Highlights from ElevateCX Atlanta 2023

2023 was the first year KnowledgeOwl attended ElevateCX, a conference that has been in existence for 11 years at the time of this blog post!

Four of our CX owls journeyed to Atlanta, Georgia from different parts of the US and Canada. It was the first time most of us had met in person, which was incredibly exciting for all of us. We spent the two-day conference learning and connecting with each other and other CX professionals. While every speaker offered valuable insights, we’re going to limit this post to highlights of some of our favorite talks.

Four CX owls having dinner in Atlanta

The conference was beautifully curated by ElevateCX founder Sarah Hatter, and it began with an introduction from the founder herself. She set the tone for the rest of the conference with the reminder that “the work you do is critically important”. It’s not uncommon for support teams to be taken for granted, but there’s no doubt that frontline support workers are incredibly important and vital to the success of any enterprise.

Sarah spoke of the social phenomenon of collective effervescence, which refers to the energy that’s felt when people are engaged in a shared purpose. She shared that marching bands make her cry, which is an example of a powerful shared social experience. I related deeply to this. When I watch sports on TV, even though I care nothing for the sport at hand, sometimes seeing masses of people all cheering together will make me weepy. I’ve often said that I could never attend an Olympics or World Cup event in person because I think I'd be sobbing in response to the powerful social energy present at those events.

Sarah also shared a TikTok of a man who received incredible service from JetBlue workers during an extremely vulnerable and difficult time in his life. His father had been put into palliative care and he couldn’t connect to the plane's Wi-Fi to talk to his family about what was happening. The flight crew went above and beyond to help him get connected and communicate with his brother. It was a truly touching story, which brought tears to many eyes in the audience. When we looked around and saw tears in all directions, it brought home a sense of connection and shared purpose for those in attendance. This story was a good reminder that when we engage in support, we have many opportunities to make meaningful connections with others.

Jess Cervellon spoke about navigating a career in CX without a traditional background and of the many stages in her career that brought her to CX. In a room full of CX professionals, not a single person raised their hand when Jess asked if anyone had studied something related to CX/hospitality in college. Oftentimes, CX professionals take a winding path to CX. Having a diverse work background is one of the greatest strengths of CX professionals, because a diversity of experiences and skills make for the strongest teams. Our CX owls consist of through-hikers, bartenders, artists, art historians, and outdoor education experts. The mixed bag of experiences we share come together to form many different ways to approach problem-solving and connecting with customers. In my experience, the more varied the career backstory, the better the hire.

Nick Cannariato (from Yetto) gave a show-stopping talk titled "Your Metrics Are Bullshit". The talk was full of examples of how an excessive emphasis on metrics has essentially destroyed CX teams in various companies. Nick also shared summaries of studies that explain how this can happen. Most of the CX owls have managed CX teams before, so we all experientially understood the unbalanced metrics-driven approach that Nick expertly summarized.

Senior management often demands to see numbers in order to assess their CX team's performance. However, as anyone who works in the field knows, you can’t neatly measure human performance with numbers alone.

A demand from management for ever-improving numbers can lead to an unhealthy sense of competition and resentment between team members. It can also lead to falsifying numbers by sending out surveys to only happy customers. As organizations grow, they can continually fall into these same traps.

Thankfully, Nick had some actionable advice on how CX teams can avoid these pitfalls:

Track fewer and more meaningful indicators. Start with actual objectives that focus on your users’ realities and needs. What will meaningfully help them? Keep these simple and avoid absolutes.

Acknowledge individual nuances that impact metrics. For example, you should know your team well enough to know that the person who often takes the more technical tickets will have a slower resolution rate. And the person who often steps in to help their teammates with angry customers will have a lower happiness rating. In other words, "time to close" and "happiness" are not truly objective ratings due to the different types of work that each CX team member engages in.

Avoid taking measurements that are only positive. While it may be tempting to avoid sending surveys to famously grumpy customers, it's worth remembering that "crabapples" can often provide helpful insights and feedback. Whenever you ask customers for metric-based feedback, try to get numbers that reflect reality by asking a wide sample size of your customer base (not just happy customers!).

Nuke your leaderboards. Only managers should see individual numbers. There is no need to foster competition or resentment between teammates. Managers can see the broader perspective as to why individual contributors' numbers may vary widely, but teammates may not.

Trust your professionals and push back on your leaders. It can be scary to push back on upper management’s demands for numbers (especially if you’ve been promoted internally), but if you want to have a healthy CX team, it is imperative to do so. If you maintain a sense of trust and care for your direct reports, they will likely work hard to ensure that customers receive the same care that you give them.

Suneet Bhatt, creator of My Authentic Story, led us through a mindfulness exercise in his talk titled "Finding and Evolving Your Purpose". Discovering our individual purpose can feel elusive and overwhelming. Suneet’s position is that purpose is something we all arrive at if we commit to deep self-reflection—it can’t just be stumbled upon.

Suneet’s talk gave everyone a “recipe” to write out to determine your greatest motivators. We took 15 minutes to reflect on prompts to help determine what makes us happy, what makes us proud, and what we're not yet satisfied with:

Happy

• What are three things you remember from this past year that still make you smile?

• What are at least three things you’d do if you had infinite time and money?

• What are three things you can do seemingly without losing energy or passion?

Proud

• What are three new things you’ve learned this past year that you can talk about in a job interview?

• What are three moments from this past year where you’ve felt your confidence in your abilities grow?

• What are three things that happened this past year that would have not happened without your presence or participation?

Not yet satisfied

• What are up to three things you believe you can improve upon in this coming year?

• What are up to three things you want to experiment with in this coming year?

• What are up to three important things you want to arrive at this point next year?

Suneet pointed out that most of us work in reverse order when trying to determine our purpose. We have to first focus on what makes us happy to get to the root of our purpose.

Studies indicate that our bodies are two-and-a-half times more likely to react to negative experiences than positive ones. This bias to focus more on negative experiences is conditioned into our psyches since childhood. For example, 77% of people fixate more on "F" grades on report cards than "A" grades. As we become adults, we have to intentionally and mindfully work to unlearn the tendency to fixate on negativity and overlook positivity.

As someone who deals with imposter syndrome, I needed to hear Suneet’s gentle reminder that no individual is a "problem" to be fixed. While it is healthy to acknowledge and learn from one's apparent failures and mistakes, it's important to move forward and find ways to celebrate and replicate one's wins. I plan on revisiting this exercise regularly.

Clay Telfer spoke on the importance of prioritizing customer success in his talk titled "Accelerate Adoption with Customer-Centric Onboarding". Clay pointed out that many companies tend to focus on how to use the product, but the focus should be on how your customer specifically defines their success.

Asking the client to define their own success gives a clearer picture of their end goals. It also allows onboarding to feel more conversational and less sales-y than a cookie cutter product demo that isn’t necessarily one-size-fits-all.

If you or your organization are feeling stuck on a success plan, here are Clay’s top tips:

Identify the three most critical elements of success for your product. With your client in mind, build new processes from scratch that will allow them to successfully check those three elements off from day one of onboarding.

Communication is key. Make sure you have frequent touch bases within the first two weeks—these could be emails, calls, or text messages. Let your customer know how you’ll provide them with more resources depending on their success needs in future calls.

Keep next year’s success measures at the forefront. At the end of onboarding, Clay suggests asking, “I want to make sure you're so successful that you can't wait to renew your contract. What do you need to see to make that happen?" in order to keep the conversation proactive and ongoing. Upon renewal, this will give both you and the customer a clear roadmap for tracking goals during future touch bases.

This may seem straightforward, but it was a great reminder to simply ask the customer what they need, rather than make assumptions and overwhelm them with information they don’t necessarily find useful. 

Even if clients are unsuccessful, Clay suggests onboarding them yet again—treat it as a “system reboot” to figure out ways to make those successes more actionable. The end goal is to build rapport, trust, and a strong line of communication.

How to stay involved with ElevateCX

ElevateCX 2023 Atlanta left us feeling inspired, and we’re already looking forward to future conferences. You can keep a bird’s eye on the ElevateCX website for future conferences and talks. You can also apply to be a speaker or sponsor!

If you’re looking for additional ways to get involved, we also want to highlight the Elevate Community Fund. In response to layoffs in the CX community, Sarah created this fund to help folks that may need help with finances, coaching, or empowerment as they navigate their job searches.

If you want to meet like-minded, big-hearted CX professionals, we could not recommend ElevateCX enough. A little bird told us that there may be some exciting ElevateCX happenings in 2024. We're excited, and we hope to see you there!