Today’s interview is with Andrea Prazakova, who is Senior Vice President Customer Experience at Mastercard in the UAE and David Boucher, the Chief of Service Excellence at Aster DM Healthcare in Dubai, UAE. Andrea and David join me today as we revisit a panel discussion that we had at the CX NXT Martechvibe event in November 2021. We had a lot of fun talking about customer experience, loyalty, the connection between the two, cultural change and implications for CX leaders.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – CRM systems are not designed with users, and particularly sales users, in mind – Interview with Justin Vaillancourt of Dooly – and is number 414 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 Andrea and David:

• A great customer experience creates an emotional stickiness that dramatically increases loyalty and retention.
• Andrea believes that we all have positive monsters in our companies who are super obsessed with customer experience. We need to identify them and then harness their energy.
• Too many people when talking about loyalty and retention jump into setting up a program or something. But, you actually have to go higher to first principles around strategy and how you perform if you are to drive real results.
• David:
  • We started a service wallet project modeled, in large part, after the Ritz Carlton hotel chain where every one of their employees can spend up to $2,000 US dollars on the spot to recover something that’s gone south.
  • We started something very similar in our hospitals in India, employees can give a free Uber ride home, they can give a free coffee or tea, they can get flowers plus a few other things to recover something that’s gone south. We’re starting to see some some pretty interesting changes, the most interesting of which is the body posture changes of the staff because all of a sudden their shoulders are back, their chins are out and and they feel okay. If something doesn’t go right and a patient is angry then rather than looking at their shoes at least they can do something about it.
• Andrea:
  • We started a movement which is called customer proximity and is made up of ambassadors. These ambassadors serve multiple purposes. They go out and interview customers. They go out and test ideas. They go out and onboard their friends and families to collect insights. They serve as consumers themselves and are always looking for insights and to provide feedback on new designs and solutions.
• Companies underestimate dramatically how much power and insight sits within their employees, not only as people who deliver the great service, but as consumers themselves as an extended arm for research, as an extended arm for testing and also with knowledge which we may not know about.
• David: I probably spend on average 3. 5 to 4 days a week in the field in our clinics and our pharmacies and our hospitals in all seven countries where we operate. I think that’s really important. But the key is in recruiting and hiring, we need to make sure we hire and recruit the correct people to represent our brand.
• David: The biggest drivers for loyalty for us….Empathy is by far and away. The number one. I would then say listening is really important. Then, a fast response time.
• The first thing you need to do to get your employees to innovate is to eliminate any fear from your organization so that people (employees) can come up with ideas and they won’t feel belittled in anyway, they won’t feel put put down.
• Realise that when it comes to change the organization is almost always never ready.
• Early wins build momentum.
• However, you need leadership support to create real, lasting change. Plus, an army of people and an army of hearts.
• Technology is not a get out or a panacea. It should be something that fits together with everything else. The right strategy with the right people, process and technology. You need all of these things to make a complete pie.
• One of the big challenges that we’re going to have to navigate is how do we use AI responsibly and how do we avoid biases?
• And the second piece is making sure that you build for negative scenarios i.e. what happens when something goes wrong.
• How do you solutionize for future consumers because they grew up differently?
• We also need to be cautious about the assumptions that we make about customers and how people respond under pressure situations.
• David’s advice to CX leaders: The same word said three times. Listen, listen, listen.
• Andrea’s advice to CX leaders: Listen, be curious and lead by example.
• If the expectation is that we want our employees to listen to the customer, we need to be inspecting that.
• Oftentimes our employees do what we inspect and not what we expect.
• Management by wandering about is an important leadership habit. But, the key question has to be …..How can you wander about if you are working remotely?
• “Why fit in, if you can stand out” – Dr Seuss.
• Andrea’s Punk CX word(s): Gemba – the real (value) place in Japanese
• David’s Punk CX word(s): disruptively innovative
• David’s Punk CX brand: Mayo Clinic & Amwell
• Andrea’s Punk CX brand: Tesla

About Andrea

Andrea Prazakova is Senior Vice President Customer Experience, Mastercard, UAE. Andrea drives the design of customer experiences across multiple geographies in MEA. Her Design Thinking prowess, obsession with customer experience and active leadership creates innovative concepts and solutions.

For over 23 years she has honed her skills within some of financial heavies – Raiffeisen International, UniCredit, Erste Bank, IFC and BancABC (Atlas Mara) across Europe, Asia and Africa. In 2019 after developing and implementing Strategic Eco Systems for Mastercard in Middle East and Africa, for over 3 years, she embarked on the exiting new road Customer Experience Design.

Her cached arsenal packs formidable skills in Strategy, Product Development, Marketing, CRM, Cards, Sales, Channel & Eco System Management. She is a mother, a gourmet chef and fashionista.

Check out Mastercard, say Hi to Andrea on Twitter @AndreaPrazakova and feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn here.

About David

David Boucher is Chief of Service Excellence, Aster DM Healthcare, Dubai, UAE. David Boucher has worked in healthcare for over 40 years and currently serves as Chief of Service Excellence at the corporate level for Aster DM Healthcare. In this capacity, he is guiding the 27-hospital chain through its service excellence journey. Prior to Aster, Mr. Boucher served for two years as Chief Business Transformation Officer at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Mr. Boucher previously served 18 years as an executive of BlueCross & BlueShield of South Carolina. From 2006 through 2016, Mr. Boucher also served as President of Companion Global Healthcare, Inc. – the world’s only medical tourism facilitator owned by a major health insurer. Prior to 2000, David served as CEO at several hospitals in the U.S.

Mr. Boucher earned his BS degree from Slippery Rock University (PA) and a Master of Public Health degree (MPH) from the University of South Carolina; he has been named a distinguished alumnus by both institutions.

David has been quoted in over 250 newspapers and journals including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, U.S. News & World Reports. He has been interviewed on NBC Nightly News and Fox Business News. He as delivered lectures on disruptive innovation in healthcare at Harvard Business School, Yale School of Management, and Harvard Medical School. He currently resides in Dubai, UAE.

Check out Aster DM Healthcare and feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn here.

Thanks to congerdesign on Pixabay for the image.