CX Decoded Podcast Episode 11: Diana Brown on Customer Experience Meets Employee Experience

Dom Nicastro: Hello again everybody, Dom Nicastro, managing editor CMSWire here with my co-host on CX Decoded. Michelle Hawley, senior editor and reporter over at CMSWire along with me. Michelle, how's it going?

Michelle Hawley: Oh, it's going great, Dom. How are you doing?

Dom: Good, another win for us because we got a practitioner doing the work of customer experience and employee experience, too. So we're gonna get into that. I'm so happy to be with her today. Michelle, just let's get right into it. No small talk. Tell our listeners, you know, me and my small talk urge. Just let's get right into it. Who do we get on today?

Michelle: Yeah, today we have Diana Brown. Currently the senior vice president of sales operations and customer experience at XPO, a provider of less-than-truckload-freight transportation services. She's got more than 20 years of experience building customer excellence teams, and one of those roles included Amazon Business where she was the head of customer success. Diana, thanks for joining us today on CX Decoded.

Diana: Thanks so much, Michelle. It's great to be here.

Dom: So happy to have you, Diana. And and you know, before we get into the subject, we're going to be talking about connected employee experience a customer experience such a huge topic for us at CMSWire. So thank you for that. Something caught my attention. I saw the word in your profile, your LinkedIn, I saw Amazon and customer success. I'm like, do we have a genius on the line here? What's going on? And what, what were the big lessons here from your past experience in Amazon? I’d love a quick snapshot.

Diana: Yeah, absolutely. So I started off in professional services and helping customers adopt technology. And so when you work for a company like Amazon Business, you have to do everything at scale, which we'll talk about today. That's something that I think is super important. And there's no company that's more customer obsessed than Amazon. So I had a ton of fun working for Amazon Business, reinventing how small and medium businesses can purchase supplies on Amazon. So and doing it again at that scale, super important. So it was a great moment for me in my career. 

Connecting CX and EX in the Service Industry

Michelle: You talk about connecting CX and EX and starting with valuing the customer experience as a growth engine for the company, and with the customer themselves being embedded in the organization's culture. Can you talk a little bit about how that looks in practice?

Diana: Yeah, absolutely. So for us, we're a service industry. Right? And Michelle, I'm just going to take a moment to define less-than-truckload and what …

Dom: Oh nice. I was gonna ask you, I'm like, what is that? Is there an acronym associated with that to Diana like a little LTT?

Diana: Just LTL. Exactly less than, less-than-truckload and it's exactly what it sounds like. Right? So, I need to ship but less than a full truckload, right? So I might have one, two or three pallets to ship. And I'm looking to find how I can move that across country, right? So your freight is actually shared spaces in our truck, right? So one truck might have freight from six or eight customers on it. 

And so when you're a services industry, like we are, in my past, there's been a lot of software and things like that. But here, it's a service, we're moving freight from one point to another, we're moving through multiple service centers, we have customer service representatives, we have drivers, we have all of our employees that can be talking to our customers helping update them at any time. So the focus on customers has to start with employees, recognizing the importance of the customer to our organization, and how they are our engine of growth, whether it be grow with current customers, or grow new customers. So that's one of the big things that we focus on here at XPO.

Related Article: Win-Win: Address Employee Experience for Better Customer Experience

Empowering Employees to Improve CX Through Innovative Tech and Engagement Strategies

Dom: You know, I went to Forrester conference last year and all the practitioners there, Diana and Michelle were talking about employee experience. It was nuts. Like I thought I was at a customer experience conference. And their primary thoughts were how are the call center agents? How are they feeling? Am I empowering them? And things like that. So I would love to start with sort of get a high level, who do you see as your primary stakeholders when it comes to employee experience? You're a customer experience, leader, but who would you say are the employee stakeholders that you're really targeting for strong employee experience?

Diana: I'm going to talk about two populations, Dom, that are really important in our business. The first is the customer service representatives themselves, right? So it is a hard job. And I think a job that folks don't always understand the breadth, at least in our business, of questions that can come from a customer at any given time. Right. So we are always focused on the customer service representatives. How do we enable them in the same way so that they have consistent development and training, and we're a technology based company. So we're always trying to throw something new at them. 

And we're trying to have a consistent experience across 270 of our main service centers, right. And so they're the pulse of is our technology working for them? Are we giving them the tools they need to quickly solve customer questions, right? And then we, of course, use the typical customer service metrics. How many calls do we have at the sites? What are the types of inquiries? Are we answering fast enough? Because that gives us just a feel at any given time of what's going on in our network? So the customer service representative, that's a super important part of the engagement, right? Because they're on the frontlines with our customers. 

But then second population is we're moving freight through our network very quickly, right? So if you think about the dockworkers, they're moving the freight, they're seeing customers’ freight over and over. They have ideas about how we can better serve customers, might it be a packaging idea, or otherwise labeling some of those things? Right. 

So we've got dockworkers that are touching the freight all the time, they're close to the frontend, and seeing what we can do to continue to improve the experience for the customers. So they're super important too, right. And it's been fun to as we focus more on the customers to see questions that they come up with and ideas for technology and other things that they bring to the table because they're seeing freight every day, and a lot of it from our repeat customers. So they have great ideas as well.

Dom: And with those customer service reps, you know, you're taking ideas from them. And I find a lot of times a lot of the problems are just communicated with each other, and they don't share it with the movers and shakers that can actually help them. So in that regard, how do you sort of empower the customer service reps and the dockworkers, folks like that, to actually share their ideas? You know, sounds like you have to have an internal voice of the customer program, but it's called voice of the employee, I guess, right?

Diana: Yeah, absolutely. So I will talk about a couple of things specific to the customer service rep. So let's start there. We're proud of the tenure of a lot of our customers as well as our employees here. So we've got a great group of employees that are the customer service mentors, right. Most of them have been with us over 20 years. They know freight movement, they know all the answers to customer questions, right? 

And anything new that we do, we need to engage them, whether it might be anything from taglines that we're using for customers internally all the way to how's this technology working for you? And what do we need to do differently? Because if you can get that feedback ahead of time, you know, you've won. You know, you've won when you've got a team of folks that says, yeah, absolutely, this works, this is going to help me do my job better, so that I can serve the customer better. 

And a lot of this is about sitting down and making sure we're we're meeting the needs of those internal end users, right, and so that they can share the information. And you talk about sharing information across our network. We are a fast velocity network, right? So we've got shipping lanes that move freight pretty long distances in two days and three days. And at any point, a customer could have a question about a shipment, where is it? Is it on track to meet the deadline? I know there's been a winter storm, right? We're in the thick of winter here. Right? So lots of questions coming in? 

Well, we know where the freight is. But lots of times there's updates about appointments or you know, when it will move and those kinds of things. So we've designed our technology to share that information across the network. So folks, can, we have a pro number that identifies each shipment so that anyone can pick that up. So I sit in North Richland Hills, in Texas between Dallas and Fort Worth, and my team can use the applications to know what's going on with a certain shipment in Denver or in New York and what's going on and when it will go out because it's very important to share that information. And so we've got to design the tools with that in mind. So I'd say that's how we work very much with our customer service representatives. 

And then when it comes to the the actual team that's managing the freight on the docks, one of the things that's probably the most fun invention recently was just making sure that everyone's holding each other accountable for how we move freight, and not damaging it. Because this is an industry where you're moving freight fast. If it's not packaged super well, you can have damages and or you've got a new driver of a forklift. And so it's got a little gamification with the dock workers where they get to rate each other, and they get to rate loads that came in. So imagine that I'm a dock worker, and I'm rating a load, Dom, that you worked, right? And how do I think you did? And am I gonna give you three stars or five stars? And what kind of feedback and where can you get better and driving this kind of competition between the service centers, and ultimately, their leadership has been incredibly valuable. 

And it was technology that wasn't even on our roadmap last year, not at all. It was something that an idea came up and said, We need to hold each other more accountable. We need to make sure that we're putting our best foot forward and, you know, let's rate each other. So the tech team did it real quickly, put it into the handhelds, which is how we deliver our technology out in our service centers and lots of requests very quickly to update the app, make it more fun, more engaging. But that's been a real win for the end customer in terms of just a focus on quality. So that's a fun piece of tech that we've deployed, I would say that really helps the dockworkers.

Match Employee Feedback to Customer Feedback to Inform Decision-Making

Michelle: When you've gathered all this employee feedback, and you're sifting through it? How do you guys filter out the insights that you can then use to inform your decisions from the noise? 

Diana: Ah, great question. So there are a couple of things that we need to do when it comes to some of the employee feedback, right. So the first thing is, you always want to match it to what you're hearing from the customer as well. Right? So I think one of the things that sets us apart is how we match employee feedback to our customer feedback, we've got several different mechanisms that we use to say, Are we seeing crossover here? Are we seeing things that are important from our customer? Or are we seeing things that are different? 

And so that's probably, Michelle, the first thing that we do is just get a gauge for our customers as well, because I think a lot of people can have ideas that they think are super important. But it may not be what a customer wants, right? And you've got to continually get that feedback from the customers as well, so I would think that's where it starts there. 

But then the next piece is going that level deeper, right? So we can do all kinds of surveys or polls and gather feedback, right? But you really need to have the roundtable conversations with those employees to understand that feedback. And to get to that next level. And I think that's where companies fail sometimes right is to truly understand feedback, get to that next level of insights that can help you sift through, right, if you just leave it at that top categorization, you might miss things. 

And so we're really good proponents here of having roundtable feedback from all of our employees, right, whether we sit down and talk to drivers, dockworkers, sales team members, right. And we also make sure that we bring in leaders of different parts of the organization to have a fresh perspective on what we're hearing. And that can be from the employee experience or the customer experience. But those roundtables really help us get to the next level of detail and help us prioritize. 

Related Article: Is It Time to Combine Customer Experience and Employee Experience Programs?

How Employee Feedback Changed the Way Customers Paid Bill

Dom: Can you think of a recent example where voice of the employee feedback came to fruition? You know, there was a problem. And we heard from the employees through our technology platforms, and through those roundtables, and we fixed it. I think you've kind of mentioned the gamification thing was an example of like, collaboration. But was there something specific you remember about the employees speaking up lately?

Diana: So I'll take a different tact here. And we'll talk about paying invoices, right. And so it is a little bit old school in our industry in terms of, you know, there's some ACH going on out there, right in terms of payment. But we hadn't had an ability to pay online. And so when we had our finance team members hearing from customers over and over, why don't you have an online pay portal, this would make my life so much easier, you would get your cash faster, right. 

And so I'd say that's one of the things that last quarter was a big win for us being able to get that out there. So customers could come online and pay a freight bill just like you and I might go and do that. And that was really driven by the employee saying customers are asking for this. Customers are asking for this. And that's a team that's working on collections and isn't typically at the forefront of the voice of customer, right. 

So it's actually something that I wish we'd moved on sooner. Because it's been a real, it's been a really great win for our customers to be able to go easily pay us that way. And something that we probably should have had quite a while ago.

Dom: Yeah, that's another example of something that's not there. And your frontline person that deals with the customer has to pay the price for it. No pun intended. 

Diana: Exactly. 

Dom: Right. They, because of a missing piece, a key missing piece, you're not up to date on things, they suffered. So their employees, they have to go home and say it was a bad day, customer kinda yelled at me a little bit. They were like, geeze, you guys are behind. So that's a bad employee experience. So there you go.

Diana: That's right. They can't solve the problems for the customer. Right. And they feel like they're on the hot seat. So that's, I think, a good example there. 

Real-time Voice of the Customer Data to Improve CX and Drive Growth

Dom: Yeah. So establishing that VoC, that voice of the customer program, you know, very critical, obviously, for customer feedback. And then employees get better off because of it. Like the example you just showed, there's so many ways to approach VoC, what you guys say you have like a central tool that really is your mothership, you know, for voice of the customer data, or is it a little bit siloed? And it's like your job and other leaders to sort of bring it all together?

Diana: Yeah, I would say we have a few central tools, right. And, of course, you know, it's still early in 2023. And everybody has goals and aims that we're working on. So, you know, I have kind of my next level of the customer and what we're looking to do here, but one of the things that has been super helpful is we run regular shipment surveys, right so we'll send out invitations to anyone that there's some logic here but anyone that shipped with with us last week that hasn't responded in a quarter, right, that still is willing to give us feedback. How’d it go for you? Right? And so we asked that question, Howd it go we ask a few follow up questions, we're, you know, how would you rate us on on time delivery? Damage free? How would you rate us on billing and invoicing? And then quality of customer support? Right? Those are the four things we're always focused on to delight the customer. And then there's an open-ended question of how can we improve? Right? 

So each week, Dom, we're getting anywhere one-to-200, really real-time responses on how we're doing, and that can be broken down by the type of customer. Alright, so we have channels, the way we look at our customers, a smaller local customer all the way up to our strategic enterprise customers. So we can look at the size of the customer we can look at, we asked them their role. And so we can match that and know, are they an end user? Are they you know, the transportation manager, so we can look at it that way. 

And then we can look at it by our region of the company in which like I said, can be important, right? So if you have all of these storms in a particular part of the United States in the winter, we know that we're going to get a little more friction in the experience at that time, right. And so we can just make sure that we think through that appropriately. 

So I would say that's the center. It's a dashboard that anybody can go to at any time and can dive in and look at all of that. And we're always reviewing that and weekly staff meetings. And so that's widely available. But that's a little bit of your real time, right? Not your strategic partnership. Where are you going next? Right. And so we also have formal interviews with our larger customers, where that's a company that we have do this objectively, for us talk about the partnership, the expectations, how are we doing from a technology perspective? What else do they need from us? Right? 

So it's that combination for us of the the tactical, how are we doing every day? What do we need to do to improve on those four key parts that I shared, as well as more the strategic partnership? And where do we go to grow XPO? Right. XPO is absolutely in growth mode we're investing in in trailers and trucks and doors and our technology. And so those interviews with our larger customers are super important to us. And so we'll look at the aggregate of those interviews on a quarterly basis to see how we're doing and to help shape things like our technology roadmap, and just make sure that we're making the right investments.

Related Article: Combining Self-Service, Chat and Phone Support: A Winning Strategy for Customer Service

Technology as a Partner to Connect Customer and Employee Experience

Michelle: And speaking of technology, I'm glad you brought that up. You mentioned how technology plays this really important role in the connection between EX and CX. And how technology needs to be seen as a partner, rather than a list of digital features and tools, which I think is where a lot of businesses kind of stray. So what does that look like when you put that into practice?

Diana: Yeah, for us, I think what we're trying to do is automate as much as possible, I've always been a fan of automate my job, so I can go do the more valuable piece of work. So I can have that conversation with a customer, so I can really focus on the value added. And I think that's what we're always looking at, what can we take whether it's AI or just routine tasks, right? How can we automate that, automate the routine away, so that employees can really focus on that next level of conversation engagement, because that's where they want to be right? Focusing on value creation for customers, rather than working through three different screens to find the right update and to get that information and saying, Oh, hang on, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, I'll be right there with you. 

Right, because I've seen in other companies where the information is just in too many different repositories. It takes long to get to the answer, right. We want to automate all that, put it in front of the customer service representative. So they can have that value added conversation. And that goes a little bit back to what I was saying in terms of the information being in a shared place across our network, and being able for anybody, you know, whether you're on the East Coast or West Coast, to be able to talk to a customer and have that up to minute information, right? 

We want to use technology to put that right in front of you. So you don't have to do the research for the conversation. You can have that conversation. And that really delights the customer, even when maybe it's not such good news. But right away, you have the answer, you know what's going on, and you can help them know when to expect that shipment.

Michelle: Yeah, I don't think anyone likes waiting on hold and you hear the person typing in the background, you're like, OK, it's been five minutes, you know, they’re still looking at my information. So, like, even if it’s bad news, or not what I want to hear at least I get the answer immediately.

Diana: That's right. Or, well, let me transfer you to another place. Right, and you're on board with that place. Right? And so you know, and this comes from customer feedback, Michelle, right. In terms of customers, what can you do better about this, and it's really taking that and driving the actions from that feedback.

Improve Employee Experience Through Development, Recognition and Rewards

Dom: It's such a thankless job, right? The contact center agents, the customer service reps, I mean, when's the last time someone called up one of your customer service reps to say, hey, I just want to let you know you guys do a great job. See you later. You know, like, it doesn't happen, right? You call up with a problem and what's the bottom line on just employee experience with these customer service reps? You know, how do you really make them feel empowered? Like they're doing a great job? And I know metrics are great. And everything like resolution time is down. But, you know, how do you spark that? Hey, I want to come to work today and take some calls. Let's do this. 

Diana: Yeah, so I completely agree with you. I think it can be incredibly thankless, right? And you have to be a problem solver and have thick skin right. And so, for me, that's the mentality we're looking for. And once you have that, you really need to make sure you're focused on recognition, rewards and development. 

That's how you get that high quality culture, in my opinion, right. And so we talked about the breadth of questions that can come in to our customer service representatives, right? When I first got here, and so I came here, like you said, from Amazon Business. So I've been here for years now. Didn't know much about LTL. And I sat down with my team and learned a little bit about it. And somebody said, oh, yeah, well, this is our entry level job.

 I said, that's a huge breadth of questions we're expecting them to answer. Right. And we've got great training. But it wasn't enough, right. So again, I went back to those CSR mentors and said, OK, what do we need to do to make sure everybody has the tools and the training to be successful? Right. And so just recently, we redesigned our entire certification program, right, so certification program that makes them proud when they've passed the four different modules. 

We have gear and patches that they can wear right shirts that, you know, really make them proud. And it's something that shows that they are certified, that could be in core skills, or our billing and invoicing, just operational skills like track and trace. And then there's some other things, you know, that they need to do in the service center. So there's four tracks for that. So I think the development and the recognition and really making it a professional certification program, just like our freight handlers have, by the way, right, making the job just as important.

So I think that's one of the things, giving them something to be really proud of, and that's gone a long way. But the other thing is just recognition and rewards. And I think that folks, forget about that a lot of times, right? Just, you know, saying thank you to somebody for going the extra distance or when the feedback comes in. 

I mean, sometimes don't we do get great feedback that you're like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe someone would take the time to share that feedback. Well, you know, don't give that just to a driver. Celebrate that all the way through executive leadership. And I'll give you an example. Sometimes in Greenwich, which is where we've just got a contact XPO type of email, there'll be somebody who said, Oh, Michelle Hawley, the driver for XPO was so great, went out of her way, did this for me when I asked her to, and knew exactly about this and couldn't have been served better. 

I mean, that is the best thing to hear about our employees. And it needs to be celebrated. Right. And so that's kind of the the informal celebration, right? Where we just make sure we capitalize on that and put it in our workplace or put it in email, or we've got an app that we're reusing a lot more for communications called XPO Go because everybody can have that on their phone on the go. And celebrating all those successes and high fiving. And, you know, doing that and creating that culture. 

But then there's also formal recognition, right, so we have a thank a CSR program. And so that's something that, you know, every Thursday, I send out a note in terms of thanking CSRs who have gone above and beyond and making sure that people remember to, you know, participate in this program. 

And I would also say, you know, it doesn't stop with just formal and informal recognitions and reward, sometimes you want to go as far as monetary incentives as well. And that's something we've actually done from a quality perspective, which certainly engages our dockworkers to go back to that, right. But sometimes it's that financial incentive that when you do really well, from a quality perspective, you're gonna get paid for that, because that means we're doing a great job. We're knowing that the customers are delighted and will continue to do business with us. So I think sometimes you got to think about the financial side of it as well.

Marrying CX and EX and the Power of Public Praise

Dom: That's the one my wife likes. When I talk to her, when I tell her that out, yeah, I got a shout out at work today. Oh, yeah. OK. Hey, I got a raise. Oh, what kind of raise! What's that?

Diana: Absolutely.

Dom: I'm a huge believer, though, in all seriousness of that public praise, if someone deserves that shout out, you know, public praise, private criticism, right? I'm a big fan of that model. And I mean, if someone can learn from the criticism, surely maybe you throw it out generically to the public, but I just feel like when peers are seeing other peers succeed, it's such a good motivator, positive culture, great vibe. And I think Michelle will agree we're kind of blessed in that sense. We get a lot of that at our job. You know, people get called out for good work.

Michelle: Definitely. I was gonna say and and the way that companies approach it really matters, too. I mean, I think there's a way to deal with that that kind of fosters that team environment We're all cheering each other on versus that competitive environment where we're trying to kind of outperform each other. And like, we've been blessed in that way where we have a really supportive group.

Dom: Yeah, again, I remember one time earlier, my career kind of backfired sometimes. Because, as you guys know, human endeavors are tricky. It's tricky when you're dealing with human beings, isn't it? I think I publicly praised years ago, when I was a manager at another newspaper two reporters, and I put them up against each other. I said, they're doing so good, look at how good they're doing. And the one that wasn't doing as good as the other one said, I really don't look that great. I wish you wouldn't have done that. I'm like, awe I can never win, I can never win. But it was a great lesson for me. It's like, do choose wisely your words and you know, really read through them when you're publicly calling out another human being.

Diana: It's interesting, I think you can inspire so much and share best practices. But I think you can also do it in a way that makes it competitive and fun, right. And so I think you can merge both. And I'll give you an example is our dockworkers. We have what's called a gladiator program. It's a quality program, again, financial incentives, but you absolutely have our leadership kind of say, who's going to be the best, right? And we've got, you know, East Is the Team to Be, Best in the West, all those kinds of things. And you know, how many gladiator service centers do you have this month, and those awards, people are wearing patches, wearing hats, you know, you walk around in the service centers, there's medals hanging up. And so everyone's very proud. But there's also a competitive element to it, that I do love. 

I think that the interesting thing about that, though, is it's a team competition, because you win or lose in the service center, right? It's not, how's Dom doing versus Michelle or Diana? Right? So you just have to think about that context? And how can you get that competitive sense going? And certainly on the sales side, that'd be a whole different conversation, right, but the competitive juices there, sometimes, that's the right thing to get them excited.

Dom: And then you can make it even more granular, like the ones that are doing well can be the Russell Crows, and the ones that are not are the Joaquin Phoenixes the mean Joaquin Phoenixes you know, so that's all good. Let's tie it all together, shall we? Diana here, you know, the big takeaway, the big lesson, and I think it comes in the form of those KPIs and how you're measuring EX, and CX and what it ultimately drives, you know, basically, do you have an indicator or KPI, a metric that shows you're doing CX and EX well together? Or are they kind of like two separate KPIs? And you kind of just look at them in a two high levels.

Diana: So we have them separate right now. And that is one of the things we’re from a next level for 2023. Well, how are we thinking about that, but I would say we have them separate right now. And we do a really good job of marrying them though, right? So just yesterday, we had our manager meeting, right? So you've got Mario Harik, our CEO talking about kicking off 2023. And how we are doing well, we just did our quarterly employee feedback, right, and our ratings in our satisfaction. 

And so we kick off and talk about the importance of employee satisfaction and how it drives customer satisfaction and how they're both married, right, so you can message them together, even though they're separate. And so you heard me talk about a quarterly view of our customer satisfaction. And we always marry that with our employee satisfaction, right. And we're data geeks here, just like everybody else. So we're looking at the different channels, we're looking at the different locations and those kinds of things. We're looking at different regions of our world. 

But at the end of the day, we were looking at how is employee satisfaction trending, and is that corresponding with what we're seeing with customer satisfaction trending, and we've been focused on this for a good 15 months since Mario Harik has been at the helm. And you know, happy to say both are moving up into the light. But it's important to look at them together and to make sure that your employees are happy, engaged and ready to delight the customers, which that's what we want. We absolutely world class LTL is where we're aspiring to deliver for our customers. And you have to have happy engaged workforce to meet that.

Michelle: Well, thanks a bunch for joining us today, Diana and sharing your insights with us. We want to give our guests a chance to give themselves a little plug so tell our listeners where they can follow your thought leadership.

Diana: Sure, absolutely. So that place is on LinkedIn. And that's Diana Brown. So thanks so much for listening. And if you have any questions, we'd love to connect with you over LinkedIn.

Dom: The streak is alive LinkedIn is the place to go for wonderful business thought leadership. So Diana, thank you so much. Thanks, everyone for tuning in to another edition of CX Decoded. We're looking forward to bringing in more of the best thought leadership like this from practitioners like Diana Brown and others in the world of customer experience throughout 2023. See ya everybody, thanks again guys.

Michelle: See ya. 

Diana: Thank you. Bye bye.

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