#5 Adrian Swinscoe: Break The Cycle of Poor CX With This Framework!
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The future of customer experience is always built in the present. If the reality is that customer experience is one of the key things on which we compete on, regardless of the market, then we have to get very, very clear about what we're doing to differentiate ourselves and how does it make business sense. Embrace the opportunity, but don't get carried away by the hype.

Hello, everyone. Today, I'm speaking to Adrian Swinscoe, an incredibly multifaceted CX expert. Among the many things, he's an advisor, a speaker, a bestselling author, a Forbes contributor, a facilitator, and a podcast host for his show,

Punk CX. I'm so excited to be speaking to Adrian today to learn about his work and the many insights I'm sure he's gathering while he's working with many different types of organizations and leaders. Adrian, thank you so much for joining us. We're so happy to have you. Thank you, Lauren, for inviting me onto your show. It's a delight. I always like a

Talk to new folks about some of this sort of stuff and, you know, and see what we can uncover. Amazing. Well, so let's start off by just learning a little bit more about you. Let's paint the picture for our listeners. Tell us a little bit about the work that you do and also how did you get started in this?

Okay, so first part first. So I've been in the sort of service and experience space now for about 15 years. I mean, solely focusing on the service and experience space. And it's taken me the longest time to sort of really distill down what I do into sort of a, I feel like three words. And recently I sort of...

came up with the idea that I three words, I came up with the idea that I found three words that describe what I do. I'm, I'm an investigator, agitator and instigator of better outcomes in the service and experience space. I love that. And I'm curious, you know, your, your, one of your books and your podcasts are both named Punk CX. How does that

just when you think of those three words, I'm seeing some similarities and I'd love for you to kind of unpack what Punk CX really means for you. So Punk CX is, so Punk CX came out a few years ago and it was the third book that I'd written. And I was in that sort of space. I was thinking about kind of the one I wrote before that was in 2016 called How to Wow. That was your standard business book, right? It's like,

50,000, 60,000 words of black ink on white paper with a bunch of charts and bits and pieces. And that was great. And I was thinking about writing another one. And I thought, well, I didn't think the world needed another theory of everything. And so I thought, what am I going to write about? And I ended up sort of talking to a friend of mine, Oisin, about the whole

service and experience space over a few beers, probably a few too many. And we have both agreed that we were enthused by the amount of activity and investment and enthusiasm there was and still is in this space. But I was frustrated about the lack of significant improvement I was seeing in customer outcomes and also employee outcomes and also business outcomes.

And I blurted out, I wish somebody would do something a bit more punk. And what I meant by that was, I wish somebody would do something that would just be so different, it would sort of move the needle a little bit. And I sort of, that sat with me for a little while. And I thought about it, and I'm a fan of punk music. And so I thought about where punk came from, what it meant. And punk exploded out the back of progressive rock in the 1970s, if you know your history of rock music genres, right?

Now, progressive rock, whilst it was popular and still is popular in many places, it was often accused of being in danger of being overly elaborate, self-indulgent, sort of more interested in its own musicality and virtuosity than its fans, really.

And punk exploded at the back of that saying, look, you don't need a PhD in music to be in a band. You just need to be in a band, start a band, learn how to play guitar, write some lyrics, kind of, and then have a go. And it was all, it was very DIY, it was very democratic, it was very all heart and emotions, but it's all about impact. And so that...

arc of an evolution kind of, I thought that was really interesting. And it made me think that, and the hypothesis therefore was behind the book of Punksie X was that I think that the customer experience space is exhibiting some of the same sort of characteristics as progressive rock did in the 1970s.

i.e. it's actually overly complicated, possibly self-indulgent, overly codified, certified, metric framework, benchmarks, et cetera, et cetera, right? And also in danger of losing sight of its customers, i.e. its fans, and more interested in itself and its own virtuosity rather than the people it's there to serve. And I thought, well, if that's true, then what would a punk version look like? And that was what the book was about. And the book's like,

like this, looks like this. And in true punk fashion, it provides no answers. It's done like that. It's like a full color sort of fanzine type of thing. It was done as an art project. It may not have worked and that was fine. But it was there to invite people and also challenge people to do better work and to approach things differently.

in pursuit of that better service, better experience outcomes. And that's the whole sort of genesis around it and sort of the Punk CX and the bits, the content in it is all about asking big questions, poking people to say, why are you doing it like that? Why can you not think about this? Here's a different piece of information that you might find interesting that might change your mind.

And so, yeah, it's just a fun way to try and move the conversation and sort of challenge people to think differently.

We need that challenge. I think it's something that is so present in the CX space at the moment as we can't keep doing things the way that we've always been doing them. So I really appreciate that approach. Yeah. Can I just add, I mean, it's like there's right at the very beginning of the book. This is probably one of my favorite titles of the whole series. And I asked the question, it's like, are you an artist or are you just coloring in?

And to your point, it feels like there's too many people that are coloring in and expecting to create art, like following all the same process steps and doing all the different same things as everybody else and expecting to create different outcomes. And I'm a bit like, well, that doesn't really stack up. And so it's challenging people to think, well, be the artist, be the person that's going to do the thing that's going to be the difference.

And that's the challenge to both brands and also the individuals that drive brands forward. Definitely. Generally speaking, what would you say really sets an organization apart in terms of customer experience? What are some of those things that you really see in your work that is making the impact and really contributing to that different outcome? For me, I think one of the biggest things, and I think this is an Achilles heel of many brands,

or many organizations just generally. And I think it is that they don't have a clear vision of what it is they want to deliver. They don't have a clear appreciation of where they're at and then also what they're building towards. Now,

Some people will be like, we have a vision statement and things. Yeah, you might have a vision statement, but I would guess it's probably a random assemblage of a bunch of buzzwords that have all been kind of stitched together. Whether it's kind of seamless, it's digital, it's AI enabled, it's omni-channel, it's this, it's that, it's the other.

throw in delightful and other bits and pieces and you kind of get the same thing over and over again. But my challenge to people when I say that, to say this is that, because I don't think we've gone into enough detail. We haven't got a rich enough understanding of what that vision means. Like we haven't really started to ask ourselves, well, what does that mean for different types of customers and different customer groups at different points in the journey? And also,

What does it mean for your employees and your staff members and your contractors and your suppliers that are going to help you try and deliver that? And does everybody really understand what the role that they play in doing that? And then more importantly, or just as importantly rather,

To take all of that and then make sure it's aligned with both your corporate and your business objectives so that it really drives those business results. Because that's the game here. We're dealing with organizations that need to produce results. This is not interior decorating.

This is not a nice throw and a bunch of, you know, some new drapes and a bunch of kind of new cushions. If the reality is that customer experience is one of the key things of which we compete on, regardless of the market, then we have to get very, very clear about what we're doing to differentiate ourselves and how does it make business sense. I love that.

Can you give us an example of a company that you feel like has done this really well? Because I think what you're saying is so important that, you know, like, we can't just check off, like, okay, we did a vision, right? It needs to be something that is...

both a dream and also tangible. And I'd love to just understand a little bit more about where you've seen this done really well. Let me clarify that when I say the vision, it can be that the visions can work at a meta, macro, and also micro level. You can work at all sorts of different levels. And I think there are many organizations that do this really well and have done it

for decades before customer experience was like a thing, right? So for example, let's take something like Apple, but let's take something like Apple in particular, it's retail stores, which is, I think, a secret hiding in plain sight. And I say that is because they had this vision that they wanted to reinvent retail, to create this experience that was more of a community fan-based experience

of experience that you can come in and use the products and hang out and experience kind of things without any sort of pressure to buy something. But here's where the innovation comes in. I mean, for example, so I've got an iPhone, right? The level of thinking that's involved in this, I think, is incredible. So if I walk into any Apple store, my phone automatically

logs onto the Apple Wi-Fi. And it makes me feel like, oh, I belong, sort of thing. And it's just all those little things. But also the other kind of things, there's innovation that's out front for the customer, but also there's these facilitating things that happen behind the scene, which helps them deliver that. Now, the key thing within retail, I learned this from a friend of mine, Richard Hammond. He told me that

and he's a retail kind of expert. And he said, one of the key things that Apple have done is they realize in retail, one of the challenges with the retail is shrinkage, i.e. people breaking things or stealing things from a shop store. That's why everything tends to, particularly in expensive stores, everything's behind closed doors and locked down and everything else. And that's generally an operational expense. And so people see it as a risk, right?

And Apple looked at it and go, well, if you apply this, if you apply the same rules of retail onto what we were trying to do, then it's just not going to work. Right. So what they did is they said, well, marketing realized that actually that was a real break. The marketing turned around and said to operations and said, well, I'll tell you what.

we'll take that risk. So any cost that would accrue to you for shrinkage, we will pay for it out of marketing's budget. So then it just took the shackles off. And they were able then to do it. And it's just that they adjusted their mindset and their way of thinking about something to break some retail rules, as it were. And that's allowed them to do things very, very differently. Now, let me ask you a question. Has anybody...

got close to replicating that experience. Not that I can think of. Right, exactly, right? And so it's this hiding in plain sight.

They had this clear idea of what they wanted to do instead of success as people that wanted to do it. They have a standard sort of format, but it's generally a broader sort of experience. And they thought about what it would take to deliver that. And they were willing to change things in order to deliver that, but also to make it make business and commercial sort of sense. And I love that sort of thing because it's very... Yes, Apple might be a familiar example, but some of the engineering sides of things...

that it takes to deliver that tells you more about the company than anything else. 100%. I feel like I actually, I recently had an experience where, you know, water damage on my laptop. I go in being like, I hope there is like some answer here and I don't have to buy a new laptop.

Turns out it was not the case. And obviously that's kind of devastating for someone. Like now I have this big expense that I need to go and, you know, incur. But everything about the experience just felt so seamless. I felt so well taken care of. I, you know, when I was delivered the bad news that like it's over, I...

I thanked the guy. I was like, thank you so much. This has been as awful as this outcome is. I'm also...

just feeling really like held and supported. And it's very clear. I think whenever we are, especially working directly with those client facing employees and they feel like they have all the information they need, they feel extremely empowered to deliver on this service. It just, it passes along to the consumer in a way that I have so much more trust in the company. Well, exactly. I mean, if you think of it, and this is where I think they, they,

Really, really good brands understand the psychology that goes behind buying and using and owning things. And they understand that. And this is the thing that I sort of wrote about in How to Wow. And it's still the case. And it's the idea that wow service or a wow experience is not what you think it is.

It's not those kind of the surprise and the delight or the little kind of extras or whatever. It can be. It can be helped and that can amplify things. But if you think about it psychologically, the things that matter to us more than anything is reliability, consistency, avoidance of disappointment and failure and all these different things. Now, we know that these things happen.

But we want people to show up and make us feel okay when they do happen. And neuroscience tells us that the avoidance of disappointment, uncertainty, failure, et cetera, et cetera, we value between something like five and 12 times more than any surprise and delight effort. And so for me, what that says is that you could be

a standout player by just doing the basics brilliantly and figuring out what the basics are and just showing up and making it easy, making it consistent, making it reliable, making it trustworthy to your point and using all the tools that you have at your disposal to make that happen. Completely. It's like we don't need to be the most innovative. We just need to focus on the things that really matter. Yeah, but here's the curious thing. Actually doing that would make you innovative. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, I love that. So you write a Forbes article, you have a CX podcast. I feel like you're incredibly tapped in to what is happening in the customer experience space.

This might be a difficult question, but I'd love to understand, like, what would you say are the top two or three trends that you're seeing today in the space that's really like shifting how we are operating in CX? I mean, I would say AI, AI, AI. Right. But the problem is and it's it becomes and this is my fear.

And I try and caution people to say, embrace the opportunity, but don't get carried away by the hype. Because right now, I think there's this danger that people are running and running. Everything's about AI, AI this, AI that. That what we are doing

getting carried away with is the idea that ai is going to come and solve all these problems but we need to keep in keep in mind that ai is just is but a tool and it's a yeah very sophisticated i mean and we also need to be clear on what we're talking about here because generative ai is not everything that is ai it's generative ai is a form of ai

And I think we need to get very clear about what are our problems, what are our challenges, what are the experiences we want to deliver and how are we going to leverage this technology to enable us to deliver that? Because this is the one thing that's absolutely clear, is the technology will change. And so right now it's like everybody's going, we're going all in on red. And you're like going, is that right? Is that wise? And so

To answer your question actually more directly is that I feel like the explosion of generative AI over the last year has dominated the conversation and everybody's playing catch up and it's strange when you hear somebody make an announcement that doesn't have AI sort of like wedded into it. And there's a possibility that becomes a distraction and that we see that everybody's kind of, oh, figuring out how to do this, but they forget that actually...

Customers are customers today, right? And there's an idea that they write about in Punk XL, which is this idea that says that the future of customer experience is always built in the present. And I think that's the challenges for organizations to understand that. People that, if you're always thinking about the future and planning for the future, then you're leaving your customers to their struggles today.

And you're banking on the idea that they're going to forgive you and stick around to allow you to get better tomorrow. And there is no guarantee for that.

But what real leaders in the field, I think, do is they're planning for the future. They're experimenting, they're trying new things and they're preparing for the future. But they're also working really, really hard to take care of people today because relationships happen in the present. And only those that happen in the present and work in the present, only when they can work in the present and you attend to the present, do you then get permission

to carry that forward into the future. And so that becomes a real challenge to get that to strike that balance, deal with today, but also plan for tomorrow and make sure you give them equal amounts of attention. And it's playing out in some of the research that's coming out, whether it's some of the Forrester indices or some of the Institute of Customer Service

survey work that's coming out particularly here in the UK, which is showing that overall, experience standards are slipping and they've possibly slipped back to levels that we've not seen since the pre-pandemic. And so, yes, I understand it's a difficult environment. And yes, I understand that there are some big structural challenges that companies have to face.

But people are playing a risky game. They're talking about the importance of service and experience and how customers are really important, but the data is not really supporting that. What would you say is an example of what you're speaking about where we're building for the future and not paying attention to the customer today?

So let me kind of like, here's an example. So the big thing that people are talking about now, or one of the big things that people are talking about, particularly in say the contact center space, because that's where things get very real for people, right? When they have a problem, they're looking for help.

And there's particularly when you think about generative AI, a lot of people are talking about, oh, we can use it to help people do auto summaries or kind of wrap up that type of stuff. So it's like an agent enablement side of things. But yeah, recent research, and this was from Deloitte's Global Contact Center survey that came out from earlier this year.

that said only 7% of the contact center leaders that they surveyed said that they had all of their channels synchronized and integrated. And yet we've been talking about delivering an omnichannel experience, a seamless omnichannel experience for years now, yet only 7% have the channels integrated. And so it makes sense. And there's other research from a couple of years ago from, I think it was

that showed that it highlighted the top five customer frustrations and the top five agent frustrations. And number one on both lists was the same thing, i.e. having to repeat myself or having to ask the customer to repeat themselves. And for me, I think that's basic, right? That's the sort of stuff you go...

One, it makes it frustrating for the customer and it's not a great experience. But it's also hard for the agent having to repeatedly ask every person to kind of to say the same thing again and again or to repeat themselves. And that for me is that you're not attending to problems in the present.

Those things were future problems, but you've had the time to deal with that. That should not be a problem anymore in large part. And also the other thing which doesn't make sense is that even though many of them haven't got these things integrated, they're still intent on adding more channels into the mix. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is not an option. At Salesforce, they get it.

They've made their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, available to help you with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of your journey. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. Before actually integrating them all, I'm like, we'll deal with...

things as they are. Otherwise, we feel like it's like the tail wagging the dog. And so I think that's the sort of the thing is we're talking about all these different sort of things, but we actually, there's an example of like, actually, why don't we fix that? Because that would make a material difference.

to both customers and in your employees, your agents, and probably your business as well. Because it would strip out time and cost and all these different things. And it would improve agent well-being and also kind of customer satisfaction if you've done well. And it blows my mind sometimes that people just don't tackle some of this sort of stuff. I mean, I think the impact on the employee experience is... Like if we think about...

customer effort being a big key metric that we need to be thinking about, especially in the customer service world. But the employee effort is high. How do we expect employees to then pass on a seamless, easy experience if the team itself is having to jump through a million hoops? Well, and think about it, put yourself in the shoes of the agent and how...

They're having to sort of the things they have to deal with, like this onslaught of stuff. It's usually an eight hour sort of like shift with two 15 minute breaks and then a half an hour lunch break. And it's like and most of the time you're supposed to be you're supposed to be on. Right. That's relentless. So taking some of the effort out of kind of their work.

Makes complete sense. But at the same time, if you don't take the effort out, then you have to realize that this adds a bit of friction to it. And it can be one of the contributing factors to the high attrition rate. You know, some contact centers are suffering from north of 40, sometimes 60, sometimes 100% attrition rate on an annual basis. That's mind blowing. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's...

It's so expensive, too. And I think it's just something that we're not necessarily talking about enough. How have you seen companies tackle this problem? Sometimes it's just about taking a step back. I mean, it's hard. I recognize that people are kind of everything. Everybody feels like they're really busy. But sometimes you have to take yourself, take a step back and to give yourself space to think.

And one of the things I try and advocate for is, well, I do it slightly tongue in cheek. When I say to people, I ask them, so how many of you find it common to have a day where you're in back-to-back meetings? Many hands go up. I go, okay, fine. And then I ask another question. I said, so how many of you have on your job descriptions that

is one of your objectives, that you must attend as many meetings as humanly possible on a daily basis. No hands go up, surprisingly. And so I say to them, it's like going, so if you're in back-to-back meetings all the time, when are you doing any work? When are you actually doing any clear-headed thinking? And one of the things I challenge them to do, I say, look, I think, or I would challenge you to try and

either arbitrarily opt out of, cancel, postpone, reschedule, or just kind of say no to between 20% and 30%

of the meetings you get invited to on a weekly basis. And if you do that, then you'll try and clear out anywhere between half a day to a day worth of space. And when you create that space, then it gives you the bandwidth and the wherewithal to actually go and think about some of this stuff and go and talk to the people that are part of that challenge that might give you the insight

or might have the keys or the clues to how you might address this problem. What we seem to forget a lot of the time is that organizations are human and it's people and relationships that drive organizations. And yet if we don't spend time really understanding them, like for example,

This brilliant Dutch guy called Martijn Gribne that I interviewed on the podcast. And he's a veteran of a series of successful transformation projects from different – across different spaces in – both in Holland and also in North America. He's now back in Holland. I think he's heading up a –

small retail bank thing but i had him on the podcast and at the time he was setting up a new transformation kind of project across and i think crossing he's finishing one job and he was going to one in north america and he said this is and i think this is brilliant he said whenever he takes on a new project he always says to people look here are the conditions that i um under which i work if you don't like them don't hire me right he says first of all

I would like to work as an intern for a month before I start. He says, I do that so that I can get a really, a much better understanding of the organization and understand what levers are able to be pulled, right? But I get it from a, rather than from a position of authority, I get it from a ground level view. That's the first thing. He says, and the second thing, when I join, I am going to split my time into thirds. He says, I'm going to spend hours

a third of my time hanging out with the people that are serving customers or solving customers' problems. Because then I get a real insight of how things work or what things are like on the frontline, as it were. He says, "I'm going to spend the next third of my time wondering about the organization, getting to know people and understanding how things work." He says, "Then I'll spend my final third doing the work that's on my job description." And he said, "If you don't like it, don't hire me. Now,

I'm not asking everybody to turn into, become Martin Gribnow because that's quite a radical approach. But I think it's illustrative of sometimes different approaches, what you can do in order to create change. Because I actually think the problem isn't anything that's around the stuff around us. The biggest problem is how do we change ourselves?

How can we do different things ourselves? How can we think different things? How can we experience different things? How can we learn our way past this kind of like, you know, the problem? And to step off that hamster wheel that we invariably get caught up in. And that for me is the true punk mindset. It's like, why do I have to do it like that?

Why can't I do it differently? This is not working for me. Can I roll this back to figure out a different way to do it? And so the answer is ultimately about ourselves.

The image that's coming to mind is kind of like, you know, as people, we might do therapy or some kind of personal development work because we have things about ourselves that we want to change or, you know, situations that aren't feeling comfortable and we want to be able to grow past them. And I'm really comparing that to an organization right now that we have to also look internally and say, how are we operating? What can we be doing better? How can we really, like,

Yeah.

You know, it's something that I think we need to accept. Like, OK, this is going to be a hard project, right? Yeah. How do you suggest to leaders who are maybe feeling like they need to take on more of this, let's say, punk mindset? How would you suggest them to get started and drive that transformation forward? Start really small because everybody's frightened about doing something different.

Because it might not work. They don't know how they're going to look. They get caught up in their own sort of like ego surrounding the position of authority and responsibility and all that sort of stuff. But try and just do something different. You know, ask yourself this. When was the last time you went and hung out with your own customers? How often do you do that? And was it stage managed? You know, was it curated for you? When was the last time you actually did it without stabilizers?

When was the last time you actually hung out in your support teams? When was the last time you actually put on a headset and answered a customer's call? And that sort of exposure, I think, is a real sort of thing. So I think that the way I think about it is that we have to go deeper in this and challenge ourselves to think about things differently. We talk about...

In this modern era, we talk about being data-driven decision makers and having data-driven organizations. And it's like, that's brilliant. But I think there's levels to this and different types of data. There's the first line of it, which is the surface-level kind of data. And what it does, it's really important.

And many organizations have challenges of organizing that and making sure it's in the right sort of place in order to respond to it and think about it. But first of all, data informs. I think there's another level that goes beyond that, which says, but stories move us. So you end up with quantitative and then the qualitative stuff. And the stories move us. But the next deeper level is which it gets into the personal domain is that experiences compel us.

So we can know about something, we can understand it, but when we feel it, when we viscerally feel something, then it becomes personal and it's hard to dismiss. And I think that's the thing that I would challenge leaders to do is like, where's the your experience of your experience?

Exactly. I always say the same thing. I coach customer success leaders and also act as a customer success consultant. And this is one of the biggest things that I find is,

These post-sale leaders don't necessarily think to do because they're being asked for data and then they regurgitate where they find a collected data and say, here's what's happening. But if we're trying to influence and really have the voice of the customer be heard throughout the organization, we need to share those stories and really contextualize that data through real experiences. Yeah, I think it's just so important. So I appreciate that you bring that up. Yeah, I mean, and so I would think it starts...

It starts at every level of leadership, but it also kind of starts all the way up to the top. And sometimes you have to, I would encourage leaders to try things, to do things and to get over, you talk about therapy, to get over their own vulnerability, right? And to realize that actually, here's the thing.

One, you're going to be embarrassed. Two, you're probably going to feel stupid. And three, first time you do it, where you can show up and just kind of like say, hey, how's it going? Most people look at you and go, what? And that's going to be OK because that's part of it. What you're doing is you're building bridges.

You're building trusted bridges and conduits kind of into your customer base and also your organization sort of thing. These things don't happen because you expect them to happen. They have to be built. Trust has to be earned and retained. And you have to, leaders have to realize that actually that might require them being vulnerable and feeling a little daft to get things going.

Because it's a bit like this kind of, you know, the thing you think about it this way, you think about human beings, think about pets that have had a hard time or have been abandoned or whatever. They have a hard time or being ignored and not respected or not kind of they don't feel they've been getting the attention that they deserve. It takes a while to build a good relationship with them. You have to show up and you have to keep showing up.

And it keeps showing up, even though it feels hard. You keep it doing it because you do it because it matters, not because it's another piece of wallpaper, because it matters. And you understand why you're doing it and why it's important. For sure. I mean, it's behavior change. It doesn't happen on a dime. This is new habits that people have to do. What did they say? The whole thing to change a habit, you have to be able to do something else new 21 times. Yeah.

Before it's supposed to stick. So you're like, okay, buckle in. It's hard work. It's hard work, but the outcomes can be so, so worth it. Are there any resources? Where would you suggest, you know, our listeners to start?

If they're like, OK, I really want to shift. I mean, obviously your podcast and your Forbes articles, I think those are amazing places to kind of see what other people are saying in the space. But is there anything else that you would recommend for people to read or watch to get some more insight into how this can be done? Well, I would say watch this podcast. I would also say get used to the idea that this is not really written about.

There is no playbook for this because it's not standard. This is new. Now, it's a bit like if you want to lead, there is no kind of like you can do the training, do anything else, but it's like it's you that has to play the game, right? And you have to figure out your own way of playing the game and your own way of winning. And so we talk about experimenting and, you know,

learning, failing and learning all these different things. That's fine. So try something else. Like, I tell you what I do love. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, but I love the TV show Undercover Boss, right? And because I just, the very principle of it and how it shows up this massive difference in perspective that exists between many execs and also what's happening on the

the frontline, the interface between the organization and its customers and how organizations have to go, the show has to put people kind of in disguises and set them up with, you know, in interned kind of jobs or temporary jobs to get a real feel for it. It says, well, yeah, I think that's the sort of principle. Now, some people will say that they go and do this. You go, yeah, but you don't. I mean, I remember doing some work with a, a major coffee brand and it,

They had managers that were out in the field and things. So I said, so you go and visit stores and do all these different things. They were like, yeah. I said, like, what do you do when you do that? Oh, we sit and watch for a while. We've talked to the kind of people and then we sort of might make some calls and set the laptop and do some emails and stuff. You're like going, why don't you just put on an apron and wash some dishes or kind of clear some tables rather than being that person?

that is the manager, the supervisor, the authority figure, why don't you just get stuck in and help? Yeah, for sure. You will learn so much more. But also here's the thing, the impact it will, you will learn so much more, but the impact you will have on the people in that store, they will look at you and go, initially it'll be like, well, that's a bit weird, but kind of cool. And

He or she is going to show that they want to help, they want to stuck in, they want to respect the work that we're doing. Rather than just this person that's going to be sitting there and everybody has to, because the boss is in the room. You're like, no, you're part of a team with them. So show them that the work that they do is valuable by respecting them and helping them. And you will have so much more empathy.

for what they deal with on a day to day and be able to see where there are barriers that you can help break down. So it's just, it's like a trust flywheel. Absolutely. I mean, I have this kind of like this slightly utopian vision that we could leverage technology and training and scheduling software to make sure that everybody in every organization

did a shift on the front line or and or the customer support phones or kind of whatever it is on a weekly or bi-weekly basis 100 and it would just collapse all the distance between everybody in the organization and um and the customers and the people that you serve and i think we could do that there is nothing stopping us doing that yeah i i think just to add on that like

If you are a customer experience leader and you haven't had other teams, other leaders and yourself get into the weeds of that client-facing role, answering those tickets, servicing the customer, it's so, so necessary. But I also think that it requires us to really

like carve out that time and say, you know, managing up and saying, this is something we need to be doing. We need to be creating time on everyone's plate to be able to come and do this because the empathy that will be built in the trust that will be built will allow us to speed things up. Sure. Absolutely. We are often scared to ask for that because it feels like, okay, well, it's not directly driving the outcome, but it's a long, it's a long game.

And we need to bring our customer into the organization. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, I repeat the point before, it starts with us. Yeah, 100%. I love that. Well, I have one last question for you. And that is, what is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? It's not about you. Remember, there is, whilst there is, if I say the customer's experience is,

And customer experience, technically there is only four letters and an apostrophe difference between those two phrases. But in reality, it can usually be a country mile. The customer is not really present in the customer experience. And so for every person that I would say is like, do not forget what you're here to do. And remember, and this might be a bit more challenging, I don't think there's any such thing as an expert in customer experience.

Because the only person that's an expert in customer experience is the customer themselves. So you're here to create the conditions that allow people to have a successful and positive experience. But you cannot control it. So keep that in mind. So keep in mind the people that you're in service of. Yeah, that's what it's all about. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Adrian. This has been a really insightful conversation about...

servicing our customer, having empathy and trust with our customer and leadership. I think I've just heard so many amazing nuggets of information here around how we can effectively lead our teams towards that customer outcome. So thank you so much for joining us. And where can people find out more information about you?

Just write my name, Adrian Swinscoe, into Google. You'll find that there's nobody else. I mean, I think there's, well, it's not a common name. You'll find me. Yeah, you'll find him. Well, thank you so much. And I wish you a beautiful day. Thank you, Lauren. Been a delight. You are a business leader with vision. You've seen the future as an AI enterprise thriving with Salesforce AI and data. And it is bright.

Getting there? It's a little fuzzier. Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work side by side with your team and turn your AI and data vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support from the best of the best. To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.