Your ability to retain customers and increase lifetime value derived from them is dependent on how you manage the journey. They may pause and restart multiple times as well as change directions. Instead of leading them, we need to be beside them attending to their needs and desires keeping them comfortable. This would need to happen overtime across multiple channels including web, mobile, and store front and in person. How to effectively design and manage such a journey more as a chaperone who is looking to give vs. a salesperson looking to get?

Contributor

• • Gordon Gaudet, Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Selective Insurance

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:55]:

Hello, and welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. And as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter, hashtag ctr live, and look for this show as hashtag management and hashtag omnichannel. Today’s topic is how to become a customer chaperone. And our guest for today’s show is Gordon, who is the executive vice president and chief information officer with Selective Insurance. How are you, Gordon? 

Gordon [00:01:26]:

I’m terrific this morning. How are you?

Sanjog Aul [00:01:28]:

Very good. Thank you. Now as we know, we go about, as a customer, going to different service providers or anyone who provides us value, but we have our own journey. We may start with them and, again, stop and go different directions. All of that happens, but all along, there is an intention from the service provider or the value provider in this case to keep us informed about what they are doing, keep in touch so that whenever we have a need, they are the first one who are top of mind and we go back to them. So in a way, we have to play like a chaperone in the during that customer journey. So we’d like to explore that in the light of what is being done. We have tried technology. We got people. We got processes that we are deploying, but how well are we doing it so that customers simply don’t go walk away. So that said, Gordon, the first question is about the journey that a customer experienced or the way they were going about their journey, say, 10 years ago versus now. What was the difference in the journey? And secondly, what is the expectation they had earlier from the value provider versus now?

Gordon [00:02:38]:

Yeah, I think it’s interesting. There’s a couple of fundamental things that have changed over the last 10 years, and the changes are happening more rapidly each year as we go along. If I look back 10 years ago or more, customers interacted with their providers predominantly in the way that the providers defined. It was the providers that had access to information. The customers were a bit constrained on how they could interact with a value provider. Today as we fast forward, I’d say one of the great equalizers is the customer has access to all sorts of information. Customers are much more familiar with and comfortable with interacting on the Internet to do their own research, to become educated buyers. Given that type of thought pattern, they have very much matured to the point where I believe most customers want to do business in a way that’s easy for them. They want to interact with us how they want to interact and when they want to interact. So I think the dynamics have shifted. The customer has a lot more control over the interaction and has a lot higher expectation.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:55]:

And the fact that the customer has a lot higher expectation, it is because that we have delivered or somehow that has increased because the rest of the world is just simply becoming more demanding. And is that is that something that can you satiate that appetite like completely ever? Or are you playing catch up?

Gordon [00:04:16]:

Well, yeah, a couple of things. And it varies by industry. Again, in the past, we probably did more comparisons when we did comparisons to other natural competitors, I would say industry type of competition. But people like Amazon and Google and other Internet providers basically change the dynamic whereas customers ask why can’t all of the businesses I interact with provide me the type of experience that ones that I like provide. So I’ll use Amazon as the example. They generally get very high marks for anticipating things that you need, looking at your patterns and your preferences and providing the type of chaperone support. They’re there when you need them and you’re comfortable with that. So you like interacting with Amazon. I believe the competitive landscape for us has changed. We can’t be comparing ourselves to the industry. We have to compare ourselves to the best providers that the customer interacts with. I think that’s been the single item that has raised customers’ expectations on what it should be like to interact with providers.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:25]:

So interestingly, you mentioned Amazon or any other provider. They have leveraged technology to be able to anticipate and start showing you banner ads and or anything that you do. In fact, sometimes it is an eerie feeling that I’m thinking about something and I see similar ad showing up. So this is becoming something like, out of this world. It’s almost like an alien trying to track you down and trying to sell you something. So if you try to deploy such, technology or such tactics, it could in a way have a counterproductive impact on the way a customer would feel about you as a value provider, and they would feel that they’re being stalked, and they may even turn away to somebody else who’s not basically haunting them every time. And if you are totally going to get too far removed, then it is a potential and that’s why in the first place you started coming close to them is because they must be defecting. So what’s that balance? What is your strategically, what’s the balance we should, strike here?

Gordon [00:06:28]:

Well, yeah, the balance is you can’t it’s a fine line as you suggest that you can’t become intrusive. You have to balance the support, the anticipation, knowing what their preferences are and balancing so that you’re there when they need you, not there when you just want to be there. I have examples of things that are very good in our experience. Folks are interested in getting proactive information if it’s something that is of that they see as of value, or something that they didn’t have or wouldn’t have had the time to research. So in our industry it may be things like when we monitor weather patterns that know that some of our clients could be at risk because of upcoming weather patterns and sending them some reminders of things that they can do is a very good proactive, well-received type of interaction. On the other hand, I have a provider that provides me individually some very good product, but I get an email from them almost every day. And they’ve gone to the point that I don’t look at expanding my relationship with them. The thing that they do exceptionally well, I will make the choice of when I want to interact, but I disconnect from the channel that they are really trying to pull me in through. Because they’ve overdone it, so you have to it’s a it’s a very fine line balance. And I think one of the key things is to really understand your, customer’s preferences, habits, behaviors, and really try to, think of it in terms of servicing them and having their best interest at heart.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:10]:

So the way you explained it that while people learn the art of reaching out to those individuals who are thinking about purchasing something or investing somewhere and you’re able to start showing them, but perhaps they have become overaggressive or they’re trying to come way too close. So is there no learning related to that or have there been any lessons learned and some best practices that have been established to say, yes, I want to be a chaperone, but I don’t want to go and nudge you every moment?

Gordon [00:08:39]:

Yes. I don’t know if I’d call them standards, but more in the best practices. The things that you need to look at are what are the critical touch points. Like every business, they might be different. But understanding the critical touch points that a customer has, whether it’s in an acquisition phase or in a servicing phase, what are the critical touch points? Focus on the critical touch points and what the value is to the customer. If you start with that, that mindset, you would reduce the risk of getting into one of those intrusive modes, I would suggest.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:14]:

So you would test. Is that what you’re saying that you would try to come close, you’ll try to test the waters and see at what point they start turning away and start showing signs. Are there any signs that you can inventory here to say, okay, this is telling us that the customer is not liking that that close pursuit?

Gordon [00:09:34]:

In our industry, we try to not approach the line. We’ve been more conservative, so we look at leading indicators on service experiences. And I know everyone’s very familiar with Net Promoter Scores. We monitor those very closely on correlated activities that are natural for us to interact with our customer on. So we’ve intentionally not been too aggressive on that, and we monitor NPSs of those critical touch points to refine our process. So there is a lot involved. It’s not an easy task, it’s a difficult task because there’s data analytics, there’s preferences, there’s really understanding the customer and their interactions to order not in order for you to be sure that you don’t push it too far. What we would see as a drop off of us being too persistent is that we would have less of a response rate on any of the survey and follow-up items that we do because we’re constantly, as you say, testing. We want to find out if what we’re doing is giving them the type of experience that they need. And fortunately for us, we have not seen a decline at all. We’ve actually seen, we have very good consistently high uptake in that area.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:05]:

So the all the discussion that we’ve had, like, you know, in this segment has been about finding out what they need or or how they’re responding is by touching them. And that’s more like pushing just to see how they react to any message that’s put out there or any touch point. Are there any, you know, not touching them and still getting a feeling based on whatever else you can do to to ensure that they get a feeling, the warm and fuzzy feeling of a chaperone being there, but not coming and nudging them? So how do you not touch them and still get that feeling? Is that even possible? Has that even been tried? 

Gordon [00:11:42]:

That’s an interesting idea. Some of the things that we’ve looked at and I’ve looked at is the, there’s stuff that you can analyze on, the vast amount of social media that’s out there that can give you some insights. But it’s hard to understand the direct response if you haven’t had some form of touch point. You can do the targeted marketing type of activity. But in our business model that is a very more of a personal type of connection to our distribution channel. We don’t get overly aggressive on that. So it’s very I think it’s a challenge to understand how they’re feeling if you don’t have a touch point. But you can gather data and analyze the patterns. And to date my experience is I haven’t been able to have, you know, specific outcomes, that I would take and make any changes from that analysis so far.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:55]:

Let’s take a quick break. Let’s just be right back and talk about the designing of a customer journey, which could be based on some commonalities that we find in a customer behavior. So we get them from all walks of life and at all levels of relationship. So can you create a mass customized customer journey, which basically makes everyone feel that they have a personalized chaperone assigned to them, and that will give them give the company, which is trying to do and make this investment the desired output and get the customer retention. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back, and, please stay tuned.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:02]:

Welcome back. So when we talk about the common denominators of a customer, whims, fancies, or expectations. Are there any? Because if you are trying to take your whole organization and all customers that you’ve ever acquired, they definitely come from different walks of life. And if you wanted to design a customer journey, which would be really almost like personalized to every one of them, there has to be some basis. What is that? Do you have a magic formula, Gordon?

Gordon [00:15:32]:

Yeah. There’s no silver bullet on anything, but we talked a little bit about the critical touch points or moments of truth that you have with the customer and every industry has those. As you take a look at for the, 10 years the things like mass customization or making their journey specific to them, the things that we have to look at are some common factors of what is the most value in the relationship for the customer. What are the things that occur most frequently? That’s generally where you want to start. The other areas that you have to take a look at is just it’s kind of basics, but you want to make it effortless. Regardless of the individual, if it’s easier for them to do the interaction with you regardless of what the interaction is, make it effortless for them is number one. The other factors you’re looking for is you want to create a positive emotional connection with the customer. It has their interactions they have to resonate emotionally, otherwise you don’t get the type of retention, the type of repeat type of business that you’re looking for. Another concept that we use in order to make this is you have to look at the different customers and look at the different points of, making sure that the customer feels that they are in control, try to put them in control as much as possible. And one of the examples that I can use on that is just basic things around queue time. If people happen to choose to go into a phone call and call a service center, it’s very important to express how much wait time there is. There was a study done in a different industry. It was a Disney study that, what the Disney lineup is like when you’re queuing in for the rides, and a little experiment was done. If people did not have any idea of how long the wait was, their perception of the length of the wait was significantly longer than people who had a definition of what the wait was even if the wait time wasn’t any longer. Because they were aware of the time they felt like they were in more control. They could step out of the line if they wanted to or not. So it’s a very simple element, but it’s an example of putting the customer in control. And the last item that we look at as a main parameter is around the, you know, being a customer advocate. That’s a very important part so that you can do when you do have those interactions, whether they’re customer initiated or something that you’re proactively doing, if you do it as a customer advocate, giving them information that’s valuable to them, or suggestions that are valuable to them are key. And that’s where you need to have an understanding of your customer, because not all things are equal to all customers. So

Sanjog Aul [00:18:28]:

it’s interesting you bring up this phrase customer advocate. So one is to call it a corporate speak. Another to become a mindset and a culture across all touch points. Because you can put all the technology or anyone for that matter can put all the technology and all the processes. But the people who are basically creating that touch point, talking to them or responding to an email or or in whatever way they’re trying to solve their problems. If they feel that the interest of a customer is above their own, then the the way they would respond and the way they will emote would be entirely different than someone who’s saying, okay. I got a quota for myself to sell those many widgets or or sell and then somehow detain this person by throwing a deal. How do you how do you manage that portion, the execution where the the feet on the street?

Gordon [00:19:17]:

Yeah. I agree with you completely that you have to have engaged employees who are properly trained, equipped, and authorized to do the right thing by our customers. The crux of being successful. Technology is nice, but if you don’t have the people side of it, it’s not going to work. We have a basic model, hire for attitude, train for skill. And I think of NBA players. You can’t train height. So we like to you don’t train someone to care. You can give them specifics about our industry and our business. But we basically hire for that attitude and that service orientation. We actually have gone to the point that we treat as part of our normal culture as we treat others within our company as customers. I’m an IT person, so it’s relatively easy to me. I’m a service provider not only to help enable things for our customer, but for the other departments within Selective. So they are my customers. I need everyone in IT to have that customer centric view. We’re not here just for the sake of the technology. We have to provide service and value to our customers whether they’re internal or external. So I would agree with you. We have specific training, hiring practices, and reward systems for having the service orientation and putting the customer first.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:42]:

So you use this, you know, phrase as hired for attitude and trained for skill. How about also adding required to have fun while doing so? Because if you see, there are many organizations who have shown a stellar, returns on what they invested in. That is where they are not just focusing on meeting a customer expectation, but actually exceeding them in the way they have done it is by having every employee just go and have fun and make the decision right then and there versus govern under a single, a monolithic approach to say, okay, this is the situation. This is what you do as a robot. How do you how do you instill such a fun attitude besides just training them on skills and the processes and also just hiring them for the attitude?

Gordon [00:21:30]:

Well, the some of the things that I’ve done in the past is you can model things, you can go and review things, you can go look at people outside of your industry. So I did the Zappos tour a long time ago. I didn’t buy the new pair of shoes. I think my wife got those. But anyway I have a personal belief if you’re not going to have fun, why bother to do it? So I think the thing you have to do is it starts with the executive in our company and flows all the way through. You have to enjoy what you’re doing. You have to have fun while you’re doing it. And you can look at outside folks and see specific examples of a culture where people have fun. That is definitely not going to have a negative impact on any of your customer interactions because that kind of shines through when, if people are having fun or enjoying the work, the interactions become more positive.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:23]:

And do you think that is consistent across all touch points? And is there a way while while I’m asking to kind of do the impossible sometimes is that every moment there will be someone in the best of their attitude whenever they touch a customer. There may be some fallouts, but that doesn’t mean that we do not do majority of the time. How are you able to ensure that?

Gordon [00:22:45]:

Yeah, there’s a concept of the moments that matter and what are the responses that you need to have in those moments that matter, moments that matter. And we have, as I say, we have a reward system, but we have a recognition system on how we can improve. We understand the information. We understand we get a lot of feedback from our distribution partners and our customers on how well we’re doing. And we have a very constant feedback loop that even if we did something great yesterday, if we don’t keep improving comparatively we will fall behind. So it has to be a consistent feedback loop. And we look at it on every touch point. And you know, we’re not consistently excellent at every one, but the ones that we aren’t where we want to be, it’s more training, more commitment to doing it and supporting it. So it is a cultural. You hit on the very important part that it has to be a cultural part of the organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:50]:

No. One is to say, okay, we are going to be, as a chaperon, just we will be attentive, we will always keep an eye and maintain focus and we’ll be courteous. But at the same time, that makes it more subservient versus a person of equal stature who also commands respect. How do you get respect out of a customer?

Gordon [00:24:11]:

We tend to gain the respect by specifically being in our industry, specifically being for them being there for them when they need us. There’s points of time where our customer because we’re in the insurance industry if somebody’s got a claim, that’s an emotional transaction. It’s something where they, we can reach out or when they reach out to us, we can be proactively helpful for them in their time of need. So we gain that trust, and that level of partnership if you will. We get elevated by providing them value and being there for them when they need it, when they want us. We always have to be there. And that is a good foundation for us to be able to offer some of the other touch points and give them some other information that, you know, improves the loyalty and the consistency of dealing with us.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:05]:

Now when you look at the people who are also deploying omnichannel capabilities and many of your same philosophies and theories and processes that you just explained in an insurance industry. So let’s talk about competitive landscape. You do it, your competitor does it. What’s the difference?

Gordon [00:25:25]:

Yeah. So we both did— we all don’t do it equally as well. Some of us have different models. The way we try to differentiate ourselves is in how we organize and deploy the people to provide the level of chaperone and experience both our support from both our distribution partners and our end customers. It’s basically a competitive game like anything else. Like we all have products and services that we offer and the folks that tend to do it better tend to get the results. So yes, do our other competitors do this? Sure, there’s lots of insurance carriers that use NPS. There are some that are moving have made further moves towards customer experience if you will or customer centricity from product centricity. But I think everybody is in a journey and it’s a journey that never ends. So it’s a constantly competitive landscape. And we always strive to be as good as we can be. And we acknowledge our competitors who are doing well. A good competitive landscape is not a bad thing. It’s a very good thing. And we even go to the point from being the customer advocate if there’s something that we think it’s more appropriate for them to deal with one of our competitors because there may be a specific product or a unique situation where it might be in their best interest to use one of our competitors, that’s not really a problem for us.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:07]:

Now let’s talk about cost versus value. So we know that in insurance, that the word insurance as soon as it comes, we say, yes, we need the peace of mind, but we also want to pay the least. How do you through your ability to create that or becoming a chaperone, you’re able to get them to see or focus more on value. That way, you are not just on are going into that prize war across competition, and customer doesn’t win anyways because then you’ll be forced to cut corners. So how do you how do you shift focus off a customer on value versus thinking a cost?

Gordon [00:27:41]:

Well, there’s basically different, there’s different buyers as you say, there’s different customers things that are more important. A customer who is exclusively going to focus on the lowest price may not be somebody that we can help as much and provide as much value to. The way we do it is through education. We want people to understand for what you’re paying, what are your coverages. I’m sure people are there’s more than enough insurance commercials on TV for folks to get the idea that there are different levels of coverage and different values that are associated with those coverages and products. And we attack that through education because we want the customer to be informed of what they are getting and help them make the right decision for themselves.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:35]:

Now given that you spent your, majority of your professional career, it seems like in the insurance industry and now you are at the at Selective. So let’s take a quick break. We come back, and let’s hear some of your experiences of what has worked versus what has not. And, of course, you’ve dealt with technology at different levels. But beyond technology, are there any other things that have actually made a difference? And if yes, in what way were they, you know, deployed in order for them to have the most impacts? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:50]:

Welcome back. So, Gordon, you definitely have paid your dues in this field and have seen things been tried and some working, others haven’t. And then beyond technology, beyond the plumbing, if you will, the culture and everything else, yes, we discussed them, like, throughout this previous segments. Now specifically, do you see as, like, macro trends wearing the hat of an analyst?

Gordon [00:31:03]:

Yes. Some of the basic macro trends, everyone knows the customer demographics are changing. So the expectations of the newer customers are very different. So they’re evolving and the pace of that change is accelerating. I can use my daughter as a specific example. She basically chooses some of her providers based on what they can or can’t do for her electronically. So the way that they can interact with her towards her preferences, she will actually make a choice of who she does business with. And I think there’s more and more of that coming about. So the big trends, the big macro level trends as we’re getting a shift of the demographics of the customers. The evolution, the speed with which technology and corresponding expectations changes just continuing to accelerate. I think everyone will probably I don’t know if they realize or think about it, but today will be the slowest day for the rest of your life of the pace of technology change. The technology change today is the slowest you’ll experience from now to the rest of your life because it continues to accelerate. So thinking in terms of those threads, one of the things, yeah, the plumbing versus messages and those sorts of things, you have to have the plumbing you have to have the ability to do this in order to compete, because the messages and how you interact are becoming more and more critical. So some of the best practices that can really help outside of getting the technology and doing those things is basically it’s a very basic one that I don’t know if everyone has all has taken on to the level that they may need to, and that is the customer focus groups. I think retail shops, and there’s certain buying there’s certain industries that are very good at customer focus groups, but every industry I believe needs to be much better at dealing with customer focus groups in order to stay current with the pace of change. Because those focus groups, if you refresh them and deal with them properly, you will get to have a little better insight into some of the shifting expectations of the customers. We’ve already talked a little bit about aligning and an organization must align the people in the process to be focused on customer service and customer expectations. That’s I think fairly straightforward. We’ve discovered that. Some of the other things that are in my view a best practice around this type of challenge or opportunity is in the world of technology, there’s a couple of terms. One is called evolutionary prototyping and the discovery type of this exploratory or evolutionary, because of the pace of change, we have very limited opportunity to do a complete exploratory prototype. So we have to be more flexible. Things are moving more into evolutionary patterns, being able to get something in and then adjusting it quickly. So the mindset and speed with which things have to happen has to increase. And so the shift away from exploratory, spending a lot of time doing exploratory work is moving, so you have to do more evolutionary work. And on a I guess the last high level one is, when you’re going down this path or thinking of embarking on this path, there are some key definitions that you have to define upfront. If you can’t don’t put your key definitions of what do you mean by a customer, what do you mean by providing service? What’s a prospect? What’s a lead? What’s a customer? What are your service objectives? And if you don’t define those out and have your evolutionary work be outcome oriented, you’re going to be playing catch up for a long time.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:01]:

What has not worked? What problems are you still trying to crack in this, becoming a chaperone and customer retention and bringing them back?

Gordon [00:35:13]:

I guess one of the things that we still have to work with and work on every day is because of what I mentioned before on the change and the pace of technology of making sure that we invest appropriately to stay and keep pace. It’s a fine balance. It’s a hard thing to crack because you can always feel like you’re behind. So you need to have that discipline to consistently invest and know that it’s an ongoing long term type of situation. I think back historically because it hasn’t been around too long that when Software Engineering Institute came out with CMM levels 1 to 5, everyone thought it was a great idea and it is a great idea. But some folks started on the journey and got to level 1 and level 2 and said I’m not seeing what the return of this is. And they may have stopped short when the first set of benefits really appeared at level 3. So one of the things going in, you have to understand the level of investment and commitment that you’re going to need to make. You can’t back out of it because if you do, it will you’ll get further behind.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:25]:

But see, so think about someone who’s holding the purse strings. Resources are anyways scarce. So they have to feel convinced, and you’re not gonna be able to do a sell job as someone who is trying to say, I’m a, I’m an advocate of of investing in becoming a chevron. So what is it that is being bought versus you trying to sell to the people who are opening up the purse strings?

Gordon [00:36:51]:

Yeah. To my view, there’s a couple of basic arguments that the thing that I try to to sell and I don’t think is disputed is, the cost of acquiring a new customer is more than the cost of retaining an existing one. So we need to make sure that we are retaining our customers positive learnings that come out of that and, you know, obviously learning any learning whether things worked or didn’t work and applying that for new customers is basically the winning model and doing it in my opinion and it’s the winning model to do that to say okay I can invest small amounts, I can target at specific outcomes for acquiring new customers, here’s how we’d go about doing it. And that is I’d say in my time here, our shift is moving more in that direction because we’ve had learnings on the service side. So we’re shifting a bit, but we’re going to do it in an evolutionary fashion because you can’t go to someone who’s asked that you’re going to ask for money for to give me a huge load of money without having a pretty good idea of the return. So I see these things happening in much smaller investment amounts for specifically targeted outcomes.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:19]:

And what did you say that? Sorry. Go ahead.

Gordon [00:38:22]:

I said that’s what I mean by the evolutionary side of things as opposed to doing a deep exploration and come up with a five year plan on how this is going to happen. Those days are pretty much gone because things change too quickly.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:34]:

So you do get some money initially or seed money to be able to show some quick wins. And if somebody was to create a playbook to say, okay, this is how you go about, creating that customer journey, which would be the first few that you would ask the seed money for?

Gordon [00:38:52]:

Yeah. First is basically doing the, what I would call the, if I go back to when I first started doing this, is if you haven’t started this journey yet, you’ve got to get the basic seed money to do the definitional work around what you mean by a customer, what your objectives are for becoming the chaperone, what are the specific outcomes. And one of the under then identify the underlying foundational pieces that you need regardless of what the specifics are going to be. So for example, if you’re a technology person, having a clear view of your customer and all of your interactions with the customer, whether using an MDM technology or CRM whatever technology choice there’s more than enough technology out there. You need to get down to what is the what I call minimum necessary and sufficient funding for a foundational piece to get those initial definitions in the first exploration underway. And that’s been successful for me, here and elsewhere in my career.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:55]:

When it comes to the people, when you do mention that, of course, they will have to be trained and and skilled and allowed to have fun. What challenges that you see people haven’t been able to embrace something new? Because people came or or most people come to say, okay. I’m gonna be trained on something. There will be some processes. And and on top, you want them to be creative. Not everybody is creative or and and they don’t think very quickly on their feet either. How do you how do you can then do you just say, okay. These x number of people who are being screened, if you will, to be creative and be able to think on their feet and have the right attitude to be only touching the customer directly?

Gordon [00:40:37]:

Well, we want the folks that touch our customer to have that level of enthusiasm. So we’ve been fortunate that we have a lot of people that have that excitement because they’re aware, everyone in our organization here is aware that the customers are the ones that are providing the revenue to keep people here employed and doing the things that they love to do. So that hasn’t been as much of a challenge for us. With time and the demand shifting, we have to constantly refresh people.

Gordon [00:41:08]:

And as the very specific programs as we target because people roll into they’re eligible for retirement and we have very specific programs targeting folks to be coming into the organization that are trained from ground one into what we want to do. So it’s we have a very tight relationship with our Human Resources department, our training programs, our recruiting programs are all tied in together with this in mind.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:43]:

And when it comes to policies and processes, any specific areas that you feel are the key to observe and fine tune on a regular basis in order to deliver that Chevron experience?

Gordon [00:41:55]:

Well, we’re constantly some of the things we have to monitor just we’re a regulated industry, so there’s a bunch of there’s regulations that we obviously have to keep track of and refresh anything that is regulated by the state or the federal government. So those are just natural and everybody has different degrees of that to deal with. On things that we look at ourselves is, are around the, on the policy side, the things that have been more dynamic lately are things around how we deal with security. There’s obviously a heightened sense of cybersecurity. So we have to look at policies there fairly regularly and the government is getting very actively involved in those sorts of things. Social media is a dynamic element that we have to look at a little more frequently. But most of our other policies, we review them on an annual basis. There’s a couple we may do spot checks for because we have regular calls and update with regulators and other industry type groups to get any insights as to where we may look more frequently than annually. But lately the only one that’s been hitting a very, very frequent review at that we haven’t had to change our policy. It’s been more making sure that we’re staying current with all the underlying processes is the world of cybersecurity. And that has a play in this because folks want to be connecting us. We have to keep them secure whether they’re going through customer self-service on the web, whether they’re coming through mobile app or calling our contact centers or dropping into the office. We need to protect that.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:47]:

Now, let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back and and look at from two different hats. One is you being the CIO, so you have to handle the technology, the plumbing, and the information integrity that flows. And the other hand, you have the business counterparts, like the business unit leaders who may be responsible for customer experience. They may want innovation by the minute. And there would be things which they would like to try on a regular basis and be able to go beyond what you have available today. So you need almost like a two speed technology department. What is it that is expected fundamentally from technology department and technology leaders and your deputies so that the business can move forward, the business can be seen as a chaperone to the customers? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:04]:

Welcome back. So you as the CIO, your business unit leader who may be in charge for customer experience and the CEO who’s been charged to make sure the company moves forward. Everybody would have their own agenda. What has been expected from each party in order for the business, the organization to deliver that chaperone effect. 

Gordon [00:46:24]:

Yeah. And, yes, we have a, we have someone that is we have an executive responsible for customer experience. So that is that helps because that person is accountable for making customer experience decisions on prioritization and driving things. Our CEO and COO are they basically are strategic supporters of this. Their basic bottom line is we would like to have seamless customer interaction on any 7×24 through whatever means they choose to interact with us. So that’s the so the highest level executive is, yes, we want to interact with the customer when they want, how they want 7×24. Thank you. Go ahead. And then the customer experience person basically flushes down into more details. They’re basically prioritizing the different things that we can do, making sure that we’re consistent across all channels. There’s areas where we may lag in one. It’s a lot of their work is a lot of her request is we have to be providing a consistent experience across all the channels. In my world, it translates into I’m sure everyone is comfortable or familiar with the speed term of 2-speed IT. Like there’s the business folks would say there’s the slow IT and then there’s the slower IT. But we like to think of it as we have the risk adjusted IT stuff doing the large infrastructure type things. And then we have to have a second speed that’s faster, that’s more nimble and delivering with customer demands because we basically have on a CXP perspective, we do mobile updates like updates to our mobile app and our web services, our customer self-service are constantly being updated. So we have a cycle time that’s much faster. So where I think people are familiar with the 2-speed IT cycle time, I’m thinking we’re almost at a 3rd one. I think the business would like us to have fast and then faster as our other speeds. So the way that we do that is we organize we have a support I have an executive who reports directly to me who is the point person for all customer experience stuff. And they we have people that are organized as cross functional teams across wherever we need in the organization to deliver on CXP at the rate of speed. And there are CXP related deliveries happening all the time. So those are the kind of the three things like from the top the CEO wants it across 7×24 underneath what and when the customer wants. The business unit leads whose response for this wants consistency and continue improvement. And my role is to provide all of that and deliver it at the appropriate rate of speed.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:24]:

Now from a leadership, so you mentioned that you’ve got expectations. So what have you seen, you know, going wrong and or been not done exactly the way it should be from a leader standpoint? Because you, of course, are going to set the vision, and then you would like to be, you’d like to see your deputies executing to that vision while still becoming the leaders who lead from the middle in order for that whole organization to be synchronized and give that consistent experience. What What are the pitfalls and where do you think people make mistakes?

Gordon [00:50:00]:

We have to one of the things that we have to do a good job of that comes from a leadership perspective is to set and align on reasonable expectations. And I think that’s sometimes we may get out of sync as to whether it’s how quickly or how comprehensively something can be done at speed. There’s always trade offs. And one of the things that I think is very important from a leadership perspective is to stay consistently aligned around reasonable expectations, make sure we stay outcome focused, and make sure we’re balancing the speed with the risk. And I think that’s I think we have learned over the time that I’m here where we can we’ve gotten better at that, but we can always get better, at that.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:53]:

If you were to review the journeys that you may have had yourself, your deputies may have had, or the people who you know in the industry, what would you suggest to be done differently if that was journey was to be, experienced again in terms of developing this customer chaperone effect?

Gordon [00:51:12]:

Well, I think the basic shift, the things that people that are embarking or if we could go back and do it again, the shift of becoming customer centric from product centricity is very important to understand the limitations of some of the historical call them legacy applications or legacy environment. There has to be it would have been fantastic if everyone had a true appreciation for anticipating the rate of change so that there could have been some ongoing smaller investments as you talk about like 10 years ago or 15 years ago. It’s very hard to predict, but I think I’ve seen a couple of places where things have struggled or taken longer and not delivered the results because there’s been a little bit of a gap in that in making sure you’re always looking forward and making sure you’re doing having an appreciation for what the implications of what the implications are for becoming customer centric. Because it touches down we’ve already talked about the process. It touches the people. It touches investments. It touches the technology. So it hits every part of an organization. So having a better understanding, take a little bit more time up front understanding all of those pieces so that you can make evolutionary progress would be my recommendation. Trying to bite off too much, too fast is not a, not the best approach in my mind.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:49]:

So if you were to give an advice to the the leader, like the CEO of a company, a fellow CIO in another company, or even the people who are at the very, like, you know, at at the level where they are touching the customers, what would be your, advice to each one of them in order for this to, be the best journey possible for them and in the process they offer that chaperone effect to the customer?

Gordon [00:53:17]:

Well, that’s a very good question. It’s an interesting question. The things that I think of with anything that I believe is transformational or a significant change, it’s to always approach things with the mindset of figuring out how we can get something done as opposed to raising reasons why it can’t be done. So it’s I would say taking the if I can call it the half glass full or the optimistic attitude of hey, we can discover, we can get this done. That’s probably been one of the that would be one of the things that I would get alignment on to say, hey, this is something getting that importance to the organization that this really is important to our future, getting that alignment up early, which fortunately we have here, and then getting making sure it filters down through the organization that, yes, we always have to take this with an idea of how can we get these things done.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:17]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Gordon, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations can fundamentally rethink what’s possible, the positive attitude that you just mentioned, and also refine the different processes they have, the type of people they choose, and have a common agenda, which is to provide the very best experience to the customers at all touch points. And, hopefully, that will result in you as an organization be seen as a customer chaperone. Thank you so much again, Gordon.

Gordon [00:54:47]:

Oh, thank you. You’re very welcome. I appreciate the time to talk with you today. Have a great day.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:52]:

You too. And, listeners, please like us on Facebook. Search for CIO Talk Radio. Please be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.