Swimming With Sharks: Customer Ops Unplugged - S2 Episode 6: Kári Thor

In this compelling episode of Swimming with Sharks, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoByte, sits down with Kári Thor Runarsson, the visionary founder of Cliezen, to explore the dynamic world of customer operations and the intersection of marketing, customer success, and technology. Kári shares his rich, globe-trotting journey from Iceland to Iowa and beyond, offering a unique perspective on the importance of understanding and exceeding customer expectations in both B2B and B2C environments.

Episode Summary:

Introduction: Kevin Dean kicks off the episode by introducing Kári Thor Runarsson, delving into his impressive background and his passion for customer experience (CX) and customer success (CS).

Interview Highlights:

1. Kári’s Journey: Kári discusses his diverse upbringing and professional experiences across multiple countries, emphasizing how these have shaped his approach to customer experience and operations.
2. The Role of Marketing in CX: Kári explains the natural alignment between marketing and customer experience, highlighting how his marketing background has informed his approach to customer success.
3. Challenges in Customer Success: Kári identifies the key challenges facing the customer success industry today, particularly the undervaluation of CS roles and the struggle to quantify their impact.
4. The Impact of AI in Customer Ops: Kári shares his insights on the transformative potential of AI, distinguishing between generative AI and other forms of AI, and discussing how technology can help close the experience gap.
5. Bridging Organizational Gaps: Kári offers advice on improving communication and collaboration across departments, emphasizing the importance of data and analytics in making informed, customer-centric decisions.
6. The Future of CX: Kári predicts the evolution of customer success, focusing on the role of technology in automating routine tasks and allowing professionals to focus on more strategic, high-impact activities.

Key Takeaways:

• Customer Centricity: Successful customer operations hinge on understanding and exceeding customer expectations, tailored to different roles and needs within a client organization.
• Technology as an Enabler: While tools and AI can significantly enhance customer experience efforts, they must be accompanied by a genuine commitment to customer-centricity across the organization.
• Realistic Expectations with AI: While AI offers incredible potential, it’s crucial to maintain realistic expectations and understand its current limitations.
• Communication & Collaboration: Effective customer success requires seamless communication across departments, supported by accurate data and analytics to inform decision-making.

Transcript

0:01

Hey there and welcome to Swimming with Sharks, a deep dive into customer ops. I'm your host, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoByte. And I'm thrilled to have you join us on this exciting journey through the dynamic world of customer operations. On this podcast, I am super thrilled to have with me, Kari Thor from Cliezen and Kari, man, you've got, you have an awesome name. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you. It can be hard to live up the expectations when people see that name, but I do my best. Yeah, so I was born in Iceland, live in Reykjavik, Iceland. Actually, sorry. there's a natural reason for the name, but I actually grew up in the States. So I spent My grade school years in Iowa City of all places, spent about five years there. And I'm sort of a citizen of the world. So I've lived in five or six different countries, educated in the UK and got my master's degree in the UK and Italy and Iceland of course, and have started companies and run companies in Iceland, Denmark and Germany. Been around. I love that. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got into this world of customer Yeah, so I've always been sort of very interested in sort of the service quality aspect. I've been in marketing. My master's degree is in marketing management. I've always been in marketing management and marketing as my marketing director in companies, whether that's in telcos or banks or sort of the last. Last 15 years in startups, always been in B2B companies and sort of focusing on the marketing aspect of it. And quickly realizing that whether it's a bank or a telco or startup, it's typically the experience of the customer that is the differentiating factor. There's only so much you can do in banking, for instance. It's the whole experience from that relationship that is. what determines if the client is satisfied or not. So that's sort of always been interested in CX even before it was called CX. yeah, so service quality is also just something that I've always been fixated You know, I think that's awesome. You know, I've talked to lot of folks on the podcast and in my travels, and it seems like a lot of really great, CX folks have some type of marketing touch where they've touched it. why do think that there's this natural, kind of union between marketing and, and Well, I've always approached marketing from the point of view of the client or the customer. I say client because like I said, I've always been in B2B, so I sort of think of them as clients. just always trying to look at it, how does this impact the customer? Whether it's marketing messaging, whether it's a product, whether it's a service, always trying to approach it from the customer's point of view. And like I said, That's even before something called CX was even a thing. So when this discipline of a customer experience evolved, that was just a natural progression from my interest and my field of expertise. Yeah, that's awesome. So as you look out into the world and you've got an interesting view being the founder of a company that focuses in on, you know, delivering great results for clients, because I think that's a little bit about how that name came about. Client's Inn. How did that name come about? Yeah, so when you're starting a company, finding a good name is always a huge challenge. And I've been guilty of finding them horrible ones throughout my career. But Cliezen is sort of, again, because I look at the user as a client. So finding something with that beginning. And The Zen is sort of, you you're finding a balance in the client relationship. So Cliezen is sort of client relationship balance. And then also it's also a ode to the Japanese methodology of Kaizen, which is continuous improvement. And that's sort of the holy trinity of Cliezen is sort of finding that balance in the client relationship and learning from it so that you can small continuous improvements that add up over time and become substantial for the client. I love that tie together, how they all really just blend together. So from your view, looking out and you see a lot of different things, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that are facing customers and clients So I think maybe on two levels. One level is sort of the industry. I think the industry is facing a lot. And then when I say the industry, I mainly talk about like the customer success part of customer experience. And I sort of look at customer experience or CXS as like an umbrella term that includes customer success. But I think one of the challenges is that I don't think that the value and that function provides and the CSMs, the customer success managers, I don't think it's valued by a lot of the budget holders. It's been very evident that many companies are cutting down on CS operations, either downsizing it or outsourcing it, or offshoring it, just like they did with customer service. And I don't think that's maybe the best move, but I think it's largely because I think it's difficult for the CS operations to sort of present the value that they bring to the organization. And the budget holders, they understand dollars and cents. And I think it's challenge to sort of present the added value that these people are providing in a quantifiable measure. I think that's one thing that we need to do better is sort of be able to quantify the actual value that this function is providing. So that's sort of the industry. And then another challenge is sort of, think we also need to look at it and approach CX from maybe a different view, different angle that we have been doing. I think it's often been done from sort of I don't want to say it's going to be controversial, I think often it's approach from sort of a lazy perspective in the sense that we're always looking for quick fixes, we're always looking for quick solutions to problems that, especially again, from a B2B perspective, there's nothing simple about a B2B relationship and approaching things and expecting to be able understand the expectations and the experience of the client using one question, for instance, you know, I'm looking at you, NPS, is just too simplistic. hoping that that one hypothetical catchall question can answer us what these different clients are experiencing, what the different contacts within the clients are experiencing. what the different roles, because each different role within our client company have different expectations towards our product. And we need to understand that. So we need to dig deeper than just sending out periodic catch -all hypothetical questions and expecting that we can gain something from that that will then ultimately result in a better customer experience. Because that's what it's all about. We need to understand what their expectations are so that we can improve our service. to actually elevate those expectations and experience. Yeah, that's awesome. So I think a lot about, you know, we see the expectations of customers, clients, you know, expanding, right? They're becoming super high. But just like you mentioned on the other side, companies are limiting resources, getting rid of people. How do you balance that? Right? We're talking about Zen. How do you balance and handle meeting the high expectations of customers with limited resources. Yeah, and the byproduct of limited resources is that you as a CX professional don't have time to do everything that you know you should be doing, which means that you only attend to the most sort of pressing issues, which then tends to turn the role of customer success, which should be a proactive position, it turns it into a reactive position. So you're always putting out fires, you're always jumping and trying to resolve issues that come up instead of anticipating issues that can come up. So I think one of the things that we can benefit from in using technology, for instance, is that you can automate a lot of the things that need to be done and are actually sort of these repetitive tasks. You can automate a lot of that, and especially with AI and all that. It's always a huge buzzword, but you know, use the right instances and circumstances. can be a huge time saver. And then using also a technology to sort of prioritize and, you know, allow you to focus on the ones on the client relationships that actually need the attention, the human attention the most. Yeah, no, I love that. And so you brought it up and you can't really have any conversation today without GEN .AI becoming part of the conversation. So tell me your perspective. Is it hype? Is it game changing? What is your view on the impact that GEN .AI is going to have on customer success, customer I think the impact is huge. And then it's also a question of, we talking about generative AI, or are talking about prescriptive or predictive or all these different modules that one day will all come together? So I think the expectations are high. I think they're justifiably high. I think that there may be a little bit too expected from the current technology, but definitely within, you know, only a matter of one to two to three years, it'll be completely different. We'll have all these different modules working together to absolutely transform the, only customer experience functions, but every aspect of the company. So yeah, it's definitely, currently there's a lot of things that can be used. Like I said, Automating repetitive tasks, automating just like our software, which sort of automates and make sure that every client is systematically and regularly being reached out to and probed for feedback, analyzing the feedback, and then determining where should the focus be? Where should the CX agent or CSM prioritize their time? 90 % of the client base are satisfied. in every given month, but that changes month by month as well. what's, you know, a client that's fine this month, in two weeks or four weeks, they might be incorporating some issue that we need to address. And if we don't regularly ask for the feedback, we won't know that the needs and the expectations are changing on the client side. Yeah, those are great points. I appreciate that you delineated that there is a difference between AI, Gen .AI and the various other fields of AI. mean, because, know, especially in the customer ops and customer success space, know, AI has been a key tool for many years. But, you know, I think that AI has failed to deliver significant value in this space over time, know, do you think that's going to change? I think like with any breakthrough technology, there's skepticism at first and then after some time and enough people start using it, then sort of expectations precede the actual capabilities of the technology. So I definitely think there will come a time where, like I said, you can automate and you can have the AI. basically do a series of stuff that maybe today are more individual tasks. And again, generative AI is awesome for drafting feedback, sort of responses and drafting all sorts of texts. But when it comes to anything that's more complex, we'll still have to wait a little bit. You just have to have sort of realistic expectations of what it can do and what it can't do. So for what it does do at this current time, I think it does it awesome, but you can't just expect too much at this time. Yeah. So as you're going around talking to companies about how to better the experiences that they're delivering, what do you feel from a change management perspective and a leadership perspective are the big conversations outside of AI that need to be happening in order for us to see big gains I think when it comes to, you because I speak to companies mainly in the sort of the realm of using technology to improve the customer experience is that no matter the tool, whether it's our tool or some other tool, it's just a tool. Like if sort of customer centricity isn't central in the identity of the company, isn't part of the DNA, then it's going to be a challenge. It needs to come from the top, obviously. But just using a tool won't change anything. So it's the actions that follow the tools. And then always the better the tools you have and the better the insights allow you to make better judgment calls and changes to the service and to the experience. But just having a tool in itself, no matter how much AI or technology is behind it, that in itself won't change anything. So you still need to roll up the sleeves and go to work and put in the hours. But the good thing is that it's as simple as understanding what the expectations are and then trying to meet and exceed those expectations. And like I said, those are different between different users, different clients and different customers. Once you understand what the expectations are, you know that can you achieve them? Is that maybe not part of what we do? Then at least me as a client will understand, okay, that's not part of what you do. Then either I'll have realistic expectations towards the service that I am receiving or we'll find somebody else. But typically it's just because companies don't know what the expectations are so they can't meet Yeah, no, that's great. You know, sometimes, and I don't know if maybe you've seen this, you've got your leaders in the customer success space who are, you know, they really oftentimes have a really good pulse on what's going on with the customer. But then there seems to be some time to disconnect from the rest of the business. If you've seen that, what do you think folks in this space can do to help bridge that gap between what's really happening and what the organization thinks and feels and is doing. Well, mean, definitely, I mean, you have this not only in CX or CS, you know, these sort of functions, you have this between marketing and sales. I mean, it's notorious that marketing advertises something that sales isn't aware of and product releases something that marketing doesn't know about. So, you know, it's not just CS related or CX related communication, having, you know, a single single source of information, whether that's CRM system or other system that sort of all the other systems feed into. you know, like we don't claim to be that single source of truth. We are a very good way of understanding the subjective feedback and experience of a client. But we then feed into, you know, the main CRM system or whatever system that company uses. that should then be distributed and accessible by all the other departments. Yeah, I like that a lot. And so how do you think analytics and data play in enhancing that communication between both sides of the fence? Well, if done correctly, then numbers don't lie. But at least sort of, because often customer facing decisions are often made by gut feeling, often made by sort of hunches. And at least if you have a process in place that does measure and you can show, and at least it's something that you can base your gut feeling on, you can benchmark it against. other ideas and if you don't agree with them then at least you can point to data that says otherwise. So I think it's very important if you don't measure it you can't change it or manage it or whatever the saying is but I think that's true. But obviously you need to do with some common sense though. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So as you take a look around, what is the one piece of advice that you would give our The one piece of advice. I mean, again, just sort of because my world is all about customer experience and customer expectations. what we honestly, if you sort of ask me what Clizen does, it's understanding client expectations and measuring the actual experience. And when you have an expectation and the experience here, That's the experience gap that we're basically measuring and then helping companies close that experience gap to meet the expectations and hopefully exceed them. know, from my point of view, obviously, you know, CFO will have a different view on this and everything. I think understanding the expectations of the clients and the different expectations because each role and each person will have a different expectation. and then putting in the work to sort of either group them together so that you have, we see that CMOs have a different expectation towards our product than product owners or CEOs. At least then you can have like a cohort approach to solving those expectations for those individual users or roles. But if you're not measuring it, you're just going by gut feeling and shooting in the dark. That's never a good strategy. Yeah, no, I agree with you. That's great advice. I appreciate that. So let's just kind of, you know, think about tough, just wrap up our conversation here. Those who listen know that I'm a big music fan. So tell me this, what have you been listening to lately? Give me something that I should go and listen to after this show is I would love to. I've never had a favorite musician or band, apart from Michael Jackson, in my younger years. But I'm a huge rock fan, hard rock, and there's a band called Alter Bridge, which is an exceptional band. They're actually based on a band that's having a comeback called Creed. The members of Alter Bridge are made up of all the members of Creed except the singer. So if you like that sort of sound, melodic, hard rock with a different singer, I love both bands, but I'd recommend Alter Bridge to anybody that likes sort of melodic, hard I love that, that would be awesome. so Creed was, I'm probably gonna this wrong, My Sacrifice, was that theirs? Among others, One of their, that's the one that just popped into my head. Okay, so Alter Bridge, what song should I go and listen to first? Give me a song. Blackbird, they have a song called, it's like a ballad. It's about the singer's friend who lost his life. Just a very, very, very heartwarming and powerful ballad with amazing guitar solos. And yeah, I've followed them to seven countries to see them in concerts. And every time they play that live, I get goosebumps and chills. It's just amazing. Definitely. So I'm gonna go jam to that one after we're done here today. Kari, this has been awesome hanging out and chatting with you today. So thank you for joining me and I'm sure that our listeners are gonna get a lot from this show and we'll be talking to you again soon. Awesome, thanks for having me. Thanks, my friend.