Episode released on: 12. June 2023
Unlocking the Future of CX: A Deep Dive into Global State Research with Melanie Mingas – THE CX GOALKEEPER – Transformation, Customer Experience, and Leadership Goals
The CX Goalkeeper had the great opportunity to interview Melanie Mingas
LinkedIn Headline: Editor-in-chief, CX Network, IQPC Digital
Highlights:
00:00 Game Start
00:34 Melanie’s introduction
01:51 Melanie’s Values
03:01 The Evolution of CX
05:57 Digital CX
12:39 Data
17:40 Conversational AI
21:06 Automation
23:30 Sustainability
27:16 The Impact on CX Professionals
31:29 The Future
33:46 Book Suggestion
35:43 Contact Details
36:09 Golden Nugget
and much more
Melanie’s Contact Details:
- Melanie.Mingas@iqpc.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-mingas-8351b817/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/cx-network/
- https://twitter.com/CX_Network
- https://www.instagram.com/cx.network/
Her book suggestion:
- Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Melanie’s Golden Nuggets:
- We must shift our perspective and no longer view CX as a distinct component of the business. It goes beyond isolated teams or individual departments. There isn’t a sole definitive measure for success or financial impact in CX. It is imperative that professionals at all career stages wholeheartedly comprehend and adopt this stance. The reason being, it opens up a realm of abundant freedom and potential. Both practitioners and leaders can work in an entrepreneurial and collaborative manner. They have the ability to become customer advocates by bridging operations, sales, and marketing, ensuring the satisfaction of those who receive the product, service, or experience.
“We must shift our perspective and no longer view CX as a distinct component of the business. It goes beyond isolated teams or individual departments” Melanie Mingas @CX_Network on the CX Goalkeeper Podcast
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What did we discuss?
Gregorio Uglioni
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the CX goalkeeper podcast your host, Greg will have smart discussions with friends, experts and thought leaders on customer experience transformation and leadership. Please follow this podcast on your preferred platform. I am sure you will enjoy the next episode with the guest I selected for you,
Ladies and gentleman today. It’s really a big, big pleasure because I’ve Melanie Mingas together with me. Hi Melanie, how are you?
Melanie Mingas
I’m very well, thanks. How are you doing?
Gregorio Uglioni
Well, I am super thrilled to start this discussion, because I already know what we are going to discuss. And I am super thrilled to get some insights, some additional insight on your global state research that you publish in late May. And let’s deep dive on that. But before we deep dive into this topic, as usual, in the first part, its introduction was our today’s top player. Today, you are the top player, Melanie, and therefore could you please introduce yourself?
Melanie Mingas
Of course, right, thank you. And thanks also, for inviting me on the CX goalkeeper, it’s the podcasts everyone’s talking about. Well, full disclosure. First of all, unlike your other guests, Greg, I’m not a CX practitioner, or a CX goalkeeper, or a CX beekeeper. Although the episode of Cristian was really, really good, but I only had to change chief of CX network. So I am 100% dedicated to bringing CX practitioners and goalkeepers and beekeepers, the information that they need to be the absolute best at experience management. So as you may have guessed, my background is in business publishing. And before I joined CX network covered things like telecoms, hospitality, residential finance, so all very customer centric industries that are all very relevant to what’s happening here at CX network, right now.
Gregorio Uglioni
I’m happy to give you back the compliments because I also really enjoyed to work together with you and two together to CX network, CX network, it’s really a great resource to get information to get insights to find new ways to chat with people. And I really enjoy to people that are not CX professional, or the super experts in customer experience, because customer experience is one important topic in business, but it’s not everything. Perhaps for some people, it’s everything for others one topic that is relevant in business. And therefore I really like to have also discussion with people outside of the CX community so that we can learn and grow also in business, because we are in the business. And therefore I it’s great introduction and super happy to have you on the on the podcast. And the second question I always ask is which values drive you in life?
Melanie Mingas
Yeah, this is a big one. I guess it would have to be. I don’t know, freedom, hard work, truth. truth. It’s a big one these days. There’s a lot of lot of misinformation out there. So I guess those would be my kind of 3 to look on.
Gregorio Uglioni
I really liked that. And perhaps speaking about misinformation, therefore, you are there, you can explain aspects of the global state research that you publish, before we deep dive into statistics, data and trends and so on. From your point of view, as you said, a bit from an as an outsider in the customer experience words. How is customer experience evolving?
Melanie Mingas
Yeah, so it’s a really good question. Well, look background first in the global state, it was very broad survey, we covered top trends, budgets, Omni channel, customer behaviors, challenges, and the role of the CX practitioner, and servers open between January and March, we had 550 responses from our network members. And we have found out that digital is everything right now. And that isn’t a surprise entirely. But we did see this year, the momentum has been building now for quite a while. But there’s even more immersive channel technology on the horizon. And so there’s a real focus right now on finalizing the foundations for digital CX. And getting that in place. We saw that across all industries and geographies. And we saw that in response to trends questions, top investment areas, we’re also focused on digital remapping journeys. In customer behaviors, customers want convenience and other things that are best delivered through digital channels. So we really saw this kind of we kind of came 360 Really on digital CX. It’s no longer practitioners no longer thinking about this as individual parts of a strategy or individual functions in the business. Digital is everything and it’s one experience in itself.
Gregorio Uglioni
And I think it’s extremely difficult to differentiate digital and non digital because they are going together. They need to be synchronized. You already touched a lot of interesting and important topics, the different geographies the topic around digitalization the topic around around data per I think you identified three top trends in this in your global state research. Let’s start speaking about them. And then afterwards, we will deep dive on each one.
Melanie Mingas
Okay, cool. That sounds good. So we asked our network members, which top three trends they believe will have the greatest impact on their role over the course of 2023. So quite simple question. But do bear in mind that these are trends that they think will impact their job, their place in the organization and their priorities. So it’s not necessarily top trends in CX. But the answers were 37% said digital CX, which reinforces our kind of headline, point for whole report 32% selected data and analytics and 29% selected conversational AI. So this just kind of reinforces how everything right now is about digital digital as a whole, and also the elements that build a digital experience. But yeah, let me know which one you want to dive into first,
Gregorio Uglioni
I think that the really interesting thing is, we are discussing a lot about different topics, cultural topics, organizational topics, and in this case, it’s really about digital, and these are all things related to technology and leveraging the new opportunities that were and I think, let’s go through in the sequence that you mentioned, digital CX, how should we understand digital CX?
Melanie Mingas
Yeah, digital is, it’s an approach, it’s not necessarily a type of experience. It’s about your organizational culture. It’s about the agility to, to refine and edit journeys, if you will, in real time to personalize them to Yeah, it’s about bringing the customer where they are the things that they want, in the place that they want, at the times that they want. And obviously, that is that ties into convenience as well. But I mean, digital CX is really about being there on multiple channels, it’s about making sure that you have some kind of response on every channel, whether that’s chat, GBT, you know, a generative AI, or an actual human agent. And it’s making sure that those journeys are monitored as well, to ensure that they’re working correctly, because as we both know, as consumers outside of the world of CX, there’s nothing worse than a digital dead end, or a broken journey, or things that don’t make sense when you just want to simply buy something, or arrange a return or do whatever you need to do. Now, obviously, CX links existed for a long, long time, way before digital came along, and all the technology that supports this. But it’s that convergence of experience as well. I think that the technologies, the platforms that are available today, it is possible to recreate that, you know, white glove service, that the personalization that you used to get from your local grocery, there’s, there’s a lot that we can do now, in terms of online, and customers want that to happen. I mean, as we all know, and this isn’t just from global state research, customer expectations are set by the best experience they’ve ever had. They don’t necessarily judge each brand by its own merits, if you will. They have an amazing automated experience, for example, with Amazon, and then they expect, you know, some maybe some small cloth boutique clothing brand, to have that same technology on its back end for customer experience and service. Whereas, you know, the smaller companies, that’s a huge investments, they’re not necessarily going to have that, but they do have to find a way to deliver that seamless journey. So yeah, I mean, digital is not just one set of tools. It’s not just one approach to CX, it’s about converging everything we know about experience and service to deliver it in a way that customers now expect a standard.
Gregorio Uglioni
I, I like extremely how you formulated the last part because it’s exactly what it’s key. It’s digital is the mean to create experiences for the customer, where they are and what they want. And I think we could discuss the full episode only about this topic. And I try to pick out four topics that are always relevant and always coming up. The first one and I think this is something that is extremely important. Everybody’s discussing about that not so many companies are really doing that. That’s my point of view we’re discussing with with a lot of companies. It’s digital, it’s not only the technological part, the implementation of the project, but as you said, it’s about cultural setup. It’s about governance, it’s about organization. And this is the key. And when you’re defining this, this project is digital initiatives. You said that in an extremely, extremely nice way, you need to be where the customer wants to be want us to be, and when they want to be and therefore it’s really focusing on them. Having the customer in mind from the beginning when you start project. Yeah. When you start your digitalization initiatives and not and not only at the end, let’s try if it’s work or not. And what you said also, it’s the don’t want to have broken experiences. And I think that’s the key before we discuss about wild moments. And all this stuff, it’s extremely important that the basics are working that you can do or you can achieve your job job to be done. And as you said, it’s it’s really a pity, but it’s the reality. It’s a bit unfair from our customers, but they are comparing us with the best in class. And as you said, we are all aware of Amazon, how quick they are in the delivery. And therefore customers are expecting from everybody that the same experience in my corporate job, I am working in a hospital, and they are comparing the patients are comparing her and also with Amazon, how quick they are out digital they are and so on. And even if it’s a completely different industry, exactly. This is the same comparison. And the other comparison that I often hear it’s it’s about our rooms, where people then need to lie longer times. And then they compare us with with hotels and you say yeah, but this is an Hospital. Yes. But and therefore I think that’s that’s extremely interesting.
Melanie Mingas
It is interesting. Yeah. And on that man, Gregorio, so we actually, obviously, our primary focus is kind of private sector and very much b2c, we do do a bit of b2b. But we also want to get more into public sector. So we have a lot of patient a lot of context, sorry, here in patient experience by yourself. And we asked our respondents this year, if they carry the same expectations for experience, customer experience, it’s an experience in their interactions with the public sector organizations that they deal with the private and 52% said that, yes, they do expect the same level of experience and service from public sector organizations. So we’re talking your local government, you know, where you in the UK, where you pay a council bills to in the US state authorities, as well as hospitals, schools, for example. A lot of yeah, a lot of different public sector organizations. And that’s going to be really big for the public sector. I mean, it’s not what we’re going to talk about today. But if you do need to talk about it again, in future, there is going to be a huge drive for demand, particularly when that expectation transfer happens in public sector. And yeah, okay, you don’t have the same choice as a citizen that you do as a consumer. So you can’t just go well, I’m going to pay my council tax for different Council this month, you can’t do that you have to stick with what you’ve got. And you do have to go through the broken journeys and the friction and everything else, you have to persevere. But that expectation is being transferred to the public sector now. And we are going to be looking into that in a lot more detail over the coming months.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think let’s take out our agendas, because we already have two additional episodes that we need to record. And therefore let’s schedule the meetings. Now Joke aside, and also for the audience. We continue through the list that you mentioned at the beginning, we discussed about digital CX. And now we are going to do the topic data. What was the view of the respondents on data?
Melanie Mingas
Yeah, this was fascinating. If I’m honest with you, obviously, data is a really big topic. And there are some really big things happening around data, particularly this year, because of third party cookies. Now, there are some obvious things that are survey data confirmed, and that is that customer data is Keith’s digital CX, we all know that. And we digital, obviously, customer data can be utilized in a lot of different ways. Now, we didn’t speak to consumers. But we are aware from our wider work in the CF community that data security and privacy are really, really important to consumers today. Now, customers of brands and organizations are increasingly savvy about sharing their data with those brands and organizations. They know how its captured what it’s worth, they know how companies can use it. And they’ve mostly learned these things the hard way through the horror stories that we hear in the news. Now, while some of them want the benefits of having an organization use their data, let’s say personalization or convenience, they’re not just going to give that data away anymore. But also companies need that data more than ever. So there’s a small point of friction there, which actually has the potential to become quite a gulf between what customers are willing to give and what companies actually need in order to deliver competitive experiences. But back to the main point, I mean, data means that CX is no longer a guessing game. And that’s a huge development, because customer data provides visibility and reach into CX, and that has the potential to drive the vision of an entire business. But it needs to be captured, it needs to be analyzed and presented to the right people. And that requires a lot of liaison with vendors. It requires, you know, structural IT management projects. It can require no IT architecture in your organization. This isn’t just a case of oh, let’s turn let’s flick a switch. And you know, this problem will be solved this you know, this work will be in progress. But that said when it comes to the practicalities of data, I think a lot of companies also need to assess how much data they ask for and if it’s relevant to ask that you You know, why do you need somebody’s location if you know if it’s not a location based service that you’re providing. And I think companies also need to be very clear about how customer data will be used, they obviously need to stick to that usage policy. And there’s a lot of consequences for not doing but they do need to fix that usage policy. And they need to make it really, really easy for a customer to withdraw their data and their consent for that data to be used. And I think that that will really solve the trust piece, that this friction point that I mentioned earlier, has the danger of kind of opening up. Now there’s lots of different data sources that can be tapped to personalize a journey. It’s not all just customers, typing in the names and their email addresses and, you know, etc, etc. It’s how they interact with websites. It’s how they move between channels, there’s a lot of kind of reactive behind the scenes data that can be used to personalize a journey, for example, to recommend products. So companies really need to focus on building that treasure trove of first party data. And particularly with personalization, and individualization is that gains pace, because that is kind of the next step. They need to get that keep your core mentality firmly fixed in their minds. Now, that’s about putting yourself in the customers shoes, and just allowing yourself to critically assess the notifications that you send things that appear on people’s social feeds after they’ve looked at them on your website. And just ask yourself, Is this creepy? Or is it cool? Because your customer will be asking themselves that and overstepping the mark on how data is used, can have the complete opposite effect what was intended. Now we have a sports or cybersecurity hub, and they publish an incident of the week, every week. And it’s all companies having customer data stolen in IT and data breaches, cyber attacks, lots and lots of different things. So I think that companies need to make a real proactive commitment to their customers. And maybe, you know, as part of that, they can start to explain how data is being used in more of a b2c kind of way, rather than 10 pages of terms and conditions accept now or you know, you can’t send this text message that you’re in a hurry to send, and then pressure people to accept terms and conditions that they may not do if they you know, if they read them properly. So yeah, I mean, data obviously has a lot of potential, we know what that potential is, we know the tools that need to be bought, in terms of where the CS community is up to, in doing that. Progress is strong. But there is a long way to go. And there’s a huge barrier in terms of how customers want their data to be used, and what they’re willing to tolerate in terms of day to use, and nothing is ever going to be a success unless that customer demand is met. And it’s met authentically. And with that white, you can’t break this trust.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think the word that you finished, I try to comment on that thread trust is key. This morning in the news in Switzerland, speaking about the public sector that you mentioned, they share that data from important school were stolen. And school means children. And that’s that’s the big, big topic about trust and ensuring that if people are sharing data that they can trust the companies, the public sector that this data can not stolen. Cybersecurity is one topic that that you shared. And I think this is the key and the foundation. And afterwards, as you said, gathering the data is one important piece. But the other is, as you said, structuring that and leveraging this data, because to gather data only for the sake of having the data doesn’t make sense. We know that a lot of companies are doing that. You said you mentioned for example, location based if you’re if you’re not in this field, why you are getting this data and demand the data is increasing and increasing. And therefore you need also to focus which data you share which data you can share and how you can you want to differentiate yourself. And I think this topic is also linked to the last trends that you shared conversation, conversational AI, because also there are a lot of data required. What’s What’s the view of the respondents on conversational AI?
Melanie Mingas
Yes, so we we actually conduct this survey, just as chat GPT was kind of exploding onto the scene while release three anyway. And then released for us, the US Commerce will kind of writing it so well. Our analysts have kind of spoken about chat GPT and its relevance. We were asking about conversational AI rather than generative. Now, what we have found is that it’s being used more, it’s being used for a lot of things. And there is definitely there’s momentum to embrace this and use it and leverage it to you know, to achieve to achieve CX targets and drive better drive better experiences. But there are barriers. There are difficulties. We’re very much kind of finding our way on this as we go necessarily in the dark but we are very much kind of, you know, finding our path to the As AI powered future as we are on path. So I think that the big, the big thing to take away from this is that large language models in particular are going to change everything, we kind of already know this. And we’re going to talk in a little while about how the role of the CX professional is changing, and AI is very, very relevant to the future obviously looks professional. But right now, I mean, we’re at a point where people are trying out these large language models for automation. Again, when it comes to customer data, there are concerns that say about data privacy, how large language models in particular use, and we use data. And I think that in general, we’re at a very early stage. But it’s very much a focus area for everybody. I mean, when we asked about the top investment areas, conversational AI was number three chatbots was number two, it’s very much people realize that this is very much the future. It has huge potential when it comes to automation. It can lower overheads, it can deal with customer queries in a much more efficient way. But yeah, we are still at the very, very early stages.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think this is also an extremely interesting topic every day, it’s a new evolution there a new tool that we can leverage, and we can use, a lot of people is discussing about it. I don’t know how many people are understanding that? That’s the big question. But it’s it’s important to really, as you mentioned earlier, also create the trust that companies are communicating interacting with customers through these tools. And there needs to be a trust there, because you have third parties provided and there are paying also a role. And as well, you have a lot of additional insights on this global state research going through the main topics that I picked out of it an insight about automation.
Melanie Mingas
Yes. So last year, automation wasn’t a top 10 trend. But this year it was. Now this is against the trends, that’s the expectation is believed going to change their role the most over the course of the year. So automation emerged as the fifth most important trend this year. And respondents are looking to automation to solve common challenges. Kind of the same with AI. And they do go hand in hand to an extent they’re looking to reduce the X and X cost by looking to improve their NPS scores. Now, automation didn’t make the top 10 in 2022. So again, this thing’s the digital CX piece that we’ve kind of covered in some detail. And also the amount of survey is a key CX tool. But we also had an open field question on automation. So we asked people how they’re using it in their organization. Now, some respondents said that analyzing contact channels to explore the feasibility of automation, those with more advanced capabilities, said they’re hiring management level engineers, and scaling their strategies to meet organizational targets. And 42% of respondents elsewhere in the survey said automation is critical for delivering CX at scale. And so again, it’s all part of this wider play on digital CX, where we’re seeing priorities change, we’re seeing investments change, we’re seeing the outlook for an organization and the tools that are available to solve age old problems change. And the positive here is that the x practitioners are being very agile in how they respond to that, and how they embrace these changes and put things like automation in place across their service and experience suite.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think automation, it’s a great enabler on both sides on the customer side on the on the employee side, running through the other trends and important topics. What’s about sustainability? Because everybody’s speaking about this topic is also a big topic in this in this global state research.
Melanie Mingas
Yeah, yeah, it was, I could have done a whole survey just on sustainability, what brands doing, how they want to position themselves at this important time, for the climate for everything that’s happening with various reports, government PACs, et cetera, et cetera, much like CX is very much at a turning points. And sustainability is very much a turning point right now as well. We’re all very aware that things are getting pretty bad. And the need to change is incredibly urgent. Are we seeing all brands and organizations make changes and become more sustainable as quickly as we need? Not entirely, but there is demand from customers for them to do that. Now, obviously, there are brands out there that are amazing at this. There are organizations that have built themselves as sustainable corporations from the very start, like the digital natives that emerged late 20 years ago, these other sustainability natives, and I’m talking like so Fairphone the first the world’s first Fairtrade smartphone. You have it in cosmetics to an extent as well. It’s in retailers. There’s an online supermarket in the UK now called Social seeking market, and it’s all fair trade products. So you don’t have to as a consumer, you don’t have to do that research yourself, you just go to that store, and you know that they’ve done all the kind of checks for you. But coming back to what our survey found, we saw that 50% of respondents have observed a demand for sustainable or ethical business practices and working conditions, which is strong, but it’s only 50%, isn’t it? Now, we didn’t ask him about meeting that demand. But obviously, the customer demand is there. And we have seen elsewhere in the survey that practitioners are obviously pivoting to respond to customer demands very quickly, and mostly very effectively, as well. So hopefully, they can do that with sustainability, just as they’re doing with AI. Now, obviously, as things become more technology focused, and the infrastructure pieces there, and your technologies, working with renewable energy, and things like that, that is going to make all organizations more sustainable. But organizations can’t just wait for the infrastructure to do the heavy lifting for them, they need to start doing things for themselves. And I’m talking about all those copper boxes that are in the postal system, I am talking about the plastic packaging that’s everywhere. It’s these little things like this, the consumers getting really, really tired about and it’s supermarkets as well, you know, there’s produce in supermarkets at the moment that isn’t the freshest, and that’s happening because of climate change. But also, then there’s the waste issue, which comes back to sustainability as well. So that’s a real, that’s a real problem in terms of retail store experience at the moment. And I think there’s only so much more that customers are going to put up for when it comes to, you know, throwing away food all the time, because things aren’t as fresh as they used to be. Or, you know, having to deal with all this plastic waste and having to go to different recycling points, because of the way that products have been packaged to mean, that burden should not be placed on the consumer. And I think that this isn’t just a CX practitioners thing, they can drive that change, they can drive momentum, they can provide data to their peers across the organization, say, hey, our customers are going to start voting with their feet if we don’t meet them at this, you know, at this demand. But we do need to be mindful of this. And I think that there is a lot more that organizations can do, even though it doesn’t necessarily sit entirely with customer experience.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think what what you’re saying it’s extremely important, this is the link between the purpose of a person and the purpose of a company, we need, we should have shared values. And if we have shared values, we will, we will have them customer for life, because then you are going to buy from a company that has value like yours, because you care about the same relevant thing. And sustainability is a big topic. And I really think that what you’re saying it’s important, this is on a company level that need to set clear goals, but it’s our duty. And to be honest, I don’t care if you are a CX professional or not. But it’s our duty as human beings to care about sustainability. I know that there are a lot of additional friends that we could discuss. But based on the fact that we are running out of time, I would ask me this. So what question it means. Let’s summarize that you shared a lot of different trends. What’s the impact on us on the role of CX professional with all these trends and everything? What what what you said from your point of view?
Melanie Mingas
It’s a good question. Yeah. So obviously, we put this question to our analysts that comment in the report. And the general consensus is that this is a time of change. And change is both scary, but also it’s really, really exciting. And it all kind of comes back to mindset from CES practitioners. Now, the job titles and job profiles that have been drawn into the CX efforts, and work is changing. I mean, we’ve got like Chief Data Officers, now we’ve got, you know, data architects, AI engineers, all sorts of people, and they’re all becoming part of the CX efforts. Now, this requires a certain mindset for those who’ve been in CX for a while, they need to embrace the change, they need to move with the change, and they need to find the opportunities. Now, I think that we’re going to come to a point over the next few years where CX kind of loses its shackles, if you will. And I’m not just talking about silos here. I think that CX is very much going to become seen as a philosophy that goes across a business. It’s an approach to how a company works. It’s an approach to culture. Like I mentioned, there are different job titles now coming into the CX effort. And I think that that requires practitioners to be very entrepreneurial in their mindset. They need to be very agile, mentally, they need to be thinking across the business. I know we talk a lot about collaborative working in CX, but I feel as though the CX or the CX practitioner, the CX leader in particular, not necessarily people who’ll be working with data and it and user experience and things like that. But those kinds of more general CX roles are going to have to be a lot more versatile. Like I mentioned, it’s a lot more agile in their thinking and their actual execution of work. And they’re going to be kind of working across the organization, I think, in a very effective way, they’re not necessarily going to sit in a CX department, they’re not necessarily going to drive CX targets, CX is going to be infused across the entire business, because we are seeing that it’s gaining recognition. I mean, we still have some practitioners now that they have difficulty measuring the impact of what they do, they struggle to find ROI, because there’s so much different information that they need. But that in itself is the opportunity because CX goes across the entire organization. And if we all kind of step out of what we’ve been doing in the past, and we do start to form those connections with finance it product development, for example, feedback, what CX is discovered, and then find out what these different departments broke down as well. And that’s where CX becomes a really holistic approach to doing business, rather than a department that’s tasked with running the service suite. So yeah, I mean, in, in conclusion, I would say the role of the practitioner is changing, but it’s gonna get really, really cool. Things are getting really exciting. And especially with all the data that’s coming into play, like this data can inform a business. So you know, the person who has that data has a huge amount of curiosity, unity there, if they use it correctly, and they build the relationships correctly. And they present their ideas in a way that people can understand. They can see the benefits, and they want to come on board with that idea project strategy.
Gregorio Uglioni
And the only thing that I can say is, let’s make that reality. Because what you described it, it’s, it’s great. And I think it’s the only way to really create value for the customer, for the company and for ourselves. And therefore, let’s make that a reality. Now, I know it’s quite difficult, because we are already speaking about trends, trends, it’s something that will happen in future. But let’s jump now in 10 years from now, you are we are back on the CX goalkeeper podcast, what we are discussing about
Speaker 2
I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time, we’re probably going to stop talking about omni channel integration and sustainability. But you know, the sea might be rising that the windows outside. I hope that we’re talking about how AI is revolutionized sex. I hope we’re talking about how all these technological changes that are spoken about today, this kind of embracing of digital CX. I hope that we’re talking about how it’s driven for opportunities. I hope that we’re talking about how it’s created new ways to deliver fantastic experiences. And we might even be talking about the metaverse, I mean, there’s a lot happening now in terms of immersive experiences. And I think that’s why digital has become so important this year, people realize that digital CX is actually just the beginning. It’s not everything right now. We’ve seen over the last couple of years, like how far experience can go. We’re starting to see it happen in sports, for example, where you have augmented reality over a sports field. And I think that as that develops, that is going to become more important. Obviously, it is going to become central to experience creation experience, design, whether or not it’s going to be our number one topic in 10 years. I don’t know. You know, it’s three, four years now since 5g first emerged on the scene, and we’ve still not got all the customer service benefits that that can bring. So yeah, I mean, yeah, well, we’ll see how things go. It wouldn’t surprise me if things move really, really fast over the next few years. And we are talking about AI Metaverse, all the amazing things that been happening in CX, but again, there are budget issues, there are investment issues, there are human, you know, human of humans feeling overwhelmed issues. And there’s a lot of barriers to getting to that point. So maybe we will still be talking about omni channel integration. Well, we’ll see. What do you think, Greg?
Gregorio Uglioni
Let’s say let’s say I hope that we meet in the metaverse and then we can discuss in a much more interactive and engaging way also also together with with the audience. First Yeah, exactly. And the game is coming to an end. But in the extra time, I still have to question for you. Is there a book that you would like to suggest to the audience because it helps you during your career or your in your personal life?
Speaker 2
Yes. So I’ve chosen a business book to kind of keep it all work related. But the one I would recommend is called the long tail. Now this came out in about 2006. And it’s written by Chris Anderson. He was the editor of Wired magazine at the time, and it’s about the change from mass appeal to niches. Now, this isn’t directly a CX story, but obviously it’s about consumer demand. And I think that at the point CX is out right now, reading this book, it’s actually really inspiring. It really got my brain kind of working on thinking it’s real idea driver, rather than an instructional guide to how to do CX in the best possible way right now. So basically, Chris talks about how manufacturing, product development you know, global does tribution changed, they were all about mass appeal, like this is the world’s most popular drink, and everybody’s going to have it in every single market. But then, obviously, manufacturing production developments, it all changed. And we were able to cater to loads and loads of individual tastes. And the longtail is about how individual tastes cumulatively are now a bigger market by volume than the mass appeal. And I think there’s huge lessons in here in terms of personalization and CX individualization and how technology can enable continued development and evolution, and a few other themes as well. I won’t give the whole book away, but it’s good. It’s a good book for business. But it’s also very inspirational for CX practitioners and leaders right now as well.
Gregorio Uglioni
Thank you, and what’s the best way to contact you?
Speaker 2
Um, oh, I’d say email. But there’s always so many emails I need, like, contact center agents or handle them or LinkedIn is a great way to contact me email, Melanie dot mingas at iqpc.com. You can also reach CX network, through Twitter, Instagram, we’re kind of everywhere and being called Melanie Mingas. There aren’t many people with my name. So it’s pretty easy to find me.
Gregorio Uglioni
And you will find all the contact details also in the show notes. And you will find also the link to the next events that CX network is organizing, because there are a lot of interesting events that you can you can participate, not eumelanin you the audience. And these are really great event. And I think it’s really important to have this exchange. Let’s conclude this game, this discussion with Melanie’s golden nugget. It’s something that we discussed or something new that you would like to leave to the audience.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I’m golden nugget. Like it’s a bit difficult. But I guess based on our conversation today, I’d have to say that we just need to stop thinking about CX as a separate part of the business. And like I said before, this isn’t about silos, CX isn’t a single team isn’t one department’s responsibility. It doesn’t even have a single source of truth when it comes to measuring success, or financial impact, for example. And I think it’s really crucial that practitioners are all stages of their careers, just really understand and embrace that position. Because there’s so much freedom and possibility right now. practitioners and leaders, they can work in an entrepreneurial collaborative way. They you know, they can become customer advocates, you connect the operations and the sales and the marketing to ensure that the person who receives that product or service or experience is happy with it. And I do believe that that’s where CX is going to be over the next kind of year or so. And also looking ahead as they becomes more prominent people in customer facing careers will have significant career opportunities, like we said, the next big skills, pull your legs data collection analysis, so you know, skill up on that areas. But you just had scan, you need to get into that entrepreneurial Broadview mindset now so that you’re ready to seize this future opportunities as they arise. And I think that would be the best nugget that I can offer based on the data that we’ve that we’ve collected this year.
Gregorio Uglioni
Thank you very much, Melanie and to the audience. I think we shared with you some insights, please take the time to download the global state research and have a look at it. If you have any additional question, feel free to contact Melanie or me I will forward 10 All discretion to the CX network. Melanie, please stay with me to the audience. It’s everything. Thank you very much for your time. And as you know, we love feedback, please feel free to contact us. Thank you very much and have a great day.
Melanie Mingas
Thanks, Greg.
Gregorio Uglioni
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