Navigating the Customer Experience

Will Laurenson is a customer value optimization consultant with 9 years experience optimising customer journeys to convert more traffic into customers, and retain those customers for longer helping companies achieve more profitable growth. He is also the host of the Customers Who Click Podcast, interviewing guests from across the marketing spectrum to give actionable insights into growth.

Questions

• Could you share a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got to where you are today? How did you end up into customer value optimization?
• Could you share with our listeners why you think brands need to focus on customer value optimization, not just necessarily from a subscription perspective, but just generally speaking, if you're a retail business, or if you're a service oriented versus product oriented, why is value optimization so important in delivering that great brand experience?
• Could you give our listeners maybe two or three tips that you think their companies could utilize to get better customer retention?
• What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even a book you read recently, but it really has just impacted you greatly.
• Could you also share with us if there is one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online if they wanted to connect with you further?
• Do you have a quote are saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocused?

Highlights

Will’s Journey

Will shared that he actually started in a few start-ups. He started in one start-up, but his early career was start-ups, so he did a bit of everything, generally marketing but kind of covering a wide range of channels responsible for pretty much everything.

But what he found was, very often companies would kind of hand the marketing team a bunch of cash and say, “Go and acquire customers.” that was basically the job. And it doesn't work like that especially in the start-ups where the product is still a work in progress. So what he started to do was work more closely with product teams and development teams to actually take into account customer feedback and build out a better experience.

You're not going to convert people into customers or retain those customers for very long if your experience is rubbish. He has got quite a bit of experience in the subscription space, that tends to be where he works. And obviously, if it's a magazine, it's a bit different but if you're talking about a digital product, and actually one that he worked for was kind of like Netflix for magazines.

If the app experience is not very good, you're not going to keep people, they're not going to pay that monthly fee for something that they're not finding particularly convenient.

If they can't find the content they want to read, if it's not recommending them content, you're just not going to be able to keep people.

So, that's where he kind of went down this path of customer comes from value optimization. And it kind of stuck with him for the years, it's always something he was working on regardless of what his role was, and once or twice, he did specialize a little bit more in the marketing area in house, but it was always a focus on value. Like he said, if you can't retain those customers, you're not going to make much money off them.

And likewise, if you focus too much on the conversion side, you could raise the conversion rates really high, but you just damaged value, if you incentivize too much, give people loads of discounts and offers, you're obviously not making much money there. But you're convincing people to buy for the wrong reason. So, that's why his focus is customer value optimization. And I went solo basically, November 2019 to just work with direct to consumer businesses on this.

Brands Focusing on Customer Value Optimization

Me: Could you share with our listeners why you think brands need to focus on customer value optimization, not just necessarily from a subscription perspective, but just generally speaking, if you're a retail business, or if you're a service oriented versus product oriented, why is value optimization so important in delivering that great brand experience?

Will shared that at the end of the day, every business wants to make loads of money and wants to be profitable.

If you can only really do that, if you are optimizing the value of those customers and building up their value over time, as opposed to just acquiring new customers every day, every week, every month, you're going to have those acquisition costs associated with it.

A lot of the time businesses do give discounts to first time customers, so that drops the value of that customer. So if you focus purely on acquisition, you're just not very profitable with every customer. So you're going to have to spend more money and acquire more customers. Whereas, if you focus on retention and building up that value over time.

If Facebook or Google does something that affects your business, or as prices get more and more expensive to acquire customers, you're not going to be hurt by that so much because you're also focusing on the customers you've got and getting more and more value out of them. Plus, you tend to get better levels of loyalty. And kind of ambassadorship. If people really like your business and are happy to spend lots of money with it, they will probably also be happy to tell other people about it.

So you're not only getting that direct value from each individual customer, you're also getting them telling other people to come to you, which means you're getting a potentially better customer anyway, because it's someone who's been referred. So he generally sees it as a bit of an increase in value there. But also, you're not paying the acquisition cost for that customer as well.

Tips to Utilize to Get Better Customer Retention

Me: And I guess ideally, all companies aim to have a high customer retention. So maybe could you give our listeners maybe two or three tips that you think their companies could utilize to get better customer retention?

Will stated that the overall big tip, he would say is, give your customers value. So that's a term that's thrown around by marketers a lot, and it can be a bit meaningless.

But what he means is, always explain to them the value of that product or service to them, make sure you're not describing just the features and saying, “Yes, if you're looking for a bookshelf, this is a bookshelf, this is what it's made of, this is how many shelves it's got.”

You want to explain why that's going to be beneficial to someone and get them to really feel like this is actually the right product for them, it doesn't just meet those basic functional requirements, but it's actually going to kind of make them smile every time they see it or they're going to feel like their life's going to be better because they have that product.

And then that kind of that idea of giving value should be everywhere, really in the business. So whenever you send out email marketing, for example, you don't have to just sell, you don't have to be sending an email every week to customers, just saying, “Here are some new products.” You can give information, you can give tips, you can give advice.

He has got one client at the moment, and they're doing a series of emails which actually has no end points in mind. But basically, each email is just a research piece, it gets put into the form of maybe an infographic or some bullet points or something and it is just purely to explain what people need to be doing to feel better. It's kind of to do with how to sleep better, how to reduce pain.

So, it's just loads of tips and they get sales from those emails. So even though the email doesn't push products much, they're kind of there at the bottom, but the main focus on the of the email is that value and giving people information. And then people are happy with that, they see the value of it and then they go and buy the products.

So, kind of with that in mind, email marketing in mind, one thing that's so important is just is marketing automation. No matter what size the business is, marketing automation is just incredibly valuable, if you're a small business, you can get them set up and they will just drive revenue for you on autopilot and you don't have to be going in and manually building emails each week or every fortnight. So, it can really help with kind of resource issues as well, if you have a small team, you don't want to be wasting time doing that, when you could just set up a few email sequences and have that drive revenue for you forever, while you focus on other areas.

And if you combine that with that value piece, instead of just selling, they will just work really well for you. You can do abandoned cart emails, welcome series, post purchase, loads of different types of emails you can do.

And you can provide value at all of them. What most people tend to do with an abandoned cart is send you an email saying, “Here is the item you had in your cart, do you want to buy it?” Just a reminder, that's it.

But now, while some people will have abandoned the cart, because they got distracted or something came up and they had to deal with it, so they might come back. You've also got a huge number of people who are not fully convinced that that product is what they want to buy and that your business is the one they want to buy it from.

So, that abandoned cart email is a great way of dealing with those concerns depending on what your product is. If you're selling electrics like a washing machine or something, you could send out the manual or something or the manual for that product, something like that. So people can check all the details, all the specifications and be absolutely sure it's the right washing machine or dishwasher for them.

You can do some really simple things that don't really cost you anything to do, but could make that customer's life a lot easier, therefore more likely to convert. So, it's giving people value kind of all the time, email marketing, email automation, really, really important. And the final thing is make really, really good use of your customer service team.

So many businesses just see it as like a cost centre, it's a team that has to be there because people will contact the business so we need to pay some people to sit at a desk and just answer these emails all day.

But actually, there's so much that you can get from the customer service team, they can turn unhappy customers into happy ones, they can answer people's questions, and cause those people to actually then buy the product.

And even better, if you collect all that information and pass it on to the relevant teams, you can then make the website better, the emails better, your social media better, whatever, so that those questions actually disappear, they're no longer people coming into customer service for it, because you've actually fixed the problem and people no longer need to ask those questions.

So, he thinks there's so much value you can get out customer service and it's so easy, pretty much all you got to do is set some categories up, some tags in your customer service tool and tag each email that comes in.

And then on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on how big the business is, just review the queries that have come in. You'll pick an area once a month maybe and just pick one of the categories and just dig into what people have actually been asking, what's been going on, and then see where you can go fix that problem so that no one faces it.

App, Website or Tool that Will Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Will shared that he has quite a few. He’s got some like accounting things that are really useful. Dext is really handy, he just forward all his receipts onto it, takes care of all that.

And he thinks a really cool one is Otter.ai. So, Otter like the animal and ai. It's an AI transcription tool. So he actually uses it for his podcast, after the recording he loads the podcast episode into Otter.ai, it transcribes the podcast for him and then he can really easily pick out some quotes, pick out key points for the summary for social media posts and things like that.

He initially tried to use it to do an actual transcription of the podcast but he found that he had to do about an hour editing every single episode to tidy it up because it's not perfect, because AI is not there yet, so, he stopped doing that.

But he uses it to help him write the summary and things. It probably cuts a good 30 to 45 minutes out of the process each week. He guesses it doesn't sound much but he really likes it, he just finds it so useful.

Me: And of course, if you're cutting 30 to 45 minutes off of any activity, when you add that up, it makes a big difference.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Will

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Will shared that Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin is really, really good. It's all about standing out but being different. Having something to actually say that is unique and makes people pay attention to your business and not just view you as another website.

He thinks honestly, a lot of fashion sites are really bad at that. You've got the top tier brands which are fantastic. By top tier, he doesn't mean the publicly listed completely, the massive ones. You've got those the handful of companies that do it really, really well and stand out. But the majority of them even look almost identical on the website, there's nothing that makes them stand out. Major clothing is a little bit different, but most of them are pretty basic. So Purple Cow he would definitely recommend reading.

And the one that he read fairly recently was last year actually, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters by Joseph Sugarman, which is just absolutely fantastic.

When you look at it and you kind of read the name, you think it's going to be like a textbook or something or a workbook, it's not, it's kind of more written like a first person, almost like a story really. It's a bit like a course but not sure how to describe it, it's really, really good.

It's partly about copywriting but it's something you can take into so many other kind of aspects and areas of the business. It's all around, for example, the first sentence should make the reader wants to read the second sentence, that's the job of it, is to make you read the next bit and on and on and on, things like that.

And then there's quite a bit about kind of consumer behaviour and psychology which is really, really interesting. So, he really enjoyed that, that's just sits on his coffee table actually, quite well broken out in chapters. So it's pretty easy to just open up, read a quick tip, it takes two to three minutes, read a few tips, and then put it down. It's obviously not like a novel, where you probably want to keep up with it, quite a lot in order to make sure you don't forget the story.

What Will is Really Excited About Now!

Will shared that the one big thing that he’s super excited about at the moment is he’s actually selling his flat and buying a new place. He stated that that's not quite work related but that's all going on which is really cool. So, he’s getting a house, just kind of outside London in the UK.

But otherwise, he’s quite excited about the new direction that he’s taking his business in. He is leaking down into that subscription space, so everything he does will be more focused around subscription businesses because he likes working with them, he likes the business model, he likes the fact that you have to place that focus on retention as well and build up the lifetime value.

So, at the moment, he’s redoing his website a little bit, he’s creating some new content and new eBooks and things which will be available on the website. That's probably the big thing that's going on with the business right now. Just that slight repositioning, so that he has that purple cow moment really, he wants to stand out a bit more.

Where Can We Find Will Online

Email – www.customerswhoclick.com

Twitter – @WillLaurenson

LinkedIn – Will Laurenson

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Will Uses

When asked if he has a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Will shared that probably not to be honest, he’s not really that sort of person. One thing he finds himself saying a lot is, “We'll make it work.” Just applies to anything really.

It happens a lot when he’s cooking, he tends to forget ingredients or something and just say, “I will make it work.” Applies to the business as well, if he’s struggling with something, just got to find a way to make it work.

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Links

• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
• The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters by Joseph Sugarman

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Zach Blank is an entrepreneur, experience designer and technologist based in Portland, Oregon. As the CEO of Straightaway, Zach leads creative teams to think that the most inspired results are inevitable when design and technology conflict.

Zack has spent his career with product and experience designers, strategists, engineers, and creatives. Through these relationships, he has inspired and been inspired to push forward leading technology innovations.

Questions

• Could you share with us a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got to where you are today?
• Explain to us exactly what is Straightaway.
• What opportunities do you see in the logistics market that probably are not existing today, especially in light of the pandemic that we're going through, have you seen that side of the business or that industry really vamped up since COVID? But how have you seen trends in that area? Has technology being applied more? Is there anything new that you think our listeners would benefit from based on your insights?
• What are maybe one to three things that you think are critical for a driver to really deliver an excellent experience?
• What are some tips for building strong and efficient teams? Because I imagine even though the drivers are doing their deliveries, they have to kind of support each other?
• Can you share with us what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even a book that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.
• Could you share with us maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you are really excited about, it could either be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel like they have great products and services, but they lacked the constantly motivated human capital, the people part of it, if were sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business as an entrepreneur yourself?
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you’ll tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track and keep you focused. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Zach’s Journey

Zach shared that like most entrepreneurs, his journey is a roller coaster and full of weird strange turns. And he likes to start back when he was in elementary school. He’s fond of the story of selling beaded necklaces and little things like that in front of his elementary school when he was in maybe the fourth or fifth grade. And that's when it all began. And obviously when you’re eight, nine years old, there's not much planning to what you're doing there. But the bug, what he was realizing was pretty intense.

And that stayed with him, he was always kind of on that hustle. It wasn't necessarily a motivation to make money; it was more maybe better described as a motivation to get reactions out of people. He was a one of those kids who acted out in class and he thrived the reaction from people and so to make something and build something and see people want to pay for that, he got a thrill out of that and a lot of pride.

So, that carried with him until now. A couple other key milestones were building an eCommerce, that was the first eCommerce rock climbing site back in the late 90s he thinks it was called Rock Air. And that was selling rock climbing equipment to rock climbing enthusiasts; he was a competitive rock climber at the time. And that was really spurred on by his dad, who was also an entrepreneur saying, “Hey, there's this thing, the internet that seems to be doing really well. And you seem to know a lot about rock climbing, there's nothing out there, let's do something.”

And that was the first real foray into it beyond the bead endeavour. And then fast forward to today, he runs a company called Straightaway that is really disrupting the logistics industry in a way that nobody else is really paying much attention to and he’s excited to explain a little bit more what he means about that.

What is Straightaway?

Zach stated that today Straightaway is a native iOS and Android application to help delivery drivers primarily be as effective and efficient with their routes. Imagine the Amazon or UPS, USPS, DHL, all of those really big carrier drivers; those people are doing up to 200 sometimes more stops a day. And first of all, that's really hard. It's hard to imagine, think for a second.

Me: When I have to make like 10 stops for the day to get work done, just a drop off and pickup it’s exhausting, much less that times 20 or 200.

Zach agreed and stated that he has never done it. He has done ride alongs with drivers, and the hustle and the tricks and all of these things that are really unimaginable. And now imagine people doing it, they're new to that job and they're looking at these 200 stop days, and maybe they know their city, maybe not, maybe they just moved there. It's near impossible.

And so they build the technology and tools to help them navigate that, that's what they are today. And what they're building currently is infrastructure to support local logistics. And that's something that there hasn't been a ton of investment in yet and something that they're very excited and bullish about.

Opportunities in the Logistics Market and Technology Being Applied

Me: So you are basically as you indicated in the logistics market, what opportunities do you see in the logistics market that probably are not existing today, especially in light of the pandemic that we're going through, have you seen that side of the business or that industry really vamped up since COVID? I'm sure, but how have you seen trends in that area? Has technology being applied more? Is there anything new that you think our listeners would benefit from based on your insights?

Zach shared that they're kind of a dark inflection point right now, there's a lot of disappointing news coming out about the treatment of drivers, it's not necessarily the overt treatment of companies setting out it's more the result. And it's the result of how the drive and demand and a pretty constant supply. So, he thinks it's easy to imagine that COVID has really disrupted and changed the logistics industry and package delivery more than anything else and food delivery is way, way up.

And there's been more delivery drivers, the infrastructure by and large hasn't changed though. So the result is, these drivers are busier than they've ever been before. And that's what they're looking at right now and they're looking at an industry that's really suffering, and one that's craving for change.

So what they're setting out to do, their focus is a little bit different. These other companies, the bottom line has nothing to do with the driver, they need to get packages delivered to customers and that's the objective. They believe that by focusing on the driver and focusing on that experience, and making that as good as it can be, then everybody will win. So the opportunity that exists right now is to instead of treating drivers like a commodity, to create tools and focus on them and empower them to be as effective in their jobs as they can be and that's their mission, and that's what they're going after.

Tips for a Driver to Deliver an Excellent Experience

Me: What are maybe one to three things that you think are critical for a driver to really deliver an excellent experience. Apart from the fact that he has to deliver the package, there's a softer side of it in terms of communicating with the customer, is it that the technology updates the customer as to where the driver is along the way almost like an Uber? Or is it a case where the driver actually makes those telephone calls, which I think is humanly impossible for him to be calling 200 different stops, two to three times throughout the day, that would probably make him go insane. But how can he add the softer side of it to enhance the customer experience so the customer feels that more a part of the process? I'm sure you know if people don't feel in the loop, it's like they don't know what's happening and that's when they get skittish and start to argue and complain.

Zach stated that there are a couple pieces to that. So, backing up a moment before getting into the driver customer interaction. The earlier part of the question, he thinks really talks to on the surface how simple the problem seems. And that's the most powerful tool we can give a driver is to get them to understand where they are, where they're going, and how to get there. And so, it's a mapping problem. And mapping problems are tough, they've gotten easier, and they continue to get easier but they're still tough when you take into account all of the shifting variables throughout the day. And by that he means traffic and road closures and other sorts of missed deliveries and change in deliveries and all those constraints that can change.

So, building the technology that can make sure a driver knows where they're going and how they're getting there. That's kind of the baseline.

And then getting into the interaction between the driver and their customer. You're absolutely right, it's a fine line, you don't want to open up a live line of communication between those two people. And that might seem counterintuitive with customer experience, generally speaking, transparency is a good thing.

In this case, it actually gets into security and safety concerns too, we don't want drivers bombarded with messages when they're driving, just simply, we don't want to distract them period.

The other is a big problem that they face is these drivers go to buildings that have security codes, entrance codes, access codes. When they can't get in the building to deliver the package, now their whole day is backed up, they're standing there, maybe they're trying to call the customer, they're trying to find a safe place to leave it, they don't want it to get stolen, they're trying to do the best thing that they can.

So, how do you build in a layer that can allow that communication? “Hey, I'm trying to get into your building to leave this package, but make sure that that code isn't accessible to bad actors and the wrong people.”

And so, they spend a lot of time thinking about that. Also, the first idea very naive from them was, well, what if we just put in a note system where one driver who gets the access code can leave it as an annotation on that stop for anybody else. Well, now as soon as someone downloads Straightaway, they can basically have a key to the city and they definitely don't want that.

Me: I never thought of it that way. But yes, that's crazy.

Zach shared that he interviewed a USPS driver a couple months ago talking about this problem specifically. And it was fascinating. He told him that, if you look hard enough at most apartment buildings or gated communities, anything that have an access like that, you'd look hard enough, you'll find the code written somewhere, he said, some will like scratch it on rocks, or like put a sharpie kind of underneath it kind of like hidden spots, but within the delivery industry, they know. And it highlights the problem and the security risk. And it's another one of those things they're super interested in solving but it's not easy to solve.

Me: Wow, that's crazy. Technology, then there are so many variables as you just indicated that are out of your direct control. Because as you said, if you indicated to the customer that you would need to have access to the building or the home or the business place in order to have the package delivered and the necessary things were not put in place, it really does push back the experience for other people who are waiting on their packages who may be home, because he or she is left stranded there trying to figure out what do I do with the package? And as a customer, you don't know some of those challenges, and most customers don't really care what you're faced with, they just want their item that they ordered. But the reality is, those are the challenges that the drivers face.

Me: What are some things that they try to do to overcome that? How do they compensate for situations like that, if they can't genuinely leave packages feeling that it's going to be safe? Because the company would now accept liability if something happens to the package if it was left in an unsafe environment?

Zach shared that the simplest thing to do is they just don't leave the package. And they take it back and the customer gets notification that it couldn't be delivered. And every company, he wants to be clear, every company has its own policy, and they don't operate on that level.

They provide the tools to allow drivers to be successful, how they operate their route, and their policies are up to them. But that's kind of the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, it gets left somewhere else where it's not supposed to and then it gets stolen. That’s just package stuff does a huge problem as most listeners know and hopefully haven't experienced, but I imagine many have. And that's what happens.

Tips for Building Strong and Efficient Teams

Me: What are some tips for building strong and efficient teams? Because I imagine even though the drivers are doing their deliveries, they have to kind of support each other. I imagine that maybe they may need to call on their co-worker for assistance, maybe accessing a location that maybe they're more experienced with. How do they ensure that they're really working collaboratively and cooperatively together versus in silos?  Because “Okay, I'm just concerned with my deliveries, my truck, I'm not concerned about anybody else. Because if I help him, then I'm going to get pushed back and that's going affect my pay.” So how do you get them to work cohesively and collaboratively together?

Zach stated that if Yanique doesn't mind, he’s going to take that question and apply it to something else that he knows a little bit more about. Because he hasn't been a delivery driver on a team with years of experience, so he doesn't think he can answer that question with any authority from that perspective. But from the perspective of building technology, and building the tools that they're building for the drivers, he has a lot of experience and he can weigh in a little bit more there and some tricks that his team have employed recently that he found successful.

He considers himself a servant leader and he actually think it's the easier way of leadership, it's the more comfortable way of leadership and maybe that's just for him, but just so that everyone's on the same page, servant leadership is being there to serve your team rather than dictating orders, that's the very oversimplified version of it.

Now, taking that a step further, what he does with his team is he drives empowerment and ownership. So it's sort of like, he likes to use the example of inception. If there are ideas that they're trying to get across and it's his job to paint the vision, and then for the team to figure out and own how it is they're going to get there.

So it's his job, where are they going? And their job, how are they going to get there and then actually get them there.

And so, they break down distinct tasks and everyone on the team is an owner of that and is accountable to that and when they feel like it's their brainchild, they're much more likely and much more invested in, it's much more likely to be successful. And that's kind of a driving thesis that he focuses on a lot with his team.

App, Website or Tool that Zach Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Zach shared that this is a big plug for a partner of theirs. They use Intercom. intercom is a third party platform that enables communication with customers. So it's pretty unique within Straightaway. So they've integrated Intercom technology tool, and it allows live chat between them and all of their drivers. And when he says their drivers, it's a little bit unique, they're not their employees, they actually pay them Straightaway.

Straightaway is a subscription service, they pay them, they are their customers. And so, they have a two minute SLA to respond to anybody. If anyone is having trouble with their route, they can hit chat right in Straightaway and that's all powered by Intercom. And the other thing that that tool allows them to do is send very targeted messages to different people to help them improve their product. So we can do things like, let's send a message to all drivers who've been using Straightaway for 3 months who do on average 150 to 160 stops, do those within 9 hours, and are located in Georgia, for example. They can get very, very targeted and they can send them a message and be like, “Hey, we'd like you to try out this new feature and give us feedback.” For example. So sort of everything that they do around their customer experience is driven through Intercom. And they've been using the platform for two and a half going on three years now and it's just instrumental to their process.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Zach

When asked about books that have an impact, Zach shared that he sort of sped read Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr recently. It's a fantastic book. It's a really quick read. It explains what OKRs are which is a management framework, it stands for Objectives and Key Results and it is a goal setting framework.

And John Doerr, the author of it didn't invent it but he's probably one of the most, if not the most outspoken leaders about it. Andy Grove out at Intel, he invented it.

Anyway, the great part about it is it's all told from the perspective of all of these very, very notable companies that we all know and love, and how they implemented OKRs in their early days to be successful.

And these are companies like Google, which John Doerr was an early investor, and he was the one who brought OKRs to Google when they were still in a garage and got those up and running.

So, Measure What Matters is a fun read just if you're interested in nothing other than early day successful start-up stories, it's sort of fun. And then I think the tools in it are instrumental for building a team that's goal oriented.

He’s in Portland, Oregon, which is where Nike is from so he’s in Nike town. His wife works out there. He spent many years consulting in a previous life out there, he’s fond of the brand and he’s not done yet, but he’s pretty much through Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE which is Phil Knight, the founder’s memoir.

And that again, another fun story about how companies are built. The thing he loves about that book is Nike really started coming up in the early 70s and the stories that Phil tell in there, he could kind of equate to, if you want to be successful in business in the early 70s, all you have to do is lie.

It's a very fun read of the stories and the things that he said and how he stuck his neck out there. And some of the absurd situations and you look at it now it's like, wow, the success that Nike’s had, it's not even about humble beginnings, it's just the balls, the approach and he doesn't think that approach would work these days. And it's just fascinating to him. It's a really fun read.

What Zach is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s working on, Zach shared that it's very hard to choose one. He has so many personal ones coming up and he knows that's not the focus here. The team has been so focused in heads down on building out their fleet platform, which they have a go to market motion starting next month, he’s extremely excited about.

They're a customer obsessed organization, so everything that they build is from the focus of customers and feedback that they've gotten directly from them. So before they ever start designing, building ideating around something, they go and they talk to customers, and they throw out ideas and say, “Hey, will something like this be useful?”

So, they've been having those conversations around their fleet platform for a year now and they've been building for maybe the last 3 months on it, and another month ago before they really start getting it in the hands of their customers. And that's going to accelerate their business tremendously, up until now, they sell and have relationships direct with drivers, and that's fantastic.

And they're always going to focus on the driver but through the fleet platform, they're able to empower even more drivers in that scale, where entire fleets can onboard to Straightaway and use all of their features to not just transform the experience of one driver, but all of their drivers and thus their entire business.

Advice for Business Owners Who Lack the Constant Motivated Human Capital

Zach stated in other ways, “How do you keep your team motivated?”

He shared that it comes down to what he spoke about before, in its ownership. For the people that he works with, they're very, very passionate about what they do and that is often designing interfaces and writing code. And that can be applied to so many different problems.

So it's how do we keep them motivated on this problem, and it comes down to ownership. When people feel personally invested in something, they are going to fall asleep and wake up thinking about that. And that's how he operates anyway. And maybe it's a rosy picture that he thinks others operate that way. But he has put it into practice and he does see the results there.

Where Can We Find Zach Online

Email – [email protected]

Twitter – @zachianblank

LinkedIn – Zachary Blank

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Zach Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Zach stated that that's the hardest question he has gotten. He doesn't have a quote but he has a different tactic. He usually goes to motivational speakers on YouTube and he'll pull up a random clip and he'll sit there and he'll listen or he'll watch it. Some of his favourites, while polarizing, he still thinks he's a great guy is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Me: And Gary's awesome. Gary has his own podcast. Gary has quite a few books out there and he has a ton of free content that if you just need that extra oomph to get going, it will definitely provide that for you.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners

Links

• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Robert Wallace is VP of Growth at Tallwave which works with companies like PayPal, Banner Health, and Lumin Digital on their products and customer experiences. Robert has 20+ years of experience in branding, marketing and communications programs to help drive the company's growth.

Questions

• Could you share with us a little bit about your journey, even though we did read a very short description of where you are now and what you're doing? We always like to ask our guests if they could share with us a little bit about their journey in their own words, and how they got to where they are today.
• Your current organization is a customer experience design company and we are going through a global pandemic, how have you been able to navigate in this space as an organization? And have you found it difficult to get the strategy or the design across to your clients, or even to your own employees to relate to your clients, especially during this environment that we're operating?
• Customer experience design from a product based perspective versus service based perspective, what are maybe one or two things that you think organizations really need to consider to really be above the rest as it relates to customer experience design.
• Could you share with us what's the one app, tool or website that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you share with us what is the one thing that's going on in your life right now - something that you're really excited about, it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read, that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or maybe even one that you read recently, but it really has just stayed with you.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track and get you refocused. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Robert’s Journey

Robert shared that at the moment, he’s based in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his company Tallwave is located. But he’s from Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh and that is where he spent a lot of his formative years before he went to college and graduate school.

And after that, he started his professional career, jumped right into a fast growth company called Airwalk. Airwalk was a head to toe action sports manufacturer, they did everything from skateboarding shoes to head to toe snowboarding equipment, to BMX shoes, etc. And that's where he really got his first taste of what magic it is when a customer base and a brand really merge together and make that emotional bond because Airwalk had that bond at that time and they had seen some pretty meteoric growth as a consequence of that. And when he was there, he ran retail marketing.

So anything that happened at the point of sale, at the retail point of sale, and then he also put his toe in the water, he’s dating himself now but he opened up the Airwalk’s online store, which at the time was not an easy feat and was a very controversial endeavour as well, because this is back in later 90s when eCommerce wasn't as ubiquitous and there was a lot of worry about cannibalization and those type of things. But he ran all of the operations of the online business for Airwalk. And that's really how he sort of backed into to the technology world.

From there, he moved out to Boston and work for a couple startups. One was a very large eCommerce site called FarmandCountry.com where he really started his product and product meant side of his background.

And so, he ran the product there at FarmandCountry.com. And then he took that experience to a startup coming out of MIT called Afanova. They were, how would I call it, they used evolutionary algorithms that came out of MIT and they use that evolutionary algorithms to do high throughput consumer testing for brand packaging, logos, product designs, those type of things.

So think of it as an incredibly efficient, a marketing research and feedback tool. He was there early on and helped commercialize the product and the technology itself, taking it and pointing it at different markets, but the one that was particularly worthwhile at that point was the consumer packaging goods industry. So they sold into Procter and Gamble, Coca Cola, Johnson and Johnson, Conagra, you name it, Nestle, the big CPG companies.

And from there he moved to Arizona and that's when he was early on in Tallwave - they’re a customer experience design company. And he was brought on early on to stand up the services side of the business, which has now grown, that was about 10 years ago. So it has grown to a much larger company where now and like as you mentioned, they work with companies as big as Amex and JP Morgan Chase all the way to well-funded startups and great up and coming companies like Lumin Digital, let's see, Emailage, Algolia, those type of startups that you may have heard of.

What he would say is the common thread in his career, he has done footwear, he has done farm equipment, he has done tech, and he has done crazy technology out of MIT and now he’s in a business that works with all sorts of companies.

But he would say the one common thread is a great brand doesn't really care about what industry you're in, it's about making that kind of emotional connection between the customer and the company itself.

And you do that by having an amazing experience from the beginning, you have a need as a customer all the way through, you bought product, use the product, maybe had to get some customer service from that company, all the way through being a repeat customer.

So thinking about all the touch points in there is a huge part of what excites him about brand experience and customer experience, which he’ll tip his hand in his bias, he thinks those two things are very close to the same thing, if not the same thing. But understanding the customer experience and what its impact can be is what he would say the common thread is through his marketing, branding and product management career so far.

Navigating Through the Customer Experience Design Space

Me: A very fullsome journey that has taken you to different industries and different touch points so you have a very diverse approach as it relates to these different industries. So, you span quite a few industries as you indicated in explaining your journey. I know you said your current organization is a customer experience design company and we are going through a global pandemic, how have you been able to navigate in this space as an organization? And have you found it difficult to get the strategy or the design across to your clients, or even to your own employees to relate to your clients, especially during this environment that we're operating?

Robert shared that they've been very fortunate, and the nature of their work, which is creative designers, marketers, consultants, those type of people, it wasn't a huge stretch for them to work remotely, so they were very fortunate in that regard.

And they were also very fortunate because they had a broad variety of clients and some were impacted more fundamentally than others during the pandemic, so that helped them as well. But they definitely have faced the customer experience situation both from their own standpoint, but also their clients. And if you think about, if you think customer experience broadly, they've almost become more acutely aware of the customer’s experience and the individuals customers experience more acutely than they ever have before because of the pandemic. So, companies have had no choice but to take a long, hard look at how they service and provide value to their customer base. And depending on the industry, of course, you've had to adjust accordingly. But he believes it hits all industries.

So they've seen what has happened in retail, for example, that everything that probably was on the customer experience roadmap so to speak, curb side pickup, buy online, pick up in store, touch less flooring, all of those things were probably on the roadmap already but the pandemic pushed it all forward by 5 years or so.

So, he thinks that's an easy one and a pretty straightforward one. But anytime you've had to think about how your customers are interacting with you, he thinks every company, and almost every person in that company has had to rethink how we do that effectively and how we provide value and where the value actually lies, versus necessarily just in person interactions.

Robert stated that Yanique had mentioned how do they actually deliver some of their work, like he said, it lends itself pretty well to a virtual world. They're able to shift a lot of their workshops online and there are some pretty cool tools that they've been using in order to do that. But he will say that that everybody's itching to have a little bit more human interaction.

Customer Experience Design From a Product Based Perspective Versus Service Based Perspective  

Me: So tell us a little bit about customer experience design from a product based perspective versus service based perspective, could you share with us maybe one or two things that as a company, whether you're a big organization like let's say, a PayPal an Amazon versus a small company, because we do have quite a range of listeners that listen to this podcast, some of them hold very big positions in these large organizations and some of them who run their own business so they wear the hat on product development, marketing, social media, all of the different things. So if we were to look on it from that perspective, what are maybe one or two things that you think they really need to consider to really be above the rest as it relates to customer experience design.

Robert stated that the one thing that he would recommend regardless of whether you're a product company or a service company, and regardless of how big or small your company is, he thinks he would highly recommend that all companies look at and be very diligent and honest about what the actual customer journey is.

That is from the point that the customer realizes they have a need, and every step all the way through purchase, use, service, and repurchase, hopefully. So, every single touch point and then making sure that you understand who those user personas are that would be going through that journey.

And that's actually not demographic, per se at all, it's more behavioural when he says persona. So who are the types of people that are using your products or services, once you have really a good deal of empathy for who those personas are, and what they go through in terms of every step of the process around their customer journey, which may or may not have to do with your company specifically, but what is actually their journey as a customer.

He thinks from there, you're in a great position to see where the opportunities are, the opportunities might be, “Wow, there's a gap in the market in terms of how they are accessing our product and using it.” And in that case, you can do a lot of user experience exploration and redesign and see if you can remap how that looks in order to make the product part of that experience more seamless, easier to use, and generally more delightful for the customer.

Or if you're a services-based business, you may have a look at it and say, “Okay, how are we going to actually support all these interactions with our customers.” And knowing how they interact and the pains they're feeling, you can start to tailor what services you might provide to them, how you might provide to them, etc. So, speaking for Tallwave even so, he would say that the customer journey is the core component, the starting point he would say for any kind of company product or service.

App, Website or Tool that Robert Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Him Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Robert shared that there are a few that their company uses. But he’ll mention two and he would say that they're less do or die for him personally, but certainly for customer experience type work and the kind of work that their team does so well.

The first one is InVision, which is a design tool to make high fidelity mock ups and present them and interact with them with their clients. So they do a tonne of work in software and mobile app development and then they also do some web work as well and laying those out in InVision and then being able to show something that's high fidelity and in some cases even clickable to their clients and to even perhaps some validation work really helps them understand if they're on the right track and making sure that they're building a product that meets the market need.

The other one that he would say has really become pretty invaluable this year is a company called Miro. And that company, their tool allows them to do a whole plethora of interactive activities, from whiteboarding sessions to mind mapping to post it note work, where they put up business model canvases and interact. But it allows everybody to interact in the tool simultaneously as if they were in the room together doing that with physical post it notes and whiteboards like they used to pre pandemic.

So, every time he uses Miro, he’s very impressed with how well they've taken into consideration the users of that tool and the people that use whiteboards and workshopping and those types of things so often, like a lot of agency folks, design folks, consulting folks, that's a great example of a company that has really listened to who the personas are, what behaviour do they take place in, and then what is the journey that we go through to implement that, and they've built that into the product. So, he thinks they're actually a good example of what he was describing before.

What Robert is Really Excited About Now!

Robert shared that on a personal level, the more and more of the world keeps getting vaccinated, and he’s halfway home, meaning he got one of the two shots, so he'll soon be fully vaccinated and that is a relief, he’s sure to everybody that gets it for themselves and their loved one. So the things that come with that are more time and more quality time with family and friends. And so, that's probably his number one personal item.

On a professional level, he thinks it is when we all go through times like this, and the pandemic was unlike any other. He thinks when we come out of the other side, we've all transformed a little bit and he’s excited by what that transformation, as painful as it might have been, that transformation has opened up a lot of opportunities for all of us, especially in the business world.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Robert

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Robert shared that one he has read about 4 years ago, 5 years ago maybe, it's called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. And he found it to be very useful and worthwhile for both his personal and professional life and it's really about identifying what really is adding value to the time that you're spending on something and when to say no, and why and being very deliberate about that. And in very simple terms, because he thinks most of us, at least at some point struggle with saying no, and being a little overburdened, but what really is important now is something that Essentialism definitely has taught him. So that's sort of a both a professional book.

And then he’s also reading a book that he’s finding fascinating, it's called Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke as in gambling bets, and it's written by a former professional poker player. And it's not at all about poker, it is about decision making, processes and using the mind-set that a professional poker player or gambler that they use and the processes they use in order to evaluate what they're doing. There's a lot of them that are very cool ways to think about the decision making we have to do in our professional lives day to day.

Where Can We Find Robert Online

Website – www.tallwave.com

LinkedIn – wallacera

Twitter - @Tallwave

Instagram - @tallwave

LinkedIn - Tallwave

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Robert Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Robert shared that it's a little long can I read it. It’s called The Man in the Arena by Teddy Roosevelt, one of their former Presidents. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners

Links

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Chad Neufeld is the Director of Marketing at Chaordix (kay-or-dix), a Canadian online community platform. He works with global brands like LEGO, Bosch, HPE, Stihl and Decathlon to make community central to their customer connection. Chad also founded a seasonal D2C company called Small City Stockings to create curated stocking stuffer packages (and so he could add the title Head Elf to his LinkedIn). When he's not at work, he's probably writing a sci-fi novel or trying to get better at volleyball.

Questions

• Could you share a little bit about your journey in your own words for us? How it is that you got to where you are today?
• The idea of having a community customer connection, could you explain to our listeners what that's all about?
• So tell us a little bit about Chaordix, what you do in terms of marketing and product development, and how has it been since we've been going through a global pandemic.
• What kinds of companies do you think benefit primarily from this type of community involvement? Do you think this could be applicable, because I know LEGO is a kids company but do you think this type of engagement could be applicable to any type of organization?
• Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, something that you're either working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that haven't had the biggest impact on you? Maybe a book you read a very long time ago, or it could be a book you read recently, but it's definitely had an impact on you.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you focused and get you back on track. 

Highlights

Chad’s Journey

Chad shared that he came out of University, and he started in the world of advertising. And so, he jumped into kind of his first role was managing digital projects like complex website development and honestly, he had never built a website before in his life. But he was coming out of school and he thought that he knew more than he actually did.

And so, that was kind of the first six months of his career was thinking that he knew what he was doing. And then he got his six month review, and found out that the people that he worked with kind of saw through that and didn't think that he was very good at his job, which is absolutely 100% true. He didn't know what he was doing but he pretended that he was and coming out of College, he was kind of a big fish in a small pond when you're coming out of University and then you start working with professionals and kind of top performers. And so, he learned really, really quickly that he didn't know what he was doing.

And so, that kind of set him on a path of learning. And so in the next kind of 4 years of working in the agency, in the ad agency world, he tried to get much better at understanding the objectives of the people that he was working with and build relationships, and be much more humble and recognize how much he kind of had to learn.

So he did 4 years on the agency side while he was working for marketing agencies, he was also starting to experiment with some stuff on the side, so doing some freelance work with friends, he sat on the board for a local theatre group here in town.

And started a small kind of side hustle with some friends called Small City Stockings, as mentioned and they launched. Basically it was their first attempt at eCommerce and the 3 of them and so they tried to set up this business building stocking stuffer packages. And so, the idea was people hate shopping for stocking stuffers, it's like a Christmas Eve kind of thing and you're grabbing a bunch of plastic garbage and throwing it into a stocking and everybody's kind of disappointed.

What if there was curated stocking stuffer packages filled with kind of local goods. And so, they started that as well and that ran for 2 years and was incredibly fun.

And he also joined Chaordix, which as mentioned is an online community platform here in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And he guessed that kind of gets them to here where he is right now at Chaordix, he leads product marketing, brand marketing and growth and customer marketing as well.

Having a Community Customer Connection

Me: So I think one of the things that intrigued me about dealing or having an interaction with you for this podcast was the idea of having a community customer connection. Could you explain to our listeners what that's all about? Because I was really, really intrigued when that was put forward to us?

Chad shared that Community is this term that he personally think is really overused in marketing and in customer experience and because oftentimes when somebody says community, what they really mean is audience or what they really mean as list like, “Join our customer community,” but really, they're like, sign up, get emails that tell you when we have a discount, and that's not a community.

If you think about community, it's a bunch of people coming together to do something special, or it's a local group. So, it's people that live around you, or it's people who have a similar interest to you that are trying to get better at something or learn more, or engage with other people with similar interests.

And so, their community platform allows brands to launch their own customer communities. And so, you can think about it, he likes to describe it kind of community, there's two approaches to community building so you can either kind of go to where everybody is and so Yanique has a Facebook group, for example, with customer experience professionals, and that's on Facebook. And so that's kind of that first approach. So you're going to where everybody is, you're setting up a community that's part of Facebook, that's on Facebook, that's hosted by Facebook, that's one approach.

The other approach is building something special that you own that people come to. And so it's a bit like kind of Amazon versus Shopify, you can sell your products through Amazon and that's great because Amazon has this huge customer base. But you also have to deal with kind of all the baggage that's associated with the Amazon brand, and you have to play by their rules.

Or you can build your kind of own online store using Shopify. And so you get to use world class technology, but you get to make your own rules. And so, they're kind of like a Shopify for building customer community.

So you can kind of think about it as your own private Facebook for your brand and what it allows you to do is connect with your customers in a space you own and control, you can give them fun and interesting things to do, communicate with them, give them kind of a peek behind the scenes, give them insider access, allow them to connect with influencers and kind of leaders within your organization, help you create new products, answer questions and stuff like that.

Me: That's pretty cool. It's just a better way of really getting to know your customers on a deeper level, and then on a platform that you own. So you have a little bit more leverage to do what you want. And of course, you own the content, or you own the whole platform, so you can manage it better.

Chad agreed and stated that you get all that data as well. So you would know how much you're able to get from Facebook, because you run a community on Facebook. But what you're able to do when you own the community is you can really get to know and understand those individuals, build personas because you have you have all that data.

Marketing and Product Development at Chaordix During the Pandemic  

Me: So tell us a little bit about Chaordix, what you do in terms of marketing and product development, and how has it been since we've been going through a global pandemic, my sister lives in Canada, and she's constantly complaining, “Oh, they're locking us down again.”

Whereabouts does she live?

Me: I think she lives in Toronto. Don't quote me. The last time I went to Canada was when I was 12 years old and I just turned 40 what, two weeks ago, so I'm not too familiar with the burroughs that's what you guys refer to them as right burroughs.

Chad stated that maybe not out west here. So he’s in Calgary. So it's kind of the other end of the country from Toronto. It's snowing right now as he looks out the window. But it has been seasonally nice, they we had a very mild winter up here outside of a couple of weeks where it was -40, which was hard to live through. But so when it comes to marketing, they sell to a large enterprise brands, their largest customers LEGO. So they host the LEGO IDEAS community. And there are 1.7 million members of that community hosted on their platform. And they're a little bit of an outlier; they're a massive household name. They also work with brands like Rustoleum, and Ford and Procter and Gamble, and Bosch.

And so they're really trying to get in front of kind of global leaders in customer engagement and marketing and customer experience. And those folks are honestly, they're not easy people to market to because they're extremely busy, they're very discerning when it comes to what they're looking for, they plan far out when you're selling into organizations like that, you have to expect that it's going to take six months to a year to even just go through the procurement process.

And so, what it requires on their part, when it comes to marketing is ensuring that they are kind of stewarding people through that whole process, educating them about community because it's relatively new still, not very many organizations recognize that the tools exist on the market to allow them to build really vibrant communities. Oftentimes, communities are seen as kind of their one dimensional, like there's just forums for answering questions like, if he can't get his dryer to work, he'll go on the LG forum and ask a question, and hopefully somebody will be able to answer it. And community can be so much more than that.

And so, marketing a lot of times for them is really about thought leadership, and helping people understand the power of community. And so, it involves a lot of writing and a lot of making videos and a lot of webinars and stuff like that.

What Type of Organization Benefits From This Type of Community Involvement

Chad shared that he thinks that it would be much harder to think of a type of organization that wouldn't benefit from building a relationship with their customers. He thinks that once people wade into community, once people experience what it's like to have a direct connection with their customers just 24/7, it's something that people don't give up because they go, “Hey, my executive, my boss's boss, asked a question of my boss, who said, hey, how do I answer this question.”

And you can go to the community, and within less than 24 hours you can have hundreds of responses from engaged users of your product. And that's something that just really is impossible in a scalable way without a community. And so, if you're an individual running a yoga studio, building a connection that is more than just an email list where people can engage with one another, can encourage one another and kind of build relationships with one another around your brand, that is extremely valuable because it locks people into that relationship, it helps them feel better about your brand, it helps them expand their knowledge.

And that scales all the way up to a brand like LEGO and although they are a kid's brand, the LEGO IDEAS community is actually for adults. And so there are 1.7 million adults who are building new LEGO sets and so LEGO is crowdsourcing ideas for new LEGO sets from the people who actually use those. And so you can see that most brands who build something for customers and those customers can be business people, like they can be B2B brands, or it can be consumers. Either way, having that direct connection to your customers is invaluable.

App, Website or Tool that Chad Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Him Business

When asked about online resource, Chad shared that for him it's Notion. Notion’s a basically a project or it's kind of like Evernote. He thinks a lot of people are starting to use it. It's just a visual way to kind of build and organize information. And so, when he’s doing his planning and writing, he’s doing it in a way that he can organize and so Notion’s a super fun way to do that. So personally, that's been kind of his secret weapon for the last year.

What Chad is Really Excited About Now!

Chad shared that they're launching a new website at Chaordix and that's something that is really exciting. It's a project as he mentioned earlier in his career, he built websites and so it's really fun to build one for a brand that you really care about and love and so as part of that experience, he gets to do a lot of writing and thinking about how to explain what they do and the value they bring into the world to somebody who might have never heard about them or has no idea how much impact community can have. And so that's something that he’s doing right now for work that he loves.

And then on the personal side, he’s working on a Sci-Fi novel, and he’s writing a pilot for a TV show with his wife, and so those are like those fun things. They will probably never see the light of day, but it's something to do during COVID and quarantine that gets the creative juices flowing.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Chad

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Chad shared that one of his favourite books that he’s ever read is called The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer. So Amanda Palmer did a TED talk that is wonderful and she was one of the first artists to actually crowdsource, using Kickstarter, she crowdsourced an album. And he thinks she raised a lot of money on Kickstarter.

And she's a really wonderful person and her book is all about being authentic and being emotionally open and realizing that it's better to just ask for help or ask for support, then pretend you have it all together. And there was one thing that he noted in that book that he thought really, really stuck with him over the years.

And she said that everyone out there is winging it to some extent, the professionals know they're winging it, and the amateurs pretend they're not. And that really stuck with him because every day he’s listening to podcasts, even people on this podcast, he’s going, “Man, there's no way I could manage a workforce of 50,000 people,” for example. That's crazy.

But he thinks if you think about it that way, and go, every one of us is just trying to make sure that by the end of the day we've kind of held it all together. And sometimes it's just pure luck and when you realize that he thinks it helps you not feel so small and incapable of kind of managing those big things.

Where Can We Find Chad Online

Website – www.chaordix.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Chad Uses

When asked about a quote or saying to he tends to revert to, Chad shared that he does, this one is a tiny bit gendered. But it's from Seneca and he was very old school.

So it's, “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no winds are favourable.”

And to him, that just goes to show like you need to have a vision in your mind for where you want to get to and once you've got that vision, it allows you to make a plan. And having a vision and a plan, he thinks leads to conviction and once you've got that conviction, and you can share that with the people around you, he thinks it's much easier to lead a group to the right destination. So, that's something that he read a while ago, that's really stuck with him.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

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Links

• The Art of Asking: How I Learn to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Elias Guerra is the Founder and CEO of Popwallet, a Mobile Wallet Customer Experience platform working with some of the most innovative brands in the world to deliver contactless customer experiences to people through mobile wallets like Apple Wallet and Google Pay. These experiences include dynamic coupons and offers, rebates, loyalty and gift cards, tickets and other lightweight branded content. Prior to founding Popwallet, he spent his career doing product and market development for Yahoo (twice), Flurry, IBM, and Thomson Reuters. Elias has an MBA from USC and a BA from Pepperdine University.

Questions

• How would you describe your journey? How is it that you've got to where you are today? And what has that been like for you?
• What if you're trying to integrate this into a culture or a country, or a market where it is that the persons there are very sceptical? Because they don't understand how the technology works, they're not necessarily quick to jump on board. How do you get those customers to feel as comfortable using those methods of payment as they would if they were using their credit card or even cash? How do you get into that state?
• Maybe could you share with us one or two things that you think trends that maybe will continue or new emerging things that you think will come about in the next maybe two to three years, based on where we're at?
• Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
• Could you also share with us maybe what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you - it could be a book that you read recently, or even a book that you read a very long time ago, but it still has had a great impact on you.
• Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Do you have to be a mobile brand in order to have a contactless customer experience?
• Where can listeners find you online if they wanted to connect with you further?
• Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote; it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocus. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Elias’ Journey

Elias shared that he started the Popwallet about 5 years ago along with a co-founder, CTO, Wes Biggs. Popwallet is a mobile wallet, marketing automation and customer experience management platform, that's really just a long way of saying that they provide software tools for companies to engage their consumers through mobile wallets like Apple Wallet and Google Pay. But Popwallet is a technology company and ironically, his own journey did not start in technology, he kind of fell into it at a young age.

When he went to university, Pepperdine, he studied history and languages and liberal arts. And as a child, he really wanted to be a lawyer. He thought that that's what he wanted to be. And his first job out of undergraduate school, his whole plan was to work in a law firm, study for the L SATs and then start law school the following year. And after working in that environment, just realized and seen firsthand what that work really was like, realizing “I don't think this is for me.”

And so, as a 22 year old was confronted with this watershed moment and somebody at the firm actually connected him to a consulting firm, the firm that did litigation consulting. And so, he started with consulting shortly thereafter, but in the technology space and learning technology as he went along. And not having studied that in school, but being familiar with how some of these things work, he was able to take classes at night, things like data communications, and programming and database management, and ultimately learn how technology works and did that for a few years, went to business school, came out of business school, really on the other side.

So from that point, less about building technology, more about selling technology, and doing partnerships and sales and business development for companies like IBM, and then Yahoo. And ultimately, about a decade ago, started getting into the mobile space and being really fascinated by mobile advertising technology and mobile marketing technology and he was fortunate to work for a company that Yahoo acquired a mobile app analytics company that was called Flurry and he worked for Yahoo before Flurry, and then left Yahoo to join Flurry, worked there for 2 years. And then Yahoo acquired them and so went back to Yahoo as part of this acquisition. But it was really that experience with this mobile app analytics company and seeing a lot of data around consumer behaviour in this new paradigm that was mobile. Think about the past decade is more and more people using smartphones, and apps proliferated, and smartphones proliferated and seeing what people were doing on their phones, and just recognizing an opportunity and market to make those user experiences better and to make it better for the brands they're trying to reach those users. And that's when they saw the middle part of the last decade mobile wallets really around 2015 become more prominent in that arena, and they just saw business opportunity there. So, that's a little bit about his own journey, how he got to starting Popwallet about 5 years ago.

Integrating of Contactless Customer Experience

Me: So, your company focuses a lot on integration of contactless customer experiences with these mobile pay platforms. If you're in a culture, because like, in Jamaica, people are still very skeptical. I travelled to the US quite often and my sister lives in Canada. And I see people use the Apple Pay and Google Pay and it's very easy, they've clearly adapted to the technology really well, and they trust it. But what if you're trying to integrate this into a culture or a country, or a market where it is that the persons there are very skeptical? Because they don't understand how the technology works, they're not necessarily quick to jump on board. How do you get those customers to feel as comfortable using those methods of payment as they would if they were using their credit card or even cash? How do you get into that state?

Elias shared that it can be difficult to break through initially and there often are concerns. It's ironic, because there are often concerns around security using a mobile wallet to pay for something, or to transact and not really knowing where your data is going.

The irony is that it's actually far more secure, the way that the data is encrypted and transmitted, is far more secure than say, certainly carrying paper cash or even a credit card. The plastic credit cards, certainly with the magstripes before now those have largely have been replaced by chips is more secure.

But an easy way to think about the difference in security is, let's say I hand you my credit card, and you hand me your phone, who is more likely to be able to go out and run up some purchases, some fraudulent purchases, the person with the credit card or the cash, this paper or plastic, they can use that, they can spend that at least until that credit card is cancelled.

With your phone, there's this layer of security where you have to be able to authenticate, you have to be able to get into the phone into the first place and then you often have to authenticate again to do your transaction. And when that transaction occurs, it is done in a safe and encrypted manner, but that's a lot for an individual to really think about, “Whoa, is this that much safer.” But once we really start using it, where we find the key is, it's just that convenience, it's just easier. And rather than carrying around your paper or plastic, these physical objects, more and more people globally, they just have their smartphones with them at all times.

And so if you're in the store, and you need to buy something, or you're going somewhere and you need to access something, it's likely that your phone is with you, on your person within arm's reach and you can easily use it to make that transaction.

And that's where they see on a really large scale that shift in consumer behaviour where that smartphone, it used to be that it's very much about these heads down immersive experiences where you're scrolling your social feed, and you're reading your news and that still happens by and large, these content consumption experiences, but increasingly, that phone, that smartphone is becoming the way that people interact with the world around them and it becomes that interface. To think about if you're buying your groceries in a store or you mentioned travelling if you're getting on a flight, not that we're doing a lot of flying these days.

But back when we used to get on airplanes more often, you're saving your boarding pass to your mobile wallet and you're going to a theatre, a movie theatre and saving your ticket, these types of experiences, they're just easier to do as people use that smartphone to interact with the world around them. So in these new markets, they find this usually convenience and once people start using it and doing it, it really takes off from there.

To add one more note on that that is actually shifted a bit more recently where safety has become paramount in the minds of consumers, obviously, with the pandemic, this idea of being in a store and touching things, and handing a card to somebody or handing paper to somebody, that consumer consciousness around remaining safe during their shopping experiences is another driver of these contactless transactions, your mobile wallets.

Safety and Customer Experience During the Pandemic  

Me: So based on your experience and the fact that you guys are clearly pioneers in this space, and you're doing really, really well. Maybe could you share with us one or two things that you think trends that maybe will continue or new emerging things that you think will come about in the next maybe two to three years, based on where we're at? Because I know definitely since the pandemic globally, safety, where as safety, it may not have been as important to a business when it relates to customer experience; it is now something that you have to integrate into your customer experience strategy.

How are we going to let our customers feel safe in this environment?

And some companies definitely, I think integrated it before COVID. But it's become even more prevalent now as you mentioned before, I would definitely prefer to take out my phone and do a tap then have to go into my wallet and hand you my card and you touch it, I don't know where your hands were or any form of money transaction. So do you see any emerging trends coming about?

Elias shared that precisely what they're talking about, it's critical. If you want to deliver that outstanding customer experience, what does your customer want, the person coming into your store or attending your event, they want to engage with you as a brand or as a store, the shopper in a way that feels good to them, in a way that in this scenario is safe and this idea of touching things.

So, this trend towards contactless and enabling people to go about their daily lives out in the real world without having to touch anything more than they have to, is this unnecessary contact is this idea of if I'm standing at a checkout line, do I really have to pull out my plastic loyalty card and hand it to the checkout person and have them scan and then hand cash or can I do this from about 10 centimetres away by holding my phone near the payment terminal and transacting that way.

And that's a more delightful experience for the customer and that's something that can be enabled and delivered. And that's something that they're seeing increasingly, the customers want.

And now we talked about shopping but really anything, the trend that we see really developing and continuing into the future is that what he mentioned earlier, this idea of his smartphone as an interface to the world around him, so whatever he’s trying to access.

They've seen implementations around cars, automobiles, there are certain car manufacturers where you can start your car using your mobile wallet. Student IDs, and if you're accessing your dorm room using your mobile wallet to unlock that door or access your meal plan. Of course, things like tickets for transportation here in New York City, all of the subway stations now you can just tap your phone, tap your mobile wallet, and easily access and get on the train. So, really anything that you need to access that requires some type of authentication as an individual, they see more and more of those use cases developing over the couple of years and even related to the pandemic, this idea of getting vaccinated and having your vaccine passport right now and even his.

Today, he has a paper vaccination card. But now we see different government authorities enabling that to be mobilized and in some instances saved into a mobile wallet. So if you want to go somewhere and prove that you've been vaccinated, we're talking about how the world has changed so rapidly, you'll be able to use your mobile wallet for that. So we definitely see that trend continuing in the coming years.

How Elias Stay Motivated

When asked how he stays motivated, Elias shared that there's a feedback loop. He does what he can to motivate his team, the people that he works with, they do the same for him. It's really energizing when they see products that are built capabilities that are added that they can then deliver to a customer and their own customers, the companies that they work with.

They're a B2B to C platform, so they'll work with brands like Nestle and Mars or DSW and David's Bridal, different brands and retailers. But they'll provide them technology that they can then go use to engage their customers in this safe and contactless way through mobile wallets. And so he gets motivated when he sees something that they've enabled out in the wild, where he can save a Nestle, DiGiorno offering to his mobile wallet and go use it in a store, he thinks that's fantastic. Or if he receives a Mars Snickers gift card and that he can save into his mobile wallet and go see it.

And so, that gets their team excited and then their excitement excites him. And so, it's this feedback loop and reinforcement. And so, he thinks it's a matter of moving forward every day, and benefiting frankly from some tailwinds in the market that really helped and they had to anticipate this several years ago. It wasn't as obvious when they started as it's become obvious now this need for these mobile wallet types of interactions. But it's all very motivating and when they see it come together out in market. 

App, Website or Tool that Elias Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Him Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in your business, Elias shared that that's a tough question, because he a voracious consumer of content, he access quite a bit. He will say that interestingly, something that he looks at a lot is, for him and maybe it's not as obvious. But something like the New York Times where it's more about, what are people doing?

How are humans behaving?

What's happening in different markets, different global markets?

How is behaviour changing?

And what are those stories that are representing this human behavioural change?

So trying to understand really what's happening in the world? And then, of course, that's the 30,000 foot view.

How do we then apply it to ground level that says, well, based on these behaviours, based on these trends or these things that are happening, here's what we can build, and then sell and then service and market to help capitalize on what's happening in the world around us. So he does try and of course, he reads industry trade and technology, journals, things of that nature, pretty constantly, but just trying to remove yourself from that to a degree and just understand what's happening in the world around he think really helps their business quite a bit.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Elias

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Elias shared that he does enjoy reading; he thinks it's something he’s trying to work in his own life is reading more fiction, he tend to read a lot of nonfiction. But a book he just finished a couple of weeks ago is called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is written by this author Yuval Harari, he wrote a while back, he wrote Sapiens, which is human history, but condensed within 300 pages, which is quite a monumental task. And then he wrote the follow up to that is Homo Deus, which is thinking about how does mankind, humankind evolve in the years to come with the technologies like AI and robotics and what does the future look like.

In 21 Lessons for the 21st century, he thought it was appropriate, because as we entered 2021 thinking about these different topics, and it looks at big topics and each chapter is broken out by a topic that he'll cover in great detail. So just again, to his earlier point, he’s reading the New York Times it just gives us other perspective on what's happening in the world, these things around globalization and politics and nationalism and liberalism and how all these things interplay.

And so, he'll read a book like that and he'll think about, “Okay, how does this apply to our mobile wallet, marketing automation and customer experience management platform.” So, trying to tie those things back to their business as he can, but that was a great book that he recently read, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

What Elias is Really Excited About Now!

Elias shared that Popwallet, having started 5 years ago, they're seeing good growth and momentum but they're still a startup. And so, they're still in that growth stage and seeing these shifting trends and their ability to build and deliver on it, he thinks that gets him excited every day. So, that's probably what consumes the bulk of his time is just thinking and it's really taking that step that they took and going from zero to one, creating something out of nothing that is of value and then thinking, “Well, how do we go to those next levels that from 1 to 10?” And that's really what they're focused on now, is how do they scale that? He will say, Yanique asked for one thing but he’s going to say 2 things.

So, also just being a father, he has a 9-year-old daughter, her name is Gwen, she's absolutely wonderful, she is the apple of his eye. And so, when he’s not focused on Popwallet, she's his primary focus and what kinds of things can they do. And it's exciting here in New York City, as people are getting vaccinated, the weather's getting nicer, there's this sense of vibrancy and life things coming back and so experiencing a lot of that, not only himself but through her eyes as they try and reintegrate into the world as things open up more since they've been close. It’s been a difficult year for so many this past year, but there's optimistic signs going forward and he’s very encouraged by that.

Mobile Brand and Contactless Customer Experience

Me: So, we spoke a lot about Popwallet, we spoke about why it's important to have this contactless customer experience. One of the things that popped into my mind while you were speaking is, like with the Mobile Wallets, they have the power to drive, not just commerce, but also loyalty and affinity for all kinds of brands. So what I wanted to know was how is it that as a mobile brand or do you have to be a mobile brand in order to have a contactless customer experience?

Elias stated that not necessarily, that tends to be their sweet spot where they work the most. And so, it's a brand that can be a brand for a product like consumer packaged goods, like, again, think of Snickers or DiGiorno Pizza, or it can be a store, they work a lot with actual retailers.

The best use case for mobile wallet usage, is when you're a product that's sold in physical stores, or if your store yourself, it's less effective when it comes to eCommerce. And of course, eCommerce more and more people buying things online.

Vast majority of purchases are still made in store and stores aren't going away, that environment is shifting and changing, but they're not going away. And so they've worked with brands primarily to engage shoppers in this safe and contactless way and the idea and how it drives affinity and loyalty is, can I just make it easy and convenient and safe for the shopper?

Can I delight them when they come into my store?

Or when they buy my product, can I reward them?

Can I understand what they're interested in and relate to them in a way that's personal, and that that shopper responds to?

And so, they are enabling technology, they're not a panacea that solves world hunger and all these problems. But for a brand that wants to engage consumers in a meaningful way on their mobile devices, they can provide them pretty interesting and robust tools to do that. And if you make a shopper happy, if you go into a store, and you have a good experience, you're more likely to come back. If you buy a product, and that was a delightful experience and maybe you get rewarded for your loyalty. And they can make it easy to deliver those rewards all through the mobile wallet, then you're more likely to remain loyal to that brand. And so it's really about enabling those behaviours.

Now, of course, mobile wallets, the purview is much larger than that. Again, it's this idea of using the phone to interact with the world around so there's a lot more that can be done with it. But working with brands and retailers, that's primarily where they've been focused thus far.

Me: So that definitely puts into perspective, who it is that it's this technology is best suited for. And then, depending on where the listener is at in their business line, they can identify if this would be something that they would definitely benefit from and how it is that it will definitely integrate to help, as you said, have their customers have a more delightful experience. Because I mean, we all want to have experiences that when we think about it, we say, “Hmm, I'll do it again.” And I mean, when you think about your customer experiences, how many of those would you really want to repeat over and over again?

Elias stated that customers; and they really appreciate being rewarded for their loyalty and that's something that can be made easy through the mobile wallet. And so an example, when they think about the use cases that are supported, that their clients deliver through mobile wallets is for things that people want, it is things like coupons. Who doesn't like to save a couple bucks when they're making a purchase or loyalty? If he’s buying the same brand, or shopping at the same store, you're a customer, hey, show me some love.

Give him a little kickback, or give him some points or some other reward. And so they can make it easy for the customer to earn these rewards, to redeem their offers, but do so in the same way that gives the brand or that store visibility into that customer and the ability to directly interact with them through that mobile wallet, through that coupon that they save into the mobile wallet, or that gift card that they use, or that ticket to the event. Then that, their role as a technology provider makes it better for the customers, it makes it better for the brands. And if they can just bridge those two things, and he thinks they're on to something.

Where Can We Find Elias Online

Website – www.popwallet.com

LinkedIn – Elias Guerra

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Elias Uses

When asked if he has a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Elias stated that absolutely and it's funny because this came up last year reading a book with his daughter. The book is called WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game and is written by Abby Wambach who's a great US women's soccer player. And it's a very inspiring book. And it's wonderful reading with his then 8 year old daughter, but there's a quote in this book and the quote is, “A girl who never gives up can never fail.”

And he was reading this with his daughter and it just resonated. A girl who never gives up can never fail. And it's something that he tries and teaches her as she grows and empowering her to know that if she doesn't quit, that she can succeed, that she can achieve her objectives. But also, he applies that to their own business. They're still a startup as he mentioned, they're still small, they're growing, and they’re doing some good things and as long as they don't give up, as long as they keep moving forward, they're going to be successful, they're not going to fail. And so, when he read that last year really resonated and it is something that he does repeat to himself and those around him often.

Me: And that came from my children's book.

Elias shared that it's actually not a children's book, he read it to a child. It's child friendly. It was written by Abby Wambach who's one of the great US American women's soccer players in history. It's just a very inspiring book and it's a lot about female empowerment and just wonderful lessons for his young daughter, so he read it with her.

Me: Amazing. That's a good message for her to learn. It's good for her to learn it at a very early age as well.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners

Links

• 21 Lessons for the 21 Century by Yuval Harari

• WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Megan Gilhooly, as VP Customer Experience at Zoomin Software, Megan has made it her mission to change how organizations think about product content. Prior to this role, Megan spent two decades managing content teams, driving content strategy, and delivering stellar information experiences at company like Amazon, Ping Identity, and INVIDI Technologies.

Her experience includes content for Support, Sales, Product, and Marketing. As a former online retail business owner and Certified Scrum Master, Megan brings a unique perspective to managing information development and content strategy. She has a BA in Speech Communication, a Ms in Journalism, an Ms in Strategic Management, and a Masters Certificate in Technical Communication.

Questions

• Could you share Megan, with us a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got to where you are today?
• What's going to make me stop on your post or your video, or your content to partake in whatever it is that you're sharing. There's just so much information, you're bombarded with daily from all the different social media platforms plus emails that people are sending you. How do you navigate through that? What would you recommend?
• How can organizations put marketing and customer experience together to support each other in the best way possible?
• If you are a company and you wanted to, let's say replicate the Netflix experience? How can other organizations utilize this model in their own businesses?
• Could you share with us what's the one online tool, resource, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a book that you read recently, or maybe a book you read a very long time ago, but it still is having a great impact on you.
• Could you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Could you share with us maybe a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote, because it will help to refocus you or get you back on track if for whatever reason you feel de-motivated or derailed?

Highlights

Megan’s Journey

Megan shared that she has always been in content of one form or another. She started her career in journalism and then very quickly moved into Technical Communications. So when she really was at the beginning of her career, she spent a lot of time writing very large books that told people how to use technical software or other technical products.

And she has kind of grown up through there, she has gone back and forth with some marketing, she calls herself a bit of a closet marketer because she was never fully in marketing, but she always did marketing. The one thing that she really recognized throughout her entire career is that product content really is the best source of marketing for customers.

Customers need to have content that's useful, content that's understandable, they don't like marketing fluff. So the marketing fluff of the 80s won't pass today. And so, she has come into sort of this marketing world in that way. She actually implemented Zoomin software twice in her career. And so, after she went to Amazon for a little bit and led global content teams there, she was looking for a new and exciting challenge. And Zoomin was growing. And so, she actually came on board as the VP of Customer Experience at Zoomin because she knows the product, she knows the industry and she is very quickly learning the role of VP of Customer Experience.

Using Content to Capture Your Customers’ Attention Through the Different Social Media Platforms

Me: So you spoke a lot about product content. Content, that is such a powerful word it encapsulates so many different things. Just thinking about my phone and the amount of information that it pushes out daily.

How do you know what content is going to capture the persons that you are trying to get their attention?

Because what is going to make me stop, I was watching this LinkedIn video a few months and the young lady on it has this thing called a scrollstop or a thumbstop, I don't remember what was the actual ring line that she had to it. But basically what's going to make me stop on your post or your video, or your content to partake in whatever it is that you're sharing.

There's just so much information, you're bombarded with daily from all the different social media platforms plus emails that people are sending you. How do you navigate through that?

What would you recommend?

Megan stated that it's a really good question, she would see technical product content being a little lower in the funnel, it might not be the first thing you send to a customer.

Instead, it's a place you send prospects to do their own homework. So if you think about the way that people buy today, people don't buy because a salesperson calls them necessarily, certainly the salesperson is very important in the process. But a lot of times, these prospects will do 80% of their homework before even contacting the sales team.

And so, the product content is the stuff they'll look at to see how your product works exactly, what it is compatible with, they might look up what your support org does to support the product, how well you can self serve.

And if they feel like they can self serve by getting their answers immediately, then they're going to have a better experience and a better impression of your company. So she thinks product content really does come a little further down the funnel. But she will say that one of the companies that she used to work with, they brought on Zoomin and after she left, she heard from somebody who was at the company, that the CEO actually said, “Product content is the new marketing.”

And she thinks that's such a powerful phrase, because it really is, marketers are trying to create useful information that will engage customers. And you know what, it really comes down to, they want to know what your product does. So that's where she thinks it falls into marketing.

Using Marketing and Customer Experience Together to Support Each Other  

Me: Tell us a little bit about how it is you see marketing and customer experience playing a more supportive role for each other. Because over the years, marketing has always been a separate part of an organization than customer experience or customer service.

As a matter of fact, I think maybe it's probably in the last 10 years that you actually have organizations segmenting customer service and customer experience, because they realize the importance of it.

As we move forward, especially coming out of this pandemic, how is it that you think organizations can really marry those two departments together in a very symbiotic way?

Because at the end of the day, yes, marketing is to get the customer but at the same time, all organizations want customer retention and loyalty and that can only happen after the marketing is done and as you mentioned, is there support?

Can you get in touch with them?

How easy is it to do business with them?

How can we really put those two together to support each other in the best way possible?

Megan shared that they are so inextricably tied. The way she thinks about customer experience is it really is kind of a subset of marketing, as well as a subset of customer success and sort of over overarches both of those two things.

Now, when you think about SaaS platforms today, they don't have the luxury of, “Oh, they bought and installed the product. So it's sticky on its own.” Their customers can leave at any time.

So it behoves the customer success team to ensure that they're getting really good retention, that they're providing the experience that the customers need in order to have them upsell and cross sell and expand into their other offerings. So, that's all very, very important from a revenue standpoint.

At the same time, if their customers have amazing customer experiences, that makes it a lot easier for marketing to get case studies to work with the customer success team and their customers on advocacy, and things that will help marketers to more effectively market to prospects.

So, she thinks there's such a big tie today that really customer experience is all about making decisions with the customer first and foremost. So rather than leading by project or leading by product or leading by sales, or leading by anything else, you really have to lead with the customer in the forefront and then everything sort of falls out from that.

How Organizations Can Replicate the Netflix Experience and Use this Model in Their Own Businesses

Me: So, there are a few organizations that take that approach. Netflix is definitely one of them, and so is Amazon. If you are a company and you wanted to, let's say replicate the Netflix experience? Provide a high level of personalization. I'm fascinated each time I go on Netflix, now found a way to tell you the top 10 movies that are being watched per country, they've broken it down into geographic favouritism.

And of course, automatically you look at those top 10 and you'll probably end up picking something because you're saying hey, well, if this is number one in Jamaica or this is number one in the US, maybe it's worth watching.

I know it's purely data driven because it's clearly the numbers that they are watching and able to put this out to us.

But how can other organizations utilize this model in their own businesses?

Megan share that that's a really interesting point, the Netflix experience is really impacting everybody. So if we think about the consumerization of content, Netflix is one of the big drivers of that.

We as professionals eventually go home at the end of the day, and we sit down in front of the TV, and we open up Netflix, and Netflix hands us exactly what we want to watch, without us even really knowing ahead of time what we want to watch, it's just served up to us.

So then we go to work the next day and whether we work in B2B or B2C, we expect that all of our tools that our vendors are selling to us are going to serve up answers in a very similar way.

And this is something where the consumer world is way ahead of the B2B world but the expectations from customers are there. So she'll give a really good example. When she wanted to buy runners, so tennis shoes, whatever you want to call them, she wants to buy athletic shoes. She always, always, always now goes with Brook Shoes. And Brook Shoes was not always her favourite, she always had a different favourite, until she got the app for Brook Shoes.

And the coolest thing about it is, its content but it steps you through a process within the content that explains how you need to choose your shoes but it doesn't give you a bunch of technical jargon.

So for example, it doesn't say, “Do you pronate or supinate?” It says, “Take your shoes off, stand with your feet parallel and look down and see where your toes are pointing.” And then it shows you a picture of one with the toes pointed out and one was pointed in and one of them neutral. And then you pick the one that matches what you see. And so it's very easy.

Now, if you want the scientific reasoning behind it, you can click a link, and you can get to it, so that's great. But it makes it so easy to figure out what type of shoe, what type of Brook shoe, she needs, that she has become a loyal Brook’s user to the point where she has four children.

Her children now wear Brook Shoes but it's easy for her to say, “Okay, let's go through this little checkbox and go through it and figure out what shoes are best for you.”

So that's experience that she has as a consumer that has made her a loyal Brook Shoes fan.

Now, at the end of the day, she’s not here to sell Brook Shoes, she doesn't care if people go to Brook Shoes or not but it's just such a compelling example of where content really drove her loyalty.

And now when she goes to work, she has similar expectations of vendors when she’s trying to get answers, when she’s trying to self serve, when she’s trying to figure out what the best overall experiences for her, she keeps that in mind.

And so it's Netflix, it's Brook shoes, it's Amazon, it's all of these consumer products are really driving the expectations that their customers have for them in the B2B world.

Me: I totally agree. I talk about that all the time that customers’ expectations are based on four things. They're based on what we communicate to them, they're based on past experiences they've had with you, they’re based on experiences that you've had with other companies that are not similar to them. So as you mentioned, you're comparing, let's say, for example, how your supermarket app is interfacing with you versus your Brooks app, which is two different companies, two different set of commodities. But the reality is, that's what people look at, they're thinking to themselves, well, if they can do it in this space with a product that's a little bit more complicated, why can’t they do it with something like this? I sit and wonder that to myself all the time. So, I do agree with you that what we experience out there, even if it's not similar to what we're comparing it to does drive our expectation of that product or service.

App, Website or Tool that Megan Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Megan shared that she thinks this is probably the same answer Yanique gets from almost everyone. But Slack, they could not do their business without Slack, especially in this digital world. So that's a big one for them certainly. And there are probably some others in the marketing world, they couldn't do without HubSpot. But ultimately, there's other tools that do that, nothing really quite does what Slack does in the way that Slack does it.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Megan

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Megan shared that she has to admit that because she works full time and they've been crazy busy throughout the pandemic and she has four kids at home, she hasn't read a lot this year.

But the one book she did read, which is a must read for any company that is going through hyper growth is called No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth and it's written by a woman by the name of Karen Walker.

She knows Karen personally; she's done some work with some of her teams. But she started her career, she shouldn't say started her career, back in the day, let's say the 80s when Compaq was going through its hyper growth phase, she started at Compaq as the 100th employee.

She left around 15 years later when they had 17,000 employees; she saw the growth and revenue from zero up to $15 Billion. So, might have some of those numbers slightly wrong.

But basically, she has a very, very impressive view of what it means to be in hyper growth and how to do that successfully, they were the fastest growing company in America to date.

And so her book, No Dumbing Down provides five internal strategies for sort of succeeding through hyper growth. And then it also talks about how do you drive those strategies throughout all the levels of the organization. Really, really powerful.

What Megan is Really Excited About Now!

Megan shared that has she mentioned, they are going through a tremendous amount of growth here. So they're doing all kinds of things in order to support that growth and it's fun to see all of the things that are going on.

So from hiring and ramping people up quickly to trying to ensure that they're setting the right strategies so that everyone has the Northstar that they need to shoot for, to fixing processes, those are all really, really big, exciting projects right now.

So she thinks if she were to pick, there's just so many, but one in particular, that is actually starting this week, is they're building a customer success playbook. And she thinks that's a very important thing that they sort of have pieces of right now but they haven't yet taken the opportunity to sit down and really flesh it out.

And so, starting this week, they have a project where they're starting to work on that. They have some really cool marketing initiatives that are going on that are keeping them incredibly busy. So they've got a ton, but she thinks that playbook is one that she’s most excited about, because it will really help to solidify, what do we expect of the customer experience?

And then how do our customer success managers actually operate in order to get us to that ideal.

Where Can We Find Megan Online

LinkedIn – Megan Gilhooly

Twitter - @MeganGilhooly

Email – [email protected]

Website – www.zoominsoftware.com

Megan shared that she also sends out a Friday email where she collate a bunch of different contents, Yanique’s podcast may show up on at one time. And so that is at the Zoomin website, so if you go to www.zoominsoftware.com and then you go to the Resources page, there be a place where you can sign up for that.

It's not really marketing, it's very much what's going on in her brain this week and what's going on and oftentimes she tells silly stories about her kids or funny stories about her husband, she puts out a lot of personal things into it.

It's very short and then she brings in relevant content because she does read a lot of content even though she’s not reading books. She spends a lot of time reading really rich and great content, so she likes to send out the best of that so that other folks don't have to wade through all the bad to get to the good, the little nuggets of wisdom.

Me: That's nice. And the reality is, I think that's how most people consume content nowadays, there's just not enough time in the day to really sit down and take on long pieces of information.

So when you can get them in bits and pieces, I find, at least for me, it makes the learning experience that much better. I recently joined Tik Tok because of my daughter's influence, and I used to think it was an application that people go on to waste time.

But I actually have learned quite a few things on it, like different tips and tricks in terms of iPhone, maybe there are features on the phone that I was not familiar with, or tips and tricks in Microsoft Excel with different tools that can help me to analyze the data better. And it's short, it's not a YouTube video, that's like 20 minutes, and I'm like, sure there are 20 minutes to watch this video, it's just like a two minute video and you're like, Oh, I got it, and you save it to your phone and you have it as a reference point. And I thought it was brilliant. I underestimated Tik Tok.

Megan shared that that's interesting. She tried to get on Tik Tok a couple times. And she just failed, so she’s going to try again. It thought she was somebody she wasn't because it kept serving up the wrong content. But she thinks it's because she just didn't give it enough time to learn who she was. Because she heard that it can be very, very good. But it really thought she was a teenager that just wanted to do dances. So she'll try it again.

Me: Because you're very correct. Because what I noticed as I started using it was it started to pick up on content that I was interested in and then it started to push more of that and less of the garbage that was there originally when I just started.

Megan shared that there's such an alignment there with how she talks about product content. When we serve up content, when our customers serve up content to their customers, we expect that it will serve up the content that's related to the version that they want to be on that's related to their role in their organization.

We don't want to just throw content out there. And so, Tik Tok, there's kind of this mirror image between Tic Tok and the product content that we deliver. So that's really interesting.

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Megan Uses

When asked about quote or saying that helps her to get back on track, Megan shared that for her, whenever she gets off track, or she feels like people in general are getting off track, I go back to very customer focused quotes.

And so there's one by Marc Benioff from Salesforce, who said, and she may get part of this wrong, but, “You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers and be ready to greet them when they arrive.”

And she thinks that's so powerful to think, especially during difficult times. So let's say even through the pandemic, when you think about the organizations that just sort of sat back and said, “Oh, we can't do that, because of the pandemic.” or “Oh, we're gonna do fewer hours because of the pandemic.”

Those are organisations that have now a really frustrating customer experience. But for the companies that actually said, “Okay, we're in a pandemic, but at some point, we're going to get through this pandemic. Now, where do we need to be? And how do we are we going to be prepared to be ready, no matter where we are along the path of this pandemic.” Those are the companies that have maintained a really positive customer experience. So that's a quote that she often looks at, she has it posted on her wall.

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Links

• No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth by Karen Walker

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

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Robert Nickell is the founder and CEO of Rocket Station, the leading provider of outsourced staffing and process management for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Operating in Dallas Fort Worth since 2013. Rocket Station helps small to mid-sized businesses with efficiency and profitability. Simplified staffing allows operators to focus on core competencies and outsource the rest.

Robert started his career as an entrepreneur in the real estate industry which has positioned him to support many real estate entrepreneurs and established firms who are struggling with staffing and human resources.

Robert and his team’s strength in evaluating best practices and efficient ways to staff capacity have continued to propel Rocket Station. When not helping clients build better businesses, you'll find Robert traveling the world or hanging out with his nephews in Dallas.

Questions

• Could you just share with us a little bit about your journey? In your own words, how it is that you got to where you are today?
• So tell us a little bit about if a client was to hire you to, let's say, you got a customer who is exactly where you were many years ago. What are some of the benefits that they would get? What are some of the things that they would need to do like maybe one, two or three things that maybe they're not doing that would help them to be more productive?
• What would maybe two or three recommendations that you have done in your own business or that you've seen other persons do that have really been able to still sustain a strong customer experience where your customers are advocates of your business?
• Some people genuinely feel like if they don't want jump in their car, or take public transportation and get physically to a location that the work can’t get done. Is that a recruitment issue or is that a leadership mind-set issue? How do they get over that hump to feel like the person is going to be just as productive if they were working from home?
• What’s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or maybe something you read recently, but it still has a great impact on you.
• Could you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now, it could be something that you're really excited about. But it must be something that you're either working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote or saying, it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocused. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Robert’s Journey

Robert shared that he quit his first job out of college pretty quick, he thinks he only worked a traditional job for a couple years. And he decided that he wanted to be an entrepreneur, because he really wanted to control his own time, he wanted to be able to do what he wanted to do, with who he wanted to do. And he likes to travel as mentioned, so he wanted to be able to take vacations.

And so, he jumped right into entrepreneurship and as the bio mentioned, he started with real estate. And he thought that real estate was going to be the answer to his solutions and not being able to control his own time. And really what happened was, he just kind of became a slave to his business, he was a one man show, he was working 60, 70 hours a week and the only way he could do more transactions or make more money in real estate was just to work more hours.

And he'd kind of hit a wall, he'd kind of hit a breaking point because it wasn't, instead of his business serving the lifestyle that he was hoping to create, he was totally serving his business every single day. But he was lucky to have some really awesome mentors and some people who had built some amazing businesses and they just kind of showed him that there's opportunities to create a better business and there's a solution, you just can't do it all yourself.

And so he started trying to hire people and train people that were friends and family to work in his real estate business and that just didn't work very well. And he really struggled with that and then he tried to do traditional job postings and use the websites like ladders, and indeed, in all the ways that you can wise hire and all the different options that exists. And again, he failed at that. People came in and he would hire people that he dreaded driving into the office every single day because he felt like he had to tell people what to do all day.

And he mentioned having great mentors, and one of them really showed him that he was doing the process backwards. He was hiring people, throwing them at a problem and then hoping that they were just going to get to solve it. When really I needed to start with the end in mind, have systems, have processes, have structure around all the tasks that are happening every day. And then somebody knows exactly what success looks like and they can come in and really help.

He was just working too many hours, he needed some help, he tried the traditional hiring model, he failed with that over and over again. And so, he kind of started from scratch, started with building systems and processes, which he didn't really have enough of, then hired people and started doing that really well.

And today, they're just kind of taking those all the failings that he had early on and that most businesses struggle with. And they just solve all those problems. They like to think they're the easy button to productivity and efficiency.

Tips on How to Be More Productive

Me: So tell us a little bit about if a client was to hire you to, let's say, you got a customer who is exactly where you were many years ago. What are some of the benefits that they would get? What are some of the things that they would need to do like maybe one, two or three things that maybe they're not doing that would help them to be more productive?

Robert shared that he thinks the first thing is just be aware of where you spend your time all day. He can't tell you how many people they talk to that they don't really understand where they're spending their time. Because we all get busy, we have a lot of things going on. So when the phone rings, you answered, or when emails come through, we respond.

And so, usually entrepreneurs just have so much going on in there, they're putting out fires all day, but they're not super aware of all the things they're actually doing. So what they like to do is have people list out and write down kind of what they're doing all day. And that usually is a little bit hard for people right out the gate because we rarely take the time to slow down and think about what we're really doing.

And from there, now, it's a whole lot easier to identify tasks that really aren't worth your time, or it's not really the highest and best use of your time. And so if you start with awareness, then you can identify some of those tasks that are not great use of your time and effort, researching different opportunities, or finding solutions to those problems becomes a whole lot easier. So he thinks awareness is really the first step for anybody.

Me: And Business Process Outsourcing can be applied to any industry, correct?

Robert stated yes and that's what's really amazing about what's happened the last few years with the development of technology, most everything's done online, we're having this conversation online, there's Voice over IP phone systems, and everything sent through email and Cloud storage. So there's been a massive shift the last several years to outsource a huge percentage of operations just because it's so easy and simple to do that in itself, and it solves many of the problems that entrepreneurs face every day.

So, the pandemic kind of accelerated that process in a lot of ways because people were forced to work from home and think about things a little bit differently. But this has been going on for a while. And part of the reason why he likes Yanique’s show is because Yanique oftentimes really talk about the customer, like what it takes to really build amazing customer experience and the solutions behind that.

And there's just so many amazing tools and resources today that can really drive the customer service experience, which ultimately does nothing but improve the business and the bottom line.

Recommendations for Sustaining a Strong Customer Experience

Me: I'm glad you touch on that, because that was actually my next question. So you outsource to all of these different persons to improve productivity processes to make things smoother for your customer. Typically, in an organization, traditional organization, we're accustomed to having a mission and a vision and a set of core values and cultural beliefs. And people come into our building every day, or they're seeing their manager on a constant basis, they have like pow wows or monthly or weekly meetings, how do you bring all of that together when you are outsourcing with so many different things to take into consideration, culture, mind-set.

What would maybe two or three recommendations that you have done in your own business or that you've seen other persons do that have really been able to still sustain a strong customer experience where your customers are advocates of your business?

Robert stated that it's a great question because most people think about outsourcing as just like a tool that is over there, it's not tangible. And for them that, there's lots of ways you can outsource. But for them, what they believe makes the process successful is they try to replicate all the things that you just mentioned, culture, intimacy meetings, alignment, transparency, communication, all of those things that seem to just happen in an office, you can replicate the exact same things with virtual teams.

So the way they work with dedicated staffing, so it's same people showing up to work, but dedicated to your company, so they're not working on multiple accounts, or multiple companies, they are a dedicated staffing model. So that makes it a little bit easier for them to create and replicate some of the things you're talking about.

So, they help facilitate from their company, the first thing that they do is they document all your systems and processes so you have complete alignment and transparency in what's happening in the organization, but that also creates the task maps and the job descriptions.

So the team members that are placed have very specific roles and swim lanes and if they're doing customer service and customer support, they've got their scripts built, they’re dedicated to your company and it's going to function exactly like a W2 would. And with technology and tools today, it makes it super easy to replicate the rhythm that you get within an office, all of their teams check in the morning as soon as they get there you exchange pleasantries, you have all the same normal conversations, whether that's in Zoom, they use Zoom as a company, a lot of their clients use Slack or Skype or Salesforce or Custom PHP programmes, whatever it is.

They integrate their teams into your organization, and they should be a part of your weekly meetings, they should be a part of your monthly reviews, they should have KPIs the exact same way that all employees should have KPIs. And they believe that you should manage to those outcomes and those numbers and not have to micromanage task. And if you go about that the right way, by building systems and processes, documenting everything that happens on the front end, now you can set expectations for what task management looks like.

And culture for him is just when you've got a team that understands exactly what's expected of them, and everybody's performing to expected outcomes, and you have success. Now, culture is going to be amazing in the organization. So there's lots of ways that you can replicate the office experience in a virtual environment and that's part of what their teams do is help you set up every step of the process, and they never leave you, they stay with you for the life of the account.

And the purpose of that is to do exactly what you're talking about, to replicate amazing culture, you talk about having raving fans and improving net promoter scores, that comes from a very efficient aligned organization.

And today, it's easier than ever to be able to create that process and it's not only doable, but that's what the expectation should be, whether your teams are working in office, or they're working virtually, and you're outsourcing customer service, or any of the other tasks within the business, you can totally recreate and replicate culture the exact same way you can in an office.

Being Productive While Working From Home

Me: Okay, so it's very possible, as you said, to replicate it in a virtual space. Now, let's talk about on a granular level, employees, because this is a question that I get all the time clients, for example, “You want us to go virtual and we're expected to work remotely. Yes, it can improve productivity, and definitely efficiency, maybe even save us some money. But what if the persons that we're sending to work at home are not disciplined enough, they need a structure, they need to come in to an office space.” I think some people genuinely feel like if they don't want jump in their car, or take public transportation and get physically to a location that the work can’t get done.

Is that a recruitment issue or is that a leadership mind-set issue? How do they get over that hump to feel like the person is going to be just as productive if they were working from home?

Robert asked if he’s hearing correcting, if it’s that's a leadership issue or if that's a recruitment issue, the answer, he thinks is yes. He thinks it's both of those things, if you have the right team members in play, and we all work a little bit differently.

They leverage a tool in their organization called Culture Index and the idea of that tool is a couple things, it's not just to identify 10 trends within personality so that we can really understand each other, but it's also so that we can communicate and coordinate and, and communicate efficiently within the organization. And that's on more the recruiting side having the right people in place but all of us operate a little bit differently and you're talking about people needing structure, if you're going to be forced to work from home, then you need to just try to replicate some structure.

For example, like their team’s the same way, they had to reset expectations, working hours are exactly the same and same with dress code because you've got to get on team meetings and calls periodically throughout the day and week, and interact with customers and clients like dress codes, the same the same expectations about having a dedicated working station where there's no food and drink, and you don't eat at the desk, and during calls and those types of things.

So that’s definitely, both of those things. But he thinks what's really happening is we're going to have this hybrid working model, where he has got an office in Dallas where W2’s come in, and they work out of the office, and they have an option whether or not they can come in.

And then he has a group of people who basically never come in and he has a group that comes in consistently because they need what you're talking about. But with their virtual teams because most of their teams are based in the Philippines, they all have dedicated workstations and it's just part of the process that they create, but for their US based staff, they're really trying to put the right leadership in place with the right team members underneath them, but then give them the option based on what they need to be successful whether they need to come into the office or not.

And he thinks you're going to see both smaller organizations have to make that adjustment the same way Facebook and Chase Bank and all these companies are releasing statements saying that that's exactly what they're going to do, is just adopt a hybrid model for now.

Because some people if you're going to hire somebody and they need the structure that you're talking about, great. Or often times, some of their team members, they have kids and they don't have the ability with kids at home right now to have workstations that aren’t going to be interrupted and background noise and pets and those types of things. So he thinks what's really going to happen is you're going to continue with this hybrid model where you'll have some part of your workforce in an office and a large part of it will you'll never see or never have to come in.

Me: Great, very good answer. I think I totally agree with you; you definitely need a blended approach because we're just not there yet where everybody can just fit into that cycle that we're trying to create. So I totally agree with you.

App, Website or Tool that Robert Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resources that he can’t live without in his business, Robert shared that for them, they're totally dependent upon Zoom right now. So, they use Zoom as their voice over IP phone system so all of their team members, they have a phone system that functions just like landline phones, but it's done over Zoom that also has their chat feature where all of their teams and groups are in Zoom chatting all day.

And that's one of the reasons why they have such great communication is they really put a lot of structure and expectations on their team about the way they communicate and how often they do, they over communicate as an organization so that's mostly done in Zoom. And then it's also their video conferencing tool, so they do their weekly team meetings that are happening right now in the conference room next to each department on Mondays goes through all of the weekly updates. And the same thing on monthly calls that's done on the video calls with Zoom as well.

So they used to use three different tools, they had Ringcentral as a phone system, they had Slack as their chat tool, and then they had Skype as their video tool. And Zoom has replaced all three of those tools and gone into one box, and they would be pretty lost without it right now.

Me: Wow, that's brilliant. And they clearly saw the need in the market. They really evolved, I must say, because I used to use them before the pandemic and I have a few clients here in Jamaica that use them for online training. And when I look at the interface to what it was, let's say two, three years ago, it's like day and night, they really have put a lot of energy and as you said, the pandemic force a lot of persons to accelerate. I was reading an article yesterday that said; Target’s 2030 goals became their 2020 goals just because of what was happening globally. So, a lot of organizations definitely had to just make that shift very quickly.

Robert shared that that's also why competition is good, because it forces people into growth and Zoom hadn't had much competition or much requirement for a last long time. And so, it’s a stagnant programme, he totally agree, it wasn't very good. But now Microsoft Teams is creating a tool that's very similar, Salesforce is trying to compete because they're blending all tools together and so as a result, Zoom had to really step up their game based on the demand and the needs of all of us as their clients. And so, they really have progressed a ton.

And to Yanique’s point, he doesn't think the pandemic really changed anything that was going to happen; he thinks it just accelerated what was inevitable really quickly. Their goals changed as well, because this concept of work from home and outsourcing now makes a lot more sense to people just because they had to live it and experience it the last year. And so, he’s so ready for the pandemic to end but it's been fun to see how fast people have been able to change and adapt.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Robert

When asked about books that have the biggest impact, Robert shared that what really set him up for success was a book called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber. And he talks about the ability to work on your business instead of in your business every day and he describes that as a technician, the person who is actually responsible for all the day to day tasks and all the things that have to be done. And if you're always a technician, then you can never actually have the business that you really want. So that was super powerful for him was to understand the impact that systems and processes and really clear structure could have on the business. And so, E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber was huge as one of the first books he read, business books that had just the massive impact.

And most recently and it's been on his shelf for a while, and I read it every single year, it's Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio. Ray's skill sets are kind of the opposite of what his are. He’s great at sales and client facing or customer engaging activities, he likes to be travelling and on the road and engaging with people. And so, his natural skill sets have never been around the structure and the clarity of operations and how to build a really successful business that's sustainable, and Principles by Ray Dalio just has so many amazing different topics in there that for him, it's an annual read for him at the beginning of the year, every single year, and he learns something new every single time.

What Robert is Really Excited About Now!

Robert shared that leadership and inner personal development is a huge thing, not just for his life, but for their teams as well. And so, what he’s most excited about is for what they're working on, it's both personal and their team members, it's their community projects and it's mostly what they have going on the in the Philippines, they call it Rocket Station Cares. And there's just so many different ways that they're supporting and developing communities, both from school service and donation and activities that they're doing to provide for school children all across the Philippines to medical service that their teams are providing and just resources that they're continually providing to the communities to do community engagements totally outside the company.

It's just service, selfless acts of service that they're setting up for their teams to be able to volunteer and participate in and it's just been such an amazing thing. And the better their company does, the bigger that platform of Rocket Station Cares becomes.

And so for him, that's what he’s most excited about what they're working on, because that's what it's really all about to him is their ability to give back to the community and do some amazing things for people that is totally outside of themselves and their personal goals. And so, Rocket Station Cares is what he’s most excited about right now.

Me: Very nice, Rocket Station Cares. It kind of reminds me of my vision for my business, which is, “To create a more caring world,” which came from the cartoon the Care Bears, I don't know if you remember that cartoon when you're little if you used to watch it.

Robert shared that their mission statement as a company is, “Enhanced lives through better business,” because that's kind of similar to what you're talking about, it's kind of what it's all about.

Where Can We Find Robert Online

Website – www.rocketstation.com

Robert shared that there's lots of great information on their website, they've been fortunate to be able to get some endorsements and work with some of the shark tanks and some other great companies. So there's lots of great information on the website, it's just www.rocketstation.com.

But what most people, when you hear about outsourcing or you're thinking about your business, it's something that you get and you understand, you just don't know exactly how that applies to you and your business and what steps you should be taking and how that works.

And so, he'd be happy for their development team to spend some time with anybody that's interested in just having the conversation, it doesn't matter if you hire their teams or not, there's no obligation. But on the website, there's a scheduled time now button and if anybody who's interested at all, just schedule some time with their team.

Again, there's no obligation to sign up for their services or anything like that but just to build a roadmap and kind of understand how this could affect you and apply to your business, just hit that scheduled time now button and their development team will spend 30, 45 minutes and answer any and all questions anybody could come up with and if that was a great solution for your business, they would love to work for you. But if it's not a good solution, it's no big deal at all, happy to answer questions.

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Robert Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Robert stated that he doesn't know if it's really be coming off the top of his head. But he has learned in so many different ways from the Tony Robbins stuff and the Darren Hardy, he spent a lot of time with both. But the real message that he tells himself consistently is, “I'm responsible for everything.”

So whatever he believes to be true, comes. So whenever he’s happy, it's a choice. Whenever he’s sad, it's a choice. Whenever they're having success, it's because the choices he has made. Whenever he has had failures, it's because the choices he has made. So, whether things are good or bad, he just tries to look in the mirror and say, “It's your choices and your actions, you're responsible for everything.” So, just kind of a personal mantra that he has that it's to be responsible and take ownership of all things that are in his life.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners

Links

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Antonio Buchanan is the Co-CEO and Chief Strategy Officer. He spent his career influencing some of the world's top brands. His career took off at Y&R Worldwide, where he quickly became a vice president of Strategic Planning working on American Express, Citigroup, Verizon, Evian, Disney and Club Med. He then served as a senior partner and head of Strategy and Planning at Ogilvy Worldwide, American Express and IBM Global Business with assignments in Mexico City, London, Singapore, Brazil and Sao Paolo.

In 1998, Antonio and his partner, Paris formed bang! Zoom, a global research and strategy consultancy with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and London. Their form oversaw research initiatives for 3Com, Lucent, BBC, Avaya, American Express and others before selling the company to MDC partners, (a Toronto-based communications holding company). Antonio has been named one of the top creative thinkers by AdAge, named on the top innovative thinkers list for Wall People Magazine and one of the top 100 executives on Black Enterprise’s BE 100 list.

Questions

• Could you share a little bit about your journey, how it is you got to where you are today so we can get a better understanding of who Antonio is.
• So I can imagine strategy has been a bit challenging, maybe for you and your company during this pandemic period that the world is going through, can you share with us how that has been and how you guys have been able to navigate through this time?
• Do you find that it's been difficult just getting people motivated and inspired during this time, especially across cultures? Because Mexico City, would you say is a different kind of culture, a different set of mind-set people versus those in San Diego? Has it been different across the globe, in a different continent for example?
• Could you share with us if there is one website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or it could be a book that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.
• So if you were in a room with one of these managers, or business owners, and you're sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to improve on the consistency of having motivated human capital?
• Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to maybe get you refocused and just get you back on track.

Highlights

Antonio’s Journey

Antonio shared that he started in the financial services industry, he was working as a trader at Merrill Lynch, the ad agency for Merrill Lynch was coming in to do a campaign on the company. And he was one of the people that was designated to be interviewed by the ad agency. And after that experience, he kind of looked at and went, “They seem to be having more fun that I am.” And so he literally switched careers and started from the bottom again. And, mentioned in the bio, started at Y&R and moved on to Ogilvy. He spent a significant amount of his career at Ogilvy with a lot of the international assignments, and then decided to start his own. And so, they've done it, this is the second time around. The first time as mentioned, they started an agency in about three years in, they were approached to sell it. And when their non-compete was over, on the day the non-compete was over, they launched Antonio in Paris. So he’s the Chief Strategy Officer, Paris was also his wife is the Chief Creative Officer, her experience comes out of McCann Worldwide on Microsoft. And so, he kind of do the strategy side, she does the creative side and they've been having a great time doing it. So it's good to be here.

Navigating Through a Pandemic

Me: So I can imagine strategy has been a bit challenging, maybe for you and your company during this pandemic period that the world is going through, can you share with us how that has been and how you guys have been able to navigate through this time?

Antonio shared that that's an understatement. So it's been interesting, he thinks like everybody, February, March of last year, everybody kind of went into a panic mode. His clients went into a panic mode, rightfully so, not many people knew. What do I do now? Business kind of stopped over that period of time. And they made the decision to really look at it, they could have stayed with how do they continue to help companies enhance their brands?

But that wasn't the right thing to do at that particular time, he thinks the right thing to do, in hindsight, was the fact that they decided that they're going to look at when was there something like this in the past?

And how was it handled globally?

And what should they be thinking about?

So they decided to start a research study globally, during COVID that every six to eight weeks they would go back into the marketplace and get indication on what were consumers thinking?

What were they feeling?

How engaged were they?

How much more engaged were they going to be as it related to streaming videos and entertainment and working from home and what were their stress points?

And all of those things that they could kind of give that information to clients, and gauge when was the right time to get back into the marketplace.

They also started presenting this to clients and people who weren't clients, companies that they would have loved to work with. They set up calls with them, Zoom calls with them, things like that, and walked them through these results.

They also talked to them about let's talk about history as he said. When SARS happened, we had a front row seat into being able to see what happened in China and how it went from China, the resurgence, the comeback happened in Asia, through Europe, and then to the United States.

So we had a roadmap of how it happened. And so they are able to talk to people about it's probably going to happen the same way, which it did, we had the bounce back in Asia first, then Europe, then the US, unfortunately, we had a second round of COVID.

This is a perfect time for companies to kind of really think about how they're going to attack, how they're going to pivot, and change maybe something small all the way to their business model. So they started talking to companies about that, if you were to start your company today, how would you change it?

Because it's not going to ever be the same again. So they started working with companies and helping them change their company from a strategy perspective, too. So it's been an interesting ride but he thinks it’s the right thing to do, because many companies responded to us helping them figure a lot of that out.

Me: Where are you exactly based Antonio, are you in the United States?

Antonio stated that they are in San Diego. Currently, he’s in their Mexico City office. They've been working out of Mexico now for probably the past six months, but their headquarters is in San Diego.

Getting Your People Motivated and Inspired

Me: Do you find that it's been difficult just getting people motivated and inspired during this time, especially across cultures? Because Mexico City, would you say is a different kind of culture, a different set of mind-set people versus those in San Diego? Has it been different across the globe, in a different continent for example?

Antonio shared that what's interesting is about five years ago they went completely virtual, so prior to COVID they went virtual, the reason why they did it was because for a few reasons.

One, they wanted to get the most talented people that they could get to work for their company, no matter where they lived. And so, that meant getting more senior people but in getting more senior people, it was good that they didn't have to uproot themselves.

A lot of times, you want to hire somebody and they're in another place, and they don't want to move, their kids are in certain schools or their spouses or partners are kind of trenched in where they are so they're unable to move.

But they're the right candidate for your company, from a culture perspective, from a talent perspective and they wanted that to go away. So they went completely virtual five years ago. So it's funny, because they were using Zoom before people knew what Zoom was and that was one reason.

The other reason is because it's a point that you're making. They thought that and it's turned out to be true, the culture, if they brought people into our organization from around the world, no idea would be US centric, or if he’s in Hong Kong, Hong Kong centric or things like that, but the idea’s that the agency would bring to their clients would kind of be from this diverse group of people, diverse culture, different attitudes and opinion and when you sit down to try to solve a problem, and all these people come to the table, you kind of ensure that you're coming at this from a global perspective with an open mind. And then when you start to take these ideas from one country to another, they happen to have people who understand exactly the way that people look into the consumer insight from country to country.

So that's helped a lot too, in terms of that, but it's a good question because he thinks so often people come to you, you're an American company, and you come at it from an American perspective, as opposed to being sensitive to other people's ethnicities and cultures.

Me: Agreed. Do you guys do business in Jamaica?

Antonio stated that they do not, and it's funny too, his family is from Jamaica and Panama. And they don't do business there but he would not have a problem to do business there at all.

Me: So you should probably look to expand, now is a great time to expand into new markets, especially with everybody doing things virtually.

App, Website or Tool that Antonio Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Antonio shared that it's probably Zoom. Because they probably have in their organization, him alone, he doesn't even know what other people are doing, he probably has 8 to 10 Zoom calls a day.

And they are with people from all over the world because they have clients in Belgium, they have clients in Hong Kong and in London and in the US and Mexico and things like that.

So it's a challenge, where it used to be a challenge before, he had to get on a plane and go do all that.

Now, it's a different challenge in terms of time zones and things, but it makes life easier. But he thinks that's the one thing.

So, another one would be Basecamp. They use Basecamp in order to kind of give clients transparency. So when they get a new client, for instance, they just signed on new client a couple of days ago who's based in Hong Kong, one of the first things they do is open up a Basecamp file for them. It's kind of a pod, and that gives them the opportunity to drop anything that's relevant about their business into that pod. It also gives us the opportunity, anything that they do for them put into the pod, if there are schedules, they put those in there as well. And clients have the ability to go in and look at the schedules, make sure things are happening when they're supposed to be happening or if they need input from them, they can go there instead of having to deal if it's if it's 2:00 am in the morning their time, but some someplace else it's 3:00 pm in the afternoon, they can go to Basecamp and pretty much get a lot of answers before even having to speak to them. So he thinks those two are pretty valuable.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Antonio

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Antonio shared that Bob Iger’s book, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the former CEO of Disney, amazing book gives us the ability to kind of look into a lot of the challenges that he had in growing Disney. And he likes to tell people, whether you're large organization, or small, many of the challenges that you face are the same, it's just the size of the company. And so, how he handled growth and strategy and how he handled disappointments. What he loves is he puts a lot of the disappointments in there, times that Disney tried to do something and fail, that's really important to him because he wants to see how a) You can imagine it's kind of cool knowing that Disney fails at something. But more importantly, how do they handle it? So that's one.

The other one is Barack Obama's book, A Promised Land. Fascinating, but also, as a business person when you look at it, the strategy and the planning that goes into running for the President of the United States, it's very similar to in a business when you're trying to launch something and everything that he had to go through, both from a personal perspective, which we can then move over to as an entrepreneur, you go through some personal things too to get your business up and running. From a business perspective, who are the right people that you're going to build for your team. Just like he had to go through what's the team he's going to pull together to help him win the election. And so, he thinks that's a fascinating book.

And then he’s reading now, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention. And it's literally, you don't have to follow any of the rules, create what's right for you, which he did, and a lot of people talk a lot of smack about him. But now look who's laughing now, because he created an organization that was right for him and believed in it and it's worked pretty well. Those three.

Advice for Improving On The Consistency of Having Motivated Human Capital

Me: We also have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel from time to time that it's not that they have poor products, they believe they have great products and services. But one of their challenges is that they lack the constantly motivated human capital. So if you were in a room with one of these managers, or business owners, and you're sitting across the table from that person, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to improve on the consistency of having motivated human capital?

Antonio stated that we have a tendency to break rules with our organization, and we do it not just because, we do it because we stop and we put ourselves in the situation of, before you were an entrepreneur, you worked for somebody and he’s sure you thought of the good and the bad with it and how you wanted to be treated.

It's more than motivation just from a salary perspective and a dollars and cents perspective. It's, “I'm respected, they understand that there's some other things that could help.”

So for instance, he'll give an example. During the summer, on Fridays, every other Friday they shut their business down. And the reason for that is people get three day weekends during the summer and if it's busy, and then a lot of people go, “Well, I can't do that, because I can't have my whole staff out.”

His advice would be if it's busy, split your staff in half and don't do half days because people end up not taking them. But split your staff in half and go, “Okay, this week on Friday, you guys are off and then next week, the other half is off.”

“You're giving them a head nod. In order to be productive, you need to be able to have time to think, experience, to live, to have balance. And when you give employees balance, when they feel like you trust them, a lot of times that's more important than the dollars and the sense, you can go to another company and make more money, maybe.”

But when you get the feeling that these people respect me and get it. Another thing they do don't have vacation time in their organization, if you need to take the time, take the time and realize you're part of a team.

So they hire grownups and he thinks that's one of the things that you need to do is make sure you're hiring grownups, make sure you're hiring people that are passionate about what they do, and they know why you brought them in. If you hire people like that, then he doesn't care if you take days off or what you're doing and things like that, because those people overdo it anyway, those people give you their heart and soul anyway. So you need to take a day off to be with your kid, to be with your partner, whatever, go do it.

And he doesn't care how much time it is, as long as your teammates are respected and they know that they're going to have to cover for you whatever that is.

So he thinks that the big thing is respect who you're working for, think about what you would want if you were a dedicated employee, a dedicated player in an organization, what are the things that would matter and he thinks these days especially with what's going on, with COVID and everything else, it's at how can you give up people work life balance, they're going to give it back to you, when they go and they have a vacation, they come back fresh and you benefit from it too. So he thinks that's what he would tell people.

What Antonio is Really Excited About Now!

Antonio shared that actually it's something that they're doing with a client that's really exciting. It has something to do with their people, too, because their people are so excited about doing this, that it's taken kind of the agency to a next level.

They have a client that is a museum, one of the largest museums in the United States, and they came to them and said, “We're about to celebrate a fairly significant birthday and we want to overhaul our brand. So the logo with the messaging, things like that.”

They went and did some consumer research, and realized that there were a couple of segments that they were missing out on and they would never get, quite honestly, because this segment is a segment that is not going to walk through the doors of a museum, but they want to deal on a digital basis more than walk through the door.

And so, they went back to the client said, “Well, here's what you asked us for in the first place. But if you're open, we have an idea.”

And they were like, What's the idea? They said, “We think that you should not see yourselves as a museum, but see yourselves as a content provider. And you should have a streaming service, like a Netflix, like a Hulu, like something like that, that is specific to the type of museum that you are.”

And that's a whole new revenue stream, that's a whole new way of looking at the customer experience. Because the customer experience is no longer when somebody walks through the door. Now the customer experience is 365, 24/7.

And they actually went, let's present it to the board, which he thought that head of marketing had a lot of nerve to be able to go Yep, I'm with you. Let's take it to the Board of Directors, and which they did.

And the board said, “We agree, go.” And so since then, for the last 2 years they've been helping them build out this streaming service and it's been really exciting. But what's happened is, is that it's pulled the team together with their team internally because it's this thing that's never been done before.

And so, when he’s done with this, he’s retired, that's it, what is he going to do that’s going to beat this after he’s done with this. And that's a good feeling that you have clients that will give him the opportunity to kind of swing for the fences.

Where Can We Find Antonio Online

Website – www.antonioandparis.com

Twitter – @apbmoxie

Instagram - @apbmoxie

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Antonio Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Antonio shared that he has a signature on his email that says, “Rules, I'm just not that interested.”

It reminds him of don't keep yourself in a box a lot of times and don't look at things and say, “Well, it hasn't been done before so I guess it can't be done because somebody would have done it. That's not true. We all bring something different to the table.” He likes to tell the story like Apple when they created the iPod, iPod was not the first gadget like that. There were mp3 players before and doing the pretty much the same thing. And someone would have probably looked at Apple and said, “Why do you need to do this, there's already a lot of them in the marketplace.” We hear about the iPhone.

And so break the rules, if you're passionate about it, ignore the naysayers and do what you want to do.

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners

Links

• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Albert Galarza is the Global Vice President of Human Resources at TELUS International. He joined the organization in 2016, and has over 20 years of experience in human resources across retail and technology industries. In his role at TELUS International, Albert leads an HR organization of over 600 professionals supporting almost 50,000 team members in 20 countries. He is responsible for the entire HR suite of services including HR Generalists, Talent Acquisition, Compensation & Benefits, HR Operations and People Analytics.

Questions

• Could you just tell us a little bit about your journey, how you got to where you are today?
• Could you tell our audience what is TELUS International? And what do you guys do?
• So maybe could you share with us maybe one or two things that you think persons that would be in that role? Because you'd have a lot of persons who listen to this podcast who they may be the business owner, but they also wear the hat off recruiter or HR person for their company, because they're not big enough to have a natural HR department. So what are some things that you think they would need to be considering to ensure that you're getting the right people and retaining them?
• How have you seen organizations really adapt or adjust accordingly based on what's happening in terms of just keeping people motivated, especially seeing that you're managing people across different countries, every country is dealing with the pandemic differently. How has that been for your organization?
• Could you share with us maybe what's the one online, resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or it could be one that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.
• Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
• Where listeners find you online if they wanted to connect with you?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity you tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to refocus you or get you back on track if you get derailed? Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Albert’s Journey

Albert shared that he is originally from Mexico, he was actually born and raised in Mexico, and he lived there till his teenage years, when they moved to the US and he has had the privilege of living in several states throughout the US both personally and for professional reasons. And he has had the great pleasure of travelling throughout many, many countries, both for personal reasons, and mostly for professional reasons as his bio says; they currently support 50,000 team members in 20 countries and he has been to every one of those countries that they operate in. So it's been a great, great experience for him to be part of this organization.

He still visits Mexico, obviously pandemic, and he plans to visit post pandemic when it's safe to travel again. And when he thinks of his journey, particularly to customer experience, Mexico has always had a huge tourism industry and so he thinks that his customer service experience journey began early on. It's common when one visits a Mexican resort, or even a Mexican corner. That actually the person on the other side of the car will usually say to you, it's my pleasure to serve you. And that's always stuck with him since a very early age.

He also thinks that our journey begins early on for all of us, no matter where we come from, or what we do now as adults. What he means by that is, all of us had always had an internal customer experience journey, even from the time we were children at a very early age, think of the relationship we have with our parents early on, and the experience that we provided them and the experiences that they provided us. And he thinks that translates well into the working world. His customer experience relates to achieving little win scenarios every day in his interactions with both their internal and external customers. As you can see by his bio, it's been a long journey so far, and one that he looks forward to continuing on for many, many years to come both personally and professionally.

What is TELUS International

Albert shared that TELUS International designs, builds and delivers next generation digital solutions which enhance your customer experience and many of their customers are customers that you actually deal with your daily life, whether you're using some of the world's largest search engines, or using some of the world's largest phone manufacturers, or you're using even to log on to some of your social media apps, that's what they do. They help a lot of those brands design and build the next generation digital solution. They also help them support the full lifecycle of clients’ digital transformation training, and they enable them to move quickly through these next generation of technologies that come up just about every day.

And the desired outcome for them (TELUS) is to make sure that they are a solid extension of those brands that they support. They have solutions and capabilities that expand the digital strategy, they're also quite innovative, and they do a lot of consulting with them as well when it comes to transforming their own journey. Think of companies that are trying to design autonomous vehicles, they will work with those companies to help them make sure that they have a product that will be intuitive, and that they will have a product that can be supported both remotely inshore and onshore.

Me: Okay, can you give us an example of maybe a company that you've worked with. I see here on the website that you work in industries such as Communications and Media, Healthcare, Tech and Games, eCommerce, and FinTech and Travel and Hospitality. So maybe pick one of those industries and just give us an example of how it is that you are transforming something that you're helping that client to achieve.

Albert stated that for your Canadian audience the named TELUS will be very familiar. And so that's actually one of their own internal customers, they actually help TELUS with all of its coding programming and networking, as well as support, and they have several employees around the world, including in Canada who will help the TELUS Corporation as well as TELUS customers in Canada, make sure that they have the daily communication through their network, make sure that the daily entertainment to their network and more importantly, make sure that their customers have the ability to stay connected, doing the things that they love most, to those that they love most.

Tips on Recruiting and Retaining the Right People

Me: So you focus a lot as your bio says, you're responsible for the entire HR suite of services, including Talent Acquisition and People Analytics. Customer service is all about people. I know, for example, in Jamaica, one of the big things that my customers complain about is getting the right persons and keeping them in your organization. So maybe could you share with us maybe one or two things that you think persons that would be in that role? Because you'd have a lot of persons who listen to this podcast who they may be the business owner, but they also wear the hat off recruiter or HR person for their company, because they're not big enough to have a natural HR department. So what are some things that you think they would need to be considering to ensure that you're getting the right people and retaining them?

Albert shared that if you're lucky enough to run and operation where you can make all the decisions yourself, he thinks that's actually quite good. Bigger is not always better and bigger is not always faster, it does usually mean that you have quite a bit of resources available to you. But sometimes the decision tree is a little bit bigger.

But if you are in charge of selecting your own talent, and being the decision maker, he thinks selection has to be well done before you think of retention and engagement. What he means by that is, make sure that you're clear with your candidates, what they can expect by working with you, and make sure that they're clear with you what you can expect by working with them. Because like any other relationship, the more transparent and the more honest that we are at the beginning of that relationship, that bigger likelihood for success that we will have in nurturing that relationship. And so, if once you get them in the door, and it's very important that at that point that you both listen to each other, that you both help solve solutions for each other.

One of the benefits he thinks of a smaller organization is that they tend to be more flexible and more nimble, as a beginner, if you have that ability to be much, much more open to flexibility of somebody's schedule, and spend a lot more time with them face to face, because again, the bigger you get, the less time unfortunately that you will have as a leader and as a direct report of yours to spend time with each other because naturally the work becomes larger in scope.

He thinks if you select the right person, if they select you as the right employer, or if you're transparent at the beginning of that selection process, and then once you start working together if you're open and honest with each other and listen to each other's needs you can solve together and he thinks that will help you select and retain that available talent so that when you're running an organization of 5 people or 500 people or 50,000 people, he thinks both can be achieved as far as the right selection and the right intension. 

How to Keep People Motivated?

Me: It's been a very unusual period, of course because the world is going through a pandemic. Could you share with us just based on your experience? Because you've indicated that you're operating quite a few countries across the world. How have you seen organizations really adapt or adjust accordingly based on what's happening in terms of just keeping people motivated, especially seeing that you're managing people across different countries, every country is dealing with the pandemic differently. How has that been for your organization?

Albert stated that we are literally weeks away from when the pandemic was first declared, depending on the country you live in, most people declare the pandemic, the week of March 12 and then most everyone declared, the week of March 19 for the United States where he lives it was March 19, when they pretty much went on lockdown.

And so, he thinks there have been a few stages to the pandemic in the way that organizations have dealt with it. Early on from March through mid April, he thinks most of the organizations were in denial that this was going to be more than just a couple of weeks. And so, he thinks the way that we adjusted for that was okay, let's just take a wait and see attitude and see what happens. And then as we realized that more and more countries went into lockdown, and the pandemic started to spread, we quickly had to figure out a way to really embrace the remote work environment, not just for employees, but for customers.

And so the way that you think about shopping for milk changed, because maybe we're more apt to maybe have it delivered to your home versus having to go get it or the times that you went to go get milk was different than pre pandemic. And so, he thinks organizations realized in the second stage of the pandemic that we had to quickly embrace the remote workplace.

And for them at TELUS International, which is a company that is strongly built on what they call a cultural value chain, which is a proven formula where strong corporate culture and employee engagement equate to the ability to innovate. And they also achieve higher customer satisfaction, and they ultimately deliver stronger financial performance because of this culture value chain, they realized that they had a great cultural value chain in the work locations, but they had never done 50,000 employees be working remotely, literally overnight.

And so they made sure that they immediately took all the great knowledge that they had, and all the great experiences that they had on site culture validation and immediately started become virtual with it. And he thinks their team members appreciated that, their team members enjoyed the idea that, “Even though I'm not with my team, even though I'm not with my leader, and I'm working remote for I don't know how long, I appreciate that the company is still doing virtual yoga classes, I appreciate that the company is still doing remote financial wellness, I appreciate that the company is still doing mental health exercises, I appreciate that we're still having virtual recognitions, and reward.” So they had to take what they were very good at on site and immediately create a platform that they can leverage, again, the remote workplace.

And he thinks companies that already had a strong work culture on site, naturally, connect and navigate the virtual and deliver that strong culture virtually but organizations who had a tough time with building a strong culture on site, naturally, also have had a tough time delivering that virtual culture. And they're going up on a year now.

So, the good news is, it's never too late and there's plenty of good readings out there that will help an organization get better at this virtual remote environment. Because we now know that most of the biggest companies in the world is Facebook, or Google or Amazon and Microsoft have said that they don't intend to go back to the site till sometime in July. That's a great thing if you're a parent, then you've been able to spend time with your children and your family. But if you're an up and comer, and you want to be around the decision makers and you want to showcase your abilities and your talent, it's very difficult to do that in a remote environment. So, being home 100% at times is not the best thing for everybody, but being on site 100% times is that the best thing for everybody either, it just depends on the station you are within your career.

App, Website or Tool that Albert Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Albert shared that he still likes to look at social media for what's fun and trendy, and the latest and greatest and he'll give you an example. He spent a few years in the retail industry and in the retail industry, a lot of big name designers often look to what was going on in the school yards, and the nightclubs, in the restaurants for inspiration, that's what the next season's big fashion thing was going to be. So he thinks that the audience that you're targeting is always the best measure of what it is that they're looking for. And as an example, they realized early on that their audience, the majority of the team members that they hire are in their 20s, they like the online social media presence, very different than even the millennials. The millennials like the playing remotely, like engaging remotely, but they still wanted to come see what your work location look like. The Generation Z is really much, much more comfortable with virtual all the time and so they really have been leveraging a lot of the social media apps to see what's the best way to reach their audience. And then they mimic some of the social media apps for even their internal communications, one of the platforms that they launched early in the pandemic is an internal social media platform called Cosmos.

And this again, mirror very much to what they know that their team members are comfortable with, it's very gamified. It's very about giving compliments, it's about posting comments, and pictures. And it worked wonderfully for them. And so, he still looks personally to a lot of what's going on in the world and in social media to try to gain inspiration for how to duplicate some of that.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Albert

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Albert shared that he didn't get a chance to tell Yanique this but he has an eight year old, his name is Dylan. And he's quite a lot of fun, he's their only son, he and his wife have been married for over 20 years. And so Dylan has been their shining light for the past 8 years. So while he read a lot of great professional books in his life, the last few years he has been reading a lot of children's books. And one children's book that he read that he wanted to share today. And he doesn't know if you ever read this book, but it's actually Drew Daywalt, The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors.

And the message he gets from this book is that rock is going through its surroundings, being the champion, nobody can beat him. And then scissors is going through its surroundings, also being the champion, nobody can beat them. And then paper is going through its surroundings being the champion, nobody can beat them.

And even though they're number one, and rock is beating everybody in the garden, and scissors is beating everybody in the in the kitchen, and paper is beating everybody in the home office, it wasn't till they venture out of their comfort zone looking for worthy challenge that they found fulfilment.

And that's kind of how I see the world of business today. It wasn't till we were pushed out of our comfort zone to really embrace the remote work environment. Now, some companies are further along than a lot of other companies. But when we were forced to come out of our comfort zone, and we were forced to immediately deploy at TELUS international, they have 35,000 team members around the world to work from home in a matter of three weeks. From the beginning of April to the middle of April they pretty much at 35,000 people working.

And so, he thinks that's how you grow a business, that's how you grow in life, you have to take yourself out of your comfort zone. And so, even though at TELUS International, they achieved an 86% engagement score in September as measured by an outside party called Consentrate.

They're not satisfied, that worked great in the garden, but they want to go into the kitchen and face the champion of the kitchen. So, he really quite enjoys The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors because again, the message to him is, don't stop challenging yourself, get out of your comfort zone and make sure that you take the time.

Even when you are beaten to recognize that you still find a good fight, and you have to get back up, and you have to do it again. And that's ultimately what Rock, Paper, Scissors do is when they fight each other, as you know, paper beats rock, but rock beats scissors and then scissors beats paper, and they just keep going. Because to them, it was never about the win, it was about the challenge.

What Albert is Really Excited About Now!

Albert shared that he finds excitement and inspiration in both his ‘work family’ and his ‘family family.’ And his eight-year-old right now is in a stage where everything is interesting, everything is important. He wants to do his very best, he as a test tomorrow on the 50 US Capitals. And then he also has to identify by geography where each state in the US is by name, and they have been working on that non-stop for last week and a half. And so he’s excited to see him achieve his result tomorrow. And like he told him, it's ultimately about the work you put in and if you put enough work in, if you really learned it, you'll be able to do really well.

On the work side, they have been automating quite a bit, even before the pandemic. Again, if you're going to be in 20 countries with 50,000 employees, you can't be in 20 places at once. So they have been really investing in automating their day to day activities. And what's exciting about that is the more they automate, the more free sub leaders do what they do best and that's lead people and support people. And he thinks at that point, both leader and employee benefit, because that means they get to spend more time with each other, they spend less time updating their personal data, they spend less time updating their performance, they spend less time manually checking the to do lists, because all that becomes automated. And they can spend more time coaching each other guiding each other and ultimately supporting the clients that they serve around the world.

Where Can We Find Albert Online

Website – www.telusinternational.com

Twitter – @TELUSint

Facebook – @TELUSInternational

Instagram - TELUS

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Albert Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Albert shared that he does actually, and interestingly enough he still like to think that at some point, he doesn't know when, he’s hoping the experts are accurate when the experts say it's probably 2022 around this time that things will return to as normal as the new normal will be.

But even before the pandemic, for those of us that have been around long enough, before the pandemic, if you remember, we had the great recession of 2008 that was nowhere near a health risk, but it was certainly an economic risk, and it put a lot of friends and family out of work and it made a lot of people lose their homes and so that was a pretty bad time.

But we recovered and we came out of a very strong and if you remember before that time, we had the terrorist attacks of 2001 so that created an economic shock wave. So it almost always seems like in some point in our lifetime, there's going to be some adversity. And so, but he also knows that almost always we seem to come out of it even stronger as a society than we have before. So he still loves Mark Twain's quote about, “Dance like nobody's watching, love like you've never been hurt, sing like nobody's listening and live like it's heaven on earth.”

Me: Live like it's heaven on earth. I like that one Albert, really fun, light, festive but kind of reminds you of the important things in life not to take ourselves too seriously.

Albert stated that just like they talked about, life is a journey. And like he said, three major world impacting issues in the last 21 years. But, there is always tomorrow and he thinks we have to, whether you think the glass is half full or half empty, he thinks what matters is that you fill it up.

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Links

• The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt

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Blanca Cobb is an internationally recognized body language expert who’s been featured on national television shows such as the Steve Harvey Show, TODAY Show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew, CNN, Face the Truth, The Doctors to name a few as well as publications around the world, such as Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, Elite Daily, Business Insider, Elle, Daily Mail among others. Blanca shares her expertise weekly on a CBS affiliate, WFMY News 2, in North Carolina.

When it comes to corporate America, Blanca’s in the relationship business. Her approach to sales is the relationship dynamics between sales professionals and their clients. It's what isn't said, but seen that can either drive or stall the sales process. Blanca also turns professionals into rock stars on camera, whether you're booked for a TV segment, or making your own videos. She says to not let the small screen of the virtual world fool you, nonverbal communication is equally important on video calls and on camera when you're making videos to promote yourself, your products, your services and your company.

Questions

• Could you tell us a little bit about what is being a body language expert entail? And where does body language even extend to? We see it a lot in customer service and I heard a lot about sales in your bio, but just tell us about what different industries and careers does body language impact? Does it impact everyone? And is it a cultural thing? Just share a little bit about how you got into it? And who does it really impact the most?
• If you really want to be someone who masters body language, especially if you're a customer facing person, what are some key things that you would need to do to ensure that when people come into your presence, even before you speak, they feel welcomed?
• In terms of let's say, for example, you are trying to improve on your body language. What do you think of all the different components, you would have mentioned examples of hand gesticulations, walking, how you move your hands, facial expression, if you were to maybe give a weighting to the different types of body language, which do you think is the most important and can have the greatest impact on an interaction?
• Could you share with us maybe what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
• Could you share maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a book that you read many years ago or maybe something you read recently that has really impacted you?
• Could you share with us maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now something that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Could you tell our listeners where they could find you online if they wanted to connect with you further?
• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to maybe refocus you or just get you back on track if you got derailed?

Highlights

Blanca’s Journey

Me: So could you share a little bit about what is a body language expert, as I mentioned to you when I came into the Clubhouse room, and I was so eagerly excited when we connected again. I saw you on a TV show maybe a year and a half ago, actually, when I checked my archives, the invitation I had sent to you was from 2019 and for whatever reason, we just didn't get to synchronize our schedules and connect. And I was like this lady, I need to interview her because I talk about body language so much in my customer service trainings so I couldn't believe there was a body language expert out there, somebody who could now validate all of what I've been saying.

Could you tell us a little bit about what is being a body language expert entail? And where does body language even extend to? We see it a lot in customer service and I heard a lot about sales in your bio, but just tell us about what different industries and careers does body language impact? Does it impact everyone? And is it a cultural thing? Just share a little bit about how you got into it? And who does it really impact the most?

Blanca shared that how she got into it is a long story but she’ll make it short. When she was a little girl, she was always watching body language, but she didn't know what she was doing. So she didn't have a very happy childhood, she was an abused little girl and what she was doing is, she was always watching for signs of when the next beating was going to happen.

And those signs were listening to changes in the tone of voice, watching hand movements, just looking at body posture, facial expression, it even got down to footsteps walking down a hall, where I could tell whether this person was happy or not happy, and what could possibly happen.

So paying attention and as you might imagine, she really didn't know who she could trust growing up and other things happened to her as a child also. And so then, when she grew up, she knew she wanted to go into a helping profession and she ended up getting a Master's Degree in Psychology and she has studied with heavy hitters, very well respected professionals in the non-verbal world, as well as a detecting deception world. And she has just combined the two and voila, here she is.

So the second part of the question is impact. And industry, every single industry, every facet of life, no matter if it's a personal or professional relationship and acquaintance, somebody you meet at the bus stop or in the grocery store, it's about body language.

When you go into a store and you're both reaching for the same item, you're using body language, you're trying to figure out, well, can I grab this or does that person have it first?

So it's everything. When you're on a telephone, when you just hear voice, how that person is talking, how they're projecting their voice. Do they sound happy?

Do they sound confused? Do they sound angry?

It's everything and everywhere body language touches. You cannot communicate without some level of nonverbal communication. And if you think about it, even babies when they come out of the womb, they do not know how to talk, it takes a while for children to learn how to talk, however they're communicating, they're communicating through their cries and they stop crying when parents attend to their needs, this is done non-verbally, this isn't done with words. So it's just innate, it's part of who we are.

Keys for Mastering Customer Experience When Using Body Language

Me: So basically, body language affects everyone. Now, let’s bring it to customer service Blanca, because as you know, our audience is all about improving the quality of their customers’ experience. People have a lot of nuances, body language refers to your facial expressions, as you mentioned, your walk, your hand gesticulations, body movements, anything that can definitely send a signal to someone else that would indicate whether their intention for you or against you. And so, in the Caribbean, I don't know if you've been to the Caribbean before, but in Jamaica, for sure, we're extremely expressive people and we have this saying locally that says, “It's not what you say, but it's how you say it.” And that comes over in your body language and your facial expressions, and all that kind of stuff. But if you really want to be someone who masters body language, especially if you're a customer facing person, what are some key things that you would need to do to ensure that when people come into your presence, even before you speak, they feel welcomed?

Blanca stated that that's a great question. So she will start with that part first. It's your body language, because people are picking up your vibes.

So let's say you're in a bad mood that day, and then you try to fake it, you might not get away with it as well as you think you can. Because what happens is your body will leak an emotion, you try to hide not feeling well, or just not being into work that day.

But people are going to be able to see some type of leakage in your face and what she’s talking about are micro expressions. So this is with an involuntary facial expression that you make when you're trying to hide how you're really feeling but your body, your face is going to leak the true emotion.

And these micro expressions occur within like 150 seconds, so like within a blink of an eye and people, they might not be able to recognize exactly what they saw but they're going to sense that, they're going intuit it, and they're going to say, “Hmm, this person isn't quite as happy, maybe I don't want to talk to them, I'm going to talk to a different customer service rep.”

So you have to pay attention to your own body language. So you want to have open body language, so what that means is you don't want to stand behind a counter, you stand behind a counter, you actually have a physical object between you and the other person. So subconsciously, people are going to see that as an obstacle, it's so much better when you walk around the counter, and it's you and that person face to face and you have a nice big smile on your faces, you're welcoming them, or asking them how you might be able to help them, you want to make sure that your hands are free, you're not holding any objects when you're initially meeting somebody.

And when you're talking, you want to have your hands out in front of you and present, you want your palms up, when you have your palms up, you're sending a nonverbal message that you're being friendly, you're being straightforward, you've got nothing to hide, because people can see your palms. And then you want to make sure that your body is facing towards them and this includes your feet, your feet takes you in the direction where you want to go. If your feet are facing towards the customer, that's very welcoming, if your feet are slightly turned either to the right or the left, even though you might have your upper body facing the person, they're still going to perceive that you're not quite into that interaction.

Me: So you want to be aware of how you're positioned. Do you think culture impacts how people just manage their body language or how they interact?

Blanca stated absolutely yes. There are cultural differences everywhere because like Yanique was saying in Jamaica, there's a certain phrase that you use, I think you said, it isn't what you say, but how you say it. Or phrasing here.

So, let's say there's somebody from a different country, but that's not as common there. So right there, you have a cultural difference, it doesn't make one right and the other wrong, it just makes it that it's different. And in order to understand people and get on people's level, you have to adapt to what they're showing you and you have to adapt to their culture, that doesn't mean you need to become a cultural expert in their country or their culture. But what it does mean is that you need to have some sensitivity. So the best way to handle this when you're not sure of cultural differences is to meet the person where they are. What this means is, she gives a good example.

What this means is, let's say their energy level or their animation, or their excitement is at a level 3, but you're at a level 9, there's a big difference there from a 3 to a 9, so if you come in at a 9 where you're like really excited, “Hey, it's so good to see you, I'm so glad you walked into the store, Baba, Baba Baba.” And they come in a little lower key, that's going to be a turnoff to them.

She likes to make these analogies to dating. So it's like if somebody comes across too strong, too much, then you pull back, you're like, “Whoa, where's this coming from? This is too much too soon, too fast.” So that's why you adapt to the same level that they are, the level three and the example that she’s giving and then together you can move up that scale. Because what that means is that you have the same energy level, and the same tone of voice and mannerisms as them, go down to the level 3. And then as they get comfortable, and as they start to get to know you and feel comfortable in the interaction, then you can move up together, but it's something that's done simultaneously and it comes across more natural, and it's very sensitive to where they are, and then they feel understood. And when people feel understood and validated, guess what? They end up liking you more.

Me: Agreed. In terms of the example you gave just now, I remember I was watching a video a few years ago, and there was a term that they use called mirroring, would the example you gave in terms of matching that person as to where they are be similar to mirroring?

Blanca stated that it is. And so mirroring, it's essentially the same thing, she’s just use an example instead of using the word mirroring. So she'll give you specific examples of mirroring. So let's say you're talking to somebody, and you notice that they adjust their watch. So then a few seconds later, you don't want to do it immediately, but a few seconds later, then you might adjust the sleeve of your shirt. So it's that similarity. And the reason mirroring works so well, is because and she always say this, “Like, likes, like.” Saying that again, “Like, likes, like.” What that means is people like people who are similar to them. And so, when people feel that you're similar to them, and it's what she was talking about earlier, when they feel like you get them, you understand them, you validate them, and they can't help but like you, it makes them feel good. It makes them feel like there's a commonality between the two of you.

So mirroring absolutely does work. So for example, let me give another example. Let's say they lean on the counter, then you want to wait a few seconds and then you might want to lean on a chair, if a chairs nearby if you're standing up. But the thing as she keeps talking about that timing, you want to wait a few seconds, because if it's like they do something, you do something immediately after, that comes across as creepy, and you don't want to come across as creepy and inauthentic and that's why you wait a few seconds and someone might go, “Wait a second Blanca, you're talking about creepy and inauthentic. If I'm mirroring isn't that action really creepy and inauthentic?” No, it isn’t, at first it's going to feel that way but you have to think about your intent, your intent is to make this person feel comfortable, your intent is to establish rapport with this person, your intent is to help develop trust in this customer service situation. So if the intent is pure, then it isn't creepy or inauthentic, it might feel that way at first. So it's like with any skill, the more you do it, the better you get, the more comfortable you are with it.

Body Language – The Most Important and Greatest Impact on an Interaction

Me: So Blanca we spoke about just how it is that you can adjust yourself as it relates to body language. In terms of let's say, for example, you are trying to improve on your body language. What do you think of all the different components, you would have mentioned examples of hand gesticulations, walking, how you move your hands, facial expression, if you were to maybe give a weighting to the different types of body language, which do you think is the most important and can have the greatest impact on an interaction?

Blanca stated that this is a fabulous question, and it isn't one over the other, it's all of them in unison. Because if you think about it, our body works together, our muscles are all interconnected in our body, even though you may not realize it. You might have a shoulder pain that's really connected to a lower back problem. All muscles are connected. So it's the same thing with body language. If you want to just focus on facial expressions, and you want to come across as more engaging and happy so you have a smile on your face but then you have tension in your shoulders, that’s a disconnect, that’s not going work.

People are going to think that face that you're making of being happy, it's fake and phoney, you know what they're going to focus on the tension in your shoulders. People are going to believe the negative before they believe the positive. That's why it all needs to work together as a symphony of body language.

Me: So then, in order for it to work as a symphony, what are some of the things that you would need to do maybe exercise, eat properly, surround yourself with positive things, do those things help to enhance your body language in a positive way?

Blanca stated that it helped enhance you as a person because it keeps you healthy, it keeps your energy up when you're taking care of your body, so that helps exude positive body language. The best thing that you can do is pay attention to your own body language and although we do not walk around with a mirror with us, and we can look at ourselves all the time when we're interacting, what you do have is how somebody responds to you, that's your mirror. So, if you think you're actually being happy, and you're being engaging, and you're being friendly, but yet somebody isn't responding, and kind, then you have to think a couple of things. Is it the vibe that you're putting out? Or maybe there's something that's off for them in that given moment? So you have to think about that.

And another tip that she would have for people is to record yourself, use a camera, you can use your phone, put it off to the side, have a conversation, practice a pitch, practice how you might interact with somebody and then go back and watch it. Now, the only problem with that when you're doing it by yourself, you might come across a little stiff or awkward on film, or on camera, because you're really talking to yourself, so then practice with a friend or family member or somebody. So that way, it's more of a real interaction and then you can go ahead and eliminate any awkwardness or stiffness that you might see on the replay.

Me: And this would be applicable for salespeople as well.

Blanca agreed. Yes, for anybody when you're dealing with the public, speakers, before you go on stage you practice and video, that's how she coaches people who want to be speakers. She’s evaluating them, pointing out what they're doing great, areas that they need to work on. And then she gives them suggestions on how to make themselves better, but then they also see themselves and they do self-evaluation, that's really important to be self-aware of yourself. Seemingly important. That gives you insight and then you'll see things that you don't even realize about yourself, because we don't walk around with a mirror, staring at ourselves all the time. The video really helps.

Me: And it's good too, because one of the recommendations I give to participants, especially those who has to deal with customers daily, but they need to remember to smile and they have the ability to afford having a mirror at their desk, I recommend, especially if they're working our call centre, for example, that they put a mirror at their desk that helps to remind them that for each caller, they need to maintain a pleasant countenance or at least sound welcoming enough, because you may come off the phone with someone who just really rattled you completely. But it doesn't mean that that energy from that telephone call should transfer into the next call because that person doesn't know what you're coming out of and they're expecting somebody welcoming and approachable.

Blanca agreed. Absolutely and she’s glad that Yanique brought that up because if there is a bad call, and let's say they're going to be jumping on the next call, what they should do is stand up, move around, shake it off, like physically shake it off even if they have a next call coming in, then sit in the chair, and just move because what you're doing is you're getting out of that negative energy that you're feeling at the moment.

It's a way just to make it dissipate, just to make it go away before you jump on the next call. And the idea of the mirror is perfect, particularly when you have a tough call, watch yourself because what happens is you may not even realize that you're rolling your eyes as you're helping the person. You may not realize that you're giving a look of disgust and disgust as if you can imagine smelling something that's like rotting that just smells bad, like super bad, like diarrhoea or vomit and your nose automatically crinkles, that is a look of disgust. And a lot of people will do that.

Another facial expression people make that you can see yourself in it and if you're not in a very pleasant conversation with somebody and you're watching yourself in the mirror, the look of contempt. And the look of contempt is the only facial expression that's unilateral that occurred on one side. And what it looks like is just the corner, one corner of your mouth, it slightly goes up and what that means is moral superiority.

So imagine if you know you're right, as the customer service rep and this person who you're talking to, a customer is really giving you a hard time, you might make that look of contempt and that is something that you should be aware of. And the reason it's so important, is because the negativity that you're feeling in this conversation can carry over to the next person. And also, if this is how you respond when someone's giving you a hard time or when something isn't going well, then you're going to be transferring that body language, those facial expressions when you're meeting someone in real life and then they can really see it.

App, Website or Tool that Blanca Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resources that she can’t live without in her business, Blanca stated that it's Clubhouse. So for those who are not familiar with Clubhouse, it's only available right now for iOS. This is an audio app, this is where you can connect with people and make connections. And you are actually talking, you're in a room with a lot of other people from all around the world that have similar interests, or people who are learning about a new topic and you're talking just like you and I are talking right now, it's fascinating. She cannot tell you how many people she has met that she would never have met otherwise. She lives on the east coast in the United States. So people from the west coast all the way to abroad, it is fascinating. She loves it. She absolutely loves it, cannot imagine not having that right now.

This is how she and Yanique reconnected, through the Clubhouse app. True.

Me: Very true. It's a really, really good app. But it's been my experience that you have to manage yourself with it because it can run away and your day gets caught up in Clubhouse and you don't actually achieve your goals. So one of the things I've done to manage myself with is I've turned off notifications, because it can be extremely distracting. Every time there's a new room that opens up and it's they're notifying my phone and I'm doing something and I stop and I go, “Oh, this topic looks interesting.” And then you just get derailed completely. But I do agree with you, it's a wonderful application, whoever was the brainchild of it in terms of having audio where people could go in and have live conversations, you can definitely learn and gain a lot of knowledge and insight and as you said, connect with people who you'd have never had the opportunity to connect with otherwise.

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Blanca

When asked about books that have the biggest impact, Blanca shared that for her, it's not a particular book, it is the genre of the book. So for example, this is a particular book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss is an excellent book. He is a former FBI, a hostage negotiator and he has made a book or written a book I should say, about how to negotiate and she loves it because it's a skill that we all need. So for genres for her, it's like understanding people. So psychological books that really help you understand people and help you understand yourself. She thinks that is such an important skill to have because we will always have people in our lives, we will have people who come into our lives and stay and we will have people who leave our lives. But every touchpoint, every person who we have a relationship whether it's personal or professional, makes an impact on us. And we can learn from every one of those interactions and relationships. And so, that's why she goes back to the genre. So there isn't a particular book, it's just the subject.

What Blanca is Really Excited About Now!

Blanca stated that she is really excited to share that she is putting the polishing touches on an ebook, Emotions Behind the Mask is the title of this ebook because everyone is wearing masks, how do you read facial expressions when the majority of your face is covered by a mask?

So it's important because we're going to continue to wear a mask and it looks like it might be until the next year into 2022. But how can you still make a connection? How can you still understand some nonverbals of somebody else in our social distancing world? That is so important nonverbal communication. So she’s super excited about that.

And then she has created a programme how to help people be rock stars on camera, whether they're booked for a TV segment, or whether they're creating their own videos for video marketing, for themselves, their products, their services or their company. So those are two big things that she has going that she loves. She’s very passionate about people having better lives.

Again, going back to the beginning of the conversation, she didn't have a very happy childhood or adolescence. And so it's important for her that people have healthy relationships, that they can get along and know who to trust and who has their back. People need happiness, part of your happiness in life are the people who you select to be in your life and that's where she can make a big difference for people.

Where Can We Find Blanca Online

Website – www.blancacobb.com

Clubhouse – Blanca Cobb

Instagram – @blancacobb

Facebook – Blanca Cobb

Twitter – @BlancaCobb

YouTube – Blanca Cobb

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Blanca Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Blanca shared, “You're stronger than you know.”

In times when we have extreme stress, when we just rethink why am I even getting up in the morning because it's going to be the same day nothing has changed, you have a lot of stress, you have children or spouses who are counting on you, or you're not sure what's going to happen with your job. When you feel like you just want to get into the corner and cry, that's where you have to really pull deep within yourself and understand you're stronger than you know, get out of bed. You can do this, even when you feel the whole world is against you. You're stronger than you know.

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Links

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

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