Interview transcript

Reade (00:00):

Two one. Welcome everybody. Thanks so much for joining me for another interview in our growth secrets interview series. I'm here with Steven Keith of CX pilots. And we've already had a nice exchange before we hit the go button. He is from the, the Raleigh area of North Carolina. I am from the Metro Atlanta area, which we're, we're kind of right up [inaudible] from one another. And so we are going to have a great conversation today. I'm looking forward to it. Steven, thanks so much for chatting with me today.

Steven (00:35):

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Reade (00:37):

Sure thing. Well, tell us a little bit about your personal background and then obviously we want to get into your business and what you guys do.

Steven (00:48):

Personal background. I am an Iowa and Minnesota, Minnesota native. And you know, I spent most of my time in the Midwest in the four years where I should've been going to college at the university of Iowa. I moved to San Francisco in New York city and [inaudible] Washington DC and Chicago and spending a lot of time seeing how the, how the other half lives and finally graduated with a really bizarre degree and went to Chicago. And it was one of the early employees at a mutual fund rating company called Morningstar. Okay. Where I learned how to, where I learned how like business works and, and got to see a, a really cool startup flourish. And spun out of Starr, spun out a startup called gorilla. Yeah. Which was a software company and ran that for about 10 years before I sold it. Moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and kind of hit reset. Yeah. Where I, I am today focused on digital transformation and the, the customer experience side of transformation. That's a little bit of background today just focused on helping companies of all sizes work their way through the planning and execution of customer experience transformations.

Reade (02:29):

Okay. That's great. I appreciate that background. Especially the idea of should have spent in college for those four years. I feel like even the time I spent in college, I should have spent more of that time in college. So we can, we can relate on that, on those grounds. So. So tell me about your, your business a little bit. We always want to hear about the problems that our guests

Steven (03:00):

Solve, right? So you, every business is like this. As you well know. There's a problem that your customers are currently experiencing and entrepreneurs, they create problem solving solutions and they get paid for it. So what is the problem that you saw and you set out to address? Well, the problem that we originally set out to address has kind of morphed a little bit in our ability to adapt has been what has sort of made the difference. But we, we, we set out to help people solve culture change issues and, you know, figure out how to make an axis shift inside the organization so that they can focus more on digital. Focus more on adopting a publishing mindset and using enterprise content. You know using marketing assets at the, at the highest level to help kind of liberate their story.

Steven (04:09):

And about 10 years ago we were doing this for a couple of really big companies and it turned out that they wanted to focus a lot more on the, the customer experience side of things. So the transformations went from, you know, your traditional digital transformation to customer experience transformation. And we were embedded in a couple organizations like like IBM and GE and you know, having really interesting in conversations about how do you make a meaningful access shift inside organizations at the size and, you know, how, how do you, how do you get cultures, how do you build coalitions of the willing to help shape cultures so that they can increase, you know, customer centricity. And so we've sort of morphed into a CX consultancy Mmm. Over the course of the past decade. And what, what, what's come out of that is we've been collecting like MBAs, you know, people with change management backgrounds who understand organizational development and understand sort of the underlying Mmm [inaudible] management and cultural dynamics in change so that we could help these organizations steer around corners and make the necessary shifts.

Steven (05:33):

So today we're, we're just a, you know, a practice of consultants who are helping organizations figure out if you want measurable out put from increasing your level of customer centricity or, you know, deeper employee engagement, what does that look like? How do you do, how do you measure it? How do you, how do you govern, know, how do you put in governance structures so it doesn't backslide to the status quo. So that's, that's essentially the problem that we solve. Okay. I love that. And so is this, are there specific type of I guess will industry focus or type of business that you focus on? Yeah, I love that question and it's an odd question. I mean, it's an odd answer to a very smart question. There are, there are an abundance of CX consultants out there now. We know that marketing agencies, advertising agencies, consultancies, you know, the big four everybody is, it kind of shifted, you know, grabbed a new, a paddle and to have started canoeing up this CX stream.

Steven (06:51):

So a lot of people focus on what CX pilots calls a consumer commodity or volume metric CX, which means they're not trying to foster long term relationships. Of note with a few companies there are trying to sell an enormous amount of product to as many people as they possibly can. So there their CX mechanisms and machinery is really focused on I'm spelling commodity and trying to drive friction out of maximum commodity sales. That's CX to a lot of people. We focus completely in a different direction. We focus on professional services. It's a dramatically underserved marketplace. So if you are a, an accounting firm, if you are a, an architect or a a legal firm or a big engineering firm, you have relationships that are seven, eight figure relationships. And if you screw up those relationships, you can see one, one floor odd relationship on your bottom line.

Steven (08:11):

If you're selling you know, if you're, if you're Amazon and one customer's pissed and jets for some reason you're, it's impossible to see that. And in the, in the larger scheme of things, so CX focused on professional services is to us this is a lot more challenging. It's a lot more complex. It requires a lot more. These companies are typically pretty insular. And there, there's just a lot of challenges and so we're, we've retrofitted our consulting approach to address the needs of those professional services firms. Okay. So I'm gonna throw a question at you, and this is, forgive my lack of knowledge of the

Reade (08:56):

Industry. This may be an elementary question, but in those two examples that you gave, right? And the Amazons, right? Or, or a large, we'll say, you know, logistically based Monster's business versus a professional services firm to fix those types of relational problems on the, the Amazon example, that's more of a process improvement and potentially a technology and a logistics improvement, a support improvement. Whereas the professional services, it would seem as if you're dealing more with people and, and improving, sure. There's a process component to that. But it's about the process by which people behave and interact with other people. Is that, is that fair? Is that a right assessment?

Steven (09:53):

Yeah, I wouldn't say that that was ignorant at all. I mean, you're exactly right. So it's not without process and technology. I mean those, those play a huge enabling roles in the overall a solution. However, you're exactly right. So we're talking about relationships. So if you, like, if you go to the, the front of the CX pilots website, you're going to see huge words that say relationship design tools. So what the hell are relationship design tools? It's a term that we coined quite a while back. We help these professional services firms understand a lot more about the, the relationship, which sounds really, Mmm. And we've actually received this feedback directly. It sounds kind of almost arrogant to walk into someone who's, you know, a firm that's had clients for 85 years. And then a fledgling berm comes in and says, we're going to teach you how to sustain more meaningful and profitable relationships. They're like, hell, are you to tell me? Turns out that a lot of these firms are unwittingly conflating customer service with client experience.

Reade (11:20):

I talk about this all the time, yet those are not the same. That's right.

Steven (11:26):

Yeah. Those are not the same. And so when we're able to when we, we're able to cut through and help people understand differences and we say, you know, if we can create an MRI and we can put every one of your client relationships through this MRI, it points to like 11 or 16 or 27 different possible trouble spots and we're able to show you why they're trouble spots and were able to help you address them collaboratively, then that's the difference maker. So relationship design tools are, you know, we, we've developed these fairly sophisticated proprietary tools that act just like x-ray or an MRI to help people understand all the different interactions that their clients have in these professional firms settings. And then give them a platform upon which they can either remove friction more closely, scrutinized those moments of truth in, in the, in the relationship, or identify competitively differentiated innovation opportunities. So a way to dramatically improve a way that you onboard a new client if you're a law firm or an architecture firm in a way that's memorable. So we use an abundance of, of psychology and behavioral economics to understand things like peak end theory which is a really cool theory that, that says that people don't remember everything about their experience they had since essentially remember the peak and then they enter, they remember the sort of the, the thing that

Steven (13:19):

That happened last. So if you're a professional services company and you're focused on the, on the, on the client experience as he should, Mmm. There's a lot of relationship tools that we bring to bear to help people kind of hack the experience so that people have a, you know, a measurably more positive and fruitful set of interactions or exchanges with there lawyer or accountant or architect or doctor or it integrator.

Reade (13:54):

I got you. So, and I'm really fascinated about, you call it the peak end theory. So I, I was going to finish your sentence by saying they remember the peak, the best experience and the worst experience, but that's not what you're saying, is it, they remember the best in the last experience. Yeah. That is a paradigm shift because I know a lot of businesses and a lot of business leaders I think it's obvious that you should try to make the best part of their experience. Good. Right? I think that it goes without saying, but I don't think we give enough credence to and enough attention to not just limiting their worst experience, but their last experience. So that's, that is really fascinating. So folks, if you're listening to this or if you're watching this, I want you to think about that in your own businesses and don't just think about

Steven (14:51):

The best and the worst are the average experience. But think about

Steven (14:54):

How you can heighten the best experience and to make sure that the last experience, and you know, you could probably fill in the blanks here, Steven, but I mean, I'm thinking about everything from restaurants two the way real estate agents handle closing day all the way to SAS companies and how they do their customer onboarding once they've, once they've signed on. I mean, there's so many applications of this that not only have to do with making sure that experience is good, but, but the real practical or the real a rubber meets the road here is that's going to affect things like your retention rate, churn your, your customer loyalty, lifetime value of each customer. I mean, all those things are going to be really dramatically impacted. Bye. Especially that end experience. So that's really useful. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I'm gonna have to go dig deeper into that.

Steven(15:56):

Yeah, I would, I recommend looking at peak theory. I mean, it's a really important concept in the work that we do. And I mean that's one of 50 or 75 different concepts that are equally mindblowing when you get into this process. Mmm. So imagine applying PKM theory to not just a generic flow of experiences or relationships that you have, but imagine if you, well, I mean, everybody's familiar with, with Mmm, the customer journey mapping. I mean, that's T T to us customer journey mapping is, it's, it's fairly critical, but it's really tip of the iceberg type of stuff. If you go into deeper interaction mapping, which is basically just you know, you go from the molecular level down to the atomic level and you interaction mapping is just like one more level deep. And, you know, one of the things that we love to do and we start working with some of these organizations, our clients.

Steven (17:04):

Mmm. When we start journey mapping, we like to ask do a round Robin, like how many, how many how many interactions would you say you probably have with the typical client over the course of a project or a matter or you know, whatever, whenever the customer's coming to purchase from you. Okay. And that the answers are always like 25, I dunno. 30. You know, there's always a wildcard person in the room. It's like [inaudible] shit, I think it's 70. Mmm. Turns out the average is closer to like 380 when we get in there and we actually start mapping these things. [inaudible] Could you go to Jiffy lube and you know, the Jiffy lube people have material really focused on figuring out what this process is. There's like 200 interactions at, you know, in one

Steven (17:55):

One business, the Jiffy lube. Nobody on earth would ever understand that there are 200 different things that are happening, but there's so many things that happened before you get there while you're there and then after you leave. So the way that we look at it, or the way we train our clients to look at it is if you really want to maximize what you get out of the process of CX, you have to look at, I'm going to introduce these two concepts. So the first concept is upstream, midstream, and downstream effect. So upstream is before that person pulls into a Jiffy lube, it's like 75 things that they can manipulate or Mmm. Take advantage of a midstream is you pulled into the shop, now you're there, you're waiting, or you're talking to someone and then, Mmm. Downstream, like there's all this stuff that happens after you drive away. So in the professional services setting, like if you're going to visit an attorney, there's the same things apply. There's upstream stuff, there's midstream stuff, and there's downstream stuff that you need to be turned it off. So that's, that's one, that's one thing I want to put another layer on top of that. So while you're focused on upstream, midstream, and downstream affects of a journey, also think about there's an early stage, there's a middle stage, and then there's a late stage CX. So

Steven (19:16):

Given that there's a, you know, a timeline that you're, your client or your customer goes through, there's also wasted chunk this work up into more manageable pieces. Make it more modular so that you, no. So your brain doesn't explode when you try to figure it out. Or when CX pilots comes in and lays down like, okay, here's the, here's the way to get 100% certainty on a return on your investment for the CX work. And it's complex. You know, we've strived to make it simple, but there's just so much stuff that is so valuable. Mmm. Maximizes the output of this work. Like you wouldn't believe. But what's happening is most people read about CX and then they, they just go the low hanging fruit route. I think they do one or two things and then they walk away with this really bad taste in their mouth because they didn't get what they were looking for. Well, it's because they didn't, you know, think about the, yeah, the holistic [inaudible] the total ecosystem of, of CX management, which is really unfortunate. But that's, I guess that's the way it is.

Steven (20:29):

So there's there, I can tell it's a complex field, right? Just by the one, the sheer number or the sheer amount of theory that one must apply to it. And I shouldn't have said complex as soon as said, it's a difficult than, it's a difficult it's probably, I mean, I imagine not a difficult sell in terms of you being able to close business, but a difficult sell when you put down in front of a client, Hey, these are the 346 interactions you have with a customer. That's just a lot to take in. Right? Especially when, cause I, as I was thinking about it for myself when you said that and, and my first thought was, I don't know, maybe maybe six or 12 on a monthly basis or something like that, because that's when I have meetings with them. But then I started thinking about, okay, we're talking about emails back and forth, Slack messages, if we see each other in person, and then all the things leading up and there's a bit of an overwhelm there. So what do you do? And I think this is broadly applicable to other folks who are dealing in a, on a consultative basis with their clients, right? What do you do to be able to deliver some pretty heavy information in a way that doesn't cause him to freeze, that still enables them to act on the information that you're giving them?

Steven (22:04):

So we, we learned from studying the way that doctors, you know, specifically like radiologists deliver information. So it turns out that when you're, when you have something complex to share with someone, and you know, it might not be really super positive news, but it's, I mean, it's good news in, in the, in the, in the fact that you can help them solve a problem that they might not know they have. Well, the radiologist delivers a piece of concerning information to someone. The whole, the whole thing is compassion and simplicity. So we would never, you know, walk in in the beginning of a relationship with one of our clients and say, guess what, you have 380 things to focus on. Plus you have to figure out how to think upstream, downstream and not just midstream. And guess what? It's even more complex than that. You have to chunk it up and all these [inaudible] that's just mind blowing.

Steven (22:58):

What we do is say we've looked five, we w w we we learned from like how how radiologists like study information and deliver information to [inaudible] people. You know, you, you'd say, Hey, there's a after running this test, this is how we ran the test. This is what the test revealed. This is something that is these are things that concern us and here's why it concerns us and you know, here's, here's two different ways that we would recommend addressing these. Then it's just a, it's a contained piece of information that people can focus on and then you will allow them to open the aperture based on their level of comfort. So when we do like a CX readiness or maturity assessment and it finds all of stuff, we're looking at 15 different dimensions of, of CX management. We're saying, Hey, you have issues with your culture in Austin, [inaudible], Georgia and New York city and Seattle.

Steven(24:02):

Yeah. Your Minneapolis and your Detroit and your Louisville offices are perfect. You know, so don't spend your resources on training people in those Midwest areas. Focus on these other places. Did that put the assessment said there where there's a problem and then you're like, Oh wow, thank you. You just saved me half a million dollars. Mmm. That's the type of stuff that we try to do. Keep it simple and then just kind of slowly release the, you know, information can as people are able to digest it. Otherwise, I mean, you know, we've learned from mistakes, we've delivered for too much information too fast in it. You don't have froze our clients up and it wasn't a pretty scenario. So we have to sort of pull back and learn from other professionals about how they do stuff that, you know, can be kind of complex and confusing. Okay.

Steven (24:57):

So I'm really, really impressed by the reaching across to a totally different, you know, field and studying the way that they deliver complex information. I know that that's actually a great value that I have derive from this. This interview series is being able to pull you know, nuggets of wisdom and, and tactics from people in totally disparate industries that I can steal from. So I want to I want to pivot a little bit focus of this. You know, this interview series is, it's called growth secrets, right? So we really want to know how other businesses are getting new business. So what's the process that you guys are using to get new customers?

Steven (25:51):

So where we're very Allegiant to the process of content and trying to, we're trying to like fly above thought leadership. It's, you know, it's my theory that a vast majority of an output thought leadership and air quotes is actually just thought membership. [inaudible] Mmm. Everybody's kind of saying the same thing about staff. You know, they might use a, they might, you know, feel a little frisky one day and put a couple alternate center an MSN for a couple of terms, but I don't think we're in there to sound edgy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying really hard not to do that right now. But the, what, what we try to do is basically, you know, think about, you know, look at more stuff and think about it harder. So what is it about, you know, I'm really on a Jack right now. I'm really interested in, in a, what we call the, the dynamics of learning relationships.

Steven (27:00):

And there are sure just absolute geniuses who forged this field, you know, 15 years ago like Don peppers and Martha Rogers, they were writing about learning relationships and client experience. You know, before anybody really thought about this. And there were people like Valerie Peck who are mapping client and customer relationships. Like so many years, like over a decade ago, these people wrote so much amazing stuff and nobody, nobody seems to be reading that. [inaudible] Spending any time deconstructing it for today's, you know, how this stuff has evolved and adapted. Okay. The notion of learning relationships like the, and how value truly gets exchanged when you want to learn about your customer and your customer wants to learn about you. Like imagine the scenario where your, where your customer actually wants to learn more about. Yeah. That's phenomenal. It doesn't happen. Why? Because we don't say anything that's worth, you know, I'll mow the predominant mindset for, you know, an agency owner or, you know, people that do some of that stuff that you and I do is sales, sales, sales growth, growth, growth, sales, growth. Instead of like, can you, can you blow someone's mind? But can you put a piece of information in front of someone that, that, that materially and measurably changes the way they think about something? That's what, that's what gets me out of bed. I like to think about things and try to apply them to people's business in ways that changes the way, you know, change the way they think about their business.

Steven (28:47):

I I couple that with the fact that the reason why we're doing what we're doing at CX pilots is because we know when we're able to do our best work, we can,

Reade (28:57):

Hmm.

Steven (28:57):

We can help that firm be the very best version of itself. That's, that's a big deal to us.

Reade (29:08):

So that is and, and just broadly speaking as a consulting firm, right? That should be the Eagle, right? Is to help your customers be the best version of themselves. And I know I'm boiling what you guys do down to some very high level. I agree very much with your critique of the thought leader as a term. I can't stand the term because it became so, you know, ubiquitous and everyone was a thought leader that now no one is a thought leader, right? Everyone is, no one is by definition. And I think the reason that it, that that definition as you described it makes that term so elusive is because what you just described doing is really hard, right? That doesn't just take content creation efforts that takes real thinking and and research and study and not just researching and studying and then regurgitating, but but re-imagining how that theory might be applied to a specific scenario.

Reade (30:27):

In this case, when it's in the context of marketing, in your ideal customers context that is hard work and in to the same end or I guess to to that same point that's going to affect a reader of viewer, a listener to a far greater degree. Like it's not a magnitude of what do they say? It's not a difference in degree. It's a difference in kind. Almost like if I see something that looks good, your website looks good, right? Like I, I see that, but I've seen other good looking websites so it may be a little bit better, a little bit worse. But if you give me information that fundamentally transforms the way that I see things and, and I get this, this stuff does come across into my world, but as a ratio of the amount of content I consume and those nuggets that fundamentally changed the way I see something, it's a very, very small ratio.

Reade (31:34):

But I remember them for a long time and I seek them out and I do business with them and I partner with them and I work with them. And, and, and I know, Steven, this, I'm just telling you stuff. You already know you've thought about this, but I really want the listeners to, to take this in now to be practical again, what you described being so hard and taking a lot of time, I would also caution against people saying, well, if I can't create some, a mind altering substance of an article or a video, then I shouldn't do anything. Right? But I do think that if you're going to claim to be a thought leader, that better be what you're doing otherwise just own what it is that you're doing and say, look, we're trying to put out helpful stuff. And it's got our own spin on it. It's gonna room voice and it's got our own perspective. But that's my long winded plea of don't call yourself a thought leader unless you're doing that, unless you're the LSD of

Steven (32:41):

Ha. Yeah, that's a good way to put it yet, you know, I'm, I'm totally diseased because I, you know, in 2008, 2009, I was writing for Deloitte. Okay. And as a writer before, you know, one of the leading for one of the big four, there's just a, there's a whole new level of expectation. Like you're, the works that you throw together have to change a mindset or they, they look at you like your, no, you're the last kid to get picked on the, on the, you know, the middle school kickball team like you, you're [inaudible], nobody wants to be there. So, you know, your level of writing isn't thought leadership. It's eminence like we're shooting for you're writing stuff that not only changes people's mind or mindset, but they don't know their mindset's really being changed. And that's, you know, that's one of the sort of the magical mechanics of really astounding writing or you know, really astounding content like content that's so stealth.

Steven (33:48):

It changes your mindset and it plants that, that kind of brand bomb and in a time release format in someone Ted, so that in six months when they are making a decision about something, they remember like, Oh yeah, that's right. These, these are clearly this smartest people on the planet. Like I need to go with them. See that's, that's some stuff, shit right there. That is, you know, they were doing it so many years ago, but figuring this stuff out, I was super fortunate to be on a team where I saw the wizard, you know, standing there mixing, mixing his, you know, his magic potion. And I just paid attention and I thought, okay, so if you want to, if you want to do this, like CX pilots were, let's just be real. Like we're one of the smaller CX consultants were focused on professional services.

Steven (34:40):

We're all, you know, we're, we're all smart. We're all doing essentially the same things. If you want to rise above in this tent and this arena, like you have to make some really hard decisions. Like I'm not typically the person that goes out to, you know, I might not be the person who, the first face you see at sea, it's pilots. I'm, I'm really focused on like how can we create our brand? How can we, how can we make sure that we're, we truly are saying things and pointing to things and helping people understand concepts that will fundamentally change their business and help them adapt. We call it the close relationship design tools and it works. I mean, it's, it's, it's something that I focus on. I, you know, I don't know anybody else who spent six months deconstructing, you know, the process to map a genome and then tried to apply it to business. But I did that to help me understand like what's, what are all the complex theoreticals that go into like fundamentally changing an industry. And I wanted to figure it out. I wanted to map it thoroughly and we've been able to do that. We apply it to our client's businesses and it's, it's pretty, pretty remarkable.

Reade (35:54):

Yeah. That is remarkable. Steven. This conversation, I [inaudible] really struggling the fact that I have to end this one because there's so many questions that they come to mind or just there's so many other ways that I'd like to look at these problems that I imagine you've thought of, you know, a hundred times over. I'd really love to, to, to continue this conversation on another perhaps a part two sometime, but I want to be mindful of your time and the time of our listeners and our viewers. So between now and when we can hopefully have that next conversation, how can people learn more about you guys and how can they get in touch with you?

Steven (36:47):

They've got a C ex pilots.com CX pilots. Your pilots is a double entendre where, where people that fly you through the sky and get you to point B safely. But we're also modular based Mmm approach to consulting. So we do individual pilots for our organizations. So that's what pilots means. Just read some of our stuff like we have maybe a hundred or

Reade (37:18):

More, yeah.

Steven (37:19):

Fairly interesting articles where we're actually trying to put our money where our mouth is and change people's minds. Mmm. Readers have to be the judge of that. But CX pals.com is probably the best place to start.

Reade (37:33):

Okay. And I'll drop the link in the comments guys, so you don't have to go pecking that out on the, your keyboard. I will drop it in there. And also I always offer this folks, if you want to get in touch with Steven and any of you don't know, how are you miss that AMIA missed the link. Can you send me a message on Facebook and I will put you guys in touch. Steven, this has been a phenomenal conversation, has been really eye opening in a lot of ways. I appreciate your how you kind of expand ones. I guess I'm trying to really, I'm even struggling to how to say this. I feel like I'm looking at things very differently because of this conversation and I think that's what you wanted to happen. I think that's what awesome you, you mind bended me into that. So I want to say thank you for that and thank you for taking the time to come on today, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. If you got some value out of this, drop a comment, let me know what you thought and if you just want to make fun of me, drop a comment. Anyway, I appreciate it. I appreciate you watching. Until next time, we'll see y'all soon. Thanks.