What'cha Drinkin'? with Mark Michelson
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Steve Quirk:
Hello and welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’? I am Steve Quirk, president of Quirk's Media, and our guest today is Mark Michelson of CX Talks. Hello Mark, and welcome to What’cha Drinkin’?. So, let's start right off with it. What are you drinking?
Mark Michelson:
Well, being in Atlanta, Georgia, I had to represent, so this is actually peaches and cream with vodka and it's just, I throw it in my bullet mixer, which is really supposed to be for healthy things. But I put the vodka there and it's quite tasty. I like this because it's refreshing and it makes me think I'm on vacation, even though I'm here at home.
Steve Quirk:
Well, alcohol in moderation they say is fine so I think you can still consider that healthy. Yeah. I am having a Pseudo Manhattan. I went to go make it and I didn't have the bidders and it's all right. So, my dad always drank this drink and so since he recently passed, I'm like, ah, I'm going to make a drink in his honor. And yeah, that's one thing we don't have in common.
Mark Michelson:
I have a funny story about Manhattan’s. I go camping every year, the 30 years we've been going now. And so, there's usually about a hundred and we always have a theme night. So last year there are a couple people that are very, very creative in this camping group, and no electricity. We're in the middle of nowhere in North Georgia. There's no wifi signal, nothing. This couple is so creative. They actually built, it was the theme last year was the roaring twenties. So, they built, what was they called? Amelia Earhart's last airport departure lounge. And the wife was dressed up as Amelia Earhart and the husband was dressed up as her long lost navigator and they were serving Manhattan’s, fresh Manhattan’s in the middle of the woods and it was like a whole room. It was amazing.
Steve Quirk:
That sounds awesome. I love the creativity. That sounds like so much fun. So, one thing you and I have in common is that we are both in the event business. Tell us a little bit about your event CX Talks. Talk a little bit about, how do you define CX and then talk about how you came about coming up with this kind of unique format of events.
Mark Michelson:
Sure. So, I'm a lifelong researcher, and so I, I've always run conferences and helped organize them for groups like QRCA, MSPA, etc. So, I kind of like that because I like going to conferences. Well, and there's a group called CXPA, it's a customer experience professional association. I got involved with them 10 years ago when they started.
To answer your question, what is CX? I think there's a lot of different answers to it. An academic response might be something, everything that touches the customer from product development all the way through to consumption and after and the loyalty, blah, blah, blah. To me, it's more of a role that just manages the balance between marketing and operation so that when you're going out and promoting something, you're actually delivering that which you're promising and making sure that all the different pieces and parts work together.
In the world of CX, there are so many different disciplines and research is just one of the small ones. For instance, there's CRM platforms, there's human resources and training, there's the whole idea of UX and dealing with computer development product development, architecture. I can go on. So, when I've always done things like store design projects and product design projects, we didn't call it CX back in the eighties, nineties. So that term was kind of coined a while ago. There was a book called The Experience Economy and they wrote a lot about it. Gilmore and Pine wrote that. So, they wrote about it and then some companies started paying attention to what it is. And now there's a whole bunch of management layered and different directors and managers, etc, that deal with CX.
When I was getting started in this, I got to know the CX community. They didn't have a clue what research really did. They were really focused on things like NPS Score or CSAT scores and that's about it. They didn't really consider design research thinking doing research to create environments or products. That whole front end of innovation was not part of their world of CX. At least they didn't think about it. And then I started thinking, well, why not? What's missing here between the world of research, which I've always lived in and the world of CX.
So, we had different meetings in Atlanta and my charge here along with some other team members, or it's all volunteer, we would have quarterly events. So, we'd go cool places, like we'd go to Chick-fil-a's headquarters and have a meeting or top golf and have a meeting there. Just cool stuff, right? Experiential. Well, they have a thing called CX Day. It's the first Tuesday in October. And in 2016, I was charged with that particular event, and I said, well, hey, why don't we do a TED Talks? I like TED Talks. And I said, well, let's make it even shorter. 10 talks. Let's get 10 speakers. They get 10 minutes each. Do an hour PR of those just in the round, no, no Q and A. Take an hour break and network in between, bring back the next five speakers and it was a hit. We had 120 people show up. The guy who had the building where we had it, his name is Carlos. And he said to me, he says, hey, this was really cool, I wonder if we can get other associations involved. What would that look like? I said, sure, I've created a few. Let me get those in and get everyone.
We had 18 associations involved with helping design the conference and when we put together how many people each of these associations represented, it became clear we needed a bigger room. I didn't really think about it but we had these meetings and stuff in early January, February and then we were planning to have it for CX Day that year in 2017. It became clear after a while that we couldn't do this as a volunteer effort because we needed a hotel or some sort of meeting room. There was going to be food there, someone needed to sign a contract and someone needed to pay the bills. So, I volunteered to do it with my association management company. I said, sure, I, I've got it. So, I signed those checks and made it happen. After that, we really enjoyed it and we had 10-minute speakers and we had some great companies represented as well. And it was interesting because if you didn't like that topic, just wait 10 minutes.
What was really core and central to our whole thing was we have a mission to bring together those disciplines in one room for one day in a local town. So, no one has to travel and anything like that. And the vision was always to try to have other towns and add a new town every year. So, we added Dallas and then we added Chicago and we were going to add Seattle this year. Then COVID-19 raised the head and that's where, we both were at that, right at the Quirk’s conference up in New York. And we both had to pivot or figure out how to still have that kind of comradery and learning experience. And most important, the networking.
Steve Quirk:
Well with that, we usually ask a fun question at the end, but since most people who are probably watching us know, or hopefully if they don't know, Mark heads up the Quirk’s MR Jam session, which we have in the U.S. events. We had it in New York just before COVID-19 hit and we're planning another great band experience in Chicago, but that has been postponed. So, do you have your guitar? You want to play a quick verse for people?
Mark Michelson:
I may have something here. Tell you what, I'm going to keep it short though. I'm only going to do one or two verses of this one.
Steve Quirk:
Okay. You do it
Mark Michelson:
Kind of a timely song…
Steve Quirk:
Well, that is a fitting song for this time, probably, which is somewhat sad. But thank you for sharing that. Hopefully we'll be able to get the band back together sooner than later since it's always a good time.
Mark Michelson:
We might be able to do a thing acapella using a software thing. So, we could have that, maybe we could do that virtually.
Steve Quirk:
That'd be awesome.
Mark Michelson:
I'll have to talk to the guys.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah, we'll have to. Well, with that, I will let you go. Thank you, Mark. And cheers. We'll see you real soon.
Mark Michelson:
Always a pleasure.
Steve Quirk:
All right, same here.