Feature
The Gist
- Collaborative focus. Interactivity overcomes siloed business thinking.
- Customer insight. Deep understanding, not assumptions, drives success.
- Vulnerability embraced. Fosters emotional connection in CX leadership.
Our new contributor Vaishali Dialani brings a unique perspective on customer experience (CX) from her position as a customer experience analyst with Konabos consulting. She not only writes about CX. She practices it. With a focus on understanding customer needs and expectations, her desire is to bridge gaps and design unique customer journeys. Her work supports organizations in their digital transformation projects, unifying CX strategies to overcome siloed business thinking.
We caught up with Dialani recently on the topics.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Dom Nicastro: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro here, managing editor at CMSWire here with our latest CMSWire contributor, a new one, am I correct in saying a new CMSWire contributor?
Vaishali Dialani: Yes.
Nicastro: Awesome. Vaishali Dialani, they call her V. What's going on?
Dialani: Great. I'm from Dubai and I’ve been here all of my life, and I'm super excited and being with Konabos consulting for about seven months now as a customer experience analyst and it's been an amazing journey so far.
Nicastro: Yeah, that's awesome. So CX analyst is the title what? What does a CX analyst do? Is it like CX within Konabos? Or is it more like external trying to help other organizations with their CX?
Dialani: It’s a very interesting role because it's a combination of a business analyst but from a CX lens. So you gather requirements as a business analyst, but do it based on customer needs and customer expectations and design journeys? So it's a very, very interesting role. And I do both internally and externally for Konobos as well as for external clients to be able to support them in their digital transformation projects.
Unifying CX Strategy: Interactive Brainstorms Overcome Siloed Business Thinking
Nicastro: Awesome. Well, yeah, I think I think there's a need for that V because I think a lot of organizations make decisions for the business and forget that there's a customer at the end of it. Like oh, yeah, those guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. We should consider them as well. But your debut article here is a good one. You talk about ways that CX leaders can brainstorm, collaborate and just get better outcomes and more organizational support. So you kind of break it down into three important things that you've noticed that are important. And the first one is, you know, conducting those interactive brainstorms. So let's talk about that one first.
Dialani: I think most of the times what happens is organizations are quite siloed and never really settled the mentality of ways of doing things and everyone has a different matrix and they're not aligned. That's one of the biggest problems when anyone's trying to create a connected customer journey that everyone has different ways of doing things are not aligned. So when you're collaborating and having these collaborative working sessions on, you know, either online digital or you know, in person, they really, really help bring connectedness internally that reflects externally on your experiences that you're trying to offer the end users. Part of these interactive sessions, communication is the key and once you're aligned and in communicative, collaborativeness and everything kind of just falls in, but as a CX leader, it kind of becomes your job to make sure you bring in — you’re the bridge builder.
Related Article: Customer Journey Mapping: A How-To Guide
Improving CX: Beyond Assumptions, Deeper Customer Understanding Key to Success
Nicastro: Yeah, it seems like a lot of organizations struggle we hear over the years with assumptions about the customer, right? We're just talking like, like, for me, for example, I've done it over the years, like, Oh, I know what our readers want. They want this. Well, why are you saying that, Dom? You know, so, is there a certain trick of the trade for them to get better? Customer daily, whether it's an advisory board with those brainstorms, I'm sure have to have some kind of direct customer input, you know?
Dialani: Absolutely. And it all starts by being able to gather insights, right? You already have a lot of knowledge about your customers. It's being able to pull in the right amount, the right people in place, being able to interview the right people. It can also start by just taking the initiative of understanding, creating persona frameworks and understanding who your core customers are. What do your frontline workers have to say about the end users? Have you done come? What kind of ethnographic research have you done on your customers? Have you gone and spent time with them at their place? Have you even researched them? There’s so much so much that goes behind the scenes that is unimaginable. And yet despite no matter how much you are able to succeed in creating or designing those journeys, there's always been scope of improvement because you're learning and segregating so many things there.
Embracing Vulnerability: Making Emotional Connection in CX
Nicastro: The next thing you talk about is embracing vulnerability. That doesn't happen in the workplace. Everyone's confident and customers are confident. There's no vulnerability. What are you talking about there?
Dialani: I think CX, I mean, I'm not I'm not sure about the rest of them, but I feel CX leaders, whomever I've been connected to are quite wonderful individuals. The EQ is higher as well, which helps them understand emotions and bring emotions into the workspace and into the world in the business. So when you place one durability and can allow and create a safe space for others to be wonderful internally in your organization, facilitate vulnerability. You cannot imagine the ample amount of impact those people can then make on the product or on your end users and your customer journeys because they are ready to get that buy in because they understand the impact of emotions now. Only when you tap into your emotional state of mind as an individual, and you can bring that collectively in your team. That's when you will be able to align on the emotion you want to offer to the end user and or your customers. And then start taking those steps towards that.
Related Article: Is Your Customer Journey Map Inside Out?
Walk in Customers' Shoes: Observing Daily Habits Enhances Empathetic CX
Nicastro: Can you think of like an example of like, embracing emotions, vulnerability, like putting that into action, like a hypothetical or something you may have experienced recently. Like, what's a good example of that?
Dialani: I think one of the really good examples is and that's personally my favorite one is actually going and spending time with those customers, going in their in their workspace and seeing what they're doing what their daily day to day routine is like, you know, if you if they have an app or they want to buy a product from your website, when are they doing it what's the time like? And what are the actions are their state of mind deep, but before that, before that duration when they're on your website and what is it after? What's their journey like? So being able to navigate through different touchpoints of their own day and how you as a company or product fall within as a part of their day. You will see and understand the customer through a lens that you've never before.
Nicastro: Yeah. Kind of like walking in their shoes, and really letting them sit next to you and say, sign up for our newsletter. What was that like?
Dialani: You know what, let them do what they're doing, but just observe a lot.
Breaking the Mold in CX: Don't Fit In, Figure It Out for 'Wow' Experiences
Nicastro: Yeah. And then you could take that back and be like, Oh, Gina is really frustrated at this point of the journey. Like she had everything set. And then this friction came in and this is why she's frustrated. And here's a way we can fix that. You know, that's great. I love that input. Like, you know, a lot of people might say, well, it's only one customer but you got to think that if you're face to face with someone, they're going to speak for a lot of customers, right?
Dialani: Yeah. So you want to be able to tap into and you see what kind of emotions you see their face. You can read their face, the body language, there's so much that goes on that is very intangible in nature. Only when you are self aware as an individual, especially as a facilitator. That's when you can understand what the other person is going through. That's why wonderful it is such an important role in CX.
Nicastro: And then your final tip in the article is about not trying to fit in, but instead figure it out. That sounds interesting, which how do you quantify that? What's the goal on that one?
Dialani: So I think as CX leaders we were never born to fit in you know, you're just figuring your part out day by day customer by customer and you are a connector you are a bridge builder. So fitting in or thinking about, you know, customer experience should be a separate silo. No, it shouldn't be you're supposed to be a mindset you're supposed to be a culture see rather embrace it internally in the organization and within every department or within every project that you'll be used within while figuring out different customer profiles or personas. Take your time to figure it out. Experiment, explore discover, these are my like favorite words to be able to orchestrate the best kind of experiences because if you're not if you're playing a safe game, or using let's just be safe and you know, let's be blindsided to the limitations we have and not explore two things. You're then not going to get that wow factor for the customer. You're not going to be able to, you don't want to use your app I'm not just gonna feel like I how could they know I wanted this, like that feeling is amazing.
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Through Economic Rough Times, CX Leaders Must Still Prioritize Experimentation
Nicastro: I think they call them those magic moments, right? The magic moments of customer experience where the wow factor comes in. And you know finding those moments are so difficult, but it's never if you're not curious if you're not exploring, experimenting, like you said, I don't think you'll ever find them. You can be safe, you can be safe. Just keep sending out the same messages, same branding, and be safe that way but it's exploration and all that it is even in this economy, you think that playing it safe is still not the way to go. Because some executives might say differently. They might say, well, we gotta be saved. We can't really take too many risks, or bets you see all the things that's happening in layoffs and so they still should be even through this rough time. Experimentation is key. Is that the message?
Dialani: Yes, absolutely. OK, and I think there are superpowers here. Listen to your inner voice. We all have an inner voice that we should listen to. And yes, we’re somebody else's customers too right?
Nicastro: We do. Yep. Yeah. I've learned so much from experiences myself, you know, I've written articles on stuff that's happened to me, you know, about breakdowns and digital worlds versus physical and all that. And so, hey, listen, thanks for joining the CMSWire contributor community. Welcome.
Dialani: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here having this conversation with you and cannot wait to create more content.
Nicastro: Yes. Anything your experience and feel and see it for yourself to your customer too maybe something happened to you write about it. It's all good. I think your co-worker there Matthew McQueeny. Did that too. He was on the Amtrak train. He had some experience issues. And he wrote about it. So all good. So thanks for joining us. Yep, that's joining us on CMSWire. Looking forward to many more.
Dialani: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Nicastro: All right, chat soon. Bye now.
