Leader Spotlight: Cracking the code to end-to-end customer experience, with Amy Saunders

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Amy Saunders is the former SVP of Customer Experience and Engagement at Novartis International. She began her career in marketing and advertising and worked for companies such as PolyGram Music (now NBC Universal/Comcast), and Music Choice. Amy transitioned to digital marketing in the healthcare space while at Razorfish Health, and later worked for GSW Worldwide and Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare Innovations. Before her role at Novartis, she served in various leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson before transitioning to Bowers & Wilkins and, later, W. L. Gore & Associates.

In our conversation, Amy talks about how end-to-end customer experience is like a content supply chain. She talks about the power of “and” instead of “or,” and how the word “and” is a force multiplier between content, narratives, technology, data, and AI. Amy also shares her “concerto approach” to collaboration that emphasizes how, like being in an orchestra, “you play well individually, you play even better when you’re in your section, but when you play all together, it’s a magic that can’t happen on your own.”

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Creating fluidity across channels and touch points

How do you define an end-to-end customer experience?

In its simplest form, end-to-end customer experience is like a content supply chain. It’s a set of interactions between a company and its customers (or any of its target audiences). In the healthcare space, that could be patients, healthcare professionals, or payers. It’s important to prioritize that. Nowadays, it’s vital to marry the narrative and all those touch points, and data, technology, and operations all enable this.

As the physical and virtual worlds continue to blur in life sciences and also in medicine, how does that affect customer experience?

It impacts customer experience in every way. Healthcare, which is where I focus, is by definition a profoundly human experience. It’s your body. It’s not always about being physically fit or a specific treatment being successful — it’s also the ability to maintain a good quality of life. And that can mean different things for different people at various stages.

In healthcare, the experience should be consistent, easily accessible, and remarkably right, both in-person and virtually. It should be fluid across channels and touch points, and one that is authentic and feels the same across all mediums. This is where technology and data come in.

What about regulations in the healthcare industry? How does that impact the fluidity of CX?

You have to be legally compliant in every industry, and specifically in the US, we have governing bodies like the FDA. But what’s unique about the US as compared to other countries is that here, you can communicate directly with patients. In the rest of the world, you actually can’t do that. Instead, you can only communicate in a way that talks about the disease and spreads awareness.

Also, healthcare systems vary in every country and can even differ by region within a country. Some countries, like Spain, Brazil, and Japan, may have 5-17 regions — each with a different healthcare system. These systems don’t necessarily connect or use the same technology, so if you’re developing products in these environments, you need to make sure that you have strong local teams in place.

They need to understand the province or county-level regulations that differ from province or county to county. It’s daunting, but this is where having a good regulatory team comes into play.

Pulling everything together at the right speed

Creating a really effective end-to-end experience is somewhat ambidextrous. Could you say a little bit more about that?

For me, it’s about the power of “and” instead of “or.” I think about this in terms of poetry and plumbing. Poetry is the content, narratives, and the element of bringing that brand strategy to life. A lot of companies do this well and have effective campaigns, but may have overly complex or insufficient execution and/or scale. Plumbing is the backbone and how it all flows together. The word “and” bridges technology, data, and AI — the force multipliers that come into play in addition to the operations.

You need to have sound marketing, technology, and operations in place, as well as the ability to pull all of these things together at the right speed. In other words, you need to bring the organization along at a speed they’re able to go at. If you go too fast, people will just rebel. If you go too slow, they’ll want to do it on their own. That, to me, is the ambidexterity.

How do you determine the right speed?

That’s a surprisingly loaded question. First, you need to listen to the company. Where do you stand today? Who are the competitors? Where are they at? This is the rigor that you should be doing. Then, you have to understand the internal culture and not just mow over what was done before. I try to understand and elevate what’s worked before and what needs to be more commonly applied.

I also look at where the pitfalls or barriers are. When you identify barriers, you need to define where you want to be and where you are now to set up the building blocks in between.

It’s really hard to change a lot at once, let alone bring in a ton of new, expensive technology. I’ve seen a lot of cases of companies overbuying and underutilizing. That ambidexterity comes in with the understanding of what your strategy is, what your organizational priorities are, and what you can pull up year over year.

Further, it’s important to have a clear roadmap with leadership aligned and bought in. If leadership doesn’t understand the roadmap or items on it, they’ll bail and jump ship the moment something goes wrong. But you’ve got to stick with it. It’s necessary to work with all those different groups, collaborate, and bring them along in the journey.

Identifying talent across companies

In what ways have you found customer experience initiatives to differ between public and private companies, as well as in companies of different sizes or stages?

I’ve worked in so many environments. In my opinion, it boils down to large public companies having better resources. This also means that they have a favorable talent profile — people aspire to work there. There’s also a lot of accountability to drive and show results for stakeholders. They always have to hit their numbers, which can be both a good and a bad thing sometimes. They also tend to have deep expertise within that talent pool and pipeline, so they can make better-informed decisions.

The negative of a public company, however, is that it’s easy to constantly reorganize and not have the full commitment to see things through. Customer experience transformation is often a 3–5-year journey, at a minimum. Bigger companies risk having silos, redundancies, and different divisions, or teams wanting to do things their own way. At a private company, these areas can be less complex.

One private company I worked at was especially great because they felt like they could build and fix anything, and these environments force you to be really nimble and agile. There was that homegrown culture to get things done. You can’t just hire an agency or a consultancy — you’ve got to know how to lead and execute with excellence.

You mentioned that you can’t just hire an agency. Given your perspective of having worked in agencies before, what are the tradeoffs of investing in in-house resources vs. using an agency?

I’ve been fortunate to work at some amazing agencies, as well as in several in-house capacities. First of all, there’s no right answer. Find a model or framework for the type of company and the culture that you have. I personally gravitate toward a hybrid approach.

If you completely outsource things, you’re never going to have enough depth of subject matter expertise. The outsourced component comes in when it’s hard to do creative aspects internally. Creative work really moves the needle, and outsourcing here can be great because you hire people who have worked in other industries and brands. They bring a fresh perspective and a knowledge of new trends and technologies. Pursuing a hybrid approach has worked well for me.

Making yourself accessible to your teams

What’s your approach to identifying talent on your own teams?

I am very passionate about talent. I consider myself a talent-led leader, and I always look for ways of unlocking and connecting potential. I start with listening and try to ensure I’m very accessible. I worked in an organization where folks were exhausted, fatigued, demotivated, and felt like they had to keep interviewing for their own jobs. I said, “We need to spend time with the talent first. If we get the talent right and form good working relationships with people, that begets good work, which drives good results.”

Part of that is also having a well-defined talent management approach. How are you measuring talent and developing it? Are your people given things that help them expand not just in their goals, but in the industry? Succession planning is also crucial. Leadership at my last few jobs focused heavily on this and said, “Who is our top talent and where would they want to go? What are the steps to get them there? Let’s give them the expertise.” It was an enlightened approach that helped everybody’s talent improve.

Lastly, I try to set a clear strategy and vision from the top down so that the team is empowered to be autonomous. That might require learning and fast failing, but that’s OK as long as everyone learns. I like to give people the space to actually do their jobs. When you give them the support and then get out of their way, they’re going to do amazing things.

You mentioned being accessible. Can you talk more about your approach to that?

Being accessible is being able to understand EQ as well as IQ and having a willingness to talk to people. Particularly in my last role at Novartis, I took the time to communicate with teams directly and give them feedback. I offered everyone the opportunity to schedule time with me. I also tried to be really available for folks and have a mentoring program in place, either involving myself or other people. Often, you’ll hear, “Oh, no — you can’t talk to that person. They’re too high up.” I disagree with that. I don’t want to be so hierarchical.

What are some practices you encourage and put in place to create a culture of continuous learning and development?

I make sure people are clear on what their target KPIs are and that they know the difference between a KPI and a metric. They need to understand the basics but share a common definition. Get on the same plane and make sure there’s both a formalized and informal continuous improvement loop. A formal loop involves reporting, dashboards, and looking at things at a high level across all your campaigns and brands. Informal is when you get together and ask, “Hey, what’s working?” to discuss things as a group.

An important part of continuous learning is admitting when something didn’t work, rather than trying to protect a good story and your turf. You have to be open and transparent, not protective and territorial. Having a well-defined approach and plan to creative and usability testing can help identify what will perform best, and avoid friction points or misses in customer experience.

Taking a ‘concerto approach’

You mentioned seeing team members face fatigue and burnout in previous roles. When you made changes to turn this around in any of your previous roles, did you see an uptick in morale?

I did. At Novartis we had a narrative called “concerto” and it really brought people along. Initially, a lot of people said that they felt that what they did in the past didn’t matter. I said, “If you think about playing in a symphony or an orchestra, you’re coming in as a virtuoso. You’re extremely good at your job. You play well individually, you play even better when you’re in your section, but when you play all together, it’s a magic that can’t happen on your own.”

We took this concerto approach, and it worked with our adjacent departments as well. We said, “We’re all doing this concert together, let’s make nice music. Don’t focus on these really myopic things. Just hit it hard.” With this approach, everyone started to feel like they were part of the mission. It was amazing how much of a difference that made.

Keeping up that momentum and that feeling of collective success was vital. Novartis did an excellent job of attaching the impact that the company and medicines make on communities to the people who worked there. Everyone felt purpose-driven, and having a purpose is what helps the best companies succeed.

Leading effectively during times of extreme change can be very difficult. What strategies have you employed to help teams develop resilience around change?

I find that change management is an outdated term. Instead, I prefer to say “change resilience.” The world around us is constantly changing. Technology is changing, people are changing, and in the case of healthcare, the way we support our audiences needs to be as innovative and fast-moving as our medicine.

In times of painful change, such as COVID, organizations had to resize and re-group. You have to be balanced and open about what you can and cannot do. I find that when you tell people what you’re not focusing on, rather than what you are, it’s actually liberating. They’re like, “Oh, good! I can’t do everything.” Give them clarity and remove barriers so that they can get things done.