Today’s interview is with Dr. Derek Wang, the founder and CEO of the AI-driven experience analytics platform Stratifyd. Derek joins me today to talk about empowering everyone to understand the hidden stories in their data, a vision of the future that features humans and AI working together to build better experience programs, proving or delivering a ROI for CX initiatives and some practical advice for leaders and practitioners in this space.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Getting closer to customers means connecting with them irrespective of the logistics – Interview with Bansi Mehta of Koru UX Design — and is number 383 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month.

It’s almost time for PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems. Join them online for free on May 4 from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time (that’s 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. UK time) to learn how the world’s most impactful companies are driving digital transformation. They’ll have compelling keynotes, demos, and case studies in a highly interactive virtual format and a few surprises as well. Go to www.pegaworld.com to register for free and check out the full agenda. I’ve attended the last several PegaWorlds in person, and virtually, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, so go register today! That’s www.pegaworld.com

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Derek:

• Stratifyd are an AI platform that combine the experience and operational data for any large enterprise to help improve their customer and employee experience for the whole organization.
• Check out their new report: The 2021 FinServ Customer Experience Report.
• Derek turned into an entrepreneur after decades in academia.
• The vision of the company is to enable everyone, regardless of education, skill or economic background, the ability to understand the hidden stories in their data.
• The data and analytics skills gap, at both analyst and leadership level, that existed a few years ago has only widened in the past couple of years.
• We’re trying to address that and make machine learning, AI or data implicit and almost invisible in everything that companies do. That allows analysts and leadership to focus on what they really need and that is making decisions.
• It’s all about driving outcomes so that ultimately it’s not about the data or the technology. It’s about the outcome of what the data and technology allows you to do.
• It’s hard to make complex, complicated things simple.
• If people don’t understand how this thing is made, they don’t know how to use it. And, if they don’t know how to use it, the results will lead to biases.
• Different people have different opinions, and biases will lead to wrong, even detrimental, decisions for our organization.
• Striking the right balance of human and technology is essential.
• We need and require humans and AI to work together because algorithms are cold, they don’t have emotions, they’re just execution. But, how they execute needs to be designed by an organization or, more explicitly, by the employees of that organization. And, their input and experience will lead to and define how their customers are looking at the brand or company.
• Can we put metrics around your customer experience or your experience program at all?
• That’s the wrong way of thinking about it. For organizations, experience is the livelihood of your company. It should be ingrained into every single function of your organization.
  • For example, Charles Schwab integrate their experience in every single function. If companies thought that way then RoI becomes natural. It reflects in their top line and their bottom line.
  • CX is no longer a department at Charles Schwab.
• Example of a fast food company. When the pandemic hit Stratifyd helped them analyse their channel and operational data to identify and fix gaps in their experience right away including optimising their mobile ordering and pick up process and adjusting order sizes based on customer feedback when it diverged from what customers perceived they would get from an in-store experience.
• Another example involves an energy company client. When the pandemic hit everyone was forced to work from home. Rather than trying to answer all of their customer calls they changed their approach. Instead of routing the calls live to agents, they asked customers to leave a voicemail and then leveraging Stratifyd’s speech transcription engine and smart AI, they were able to understand and prioritise those calls. Where customers had an urgent matter (e.g. a power outage), these were very quickly routed to agents. However, all of the simple and repetitive calls were dealt with through automation which meant customers were sent a quick resolution article or a care package, for example, via text messages instead of waiting in a queue for a live agent.
• How good your customer experience flows directly from how good your employee experience is.
• Where to start? Look inside your organization, look inside yourself and start identifying where are your customer’s pain points. Do a full inventory assessment. Knowing what you don’t know is always step one.
• Big shout out to The Mayo Clinic for pioneering a patient centered approach to health care.
• Derek’s Punk CX word: Simplicity.
• Derek’s Punk CX brand: Contact Energy in New Zealand.

About Derek

Dr. Derek Wang is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stratifyd, Inc. Dr. Wang earned a PhD in Computer Science from University of North Carolina Charlotte and was named the Associate Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center at UNCC, which applies interactive visualization and analytics to solve problems in science, engineering, medicine, business, design, and the arts.

Before coming to the United States, Derek was born and raised in China. He has held positions at Microsoft Research, Xerox, and Bank of America before becoming the Associate Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center where he worked on projects for Homeland Security and Bank of America, among others. Wang started Stratifyd in 2015 with Li Yu, PhD, SVP of Analytics, and Thomas Kraft, PhD, SVP of Engineering. Dr. Wang holds five patents and is a contributor to Forbes and many other publications.

Check out Stratifyd, their new report: The 2021 FinServ Customer Experience Report, say Hi to them on Twitter @getstratifyd and connect with Derek on LinkedIn here.

Image by kiquebg from Pixabay