Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 10 Episode 4 - Exploring the Customer-centric mindset - Piotr Wojciechowski

Every once in a while you meet, or as in the case of CX Superheroes podcast host Christopher Brooks, you get to work with an exceptional talent. Piotr Wojciechowski, CX practitioner with a design background is such a talent. Having delivered a CX transformation project together in Poland, Christopher is keen the rest of the world discovers the value he has enjoyed in Piotr. 

In keeping with the CX Superheroes podcast series Christopher & Piotr dive in and explore a critical topic in the world of customer centricity; the customer centric mindset. Arguably more important than any method, process or motivation for CX, the mindset sets apart those who 'are' CX from those that 'do' CX. The former being great leaders in CX. 

Christopher shares some of the characteristics of great CX leaders with Piotr who in turns examines and qualifies attributes. Piotr also helps us understand his journey to running the Polish CX company Fuzers, and how CX has accelerated its prominence in Polish business during and since the pandemic. 

If you enjoy the podcast, get in touch with guest Piotr through his LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotrwojciechowski/ or email piotr.wojciechowski@fuzers.com. 

CX Superheroes podcast is brought to you by http://lexdengroup.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes Podcast. This is the series in which I, Christopher Brooks, bring you some of the thought leaders from across the globe who share their ideas, their insights, their inspiration for a progressive and accelerating world of customer experience. In this episode, it is a personal pleasure for me to meet up with a colleague, Piotr Wojtyrowski. Piotra, based in Poland, is one of the most talented CX professionals I've come across. Piotra and I met earlier and we discussed a really important topic, the customer-centric mindset. And what is it that makes a customer-centric mindset? In a journey across this particular topic, we also hear about Piotra's own personal approach to customer experience and some of the truly innovative ways in which he's connecting with his customers and progressing customer experience in Poland. Let's meet Piotra now. Piotra, we're going to go through a number of things in our conversation today, and I'm particularly interested to understand your take on the customer-centric mindset. Having a mind that thinks differently about customer centricity, and we'll we'll come on to that. But yeah, I'm very fortunate. I've not only got to know you, but I've had the pleasure of working with you, and uh can say firsthand what a quality and expert CX professional you are. That said, many of our listeners won't have had that benefit. So would you mind just introducing yourselves but giving us a bit of an appreciation of where you come from in the world of customer experience, how you got into it, and what your current role is?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Okay, thank you for this uh nice introduction. I found myself uh in the customer experience area uh through working in an innovation consultancy. It was the moment when I uh started to look uh closer to this area of design, innovation, service design thinking at the very beginning. And I was working there for some time, and later on I uh quit this job. I started to work as a design thinking trainer, consultant, freelancer. And through this, I came to the moment when I founded my company. At the very beginning, we were focusing on service design practice. We are still doing it because we are still using service design, but at some point we focused our projects and our investments and education on customer experience, and at this moment we are connecting this customer experience elements with service design projects, making it work all together. This consultancy since seven years already, so quite a lot of time so far. And as for now, on one hand, I'm a company owner, so I have all this task related to being a company owner, but on the other hand, I'm a consultant and I'm working on a daily basis with our client, and we are running uh several customer experience projects.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Brilliant, thank you so much for that. So tell me, Fuzas is, as you said, it's well established, seven years. There's a lot of learning and a lot of development, and you've obviously been honing your craft as you go on. Your background is interesting because many people in customer experience seem to come from a customer service or a marketing background or even an insider. You come from a design background, so a very interesting kind of context you bring.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

To be honest, I'm coming from the training industry because it was my first company, it was a training company, and we are selling trainings, different ones, uh sales training, team management, and this kind of stuff. And a bit by accident, I joined this innovation company where everything started for me. I'm not a designer by education, so I'm graduated in psychology and management. So this design area was new to me, and I got into it as a kind of outsider, I think. And for a long time I was thinking about myself as an outsider, so because there were so many people who were design educated and they finished and graduated from design studies. But at this moment, I think that it's a kind of advantage. It's giving a bit of different perspective than people from design education have. It's not better, it's not worse, it's simply different.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

It just means you're you're richer and deeper in the knowledge and insight you have coming into it. One thing I'd like to ask about is FUSES. Now, you've established FUSE in Poland. Now I've had the benefit of working some time in Poland. Do you see the way in which customer experience is evolving in Poland? Is it in particular sectors? Is it with an aim, is it supporting regulatory drive? What is the motivation for customer experience? Your take on it in Poland.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Definitely I see um uh customer experience, it was somehow present in the companies. There were people who are taking care of it, but uh it was just a very small piece of the market. It is still not so huge as uh, for example, marketing or sales departments or areas of the market, but it has grown. And there is on one hand so many people uh within the companies who are running this kind of initiatives, who are building sex structures in the companies, and on the other hand, there is more and more consultants, companies, there is a lot of big consultancies and big, for example, advertising and 2x agencies who are developing this kind of sex practices. So at some point, I think that we are in a tipping point or at the beginning of a tipping point in Poland as it comes to the customer experience, and there is huge potential, but still there is a lot of things to do because uh I think that somehow at the beginning of the journey we are talking a lot, we are doing a bit more, but on this operational level, uh when we are working with the companies, there is still so many challenges which are quite far from these huge words we are saying sometimes at the very beginning when we are coming to the idea of customer centricity.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

But do you think you've got some advantages? I mean, obviously, for quite some time there was a kind of a US blueprint to customer experience that was stamped around the globe until it was starting to realize that it hasn't work. You know, it needs to be adapted and and it needs to be empathetic to the drivers of business success in each country. But you have got a number of years of different countries and different ways it's been approached. So Poland coming to it now, are you able to fast track some learning? Uh or or are the same mistakes being made where people are just jumping to a measure or diving to a journey map, or is there a more mature approach to it you're finding?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I think that it depends. It depends on a company, it depends on on the people and their experience and perspective. But from my point of view, I think that we are in a moment where uh it has changed from do we're taking everything what was somehow easy to be found in the internet or somebody brought it or or we read about it uh somewhere, then we are taking this and using without thinking how to adapt it, how it's going to impact our processes and so on. Now we are still uh learning and we are still taking a lot from many places and resources, but I think that many people at this moment they are more reflective, they are adapting tools, they are adapting methods, they are bringing them, but they are thinking, okay, it looks good, but let's think how we are going to implement into our reality because taking it one-to-one from the US or UK or whichever market we can take, it's not working in a way we would love to.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

And just how is it with clients? So maybe this is your style. We've heard people talk and say sometimes clients want you to just do it all for them. Sometimes you need to really prove the case before you get traction, whereas others want to work together, collaborate, and develop their understanding along the journey. What's your preference? How do you like to work?

SPEAKER_00 8:29

When it comes to Fuzzers and my team and our experience, we are mainly working with our clients in this collaborative way, and most of the requests for proposals we are receiving from them, it's about working in this way. So during this last seven years, I had maybe three up to five projects that were done like a project without this collaboration where we are just delivering the products from the contract, and mainly it's this way. I think that the main reason is that in this way our clients are learning a lot when they are cooperating with us, they are watching how we are proceeding, how we are doing things. And many times at the beginning of the project, they are saying about this that we want to learn, we want to see how the agency is doing that, and we want to be part of this process because in this way we can later on do at least half of this job by ourselves. This is it, and from my point of view, this collaborative way is more popular, at least in case of my company.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

And would you say, despite the fact that you've been practicing for many years, this collaborative approach, are you still learning from clients? You still hear something, hey, that's really interesting. I've not thought about that perspective. Do they bring things to the table that excite you as well?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, they do. They do. Especially that in case of users, we don't have this industry specialization, so it means that we are not working only with financial companies, for example. We have a lot of banks, we are cooperating with a lot of banks, but still we are making projects for other clients also and other industries, so it uh gives us a lot of different perspectives. And yes, clients are also uh full of inspiration, and we are learning a lot. And now I see that more and more often we are asking them, for example, for uh short presentations about their perspective, about their business, because in this way we can learn a lot about them and about the way they are seeing the world and their challenges. So definitely, yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Great, it's really reassuring to hear. You mentioned there about banking. Now, my experience of banking is been a few places, Austria, France, and Portugal as well as the UK. Is there the race for digitalization in Polish banking that we see in other places? And and what's your view on that? Is that good? Is it make things more efficient? Or do you worry that the human side of those very emotional engagements about money are being lost? How is it progressing in Poland?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

When it comes to the digital side of the Polish banking, it looks really good. Poland as a country is one of the leaders of digitalization in the banking sector, and it's well known globally. I saw some reports about this. We have a lot of really cool digital solutions in banking, and there is a lot of people using them. So this digitalization is the normal stuff as for now. But if you're asking about fears related to this, there are some of them. The biggest one uh for me is the situation where the company is trying to digitalize everything for the sake of the digitalization itself, to say that we are digital and they are like closing this human touch and human contact totally in the name of digitalization. And on one hand, I really understand it from the business point of view. In the long run, it makes sense. But from this customer experience perspective, from this human perspective, I would love uh uh to see this situation where on one hand we have this digitalization because it's a part of our world and it's a normal thing now, but still we have this possibility to uh contact somebody in case we need it. Uh, I also think that this uh personal contacts and human touch uh would become kind of a premium service you you will be charged for more pro most probably, and you will be also uh you will have this willingness to pay for that for this contact in case you need it, because in most of the cases you can or you will be able to do things digitally, like for example, when I'm analyzing my relation with bank, I don't know when last time I was in the bank branch. So when especially when it comes to the consumer finances, because when it comes to the company, it's becoming it's more often, but uh, when it comes to the B2C market, it's almost unnecessary. We are digital when it comes to the banking, and the level of digitalization is really high. But this risk or this fear I have is about this closing this human touch completely, and I think that we should live at least a bit, and we can charge people for that. We can monetize somehow this human. I think that it will be important for the customer experience.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, it's very interesting you you say that because I I also recognize the need, but yeah, where there's a need and people want it enough, perhaps the banks, as you say, will look and say the only way we can afford this is if we premiumize it and it will become human interaction will become a luxury.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

But I think that that this is happening, I don't know what what are your experiences at this point, but for example, when it comes to our practice as a consulting takes company, and when it comes to the physical workshops, for example, or physical meetings with clients, after the pandemic, it has changed a lot, like everywhere, it's nothing new. But now I see that this uh human touch in terms of our business is becoming premium service, and we we are charging, for example, additionally for this option that we are going somewhere, and somebody has to cover all these costs related to this trip. And there are clients who are saying, Okay, we are able to pay for that because it's important for us, we want this, and there are some who are saying, Okay, we see the cost of this personal contact, so let's stay online and we can do this project online. And I think it's a kind of fair deal because everybody is happy. Uh, we are given this opportunity and they can choose. I think that it's be will become quite the same in many different areas.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

That's a fair point. One of the things that we were just talking about there, kind of the humanization uh or retained this and kind of human human engagement. Um we did a study looking at what mattered most to customers, and and that was one of the things that came through. And what we realized was that you needed to have quite an enlightened leader who's curious to understand what is the value of digital in my business? If my business is about relationships, what is the value of digital? And this just brings me on to the topic of the customer-centric mindset. And enlightened leaders are those who are able to be a role model for others in terms of what good customer centricity looks like. And I wouldn't mind just playing with a few of these attributes and just getting your take on them because we always have a good conversation, and I think it'd be really good to get your view on this. So the first one being the idea of kind of perpetual curiosity, always the Simon Sinek kind of asking why. Do you think it's important in customer experience that we are securious and respectfully challenging and wanting to know more?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I think that it's damn important. Even today I had a talk with one of our clients, and she said to me that she witnessed a situation in her company when they did the customer research, they had a lot of customer insights, they make made the prioritization of this customer insight, they saw what is most important from the point of view of the customer, and the product team, when they saw it, literally said, Fuck the voice of the customer, we are going to do this in this way. And on one hand, maybe we can somehow explain this approach, but for me it's about this curiosity you mentioned, because even you are not agree with this point of view, even you have some other ideas or the way of doing things. The simple fact of being curious what these people said, what our clients have in mind, would be nice to be implemented in this situation. So for me, this curiosity is kind of basis when we are coming about when we are talking about customer-centric mindset, and without this curiosity, it would be difficult to run any kind of SIX transformation, in my opinion. Because if you are not curious about your clients, what they are saying, what they are thinking, what they are feeling, then it makes no sense to start any kind of customer experience-related projects within your company. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Great. I think we both very much agree on that one. And obviously, you know, that curiosity sometimes is another piece that comes with it. It's the empathy. Having being able to empathize with the context, the situation your customers are in or employees are under. I mean, it's not probably a word that's used a lot in customer experience. For you, how do you really help an organization be empathetic to its customers? It's not just saying it, is it? You've got to live it. How do you get to that point?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

We're trying to force them to use their own services in different contexts. So I think it's the best way to become empathetic towards your clients because you can talk a lot about customer perspective, but as long as you are not doing the things that they have to do on a daily basis, you won't understand them. And any agency, any amount of insights from external company won't help here. But this is what we are trying to do. On one hand, we are doing it by ourselves. So, for example, when we had a project about the customer journey for opening a bank account, people from my team were opening accounts in this bank. So, nothing spectacular, nothing new for people who are working in this area. But on the side of companies, it's an extremely innovative approach because on they are not doing this on a daily basis, it's easy to understand, they have a lot of other tasks to do. So, this is what we are trying to do on a daily basis: trying to force them to see and to experience their own processes, to buy through their shops, to open their accounts, and to make reservations through their booking pages, and then they are becoming really empathetic. It's the one way, and the second way, if we can't somehow uh invite them or force them to do this uh service safari stuff, how we call it, we are inviting them to listen to their customers at least. So we are running interviews, we are running observations, we are running different uh research activities, but they are part of it, and it's related to the topic we had before this collaborative cooperation between us and our clients. And this collaborative cooperation in practice means that, for example, they are present during the interviews and they can listen to what customers say, and I think it's really important because then it's much more easy, it's easier simply to proceed with the project in the organization because they understand the inside and understand the source, they understand the context, and this is it. And in this way, they are also becoming a bit more empathetic when they listen to stories from original clients and not only presentations with our insights and our reports and so on. Two quite simple ways, but they are really powerful if they are implemented really and they are put into action.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Great advice, uh Piotr. I think I mean brilliant, because obviously they're not they're not expensive things to do. And uh yeah, what better way than actually becoming a a customer of the experience you're trying to improve to then be able to have empathy with what people are going through. So it's a great advice. I'm sure people will be scribbling that one down and taking it back. Very good advice, especially if you happen to be Ferrari or uh Disney World or something. I mean, come on, we can practice there.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

In Fuzers, we have this informal list of companies we would love to work with because we would love to make the service safari for them. So yeah, I can list them somehow in the description of this uh of this uh podcast. So maybe somebody will approach us later.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yeah, exactly. We'll put it in there, they can tap.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Ferrari is there, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I got close a few years ago. I did a collaboration between a payments company and Ferrari. I got to put my toe in the water, but I won't admit to having done anything more than a toe in the water. But uh yeah, I can I can see the value in in selecting the clients that you would think that will be a great experience.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah, but it it it's damnly interesting. Like all the service safari we are doing, mainly uh girls in my team, because at this moment I have only girls in my team. Lately they were doing service safari connected with field research. They were visiting some areas outside the city looking for people who have some heating solutions from gas. providers outside of their homes and they were talking with uh people uh outside of their homes and so on in it might seem strange in the era of digitalization all this uh digital research tools and so on but at the end it works really really good and it gives us also a lot of new knowledge and perspective so I really believe in this kind of stuff yeah the list is growing there is a lot of company would like to do service safari with very good this service safari fits into this category but another of the categories that we found was very prevalent in the kind of the leaders of CX was the willingness to experiment and try new things we found that not just sticking to the same old formula but those in customer experience are who do stand out are happy to break the boundaries and try things not necessarily with a proven business case but perhaps bit backed up with some some insight or some indication that it could be a value to customers how important do you think that is just not experimenting for the sake of experimenting but being bold and brave enough to try new things I think it's especially important if you are working in the corporate environment because at least in our case we are working mainly with corporate clients so on a daily basis we see a lot of people who have this courage to experiment but this courage it's not normal thing in the organization so they have it but it's not the same when it comes to the management board and the leaders and so on. It is important but it is important to have this courage on all levels of organization to make it work because it's not enough when this level of operation have this courage and they are doing things they're trying to experiment because at the end in especially in the huge organization somebody will say stop we are not working in this way we have product roadmap here we have to go step by step so please focus on your job and do not create additional tasks for us and yeah coming back to the point it is important but I think that we should start from the management boards from the leaders we can teach them we should invite them for the service safari we should invite them to try new solutions because in this way slowly we can change the mindset and it will go down to lower levels to these operations but in other directions at some point it will stuck anyway. Excellent excellent but I think good advice yeah you just can't have small pockets of it can't be siloed it needs to be a spirit kind of part of the culture doesn't it it is difficult because there is so many people up there in the management boards there are who are really experienced they have their own paths of doing things and they are not really willing to change anything because it's risky and it can impact their salary, their position, their status and many other things so it's a really complicated case and topic but still I think that somehow we should approach them and start with them or from them.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

I'm with you on that I do recognize that the sort of conventional approach but you need to get them on board. The seven traits we've identified just another one I want to talk to you about is the spirit of sharing everything with the intention of allowing faster accelerated progress we quite often come across in organisations brilliant individuals who just have no there's no means for them to share what they know with other people we also come across in some industries people who know stuff but they hold it back for fear of them then not having value. But we recognize that you need to share everything in order to get progress.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

What's your take on that are are you a supporter of that sort of thinking of sharing everything or do you think you should hold it I'm definitely for sharing everything and I think that without this we won't finally have any impact on the business side of our organizations because especially now our processes are so complex and they are involving so many different business units. For example some time ago we did a touch point map with one of our financial customers and there was a process in the bank and we came up well we saw on this touch point map that there was 16 business units involved in delivering this process it's difficult to imagine that without sharing we can really change this process and change the experience with the process and with a brand so I'm really in favor of sharing and we are also trying to promote it somehow for example through different kinds of workshops where we are presenting the results of the project and we're inviting different people different stakeholders I know you are doing quite the same things in your uh in your projects and this is it so yeah I'm really into it and I think that it's really important to share all the data we have about customers and all the data we have also about business because many organizations we have this data related to our department but we really do not understand how our business works because we have no information we really don't don't know what our customer says from outside of our part of the reality and still it's uh it's of course difficult when it comes to the huge organizations how to connect all this data into one dashboard that it's easy to use and it's easy to understand to work with but I think it's really really important.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

It's worth the F isn't it so th thank you really useful to get your kind of context on that just some of the things about there about sharing I just prompted in my mind how does it work in in Poland what's the community like for customer experience is it a very open community or or do you need to connect up with other parts of Europe to get an exchange going? How's it forming?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

I think that it's becoming more and more open but to be honest there is not many customer experience focused organizations on let's say national level there were some tries but they are not really active at the moment as far as I know lately there was a first customer and employee experience conference in Poland which took place in fall 2022 it's the organizers of this conference they have this goal I suppose also to somehow unite the CIX community in Poland but uh in this context I think that we are at the very very beginning and these organizations like for example European Customer Experience Organization or Customer Experience Professional Association I think that they are not really popular in Poland at least for now there are some people who know about them but there is almost no activities under umbrella of uh of those organizations uh or any other organizations related to customer experience uh um honestly and and finally if I might touch on something that we're gonna be collaborating on later in the year that I'm very excited about you heard about the customer experience world games and you asked if we could run one specifically in Poland which I thought was a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Gonna happen later in the year how excited about this are you?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Really excited I couldn't wait to do it because I think that it would be really amazing to do something along our corporate business oriented work and I really believe that we can use our customer experience co-creation cooperative skills and everything related to it for doing something really good and really impactful because the truth is that in many of our corporate projects it's difficult to find this impact. We are delivering we are delivering a lot of things but impact on the real impact that it's measurable it's really difficult to find some times so I think that this completely different area of doing something good and using takes for good can be really more impactful and we can do a lot of good things so I can't wait and looking for that.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Right we're very excited and we had some some incredible success when we ran World Games normally runs in English just as a default language but we ran it previously in Spanish as a default language. Okay. And it just brought in a much wider audience because you have some people who are brilliant in CX the only thing they don't do is speak perfect English. That's the only so why is that a why is that a a reason for them not to engage in it extending the approach similar to Poland and have people playing in Polish will hopefully draw in some more people who are great at CX but just less confident in English which seems again a silly reason not to be a part of it. It'll connect the community up and as you say find space to to give back and I'm very excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I also think that the really important point about the community in this context is that based on my TEDx experiences and running a TEDx conference in uh in Lublin for several years I see that it's much more easy to build a community around non-commercial things. I don't know maybe there is like less feeling of concurrence maybe this is it I'm not sure but at some point it's much more easy so I also think that this Sakes for good projects could be at least for some people a good way to join the Sakes community and try to do something all together to get to know each other and so on.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

If it works like it has in in with other world games they become the benefits we we started thinking the benefit will be for the charities we help but actually players tell us you've connected me with people I've learned new things I feel more confident I actually do know what I'm talking about and I feel really good for giving back as well I'm sure all those same things will come through and we'll make people aware of that as it comes up but but for now Piotr if people want to get hold of you what's the best way to get hold of you you said some really useful stuff in this session I really appreciate it and I'm sure you don't obviously people understand your English is excellent. So you're not just working in Poland you're open to looking at projects across other parts of the world as well I assume so how do people reach you if they want to speak to you?

SPEAKER_00 32:47

You can reach me through my LinkedIn profile so you can easily find me on a LinkedIn or you can approach me simply by writing an email and I think that somewhere we can put this email yeah we'll put your LinkedIn profile and your email address into the description for you. And regarding this working outside of Poland yes we are open as for now we are uh we had mainly projects in Poland in many different sectors some small activities outside but there were really small ones and we are open and even for that I finally started to translate our webpage so during upcoming weeks we'll have English webpage so it will be much more easy to understand how we can help you in case you would be interested. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Piotra thank you very much not least of all for speaking English as well because obviously sadly my Polish is lacking I have to rely upon my colleague Rodrigo who is Mexican which is a strange set of speaks Polish. There we go there we go but Piotra it's always a pleasure to talk with such an acclaimed exercise you bring a really fresh perspective to the world of CX so we're grateful for having you in the community. Good luck with you and Fuzers throughout the course of the year and the future and I can't wait to collaborate with you again on on CX World Games and hopefully on other projects together commercially also so Piotr thank you so much for joining us on CX Superheroes thank you for the invitation goodbye.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Goodbye