Tiffani Bova: The Power of a Remarkable Employee Experience

27:51Worst CEO I've ever worked for, greatest CEO I ever worked for. What are you supposed to do with things that like so conflict each other in the comments? So if I were going to be looking for work again, I would look and I would look before I interviewed. And then the things that were super polarizing like that, that's where I would ask questions. I see mixed reviews around the CEO, like their leadership style. People either like it or don't like it. Why do you think that is? I'm talking about me. I'm interviewing somewhere, right? And And so it gives me the ability to know what questions do I want to ask based on what's important to me.

28:33And they may say, look, I'm in a call center. I'm going for a call center job. If the CEO is not a great leader, does that impact my day to day? I don't know. I'm going to report to this leader. That's a different story. I'm in middle management and I aspire to grow in this company. That's a different story. So I think once again, it's a data point by which people can inform their interview questions and where they would want to know more information. See, you always mention these things. And then a few minutes later, I got to go back because - Yep, go back. You know, I'm drinking out of a fire hose right now.

29:08So you mentioned Howard Schultz and Starbucks. And I would throw Amazon in this same bucket. So what should people make out of this? Stores are voting for unionization or an Amazon warehouse is voting for unionization. Does that inherently mean that the EX sucks in those companies or there's just a handful of pissed off people who are trying to get unionized? I actually did a case study in my first book, Growth IQ on Starbucks, and I used it as a cautionary tale on what not to do with customer experience. And people were surprised that's what I did because they're held up as sort of a big standard.

29:53But what had happened is they got a little bloated in what was going on in each of the stores, in each of the cafes, and it became very confusing. Are they doing coffee? Are they selling breakfast? Are they selling CDs and teddy bears? I don't know if you remember. It got really crazy on what they were selling, right? Stanley Cups. It was just nuts. So Howard had left. He came back and the first thing he did was he said, we got too far away from the experience that our customers expected and what we aspire to deliver as an organization. Then he left and he came back when what started happening?

30:28The employees started grumbling and unionization started happening. And so the first thing he said, which is now a case study in my new book, The Experience Mindset, is this focusing in on employee that we just forgot about our baristas. we overwhelmed them with, as an example, it was during the pandemic, everything moved from in store to online. And it was really tough for the baristas, right, the employees of those establishments to handle the volume now that was online, because it used to be like 15 % of it. And now it's 99 % of it, because there was no other way to do it. Now it is that we were customer centric, you know, true north organization, and the employees got a little bit left behind.

31:13now flip it onto Amazon we are the most customer obsessed company on the planet that's what Jeff said on his way out and that was from kind of day one his day one mantra on his way out the door the last thing he said is we want to be the best employer on the planet as he was walking out the door so customer got them where they needed to be and lots of growth hyper growth but there's some challenges there because a customer says i want it same day delivery oh and i can ship it back for free if i don't like it so that customer first customer always right customer obsessed now they have a return problem billions of dollars being returned or they say don't send it back keep it.

32:04So who's paying for the shipping? They are. And it was free returns. So you can't over pivot to the customer without some implications. And then to the point, according to their employees, they were not taking care of their employees. So even high performing organizations have space for improvement. I'll just say Salesforce as an example. We only stood up an employee experience team about 10 months ago. Yet, we are a great place to work. We're one of the most innovative companies in the world and we're the fastest growing enterprise software company. So even those things do not guarantee that you don't have room for improvement.

32:41But wait, I didn't get the answer to my question. What does unionization signal? That their employees were not happy. Specific employees, specifically for Amazon was really the warehouse employees, were not happy. So what are the things that you need to do in order to make that right? And then you say, okay, if unionization is their last resort to make that right, then we have to shore that up. Now, some people weren't handling it correctly. Because in those two examples, one or two or three locations were shut down. So was that a coincidence that it was shut down, that it was those that were loudest on unionization?

33:22Or was that a way to quiet it? Who knows? Maybe we could all assume from the outside. But go ahead. No, I was going to say. So if you're telling me that organizations or locations that vote for unionizations are shut down and the people who are the union leaders were fired. I mean, it's hard to build a case that's all coincidence. Listen, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm saying that ultimately you've seen going, look at what just happened two weeks ago with that woman from Miller talking about the bonus on the Zoom call. The one about get off the pity train or whatever. Get off the pity train.

34:02That's a really bad show of employee experience. But it was a little false. No bonuses had actually been announced for this year. She's just like, we need to make this better. It was just a really bad delivery. It was a bad delivery. So you see it happening really consistently where I think executives are trying to figure out how do I show up better for the employees because employees are taking matters into their own hands. I mean, I don't know about you, but I feel like unions weren't the thing. And now all of a sudden unions are a thing again. Dipping back into the Tiffany fire holes a few minutes ago.

34:39Yes. It occurred to me that can one make the case that as a company starts, it's primarily CX, but as it matures, it has to pivot and become more balanced towards EX. So it's a part of a corporate life cycle that this change has to happen. Okay, let's go to the art of the start. The book. Your book. Yeah. Don't believe everything I write. Okay. So let's go to the art of the start. So based on everything I just said, I'm going to toss it back to you. What would you say if you were going to have five people starting a company and they were not that happy and you were trying to innovate, move really quickly, break things, have to be agile, all of that, do you need really engaged employees or is customer experience more important?

35:34That's a complicated question. I would make the case if that I hired those five employees and we didn't have the same passion and vision and the same obsession with making a cool computer or whatever i hired the wrong people i would make the case that in a company's life cycle you need certain kind of people at the start to create the product and wage war against an incumbent or a new market but then as you achieve success then you need more operational people to keep, you know, the trains running on time. So it's a different kind of person you need at a different time in a company's life. So I would agree with you.

36:19I would agree with you. And I would say that this is that mindset of what I don't want to have happen is the gap between those two things get so big that when you start to go to make that change, that you have a lot of ground to make up versus if you just ask that question, like I just said, Be totally customer obsessed. When you do something, just ask the question, are we giving our employees what they need to be successful if this is what we're going to do at this pace and these are the expectations? If they just ask that question, they could be doing two things at the same time. It's sort of this bimodal of one's gonna give, one's gonna take.

36:54It'll never be even, but let's not forget one for the other. And so I would say, if they're going to be completely focused on the customer and you've hired well in the first round of hiring, let's just make sure you don't end up with 900 applications with only 24 of them integrated let's not get there let's not get there okay point taken how do you think remote work figures into ex yeah so when the pandemic first six to eight months after everybody went on lockdown and was working from home, it was like a 3 ,000 % increase in the purchase of keystroke tracking software. Not a good sign. Not a good sign.

37:43So I trusted you when you worked here. I trusted you when you were in a cubicle. I don't trust you when you work at home. So what does that say to the people? Do you care about what's going on? By the way, some call centers actually required the camera to be on all the time. So that's not a great look, right? That is, I don't trust you. I'm hyper-focused on productivity, et cetera. Now, I think the good that came out of that was more focused on mental health, more focused on what people need for a little more work-life balance. People were working from their kitchen counters. Not everybody had a space that they could work in that was separate from their house and kids were home.

38:31It was a lot of challenging situations. But what I'm worried about now is you see a lot of companies snapping back to the way that it was before and letting go of some of those people investments because either they need to get back to productivity, everyone has to get in the office, we need to cut costs, whatever the reason might be, that I worry that we're going to go back to some of those old behaviors. So now for me, I think hybrid is the answer. I don't think it's always in. I don't think it's always remote. For certain roles, it's always in. For certain roles, it may be always out. But I think a hybrid of pick two days a week or three days a week that the team all gets together in the office.

39:09I think there's a ton of power in face-to-face collaboration, that walking around and seeing people and asking quick questions. You feel like you're a part of something. I think that's very valuable. I've worked from home remote for 18 years, but I don't just work here nine to five, five days a week. I'm on the road. So I get that interaction because when I was locked up and I was home five days a week, all day, it was much more difficult for me. I really missed that human interaction. So I hope hybrid is where we land, where appropriate. Our discussion has been perhaps unconsciously biased towards tech, large company, consumer brands, Starbucks.

39:49But what if I'm listening to this and I just own a restaurant or a dry cleaner or a surfboard shop or something? And I'm thinking, okay, I understand, but we don't have 900 applications to integrate, Tiffany. I'm just trying to make people eat my ribs or buy my surfboard or shop in my single location store. So what does that person do for EX? So I asked two questions. When was the last time you caught an Uber ride, Guy? Or Lyft? A seemingly simple question has a complicated answer. So when Uber went on its whole binge where, to me, I perceived it as a very misogynistic company and that just trod on employees and particular women.

40:44So I boycotted Uber. I will not catch Uber to this day. I will catch Lyft. But I haven't done either for a while. first because of the pandemic and then now because I just refuse to travel. So I know that's a long answer to a short question, but. So let me take you back. You are making as a consumer a conscious decision to not deal with a brand because of how they treat their employees. That's absolutely true. Yes. There you go. There you go. Proves the point. So now since you don't have that one, usually what I ask on the backside of that is let's say you said last month, let's just say, I would say, what did you pay?

41:24Most likely you're going to say, I don't remember. Then I'll say, did you have a male or female driver? Were they talkative? Was the car smelly? Was the music too loud? Were they really friendly? Did they help you with your bags? You're going to remember all that experience much longer than the price you paid. So now I'll ask you about a restaurant. If you went to a restaurant and the food was absolutely spectacular and the service was terrible, would you go back? No. So that is why experience is so important. Now, why was the service terrible? Were they understaffed? Were they trying to use a new handheld device for ordering and they weren't trained on it?

42:03Was it really dirty? Were they out of the three things you enjoy eating there? So that experience shows itself in every employee interaction. That's why I focused in on those moments that matter. When a customer is in front of an employee in some way, the packaging they build, the instructions they write, the website they build, the food they deliver, the car they drive, the check-in at a spa, a nail salon, like whatever it might be, those employees, the collection of those employees are your company. And so people make decisions, as you just said, with Uber, that you have boycotted them because of what they do to employees.

42:47And you would not go back to a restaurant, even if the food was spectacular, if the service was terrible. Now, you might give them a second try because it might have been an off night, but most definitely you wouldn't give them a third if it was bad. So that experience is remembered and has huge impact on decisions that are made by consumers, by us every single day, whether it's a small mom and pop store, a franchise fast signs location, a nail salon, a surfboard shop. If you had someone working in a surfboard shop and I went in Dubai and I didn't know anything about surfboards and the other person's like, well, I like this one because I like the design.

43:23I'm like, well, okay, but what about my height, my weight? I don't surf big waves and they don't know anything about the product. That's a terrible experience. Yep. That's why it's important regardless. And we use the big examples because most people have had experiences with those big companies' employees. But to your point, you are correct. It's impactful. You need one employee, but treat yourself good if you're a solopreneur. But if you've got a handful of employees, it's equally as important. If not more so, because you only have a handful. I give a Canva example. So I've been with them twice down at World Tour Sydney events the last two years.

44:02and their employees are really happy. And look, they're growing like gangbusters and they love their CEOs and their founders. And look at the company's growth. So there is lots to be said for if you're looking to accelerate growth, don't just only exclusively think about the customer. Up next on Remarkable People. This is where it gets tricky and I'm not avoiding this because I don't want to say it. It is because there are pieces and parts of companies that it was the warehouse employees that really felt the greatest pain. It was the baristas that really felt the greatest pain. Would you say corporate employees were feeling that unhappy or is it pieces and parts of the organization?

44:48If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it. Even better, forward it to a friend. A big mahalo to you for doing this. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. I checked yesterday to prep for this interview, and the Canva Glassdoor score is 4.7, and the Salesforce Glassdoor score is 4.2. There you go. There you go. There you go. Honestly, I'm not surprised. We've just had two rounds of layoffs, and it's a tough time, So ultimately, but that's what I was saying. That's that, why is it happening? What are the signals? Is it just because we had the layoffs?

45:38I don't know. I haven't looked, but ultimately those are telling signs. Okay. Shifting gears. How can or can chat GPT and let's lump all AI into chat GPT. How does Tiffany Bova think that you can use ChatGPT if you do to improve the employee experience? So we are doing something called EinsteinGPT. A lot of it is, look, sales reps and customer service agents will write very similar, consistent, repetitive responses. So can we create that kind of response using AI instead of a human doing it so that we can focus the humans on doing the more nuanced, complex kinds of responses? And so I think that it has the ability to scale and augment and offload those repetitive tasks that take up time.

46:42However, the caveat on this is I'm not yet a fan. So, you know, I'm sure you've played with it as well. I got asked a couple interview questions. And so I asked ChatGPT. I'm like, let me ask and see what the answers would be. Would I say something similar? I'd say 75 % of it was pretty good. I had to edit some of it. Like I wouldn't say this this way, or I don't actually agree that that is before that or whatever. Small, subtle stuff. But it got me started. It definitely got me started. And the smarter that it gets, the better I think it will be. But I do think it has the ability to scale misinformation and disinformation.

47:19So part of the challenge in all of AI and automation that we've had just in sales and customer service over the years is like social selling. At scale, if you do it terribly, it's a really bad result. So I think that companies have to have a strategy. They have to figure out how and where to use it. and they need to put some guardrails in place as they learn through what will work and not work without degrading the level of service that is delivered. Well, Tiffany, I'll tell you one author to another. I use ChatGPT every single day. I'm writing another book. Not saying I copied you, but I'm naming my book, The Remarkable Mindset.

48:02Awesome, I'll take it. I like the mindset word anyway. I'll take it, I'll take it. let's say i think that in order to be remarkable you need to really understand how to apologize okay agree so i have an expert in that her name is lisa leopold and she gives me these are the five things you need to do but i will also ask chat jpt how do i apologize well and it may give me a sixth thing and so i use it as a research assistant not to generate text after this interview I bet you, if you go to chat JBT and you say, give me examples of companies that blew it because of poor employee experiences, it will give you a lot of examples that you can use in your book or speech.

48:53Probably. And as it gets smarter to go out to the web, I could say in the last 30 days. Because in beta right now is going out to the web. Because I could have been like, I'm going to interview Guy Kawasaki. I want to know what three questions I should start asking him. And it will go crawl. What's the last things you've been saying? We're not quite there yet, but yeah. Funny you should mention that because I have tried to do that with ChatGPT and the questions it comes up with are crap. Let's take an example. I interviewed Ginny Rometty, who was the CEO of IBM. And I said, what should I ask Ginny Rometty?

49:27And it gives me very sort of expected NPR-like questions like how do you see the future of technology? how do you manage a large company what do you see as promising technologies like total bullshit questions so i don't think it's good for that yet so there is a web version that will crawl the web that's in beta right now that will say tell me what i should ask her based on her last three interviews and then you can ask her something that she hasn't been asked or asked a different way or in her answer it actually gave us something else so you're right it's not right yet it's not there yet, but these are great examples of how curious do you want to become and where and how you can use it.

50:11And I agree with you, that sort of sixth thing or the fourth thing or the thing I didn't think about. It just makes you go, huh, okay, you may not agree with it, but if you agree with it, all the better. Thanks. That's the sixth one. So I could tell you right now for this book, I'm going to put in a section that is inspired by you, citing you, right? And I'm going to ask ChatGPT, give me examples of companies that blew it because of poor EX. Now, I know the examples you have in your book, but I'm looking for even more so I can build a table of examples. And I guarantee you ChatGPT will help me.

50:54I guarantee you. I'm sure. And I think that why it's important to know who's blown it is so if you're a leader of a small company and you want to grow or you're a leader of a medium or large company, what not to do. It's not about shaming people who have done something wrong. It's about what you don't want to do. But you know what? I'm not like the guy, but so I'm going to tap chat GPT, but right now I have Tiffany GPT. So Tiffany, give me some examples of companies that have blown it so that I can have examples for my book. This is where it gets tricky and I'm not avoiding this because I don't want to say it.

51:38It is because there are pieces and parts of companies that maybe, so we were talking about some of those brands before, that it was the warehouse employees that really felt the greatest pain. It was the baristas that really felt the greatest pain. Would you say corporate employees were feeling that unhappy or is it pieces and parts of the organization? So that's why it's hard to answer that full writ. Like this company is terrible at it, right? Because you could say from a customer experience standpoint, like Macy's right now, if you've gone to a Macy's store, Like it's so sad. Like you just kind of go, wow.

52:14And the people that work there are just uninspired. And that's an existing example. Or Bed Bath & Beyond is closing. It just filed bankruptcy. It's been in this death spiral for the last 12 months. How have those employees felt? It was a very specific situation or part of the company. So that's why I don't always like to call someone out. I like the positives. Like I think Chewy does amazing work. I think Zappos does amazing work on both sides. I would argue that Southwest did an amazing job until these last two hiccups where employees have really bared the brunt of some of the infrastructure, outdated technology problems.

52:51That's why it's always tough to just blanket answer that question. I'm not avoiding, I'm not trying to be political. I'm just saying it's just not fair to call someone out when there are pieces and parts of all companies that have opportunity for improvement. Pardon my ignorance, but what is Chewy? Chewy. It's like the Zappos of pet food. That's the best way to describe it. So literally they know your pet's names. And when your pets pass away and you cancel the subscription, employees will draw pictures of your pets and send it to you. They send you condolence cards. They are hyper-focused on CX with a huge angle on E.

53:26That's why I say they're very much similar to the Zappos kind of mentality or mindset. Chewy. Okay. Okay, so you successfully avoided giving me the hall of shame. Yes, I did. So now, give me like hall of fame. Oh my God, guy, and don't use Salesforce. Oh my God, this company just has the greatest EX or this company showed the greatest turnaround in EX in the history of business. Well, you could pick international. I think Zurich Insurance has done an amazing turnaround, really focused in on employee experience five or six years ago. I'd say Chewy is a great consumer brand that has gone the extra mile and modeled what good looks like in empowering employees to do their job and also to provide this remarkable level of customer experience.

54:19Zappos is pretty consistent. You could say Nordstrom is another one really aligned around employee and customer. Ritz Carlton. Absolutely, Ritz Carlton. And they're a case study in the book. They're grounded on the golden rules that Horst put together initially when the company was really founded. And it was employee first. He was dead set on that employee journey in picking the right people and training them so that they could deliver those great experiences. Four seasons. But now look what you see. Job to be done. Stay at a hotel. Motel 6 on one side of the street, Ritz-Carlton on the other side of the street.

55:01Both accomplish the job, correct? I need a place to sleep when I'm not at home. Why do people pick one over the other? Well, price might have something to do with that. But you only could charge that kind of price if you got that kind of experience. You couldn't charge$425 for a Motel 6. Well, but some of it is because Ritz-Carlton has a pool and Motel 6 doesn't. It's not the employee. No, but it's both. It's both. It's both. It's the experience, the rooms, the bed, the sheets, the towels, the pool, the restaurants, all of those, that's all part of experience. And that's why you're able to charge what you charge.

55:38Where the other one is a good enough experience and the right price point for you. So you're always able to add a premium if you're able to deliver those better experiences. Okay. So let's say that I'm listening to this and oh my God, Tiffany Bova has converted me. We've been focused too much on CX and we've been not focused enough on EX. So what's the first few things I should do? First would be do an inventory on what you're tracking today because what you're tracking today has an impact on the behavior of your executives. So that list of top three or five CX metrics and then top three or five employee metrics.

56:25Next thing I'd say is understand when the last time you surveyed your employees was and understand what they said and did anyone do anything with the top pain points. And then same thing for the customer, which that is more likely happening than employee. The next is if you have customer advisory boards, you should have employee advisory boards. If you journey map your customer, you should journey map your employee. Like balance on the four or five key efforts that you do now for customer, for employee, and it starts with that inventory. Inventory what you're doing today and then look for areas in which you can begin to slowly shore that up by involving your employees in this effort.

57:09If they feel you are asking and listening, they're more likely to be willing to absorb the level of change they're about to face. Will you just explain how an employee advisory board would work? Who's on it? What do they do? Who do they report to? Who sees it? Yep. So that idea actually came from Airbnb, which was one of the case studies in the book. Mark Levy was the chief employee experience officer. He was not the CHRO. And that was a new title back in the day when he was there. And their employee advisory board was called their control center. and it had people from all over the organization that would actually, when they were gonna change something in the environment, that employee advisory board told them what would work, what wouldn't work, how to do it, recommended best ways to do it.

57:59And that was their sort of guiding light of making sure that employees were invested in all the things that Airbnb was gonna ask them to do because they did it on the customer side as well. And the interview process was also part of that. They would have groups of people that would interview from other parts of the organization, not necessarily the hiring manager. So they made sure that culturally, and to your point, had the same kind of mindset, was willing to do the things that they needed to do in the role. And that's how they stood up that employee advisory board or an EAB. Okay. You got any closing remarks?

58:35Why people should buy your book? First, I'd say you should buy it because guy's going to borrow the word mindset. That in and of itself. I'm borrowing it from Carol Dweck. Yep. Yep. Who I borrowed it from. So it's just a downstream borrow. Yep. But I'd say you can follow me on social media. I'm pretty active. The book comes out June 6th called The Experience Mindset. My first book is called Growth IQ. And it's always a pleasure to talk to you, my friend. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Remarkable People with Tiffany Bova, the global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce.

59:11If you'd like to hear more about Salesforce, we also interviewed Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, in an earlier episode. Hopefully you've gained an insight into the importance of EX, employee experience. Remember, happy employees make happy customers make happy you. Read her new book, The Experience Mindset, changing the way you think about growth to learn even more. I'm Guy Kawasaki this is Remarkable People my thanks to the Remarkable People team that would be Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff C Shannon Hernandez Alexis Nishimura Luis Magana and the drop-in queen of all of Santa Cruz maybe all of the Pacific Coast Madison Nismar they are, I hope happy with the employee experience of Remarkable People Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

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