In this episode of CX Talks, host Simon Blosse is joined by CX strategy experts Julien Kervella and Loic Le Fouest, to explore the evolving landscape of customer experience. Together, they discuss the transformative power of customer-centric strategies in navigating today's complex market dynamics.
From the growing impact of AI and personalisation to fostering trust and community in a world of self-directed consumers, Simon, Julien, and Loic dive deep into the trends reshaping CX. They also tackle the challenges organisations face in embedding CX at a strategic level, emphasising the importance of leadership buy-in, cross-functional collaboration, and sustainable, customer-first approaches.
Julien shares his insights on aligning CX strategy with organisational goals, while Loic reflects on the shift from reactive customer service to proactive customer success. This episode offers a roadmap for businesses looking to thrive in an era where every strategy is a CX strategy.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript.
Simon Blosse: Hello everybody, and welcome to another CX Talks podcast. Today, I'm delighted to have the topic of our focus being CX Strategy, an element of customer experience that I've had a lot of involvement in, a lot of work in, but it's something that Clarasys hasn't actually delivered a podcast on. So we thought it would be a really interesting topic for us to explore with all of you, our listeners.
And to do that, we have a very interesting and exciting guest with us today, Julien Kervella who I'll give him the time to introduce himself in a moment. And also Loic Loic Le Fouest who you've probably heard of before from our previous podcasts that are related to CX and obviously our circular economy aspects as well.
The person speaking is Simon Blosse, I am a lead here for our customer experience approach offering and strategy and have been working ultimately in customer experience projects and customer experience transformations for the last 14 years of my consulting career and being at Clarasys for the last three of those. Delighted to bring to today's conversation all that experience and hopefully to explore a lot of the challenges we've seen but also focus on the future and what we are noticing and seeing is coming down the line that ultimately aligns to the need for strategy.
Before we go into that topic, I would like to just give Loic and Julien the opportunity to introduce themselves. So I'll hand to Loic first. Hello Loic and welcome.
Loic Le Fouest: Hi Simon, great to be here and hi to everyone. So very quick intro to myself, Loic LeFouest, I'm one of our customer experience practice leads. I've been in the world of Customer experience transformation for the last 10 years in a number of different roles, both internal and external, and have changed a little bit what that meant for me in terms of focusing on customer experience. It's such a broad discipline today. Of course, we're going to be focusing on the world of CX strategy in particular, but I'd like to think that the different elements of, at least my CX experience, have really helped me have a perspective and a way to help companies drive this forward.
So very briefly, I come from a world of Kaizen of Lean and Six Sigma and helping streamline customer experiences by removing the friction and the waste that we see in a lot of the experiences still today. Moved into more product management and service design types of roles, helping to create better experiences end to end, both from a customer and employee perspective.
And most recently been focusing a lot of my time on the increasing overlap between the worlds of CX and sustainability as more and more, both customer demand and market pressures are asking organisations to think about what they're going to do from a sustainability perspective, but organisations still struggling to find the right way to drive customer demand and engagement when it comes to actually purchasing those services. So it'd be really interesting to see where we all think sustainability in CX strategies fits today, the role it has to play going forward.
Simon Blosse: Thank you, Loic. Julien, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
Julien Kervella: Thank you for having me, Simon. Hi, Loic. A quick intro on my end. I've got about 20 years of experience, five years developing a practice for an IT consulting company, about five years working for a large conglomerate in Asia to do corporate strategy, and then about five years, roughly speaking, Oh, 10 years actually, more on the 10 than on the five, working on CX strategy and developing customer experience strategy, including the organizational impact of it for a large conglomerate again, recently involved in providing advisory services and consulting based in London at the moment.
Simon Blosse: Thank you, Julien. And I should mention, we've had the great support of Julien to help us at Clarasys really form some of the ideas and thinking and make sure we can serve our clients the right way when it comes to CX strateg. And I think today we don't want to just talk about what CX strategy is. We want to explore a little bit about why we need strategy in alignment with that. And I think the future is obviously undefinable, but at the same time has got trends that we can see and things that we recognize. And I think one of the key things of today's podcast that we wanted to explore was what does that future look like and why does that actually drive us towards having a need to focus on CX strategy and customers ultimately.
So I think just to kick it off and just to start exploring that, I'd like to hear from both of you really, what do you think customers are after at the moment from both an individual and a business perspective that are new that businesses or customers are thinking of?
Current trends in CX
Julien Kervella: I can take that one. I could start with, let's say, ongoing trends that are just exacerbating at the moment. And if you think of consumers as people, as every one of us, there are a few trends. Again, you could think of, for example, the home and the relationship that people have with home. If you just listened recently to the Amazon news, people won't be able to work from home as much as they used to, as much as they've been comfortable doing in the past few years.
You can also think of the housing crisis in general, specifically in big cities in the UK, but also in the US. You can think of the pressure on healthcare as well. People will have a different relationship with their health going forward and the way they take care of their health.
You can think of climate change. Actually, today starts COP 16 in Cali. And recently, we had hurricanes in Florida. But I was also hearing over the summer that in the next 10, 20 years, it won't be uncommon to have 50 degrees temperature in summer in Europe. So how will people deal with that is something quite interesting to think about.
Simon Blosse: And just to clarify on the COP16, could you just explain what that is?
Julien Kervella: Well, it's the gathering of many institutional governmental leaders and they're trying to address climate issues from a global standpoint. There's been multiple COP before and 16 is the one that we have this year in Cali.
Then there's also tech and AI. I mean, tech is ever more present in the mind of people, in the lives of people. We are all using smartphones today. AI is relatively new as in a public phenomenon and it will alter the way people live and people work again. So if you think about that, there's quite a lot of anxiety led trends in today's life. And it's true, it's been measured that people's lives or people are a bit more anxious now. There's a feeling of burnout that comes a bit more often. And as a reaction to that, people are, and that's the new trend really, people are looking, for example, for personal care a bit more. They're looking for wellness in various dimensions. So if you think of a tech company, for example, you would have to design a completely different health and fitness app for consumers going forward because of those trends. You can also think of the sense of community and belonging. Post COVID people want to relate differently with, for example, their neighbors. The relationship they will have with their neighbors is completely different than it was before COVID as people were just sleeping in their house and going to work. Now they also care for their neighbors a bit more. They are looking for connection with a purpose as well, as opposed to weak connection. I think that's something quite important.
And the relationship to news is also changing. That's another point that I think is quite interesting. People have trust issues with the media. So you've got people that are a bit more interested in, for example, looking for facts, and some people are a bit more looking into finding community through which they will hear the same sort of thoughts and opinions.
So the way people consume media is also different. Perhaps that's a bit of a serious discussion. So on a positive note, I was looking recently at the consumer confidence tracker that Deloitte is having in the UK. And thank God now people feel a bit more comfortable, a bit more confident in the way the society is going and feel comfortable purchasing and consuming stuff, things, products, services.
So I think these are important trends that will have implications on many level on the way people consume either products and services. So how companies can address that is the big question, really, from a consumer experience standpoint.
Loic Le Fouest: That's interesting. The last point there, Julien, I think I've heard you say the word the relationship is changing a lot with regards to how people interact either at home with technology in different environments and the way they consume is going to change.
I can really relate to that having seen a really big shift already over the last few years. When you think about people, and the word consumer implies you're buying something, you're using it and then you're throwing it. It's very linear. It's the economy that we've all been used to, and we can already think over the last five, 10 years, some of the fastest growing companies have put forward new models, new ways of developing relationships with customers. When you think about all of the subscription services that exist today, it's a fundamentally different relationship that the customer ends up having with the organization. A lot of people talk about the role that personalization plays in customer experiences today. And a lot of that comes down to the fact that you don't just go into a store, a physical retail and buy something and that's with cash. It's a one-off payment and that's it. They don't have any more visibility over what's important to you as a customer. Today, more and more you're buying online, that activity is being tracked. You're offered the chance to personalize what you prefer. It's not a one-off purchase, it's a recurring one that you can enhance in a way to better serve your needs. So that word relationship really resonated where fundamentally the way that organizations are engaging with B2B or B2C customers is already fundamentally shifted. And, and I think we'll continue in that direction.
Julien Kervella: I fully agree. And personalization is a big, big trend that will be exacerbated with the development of AI for sure, because AI will provide new ways to personalize even more the brand relationship with consumers.
There's other trends as well that are quite interesting, but these days people talk a lot about trust, building trust and loyalty. Of course, five, ten years ago it was already the case, but with the new tools and the new requirements that people have vis-a-vis brands. I think this is even more important now than ever and brands need to address that properly. And this is where a customer experience and the strategy component of it is extremely important because if a consumer loses touch with its customers, they won't know how to create trust, develop loyalty and personalize.
Simon Blosse: It's really interesting to think about the anxiety element that you brought up there in your summary of what customers are dealing with. And the reason I bring it up there is there's quite a lot of pressure on the individual at the moment, I feel. And I've been reading about where if you think about all of the individual channels that have now become very individual oriented. I'm saying that word a lot, but in the context of this, you as a customer are expected to select which channels you opt into. You are expected to understand quite what you want to be marketed about. You're expected to be in parts of communities that you want to be. There is a risk that you're also feeling that, am I too in my own bubble? Am I not giving myself that openness to new opinions, but whilst also wanting to feel less stressed. I was just curious if there's anything that either of you have sort of thought about in that context, about how you can orientate yourself towards a customer that gets that sense of almost, don't worry too much. And that we can support you, or if that has come into play at all in some of the customer strategies that you've been seeing Julien? Because I do sense that there is this element of, as you called it, burnout, but not just from a work perspective, but equally just from the noise and the self selection expectation there is now on customers to manage their own world without really knowing what their world should be.
Julien Kervella: I mean, it depends on the industries and the types of services as well that we want to look at, but definitely in my past with my, let's say, previous employers as well, we were already looking at how transforming health, for example, and health and fitness, going back to that same example. 10, 15 years ago when the app economy started to develop, people were actually creating health and fitness services the same way you would actually consume VHS videos and follow, you know, the workout at home and stuff like that. So health and fitness was built on the premise that it's good to actually develop muscles for men and it's good for women to actually lose weight, which is completely wrong in today's age. So how do you create different value proposition based on how people feel? And since people feel actually quite anxious and burnt out, at the end of the day, they want to feel better about themselves. And that battle, that constant tension is way more difficult to achieve in urban environment now than it was before.
So, there's clearly a shift that brands need to be aware of in this particular case from health and fitness to wellness, but you can also apply that sort of shift in many other industries as well. How do you reassure a customer? How do you create a trusting environment? How do you make sure that you are actually responsible as a company so that a customer that buys, let's say, your clothing, your dress, a coat, whatever feels good about it, Durably? It's a big question. And again, I think this changes the business model of brands going forward. And also this is something typically that customer experience strategy should address as part of a brand overhaul.
Loic Le Fouest: Yeah. That's interesting. So you both use the word trust there quite a few times and reflecting on that. Again, I think there's been a real evolution that, you know, customers before had that more transactional relationship. They were just looking to buy something that fit their needs. So the right quality, the right price points, the right convenience. And now it has changed a lot. You know, you buy something and it is about, the way it will make you feel.
It's a different relationship that the customer have all the way down to something as simple as, you know, what the clothes you wear. It's not that it's just functional. It's not, it's a warm jacket. It's a jacket that when other people see you with, that their perception of you as a person actually starts to be raised and be, Oh, he's buying that brand. That's, that's what this means about them. So I can imagine that's part of fueling this concept of trust as well from customers is they're not just trying to buy a product or a service, a lot of the products and services now have to be developed in mind with how that going to make that customer feel and stretch that thinking a little bit further.
Community and belonging in CX
Simon Blosse: I think the interesting word that comes to mind there is community. And I think that's where I was getting to with some of the stress that you get as an individual. To, oh, I need to know what brands I'm going after, or even as a business owner or someone who is responsible for buying other businesses as a B2B consumer, there is this expectation that you can navigate this diverse world of so many different options. And you are going to sort of segment that and do that yourself. I think what I've noticed has been a reliance on forming those kinds of communities where you feel like, oh, I'm part of something that is going to drive me in the right direction to help me navigate this world that is becoming more self directed than it's ever been before, because there are so many options. And whether that's an individual who's feeling like, oh, I'm part of this community, they will be leaving this, is a good option for the type of health service I want or the type of products I want to buy or the type of business I want to be in to a business that's like, okay, we are part of a group that is trying to drive future change. And therefore we together will make sure that our vendors and our buyers are the same type. The reason I sort of highlight in the community is because I think that does then mitigate that feeling of being alone in a world that is so exposing and you always constantly trying to like, will you sign up to this? Will you ask for this? Will you have this? Well, can we come and speak to you? Can we do this? Can we support you? It gives you that sense of I'm not on this on my own. And I think those businesses or offerings where they also give you that kind of added, almost cushioning are working more successfully because you kind of have this moment of, oh, I can breathe a bit. I feel like I'm part of something. Okay. I feel like it's on your point earlier, Loic, it's, it's got the right background. It's got the right mission. It's got the right feeling. It's given me the right services I want, and I'm feeling very good with those, but also I feel like I'm part of something that's just reinforcing my decision.
It's maybe just an idea, but I think it is something around that, like, how do we reinforce that sense of security, belonging, and community in a world where there's so much self decision and AI is coming into play with that as well.
Leveraging AI for better experiences
Loic Le Fouest: On the AI point, Simon, I'd be interested in picking both of your brains. I've seen organizations take very different strategies around almost how obvious they are making it to the user that they are using artificial intelligence to enhance their journey. The ones that really use it kind of in the back office and the operations, it enables them to, you know, ship the next day, accelerate a lot of the timelines, respond to some of the queries quicker, but the customer doesn't necessarily see that. To ones that are really open about it. And that might have worked really well for them. That might also have drawbacks. What are you guys seeing today in terms of the overlap between this concept of engaging customers and creating trust, but also trying to rule out some of the most exciting technology and breakthrough innovation that we've seen in a while.
Julien Kervella: I think it's a spectrum really. So it's not black or white back office versus championing AI. If you think, for example, about Netflix, or if you think about Spotify, they have built their business models on recommendation engines, right? Having the best playlist or having the best movie recommendation possible. Even though the word AI was not explicitly mentioned in marketing, people knew that it was made with something specific and a bit magical that was called AI. And they've been extremely successful to that. But there are other industries where the word AI should be carefully mentioned.
If you think, for example, about healthcare, I mean, you have to be careful when mentioning AI, because healthcare is obviously very, as an industry, you have got to be extremely careful the way you handle consumer information or people information. Privacy is very important. Healthcare is also an industry that is massively impacted by cybersecurity and attacks. So AI would just be creating a lot of tension, concerns in consumer's mind, with the exception where you can say, I'm using AI to diagnose the next cancer and we can do it better than doctors can, which is a very specific example. But if you compare the world of media, where AI can be front and center, and to the world of healthcare, you've got to communicate slightly differently. And that's point number one.
Point number two, you've got to be careful as well. Communicate about AI when you're really in control of the technology. If you start communicating about AI and you're just as a maturity model in your experimentation phase, you're not fully in control of your technology and how it's released and how it's going to work with consumers. You may not want to release a marketing campaign straight away. You've got to wait a little bit for the company to mature and being sure of the technology that it pushes to consumer, right? To that extent, some companies instead of putting AI in the middle of everything they do, mention AI in one feature among a hundred that they already have, by just saying, yeah, we know AI, we're already using it, and this is the benefit that we're having with AI, and by the way, it relates with our mission statement, it relates with our value, and that's a clear communication.
So as you can see, it's a spectrum and it's only going to get better. I think AI is a trend that is growing. It will get much better, much more controlled over time. This is just the beginning. AI is just at an infancy. We could talk two hours about this.
Simon Blosse: I think there's something interesting again, to bring it back to the individuals inputs or opting in of, or agreement with use of AI that I think can sometimes get quite blurred, but is an interesting topic I think to explore for a moment because I was recently talking to a friend around the difference between Netflix and Disney plus, and they quite categorically were like, but I don't get to input into what I like on Disney plus. They don't have a like. I can't say I've liked this film or I like this very much. They obviously don't use the same level of input as Netflix does. I'm like, wait a second. I guarantee if I went onto my Disney plus account and you went onto yours, we would see very different things being recommended. It's just, there's not, he's like. Are you what? Oh, I thought it was just on the basis of what I said yes, I liked. And what I said, no, it's on the basis of what you're watching and how often you're watching it. And I know that sounds very simple, probably for yourselves, but there is something interesting about that interaction with an input, which goes back to the first time I remember when there were the agreements to use data starting to come in about, gosh, probably 10 years ago now, but feels quite recent, where it was like, are we are going to use your data on this app to enable a service that's better? Are you okay with that? It was the first time customers or consumers were like. Oh, I think so. Yes, because I'm getting a benefit. I'm getting, Oh, the option to have these products I've bought before and now discount it, or you're in our store or you are buying from our information services and we know you like these particular scientific journals, et cetera, we'll therefore put them front and center and provide you a dedicated package. That kind of opt in and then being part of, I think is an interesting lens on the AI front versus those ones that are going on behind the scenes that are naturally then creating different experiences. The third one, I think that is quite interesting. We talk about health and especially if you talk about things like, you know, security of, and civil service. And especially when you get into anything to do with crime that gets the challenge, I think, raised around what decisions are truly being made by human beings versus by historic fact. And that's where I think there's, you are right Julien, we could probably spend hours talking just about that because that's often what fuels some of the decisions. I think that's that transition. But I think there is a real power in AI being the underlying current to help solve a lot of the problems that we discovered when we were trying to overly personalize and getting caught up in algorithms versus learning when we weren't being clear. By the way, you were opting in kind of people are taking for granted now that that's going to be used then to serve up different experiences. So if you haven't got those different experiences, you haven't got those different kind of offerings, people will start to notice on the negative side. So there is that interesting balance, I think, which is how do you make sure you are leveraging it enough to not be behind the scenes or behind the curve, I should say, but equally, how are you making sure you're not leveraging it too much that you become creepy? And then people get frustrated or annoyed with how much you're using their data to then serve up what is too creepy for them to digest. That's my term. Are there any other things that business is struggling with when it comes to engaging or satisfying customers? Julien, from your perspective that we haven't sort of covered off, we obviously covered off the over reliance on AI.
Julien Kervella: Perhaps going back to the basics, I'm still surprised when I hear people coming from large organizations telling me that they don't have a consumer segmentation or that their consumer segmentation is a bit, say, what's the gender, what's the age range and the income level. So I still think that some companies out there have not put enough thinking and resources when it comes to really understanding their customer and addressing their needs accordingly.
But something recent that I discovered as well, which is I think quite interesting. More and more people are using TikTok these days, right? So there was a time when there was Facebook, there was a time when there was Instagram and so on, and now there's TikTok. It's virtually impossible to understand from a company who is consuming your content if you post on Tik Tok. Tik Tok doesn't have or doesn't let other marketing agencies actually understand, create that data, create that insight and help companies spend their marketing dollars where they should be. So it's interesting as the social media, the world of social, the landscape changes and, and gravitates a bit more towards TikTok these days. TikTok is actually a bit like a black box for good or, or a bad reason.
Simon Blosse: But why is that the case? Like, I am curious and forgive my ignorance, but like, why don't TikTok not let that?
Julien Kervella: I think we should discuss with, the CEO of TikTok and, uh,
Simon Blosse: That's their decision, right?
Julien Kervella: It is their decision.
Simon Blosse: To make it a black box.
Julien Kervella: Correct.
Simon Blosse: It's very different to the other social media platforms, right?
Julien Kervella: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So you've got a few well known social media platforms that analyze what's happening. For example, the sentiment that people have towards your brand, TikTok doesn't allow you to do that today.
So as a brand, how do you find your right audience, whatever that is, beyond consumer segments and target them with the right marketing message? It's not that easy as TikTok gets more and more important.
Loic Le Fouest: Yeah, that's interesting. There's the social media element that you're talking about. I'm also regularly surprised when I look inside the organizations in terms of how they manage their customer data, the amount of silos of customer data points captured in different systems, in different parts of the business, and how little yet centralization of that data exists in order to then be able to target more effectively because you understand that customer journey end to end, whether that's the outdated systems or more broadly, the organization still thinking that each function owns a different part of the experience and that they don't need to come together and look at it end to end. So culturally, the customer first thinking still not being something that's enabled with the organization, a huge problem beyond the social media. So those two lenses feel like immediate steps that organizations have to get right in order to thrive. It sounds if we're saying, you know, the world where AI continues to increase the amount of data available, the amount of personalization that you can embed will continue to increase, then getting those foundational elements of splitting your customer segments the right way, not by demographics, but by understanding their behaviours, their sentiment throughout the journey and having the data available end to end will become a necessity, right?
A real, real foundation. I don't know, Simon, if you've seen any other challenges in your recent work?
Simon Blosse: Well, I think the key thing is we have seen a trend of focus on customer, but it has been very, dare I say, surface level. And I think what I'd love to sort of explore a little bit more in the second part of our conversation today is how do you make sure that your business itself is actually aligning to what we all recognize, those listening to this and ourselves in this room is important, which is getting customers at the heart of the way your business operates and the experiences they have being supported. But we've been talking about this for a long time in terms of years, in terms of the last 10 years, you know, folks, but what are companies still doing wrong in terms of getting their focus on CX or what do you see Julien that needs to happen differently to make it possible for the strategies and the way that businesses are thinking is aligned to customers and their experiences more.
Aligning CX strategy: What companies are still getting wrong
Julien Kervella: Yeah, there's a few things that I could add here. It's a good question, it's a difficult one as well to address. I would like to start with a definition. How do we define customer experience? I was extremely surprised a year ago, I attended a conference, it was all about customer experience and I was like super happy to be there and listen to experts in the field and I realized that 90 percent of the conversations were actually around call centers and customer support. And that's right, that's part of it, but it's massively incomplete. The way I define customer experience is the relationship a brand has at every touchpoint possible with any consumer, and that is valid pre purchase, and that's also a valid post purchase. So in theory, it touches every part of your organization.
So going back to what Loic was saying before, when we think about a big challenge that experts, CX experts face today in large corporations, this ability to run cross functional initiatives and, transform the company accordingly because it's very easy to find a marketing silo and then a product silo and then a supply silo and how do you manage to keep it all together and have a real impact at the consumer level That's point number one. Point number two is the actual importance of CX from a CEO standpoint.
Julien Kervella: The champions of CX in large companies sometimes are just director level, either working for a CPO or a CMO. I don't see enough CXOs out there. And I think, the customer experience as a topic as a even more important topic these days because of the fragmentation of the channels because of the varieties of ways you interact with the consumer. The CXO agenda should be part of the CEO mandate, not just a program, a transformation program that is run, no offense, but at the director level because that person will struggle unless he or she has the right level of support.
Simon Blosse: But why do you think that is the case? Cause it is an absolutely common thing to see is a lack of the right buy in at the C level to customer experience being a core reason for the business to exist and needing focus.
Julien Kervella: There's a part of it that has to do with education and educating CEOs and investors about the benefit of CX. Another part of it is measuring impact, which is sometimes very hard to do. How do you measure how a consumer journey is good or not so good across touch points with a specific consumer segment, provided you have a consumer segment.
For some companies it's very hard also to implement CSAT or NPS at the journey level. You can implement it on part of a journey but sometimes it's just incomplete or even broken. And sometimes for some companies it's easier to have a chief marketing officer or a chief product officer and then ask that person as part of his or her priorities to run an Customer experience project. But I think that's the wrong length. I think the CPO should embrace his CX or the CMO and take it at his own level as one of his top three priorities, especially for consumer goods, consumer brands, I would say.
Simon Blosse: And I can imagine there's a number of folks potentially listening to this who would be sitting there going, this is exactly the problem we have. How do I communicate to my leadership team? I have got to get this message across. I've got to give the reasons why, what would you recommend to them to think about, how would you structure that like approach? Because that is a challenge. We've seen it. And I imagine a number of people are feeling it. What would you recommend to them to sort of use as a reasoning but equally, how would you go about that?
Julien Kervella: I mean, I, I have my own personal experience in a big tech company that I used to work for, but I can tell you that creating a CX organization that reports directly to the CEO, making it as big as it is needed with the right amount of talent, the right amount of structure system process is not a six month program. It's a three, four, five years program. And for that to happen, you need to have the support of C Level, the leadership team, obviously the CEO, you've got to create your own cloud, if I could say, that's convince people. The transformation program has been sort of well identified. You have a few frameworks out there that you can use to transform a company and align it with what will be required from a CX standpoint to run a true CX organization, if you want. But you need muscle, you need people that are humble, and ambitious, that have grit. You need the right level of stakeholder again. I mean, I've, again and again, I've seen people being tasked with a transformation program, including CX, that are reporting to a CMO or a CPO that I would say between two glasses of wine, I've been asked to do it, therefore I do it. But I'm going to still keep doing what I've been doing for the last 20 years the same way. I think something very difficult for CX is, is the holistic nature of CX and the transformation program going back to that. So if you don't have a leadership team that embraces it, it's going to be hard.
Simon Blosse: I mean, I remember the days when, and maybe they are still out there, but the chief digital officer became a big thing to sort of land digital capabilities within a company and then became phased out being considered as part of every C level person's responsibility.
In the context of customer being front and center in front of mind, of course, that's where we play in terms of trying to make sure that companies understand that. Do you see a similar trend there or is it still very early days in terms of actually having to establish that customer focus within the C level in the right education?
Julien Kervella: I've seen successful companies questioning the need for a CX, for example, they say we've been successful forever. We're doing fine today. The problem or the challenges that we're facing are just temporary. We'll go back to our feet very soon. Why should we change? So it's just this attitude to change that is really, really hard to manage.
So you can, if you want to be a good chief digital officer in an organization that is not used to digital, you've got to lay out a few years ahead of you of program. You've got to convince people, create allies, really, that will buy into what you want to do and support you as much as possible. And over time, create change, win by win. That's the only way for me. So don't expect a big bang and saying, Oh, the CEO will give me 3000 people tomorrow and I'll run the show. That's not going to happen like that, takes time. I think some companies have wonderful CXOs. There's a lot of brilliant CXOs out there, but there's also some companies that are a bit behind the curve and they need to understand that it takes time to operate such a fundamental change that may impact your DNA.
Loic Le Fouest: Yeah, that's really interesting the emphasis you put on how unaware some organizations and leadership teams seem to be on how quickly they'll get the benefits from deciding to be a bit more customer first in their thinking and assuming that it's a matter of sometimes a couple of months, six, 12 months, we'll have a better customer experience. I've seen that a lot, which is not healthy, actually. It ends up creating more case studies of where CX has, has failed, but that's, actually, because they weren't approaching it at all the right way.
And you're right, you know, there's a spectrum at which organizations can go down the approach of, you know, creating a CX organization and having that at the core of the organization. There's other examples where, you know, CX becomes embedded across the entire organization and you've seen very successful ones over the last, you know, couple of years that CX is really into the core of everyone's responsibility. You might still have that central sponsor and there's the drawbacks of having it maybe sitting within one of the functions or having it at the CEO or having a CXO leader.
But finding that balance of how much do you make it, you know, everyone's responsibility within the organization, because we know when all of the employees are engaged and making that happen, we've seen great results versus really looking at the op model that's going to enable that.
From customer service to customer success
One of the examples, positive trends to show that there is some progress being made. It's not all doom and gloom. I've noticed a lot of organizations rethinking, you know, you mentioned call centers and customer service. That isn't CX. It's a function within a business, it's part of the customer experience to sometimes have to go and get support. But it's always been actually a bad way to think about it because it was always very reactive. It's let's wait for the customer to have a problem and let's offer service to them. So you already set off to the bad start. A lot of organizations now are talking less about customer service, but more about customer success. And having teams of people thinking about where might the experience go wrong? How might I be able to help the customer realize the value from my brand, service, products, et cetera. I think that's a positive change that is happening now across a lot of organizations where they can tie down the efforts to metrics, like you were saying, Julien, being able to show that the amount of customers reaching out for support is going down and being able to see the impact on their P and L that there's less time wasted on trying to solve issues because proactively they were avoided in the first place. So I think there are some of those examples where organizations are changing, but there's a lot of work ahead of us.
Simon Blosse: Yeah. And I think that's the key. It's interesting when you think like, why is it important? Why have we spent this time today talking about it? Why do we focus so much on it as individuals and as a business, but equally, why should businesses focus on customer experience?
A few takeaways from each of you, like why you think that is necessary and what it drives?
Julien Kervella: I mean, obviously a brand that doesn't listen to its customers is bound to die sooner or later, right? A brand who doesn't understand how to leave a customer satisfied will also face the same outcome. So it's just like forgetting how to breathe in my opinion, you really need to be close to your consumers already. You, you lose touch
Simon Blosse: But it is an interesting point, sorry to interrupt you, but just on that point of no like customers and reporting, it is an interesting recent addition to a lot of businesses, dare I say it, like even some of the retailers I've worked with where like, Oh yeah, we should actually start tracking actual customers rather than spend, by like a total. It's just something I think is an interesting call out is making sure that actually at the reporting level, there is some consideration for customers and the metrics that are associated with that seems like such a basic, but it's often overlooked because you can end up, if you look at a standard and you balance it, it doesn't actually talk about customers, just talks about how much money is being brought into the business and whether that's come from a hundred customers, a million customers, 2 million tends to be almost avoided. And especially even when you're dealing with more service orientation, having a custom account and a view of that and happiness and CSATs and all that, sometimes that reporting level is completely avoided and can drive a different mentality if you get that into the reports, I would say.
Julien Kervella: Yeah, it goes back to, well, if you have an NPS program, you're already lucky. If you have a complete CSAT program, great. But how do you relate that in terms of financial metric? The gap is sometimes very hard to overcome, really. And that's one of the problems. I think CX, for example, has suffered a little bit over the last couple of years, in my opinion, in terms of how important it is within the leadership team because of AI, strangely enough. I think AI should be a wonderful booster to create amazing customer experiences. But what's happened sometimes is that CX could be perceived as a support function, and then we reduce the cost of a support function to leave a little bit of room or resources to run AI programs and fiddle a little bit with AI, experiment with AI. So I'm concerned that some companies haven't placed their bet in the right way, decreasing the importance of CX as a topic, as a top priority topic for a company. Potentially, particularly because it's not easy to relate it with direct sales and replace that topic with, let's experiment on Gen AI and see how much it costs and what we can do with it. Because instead of having people talking to consumers, we'll have a bot talking to consumers. And I think that's the wrong approach.
Loic Le Fouest: Yeah, that's interesting. My two cents would be, if you look out today, either through the work we've done, Simon, for example, helping our clients rank themselves on a maturity matrix when it comes to CX, where a lot of organizations on a five point scale will rank on, you know, the one, two, and three out of five.
If you look at the Gartner surveys out there that come out year on year, very similar. So a lot of organizations have a fair bit of that journey ahead of them. Hopefully everyone still feels like there is time to get involved. It's not like CX is going to go anywhere. It wasn't a trend that, you know, joined us for a few years and won't be important. So it is still absolutely the right time. And like we said, with Gen AI sometimes taking away the attention on it, actually what you want to see is them being very complimentary in terms of what you can do and maybe accelerate and help catch up the position where you're on.
If I think back to a few years now, CX as a discipline was, was not born that long ago. Some of the key metrics we discussed today, NPS, for example, have only been around for 20 or so years, right? So a lot of the last 10 years have been about starting this thinking. What does customer centric mean? Digital transformation came and absolutely took us by a raft, accelerated during COVID. And actually we talked maybe a bit less about CX, more about digital, but it was hand in hand. It was all about engaging customers in, and sometimes the only way we could, for some reason, we forgot that that was also a customer experience and banded under digital transformation. It was actually about being able to create great experiences for customers in a digital way.
We're in an era now where CX is going to increasingly become a differentiator for organizations where hyper personalization and Gen AI are all going to feed into that. And I'm hopeful that one of the next big chapters for CX, which we've only kind of touched on early here, but there's a few themes that have come out, are the words of sustainability. Will that be from an environmental perspective? How does that fit into the customer experience? Or from a wider social and wellbeing perspective. How does that have to feed into. More and more those will become again, expectations five years ahead from now, whereas now we're just starting to report on these more actively and pick up on all of the shifting consumer trends.
That's the next set of focus areas. I think for a lot of CXOs out there.
Simon Blosse: I do think the key shift here and the reason actually why we thought it was helpful to talk about this today is, is that movement from, Oh, how do we make sure our customers are having a good experience and how to make sure they're engaging well to being, how do we drive our business strategically with customers at the forefront of the decisions we're making?
We have seen that evolution from customer journeys being like touch points to then actually that involves seven different departments that all have to think more customer oriented. Let's get that working to a customer centric mindset, as you said, Loic.
I think it is interesting when you differentiate between getting your CX right to actually driving a CX strategy within your business. And one of the things that we at Clarasys are really trying to orientate ourselves around and make sure that our clients are comfortable with working with us on is how to land the right strategic focus on CX and is that as a key drive. So, I mean, just to try and bring today's great conversation to that kind of point of reference that we started with, Julien, are there particular differences when you're thinking about CX from a strategy perspective that you think it's worth us reflecting on versus maybe the more general experience considerations, or are they the same?
CX strategy vs general customer experience
Julien Kervella: Well, I mean, strategy is just a tool or a skill set. So you've got customer experience, you've got the implementation of it, you've got the management of it, and you also have a bit upstream how you want to think about it in the way it will impact your brand, in the way it will impact your mission statement, your values. I think it's very important to always start with a little bit of thinking before jumping into a transformation program or implementing or integrating whatever IT tool that will help you improve your CX overall, just making sure that you're doing it for the right purpose. And I think that's something that also Clarasys is trying to do again and again is to make sure that the foundations are properly laid out before the beginning of a project to discuss with the champion and not necessarily target the director program and say, okay, so is this really what we're trying to do? Is that the reason why? For half an hour, just ask a few why's and if the answer is not satisfactory enough, just push back gently and try to put that program back into its own rails, I would say, before implementing.
Simon Blosse: Wonderful. Anything further there, Loic?
Loic Le Fouest: Yeah. Building on that, Julien, I'd say that the first thing for me is recognizing CX and strategy can be put side by side in a sentence. I think often it's, let's figure out our business strategy and CX is an afterthought of how do we level up the experience, become more omni channel or improve, you know, this element of our experience so there's less people having to contact us. So it's very reactive. Let's just make sure it's works all right.
CX as a strategic enabler
Actually, CX, like you said, can be an enabler to strategy if you think of them side by side and really asking yourself the question of how are you leveraging customer experience when it comes to, you know, how can you create more value for customers that will materialize itself into a business benefit and not just seeing it as an afterthought that a team, often with less power, less clout, less spending, power for them to deliver, when actually it can be one of your biggest differentiators at a strategic level.
Julien Kervella: But I mean, I would be even more aggressive on that, I would say a good strategy needs to have a consumer pillar or even more put consumer at the center. So in my books, any strategy is a CX strategy and it's really, really important, and to go back to those basics again, if you forget that you need to serve a customer, a consumer, a person, an employee, you're going to go off track, you're going to diverge. And making sure that for every program that you launch, you've got a reason why and the benefit attached to it is very important. It can be a half an hour conversation or it could be a two month project. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it's just making sure that whatever you execute will benefit the consumer and create value.
CX strategy is part of the growth strategy. So it's helping you generate more revenue, but it's also helping you protect your revenue, right? Let's not forget about revenue protection as well.
Simon Blosse: And with that, I think that's a great quote to remember, right? Any strategy is a CX strategy, one that should have customers, consumers at the heart of it.
And hopefully you found this conversation as interesting as I have today and has opened your eyes to a few different perspectives on both what the future trends are, what the demands are when it comes to driving CX transformation and ultimately CX strategy. Please do reach out to us at www.clarasys.com with any questions, thoughts, comments. We'd be delighted to talk more with you.
Show notes
Guest bio: Julien has built a 20yrs-career starting by developing a practice for a global IT consulting firm. He then moved on to work for the largest consumer electronics company, where he became corporate director and group leader, reporting to the C-suite on corporate strategy and CX strategy. He recently founded an advisory firm (https://mangosteen.ltd) supporting late stage start-ups, PE-backed companies and mid-to-large corporations with growth strategies. He is a proud member of Clarasys' extended family.
Follow Simon on LinkedIn here.
Follow Loic on LinkedIn here.
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Contact us at podcast@clarasys.com
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