When the Champion Leaves, How Can the Team Pick up the Pieces?

Don't give up. You know why you're doing it. It's worthwhile sticking in there and just try to not give up and think about why you're doing it.

Hi, I'm Adam Durrell and I'm the host of the Account Experience podcast. And if you're a regular to the Account Experience Podcast, you'll know that in every episode, I like to catch up with inspiring industry leaders or thinkers who can help share their best practices to help you develop your own B2B account experience program. Today, I want to talk about a particular topic that I've come across more times than I can count, but I've never really had the chance to think about what happens inside it. And this topic is, you know, what happens when you have a very strong champion of a CX program within business? That champion leaves. And then what does the team do when that happens? How do they pick up the pieces and how do they get through that storm? So I guess today was right in the heart of that situation. We'll find out what happened from her when she comes home. So can experience. Well, we sit at the Busy Crossroads where B2B account management meets customer experience. And at that kind of junction, I suppose you think. I suppose with sort of the Habsburg capital, you know your history of account experience, and that's kind of appropriate because I guess today is Ragnar Goresi, who is based in Vienna. She's a seasoned customer experience leader. She's got extensive, extensive experience in both corporate and startup environments, and she's been mixing both. She's currently serving as the VP of Customer success at Dutch startup Kling, who I also happen to know, actually. Hello, Gilles, if you're listening. And is the founder of Ragnar Digital, her own boutique consultancy. She's a CX mentor and speaker with experience, combining customer experience, customer success, E to E, business transformations, lots of change management and so on. In short, she is the all round Swiss army knife. Maybe that's the wrong thing, given that she's based in Austria. Anyway, a really good toolkit for those who helps companies scale their programs. Hello, Ragnar. How are you? Thanks for joining me today.

Hello, Adam. What a lovely intro. I've never been compared to a Swiss army knife.

That's probably a bad expression, really, but I mean, you've got a multiple set of tools that you've got there. So, yeah, I'm trying to think of another maybe.

Didn't I call Leatherman or something like that?

Renaissance woman. Should we say that with the ability to bring all these skills today, hey, I'm so glad you agreed to come on today. When we spoke a month ago and you, you spoke about this, the, the situation that you'd been in, I really struck a chord with me. I know plenty of people in programs that we've been in. The champion has come in and, and, you know, really driven a strong program. And so when he said this, I really, it really brought that home to me. So is it okay if we get into that? But first of all, why don't we hear a little bit about you? How did you get into the whole customer experience game?

Well, customer experience was something I was really passionate about without even knowing the name of it. So when I started my university studies, I actually was already really admiring the people that are able to really think in the customer shoes and finding the right message to address to their audience. So I was very, very much into advert at that time. Luckily, I did not join an advertising agency, but I joined, in fact, a big corporate, big IT company, a seasoned one, where I had the chance to really see firsthand how innovation, how disruption, etc. Happens. And that was very, very insightful. So over the time of that stint, which was a long one, I actually had various roles being customer facing, being in the back end as well, taking care of CRM database M migrations, or making sure that we have the sales teams being migrated to pan European sales centers, etc. So I did a lot of things. Luckily to that big company, I had the chance to do it. I loved working in the EMEA context as well as in the global one. And at one point in time, by coincidence, I stumbled over the project that I was given to lead the EMEA transformation for a customer experience program. Because we installed at that time middle. Yeah, yeah. And then suddenly that passion had a name. And that was fantastic for me because so far I had this feeling of loving to work with customers, loving to make it easy for them to cooperate with a company. But I never really had a name for it. So there you go. This is when I realized this. Customer experience.

Okay, we'll get into that in a second. But I'm just curious as your way, the way you got into that, had you had experience working with customers before? For example, had you worked in retail or Raker or something like that? Maybe college or something? Do you have a passion for helping customers?

Well, I had a passion for working at trade shows. So that is something I did during my studies and realized that I actually really like to talk to people.

Yeah.

And try to get to the bottom of things, etc. So that is something I did. I never worked as a waitress or selling stuff or so at that time. But talking to people is really something I enjoy.

Brilliant. So let's not dig into this a little bit more. You're in this, this big corporate environment, global organization dealing with B2B at all level, you know, sort of small B2B's right up to enterprise, the classic account experience situation. So first of all, how did you define or how did you come to define what good customer experience was? Can you characterize a few things that the customers would value as good interaction with the organization?

Well, the area that I was working in was really handling the smaller customers or also win back segment which means they normally did not have direct contacts that take took care of them. That means they really have had the situation that they have to self serve themselves.

Yeah.

So seeing how they at times struggled to find the right answers, finding someone who can give them answers, et cetera was something that was driving me because I was reading the feedback. Even before we started with that transformation project. We had chances to gather feedback and it was obvious that it was not built so to really address self serve environment. And that was the thing where I thought it really is necessary and to focus on it.

So what can you characterize as sort of a typical fix that you might have had? I mean, you know, with the issues mainly with, I don't know, accounting or delivery or something like that. Would you, can you characterize some of the issues and then about how you figured out how you would, you would fix those?

Well, we had certain packages that we were allowed to sell so easy, smaller products that needed no services in addition. So obviously you would like to buy them easily online. And that was one of those things where we had hiccups in the back end because the processes were not meant to be E commerce processes as such, where they were really streamlined and fast but more taking into account how bigger corporations work with other bigger corporations. And there were things that we really discovered and, and fixed which helped tremendously because the speed of how to actually get a deal done was really improved.

It's interesting, you talk about speed. I think, yeah, it's about handling it, handling an item fast, isn't it to do that? And I guess that's what we think of as a small loop. And so did you get into the situation where you were sort of able to, to take the learnings out and then put strategic changes in place that would ease, you know, a multiple of customers at one time to be Honest.

These, all these changes were strategic because we had one way of doing it and normally if you change that one way of doing it, it was strategic and was helping everybody else. And in fact even the bigger corporations actually liked like the changes. So it was not necessarily something that was just benefiting the smaller customer segments. Same thing. We worked a lot on chatbot at that time already it's couple of years ago where gen as such was not was existing but not that popular like it is now. And we really try to think of the idea of talking to humans rather than to corporations. This classical. It's not B2B but human to human.

Yes.

And there it doesn't really matter if you have someone working for a big corporation or someone working for a smaller company because at the end these are people that really try to get help, try to find something and that didn't make a difference.

Yes. Now one of the things that you speak about is about making sure that you, you have the right customer profile. And you, you know, I know that you feel strongly about this about, you know, you can't always fix an issue downstream, so to speak, if, if the customer set had the wrong expectations being set set earlier on. Can you talk a little bit about that, about how that that fed into your experience?

Yes. And that is something that I saw both in the corporate environment, but even stronger in the startup environment. Now if you don't know exactly who your ideal customers are, who is your icp, who is your ideal customer profile? And you sell because you need to sell to get money in. At one point in time you're faced with the issue that you cannot deliver value. And even no matter how hard you try. And customer success people for example, or post sales people, relationship managers, they try hard to really make the customer feel well, have a good sense of what they get out of the product. But if there wasn't a good fit at the starting point, they cannot fix that situation. Which means very likely you will have these customers walking away from you again. And that's why when you talk about retention and all of that, I think what you always have to keep in mind is that it is an end to end process and it starts much earlier than when you actually have the signature on a contract. It really is important that you know exactly who the sweet spot is, who are those that really get the value out of it, because then you have all the chances in the world to really keep them and grow them and work in partnership with these customers.

I'm giving a sort of an embarrassed laugh because I've been in this situation myself in my own company that, you know, you either pivot, perhaps it's an organization, you start doing something else, or customers, they're not. Not miss. Sold. That's too big a word. It's just that their expectations are somewhat different for it. Look, I'm going to push you a little bit more on this because I love to get the color, but, you know. So can you give an example for some of the people who may perhaps have not been exposed to that more startup life about how it can go wrong?

Well, if you, you see very easily when, when you talk to the customers during the onboarding phase, for example, that there might have been certain misunderstandings, perhaps that was not even on purpose, say that people are misled or something. It's just the perceptions, you know, how communication is. Some, it depends how you phrase it. And sometimes when it's not clear enough or people have certain perceptions in mind and hear something else than the other one was saying. So these are things that happen very quickly. So that's why precision in communication and also in, in what is delivered is super, super important for both sides. Also for protection of sales teams so that they, they don't get hit for something that they've not done because that is also a game at times. So when you realize during onboarding that there, there are areas where there is a misunderstanding, of course you have to get along with it and you have to make sure that the customer gets the most out of it. But it is a stretch. It's tough for customer success and it is tough for any, any delivery, delivery function to actually sort that out. And again, I think there are nuances. If there's a mismatch, I don't think this is happening today. But if there, if the mismatch is too big, then the, the chances go linearly with the, the probability to churn.

And then as a, as being in customer success, which I know you've also been in, the blame can fall on that department. Why could you not hold on to that customer?

Yes.

And it's really hard to sort of explain. It wasn't the product or the solution that they thought they were buying.

Yeah. And that is there was a saying, and I can't recall anymore who put this out there. There was this question, is customer success needed at all or shouldn't customer success not be an attitude or a function that is executed by everybody in the company? And that's an interesting thought because as you said, you can't just give it to one department it's always a company effort that you have to put in place to keep customers. It's the same with customer experience. It is a effort to introduce an attitude that is customer centric and to really improve customer experience. It can't be a customer experience department doing it by themselves because they normally can put this out there, but they need someone else to execute it. So it's always a team effort and never really. Or a company wide effort. Not a single team.

Yeah, I really love this actually. And it's led us to have a kind of radical candor with clients these days. In order to make sure that we do that. I'll give you our example that we now say we, we say at customer gauge. Look, if you don't want to follow up on customer feedback, that's fine. But we really believe it's important and we, we really only want to work with companies that feel that's important to them as well. So we might not be a good fit for you if you don't want to come along on this journey where we teach you how to do that. And that's normally works quite well. I mean it's quite a good way of like, you know, figuring out if you're a good match initially. But if the customer said no, no, we just, we just want to analyze and do insights, we walk away from that. So have you come across that, have you used that radical candor these days with your clients?

I can't tell that from the sales perspective because obviously I'm not in sales. I think the one thing to consider though is that there are always reasons for these things happening. Sometimes you are under pressure when you have to grow a company when you don't have another option. Sometimes these things happen. So it's not, it's not a blaming game. But I think as soon as you're in the position to really have that structure in place to say and also the self confidence in place to say these are the customers that I enjoy working with and that I know get benefit out of what I'm selling versus I understand why you don't want to do it a certain way. However, then we know that you don't get the value out of it. Hence we part ways. I think that requires a lot of maturity for a company and that is something that everybody has the luxury to do.

That that's really true. Yeah. And hey, but there's a special case. So let's talk about this when no one's really to blame, but it's just a situation where you have A team or an individual in the organization that wants to go in a certain way. They have a vision for customer experience. Let's talk about that. And they have a strong vision. That's enough to bring the company along. So the company makes a big investment in one particular vendor, for example, and you go down that route and everything is great. But after a while, that champion leaves, either through their own volition or through dynamic changes in organizations. We've all seen this. And then there's a vacuum, isn't there? And then the team has to cope or somebody else comes in and that's when maybe the original purpose is diverged. And that goes exactly into your point about the icp. The ideal customer profile has changed and you can't rescue it as a customer experience. But you've been in that situation, haven't you? That was what happened to you and that must have been tough. If it's okay with you, can we explore that a little bit? Because I'd love to find out more about what that was like and about how that, what that meant for you.

Yes, sure. So you have to imagine a big, big transformation project and introducing a new way of looking at customer feedback is nothing but that is a big, big change management effort and it's a big transformation project. And as we know these big transformation projects in big and small companies, I think there is not such a huge difference. They really require both a bottom up approach but also a top down approach. You always need a strong backing in as high up in the organization as possible to really drive through that pain. Because at the end it's a transformation. People don't necessarily want to change. There is reluctance to change. It's easier to stay in the known path and not having to change. So you really need a strong leader on that. Now what happens when this leader has not made sure that there is enough of. There are more shoulders than just one to carry this idea. And this is why I said before, you need to have the full company being bought in and you will not get the full company. I know that's unrealistic. But you have to really get the important advocates within your organization to really carry that idea independent of that strong leader being there or not. Because by that you prevent for this vacuum that you just mentioned to happen. Because what happened in my case is that at a certain stage of that transformation, so we were quite far, we suddenly lost that leader who brought this whole idea of the transformation in and was really the North Star for this transformation. And there were other leaders that carried the idea and that were bought in, but they had less visibility and they really had to ramp up. It was not something that was prepared long in advance that was visible so that leaders suddenly, for us, at least for those more in the bottom that were actually working on the transformation in the tre, it was not visible. And then suddenly that light was gone. And you had the other leaders trying to struggle to pick up the idea and just go with the same strength that the leader that has left passed in the same way. So I lost myself a bit on that one. What happened is that we lost that light and everybody was working and everybody's passion passionate, so everybody really wanted to keep on going. But you could tell that the pace of change really got much slower. Sometimes it even halted. And it was really difficult for those people working in the trenches to keep up with the motivation to just put all this energy in there as we did before.

Yeah, let's just reflect on that because that is another sort of transformation, isn't it? When a leader goes in any kind of corporate thing. But I've worked in enough corporate companies to know that when a senior leader goes, the vacuum is not just in the department that's left behind. There are, how can I put this? Corporate politics at stake. There's jealousies, there's budgets up for grabs. There's a. There's a power opportunity. And how I've seen it, and particularly I think with customer experience, it is one of those flames that can be more easily extinguished by somebody who wants to make a power grab. Would you find that it's. Because it looks like a difficult thing to do. It's hard to show the immediate value from this and there's budget associated with it and somebody can come in and say, well, we don't need that anymore. Did you find that at all? Was that something that happened in your case?

It luckily did not happen, but there was certainly a danger for it.

Right.

And I think in general, CX has the problem that they have to prove that there is an impact on revenue. And this we know in general, independent of a leader being there or leaving that is difficult topic because you have to show why you're putting this budget, why you put this effort, why you engage people that work on this. And at the end, let's face it, what counts is how the company grows, how the revenue grows. And if you can't show that you contribute to this and when you're seen as a cost center, this is not going to fly. And you will be the first department, the first project that will be killed when there's a property.

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So let's. Let's talk a little bit about how you managed to successfully come out of this. Then let's carry on. From your thought about how we how were you able to show that you were making financial contributions? What were some of the ways that you had it going on there?

Well, I was lucky because I had a global leader who believed in it and we grew into this together. And he was a strong, strong promoter still, even though his boss, who was that leader that left, was not asking for it anymore. So I was really lucky in my department that this was visible. However, I could see that he also couldn't get that much traction even if he wanted to. So ultimately, even though my leader was really supportive, the pace got slower and you could see that there was not such a focus on it anymore, which means the caravan just moved on. And there was another topic that was really the hot topic. And that was really a pity because it was too early. It was really too early for, for the full organization to have bought into this. It just takes time. A transformation takes time. And when you stop it too early, then things have the tendency to fall back into the place where they were before, which they didn't completely, but they moved a bit back from the ideal line.

And normally in a situation like this, you've Got to prove that you are either saving the company money by increasing the customer experience or you're able to contribute somehow to the bottom line or the top line. And I'm wondering what, what route did you go down? Were you on the. Whether you on the money saving side or the. Or the increasing growth side?

We were definitely on the money saving side with all the efforts with the chatbot, etc. My trouble was that my department was not necessarily the one that brought the majority of the business. That means the focus in general was not on these smaller accounts, but on the bigger, which were not in my line of business. So that was coming even on top of everything else. So it was really, really hard to. How do you say that? Lead by influence. Specifically in a matrix organization where you need others, you need products to buy in on certain things, you need marketing to buy in on certain things, et cetera. So I really had to expand all my options on leading by influence, which brought me somewhere, sometimes where I wanted to be, but also too often I didn't get the traction to be super honest. Yeah, and that's frustrating when you put all your hot bloods and everything and all your efforts in there and people even buy into what you tell them. So it was obvious that it is the right thing to do, yet it didn't get the prioritization.

Yeah, because I think it really needs that influence from the top level, doesn't it? If you don't carry that or you're not able to make the link, it's so difficult to do that. So how did you. So, so with the leader gong, how did you manage to reassemble the initiative after that? What, what steps were you able to take to at least keep it if not growing fast, at least, you know, present.

It got a different direction. It got the direction of the area that the wingman of this leader was leading. Yeah. So she was leaving, but she had someone, a seasoned one, that Chi was working with a lot because he was really bought into this and he took over that leadership role. However, it got a different tweak to the whole program because it really got more of an. I wouldn't say internal tweak, but there's always this thing about customer experience. Is it do you need to tidy up internally so that the experience for the customer is easier or do you work on the external facing journeys? Which one do you prioritize? So at that time we had more the shift to the internal view rather than the external one, which at that time was okay. What then happened? I don't Know, because I left that one. I don't know. But I know that the team. And that was so interesting for me, what we did and that was really the right thing is we had in each of the lines of business, we had really passionate people. We had both people working in the trenches to transform within the teams as well as on leadership level. And I think that's the right thing to do. You can't have it in a few places. You really have to have advocates and leaders and lights in each of these lines of business that then unite and then really push forward together. And that is something that I could see not disappearing, even though the pace was not the one that people wanted to. And then of course, the danger that you get a bit frustrated is there too. But people still kept on pushing for things because they could see that it is important.

Yeah, see, you did. There was a lasting cultural impact of what you were doing.

Not as much as it could have been, but there was still something that was kept luckily.

And how did that then? I mean, because we speak about the cultural side of it, but also you had a technology or system side. Did you have to reconfigure that? Did you scale down the ambitions or did that stay the same? How did that work out?

Well, it depended on some of the things that have been so progressed already. We just said we are not going to drop that ball now because we are so far already. And that made sense. So there are always options how to reframe certain projects so that you still can keep the funding. But some other things that were not started yet, of course had. Well, didn't happen. Yeah.

Yeah. I want to call this up because I think this is such a common occurrence in business. You might have even seen it in some other things as well. But this is a particular area of expertise that you come from. And as you look back on that experience, would there have been things that you would have done differently? Or let's put it another way. Are there tips that you could pass on to other people who are going through this, that you could say, hey, this and watch out for this or.

Well, the one classical thing that I. I should have pushed. I pushed for it, but not hard enough. I should have pushed more for really having meaningful targets in those places where who could really make a difference and meaningful targets. I don't mean giving them a certain NPS target that, not that one. Because that's the easy step that often is done.

It's the NPS targets is always the wrong thing to do.

Exactly. So not one and had a lot of conversations. That would have been the easy thing because that is something we measured. You could have just taken it and. Yeah, but not that one. But really meaningful ones side by side with the revenue targets. And that's one that I realize now even more how important it is because at that time I was talking to the leaders and I did not completely get the dimension of the pressure that they have for things that are in their pipeline or in their target sets. And anything else has to follow. And there is normally no time for or no time left to really focus on something that is less important. So you have to make sure that you get. Get it there.

Yeah, well, that's a lot of vulnerability that I hear from you about doing that. But I mean, on the other hand, I think it maybe just. Just to give it back to you. I don't think it was your issue. I think it probably was there in the leader who left. That was their responsibility to embed that into the program. So maybe that's, that's the big learning to take out of this. Anybody that's got a program now, you can be replaced. But if you put metrics, the program will go on. And I think. I don't know what you could comment on. I like metrics like revenue coverage, response rates, engagement sites, follow up rates. What would you add to that?

Well, customer retention definitely is something. And no matter if you work in SaaS or not, customer retention is key. Do you keep your customers, do they grow with you or do they stop using your product and eventually go go? Yeah, I mean, this is the ultimate lmus test because there, you know, did you bring the value? Have you managed to make them happy so that they are not open to changing to somewhere else or to getting rid of you? Because they are also having short shortages in budgets. So that for me are the ones that I really look at now.

Ragni, just before we leave this topic, I just want to find out if there's anything else you can talk about. So one person leaves. Is there a sort of a network effect? Are there other people, people that can step into that role? How do you think about that?

I think it is something you have to have as part of your project already that you anticipate that there is a change. So even though one person needs to jump in and be the leader at the beginning, that's obvious because all these projects have a leader. But you should anticipate early on, not when things happen and change happens, but early on, that you base this project on as many shoulders as you can get and powerful shoulders. So the more you spread that project and the thoughts and the meaning behind across the organization, the higher the chances that you keep that vacuum as small as possible when there is a change in leadership. And that can, let's face it, that can always happen. People can get sick, people can change roles, jobs, companies. It is something to anticipate. That's life.

Yeah, yeah. And I think as we bring these strings together it is like maybe having metrics really embedded in there that the whole companies get behind. Metrics are hard to shape, to take out. I deal with companies that have got 20 year old customer satisfaction, KPIs embedded in, which I would say are not always entirely relevant for today's work. You know you've got to get an 80 or you've got to get 30 NPS and it's just. No, that's not what we're trying to do. But we are to get those out, so. So I think that really helps. And having a real culture of customer experience is important, isn't it? And then other people can take the tools. Hey, thanks for sharing that with us. Let's move on a little bit to your, to your current and future work. So I know that you're really passionate about AI. You know this is a real hot topic around at the moment and I see good AI and bad AI in cx. How do you see it being used most effectively?

That's a question that can fill another hour if we talk about this. I think there's a lot of dust at the moment and I think the situation for me reminds me a lot on that Wild west situation where everybody was racing to find the best claims. And it's a lot of Wild west at the moment that you see. If you look at these gartner hype curves, etc. I think we are over this already. So I think it is settling down a bit. But the three areas that I see which are really, really interesting are those. First of all, I think with AI you can expand what you learn about the customers. That's a massive, massive challenge because you can digest and interpret and analyze many more data. The caveat though is all those companies that have not taken care of the data, that they are clean enough and that they really have proper data in place. They are in trouble now because of course you don't want to train any AI with data where you know that they are full of mistakes. So that that's a starting point. So that's one great chance to use AI. Another one is that you really automate those tasks that are redundant or that don't really require a human brain to look at it because 80% of the tasks normally are tasks that can be automated it and I'm absolutely sure that customers will enjoy that. Not everybody needs to talk to people for everything. If there is a fast solution and AI does not just send you a link but really does what you want for them. I mean that's fantastic. It's a win win situation both for the companies because they can really save a lot of money, but also for the customers because they get the help that they need very quickly. And the last one is that of course we need to take care of those people actually then taking over these 20% of the difficult cases because they will need more help. They have more time to focus on these. They might have been dropping through the cracks so far and creating unhappy customers, but now you can focus on it. But there this agent assist element comes in and I think this is super exciting to see what can be done to help agents. So that internally it is something where you really have a wingman, woman, whatever, you have a co pilot. That's the best word for it that helps you. Yeah, I think that's, it's fantastic. And specifically in the customer facing areas you will see a lot of change. I'm absolutely convinced of that.

Yeah, I think the. I like what you say about data, about fixing data first. Probably humans are quite good at dealing with dirty data and this is going to be the last thing that gets automated. This is really the promise of AI. But I, I do agree it's a, it's really having that stuff open to interpretation. So I mean where does a company start with that? I mean if you. Or do they just give up? I mean they just go oh, we can't get the data right, we might as well go out of business. What does a, what can a company do if they're in the, in the maelstrom now of thinking about, about how they can improve their customer experience?

Well, I would probably try to aim for those low hanging, the classical low hanging fruit to really say what gives me the biggest impact with a limited resource? Yeah, I would start with this and then take it from there. And it is more, I think it's also more than just looking at the customer experience or customer facing entities within a company. I think it is really a company wide effort that needs to put in place. Part of it will be customer experience impacting or facing impacting but other areas will be impacted as well. So I do understand why some companies really decide to have a separate function for it that sits over this to really oversee so that you don't have the situations that you see a lot in companies. Now that everybody tries something, this department tries something, potentially another one tries something as well. They are not really knowing from each other, which generates a lot of interest and innovation, but also a lot of noise. I think it's good when you try to structure a bit what you do.

I've seen companies with 400 different AI projects and it's really hard for it. I think it's a really refreshing way of looking at it. And I also like what you said about you've got to look after the people that deal with the cases that cannot be solved. So I think that's really my echoes. My thoughts is that you can do some great automation for the mundane work that everybody loves, but you cannot replace humans in the mix because you, you know, effectively it's the more complicated cases and you need to learn from that. The other thing I like, and in a way this is the circular journey that we have on this was just talking about, you know, customer feedback and so on, which is about making sure that you can really involve your customers in that process as well. Well, understand what they think and don't just allow AI to read it, you know, really read it yourself. And also step into that by saying, did we get this right? Are you saying this? That's. That's how we can, you know, we can always get better.

Yes. And that was for me, the most powerful. Yes, it's tiring, but that was for me the most powerful way of really getting close and trying to understand. You have to. When you read the verbatims. Verbatims for me are the, the gold nuggets that you can find. You have to be careful though, as well. That interprets just one, one feedback as a massive thing. So you have to put it into.

This is a real human thing, isn't it?

Yes, it's the.

It's the last and most noisy comments. That is the one. And that's always the one that bubbles up to top management. That's the worst example, you know, what is happening here. Hold on a second. It doesn't. So this is where sanity needs to come in.

Yeah. But it's super important to read all of this. I completely agree. And you should keep, I think keeping close to customers, no matter if we use AI and how we use AI, keeping close to them, talking to them, reading what they say, and even better, talking to them in person is just unchangeable. For me, that is still the secret sauce.

You know what? I think I couldn't think of a better place to end our discussion today. It's been a super wide ranging discussion. Ragnar, I really love the way that you were able to talk about customer success in the way of getting the right proposition and making sure that the expectations are met to the whole thing about how you're able to rescue us, the big corporate issue from a vacuum occurring when somebody leaves to really thinking about how AI will do. Look, before we leave today, do you have any thoughts or any tips for somebody that is right in the middle of a B2B customer experience program? Do you have words of wisdom for anybody?

Don't give up. You know why you're doing it. It's worthwhile sticking in there and just try to not give up and think about why you're doing it.

Thank you so much, Ragnar. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you. It was a pleasure being here.