RERUN "The one with the CX controversy" - Nic Zeisler E19

CX Passport is on Spring Break and heading to the mountains for a little skiing (actually snowboarding for the first time this year!) So to take a little break, I'm going to replay episode 19 with Nic Zeisler...the guest who definitely spends the most time in the mountains as compared to all my other guests.
Enjoy...and CX Passport will be back next week!

Oroginal show notes below

Episode S1E19 welcomes Nic Zeisler of Zeisler Consulting http://zeislerconsulting.com/ and he’ll hit the controversy horn right off the top of the show. 
Find out why he’s telling companies they’re too focused on ROI. Nic challenges us to consider WHY we start customer experience work at all. Are we motivated for the right reasons? 

Nic tells why companies should stop trying to be Zappos...just be better than the DMV. We’ll talk about skiing in New Zealand and why it was important for both of us to make sure we flew on the 747 before she retires. 

He’s also the first guest that brought his own drink to the show’s First Class lounge. #respect

Hosted by Rick Denton, CX Passport, guides you through  a conversation on customer experience and travel. 

Transcript

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Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to cx passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode will talk with our guests about great cx travel. And just like the best journeys explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick, I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. This episode of cx passport brings you Nicholas Zeisler, Nick leads Zeisler consulting, which helps clients build and execute their strategies through process improvement and customer centricity. Now along with a shared passion for skiing, I'm actually frequently jealous of how close he is to some of the world's best ski runs. Nick and I also talk often about customer experience. I really appreciate his disciplined approach to it while still allowing for the creativity that's needed to build these experiences for a whole wide world of customers. Nick's not just a cx thought leader. He's an actual real professor. I also think he has one of the best voices out there. And yes, Nick even has honest to goodness, radio talent experience as well. So if you're ever in the market for voice talent work, or great cx wisdom, reach out to Nick. Today I am very excited to have both that great voice and cx wisdom in one episode, Professor Nick, welcome to cx passport.

Nicholas Zeisler: 1:30

Thanks, Rick. It's great to be here. I'm a floor wax and a dessert topping. It sounds like

Rick Denton: 1:36

well, you know, something along those lines? Absolutely. So let's, let's hit that controversy. Horn right at the top, you've got a book coming out this summer titled, we're doing cx wrong, bold, and I enjoy the heck out of that title. But what do you mean by that?

Nicholas Zeisler: 1:56

Well, what I mean by that isn't simply to come and gripe because there's kind of a subtitle to it, as well, it says and how to get it right. So the military they teach, you don't just come with the problems come with the solutions as well. But you know, Rick, we teach folks in the CX world, we're always harping on cx folks and other business leaders, to think outside of the box, right? To take a different perspective, to look at things, most importantly from the perspective of our customers. But it's interesting how often we don't necessarily stop and take a look at the way we do things as well. So you know, I'm, I'm a little bit of a pain in the neck. I'm a bit of a contrarian, but I'm also a statistician, so I think about things as as as regimented as I possibly can. And every once in a while, I would take a step back in my cx journey in my cx dealings, and look at some of the things that really didn't make sense, you know, all the way from Why do we ask this crazy question about likelihood to recommend, I mean, that doesn't necessarily have any sort of logical underpinning. Now, obviously, I'm not I'm not here sacred cows. Yeah. I'm not here to give Net Promoter system a hard time I understand it. But if you take cx out of the equation, why would you ever ask a question like that? I mean, there's, there are memes out there about Windows 10. Sending that NPS question and like Well, I don't have conversations like that with my friends and my family and co workers and so of course, I'm not gonna have that sort of discussion with them. But that's just more of a silly example there are other things that we're doing I think that are wrong and see where we put so much emphasis on voice of customer but a lot of organizations don't take any action on it, where we throw up banners all over the office that say customers are number one or customers are at the heart of everything, or we love our customers, and you know, wash our hands and say now we've done cx and we've built a cx culture by doing something like that. So as I was thinking about this as I was reflecting on it, and as I was sharing these thoughts with other cx experts, like you, I kind of pulled that thread a little bit. And what I noticed was that there is something that's going on in the way we approach cx that I think is at the heart of a lot of these here in their little transactional things that I think we're doing wrong. And the more I thought about it, and like I said, the more I talked to other cx experts, the more I found myself in a lot of similar discussions and one of the discussions and here's the controversy and here's where I think you and I disagree and and I was one of the great things about about being here and talking with you Rick, I always love chatting with you and and I'm definitely here to butt heads with you too. Is that I think we get caught up. I think we get caught up in the discussion of ROI of cx Okay, a little too much. So I'll throw that gauntlet down.

Rick Denton: 4:48

There it is. We just laid it down. We've already sacrificed NPS and now we're gonna sacrifice Rei. Rei. Oh my gosh, no ROI.

Nicholas Zeisler: 4:56

I don't know never. I need those for my I'm on board with REI.

Rick Denton: 5:01

sacrificing ROI tell Okay, this is interesting. Tell me more.

Nicholas Zeisler: 5:04

So, so put yourself in that situation of being either you know, a consultant like we are, or chief customer officer, or maybe you're the person in your organization who's finally had an opportunity to break through into that leadership meeting and try to pitch and sell cx team boss, Mr. or Mrs. C, E o, we need to do cx. And what's that pitch almost always come down to? Well, there's this Forrester study or PwC has this white paper wherever it is out there that says, For every point of NPS, that translates into x 10s, or x, hundreds of 1000s of dollars of revenue, or this percent of market share and so forth. And again, this isn't to just to denigrate NPS, I mean, you could do that any way you want, but the whole pitch is based around that promise. Okay. Well, Rick, here's what I teach. You'd say that I'm a professor, I'm a professor of statistics. Okay, so my numbers spidey sense kind of goes off when I hear people saying things like that, because you're talking about there is a correlation? Well, yes, I had, I had a professor, a stats professor in grad school, that used to use the phrase, fraught with peril. And that's all I can think of, when I see somebody up in front of a group, promising something like that, you've got problems with what we call extra genius factors, you've got problems with what we call confounding factors, you got problems with extrapolation, I would go into all the details of that. But the point is, I don't envy somebody who's standing up in front of an organization and promising that there's going to be this ROI, because of this silver bullet, called cx. And it's not just a statistical thing that scares me a little bit about that. That's one problem I have with it. The other problem is the execution. If you don't actually deliver on that, you don't get another bite at the apple, right? You don't get to explain to the boss, well, here's the thing, there are these other things going on in the market. That kept us from hitting that revenue target that I promised when we increased our NPS, from here to here to here, right? And then quite frankly, and this, this is gonna sound maybe unnecessarily over the top critical, but if I had to sell you on becoming customer centric, and quote, unquote, doing cx with the promise that you'll make more money. There's a little bit of dissonance. When you turn around and say, Hey, everybody, we're customer centric. Now, customers are number one for us. They're number one to us. Right? Well, actually a minute ago, you just admitted that they're more of a means to an end. Right now, I don't mean to be pollyannish about this, Rick, I understand. We're all in the business of business to make money. But there's a little bit of discord in saying, Yeah, we love our customers and they're the number one most important thing to us. When it's like No, that's not what you just said

Rick Denton: 8:14

you are you're definitely hitting on something that is going to touch a nerve in the CS community and in in just kind of the business community as well because you're right, it often comes down fundamentally that number I think you started that by saying You and I are going to disagree i think there's actually a lot of unit unity and when you explain a little bit of really kind of how you're going to pivot this and tell me a little bit about where this is going. But I think of it a little perhaps, I think one of the areas where you might disagree a little bit is that I think of it more in a spectrum that it's not as it's either numbers or it's either customer experience and even in your example there of the NPS one you're absolutely right, that's correlation not causation in many cases, but I think there is an opportunity to say if we provide a better customer experience then our cancel rates will go down by 2.5% and we might say that our customer experience only influenced that cancel rate by 50% or pick some other kind of and this is where I bring the analysts and and I'd go way beyond my ability to do analytical exercises but that's where I tend to think of it it's it's not a if you go up 30 points then you will get 100 million dollars but rather what are some of the factors so I'm curious so if that's the wrong way though, in your perspective what's the different way

Nicholas Zeisler: 9:29

we Yeah, and and the thing is even even what you were just saying there Rick also opens the door for plenty of statistical error even if you pull it back well, even if I shouldn't be talking to him for fell No, no, no. But even if you want to pull it back from things like revenue back from market share, and so forth, you're still going to have what you described yourself as causation correlation and these other these other possible pitfalls, But to answer your question when I am faced with that, okay, so why should we do this? What's the return on this investment? I kind of turn that question. Turn around. And what I say to business leaders is, well, let me ask you this. If your customers consistently and reliably had an experience with your brand, that was exactly in line with your brand promise? Do you think that that will be good for your business? Do you think that if when your customers interact with your brand, they could see that you're dedicated to your mission, your vision, your corporate values, and your your principles? And and all of that, your brand promise? Do you think that you'd see positive business results? And all around the room? You all around the oak table? All the heads would be nodding? Yeah, of course, harrumph. Rob. I mean, that's why we put so much emphasis and effort into building out our mission and vision statement, we really do mean that right? incise Okay, good. Well, congratulations, you've sold yourself on cx there it is, because that's what cx brings, is that alignment? And if it doesn't, well, then there's another really interesting conversation to have.

Rick Denton: 11:12

Well, certainly right. If If suddenly, we discover that the delivery of the brand promise and the values and everything else doesn't, well, one, delight the customer and doesn't result in financial results that you're seeking, well, then you may need to go back to the beginning. So that Okay, now it's starting to make a little bit of sense to me. And I know, we talked about this before, but now we're kind of getting a little bit deeper into it, is it? It's not that you're saying money doesn't matter. It's actually what I'm getting from you. And maybe I'm just saying it back. Can you tell me if I've got this right, it's more about what is your focus point? Is your focus point on the experiences your focus point on the brand and the values and therefore then financial results will occur? Or is it we're looking for financial results? And we're going to do that through Brandon value? So it might, it might seem kind of how you're going about this, that it's really just pivoting the focus?

Nicholas Zeisler: 11:59

Yep. Yeah. Rick, let me take one more step behind what you were saying. Because there is a there is a corollary, that goes along with this tricky little question that I like to ask, which is about that alignment? And whether you whether or not you think that it would result in positive business results? Because there's the question, well, what if it doesn't result? Right? Do you does your organization have the wherewithal to take a step back and say, Wow, there really isn't much of a market for say, for example, a luxury brand of whatever widget we create, it becomes so commoditized that everybody just wants you know, I just want to be able to go to Home Depot and pick a dozen of them off the shelf for 98 cents apiece, I don't really need all of this luxury in whatever this product is being it's being built. Okay. Well, you can't have that conversation. If the CX jackass who came into your organization a year ago, promised you all sorts of buckets of money and we're going to make it rain because you're going to do cx Well, no, no, what we're going to do is put you in a position where you can actually have that, you know, existential discussion if heaven forbid, it turns out while you made a strategic error at some point along the way, you don't just get to kick the CX guy out and say, what's the X was a waste of time and effort now because it offered you and it gave you in a delivered for you that actual valuable insight? Hmm,

Rick Denton: 13:22

interesting. And I now have a new term, the CX jackass. I hope that makes an appearance in your book if I monitor maybe I'm forea. A new iteration before Yeah, final print. Right.

Nicholas Zeisler: 13:37

We're doing cx wrong, how to get it right by Nicolas, the CX jackasses Eisler I do like it.

Rick Denton: 13:45

I would imagine, I think I haven't checked. But I would imagine that that URL is still available. So feel free to grab it at the end of this episode, for sure. So you did mention a little bit of execution. I know I talk a lot about blending the outside and of customer with the inside out of process ops. And that's what creates great experiences for every customer every time. Now, I I'm pretty sure we share a similar philosophy there. Tell me about your framework when it comes to addressing customer experience.

Nicholas Zeisler: 14:12

Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is where you and I don't disagree

Rick Denton: 14:16

at all disagree at the beginning. Now we're gonna

Nicholas Zeisler: 14:19

see how we come together. That's the beauty of these podcasts. Yeah, right. One of the things that I noticed one of those new ways that we're getting stuff wrong is that a lot of folks are spending a lot of effort and a lot of time a lot of money. And a lot of aggravation, asking their customers pinging their customers for how they feel about them. And then they put it on a chart and then they say great, we've done cx now right? And they're missing the whole point of it. Yes. And that is to do something about it. Right. I like to say that CX is like the weather people talk about it. Certainly it impacts them but nobody does anything about it.

Rick Denton: 15:00

That's why we're here is to change this. So yes, I completely agree. Yeah,

Nicholas Zeisler: 15:04

I my little bit of my backstory, Rick is that I come to cx by way of process engineering, I'm a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and I was recruited to be a cx executive on the back of that, and it was pitched to me, Hey, we want to leverage that skill set to make our cx better. So that's why that's so much more inspiring than usual, the usual Lean Six Sigma shop is there to find, oh, shall we say, resource waste, and once that's cleaned up, and figured out, should we say, oh, redundancies, and it's not that fun of a flag to rally around, to recognize that once my work is done here, you'll be gone, you'll be gone, you'll be gone. Yeah. On the other hand, to say we're gonna make what we do better, we're gonna get better at what we do not through the prism, necessarily, we're gonna save a whole bunch of money and save a whole bunch of resources, but we're going to make it better in the eyes of our customers. Well, guess what you'll also, by the way, save some money and save some resources, because you're gonna make your processes more efficient, and more lean, and so forth. But the main goal that that rallying cry is around improving your customers experiences.

Rick Denton: 16:18

Yeah, I, I too, have a although I joke, I have a Six Sigma Black Belt in my back ground, but it is gray from lack of use at this point. But I've had this conversation with several other cx professionals that they talk about coming out of the process world. And a lot of it is his recognition of kind of how you're describing that that was, you know, for the sake of process, but there's the other side of it, too, that a lot of us have looked back and realize, hey, wait, when I was making the appraisal process more efficient, I was actually doing it on behalf of the customer. Yes, it saved money for the company, it reduced waste. But the customer got their appraisal faster, they got their home closed faster, all of that. And that so the process worlds and the operations I'm sorry, the process world and the customer experience worlds weave together nicely or when they do that's when you really unlock that sustainable customer experience that can delight that customer ongoing.

Nicholas Zeisler: 17:06

Yeah, I agree. It's it isn't necessarily that you have to pick one or the other. And that's something that I can clear right away, right? It's that which of the better meant is incidental to the other? Right? You focusing on the customer, And oh, by the way, your CFO is going to be happy to

Rick Denton: 17:23

which is a delightful thing and often, often the the magic key that unlocks your initiatives

Nicholas Zeisler: 17:28

for the CIO, CFO and happy Ain't nobody happy.

Rick Denton: 17:33

Now, you did mention the military earlier and I'm sure with the Air Force, you have seen some fascinating planes. Now, I've only been a civilian but I have always love the 747 I think it is one of the most beautiful airplanes and yet they're slowly fading away. I mean, I think mostly only cargo at this point. You've had a chance to travel in one before they're all retired. Tell me about that experience.

Nicholas Zeisler: 17:57

Yeah, a few a few years ago and you know, one of the things that's been so tough about the last year for me is travel and I know you and I share it share a passion for getting out there on the road and years ago as United Airlines a Denver boy so I'm a United Airlines guy I know. I know down in Dallas what you're all about, but

Rick Denton: 18:17

we got two down here. you may not know which team I play for on that one. But yes,

Nicholas Zeisler: 18:22

but united retire their 747 several years ago. And before they retired, I had to fly on the queen of the skies. It was it was a goal of mine and call it perhaps a romantic silly schoolboy notion. Or call it seeing too many Jennifer Aniston commercials but I have this picture in my head that upstairs on the 747 there's this lounge and this bar out there and everybody's dressed real nice. And we're just talking on what do you do for a living and this sort of thing and, and you know, maybe a hot tub or whatever. And so I said to my partner's like, we got to do this. And he'd flown on the 747. Like, that's not at all what it's like, but didn't tell me. And it wasn't until I walked onto the plane that I realized that that was kind of a dumb thing to think that it would be anything like that. here's here's what business class on the United 747 before they retire that was like you go upstairs and you have the exact same experience as business class downstairs, which is to say, international flight. We went from from San Francisco to to Seoul, South Korea. You sit down, they bring your drinks, they bring you food, they bring you more drinks, you lay down, everybody closes their shades. You go to sleep and you wake up in another country. It was really no different and I felt so silly about it, but it was it was still a great experience. I'm glad I did it. We had a wonderful long weekend in Seoul we actually flew back first class downstairs in the nose of the plane and that was more glorious because my partner was in one On a I was in 1k. So our feet were like pointing

Rick Denton: 20:03

right there in the tip of the flight

Nicholas Zeisler: 20:05

at the very front of the zoo, I like to say is the only people we saw that whole flight home, were bringing us things nice because everybody else was behind us. We In fact, my partner was on the port side of the plane. And if you think about the great circle route as you come in from Asia into San Francisco, my partner was actually the first person on the plane because we're, we're foreword of the pilots who are behind us upstairs to enter us airspace. So that was kind of interesting.

Rick Denton: 20:33

All right, you got to win that first. You said it's silly but no i i to mine was a Cathay Pacific flight but I went out of my way even choosing a particular airport as a gateway I think at the time of choosing San Francisco as opposed to LA x because I wanted to be on the 747 instead of the triple seven so I even though you're right it's the exact same experience out there but there's something magical about climbing stairs inside a plane even if it's the same experience I'm climbing stairs and no i didn't get a time machine and no I wasn't standing at the bar with the hot tub with you know there's still when somebody's elegantly smoking or something along those lines in the 60s But no, my experience was it well business classes never mundane, but it was at least the norm isn't that I climbed the stairs and that made it delightful. Yeah. Nick with that kind of luxury international travel it's time for you to join me in the first class lounge we'll move quickly here and hopefully have some fun.

Nicholas Zeisler: 21:31

Rick did that sound incredibly low flying to you just then

Rick Denton: 21:37

I would imagine that plane maybe just a little bit closer than we want but Alright, we'll still enjoy

Nicholas Zeisler: 21:42

lounge by the way hope you don't mind I brought along one of my on here.

Rick Denton: 21:46

I think that's a wise idea. Sir. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Nicholas Zeisler: 21:52

partner and I took a round ring road trip. South Island of New Zealand several years ago. Nice. It was about 11 I think 11 or 12 nights, different town every night. I skied mount Hutt it was August and somehow we willed the most glorious and you know in August it's it's coming out of winter down there. We had the greatest clearest most beautiful day on Milford Sound that you could ever expect you would never in fact expect at that time of the year we all the sheep we did coast you know all along the coast the whole time. It was just beautiful. would absolutely even do that.

Rick Denton: 22:37

That's awesome. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Nicholas Zeisler: 22:42

Well this is strange because I was actually my dad was in the Navy and I was born in Italy. But being a kid of Italy I was just a baby on the way not long after that. I've never been on tour to Italy, like gone and vacation in Italy. You know, stopped over in the airforce a couple times at Aviano just on the way to the Middle East but never actually gotten to go to Rome, or go to Naples or go to Milan and just tour around.

Rick Denton: 23:09

Well, I hope you get there soon. It's interesting how often Italy has shown up in this section. In in the podcast either folks who mentioned it as their favorite of the past, or their dream for the future. It is a delightful place for sure. What is a favorite thing to eat?

Nicholas Zeisler: 23:25

You know, I know how you want a passport for your meals. But for great Indian food. We walk about three blocks from our house here in Denver to a place called Little India which is fantastic. Nice. incredibly good. We had actually we had a little bit of saga last night that I made at home. One of the things that's so great about going out to an Indian restaurant is you get SOG and Tikka and and korma when you make it at home it's so much work in one of those things. But you feel like a king when you go or maybe assaulted when you go there you're bringing me everything and you get all the different different dishes.

Rick Denton: 24:06

That is true. It is nice to get all of those I the Indian restaurants that I've gone to it is nice to be able to just sample and enjoy all of those. What is on the flip side of that though? What is the thing your parents forced you to eat? But you hate it as a kid?

Nicholas Zeisler: 24:18

I know you're expecting yet another vegetable answer here.

Rick Denton: 24:21

I've had a lot of vegetable answers.

Nicholas Zeisler: 24:23

Yes, you have.I've been paying attention. But I'm not sure if you have ever heard of brown swagger. No, it's some sort of horrible meat patay thing that people spread on bread. liverwurst of some sort. And when we were a kid, when I was a kid, we would eat that. And I'm not sure why. It made me that brown swagger is a real I should investigate. It might be some sort of, you know, poor kids eat this. Not that we were necessarily that poor, but hey, I were just kids. I'm not going to spend all the money on the Kids dinner, right? But yeah, that was pretty nasty stuff. And I won't touch it still to this day.

Rick Denton: 25:06

It's amazing what parents have done to us, how did we ever get through all this

Nicholas Zeisler: 25:11

links a lot about where I am, what is,

Rick Denton: 25:13

what is one travel item you will not leave home without.

Nicholas Zeisler: 25:17

I'm a Colorado guy through and through. I never go anywhere, whether I'm traveling long distance or just to the grocery store without chap stick.

Rick Denton: 25:30

Nick, you've got a post out there that says don't try and be Zappos just be better than the DMV. Now, I just had a daughter get her license. And I can attest to at least in my state, that the DPS bar is very low. How does your approach help companies create cx when they're just trying to be the DMV, or beat the DMV, but not Zappos?

Nicholas Zeisler: 25:54

Well, you know, Rick, we kind of talked earlier about how people are trying to use cx to just knock it out of the park. And not only do people do that internally, as they're having conversations with themselves about what the result of, quote unquote doing CX is going to be in terms of their own revenues, and sales and market share, and so forth, I think they try to project outwardly, that their cx program is going to change the lives of all of their customers. And it's just going to be so over the top and just wow, and blow the doors off, everybody. Win, you know what, I chose your brand. Because it's easier to use, I know I have to spend a little bit more, I know it's not available everywhere. But I want to ease of use, I want to not have to hassle with it. Don't try to drive down your price, necessarily. If it's going to come as a sacrifice, for ease of use. Don't Don't make yours necessarily the highest quality. If what I really want is ease of use. It's understanding and knowing what you're all about, and what your brand promises and the niche you're trying to fill within the market and dedicating yourself to that. Now that said, when it comes to the DMV, sometimes they're just very simple things, especially in your market or in your industry, right? That for some reason people never think to fix you think about the DMV or better yet think about something that isn't government. But that's highly regulated by the government think of things like health care, or banking or investing these sorts of things, real estate, something that you've got to fill this thing out in triplicate, you've got to jump through all these hoops, you've got to meet all these requirements, government mandated well why doesn't a company come along and say we know it's a pain in the neck to do business in this industry. We're going to dedicate ourselves just simply to clearing all that out and making it easier for you. There are so many great opportunities to pick the right brand promise to stand out within an industry that if what you're trying to do is like I said blow the doors off of it and make your experience the most elegant and luxurious and simple and cheap and high quality and everything well you're going to miss a great opportunity to find a corner within your market and beat your competition that

Rick Denton: 28:32

way. Yeah, I like that approach it I think it reminds me a little bit to have even when tackling even just cx initiatives in general there's a lot of appetite to do everything and instead let's just do something do that quick I hate to say quicker but do that something that takes you and so if if the if in your example there if it's just make it simpler and easier for the customer forget about shocking delight and incredible just make it easier and Kinder. I think you mentioned banking I think that's why you're seeing a lot of the FinTech competition take some space there from the the traditional players and why traditional players have adopted some of the attitudes and spirits and elements of the FinTech world is exactly that it might be regulated, but you can't use that regulation as an excuse to get better you don't have to be the world class best just do something I like that a lot. You You mentioned and I may close with this but you mentioned a word earlier in the episode and you mentioned exit genius factors influencing cx now first professor, please define exit genius and then tell me how that influences cx.

Nicholas Zeisler: 29:42

Okay, well, exit genius factors are in in the study of design of experiment. exogenous factors are things that are going out out in the world that you're not trying to control and having not controlled that they've impacted your experiment in such a way that you You can't attribute those impacts to what you actually were trying to measure what you were trying to control. In the CX world, for example, and this would go back actually, kind of bring us around full circle to, to my animosity towards how we're doing. See,

Rick Denton: 30:15

I would love to bring that circle back.

Nicholas Zeisler: 30:18

Yes, yes, certainly, yes. Um, I don't care how great of a cx program you have, no matter how dedicated you are, to CX, and how much you love your customers, and you've got everything going for you from a cx perspective. If you're in the business of manufacturing, and selling hydroxychloroquine, you probably kind of took a hit last year, right? reasons that fair or unfair, certainly have nothing to do with your cx program. Okay, there's an example of exogenous factors impacting what you're trying to accomplish.

Rick Denton: 31:01

And so that extra genius factor, and Professor I'm trying to understand here is something that has tripped up people from that cx approach. In the past that maybe they patted themselves on the back, let's use the positive that, Oh, goodness, let's use last year, let's use that as an example. If I'm a food delivery provider, I probably had a pretty darn good year. But maybe I didn't actually benefit from creating great experiences. Maybe I did, but maybe I didn't. And so it's less about the, the extra genius factor, man, I've used that word more right now than I ever have in my entire life. And it's more about that factor rather than your actual delivery of that. And it's it takes a discipline to decouple that from the overall experience, observation and planning and the like to understand what you've done.

Nicholas Zeisler: 31:53

Absolutely, yeah, that's, that's that's the point. And for that matter, these are things that are going on in the market that are impacting how your customers see you and how they, for that matter, even see your industry. But there are also confounding factors. Internal is you taking I alluded earlier to Forrester and PwC, or whoever might produce the study or white paper. And they'll say, all these companies that are dedicated to customer experience and have you know, these, these tremendous customer experience, initiatives and programs do so much better in the market? Yeah, well, you know, something else that they also usually have in common, well, incredibly charismatic leaders. Tremendous, unique technology that they own the IP two, they've got really tight supply chains, all sorts of other things that are, by the way going on. And these extremely well run companies like Zappos and Disney and Southwest Airlines and Ritz Carlton, like, Wow, it just so happens, there are all these other things that these companies are doing very well. Hmm. Maybe their success might also have something to do with that.

Rick Denton: 33:05

That makes a ton of sense. And that brings us full circle into some closure here. I do like how you you start us off by just simply saying, hey, guess what, we're doing cx wrong. And it's a lot of what you just described there is, is understanding what are the factors and decoupling those factors and the like, but what I really like is at the beginning, you're saying, hey, wait, stop focusing on Rei R, I did it again, stop focusing on our Oh II, but rather, focus on your brand, your your values, your promise, even those internal elements that you're just describing. And then that in turn will result in the ROI that you're seeking. I do certainly appreciate the idea of we got to weave that process. And we have to weave the customer all together to make sure that it all works. And you know, I also really liked hearing about being in the 747 I too appreciated that moment. And I'm sad to see them go but Nick, it was great to talk cx with you. It was great to talk travel with you. I really enjoyed it. I imagine we could go for another half hour, but maybe we'll save that for a future episode. And I look forward to having you back on sometime because this has been a delight and I look forward to it happening again.

Nicholas Zeisler: 34:14

Thanks so much, Rick. It's always great chatting with you.

Rick Denton: 34:19

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.