Scaling Operations & How to Improve Customer Experience (CX)

Jessica Ly: I'm here with Nick King, who is the VP of Customer Experience at Cisco, our customer experience marketing in particular, which is a very big organization now, and CX is the third important initiative at Cisco. So Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you for sharing what's happening at Cisco with us and talking a bit more about some of the best practices that you were seeing.

Nick King: Yeah, it's great to be here Jessica, thank you for having me.

Jessica Ly: I know that this is an organization that is growing massively and is a very significant part of how you're trying to help your clients transform towards the CX experience and how Cisco can help them do that. So I wanted to ask if you can explain a bit about the whole initiative? What is the strategy? What are the mission and some of the metrics that you see in the work you've done recently?

Nick King: Yeah, for us, customer experience is really key across how we think about how we engage our customers and our partners. And what we focus on, specifically on marketing and as the messaging product marketing, cross-platform integration, and how we scale that for our field and partners globally. And our KPIs are very simple. In a lot of ways, we focus on what is the adoption, our customers’ specific outcomes based on technology platforms. We look for progression for those customers. Our marketing objectives are around context, engaging contacts, leads, opportunities, pipeline and bookings. And overall, we look at message pickup and how customers are engaging Cisco as a whole the different tables that exist as part of that. From a strategy perspective, we really think about customer experience being as a whole across Cisco, and looking at how we can engage our customers through what their goals are, and apply that back to technology, we're selling them and delivering with him. And then finally, CX carries a revenue goal that we track around delivering value for our customers. And the simple logic is if we develop delivering value for our customers, then we see revenue increase as well.

Jessica Ly: Yeah, that's an initiative that I find fascinating is marketing before and has been very much on the, you know, building awareness and getting the leads. But you're saying it is CX is actually very much tied to the revenue figures. In the end, you're held accountable for making a difference. And you're working with sales, too. So maybe you can talk about how does that works now that you've got CX also talking with customers? And then you have sales folks talking with customers? How do they work together as a team?

Nick King: Yeah, the trick is very much upfront. You define a standard lifecycle that you want to engage customers with. We work with customers and partners to define that. And then, as you've defined that, it gets more predictable to make sure you're doing the right marketing at the right time, you understand customers’ requirements at the right time. And you really, I want to help get the cells at the right place at the right time as well. And, you know, what also happens is we hide a lot of the complexity that involves inside of Cisco, by being very specific there, and that allows our customers to get a better experience overall, as well. And so it really takes a very customer-centric lens as to how they're engaging multiple audiences or people from Cisco or our partners. And that consistency makes it easier for customers, you know, they very much wait for them to have their own problems to solve, when we can predict what those problems are, or at least communicate and the language, it sort of helps them, you know, debug, we'll get through all the complexity of the ecosystem.

Jessica Ly: With the COVID-19 happening with people working at home, you know, companies are scrambling to try to scale their operations. The network part is so critical, right? Collaboration tools like WebEx are helping people to stay connected at the human level, even though it is virtual. Can you share with us what kind of demand you're seeing and how CX is stepping up to be a significant player in this new ecosystem?

Nick King: Yeah, I think it goes back to you know when you're thinking about customer's needs, and you have an understanding, and empathy for the customer, is, you know, we naturally had offers that made sense for customers to take advantage of, and a lot of what we're focused on as customer experiences, making those offers accessible, but also making it so that you know, the outcomes are very specific, and in some cases accelerated as we've gone through COVID-19. It's also changed the way that we engage customers as a whole. I think we've all seen our inboxes filled with emails talking about different things we can do. We've taken a very targeted approach and engaging customers that ask to be engaged, looking at ways that we can accelerate value for those customers and for us partners as well. So very humble and pragmatic approach to say, okay, we've got the technology, we've got the relationships, how do we how to really support our customers and partners in the best way possible? And I think this sits up for a number of us how we think about what does the new normal looks like? Or what's going to happen in the future? And how do we start moving towards a realm of where, you know, they're, like, the customer experience of the customers is also impacted by these changes? And so we're making available a number of our offers that have been available for some time, but just, you know, providing that insight and capability for our own customers to take advantage of. And really, as I said, taking a very empathetic and humble approach to how we engage the community.

Jessica Ly: I think that a lot of companies talk about CX, and they know it is an important aspect of the strategy and competing, but a lot of them actually do need help in drafting, what is that strategy and how you actually implement and execute to make it successful? It Cisco, you're going through this journey yourself, and you're doing it? So do you then take all that learning also help your clients go through that CX transformation?

Nick King: Yeah, a lot of how we engage our partners has shifted a lot in the last couple of years. And so we publish, how we think about the customers’ lifecycle, we publish, how we see the different technology journeys, we provide insights on new business and renewal businesses, and how to shift the way partners think of the way they deliver technology and how they monetize that technology. And so, in some ways, we're open to providing an open book on how we have done our customer experience transformation, the key metrics that are important in the programs that go behind it. So not only did our customers get to experience directly with us, but also our partners get that experience and deliver that to customers. In some of our customers are also picking up that information applied to their own customer experience practices, you know that the physics of customer experience is reasonably consistent, defining the lifecycle of your customer, understanding, you know, the gates for each stage of a customer's journey, and then optimizing our investments to give the customer the best possible experience for each of those stages. And I think the other key element is ensuring that you constantly focus on the value that you're transferring to customers with their technology being delivered business outcomes, efficiencies and operations or changing business models.

Jessica Ly: Yeah, and I think that was the movement towards software as a service. In the networking space, even separating the hardware from the software means that there's a lot more recurring revenue, and recurring revenue is mainly the driver behind why they're just so many more customer success teams. Right. And customer experience is very much in helping to ensure that recurring revenue for at least for Cisco.

Nick King: Yeah, I think, you know, this is part of the thing, a lot of SAS businesses, you know, saw the value in reducing churn and even you know, telco and sales provided before that, if you just take it from a marketing lead, as the cost of acquisition now is, it's reasonably high when you get into, you know, large tech deployments. And it's very hard to also get engagement. So if you have that relationship, if you take what you're spending in marketing to acquire new customers and some ways you can get happier customers and better results by applying for that funding throughout the entire lifecycle. And so, in some ways, we think of it as you know, define a customer for life versus trying to acquire a full list top of the funnel, and then thinks through the logical next step for a customer and begin to predict what might be valuable to them. And do it in a way where they're able to use that portfolio to their advantage. And it just becomes this wonderful, self-employed prophecy that if your customers are delivering new customers, great customer experience, and we're doing the same for our customers, then you know, the results are not positive.

Jessica Ly: Maybe you can talk to us about one particular case study. I think Rakuten is one of them that has a pretty good story.

Nick King: Yeah. Rakuten is a great example of, you know, we had a customer with a really bold idea about building a fully virtualized 4G 5G network. And, you know, we really came to the table in that one and sat down with Rakuten, attended and explored all the options. And we're really thinking through that we knew how to deliver a fully virtualized 5G infrastructure. But we also recognize that to be a new entrant into the Japanese telco market requires a lot of, you know, out of the box thinking, and so everything from health histogram elements are delivered the way that the infrastructure is designed, built and delivered, even though how it scales has been an alliance between both Rakuten and Cisco, but also a number of third-party providers, and it results in the fastest delivery of a new search bar that I will arrow and a relationship where we very much close with Rakuten, and how that works. But it also is testament to you know. If you put that customer experience first, you know, both Rakuten and their customers, then we're able to build very largely robust solutions very, very quickly. And it's exciting to see in a Rakuten to live with that very recently. It’s good to see them begin to talk about that model outside of Japan as well. And all that is fueled by this understanding of customer experience. And so I think we're going to see a lot more of these types of examples where, you know, companies have bold ideas about how they're going to transform their customers’ experience, and then ask back to technology vendors like us to be part of that journey. Because if we were just delivering, you know, boxes or technology or services, there's not always enough to drive these large transformations. It really does take that, you know, complete model to make this work.

Jessica Ly: Yeah, I mean, it takes a very strategic consulting service. And it's not just selling a box or selling software, but helping them craft that strategy and execution, the change management that comes with it.

Nick King: Absolutely. Yeah, it's something of that scale, we had to really think about, you know, how do we handle the 4g to 5g shift? How do we do it in a way that allows Rakuten to scale as fast as I need to? To get live in Japan requires an incredibly fast rollout. And also, you know, the way that businesses are thinking through technology delivery has changed a lot. So, you know, they have to build continuity into how they see these deliveries so that they can rapidly make changes and deliver new technology. Whereas previously, these larger network rollouts require multiple years of planning multiple years of delivery, in this case, it's, you know, 18 to 24 months of, you know, from inception to delivery,

Jessica Ly: How big is your CX department now?

Nick King: You know, I don't have the latest count, but it's relatively large. You know, we really do have these franchises that are well established. And so what that means is, we get to take advantage of all the different teams and partners and, you know, organizations around us, so it means we don't have to have, you know, these single-function organizations. So I feel like, as an organization, we're able to tap into, you know, multiple countries, different thought leaders, different divisions inside of Cisco relatively easily. And that's a huge advantage we have, but also something that we treat, you know, with a lot of respect, and how we engage our customers, but also our partners. And just thinking through like, Okay, if we can do this way, can we package up that insight, that approach and then give it to partners, they don't have to have the same, you know, organizational size or different complexities, we can just distill that down and hand them that package. And it's a big part of the philosophy, right? It's not about us as Cisco, you know, having these huge teams, but okay, how do we take all of that and make it easily consumable by our customers and partners. And one thing we've been doing is really thinking about all the different insights we've gotten over the last 30 years. So we take all those algorithms and learning and different, you know, enabling materials and beginning to dynamically put those together and provide them to customers. So our customers and partners get the advantage of our scale without literally having to go and invest in small, large organizations.

Jessica Ly: So is there a platform for them to get customized materials to send them out, kind of like a managed marketing engine?

Nick King: From so there are two things. One is there is Cisco has a marketing velocity program, which partners can take advantage of. And then, we also have a portfolio specifically around customer experience, where they can take advantage of a set of portals that bring all this together and deliver what we call collaborative intelligence, which is really all those components packaged up and aligned to this lifecycle we see our customers delivering. And then the last thing we have is a certification and specialization program so that partners and marketers and partners and different companies can pick that technology up, pick those insights up and rapidly deliver them.

Jessica Ly: Now I want to touch on your career growth and your get your career advancement tips because I know you came from a data center world experience building your own business and all that, so you have a lot of experience to share with us and you've taken on this role and just been so successful at something that's fairly new at Cisco. I wanted to get your tips, You know, for the audience out there who are interested in the CX space and taking on a leadership position?

Nick King: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've been fortunate to be at the right place at the right time and sort of have gravitated towards the complex problems. You know, my first tip is that marketers intuitively have both the data and the understanding of customers, which can enable customer experience. And so if you take customer experience, and think about customers requirements, and what can be done, you know, the marketer can have a very elegant conversation with a sales stakeholder about how marketing can enable this experience and reduce churn and have a data-driven conversation is developing for you know, I think the other thing is, all of us that are looking at, you know, complicated spaces, or markets, where there have been multiple years of innovation is always usually sit back and say, how do we simplify? How do we make this more consumable? And I think like a marketer, you have to always be thinking, Okay, how do I make this into the most concise, simple, easy to understand the message as possible. And so another piece of advice is to look for complex problems that are asking for elegant solutions. And, you know, lean into the heritage of these different organizations because there's a reason why customers are buying your products. And there's a reason why customers want to have that experience. As for career growth, you know, a lot of times, it comes down to what I'd say like running towards the rain towards the unknown. And, you know, having a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset as to hack such problems, we don't always have to do things the same way. And then again, like if there's a simple way to solve for it, solve for it that way. But the final thing I would say is this, always make sure you communicate what you're doing in the voice of your stakeholders, whether it be customers, partners, or internal. And I know that sounds really obvious, but I sometimes think as marketers, we can lose focus of, you know, how we can articulate what we can change in the business. So if you're able to identify how marketing can help build that business case and have the confidence to go and talk to, you know, sales partners, different organizations and engineering to really, you know, help drive the junior route customers?

Jessica Ly: Excellent. What would you say are some of the challenges that you face right now.

Nick King: You know, I think the pieces that, you know, are always complex are the same things most marketers deal with. You know, when you're going through a transformation, you've stood around the business and transformed the business, and the macro factors are always shifting around. So you have to some ways predict where you make bets and what you can, you know, maybe reduce some investment in funding. And so, what I've learned is that you know, wherever, reasonably predict where that stuff is happening, but there's an element of change. Management has to stay aligned with that as well. And, you know, who could have predicted what was happening this year? And so are a lot of challenges. I like what one of the tough trials we have to make, to in order to, you know, continue to deliver for our customers prepare for things we have to learn from six months from now. And, you know, a lot of the variables are up in the air, it comes back down to just trusting the data, and making sure that you know, as you build the plans, you constantly revalidate you know, those assumptions and try and bring the organization as best you can, along with all those decisions, because many things are happening, you know, every other day at this point as we pivot for what's coming towards us.

Jessica Ly: Thank you so much, Nick, for being on the show and talking about customer experience marketing from your point of view. I appreciate you sharing the best practices and tips with us.

Nick King: Yeah, it was wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me and stay safe.