232: Embracing Technology and Human Connection in Customer Experience with Vaishali Dialani

Navigating the Customer Experience

Vaishali Dialani is a multi-award-winning Customer Experience professional in the Middle East, has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader, a finalist for CX Leader of the Year 2023, and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in both 2023 and 2024. She is a firm believer in the power of knowledge sharing to foster growth and awareness within the CX community.

With over eight years of experience as a data-savvy experienced designer, research specialists, and strategic change-maker, Vaishali passionately advocates for the integration of emotions and efficiency through customer experience research, product insights and communication. She currently serves as a Senior CX Strategist at Konabos, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation.

Her commitment to knowledge sharing is evident through her involvement in podcasts, blogs, guest lectures, speaking engagements, and training programs. Additionally, she conducts leadership training workshops for professionals with low literacy levels, making a positive impact through collaborative efforts across diverse spheres.

Questions

· Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you are were to where you are today.

· Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.

· What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?

·How have employees across different industries adapted to the integration of technologies, specifically in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, to enhance customer service experiences? What future trends do you predict for technology's role in CX, and do you believe human interaction will remain vital in this space?

· Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

· Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

· Can you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

· What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?

· Where can listeners find you online?

· Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Vaishali’s Journey

Me: Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you were to where you are today.

Vaishali shared that she started her career back in 2015, right after she graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Dubai, and just like any other graduate, she was like, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I think I’ll start with marketing.”

Right quickly as she dived into marketing in the advertising world, it was chaotic, busy, a great learning curve, she learned what she liked. But most importantly, she learned what she didn't like. And that's where her analytical journey began from, she understood that it's important to know and work on your skills that you like. She paved her way to get her MBA done, and learn more about research and analytics, and then dived into a CRM officer where she picked up different aspects of what experience means, how you're helping small businesses grow, what is innovation and research, it’s a very cool experience.

And then she moved back to Dubai where she joined her FinTech company as the head of customer engagement. Now, this was a whole new world for her while she already knew marketing and analytics, but now running campaigns and media was super interesting. And just like in any other startup, you have to wear many other hats was very interesting, because normally she would play so many different roles, she had different opportunities where you would design experiences for low income migrant workers in the UAE.

It was almost like her postgraduate degree or a PhD, she would say, at no money, where she learned a lot of things. And that's where her curiosity for CX began, when she was designing experiences and working with the ideal. One thing paved to another and then she dived into CX, and she’s been in the industry for almost four to five years now.

Me: All right, that is a wonderful journey.

Vaishali’s Views on Customer Experience in Her Culture

Me: Now, throughout your journey, Vaishali, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned the different industries that you've worked in, but seeing that you've been in the CX space for a while, and our show is about navigating the customer experience, maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about what your views are on customer experience. And I know you are in a different part of the world. And I know culture and behaviour varies depending on where you are. Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.

Vaishali shared that for the listeners, she comes from the Middle East from they say the light of gold, which is Dubai, and it's very interesting because it feels like you're always served in a platter. So, over the last few years, she’s been travelling a lot, and especially to the West and the East port. And she thinks there's major cultural shock that she almost have is why somebody not serving her enough. Being in Dubai hospitality is huge; services at its peak, people come for the luxury and lifestyle in Dubai. And so, she’s never had even if she goes to a restaurant, if she’s in Dubai, if she asks anyone to please can you pack this, I need a take away, they'd be like, “Yeah, sure madam”, and all of that. But when she comes to the West, they give her a box, and she’s like, “Oh, so am I supposed to pack myself?”

So many different experiences that are such culturally different, yet you're working on designing those right kind of experiences is very interesting. Being in the space that she worked across education, FinTech, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit organizations, and one thing that she finds, despite no matter where you are, in which part of the world across which culture you have been raised, is that we all are humans, and we all want to feel heard. And we want to all feel listened and feel the emotion that we're feeling whether it's with another person or a brand. So, despite many, many differences, being from the Middle East, one common thing is what kind of human experiences are we really designing?

Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Customer Experience Design and Delivery

Me: What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?

Vaishali stated that’s a difficult one. But she thinks something that's really helped her, and she truly believes in this is the power of love languages, and how you can mold that and use that in designing experiences, especially customer experiences, whether it is quality time and actually speaking to your customers, making them feel heard, and understanding where they come from, to just simple words of affirmations. And this can be digital affirmations, she’s not saying everything has to be in person, it's more about how you make someone feel like, “oh, this person hears me and understands me.” Do simple acts of service you do for them digitally, again, reward them that make them feel loyal to you.

So, when it comes to leadership, every different project is so different from one another despite being in the CX space, because they are spread across different verticals, from governance, to analytics to design, she’s had the experience of learning that we need to understand what kind of emotions we want to create, and then create those journeys. So, for her, that's been one of the key things is, drive and understand what emotion you want to create.

AI Integration in Customer Service; Employee Adaptation, Future Trends, and the Human Touch

Me: Now, a big part of CX is technology, right? Technology is here to help us and support us in delivering a more seamless and a less friction kind of experience with customers. In your part of the world, how have you seen your employees across different industries and verticals, as you had mentioned, adapting to the technologies, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence, there is ChatGPT and different things that organizations may integrate to enhance the service experience with their customers and cut down the more route type of activities that are very mundane and monotonous, they're investing in a technology to kind of reduce. How have you seen the adoption of that take place? And if you were to be a fortune teller, if you were to look into the future, where do you see this going? And do you believe human interaction will still play a very integral role in CX?

Vaishali stated, wow, what a question. It's very interesting. So, to answer the first part of the question, which is adoption levels. She thinks adoption levels are at its peak right now. We have no option but to keep up because a lot of the CX experiences and designs that they choose to design for their customers is technology driven. You can have the best of the best designs on Figma or Canva, or Miro, but to really bring them to life, you need the right tools in place. And to be able to do that, you will be able to understand which technology or business is actually using at the moment, what kind of architecture do they have in their back end systems, and what is really possible.

And in the ever evolving space, also, she thinks, today, all kinds of businesses, especially in the tech industry, they are coming up with niche tools and technologies across diverse industries specific to different features that allow them to give the best of the best services to their end users. But most importantly, they are very open to saying we'll integrate with another tool, whether it is in the healthcare industry, and you're looking at billing and medical insurance, they're creating their own tools to integrating with personalization tools to understanding when a patient needs to have their next checkup and reminding the patient about it to actually having analytical tool. There's so much that is happening in today's space and the adoption is at its absolute peak to keep up with the industry at the moment. That's the first part of the question.

And then the second part of the question is, there's so much that you can do with today's technology, no matter what you do human intervention can never be impacted directly she feels, they will always coexist in her space, she doesn't think it's going to be one or the other and completely replaceable. They will always need human beings because human beings evolve. And technology is made by humans.

Me: Very true. Alright. I love that.

App, Website or Tool that Vaishali Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Vaishali shared that she’s a very tech person, she loves using her app, she has apps for almost everything. But at work, she uses a lot of Canva; she’s creative as a person. So, whether it's the whiteboard or whether it's just designing something that she needs to just throw it out. She loves using Canva.

Me: Amazing. I like when I hear guests talk about using Canva. Recently, I did a presentation skills workshop for a client and they wanted to basically teach the team how to use Canva. And I remember, it was so fascinating, especially for persons who have never been exposed to the platform before, when they looked at the user interface of Canva versus a Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is just like, it's like the Apple of design. Like in terms of how easy it is, you just drag and drop it, in PowerPoint, you take three steps, in Canva, you take one. And I just I find it so amazing, it really has brought design to the average person; even if you weren't creative Canva would find some way to stimulate your creativity.

Vaishali agreed, and more than anything, even like the guided templates too, they have everything, you can just create a design system in place to be able to do anything with it. Previously, developers used to use draw.io a lot to create the map and the technology flows. And like, guys no, we need to use Canva make it more colourful. And it's so easy to use.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Vaishali

When asked about books that have had a great impact. Vaishali shared that she just finished two books recently, but they are more spiritual, but she thinks one of the books that she’s still continuing to read, and she’s amazed by it is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. That the book is taking her longer to complete in all honesty is because you really need to retrospect and think, is this the way I think.

And it's just the way she would want to think like from growth mindset or fixed mindset and how our childhood, the way we just appreciate it really impacts on the way we work and our personality, or our character. So, there's a lot of retrospective to do. And she thinks she'll have to read the book 2, 3 times. But for now, this has been the biggest impact on the way she’s started evolving and thinking, so she'd highly recommend this book.

What Vaishali is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something she’s excited about, Vaishali stated that she'll give two things. So, the first one is she’s very excited because she’s travelling on a personal level. She’s travelling to Vancouver tonight to for her brother's graduation. And it's been a journey for their family. So, they're very, very excited for his graduation.

And professionally, what she’s very excited about is at the moment, she’s working on three different projects across manufacturing, healthcare, and education. And the best part about all of it is, is that all of them are across different verticals of CX, and that really shows the power of a) customer experience, but b) also how vast our growing industry is. And we all have some stuff to do and make an impact across different verticals of CX, so she feels super blessed.

Me: Alright, well, congratulations to you, brother and his graduation. That's awesome.

Emerging Trends Shaping the Near Future

Me: Now, can you tell our listeners, if you were to just think about maybe two or three trends that you believe will continue to grow and emerge as we wrap up on the second and embark on the third quarter of 2024, what would you say those are just based on working with clients, in your own business, listening to podcasts, being on podcasts, writing blogs, interfacing with other CX experts across different industries. What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?

Vaishali stated, great question. And we all have been talking about this, start of the year, we were like, what’s 2024 going to hold for CX and is AI going to replace but she thinks now conversations have shifted, and everyone agrees, and a lot of the conversations she’s hearing about is, we are going to coexist together. So, that trend is kind of going to continue and only emerge, people are not going to lose their jobs because of AI, but they're just going to be supported better and to design better experience. So, that's definitely one.

The second one is what she sees as a shift, based on discussing with clients and having these daily one on one conversations, being the centre front of the industry is that there's a grey area that was first there was digital experience and customer experience, but she sees that becoming a grey area now to becoming actually digital customer experience, and people finding out and learning more about it. And that's a very interesting space, because it makes room for everyone to grow together and learn and share experiences, which she thinks is phenomenal. So, there are no more silos within even the experience design space anymore.

And the third one she would say is, she sees extremely authenticating orthodox industries, especially such as manufacturing, or education, which had a certain way of doing certain things digitally, are now ready to evolve and embark on a transformation journey. Because they think it's extremely important to kind of keep up to the industry and the world and the customer needs. And those are massive projects that they're working on internally. So, she thinks it's very, very interesting to see that shift in the industry right now.

Me: Alright, exciting times ahead.

Where Can We Find Vaishali Online

LinkedIn – Vaishali Dialani

X – Vaishali Dialani

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Vaishali Uses

Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert, Vaishali shared that she does. And it's one of her favourite quotes that she’s actually tattooed and it's called, “Fly with full faith.” So, it's always do your hard work and have faith in whatever you do. Because most of the times, it feels like we're doing so much and we still not able to get to the next place, we're stuck in a circle or a rod. And it's important to have faith and while you have faith, always, always do your hard work.

Me: All right, thank you so very much. So, Vaishali, I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you again, for taking time out of your busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all these great insights, especially as it relates to your culture and what's happening over there. Because the world is very small, even though we are in different continents or different places, human behaviour is still pretty much the same I believe throughout, we are through and through emotional beings. And I liked the fact that that came out in your message in terms of what we should be focused on in CX and ensuring that we're connecting with people on an emotional level, and what kind of feelings do we want them to have after they've interacted with us. So, I thought it was great that you brought that across in a message. So, thank you again.

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Links

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

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