Today’s interview is with Dorian Stone, General Manager of Grammarly Business, who oversees all operations for Grammarly’s integrated business solution. Grammarly is a cross-platform, cloud-based, AI-enabled, writing assistant that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement and delivery mistakes in real-time. Dorian joins me today to talk about customer service and experience, writing and the impact of ineffective communication on productivity and service as well as other areas of business.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – We’re going 100mph. But, we have no rules of the road and we need them – Interview with Ben Pring of Cognizant — and is number 395 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.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Dorian:

• Grammarly is an AI powered writing assistant and there are 30 million people and 30,000 different teams using it every day.
• Gartner has reported that 87% of companies are investing in communication skills for their team.
• Ineffective communication is one of the silent killers of business performance and customer service performance.
• Getting it right is a huge boost to organizational performance and hard core business output, particularly in a customer support setting.
• Getting communication right with customers can deliver double digit increases in CSAT or NPS as well as double digit increases in productivity.
• Improvements in increased quality and better customer experience come from 3 primary factors:
  • 1. A seamless and frictionless way of getting better and learning in real-time,
  • 2. It’s not just about correctness but also about clarity, engagement and delivery, and
  • 3. Style guides and analytics can be put in place to ensure that all communications are on brand and consistent.
• The impact of effective communication is one of the most grossly underestimated costs and opportunities to businesses.
• There’s some estimates that ineffective communication is costing the U. S. alone around $400 billion dollars per year in productivity.
• The forgotten child of service is internal service.
• One client (one of the world’s largest CX management company) has seen a 17% improvement in satisfaction scores and a 22% increase in the number of tickets that their support teams are responding to through the use of Grammarly Business. The actual productivity improvement is greater than 22% because they’re achieving a greater first time resolution on those tickets. So, the actual productivity gain is closer to 30%.
• Another client (a web hosting platform company) have achieved productivity and CSAT gains of 30%.
• Clients that they can name that are achieving similar gains include Atlassian and Zapier.
• The importance of customer experience has and is going to continue to define company performance overall.
• Take a look from the customer lens back as to what expectations have changed in the last 24 months.
• We saw in the first five months of the pandemic, the evolution of online behaviors at a rate of the previous five years.
• What are the expectations of my customer today?
• Dorian’s Punk CX word(s): Adaptable
• Dorian’s Punk CX brand: Lucid

About Dorian

Dorian Stone is General Manager of Grammarly Business, overseeing all operations for the integrated business solution. Previously, Dorian was VP of Customer Experience Strategy and Marketing at Medallia. He was also a co-founder and leader of McKinsey & Company’s Global Customer Experience practice and a Program Director and Volunteer in the Peace Corps. Dorian holds a bachelor’s degree from Pitzer College, a master’s degree in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s in business administration from UPenn’s The Wharton School.

Check out Grammarly Business, say Hi to them on Twitter and Instagram @grammarly and @grammarly respectively and do connect with Dorian on LinkedIn here.

NOTE: Since the recording of this podcast, Grammarly announced new Grammarly Business features to drive even greater consistency, efficiency, and continuous improvement for customer-facing teams, including snippets, brand tones, multiple style guides, and enhanced analytics. Check out the new features here.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay