CX Isn’t a Department: Stacy Sherman on Humanizing Every Touchpoint

Foreign. Isn't more marketing, isn't more automation, but more meaningful moments. Welcome to Chats with Jason. I'm your host, Jason S. Bradshaw. And today on Chats with Jason, we're unlocking the blueprint to real loyalty. Not the points based kind, but the kind that turns customers into fans and employees into believers. Today we meet Stacy Sherman, award winning CX strategist, best selling author and founder of Doing CX Right. A woman on a mission to humanize business. One conversation, one connection, one customer at a time. For 25 years, she's merged heart and science to deliver CX that doesn't just convert, it changes lives. So if you've ever wondered how to stop losing customers quietly or how to lead with empathy and results, this episode is for you. So grab your journal, grab your team, and let's dive into a masterclass on doing cxrite with the one and only Stacey Sherman. Stacy, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I love the way you introduced me. That sounded very good.

Well, you're free to use it and I could probably go on for another few hours. With all the awards that you've won and great impact that you've had on the CX community, business leaders and employees around the world, great privilege and honor to have you on the show today. Stacey, we're going to jump straight into the questions because time is precious and we're going to start simple but not necessarily with an easy question. So if you had to explain customer experience to an 11 year old, how would you describe it?

Oh, that's a really good one. I have not been asked that. And let me tell you, I've had a lot of questions over 30 years. So I would explain it that imagine you wanted ice cream and so what would you do? Well, you would first probably ask your friends and learn about where to get the best ice cream. And then you would probably go to that ice cream place or maybe it's an ice cream truck and you would buy it. So you learned about it, you buy it, you get it, you eat it, you pay for it. And you might need help because the ice cream fell on the floor and you need a new one. So I just walked you through at the highest level, a journey. And so people, consumers, humans, we're all on a journey and companies have to design that journey because we are on one, whether with you or without the company. So you might as well design it so that people actually love your brand and people come back and tell others. And so it's about journey management and every single point matters. The holistic experience matters because even if the product's great and paying was easy, if another part of the journey was bad, you're probably going to tell others and go onto TikTok and your whatever social media channels you use and bad mouth that ice cream company.

Yeah, if only we had TikTok when I was an 11 year old.

Yeah, there was none of that when I was little.

Yeah, I'm not sure the world was ready for my bad dancing when I was 11 or when I'm 40. So we can definitely skip that part of TikTok. What a great way to start us off, Stacy, making us remember that customer is going through a journey and every touch point actually has an impact on the experience, on the story that they tell. So going from what's meant to be a simple question to perhaps a little bit harder hitting now, what's one unpopular opinion you have about customer experience that most people need to hear?

I have a lot of those, but I'll pick one that I just Talked about on LinkedIn. Literally, that is customer satisfaction is no longer a valuable metric because that ice cream that we just talked about, if you were satisfied, that's like mediocre. That's like it was fine. Companies needed something back in the day to measure. But fine and mediocre and average and satisfactory is no longer valuable. That is not a popular opinion. But having worked in companies for many, many, many years and responsible for measurements, I've learned that there are better ways to know how your customers feel and their future behaviors.

Yeah, could not agree more. Just being satisfied. Definitely not a recipe for repeat or referral business if that's all that you're generating as a satisfied customer. So you've mentioned you've worked in many organizations. You've worked with giants like AT&T and Verizon. What's something most businesses, even the big ones, still get wrong about customer experience?

That it belongs to customer service department and that's it. And there becomes this blame game and pointing fingers because nobody is really being accountable. It's not in their job title, it's not in their responsibility. It belongs to customer service. And so I am around the world educating. That is a limiting belief.

So just following up on that, there was a period of time where CEOs of of large companies were like, we're going to fix this customer problem that we have and we're going to instill a chief customer officer or in my opinion, worse still, we'll just make the chief marketing officer also responsible for customer because they just easily Go hand in hand. I think. I think they are related, but I think just throwing it onto someone's JD is not the right way to go. Why did companies go down this path of creating the chief customer officer role? Oh, something like it. And then perpetuating this myth that, well, now I've got a chief customer officer, that's a new department, and they can fix everything about customer. How do we break down the myth that that's the way to do it?

Well, part of it is that silos are part of every single company I've ever worked for or worked with. And because of that, they're creating the role of CXO to be the glue to the organization because nobody else is. And you might say, well, employee experience, which we know fuels the customer experience. That's HR department. But no, HR is focusing on your benefits and your medical. They're not focusing on what the CX team is really understanding about how to deliver that experience. And so I believe the role is needed to be the glue where they work with it. Legal, hr, marketing, product, and the journey we talked about with the ice cream. Bringing every department and team to design that experience in the journey management and then validate with real customers. Because if you don't have anyone who is the glue to the organization in this regard, nobody's doing it. And this domino effect, people don't realize, oh, how my role affects your role to this role. And then the customer's left confused. Complete miscommunications and so on.

Yeah, absolutely. Believe that the chief experience Officer. Chief customer officer. One of their biggest jobs. And I'd like to hear your take on this. One of their biggest jobs is to be that internal mirror. To hold up a mirror within the organization and say, we can do better. Is this aligned to our vision of what great or excellent looks like for customers?

Not satisfactory. You tell. That's a pain point.

Yeah. So Stacy's got a new program coming out, how to get customers satisfied is what I'm hearing.

Yeah. No.

So, Stacy, what's the single most memorable customer experience, good or bad, that you've either experienced firsthand or witnessed? And what did it teach you?

Oh, there's so many good ones doing cx. Right. And I'm on a mission to tell those stories. So I love the question. There is a company. I don't know if this market is where you live, but in the United States, there's Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is well known for its CX doing cx. Right. And so here's one Example why I say this, and I'm picking this example because this does not take a big budget. It does not require this AI investment. This is something that anyone can do. Number one, my onboarding. I come into the store, the whole experience, just when you walk in feels good and people greet you and say hello, it's something so basic. But more than that, how can I help you today? I'm looking for this XYZ product. Oh, let me walk you there and show you it. And oh, by the way, let me open the bag of these chips so you can taste it. And I said, you don't need to do that. I don't want you to waste money because if I don't like it, I'm not buying it. No, no, we want to make sure you're happy. Okay, great. So I try it. I do love it. I finish my shopping and I go check out. When I check out, it starts to hail, rain, major storm. The woman at the register sees that I have no umbrella. What does she do? She tells me that I'm going to walk you to your car and help you with your groceries. And I have an umbrella so I'll be able to keep us both dry. Now, by the way, she did not need to ask her manager to do that. Let me repeat, she did not need to ask to be empowered to do some kindness walking me to my car. She was proactive. I didn't ask, I would never even asked. But she went up and beyond to create what I call this emotional high, this moment of caring in actions. And I believe that companies can create these emotional highs throughout the journey. And that's what's going to keep people talking about you, as I am right this moment.

Absolutely. Now just to follow up on that, for those that don't know who Trader Joe is, it's a supermarket, essentially a great one. Would you say that they're the most expensive supermarket in the us?

No.

Would you say that their stores are necessarily always in the best, prettiest locations?

No.

Would you say that their experience is the same human centered experience at every store, Absolutely consistent? Yeah, I thought you would answer that way. And I wanted to just hammer home this point that nowhere in Stacy's explanation of her experience and with Traders Joe talked about self service kiosks. Nowhere in there talked about, oh well, you know, I expect this because instead of paying, I was going to talk about eggs. But perhaps not. Nowhere am I paying dollar for my product and then a $5 service charge on top of it. I'm simply getting great Value with great experiences. Is that how you would explain a Trader Joe's shop?

Yes. The consistency is a great point. I know what I'm going to get. There's no surprises. There's no gaming with. I got to scan this coupon code. It's just fair. They're generous. I believe in their product and what the value is. And here's how you know that they are doing cx. Right. They have tons of communities on Facebook and I'm sure other social channels that are started by the community. And they're talking about, I bought this product and here's what I made and here's what you can do. They're not running the community. The customers are so in love with the brand that they are starting these communities and bringing people together to talk about the recipes. That's a dream for a brand.

Yeah. We should also take the moment just to acknowledge they can do all of this and be profitable. It's not about being nice and loved by customers and not making money. You can do both and do both really well. In fact, there was a study by Businessweek and Fortune magazines, one in 2008, one in 2016, and in both instances, they said that they outsold per square meter Whole Foods. Now, Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon, so it's a little bit harder to know how they're performing against them. But back in 2016, when Fortune magazine did their estimation, they were saying they were selling double or getting double the amount of revenue per square foot than Whole Foods. Now, Whole Foods is, I would say, probably from a brand perspective, seen as a more luxurious brand to Trader Joe's. But here we are, Trader Joe's doubling down on experience and doubling up on profits. So what a fantastic example to share. I did not know we were going to go there, so I had to do some quick research. But I love it. A fantastic example. So, Stacy, you created the Heart and Science Loyalty model. Can you walk us through what that looks like in action and how a small business or a leader of a small team could apply it today?

Yes. So the heart is all around the emotions of how people feel when they're interacting with your brand. At those moments of truth, at the ice cream example of how you learn and buy, get, use, pay, get help at the highest level. And it's actually designing for the emotions. But then the science comes in where you're measuring specifically precisely how you are delivering on the promises. And so it's the metric side. So when you combine both, because some things you can rationale and others you can't. But combined, you apply the framework, and that's where you can achieve that loyalty and retention and referrals and boost your reputation.

Yeah, makes. Makes so much sense to me. I would say that looking at your work, that you would say that real loyalty isn't transactional, it's transformational. What do most loyalty programs miss when it comes to building real emotional connection with customers? Like if I think about my American Airlines membership, or my membership to any airline for that matter, as an example, the last time I had a human experience with them was when they told me they were downgrading my membership because they didn't think I was valuable enough as a customer. And let me tell you, that experience meant that I stopped flying with them. But, you know, I'm just picking on airlines. But they're not the only ones, of course. Most loyalty programs, I would argue, fail to think about who they're actually serving through that loyalty program. So what are most of them missing, in your opinion? How could they change that and create an emotional connection?

So I'll give you an example. At a company I worked at, during the pandemic, my team stopped doing surveys. They were phone surveys. We would do 10,000 a year to gauge whether the customer was going to renew their contract. We would do it six months to a year in advance because you can't ask them right when they're going to leave or. Or when the contract's up. How do we do? That's too late. So point of story is that during the pandemic, we decided, let's stop the surveys. Don't call. Don't call it a upsell, cross, sell anything. We're going to do peace of mind calls. And that meant we would call all the customers and say, we're checking in with you. How are you doing right now through this tough time. That was the conversation. And guess what? When the pandemic was over, they remembered it. They remembered that the brand cared. And so you don't have to wait for a pandemic to happen to actually have the conversations like that with your customers. And it's just as simple as that. It's demonstrating in action. And people remember and see that and know the truth.

Yeah, there's so much power in that. I was having a conversation with a member of the team at Giftology, which is John Rulan's old company, before John passed on. And she also emphasized that the importance of just making. Making the connection human. It doesn't have to be anything more than that. And as you were explaining that to me, I was replaying in my mind the conversation I had with an Australian based airline. I won't say their name, but I was a member of their invite only tier of their program and I didn't travel for nine months because my grandmother was in hospital and she was 100 years of age. So it was something that took priority. So I wasn't traveling for nine months. Now, during that time, the airline, instead of reaching out to me to say, you know, is everything okay? We haven't seen you, like you're one of our high flyers, they simply sent me a letter saying, congratulations, we've downgraded you to the next tier. Goodbye. And then when I of course complained about it, they had even less interesting. Yet here we have a story of reaching out to people saying, you know, is everything okay? No. No alternative motive other than just being human, which is powerful. And everyone watching or listening today, how can you be that intentional about creating relationship as opposed to creating a sale? Because if you do the relationship bit, I think the sale comes, right?

Oh, absolutely. Now I, I do need to preface one other example and I speak from highlights again, those emotional highs, but this is an emotional low and I talk a lot about those too. And I want to tell you another quick story because I hope that everyone listening doesn't do this and that is related to the employee experience because the correlation, if anyone is confused, is that there is no customer without your employee delivering that excellence. Well, when we talk about the journey, there is an employee journey too. And every point, whether you're talking about bringing them into the company and onboarding and training and career growth, but even the exit matters. And here's what happened to me. And by the way, you never know who of your workforce is your customer too. If you're a telecom company, their home and everybody and their family might be using you. So make sure that you exit the right way. And so here's what happened. For one role for me, there was a big decision at the top. They cut the executive at level so it wasn't personal, but I was hit and they immediately turned off my computer and I didn't get to say goodbye to my team. And the way my team found out was they were going on to slack to message me and it said, Stacy's no longer here. That's how they found out. So I tell you this because it pains me and it doesn't have to be that way.

Just take one extra moment to think about the impact of your action before you take it. And like you said, you left that organization not for personal reasons. It was just company reorg where these things happen. I've been subject to it too, and I think it raises more questions than answers when you have the experience that you went through and that just leads to disruption of the worst possible tie. So, Stacey, great having you as a guest today. I'm not the only show that you've been a guest on, but what many might not know is that you have your own podcast called Doing cxrite. What's the biggest mistake people make when they think about doing cxri, but they're really not.

They are again, thinking that there is one department that owns the customer experience. And it's a culture change, It's a transformational mindset change, especially in the world with AI. That's another piece of the journey that has to be infused with the human. And so I encourage people to realize, regardless if you're a CEO to an internal, you have a customer experience role and it goes beyond responsibility because responsibility, you just kind of like focus and do your job. But accountability is where you go up and beyond. And I want people to really think about what that means and don't wait for the official title to implement.

Yeah, absolutely. You'll stand out in your organization if you do deliver a consistent experience to your internal, external customers, even if it's not in your job title. Tell us a little bit more about the podcast Doing CX right. Who are some of your guests? What are some of the things our audience can learn when they tune into the next episode of Doing cxri.

Yeah, thank you for that. So my show is all about what does CX right mean? What does it look like? What is doing it wrong look like so that you can actually avoid those mistakes. And I go into a lot of case studies with my guests. I have mostly company leaders on my show, but I also have some wonderful authors, Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, tons of thought leaders, Fred Reichelt, who invented nps, and others that are just brilliant and have their zone of genius. And so I'm learning just as much as we're all learning. And that's my goal, is to help people keep getting educated, that peer to peer education.

Fantastic. And we'll be sure to share links to the show in our show notes. It's a fantastic show and I think it just shows the breadth and impact of the work that you do. So it's no surprising knowing the work that you do, Stacey, that you've been named a top thought leader in customer experience for many years in many different Lists around the world. What habits or mindsets have helped to you stay relevant and real to your customers and to the industry at large in such a fast changing space.

A lot of getting my hands dirty, really getting deep in the work. I just left corporate two years ago, so I've been the practitioner and now I am doing the research and talking to brilliant people. I also am sharing through LinkedIn learning courses and working with other instructors. And that's how you stay relevant, talking a lot of my friends, my colleagues, my past coworkers and like I said, I think we all have so much to learn in this world and that's why we do podcasting, because we're able to help people learn and ask the hard questions and, and give them the best answers that we've accumulated.

Absolutely. And I think it's definitely a practice area that by definition evolves and expectations change as our customers and the world around us changes. So we've talked a lot today about customer experience, of course, but we've only mentioned employees a couple of times. How do you think that employee experience should shows up in the customer's experience that you're trying to build? And can you share a time when you had a great internal shift that led to an external breakthrough?

Oh, so many. I would say. Well, first of all, employee experience, I think the word's starting to get overused, but the meaning of it is important. Just like DEI is no longer the words to use, but the meaning of people belonging and being cared for and having a voice is still important. So the basis of it is leaders A being trained. Because a lot of leaders I've worked with were just thrown into the the position and not really meant to be leaders. So equipping leaders with the right training tools, technology and education to lead. Well, secondly, helping all of the executive level down to the intern level and everybody in between, helping them understand what great looks like, what it feels like. And what I mean by that is shadowing your peers. Take someone from billing and put them on the customer service calls or at least listen in. Take someone, an agent from customer service and have them be part of the HR team for a day. Have all the different roles shadow. I learned more from traveling, going on ride alongs with technicians when I worked at an elevator industry. I learned more from one day of being a technician for a day, which had never been before, than I did a year in my corporate role. And so put on the hard hat or the equivalent symbol and I'd also say, go be your customer, go buy from your company. And see what it's like. Is it easy? Is it hard? Can you get help? Is it take days? So I think both of those are very valuable, easy ways to make a difference and make an impact because you want to, not because you're told to.

Yeah, yeah. Some great insights there for us. So imagine for us, if you will, that I'm a business owner who feels like I've tried absolutely everything to improve the customer experience or the employee experience. What's one often overlooked moved a small shift that could have a big impact that you'd recommend to instantly start improving either customer or employee loyalty.

One of the things that worked really well is creating a community for the team, internal team. Now, it started with our customer service agents. What I mean by that is picture like Facebook internally, where they could ask each other for help and support. And what did you do when this happened? Oh, what did you do? And allow them to help each other, not just your corporate team chiming in. And the reason that's important is because if you don't, they start the community on Facebook and don't let you in. I remember that I would go into Facebook groups because the customer service agents were all talking and I wanted to come in just to understand what it's like in their shoes. And they wouldn't let me in because I was headquarters staff. So the point is, if you create space for them to have the community and support each other and award systems and thank yous and kudos, then not only are they happier and more fulfilled, but you get that voice of employee insight that you can do something with and keep them and retain them and make them feel like they're part of the company and then they stay.

Yeah. I think it's so important that we do give our employees a voice, but importantly, take action on their feedback. It's no good if you just created an opportunity for people to tell us how much we suck or otherwise and then don't actually do anything with it.

Yes. And one thing, though, I wasn't even coming at it from that lens. What I was saying is that we gave the customer service agents the ability to say, hey, I had this irate customer and here's how I'm feeling. Anybody else have that and someone else would chime in and say, yeah, I really get you like that empathy. And here's how I handled it. Them helping each other give them that platform.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That goes hand in hand. I think a great reminder of just infusing a human centered approach. Stacy, it's been absolutely excellent having you on the show, you've dropped some golden nuggets for us today. And those watching along at home or listening along on their commute to work or wherever they might be enjoying today's content. Before I let you go, I hear that there's some exciting news. And that news is that you're releasing a new book, Transformative Journey Management. What's a powerful story in the book that you believe every leader needs to hear and one of the reasons why they need to get ready to buy the book?

Some of the stories I already shared, but I promise you that there are concrete examples where there's a theory and then the lesson and it's and it goes back and forth between the theory and the lesson and it goes very deep into this journey I was describing. But the important thing is a lot of people are talking about customer journey mapping in this world and this book is taking it a step forward where it's this whole ecosystem. So it's not just your customer, it's your employee experience, it's your partner experience, it's an omnichannel perspective. So journey mapping is important, but this is taking it to a grander level.

It's fantastic. Definitely worth a read when you can get your copy of the book. Stacy, excellent. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Now, Stacy Sherman didn't just give us strategies today, she gave us a reminder. A reminder that people don't stay because of policies, procedures, but they stay because of how you made them feel. Whether you're leading a startup or a global brand, CX isn't just a nice to have. It's your differentiator and it's your legacy. So let this episode be more than just information. Let it be a spark. Share it with someone who is ready to reimagine loyalty, leave a five star review and tag us with your biggest takeaway. And most importantly, ask yourself, where can I lead with more heart and more humanity starting today? Because remember, when you transform the experience, you transform your business and the world around you. I'm Jason S. Bradshaw reminding you that better business starts with delivering a better experience. Thanks for tuning in to chats with Jason.