Automated Transcript
Harriet Carr, Gammalabs:
Hello. Thank you for coming in. I’m Harriet. I’m one of the Customer Success Managers working at Gamma, joined by one of my wonderful customers, Sam.
Sam Charlton, Product Manager at E.ON:
Hi. I work for E.ON. We do electricity, wind turbines, and lots of other unusual things like solar panels, heat source pumps, hospitals, and all that stuff.
Harriet Carr:
Fantastic. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Following on from the wonderful video you did for ATX, it’s great to have you here in person today. I thought it would be really nice for us to revisit where we were when that video was made and the journey we’ve taken since then over the last 11 or 12 months. So, yeah, hopefully, we’ll touch on some of the key strands that make working together so much fun.
Harriet Carr:
Are you able to summarise the work you’ve been doing for E.ON?
Sam Charlton:
So much for so long! But specifically in this area, we’ve been looking at the customer contact platform, going from on-site to the cloud—digitisation has been key for us for many years. So, changing from on-premise to the cloud was quite a big movement. It was dealt with in a very waterfall approach, but one of my main passions is agile delivery, as it should be for a Product Manager these days. So, I had to move us away from that waterfall area and shift our digital technology people, as well as my business—there are so many different types of customers in my business—over to that agile approach and bring all that omnichannel stuff together at the same time. So, that switch from big waterfall to what we have now, with beautiful, smooth scrum team activity, has been significant.
Harriet Carr:
And I think that is one of the biggest challenges before we start with any sort of delivery—understanding the delivery model preference. Even if you do have an agile team, somewhere someone is always going to almost fall into that big tunnel moment at the end. And, yeah, it’s good to keep that in mind all the time.
Sam Charlton:
What is MVP? It’s everything. No, it’s not. It’s about what we can make work.
Harriet Carr:
Exactly, yeah. So, as we mentioned, from that initial project, which was an MVP—let’s get us transitioned—to where we are now, which, as you said, is in a really agile, consistent delivery. So, we’re always scoping the next thing as we’re delivering. And, yeah, I go back to that big “tadaa” moment. So, what have you done over the last 12 months? Or, I suppose, how have we evolved together over the last 12 months?
Sam Charlton:
The most important thing with any long-term roadmap—because you can’t just be in the here-and-now as a Product Manager or Product Owner—is considering the strategy for the next three months to three years for the business. It’s about getting away from the attitude of “I want this, go and build it. I want this, go and do that.” That immediacy doesn’t work when you need to work together with a partner who has their own strategy. It’s about teasing out of my business what it is that they want, where they may go, and identifying emerging technologies. Plotting it out and sharing it with our partners, like Gamma, where Smart Agent is going. It’s only when we put everything on the table that we can help you understand us so you can get ahead of us in certain areas if it aligns with your strategies. We can pick up roadblocks early, manage them out of the way, and you can suggest things we haven’t thought of that are on your roadmap and that can affect our changes. It’s about moving away from the “I’m in Tesco’s, I pick up the rice because I want rice” mentality. It’s about asking, “Where’s my shopping list? Where’s it going? Is this what we both want to be doing?” Can we flex to benefit each other by going in different directions at different times? I think that’s one of the key things we’ve done.
Harriet Carr:
And I think, to add to that, we’ve had an evolution in how we share that information with each other. And we’ve had a few of those moments, right? And we’ve sat back, and we’ve had sometimes challenging conversations where we found out too early or we’ve not shared with you the blockers early enough for you to make any impact. I really enjoy working with you in that way, in that I totally trust you to give me that trust when it’s needed. I don’t think we could do any of that without that trust, that amount of feedback, and also you allowing us to progress our roadmap, progress the things we need to, and also, when we can bring you into that to help influence it, you trust that we will. You’re not feeling the need to go, “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m being left out of this. What’s happening?” Hopefully, you feel that.
Sam Charlton:
That’s the biggest thing. Parcelforce has changed—”Where’s my parcel?” I don’t know. Now I can track it. I’m totally relaxed. As long as I’m informed, everyone relaxes into a trusting environment.
Harriet Carr:
Yeah. So, I think this was a real shift over the last 12 months, where we’ve gone through those sometimes uncomfortable, but more often than not, just honest conversations. You know, this is always evolving. And I think that’s probably a real highlight for me over the past year.
Sam Charlton:
And we’ve had a shift internally as well within the business because it has very much been, “IT is over here, and the business is over there.” We’ve been building that trust for the business to come to me with their ideas and where we are. But I think, yeah, it’s what you said—it’s about having hard conversations in a constructive manner. And, as much as I hate clichés, storming, norming, and forming are key things that demonstrate we’ve got success in the way we’ve changed our relationship and how we are building out into each other’s customer areas. It’s to go deep into storming and back to norming. The faster you can flip from there to there demonstrates that you’ve got trust. You know that it’s going to get picked up, and there are so many other areas that kind of flexes out to.
Harriet Carr:
I’m smiling because I use that all the time. I use that all the time. It just validates why it feels a bit weird sometimes, and then we go into this acceleration mode, and then we look back and actually, it’s all really normal. And, yeah, we do it all the time. And when I try to explain that to people, I always try and liken it to a hen party WhatsApp group or something, you know?
Sam Charlton:
Oh no, I just came back from a stag do. The WhatsApp group was torture.
Harriet Carr:
You go through this big awkward moment together, some people don’t know each other, it kind of feels a little bit like, “Oh God, what’s it going to be like?” And then you have a great time. And then you have this follow-up period like, “Oh my God, it was great. Let’s see you at the wedding.” And that is so transferable to any working relationship. But also knowing it isn’t always circular, and we will dip in and out of that.
Sam Charlton:
Every relationship has its fractious moments, and it’s how you recover from that. And that’s what we’ve worked on—we understand each other. And that kind of demonstrates one of the things—when I’ve been allowed to do my job properly, I can step back. I don’t need to be hovering over my product because I know that they’ve got to a situation where they can have that kind of relationship with Hannah and Kate and everyone else. And they can just be left alone to get their delivery done. I don’t have to worry about them saying, “Sam, what about this? Sam, what about that?” They’re just doing it. I don’t need to be involved. And to tease out what was said on stage earlier, they’re talking to everybody around me and not to me, and if everything’s working, I’ve done something right. We’ve been able to do something right. Empower the team, citizen development—all that stuff is just appearing around me now, and it allows me to really focus on where we’re going further in the future.
Harriet Carr:
Just keying into that, then, something you said earlier about the tools that we have—you’ve obviously got a lot of trust within your team as well, I hope?
Sam Charlton:
Yes.
Harriet Carr:
Yeah, and also around that trust within the business. So, how do you touch on delivery models, and how do you get everybody’s requirements at the right time to then deliver something? And how do you maintain that trust to do so consistently?
Sam Charlton:
I could bring up my end-of-year review after my performance… I’m sometimes attributed for being brutally honest, but honesty is the key thing, right? Radical candour. I like that. There’s no point in old-school IT hiding behind the thing and saying, “Oh yeah, that’s a problem, but should we inform the business?” No, let’s try and fix it and not tell them. I’m like, “Guys, the phones have just gone down. They’re going to notice these things.” You’ve just got to be honest, find out what the problem is, and don’t blame people. Come in and say, “This has happened. I’ve put all these things in place to make sure it can’t happen again.” That was kind of a key thing to build trust. I do not act like the old world of IT that my business has had before. And just talking to them, sitting down with them, being close to the business, and not leaning back on something familiar from the stage—I hate architecture. It’s boring. It’s stale. It’s a bunch of people on the sidelines, and the business doesn’t like that. They want to see, “The screen needs to be changed. I need that. How is this going to work? That design thing…” It’s a joint process. And that’s what makes them feel that I’m with them. I’m not over here in this department. I’m with them, for them, listening to them. That’s how I build trust with them. I’m being with them. I’m not sitting over there in the stale IT world.
Harriet Carr:
And gaining their buy-in.
Sam Charlton:
Yeah, demonstrating that I’m always looking out for their needs. They mention stuff, and then we’ll be having a random roadmap conversation. I’ll hear something and think, “That’s a great idea,” and I’ll bring it back to them. They see me coming in with things to move things forward that they just mentioned in passing. And they go, “Oh, he does actually care. He’s not just here to deliver the architecture from group strategy.” That’s how I build that relationship.
Harriet Carr:
Great. I really like that you mentioned the self-care aspect as well—caring about the direction of the business and the teams and the people that are working there as well as customers. And I think that’s a really fundamental strand that runs through all of that, isn’t it?
Sam Charlton:
But you don’t do it to people; you’ve got to do it with them, for them.
Harriet Carr:
This is a massive topic, but you know, my job is obviously to work with customers. But there are so many layers to that because, you know, I have customers of mine and then the platform and then internal customers, and you will have the same. So this layer of people that come to your shop, your department, your POS, and they need things—I’m interested in how you balance that? Because ultimately, you do have an end customer. You do have a concept of E.ON services. So, yeah, can you talk us through the layers of those?
Sam Charlton:
I’ve got all the weird stuff, a lot of the weird stuff. And that’s all the peripheral things you don’t really think we do—I think five separate business units. So, immediately, I’ve got a huge spread of internal customers, people doing things, team managers, people on the phones, different systems, solar panels, drive heat pumps, all this stuff. They’re obviously customers straight to me. They’re customers to the product teams. The product team is obviously key customers of mine—I’m doing what they want. I’ve got virtual customers of, “This has gone wrong. Someone announced a price change we didn’t know about.” You’ve got that kind of customer. I’ve got architecture calls. I’ve got a BA group, digital strategy, which is so remote to my business and my product line, but they care about group strategy. That’s the hardest individual balancing act to say, “We’re moving in that direction. I know you want to go there, but how do I balance actual customers and group?” I think I’ve kind of listed everyone. There’s just a huge breadth. How do I balance that? It’s kind of like a brake on any kind of vehicle. It’s about allowing friction and knowing when you’ve got to take hold of something that needs to steer you at certain times and, at other times, allowing it. “Well, now is not the right time to try and steer this conversation. This is where they need to be. Let’s let that happen. We’ll veer off the track a little bit,” but always with the knowledge that you can bring it back in, and never going past a junction where you can no longer turn back. That’s when you’ve really got to apply the friction. And the better that relationship is, and the more that people know that I do care, and I am there to deliver what they need, the more they’ll allow that friction grip to be taken. And they know that if I do ever dig my heels in, they know I’ve obviously got a point. And I explain, “These are the masters currently controlling what we are now not allowed to do here,” and they’re accepting of that. But, yeah, it’s all about layers and layers of customers, different types, knowing when you can apply friction, how much friction you’re allowed to apply, and knowing when you’re going to pass something that you can’t come back from, or at least not come back from easily, balancing cost, expenditure, and all those other things.
Harriet Carr:
I suddenly pictured driving on a snowy road when you said that because, you know, you’re okay to drift a little bit, but you have to know…
Sam Charlton:
Sometimes you need to drift a little bit when driving on a snowy road to get off into some areas. And sometimes that’s when you find innovation. I spoke with people here today about things that technically aren’t on our path, but you know what? There’s innovation there. It should be considered. So, you’ve got to drift off the rut sometimes.
Harriet Carr:
And always keep that strategy in your peripheral vision and know there’s a way back to it.
Sam Charlton:
Exactly.
Harriet Carr:
Right, okay, cool. I think we’re at our final topic.
Sam Charlton:
You haven’t said AI, so clearly that’s going to be left here.
Harriet Carr:
Yeah, I mean, we’re not planning to touch on it too much on stage, but I think it’s something that…
Sam Charlton:
That’s got to be spoken about.
Harriet Carr:
In every meeting, almost! Do you have any plans to introduce AI to current solutions, or are they in your roadmap? Are those conversations going on with your layers of stakeholders?
Sam Charlton:
The business knows they need AI because everyone’s talking about AI. There’s that angle to it. But we’ve already got AI—a large chunk of AI—in certain areas. We’ve got capacity management, workforce management, field engineers, outages being noticed. We can take predictive action. That is all AI in the way that everyone defines it today. Are we looking to do more? Always. We’ve got two AI estimates in conversation to assist customers with booking their meters. We’ve got too many turning up. We’ll just get information to you. Rebooking of cancelled appointments is our biggest controllable cost directly in our group. And we’re moving stuff there. We’ve got more hackathons coming up next month to bring more AI into it. So, yeah, it’s clearly at the forefront of everyone’s minds. It’s just about when to present it to the business so it isn’t just you doing IT stuff. I just want this. When do I do that? When do we not do that? But internally, we’ve got an AI forum, a user group, and a proof-of-concept group, some of which I’ve kicked off. I’m a disrupter. I like to innovate. So, I’ve triggered a few things here and now on purpose because I want to see where it goes. And I really enjoy that stuff. So, yeah, it’s all there. We’re doing it. If you’re not doing it, you’re going to get left behind. You’re just not going to be making the cut in what our customers are expecting, both internally and externally.
Harriet Carr:
And I think this is a real opportunity. There’s still a lot of learning, while the AI models are…
Sam Charlton:
Borrow—as it went up on the board. You’ve got to borrow. You can’t build and test and understand everything. You need to borrow, see what it is, understand it, make decisions, and then enact that strategy. And that’s where we are. I’ve triggered that borrow stage, even though I wasn’t here for last year’s thing. You know, I’m pushing it to share its view. You’ve got to get in there early, borrow, understand, make decisions, and then drive that strategy. And then I’ll have another stakeholder to worry about and join together.
Harriet Carr:
I think it’s so dependent on the different technologies and suites and what’s available to learn and actually decide, “Well, you know, this is not relevant to us. We’re not really going to get benefit from that. How are we going to get a return on investment?” And, ultimately, are we going to maintain and continue to grow the trust that we have with customers and clients?
Sam Charlton:
Absolutely.
Harriet Carr:
So, yeah. Thank you so much.
Sam Charlton:
Thanks for having me.
Harriet Carr:
It’s been fun chatting through all things customer with me. Thank you.
Sam Charlton:
Cheers.
