We Don’t Need Another Hero featuring Mark Slatin

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:04.834)
Mark Slatin, thanks so much for being Next in Queue. How are

Mark Slatin, CCXP (00:09.676)
I'm great. Thanks so much for having me on.

Rob Dwyer (00:16.6)
Yeah, absolutely. You have a long list of accomplishments, but I think we can start with the fact that you are the CX advisor and consultant of EmpoweredCX, your own consultancy, and you teach, not just consult. Can you tell us just a little bit about your teaching background? Because I find that fascinating.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (00:46.894)
Sure. I taught for on and off for about six or seven years at Loyola University and in the Baltimore area. And I taught mostly, originally it was a sales leadership course. And then later on, when my career changed to customer experience, I built out and developed a course called customer experience management. Now I teach in

So that was an MBA program. Now I teach in a Master's of Science degree program, a degree program in customer experience management at Michigan State University. And I'm honored to be on the faculty there with 14 other professors. And we are excited to be part of the one of its kind program. Unfortunately, we hope there's more that pop up, but right now we're the only one that offers a degree program in CXM, at least in North America.

Rob Dwyer (01:45.494)
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that are aware of all kinds of creditations and certificates that you can achieve within the CX space, but this is an actual degree program. And I too hope lots more pop up, but it is very cool that you are working with the one and only in the country today.

So I want to talk with you specifically about trust. And I don't think I could have found someone more aligned with this particular topic. And that is because you currently run a series of master classes called the Trusted Guide Roadmap. So let's just start with the bare basics.

What heck is trust? Let's define

Mark Slatin, CCXP (02:42.766)
that is such a great question. And it's part of the reason why it's so hard. There's so many definitions out there of trust that it's really hard to gain mastery over something that is hard to define to begin with. I connected, I was lucky enough to connect with and become part of trusted advisor associates who

The CEO and founder, Charles H. Green, was a co -author of the book, The Trusted Advisor, and co -author of the 20th anniversary edition that came out last year of The Trusted Advisor. And he created training and different programs around Trusted Advisor. And so I got certified and trained in that before I even got into the CX world. In that model, there's something called the trust equation.

And the purpose of it is to help define what trust actually is. According to the model, the equation works sort of like a mathematical equation. On the left, you have trust. Really, be more accurate, it's trustworthiness. It might as well be called the trustworthiness equation because you've got the trustor, the trustee, and someone doing the trusting, the person who wants to be trusted, and you've got this now in trust, which is the thing that happens between them.

And so that trustworthiness, if you can imagine like a quotient, on the top you've got the numerator, there are three things on the numerator, credibility, reliability, and intimacy, all over something called S, which is self -orientation. And it's in the denominator by itself because it's the inverse of trustworthiness, right? It's almost directly proportional to the

The more people feel like you're self -focused versus other -focused, the less trustworthy you'll be. So that's what the S is. then the credibility, has to do with, yes, you think about, do I have the data right? Is my data credible? But more than that, with people who are beyond the technical expertise, it's do I trust you in the sense

Mark Slatin, CCXP (05:04.236)
Do you look me straight in the eye when you're talking to me? Do you speak with confidence? Right? So I use the example of someone giving you directions and you're lost and they're saying, well, I think you ought to make a left turn. I think it's a third or fourth light. I'd say after the Burger King, maybe that was a McDonald's. So, you you're probably going to pull out your map or your GPS before you follow those directions. So that's what credibility is to do with. It really has to do with.

the words that you use and yes, it's connected to your certifications and degrees or your medical lab jacket, but it really has to do with those other things I talked about. And then reliability is whether or not you follow through on your promises, right? So that's kind of straightforward. It's whether you're predictable, whether you're dependable, and that's the one that really requires the passage of time to really know the answer to. Are you trustworthy in that sense? And then the other one,

on there, the I, which is intimacy, is about psychological safety. So, do I trust you? Are you trustworthy in the sense of you've created sort of a safe haven for us to have difficult conversations? I feel like you're a vault. I can trust you with sharing confidential information. And also, you'll know how to empathize with me if I share something with you

personal in nature or means something specific to me, you'll know whether to laugh or whether to cry with me or whether just to listen. So that has to do with intimacy. And so those are the four variables, as I mentioned, all over the S. So there's a joke in the field like get off your S, right, which is self -orientation, because that is a huge factor. As it turns

Bit of a spoiler. So the reason the authors put the s in the bottom is they thought it was going to be the most powerful of the four and it turns out that after a hundred thousand Surveys or assessments that were completed the correlation is higher to end of intimacy and both self -orientation and intimacy have to do more with the emotional side of the of the brain and the credibility

Rob Dwyer (07:17.581)
Hmm.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (07:26.868)
and reliability have to do more with the rational or logical side of the brain. All of them are important, but if you ask, you know, what is trust or trustworthiness in this case, yeah, you probably want to think about it in terms of those four variables.

Rob Dwyer (07:46.862)
So I love that you brought up that two of these are very different than two of the others, right? It seems like two of them are pretty easy to quantify in traditional kind of KPIs, if you will. And a couple of others are less easy to quantify.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (07:55.086)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (08:08.856)
But as businesses, when we think about CX and we put in processes in place and we're looking for new tools, often we rely on KPIs to identify the effectiveness of what we're doing to help us on our roadmap. Are we often making a big mistake and forgetting about those two particular variables that are more emotional?

And how do we go about rectifying that if that's the case?

Mark Slatin, CCXP (08:46.318)
Well, that's also a great question. And I think, yes, we are missing the boat largely. I just had a conversation with the head of patient experience at Tufts University Medical Center in Boston, in the Boston area. there is a crisis, according to many in health care, of a lack of compassion.

Compassion speaks directly to the two that we've talked about, intimacy and self -orientation. And there's a whole bunch of reasons for it. There's a book called Compassionomics in which the author is the medical director at Cooper Union Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. And he's done all this research to talk about why it's the case and the impact of it to businesses. So that is, we're talking about the high stakes of

human experience when you're about to get a bad diagnosis for something. In the case of Tufts, it's the breast cancer and radiology and oncology. But in the book, they talk about terminal patients. The studies were done with terminal patients, so whether it's cancer or something else. And there is a huge lack of care. And part of it is because of sort of the production

mentality that's filtered into the medical world about getting 15, you know, 15 minute visits with patients. And so you can get as many patients in in a day and there's a tremendous amount of pressure on doctors. They don't feel like they have the time. And quite frankly, they have a bit of suffering from burnout themselves in medical industry. It's very true. Part of it started with COVID.

They're shorthanded, so they're asked to do more. All these things factor together. But yes, there's a direct impact. It is harder to measure. It's not impossible to measure. You need to tap into questions around, a good survey design would ask questions around this, and measure. And also you look at the feedback you get verbally or through verbatims, or if you're talking to a patient group, a patient provider.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (11:07.32)
patient slash provider panel, there's ways to collect this data and get information about how well are we doing in these areas and I'm giving you example of healthcare, but the same applies to whatever business you're in is are you understanding how your brand is or isn't building trust with customers? And that is a really good question. I think a lot of times the data that we get back, it

overlaps or it just kind of misses that question and at the core of loyalty, right, the bedrock of loyalty for customer loyalty is going to be trust. Do I trust you first?

Rob Dwyer (11:50.67)
So I've been having an ongoing conversation online a lot about CX. And this just popped into my head. And I wonder, do those two items carry as much weight? If I feel like none of the brands that provide the product or service that I'm looking for, none of them I can trust. At that point, is it?

I mean, obviously if I could trust one that would be a differentiator, but am I potentially, can I bank on some customer retention, not loyalty, but retention because it's just, there's too much friction in switching. And are we seeing more of that? And is that why maybe we see like CX indexes falling because

Customers don't trust a lot of brands these days.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (12:56.238)
Yeah, so you're talking sort of in general terms about industries. And so it's kind of hard for me to answer sort of the general question. to be, I remember 10 years ago, we had the lowest scores of net promoter score. Those people listening probably know what NPS is. We're talking about the industry leader.

still may be in the negative numbers, right? That's how bad, you know, utilities were considered, specifically internet providers. And so one was bragging, we're the top ranked in our industry and there's still a negative NPS, so more customers wouldn't recommend you than would. So there's nothing to really be proud about. So we'll dig into the nuts and bolts of it, but what it means for me if I wanna be an optimist,

There's an opportunity for me to go in there and take some market share just by being decent at the experience. In the course I teach, we talk a lot about loyalty and what is loyalty. And one of the models that I really like has to do with three types of loyalty in it. They talk about habitual loyalty, functional loyalty, habitual loyalty, and then true loyalty, which they describe sort of as emotional loyalty.

And functional loyalty means basically you can do what I need you to do. And I may be buying from you because of convenience. For example, I go to my gas station because it's the closest to my house. And the difference are pennies per gallon, so I don't even look at the price. And so you're getting my business and it appears like it's loyalty, but it's really more about convenience or function. The next one is about loyalty that's habitual, which means

I've kind of gotten into the groove of going to your grocery store or just renewing my insurance with you because it's the easiest thing to do. But if someone came along with a better offer or I heard from a neighbor that ABC insurance is great or you really got me upset for some reason, I would switch in a minute. But it appears like I'm loyal to you. The third kind is emotional loyalty in this particular

Mark Slatin, CCXP (15:22.278)
And emotional loyalty means that I have an emotional connection to the brand because they've done a good job by me. They've treated me well. I feel loyal in the sense that you could come along with a competitive offer. I'm not even going to pay attention to it. I am loyal. I'm not giving it the time of day. I would defend the brand. That's how much I like it, much less refer it to friends or neighbor. I would defend and forgive.

the brand. So there's different levels of loyalty and I'll share again, it's directly correlated. can't happen without trust. So trust needs to be high to get to that emotional level of loyalty. Otherwise, it appears like they're loyal customers and retention is important. What business doesn't like retention, just knowing that those customers, you may be overstating the level of health of your customer base.

Rob Dwyer (16:18.762)
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting and it hits home with me because I can think of very specific examples of all of those sorts of loyalty. Sometimes it's just out of convenience and it is a matter of function. Sometimes it's just this habit. It's easy. And it's quite honestly more effort. Like I was talking about more effort to make a change.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (16:19.438)
If that makes sense, yeah.

Rob Dwyer (16:46.19)
And then there are 100 % brands that I would defend. A long time listeners can probably name a few. Recently, you and I were both featured in a video series done by Luke Jameson and Michael Mattson. And one of the recent ones,

we were all given superhero names. But I'd like to talk to you about the kinds of problems you can encounter being a hero versus being a

Mark Slatin, CCXP (17:33.601)
Yeah. So you're now speaking my language because when I was trying to figure out what I'd like to do in my business, I do consulting, I do coaching, but I thought there's more. There's more that I can offer. And I feel like there is some sort of training in there for CX leaders, but I don't know what it was. And then I,

I've heard about this book by a guy named Donald Miller who's in the marketing world who wrote a book called Building a Story Brand. Largely, it's based on the hero's journey. That is that in every story, just about nearly every story, there is a hero, there is a guy, there is a victim and a villain. The hero is the person who has some goal that they're trying to attain, something they're trying to win.

but there's some barrier or obstacle in their way. The guide is that person with some experience through the school of hard knocks who has the wisdom from going through the pain and suffering, and now they've got the wisdom. And then the victim is someone who doesn't

Steal the show in the story, but they're important and and and the truth is that there may be and the villain is obviously the person Creating a lot of the conflict in the story to make it noteworthy and to make it interesting right you need to have a villain It's interesting the the hero is If you think about the movie the King's Speech, right? The King George the sixth I guess it was is was struggling with the speech impediment

During World War II, London was about to get bombed by Nazi Germany and he had to come out and give the national address over like a public address radio type system. And if you saw the movie, you know this guy, Lionel Logue, who was really a dramaticist who turned speech therapist, helped him overcome his impediment at least to get through these speeches. And he gave encouragement and support and rallied the troops literally and rallied the people to help England.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (19:54.433)
do its part in defeating Nazi Germany. So there are many movies like that. You can think about Karate Kid. You can think about Rocky. You can think about Willy Wonka. There's these, one of my favorite is The Wizard of Oz, right? So you've got these, but nobody in the CX world, when we talk about change management, which really what CX is all about, we need to change from the current state to some better future state for our customers, nobody's interested in another hero.

And that they don't want another hero. As Tina Turner once said, we don't need another hero. We might be open though, they might be open to a guide, a guide who can help them bridge the gap from where they are today to help them achieve their goals. And so that's a huge trap. I know I fell into it more than one time as a CX leader in jumping to this hero role.

Nobody wants that. You get, and this is directly connected to trust and that bottom, the denominator I was talking about, self -orientation, it's the opposite of that. It's focusing on them and their issues and their goals and helping them, communicating with them on how you're gonna help them get to their goal. So that, to me, that was the goal that helped me develop this Trusted Guide Roadmap Masterclass.

Rob Dwyer (21:13.548)
Yeah, I love it. I recently had a conversation with Matt, with cognitive copy who runs the BPO bullhorn newsletter. And we talked a little bit about this and, and, his comment was you are not the hero of the story, right? Your, your customer is the hero. You are there to help them. And I think all too often we want to be the hero. We want to step in and save

when really if we want to be trusted, we should focus on being that guide to help them be the hero, whoever it is that them is that we're interacting with. So I absolutely love that and you illustrated it beautifully. I also, speaking of people in this video series, I just recently had a conversation with

Jeff Sheehan, and we were talking about ROI. And CX and ROI are huge things. But are there different ways to measure ROI? I think most people think there's one way to measure it. But are there different ways?

Mark Slatin, CCXP (22:34.958)
Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's been a drumbeat that's been going on, I don't know, about four or five years at least about CX leaders fail because they don't demonstrate the ROI of CX. And I think I'd like to reframe that sentiment from my personal experience and call it they don't demonstrate the value. so value is a bigger word than

Really, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of ROI, what you're talking about is it sounds very concrete, but actually it's pretty darn fuzzy. Because first of all, before even I start to talk about a couple of the different models out there, one thing I'm pretty sure of is that whatever justification I share with senior management, the C -suite, let's say, and I say, we're going to have this kind of ROI on this initiative.

Who is going back three years from now to check to see what the ROI was? How often does that happen? So that's just one aspect of the problem with using the ROI of CX. Two is if I'm in the C -suite and I've got the CX leader, the marketing leader, the IT leader, the product leader coming to me one after the other for our annual

our monthly executive team meeting, and they're all pitching what they need support on and budget dollars for. One has to do with reducing costs. One has to do with increasing revenue. One has to do with reducing risk. Another one might have to do with increasing share of wallet. So really what you end up with is a completely apples and oranges comparison of a decision that you have to make. And then you go right back to a motion, which

You know, Charlie Green, who wrote The Trusted Advisory, he calls it a sandwich. The sandwich is, I need some data as a top slice of bread to start the conversation with, to help me with my rational mind. And then in the middle, the meat is really around the emotion. And then there's another piece of rationale that helps me justify it that I'm going to come up with in my mind. And that's the sandwich. But really at the end of the day, as,

Mark Slatin, CCXP (25:00.014)
Gerald Zaltman from Harvard said 95 % of decisions, buying decisions he wrote, but this really is a buying decision, have to do with emotion and only 5 % are based on pure logic. So value, when we talk about value, it's bigger, it's bigger than that and it includes things like, Do you have a concrete roadmap as a CX leader

of how you're gonna help show us how we're gonna get from point A to point B in, let's say, three years? What are the elements of that roadmap? Does it make common sense to me? And do I emotionally connect to that roadmap? And part of that is, did you have consensus in building it? Do you have the support of my middle managers who really gonna make that happen, by the way, and senior managers? And two, is it aligned with our stated corporate goals?

Are you going against the river somehow, the flow of the river? If you're a CX leader or any leader trying to make change, one of the smartest things you can do is dovetail into what the executives have already said is a one -year or two -year goal for them. Tap right into that. And by the way, going back to emotion, hit into what they've said are the cultural values of the organization. That's the language you need to speak.

And so I think ROI, yes, it's a yes and sport. I'll be the first to say that. And you go back to improv, yes, both can be true. Yes, you need to demonstrate for the purposes of that sandwich, but realize that it's the emotional piece that is gonna be what those decisions are hinged on and you've gotta connect with them emotionally.

But value, and I gave the example of the roadmap, there are many other ways that you're going to provide value. But recognize that it's not just in these mathematical models. And for the reasons I shared at the top is that oftentimes it ends up being non -verifiable or it's verifiable, but nobody does. And two, it ends up being really an apples and oranges comparison.

Rob Dwyer (27:11.522)
Well, if you can make them the hero. That's the return. That's the return they're looking for. So certainly if you're digging into the things that they've been talking about that they want to accomplish, you were you're doing that. You'll be looked upon as a trusted advisor and and lots of success there. I have. A little bit of a question that that I'm guessing

probably never been asked before but If you were gonna have someone write a song About being a trusted advisor would it be Elton John or Billy Joel and

Mark Slatin, CCXP (27:56.336)
wow. Well, you talk about two of my favorite musicians and I have been fortunate enough to see them both perform at the same time on time with my daughter at RFK Stadium in Washington, which was an amazing concert. Which one would I have write a song about being a trusted advisor?

Mark Slatin, CCXP (28:28.33)
I probably either one would be a suitable choice. I probably would lean more toward Billy Joel for this reason.

Number one, the guy has done 150 concerts at Madison Square Garden every month, you know, for 10 years. So there's some trust that he's built with his audience over that time. They're both about the same. He's got that R, he's got that reliability built in. It's a really hard question, but that would probably be...

Rob Dwyer (28:56.94)
Reliable, right? Reliable.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (29:07.98)
I mean, so I'll share one other story with you and I don't think he does this anymore, but Billy Joel did this for a while. Talk about other focus, right? This would be my reason why. So you may or may not know this if you're a Billy Joel fan, but oftentimes at Billy Joel concerts, front row would be, seated at the first two rows would be scalp tickets.

And he said, it's ridiculous. My shows aren't worth $50 ,000 a seat. He's joking, but people paid a ridiculous amount of money for the front row seats. And so he's like, you know what? We're going to buy those seats and we're going to have our roadies go to the back two rows of the stadium and hand out those tickets and move those people up to the front two rows. Cause those people probably work really hard for their money, for what they earn.

and they deserve and they're here because they really want to be here. The people at the, as he says, the people who just scalp the tickets, they're at the front, sitting in the front two rows, go ahead and entertain me, piano man. So that's probably why I picked Billy Joel. Tough to pick, but that's the reason why I would choose.

Rob Dwyer (30:25.576)
I love that. And I can't tell you, I have been to concerts where I've seen people spend the bulk of the time on their phone, not like holding it up and recording it, but literally just distracted by their phone. And I just think, why did you pay to be here knowing that there are absolutely people with like the worst tickets in the house that are in the nosebleeds?

and they are just sitting on the edge of their seat the entire time. And so I love that. That is a fantastic story to add to this. I have one last odd question, but can you tell the people in the audience who don't know what the heck is a terrapin?

Mark Slatin, CCXP (31:20.91)
You did your research. You're right. I've never been asked either of those questions before. So a terrapin is more broadly known as a large turtle, but also happens to be the mascot of the college I went to, Maryland Terrapins, who nicknamed the Terps. And we are battling to restore

football and basketball teams in particular to where they used to

Rob Dwyer (31:54.434)
Well, I was hopeful that while Danny Manning was there, at least the basketball team would do its thing. And unfortunately, that wasn't the case. So good luck where you are today. As long as you don't run into my Jayhawks, then I'll just have to root against you once again.

Lots and lots of talk about trust, but I have really one last question as it relates to this. You mentioned earlier in the conversation with this equation that really that T should be should be trustworthiness. If I'm a leader in any organization and I want to be seen as more trustworthy, what are some concrete things that I could do

to change my image or enhance my image as it relates to trustworthiness.

Mark Slatin, CCXP (32:58.06)
Yeah, that's a really good question, Rob. And so I go back to the model and I would look at, first what I would do is you can go to trusted advisor associates and you know what, for your podcast I'll send you, Rob, the link to the assessment. It's a free assessment and see how you score on each of the four variables and that might be a place to start because the,

designers of the assessment suggest that you start with your lowest score. That tends to be the greatest positive change in outcomes for people who take the assessment. I will send you that. two is, so if you, for example, if it's self -orientation. So one of the things about self -orientation is that we tend to be really focused on ourselves. Now that goes beyond, that's not typically

bragging about yourself. It could be. It could be those kind of, telling my story and I'm talking too much, but oftentimes it has to do with the preoccupation of self. So I'm worried about how I look. I'm worried about what I'm going to say next. I'm worried about maybe what just happened before the meeting, right? So I can't be fully present for the other person and that comes off as not trustworthiness. I mean,

The typical example is, you know, I've got my phone out while I'm talking to you and you're sharing with me something very personal. Yeah, that's a low trust level. How likely am I going to be to want to share something kind of important with you? Right. So that's an example of self -orientation. I'll give you one more for, let's say, reliability. I'm just,

since you asked for, I'll just share another one on reliability. Let's say that's your issue and it could be. An example of how to be more reliable is to offer, to take on some responsibility, maybe even a small piece of responsibility in the conversation and do a follow -up. So a good example would be, hey, when we get together next time, I'll do the, how about if I set up the agenda for the meeting? I'll send you a draft agenda and if it's good, and then you just follow through on

Mark Slatin, CCXP (35:17.24)
You're taking the initiative, you're doing what you said you did. Yes, it's things like a follow -up email and a thank you. This is not rocket science. Improving your trustworthiness is not rocket science, but it's often just hard to do. And it starts with self -awareness. And so I just gave you a couple of examples. I hope that was helpful.

Rob Dwyer (35:39.18)
Yeah, they're they're absolutely great for everyone listening will have that link in the show notes as well. So if you want to number one figure out kind of where you stand on the trustworthiness quotient, you can take the assessment and then if you're like, hey, I need help. You can talk to Mark about getting some help and will have links to empower CX on.

the show notes and his LinkedIn so that you can message him. Mark, thank you so much for joining Next in Q. was great talking to

Mark Slatin, CCXP (36:17.772)
Hey, it's been a delight and a pleasure and so much fun to talk with you as well,