Interview
The Gist
- Introduction to the evolution of CX and EX. Marietta Silva-Allison discusses her extensive experience in customer and employee experience, providing insights on the interconnectedness of CX and EX at Intuit TurboTax.
- Linking employee experience to business outcomes. Marietta shares examples of how improving employee experience leads to significant business improvements, emphasizing the correlation between employee satisfaction and revenue.
- Training and integrating seasonal employees. Details on how Intuit TurboTax trains both internal and third-party employees to align with company values, ensuring they deliver exceptional customer service.
In this edition of CMSWire TV's Beyond the Call, Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief at CMSWire, is joined by Marietta Silva-Allison, principal leader of customer experience at Intuit TurboTax.
Marietta brings a wealth of knowledge and insights on the intricate relationship between customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX), sharing how these elements intertwine to drive exceptional service and business outcomes. With years of expertise in the field, Marietta discusses the importance of emotional intelligence, effective training for seasonal employees and the critical feedback loops necessary to maintain high standards of service.
Joining the conversation is Siobhan Fagan, editor-in-chief of CMSWire sister site Reworked.co, who adds her perspective on EX and its direct impact on CX. Together, we explore how Intuit TurboTax leverages data and employee engagement to create a seamless and supportive environment for both employees and customers.
Table of Contents
- Introduction and Welcome - 0:06 (0:01)
- Background on Marietta Silva-Allison - 2:03 (2:54)
- Combining CX and EX at Intuit TurboTax - 3:18 (5:45)
- Training Seasonal Employees - 9:58 (7:48)
- Emotional Intelligence in Customer Interactions - 20:42 (11:05)
- Future Priorities in CX and EX - 24:17 (13:47)
Introduction and Welcome - 0:06
Dom Nicastro: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this latest edition of CMSWire TV's Beyond the Call. I am Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief at CMSWire. And we have two very special people joining me today. One is my colleague, and one is the star guest of the show. Let's start with my colleague Siobhan Fagan, editor in chief of Reworked.co, our sister brand at CMSWire. Siobhan, how are you doing?
Siobhan Fagan: I'm doing all right. Thanks for letting me jump in on your call here, Dom. I hope I'm not crowding your space.
Dom Nicastro: Every time the word EX is mentioned, Siobhan just pops in all of a sudden. And here she is because we're going to be talking about EX, CX, and everything in between. And the person to help us do that is Marietta Silva-Allison, the principal leader of CX at Intuit TurboTax. Marietta, how are you doing?
Marietta Silva-Allison: I'm doing awesome. I'm really glad to be here with you guys today.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, we are so glad to have you. We got a chance to catch up at our conference last year in Austin. And that's where you are—beautiful Austin today. Unknown Speaker: It's muggy. That's pretty standard. 100 million degrees and buggy.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, go take care of those bats after we're done with the show. So, obviously, we're excited to have you. You know, CMSWire and Reworked. One of the themes that we talk about a lot is the combination between EX and CX, especially on the CMSWire side, of course, and Reworked focusing on EX. So we're going to see if we can hammer out how you're doing that over there and how you're walking the walk. Sounds good? Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Sounds good.
Dom Nicastro: You know, tell us a little bit about yourself, though, for listeners who, in viewers, this might be their first time getting a piece of Marietta here and her insights. So what's, what's your team like? And sort of how did you arrive in that role at Intuit TurboTax?
Background on Marietta Silva-Allison - 2:03
Marietta Silva-Allison: Oh, my goodness, well, I've been doing customer experience, or EX and EX, because it's all combined, for some decades now. And I landed at Intuit because a recruiter reached out to me with a job description that was like, "Oh, my gosh, this sounds like the most fun ever." Like, yes, I'm interested in doing that. And it was, you know, to provide that most amazing level of service to drive conversion for TurboTax customers. And I've been doing it ever since. And it's been a blast. And interestingly, my focus has really been on EX since I've been there, and how that directly ties to the customer experience.
Dom Nicastro: Excellent. So in practice, you know, just the high-level view of how you get that done, you know, how do you view that relationship between customer experience and employee experience? You know, from a high-level view, I mean, you know, I always wonder like, geez, are these CX people like teaming with HR? Like, how does that work from the top there?
Marietta Silva-Allison: You know, it's really funny that you say that, because I was just reading an article the other day about combining, like looking at the link between your employee experience, right, as shown by tenure and how they feel connected to your values and things like that, and how there's actually a correlation. You can make the correlation between revenue and the employee experience, which is a hard thing to do, right? So it's the concept of taking that people data, and connecting it with revenue data, and seeing where it tracks. So they did this with a retailer that had stores that were, you know, they could isolate it, one company.
So they removed a bunch of variables, one very specific department that they provided all this additional training for, and then they measured it across all of their stores nationwide. And they could find that if they brought up the experience of a store from the bottom quartile to the top quartile, that it actually gave them like 150% ROI. Like it was crazy, just by moving people up the food chain as far as training and tenure and feeling connected to the values of the company. So really can drive tons of change on the bottom line.
But I see Siobhan you're like nodding your head. Am I speaking your language?
Siobhan Fagan: You're speaking my language. It's funny because I hear from so many EX leaders that they are struggling to make that connection to the actual money. It just sort of sounds all woo-woo and employee happiness and blah, blah, blah. But like there are actual monetary implications. So it's kind of great to hear that. I'm curious with, you said that your role sort of moved over to EX, was that a deliberate choice on your part? Did it happen organically?
Marietta Silva-Allison: Everything at Intuit happens organically. So we really are driven by our annual innovation goals. And we're actually like, in the thick of it right now. And so every year, we say, like, this is where we're going. Here's our Northstar, here's our revenue targets and our team, our NPS targets, etc, etc. And then we move people around to fit that. So we're like, I always say, We're the biggest, oldest startup I've ever worked at, and the fastest moving to. Yeah, I think I told you, I thought I was gonna, you know, like, go back to corporate land from startup land, and things would slow down. No, absolutely. Quite the opposite.
Related Article: Teeing up Employee Experience to Enhance Customer Experience
Combining CX and EX at Intuit TurboTax - 3:18
Dom Nicastro: You know, you kind of had me at people data when you mentioned that earlier. Can you give us some examples of that data you're looking at when it comes to employee experience, and sort of how that informs you to create to be better at employee experience?
Marietta Silva-Allison: Yeah, well, so at TurboTax, the bulk of the employees that I'm dealing with are not actually mine. They're actually third-party partners. So there's, there's what Intuit does for our internal, right, employee experience. And our tax experts are all Intuit employees, although they're seasonal.
But the bulk of what we call our product support experts come from third-party partners. So we have a different approach for each one of those buckets internally. And they take care of us and Intuit, we get surveyed with our whole surveys, we meet with our directors and our VP about those results. And I've really seen like, "Oh, we went down one point in this area." And it's like, all hands on deck, like what happened? We got to figure this out. And we got it, like more so than any company I've ever worked at. Then on the partner side, right? Those aren't my employees, there's different legal requirements, and depending on what state and all this good stuff.
So the partnership that we have with those vendors is so critical. And what I experienced in other places is like, you might have multiple partners providing your call support services, and they will compete with each other. Right? It's not really, it's not always as friendly. When I first joined Intuit, I was like, "Wow, are these all the same part? Is this one partner? How many people, how many partners are we talking about?" Because they really work together in a much more collaborative manner than I've ever seen.
And I'll really credit that to the people who manage our partners and our service delivery teams. They really, really have created this collaborative, like we're, we're partners together to get to this goal. So that's how we've really approached the employee experience. We also survey them too. We survey our partners' employees every year. And we're looking, you know, we ask them to if they feel connected to the Intuit values, do they feel proud to service the program? Would they recommend it? Like, not only are we doing the NPS score for customers, but we're actually doing it with our employees too, right?
Siobhan Fagan: Marietta, I love this idea of having to sort of deliver comparable employee experiences across these very different entities. So you have these third-party partners who are bringing in these people and you just mentioned you're actually quizzing them about if they feel connected to the Intuit values. And I'm wondering, like, how, when you have somebody who's coming in just for a period of time, I'm gonna guess somewhere around April, maybe a little bit before, how do you impart those values? How do you bring them into the corporate culture when they're just there for a certain period of time?
Marietta Silva-Allison: So I've taken all the training, because, you know, I believe if I'm going to do experiences for our experts, I need to experience it as if I were an expert. So it's built into the training. They really provide that opportunity for these seasonal employees to go like, "Wow, I'm actually part of something bigger than just this one phone call." Because emotion doesn't lie, right? Energy doesn't lie. So if I can support this one customer in getting their taxes done, yes, I'm doing my job. I'm actually making sure that they're financially protected. I'm actually making sure that they can go sleep at night and get that refund because that refund for most Americans is the biggest paycheck that they get all year. So they're waiting for that, like, "I had to buy tires for my car." It's like really important stuff.
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Siobhan Fagan: Yeah. I love that because it is sort of a known thing that people want some sort of purpose in their job. Yes, it's a temporary one. So imparting the purpose of the job... Marietta Silva-Allison: Yes, that is how we are wired. We want to know that we're part of something bigger. We want to be recognized. We want to know that we have an impact, that we make a difference. And so those are all things that I build into the employee experiences that I build.
Related Article: The Art of Balancing Employee Experience and Customer Experience
Training Seasonal Employees - 9:58
Dom Nicastro: Marietta, do you let the temp workers come to the party on April 16th?
Marietta Silva-Allison: We have. So we have seasonal employees, who we call Intuit-badged employees. And yes, if they are in town, to come to the celebration, our partners have their own way that they do that with their employees, and I don't get to go to their parties either.
Siobhan Fagan: So Marietta, I love that you've brought up training a couple of times, that's a topic that is near and dear to our hearts here at Reworked. I'm curious how the training that you deliver to these third-party employees differs or is the same as that that you do to the full-time employees at Intuit. Marietta Silva-Allison: Okay, so the training for the third-party partners is very specific to them. Like we create it for that purpose. And we actually partner with different SMEs at our partners to update it, like, "Does this make sense? Is this accurate to you? Is this confusing?" We do it every single year, no surprise. The systems change, tax law changes. There's also a set of training that our tax experts who are also seasonal, you know, some of them are all year round, obviously. But the bulk are going to be seasonal, that they go through. And I actually haven't taken that one. So you've just given me a new task to do. I need to go take the domain expert training. Yeah.
Dom Nicastro: Siobhan is in the project management software of Intuit TurboTax. Now SF says do this.
Marietta Silva-Allison: Yes, yeah, I got the Learning Path is now assigned to me. But I actually have her this call, I have a call with one of our tax experts. Because I'm learning about the tax side. I've been very, very deep in our product support side. And now I'm moving to expand my scope into a new area. So thank you for the reminder.
Dom Nicastro: 100%, Marietta. With you know, focusing on EX and trying to help that improve CX outcomes. A lot of people talk a good game about, "Oh, great EX leads to great CX," right? And that could be true, but I'm wondering specifically how that happens, right? Is there an example you have off the top of your head where a great employee experience efforts truly lead to better customer satisfaction and sort of how do you measure all that? Is that really, like tangibly measured now these days? Like is there a software system that can actually say, "Hey, look at this, EX led to great CX"?
Marietta Silva-Allison: If I had it all nailed down, I would be very rich and we would all retire together. Because it is tricky. There are many variables, right? That you can say impacted the customer experience. So like, did we have the improvements because of that great press release or the drop because we had something negative show up in the news or the system crashed or something happened? Or is it really truly the customer experience? That's why finding a way to limit the variables, like I was talking about that previous example, were finding a way that you can truly knock out all the variables, just see if the financial numbers and the employee experience track.
I think that's a huge opportunity, honestly, in the same way that we're doing customer experience analytics, or linking all of our various data sources together, I can certainly see that's an opportunity to drive the connection between EX and CX and all of your data like what is the onboarding length of time, speech proficiency?
What is this expert's first call resolution like putting that all together and seeing where the links are, seeing where the boulders are that I have an opportunity to change, to be able to drive that customer experience. But when we've all walked into some store, or had some experience where someone says that thing or does the thing, but we know they're not interested in actually supporting us or helping us, right? So common sense tells us there's a connection because we all want to turn around and walk right back out, or I do. We know that intuitively, the connection is there. And I think it's time to actually do the analytic work to prove it.
Dom Nicastro: We're going to see more CX people adding EX officially and me liking it on LinkedIn when Marietta adds it to her title.
Marietta Silva-Allison: Well, that might depend on the job families available at each different company. I don't have that job family available. But the truth of it is, I can't even think of CX and EX as two separate things. I mean, I approach them together, they both need to be journey mapped, they both need to be continuously measured. And I'm fooling myself if I think I can separate them. So for example, we talk about this concept of the connected rep. I've been doing the connected rep for years before it was a theme. It's the concept of if I can give a representative the answer that they need to support that customer, right at the moment that they need it.
Now, my expert feels more confident. And now my customer is going to pick up on that confidence, right? And it will go from the NSA expert, because that's what we say it into it. But it's agent, you can just say agent. It's just going to carry over automatically. I say it again and again. Like energy does not lie. If that expert is not confident, frantic, like "Oh, this guy's mad at me. I don't know the answer, and I gotta put them on hold. He's gonna be really ticked at me when I come back. Now I gotta ask you too," right?
All of that comes over. And that means that that customer is feeling that uncertainty, that doubt like, "Can I trust what you're telling me? Or am I gonna get audited by the IRS? Because I don't trust myself. That's why I called you, right? I don't know what I'm doing. You're supposed to help me out here. And now you don't know what you're doing either. Oh, my God, let me hang up and call again and again and again," right. So let me stop that process. Let me give you what you need at that moment in time to answer it. And then let me extend that because I've got all kinds of data and ML and Gen AI. And I can look into the future and see what the likelihood of the next errors, right, before you even know it might be coming down the path and then bring that up. Let me anticipate and forward resolve that expert.
Now that expert feels great, right? If I can do that, and I can now they will answer as if they are a tenured agent. And my customer is going to take their advice more readily. They're going to actually file their taxes with me, right? And they're going to come back next year. Because I've given that consistent experience, all because I supported the expert.
Related Article: AI in Customer Experience and Employee Experience: Finding Balance
Emotional Intelligence in Customer Interactions - 20:42
Siobhan Fagan: I love that, Marietta. I love also the fact that while you're talking, I'm listening to this experience, and I'm kind of in the pit of my stomach flashing back to the filing taxes and sort of how fraught that is. And it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you are not only taking care of that very specific knowledge base, and you're providing that to them in the moment, but also they are learning or they've come equipped with a certain amount of emotional intelligence to handle what are these really, I mean, as far as customer interactions go, like on a daily basis, this one's one of the more fraught ones, it's really emotionally tied up. Can you elaborate?
Marietta Silva-Allison: Yes, in any call center, it can be a hat trick to stay calm, to not pick up the frustration that your customer might be coming in with. They're not having the best day ever. They didn't get up going, "I can't wait to call you."
But they don't want to need to call you. But they have to. And so here they go. That emotional intelligence, one of the things that we do spend a lot of time working with our partners who work with their employees, and that we work with our own employees is the concept of being able to defuse the situation. So they get that the process is we think we call it heat. So it's like, hear them out, explore right, and go through that regular process. I've done it with different personality matrix, there's usually four or something like the quadrant where you say, "Okay, this customer, you can hear is a controller or a promoter," you know, these types of things. And this is how you approach them. Right?
So listen, is this customer ready to have this longer conversation with you? Do you need to get really efficient for them? Are they ready to hear a recommendation about an additional product? Or do you just need to take care of the issue at hand, efficiently is that their number one thing? So that's, we bake that in, we have daily huddles for teams, we have different what we call Ambassador programs, where we will support experts, these are usually partner led, or will support experts in certain skill sets around that emotional intelligence. In the end, I've never been super prescriptive about guidance that I give my agents, because they're the one on the call.
Like, even as smart as Gen AI is, and it will get smarter. It's crazy how fast it's going. It's not on the call. Even if it is like if I've got my real-time transcription on I've got, you know, my listening ears, and I'm spitting out guidance in the moment. It's still flattened, it's still not the human who can hear that little catch. And I know we've gotten much, much, much better at that. In fact, you know, there are companies that do the emotional measure, the customer emotion. I'm super into that. I think that's where the future really is going. I've followed Cogito for years, I think that what they do is amazing. Even with that, there's something to be had in the human to human like the, the computers still can't pick up all the subtleties that the humans can yet.
Future Priorities in CX and EX - 24:17
Dom Nicastro: If there are one big priority with the world of EX and CX, as it relates to the call center contact center, what would that be? What's the one big area you just want to nail down in the next six months?
Marietta Silva-Allison: I'm speaking more for myself, not really about industry trends. For myself, the area that I really want to drive forward is that feedback loop. I think it's so important that the people who support our customers feel heard and feel truly like when they raise an issue. I'm on a call with a tax expert yesterday.
And she shared, I asked her, "What is one thing that if I could teach it to all other tax experts that you think would really help our customers?" And she had something right off the top of her head. "This is the thing that I tell everybody on my team. And I given this knowledge base article on it, and the cytomx that, how to do this with a customer, so that the customer is really informed and that they don't get a surprise later." So she can just tell me that and then it can go into the ether, and that doesn't feel good.
But if she tells me that, and I do something with it, and she knows that, now I've connected her to this much larger world. She has value. She goes home and tells her family, "Yeah, I just made a difference for 18,000 people," right? Because my input resulted in this point of need service guidance that I would have never known if I hadn't taken the time to say, "What would you do? Magic Wand." And when I don't know what this conversation she says most fun at that, like this is a blast.
Dom Nicastro: Well, Marietta Silva-Allison of Intuit TurboTax, you are such a good friend to CMSWire and Reworked. We appreciate you coming on the Beyond the Call show and espousing your wisdom once again. Thank you so much.
Marietta Silva-Allison: It was my pleasure. Yeah. Good to be with you.
Dom Nicastro: I didn't get a chance to thank Siobhan Fagan for coming on to our CMSWire show. Your sister website Reworked.co is where you can follow Siobhan and her team's wonderful reporting in the world of digital workplace, employee experience, and everything in between. So Siobhan, thank you as well.
Siobhan Fagan: Thanks for letting me jump in, Marietta.
Dom Nicastro: OK, Marietta. We will talk soon and on April 16th, I want to be invited to that party.
Marietta Silva-Allison: It's a good one.
