 In this video you'll learn how you can successfully make the leap from small and isolated customer experience initiatives to a true strategic and company-wide activity without spending years setting up structures and processes that nobody ends up using. Here's a guest for this episode, let the show begin! My name is Kirsikka Vaajakallio and this is the service design show episode number 166. Hi my name is Mark Fontijn and welcome back to the service design show. On this show we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are those hidden and invisible things that make the difference between success and failure all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. Our guest in this episode is Kirsikka Vaajakallio. She is a design principal and partner at HALON and HALON is maybe one of the oldest and most experienced service design agencies out there. Now I'm going to introduce this episode with a short story. Imagine that one day you decide that you want to adopt a healthier lifestyle. As a first step you start buying healthier food in your grocery store but of course that's not going to be enough. You need to consider the broader environment, how you think and act across all areas of your life. Will you make physical exercise a daily routine? How will you improve sleep quality? Now let's take this one step further. Imagine that you are not going to adopt this lifestyle alone but with your entire family. Now that's going to take a lot more coordination and that brings us to today's topic namely CX governance. Yes that's right maybe not one of the most sexy topics to think about but a crucial one because it's the key difference between companies who are able to make the leap from small often isolated CX initiatives to company-wide orchestrated activities. This leap in CX maturity is a challenging one. It requires a lot more coordination, a lot more commitment and a lot more resources from the company but once you get it right it frees up a lot of time to focus actually on improving the customer experience rather than having to worry about setting all the right conditions. So if you stick around till the end of this episode you'll learn what the most important elements are that go into a CX governance model when you should start thinking about it and what the single biggest reason is why companies fail to implement it. If you enjoy exploring topics like this that help you to grow as a service design professional make sure to click that subscribe button and that bell icon to be notified when new episodes come out. That about wraps it up for the intro now it's time to jump into the conversation with Kirstika. Welcome to the show Kirstika. Thank you Mark. Pleasure to be here. Nice to have you on. We're recording this at the end of December and the days are really really short especially in Helsinki where you are right? Yes that's correct. At least you get you still do get some sunshine. You told me that if you are in Lapland then it's dark all the way. Yeah yeah we might have if we are lucky a couple of hours of sunshine during the daytime. Well let's not commercialize on that too long because we have a fun conversation planned. Kirstika before we dive into all these fascinating topics could you give a short introduction of who you are and what you do these days? Yes so I'm currently working at the design agency called Hellen and we have an offices in the Helsinki and London and in Oulu in northern part of the Finland and we are specializing in helping different kind of organizations to improve their businesses from the customer experience point of view. So group of multi-disciplinary experts and yeah that's a great place to work. And Hellen has been around for quite a while right? Yes we are actually one of the oldest service design companies and I've also been working there over 10 years and also I'm a partner so it's yeah it has been an exciting journey. I've seen your name come by so often at the service design conferences, different events. It's amazing that it took 166 episodes to have someone from Hellen on the show. I don't know what happened there but happy that you're here. Thank you for that introduction but we also always have a lightning route with five questions to get to know you as a person rather than a professional a bit better. Five simple questions, your questions, your task is to answer them as quickly and as briefly as possible just the first thing that comes to your mind. Are you ready? Yes I am. All right, what did you want to become when you were a kid? I wanted to become a designer, industrial designer. Oh look at that. Which book, a book are you reading at this moment of any? I need to say that not any at the moment. Maybe during the Christmas holiday I hope something. Okay let's see what's on your wishlist there then. What's your favorite food? My favorite food, oh that's that's but let's say sushi. Okay okay and what was your very first job? I was selling hot dogs in the ice hockey hall. Nice, great. And the fifth and final question we're blazing through this. Do you recall the first moment you learned about service design? Yes more or less. I was in doing my master studies at the university and we had the course with Finnair and I think that was the first time that we like started to discuss that okay service design what's that about and we were like focusing on the Finnair's services but still it was mainly taking a bit of a product focus for the like looking at what kind of touch points there are in the end but I think that was one of the first encounters 2000 and 2004 or five. Early days, early days, early days. Yeah I got into I first learned about service design I think it was 2006 and that still was like relatively early but 2004 that was pioneering. Yeah you could say though. Nice thank you for that introduction and for all these responses now let's jump into the topic of today because it's the very attractive and sexy topic of customer experience governance that's what we decided to discuss today. I think it's super interesting and definitely a lot to explore there. Let me start with this first question. What are we talking about when we're talking about governance because that's at least for me is also quite an ambiguous topic what is governance can you give some examples maybe from other areas that we sort of get familiar with this term? Yeah I think that's also probably depends on the background perspective that you have but from the designers design perspective and I'm talking about the governance or thinking about the governance it's a lot about that what kind of roles, responsibilities, structures like different kind of forums who is meeting where how these are like regularly organized and that kind of things so and when we connect that to customer experience then it's of course dealing with that who owns that topic in the company or in the organization and all the different kind of activities related to that that help to organize around it more systematically. I was trying to see if there are maybe other areas where we are already very familiar with governance maybe I don't know if we use that word like what could be some other areas that people might be familiar with and think okay governance I get it. Yeah okay maybe in general in the companies for example when you are working with most probably there are different kind of board meetings or different groups of people who meet regularly and depending on they are typically in a certain level of the organization they have own kind of meetings and where they are looking at some specific topic and so it's I would say that they are maybe having some sort of tools they are using there to develop the things that they are interested in or responsible in. And am I correct to say that governance is really also the act of making all these things explicit because you can have like meetings all over the place and use tools all over the place but I think you also use the word standardizing like making it explicit is. Yeah to have certain policies and the standards some kind of guidelines what you are following so that you can show that okay this is how we actually work so kind of describe in some somewhat that what we are how we work. Exactly yeah describing how we work what are the rules we play by and again trying to capture that and make sure that it's written down somewhere that it's transferable that we have something to point to and again rules guidelines processes. It sounds quite boring now how you get it. I don't know like I'm thinking of games like just the games that you play they also have rules we call them governance yeah that's true but maybe we could call them governance but a game without rules is really not a lot of fun and it's mostly pretty confusing so I can imagine like that this would just help. We're going to sort of dissect this entire topic in this conversation but I'm also really curious like how does someone get interested in a topic like customer experience governance so how did you get into this? Well it always in my case at least it has been typically related to the organization's transformation towards customer centric way of thinking and doing so the typically has been this kind of need for rethinking the way that in the organization they are organizing they work and their goals to better understand the customers that they are serving and the whole customer experience and from that point of view so I've been working with a different kind of organization who have had this idea that who we would like to come we would like to become more customer centric we would like to put more effort so on our customer experience we would really understand how that influences to us and that has been then like one part of this kind of transformation at some point typically is that okay how you are then structured around this topic. I see a lot of people interested in this topic and sort of helping organization to become more customer centric I don't see that in any service example professional stumbling upon governance maybe it's my blind spot so I'm really curious I think at what point did you think maybe it's governance that I'm that I'm trying to grasp with. I think that one of my first projects or like a collaboration with the company was somewhere 2015-16 and in that that was one of the like public organizations in Finland and they actually first asked our help to improve their services of course we are I'm a service designer as a background so but when I I went into the company and I was there like three days a week sometimes even four days a week and I just like participated different kind of meetings discussions lunchtime conversations trying to figure out that what's going on there how they actually talk about the services who are the customers and at some point quite soon it was clear that it's not about the services that is the problem but it's about how they are organized in the silos and how the how how the customers are only kind of seeing the the different departments and and business units from that organization and not actually the services so they had like built the services really organizational crown deed and and that was their first revolution okay we need to actually look at the inside first so that we can then change how it looks outside. One of the metaphors that I've been using in the past is like services might be the software that runs on top of the hardware which is the organization and then you sort of have something in the middle which is the operating system and the operating system is like if you put a service into an operating system that is not designed to sustain that service it's not going to work and I feel you're also hinting upon that what like can we create an operating system where the services that we want to design actually can be designed and delivered. Yes exactly I think that's the quite good way to put it so if we only look at the the services that may not be that it's possible to sustain them or develop them continuously so we need to have like the processes and the people who are owning those and then then all the capabilities and acknowledgement that is relating to that so really like having the like enabling factor in a sense maybe maybe we can think about that as that. Yeah absolutely the enabling factors and I feel that we're often sort of run into debt as the challenges that the enabling factors aren't there in place but we don't have really a very good language to talk about that and to grasp that and to maybe design that. Now I'm curious what is your experience with when do organizations actually need to think about customer experience governance is that from day one or is there some sort of evolution what have you seen? Yeah I've actually been thinking that quite a lot and is it necessary or not and I think that that's that's a really contextual question in the sense that it really depends on the size of the company the way it's like legacy and it's like a design and development legacy as well the field it operates in but I think that quite often it's at least the experiences I have it's at some point when the maturity is already there in a sense that you have some internal capabilities you have some sort of ownership for the customer experience but it may not be yet explicitly in the C level for example but it's a little bit somewhere in the middle management level and then the organization starts to see that things could get much smoother and much faster if they would be a little bit better or a more systematic way of like driving the decisions and and having the right people in those like making those decisions and really like be able to prioritize between different kind of customer experience initiatives and then at that moment it's it's quite often like becomes this moment of aha maybe we should think about that do we actually have appropriate like a governance at the moment or should we develop it somewhere or change it a little bit especially if there is like that that it has been more in a silo that one one part of the organization has been owning the customer experience and then you want to widen it up open it up you start to think about this more holistic customer experience which goes across the business units for example so that's typically the moment that you need actually to start thinking about that what is this cross-functional way of organizing that yeah yeah I totally recognize that it's often this customer experience wave starts small pockets in the organization some pioneers some brave souls who see the importance and often it's also small pockets maybe at sea level like those are the two levels that you see it happening and then they start doing this they start working and at some point you run into a challenge just scaling it up yes like you can you can scale it up to a certain level from sort of these pocket sized initiatives but at some point you need well you you can scale any further things become inefficient you get frustrated you you see that you need to do things repeatedly and I think what you're saying is that's when you need to make the jump form okay we need to look at governance institutionalize this right exactly exactly that's that's how I see it that sounds to me like a very big leap and a leap where a lot of people don't make it across to the next side can you can you maybe take us through some of the things you've seen of how do we actually make this leap from these smaller initiatives smaller pockets people who are excited to okay now we need to look at this from cross silos cross function how do we how do we make this leap without falling off the cliff I think there is no like one one solution or answer but what I've recognized that that least one thing that you need is to have a really high level top management sponsorship it may not be yet the full like a board that is on board it but at least there are one or two people who really from the top see that we we need to do this and and with those people then you can start building a clear connection with the business value so that's I think the the key that you need to be able to show the business value and get then the more and more people interested in because otherwise it stays easily in in this silo that okay it's just one part of the organization who are dealing with this customer experience is nice to have we have it of course everyone nowadays has it in the strategic text that it's set there that we want to be best in the field or whatever but it's not always open up that well that explicitly that people really understand so when you create the clear business case connection there why you need to start looking at more broadly and across the organization that's the key so let's talk a little bit about this because this is one of those things also easy to say like you need sponsorship at the c level and you need to come up with a business case I'm really curious how do like what have you seen around this business case like how do you convince quote unquote or seduce c level people to actually make this investment because it is I think quite an investment yeah how do these conversations go what have you seen I think it's it's step by step so so there need to be some level interest to picking with because you need to have a time for these conversations with these people you need to be able to dig in for the different examples from the different fields what could it look like what you need to be able somehow to create the image that what the crate looks like what the ready looks like when we have this governance working so let's see like after two three years so so where we are what we gain so so helping to build this vision state somehow quite explicitly and then then you need to be what I what I typically do always is that to start with I do the interviews so quite simple thing interviewing people in the organization in different roles from the top all those people that you think that should be involved or engage or at least like somehow favoring that to be able to get resources and time and investment so so I do the interviews and try to really understand that where they are at the moment what they think that in the organization works well at the moment what maybe doesn't work and try to find that where the customer experience fits in in that sense that what other purposes it could serve somehow so that it's not just the customer experience in itself but these people typically have quite stressful like how to say they have a lot of different kpi's they need to be fulfilling they are focusing in so if I can somehow identify where these connect and they can see that actually then I can get help and support from these people who are already in that and can actually actually help me to take me where I'm going as well so so so that's at least the this kind of practical step in these conversations then then I think that you need to be able after that to somehow do some sort of analysis or like make those insights into more actionable ideas that what could it mean for you and then having this common sense-making sessions or workshops or places for the dialogue so that all these important stakeholders can then based on your findings you can already prepare quite nice and well well taught exercises or perspectives and so these probable plus minus things so I think that's that's the one of the key things to start with is understanding the organization doing these interviews and trying to connect the customer experience to other targets yeah and that's so good that you were mentioning this because it's all about contextualizing this stuff and so often we are so excited about what we do and how important it is and the funny thing is you're not selling customer experience governance it's a means to win it right yes and you have to figure out what the end is and you figure that out like you said for instance by interviewing c-level people you need to get access to them and figure out okay are they focused on growth are they focused on operational excellence shareholder value and your task is then to see if something like customer experience governance cx governance can help to achieve those goals if it can't like you'll have a really hard time implementing this correct exactly exactly and and of course then you need to think about it that okay maybe the maturity isn't ready yet for that so so or that there is like a light version or one thing is as well that as you said that it's really contextual so in some of the organizations i've been working with the cx governance covers the whole hierarchical structure in a sense so that there are there are the explicit place for the top management to be part of these discussions and there are like one layer below and one layer below so that it goes all the way whereas in some organizations it's mainly in then maybe for example in more middle part of the organization and then there is just the owner like a sponsorship in the really top so that it's in the agenda there every now and then but it's not like the main focus of those people but it happens a little bit lower especially if it's a smaller organization that may be just fine yeah yeah so and i guess that's one of the biggest pitfalls don't focus on the actual topic like figure out figure out figure out what the organization needs what they are heading what they are heading to in the next three years and see how you can help there and that's also i think related to what you mentioned around paint a future state in two or three years that needs to that needs to be focused on the company goals and not not at all around cx governance so exactly yeah but but i think also one not necessary in in in all cases but some cases even in in a company that which seems to be mature in in the cx in a sense that they have a quite clear ownership for it and like initiatives to to develop it but still they are lacking this red line or this kind of like a common vision that would go or common customer experience principles that would go across the organization and that may be sometimes quite powerful and practical tool that if you can in the picking to engage these key stakeholders to build this a little bit more explicit customer experience vision than they have maybe in the strategic level where they might have these targets that you know let's be the best in the field but it's not really like opened up that what does it mean then actually how does it fit and look like in different kind of customers or who are the key customers or so it's also a lot about making decisions making things visible so that people know where we are going and then then using those in as a tools to like quite the path yeah and and i would i would translate this in my own language like the first needs to be a problem and like if you set a vision for how how you want to be how the customer experience should be in your company how customers should perceive you if you don't have that then like there is no problem that needs to be solved right there like any any experience then there would be good so creating that awareness first like you said maybe painting a scenario creating a picture like we as a company want to be like this and then you can say okay to get there we need we need something we need things that can help us on our way so let's let's let's maybe look into a few practical examples because you said okay let's imagine we have buy-in from the top people see the importance people want to go where we sort of want to go and you said then we sort of try to turn this into tangible actionable initiatives what are some common things that you see in those kind of plans first of all i think that maybe going a little bit still back i listened to one of your earlier like service design shows about the customer journey mapping and and i liked her how it was described that it's it's also a design task to get people involved and and really see it like like from that perspective so so how i see cx governance it's a design task so that's why you need to understand this to whom you are designing it for so who are the users of that like a governance so so and who will be affected by it and and start drawing it so making it as a visual so where does it sit so what are the functions in this organization who are the people here and and what are the services so what are the products and and how this is now and then trying to see that okay from this picture this image we should be actually brought in here so that we can have this like wide enough perspective for the customer experience but at the same time for the organization itself and and so so i would like to see it as as an image or visual as a map as a map kind of as a map and and then and then like when i when having those people involved so you you of course and having this more business target so that's one super important thing to be clear what's the business target the key business target for us is it increase the loyalty is it like transform our customers into the digital services or what's the key thing in the mind that you need to be thinking because then those different customer experience initiatives kind of come from there that where we are actually going and where we are and and that's why it's also links actually this customer journey mapping quite much because that's one tool for example then to understand that where you are now from this customer's perspective and when you have and create the vision where you want to be and then you can start see where you are and which part of the organization especially are related to these things that we need to be started improving or changing so i get that and definitely i see the the value of journey mapping but maybe that's uh uh tied to specific services if i'm i'm looking for and i'm curious about like if we zoom out and look at the operating system or like i don't know the game manual like what do you feel are elements that are that should always be in this manual like if we have a piece of paper or a map and it says cx governance like what are some of the areas that we at least should think about and should make explicit yeah yeah of course the the ownership for the customer experience and in different levels that's that's the one thing uh who will own in what kind of forums you need that where you are discussing about it or sharing the experiences who is going to develop it so what's your development system but then then one of the key thing is the data so so what kind of processes they are on place for the customer data to understand in the customers in in as like 360 way as possible and and so that's if you don't have it yet you need to have because the cx forum is quite powerless without that so it's it's it's in that sense i see that as a crucial part there that what kind of processes and tools and that's of course then it comes back to that where do you use the data who uses that and that's again the governance model in a sense that who are there where they get this kind of data what they do with that and who has the decision making power as well and and of course the the idea is not to add hierarchy or complexity in the organization so that's that's some of the challenges there that easily you just add things on while you should at the same time try to see that are there already actually natural places are there already forums or group of people who meet regularly where you could actually take this into agenda and and support by this just making for example better processes around the data so so so those are those are like at least some building blocks so data ownership forum processes tools decision-making power like those are the typical things you would make explicit yes around customer experience governance right yes exactly and then of course to make it more complicated it's then it starts to become clear this that the capabilities from the more like a people perspective that okay do we need actually new roles do we need to train people who we need to train do we need to build the tools that gives us more common vocabulary around these or these kind of things and like a meta question is one of the things we make explicit in the cx governance is ownership who owns the initiative to initiate the cx ownership is that the service design professional or like i think that's that's rise in a comp like it depends on a company by company so so in some companies it has it's more naturally in the marketing department so maybe they can they can be be in the ones who initiated actually we should have it clearly owned or we should have a more better governance but quite often i think it's those like not service designers but more about the like business owners or something like that who has this feeling that i'm not going to be able to move over where i want before we have this clarified that who actually owns this but then of course service designer can be helping like me for example to make sense of it and make it as this kind of a design task so that you start trying to understand and figure out what would be appropriate model for it yeah i can imagine that this absolutely needs to be a multi or inter or a transdisciplinary activity because like when you talk about capabilities and roles you need to have HR involved when you have when you talk about data you need maybe data scientists so i don't i i couldn't imagine that a service designer would be like the the lead in this initiative but could be an enabler or definitely a big role to support this process yes and i think it's also also like interesting topic i don't have there any any good like answers but i'm of course always like external and then then so i need to have this really good relationship and close people the one who wants me to help to make it so so so the one that i'm working with and those are typically like i said not the service designers but who understands about service design who are keen on like developing the customer experience and whether the background is in the business or in the in the marketing or in the development they are the ones who see the benefit of making it a picker and more systematic common goal for everyone now let's imagine and that we've put this team together we see the need for cx covenants we've created a good plan we've put things on paper how do you how do you then make it stick because i i can totally see that this becomes a beautiful slideshow beautiful presentation great initiatives and then when the rubber hits the road like six months later people are scratching their head and thinking didn't didn't we do something around cx covenants like yeah and you yes that's that's a correct and that's that's a real risk here and and that's what maybe the challenge is that it's quite one of my one of my like customers said said to me once that yeah we are one i now see backward like a couple of years that what we've been doing also together that that we've been able to achieve a lot and we have progressed a lot so we have now this and that processes in system we have this and that like tools there and this structure and but what where we are still struggling is the mindset so the more culturally so more what did actually mean when we want to behave and think more user-centric way so so it's quite easy as long as you still like it's just the let's let's create a tool or all these meetings and structures but then that what actually people are how they really breathe that so so that's the more more difficult part and that's why i recommend always that it's good to have the external person for quite a long in the journey to remind that the customer experience why we are here help to like create the agendas for these meetings but also to help to create the like in all customer-centric transformations so helping to create different size of development initiatives around it so that you have all the time something that you can follow and wait for that now we get quite soon some some concrete examples why we are doing this but then you also have this longer term that you need to really be waiting and a little bit more putting efforts on all the time so i think this that you are able to follow the progress and that comes to the data part again and creating the like clear targets that what you're trying to aim so that you can all the time follow in these cx covenants different like the meetings that there are the different forums and people that you can like engage them in seeing that actually things will change when we are doing this together yeah and so good that you mentioned this because i can't imagine that this is so easy to overlook and like buying or implementing a new tool or setting up some dashboards to measure things or defining new roles and capabilities like that's super concrete and tangible and i can totally see that people start running with that and like yeah we we are making progress but what you're saying is if the mindset of the organization isn't evolving at the same time you will have a great tool but people won't be ready or the organization won't be ready to make to take full advantage of it or something something like that yes so i think there's a quite a lot of efforts at the same time need to be put on there like maybe maybe like telling the stories of the customers and these different kind of good and bad experiences and examples and and also like showcasing the good even the small things and changes so that people can get the understanding that what it means and they can helping people to see their own role there because i think that's the biggest challenge in especially in in bigger organizations that there are a lot of those people who are not in the front line but whose work is super critical and important but they still tend to think about it that although there would be this that yes i'm making these decisions maybe on that but still it's quite far away so you need to be helping them to reflect and see their own like importance in this picture and that that i'm making some assumptions here but i can imagine that that's the hardest thing to sort of sell because anyone can see how a tool might be helpful to get like how it fixes a gap but when you need to sell we are going to tell stories in the organization for the next three years to change the mindset like you have to you have to have a good story like how do you make a business case for that right that's yeah and i think that's why you need to be continuously enough involved and that's why i think that there needs to be either a lot of really good like a close like working relationship between for example me and my my customer from their organization or the internal people a lot of supporting it because you need to be understanding that what kind of discussions they are going on so that you can always correspond those that it doesn't like happen so that it's start to be the sidetrack that you started that in the middle but all of it slides a little bit if you know what i mean and then then it's not in the those topics anymore that people are talking about and interested in so you need to be all the time reflecting and that's why i also think that although you need to be super clear in the beginning what's the long-term target what's the what's the business goal why you need this kind of structure that need to be really clear and connected to this like a future state where you want to be and also the what's the money point of view there but but at the same time like really really like being flexible you need to have these reflection points does it work like we've been a little bit like a pilot starting maybe again like a pilot in and then then being open for it that okay for some reason it doesn't work we have wrong people involved we are in the wrong level are now working we we are not two-picks project in it that we haven't been actually making the prioritizing as we should be and so you it's a long-term learning process at the same time i think that's a very healthy way to approach this as an iterative process and keep on reflecting my mind was sort of wondering off while you were mentioning this and i was thinking about another metaphor around maybe living a healthy lifestyle it's not just enough to buy healthy food like you can buy healthy food that's the easy part you go to the to the grocery store and you buy healthy food but your long-term vision should be that you want to be able to play with your grandkids when you are 70 like that's that's the big vision and when you i think lose that side of that vision and just focus on buying healthy food one it will be really hard to sustain because like the next day you sort of forget to buy healthy food and you have to keep reminding yourself why you're doing this yeah i like that metaphor yeah i like it because that's exactly that you easily buy the gadget and you know the things that kind of help you but then you should all the time think about it where you are going and when you mature for something or you read some step then you should change a little bit maybe the steps that how you go there the goal is there about how you move that may be like a different in a different times as well yeah and that goal should be almost not almost should become a mantra like you stand you stand up and in the morning in the front of the mirror you sort of repeat where you are heading to and it sounds really silly but i think that that might be like and the magic ingredients for getting these things to actually work and stick yes yes something something easy to remember again yeah yeah and something that you repeat what do you think is the question someone should ask themself before they embark on this journey so maybe they are listening to this conversation and think oh that sounds really good what is what is what is the question they should ask before they invest their time energy passion money i think the the starting point is to think about that are we ready for it in a sense that what's our maturity level how we are organized at the moment do we actually have this in place but it's not explicit so it might be even a smaller task we actually have it almost there but making a little bit the next clip and making visible or or is it that it's it's we are still discussing a totally different language in the different parts of the organization so we first need to just try to raise awareness and the common language and not let's so so it's also trying to understand that where you are in the maturity level that how how well organized you are in this customer experience perspective yeah so you mentioned awareness is one is there even awareness is the language are we doing something around this and if not then that might be a good first step if there is already something in place can we make it more efficient that's basically exactly is there something to make more efficient yeah i think i think one thing is is also like this like what we discussed earlier this customer understanding and data so so do you know your customers at the moment or not so that's also something that we quite that's a hard question like how do you answer that do we know our customers well i think that when you start looking at that okay do we make assumptions or do we actually actually you know based on the like the qualitative and quantitative data that when we see that what the customers are actually doing are we using that data we probably have it but are we using it are we searing it are we discussing about it if not then we don't probably know what our customers are actually doing although we might have the data there available uh so so it's also that do we make these things uh tangible visible something that we are discussed are we discussing this topic or not that's maybe one of the like easy thing are we really discussing what the customer experience mean what is the state at the moment where we want to go is it is it the topic on the agenda and if it's not yet on the agenda what would you advise then then then really thinking that uh who would be if you are interested and you would like that to be that okay who are your alliance who from the organization uh listening maybe the top management talk that who from there might be something that could be like interested in hearing more and and thinking so how you can then from small to try to go up yeah so you mentioned building the alliance or building allies that's probably the first step like if you're if you feel that you're going to be the only one who cares about this then probably you need to take a few steps back exactly yeah yeah and this was the other question that i had like is this something that you can start small and scale or as you previously said like you need top level sponsorship is this something that actually needs to start with with more serious a bigger budget bigger investment i i think you're gonna start with the smaller steps in the sense that becoming more systematic uh in in like a drawing first is that who are what are the forums that are talking about or looking at the customer experience at the moment can i bring there a little bit more still the system as you are there the customer experience point of view like can i just create the one like like in in many organizations i don't know if that's not the like full governance yet but there are the parts for example might be this kind of service design morning or breakfast discussions or where people share their like experiences from the front line or whatever so so there might be this kind of small initiative that when you start like a build a bigger picture so also how these connect how you can maybe systemize those and by bringing small elements or one people who actually are involved of everything uh and and like start making this red line between these different things and then if you have an opportunity to start like uh i don't know to report somehow to the top management that what's happening these smaller like forums and places yeah and uh when you mentioned this one of the things i was thinking and wanted to ask but i already have the answer to this question is like what is the how do you convince top-level management to move from these small initiatives to where a more company-wide organized initiative i think i'm going to fill the answer in but i think the answer is it depends on what the priorities are of the organization right otherwise you it won't it won't resonate exactly if if they are not yet interested in and you are not able to show this connection to their like targets so then it's not going to fly most probably yeah yeah yeah so that's you need to do you need to work on both fronts you need to find your allies and see where their pockets are of people who are interested and passionate about this and on the other front you need to figure out how do i connect this to what the company currently measures values and where we want to be in three years and then if you have those two ingredients then the chances for success definitely go up uh yeah yes i think that was a nice summary thanks it wasn't all that bad yeah um which questions uh or question do you still have around this topic anything i don't know if it keeps you awake but what are you curious about well well i think that the the biggest challenge that in in each case when i'm working with this kind of topic is always this that how i'm engaging those people and convincing those people who are not yet totally convinced so how i find this although i'm interviewing so do i really hear where there is the opportunity do i really see and then can identify so so so that's the thing that maybe if something wakes me up during the night it's it's that that okay can i can i identify that i think that's this is the like so contextual so much to learn i think this is a topic that i'm never ready in in that sense that it's every case brings a little bit new angle a bit new emphasis a bit new way of adopting things so so that's why it's also super interesting uh but all these questions that we be discussing today i'm still asking those from myself when i start the project is this the maturity level there the right and and and should we try to push this or not so do we have a enough success factors as we were mapping there and so so i think those are the things to really consider and best practices would be wonderful to see but i think it's it should be always not not how it's on place but it should be the long-term journey and that's difficult to find yeah yeah and on the one hand it's also comforting that uh it's an ongoing journey you still you're always learning and uh like don't let the fact that you don't have experience with this stop you from starting no exactly i think that's that's yeah this is a collaboration effort as you said earlier that you need the different people with you so so bringing different people and making this your common design task so you solve it together that's the way to do it let me ask you this question if um what do you hope is the one thing somebody will take away from our conversation today if they just remember one thing after six years or a year i wanted to say six months or a year but maybe after six years who knows what is the one thing you hope that they will remember that that it really makes sense to think if you can make this kind of customer experience related decisions more systematic by building a bit better cx governance model around it so the systematically in that sense that that's what it brings for you great let's hope people will take away that and if you took away something else leave a comment let us know what you would you took away from this conversation we would love to hear uh okay Scott thanks so much for coming on uh and discussing this topic i find it super fascinating and like you said it's big it's holistic it's ambiguous but that doesn't stop us from exploring what it could be or where it's heading and uh i hope that we provoked some people and inspired some people to yeah to experiment to try and to prototype and see how far they get yeah thank you for inviting me it was really interesting to try to dig in this topic and explore a little bit the different perspectives what is your takeaway from this conversation make sure to leave a comment down below we'd love to hear my name is mark from time and i want to thank you for tuning in to the service design show and i hope to catch you very soon in the next video