Don’t Treat Your Customers Like Tickets

INTRO:

You're listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. In each episode, we’ll share the customer experience stories and insights you need — straight from the sharpest minds in CX — to better connect with your customers and create customers for life. Let's start the show.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Hello, hello. Welcome back to this fresh episode of CX Confessions. I'm your host, Katherine Calvert, joined as always by my amazing partner in crime, Mr. Spike Jones. I'm the CMO of Khoros. And Spike Jones is the GM of our Strategic Services Business. Spike, we have a great show today.

SPIKE JONES:

Great show. I'm super excited. Things are going, things are good. I got no complaints — well, not no complaints — you know what, I’m good. I am excited today. Excited about our guest. We got to chat with them — It's been a while, so I'm glad to get a refresher of that conversation and add to it, but I'm excited.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Well I'm sure our listeners are now on the edge of their seats. Who could it be? So let me tell you a little bit about our special guest today.

It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome Mr. Jeff Harling. Jeff is the head of Global Self-Service for Zoom. I don't know if you've heard about Zoom, Spike, but —

SPIKE JONES:

What? Are they a start up?

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Haha. It's one of the few companies that became a verb in recent years. So everybody knows Zoom.

Jeff comes to Zoom with an incredible background in the customer experience world. At Zoom, he's leading digital support strategy for Zoom’s web experience. So he's got the chatbot, search engine, content, knowledge management, and the brand new Zoom customer support community. We're very proud to call you guys a customer.

Anyway, back to Jeff. He spent the last two decades leading transformation in digital customer support experiences. Just prior to Zoom, he was at a little company called Ring Central. He's also worked at Zendesk, Avaya, and Comcast in similar roles. He's a four-time JD Power award winner and a member of the Tech Services World Star Award Hall of Fame for service delivery and content knowledge management. So not only does this guy actually practice customer experience every day, but he's also worked for some of the leading companies that are thinking about designing solutions for customer experience. He is dialing in to join us from Denver, Colorado.

Welcome to the show, Jeff.

JEFF HARLING:

Thanks, Katherine. That’s a humbling introduction there. Wow.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

We’re humbled to have you.

JEFF HARLING:

Pretty sure most of that is true. Thank you for the great introduction. It's great to be here. And I think, I love the opportunity to chat with industry experts like yourselves, and really just kind of commiserate on what's working and what's not out there.

SPIKE JONES:

We can go back further next time we introduce you: he was born on a cold day ...

KATHERINE CALVERT:

On the plains ... Yeah, it is a lot easier to have somebody else tell your story, I think. Anyway, we are honored to have you here. We've gotten to know you a little bit. You were actually a guest at one of our big customer events last year. You had just recently joined Zoom. But I think, you know, the show's called CX Confessions, you have actually had a front row to the evolution of CX as a thing that we even know stands for customer experience. That was not vernacular we were all using a few years ago.

I would love just to start there. When you think about CX, the evolution, why do you think it's become so much a part and parcel of how companies today think about going to market?

JEFF HARLING:

Oh, you know, you mentioned in the intro two decades. So probably before CX was even coined as a term, I think, we weren’t really talking about customer experience 20 years ago. Google hadn't even IPOed, The iPhone was still almost a decade away. In thinking about how customer experience has really evolved in that time, I think it's evolved and it hasn’t evolved.

What's interesting about customer experiences, you know, as a child growing up or the age of my parents, there was an in-store experience, right? That was how we bought products. We talked to experts that explained to us how that dishwasher worked or the newfangled gadgets on our car, and that was where we went to get support as well. And interacting directly, human to human, was kind of the norm. We had evolved into making phone calls to get support. But you know, really hadn't advanced far beyond that.

But in the past 20 years, just think of the directions that we've gone. Now we're building out those same in-person experiences in a virtualized space, we're attempting to duplicate those through use of chatbots and AI, SMS and robotic process automation flows, and so forth. All in an attempt to really recreate that experience, that was the norm more than two decades ago.

So I think that it has evolved. It's evolved into different platforms and different frontiers. But I think that overall the actual experience itself has not, right, it's still expected by us consumers to be very personalized. Very focused on knowing me, knowing the products that I have, knowing the experience that I desire, and building to that. So the best companies out there are keeping their ear to the ground to understand what customers really and truly want, which is far more than just a website with a knowledge base of content that they can Google search.

They're really looking for an experience that treats them like persons, or people, not like tickets or cases. In the purest form CX, when done correctly, is really accepting of that personalized experience that all of us have come to demand.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah, it's like electricity. Like when you turn on the lights and they just come on you don't think about it, but if they don't come on, then it's like, oh, yeah. Same thing I kind of think about CX. Zooming in a little bit — see what I did there? You see what I did there? My dad would be so proud.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I'm sure he's never heard that before.

SPIKE JONES:

My dad would be so proud. As Katherine mentioned, you've been there just over a year, your Zoom-versary, Zoom-aversary, whatever, fourteen months you've been there. And before 2019, people knew who Zoom was but you know, just because they had touched up the technology, bumped up against it, if you will, and now of course it's a verb as Katherine said.

Through your lens, especially the lens of CX, how has Zoom really evolved over the time that you've been there and even a little bit before they became so huge?

JEFF HARLING:

Yeah, I think there’s probably two sides to this. One is how Zoom evolved and the other is how has our industry really evolved to adapt to this kind of post-Zoom era that we're in now.

I think that prior to 2019, or in 2019 before COVID hit, I think folks were used to just working in the office and working amongst one another. There was always some degree of human interaction. We quickly transitioned in March of 2020 to a work from home or a distant experience that was remote from one another.

And you know, immediately there's a gap, right, that lack of human touch and human interaction. And I think that Zoom very nicely traversed that gap in our ability to interact and provided a face-to-face experience almost seamlessly. From an office experience to the at-home experience that we have.

I think that it is now, I hate to use the term, it's the new “Zoom normal” for interactions through business. I think that this will never go away. I think that it may reduce to some degree when we return to the office through some sort of normalcy, but there will always be some aspect of human interaction that will forever be replaced by this video experience that we're having right now.

So I'm super excited about the fact that no longer are we bound by our geography, our distance between one another. I think that that's probably the biggest positive outcome of the last two years.

SPIKE JONES:

Return to the office. That's funny. That's, you're very funny. That's funny.

JEFF HARLING:

I heard it exists.

SPIKE JONES:

I just hope they let me travel again. I just hope they let me go to other places

JEFF HARLING:

There is that.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

You know, Jeff, we don't always talk so much about our guests’ particular companies, but Zoom has been such a pervasive meme, for lack of a better word, for this pandemic and post-pandemic new normal.

As you were talking about, you talked about your parents. I mean, my mom knows how to Zoom. It's not just work. I'd always known Zoom as a work app, and then it became the dominant way to spend time together virtually.

That creates an immense amount of pressure on an organization to support that experience and make it feel connected and painless. And the IT needs of my mother versus me are quite different. When you think about what's happened to Zoom, the Zoom Boom, how has that changed, for you, thinking about that CX journey? Like even just I think in the last few months, or certainly in the last two years, Zoom has really I think changed the way people expect to interact. That puts a lot of pressure on you. Yeah.

JEFF HARLING:

There's a lot to unpack there, Katherine, but I think, looking back with respect to the Zoom Boom, I think of human interactions as having been kind of sinusoidal over the last few years. And initially when contact centers and that industry really began to grow it was all about the phone call and potentially the cutting edge companies were also introducing email as an interaction channel.

We quickly move to virtualizing experiences and supporting chat and other, I guess, asynchronous methods and that have been probably prevailing recently, but now that we've moved through the Zoom Boom, and we've introduced this video component that is now accepted by all walks of life, starting with children in school, all the way through senior citizens, our parents and grandparents are using it. It's now an accepted form of interaction that I think previously was one that was feared.

And so it's done a lot of good, I think, for bringing back the personalization of customer experience. I think that there's nothing quite as telling as expressions on an individual’s face, being able to see them as opposed to just hearing the tone of voice, right. So the more senses that are involved in this process, I think that the more improved the experience can be.

SPIKE JONES:

I think that’s a great point.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

My children had Zoom school for a while, and now they're back in school, and they've been back for a while. We've been very lucky. But walking to school this morning, my youngest said, you know, I think we should do in-person one week, Zoom one week, and off and on because it's, I kind of like being in the house more.

Okay, maybe that is the new normal. It's a little tough on teachers, but it's amazing how you know maybe there's a little initial fatigue, but we've really normalized this as a way of connecting.

JEFF HARLING:

I think that's actually a really interesting perspective. And one that I've thought of was when the transition from office to home was made in March of 2020, March and April of 2020, I think that it was very difficult for folks. There were many folks in the first, you know, weeks and months that really struggled with that, that transition from the office.

And I think that ultimately the transition back will be just as difficult, and in some cases, more difficult, for folks. I mean, we've gained not only time in travel and time with our children and time with one another, and we have more respect for the pets curled up at our feet all day. They probably will have as much of a difficult transition as we would returning to the office. I feel as if, you know, your daughter brings up a good point. It's something that we've now dabbled in and we like, I think that it will continue to become a big part of our fabric.

SPIKE JONES:

Totally agree. Yeah, I've never worked from home ever. So this was my first experience with it, and it wasn't easy. I did enjoy having the commute time back. That was awesome, and still is awesome. You get eight hours of sleep every night, most nights, which is great, too.

Anyway, switching gears we always ask our guests a couple of questions, just to get some uniformity over the podcast and one of those is: what is a commonly held belief or industry practice that you just passionately disagree with?

JEFF HARLING:

I think there is still a commonly held belief that customers do not want to self-serve, and I have a little bit of bias because I'm in the digital support space and I think that there is still some belief that the customers just want to, they just want to talk to somebody live.

And that is the case for some segments of society still and there certainly are situations where customers are having issues that are probably far beyond the norm that require some instantaneous help and gratification as well as probably needing some velocity behind them to be solved for.

However, I think that the majority of folks want to self-serve. I think the majority of folks who want an experience that is immediate and can be accessible and attainable from anywhere. Really, I mean, I never think about calling any company for customer support until it really gets down to a point where I just I have no other solutions.

So I've tried everything before I get to the point that I'm actually looking for a phone number or even a direct contact at any one company. So I think there's still a stigma, the belief that the contact centers must exist in a large capacity to support customers that just want to talk to them. And I think that we’ve moved beyond that.

SPIKE JONES:

And good luck finding the phone number anyway.

JEFF HARLING:

Depending on the company, yeah, that’s a good point.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Jeff, could we just spend another minute there because I do think that self-service can get a bad rap. And it can sound like well, wait a second, if I need help, if I could have fixed it myself, I would have fixed it myself.

So for those who aren't living and breathing this, when you picture self-service, what does that look like to you? Where are the answers that you go to first?

JEFF HARLING:

You know, I think the boundaries are rapidly expanding. I think one time it was probably a customer's website with some FAQ's or a company’s website with some FAQ's and that was it. That was the limitation of that.

But now I mean it has grown into spaces where there are partners and supporting communities out there, there are their hobbyists, there are, in our case, Zoom loyalists that exists that are just sharing tips and tricks about how the latest Zoom features are being used or how to support a specific product with quick answers. Because there are folks that are experts in the industry, and they just want to share that knowledge and that can exist anywhere.

Self-service doesn't exist within the website, the domain, of a particular company anymore. I think even when we think about experiences within the company domain, Zoom has recently expanded. We have a new Zoom community that has now taken off in just six months. We have hundreds of thousands of people that are coming in just conversing with one another, not necessarily with Zoomies, there are also Zoomies in there, but they're mostly solving their problems using the knowledge of their peers that are also customers of Zoom.

And I think that that is also self-service. Not only is it self service, but it is also making them happier and frankly more knowledgeable about the products that they use. It has a double-edge benefit. It's of course cheaper to support for any company. It also increases the adoption and loyalty of the products that we're selling. And that's just within our own company walls.

There are other communities that exist out there that are sharing, if you just Google search any kind of Zoom question you'll find dozens and dozens of resources out there and Zoom experts that are all over the place answering questions for us. Most of them are accurate. There’s probably a few folks out there that probably do have to follow along with us, which is totally fine. We validate those folks happily if they come to us.

SPIKE JONES:

I learned a long time ago not to be surprised about what people can get passionate about. In another lifetime I was at an agency, and one of the big US tela companies was one of our customers and there was this group on their Facebook page that called themselves the wolfpack and they were just customers answering other customers’ questions and we thought it was the greatest thing. And there was a huge debate about whether we should engage with them or not or leave them alone, and that's a whole other story.

But you know, and for another company, people are getting excited about scissors again, wanting to talk about scissors. And at first you’re like, that's crazy. And then you learn this is their passion. It helps them with scrapbooking or whatever. It's just really, really cool to see.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

And that's what I was — thank you for sharing that. I think that the wording “self-service” can make it feel like you're just — go figure it out yourself. You're on your own, kid. And what I think we've seen and what the world has made possible with technology and connection is making it easier to find other experts, whether it's somebody you share some passion with or a faster resolution.

JEFF HARLING:

It’s a collaboration, I think.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Yeah, I like that. Collaboration.

Yes. With all those people and all of those service moments, there's so much data, and to run a business like you're running, and the millions of people who count on your service, you're probably flooded with data. We all are in our jobs.

We like to ask all our guests: what's the data that matters most to you? When you think about, things are going well, things aren't, what's the data that you look to first?

JEFF HARLING:

You know, I think ultimately it's understanding our user base and who's visiting us. So in my world, it's really about curating experiences for our customers. And I think the data then that becomes most important to us is of course have we indeed solved the problem for them? Have we made them happy in transacting with them, if it's mechanical or if it's something larger, are we, over time, are we increasing their sentiment and really creating a better experience for them?

Customer satisfaction is the ultimate measure for us. It cannot be understated. It absolutely cannot. And I think one thing that really drew me to Zoom was just their aggressive focus towards just creating happy environments for our customers and if they are not happy. If there's even just one iota of concern that we sense for them then we crowdsource around them and work to solve their issue to make them happy.

And that's not just for our enterprise, paid, most pristine accounts. It's for the folks that are just trying us out for the first time as well. And I just absolutely adore that about Zoom. And I think that is a data point that if companies can get that right, and they can really drive a true focus around what the experience is ultimately culminating in, from a satisfaction perspective, then I think that everything else falls in line past that.

SPIKE JONES:

So, Jeff, this is CX Confessions. And so we do ask this question of all of our illustrious guests, for one of your confessions. So you know, we all have careers that have highs and have not-so-highs and we learn from those not-so-highs. So could you share a hard lesson that you might have learned along your journey, either at Zoom or someplace else?

JEFF HARLING:

Well, I will tell you the hardest lesson that I've learned through two decades of — since I was just a child starting in this field.

SPIKE JONES:

A prodigy, wow.

JEFF HARLING:

Sure, just call me Dougie.

Honestly it is the knowledge component of self-service, of digital support, that is I think by far the most undervalued piece of any self service or digital support experience. I have in recent years really begun to just overemphasize my focus in that space.

Ironically enough, I started out on the frontlines working at AT&T just after the Air Force. And I didn't really appreciate what that collective knowledge, the value of that, and how valuable it could be to me. But over the years I really began to understand that.

Zoom right now is in the process of rolling out the KCS methodology, which is probably another podcast, but it is an opportunity for us to really, both internally and externally, share and collaborate on any knowledge that we capture. And I think that that has for me been, I figured that out that that is the most valuable outcome that any of my teams have been able to produce, and it ultimately drives AI. It drives our chat experiences, our auto responses, it drives up the agent experience. It is ultimately the best SEO experience. All of those get touched by great content, really reinforcing in an underpinning in that area.

SPIKE JONES:

That's great. Thank you for sharing.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

So wait, I want to make sure. If it's the most valuable for your employees fear? Where is this? How are they sourcing that? You used an acronym I didn't recognize.

JEFF HARLING:

Yeah, so I'm sorry. KCS is a methodology knowledge centered service or knowledge centered support, depending on which generation you're from, which is —

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That’s a new one! We haven’t heard that acronym on our show yet.

JEFF HARLING:

Oh great. So I will tell you this is a — I would definitely recommend looking into this. There's an entire consortium of companies out there that are, you know, that work together and have been for, it's been almost two decades, I think, as long — since I was child — that industry has really been created and this methodology been perfected over time to understand and solve for issues once and only once. And that's I think the biggest value of this is how many calls and how many chats and how many emails can we get for the exact same question?

KCS really, you know, it drives to solve and evolve that content such that it is immediately putting it back out for self-service consumption for others to use. So we solved the problem once and everybody gets to learn from it. That's the biggest value that KCS provides. Not a KCS commercial, but I will tell you, you know, my peers working for much bigger companies than myself, and then Zoom, etc. are using KCS with great degrees of success. And I have to say that has definitely been a lesson that I've learned that I will take with me going forward as well.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That is very cool. We love learning new things on the show. KCS.

And actually your quote, I wrote down: nobody wants to feel like a ticket. I mean, that just to me was really the heart of the way that I think the CX expectation has changed so much, just that we want to be understood and known by the companies you're doing business with.

But, Jeff, we have reached the time now, our show's almost over. Speaking of your childhood, we always like to close with a little personal information for our listeners to get to know Jeff Harling a little bit better.

Thank you for sharing all of your business stories and your CX expertise with us. We're now going to learn a little bit more about you. This is what we like to call quick fire confessions.

So you've entered your childhood. We're going to start with the first one we always ask: what was your first concert?

JEFF HARLING:

Haha, this is going to date me. Twisted Sister.

SPIKE JONES:

Oh, yes!

JEFF HARLING:

I had the hair to go with it.

SPIKE JONES:

That’s killer.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

We just talked to someone who’s first concert was Ratt with two “t”s.

JEFF HARLING:

Oh! That was probably my second or third concert.

SPIKE JONES:

Oh, man. Twisted Sister. That's fantastic. Well, how about your first job?

JEFF HARLING:

Oh, paper route. Yeah, I was twelve. That was a great day in my life to turn twelve. Not because it was my birthday, but because I could call the paper company and I was delivering papers within a week.

SPIKE JONES:

Solid American job.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

What paper, Jeff?

JEFF HARLING:

Oh, Seattle Post.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Seattle Post, okay. If you couldn't do what you're doing today, which is hard to imagine, you're very passionate about self-service. If you couldn't do what you were doing, what profession would you attempt?

JEFF HARLING:

Oh, you know I — haha. Fun fact. I really love tearing things down and building them back up again. So it'd be house flipping for sure. I would do that all day. I'm in the middle of a bathroom project right now. Remodeling. Of course waiting for parts which is I think like everyone else on the planet right now. But yeah, it's absolutely, I love doing that, so.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That I admire that so much. I do not have that genetic code. That is very cool.

SPIKE JONES:

I thankfully have lots of friends who have that code. So I invite them over whenever I have needs like that and —

JEFF HARLING:

There's a YouTube for that, I promise.

SPIKE JONES:

I will, I guarantee I will mess it up. It’ll cost me more if I try to attempt it. Every time. What is your current favorite app on your phone?

JEFF HARLING:

You know I’m going to say the Zoom app, but we’ll put that one aside for obvious reasons.

SPIKE JONES:

Appreciate that.

JEFF HARLING:

It has to be TikTok. It has to be.

SPIKE JONES:

Say more about that. Why is it?

JEFF HARLING:

Well, I will just warn people, it can be a compulsion. Honestly, once you start with TikTok it's difficult to stop, and especially if your particular area of interest, like you know home improvement, there are entire channels and spaces for just home improvement and understanding what current trends are and such.

And it's always comic relief. There's always great comedy on TikTok, so if you just enjoy laughing, that's a good way to end my day.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I know you’re a dad Jeff, what do your kids say about dad being on TikTok?

JEFF HARLING:

Well, I am not on TikTok but I should tell dad jokes or something like that. There’s a space for me there. Yeah, I do actually follow a couple of dad joke content providers, but they're all over the place.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Well, we all need some laughs, so that has just been amazing. I mean, honestly, if you think about the last two years, companies that have become so ubiquitous, it'd be hard to say anybody more than Zoom and TikTok.

So we know that you have a secret TikTok addiction. But you're our final question, Jeff, is what's your biggest indulgence?

JEFF HARLING:

Biggest indulgence? Travel and food and not necessarily in that order. I don't know if I would rank those because I usually travel to eat or eat with the hopes of traveling. I don't know. It is something that I like to do. I certainly have been, you know, stemmed from doing that the last couple years. But I love building travel itineraries and I usually try to enjoy my travel and I don't try to travel on the cheap because I really want to enjoy and get out and see as many tours and as much history as I can possibly absorb in those and of course along with that comes food.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I gotta know: tell us one of your favorite trips that was food related. I mean, or a food moment on one of your trips.

JEFF HARLING:

I mean you can't dismiss any trip to Italy. Literally the worst meal in the entire country is probably better than the best meal I've ever had here. Yeah, every bite is heavenly.

I think what I really enjoyed was learning about the history of the food that you're eating and understanding that there are certain types of cheese that you can only get in Italy that you cannot get anywhere else, despite the fact that people try to put them on a plane and take them elsewhere. It's not the same because they have very specific guidelines around the consumption within a certain amount of time, after a certain type of cheese, is processed.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That’s crazy. Art takes many forms. Art takes many forms.

JEFF HARLING:

It really does.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Thank you for sharing that, Jeff. It's been a pleasure getting to know you over the last year or so and I knew you'd be a fantastic guest. Was I right, Spike?

SPIKE JONES:

So right. So right.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

So right.

Thank you for joining us. This is going to be, I know, one of our big hits.

Thank you everybody who joined us to listen in. We hope you'll tune in for the next episode of CX Confessions. And in the meantime, please like and subscribe.

Thanks so much. Take care everybody.

JEFF HARLING:

Thanks Spike, thanks Katherine.

KHOROS:

Your customers expect to be understood — their likes and dislikes, their history with your brand, and their communication preferences. But so many companies struggle to connect the dots of the interaction across their own teams and channels and its creating customer experience challenges and disasters. That's where Khoros can help. Khoros is the award-winning customer engagement platform built to turn those siloed interactions with your customer into enterprise value. Khoros works with more than 2,000 of the world's leading brands and powers more than 500 million digital interactions every day. Khoros is the award-winning platform for digital-first customer engagement. Ready to create human connection across the digital customer experience to create customers for life? Learn more at Khoros.com.

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