It seems to be my pattern to publish every other month or two… so let’s just pretend that it’s completely purposeful.
Anywho, hi friends. How have ya been?
That’s great to hear! Keep sticking in there.
How am I doing? Well, I’m great minus my accidental chemical inhalation this morning that landed me in urgent care. No worries though, I’m all fine and thrived on the attention.
How did I inhale said chemicals this morning?
Well, to that, I say mind your own business. (or look at my Twitter bc I tweeted about it. Didn’t happen unless it’s on social media, right?)
But truthfully, minding your own business stops there because my business in AV is everybody’s business.
So listen up.
This year, I am embarking on a year-long customer experience research survey and I’m bringing you along. It’s as tedious and exciting as it sounds. You see, may be a big, fancy award-winning AV team on the outside, we are secretly kind of a mess. And since I know my boss doesn’t actually read these articles, I’m going to give you the tea while it’s piping hot. (Lady Whistledown style) *All names/situations will be kept anonymous and vague so don’t get your panties in a bunch.
Project CX Update #1
Why we started: Well, to be completely frank, our teamwork isn’t up to par, and it’s reflected in people’s interactions with our department. Whether that be from the inside or outside. In fact, just recently we were notified that all of ITS didn’t meet CX goals for this term because of our department. *big yikes*
When I started, our department had just gone through an entire structural revamp. Most of the previous staff was fired and 3/4ths of the team came in all at once. It was chaos. Exhilarating. Confusing, fast-paced, and miserably slow all at the same time. Definitely, not for the faint of heart. We started from the ground up and 2.5 years later, our team has finally started settling into its routine. Now that the dust has settled, we aren’t where we thought we’d be. Our systems work for the *most* part but we had to start all over with student workers. The professors were rudely awakened by the brand new systems when they stepped foot into class, we’re still wildly understaffed and the few staff members we do have, aren’t exactly best friends.
Now I’m not saying that you need to be best friends with your coworkers. Go ahead and establish friends and a life outside your workplace, in fact, I encourage it. But there is a level of feigned friendship to make the average corporate America relationship/system work. And not all of us are there with everyone. What do you get when you have a team made up of highly intelligent, independent as hell go-getters? Silos. And what do silos case? A huge case of miscommunication or no communication at all.
If the roots aren’t working together to keep the tree stable, the tree falls and so does the entire ecosphere it supported up there.
So, we’re getting down to the roots of it. Our team. This is where we’re starting and it’s only the beginning.
The nitty-gritty of it (aka research process):
We are starting with our team. I have partnered with our project manager who is a male to ensure there is no awkwardness in our individual team member interviews. Before we started our interviews, Hunter and I started with our goals for Project CX. Here they are:
- Discover/uncover every possible customer journey route (including staff and students)
- Finding gaps in the journey/services
- Filling gaps in the journeys/services
Simple right? Of course, it is! Until you include people in the equation, who, in general, are wildly complicated. In order to keep the process of discovery fair, we put together a list of questions to ask in each interview. We have a variety of questions that start off vague and then get specific. Some questions are simple answers while others are open-ended. We make a point to share our defined goals listed above and ensure that each employee knows that this is not just to make our customer experience better but also to make their lives/jobs easier. So the more they share the better. Of course, everything is confidential. (*hot tip: try to control your facial expressions and any comments that might influence their answers. Your job is to be a neutral party)
Each interview lasts 30-45 minutes and is recorded while I take notes. Each interviewee has access to the interview recording if they’d like and can feel free to update their answers at any time. For now, we are just collecting notes. No need to analyze or solve any of the problems right away. The goal here is to just *listen* and make sure the team feels heard.
If we are going to make evergreen, lasting improvements, we need to take this slowly and do it right.
Next steps:
We have just a couple more interviews left and then it’s time to find patterns. The analysis is arguably one of the most exciting parts for me because this is when my brain starts to get excited about the possibility of fixing these problems. While that’s exciting, I warn you not to go too far down that route. It’s important to find patterns and still try to maintain as much neutrality as possible. As much as you, or I, may want to, fixing problems will come soon but not yet.
Lessons we’ve learned so far:
- Have your overall goal and next specific 2-3 steps ready to go for employees who are curious about the project.
- Our team does not read meeting agendas. RIP.
- You have to be the biggest advocate for this project. While it may seem remedial to some, a machine grows slow and doesn’t produce good enough work without constant maintenance. This is the maintenance. It’s the dirty job that’s easy to put off but will save you the big bucks in the end. And who doesn’t love saving money?
Well, that’s enough for this update. I like to write my stream of consciousness so hopefully, this makes sense. I’ll be as transparent as possible as we go through this project so that you too can learn from our mistakes and take our successes to implement within your team.
Happy Monday you crazy cats.
Lex