 Thank you and good afternoon as I was introduced I'm Michael cannon and I pretty much run success management at accelerant We're pretty much online Software development company that provides solutions for creative and marketing agencies around the world So that's part of the reason I get to travel a bit. It's got people and clients really all over the place So I'm a little bit lucky. I get it go do a lot of different things in the world, but these days I I Spend a lot of my time actually thinking about what we want to be doing as As a company ourselves, okay It's not a case of hey, I actually want to build something cool Of course we want to do you know We're doing things like you see now retail customer engagement as part of digital transformation with other organizations and things like that However before we can actually get to that stage We actually need to be working with people to figure out What really kind of matters for them and so I'd like to share a little bit of a story with you And it kind of goes like this Don't let your success be an accident All right in the beginning At least over the past dozen plus years There was quite a bit of Projects that we had been engaged in over time and part of the time we did some some good work sometimes we do some not so good work and You know get to sign some really big-name companies and because the work wasn't all that great Yeah, you would actually lose these accounts and it's really tough being able to pay the bills and little things like that if your Experiences for clients aren't all that Frankly consistent or great as a case in a point you can actually Have the worst customer service in the industry But yet your business will survive because people know what to expect from that experience that they have with you now if you're kind of like a mid-range company and You are sometimes great sometimes pretty poor and Every interaction is inconsistent in that then customers really don't know what to expect of you So they tend to move on to something in which they can understand what they can expect So as Part of that inconsistency that happens you're even your employees might decide to leave on because they want somebody that knows what they're doing so Where customer experience comes into play is actually at this higher level concept called the customer journey and the customer journey is really an end-to-end or actually the start of a continuous cycle for how somebody Count a client a customer Become aware of your organization how they become to like what you're doing Begin to trust it being involved with you're doing things and hopefully growing a bit of value well This is where we had to realize that we needed to step back from our inconsistent experiences It's like instead of doing You know these kind of operations for this kind of client these kind of operations for another kind of client We actually need to start figuring out. Well, what's the baseline? What's the kind of core experience that we don't have with our within our organization and deliver to that? So by stepping back and taking a look at the whole picture of what we want to do Then we came into this customer journey so the first part of it is really Getting to know about the kinds of customers that you want to be working with and I met even before you get to worry about this You need to be knowing what it is that you as an organization want to provide. Is it a piece of software? Is it a food service or is it? Hey a medical care thing of just being on provide Massages, but the thing is is no matter what the offering is you need to have an idea What it is that you really want to do so then you can start figuring out what that customer journey is To know hey, these are the kind of clients you want to be working with these are the ways that you want to be interacting with them and I can get a little bit more into it, but really You need to know what you want to do as an organization so then you can start making other people aware about it So as people begin to get aware of what your organization does You need to start worrying about this thing called build some confidence. Okay. Oh actually which era we're calling it liking it so Under the concept of liking it is Going back to a little bit of the old-school thing I know a lot of the operations that we do these days is based around SAS Software as a service and other other similar things. However, what's going on is to bring back The you know better customer relationship is to actually have a relationship with the customers that you do have and frankly it can be a case of have a personal interaction with them actually in Some cases especially if you don't want larger accounts. No Know about their kids What kind of schooling is going on what kind of vacations and? The real point though is have a relationship so that you can understand where relevancy for your organization fits into for the kinds of accounts that you want to be working with now Where we get to the trusting or yeah, actually trusting so that we can get started on doing something this is kind of where the All the different ideas you might have about the things that you want to do need to come into place as Far as an actual roadmap or in our case. We actually utilize something that's called a storyboard and This particular storyboard is actually the third epic because since we're an agile we do a lot of agile work we utilize the Utilize a epic terminology as long as well as kind of releases so What each of these cards represent is a point of interaction that one of nine different kind of roles across our organization and and the customer need to be concerned about but the thing is is a say across a Staffing engagement where? Organization has a little bit of a capacity capability shortfall some of our people come in and help them Technically we've actually identified about seven hundred points of engagement or not really points of engagement with kinds of interactions well, frankly It's not feasible to really automate and have all those things on the on an amount of basis So what you can come up doing is actually say well Here's the full potential of what we could do, but you started identifying. Well, what are the things that really have the greatest impact? okay, and So that allows you to ensure they get the right people you're coming across with the relevant solutions and be frankly having some clear agreements Between yourself those that you're working with and the people that you want to be servicing Now Since you have a bit of the roadmap you got your project systems kind of going your clients and what's what's going on You have basically what we consider the fourth stage or an execution or Demonstrating that trust, you know getting things done and Really here. It's again going back to following the game plan if you say you're gonna do daily stand-ups and weekly releases or You're going to have a certain kind of communication protocol. It's again it's about the consistency and also ensuring that That the customer or that who you're dealing with has consistent in good outcomes, you know so along the way again the the key point is be eliminating inconsistencies in the things that your organization does and Lastly one of my favorite parts that's where I'm coming in is because You've had a successful relationship of being able to provide some service or some product for the kind of accounts that you've been working with whether they're Consumers or there are large enterprises you can start working on the important thing of starting to grow your value together Where instead of being alright? He here's an outsourcer and here's a company Start actually start working together as a partner. So such that one plus one is in two But it's actually 11 because by working together by collaborating together. You can start doing quite a bit more I love the work together so That's last part it's really ensuring that you're starting to have future alignment for what's going on now Getting into the customer journey customer experience Maybe a broader term customer success this is a Concept that came out about ten years ago and it's kind of much touted and I admit When I was first kind of pushed into my role not really pushed But I kind of jumped to my role My initial list of hey the things I'm gonna say hey that we're gonna we're gonna focus on these things was like 50 Adams long and I figured with my team would come up to the hundred as I kind of mentioned earlier became 700 so what I'd like to point out is To do something like this. Well, it's actually a lot more effort than you're going to be expecting and so because of that we actually needed to come back and well, frankly Focus on just a few aspects. What is it that causes the most friction? Is it the communication delays? Is it the quality aspects of something that we're dealing with is a lack of the expertise that's being applied is it? Risk not being reduced as much as it should for where you're going So when you get into something for the customer journey to start now banging on the customer experience you want to Frankly be worried about just a thin line of your business You do not want to try to do everything all at once as an example say Pizza Hut wanted to Really Do two things twofold at a high level really streamline the online ordering of their daily pizza specials Which in turn goes out to the store so that they get delivered Okay. Well, the thing is is instead of completely revamping their online e-commerce platform what they did is just went for introducing some Insets and actually ran a secondary system Alongside of the primary so by doing that they were actually able to divorce themselves from pre-existing infrastructure Okay, so the idea here is Just worry about trying to do one aspect or one thin slice of what of your business that you want to try to focus on okay, and Really remember at a high level it's about the people and the processes that kind of lead into systems and most importantly keep it short and sweet This is definitely a case of you can't make things too complicated, which is something that we've run into it's like even As as we've been going along We keeps having to step back how can make it simpler so that people understand things now the downsides to customer journey that a lot of organizations think they just think it's a Give a couple people the role and throw it out there. Well, I have to admit this What I do now is really when the greatest challenges that I've ever had in my career I've been doing it for about 35 years and it's actually the most fun and most loving Because I've actually had to rethink how everything in an organization works. It's like whenever I've been involved with whether it's my own companies or other companies you get to the point of There's always something missing, but weirdly under the customer success customer journey aspects everything that we do That's geared towards the customer experience and even an employee experience is all about a purpose So that means that organization needs to have a purpose because what then happens is the Organization purpose defines what kind of values that the organization have and if those values are there Then we know what kind of people we want to have and why are the people matter because the people define those Relationships or create those processes that we're going to be working with and we're going back to this Consistency concept. It's fine if you got a bunch of processes But if there's no system in place to actually bring it all together Whether it's from a tactical aspect or a strategic overview and a future alignment thing. It's not going to work So, oh, yeah, my favorite part Even doing something simple. I thought this 18 months was a bunch of balonis like now. We're smart We'll get through it in like six months. Oh my god We keep kind of simplifying things and we're still at about nine months and I Can easily see version one for doing something really well is about It's about nine month or excuse me is about 18 months But for what we're working on really on solidifying the way that we do account operations and staffing operations We actually started seeing major improvements within about six months so Get a little recap, you know when it comes to like customer journeys You know again focus on a small part of the business that's end-to-end empower the people to be To do the things that need to be done Be talking with everybody that's involved This is actually really one of the coolest things I that I really really like about customer journey is Everyone is involved in it. I actually have come to realize that This is a really good check of if the organization really knows what they're about Which kind of goes back to my original statement of don't let success be an accident I know before we were lucky now. We know what the heck we're doing What's also kind of nice is Especially when you get into the customer journey as a way You can't really just manage people but you need to be able to determine a way to lead them and the way to Do that leadership is by having a decision framework and getting to the decision framework actually comes out to understand what the purpose is for the organization the values around it and what's What's really the priorities around the kinds of engagements and counts that you have so once you have those sort of things The team that is on that account or on that engagement can actually be able to make the decisions that need to be made so the right thing, you know, it's basically the right thing and the next right decision gets handled and Lastly most importantly, especially under the agile concept always be having regular retrospectives and iterations for what's going on now wonderfully. I've Kind of wrapped it I'm kind of curious who else here is maybe on the Non-development technical side of the house or whose customer facing how about that as customer facing. Okay Well, Mishari, I'll come back to you, but it's a bit back, right? Yeah, how are you customer facing and behind you? Are you involved with customers? Ah Okay, all right, and back here. Okay Yeah, yeah, great. Thanks and Mishari let everybody else know how you interact with people so Actually, one of the things that I kind of like to point out is when it does come around the customer experience even though I kind of keep throwing that word customer around It's actually about the people and it's not just the external people to an organization, but even the people within and Really with that I would really like to be able to take your questions. Thank you. Yes Ben there done that Weirdly when we started saying no That what the customer was asking for or providing alternatives Started standing up for what we believe in It was actually weirdly yeah it's kind of like when we started having more of a backbone for how we felt that things really needed to be and sticking with it that actually started changing the kind of conversations that we were having and in many ways, I think that's sort of the The the turning point Also being up front that our relationship is not about Being given something The term is thrown over the fence. It's like we have to work together It's like even if we're going to the restaurant to get a burger. I mean I have allergies of the yin and it's terrible It's like I need to be able to actually communicate with my server who then easy needs to communicate with the cook to be able to get something that's not literally going to kill me or at least make me really ill for for a while and It's like when people are willing to communicate and be kind of Trusting truthful and transparent then we can actually get to you know really really higher level relationships Yeah, absolutely. I You know as a back story, it's like years ago Sure, our thing was doing two to five thousand dollar kind of opportunities whether it's a project product or staff and engagements now We're much more into you know a hundred thousand dollars action a little bit on the small side. You know what really means is where say Somebody at the pet store really just needs to be able to talk to you for about five minutes to do a ten dollar sale or even a hundred dollar sale My conversations might last in between six months to three years before something comes around But that's where actually having to be really interested in people Having to know what is it that their organization wants to be accomplishing is really coming into play Because whenever you're talking to somebody it can't just be all about the sales aspect. You know, it's kind of I I Actually have various kinds of nurturing cycles and and frankly I rarely actually mentioned something like oh, hey We've got some free people. No, I'll be like, hey, we just launched pottery barn in the Middle East Oh a city of dreams over here is you know doing something pretty cool, but before all that it's like, oh my gosh It's like minus five minus five degrees outside. You know, how are you surviving the winter? It's really start about being personable with the people So really kind of going back to more truthful or more authentic relationships and frankly if you just don't get it with that person Throw them over 20 of yourselves people or the marketer Okay, so you mentioned something quite interesting personable I've come to realize that even as typical geeks and as a team it is a Very very good idea for people to be personable. Yeah, but then What do you have any recommendations on how to train geeks to be more personable in some ways, it's a little bit of an easy one first off is Actually, it's not such an easy one really you got to go back to what the organization purpose is Because then that also starts to define Well, what's what kind of values are important to you for your organization because in those kinds of values to find what kind of people you want to hire for For our work at accelerant, you know, it's called echo enthusiastic kind and open So the people that we come in frankly, they need to be able to communicate because communication is the key for everything that we do Sure, we might be able to do video conferences, but guess what you still need to write something that other people can understand However, when Whether we just want to be a little bit more or grow. So we actually have a life coach at At our place of employment and at first I thought was like one of those wishy-washy things now I'm like totally hardcore for it because the life coach actually really demonstrates that we care about somebody personally and professionally and You know, sometimes I even talked to my life coach about marriage issues But it's through that enabling the ability to have soft skills development within the organization Two minutes and 30 seconds Yeah, it's I've seen it around a little bit In many ways, it's kind of like I'm a more personable chief operation chief operating officer And it also depends upon what the organization structure is Again for my particular role is really about The overall the overall customer success and for us customer success means highly engaged teams positive account experiences and expected outcomes So that pretty much means that account managers project managers and engineering managers Report to me and then through them all the delivery. So that's chief success officer for us It was a bit of an attempt pushing towards Holocracy or basically, you know truly being self-managed teams Driving towards eliminating silos, but that's really one of the biggest things that that goes on here when you're dealing with a customer journey is You have to break the silos like crazy. It's like you're doing your status meetings even marketing, you know Some marketing rep needs to be there People need to be aware. Alright 57 seconds 56 53 You've been fantastic Well, feel free to holler at me. It's Michael accelerant or the photographer guy