Delivering human and intuitive experiences

Hello, hello! Welcome back to another H2H Chat. We are very excited to be back. That means it's another Monday at 12 PM Pacific Standard Time, and we are on our bazillionth, uh, H2H Chat at this point. I don't know which number it is.

Bazillionth? Is that a real number?

It's, it's a real number. Look it up. Google it.

Google.

Um, and, and we're really excited to be here, but before we introduce our guest Just wanted to say, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm so looking forward to this week. I have a lot of stuff on my to-do list this week, but I have a feeling that it's gonna kick some A-S-S.

And for those of you who don't know what that spells, no problem. So we are very excited to be here today. We've got a very good friend of ours on as a guest, and you can probably see her on video right now. Before we dive into talking, let me introduce her, do a little formal introduction. Ekaterina Walter led strategic and marketing innovation for Fortune 500 brands like Intel and Accenture. And at Brandarati, which is actually where I met her, the startup she co-founded was acquired by Sprinklr, where she now serves as global evangelist. Ekaterina has been consistently recognized by the industry and her peers for her innovative thinking, most recently receiving a 2013 Marketer of the Year honor at SoMe Awards and being named number 3 in the Forbes 2014 World Top 40 Social Marketing Talent. In June 2014, Fortune magazine— this little magazine, I'm sure you haven't heard of it— included her in the list of the most impactful business people on social media with some other people like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey and Arianna Huffington and Warren Buffett. You know, people like that. Yeah, I know. So Ekaterina is an international speaker and an author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Think Like Zuck: The 5 Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbable, Brilliant CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and co-author of The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media

I feel like on today's H2H Chat is Ekaterina's bio

because

it's gonna take an hour to read.

Furthermore, I'm just kidding. Um, I will say this, um, it was really, really cool. There was a cool moment before we get started. I'll tell you real quickly that I was in, I believe it was New York, and I had reached out because I saw Ekaterina was there. And she was nice enough to have a cup of coffee with me. It was the first time we had met in person. And she sat down with me and gave me so much information on, on how to succeed in this, this, this leadership marketing leadership land and writing books and all this stuff. And I truly appreciate the time she spent with me that morning. So always left a mark on me. And with that said, how are you doing, Ekaterina?

I'm doing fantastic. How are you guys?

Doing great, doing great.

We're out of breath after that description about everything that you've accomplished in your life.

I was gonna say, we might as well go home, just wrap it up.

All you have to do is like just get a mic and drop it and then walk off.

That's a brilliant idea, I gotta get me one of those. I have the big one, it's hard to drop that one.

So, um, so tell us, just give everybody a little bit of an idea as to what you're doing now, like what is your You're an evangelist for Sprinklr. What does that mean?

Yeah, basically you just sit there and look pretty, kind of like what I'm doing right now. I've gotten pretty good at it. But, you know, in my definition, evangelist is anybody who helps really build the business, no matter what that means. I've done a number of roles at Sprinklr in the past 3 years, ever since the acquisition. But my favorite has been and continues to be working with clients to really help them define what their strategic digital transformation roadmap looks like, and what it is that they need to do in the next 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months to really become customer-first. So sort of define the strategy around the digital social landscape, as well as what do they need to make sure they reach and engage and listen in all the core things that you need to be and do to become customer-focused.

So in your world, what does that mean, customer-first?

I think in any business, for any business in any sort of any world, customer-first means that you put customer up front and center in anything you do. So sort of think, I think easy way to talk about this is you take the brands like Mercedes or others, and you talk about, or Starbucks, and you talk about how they build their culture internally and business and touchpoint with the customers externally to really become driven by delighting customers, by delivering the best experience possible. A lot of brands talk about it. A lot of companies talk about it. Very few really figured that out, and those who figured that out used a lot of sort of traditional channels historically. So right now, when they look at the digital strategy or latest and greatest that brands really think through, like social recruiting, social selling, social care, etc., they are coming to realize that in the old world everything was sort of set in stone. It's sort of like the old CRM. Well, here's the certain information I have on my customer, but in the social world everything moves so fast. There's a lot of trends changing. Changing. By the time they figure it out in their CRM, everything else, the preferences, the behaviors, et cetera, might shift, right? So I think the customer experience issue or gap that clients right now have in becoming customer-first is how do you adjust my strategies and my business needs and outcomes towards that highly evolving, changing, constantly shifting world of Social and digital, right?

Yeah, well, that's kind of where I was going with that, which is every company wants to be customer-first, but actually saying it and then backing it with the commitment to even change your whole strategy, not to mention technology and investment that needs to go into that, is another story. So yeah, yeah, it's a huge undertaking. So Good luck.

You know, Courtney, exactly. You know, it's a lot of that sort of, oh, good luck. How would we do that? But, and it is a big, big initiative if you really look at it, and it's not even one, right? It's across the board. You gotta change a lot of different things. But the reason why we work with our clients on a strategic scale is we are a tech company, let's face it. But you probably said that a number of times, right? And then Bryan, I've heard you talk about it a little bit as well. We've said it a number of times, you can have the best technology in the world and you will never get to the level of customer centricity that you really truly need to without having the right people in place, putting together the right processes, scaling it in the right way internally, but then also just learning to honestly give a damn about your customers, really truly caring. And that's where your age-to-age sort of mentality, right, that you talk about comes in, is every single customer— single time you go in front of the board of directors or in front of executives and you go, well, it doesn't really matter whether you're B2B or B2C, because that's every single time that question comes up. How do we do it differently? We're not B2C. It doesn't matter. It's person to person. It's that sort of understanding that your customers are human, but also knowing where those touchpoints are with the customer, how to build the right journeys, how to intercept them, how to really meet their needs. And there's not— it's not just about reactive, whatever that is, marketing, care, et cetera, et cetera. It's also how do you proactively really truly reach out and build those relationships before you even need it in the sense of, I have an issue, that's the only time I come to the brand and connect with the brand, right? And a lot of this, that's what we've done with brand writing. I think where advocacy is a critical piece and why Sprinklr is focusing on that as well is because Advocacy drives all of this and there's no advocacy without relationships. So it's sort of this circle that always comes back, right?

Yep. Well, I think you, you hit it on the head saying, it's so important to develop the relationship with your customers before they have a problem, because if they're advocates of your brand and what you do, then they are gonna be less likely to share their bad experiences on social media, more likely to go directly to the source and more interested in, in that conflict resolution, I think, in a much more positive and helpful way.

You know, I've lived through that when we built communities at Intel, and we did have sort of a crisis where our— there is a small community of people sort of took over our Facebook page, and it was all about sort of legal issues. And without going too deep into it, it wasn't about necessarily you know, the customer service, it was about a very specific targeted issue. It wasn't me who went on there and said, hey, I manage this community, let's all sort of either solve it offline or be respectful to each other. It's the community members that we've had relationship with for years in our community that jumped in and said, this is not the right forum, that's not what we do in this forum, that's not what we talk about. So, you know, it's interesting. I, you know, I think over the past 10 years, really building communities and seeing how they operate and how people engage. It's— I've seen a number of those examples, and every single time, that's what you want to happen versus you coming out and hitting yourself on the chest and saying, no, but we're awesome. Well, you didn't get— you totally missed the point. It's your community to say, you know, that comes out and says in a very credible way is, wait a second, did you really truly understand the issue? Or this isn't the right place to have this conversation, or whatever that might be, right?

Yep. And, and, um, yeah, I think, I think what you're, you're talking about is the value of having your community come to your rally. Like, they're going to rally behind you and your, and your product against people that don't quite get it. And maybe we could talk a little bit about, um, your experience and best practices in, in growing these, these strong communities. Do you have any secret tips or insights or, you know, stories or—

I'll, I'll give you one magic bullet. It'll solve all of your issues, no matter what community you have and what, and, and, uh, how large you want this community to grow. You ready? One secret. You gotta really, really care about your community, period. And the story, it's really not a secret, right? We've been talking about it for a long time. But when I manage communities, um, and I continue to do so, either it's my personal communities or really engaging with with any other communities out there, either Sprinklr or any other that I participate with. You know, I have to say, it's such a simple truth and people just don't get it. Brands just don't get it. You know, you try to, as in the role, I keep telling folks, the role of a community manager is critical. That's why you don't hire a random intern or some millennial who doesn't know your business. The role of— Right? Because you have to balance the needs of the community with the needs and wants, right, of the brand. And the problem there is the brand wants to promote products. The brand wants to promote latest announcement that's going to be around there for a month and then die out. And that's it, right? There's no, there's no longevity of evergreen interest, the community in it, because they know they can, they can smell BS miles away. Um, You know, that's what brand wants a lot of times. We're awesome. Let's tell them how awesome we are. But community wants totally different thing. They want value-add information. They want to talk to each other. They want to get introduced to other communities out there that might be relevant. They want to talk about, you know, in a case of, hey, you know, since we've been talking about my experience at Intel, they want nerdy conversations, right? Because that's this community of nerds, which is Don't knock nerds, it's the new sexy. But that's what they want. They want a totally different approach and totally different engagement and totally different content. So it continues to amaze me that brands don't get it. And the reality though is the biggest thing that you have to figure out is how to manage experiences that you have with anybody. So you name it, customers, With your employees, with your investors, with your vendors and partners, with the rest of the people that might not have anything to do with you, but they're watching, right? And they're watching and learning and they're consuming information, whether it's positive or negative about your brand. And that's why when I try, when we say consumers or customers, and we've adopted that terminology at Sprinklr as well, is we mean everybody who has any sort of connection with your brand or with your company, even if they didn't buy your products, right? You want to make sure that at every single touchpoint, that experience Experience is human, right? It's human, and we are struggling to get there.

Maya's gonna have to hit the human applause for me.

Right.

We usually hit human the applause, and I know everybody in the Twitter stream is actually hoping for it. I'm logged in as a non-admin, so Maya's gonna hit that for us. But I totally, totally agree. You got you got us. You got us. like clapping for you right now.

It's a knee-jerk reaction every time someone says human. Now we just have to do this. But yeah, by the way, I thought I'd share, nerds are the new sexy is trending on Twitter now. Well,

it

is.

So let's talk about the— let's talk first of all about the experiences that you have, the difference, the combination of technology and people, and where you see the moments of truth or the places that you think maybe technology should not be used and maybe places where you should use it and it's not used as much.

Well, I think the interesting part is the issue is much broader, right? So when you go, when you walk into the Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies, company, um, the first thing that you see and the first roadblock you see to really, um, creating experiences or, um, building and nurturing communities and advocacy within the company, right? Because let's face it, that's what drives your revenue, is honestly the internal issues, right? So you have either it is internal politics, it is bad culture, it is silos, horrible silos. I mean, if you really look at What it takes to provide the really truly customer-focused, either it's experience or it is elements of connections on that sort of journey or relationship that customer has with you, it really truly takes a variety of different departments. So let me give you an example. So ideal scenario would be, right? You walk into the store, And you're really upset about your product. Now, do you think the store manager knows about this? No, they're gonna smile at you and say, hello, how are you? They won't even know who you are. They don't know what you purchased. They don't know that you're coming in absolutely upset. Could, could have they known? Absolutely, right? The ideal scenario could have been, look, they, they caught your tweets or any messages out there that talk about the fact that you've had real trouble with this product for a while and you tried to solve it and now you're to the point point where you're really angry, they could have engaged with you earlier. Even if you walk into the store to return it and probably never, you know, walk out and never come back, they could greet you with, um, hello, Mr. Kramer. Um, oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming in. We really, um, we're really happy to see you. We know you've been having a lot of trouble, a lot of issues. We're truly prepared to help you with it today. Hopefully we'll go for it, you know, fast and painless. These are some of the solutions we suggest. Okay. May we suggest that you exchange the and see if this one works better. We can also follow up as you bring the product home. We can follow up. And if it's complex product electronics, whatever, we can follow up with setting up the steps of walking you through it and see maybe the issue is on a different end. Maybe it's connectivity, whatever that may be. And then wouldn't it be awesome if they did all that, right? And then they would follow up with additional messages instead of saying, complete our survey. They could say, hey, here's some additional tips, or here's some things that customer shared that might potentially have issues down the road or might help you use the product that you just bought in a better way. Or here's our community that, you know, you can join and continue to discuss certain questions that you might have with us or with your peer-to-peer community. Here is additional, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on and on, right? So we think that we need to engage in very specific situations, right? Resolve somebody's angry issues or sell somebody. But what about the rest of it? What about if a person is using it, but they are not using it correctly, but they are creating a significant amount of content and becoming a detractor for the brand because they just don't understand how the setup process might've worked, right? Can we reach those people ahead of time and provide them with information that makes sense to shift their opinion, right? The list is literally infinite of how how you would address and continue to engage with that customer in an evergreen way where you really truly show them that you care, that they're the client, that you do wanna provide them with information to make their life easier. And then so when you ask them, hey, we would love to hear from you, they are ready to jump in and provide that feedback, whether it's in the form of reviews or any other business intelligence that you want to gather from a client versus hitting them with the sales pitch and then hitting them this survey later on and that's it, right? So I think the issues, honestly, it was a, sorry, long-winded answer, but the issues so much that exist right now are internally, and either we're not setting this up from the right perspective internally, or we're siloed and our sales department talks to a client in one way, our marketing then hits them up with messages when they don't even know that the client is angry and hitting them up with marketing messages makes no sense. And then we have other departments that hit them whatever it is out there, and then customer service data on that client is not even connected with any other touchpoints of the journey that the client has already taken with us. And so we cannot literally talk to them in an informed way.

Yeah, well, you're so right. I mean, A, it's an overwhelming rat hole to have to even start to go down and explore, but But it really is that dance between technology and team, because, you know, you can have the greatest technology in the world, like you said, but if your team members aren't set up with even the right personalities, a helpful personality, or, you know, empowered to provide solutions that are going to make a difference to the customer, then it's just going to be a total fail.

Yeah, and, you know, honestly, technology helps a lot. You can automate portions of different things, and I'm not saying I automate engagement. I'm saying automate as the information comes through is how you're filtering it. How does it fit into different workflows? You can automate and can set different rules on who and how different teams are engaging. You can set up a lot of useful ways of collaborating between teams. There's a ton of not just automation, but tons of workflows, approvals, governance, a lot of insights that you can set up that would help you make business decisions in the right way. So technology absolutely helps, but you have to set it up right. And what happens is people don't, right? They go with, oh, only this team uses this piece of technology and that team uses that piece of technology. None of it talks to each other. You start looking at the business impact and the data is apples to oranges. And then you start saying, how would I then guide my client or my customer on the journey from they started talking to us on social networks, which probably usually managed by marketing, right? But then we need to shift them to talk to our customer service who can help them resolve this. And then if they— if that goes well and they would like to buy something else, shift and then into our sort of product information and sales cycles, right? And you connect the dots across the board. And that's the problem is the dots are not connected and the way technology is used and very much in the very niche point solution kind of way. As a matter of fact, that same team could have 15 to 10, 15 different little tiny point solutions technologies that none of them are integrated or talk to each other. So, so there's a lot to be said for having a technology that gives you a unified system of engagement, a sort of unified system of record for experience management. However, if you don't use that right, across your different functions and across customer journeys and really look at it from a customer perspective, it's just not gonna be that effective for you.

But what have you seen from your own work with, say, larger companies? Who do you have to get on board and what are the steps that are necessary to take in order to really right that ship?

It's a great question. And that's exactly, you know, it's interesting when we walk in and do a strategic workshop and spending the day with a client to define sort of their digital transformation or customer experience management journeys and strategies, that's one of the things I keep telling them, guys, the biggest value you're gonna get from this is when you bring multiple stakeholders on board and they all understand what role they play. It's not necessarily of putting the strategy together that you can go and implement, but to me, the biggest value is getting everybody aligned. So who do you need to get aligned normally? And I'll tell you just based on my experience and Obviously, different, different brands are organized differently and they have different name department names. But, you know, in general, you would have sales, marketing. By the way, nobody talks about sales when it comes to customer experiences, which is bizarre to me because social selling is a critical element of how you sell right in the digital world. So you have sales, you have marketing, you have customer service, you have brand. Sometimes brand teams are separate from marketing teams. you have advertising. Again, sometimes advertising is actually separated from marketing, and it always amazes me, how do you create a solid content strategy that doesn't include the connection to how you run your ad strategy, right? And then you also have, interestingly enough, you guys, we have, you know, a lot of times HR department, because HR uses social recruiting, um, a lot and quite effectively right now. You would have departments such as innovation. So there's strategic innovation functions specifically targeted to look at what the future looks like. And absolutely another one that hasn't been included previously in my experience is IT, because IT drives all the necessary integration. So if you have a system of engagement, but then you have to connect it with system, with your current traditional legacy systems like CRM or email marketing or other automation systems, right? You, you you're really not doing it the right way. So you have IT that needs to be involved in that, and obviously executives across those levels. But sometimes we have fraud departments. I mean, fraud uses social listening right now in interesting ways, right? Whether it's employee fraud or any type of fraud, and quite effectively, we have companies across retailers and others using them. So there is a variety of those departments that come together when we do those strategic sessions and they go, Oh, you know, they come out of this going, wow, okay, that makes sense. I now know as my function who I need to be connected with, how, and what I need to look at from people, process, and technology perspective to make sure that I am contributing to the broader view of business needs or business goals. How do you get there? Again, you just map it out. Here's the processes we need to set up. Here's how we scale it across the board. Um, this is what, um, our— how the technology needs to connect to drive the right business insights. But, but honestly, um, the reality is, is what are the steps based on the current culture and current technology and current, um, resources and skill sets you have to really drive 3 objectives and, uh, 3 objectives only? Because that's what executives care about, which is Increase revenue, reduce cost, and reduce risk and manage risk. So if you can get all those departments aligned across the right processes, skill sets, and the technologies, that's your first step, and then the hard work begins.

Um, that's so spot-on. I mean, you totally distilled it down to the 3 things that all the executives really just want to know, and if you can If you can satisfy those 3 things, then you're winning. So real quick, before we get to the bottom of the hour for the Q&A session, I want to give you some time to address the title of what our chat is about here, which is about the intuitiveness of the customer and of the customer experience. Intuition is near and dear to my heart. I absolutely love it, so I'm so interested in your point of view about how intuition plays a part in this.

It is huge, and that's why it's important to have the right people in place. But I will tell you though that some of the most brilliant companies use business intelligence to confirm their intuition, right? So you kind of have a real human element of, we know our customers, we know our communities, we know what would make makes sense and, and use intuition in that way, but then pair it up with business intelligence. There's so much data out there, but I've seen some clients, um, for example, hospitality, right? They are some of the better ones out there that really pair their love for their communities and customers and how they use intuition in making their decisions with data. And data could be location-based data, and for hospitality, you know, obviously that's very critical. down to customer behaviors, not just how they buy when I say customer behaviors, but what do they appreciate when they stay at specific properties. And they dig down to every single little element they could. How was the food? How was the cleanness of the room? How was the service? What else did you enjoy around, you know, things that you can do around the area, etc.? And what the hospitality folks do well is they use that business intelligence and not just insights that come from them engaging with their clients on a variety of levels, not just from social community, but maybe through service and, you know, email marketing, etc. But distilling it all down and literally using— we've seen clients that use those insights to really truly drive business decisions like humongous capital investments that they're making in improving not just their properties but their customer experience. So that was some of the best examples I've seen. But in intuition, to your point, I think it depends on your culture and it depends on people you have. Because let's face it, if people hate working for your company and they absolutely can't stand your culture and your leadership is, pardon my French, crap, right? People will know. Your clients will know. And when you talk intuition, I think we need to talk intuition from perspective, not just how you as a brand engage with your clients, but how you What your clients intuitively feel about you when you get your stuff together, you don't have your stuff together. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Isn't that the truth?

Okay, so we, we, we've gotten to the point of the halfway mark here of HHH Chat, and I wanna make sure that we have time for questions. And the reason is because we have so many questions that have come in. We're gonna try and hit them all. But thank you guys for sending in your questions well ahead of time. Keep your questions coming. Well, if anything, maybe we can answer them at a later time, but we will try to hit all your questions, so don't stop feeding us questions. But we will get started. Hey, Katerina, you ready for some Q&A?

I was born ready. I was born ready.

Awesome.

Okay, so let's start here with today. It will be no surprise that our friend JS has He has won the question lottery. He has lots of great questions. Also, he loves jazz.

And he's also wearing a tie, he said. So I love how he came totally prepared for this chat. He's serious.

He's very serious. He's a serious person.

Tie, briefcase, and lunch probably spread out in front of him.

He's ready to go. So, so his question is, is there one thing you see businesses or marketers doing that makes you want to scream, no, no, no?

One? Just one? Do you have an hour?

That should be the title of the next chat. No, no, no.

Yes. So one big one is when they, when they say, Um, yeah, but everybody loves our products, but we're so cool, but look at our new campaign. You know, my biggest thing that I tell marketers, and every time I'm on stage talking about it, especially when we talk about things like how, how do you use storytelling to really connect with your clients, is nobody cares about your campaigns. Nobody cares about your, you know, commercial or an awesome infographic you put out there. People care when they really truly see you being invested. You invest in them, they invest in you. And so what I say, instead of creating short-term campaigns, spark movements, build tribes. Everything we do in marketing is short-term. Everything. I mean, we spend a year on creating a super duper awesome cool commercial, and 3 months everybody forgot about it because it wasn't that cool to begin with. What really stays with people is when you literally bring them in and saying, you are part of our tribe, we get it. That's why I love managing and leading communities at Intel is because I knew who our community is. They're all nerds. They're like us. They love same things we do, but putting them up front and center was absolutely critical. That's what resonated. If there's one thing that we do wrong, is we care about us more than we care about our customers. And because of that, we really truly create most of the time, again, pardon my language, shitty campaigns that are not only just short-term, but nobody cares about. And then we're wondering why don't we see the business impact? So instead of creating short-term campaigns, don't create campaigns, build movements, spark and inspire Longer-term relationships and conversation and bring them into your tribe.

Yes, yes.

I think you're saying something, but I didn't hear it.

Oh, sorry. Janet Fouts just tweeted, yes, yes, yes. Nobody cares about your campaign. Start movements. Awesome, awesome stuff. All right, the questions keep coming in. In fact, Nancy Rubin just shot a question out. Nancy, we will get to your question, I promise. Going down the line here, we have Alan Berkson from Freshdesk, a really good friend of H2H Chat and ours. What's a recent cool example you've seen of a company living the customer-first credo?

Oh my gosh. You know,

it's a hard one.

It is a hard one, but hard one is not only because very few companies actually do, but it is a hard one because you don't want to use somebody else's, right? You want to use an example of what happened to you. And I'll tell you, I will answer this question, um, as myself, a person that has experienced it. So, uh, you know the whole debacle that's happening with airlines? I'm not gonna to say throw one name out there because it's literally multiple. I will give you an example of Alaska Airlines. Right. Here's the airline that I've been a fan of for God knows how many years. I've just actually got a chance a week ago to, for the first time, to meet their CEO, Brad. Brad is amazing. He's so down to earth and he literally lives and breathes the company. And I do not get starstruck. You won't don't see me coming up to celebrities asking for pictures. It is not in my DNA. Um, I, you know, I don't much care. Um, but I did ask for a picture with Brad because I've been a fan of the, of the brand forever. I've seen them handle some of the toughest situations on their planes in, in a very delicate and very literally customer-first ways. And I will tell you, it's funny, my husband and I were just talking about it with all these dragging passengers of the airplanes. He, you know, he had an example where he was traveling with a group of people and they were just overbooked. And they, you know, the, the staff gave out 3 free tickets for a group of 8 people that my husband was traveling with because he's like, okay, You know what, you guys are overbooked. It's an issue, but we will do this for you. And it's not that they negotiated tough and Alaska Airlines was very, very amicable about it. It was the experience that my husband then was able to create and remember because of those tickets. He took his parents on— bought them, the 3 of them, tickets to Mexico and spent some time with them in Mexico. really, really bonding, creating new experiences. So when he talks about this, he doesn't talk about how Alaska Airlines still overbooks, but, you know, they handle it differently. He talks about those free tickets did something for me, you know, in my life. And his mom has since passed away, and we, we continue to talk about those experiences till now. When you talk about the best brand ever right there, That is an example of a best brand. It's not that, again, you negotiated something and you thought you really swindled the brand, or it's the other way around. It's what is that experience that you remember afterwards, and what is that sort of longevity? So, so you know what, I, I can give you other examples. REI, love it. Pacific Northwest, one of the best brands out there. They're the first ones to close the doors on Black Friday and said, you know what, we're off. Yeah. Off, where we want everybody to have healthy living. We're going outdoors, we're sending our employees outdoors, we're closing the doors, and we're just having a day off. We're not gonna participate in the madness, right? And I mean, there's— these are the brands that are near and dear to my heart, not because they have the coolest campaigns or they do some really cool things on social, which I can give you plenty examples of what REI has done recently. They are the cool brands because they live and breathe their values. That is why they're customer-focused, and they expect their employees to get the same amount of joy that they expect their customers to get. So,

well,

that would be my—

Well, that is the only way to build trust, is to do what you say you're gonna do. And I guess it makes sense now why Alaska would buy Virgin. If the CEO is so great and cool, I guess Early stock tip, go buy Alaska Airlines stock, because if they can combine that kind of customer service with the panache of a really cool brand, they're gonna be unstoppable.

So just to keep the questions rolling out here, Janet Fouts asked, when building communities, do you start with the desired corporate result or customer experience?

Oh my gosh, look, here's the thing, is desired corporate result will come. If you build the relationship capital with the customers and you look at the full journey, not just a specific touchpoint where they could be, but the full customer journey, and ensure that you delight them as much as you can in every single touchpoint, business results will roll in. It is not mutually exclusive. And I get that, that for the stakeholders or shareholders, you have to sort of lead with business results first as an objective. But the reality is every single customer— you just said Virgin. I mean, look at Richard Branson. Every time he builds his company, he thinks employees first and culture first, customers second, and the rest will roll in, right? So, so the dough will come if you truly care about people around you. Again, not just your customers, but everybody else you interact with. It's just, it's just that simple. But for some reason, that's complex for

Wonderful. So just carrying down the line here, Carrie Maslin said, do you think— do customers think of you as a corporation or a person?

Me personally?

Yeah, let's— since she put you in air quotes or in quotes, I should say, let's use you as the As the example here. So, and I think she's talking about personal branding versus corporate branding and how they see you. That's what I think. It's hard in 140 characters to understand.

You know, interesting for people. So I've had a conversation with multiple executives that reached out to me lately and said, well, how should we look at personal branding specifically for executives? Because they represent the brand, but at the same time, do they spend time building their own brand? You are a brand. I don't care whether you wrote a book or you're an executive of a corporation. You are a brand. Whatever you do, you, your face, your life, any positive things around you or negative things around you, they are already associated with who you are, what you do, and what company you represent. It's all the same thing. And so it amazes, continues to amaze me that that brands really look negatively at the sense of, well, you know what, we're gonna help these executives or experts within our company build their own brand and then they're just gonna up and leave. They're gonna leave you anyway. But the best companies and some of the better ones that have done it in the past were IBM and Dell. They actually build networks of their experts and sometimes their executives and they give them a platform and said, if you're this known in the Let's use your expertise and you being a part of that tribe. At Intel, we've done this with some of our engineers who are extremely well known within the developer communities. And, you know, that's one of the communities that's very hard to actually break into or become a part of, right? Because it's a very specific community. We've used the power of our employees and the knowledge of our employees and the power of that personal brand to really truly successfully engage with the community. Communities in the right way, and not only understand them better, but to literally know how to speak their language and become that part of the community. So you know what, I, I don't differentiate. I do not absolutely disagree when people say, but, but who are you? Who are you as a professional? Who are you as a parent? Who are you as a, um, you know, somebody who has other passion points and hobbies outside of your I always say you're one person, and if you can use the power of those people when they work for you, no matter what their passion points are, in a positive way and showcase it and give them a platform and help them engage, you are going to be better off as a brand, and your communities are going to appreciate it because it's going to be authentic.

Could not agree more, man. You are on fire today. Mahul just. just submitted a new question and we'll get to your question here. So don't worry about that. We'll start into the next, next question in line here. Back to our good friend JS Gilbert. Curious how Ekaterina sees online video, live and produced, working to help brands have better relationships with their customers.

Yes! And it is

a

great question, right? It's funny how many executives are so authentic and they're really approachable, and I tell them, you have to get on video. You have— I mean, that goes back to the whole personal brand question as well, but since we discussed it, right? You get in front of your audience and everybody is always whining and, and, and and some of my friends do as well. Oh, creating content, that is so tough. It takes so much time. I have no time. I'm like, look, you have 2 minutes to get in front of the video and discuss stuff that you're passionate about. You get in front of folks and say, hey guys, here's what's going on in the industry. Let me tell you, this is my view on it, right? This is how me and my company is addressing it. It's fantastic. You don't have to have a blog. You have a vlog, go for that. You know, live video— gosh, you already have something that you put millions of dollars in sometimes, in some cases, which is, for example, a lot of brands do their own events. Or you have a conversation where you invited an expert. Instead of doing that kind of thing, putting it in front of 20 executives, livestream it. Livestream it and put it in front of millions of people and say, hey guys, we want you to see the value that that we all would like to get internally here. We had this expert come in and talk to us. You know, here's an event, jump in at certain points. You don't have to livestream the whole event, but you already have so many ways and outlets and information and value that you can add. Put it out there. So yes to video, JC. Yes to video. And I love that you're wearing a tie one more

time.

Hey, we want pictures or it didn't happen. Come on, JS, let's go!

So we'll be watching for that in the tweet stream, and please do make sure you are fully clothed.

Pants, pants, please!

Yeah, pants and shoes, please. So, okay, we're here to Nancy Rubin's question: What is customer experience management, #CEM, and why should you be focusing on it?

So, so, um, uh, that's a great question. Love your tweets whenever I was able to glance at the chat. Now, CXM, right, um, is, is usually sort of, um, what we talk about when we talk customer experience management. It is honestly, seriously figuring out the journey of where you engage with your customers, and that's my, my, my definition. It's a little, it's a little, uh, might be a little weird or not polished, but to me it's not about how polished you are. It's about, do you utilize every single opportunity, every single channel, and every single touchpoint to truly provide the best customer experience and to delight your customer whenever you can? And do you empower your employees to do so at every single touchpoint? But when, in official speak, when we talk about customer experience management, It is an ability to connect the dots of that journey and to really truly connect with a client at scale in a way that is fast. So it is the right people at the right time, at the right place, with the right content, with the right customer resolution approach, and on the right channels where the customers really are. To me, if I look at it, that's the definition is when is the right time, what is the right content, and, and what are the right resolution approaches that you can use across the board. That to me is it. And the problem is why it doesn't happen again is internal silos and technology is when none of them is connected. People are not connected and tech is not connected, and it doesn't really provide you one single view. I honestly think this is also the opportunity for us to talk about Um, you know, CRM, CRM of traditional, because I think, and that is where for CXM it's going to be really key moving forward, I truly believe that we're going to move away from a regular CRM, um, sort of system of record or whatever we want to call it, um, because it was so static, into a social ID. I think there is, there is, um, the whole layer of social that's being forgotten in customer experience where everything happens real-time— trends, conversations, complaints, resolution, you know, like SLAs for addressing your issues, crises, etc. It happens so fast in such real-time, and preferences of your customers change as well, not based on just their age or location, but based on a lot of other things that are happening in the world. And so if you don't build in that social business intelligence layer and engagement layer into anything you do when it comes to people, process, or technology, you, you, you're really gonna suffer. And to me, that unified view of a client is essentially for what good customer experience management is, because you can't manage the experience across the journey points without having a unified customer ID or intelligence around it.

And doing that without making it all so complex is the big challenge, right?

Exactly.

Okay, so we have another question actually from— I'm going to go to Mahul and then I'll jump back to another Nancy Rubin question. So Mahul, how do you— he says, how do you see communities panning out in the future? What's the future of community?

That's a good question.

The future of your community is the future of brand health, the future of brand love. We started sort of with communities when Facebook appeared, then there was Twitter and others. And we talked about those communities from a perspective of, we just, it is a platform for us to talk to people. It isn't just a platform. It is truly at the heart of your business. Success. So whether you have a community on your app like, you know, Nike Running or others, whether it is on social networks, whether it is your forum, whether it is a peer-to-peer resolution or any sort of advocacy, whether you're employee advocacy or influencer advocacy, right, it doesn't matter. All of those communities play a huge role in your business success and business results moving forward. So if you are broadcasting, whatever that is, including your commercials, right, that's broadcasting. You're not gonna be as successful as if you are or feel like you're part of the community, or people who engage with you feel like they are part of the community. So you really need to build your own, foster your own, engage in other folks' communities like your partner communities, your other communities that maybe your employees have started, and really truly look around you and see. For me to spark and build the movement I have to be a part of the conversation. The only way to do it is around communities, right? I mean, we have at Sprinklr, when we build the sort of customer experience management framework, one of the models talks about 5 Cs, and those are conversations, communities, content, collaboration, right? So you have all of this. This is, if you think about it, it's all constantly an engine that is alive and it lives and each one of them feeds another, right? So it starts with conversations, then it goes into engagement, then you create content around it, you literally collaborate internally to make sure that's the best thing for your communities, you know, and the list goes on and on. And so if you look at how does that— what role the communities play within your company and if If it's not central to your strategy and everything you do, you're already behind.

So let's just take a quick second to appreciate the fact that JS is wearing a tie. And he did post it up onto, onto the interwebs. And so we can now confirm that he is in fact wearing A tie today.

And what is a collar? Collars are overrated.

It is a very proud photo. The proof is in a picture. We can't hide it, and in fact, we can't forget it.

Never unsee that.

Okay, so back back onto the questions. If we can, we can try now.

We focus.

We're gonna we're gonna we have time for a couple more questions. So again, keep your questions coming. We've got one from Janet. She said, you have to really care about your community. How do you not become robotic when you manage many communities?

You, you hire people who have a voice that's very similar to your, to your brand or values that you want to project. You don't post the same stuff over and over. in the same size, mind you, across different communities that, that where it doesn't make sense. You have to marry content with context. And for me, what that means is, you know, if, if, if on Tumblr people prefer animated GIFs, do that, you know, create that. If, if there's a, on Instagram, it's a square image, you have to make sure it fits that community and, and that format. If people, if you have younger audiences on Instagram or Snapchat versus Facebook, Address it as such. You, the way you really truly build a relationship and engage is you listen to them, you engage meaningfully. Again, you know, content, marry content with context. You reach out and you ask your community what it is they want. I mean, I, when I, you know, lead or drive communities, or I used to manage brand communities, I've always asked folks, hey guys, this is Ekaterina. I'm curious to to see, uh, what other ways we can add value. What is the type of content you would like to see here? And by the way, check out some of our community members, um, creating this, you know, sort of love letters, love images for us that we put in the category of, of, uh, fan love. And we want to feature people, right? So a lot of companies, um, do their communities a disservice by not highlighting their members. Dunkin' Donuts used to do it extremely well. Not anymore. Don't believe, but they've put— they did Fan of the Week right on their Facebook page. And they've gotten so much images and videos and just love around their brand. They picked Fan of the Week and they featured that person and folks loved it. They really— people are really passionate about Dunkin' Donuts as a brand. And the brand caught on to that and featured folks. And they did the same across the board. They also featured their employees, fun things like their nail art on their Instagram account, you know, their chef recipes. You really, honestly, guys, as, as what would you do if you really want to build a relationship with any other person, whether it's a friend or whether you're dating somebody new? It's the same principles. You, you listen, you pay attention, you, you provide value where they most need it, you provide support when they need it, and you ask them, how, how can we do better, right?

It's out of what I like the most out of what you just said is the co-creation. I really love that aspect. I love seeing when brands actually co-create content together inside of a community. It means they're learning, but they're also both appreciating the output of the content in order to want to share it together, not just push it out from the brand and say, we created this, how can we get this into the world. And when you co-create, it brings so much more joy to a community. Totally, totally agree. I have a— I'm having a hard time disagreeing with anything you're saying for an entire hour. So it's like, it's like the— it's like an agreeing hour. We'll just leave it at that.

No, it's like, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah, really is. Okay, so, so again, going back up to another Question here, another one from Nancy. She said, what are the KPIs for customer experience that they should be looking for? Any suggestions on how to look at KPI of customer experience?

You know, there is a ton of them. It depends on what you are, how you set up your processes, what you're tracking, and how you engage, right? And then also what technology you have in place to actually measure it. KPIs and ROI tends to be pretty broad questions, but it could be your customer service SLA, it could be how many inquiries you proactively address, it could be how much revenue did you bring from social selling, right, as part of your— because honestly, everybody says customer experience management starts when somebody buys something. To me, the whole customer experience journey, it starts before people even look you up, if they search for you, your brand, your products, and start getting engaged with the conversations with you, right? It is, you know, what type of advocacy you've seen across the board and how well that content performs versus the ones that you post as a brand. It is how are you boosting the whole paid, owned, earned, so the whole POEM, paid, owned, earned media. How do you use the owned and earned media and boosted and with, for example, paid advertising? How many crises have you prevented from doing effective listening? Because every crisis impacts your brand and it impacts your current customer experiences, right? Our other clients say, well, we won't buy from them or we're not gonna go back, right? So it is all connected. If you look at the circle sort of life, when it comes to managing experiences, every single one of those points counts. So, you know, it is NPS scores, it is customer satisfaction, it is how do you use your business intelligence to really drive business decisions. But at the end of the day, every single one of those KPIs should drive to the 3 objectives we talked about: increase revenue, reduce cost, and manage risk.

All right, so there are more questions. We are unfortunately out of time, so we're going to go ahead and leave the questions online. If we have a chance to answer them, we will. Otherwise, really appreciate everyone stopping by for what I thought was an epic HAA Chat. Yeah. Thank you so much. You really Man, your energy and your the the stuff that you talk about always seems to resonate with so many people. The tweet stream is like a stock ticker right now. So so obviously everybody feels the same way out there. Thank you all for joining us for another H to H chat.

Should we ask Ekaterina to let people know how to get a hold of her?

Yes, please.

Oh gosh, google.com. You can find me on my website, on Twitter, on On Facebook, any way that works. But I would love to engage in conversations with anybody. I always reply to the inquiries. And thank you so much, Bryan and Courtney, for having me and be part of your community, which I love because H2H, you know, I share that passion as well. So thank you for having me in this conversation.

You got it. Always and anytime. We'd love to have you back sometime as well. Just so everyone knows, next week we are going to have another good friend, Ann Ward, who just wrote a book on search engine optimization, what it's like now and in the future. As you know, search engine optimization has changed, and she is the one to talk about it, let me tell you that.

And she's got a personality as popular as her book. I mean, she is awesome, funny, funny, whip-smart. Right. Can't wait to do a little sparring with that girl.

Good. Well, thank you guys so much. Um, again, Ekaterina, thank you. And to everyone out there, uh, thanks for joining another HCA Chat. We'll see you next Monday, same time, same place. Cheers, everybody.

Bye.