The (Not So) Hidden Cost of Building Your Experience Program Internally

When you start to look at the financial investment of that salary to give up a day or two, you start to look at the recruiting effort that goes into that. The time, I mean, it really starts to snowball and start to add up really fast.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Counter Experience podcast. And in this episode we dive into the not so hidden cost of building your experience program internally. And my co host, Kerry and I are both highly qualified to walk you through this because we've both built systems at previous companies by stitching together a bunch of different software. And yes, we've suffered through using manual Excel sheets and yes, the data was delayed. You name the mistakes, we've probably made them. But here's the thing. Most companies underestimate the true cost of building a program internally. In this episode, we dive into everything you should consider before making the leap to building internally. So without further ado, let's get to it. Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode. And today we're talking about a really interesting topic that I'm pretty sure we've all been here at one point or another, so it should be super relevant. It is the not so hidden cost of building your experience program internally. And what I mean by that is stitching together program without a kind of all encompassing software. We're talking Excel, we're talking Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, you name it, tableau, it's probably in there. I'm here as always with my co host, Kerry T self. How you doing, Kerry?

I'm doing great. Hello everybody.

Let's kick it off. Kerry, so what do you think the ultimate cost of building your program internally is? If we can put a number on that thing.

I'm not gonna. Wow, an actual number. I wasn't prepared to do math that quickly. You know, it's. I think it's too hard to equate the cost of it. If you want me to be an honest answer, I think what I would tell you is, and it's funny, you know, we were talking about this a little while ago and we building up for this podcast. I was there, you know, I was a program owner who was trying to piece it together. I was the champion who was asked to improve the experience of a customer or all of our customers, but wasn't really given the right tools or resources to do so. And what I found was you might have saved X amount of dollars by not hiring or going out and getting a great company to help you out with it. But in turn, the cost was people. The cost was time. The cost was money, without a doubt. Then there was this sum of all that, which meant you weren't really improving the customer experience. You might be improving the way you report, but that's all you were really doing, was collecting data and hopefully getting it to the people. But were you really taking action on that? So I think that's the ultimate cost, is if you don't invest, if you don't build out or have the right resources and tools. I think the ultimate cost is you're not doing what your main mission is, is to improve the customer experience.

Yeah. And I think we touched on this on a previous episode where literally you become these, like software developers or these integration experts instead of focusing on what you're really there to do, which is serve the customer. And I've, I've also been there. So you said you were there. You were champion stitching this stuff together. I've also been there at CIT bank, we stitched together Marketo, Salesforce, Tableau. I got the tech team involved. I think they had over 15 hours in this thing. I had an analyst that was completely dedicated to me and producing these reports. I was snapping dashboards from tableau, dashboards that were already a day behind because that's the way tableau works. You get a day lag on that, that table data. So not only that, I was snapping day late data, putting them in a PowerPoint, reporting to management three days later, like it was insane. And what ended up happening, exactly what you're saying is like, I spent more time trying to fix the issues with the system or improve or optimize the actual system to try to get it to real time. I was smart enough to know that this wasn't really the best way to do it. Like, this data is already stale. How do I get it real time? So I started investigating things outside of Tableau anyways. But it really became an issue of I was spending way, way, way too much time getting the systems right and not necessarily focusing on the feedback coming in and following up with that feedback immediately. And it sounds like you've had a similar experience, Carrie. So a lot of Excel sheets in your past life, maybe?

Well, you threw out some tools that I would have been blessed to have in my first go around at this. But yeah, you know, when we talk about a program and a real healthy program, you know, we always talk about that listening phase, then we talk about that measure phase where we take that data and measurement, then we actually grow on that.

Right?

We act on that and we grow on that. And it's funny, because what you're saying is exactly where we were. We were so stuck in this middle measure phase because that's where I had to get it right. Because if data's wrong or it's not relevant or in the moment, it's yesterday, literally. And we've already done that. We got to move on. So, yeah, we were using Excel and pivot tables, and my communication tool was just email. I mean, we use Outlook. And then on top of that, PowerPoint, you said something funny. The snapshot, that's literally what our dashboards were. You couldn't push numbers. You couldn't change variables in there. It wasn't being updated. You know, if. If. If Marielle, who sat next to me, was not updating that, that Excel and moving it into PowerPoint, it didn't happen. You know, if she was on vacation, our whole program stalled. As crazy as it sounds, there's still a lot of companies that are piecing it together that way. So, yeah, I completely get where you're at.

And I think the appeal is very tempting, right? Because just thinking back to my previous history, right, Like, I was pretty much. I got a demo of a couple systems, and I was like, I can build this. Like, no problem. I can do this. Like, it's just in my head, I instantly went to, all right, that's just Marketo, Tableau, Salesforce tying in the cases and Salesforce stitching it all together with integrations. And I. I don't know if it was, like, hubris or what, but I think it's way more complex. These systems are way more complex than you can ever, ever imagine. And it's not only that, like, they have entire dedicated teams fixing these issues that you're going to run into, because issues are the main thing I think that I ran into, because things break, integrations don't work properly. Things come at you that are unexpected, and again, it becomes like, you're a firefighter. You put out fires on this and put fires out on that, and you really. It gets so complex that you said something interesting to Carol. Throw back at you where there's a learning curve. And like you said, Marielle, if she was out, you're pretty much left hanging out to dry for a while until she gets back. Like, these systems are so complex, and there's so many, like, oh, well, this doesn't work because of this little weird tweak over here you have to do. There's, like, this tribal knowledge that kind of accumulates in these programs. How do companies like that Manage like a Marielle just not coming to work for two weeks because she's on vacation. How would you, how did you deal with that?

Well, you're blessed if you can get a second person sure to be aware of that. So that usually becomes the person she reports into. Right. Me as that champion. So it meant me putting, you know, whatever I had to do on hold and fill that gap if that was the case. But I don't think you can manage that really well when you're, when everything. You know, I always say if you're, if you're depending on that one person to push the button to make that happen, when that person's not there, someone needs to know how to push that button. And I'm making it real simple. It's not simple. You know, and then you said the dreaded update. God forbid you had a region or a location or you have someone in the field that changes. These are things that are happening in our business constantly. I don't care if you're 50 people or 50,000 people, changes are coming at you. If you're a healthy business, changes are coming, right? You're growing, people are moving in and out, people are getting promoted. What about Marielle? Let's go back to her. What happens if she wants to get promoted or grow? You know, now you have to create a whole succession plan to bring someone else in just to do this piece. And, and you know, when you start to look at the financial investment of that salary to give up a day or two, you start to look at the recruiting effort that goes into that. The time, I mean, it really starts to snowball and start to add up really fast. And then with the caveat or the end result, you're still looking at not dynamic data. That is probably like you said, I mean, you got a couple of days, man, I applaud you. We were sometimes a week out because we had to make sure systems updated and you know, just so I could see. So the consequences or the return on that, thinking you're saving a few dollars by not making an investment. But I think what's important here, and I think this is where companies get it, the aha moment is when you start to have vision, looking forward. It's the same thing with your actual program. Why are we doing this? We're doing this to create change moving forward, not to report on what's already happened. But if we are truly going to make impactful change long term and grow with that information, you have to have someone that or a lot of people, an organization that's looking forward and has that vision and a small investment now will definitely pay off. As you grow through that, you'll be able to see that return very quickly.

Yeah, and I think that's, that's so true, man. Because like you think that it's cheaper and as you start to tack in all these weird costs, like spending 15 hours of text time using the analyst pretty much every day for like four hours. I'll never forget I was in a meeting with my CEO at that previous company and the question kept coming up which was like, so what? So what? I see a bunch of charts that have a bunch of pretty NPS scores and like all these things. And he kept asking which he was on freaking point. Which was so what? What does this tell me? And I'll never forget I walked back to the analyst desk after that meeting. I was like, all right, so we need to like figure this out. And I can already see the path ahead of us. It's going to be like four days of just tableau working and data manipulation and because I knew how to get there, but I knew that the task was just so monumental that it would take me three to four days of manual work just to answer that simple question of so what? Show me something that is actionable for my business. And I think again, plug complete ad for CGA here. But I think that's really the benefit of these systems. And CG allows you to see that so what in real time by using those like monetized drivers and showing revenue contribution on drivers. There's other companies out there that may be doing this that I'm not aware of. But if there are, I think that's really something to key into is like you can answer that so what? And go back to that CEO in real time and even slice it in a meeting at that same spot, which I just couldn't do. And sure, maybe people are better at that stuff than me, but I still think that if you're dealing with the tools at the time it was Marketo, Salesforce, Tableau, which are pretty high end tools. There's not a ton of easy ways around that you have to do some manipulation of that data to get there. I'm just kind of curious, Kerry, did you have a similar scenario where you had like a meeting pre automated system where something like that came up?

You know, when you first come into this situation, they've identified you as that champion. They say, okay, this is what we need. So sometimes a lot of these decisions come along more for compliance or reporting purposes. And I think sometimes they lose the vision of, all right, now that you have the data, or we can report on the data. You said the word actionable, which is so key. And I think operators appreciate that if they can see the return on that action. Right? And I was in a scenario where, yeah, I can report on this. I could spend two or three days and we can come up with some beautiful looking reports, but what are we going to do with them is, you know, what's the. So what? And I love that terminology. So I remember sitting there and I remember walking into my executive team. I won't forget this, my first year in the company and I walked in, I said, hey, I was really. I have this. It's not earth shattering, but I think it would help us. I want to do. And I basically called it a report card. I wanted to open up a report card. And in there I wanted to show what is our nps, what is our average ticket sale, what is like pull, pull from every department, Turnover, throw turnover in there and everything. And I remember looking across the table, there were two looks on everyone's face. My CEO is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the operations team is like, yeah, that's what we want. But there was this other side of the table that had this look of fear on their face. And I'm not lying to you, this is what someone said. I won't tell you who it was, but this was the comment. I think that's too dynamic, that's too sophisticated for what we need. And I think what this did for me, it was almost like an epiphany. It immediately showed me that there's people in our industries that are about moving forward, growing and changing. Let's be transparent and let's do something with that. And there's this other group and I talk about fear all the time. I think fear is what cripples us. Fear of change, fear of extra work, fear of not knowing. And that person who made that comment, I don't think they were afraid of the report card or the data because ironically, they were in finance. They make a living off of metrics and data, right? But I think the fear was what do we do with that data when it comes through? And I think that was the crippling thing. So, yeah, part of it's the spend or the investment, but I also think part of it is like, this is going to show us a lot of things and we're going to have to do something about it. And so I think that was that moment that I stood there and go, okay, I have to spoon feed him, him and her. But these people are going to be my champions. They're going to keep asking me every day, where are we with that? What are we going to do about that? And I think that's where the so what moment for me was. Was like, okay, I hear you. But now I need help in a tool to minimize collecting the data so I can focus on the so what, you know, shift that.

And it's really hard, too, because I almost feel like there's one additional group in that scenario that are the people that are going to build the tool that are instantly resistors, right? Where you're like, all right, we need to do this. And it's important because of that. And the CEO is on board. And the first conversation you have with them, you're excited, you say, hey, we're build this tool. It's going to be amazing. And the first thing they do is like, well, that's not going to work. We can't do that because of that. Blah, blah, blah, blah. They resist everything because they just know how much a mountain of work is going to drop on their desk because of this new project. And I think that's. That's also super important to mention where it may not have happened in that meeting, Carrie. But, you know, just like I do, there was that group of people at your company because the same thing in mind that just knew how much manual work this was going to create. And fatigue's a real thing, too. So, like, the analyst that I was working with completely got fatigued on the project because it was every day, multiple hours a day, just, like, trying to slice the data. Trying to slice the data, different things every day. And he eventually kind of just got reassigned because it was. It was too much. Like, I think he was like, all right, I'm out. Like, this is not working. But here I am. I had the CEO buy in. I was reporting every week. So the manual load on employees, when you onboard this manual internal system that you're building yourself is something worth mentioning, too. But, like, like you said to the CFO has that fear. The CEO may be all for it, which is great. I mean, it's fantastic. You have the CEO involved. That's. That's really important. I did, too. And I think that's the only reason this thing survived, because of the amount of sheer man hours that went into this thing. I think if the CEO wasn't involved, everybody would have laughed at me.

And it's funny you said fatigue, too, because I think I Wouldn't even brought that up. But you're right. I mean, I can remember specific moments of coming back to my team and saying, all right, guys, we need to look at it this way now instead of this way, I need to very quickly pivot. And that wasn't an Excel joke. That wasn't like a pivot table joke, but literally we need to pivot. And you know, and I just remember, like, being stuck on one vlookup or not being able to get something to function right. And you saw the fatigue like we want. They want to do right for you. And usually when you have the right people in place, they really want to deliver. But fatigue is a slow thing that builds over time. And if Tuesday was our reporting day is what we called it, and that's the day we dedicated to it, and yes, we dedicated an entire day, like three of us of breaking off and investing in this to have a final product ready to go by Wednesday morning. A lot of people, a lot of effort, but it is fatigue. And I noticed the lack of excitement. People started coming in later on Tuesday. People started to. I mean, you start to dread it a little bit more. And yeah, the cost of that is, you know, how do you. And again, it's fear, it's workload. You know, like, instead of celebrating opening a new location or adding a new region, it was like, how much work is going to come with that? You know, and if you don't set yourself up, if you don't prepare a program and a system that can absorb that easily. Yeah, fatigue is a big part of that, for sure.

This episode of the Account Experience podcast is sponsored by CustomerGage, the leading B2B account experience software that ties revenue to your experience data in real time to help you make better account centric decisions that drive revenue growth. Quick question. What do you guys think is the number one reason B2B experience programs fail? Believe it or not, it's lack of C suite buy. In Customer Gauge's research with mit, they found the quickest way to align yourselves with the C suite is to actually align with what they care about most, which is revenue. That's why CustomerGage is literally built from the ground up to maximize and track the revenue contribution from your Experience Pro program in real time. Companies like dhl, Anheuser Busch, Heineken, uh, yeah, we get a good amount of FreeBear, OneLogin, Iron Mountain, H&R Block, SuperOffice and SugarCRM are already using Customer Gauge to maximize their growth by tying their programs to revenue and with over $10 billion worth of account revenue actively being managed in Customer Gauge. Yeah, that's billion. With a B, they're the leader in the space. But maybe even more interesting, they found that once you get alignment with that C suite, the needs of these B2B practitioners or the program champions are evolving too. In such a complex account environment, it can be really tough to measure and act on feedback quickly across multiple departments, divisions, or even locations. Luckily, Customer Gauge has you covered there as well with account native features that easily help you not only measure the feedback from multiple stakeholders in an account, but but act on that feedback in real time. Because at the end of the day, if you're not empowering your frontline staff with the right insights to address customer issues, you're going to be dealing with a churn issue. It's not a matter of if, it's really a matter of when. Customer Gauge helps you distribute this experience data across your entire organization, regardless of department, regardless of location, regardless of division, all in real time. No manual spreadsheets or a team of analysts are needed. Customer Gauge's mission is to help B2B companies harness the power of account centric growth to drive meaningful change in their businesses. And that's a powerful thing. If you want to see Customer Gauge in action, go ahead and check out CustomerGage.com and get a demo of account experience today. You won't regret it. And it's worth saying too, that the system I made. I don't know about yours, Kerry, but my system, which I spent eight months on just developing, was not even close to functioning at the levels that these systems out there now are. And that's not to say that, you know, some systems out there are better than others. I mean, this one was probably at the low end, regardless of what system it is. Like, even the low end systems right now, this was at the low end because my data was delayed. The closed loop system was built into Salesforce, which is not so great. I had to build the surveys myself. I had no drivers built in, so I was doing manual, literally excel analysis. Everything that I could have done wrong, I did wrong. And there was no way out. Like I didn't have the tech to bring me from point A to point B. And that's when I realized that it was just never number one. It wasn't worth it, but it was never going to work properly. So that's when we started looking for a tool.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I don't care how hard we worked or how proud we were of what we put out, it was always, I think, time delayed for sure. There was always a tinge. I don't think we've talked about this either, but there was also a tinge of mistrust on the data. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, if I was out running for office and I was out collecting the ballots, would you trust that I really won? You know, and I think it was a bit of that too. Like, you know, I was overseeing this program where I was about improving the customer experience and then I'm the guy who's taking the data and presenting it. I think there was always that, that, that, that hint of, well, how do we know this is real? Can you show it to me? So I found myself doing some of that too, having to prove those numbers and, and then God forbid I had to hand this off to someone in the field. I would have to explain they couldn't use it dynamically, they couldn't drill down and break it out. That consisted of more time to do it. So it became a very much of a, almost a dead end in some ways that took more manual labor to make, get more adoption on the program and the tool. And I think, you know, that was, I think, a big thing. I was like, this is another reason why if someone else is doing that for you, not only are they motivated to do it right, but there's a trust factor because they're like your filter. They're going to collect that data. They're the ones that are going to work on it. They're the ones that have their reputation on the line and there's no win or lose if they show you good data. Well, it's all good data if it's clean, right? If it's right. But if it's positive, negative growth or decline, they rather just show you the truth. So I think that was an important step too. We got away from that mistrust a little bit by being able to tag someone else's name on there and say, look, this is a reputable company. This is the other companies they work for and there's some truth behind this. This is really who we are. Now what are we going to do?

Yeah, that's really important. And speaking of trust, like maintaining the customer's trust as well in your program. So I don't know if this happened to you, but again, in the process of stitching all these things together, so I was using Marketo to send the survey invite and then survey gizmo to actually collect the data or survey monkey is like the same thing. It's just basically a lower tier of survey monkey. But go ahead. Gary, you want to say something?

No, no, go ahead. I'm laughing because I'm with you. I'm stitching mine together also.

Oh my God. And then. So what actually happened this one time we sent out the email. Everything was going perfectly right. So the email was great from our CEO. I did that piece properly. I think on the marketing side, I had it from the CEO. We had a good message, we had a good open rate. Click right. But I'm guessing everybody can see where this is going. They hit the survey and the survey was broken, so it wouldn't let them take the survey. I think one of the buttons to hit next was broke. So we got the first question and then it like just stalled out and we got no responses. We he sent it to like it was like 10,000 people. It was a good amount of people. So. And we checked it too. That was the other thing is like we double checked it and it still didn't work. So there's something to be said about maintaining the customer's trust. If you send out that email and say, hey, we love your feedback, we need it now. Take time out of your day. And if you ask them to take time out of their day and they land on a broken survey, they're not going to take it again. Probably there's a huge mistrust of like, oh, here we go again. Like there's another survey. It's gonna waste my time. That's super, super important. And the benefit of using again a system or a built in software that is doing this for a living. You don't necessarily have to worry about that type of stuff going wrong. We're built on some of the best tech in the world. Right. So again, ad for cg. Sorry guys, but I think that's super important. You don't want to erode that trust in the customer. Carey, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's almost an immediate. It's like going from walking to light speed. When you add that software solution in there, that adds trust. And I'm glad you talked about the customer client experience. It's ironic. Customer Gauge is a company that does this and we use our own tool to do it, but that's how we believe in it. That's where it comes from. We're constantly reshaping it to make sure and looking at that like, what more can we do and what more can we do to enhance this? But it's. Yeah, talk about fatigue of your team. What about fatigue of your customer? I think you spoke to that, right? If you run them once, the chance of you winning them back, I mean, that's a big ask.

Yep.

And it's so valuable to have a system that. That works completely. To have a full blown system that works completely.

Yeah. The other side of the is earning trust. Right. So just one more point on this is I think you actually had an example when you were a customer of using a real time system in an airport with like a Big Mac or. No, it was like a Whopper or something at Burger King. And you guys got the feedback, he was unhappy. And you actually like got back to the person in time to see him at his gate before he went on that flight. That was a crazy story. I mean, that's.

And when you talk about what I was doing before, I mean, we were a concessionary areas, we did airports, we did travel plazas. So think of anyone, anyone that's listening right now. Think about hopping in your car or flying out somewhere. Your minutes are precious, Right. You're moving pretty quick and you don't want food to be something that ruins or slows or would you. Can you imagine missing a plane because you were grabbing a sandwich? I mean, good God, you know, that's just not even smart. So having a system that could get feedback quickly and being able to take action on that is so vital. And so you know that moment where that person is literally on their plane, not even getting on. If I'm not mistaken, they crossed the Fleshold, they sat down, opened their bag and they were pissed. Right. Because that's. I would be pissed too. Right. They're leaving this message, they're typing it out. Sent the manager at that restaurant close to that gate saw it and goes, well, there's only one flight leaving. Let me run over there. I have the person's name and the woman at the gates, like, what's going on? You have someone on your plane that didn't get the right thing. Here it is. And they're like, what? Look in there if you want. I work right there. I've got my employee badge on, whatever. And literally walked it over and dropped it at them. Goes here. And the person's like. And everyone's looking at them like, who are you? That kind of service. And so they're excited. They left on the feedback. Yeah, a letter that went to the airport. You know, the person I think who got it got. Got like honorary mention for the month. I mean, all this thing escalated over just being able to have a system you can trust. That was quick. And do you think that person's gonna fill out a survey now every time?

Oh, my gosh.

They trust the system. Without a doubt. You think that manager's not built in that it can change their business? Without a doubt, you know, so, yeah, definitely, I think.

And that's so interesting too, where it can have the exact opposite effect if you do it the right way. It's like you. Again, what we set out to do is create these lifelong brand advocates. And that's. I love that story because it's such a good example of, like, I mean, how much time did that take out of that manager's day? Like, maybe two minutes. Two minutes, probably. Right. It was literally the system in real time getting that feedback and just him knowing that he could still affect the situation, reacting in real time. If I did that at my CIT bank days with my program, I would have been four days later, like, here's your. Here's your moldy whopper. It's just. It doesn't have that same effect. Right. Like, it's just not the same thing. And talk about a trust builder, when you follow up real time, like you said, like, everybody's looking at this person like, wow, who are you? That's such a cool story.

Well, you've literally just planted a promoter on an airplane talking about their experience. And, you know, all those people are going to leave with that in their mind and talk about that. And if we talk about using that promoter system as your core, that's what our goal is, is to generate these referrals, these promoters of our business. You know, there's just listening. And you and I both know there's too many companies out there. There's too many business out there doing the same thing that everyone does. So how do you create a differentiator? How do you create a solution that sets you apart and puts you out there? And you got to back it with actions. You got to have a system you can trust that can close the gap of time and it removes the fear. It's not that hard. You know, people want to be heard. People want you to take action on what they say and share that data.

You know, fear, uncertainty, doubt. Right. Eliminate all of those and you'll be in good shape. Yes. This has been a great episode. Kerry, thank you for sharing some stories along the way. Hopefully, this is kind of unveiled the lid from the internal program costs, because we've both been there and we well know how much it does actually cost your team. It's not just monetary it's time, people, investment, effort. It's everything. And all of the above, all the time. Um, I just. I don't know how else to say it, but there are some internally internal programs that are unwell. But I think It's. It's maybe 10% of those things. I think the other 90%, in my experience, are just time and money sucks. I don't know where you're at on.

That, Kerry, but, yeah, I would say, you know, be brave. Be brave for 10 minutes and do a true analysis on your program. Really ask yourself, you, you know, if something were to change six months from now, someone was to leave, get promoted, a new statistic gets thrown in there, or a new data point, if I'm trying to create change, is this truly a program that does all that, or am I just living in the moment? Am I just trying to get it done for the day, trying to push something out for tomorrow so I don't get pounded or hammered or whatever the case may be? You know, you got to ask yourself again, I keep asking the question, why are you doing this? What's the true outcome you want to do? But be brave? 10 minutes, an hour, take. Ask yourself a couple of those questions, look at your program, and if you can't check the box off on yes on all of that, then, yeah, you're going to need a better tool, you're going to need a better solution. And you know what? Your team is going to rally behind it. You're going to see the benefits of it. You know, you'll see. I mean, we even talk about turnover and, you know, the impact it has on HR and hiring and having to train somebody, a new system every time they come in, versus having something that's more built in and baked in. The benefits hit every department, you know.

So, yeah, that's a really good point. Just before we wrap up, so the benefit in every department, I think we talked about the snapshot dashboards, right, where you're reporting the results to honestly one person or two people, probably a group of management teams, CEO, cfo, things like that. But the real loss is getting the information to the different departments and making sure they're invested and understand what the data is and maybe can enact some sort of action to take that data and serve the customer in some better way. I think that's. That's another really hidden cost of, you know, you're not actually spreading the data across the org, you're literally keeping it siloed, which we talked a lot about on this podcast already. That's that's a really big cost that again doesn't really fall into one of those like money buckets. But it, it really does affect the culture and your company in a very profound way that I don't think a lot of people are talking about because that's, that's something that we see at almost every one of these home baked shops that they just don't even know they're doing it. And it's robbing their company and their employees of this feedback which can be so transcendent. We get feedback every day and it's like on our Slack channel we just celebrate like crazy when we get a 10 or you're sacrificing a lot of those little wins that I think are super important every day.

Yeah, I think with the siloing what we see is little mini companies being formed in each silo, each department. So each department now has its own marketing kind of approach and has their own CX program. And like everyone's. So everyone's working on the same exact kind of solutions but in their own silo. And I think when you create a tool and again this is a pitch for Customer gauge. I did buy it, I did Excel. But when I was able to show and bring people into the room, the question wasn't questioning my data. The question wasn't, you know, what are you going to do with that? Or so what the questions became, how do I get that? I want that. And it didn't mean their whole team dedicating four weeks to build it out. You know, it became a very easy thing to turn on and incorporate. And there was more adoption. We were all starting to speak the same language. Things got smooth and yeah, I think, yeah, we could talk about siloing for weeks. And you know, it's like, but how do you bridge that distance? How do you get people on the same page? And you know, Customer Engage is not a tool or any tool that you get is not a tool that you plant into one department and gonna see big success. You might see some success. The real success comes from when all departments can feed that, you know, because at the end of the day we should all be customer centric, we should all be accounts centric. And that tool has to speak to that. Right. All departments should be outward facing towards that account and taking care.

That's the only way it works. I mean I was literally talking to a company the other day which I won't mention their name. They were talking about how they run product nps then they run a marketing NPS and then they have like a sales nps and none of them were talking to each other. They all had different systems they were using and it was just like, good luck with that, guys. Like, I don't know how that would work. Like, yeah, you might be serving your department, but that's not really what this is about. That becomes a selfish thing, right? And you're like, I just want the data from my department. That can be really, really dangerous. Because then you have like you said, those silos and the same person could give feedback in each one of those departments and they would have no idea and they would have no clue what the overall sentiment of that person was. And it's just then you over survey, right? So if they're not talking to each other, you could survey the same customer three or four times. And that's, it's just not ideal. I think we could probably stop harping, beating that dead horse for now, but yeah, internal cost of running your own program is immense. And I don't know how else to say it, guys. We've been there. Both Carrie and I have suffered through it, if I'm being completely honest. It sounds like it's hard, number one. But it also, it takes a ton of time effort, people. It can take a toll on your org. So if you can, whether it's Customer Gauge or some other tool, we really, I mean, we prefer you use Customer Gauge, but at the end of the day, we want you guys to do what's best for you and your company. I highly, highly recommend use some sort of a tool that's built for this type of thing because you're going to save a ton of headaches in the process. Anything else to close up, Kerry?

No, I think that's perfect. You nailed it.

Yeah. So thanks guys for joining up and listening once again. Please share with all your friends. Subscribe and we'll talk to you soon.

Bye everyone.