A CX and customer insights conversation with… series will feature video interviews with leaders in CX and customer insights, sharing learnings, trends and challenges from some of the region’s leading organisations.

What do you love most about working in CX?

T: I think the best thing about working in CX is it’s obviously seeing the changes that you make come to life. It’s really, really exciting. But I think on a personal note, I like breaking things. I like to challenge, challenge ideas, challenge experiences, and it’s really exciting to bring people along that journey and see how when they question things, they’ve been doing the same for a long time, you can you can get some really exciting outcomes.

How do you think customers’ expectations with regard to CX will change over the next few years?

T: Interesting, I’m not sure that they ever change. I think customers expectations are always “okay, cool. But what else?” And so I think it sort of draws into that sort of surprise and delight element where if you’ve managed to reduce an experience down to two clicks, as a user, as a customer, I’m like “brilliant, make it one click”, and then it’s “make it no clicks”. And then it’s how can you predict that I’m going to want this thing and give it to me before I asked you for it.

And so I think that’s the challenge of the fun of CX is that it’s never finished, the expectations are always wherever they are last year, little bit more.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

T: “Tom, shut up and listen”. I’ve received that piece of advice from numerous different sources at numerous different times in my life. But every time, it’s probably been valid, and as somebody who likes to talk quite a lot. I think it maybe resonates more with me than perhaps people who talk less, but it’s just listening, listening to the people listening to the situation, listening to everything, I think is just the most important place to derive insights.

What are the most pressing challenges facing CX leaders today?

T: I think the biggest challenges for CX leaders always have and always will be measurement. When you’re talking about experiences, it’s very, very challenging always to find any exact number, particularly if you’re trying to link that number to the bottom line, the increase in sales or, or something is as contrived as that, I suppose, is bold as to say like that.

I just think it’s always gonna be the challenge. But CX maintains its importance when you speak to real people one to one, and they talk about their experience, I think it exudes from them. But it’s very difficult to bottle that. And so I think that’s, that’s always going to be the challenges for any CX leader. It’s getting funding for your amazing idea, without having a really tight one to one connection between the outcome beyond saying “it’s going to be amazing”, and “everyone’s going to love it” doesn’t always work unfortunately.

What are you most excited about over the next 12 months?

T: I’ve got a number of active projects that are that are really, really exciting. One of which is a complete revamp of our call centre. So in terms of the avenues that we’re able to connect with our customers on, our students on, that’s going to open up in a brand new way. I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see both from an internal side how we try and utilise that, but also from the user side – how do they respond to suddenly be given an extra extra channel to communicate on. I think there’s gonna be some great learnings for both sides on that. So that’s a really exciting change for us.

What can Customer Connect attendees expect to learn from your session at the event?

T: What I’m going to cover is how to cheat your way to amazing CX success. And what I mean by that is the implementation of things like service design methodology gives you access to insights, perhaps you didn’t think you had, and, any chain needs to be driven by insights. And I think we’ve got a great example of how you can get to them, and how you can make those tangible changes as well as what you need to do to get your project over the line by bending the rules.

Customer Connect, 10 November, will bring together 150 CX and customer insights professionals for a day of conference featuring inspiring international keynotes and the best local case studies.