Podcast Ep. 23 – You can’t break silos, but you can connect them w/ Jael Schultz and Audrey Hamoy

In this episode, we hear from Jael Schultz and Audrey Hamoy from American Express. 

Noz engages in an in-depth discussion with Jael and Audrey, content strategy professionals, navigating the complex terrain of cross-channel consistency. They unpack the challenges and share the strategies they have employed to create a seamless communication experience across various channels.

They discuss the importance of consistency in communication, documenting processes, collaborative efforts, and how to kickstart your journey to better omnichannel communication.

What you will learn:

• How to master the art of cross-channel communication consistency
• How to leverage documentation for efficient decision-making
• How to boost process efficiency through regular collaboration and meetings
• How to choose accessible documentation tools for enhanced team usage
• How to embrace the journey, not the destination, in omnichannel communication.

Full session transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Noz Urbina  02:07

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the omnichannel podcast by OmnichannelX. I am your host Noz Urbina, and I’m here today with Jael Schultz and Audrey Hamoy. They are both joining me to talk about their experiences doing omnichannel out in the field out in the trenches, their real life stories. So let’s go in alphabetical order. Audrey, you want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you got into this?

Audrey Hamoy  02:47

Sure. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Audrey, I have been a content architect for about a year now, kind of going into it from a background, bachelor’s in Creative Writing Master’s in applied linguistics, kind of like tailored perfectly to content design and UX writing. And, yeah, I just kind of got into it from that, um, I’ve been at Amex for the last three and a half years.

Noz Urbina  03:15

Fantastic. And Jael, do you want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Jael Schulz  03:22

My education is actually in design, my Bachelor’s is in graphic design. I had an interest in fine arts, but I figured that’s a hard way to make a living. So I went with graphic design. And they wound up in digital content strategy, by accident, actually, I’d applied for a design role. And they said, we have this other role open that we think you might be a good fit for, which was a digital content specialist. And I figured I’d give it a whirl. And I actually fell in love with it. It really played to my strengths as far as information organization. And my design background obviously helped because it was working a lot still with digital designers on web experiences. So I’ve been in content strategy for about a decade. I joined Amex four years ago, as a UX writer, actually, the hiring director at the time said, I know we have a need for content strategy. We don’t have headcount for that right now. So I want somebody with that background. And then last year, similar to Audrey, moved into a content architect role. So Audrey is on the mobile side of things. And I’m on the website. There’s newly formed teams working on information architecture, on mobile and on web. And so were in those roles on those respective teams.

Audrey Hamoy  04:33

Yeah, we got pretty lucky to be going into those roles at the same time. And now we can talk about this omni channel situation that we found ourselves in.

Noz Urbina  04:43

Fantastic Well, you’re the you’re kind of backgrounds and kind of thinking about this as it’s very near and dear to my heart. I kind of say that it’s all rolling up into user experience at the end of the day, and it’s a design process, whether you’re designing words, whether you’re designing information architectures and taxonomies. When you’re designing interfaces, it’s it’s all design work. And it’s all driven by understanding our users. So I’m really excited to talk about what you’ve been doing. So my understanding is you’ve been working on undergrads grassroots push to go more omnichannel, Amex. You know, omnichannel is what we talk about all day, every day at the omnichannel. podcast, we always have this issue, because by definition is cross functional. But organizations are hierarchical, you know, budgets are allocated by department, by region, and so on. The users cutting across departments, and they don’t really care at all, who or where their their answer or their experience comes from, they just want to have a good relationship with the brand. You know, I’m engaging with your brand. For some value proposition, I want that value proposition and I don’t care about your headcount or your turnover, who’s understaffed or whose responsibility this part of my experience was? So orgs have things like a web design team and a mobile design team and a dev team that really has no bearing on the content or the experience? How do you experience that in your roles today, this kind of inherent contradiction all companies have between between silos and omni channel experiences?

Audrey Hamoy  06:22

Yeah, just a little bit of background is just kind of like how we work. Like, obviously, there’s a web design team, there’s a mobile design team. And then all of these things are kind of siloed. separately. So gel works with, you know, different dev teams, and I do different product teams than I do. So we are very much siloed, like through the organization. So it is like how do we like just having that context, I feel like it’s important to know how we kind of like, worked together a little bit on it. But yeah, and

Jael Schulz  06:56

I would say also, where we are now on. Newly stood up relatively newly stood up architecture teams on specific channels still, but as counterparts to each other is actually a huge step forward. Some of the stuff we’re going to talk about today is work that we collaborated together on when we were still in UX writing roles. We were again, I was still on web object was still on mobile. But this was before we were set up in these kinds of architecture roles. And I would say in some respects, the work that we did on this, from the grassroots sort of efforts in showing this cross channel collaboration, in some regards, helped to make the case for setting up these content, IA roles on these respective teams. So there was a plan essentially, to stand up these architecture teams. And the work that we had done on this thinking project collaborating and showing the benefit of that sort of cross channel approach to content, in some ways made the case for having these content specific roles on the team. So I think today, we’re probably going to chat a little more about I think the scenario that a lot of folks in bigger orgs can relate to, which is if you’re in some kind of a content role or design role, it still applies. And you’re trying to work across those channels when the organization is sort of organized around channels. How do you do that before you have official support and official backing and our counterparts to each other? Well,

Noz Urbina  08:27

let’s ask a very fundamental question. How did you find each other? Like how did this How did YouTube first connect and realize that you had a common vision for us?

Audrey Hamoy  08:37

Yeah, actually, we just started working at Amex together. She was on the web team. I was actually the first mobile UX writer on the on the mobile team. So we’re our worlds were a little bit different at first, and then we both just started collaborating on banking and realize that we both I think we played each other’s strengths really well. And then we’re, the other one is like, you know, I’m forgetful. So jello usually helps me like, kind of, you know, pick up where like, my brain leaves off so and stuff like that. So it was just like, yeah, we ended up working Amex together and found out that we’re like, really, really good at collaborating together. And just really good at documentation and all of these things that are needed to kind of like create this. This like story of like, of collaboration, when things like that don’t don’t exist.

Jael Schulz  09:35

Yeah. And UX writing is organized under the UX writing rules are organized under a director within the part of the org that we work in. So we were aware of each other. It was the first time that we had had a project where roadmaps align somewhat across the the web and the mobile and what they were attempting to build or improve at the time, but there’s Also that question of where do you find each other because we eventually discovered, pulled and collaborated with a writer on the business checking side. And that was through the experience of trying to understand like, if we’re working on consumer, then how do we make sure that where appropriate, there’s consistency between consumer and business. And so we discovered there was actually a writing person recently hired there. And so we pulled that into so it is, you know, us being under the same director made it a little easier to get started, but it is sometimes a process of discovery, because you don’t even know who else might be out there in the Lord that’s working on something related. Yeah,

Noz Urbina  10:41

especially Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that’s what I’m kind of picturing is. So this, did it was this in the days of physical offices or, because I’m thinking about our all our people who are working remotely? And were you like, literally like looking at the org chart, and thinking Who should we reach out to or each other in a hallway,

Audrey Hamoy  11:02

it was remotely and we were beginning to in the banking project we worked on. So this is for, I believe, I can say this for the MX high yield savings account, and then the checking account, which was kind of like a new product that we hadn’t had before. And then we were building the savings account into the app and the website natively. So it was like a bigger thing than we had undertaken, and a brand new, like project that,

Noz Urbina  11:31

like potential brought into that, yeah,

Audrey Hamoy  11:34

which product which Amex doesn’t really build, typically, so it was pretty excited. So like, all these people coming from all these areas, and we started kind of working with the business people and their product people more, and then we kind of found out like, oh, there’s a writer there, they’re, you know, what is this person working on. So that was just us proactively, like reaching out to that person. And, and establishing that that personal connection, which also is very important in a siloed, kind of omni channel and like, separate channel, if we want to become that one channel, we got to have important relationships with with people that are, you know, on our on our team, and, you know, want to fight the good fight, I guess.

Noz Urbina  12:24

Absolutely. So the human relationships, but it’s something we talk a lot about at omnichannel x, because building those internal relationships, they have to be there, we have to be sharing, we have to be aligning on customer journeys, and understanding and supporting a common vision of a customer journey. So often in projects we get together. And when I say customer journey, I’m not referring to like the sales funnel. Like the buyers journey, I’m talking about actual experiences that people have the the journey that is achieving an objective that you have. Some research has been coming out about this, which I quote all the time, which I love. So McKinsey and customer, Kinsey and company has said measuring satisfaction on customer journeys, is 30%, more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring each individual interaction. So we can get very, like we want to get super micro targeted, like I designed this new screen and it’s got a button is my button succeeding and the world’s buttons. And that’s, that’s fine that we all want to kind of measure our works in such a granular way. But that’s not actually what people care about, you know, people care about whether the whole thing came together and they were able to open an account or no migrate, do a bank transfer or whatever it is your your company offers. So but how do you you need to get people together on that? And discuss how do we consistently show up across all these touchpoints across this, this, this this purpose that the user has. And if you don’t have a common vision of that purpose, and you haven’t discussed that, then everyone is looking at the experience through their own lens of what they do. Right. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about your how, what was it like for different teams who were coming together in a bigger context, but are different teams? And you know, you may look? Where does the documentation live? Where do personas live? Where does your understanding of the journeys live? How to back to

Audrey Hamoy  14:32

this, I want to say this was like it was already Yeah, this was like a pilot for working together, you know, because we were so siloed this was the first big project where it was, teams were working together. So a lot of we did have a lot of like, struggles with documentation and making sure like, where did these things live? And how do we these teams that have these different processes, how do we pull that together? And for us, a lot of it was like, just for So it was like whiteboarding together, making sure we keep that documentation. Not only, you know, kind of like up to date when we’re working on it, but like, how do we find that documentation later is a big like find ability is a big part of it. One thing we did was create a shared document of questions that could go to both of our product teams that way, there was a document of answers to these questions. From us, if we had questions about something, the design process or requirements, something like that, then we’d take it, write it in this document, share it with the product teams. And hopefully, between the two product teams, they’d come up with the answer or answers, and then we’d be able to kind of have that space for us to share that information. And that that was kind of an important thing, because we were finding that Jor el was asking questions, I was asking questions. The other designers are asking questions, and we’re getting answers from all these different places, all these different locations, we need this one source of truth where everyone is looking, everyone is participating, to bring us on more of the same page.

Jael Schulz  16:21

It’s also not really fair for those stakeholders, either if you’re in the treasury, or if you’re in compliance, and you’re getting variations of questions on the same topic from, you know, two or three different folks. That’s a pain. So yeah, I think I think I would like to acknowledge first that documentation is not fun. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody now not yet enjoys doing documentation. But it was especially crucial in this because the project was really fast paced. And then again, since Audrey was working with her products, and engineering partners, and I was working with my product and engineering partners, then sometimes they were working with the same business partners, and sometimes they were separate ones. There was a lot of complexity. And I think there are a couple of key things like Audrey said, having that shared source of just like what all the open questions were, we also made, essentially, kind of an FAQ page, because when somebody new would be pulled in on the project, we were finding that have the same questions around like, how does this thing actually work on savings? Or how is that different from how it works on checking? So documenting some of those things that we were learning and that, too, so then second nature to say like, oh, no, the way that a transfer works on checking is actually like this number of days versus on savings like is quite a lot. And a shared lexicon as well. So as we started defining things, either with our internal partners, or within an external customer facing journey, we were saying like, this is how we use the word transfers, or this is what the terms and conditions are going to be like consistently as much as possible. Across like a disclaimer at the bottom of a transfer journey, for example. That was huge. Also, when when you thinking about a regulated industry, like finance, you have a lot of legal and compliance partners to work with for good reason. And those were different based on like, is this checking or savings or etc, the different products because they have different areas of expertise. And so being able to even talk to them and say, like, here’s how we’ve done it for these other journeys. And we can show you what this look like, is it possible to align as much as we can to this format? So we’re looking at it as almost like component chunks of content and the way we were sharing it with those partners? Yeah, like,

Audrey Hamoy  18:52

we were taking like screenshots and like underlining like, this is the word this is the string that is consistent with this string, it may look a little bit different, but the meaning

Jael Schulz  19:01

is the same. And that was super helpful. Because if I if I’m a legal expert that’s specific to like checking accounts, then I’m thinking about what do we need to disclose to make this clear to customers and be safe as a company and etc. and legal speak doesn’t always translate super easily to like a consumer experience. So being able to show that consistency and that we were understanding what was necessary in that was really helpful and explaining also our goal, you know, like, we see what the legal requirements are, we’ve made these changes for these reasons to be consistent, to reduce the reading comprehension level unnecessary, et cetera. And that was very helpful. Yeah,

Audrey Hamoy  19:47

reasons are important. Always, always are and especially if you’re a writer, unfortunately, as a designer, you don’t need your reasons quite as much. But if you’re a writer, you better have a reason why you did that.

Noz Urbina  20:00

Well, the good designers, the good designers like,

Audrey Hamoy  20:03

I mean, yes, you do need a reason, but like, you don’t normally have to, like validate all of every, like, thing you, you know, design to an outside critic. So just Yeah, it’s it’s make sure you have your reasons why, blah, blah, blah, your your backup documentation and

Noz Urbina  20:23

when we say document to make this concrete like, what are we talking about wiki? Are we talking like, design system? Or are we talking like Google Docs?

Audrey Hamoy  20:33

Yeah, just whatever, whatever like tools that you use? Like I said, whiteboarding was really important for us. If you have some sort of whiteboarding tool. I know there’s a bunch of like, like figma has some envision has one. There’s a bunch out right now. And then

Noz Urbina  20:48

I’m addicted to Miro. Miro, yeah, it was much.

Audrey Hamoy  20:54

And then I lost my train of

Jael Schulz  20:57

thought, yeah. And then we did use like an internal wiki to essentially document things like the questions list, the copy matrix, for example, and a lot of cross referencing. So if I had a wiki page that was talking about, here’s how transfers work for savings on web, then there was a direct link to here’s the mobile page, you know, how transfers work on on the on the exact same thing, so that there was a reference. But yeah, documentation is nobody’s favorite. It’s worth the work. So yes,

Noz Urbina  21:34

well, let’s get back to my library, McKinsey quotes, it may not seem sexy, but consistency is the secret ingredient to making customers happy. If you you need to show up, you need to be consistent. And like language, especially in anything like complex, like medical or financial insurance. The the words aren’t themselves are like the terminology is a barrier for entry. Now, I’ve done a lot of work. And I’ve done a lot of work and all of those regulated industries. And there’s too much expertise in the building. Like just people know all these words. And so no one even they’re blind. You’re blind,

Audrey Hamoy  22:12

to get out of that kind of like mindset when you’re in it so deep for sure.

Noz Urbina  22:18

And then we have the same thing between developers and like our specialists and everybody else, the business can say, well, we’re trying to do this. And we had this recently on a project, we were discussing, like, something didn’t work as we were expecting. And the feedback was, you know, well, the designer showed you the design two months ago, and you signed off on it. And it clearly said that this was a content asset, not a content snippet. And like we’re trying our best to review this thing, but it’s our specialism. Like we have to come together on how it’s going to work, what the expectation is. And language can be a huge barrier. So the more we can kind of keep living documentation and understanding how do we scale up understanding across teams? Yeah,

Audrey Hamoy  23:12

if if you’re in the writing space, it um, I want to say like UX writers, content designers, content architects, anywhere where you, your job is with words and tech, a lot of the time you end up being the person who makes things less confusing for other teams I found because you’re good at taking this this information and making it understandable. So while it’s you know, maybe not fair to always be given this role as the writer you can use that to your advantage in situations like this where you need to document you need people to be on the same page. Use like your writer voice use, like all the tools at your disposal and just make it easy to read make it easy to find the fungibility should be like through the roof. Follow the same rule as you would for writing a screen like copy on a screen format information just like make it easy to read as well.

Noz Urbina  24:15

No, I’m two things are coming to my head one. I have to bring this up or else I lose my podcasting license, which is Chad GPT and AI. And we’ve been using it in production now in projects, both for externally facing stuff but also for internal stuff like for Oh, wow. Yeah. Because you know, you have these meetings where everyone discusses how it’s gonna work. And so for you can take a transcript from a discussion like this, and you put it in chat GPT and say summarize this like one of the one of the key points of discussion or you can, you can take someone at someone’s explanation of something. And you can say summarize this into a procedure like put it into a format of bullets and steps and instructions. And it’s stuff like that. And that’s really, really, really, really, really cool and really useful. And for me, the the meta thing about this, it’s once content production becomes easier, like the skill will not be in the typing or the creating of the words, it will be in the asking of the right questions like the one of the brands who will succeed, or they’re going to be the ones who understand their user better who who share that understanding of user better across the team, so that we’re asking the tools to do the right things for us, rather than kind of the skill being in the actual ability to craft the sentences or produce the volumes of sentences that we need. So it’s we’re on the cusp of very interesting point. I don’t know if you’re experimenting without or have any feelings on the ramp and buzz in our industry?

Audrey Hamoy  25:58

No, I haven’t. But I don’t know why I haven’t because it’s very in my wheelhouse. It looks very exciting. I’ve seen some people do some really wild stuff with that. But yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s a good point. Like, we there is like, you know, as writers, we we asked questions that that people might not see, you know, we find roadblocks that people might not visualize, and, yeah, like we need to really rely on on those processes and those skills that we have in the future for sure.

Noz Urbina  26:35

So just very quickly, we refer to actually literally as a meta content strategy, like you have your content strategy champion we’re trying to do externally, and use the content, people have to have an internal sense of who are my stakeholders, what language they speak, what’s going to resonate to them, what’s my cadence for communicating with them? Or else, you know, you can’t get the buy in? So for yourselves that I what I’m hearing is that’s been a big part of the effort, like the outreach, the documentation that communication?

Jael Schulz  27:04

Yep, absolutely. And I think it’s the nature of working anywhere where you’re collaborating with different roles is, yeah, you’ve got different silos of like, disciplines, or rule types, or channels, or whatever they might be. And it can be easy to get frustrated with, like the forest for the trees. And like, why don’t they understand that we actually need to do X, because otherwise the experience is gonna be terrible, and so forth. But it is the nature of a business is not going to succeed if you don’t have goals if you don’t have things that you’re being measured against, and so forth. And so when you particularly in larger orgs, but anywhere, somebody does have to be focused on specific goals that are smaller. So it’s easy to get frustrated when you’re running into bumps on the road with things like that. But understanding like they have a good reason for being focused on that it’s my job, or maybe it’s not my job, but I’m making it my job to bring in this broader perspective, to show how looking at the entirety of it is actually going to contribute towards their goals succeeding, or sometimes there’s a trade off. So it might be we’re looking at the broader ecosystem, we’re going to make a change that’s going to affect, let’s say, the entry rate to a journey, but what we’re actually doing is increasing clarity about whether or not the customer needed to do that in the first place. So it might be affecting one area and making sure that there’s acknowledgement about that it’s not like oh, your your entry rate declined. So that’s a ding on you. It’s like documenting and acknowledging that trade off. So I know it’s something that anybody faces when you’re trying to do things like this red cross channel, try new ways of working, et cetera, don’t get frustrated. But understand that perspective, again, what you were seeing Knauss like, knowing where they’re coming from, and then being able to speak in those terms that make sense to them and what they have to deal with and put up with every day. Because they also have frustrations

Audrey Hamoy  29:11

and luckily, that’s what we’re good. I’m so

Noz Urbina  29:15

content to the rescue. So your daily, your raise a really good point about the measurement like what is the reaction been to this and and how do you report this out in a way that if you’re if you only have 30 minutes of if you do get a chance to to kind of talk this up the hierarchy? How do you quantify or measure or show the benefit of this and then how are people reacting?

29:43

Yeah, I would say

Jael Schulz  29:46

for internal partners, a big part of it was efficiency and decision making, really so as we started to get some buying And then get more folks involved in understanding what we were doing there. It was just when the question came up with like, Well, how do we treat this thing? We could say, Well, we haven’t documented for how we treated it here. What are just the essential changes that we need to make to apply it to this, or when we were working with our partners and labeling compliance, being able to come and say, we already have a document to pattern for how we’re handling the terms and conditions or disclosures on a transfer journey? What are the essential changes that we need to make to this pattern instead of coming up with something from scratch? So I think the big thing that really started making it make sense to partners was essentially that savings and efficiency.

Noz Urbina  30:43

I think that that’s an interesting example, because we talk a lot in in this world about reuse, for production content going out. But reuse not of the actual necessarily the words like copy and paste, but reuse of the of the thinking, like we’ve already worked this out, we’ve already kind of have the Word template is fraught with confusion. But we have we’ve we have the logic of this already, maybe if none of the words are reusable, but that logic is repurposed bubble and the decision discussions that we had apply. And so as you say, What’s the difference? We may populate it with completely new content. But we’re shortcutting the process because we don’t have to think it through again. Yeah. That’s really, really good. So when you say that they’re they’re seeing that efficiency? Are you? Are you capturing like testimonials? Do you have like internal slide decks? Where you show hey, this person said, This is so much better? Or? Or can you actually see it? Can you see like this? Well, this took this used to take us two weeks, and now it takes us three days.

Jael Schulz  31:48

Yeah, we can see it, there’s actually so it caught on enough. And i We can’t take full credit for it, I think, I think also village, it takes a village, we can take some credit for it. But our product partners, we’re also seeing the need for some more collaboration is the more efficiency I think the credit to some of that was like us having been working on that grassroots. And they started standing up ceremonies to collaborate across channels, and across the different types of banking products. And that was just

Noz Urbina  32:21

to be clear ceremonies in this context, like what does that actually look like? So

Jael Schulz  32:26

an example would be having like a monthly meeting to discuss what’s on the upcoming roadmap, or the various linking products across both channels. And then to see, oh, work has already been done on this one side and understanding the logic of the back end and how we can bring this in. Cool. This is now going to save the web team a bunch of work, for example. So just some things like that, like a monthly cross channel meetup where what was upcoming, and what had been done could be shared out. And so that knowledge that had already been gained or work that had already been done could be shared again, the same thing of like, understanding, is there a template? Is there something like that that can be reused? Yeah. And that was massive. So we can’t take all the credit, but we’ll take a look at it.

Audrey Hamoy  33:13

Yeah, that was a good point. On top of the documentation, you do need to have people in the rooms discussing these openly, otherwise, there will be gaps in communication. And I think there was a point in time where that meeting had dropped off for some reason, like something happened. And then I immediately I think, we’ve basically immediately noticed that things were starting to be a lot less clear between our teams again. So it was a very clear indication that having these these places to just like share out and kind of like a stand up for the for each team a little bit was was super important just to stay on the same page.

Jael Schulz  33:58

Yeah, I don’t think that documentation can replace discussion, documentation is important. But you still have to have folks in that room, or WebEx or zoom or wherever. Having a

Audrey Hamoy  34:12

discussion around gangs and, and part of it is knowing also that you you are the expert in this field, like you feel free like to, if you notice these gaps in communication, like take the reins on that and start these conversations and start this documentation. That’s basically all we did was just, we were like noticing these issues. And we were like, Let’s try and solve this. We’re struggling with it. Maybe we can make our lives better and everyone else’s lives better as well.

Noz Urbina  34:45

Yeah. So that that leads me to a common question about the audiences are events of like, how do you set how do you get people to set aside time for that? Because everyone’s saying, oh, like, I don’t have enough hours in the day. it anyway, would like for these sinks or to read this document that you’ve created? How are you getting people to kind of make time for this not just engaged, because I’m sure people are like, if you if you show benefit, so they’ll want to, but it’s the it’s the manufacturing of the time or cutting, taking time away from something else that that we’re already doing dedicating it to this, how did that work?

Jael Schulz  35:23

Yeah, I think you have to find a partner in crime. So starting with Adrienne, I was using time, um, I think if you have been working with folks on projects before, you’ve probably already got a sense of one or two people that would be willing, that you’ve seen have exhibited interest in new ways of working in trying out stuff that could improve things. So start with those people, you’re not going to send an invite out to like three dozen folks across all the disciplines and say, we want to do this new thing and insert it in your calendar, and it’s going to take up time and have everybody say, Yes, that sounds great. You’re gonna have to make a case for

Audrey Hamoy  36:09

small with like, product teams, and then talk to them and then build from there.

Jael Schulz  36:15

So if you know whether it’s like a product person, one of your engineers, a designer, whoever, if you if you know, there’s somebody that you’ve worked with before, start there, if you don’t know, um, toss it out there like in your next sync, whatever it is your weekly meeting, whatever it is, say, hey, I really think you know, there’s value in making sure that we have some alignment across channel, if most of the people say, we don’t have time for that. Keep tossing that out there in every like, standup that you’re in until you find somebody that was like, Oh, that does sound like a good idea and say, Cool, I’m sending you a calendar. Right now. Yeah, yeah,

Audrey Hamoy  36:55

if you’re the only person also, it could be you are the only person writing for both channels. I think all of these things still apply. Like, unfortunately, you do have to You are your own partner in crime, I guess for a bit, then you gotta find your people. And then, you know, feel free to keep this documentation, right, this consistency thing of like, you know, you can have what consistency means as UX as a UX writer, as a, as a writer. And just like, that’s what we think, as writers like consistency. And let’s have this guide for what this means. And then you can share that out. So don’t feel like you can’t do this. Like, if it’s just you, and you’re trying to, you know, solve this siloed channel issue.

Noz Urbina  37:40

I think this is a great story, because a lot of our a lot of our attendees do come from big companies, and a lot of them feel like, oh, we must be the only big company that’s that’s facing this. When that’s absolutely not the case, like we all of our work is with with, generally speaking, like global multinationals. And there’s the haves and the have nots, like some organizations are doing really well. Nobody’s actually omnichannel like,

Audrey Hamoy  38:05

nobody’s new, you know, like,

Noz Urbina  38:10

ya know, like, I’ve been harping about this stuff for 21 years. And we’ve had, we’ve had on the channel X for five years. At that, the what’s clear is, it lots of people are trying, but it’s, it’s like this, it’s this ongoing thing where you, you are always trying to move things in the right direction. And the ironically, the journey, we’re gonna call it that, like, that’s the point is getting the journey going in the right direction, not stressing that you’re not there yet, because nobody is like everyone is Oh, there’s another channel, there’s another touch point, there’s another team and other product,

Audrey Hamoy  38:53

yeah, you will get frustrated, you will get frustrated. And you have to remember that you can only control so much, you know, at the end of the day. And as long as you’re, you know, trying,

Jael Schulz  39:05

yeah, and hopefully this will be encouraging. But to be honest, we’ll never get there. Right? So technologies are evolving, how people use technology is evolving, the kind of products services etc, is evolving. So nobody’s ever going to arrive at a perfect state of like totally omni channel incredibly amazing customer experience and then like brush their hands off and be done is always going to be a journey. So I think that can be frustrating if you’re in a moment of existential crisis. I think that can be really reassuring. If you’re like, why are things in this discipline or at this org or in this field, whatever are not like they aren’t where they should be? That’s okay. Because you got until forever.

Audrey Hamoy  39:58

I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.

Noz Urbina  40:00

Yeah, well, like jump in that start wherever you are, like that. That’s a good message. You know, wherever you are, that’s a perfectly valid place to start. It’s like yoga poses are infinite. So, alright, so we’ve said, Okay, start where you are kind of jump in, find your find your tribe progressively. Any, you know, anything that’s shareable and X easily accessible and findable for documentation, write it down, share it, help people find it, but still talk. You know, I think that you, you’re saying, like, you have to be able to get together, you got to sync up on a regular basis. Any other? Like, if you’re gonna say, if someone walks up to you, and said, I’m trying to get this started Americanization what, what what should be my first steps, or, like, what’s the simplest thing I can do is to get get this moving? Or to tell?

Audrey Hamoy  41:00

Um, first of all, I would say, you know, get some documentation, like define consistency, make make a definition for that. Start thinking about where you want all of this to live kind of in the the, like, don’t create it in a tool that you’re not going to use again, you want to be able to, like find this where use it in a tool that’s easily findable, or, or something that people use a lot of

Noz Urbina  41:28

easily accessible by your colleagues, by your

Audrey Hamoy  41:31

colleagues. And then yeah, like, a lot of times, some tools aren’t accessible through to some people, and you just want to make sure, that can be frustrating. So yeah, just trying to make it as accessible as possible.

Jael Schulz  41:45

Start talking about it. I think the sort of area of like, content, strategy, AI, all of that tends to pull in folks that have like, super organized, and a lot of times a perfectionist approach to things. So the piece of advice that I give people all the time is like start talking about it way earlier than you feel comfortable. Because we always want to have like this neat, tidy package that we can present. And then everybody be like, Wow, that’s amazing. It solved all my problems, like start talking about it right away when it’s still gross, and crummy and ugly, and not all in one place yet. And that’s going to be huge, because it makes it more accessible to other people. First of all, if they see like, Oh, this is a work in progress that I can contribute to. And also just like getting the word out there that you’re even working on it. Yeah, you can start getting that input that feedback. And other

Audrey Hamoy  42:43

people might also be struggling with the fact that like they’re doing similar work. But you know, other teams are doing work, and they’re not having that good communication. And maybe they’re just not sure what to do. So if if they see, you know, you’re taking that initiative and you’re trying to bridge this gap, then maybe it’ll be easier for them to also bridge this understanding gap as well.

Noz Urbina  43:08

Fantastic. As I said, I love this because a lot of big clients, like people in big companies can can feel this kind of, oh, we shouldn’t be like this. Something’s wrong with us. You know, how can it be so, so difficult, but it comes down to just having having a go and getting started. So that’s that’s the message that I’m getting from this. And I think that’s a great message. Thank you so much. Both of you for joining us. I didn’t mention at the end you’re dialing in from New York City. We managed to hear

Audrey Hamoy  43:40

a little background noise that is just the sounds of the

Noz Urbina  43:45

well, we had a sounded perfect crystal clear. totally silent. I would have guessed you’re out in the out in the in the mountains. If people do want to get in touch and learn more Do you are you LinkedIn folks? How can people kind of

Jael Schulz  43:59

LinkedIn is good? Yeah. Always happy to do like coffee chats, you know, content people, strategists, whatever, or people just getting into UX. Always happy to have a career talk or

Audrey Hamoy  44:13

commiseration, you know? Yeah. Anyone else in a content architect or similar? role? I would actually love to talk to you because we’ve never we’ve only talked to ourselves. So to talk to somebody else.

Noz Urbina  44:27

Okay, well, maybe we can schedule another podcast. Yeah, so I’m always happy about talking about that too. You can reach out on LinkedIn for myself. Noz Urbina, OmnichannelX.digital. So check that out for our podcasts, articles and other resources that’s getting revamped right now. It’s a bit of a mess. Honestly, and we’re cleaning that up. But keep keep an eye on that. A we should be hearing a lot of new things in 2023 and beyond about what the new incarnation of OmnichannelX is going to look like with our editorial calendar of podcasts and webinars and so out throughout the year. So please check us out. If you are whatever platform you’re on. Give us a like, give us a comment. Let us know what we missed what you thought, what we should talk about next time. Who should who should invite because that really helps us out. Thank you so much. Gel and Audrey and everybody has a great rest of the day. Thank you.

Audrey Hamoy  45:28

Thanks for listening.