Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 9 Episode 2 - Refugee Experience with Elena Rozanova

Elena Rozanova was due to be a guest on the CX superheroes podcast series to discuss the loneliness of CX leadership in organisations. However, days after the production meeting Elena's world was turned upside down. 

Elena agreed to record this extra episode which captures her observations from the experience of refugees. Elena shares her vision for what more could be done by the CX world to help those struggling to support refugees the world over. 

Listen in to understand the experience none of us want to go through and hear Elena's insightful observations and ideas for helping refugees facing uncertain futures.   

Hosted by Christopher Brooks.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to another episode of Customer Experience Superheroes. My name is Christopher Brooks and I'm your host for this podcast series. A series in which we meet individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the world of customer centricity and customer experience. They share their ideas, their inspiration, and their initiatives, helping us appreciate the better outcomes that they're achieving. In today's episode, we meet up with a truly special individual, Elena Rosanova. Elena originally agreed to come on to talk about the loneliness of CX leadership. And in the following episode, we will speak about this really important topic and hear her experience and her strategies for coping. But for now, we wanted to take the opportunity to speak to Elena about a much more significant chapter in her life. Elena has a unique perspective. Elena had returned to Ukraine to see family. Little did she know at the time that she would then need to leave her home and move to a new country. Elena agreed and felt it was important to share her experience with the wider CX community. And we hope, as a consequence, we can move forward and develop an international code of practice for refugee experience. In this episode, Elena shares her story and provides context and consideration for standards in refugee experience. You personally have been through quite an extreme that very few of us hopefully will ever go through in our lives over the last couple of weeks, and I'm sure it will continue. Now, through this, there's been different touch points you've been through. And I'd imagine it'd be very difficult to think about it from an experience perspective. But have you been aware of how experience has played a part in sort of the migration and refugee camps, etc.? Have you become conscious to this?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Oh, absolutely. I think it was day two or three. And I was in Kharkiv. I was sitting there in the basement with my friends and trying to absorb the whole situation, trying to understand what's going on. Because I only came there for three days. I didn't I didn't plan to stay there longer. And on day two, everything started. So I was in the middle with um with no understanding of how to get out, what would happen to my family, and everything. I was trying to understand the reason why, because I believe in every time at least in my life when I was somewhere, it meant something in the long run. So I think on day three, I was sitting there and I thought, okay, well, as a custom experience professional, what can I learn? And how can I use this experience to actually do something better? Is there something I could take away from this? What's the lesson for me? And that actually kept me going. I found this reason, and it's very important in this traumatic situation is to actually find the reason. So I had this reason and I've started looking into the small things, how how people, how how people were helping other people, uh, how governments were were changing the legislation to bring more uh refugees in, how uh dramatic things were actually proving that the relationship, the human relationships are way more important than your passport, your faith, your race. It doesn't matter. Okay. It's interesting that when when I was staying in line for the train on the first station, because I had to change three trains to get out of Ukraine. I was standing there uh and um I was singing a song to myself. It's the pretenders, I'll stand by you. This song was with me in my head throughout the whole experience. I don't know. And I was sending and singing it to myself at the station, surrounded by hundreds of people. And um, and I started singing, and there was a girl next to me, and after I finished, she said, Thank you so much. I didn't listen to any music for a long time, and your song made me so comfortable, so calm. I appreciate that. At some point, you only hear the bombings, you only hear you know screams, you put yourself into this, and and it's it's very hard for brain to survive through that. So this small that such small thing made one person comfortable. And again, I started thinking, what if it was intentional? And what if we could make people a bit more confident uh into this standing in line? Again, I was standing in line for five hours. I couldn't really understand even if I'm getting on the train, is there a train? What's the train? Where is it going? This this also brings a lot of panic. And you know, I only had my backpack and I was with my friend and her 11-year-old daughter, so we were pretty, you know, um uh pretty quick in moving around. But there were people with with elderly parents, with little kids, with lots of luggage because they were fleeing the country for good, and they didn't know what to do because the train could come to that platform or that platform. This also brought me into thinking, okay, if we had a proper refugee journey map, whatever you call it, just understanding of what people are going through. Could we actually create a bit more stability and clear path for these people so they don't have to worry about whether they're getting on the tree or not, but they will have more human powers to just support their loved ones next standing next to them or thinking about other things, but not just worrying about something they don't even know how to worry about. Then the other thing I really noticed in on Lviv station, there was um there was a line. Uh the volunteers were there giving food and and kids, kids, specific kids' food, diapers, everything. That was really human, that was really good. But at the same time, uh the line, the pressure there was not controllable. And again, though you could see them standing there, it was very unlikely you could get out of the line and get back in line because of all this mess happening. Again, no structure because no one was prepared for such things. And the act of kindness, which uh we previously talked about the Polish uh guys giving teddy bears. I was on the train, and the lady who was checking passports, she was she was checking passports, and at the end, when she checked the passports, she took out the candies from her pocket and gave it to the kids. It was very like human moment, you know, because kids love candies. Parents want them their pet their kids to be happy, so that was a very important small gesture. And then the other one, we were already out of the train waiting for my friend to pick us up, and we were standing next to a building, I don't know, like some sort of station building at the train station. Me, my friend again, and her daughter, and suddenly I um I see a woman running towards us. I was like, What's what's going on? I mean, is there a problem? No, she saw us standing next to the building and she brought us juice, some some candy, some some food, uh, and a blanket, because we were standing there for just, I think, over I mean, we were there for five minutes or so. So it was not like we were standing there for hours and she noticed us after an hour or so. No, and it was again human, human behavior, which is touching me throughout this. And if we give these humans, these volunteers, these real people, a bit more tools to help, help them to help others, uh, I think our role as customer experience would be so much more important and brings value to lives rather than just to businesses.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

That's a very powerful set of observations you made and shared, and thank you for sharing them. And yes, if you were to design a refugee journey map, you could say what the expectations are, how people feel, how you should respond, when things go wrong, what you can do to improve it. And that's something that the world over could benefit from because you know, if you had that as a starting point, I'm not to say it's a it's the solution and it's not going to be the same everywhere, but it just helps you understand and empathize with how people are in that situation. The the most telling thing you've said there, and you said many things, was just that real human uncertainty of which platform.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

I've traveled all this, I've traveled all this way, I brought everything, and I get here, and this is okay. And now I see six platforms, and there's no sign-up. You know, those things then all of a sudden the anxiety goes through the roof, doesn't it? And just having that taken care of would just bring it all down again.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I will tell you uh just another example. We were standing in line for in Lviv for five hours to get the train to Poland. We were thinking we're going to one city, right? And we we are getting on the train, and I'm asking the uh conductor, uh, where are we going? And he doesn't know.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

And I'm saying to my friend who's who needs to pick us up, I say, I don't know where we're going. And she and she's like, Okay, well, I'll figure it out. And she tells this to her uh 19-year-old son in Poland, and he's like, What does what does it mean? She doesn't know where we're going, just let her make her go out of the train, and there's always a sign where the train is going. Because in his mind, it's just so strange not to know where you're going sitting in the train. Yeah, and that's another, you know, you you are in the train already, you you've managed to get on the train, but you don't even know where it's going. So it's it's even more anxiety. And you know, and the other thing I wanted to underline again, I speak English. I feel confident in many countries, but lots of the women with their kids, they're lonely, they have they have no no English or no other language except for their mother tongue, maybe Russian or Ukrainian. Okay, that's that's the main in our situation, and they cannot they cannot feel confident because they don't even speak the language. So it's another problem which the refugees will have around the world.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

It is just those basics, isn't it? Just thinking about those basics, the impact they actually have. I mean it's almost, and I don't want to, I'm certainly not trying to make it superficial, but it's like a pop-up experience is needed, isn't it? It's kind of unpack it and just go, right, this is how it works here. Because it'll only be momentarily and it will be rolled down again. So it needs to be about um social equity rather than you know commercial equity in any shape or form, but done in a way that has humanity running through it, you know, so that everyone who's going through that situation, who has never been through that situation, doesn't deserve to go through that situation, actually feels they go through it with dignity rather than with desperation. Because that will then again you know increase your confidence and make you feel more normalized with it, isn't it? I mean, it's what the answers are, I don't know. I think probably the answers come from people like yourself who have been there and said, what would have reduced my anxiety at this point? You know, and actually there would be a group of people out there who could probably contribute towards a data pool of all of these experiences, and then from there create an appreciation of what a refugee's journey might look like in these different scenarios. You say yourself, you know, sometimes you you look at these situations and think I'm here for a reason. Maybe this is something that will develop in the future, but it's um it's a powerful set of observations in very extreme situations. It must have been comforting to actually have something like that to hang on to, to create kind of that normalization through it. Yeah, to have the reason why to go to that. Well, look, I'm very aware that it isn't the end of the journey for you. So um obviously I and I'm sure every listener here kind of our hearts are with you and hope you know you you come through this in in a way which makes you stronger. So thank you so much for your time, uh Elena. It's been a delight um to speak to you professionally and personally. And um, let's hope we speak again soon.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Oh thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my views and my story. And uh yeah, I'm always open for the discussions. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Great, thank you.