If you get the human experience right, you’ll get the numbers that you need.

Customers and employees should never be disconnected in any way, shape, or form, no matter what industry you’re in. It is crucial for leaders of organizations to think about how they can create delightful experiences for human beings that engage with their brands.

The question is, what is the secret sauce for designing for humans? What does it mean to have an outside-in approach? How do we pull the three concepts of employee experience, customer experience, and brand experience together?

Join Shawn Nason and Aarthi Murali as they discuss all this and more.

In This Episode

(02:11) - What does Aarthi’s average week look like?
(05:02) - Aarthi’s approach to human experience
(07:53) - Should the Chief Customer Experience Officer report to the CEO at an organization?
(10:17) - The outside-in approach versus the inside-out approach
(13:22) - Why Aarthi joined M&T Bank
(17:34) - Aarthi’s journey and how it influenced her role today as a Chief Customer Experience Officer
(22:10) - The advice Aarthi would give to people who want to be in a similar role in the industry
(23:35) - What is Aarthi’s next big idea?
(25:45) - The Combustion Questions

What we learned for Aarthi

In any industry, you can’t decouple customers and employees.
The outside-in approach – putting ourselves in an empathetic lens.
The further away you go from customer-facing roles, your customers tend to be different.
What's most important is to think about beliefs and behaviors.
The Chief Experience Officer role should be responsible for pulling together the three concepts of experience: employee, customer, and brand.

Notable Quotes

[06:25] - “I've been very much on this mission to connect the dots and make sure that when we think about experiences, it's human experiences and designed for humans.”

[09:14] - “It's incredibly important that the (Experience Officer) role is empowered, has complete decision rights and has full empowerment to drive the change.”

[12:31] - “Experiences are a set of choices that you allow the customers to make that delight them.”

[15:29] - “It is very important for every single employee in that journey from front to back to connect to understand their piece of that journey.”

[22:11] - “One of the things I would say is incredibly important in any role, especially for this role, would be to have an incredibly open mind and a growth mindset.”

Our Guest

Aarthi Murali is M&T Banks’ first Chief Customer Experience Officer. She focuses on enabling teams across the enterprise to design delightful end-to-end experiences for customers, while building out capabilities to support them.

She is a customer fanatic at heart and in practice, and believes that taking an outside-in approach is key to making a difference in people’s lives.

Resources & Links

Aarthi Murali

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarthi-murali-0a6b90/

Shawn Nason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nasonshawn/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manonfiresocial/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/manonfiresocial

Website: https://shawnnason.com/

MOFI: https://www.mofi.co/

The Combustion Chronicles Podcast

Website: https://shawnnason.com/combustion-chronicles-episodes/

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