Joanne Stone, Director of Customer Experience at recruitment firm Hudson Asia Pacific, explains how marketing as a profession has become less about campaigns and more about engaging touch points along a customer journey.
John: Today I’m in Circular Quay in Sydney, where I’m joined by Joanne Stone. Joanne is the Director of Customer Experience at Hudson, Asia Pacific. Hudson specializes in recruitment and talent management, helping to connect and support organizations and their employees. Not only is Joanne successful in her career, she’s also a mother and has openly spoken about her decision not to conform to a traditional stay-at-home mother lifestyle. We’ll hear during today’s interview about how this ultimately allowed Joanne to pursue a passion for customer experience. Joanne, welcome to Customers Matter.
Joanne: Thank you.
John: Your career has taken you from marketing and PR to program manager to customer experience. Can you tell me what the trajectory has been? Where did you start and how did you get here?
Joanne: It’s been an interesting journey and one that you certainly would never predict while sitting at university. I did an undergraduate degree at UTS in Marketing and International Business. I’ve always had a passion for travel. After university, I did the “London thing” for a couple of years and got into banking there because I was focused on earning the most pounds in the shortest amount of time possible. The goal was travel, so I’ve always been clear on what I’m trying to get out of where I am, whether that’s money or traveling.
Upon coming home after three years, I moved back into marketing. I went from travel into US-listed insurance companies for around seven years, where I started to learn more about the customer and their end goals. I then moved into another professional services firm around 2011. It’s been an interesting journey moving up the marketing trajectory from specialist to manager, eventually taking on the role here at Hudson as CMO. I was in that marketing role for about 12 months, but it was during that time and my previous role that I realized marketing is changing. It’s becoming less about traditional campaign management and promotions, and more about the customer and the customer journey.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but even before I formally moved roles at Hudson, I was already creating journey maps. I would draw things on the board and my team would say, “Oh, another Jo whiteboard session, here we go again!” It was important for me to think about what we were actually trying to achieve. This goes back to roots in branding, where you think about the entire interaction with the brand rather than just one particular interaction. I’ve been at Hudson almost four years now. I moved from the marketing role I was covering for maternity leave when our CEO, Mark Steyn, said they’d like to keep me. I think differently than a lot of people—which can be a blessing and a curse—and moved into a customer experience role. I like to learn and do things differently; I’m never afraid of a challenge. I’m often referred to as someone who can “get stuff done,” so I am often put in roles where something isn’t working and I am asked to help fix and drive it. That has been a tenet of my career: finding learning opportunities and driving for success.
John: There is certainly an old adage: if you want something done, give it to a busy person.
Joanne: Yes!
John: It’s interesting that you mention your view of marketing has changed, and that the experience of an organization effectively becomes its brand. The way you interact with an organization is now much more multidimensional and two-way. What do you see as the factors that really changed things? Is it social media? Where did it start to gel that things were different from what you were taught?
Joanne: There was no “online” when I was at university—no websites, no digital, and certainly no social media. For me, it shifted as things became more digital and you had less control over the experience. When a customer walks into a physical store, you control the people, the advisors, and the products they interact with. Now, a digital interaction is only a very small part of their total interaction with your brand. Between social media and word of mouth, people do an immense amount of research before they even approach you, even in B2B purchases. You lose control of that.
In the era of social media, word of mouth becomes even more important because there is so much information available that people don’t know who to trust. They go to their networks on LinkedIn and ask for vendor recommendations. You realize it’s not just about running campaigns anymore, because customers will see through whatever you tell them and find the information for themselves. It has shifted from one-way “push” marketing to helping people understand their problems and tailoring solutions to them. There wasn’t a “Big Bang” moment, but the introduction of social media was certainly a game-changer.
John: In the Hudson context, what do you do differently now as the person responsible for customer experience compared to what you would have done as a marketer? Are you saying the Customer Experience Director is the “new marketer”?
Joanne: It’s evolving that way. We still have a strong marketing department across five countries doing interesting campaigns around EVP, but marketing as a profession is becoming less about specific campaigns and more about touchpoints along the journey. Customer experience doesn’t belong to any one silo, which is both a joy and a challenge. You are a bit of IT, a bit of marketing, a bit of operations, and a bit of service. It’s about finding a way to connect the journey for the customer across all those different departments.
John: To get down to brass tacks, how have you gone about delivering on customer experience within Hudson?
Joanne: We’ve been on an interesting journey. We are still moving at a tactical level, trying to move up the maturity curve. For us, “customers” include both client experience and candidate experience, as well as our own staff and consultants. We have them as part of our core strategy to improve the experience and drive differentiation in the market. We’ve balanced this by streamlining onboarding and various other projects, but we are currently focused on getting a few fundamentals right.
John: One of the dynamics of the contemporary marketplace is that big players almost always have legacy systems. This is where disruption happens because agile competitors can design a mobile-first experience while the big ships are still turning. It’s a challenge to blend legacy systems with a modern customer experience while giving customers confidence that things are changing.
Joanne: I agree. On the flip side, I was speaking to a senior executive at Uber recently. I told him it must be great to be so agile, and he said, “Yes, but we started off small and did it cheap, and now that we’ve scaled, our systems aren’t fit for purpose anymore.” They are currently replacing their payroll system. We often forget that even successful startups battle the same legacy issues once they grow. It is very rare to find an organization that is perfectly right-sized with nothing to fix.
John: I love that. I met an entrepreneur who started a travel business four years ago that now does over 100 million in turnover. They just had to invest massively to move from Google Docs and spreadsheets into an enterprise resource system and a CRM built on Salesforce. Being “grown-up” meant getting grown-up systems.
Joanne: That’s the problem. They can start in an hour with Google Docs and MYOB, but the processes needed to support a startup eventually need to scale too. It’s not just the big guys facing disruption; everyone has their own battles to fight.
John: The other big conversation is data and artificial intelligence. What do you see as the role of AI and data in enabling better customer experiences?
Joanne: Data is vital. Without it, we make assumptions and guesses based on our own perspective rather than the customer’s. Without data, you are just relying on hunches. The challenge is matching internal data or research with what the customer actually wants. I certainly think AI and other emerging technologies are going to play a big role in that. Wherever you can use data to support a decision, you have to do it.
John: How is that working at Hudson? What is the trade-off between deep focus groups and gleaning insights from online behaviors?
Joanne: Like many companies, we have no shortage of data—we have millions of CVs in our database. We are in the process of working out how to best use predictive analytics and new technology to leverage that. From a CX perspective, we use internal data, NPS, and customer listening to identify and fix problem areas. We are still working on how to blend data from different sources to move forward.
John: Regarding NPS (Net Promoter Score), it has become a common currency, but it can shift according to the importance of a transaction. Have you thought about the issues regarding how you gauge success?
Joanne: We need to look at our entire “customer listening ecosystem” to find the right metric. We have a very large funnel in terms of applications versus placements. If someone has applied for ten jobs and haven’t been successful, is that the right time to ask for an NPS? We have to find the right metric for the right phase of the journey. I believe the most important thing is to have a metric, measure it, and understand what is driving it. If you can work out what’s causing dissatisfaction among your detractors, you need to act on that. I want to understand the relationship of moving someone from a detractor to a promoter and the benefit that brings to business growth.
John: Let’s talk about HR tech. What are talent communities and these new platforms all about?
Joanne: HR tech is massive. We participated in a tech accelerator with Slingshot and Seek earlier this year. People are looking at talent differently now. It’s becoming more about finding “passive” talent—people who aren’t necessarily looking at job boards every day. We want to engage with them throughout their career so we can tap into that hidden talent when the perfect job comes up. Technology companies and startups are moving fast to solve these engagement problems.
John: You mentioned your decision to keep working after having a family. Can you tell me about your family and how your partner supported you in that process?
Joanne: I have two daughters, aged nearly eight and four and a half. They are my number one priority, but I was always going to be a working mother. When I met my husband, we spoke about who would stay at home, and it was a very short conversation. He said, “You’re driven, you enjoy what you do, you earn more than me—this is a no-brainer!” For our first child, I took nine months off, he took three months, and then he went back part-time. Working in a company with parental leave was great for both of us. He’s an amazing dad and loves being with the kids. We are the Yin and the Yang; I’m the extroverted, driven one, and he’s more introverted. We found a balance, though there is a lot of stigma attached to it. I’m an achievement-driven person, and I’m definitely a better mother when I work.
John: And you’ve blogged about this.
Joanne: I have, because I get so many questions. People at conferences ask if my husband is a stay-at-home dad like they’ve read about in books. Men often tell me my husband is a “brave man.” He has even been asked how it feels to be out-earned by a woman or how it feels not to “support” the family. It’s very outdated, 1950s-style judgment. Thankfully, we both have thick skins. We know that family balance is about whatever works best for your specific family, and ours is happier this way.
John: We work with companies to uncover their intrinsic values and purpose. Can you talk about how you align the values of a business with the people who work there?
Joanne: Companies are placing much more importance on this now. The old adage is “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Cultural fit and motivations are often better indicators of success than technical expertise or degrees. Personally, I’m driven by driving change. That is essentially what customer experience is: driving change for the better. Once you uncover what drives you beyond the dollars, it becomes easier to make the best decisions on a personal and professional level.
John: Can you share a memorable customer experience that you’ve seen or been involved in—the “Holy Grail” of CX?
Joanne: I’ve had more negative experiences lately—connecting to the NBN was a whole other level of negative! But for a positive one, I always look at hotels. I recently stayed at the Intercontinental in Sydney. They have it down to a tee. The check-in was seamless, we were upgraded, and given access to the club. They had snuck into the room to leave a little envelope and turned the bed down. They make it effortless and frictionless. When we checked out, they thanked us and asked if we needed onward travel. Hotels have the volume and the dollars, and they do it really well.
John: I’m pleased you mentioned them; we play a small role in the digital experience for their customers.
Joanne: Ah, there we go!
John: Finally, what do you see unfolding in the next few years for customer experience?
Joanne: I think the future is very bright for CX. It is only going to grow in importance. Many companies are still nervous about the ROI, but everyone is talking about it. It needs to become a holistic, coordinated effort across all silos. We have the opportunity to “leapfrog” and not make the same mistakes other markets have made. We need to increase our discipline, use data, and—importantly—show ROI. Customer experience is at risk of being seen as “fluffy” or “warm and fuzzy,” much like how some view marketing or HR. As a profession, we need to mature and use the language of the business to drive initiatives forward.
John: Joanne, thanks for joining us today.
Joanne: Thank you very much.