Transforming Customer Experience at Wagner Equipment: Insights from Kestly Miller
Transforming Customer Experience at Wagner Equipment: Insights from Kestly Miller
In this interview, Lynn Daniel and Kestly Miller, Customer Experience Manager at Wagner Equipment Company, discuss
- The importance of improving CX programs
- The challenges faced in implementing CX strategies
- Wagner Equipment’s progress in enhancing CX
Transcript:
Lynn Daniel:
What are people doing to make a difference in cx? And you guys, in my view, have made some really good progress. I now hear that Hobbes is not at the bottom of the list.
Kestly Miller:
So awesome. We’re praising, we’re praising in public, correcting in private. That is a big lesson that I learned. I think that those were Doug’s exact words every time I have spoken with other leaders about this. And yes, it has been a enormous learning curve. I will be the first to always admit that to anyone that I came into this process really pretty blind, and I was open to that. It wasn’t like my manager when he hired me, he was very transparent from the very beginning of, we don’t really know what this may look like. We trust your instinct. And especially as somebody who kind of came from the outside as far as the industry and my experience, it didn’t make a ton of sense of, oh, I’m going to go work for a cat dealer. It was a very surprising path for myself, but it’s been astounding how much I’ve realized. And what it ends up coming down to at the end of the day for me is that CX is really about human experience and relationship building and how we serve others. And that is something that I thought was really attractive when I was interviewing to come work for Wagner, is that that is in our vision statement and it’s how they operate as a company. And so yeah, we’re trying to turn it around so we can really live those words out day to day in how we’re doing business. So
Lynn Daniel:
Just briefly tell me, tell the audience that we’ll be watching this a bit about Wagner. Just Sunna sketch of Wagner equipment.
Kestly Miller:
So they’re a fourth generation cat dealer. We actually just transitioned at the beginning of this year to our new president, Braden Wagner, which was a very exciting change in our organization. It we’ve grown really big, and I would argue honestly, I think that we have one of the largest territories of the dealers in the us. But I would say I think that we still very much have a family business feel. It’s very welcoming. We’re a team and you feel that when you come in through our doors. I hope people feel that when they come in through the doors.
Lynn Daniel:
Now you’re covering Colorado, parts of New Mexico,
Kestly Miller:
All of New Mexico, all of New Mexico, all of New Mexico as well. And then Upper West Texas around the El Paso region as well.
Lynn Daniel:
So you just geographically you’ve got a huge territory.
Kestly Miller:
It’s huge
Lynn Daniel:
Cover.
Kestly Miller:
Yep. We have 27 branches currently, and we’re around 1700 employees across the board, so that’s always growing. We’re always striving to keep growing. So yeah, it’s a rather large territory and kind of a big elephant to eat in a sense.
Lynn Daniel:
Now you’ve been in this role Kessley two years?
Kestly Miller:
Almost two years. Almost two years. About a year and a half. Yep. Yep.
Lynn Daniel:
Now, what were the most difficult things you had to do as you started this job? What were the things that just were tough to get done?
Kestly Miller:
Sure. I feel like quite honestly, the biggest challenge for me, and then it translated throughout the whole company really was we had to go down to the absolute most basic of what CX is because I don’t think we ever really truly understood it from the beginning. And so whether that was because there wasn’t one person who was kind of taking and owning the responsibility for that and educating the whole organization, it was like, alright, we don’t even know what CX is. We know that we have to measure it and we’re being measured on success of customer satisfaction. And I think it was just a box that we were trying to check that was a requirement from Caterpillar, but it wasn’t about how are we serving the customer and how are we working to improve their experience in every touch point when they’re doing business with us.
So we had to go to the very, we had to scrape it down and I feel like we had to build a foundation that was all around what truly is customer experience, what are the items, what are the actions that go into that? And then what are we not good at? And essentially it was level setting across especially our executive team to start and then trickling that down all the way down to the front line of like, we are not good at this and this is going to be the path we’re going to have to take to try to turn it around and improve.
Lynn Daniel:
Okay. Now you guys have made some good progress in the past, very progress, very pleased to see that kind of progress happened. But again, thinking about where you are right now, what are the absolute must haves? If you were going to advise somebody that’s starting in a role like yours in a company maybe similar to Wagner, what are the absolute must haves to make a CX program successful?
Kestly Miller:
I think that once the level setting has occurred and you feel that your especially upper leadership is on the same page about where you need to be as far as customer, what success or what the overall goal would look like, if we were really good at this, what would this look like and feel like? I think that it is the most important to have standards and expectations that can then be clearly communicated across the board so that everybody understands what they need to do. And that’s just the culture. This is where we have to be and this is what we have to do to get there. And we need to make it clear. Because again, I think that there just was no or minimal understanding of what CX was. And so it looked different to certain people and I think we were leading and it was very disconnected in that way.
So there was no way to achieve our goal because we didn’t really have it clearly outlined or even identified of what we wanted it to be. So we created something very unique to Wagner, and I’m very proud of it. It’s what we call the 10 Ws. And each department or division within our company has their own set of 10 W, and it’s 10 standards and expectations that leadership and frontline alike came together to brainstorm and create what they felt was the most critical items for those teams of when you show up to work every day, these are what the expectations are as a parts counter personnel or a rental coordinator or a service technician, this is what I’ve come to work to do every day. I show up and these are the expectations of my job.
Lynn Daniel:
So those 10 Ws happen at that local branch level? Correct. It’s not something that happens in your main office, but you probably have some of those too. But if I go into Hobbs or I go into Aurora, I go into some other locations, there’re going to be 10 Ws there, but it may be a little different depending on the nature of the audience they’re serving.
Kestly Miller:
Well, I guess it started from our main corporate office and they are implemented down to the branch level and again, that department level. But no, they don’t differ. I mean,
Our goal in creating this was really to achieve some consistency because again, when we’re disjointed or disconnected as far as how does CX look for Hobbes New Mexico versus how CX looks for Aurora, Colorado, it needs to be consistently or foundationally, it does need to look the same. So actually, no, I will correct you. It was intended to be consistent and the same for these 10 Ws. Now, by all means, I would always encourage our leaders if they want to build off of that and take it to the next level. Absolutely. And I want to help support that. However, it looks for their branch and they know their teams the best. So I trust when they reach out to me, if they need additional support or resources in this effort, we can provide that to them. But no, this was really an effort to be consistent in CS across
Lynn Daniel:
All those many locations to have some consistent in expectations about how the customer is going to be served.
Kestly Miller:
Yep, exactly. Exactly.
Lynn Daniel:
Tell me what, if any aha moments have you had over the last almost two years in this job?
Kestly Miller:
Man? A lot. A lot. Where do I even begin with my aha moments? I think that one of the biggest aha moments for me was that we needed to move from denial to acceptance that we weren’t very good at this. And that was a huge step for I think a lot of our leaders and for me too, because again, I took this job, it wasn’t new news that we weren’t sure what it was going to look like as we were navigating CX for Wagner. And I do think that everybody’s path can look a little bit different depending on the needs of their organization. But yeah, it was a big like, okay, no, we’re not good at this, but you know what that means is that we only have room to grow and improve here. So that was one of the biggest challenges and aha moments for myself.
And again, I think, I know my manager and I had had many conversations about it, and he’s like, yeah, I presented at our all managers meeting, which was the first we had done in several years back in February of this year. And that was one of my opening statements was I think that this may be a little bit painful for some of you, and I’m here to tell you that we’re all in it together, but we have to recognize that we’re not good at this, and that’s the only way that we’re going to move forward and then try to make changes that’ll make us better in the long run. So acceptance, denial to acceptance biggest. Aha. What else?
We all need to have the same vision. And again, I think expectations need to be aligned and that comes from the top, but most importantly, it needs to be in the hands of our frontline. They, at the end of the day, we’ll always have the most power in this because they are the face of our company and they’re the ones that are working with our customer every single day. And so as much as us as leaders, we can preach all of these wonderful things and ideas. It doesn’t mean anything unless the people who are implementing those items are also on the same page and they have buy-in in this process because it really is up to them, and we can try to manage that all day long, but they need to be bought into the process as well.
Lynn Daniel:
Interesting. Interesting. Yeah.
Kestly Miller:
Yeah.
Lynn Daniel:
One last thing. Let’s assume for the moment that you were Glenda, the good witch in the wizard or box, and you had a magic wand and you could, with that magic wand, you could do about anything you wanted to, but you only had one thing you could do to improve CX at Wagner, what would it be?
Kestly Miller:
It would be to train everyone at the same time with the same message and hope that they can have the same takeaway. Training has been, I think one of our greatest challenges. I would give the Daniel Group and my partnership with you guys, and especially Kim, my wonderful rep who I’ve become very close with a lot of credit in helping me try to develop this because again, I think one of the biggest hurdles for us was that we had to start the beginning. We had to build a foundation. People didn’t know what CX was. I still get questions about it, and so I’m like, gosh, where is this gap that somehow there are still people within our company who don’t know what this is or what we’re trying to do. And so if I had a magic wand and I could just spread it over a very large territory, it would be to get everybody up to speed and trained on this because it’s going to take quite some time for us to be able to even reach every single person, and we’re having to include it as part of our onboarding process. We need annual refresher training. So it’s just kind of a continuous effort that I didn’t realize from the beginning was going to be so monumental in this path, but we’re chipping away at it. We’re going to figure it out. It’s just that was a, whoa, I wish this was a little easier.
Lynn Daniel:
Kestly, any final thoughts?
Kestly Miller:
Oh man. Again, as I started our conversation, I just want to reiterate that, and I think that this idea came from actually a discussion with another CX leader who I’ve also become close with. He’s a great friend of mine now, but how can we make CX more human? How do we relate all of this back to just the human experience and that yes, we want to serve our customers, but are we being better humans? It is just a really cool thing, and I think that that’s why I love this job so much is the human relationships and connections. So how can we make CX more human? I would challenge everybody who is listening or in a similar position as myself, how do we do that and come together to inspire one another?
Lynn Daniel:
Kestly, thank you so much for your time today, ly fascinating conversation because I know where you’re coming from. I’ve had a lot of experience with Wagner, and you guys have done tremendous work over the last two years, and I’m very thankful to see that and look forward to see continuing improvement. So thanks a lot.
Kestly Miller:
I really appreciate it. It was great to talk with you today.
Get Started Today
Let’s deliver exceptional experiences that drive growth and customer loyalty.