Closing the CX chasm - Interview with Jamie Anderson of UserTesting

13:40Adrian Swinscoe:There's imagery that you could use that might be off colour. There is, you know, the way you explain a product or describe it, it might not resonate with the audience, so it doesn't pop, it doesn't grab people's attention, which is the whole point of advertising. So why wouldn't you test that to improve the likelihood of a good return on your ad spend?

14:02Jamie Anderson:I tell you what the um I'm not sure it would I'm not sure it was tested but I tell you what that's have you seen that there's a an ad right now that features Samuel L Jackson and Vattenfall and Vattenfall are a wind farm I haven't seen it uh wind farm kind of company but as part of that there's this like spin-off because they're working with this I think it's like the seaweed crisp company because they're being able to grow seaweed off the base of the uh off the base of these wind farms um and it's it's a brilliant piece of creative a piece of film but their writing in it is just absolutely i need to see it i'm not going to tell you what it what the what the tagline is but it's just brilliant it's brilliant in nuance in terms of how you can say the same thing with a slightly different tone and it just changes the perspective anyway that's a clue look it up because that is great i just one because i also love samuel and jackson but it's just but to your point that that sort of like if that was done wrong yeah it could go kind of very wrong and we see all these different ad examples that are you know where it creates such a reaction or it just goes so i can go so badly wrong some people might say well yeah they were that by design sometimes but then but if you're particularly if you're say you're in a tech environment and you're launching into your message you're trying to change your messaging into a kind of into a market well then you don't want to be you want to as you say you want to get something that pops it doesn't want to be a sea of sameness type of yes because like well what's the point like well why is that different to anybody anybody else and so yeah you you want to test that

15:52Adrian Swinscoe:I think there's definitely a whole range of things, in essence, that touch the customer, impact the customer experience, that still to this day are not tested. And I think it does have an impact. That's why you end up with this huge chasm between what the brand thinks or the company thinks they're doing really well and actually what the customer perceives in the other end.

16:16Jamie Anderson:Yeah. And I think what's interesting is that that's almost always been the case. And was it Bain or BCG did a study that was like, oh, at least a decade ago. And they were like saying 80 % of execs think they deliver superior kind of service and experience and about 8 % of customers, 8 or 9 % of customers agree. Now you say that the gap is closed kind of marginally, but it's the same thing. And I think the context has shifted. Yeah. But I think that the, and the idea about the, the, the gap between what brands think they're doing but it's basically what their customers are doing is um is is there there is a gap and that's that you're kind of saying you're actually testing stuff there's a way it's kind of

16:59Adrian Swinscoe:it's one dimension to it i mean um obviously that brand perception and how the customer you know perceives it the other angle is and again i think this bit is still this is proven and it's uh and it's powerful yet for some reason i think it's also sometimes missed when it comes to customer experience that brands that provide the best customer experience generally particularly those you know publicly listed companies the stock performs better yeah there's a study that goes back 14 years and it's every year there used to be a thing and you know it right the forester customer experience index which was effectively forester doing mystery shopping exercises on the, I think it was the S &P 500 companies.

17:52Adrian Swinscoe:And then John Pico from a company called Watermark Consulting, they took the Forrester data and they went, how does this correlate to stock performance over the same period? And over the same period, the companies that had a superior customer experience, independently validated, their stock performed better. almost five times better than the laggards the people that literally didn't provide a great cut or didn't value or in no way had a customer's experience yeah exactly so you know there's there's a commercial imperative behind getting it right beyond kind of differentiation of your brand and so on i think it's a really it remains a hugely interesting area um before we move on to

18:40Jamie Anderson:the next thing i wanted to ask you about uh the research that you kind of mentioned is that user testing research they talked about they can this is the research that you've got so we did follow-up

18:49Adrian Swinscoe:research on the initial um piece right okay so i can't remember the original source of the of the research but then we did a lot of follow-up work so again if you check our our blogs and our reports and we've been you know doing a lot of different articles on this recently i will put a link in

19:07Jamie Anderson:that in the in the notes the thing out there next thing i wanted to talk about and we sort of alluded to it is this so they you know they're always talking about ai right now yeah and that's fine and that's fine because i think the the possibilities are quite incredible you can run out um and it's kind of mind-blowing and it's sometimes hard to keep up um but there's also a lot of risks and challenges with getting it sort of right and you said something when we were talking that that you believe that there's a risk that a use of or like an overuse of AI can risk disconnecting teams from real human needs if left unsupervised because a lot of people are trying to move to the point where all of those things are on autopilot you know particularly with the rise of agentic AI and things and I wanted to help me understand what you meant by that and that because you talked also about being you need to be purposeful in in in our use of these these technologies and these tools and so i just wanted to dig into that a little bit help

20:16Adrian Swinscoe:me understand what you mean by that right i'll try um because it is it's like a it's an ever-moving target at the moment i think the starting point of a lot of discussion around artificial intelligence has been that I've heard people say things like, it's the end of Google search. It's the end of effectively websites as we know it. And I'll talk about that in a minute.

20:43Jamie Anderson:I think it's largely rubbish, but never mind.

20:46Adrian Swinscoe:I agree. Well, here's why I agree with it. I think that - I think it'll change. No, here's why I agree with what you said, that I think it's largely rubbish. It's been Built up into this huge thing AI, talking to AI and making decisions Now I think that's when you get into Argentic We'll let the technology do this thing and we'll just go down the pub We'll cover this And by the way, I think actually Here's my Prediction, for what it's worth I can make a prediction because nobody's going to hold me Accountable to it I can pretend to be a big Analyst firm Nostradamus But I actually think if you go back in time, right, and you think about all the things we've gone through from, you know, from desktop machines, you know, to laptops, to the mobile phone, then with tablet and everything else, right?

21:43Adrian Swinscoe:I think about each of these things as channels, right? Now, I asked, I was doing a talk recently and I said, How many people have a desktop device at home? Right? How many people actually have a desktop That they sit in front of and they work at? And I'd say about 80 % of the audience Put their hands up They've got a desktop, you know, like a big app I've got a 27-inch iMac That I work from and I enjoy it, right? I like sitting there I also have a laptop I've got a phone And I was told 15 years ago 2010 or whatever that the phone has so much computing power in the palm of your hand that eventually the desktop machine will go away.

22:25Adrian Swinscoe:They still sell extremely well. They look beautiful, right? And they're very functional for certain things. I have a laptop. Of course I have a laptop. There's tablets knocking about the house. I don't know how many, but there's tablets knocking about the house. And so all these things have been evolutions that haven't fully moved people off these other devices. agentic ai and angie is another part of that now what it will do if you think about agentic commerce to a degree it does disintermediate some of the things around search engine optimization because it's no longer relevant with agentic right it does disintermediate some of the things around website you know like some of your website design but does it mean it goes away no because there are certain things that are not commodities that people will want to go and look at.

23:22Adrian Swinscoe:And in the same way, when you look at something on a website, at some point you go, I kind of like to see that, right? Particularly high value items or again, fashion, because it's a very personal thing. You want to go and try clothes on or whatever.

23:39Jamie Anderson:Or art or anything that has an an aesthetic, an emotional connection to it.

23:45Adrian Swinscoe:And so here we go. We'll talk about emotion in a minute as well. So I think that it is going to blend in seamlessly. And it's going to change the way in which companies think about how they make sure their products and services get to the front. Now, I'll give you a couple of statistics on Egenti, because I found this absolutely fascinating. So 8.9 million people have already done an agent-to-agent, an AI-to-AI transaction, commercial transaction. 8.9 million, globally? Yes, globally. 8.9 million people. They actually estimate the market to be a$290 billion market for agentic commerce. So this is you basically saying, I'll give you an example.

24:30Adrian Swinscoe:I'm looking for you know a skin cream of this kind of type I don't want to spend any more than 40 it's going to go away talk to the agentic interface on the other side and it's going to come up with the best price you know depending on you know regardless of brand regardless of retail it's going to come up with the best choice shipping it within the time frame you want and you just and it will present it to you and you'll say yes now at no point have you gone on the internet to browse for that because to you it's maybe more of a commodity purchase I can think of people saying you know like buying a holiday for a family of four hey we want to go to you know want to go to Turkey we don't want to spend any more than four grand on this holiday we want to go away for two weeks whatever it happens to be find the best flights we want to fly out of Edinburgh we want day flights we don't want to fly you and you could do all that and it comes back and says here are your top three choices or here is the best choice which one do you want?

25:26Adrian Swinscoe:It's a five-star rated to blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I'll do that. It could just be for flights. I mean, flights is an ultimate commodity. I mean, it's pretty much the same service no matter who you go with. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. But does it replace the need for these other things? No. Because they become more of an extension of the overall experience. Yeah. There's aspects of it emotional. But what it means for the product and the service providers is how do they surface their goods and services to the agentic? Well, they're going to have to have an agentic interface.

26:01Jamie Anderson:I think there's also another element to that. And this is the kind of thing that I kind of was thinking about late last year because about this whole, the impact of generative search engines on that whole shopping research experience. Yes. and it goes back to almost like a point earlier around brand marketing and how do you do you abrogate responsibility in terms of generating an awareness or place of mind in a customer's kind of mind to kind of like technology or do you actually start bringing back other brand related marketing activities which you then start which allows you to grab mind share to differentiate yourself and so you have to get to this thing so the digital it becomes gets amped up and changes but actually some of the old school stuff that you go like we need some activation sort of things so we can grab some mindshare so when somebody says i need to book a holiday but i saw this thing about kind of hotels and things do this brand have kind of hotels in turkey yeah so we can fly out to and do that kind of because of what i liked about their thing was but it's about family oriented and it's all about service and great kind of around the pool and blah blah

27:15Adrian Swinscoe:earth yeah there i think i think you're right i think this is almost like a little renaissance to that classic brand marketing brand values and then also how you as a company have to re-architect that so that it's part of that agentic yeah you know interface on your side so the other agent that's searching can find that yeah i think it's fascinating i think it opens up whole new

27:41Jamie Anderson:opportunities oh completely and it makes it complicated oh yes i mean it's a bit like gone oh i don't have to be a technology something but i need to think about oh activation and creating kind of mind share from other kind of like campaigns and like going oh and it's like how

27:59Adrian Swinscoe:do you balance all of that sort of like stuff and and it's going to be about continual refinement yeah right and there was back to your point around testing constantly i think continually refining it because you'll need to measure. One of the things that's going to remain true, I think, about AI for a while certainly is how is it going to interpret and understand the emotional context? At the heart of advertising, and the heart of advertising in any kind of marketing is still that an emotional response to an advert creates a six times more likely reason to purchase. And when you get to that point, all of the research that we're doing, when you and I see something that just really appeals, it's something we want, emotionally we bought it.

28:50Adrian Swinscoe:And now we spend the next two or three weeks finding the justification as to why we should buy it. You know, the logic comes in. But emotion will trump logic.

29:00Jamie Anderson:So again, every single time.

29:03Adrian Swinscoe:And it's like literally how, you know, AI to continually have the trust. So I think there's still that reticence about how much data you share and how much you can trust the AI. So continually refining it so that, you know, in situations where, I mean, there's still some odd responses you get from AI. And you go, maybe my prompt was wrong. Maybe it didn't understand what it was asking. Is it a language thing? is that, and particularly by a conversational interface, picking up the nuances of our brogue along with others.

29:37Jamie Anderson:Maybe we should start a Scottish NLM.

29:39Adrian Swinscoe:Definitely. So I just think to myself, there are so many areas of it which is going to require consistent refinement. We're now actually, on that basis, we're back into the move fast, fail fast environment. Because that's where the advantage is going to come.

29:58Jamie Anderson:I think the other thing I would say that what's becoming increasingly apparent, because people are trying to figure out this kind of thing, because just, I don't know, maybe I'm just complicating it even further, is the emerging landscape around what some of these generative AI engines are picking up and using as kind of sources, and how the role of earned media is still really strong and it's the paid media that that seems to be dropping in in importance but and so then you've got brands i've got to factor into kind of that so you build these kind of campaigns that are going to resonate with kind of people but you want to get people that are going to talk about them in a value add kind of like kind of way in whether it's their industry press or kind of like the commentary kind of kind of ecosystem that sits around that because that's what some of these engines are actually, um, using to kind of, to validate kind of their, you know, their results that they're kind of coming up.

31:03Jamie Anderson:And so it's just this, it, it is like, it reminds me of, um, what's that, um, film with Eddie Murphy, Golden Child back in the nineties. Remember that one? Yeah. Vaguely. Yeah. Yeah. There was a point where he was, he was going across this chasm sort of like, it was like all these different kind of like, it was almost like stepping stones across them. They would either kind of like descend or explode or whatever. And it's like such a moving landscape. Right now it's completely uncertain, but I think my reading of this thing is that you've got to look at them. You can't go all in on just one thing.

31:42Jamie Anderson:You can't just optimize on the generative search engine optimization. because if you do that it's it's like realize that that's going to change it's consistently changed so you end up having to take a very strategic kind of view it has to involve brand kind of activation it has involved kind of the generative search engine it has to involve doing things like you know paid paid media but also has to include kind of earned media and it's like it's hard it's complicated that's just the world that we can live in but the essential part of all that sort of stuff there's no hard or fast right answers you know that some things where you'll get wrong but you're like you've got to iterate you got to yeah all of this all the time you got to be kind of moving around you got to be agile in that and how you respond to this sort of stuff because what what you thought was true last week may not be can look true next week yeah and i think that's the the key thing and i think i mean would you say that's probably one of the some of the key lessons that that you see brands that are getting it right are sort of like learning from this this sort of stuff or is there other things that brands are doing that you think actually this

32:53Adrian Swinscoe:is they're getting it right no i think the ones that i think the ones that continually test and find more meaningful ways to understand who their customer and how customer needs preferences you know change over time is important as well i mean google recently did a i think a pretty big brand refresh around their brand elements you know like how how those brand elements appear in their products right so whether it's the productivity tools or whether it's other aspects of their product catalog um and controlling the brand across multiple products is really quite tough but I had a great story from the design lead over at Google when I was overseeing them a couple of months ago in San Francisco.

33:48Adrian Swinscoe:And they shared this amazing story of, look, we didn't necessarily go into this situation thinking we need a brand refresh, but we were challenged. It was like, look, we've had the same brand elements for a long period of time. and what we do is when we develop it, when we put the brand infrastructure in place and the framework for our designers and our product owners to build product using this brand framework, obviously that's them, they're kind of locked in. So what I said to my designers was, look, you're free. I want you to go absolutely crazy. I want you to go bonkers, right? And just imagine things that you've always wanted to do with the brand, right?

34:35Adrian Swinscoe:And look, you've got carte blanche. Try different things, put them out there, and let's ask our customers what they think. They did this with user testing, which is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. So they then got all this feedback, you know, hours and hours, hundreds of hours, thousands of hours of feedback, you know, from individual customers saying, well, I like that, I like that, I don't like that. And they then distilled it down into, what people really, really loved about some of the new brand elements and what they went to stay absolutely away from. And they started to implement parts of that.

35:10Adrian Swinscoe:So they did a brand refresh in complete concert with the customer of all the demographics covering them and doing something which delighted the customer as well, but gave them a fresh perspective to modernize their product suite. And I think that's really cool. And that ability to do that...

35:31Jamie Anderson:It's completely different to how you would do a brand refresh in sort of old money, as it were.

35:37Adrian Swinscoe:Well, yeah.

35:38Jamie Anderson:Which would be like you'd outsource it to, you'd do a brief outsource it to an agency, they'd come back and collect, here's all the different options, and then you kind of think about how you implement it. Well, actually, this is almost a brand refresh in the...

35:49Adrian Swinscoe:But it shows a commitment to the customer and actually the end user, because let's just call them the consumer, right? they are consuming the products every day they're using them every day and what did they want to see in it you know how does it make navigation easier for them how does it you know how does it make them feel more affinity with the brand that they use and and i love that yeah because that reminds

36:13Jamie Anderson:me of the of something else that you kind of said where you go most you know many rather digital

36:19Adrian Swinscoe:experiences suck i probably did yeah and i think that's probably true um and it's it's fascinating

36:30Jamie Anderson:and again we come back to that sort of testing thing i'm doing things iteratively and in concert kind of with kind of customers and um i think many people it feels to me that many people might assume that doing that iterative in concert sort of approach takes longer and it's time consuming but actually i think they'd be wrong right well and that's in

36:54Adrian Swinscoe:that situation you know i think what frank over at google was basically proven to also his design team is like you know what you can you can think outside the box right you can get customer validation within an hour right you can go and put a concept out there you know leave your desk at five o 'clock in the evening or six o 'clock in the evening. And you come in at 8 a.m. the next morning and there's all this feedback from, you know, your customers that, you know, that want to help you improve and say, well, I really like this. And they're engaged. And that's the other thing about it is there's a really then strong engagement between, you know, the brand itself and their customer out there, which again, I think is often missed because people are not testing.

37:43Adrian Swinscoe:They're going back to, I mean, I know Prince liked to party like it's 1999 But you know brands don't need to Market that it's 1999 You go to your agency You get the agency pitch You get three or four options You then workshop them And then you get a focus group And then somebody very loud in the focus group Has a very strong opinion So everybody in the focus group Has that opinion And then you go and you show the best two And then the CEO goes I like that one And that's it

38:12Jamie Anderson:because that's the hippo opinion right yeah and so that and then you end up with something where

38:18Adrian Swinscoe:everybody feels really good about it and then you launch and then you come back to the the chasm the brands think they're doing a great job and then customers turn around and go yeah we have the we have the tools and we have the technology and we have the reach literally you know to go and ask our customers, you know, for their feedback and their opinion. And look, it doesn't mean in every situation that, you know, it doesn't mean in every situation you have to go with this homogenized kind of like view. What I love about particularly what we do is it's a lot of the outlier stuff that you won't get from even a survey.

39:00Adrian Swinscoe:I mean, we do surveys, right? But I always say, look, a survey, you're going to get a pre-programmed response to a pre-program set of questions that you ask. So I think that's good directionally. But if you then take that and you give people the ability to think out loud, to talk, to articulate with emotion, right? To show the things that, you know, they have a strong preference of. All of a sudden, these outliers of pre-go, I never thought that. And there was that.

39:30Jamie Anderson:But there's gold in those outliers.

39:32Adrian Swinscoe:The gold, because you go, well, wait a minute, right? This either It's a horrible outlier Or it's one that you go Well this is interesting This is a new There was a story I'm just trying to remember One of our customers It's terrible There's a story about How they redesigned Their warranty process Okay Because the customer went Well look This is all good But actually I bought This bed Six months ago And I really wasn't You know super happy with it And I thought I should be able to replace I should be able to replace that right and the CEO saw it now it went through all the normal channels but the CEO saw that one clip and went we should have our I mean if somebody doesn't light a bed after 12 months we should just give them a new mattress right and that became the thing sometimes these what we do with surveys and feedback loops in general is we tie them to a score like an NPS or a CSAT or something and it becomes homogenized and you lack the why behind this kind of like answer.

40:39Adrian Swinscoe:And look, I get it. Some people's bonuses are paid to increase CSAT by this, increase their NPS by this. And I get that. But there's an element missing. It's like a voice of the customer program. It's exactly like a voice of the customer program that deals in surveys.

40:55Jamie Anderson:You're not forcing somebody into this kind of like system or kind of like framework and stuff. You're basically going, what do you think of that? and it's like a free sort of thing. And you're not the first one, they can type if they like, but they can also just kind of go, here's what I think.

41:08Adrian Swinscoe:And when someone talks, like you and I talking just now, right? When we talk, we get passionate about this subject because we love it, right? We know what great customer experience is. We know what customer experience that sucks is. And we've experienced it. And how does it make us feel? Emotional. And this is that bridge, again, going back to talking about, AI it's that emotional bridge I think it's still there people still want to experience things I was laughing when you were talking about because I had the same discussion with a pal it's like oh well if AI is going to replace all programmers if AI is going to replace shopping and we're just going to go buy it we'd all go to the pub right but we'll be unemployed at the pub

41:57Jamie Anderson:right

41:58Adrian Swinscoe:who's buying stuff then because if I'm unemployed I'm not going to buy anything. And buying is an emotional thing. So the need for it comes from a place of need, desire, you know, in some cases, and that's an emotional thing at its core.

42:12Jamie Anderson:Yeah, and then also you want to be, you know, to be, feel valued. And then you're, you know, delivering and creating kind of value because you're playing up your part, as it were. And that's called part of that sort of employment sort of thing. But, I mean, I think the things that we've been talking about is that, you know, that idea about being, about testing about understanding your customers not necessarily doing it on a survey sort of thing but actually involving them in a in a sort of a decision making thinking kind of process because you'll learn a whole bunch of stuff and you can do it fast and you can collapse that chasm that exists between you know what brands think about the uh about the service and experience that they deliver and kind of what kind of customers think which is feels like a perennial kind of brand but is possible to collapse it i mean do you have an example that you can that you hold up and go that might be a cut there it's probably a customer of yours and you go like these guys i think they've just got it they just do this it's in their they've either in their dna or they've built it kind of into kind of what they can they do and they just consistently kind of like you know deliver you know companies that i see doing it yeah or even just like or customers of yours that you think that i know you mentioned kind of google and stuff but like there are other ones that you think actually they're a good one to watch i think i think there was an interesting one recently i

43:37Adrian Swinscoe:saw l 'oreal paris um do a really interesting thing around the skincare range right which was to create and this leads actually into something else as well but leads to a much more immersive inclusive of experience across helping people choose the right shades for you know their complexion based on you know obviously everybody's got kind of different complexions and things but create an online tool which then allows them to test and you know to basically give them different options and then it helps with the purchase process but it also helps understand that you know not everybody's skin is ultimately the same and they react in different ways so I thought that was a really interesting one.

44:21Adrian Swinscoe:I think Gymshark as well, another customer, they continually innovate how they present their products to their customers. They get the feedback on how products are worn. People like to see how a product is worn. Rather than just see the Sheehan view of a product, then you get it and you go, well, that looks nothing like what I saw.

44:45Jamie Anderson:That looks like a bag of spuds.

44:46Adrian Swinscoe:Yeah. So I do think there are great examples in just like, you know, commerce and websites and things. I mean, but brands that I think have kind of punked up their industry a little bit are the challenger brands and things like financial services. So I think Monzo and Revolut, I think, are two brands that, you know, beyond just, you know, how they do their thing today, I'm interested in how they disrupted the industry so beyond just this is getting into the banking still to this day you log into whether it's HSBC you log into HBOS or whoever it is and you're presented with your balance and your transactions and what I liked was they would basically show you who you're spending with they would give you analytics on top of it, which I think was definitely a bit different.

45:46Adrian Swinscoe:It helped you understand your spending more, which when you're banking with somebody, it'd be probably quite good to know. Sure, absolutely.

45:54Jamie Anderson:I mean, I think that open banking sort of thing kind of give a lot of the big incumbents a bit of a kick up the bum, really.

46:03Adrian Swinscoe:It did, and having said that, what's interesting is that they still, particularly in the US, the big brands in the financial services sector still hold more than the lion's share. And their digital services that are coming in on top are actually getting pretty good. So it's interesting to see. People talk a lot about the challenge of brands in these areas, but people are not putting a lot of money with them.

46:35Jamie Anderson:Yeah, I sometimes think it goes back to your point around emotions and trust and belief in what's going to happen because in many cases it's like, well, it's important. And people go, if I put it all with a challenger brand, then it's a bit like, oh no, I'd rather come and stick with heritage. Now, there's no guarantee of that, but it's an illogical, emotional sort of response.

47:05Adrian Swinscoe:It is illogical, emotional. It's part of, I think some of it's part of your upbringing and the brands that you've seen. I think the financial services industry has done a great job over the last, you know, 17 years re-establishing the trust, building liquidity in, you know, to what they do. I think things like, I mean, let's put it this way, there's no doubt that Vanguard, for example, charge a lot less in fees than St. James' Place. or something like that, right? Sure. There's no doubt about that. But then St. James' Place still have the highest number of assets under management by a long way.

47:42Adrian Swinscoe:Why? Well, people know they're paying more for the advice, but there's an element they feel certainly of safety within that. Whereas, yeah, I'll make some investments with Vanguard and some of the other people, but from my retirement, my nest egg, these things, am I going to trust the challenger brand yet? And I think the answer's probably not. So there is still that again. That's an emotional response. Is it logical? Well, if somebody's taken five times the amount out of your pot for charges in Vanguard, then it's not logical at all. Why would you be with that? There's an emotional element to it.

48:20Jamie Anderson:And that's the challenge. You've got to understand that as a brand. And you only understand that by actually leaning into it and talking to people and testing things and finding out what works. Damien, I'm just conscious of time and stuff. But I think you've answered one of my quick-fire questions already, but I'll revisit it. But anything else that you want to add that we haven't covered before I go on to some quick-fire questions?

48:44Adrian Swinscoe:No, let's do quick-fire. Because we've talked a lot. You're probably going to have to edit this.

48:49Jamie Anderson:I'm not going to edit anything. I'm not going to edit this shit. Because this is it. This is the rummage around. This is the punk. Right. This is it. It's the air less. It's like the rummage. And if you don't like it, you know what you can disagree with yeah i mean it's fine yeah it's no it's good stuff and it's the thing that the gold in in it the gold in it like you're saying is that you take all this sort of like stuff and there'll be a thing always there always is a thing or a couple of things you're like oh that's interesting it's just like the insight rather than talking about just the random sort of like stuff that ever broad things that everybody can talks about you're like oh that that's an interesting kind of thing and you know and that's the thing that lands um it is for me that's the that's what i get out of it but quick fire questions boiling everything down we've talked a whole bunch a whole bunch of different things so i like to do that's to get now you're

49:37Adrian Swinscoe:going to find out what's at the top of my mind and it might not be well so here's the thing

49:42Jamie Anderson:complete this sentence jamie if you'd like if you want to improve your customer experience jamie says do this dot dot dot complete in that sense.

49:53Adrian Swinscoe:Always talk to your customers. Always get customer feedback. It doesn't end when the experience ends, right? It doesn't have to be at an intervention point. It's all the time. Find a way to get that feedback. Make it meaningful. Put the customer's voice at the heart of your voice of the customer program. Don't rely on surveys alone. Find other ways to connect with customer, listen to them. That's key.

50:23Jamie Anderson:It's like a flywheel, get it going. It's like a gyroscope. You just got to keep it going and going and going.

50:28Adrian Swinscoe:Well, the fact that you can do, you can present this data and then I can give you, through user testing, a highlight reel of what these customers that represent each of these trends actually say and show your board. Your CEO will react when he hears or she exactly what the customer thinks, feels, they have an emotional response yeah of course

50:53Jamie Anderson:I would say that kind of like there's I think there's different levels to that sort of like leadership and sort of experience I say that data informs us stories move us yes but then the third level is experiences compel us yes that's a great point and so you go like but if you know you can use the testing and the commentary and things that the views of your customers to actually move your execs and if you get them interested then you can get them closer to the experience and then you can see things happening in real life and then they're going like oh my god

51:26Adrian Swinscoe:I think every board I mean we do this when we get together as a team I think every board meeting should have a 15 minute section on what are our customers saying about us and again just a highlight reel of the good, the bad and the ugly it's a great barometer for how you're doing as a business absolutely 100 %

51:47Jamie Anderson:I'll revisit the punk one now you can say Monzo and Revolut again but like what company or brand do you think is taking a more punk approach to customer experience? I love it, they're smashing it it's just so different, it's so iconic, differentiated stand out, all that type of stuff

52:05Adrian Swinscoe:I mean I like, look it's not a new one but I like the whole Patagonia message about buy this jacket and this is the only jacket you ever need and it was that whole element of sustainability which kicked back against the classic retail Depeche mode fast fashion type of thing which was like you know you've got the brands on the high street you know like your pre-marks to the world which is stack it high sell it cheap discard and I liked that it was the opposite of that and we will repair this for you you know you'll wear this for life I liked that I thought that was really compelling yeah

52:41Jamie Anderson:perfect thank you and finally final question and this is what we did recently is I think we can all agree the world's pretty weird right now and there's quite a lot of doom scrolling going on so I've been asking people to share with me a good news story so tell me a good news story something you've seen over the last week that you've gone

53:04Adrian Swinscoe:that's just ace

53:06Jamie Anderson:that's brilliant, it's made me smile it's a good thing

53:12Adrian Swinscoe:oh recent

53:16Adrian Swinscoe:I said there's so many things Right That have come up I smiled a little bit When Taylor Swift got engaged Because I thought to myself I actually Admire her as a songwriter She's a really prolific songwriter But I'm thinking Will this change her music? Who's she going to write about in the new album? Because normally is because she's had a bad experience. So now she's engaged. Are we going to get a super happy Taylor album? Who knows, right? So I thought of that. I also saw recently a breakdown. It's really old, but I saw a breakdown of all of the harmonies in Wouldn't It Be Nice, right? It's an individual harmony piece.

54:07Adrian Swinscoe:And there's literally, there is a four-part harmony Which I kind of knew But I hadn't heard it broken down Into its individual constituent part And it just There's a four part harmony That sits underneath the lead vocal track Of Wouldn't It Be Nice Which is then a fifth part And it just reinforced My It reinforced my view That Brian Wilson who passed away Obviously this year Was a modern Mozart It's beautiful Absolutely beautiful

54:38Jamie Anderson:Love it I love it that's so random but brilliant and that's exactly why I asked that question just because it's a bit like you see the things that resonate with people but I will point people in that sort of direction but I just want to say Jamie thank you for spending time with me today and having a bit of a rummage around yeah that's been great and that's all I have today so thank you awesome we'll do it again sometime yeah thank you

55:06Adrian Swinscoe:thank you thank you wow

55:09Jamie Anderson:Wow, what a great interview. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did. Find out more about me and the work that I do at adrianswinsko.com. Do leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you have any comments, feedback or questions about the podcast, then feel free to send me a message to podcast at adrianswinsko.com. And do tune in again. Thanks very much.