also a result of a culture of where it was acceptable to talk about these things in a uh in a retirement home context. Uh so things happen because we allow them to happen over time. Um so if there is uh anybody who is uh not really focused on a customer, and these can be small things, right? Of course. Um then yeah, you need to act as a leader and you need to take action and you need to rectify it right there because otherwise people are going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

In the moment, you've got to intervene as you see it happen, as you see it unfold?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

That is one of the roles of a leader. It is actually to rectify whatever uh you believe is is not right. And of course you need alignment within the organization, right? You need to align what is customer-centric. What does that mean for us, right? And what kind of behavior do we want to see? What do kind of behavior do we want to encourage? And uh, once that is in place, when you once you have normality in place, then you can actually talk about okay, so how are we going to refine uh processes and are we going to use technology to do that?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Um, it's more as as as levers or as enablers or as as facilitators, catalysts if you like. But but and have you seen in in in your expertise, because you've you've worked with so many teams over the years, have you seen people actually take that in, internalize that kind of because you you you talk about a culture as being the things that we take for granted. Changing that in somebody's head is not a small thing. Have you seen that happen? Have you been surprised by the ability of people to internalize that, to take that into themselves?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Absolutely. I think that the most important thing there is that you have as a leadership, that you have a very good story, right? So uh a lot of people talk about strategy. Um, and of course, strategy is a placeholder for we're going from A and we're going to we're we're now at A and we're going to B, right? I like to think of them as stories. So how are we going to go from A to B, right? What are we going to do and why do we need to do that? That is one thing. And then another thing is that, and this is something that uh a good friend of mine uh just uh talked about, and he's he wrote a book about it actually, um, is that it not only do you need a story, but you also need some resonance. It needs to resonate with the person that you're telling the story to on a deeper level. It needs to be something where people go like, oh yeah, I can get behind that, right? I don't know about you, but I I am genuinely not excited about the next AI strategy. Oh, we're gonna do an AI strategy. Fantastic. Wow, that's great. Congratulations on that. I don't know what it means, I don't know what it's what's in it for me. Uh I don't get that. So I will unlikely that I will get behind it. And a lot of things happen in the same way. There is this new strategy. Oh, strategy 2030, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we get it. So, but what does that mean? How does that resonate with me on a personal level? How does that align with my moral compass as well? How does that align with what I'm seeing around me as well, right? And once those things are in place, that's when you actually need to make sure as a leadership that people can in uh can actually absorb it and do their thing. So out of the way.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Your method, if I if I may call it that, is you give stories or you find stories, you you crystallize stories as a means to get a vision about the future culture across. Absolutely. 100%. I think it's it's one of the oldest methods in the book, isn't it? I mean, it's what makes us people is is the storytelling. But I can imagine it's not that easy to do. How do you find these stories? Is that by observation? Is it is it anecdotal, literally, like like you were saying, you were explaining the anecdote this morning. Is that the way that you do it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Well yeah, go to Gemba. It's something that I've been trained to do uh when I was in into Lean Six Sigma. Um they said, yeah, go to Gemba, go to the factory floor, uh see what happens. And it's also whenever I am um with working with a new client, the first things I one of the first things I do is sit down and observe what is going on here and what is happening and and why do things happen. There was this crazy uh story um not that not that long ago, where I was sitting with uh customer service uh people and it was at an uh at a utilities company, and at some point um there were a lot of calls uh around um around a move. So a customer was actually moving from A to B. So yeah. And they need to modify their contract. And uh somebody said, um, well, that's actually odd because people can find all that information online. They just need to type in a weird uh combination. It was a the it was a very near weird name for uh for for the document. It was uh uh a document of abandonment or something like that. It was a cruel name. Yeah, it was a cool name, right? Uh me as a customer, I would look for um uh move document or something or uh something like that. Abandonment. But it was a document of abandonment.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Document of devastation, abandonment, loss, and tragic death. Something like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

So I um uh so I was listening to these, and you know, there were actually quite a lot of these calls. Like, oh yeah, dear um well, dear customer, uh, you know what? I'll I will send you the document, right? Uh it was just something that I take from the website. Okay, document of abandonment, okay, and I'm sending it uh right to you right now. Right. So I asked people why do we call this a document of abandonment? Well, that's because the the building is vacant and uh yeah, it was abandoned by the previous owner. I said, well, what happens when when we change the name of that document that people can actually find it when they go for like move document or something? Well, I don't know. Yep. Moving house, I mean obviously. Yeah. They changed the name of that document. Guess what happened? A lot less calls came in.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Everybody found it online. Yeah, there you go by themselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

And the funny thing is you can only know these things when you go to Gemba, when you sit down and listen to what is going on.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

And I think that's it's actually fun to do. I mean, the way that you describe it, because it's it's such an obvious thing. I mean, it it it jumps the eye right away. You know, a document calling uh you know abandonment, it sounds it sounds silly. But the thing is when you're in there, you don't see that anymore. It's a given for you. And this is this is what what uh is often said the last thing that a fish discovers is the water that it swims in. For those people, the name of that document and the way it and and the fact that they have to say that to somebody, I'll give you the document of abandonment, it's normal. So you change that. And I think that's one of the privileges of your position and my position very often is that we can come in and see those things and observe those things, things that are very obvious, obviously wrong or or you know not fitted well into the context, we can spot them right away because we have the luxury of not being deeply ingrained into the context yet, context yet. Another thing is changing things sometimes. I find, I don't know what your your experience is, changing things that are set pieces, fixed into the fabric is sometimes very, very difficult. A lot of yeah, um people don't want it, people don't welcome it. You know, should we do that? Should we spend time on that?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

What's your take? I fully agree. It is not um well, it's not fun to change. It is not fun because you are set in your own ways. Uh there are things that you like, there are things that you dislike. And um we as humans, we are not wired for for constant change by nature, by default. But I think that uh in a business context, the only thing that is sure is that there is change because your competitors are adapting, your customers are changing, and if you stay wherever you are right now, I can assure you you will not you will not survive, right? Um and the thing is that we need to find a currency within our organization. How can we make sure that the change leads to something that is of value for us? That's an interesting point. Yeah, do elaborate on that. The currency, it's an interesting point. Yeah. So uh very often when we as CX professionals talk about um customer centricity or customer experience or customer focus or change, we talk about ah, we need a 5% change in customer satisfaction scores, or we need um our NPS to go up or whatever. Something like that. The problem is that your senior leadership, well, they do understand that, of course, they are they're not dumb. Um but it doesn't resonate with them. At the end of the day, they are judged on how much growth did we make, uh, how much uh did we save, stuff like that, right? And on the other side of the spectrum, you have your staff and they speak a totally different language as well. They are not relating to your 5% uh uptick in customer satisfaction because it doesn't relate to the operational reality they face. They face like um uh for instance, we saw um three percent more calls coming in, and uh we had to uh transfer uh five percent more. That's their language. That's their language. And so you need to find a way to unite these three metrics, these three types of metrics, right? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. So three types of metrics. Again, which ones? So one, two, three. Yeah. The one the one I just described was the the operational one. Those are descriptive metrics. They describe what happened in reality. It could be like uh uh a high uh service level, for instance, and a and a low transfer rate in the call center, right? Or a high first time write if I'm juggling with juggling in long terms. And then then two is um the net promoter score, customer effort score, uh sentiment analysis these days, uh so the things that typically uh customer experience professional talks in, right? It is a perception. We me those uh metrics describe a perception that a customer has. And three. And then three are the outcome metrics. So what is the result of that perception, right? Um that could be a customer lifetime value, that could be uh revenue, that could be uh increase.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Increase in return, increase upsell, there you go up, right? Yeah. If you take those those three metrics and you you know you weave them into one fabric, one of the things that I'm always interested in is how do you get the the frontline people on board? Because I've I've I've often seen initiatives fail because of the lack of desire within that group of people, very important group of people, to to absorb or to adopt the change. In your experience, when you look at those three metrics, what are the ones that resonate the best with them? How how broad must you tackle the topic? Must you involve those three metrics within what you tell them, or do you just show them one of these metrics and and and motivate them using those methods? What is the best way to do that? Or how do you let me rephrase the question? If you would like to, which is something I greatly believe in, if you would like to empower your frontline employees to do a better job, what works best?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Right. I think that um in an in an or in any organization you need to you need to treat people like like the adults that they are. Right. I don't know about you, uh I run my own business uh and I want to make money. That's the reality. I need to pay the government uh a lot of taxes always. Really? Uh yeah, I do. I've stopped doing that a long time ago. Yeah, but uh we can joke about it, but at the end of the day, we are measured by how by how successful our company is. And everybody in an organization knows that and understands that. There is some kind of value that needs to be delivered to the business, right? Uh and on the other hand, there is also some kind of value that needs to be delivered to the customer as well. Right. And and how do you express that value? That could be like uh we serve our customers better, right? Um but make that tangible, right? How do you make that tangible? How can I make sure that by focusing on on delivering value to the customer, how can I make sure that I also deliver value to the organization? One of the worst things that we can do is to tell our people the customer is always right. I I so totally agree with that. You put people in a no-win position. Absolutely. Yeah. They are they are squeezed into this mold where they know, like, okay, I should do things for my customer uh because the customer is always right, or s or or variants of that. But deep down they know, well, that's not true because at the end of the day, we all need to be paid, right? We are paid in euros and not in smileys, right? So so how does that they are in a no-win situation. And that's why I always tell people, clarify that. What do you want? What do you want from cust what do you want from your employees? What do you want them to do, right? And that for that I explained them like there is a rational component to customer centricity, and there is an emotional component to customer centricity. Some people are drawn to the emotional side. I myself, I was drawn to the emotional side. I wanted to make customers happy. That was just how I am wired. That's what because what uh what I believe in. But there is also the rational side of things, and that is how can we make sure that through customer centricity, we can actually make more money. And that is also a side that we need to explain. And it's only when you explain that duality that people will go, like, okay, that's interesting. They need to buy into that story again, right? And then we can talk about how you are going to do that. But before anything, you need to make people aware that something needs to happen, not something needs to change, right? And it's not because you do things wrong, but it's just the environment is changing, the customers are changing, and we are standing still. So something needs to give, right? And then you need to build up the desire to actually make that change happen. It needs to come from from them. They will drive.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Precisely, because you're treating them like grown-ups. Exactly. And it's uh that's that's one of the things that I find to be lacking sometimes in some still today. I mean we've been in the twenty first century for quite a while, but still now I can see still managers um treating their employees like it's the nineteenth century. And you have to treat them like grown ups and you have to explain things. I love the the notion of you know using stories to do that, because at the end of the day it's not That's complex. It may be complex to do, maybe complex to execute. There's always a balance to s to strike. But essentially it's not that it's not that difficult. Another thing I wanted to definitely uh touch on in this podcast is the following. You, I know you travel a lot, you you you see a lot of the world, you train in many places, you've got an academy that you're that you're leading, you meet a lot of thought leaders, you're on on conferences and so forth and so on. And so in your opinion, what are the trends? And I'm not looking for you know some some kind of buzzwords, AI stuff, you know, we can we can all uh we can all look that up. But do you see trends? Do you see things changing in your field, things that um somebody who is not within the field can relate to and understand?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

I am uh very optimistic about the the next the next years. So the next decade will be something that is going to be quite something. And uh that it hasn't to that has very little to do with technology. I think that technology plays an accelerator to it. But um it it the next few few years will force us to answer a few fundamental questions, right? Um and we are forced in that position because it means that how are we going to make the difference? How are we as an organization going to make a difference? Because everybody can achieve the the average now, right? Yes. Um AI is a very important thing. The average is attainable for everyone all of a sudden. AI says it the average of the internet. It's not artificial intelligence, it's average of internet, right? So everybody can achieve that, attain that that uh averageness. So then the question is what makes us us? And the organizations that think about that or know that already are the ones that are going to accelerate. Um and and that is because it has to do with trust, right? It has to do with honesty. Um and and these are all things that are and are are coming back now. And you can see that organizations that are clever, they don't necessarily use AI to shave off a few um 100 euros or maybe a thousand euros uh these days, or millions maybe. Uh they don't necessarily use it for productivity reasons. They try to understand how is this technology going to help us to do things differently. We don't need something that goes faster or cheaper. Seriously, we do not know need that. I will agree on, however, that we need to explore uh technology. And if it's AI, it's AI. If it's something else, it's something else. We need to understand the boundaries of technology. We need to wrap our heads around it. And once you understand that, then you can actually understand the power that the technology uh holds, right? And then you can actually do something with that. So I think that right now we are bolting on technology on a lot of existing processes and yeah, doing it faster and cheaper. But actually the question should be how can we make it better? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

And more authentic, and more sincere, and so forth and so on. And what I've we share that optimism because you can look, you can look at what is happening in the world and you can, you know, the glass is half empty or the glass is half full. But what I find very interesting in in your way of thinking is that you look at technology at something as something that is helping to bring back some very old values, such as authenticity and such as as you know being outright and outspoken and to be clear about what you're delivering and to listen also to what the customer wants. And so it's a funny thing that um we need this this road towards more technology to find again our purpose, our goals as human beings. And it reminds me of something that I I think I think it was Stephen von Bellingham who once said that you know the more digital digital our world becomes, the more important the human being will be. Um which is a very hopeful way to put it. But I I I would think that you know listening to you, you you agree with that. You're in that same line of thinking.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

When in doubt, be human.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

That's uh when in doubt be human. Yes. I'm gonna trademark it. Uh, you should, you should. No, you're too late. I just did. No, but but it's when in doubt be human. And and that is the thing that that will drive us forward. So I'm I'm gonna give you an example and you're gonna immediately understand what I mean with that. Is that um last year I was in the US and I rented an RV. Long story, gonna cut it short. Um, and um at some point I was not very happy with how that rental went. So uh I was there in my RV in the middle of the night in a bed that was way too small. I didn't order that. Um and what what happens when you are all alone in your bed and you wonder, okay, so what is going to happen now? You turn to AI and go, you weaponize it. You say, okay, dear AI, this is everything that you need to know about this case. How can I get even with them? Oh, you evil man. Yes, absolutely. And so uh my AI, they he said, Well, this is uh this is these are all the things that you can do. Uh, which one do you like to execute? So I went for maximum refund. Um that was uh the thing that I did. And I weaponized that AI and I used it against their customer service. I'm not proud of it, but I did it anyway. Um but the thing is that that means that on the other side of the line, there was somebody who was like, wow, this is a um this is a well-thought of uh problem statement that you have there. So you needed actually somebody uh who understands what is that person actually trying to do? What is this what is his problem? Right? What is he trying to achieve, right? And if they were only able to do that, then the problem would be solved like in five minutes. But they didn't. They st they stuck to the procedure, they stuck to the process, and they kept on repeating whatever they said in the past. So yeah, it ended up uh in a bad way.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

But I can see I can see where that's uh where that's coming from. And I I like the I like the thought when in doubt, be human. Um right. Well, sadly that's that's gonna be all we have time for today. Yes. I think I think we could go on for uh for quite a while. But um I thank you, uh Michelle, Michelle Stevens, for joining me to unpack some foundations of real customer centricities and to find more out uh to find more about how organizations can bridge the gaps between the frontline and the back office. Um and sometimes it helps to be evil. I've learned that as well. So, thank you so much for being here today. CX Matters is a podcast produced by Hello Customer. If you want to discover how your company can act smarter on customer feedback, visit HelloCustomer.com. In our next episode, we'll continue the conversation with Horst Lines, another valued CX thought leader. And he'll be challenging some of the biggest assumptions in the field with what he calls the myths of customer experience. Until then, thank you for listening. Goodbye.