Barbara Morton – Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs [Customer Experience]
Barbara is the Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer at U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. In this role Barbara is responsible for building a lasting customer experience capability at VA and sharing best practices across sister Federal Agencies. Barbara is the Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer at U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Barbara talks about why the Veterans Experience Office was created and the amazing achievements they have accomplished in five years, which include not are not limited to Customer Service policy, VA Welcome Kit, Community Engagement Boards and the VA Hotline.
Nick Glimsdahl 0:04
Welcome to the press one for NEC podcast. My name is Nick Glimsdahl. My guest this week is Barbara Morton. Barbara is the deputy chief veteran experience officer at US Department of Veteran Affairs. And in this role, Barbara is responsible for building and lasting customer experience capabilities of VA, and sharing best practices across history, federal agencies. Barbara is the deputy chief veteran experience officer at the US Department of Veteran Affairs. Welcome to the press one predict podcast.
Barbara Morton 0:31
Thank you, Nick, thanks for having me excited for the discussion today.
Nick Glimsdahl 0:34
Yeah, you and me both. So the first question I have for every guest, is tell me about something that people might not know about you?
Barbara Morton 0:44
Well, so this is like the best question to start off with. I love this. So one thing that people may not know about me, is I’m actually very artistic. So I’m a lawyer by trade. And I’ve been in government and public servant faithfully for the last 14 years. But I’m also incredibly creative as well. So I do stained glass, pottery, jewelry making, you know, pastels, charcoal painting, the whole nine, my mother was an artist. So that was always a big part of our lives growing up, and it helps me creatively problem solve, I think in government to, hopefully a good skill to have put to good use.
Nick Glimsdahl 1:19
Yeah, that’s actually really neat. I’ve never heard of somebody who’s a lawyer and creative at the same time, I think that’s probably a pretty unique trade set
of a weird combination problem.
If you were to pick one piece that you’re most proud of, what would it be? You know,
Barbara Morton 1:35
I think it’s a piece a few pieces that I did recently, they’re actually mosaic. So it was my first hand at Mosaic, very similar to stained glass, obviously, in terms of the product that you use, but the way you manipulate the glass is quite different. So I’ve got two pieces that I did last fall hanging in my living room. So very, very proud of those.
Nick Glimsdahl 1:55
That’s awesome. Very cool. So I kick things off for the people that might not know, what do you do at the US Department of Veteran Affairs.
Barbara Morton 2:04
So I’m really fortunate to work, what I see is one of the best jobs in the department. And that is really to focus on the experiences that we provide to veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors when they interact with VA. And essentially, what that means is, how are we supporting the department to enable the greatest experiences possible, because veterans deserve the best from us. So we have a pretty robust customer experience data capability, which really involves real time customer experience surveys. So we get that feedback rapidly in real time, rather than months or weeks after an experience. So the teams on the ground can kind of triage those issues, those concerns, and really help get the veteran the help that they need. We also have a really, really strong human centered design practice, which is, you know, listeners may be familiar with, it’s just a fancy way of saying, talk to your customers and understand what their journeys are and design your solutions around them. So we’ve developed that over over many years have interviewed, you know, 1000s of veterans and really tried to create very concrete products for our employees to deliver better experiences through training, other artifacts, best practices, things of that nature.
Nick Glimsdahl 3:20
Oh, and how many total employees do you guys have at VA?
Barbara Morton 3:23
So VA has about almost 400,000 employees, plus a bunch of contracts support as well. So we are a very, very large organization. And I think we have the best mission in the world again, which is to serve those who have given so much to our country.
Nick Glimsdahl 3:39
Yeah, that is a great match mission. And then how many departments do you guys have?
Barbara Morton 3:43
So we are organized into sort of three large administrations. One is the Veterans Health Administration, so VA hospitals throughout the nation, the second largest is the Veterans Benefits Administration, again, regional offices throughout the nation. And the third is National National Cemetery administration. And again, cemeteries throughout the United States, we also have a number of supporting staff offices, My office is what’s called a staff office. But it’s interesting when you ask that question, because I think, for those of us who are trying to sort of understand and organize the capabilities of VA, the org structure makes sense. From a veteran perspective, however, they’re not necessarily interested in our org structure, my office tries to do is really sort of flip the way we see ourselves inside out, meaning we look at the veterans journey with us at VA and where we plug into their lives rather than them having to figure out our bureaucracy. So that’s kind of a great example of how we really try to kind of just change our orientation and change our way of thinking to meet them where they are.
Nick Glimsdahl 4:45
Yeah, I love that. I wish that more organizations would actually do that. Do what was best for the consumer. Not saying hey, check us out and work in our framework.
Barbara Morton 4:55
Exactly. Exactly. Right.
Nick Glimsdahl 4:57
Yeah. So how old is The veteran experience office department.
Barbara Morton 5:02
So we’re kind of a baby office, we’re relatively young. We were set up in 2015, January 2015. And a little bit of the background, some, some may remember, you know, back in April 2014, there was really a crisis at the department, a crisis for veterans, and that was the the Phoenix, VA Medical Center with certain wait times and things, you know, veterans not having a good experience, obviously. And so that I think, for us, organizationally, was really a tremendous wake up call that, hey, we really need to make sure we can listen to and act upon experiences that veterans are having. Because if you think about certain measures of performance, like operational metrics, for example, number of claims process, number of surgeries conducted, operationally, things could look just fine. But if the experience is less than it should be, then we’re missing a great opportunity to meet the needs of veterans and also hold ourselves accountable for experience. So this office was really born out of a catalyst, I would say, and we’ve been building it ever since then, I’m proud to say that the the team that I have in this office, and also our brothers and sisters across VA, who’ve really, really come along this journey with us. It was an idea back in 2015, it was a concept. And we’ve been able to actually make it real and tangible and adapt, adapt it to kind of how we operate in government to make the greatest impact we can.
Nick Glimsdahl 6:32
Yeah, that’s it’s really neat. And that’s only been for five years. He said,
Barbara Morton 6:37
Yeah, about five years was when the office was first stood up. And I joined back in the summer 2016.
Nick Glimsdahl 6:45
So speaking of your role as the deputy chief veteran experience officer, what does that what is your role consistent.
Barbara Morton 6:53
So you know, there are a lot of sort of internal operations that I oversee. But really, it’s kind of about, you know, driving the strategy, creating a strategy for VA to have this be an enduring capability. So it’s not just a one off, it’s not just a good idea that then disappears over time, but to really hardwire it, bake it in to the culture, as a core business discipline. So as mentioned before, the concept of operational metrics that, you know, a lot of agencies and other you know, private sector organizations report out on, those are very, very important, but what we’re trying to do is bring experience to be a co equal measure of our performance, along with those very, very important operational metrics. So again, a lot of what I do is, is really crank kind of trying to frame what the capabilities we offer do as a way to sort of provide greater value to veterans and their families, and make it part of how we do business at VA.
Nick Glimsdahl 7:48
Yeah, I love that it’s a co equal, why is that important to you guys?
Barbara Morton 7:53
I think, you know, again, for me, I sort of made a when you may not know about me, I have a shameless patriot. So I love this country, I love being a public servant. And I think for me, choosing the path that I chose professionally to be in public service, I have a very, I have a very deep and profound sense of duty to actually serve the public in a way that is actually not just going to be a transaction and deliver on the transactional requirement, but actually create an experience where, you know, we’re actually here to give back and to serve you. We’re not here just to push paper, you know, so there’s some sort of, to me, it’s, um, there’s like a philosophical component to me of why that’s important. It’s an emotional component as well. I think that’s why why we are public servants for our great country.
Nick Glimsdahl 8:42
Yeah, that is really cool. So I had the opportunity to read the 2024 strategic plan laid out by the current secretary, where he states the customer service is my prime directive and first priority. So what do you mean by that?
Barbara Morton 8:58
Oh, my gosh, well, when when he came in into town, and literally that was his prime directive for all of us back in 2018. It was just such an incredible moment, because that’s exactly what I think all of us have been have been really trying to amplify and kind of, again, make as a co equal sort of measure of performance and VA. And so I think to him, when he when he talks about customer experience, he talks about it in a number of dimensions. One, of course, is the experience with that we provide to veterans and their families, caregivers and survivors. But the other dimension, which he’s very specific about is the employee experience. And I think, you know, as listeners kind of think about this, they’re very, very intertwined. They’re super, super dependent, you know, and codependent on each other. And so I think, you know, Secretary Wilkie has really spent some time to make sure that from a top top leadership perspective, this is a culture that we want to provide and sort of build and grow and the experiences that we want to provide to our customers, and so having that leadership support at the highest level is super invaluable, because it just sets a tone. And it sets a focus area that I think, frankly, everybody can get on board with. I’ve not met one person that doesn’t agree that customer experience is a really, really important element of what we do. The other interesting thing I’ll mention, if I can think about government, and probably any organization, there are a lot of different sort of operational levers to sort of utilize to try to, again, infuse a transformation initiative, like cx into the culture into the organization, the VA strategic plan is one such vehicle or ingredient, if you will kind of have a key ingredient to sort of, really make sure that we can get this down to, you know, every level and in the environment. And so the strategic plan, you’ll, as you probably read, has lots of reference to veteran experience. And it was sort of foundationally crafted around the veterans experience journey map, which we did very early on in this office history, probably back in 2015 or so. And so you can see, you know, again, it’s infused in a lot of little nooks and crannies throughout throughout the organization.
Nick Glimsdahl 11:08
Yeah, yeah, it for sure. Sounds like it, you know, tell me more about this. Va first customer service policy.
Barbara Morton 11:17
Oh, yeah. Well, so that, again, talking about ingredients and levers to use, right. So when our current Secretary came on board, one of the very first policies he issued was a VA wide customer experience policy, one of the first unheard of first ever, so of course, we were incredibly pleased that that happened, again, just to reinforce and to drive this orientation. And the interesting part about that policy is that there there are a couple of distinct components. And this is something that we learned in the veterans experience office, in the first few years that you know, that I was on board and the first few years it was developing. And that is that you really need to be clear and define what your core capabilities are. So like, kind of kind of the what, and then the how you’re going to apply them to produce impact and tangible results. And so I talked a little bit earlier about customer experience data, whether it’s real time surveys, Human Centered Design, another key component of that is putting the data to action, and creating tangible tangible tools to empower employees to deliver great experiences. So that’s kind of sort of a little bit of the framework. And some of the core capabilities that we offer. We also serve as sort of a, you know, a va wide integrator, if you will, and sponsor for the front door, the digital front door va.gov for veterans, and also kind of the back end data systems that need to be integrated to provide that front door singular experience. So the kind of core capabilities and framework is the first part of the policy. And the second two parts really are about, you know, how do we infuse customer experience, insights and data into decision making, because data sitting on a shelf is not really going to be helpful, right? We have an internal way that we, you know, make decisions at an organizational level, customer experience, insights is part of that now. And then the accountability piece, we hold ourselves accountable at an organizational level, reporting our trust scores with veterans, publicly and also at an individual level. So our senior executives are held accountable now for customer experience metrics. So you can see there are a lot of different ways to kind of drive it and again, using the levers that we have in government. That’s that’s one of the things we’ve been able to do.
Nick Glimsdahl 13:36
Yeah, that’s really neat. And I want to get to the trust, here in a few more questions. But tell me about you guys have the strategic plan. Do you guys have brand promises or best practices around that?
Barbara Morton 13:48
So yeah, I mean, we have a lot of best practices that we’ve kind of, you know, developed or brought in and adapted from industry. So one example, we have a really, really very well developed Patient Experience Program. So I mentioned we support the entire department, all the administration’s we talked about, but the Veterans Health Administration was sort of an early adopter with us and in terms of proving the concept of how important and how valuable customer experience is. So one of the things we did early on, when I came to this office was the team went out and said, Okay, we’re going to build this this patient experience program as a proof of concept. We want to actually do our research not only with veterans to map their journey and understand what moments matter most to them. We want to go to leaders in industry and understand what they do as a best practice so we can kind of bring those in and adapt them to VA. So one perfect example of what we did is we when we went out to, to speak with with some of these experts, like you know, Cleveland Clinic Mayo Clinic, one of their best practices was what’s called leadership rounding, which basically means your leadership in a medical facility walks the floor talks to patients talks to employees, not Once a year, but on a regular basis, we adapted that practice and brought it into VA to kind of fit with the VA culture. And so now we have a program called we care rounding, which is a play on some of our core values and characteristics that we have now infused across VHA medical centers as a best practice. So we’re always learning, we’re always wanting to bring in and adapt those great practices that industry has been able to utilize. And really working, you know, with, with the insights that we get from human centered design, prototyping, testing products with employees, as well, really enables us to give some some dynamite products for people to execute on.
Nick Glimsdahl 15:40
That’s really cool. Um, so how important is it for the VA to receive customer feedback?
Barbara Morton 15:47
Oh, gosh, I mean, to me, customer feedback is like the heartbeat of this whole organization, right? I mean, super, super important. And again, you know, I can talk a lot about the sort of the mechanisms in government that we’ve referred to before and sort of speak to, but at the end of the day, you know, it really boils down to an individual to individual level, and making that moment matter, and sort of connect and owning that moment with people. So they don’t feel like they’re falling through the cracks, or that their needs aren’t being met. And I love the concept of like, you set these sort of macro policies, you set these, you know, certain drivers, but again, at the end of the day, it’s about the folks on the front lines who are interacting with our veterans and their families each and every day.
Nick Glimsdahl 16:30
Yeah. What are a few examples that you guys use to receive customer feedback? Yeah, so
Barbara Morton 16:37
we’ve had a lot of different channels. So one of the mechanisms we use, which I, which I referred to my office uses, on behalf of the Department is the real time survey capability. So if a veteran is getting treatment at a VA Medical Center, you know, within, you know, a week or a few days, they will get an email invitation survey, they, you know, they fill out their survey, and immediately those results go back into the system. But the interesting part about the survey, people usually ask, Well, how do you know which survey questions to ask? And the answer is, well, I don’t make them up. Actually, they’re based on Human Centered Design, journey, mapping moments that matter most. We take those moments that matter most, we create questions around them, test those questions with veterans before we launch them to make sure they make sense. And then ultimately deploy them. So it’s really always this kind of like constant feedback loop, even about how we’re collecting that feedback before we before we launch it, and deploy it.
Nick Glimsdahl 17:38
Yeah, I love the section where you just said measured moments that matter most. Yeah. So it’s, it’s staying focused on the moments that matter most. And sometimes there we get in the business of life or business of work. And I call it the horse blinders, where we’re like, Okay, this is my goal, and I’m going to run as fast as I can in that direction. But if you don’t actually understand what, what matters to you, but it’s also what matters to your, to your customers, your consumers. So that’s very cool. Um,
Barbara Morton 18:09
one examples, I can just give you know, that because the thing that I always really like to sort of highlight is the power of experience, the power of talking to your customers, and understanding the moments that matter most so talked about healthcare, talked about how we’ve done a number of journey maps with Veterans Health Administration, one of the journey maps was in relation to outpatient services. That’s a huge, huge business line for Veterans Health Administration. So we went out, we talked to hundreds of different veterans across multiple demographics, ages, locations, etc. And one of the moments that mattered most to them in their journey with us was navigation of a VA medical facility. Right. Now, naturally, navigation of a VA medical facility would never appear on an operational dashboard, right? an operational dashboard, rather, would capture, again, number of surgeries completed, you know, number of new patients seen right? navigation of the facility, though, is important to the veteran. So we want to be able to measure that. So my team in concert again, partnership, great partnership with VHA, designed a survey around that particular moment that mattered. And then we also help to scale a tool, what I call a tangible tool that was already in place in some VA medical centers, but not all, which was an ambassador or greeter program. So essentially what what you see now when you walk into a VA Medical Center is a greeter or a number of greeters. Sometimes their dogs is greeters that wear red coats, it’s called a red code ambassador program that will help respond to this moment that matters most. So, again, we took the Human Centered Design insights, this fell out as a moment that mattered most we measure how we do in that domain. And we also have created a program in concert with VHA across medical centers to address it. So it’s really got to be that sort of holistic cycle. You can Don’t just have the data and admire the data, you’ve got to create something to respond to it, and then measure your performance in it.
Nick Glimsdahl 20:06
Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s so neat. You know, the last thing that somebody wants to figure out is, how do I navigate? How do I once I’m at the hospital? Where do I go next? How do I have my peace of mind, the last thing that they want to do is that they’re trying to worry about the issue that they’re there for. One of the tool that you guys provided was something called a welcome kit. Yeah. Can you explain that?
Barbara Morton 20:30
Yeah, absolutely. So remember, in the beginning, we were talking about kind of the structure of VA, we got health benefits, memorial services, other staff offices, Well, again, to a veteran, they shouldn’t have the burden of trying to figure out our org chart. So the welcome kit is actually based on the veterans journey map that I mentioned, that was done a number of years ago when this office first stood up. And it really is a way for us to understand in the veterans lifecycle based on their input, where should Where should and does VA fit and to kind of help them along their journey. And so the welcome kit basically uses that journey map and inserts references to the different sort of benefits and services available, not based on our bureaucracy, but based on the lifecycle and the journey of the veteran. So it should be more intuitive to veterans to utilize. So if they’re out of military, and they’re saying, Hey, I’m just getting started, I’m starting with my career, or I want to buy a house, we’re aligning our services based on that journey line, rather than again, then having to figure out who had VA and the bureaucracy Do I have to speak to? So to me, it’s one of my, one of my favorite products, that that this office and this incredible team has developed.
Nick Glimsdahl 21:42
It’s really neat. The VA has also a quarterly trust survey. Yeah. And I promised I was gonna get back to the trust question, but you asked veterans to rate VA ease of use effectiveness and its staff availability to provide an empathetic experience. Yeah, which I think is awesome. Um, but you also ask the question, Do you trust the VA? And to what extent? Why do you use the word trust?
Barbara Morton 22:12
Yeah, well, this this is also again, I think such a such an important conversation. So one of the things that we wanted to do in this office, again, early on, was to establish some core principles, like what does customer experience even mean? What are the elements of customer experience that we can all understand and speak to as sort of an organization and so the model that we use what you just mentioned, you know, the key, the key components, of course, any experience, and you think about your own experience, and you know, your your daily life, it’s got to be easy, it’s got to be effective, I need to get what I need. It’s got to be feel emotionally resonant. Like I’m actually a valued customer again in the transaction. And these three domains, we believe, are all key drivers of trust. Now, why is trust important, as public servants, and this is my view, trust is our most valuable currency, we hold this trust for all the public and especially those that we serve. And so that’s why it is our primary metric in terms of how are we doing macro va? How are we serving you? How are you feeling about us? And I’m really, really proud to say that, when we started this trust mess metric about five years ago, the initial kind of baseline was was not that great. It was about 55% agreement. So we had a long, long way to go. Over the last four years, Trust has increased by 20 over 20%. So that is veterans telling us that you know, we’re listening, we’re responding, we’re doing something right, to earn that trust. And you know, our goal is to hit a 90% agreement with that level, we’ve got a ways to go. But incredible progress, and certainly attribute all of that to our frontline employees who are really walking the walk and delivering every single day, nose to nose with veterans, dynamite experiences.
Nick Glimsdahl 24:02
Yeah. And I think, you know, it comes back down to the leadership all the way up to the Secretary Wilkie who believes in it, but it has to trickle down all the way down to the person who’s interacting with that with the service member. Because if they don’t believe in it, and they’re just like, oh, man, you’re just giving me more work. And I got to get measured on something else. Now, I gotta get measured on trust. What is this? What’s going on? But once they believe in it, 100% Yeah, that they buy in? Yeah,
Barbara Morton 24:32
I think you’re like, just to that point. I mean, I think they’re, they’re like two dimensions of experience. And one I think is the one that it’s like the feel good, right, everybody, I think as a public servant, believes, especially at VA, it’s the right thing to do. Right? veterans are our, you know, deserving of the best from all of us the best experiences, but the other dimension is it actually has positive impacts in trust scores and operational efficiencies. If you’re finding any product based on what veterans are telling you that they want, you’re always going to produce a better outcome. Right? Whereas if you design something with kind of my internal idea of what might make most sense, it could be a hit or miss. So I think there’s so many dimensions to the value of it, you know, part of it is the the feel good part. But also the other part. It’s like a hardcore business discipline to create better impact.
Nick Glimsdahl 25:24
Yeah, for sure. You had mentioned a couple minutes ago that trust is the most important metric in public service. And I would argue that it’s not just in public service, it’s across the board. And the more that people trust you, yep, it doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect every time. Of course, it means that what you’re doing over time is what’s in the best interest of the person interacting with you.
Barbara Morton 25:52
Yes, agree.
Nick Glimsdahl 25:53
So I love that, um, tell me about the community veteran engagement boards.
Barbara Morton 26:00
Yeah, so this is an incredible partnership. So you know, I mentioned some of the the capabilities that we have, you know, the data, the Human Centered Design, the tools that we build, and deploy, and then enabling technology. So another key component is partnerships and community engagement. The community veteran engagement boards, otherwise known as C. Babs are boards that are that are kind of grassroots local organizations across the nation, that consist of, you know, veteran advocates in a region veterans themselves, private sector partners, just a whole collection, veteran service organizations, of folks who are coming together at a local level to help solve local veteran issues, because we know certain veteran needs in the northeast might be different from the southwest. So all of these incredible cves exist, really to sort of be a nucleus of partnerships in those local areas. So we partner with them. It’s not they’re not, you know, quote, unquote, VA organizations, but we partner with them and coordinate them on so many levels in terms of information distribution from VA, you know, feedback collection, trying to understand, you know, what are some issues locally? So it’s an incredible way for us to plug into local communities across the nation.
Nick Glimsdahl 27:11
Yeah. And from the research that I read, I think there’s 163 of these boards. Yeah, across the country, and they represent 50 million people.
Barbara Morton 27:22
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the catchment areas, you know, they each have kind of their rings of influence. And Funny, funny, interesting background or not funny but interesting background about the seabeds. So they, some of them sort of naturally existed in pockets. And our former Secretary, Secretary Bob McDonald, who actually stood up this, this office back in 2015, he had sort of seen an example of these engagement boards, I think it was in San Diego or Southern California. And he came back after he was sort of going out in the field and sort of understanding, you know, how veterans were doing and organizations partnerships. And he thought, Wow, what a great opportunity to see if we can help foster these types of grassroots engagement boards across the nation. So that’s sort of how we became my office became involved in that.
Nick Glimsdahl 28:09
It’s so cool. I can’t believe they represent 15 million people. That’s what an accomplishment on that side. But it last question about the VA is, tell me about the VA hotline.
Barbara Morton 28:22
Yeah, so we we also got I know that, like, we’re walking through all these things, we have our hands on a lot. And a lot of things. So yeah, so the VA hotline. So this is a new capability, again, that was stood up probably about two, three or three years ago now. And it’s essentially in response to veterans saying, hey, when I call, you know, to get some help for VA, if I don’t call the right number, or if I can’t get ahold of somebody, I really just want to be able to have, you know, a hotline, it’s available 24 seven, to really be able to kind of express my concerns or give a compliment if it if it’s that or just, you know, kind of escalate things to get things moving. And so my team, you know, has has sponsorship of that capability. And it’s interesting, because we’re always again, wanting to learn and update and sort of make sure that we create an experience that that veterans, you know, that are going to resonate with veterans. So we have been able to kind of create in conjunction with this hotline, as sort of a single front door, if you will, in terms of if a veteran doesn’t know what phone number to call, they can call this single front door phone number, and get directed, you know, either kind of through a phone tree, they can make a selection or they can get directed to a live agent. So we’re really just, again, trying to accommodate and adapt to make sure that veterans can actually speak with a live person if they need to do that.
Nick Glimsdahl 29:44
Yeah, no, that’s great. I wish kind of going back to the the private sector. It’s I wish all organizations had that where I could just pick up the phone, say what I really wanted and go to the right person at the right time. Yeah, so I I love that and you guys are on mission. You’ve only been doing this for five years. But we didn’t even talk about all the things that you’ve actually accomplished we just gave you gave everybody a sneak peek. So, you know, everybody’s as money is as well used here at the vo. But I wrap up every podcast with two questions. And the first question is what book or person has influenced you the most in the past year? And then the second one is, if you can leave a note to all the customer experience professionals, and Monday at 8am. It reaches everybody’s desk, what would it say?
Barbara Morton 30:38
So I think Can I start with the second one first? Yeah,
yeah. Well,
I might,
I’ll leave a note with a couple of hashtags. Probably. One is, one is for my cx brothers and sisters, you make a difference, keep charging, you know, keep driving this change, we’re driving it from the inside out. We’re driving it with our private sector and nonprofit partners. All of us in this ecosystem are in it together. And it’s so beautiful to have such a such a focus and unified intent around customer experience. So keep charging is what I would say that to them. In terms of the most influential book or person. Again, I’ll kind of also deviate a little bit. I will say the most influential group of people, has been my brothers and sisters in VA and across federal government, who are in customer experience to make government work as best as it can to serve the public the best that I can. I’m just privileged to be one out of so many around me. And let’s keep charging.
Nick Glimsdahl 31:40
Yeah, that is actually some really great advice. And I love the fact that you brought up your team. You know, you guys again, have done so much. And I’m really excited to what you guys are going to be doing in the future because I know you’re not done yet.
Barbara Morton 31:56
No, not even close. We’re just we’re just scratching the surface just getting started.
Nick Glimsdahl 32:02
Yep. Yeah. So Barbara, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing the success you guys are going to be doing and how you’re helping, sir the Veteran Affairs.
Barbara Morton 32:14
Awesome. Thanks so much for the time Next, take care
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The Press 1 For Nick podcast is both educational and engaging, and each episode offers listeners a dynamic blend of insightful stories, best practices, and invaluable lessons.
Nick’s guests – each with a unique wealth of knowledge – include leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some of his guests include:
Customer service & customer experience leaders- A hostage negotiator
- Award-winning authors
- Home Depot’s Senior Director of Customer Care
- Former VP of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
- Lyft’s Head of Partner and Customer Engagement
- Deputy Chief Veteran Experience Officer from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
On every episode Nick asks his guest two questions:
- What book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?
- If you could leave a note to all the Customer Service and CX professionals, what would it say?
You can find all the podcast guests’ answers under their episodes below.
If all you want is the guests’ book recommendations, you can go here.
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