EPISODE 72 | Guest: Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix
The experience is everything. Whether it be the visitor experience, customer experience or employee experience, focusing on people, their needs and how they interact with your company and culture can make or break your brand.
In this episode, we’ll give you an overview and history of each of the EX, CX and VX disciplines, and talk about how a good experience can lead to higher productivity, improve employee retention, raise revenues and create brand advocates. We also distinguish between employee experience and employee engagement, and give you some tips for how to wrap all of this into your digital signage strategy.
- Understand the difference between EX, CX and VX
- Hear the history of how each of these mindsets developed
- Learn about the evolution from employee engagement to employee experience
- Discover why experience is so important for a brand’s success
- Get tips for how to wrap experience into your communications and content strategies
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Get more tips in our Masterclass Guide 2: Digital Signage Communications Planning Guide
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: The business world is filled with acronyms. Some of the newest ones to show up are EX, CX and VX. What the heck does it all mean? Is it another language? We’re going to find out by talking to Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix, Inc. Hello, Debbie.
Debbie DeWitt: Hi, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: How are you?
Debbie DeWitt: I’m great. How are you?
Derek DeWitt: Excellent. Thank you everybody out there for listening to this episode of Digital Signage Done Right.
So, in the business world today we’ve got acronym a-go-go. Maybe acronym-itis. I know that EX stands for, what, employee experience, is that right?
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, that’s right. And if you’re looking for a definition, Gallup does a pretty good job with it. The employee experience is the journey an employee takes within your organization.
Derek DeWitt: The journey!
Debbie DeWitt: It’s a journey.
Derek DeWitt: That’s so nice.
Debbie DeWitt: But really it is because it’s not just within the organization, like the day they get there until they leave. It’s actually every interaction they have with you along the way. So, it could be the first email that you ever exchanged with them about a job interview, it’s the job interview itself, and then it’s, you know, everything after they’re hired – their role, their workspace, their manager, their coworkers, their wellbeing,
Derek DeWitt: Their onboarding.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. It’s everything. It’s every day-to-day item. It all adds up to the employee experience.
Derek DeWitt: Up to, and including, when they finally get frustrated and quit.
Debbie DeWitt: Or they retire, lovingly, with a gold watch and a big party. Because, you know, even when people leave your company, they can still be an advocate for your company. So that employee experience really has an effect throughout their life cycle.
Derek DeWitt: Hmm, that’s true. Okay, so that’s EX. What’s CX?
Debbie DeWitt: CX is the customer experience, or client experience, as we use it at Visix. And this is the same kind of thing. It’s all of the interactions a customer has with your organization or your brand. So, it’s everything from the first time they ever hear of you, all the way through the life of that relationship up through the present moment.
Derek DeWitt: So, like, if I come across a Facebook post that somebody shared and that’s the first time I hear about your company, that’s the beginning of my CX with that brand. If I’m watching a football game and I see the ad come up along the side of the field, that’s my first experience. That’s the beginning of it all.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. It’s that first impression and what it does for them.
Derek DeWitt: And this is why branding is so important. So, VX. Umm, vampires?
Debbie DeWitt: Visitors.
Derek DeWitt: Ah!
Debbie DeWitt: Eh, vampires would be cool. But maybe that’s another podcast.
Derek DeWitt: The vampire experience!
Debbie DeWitt: Yes. The visitor experience: again, it’s kind of like the customer experience, but it really encompasses just the tangible and intangible aspects of someone visiting your facility. So, it’s everything they experience when they’re on site at your place of business, your organization, your, you know, restaurant, whatever it is.
Derek DeWitt: Your branch. Like if you’re a franchise or a bank or something like that.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Actually, with a bank, I could be down to the ATM. That’s a visitor experience. They’re visiting something from your company.
Derek DeWitt: Does that include, like, if you’re a really big company, like Coca-Cola (based in Atlanta), they have a museum devoted entirely to the history of their product and their brand.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. You’re on Coca-Cola premises. That is a visitor experience. It’s a subset of the customer experience, but it’s a visitor experience specifically for that museum.
Derek DeWitt: This all seems like pretty fancy modern, late 20th century/early 21st century talk. When did all this talk of experience really kick off? When did we start using this in the business world?
Debbie DeWitt: Well, customer experience came first, and the origins of it can be traced back to marketing and consumer theories back in the 1960s. It was in the 90s that concentration on making client relationships last became a priority. So, the customer started taking center stage over the product because of course, businesses figured out, you know, get a customer for life, it’s much better than having to get that new sale every single time.
Derek DeWitt: You know, I’m reminded of what happened to the Hollywood studio film industry in the 1990s where they shifted to something quite similar, which is they became obsessed with franchises. We don’t want to make one movie; we want to make 13 movies.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. It wasn’t about, I just want to put out this one film. It’s about, I want someone who’s going to view our films for the next, you know, 12 years, 20 years, whatever. And since they like Star Wars (we’ll use that one), then let’s make more Star Wars, and we’ll get those same people back.
Derek DeWitt: And they’ll pass it on as a legacy to their children.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. So, there’s a gentleman named Lew Carbone. He wrote a 1994 article called Engineering Customer Experiences, that was for Marketing Management magazine, and that’s sort of seen as the beginning of the customer experience discipline.
Derek DeWitt: Okay, so CX was first. What came next?
Debbie DeWitt: Well, visitor experience, because like I said, it’s sort of a subset, if you will. The difference is that it’s only when a person’s in your venue. So, you know, this is, like we talked about, museums, hotels, other destinations.
Derek DeWitt: Movie theaters.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Disneyland, you know.
Derek DeWitt: Restaurants.
Debbie DeWitt: Places that may have products, but they’re really about the experience when people are there. And there was a 1990 book called Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience that kind of kicked all this off. That was by an author named John Falk. So it really kind of evolved alongside customer experience, but it was focusing on how destinations are trying to affect how people perceive their facility and their time there.
Derek DeWitt: That makes sense because, you know, I may like a brand, but then I go into their place and things don’t work; the sink is faulty, the soap dispenser doesn’t dispense soap, things like this, I would kind of start, maybe, having a bad opinion of that company or brand.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I mean, if you think about a grocery store. They have excellent products. You know, the checkout lines, the cashiers are friendly and all that, but we’ve seen that explosion and you look at something like a Whole Foods where there are experiences. And actually this goes back to, you know, starting to have a butcher or a bakery on site where you could actually go in and order a birthday cake. It’s much more of an experience when you’re there than just go in, grab something off the shelf and leave.
Derek DeWitt: So CX and VX kind of grew up together. What about the EX with the employees? Was that before or after?
Debbie DeWitt: It’s actually, again, at the same time. It kind of launched in 1990. But I’d rather go back for a second. There’s actually a great article by Jacob Morgan that we’re going to link to in our show notes, so anybody who wants to get into the nitty-gritty of this can go there. But he talks about that there’s been a journey, an evolution of how we treat employees. So up through the 1950s companies were all about utility. Like, here’s your stuff, do your job.
Derek DeWitt: Right. And be happy you have it.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. So over the next couple of decades, they started looking at productivity to counter competition and do better in the marketplace. And that was sort of like improving processes, your workflows. So it was, here’s better stuff to do your job.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. And different ways to measure what success is in that job.
Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. So, it was the late 80s when companies finally started looking at employee engagement, which we talk about a lot on here.
Derek DeWitt: Oh boy.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. That employee engagement term is from a 1990 article, so again, we’re in the 90s, William A. Kahn, where he looked at Psychological Conditions and Personal Engagement at Work. So this is where people really started paying attention to it. And a lot of it came out of surveying employees.
Derek DeWitt: I think that’s especially true in the tech industry because those people are, their skill sets are so in demand, you gotta hang on to them. And it’s not the salary that’s going to do it; it’s more intangibles.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. The tech companies are where we started seeing perks like foosball tables and free food and pets at work and a chef for the lunch room. There was a lot more attention on, sort of, employee happiness and wellbeing at work. But they found out just giving people stuff or perks didn’t actually raise engagement that much. It was about culture and it’s super fun to work here, but they realized they needed to do more.
Derek DeWitt: I’m reminded of a story of Steve Jobs, when they kicked off Apple and started the Apple headquarters. It’s a huge campus. They had two professional chefs. They had gyms, they had volleyball courts, they had all this stuff. And one day he saw an employee leaving and he said, what are you doing?
Debbie DeWitt: I’m going home.
Derek DeWitt: Exactly. He said, I’m going home. I pay rent on an apartment. I think I should visit it at least every couple of weeks. And Jobs was like, why, what do you have there that we don’t have for you here? He didn’t seem to get, because he still maybe had this old fashioned idea of, hey, we’re going to solve this issue with things instead of this more intangible experience aspect.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. And I think that was actually a very valid effort to try and build a culture where, you know, it’s the best place to be, and you’re so engaged in what they’re doing, and it was so exciting at that time that I get where he wouldn’t understand why you’d go home. So that’s why they needed to look at employee experience versus just engagement. So, as companies started looking at customer experience, obviously some bright-eyed person got the idea, can’t we just apply it?
Derek DeWitt: Bushy-tailed little worker squirrel.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. Can’t we apply this to employees as well? I mean, let’s look at that. And this again is about optimizing every interaction the employee has with the organization, the culture, the staff, and how they do their work.
Derek DeWitt: I also think of that as sort of the rise of HR. I know HR’s always been around (used to be called personnel). And I think it’s somewhere in the 90s that that changes to Human Resources, which in some ways is less personal than personnel. And yet that’s what you really started to see all of these kinds of sometimes kooky initiatives coming out about getting people engaged and involved.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, and actually HR has evolved. There are a lot of what we consider HR titles that no longer contain “human resources”. There are things like Officer of People Happiness, you know, staff retention, like, there actually have been a lot of advances in that area as well.
Derek DeWitt: Smile Manager!
Debbie DeWitt: Oh, that would be nice. I’d love to be a Smile Manager.
But you’re right. And a lot of it is because they started looking at things like happiness, wellbeing, culture, and it includes employee engagement, but it’s not limited to that. It’s meant to encompass more than that. Like, you know, do they have the right tools and technology they need to do the job? Are the workflows what we need them to be? Are our little standard operating procedures actually optimized for the people who have to do those jobs? You know, do they have the right workspace? Do they have the right work hours? Which is, you know, we know super important right now, workspace and work hours is a big topic.
Derek DeWitt: Well, that’s where you started to see in the 90s really, the rise of daycare centers (creche for those of you who are British) onsite in some larger organizations, because they realized that this was an issue.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. And right now, we’re in the work from home transition, hybrid office transition. So this is a big topic and it actually, all of that bleeds into does the employee then actively support the mission and the culture wherever they’re working from? You know, do they believe in the company? Do they trust it?
You know, ’cause again, just like you can create a customer advocate or cheerleader, you can do the same for an employee. You know, you get a happy employee, they’re going to tell people that it’s a great place to work. And that helps you with staff attraction and retention. It also helps you with your customer service and your customers’ perception. With the internet, we all know the cultures that are failing or that are looked at as unpleasant by employees; it hits the news. So, instead you can have employee advocates, so that you don’t have that bad PR and, you know, worse, bad employee experience.
Derek DeWitt: It’s interesting because it almost seems to me (and perhaps I’m wrong because I wasn’t alive back then), but I have this idea in the 50s and 60s back when people got a job, they very often thought, this is it, this is my career, this is the company I work for. I’m a Fuller Brush, man. I’m an Encyclopedia Britannica man. I’m a this-advertising-agency man. This is what I do. And they are where I get my sense of self-worth. That’s where I can be promoted and they’re the ones that put food on my table, and so I’m loyal to them. And then somewhere in there, the Boomers and then our generation, the Gen Xers, kind of went like, eh, it’s kind of crap. We’re not treated very well and we don’t really like it. And so they tried to find new ways to get that old loyalty that used to exist.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, and I think there are a lot of economic and societal factors that bled into that. You know, you used to also be buying a house where you were settling down for the rest of your life. You wanted to work close to that. Now we’re much more mobile. With digital workplaces, we can work from anywhere without having to be right there. I think the recent stat I read (and I’ll have to check this), but I believe it’s like four years is the average…
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, it’s 4.4 years. That’s the average length of time that someone will stay at a job before they change employers.
Debbie DeWitt: And I think the difference between engagement and experience is really the breadth and depth of what a company does. You know, it’s like, you can just look at improving engagement, but if you go further than that, you’re really looking at experience. It’s a very subtle shift, but it’s true because engagement can be very temporary. You can do those perks that we talked about before. You know, you can bring in the food truck, you can have pizza parties, you can institute a casual Friday. That wears off. That’s a temporary perk. The engagement will be temporary,
Derek DeWitt: Right. If day to day, I mean (I’ll use a physical object as a metaphor, but it applies to the other things that are far less physical and tangible) all that stuff’s great, but if the chair I sit in every day, eight hours a day, hurts my back, I don’t really care about your pizza party. I would like a new chair.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I mean, really perks are just like a reward. I mean, we play games on our phones, and we talk about that it’s annoying that they feel they need to give you like 16 rewards every time you score.
Derek DeWitt: Good job! Excellent! Wow!
Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. But you know, it’s a temporary endorphin rush or whatever. And when you look at experience, it’s about every single aspect of your relationship with an employee and their relationship with you. You know, you’re actually retooling your organization around employees. You’re not looking at employees and going, well, we do things this way, here’s a cake or whatever. You know, it’s hey…
Derek DeWitt: Sorry, diabetics.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. You’re like, what do you need? Let’s design our workplace, our workflows, around what you need to really fit in, adopt and encourage our culture; to be a part of it, to be a brand advocate and to want to work here for the rest of your life. No company wants to hire new employees.
Derek DeWitt: No, it’s time consuming and expensive.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I mean, you do want fresh blood. Everybody knows you can’t get totally static, but it is a process and very expensive and a risk every time you bring someone new.
Engagement is really like, hey, we’re doing this, do you like it? It can be a push. You can, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of tips to make it a dialogue versus push, but it is very much like, hey, we’re doing this thing, do you like it, what’s your feedback on that? Versus, like I said, it’s kind of a slight shift, but going into experience, it’s every step of the way you’re getting input.
I don’t know about partnership because there are management duties that not every employee is going to understand or value, but I think that they can certainly, when it impacts their experience, that’s the whole thing. It’s like, we’re talking about your personal experience, that’s depending on job roles, personalities, all kinds of things. So it’s really getting down to the more individual level. And when you’re a huge corporation, that can certainly be a challenge, but you can do as much as you can do to try and hit all the notes you need to, to improve that employee experience.
Derek DeWitt: But I mean, how much of this can you control, really?
Debbie DeWitt: You can control what you put out there. And I’m going to switch into the whole experience conversation now. Whether it’s a visitor experience, customer experience, employee experience, you can absolutely control what you put out there. You can measure its results. You can see how people react. You can get input on what you’re going to do before you do it. But, here’s the unfortunate thing is, you can’t control how people react to something. I think we all know this.
Derek DeWitt: No, you can maybe, maybe with some degree of accuracy, predict how they might react, but no, you certainly can’t control it.
Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. So, the thing to remember is it’s personal, you know, it’s subjective. It relies on how someone’s going to perceive that experience with your organization, whether as a client, an employee, a visitor.
But the main thing, and we’ve said this about engagement as well and that’s why they’re so hand in hand, it’s not a one-time thing. It is a process, not a task. You have to constantly get input, try something, see how people reacted to it, measure it, survey, tweak, adjust, do it again.
It’s a relationship. I mean, experience is just another way to say relationship in this context. I think we all know, like we’ve all been told you have to work at relationships. You know, you have to constantly be aware, constantly communicate, get input from all the parties and hopefully constantly improve it.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, and the reason that a particular segment of your target audience, customers, employees, visitors reacts a certain way may change over time. So with the same stimulus, they may have a different reaction at a different time because they’re operating from a different place. So it does have to be this ongoing, constantly-looking-at process.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I mean, we all know in terms of, for example, marketing or communications, one of the biggest demographics that makes a difference in how people perceive or interact with your brand is age. You know, and if you do get a client or an employee who stays with you for a very long time, they’re going to have different reactions based on what age group and what they’re going through in their lives.
Derek DeWitt: So, we want to create positive experiences, however that gets measured and so on, in order to create loyalty, is that basically what we’re looking at?
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, a loyal client, a loyal visitor, a loyal employee. I mean, it’s pretty basic – a positive experience leads to a more positive brand perception, whether from the inside or the outside. That leads to more revenue. And even if it’s an employee, their service, their support, whatever they’re doing for you improves, so that leads to more revenue.
Derek DeWitt: Right, right, they get more efficient and yeah, sure.
Debbie DeWitt: And then, like I said before, you create brand champions, whether in or outside the organization.
You know, especially when we talk about employee experience, that really affects every aspect of your business. Like I said before, attracting and retaining talent, people are going to look at your company and anything that’s been said about working there before they take a job. And, you know, obviously their experience when they’re working there will determine if they stay or not.
But you know, whether they’re efficient or productive, we’ve talked about engagement experiences, the same thing, that there’ll be more productive. You know, you’ll have less sick days, you’ll have fewer people leaving, health and wellbeing increases. You know, if you’re doing product development, customer service, or even financial stuff, you know, just doing your job better. So, that all leads to a better visitor experience or customer experience because your employers are happy.
Derek DeWitt: Well. we’ve talked about this before on this podcast and we’ll probably talk about it again in the future, that great California cheese ad campaign.
Debbie DeWitt: Happy cows?
Derek DeWitt: Happy cows make happy milk, which gets made into happy cheese.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. Which makes customers happy.
Derek DeWitt: Which makes customers happy.
Debbie DeWitt: So, if you shift your thinking from like sales, product sales, ticket sales, to experience, it’s going to affect your whole organization. We’ve talked about this a lot. You’ve written a lot for us on it’s human-centered, which is a whole different aspect of thinking. Again, there’ll be links in this to some articles for you. It can obviously be a differentiator when it comes to competition.
Derek DeWitt: Oh, that’s for sure. Hey, those guys are stuck in the past. Welcome to now.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. So, it’s a long-term strategy that will definitely have long-term pay offs.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. This is all super interesting stuff and I could talk about this all day. And yet, the name of this podcast is Digital Signage Done Right. So what does this have to do with digital signage, Debbie?
Debbie DeWitt: What’s it got to do with putting stuff on my screens?
Derek DeWitt: Yeah.
Debbie DeWitt: Well, we talk a lot about how digital signage is looked at as a technology. The IT person researches it, buys it, puts it in place. It’s looked at as an IT solution, but it’s really a communications tool. Like, we’ve said this a million times but I’m just going to say it again in case you’re a first-time listener, it is not a technology tool, it is a communications tool.
Derek DeWitt: That happens to be technological.
Debbie DeWitt: Exactly, exactly. So if you create this experience mindset, you know, to do that, you always have to put your audience, whether it be employees or customers or visitors or whoever, at the center of your communication strategy. So, what’s the experience I’m trying to create versus what message do I need to throw up on the screen?
Derek DeWitt: Right, right. What do I need to say, when does it need to show? Job done!
Debbie DeWitt: Right, and I get it. A lot of people are handling digital signage as a task. You know, especially if you’re not creating the things, you’re the manager who just schedules it. A bunch of people are just handing you disparate messages to throw up on screens.
That can be a challenge, but again, if you’re doing some training, if you’re looking at it as a communications tool, you can actually help coach those people. And if you are the person creating content or campaigns, you can keep that experience in mind and think about how is the experience of seeing this, engaging or interacting with the message, with that layout, with your interactive wayfinding (if someone’s doing an interactive project), whatever you’re showing, how might that affect the audience?
It does come to design. It comes down to basic design principles. It needs to be easy to read, easy to understand, appealing, attractive. If it’s interactive, just like a good website, the navigation has to be easy and intuitive. So that’s all part of experience. You know, how might they think or feel about it, you know? And will it improve the experience you’re trying to build for them? Because I would say, if it doesn’t, you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this?
Derek DeWitt: Don’t’ do it. Right, right, right. Just cause we decided in committee, you know.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. And information can be part of the experience itself. I know that I get the information I need on my digital signs. So even if it is disparate messages, if they can rely on those signs, those screens, throughout your facility to get what they need, they’re going to appreciate that. That’s part of an experience as well.
Derek DeWitt: Sure. And like you said, design is a huge factor in this. Especially, I think, when it comes to things like interactive screens and signage. I personally have been to facilities that are run by, let’s call them organizations or brands, that I thought I kind of respected. I was like, oh, I like this company, I think what they do is all right. But then I got a chance to play with their interactive screen and it was clunky, just a mess. It was very hard to read. You tap the things, they didn’t work half the time. And I started kind of rethinking that company like, wow, maybe these guys are not as on the ball as I thought they were.
Debbie DeWitt: Well, we’ve all done that when you love a brand or a company you go, and their website looks like it was designed in 1998. You’re like, whoa!
Derek DeWitt: Right. 640 by whatever, it’s all squished in the middle.
Debbie DeWitt: It’s all that beautiful web blue.
Derek DeWitt: Web blue, right. You’re like, is this an old Geocities that you just ported over?
Debbie DeWitt: Right. And I will say, disclaimer, please do not dismiss any entire company because of a bad interactive project or something like that.
Derek DeWitt: Or website.
Debbie DeWitt: That can be down to, you know, just poorly planned, poorly designed. It could be in the middle of being remade, you don’t know.
Derek DeWitt: Or maybe because they were rushed. Maybe they were like, look, I don’t know. Just get it done, we just need to get it done, we have to engage our people.
Debbie DeWitt: Hopefully not. But yeah, when it comes to interactive, that’s where experience is huge because we know it engages more senses than just staring at a screen or glancing at a screen. You know, you’re actually having to navigate around it. Like I say, I always think of those as very much like a website experience.
But yeah, whatever you’re doing, basically, it’s about thinking about how’s this going to fit in with their overall experience? Yes, you do need to care about whether a message is effective or a campaign is effective, but this is taking it that step further and saying, what about our messaging as a whole, our communications as a whole? Is that adding to the employee experience, the client experience, the visitor experience? And it’s going to affect everything that you do: the content you show, how you design it, when and where you schedule it and how you measure that success.
Derek DeWitt: I’m just thinking that it requires people who are responsible for communicating and branding and basically improving the EX, CX, and VX of an organization, they need to start looking a little further down the road. Start anticipating, ah, this is, and then this leads to that and mm-hmm and this. So a lot of it really comes down to, I should think, refocusing and reprioritizing what it is that you’re trying to achieve, so that you can create this more, sort of inclusive in many ways, experience for the people who are interacting with the organization.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And digital signage is one communications tool.
Derek DeWitt: But it’s a good one.
Debbie DeWitt: If you’re looking at experience, this isn’t going to be a standalone effort. Your marketing people, your communications people, your human resources staff, your management team. If employee experience, or customer, or visitor experience, are important to the whole organization, that’s going to permeate all of these things and they’ll be done in concert. So, this isn’t all going to lay on the digital signage manager’s shoulders. You know, you can get help for this. This is a corporate culture. This is a corporate focus.
Derek DeWitt: So don’t silo. Maybe that old way of doing things where everything’s siloed and you know, in this office, this is what we do and we don’t even know the other people in the other offices, maybe those days are past us. If we want to have a holistic, comprehensive sort of a culture that bleeds out to the employees and from there to the world at large, we need to have that kind of looking further down the road, really expanding what it is that we focus on in order to integrate the organization and its brand and its message and its…
Debbie DeWitt: Values.
Derek DeWitt: …values…
Debbie DeWitt: Mission.
Derek DeWitt: …mission and so on into the larger fabric of people’s lives.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of practical articles out there. If you’re trying to improve your visitor experience, customer experience and especially employee experience, there are a ton out there about that. So, I know that we’re not getting into a ton of tips. I wanted to stick to the overall definitions, kind of introduce the topic and, you know, really just put it in a little bit of a framework for digital signage managers, but there’s a lot out there on the web that you can go to if you want some practical tips.
Derek DeWitt: Though the letter X has often been used in the past to mean the unknown, when we’re talking today about organizational communications in the 21st century, we are talking about EX, VX and CX, three things that are interrelated and somewhat similar to one another, and that every organization should seriously spend quite a little bit of time focusing on and thinking about and implementing. And as Debbie mentioned, constantly evolving and changing.
Debbie DeWitt: Yes. People plus experience. Those are the things, those are the post-it notes to put above your desk: people and experience. The message is secondary to those two things.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Don’t forget the letters before the Xs in these three acronyms are customers (people), visitors (people), and employees (people). And we like people. Well, Debbie, I hope that you’ve really enjoyed your IX.
Debbie DeWitt: Excuse me?
Derek DeWitt: Interviewee experience.
Debbie DeWitt: Oh, but I have.
Derek DeWitt: On this PX, podcast experience, for all of you listeners. Thank you again for listening. Don’t forget, you can find a full transcript with links on the Visix website. Go to resources/podcasts. Thanks for talking to me today, Debbie.
Debbie DeWitt: Thank you, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: And thank you for listening, everybody.