Interview
The Gist
- Digital convergence. Employee and customer experiences intertwining in the digital engagement industry.
- Empowerment evolution. Intelligent tools empowering employees to enhance customer experiences.
- Simplifying the journey. The drive toward simplifying customer and employee experiences and its potential to translate into tangible financial gains for businesses.
In the constantly evolving world of digital engagement, a strong focus has been placed on the interconnectedness of customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX).
As more businesses move their communication to digital channels, the necessity for aligning these two components of any successful company has grown increasingly clear. The call for a unifying approach to these elements is resonating across industries, with many suggesting a new direction centered around "experience" in general, rather than compartmentalizing customer and employee experiences.
CMSWire Contributor Mark Smith, senior vice president of digital engagement solutions at CSG, he brings a wealth of industry knowledge and practical insights on these critical areas of digital engagement.
You can read Mark's recent CMSWire column, "The 2022 Golden Rule of CX: Treat Employees How You Treat Your Customers" here. And we caught up with Mark in a video interview on the topic:
Editor's note: This transcript was edited for clarity.
Dom Nicastro: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro, managing editor at CMSWire. I am so pumped to be joined by a new CMSWire contributor Mark Smith, VP digital engagement solutions at CSG. How're you doing, Mark?
Mark Smith: I'm doing great, Dom. Great to see you again.
Nicastro: Yeah, it's great to see you, too. And it was so good to see you in person at the Forrester CX North America. We caught up at CSG’s booth and talked about customer experience and employee experience, amid all the hoopla and fun that Nashville brings to us. So did you have enough fun in Nashville a couple weeks ago?
Smith: Yeah, there’s a reason it's now called Nashvegas.
The Symbiotic Connection Between Employee and Customer Experiences in the Digital Engagement Industry
Nicastro: Nashvegas. Yeah, I never expected a New Year's Eve feel on a Wednesday night in June. But lo and behold, there it was. So, Mark, let's — you're a new contributor to CMSWire. And that's awesome. You know, we love getting people that are in the trenches, doing the work of customer experience, employee experience, listening to clients about their challenges, their successes. So tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your company.
Smith: Sure. So ya know, It’s a real pleasure to be here. Very excited about being a new contributor to CMSWire. So I'm a VP in our digital engagement solutions business here at CSG. CSG’s a big global business focused on employee and customer engagement solutions for primarily our biggest market is telecommunication cable companies. But we also have a lot of clients in financial services, healthcare and retail. And, you know, in my group, a lot of what we do is digitally focused, helping businesses move more and more communication to digital channels.
But, you know, the heart of any rigorous customer engagement process has to take in all channels. And oftentimes, there are human-assisted channels where there's, there's no members of the team, employees involved in those interactions. And we obviously help with that, too. And that was one of the things we were talking about, but I've been at CSG for actually a year today. A year ago today, they acquired my previous business, which was called Kitewheel. Kitewheel got featured lots of times on CMSWire.
Nicastro: Journey orchestration engine. Joe, Joe, J-O-E.
Smith: Yep. So you know, an engine to make, essentially make the right decisions in real time, every time you see a customer, regardless of channel, and map out an experience to be as good as it possibly can be. For every customer, no matter which channel they use. It's been a bit of a crazy year in this market, because all the leaders in — you mentioned Forrester CX and Forrester Wave actually just came out this week for journey orchestration. And all of the leaders have been acquired in the last 12 months. Yeah. And so very proud, very pleased that CSG comes out right in the top corner of that, that we have, with a clear leader in this space, posted all these acquisitions, so very exciting times.
And, you know, I think very exciting times to, to add the employee experience dimension into customer experience, because for two, two plus years, you know, every boardroom in the States has been talking about CX as a big theme and experiences everything and that's why customers buy and that's why customers stay.
But this year, that's almost, in many companies have been overtaken by a focus on the employee experience, and I'm taking care of our employees. You know, the grand resignations, certainly part of that there's shortage of staff everywhere is definitely part of that. But you know, what's really cool is that a lot of the stuff that's been developed to help the kind of self service, best experience for the customer. Same stuff can be used to help with guiding the employee through their experience of interacting with the customer and tying the two together so that there's a real synchrony between what the customer does and what the employee does.
Related Article: DXPs and CDPs: How to Measure and Improve Your Digital Customer Experience Metrics
The Convergence of Customer and Employee Engagement Through Empowerment and Intelligent Tools
Nicastro: And you and we when you and I were talking in Nashville at the Forrester CX event, this is what led to this article. Right? You know, we were talking about the connection between customer experience and employee experience and we weren't the, you weren't the only one that mentioned that to me. I was working that exhibition hall, talking to, I was working the lunch room talking to CX folks, now the CX folks, there was one particular group that was with a credit card company and they were not talking about their customers' various challenges, they were talking about empowering their agents, right? That's all employee experience.
And that conversation, the one with you, with other folks has led me to think, I think customer experience folks are going to lead employee experience on some level in many organizations soon. I don't expect them to handle benefits and vacation and PTO time, you're still going to have HR for that. But why not apply these skills, this technology that customer experience folks are so good at and apply that to employees.
Smith: I totally agree. Because, you know, if you link it, if you link delivering a great experience, to a customer, and put that power in the hands of the employee, they're just gonna, they're gonna love the job, they're gonna feel a reward from doing their job, that job becomes easier, because they feel intelligent, they're empowered with this insight, to do the right thing for the customer. You know, so many of the tools in the CX space have focused on, you know, smart analytics and AI, and delivery of this, you know, the delivery of the right thing to help the customer.
And it's just like the next step, it's now let's help the employee help the customer by giving those same, that same insight and that same intelligence, putting it right in the hands of the employee. So I think you're right that, you know, the ideal future is, there is one system that's running both sides of this, and helping the employee experience, as well as the customer experience and integrated with the customer experience.
Related Article: Win-Win: Address Employee Experience for Better Customer Experience
The Rise of 'Experience' as the Unified Guiding Principle in the Industry
Nicastro: Yeah. And I put it out there as if I'm going to be this industry leading voice that just changed the industry. But I did put it out there on a tweet, Mark, after Forrester. And I said, I think I said, it's gonna be called something like, experience, right? Not just customer experience anymore, not just employee, it's going to be called experience. That's it. And you know, you see some of that in the market already. You see some things like total experience. So you see things like that, but I think it's just going to be wiped out, experience. And in your article. I think one of your comments in the article was, you know, employees are the guiding light of the customer journey. And that seems to sum it up nicely.
Smith: Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, just go back and use the Forrester name again, you know, they've made this move, they used to talk about customer journey, customer journey orchestration, they now just talk about journey orchestration. So a little bit exactly that you said about experience? Because, and they deliberately did that, because it's not just the customer it’s, you know, wider perspective of caring about the employee, for sure. But just engaging the employee better. Yeah.
Simplifying the Journey: The Future of Customer Experience and Its Monetary Impact on Businesses
Nicastro: Awesome. Well, looking ahead, Mark, you know, what do you think, are some of the themes you'll be following? You know, the rest of 2022, 2023, or just general broad strokes about some things our readers might expect from you down the road and some future CMSWire columns?
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Smith: Yeah. So I think there's two big things. One is all about helping, helping companies get started on this, this type of thing, that's there's a lot of demand. But it's a new space. Oftentimes, it seems very complicated to figure out how to get started in terms of delivering the customer journey or a better customer experience. And especially when you're embedding the employee in the mix, it's just a level of complexity there that the leaders in the market I kind of changing, packaging things up, getting best practices embedded into the product, so that it's just easier and quicker for companies to get started actually doing this stuff. There's just so much demand.
And it's, it's moving down from the very, very top companies, the leaders, to the mid-market now is very eager to get involved doing some of this smart stuff with their employees and their customers. And that that's, that's certainly going to happen. I think the other big thing that's happening is we're gonna solve a long-standing kind of thorny issue, which is how does, how does this, how does driving the improvement in experience for the customer, which you might measure in terms of customer satisfaction, or Promoter Score, kind of metrics?
How does that turn into real money for businesses, and the good tools and the advanced companies are kind of overlaying that feedback information from customers on the actual behavior of customers on the journey that's actually happening and for the first time are starting to piece the two together. ... I can now measure that in real terms in terms of increased revenue or decreased operating costs, whatever it may be. And I think that's the next sort of big barrier that you're going to see a lot of stuff are on in the next couple of years.
Related Article: Customer Engagement Tactics That Work, According to Marketing Exec
The New 'Best Places to Work': Emphasizing Remote Work and Efficient Software Tools as the Future Norms
Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. And it's true, like, I think, remember how before 2020, all those best companies to work at, right? What were in those descriptions, perks, vacation time, pingpong tables, what the office is, like, do they let you work from home one day a week. Now, in 2022, and 2023, who's going to make the best places to work, A) it's going to be the folks that let you work from home 100%. So and then B) who has the software and the tools to provide you with the ability to do your job efficiently? Right.
So those are now the standards of best places to work. It's remote, and software, remote and software, there's no more pingpong, there's no more beer, unless they give you a gift card to go somewhere on your own. The office of the future, none of that matters anymore in the office of the future is downstairs in my basement or my kitchen, you know, so I get it, I get that I get that employee experience is going to be so top of mind and customer experience is obviously always…
Smith: You know, Dom, all the more reason to support those employees with the intelligence tools to help them do their job quicker. And better.
Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Mark Smith can't thank you enough for catching up. It was great to see you in Nashville and in this virtual world today, as well. Looking forward to more CMSWire columns. Thank you so much.
Smith: Thank you, Dom.
Nicastro: Alright, have a good one.
Smith: You too. Take care.
Nicastro: Thanks.
