Hunter Douglas' B2B and B2C Customer Experience Leadership with Ross Garretson

Hi everybody and welcome to the Chief Customer Officer Human Duck Tape Show, where we talked to leaders about how they unite their companies to achieve customer-driven growth as the Duck Tape of their organization. I'm your host Jean Bliss, so be sure to catch us on iTunes, Stitcher, and at www.customerblist.com/podcast Hi everyone and welcome to the Chief Customer Officer Human Duck Tape Show on the C-suite network. Today Ross Garrison is my guest and Ross is the vice president of customer experience for Hunter Douglas. Hi Ross. Hi good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for being with us. Well thank you very much for inviting me. I love your part of the business world that you represent and just to make sure everybody knows I would imagine they know what Hunter Douglas is but just how many bars for us to make sure everybody's familiar. Sure absolutely. Hunter Douglas is the worldwide leader in custom window treatments, window treatments, and also architectural products. Many people don't realize but we also produce manufacturer and sell architectural products across the globe but our main product category is window coverings and window products. Okay and you're running customer experience for North America. Do you have a counterpart that does it for other parts of the world for for Hunter Douglas? Well the way in which Hunter Douglas is structured with other divisions and companies. In fact we've got about almost 130 companies across the globe. Various functions are you know various customer experience folks operate in some of those companies or divisions. So I wouldn't say that there's just one counterpart but many people serve in that capacity. Got it got it. Well and that's what's always interesting when when we start to do this work is if we're doing it in a country or then expanding it globally hence the duct tape show. How do we figure out how to connect all those dots? Well thank you. Let's start with your background you and I were chatting before we started recording about the way you got into this business. So let's take us back there and then we'll walk through some of your roles. I love to I call it putting the bread crumbs together to kind of tickle out these skill sets that you had have intuitively and innately that you didn't know it would make you such a great CX leader. Sure well sure and so you know back when I got into the industry which dates back into the early 2000s I was part of a family run business that was fabricating and selling custom window treatments and Hunter Douglas was a big part of the portfolio of products that we were selling. I handled many different roles in that business most were centered around general management and running the operation but in 2006 we ultimately sold that business 200 Douglas and so I've been with Hunter Douglas employed in a number of different capacities since then and then those roles varied from customer support to marketing and then ultimately into the role that I am today around centered around customer experience. Okay so so interesting because you have you have deep deep expertise in this vertical around windows window fashions and then became part of Hunter Douglas which is interesting because now you're open up to a broader marketing engine product development etc and you started in marketing was that your was that what you were educated on? It was it was certainly part of my background and the degree and you know my experience but at Hunter Douglas and you know our focus then was really about building out our distribution and the number of dealers that were selling our products various alliance programs to to get them to be more loyal to us and so really felt at the time that my expertise and my time could be spent in just that and a lot of this was also about execution we would have a corporate marketing function that would deliver down programs and promotions and then locally we were really responsible for the day-to-day execution. Got it okay so then you moved into customer support what what prompted that change? Well it customer support at Hunter Douglas is you know I like to think of it as one of the best positions to really learn the business you are dealing with everything from A to Z day in and day out and at the time the division president approached me and asked me to run the customer service function and act as the vice president and my primary responsibilities at the time was really around consistency improving the service design and having at the time we had about 13 or 15 different contact centers how do we operate them in an efficient and effective manner so a lot of groundwork on process redesign and also at the time I was starting to get a lot of experience with technology and bringing in platforms and trying to find new solutions to improve the service and improve the experience that our customers were having with us. So it sounds like you were doing a lot of the important foundational work to create consistency and reliability and also kind of optimize technology I would imagine that there may have been a lot of different databases and ways of orienting things and you know a lot of the work initially is assuring it all up right. Yeah no question and a lot of times those things while subtle getting the way of providing a superior customer experience and so we were the other good part I believe about the customer care foundation is you really get a good idea as to what the customer pain points are. That's right. Well go ahead I'm sorry. Yeah where there are opportunities to really dive in and and try and address those. Yeah I agree I mean we're finding that there are quite a few customer experience leaders who spin off of that role to become the cross-functional cx leader to many degrees like you said it's you're living it you're hearing it and you walk into the work with you know dirt under your fingernails already it's nothing new once you walk into it. Okay so in 2015 not too long ago you changed over to this VP of customer experience role. Tell us what caused that change and that role to come about in 100 Douglas. Sure and so coincidentally at the same time we had our current SVP of marketing move into the new CEO position. Our previous CEO Mark Hopkins retired and Ron Cass came on as CEO and one of his top initiatives from day one was really about how we can improve the overall customer experience and so we had a really quick conversation around the opportunity and I raised my hand and said absolutely I'd be happy to lead the function but at the time it was brand new to 100 Douglas I mean we all knew that we wanted to improve customer experience but what it meant and how we were going to approach it was really a clean slate of paper which is you know a fun part of the job but so we brought together customer facing departments and functional areas outside of our field sales organization under one group and so that was the group that I was asked to lead and that I'm leading here as we talked today. So you're leading part of the function as well as driving business transformation is that correct? That is correct so I have the customer care organization and based on our model that's a B to B group as well as a B to C so we have a consumer facing customer care department as well as dealer. I also lead our learning and development organization and you know that might be a little different in terms of other customer experience professionals but our learning and development organization is incredibly tied to the success our customers have in terms of their knowledge, their ability to add new employees, their ability to sell our products and then of course all the employee internal learning and learning and development. I also have a field service organization and that's a team that's really dedicated to in the field service whether it's through measure installation or service work and then last but not least I have a group that's really dedicated to transformational products or projects and programs and that's really around systems and voice of the customer frameworks and items like that that we know are so important to the customer experience. Okay so really interesting I mean you have kind of what I call a hybrid role where you're running operations but also linking arms with others who are doing other parts of the business to drive you know cross-company change it sounds like. Very much so and a good example is we have a team inside of Hunter Douglas that's focused in on product quality and we know that that's an area that of course will drive customer experience and while that's not under our purview or my purview that is absolutely a group that we work hand in hand with that we're working together on you know big projects and how we can improve together so a lot of what we do day in and day out is cross-functional. Got it makes sense okay so let's level set just for everyone and so you've got a dealer journey and a B2B relationship and then you've got a customer journey and a customer relationship and so in your role you're managing helping to lead the B2B side as well as the B2C side correct. That's correct. Okay so let's get into our first topic we usually talk about which is you're new in this role although not new to the work at all and or not new to the company but what did you do? Let's walk us through that first three months where you fundamentally have to figure out what you're going to do and find a way to communicate it. Yeah challenging for sure right so I think at first the nice thing was is that we had executive support around the customer experience idea and the organization started to talk more about it so I really tried to tap into that to that momentum and start to identify the key projects and it didn't take long for us to have a list longer than we could manage. How did you go about identifying? Yeah because I mean that's that's part of the the opportunity with this role too is to create focus versus shooting fish in a barrel right there's you could always come up with a list of 400 projects. Absolutely and I you know one of our one of my teammates always talks about the whack-a-mole syndrome and we believe I write that word all so we you know we try to stay away from that but you do get brought back every once in a while and say hey we've got to quickly solve this one issue but we've used models along the lines of you know cost benefits and then you know how long is it going to take us to implement and so we've done a lot of different things but you know I know it's also important it goes to the second part of your question around starting to communicate this is we did want some early wins so as we started to identify the key projects we also were thinking about hey what are some early wins that we could deliver back into the business so that folks can start to realize hey you know I understand what these guys are doing now I want to be part of the work and start to get excited about you know what we had in front of us. So let me ask you a question it's interesting because you said key projects did you did you map the journey and understand where the opportunity points were or how did you come about building that list to assess what the you know either the Rome is burning or then we need to do this to get to the next level stuff. So I'd say a little bit of both I mean we have had experience and have done some good journey mapping and we've used that as a way to identify pain points but you know we have a good field sales organization that brings input and feedback back into the company we're very close with our customers and so I would like to say that we probably knew you know with some degree of certainty what the big you know what the big opportunities were. So so you basically it sounds like because this happens in every organization at the beginning of this work you know there's big boulders that have been rolling around for years that have been tackled maybe incrementally one piece at a time but it sounds like you basically said hey here's the big boulders we know about let's tackle these and then go to something else. That kind of approach. Yeah that was our approach and I'll be honest too I mean some of those big boulders we couldn't move alone or require you know longer more funding longer time and so those are being addressed one way or another but absolutely if we saw something as an impediment or a big issue that maybe has been around for some time that's definitely on the list. So did you did you tackle both B2B and B2C at the same time or what was your approach. Well I would say that we probably spent the majority of our time on the B2B side because that's the way we go to market and so we're really focused in on our dealers having a great experience with us and has them you know as long as they're happy with 100 Douglas they're going to position it they're going to sell more of our products. So I would say we spend most of the time with them but like a lot of manufacturers today you can't avoid the consumer experience it's becoming more and more important to us and the dealers realize that too so I think that there's a partnership now maybe a little bit more of a willingness for us to intercede as necessary. Yeah you're not taking the customer you're helping to enable a more robust relationship right I think that fear factor is being you know hopefully going away more than it was in the past. Absolutely and I think transparency and systems are helping us do that you know a good example is we're starting to open up portals and systems so that as consumers call and interact with us the dealers that are selling them the product can have visibility and understand what's going on so that transparency is a big part of it. So let me ask you a question what tactics did you use you know we like to get tactical here because it's really about learning your approach your methodology. The big boulders were just essentially you had been in the business and kind of figured out what they were. Did you do any engaging with the dealers for for our friends and be to be out there who have models like yours to validate the big boulders or how did you decide how to which ones to move forward on. Yeah so we absolutely we've had dealer councils where we bring in customers and start to vet our ideas and our thoughts around it and use that as a sounding board. We've also done a lot more in the way of customer feedback and forums and and ways to collect you know the voice of the customer if you will if you will in an unatrusive way so you know we're trying to do as much listening as we possibly can bounce it off of our original thoughts and sometimes the projects line up and I'll be honest sometimes they don't we just know that for one reason or another we need to move forward with you know what we have on our list. Okay hey Ross did you did you have a need to kind of package your CX journey for the organization and for that dealer customer. Yes I think in some regards we have I mean we've had to be able to paint a road map or a picture around how we're going to transform certain items. A good example is the way our service department is structured and designed I think you know there were some growing frustrations there and some opportunities for improvement and packaging that in as hey this is an idea we have on redesigning the service structure these are some ideas that we're going to you know start to test if you will and package up and then ultimately use it as a way to sell it through to the customers when we are ready for the change so we've done some of that and you know I would say there's probably room for more if you will. Got it okay so let's go to the in the first three months were there I'm scrambling a little because I want to make sure I'm asking you all my important questions. Within those first three months kind of what were your indicators to that you had inside of yourself or communicating to make sure you knew or felt you were making progress what did you want to get done in those first three to six months wow well I know I'm hard I make it hard. If I reflect back on it I think you know one of my immediate areas of focus truthfully was building a team and building a organization that I thought could deliver on the promises that we were making along the lines of you know improving the customer experience so immediately out of the shoot my focus was on talent talent development who did I have on my team how were we structured and as you said earlier and we've talked about before a lot of these customer experience groups and departments are different so that was a focus for me in the first three months as we're you know what are they going to be some of the metrics that we look at what are going to be the ways that we could gauge success and you know because I've got different functional areas there's different metrics within each functional area but at the end of the day it comes down to increasing sales customer loyalty things of that nature so we were spending a lot of time also on identifying what are the key metrics great well and you know I love that you you spoke of outcome metrics because often people will initially fixate on survey metrics which are an indicator but the the real outcome of the experience is the customer voting with their feet and I would imagine there must have been some interesting dealer metrics as well around dealers who come back and keep buying from you because that's you know that drives that drives certainly your B2C metric hey I'd love to know how you structured your team probably if we focus on your transformation side that may be of real interest for folks hmm sure well on the transformation side we brought on a great leader who's been in the customer experience space for some time and her focus really out of the shoot was a couple key projects but as we started to develop and and move you know beyond just the the big quick wins we realized that we needed some additional support so we have looked at communication analysts of course reporting and VOC analysts we know that that's a critical role and we're also getting a lot more into UX design there was a lot there was a time in which that was a a function that would be outsourced and we'll be struggled with it truthfully because we feel that our business is unique as I'm sure everyone does and so knowing the subtleties around that and being able to develop a good user experience when you're implementing digital tools is something that we want to bring in house so that's part of that whole transformation team as well um and truthfully it's still growing I mean we're still trying to identify the pieces of the puzzle and the folks that we need on that team to help well and you know I'm glad you brought that up because I think that the the UX design and the process of uniting multiple parts of the organization to rethink you know how you're going to help customers achieve their goals which is is really at the end of the day what this work is about it it challenges so much of the business and it's it's not a natural skill set we have you know we we know we need to have listening um we know we need to have communication we have a sense of metrics and we can hobble our way to them but UX is a skill set that people need to be trained on and developed on and so did you hire that from the outside or did that come with the transformation cx person did you hire her from the outside we did yes we did hire from the outside and um had had good experience in in well-known businesses doing some of this and we knew that there would be a ramp up period and a ramp up time for that individual to start to get acclimated with our world but we just felt strongly that it was a talent and a capacity that we wanted to have inside and we knew that it wasn't going to be you know one project and we move on this is going to be something that's important to us for years to come great well yeah and I you know I think it's such a intriguing part of the the cx work and certainly a competency that has to be developed let me ask you this other question that's always um I think a fundamental part of success in your role which is having the rest of the c-suite sit at the table with you as partners and not seeing them as your customer like oh great go work on that and report back but rather you know knowing that they have skin in the game that you're really facilitating things that you all need to work on together and coming together with one voice of how you communicate um that's a big mouthful I just gave you but tell us how you united that c-suite to be a team with you it is a mouthful I know I'm sorry but just talk about uniting the c-suite I'm a blabber mouth I'm sorry now it's challenging and I think that um you know it certainly doesn't hurt to find out what's important to them right and so what's on what's top of mind and what's important and deliver on that that certainly I think sets the stage and then starts to you know go back to those early quick wins um but I think it was really important to understand you know from their standpoint what's important to move the needle what's important to um you know to be able to sit back and say we're improving the customer experience confidently and understanding the you know the critical three if you will in the projects I mean one of our you know and I can remember our CEO when he first got into the role and we started this customer experience journey right then and there there was a particular project around developing and delivering a better experience via a dealer portal for our customers and we we grasp onto it and it's a project that we're still working on today and it's a big part of what my team is doing so I think you know understanding what their needs are understanding where they see there's opportunities and then trying to deliver on that it's a big part of it yeah and you know what you said was is important because often you can talk this is customer experience it and it sounds like blah blah blah but I'm very technical with my sorry see I just noted at you I told you I would um but I love that you you know we what we find is as you're doing with the dealer portal is find an example of a project that you can then live out for them of this is the work this is what CX is yes yes and I think you know having some measurable impact right and some feedback from the field that this is helping us that this is allowing us to improve this is allowing us to sell more product I mean that make it easier on our customers I mean that's that's what it's all about so what we're what we're what we're some of the success metrics around the dealer portal for example that you built out and we're able to market back I call it marketing hope by the way yeah well I guess I I should clarify that the launch of this portal is actually coming next next next year it's gonna be early yeah we're gonna have an unveil in February and and roll it out surely there after so but we're metrics are top of mind of course and we're looking at you know first and foremost how do you make it easier for a customer to do business with Hunter Douglas and so we are looking at of course adoption metrics but we're also looking at you know errors that our customers perhaps make I mean we we live in a custom product world and it's very complicated and so how you can simplify and make it easier to order make it easier to interact with us is a big part of it so customer mistakes and then also we want to see more and more customers become more loyal to us and by that I mean give us you know more market share and be able to have more customers that are highly aligned with us and that come back year after year wanting to sell Hunter Douglas product so it's a long-winded question or long-winded answer to your question but it's something that we're constantly looking at is what those metrics will be and hopefully this time next year I can report back great well and yeah I'm just trying to get some context because I think it's really helpful for people to understand but the the fact that you're building it and are building with it with the dealers I you know again proves out what the what the approach is are you are you for example in taking a project like this dealer portal are you building a methodology that then people can rely on as okay next time we do another one will follow these same steps because I think peace of mind in the approach is also one of the things we need to get over as we kind of get in people stuff right yeah for sure for sure we're trying to do that and I can't say that you know where it's you know we're going to be a hundred percent successful with it but absolutely and I think any time you go through these you learn what works what doesn't work what you would have done differently but it's an exciting project because it's touching all areas of the business and we really view it as a transformational way in which the customers will interact with us for years to come so pretty exciting stuff what else about uniting the C-suite were there any tactics that you that you did to get them all in the same page you know what we find sometimes is every silo leader comes in with their version of what success is but you really need to say it's this is how we need to look at success across the total customer journey did how did you unite them from that standpoint well I think a lot of it was you know constant communication on what's important to us what we're working on I think bringing in some feedback from the customers directly always helps and what's nice is our management team our executive suite they're constantly a lot of them talking to customers interacting with them we have councils as I said in in our headquarters so they get a chance to hear more about it so it's you know it's it's an evolution in terms of how we're trying to get them to rally around this stuff but you know some of it comes natural too I mean some of it is that our CEO himself is saying I want to measure product quality more because I know it's a driver of of of dealer experience or customer experience so you know some of it comes naturally and you know other parts I think we're still working on okay Ross can you walk us through a couple places where you've improved the experience as a result of your your work over the last I love LinkedIn because it it dates everything two years ten months and three hours no it doesn't have to be two years and ten months sure well I mean there's been a lot as I reflect back on it I mean some of it has been I would start with our people right and I think that bringing on leaders and fine-tuning the leadership that runs the customer experience group at Hunter Douglas has been the number one success I think it it starts there it ends there it's all about the folks that you have leading the team and I've spent personally a lot of my time doing that is you know identifying who we need and then structuring the department and the functional areas in such a way that we can be successful but once you go past that there's a couple areas that I think on the mind number one is this whole idea around service design and how do you structure what used to be very decentralized groups when it comes to customer care around one you know a one cohesive group that's working together they can improve the day-to-day metrics that can improve the communication that we have with the customers we've just implemented a whole new way of routing interactions and and I think for all the customer care professionals out there they know of some of the more modern day tactics around skills-based routing and things of that so we're we're just doing that and I think that's going to be successful another area that comes to mind are some of the tools and systems that we've implemented we've introduced new communities and forums in particular for one of our product groups we we are really excited around the power view platform which is the connected products for the connected home and that's something that we're really yeah we're doing a lot more of it's really exciting anyway to improve the communication and sort of the transparency around that product the launch and the management of it we set up communities and forums for our customers to interact not only with one another but with some of our back office engineers that's been a huge success and we've heard great things and then then last but not least I guess I would just end on there's been some other projects where we've developed tools apps systems where we're collecting better feedback around the product experience and not only is that helping our quality folks understand what's going on in the field but it's allowing us to send information back into the product engineers and the product groups so a lot around feedback voice to the customer and data collection if you will well and here's what I love about what you just said is the that this is also embedding as you mentioned I have to put it into a wrapper this is what I do I'm very weird this way but you know service design right so you're you're taking what was decentralized creating a new methodology around it and in doing so with your projects creating clarity for the organization I think that so much of these six groups sometimes there's fear around them that you're going to get in the way or change things rather than enable but what you're what you're showing is how you're enabling the communities and the forums are really really interesting because now you're also involving a lot of the other silos in those those communications with customers that wouldn't have that is that right oh very much so yeah you hit the nail in the head and I think it's been eye opening for them but also the customers love it because they they're able to tap into resources that they otherwise did not have so it's it's been very interesting I have a question I was just at a big at ccw at contact center week this week and one of the questions was around social service and are you addressing it through the communities and forums you know being agile and responsive and you know channelism in the right way but it's kind of like knowing and scraping where the customers talking so you know what what to hear from them yes and no you know there's some degree of that that we are doing there's some that are our marketing team is addressing but social is definitely something that we're continuing to monitor and watch and understand and certainly there are platforms and areas that that we find you know more beneficial than others and we're tapping into those but you know you also sort of hit on that whole omnichannel thing and that's becoming a bigger deal for us where you know our whole you know it used to be 10 years ago was all phone and then it moved the email and boy now we're doing everything you know we're testing video chat and we're doing sms so it's it's transformed that whole service world well yeah and I mean customers are tweeting and facebooking and everything else about problems they're having so are you embedding that into your service recovery model we are yes I think every company nowadays realizes that they have to have some approach to it it's very interesting right it really is it really is and I don't know if anyone has figured it out completely because it's changing so rapidly and every time you turn around there's a new channel or a new way for a customer to talk to you but absolutely it's something that we're keeping an eye out for and it is part of our recovery process for sure so I have a question for you because what you've really built out are some robust listening processes you know the product feedback is understanding what's happening with the product the communities and forums the other listening how do you package that back up for the organization to do what I call telling the story of customers lives yeah good question I you know some of it varies from you know routine or daily weekly reviews of the information and the content the other part is you know I think that a lot of our folks especially at the management level benefit from a higher level dashboard indicator type system where they can understand are we getting better are we getting worse and where are the opportunities you know I talked a little bit about the product feedback something that we're looking at now is a metric around first time right and and that's important to us you know how often does the product get what are shipped and installed and is 100% perfect you know throughout that journey and so monitoring and managing metrics like that are important but we deliver it back into the business as a dashboard or you know some way some visual indicator where people can see how we're doing are you are you doing anything around packaging it by stage of the journey we have not gotten well I shouldn't say that we we do look at it you know in terms of installation we do look at it at times of ordering so there are some metrics at different stages of it but I can't say that we're packaging it up in such a way where it's you know it's exact in terms of here's every step of the journey and here's how we're doing I think that's probably an area of opportunity yeah I ask because we that's what we find is if you if you're broken record about the journey stages and then you use it as a framework for decision making as well as packaging up the storytelling it all starts to click after while and you'll find people start using those stages as part of their whole lexicon as well so I'm always curious where people are from that standpoint hey Ross let's go to our last question which is you know always one of our favorites and this is the pay it forward question for others out there thinking about the role or starting maybe or maybe they just hit a spot where they need a little sustenance answer this question for us Ross in your role what do you know now that you wish you do then point how challenging this is right yes sir I say that I'm five foot because the Rock always kept falling on me well you know I think that a big part of it that maybe I underestimated and I think a lot of folks do is is how much cross functional work you really need to be successful and there's no question that managing relationships and identifying stakeholders who are who want to be part of the journey and opportunities that maybe aren't directly in front of you is something that's really really important and I think if I could go back I probably could have saved myself six months or a year knowing some of that going in if you will and then again the other part of it that I think that we go back to is is the whole talent development having individuals on your team who have done some of this before who could teach us a thing or two I think is critical and important it sort of accelerates the initiatives by having those folks on your team it really does I mean and there's true value in bringing someone with the skills from the outside but then blending them with someone like yourself who knows the culture and the people right very much so yes I couldn't agree more anything else you want to leave our folks with some words of wisdom or sustenance well I you know I think I would just reiterate what a lot of folks are saying around how important customer experience is I mean every time I go through my day-to-day life and interact with companies or products I can't help but think about how important this customer experience space is and it's exciting to see companies and businesses investing into it but I just think it's going to become more and more of the battlefield and I hate to sort of use the same analogies but really I think that ultimately it's going to come down to your service and the experience you have with companies it'll keep you coming back and buying more much much more so than price ever was I think so it's exciting it's an exciting time yeah it really is and thank you for that and you know I think anytime people walk into your house to install something you're leaving them a memory one way or the other and you've got an opportunity to really leave an interesting memory that they want to have again right absolutely absolutely well Ross thanks so much for being my guest I'm so glad that we were able to have this chat I know people will really enjoy the conversation and if there's some visuals that you want to share of some of the work that would be terrific too we'll get it on the show notes and thanks everybody out there for continuing to listen remember you can go to customer bliss dot com backslash or slash podcast and sign up to get this into your email box let us know if you are a cco or a cxo and want to be on the show and until then keep pushing that rock up the hill thanks everybody thank you for listening to this episode of the human duct tape show you can get our show notes our links and any tools we talked about 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