The Gist

Generative AI integration. LinkedIn utilizes generative AI, in collaboration with Microsoft, to improve content creation and optimize job postings, enhancing both customer and employee experiences.
EX and CX synergy. Emphasizing the importance of combining employee experience (EX) with customer experience (CX), LinkedIn focuses on equipping customer-facing employees with the necessary tools, data and support for better service delivery.
Insights through research. Leveraging qualitative research and journey mapping, LinkedIn gains a deeper understanding of customer and employee journeys, emphasizing the value of humility and curiosity in driving significant CX improvements.

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In this episode of CX Decoded, we delve into the intricate relationship between employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX), with insights from Sam Stern, a seasoned customer experience manager at LinkedIn. Sam is also a CMSWire Contributor.

This discussion covers the significance of integrating EX and CX strategies, leveraging data for impactful changes, and the evolving role of AI in enhancing both employee and customer interactions.

Episode Highlights

Sam Stern's Role and the Structure of LinkedIn's CX Team

0:23 - Insight into Sam Stern's background and the dynamics of LinkedIn's customer experience team, focusing on journey mapping, qualitative research, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Top-Level KPIs: Trust, Value and Effort

3:08 - Discussion on the importance of trust, perceived value, and ease of doing business as key performance indicators in measuring the success of LinkedIn’s CX initiatives.

Distinguishing Between Customers and Members

4:07 - Exploring the distinction between LinkedIn's members and customers, emphasizing the platform's commitment to unlocking economic opportunities for all users.

Leveraging Data for Continuous Improvement

6:16 - How LinkedIn uses vast amounts of user-generated content and operational data to inform CX strategies and drive platform enhancements.

Integrating EX with CX for Memorable Moments

8:12 - The critical role of employee experience in delivering memorable customer interactions, highlighting the importance of empowering and enabling customer-facing employees.

Collecting and Acting on Agent Feedback

17:33 - Strategies for capturing valuable insights from call center agents to improve customer experiences and address frontline challenges.

Recent Changes from Journey Mapping Insights

25:47 - Examples of how journey mapping and cross-functional collaboration have led to significant improvements in LinkedIn’s customer and employee experiences.

The Impact of AI on CX and EX

27:22 - Sam Stern discusses the integration of generative AI technologies to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of both customer and employee interactions at LinkedIn.

Conclusion and Takeaways

29:50 - Sam Stern shares final thoughts on the importance of humility and qualitative research in uncovering new insights to improve both customer and employee experiences.

Connecting with Sam Stern

Follow Sam on LinkedIn and check out his podcast, CX Patterns, for deeper insights into customer experience strategies and trends.

Episode Transcript

Dom Nicastro 0:23: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of CX Decoded. Dom Nicastro, here managing editor of CMSWire. And today we're really continuing our deep dives into the world of CX, but also how EX kind of fits into that old employee experience with customer experience.

So we'll talk a lot about that. And to do that we've got another great practitioner who is living this dream every single day. And it's Sam Stern, senior manager, customer experience, at LinkedIn. Sam, what's going on?

Sam Stern 0:55: Dom, great to be with you. And thank you for having me.

Dom Nicastro 0:59: Great to have you on and welcome, by the way, Sam Stern to the CMSWire Contributor community. Sam already penned his first article for us. It was on the peak end rule for CX, a lot of good food for thought there. Thanks for joining that community as well.

Sam Stern 1:14: Thanks for inviting me and for having me. And yeah, I'm excited to have my first article published with you.

Overview of LinkedIn's Customer Experience Team

Dom Nicastro 1:19: All right, well, let's give our listeners the lay of the land here for you, Sam and your team kind of the structure, you know, the dynamics of that CX team that you're in, where you fit in who your team is, and kind of what are the main objectives there?

Sam Stern 1:34: Yeah, sure. So I've been at LinkedIn on the customer experience team for close to three years now. And our customer experience team is really focused on experience design. So we do journey mapping, qualitative research. We have a bunch of techniques we use to prioritize and set up for execution with some of our cross functional colleagues, changes to the experience based on what we learned in our research and our journey mapping.

And with the experience insights team who are colleagues of ours in sort of the same larger organization, but on a different team. They have all the customer data, they're doing surveys and collecting other forms of feedback, where they're soliciting feedback from customers.

But then they also have inbound data and operational data.

So social media comments, I mean, we are a social media platform. So it was a comment on the platform on LinkedIn, support tickets, data from our platform, so from usage, page times and those types of things.

And so we're using all of that data, one as inputs to our experience, design work and our journey mapping. But even further back, we're using it to help us determine where we should be working, what projects we should be doing next, what parts of the experience, need our focus, so that we can take effort out for customers take effort out for employees.

Related Article: What Do Customer Experience Teams Actually Look Like?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Customer Experience

Dom Nicastro 2:48: What are some of those big top level KPIs amongst that data? You know, what are the top few that you're really looking at day to day? You're thinking about it when you're not working? Like those KPIs that kind of like, okay, we gotta get this number up, or we gotta have this number, do this, this number, do that? Are there a few of those that stand out? Yes.

Sam Stern 3:08: So first and foremost, trust, the emotion of trust is something that we take very seriously, we track and measure, trust is not much evidence for the big social media platforms, except it is for LinkedIn. So it's really down to LinkedIn, and Pinterest that are the two social media platforms that people trust these days. And we take that very seriously that responsibility to maintain that trust. So trust is something that we're tracking, as well as perceived value. So our customers feel like they're getting value for money for their services that they're spending, and then also ease of doing business. So are we taking effort out of the process? Are we automating things that can be automated or removing steps that don't need to be taken by customers or by employees? So those, I would say, would be the three big ones: trust perceived value and effort?

The Distinction Between Customers and Members at LinkedIn

Dom Nicastro 3:54: One point you mentioned to me in our pre talks was the difference between customers and members. I think this conversation, people would love to know the difference in how you guys view those, it's two different buckets, right?

Sam Stern 4:07: So it's interesting, because it's every customer, I think I can say this, every customer is a member. But if you think about your relationship with LinkedIn, you're probably thinking about a member relationship. If you're listening to this podcast episode, you're a member of LinkedIn. And that's who we honor first, because the ability of members to get value to find interesting opportunities, whether it's jobs, whether it's people to work with, whether it's content that's going to help them be better in their role that keeps them coming back to the platform that gets them to trust us and see value from us. And it's that engagement that makes LinkedIn an appealing platform to customers.

And so then many of those members not all of course, because we have 1 billion plus members, but many of those members become customers when they need to hire someone when they want their Salesforce to better target by using Sales Navigator when they want to buy learning products, all the different doughnuts we have.

So we're trying to balance the needs of both right? We want the customers to get value from the ads that they place on LinkedIn or find great candidates for their jobs. But equally on the other side, we want members to feel like they're getting great jobs because what we always say is we're trying to unlock economic opportunity for everyone. And so in both directions, we want to create that mutually beneficial marketplace and platform.

Strategies for Managing and Utilizing Customer Feedback

Dom Nicastro 5:23: And those members are very chatty on LinkedIn. I know if people make comments, they make statements. It's emotional, please. I mean, it is just a forum for world dialogue, really just have what's on your mind professionally. What's on your mind personally, sometimes, I like the touch when a lot of people go personal. I'm like, I didn't know that about this person. You know, the question I'm getting at for a CX person on LinkedIn, a CX manager, like yourself, what do you do with that massive amount of material? Right? There's so many posts, so many comments, so many replies, so many groups, private groups, public groups, webinars, LinkedIn live, people are saying things every second on LinkedIn. So how does the CX team gather all those insights? And what do you do with them? It's

Sam Stern 6:16: An incredible amount of data, as you said, being generated. So a lot of times we're looking at trends, and we're looking at responses in activity and behavior on the platform to changes that we make, for example, when we implemented AI generated key takeaways from articles or from newsletters, we want to see how many people are using that are more people reading the articles that are they engaging with the content more?

So a lot of times it's about because it's such an overwhelming amount of information, as you said, it's about using that information to focus ourselves on reviewing tests are changes that we've made using the data and focusing on a specific area, because if you're trying to look at it all at once, it's obviously overwhelming. If you're using it to make a decision about whether a new feature you implemented was successful or not. It's much easier in that case, right? Because you have great data coming in and you've focused on a very specific, narrow, tailored question to answer with that data.

Dom Nicastro 7:10: Should I put my link in the post Sam, or in the comments? That's a big debate, right? This is totally off subject in a bit. I'm just, I was just thinking of it, right? Because we post all the time on LinkedIn. And it's a big part of our business, social media strategy, and not just like, hey, hey, that guy's doing it differently. How do I do it?

Sam Stern 7:28: I know, I think actually put it in the comments. Okay. Yeah. Because I think it formats strangely in post. I don't know why we haven't made that easier. But yeah, usually, what you'll see a lot is people write the post, and then, you know, point you to the first comment, usually from themselves, of course, for the post to the podcast, or the article, you know, on another site, or wherever it is.

Integrating Employee Experience (EX) with Customer Experience (CX)

Dom Nicastro 7:52: Let's talk about that EX and CX dynamic that you alluded to quickly. I know it's a big deal for you.

Sam Stern 8:12: Yeah, that's right. So when I was at Forrester, I did a lot of research, I was on the customer experience research team. But I did a lot of research on employee experience, and customer centric culture, and how both of those support delivering a great customer experience. And with LinkedIn, integrating that employee experience with customer experience, our last podcast, guests had a great example of like, their NPS was low, if a call center call went more than like 15 minutes, right? And a manager would come on at that point, and would remind the agent about, hey, this is the time to maybe shift pivot, what can I do to help kind of thing? And that was a great example to me of using CX insights to fuel EX. Because now the agent is having a better experience. Maybe the call goes better, and maybe they get better grades after, right? What are some examples there for your team, the infusion of EX with CX and kind of how you're looking at that.

Related Article: Is It Time to Make CX and EX 'One Experience'?

Sam Stern 9:05: For us. It's interesting, so much of our customers' interactions with us are digital on the platform with our tools and services. But we have large Salesforce, large customer success teams, we have customer support. And all of those customer facing roles and teams, they're there for really important moments of the experience, the account setup, or the walking you through how to use a new product, or when you have an issue and an error, and you get to global support.

So we think of that interplay, as the platform should work, the product should work, but when they don't, the humans, the people, the employees stand behind that and make sure that we back that up. And I think again, to me, that's part of the equation of trust, it should work and if it doesn't, we stand behind that to fix it to make it work. We back up our experience. And we want to make sure that those employees are equipped to deliver a great experience in those moments because those moments will be really important. and really memorable to customers if they go well, or if they do not go well.

And so that means giving them access to data and knowledge about the customers, and the context and where they were before they got to that point, and the experience and the feedback, there's a tool we use to sort of let sales reps and Customer Success reps record, and then listen back to their calls and sort of use that as training to get better on their customer calls.

And all of that is designed to sort of help those customer-facing employees get better and better at nailing those key moments in the experience, because we know that the human delivered moments in an experience are more memorable, either good or bad. We're human, we're used to sort of interacting with people. So we're social beings, we remember that kind of stuff. So those moments are few and far between, as they are still really impactful because they live long in the customer's memory.

Balancing Employee Experience With Customer Insights

Dom Nicastro 10:50: Yeah, and that experience insight team, the one that collects the data, your teams and any other team really around the CX effort at LinkedIn, are there KPIs that they have for the employees, like, you know, sometimes there's employee Net Promoter Score, right, or employee effort score, whatever you call it? Are you looking at some employee data alongside your customer data?

Sam Stern 11:13: So we have ease of doing business with LinkedIn, which is about making it easier for customers to work with us. And we also have ease of doing business at LinkedIn. And that's for employees. And my team has done some research with our customer-facing employees. And it's clear to us that there's a lot of effort we can take out of their daily work. And it's daily work that is preventing them from doing their more important daily work, namely, being on calls with customers.

So as much as we can do to remove some of that effort to track activities, or to keep their book of business updated, or whatever it is, we can make that easier or automate parts of that, then we're freeing up hours for them to spend more time preparing for client meetings on client meetings. And that's high value, high productivity time for customer facing employees. So that's a big metric for us, as we think about the employee experience is, do they feel like it's easy to work at LinkedIn and get their jobs done and deliver value to our customers?

Dom Nicastro 12:12: Yeah, like, is there an actual, like, scientific model for that? Or is it a lot of anecdotal data? It's a lot of spreadsheets, like the ease of doing business. Is it actually, is there a formula behind that?

Sam Stern 12:23: That's a good question. So it is a little bit of a mix, we are doing sort of, we're asking them to give us time estimates for how much time they're spending on things. But then we're tracking some of that, and some of the systems how much time they're spending doing certain tasks. And we've done some time diary studies.

So we are trying to collect some of that data directly. But also, the actual amount of time it takes is important, and it's great to have, but how they perceive that time is really important. If it feels like it's taking a long time. And it feels onerous, even if it's not, that's valuable information, because we know they're really feeling like, you know, maybe it only took them five or 10 minutes, but they just thought it was painful. And it took way longer than it should.

And that's going to impact them, that's going to sort of bring them down a little bit. They're not going to have the same sort of sunny effect when they're talking to our customers later. So we want to manage that as well, their perception of how much effort or how much time things take.

Related Article: The Art of Balancing Employee Experience and Customer Experience

Dom Nicastro 13:34: Those CX leaders (at a Forrester event in 2022) were talking about agent experience more than anything, when I was talking to them at the lunch tables in the hallways and what have you. And on stage, I was fascinated by that. I'm like, wow, we really are moving towards an EXE type of CX dynamic here that has to be baked in. What have you learned lately, from all these insights with the ease of doing business at LinkedIn? What are some big top level concerns of these customer facing employees? And what have you done on the back end to kind of address these challenges?

Sam Stern 14:07: Yeah, we have learned that employees want to feel and want to believe that they are critical to have some part of the experience that what they do matters. And that is seen that that is respected right, in an organization like LinkedIn, where it's mostly digital, you could see how maybe they would think what they did wasn't valued as much as you know, the platform activity. And so they want to know that we understand we, the rest of the organization understand the critical role they're playing in our experience.

And as you were just alluding to agent experience, you know, the concept of that moment of service recovery when something did go wrong. There's many, many instances where that saves the relationship. They're heroes. It's a you know, it's like a game saving diving catch in the outfield. So it's on that level. That's really important. And what they also want to feel is that they are empowered to deliver that experience. So do they have the information they need?

Do they have the permission to spend the time needed with that customer to give them the experience they need. And then enabled to do they have the data they need, do they have the tools? Do they have the training so that when they're in these interactions with customers, they feel like they are set up for success.

Those are feelings that when they feel enabled, when they feel seen when they feel empowered to do what's necessary to deliver the right experience for customers, that has been sort of a really sturdy equation that lasts, right that when you set up employees with those beliefs, and those success factors, they will mostly almost always deliver a really good experience to customers.

So that's what we've been focused on is getting them to that feeling where the data they have worked for them and are at their fingertips to tell them about the customer, and where they feel like they can take a few extra minutes with that customer if they need to. Because we're tracking performance. But we also have some leeway in that if they find a customer needs a little extra attention. Those types of things make them feel empowered, right?

Related Article: The Importance of Contact Center Agent Well-Being

Dom Nicastro 15:59: I've had 25-minute awesome conversations with call center agents, you know, where, I like to talk. So sometimes it makes me feel good on the day when someone listens to me, right? It just goes beyond that duration, right?

Sam Stern 16:22: 100%. And just to your example, that agent using their judgment and their skills to assess that, hey, I've got Dom on the phone, and he wants to chat, I'm going to stay on with him, right, versus someone else. It's like this person's in a hurry, might hear the kids in the background, I'm going to process this as quickly as possible. Again, that's a sense of empowerment that we trust the agents to read and react with what the customer is looking for in that moment, right and adjust the experience and service they deliver accordingly.

Dom Nicastro 16:50: One thing I think that companies want to get better at CX team, CX leaders is taking the feedback from the agent and using it effectively. Because how do you capture that? I don't want to say water cooler, everyone says that I hate that when any of us even talk over water cooler, when the agents are talking to each other after work, or they have a smoke break or something like that. A zoom break, if you will, if they're remote, right? How do you capture those moments? Right? I mean, where they're talking about customers, how they solve the problem. The agents have a wealth of data and anecdotes that can fuel better customer experiences. So is there a strategy there with collecting agent feedback agent experience?

Sam Stern 17:33: Yeah, so one of the things that we do, and totally share that perspective that we are always trying to get more of that information. To me, it's sort of thinking about, like, there are things they know, and they've known them so long, or they've adapted so well to work around or adjusting to whatever their constraints are in their the employee experience for the experience they have to deliver, that they might not even be able to tell you about them if you just ask.

So we'd like to get them to show us. So we'll use a technique called contextual inquiry where we'll sort of ride along with them and have them share their screen and show us the different steps. They're going through the different systems, they have to click through to complete something.

And it's hilarious to me, because first of all, they have like 30 tabs open, and they're clicking around. And then they'll say, oh, and I see this data point, that means I'm gonna have to go to this other system and grab this piece of information. It's like, well, how do you know that? Like? Well, I've been here for three years. So I just figured that out. At some point, we note that down because it's like, no new employee is going to be able to do that on day one. And so now we have a training opportunity, or we have a process thing that we want to fix, right? Because it's like, as soon as someone tells us they figure that out, or someone else told them, but it's not the prescribed way of doing things. That's a moment for us to go and try and fix.

Related Article: AI in Contact Centers: Championing Your Agents

Dom Nicastro 18:46: And I think that's the moment where you realize that we just have to do it like Undercover Boss, does it? Does she ever. Yeah, just go. It's like a verb for me: go undercove-boss-it, right? Yeah, go sit in their shoes. Watch how they do it. So that's like the reverse effect that's starting with employee experience, to fuel customer experience, because if that first week, employee, first day employee is going to benefit from your efforts of seeing what's wrong with the three year employee, and in turn, probably going to help the customer.

Sam Stern 19:17: Absolutely. And actually, you know, to that point about helping the customer, they will often in those sessions tell us about things that are driving case volume that are known to them, issues for the customer, they're like, Yeah, this always comes up and it's a problem, you know, with billing or with provisioning this new product or whatever it is. And we're sitting there thinking and listening to what they need, but we're also thinking hmm, that's something we should go talk to product about, like I bet that should work differently than if they're telling us it's working in ideally then wouldn't drive as many support tickets.

The Role of AI and Future Directions for CX and EX

Dom Nicastro 19:48: The past couple of weeks or so Sam, like give me an example of like a standout call center employee that you just had a great moment with. I'm fascinated with that interaction between call center leader and your call center manager, like someone in your shoes, someone in your team shoes, working with the front line? Is there an actual vivid moment that you can recall?

Sam Stern 20:08: Yeah, yeah. So we've been doing this research for the last few weeks with customer support. And I was reviewing some of the videos just this morning because we're sort of splicing together some of the clips from some of the research to sort of make a recap video. And I was watching one gentleman in our global support be interviewed by a couple of my colleagues. And what he was saying, and I think this is what's so powerful about these folks is he was talking about when he has to spend two hours on a really complex support ticket.

And my colleague asked him, she said, doesn't that hurt your cue percentage time and your calls per hour handled? And he said, Oh, yeah, it craters it. I know, I'm done for the day, like, it's gonna be a bad day. He's like, so what I do is I communicate to my manager to tell her this is what I'm doing and she almost always backs me and supports me and she understands. And we are going to put a little note on my performance for that day. But it's the right thing to do for the customer, the customer needs that much help. And I can make a difference. And that's really inspiring to hear. He's taking a hit. Now, maybe we should justify metrics a little bit, but he's taking a hit there to do the right thing for the customer. And he's getting the support from his manager in doing it. And I just love that example.

Dom Nicastro 21:20: That is gold. That is gold. And to get to that point, Sam, it's a credit to your team, because you have to make the effort to review and talk to these people one on one, right? I think a lot of CX leaders might get buried in the data, the KPIs, the board meetings, and all that stuff that matters, but doesn't it matter as much as that customer-facing employee working with a customer, that one on one transaction that can bring the company down? Yeah. So they need to be empowered. So I guess my question to you is like, what kind of advice do you give to CX leaders to get out of their day to day and make time? Yeah, sounds like you have a pretty good system there, you were watching some videos, then you went to the employee.

Sam Stern 22:02: I do think even in this age of incredible volumes of data, and we've talked about that already. Qualitative research absolutely still has a role to play, getting this kind of rich feedback. And it's so complimentary to the big sets of data that we all have access to. So I think to me, that's first is you have to be planning to prepare to do qualitative research to complement the more quantitative sets of data that we already have coming in. And then as you said, I think the power of seeing it, so it's for me, seeing it, seeing him talk about it, and show my colleague on his system where he had to spend this extra time, but then putting that video together and sharing it with our colleagues to show them because they might say, well, he should have gone to this system.

And it's like, well, look at all the tabs he has opened, do you really think he's going to find that or no, that in the moment when he's taking two chats at once with customers, when you see the employee in the convoluted systems that they're going through on screen on video, and you hear them talking about it, that is unassailable, people can push back on that that's just real. And so we really like to use that we're trying to do that more and more these days by showing the videos to our colleagues, when we present when we do the deliverables, to highlight some of the key findings and the research and the sessions that we hold. That's the evidence that's hardest for people to look away from is what I found.

Leveraging Journey Mapping for Enhanced Customer and Employee Experiences

Dom Nicastro 23:18: Having those insights is just amazing. And I know, your team really focuses on that qualitative research, like you said, in the journey mapping to I know, journey mapping, and we haven't really talked about that. And a lot of folks talk about employee journey mapping and customer journey mapping. But it sounds like you guys are really doubling down on that customer journey mapping. How do we get there? How do you get to that point? And sort of where do you start?

Sam Stern 23:42: So yes, we do a lot of journey mapping, both customer and employee journey mapping when we're looking at the employee experience. And it flows from the data that we have access to from experience, insights team and the qualitative research that we do. So we sort of, you know, we start there.

And then a lot of what we're doing, we're aiming to do with with conducting that research with ingesting that data, is to start to turn it into a rich understanding of the experience from end to end, which is every CX Pro on Earth basically is finding that it's best visualized through a journey map. So that's how we do it too. And what I found it's been really valuable since the pandemic and I think a lot of folks have found this is we now do it all digitally, all remote, and it makes it really easy to have collaboration with our colleagues to get their inputs to the journey map.

So you know if we're going to look at okay, well, what is the process that underpins these steps in the journey for the employee to talk to the business process team and get their input for that part? What are the metrics these employees are being held to we get that from the managers and that team, we can end the journey with go one by one, we can have people review it, we can share it with people, I found that that's a really powerful way to sort of open up those conversations with our cross functional partners by taking time to sort of show them the journey map, walk them through it and also get their inputs and almost in real time with them on the call with us sharing our screen.

Add their input to the map, so they can see that it's there. And it's included. The other thing I'll say, though, is we also do a lot of service blueprinting and future state journey mapping. And again, it's really just sort of you wanting to capture the current state and understand what's working and what's not. But we don't want to wallow in the pain that we're causing our customers, our employees. So we want to make sure as well to frame up what it could be like if we addressed some of the issues that we found in the current state map. So that's the other technique, I think is important is to sort of not only document what's happening today, but to help colleagues imagine what's possible tomorrow.

Dom Nicastro 25:34: Can you recall any changes recently from these journey mapping sessions and learnings and these cross functional calls, like anything that's recently made a big change because of your journey mapping work?

Sam Stern 25:47: This is going back a couple of years. But this was a project we had worked on, we found that there was maybe not enough of a ritual around a customer's ad campaign experience on the site. What I mean is when they run a campaign marketing campaign, they get the results back, it's sort of just here the results, here's the dashboard, there was an opportunity there to help them memorialize it, you know, for the first campaign, if it was a really successful campaign, if it was going to lead to these business results. And that came out of doing research for customers, what are they going to do with the data?

What are they going to do with the results from the campaign, and we saw that it was like, this is something where there's real alignment between that individual customer and LinkedIn, assuming it's successful, it has to be successful as a campaign, if it is, they want to celebrate that they want to talk about that internally, it's good for their personal brand, it's good for their professional development and how they're seen among their team.

But also they want their colleagues, you know, the sales team who's gonna follow up on leads other colleagues in the marketing department, they want them to know that it was successful. So that was an example of something we found in journey mapping. We've got to do more to help them turn that into a milestone around the results of the campaign coming back.

Enhancing Human and Customer Experiences: The Integral Role of Generative AI at LinkedIn

Dom Nicastro 26:53: We've gone like 30 plus minutes, Sam, and I did not ask a question about AI. How did I miss it? I mean, my goodness, there is that question. We gotta get to it. You guys have been around a long time, but November 2022 we know that was a big moment with ChatGPT and OpenAI and generative AI really specifically? So are technologies like generative AI being implemented successfully with you guys? And if so, what have been some of the outcomes?

Sam Stern 27:22: Yes, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, for anyone who doesn't know that. So Microsoft is at the heart of everything that's happening. But so you know, Microsoft, the partnership with ChatGPT, all the things that they're doing for their clients, we're working with them on using their capabilities with our clients. And so yes, it is making its way into the experience, primarily for customers. Now, as they're doing things that they do on our site, launching marketing campaigns, writing job postings, they get AI systems that you may have noticed as a member you can there's AI features to help you write posts.

Now, there are AI features to help you summarize articles. I think I mentioned that earlier. So this is getting infused everywhere. But it's becoming something we're starting to use for employees, co-pilot to help employees get access to information that might be in disparate systems that might be buried, giving suggestions about things to recommend to a customer. So yeah, we're seeing it show up everywhere. The use cases being for now primarily, like, let's augment what the customer is wanting to do anyway, write this post, if it's a member, or write this job description, if it's a customer, help them make it better.

And if it's an employee, help them deliver a better experience, I say for now, because that's sort of like human assist. It's other places, it's popping up where it's a primary interface. And I think as we keep going with AI, it will become more of that where it's AI to customer or AI to AI, the AI on the other side acting on behalf of the customer themselves. But right now, it's a lot of that human assist.

Dom Nicastro 28:58: You can't write an AI assistant post on LinkedIn without a couple of nice emojis next to it. Like, you know, if this is going to be great for business momentum, you have to have a rocket ship next to it. That's right. That's that's the deal. Sam, you know that this has been great. I'd really like to do a couple more things. One, I'd love for you to just wrap this whole conversation up.

And I think my big takeaway is the moment with that gentleman in the global call center. Yeah, and to me, that's a heck of an illustration of employee experience meets customer experience where you're using analytics, you using qualitative, you're using one to one face to face it's just like everything is involved in that so what would be your big takeaway from this Sam you know, talking to a fellow CX leader in your shoes that really wants to do more of this combination of EX and CX because I think that's the gold star this Convo for me. Yeah.

Sam Stern 29:50: So go into those efforts to understand and learn to find parts of the experience to fix. Go in with humility. It's been easy for us. LinkedIn is a big organization. So we're like, well, we don't really understand how this works. And embrace that mindset. I don't understand how this works, because then it allows you to explore, it allows you to ask the dumb questions. And we've learned a lot by doing that.

When my colleague asked that gentleman about, what are the studio metrics, she was asking for a position she truly didn't know. How did he balance that? And by asking those questions, you get to deeper insights. And I think that's a really valuable mindset to embrace for CX professionals is, if you are in a position where you don't know a lot about what's happening, great. Embrace your ignorance, if you feel like you know, really try and dial back and think what am I assuming is true, or what might be different from the last time we did this research, because that allows you to uncover new insights, new perspectives, nuances to your understanding that maybe you hadn't explored yet. And that's where we get into these opportunities to make real unique experiences or real upgrades to the experience that we might have missed if we hadn't embraced that mindset.

Dom Nicastro 30:56: Love it. And lastly, I'm going to give you an opportunity for a shout out because it sounds like Sam that you might have done a few podcasts here and there. So I think you might even have your own. So go ahead. Give us the details. I'd love to hear about it.

Sam Stern 31:08: Yes, thank you. Yes. So I publish periodically, a podcast called CX Patterns, really looking at sort of the underlying trends and the processes that make up great experiences. So trying to explore those with guests every couple of weeks. And then I read a newsletter on LinkedIn, of course, accompanying that with each podcast that goes live on LinkedIn.

Dom Nicastro 31:38: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned you had that LinkedIn profile, I was going to ask, make sure that people can connect with you on that platform. You do have one right, it's updated.

Sam Stern 31:45: I am updated. I am active there. And yeah, I always love to connect with people there. Because I found since I got to LinkedIn, I feel like I'm getting so many great questions from our members and customers about our experience, but also ideas and suggestions for podcast guests or topics or for questions to think about with regard to customer experience.

I found it since I got to LinkedIn, it's been really valuable. The platform is really valuable for thinking about and working in customer experience because people come look for you there anyway. And now I'm doing it for LinkedIn. So they'll tell me about their experience as a member customer to

Dom Nicastro 32:18: Awesome. Sam started on LinkedIn. Thanks for joining us on The CX Decoded podcast. I appreciate it very much and am looking forward to following Sam’s stories on cmswire.com. Don't forget about that. He'll be penning some articles for us. From time to time, Sam. Thanks again, really appreciate you letting us behind the curtain wet LinkedIn.

Sam Stern 32:37: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dom Nicastro: 32:40: You too.

We encourage you to drop us a line at editors@simplermedia.com. And if you have comments or suggestions for a future podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Additionally, if you like what you hear, please post a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you may be listening to this. And be sure to share CX Decoded and anyone that you think might benefit from these types of conversations. Finally, be sure to follow us on Twitter @CMSWire. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

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