This episode features an interview with Jennifer Lang, VP of Customer Experience, Innovation and Insights at TD Bank. Over her six years at TD Bank, Jennifer has focused on understanding the TD customer experience and how to improve it. In this episode, Jennifer shares the importance of having different perspectives at the table, applying universal design to CX and setting a long-term CX strategy during a period of great change.
This episode features an interview with Jennifer Lang, VP of Customer Experience, Innovation and Insights at TD Bank. Over her six years at TD Bank, Jennifer has focused on understanding the TD customer experience and how to improve it. In this episode, Jennifer shares the importance of having different perspectives at the table, applying universal design to CX and setting a long-term CX strategy during a period of great change.
Quotes:
“Our work is multidisciplinary. And to be able to excel, we need different perspectives. We are deliberate in making sure we not only have a diversity of cultures, but a diversity of thought and experiences. Then you have to actively ask for different perspectives in your meetings and be okay when people don’t agree with you because it will help you get to a better outcome.”
Time Stamps:
[1:20] Intro
[2:08] Interview begins
[2:57] Background on CX at TD Bank
[8:31] Building a diverse team
[16:20] Accessibility as part of CX
[25:43] Getting company buy-in on investing in CX
[29:13] The secret sauce of great CX
[32:06] The future of CX at TD
[35:40] Recovering from a mistake
[38:52] How COVID has affected consumer behavior...for the better
[44:54] How to expand your brand through proactive outreach
[47:39] Lightning round of questions
Bio:
Jennifer Lang began her career working on the research-supply side at Compass Research and Ipsos. She then switched over to the client side, working on CBC's research team for 10+ years, where she ultimately became Chief of Staff for the Office of the Executive Vice President. Jenn is currently Vice President at TD Bank and oversees the Customer Insights and Experience department, Customer Journeys, and Diversity.
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Jennifer: If you solve for those with the greatest need, you can solve for the needs of the whole. You make it easier for everyone. And so there's a great deal of benefit when you have this mindset.
Narrator: Hello and welcome to The Customer Experience Show! In this episode, we talk with Jennifer Lang, VP of Customer Experience, Innovation and Insights at TD Bank. TD is one of the ten largest banks in the U.S., with more than 25,000 employees and a legacy of over 150 years of unparalleled convenience and customer service. Across her six years at TD, Jennifer has focused on understanding the customer journey and creating an inclusive environment that makes services at TD accessible to all, regardless of disability or other accessibility challenges. In this episode, we talk with Jennifer about the importance of having different perspectives at the table, applying universal design to CX and setting a long-term CX strategy during a period of great change.
Phil: When creating a customer experience, it’s easy to make assumptions about who that customer could be. Maybe you assume they’re able-bodied. Maybe you assume they understand English. That they can walk up stairs. That they can hear, and see. So what happens when a potential customer is Spanish-speaking? What happens when they use a wheelchair or are blind? That’s when your assumptions begin to work against your business. When whole groups of customers are excluded because they don’t have access, or their most basic needs aren’t met. Let’s talk about how we can design a customer experience to be more inclusive of abilities and backgrounds so no one is left out.
So hello everyone and welcome again, to another episode of The Customer Experience Show. I am here today with Jennifer Lang. Jennifer is currently vice-president at TD bank and oversees the customer insights and experience department, customer journeys, and diversity. Sounds like an amazing job. Jennifer, how are you today?
Jennifer: I'm doing well. How are you Phil?
Phil: I'm outstanding. Thanks so much. Thanks for making the time. And it's really great to speak with you. I've known TD for a while in a number of different environments, but I don't know how many people pay attention to all the different banks and what they're really great at. So for the folks who maybe don't know you or TD so well, can you tell me a little bit about Toronto Dominion Bank, your role, and what you try to accomplish in what you do?
Jennifer: Sure happy to, Phil. TD Bank and TD Bank in Canada and TD Bank in the U.S., we are a financial institution. And we are predominantly in North America. So we serve both Canada and the U.S. We are one of the big five in Canada. Usually number one or two, and then in the U.S., we're one of the top 10 banks as well. And so we've been operating for many years and have been starting in Canada, obviously. It's called Toronto Dominion started in Canada, and expanded into the U.S. My role at TD is specifically an enterprise role. So I actually do support across Canada and the U.S., and it is one where I lead customer experience at the enterprise level. And what does that mean? Because I think customer experience can meet a lot of things. And so CX at TD is very much around understanding how we're delivering the products and services to our customers. And so I lead the overall CX strategy at the enterprise level, the accountability for all the measurement of customer experience across channels, businesses, both markets. And then also lead kind of consumer trends and innovation. So really looking forward, what's happening in different markets to help inform our business partners thinking around where we need to go next. And then I have the consumer insights market research team that also supports both markets. And so custom market research, competitive intelligence, we do that and support across the bank. In particular at TD, we have some specialties. We have a COE, a center of expertise on consumer behavior. And then we have a deep expertise on diverse community insights, which I think is a little different at TD versus maybe some of the other organizations
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine that's the case and I'm curious where it comes from. And the first way I'd like to get into that is talking a little bit about your background and your experience. And I think the second way to get into that is to talk a little bit about the culture or the uniqueness of a company that comes across the border from Canada into the U.S. and what sort of things you're learning there. So, let's start with you first and can you talk a little bit about your background to educate the audience on how did you get into CX? What sort of roles did you take that got you to this point?
Jennifer: In my 20, 25 year career, I've spent a lot of my career in grounded and kind of market research and consumer insights. And so I would say that consumer insights tend to be going direct to consumers to understand what is happening, who they are, what their needs and expectations are. And so that is a foundational element within customer experience, right? Going to consumers, understanding what's happening, how we're serving them. And so I spent a lot of my career in consumer insights and then moved into different strategy roles because data and insights becomes the foundation for any strategy work you might be doing as an organization. Went into analytics as well because with the abundance of data, whether it's CX data, behavior data, there's so much opportunity with looking at analytics and data to inform our thinking as well. And then really expanding into CX as well as insights consumer. And so to me, all those things are very much around understanding customer and being the voice of the customer. And so that's been a bit of my journey on the insights and CX side, but I've been in a number of categories. I wasn't always in financial services, I've been in retail industries, retail and food, nonprofit and charity, broadcast media, and now financial services. And so while the practices have been similar, the categories have been quite broad in terms of my overall career.
Phil: That's awesome. It sounds like it's a great breadth of experience that helps you understand consumers, understand your potential customers in a unique and compelling way. Can you tell me, which experience you had that maybe surprised you the most as being relevant for the financial services, from those different industries that you worked in?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think I probably took a little bit of something from each of those experiences, but I would say, I think that honestly, retail and food services, because they're on the ground, you're actually seeing and delivering the experience itself to consumers, end consumers. And I think that experience gives you a different lens and perspective when you then are sitting in a strategy role or an enterprise role. So I do think that's critical. And if we think about the colleagues that we recruit into a team like a CX team, I actually recruit purposely from a multitude of different backgrounds. So I've got people who've worked in branch in call centers, management consulting, communications experts, finance, marketers. And so you actually want that breadth because it is that, that those experiences it gives you a different view into the experiences that you're delivering. And so I do think having that experience is actually very important in the CX role.
Phil: I think you've hit a couple of really important things there. And one is, if you learn from retail and food service, how to really excel in financial services, people who are listening, saying, I'm trying to go from here to somewhere else can actually believe that they can get there and that they can learn the value of their experience in that environment. And then the second one is that the diversity of experience, I talk about this thing that I call multi-dimensional diversity and that the diversity of the experience, the diversity of lessons from different backgrounds, helps you it personally, but also helps you in building out your team. Is that a fair assessment? Is there anything you would add to that?
Jennifer: I'm a hundred percent in agreement with you on that. I think that you're starting to see across many industries and in many departments that this multidisciplinary nature of our work is so critical. And to be able to do that and excel in that, you need different perspectives and experiences. You can't have people that all have the same background at all, have the same experiences because you will not see the opportunities that potentially present themselves. And so we are very deliberate with making sure it's not even diversity of cultures, it's diversity of thought and experiences, is all critical. I one hundred percent agree with that thought.
Phil: So let me just riff on that a little bit with you, if you let me, because it's easy to talk about, but it's hard to do. And I've lived this experience in a financial services company where people thought that they were being diverse in their thinking, but they were so blindsided by the tunnel vision of the type of person that they thought would fit with their team, that they weren't as open to it as they thought they were. So if someone wants to test how well they're thinking about the cross discipline, cross experience, nature of their team. So they want to remove their blinders or see how well they're going. What sort of tips would you give someone to help them get from where they are to where they want to go?
Jennifer: I think there's a few things you can do in an informal way, but there's also lots of formal mechanisms you can put in place to make sure you're living this day to day. And so informally, if I think about where we started our journey, we actually started to consult with different groups and just ask for people's opinions on strategies we were building, on solutions we were thinking about. And so, you do have colleagues from many different groups and many different experiences. Even just pulling a few of them in to get some perspective on your thinking is helpful as a beginning stage. I think as you get a little bit more mature when you are hiring, I think you have to have a different perspective. So maybe someone doesn't have market research experience, but they have an amazing amount of frontline experience and they actually understand, but when you bring them in, you need to make sure you also create a culture and an environment where you're encouraging that dialogue and debate that when we're now open to hearing a different lens, and actually you actually have to actively do this and ask for different perspectives in your meetings, in your thinking. And so I think that takes some time to get used to, and time for people to start appreciating the different perspectives versus taking it like somebody's debating with me, somebody's not agreeing with my idea, but that's a good thing, not a bad thing because you get to a better outcome. And that just takes practice and time and iteration and working through the friction, not being afraid to have a bit of friction. I think that's okay. In a respectful manner. Of course,
Phil: Yeah. I call that healthy conflict and I think Diana Kander calls it radical candor. Right? The embracing of the fact that someone thinking differently than you is a very good thing. And even if they can't elucidate clearly exactly how and why that they have trouble with what you're giving them, that listening to them and getting to the root of it and saying I didn't think about it that way. Let's consider how that might matter to our mission. That's the key. Would you agree with that?
Jennifer: I agree. It isn't just listening. It's hearing what they have to say. So letting someone talk in a meeting is one thing, but actually thinking about what they've said and consider it in your work is actually a step beyond just here, like listening.
Phil: So I love it. Cause I, I might've learned something that I had been accused of as a man when women say you're not listening. And I say, I hear every word you're saying. Right? So like, can you say again how you would describe the difference between hearing someone or giving someone space and really listening to them? How do you bring that into a team in an organization and make people feel heard?
Jennifer: I think it has to come from both ends. I think you have to first set out the expectation is this is how we're going to operate. We want to, and we encourage people to share their opinions, but when they share their opinions, we need to make sure we stop and pause. It wasn't just for the sake of hearing everyone's opinion around the table, it makes us pause and think differently. And I think it's a continuous journey, right? You're not going to get it right all the time. You're going to try it. They're going to say, yeah, you let me speak. But no one even stopped to consider what I was saying. They just kept moving. Cause they were just doing it as a checkbox. They were hearing me, but no one was deeply listening to what I was saying. And so I don't think you always get it right. I think it's the culture and environment you create that allows people to say, I didn't really feel heard or you didn't even bother getting my opinion or, and so I think that just takes time leadership and constant iteration to do better every time.
Phil: Yeah, it sounds like in that regard, then you have to put in the work. I love when you say it's a continuous journey, it's constant iteration. You're putting in the work and someone might not hear from you in a day or in a week, but I bet if you came back to them in a month and said, I've been thinking about what you said, and we did this with it, that would just really matter to people. So, all right, I want to ask you like something that's a little more personal about your journey. Now you said, yeah, we don't always get it right. Can you share maybe one of the gaps that you identified in yourself or in your team or in your organization that you're like, wow, this is a gap for us? And maybe how you guided people in the right direction.
Jennifer: I would say this has become maybe most obvious and prominent in our journey around diversity. My team is very focused on diverse communities, understanding the communities. And even though we do so much work in this space, there's still more to learn. There's still nuances that we don't get and we don't see. And so I think that there are things that have become normal nomenclature. Words we use, terms we use that we actually either didn't understand the background behind some of those terms or the impact maybe they have on others. And so I think the diverse equity and inclusion is a bit of a journey and I've had quite a journey myself. Not just being exposed and experiencing some of the challenges, but also maybe myself also being not as aware. And so personally I used to make jokes. I joked a lot about my own culture. I joke, I'm a casual person. I like to socialize. And I used to make jokes about my own culture because I thought it was okay. But actually what you realize over time is it's actually not okay because other people of your same culture might actually find that offensive. And it wasn't something that I was aware of until, a few years ago that really being a little bit more aware. And I think TD is culture is so inclusive. We talk about diversity so much and we've done so much work and understanding communities. You just start to learn like, oh, your lived experience is so different from the next person, even if you're from the same background and not to make any assumptions that what you say is okay, just because you're part of a particular culture. I think just, heightening that sensitivity is something that I've learned personally over time.
Phil: Sure. Yeah. Thanks so much for that. I mean, there's so many layers to it, right? I share that, the African-American community or people of African descent or black people that you might meet in America, not a homogeneous group, right? I even rarely say the term Asian-Americans anymore because I know how different culturally my friends who are first-generation Koreans are different from first generation Vietnamese or Japanese, and second and third, it makes all these differences. And if we're really want to embrace it, we want to be aware of those different things. And you also took it in a different direction in the thought leadership piece you did on understanding people with disabilities. And can you talk a little bit about maybe how that's impacted your perspective of customer experience or engaging in having empathy with customers?
Jennifer: Absolutely. And so I do think this is part of, some of our priorities at TD and really understanding diverse communities. I personally have spent quite a bit of time specifically with understanding of the community, around people with disabilities. I am part of that community. I've talked openly about my own personal experiences. I didn't speak about them before I was at TD. I think it's something that you get to a point where you're comfortable talking about that. We spent a lot of time trying to improve experiences, but if you don't understand the customer deeply, then you don't understand how best to solution for their needs. And so especially certain communities. And I'll talk about people with disabilities. There's such a broad range of disabilities. Or different abilities as that we would like to say. And again, not generalizing that solutions can solve all of the challenges. So with understanding any community, you first need to spend time on that, just understanding who they are, what their challenges are, what their needs are, and then really go deep on the experiences that you, yourself, as an organization are delivering. And so we spent a lot of time doing insight work with the groups, understanding the subcultures, understanding the challenges. And then we did a lot of CX journey mapping. Like going specifically, the savings and investing journey for people with disabilities. What is it? What are they aspiring to? What is their current experiences? What are the challenges? What are the barriers? What's working well? And then really getting down to frictions, pain points, to try to figure out how we can solve either with service, product, What's the way we can solve for some of those challenges? And what we do know consistently with this community is if you solve for the needs of this community, you can solve for the needs of the whole. And it is all about universal design. If you can solve for those with the greatest need, you actually solve so much. You make it easier for everyone. And so there's, there is a great deal of benefit when you actually have this particular mindset. And so that's been a bit of our journey at TD. We spent a lot of time understanding the communities, but now we're working with product teams, service teams, branch design, how do we optimize the end-to-end experience so that we're helping customers.
Phil: That's great. I've heard in a number of different industries people sharing this. Like I talked with builders before and they talk about ADA and they love and hate the Americans with Disabilities Act because, they got to put in all this extra work and if has all this additional cost. Every single person at the end of the day says but it makes us make better buildings for everyone. Can you share a story that maybe comes to mind of how focusing on diverse communities, whether it's disability or otherwise, has made TD a better place for everyone?
Jennifer: I can talk about the colleague experience cause I have a very personal example if that makes sense. And that would transcend into our thinking around customer. And so it is a small but impactful example. And so if we think about individuals with dexterity challenges which would be myself. I have hand dexterity challenges and you think about something as simple as a doorknob. And so our department spanned three floors. at one point and we would use the stairwell to get from floor to floor because it just wasn't efficient to take the elevator. And so on two floors, they were lever handles and one floor was this round knobs. And so for almost two years, I was asking to have those replaced. And because the lever, if you can imagine, if you're going from floor to floor, you're carrying your laptop, you're carrying that plug, you're carrying your coffee. Everyone has handfuls of stuff. And then you have these round door knobs. And so lever handles allow all of us to move up and down using our elbows and being able to carry things. But for someone with hand dexterity issues, trying to hold and squeeze a doorknob is the most infuriating experience that you can possibly have. And it just really de-motivates you, it's just super frustrating and it's such a simple, small thing, but for anyone who doesn't have hand dexterity issues, they wouldn't understand the impact of something so small. And so I was able to get our building operations folks eventually replaced the, that everyone was talking about well, finally, they replaced it. Now, I can move more freely from floor to floor, but you think about that at scale. And how many of those small little frictions are actually in our experiences that could actually improve the experience for all. I would love us to get to a better place where we actually are considering those and understanding the impact for all.
Phil: I think that's a really great way to describe it. Thank you for sharing such a personal story. It might seem like a little thing, but I would expect removing that friction is just another example. Let's call back to what you were talking about. Listening to people, right. This is a good insight of how we address friction for one set of our employees. How do we think about other frictions that other people have? What prevents them from bringing themselves to their full selves, to work, and then gives us the ability to deliver them. That creates empathy, right. That creates opportunity for a change. Now, would you describe something like that as a CX project or implementation? It sounds like good management, but I was gonna tee up a question to say, can you tell me about a favorite customer experience project or something like that? Is that a CX project? Does it stumble into a CX lesson? How would you describe that?
Jennifer: I think it's a colleague experience lesson, but it does then transcend into how we think about the spaces that we offer to our customers. And so very simple design elements, like how we structure our branches. How much space are we allowing people? Those simple things do transcend the colleague and the customer experience. And I think we've been trying to take those small lessons and then use them as use cases to say, what could this look like for customers, for colleagues in other spaces? So I do think these little lessons become big, scalable projects. And a lot of work, obviously, around branch design and even, building design, office design I think has been critical to inform some of that work and thinking.
Phil: Sure absolutely. A lot of times, operational folks really tie this together well, because they're thinking about those metrics of how people operate better. And that sort of thing. But if you're in experience and research and creating that sort of empathetic environment, it seems like an interesting way to tackle that problem. So that leads me to another, related question to that. How is your team then structured? You said you try to recruit a diverse team. Can you talk a little bit about the structure of the team that allows you to extrapolate those insights into the outcomes you described?
Jennifer: Sure. So our team as an overall team, we do sit in the marketing group broadly. And I would say at TD, I call our model a little bit of a hub and spoke model. And so we have an enterprise team that's accountable for a number of the core elements. And then we actually have CX leaders and teams in every business and channel. So we work with them extremely closely. They take the insights and the learning, and I'll talk about how we derive that. And then they actually go deeper and then execute and implement within their businesses. And so I would say our models a bit hub and spoke. On my team specifically, we have a number of specializations and disciplines that we've brought together. And this combination of disciplines is actually been only in place since I took on this role about two years ago, and so we have a core CX and measurement and voice of the customer team. And what they do is they are accountable for the 52 CX measurement programs that we have that measure CX across TV and so on. So they're running those programs every day and they're looking at the insights that we're hearing and seeing. And so that's the CX voice of the customer team. And then we have a CX capabilities team and they are building the current state and future state CX measurement that we have. And where do we need to be? So we usually do telephone surveys. Now we do email and SMS. We need to do in experience. Like where are we going from a future state capabilities perspective? Because in CX you need to be where your customers are. You want to engage them in the channels and the way and touch points that they're engaging with you. So I have that team. I have a CX insights team that looks at competitive intelligence. How are we doing relative to the market, to competitors, to other industries? And then we have customer journey team and they go deep on understanding an end-to-end journey, and they do CX journey mapping and they do ideation on opportunities. How do we solve for some of what the frictions we're seeing within journeys? And then I have the market research team. So if you think about that spectrum of expertise, all of those pieces come together to help elevate customer experience, but also understanding the market context, the competitive landscape. So that is a bit of the structure of my team from a group perspective. And then within that, as I mentioned, we have all the different personal experiences and expertise that span even beyond some of the disciplines that we have.
Phil: Wow. That's pretty impressive. First in the layer of detail and in the breadth of the teams, the size of the team. 52 customer experience measurement programs. That's awesome. What comes to mind then as the next logical, but dumb question. But I always say there was no dumb questions, but it's obvious. Why so many? And the tougher one, how did you get the organization to buy in to the level of investment of really understanding customers at this level?
Jennifer: So 52 programs because we do measure across every business, every channel. And even within a channel, say phone channel, there's 12 programs because we have inbound and outbound calling and we have insurance and we have credit cards So we measure so many subsets of the experience, as you can think about it as phone channel, but for us, because of the nuances of each program, we do measure them. We do consider them to be separate programs, but they all ladder up to the larger either business or channel experiences. And so that's really why the breadth of our measurement. And I would say at TD, CX has been so core to our brand and who we are for so many years. We've had measurement in place going back decades in terms of measurement. And our measurement has evolved and become more sophisticated over time. But because we were a CX focused organization, we had customer satisfaction measurement back in the day when it was customer satisfaction and before it became customer experience. And so we always wanted to know how we were delivering for our customers. And so we had telephone, I don't know, we might've even had mail surveys back in the day. We had telephone surveys. So we've really just evolved along with our customers because we always want to know how we're doing. And we actually linked the compensation of all colleagues to customer experience, which I think is phenomenal that we care that much about customer experience, it is embedded in how we compensate.
Phil: So if I'm hearing you right, you have a strong customer experience focus in the culture of the company and some pretty mature practices as well. Is that pretty fair?
Jennifer: Yeah, I would say in some areas we're quite mature. And there are other areas where we are still developing. And so we have extraordinarily robust brand measurement. So we understand what our brand stands for, how it's being perceived, how we're tracking relative to market. We have really robust transactional measurement. So if you went to the branch today, you would get triggered for a survey tomorrow. If you called the call center today, we would ask you for feedback tomorrow. We are building a couple of other areas. So as we think about customer journey, that which has become I would say a sub expertise within the practice of CX, customer journey, mapping, customer journey measurement, we are building out our understanding and expertise around journey measurement. What's the right moment in any given journey to trigger feedback, right? Not at the end, maybe, which we do, but like there are key moments in anyone's journey that you probably want to get feedback, so you can optimize that experience. And so we are in the midst of building out more sophisticated journey measurement and just more sophisticated relationship measurement because transactions are critically important, but there's so much more that feeds into someone's overarching experience with an organization across experiences, across channels and businesses. And so we're in the midst of also building out our maturity around that.
Phil: That's a really great share. I'm actually always looking for little tips to share with our listeners to say, how do I do that? Or what should I be thinking about? And figuring out the right time in the journey to serve up the opportunity to interact sounds really important. Are there any resources or practices you recommend? Because my assumption is some of these are industry standard and some of these are influenced by thought leaders and that sort of things. And some of them are like the secret sauce of what you do. While some people listening would love to know your secret sauce, maybe you could just give us some recommendations on off the shelf tools or things you offer as services, or those are the things that people could use to get them self started down this path, but what would you recommend?
Jennifer: I would say it depends a little bit, but I think there are many resources available to understand where to start. What are these different levels of measurement and how do you use that measurement ultimately to influence change? There are many councils. So I sit on a number of councils, whether it's CMA's CX council, different insight councils, forums, panels, conferences, there's so much information available today. Conferences - we're in the middle of conference season right now. There's a lot of conferences where you can hear people speak and talk about what their organizations are doing. There are people like the Gartner's of the world and the Foresters that actually have practices and actually have gone deep with many organizations that have distilled what are the best practices. And and then you can reach out to people you see on LinkedIn, you've heard them speak in a conference. Don't be afraid to reach out and learn a bit about their journey. What's worked for them? Because I think what works in one company will not always work in another because it depends on what are your priorities, what's your purpose, where you are in your own kind of CX journey. And so those would be some of the things I would suggest. I've had many people reach out to me and I try to spend time talking to folks, helping them on their journey, as well as a practitioner.
Phil: And do you feel like the discipline itself is mature enough that people are, I guess there's two ways it can go. It's growing. So everybody's just trying to do, add to the credibility and add to the professionalism of the industry. So people are really open to sharing tactics cause like we all get better together and other times people are not growing. So people are trying to elevate themselves. Do you feel like the CX community is one that's open and growing and supportive?
Jennifer: I would say that's been my experience, but if you think about CX, as we define it today, it is pretty immature. I mean, customer satisfaction has been around for decades, but CX I think the CXPA, the CX Professional Association was only established in 2011. So you can see it's only about 10 years. The professional association has only been around for 10 years. But I do think we're at a point where we've got enough companies and enough categories and disciplines that there's a lot of learning and people are very willing and open to share and you'll see them in these CX forums and conferences and panels. And so I do think we're at a point where there's lot of sharing. A lot of sharing around measurement. Maybe less about individual business strategy. Cause that's a bit competitive, but definitely lots of sharing on the kind of structure, organizational measurement. I've seen lots of openness around that.
Phil: Awesome. And it actually leads me to shift gears a little bit to say as an expert practitioner who's engaged in this work, what do you think about as you think about the future of customer experience? So can you share a little bit about your vision for the future of CX at TD and specifically, if you think about trends or technologies that might be most important to that future, what do you see coming down the pipe?
Jennifer: I think CX as many practices are evolving alongside consumer behaviors. And so, what I see today and then what it means for our vision, as things are moving faster than ever. And the importance of understanding how quickly things are changing, but what is going to stick versus what is maybe a passing trend has actually become even more important as we think about our long-term strategy and vision, where we need to be versus, is this something that's going to pass in the next year? I think we've got a lot of questions around, are people going to revert back to branches post COVID, right. Once everything's back to normal. And I think what we've now seen is that there's been enough time that new behaviors have been established from a consumer behavior perspective. And so some of these trends have become more important for us to stay close, to inform our vision of where we need to be from an organization and a CX perspective. And so I would just say that as a grounding piece. Where I would love CX to be, I think we're on an amazing journey. I think we have an amazing leadership group that is very aligned and very much believes in CX. I think my vision for CX is that we continue to build out our understanding. I think measurement is one component and a foundational one, but measurement alone is not going to change and drive behaviors and actions in an organization. And so for me we've got great traction in understanding the customer. We've got really good traction and prioritizing some of the areas that matter. But I do think that for me what's missing is I think frontline teams have always been obsessed with customer experience. But what we know now is that every group, whether you're frontline or not, you have a role to play in driving amazing customer experience. So if you think about operations teams, if you think about backend processing teams, you think about legal and compliance teams, traditionally groups that may not have considered themselves to be a direct impact on customer experience actually are having a more critical role. Platform stability, wow, that is critical today. Given how many people are on digital. And if your platforms go out, that really affects the experience. If you can't communicate in a simple and easy way, too much jargon, language that people don't understand, well, that's going to become an impact on customer experience. If our processes on the backend are not smooth and end-to-end and automated, that affects the experience. And so my vision for us as an organization is that the focus we have on CX transcends all groups and all areas and that we're all working together to improve the experience, not just those who have direct contact with our customers.
Phil: That's the thing, right? One common thread I hear from the most amped and serious CX people is that every group has a role to play. Every group has a role to play. And I really love what you said about measurement alone will not drive behaviors. There's more to it than that. So the trick is, how do you get there? Right? I think you started in a very smart space in saying, I know I need to get my team to be diverse and to get there, but how do you get other teams involved and how do you recover from a mistake? You talked about system availability, right? Today with a bank, if the system is down, if there is a data breach, if there was an error, that error made by somebody far away in the organization is going to affect the frontline people, but other people along the way. How do you tackle the need to get other people involved and the recovery from a mistake? What are the keys to that?
Jennifer: I think that getting others involved is something you have to strategically deliberately do within your organization. And so for us, we have cross-functional, multidisciplinary forums where we bring together anyone involved in CX across this organization and VP councils, CX councils, the top level set councils, where we actually talk about CX on a monthly, quarterly basis. And we talk about what we're doing. What are our priorities, what are the irritants that we're seeing? And are we making progress? Do we need to course correct? So, having those forums I think is critical to being able to talk about what's happening and make change. I think your other question on what do you do when something has gone wrong, because nobody's perfect and no company is ever going to be perfect, things happen. I think what you've seen is, the companies that can recover quickly, one you have a strong brand going into it. The stronger your brand going into a crises, the more people might be likely to support you and defend and forgive what has happened. Secondarily it's how you manage that situation. I mean, trust gets broken a number of different ways. Now breaches, a poor experience. I think you need to be transparent and this is something I'd love to see organizations doing more. Being transparent on what happened, why, what you're doing about it. And I do think that's important to bring people along because too often you see responses to crises and you're like, oh, that was a bit of a talk around. They didn't really tell you what happened. And so I think we're fearful, sometimes of being a bit more transparent, but the consumers are expecting a level of transparency. And the more transparent you are and honest, actually more people are willing to forgive you and then trust you again.
Phil: I love that. I think you, you crushed the really important parts, right? And once again, thanks for sharing so much. Like the multidisciplinary forum, it shows that commitment, right? It shows the commitment of the organization to invest the resources and create the communications channels so that the champions in these different departments can really talk about the significance and the connection of what people do on a day-to-day to their mission. And I love that. And the other piece, we talked about radical candor, right. But what I also hear in your management of the situation is extreme ownership. Right. If you are owning the customer experience in all of its ways, and you're owning your responsibility to them, you're honoring your relationship to them. You're honoring your brand promise. That to me is what you're talking about in terms of transparency and honesty. I love it. You know, another thing you said just a little bit before was about COVID. And, sometimes, in these conversations over the past year, people have mentioned COVID and we've learned how it has changed customer behaviors and learns how it's changed organizations. So I'm very curious, because you said your practices were evolving alongside consumer behaviors. Can you talk a little bit about how COVID has changed the customer experience or the consumer behavior, as you've seen it through your eyes there at TD and maybe where you think there are temporary changes and where you think there are permanent changes or even unexpected impact on the business in a positive way because of how you adjusted to this crisis?
Jennifer: I think we've seen and managed through a lot over the course of COVID. We knew what financial health looked like in Canada and the us before we even went into COVID. We knew that certain groups of the population were struggling more than others. When COVID hit, we knew right away that some of those disadvantaged groups were going to be hit harder, given what was happening. So we actually had continuous measurement and market to understand how severely certain groups were being impacted. And we were sharing that across the entire organization. We're still doing it every two weeks. COVID consumer insights, every two weeks, so that the company stays focused on what is happening. What is the sentiment and attitudes among consumers, because it was changing so quickly. what they needed when they needed it and what were they were struggling with. And so that has been something we will continue to do as we manage through COVID and just staying attuned to what is the sentiment in the market, because sentiment and emotions lead behaviors that sometimes right, we know emotions are big drivers of behavior, but by the time you see it in the behavioral data, it's already happened. You can't help consumers as well once it's happened. You're now just trying to go back and resolve something that has happened to them versus how do you proactively get ahead of it and help people before something unfortunate happens. And so I think that has been a big shift. We talked a lot about whether or not we should keep our CX program going during COVID. For two reasons. One, should we really be asking customers about the experience when they're just trying to get the basics done, where they're just struggling? We also thought, should we take away any distractions for our frontline so they could be wholly focused on delivering for our customers? And we talked a lot about it. We did not turn off our CX programs because as an organization that is CX focused, we thought, how can we be customer led if we aren't understanding the experiences we're delivering in the worst and most challenging times? That is when we need to know how we're doing and what we need to be doing better. And so we as an organization and all the leaders were very supportive of, let's keep it on, do we need to make any adjustments, add any extra questions to find out what more we can do in which we did. But that source of data became a critical input for us as we were on daily crisis management calls. What are we hearing? What are we seeing in social media? What are we seeing in the CX programs? What do we need to do and adjust either in branch or phone or operations to support customers? So it actually became a critical feedback mechanism for us to manage through COVID, which was fantastic. It actually showed the value of social and of our actual custom CX programs. And so we were able to leverage so much of that insight. And now what we've started to do is be more proactive. So could we look at the data? Can we forecast out people that may need our support, even if they're not coming to us, can we proactively reach out? And so I think you've seen this in a few financial institutions where you get the calls, you get the emails proactively outreaching, seeing how you're doing. Do you need any support? And so just trying to help customers get ahead of maybe financial circumstances.
Phil: That's interesting. There's so much there, right? I mean, if I put on my hat as a TD customer, and I were to hear all that, I would say, wow, that's pretty impressive that this organization was doing that much thinking and that much work to talk every day about what might be impacting me and really thinking about what's the best way to help me to navigate a challenging situation. They're not some monolithic entity that says, ah, whatever I got your money, come get it if you need it. It's a different story. It's a different relationship. And it's true to your brand promise. So, I mean, that's deep and I think it's a great lesson to consider for people who are trying to build a brand or change a brand or reinforce a brand. I would expect that the things that you talked about in terms of trust repair, the trust creation creates a bit of a flywheel, and then I would also expect that because you were doing a proactive reach out, if people knew what and why and how you were doing this, their engagement would be higher. Do you have any interesting anecdotes or stories about people in their engagement or their appreciation of the efforts that you've been taking?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think we actually measured those programs, of course. In terms of how customers felt that proactive outreach was. And I think we learned and we finessed it over time. At first, I think, people weren't sure why we were calling because we might've saw something coming that maybe they hadn't yet. And so this is the balance between proactive outreach and looking at the data that we do have and how early do we try to reach out in terms of helping preempt things that we might be seeing. And so I do think that as a bit of a learning, and then we continue to optimize the program. And then also what we say when we call, because proactively outreaching during a pandemic is not something that any of us were really familiar with how to do it well and what to say. And so we have over time just learn from the experiences, improved the scripts and really I think optimized those programs. So we did see that for the people that we did reach out to, there was a lot of appreciation. There was a lot of thankfulness. Some people did uptake various products that actually helped them get to a better financial situation. And others just were thankful for the reach out. So we look at verbatims a lot, what people were saying and there was just appreciation that someone cared enough to reach out. I think you hear a lot of that, even whether or not it yielded anything on the backend, it was really just, I was happy that someone reached out and asked if I was okay.
Phil: Okay. So that leads me to the last request for a tip before we go to the lightning round. And it's really one of how do you get people to answer the phone, answer the call and answer the proactive outreach, and to believe it is intended the way it is intended, right? Cause if you're busy, you're dealing with all this different stuff, and then you see the bank's calling and some people might get onto them. They're like, oh my God, my financial situation, why are they calling me? Right. Can you share any tactics or tips or strategies for somebody who is saying, I want to expand my brand? I want to tell these people that I really care. How do I get that message out there to, to the largest number of folks?
Jennifer: I do think it has to be true to whatever your brand promise is. And so it has to start with there because your brand is the promise you make in the market. And then everything you do on the CX side should deliver against that promise. And so for us, our brand is helping customers feel more confident in their financial future. And so what better time to reach out then in the middle of a pandemic when people are struggling with finances to help them. We know that people aren't feeling confident right now. A lot of people aren't feeling confident. So as we reach out, I do think it's how you play that interaction and what you say. I think it's a bit of learning. I'm not sure that we always get it right again. I think that it is why are we reaching out right away. Because people assume when the bank's calling, oh, I've been frauded or something's happened or something, I forgot about a payment. So people have that natural bias in their minds when the bank is calling you is because something's going on, versus the banks is calling you because they want to know if you're okay. If there's anything we can do to help, which I think is probably a dynamic and a mindset that is not familiar for most consumers, because they have a different experience or a more transactional experience with banks. And I do think we just learned over time how to have that conversation. We're still learning, I'll be honest, in terms of helping change that dynamic. How do we build trust in big banks, big institutions? I think there's a natural tendency to think that we're not here to help them. And we really are. And it's just, I think it's in the day to day interactions and consistency in every touch point that we deliver. So we keep delivering against that brand and every moment, and then people will understand, oh, this bank cares about me. They want to know how I'm doing. They're here to help. I can talk to them when I'm having challenges. And I can trust that they're going to give me the right advice for my specific situation, but you don't do that in one interaction. You have to do that over time and every moment and every opportunity that you have with the customer. And I think we're still building towards that as well, to make sure that we are delivering in every moment.
Phil: Yeah. I think what you said there is special, right? You don't do that in one interaction, right? You have to keep doing it over and over, right. And actually one of the thing I thought about while you were talking was that making the message consistent with your brand promise is critical. And helping people feel more confident in their financial future, it's not a static thing. It's not a transactional experience. It's a relational experience. And you're trying to create a relational experience with people as a brand. And that is actually probably where a lot of the other experiences you have come to the fore and to breathe life into something that people might have thought of as a limited experience. So I think that's pretty amazing and a pretty great space to slip into the lightning round. If you're ready for that.
Jennifer: Yep. I'm ready.
Phil: So first one. As a customer, what is an example of one of your favorite experiences?
Jennifer: There's a few, but if I have to pick one, I think recently, Sephora is an exceptional experience in so many facets. And in fact, I have a deeper relationship since the pandemic, they have optimized their digital experience. They know their customers, they're extremely accurate in targeting, and they created this sense of community that is so engaging. And so I think they just nailed the customer experience from end to end and their delivery, very quick. And so I do think that they've just really mastered elements of the customer experience.
Phil: I don't use their products and services, but I know some people who do and it's one of those loyal brands that I think if you said a loyal follower has increased in her relationship with them, that's pretty awesome. So, cool. Second question. If there's one thing you could change about people's perception of the role of the VP of the customer experience or the rule of customer experience at a company, what would it be?
Jennifer: I would say most definitely, I would love to change the perspective that people think focusing on CX means you're not focusing on business results and that is so far from the truth, but it is something I hear and I see often. It is one in the same and how do we get people to think about CX equates to business success? It's not just championing CX for the sake of it. It's championing CX for the benefit of the company as well.
Phil: Yeah, it's a tricky one because people in traditional transactional mindsets, don't see a transactional direct line to something that is relational that has tangible and intangible and good will components to it. Awesome. Okay. Final question. And I'm sad to say this because I feel like we could go on for some period of time, but I have to let you get back to your day job. For our listeners, what one lesson would you want them to take away from your experience as a VP of customer experience?
Jennifer: I think it would be that no one individual or group owns customer experience. They hear a lot about who owns CX. We all have to own CX across an organization and all groups need to understand what it is we're trying to deliver and how we can all work together to deliver that exceptional experience. And so I think move away from the sense of ownership and work together and collaborate in delivering the customer experience. It delivers on your brand promise.
Phil: Yeah, That sounds like evolved CX with an organization that knows what brand means what brand stands for and everybody owns their piece of it. That's pretty awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing Jen. It's been really great talking with you.
Jennifer: Thank you, Phil. Really appreciate spending the time with you today.
Phil: And for everyone out there who is listening, thanks so much for joining us again on this episode of The Customer Experience Show. We will see you again next time.
Jennifer’s last point is critical. Collaboration on designing a customer experience is so important, making sure you’re including people at the table with different perspectives, different backgrounds and different levels of ability. Not only does it reflect on your brand, but it creates a better experience for more people in their day-to-day lives. You are literally and figuratively opening a door for them and inviting them in.