We’ve talked a lot about the shift to the full-on digital workplace, and now we’re in this “phygital” purgatory where we’re trying to find the right balance between the delights and convenience of digital with the real-world excitement and empathy of engaging with real people in real physical settings again.
Publicis Sapient is driving this new era of physical/digital experiences for major enterprises
This is driving a dire need for partners who can really address this balance right across our customer lifecycles. And when we look at the changing needs of enterprises to engage their customers with experiences that will create new business opportunities for them, create new data assets, or disrupt stagnating business models from the pre-Covid era, we are seeing some digital experience firms taking this head-on with innovative skillsets to help them.
One firm that is now past the $10bn mark and really making its name for enmeshing advertising with digital tech design and execution is Publicis Sapient, which represents the is the digital transformation hub of advertising giant Publicis Groupe. The company really is unique in this world of designing and executing blended digital/physical experiences, so let’s dig into this some more…
Enter the new CXO… the Chief Experience Officer
HFS Research Leader, Melissa O’Brien (pictured top right) got time with Publicis Sapient’s new Chief Experience Officer, Abby Godee (pictured top left), who joined recently from Deloitte Digital where she led the firm’s Customer Strategy, Design and Innovation team… Over to you, Melissa:
As we hurtle toward our new OneEcosystem reality, experience is king. As such, many companies are taking a call to put one person in charge of all things experience. Enter the CXO. I met my first CXO at a Genesys event in 2011 and was thrilled to hear about how these custodians of experience were cultivating experiences across enterprise stakeholders. But back then the world was a lot different and more …. well, physical. Now as we grapple with this new “phygital” reality, creating experiences that blend remote and bricks and mortar seamlessly, where people are eager for real connection yet weary of endless Zoom calls are so important. Now we need real leadership that understands human needs and wants and aims to develop experiences, digital and physical ones, on a very human level.
There’s no time like the present to create and invest in roles like this, now when we are more in need of genuine engagement and strong leadership, and we have found that diversity of all kinds is critical to success. Abby Godee (see profile), 3 months in at Publicis Sapient and bringing a tremendous background of experience design, shed some real light on what it means to be a CXO in 2022, and her vision for enabling experiences for Publicis Sapient’s employees, customers, and the greater community.
Melissa O’Brien, Research Leader, HFS: Abby, the CXO role is still relatively a new one but is rapidly maturing. What is a CXO? Can you tell us what it entails, and the vision Publicis Sapient has for you?
Abbye Godee, Chief Experience Officer, Publicis Sapient: It depends on the maturity of the organization, Melissa. Publicis Sapient has been in the experience business for many years, it gives me the opportunity for my role to be more expansive. At Sapient my role is about strengthening and scaling the impact of experience. There are traditional design capabilities like UX, product design and other core capabilities, but we also have strong design strategy and CX strategy. So it dovetails into transformation strategy on one end of the spectrum and on tech execution and platform execution on the other end. My role is to guide the impact experience can have. We are ensuring our approach to technology is not just best in class but informed by human needs. I see my role as being the custodian of the human in experiences. I don’t think we design experiences; we design the opportunity for people to have great experiences. It’s up to us to deeply understand our employees, our partners, the patients, the citizens and so forth, so we can design ways for them to have the right experiences. You have to embrace skills way beyond core design skills to enable that.
Melissa: Can you share some of your background with us, Abby, and what do you consider to be your greatest influence?
Abby: My educational background is in cultural anthropology and that has always informed my approach. I studied design and was art minor, and can design my share of products, but what’s always driven me is “why do people do what we do?” So there’s a lot of overlap with behavioral design. I worked at Smart Design where we were busy designing products like OXO kitchen products, which were designed to be really good with people with arthritis and manual dexterity issues. Those kind of early experiences have informed the way I approach my roles.
No matter how complex technology makes our world you have to do the basics- what are the jobs to be done, things people do to feel fulfilled and happy, to build trust… keeping human at the heart of it. Moving beyond kitchen products into advanced technology it seems complex some times. But our needs haven’t got that much more complex, we still have the same basic human needs – you have to be grounded in that. Understand the complexity but bring it back to what people need to be successful is what has been my greatest influence.
Melissa: So what enticed you to Publicis Sapient?
Abby: I joined because of all the companies focused on digital transformation, in my conversations with CEO Nigel Vaz I heard the laser-sharp experience focus. He said we not trying to be everything to everyone, we are about digital business transformation. The clarity he articulates about building capabilities around “SPEED”—strategy product experience engineering and data — that is our toolkit. Publicis Sapient takes experience very seriously. Nigel asked me to work across these capabilities, connect dots between strategy and engineering and data- to collaborate across these areas. It was a ripe opportunity to unlock the secret of multidisciplinary transformation. Publicis Sapient is sincere about the interplay and building trust and a common way of working.
Melissa: Speaking of that, how are you working with other leaders to align outcomes so far?
Abby: Going well but of course it’s still early days. In past roles I’ve had to explain why I need to be there, why I need to be part of the solution. Here I don’t have to explain that or bang at the door – the seats are all at the table. We are working on breaking out of bad habits like looking at what’s in the toolbox versus what problems do we want to solve. It’s an orchestration mindset which sounds a bit utopian but its actually about aligning a common taxonomy and figuring out “what does good look like.”
I think of it like this: I’ve become a fanatical rower— when you start rowing with a team every motion you make, if you’re all not in sync you stall the boat and take away from the progress. This has been the perennial challenge of experience, technology and strategy for many years, and now we’re in a position to change it.
Melissa: What’s exciting in the CX space right now?
Abby: CX has a huge opportunity for tech as an enabler, I am seeing some amazing things to revolutionize call centers. We are at a moment in time where cost has come down and tech has advanced where we can create an amazing experience while saving companies money. There are some areas that are advancing faster out of necessity- for example, in healthcare and some healthcare services regulated like pensions. More exciting advances are happening because some countries are moving to direct benefit plans for example; this is helping people navigate a new financial future, that’s where you see the impact, when people’s lives change.
Melissa: What’s your vision for Publicis Sapient and beyond, Abby?
Abby: We are getting more aligned as a global team, Melissa. The teams in each of the regions and countries are strong, I’m amazed at the quality of the folks we have. But we need to get more standardization to work more effectively together for the scale that is required to meet client demand. I am looking for amazing talent, and more diverse talent. It’s part of my commitment that our team from top to bottom reflects the same mix of gender, race, socioeconomic status and so forth. It’s important to make us a mirror of the people we are designing for.
There are a few industries where we have more to give where Publicis has been doing great work – some of it is citizen experience so helping companies navigate decarbonization agendas and the future of mobility, for example, are places we can accelerate.
Melissa: Your talent comments are spot on, what are the critical skills and how do you cultivate the culture to retain them?
Abby: We have a healthy, open culture which makes it easier. You’ve got to have people with a growth mindset and I’m looking for people with an interest in embracing and developing a more consultative approach to experience. They’re interested in engaging and solving the problems with clients, and we need more of those people. We are also looking for professionals who have a thirst and hunger to know more about where data and AI are going, and also embrace an understanding of platform technologies. But also new alternative business models that are enabled by different experiences, people who can go deep in crafts but are hybrid in the ability to tune into the context of the world are working in.
Melissa: Going back to that big picture vision, what are the key elements of focus to bring that to life for your clients?
Abby: I’d like to see us applying our skills more to citizen experience and energy transition, future mobility, and things that are meaningful and purposeful. This hearkens back to recruitment and retention, Melissa – these things are purposeful to our experience team, and if we are providing work that is meaningful and filled with purpose they’ll want to stay and grow and build their careers. We also want to develop unique skill sets, so we are doing product design and development, but we want to build more innovative specific centers of excellence to do this all more consistently at scale. We have three things to do 1. Design for innovation 2. product and service design and development and 3. Enterprise experience which includes employee experience, sales and service and commercial, and potentially back office.
Melissa: Thanks so much, Abby for sharing your vision with us. I love how you’ve said that while you can’t determine an experience, you can encourage certain outcomes like loyalty or other value. And also, how holistically you look at experience is very in line with the way we view our OneOffice Ecosystem coming together. This is just the tip of the iceberg of how we need to align outcomes across stakeholders and really think about the impacts on our communities.
Abby: Thanks Melissa – it’s been great spending time with you today!
Posted in : Customer-Engagement, Design Thinking, Digital Transformation
