The one with the customized resiliency kit - Sangeetha Rai VP Customer Success Northwestern Mutual E177

🎤🎞️AI will require employee resilience “The one with the customized resiliency kit” with Sangeetha Rai Vice President Customer Success at Northwestern Mutual in CX Passport Episode 177🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:34 Employee resilience in face of AI-driven change

7:39 AI's role in customer service, balancing digital solutions with human touch

14:31 Embracing flexibility and calculated risks in travel and customer experience

18:55 1st Class Lounge

21:27 AI bias, inclusion, and ethics in tech

30:01 AI, diversity, and customer experience

35:57 Contact info and closing

If you like CX Passport, I have 3 quick requests:

✅Subscribe to the CX Passport YouTube channel youtube.com/@cxpassport

✅Join other “CX travelers” with the weekly CX Passport newsletter www.cxpassport.com

✅Accelerate business growth📈 by improving customer experience www.ex4cx.com/services

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

Episode resources:

Sangeetha LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeetharai/

Instagram: @sangeetharaii

Transcript

Sangeetha Rai: 0:00

In the future, I see your digital agent calling customer service, talking to an agent AI agent within the company are calling and getting your issues resolved so it'll save you time and you can focus on more important stuff. Rick it's like having your people talk to my people but but bots

Rick Denton: 0:19

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport, CCW Austin earlier this year joking about the risks of a hot mic with a former CX passport guest Wes Dudley might not have been the best idea is right next to us waiting for her arrival on stage for a vital keynote was today's guest you know like quite adding a few extra butterflies before heading on stage. However, after joking a bit it did allow me to meet Sangeeta Ray, a visionary tech and customer experience executive AI advocate and dedicated board member with a passion for driving change and championing diversity. Currently serving as the vice president of customer success at Northwestern Mutual. She has redefined excellence in customer experience focusing on automation, and continuous improvement to elevate customer happiness. With over 20 years of leadership and customer experience and technology. Sangeeth has been at the forefront of driving service transformations, achieving operational efficiencies, and providing strategic thought leadership on the implementation of AI in service beyond our professional endeavors, and Keith is an advocate for diversity and inclusion, serving as the executive sponsor for women in tech at Northwestern Mutual. And as a board member for organizations like Milwaukee tech hub, the Red Cross and is also a member of chief, a community helping to maximize women's leadership impact through access and insights. A sought after TEDx speaker Sangeeta shares her expertise on AI customer experience, AI and leadership and inspires audiences worldwide. Now, she's not all business when she's not reshaping industries think Ethan doccia is her adventurous spirit traveling the world. From coast to coast road trips to traversing continents, her bucket list knows no bounds. And that makes for a perfect guest for CX passport. Sangeetha. Welcome to CX passport.

Sangeetha Rai: 2:24

Thank you, Rick, it was so great to meet you that day because it helped me have the right energy to go rock. CC w. And I'm glad that you invited me as well.

Rick Denton: 2:35

I'm glad for both of those. But yeah, I remember feeling I felt like oh my gosh, I really did just shove my foot right my mouth as I'm making the keynote speaker anxious. But there was zero evidence of that, as you stepped onstage that day and gave what was a pretty insightful keynote. And there was something in that keynote that even we're talking about months ago. Now, at the point of recording, you said something back then that still sticks with me today. And you said 85% of the jobs in the year 2030 haven't even been created yet. That is a ton of change between now 2024. As we record this today, and 2030 that change likely both inspires and frightened employees. So let's talk about employee resilience. What does all this change your describing mean to employees? And how can they develop that resilience?

Sangeetha Rai: 3:29

It's a great question. And let's talk about what all of this change means to employees first, right? So 85% of jobs and 2030 Haven't been created query yet. And that's that can be both exciting and frightening at the same time. Another stat that I read is that AI is expected to create 133 million jobs, new jobs by 2030. And the demand for AI skills is outpacing the supply for AI talent. So there's a lot of opportunity. Yeah, throughout my career, I've embraced this mantra and I shared this at CCW is who you are today, who you will be tomorrow. And the path you're meant to follow is unpredictable. Change is the only constant and your success depends on how well you adapt to the change. And the key to adapting to this change is being resilient. And it's 100% believe learnable skill, believe it or not, and I can Yeah, and I can share one effective way to build resilience, and that is through creating customized resiliency kit. And that can be utilized whenever we encounter changes and that requires learning and adaptation. So you mentioned this I recently had the opportunity to deliver a TED TEDx talk on this topic, and will be available on YouTube in a few weeks and I encourage people to watch it. So my personal resiliency kit for embracing new challenges involves three things. The first one is that I block an hour of thinking time weekly and list out all the possible opportunities that I can take advantage of. And then I figure out how do I push beyond my comfort zone, and then how to strive to improve by 1% every day. And I've used this multiple times. I mean, I'm going to age myself, but through all the technological. And when general AI emerged in the late in late 2022, I followed my resiliency kit, and I'll share that story with you. So the first one point was like sitting down and laying out all of the possibilities, right of all the opportunities. So the thing that I had to say was, no one is an expert on generative AI, I had the opportunity to become a thought leader and a speaker of Gen AI and service. And then the next opportunity was to work on use cases on how generative AI can make user experience and age and experience better, and so on. So I laid out those opportunities. And the second thing was pushing beyond my comfort zone. And I had to really think about this and say, What can I do to push myself beyond my comfort zone and also educate myself. So I pushed myself to do this talk on how to fearlessly navigate the world of AI. And for which I had to do a ton of research and learn because I had to navigate this world myself and I did the speech. And then I signed up my team for a generative AI POC within my company. And after I did that, I was like, Okay, now the third piece is how do I improve myself by 1% every day. So I spent an hour listening to podcasts, meeting with vendors who were talking about AI capabilities, learning some foundational stuff, you know, I would sit down with books, and I would go to chat GPD and say, explain this to me, like you would explain this to a child, right. So what I mentioned that CC w 85% of jobs and 2030 Haven't been created yet, it's a reminder that my job didn't exist 20 years ago, and likely won't exist 20 years from now. And so the key to overcoming any challenge that comes my way lies in creating a rest resiliency kit that will help me get through it.

Your CX Passport Captain: 7:13

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: 7:39

Thank you. I liked that I liked the customized resiliency kit. And what I really appreciate about it is this idea that it's open ended, that there's not this, okay? It's only for this type of use. It's very technology use or it's a you know, a a skill set over here type use it is whatever change is coming your way, here are the steps that can help you build that resiliency as you go through with that customization. I'm curious what you because I talked about open ended. But you're talking about 2030, which isn't that far away. So I'm somewhat curious about the fact that we're in this world where AI is no longer new, right? It is And heck AI has been around for decades, we know that. But even the recent advances of generative AI, it is not this new and unknown concept. It's not a surprise. We do know that there's still this whole set of untapped opportunities. Knowing that you've got this deep passion for AI for serving customers mostly use that word you did to serving customers. What's coming next? How will customer experience change in the future with AI?

Sangeetha Rai: 8:50

Yeah, so we're definitely not surprised. But generative AI in this phase, where there are endless opportunities to use it. And most companies are exploring these options, right. So in the short term, companies are transitioning from testing ideas to fully implementing generative AI use cases. We're learning we're iterating. And trying to understand how quickly we can derive value from this. So at Northwestern Mutual earlier this year, we implemented generative AI for call summarization. And it's a great use case where it's all it's transcripts. It summarizes them automatically saving the agent time. And then we'll present on the calls with the customers. And that's what we've been talking about, but serving the customers being present, right. So it used to take our agents about two to four ish minutes to finish the after call work. So we completed the POC, and we rolled it out to the whole team. And since it's new and still evolving, we're starting to see some initial advantages, such as decrease in average handle time, but like any new technology implementation, it's going to take some time to derive that full value. Sure. And in the future Sure, I see your digital agent calling customer service, talking to an HR AI agent within the company, you're calling and getting your issues resolved. So it'll save you time and you can focus on more important stuff. Rick, it's like having your people talk to my people. But but but

Rick Denton: 10:21

Oh, and I've seen some some early evidence, I've seen early conversations around exactly what you're describing. And I've seen some early evidence of that. My examples, not exactly what you're saying. But the idea of having Google voice call a restaurant and make your reservations for you, so that you're not even, we'll get into even just calling reservations, but having Google Voice interact with the digital reservation booking system and just being done with it that you just ask your assistant, hey, I want to take my wife out somewhere nice on at seven o'clock on Friday booked me something. And when we get there I can I can see that world of basically robot customers being served by robot employees. And what that looks like is going to be really interesting. Yeah. The that brings up a little bit of a question that I've asked other guests as well. And it's this idea of what I just described as exciting. Hey, go book something nice for me and my spouse. Right? That's, that's easy. That's simple. restaurant reservations is a great example for digital. But when it's a truly complex travel scenario, when it's something that is a flight disruption, or God forbid a life insurance claim, I don't necessarily want a digital solution. So how do you balance that digital promise and the humanity that is required in experiences like that? Yeah,

Sangeetha Rai: 11:40

in the future, you know, I definitely see to your point and AI assist in making my reservations and also taking it further, you know, checking traffic, real time updates on weather conditions, telling me when to leave, calling me an Uber or texting my friends when about to leave. But what I don't see is the AI agent, having that warmth, that trusted conversation on behalf of me with my friends. So both human and AI possess this unique strengths that complement each other. And it's not substituting but augmenting, right. So for example, at Northwestern Mutual, we have multiple contact centers, and four contact centers that support our websites or technology helped us we can use gender of AI. But when it comes to supporting claims for the death of a loved one or a disability, it needs more of a human touch. And for the first time this year at Northwestern Mutual. We did this research on consumer sentiments on the topic of AI and financial planning, and the general sentiment is aligned the human component to financial planning is critical to our consumers. And to give you an example, according to Northwestern, Mutual's planning and progress study, the research shows that people trust humans far more than AI alone across most of the core elements of financial planning, from creating a retirement plan, to asking a financial question to manage your budget. But the survey also found that Americans are largely comfortable with financial advisors using AI tools for planning related tasks like fraud detection, analyzing data, predicting future trends, and so on. So that the takeaway is, well, there's no doubt that AI can improve customer experience. It's critical to identify the right use cases, and regularly gather insights from the voice of the customer feedback to ensure that it's working for you, and it's not working against you.

Rick Denton: 13:36

Yeah. And that's that. Thank you that that's the theme that I'm hearing. And I'm encouraged to continue to hear that. Because I think what we heard more when generative AI and others came out it more publicly, again, it's not new, but it's perhaps just more widely known, was it was all about how do we digitize how do we cut? How do we effectively dehumanize? And the pendulum has definitely swung away from that and more into the How can it supplement the human to be better? How can the supplement the human to offload anything that doesn't need a human touch and then allow them to embrace that pure play humanity when that humanity element is needed? I was sincerely hope that there is not a day at least in my lifetime, that I see a digital solution for life insurance claim as you is you bring up right, that needs to be an empathetic human to human conversation. Let's Let's stop talking about this tech for a little bit. I gotta get to the travel thing here. Thank you. Because you and I, when we talked before the show, had mentioned these long road trips, and you've even told me that you've been to 37 US states. I'm curious, what are some of the most memorable moments from those trips and how have they influenced your approach to customer experience and even your AI approach?

Sangeetha Rai: 14:55

Yeah, so I've spent a significant amount of time traveling for work and for fun So when the pandemic hit, it became difficult for us to stay indoors confined. And there was no lack of social distancing among some people in our social circle, and that led my family and me to embark on a series of road trips. So over the course of two years, we had the opportunity to explore 37 states. And there was like a tweet, 75 days across four separate journeys. So now these are the titles like variable, valuable life lessons, and that whole relevance beyond our travel experiences. So two things that I'll share that kind of helped me with the CX and how I handled generative AI POCs are one is embracing flexibility. And the second thing was calculated risk striking. So embracing flexibility. Just let me share a little bit about that one. What so on our, one of our memorable trips was a 25 day cross country drive from New Jersey to Seattle. And he had, yeah, it was amazing. And so we had hotels booked and we planned the entire drive. And we discovered the importance of remaining open to unexpected opportunities. We took detours and explore places that were not initially part of our plan, like little waterfalls, or little pastures, where we found burrows, or one of my favorite detours, and wasn't planned was this little India in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. Nice.

Rick Denton: 16:33

All right. So you

Sangeetha Rai: 16:35

know, applying this to the world of CX and AI, it's important for us to maintain a flexible mindset. So for example, in a CX and AI, the ultimate objectives for us may be improving customer experience, enhancing agent productivity, and achieving cost savings. But if we embrace flexibility, we may discover unique opportunities to delight our customers while we work towards our overall objectives. So that's one and the second one was taking calculated risks. going on trips during the pandemic, it required a lot of careful planning and risk assessment. You can imagine, so to make the make sure the family was safe, we took precautions during during our hotel stay. So I called all of the hotels that we stayed in, I said, Give us rooms that hadn't been stayed in for two to three days. And we also carried the supply box in our car. And we had this 10 minute routine where we'll walk in and spray all the switches and everything. Okay, disposable pillowcases. So and we only did outdoor activities, and we were masked. So what this allowed us to do was we enjoyed our trip, and we did not fall sick in any of those trips over 75 days, right. So as we navigate this world of CX and Gen AI, where there's uncertainties and risks that exists, it's crucial that we implement with caution. So at Northwestern Mutual, one of the precautions and best practices we've taken is we established this AI Council. And it's a group that consists of leaders from security, infrastructure, risk, compliance, and others. So to look so that there is a safe and a holistic integration of all of the work that we're doing, and also this group looks at all of the general AI use cases and approve them across the company as well. So those are two things, you know, like embracing flexibility taking risks are two learnings that I had. And I've been actually to 49 states. Okay. All right. That's a North Dakota is left. So if anyone has tips on what to do that that'll be my next destination.

Rick Denton: 18:55

To get to, you could have given me a good set of guesses. And I don't know that I would have guessed that North Dakota would be the one out of 50 that you haven't hit yet. So at least we know that it's relatively accessible. There's no plane, at least no required planes, you could truly drive there. It's a at least part of the contiguous. So hopefully, you knocked that one out. I did not realize that it was all almost all 50 When we were talking about that, one thing that I would imagine a road trip you didn't get to do but you have certainly traveled the globe. You know how nice it is to stop off in the lounge, you know that the first class lounge can be such a treat when it's a long, long flight or some sort of disruption. So we're going to do that today. We're going to stop off in the first class lounge move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Sangeetha Rai: 19:40

Dream travel location Kenya, if I tell you a quick story? Yes, I promise. So one night was a life changing experience because it taught me about empathy towards animals and respecting their environment. But it also taught me a really good CX lesson on a cyclist experience. So bear with me here, I'll share the story. So I had the best dinner of my life, and it wasn't the food. So you know, we visited Kenya with my family, my parents, my sister, her family, and we decided to do this private dinner, and it was in the middle of the savanna. And there was a beautiful string lights to guide us to our table, the servers were attentive and polite, the chef's prepared this really good dishes for us, it was very reasonable. And then the Messiah came the people of Kenya, they sang and they dance with us. And it made it one of the most memorable dinners of my life. And the reason is because it was seamless end to end for my nine year old son, 40 year old me and my 17 year old dad, and I have to worry about what tools they use to cook, how they coordinated between the different departments, and all of that. So the key takeaway that I would apply the CX is that customers compare us with the best of the best, they're not going to give us a pass. Because we're in a specific industry or a specific country. The customer's needs are diverse, and they want personalization, and they don't care or care about the silos within our within our companies. To them, we're one unified organization, and they just, they just want their problem solved. They want to have an experience that is seamless, and that needs that is handled holistically. Boy,

Rick Denton: 21:27

you had me it just the Kenya story, right? The first class Lounge is about just a hey, have you had me that sounds awesome. I will find out what tour company you use, and all that kind of stuff. Because I want to perhaps do that trip myself. I love the CX application there. And that is something that's so true about travel is how much we can learn about just customer experience in general empathy and all of the categories by taking ourselves out of our zone and going wherever that may be. Where is that? Where can I say it this way? Where is that next? Wherever it will be? Or maybe if not next? What is that dream travel location that you've not been to yet. It

Sangeetha Rai: 22:04

is a dream. And it is next we're going in December, I am intrigued by Antarctica, and good this year. So it's not as you know, on top up and limited interactions in the world. It's exciting. And then we're talking about you know, we're here we are talking about cutting edge technologies like generative AI and other things. And there's a lot that we can learn from nature as well. And that's what's exciting. And Rec plus penguins.

Rick Denton: 22:30

Yes, yes, yes. My favorite animal is the penguin. And so you and I are very symbiotic or we have a similar shared interest there. listeners know that I've said this a couple times yours as well. So Sangeeta, you have some homework. That is a requirement. Now that you've mentioned that. And that homework is see if you can find me a CX passport guest in Antarctica, because that's the one continent that I've not had on CX passport. So find some scientist, somebody there that is willing to be on the show. And then I will have all seven continents. So selfishly, I've given you homework. What is we'll keep going with a lounge here. What is the favorite thing of yours to eat?

Sangeetha Rai: 23:12

I'm from this little coastal town of Mangalore in South India. So if you go to an Indian restaurant and they serve chicken, ghee roast, try it. Not all restaurants. My mom makes the best key rows, but I've tried it in some restaurants and they make it pretty good

Rick Denton: 23:27

as well. Okay, I like that. That's certainly my favorite thing. I can see that and that sounds really good to me. You mentioned your mom, I'm gonna go the other direction. What is something growing up that you hated to eat? But you were forced to eat as a kid? Yeah,

Sangeetha Rai: 23:40

like most kids, I didn't like vegetables. Now. Of course I liked them. So when my son Nico was younger, he didn't like vegetables either. So I'm very creative. I'm a very sneaky chef. So I puree butternut squash. This is a tip for all parents. I pureed butternut squash and all of the sauces that I make. I've made brownies with eggplants and then believe it or not Wow. But these rich infused creations are pretty delicious. And so now of course he's a teenager and he knows but he didn't suspect any of my covert operation

Rick Denton: 24:17

so not only listeners viewers do you get CX insight you get some travel stories you get parenting advice as well. So it's the bonus episode today we're saying Keith I love it. So either we're sadly gonna have to exit the lounge so what is one travel item not including your phone not including your passport that you will not leave home without

Sangeetha Rai: 24:34

air pods. I listened to podcasts everywhere I go. One is AI breakdown which is our daily 15 minute overview of what's happening in the world of AI and the second is the CX passport hosted by this guy Rick Denton

Rick Denton: 24:57

well thank you that was not expecting that shout out so I I'm glad that sex passport makes the one thing you will not leave home without flowing through those air pods of yours. Thanks so much. I want to go back to something that I had mentioned in the introduction we've kind of talked about a little bit, but not really, it's you are a champion of inclusion, you're a champion of making sure that all roles are an all backgrounds are a part of the business experience. And you're a massive champion for women in tech. And it shouldn't be a shock for companies to realize how important this inclusion is. But we've got examples as recently, as earlier this year were mid journey journey at mid journey image generation clearly showed obvious bias. So if we're not there now, on companies understanding the importance of inclusion, how will we know we've actually achieved the objective? What does it look like? And how can we get there?

Sangeetha Rai: 25:53

Yeah, so you know, sadly, AI carries the same biases as humans, but it's often disguised as objective because it's technology, right? Yeah. And we need to to your point, we need to address this. It's not only because we want to ensure fairness, but frankly, to get better results. And eliminating bias in AI is not a simple task, as racial and gender biases have proven difficult to approve in the real world as well. And there's, you know, two main factors for these sorts that are sources of these biases. The first one is the data on which the AI software is trained, it plays a significant role. And you gave an example. And there's this example of a test of image generation Bloomberg requested over 5000 ai generated images and found that they depicted a world dominated by white male CEOs enforcing those gender and racial biases. And the second source is with the red teamers, the testers, the programmers who manipulate the software during its use, and they have controls over the decisions and trusted to AI software and can override its recommendations. And sometimes bias can seep into those processes as well. Companies are working through this, but I'll say like four ideas that I've read that I would like to suggest and they're pretty idealistic is, the first one is to my point. Second point earlier about countering bias in AI. Keep a diary keep diverse and huge objective humans in the loop. The second one would be around algorithmic auditing, the auditors must be truly independent. And they should be empowered to question all the underlying assumptions its developers make, not just merely the algorithms efficacy as they define it. And then I would also say that working with communities affected to study the impact of AI systems on real people, as opposed to just solely analyzing these algorithms in the labs. And this last one is important because it's foundational level teaching in schools right. In most of the courses on machine learning and data sciences, students learn how to make the programs more effective and more efficient. And besides accuracy engineer should pay attention to whether there's models or bias, whether they compromise data privacy, whether they're going to behave reliably and as designed at test time and things like that. And from you know, from my company, Northwestern Mutual's perspective, as the as a part of the financial services industry, we have this unique ability to provide objective insights to help our clients establish financial security. So in today's economic climate, there's this abundance of counsel we can offer as well. And all of this is it all of this trust is paramount to our consumers. And so we place a great deal of importance on establishing AI governance capabilities. So for example, each dataset source and scoring system must have its own well designed governance structure, and prioritizing accuracy, security, privacy, ethics, inclusiveness, and so on. So we have this responsibility to demonstrate to regulate regulators that our algorithms do not discriminate in pricing, based on factors like race. And to answer the second part of your question around what it would look like when we've achieved our objectives around bias and AI. I think that the results will represent the world that we live in, and what you know, and and we're not talking about this topic, right? So I liken it to International Women's Day. So I imagine a world where every day is a celebration of all genders and we don't need as data's special day to celebrate and recognize and honor women so that's what I see the world to be You know,

Rick Denton: 30:01

when you're Yeah, and I love that, that I like that when we've gotten to that point that we're all able to just recognize that we're all different. And it's okay. And we just enjoy that diversity and the the productivity that comes from that diversity. Going back to some of the things that you talked about how we are where we are, especially in AI, I heard kind of a couple of themes. And one was, well, if you're training a model based off the past, it's going to incorporate the biases of the past in that model. So it just reflects what the biases were in the past. And to solve for that requires a choice. It requires processes, it requires guidelines and guardrails and all these, I think it may have been, and perhaps I'm going to use that just to look at myself for saying it might have been naive on my part to think that suddenly a technology would be better than the past. without effort, what you're describing is that we need to put the effort in place so that it doesn't just vacuum up the past and regurgitate it out to us in a more efficient and different sort of technology sort of way to get the beyond bias that exists in AI. There's also the global aspect of that the global talent inclusion element, we can talk about extracting by removing bias from technology we can talk about including women in tech, but there's even a wider and that is just ensuring that we have the global talent inclusion in place this wide diversity that the globe offers. How can companies truly leverage that wide global talent diversity? Yeah,

Sangeetha Rai: 31:37

there's a lot that companies can do to leverage global talent to deliver experience from the gender of AI perspective, you know, choose a balanced team. As with everything representation matters. The mo vary the AI team, what I mentioned earlier about the red teamers testers, programmers who manipulate the software during its use, the more more varied that team is, the more likely they will recognize bias. And the second thing is that different cultures do things do different things really well, we need to take the best of the best. So you've traveled to a ton of places. So, you know, one of my favorite experiences was in Thailand, you know, they're warm, hello, professional. And in America, in the US here, I think the team is bold, and they share their opinions more openly with leadership on what works and what's not from the customer perspective. So if we do it right, then what we will experience is a globally representative culture that eliminates the negative and highlights the positives, and delivers really exceptional experiences. That

Rick Denton: 32:42

is so true. And it is amazing how travel you I love that you call that the travel part of that. Imagine if you were able to combine that warmth, that and your love that you call that the ties the tie sense of hospitality is spectacular. With that classic, you know, American boldness or whatever that you want to, if you blend those two together, what a great and that's exactly the statement you're making is that companies by bringing in that global talent diversity will find themselves in a more successful position as a result. I've used this phrase on other episodes before my brains kind of broken a little bit because of that, but I will take some time to think about it as we exit the episode. And I look at the clock and I realize we're running out of time here but there's a story that I really don't want to miss here Sankey, the you told a story at CCW Austin. And it speaks to my heart. I remember my mom's fried chicken. And of course, every kid thinks that their parents meal is the best. Well, my mom's fried chicken is the best and I don't want to hear it from anybody else. But you told a story. It's ECW Austin about chicken tenders. And it still sticks with me today. So I wanted you to take the time to share that with the listeners and viewers today. And how should a company approach that balance between policy and experience? Yeah,

Sangeetha Rai: 33:58

you know, like all of this food talk is making me Hey, I think it may be good that the episode is kind of coming to a close to so. So I was at this restaurant with my work colleagues and Milwaukee ordering a bunch of appetizers and drinks. And we asked for chicken strips, which was from the kids menu. And you know, because we're all good, responsible adults, we wanted to be fair, so we said, Listen, give us the chicken strips. And if we can pay a different and more suitable price, if you know if that's what you need. But the server refused to serve as the nuggets and we were like, hey, we'll pay you more and he was like, No. And he said, You know, it's against our policy and whatnot, we could not change his mind. So and we've all been there before and some form of conversation where it's not logical, you know, some policies and procedures are irrational and they will carry forward when we implement AI. So what we need to do, again, this is coming back to the effort they just talked about earlier. We need to empower the customer service agents to do the right thing. And also to be the voice of the customer in changing these policies. This again goes to the human in the loop piece that I was talking about earlier.

Rick Denton: 35:13

Man, I won I love that we get lessons from fried chicken. Like that alone should be the victory of the episode that if fried chicken and lesson we have achieved success, there's a movie from the 70s I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. I've only barely seen it. It was one of my dad's favorite it was Jack Nicholson was the star and it has five easy pieces. And there's a particular scene that now that you've told the story again, it reminds me of that story where he was trying to have the restaurant do something different, even though it made complete sense of the customer, but it was absolutely outside of their policy. So there's a little movie when for you, you may want to catch that clip. Sometimes Sangeeta I did not. One more time. I didn't hear you.

Sangeetha Rai: 35:52

I said you've given me two pieces of homework. Now watch that movie.

Rick Denton: 35:57

Well, it's a long travel to Antarctica, maybe download the movie. You got some time there. So your guests, I promise if you ever want to be a future guest on six passport, there isn't always homework assigned. It's just when someone has something so exciting as an Antarctica trip, I can't pass up the opportunity. Thank you. What a great conversation to start from conversations around technology, and how there's going to be this massive shift and what kind of jobs exist to talking about the necessity of inclusion of diversity and and removing bias from that technology to the lessons of fried chicken if folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about your TEDx talks, or your approach to customer experience, or just understand a little bit more about your thoughts and CX, what's the best way for them to learn more.

Sangeetha Rai: 36:43

The best way for them to learn more is to connect with me on LinkedIn, my TEDx, which I'm really excited about, and it will help people build resilience. The topic is how to conquer stress and do hard things. So the follow me on LinkedIn and I will let you know when it's

Rick Denton: 37:00

out. Awesome, awesome. And if the timing of it works out, and it's already out there, I'll make sure and get that TEDx link in the show notes. If not, make sure you follow Sangeeta. She's a fantastic follow and you will enjoy learning from her. So either I really did enjoy today. It was a wide ranging conversation, which is the best kind of travel possible. Travel I mean, conversation. What am I saying here? I did really enjoy talking to you today. Thank you for thank you for being on CX passport.

Sangeetha Rai: 37:27

Thank you for having me, right.

Rick Denton: 37:34

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.