How To Make Customer Experience The Number One Driver For The Business?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, I guarantee we have a phenomenal conversation with Enav Birnbaum. Now, Enav is gonna talk about how we take customer experience and connect it directly to the growth in the business—a driver of revenue in the business—which is amazing because a lot of the time we’re still seen as a cost center, right?

[00:00:30] Steve MacDonald: And we need to change those perceptions around. And Enav is gonna elaborate on that quite a bit here today. Now, you are not only the Director of Customer Solutions at Zencity, but you also have a PhD that I’m gonna allow you to go into a little bit and explain, right? You also just—interesting on the side—you not only work out, you’re like in a bootcamp-style workout six days a week. I don’t know why you put yourself through that. I mean, I do, but I give you a lot of credit for that. Before we get started here, if you wouldn’t mind just expanding a little bit on your role in the company and what you’re doing before we get started.

[00:01:10] Enav Birnbaum: For sure. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. So, I’m Enav, I’m the Director of Customer Solutions at Zencity. So, first of all, about my PhD—just so everyone can understand what I wrote about—I have a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in International Relations.

[00:01:28] Enav Birnbaum: And my topic was the politics of street naming in Jerusalem. I was actually examining how Israel reached out and maintained its relationship with other international actors—like states and international organizations—through practices of naming and unnaming of streets in its capital, Jerusalem.

[00:01:50] Enav Birnbaum: But that’s for another conversation. So, going back to Zencity, I’m the Director of Customer Solutions, and in Customer Solutions, this organization includes two teams. One is the Support Team of the company—that includes Tier 1 and Tier 2 support. And the second team is the Operations Team.

[00:02:09] Enav Birnbaum: We do a lot of back and backstage work in order to customize the tools for customers. Yeah, that’s just as a starter.

[00:02:21] Steve MacDonald: So here’s what I’d love to do. I’d like to dive right in and tackle the big question here: How is customer support tied to revenue? And you actually had an outside consultant come in and evaluate what you were doing and give a third-party perspective on this.

[00:02:40] Steve MacDonald: Tell me a little bit about that, and then how you do it internally.

[00:02:45] Enav Birnbaum: So I will say that the Customer Solutions team and organization is an inseparable part of the revenue organization at Zencity. So we are considered from the get-go as drivers of revenue in our company.

[00:02:59] Enav Birnbaum: And when we had the external consultant come to Zencity and evaluate what customers—and also prospects—value in Zencity, the top thing that stood out the most was the exceptional technical support that they’re getting from us. In interviews, it came back again and again that they feel like the support they’re getting from us is always available, always quick, and always comprehensive.

[00:03:25] Enav Birnbaum: And they truly valued it, and I’m very proud of it.

[00:03:29] Steve MacDonald: So let me—before I get into and ask questions about specifically how you, and why you, get those kinds of reviews, like what you’re doing—I want to go broader a little bit and say, is this something that’s limited to your team, or is there like a cultural aspect within the company that has a big focus on the customer?

[00:03:50] Enav Birnbaum: So I think that one of the biggest reasons for the success that we are seeing in the Customer Solutions team—as well as the entire company at Zencity—is that we are deeply connected to the company’s mission. And we are not just here to provide a service—we truly believe in what we do, and we think it’s important.

[00:04:09] Enav Birnbaum: We have no teams in the company that feel alienated from our mission. So our mission at Zencity is to be the trusted partners and the source of truth for local governments and law enforcement agencies, and help them understand the community input that we can gather for them and take…

[00:04:28] Enav Birnbaum: …meaningful actions upon them. And for me, that means that our tools have a significant effect and impact on the lives of people—like, it truly has an impact. And that goes to the people who are the developers of the company, but it’s definitely related also to what we do in support.

[00:04:49] Enav Birnbaum: So we have to be there fully committed across every team in the company, including Support and Operations. So I can give an example.

[00:04:58] Steve MacDonald: I’d love to hear an example. We all love to hear a good story.

[00:05:02] Enav Birnbaum: So, for example, we have survey tools, and local governments are using them to gather feedback on everything from quality of life to urgent needs in the aftermath of crises. For example, if a hurricane hits or if a city needs to understand where people are struggling and need their immediate help after a massive flood—we are there to help them. So for me, if they need to launch a survey to get this input as fast as possible…

[00:05:45] Enav Birnbaum: …if someone reaches out from a city that is in need, we are there to help them as soon as possible and give them the most comprehensive solution, and make sure that we’re responsive when they need us.

[00:05:45] Enav Birnbaum: So for me, that drives me every day, and I know that it drives my teams—whether it is Support and whether it is Ops. It’s why we make sure that our support is always timely, it’s effective, and it’s focused on getting issues resolved as quickly as possible. Because at the end of the day, real people are counting on us.

[00:06:06] Enav Birnbaum: There are more than 200 million people that are affected for good by Zencity’s tools. And I want to make sure that we are there to help them launch, give them quicker resolutions to their issues—because sometimes that’s the barrier they need to overcome in order to get this input efficiently.

[00:06:29] Enav Birnbaum: So it’s not only about getting a satisfaction score for us. It’s really about wanting to help our partners.

[00:06:36] Steve MacDonald: Before we started this recording, you made sure to say that part of that culture is that you’re just passionate, right? That you just want to do the right thing—and that it’s pervasive throughout the company. There are a lot of SaaS companies. There are a lot of technologies. There are a lot of platforms out there, and we all help our clients in many different ways. But that culture and that  passion—I think it’s something that we can’t underscore enough in terms of how you help grow the business by just doing what’s right for your customers and being passionate about that.

[00:07:12] Steve MacDonald: I just wanted to say that. But I wanted to dig in a little bit more, right? Because you said something to me in one of our past conversations that I just loved. You said, “You know what? They know our agents by name.” Tell me your process. Tell me how that happens. Paint the picture for us, if you could.

[00:07:34] Enav Birnbaum: So the way that we structured our support team is in a way that a user is most likely to encounter the same agent once again in a chat. We structure the team so that one team member has the expertise of communicating with end users. That means the default would be that every time someone reaches out to us, they will communicate with the same person. And once they reach out, and they’re happy with the service they got, and everything was resolved in a timely and efficient manner, they’re likely to reach out to us again.

[00:08:13] Enav Birnbaum: So usually when we see someone who reached out once, they’re definitely going to reach out again—because they know they’re going to encounter our lovely agent again. And eventually, they’re just saying, “Hey, Medina! Hey, good to chat!” And then they’re telling us why they reached out that day.

[00:08:31] Enav Birnbaum: But it becomes an actual resource. People acknowledge that it’s not a burden to reach out to support. It’s an asset that they have available to them during the time of day that they’re using Zencity. And we’re trying to be as available as possible. They’re reaching out usually via chat, so it’s just a way to start a conversation—even if we’re not going on Zoom and they’re not seeing our faces.

[00:08:56] Enav Birnbaum: Eventually, when you’re communicating and interacting with the same person, it creates some sort of a bond.

[00:09:03] Steve MacDonald: I want to take the benefits of that and expand it out—because your brand is a trust mark. And in B2B, relationships are so important.

[00:09:17] Steve MacDonald: Doing that—what do you think that’s done for the trust that’s built in the company and the depth of the connection between you and your customers?

[00:09:30] Enav Birnbaum: I think it’s the fact that the users who are reaching out to us know that we know how to triage super effectively.

[00:09:37] Enav Birnbaum: They’re not going to see a lot of unnecessary back and forth from us. Once we get the request, they know that we are going to communicate with all of the needed stakeholders in the company, and we’ll get back to them with a sufficient answer. And then—we’re not just going to hand them off to another stakeholder. We’re going to get back to them.

[00:09:59] Enav Birnbaum: So I feel like that creates another layer of effective communication. It’s not frustrating; on the contrary—

[00:10:09] Enav Birnbaum: I think that it’s very much what we’re trying to do in all parts of the company, including support. We’re trying to make sure that we have a stable connection with stakeholders in the organizations we’re working with—and also in our teams at Zencity. So we’re trying to create stability and a relationship between support and the people on the other side—the user.

[00:10:35] Enav Birnbaum: And I think that’s something that is relatively unusual. Because usually, when you’re reaching out to support, you’re like, “Okay, am I going to hear back? Am I going to be handed off to someone else?” So that’s definitely not going to happen at Zencity. And I’m personally, as the manager of that team, making sure that I’m reviewing and making sure that nothing falls between the cracks.

[00:10:57] Enav Birnbaum: So that’s something that we are hands-on with.

[00:11:00] Steve MacDonald: You also have a different approach for support depending on what customer segment you’re dealing with. Tell us a little bit about that, if you could.

[00:11:13] Enav Birnbaum: Yes. So in general, in the company, we introduced a new segmentation to our customers. There are small-size customers that fall under the category of scale—or small to medium businesses, or governments in this case. And then we have higher tiers of mid-market and enterprise. The service model for each segment or tier is completely different, and that really ties to the way that they are utilizing support.

[00:11:44] Enav Birnbaum: So for the segments like the lower segments—scale and small-medium businesses—support is a super valuable resource. We see that they reach out to us, and they see us not as the only resource—because they do have a customer success manager that’s dedicated to them—but the meetings with them are not as frequent, let’s say. And we are providing immediate support, and we address what they need in a timely manner.

[00:12:09] Enav Birnbaum: So we see that from those segments, we get a lot of incoming chats. From the enterprise and mid-market customers, usually, we get less. We’re of course happy to help and assist everyone, but usually, they’re treated in more of a white-glove service model. So sometimes they’re less keen on using support.

[00:12:30] Enav Birnbaum: It does happen, but we are very dominant in the SMB and scale segments.

[00:12:38] Steve MacDonald: So we’ve talked a lot about your style of approaching—what I call a very relationship-based support philosophy. What haven’t we talked about within that? Are there other areas I haven’t asked the right questions about that you want to make sure you’re talking about here, in terms of your philosophy of how you create this relationship-focused support?

[00:13:04] Enav Birnbaum: I think we covered a lot. I feel like something additional that we are doing a bit differently is that we are being proactive in support. So as a support team, we’re always trying to think about the next step. If we know that a user is engaging in a process that is going to end in an error—because they’re not using the product in the way we hope they would be—

[00:13:28] Enav Birnbaum: We are reaching out to them before they encounter the error. Or if we know that there is a resource that can help them, we are reaching out to them and providing the resource. If we’re seeing that we have an area, for example in the U.S., that is undergoing crisis—

[00:13:44] Enav Birnbaum: So there was a hurricane, there was a flood, there are wildfires. For example, in the LA area, there were horrible fires recently. So we took proactive actions to make sure that they are getting the most out of the tools and understanding the community input about those crises—so they don’t even have to ask us.

[00:14:04] Enav Birnbaum: Support is taking action even before we are asked to, because sometimes when we are asked to, it’s already too late. So we’re trying to be proactive as much as we can. We keep on trying to think of additional ways in which we can upgrade ourselves and invent new ways to create value from within support.

[00:14:23] Steve MacDonald: So you’re reaching out proactively because you’ve got your dashboards and you’re seeing what they’re doing—what they’re not—and you’re actually reaching out to them. You’re not just waiting for calls to come in. Now, I know that takes a certain team and a certain dynamic inside of the team in order to operate like this. Tell me about your team. Tell me about what you’re proud of inside of your team.

[00:14:46] Enav Birnbaum: So I think that everyone shares the passion for the mission. Everyone is super detail-oriented, to do everything and hold everything to the best standard. Everyone is process-oriented and research-oriented. So when we get a new customer to set up, we’re setting up dashboards of customers.

[00:15:12] Enav Birnbaum: We’re performing a thorough search about them—what they need, what can help them get the most out of our tools, what projects they have going on in the city. How can we do the most for them? And then we are tailoring the solution around their needs. So that’s something that, again, the team is always trying to think about: how we can better things, how we can improve what we do today in order to provide a better—

[00:15:43] Enav Birnbaum: Customized solution for the customer. So it is on the support side of things, but also on the operational side of things—how we can customize the tool, how we can configure the dashboard in a way that will be just right for this specific customer. Is it a county? Is it a city? Is it a police department?

[00:16:04] Enav Birnbaum: Is it a sheriff’s office? Let’s understand how we can do it right for them.

[00:16:11] Steve MacDonald: What you just described to me was—I don’t know any better word to say it—other than a consulting process. You’re looking at who they are, what their particular needs are, what they’re doing with the tool, what they’re not, reaching out proactively, making recommendations—you’re consulting with them so that they can be more successful.

[00:16:36] Steve MacDonald: I think that’s phenomenal, because a consulting process or mentality isn’t something that’s endemic within customer support.

[00:16:46] Enav Birnbaum: For me, support can be so much more. And that’s also true for ops. This is why we keep on proving that we can improve and we can introduce new things that haven’t been there before—just because we didn’t do them.

[00:17:03] Enav Birnbaum: So every time that we are seeing a problem within the company, within our partners, we’re just trying to address it from the scope of support. And this is just what we believe in as a team. I think it actually shows in the way that we operate things on a day-to-day basis.

[00:17:27] Steve MacDonald: And I know everything that you’re doing here rolls up into a very important category.

[00:17:33] Steve MacDonald: Just to give a little bit of backstory—McKinsey & Company, the extremely large consulting firm out of the United States, did a huge study of 400 different companies—B2C companies and B2B companies—and they were highly profitable, with a huge return on shareholder value. One of the most important results that came out of that study—

[00:17:54] Steve MacDonald: They found that the number one differentiator across all those companies was CX—Customer Experience. Everything that you’ve been talking about here is how you create a brand of experience. And what that goes to is—it becomes a competitive advantage. Right? We think about product, we think about price, but what you’re doing here is adding a competitive advantage to your company.

[00:18:25] Enav Birnbaum: I definitely agree. I think that one of Zencity’s main assets is its people. It’s the processes that we are putting in place in order to better support the customers. And it’s not limited to support and the Customer Solutions organization. Every time, we are all hands on deck.

[00:18:44] Enav Birnbaum: We’re running a tight navy ship. Yeah—it’s not a pirate ship, it’s a navy ship that is sailing toward the same vision. And I think that does create a competitive advantage. Taking all of that together definitely takes us to the next level.

[00:18:59] Steve MacDonald: So this experience—it doesn’t just start when they become a client. It starts in the onboarding process.

[00:19:09] Steve MacDonald: It starts even before that. Explain how that works in the company.

[00:19:16] Enav Birnbaum: Yeah, so since we are a part of the revenue organization—which includes Sales, Customer Success, and within that, Customer Solutions—we try always to integrate even more and more into the customer lifecycle.

[00:19:32] Enav Birnbaum: So for me, that cycle starts in the pre-sale process. We sometimes go on prospect calls, trying to understand what would be the best solution to fit their needs once they become our customers. What kind of dashboard they’re looking to see, what kind of input they’re hoping to gather using Zencity.

[00:19:51] Enav Birnbaum: And then once we have this input, we’re able to take it from the prospect and set up the most tailored dashboard, or survey, or whatever it is—the tool that they bought—that would be just right for them. So that’s the first point where we’re interacting with the prospect-slash-customer.

[00:20:14] Enav Birnbaum: And then in onboarding, we make sure that all new customers are being trained on support—what support is, how they can reach out to us, what value we can drive to them. Because we wouldn’t like to stay in the background. We would like to be part of the resources, so they know that we’re there. The onboarding manager acknowledges support as an organization that is—

[00:20:41] Enav Birnbaum: Crucial to the customer. At Zencity, they tell new customers and users that other users who’ve been using us keep coming back and reaching out to support for good reasons. No, it’s not because they keep getting into errors—but just because they’re happy and they’re getting what they need, at the time that they need it. That’s, again, something that we’re doing. And on top of that, every time we are reached out to—or every time we see an opportunity to provide value proactively—we will, once again, reach out to the customer.

[00:21:17] Steve MacDonald: Two huge things I took away from that. One is, you’re involved in pre-sales, right?

[00:21:21] Steve MacDonald: I’m sure in a customer meeting, a prospect meeting—being able to actually talk to support and hear the kind of things that you’ve been sharing here about how you support them—and then secondly, that in the onboarding process, you actually train them. Not necessarily just the product, but you train them on how to use us, right?

[00:21:40] Steve MacDonald: How to use us as a support tool for you. Nobody usually talks about training on how to use the support department. That’s great. That’s phenomenal. I love that. I love that. You talked about something interesting, which was—in a previous conversation—this balance of professionalism and friendliness.

[00:22:00] Steve MacDonald: Tell me what you meant by that.

[00:22:03] Enav Birnbaum: So for me, I would like to see the conversations between us and our users—as we’re interacting with the same individuals again and again—as a professional connection and relationship. But at the same time, to be friendly. The bottom line for us is that we get the job done, and we do that by keeping a semi-formal connection.

[00:22:29] Enav Birnbaum: I think also that lowering this barrier of formality is good for both sides. It helps us get to them, and sometimes users become more responsive. They’re more eager to get the thing—even the issue they reported—resolved, once we’re more to the point, more communicative.

[00:22:54] Enav Birnbaum: So that I found interesting. That’s the overall approach. You won’t see any emojis or jokes, but we are definitely trying to be a bit personal.

[00:23:08] Steve MacDonald: There was a recent B2B buyer study—and it was by Dentsu—and they titled it the biggest B2B buyer study that’s ever been done globally.

[00:23:17] Steve MacDonald: One of the things that came out of that was that B2B buyers now, for the very first time, the trend line has changed—they buy for personal reasons more than professional.

[00:23:30] Enav Birnbaum: Interesting. I would like to think that when it comes to us—we are B2G, business-to-government—I would like to think that it’s both because of the professional reason, but also because of the connection they feel that they have with us.

[00:23:46] Steve MacDonald: I think that’s what that study is saying—that you’re the trendsetter on this. So I have one last question for you, and that’s this: we’ve gone over so much here, but if  you could give one piece of advice, what’s the most important thing that you want the audience of contact center experience and support leaders all over the world to take away from this episode?

[00:24:15] Enav Birnbaum: So for me, I think that the most important thing to do when you’re managing a contact center is to keep your team members connected to your company’s mission and vision—why we need to provide top-notch support, why we are here. That’s key to help them push it to the next level, and not just hope to get a good CSAT.

[00:24:42] Enav Birnbaum: Because that’s a very low standard for me. We want to make sure that we are valuable, that we are doing the best we can. And also, I think that it creates more motivation among the team. I would also advise not to stay passive. Let your support team think about creative ways to push the traditional support boundaries and be proactive rather than reactive in your day-to-day operations.

[00:25:12] Enav Birnbaum: Don’t stay in the box—I wouldn’t recommend it. And I think also, one last thing, is that managers should manage their support and operations resources wisely. Think about what each team member brings to the table—what’s their added value, what’s their expertise—and build on it. Make them the owner of their domain.

[00:25:35] Enav Birnbaum: At the same time, while everyone can have their own unique area of expertise that users will be directed to when they need that type of support, avoid always having single points of failure. So make sure that your support team always has at least two people who can perform the same task effectively—but still make them the owners of their domain.

[00:25:58] Enav Birnbaum: I think that’s the best way to also develop support team members professionally.

[00:26:05] Steve MacDonald: I have to tell you, I feel like I’ve gone through a customer support clinic today. Thank you.

[00:26:12] Steve MacDonald: And I know one thing—people are going to have questions. Is it appropriate that we give out a link to your LinkedIn profile so people can reach out to you?

[00:26:22] Enav Birnbaum: Of course. Yeah, love that.

[00:26:25] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. The mission of this podcast is to bring perspectives from leaders all over the industry, all over the world together, so that we can learn and we can collectively do better, greater, bigger things within our companies.

[00:26:39] Steve MacDonald: And you helped accomplish that mission in spades today. Thank you very much.

[00:26:44] Enav Birnbaum: Thank you so much for having me.