“It is important to be smart. It is important to be personable, but being a good influencer is such a critical skill.”

This week on Be Customer Led with Bill Staikos, we’re joined by Ryan Hart, Fractional Chief Experience Officer and Experience Practice Lead at Chameleon Collective. 

Ryan also served as Managing Director, Experience Management Consulting (Tokyo) at PwC Japan, where he empowered a diverse and inclusive team of talented, creative, and strategic thinkers to assist organizations in Japan and throughout the Asia Pacific in accelerating experience, digital, and cultural transformations. 

Throughout the episode, we cover several aspects of experience management, including its key components, where people struggle in experience management, and how to prepare for the future of experience management.

[01:25] Ryan’s Story – Emphasizing how fortunate he is to come from such a diverse background, Ryan discusses his journey thus far.

[04:53] Chameleon Collective – Ryan describes the business model of Chameleon Collective, the company for which he works. Additionally, he presents his ideas on a variety of organizational structures.

[11:29] Leadership – There are numerous leadership styles. Ryan explains the type of leader who often achieves tremendous success, in his opinion. 

[13:49] Key Pillars – Ryan talks about experience management and its core components.

[16:32] Why Fail? – Ryan outlines why and where he believes people fail the most or do not place as much importance on customer experience. 

[23:34] The Future – Ryan shares how he envisions experience management five or ten years from now. 

[27:54] Inspiration -  After mentioning the leaders he most admires in this field, Ryan reveals where he finds inspiration.

Resources:

Connect with Ryan:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryan-hart-a9254b4/

Twitter: twitter.com/rhartcx

Be Custoemr Led - Ryan Hart on the Evolution of Experience Management

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to be customer led. This is your host bill steakhouse. I have another amazing guest for you all today. So Hart Ryan, someone I got to know last year, and before he joined the chameleon collective, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit, he was managing director of PWCs Japan's Tokyo experience center, part of PWCs, APAC experience consulting leadership team, where he and his team have experienced strategy.

[00:01:16] Ryan Hart: Thank you.

[00:01:21] Bill Staikos: Well, I know, I know last time we talked, you were in APAC and now you're, uh, you're back in the states, which is wonderful. So today we're talking about the evolution of experience management, something.

[00:01:48] Ryan Hart: So I have a very, you know, like a lot of really good customer experience, people that I've met throughout my career, I have a really long Securitas route actually to get to where I am. And as opposed to, I remember when I used to work for JP Morgan and I used to look at these guys that were, you know, managing director and they've been in the bank for 20 years and I was like, wow, it must be so great to be that senior.

[00:02:26] So for me, I've had a very diverse background. I've been in APAC for probably 14 or 15 years. I was in, I started in banking and real estate in Japan and China moved back to Japan to help launch HSBC premiere, which was. You know, quite disruptive for the Japan market. And that was really wealth management space as you know, bill from, from your time with credit Suisse.

[00:03:07] And really we identified very smartly that it was experienced that was early 2000 around then that we did that. And so, uh, from that point, I really saw that, you know, creating a differentiated experience for customers was really a way to not only. Just look and feel nice and have people happy. But I mean, really it was, it was driving revenue and it was winning customers.

[00:03:48] So, so close that down, but then, you know, here I am back back in the states, so yeah, it's been great. And I think. Um, you know, for me really the most special time in one, it really accelerated that learning curve was when I was with Forester. So I was with Forrester for about five years, led their customer experience practice in some of the thought leadership in Asia, Pacific based in Singapore.

[00:04:24] Bill Staikos: Man you've had such an incredible career from a broader, like big C customer experience perspective. So now you're a chameleon collective.

[00:04:38] Ryan Hart: Yeah, no, it's I thank you for bringing that up. It it's really interesting because community collective is in so many ways. It's the future of work, really? So basically we have these people that are, you know, senior partners at these management consulting firms.

[00:05:17] So for me, Leaving a large organization like PWC it's it's, you know, when you're a managing director or you're quite senior in an organization, you spend a lot of your time, you know, doing performance reviews and dealing with internal team mechanics and personal issues. But really you just want to be with closer to the clients.

[00:05:50] And then when they needed to deliver work, they actually drew from the skills and experience that these other people had. And so that actually, um, through scale then allows them to go after bigger and more exciting pieces of work and transformation work

[00:06:10] Get a ton of value of that, of your expertise and what you can bring to the table, but clearly you've got access to other resources as well, which is pretty awesome.

[00:06:26] They have a lot of overhead costs. You know, they have a lot of just the cost structure is just so massive that, that, that what you charge clients has maybe three or four times what you would as if you were an independent consultant, for example. So the value that actually clients get now is you have someone who is a C-level executive or has experienced running large businesses or P and L's, and then actually has them directly working in the.

[00:06:59] Bill Staikos: So I'm actually a big fan. I've been having a lot of conversations with friends who have been fractional CMOs or fractional other C level kind of roles.

[00:07:28] And even coach and nurture someone who we want to bring up from within as well. I think that there's a really interesting business case and model in there that I think the companies are going to start to explore

[00:07:43] Bill Staikos: bill, so it's, I see that a little bit.

[00:08:07] Yeah. Right. So not like massive funds, but how do you apply a customer experience strategy or create a customer experience strategy that covers or crosses a portfolio of companies? Right. So we don't need like a big CXO to run all this, but we need someone who can come in. Call it CX in a box, whatever you want to call it and actually apply it to the portfolio.

[00:08:40] Ryan Hart: Yep. I agree. So I guess, you know, I think you look a lot of companies that have done leveraged buyouts, for example, or that are looking, that have taken over companies.

[00:09:08] They removed the CMO, the CMO position, all those people then roll up into a chief customer officer. So I think the really smart, more sophisticated organizations are if you really want a path to revenue, that's sustainable, not just a quick hit with marketing really is to build in the foundation of what is the customer, what is it that our users really need?

[00:09:53] That also includes. You know, you know, being able to prioritize and, and create the right strategy that, you know, that maximizes the impact. So a lot of really interesting work out there. And, uh, yeah, I hope that more companies see that CA the chief customer officer is actually probably a better value than just going after marketing folks.

[00:10:32] Like what's the makeup of that individual? Cause that's a really, it's a really tough role one, but it's also tough in the perspective of not just sort of leading so much transformation organization, but influencing multiple C-level executives, et cetera. So like, When you see success in your past lives, what have you seen?

[00:10:56] Ryan Hart: So I think you basically nailed a bill when you said that. I mean the influence piece for me being a great influencer is so critical. I think to actually getting work done more so than if you're really smart someone who's a great execution, or maybe they can execute work and they can get a lot of work done, but to be able to influence other parts of the business, I think is it cannot be understated.

[00:11:38] Maybe even though they're high value to the organization, making sure they have great experience has, you know, obviously it will have a good impact on the business, but what I see. Actually sometimes people that are maybe not so protective, but a little bit more willing to work and make changes. Maybe it might be the second, most important area of the business or a third, maybe not the core area, start there and then start building, building that influence across the organization.

[00:12:23] Bill Staikos: Yeah, for sure. For sure. That is number one for me. Yeah. When you look at this kind of leadership and the type of person you and you're right, you can get things done all day long. And sometimes people are promoted into these roles because they're great on the execution side, but then sometimes they fall short because great execution in your kind of silo.

[00:13:02] You know, what do you think those are and what kind of works cross? Right.

[00:13:20] I think the really great thing about customer experience is that it cuts across all industries. It cuts across all channels too. So, I mean, really you have to research and understand the needs of your customers. So research is a key. You have to understand what are your priorities, what it's going to be, the drive, the maximum value for your customers and for your business.

[00:14:08] Your people, you're obviously you have to speak to employee experience. You need to be able to enable them and empower them with the right tools and service blueprint, and kind of, you know, how are we going to deliver on this customer experience vision? So really enablement is so good. Then, you know, all the big bosses and people are going to come in and ask, like, what have you been doing?

[00:14:50] Companies that are really successful at customer experience. Do all of those well or most of those? Well,

[00:15:10] Everyone's gotta be bought in three. It takes a lot of money to do this really well. Not just saying, Hey, we're investing in tech and a technology stack to support us, but also, you know, thinking about all the changes to an organization that you need to potentially make as well. Now there's real investment dollars that are associated with.

[00:15:39] Ryan Hart: Well, I think one is sometimes you have certain, uh, probably, you know, you've seen this in your career bill, but you have certain executives that are more comfortable with certain areas of the business than others.

[00:16:06] But I think really where people fail and I, it's almost cliche to sound this cause I mean, everyone talks about it, but really. Being able to speak the language of the people with money and being able to financially show what is the ROI of whatever project you're doing, whether it's the entire customer experience transformation showing the ROI or whether it's basically, you know, what is the ROI.

[00:16:55] Right?

[00:17:14] I was like, I've got three main objectives. When it increase the revenue, this company, I'm going to reduce costs and improve the culture. And those are measures that we're gonna. And they're like, that's cool. Right? Like, and they're like, well, customer satisfaction is on our scorecard. I'm like, great. That's fantastic.

[00:17:51] We get lost in that a lot as leaders and professionals sometimes. And we forget that at the end of the day, we are here to drive the business doing in a way that customers is good for customers, but you got to find that balance. And that's really tough to do.

[00:18:13] Around MPS in these numbers that they will do anything to manufacture outcomes, that they actually will serve their purpose. Right. And I mean, I used to travel to Australia a lot for work when I was in, based in Singapore and I would go there and I, every time I went down there, I would have more and more people that I would meet more.

[00:18:53] And we saw that, that the economy was actually in those sectors, that there were more customer experience. It was actually going down. It was actually decreasing. So it's like, what are they doing then? They're their ambiguous costs are going up, but it's actually not actually creating any material, material uplift in, in the

[00:19:10] What was, um, did you ever come to, like, what was your perspective on that? Like why do you think that? Cause I mean, Forrester, right? All these forms, like they've created all this research and said like, all these scores are kind of petering out, right? The trees don't go to the sky. Right. Eventually like. It gets harder and harder.

[00:19:45] Ryan Hart: So I think, I mean, it's a broad brush. It's kind of a broad brush problem because I mean, basically you were saying, okay, we want to increase our MPS score across our entire. Customer, you know, cohort or, or population. But the problem is, is you see that, you know, at the end of the day, not all customers are equal, right?

[00:20:22] We were trying to service all of these different complaints from customers, do all of these different things. And we were just like spinning our wheels. We analyze the data. And what we found was actually that the customers that were actually causing most of the complaints had like the lowest balances in their account.

[00:20:56] And so either they were suffering in silence or they just didn't, weren't even making complaints. So what I realized is what are we doing? You know, falling and tripping over ourselves, servicing every little request and need that these low, these low value customers are doing at the expense of neglecting our high value customers.

[00:21:37] I think for me, that's a gap or an issue that needs to be resolved. Yeah.

[00:21:56] Obviously. How do you see experience management? Like what are your thoughts on what this might look like five or even 10 years down the road? If you want to go down that

[00:22:14] I feel like the most sophisticated companies that are doing really well in this space have recognized this, the importance of customer experience, call it what you want. I mean, maybe, you know, once the new shiny thing, but really it's about aligning your products and services to the needs of the people that you're selling products and services to.

[00:22:51] So that's why I love the name of their podcast. You know, be customer led because that's at the end of the day, that's really what it all boils down to. Do I think customer experience is going to go away or change in a, in a material way? I don't think so. I mean, maybe some of the nomenclature in, in some of the practices may change a little bit, but, you know, I don't think you're really going to get away from having to, to be able to do journey mapping, you know, maybe it's analog or maybe it's digital, but I mean, starting very basically with understanding what is the journey that the customer has with us?

[00:23:44] Bill Staikos: Yeah, for sure. I think that you're a hundred percent spot on there. There's a lot in terms of. Those core fundamental capabilities of the work that we do every day, those may evolve in some way, shape or form, but those are just staples and what, and, and th and the toolkit. Right. And we're going to use those all the time to understand, I mean, look given kind of my seat at Medallia, can't get too far into it.

[00:24:26] For sure. When you look at things like journey analytics, journey orchestration, real-time just interaction management and like being able to create the next best journey as, as a consumer, I'm going through it. That is pretty cool stuff. That is really cool stuff. I'm really excited.

[00:24:48] So I mean, data was like paper surveys or something. But I mean, now that, that obviously gets a lot more smart about how to extract the right data and how to actually do things with it. I mean, cause that's, I think that's for awhile, it was okay. We have a lot of data. We, we understand we have a lot of data, but now how do we actually action it?

[00:25:30] Bill Staikos: Yeah. And I think just, you know, Back to your point is organizations are bringing together these disparate function, what not disparate, but like marketing CX, et cetera. Right. That's going to have, and then you kind of put in this sort of tech stack on top of that combination, I think it would be pretty powerful.

[00:26:08] Ryan Hart: So, this is where I say bill stakeholders.

[00:26:16] Ryan Hart: Venmo me the money later. No, I think I owe something to Harley Manning because Harley Manning, you know, know. And a lot of people's eyes, you know, the godfather of a lot of customer experience and formalization of customer experience, he wrote, you know, the inside out and, you know, are outside in, sorry, outside in and, and you know, that kind of at least put a stake in the ground around customer experience.

[00:26:55] Yeah. You know, he was just this brilliant guy or, you know, working along on his computer, working on his books is right before he wrote through the grid. And so, you know, he just said the ideas and the ability to articulate so clearly and so well about, you know, some of the issues in customer, spirit and space for me has always been really impressive.

[00:27:39] And so we have to be a little bit more. Uh, studied or at least, uh, up-to-date on what happens actually, once we created the brand, well, then the brand needs to come to life in form of experiences. And so what does that look like? And so marketers that are making efforts to understand that side of it. I think I also have a lot of respect for

[00:27:56] Yeah. I know we were lucky to enough to have Matt on this show. Not too long ago, the grid was one of, uh, there's a couple of books that, but th that I really kind of keep on going back to the grid is one that. Changed my perspective on the work that we do every day. And he's got a new one coming out this year.

[00:28:20] Ryan Hart: So I think bill, you're also a cyclist. So I think maybe you can agree that. I mean, it's great to just get out and go for a long ride and then just really clear ahead. So I don't know if that's inspiration, but for me it's just a really great time to just think.

[00:28:48] Fresh insight and some endorphins to think about new things. So I think that's really good. And you know, both of my girls are our big climbers and stuff, and I used to be a professional climbers actually go, you know, take them climbing and stuff like that a lot. So I think they really love that.

[00:29:05] That's awesome. I love that. Yeah, no, I get a lot of inspiration from being on a bus. Just in the zone and you do, I mean, when those endorphins go on, like the idea just starts coming fast and furious. All right, Ryan, you're running your own kind of shop you're at chameleon collective. Where can people find you if they want to reach out, learn more and potentially.

[00:29:43] And based in Colorado now. So yeah, happy to have conversations with people. I'm an interim leader, so always happy to help to step in and help execute work. And that's how we're positioning ourselves as an extension or a team that executes the work, not just talks about frameworks all day.

[00:30:01] Thanks so much for coming on.

[00:30:06] Bill Staikos: Absolutely, absolutely man. Great to see you. All right, everybody. Another great show this week, we're out. Talk to you

[00:30:19] To their time, be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we're doing or tell us what you want to hear more about until next time we're out.