CX as Your Sacred Duty with John Boerstler, CXO at the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs
11/03/21 • 44 min
This episode features an interview with John Boerstler, Chief Experience Officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. In this episode, John talks about improving trust ratings, journey mapping, and reaching underserved communities.
Quotes
“If we're going to create this world-class customer experience for our veterans and their families, caregivers, and survivors, then we also have to make sure that we provide a world-class employee experience for 400,000 men and women that serve here in the VA everyday.”
“If we think just not only along the lines of age, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender in general, we have to design for all of these different customer types to ensure that some of the most underserved veterans and their families are out or are engaged and retained as customers and that they choose VA for their care and benefits so that we can fulfill our sacred oath and our commitment to them.”
“The United States military creates the largest number of displaced workers every year. 250,000 young men and women leave active service. And they move from Virginia to Texas or California to Missouri or Missouri to Florida and the professional and personal networks that they have at their duty station that do not translate to the communities that they return to. And so they have a difficult time finding work and finding a new social or that unit mentality, that social net social network, so to speak that we have in the military, that comradery that we so miss. And that can lead to negative health and economic outcomes. So how can we be on the front end of that transition, improve it, negative health and economic outcomes by wrapping our arms around these individuals and their families at that point of transition and then at the same time deliver a delightful customer experience?”
Time Stamps
*[4:09] Shifting to human-centered design
*[6:05] The sacred duty to serve Veterans
*[7:15] How the VA has improved trust ratings by 23%
*[10:26] Leveraging tech to give more Veterans access to services
*[12:50] The birth of the Veterans Experience Officer and the first journey map
*[16:54] The core values of the VA in CX
*[18:46] Using data to increase access and improve outcomes for Veterans
*[20:47] Meeting the unique challenges of Veterans after active service
*[24:14] Learning to meet the needs of LGBTQ and BIPOC Veterans
*[27:31] Measuring the effectiveness of CX initiatives
*[31:58] Meeting Veterans at their point of transition to civilian life
*[32:33] Addressing mental health needs among Veterans
*[39:00] Owning the moment
Bio
John is a native Texan who served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999-2007 as a non-commissioned officer and infantry unit leader, including one combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2004-2005 and Operation Natural Fire in the Republic of Kenya in 2006. John has also served as the CEO of Combined Arms, Executive Director of NextOp, a program manager with Wounded Warrior Project, the Mayor of Houston’s Office of Veterans Affairs, and as a policy and district staffer for a U.S. Representative.
Thank you to our friends
This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here
Links:
This episode features an interview with John Boerstler, Chief Experience Officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. In this episode, John talks about improving trust ratings, journey mapping, and reaching underserved communities.
Quotes
“If we're going to create this world-class customer experience for our veterans and their families, caregivers, and survivors, then we also have to make sure that we provide a world-class employee experience for 400,000 men and women that serve here in the VA everyday.”
“If we think just not only along the lines of age, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender in general, we have to design for all of these different customer types to ensure that some of the most underserved veterans and their families are out or are engaged and retained as customers and that they choose VA for their care and benefits so that we can fulfill our sacred oath and our commitment to them.”
“The United States military creates the largest number of displaced workers every year. 250,000 young men and women leave active service. And they move from Virginia to Texas or California to Missouri or Missouri to Florida and the professional and personal networks that they have at their duty station that do not translate to the communities that they return to. And so they have a difficult time finding work and finding a new social or that unit mentality, that social net social network, so to speak that we have in the military, that comradery that we so miss. And that can lead to negative health and economic outcomes. So how can we be on the front end of that transition, improve it, negative health and economic outcomes by wrapping our arms around these individuals and their families at that point of transition and then at the same time deliver a delightful customer experience?”
Time Stamps
*[4:09] Shifting to human-centered design
*[6:05] The sacred duty to serve Veterans
*[7:15] How the VA has improved trust ratings by 23%
*[10:26] Leveraging tech to give more Veterans access to services
*[12:50] The birth of the Veterans Experience Officer and the first journey map
*[16:54] The core values of the VA in CX
*[18:46] Using data to increase access and improve outcomes for Veterans
*[20:47] Meeting the unique challenges of Veterans after active service
*[24:14] Learning to meet the needs of LGBTQ and BIPOC Veterans
*[27:31] Measuring the effectiveness of CX initiatives
*[31:58] Meeting Veterans at their point of transition to civilian life
*[32:33] Addressing mental health needs among Veterans
*[39:00] Owning the moment
Bio
John is a native Texan who served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999-2007 as a non-commissioned officer and infantry unit leader, including one combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2004-2005 and Operation Natural Fire in the Republic of Kenya in 2006. John has also served as the CEO of Combined Arms, Executive Director of NextOp, a program manager with Wounded Warrior Project, the Mayor of Houston’s Office of Veterans Affairs, and as a policy and district staffer for a U.S. Representative.
Thank you to our friends
This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here
Links:
Previous Episode
Digital Access for All with Howard Pyle, Founder of ExperienceFutures.org
This episode features an interview with Howard Pyle, founder of ExperienceFutures.org. In this episode, Howard talks about the true meaning of digital equality, front-end experience automation, and why there will never be a single solution suited for all users.
Quotes
“The social issue is twofold. One is that all the sites, all the tools you interact with are designed for privilege. They're designed for people who already know how to use technology. They're designed for people who sit in front of a computer all day. They're designed for people who have reference to things like the way design system conventions work. We expect you to know how these systems work...And so if you don't know how to access those sites, suddenly you lose access to the things you need to do in your daily life. You can't access government, you can't access healthcare. You can't access your financial services because you don't know how those tools work. And that's where it becomes a social issue.”
Time Stamps
*[3:27] Understanding the depth of the digital divide
*[6:04] Digital inequity as a social issue
*[10:05] A new way to look at digital equity
*[18:01] The nexus of experience design and automation
*[22:19] Democratization of digital access
*[24:06] Whose problem is digital inequity?
*[25:40] Designers create for privileged audience
*[29:04] Defining CX
*[37:00] Committing to digital equity at the leadership level
*[41:23] Addressing design equity with help from ExperienceFutures
Bio
Howard is founder of Experience Futures and a 20-year design and digital platforms veteran. He was previously SVP of Global Customer Experience Design at MetLife, VP in IBM’s Design Studios, and founder of several startups.
Thank you to our friends
This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here
Links:
Connect with Howard on LinkedIn
Next Episode
A Delightfully Simple Customer Experience with Carol Carpenter, CMO at VMWare
This episode features an interview with Carol Carpenter, CMO at VMware. In this episode, Carol talks about understanding your end user, how CX encompasses what customers see, think and feel, and how to enable customer success through a delightfully simple experience.
Quotes
*”I define customer experience here at VMware as what do we make our customers see, think and feel? What do they see, think, and feel as they experience the company, our products, our people, our support? How do they feel in that entire realm of experience? And that's why customer experience is much more than just a function.”
*”We're in a multi-cloud world. 70 to 80% of businesses are using more than one cloud. As a company, part of our brand promise here at VMware is we're going to simplify and help you decomplexify all the things you need to do across your application and infrastructure stack. It's pretty complicated when you have multiple clouds, you have multiple solutions. And our goal was to be the Switzerland, and frankly, the connectivity to help companies transform and move to the cloud and take advantage of all the cloud offers. So long way of saying that at VMware, we're looking for, how do we create the simplification? How do we make it so that customers have the security, the management, the resiliency, and the ability to move fast?”
*”At VMware, we're really committed to communities. A lot of people don't realize we actually have several open source projects. We have the founders of Kubernetes as part of our team. So we believe in the communities and the bottoms up approach, and that's a different type of experience and engagement that's required. So that's also an area where, as CMO, I have some influence and work with those teams pretty closely. Cause you can't market to those communities. You need to engage with them.”
Time Stamps
*[3:13] Carol’s journey to CMO at VMWare
*[12:08] How to stay ahead of the curve on CX
*[15:30] Partnering with customers to drive innovation
*[22:17] Advice for navigating change as a leader
*[27:07] Deciding what CX initiatives to pursue
*[28:29] Building trust with customers
*[30:25] Getting a 360° view of your CX
*[40:38] Predicting the future of CX
Bio
Carol Carpenter joined VMware in June 2020 as Chief Marketing Officer. As CMO, Carol is responsible for leading all aspects of the Global Marketing organization, which includes Corporate Marketing, Partner, Segment and Field Marketing. She brings to the role more than 25 years of technology sector experience. Most recently, she was Vice President, Product Marketing at Google Cloud.
Thank you to our friends
This episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here
Links:
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