Crack the Customer Code

Adam and Jeannie are Champions from the customer-centric school of Hard Knocks, and they’re sharing a few things that are missing from the typical curriculum at business schools.

Business schools traditionally do not teach us how to become customer-centric in the real world, so many of today’s business leaders like Adam and Jeannie have had to combine business training, years of real-life experience, and their own tireless research to learn this the hard way.

If you’re joining us today, you know your customer service and overall customer experience can have a huge impact on business outcomes. Can you honestly say business school has taught you everything you need to know? It seems most of us could stand to learn more about understanding customers and creating lasting connections.

Today we’re naming a few subjects we’d add to the curriculum to help the next generation of leaders succeed in the age of the customer. Did you learn any of these in business school? You may want to catch up with some independent studying after the show!

• 360Connext® post, Class Trip: Defining Customer Experience Investigation® Through A Day in the Life
• Customers That Stick® post, Introducing a New Guide to Customer Service Higher Education
• Episode 094: Joseph Michelli, Becoming Customer-Obsessed
• Episode 160: Blake Morgan, More is More

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe. Developing and internalizing unique and scalable customer-focused missions has been crucial to their success.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we discuss the business impact of augmented reality now and in the future with technology titan and "The Fourth Transformation" co-author Robert Scoble.

“It’s clear that the world is going toward augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality,” says technology titan Robert Scoble. This means lots of challenges and opportunities for business as AR and artificial intelligence become a part of our daily lives.

In this interview, Robert shares defining highlights from the three past tech transformations, and how they have impacted business and daily life. He says recent developments in AR have marked the beginning of “The Fourth Transformation.”  What does this mean for business, and how can we be a part of it? Should we be?

Through each transformation, some of the biggest companies have disappeared as innovative mavericks have taken their place. Staying educated and thinking ahead to your customers’ needs are the keys to surviving this transformation!

Join us as we dive into surprising ways AR is already being used, and how forward-thinking companies are preparing themselves for the day when mixed reality experiences are expected.

“It’s gonna come!” says Robert, “…you can wait, or you can get in now and do it at a comfortable pace…”

Highlights from the interview:

• What were the first three tech transformations, and what has brought us into the fourth? [5:15]
• Does Apple have anything up its sleeve to compete with predominantly PC-based systems we're hearing about? [13:25]
• Which businesses are looking closely at leveraging AR, and who is already using it? [15:38]
• How do we define goals around responding to a customer need vs. having the latest, sexiest tech? [20:00]
• What new privacy, security and social issues may come with the rise of VR? [29:10]

As entrepreneur in residence at Upload VR , Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology.

He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released here), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people. They have worked together on a new book about AR and AI, called "The Fourth Transformation" which you can order on Amazon here.

As entrepreneur in residence at Upload, he spent 2016 working with the virtual reality ecosystem to figure out what media and conference businesses Upload needs to build next. He'll also be assisting startups in the Upload Collective (a coworking space) in their efforts to get to market.

He has been a technology blogger since 2000, was one of five people who built Microsoft's Channel 9 video blog/community, worked at Fast Company Magazine running its TV efforts, and has been part of technology media businesses since 1993.

Connect with Robert

• Facebook
• Twitter

• 360Connext® post, Magic Mirror Reflects Major Innovation for the Connected Consumer
• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to Handle Unreasonable Customers
• Episode 143: How Augmented Reality is Changing Customer Experience
• Episode 103: Will Virtual Reality Make Customer Service More Real?
• Robert Scoble’s podcast, Inside VR & AR

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe. Developing and internalizing unique and scalable customer-focused missions has been crucial to their success.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam shares best practices for resolving customer service issues and a simple time-tested process you can share with your front-line associates.

Many customer-facing employees benefit greatly when there's a shortcut to remember how to handle the trickier customer service issues with finesse. If you’re listening today, your employees and customers are in luck! You're about to learn a special process from Adam's book, Be Your Customer’s Hero, called the CATER process.

If you’re thinking CATER is an acronym for something, you are right, but you’ll never guess what these letters stand for. One of them is something we’re typically told NOT to do!  We argue it makes a huge difference when it’s done right.

Want to make handling unhappy customers less stressful while ensuring better outcomes? Find out what the CATER process is all about!

• 360Connext® post, 5 Ways to Rock your Worst Case Customer Experience Scenario
• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to Handle Unreasonable Customers
• Episode 161: How to Approach Customer Threats
• Get your copy of Adam’s book, Be Your Customer’s Hero (and preview the first 3 chapters for free!)

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share a few valuable tips about personalizing the customer experience.

With so many great ways to access and leverage customer data, companies are getting creative about personalizing the customer experience. But do customers really want to be where everyone (and every thing) knows their name?

Some companies personalize as many parts of the experience as they can, but that’s not always a good thing. Be careful! Personalizing for personalization’s sake can harm some experiences.

So what should you know? Are you personalizing too much? Too little? Perhaps you need to take a different approach.

In this episode, Adam and Jeannie share a few quick but vital personalization tips everyone should know.

• 360Connext® post, 5 Mobile Personalization Tweaks to Keep Customers On Track
• Customers That Stick® post, The Greatest Customer Service Statistic in the World
• Episode 019: Writing for Machines, Andy Crestodina, and Personalized Robots

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you ready for 2017? Adam and Jeannie share some announcements about what’s coming to Crack the Customer Code this year.

We’ve had a long holiday season, but we’re back! And to kick off the new year, we’re announcing some changes to our podcast. Don’t worry - we’re still the same podcast you know and love… but better! We’ve been listening to our fans, and we’ve decided to bring you more of what you like and some new things you've been asking for.

Adam and Jeannie have been working hard to bring you an exciting lineup of guests, expert tips and more. What else is changing this year? We couldn’t wait to tell you about it, and we recorded a special episode to fill you in. Listen in!

• Customers That Stick® post, 3 Areas to Focus your Customer Experience in 2017
• 360Connext® post, 3 Powerful No-Sweat Customer Experience Quick Fixes
• Episode 100: Customer Service 100 Years Ago

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie discuss exciting new changes to make your favorite customer-focused business podcast even better in 2017.

We’ve had an exciting year on the podcast, and we’re so thankful you’ve been listening to us twice per week. Thank you!

As we head into 2017, it’s time for us to look back on the last 169 episodes to see what has worked well and maybe a few things that didn’t. You may see changes in our format, frequency, website, and images. Most importantly, we want to know what works best for you!

Let’s start the new year with more of what you love about our podcast, less of what you might not love as much, and an overall better experience for all our listeners.

What do you find the most valuable in a customer-focused business podcast? What changes would you like to see in 2017? Listen in and let us know!

• Email us: [email protected]
• Call us: (470) 223-CODE
• Tweet to Adam: @adamtoporek
• Tweet to Jeannie: @jeanniecw

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we discuss how the results from the recent US Election Day betrayed the projections made from massive amounts of data.

In the months leading up to the recent US election, tens of millions of dollars were spent analyzing the data to predict the outcome… and we all got it wrong! The data did not reflect the emotional state of the electorate, leading to false predictions.

We see this happening a lot in business. Data often fails to show the emotional state of our customers. And when we look at data in simple “A vs. B” terms, we underestimate the power of entire groups where data was either not collected or not considered significant enough to make a difference.  

Much like voters, customer sentiment can change very quickly. What customers say today is not always indicative of how they will feel tomorrow, or how they will act on these emotions. And many business leaders fall into the trap of thinking they have an advantage where sentiment appears neutral.

What else can business leaders learn from the recent election? In this episode, Adam and Jeannie share three big lessons about customer data, customer sentiment, and predictive analytics. Listen in!

• Customers That Stick® post, Your Data Is Only as Good as Your Perspective
• 360Connext® post, What’s Missing from your Data Insights?
• Episode 119: CXPA Live, Predictive Analytics

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission to Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we explore ways to create outstanding service center engagement with renowned speaker and HDI certified Support Center Manager Nate Brown.

Call center processes are ever-complicating. And customer expectations are getting higher while their patience gets shorter. How can you create a service experience that works better for customers?

Nate Brown explains the difference between a “call center,” where the experience is based on processes, and a “service center,” where the experience is created around a customer-focused culture.

“It’s really about putting technology in the right place.” –Nate Brown

Properly engaging your team is a huge part of this. A team that is customer-focused, happy working together and communicates effectively can make all the difference. This can mean a huge shift in mindset and execution! Today we explore some of the ways you can go about facilitating these changes.

“There is nobody in the organization that is closer to the customer, and to the products and services of the business. It’s amazing the opportunity to really represent the brand, be the voice of the business to the customers. There’s nobody that gets to do that like customer service does... If it’s a sad place, that’s a cultural thing, and that ultimately stems back to leadership…” –Nate Brown

Are you ready to create a customer-focused service culture and stop letting processes and technology define the experience? What performance metrics should you be looking at to help guide your next actions? Listen in and with Nate’s help, we’ll get you started.

Nate Brown has had an outstanding day when he is able to help customers.  He is on a quest to improve the agent experience and the customer experience through creativity, knowledge, and hard work.  Nate is an HDI certified Support Center Manager, VP of Communication for the HDI Music City Chapter, and a well-known speaker in both the ICMI and HDI communities.  He is also the founder and primary author for the customer service and leadership blog CustomerCentricSupport.com.

Connect with Nate

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Nate’s blog

• Customers That Stick® video, An Interview with Matthew Dixon of The Effortless Experience
• 360Connext® post, 3 Ways to Add Magic to your Customer Service Training
• Episode 137: Culture and Customer Service
• Episode 073: Hacking Your Workplace Culture
• Episode 153: Training for New Customer Service Technology

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we explore proactive ways to tell when you’re losing a customer. Can you recognize the warning signs?

You’re lucky if customers explain why they’ve left you. That feedback can save future customers from jumping ship! But while you read this, there’s a good chance you’re in the process of losing a customer. Now is your chance to throw out a lifeline and keep them on board.

Retaining individual customers can be very tricky, especially when they’re not directly sending you distress signals. And in many cases, processes and technology designed to help manage customer relationships actually hide critical warning signs.

So how can you get ahead of this? Those warning signs may be subtle, but if you know how to look for them, it can be painfully obvious when the relationship is in peril.

In this episode, Adam and Jeannie share real-life examples and different ways customer relationships could have been saved, had the right proactive measures been taken.

Don’t wait for that exit survey! Listen in to save those relationships before it’s to late.

• Customers That Stick® post, The Importance of Listening in Customer Service
• 360Connext® post, How Micromapping can Save Your Business
• Episode 085: Proactive Customer Service and Worst-Case Preparation

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie discuss the challenges and benefits of instilling customer-centric thinking in service technicians with Justin Deese, CEO of The Blue Collar Business Group.

CEO Justin Deese is a highly sought-after business strategist, visionary, and self-made entrepreneur. He simultaneously built three flourishing in-home service companies in multiple states, is a certified E-Myth Business Coach, and is an expert at helping fellow business owners structure and manage their companies for maximum profitability.

Justin has extensive working knowledge regarding all aspects of operating a successful in-home service business, including (but not limited to) sales and marketing, recruitment, systematization, and human resources. He has helped numerous business owners revitalize their companies and become true business owners, not just operators. Justin has a distinct talent for helping entrepreneurs recognize growth opportunities, remove what’s hindering their success, and develop customized strategies based on their personal goals.

It’s bad enough to have a poor customer experience at the checkout or on a call, but how about inviting a poor experience into your home? Sadly, that’s the reality for many customers who receive in-home service- from repair technicians, installers and more.

Focused on their skills and qualifications, technicians in these industries are typically not trained on delivering great overall experiences. Today’s guest explores the importance of customer experience training for service technicians and why it can make a huge difference.

“80% of what’s going on is before and after the sale.” –Justin Deese

What kind of experiences are your technicians delivering to in-home customers? Being an expert in a certain trade does not make someone an expert in interacting with those customers. And seasoned technicians are likely to subscribe to the idea that since they’ll only be there once, it doesn’t matter.

Justin shares some great tips for training technicians to be more customer-focused, even the long-time experts who feel the old ways have served them and their customers well. Many find that learning to be more customer-focused has made their jobs easier and more rewarding.

So how can you inspire your technicians to create a better in-home service experience? Listen in!

Connect with Justin

• Justin’s website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• The Blue Collar Success Group

• Customers That Stick® post, The Best Way to Make a Customer-Facing Team More Effective
• 360Connext® post, Customer Experience Rockstars: A Snapshot of ModTimber
• Episode 148: Randi Busse, Workforce Development
• Episode 091: How to Find Time for Training

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices