CX Pulse Check Kickoff

Jeannie Walters 0:00

Hi everybody, I am Jeannie Walters. I am so excited that you are joining me on the Experience Is Everything podcast for my favorite episode of the month. It is time for CX Pulse Check. This is where we check in with what's happening in the real world around customer experience. And I always invite a special co-host to help me do that. Today I'm delighted to introduce you to Gloria Gupta, who is the Senior Director of Customer Experience at the American Medical Association. And someone I've known for several years. We're both in Chicago. We always have very good discussions. So I'm excited about this one. Thank you for being here, Gloria.

Gloria Gupta 0:46

Oh, Jeannie, thank you so much. You know, I'm honored to spend some time with you. I always learned something from you. And I want to just thank you for being such a foundational guiding mentor for our program.

Jeannie Walters 0:59

That's very nice. Thank you. And, you know, the work that you do at the American Medical Association, I think you've seen a lot of exciting momentum around that. You've seen growth around that. You've seen buy-in around it. And so I think as we tackle these subjects, I would love to get your perspective from working within. You know, a lot of us have to work within organizational structure. We have to worry about all sorts of things, but we still have to get the job done. And I think you and the team there at AMA have done a great job of really building that excitement, momentum, and buy-in from the inside out. Well, I picked out some fun stories for us to talk about because the common thread, I think, today is that first of all, it's so exciting sometimes to launch things, but we have to be careful about how we do that. And we're living in a time where things are really rapid and changing quickly and accelerating. And so I think it's a good moment to kind of remind people of that as well.

Tech Is Easy People Are Hard

Jeannie Walters 2:01

So the first headline that I have for us today, this is from a publication called Route Fifty. And the headline is Tech Isn't the Hard Part in Digital Experience, Local Leaders Say. This is actually based on local government leaders. When we say tech isn't the hard part, that sometimes gets lost. And one of the things that they talked about in this article and some of the quotes that they pulled out were really about communicating change and how whenever you introduce technology, whenever you have different pieces, yes, that's important, and we need to learn how to use it, and we need to learn how to optimize it, and we need to get different people on board and we need to help them with that change. I know you've worked on this a lot within the association and some of the work you've done, but I'm just curious, what did you pull out of this? And what are some of the things you would recommend to people about communicating change?

Gloria Gupta 2:59

Well, I think the big mistake that people make is thinking that they need to communicate change instead of thinking about how to involve your stakeholders in that change. So there is aware of the purpose and the process and the intended outcome so that you don't have to do the big memo for the organization that we've just uh executed a brand new, very expensive system that's going to rock your world. And what we really try to do is identify the key stakeholders across the organization and have them be part of that change. We all know that with change and transformation is change, right? It's a lot of microscopic change that works into a organizational transformation. And big IT projects are very much the same way. So as you bubble these changes up or as you go through your processes of executing big change, whether it's current state documentation or documentation of requirements or UAT, my biggest recommendation is to get the key stakeholders involved and really allow them to celebrate the change and communicate it in the way that resonates .

Jeannie Walters 4:12

Yeah, I totally agree. And one of the things that stood out to me about this article, and they were really gathering some feedback from these leaders at a conference. And one of the kind of before and after stories I thought was really interesting is this was about serving the residents of communities. And so they had to figure out what was most important to them. And so they had to bring them. They were the stakeholders, right? They had to bring them into the conversation. And there was a suburb here in Chicago, Aurora, Illinois. They rebuilt their website after residents complained it was hard to navigate. And so the city ran a navigation study with resident feedback and the experience improved. But then the best part of this is during that process, residents also shared with them something they didn't even know was a gap, which is that if you weren't on Facebook, there was no way to get city news. So they said, well, we could have an email newsletter. What a simple idea, right? But they would have never known that if they hadn't asked people, not just for very specific outcomes, but just watching and listening and learning from the people who they were trying to serve in the first place. And I think it's a good example of we can do all sorts of structured feedback gathering, but sometimes it's those conversations that help you realize the gaps. And sometimes those gaps are really easy to fix. We just have to constantly be listening. And to your point, always be including the stakeholders about how we're communicating, what we're communicating, and I think more importantly, why we're doing this, which is the point as well. So I get excited too when I see that local governments are paying attention to customer experience issues and treating that as a CX issue because a lot of organizations they don't necessarily think of themselves as having customers, but we all do, right?

Gloria Gupta 6:06

Bev Martin, I just met her, but she leads transformation at the Department of Job and Family Services in the state of Ohio. I was so impressed with how customer focused that team is currently as they're evolving a lot of their services, they're involving their customers, they're really building programs that not only logically meet need that get 20-year-old systems up to speed, but really reflect the true feedback that they're hearing. People are understanding the power and the influence that customers can have over our success. And that's also happening at a state institution.

Jeannie Walters 6:48

You're absolutely right. And I think, you know, being part of an association is another example where 10 years ago, I think associations were very focused on acquiring members. That was the focus, just how do we get more? And they've had a big evolution about focusing on member experience as well. And so all of that makes a big difference to the organizational outcomes as well. And

AI Service That Builds Trust

Jeannie Walters 7:10

of course, we can't talk about technology today without talking about our friend AI. In fact, I think it's required. So my next headline here is from a publication called Skift, and they had a conference with hotel CEOs. The headline is how hotel CEOs are really using AI from voice agents to a digital Hyatt CEO. Now that's a very compelling idea, having a digital Hyatt CEO. What caught my attention here was that they all agreed, all those CEOs agreed that AI should be used to help the hotel staff do their jobs better. It should help them not only do their jobs better, but more efficiently, easier, all those things. Where they kind of separated on some of their opinions was about how do we use AI, where is it introduced? Hyatt, or yes, it was actually Hilton, said, you know what, we're always going to have people at our front desk because we're in the business of people serving people. Others said, you know what, we're seeing some really great uh customer experiences through the use of AI. 25% of calls sometimes were unanswered. Now AI can do that, and many of those are being converted into booking. So people are achieving the goal that they wanted, and AI is assisting them do that so that the people can then be in the right kind of people spots of the organization. And I think this is a big, interesting, meaty topic because we're all struggling with this right now. We're all trying to see the future. So when we talk about using AI and service, what do you think the right approach is there? What do you think are the gotchas that what have you learned in how you've explored it?

Gloria Gupta 9:03

Well, it's interesting. And I know, Jeannie, you know me, and you know that I lead both CX transformation, but I also lead AMA's uh primary contact center. So just explaining it for our audience that oh CX is not service, they're wonderful partners and with great synergies, but two very different functions in our organization. Back to the question about what do I think about using AI in service and how I think about using AI in CX? Kind of two different perspectives. First of all, when we unified AMA's all of AMA's corporate service into one unit, it was a big risk and it required a lot of trust building across the organization. And so we're excited that we lead all service for membership, all business lines mission. So 98% of all service comes through that team. From the very beginning of AI, I said there will never be an automated virtual attendant used in the unified service center. Well, never say never. I've learned over time a lot more about AI, augmented intelligence, is how I prefer to refer to it as. What we've decided is to stick our toe in the water. Our problem is that we also handle many, many calls from the public. We are an American institution that's 200 years old and people rely and trust on the AMA. But we have to really reserve our resources for our customers and our members, because there are not in contact centers infinite resources, as we all know. Efficiency is a big component, unfortunately, of our success factor. So one of the ways that we have kind of contained calls from the public, which could be thought of as a non-value call, but so important to brand, right? A bad call with the public can really denigrate our brand. And we don't want that because we're dedicated to serving the health of America as well as physician's needs. So how do you handle that? So several years ago, we created an automated answer center, and it was a bunch of recordings, and you press buttons. And if you don't have a pen, you have to stop it and you have to go get one. And if you have an additional question, you couldn't answer it. But it was a rudimentary way that we were able to achieve about 30% containment. In other words, the public will find their way to something else, which is our 800 lines, and then of course we have live agents there. So we knew we had to upgrade this automated answer center, which was just recordings. And so we've now started to train Kevin, who is our automated attendant. And Kevin will be trained to answer all of the current common questions that have been recorded and kind of over time refined to be effective. The automated attendant will be able to ask the customer if they have other questions. The automated attendant will stop and say, I can send you that information via text if you will provide approval in your number, or I can wait on the line while you pick up a pen and paper. So it's a little bit different experience than pushing a button. And if you need another question, you pretty much have to say, I have another question. Because Kevin will ask you if we've met all your needs. Were there other things that you needed to know about the American Medical Association? We're really excited about this because we've started a new campaign to the public to make sure that they're aware of the science that we back. So all of the information about our health versus hype webinar, we have the JAMA patient pages. We have a plethora of information that's backed with scientific facts. And we want them to have access to it. But how do you do that in a way that doesn't just denigrate all of the efficiencies that you've created with live agents?

Jeannie Walters 13:25

And you know what I love about that, that I think is very important to underline. We're seeing today that there is a bit of a trust crisis, right? And part of that is because somebody might be on a chat thinking they're talking to a human and then they figure out they're not, and it feels like deception. And so the fact that you are disclosing that from the beginning, I think that is a great way to build trust. And if you lose some people because they don't want to do it that way, there are other avenues, right? They can find different ways. But I think the important thing is really revealing very early and disclosing this is how we're using this. The other thing we're seeing in the research is that comfort level is going up, right? People are realizing this isn't the chat bot of a few years ago, just put you in a loop. This actually can help you achieve what you want to achieve in a way that is easy and comfortable.

Gloria Gupta 14:18

That's exactly why we're considering Kevin our first digital employee. Our automated attendant will have a manager. And that manager, just like a service manager, will be responsible for Kevin's performance, will be responsible for listening to and looking at all of the communications that we have. So monitoring the calls and the interactions, and then also helping to retrain so that we can use the same best practices that we use for coaching people, but use this to enhance our technology. And that I think is what's been missing, and that's what people are reacting to.

Jeannie Walters 14:58

I agree. And I think uh treating it in that way, you're including that all-important human oversight, which is often what hasn't happened. And I think that whole idea of what happened early in the some of the processes that we all suffered through as customers was the set it and forget it, right? Like I'm sure it's doing its job, we don't have to look at it. And that's what caused the constant loops and the no exits. You know, all of this, when we talk about this, some of this is we're in this big moment in time where we have to test and learn and test and learn and test and learn. And so we can talk about technology, but I also thought we might want to talk about pizza today. So this is our final headline

Domino’s App Misstep And Lessons

Jeannie Walters 15:42

here. It's from CX Dive, and I want to give a shout out to the reporter, Michael Brady. The headline is how Domino's App Redesign Went Wrong and What CX Leaders Can Learn. And Domino's has done a lot of things very well when it comes to customer experience in the last few years. They've really done a lot to collaborate and listen with their customers. And that's why this miss really stood out to me because what happened was they invited their customers to give them feedback on their app and incentivize them with a $5 coupon. But the app had already been redesigned, it had already been out. And so people were giving feedback thinking that it was going somewhere, but they were already giving feedback saying, this app isn't working for me. It takes more clicks to get my favorite order. People were reporting it takes an endless scroll to get what you want. So I don't want to beat up Domino's here. I think this is very common. I think a lot of CX gets derailed because we have really good intentions, and then we don't take the time to really try something small, see how it goes, and learn and try again and test. And so instead of rolling it out across everywhere and then seeing that there's a big mistake, trying things small right now, I think that's going to be really important as all of this gets accelerated with AI. So I know you're a big believer in this idea of test and learn. So, you know, what stood out to you? What would you recommend?

Gloria Gupta 17:13

First of all, I think, you know, I I have to give a shout out to Todd Unger, who is our CXL, because he's the one who has had the courage to allow us the environment of a test and learn. And our entire CX, and to some degree, our service successes have been because we have made incremental changes and allowed those to bubble up, but with the idea that you know where you're going. So incremental changes for the purpose of no impact on business, very few articulated KPIs, not so great. You're just plugging the dike, perhaps, you know, you're plugging the leak. But if you are doing incremental change on your way to building toward a vision, then I'm all for it. And I'll give you an example. We have been working on AMA's, what I call the keys to the castle, the keys to our golden value. We have such rich journals and books and businesses and content that are available to our customers and to our members. And some really to the members of the public. A lot of it requires authentication, sign-in. And our sign-in process was deplorable. We've been working on it for seven years, not because of bad people, not because of bad processes, just antiquated technology, and a lack of vision of how this would all connect to making it easier for physicians and others to access our value. So we started with that in mind, that goal. And we started with a very broken, huge problem that affected nearly every business unit at the AMA. And we just incrementally worked on some find it, fix it, some break fix, some small incremental changes while we looked at the under the hood at the real problems, got customer feedback, use our voice of the customer data to prioritize that. It was like 158 improvements over the last six years for this. But we've received transformation awards, cultural change awards. We just received Proven Business Impact Award for the work. But this time the award is for 50 people who have worked on this project over five and a half to six years. And so I guess what I think for Domino's is I think it's great that they're doing anything. I think it's great that they sought feedback. Would they have been better to seek that feedback and prioritize those changes earlier on? Probably. Do they? What I don't know is it's all gonna be okay if they're working toward an end goal that's very tied to their brand and their business and their customer need. But you don't just enter the water, splash around and saying, We're drowning, we're drowning, we've got we need help, we're gonna fix it. You need to be a little bit more strategic. Even though at first it seems like you're bubbling up small changes, there's a strategy to that to just build enthusiasm, trust in your organization. And quite frankly, sometimes these large um IT projects, rightfully so, they take time and money. And so I'm all for kind of doing both, looking under the hood and understanding, but having the courage to go ahead and bubble up the changes.

Jeannie Walters 20:43

Yes. Uh, you're speaking my language, as you know, because

Gloria Gupta 20:46

I think you're our teacher. I think you've been feeding this on us a lot for a long time, Jeannie.

Jeannie Walters 20:51

I feel like so many CX leaders and teams get a little lost. They get lost in reaction. They're reporting, they're reacting to requests, but they're not tying it together to that strategic vision. And it really is amazing. I think it it comes back to, you know, Simon Sinek and Start With Why. It comes back to helping people as humans connect with really the meaning of this work. Because some of those small changes, they can feel like, you know, okay, check it off the list. Let's just get it done. But if you actually connect it with, oh my gosh, this is going to make it easier for people to find life-saving information in some cases.

Gloria Gupta 21:31

Well, we're in the business of saving lives. And

Jeannie Walters 21:33

There you go.

Gloria Gupta 21:34

When lives are at stake, friction's not an option. And so we've really leaned into that. So it's as important to bubble up those small changes as long as you know where you're going and it's connected. Um, to allow people within your organization to see their role no matter what it is, no matter where they are in the hierarchy, help them understand that there are lives at stake and there are physicians who need our help and that they're powerful allies in patient care themselves. Even if they're in data architecture, it's our job to make sure culturally they're attached to our brand, our brand promise, and they know that the changes that they're making really have an effect on a human being.

Jeannie Walters 22:19

Yes.

Gloria Gupta 22:20

Not only a physician, but a patient. And so we've been very successful in that. That's how we're building trust. Our whole collaboration is, as you know, the four C's, right? Culture, capabilities, collaboration, and celebration. Collaboration is the engine for how we're getting things done.

Jeannie Walters 22:39

This

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

Jeannie Walters 22:40

was a wonderful collaboration. And I just want to celebrate you. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for being here. And thank you for being here as a watcher or listener of this podcast. By being here today, you help me live my mission, which is to create fewer ruined days for customers. And you do that through acting on everything that we just talked about today, making those small changes, connecting to your vision, connecting to your strategy, and really delivering not only for your customers, but for your organizations as well. If you know somebody who would benefit from this conversation, please go ahead and share this podcast. And of course, we love your ratings and reviews. So keep up the great work, everyone. Keep fighting the good fight, and we'll see you next time. If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. A USA Today bestseller. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.