Episode released on: 15. May 2023
Cracking the Code to B2B Customer Experience with Shaun McAndrew – THE CX GOALKEEPER – Transformation, Customer Experience, and Leadership Goals
The CX Goalkeeper had the great opportunity to interview Shaun McAndrew
LinkedIn Headline: Vice President | Helping P&L owners create complete offers and harden services │ Keynote Speaker │ Coach
Highlights:
00:00 Game Start
00:34 Shaun’s Introduction
02:50 Shaun’s Value
03:51 B2B satisfaction shocking satisfaction scores
06:49 Customer Centricity in B2B
09:04 Service Design
12:44 Customer Needs
16:11 Streamlining Processes
20:05 Enhancing Service Quality
22:38 Creating an offering journey
24:46 Best Practices
26:43 Breaking Silos
29:45 Learnings
31:36 The Future
32:49 Book Suggestion
33:57 Contact Details
34:15 Golden Nugget
and much more
Shaun’s Contact Details:
- Shaun at theservicedesigngroup.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunmcandrew/
Her book suggestion:
- Digital Hesitation by J.B. Wood and Thomas Lah
Shaun’s Golden Nuggets:
- My personal philosophy is: Think Forward, Choose Excellence. Be able to think forward, think through the options, think through what are the consequences of all those options, and then choose, actively choose what is the best one for everyone.
Think Forward, Choose Excellence – Shaun McAndrew on the CX Goalkeeper Podcast
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What did we discuss?
Gregorio Uglioni
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the CX goalkeeper podcast your host, Greg will have smart discussions with friends, experts and thought leaders on customer experience transformation and leadership. Please follow this podcast on your preferred platform. I am sure you will enjoy the next episode with the guest I selected for you.
Ladies and gentleman tonight. It’s really a big pleasure because I’ve Shaun McAndrew together with me, I Shawn, how are you?
Shaun McAndrew
Hi, Greg, great to be with you today.
Gregorio Uglioni
Thank you very much for taking time from your busy calendar. And coming to my show to discuss about b2b in customer experience. I think it’s a really important topic that it’s not so much discussed from from people in the different communities, and therefore I really appreciate you taking the time. But as usual, also for the audience. They know that before we deep dive in this topic, we would learn about something something about you. And therefore Shaun, could you please introduce yourself?
Shaun McAndrew
Thank you so much, Greg. My name is Shaun McAndrew, I am the Vice President of Business Development for the service design group. So I talk all things service design and service design approach. I got into this I’m actually a Navy veteran, I had a career in the Navy first was a helicopter pilot. And then when I left the Navy in 2020, I took some time, we moved from Idaho to North Carolina, here in the United States, I wanted warmth, that was number one option. And then I took some downtime, and I’ll say fell into learning about this company and started working with them. And I’ll say, fate be safe be what it is. That was over two years ago. And I have absolutely fallen in love with I’ll say the service design approach, as well as a service dominant mindset. And I really do think it is the way of the future. What I love about the company, is we’re always looking for a win win win. And that ends up falling in line with my personal values and my purpose. Why? Because I’d like to leave the world a little better than when I found it. And we’re looking to make sure as a company, how technology integrates and creates customer outcomes that are very viable for the customer, to create better business, great, generate better revenues. And so you end up with a win win win, and doing integrity and bringing all of that together in a positive way. So those are I’ll say, That’s a quick introduction on me, to let people know, at least where my starting point is.
Gregorio Uglioni
And you prepare to very well, because you already answered my second question about the your, your personal values, but I think it flew it flew very well. And therefore, if you want to add something about your personal value that you have, then please please feel free to do that now.
Shaun McAndrew
Yeah, well, Greg, thanks for that kind compliment. I really do appreciate it. One of the things I’ll say that I take away from the Navy is the value of integrity. And I’ll say helping people. And that is truly where I enjoy what we do, because it really is about helping people. And not just Yes, we all do want to make money, there is the value for that, I get that. But actually in the end, it’s really about helping people helping businesses thrive. And that’s what I truly enjoy, about the company, about the business and who I get to meet and talk with.
Gregorio Uglioni
And I would say let’s give me this opportunity to say thank you for all the services that you provide your provided in your past career. Thank you very much. I think it’s not so easy. But you I’m sure you did a great job. But now let’s really deep dive in understanding better customer experience in the b2b world. This is the topic we would like to discuss and I saw one of your posts in LinkedIn, please do your audience. Follow Shawn because she’s sharing really great, great insights. And on one of that, and I’m reading that you stated only 22% of the b2b buyers are very satisfied with their current service provider. And 65% of the b2b buyers are open to switch service providers. What does it mean?
Shaun McAndrew
Now I love this and I loved finding this statistic. It was from HubSpot, where they surveyed 1000 b2b buyers, about their suppliers, and I was really shocked at the statistics. For me, the biggest thing it says is there’s a huge opportunity For b2b suppliers, that if they can do the value proposition, which includes the customer experience as part of the offer, they can outrun their competition very easily. And so I see this as a huge opportunity. And I’ll say, this is where I look at CX CX is not just a business function. Yes, it is a business function like marketing, like sales. But it actually it’s also a mindset. And it is a mindset in the the customer outcomes, not the customer, it’s him or herself, because it’s b2b. So it’s a business, but the customer outcomes, what your customers business needs to do to do better, you do better than they do.
Gregorio Uglioni
It’s your are stating already a lot of great pills inside. Let’s go step, step, step by step. It’s only a podcast, not a masterclass.
Shaun McAndrew
Well, here’s the thing is, when you can tell I, I really enjoy this I am passionate about I know you are passionate about it, you look at how long you have been doing this, and I love how much you give your audience, you know, and be able to make them and participate with you in this experience. That’s why I’ve enjoyed these past two years they’ve flown by. Because, again, I see this win win win, I see where companies could do better. And, but there are obstacles you’re right. Because if there weren’t obstacles, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Gregorio Uglioni
That’s true. And unpacking the first thing that he that you shared, we are in the b2b world, in the b2c world, we are often speaking about customer lifetime value. And this is something relevant also in the b2b world. And if it comes to my mind is thinking about how much value is is a customer in the b2c world, compared to a b2b world. This, this is a big, big amount of money that could be together with a customer taking this decision after a contract renewal two years, three years, five years to renew the contract, it can be good to have a massive impact on the complete business, and how are you working with your customer in relation to this important topic?
Shaun McAndrew
One of the things I’ll say is that the concept of customer centricity and customer outcomes is part and parcel to this service design approach that we’re talking about. And I will say the customer experience, the mindset as well as the requirements are built into this approach. So in a b2b world, what we start to focus on is, what are the jobs to be done, that you as the provider, do better than they do? And then how do you put I’ll say, a complete offer together. So whatever combination of product service, hardware software, IoT, AI, machine learning, data science all together, so that the offer itself creates a business outcome for your target client, for your target customer, that actually improves their business. And you must prove it. So this is where the data science the digitalization must go hand in hand, and are normally part of this kind of complete offer, as well as part of the customer experience. Because if you can prove to your customers that you’re improving their results, you almost guarantee they have a good customer experience.
Gregorio Uglioni
Yes, I think that’s that’s extremely, extremely important. And we see also beyond you and nice information, service design, and let’s talk about service design. From from your point of view, could you please share the framework around the service design that you are offering to your customers?
Shaun McAndrew
Oh, okay. The framework of service design, I’ll say, we have framework and we have tools. All right, but it I’ll say it starts with our mindset. And what we believe is businesses need to create these complete offers, and or harden their services at in order to create customer outcomes. So that are viable. So all of our tools, which will start from why it is important for, I’ll say, the leadership team, or even just the team creating these offers to understand why they’re going in this direction. Too often, and I’ll start with this framework, people have a product first mindset. So I call it product dominant mindset. Which means all the services follow. After the product, the features, everything is done. For us, they actually have to go hand in hand. And that is actually what ends up creating the full customer experience because everything was done together. In one, I don’t want to say one step, but in one process, so that the offer is cohesive? Well, the starting point is, is getting everybody on board to believe that. So we actually have a workshop that we take people through, and they individually figure out through our workshop, why going towards a more service dominant mindset, makes sense for them kind of personally, as a consumer, but also for their business, as a b2b. So it takes them through an evolution where they discovered themselves and I think it’s a very fascinating, simple workshop, we do it in two to four hours. It can be virtual, we do it live. But that’s the starting point. Because if you don’t have the decision makers and the resources and the support to do this, it becomes very, very hard to actually implement. And I think that’s where a lot of b2b CX organizations find their frustration. There isn’t the mindset across the entire company, that everybody is part of the offer, therefore, part of the customer experience. And without that, every CX department will struggle until there’s that larger mindset and the support from on high and other teams. And that’s why we created the workshop, because I honestly believe that is the first step is recognizing why do you even want to go down this path. So I’ll say that’s that’s the start. That’s that’s the start of the service design approach and, and framework.
Gregorio Uglioni
And they totally make make sense, because at the end, we are in business, and we need to understand that businesses can select US can pick our products, our services, but they want what they want at the end is working products, working services, and everything around that. And therefore it’s important to build to build the relationship with with these with these customers. Absolutely true. And and based on that, I know that you are also sharing several points, and sorry for jumping from one topic to the other. But let’s pick some some interesting stuff, we now understand why. And one one topic that you are often sharing in service design is understanding customer needs. Could you please elaborate a bit on that?
Shaun McAndrew
Now that is wonderful. customer needs, and I will say the customer jobs to be done. I want to put out what exactly we think of as a service as a definition because that will help explain why we’re putting it out there and and its importance. So our definition of a service is an in market offering, that affirm performs a jobs to be done or a specific outcome on behalf of the customer at a level of value or efficiency or expertise that the customer cannot attain on their own. So unpacking that a little more is if you do not know the jobs to be done, or the business outcomes that you do better than your customer. You cannot offer them something of high value. That is the challenge with one of our clients that we did, they were it was a biotech company that one of their ingredients was essential to biofuels to make the biofuel and they sold it by the kilogram. So it was very much a commodity. They wanted to do something with data science. They brought us in and over time what We help them create was the outcome of maximum yield for per biomass, and the data science, the measurement, the instrumentation, the process engineering, the data engineering that is needed. So they’re no longer selling, you know, something by the kilogram, they are now actually selling a specific yield, maximum yield. So they know the quality of the biomass coming in, they have the proper dosing, so it’s not too much, not too little. And then they prove they’ve maximized the yield. That’s an example of how you, and the whole thing with the experience is, now instead of the relationship being a price based relationship, it’s no, how do we make this better for each other? And how do we prove it, so you have a better customer experience, because everything was about the customer outcome, and getting the right business result. So you’ve taken all of those things into account upfront.
Gregorio Uglioni
I think that’s, that’s incredible, because you are failing out to create or maximize the value that is creating throughout the relationship. And basically, this is the starting point of every business connection, to maximize the value and you share that several times. You need to do that in better than others. Because if you’re not doing that better than you can be exchanged, or the company can can do it by themselves. I think what you’re reiterating, and I would like to double click on is streamline processes beyond beyond service, you are always saying it’s not only about the thing, the product and so on, but it’s much more, could you please elaborate on that?
Shaun McAndrew
Alright, so I keep saying a complete offer. You know, and that is something that I’ll say, especially as we get more and more complex offerings, so the products themselves are more complex. And it gets harder and harder for a company to use or that that b2b customer use, there’s onboarding, there’s training, there’s all these other things that are required to get the maximum use out of whatever was developed. So companies built, they’ll create the product, and all the fit all the features all the widgets, and they’ll sell it. And then the customers are like, cool, how do we use it, and then they’re like, and then there’s this six month delay of additional services that have to come in. Some of those, again, are rushed, are added on are individualized. And we have this ad hoc kind of feeling to everything. And then everything has been expanded. And nobody can take track or knows exactly what the real offer is. So there’s this, this frustration of how do I manage all of this, especially for service managers, or services managers, they’re doing this. So a complete offer, you start with the product and the service team together, and everybody else who has a voice of the customer. So your marketing side, your sales side, your tech support, customer support, they get a seat at the table. Now you don’t you have representation, you don’t bring everybody in the room, you’ll never get anything done. But the focus is to integrate the combination of product hardware, software, tech, AI, machine learning, IoT, data analytics, and services needed to align to the customer outcomes, those business outcomes that you improve that you deliver at a level of expertise higher, it is a single value proposition in one offer. That is what companies need to come together and bring all those wishes to the customer in the one section, so that those jobs to be done are really understood. Because there’s not when you’re selling b2b, there’s not a single target persona. You’re selling to a business, which is a group of people. So you have to focus on the jobs to be done not on single personas. And I’ll say that’s something that is a little bit nuanced. Between b2c versus b2b CX is the focus on the customer outcomes and the jobs to be done. Are the personas that need to be addressed.
Gregorio Uglioni
At the end, as you’re saying, on the other side, you have several stakeholders that you need to manage you need to discuss, I was working with a company, and the marketing team already sold in a b2b, worth a product. And they came back to the IT department and they asked for this product and the IT department told them, yes, we need two years to build it. And they said, Oh, the product need to be there in six months. And then it starts exactly what you’re saying that they are not not aligned. And it’s not it’s not working properly. And I think this is and also extremely important, speaking about quality, and I know that you are often speaking about enhancing service quality, could you please share your thoughts on this topic?
Shaun McAndrew
With the service quality, I’ll say everybody wants to develop to develop good quality, you know, and deliver good quality. To me, it’s about knowing what you are going to deliver what you have to deliver, and therefore build, specifically what you should be delivering, which then ensures the quality that you need. I love your example, because we’ve heard that either marketing or sales, sell something and then everybody else is left to do it, which is why they need to be part of this team. Because they need to understand the offer as much as the product team, because they need to know what they’re selling. And vice versa. So you can deliver the quality. And that’s why designing it ahead of time. And not just going to, you know, whatever the customer needs, and being able to say no, this is what you know, based on what you have said and what the outcomes you want. This is what we can deliver, that ends up ensuring a much higher quality. And you don’t have those gaps that you talk about, well, we need, you know, we need two to three timeout times the amount of time to deliver what you said you could and then everybody ends up upset. So, again, some forethought ends up getting a lot higher quality. And that’s what I would say is a you know why I think what services they ended up getting last minute, therefore the services don’t feel as good as they should be.
Gregorio Uglioni
No clear. I think that’s extremely important. Because you mentioned earlier, it’s the product or service must be better than others. And therefore you need you need to work on that and and invest time on that. And I think in the b2b world, it’s also important to invest time creating an offer journey, I think that’s the word that you use in in your videos. I think this is something really interesting. Could you please also share your your your ideas on that.
Shaun McAndrew
The idea that of the offer journey, I will say there’s there’s the the customer experience, the customer journey, but then there’s the business function and the business journey. And they have to be one, they have to be on a single document single sheet, being able to see who supports what, at what time. And so it really is about business model design, and you’re designing the experience for both the business and the customer at the same time. Therefore, they are mutually supportive. And you end up with again, a cohesive offer, that everyone in the business understands they understand the role of what they are delivering. Therefore, with that understanding the customer feels supported, because everything is already understood. Next steps, they’re already known. So the handoffs and those gaps that we have I have seen when we’ve when we’ve talked with other companies, where things fall through the cracks, the cracks have already been identified in bridges made ahead of time. So that’s, I would say where the offer map is different than a journey map, because it’s two sided. And I just see that, that’s the that’s the requirement is is you don’t need just the customer side. You also need the business side, and they have to be mutually supportive.
Gregorio Uglioni
Yes, because he needs to build up it’s B to B to C or to somewhere else and therefore you need to create all this, this flow that that it’s working properly and smoothly to create value and At the end of the of the of the complete chain, what we know and what we see. And what we’re feeling is you’re passionate about this topic and your experience about this topic. And I’m sure that your this add some best practices that that you could share, but perhaps also some mistakes that you did in the past. Let’s start with with best practices. Could you share from your point of view, what are the best practices that you often use, or you see, this is something really important in customer experience in the b2b world,
Shaun McAndrew
the biggest thing is that cross functional team, I have mentioned it before. But breaking down the silos is also an essential secret sauce that we have, and requiring there to be a p&l owner to take the lead. So those two elements together, are really essential. And we require that when we work with people that we simply say, these are the requirements, and they do follow along. But if a company were to do it on their own, they really need that p&l owner to bring a cross functional team together, to become advocates to really do the ideation to talk through the process of what is going to be offered, what are all the different jobs to be done. Because if they don’t, something’s going to be a gap. And that’s why with CX, even with the best of intentions, somebody always knows something else. That’s not getting put on the table, if you don’t have those other job functions, you know, together with you.
Gregorio Uglioni
And I think what you’re saying it’s really interesting, it’s putting all the relevant people together, you share those throughout the discussion, one thing is getting older, and people are at one table, the first thing that you mentioned that I think is key is to explain why we are doing that. And why is so important. Perhaps, do you have also other learnings from finding ways to break these silos and bring people together?
Shaun McAndrew
You know, you need an advocate, somebody needs to be an advocate, and has to be willing to also do all the branches. Or someone has to be frustrated enough to say, Okay, we have cool innovation, and we’re tired of Acts, being commoditized not seeing the value, giving our services away for free, you know, something like that, or there’s way too many services, we have to reduce the portfolio, there has to be something that is a frustration that is driving that is recognized in somebody has to to be want to step up and take action. I’ll say one of the biggest obstacles is the fact that everybody gets comfortable in their job, and everybody’s job is full. So to do this work, you’re actually asking people to take time out of their normal busy day, and do something different. That’s actually not necessarily easy, not necessarily intuitive, and work together in ways that they’re, they’re not used to. That’s change. Nobody really likes change, you know, so this is one of the reasons why we end up getting brought in, is because we can galvanize change, you know, and make it so that there’s less prep, you know, at least starting to work with us. And it makes it easier for a company to at least get started. Because they don’t have. The other thing we realize with it is they, you can’t stop doing what you’re doing. Now. Take the time it needs to create a new offer, because then you won’t be in business because you won’t have been sold anything. So it has to be a gradual process. And it can’t be something that you just drop on a company and actually expect it to take over. It has to evolve. And people will probably, you know, the objections are, well, they don’t want to work with outside sources. They’ll say they don’t have the money. I look at it this way in my own budget. If there’s something that I really really want, I will find the money. I think businesses do the same. So if it’s not enough of a pain point to not find the money you know, that’s that’s a business decision itself too.
Gregorio Uglioni
But then you can say let’s meet let’s meet in six months again, when it’s the platform is really burning. And exactly that’s the important thing what you are saying experts like you also give the feelings And the security to the teams to these people that you can guide them through this change, because change is difficult. And the business is perhaps focused on their daily activities and not on changing everything. And therefore, it totally makes sense. Perhaps moving to one of the last question that I would like to ask you, mistakes are opportunities to learn and to grow. And perhaps throughout the journeys with your customers, and what you lead with with your customer. You said the next time I would to this or that in a different way, would you please share some one of the latest learning that you gained,
Shaun McAndrew
I’ll say our biggest learning is is making sure you keep the executive team informed of the progress and that they continue to see the value of the work, the work to create complete offers and extremely good customer experience. Without that, that leadership buy in and making sure they understand the value that is being brought with the change, the change will the chain, the positive change will stop, you know, because they will not allocate the resources that are needed to actually do it, they won’t make the decisions to make to actually enact the changes that are real realistically possible. So making sure that you that, you know, the senior leadership, you know, not just as briefed, but actually continues to buy in on the process is essential.
Gregorio Uglioni
And this is hard work. It’s hard work. Yes. Jumping from from your learnings from the past into the future, it’s now it’s in 10 years time from now we are back on the CX goalkeeper podcast, and we are discussing about customer experience. What’s the topic?
Shaun McAndrew
I would say that the topic is is Look how far we’ve come in with a service dominant mindset. Those that were early to adopt, look at how much they have been thriving. Look how much better our economy is, because we’re coming from more a place of abundance, and not necessarily scarcity, because that’s what this mindset actually requires is the idea of abundance, that there’s enough for everyone that there’s higher value in working together than not. And so that will be the improvement of look how quickly the the end, we were on the leading edge of this change. And we are enjoying sharing conversations and sharing stories about all of the different changes in positive impact that this has made.
Gregorio Uglioni
Oh, thank you very much. Basically, we are coming to the end of this game in the last three minutes. I still have three question for you. The first one, is there a book that help you during your career or personal life that you would like to share with the audience?
Speaker 2
You know, one that is has been very good right now is digital hesitation published by J.B. Wood and Thomas Lah from technology and services, Industries Association TSAA. It really outlines I’ll say, this challenge and the hesitation to this change that that we’re talking about with customer experience with service and with service offers. And I found it really informative to to understand I’ll say the hesitation the fear about making it. And so if companies really want to see and understand what that looks like, being able to get a copy of that would be fantastic. And again, really, really beneficial.
Gregorio Uglioni
Thank you and what’s the best way to reach you?
Speaker 2
Sure, I can be reached at Shaun at the Service Design Group. Sean is spelled s h a u n Yes, there are multiple ways of spelling it. But the service design group.com That service design group is all squashed together.
Gregorio Uglioni
And there is only one there is only one. Thank you very much you will find out so all the contact details in the show notes. And now we are coming to the last question is Shawn’s golden nugget. It’s something that was discussed or something new that they would like to live to the audience. And I think this is a difficult question because you shared so many golden nuggets throughout this discussion. But I’m pleased to listen to to the to the conclusion.
Shaun McAndrew
My last golden nugget in kind of blows in with with everything we’ve talked about as well as my personal values. My personal philosophy is Think Forward, choose excellence. Be able to think forward think through the options. Think through, you know, what are the consequences of all of those options, and then choose, actively choose what is the best one for everyone. And so the golden nugget is simply and how I want to live my life is Think Forward, choose excellence.
Gregorio Uglioni
It’s great. Thank you very much, Shaun for your time. It was really a great pleasure to have you on on the CX goalkeeper podcast. Thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2
Greg, thank you as well and I hope you have a lovely evening. Thank you all for your time tonight.
Gregorio Uglioni
Thank you very much. Shaun, please stay with me to the audience. It’s everything. I hope that you enjoyed this discussion. feedback is a gift please contact me contact shown if you have any question. We would love to hear from you. Thank you very much. And bye bye.
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