Is Transformation a Bad Thing? | Gregorio Uglioni

Transformation. 

Everyone talks about it, but very few get it right. In this episode of WFM Unfiltered, Irina sits down with Gregorio Uglioni - also known as the CX Goalkeeper - to dismantle the corporate myths around change, strategy, and customer experience. With a rich background in healthcare transformation and a passion for customer-led innovation, Greg shares war stories from the frontline of business change that’ll make you question everything you think you know about CX and strategy execution.

From the fear of change that paralyzes organisations, to the exploding expectations of customers across digital channels, Greg breaks down why transformation is no longer a luxury - it's survival. But don’t worry, this isn't just theory. With over 20 years in the game and experience leading award-winning initiatives, Greg brings receipts. If you've ever seen a beautifully crafted strategy deck crash and burn when it hits the real world - this one’s for you.

Irina and Greg take on some sacred cows - like whether layoffs can be a good thing, how AI can (and absolutely cannot) replace human expertise, and why most companies confuse “culture” with “free coffee.” They also dive into the five pillars of transformation, exploring what truly drives sustainable change from the ground up, and what consultants need to bring to the table if they want to add real value - not just buzzwords.

You’ll also hear real customer stories, a surprising healthcare transformation success, and a challenge to CX professionals everywhere: simplify, or get left behind. Whether you're a CX lead, WFM pro, or transformation consultant, this conversation will shift how you approach change in your own business.

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Transcript

Irina: 0:21

Happy Tuesday everyone, and welcome to WFM Unfiltered. I'm your host Irina, and for the first time I'm going to Switzerland because believe it or not, I still have not been there and I'm so jealous, but so happy that I'm having a fantastic guest who also has a fantastic podcast I cannot wait for, uh, him to tell you a little bit more about it. So let's jump straight into it. Hey Greg, how are you doing?

Greg: 0:49

Very well, thank you very much, Irina for the invitation, but it means the next time it'll be in person, we'll record an episode together so that you are done in Zurich, Switzerland, together with me. Thank you very much.

Irina: 1:00

it. I would love that. And tell me a little bit more about the podcast because, um, actually I have been on the podcast and unfortunately we had to reschedule several times due to, you know, falling in on my end. So tell me a little bit more about your background and the podcast and where people can find it.

Greg: 1:19

Super happy, but it's never only your fault. I think we are all busy and we are doing, we're podcasting because we like it well much, but it's also really intensive to record episodes, to schedule episodes, and then to launch them and therefore super happy to be here. And important is that we are here. Now together and we'll spend a few minutes together. I am Greg coming from Switzerland. I am. I was always working in a business transformation. It's also my passion and therefore my podcast, the Six Goalkeeper podcast. I worked in financial services, I worked at Accenture. I worked in an healthcare, uh, in the healthcare industry and in hospital. And now I am a consultant doing consulting in contact center, uh, helping customer throughout their service excellence journey.

Irina: 2:07

Thank you so much. Can you please share where people can find your podcast?

Greg: 2:12

Uh, CXgoalkeeper.com/podcast. People can fifind usn all platforms. Apple, Spotify, YouTube. You can find me.

Irina: 2:23

Perfect. And I strongly recommend the podcast guys. Greg has been doing amazing. He has such interesting topics, interesting guests, and I don't know how many episodes you're having, probably way over 200. Now what's the score? Okay. You've been doing it for a while, like, uh, let's say that people will have, uh, something to binge on. But thank you again for first making the time and making yourself available because we have shared some conversation around the topic of transformations because this is something that. It's not only a hot topic, but I started reflecting on transformations and ever since I started my professional journey, I'm in companies that are undergoing transformation. So it seems like this is one thing that we cannot escape from. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective, what is the leading cause for companies to go through transformation?

Greg: 3:21

Everything is changing and nowadays the speed of this change is increasing dramatically. And I see, because we are also on your podcast, a lot of, uh, companies that have similar issues in different phases, but basically, um. Until before COVID let's say like that, uh, customer were contacting companies through the phone. Perhaps they were, were writing an email or they went in person there. And then they asked, discussed, and were able to solve their issues. And for the company was still possible to manage, let's say, two, three channels at the same time. And knowing Irina in front of me, Irina has these products with us, and these were the last Context that we had, and perhaps also she's happy or she's not happy or she's a recurring customer. Nowadays it's extremely difficult because we as a customer in this case, are trying to contact companies with all the possible channels. We have expectation that my problem is, is solved. Now as quick as possible, I want to get an excuse and this and that and that and so on. And for a company, it's extremely difficult to manage 5, 6, 7. 10 channels at the same times, interacting from the different, uh, ways. And we know the usual customer journey, if you want to ask a question about the product, is you go online, you try to find out the solution in the web, then um, you don't find it. Then a chat popup. You ask this chat bot, the chat bot. It's not always able to provide the answer. And they say, okay. Then I call the company. And the company's not aware that you already spends 20 minutes on, uh, on on, on the web that you try to speak with this chatbot and now you want a solution because you already invested far too much time to solve, for example, a similar issue. And then you say, okay let's find way. And therefore it's extremely important to go through a transformation.

Irina: 5:18

So if we're looking at it from a broader perspective, and I need to apologize to you and to everyone who is listening, my voice is going down. So if at some point it starts cracking, bear with me. I have my water, so it'll be fine. But is it fair to say that transformation happens because something is changing or something needs to change? Because what I have seen from my perspective is sometimes I. The, the information that is shared is we are gonna be cutting on resources, or we need to go to a growth, or we need to increase customer experience. So something needs to change, whether it's the work that we're doing, how we're doing it, or even the people that are doing it. So from internal perspective, what I have noticed that at the moment, someone mentioning the word transformation. Everyone gets worried, everyone starts to panic and everyone starts to associate it with, there will be layoffs.

Greg: 6:17

You are so right. I think that's one big issue. I let's tackle this question or this topic from two point of view. The first one is from the company point of view, and then the second one will be from the employee point of view. From a company point of view, I think the cost to change, I. For a customer to another product, to another provider are extremely low. Nowadays your competitor, the competitor of a company is one click away and is to click, and I switch provider and there is no issue at all. We know that only one out of four people complain with the company. It means three out of four people leave a company without telling to this company that they are living. And these are, it's a bit scary, I would say, and therefore companies need to change, but. It's difficult, it's really difficult to change. And now we are coming to to, to the employee side. If you are employed and it's independent, at which level you can work in the contact center, you can be a team leader or you can be also in the senior management. At the end, The executive board will need to take a decision to, to change, and then it's extremely important. If a company start a transformation to start informing involving the employees from the beginning and not as you said, okay, now we need to lay off 100 people, but let's try to find a way how to transform the company in a structured way with clear, uh, targets. Really understanding what are the needs of our customer, of our employees, then going into this change, uh. Supporting the change, the transformation that it's often happen on a digital basis. Digital transformation with change management. We know, uh, what, what quota is preaching, how to involve people in a big change. There is this extreme interesting book. The iceberg is melting and uh, the first thing we find that out and try to involve the other people. And then when you start change, also measuring the progress of the change, knowing how to measure and how companies can be every day a bit better. And the last one is the culture within the company. That's all about how, which values as a company and how people are behaving at all different levels. And as you already find out, these are the five pillars. I always suggest companies to go through a transformation and to involve people from the beginning. It's not often, it's not about only saving costs, but also finding ways to improve products because then you can also move the focus on we need to save money. We need to lay off people to how we can create additional value for the customer. That we can keep all our employees, or we can re-skill our employees for order task for more complex task. If some task, uh, gets them done by. Computers, machines, or nowadays it's cool to say by agents, but not the agent sitting at the call center, but I really, the, I really mind the artificial, uh, intelligence based agents

Irina: 9:25

It is such a great topic, and I feel like we can go into million different directions, but Really wanna dig into different examples that we have seen so we can put things into perspective because I don't know about you, but I. What I have seen from companies at the moment when they, uh, communicate that there is gonna be a transformation. Usually they come in with those bank great ideas and we're gonna go into this direction and we're gonna grow and great things are gonna be happening. And often they're failing. And we go through 2, 5, 7 years of transformation. Nothing changes. And I wanna ask you, what do you think it's. first, the biggest, the leading reasons for failing.

Greg: 10:10

That's, uh, you know, I don't want to start discussing about breaking silos. I think that's, everybody's discussing about that. Let's skip that. We spoke and we discuss enough I, I, I see the title of your podcast, WFM, and this is something that, I think it's, it's workforce management and basically. I see that there is really very big gap between what executive boards are thinking, that it's really, that it's happening in a company and what it's really happening and you have this different. Point of views and therefore a lot of time, and they are paid also for that. Board of the board members are creating strategies that that don't really fit to the reality. And for me, this is an example and I am. Super happy to share that, you know, I had the opportunity to to, to run and to work in a lot of different transformations and with different rules. It's not that I was born and I was, uh, the leader of a transformation. Yes, I got to that to this point, but I was a project member. I was then responsible for one work stream. Then I was responsible for bigger transformation, and then I, I, I really was able to, to work on really big, big transformation. In different industries and for me. I started as usual with my, with my PowerPoints. Let's create this, let's do that and let's work on that. And then, uh, I was working in the operations of a credit card company and uh, I started explaining I would do this and we do that. And then the head of the contact center came to me and said. Greg, how much time did you spend sitting next to an agent to really understand what is happening in the company? And I said, until now, I was never there. And he said, okay, now you come with me. Come downstairs and you sit next to an agent. I felt in love to really listen and understand what's really happening, because on PowerPoint you can depict a slide in the best possible way, and you can sell it. It's not difficult, but to really understand what it's happening and which question customer really have compared to all the strategic views, let's do this then Let's do that. It's mind changing. It's mind blowing. And, uh, I'm so grateful to Dario if he's, if you're listening, thank you very much, Dario, that you took me downstairs and you said, now you sit here and you listen. And afterwards it, I wanted to be there because I wanted to see what's happening. Our employees were struggling using 6, 7, 8, 9 different system at the same time to service a customer and for some use cases. Customer received the information before the agent, were able to see this information, and then I think that's the main issue, the big disconnection between who's taking the decision and who's willing do the work. I know very, very long, uh, answer super. Sorry for that.

Irina: 13:17

no, because I'm so happy that you touched upon that because what we are always struggling with from WFM perspective is exactly what you mentioned. Somebody comes up with that great strategy that cannot be translated into reality, and it is that huge disconnect. So if I am following what you're saying, basically there is also communication breakdown. We're doing what is happening, but someone up there is not seeing it, but they're coming with their ideas that we just can't implement. And I wanna pause right here because this is getting me super excited for two directions. First of all, because we're both consultants and we're usually going fresh into organization without necessarily the knowledge, how they're operating, ways of working knowledge and so on. second of all, what I wanna touch upon is. Even from operational perspective, this is something that WFM usually does. They sit in their corner, they are doing their files, their formulas, our calculations, and then we're expecting that this can be met or managed on the floor. I'm always saying, okay, you go sit. Look how they're doing things, because we can say, you know what? Somebody's taking way too much time on after cohort. Maybe there is a reason for that. And yes, it might not be necessarily our job, but the team leave job, but it doesn't hurt that we know how things are in reality. So we can put some kind of understanding between behind our numbers. So I'm actually so grateful for you to bring that huge, important topic because it is still huge disconnect between different teams, uh, between different stakeholders. And I don't know honestly how we can solve that. Is it a maturity issue? Is it like who needs to actually create that kind of, um, between the teams?

Greg: 15:15

Everybody that is listening to this episode should start doing that. Sorry, but for me, it's extremely important. It should come from us, from employees, from the people. In this case, I'm a consultant, but I was working in a company everybody should bring that I, I was really enjoying when I was leading the transformation in the operation department. But it was not me taking this decision. We had agile working groups, agiles group with people exactly that. Were able to understand the numbers because not everybody can understand numbers. And then having older people understanding the real issues of struggles of the customers and then putting them together, perhaps also with the IT guy and then with the process guy, and. Helping them going in one direction to make the life of our customer effortless or even better, to make life of our, of the human being involved in the process. Customer and employees effortless, much smoother that you can improve processes and that's come. From the bottom to the top and not the in the other direction. It's clear the bosses need to give direction, support and so on, but basically what's, it's really not working in a contact center, in a service center. It's the people that are knows that and putting together. The numbers that are really the important piece to calculate business case finding are much value and adding the stories from, for example, contact center agents that can explain, oh, this issue is happening so often. And by the way, two days ago, uh, one customer called me, Mr. Mr. Jack, and he told us, oh, he moved from one town to the other. And now we need to change the address. And it's so complex to change address, but we always know that address change is a big topic. Let's find a way out to how to make it effortless. And I think this collaboration, this working together, together, this willingness to change for the better. It starts with everybody involved in the company. And I think as you also myself, we have a passion for what we are doing. And therefore I think we should be the first. You can name that champions, uh, uh, supporters. I don't know how that starts this transformation and say, let's really find the top 10 issues that we have and let's work together. WFM great example. There is always the, the discussion about opening hours. That's the usual, shall we have opening hours, eight to five, eight to six, eight to eight, but then it costs more. Does it really bring value and so on. Okay, but let's get the people at the table and let's try to find a solution and then perhaps it, somebody with a good idea comes and then we can discuss from that. And then you can start again having the numbers, the data, you calculate your business case, but you have the stories. You have also. The needs of the customer. I don't know how you, you shared that I am in Zurich, but I cannot go to a branch in the post because if I want to send a letter or something like that,'cause they're open from nine to four o'clock or to five o'clock and or one. It's strange, but I'm working during this time

Irina: 18:30

very unexpected.

Greg: 18:31

exactly.

Irina: 18:33

Yeah, you know what I have a feeling that I made a mistake inviting you on that podcast because you're such an interesting guest and I have to have you for a week to speak with you. we'll not end, but I wanna pause again here because you are right. We are often taking things as they are, and we're trying to work around them. The point about operational or opening hours, I'm always saying, okay, that there are no calls for the last one hour, but you're struggling in the morning. Maybe you can suggest that we close that one hour and use the people in the morning instead. But then you're meeting the response of. No, that's not my job. Or it's always been this way or this is how we operate. Bring it up. Go speak with someone. Raise your radio. What would happen? The worst thing that can happen is somebody tell you, we're gonna keep it as this period, but at least try to influence change. That's what I'm always saying. Uh, we are not static creatures. There is so much we can do and deliver. But we're being in our own way. So I wanna start making things very uncomfortable here because you know me. So I wanna talk about transformation and the lead to redundancy roles and layoffs. So I wanna ask for your opinion. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

Greg: 19:56

No. And, uh, I, I think half of the audience will leave now because I said no, and I should have said yes. But basically, I think now I'm speaking as an employee and as a consultant, we need to re-skill ourself continuously thinking about now gen ai, and so on. It's time that we are reskilled because I'm not sure I often, I'm often a project manager in a project and, uh, I'm quite sure there will be an, uh, agent that it's much better than me in reminding people to provide a status report to updating the project plan and all the stuff because it's something that perhaps the machine can do. And therefore it's extremely important that we upskill ourself back to, uh, contact center. WFM again, it was. For in some regions five years ago, in other regions, 10 years ago, it was the big topic. Again, it was to write and then again it started this transformation, this change. Who is willing to write? Me, me, me, me. Oh, okay. Good. Oh, by the way, you are so good at writing. Are you sure that you want to stay over the phone or do you like more to write? And then you can start finding and discuss if you can discuss and if you can talk with people and with employees, you can find what you are good at, what you need as a company. And perhaps not only what NPR looked at, but what they really like because some people didn't like to. Have a phone call because it was too much for them. And therefore, if you can find this intersection, then you can start changing skills, upskilling and so on. And some people said, oh, I was, uh, working in the code center for five years, and now it's time to learn something different. I want to write or I, I want to go in. Uh. Different department. I want to go in the process management department. I want to go in, I dunno, application processing department on the marketing department. And then the magic start happens because you have. All around in the company, people with different skillset that already work in the company. It means they know the company, they know the culture, they know the processes. And when they are creating products or processes, they know our process processes are lived and are really performed. And then you can start really creating this magic, I think, important for companies. Now it's. To find a way to keep the good people, the people that want to improve themselves, that want to grow and keeping them in the company.'cause nowadays, I said that earlier, for companies, uh, your competitor is one click away. But for employees, the next employer is also one click away. And I know that lot of people. Enjoy, like working from home, and that's something I'm really supporting. But for a company, it means it's extremely difficult to create a culture where you feel part of this culture, you feel part of this company, and therefore often the employer. It's only a logo that you see in your desktop when you're working. And therefore we need to find ways as companies to keep people, to keep the good people and to let perhaps people that need to do something different, uh, live.

Irina: 23:11

Such fantastic points. Honestly this. This line is so saturated with great insights because actually I share the exact same opinion. For me, transformations are a way to force growth and to make things change. And unfortunately, sometimes that means redundancy, but it also means opening opportunities, and I have seen that time and time over again that. Maybe when we shifting things around, somebody gets promoted and it's been put in a role that can, they can really deliver so much more value and results to the companies. And often I have seen, when we let go of people, I. can still do the job with the remaining people and not necessarily do make them do more job, make them do more work. so I, I don't see it necessarily as something negative. I know that if you're on the receiving end of being made redundant, unfortunately it's not good. But from the people that do stay, maybe there is a reason, maybe there are the right people to continue with that company during that time. Maybe the company makes mistakes and keeps the wrong people in and the right people out. But in general, I'm always saying look at it as a, a opportunity, not as something that's necessarily negative thing. And now let's, uh, let's make things uncomfortable for us. So consultants, somebody fresh coming into the organization, telling people what to do. How the heck does that work?

Greg: 24:44

That's, uh, extremely difficult. But and nowadays even more with these LMS and so on, because you can write into Cha g pt, please provide me a plan now to take of this and that. I see the, the value added for consultants and I was working 17 years in, in corporates that you can buy specific skills that you donate over the long time. Over a long period. You buy the specific skills and then you use your expertise and they bring you first a fresh per perspective because it's, uh, you are not biased, uh, and you are not in all this political setup. You need to please this, you need to please that person. And third one, they brings in best practices, but. I really like the consultant that did the work. Not that, uh, copied from somebody else. My colleagues did that. Yes. But then please bring your colleague and not yourself. And I think at the end also our work will change. But all these experiences, all the time that we are investing it's make the it's the differentiator for us because chatGPT can provide, provide you average. That's the reality. You can tell and be the expert, but it brings you the, it brings you the average because they are trying to best the next best possible answer to your question or the next possible best word to your answer. And if we still as consultant, are doing our job and we are really delivering and working on an operation level, and that's something that I really enjoy doing data analysis, creating maps, and doing process analysis. Then we can bring our experiences and often companies have sim similar issues in completely different setups, and we can say, oh, we, we think that this could work. We think that could work and pay attention. We tried with this and that, uh, and that way of working. It didn't work. Please pay attention. And I think that's the, the, the value that we could bring our expertise. But really, if we did that and not. Based on chatGPT or based off my colleagues did that, and now I sell you this project.

Irina: 26:55

So what you're saying and what I completely agree with is consultants can bring a lot of value because their experience. In different environments, they can give you different ways of, me, tackling an issue. But also one thing that it's often underestimated and you mentioned is consultants are not emotionally involved into the company. And I'm seeing that time and time over again. People get angry, they got upset if something is not happening, if somebody doesn't listen to them, they're like, it's always happening. I'm in this role and manager X is never paying me attention. But then consultant comes and they're paying them attention. Yes. Because consultants are not emotionally involved. And this is a huge benefit. But I would look at it from the other side because I also hate consultants, like with passion, and I'm a consultant. If you go to a company and you are just putting forward ideas that cannot translate to that current company strategy or reality, and you do not make the time. To talk to the people that are doing the job, but you are, uh, giving the time to the senior stakeholders because they're the ones who are signing your contract. And I'm starting to shake from anger when I see such consultants because then you know that they're after the paycheck, not after the change and supporting their client. have you seen that?

Greg: 28:22

As a lot of times on, on both sides. But I, I, I would like really to come back what I said earlier and perhaps sharing an example. I know it's not related to WFM, but I think people can understand that when. Started working for, uh, for the hospital. A lot of people were skeptical. They were saying, you're coming from the financial services. You are an external guy. You don't understand us, and so on. And basically it was something like a new consultant coming in. And for me it's the second main pillar in a transformation is understanding, understanding human being. And in this case was understanding employees and therefore I really spent, or let's play with words. I invested a lot of time to speaking with them, to trying to understand, to listen to them and you know, let's create also something like a bonding. I was in this hospital, it's a big hospital, and then one guy said, I test if you're committed or not. I think that was the real reason because why he invited me to an operation room. It means I went, I had my green clothes and I went there in an operation room and, uh, they said, oh, now look e here and there they are now cutting this and that. I'm not sharing what was, what exactly was, but basically it was test to see is this is he or is this person really committed to our mission to what we want to achieve to our vision. And I went there, I was, it was five o'clock in the morning preparing for these operations, uh, washing my hands. I never, I didn't touch anything. I was looking from far away and I was super happy that I didn't throw a lot, but basically it was a test. If you wanted to change something, you need to be part of it. You cannot change something from the outside in saying, do this, that, and that, and go, and let's go. That's impossible. You need to be part of it. And that was my first example going into the contact center, being part of the contact center, understanding what is happening with the contact center people working there. And exactly the same was in an hospital following nurses is seeing, watching, feeding what they were feeling and being in an operation room and seeing land around. And so, because that's the reality there.

Irina: 30:36

I am getting goosebumps because what you mentioned is if you wanna change something, you need to be a part of it. It's brilliant. And I'm gonna use that for, for, um, headline for the ops episode because it, it is like that. Like you, if you don't understand something, if you can't. Live through it or feel how people are feeling or what the process is you can't do anything about it. You can just probably kinda spit some kind of a theory or something that you have seen, but that would never work. So I think this is a brilliant way to actually wrap up this episode and to thank you so much, Greg, for joining me. I'm feeling so energized after this conversation and I wanna invite you for a second part.

Greg: 31:23

Super happy to join, but let's, uh, give a shout out also to you. You are, you have a great podcast. I listened to a few episodes. It's really great and thank you very much for spreading the positive word of mouth to spreading the right things because we want to change businesses for the better. Focusing on human beings and changing what it's possible, and therefore, thank you very much for your time.

Irina: 31:48

Thank you, Greg.