Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Steve Sidelnyk and Jim Turner to discuss their successful careers in the music industry. Steve and Jim share their most exciting memories, explore the pivotal early moments in their careers, and highlight their struggles with imposter syndrome.

Steve Sidelnyk is a highly accomplished session drummer and music programmer who has worked with a multitude of A-list artists over his storied career. From answering an advert for ‘drummer needed’ for Paul Weller in 1983 to opening the Grammys twice with Madonna and featuring on numerous Hollywood soundtracks, Steve is one of the world's most in-demand live and studio musicians. 

Jim Turner is a long-time entertainment industry professional whose 40+ year career straddles Music, Film, and TV. Having previously worked as a session musician with Steve on British multi-million-selling artists: Black, Bros, and Lisa Stansfield, Jim established himself as one of the top commercial music producers for brands such as Pepsi, Esso, Ellesse, Coca-Cola, and Nike before moving to Los Angeles to work on film and music projects. He has worked with Guillermo Del Toro on Hellboy II as well as the Tekken franchise, and has further developed projects for both Netflix and HBO. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Steve has always loved music, having followed his brother’s band around as a child. When he learned the drums, his priority wasn’t to earn money from the hobby but to play something that he thought was cool. He was all about music; he didn’t consider what might happen later or make a plan B, he just wanted the music to be a part of his life. Jim was similar, as a child he decided that music was what resonated with him. After watching The Crusaders, he quit his job, bought a saxophone, and just started. His Aha! moment came when on tour as a support act and he realized he was the only one who could see real talent, so he started doing session work instead of being in a band, beginning his work with Steve. 

👉 Steve’s pivotal turning point in his career came when his band played Live Aid and was the second band after Status Quo in 1985. It was the first time he’d ever been on TV, and a week later he was recognized at an airport as the drummer in the band. Having never been recognised before, he realized that he had made something out of his hobby. Jim, on the other hand, doesn’t believe he had one pivotal moment, but attributes his success to deciding to focus on a session playing at a higher level, rather than just local work. He realized that if you’re working for somebody and you’re not the primary talent, you’re always expendable.

👉 Everybody is prone to a bit of imposter syndrome in their career, especially if they are achieving some level of success. Jim shares that his experience being the only person in his band to recognise talent gave him the confidence that he was on the right path with his career. It took him ages to say that he was a professional musician; it wasn’t until he was paying off his mortgage and had platinum records on the wall. When he turned to composing music for commercials, he lost his confidence again; he wasn’t comfortable claiming to be a composer since he was no Mozart in his own eyes. He was always just waiting for someone to claim him to be a fraud. 

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaiResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectQik Website - https://www.connectqik.comSteve’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sidelnyk-41473480 Jim’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimturnerceo Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

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In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Xuan Xu, Managing Director of Xuan Xu Experiences. Together, we discuss Xuan’s transformative journey from business consultancy to experiential design. She shares insights into the growing importance of experiential design in today’s business landscape and the shift in consumer expectations from the product to the experience.

Xuan Xu is an Experiential Designer who designs holistic experiences starting from a unique and meaningful story. She initially started her career as a business consultant in Germany but changed paths to the creative industry in 2014. She founded her own company in 2017 to obtain independent artistic freedom to produce innovative, memorable, and meaningful experiences. She has conducted various projects cutting across multiple industries, including recent projects in food and beverage, hospitality events, and entertainment. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Xuan’s first aha moment came when she took a consultancy trip to Bangkok. There, she met Ashley, who was opposite to anyone she had met before. He inspired her to take a step into the creative world, doing something based on her passion that truly came from her core. She realized that she wanted to create a world that would allow the people interacting with her to experience something they may not have previously had access to; she found the world of experiential design. 

👉 To Xuan, differentiating between skills and components is essential. Skills are the things you learn and master, whereas components are what you have naturally or gain through life experiences. For experiential design, three components are necessary: passion, creativity, and vision. On the skill side, you need analysis, strategy, and execution. The latter are intentionally learned, but the former are not.

👉 Today, people seek for experiences beyond the product. To Xuan, this is because the product has become a commodity. They now expect good service and products by default, so they search for good experiences. It’s not just about a tangible product or whether it is delivered well; it’s about the emotional experience and journey from the first time they hear about your brand to post-purchase. 

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaiResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectQik Website - https://www.connectqik.comXuan’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/xuan-xu-6720b048 Xuan Xu Experiences Website - https://www.xuanxu.de Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Haider Aabidi, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of D2C at Country Chicken Co. Together, we delve into why you should always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you; what it means to take a calculated risk in entrepreneurship; and why you need to respect your customers as people.

Country Chicken Co. is the first brand to exclusively sell high-quality organic Country Chicken, looking to provide people with a healthier alternative to regular chicken. Before becoming the Chief Marketing Officer and the Head of D2C, he originally served as the Director of Brand Marketing. Prior to joining, he was the National Manager of Student Awareness at IMS Learning Resources; the Founder & CEO of MBAP; and a Sales & Distribution Consultant at Deloitte.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 When it comes to your own professional success in any industry (not just marketing or consumer insights), you need to be able to challenge yourself. You need to ensure you’re surrounded by people who are better than you and push you to think about things in ways you might not have done before. If you put yourself in a room where you’re the only one who doesn’t know everything, then you’re actually in the perfect place to learn something new. Embrace it; don’t feel disheartened by it.

👉 Everyone in business should be taking calculated risks; it comes part and parcel. It’s all about how much you know about your own limitations and strengths. Haider tells us about his shift from tech into business; even though everyone told him he couldn’t do it because he didn’t know about it, he knew that if he did some research and put the work in, he could figure it out. He took a calculated risk; now, he understands the foundations of business and has the wisdom of communicating with consumers.

👉 Once you understand how customers work, you can begin to interact with them in a way that will benefit and grow your business. Haider talks about creating personalized interactions with them on a mass level, how we can do that, and why businesses find it such a difficult feat. The one thing he’s taken away from his own analysis is that you have to respect the customer and who they are as a person; respect the time they take to give your business attention.

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaiResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectQik Website - https://www.connectqik.comHaider’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/haider-aabidi-101071175/ Country Chicken Co. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/countrychickenco/ Country Chicken Co. Website - http://www.countrychickenco.in/ Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Monish Debnath, CMO and Founding Team Member of WickedGüd, to discuss the fascinating world of consumer insights. They delve into how culture impacts consumer behavior; why simple moments are the biggest aha moments; and why taste is the number one consideration for brands in the food industry, even if they focus on health. This episode is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the intersection of psychology, business, and delicious food.

Monish is the Chief Marketing Officer and a Founding Team Member of WickedGüd, a food and beverage retailer on a mission to “UnJunk” India and the World one kitchen at a time. Prior to this, he was the Lead Strategist and Vice President of Strategic Planning at Havas, where he assessed creative ideas by grounding them in strategic consumer insights. He is an entrepreneur, design thinker, philosopher, and activist with a passion for consumer behavior and communication that amplifies human potential and shapes subtle qualities of the human spirit.

We can’t wait for you to hear what he has to share with us!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Monish has been intrigued by consumer behavior since he was very young. Now, he sees humans behave differently based on their exposure to the external environment, culture, and people around them. He has seen certain behaviors that seem to cut across cultures, which in and of itself was a big aha moment. To him, simple moments such as food choices based on culture are more significant aha moments than complex moments you never expect to happen. It is all about driving for simplicity. 

👉 According to Monish, every day is a day of insights and aha moments, yet people always struggle to find them. This is because they are not new; they are already existing and evolving. For example, when he ventured into the food and drink industry, he realized that a good mom always says no and a bad mom always says yes. This is not a judgment on their parenting but an observation that the mother who wants good for her family will say no to many things in the food space. That is a progressive mom. This is something people experience growing up and likely feel annoyed about, but it becomes an aha moment later in life.

👉 Food is important to Indian culture, and Monish got into the food industry to bring about desperately needed disruptions.. He wanted to bring healthiness to indulgent foods where health was a missing narrative. He and his team wrapped healthy ingredients into indulgent dishes: pasta and noodles. The whole idea was to take something healthy and make it just as indulgent and delicious as comfort foods while still appealing to the market.

👉 Taste is intricate, and taste is linear. You either like something, or you don’t. When it comes to food, India is a taste-first culture, not a health-first culture, and so Monish and his team have had to put taste as the top priority, both in their development and their marketing. As they are developing new products, they are constantly gaining consumer feedback and keep improving their recipes to ensure that the food is just as delicious as the typical versions, but with all the added health benefits of their ingredient choices. They have also had to focus on texture and appearance, ensuring their products are appealing before consumers taste them. One way they have done this is by incorporating a transparent exclamation point on their packaging so that consumers see the food item before they even open the box, knowing what to expect.

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bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBzApple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaIResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectqik Website - https://www.connectqik.comMonish on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/monish-debnath-9420049 WickedGüd Website - http://www.wickedgud.com Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this Greatest Hits episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Daniel Enson, VP of Research Solutions at Toluna Corporate. They discuss Daniel’s aha! journey; how data can be turned into an interesting, coherent story; the huge impact that agile research has had on the world; and the key to what a successful research team looks like. They also delve into the number one mistake that researchers always make!

With over fifteen years of experience to draw on, he’s the man to go to for all phases of research, including study design, sample planning, advanced data analysis, and actionable storytelling. He’s the VP of Research Solutions at Toluna Corporate, an organization delivering real-time consumer insights at the speed of the on-demand economy, and has been there for over nine years, starting out as a Research Director.

One of his previous colleagues described him as “an effective and talented boss and teammate. Regardless of what else is going on, he's always there to support and mentor those that work with him and for him”.

Tune in to this week’s episode of Getting to Aha! to find out more!

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

👉One of the key aspects of market research and consumer insights is being able to think on your feet and question your own assumptions. Just because your campaign or marketing idea didn’t do super well at the beginning, it doesn’t mean it’s a failure or that it’s bad; it may just require a little tweaking.

👉Daniel’s favorite part of research is storytelling; it means you can present something to clients in a way that all the data makes sense. To do this, you need to make a good, well-thought-out questionnaire and choose the right methodology. It’s all about weaving the data into a coherent, interesting story. It’s no easy task, but when it all comes together, it can feel extremely satisfying.

👉With the help of agile research (a research method where feedback is collected quickly and continuously), researching data has been made much easier. But, as Daniel points out, it wasn’t always this way. When he started out in the industry fifteen years ago, there weren’t any companies out there using the agile methodology; the research took much longer and wasn’t necessarily always accurate. Viewing the data in real-time is far more helpful, also meaning it’s more valid and legitimate.

👉Before you shift towards agile research, there are two things you should keep in mind: know who your target audience is, and don’t try to fit every single thing into one template. Without these two pillars, your campaign will surely collapse. It’s incredibly important to make sure you’re keeping track of everything in a clean and accessible way.

👉Oftentimes, there are far too many questions in a survey or questionnaire, which can result in way much data, which isn’t useful at all! Daniel says that something you can do to stop this from happening is to make a quick sample poll just to figure out what the people want. This way, your questions will be more streamlined and straightforward, filtering out the futile ones.

👉For a successful research team, diversity is key. You need to make sure you have people from traditional market research jobs, science, psychology, writing, and analytics, as well as people with different strengths and interests who want to learn more about research. But most importantly, they need to be able to work as part of a team.

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Episode Resources

• Daniel Enson on LinkedIn
• Toluna Corporate 
• RTi Research
• Fulcrum Analytics 

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this Greatest Hits episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Erika Putinsky, Vice President of Customer Education at Mailchimp. They discuss Erika’s aha! moments, different methods of educating customers, the impact that customer education can have on growth, and the role that social media can play in this area.

Erika is the Vice President of Customer Education at Mailchimp. She educates customers about their products and how best to use them to improve their experience. Erika believes that entertainment can help companies educate their customers, which in turn can lead to better feedback that can be used to develop better products and services.  Prior to MailChimp, she worked with WhatCounts, where she focused on customer support and solutions as Chief Customer Officer. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 To educate your customers, it’s vital that employees also have a thorough understanding of your product. 

👉 Create effective social media content that can educate customers on your products and services in an accessible way.

👉 Have an open-door policy for employees to encourage dialogue and foster a sense of belonging within the company.

👉 Listen to customer feedback and use it to improve the customer experience.

👉 Educate customers in a language that they understand so they’ll be willing to learn from you during their downtime.

👉 Move towards scalability. It's important to upgrade your services constantly and bring education to your customers' doorsteps.

👉 Customer Education also has a positive effect on employees; it sets a baseline for how employees are engaging with the products and improves how they engage with customers.

👉 A startup looking to grow should have good leadership at the top to hasten the rate of decision-making.

👉 For a business to be successful, all departments of the business need to work in close contact with each other.

👉 Video content can be a great source for better customer engagement.

👉 Create structured opportunities for clients to interact with each other about the way they use your products; it creates a wraparound effect for your customers.

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret, a food and beverages provider that believes un-junking your diet can be fun and eating healthy can be tasty! They delve into her widespread, diverse career journey in numerous industries (education, healthtech, consumer tech); the drive of innovation, curiosity, and learning to be human; and what failure really looks like.

On top of that, Abhilasha is also a Mentor at the Founder Institute and was previously the Chief of Staff at Hike, the Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Elucidata Corporation, and an associate at Innosight. She’s been featured in various interviews and podcasts, including Women Who Build and Network Capital, where she discusses her career and journey to Harvard Business School and life after graduation.

Listen out for what this Harvard graduate has to say about the world of Insights!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Abhilasha has worked across numerous industries: education, healthtech, and consumer tech, and now she’s working in the ecommerce food and beverages space. She says the goal behind all of these careers is to look at how technology or business models can be delivered in a new way to the consumer. For example, education has been done for years upon years, but how do you scale it to the most remote parts of a country? How do you make it so your food and beverages brand reaches the right amount of people and appeal to the consumer? With each industry comes a different challenge, and that’s the connection between these industries.

👉 When asked whether it was innovation, curiosity, or learning what it means to be human that drove her in all of her roles, Abhilasha says that it’s likely a combination of all three. She says she enjoyed finding connections between the products and the consumer, and this, in turn, provides fascinating consumer insights which can lead to incredible, innovative things for a business. 

👉 Failure comes in many different forms. Some might say it’s not reaching your goals; some might say it’s not trying; and others may go as far as to say the real failure is not learning from your mistakes. Abhilasha agrees with this, for her motto is to learn from your failures. She recalls a time she built something that didn’t really solve a problem for a user, but she doesn’t think she failed because she learned from it and adapted!

👉 Open Secret started off as a brand that did everything: sweet, savory, beverages. Eventually, however, they realized they weren’t really competing with smaller niche brands, and were instead competing with the larger ones. Their aim is to give people the tools to make ‘better for you’ choices across the board so that they can stick out compared to the bigger companies. 

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Episode Resources

• Abhilasha’s LinkedIn
• Open Secret
• Founder Institute

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this Greatest Hits Episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Annette Franz, Founder & CEO of CX Journey. They discuss Annette’s aha! journey; how customer experience came to be so vitally important in business; when the customer journey truly begins; and the difference between being customer-focused and customer-centric. They also dive headfirst into the annoying habit that businesses have of ignoring customer feedback, as well as why leadership needs to change.

In addition to being the Founder and CEO of CX Journey, Annette Franz is also a keynote speaker, coach, consultant, and thought leader, and was named one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider. With thirty years in the CX profession under her belt, her book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), is a testament to how much knowledge and advice she has to offer. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Customer Experience wasn’t always a widely talked about subject within businesses. Back in the early 2000s, there wasn’t much of an understanding about what customer experience truly was. Over time, however, metrics and data became a more prominent aspect of marketing; they were read and interpreted in different ways, and businesses were finally beginning to understand that customer loyalty and satisfaction were two separate things. It wasn’t until 2010 that CX became more widely talked about.

👉 The customer experience really begins at the moment of need, when the customer has a problem that needs solving. The minute that moment comes into fruition, it’s up to businesses and CX professionals to act fast and come up with ways to solve the problem. It’s all part of the customer life cycle.

👉 Don’t just be customer focused, be customer-centric! But what’s the difference between the two? Well, the former is more tactical and focuses on the short-term approaches of what to do when a customer is in front of you. The latter, however, is far more strategic, meaning it takes into account long-term strategies for retaining customers and making sure they come back.

👉 Annette recalls a client who had a really unhealthy approach to customer relationships before the introduction of CX; they would think that customers were trying to take advantage of them, leading to a lot of resentful feelings towards them, breeding toxicity. It wasn’t until there was an analysis of the business’ core values that the idea of ‘customer trust’ came to be. Through this, they were able to decide what behaviors were acceptable or not.

👉 Whilst customer experience is so important, we need to also remember how the employee’s experience factors in, after all, the two are inherently linked. You can’t have a good relationship with your customers if your employees aren’t happy - it’s about striking that balance.

👉 Businesses have the annoying habit of getting feedback from customers and then not doing anything with it. It’s very important to keep up-to-date on what your customers want, otherwise, they will leave you for a competitor who actually does listen. By taking their feedback into account, you are actively telling your customers that you hear them and that you are working to make their experience better.

👉 It starts at the top: you have to change the mindset of business leaders before being able to make a real difference for your customers. There is the assumption that leaders are completely separated from the customer experience, that there is a wall between them - in order for change, this needs to not be the case.

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6

Episode Resources

Annette’s LinkedIn

CX Journey

• Customer Understanding Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business)

• Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture That Drives Value for Your Business

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Joseph Michelli, Chief Executive Officer of The Michelli Experience. They discuss Joseph’s aha! journey; why you should tap into your natural curiosity; how business leaders coped with the pandemic; and why you should always listen to your employees. They also delved into the importance of humanizing your customers, as well as what it truly means to be a brand!

Joseph is an internationally sought-after speaker, psychologist, author, and organizational consultant. He passes on his knowledge in ways that encourage workplaces to be joyful and productive, focusing on the customer experience. He has been the CEO of The Michelli Experience - a full-service, human experience delivery company that helps leaders attract and engage customers - for over twenty-five years; is an Opinion Columnist at CEOWORLD magazine; and has also won the Asian Brand Excellence Award.

Whatever Joseph doesn’t know about customer experience, it isn’t worth knowing…

Tune in to this week’s episode of Getting to Aha! to find out more!

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

👉Joseph began his career in radio after winning a competition to visit a radio station when he was thirteen. By the time he finished college, however, he had realized that his career would be in something quite different, which is what led him down the path of customer experience. But he’s always stayed in touch with the man who gave him that job and considers the lessons he’d learned from him to be one of his Aha! moments.

👉Part of being successful means you need to tap into your natural curiosity. Whilst it is true that as we go our way in life, we lose some of our drive and curiosity, but we must always try to keep on challenging ourselves and be willing to go to the next level. Never be afraid to learn new things, it’ll benefit you dramatically in the long run!

👉 During the pandemic, one thing became exceedingly clear to Joseph: leaders didn’t know what they were doing. It was a very difficult and unpredictable time for everyone, and even they admitted that they were clueless on how to respond - as a result, it was Joseph’s job to help them retain customers. He asked them what they were relying on and what tactics they had in place, and found himself giving advice to more and more people, which is how he came up with his next book.

👉A philosopher once said, “the first duty of love is to listen,” but Joseph has altered that to “the first duty of leadership is to listen,” and then added, “the second duty of leadership is to listen more”. The most important part of being a business leader is to listen to the people around you and to figure out how to lead them in the best way possible. 

👉In the early days of the pandemic, Joseph tells a story about when they’d call customers simply  to thank them for visiting. Naturally, customers were very skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a very authentic, genuine way to make customers feel appreciated. Since then, they’ve put more time and energy into appreciating their customers, not just monetarily, but humanistically.

👉Brands tend to confuse the need to be interesting as a goal, when really, they need to be interested. If a company is interested in its customers, then the customers will eventually become interested in them. All relationships, even in the B2C world, are a two-way street - there has to be some give and take rather than just take.

👉 To Joseph, “customer satisfaction” means meeting expectations, but “customer delight” means exceeding those expectations. The latter is far more emotional, and you can feel it in your chest when a company goes above and beyond for you. 

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Episode Resources

• Joseph’s LinkedIn
• The Michelli Experience
• CEOWORLD magazine 
• Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this Greatest Hits episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Priscilla McKinney, CEO of Little Bird Marketing. They discuss Priscilla's aha! moments, improving business with the application of SOAR, the importance of having a watertight growth strategy, how to develop statistical personas, and the challenges that arise from statistical persona development. 

Priscilla is the CEO of Little Bird Marketing. She helps businesses succeed by building their brand and delivering sustainable lead generation. Priscilla believes a business should be unique and think like their customers to build a sustainable brand. Before Little Bird, she worked with Clear Entertainment & Marketing Group, where she focused on improving the portfolio of companies as Chief Executive Officer. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 To improve your business growth, you need to apply SOAR logic; S- Strategy, O - Organize, A - Accountability, R - Repeat

👉 A business strategy should be unique to your brand - don’t mimic competitors' strategies

👉 Get a clear perspective of the market to help develop a persona for the business

👉 Whenever possible, put yourself in the customer's shoes to see what kind of strategy you should be pursuing, including consideration of their financial situations

👉 If a strategy can't be adapted to new circumstances, it's not accountable

👉 Create a work plan showing what you intend to achieve, then derive a strategy from this plan

👉 A brand strategy should be centered around your ideal customer, including brand building and purpose

👉 Before developing a statistical persona, know your ideal client. You need to filter your clients, remove those that aren't your market target, and focus on the ideal ones

👉 The ideal number of statistical personas to build is four, but when you are a new business, don’t exceed two

👉 The process of statistical persona development isn't meant to be rigid, but should be meaningful to the customers 

👉 When developing statistical personas, have conversations with the customers and determine how they use your products

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form