The one with the CX teenage years - Andrew Carothers Digital CX Leader Cisco Systems E150

🎤🎞️The 150th episode! “The one with the CX teenage years” with Andrew Carothers CX Leader Cisco Systems in CX Passport Episode 150🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:02 What does successful digital CX look like?

5:16 The role of AI in customer experience?

13:05 The importance of process in customer experience

17:16 How global influences customer experience approach

18:53 1st Class Lounge

24:43 The teenage years of CX / Customer Experience

29:28 Maintaining humanity in CX

32:39 Contact info and closing

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Episode resources:

Andrew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-carothers/

Transcript

Andrew Carothers: 0:00

Customers want, all customers no matter again b2b or b2c. Simple purchasing, complex for just every customer is a digital first customer.

Rick Denton: 0:17

YYou're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll 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 Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. We're back on the plane CX passport travelers with a another episode about customer experience with a dash and travel talk. Our guest today is Andrew Carothers digital customer experience leader for Cisco. With over 16 years of experience with Cisco Andrew has been at the forefront of transforming customer experience in the digital age, his sweet spot, building CX organizations that can seamlessly scale using cutting edge strategies, including Well, you know, the hottest topic, the strategic integration of AI interests honed a unique perspective on what it takes to build and scale a successful CX organization, especially in our digital first era. So whether you're a seasoned CX professional or someone eager to enhance your organization's customer experience, you will find an arrival destination here. Speaking of arrivals, when Andrew and I first met he had just and when I say just it was really just before he had gotten back from Bucharest, I am eager to get Andrews global perspective for sure, Andrew, welcome to CX passport.

Andrew Carothers: 1:48

Thank you, Rick. It's a pleasure to be here. I love your podcast, because it combines two of my passions CX and travel. So I'm looking forward to the conversation. It's

Rick Denton: 1:56

gonna be awesome. Andrew, I'm glad that you love that CX and that travel. And I know that is going to be woven in for sure. Let's just start off kind of at the beginning that title, digital customer experience leader. And I know that's a title that has this massive spectrum of meaning. So let's just start with the big themes for you today at Cisco. What does a successful digital customer experience look like?

Andrew Carothers: 2:20

It's a good question. So the let's start with the big picture. Sort of philosophically, I think of a successful digital customer experience, as focused on what the customer expects their experience to be not on what the internal company processes dictate, which is often what happens in the end, right, everybody goes in with, but ends up well, we can't do that we have to do it this way and moves farther and farther away from what the customer actually expects. So that's the big picture. More specifically, two key elements one, make it simple. Complexity fills customer experience, customers have options. And study after study shows that they will switch brands if they don't get the experience that they expect. And this is true for small purchases for large purchases, simple purchases complex across consumer and b2b. So you have to make it simple, simple for customers to get the information they're looking for to to be able to connect with whom they need to essentially to get the value that they're looking to get overall, as well as in that individual touch point. And then the second element is omni channel, you have to meet customers where they operate, right. In the old days, it was a we've got a website, we'll send you an email, you have to come where we could talk. And now customers are in charge. So that could be they may be looking for information to look into engage on your website, but it could be on tick tock or Reddit, or another social media platform. It could be in your customer community. The bottom line is if you're not reaching them where they engage, you're not reaching them.

Your CX Passport Captain: 4:01

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 4:28

Andrew, I think that's actually you said a several things in there that were meaningful to me one and you may have seen me grin is when it was doesn't really matter what we think inside the company the customer wants it matters what the customer wants. And in the event you've kind of dropped it in there. Over time a company can start to drift away from that it is amazing how often overtime Yeah, we we spent all this intense time with our customer we find out everything we need to know and then we never talked to them again and we just kind of evolve and suddenly we wake up to realize how far away we are from the customer. And then that concept of simple and omni channel so incredibly vast Louisville, I want to take that into the topic that I alluded to into the introduction. And it's a topic that feels like it's almost part of the CX podcaster union requirement, right that I have to bring up and talk about it. But it's really any conversation these days, we're talking about AI. Now, I know that AI has been around for a long time, you know that it's been around for a long time. So we're really talking about some of the new things around Gen AI and LLM that large language models that are out there. Let's stay with that term. It's about simple an omni channel, the key to that great CX is that simple, quick, easy in whatever channel, the customer needs it. And I'm going to throw a little curve at it, we want to keep humanity in that experience. How does AI fit into that approach?

Andrew Carothers: 5:42

So the humans and the machines, okay, so obviously AI is, is is changing dramatically from from, you know, year over year. So, let's, let's talk sort of thematic as opposed to specific, you know, technologies or brands or that type of thing, which is why I think we want to go with this anyway. So kind of three ways, I think that we can use AI particularly generative AI to, to improve the experience and maintain the humanity. One is, we can use it to better enable personalization. And to do so at scale. So AI can give us the opportunity to take content that we have, or that we create, and rather than have sort of generic versions of it generic by a persona or buy a piece of content for helping customers move from from adoption stage A to adoption, stage B, right. But, you know, focus but still fairly generic, we can personalize it by persona, by language, by job title by format, right? Whether it be a long video or short term, video and FAQ, and infographic by channel to receive it by right so what people are looking for on the web may be different than what they're looking for on a website may be different than what they're looking for, on Tiktok, or a different social media channel or, or the SNS, right. So it allows us at scale, using resources that most companies won't have the opportunity to build in house themselves, to take information and personalize it to the needs of the of the customer. So that's, that's focusing on the humanity of the customer. Another way to focus in on the humanity, the customer is improving self service digital engagement for customers, customers want all customers, no matter again, b2b or b2c, simple purchase a complex purchase, every customer is a digital first customer, some customers are going to be digital, only many customers are going to be digital first. And they still want a human option, right. So they want to try to get what they're looking for on their own, because it's just faster or easier that way. But they want the option to talk to a human. So make that digital first experience better for them by being better able to quickly get customers the information they need, whether they're looking to purchase or adopt or troubleshoot or handle the renewal or whatever it might be an AI can bring correct information up to date information into into the chat bot or whatever the whatever the actual touch point might be for a customer to improve that experience. And then the third way that I'll talk about is then when customers want to speak with a human, augment, augmenting the information and the experience that the human rep is able to have with that customers. So making sure that the customer excuse me that they that the customer success manager or the the human rep whatever the title has correct information at their fingertips. Even doing like AI can even provide the opportunity for that rep to engage with that customer with real time translation. So now rather than requiring a customer to speak English, for example, which might be a second language for that customer, you can now have that English speaking customer experience or customer success manager speaking in English, but with real time translation into whatever the customers first languages, that's a much better experience for the customer. And also lets the customer know, we care about you. So it's a win win from both experiences. So I think AI can really do a lot to improve the customer experience, as well as the human component of that.

Rick Denton: 9:43

Yeah, and I want to stop down and that there was about four questions I want to ask you through but then you just froze me with the language one. To me, that's still the stuff of sci fi. Am I just being naive here has this already. Is this something that a company right now today could legitimately implement? And if so, how? How do they go about this? Yes,

Andrew Carothers: 10:02

yes, right now, today it is being implemented by companies. So there are there are vendors out there that have a customer of combination of large language model plus translation capability. And it's a one off language by language approach to taking information that the customer to that the customer is likely to ask sort of based on the knowledge of past engagements with those customers, like, we know what maybe 70 80% of the questions coming in and going to be. So we can start by essentially pre translating that, and then having language capabilities to translate the other 20% or so on the fly. So it's a little bit of, of, of, you know, preparing in advance and getting ready for the conversations. And there are some companies that are doing that today.

Rick Denton: 10:56

That's awesome. And I think what's important, what you said, Well, there's a lot that was important, and they're one of the things that that I want to tease out, is there is that preparedness element to this. And I think that's something that often gets mixed, missed in the hype of what we're hearing in AI that a lot of companies think that alright, I just go by tool X, implement tool X, and I've solved all my problems, that prep work, be it understanding what my what business challenge I'm trying to solve, in this case, I want to connect to customers that aren't speaking native language of what my company speaks, and how do we connect to them better that problem, there's other problems to solve, understanding that and then understanding what's the underlying data that exists and preparing that there's work to be had to make the or work to be completed to make this something successful?

Andrew Carothers: 11:42

Absolutely. And you the phrase that jumped out to me, that you just said is underlying data. So data is the new liquid gold, and not even new, it is the liquid gold of our time. So I had a lot of people think this is why Elon Musk thought Twitter was for the data that's there, to be able to then use that to train large language models for Tesla or other properties he's working on. So similarly, I think data is oftentimes not used to its fullest value within companies, we take Cisco, we've been around for 3537 years, we have tons and tons of data and tons and tons of data, but not just where customers have gone on our website, but also, you know, 35 plus years of customer support that we've been providing. So that massive store of data is really a competitive advantage that a large legacy company like Cisco has over some startups, right, which have their own, you know, born in the cloud advantages, right? So companies need to make sure that they are starting to capture that data and not just capture it, because I think most are, but then you look for ways that they can use it to inform the experience that they're having, not just optimizing the journey mapping, etc. But as we're talking about here, using it to inform upcoming engagements that they're going to be having with their customers. Excellent.

Rick Denton: 13:05

Excellent. Indeed. Yeah. I was asking you, we got there because we're talking about the how of a particular solution. And I know that I'm starting to feel this and I started talking about it even on LinkedIn and and other spaces. That as a CX, discipline, we've kind of lost our way. And there's a lot of lost our ways, conversations that are taking place, ROI, that kind of stuff. But one of the things that I feel like we're losing our way is the idea of execution, and process and getting things done. And it's just theories or ideas that are out there as opposed to alright, this experience for the customer sucks. What are we going to do about it? And I know that that takes process. You have said a phrase both to me, and I've seen you comment on this, the process of CX for you, why is process such an important element, and maybe I should say should be an important element of customer experience?

Andrew Carothers: 13:56

Yeah, you're spot on with your assessment of what's going on. I think CX has grown to a place where, where it's a discipline. And I think companies understand that it's an important discipline. So there's been a lot of discussion and this is what happened when we, when we created our CX organization in Cisco about 15 years ago, there were 100 of us in that organization, and half of us were renewal managers. And the other half were trying to sort of build the function. And most of what we did for the first few years was evangelize. evangelize the discipline of experience. I think we've now have gotten to the point as an industry where people are like, okay, I get it. Now it's time to you know, now it's time to put up or shut up right i I've invested in this function, I built it out, needs to move from something I'm investing into something of getting value from and that is going to come from, from execution and executing consistently. What I mentioned customer experience is a discipline. There are transactional touchpoints with customers, I'm looking for this information, I want to make this purchase this renewal, whatever it might be. And I need information to help me get from point A to point B in my adoption, those are transactional touch points. But overall experience is a discipline. And so to accent successfully implement, the discipline of customer experience requires process to ensure consistent execution from everything from customer listening data, threading, automation, busting silos across organizations, and everything that we can talk about when it comes to CX requires ongoing consistent execution. Otherwise, it's hit or miss with each customer and with each touch point, so that's inconsistent. And if we're delivering inconsistently across the customer base, and across time, then we're going to start losing customers, then we're going to create a poor customer experience. So sometimes they I get what I need, when I'm looking when I'm trying to work with that company. Sometimes I don't, that doesn't work. So it has to be consistent execution and now requires process.

Rick Denton: 16:15

Again, I'll be in the little picture in picture in the edit, I'm just grinning from ear to ear, because there's so much, there's so much truth and alignment in what you're saying there. The idea of you know, it can be incredibly easy. And I'm going to use that word to delight a customer. And it might be a Herculean one off exercise, but almost every company can delight a customer. But it's that company that can perform good. And I'm not even talking about great, just good delivery of stable, expected brand promise customer experience for every customer every time. Well, that requires process and execution.

Andrew Carothers: 16:53

And and I'll add on to that. Doing that creates an unexpectedly positive customer experience, because most companies don't do that. So you're right. You don't have to be great. I'm not even big on the phrase of like, delight customers. It's not about finding customers without getting what them what they need, quickly, simply and consistently.

Rick Denton: 17:16

That said that we're like, oh my gosh, hey, they actually did what they said they were gonna do, that's the best 5, 10 stars, right? So hey, let's, let's switch it up a little bit. You know, I mentioned you had told me that you just gotten back from Bucharest, which is a place I've not had the chance to be, it's actually still even sounds kind of exotic to most of us. You actually also talked about having a career that started with this international education organization that even had a student travel component and my student travel the books of let's go in the 90s. I know it's beyond that. But you've got all of these global destinations under your belt in the near term. And in the way past? How does all of that global travel, influence your approach to CX today?

Andrew Carothers: 17:58

Oh, that's a good question. Global travel opens my eyes and reminds me consistently to the world of possibilities for approaching problems. For it's a reminder that, that, that there are many different ways of achieving the same result, right? So takes me out of my wall, my border, and right and, literally, but also figuratively, mentally, right? It opened my eyes to the different ways that people approach a problem or think about something, and thus allows me to be more creative in my problem solving. So that that's really what it does. It's sort of mind expanding and possibility enhancing.

Rick Denton: 18:53

Andrew, that that creativity expansion, I love asking this question of global travelers, because of that fact, it seems that global travelers are the ones that do have that expanded mentality that understanding that hey, my way is not the only way. There's other ways to do things, just by seeing how it's successfully done elsewhere. And I love hearing that I love hearing that global perspective being fed into you now one of the things though that global travel does provide is there's some delight that we're describing here I now use the word delight, but it also provides some pain and we there's a lot of challenge with travel there's a lot of delays or all the struggles and it can be so nice. So nice to stop down in a first class lounge and so today I invite you to do that as well. Join me here in the first class lounge we'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun what is a dream travel location from your past?

Andrew Carothers: 19:43

Or dream travel location from my past I'm gonna go specific place in a specific time going to Eastern Europe six months after the wall fell down or came down. Right. So wall came down on October end of October of 89. I was gonna go on my hunt. with my wife to Spain and we said Nope, we're going to Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Berlin and going to the wall and actually renting from some entrepreneur a hammer and chipping away pieces of the wall as it was still standing. I still haven't like that to me is I cannot top that.

Rick Denton: 20:22

Oh my gosh, no, that's gonna be incredibly hard to top I think all of us are gonna have a hard time topping that. I think the little sub story in there that I love not only you experiencing the wall following the cultural that there was a an entrepreneur who said, sure you want to enjoy this. Here's a hammer for you. I love I love the capitalism that exists right there with the symbolic nature of the wall falling and falling. And here's this hammer for you, sir. Oh, I love it. Absolutely love it right. Now. Okay, maybe you can't top that. But a pitcher can? What's a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Andrew Carothers: 20:54

Hmm, so many. I've been to Ethiopia. But there's so much more of Africa that I haven't been to that I want to see I want to go to, I want to go to Ghana, I want to go to Senegal, I want to go to Chad, I want to go all over Africa. I've been to South Africa. I've been to a couple of countries. But there's so much more of Africa that I want to see. And I want to go there. Because it is so different. It's such a different way of life of living of communing with nature or interacting with nature. And and yeah, that's where I want to go. I

Rick Denton: 21:31

like that. I like that choice. And I'm willing to allow it to be the entire continent. Because of the wide diversity that is existing there. I too would like to expand my exposure to that continent. I have only the tiniest bit and I need a lot more. One of the joys of travel and just life in general is eating certainly for me and imagined for you as well. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Andrew Carothers: 21:53

Hmm, very difficult choice because yeah, no. But I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go Spanish cuisine. Yes, okay. Topas I love the whole tapas experience. Just got back from the Basque Country where it's the pinch show experience, but love, you know, the small bites and engaging with people and then moving to the next place and the next place. And so I'm gonna go with that.

Rick Denton: 22:20

I like that. I like that a lot. And I've listeners have heard me say this before I got to stop doing recording this at times when suddenly the hunger kicks in. It's four o'clock where I guess 430 Now where you kick in? I'm thinking it'd be nice to go hit a tapas bar and just enjoy some little bites and some wine. That'd be kind of nice. Yeah, here, this will help me out. Let's go the other way. What is something growing up that you hated as a kid but you were forced to eat?

Andrew Carothers: 22:42

I love this question. So fortunately, I was not forced to eat too many things. I was forced to try things. Sure what Yes. Continuously eat them. But one thing. So you know, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes. I don't remember those. But the one thing that I was repeatedly said that I will never eat is creamed spinach. I know some people love it. But if, if they're the only bad travel experience I could have would be someplace where all I can eat as greens.

Rick Denton: 23:20

And you know, you think about that, from a kid perspective, what a horror even the words are just kind of gross sounding. And even if it is delicious to many, not you. I thought you and I were going to be friends when you started talking about brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes, and then you switched on me and switch sides. So now you and I are no longer friends. But we will still finish out and have a good time here in the first class. What?

Andrew Carothers: 23:38

When I was a kid, my brothers and I would we would have dinner at a different time than my parents. So we would have dinner in a different location in lieu just in the kitchen. And are we our garbage cans were kept in a little area outside right outside the window where we were sitting. So when we got cleaned, we would throw it out the window or other vegetables that we didn't like and the raccoons would come and eat it. But what we're through we got busted because even the raccoons would Yeah.

Rick Denton: 24:10

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. I love that. I love that story. All right, we're gonna close out the first class lounge as much fun as I'm having here. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without.

Andrew Carothers: 24:22

Okay, so one is a suitcase that I can take on the airplane. So I'll travel for a weekend a week, three weeks, four weeks with only my carry on suitcase.

Rick Denton: 24:43

Andrew off air we're gonna have to talk about how you get three weeks into a carry on and I'm imagining there's some laundry involved there but we'll talk about that off air. You said something that I want to get to. And it may be related something we talked about earlier but in our pre show call you said an interesting term to me and he said That CX customer experience is in its teenage years. I'm kind of curious, what do you mean by that? And especially given what I've experienced having my kids recently exit the teenage years? How does CX grow out of these teenage years? Yeah,

Andrew Carothers: 25:16

well, it ties into some of the conversation we've already been having. And that is CX. Most people for in CX sort of came from either customer service or marketing. So sort of the parents that have been birthed and raised CX. Now it's, it's, it's gone through childhood, meaning it's developed into a real discipline, there's a there there that companies recognize they need to invest in, they understand the big picture of experience. It's like what we were talking about earlier. But now it's at a point where there are a lot of questions around CX you referenced earlier, some of the questions around ROI. But I think it's even Who are we what should we be call that customer success and customer experience? Where do we sit in the org chart within a company? Should we be in marketing? Should we be in sales? Should we be reporting directly to the CEO as its own function? I've even seen CX in some companies being placed in engineering. So what do we call ourselves? Where do we fit inside the organization? How should we be measured? These are the things that we're like, we've grown to the point where we're trying to figure out who we are just like a teenager sort of stereotypically is trying to figure out, okay, I'm no longer a child. But I don't really know who I am. Yeah, I think we grow out of it into full fledged adulthood. By focusing in on a couple of key elements. One is execution and process. So it goes directly to what we were talking about before, we have to put up or shut up, we've been talking about the value, now we need to demonstrate that value, we need to and so one great way of doing this is not only sort of effectively executing and implementing process, like we've been talking about, but it also means showing internal stakeholders, the impact that we're having through the lens of our customers and of our partners. So that means bringing in customer quotes, that means maybe taking the executive suite, on a field trip to a customer and walking them through the process, I read about a hospital that did this. So they see from the in this case, the patient's eyes, what the experience was, like coming into the customer, and you could do this for retail, you do this for any company, so that they could really understand like, Oh, I did not realize this is the situation, certainly you could bring in a customer into into a conversation via, you know, the virtual meeting, something like that. But bringing in customers or partners, to speak directly to the decision makers, so that they understand the actual sort of benchmark state of their experience, and understand what the CX organization's approaches to fixing that are to solving or improving that. I think that will make it real for folks. And in the process, focusing on execution, as we've been discussing, that will help CX sort of, you know, learn focusing on his best practices, and on how to demonstrate its ROI. And I think it will naturally grow through the teenage years and come out as as a full fledged adult in the, you know, sitting at the adult table.

Rick Denton: 28:34

Although, as we know, sometimes the kids table is more fun. But yes, we all aspire to get to that. You know, your analogy, it hit me with a couple things, especially when you talked about the parents there, you talked about the parents being marketing and in the customer sort of service, that delivery space. You know, I also think that the teenage years is where you start to get more coherent exposure to non family mentors, non family leaders. And so I think of processes Maybe that's your sports coach, or your orchestra leader or something like that, that is providing that input into your life. It's also that exit stage where you know it, you actually need to kind of deliver some things to the family, you've been a consumer of the family for the longest time, now it's time to deliver something back. That analogy is not one that I'd heard before. And I'm really gonna enjoy that I may steal it and carry it forward. Andrew, I like the idea that we're sitting in the teenage years, but by golly, we've got to get to adulthood. Yeah,

Andrew Carothers: 29:22

please, please use it. I loved how you just added on to it and iterated it and made it made it even better in ways I hadn't thought about. That's fantastic.

Rick Denton: 29:29

Well, that's, that's part of the fun of riffing back and forth. I want to close with something that I asked a lot of folks that have digital customer experience in kind of their focus area. And we talked about it a little bit with AI, but I'd like to almost get a little more specific around this area. And that is when we talk about digital customer experience. And even when you're talking about that, how a company may understand what their customers and then lose that over time. I see that a lot in the digital space, because there's such a appetite towards efficiency or we can get cost gains OUT OF HERE WE CAN DO Call deflection, which I hate that term, by the way, but you know, we can at least maximize the the calls that are more intense for agents. Well, how do we make sure that, at least for now, it's humans that are making the purchases, and I realize we're eventually going to get to bought the bot purchases? And we'll just sit on our couches. But for now, while the humans are making the purchases, how do we ensure that we're keeping that humanity in our digital customer experiences?

Andrew Carothers: 30:25

Hmm. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a paradox, isn't it? But you're absolutely right, it is humanity that is that is being engaged on both sides of the equation, the customer and, and the company. So I think I think what's important in this regard is always centering on the customer. And we started our conversation focusing in on the need to center it on the customer, as opposed to, you know, internal processes that might shape a company's ability to do one thing or another. So by by constantly engaging with the customer, and not just digitally, right, not just tracking breadcrumbs across a website, or purchase behavior, or that sort of thing, but also the in person, right at trade shows at customer conventions, you know, whatever it might be one on one meetings, even if they're done virtually, but through a screen, but actually connecting with customers. I think that there is a not only do I think it's the best practice for this, I think there's a yearning on customer's behalf, to engage directly with with companies. For example, a couple of days ago, I was at a local craft store that was standing in line, I needed to make a return. So I needed to, to engage with the one cashier that was there. And then there were about six self help, you know, cashiers, booze, and there was a line of people that started to fall behind me. And I would say, each person, you can go self serve, if you're just making a purchase. And several of them would simply say like, No, thank you, I would rather talk to the person. So I think that there's a yearning on the behalf of customers to do this. And they want to talk, they want to explain who they are and what they want, and how we can better serve them. Which means let's take advantage of that opportunity and listen to them in a formalized, process driven way. So that the information we glean gets brought back into the processes and and the experience that we're trying to develop. But that's how we're going to maintain the human element is by working directly with the humans.

Rick Denton: 32:39

i That's it, we're done. We're gonna just end it right there. Because that is how I want to hear that is that we can't design great digital experiences without listening to humans. You talked about it earlier that how do we get executives out and I'm a huge proponent of this, get them out into living the customers I think our airlines or hotels or rental car experiences, a lot of those would be a lot better if some of those executives were flying back in the portions of the planes that the rest of us were flying. And that idea of using that to then inform how you craft a great digital customer fares. I love the fact that my I ordered GFCI outlets at Home Depot, it was completely online, picked it up in a locker never interacted with a human but that's because they understood me the customer in that scenario. If I needed some help, though, I bet I could talk to someone in orange apron and get that help on the inside. So understanding me was so vital that digital customer experience. Andrew, thank you for taking us on that journey. Thank you for helping us understand what a digital first experience looks like. Thank you for again talking about I know AI is talked about but really kind of demystifying getting us out of the hype and into how does this reality actually happen? And you know, you and I are certainly symbiotic spirits when it comes to appreciating how global travel can influence us. Even if you and I are no longer friends over brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes. I was somehow forgive you of that. Andrew, folks want to know a little bit more about you to get your perspective on customer experience Digital First, what's the best way for folks to get to know a little bit more about you? The

Andrew Carothers: 34:11

best way to reach me is going to be on LinkedIn you will find it's on my profile there and be able to reach out and connect with me I'm always happy and and interested in talking with those.

Rick Denton: 34:20

Awesome well, you know, listeners, I will have that in the show notes. Scroll down, you will see that get a click, click that link and you will be taken to Andrews profile right. Oh, Andrew. It really was an enjoyable trip today. Thank you for being on CX Passport.

Andrew Carothers: 34:32

Oh, thank you, Rick. I really enjoyed it.

Rick Denton: 34:40

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.