This episode features an interview with Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader at HFS Research. Melissa discusses simple ways to apply automation to both the customer and employee side to create an efficient and balanced customer experience.
This episode features an interview with Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader at HFS Research. Melissa discusses simple ways to apply automation to both the customer and employee side to create an efficient and balanced customer experience.
Quotes
*”There's so much data, in particular in the contact center, that just gets overlooked. It's a treasure trove of information. How can you understand your customer before they call in? Do you have kind of a golden record or repository of this customer's background, their buying habits and what their social media sentiment has been? I think one of the big things that you can use data for is to actually help an agent have context before a customer gets on the phone. And that you can really tackle by having the right kind of omni-channel and the right CRM integrations.”
*”A lot of times, companies have a software license that comes with a chat bot, so they feel compelled to roll it out. And that has resulted in a lot of chat bot fatigue. Because it’s a poorly designed chat bot. They're just put out there with their FAQ's. You could get the same responses just searching the website. It's not just ineffective, it's also a detriment to the brand, because people are then having frustrating experiences on your site.”
*”If you do it really well, you have this nice flow between an intelligent virtual assistant and an agent. If it needs to hand off for context, that's going to make or break an experience.”
Time Stamps
*[0:08] The Case of Balancing Automation with Human Interaction
*[0:44] Introducing Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader at HFS Research
*[4:59] Evidence #1: All processes are manual
*[10:15] Evidence #2: Implementing automation seems too big a task
*[14:09] Evidence #3: No visibility on data to pinpoint what to automate
*[25:50] Debrief
*[26:35] HGS Pub
Bio
Melissa O’Brien is Research Leader at HFS Research. Melissa leads HFS’ research initiatives for CX services including digital marketing and sales, contact center, and digital associates. Melissa brings over 13 years of both hands-on industry and analyst experience to her role at HFS. She previously led IDC’s Worldwide Customer Experience Management Services program, including in-depth analysis of evolving contact center business process delivery and consumer communication trends.
Thank you to our friends
This podcast is brought to you by HGS. A global leader in optimizing the customer experience lifecycle, digital transformation, and business process management, HGS is helping its clients become more competitive every day. Learn more at hgs.cx.
Links:
Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn
Connect with Lyssa on LinkedIn
Lyssa Myska Allen: There you are! Come in and make yourself comfortable. We’ve caught a case. A client left a message I want you to hear.
Client: Hi CX Detectives, I could really use your help. I run a SaaS company that helps clients with their taxes. Companies use our app to navigate particularly complicated tax situations. We’re a bootstrapped startup and we haven’t built out a dedicated customer success team yet. Now I’m worried that was a mistake, because we just had our largest client churn. They were using the product on their own and we couldn’t give them the high-touch experience they needed. I have to figure out a solution that allows us to add the right level of human interaction into the customer experience, while still relying on automation to help us scale. Can you help?
Lyssa Myska Allen: Of course! I’m so ready for this. And I know the perfect person to help: Melissa O’Brien. She’s Research Leader at HFS Research. As an analyst, Melissa looks at how technology impacts business services, and automation is a main point of focus. Today, Melissa and I are joining forces to crack the case of balancing human interaction with automation. Because we are CX Detectives. Real cases, solved. I’m Lyssa Myska Allen, VP and Global Head of Marketing at HGS. Let’s get started.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Thanks so much for joining me today, Melissa. I'm so thrilled to have you here as my co-detective, solving this case. Um, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Melissa O'Brien: Thanks so much, Lyssa, thanks for having me on. I'm delighted to be here also. Um, so my name is Melissa O'Brien. I'm research leader for HFS research. And my focus area is customer experience. I've been following this area as an analyst for close to 11 years now.
Lyssa Myska Allen: So in case we have any listeners who aren't familiar with an analyst role, what does that kind of entail?
Melissa O'Brien: So we're a third party analyst firm research firm. So our primary job is to understand the markets. Um, so fundamentally our, um, user base or our customer bases are, uh, service providers. Um, but we look at all that through the lens of, uh, of technology. So fundamentally how technology is impacting business services. So we focus on automation, artificial intelligence, IoT analytics, and things like that. And what we do is we try to understand what the market is providing in those regards, what the enterprise is and what the buyers want, and try to connect those dots.
Lyssa Myska Allen: That's awesome and, and much needed. So how did you get into that sort of role or field?
Melissa O'Brien: It started actually with customer experience because I was working in marketing and recruitment for a firm called PSG Global Solutions is a BPO service provider. Uh, KPO, I think they were calling it, calling it at the time, Knowledge Process Outsourcing. Um, and I was in various operations roles, but it was a lot of, um, contact center. And, uh, I was working out of Manila and Subu in the Philippines quite a bit. So, um, I had some experience on the ground, you know, kind of hands-on training customer service agents, seeing how customer experience, um, programs were designed. Um, and at the time I was approached by, um, IBC, which is another analyst firm and said, can you run our customer experience program? And it was very, very interesting. I was so excited to get back into a role around writing and analysis, uh, and eventually made my way to HFS doing a similar role, but just expanded and, uh, you know, a lot more, a lot more research under my belt.
Lyssa Myska Allen: I love that. So you moved kind of from a practitioner to an observer and where you get to really study and see kind of a breadth of trends and what's going on in the market. When and how did automation come into play?
Melissa O'Brien: Um, oh, I think automation's been around, um, you know, the entire time. I think the difference is, um, the level of, uh, intelligence in it. So automation has always been around in the, in the background, uh, whether it's screen scraping or agent workflows and things like that. Um, now it's actually coming to the forefront and it's getting a lot more intelligent. So now it's getting really interesting, um, because it's not just about efficiencies, it's about experiences.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Alright, we’re getting warmed up. And now that we have Melissa’s credentials, let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and then we’ll dive into the case. Welcome back. Melissa and I were just about to get into the case of balancing human interaction with automation. Let’s do it.
Lyssa Myska Allen: First, I want to hear from the client about their current customer experience.
Client: So once customers subscribe to our tax service, they have access to our tech support via email. So if they have any questions or need to troubleshoot issues, they can reach out. If they do, one of our team members will get back to them. Other than that, we don’t have a lot of contact with our customers once they make the purchase.
Lyssa Myska Allen: It sounds like they’re doing everything manually, so no automation. And the onus is on the customer to reach out to them. They don’t generally reach out proactively to the customer. I definitely see some ways we can help them here. Melissa, what do you think?
Melissa O'Brien: I love this topic because there, there are so many nuances. Um, the way that I like to think of it is, is twofold. So when you think about automation and customer experience, a lot of people automatically go and think about chatbots or IVRs and things like that, which is true. You know, that those tools exist and they're maturing as well. But what I find really interesting now also is, uh, automation for agent-facing, uh, activities. So that's actually getting more sophisticated. And like I said, going beyond just the screen scraping to, you know, how do you have chatbots that serve up recommendations for agents or, you know, bots that can actually go back into backend systems and provide information? You know, what's the status of my claim or my order, or what have you. And so you really have to look at both sides of that to, you know, to have a more holistic strategy around, you know, finding that right balance. And I think most companies are really still struggling with that, you know, what, what goes through a human, what stays with a, uh, a bot, um, and just finding the right balance.
Lyssa Myska Allen: How do companies find the right balance and how do they prioritize? Do you have an opinion on how they should prioritize agent experience in terms of agent happiness and, um, co how that affects customer experience and automation for the sake of making life easier for the customer?
Melissa O'Brien: At HFS, we have a vision which we call The HFS One Office and it entails a lot of things, but fundamentally it talks about how we can prioritize employee experience and customer experience in tandem and also align those goals. Uh, which is a lot easier said than done. So I appreciate that. Um, but what I've found, you know, when you are, you know, cracking a case like this, um, is you want to study the user experience first. So, so many times, you know, people are just kind of implementing automation for automation's sake or, or tech for tech's sake. Um, and, and most, most places have made this, you know, made these errors in the past. So it's, it's totally something that, that happens and it's part of the evolution. But, um, we did a study on what we call digital associates. So both agent facing and customer facing. Earlier this year, we put it out. Um, and like 90% of the enterprise leaders, practitioners, I spoke to said it all came down to the design. Um, there's so much that goes into it. And in my mind, you kind of have to take this three pronged approach. So you want to eliminate, automate, and then optimize. So eliminate the interactions that cause friction between a customer and a brand or between an employee and their, their company. Um, and then you want to automate things that make sense, just low value, you know, really simplistic. Just get those things automated, self-service, what have you, because that's a win-win for you and for the customer. It's seamless for them. And then it's. It's actually probably more efficient for the company and saves costs. And then lastly, you want to optimize those interactions that do end up going to an agent by making sure that they have the right tools, making sure they have the right training. Um, and just ensuring that, uh, you know, again, their experience and outcomes are aligned to what the customer needs. So, um, you know, for all of the progress and tech capabilities, I think this is still an evolution that most companies are still on and trying to figure out this CX transformation thing.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Can you think of any clients, and you can tell us stories while remaining anonymous, if you need, who are doing this really well? Like how did they get to that point?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, absolutely. So what you need to do is, you know, as I said, it comes down to the design. So how do you figure that out? Well, You have to understand the experience as it is. You can't automate, as you know, it's probably become kind of a trope at this point, but you can't automate a broken process. You can't just throw automation at a process that's not working. So understand your process, understand your customer's journey. Um, and companies that have found success in this are, they're seeking out all kinds of data, seeking out information to understand what their customer's pain points are, what the friction points are, and same for their employees. And then you measure that and you iterate on it. And you don't want to obviously get stuck in this kind of analysis paralysis thing, where it's like, oh boy, we better not automate this because it's not ready. You do have to start, you know, you have to start somewhere and, and put out some, some pilots and some, um, proof of concepts to get things, to get things moving. But at the same time, you cannot do that without looking at your process design, um, you know, and listening to the voice of the customer and the employee.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Alright, we’re going places fast. Let’s hear a bit more from our client about some issues they’ve had with their customer experience.
Client: Well, the plan was to eventually build out a customer success team, and resource them with technology solutions that can help provide automation as well. It sounds good in theory, but it just feels like such a big hurdle. I don’t even know where to start. Do I start hiring first? Should I onboard some kind of chat bot? Or something else?
Lyssa Myska Allen: There are smaller steps we can start with. Melissa, what advice do you have for our client?
Melissa O'Brien: I think definitely what I've heard is that people have gotten stuck in that analysis paralysis that I mentioned. Where they're like, okay, we don't know where to go because we have too much information and we don't know which information is important. Um, I think that's probably the bigger challenge then, you know, we just don't want to do it. Um, I will say one of the difficulties probably is finding the, um, not necessarily the ROI, but, um, proving the value in particular, if you have to get executive sponsorship or if you have to, you know, prove to a boss like this is going to work, this is what we need. Sometimes that's a challenge. Um, probably a challenge more so getting internal stakeholders aligned and people bought in culturally to things, but at the end of the day, you, you have to, you know, you have to dig into what the design should be, um, and, and go through this whole process. Otherwise it's just going to be poorly implemented and you're not going to get the results. You might even do detriment, um, to the brand or to, you know, to your employees if you don't go through those exercises.
Lyssa Myska Allen: That's a really good point that you bring up, kind of that cross functional collaboration and buy-in from a bunch of different stakeholders, as well as that makes me think of like, sort of the role of automation in the enterprise and who owns it. So if you have, say, like marketing owning the customer journey, but IT implementing automation, do you have any tips for kind of people trying to help those teams work together?
Melissa O'Brien: Definitely. So this is another one, it was a financial firm that we were talking to through a case study. And, um, what tends to work in those situations is if you have kind of a center of excellence set up and you pick a few, you know, kind of slam dunk use cases or things that you think are really kind of, um, you know, low-hanging fruit or just things that are going to be really impactful and you get some momentum behind that, um, that really helps to get, you know, number one, to get visibility and to get buy-in, but also to get, um, people enthused about the potential for these things. And saying, Hey, you know, maybe we can replicate that in, you know, in another part of the business. But of course, you know, that the IT business, you know, friction does persist still in a lot of organizations. And, you know, that's a challenge. I think getting to focus on outcomes and business outcomes in particular is going to be the key to, um, you know, to, to moving a lot of these projects forward when you need IT buy-in but you also need to show what kind of outcomes you're, you know, you're trying to accomplish. So, um, again, easier said than done. I know it's a challenge, but, um, but it, it has been proven to happen. And it can work.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Do you have any examples of like those slam dunk use cases?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, thinking of insurance, for example, it's going to be different for every industry and for every organization. But, um, you know, if you're able to, um, check eligibility of a claim or the status of a claim or, um, assign leads to the sales team. Some of those things are kind of like RPA, pretty basic based automation. And then what you can do on top of that is once you get those kinds of layers, um, or once you get that foundation built, you can layer on top of it off of it. You can add more, uh, intelligence, you can add, you know, an intelligent chat bot. Because now that you have, um, you know, automation, that's pulling from different systems and actually available to talk to, um, various systems, you know, the, the biggest thing that call center agents struggle with is just toggling between systems. And that's sometimes half the battle.
Lyssa Myska Allen: That’s so true - sometimes a chatbot is a good place to start with automation. And you do just have to start somewhere. Okay, I want to hear once again from our client to see how we can help them.
Client: So one reason we’ve been hesitant to adopt any kind of automation is I don’t know which parts would be the most helpful to automate. Maybe you could help me figure out where to look.
Lyssa Myska Allen: I bet she’s sitting on a bunch of useful data. Where do you think she should look first?
Melissa O'Brien: There's so much data, you know, in particular in the contact center that just gets overlooked. It's a treasure trove of information. Um, you know, number one, that's going to help you understand sentiment analysis. Um, and that's going to help with that first part that I mentioned, which is eliminate, um, you know, or self-serve. If you get so many people calling in asking for the same information, you know, you use that then to figure out, you know, what are your use cases, um, that you can actually automate, um, create self service or even eliminate. Um, so that's, that's huge just from a context center standpoint. And then there are so many other sources of data too, like. How can you understand your customer before they call in, um, is so important. So, you know, do you have kind of a golden record or repository of this customer's, um, their background, their buying habits and propensity, um, what their social media sentiment has been. I mean, that's a whole other big, um, you know, big thing to tackle is, is social sentiment. Um, but I think one of the big things that you can use data for is to actually help an agent have context before a customer gets on the phone and, and that you can really, um, tackle by having the right kind of omni-channel, the right CRM integrations and things like that.
Lyssa Myska Allen: We touched a little bit on some mistakes, um, that you see when it comes to deploying automation, but are there any others that our listeners need to be aware of?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times, companies have a software license maybe that comes with a chat bot or something, so they feel compelled to roll it out. And that, you know, that has resulted in, in my experience, a lot of chat bot fatigue, because there's been these poorly designed chat bots. They're just put out there with their just like FAQ's. You could get the same responses just searching the website. Um, so stuff like that, you know, as I said, it's not just ineffective, it's also, you know, a detriment to the brand because people are then having frustrating experiences on your site or with your chat. Um, so that's a, that's a big thing. You know, I would say, especially from a. an employee standpoint, like if you're rolling out tools internally, I would say a lot of transparency. Um, and if there's not transparency people, aren't going to trust the tools, whether they're being used for them internally or whether they're, um, you know, being deployed on the front end. So, you know, you need to basically have that conversation with your employees and say, these are our goals. This is what we're trying to accomplish. And then again, it goes back to, you have to know what you're trying to accomplish. Um, you know, otherwise people aren't going to embrace them.
Lyssa Myska Allen: I think that's really interesting point that probably a lot of enterprises miss out on, is that employee trust in the automation and even sometimes customer trust in the automation. Like if I have an automatic shipping notification, I'm like, did someone really pack that? I don't know. Um, and, and so aside from just, you know, kind of having conversations, is there process or operational ideas that you need to put in play to make sure that employees feel like they're part of the business outcome?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, absolutely. So you have to have some kind of formalized change management in place. Um, and this is going to be really huge in terms of getting buy-in. Um, and also expanding the program. Like we said, a lot of times companies want to start with a center of excellence and then try to expand. Um, so you can't do that unless you get people excited, um, unless you get champions for the business, um, for the automation in the business and, and that will help people, you know, truly organically, you know, want to find new use cases and want to embrace using the technology depending on, on how it is. Um, and you know, people want to be a part of that process. So you need to collect feedback, collect information, and then iterate on it. So I had one, um, recently, I was speaking with a real estate company and they have a kind of simple change, a use case and their, um, their service desk, but they have really, really big ambitions. And they're starting with a small group of employees with the proof of concept, um, a use case in the service desk. And they're saying, we're going to do this and we're going to test it out until it works for these people, rather than, you know, if you roll it out to the entire organization and it's not well done, then you're going to erode trust in it. People are going to be like, ah, I tried that, no thanks. I'm not going to do it. Um, so again, it just goes back to, you know, taking those steps and just being very careful and thoughtful about, about how to roll things out and people's emotions and how they get, how they get to use these tools, how they'll react to them.
Lyssa Myska Allen: That's such a good point, particularly in an industry like with tech and automation, where like speed is considered a virtue, right? That like, like sometimes you have to go a little bit slower so that you can go faster once you have that buy-in.
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, exactly. It has to be something that's designed for an outcome. What are you actually trying to accomplish? It can't just be cost savings, um, because it's not worth it if it's just cost savings, it has to be a win-win with the employee experience and the customer experience. And if it's done well, it also will be more of efficient.
Lyssa Myska Allen: What do you think is the most exciting upcoming use case or way that automation can be used in customer experience?
Melissa O'Brien: Well, I've been following this digital associate space for quite a bit. So this is what tends to get me excited is because, um, you know, NLP platforms I think have kind of started to reach parody. Um, you know, they, they have the similar capabilities and, um, there's not a lot of differentiation around the language, but what there is differentiation around is how they're integrated and how they're designed. Um, and if you do it really well and you have this nice flow between, um, you know, an intelligent virtual assistant and a, an agent, if it needs to hand off for context, that is, you know, that's gonna make or break an experience. And, and another piece of that is that, um, I really do think that voice is kind of the future because we're using a lot of these, you know, consumer tools like Alexa and Google. Um, and I think people are just going to start functioning like that. It's, um, It's something that's evolving and, um, ambient computing, you know, we're just going to be talking to different devices and saying like, this is what I need. Um, so that's gonna make a big difference in employee experience as well as CX.
Lyssa Myska Allen: I think one of the reasons that people are wanting to get away from voices because they want to have that, like we've started even in work, in work, like with slack to do asynchronous interaction. So you can answer it on your own time when it's convenient. And that's why, you know, picking up the phone and calling someone is expensive, time consuming expensive in terms of my own time as a consumer. So, if we're talking about the reverse and I'm using voice to activate something, is that still asynchronous or does there, is there still a real-time component to it?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, no. So I think when, especially if you're dealing with AI components, like me saying, Hey, Google, um, you know, or Siri that's that's on my own time. I'm a firm believer that there's always going to be exception handling. Um, there's always going to be things that humans need to get in the loop on, um, whether it's elements of empathy, whether it's a demographic scenario. If it's a, you know, an older person, we talk a lot in healthcare about, you know, getting them to use the visual IVR on their, you know, on their pharmacy app and stuff. And sometimes they need to be transferred to an agent, but how do you make the tools really, really simple and really, really intuitive so that this does not feel like it used to be, which is you need to now hold for 45 minutes. It's it's, it's not an, it's not an easy thing to solve for, but this is where we're headed.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Yeah, that's such an interesting point, How do you see personalization, uh, playing into automation?
Melissa O'Brien: So companies are taking kind of some different approaches to this. You see some that are actually really trying to look at buckets like, okay. You know, here is a female, middle-aged, you know, whatever, and then you just automatically get placed in that bucket. Um, you know, which, which works for some organizations because they have enough data to understand the behaviors and it suits what they're trying to accomplish with it, particularly around like retail marketing, for example. But then you have other organizations that are really trying to get deeper into the sort of micro personalization where, you know, it's really more about understanding that person and their behaviors and then tailoring experiences to, you know, to that. Um, so it, it's going to be some combination of, of both of those things.
Lyssa Myska Allen: So in like a micro personalization situation, what is. So you need a bunch of data. You need some automation to understand it. It needs to be housed somewhere. Like what does that look like from a like company investment time and money standpoint? Like, is that sounds really expensive in all of those areas.
Melissa O'Brien: Well, some of this stuff is available, you know, within some of the investments that's already been made. It's going to be a matter of some professional services and tailoring to it. So I know a lot of the CRM firms have invested in CDP, like Customer Data Platforms so that they have that, you know, that information and, um, and they can use it to their, um, You know, they, they can have it better at their fingertips and know what to do with it, but I get what you're saying, Lissa. I think it probably seems like pretty daunting exercise to get into for many organizations. And it's just simply not going to, you know, to, to be worth it, depending on what they're trying to accomplish. You know, if you're a utilities company, you've got a finite amount of types of interactions, you probably don't have to deal with some of the, you know, nuances and complexities and BFSI or in healthcare, for example. So, you know, it's all about just sort of examining what you're trying to accomplish and then, um, you know, designing a program that makes sense.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Yeah, that's a good point too, about sort of the industries that most benefit from this like automation, human interaction balance in customer experience. Like it feels like retail is one of those industries where this is like hot, hot, hot, we've got to do it. Um, or, or BFSI, um, and then manufacturing, maybe less about customer experience and more about efficiency. Have you seen any other trends like that?
Melissa O'Brien: I think you're spot on. So retail and BFSI tend to be more mature in this regard. Um, and then you look at industries like telecom, um, you know, they're just really focused on efficiency for the most part. I mean, yes, they can get better at using data. They aspire to get better at using data, but they're not going to go down this path of, you know, micro personalization. Um, you know, every company's culture is going to be different and have a different appetite, but, uh, You know, travel, for example, last year was really stretched to, you know, to even keep up a semblance of customer experience because they had to lay off so much of their staff. And then as travel started picking back up again, they're like, all right. Some of them, those that had invested in advance had some, um, you know, more intelligent virtual assistant type services to actually start to manage the volumes, um, not at all. So it kind of depends on, um, on the industry and where they're positioned and what their investments have been thus far in order to actually take advantage of, um, you know, future opportunity.
Lyssa Myska Allen: I’ve taken away so much from my conversation with Melissa today. Let’s debrief.
First, take your time studying the user experience to the point where you understand it in and out. Then use Melissa’s three-pronged approach of eliminate, automate and optimize. And plan to apply it to both the customer and agent experience.
Second, get everyone on board by presenting them with slam dunk cases of automation that have been proven to work well.
And third, look at your data to decide where to automate. Like Melissa says, the contact center is a treasure trove of information.
Client: This is all super helpful. Thank you for your time and advice on building up my customer experience. I feel like even though we’re a small team, we can actually work more efficiently if we’re thoughtful about where to implement some automation. Thanks again!
Lyssa Myska Allen: Anytime! Let’s head over to the HGS pub to celebrate with some virtual cocktails!
Lyssa Myska Allen: So is there anything you want to automate in your own life?
Melissa O'Brien: Yes, housework.
Lyssa Myska Allen: is. Housework. Do you have a, an I robot? What did the little,
Melissa O'Brien: No, I need one.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Okay. So you want to automate housework. Um, do you currently have like the floor vacuum or like any automation in place?
Melissa O'Brien: I think it would drive my dogs crazy, unfortunately. So it's all manual.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Yes. Yes. Um, okay. What kind of dogs do you have?
Melissa O'Brien: I have two big hound dogs. They're both them rescues from the south Kuhn. Coonhounds Coonhounds
Lyssa Myska Allen: uh, they have big floppy years.
Melissa O'Brien: yes. Big floppy ears. Big, big paws.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Oh, that's awesome. Um, so is, is, are, do they take up most of your free time? Or what else do you do in your free time?
Melissa O'Brien: Yeah, we, we liked it. My husband and I like to take them out, um, you know, hiking or on long walks and things like that.
Melissa O'Brien: The other thing that keeps me busy outside of work is kickboxing. So I belong to a couple of different gyms studios, and my favorite activity is just punching the bag or sparring with the coach.
Lyssa Myska Allen: That's awesome. Um, okay. The, do you have a favorite experience that you've ever had as a customer?
Melissa O'Brien: I've got, so I've got a couple, one was my flight was incredibly delayed one time at a hotel in California. And, um, it was a pumpkin festival time there. And I think I told the, the manager or somebody at, um, at the hotel that I was delayed.
Melissa O'Brien: So the manager said, you know, go to the, go to the lounge or the bar or whatever, and hang out. And nobody else was really there. So the, um, the wine guy, whatever you call them, comes over and gives me a free wine tasting and taught me about the wines. Um, and then I think, as I mentioned, it was pumpkin season there in this part of California. I actually don't remember where it was and they brought me this beautiful little crystal pumpkin. I think they just, they, you know, they felt bad because I was, uh, you know, I was kind of stuck on my own at the end of a work trip and had like a seven hour delay or something in my flight. And they were just, they were really excellent.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Melissa. Uh, you were a great co-detective with incredible insight, and I really appreciate it.
Melissa O'Brien: Thanks so much for having me, Lyssa, really nice to chat with you.
Lyssa Myska Allen: Thank you for listening to CX Detectives, brought to you by HGS. If you liked what you heard today, tell a friend, a colleague, that rando who friended you on Facebook. And don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Next time there’s a CX case to be solved, we’ll be there!