The one where he unifies CX - Adam Powers CX #OpenToWork E178

🎤🎞️This month’s CX #OpenToWork seeker in “The one where he unifies CX” with Adam Powers in CX Passport Episode 178🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:06 Unifying CX design across various aspects and industries

4:00 Improving customer experience through unification and collaboration   

11:43 Customer Experience pushback and testing improves business results

14:17 1st Class Lounge

21:22 Ways for companies to improve customer experience

24:39 How Adam helps companies improve customer experience 

29:12 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:

Adam Powers LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avtpowers/

Transcript

Adam Powers: 0:00

For our ability to balance and be champions of the customer, but equally have a duty of care to make the organization successful. They're not mutually exclusive as CX practitioners if we can keep those thoughts in our head at the same time, we're more successful and we've more influential

Rick Denton: 0:16

customer experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. Hey CX passport travelers welcome back to a another CX open to work episode. I'm hoping that you do just like you've done in the past. Do it today and do it in the future to help amplify today's guest and his career path. Today we have Adam powers joining us from England. And before we hit record, he and I had a nice little chuckle about that. Because England right now what are we Jul 11 is in the midst of all sorts of activity with elections, two massive sporting events taking place, and the celebration that goes on there. So I'm glad that Adam carved a little bit of time out of the absolute busyness that's going on in his country to talk to us here and see his password. A little bit about Adam, he is an experienced design leader with over a decade in meaningful work in this field. He's built and LED high performing design teams for some of the world's most iconic brands like Volkswagen, Johnson and Johnson and GSK, serving both from an in house perspective but also inside of agencies. Most recently, Adam served as the Chief Experience Officer at 26, where he unified creative UX and UI teams into a cohesive unit. Prior to that he led global experience design team at HSBC, where he positioned experienced design as a key partner to technology and product management. His ability to blend empathy and demanding leadership has consistently delivered significant commercial returns and deep human engagement. You know how important both of those are to creating a successful business? Buckle up y'all it's gonna be a fun ride, Adam, welcome to CX passport.

Adam Powers: 2:06

Thank you very much, right? It's good to be here it is. And

Rick Denton: 2:10

for those that may be where they're listening to it later, or they pulled your episode two, three years after English elections, Wimbledon, and England is in the finals of the 2024 euros. And so it is going to be quite the scene there. I wish all the best on on Sunday, as the match goes. I want to talk about customer experience. Right? I asked these questions of almost every job seeker that joins us in the CX open to work series. What is it that drew you to customer experience? Why is this world important to you?

Adam Powers: 2:47

It's an interesting journey that I took I started out as a traditional graphic designer working in the world of magazines and the music industry. And it wasn't until the kind of mid to late 90s that I discovered this thing called the World Wide Web is emerging extraordinary technology. And I thought, oh, there might be something in that and started transferring my skills. And over the last, actually, it's very generous of you to not 10 years, but actually 30 years within this kind of domain. Yeah, realizing the scope and scale of opportunity for those that have come from my background to be much more influential to be able to shape experiences beyond the page or the website. And this idea of a kind of holistic approach to customer experience is what actually excites me most, that idea of of orchestrating every aspect of a customer experience. And so increasingly, over the last decade, as you rightly say, that has felt like a really rich place to operate. And I also I think of it more than just a job or a career, although clearly that's what it is. Right? I think there's a sense of how you think about things. And that happens to be a way that you make a living as well. You

Rick Denton: 4:00

You said something in there that caught my ears. And it was that unifying theme that you were describing. I want to talk a little bit more about that. Because as you talk about and you're right, you know, certainly if we're you and I both have stories to tell from the 90s. So we share a similar, similar approach there. We didn't know then what we know now, obviously. And a lot of that has been these fragmented pieces of what we now call customer experience. You're describing that unification Tell me a little bit more about what you've seen and what you mean when you talk about unifying across that world.

Adam Powers: 4:33

I think on that journey working with large organizations, but also some degree with smaller businesses tos, seeing those slightly fractured organizational structures the silos within a business and those businesses shipping those silos to customers and not feeling like a coherent whole And increasingly, for ambitious customer experience practitioners in whatever flavor because clearly will Come, we come from many different worlds, right? But this idea of, of orchestrating customer experience being the conductor of many different instruments, but creating a whole, that really works brilliantly together. And I think that's the ambition that, that the ability to get a whole greater than the sum of the parts. And it's still still today, it's 2024. And it's still a huge challenge. But organizational leaders that product owners that call center managers looking into a business through their individual pipe, and not really looking left and right in terms of their role within the wider organization, the smarter businesses have gotten there. And you can see that, and certainly some of the some of the younger upstarts, where they've been able to build their business like that. That's, you know, they've been successful, because they've been able to do that some of the huge international organizations, these oil tankers, of global businesses much, much harder to do. Sure. But when you start making progress in those kinds of organizations, it's incredibly rewarding to so I think the challenges are different. But that's really what I was thinking about in terms of that kind of holistic orchestration of customer experience.

Your CX Passport Captain: 6:10

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: 6:36

Adam, I see how that unification is so important. And what kind of makes me chuckle a little bit is it's naive, perhaps for me as a CX person, or just six people in general to think that somehow, we have risen above silos and don't need to tackle that same sort of unification across those silos. And I'm glad that that's something that is you focused on and have drawn, certainly our eyes and ears to today, thinking about that unification or just thinking about positive experiences that you have created for customers in the past? How have you created an experience your customers wanted in the past?

Adam Powers: 7:14

So I'll circle back around to the first product. So I think you're absolutely right, in that we can't wave a magic wand and have those silos disappear. And also, from my experience, both client side and agency side as an agency, consultant and partner. And he's even harder than if you're inside the engine room of an organization as a as an employee, colleague and appear. That certainly were one particular example is leading a team for the onboarding experience of mobile banking for the international bank that you've mentioned that I've worked for. And the idea that, you know, security being such a big part of that process, we had a suite of 50 plus questions that somebody would have to wade through, it might take 2025 minutes before their mobile banking app was up and running. Oh, gosh, and actually work and and because of the transference of experiences and the expectations of quickly signing up for Netflix or getting an Uber account running. Yeah, those evaluations are being held to banks, even though the responsibilities and requirements are very different. But what we were able to do, and I had a brilliant and proactive UX lead CX lead on that coordinating that process was to really interrogate the number of questions that were acquired genuinely, what were the minimum viable question set, but also figuring out where there are moments where you do as a customer want to feel some friction. So we talk a lot about frictionless experiences, there are instances around security and safety and banking, where you want to feel like there's some friction that there's attention being given as a duty of care. And so we were able to attend Bilco with my colleague and lead the project, we're able to create an experience that reduced that signup time to more like seven minutes, we still got all the questions answered that the business needed. But in challenging back to the business, do you really need these? And I think the critical point there is that a CX practitioners or CX leaders, you can't do it on your own. This is a team effort. It's not a solo performance. Yeah. So you have to work with the kind of security and legal teams work with brand, work with engineering and product, and really get them to come with you on the journey to make those experiences vastly improved. And, and we know from the kind of prototyping and rollout, it's made a really significant difference to not least the completion of that journey to activate the app and then start using it. But actually the brand perception as well that actually for 150 year old global bank, operating more like one of these kind of agile startups that try and remove all the obstacles out Got the way it was noteworthy. So I think it has benefits in many facets. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 10:07

the oh my gosh, there's so much in there that I want to talk about the, the the idea of the CX team, and whatever the label is, it doesn't even really matter. But the team that is focused on trying to make this better for the customer, that they are the ones pushing back against the company's rules against the company's legacy against the company's history of doing things, it reminds me of something that we did actually at a bank, it's interesting that that may be where the biggest pushes this was decades ago at a bank that has been absorbed into another brand. At this point, there were two signatures required for a check. And it slowed the process significantly for and this was in business banking for a customer to get a certain payment for a certain thing. And it had just been the way it was. And it was the customer team that was pushing back saying, well show me the regulation, the customer doesn't want to show me the rules show me the rule, and to a little bit of irritation to those and perhaps the regulatory side of the bank, but eventually realizing, Oh, wait, there isn't a rule, we just have been doing it this way. And so that idea of going from 20 minutes worth of questions and dropping that over 50% and dropping that down to significantly. That idea. It's the customer's voice through the customer team that helps push back and bring that forward. That leads to these kinds of things like tangible business results, which I talk about all the time, because it's great that you make the customer happy. But that's not what's going to make your CFO or your shareholders happy. So how does this deliver either that example or in your general experience, Adam? How does the delivery of customer experience affect business results.

Adam Powers: 11:43

So in another example, I was leading a project with a global software marketing company that that we all know and working on their small business hub. So speaking tomorrow on par shots, trying to sell their advertising services and various other tools and technologies. And through some really rigorous CX work, some great design work and creative thinking, we were able to take what was a really complex kind of takeaway menu things that the more impartial arts didn't understand and turn it into language and display it in a way that they completely understood it, the kind of real world analogies. But what was so important was that we tested this in the wild instinctively, and with our rapid prototyping, we felt confident about it. But this organization, AB and AB tested multivariate testing everything that they put live, and they put our solution out for three months ago, we were very confident and they were very shy about telling us what happened. But at the end of three months, they came back to us and said, we've seen a 617% increase in conversion. So all of our advertising products sold and, and another aspect of it, and 187% increase. So the most significant step change in any of the products at that particular time. And that directly translated to increase revenue, there's absolute through line through that customer experience. And I won't pretend it was easy. There was a lot of the kind of muscle memory pushback that you described. But there's no arguing with those kinds of numbers. So even though before we went into the the ABX, testing, our relationship might have been a little bit Prickly, because we've really made them jumps through. So after that three month period, they came back and went, you know what, guys, you're absolutely right, this is sensational. And you have to kind of, you have to bank those case studies and either use them in the organization or take them with you and use them elsewhere. Because I think that our ability to balance and be champions of the customer, and humans, but equally have a duty of care to make the organization successful. They're not mutually exclusive. And as CX practitioners if we can keep those thoughts in our head at the same time, I think we're more successful and we've more influential when we're there trying to do the work

Rick Denton: 14:17

wow, like that those last couple sentences there, I think need to be put on a t shirt. Like that's brilliant. That's exactly what we need to be doing and CX that we're representing the customer. And we're cognizant of what this means towards business results. I love how you said that. That was great. I also loved and this is just me being a little bit across the pond discussion. I love the phrase prickly and I was thinking about I want to start using that in my meetings if they get a little you know, off kilter or whatever. Are we being prickly with each other or something along those lines. Well when that happens and let's talk about you know, say when we're traveling sometimes it can travel can itself can get prickly and that's when it's nice to stop down in a lounge somewhere. Take a break get a drink, get a snack and just take a break. And that's what we're going to do. Now we're going to jump here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly ish here and have a little bit of fun. What is the dream travel location from your past?

Adam Powers: 15:10

Cuba. So about 25 years ago, I went to Cuba with, with a friend. And I was not at that point, terribly well traveled. I've been to the US a lot of family there. But I haven't been out of the UK a huge amount. And so it was the most extraordinary experience and felt like it was stepping back into the 50s. I already had a love of, of the music. Yeah. But discovering the island and Havana and many other parts really gave me an appetite for travel and was a life changing experience. And it's something that I would to this day love to share with my own family. But yeah, it was extraordinary.

Rick Denton: 15:55

It viewers saw this, I don't know if I was audible enough. But I just gasped with the largest smile, because as you know, the political relationship between US and Cuba is not there. And so it is near impossible for me to at least legally travel to Cuba, there are ways for me to get there. And so I'm jealous of my UK friends, I've got some Canadians that talk about going to Cuba from time to time. And I would love to experience for you to describe it as life changing just makes me want to go there even more. Is there any place like that? What's a for you? What's a dream travel location that you've not been to yet?

Adam Powers: 16:32

I I'm kind of torn. It's certainly Asia. I was Tokyo. And Japan's a long way away. And, and but everything about the culture, the food of the people, incredibly appealing. And but but I'm torn now as as more and more we discover in the UK about South Korea. And so yeah, and certainly in the world that I operate and kind of technology, customer experience. And those kinds of things are just really extraordinary country of innovation as well. But I think if there was a Tokyo has been that my longest crush. I kind of I'd love it. I haven't been there hadn't met you. We've not been out on a date. But I would really really love to get to Tokyo.

Rick Denton: 17:21

Oh, that is the best description I've ever heard of the dream travel location. You're even giving me the temptation to call it Hey, what's your crush travel occasion? I love it. Having and having said this before and having had the chance to go there. Japan is spectacular. My son actually studied abroad there and so got to spend some time there. He got to spend longer time there. And so when you mentioned South Korea, Japan, geographically, not too hard to get between the two. He actually just dipped over to South Korea for a weekend when he was staying there. Actually, it was a visa run. But we I may have to edit that out. So he had to go for the weekend. Make sure Kyoto is on your list as well, not just Tokyo. It is a wonderful. It's a wonderful country and great food, as you mentioned. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Adam Powers: 18:09

Oh, I'm a massive foodie. And I cook a lot and love given the opportunity to eat. But a simple thing. From early trips to France, I was introduced to coffee to Canada or duck coffee, the the kind of anxious duckling with crispy skin and soft, moist meat with a rich kind of gamey taste. That is, whenever I see that on a menu, it's hard to pull away from that. It's something that I really love. It's it's a little easier to get in the United Kingdom Now certainly than 20 odd years ago. But it is still a treat, I think because of the richness of the meat. But yeah, that's, I think that's my Oh, yeah. My favorite.

Rick Denton: 18:56

I can see why that would be and I liked that there's kind of a story in the fact that you like to cook as well. So you said you're a foodie. Will it be interesting to hear the answer to this? What is a food that you were forced to eat when you were growing up, but you hated as a kid.

Adam Powers: 19:11

So as a young boy in the 70s in, in and around London, UK, I mean that the food scene is like a different world all those years ago, right? And my dad was a very simple man with very simple tastes and as a kid, you you ate what you were given and that's what he wanted, you know, you didn't have to be opportunity to choose right and he would he would love this lamb stew with with dumplings, it's kind of smooth it balls floating on the top. But the quality cooked poorly and my mom was absolutely fine cup but there's a lot of fat content in lamb and there'll be a layer of fat across the top of the stew and I was a fussy kid there's no question as a as a little boy, I was incredibly fussy, but then and it hasn't been ticked. Get a smell that used to fill the house and I remember being in my bedroom going out long walk down to the dining table dragging my feet pushing stuff around my plate to make it look like at at least eight and eaten a little bit of it yeah that's that's still triggers me to this day

Rick Denton: 20:23

well I'm sorry to bring it up although actually I'm not sorry because that presents such a a delightful image well comical let's not use delightful image in my head. I thank you for sharing that. We will have to exit the lounge, unfortunately. So what is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without?

Adam Powers: 20:45

I have some favorite sunglasses. They are battered, chipped. I've had them for many years. And let's face it, it's a rare occasion you get to use them legitimately in the UK. But I always got to have them with me. And it's it's a kind of tapping system that goes on. Okay, I've got my wallet. I've got my phone, and my sunglasses. And there's that kind of automatic check when I leave the house. So yes, I think that's, that would be by item besides the mobile phone.

Rick Denton: 21:22

And I love the idea. There's the concept of what does an EDC everyday carry. And it's the you know what, what always goes with you in your pockets. And so I love that you're doing the pocket Pat, I do the same thing as well. And that it's those battered sunglasses that you've been able to, to hang on to which is sometimes a rare feat to be able to pull off, right? What is going back to customer experience, what is it the companies are missing today in customer experience? And what do they need to do to improve on that?

Adam Powers: 21:55

I I think there are still huge challenges actually around employee experience, okay, league experience, the critical nature of your team's ability to do their job in order to deliver a brilliant customer experience. And still still too many organizations are focused outside of their walls rather than thinking around what are the tools that our teams are using? What's the context was the culture. I mean, Richard Branson famously talked about looking after your, your team's, your staff, and the customer, kind of the customer experience will look after itself. And I think, you know, this is this is decades old. But I think it's even more true than it's ever been. And I think that that right, it's amplified. Also, if you look at the world retail, you know, increasingly automated checkouts and experiences reducing the number of humans and this is having a real knock on effect customer experience in the retail environment. So I'm speaking for the UK. But what I have noticed in countries like Australia, where they've found the same they've introduced slow lanes at their checkout. Yeah, and so for, for elderly citizens, who maybe don't have many people to talk to, the idea of doing shopping on an enormous kind of tablet is terrifying. And actually, that may be the only conversation they have that day or that week is with the person at the checkout. So but But equally, you know, there are these huge enterprise solutions like SAP and, and many others, but you know, the software exists, which don't feel like they're designed for real humans to use. And so your teams and sometimes these attends hundreds of 1000s of people are having to kind of deliver great service or good experience in spite of the tools that they have to use. Or sometimes they have an I've worked, I consulted with several financial services organizations. And at the counter, there might be seven different software platforms that that salesperson would have to bounce through in order to deliver on what that person behind the desk, the customer in front of them needed, rather than a sense of actually investing effort into consolidating that. Yeah, so almost the kind of the tools in the interaction disappear, is actually about being in service to the customer. And you know, if quite literally, some of the colleague tools are just getting in the way, yeah, happy customers. So I think yeah, that that kind of effects. The employee experience is something that really needs to be dialed out. There are too few organizations giving that the time and attention that it deserves. Well, let's

Rick Denton: 24:39

talk about that. Then. I'm glad you brought in employee experience because it's been talked about on the shows as well and it is a vital part of the delivery of customer experience love that you brought in the barrier that tools and systems and processes can create for an employee being able to even deliver let's say that they truly want to do and they just simply can't. How can you how How can Adam help companies improve customer and or employee experience today?

Adam Powers: 25:08

I think there's a combination of things, I think directly relating to employee experience. It's about taking moments and the time to apply the same rigor and analysis and empathy that you would tell your customer experience that colleague experience. So for that, for those moments, they're your end user, and bring the same rigorous thinking and analytics to to improving that. And then you'll see a kind of times 10 Knock on for your customers. What I also think is, again, from my point of view, the ability, we go back to orchestration, the ability to be able to a court coordinate different capabilities within an organization to then come together and deliver brilliant customer experience. So again, from my own experience, the ability, we're working with a large automotive company to be thinking about not just the car configurator software on the website, but also what are the digital tools that the the sales staff are using the auto dealership? Yeah, how do you connect the dots between what you've selected in your config? And what they talk to you about and have it all related, but then also be a return path? And be thinking about not just the sale? But also, what about the in life experience of that service? And how do you continue adding customer lifetime value? So I think part of it is having helping an organization open their aperture, to think about the different effective paths, and then help them in coordinate it. And I think, you know, one of the things that I've experienced is that it's often the case that maybe only the CEO, is that is concerned about all of that working. And when they look at their exec board, they're worried about their slice. And I think there's a great, like we talked about earlier, Rick, I think that sense of being able to help with that orchestration. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 27:04

Well, and that orchestration, that unification, that silo busting, insert word here, so required, and it takes someone that's focused on it, because we're just naturally we slide into our silos, we stay there. And so someone coming in and looking across like that, well, what is what's next for you with customer experience? Where do you want to be next?

Adam Powers: 27:25

So I'm, I'm looking for for gnarly challenges. You know, one of the things I've learned I've had the big scale thing, I've had the very small role with tiny teams. And certainly, I think I need some scale to have impact. And at this point in my career, I'm slightly fussier, about that having done many things, but I think also, you know, you get to a certain point in your career, where you've done the job title thing, you've done the scale thing, actually, the interest is, what kind of difference can I make with this organization and to their customers. And you know, that sense of satisfaction where you deliver on something that you drive change, and you realize that that's gonna affect the lives of perhaps millions of people, depending on the brand, you're working with certainly hundreds 10s of 1000s of people and make them for the better, but also have helped that business grow to go to a place that they might not have gone, had you not been there as a catalyst for it, and a team member and a colleague. And so I'm looking for those kind of fertile environments where I can make that kind of contribution. Nice. But I think also with, with a leadership team, that actually understand some of this world and some of the things we've talked about, I think I've worked in enough environments now where it's been, like kind of showing a dog a contract that you're that you're trying to present them what they need to do, and they just don't get it. Right. But equally, I think it's really interesting working with an organization perhaps where the light bulb has just gone off, but they're not quite sure how to get to where they need to. So it's, yeah, I think it's a really interesting time. And I think there are extraordinary opportunities out there. And I'd love to help folks with it.

Rick Denton: 29:12

Yeah, I love many of the themes there. And the one that you ended on there that you're talking about a company that's got the eagerness, but maybe not the awareness of how, and what a delight that would be to be a part of that. Absolutely. Well, Adam, if folks listening to this want to get to know you want to help advance that that open to work space, or just have a conversation with you, what's the best way for folks to get to know more about you and connect with you?

Adam Powers: 29:34

I think probably the easiest place is using my LinkedIn profile, and my details there and love to have a chat. And I'm always looking to build out my network. And even at this point in my career, you know, always be learning for me as well, you know, it's so you know, if people have got things they want to share with me that might help me be a bit of a better practitioner then I've always

Rick Denton: 29:57

excellent. Well, of course I and listeners and viewers, you know, scroll down, it's there, click the link connect with Adam and have a deeper conversation than what we were able to do here in 30 minutes. However, I really enjoyed these 30 minutes. Adam, I, you took us on a fun little run here. And I've enjoyed that. The unification really sits with me, the idea of breaking across those various silos to then create the tangible business value that customer experience can actually provide, all while realizing that your employee experience is an area that is perhaps under focused on and a place where you and others can help really improve. I like where you took us on all of that. Adam, it has been an absolute delight today. Adam, thank you for being on CX passport.

Adam Powers: 30:43

Thank you. Rick.

Rick Denton: 30:49

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.