Podcast released on: 14. March 2022

The CX Goalkeeper had a smart discussion with deBBie Akwara

deBBie is a CX Start-Up CEO, a Global CX Thought Leader & Influencer, a CX Entrepreneur, Practitioner & Educator and Humanitarian

Key topics discussed is the competency framework required to deliver CX Success

Business goal understanding & CX diagnostics.
CX goal alignment with the business goal.
CX goal alignment with internal stakeholders (other functions or departments).
CX improvement design, deployment and measurement.
CX Inspiration, motivation and reporting.
CEM institutionalization i.e. embedding company-specific tried and tested CEM practices in company culture and business operations.
Achieve business goal + attain projected CX maturity status + increase CEM capabilities

(This is deBBie Framework – source: Link)

How to contact deBBie:

Her book suggestion:

Outside-In; Harley Manning, Kerry Bodine and Josh Bernoff

deBBie’s golden nugget:

So if you are in a frontier, or emerging market economy, be bold. If you have been doing stuff in customer service, customer experience, customer success, customer relationship management, customer value management that has been working for you. Let’s be bold, and let’s share it together. We can grow Africa, one customer experience at a time

If you are in a frontier or emerging market economy, BE BOLD. If you have been doing stuff in customer service or cx that has been working for you. Be bold and share it. We can grow Africa, one CX at a time. @debbieakwara on the CX Goalkeeper Podcast
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Thank you, deBBie!

#customerexperience #leadership #cxgoalkeeper #cxtransformation #podcast

Transcription:

Gregorio Uglioni 0:00
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CX goalkeeper podcast. Your host, Gregorio Uglioni, will have a small discussion with experts, thought leaders, and friends on customer experience, transformation, innovation and leadership. I hope will enjoy the next episode.

Ladies and gentlemen, today it’s, we are big, big pleasure. Hi deBBie, how are you?

deBBie Akwara 0:29
great, amazing. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast today.

Gregorio Uglioni 0:34
Thank you very much. Where are you today?

deBBie Akwara 0:36
I’m in Lagos. So it’s a state in Nigeria, where we’re in danger. Yeah,

Gregorio Uglioni 0:43
oftentimes, you you are there. But I know that you are traveling goals around Africa. And also you are a global thought leader in customer experience. And therefore, I was asking, or I was wondering where were you?

deBBie Akwara 0:56
I am In Nigeria. Yeah, I’m home.

Gregorio Uglioni 1:00
That’s, that’s a very, very nice, thank you very much for being here quit’s really, really appreciate you taking time for this discussion. And as usual, I asked the same question, Debbie, could you please introduce yourself?

deBBie Akwara 1:14
Right. So I’m Debbie Akwara in Nigeria. And I run a customer experience consultancy, which you know, has over time evolved into a group of companies. So I kind of like to describe myself, based on what I do as a customer experience. intrapreneur. I am, you know, so set up three businesses now. And I’m constantly looking for, I’m constantly getting inspiration from businesses and business models to to find new ways to help businesses grow one customer Express at a time. And in Africa. At the moment, I will also call myself a leading customer experience educator, because we’ve recently launched Africa’s first and globally recognized CX certification program. So we are on a mission to get 1 million Africans certified by the year 2030. So it’s a lot of work. But we just believe that the more competent people are to manage CX from a cultural perspective with Africa in context, the more successes will record. So that’s just me, I’m a mother, I have the most adorable 10 year old I’m sure mothers say that. And then I’m also I mean, I also have an NGO on the side that like the real me humanitarians, I have an NGO at the side, it’s kind of a bit of CX, though, but the focus really is on community experience, and basically giving platforms to high net worth individuals, and corporate organizations to give back from a shared value perspective with the focus on low income communities in my country. Yes, that’s me pretty briefly.

Gregorio Uglioni 2:54
Thank you very much, Debbie. First of all, I think a lot of people are using the name see, it’s a queen. And we can see and we can understand why also only from the way you are speaking. Besides that you are really an expert on this topic. You didn’t mention the name of your NGO? Could you please share the contact details or the link?

deBBie Akwara 3:16
Yeah, so it’s actually a like an acronym H E E L P. And so it means help educate, elevate the less privileged. So it’s a bit of people that know what I do at the moment, just reach out and schools basically work in education space right now with high net worth individuals. But you know, is I think one thing at a time, so I was trying to figure out how to get that going. But that’s, that’s between you and I that’s like my retirement plan. So yeah, taking it steady on that one. Yeah.

Gregorio Uglioni 3:49
Thank you very much. And, as usual, I am, let’s say, preparing a bit myself. I did some research. If I understand, well, you the plan was that you were a lawyer? And why did you got to there? Or didn’t get there.

deBBie Akwara 4:07
take that again? Your question. The plan

Gregorio Uglioni 4:09
was that you were starting low. And you would be a lawyer if I understand well,

deBBie Akwara 4:16
what happened was my father wanted me to study law at the University. But I had had to have a certain score in math. And I suck at math to be honest, like it’s so bad Don’t Don’t even ask me what one plus one is don’t even think about don’t bring that question in the right way. I sucked at math. And obviously had had stayed a year who my friends are often sought after university and like I’m not going to keep writing the same exam. I’m not good at math. Right so I opted for for theater arts. Maybe that’s why I’m very dramatic when I have a natural high when I’m speaking Yeah.

Gregorio Uglioni 4:56
No, thank you and could you please share a bit also from from your career? How do you How did you get to create three different businesses and being one of the most recognized recognized CX expert? See each screen in Africa at the end is one of the biggest continents.

deBBie Akwara 5:14
Yeah, it’s amazing. I it started. I mean, prior to when I was trying to pass my math to get into, to meet the cost of school to get into university, and I took a job in sales and service, I was working in a boutique. So we call we’ll call that role like a sales girl. And I did that I did that for for for a while. And then I finished university, I took a job I was in broadcasting for for a bit as well moved into PR, and then I got into banking in customer service. So that’s really where my contact with customers started. So I was in that role from just being an entry level employee, I started I had in the team, I switched organizations. And I was I was hired in total quality management. So that’s when I began my journey in 10. From a CX, we know it was there’s no such thing as CX back in the day, where those doing stuff right and making things happen. And so achieved great success. And my team was dissolved. And we were told, we no longer needed. We are now number one. So this thing KPMG does in my country is called the banking industry, customer satisfaction survey dude every year. So all the bank kind of wants to be on going to be number one right to my bank attain number one, and they’ve been there for a while, like, Okay, we don’t need you guys anymore. You go to marketing, you go here, you go there. So I went into training, I was in training for five years. And what and I was I was I was given the customer related courses. So designing curriculum, running the trainings, I was also responsible for the entry level guys designing their curriculum, managing all their trainings throughout the cycle at the entry level. And so I did that for five years. And but at the same time, I was also thinking about why we were dissolved as a team, but we’re not relevant. So we’re busy chasing the things that matter. We’re chasing the score as against being relevant, right? And so I did a bit of work a lot of introspection to figure out what we did wrong what we did, right. And guess what happened, the bank robber banks rating drops. And then like, Where were these guys? So and at the time, I had a boss, who was the general manager in charge of HR and training, and she was given the role to take on customer service and get us back at number one. So I, again, none of the fancy names we have now existed. So I put a proposal together what you will now call a customer experience strategy. Do you know we have many fancy names now? So I put the proposal together, and I presented it to have that. So I had an immediate boss before her. So I told that one verbally, I would like to go back in there and get this straightened out. Okay, put your thoughts document, right write down your thoughts, let me share with her, and then I sent to the head of the middleman. That’s what I’m trying to say. Right. So she shed my proposal with a general manager. And General Manager calls me so then I was I was heavily pregnant, like, just a month before my due date. And the general manager calls me and says, great proposal, the minute you’re done, and you’re back from Mark, leave, you are resuming into this role and doing every single thing you have documented.

So I got back from maternity leave. And then I got to work. So it was just there was no approval for anything but fix it. So it was just me and my computer at a time I used to have a blog, you know, a Christian blog, and personal favorites have a Christian blog where I share my thoughts and my perspective on God. And they occurred to me that, why don’t you get a sense from everybody why our culture now isn’t working and why we’re dipping. So I just basically applied what I was using in my personal life, the blog and I we set up for the service blog. And people were just given feedback, like this is the problem. That’s the problem. So it got to the point where we had departments like internal control, going in there and pulling insights and changing policies. And it really worked. The awareness was so strong, and then we moved from there into your individual product experiences, right. So from there, the bank moved back up to number one. So eventually, we moved up a step I got approval, I didn’t go to the team, and then we go back to number one, and then I was told Okay, and we get there. We’re back at number one, but we would like to merge your role with HR I’m like, Why, like, I’m on the roll here, right? Because you can still just see, let me see the value. But let’s merge you with a bit of HR. So I did HR for a bit, and I stopped, and I switched organizations to go kick off a customer experience in another bank. Now, in doing that, we did a diagnostic. So that’s where I started the whole diagnostics thing, my former Bank, where we do the diagnosis and what the problem is, and then we’ll try and address it at the source, we did the same thing. And we found that was a different problem. Right, we have two banks that had merged, and then they had different standards of service. So we had to create one style of service and went on like a nationwide training and auditing and all of that. And in nine months of doing this, when the next survey was done by KPMG, they went up three steps from 16 to 13. And I moved to telecommunications, I wanted to know more, I thought there was more to CX and banking. So I really wanted to know, let me go try CX, another sector. So at telecoms was when I was exposed to CX and the bottom line, and organizational goals that alignment, which brings stuff I’m talking about today, right? And, and we managed to get to the point where we could tie it on to corporate the corporate goal. And we could measure return on experience to my revenue perspective, and from a product adoption perspective. And when I moved to telecoms, I’m like, Okay, I can’t keep popping, I can keep job hopping and set up a paid in from HR perspective, like, I have no staying power. So that was in 2015. Like, okay, you know, other than, you know, industry hopping, job hopping, let me set up a practice where I can give this service to anybody in any sector. And that’s how it started. So I started that by just, you know, I went on I went on godaddy set up a website, I was already doing stuff, every quarter, I would take time off work to go train, I was focused on sharing with people who were up and coming, what I had discovered what his discovery was, I knew at the time, it wasn’t all the seats and all the fancy stuff. We’re just going right. And then I switched to education. So my employer in education had the challenge with me having a company on the side, so I had to resign involuntarily. And I just focused on doing this. Now, to the point of doing the consulting, while we’re doing the realize that the need for training was huge, because you had to design again, remember my experience in human capital development. So it expanded beyond just training one person to think of an entire curriculum spread for basic middle management, cinema and executive management. And then then there was a need for the CX certification program. So and we framed it as a customer experience and Innovation Institute. So if you want to design a product at the institute’s, we can help you do that. So that now formed a business out of the consulting firm. Now working with clients, again, they adopt technology, they don’t even know the half of what they need, and they waste a lot of money. In some cases, we’ve had micro businesses come to ask, but they can’t afford us visibility, need our services. So like, there’s opportunity in digital, right, we can begin to find an path now it’s so to see it solution providers, and then make recommendations to clients help them with identifying the right tool, doing the requirement gathering, managing the project to deployment, and also designing solutions. So that became our third business. So that’s how we have three businesses. And I don’t have the technical competencies from a tech perspective. So I have the co founder and CEO. So that’s how our three businesses were formed the consultant business, the Institute of CX animation, and digital solutions, business. That’s that’s how the journey started. And as a fourth of what I wanted until it’s fully birthday.

Gregorio Uglioni 14:08
This is an outstanding story. It’s it’s a great story from having a job moving into consulting, creating the own business, and therefore all my respect for what you’re doing. And also for what you will, will do because I am following you, you’re doing an outstanding job. And as we said, today, we would like to speak about six management competencies, and then also the role in the different continents because at the end, what we discussed quickly also at the beginning is there are really great example that are coming from the USA. I like them, I really reuse them. I share them it’s the Ritz Carlton, it’s Nike, it’s McDonald’s, and all these these these great examples from different points of view from different angles, but I am in Europe, you We’re in Africa and look at the countries is a bit different. The values are different. And therefore I really would like to understand what’s your view on which are the six management competencies that are required? And then why are these required in your continent?

deBBie Akwara 15:17
Yeah, I think overall, if you look at the brands that you have mentioned, now, they are brands that have the knew what they wanted and define your roadmap to achieve their goal. What we are doing and what I’ve observed that we are doing as the profession is, we are just sitting back and putting the pieces together from all of these different businesses, which is actually wrong for the emerging markets. We are yet we are whether when emerging markets away from we’re not developed bottom line, we’re either on the road to development or we are still above for the frontier markets, you’re not on that developed, you’re on that road, developing country. There are specific to Africa and Nigeria, they are. It’s tough to do business in Africa. It’s tough. You’re dealing with the political issues you’re dealing with, you know, with the currency, you know, the FX rates going up every other day, you’re dealing with even utilities power, like in my country, how are you dealing with taxation issue, there are things that our family that is outside of thinking about the Porter’s Five Forces, there are things that affect business growth. So when you’re talking to the CEO of a business in Africa, who is dealing with all of these things, and you’re telling him as a CEO, you need to embed CX in your leadership, it’s hogwash. But once for better water, put it because his priority is to stay in business. So when I think about my journey, which I have shared, the reason why my team was dissolved is because there was nothing bringing in the bottom line. Right? So when the goal of okay, we wanted the bragging rights when that was achieved, were off the table. So in an emerging market, or in a frontier markets, what are you in terms of competencies? How can you manage customer experience successfully? What are the things you need to manage CX success, it is not a case study from Nike, or from Amazon, or from Zappos, that will save you I have I know people who go for CX training outside of Africa, and they come back and they guess what they pick up the phone, and they call me to ask me questions. Because you cannot correlate what you’ve gotten from the Western world and apply it here. What is one of the reasons why we designed the CX certification program the way we did, right, understanding the African culture and then embedding, you know, a put in a bit of the Western in so your even your broad scope, you’re not just narrow minded on what’s happened in Africa. Right. So when I think about my experience, and I really did spend some time researching, and then I found the the good calls courier competencies, and that was the aha moment for me as the customer experience practitioner, because I saw the alignment between competencies and human behavior.

And then that injecting that into understanding the business. So the customer experience competencies for me, really, for an emerging market starts with understanding the goal of the business. And this is what I’ve seen in my career. The successes I have achieved in my career is I started from the place of what is the goal of the business, I don’t go talking CX on the table. I mean, I sell CX for a living, I speak to CEO’s, and they listen, I send in proposals, and because it is focused on what the business wants to achieve, I get to yes, very quickly, right, we get to yes, very quickly. So the first thing is the first competence, you need to understand business, how does your business make money? How does your organization make money? And then what is the place of CX in that revenue generation? That’s the first thing. The next thing from a comprehensive range understand is, do I have commenced successfully align the idea of cx to that goal, there has to be an alignment. So if the goal of your business is to increase and I think I’ve shared this case, a lot of times online, where the telco sector where we had 21 million subscribers and you had spent money on a self service platform, the self service platform was built to solve a business problem, which was reduced cost to serve at the contact center. Now money had been sent, but the cost was still high. Only 300,000 out of 21 million subscribers were using it. So the business goes I’m gonna use this analogy now to kind of explain my take on the competencies. So the business goal pretty much was we need to increase the adoption of the Self Service channel so that we can reduce the cost of service. Now for us as CX, the understand now that we understood that, if the business could save costs of this gets return on the self service platform that was done, I mean, revenue will come in make more money, if we save costs, obviously, is a no brainer. So we said to ourselves, how can we, how can we work with the business to achieve this from a customer experience perspective? And we wanted to find out what is the reason why people are not even using the solution. So, our strategy became aligned to focus on the experience on that channel to increase adoption, increase usage, reduce cost to serve and increase revenue from the channel, right. And then the next thing that I consider a competence, competency for emerging markets is stakeholder inclusion, we make the mistake of thinking as CX we know it all, we don’t know it all. We don’t, we don’t know, we don’t know half of it. In fact, half is like giving us a lot of credit. All right, you need the people in all the different teams on the table. And it’s not just needing them, you need to connect your strategy with what they want to achieve in a year. You can’t walk in isolation, right? So you have to find a way that marketing, what’s your KPI for the year? And finance was your business? What’s your goal for the year? How the see so it’s a lot of connectivity. So that whatever you’re reporting as a When finances saying, Oh, this is a win for us to that we’re not going to struggle to get buy in across any function across many departments. Now, the fourth thing is when you have done the diagnosis, you’ve seen what the problem is, you design. You’re not just chasing scores and dashboards, or we’re doing effort score, why are you measuring efforts? I was I was I was part of the capstone project presentation. So one of our certification programs, and someone was talking about KPIs she wanted to track. And she said, I thought this was really interesting. I was talking about it since then, she said, Her goal was not to track NPS. But her goal was to measure the number of new customers that they got through referral.

Right? So we need to it’s about in the developed world, it’s great things are working, you have the privilege of you know, having the best agile, and you’re at your beck and call, right. But here, we have to develop it. But we have to find a place where it makes money and make sense for the business. Right. So I’ve talked about understanding the business going after, effectively do that, effectively align your CX strategy to that goal, work with stakeholders, alignment with stakeholders, and then now design, experience improvement initiatives, implement them, and then track and measure the outcome. So if you’re going down this route, then you will see that year on year as the business goal changes, your CX metrics will change. Because the focus is changing. In some cases, you may even have to come up with your own metrics, CX metrics, and this happened to me in education. So they were all the things that I share are things that that I experienced on the job, right, in education, were measuring CSAT CSAT, scores were high, the rents were happy, but they were living. And when we did a deep study, we found out that what was important to parents was academic improvement of the child, meaning has my child improved academically since joining your school, so we had to include the academic improvement score a is never existed, it became a CX metric. Right? And then from there on, when you’ve done gone the round, and see we’ve measured, oh, my God, it’s worked amazing. Now, how do you put that thinking into a process? And I call it customer experience management, institutionalization? How do you put that into a process that even when you’re not there, it’s seamless. It’s working. Because at the end of the day to the next competency, is about inspiration and maturity, everybody knows. And for me, the way I look at customer experience management competencies, every person in an organization should be proficient in Customer Experience Manager to a certain degree, right? And I’ve had the privilege of working in HR performance management. So what we’ve done at niche is we have speak that into competency book a proficiency pockets. So if you’re in the entry level, you should function no less than a three, no, no more, no less than a two. It’s a middle manager, no less than a three. If you’re a senior manager, no less than before, and if you are so here we go. Call it or God talk, that means the big boys, right? You are five. When you are all at that level, I don’t struggle to get your buyer because you know you’re thinking CX or you don’t even need me because I have clogged, they remember institutionalization. So I have clogged the thinking into your process already across all the departments, right? And then that takes to the next thing where CX leadership, you’re thinking, how will this affect the customer, but CX is not in the room when you’re having that conversation? Because you know, and for me, the success with CX in Africa is not having a department with 520 people and doing CX management Absolutely not, is having one two people for strategy, because every other person gets it. And you’re just providing that foresight, you have done the work. So if you look at customer experience, the way I’ve broken it down now it is my experience, not the emerging markets. It is not textbook, it is purely experience. Purely experience, right. So if you look at is actually a journey. So by the time I get to that point of CX leadership, and I think along the lines of the value of the value disciplines, product leadership, and what they call the three of them the value of discipline, you remember, the three of them, there’s product leadership,

excellence, the three products, customer intimacy, so product leadership, customer intimacy, and then operational excellence or efficiency, remote, something operational, though. So you now transition into that. And that’s what has happened with Amazon, with Nike. With Zappos, they’ve done the work. The goal of the business drives the type of experience that deliver look at Amazon, their story is unique. But we I don’t want to say we’re lazy, but I can’t think of any other word to use. We jump on it. I want to do what Amazon has, you’re not Amazon. So when so we in Africa, we’re struggling? We’re not Amazon, we’re not suppose right. So we can do next, let’s let’s put in AppSync businesses, right? We have seen businesses do amazing things here in my country. And I’ll give you an example. There’s a business a small business, right? We hire undergraduates who are still in school, and they give them student loans. So you find a lot of young, energetic, passionate people working for them. And the extra service that they give customers is completely different from any other restaurants I have visited in my country. Just a strategy, and the leading from employee experience, because that was dear to the owners hearts. So that’s my take really on the customer experience, management competencies for emerging and frontier markets is, let’s let’s go down that road. First of all, successfully understand your business and what he wants to achieve and how we can make money, then understand how to align your customer experience strategy to that goal, then get your stakeholders What more do you need? Is your strategy aligned to this as well. Otherwise, you will struggle to get implementation, then you can go ahead and design your initiatives, implement them, measure the outcomes, as they, as they measure the outcomes, and they’re successful. Think about institutionalization, build it into your process. One of the things that we are very guilty with in my country that I’ve realized, and I’m able to say Africa’s not to be corrected is it’s in our head, it’s up here. And we expect people to know when you say it once and they get it, you have to document it, you have to get documented enforce it. Right. So that’s, that’s pretty much my take on on, you know, the competencies from the from Frontier, and emerging market perspective or customer experience management.

Gregorio Uglioni 29:09
The only thing I can say is, ladies and gentlemen, please go back 15 minutes, take a sheet of paper and write everything that Debbie was saying, because there is only one thing that I am not agreeing with her. And is that it’s only that it’s fit only for Africa. I think it’s also for Europe. Because exactly what you are saying is, is what we need also on the Europe side, I can less comment a comment on the on the USA, as you’re saying there are quite a lot of great examples. But I think Amazon was from the first day on extremely customer obsessed and therefore they are where they are. And basically there are a lot of business that exactly needs to understand that and we’re all you all what you said was perfect. I’m not allowing myself to command that but what I I think it really, and completely makes sense. And it’s where we are starting on understanding in Europe, we need to link customer experience with business results, exactly what you were saying, we are not speaking about fluffy stuff of NPS, or figures and so on, it’s nice to see the endpoint is growing. But you need to link that to real business results. At the end, it’s bottom line, it’s acquisition or cost reducing cost to sell. But this is the key. And this is the direction where we are discussing in Europe that we need to re to because at the end, you are extremely passionate, and there are plenty of other people extremely passionate about customer experience. But for businesses, customer experience is one discipline among quite a lot of others. And therefore, we are spreading passion and explaining everything. And you said the CEO, I can say the CFO, to me, it’s nice. What’s in for me, and we need to be able to explain what what’s it for me?

deBBie Akwara 31:04
Exactly. I remember one time in my telco days when so we’re doing all that work around driving self service adoption. And the guys in it said to me, that’d be there’s no budget. I’m like, okay, so I went to the CTO. And I explained to him what he would what we’re trying to do. I call these guys in sorry, I told you, I want you I’m very dramatic. Because the guys in like, Guys, are you boy, okay, this is the business goal. What do you mean bang for money, if they win, we win. Right. And that was it. That was the end of who we got approval. So it saved us a lot of trouble. And I, I just want to encourage us because it’s easy to get carried away with all the trends and start. And we will notice that if we look at all the global CX reports, Africa is not on, it’s not included. So we just even started this year, let’s solve that problem. Let’s start with the state of CX in West Africa. And what we’ve observed is, when we did the research, we now saw that there’s something unique about customers in West Africa. They are loyal and they are tolerant. They will rock the boat. Now we’re telling ourselves we need to do a deeper study. Because if the African customer the worst that one customer is somebody who is loyal, right? Who do this to help you stay in business just because how can businesses now leverage that’s going to change the game completely. And this may be different for South Africa. He may be different for East Africa. Right? So I That’s why I cringe when I hear. I sense that there is this thing about globalizing CX, it’s going to kill the value of CX, let’s each region you’re in Europe, you’re in the US, wherever you are, express your CX and his appeal applies to your culture, then let’s come together, compare notes, understand what’s going on, be more global minded. That’s how I how I see it. My game, actually about this one.

Gregorio Uglioni 33:20
It totally makes sense. Because also in businesses, we are trying always to personalize experiences. And at the end, we are living in different contents, we have different values. And therefore we should follow it follow different strategies to get to have a loyal customer to keep customer coming back, and to increase the share of wallet. And as you’re saying important is then afterwards, the global sharing what are our best practices, how our it’s working, and then taking some insights and reusing them based on the different cultures. Because in Europe, Ireland, for example, folds back and is selling quite a lot of cars, but they are not able to sell a lot in a in the USA, because there are different expectations from the customer and exactly what you are saying that’s be examples, share them, understand them, and then we can we can start from there. It was really outstanding. Thank you very much there before this, this this master class because it was a master class and not only an interview, we are coming to the last part of this discussion. Three questions for you. The first one, is there a book that you would like to suggest to the to the audience that helped you during your career?

deBBie Akwara 34:36
Oh, yes, there was one book, outside-in perspective, transformed my thinking. So that’s what really got me thinking about oh, there’s such a thing as CX that exposed me to the political sector I’ve been doing CX. Okay, how that is the next level. So I’ll say outside in perspective is the most read the most.

Gregorio Uglioni 34:55
Thank you very much. And if I remember well or understand what you wrote also something The customer pulse check. Is this correct?

deBBie Akwara 35:03
Yes, I have the book out. Yes. Customers pulse check. It’s so practical guide to gathering and using customer feedback.

Gregorio Uglioni 35:12
And where can my audience find your book?

deBBie Akwara 35:15
On my website: debbie akwara DOT com. It’s available as e-copies available. You can also get it on Amazon. It’s also available on Amazon, you want to have a copy…

Gregorio Uglioni 35:25
Thank you very much. And also linked to this question. Are there older contact details that you would like to share with with with the audience,

deBBie Akwara 35:34
I guess I’m on LinkedIn, I’m always that that’s my most, most active and social media channels. So I’m just going to send me a DM connect with me on LinkedIn, I will send that email to Debbie at niche cx DOT com

Gregorio Uglioni 35:54
Thank you very much. And I know that you mentioned already, but I think it makes sense to repeat that again. And the web page of your NGO.

deBBie Akwara 36:03
We don’t have a web page yet. So it comes through my personal website, which is debbie akwara dot com, , the baby grows gradually, I don’t want to take on too many things. Take time off CX I go do some of that work. And then I come back.

Gregorio Uglioni 36:19
Thank you very much. And the really last question is deBBie’s golden nugget is something that we discussed or something new that you would leave to the audience.

deBBie Akwara 36:28
Well, my golden nuggets is in the if you’re in the customer experience management space in a frontier or an emerging market, my golden nugget is be bold. Stress the experience that you have that has worked for you, it worked for you for a reason. be bold. Only train it and scale it. It’s that’s what I’ll say. Sometimes we don’t trust what we know. And think because it’s not coming from a particular source is not valid. And I have an encounter. I’ve always had to say counter if you if you don’t. But what it is that you have you don’t share it, the less people would grow. The reason why I am having to show you today because I’m sharing what I have seen what I knew for a fact that works. So be bold, be bold people are going I mean, I’ve had people come after me like, Who does she think she is started a CX certification. I’ve had those kinds of teams, right?

I don’t care because what drives me is impacts.

So if you are in if you are if you are in the frontier, or emerging market economy, be bold. If you have been doing stuff in customer service, customer experience, customer success, customer relationship management, customer value management, you’ve been doing something that has been working for you. Let’s be bold, and let’s share it together. We can grow Africa, one customer experience at a time.

Gregorio Uglioni 37:52
Thank you very much. I’m not commenting, Debbie’s golden nuggets because this was Debbie’s golden nugget. The only thing that I can say is thank you very much for your time. It was really a great pleasure to have you on my podcast.

deBBie Akwara 38:06
Thank you so much for having me.

Gregorio Uglioni 38:08
And also to the audience. Thank you for being here through listening to the CX goalkeeper podcast. I hope that you enjoyed this discussion as much as I need to because it was really an outstanding discussion with the CX queen. Thank you very much.

deBBie Akwara 38:23
Thank you.

Gregorio Uglioni 38:26
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it word of mouth. Subscribe it, share it until the next episode. Please don’t forget, we are not in a b2b or b2c business. You are in a human to human environment. Thank you

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