The Customer-Driven Leader (Episode 6) ~ Eric Vogel

In this episode of the Customer-Driven Leader, James welcomes industry veteran Erik Vogel, Founder of VistaXM. Erik and James will discuss the current state of XM, industry challenges, and why technology (albeit critical) is only part of delivering a solid XM program. Erik will share his expertise on why CX-as-a-Service is the right approach to helping companies activate their technology and deliver meaningful, measurable, and lasting value XM programs.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning or good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Customer Driven Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. James Killian. I see we have some audience here, so really appreciate you all joining us. And I'm really excited to welcome my second guest of 2026 to the podcast, Mr. Eric Vogel. Welcome, Eric. Thanks for being on. Great to be here. Thanks for having me joined. A pleasure. Always, always great to talk with you. So Eric and I are recovering qualtricians. So we were both at Qualtrics during the crazy ride that happened from around 2018 to 2024. Eric has uh since moved on to start his own uh company. So he's now Chief Executive Officer of Vista XM Incorporated. And we're gonna let him tell you a little bit more about what that actually means. But is a CEO, he spearheads the company's global go-to-market strategy and revenue growth, uh, works with the sales and operations team, of course, and also uh is uh elbows deep in product management uh as well. So uh Eric and I have known each other for uh quite a few years, uh, but he brings considerable expertise over 30 years across technology services, and he's got quite a track record uh of innovation. So uh Eric, you were previously at uh HPE, uh if memory serves correct. And uh you also were in leadership roles at Cisco, is that right? That's right. Yeah. So and he is heavily educated with an MBA from Carnegie Mellon and also his law degree from University of Pittsburgh, and also uh mechanical engineering. So that's quite an eclectic background that you got there, Eric. And I know you're also uh you've also spent some time as a faculty uh there in the Salt Lake area. Um thanks for being on the show. So I'm really excited to talk with you and and for everybody who's joining or who will be watching. One of the reasons that I was really interested in speaking with Eric is uh because of his expertise, he and I have seen some of the same patterns out there with respect to it can't just be about technology, right? I mean, I mentioned this on some of our podcasts in the past, and uh of course everybody's a fan of technology because it allows us to scale, it allows us to move faster. Uh, but the reality is tech by itself just doesn't get the job done. You actually need brains and a little bit of muscle and finesse to actually activate the technology. So, Eric, you and I have talked about the run of show, and you know that I have bookends. I always start and finish the same way. And so uh my first question to you is the same one that everybody gets. A leader team or company is customer driven when what? Please finish that sentence.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, I love that question. I love that question. First off, I I always like to tell people, you know, if you have to ask the question. So when we talk to companies and they want to know, hey, are we do we should we consider ourselves customer-centric? Are we, you know, customer focused? And uh I always have to tell them if you're asking the question, the answer is no. Um, you're not. Um, you know, in our opinion, you know, we think about customer centricity when you're really looking at every interaction that a customer has with the brand. And you know, a lot of times, you know, we think about experience as being, well, after they're a customer, we have to take care of them, we have to provide great customer success and customer support. But in reality, experience begins that very first marketing outreach. It could be an event, it could be a cold call from a seller. Um, that is the that is an interaction. And every single interaction you have to you have to understand is influencing the perception of that customer towards your brand. And really, the customer evaluates you on all of those experiences to determine whether you're fulfilling the brand promise. So when I think about is a customer, you know, is a is a company customer-centric? Are they are they truly living that? It's are they thinking about every interaction and are they evaluating themselves against all those touch points against the brand, not just selected ones where they're after their customer or before a renewal or when they call into a help desk or a support center. But are they really thinking about the entire set of customer interactions? You know, we refer to as the journey, but it really matters. You have to be thinking about every interaction along that uh that that series of transactions that a customer has with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Wow, I love that answer. That is uh as I would have expected coming from you, Eric, incredibly detailed, and and there's a lot to unpack in that. I um that really resonates with me because and for the audience, I I think um uh generally speaking, I think Eric and I have sat uh as um uh one side of the same coin. So you spent most of your career on the CX or customer experience side of the equation, and I uh mostly on the EX or or employee experience side of the equation. And I love that answer because um one of the things that I always uh talk with my clients about is that you know, we talk about employee experience, and in a lot of cases, as we all know, that tends to be synonymous with employee engagement, which is important, but employee engagement is not the only box to check to for having a comprehensive uh employee experience, right? And and you talking about the minute that you know a sales call happens, that's creating the first experience, the first impression that really leads you down a path, right? It's all a big decision tree. I often talk about the fact that it is um the moment you reach out and touch a brand enthusiast as a prospective employee, as a candidate, that you know it's really important that you do that right, because if you don't, then you're setting an expectation of what it's like to work here. Um and you want to make sure that you're doing that in the best possible way. Um really, really great um uh response to that. I I think that's the most detailed one that I've had thus far, so thank you. I um I, you know, you you and I haven't really talked about uh how we got into um the experience management business in a lot of detail. So maybe we'll unpack that one as well. Um one of the things that I like to ask people just to get that uh ball rolling is do you have a good example of a bad experience, maybe as a customer, or maybe something you witnessed, or maybe something that you saw for one of your own clients uh maybe that really shaped how you think about experience management?

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Oh, I I think we all have we all have those examples, and we can all rattle off hundreds of those examples. And the reality is, right, we we tend not to remember just as humans, we don't tend to remember the good experiences because we take those for granted, and that's the expectation. And what we remember are those bad experiences. And that's why, you know, we talk about one bad experience. We'll turn a customer off of a brand for life. Um, they will forget the hundred great experiences. Um, you know, you we love to you know talk about uh you know, cell carriers, for example. You know, the phone showed up in perfect shape. It was easy to authenticate. I was able to get it set up, everything migrated to my new phone perfectly, and you know, it's been a great phone for two years. All of a sudden there's an error on my bill for seven dollars. And I call a help desk or a contact center, and I can't get through to somebody, or I they have an accent I can't understand. And just like that, I have forgotten two years of great experiences because one bad experience. And I will I will switch carriers as a result and never come back uh because of that one seven dollar bad experience. And um, so I think we all have lots of those examples. We see them every day in real life. And unfortunately, uh, because of that, um, you know, we we do see a lot of lost revenue opportunity. We see a lot of uh what we call blindside turn in our business because it just takes that with that one, that one negative experience. One that really you know stands out to me, and it's a really simple example. I have a neighbor who's a dentist. And um if you if you live in the Salt Lake area, you know there's a lot of dentists. I don't know why, but there there are a lot.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

And they got great teeth there. You really do.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Well, thank you. Well, well, thank you. And I wish the lighting was better in here. I apologize. I'm in a in a conference room um at a at a company EBC, and they they have the automatic lights that turn on and off. And I'm sitting too far from the automatic light switch, so it turned off on me here. Uh so I just got the window light. But my my neighbor's a dentist. Um, he competes heavily for business, and they rely a lot on uh on Google reviews. And he was telling me that you know he was getting a lot of negative reviews. And you know, interestingly, it wasn't about him you know not being a good dentist or not taking care of his patients, or they were very happy with the work they did. He you know, he's low-paying. You know, people talk about he's a very gentle dentist, which is great. What they were complaining about was the magazine selection that he had in the waiting room. They were old. The crossword puzzle book was fully completed. There were no crossword puzzles to work on while they were waiting. And he was starting to see a number of negative reviews in in Google reviews. And a lot of people they'll they'll use that to select a dentist. They'll see a bunch of one-star reviews, they won't read the detail. Well, the the book was full, there were no crossword puzzles to do, they were out of Seduco puzzles, so I had nothing to do while I was sitting there. Um, that was the complaint. So that was the bad experience, and it actually impacted his his revenue because it reduced the number of new patients he was able to get because of those negative reviews. So is that really a bad experience? If you're going to the dentist, he's doing a great job on your teeth. That's what you expect. But again, you've got to look at every touch point and every um every interaction with the brand. And unfortunately for him, that is still an interaction with the brand. Um, you know, I think sometimes we think about it being our core, you know, well, it's are they do they love the product? Uh, you know, are they happy with the product? But we've got to be thinking about every single interaction. And any one of those interactions can have a very negative consequence if we don't track it, if we don't measure it, if we don't monitor it and keep abreast of that, because it just takes one bad experience, one $7 mistake on a bill that will push a customer away and push them to another brand, and that's revenue erosion, and that's lost customers.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, I uh that's that's great. I I love that perspective. And um and you're right. And I think that um, you know, just a personal example for me. Um my my wife and I over the weekend uh got away uh early Valentine's Day retreat uh to Palm Springs. And in my book, um, Obsessed, Cultivating the Customer-Driven Leader, I give the example of um of the Ritz-Carlton as being very customer-driven, right? Because they actually um in in enable and empower their employees to make contact with a guest to look for that um that vibe of consternation or frustration and lean into it and help the guests close that gap so that they can continue to have a good experience. And uh and I use the Ritz-Carlton as a really great example. Um, in this case, um yeah, for a much needed vacation, I might add, started with us um getting there early, but the room was not early as it was promised. And in fact, we waited for um over an hour before it was ready. When we got to the room, the wrong luggage had been delivered. Um, that same evening, we had to call security on a drunken underage uh teenager who was harassing us at the hot tub. Uh, we waited for uh an hour for a very cold cheeseburger to be delivered pool side. Um and each and every time, and and you know, here's the thing, right? Those are those are experiences along the way. And um those things contribute, right? They are layers that can add up in a good way or add up in a bad way. And in in this case, you know, I'm I'm a seasoned traveler, so you know, things happen. I mean, you you just have to appreciate that that so it's how things get handled that I think is really, really important. And in this case, what was particularly frustrating to us was each and every interaction that we had with a hotel staffer, they said, we're gonna make this right. You know, we're we're you know, we're gonna give you some some credits on your your Marriott rewards points, or we're gonna take something, you know, off the bill for you. And we heard that each and every time, but nothing happened. Hmm. So am I never gonna stay at a Ritz-Carlton again? No, because I generally have good experiences. But it did it take the brand a notch down for me? Absolutely it did. Absolutely it did. Um, so so you know, just by way of story there. So so one of the um the things that I think about, you know, in that situation, right? And in the situation that you described was as I mentioned in the intro, technology is omnipresent. I mean, it is just it is there, it is constant, right? Technology didn't do squat to make my experience better in that circumstance, right? So you and I have talked about this extensively, and um, we both have noticed that a lot of EX and CX programs or experience management programs are finding themselves in a state of failure today. Now, I have my own ideas and opinions and hypotheses about why that is, but I'd like to give you the mic and hear from you. Why do you think that is? What are you seeing? What's FISTAXM doing about it?

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah, I you know, that that's a really, really good point. I think that you know the SaaS providers in the space have really done a disservice because I think we, you know, the the message that the SaaS providers came out with was hey, buy our technology and you can have a customer experience program, right? Start sending surveys and voila, right? Magically customers are going to love you. Um and that is simply not the case. And you know, that you know, honestly, that's a big part of why we started Vistax app. So a little bit on my background, um, I built a CX program for a large OEM technology company. Um I was a Qualtrics customer, uh, Qualtrics power user for a number of years, and then moved to Qualtrics and um helped other technology companies get their programs up and running and working. And so I got to work with a lot of the large technology companies, brands we all know, brands like Autodesk and Adobe and uh IBM Global Services, and really helped them get their program running. And what was painfully obvious was it wasn't just the tech, it was the people, it was the process, it was the playbook, it was the methodologies that they used. They were able to bring in at ServiceNow a guy named Matt Lombardi, for example, and Emma Sapogieva, who were experts in customer experience on top of you know, using the Qualtrics platform, but they knew how to run these programs. Um you see that you know across all of these leading tech companies where yes, they're using Qualtrics or a good SaaS platform, but at the same time, they've got they've got the people who have the method, the process, and the capability. And we started VistaXM to address that gap essentially that exists, what would I call mid-market. Um, so as you start to look at smaller firms, they don't have the luxury of hiring 10 people, 20 people, you know, CX experts, right? A lot of times these programs get pushed into marketing departments or operations uh type departments or even IT uh because it's a software uh platform. So IT runs these programs and they don't have the skill set, they don't have the background, they don't have the capability to really do it well. So we started VistxM as a managed service where we bring all of that uh to our customers and we're solving for these specific cases where people want the benefits of a great experience program. They want to be able to listen to all these touch points and understand what's happening and probably most importantly understand what to fix and what to improve. Um, but they just don't have, you know, I hate to say people process technology, but that that's a problem. Technology uh turns out to be the easy part of the equation, right? There's a lot of good technology out there. And now with AI, we're seeing it all over the place. But all that's giving you is more signal faster. Um, you still have to understand how to interpret that signal, how to take action on that, how to prioritize. You know, one of the things we are very big on at a stax M is the prioritization. Um, not uncommon if uh you know people listening to this, if they have a CX program, where a CX team can come back with 50, 60, 70 insights, right? 70 recommendations. Here's 70 things we need to go fix. So they'll they'll take, you know, go over to the contact center and say, okay, here got here's here's six things you need to work on. And they'll go to the product team and they'll go to the engineering team and the pricing team and they'll say, okay, go fix this, go fix this. And of course, these teams are saying, well, take a number, right? I already have a list of 100 priorities, I'm just gonna add these to it. And then at the end of the year, people wonder why nothing's fixed, right? And why nothing has happened with those insights. Um, so when we see really successful programs, when you look at the industry leaders, what they're very, very good at is saying, Yeah, there are 75 things we could do. What are the two things we must do? And let's prioritize and let's figure out those two or three things that from an ease and impact analysis, which is the method we use, but however you want to stack rank them and sort them, but let's go find that two or three things. Let's go take action on those, let's improve those things. We have the solid business case to back it up. And then when we're done, we're gonna track the value. We're going to show how that's impacted churn, how that has impacted um net new customer wins, or how that's a impacted expansion. Because when you're able to do that, you can start to build that cycle where, okay, now let's go take the next one or two top priorities and then take the next one or two. And you're constantly listening, constantly bringing in signal, coming up with those insights, stack racking those insights, picking the top ones, executing on those, tracking, proving the value so the business gets behind it and you get these teams behind it, where it's not a I'll take a number, I'll get to it when I get to it, but they see the benefit and say, yeah, this is a priority. Then you do it again and you do it again. And it really mirrors the old plan to check act cycle we talked about 30 years ago in quality management circles. It's the same idea. It's just we're improving the quality of the customer interactions and the customer experience we deliver.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah, that that's a great response. Say a little bit more about that ease of impact analysis. Uh, you know, you you and I may know what that is, but but it's not a phrase that's actually thrown out a lot. And so I think that would be beneficial to just you know get a little bit beneath the surface on that one.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, so what we find again, you you there's no shortage of insights that are generated. And with AI, we're just getting more of them. Um, so if you're confronted with a list of a hundred things that you can go and improve, how do you make how do you determine? All right, look, we can't do all 100. And the and the industry leaders do this all the time. They say, look, we're not gonna work on a hundred things, we're not gonna spread ourselves. That's how do we find one or two? And so we use uh this is an old McKinse model, um, ease and impact, where you you take all of the opportunities that you have, all of the insights, and the first thing you want to understand is how easy is it to implement? You know, some things are really easy, right? It's like, hey, we just have to you know improve the the messaging on the website and get the digital team to do that. Um when I was at HPE, we had an issue where uh we had a digital, brand new digital experience, and we expected customers to come in and first thing we thought they'd learn about the the service and the solution, and then they'd want to get a price for the solution. And so they'd go to a pricing tool where they they could get a price. And we saw very early on about 80% were dropping um on the first page, that they were never working, they weren't going through the journey to get to ultimate pricing. And when they when they generated a price quotation is when we captured that as a uh as an opportunity because now we knew who they were, we had their email address and we could follow up. And so but 80% were never even going two or three clicks deep in the digital experience. Um, so we immediately put some listening in place, and what we heard from that customer was hey, we think you're too expensive, and we're not going to invest our time learning about your experience or your solution until you convince us otherwise. So the the the aha moment was put pricing on the front page, you know, don't hide it in the back. So we just had the digital team put a little box on the front page that said prices starting at. And here was a little comparison table between what we were offering in Amazon and Azure and Google Cloud were offering, you know, price per terabyte, price per core, price for whatever. Here's our price, here's their prices, right? Basic. But that was enough. So that was an easy, easy fix, and that generated 15 million of net new pipeline in the first month, right? So huge impact. So the first thing we looked at was ease, and we said, yeah, some things are like, well, you gotta implement a new version of SAP. Well, that's hard, right? That's a big, big thing. But putting a little pricing table on the front page of a website took two days, right? Easy. And then the flip side is you you look at impact, right? What is the what's the business impact? And some are gonna have you know outsized impacts, um, but others, you know, maybe they're smaller, but they're easy and quick to do. So you get those quick wins. And so we're a firm believer in, you know, you you've got to map them both. It's not always the big big impact items, um, and it's not always the easiest ones, but when you rank them together across those two dimensions, you know, you're looking for the ones that essentially sit in the top right quadrant, which are the ones that are easiest to do with the best business impact. And you pick those off first because that's how you build momentum. Right. You can go do tough things that are gonna take you 12 and 18 months, but you'll find that these programs start to stall pretty quickly. People start to question the value. We've heard this many, many times. Like, well, what are you doing? Um, but if you can go get wins that you can do in two weeks and generate 15 million of that new pipeline 30 days later, um, that's an easy thing to do that generates a very, very good um return. So that's what you're looking for. Um you can call them no regret moves, low-hanging fruit, whatever you want to call them, but that's the model. Um and when you when you take a hundred and you're ranking them relative to each other, and it doesn't have to be perfect. Everybody always asks me, Well, are you gonna go build out a plan for each one of these? No, it doesn't have to be perfect, it's directional in nature, and that is good enough because again, you're just trying to understand which ones sit in sort of the the top right bucket, and then you can refine further from there. But it doesn't have to be perfect. Um, you just have to you know kind of think of them all relative to each other. How easy is it to the, you know, it's this one relative to the other 99? What's the potential business impact relative to the other 99? And then you plot them on that XY graph, and really those those key opportunities will jump right out, and that's where you want to focus. Go after one or two in that top right quadrant. Uh, once you start putting wins on the board, it's amazing how it starts to fuel these types of programs. All of a sudden there's more investment, there's more dollars, there's more excitement and enthusiasm for a CX program. And back to the first question, right? Are we customer centric? When you start operating in that fashion, you build a culture of customer centricity because now you're in the process of real-time listening, improving, taking action, tracking value, and going back and doing it again and again and again. And you build that internal momentum to keep that type of program running.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Yeah, that's that's that's great. Um, and to that point, the answer isn't just throw AI at everything and it'll solve your problem, right? And I'm a big fan of AI, of course, but we all are. But I think that what you're describing there is um is bringing experience to experience management, essentially. That's that's the knowledge, that's the background, that's the expertise, that's the you know, battle-tested um actions that you're taking. And you know, what you're describing there, that kind of prioritization. Like if you think about it from the perspective of a coach, which in a lot of ways you and I are, right? We go into an organization and we are coaching our clients about the do's and don'ts and the priorities. And no coach says, here, here's 75 things to work on. You know, that just doesn't work. You got to get that priority going. And that requires that expertise. And um, I'll share a little something. Uh now this was explicitly on the EX side of the equation, but I definitely think it applies to the CX side of the equation. There was a little-known um report that was actually put together by Everest Group from about two years ago, where they interviewed 600 uh CHROs and senior vice presidents of HR globally about their employee listening programs. And they all said the same thing. Number one, two things. Number one, technology is absolutely critical to our employee listening program. Number two, it is necessary but not sufficient for creating great employee experiences. So we need expertise, we need advisory, we need consulting, we need project management, we need support to activate that technology. And I think, you know, that that I just summed up is uh really pretty much at the genesis of where VistaXM came from, on the more on the CX side is all right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. Because that's you know, it's interesting. We talk to customers, you know, they're they're what they tell us is just tell me what I need to know.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

And honestly, they don't care whether we're using AI or a thousand smart people with with sharp pencils and notepads. They don't care. Like I don't care how you find it out, right? But just tell me what I need to know. I need to improve my business. I need to reduce churn. I need to get my customers, my existing customers to spend more with me. And I need to close more business. I need to improve sales velocity, I need to reduce discounting, right, et cetera, et cetera. That's my problem. That's my business problem. So tell me what I need to know to improve those, those metrics, those KPIs. And how you do that as a company, I don't care. Now, because we run enough of these programs, you're absolutely right. I mean, I'd love it if I could just put in technology and magically the answers would pop out. But no, it doesn't happen. Technology is essential. And you know, we use a number of AI solutions, we use all the the major SaaS platforms, uh, depending on the customer and what we're doing what we're doing for them. So we're kind of at the intersection of all of those tools, and they're great. But they they only they're only great to a point. Like I said, they're great at getting the data, at organizing the data, at uh driving, you know, allowing for the analysis, the statistical analysis that we do to come up with those key insights. Um, and in some cases, we're even using them for that ease and impact type analysis to kind of give us a starting point. But at some point, right, you need somebody has to manage that. That's a process. Um, you you need somebody who knows that process, who understands that. Um, even something as simple as you know, we talk about a survey, right? Sort of the gold standard of feedback, whether it's on the employee side or customer side. Um, how you write a question, a survey question. There is so much science behind that, so much nuance. Everyone thinks, well, I'll just write a survey. I'd like to ask them this question. Well, depending on how you write that, you're you're gonna get all you know this, right? You're gonna see all sorts of biased results and all kinds of crazy answers. And um, so just again, unless you have somebody who knows that, or you're gonna go get a consultant who can help you with that, then you're it's garbage in, garbage out. And yeah, you have AI, but you'll just get the garbage faster. Um so in those cases, that's where you've got to have that expertise. You have to have that people, you have to have the process. Um, and then the technology is kind of what what sits underneath to make it all work and work efficiently and cost effectively. So yeah, you need the tech, but without the the people who know the process, who know the method, who know, who've been through there and done it, right, who've rolled up their sleeves and actually run these programs and run them well, um, you're just gonna get a lot of noise. Um and that's that's ultimately we're gonna collect. And you know, we we step in and and run programs for other companies who've tried and they were never weren't happy with the results. And typically what we'll hear is, well, we tried, we ran some surveys, we got an NPS score of 14, blah, blah, blah. We're but we that's it, right? That that's all we've done. And in those cases, that's absolutely the case of well, we just bought the tech, we put our contacts in there, and we sent them an NPS survey with a couple questions, and we got you know, 3% response rate. It was very noisy, very biased, and we can't do anything. So that's that's pretty pretty much the case. Um, and so you know, we we hear that all the time, we see that in our business, and we step in and fix that for our customers. Um, but but you know, I think again, too much reliance on the tech. Um, now it's all on AI. Well, AI is gonna do it for us. What are they gonna do exactly? Right? Are they gonna sit down with your stakeholders and the business units and lines of business and say, here are the two things we have to prioritize? We need to make these a priority over the other hundred things you're chartered with this year. No, they don't do that, right? AI doesn't do that. Are they gonna manage a project? Are they going to make sure things get done, you know, is AI gonna make sure things get done on time? Is AI going to, you know, work with the stakeholders to demonstrate what the value was when sometimes we don't have all the data yet? No, right? You need people and you have to have a process and a method.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, I I I hear that for sure. Um, and that's a really uh those observations are are really great for for the next question that I've got for you. And and uh we are moving towards the back nine here uh pretty swiftly, Eric. So uh for the audience members, if you have any questions or comments that you'd like Eric to go a little bit deeper on, I encourage you to put them in the Q ⁇ A and I'll make sure to read those off as we get into the the QA session here. Um the the observation that you have about the expertise and something that you said earlier about, you know, a lot of times you see the uh the XM program getting um maybe delegated downwards or sideways over to even like a marketing function. I want to scratch on that a little bit because one of the observations that I've had uh and several of my guests have had over the last um particularly I'd say year, is that the role of the CXO has just been evaporating. And so you you tend to find that uh to your point, um, maybe the IT organization now owns that you know customer experience or employee listening program, but they also don't have the expertise that they they need to really activate the licenses that they've just purchased. So um what do you attribute this phenomenon to just the this the CXO's kind of disappearing? And um who do you now see as your primary partner in your client organizations?

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Yeah, I answer your second question first. So right now it's primarily a chief revenue officer, chief customer officer who we are working with. I mean, that that seems to be where we're spending our time. I I think you know, we talk about the rise and fall of the CXO, and you know, we see that with customers we're talking to every day, um, where they they had a big program and now they don't. They had a CXO and now they don't. And I think the big failure of CXOs, and I know this has been talked about widely, was you know, customer experience um did not translate to business. I always like to say we don't spend NPS points, we spend dollars. And when you're at when you're at that table, right, when you're at the the chief anything table, you've got to be talking the language of business. So everything has to be translated to churn reduction, expansion, renewal, right? The met the what matters to the business. And I think that's where we failed because we got so enamored in the CX world with, oh, I have an NP, our MPS score went up two points. We were a 70 last year, we're 72 this year. Okay, but our churn also increased five points. So what does that mean? Right? What what did that buy us? What what does a 72 do for us? Unless you're using it as a marketing uh tool, it it did nothing, right? Um, and I think that was the that was sort of the first big, big failure piece. And because they weren't CX teams and the CXOs weren't aligned enough with the business, they weren't able to drive the improvements and the the fixes, if you will. So they were learning and getting the insights, but it was very difficult to get the lines of business and the stakeholders uh to operationalize that because it was hey, we if you fix this, we can improve our MPS score by three points. And you know, it just doesn't work, right? It because they're saying, I've got this initiative that's gonna save the company three million dollars. I'm gonna do that before I buy you two more NPS points, right? That's the priority. And so that is um to me, that's that's been the big challenge of the CX world in general, is that that lack of really tying to the business. And so, you know, as times have gotten tough, right? As the economy is uh slowed down, hiring is slowed down, it becomes a cost center, right? Understand MPS score a cost center. And that's how business are treating it, right? They treat it as a cost center, not as a profit or revenue center. Um, so it's not tied to revenue, it's tied to costs. So where does a cost center go? It goes into IT, right? IT tend to look like as a cost center. So we'll push it into IT, or we'll push it into an operations function where operations tends to look like a cost center, um, not a profit or a revenue center. So the the leading firms and the ones again that I work with who see it as a revenue driver or a growth driver are putting it into CRO, CCO, right? It's part of a chief customer, keep chief revenue uh function. Um and so you can you can start to see how companies view it. Do they view it as a uh a necessity, something we have to do, cost of doing business, because we just gotta get some numbers, or do we see it as a really strategic entity that is truly going to grow the business and drive revenue, drive retention, drive expansion? And if so, it sits in a function that is also chartered with that, like a chief customer officer, chief revenue officer, because then it aligns very cleanly to the objectives of that function.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah, yeah. I I love that. I um I actually I interviewed um uh famed Bain uh expert and and Harvard professor Rob Markey, one of the co-creators of the Net Promoter Score. I interviewed him for my book, and and he's he's a really interesting guy and and really down to earth and really relaxed and just calm. And he's like, you know, NPS, it was never designed to be a vanity metric. You're supposed to build a program and system around it. Stop just quoting the score. It doesn't matter by itself. You know, and for him to say that, it's like, you know, I'm I'm sure it's a little frustrating to somebody like him and Fred Ryger, right? You gotta actually do something with this score. It's not just about reporting it, right? Um That's right. That's right. So uh what's next for X Vista XM, Eric? Uh where where are you guys going from here? So you've been um up and operating for about two years now, is that right? That's right. Yeah. Where are you going next?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Yeah, so we're continuing to expand. We've we've got some global plays, um, you know, being able to support uh some of the larger global companies uh running programs multiple languages. Um we are one of one of the things we can do, which is pretty interesting, because we're a managed service and we run programs, uh it gives us the ability to run programs for ecosystems. Um, where because we're running it the same way, we're actually getting a set of benchmarks that are truly benchmarks. Um, and so as you know, right, um, you know, Qualtrics and all of those firms will publish literally thousands of benchmarks and they're great. Um and my customers love to quote them hey, our you know, we're 72 on an NPS score against an industry score of 52 for tech, for example. And you know, we start to ask this question well, how is that benchmark calculated? Right? Did they send an NPS survey to every customer, every current customer, every customer they touched in the last 24 months? Well, we don't know. Well, if it's only current customers and you miss every customer that turned out last month or last 10 months or last 20 months, and shouldn't you hear from them because they turned out because they weren't happy, and you're not gonna that's not gonna factor in. Oh, well, I don't know if we have to count them or not. Well, of course not. So that's the problem with benchmarks, is it is so tied to the methodology and approach that you take to collect that that you know everybody does it differently. Um you know, we've we've seen lots of cases where people game the system. You know, we have one customer that um they have a bonus tied to an NPS score, an internal bonus, which is an absolute no-no. Um, and so magically they hit the target every single year. And they can't tell you how, but they magically, you know, they're getting better no, but they at least hit their minimum target so that everybody gets their bonus uh component that is tied to that NPS score. Um, so again, the methodology is really, really important, the process. And because we're able to do that consistently across ecosystems, we can actually get an ecosystem view and a set of benchmarks uh because we're you know able to do it consistently. So that is that is one of the areas that uh that we're really focused on right now. Um and we're still heavily focused in the B2B space. And this has been a big gap, as you know, uh within CX. Most of the you know, when you hear CX stories, it's all B2C. Um and rightly so, right? It's uh but B2B is is a different animal um in that you know you you've got multiple personas in the buying uh decision making process. Um it's never just a one-to-one, right? If I buy an iPhone, I I shop for it, I buy it, I install it, I use it, I get support on it, I do it all. But when you're in the B2B world, you have very different personas that are doing all of those things. So one person buys it, one person's a decision maker, you got a procurement team who goes through the contract, you got an installation team, a setup team, an operate team, a renewal team that buys it again. So you've got to manage across multiple personas across a very complex customer journey. Um so we tend to tend to focus on that sort of unserved uh B2B space, and we will continue to expand in that space because we definitely see um a lot of opportunity because while you have B2B customers have fewer customers uh end customers, these customers are much higher in value. Um, you know, not uncommon, right? Some of these B2B companies have customers who are worth millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in one customer. So you think about the risk of churn of a single customer can be massive. Um the ROI is very high on a solid CX program that can spot risks early and understand where customers are at risk and what needs to be done to shore up those customers. Uh so we're gonna continue to double-click on that. We still do B2C. Um we have um a couple customers in BC space that we support, um, but we will continue to focus probably more heavily with more solutions in the B2B world.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

That's great. And um remind me again the industries that you focus on.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Yeah, so we are you know pretty much anything technology related. Uh so we support a couple of the big OEMs and their ecosystems. Um so that's that's kind of a primary area for us. We're also in the fintech world. Uh, we're supporting a number of big manufacturing companies today and some consumer product companies.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Fantastic. Fantastic. Um, so as we start to land the plane here, Eric, uh last question before I get to my wrap-up question. So uh just, and I think we've covered a little bit of this, but but just more pointed here. When you reflect on the field of experience management, um, which is still fairly nascent as a domain, right? I mean, within the last 10 years, it it finally got this moniker of experience management. But when you think about, you know, in its early stages, what it was 15, 20 years ago uh when you first encountered it professionally, you know, what what would you say are some of the the biggest evolutions or or trends that you've seen shift as of late? And what should practitioners have on their radar for tomorrow?

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Yeah, I think um, you know, kind of what we talked about is the one of the big is the shift towards the business-centric customer experience, right? Um, and so you know, we we're almost now, we we talk about it in terms of customer experience is really revenue intelligence, right? At its heart, that's what you're that's what we deliver is revenue intelligence. And because what CX does is it focuses and really helps you understand where revenue is one or lost, right? And it's one or lost at those experience touch points along the journey. And you know, any one of those points could be a win or it could be a loss for you from a revenue perspective. So CX really is revenue intelligence. To me, that's the latest. You know, we talk about aligning to the business. And if you boil it all down, that's what it's all about. Um, and so I think, you know, as you think about new practitioners, the first thing is think about it in terms of how do I drive revenue? How do I become part of the revenue side of the equation in a business by providing insights and intelligence that were not available yesterday? And when you can do that, um, you know, within a CX program, that's where you start to really, where CX programs really deliver value. Um, and so that's to me, that's the the first thing. And I and I think the second big evolution, um, and I don't know if it's maybe it's not an evolution, but you know, look, there's always going to be a new technology. There's always some shiny new technology. It was SaaS 10 years ago, right, with the rides of Qualtrics and Medallion, right? They the big SaaS platforms, and I got to go spend a boatload of money and get this big platform. Now it's all AI and a gentech AI, and that's all you're gonna hear about in CX speak. They're gonna talk about how AI agents can do all this great stuff. Um, but you've got to move beyond the tech because to be honest with you, you can deliver great customer experience with no technology, right? You can just talk to customers, you can take notes, you can summarize notes, right? You do not need a single piece of technology to deliver a great customer experience program. It makes it a ton easier, it makes it cheaper, it makes it faster, absolutely. But the minute you pivot away from saying, I need X technology in order to do this, um, you're gonna be in a much better spot because then you focus on the process and method, the outcome you're trying to deliver. Because it's really about CX is all about the outcomes. Um, it's not about the method, it's not about the process, it's not about the interim metrics, the CSATs, the MPS, the vanity metrics. That doesn't matter anymore. It did because we, like you said, it is a new emerging practice. And we talked about that just like quality programs. It was all about, you know, mean time between failures and defect rates. And we very quickly pivoted to, you know, we used to have a quality department that sat in a room off on the side and did their magic and posted things on the wall, very similar to what we did with NPS scores and CSAT scores. And we'd have a CX team that did it on their own and posted it on the wall, right? Now, you know, quality is embedded in everything we do because it's part of the business, right? We don't think about it as a separate standalone function. CX is moving that same way, right? It is moving towards, it's part of the business function. So it has to be aligned to the business objective, which is revenue, right? Which is operating profit. That's what matters. So as I see kind of the next evolution, it's moving that way as an outcome, as revenue intelligence that is delivered by listening to customers and understanding customers and using the method and the science of customer experience.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Totally stealing revenue intelligence. Thank you very much. That is that is a nugget of wisdom that I hope everybody takes with them. Because I, you know, I talk uh I until I'm blue in the face, right? About uh on the EX side of the equation, it's not about doing engagement surveys. It's about what you're doing with them, you know, to get to where you need to be as a business guy. So um really valuable insights there, Eric. So as we wrap up here, I always finish uh my podcast with what I call two. Things. So if you could have two pieces of advice for practitioners of experience management today, one thing to stop doing, or one thing to continue or start doing, what would those two things be?

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Yeah, stop doing, stop with these CX metrics. I might hear one more, one more customer tell me, hey, we have an NPS score of 90, right? Look how well we're doing, right? Stop that. Nobody cares anymore. Um, you know, nobody cares about NPS. That is, there's such a small group of people who give a crap about that. Stop it, right? That is that is not helping us as a business process, as a function, as a as a corporate entity, if you will. Um, so I would say, you know, look, those are good metrics. Those help CX practitioners do their job. That helps us understand what's happening. But that in the grand scheme of things, in terms of what the business cares about, those just don't matter anymore, right? No, but again, I'll go back to nobody spends NPS points. That's absolutely the case, right? Nobody really cares anymore. NPS has been around, what, 23 years since Fred launched it? Um, or 24 years now, I think it's been uh since uh since Fred launched uh the NB first NPS. And you know, we still ask that same silly question, right? How likely are you to recommend this to a friend or colleague? And it's morphed so many different ways. Still the same question. Um, of course, 24 years ago it was done with emails and spreadsheets, and that's why it was a simple question, right? It was built for the technology at hand. Uh, but now we have all this great new technology. We can listen to people's phone calls, right? We can do all this cool stuff that we never could do 24 years ago, but yet we still ask that same question like that's some magical, you know, mystical thing. Um don't get over reliant on that, right? Really start, you know. So, what do you do more? Focus on the outcomes. CX needs to be an outcomes function, right? You've got to deliver the business outcome. Uh, that's what matters. Every business function that exists today delivers a business outcome. CX cannot be any different than that. It's not something special, it has to deliver a business outcome. So I would say, you know, what to start doing more of? Um, still uh Stephen Covey, right? Start with the end in mind, right? What is it? What is the business problem that CX is trying to solve for? Is it revenue? Is it operational cost? Is it efficiency? Is it you know retention? What is it, right? What's the problem the business faces? Work backwards to understand how CX can solve for that. Don't try to go the other way. We see this all the time. Hey, I got a CX program, what can I go fix? What's the use cases for Qualtrics, right? How many times in you know you probably saw this, right? We go out with, hey, we got this cool platform, what can we solve for you? That doesn't work, right? Here's the problem. Let's work backwards into how CX can solve that business problem. And then how do we set up a program that addresses that, right? Versus let's go, you know, we've got this cool hammer, let's go find nails. No, here's the problem, let's figure out how CX. So do more of that, right? Start with the end in mind, work backwards into CX and how CX delivers that outcome, and do less of relying on a bunch of metrics that honestly people just care less and less about.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

Yeah. Fantastic. Words of wisdom from my friend Eric Vogel, ladies and gentlemen. Uh Eric, I really appreciate you being on uh today's episode of the Customer Driven Leader Podcast. How can people best get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah, I I think the easiest way, just go to our website, uh vistaxm.com. Um that's and you can send me an email. I'm Eric at VistaXM.com. So it's E-R-I-K VistaXM. Easy way to reach me. Um happy respond to emails, all the emails I get, or just visit our website, a lot of contact options there as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Fantastic. Well, Eric, it's been great having you on. Thanks for being so full of really valuable insights. Really appreciate your time today. And really appreciate all of you who are actually on today's webinar. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, this is James Killian signing off from the Customer Driven Leader. Thanks for attending, everybody.