Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 12 Episode 2 - CX Design - Ricardo Sultz Gulko

There are many aspects of customer experience. No one person can have a satisfactory depth of expertise in all areas. The CX Superheroes podcast series brings to the mic, experts in specific fields to give you, our esteemed listener, a broader appreciation of the various components to succesful customer centricity. 

This episode we focus on design and to do so we have an expert who has installed  customer led design thinking as a leading practice within international technology giants. Ricardo Sultz Gulko (Eglobalis Information) has worked with some of the world's biggest brands helping them to design customer experiences around the outcome they want to achieve. 

Ricardo shares his journey and his methods to arrive at better CX design. As well as imparting an array of personal and professional design experiences.  Experimentation and Collaboration are just two of the customer centric superpowers Ricardo discusses in conversation with Lexden CX's Christopher Brooks, also your series host.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast. My name is Christopher Brooks, and I'm your host throughout this series. A series in which we interact with some of the more interesting characters in the world of customer experience. Some working as practitioners and helping take organizations forward in their endeavours to be more customer-centric, others providing services, advice, expertise, and progress in the discipline of academia in customer experience. But all of them have an interesting perspective and an interesting story to share. And today's guest is no different. Ricardo Sgolke is widely known as the managing director of Eglobelis, which is a customer insight and experience organization, but is also probably equally well known as the founder of the European Customer Experience Organization. Now I chose to catch up with Ricardo and talk about a topic that I know he's passionate and has a depth of expertise in, which is unrivaled by many, and that is design. We're talking about customer experience design, and we're talking going to talk about how you get individuals in an organization and customers to adopt changes in design. Ricardo, at long last, we get you on the superhero podcast. It feels like it's been a lifetime. It feels like we've just been trying been missing each other all along the way. But welcome, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Thank you very much, Christopher.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

We're delighted to have you here. It's more for the advanced CX, I find, but we'll come on to that. Maybe our listeners will disagree. But I think you've got to kind of you've got to, with all due respect, because I'm probably older than you, you need to have been around a while to make this one work. I'm 25 only. That's good then. Okay. So, Ricardo, would you like to introduce yourself and the organization you represent, and then we'll let people know how we met each other. So, over to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Sure. So, first of all, we met through the ECXO as you become one of the co-founders, and that's how I met how I met Christopher a few years ago. I think it's three or four years, I don't remember. Three years, yes. And I am the MD of a small company that works with B2B large companies such as Samsung SAP and other companies, HP, etc., to help them to create a better customer experience through technology. Our specialization is really technology. I'm also the co-founder with also Christopher and many other people of the ECXO, which is the European Customer Experience Organization, which aims to educate corporate in Europe and to improve the customer experience to get to a maturity level in 10 years from now, all together in all Europe, the 50 countries. That's the overall idea. Did I present myself well?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yes, absolutely. It's the person I know, so that's good. So, what was your path? Some people come in via customer service, others via marketing, some are technicians. What was your road to customer experience, Ricardo?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

So I come from professional services all my life, but I always have this challenge because I was working in a company called Sam Docs, and I always have this challenge that I thought that you are super abusive toward the customers. Many requests that what they wanted, they have to pay, everything they have to pay. And we was like negotiating those small change requests that would take five minutes to do it. And I thought this cannot be the way, but I didn't know a definition of what I was looking for. Then I went to live in the US in 2004 or 4 to 2006, if I'm not wrong, and I also studied there. And I am diabetic type 1, so this is a big part of my life. And one day, when I arrived in from Germany to the US, my suppliers of my pump, which is what a diabetic used to inject insulin in his body, intercutaneous, is a machine. I didn't know what to do because my suppliers was very low. So I you can understand how good I was in customer experience that I didn't know that you have a call center to call. I didn't know that customer services would answer. I called at the headquarters in Minnesota, Made Tronic, the biggest uh uh medical device company in the world, with amazing company. And I said, Look, I need help. I don't have my suppliers, I just arrived from Germany, and all the doctors tell me that I cannot get uh inside a line because they have too many customers. And besides that, I did not have also a card that you need in the US because I was working for a company. I did not yet have the card. No problem, sir. We will help you. Let me talk with the representative in your area, and this is B2B, or this is B2C, excuse me. Um, in your area, and in 24 hours, she'll call you back. Coming from Germany, from Israel, you are skeptical already. What they say, what they do. So she was about to close the phone to hang up the phone, and she said, Do you need any other thing? And now out of my frustration, I told her, not expecting absolutely nothing from her, I told her, Look, it's very tough to find a doctor here. Everybody tells me that they have they have a line and I have to wait, and and I don't have a card, so it's a problem. No problem, sir. We are going to help you. Close the phone. Less than 24 hours in the morning, 7:30. Okay, I was in close, very close to Philadelphia in the other side of the river in New Jersey. Somebody calls me and she says, Hi, Mr. Guko. Hi, my name is Fabi. I don't remember. And look, first of all, I want to tell you that we are going to send you right away for suppliers. Wow, so this is 2004 or 5. And when she told me that, I was already in the model of wow, that's amazing. Let me pay you, let me give you my credit card. And said, No, if you remember, this time you did not have many tools to pay online as you was at the beginning of social media. Oh, no, no problem, sir. We are going to send you, don't need to pay nothing, it's$200, and but we are going to send you. And when you start to work with us later, did you have your card and you pay normally? Said, Wow. And then in the end of the phone, she said, This was uh 10 10 minutes call. And I said, I will send you today by federal express, whatever. And I got in the end of the day, and she said also, by the way, sir, tomorrow or in maximum 48 hours, I will call you with three daughters. I was wow, this is amazing. Yeah, I was really uh thinking why we don't do those things in the B2B world, treat people so respectfully like that. Obviously, Metronics have the understanding that we are we need them, it's not that you can just fail, you you cannot fail there. Less than 24 hours later, they had you're not going to believe on that. They call me, sir. I have three doctors for you. She told me the three doctors, and then look at that. You know that I don't care about religion, I don't care about color, don't care about absolute gender, I don't care about those things. And then she said the following thing that you'll be stunned. Said, by the way, this doctor here is Jewish. And then I went, Wow, I like I didn't know how to define that zyper personalization, yes. But she, without me saying that I was from Israel or I'm from Germany, she understood basically my name because South every South in the world is probably Jewish. And she said that I was wow, this is amazing. Then I went to so they sent me everything. I have a doctoral read, they arranged it for me. It was a really amazing experience. I was like, Wow, having a shock of culture, let's say in that way, and then I went to the no Burns and Nobles is a shop in the US, very often. Uh, everybody buys books there, and I love Starbucks because you can find hundred books that you like in the same place. I I I could expend my time there all my life. And what happens uh that time is that uh I found a book out of the blue that was a uh history about a taxi driver, and that was Chef Hiking. And I said, Wow, but this is what we need in B2B because it's so bad. This the the book of Shep Hiking about a taxi driver that for me is the best history that he tells in his videos changed my concept. So when I started to lead professional services, obviously, this was not maturing that in 2005. We just started to speak. Have Don uh Don Peppers talking about hyperpersonalization already, but there was a few guys talking about that, and obviously Peters, as he was always talking about that, about excellence, etc. Then I understood we have to bring that for professional services, for sales, but I didn't know how to do that, so I started to study to read more books and to understand and talking with people, how you are doing that and how Medtronic did that. So just to explain how I got I I looked for the guy that was leading experiences in Medtronic. I don't remember his name right now, but he told me how they did that and how they designed the experience and how they trained the people, and they understood also that the people that they are going to hire is not a normal kind of guy because you have to be a person that is extremely empathetic because they are dealing in all day divisions with very sick people or people that have a disease as I have, which is not a disease situation, diabetes type one, and they train the people super well, and the companies structure it so well, and then I started to implement small things in the beginning in MDOCs was hard for me because I did not have a position that was a leadership position, I was a project manager later. When I became a head of professional services already in Germany, I started to implement different things. I didn't know that you have to measure, for example. Slowly, I was learning how you do the things, and then reading and doing, reading and asking questions all the time, and then uh the things growed for me. I became the the senior director for Ericsson around the globe, let's say in that way, and things there. I have the chance actually to develop certain things that I wanted, and when I got the opportunity to work for Oracle, I was observing the people that was part of my teams, and I said, Oh, those guys are so good delivering the solution, designing the solution, developing the solution sometimes, because we in that time we just started with clown solutions, as we have the legacy systems, the each machine, the each uh systems, as you you remember, and the amazing thing here is that in Oracle I understood that we are we can make this successful, treating the employee well, not yet involving the jar as we are doing today, and or creating onboarding. I did not told in that time about onboarding, but the interesting thing here is that I understood what's possible. But what was missing was to have the people train it in not just uh keeping that beautiful, deliver it, but to spot opportunities, commercial opportunities. Because if you don't grow, what you are doing is for nothing. Yeah, the the objective in the end of today is to grow, but having loyal customers all the time to create adoption and great engagement. So we created that still based on what I heard still until today, there are some course that I don't know the name today, but it's commercial awareness for people in professional services. We were training the people how to spot uh, like you have a I am with you already. I'm working in your house right now in your in your company. So it's a project. Uh normally projects in York was uh 100, 200, 300 people, huge projects as uh multi-million dollars. Why not use the opportunity to spot opportune more opportunities to extend expand up sales and cross sales without doing that? Because I will bring later the business development to do their part, but I want to recognize, I want to help you to grow. Yes, that's the mindset, and and that makes us very successful in terms of growing accounts. So we started in Holland, for example, we did the financial entity of Holland that calls Belasting Dings. I don't know if you ever heard this name because it's uh strange. It's like the Ministry of Finance in the UK or in Germany, and the project was 50 million dollars and was had lots of troubles because we were working with uh with a government, and the people in the government they work different than you and me. As we work like seven to seven, they work from eight to three, and then you cannot deliver what you promised in two years. Yeah, so that becomes a problem. Was trying to deal with that and creating more opportunities to grow the accounts, so we have many challenges. It was a very confused and very problematic program. We was all even in the news because they were criticizing us, but in the end of today, we delivered a very successful initiative, okay, and was a bit more expensive than they expected, and because time, as you cannot work for them, they have to be there to deliver, especially when you are dealing with the financial, very delicate data of the people. And there I already started to implement those small things and become successful, okay. Ericsson the same and intra later on, which was a total different kind of company for me because was the SaaS, was the real first SaaS solution that I worked with. Although, in my experience, Oracle invented SaaS solutions because why I'm saying that because we have a project in Congo. Look at that. Have a project in Congo that actually in the end of the day we lost for SAP, but they requested from us to decrease the cost as more as possible, but they want to keep the data. So all the administrative things could happen in Europe or in the US in Oracle managed services in that time. So this, in my opinion, becomes a kind of cloud solution without defining that as a clown solution, because we have the database organized already. And in the last minute, SAP did a very good proposal for them and they dropped us, although we invested and they pay us back for investment because was a lot of effort in this thing. This is the way I created my career and and uh later on created my own company based in design. One of the things that I observed, and that leads us to adoption and design is that it's very difficult to adopt for people for so many different people, so many different cognitive understanding. As you like math, I like physics and other like chemistry. And we we cannot be good in everything, maybe Elon Musk or or Bill Gates, but not everyone. But the main point here is that I understood that was problems in many big companies in design. Oracle have many troubles in design to create adoption because one of the things that I learned early on that the executive they invest because you have a brand, they know that you are going to deliver, but they don't take in consideration normally the user, the guy that's going to adopt or not your software. Salesforce, the CRM, that's in my opinion, the most successful initiative in the world is uh Cloud Solution. But when you enter in the cockpit, for example, you are not uh I don't like the design of this cockpit. Looks if you don't understand what's going on there, it's very hard to get around because it was not well taught for the human brain. The challenge is to create something that will fit everyone, and this challenge unfortunately is unsolvable because nobody will like everything, just like you a BMB, I like something else, and that's the normal thing in life. Yes, from that perspective. So I left I left intra and I became part of this small initiative that somebody invited me to create a compra that will educate corporates about CX, which and I said, Okay, let's do it. So I knew people, I was in London many times presenting and talking and participating on talks, and I knew people there, and somebody told me, Let's go to this talk here. Okay, and I said, Which talk will be a SVP of uh Samsung speaking in this event in London. That was I said, Let's go. And I didn't know who was the speaker. Okay, I did not have a clue about Samsung in my life. You know, I have the phone of my company and one of those uh blue boxes from Nokia, if you remember. So the funny thing here is is the following we went there, and nobody went to him to ask for his card. Was like 100 people maybe there. I thought that it was totally strange that people don't go there to ask him. So I went there and said, Hey, hi, my name is Ricardo. I am trying to do something, and I can I have your card. Maybe you can talk later about some ideas that we have. Yeah, sure. Let me give you here. So that's also time comes by three months later. I decided to go really with the new initiative that was in globalism that time, and I dropped him a message by email. He never answered. I dropped a second message following up, never answered. So then I told my my my partner and also my wife in that time. I told her, Look, it's not going to happen. I will have to take a job back because not going to happen. And then I got a message from from his secretary saying, Mr. Li got your answer, but he's very busy because his father had a stroke. Then I went to the Google or Radio, whatever it was, Yahoo, I don't remember, and then I took a look, and then I understood who was Mr. Lee. This was the luckiest life, the luckiest day of my life. Mr. Li was the grandson of the founder of Samsung. So this is uh wow, yeah. That then I said I was super excited that he even sent me a message. I said, Wow, that's amazing. And then a relationship developed again. We met because he was always flying. He met me again in London. That time I did not have to pay, that was a good thing. And I stayed in the Hyoto in the center of was very good for me. And they talked to me. I told them my ideas. I learned about Samsung, all the challenges that they have in design and that in adoption. Because when you talk about Samsung, I'm not exactly talking about those cell phones. Sure. We are talking about a huge company that have eight big divisions that have so many technology, so many things that you don't know at home right now, listening to us, that I really like them. So the first challenge that they have is to create adoption. So that was my my first focus with them. And they said if you do that well for us in the first stance, we are going to expand your account and you are going to grow together. That's was the approach that they have. So I know that's a chance that you don't get every day. So the first thing that we did with these software that you are not aware that they have a lot of things in different solutions, they have also a lot of hardware, but they also are telecommunications and they do software as well. So what we helped them to do is things that would be bearable for your brain in a wheezy way. Okay. So the first thing I remember I wrote actually, this is the first time that appeared in Forbes that Shep Heiken used my name was exactly because of that. Because I told them the following look, you are giving like SAP and then work, all those guys do the same, and that's overwhelm you when you have to adopt or learn something. If you have 10 solutions for a mathematical problem, you never will find a solution because it's hard to think about onehow.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

So what happens here was the following. I told them maybe so. Learning here, we understood that if you offer three main features that will solve the problem, will be much more effective than offering all 10 different things, small things that they will change and help the customer to answer, because then you are decomplicating or making easier or what they call today a seamless experience, yes. But that was old word already. And that was the intention. So obviously, all the softwares today they have uh authorities, yes. So you are going to see that, and the other guy will see that. Yes, because if you are the manager, you are seeing 10 features that are important, and the other guy is seeing three, and that's normal, but not to adopt the services, and that's normal. Important part because what you want when you have a contract with some company, especially today in Cloud in SaaS solutions, or if if it's a leg systems that I hope that soon will disappear in a certain way, because I think SAS is a great solution. You want the guy pay you already the fee of the licenses, and that's a lot of money, oftentimes. Okay, although is is is cheaper today comparing with what was in the past, is still very expensive for companies, and you are paying something that you have is a kind of marriage, yes. You don't want a divorce because it will cost you a lot. So the best way to do that, yes, is to create something that will really help the people to adopt your customer. So in that time, we were not talking about onboarding, okay. But then we started to facilitate not creating videos but creating explanations. And the idea that we have, and there's a company in Munich actually that they did that so well, is to have intuitive design, which is easy to say, and I'm saying here is very easy for me, but in uh practically speaking, it's very difficult to do it. So this company in Munich that they are here today, they have a model that you drive you where you have to go from here. It's like of arrows, is really something totally nuts, don't look very beautiful, I must say, but it's really useful for people that want to make your employees adopt something. So this is always the mindset how I can create grow for my existing accounts. Okay, so you have a license that you sold, now you have to ensure that they're going to adopt. Okay, the first company that offer uh analytics of the other clients in the world was not what they say that was Salesforce, actually was Samsung. The only difference is that Samsung never said that, but they always did that because they have so many clients trusting they because uh Samsung is huge, okay. It's not what I think today they have maybe 15 or 20 percent of the the GDP of Korea, which is a super big company, and they have companies that use them and you don't know. So we helped them to create those things in the beginning. Later, as we succeeded, okay. That and that was did not take them them 10 months to understand that we succeeded because the ideas was I think we worked with a very good design group internally in the company to change the mindset as well. We understood that many of people designing solutions and designing experiences was focusing and satisfy the uh that that's a funny thing, but it's really the opposite of customer experience, satisfy the managers because the culture. Oh, you are my manager, Chris. So I'm going to bend to you and say you are right and I'm wrong. But unfortunately, this doesn't work in that way. So we started to use feedbacks for that, and that's already was developing the companies for feedbacks to get was not so advanced as it is to is today, but we start to understand feedbacks are super important. Sometimes you have sessions of customers or we have conferences that use it to demonstrate new products, potential new products, to see how the potential what works, what didn't. So, this is the way we develop this relationship during the years, and later on, I worked with the and I still now working in the what caused the holding, okay, with the strategic Samsung, which is the holding of the eight divisions. Sometimes you see that as a six, but it's really eight divisions, okay. And we work with all acquisitions, especially during COVID. We work with all acquisitions to test, understand the culture, and see if it's not that we want to go there and change something, but if something is wrong, we have to adapt for Samsung basic mission, and they have a kind of mission ladder that you have to follow these things, expecting people, blah blah blah. So it was helping them to adapt those things during COVID, and we will also during this period of Samsung will develop it something for them specifically that helps the marketing to launch products faster because Apple to be faster than Apple that calls uh the wait, I forgot the name now. I knew that it's going to happen. This I always forget. Is the um I forgot uh in a few minutes we'll return, but uh we we we developed the analysis for every product oh for perception analysis. Okay, so we also made the trade for Samsung, they patent today because in that time I did not have money, so they patent for them, unfortunately. Okay, but it's something that really works well to create a product. You can have the perception analysis of customers and have perception internally, and you can always have roadmap together of that to improve and how you are going to launch that in the markets and in different markets, so it's very interesting because we have the cultural differentiation there for every different market. That's that's plus minus the history of me in 10 minutes talking without break, so I have to rest right now without break or breathing.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

It's a really interesting journey you've been on, and it feels like it's that that moment of discovery where you're wow, there's something here that I'm really curious about. That curiosity is one of the superpowers we get very excited about, is because you don't know where it's going to take you, and you just have to trust your instincts. And sometimes it can be a dead end, but other times, like you mentioned there, just the curiosity of why are people not talking to Mr. Lee? Let me just go and say hello. It's been very much a serendipity moment for you. Your course and the work that you've done would be potentially very different if you hadn't had the bravery against the crowd to go and say hi, this is me. And obviously, from his position as well, the kind of enlightened leader to take a chance and go, I don't know what it is, but I know this guy's onto something, and to hook up together and take it forward. And what now seems probably common sense, and of course, this is all good practice, and you've got rigour like patents in place and methodologies in place, all came from that original. What if I just go and say hello to him? And I think that's really important to understand in terms of customer experience, is you have to remain fiercely curious. The moment you stop being curious is the moment you're done. Absolutely. And I guess on your journey along the way, there's been a lot of experimenting, there's been a lot of testing and trying, and when it's worked, you've rejoiced, and when you've not worked, you've learned and been able to build going forward. Would that be the case?

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Exactly. That so, for example, I thought when they started with the let's say the fashioned part of design thinking, yeah, that I think was an American company. I don't remember the name as well. I'm sorry, but there's an American company that started that. I thought, wow, that's so cool. And then I started to learn about that, and I did a course about that, and I said, This is you help me millions here to be better, then agile. Yeah, and then we try you start to try things. Agile, there's two levels as you have the culture of agile that's totally different, and you have the implementation of agile, that is two different levels, and both of them was super useful for us in terms of adaptability and also in terms of the creating cloud solutions and helping the companies design better things, and um yeah, and and that's the the the the the kind of uh things that I did is you when you enter in CX, you are always learning, you don't know everything, and whoever tells you that they know everything is simply impossible. And yeah, you know what you are strong, I'm not, and that's we can collaborate on that, and that's the beauty. But is I'm always learning here, yes, and can tell you that in Samsung in SAP uh they ask me things that I know I never did. I know that this is one of the reasons they come to me because uh I am not a guy that likes to repeat a project, I like to do different things. I'm very impatient of uh repeating myself. As I I think mentioned to you about ECXO that I have to repeat certain things that we are trying to automate now, so it's not easy. But this is the challenge, yes, to learn all the time as you go, yes, and getting as more information and accurate information because uh, in my opinion, there are many people that say things that are not really tested, them and become some type of theory, and I I not always so I'm very uh uh careful about those things. I always trying to to do things that uh taking uh conclusions for material that I think are really people did things to understand better. And I can illustrate one thing for you about design thinking adoption. We have I I don't do you remember the name of this uh telecommunications uh meeting that they have in Hannover every year. I don't remember the name of the it's a big conference with all companies around the globe, and they have also in Barcelona. So we tested before COVID actually. No, one year and a half before COVID. Excuse me. We tested uh something that we had an idea, okay, that was totally nuts idea. Somebody have a dog in his house, just to tell you how we create this product and the experience tower around this product. A guy have a uh dog in his house in Korea and was talking, having uh coffee or a tea, I don't remember, and he said, Well, I cannot fit my I have to go all the time back to my home and fit my dog. And then we start to brainstorm just like a friend speaking, and you created the idea of a bowley, which will be some kind of product that is a kind of uh small robotic thing that will be empathetic, that will look nice, and you take care of your dog at home, and you can see from your phone. Okay, that was the idea. Totally nuts. One year took somebody loved the idea for home, uh automatic home that you have today in the US, especially you have many homes that you can open your window, you can uh you can open your fridge, you can know how many products you have in the fridge. So adapting to this package that Samsung have, they want to add this product. So we went to many different conferences and expositions, etc., to test the product, not me exactly, but other people to get feedback about the product that you created in two prototypes, okay, because we we never know prototypes always you have problems with prototypes, and was very successful. So we created the product. Okay, the first version was terrible because we did not thought about many things. After that, we we got together again in in in not in Seul but in Swan, the second city of South Korea, and you redesigned the product with a cam that you could see the dog, that you could control the opening of the food there from your mobile phone. Very cool thing, and was very empathetic toward the dog. So you could talk with your dog through the through the this uh kind of robotics, which calls a boiling, call bowley. And it's a really cool thing, it's very sympathetic in certain way, and now it's selling not millions as a they sell phones as because it's not such kind of product, but it's uh a product for top class A, let's say, top uh people that have a super house and all those kinds of things. It's very uh it's very adoptable because people love this, that will help their dogs, and the dog gets very friendly with this thing as well, so it's it's uh nice to have. So, this is the the mindset that we have, not creating products because that's not my specialty, but creating the experience that you are going to deliver to our here. We have to think about dog minds, and was laughing on that all the time. But no, they was in your even in your journey maps to understand how they how it's going to work this thing. We have to design like the dog is a client, yes, because that's what the dog or or or cat is on my this is the mindset we have of creativity.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

That's so important, is the the word they use the mindset. I was listening to an article only yesterday about how for a dog, their nose is the same as social media for us. So their their nose will inform them who's been in the areas they've been in, who hasn't been there, they catch up with their colleagues, and they're not their colleagues, sorry, they're they're dog friends by these smells. And it says every time you see uh an owner pulling their dog away because they're smelling too much, it's like taking a smartphone off a child and saying you can't interact with your friends. And I think it's that's the beauty about really good CX design is that you exactly as you'd explained there, Ricardo. You get into the mindset and you envisage the experience you want, and then the brilliant technicians and product provide product builders create the products that create that experience that you know is going to be the one that connects.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

This is the doesn't uh take the value off the first steps of CX, as which is the most important culture, having a buy-in of the CEO, yes, and cascading that down with their strategy of execution. But this is what happens in the daily life of CX. The daily life of CX, not so that we are sitting there writing articles or looking for the people and enjoy our lives. You are working, as in that's hard work to get to the level that you want to get. And those companies, independent if it's products or services, that they do that right and they facilitate the life of their customers, creating something that will be adoptable easy, what you call seamless experience without problems, that's what you work, and that's proven that works as today. That's the mindset.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

And do you and do you think, Ricardo, this word that you you've used several times, the the adoption? I I think I've got an answer to this myself, but do you think it's taken for granted? Do you think people in CX fail to understand just how important it is for them to understand the rules for adoption, to understand that people's behavioral change won't happen just because you've designed something? It you really have to get them to adopt and and adopt. If you think about it in human terms, adopting uh another person into your your life is a huge thing. It it's it changes you, it changes what you are, and or or maybe it's what you've wanted to be. So I think it's a really powerful word. And have you I guess it's used on purpose, adoption, because it's really significant.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Yeah. Uh I'm not sure. I don't know everybody, okay. I know people that are very practical, okay, in the industry. I don't know everybody, but I think the people understand adoption today as something that you have to create. Uh, you obviously you have to facilitate for the customer to want to work with you long term. Yeah, that's the obvious thing. But they I'm not sure that they understand how hard it's to get this done. You understand? Because it's not uh it's not a beauty all the time, it's not uh although uh CX today uh is very sexy word, it's not easy to do. You have to convince lots of people, you have to work for with the product, for example, product marketing, product design, you have to help them to create, and that's about the culture of the company. There starts also your adoption because it's all about design. So this is the first part. I I don't know what's the the state of the mind of people, but uh I can tell you that I observe things, not always happy with them in terms of uh understanding design. People say that the experience design is designing the basic customer experience, from culture, strategy, measurement, etc. I think it's much more than that. I think includes design, includes uh cultural understanding, the your ability to use, and that's something that I talk a lot about. Uh, employee experience is the most important thing for me, not because, and that's true, employees are the responsible to deliver a great experience. We all know that, that's a given, but they are also the important part of creating and improving what you already have, and that's a missing point because many companies lost the ability, and the best example that you can see here, and that's uh really happened SAP. SAP, huge company, multi-billion dollar company. I love them. But the sad truth is that the spree of acquiring cloud solutions to not uh lose the leadership in the market was due to the fact that everybody that was working there in a certain moment was focused on closing fires for their managers instead of having the quality time for yourself to create some ideas. For example, my best time creating ideas is when I'm running, not in the gym, but when I'm running, I'm thinking like I don't know why it's like that, but that's my nature. All right, you need to give space for the people, they don't have to work like eight to seven, like a nuts guy, just to deliver enclosed your they need a quality time to reflect, or maybe this feature to discuss, and also all the things that we always discuss that is about giving an environment that you feel secure to express yourself. Because if you are afraid of your managers, that you say something that is inappropriate or something that sounds dumb, and the people laughing on you, so then you never say again. That's the obvious thing, that's the human behavior. So it's very important to have this place, and we use agile that uh that uh a lot for that, because there you have a safe environment to talk and push and make all the assumptions that you can do, and you can test you can. This is very important to create innovation because there are eight kinds of innovation. There's two of them that I don't like that is copyation, because people today copy each other, and that's really for me is not innovation, that's just copying other features from your competitor. Real innovation comes from great ideas, from people digging in the things and the problems, taking the feedbacks of customers, digging in and say, Okay, we cannot deliver this feature or this solution because it will be very costly for us, but we can do this workaround, maybe we kill that, we kill this feature here, and you do this feature that'll be cheaper for us. There are so many solutions uh in terms of creating the mindset. So, if you ask me, and concluding to your question, I don't think that the people are very aware of what really is adoption. It's nice to talk about convenience. The book of Shep Hiking, convenience revolution, is a good book, very good book. However, there's a problem here, and told him that, and he understands that. This talks about the front line. That's everything's easy. I go in there, I pick and go. But think about Amazon for a second. How difficult is to create this one-click experience for you? Yeah, and it's very difficult, it's very costly, and lots of people are involved in the process of creating this thing, it's not easy. So the people don't think about this part, that's the hard part. We both can talk about CS wow, it's amazing and beautifully, but to get there with a company is really challenging, yeah. You need the right team on board, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:34

I think that's uh that's one of the I love working in B2B, spend most of my time in B2B, yeah. It allows you to dive into supply chains because when you've had this one click, you realize actually there's there's many there's contracts in place that have been agreed for three years and aren't going to change, and therefore you can't get anywhere near this. And these two systems will never talk to each other because they're always one, they buy the older version, you buy the newer version. There's that it's so much more complicated. And I think you're absolutely right. I think that's where when you say there are those who are you know, there are those on who take one particular path on the CX and great, they're standing on a podium and telling everyone the vision, and there are others who are rolling their sleeves up and trying to work out how do we get your contract to work with this contract so we can achieve that one-click idea.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

You you remind me and think about processes. Companies in supply chain, because I work at a lot of supply chain organizations when I was in intra, they have such complex uh systems, and they make the the lives of uh your employees sometimes very hard. Imagine when you return to a big company for a trip, or you went to meet somebody there, you have to report this trip and your cost, and you have 100 bills and you have to put in a system, and that takes so much time, and this turns the people off. And the best example for that is Oracle. When I was working there, I was thinking already in the plane after coming one time from a trip of two weeks. I was thinking the plane returning, Wow, now I have to make this nightmare. No, if you facilitate the life of our employees with your process, I'm not saying not controlling because obviously costs you need to control, but controlling in a smart way that's not going to doubt they trustworthy, and maybe it's not the right word trustworthy, but uh that you trust the people and you have to interest if you hire if you hire people, you have to trust them. Yeah, this one thing, and you mentioned about supply chain. Supply chain now is getting to CX. I'm seeing many different things happening. They are now asking how we can improve that. There was a company they did not. I told you actually uh now cargo Luftanza Cargo, they approached me about that. Remember, I mentioned that for you in the and they approached me about that. And intra is doing that right now. Companies from Cargo, there are so many, there are Hamburg. So the Rapatloid, you have one billion Steam. They are all thinking how we can improve the lives of our employees that are the tough workers. There are things about small things that we improve in the end of the day. Okay, so you just taking on what you are saying before about supply chain. And I I thought about you are talking about for me about processes, turns the people off many times.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

It's, I mean, so I really you said earlier you can remember the name of a company. There's one that I wish I could remember, an American company who are just the best at this. Kind of they've really understood that what they provide parts for machineries for factories and things, and what they've done is they've gone from where you come to us and get the parts to understanding building their business around how do we make it easier for the employees who fix our machines? And it's revolutionized their channel management, their approach, their technology, everything. And this is a company that could have been very old and dusty and stayed there with a great big factory saying, come to us and we'll get them. But no, they've turned it around and they have vending machines and they work out how long it takes that employee to work, walked by the time he gets here, let's put a coffee machine for him to have as well. And and now we actually know stock management to the moment, so that can help the organization and that can reduce their costs. And they're constantly thinking about how they can use the data that they now got to improve and reduce the the time it takes for the supply chain to work from end to end. I think it's a really exciting space, and I think from what you're saying, it's where CX design is really exciting as well, because you've got B2B, you've got very people very connected to the commercials of the organization. I find in that space they understand the commercial of the organizations better, and they're able to really trust their colleagues to deliver and improve the experience in terms of designing a better experience because you're always thinking about my colleagues around me as well as my customers at the same time. And I think having the balance of customer colleagues and the business priorities is absolutely essential. It's I mean, it's I think we can carry on talking like this. It's really fascinating to go down this really deep cavern and understand it because I think sadly, a lot of people who are in customer experience, both client side and practitioners, only get to tap into it lightly sometimes. Maybe the product team don't let them in, or someone else is actually responsible for this. But you've got a wealth of experience in this space, and just hearing the excitement in your voice revisit some of these moments is wonderful. Now, just uh to conclude, now um, this is you know not something that's exclusive to Samson. This capability that you have, which is pretty unique, I'd say, in our sec in our area industry, you're happy to for other people to approach you and talk to you about it. I mean, you've got some opportunity to talk with people about CX design and how it's properly done if they want to reach out to you?

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Yeah, they can always approach BindleLikadin or in in eglobalis.com, which is where I am. Cool, great. It's easier to find me. I'm always around.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

So I I know from past encounters you're always open to sharing kind of your advice and your thoughts as you've done in this session. So I'm sure there will be many CX managers sitting there thinking, just how do I create the how do I describe the experience I want to be delivered, and how do I engage my teams to create that experience? And thirdly, how do I get my customers to truly adopt it? And I think that's the triple whammy that you've described there.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

Yes, and I just want to think customer success, they do a lot of adoption, but they deal a lot of with adoption onboarding, etc., which is is normal for CX and for CX, both are in this almost the same as in certain ways. But I think having the approach for creativity and adoption from the standpoint of customer experience, that's enriched the company more because you have the umbrella for the company, you understand almost every touch point, not just of the customer with the partner of your employee. You you have to have all the picture, you are the lec copter looking down, yeah, and touching all the points, and every point is very important. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Hey, so Ricardo, it's it's been a delight. I'm really glad we got that topic out. And as I say, in in terms of previous uh guests we've had on, we've never had that depth of discussion about it. And I think we now know that when you're not all over social media, it's because you're deep in session with clients trying to solve these problems, which is what true CXs should be really doing. So, congratulations to you.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Well, thank you very much, Christopher. It was a pleasure to be here with you.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

No, thank you, thank you, Ricardo. It's been too long to get here, but I'm sure people are gonna really value the journey you've been on and the work you're up to, and I'm sure they'll be curious to learn some more as well. So, thank you very much for a lot of things.