From skeptic to advocate: Dr. Jeff Dahms on how Physicians Mutual transformed CX without trust

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Description

Customer experience isn’t just a department—it’s a strategy.

In this episode of The Curiosity Current: A Market Research Podcast, hosts Stephanie Vance and Matt Mahan speak with Dr. Jeff Dahms, Director of CX Research & Insights at Physicians Mutual. Drawing from a career that spans insurance, finance, and academia, Jeff breaks down what it really takes to embed customer-centric thinking across an organization.

From his “Cycle of Success” framework to lessons learned managing in-house customer panels, Jeff reveals how great CX starts with building credibility, understanding business priorities, and translating data into action. You’ll also hear about the role of AI in research, what not to do with internal panels, and why he thinks paper surveys might just be making a comeback.

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Transcript

Dr. Jeff Dahms:

When I look at an organization, I think of it's a circle and it's divided up into four different pies. And in the top right hand quadrant, you have what it is, the customer bucket. And so it's really your customers are always giving feedback. They always are. It's just whether or not are you collecting it? Where does it live? How are you engaging with your customers? And so I assess an organization based on that part of it. How are you hearing from your customers? Are you casting a wide enough net to collect all of these different opportunities to hear about your customers perception of your company? And that leads into the bottom quadrant, which is the data. And how are you using that data? Is it organized? Is it clean? Is it accessible? Is it packaged in a way that makes sense to non-data people?

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Stephanie Vance:

Hello, fellow insight seekers. Welcome to The Curiosity Current, a podcast that's all about navigating the exciting world of market research. I'm Stephanie Vance.

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Matt Mahan:

And I'm Matt Mahan. Join us as we explore the ever-shifting landscape of consumer behavior and what it means for brands like yours.

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Stephanie:

Each episode will get swept up in the trends and challenges facing researchers today, riding the current of curiosity towards new discoveries and deeper understanding.

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Matt:

Along the way, we'll tap into the brains of industry leaders, decode real-world data, and explore the tech that's shaping the future of research.

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Stephanie:

So whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting your feet wet, we're excited to have you on board.

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Matt:

So with that, let's jump right in.

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Stephanie:

Today, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Jeff Dahms, the Director of Customer Experience Research and Insights at Physicians Mutual and an expert in CX strategy, consumer research, and data-driven decision making.

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Matt:

Jeff has spent over a decade leading customer insights and research strategies across industries like insurance, finance, and banking from spearheading CX initiatives at First National Bank of Omaha to teaching data science at Bellevue University. He brings a unique blend of academic expertise and real-world business impact.

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Stephanie:

In this episode, we're going to dive into a critical challenge in modern customer experience, how to build an effective CX strategy that truly drives impact. And within that, we'll talk about how to leverage customer panels to unlock deeper insights. Jeff, I have to tell you, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and my role here at AYTM. And so we're just so excited to have you. Thank you for joining us today.

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Jeff:

You know, thank you for having me. I really appreciate being a part of this and big fan of the podcast and big fan of what you guys are trying to do.

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Matt:

Well, thanks so much. And we certainly appreciate your fandom, especially kind of in these early stages of rolling the podcast out. Love to hear it. I'll get us started. Mentioned it in the intro there. Love it when we have guests on the show who have this very multifaceted perspective. You know, your career has taken you across a lot of different industries, industries that have a lot of regulation. Have a lot of sort of unique challenges, I think, when it comes to conducting research, banking, insurance, you know, fintech. And in all of these areas, customer experience also plays a critical role. Now, I'll be 100% frank, I don't consider myself a customer experience expert at all. Like I'm a consumer insights guy, start to finish. So I'm just really looking forward to learning from you throughout our conversation. But I'm curious, how have these experiences across these different industries really shaped your approach to creating a CX strategy? And, you know, are there particular insights that you've gained that might not be obvious to someone who's only worked in one sector?

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Jeff:

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I would also throw in my time as a vendor with B2B market research firm, because I think there's a lot that comes from that as well. And I think the biggest thing that it's not necessarily things that I've picked up from different, you know, that have been different between those, but how pretty much everything is about the same. You know, a lot of organizations like to think that they're unique. I think at the end of the day, everybody's trying to solve, you know, very similar problems. How do we get customers to buy more to, you know, reduce the effort and friction between them, us and their experiences? And then how do we get them to advocate for us? And so that's really been the commonality between all of that. And then I think also in starting a CX strategy, which I've been fortunate enough to do at a couple of different places, is learning how to network inside of an organization, how to build credibility for your services and your approach. You know, how do you approach people and try to get them to maybe think a little bit differently? You know, when you are, especially when you're starting out as a CX team, it's brand new, you're a support function. And a lot of times people can choose to use you or not. And so you really have to take that into consideration. I kind of like to call it like a little bit of CX guerrilla warfare, where we try to pick our spots and we try to get in and get out and we try to, you know, maybe do little things here and there until eventually, you know, we can tip the scales into our favor. In terms of... What I've learned, I think, across all of this is really, the importance of a good team and, you know, Physicians Mutual, I'm so fortunate to have a great team. And what I think a part that really builds a good CX team is people who are passionate about the customer, you know, and are really strong advocates for them that are willing to play the part of the customer inside of an organization. You know, who's going to be able to stand up and say, hey, hold on a second here, guys. Like, is this really going to be a good experience? And like I said, just very fortunate to have that as part of my team right now and also very skilled at what they do. The other part is, you know, trying to balance the speed of the business with the rigor and reliability and validity of just doing good research, you know. Coming from academia or with a background in academia, it's a very long, drawn-out process to get a research study done that you are eventually going to have published because it's going to be ripped apart. You're going to actually be reviewed by people who are legitimately experts. I mean, people who have dedicated their lives to some of the stuff that you're proposing. And that could take a really long time. And you really got to dot your I's and cross your T's. Businesses don't have that time and they don't really have that patience. In most cases, especially in the beginning, you're getting handed projects that said, hey, we are going to make a presentation to the leadership team. And we thought it would be nice to have some customer research involved in our presentation. Oh, okay, we do need that. Oh, the presentation's tomorrow. You're like, oh, well, maybe we could have had a little bit more runway with this, but we'll do what we can. And so it's balancing how do we produce really good insights that people can make decisions on, but you do it at the speed of the business. And, you know, there's multiple ways you can do that. But I think overall, it is just there's a commonality with customers these days. Everybody is connected to everything. You know, my experience with Amazon drives my expectations with my bank that drives my expectations with property management company, with the gas station, like it doesn't really matter. And so. It's really understanding how all of that stuff can really inform what it is that you should be doing to treat your customers the right way.

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Matt:

I love that. Everything is so much more connected than we oftentimes want to pretend it is. There's sort of like a universal approach at play here that we're all tackling from different perspectives.

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Stephanie:

For sure. Yeah. It's interesting to think of like Amazon as being the nexus for all of this, right? Like darn you, Amazon. These expectations are unreasonable, but it's an excellent point.

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Jeff:

I would also say with Amazon, you know, there's a lot of opportunities to say, okay, well, what are they not doing that people, you know, would miss or still appreciate? And I think there is an opportunity to add satisfiers to your experience that aren't in some of these other places that maybe people wish they had. You know, I think if I have a problem with Amazon or something needs to be returned, yeah, they've made it easy. But what if I want to call somebody? What if I actually want to talk through an issue? It's really hard to do. And so there are opportunities for organizations to look at this interconnected world from a different perspective and say, OK, well, what's missing? And can that be where we went? You know, can we be a provider of something that people wish they had, but they're not getting in other places?

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Stephanie:

Totally. Yep. Makes sense. So either you've described yourself or have been described, I'll leave that vague there, as a change agent. And you have a lot of specialization in transforming customer insights into business strategies, whether that's using qual, quant, AI-driven methodologies. I'm really curious to know, when you first step into an organization, how do you assess where its current CX function sits? Like how mature it is and how do you identify like, well, what are the biggest opportunities that I can come in here and make an impact quickly?

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Jeff:

I think it starts with, it's something that I call it the cycle of success and it's just something that I've developed, you know, over the years and it's, it's really nothing official. I wish I would have come up with a different name for it when I started it and started communicating it. But people were just like, what should we call this? Like, I don't know. It's called the cycle of success. I'm like, all right, well, there you go. It just kind of stuck. But it's basically, when I look at an organization, I think of, it's a circle and it's divided up into four different pies. And in the top right-hand quadrant, you have what it is, the customer bucket. And so it's really, your customers are always giving feedback. They always are. It's just whether or not, are you collecting it? Where does it live? How are you engaging with your customers? And so I assess an organization based on that part of it. How are you hearing from your customers? Are you casting a wide enough net to collect all of these different opportunities to hear about your customer's perception of, of your company? And that leads into, you know, the bottom quadrant, which is the data. And how are you using that data? Is it organized? Is it clean? Is it accessible? Is it packaged in a way that makes sense to non-data people? You know, I think I've been fortunate enough in my career to play as a liaison between the technological group as well as business operators to try and translate some of that. And I think that's helped me and my teams tremendously is be able to kind of speak that language. But where is that data? And is it in a usable format? And that feeds into the other bottom quadrant, which is the business unit or even specifically managers. How are they accessing that? And then how are they turning that into business decisions? Sometimes it could be, you know, coaching opportunities for your sales agents or your call center staff. Sometimes it could be like, well, how are we using this to actually drive decisions? And, you know, in that bucket specifically, what I try to listen for is how often do people say, I think the customer, you know, X, Y, Z. How many times are we speculating? You know, like, well, I think customers do this, right? And I know I'll be successful. And we talk about this all the time as a team is when we start showing up and people say, I know, right? Like, or we found this out or, hey, let me cite this research. And, you know, that's what we're really looking for. But then the top one quadrant is probably one of the most important is, you know, your employees. How are those frontline staff? How are the people that are actually doing the work, you know, putting that customer information into play? And so if you take that circle and you, you know, you draw a big arrow around it, like it just becomes a cycle. And do you have those touch points where each one of those things intersect? What does that look like? And how is that set up? And is it automated? Is it always on? Is it easy for people to get from one quadrant to the other? No, you can't really go from getting customer, you know, getting in touch with customers and feeding that directly to the business unit because that could lead to bad decisions. It could lead to, you know, unreliability of the data. You know, you can't really cross, in my mind, those sectors. So you really have to try to figure out. How does this cycle work and where are we missing and where's the biggest opportunity and try to start connecting those dots internally. And that happens through conversations. You know, this is where kind of having that vendor mentality of like, I've got to sell, you know, I've got to sell myself. I have to sell the team. I have to sell, you know, what we're doing. I got to figure out like, how are decisions being made now? Because obviously this business has been successful or wouldn't exist. Like we've, as a business, like we've been fine. You know, I've, I've worked with some businesses that have been. Business for over a hundred years. Well, you know, it didn't happen by accident and there's some really smart and capable people. So how do you embed yourself into those, you know, conversations?

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Stephanie:

For sure. It's so interesting because I feel like this comes up in a lot of the conversations we have, just the importance of marketing what you do when you work in this sort of insights and customer related areas that we have this tendency to think like, I have all of this important data, like people will come to me. And like, that's not really how it happens, right? We have to show up where we want and advocate for that perspective a lot of times. This brings us actually to, you like teed me up perfectly for this question that I have next. And I think you've answered it to some extent, but I would be curious for you to round that out. You know, CX is a competitive advantage, right? No doubt. But embedding it into the DNA of an organization, as we've been talking about, is a challenge. When you're designing a strategy, how do you ensure that it's not just a department, right? It's not just your team, but rather that it's something that truly influences and has buy-in across the company for decision-making.

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Jeff:

Yeah, I think it starts with being reactive. You know, I think it starts with showcasing what you do. One of the biggest things that we try to move the organization towards is bring us problems. You know, don't bring us solutions. Don't bring us methodologies. You know, when you start a CX team and they, you know, the organization hears that you've got the capabilities to do surveys, you know, oftentimes people say, hey, I want to do a survey. And I say, okay, well, you know, let's, that's great. Let's take a step back and let's, let's, what are you hoping to learn? What's your objective? Like, who do you want to talk to? And so we've, you know, developed this process for conversations and way to take and work that helps people think through what it is that's really going to matter. You know, what is the one question that we can answer? If I could, if I had a magic wand and I could put the answer to your question on your desk tomorrow, like, what is that answer? Because, as part of the, the role that, that I have and, and I've had the fortunate pleasure of having in other organizations is cobbling together a bunch of different resources. You know, it's, it's, to me, that's the funniest part. You know, I am, I'm a huge nerd, you know, I like, and so I love, you know, technology, but I also love, you know, different research capabilities. And to me, it's kind of like being a detective. It's like, okay, well, here's the crime we have to solve. Like, how are we going to do it? And so we always try to maintain a good set of different types of resources. And so when the organization comes and says, hey, I'd like to do a survey and we can actually get them to a place of, okay, well, let's, let's describe the problem. Let's describe the answer that you're looking for. Let's form some hypothesis here of, you know, what we think this is going to be that we can actually go test. We can then go out and do that in multiple different ways. You know, we don't have to do just a survey. We don't have to just do our customer panel or work with a vendor. Like we can do multiple different things. And then you bring that back to the organization. But sometimes we are reactive in that. And sometimes you have to take that opportunity to jump on showcasing all of this stuff and say, hey, I know you asked for a survey, but we did the survey. But we also did some video interviews. And we also went out to this customer panel. We also did XYZ. We also did an AI search through our chat GPT capabilities. And here's all the stuff we found. And you do that enough and you do that with the right influential people. And then they start thinking, oh my gosh, I didn't know we had these resources. Like, this is great. I didn't know that we could talk to people in this way. Like, this is really, truly, you know, competitive advantage for me and my team.

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Stephanie:

So it's like that sort of reactive relationship in service of that longer term, more proactive engagement that you will have with them. I love that. You're like Trojan horsing yourself into the situation.

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Jeff:

Yeah, because what eventually will happen is if you do that enough, then you start to develop a queue of work. And, once you develop a queue of work and someone comes to you and says, hey, I really need this. I need it next week. And you have to say, look, I'm sorry, I've got this other project I'm working on. We'll get to it as soon as we can and we want to do it. However, what would be great is like, can we attend your team meetings or can we get embedded in your project list? Because we can be a little bit more proactive and then they start to see the value of bringing you in, you know, earlier in the process.

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Matt:

I love that. Really what you're talking about is building demand, you know, building that queue of work. So let's say you've done that. You've done a great job. You've got, you know, your, your internal teams coming to you asking to be, to be penciled in, right? Like that's the dream. Like, oh, do you have time for us on this project? Like that's, let's say you've reached that point. What's kind of like the next step? Like, you know, assuming, you know, you've got all the tools you mentioned, a lot of different tools at your disposal. How do you, because I know that this is something that, that like consumer insights, like primary research teams will often struggle with is, all right, we can do the work. We particularly like on the client side, we'll do the work. We'll put together the reports. We'll generate the implications and all of that. How do you kind of bridge the gap to the next step, which is like ensuring that that all of that wonderful data, all those wonderful recommendations that you've made, that that gets actually incorporated into the execution. Like if you're, you know, if you're guiding a customer strategy, marketing strategy, whatever it is that you're doing, how do you kind of make sure that your team stays involved throughout the process, throughout the rollout of that work that you've done?

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Jeff:

Yeah, I don't know if I have, like, the answer that everybody's dying for, right? Because that would be great because you're right. Like we all struggle with that. One of the things I think that we've done to sort of mitigate that risk is, you know, again, building relationships throughout an organization and being in touch with the right influential people and being involved in their work. And whether or not something gets implemented, you can certainly bring that up down the road. And if you've got that strong relationship, you can ask them, like, hey, did we ever do anything with this? And I think. What we've been able to do is, is have good relationships with people to just be honest with them. You know, everybody works in an organ, everybody that works in an organization answers to somebody and, and has to have, has to justify, you know, what you do. If you've got a $20 million marketing budget, nobody's, you've got to justify that. If you're going to bring in a new, if you're in technology and you're going to bring in new security or compliance, you know, you've got to justify that. And so I think everybody gets it and being able to have that honest conversation with folks and say, Hey, you know, gosh, we did, you know, we did this work and I've got to answer it. I've got to, I've got to justify this tool. Like, did you guys do anything with it? And sometimes no decision is the decision and just asking them like, Hey, did this help? You know, did, did this move you along? Like, can you help us quantify, you know, like if we didn't do this, you know, did it change your, your perspective on the issue at all? And I think people are pretty receptive to that because everybody gets it. I mean, everybody's kind of in the same boat. But that comes from establishing those relationships with those influential folks. I think a couple other things that we're, we're doing, um, we're getting better at is taking in, creating a research request process. Yeah. So again, being reactive in the beginning, this, this didn't really go as well as we'd hoped, you know, where someone said, Hey, we want to do this research. We're like, okay, will you fill out this form? And they're like, yeah, we'll get to it, but I need this tomorrow. And we're like, all right, well. We'll fill it out for you. You know, we'll do it for you.

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Stephanie:

Right. Right. Yes.

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Jeff:

But then you get to that point where you say, hey, I really need you to fill this out. And you ask questions like, who's the sponsor, right? Who's the executive sponsor? Who's getting updated? What's the business problem we're trying to solve? What type of project is this? What decision needs to be made? You try to do it in a way that gives you enough information, but it's not too cumbersome for people to fill out. And then I think one of the biggest parts that we look at is like, what level of analysis are you looking for? You know, in some cases, I call it the color of the button test, right? And I've heard this in a couple of different places. Do you want this button green or red? Well, let's just ask the customers and then I'll just email you and tell you they like it red. Or do we need something that's going to be more robust? That's going to have to go to your leadership team. That's going to be used, you know, for the next year to set strategy. And we really want to make sure that we put a lot of thought and effort to it. So that form has been really helpful and then helping to drive conversations and understanding like who's all involved in this project. And it's given us a mechanism to go have those conversations with people in the business. The other thing is, you know, a post-engagement survey. So we try to hit them twice, once immediately, right after we've done a formal readout. You know, what did you think of the timing? What did you think of the insights we produced? Did we change your mind on anything? You know, and just trying to get that initial reaction. And then following up with them a couple months later around, did this actually make an impact? You know, remind them, hey, we did this. Here were the key takeaways. Here are some things that we said that could be potential next steps. Like, did any of those things happen? And I would say the last thing that we always try to do with the research is embed in there, here's more that we could do. We don't ever really consider a research project fully done or completed. It's just at this particular step. And so we always want to be trying to push the organization and be good stewards of... Getting them to think a little bit more differently. Like we were able to test this hypothesis. We were able to show you what the customer was thinking about this at this time. We were able to design or give you ideas on designs of this experience. And if you want to go further, here's what else we could do. We could talk to these different people. We could go out and do more interviews. Here's something that came up that maybe we weren't testing for, but we thought would be interesting to take a look at. Like, are you okay if we go do that? And so I think the combination of all that, really the bottom line is just trying to have a continuous conversation with the organization to get them thinking about how do we get more customer perception embedded into our work so we can make better, higher quality decisions that are going to lead to our customers buying more, reducing the effort in order to interact with us, and then be advocates for us out in the world.

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Matt:

I keep going back to something you said right at the start of the conversation, which was like, we're all trying to solve the same problems and everything you just listed out. Hits home for me, I know for Stephanie too, like you're talking about like formalization of intake. It doesn't sound sexy, but it's really, really important. Retros on the work, like again, kind of a foundational thing that like, it's just so easy. You see organizations forget about it all the time. And so you lose this opportunity to see like how impactful was the work to like, really like holding ourselves accountable. Like so, so important. That's great advice.

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Stephanie:

Yeah, but I even think like, I think a lot of us can really get behind the intake process because what it does is it's what we're saying is, hey, could you just take a step back and describe to me what's this going to do for you, right? And helps us like get them at the right conceptual level so we can be at the right executional level. I really, really though applaud. The way that you have described just being so receptive and open to that feedback about the work that you've done, because that kind of thing takes courage within an organization. It takes the right kind of culture within an organization too, but because that can be a bit threatening, right, to ask for that kind of feedback.

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Matt:

Especially to say, just to pile on, especially to say, did we change your mind? That's like, just thinking about like my time client side, that is like so many of us in the research and insights world, like we love our little like safe position. Like, oh, we're here to-

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Stephanie:

We just tell the truth. We're truth tellers.

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Matt:

We just tell the truth. We're the truth tellers, right? We don't influence. That's sales. Sales influences. We don't influence. I just had to have to second that. Really, really applaud that approach.

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Jeff:

So I often start out presentations by saying, hey, let us know how we did. We're here to help. And if at the end of this, you tell me, Jeff, this was worthless. I learned nothing. I would say, that's awesome. Tell me why.

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Stephanie:

Yeah. Tell me more. Yeah.

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Jeff:

Tell me more. Like, I would appreciate that so much if that was your sentiment, you know? And so it is a little bit of courage, but I think it's also just setting that stage that, hey, I know I'm the support function. Like, I know I'm here on your behalf to help you out. And if I'm not doing that, then, you know, you have to tell me. It's like when I make meals for my kids and I lay it out there, I'm like, hey, I'm trying something new. So if you tell me you're like it, you're going to have it again.

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Stephanie:

Right.

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Jeff:

So if you don't like it, I'll try something else, but you gotta tell me.

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Matt:

It's a lot of sense.

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Stephanie:

Totally makes sense. I love that. I guess to switch gears a little bit, because I think both Matt and I are pretty interested in hearing you talk about this, customer panels, you know, they are very powerful tools, especially for CX research. I think a lot of us, especially, you know, Matt and I sitting on a supplier side, working mainly with panel surveys, like we are acutely aware of their challenges, right? Like maintaining engagement, avoiding bias, ensuring that they're representing the full customer base. When building and managing a customer panel, what are the most important factors to your mind to get right that you really have to nail for it to be an effective source of data for you?

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Jeff:

Yeah, so our, you know, our panel is our own customers. We have a couple different tools, but we do have one where it is our own customers. And so we've recruited them and maintain that. And I think the overarching most important thing is to remember that that is also a customer experience. You know, that is a customer touch point. You know, that is a reflection of you as an organization. And we try to set, you know, so we try to have that mentality of, is this going to be a good experience for them? And how can we recruit them the right way? And how can we make the tools, you know, engaging and easy to use and using the right images and explaining things the right way? You know, we also understand that it's a continuous conversation. You know, that's, we talk about that all the time is we don't want this to appear as though we're just reaching out and, hey, can you answer the survey? Thank you very much. You know, we want to try and engage them in that, you know, we want to hear what they have to say. And we want to have a relationship with them in this way. And so we take that into consideration as far as when we ask you for your feedback, we're going to report back to you what we learned. You know, we, the closing of the loop with our customer panel has been so engaging for them. And we've had a lot of feedback from them saying, hey, thank you. Like, you know, this proves it's not just going into a vacuum.

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Stephanie:

A vacuum. Yeah.

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Jeff:

We've tried to humanize, you know, the panel. You know, I think done this in a couple different places and it's kind of just depends on your, your viewpoint of like, well, do we just make up names and, and, you know, protect our identity? And, you know, we just make it moderator Chris or whoever. And we started that way, but we've, we've since changed and, and said, you know, we're asking for a lot from these people. We're asking for them to be personal. We're asking for them to give us information and insights into their lives. I think the least that we can do is humanize who we are. And so we've really tried to put ourselves out there more as far as pictures of us, you know, short biographies, you know, engaging in discussions with them and sharing our own thoughts. And again, the idea that this is just a continuous conversation and they can expect to hear from us about once a week around the same time. And if you get that going and you get that machine, just that, that habit forming of having that continuous conversation with your customers, you know, one week we might be talking about, what are you planting in the spring? But then the next week we might be asking them, Hey, could you review our explanation of benefits? You know, which is an extremely boring topic, but one that we need to have some feedback on. And then they'll do it because that's just, you know, it's like having a friend where it's like, Hey, let's come out and have some fun. Oh, and by the way, I need your help moving, you know, so I'm going to ask you to do something with a little, takes a little bit more effort. And so I think that's the most important thing is like just treating it as a continuous conversation with other human beings that you're asking a lot for. And, and really making sure that you take care, you know, cultivating that relationship.

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Stephanie:

I love that because I feel like it's, it really is like 180 degrees different from how you would interact with and treat a panel, right? Where it really is about like reducing bias and then not knowing who you are, right? Because we're trying to take that approach of really tight experimental design. But it almost sounds like when it's a customer panel, that's just not the same function. That's not what you're doing with that group of people. And so it requires something different and a level of trust building that requires transparency and giving as much as taking. It's cool. I like that.

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Jeff:

Yeah. And I think it, it then, but to your point, you have to understand what that panel could provide. You're right. Like since we do have such a good relationship with them, it can be hard for them to be critical of the organization and, you know, not, not always, you know, and so you have to understand where would I ask this of our customer panel and when would I go out and do an external, you know, vendor, a blind study, you know, something along those lines.

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Matt:

Can you give us a high level on what those guidelines are, you know, without spilling any, anything proprietary, of course, but I'm sure there are kind of like some rules of thumb where you're like, all right, this, this is a good fit for the in-house panel. This is a good fit for external.

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Jeff:

Yeah. I think that the in-house panel, we do use it a lot for, you know, creative feedback. I think when you're looking at just generalized human feedback, hey, does this catch your attention? It's also great for like diary studies, like just walk us through your day. Like what are the jobs that you're doing every day that we think we might be able to help with? Because they'll tell you. And then again, maybe reviewing some more complex things that you need people to spend some more time on that you're not going to get if you send out a randomized survey or even, you know, an external vendor. And it's also allowed us to bring up some personal stuff. We sell life insurance. And for this is just an example. And the main customer of a life insurance policy is the beneficiary. And so when you talk about trying to describe that experience or what that's like, people who have had that experience have got to, you know, they've got to think through some, maybe something that was very uncomfortable for them at their point in their life. And so you've got that relationship and you say, hey, I want to be careful about how I talk about this. You know, we don't want you to, we're hopefully we're not bringing up anything that's inappropriate, but we want to hear how this went. And so. Those things that where you're, you're trying to put people into more of an emotional state. To try and give you feedback on like, how could that have been better? You know, and insurance is, is fraught with that, right? Like I got injured, I, you know, somebody passed away, like I've got to have this surgery, like all of that stuff could be pretty emotional. And so that's, I think a good place for the panel. I think externally, what I would not do necessarily for a customer panel is things around pricing, you know, maybe a description of what type of policy or, or what are you looking for? Competitive analysis, you know, things like that. You certainly can, it just wouldn't be the single source for that. Because it can be difficult to, you know, talk about things like pricing with your customers. And so, and it's not necessarily going to be that beneficial or that insightful versus going out and doing a full conjoint analysis or something like that, that involves competitors and more of a blind, you know, type study.

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Stephanie:

Same. Yeah. And brand trackers, I'm sure same kind of, kind of thinking there. Your panel's a little stacked on that front.

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Jeff:

If we asked our panel, like how likely are you to recommend Physicians Mutual? I'm sure it would be through the roof, you know, and so we wouldn't want to do that.

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Matt:

Unless you were looking to puff up them scores on purpose.

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Jeff:

Yes, exactly.

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Stephanie:

So Jeff, you've worked extensively in financial services and insurance. Both industries that I have the perception are highly regulated and where customer experience is deeply tied to things like trust and compliance. How does CX research differ in these environments? And what unique challenges do companies in these, you know, verticals face?

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Jeff:

I think the biggest thing that really struck me, especially in finance, but especially in insurance, is the amount of regulations and the timeline between concept and delivery to a customer. In insurance specifically, you're dealing with a lot of different states. You're dealing with a lot of different types of regulations. And so having our own mindset, again, of we may give you something that's going to help develop or make a decision, but that decision may not actually reach the customer for a long time. And so that impacts us as far as, you know, when we talked about how do you measure what you're doing or the ROI on that and really focusing more on internal decisions. Because if we are trying to impact things like retention or churn, like it may be a while because it just may take a long time to work its way through that compliance funnel. But with that, you know, bringing in your compliance group early and really spending some time learning, like what are those nuances, like, you know, spending time with people who that have to do the filing within each state, as far as like how we can advertise, what words can we say? You know, there are states where you can say things are affordable. There's states where you can't say things are affordable. So that's going to impact the way that you ask that question. If you're going out, you know, to a generalized population. And so really bringing that group in early and developing a relationship with them, having them review your stuff can really make things a lot easier on the back end. You know, we've had a couple of instances where we've created surveys and we thought they were great. You know, we were going to test this, you know, new marketing campaign or marketing message. And we thought it was going to be awesome. And we ran it by, you know, the compliance and the product people. And they would just they just flat out said, we can't say that. We would never say that. Like, we can't use those words. And then you have to, you know, kind of redesign everything. So, trying to get in front of that as best you can. And then I would say, choose your vendors wisely. Choose people who understand that regulation and understand that they may not be able to do everything that they do with like a tech company or people are moving fast who are gonna, find some information and make a decision tomorrow on the website that's gonna see an immediate impact. Yeah, I think are- That's pretty important to do.

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Stephanie:

Yeah, absolutely.

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Matt:

I am not allowed to let you get out of here without talking about AI. And you did mention it at a very high level just at the start of the conversation when you were kind of running through the different tools in your toolkit. Just curious, where do you see AI transforming CX? Where is it transforming CX for your organization? What are you really excited about on the AI front?

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Jeff:

Yeah, I think there's obvious ones, right? Like we run, just the summarization and tagging of qualitative feedback has just been incredible. We've been able to create an insights library. We now store everything that can be recalled using AI. So we're really trying to get away from, hey, who has that PowerPoint? Is it in someone's email? Is it in a folder? But having a centralized place where it lives. But setting it up to where it's totally democratized, where you don't have to even know what you're looking for. You can just ask a question and it will bring it up for you.

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Stephanie:

You have that set up already?

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Jeff:

We're in the process of that. It's a big project for this year. We're at about month three of getting that set up.

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Stephanie:

That's awesome. I feel like you guys are relatively early in the, I know we're all kind of heading in that direction. It's cool to hear how far along you are in it. So kudos.

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Jeff:

Yeah. You know, the idea is, you know, again, I don't know if I said this, but I would think like with setting a CX strategy, being able to paint the picture of what you want it to look like when you're done, right? Like, what do you want people to be saying? What do you want to have visible? How do you want people to be interacting? I think is so important in that storytelling, part. And so when it comes to this, where we're building is we want the customer in the room with the business. We want them, you know, we call it the strategic insights, metrics, observations network. So it's Simon, for short. So we're literally asking people, well, what did Simon say? Like, that's, that's what we want. That's how we'll know we're successful. Yeah. And then we came up with the name. It was just like lightning bolts. They were like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. All this stuff we could do. That's what we want is we want people to be in the room and against, instead of saying, I think this is what customers want. We could say, I know. And if we don't know, let's go ask Simon and see what he said. And let's, you know, put the customer in the room with the, with them. So AI is helping a lot with that. Where I'm most excited for AI to be more integrated is helping us stay on top of things that are changing. You know, we just actually did a workshop not too long ago about how to set up workflows and give AI tasks for you to do you or for them to do using AI agents. So simply returning a query once a week or once a month, Hey, what's new? In this space or what's new with this type of people, what type of research has just been published in different journals and giving us and spend, instead of having to spend time doing all of that, you know, looking into things on our, on our own and reading white papers and trying to determine whether or not it's, it's a good fit, you know, using AI to really cut out some of those tasks that we've had to spend a lot of time on in order to stay up to date and be the experts in this space.

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Stephanie:

That's so cool.

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Matt:

On the flip side, is there anything from your side that you see AI just not having a role in? Are there things where you see maybe some other organizations a little bit too quick to adapt these tools and you're like, really need a little more human oversight or anything like that going on?

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Jeff:

Yeah, I think so. With my background in academia, I think where I get the most concern is AI returning results and having them be treated as fact. I think there's always going to need to be a human involved in that in some way. I was brought up through my academic career with the understanding that things like statistical significance really matters. You know, these equations that we have that somebody dedicated their entire life to, you know, that you've never heard of. That but we should give them credit you know we should establish and be cognitive of this rigor and this reliability and this validity with some of this and I feel sometimes that AI is a bit of a black box where it just returns and it says you know this is this is a significant finding in this study and it's like well what model or what algorithm or who programmed that you know to return that does that person have bias you know and so we try to use it as a guide but we always will validate and then I also think on the flip side of that with things like the rigor and reliability is I think sometimes AI can be can be too hard too technical to, this is the answer and at the end of the day we have to realize you know yeah this person rated the Net Promoter Score a six but it's a person and maybe they were having a bad day and maybe they just had you know again going back to saying that everything's incorrect, maybe they had a bad customer experience at the gas station and now they're taking out an S so you know the impact of those scores of something like NPS going from a six to a seven and if you have enough people that do that like that actually impacts you know your score so understanding that these metrics and these with the these comments and all this stuff are coming from human beings and we all know that we've got good days we've got bad days it can really impact how we interact with businesses and, so we try to take that in account when looking at these results to say okay, this is what the number says, but what's on the margins of that? What's on either end? Is there anything that we should be looking at to say, okay, there's a bit of a deviation here that maybe we can play with, and are we 100% confident that this is actually what customers are saying?

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Stephanie:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you've got a pretty measured perspective on, you know, the utility and then the watch outs as well. I guess to close us out, Matt and I usually each have a question for you. Mine is looking ahead. You know, we've talked about that CX is evolving pretty rapidly. Customer expectations are changing. You know, the tech is advancing and evolving all the time. And data is becoming, therefore, you know, more sophisticated. What is one or, you know, more, I don't mean to restrict you, sort of piece of advice that you would give to maybe more junior CX professionals who are just looking to stay ahead through all of this and all of these shifts?

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Jeff:

Yeah, I would say read, you know, and I would say meet with vendors. That could be a bit of a slippery slope when you start reaching out, you know, you have to, you know, you could probably spend every hour of every workday meeting with vendors, you know, don't follow up. Yeah, there's there's no shortage of that. But we do love it. You know, we love to see what's coming out there. My perspective is if there's a business that's been spun up that is designed to sell something, then there must be a need. So what is that need? And is it something that we should be looking at? Is it something that, you know, maybe we're not ready for now, but. We need to be aware of so when we are ready, we know where to go for that. And I would say, go to conferences. You know, when I used to go to conferences in my younger days, I used to really only pay attention to the presenters and I'm not going to get anything up from the presentation. And maybe I'd walk around the expo hall and see, you know, who's got the coolest, you know, tchotchke that I want to grab. Or, you know, I've got a ton of water bottles. When I had kids that were younger, water bottles were great because they lose them all the time. So I loved coming home with a new bag full of water bottles. But now when I go to conferences, I pay more attention to the vendors that are there. And I pay more attention to, is this a group of vendors that I'm actually going to want to talk to? And I spend more time in that expo hall. You know, visiting and learning again, like what is out there and what are the problems that these vendors are trying to solve? Is that a problem that we have or that we think we're going to have, you know, down the road?

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Stephanie:

Smart.

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Matt:

My question is a ridiculous question, which is why I love to ask it, which is, where do you see the biggest change in your industry and in CX happening over the next five years? What's sort of the biggest transformation you're expecting or tracking?

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Jeff:

I think two things. One of them was a bit of a hot take, so I'll end with that. But the first one is, I think the actual customer experience is going to matter so much. I mean, we've been talking about it for decades, right? Like your customer experience is the one true competitive advantage. I mean, you know, there's books and speakers on it. I mean, there's no shortage of that. I just feel that like right now is at a time where that truly matters. You know, I think businesses have been able to get away with not having a great customer experience because they could compete on price. You know, well, let's just offer free shipping, right? Well, let's just, you know, bundle these things together. Or, you know, you had large businesses who could compete on scale. Well, you're starting to see tech now be more accessible to smaller businesses. And so all of these things that you could cite to as a competitive advantage in lieu of a good customer experience are starting to become lower cost or starting to become more accessible. I think we'll reach a saturation point of we know everything about everybody and everything they do and everybody will have this information. And so at that point, where are you going to compete? If I know as much about your customer as you know about mine... Then what do we do? Where's our competitive advantage? And I think it comes down to those experiences. And I think also then who's designing those experiences? I have a bit of a background in organizational development, psychology and talent management. And so I'm a big proponent of paying attention to the talent within your organization, because that's ultimately who's going to be in charge of designing these experiences and, and taking this data and putting it into, you know, motion. And so Who are you hiring? What does that process look like? Who are you bringing in? You know, do you have the talent to support competing almost exclusively on customer experience? My hot take is it kind of stems from, you know, everything kind of is cyclical, right? We always come back around to things that, you know, from the past. And so I want to be on record as saying, you know, I'll put myself out there. I think paper surveys are coming back. I think, you know.

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Matt:

That's the hottest of hot takes I've heard in a while.

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Stephanie:

I love it. I love this hot take.

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Jeff:

Well, let me tell you why. Because, we do have a little bit of research, we're looking at this a little bit further, but, nobody answers their phone anymore. That's getting harder to do, spam messages on both text, you know, and email you know, I think of like my parents who are just scared to death to click anything, that comes through email. And who are, you know, even myself like putting my information out onto a website. You know, just being very careful about so, you look at this, so if we're not doing electronically, and people aren't don't feel that that's no longer secure, or I think we've all known somebody who's been scammed, or been you know had their credit cards compromised or whatever it is. Where are you going to go? And I feel like physical mail, physical paper surveys are, there's start to be a turn of, there's a perception that those are safer and more reliable. It's something that we've talked about. We've, we've, you know, it's, it's always kind of in the back of our brain of like, well, should we email a survey out and see what we get? But. It reminds me of, I will never forget this. This was probably early 2000s. I got a survey from Nielsen. And it was about my viewing habits and for your younger listeners, there used to be this thing called TV channels. You know? And they would actually like, you'd have to tell people what you watch. Like that just isn't monitored by Big Brother. And it came with a $5 bill. They give you the money. Yep. And they were just like, hey, if you could.

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Matt:

Cold hard cash.

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Jeff:

Yep. You could keep this if you want, but we would also appreciate it if you would fill out the survey. And I did. And it was like a four page survey and it was great.

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Stephanie:

Creates the commitment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Jeff:

Yeah. And so, I always remember that, and so I'm just curious like, is that are we coming back around? You know, have we reached a point where, technology and electronic delivery and try to get all this electronic feedback is it? Have we reached the saturation point of that? And like, where do we turn once that is no longer a viable option?

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Matt:

You're talking about societal shifts. And we saw this with the last couple election cycles where people started talking about paper ballots. Should we really be getting rid of paper ballots? Jeff, I'm 100% on board with your hot take. And I will share with you an anecdote. Stephanie just this morning was making fun of me for reading paper product catalogs and getting a lot of enjoyment, out of getting a paper product catalogs, actual print catalogs in the mail and looking at things. But I think you're dead on. There is something to the idea of having a physical thing sent to you that feels, yeah, more secure. I also think that there's a authenticity thing there. At least that's what we were talking about with the catalog discussion this morning. Which was like, I like the idea that there was work and effort and thought put into the creation of this thing that I can put my hands on. And when I, in the case of a survey, when I fill out my answers and I put a stamp on it and give it to the Pony Express. And the Pony Express takes it off to wherever it goes. I know that I have a feeling, a sense that those results are going to be captured. And there's an authenticity of an exchange there that I think you're onto something. I love it.

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Stephanie:

I hear you both. And I think data quality would be less of an issue. I still, I struggle to see how this works at scale. So, you know, we'll finish this up. We'll set our wager afterwards and we'll go from there.

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Jeff:

I didn't say it was a perfect system, but you know, it's still in the incubation stage.

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Matt:

I love it.

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Stephanie:

Very cool.

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Matt:

This has been a great conversation. Dr. Jeff Dahms, really appreciate having you on today. Really appreciate the time. Gave us a lot of really great thoughts, a lot of really great advice. And just thank you for spending your morning with us today.

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Stephanie:

Absolutely. It's been great.

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Jeff:

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

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Stephanie:

The Curiosity Current is brought to you by AYTM.

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Matt:

To find out how AYTM helps brands connect with consumers and bring insights to life, visit aytm.com.