Hi Luiz, tell us about yourself and your background in the customer experience space?
I am a radio broadcaster and an actor by training. I saw in this career the opportunity to bring art into people’s lives. And by luck or fate I was guided through life to follow in the footsteps of Customer Experience. My daughter was going to be born and I needed a steady job, because even though I earn well with acting, there could be months that I wouldn’t earn, so I couldn’t take this risk anymore.
I couldn’t get away from my precepts – delighting the audience seemed to be easier on stage after I started attending and then managing teams; attention is a key factor, seeing incredible moments is our goal, as is solving problems efficiently and empathically. That is our duty, we shouldn’t even think about it too much anymore – we should focus on how to listen to our client and react to them so that they get a special and humane service.
Today I work with our team to engage in working magic with customers, having charming interactions and all those connections, in addition to managing a team and thinking about career development. I think the key at this moment is to understand that the cycle is in being fair, delightful, respecting and being inclusive; if we do this with the employee, it will probably reflect on the work performed.
How can companies better listen and understand their customer base?
Explaining to employees the importance of taking notes on customer issues. It is only by engaging with the frontline of the company, the people who provide the service, that we will be able to know what customers want, and what can be improved. Believing that customers will call to give suggestions seems a little naïve to me, but you can train the whole team of the company to be able to be active enough within the day-to-day problems, to be able to map what customer needs to improve and, most importantly, register this. Then we can analyze what is the Voice of the Customer.
Listen to your employees, they will be the connection between the business and the customers. The more they are active and satisfied, with a sense of belonging to the company, the more we will have customer feedback being passed on, being reframed. This is important, because they, the employees, are important.
What are some companies that you think are doing an excellent job at customer experience, and why?
I’m an actor, I could never imagine working in a banking institution – in this sense I think Nubank does CX with mastery. Paying attention to the employee’s journey to bring forth the client’s journey, which favors an active listening to the value of the entire community.
I’m also enchanted by the work done by Ifood, they bring to their employees/customers an empathetic vision and recognition for being there, helping the company grow by a sense of collective growth.
Many companies are currently undergoing digital transformation processes – what are your tips on a successful digital transformation?
I have a personal and simple tip. Keep in mind that digitization doesn’t ignore the fact that we are human, so find ways to humanize all segments. Value the connections created as the main thing, but don’t forget the data; not the other way around, valuing the data and forgetting the human. In the first case, you will have organic growth, in the second one, you will not know what tomorrow is.
Now when I’m looking directly at the connections as we see them, I realize that we expect incredible customers, but is our service amazing, are we really listening and reacting to what is said or written? Are we just solving problems or are we understanding their contexts to improve the future, whether individual or collective?
Did you read any interesting books this past summer that you’d like to recommend?
I have a short text that I recommend for a quick and very effective reading – The Catastrophe of Success by Tennessee Williams.
What is your favorite CX metric?
That’s a good question for me: in short, when we take on cases, even if we make mistakes at first – we’re in control of the situation; that’s the only metric that we’re sure we have control of.
