ServiceNow’s Perspective on Customer Experience

00:05 all right we're getting to our next

00:07 interview now with chris betty cio of

00:09 servicenow chris welcome

00:12 thanks blake great to be here hi chris

00:14 nice to see you looks like you're

00:16 literally in the office today

00:18 i am powered by juniper's miss

00:21 technology on my wireless you have all

00:23 this strategy behind you is that all

00:25 customer strategy no i don't my core

00:28 strategy isn't on the wall it's just

00:30 some chicken scratch

00:31 uh from brainstorming yeah i'm just

00:34 gonna zoom in after this and watch it

00:36 i can see it says hi chris so that's

00:39 um all right so your motto

00:41 i've heard is being your own best

00:43 customer helps us make all of our

00:46 customers more successful so can you

00:49 launch us into this interview by

00:51 unpacking what does that mean

00:54 sure we're our own best customer of our

00:55 own technology and for the folks on the

00:58 line who don't know what servicenow does

01:01 our core purpose is to make the world of

01:03 work work better for people

01:05 if you think about that

01:07 that's ranges anywhere from

01:10 you know helping the country of scotland

01:12 with its vaccine management and

01:14 distribution

01:15 to partnering with disney plus in terms

01:18 of helping their hundred plus million

01:20 subscribers have a great customer

01:22 experience which you and neil were just

01:23 talking about

01:25 or partnering with att another big

01:27 carrier as they transform their

01:29 operations

01:30 and as we're doing all of those things

01:32 for our customers

01:34 it's really really reliant on our global

01:37 cloud services and our global cloud

01:39 services are really reliant on juniper's

01:43 technology so our mission is to provide

01:46 the most reliable performing and secure

01:48 cloud services and we partner with

01:50 juniper on that to directly answer your

01:52 question all the technology

01:54 that we make available to our customers

01:56 we use ourselves and we use it ourselves

01:59 to

02:00 you know drive great customer

02:02 experiences for our customers

02:04 provide our own employees a great

02:06 employee experience whether it's virtual

02:08 onboarding as they ramp up to coming

02:11 into the office using our return to work

02:13 apps

02:14 and i think over the last couple of

02:16 years we've proven we've driven over

02:18 about 300 million in productivity

02:21 internally leveraging our own techs we

02:23 use it all internally we're really proud

02:25 of that but even more proud of the way

02:27 our customers are transforming and

02:29 leveraging it

02:31 it reminds me of eating at a restaurant

02:33 chris where it's the chef has to try the

02:35 food if the chef hasn't tried the food

02:38 you it probably doesn't taste very good

02:40 so i think that you really beautifully

02:42 illustrated that um there's been

02:44 increasingly more research that there's

02:46 a link between what we're talking about

02:48 today customer experience and actually

02:50 employee experience

02:52 and even my husband wrote this book

02:54 called employee experience advantage and

02:56 he found researching with hundreds of

02:58 companies that

02:59 companies that invest in employee

03:01 experience are actually 4.2 times more

03:03 profitable than companies that don't and

03:06 that's jacob morgan's research my

03:08 husband

03:09 let's talk about employee experience

03:12 what does employee experience mean to

03:14 you and how is the partnership between

03:16 servicenow and juniper really benefited

03:19 your employees in addition to your

03:21 customers

03:22 sure and i do believe blake the two as

03:24 you stated are very much linked together

03:28 and if and in that service now we really

03:31 put the customers at the center of

03:33 everything but we know

03:35 if we can't deliver a great employee

03:38 experience for our own employees

03:40 they won't be able to do really what we

03:42 want them to do to serve our customers

03:44 in the best possible way

03:46 and when i think about employee

03:48 experience and i think the pandemic has

03:50 accelerated this it's really the

03:53 employee at the center of everything in

03:55 control of where they want to work how

03:58 they want to work whether it's remote

04:01 hybrid or a mix like today i'm in the

04:03 office

04:04 in workflows that surround the employees

04:06 that help them digitally onboard

04:08 digitally ramp up digitally connect

04:10 digitally get help

04:12 all of that is really reliant on a

04:15 network that can support that

04:17 so we use um for our 17 000 employees we

04:21 use juniper's wireless products the

04:24 missed product set of products to make

04:26 sure that we are delivering a stellar

04:28 experience to our employees they really

04:30 can work from anywhere it might be in an

04:32 office

04:33 could be in a collaboration space and

04:35 could be at home but the whole point

04:36 being it's a seamless experience and the

04:39 employee never has to think about where

04:42 they are they know they're always going

04:44 to get always on reliant service

04:46 and for the few times that you know

04:48 there are issues really a drive to

04:51 proactively helping it organizations

04:53 proactively resolve those issues so an

04:56 employee never has to think about it and

04:58 we we partnered with um

05:01 juniper with their own ai technology you

05:04 were talking earlier about ai

05:06 and we've we've driven a 90 reduction

05:10 in the number of issues reported by

05:12 employees on wireless and think about

05:15 that like they're not wasting time

05:17 thinking about the network thinking

05:18 about kids a wireless gonna scale or

05:20 perform they're doing what we want them

05:22 to do which is further the strategic

05:24 objectives of servicenow

05:27 absolutely it makes perfect sense and it

05:29 sounds like innovation has been a pretty

05:31 important part of how you evolve with

05:34 the times and enable your employees to

05:36 really do what they need to do

05:38 would you say innovation has been a

05:40 pretty big part of the partnership and

05:41 what you're doing

05:43 absolutely and we've really enjoyed um

05:45 the partnership

05:47 with juniper on innovation and the ai

05:50 solution i mentioned our engineers were

05:52 literally

05:53 um in a room together maybe a virtual

05:56 room right figuring out how our how our

05:58 technologies can complement each other

06:01 and and not only for us here that

06:03 solution that we proved out here

06:05 together

06:06 is serving our joint customers worldwide

06:09 as well and then we partner with juniper

06:11 and actually

06:12 um two or three different ways one was

06:14 on the employee experience blake which

06:16 we were just hitting on but at the

06:18 beginning of our conversation i talked

06:20 about our services and how critical our

06:23 always-on cloud services are and with

06:25 juniper delivering that you know those

06:28 services which are highly performant

06:30 highly reliable highly secure that are

06:33 growing with us for our production

06:34 network which we call our cloud services

06:37 and then the third area of collaboration

06:39 is really

06:40 partnership on the product and go to

06:41 market side

06:43 so we partnered again with juniper on

06:45 their missed vble technology and

06:47 servicenow's contact tracing

06:49 applications to really provide a joint

06:52 solution that can help our customers

06:55 worldwide

06:56 leverage the power of mist and

06:58 servicenow workflows for contact tracing

07:01 to ensure employee safety

07:04 so sometimes it can be hard to make

07:07 everybody a priority at work chris

07:09 customers and employees it's a lot

07:12 and

07:13 obviously sometimes we have to

07:14 prioritize one group over another

07:17 or

07:18 deal with silos that

07:20 we're not working on both ex and cx at

07:23 the same time seems like you've been

07:24 pretty successful in managing both cx

07:28 and ex so what do you think cios like

07:30 yourself can do

07:32 to really break down these internal

07:34 silos between cx and ex

07:37 well blake i think it really starts with

07:39 declaring that they're not silos

07:42 and and and strategically um making sure

07:45 the enterprise can see how they're

07:47 connected i think traditionally customer

07:49 experience has been really focused on

07:51 that

07:52 front-end engagement layer it could be a

07:54 portal or something like that or it

07:56 could be customers calling in and neil

07:58 was talking about some customers don't

07:59 want to talk to anybody but i think

08:02 the gap has been that front end

08:04 engagement layer to

08:06 some organizations may call it the

08:08 middle office core operations customer

08:10 operations whatever name you put on it

08:13 that's where the employees are doing the

08:14 hard work of serving you know those

08:16 customers and trying to be proactive so

08:19 linking that front end

08:21 all the way to the middle office

08:22 operations all the way down to the

08:24 technical operations we think is super

08:27 critical here at servicenow that's how

08:29 we treat it and i think more and more

08:31 that's what we're seeing in our customer

08:32 base as well whether it's telco

08:35 operations whether it's banking

08:36 operations insurance operations where

08:39 it's not enough to just focus on that

08:41 front end layer it has to be the front

08:43 end tied to those middle office

08:45 operations tied all the way back into

08:47 the technical operations

08:49 absolutely and it sounds like you're

08:51 moving toward this idea of total

08:53 experience as you think about all the

08:55 moving parts and how it works together

08:57 can you tell our audience what that

08:59 means to you total experience and how

09:02 you get support for that

09:03 yeah absolutely and and total experience

09:06 i think is a great term and there was a

09:08 while where when cios like myself when

09:11 they would engage with partners like

09:13 juniper we'd talk about things like

09:15 quality of service

09:17 and i always thought that that was such

09:19 like a tactical thing and that evolved

09:21 into quality of experience and now today

09:24 we call it total experience so what that

09:26 means to me i'll say from a customer

09:29 lens is regardless of how a customer

09:32 wants to engage with you it could be on

09:34 a mobile app it could be on on a portal

09:36 as you were just talking about the

09:38 stadium experience it could be

09:40 via a chatbot but regardless of how a

09:42 customer wants to engage you the

09:44 experience the quality of the network

09:46 the security of the network it should be

09:49 completely consistent and the same thing

09:51 for employees and with partners like

09:54 juniper we are able to deliver

09:57 that total experience to our customers

09:59 employees and partners

10:02 yeah because everybody has a high

10:04 expectation and it's all related right

10:06 if your employees can't do their job

10:08 then it impacts the customer experience

10:10 if the customers are

10:11 mad and angry then your employees are

10:13 out of a job so it's this funky cyclical

10:16 thing and everything is important so i

10:19 mean that's very challenging for

10:20 everybody watching um chris let's talk

10:23 about the value in digitizing cx and

10:26 why do you think cios were such early

10:29 advocates for digitizing cx

10:33 well i think part of it is we see what

10:35 an impact that the experience can have

10:39 firsthand with our employees and when

10:41 that with that employee experience how

10:43 much more engaged how much faster things

10:45 are operating

10:46 and i think it's just taking that same

10:48 mindset how do we how do we how do we

10:51 transform the customer experience which

10:53 can really help help enhance top line

10:56 revenue there's been countless studies

10:58 you mentioned ones earlier that show

11:01 that leading with nps leading with that

11:03 customer experience creates a level of

11:06 brand loyalty

11:07 that will generate future top-line

11:10 growth

11:11 and i think as organizations accelerated

11:13 the pandemic have leaned into more

11:16 digital services more digital

11:17 experiences cios are playing a bigger

11:20 role

11:21 so whether it's a company like pepsi

11:23 that's going direct with snacks.com

11:26 heineken is going direct but even

11:28 organizations like honeywell creating

11:30 sas platforms to sell software as a

11:32 service that customer experience is

11:35 landing on the desk of the cio to say

11:38 how are we going to digitally enable it

11:40 because the non-digital customer

11:42 experience is becoming a smaller and

11:45 smaller part of the equation

11:48 right and thank you for

11:50 citing a company in my roi framework i

11:53 shared earlier about honeywell it's

11:55 great to hear that co is like yourself

11:58 or i mean you're very much involved with

11:59 your own company but you're also aware

12:01 of innovation like pepsi going direct to

12:04 consumer and it seems like you're very

12:06 much keeping your finger to the pulse of

12:08 what's happening with your entire

12:10 industry let's talk about data

12:14 and employee access to data has that

12:16 been a pretty big part of

12:19 your success you think giving employees

12:21 access to

12:22 data absolutely i mean data

12:25 it's been long written as the fuel of

12:27 the new economy and why we were talking

12:29 about it earlier leveraging the power of

12:31 ai and ml

12:33 and so so we need um all employees and

12:37 neil talked about you can't have a data

12:39 science team and call it a day everyone

12:41 has to be versed in machine learning and

12:44 not just people in technical

12:46 organizations right the whole concept of

12:48 citizen data scientists and the new

12:51 generation entering the workforce they

12:53 want to get their hands on it they want

12:55 to participate in digitizing their own

12:57 work using modeling to figure out how to

13:00 you know further their own objectives

13:02 and i think this marriage of leveraging

13:05 data and citizen development via low

13:08 code no code tools i think we're under a

13:11 really big i'll call it

13:13 revolution here where it won't just be

13:15 the central tech organizations that are

13:17 driving digital transformation all

13:20 employees getting their hands on the

13:21 data becoming conversant with how to

13:24 digitize their own world to again

13:27 accelerate the overall digital

13:29 transformation of their enterprise

13:32 so the chief information officer chris

13:34 has a tough job

13:36 i think that any customer thanks for

13:38 saying that

13:39 [Music]

13:41 sure it's it's a lot of pressure

13:44 um i mean just think about what um you

13:47 protect and uphold information i mean

13:49 information has become number one in

13:52 society no matter who you are

13:54 um can we talk about

13:56 how you are successful in getting

13:59 advocacy and buy-in from your colleagues

14:01 in the c-suite because

14:04 customer any customer program it's hard

14:06 to get people on board

14:08 getting the right investments recruiting

14:09 the right people

14:11 what advice do you have for everybody

14:12 watching this who are really trying to

14:15 secure support and advocacy for for

14:18 their programs

14:19 sure i mean it's all about tying all the

14:23 initiatives

14:24 to an outcome the company cares about

14:27 um at at the right time right at any

14:30 point in time the company has to care

14:31 about a thousand things some things are

14:33 going to be more important than the

14:34 others i have seldom found that

14:37 if an initiative or a program can really

14:40 move the needle on customer experience

14:43 can really move the needle on speed to

14:45 serve

14:46 or reliability or security

14:49 that it won't get my peers attention

14:51 here at service now

14:53 the art i think is in making sure that

14:56 one can draw that line

14:58 and tell the story

15:00 about how all these programs link to

15:02 that better outcome and then obviously

15:05 execution

15:06 um then creates that flywheel effect so

15:09 and i think machine learning you were

15:11 talking about earlier is a great example

15:12 of where there may be skeptics will

15:14 machine learning really work is it

15:16 really better than humans and so i think

15:19 experimentation

15:20 rapid pilots and proof of value

15:23 internally

15:24 really help then it's a little bit of

15:26 glo go slow to go fast

15:28 get the pilots demonstrate the values

15:30 show that the innovation can work and

15:32 then scale like crazy

15:35 yeah the advice you're giving us it

15:37 sounds like some other advice would get

15:39 in life which is when you're trying to

15:42 make an argument tell a story illustrate

15:44 the value to the people that care that

15:47 would care

15:50 test and then show the results do quick

15:52 tests

15:53 fail fast and so i think what you're

15:55 saying a lot of us can relate to and

15:57 learn from let's go back to this

15:59 discussion of total experience what do

16:02 you think is the future of this idea of

16:04 total experience as we think about the

16:06 evolving role of the cio

16:09 i think um

16:10 when i think of the role total

16:13 experience it's really saying who are

16:14 the key stakeholders and enterprise

16:17 cares about and we talked about

16:19 customers a lot

16:20 but partners are a key stakeholder for

16:23 some organizations with a deep supply

16:25 chain it's going to be suppliers

16:27 so really looking at those end-to-end

16:30 experiences across those

16:32 because that's how we're going to serve

16:34 our customers the best right how do we

16:36 get an end-to-end experience across

16:38 those remove the silos remove the

16:40 friction from those operations and as

16:42 things as we also think about you know

16:45 the network

16:46 what what does it look like at the edge

16:49 where we need more compute power at the

16:51 edge what are the possibilities right 5g

16:54 might create

16:55 for us in terms of delivering experience

16:58 to all of those different stakeholders

17:00 so total experience to me means looking

17:02 at all the stakeholders looking at

17:04 horizontal experiences across them that

17:07 really serve the end customer in the

17:08 best possible way

17:10 chris i think so many of us watching are

17:13 struggling to balance the pressure to

17:16 innovate to grow while also continuing

17:19 to deliver on the experience our

17:21 customers are expecting now

17:23 what do you think has made you

17:24 successful in balancing these two

17:27 difficult pursuits of innovation but

17:30 also customer focus

17:32 i think um with growth

17:34 comes you know scale there's there's

17:37 more to do with growth more customers to

17:39 serve maybe more suppliers to manage

17:41 more people to onboard

17:43 and i think

17:44 left unchecked the manual work that that

17:47 can create

17:49 will bog down an organization it's like

17:51 tiny little boat anchors that start to

17:53 weigh down the organization drag down

17:55 speed

17:56 and i think the answer is a continuous

17:59 and relentless focus on digitization and

18:02 digitizing all of those core processes

18:05 those workflows internally so that the

18:08 organization doesn't get bogged down

18:10 with a thousand little boat anchors and

18:12 can really as it's growing still

18:14 maintain its focus on innovation and

18:17 scale because when when that doesn't

18:19 happen

18:20 the day to day and the tyranny of the

18:22 urgent consumes like 80 to 90 percent of

18:24 the resources and there's very little

18:26 time left for some creative blue sky

18:29 thinking about what's next and we all

18:32 know we have to do that and make room

18:33 for it but there's not going to be room

18:35 for it unless we

18:37 get rid of the

18:38 the routine the mundane things that we

18:40 can automate

18:42 it's kind of like in our own lives i

18:44 mean as you're talking i'm thinking

18:45 about both of us as people and everybody

18:47 watching we have to continue to

18:49 keep everybody happy families and and do

18:52 our job but also always be working on

18:54 ourselves to be better to try harder to

18:57 grow and expand our minds and i think

19:00 there's a lot of parallels between

19:04 building character as an individual and

19:06 also even an organization

19:09 and i'm sure you can relate to that

19:11 because i can tell i mentioned earlier

19:12 you're clearly a cio that reads that

19:15 gets out there that is watching pepsi

19:17 and honeywell and other companies

19:19 outside of your industry and constantly

19:20 working on yourself would you say that's

19:22 true

19:23 absolutely and i i have the unique

19:25 privilege um servicenow serves about 80

19:28 of the fortune 500

19:30 of of talking with and working with all

19:32 of the cios to make sure they're getting

19:35 the best out of the platform our

19:37 platform but not only that but also

19:40 exchanging ideas on digital

19:41 transformation because there's no

19:44 industry which has been left untouched i

19:46 was talking with a

19:48 healthcare provider their number of

19:50 video appointments pre-pandemic was

19:53 about 5 000 a month and this was after

19:55 about of you know close to a decade of

19:57 pushing it

19:59 without even trying in about four months

20:01 later they were averaging 350 000 a

20:04 month

20:05 so

20:06 think about that acceleration of

20:08 transformation

20:09 but um for maybe the more

20:11 network-focused colleagues uh watching

20:14 this think about the pressure on their

20:16 network that that must have created and

20:18 whether it's that example

20:20 could be governments with more

20:22 direct to citizen type services which

20:25 servicenow is helping out a lot of our

20:27 federal customers state local um etc so

20:31 when you mention in tune with the

20:33 industry it's really the privilege and

20:36 and it's a result of service now serving

20:38 all of those organizations

20:40 well wow you definitely have your work

20:43 cut out for you but it sounds like you

20:45 guys are doing a great job and and thank

20:47 you for talking with us today and i've

20:50 learned so much from you today chris

20:52 um and we'll continue to follow your

20:54 success and the success of servicenow as

20:56 you guys continue to serve the world's

20:59 best companies and it's really been a

21:01 pleasure interviewing you blake it was

21:03 really fun talking with you as well