CX Passport

The one with the AgileCX - Lauren Feehrer Founder and President of LoyaltyCraft Consulting E182

September 17, 2024 • Rick Denton • Season 3 • Episode 182

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🎤🎞️A quicker way to tangible results with Customer Experience “The one with the AgileCX” with Lauren Feehrer Founder and President of LoyaltyCraft Consulting in CX Passport Episode 182🎧 What’s in the episode?...


CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

3:01 Lauren's transition from software implementation to customer experience

7:18 The concept of "Agile CX" and how it can benefit organizations

11:45 Lauren's experience in the eldercare and end-of-life space

15:34 Lauren's family road trip and the lessons learned

17:32 1st Class Lounge

23:41 The importance of process and execution in customer experience

26:34 The “Grandfather inspiration” behind Lauren’s business

28:28 How Lauren's family operates using an Agile model

31:55 Contact info and closing


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✅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:

Lauren LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenfeehrer/

LoyaltyCraft: https://www.loyaltycraft.com/



Lauren Feehrer:

Let's focus on on simple and easy and let's just try to remove the friction or the paper cuts you can win over a customer in those little moments much more than those those massive implementations.

Rick Denton:

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. Welcome back to CX Passport. I am truly thrilled to introduce Lauren Feehrer founder and president of loyalty craft consulting. Lauren is dedicated to helping mid market companies grow through improved customer experiences. Why thrilled? Well certainly because of what Lauren knows and the wisdom she can share about customer experience. And I have found someone who probably loves travel especially outdoor travel even more than me. I came aware of Lauren through a great newsletter series she created on LinkedIn recently where she described a great trip with ample outdoor stories. applying those stories to customer experience insights, Lauren's writing intrigued me several back and forth interactions in the comments later and it was clear I had to have Lauren on CX passport. Lauren works to examine the full range of the customer journey to identify and address challenges. With a career background and places like Accenture, rare view the brink SBDC and Alliance Global Services. She's got the business chops to know how experience influences tangible results. Inspired by her grandfather's dedication as a small business owner, Lauren founded loyalty craft on the principles of trust and long term relationships. So she not only preaches great experience to her clients, she delivers it. Cx relationships travel. I'm all in Lauren, welcome to CX passport.

Lauren Feehrer:

Thank you, Rick. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm honored to be part of your your long standing wonderful show. So I look forward to our conversation today.

Rick Denton:

Well, thank you for the kind words. That's the way to put the host in a good mood. All right. I like that very good. In spite of the host being slightly jealous for those that are watching, if you're not listening, you may want to look over YouTube. Lauren is coming to us from a beautiful park in Colorado with a glorious sunny day as we sit here recording on the 29th of July. I bet her weather today is going to be a lot better than my weather. It looks glorious there. Lauren,

Lauren Feehrer:

I cannot complain about life at 11,000 feet. It is an adventure. And today 70 And Sunny, so I can't complain.

Rick Denton:

All right, Episode over. I'm jealous. That's it all the Goodwill has now been lost. You know what we better? Do we better get back to talking about customer experience. But I want to talk about something that's actually similar between us. We both started our careers at Accenture, although I'm ancient enough to describe my career actually started at Anderson Consulting. last

Lauren Feehrer:

in line. Luckily,

Rick Denton:

we both find that out together. Currently. We are we're kids in the 90s and in our careers for sure. So how did you go from that classic system business analyst role to focusing on customer experience today?

Lauren Feehrer:

Sure, well, I was implementing software in the Fortune 500. And was a process analysts when I first started. So I was you know, creating these very, very structured, beautiful swimlane diagrams that showed everything working perfectly right, because it always does. Everything's perfect.

Rick Denton:

A land of video. Sure. Right,

Lauren Feehrer:

in the confines of Vizio shore, but in the real world where customers interact with software, not always, you know, things like blue screens happened to us. We don't necessarily plan for those two way. And I think that's what I realized was was life is messier than than a flowchart. And you know, when we think about the customer journeys, customers are coming to us through, you know, maybe the front door, but maybe a side window, and unfortunately, leaving out the back too quickly. And so I kind of realized through working in, in software that my true passion was around, how do we make this better for customers. And I love that Steve Jobs quote about, let's start from the customer and work our way backwards to the technology. That's what really got me inspired. I did have a CEO along the way, who tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know, we really need to listen to our customers better Lord, do you think you could just go visit all of them? Oh, cool. And that's what started me on my way with learning what voice of customer was and really getting started kind of understanding what customer experience is all about. And really, I'm thankful to him for helping launching my journey into into this space, which is just so so fun. So

Rick Denton:

you you actually you I mean, literally started with the literal Voice of the Customer going out there and talking to customers. Have you found that that is the origins because there's many different origin origin stories of folks getting into CX? Yeah, have you found that that day zero of it was talking to customers has influenced you today and how you approach CX and how that blends with all of the other elements of making a customer experience something great.

Lauren Feehrer:

Absolutely. And I remind my customers of that oftentimes, you're my clients have to go out and and really listen and, and that can be intimidating at first. But it's amazing what people you know will tell you when you just ask. And so finding the right way to ask the right moments that certainly has influenced the way that I, I practice our profession is really listening and asking good questions, and then sitting back for those quiet moments, to give customers space to share exactly what's going on and what went right or what went wrong.

Your CX Passport Captain:

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:

you actually you started answering that with it. I can't remember the exact word but like it's frightening or it's it can be scary to do that. Sure. And intimidating. And so as you're working with clients, how do you get them comfortable with the fact that you're going to do this, it's going to be valuable? You're gonna hear bad things, don't freak out. What does that been like with your conversation with clients? That's

Lauren Feehrer:

that's always fun is to say let's let's start sometimes they're so scared to do it a journey map and, and I'm a big proponent of a journey map is a customer journey map. It's not assumptive, it shouldn't be just what we make up and what we think a customer might feel. It's so powerful when we actually bring a customer into the room to share their story. And so I'll say well, why don't we start with an employee, let's tell tell their onboarding experience of when they join the company and like break the ice with them, like see if they can do it, maybe we can have a couple of customers come join us. And once they kind of, you know, get a taste of that, then they're all in, you know, because it's just it's the nuggets in what they share that so transformative for us. You don't get that if you're just crafting the happy path, like I talked about before with the Visio diagrams, you're just not going to learn the things that you learn. When you bring a customer into the room, or you know, be able to play that recording, play that audio for a CEO, or even have the CEO in the room with the customer. I mean, those are all such such powerful things that inspire change.

Rick Denton:

I am a huge proponent of that is amazing to see both the the foreheads that go into the palms or the smiles or the wide eyes that happen when you're bringing the literal customer's voice or their actual words into the room. You had you'd said there was a phrase when you and I were talking earlier that intrigued me. And it was agile CX. I'd like you to tell me more about what do you mean by that? And then any stories about how agile CX made a difference?

Lauren Feehrer:

Sure. Well, and as we talked about my background, which is in software, I was in the period of time where companies were transitioning from a standard waterfall approach over two agile, and building agile teams. And what I found was we were able to, to kind of knock down the idea of that there's this wall between business analysts and gathering requirements with customers to say, and the developers who would actually build the software. And by breaking down that wall, you know, it just allowed for design to happen more fluidly. For changes to happen for us to be able to pivot quickly, and be much more collaborative and show customers Hey, is this what you want? What do you think this is, so to me that just didn't feel like it was only applicable to software, it's truly a way of working. And that's kind of how I brought it into CX for, for the clients that I work with. And people around me, I find that, you know, a big goal is to break down the silos of organizations. And so if we can create Scrum teams, you know, small teams that work together to solve customer pain points in an iterative way, that that's incredibly powerful. And what I found is we can deliver that value much, much faster, rather than just sitting on big backlogs of ideas or opportunities. A lot of companies, I think, just gather a lot of those ideas, but then it's really, really hard to get them implemented, especially in a short time period. And so that's what Agile CX is all about is being able to work collaboratively, actually bring customers into the room and get their feedback on the things that we're doing and then work across the organization to make that change happen. The

Rick Denton:

to folks like you and me and anyone who's done whether it's capital, a agile or just the concepts of lowercase A agile, we're just doing things in smaller chunks faster. It seems really intuitive. That's the way you would get value faster yet, we don't see that a lot of times we see in customer experience initiatives, that it's gotta be something big whether it's, let's go buy a significant purchase technology when it comes to experience management tool or some other grand experience initiative. Why do you think companies continue to lean more towards the grand rather than the quick iterative value? Depression.

Lauren Feehrer:

I wish I knew the answer to that sometimes it's like, let's, you know, let's focus on on simple and easy. And the things that can cause you know, those moments of let's just try to remove the friction or the paper cuts. You know, let's, let's find those because you can win over a customer and those little moments much more than sometimes those those massive implementations. So I think that we get focused and kind of wrapped around the axle on the big implementations. Because they're hard, because they're going to take investment. And so they take time, and they're going to take a lot of resources. So, you know, we the times necessary, but sometimes if you can just pull together a small team and say, Hey, let's go fix the fact that like, you know, we have this really outdated process, we should kill, let's figure out how to do that. And do it within, you know, two weeks cycle. Those are when you know, you build a lot of momentum with people, when you get those wins.

Rick Denton:

You are definitely singing my song without when I love anything that is a quick win like that. Something that as I've come to know You you're in a space, that is not one that I I knew that you were in before back in May, I had put out a newsletter talking about the CX, the customer experience of grief, having just lost my mother to Alzheimer's, it was really amazing. I'll use the word but kind of shocking to see how difficult the actual business experience of someone's passing. It wasn't great. Not to mention the emotional grief. But the business itself is a struggle. And even prior to my mom's passing, the caregiver experience was a challenging one. This is where you've had an opportunity to really work in this area, the caregiver, the elder care, the end of life space, what have you learned about that experience? And how can and I'll just say it sort of collectively, how can we get better at this?

Lauren Feehrer:

Well, thank you for the question. And first off, I'm sorry for your loss. I think he's tough. And we don't know, I think the unknown is what's tough for all of us is we don't know what to expect watching a loved one pass. That's a very scary, overwhelming experience. And, you know, when I was working recently in the eldercare space actually studying hospice caregivers who had just lost a loved one, you know, the thing that really came came true out of that research was that people want to be able to communicate with each other about this and share. And they want to share the experience of making their loved one feel dignity and respect. And I think that shows up differently for people in different ways. But oftentimes, for me, like I know, when I've lost my, you know, my family members, it was about telling their story, or what was true about them, you know, there's a reason my grandfather's story is on my website is because that's such a meaningful person to my life, and so, in, in the hospice space, it is really about, I think providing someone that space, and providing each other space to grieve space and to learn. And the the people who actually are, you know, are the nurses in that space and social workers, man, they just have the biggest heart, so much empathy, and I'm so inspired by them. That is tough, tough, tough work. But the best way that they can support someone is letting them tell their story, and be there to support along the way. And I think we can all do that for each other. It's pretty special.

Rick Denton:

That idea of telling the story, right? Yeah, because that's exactly it, especially, let's say to someone who's not even able to tell their story, but as the relative the caregiver, that that element, then you can start to amplify the story. And even as caregivers or hospice or whatever, ask about that and understand that, how this is a sensitive area. And so how have you found the ability to get in there and understand it? Because you do have to kind of put your whether to Agile CX or kind of put your business lens on right and understand how can we make this better? When you're in a space? That's so emotion based? How are you getting the business right in the space along with getting the emotion right, in this space?

Lauren Feehrer:

Yeah, I mean, it is a really big challenge. And I do think it's a matter of, you have to prioritize so many things. I know the research we just did, you know, we came out with like 80 different opportunities to improve the experience, and they're already doing great, great, great care. But, you know, it's kind of taking those themes of the research and saying, Alright, well, if a caregiver wants to make sure their loved one story is told, what are some simple ways we could do that? And how, what can we implement tomorrow, versus something that's going to take us more time? Or when we look at the resources, it's an overwhelming experience, and not one size doesn't fit all? When it comes to? Do I need video content? Or do I need an app? Or do I need a booklet or do I need a website? Right? So it's sorting through all of that in terms of Well, what's going to be the most valuable to you take the 8020 rule and say what's gonna be the most valuable for the most the largest amount of people that's going to have the biggest impact and really wait those things against each other to kind of come out and say, Alright, well, this maybe we can do quickly. This is the bigger thing, but this is going to have more impact. So it's so important to have kind of a roadmap for those opportunities and again, put it into To put it into agile and get them done,

Rick Denton:

like, see I love you brought it like we're talking about stories. We're talking about emotion we're talking about heart. Put into agile, get the stupid stuff done. Right. So I love it. I absolutely love it. Major pivot here, but I talked about, you know how I came to know you was through your well, your storytelling about road trips and outdoors? What is it about that grand road trip that captured your imagination? And specifically, how did this come about for your family? And what was it really like? Oh,

Lauren Feehrer:

yeah, it's subtle. Not all but Instagram shows, right? So certainly packing a family of four, I have two boys. They're now middle schoolers. So we're going through those really fun for 18 years. But you know, a few years back, we had a little thing called a pandemic. And, you know, we didn't want to be locked inside the trails and beaches in our community closed, which to me still blows my mind that you'd actually close the trail. And we were like, No, we cannot do this, like we are outdoors, people, we need to be outside. And why don't we explore the country, you know, we don't have to physically be anywhere. Our school was closed, you know, our offices were closed. So we bought a camper. We had never even been in a camper before. No experience with this at all, we attend camp, but never actually, you know, my husband had no idea how to drive a travel trailer. I mean, it was all new to us. We did it, we bought it. And then a week later, got on the road, and you know, traveled across the country doing national park tours. And, you know, it was pretty quiet in those national parks during those those days. So a very, very special experience. We spent a few months on the road doing that. And I'd say it really transformed our family in terms of how we communicate, you know, when you're stuck in a camper with four people in two dogs, it's, you know, an adventure, but it's, it has its challenges, it's moments when you read on top of each other, and you realize you have to figure out how to how to work together and get through hard times. So, you know, it certainly solidified our value as our family values in terms of adventure and curiosity, encouraged to do things that, you know, maybe not every family would do. So so that's that's the reality of it.

Rick Denton:

Lauren, there's just something so wonderfully. I'll use the word romantic, but not necessarily like the love sense. But just kind of that sort of epic, novel romantic vision of a road trip. That just especially there's something maybe about the American Road Trip to maybe it's just the variety, the size that I'm not sure what it is, but that road trip and then my gosh, getting into a camper that you've you've never done it before, and learning how to drive and, and all the things that you learned as a family, I will folks, Lauren's LinkedIn profile is going to be in the show notes, make sure you go back and look at some of those old articles because the insight as how it's tied to customer experience, or business or life in general, were incredibly valuable. Now Lauren, I gotta imagine that there were times though as delightful as it was an exploratory as it was as a family to get to know each other. There was probably a little secret thought that she said, You know, I kind of miss the the airport lounges. I kind of miss having a break, I kind of miss the first class lounge. So today, we're gonna give you a little access to the first class lounge here and see x pass quickly here and hopefully have a little bit of fun. What is the dream travel location from your past?

Lauren Feehrer:

There's so many and Rick, I know you're a big traveler, and you probably it kind of depends on the moment. Sure. I grew up by the ocean. And so you know, anytime I can get to the water, I'm pretty happy person. My family has spent some time in Grand Cayman. And as if I witnessed two of my friends fall in love there. So that is an incredibly special place for me to go to Grand Cayman and get to hang out with some stingrays on an island in the Caribbean. Oh,

Rick Denton:

that's awesome. Yes, I actually I have an aunt and uncle that have lived there for 30 some odd years. So I love the Caymans. What a brilliant place to I think you maybe the first dimension the Caymans. Oh, it's beautiful. Yes,

Lauren Feehrer:

it's great for families. It's kind of my favorite Caribbean island when it comes to just having a lot to do and Seven Mile Beach with that beautiful turquoise water. Really. It's pretty nice. Hi,

Rick Denton:

you realize that after the show, I'm gonna go to Google Flights and just see what would it mean to get to the Caymans as quickly as possible? What going forward what is a dream travel vacation you've not been to yet?

Lauren Feehrer:

Okay, so, and I am a surfer so of course I'm watching the Olympics right now and watching. The surfers compete in French Polynesia and so yeah, so he is definitely on my list have never been there and it's definitely staying on. You know, one of those Special hotel rooms above the water sounds pretty cool. Oh,

Rick Denton:

man. Oh, I like that. And yeah, it's been kind of fun. Yeah, I can imagine that the athletes may kind of feel oh man, I'm not in the epicenter of it. But when you're told you won't be in the epicenter of the Olympics, but you're going to be in Tahiti. I feel like some of that disappointment went by the wayside pretty darn quickly. I'll

Lauren Feehrer:

be a surfer. I mean, I grew up looking at Surfer Magazine and pictures of to foo and that is an epic epic place. Books break there in is called the wall of skulls. So that is not a way for the everyday surfer is just one I'd love to see someday.

Rick Denton:

Oh, wow. Okay, well, I've now learned about the wall of skulls. Where am I going to learn to surf? Not they're not there.

Lauren Feehrer:

Oh, no, no, no. Lauren,

Rick Denton:

what is it? Yeah, no, absolutely. Lauren, what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Lauren Feehrer:

You know, because like you're off on the water. I am a huge seafood fan. So get me the Rhode Island's where I grew up in the summer eating any kind of seafood at all, and I am a happy camper.

Rick Denton:

Ah, that sounds delightful. It absolutely does. Well. Okay. Growing up, what was something that you were forced to eat, but you hated as a kid? Oh, I

Lauren Feehrer:

have a tough relationship with beets. I was forced to eat beets. And I sat there for over three hours just refusing to eat them. It was a standoff with my parents. I thought they looked like tendons. And they just grossed me out so much. I couldn't do it. So I like cried in my plate for three hours straight. And so finally my parents gave up. And then my mom I think was more traumatized than I was because then she just refused to feed me anything new. I think I just ate pasta and butter for like years afterwards.

Rick Denton:

Well, boy, if you're gonna do a holdout, one, I agree with you on beats, I'll hold out on beats as well. But looks like you kind of won that labor. That hold out that you ended up with Causton butter going forward? Fine by me.

Lauren Feehrer:

I didn't get a lot of variety. It took me till you know, I was in my 20s and started traveling and experiencing food from all over the world. I'm thankful for that. But also, I'm sorry to my mother, who was forced to give me many years.

Rick Denton:

I love how this is the question does tend to expose some some moments for therapy sessions of the future, I would imagine. Lauren, it's time for us to exit the lounge. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without?

Lauren Feehrer:

Well, aside from my retainer, which you know, I like to keep my teeth straight. So that's like a given. I have a five year travel journal, or it's just a journal. But every day I read a sentence. So it's not you know, I'm not writing lots and lots of prose and literally writing one sentence a day. And that keeps five years going. So it's fun to look back from like, what was I doing three years ago, on the same date. So So that's always in my bag wherever I go.

Rick Denton:

Warren, you don't want to say anything about other guests. But you're definitely in kind of the on the middle stand for sure. With answers to that question. Wow. First of all, you made me laugh about the retainer, of course. That's awesome. But I bet that travel journals fascinating. That's the kind of thing that would be really interesting to see all those sentences and the evolution of the trips you took but evolution of you as a person, the family the the experiences you have. Ooh, that's fun. Oh, yeah.

Lauren Feehrer:

Yeah, that was fun. Someone shared that with me on a trip once that they had this five year journal, I went to Amazon right away and picks one up. That's awesome. It's just neat to see. Yeah, to see how the past can influence your future. Well, that's

Rick Denton:

okay. So that actually goes to a question that I wanted to ask you about. Because to do so requires discipline, a process and execution, you have to one have the journal, you have to actually write in the journal, you have to choose to do that. So you know that and others listeners viewers certainly know I talk a ton about process and execution. It's to me, it's this required path of how we're going to get CX out of the wilderness that it's in right now. It's the way to deliver tangible business value. Why do you think that there are so many in the experience world that have de emphasized process and execution in the recent past? And what should we be doing to bring it back?

Lauren Feehrer:

Okay, I could not agree with you more. And it's something that I know that we geek out about together on the importance of of process and discipline to actually implement change. It's hard work, you know, and I think people shy away from it. Because there's a lot of shiny object syndrome. It's a lot more fun to talk about AI and machine learning and all the cool stuff, all the cool gadgets, versus sticking to, you know, kind of the habits and the rituals that go with. All right, we're on a plan here. And here are the things to consider in terms of is this going to be additive to our customers experience? Is this going to save us time and money? You're really putting I think the the flywheel that has to stay in place requires that precision of always saying, what does this get us at the end of the day. And if we don't wear that lens, you're right, like, you're actually not going to get the ROI out of CX that was so needed right now. So I'll try not to break into Justin Timberlake here and bring sexy back. But I do think we need a little focus on actually a lot of focus on how do we make sure that we're, we're actually driving this value. And doing it by saying, all right, not only do we understand the journey map of a customer, but what's the service blueprint that's happening underneath it? And what are we putting our employees through? So if we put our customer through a bad time, guess what, like the employees probably not doing great, either. So let's actually bring, you know, teams cross functionally together to map out like, well, what is that process look like? What are the tools they're using, and struggling with? What are their emotions as they go through, you know, that customer journey, you can learn a lot through that. And I feel like there there should be more emphasis on it.

Rick Denton:

That emotional aspect of that is something that I'm coming a little more aware of the employee experience of how the internal emotions are really driving the behavior that I've seen a lot of interest in, some isn't mentioning white papers coming out. And some studies around that, that are, that are interesting around that kind of just the internal emotion aspect of it, coupled with that just discipline and execution aspect of it. I wonder if I don't actually know where this is going. But the story of your grandfather and how that inspired loyalty craft, I don't know if that has anything to do with process execution, or if there was inspiration from there or anything along those lines. But I'd like to know that story. Because I only know the headline, I don't actually know the story and really great depth. Why is it that his experience, his approach is what inspired you to take loyalty craft forward? Sure.

Lauren Feehrer:

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut is an old mill town where the mill was out of business. And so you know, times are tough. And in that area, he owns the automotive shop in town, right in the heart of town across from Dairy Queen, and locked away from my school. And so as an elementary school student, I would stop by the shop. And my father and my uncle and grandfather, even an aunt worked in the she was the bookkeeper. They're all there. And so I had stuff in, they had this really cool soda machine. So I would go get a cherry soda, I walk around. And you know, I got to really be a firsthand observer in a small town business. And one thing my grandfather would do, and I didn't know this until he passed, and so I was looking at, we had like an online page for his obituary, and people from town, were commenting about the power of my grandfather and his business. And they actually, one woman wrote about how my grandfather would always test drive the car, when it was fixed, would always take it for a drive around town to make sure it was performing exactly as it should. And would be the person to hand back the keys to the owner of that vehicle. And to me, that was the promise of his company and kind of the the feeling that I wanted to have for the companies I work with is like, Hey, you have to feel that, you know, this, the families that would would have their car fixed that ideal tire were families that we cared about. And you know, it was that emotion, that connection to people that he inspired me.

Rick Denton:

That's, that's, I like that. There's a beauty to that, of course. And then there's the practicality of that I like the blend of the beauty and the practicality that of how the motion of the family can then be taken forward into the practical nature of your business. Family is a recurring theme for you. And I'd like to close out with something that I found really fun when you were taught you and I were talking earlier, you had told me that your family operates in the Agile Model. So not just agile CX for your customers, but you've got your family dorks telling you beyond just being big dorks, which I don't quite necessarily buy into but how did this come about? What is it what's it like in a family that is approaching the Agile Model?

Lauren Feehrer:

So I had seen I can't claim ownership of the idea I saw a TED talk on using agile and families many years ago. And I liked it I kind of tucked it in aside for once my kids got old enough to write their own personal user stories. So once they turned six

Rick Denton:

threes on that Senate wait personal users, okay, okay, now let's keep going. That's alright.

Lauren Feehrer:

So so once we did that, we kind of recognized and I always think, you know, a family is a team. And so, you know, you want your team being able to collaborate and work together and have goals and accomplish them and feel the sense of pride and of what we do. And so you know, it's tough these days with all the activities and sports and school and work and all the things right it's sometimes you miss that. We didn't want to So that was our why behind why agile was to allow us to kind of say, hey, let's get a chance to actually communicate with each other more effectively be more collaborative and get some really cool things done. So this is not some people asked me when I talk about agile in family, if it's like a chore chart, like, oh, goodness, no, we have fun. chore charts. I never want a chore chart. But no, it's we write user stories, we each write individual ones for each have a different color coded sticky note. And we write things like you know, I want to learn how to speak Spanish so that we can travel to a Spanish speaking country. Okay. So then it's a question of, well, do we all want to do that? Or is that just you, Jesse? So we put it into our family backlog, and then we have to prioritize. So it's teaching my kids at a very young age that you can't do all the things. And so we run in two to three weeks cycles, we kind of vary it depending on what's going on in our lives. But then we really try to tackle these these goals that we have both personally and as a group. And that's kind of what what pushed us to do a lot of the traveling that we've done, as well as just big, you know, big steps that we want to take in our lives, we've been able to put on our scrum board and make them happen. So yeah, I'm a huge proponent. Often it's easier to talk to clients who've never done agile before to say, hey, my six year old does this. Like it makes agile a lot more accessible for everyone.

Rick Denton:

Oh, I like that. A little bit of shame there. Yeah. My six year old can handle this. I think you can put a sticky on a board who I like that. Lauren, were definitely I'm glad we ended with that because I definitely want to end with that what a brilliant way of operating inside of a family. My kids are empty nesters. We've lost any sort of chance to influence that way. But perhaps there could be others that are beyond before the emptiness phase that I have

Lauren Feehrer:

to reach out with me if you've got questions on how to implement it in reality, some of the you can have at the retrospective too.

Rick Denton:

Well, let's so how can folks if they want to get to know more about you wilty craft agile CX or how to run a family inside of agile, what's the best way for them to learn more? Sure,

Lauren Feehrer:

I'm always on LinkedIn. So feel free to hit me up there. That's a great way to connect. You can also reach me at Lauren at loyalty craft.com. And definitely check out my website love to connect. I love talking to other CEOs, practitioners, as well as companies trying to transform their experience. So look forward to hearing from you. Excellent. Well,

Rick Denton:

all of that will be in the show notes, listeners, viewers, you know the drill there down there. I can't stress enough how Lauren has such a fantastic follow. Make sure you are paying attention to what she's putting out there and LinkedIn, some great storytelling and some great lessons along the way. Just like this episode where I had a blast learning from you today, Lord, I thought I knew you know good about you and know I've learned a lot in not just customer experience, but road travel, camper life, and how one could run a family inside of an Agile Model. what a what a brilliant approach to that. Learn. It's been a treat talking with you today. Thank you for being on CX passport. Appreciate

Lauren Feehrer:

it. Have a great day. Thank you, Rick.

Rick Denton:

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.