Please share with me your first, last name, where
you're located, and the name of your business
and or books that you may have written. Yes,
I'm Stacey Sherman, and I am the founder of Doing
CX Right. For those that don't know what CX is,
it's customer experience, which is fueled by
the employee experience and workforce experience.
And I have a book. all about transforming your
customer experience through journey management.
It's on pre -sale in Amazon right now. And I
have LinkedIn learning courses also that really
help people learn how to do this right, not just
think about it and talk about it. Tell me a little
bit about your experience before doing Customer
CX Right. Yeah, so I grew up in... sales and
marketing i have a master's degree in marketing
and when i was in corporate for over 25 years
one of the roles happened to be where i was in
marketing at that time and my boss says here
here's customer experience and service you need
to handle it too and i said uh okay but what
does that mean and he said go figure that out
and i said uh okay i was a little angry at that
moment because that wasn't very supportive but
now i figure everything out and i've taken the
leap into this field because i believe that we
don't have to have frustrating experiences and
it's in our control as company leaders and we
also benefit as a society by those enhanced experiences
so I started to work in different departments
of companies, really leading and measuring the
experiences, designing the experiences, and then
took that whole practice to my own company to
help companies, clients, big, small, really know
that they are delivering a great experience so
people come back and tell others. Yes, yes. And
just like you said, the support pretty much led
you into where you're at now, though, because.
The lack thereof, meaning you had to actually
figure it out on your own, which now as of, I
believe, 2023, you decided to take that leap.
So in that leap that you made, what was the boldest
move when saying goodbye to corporate that you
experienced? Oh, it is so bold and it was so
scary. And in the beginning, I was actually grieving,
but I didn't know that. It was grieving. And
I was actually thinking I was crazy because nobody
died, but I was grieving. And so it was a sadness
and confusion because all I knew was the corporate
way and the corporate box and my title. And this
is where I live and breathe. You don't go outside
the boundaries. So in the beginning, it was really
scary, messy, and exciting. Cause it was big
blue sky that I could do whatever I wanted. And
I literally did what someone told me. They said,
Stacy, it's time to bet on yourself. I've been
doing that for, as a mom of two young adult kids,
I've been doing that with my friends and family
and everyone and people that worked for me betting
on them. And so now bet on myself. And it's fun
and it's exciting. And I'm learning every single
day. Do me a favor and tell me about your vision
for this. Yeah, my vision was not a straight
line in the beginning. In fact, I had started
doing CX Right was a blog when I was working
at Verizon. And I was just telling the world
how. What I was seeing from not Verizon, but
from living as a consumer, what I saw and what
I studied was not a good experience. And so I
decided to put out the blog. I had no idea if
anyone would ever read it. And they did. And
then I started to get on podcasts and such. So
point of story is that for those listening, start
before you're ready. I didn't know why I was
blogging and podcasting initially, but here I
am. I grew a baby. I birthed a baby and here
it's been growing with me. And now I know why.
And now I'm able to take it to a career. It's
been a career, but start before you know why.
And so my mission now that I'm into this. going
into my third year is that through speaking on
global stages, through my content writing and
partnership and advising companies, my mission
is to really help them understand that people
don't just buy on price. People don't stay with
companies because they have to. There's a lot
of options. And so if you as a company, even
if you're an entrepreneur, you have partners,
you have freelancers, contractors, you need to
really design an experience of how people interact
with your company from how they learn, buy, get,
use, pay, get help. And I'm on a mission to help
people understand how do you do that? How do
you do it right? How do you make sure that you're
really meeting people's needs, their needs, not
your own? And I have a formula for that. I tell
you, one of the most important things you said
is start before you begin, right? Because you
didn't know the reason why you were doing it.
And lo and behold, and in my mind, Stacey, I
was like, she branded herself before she even
needed to be branded. I love it. I love it because
brand is everything. I think that what you upheld
in your company at Verizon, all you did was just
carried over to doing CX right. And I think that
that's just doing it right. Look, I love that.
And so to no surprise, my formula is. the right
formula, the right way. And it's all about what's
in your control because we can't control a lot
of things happening and some of the chaos in
the world, but we can control the way we do business,
the way we show up, the way we communicate. And
so that's what I'm helping people not only survive,
but thrive in their life and in their business.
Yeah. So with that being said, With that being
said, the biggest topic, especially in entrepreneurship
and customer service experience, would be AI.
Talk to me about that and what does that look
like now? Yes. So we are living in an AI world.
People are fearful. Some people are embracing.
Some people are running away. at the end of the
day you can't run you can't hide it is here it's
expanding quickly and we can't even keep up every
time i wake up there's some new ai solution so
my point is my passion is to say okay while we're
living in this ai space we can do both we can
actually have sustainable revenue Using technology
to save time, to be more efficient, without taking
the human compassion and heart out of the equation.
You can do both that, not either or. And in fact,
you have to. If you don't, people will go to
your competitors. Yes, yes. And it's interesting.
I'm reading this book called Who, Not How. I
think the how, the who can now be AI, right?
You don't necessarily have to go find an actual
human being. It's the who, it's the person that
could help you or the thing that could help you
so that you can focus on the things that you're
great at. And as you mentioned, when it comes
to customer service experience, you don't lose
the person, but maybe you could work on yourself
better and let AI do the stuff that you really
don't like doing anyway. Well, absolutely. That's
a great use case. The thing leaders need to understand,
and I say leaders, everybody is a leader, even
if it's not in your job title, and that is use
AI. For example, if you have a chat bot on your
website and you're giving people the opportunity
to chat and find information on your website
quickly to navigate, but somebody is constantly
typing agent, support, help. Then train the technology
to know to pass it on to a human being. And so
it's the collaboration. It's the both and. And
the companies that are not doing that are going
to suffer and lose the customer, their patients.
They're going to go somewhere else. Yeah, yeah.
You know, I never even thought about that. You
know, so after hours, most people are usually
on their phone. They're like, hey, I have some
stuff to do. And then, you know, you go to the
web page, you'll see the chat. In our mind, the
thought is like, hey, if I say agent, an agent
will pop up. But just like you said, if AI isn't
trained to say, hey, the hours are closed or
there's no agent on, we could call you back,
then I never even thought about that. Awesome,
Stacey. Well, one more thing, and this comes
from working on teams that managing these customer
service agents, and that is if the human being
doesn't give the. the agent, the chat bot or
human, if they don't give them a library of information
that's accurate and updated, they're going to
give the wrong content to the customer. So again,
you can have the best technology, but if the
information, if marketing comes up with a promotion
code and the agent doesn't know about it, that's
a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, is that a behind
the scenes problem as far as for the company,
you know, and how now that you're doing this
and you're teaching companies and teams to do
better at this, what would you say to somebody?
You know, it's like, hey, you're you're bots,
not button. Yeah. So that's bot to human. There's
bots to bots, too. So the answer is. You need
to design the customer experience and there's
a real journey and there's journey mapping, which
I teach people. So that way, when you're designing,
how does a customer interact or prospect? They
might not even be a customer yet. How do you
make sure that what they're experiencing, where's
the human touch point and where's the technology
touch point and where do they connect? And so
it's designing and there's this domino effect.
And what happens is whether you're a small team
or big, people don't realize the domino effect
of where one role begin and one ends. They're
just in their own silos. And so even if you're
a small company, you have partners, you have
technology teams, there has to be that unified
experience and design it that way. Yes, yes.
And that's that's good to hear. And that's good
to know. With that even being said, it's a there's
a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming out and
it is often stated utilize AI. It's going to
help you. What tips do you have for entrepreneurs,
especially newer ones? That's that's probably
being asked like, hey, would you like AI? I think
it could give you some help. What tips would
you would you have for them? Well, first of all,
I would start with a persona, meaning define
who is your audience. Who are they? Put a name
to the person, right? If you said the demographics,
the age, their income, I have a template you
could use. So you define who you want to talk
to, and then you design. through a journey map
and it can be literally on a whiteboard. It doesn't
have to be fancy, but what does that person go
through? How are they going to learn about you?
Is it through a podcast? Is it through events?
Is it social media? How are they going to learn
about you and become aware? Yeah. How are they
going to buy from you? Is it an e -commerce?
Is it a retail store? Right. So there's a whole
path. And I want you to literally go through
the journey. But then once you do that, how you
think that they're going to interact and buy
from you and get help from you, then go to that
persona that you designed. Let's say it's someone
like me. You would come to me and say, hey, I've
got this new product or service. Here's what
I believe will help meet your needs and how you
can get it and use it and get help. Let me walk
this through. Can you give me feedback? That's
gold because then you know, well, that's good,
but you missed the mark there so you can tweak
it and then go to market and just constantly
reiterate, improve. Test, analyze, adjust, repeat.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy
that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is gonna get more
and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.