We hear so much about the importance of strategic communications, but what does that really mean? Martha Boudreau, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at AARP, helps bring strategic communication to life through relatable stories and concrete examples. Hear her explain what it means to become your customer’s wisest friend and fiercest defender - a core mission to Martha’s team at AARP. You’ll hear some of her globally-recognized insight into topics like aligning strategies, empowering employees, and much more.
We hear so much about the importance of strategic communications, but what does that really mean? Martha Boudreau, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at AARP, helps bring strategic communication to life through relatable stories and concrete examples. Hear her explain what it means to become your customer’s wisest friend and fiercest defender - a core mission to Martha’s team at AARP. You’ll hear some of her globally-recognized insight into topics like aligning strategies, empowering employees, and much more.
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Key Quotes:
“We have to be where everybody is, offering up the same kind of content to everyone - whether it's a mailbox, a digital platform, or through our app. That is an obligation. What it means from a customer experience standpoint, is that it all has to work together. It has to be a sort of an omni-channel experience.”
“For other brands, especially brands that were not created in the digital world, there can be no time to wait. You have to adopt different platforms, but first, you have to have a serious look at who your consumers are and know that moving forward, there will be no excuses for delivering anything that's not a great consumer experience. You know what? Maybe, you never get it perfect - but you create processes whereby you can fix things as you move through.”
“Being able to truly listen and then act on the input makes sense for the mission, and for the business model of the organization. That's essential. You can't satisfy everyone, but you can make sure that your processes are top notch, and that you're delivering what your brand promises.”
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Time Stamps:
*[:15] Martha’s role at AARP
*[3:20] How listening to customers benefits CX
*[7:50] Aligning CX strategies across multiple departments
*[12:20] Why customer experience is employee experience
*[15:48] Martha’s go-to tools for productivity
*[19:05] Responding to negative customer feedback
*[22:00] AARP’s Virtual Community Center
*[25:40] The future of CX
*[29:17] Lightning round
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[00:00:00] Phil: Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of The Customer Experience Show. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. Today, I'm here with Martha Bourdreau. Now Martha is EVP and Chief Communications and Chief Marketing Officer of AARP. How you doing today?
[00:00:20] Martha: Hey, Phil. Good to be with you today.
[00:00:23] Phil: Good to have you. It's really great to, to have you to speak with us. I've learned a little bit about the AARP over time. I've learned a little bit about, in your background in preparing us for this conversation. So can you tell me a little bit about how you describe what you do and how you got to being, doing what you do?
[00:00:42] sure. As the Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at AARP, I'm responsible, at the highest level for creating one. For the organization, AARP is the largest social mission organization in the country. And we represent 38 million people who are over the age of 50. So our membership is extremely diverse and we do advocacy at the federal and state level and local level across the country.
[00:01:13] Martha: So we are an advocacy organization and we really focus on healthcare and, financial. Issues as well as what we call fun and fulfillment or the, the fun part of living to, into the second half of your life. So as the CCM, I'm responsible for first of all, our publications, they is the largest publisher in the country.
[00:01:36] Our magazine is the most read magazine of all magazines. And last year we added about a half a million new readers. Who are under the age of 68. I'm also responsible for our social channels for our consumer care, our consumer experience practice, which I know we're going to,talk a lot about, um, and also our external relations and, and our advertising on our platform.
[00:01:57] So it's a lot of different things. and when you think about the fact that there's 110 million people over the age of 50, and our job is to represent their interests and provide information and resources for them. we have a lot of work to do that. There's a lot of people with life transitions and we use all of our channels to, to help them live their best.
[00:02:21] that sounds pretty amazing and such a big group to serve. And this may sound like an obvious question, but I'll ask it anyway. When you say we need to have one voice for the organization, what does it mean? And what sort of challenges do you have in that for people who don't know this community to that you hope.
[00:02:41] Martha: Well, you know, we're large organization and we have offices in every state. They have their own social channels. They have their own website. we've got the publications that have a voice and an approach. And then we have our social channels.
[00:02:55] Then we've got our executive communications and our media relations and it requires an enormous amount. Of collaboration and integration to make sure that our messaging is consistent. So no matter where you connect with AARP, the brand voice is consistent. The imagery has to be consistent, the visual representation of the brand, and all of that and the responsibility for.
[00:03:19] Wraps up, to, to me ultimately. that makes a ton of sense with such a large group of people and with such a diverse population, that's going to represent a little bit differently in every state. That's gotta be. A bit of a massive challenge. Can you talk a little bit about the separation, for example, between traditional communications and then layering on the customer experience world?
[00:03:43] Yeah. and that is the essence of what a. Stepped into when I joined a ARRP in 2014. we are, as you would expect when you have 38 million members. You know, you're doing a lot of membership, acquisition and membership renewal, and so direct mail and direct marketing is a very key part of what we did.
[00:04:05] And so when I joined, the CEO and members of our board and other folks said, okay, Martha, w you have to look around and let us know, how are we going to stop sending so much. 'cause people. Don't like all the mail that we send And so one of the brand attributes was that we were irritating because we sent so much. And so when I started digging in and looking at how much mail we sent, what I soon realized. Was that a male was only part of what drove the, perception of our brand.
[00:04:37] people had a hard time interacting with us. They had a hard time getting answers to their questions and to managing their memberships. And we had a hard time really figuring out how we could be of greater value to people. So what started as a simple question of how do we send less mail?
[00:04:55] Martha: Really became a big exploration of what is the experience that consumers have in dealing with our brand. And know, I'll tell you a story, Phil, which I think, is the perfect example of what jumpstarted our very serious adoption of consumer experience practice, every once in a while, I would get these letters from people saying,dear Mrs. Boudreaux. uh, my wife died three years ago and you're still sending me um, Materials. And that hurt. That hurts me because she's passed away
[00:05:30] And one of our data people would say, oh, but it's really hard to fix that problem. And it's a very, very, very small number. And then I'd get another letter, a couple of weeks later. And before, long after probably six months of getting these letters, I talked to, my senior team and I said, this.
[00:05:47] We have to address this where we are in the business of helping people age with dignity and resources, and we're inflicting pain on them. We have to fix this. And, one of my colleagues who runs the contact centers, he looked at me. He said, Martha, that, that small percentage of complaints, that actually is 9,000 calls a month to our.
[00:06:13] And so just that realization, which put this human face on the problem, I said, you know what, not on my watch. And so we began the process of really. Kneeling back, all the layers that are involved in sending people mail and how do we get notifications when people pass away and how do we work that through our technology, And then what do we do in response with people? And so fast forward, it took about nine. But now we have an online grief center where there's resources for people who lose loved ones. I send out a note to people, right? When we are notified, remember we, we, we have to be notified that people pass away.
[00:06:55] There's no other way for us to know that. And so I sent out a letter of condolence and you know, what fell about two years ago, I got a. That was, obviously written by someone who was quite old, I opened it up and it said, dear Mrs. Boudreau, thank you for recognizing that my wife Edith passed away.
[00:07:16] We were married for 60 years. Yours is the only letter I received. When you hear that you realize that it really matters that we get it right for people in, especially in those moments of their life. You know, you highlight something there that's really particularly interesting specifically related to the mission of the organization. And in data that I will say in some cases might be passed over as statistically insignificant, but critical to your experience and your emission. At one of those times where you just can't get it wrong, right.
[00:07:52] Phil: Well, or you can't get it wrong and really be authentic. And people will be sympathetic to some of the technical challenges, but they won't at the same time. Because they only lose their spouse once. And they don't know how long you worked to solve a problem that has been persistent. But 9,000 a month on a membership of 38 million can easily be missed at a surface level that the percentages are just way, way too small.
[00:08:16] in a mission-driven organization like yours, how do you get clear on the critical things that you need to do, Right.
[00:08:24] Phil: Or this, or is this something that's part of your customer experience and communications journey that you're uncovering and the reason you created the CCMA position in the first place?
[00:08:33] Martha: the absolutely most crucial thing that any organization can do, is. Is listened to its consumers for us, listen to our members and we have to listen. So when we started down this path of creating a data-driven technology enabled consumer experience function, the first thing we did was stand up.
[00:08:56] What we call VOC, right? The voice of the consumer. And we have over the years now, we have what we call a top 10 pain points. and a lot of them are, I need to manage my account better.
[00:09:08] Martha: I didn't get my magazine. It's hard for me to register on, on AARP.org. And these are things that we can control and we can. fix those processes now that we know about them. for any organization, just starting out, if you're not listening and if you're not pulling together and analyzing where those pain points are, you can't get anywhere.
[00:09:28] That's the essence of it. So we did that first and foremost, but then on top of it, beyond those transactional elements of what it is to do business with us, then there's issues that we listen to people what they need and what their fears are and how they want AARP to show up in their lives. And in listening to them and realizing that if we're going to be a consumer centric organization, we have to listen and act.
[00:09:56] So we spent the better part of year doing research and looking and asking our members and consumers. What, how do you want to air Peter's show up in your life? And they told us something. resonated immediately and has really become our north star. And what they told us is that they want us to be a wise friend and a fierce defender.
[00:10:23] These are their words. And so we took wise from the role of a wise friend and fierce defender, and those roles are central to what we call our consumer commitment.
[00:10:34] Phil: I love that title of that role wise friend and fierce defender. Is there something that changed recently in the population that you serve that made this a essential at this point, I've made this on the obvious move that you needed to make.
[00:10:50] not so much, you know, it's not enough to be trusted. We realize that we have to satisfy for people what they need from AARP. And that's when we went to them. So in 2018, we did that research,to find out what consumers wanted from us.
[00:11:05] Martha: And then in 2019, we rolled out our consumer committee. anytime you interact with AARP, we're helping you,understand how to create a financial stability and resilience in your life.
[00:11:18] And you know how to navigate the healthcare system. And COVID was an enormous. focus of ours. It still is, of course from the very beginning. and so this role of wise friend comes to us naturally and it builds on that trust, but being able to articulate the fierce defender part is what really galvanized the organization because, we have focused.
[00:11:42] Do advocacy and state capitals. And in Washington, we have a, a part of our foundation does litigation and, in support of, the 50 plus. And so these things are obvious, but other parts of the organization, when we encourage people to look at their job and what is it that you're doing that can satisfy that role of fierce.
[00:12:02] You know, we have people that focus on fraud, our technology folks, They're looking for, they're looking at privacy and protecting people's what data we have on people. And so they are serving that role as fierce defender. just just as much as any other part of the organization is as well.
[00:12:21] Phil: I could see that I could see that in a lot of different ways. a lot of times when we talk with a customer experience experts, we talk about the internal experience as well as the external, the employee experience, as well as the customer or community experience. And it seemed like what you were saying is owning that role as fierce defender allows someone to have a cultural.
[00:12:43] Martha: Identification internally as to how and why they do something. Even if the statistics don't matter. but it really matters to the mission. Can you speak to that? is that where that it's, that's where it sounds like it's going, Yeah. you can't have a great consumer experience if you don't have a good. Employee experience where employees understand what their role is and then how they deliver on that. And then they have the tools because you know, the other part of building a strong CX organization is that, we have it, we have an experienced team, which is probably 50 people, 40, 50 people, but they can't do it all for the whole organization.
[00:13:25] They can't be everywhere. So part of their role is to enable. The delivery of wonderful experiences by the rest of the organization. And the employees have to understand their role and then they have to have the tools to be able to deliver on what we have decided is a very high priority across the enterprise.
[00:13:46] And I'll just say this and this won't surprise, you felt, it's about leadership. It's critically important for any part of the change management, right? For that buy-in a lot of times we also talk about how there needs to be. There needs to be budget. There needs to be incentives. There needs to be, there need to be performance metrics for people. Across the organization to tackle that, right?
[00:14:09] Phil: Because sometimes when there is a internal experience organization, someone says, experience is their job. And I do my job and we're all good, but we know that won't work. So there are different things that organizations have to change to align. People's. incentives with their cultural aspirations.
[00:14:28] For example, can you speak to some of the things that you guys have been able to accomplish and trying to address that?
[00:14:35] first of all, the CEO, is watching the implementation of our consumer commitment, like a Hawk. She knows exactly what's going on across the enterprise and she holds people accountable. The second thing is, as you said, you do what is measured. And so we are working to.
[00:14:55] Martha: To really S spread the adoption of a balanced scorecard approach. I am to experiences. when you look at a balanced scorecard, it's not just about those transactional sort of interaction metrics, like how many page views were there, how many people registered,how many, memberships are there?
[00:15:14] It goes way beyond that and includes consumer perceptions and. What are the outcomes? If people did this to they then do that, was it seamless? Was it easy? Do they feel good about it? individual balanced scorecards have to be created. So it's fairly heavy lift and then adopted across the organization.
[00:15:34] For different parts of, our work different journeys. Um, if you're incentivized to do it taking into consideration the overall consumer experience and the outcomes, it changes the way things are designed.
[00:15:47] Phil: Yeah.
[00:15:48] that's great. you've talked a bit about, The structure, the strategy, some of the plans and such, and I get a picture of the vision that you have for customer experience, to be something that's really a transformational for the organization. you are, you're doing things to build trust with The community served 38 million people, which is still mind boggling number, And it's over 10% of the us population. we were talking about, how you build trust and how you leverage technology and process and senior leadership to make all that happen, which is. it's the, it's some of those very best things that we hear about best practices for different organizations to do this going forward.
[00:16:27] Do you have any sort of, trends or technologies that you think will be important for you to be successful? in the near future?
[00:16:34] uh, let me share with you some of the tools that we use on a regular basis, but first let me say, we have a team on our AARP RPX group that is called, enable. And what they do is they drive awareness and adoption of these tools across the organization. the couple of technology platforms I want to mention and share with folks. One is UX pressure, which really is, enables this the self-service for. Mapping and journey creation, which is essential. And we don't have to recreate the wheel every time, depending on the persona and what the journey is.
[00:17:15] Martha: A lot of the work that goes into them can be used for multiple purposes. And so we use that, that platform for journey mapping. Then we use a collaborative whiteboard platform called Miro, which allows teams to, work together for brainstorming. And then the other thing, which is probably. I will say it is central to our work is, Clara bridge, which is a, it's like a voice analytics,instrument that allows us to take, natural language.
[00:17:46] Cause remember, as I said, we're in a thousand people a month call. So we have to be able to take that language and turn it into data about, about what they're calling about. And ClearBridge informs how our consumer care agents talk to react, offer things to folks that are calling us. But in addition to those play those technology play.
[00:18:08] We have our voice of the consumer insights reports. So if somebody wants to know I'm doing COVID education information, what are people saying about it? What new areas do they need information on? We can go to our VOC team and say, run us a report on all the comments about COVID and what people need.
[00:18:28] Um, we do experience audits this is a big one. we say, okay, so people are having a hard time logging into our website. And then signing up for newsletters. So our team will go in and audit the language. The, the linkage that clicks, you know, what are the calls to action?
[00:18:47] Martha: And those audits become a guide for us on what to fix in order to make that experience more seamless. so there's there's probably 10 or 12 different specific tools that we have that we need to educate continually educate and train your organization on how.
[00:19:06] Well, that's a great suite of tools and thanks so much for sharing. I'm familiar with a few and, finding a few new, but, it's,it's always great to see when people have done the work to really grind through and figure it out. But the different tools that are work inside of an organization and that are gonna help, one team enable or empower other teams if someone's just starting out or they're not as sophisticated as you guys are, how do you have them tackle some of the. I'll call them obvious pitfalls or maybe not obvious pitfalls, but I go back to the experience, the story about my spouse's past, Or, or, listening to the loudest voices versus trying to figure out who the most important voices are. Right. If you're going to give some people, some guidance on like how to think about pitfalls or a story about how.
[00:19:55] Phil: you captured some of them, what would you share?
[00:19:57] So we get a lot of input about people who don't like this position, or they don't like that position. And we listened to that and we share that through the building and through the organization in terms of what we're hearing. But we're also clear about, as I said, our mission and therefore we know where we really need to lean in to fix things.
[00:20:19] Martha: We know where we need to double down on our role as a wise friend and help educate people. during times of COVID and the stimulus payments, we know that we need to double down and help people. Understand how to protect themselves and their families on COVID. Despite the fact that some of the input we got were from people who, didn't, you know, they, they had different views on COVID, if you will.
[00:20:40] and so we're clear about who we are and how we serve over a hundred million people. We are open to the voices of everyone, but we want to make sure and all organizations need to do. which is to be crystal clear about where are the interaction points with your consumers and are they easy?
[00:21:03] Martha: Are they intuitive? How do you fix them? Is there organizational agreement about becoming consumer centric? And I guess in one of the number one pitfalls of a lot of organizations is to say, oh, we know the best way.
[00:21:18] We are in a consumer driven world and the experiences that people have with Amazon or what they want with AARP and what they want with any consumer product. And if they don't get it, they're going to write a review that is going to send five people running from that brand because there's one bad review that they read.
[00:21:37] So being able to truly listen and then. On the input that makes sense against the, the, the mission or the, business model of the organization that's essential. You can't satisfy everyone, but you can make sure that your processes are, are top notch and that you're delivering against what your brand promise.
[00:22:01] Phil: I would assume for something like that while you're, while you talking that the description of your virtual community center project came to mind. And what I was thinking of is different people want to be. With differently. Right? I like mural, a better than Miro, for example, but it's a style thing, right?
[00:22:17] I'd rather you text me an SMS versus putting another message on slack, but that's me. but you're trying to deliver this for a large base of people who have different understanding of what it means to be consumer centric or what. It'd be easier or user-friendly. If we're going to try and drive to a, to another level.
[00:22:36] Is there anything that you felt you learned in building up this virtual community, center or a similar projects that, that helps you break through stereotypes about a certain group or helped you make something,make adjustments to a solution that made it more palatable for them? cause it would seem like some people like the mail, but some people like something that they haven't even seen.
[00:22:56] Martha: right, this is what's great about being. In communications at a air P we have an obligation to be there for people who have bad internet or no internet, and they want to engage with us in their mailbox. And for the new 50 year old, who just joined, who loves our tick-tock presence and doesn't want any mail, they don't want the magazine except on our app.
[00:23:24] We have to be where where everybody is. Offering up the same kind of content to everyone, whether it's a mailbox or it's on a digital platform or through our app, we have to be everywhere.
[00:23:36] That is an obligation. And it's exciting for us because you know what it means that from a customer experience standpoint, it all has to work together. It has to be really, Sort of an omni-channel experience if you will, because when you think of that term, omni-channel, for me, we don't think of that as we have to be in every channel, like a multi-channel we think of it as an omni-channel experience, no matter where you are, if you're on our website and you end up in a chat bot, You know what, that's gotta be a seamless way to do it.
[00:24:08] You mentioned our virtual community center. We started that exists almost exactly a year ago,in the middle of COVID, because we wanted a way to bring a wise friend persona to life in people's life every day. I mean our magazine and our bulletins sister, publication, they show up in people's mailboxes or on their app.
[00:24:30] But there's so much that we have to offer people. So we thought, we'll start a virtual community center where people can go every day. And if they want to do a yoga class, they want to do a one day university. they want to,see a movie. They can come to this one location. And what happened during COVID is fascinating.
[00:24:49] Martha: The technology adoption rate of the certainly the 50 plus, but the 60 plus and the 70 plus. It went through the roof. it galloped forward. What would have probably taken 10 years happened in one year because people needed to stay in touch right. With their loved ones on zoom and other places. And so our virtual community center, the adoption rate was enormous.
[00:25:12] Phil: It's an amazing thing. What happens when you have some sort of unexpected, but, PR but pervasive in impact event, like COVID some might call it a black Swan. I don't know. Some might call it, refer to it as something else, but, we've talked to a number of different organizations that have said things have changed in the industry in significant ways, because of something like that. Which makes it, which makes a ton of sense and creates an opportunity, right? For, for the organization to do things you couldn't do before, other lessons outside of COVID that I think that you. Learned recently in the CX journey of ways to do it, ways to encourage compliance or to, I don't even know the right words for it, but it's the adoption.
[00:25:57] it's the communication of the value. Is it always omni-channel has anything popped out as recent trends that you can extrapolate outside of the COVID impact? When I came to AARP, I did not have a background in. And you talk about the fact that you don't have to be a CX officer. CX can be promoted and driven through an organization by any number of different people at different levels, with different titles.
[00:26:25] and that an AARP is a perfect example of that. And, and so for other brands, especially brands that were not created in the digital world, there, there can be no time to wait. You know, you have to adopt these different platforms, but first you have to have a serious look at who your consumers are and know that moving forward, there will be no excuses for delivering anything.
[00:26:50] Martha: That's not a great consumer experience and you know what, maybe you never get it perfect. But you create processes whereby you can fix things as you move through.
[00:27:00] Phil: It's definitely going to be a differentiator, Right.
[00:27:03] If you're a legacy brand that doesn't get it. I like to say it's going to work until it dies. Right until someone else comes along and they, they eat your lunch, so to speak, Because they say there's a big gap and it's not being met and we're going to have to address that.
[00:27:16] And we've seen that over and over again. And it's the consumerization. Yes. If you're brought up digital first, do you have technology tools or processes because of a digital native sort of organization that break down silos and communicate across functions or whichever. that is. it's really critically important because the expectation, as you said, is so high and then patients is low and then it starts to erode at some of the base level of the organization.
[00:27:43] If they can't get this right. How can I trust them with this other thing? If I told them this thing, three or four times in chat, why don't they know it over here in the call?
[00:27:52] Martha: yes. Yes, absolutely. And the other. Industry, I guess I would say, I guess it's an industry, that may not necessarily see this as relevant, which surprises me is, you know,I'm in Washington. And so lots of my friends work in different trade associations, which don't have consumers as members.
[00:28:11] They have companies as members, but I always say, but those members are consuming. You know,your members, you might have companies that are on your membership roster, but the people you're dealing with their consumers and they have expectations for how to even deal with the trade association. You know, what are your technology interfaces?
[00:28:30] And how often are you communicated with, and what's the quality of your communications and all of these things. So the concept of delivering to the consumer is not just the individual, like what an AARP has. It's also. When you would, anyone that you represent has these expectations of a seamless experience based on listening, based on technology and having some kind of a, of a vision for what the organization can offer.
[00:28:59] Phil: Yeah, totally agree with that. It's an interesting time to be in a position like this and critically important for so many folks who are in transition, who were looking for someone to believe in and someone to trust. It seems like you guys are,you and your team, Martha are really making some strides in the right direction, which is pretty awesome.
[00:29:17] we're going to close to running out of time. So before we do that, I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to do our lightning round, which is, are the three questions that I use to, to end every show. Are you ready for that?
[00:29:29] Martha: I'm ready.
[00:29:30] So first question, as a customer, what's an example of one of your favorite experiences.
[00:29:35] today is Valentine's day. And so I guess the perfect example is 1-800-FLOWERS where I have sent. Oh, prob I probably 30 flowers arrangements over the last couple of years. And what I have found with them is that their technology. it is fabulous. The website is great in terms of being able to navigate it and make selections and make changes and send the arrangement and you get notified when it's been delivered.
[00:30:05] and I think they had a couple problems where I've used the chat bot and I've called the 800 number and the culture of customer experience. there is very strong and I would say that when you're sending flowers to someone, it's for something that matters. And you want it to be right. And I have found that to be the case with that particular brand
[00:30:27] Phil: Awesome. Yeah, that's a really good one. Use them before, and it's great to be able to deliver anything anywhere, almost in short period of time, even for some of these very remote spots, but it's a ubiquitous experience. the second one, if there's one thing you could change about people's perception of the role of customer experience at a company, what would it.
[00:30:48] Martha: That CX is not a standalone group. It is not a standalone suite of tools and platforms. It is something that needs to be woven through the entire organization, woven through the culture and woven through the.
[00:31:03] Phil: absolutely if people expect that the.
[00:31:05] CX team, your small CX team to do all the work, because it's not their job, it's not going to be successful. And It seems that you got. You got the executive other executive and CEO level buy-in to really make that happen, which is awesome. last question.
[00:31:20] Okay. For our listeners, what's one lesson that you would want them to take away from your experiences, customer experience leader.
[00:31:29] Martha: It is a very difficult function to stand up from scratch. It requires executive level commitment over the long run over a long period of time. And of all the different roles that I serve as the CCMI. I will tell you that my work in CX is the most satisfying to be able to help people, to deliver for people in moments of great need and moments of joy, and to satisfy our role as a wise friend, and a fierce defender is probably the most gratifying thing that I do today.
[00:32:06] Phil: That's awesome. I'm just in love with that wise friend and fierce defender term, but you know what I always thinking though, A lot of times in organizations, corporations, people say, especially in the frozen middle, this is the flavor of the month. This is the newest, this, that, or the other we're going to deal with.
[00:32:22] How do you get people to believe and understand that this is a long-term shift that is beyond them as being it's beyond any individual or any company's ability to say, no, we're not going to be consumer centric. How do you get them to understand that this is a. And that, and that they actually need to make the commitment over the long-term.
[00:32:44] Well, you know, Phil, I wish I could say that. it should speak to. it should speak to them as a vision, as a higher calling. And I think that is important, but really the organization needs to measure what good experience does to deliver against the business model, whether it's a retention of consumers, whether it's acquisition, it needs to measure the benefit of good experiences and measure what happens when you have bad experiences.
[00:33:12] Martha: 'cause you've got to do that because beyond that, you can only talk about it for so long as being mission critical. And unless you're measuring against it, people will wander away and go do something else or revert to the way it's always been.
[00:33:26] Phil: Sure. Sure. It's super easy when somebody takes their eye off the ball. If you're not, if you're not shining a light on it, but if you make it a part of the new routine and change habits and change disciplines and. Incentives and rewards and all of that, then you can make a new behavior stick
[00:33:43] Exactly.
[00:33:44] well.
[00:33:44] Phil: Martha, it's been really great chatting with you. I, we could, I could go for another hour easy because you have such a such great wisdom and experience on the topic, But thank you very much for your time. It's been a real pleasure.
[00:33:57] Martha: Thank you, Phil really appreciate the time with you.
[00:34:00] and with that, thank you all for joining us and thanks for listening. We hope to see you. next time on the next episode of the customer experience show bye for now.