The one with the (CX) Pet Shop Boys - Scott Lee Holloway, VOC Manager APS Bank (Malta) E167

🎤🎞️MALTA Y’all!!! “The one with the (CX) Pet Shop Boys” with Scott Lee Holloway, VOC Manager APS Bank (Malta) in CX Passport Episode 167 🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:29 Pet Shops and CX Origin Stories

4:40 Bad customer experience is expensive

7:45 Overcoming skepticism about customer experience

9:20 Firefighting vs process improvement with customer experience

15:15 Approach to customer experience in Malta

17:30 1st Class Lounge

22:50 Leveraging unstructured customer data

26:20 Starting a CX team from scratch

31:14 Contact info and closing

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I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport

Episode resources:

Scott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottleeholloway/

APS Website: https://www.apsbank.com.mt/

Complaints Management Forum: https://informaconnect.com/complaints-management/

Transcript

Scott Lee Holloway: 0:00

If we can strip back layers of the process, remove unnecessary bureaucracy make everything as seamless as we can end to end that will not only deliver superior experiences, but that will be more efficient for our business. When you're looking at investing in CX , there's cost of not doing so or not delivering superior experience.

Rick Denton: 0:17

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. Yes! Another new country with today's CX passport guest. And I guarantee this is not one that I had on my 2024 Bingo card. Today we catch a short flight, a little longer ferry into the Mediterranean as we enjoy the crystal blue waters of Malta, Malta, y'all. As we talk with Scott Lee Holloway Voice of the Customer manager at APS bank. Scott's journey into the realm of customer experience began with addressing customer complaints, which eventually evolved into designing and implementing a customer feedback program, which y'all know how much I love that area. With over a decade of experience in the financial services sector, Scott is well versed in navigating these high intensity environments and driving CX optimization inside of those high intensity environments. One of the key challenges facing Scott these days is striking a balance between addressing helping that customer right now that immediate issue with the need to design sustainable processes to prevent those similar issues in the future. What's that process? Yeah, this man speaks to my heart. Scott firmly believes that poor CX is expensive. His expertise lies in overcoming those challenges and implementing effective strategies that drive tangible business results. And you all know how much I talk about and love that. Scott made the move to Malta from the UK, his transition there provided unique insights into the differences between customer experience and customer expectations between the two regions. We'll explore that a little bit here in the show. Outside of work, Scott enjoys the company of his two cats, two dogs, and a snake sharing his life with his partner in Malta. I can't wait to start this trip. Scott. Welcome to CX passport.

Scott Lee Holloway: 2:22

Thank you, Rick. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really excited to be part of the podcast. Thanks for having me. Well,

Rick Denton: 2:29

you know, already how excited I am and the energy is bubbling. And I'm ready to get going on this trip. Let's talk about that you are leading CX for this key bank in Malta today. There's a journey, though that got you to where you are now in that point of your career. How did you get into customer experience?

Scott Lee Holloway: 2:48

That's a good question. And it's something I always like to ask fellow CX professionals, because everyone has a slightly different journey, a slightly different path. In my case, my very first work experience part time while I was still a student, I was actually 14 years old, was in a pet shop. And I was really determined to get some work experience under my belt, some life experience, I really was keen to do that. And and I found a pet shop because in the UK, it's hard to find employment under the age of 16. Although it's legally permissible part time, because of health and safety, or whatever it is, it's easy to find companies that want to take you on. But I found this independent pet store. And I learned some amazing life skills and work experiences that I take with me to this day. And I was reflecting on it last year because I did a piece with customer experience magazine, where I just started looking back a little bit. And I actually then built quite a lot of the piece around that first initial part time job as a, you know, as a teenager. And I realized that it was then that I didn't know it was customer experience. I didn't know that's where I would be heading. But it was that customer satisfaction. And finding what makes customers happy and delivering that that really gave me great job satisfaction. That was what motivated me that was what made me want to work really hard and to deliver what I was trying to achieve. And that's stuck with me through everything I've done. So ever since then. I've been in financial services, but I've applied the same approach about understanding what our customers need and making sure that we deliver on it. i

Rick Denton: 4:23

i Do you know it's fun to hear the origin stories. Right. I'm glad that you like to ask that question too. Because while I've heard a myriad of things and yours is a story that is related to many others, I can assure you I've never heard a petshop story so far and it makes sense. There's a little part of me it's probably your accent or something. Now I'm starting to sing Pet Shop Boys songs in my head and you've now got that ear worm stuck and I don't know what we're gonna do with a way to make me feel old. My dad is a brilliant, but it is that petshop story that is the origin that brought you into the experience where you are today. That shoot I started bagging groceries and it is that we are facing the customer and what that is likely and how that kind of carries forward. Yeah, you You've not only did you develop that back, then you've got some thoughts around customer experience that intrigued me. I alluded to one of them in the introduction, when you and I talked before, I really liked this phrase, poor CX poor customer experience is expensive. It's kind of juicy. Tell me what you mean by that.

Scott Lee Holloway: 5:29

Absolutely. And this is something that the longer I've been working in the field of CX, the more that I firmly believe this is the case. So I think sometimes people believe that to deliver a more superior customer experience, it must be more expensive, right? It must mean giving more spending more time. Actually, we're busy. In this day and age, we're all busy, we want what we need as quickly and as efficiently as we can. So if we can actually strip back layers of the process, remove unnecessary bureaucracy, make everything as seamless as we can end to end, that will not only deliver superior experiences, but that will be more efficient for our business. And there's lots of other ways that I believe poor CX is costly. If your service is not delivering, you're having to constantly rework items. And if you have a very poor service level, that's on a continual basis, if I as a customer have to contact you several times, for something that I could have done on one interaction, there's the cost of servicing those interactions, right? Then there's the cost of losing my business, I'm not going to stick around if I have poor CX, so I'm going to head out the door, you've now lost me as a customer, I'm not going to say very good things about you either. It's just believing, yes, I'm going to make sure that I left and why all of this has an impact on the business that if we got it right in the first place, or at least you know, did our level best to deliver superior CX, none of that would be happening. So it's important to consider all of those aspects when you're looking at investing in CX, because actually, there's cost of not doing so not delivering superior experience. So it's very important to balance.

Your CX Passport Captain: 7:05

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: 7:31

Let's let's pull it that a little bit longer. Because that's like you clearly I'm smiling. I'm nodding I'm agreeing with you. You and I are fellow C experts. You you started work in a grocery store. And

Scott Lee Holloway: 7:43

that's it. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 7:44

So how are we? How have you helped and it's probably relevant even in your role there at APS bank, how have you helped others be convinced of that that may be somewhat skeptical, especially now that there's a lot of skepticism around CX and what that means.

Scott Lee Holloway: 8:03

I think part of skepticism towards the X comes from the fact that it's become a buzzword, it's being used interchangeably. Sometimes when it doesn't mean customer experience, it means something else. There's a lot of misconceptions. But definitely you always have your skeptics, I'm very fortunate where I am now that the bank really believes in customer experience, and I have full leadership support. But definitely you have varying levels of support on different initiatives from different stakeholders. What I've learned is that when people see things for themselves, they really come around and realize, ah, there's something to this. And by pointing out that disconnect, so when I see a particular example, maybe it's a complaint, where I see that the customer had to contact us multiple times to resolve something that could have easily been resolved at the first point of contact, for example, I highlighted the business look at this example. They've had to contact us this many times through this many channels. And then it escalated to a complaint, this complaint handling cost all of these different elements that if we got it right the first time, we wouldn't have had any of those expenses. So definitely, that's a great way of doing it. And then over time, as people see the benefits for the business, you get more and more supporters. And suddenly, you know, everyone will be on board with with what you're doing.

Rick Denton: 9:17

You're describing an approach that makes such logical sense. And yet many of us in the CX world and I'm thinking specific 2023 We saw a lot of damage to CX there. There wasn't as much focus on the delivery of both quick tangible results like hey, look right here look real honest to god results, and then the ongoing delivery of that, and it's showing that there's an area that you talked about that I'd want to explore a little bit even more you you're working with customer complaints, which is a massive goldmine of information, but I mentioned it in the intro, how are you balancing? A customer's complaining? How do I restore the relationship with the customer with the epic? That's effort? Then there's also the effort of creating the process improvement the content Use improvement to make sure that doesn't happen again. How are you handling that balance in your role there?

Scott Lee Holloway: 10:06

So first of all, I skipped quite a lot of the journey, of course from the dais in the pet shop at 14.

Rick Denton: 10:12

But it wasn't just pet shop to Malta. Okay. That was

Scott Lee Holloway: 10:16

a little bit in between. And as you mentioned, a big part of that journey was customer complaints. I love customer complaints. And not everybody does. And it's not for everybody, customer complaint management, and even customer experience management. But I think that it's such a wealth of insight, it's an opportunity to put things right first of all, when we know that if we get the service to recovery, right, we can repair the relationship, but also that insight of being able to fix what's going wrong, that customer is telling us something, let's listen to them. And that's, that's really, really valuable to the organization. And when I first found my way into complaints from various organizations, I often found myself responsible for different aspects of complaints because nobody else wanted it. Everyone heard the word complaint and wanted to run out the door running the other direction. And I think that's the natural response. I mean, even the word complaint, when they say I love complaints, I see people's face like, are you crazy. But no, I It's truly and it's as a filter work. And it's so interesting, every day is different, you're crossing the entire organization. So you're really a generalist across the entire breadth of what you're doing as a as an organization. And it really allows you to work cross functionally, with every function across the organization to solve issues. And it's so rewarding to see the tangible benefits delivered from this. So that's why I absolutely love working in complaints. And in fact, I will be speaking at the complaints management forum in London again, this year, for the fourth time, I believe. Now. I love networking and with fellow complaints, management personnel, and it's, and there's, there are a lot of people that do share that passion for complaints and that the insight and the value that can add to the organization. So that's a starting point. And that is something you need to get the organization to also see. So it cannot be the only the stakeholder that's taking care of complaints management is really passionate about complaints, right to get everyone to see complaints as an opportunity. But to your question, which is about how do you balance the firefighting of the daily cases, and what's coming in, and then the holistic improvements and resolving problems at the root, it is really not an easy balance to make the same as many of us I have resourcing constraints. And it's definitely something that if we had more time, you know, we would delve deeper into certain areas. I know we could do more if we had the capacity to do so. But you need to make sure that you're not only firefighting, what's in front of you right now, because it's going to keep coming back around unless you do solve those root cause issues. It would be a logical as well to keep having the same problems and just keep addressing them as they arise. So a friend of mine is actually a full time CX consultant and working with various organizations across the world, actually. And once he was working with a particular company, I won't name them for for obvious reasons. But he had mixed buy in from leadership team, and one of them said, I don't know why we're doing is because we're already excellent at customer experience, I don't think we can improve. And he said, Well, that's really interesting. Why do you feel that way? And they said, because things break all of the time, and we're really good at fixing them. So things are always going wrong, but we fix them in a really great way. And we really focused on making sure that the recovery is it part is done well. And they didn't see the irony that of course, they're not spending any of their efforts on stopping it from breaking in the first place. They genuinely, that that was a problem they fought as long as we put it right, it doesn't matter if it keeps breaking, we're really great when it goes wrong and then putting it right. Of course, they had become quite adept at putting it right, because it was breaking continually. It was part of their normal process is they expect it to break and then they have to fix it. So definitely, it's important that we invest our efforts in the root cause resolution of pain points, of course, and that investment is rewarded by reduction of issues relating to the same problems. You

Rick Denton: 14:04

know, Scott, it feels like that that client, let's say you're your friend, the consultant, and then the client. Yeah, yeah, client took a little adage that we say and CX a little too closely to heart and that is, you know, sometimes you're a customer's more loyal, if you've disappointed them in their relationship. I want to make sure listeners, viewers, we don't subscribe to that as a chosen principle. It sounds like this client might have said, Yeah, we're gonna piss off as many as we can, as long as we help restore their relationship. Replay. Yeah,

Scott Lee Holloway: 14:40

that's really not what I would advise. But you're absolutely right, because there are studies showing that the service recovery can actually repair the relationship to even stronger than it was before potentially. Actually, there are some companies that have interpreted it in that way. In that case, it doesn't matter if it goes wrong. No, it still matters. And also it's very inefficient in your processing for Something to go off track for you to have to work to bring it back on track. So of course, that's not what we should be aiming for interesting. Some give if the if the customer if it does go wrong occasionally. But if it's happening repeatedly, you need to really look at your processes. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 15:15

then suddenly your brand promises will piss you off. But it'll be alright in the end. And no one really wants to do business with a company like that. You talked about going to a complaints Conference, which if your appearance is something that's already known, and I'll drop a link here in the show notes, folks, so that folks can see that and see the conference because it sounds valuable. Well, that's back in the UK. You said, Well, let's talk about that. So you were UK now you live in Malta? You've got one it just kind of what's the life like it's been there? But more specifically, have you seen differences in expectations around customer experience? Or just the approach to being a customer between the UK and Malta? And what's that look like?

Scott Lee Holloway: 15:52

Yeah, that's an interesting question. Actually. I've been living in Malta for some time. Now, this is my eighth year living here. I'm quite settled on the there's a lot of similarities to the UK because Malta is a former British colony. So there's a lot of cultural similarities. But there are differences. And when I joined Malta, especially and customer experience was much less advanced in in the country, I think it's fair to say, as a discipline, and the understanding that has evolved a lot, even in the time I've been here. So it's great to see that the CX revolution is also reaching our shores, and it's really gaining momentum. In fact, this year, I'm speaking at a local conference, and I do quite a lot of speaking engagements. But they're almost always overseas or virtual conferences, because there's not a lot locally. And this is my first major one this year, at a conference that's usually centered more around HR. But it's called HR gig, but this year is going to be exploring the connection between employee experience and customer experience. So that's something I'm looking forward to. But in terms of cool differences, I would say that companies seems quite defensive to complaints locally, here in Malta, and maybe didn't handle them the way I was used to. And that was quite a surprise to me. But it was also an opportunity for us as an organization to really take our customers feedback seriously. And we tried to really be a leader in terms of taking any concerns they have as seriously as we can and doing our best to listen. And then importantly, implement, you know, the, the solutions to the problems that they raised.

Rick Denton: 17:30

Gotta love that. I like that you're describing kind of maturity. And it really smiled a lot when I heard Hey, the first local conference, and maybe it's not CX specialized, but it's the idea of it. And certainly what a great topic, right employee experience and how that influences customer experience. We're not going to get into that here, because we would have an entirely separate podcast, maybe, yeah, episode two with you. Or we may consider that but let's let's take a little change of pace here, you've done clearly some traveling and so you understand the value of a lounge. And it can be nice to take a little break. And that's what we're gonna do here. So move quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel occation from your past.

Scott Lee Holloway: 18:08

I'm cheating a little bit, but I'm actually because I am representing water. And I'm probably the only guests for a while that you might have from oscillation. I'm going to actually say motor even though I am cheating a little bit because they live here. But as somebody who wasn't born here, and I'm not a Maltese citizen, we have lots of sunshine. It's an English speaking nation, almost guaranteed sunshine, 300 days a year, lots of history, we've got some of the oldest freestanding structures in the world older than the Egyptian pyramids, the temples. So I would say I will fly the flag for Malta and I would urge anybody who's in the area anywhere in the Mediterranean to come and visit.

Rick Denton: 18:49

Okay, well, you certainly actually after you and I met I'm not kidding. I went and kind of looked at Google Flights How can you get there you know, that sort of thing. And let's make let's not make this up. The last guest helped me find another CX person out there on the island. And we'll see if we can get an encore for CX and Malta. Yeah, well, let's go the other direction. So Malta you've been to and it's placed that it's a dream travel occasion asked, What about looking forward? What is a dream travel occasion you've not been to?

Scott Lee Holloway: 19:17

I don't even have to think about it for very long, because there's somewhere that I've always wanted to go that I haven't been yet. And that's Japan. I love Japanese culture. And I've always wanted to visit so definitely one day I will visit and I want to explore quite a different, quite different aspects of Japan. So not only Tokyo and Kyoto, but also the countryside, and to really experience different parts of what the country has to offer, but definitely Japan is top of my bucket list. That

Rick Denton: 19:47

is awesome. And recurring listeners and viewers. Those of you that have wisely matched the listen and subscribe button. What a recurring theme I just got. I'm very shocked by how many guests continue to See Japan? Is their dream travel location they've not been to I promise I'm not sponsored by the Japanese tourism board. It just happened this way. As someone who had been there recently about a year or so ago, brilliant plays great. i Yes. i fully encourage that as your dream travel location, get there as soon as possible. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Scott Lee Holloway: 20:22

Who pastor I love pastor, and especially here in Malta, because we're so close to Italy, very authentic Italian restaurants and I can get some amazing pub menorah made the correct wave egg and not with cream.

Rick Denton: 20:36

Oh my gosh, that sounds so good. Right now. For those that if you haven't pulled up your map yet? Yeah, I'm also really, really close to Italy. That's probably where most maybe all the fairies if you're gonna go that route would connect to Italy. And it is. It's nice and close there. So I can see Oh, that'd be the end. Yes. What about the other way? What is something that while you were growing up, you were forced to eat, which you hated as a kid who

Scott Lee Holloway: 21:00

I think growing up a lot of us kids hated veggies. But I'm trying to think if there's anything in particular that I really couldn't stand, there's something I didn't like that I still don't like, which is mushrooms. And a lot of my family loves them and would put mushrooms in every dish if they could. Luckily my partner's the same and doesn't like mushrooms. i But so we can merge them together. But that's something that I didn't like especially Yes. And still don't.

Rick Denton: 21:26

Well, that was wise. And you're, you know, as you chose a partner that you know, hey, where do you stand on mushrooms before we kind of do life together? So that was that was wise there? To make sure you were very there. Yeah,

Scott Lee Holloway: 21:37

that's how I chose. Yes.

Rick Denton: 21:41

I don't care about anything else. But mushrooms. Yeah, where are you? What is going back to travel? We're gonna have to get back out of the lounge, unfortunately. But what does one travel item not including your phone and not including your passport that you will not leave home without?

Scott Lee Holloway: 21:54

Oh, I like these questions. Actually, if I'm traveling flying, I do not get on a flight without first of all hard boiled sweets. And I quite like Werther's Originals, because my ears do suffer quite badly from the change in air pressure. But actually what's really important is I always take a good old fashioned word search book and a highlighter pen. I love doing word searches on the plane. And even if it's a short flight, so if I'm going home to the UK, it's only three hours from water. But I like to make sure I've got something to pass the time and look, eventually, even though it's very beautiful to look at the clouds out of the window, I would like something else to kind of occupy myself. So I love what Jess and I have done since I was a child. It's something I shared with my grandparents, they used to love puzzles and things of this nature as well.

Rick Denton: 22:48

Gotta like that. It's interesting. You mentioned that because I was on a flight recently. And not that I was I promise listeners, viewers I wasn't doing I wasn't staring through the chair. But sometimes the screen is visible. And I saw someone doing a word search digitally. I was I thought to myself, well, that's neat. I think it still would like the book, the good old paper version of it like you're taking so that makes sense. Now you go down that path. We've talked a lot about getting you know this this customer insights gold or or customer complaints gold. But this can get kind of messy, especially when you get outside of the realm of quantifiable scores or you know, surveys or that there's a lot of unstructured data that exists out there when you really, really are listening to the customer in all the ways that they speak to you. Yes, listeners know that I've talked about this a lot. It requires process and execution to do it. So how do you how are you extracting insight from all of this volume and unpredictability of this messy unstructured information?

Scott Lee Holloway: 23:50

That's a really great point direct, because actually, you're right, and what I have observed from some organizations, they give a really strong amount of importance on the structured feedback channels, and they can measure it quite nicely monitor it. It's easier to keep tabs on. But as you're saying that unstructured channels are much less predictable, much less easy to interpret, more difficult to analyze. But actually it's crucial you give just as much importance to that unstructured feedback. First of all your customers are volunteering that insight, they're actively reaching out to tell you that there's a problem. So it's just as important as if you had happened to send them a survey. I mean, it's not making sense that you would give them more support to one or the other. It's not easy to do and as you said, you have to really unpick it. And it's really about being attuned to each and every case having empowered complaints handlers. Sometimes a problem can be reported by one customer that can identify a significant issue for the business that's going to keep recurring or a small number of customers it can be early signs of a wider problem. So it's not only about measuring the quantity of the situation, it's also assessing the matter at hand. And, really, that's where skilled and talented complaints handling teams that are empowered, that's really important comes in, so that they can flag issues in the right way, with the right people for them to be addressed. And we are very reactive to what's coming in. And sometimes we have reports from as little as one customer before a problem is addressed and resolved. And that's how you need to be don't wait for it to get worse, don't wait for it to keep recurring. If you can identify that there's a pain point that needs addressing, do it as quickly as you can. But it's not easy. I do empathize with this, about the structures and unfair structured feedback channels, we tried to bring them together and align them as much as we can. So I use the unstructured feedback and the complaints that our customers are volunteering as a compass for often where we will focus our structured feedback efforts. So you can combine the two in unison. So say, Okay, it looks like there's a problem over here, let's dive a bit deeper into that in a more structured way. And then you've can obviously use the best of both worlds to, to analyze what you can do about it, and what the customers would expect you to do or would like you to do to resolve that barrier or that pain point.

Rick Denton: 26:15

Oh, my gosh, there's so much in there, I had about like seven thoughts in my brain at the exact same time. The way you know what, let's let's go. I want to evolve from that question into something else that I know that's a part of your background, but I think it'll tie back to a lot of what you said there as well, you had this opportunity to create a customer experience team from scratch. Well, that allows you to create some of the structures that you're talking about. It allows you to create some of the cultures or at least work to establish those cultures, the processes, how do we handle complaints? How do we merge unstructured and structured all that you talked about there? And also what we talked about earlier? How did you get started when you were building this from scratch? What are your some of your favorite stories around getting that buy in and moving forward?

Scott Lee Holloway: 26:58

That's another really great question. Sometimes I think blind optimism is a really powerful tool. I think I may at the time, I've underestimated what I was embarking on. But I think that was one of my greatest strengths. Because I saw everything as possible, and nothing was going to stop me. I just really believed where I was going. And I had a really clear vision of what it would look like and what was needed to get there. And they just didn't stop until I mean, I never like to say we're finished on anything we're continually improving. But I just had a very, very clear vision on how it should be and what was needed to get there. And I was fortunate that I had worked for other organizations that were more developed in that area. So I had experience and expertise of what it what it could look like, I took parts of that from previous organizations that I liked, and it changed it and adapted it to fit our business. Something else that is when you are starting from scratch, having a blank slate of a blank sheet of paper is actually really, really enabling as well, because you haven't got legacy restrictions, Legacy processes that are boxing you into a corner, you can build all of that. So build it in a way that's logical. That's that's achieving what you want to achieve that supporting your aims. So all of that was really, really useful as well that we could start from scratch and say, let's approach this in the way we want. It doesn't mean that there was nothing that before but it was about bringing all the pieces together in a structured way. And I often liken cx to a jigsaw where you're bringing the different pieces together. And I know, other people have used that analogy as well. But it's very much the case, you're not starting something afresh and you need everything to be completely reinvented, you're not reinventing the wheel, you're actually looking at what you're already doing quite well what can be improved, what really needs to be revisited and reworked bringing everything together and all your stakeholders. But you mentioned something that I can remember that was kind of bringing people on board with the journey. There's a few there's different ways we've done this. So I do a lot of training with our colleagues across the organization. We started with colleagues that are closer to the customers directly. So our frontline teams, and we work just as closely now with our back office teams as well to get everybody to understand that they all contribute to the customer experience. And we've had a really great reactions from from our colleagues. I try to make it as engaging as I can actually. And especially on the topic like complaints, it's something that if it's not done well could be quite heavy, you could not really enjoy it. So in some of our training, we deploy the Lego serious play methodology they get to branch. It's really fun. And one example that really comes to mind is when we introduced our new complaints management tool, which again, I was able to build this text from from scratch and with the support of our colleagues from technology and the supplier really build the system to our requirements. When that was launching. I wanted to make sure everyone knew of course I had to do an internal communication. But I wanted to make it fun and you know, it could easily just be yet another bulletin. So we did a short video that was filmed in a James Bond movie store. I will trailer, actually, somebody would phone and there was a problem and we're running to resolve the problem. And it it culminated with me on the back of our CFOs, sorry, CROs motorbike, riding off into the sunset to solve the customer's complaint. And then it was it was poking fun at ourselves not taking ourselves too seriously. But it was all around the launch of this new complaints management tool. And he got so much engagement, even our CEO commented on it on the internal channel that we have, which is quite rare. And, and people were coming up to me for weeks afterwards mentioning it. So that's something that again, it could have just been so on noteworthy. And it could have just been so uninteresting and uninspiring, but we found a way that really resonated with people and everyone was talking about it. And it was fun. And we poked fun at ourselves, you know. So it's often about thinking a bit outside of the box, that trailer took just one afternoon to film and we just spent no more than 300 euros with a camera person to help us film it. So again, it's not something that took a lot of time, resources, anything of that nature, it was really more about creative thinking. And

Rick Denton: 31:14

so there you go, folks, here's the key to gaining buy in for your customer experience, team and initiatives, a double oh seven video that. There's the lesson we'll take now, which we'll talk to you surprise me with this video. We should have talked and see if we got some progression to insert that video into this episode. I would like to see that weather off the record. Or maybe we talked about that this might be kind of fun, Scott. What a great way to end though, because you're right. Make it engaging. Oh, my gosh, business is so boring sometimes. And especially in the financial services world. How boring can we be and I came out of that world I understand. But let's go ahead and acknowledge that humans have fun. And that's a way to gain buy in it. Scott, this has been a wonderful conversation, I think folks may want to get to know a little bit more about you ABS bank, tech, if that's how they're approaching their customers, they might want to do a little business there. So how can folks get to know a little bit about more about you your approach to CX, and all the rest?

Scott Lee Holloway: 32:10

Sure. So the best place to find me is usually LinkedIn. So if you look Scott Lee Holloway CCSP. Or if you just put Scott Lee Holloway should come up. Also, you can find me from my website, Scott Lee holloway.com. And, again, you can get in touch with me through the site as well. Earlier this year, I was one of the co authors of customer experience five, the latest in reader and will only have the physical copy something I've been trying to encourage them to think of any reader because we're all over the house. But, but he likes the traditional book, and I don't blame him either. And then for the bank, you can find APS at APS bank.com.mt. And you can find out more about us, we've got a really interesting heritage, we're over 110 years old. And you can find lots about us, there's actually a page about the banks history of what we're doing. But again, what brought me to APS was that there was a strong sense of focusing on the customer. And that customer experience was important. So that was definitely what brought me here. And what's kept me here for as long as they as they have been. So yes, definitely look us up as well and find out more about the band. Well,

Rick Denton: 33:25

what a great way to end because if you're in a great place, then let's talk about employee experience. Yours is helping drive a good customer experience externally to the customers of the bank. It's got to enjoy it. This was a fun, fun ride, not only what I got to learn from a customer experience perspective, certainly some laughs about double oh seven and complaints and the like, and absolutely a real temptation to get get to Malta sooner than later. I'm looking forward to that. Scott, thank you for being on CX passport.

Scott Lee Holloway: 33:54

Thank you, Rick. The pleasure was all mine. I really appreciate you having me. I'm a listener of the theory. So it's great to be on. And thank you everyone that's listening.

Rick Denton: 34:08

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.