Is the commoditization of technology ruining the customer experience? Can Artificial Intelligence be characterized as “Affectionate Intelligence” if it’s designed to respect a consumer’s boundaries? Louis Giagrande, CMO of LG Electronics USA, dives into these hot topics as he discusses the challenges of maintaining brand value in a market flooded with cheap alternatives. Plus, he explains what companies can do to stand out and how LG is breaking down silos and fostering collaboration to enhance customer experience.Key Moments:00:00 Introduction01:43 Human-Centered Innovation at LG03:59 Voice of Customer Program Enhancements06:04 Game-Changing Data Sources07:30 Integrating Marketing and Customer Support08:56 Challenges in Cross-Functional Collaboration10:30 Impact of Executive Alignment 11:25 The Next Phase of LG 13:24 Customer-Centered Innovation 14:47 Proactively Providing Customer Solutions16:10 LG’s Philosophy and Brand Story21:37 Key to Identifying Campaign Effectiveness24:25 Basics of Integrating Customer Feedback 26:23 The Power and Purpose of LG Nova32:04 B2B Segment Focus Brings New Opportunity 34:29 Challenges in the Home Appliance Industry40:36 What We Can Learn from Chewy’s Customer Service42:45 Advice Every CX Leader Must Hear–How can you bring all your disconnected, enterprise data into Salesforce to deliver a 360-degree view of your customer? The answer is Data Cloud. With more than 200 implementations completed globally, the leading Salesforce experts from Professional Services can help you realize value quickly with Data Cloud. To learn more, visit salesforce.com/products/data to learn more. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org
Chapter 1: What challenges does LG face in brand storytelling?
In the past, we had good reviews on our refrigerators, our laundry, our TVs. But now it's like, wait, what does this company stand for? So reinventing the brand, committing to telling the brand story has been a big part of our development of where we're going in the last two years.
What got us here won't get us there. Telling the story of what this brand means so that people feel connected. We want to feel like we are a part of something in that. And it's not just a product that we put on our counter, but it's actually something that's here to help us live a better life. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood.
Today, I am joined by Luis Giagrande, the Chief Marketing Officer at LG Electronics USA. Today, we are going to explore how he's leading a transformative shift in the customer experience at LG, leveraging innovation, new market expansion, and a redefined brand vision to strengthen LG's connection with both customers and businesses. Before we dive in...
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Lewis, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great. Thank you. And yourself?
I'm very, very well. So I'm really excited to talk all about LG. And in our prep conversation, you told me that you have over 1400 products on your website. Is that correct?
Product pages. Yes. You know, variations and accessories and everything. But the point is the product portfolio is broad for sure.
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Chapter 2: How is LG innovating through human-centered design?
Which is huge. And you also shared that the way that you would design these products is really built on the premise of human centered innovation. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about what human centered innovation really means at LG and how that's a differentiator for you.
Yeah. No, it's one of the things we take the most pride in is that it's really one of the core brand values that we have is that there's a lot you can do in our space in terms of making innovative products. And sometimes we do have products that have innovations that is more for the fun of it. But most of the products innovations are really tied to your consumer pain points and things that
consumers are asking for. We have a very robust voice consumer, social listening platform. We're always looking at what consumers are saying is a challenge with not only our products, but competitors' products. I like to start with dishwasher because it's such a category that most people don't talk about, but
Just from listening to consumers' feedback on dishwasher usage, the things kept popping up. It was very loud. So if you ever had a dishwasher that was in the vicinity of where you're watching TV, the TV always had to be increased in volume. There would be promises of a wash and dry cycle, but things were never really quite dry. It would take so long.
So if you're like you want to do a quick wash, if you're in the middle of a party and whatnot. So, you know, last year we came out with a dishwasher, one hour wash and dry that was super quiet and addressed these issues. And, you know, right away you saw, you know, great success for that product. And it's not a surprise because we're addressing, you know, what the consumer needs.
So, you know, we could have done something fancier, you know, with the, you know, I don't know, with the outside of the product or whatever, but just hitting on the innovations that really are consumer driven is very key to us and something that our factories are very good at.
And you were telling me earlier that you've recently made updates to your voice of customer program. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired that change and what it looks like now?
We're really proud of our team that's working on this. I don't want to say his name because I don't want anyone to poach him, but I'm keeping on the DL for those who understand what I'm saying. But that team in general has done a fantastic job of really aggregating feedback. There's so much data out there right now. In fact, I think we've moved into a...
a point where there was a time when you were always struggling to get the right data and now you're almost struggling with what to do with all the data that's available. It's almost too much. Yeah. And that's really been a guiding principle from our CFO in North America. He doesn't want to see data anymore. He wants to see data insights actions. And it's totally right. And it's like, so
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Chapter 3: What is LG's approach to integrating customer feedback?
And we've also found a nice way to balance our survey data with, you know, with our other data, which gives us a nice combination of perspectives.
Yeah. You're highlighting something that is just music to my CX ears, which is the collaboration between customer experience and customer support and marketing. And when you really marry those two teams and we look at the insights and the wealth of knowledge that is coming through customer service...
We can not only improve the experience for the customer, improve the marketing messaging for the customer, but also create products and think about how these products will impact the customer in a more meaningful way.
Yeah. If you're not marrying up marketing and support at this point, you know, you're falling behind because it's, like you said, just so integrated. There was a time, I've been with LG, you know, almost 15 years and, you know, with the marketing team, there was a time when on social platforms, they'd be like, oh, that's a break-fix issue. Here you go, support team.
And then like, oh, that's a non-break-fix conversation. And it was literally like, all we were doing was triaging and separating and that was it, you know? And now we have people within our marketing team that's having daily conversations with the support center and regularly pulling it in. That's especially going to be helpful as we're growing our D2C e-commerce platform.
This isn't just about breakfast. It's about delivery and the experience of interaction and transaction. Yeah.
Fully. What challenges have you experienced in this? Because at the same time, as we create these deeper connections, we also create often more complexity. And I think a lot of the reason why we've stayed in our own lanes is because it's easier to stay in your own lane instead of merge the highways. You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hit on a big challenge I think most companies are dealing with is prioritizing customer experience really means breaking down the walls between groups within companies. And the biggest one being a support center, which is like for us, it's like a different headquarters in Alabama. We're headquartered here in Northeast California.
So it's like you have to break down these walls. So that's a challenge. Now you're starting to creep into each other's R&Rs and the RACI charts look different. And collaboration has to be a lot more than just the handoff via some sort of triage tool. It's like, all right, what are you doing? Even to the point of training the chat agents, training the callers,
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Chapter 4: What is the future direction for LG as a smart life solutions company?
And what I loved about what they did is even though the press release said LG launches a new brand identity recently. What they really did, which was very smart, was harness what was there. What do we stand for? And so the new brand identity was really us saying we're going to commit to telling the brand story, to exposing customers to what the brand is about.
And you've seen a lot of improvements there. We're LG. Our slogan is life's good. And what that is is like a promise to really champion positivity and optimism, not just in your life, but your work life, your personal life. So that's really been the foundation of what we've done. We've made a lot of progress in that. It's a very long answer, but the main thing where you're seeing the results is
Interbrand this year noticed a difference from last year, this year, where they value your brand value. And it's a 40% increase in our brand value, really based on the fact that we were exposing consumers to our brand and opening up what we stood for. And LG is now in the Interbrand top 100 brands in the world as of this year. So it's nice to see the fruits of labor paying off.
but even more encouraging that we're seeing it in the brand, we're seeing it in our own brand metrics, a lot of improvements in the perceptions of the brand.
Great CX starts with a great story, and AgentForce helps you tell it consistently across every channel. AgentForce allows you to build AI agents that empower teams and customers to provide top-notch customer service 24-7, all seamlessly integrated with Salesforce. Discover the future of CX today and visit salesforce.com slash agentforce.
Well, congratulations. I'm sure that feels really good to say, oh, okay, there's the recognition for what we've been doing. But I just want to highlight the importance of storytelling here. And it is... The first thing is always having a great product that... works well, that people enjoy, that solves the customer's problems.
But there's also, in what you're describing, this really important piece of telling the story of what this brand means so that people feel connected to it. And I can only imagine that as we become more and more connected to our technology.
And that our homes become, our technology becomes connected to each other within our homes and all of that, that we want to feel like we are a part of something in that. And it's not just a product that we put on our counter, but it's actually something that's here to help us live a better life.
We are now entering the 12th year of being the number one selling OLED TV. There was a point where all manufacturers having trouble mass producing OLED screens. They knew how to produce it, but the failure rate with the way they were doing it was just too high to make it a viable product. And at one point, LG took a different path to manufacturing than what you were seeing the competitors take.
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Chapter 5: How does LG measure the effectiveness of their brand campaigns?
Um, where 99% of them, there's no big payday at the end of it. It gives them a platform, uh, where now they have their championships being broadcast nationally through our smart TV platform. And it's, you know, so now we're bringing, uh, content play into our hardware play, uh, And even one more step further, we started creating unique content by ourselves for that channel.
So we have a series called The Rivalries, which is like finding these niche little rivalries in D2, D3 schools that have been going on for 100 years and doing like a docuseries on them to put on our channel. So it's forcing us to rethink what we can do to make our products more than just a good picture quality.
I mean, sometimes that competition or the shifts in the market force us to take it a step further and really think about how do we provide more value for the products that we are that we are selling. So I love that story because it's I never would have thought, oh, LG is doing this. But look at that. Yeah.
Like you said, necessity, right? We have to find ways to differentiate and it's creating some good stuff.
Completely. So I have two last questions for you as we wrap up on our time here. And the first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was that?
Yeah, I remember it didn't happen to me personally. I remember reading about a recent experience a consumer had with Chewy, who's known for doing some great stuff. And it was like returning dog food because the dog passed away. And then Chewy responded with like, you know, condolences and like a gift. Those are home runs.
I want to just say Chewy is probably the most common response that I get to that question. Chewy and Apple, you know, but I think it just is such a testament to the way that Chewy not only recovers if there's a mistake, but I think most of the time it's either the customer's mistake or misfortune that Chewy just steps up to the plate around.
They made that like part of their DNA from day one, which is, you know, where I think, you know, the advantage while the companies are trying to recalibrate and restructure, changing KPIs from call times to customer satisfaction, you know, things like that. Chewy's done a good job.
Mm-hmm, Zappos is another one that I, if you haven't read Delivering Happiness, I highly recommend it to anyone because that, again, Zappos really pioneered, I think, in the space of making their customer service, their marketing.
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